D&D 1E 5e Play, 1e Play, and the Immersive Experience

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Henry]

...Many people have the opposite experience of you, and are finding better, more immersive roleplaying with 5e. Many players (who I've seen) seem largely oblivious to rules and what's on their sheet, and are playing exactly the way you remember with such fond nostalgia.

Every edition has had every kind of player.

Quite true; I'm looking at the current generation of Crit Role watchers and stream viewers, and finding that a TON of people coming newly to the hobby are far more interested in the exploration and role play aspects than mechanical concerns, and IMO this has a lot to do with removing a lot of the complexity of the last twenty years, making it more approachable to those interested in it. Later, those same gamers may desire more rules complexity, but there's a lot in common with the structure of both D&D5 and Basic D&D from the late 70s and early 80s.

However, you WANT the complexity of the GM side of the screen to be approachable to these new gamers, too. While I enjoyed the hodge-podge of rules on the DM side of the screen back in the 80s, it's NOT conducive to interest very many people in moving to that side of the table. Having the rules to be consistent, and above all VISIBLE to all participants I think is important to getting more first-time DMs to take the plunge, rather than blindsiding them with a ton of undisclosed complexity.

The worst job assignments I have hated in my life have been the job opportunities where major components of the job were HIDDEN from me until I took the reins; my groups always considered the PHB and DMG as open, and knew the rules back and forwards as two parts of a whole, rather than (as Gary used to suggest) hidden from everyone except those select few who were DMs. If we had treated them as such, with the DMG for NO PLAYERS ALLOWED, then I might not have had as positive an opinion of it back then. I knew it was a lot of work going in, I didn't have to be the sole expert on the rules because we shared the "rules lawyer" burden among the group. Therefore, to me rules transparency was a positive forward step in development, not a negative thing, yet still tempered with the AD&D OSR aspect of "GM as final arbiter" to remove argument and facilitate a smooth game, rather than the trend of the 3.x days among the player base of making the GM beholden to all the rules to the expense of the game play. Part of this new renaissance in pop culture I think is in finding that balance of "rulings instead of rules" with "the DM is the only one who knows the rules".

 

[hawkeyefan]

Solution: wherever possible the player just says what she wants her PC to do, and the basics of how; leaving the DM to worry about the specific mechanics involved.

Take turn-undead as an example. All the player needs to know is that Clerics have the ability to attempt to turn undead. The rest of the mechanics are left entirely in the DM's realm, and on the player declaring her PC is trying to turn undead the DM tells her what dice to roll (and eventually the player will just know this) and sort out the results.

Of course this assumes trusting one's DM to apply the mechanics fairly and consistently, etc.; but if you can't do this why are you playing in that game anyway?

I think that player knowledge of mechanics serves as a stand in for character knowledge of the world. It doesn't really have to be about the DM being fair, or the players trusting the DM. It's more about (as others have gone on to say in the thread) the fact that characters have some knowledge of their world and their place in it. A novice cleric would know that he has a better chance at turning a zombie than a vampire, for instance. And so on.

I find that meta knowledge of all kinds can serve as a substitution for some in world thing that cannot be replicated at the table. I allow players to offer each other advice, for example, which is something I know many DMs do not allow. But I find that it's a suitable representation of battle experience and how a group can learn to function well together. And so on.

I'm sure for some, this kind of thing breaks immersion, but I find it helps the players to be more inline with what their characters are experiencing, and the options they have in the moment.

This speaks to exactly what I'm getting at above. As the editions have gone along more and more game mechanics have been transferred from the DM-side to the player-side; and I don't know about anyone else but for me-as-player that mechanics transfer gets directly in the way of immersion.

Add to that the fact that as the editions have gone along more and more classes have had to worry about more and more abilities (mostly skills and feats), the in-play remembering and application of which also harms immersion. In combat this isn't as big a deal, but in role-play situations it can be.

When a friend recently asked me to play a 1e game again for fun, he shared the books with me so I could make a character. I had forgotten that all the to hit matrices were in the DMG. I'm so glad they've changed that. I mean, even back in the day they realized what a bad idea that was and made that info available to players in different ways.

Familiarity, pure and simple.

Were I in that position - trying to design/write a system and needing examples - I'd probably use stuff from my own game too. It's something I'm already familiar with, I don't need to make it up again as the example already exists, and - should such things matter - if there's any copyright issues regarding the example I in theory already hold said copyright.

Sure. I wasn't clear about what I was saying....since Gygax seemed reluctant to want to offer his world as a source for players and instead expected them to come up with their own setting, it seems odd to use examples from his own game. Especially since he also used examples from fiction and myth (copyrights be damned in some cases!).

It seems to me to be a bit of a conflict compared to the commonly accepted idea that he did not expect players to mine his material for their home game. Certainly he had to know that The Hand of Vecna was going to wind up as the goal of some home games, rather than simply as inspiration for a DM to come up with some other similar artifact to use.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I know you often make this argument (that a character within the game naturally understands and "susses out" the underlying math) this literally makes no sense, and I still fail to understand it each and every time you make it.

(snip)

But again, this is all besides the point. If you like the "game" aspect, that's awesome! You don't have to do any post hoc rationalization. After all, the earliest games often relied on the player's skill, not just the proverbial "PC knowledge." Whatever is fun for you!

I just don't understand this argument you make. It's unnecessary, and kind of odd?

Saelorn (who has me blocked) insists that he is always in character and always maintains a perfect separation of player knowledge from character knowledge. Therefore he has to defend the view that his characters understand the probabilities of the game mechanics, because otherwise he would be forced to admit that he metagames constantly.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[reelo]

As someone who, other than a brief campaign of 2E at the very beginning of my RPG-career, cut his teeth on 3E, and now 5E, I think I've identified (for ME!) what my main gripe with modern iterations of D&D is, and why I've come to vastly prefer the OSR and its clones of early versions of the game:

Before 3E, other than casters getting new spells, characters only got *better* at what they did, but they had most, if not all, their abilities right from the start. Levelling up just made them better.
Ever since 3E, class-abilities are spread out in a way that make players "chase" them, so to speak. Feats and ASI are the same. Players always seem to rush for this or that class-mechanic, planning their "build" several levels in advance.
Whatever happened to "it's the journey, not the destination" ?

Of course, ymmv, but for me, that's my biggest argument against modern D&D: getting new stuff instead of simply getting better.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm not sure I get that? Is it bad to say that you "metagame?" Or for particular cases?

I mean, a lot of the early, Gygax-ian D&D assumed that the player applied gaming expertise to the game that was independent of the character; in fact, many early modules assumed and required this type of play. Heck, it's the theory behind competition modules!

Well, if you are somebody who insists that you never, ever metagame, yeah...I guess it would be bad to admit that sometimes you do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

1. The game is not real life. It is not even a very accurate simulation. It has never even tried to be, from the very first editions onward.

The game world is not our real world, but it is a world that could be real. Things work differently there, because they follow the local laws of nature rather than real-world laws, but the laws that they do follow are consistent. That's the minimum consideration for any fictional world, whether in a game or novel. If you cross that line, then it stops being fantasy and starts being a fairy tale.

However, we don't know what those laws are. We can't actually go there and measure the gravity, or how much force it takes to penetrate six inches through oak. We don't even really have a sense of how things work there, aside from basic genre conventions, because all we have to go on is what the DM tells us. Our characters would have a pretty good sense of how things work, though, because they actually live there; they can look around and see all of the details, and they have at least a decade of experience with how things happen there on a day-to-day basis. When the player puts themself into the mindset of their character, they should be assuming that they have a pretty good idea of how things work around them, because the character knows that even if the player does not. (If you want a discussion about how much information is reasonable to assume for the character to have, and what sort of checks might be called for, then I'd be down for that at a later point. I don't really want to run too long here.)

The other relevant issue is that, while neither the players nor (necessarily) the DM know exactly how the game world works, we do all know that the rules in the book are a reasonable approximation of it. We know this with great certainty, because we have out-of-game knowledge about the procedure of play. When my character tries to climb a wall, the DM looks at the rules in the book and follows the rules for climbing. If the climbing rules say that I have a 70% chance to climb right now, and failure results in 1-6 damage, then that's what happens in the world. And since the laws of the game world are consistent, it means that those circumstances will always yield a 70% chance of climbing, with 1-6 damage on a failure.

Even though the character can't know the rules in the book, and probably hasn't studied the local laws of nature in any real depth, all of their observations must necessarily be consistent with those rules. Without even thinking about it, they will know that stronger people are better at climbing than weaker people - weight doesn't really seem to be a factor - and that falling from more than ten feet has a real chance of killing someone if they don't receive medical attention within a minute. They will have internalize everything that the observe around them, maybe not enough to run a probability assessment, but definitely enough to know what is a factor and what is not.

3. Even assuming (1) and (2) are correct, most people in today's modern age, with full ability to understand and learn such topics as statistics, where the properties are widely known and disseminated, still don't know. For evidence of this, see almost any thread on this very board where the topic comes up.

If I was cornered by thugs, I would be able to glean enough information from the environment to make a fairly accurate assessment as to my chance of climbing a wall or running past them. Even if I can't name all of the factors off the top of my head, I could make a reasonable guess based on the exact distances and my knowledge of my own physical abilities and the appearance of the wall and the body language of the thugs.

In a game, I wouldn't have nearly that much information (unless I wanted to stop and ask the DM many questions, which they may not be able to answer very quickly). But if I know the underlying mechanics of the game, then I can still make a decision with that same degree of confidence, as though I did have all of that information.

But again, this is all besides the point. If you like the "game" aspect, that's awesome! You don't have to do any post hoc rationalization. After all, the earliest games often relied on the player's skill, not just the proverbial "PC knowledge." Whatever is fun for you!

I'm not sure I get that? Is it bad to say that you "metagame?" Or for particular cases?

I mean, a lot of the early, Gygax-ian D&D assumed that the player applied gaming expertise to the game that was independent of the character; in fact, many early modules assumed and required this type of play. Heck, it's the theory behind competition modules!

I honestly can't tell whether you're being serious here. Meta-gaming is universally bad, from a role-playing standpoint. Role-playing is making decisions as your character would make them, based solely on information available to them; and meta-gaming is making decisions based on out-of-game factors that your character can't possibly be aware of. They are mutually incompatible, to the point that I wouldn't even consider Gygax's game to be a role-playing game in that sense, since you aren't making your decisions in-character.

Many people are fine with meta-gaming, either because they don't care about the role-playing aspect of the game, or because they're extremely adept at jumping into- and out-of- character. Personally, I find that meta-gaming ruins my immersion, which is why I want the game to only present me with information that is observable to the characters. (It's also why I take a hard stand that a successful "hit" on the attack roll must be visually distinguishable from a "miss" on the attack roll, since my character can't react to a loss of Hit Points unless they can observe it.)

 

[Lanefan]

I think that player knowledge of mechanics serves as a stand in for character knowledge of the world.

In some instances it can, I suppose; but in many others it just ends up diverting a player's thoughts from in-character to metagame considerations.

It doesn't really have to be about the DM being fair, or the players trusting the DM. It's more about (as others have gone on to say in the thread) the fact that characters have some knowledge of their world and their place in it. A novice cleric would know that he has a better chance at turning a zombie than a vampire, for instance. And so on.

In terms of in-the-rectory classroom training, yes. But in the field when meeting an undead for the first time that shambles and has fleshy bits hanging off of it, how does she know whether it's a zombie or a wight or some other thing she's never heard of?

And this tangentially brings up another point: in these situations the DM really has to just visually describe the creature and stop there.

I find that meta knowledge of all kinds can serve as a substitution for some in world thing that cannot be replicated at the table. I allow players to offer each other advice, for example, which is something I know many DMs do not allow.

Me being one, if for no other reason than the loudmouths don't give the quieter players a chance to think for themselves. That, and in situations where the PCs can't see or interact with each other (e.g. someone's gone ahead scouting and the party doesn't have long-range communication) the players' lack of interaction should reflect that. (for my part, in situations like this I'll take the scout's player to another room, or do it all by note, to enforce this)

When a friend recently asked me to play a 1e game again for fun, he shared the books with me so I could make a character. I had forgotten that all the to hit matrices were in the DMG. I'm so glad they've changed that.

Where that's one change I've never liked; it moves far too much of the math into my view as a player, and breaks the illusion.

In the too-short period before I started DMing and was only a player, part of the fun and mystery was that I'd roll the dice and the DM would then - after doing whatever arcane things he had to do behind that screen - tell me what I'd done. Where possible I'd like to preserve this idea rather than destroy it.

I mean, even back in the day they realized what a bad idea that was and made that info available to players in different ways.

Yeah, THAC0 and all that - which I've never used, and still don't.

Sure. I wasn't clear about what I was saying....since Gygax seemed reluctant to want to offer his world as a source for players and instead expected them to come up with their own setting, it seems odd to use examples from his own game. Especially since he also used examples from fiction and myth (copyrights be damned in some cases!).

It seems to me to be a bit of a conflict compared to the commonly accepted idea that he did not expect players to mine his material for their home game. Certainly he had to know that The Hand of Vecna was going to wind up as the goal of some home games, rather than simply as inspiration for a DM to come up with some other similar artifact to use.

That didn't last long, given that within a few years came the whole Greyhawk series of modules - for better or worse...

I'm not sure I get that? Is it bad to say that you "metagame?"

Yes. It's worse than saying you like to play Gnome Paladins, by many degrees.

 

[lowkey13]

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