RFisher - do you honestly believe that we role played MORE in the early 80's than we do now? Considering that the average age of the gamer has advanced about a decade since that time, do you really believe that we had a pinacle of role play back then and everything else since has been down hill?
My experience is that the amount of role-playing has stayed fairly constant.
The stories I read about the earliest campaigns have shown me that they were about a lot more than “kill them and take their stuff”. It seems only the histories written by people who weren’t there think that the Braunsteins, Blackmoor, Tékumel, and Greyhawk were all about combat. Oh, wait...they never mention the Braunsteins or Mr. Weseley. (And seldom Prof. Barker.)
I honestly believe there’s a lot more to the game between combat and role-playing that is being ignored in this thread.
You know, that's a very good point. The keep was much more interesting than the caves of chaos....
For some reason, though, I can't remember the name of even one NPC in the keep. It's almost as if the only thing the module actually said about the keep was the names of the buildings, what could be bought and sold, and what loot could be obtained if the PCs decided to slaughter the entire town.
It’s probably because Gygax didn’t name any of the NPCs. They were mostly just referred to by their role.
With the inability for two gamers to agree on what is a good fantasy name, I think this was brilliant. The DM can easily substitute in names he likes without having to keep track of the correspondence between his names and the author’s names.
For good or ill, a lot of DMs never thought to give the NPCs names.
Second off, I think people seriously need to order OD&D from Wizards and play through it a few times. It's available in PDF form for about $6. Play it for a few sessions. It'll teach you something about what D&D "is supposed to be about." I see a lot of people using Gygax's name in some kind of appeal to authority here, and while that's a logical fallacy, if you want to know what D&D is about to the creator, look at the last version he considered "D&D." I think you'll find out what I'm about to say in point three.
Third, despite having intricate surroundings and deep campaign settings, D&D was originally about a dungeon crawl. It was about , as someone else stated, "kill the orc and take his pie." We all know the history here. What is obvious to me is that a number of people / players grew up in more narrativist campaigns than what OD&D supported. A lot of people added stuff on to make the game fit their play style. Hey, cool. That's great.. but remember, OD&D was about killing the orc and taking his pie.
A dungeon crawl is more than “kill them and take their stuff”.
While I’m often one to say that the books have done a poor job of describing the game that is played in the stories told by Gygax, Arneson, Kuntz, Mornard,
et al....
The original three D&D booklets had less total content than the combat oriented bits of 4e. Heck, they contained little about combat at all: Referring you to Chainmail or giving you sketchy hints at an “alternative” system.
And if you wanted to survive and level by those rules, you did your best to take the stuff without risking death by trying to kill the monsters first.
But if you want to play the older versions of D&D , go right ahead
As I said earlier: The reason I prefer classic D&D is not because I think the rules somehow prohibit role-playing in 3e or 4e. It’s because preferring less focus on combat, there’s little sense in using such complex combat rules.
The long and short of it is, we should embrace people coming into this hobby. Not discourage them because they don't like our particular flavor of soft drink.
Agreed.
