The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan - your experiences?

[Celebrim]

Did you Play or DM this adventure (or both, as some did)? What were your experiences? Did you complete it? What were the highlights for your group?

Quasqueton

Have played and run it.

Using the pregenerated characters and scenario mode (starting from the inside out), this is probably a more lethal dungeon than Tomb of Horrors because the players are put on a hard clock. Tomb of Horrors allows the players to spend days or weeks investigating the environment without cost. In HSoT the PC's will be dead within hours unless they rush headlong through a series of encounters that are well above their capabilities.

Playing it was a lot of fun. Great atmosphere. Interesting puzzles. Suffocating to death was a major bummer, but had fun until we died.

Running it 1e style was a chore, mostly because I'm now used to a coherent rules set and there is nothing like HSoT to expose the problems with the 1e rules set. While the module tries to create rules subsystems for the various encounters on the fly, invariably the players are going to go out of the box in predictable ways (throwing another player a rope, trying to swim down and pull someone to the surface) and the module provides no guidance here. You won't go 1 minute in this game without having to pull fiat rulings out of the air. After the 100th or so fiat seat of the pants ruling in the space of an hour and a half, I was exhausted. I spent probably 15 years DMing 1e, and after running this one retro style I look back at that and think I must have been insane. I pretty immediately remembered why I'd given up on D&D in frustration back in the mid 90's.

3e catches flak for its voluminous rules, but the text of the module makes clear that 'old school' was paying for its silence in other ways. Most of the encounters would take much less text to write in 3e than they did in 1e because the module often spends half a page creating a room specific rules set to handle situations the 1e rules are silent on.

 

[Nagol]

Have played and run it.

Using the pregenerated characters and scenario mode (starting from the inside out), this is probably a more lethal dungeon than Tomb of Horrors because the players are put on a hard clock. Tomb of Horrors allows the players to spend days or weeks investigating the environment without cost. In HSoT the PC's will be dead within hours unless they rush headlong through a series of encounters that are well above their capabilities.

Playing it was a lot of fun. Great atmosphere. Interesting puzzles. Suffocating to death was a major bummer, but had fun until we died.

Running it 1e style was a chore, mostly because I'm now used to a coherent rules set and there is nothing like HSoT to expose the problems with the 1e rules set. While the module tries to create rules subsystems for the various encounters on the fly, invariably the players are going to go out of the box in predictable ways (throwing another player a rope, trying to swim down and pull someone to the surface) and the module provides no guidance here. You won't go 1 minute in this game without having to pull fiat rulings out of the air. After the 100th or so fiat seat of the pants ruling in the space of an hour and a half, I was exhausted. I spent probably 15 years DMing 1e, and after running this one retro style I look back at that and think I must have been insane. I pretty immediately remembered why I'd given up on D&D in frustration back in the mid 90's.

3e catches flak for its voluminous rules, but the text of the module makes clear that 'old school' was paying for its silence in other ways. Most of the encounters would take much less text to write in 3e than they did in 1e because the module often spends half a page creating a room specific rules set to handle situations the 1e rules are silent on.

And from memory, the attempts generated some pretty bad (as in unbalanced, quirky, with failure is the expected norm) mini-rule sets. I remember running this right after a different published adventure (White Plume Mountain perhaps?) that also developed some environmental rules -- different ones. The players were quick to point out how it worked differently last time and differently from the house rulings seen in campaign play.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Have played and run it.

Using the pregenerated characters and scenario mode (starting from the inside out), this is probably a more lethal dungeon than Tomb of Horrors because the players are put on a hard clock. Tomb of Horrors allows the players to spend days or weeks investigating the environment without cost. In HSoT the PC's will be dead within hours unless they rush headlong through a series of encounters that are well above their capabilities.

Playing it was a lot of fun. Great atmosphere. Interesting puzzles. Suffocating to death was a major bummer, but had fun until we died.

Running it 1e style was a chore, mostly because I'm now used to a coherent rules set and there is nothing like HSoT to expose the problems with the 1e rules set. While the module tries to create rules subsystems for the various encounters on the fly, invariably the players are going to go out of the box in predictable ways (throwing another player a rope, trying to swim down and pull someone to the surface) and the module provides no guidance here. You won't go 1 minute in this game without having to pull fiat rulings out of the air. After the 100th or so fiat seat of the pants ruling in the space of an hour and a half, I was exhausted. I spent probably 15 years DMing 1e, and after running this one retro style I look back at that and think I must have been insane. I pretty immediately remembered why I'd given up on D&D in frustration back in the mid 90's.

3e catches flak for its voluminous rules, but the text of the module makes clear that 'old school' was paying for its silence in other ways. Most of the encounters would take much less text to write in 3e than they did in 1e because the module often spends half a page creating a room specific rules set to handle situations the 1e rules are silent on.

If you approach an old school adventure with the belief that every situation that comes up needs to be handled with a rule, a die roll, or both then you will be exhausted rather quickly. That sounds like too much work. Have you never in all your years DMing, resolved something based purely on the merit of the players input vs what you know about the environment/ situation at hand? There are no rules for that because there can't be. The end result is the product of players interacting directly with game world elements

 

[Celebrim]

If you approach an old school adventure with the belief that every situation that comes up needs to be handled with a rule, a die roll, or both then you will be exhausted rather quickly. That sounds like too much work.

Yes, it is.

Have you never in all your years DMing, resolved something based purely on the merit of the players input vs what you know about the environment/ situation at hand?

Sure. Every session.

But the important thing is, that's the exact same thing. Resolving something based on the merit of the player input vs. what you know about the environment situation at hand has the exact same effort involved as creating a rule to deal with the player input and the environment at hand and is functionally equivalent. Remember, we aren't talking about trivial propositions where neither failure nor success brings a meaningful consequence. We are talking about doubtful life and death propositions where there is the possibility of both failure and success and where there could be a wide range of possible outcomes. Figuring out which outcome is most likely in a given situation based on the merit of the plan and what sort of success or failure mode results is exactly the same as creating rules, assigning possible die rolls, and so forth while maintaining the hats of impartial referee and engaging storyteller.

Sorry, the work you describe is exactly what I'm complaining about being 'heavy lifting'. The great thing about having a broadly applicable rule set with core mechanics is that it is also a broadly applicable tool set that makes judging the merit of a situation and assigning fortunes to it trivial and intuitive.

There are no rules for that because there can't be. The end result is the product of players interacting directly with game world elements

This is one of the most illogical couplings of sentences I've ever seen with regards to RPGs. What are the rules for if not resolving the results of interacting directly with game world elements? All RPGs revolve around the cycle of narrated proposition and narrated resolution. Basically, the players say, "I do this. What happens next?", every few seconds and you have to come up with answers that are fun and unpredictable without being so unpredictable that the player can't anticipate possible outcomes and plan on that basis. Or course there can and must be rules for interacting directly with game world elements.

 

[Celebrim]

And from memory, the attempts generated some pretty bad (as in unbalanced, quirky, with failure is the expected norm) mini-rule sets.

Quite often. The drowning rules that permeate the text are incredibly difficult to apply and don't answer very basic questions of player interaction. And they are almost certainly completely different from probably a dozen different sets of drowning rules that could be cited from published material. Gygax was fond of ad hocing finely grained percentage changes based on dozen or so factors to yield an 'answer', and this text follows that pattern.

To handle problems of character competency, 1e ad hoc'd in all sorts of unofficial rules. This is most evident in the various mini-systems it created for handling whether you were caught in a trap. Depending on the writer you'd see either a percentage chance (straight up luck), a save vs. petrification (presumably an implied alertness check?), a save vs. rod/staff/wand (a pseudo-reflex save?), or an ability check (roll less than your dexterity on a d20, a proto-skill check). In some cases it wasn't mentioned in the text, so the implication is that you don't avoid the trap (no save!) but many groups had by that time ended up adopting one of the above as a house rule (often without being aware they'd done so) and so assumed the ruling applied whether it was mentioned or not.

The players were quick to point out how it worked differently last time and differently from the house rulings seen in campaign play.

Of course they were, and rightfully so. From the player's perspective, there is no difference between a formal, canonical rule out of a rule book, an unwritten house rule, and an immediate ad hoc ruling. This is easily seen if you are dealing with new players that don't know the rules. Once they encounter it, it goes into their library of expectations about the game world from which they base their propositions on. It's an inherently unfair world if the same proposition has two completely different resolution systems in what is from the fiction a basically identical context. At that point, from the player perspective, there might as well be no rules and the game is trivialized to 'BS/boot lick the DM'.

 

[Nagol]

Quite often. The drowning rules that permeate the text are incredibly difficult to apply and don't answer very basic questions of player interaction. And they are almost certainly completely different from probably a dozen different sets of drowning rules that could be cited from published material. Gygax was fond of ad hocing finely grained percentage changes based on dozen or so factors to yield an 'answer', and this text follows that pattern.

To handle problems of character competency, 1e ad hoc'd in all sorts of unofficial rules. This is most evident in the various mini-systems it created for handling whether you were caught in a trap. Depending on the writer you'd see either a percentage chance (straight up luck), a save vs. petrification (presumably an implied alertness check?), a save vs. rod/staff/wand (a pseudo-reflex save?), or an ability check (roll less than your dexterity on a d20, a proto-skill check). In some cases it wasn't mentioned in the text, so the implication is that you don't avoid the trap (no save!) but many groups had by that time ended up adopting one of the above as a house rule (often without being aware they'd done so) and so assumed the ruling applied whether it was mentioned or not.



Of course they were, and rightfully so. From the player's perspective, there is no difference between a formal, canonical rule out of a rule book, an unwritten house rule, and an immediate ad hoc ruling. This is easily seen if you are dealing with new players that don't know the rules. Once they encounter it, it goes into their library of expectations about the game world from which they base their propositions on. It's an inherently unfair world if the same proposition has two completely different resolution systems in what is from the fiction a basically identical context. At that point, from the player perspective, there might as well be no rules and the game is trivialized to 'BS/boot lick the DM'.

Indeed. It was Tamochan that led me towards developing/applying consistent rulings for situations affecting the PCs. I took to heart that players can't make sane decisions in the absence of a working knowledge of the moving parts of the game and having the levers change every time a situation comes up made the universe fickle. I placed a much greater importance on precedent after that and that placed a greater burden on initial design/sober thought/math models/expectations in world design.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Sorry, the work you describe is exactly what I'm complaining about being 'heavy lifting'. The great thing about having a broadly applicable rule set with core mechanics is that it is also a broadly applicable tool set that makes judging the merit of a situation and assigning fortunes to it trivial and intuitive.

How is the merit of the player's input judged in such a system? A bonus, a DC adjustment? Either way the player is interacting with a rules element and picking a move from a pre-defined list.

This is one of the most illogical couplings of sentences I've ever seen with regards to RPGs. What are the rules for if not resolving the results of interacting directly with game world elements? All RPGs revolve around the cycle of narrated proposition and narrated resolution. Basically, the players say, "I do this. What happens next?", every few seconds and you have to come up with answers that are fun and unpredictable without being so unpredictable that the player can't anticipate possible outcomes and plan on that basis. Or course there can and must be rules for interacting directly with game world elements.

The number and components of such rules can vary widely.

 

[Celebrim]

How is the merit of the player's input judged in such a system? A bonus, a DC adjustment?

It would depend greatly on the rules system. For these sorts of theoretical discussions it's worth using Celebrim's Simpliest RPG Rules Ever Devised (SRRED). The rules set consists of only one rule.

Rule #1: For any player proposition, flip a coin. If it is heads, the proposition succeeds. Otherwise, the proposition fails.

It's a complete universal rules system. It is for a lot of different reasons not a very good one I admit, but it does work as a very good means of stopping people from thinking in the box.

So, how is the merit of a player's input judged in this system? It isn't. Regardless of whether you propose to jump a puddle or the Atlantic ocean, you have an equal chance of success.

So, suppose after an enjoyable session playing SRRED, the players get tired of the zaniness and decide that SRRED would be a little more fun if it had just a few more rules. Which of the following rules sound good to you?

Proposed Rule 0: One player is appointed a Referee for the duration of the game.

Proposed Rule #1: For any player proposition, if in the opinion of the Referee the proposition is well within the abilities of the player's character, the proposition always succeeds and no coin flip is necessary.

Proposed Rule #2: For any player proposition, if in the opinion of the Referee the proposition is well outside the abilities of the player's character, the proposition always fails and no coin flip is necessary.

Proposed Rule #3: For any player proposition, if in the opinion of the Referee the proposition has extraordinary merit, the player flip two coins and choose which of the two coins to use after the results of the flip are known.

At this point, we are probably beginning to look more like an RPG. Most RPGs have some variation of the above 4 rules, and in particular the proposed rules 0, 1, and 2 tend to be system invariant and in some cases are just assumed without comment. The fact that they are assumed without comment doesn't make them any less part of the rules of the game.

Either way the player is interacting with a rules element and picking a move from a pre-defined list.

What???

Considering SSRED again, we haven't yet done ANYTHING to define what a valid proposition is. In fact, that's likely to become the first table argument if we were foolish enough to try to play SSRED as written.

You are making statements on the basis of unreflected upon biases about what the system is like and how it is run. We haven't gotten that far.

What I would like to point out here is that Proposed Rule #1 etc. unavoidably create a meta rule beyond the new proposed rule #0 that institutes a Referee.

That meta-rule is simply that the Referees rulings in Proposed Rule #1 etc. become part of the common rules as soon as they are made. In effect, they are rules that act as rules generators, authorizing the Referee to create new rules as he sees fit. But once those rules are made, the players will have a reasonable expectation that the Referee won't alter those rulings on a whim. If the Referee rules that jumping puddles that are 4' across is well within the abilities of Wonderboy, the player of Wonderboy will be unpleasantly surprised if the next time he tries to jump a puddle of the same size he falls in and drowns. The Referees ruling, "Puddles that are 4' across are within the abilities of Wonderboy to jump.", becomes a new rule that we could write down and give a number as soon as it was made.

And this points to one of the problems with rules that act as rules generators.

The number and components of such rules can vary widely.

Sure. Some rules sets are good and some are less good. Some rules sets make different trade offs based on what they consider important. But I'm talking about things that are universal to all RPG rules sets. There is no, "Oh, you have that problem but I don't", here whatever you are insinuating. These problems are unavoidable.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I DM'ed this one some time in the mid-80's. I don't remember all of the details of course, but I do remember that we had a lot of fun with it. The poison gas added a lot of tension and and the pictures definitely added to immersion. It's definitely an old-school player-skill not character skill adventure, which is a big plus in my book. Pretty sure everyone made it out alive too.

 

[Akillion]

I DM'd this when it first came out, in the world of Greyhawk. I decided right from the off as it wasn't a tournament to get rid of the poison gas. I don't remember much but the players survived until the end. With a few tweaks a very enjoyable adventure.