D&D General In defence of Grognardism

[Fanaelialae]

but they aren’t all as lethal by default. They don’t just have tools for making it possible to avoid lethality, they are less lethal systems. I don’t think that is a very controversial interpretation. I do agree the GM matters but so do HP totals and rules like you die when you reach 0. That isn’t accidentally lethal. That is a system where you are meant to die if you take 4 damage and your a first level wizard

Like I said, I've played in low and no lethality BECMI and 2e games. I've played in high lethality games in later editions.

The rules of those earlier editions are more lethal, but ultimately that matters less than how lethal the DM intends the game to be. More lethal rules simply mean that the DM needs to throttle the lethality more (assuming they want less lethality), whereas less lethal rules mean the DM can basically go crazy and throw whatever they want at the characters (assuming they want higher lethality).

But now I'm starting to feel like a broken record...

 

[Marc_C]

Like I said, I've played in low and no lethality BECMI and 2e games. I've played in high lethality games in later editions.

The rules of those earlier editions are more lethal, but ultimately that matters less than how lethal the DM intends the game to be. More lethal rules simply mean that the DM needs to throttle the lethality more (assuming they want less lethality), whereas less lethal rules mean the DM can basically go crazy and throw whatever they want at the characters (assuming they want higher lethality).

But now I'm starting to feel like a broken record...

A common way to curb lethality in TSR D&D was to fudge the attack and damage dice behind the screen. Often because the DM was inexperienced or realized the encounter was far too powerful for the PCs. Death at 0 HP doesn't forgive.

 

[Fanaelialae]

A common way to curb lethality in TSR D&D was to fudge the attack and damage dice behind the screen. Often because the DM was inexperienced or realized the encounter was far too powerful for the PCs. Death at 0 HP doesn't forgive.

True, but I didn't usually fudge. We did use the common misconception of how the -10 HP rule worked. (I know that's not how it was intended to work, but that's how literally everyone I know read it to work, and this was before the internet was really a thing, so we certainly considered it RAW.)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Having grown up during the Cold War, I'll agree that its influences was all over games. Our sessions of Top Secret were defined by the Cold War as much as James Bond and 80s action movies. Paranoia was played for laughs, but it had a darkly, darkly satiric element that probably went mostly over our heads at the time. Gamma World began with the presumption of the nuclear holocaust (which changed as the editions moved away from the Cold War era).

I never played Twilight 2000 back in the day, but its ads were all over the place, and they painted a stark vision of the future. Which, after finally picking up the game since then, if anything were still not as dark as the game itself.

Several roleplaying games of the 1980s dealt directly with the Cold War, or the possible consequences if it turned hot – Paranoia (1984), Twilight 2000 (1984), and The Price of Freedom (1986). This post is about the reviews of the latter two in the British roleplaying magazine, White Dwarf, and subsequent debates in its letters pages.

I think there is a difference between someone that was gaming back in the day and someone that is a grognard. I daresay I have my share of "old school cred" but I don't call myself a grognard. If anything, I'd say it's the munchkins (using the terminology as it was used back then) of old that we owe a debt to. The kids that got into D&D just because slaying dragons with a vorpal sword sounded awesome. That plowed through the inscrutable rules without having the wargames grounding that might have helped make sense of them. It was the grognards of the day complaining about D&D's explosion of popularity. The popularity that enabled D&D to thrive and survive in the coming decades.

Of course, yesterday's newbie munchkin can turn into today's cantankerous grognard...

If it wasn't for we Grognards, all you folks who first discovered D&D since the mid-80's would not have had that opportunity.

 

[GuyBoy]

Growing up in UK during the Cold War, I think the attraction to D&D as part of US Soft Power was related to, but not identical to, the “Cold War gone Hot” games such as Twilight 2000 and Gamma World ( both of which I played, particularly the latter).
We probably need to be careful about even the phrase Soft Power when talking about late 1970s gaming: Joseph Nye of Harvard is generally credited with introducing the phrase in the late 1980s and the book, “Soft Power” was published in 2004. Highly recommended btw.

Amid the fear aspects of the Cold War, there was a general attraction in UK to all aspects of US culture at the time. This is the Soft Power attraction I’m referring to, even before Nye codified the concept. It included Hollywood, CBGBs, Happy Days, reaction to Elvis’ death, skateboards, Bazooka Joe, Spider-Man and, yes, D&D.
I’m not getting rose-tinted on USA as “leader of the free world” (from around 1980 as a politics student, I was pretty critical of Cruise missiles, Contra funding etc), but generally USA was pretty admired in geo-political terms by most British people ie successful soft power.
It’s easy to argue that the most dangerous point of the Cold War was Cuba. That is true, but detente had crumbled by the late 1970s and Able Archer in 1983 was certainly a danger point.

So D&D was part of Cold War Soft Power, even though it had no more direct reference to the conflict than Arthur Fonzarelli.
Twilight 2000 and Gamma World carried direct Cold War reference but less Soft Power impact, being less popular games.

“Mr Gorbachev, cast Passwall on that Wall!”

 

[Thomas Shey]

A common way to curb lethality in TSR D&D was to fudge the attack and damage dice behind the screen. Often because the DM was inexperienced or realized the encounter was far too powerful for the PCs. Death at 0 HP doesn't forgive.

Tended to be pretty obvious after a while, though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, but I didn't usually fudge. We did use the common misconception of how the -10 HP rule worked. (I know that's not how it was intended to work, but that's how literally everyone I know read it to work, and this was before the internet was really a thing, so we certainly considered it RAW.)

So in practice, it wasn't as lethal because you'd houseruled it, albeit accidentally.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So in practice, it wasn't as lethal because you'd houseruled it, albeit accidentally.

Based on my understanding, this is an extremely common misunderstanding (every DM I'd ever met read it this way, until I found ENWorld). Therefore, I wouldn't call it a house rule. Rather, it was an unclear rule that we believed we were using RAW, but were not using RAI.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

In regards to the OP, I think the biggest reason, for me at least, isn't really any of those. Most of them could have an impact, but the biggest reason is because it's just a style of play like any other edition. it's a style that rewards out of the box thinking, player skill, speed of play, and rulings over rules. That's just as a legitimate preference of play as narrative play, or power gamers, or any other style that various editions support. And thus, there's room for them all and doesn't really need defense.

None of the bolded are the sole domain of grognardism/old skool play/whatever you want to call it. They are just positive elements you want to lay claim to.

Power gaming rewards skill and out of the box thinking to come up with unexpected combinations. Narrative play certainly promotes player skill and rulings over rules. Grognards just act as if their playstyle is the only one that does because it comes from a nostalgic view of their treasured memories. Its like when people say movies used to be better in "insert era". They remember the cream of the crop, not the vast amounts of unmemorable dreck.

Speed of play? There was a reason so many ignored so much of the written rules and ran by the seat of their pants. I personally find 5E runs faster than 1e.

 

[Bedrockgames]

None of the bolded are the sole domain of grognardism/old skool play/whatever you want. Power gaming rewards skill and out of the box thinking to come up with unexpected combinations. Narrative play certainly promotes player skill and rulings over rules. Grognards just act as if their playstyle is the only one that does because it comes from a nostalgic view of their treasured memories. Its like when people say movies used to be better in "insert era". They remember the cream of the crop, not the vast amounts of unmemorable dreck.

Speed of play? There was a reason so many ignored so much of the written rules and ran by the seat of their pants. I personally find 5E runs faster than 1e.

I don't get the defensiveness around this. I am sure plenty of other styles have similar things they prioritize or do. But when OSR and Old school people talk about skilled play, they do so because it is one of the crucial things to understand going in if you want to enjoy the style (but I think talking about it as a part of this type of play doesn't imply it soley belongs to the style). I will say, I did a fair amount of power gaming, and ran a number of power gaming campaigns. That is a different kind of skilled play in my opinion (the focus is much more on optimizing your mechanical choices, your character creation choices, and getting more out of the system than it seems was intended). That definitely takes skill and is harder than skilled play in the OSR sense, but it is a different kind of skill.