L&L: The 2nd one this week (DM Packet)

[jadrax]

Balesir is spot on here. I'm not talking about anything special to 3E or 4e here. I'm talking about D&D as it has been since at least the late 1970s.

1st ed AD&D has hit point rule for physical injury, near-instant death from spider and snake venom, notoriously contested rules for falling damage, and later (in the Wilderness Survival Guide) suggests terminal velocity of (from memory) 1000' per round, which is something like a tenth of the minimal terminal velocity for a falling person.

1st ed AD&D also has highly defined leadership and influence modifiers which have been derived not from any systematic study of human affairs or of organisational psychology, but are posited based on the author's imagined conception of how human relationships and military discipline work.

It also has rules about the likelihood of pursuers giving up the chase in response to dropped treasure and food which are based not on any conception of reality, but upon their contribution to a certain sort of game play.

I would argue that the designer was trying to emulate reality in all these cases, but failing. But to be honest, I don't think its possible for us to come to agreement on this issue.

 

[pemerton]

I would argue that the designer was trying to emulate reality in all these cases, but failing.

I personally think the emulation was of a certain literary genre, but let's put that to one side.

Suppose it's true that the designers were trying to emulate reality. Suppose, also, that a player of AD&D plays his/her PC on the assumption that the GM will follow the rules. In your view, does the GM have a licence to change the rules to better reflect what the GM takes reality to be?

 

[pemerton]

The interesting thing about those rules for followers is that the highly inspirational paladin class does not attract followers when even brooding fatalistic warriors do. It's almost as if game balance trumps believable simulation.

Well, quite!

There's a whole lot of weird stuff about the follower rules in general. What are 10th level thieves and rangers expected to do with 1st and 2nd level followers? From memory the Rules Compendium seems to have a better take on this for thieves - doesn't it have rules for using your low level guildmembers to do stuff from which you (the high level guildmaster) take a cut?

 

[jadrax]

Suppose it's true that the designers were trying to emulate reality. Suppose, also, that a player of AD&D plays his/her PC on the assumption that the GM will follow the rules. In your view, does the GM have a licence to change the rules to better reflect what the GM takes reality to be?

To me, they have more than a licence, they have a responsibility to do so, as long as it makes it a more enjoyable experience. If the players come up with a plan that relies on something working in a real-world way, saying the rules do not allow it is, to me at least, a pretty low move. Obviously Magic can upset that a bit, as can badly described powers. We used to have terms for players who sought primacy from the rulebook, these terms where not pleasant ones.

I know I have put a ton of qualifiers in the statement. However, at the end of the day, DMing is an art rather than a science, you cannot really codify a lot of it.

 

[Campbell]

Well, quite!

There's a whole lot of weird stuff about the follower rules in general. What are 10th level thieves and rangers expected to do with 1st and 2nd level followers? From memory the Rules Compendium seems to have a better take on this for thieves - doesn't it have rules for using your low level guildmembers to do stuff from which you (the high level guildmaster) take a cut?

I don't have my 1e books available right now, but there's an incredible amount of RNG in the follower rules. In 2e Thieves receive 4d6 gang members ranging between 1st-8th level and rangers receive 2d6 followers ranging from a dog to a werebear. Realism isn't always more important than balance in AD&D but gonzo fun sure is. It really is theater of the absurd. I can play 3e or 4e relatively straight, but AD&D past 4th or 5th level quickly takes my suspension of disbelief back behind the barn and shoots it in the head. It happens even earlier if I use official adventures. All of which places 2e's sedate tone in the realm of almost parody. It's what I love about the game.

 

[pemerton]

Realism isn't always more important than balance in AD&D but gonzo fun sure is. It really is theater of the absurd.

I've been rereading one of the Best of White Dwarf Scenario collections over the past week or so. This is a complition of adventures for D&D, Traveller, RQ and C&S from the first dozen (?) or so numbers of White Dwarf (the copyright date is 1980).

The adventures certainly are over-the-top absurd, with the classic nonsense ecologies, dungeon dwellers with no access to food or light, magic used to create silly teleport traps rather than conquer the universe, etc.

It's also blatantly "gamist", not always strictly in the Forge sense but in the ENworld usage of being blatant in the way a situation is meant to be meta-gamed. For example, one encounter (designed by Don Turnbull, who was a good designer - he invented the Monstermark and edited the Fiend Folio) has a heavy statue with a wheel attached. The wheel turns a dial numbered from 120 to 400 - and these numbers correspond to the combined points of strength required to move the statue! That is, a machine in the gameworld is numbered by reference to the stat rules!

There is also this (in my view very strange) treasure hoard:

*sack of 70 platinum pieces;

*scroll of comprehend languages;

*scroll of detect evil;

*a single +2 arrow;

*a manual of bodily health.

Spot the odd one out!

 

[Ahwe Yahzhe]

The way these rules work so far, you could probably just use the 8 pages or so out of the original B2 module. Then improvise the rumor gathering with WIS checks to suss out the false ones, the keep locations are just your standard base of operations and don't need a lot of rules. Only the four outdoor encounters require on-the-fly stats conversion, from what I can tell.