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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6587259" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Prompted in part by this thread, I've been looking over the 1982 book "What is Dungeons and Dragons?" (Puffin, 1982 - better known, I think, in the UK and Commonwealth than in the US). You can see the breakdown in coherence between goals of play and procedures of play already emerging:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">* The book's sample PCs have meaningful backstories (a fighter who wants to reclaim his family farm, and enslaved family members, from an evil landlord; a magic-user wrongly driven from her tribe for witchcraft who belongs to a magic-college with a rvial college; a halfling thief with a vow to take revenge on those who inducted him into the thief's life);</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* The book (p 108) notes that "Such backgrounds can be used by the DM to work out some later scenarios; for instance, [the fighter] might lead an expedition to take back his farm;</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* But the book also notes that XP are awarded for acquiring treasure and killing monsters (though there is a cryptic, undeveloped remark that "Ingenuity and bravery will also be rewarded" (p 8)), and the book also states that the aim of play is to earn XP, and thereby levels, with "Survival and self-aggrandizement constitut[ing] success in D&D" (p 8);</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* And the book refers to "the dungeons in which most adventures will take place" (p 11).</p><p></p><p>It doesn't take very close scrutiny to see that the first two dot points above are at odds with the second two: if you want meaningful backstories to be more than the barest of background colour, you are going to need a reward system and success conditions that are not defined in terms of successful Gygaxian dungeoneering!</p><p></p><p>Similar tensions emerge in the book's account of characterisation and metagaming:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">* "The players take on the personality, when role-playing, of an inhabitant of the DM's fantasy world" (p 12);</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Players should play within their characteristics, and the GM is entitled to penalise them if they don't (the example given, on p 19, is of a player with an INT 4 PC who is "consistently solving difficult problems and gaining large amounts of treasure" - in such a case, "the DM might rule that the character has a very bad memory and keeps forgetting where he has hidden his gold";</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Players should stick to alignment, and may be penalised XP by the GM if they don't;</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Players should not use information to which their PCs don't have access (eg gained by a prior, dead PC), the GM should use notes to communicate information that only a single PC would acquire, if the party splits up then half the players need to leave the table, etc;</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Yet in a case where novice players who don't know about monster immunities enter into combat with gargoyles, "the DM should point out that the party will probably perish, as it is unable to hit the Gargoyles" (p 113);</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* And, more generally, while players are forbidden from reading monster descriptions during play, they should be allowed to read the monster descriptions in the rulebook before starting the adventure.</p><p></p><p>Is the game a puzzle-solving game (in which case the players should learn about gargoyles through trial and error, surely)? Why is knowing monster descriptions not dependent on PC INT and background (which is how most contemporary D&Ders play it, I think, but was not the norm back in the earlier days, where reading up on monsters was just part of learning the rules, as it would be for a wargame)?</p><p></p><p>More fundamentally, what is the relationship between "roleplaying" (in the sense of taking on a personality, conforming to ability score and alignment descriptors, etc) and the game's success conditions (of earning XP and thereby gaining levels)? Even in 1982 this has become apparently impossible to articulate using the then-extant vocabulary.</p><p></p><p>Finally, this book contains the classic illusionistic injunctions, apparently completely unselfconsciously (pp 111-12):</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">The very first encounter with potentially hostile monsters is crucial. . . . If, for example, the characters fled the Hogboblins at the entrance to [the very first dungeon], the DM might rule that they ran in the direction of impassable forest. Alternatively, he might make an extra wandering monster appear in the party's path of flight. In this way the DM can avoid the party missing the dungeon completely. This is not to say that the party should be channelled into doing certain things; the players should always determine the main part of the story line or plot of an adventure. Only when the party is going right off course, or is in great danger of being killed through no fault of its own, should the DM interfere. If, for example, the DM has placed clues throughout the dungeon as to the whereabouts of a magic item, the party may simply miss all of these and so end up in a situation where it has explored almost the whole dungeon and cannot ascertain the hiding place of the item. In such a case, the DM may, if he feels justified in doing so, place another clue in an area through which the party will soon pass. This should not, of course, be done to reward parties for their bad play, merely to ensure that those who have missed things through sheer bad luck are not overly penalised. Also, if the players constantly fail to achieve their objectives they may become discouraged. The DM can make sure that this does not happen by altering the difficulty of his dungeon while play is in progress. DMs should feel no compunction when altering die rolls, rules and events if they feel this will improve the game. It is important, however, that the players not realise that this is being done, as it is just as annoying to feel that what you have achieved is not through your own endeavours as to feel that you have not attained something which you ought to have done.</p><p></p><p>Unpacking <em>all </em> of the incoherence in that would require a book of one's own, but some obvious highlights:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">* What does "story" or "plot" mean in the context of a game where the goal is survival and self-aggrandisement, attained by earning XP from looting and killing?;</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* What are "player objectives" in this context, too, other than the sort of thing Gygax talks about at the back of his PHB, of identifying and successfully raiding particular dungeon rooms, known stashes of loot, etc?</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* If the players determine "the main part of the storyline" - whatever that might be, exactly - then how can they possibly "go right off course"?</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* If the <em>players</em> determine "the main part of the storyline" then what exactly is the function of the GM-authored dungeon, which in practice is going to be the overwhelming determinant of whatever story emerges, and is clearly decided by the GM and not the players?</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Pulling back to the most general question underlying all this incoherence, is the aim of the game to explore/discover/create the story of <em>these</em> characters in <em>this</em> co-created world, or is it for the players to use their skill and resources (with the latter including their PCs) to win the game by earning XP? And if the former, why are we using rules systems that were invented for a game with the latter aim?</p><p></p><p>The culmination of this sort of incoherence was the 2nd ed AD&D era, and parallel issues in the so-called "Storyteller" games. And I suspect similar incoherences pervade quite a bit of 3E/PF "adventure path" play. But it is interesting to me to see them all laid out in a book published in 1982, and so presumably written in 1980-81, ie before the expiration of the hobby's first decade.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6587259, member: 42582"] Prompted in part by this thread, I've been looking over the 1982 book "What is Dungeons and Dragons?" (Puffin, 1982 - better known, I think, in the UK and Commonwealth than in the US). You can see the breakdown in coherence between goals of play and procedures of play already emerging: [indent]* The book's sample PCs have meaningful backstories (a fighter who wants to reclaim his family farm, and enslaved family members, from an evil landlord; a magic-user wrongly driven from her tribe for witchcraft who belongs to a magic-college with a rvial college; a halfling thief with a vow to take revenge on those who inducted him into the thief's life); * The book (p 108) notes that "Such backgrounds can be used by the DM to work out some later scenarios; for instance, [the fighter] might lead an expedition to take back his farm; * But the book also notes that XP are awarded for acquiring treasure and killing monsters (though there is a cryptic, undeveloped remark that "Ingenuity and bravery will also be rewarded" (p 8)), and the book also states that the aim of play is to earn XP, and thereby levels, with "Survival and self-aggrandizement constitut[ing] success in D&D" (p 8); * And the book refers to "the dungeons in which most adventures will take place" (p 11).[/indent] It doesn't take very close scrutiny to see that the first two dot points above are at odds with the second two: if you want meaningful backstories to be more than the barest of background colour, you are going to need a reward system and success conditions that are not defined in terms of successful Gygaxian dungeoneering! Similar tensions emerge in the book's account of characterisation and metagaming: [indent]* "The players take on the personality, when role-playing, of an inhabitant of the DM's fantasy world" (p 12); * Players should play within their characteristics, and the GM is entitled to penalise them if they don't (the example given, on p 19, is of a player with an INT 4 PC who is "consistently solving difficult problems and gaining large amounts of treasure" - in such a case, "the DM might rule that the character has a very bad memory and keeps forgetting where he has hidden his gold"; * Players should stick to alignment, and may be penalised XP by the GM if they don't; * Players should not use information to which their PCs don't have access (eg gained by a prior, dead PC), the GM should use notes to communicate information that only a single PC would acquire, if the party splits up then half the players need to leave the table, etc; * Yet in a case where novice players who don't know about monster immunities enter into combat with gargoyles, "the DM should point out that the party will probably perish, as it is unable to hit the Gargoyles" (p 113); * And, more generally, while players are forbidden from reading monster descriptions during play, they should be allowed to read the monster descriptions in the rulebook before starting the adventure.[/indent] Is the game a puzzle-solving game (in which case the players should learn about gargoyles through trial and error, surely)? Why is knowing monster descriptions not dependent on PC INT and background (which is how most contemporary D&Ders play it, I think, but was not the norm back in the earlier days, where reading up on monsters was just part of learning the rules, as it would be for a wargame)? More fundamentally, what is the relationship between "roleplaying" (in the sense of taking on a personality, conforming to ability score and alignment descriptors, etc) and the game's success conditions (of earning XP and thereby gaining levels)? Even in 1982 this has become apparently impossible to articulate using the then-extant vocabulary. Finally, this book contains the classic illusionistic injunctions, apparently completely unselfconsciously (pp 111-12): [indent]The very first encounter with potentially hostile monsters is crucial. . . . If, for example, the characters fled the Hogboblins at the entrance to [the very first dungeon], the DM might rule that they ran in the direction of impassable forest. Alternatively, he might make an extra wandering monster appear in the party's path of flight. In this way the DM can avoid the party missing the dungeon completely. This is not to say that the party should be channelled into doing certain things; the players should always determine the main part of the story line or plot of an adventure. Only when the party is going right off course, or is in great danger of being killed through no fault of its own, should the DM interfere. If, for example, the DM has placed clues throughout the dungeon as to the whereabouts of a magic item, the party may simply miss all of these and so end up in a situation where it has explored almost the whole dungeon and cannot ascertain the hiding place of the item. In such a case, the DM may, if he feels justified in doing so, place another clue in an area through which the party will soon pass. This should not, of course, be done to reward parties for their bad play, merely to ensure that those who have missed things through sheer bad luck are not overly penalised. Also, if the players constantly fail to achieve their objectives they may become discouraged. The DM can make sure that this does not happen by altering the difficulty of his dungeon while play is in progress. DMs should feel no compunction when altering die rolls, rules and events if they feel this will improve the game. It is important, however, that the players not realise that this is being done, as it is just as annoying to feel that what you have achieved is not through your own endeavours as to feel that you have not attained something which you ought to have done.[/indent] Unpacking [I]all [/I] of the incoherence in that would require a book of one's own, but some obvious highlights: [indent]* What does "story" or "plot" mean in the context of a game where the goal is survival and self-aggrandisement, attained by earning XP from looting and killing?; * What are "player objectives" in this context, too, other than the sort of thing Gygax talks about at the back of his PHB, of identifying and successfully raiding particular dungeon rooms, known stashes of loot, etc? * If the players determine "the main part of the storyline" - whatever that might be, exactly - then how can they possibly "go right off course"? * If the [I]players[/I] determine "the main part of the storyline" then what exactly is the function of the GM-authored dungeon, which in practice is going to be the overwhelming determinant of whatever story emerges, and is clearly decided by the GM and not the players? * Pulling back to the most general question underlying all this incoherence, is the aim of the game to explore/discover/create the story of [I]these[/I] characters in [I]this[/I] co-created world, or is it for the players to use their skill and resources (with the latter including their PCs) to win the game by earning XP? And if the former, why are we using rules systems that were invented for a game with the latter aim?[/indent] The culmination of this sort of incoherence was the 2nd ed AD&D era, and parallel issues in the so-called "Storyteller" games. And I suspect similar incoherences pervade quite a bit of 3E/PF "adventure path" play. But it is interesting to me to see them all laid out in a book published in 1982, and so presumably written in 1980-81, ie before the expiration of the hobby's first decade. [/QUOTE]
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