Old School : Tucker's Kobolds and Trained Jellies

[Hussar]

A game system influences play through what is NOT included just as much as what is.

A large section of rules aimed at providing "support" on how to be creative paints a rather clear picture of the general tone and feel of the rest of the rules.

The fun to had by a roleplaying game rarely comes from any rules. It is generated by the people who participate in it.

While I generally agree with the sentiment EW, I'd also point out that there is something of a corollary. The times when you're not having fun at the table quite often do come from the rules, and also very frequently, from the times when you don't have any rule guidance as well.

Sure, you might have a great time free-forming, but, when the rubber meets the road, we're all mechanics junkies who want our game to be able to answer questions.

Otherwise, we're all playing the wrong system.

 

[Celebrim]

This is one of the great difficulties 5e will face. This element of play has gotten slimmer with every edition...never totally gone, but the mechanical and slick we get, the less play like this factors in.

I partially agree, but I'd like to say that one of the reasons I prefer 3e to 1e (and I've played a lot of 1e) is that - especially as a DM - 3e gives me a lot more tools for adjudicating off script and creative play. One of the real problems in 1e is that with no skill system, no unified saving throw mechanic, and with no combat manuever system, it was often hard to know how to treat any given proposition. How would you figure out the chance of success and the effects of success or failure?

This was a such a ubiquitous problem that it was generally ignored for fear of wrecking the game. A proposition even so simple as, "I climb the wall.", raised a minor panic. 'Climbing' per se - like everything else - was treated like a siloed ability. It was obvious how you resolved it in the case of the thief, but how do you resolve it for the fighter? Did the fighter automatically fail? Did he climb as well as a thief of 1/2 his level? Did you handle it on a case by case basis, essentially attaching the fighter's chance of climbing to every wall and then figuring out what the theives modified chance was hopefully in a way that didn't make the thief feel even more useless than he was.

The great thing about having a complex set of rules is, even if you don't normally use all of them, if one of the players pulls a stunt, you've got something to adjudicate it with. You can always think something like, "That's not in the rules, but its reasonable. OK, if he passes a jump skill check, then I'll grant him a +3 circumstance bonus on attacks and a virtual power attack feat for the duration of the round." It was a lot harder to approach the problem in 1e, and in practice you got one of two equally disfunctional responses: "No." or "Yes." "No" was bad because since 1e defined almost nothing explicity, it limited you to a very narrow set of repetitive actions. "Yes" was bad because it tended to make the game irrelevant, and the real game was whittling, browbeating, intimidating, confusing, conjoling, bribing, flattering, tricking, and anticipating the DM so as to always get told "Yes". I saw many 1e players who didn't make true propositions. Instead of saying what they wanted to do, they said what they wanted to happen. Then they'd argue with the DM that what they wanted to happen should happen, and if the DM said, "No, something else is going to happen.", they'd argue that they'd never do _that_ and that they should be allowed a different action. The real game became "Mother, may I?" mixed with, "Can we get a pool, Dad? Can we get a pool, Dad?"

I really feel that 3e meets both groups halfway (or nearly so if you do a little tweaking). The players that have to feel in control are given a clear relationship between what they purpose and what happens. When they propose something, I can outline my conditions: "You'll have to make a DC X skill check, and you'll get the following result." This let's them get a realistic sense of the rick they are taking and the reward they will recieve without them needing the unrealistic ability to know ahead of time how things will turn out. Players that on the other hand don't want to be hidebound and who enjoy the free form gaming that pen, paper, and imagination allows, can propose wild and crazy things without me having to say "No, if it's not a power on your character sheet, you can't do it."

If I was a 5e designer, that would be the tangental turn I'd want to make on the direction D&D (and its clones) have been going. The system needs to be rules heavy BECAUSE it needs to be freeform. Whatever rules you introduce have to add to that goal, or they aren't good rules for the system. The reason I stuck with 3.0 core rules and tweaked it myself, rather than expanding into the supplements or (*shudder*) 3.5, is that it seemed to me that the core 3.0 rules held that promise, but that the rules added to the game detracted from it. You started seeing lots of feats that didn't make you merely better at something, but which siloed a perfectly ordinary stunt that a kid on a play ground could attempt - like throwing someone you'd grappled - off as an ability that required a special feat. You started seeing lots of Prestige Classes of a generic variaty that seemed to imply that you couldn't be this thing unless you took this rigid, narrow, and inflexible class. And you didn't see a lot of addressing of what I saw as 3.0's core problems.

 

[Celebrim]

That's not a comprehensive rule set, it's a universal resolution mechanic. D&D has one of those, it's called a d20.

And it completely fails to answer how to resolve something when the measure of success is not clear cut.

To repeat my earlier example. The Dweller-in-Darkness is chasing my PC down a corridor. The PC pulls out his Immovable rod, kisses it goodbye with a tear in his eye and activates it at knee height as he runs. He's hoping it will hinder the badguy long enough for him to get away.

So you make your check and roll over a 4. Yay! Success.

Oh wait, what does that mean? Did he successfully target the rod so it's at an appropriate height? Did he make an attack or create a hazard? (To use Savage Worlds terms.) Does it now automatically trip the monster? Does it roll a dex save to avoid the rod? (Or an agility check to avoid a hazard, in SW?)

This is a great example because it is exactly the sort of proposition that I expect to face as a DM. And its exactly the sort of thing that made me love 3e more than 1e, because I feel 3e gives me better tools to deal with it.

In 1e, it's clear to me what the player wants - but its not at all clear to me what I should say or what should happen. The rules give me virtually no guidance. Whatever I say, I'm making it up completely. The implicit rule of, "In the absence rules, things work how they would in real life" is no help to me here. I can try to imagine this in my head, and really that comes down to my opinion of how the monster moves. Is my monster an idiot or a parkour star? How many steps behind is the monster, and how many steps will adjusting his move cause him to fall behind? The problem I typically faced in 1e is that when a player pulled a stunt, the binary nature of the stunt - monster falls or doesn't - tended to make me very conservative. The outcome was generally never impressive, and never really satisfying to anyone. I felt I couldn't afford to give the player 'I win' buttons, else the player would have the expectation that every plan - no matter how ill thought out - would work. As a result, the rules pushed me to saying "No."

But in 3e, I've got rules in easy reach. The stunt is the player wants to make a nonstandard trip attack. I can work with that. We know have a non-standard proposition that I can convert into a standard proposition of the form "X chance of success, Y on success, Z on failure." Everyone is happy. The player doesn't get an 'I win' button, but he does get the chance of his plan being spectacularly successful.

 

[Celebrim]

But The Tomb of Horrors (and that is what I was talking about) is an adventure completely based on adversarial DMing, wouldn't you agree?

No.

Just compare ToH with the first Zeitgeist adventure and you can see a vast difference in quality of design.

There are some writer/designers on the Zeitgeist team that I have a lot of respect for. Ryan Nock is a great writer. But if he thinks that Zeitgeist is better designed than Tomb of Horrors, then I'll just shake my head and walk away. Sure, Gary had the easier time because he got there first, but seriously, is there a designer out there that doesn't wish he could write something as evocative, memorable, and enduring as Tomb of Horrors?

 

[Piratecat]

I love Tomb of Horrors and I haven't read Zeitgeist. But a lot of Tomb of Horrors is IMO awful design. There are instant death traps with no clues and no way to figure them out other than experimentation that insta-kills.

That doesn't stop me from adoring it and what it did to inspire me. But dang, it sure doesn't play fair. I'd certainly define it as an adversarial module (particularly because that's exactly what it was written for, to kill cocky players.)

That's consistent with Gygax's style. When he ran a OD&D game for the ENW moderators the year before he passed away, my elf used a listening cone to avoid ear seekers. Gary chuckled. "My players spent all their time listening at doors and it ruined the fun. I added ear seekers to teach them a lesson. It worked." His smile was wonderful.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Yes, absolutely, I unuderstand what you are trying to say. And I agree with your sentiment.
But The Tomb of Horrors (and that is what I was talking about) is an adventure completely based on adversarial DMing, wouldn't you agree? And I must admit that this sort of game has never suited my taste. Plus, ToH is very incoherent and lacking a convincing story in my opinion. Another reason for me not to like or play it. Just compare ToH with the first Zeitgeist adventure and you can see a vast difference in quality of design. ToH does not stand the smallest chance if you ask me.
Now, this is just my taste and I defend anybody's right to like that kind of game. Sometimes, though, it seems to me that people who like this kind of game are very vocal (especially here on ENWorld) while those who disapprove dramatically are overlooked. Or at least, this is what I fear. I might be completely off, though. Those that like 4E and it's design need to speak up and defend this kind of game against all the mindboggling dissing that is going on.

The "story" of TOH is that there is a tomb said to contain wondrous riches just waiting for someone brave enough to claim them. The adventure was written for a game system in which the primary reason for adventuring was the acquisition of wealth & power. As such, the adventure was very location based and there was no plot going on. A DM inserting the adventure into a campaign could certainly add things. A piece of treasure in the hoard could be needed for something and/or other adventurers could be searching for the tomb as well.

Adversarial DMing was something that some people do and others don't. It is not connected to a particular edition or adventure.

I have heard claims that 4E is more suited to adversarial DMing because the PCs are more durable and you can "take the gloves off". Does this mean that 4E is a DM vs player system?

I don't think so.

 

[grimslade]

Tomb of Horrors was a meat grinder. It was designed to slaughter PCs, you could kill them if they played creatively, you could kill them if they played reckless, or even slay them when they were cautious. ToH was a tournament mod to slap down a bunch of boastful players. The fact that it was published a played by a wider audience is amazing to me. Because it was so deadly, groups could run it again and again just to finish it. I think this was its greatest draw. ToH was the D&D doctorate level mod. If you could beat the mod, you were a true gamer.
The odd thing was I never felt the DM was adversarial running the Tomb. Acerak was the adversary, the DM was just refereeing the carnage. My moniker on these boards is the name of my only character to finish ToH, a halfling thief who lost a hand in a chest trap. He was my 9th character to run in the mod. He started out as a hireling.
1E was a different edition. I had less attachment to my characters. If they lived, they could have more story invested in them, but nothing like the involvement in my 2E and 3E characters. 4E I have never played only judged, so I can't say how involved I would have been.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Sure, you might have a great time free-forming, but, when the rubber meets the road, we're all mechanics junkies who want our game to be able to answer questions.

Otherwise, we're all playing the wrong system.

Well, this is why I DM RCD&D, not 3.5e or 4e.

 

[Mattachine]

No.



There are some writer/designers on the Zeitgeist team that I have a lot of respect for. Ryan Nock is a great writer. But if he thinks that Zeitgeist is better designed than Tomb of Horrors, then I'll just shake my head and walk away. Sure, Gary had the easier time because he got there first, but seriously, is there a designer out there that doesn't wish he could write something as evocative, memorable, and enduring as Tomb of Horrors?

The introduction to Tomb of Horrors, written by EGG, specifically states that it is a players vs. DM adventure, rather than characters on a quest in a story.

 

[Mattachine]

That's consistent with Gygax's style. When he ran a OD&D game for the ENW moderators the year before he passed away, my elf used a listening cone to avoid ear seekers. Gary chuckled. "My players spent all their time listening at doors and it ruined the fun. I added ear seekers to teach them a lesson. It worked." His smile was wonderful.

And thus began adversarial play . . .