Things I Miss....

[pukunui]

I really wasn't. That's the trouble with e-mail and forum posts sometimes. You can't "hear" tone of voice or inflection or pick up on body language.

Mmm. I know that all too well.

I would allow this in a game where I chose the PC's names for the players. Heck it might make for a good character trait--the young fighter not liking his name of Virgil, which was also his father's name. It'd be interesting what that reaveals about the character.

Fair enough.

Everyone has the same chance to get good or bad stats.

That may be so, but the variance in the end results is far from fair.

In a point buy system if you dont know the ins or outs of the system and make a bad choice at character creation your screwed. I find that to be unfair.

Eh? It's pretty hard to get screwed over by point buy. It's not that hard to figure out.

I'm sorry but point buy is far more fair than rolling. That's practically the whole point of it. Everyone gets exactly the same number of points to spend on their stats, whereas with rolling you can end up with one PC who has the equivalent of a 50 or 60 point-buy build, while another PC only has the equivalent of a 25 point-buy build.

 

[Jack Daniel]

As mentioned by several people above, there's a standard counter-argument to the idea that random stats aren't fair: namely, before the players pick up the dice, everybody has the same chance to roll well or poorly. The outcomes may not be even, but the chances are perfectly fair. If everybody takes this attitude to character generation (and it does require a different perspective than we usually see in more modern games, which tend to be driven by stat modifiers and by the primacy of the character), the imbalance that results from high scoring vs. mediocre scoring characters is more acceptable.

It comes down to the old debate between character generation vs. character creation. Point buys are for character creation... and, surprise of surprises, they lead to min/maxed characters. Since there are usually only a few ways you can optimize a character, they also lead to pretty standard fare, plain vanilla characters. Rolled stats lead to surprises -- and disappointments, especially if you use the "ironman" method of 3d6 in order, but that's part of the charm. When you roll your stats, you get to be surprised. When you roll your stats in order, you even get to be surprised by what class you'll be playing.

Now, the table of ability modifiers does matter here. I wouldn't particularly want to use rolled stats in 3rd edition, where every two points of ability score translate into a point of modifier. But AD&D (where scores ranging from 7 to 14 usually don't do anything) or OD&D (where the modifiers are just all-around smaller, ranging from 1 to 3 depending on the particular version)? It's much less of a big deal. Outlier scores that actually come with a bonus or penalty are just plain rare anyway. The point is, blanket statements about dice vs. points are meaningless without context. You need to know game, edition, and maybe even campaign and DM first.

 

[Fifth Element]

Would it surprise you to know that, in my current campaign, I limited class choice to a single class? And, I gave the players a rough background of each of their characters--a solid foundation for them to build upon. I even gave each character a name. We don't pick our own names in real life. Our parents do. And so it is with the PCs in my campaign.

It's up to the player to take what I've given them and make something great out of it.

I think you'll find this is a very unusual situation, and certainly is not the assumption in AD&D. I was talking about the incongruity of the AD&D rules, where you can choose everything about your character, including things that you have no control over in "real life" (such as your race or your name), but you roll your stats randomly. It strikes me as odd that that part of your character should be determined randomly, while so much else you can simply decide yourself.

I'd say it's very unusual for a DM to assign character backgrounds and names to the players. It can work for your group, but I think very few groups do it that way.

With random roll, you get what you get, and then you start trying to figure why a character is like the way he is--and this usually leads to a lot of fantastic character development.

You say usually, I'd say "sometimes." Non-random character determination allows you to begin developing your character before you have determined any of the mechanical aspects. You might have a great idea for a fighter, but if you roll a 5 for Strength, he wouldn't be a fighter, so there goes that idea.

This gives players a decent amount of choice with creating their characters while still keeping randomness involved.

That sort of thing is pretty common, I think, and means that stat determination is not, in fact, random. The specific numbers are not set beforehand, but especially when you used 4d6 drop one, typically the range of numbers you get is fairly narrow. The player doesn't have complete control over the stats, but it's far from fully random determination. You can choose whether your character is strong or not, for example.

If you give five people a point buy system and tell them to create a fighter, you end up with five very similiar fighters. If you have those same five people the task of creating a fighter from random roll--now we're talking about some diversity. We'll end up with five individual fighters.

If stats are the only thing that separates the fighters mechanically, then I'd agree with you. In recent editions of the game, however, there are enough other mechanical choices to make that it's rare to get two very similar characters of the same class, especially as levels increase.

 

[Fifth Element]

I have always found that rolled stats are completely fair. Everyone has the same chance to get good or bad stats. In a point buy system if you dont know the ins or outs of the system and make a bad choice at character creation your screwed. I find that to be unfair.

It is completely fair, in the long run. After everyone has rolled a certain (high) number of characters, the luck evens out.

But unless stats are the only mechanical thing about the character, then you still have other choices to make, know the ins and outs of the system, and can make bad choices. That aspect of unfairness is still there, with random stat determination.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I call shennanigans on the idea that someone being better at a game -- any game -- is somehow "unfair". You might give a less skilled player a handicap (such as the "first level starting area" described in the 1e DMG), but that doesn't mean that the more skilled player is somehow being unfair because he knows the rules better, or can use the rules better.

Also, in a game that relies on luck (to whatever degree) that someone gets luckier than someone else isn't "unfair", either in the short run or in the long run.

Shennanigans!


RC

 

[lumin]

This is the main reason why I like the older art more than the newer art. The characters on the AD&D PHB cover look like real people turned adventurers. They look very squishy and mortal, like something could kill them at any moment.

The 4E people look like they came off of Saturday Morning Cartoons. They seem invincible and like Super Heroes. When the people in the D&D world lose their "humanity", I no longer feel like I can be a part of that world.

 

[lumin]

This is exactly what I'm talking about:

Real People
Real People often die when they're stabbed. They don't cast spells or have amazing supernatural powers, they're not descended from dragons or celestials, and they usually pursue mundane occupations such as farming.

1E was good at modelling Real People – it called them '0-level.' Usually, they stayed in the background; sometimes, they got in the way; occasionally you could pay them to lug crossbows around, and shoot things that you pointed at. They were crazy easy to kill – a Fighter could make as many attacks in a round against 0-level characters as he had levels of experience.

0-level people stayed at 0-level, never gaining experience. They weren't eligible, and that was that. Curiously, this rule applies to the followers of characters with the Leadership feat in 3.X, although the rationale (aside from balance considerations, presumably) is not made clear.

I would argue that it is precisely the sharp contrast between the mundane world of Real People and the liminal world which the PCs generally inhabit which gave earlier editions that special feel. That's not to say that there should be no overlap – the PCs themselves often exist at the interface of both worlds, equipping themselves with weapons which they purchase from a Real Person, before venturing into the unknown; or staying in a tavern where Real People might also be enjoying a drink when their evil nemesis sends a demon to attack them.

One of the principal complaints levelled against the preponderance of 'bizarreness' (half-fiend ogre PCs, or whatever), is that it renders the fantastic commonplace, thus stripping it of its mythic quality; or that the game has become too 'superheroic,' resembling a Marvel comic more than the conventional fantasy genre. But in D&D the PCs have always been superheroes: I think the real problem is that now there are too many NPC heroes as well, and not enough 'regular Joes'.

 

[SHARK]

When I started missing things from older games, I went back to playing those games again.

Now I don't miss them anymore. I play with them instead.

Greetings!

Right on, brother! I did the same! I run a AD&D campaign now. Just awesome!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[enworldatemylogin]

I miss random wandering treasure. This became our label for random encounters. Random encounters sometimes turned into fun side treks in and of themselves, like the time we tripped over a buried glass coffin, with adamantium trim after killing an I-cannot-remember. And that's what's important. I don't remember what the actual monster was, but when we searched for treasure we got lucky, using percentile dice for luck and really tripped over the corner of the coffin sticking out of the ground.

I guess really this all blurs into a really different type of game, where treasure, combat, experience, and house rules for luck all merge and thanks to random charts or rolls was then put into a context which sometimes formed wonderful fun. I suspect we also had lame random wandering treasure as well but don't remember them because they were lame.

As Shark said, it would be cool to go back and play that old 1st edition style, but that requires friends who want to do it as well.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Yeah, I miss the treasure types by monster and randomly rolling it. I don't mind placed treasure, but random rolling you can get a chance at more powerful stuff.

Other things I miss is the way they did artifacts in the 1e D&D.

I certainly don't miss the Thac0 tables, the saving throw tables, and the saving throw tables.

3e Did a lot to streamline those.