Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Doug McCrae]

Do you think anybody had cast even a handful of them in actual game play before the PHB was released in 78? I doubt it.

Monty Haulism, gaming that goes well beyond the power and threat levels described in the rules, is mentioned often in the texts of the period - Dragon magazine, the intro to OD&D Supplement IV, the 1e DMG. In fact I'd say stamping out Monty Haulism was Gary's #1 concern in the mid to late 70s.

Strategic Review Vol 2 Issue 2

There are no monsters to challenge the capabilities of 30th level lords, 40th level patriarchs, and so on. Now I know of the games played at CalTech where the rules have been expanded and changed to reflect incredibly high levels, comic book characters and spells, and so on. Okay. Different strokes for different folks, but that is not D & D. While D & D is pretty flexible, that sort of thing stretches it too far, and the boys out there are playing something entirely different — perhaps their own name “Dungeons & Beavers,” tells it best.

OD&D Supplement IV Gods, Demigods & Heroes

This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?

Dragon #26

While D&D campaigns can be those which feature comic book spells,
43rd level balrogs as player characters, and include a plethora of trash
from various and sundry sources, AD&D cannot be so composed.

 

[Garthanos]

Too many people in this thread are taking the premise of this thread as an absolute!

The thesis fails on multiple points... not just when taken absolutely

Even if we just hand wave a little and accept there is an element of ego gamer. ...is this new and is it being catered to?

Dougs point is very relevant It points to this element always existing... the prevalence of "Monty Haul" DMs as a concept from Gygax himself way way back presumably these DMs were catering to folk with easy fast game rewards right? Is this a play style enhanced by newer games? Or have more recent games progressively done the opposite and provide a standard to follow (one which you can still choose to diverge from but you will now know what you are doing).

 

[Saeviomagy]

My point in comparing the situation where you are stunned to the situation where your turn was pointless because you accomplished nothing was to bring up the fact that you couldn't solve the problem by simply getting rid of 'stunned', because there would be similar situations that would annoy the sort of player who was particularly annoyed by being stunned. I predicted that it wouldn't stop at 'getting rid of statuses'. I predicted that quite quickly there would be a demand for 'getting rid of misses', and that prediction was born out very quickly when someone pointed out a thread where they were discussing that very thing.

And multiple people have responded to point out the fact that being stunned is removing more than just the flashing lights of rewards: it's removing the ability to choose what happens. When you start a turn normally, you get to choose what happens, to a limited degree, and even if you miss, you may well have accomplished something for good or ill. You might have occupied a crucial square, granted an ally a flank, provoked an AoO that damaged you, risked that same AoO and been missed or exposed yourself to the enemy. And then finally, that attack that missed was an attack that you chose to make, that may or may not have consumed resources, had follow on effects etc etc.

If you start a turn stunned, you don't do any of that. You roll the die and if you're lucky, then NEXT turn you might get to do some of that stuff. Replacing the stunned condition with "all of your attack and skill rolls fail" would still be a massive net improvement to most peoples experience.

 

[Celebrim]

And multiple people have responded to point out the fact that being stunned is removing more than just the flashing lights of rewards: it's removing the ability to choose what happens. When you start a turn normally, you get to choose what happens, to a limited degree, and even if you miss, you may well have accomplished something for good or ill. You might have occupied a crucial square, granted an ally a flank, provoked an AoO that damaged you, risked that same AoO and been missed or exposed yourself to the enemy. And then finally, that attack that missed was an attack that you chose to make, that may or may not have consumed resources, had follow on effects etc etc.

And, as I said, or not. The choises could be trivial, and indeed the assumptions I've always made have implied that the conscious character's player had trivial choices. I'm not even sure why people felt the need to point any of that out to me the first time, much less the second or third. As I've said again and again, I'm not comparing the general case of not being stunned to the general case of being stunned. I'm comparing the level of player participation in a round where you tried to roll for recovery (and failed) to the level of participation when you were slogging it out in a static fight and missed your attacks. It's not necessary for my point that every case of not being stunned is as bad as every case of being stunned.

But as for this particular attempt to point out something to me, it fails harder than most of them because things like 'occupied a crucial square' and 'granted an ally a flank' don't in themselves increase the level of participation of the player. Granting an ally a flanking bonus implies that the character is participating in the fight (ei, the character is not bored and is getting immediate feedback and drama), but it doesn't imply that the player is participating in the fight.

There are times when I feel I'm failing to communicate my ideas well, and that's the reason people aren't understanding me. But after a certain point, especially when I have people who understand (but may or may not fully agree), it becomes clear that explaining myself yet again is pointless.

This particular subthread, which was never even central to my discussion, has become an unamusing joke. At first I found rather humorous the audacity of claiming that this experience I offhandedly mentioned had never happened to you and you couldn't relate to what I was saying. What, you've never failed all of your attacks in a round, and passed your turn with a feeling of impotence? Or, you've never cast a spell, had it fail to spell resistance, a successful saving throw, or some unknown immunity, and passed your turn with a feeling of impotence? You've honestly never had a round were you felt that because of the dice you were missing out on the combat? Don't give me this crap about, "Well I play 4e and that never happens.". Even if I ignore the many threads about 4e that speak to the contrary and grant you that 4e is all awesome sauce, what about earlier editions? You never experienced a turn which was effectively over and pointless when you failed an attack roll? Really?

 

[Celebrim]

Agreed, but I think the OP might be misunderstanding the rewards received from playing a P&P RPG.

I haven't really even discussed what I think the rewards from playing a PnP RPG should be directly. I've hitherto mostly confined myself to discussing what they shouldn't be. If you believe that there are other sorts of rewards available in gaming, then we are not likely to be in as much disagreement as you seem to think.

 

[jmucchiello]

Dougs point is very relevant It points to this element always existing... the prevalence of "Monty Haul" DMs as a concept from Gygax himself way way back presumably these DMs were catering to folk with easy fast game rewards right? Is this a play style enhanced by newer games? Or have more recent games progressively done the opposite and provide a standard to follow (one which you can still choose to diverge from but you will now know what you are doing).

Monty Haulism is orthogonal to the OP. MH is ego-tripping, "I am a god" stuff. But that egoism has nothing to do with the egoism of Celebrim's Ego-Gamer. The EG is looking for instant and more importantly frequent gratification that he is winning. There is nothing in MH that requires frequently killing Odin and taking his stuff. In fact MH can destroy the EG. If the game gets to the point where Odin scrapes and fears the EG, then the EG will feel cheated and move on to a game where he can face danger and kill stuff again. The MH player wraps himself in the character. He is the character and the character is all-powerful. The EG player will change characters to find more thrills of victory. The current character is less important. In short: The MH seeks the shiny. The EG seeks the thrills.

Finally, Doug's proof that Monty Haulism was derided by "the powers that be" only reinforces my premise that the high level spells were not put there to be used. They were window dressing. If this is true, then 3e missed the point. Whether that has anything to do with WotC pushing a more Ego-Gamer style of play, I don't know.

Personally, I'm convinced the EG players exist. I don't know that they are targeted specifically. I do know the target player for D&D changed between 3e and 4e. Did that change specifically go after the twitch player? Or did it target something else and the twitch maybe makes up some (significant) portion thereof? I think exploration in that direction would be more telling than trying to prove this narrow trait was targeted. I think a profile was targeted and this trait figures prominently in that profile. This trait is too narrow to look for because other traits of the profile that were targeted might have requirements that work against this trait sometimes. With the full profile you could say "everyone heals" goes to help player trait X and "at will abilities" goes to help player traits Y and Z. Etc. And then you could find what parts of the design targeted Ego Gamers or not.

 

[Celebrim]

Monty Haulism is orthogonal to the OP.

I wouldn't quite go that far, but yeah, it's not directly on topic and there is no easy relationship between what I'm talking about and Monty Hall. The closest I can get to a relationship is that cateering to an ego gamer all the time would eventually lead to Monte Hall, because the ego gamer dislikes setbacks, but you are right that Monty Hall doesn't necessarily provide the rewards the ego gamer is most interested in.

And for that matter, I've always been up front about the fact that PnP RPG's have always brought the ego-gamer experience to one extent or another. I've mentioned that several times.

As for the rest, I'm not even going to address a thesis that begins with the statement that Gygax et al. weren't providing a standard of play.

 

[Hussar]

That's an interesting point jmucchiello. I would agree that the target focus shifted in 4e. It shifted away from the world buildling DM towards the adventure building DM (IMO). I think that would fit kinda well with the idea of the EG as well. The EG isn't concerned with world building and whatnot - there's no thrill in that and it takes too damn long.

Is it just that the shift was deliberate to target this audience, or a by product of the shift?

I dunno.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Finally, Doug's proof that Monty Haulism was derided by "the powers that be" only reinforces my premise that the high level spells were not put there to be used. They were window dressing. If this is true, then 3e missed the point. Whether that has anything to do with WotC pushing a more Ego-Gamer style of play, I don't know.

The sort of levels they are deriding - 30, 40 - are way higher than you need to be to cast the top level spells. In 1974 OD&D 5th and 6th level spells are the highest available, for clerics and magic-users respectively. A cleric gets 5th level spells at 7th level, a magic-user gets 6th level spells at 12th level.

OD&D Supplement I Greyhawk increases the max level spells. Magic-users can now cast 9th level spells, at 18th level, while clerics receive 7th level spells at 17th level. Demihuman level limits are increased, if the character has exceptional stats. For example an elf with 18 strength can now attain 6th level, where previously 4th level was the maximum. Unearthed Arcana did the same for AD&D, increasing demihuman level limits.

In a way it's paradoxical that the powers that be were deriding Monty Haulers for going beyond the limits of the game, while at the same time increasing those limits, and catering for the MHers. I believe Monty Haulers mostly regarded Gods, Demigods and Heroes as their Monster Manual. Hence the Odin-slaying.

 

[Celebrim]

The sort of levels they are deriding - 30, 40 - are way higher than you need to be to cast the top level spells.

Indeed. However, assuming that EGG and company are asserting that 10th-15th level characters are reasonable high level gaming (and by extension 15th-30th is 'epic' in modern terms, and anything above that is a god), then it follows that against a party of 10th-15th level characters a spell-casting foe that provides a reasonable challenge has to be of higher level than the average members of the party. Hense, a BBEG wizard or lich might need to be 18th level or higher in order to provide a really legimate challenge as a solo or semi-solo (BBEG + 'minions') encounter. So, its quite possible to percieve a need for high level spells even if you don't anticipate them seeing much use by PC's. Afterall, while it might be possible with a stretch to provide a challenge for a party of 10th-15th level characters, it doesn't necessarily hold true that with the same system you can provide a reasonable challenge for 18th-21st level characters. At some point, you run out of easy scalability.

If you look at EGG's theories of play as a whole, I think what EGG was railing against wasn't so much 'high level play' as it was his perception that too many DM's were discouraging what EGG considered 'skillful play' by making attaining high level too easy. The real heart of his complaint is I think that 'high level play' makes it easy to overcome all challenges with 'character skill' rather than the 'player skill' he thinks that the game should encourage. EGG is railing against MHism because he thinks (coming from a competitive wargaming background) that ultimately, overcoming a challenge with character skill is less satisfying (and more likely to cause the majority of players to percieve the game as shallow and unrewarding) than overcoming it with player skill. He's comparing MH to giving one player of a war game a very large army, and then placing him against a series of very weak armies. And he's deriding the practice of playing the equivalent of 'very large armies' on the grounds that the game rules aren't designed to speedily accomodate, adjudicate, or balance the equivalent of running of 'armies' beyond a certain size.

In a way it's paradoxical that the powers that be were deriding Monty Haulers for going beyond the limits of the game, while at the same time increasing those limits, and catering for the MHers.

I don't think that it follows that by providing more powerful foes, they were necessarily cateering to the MHers. If you look at EGG's high level adventurers, they most certainly don't cateer to MH or the sort of players who would be satisfied by MH.