The "Old School Revival" - The Light Bulb Goes On

[Vegepygmy]

If your brain explodes running 3E, by all means play another game. But realize that for those of us whose brains don't explode, you are not communicating a problem with 3E, you are just communicating that your brain exploded.

I must spread some XP around before giving it to BryonD again.

I know I'm more comfortable at handwaving in 3e because of its rules-heavy nature. Having all those rules means having lots of models available as guidance. When an on-the-fly adjudication is needed, it's usually fairly straightforward to give it a form similar to another tangentially related rule and yet be reasonably confident it'll function ok within the game at that time. Also, the huge rule set means that I can usually track down an official ruling after the session and retrofit if/as needed.

Exactly.

But even though I don't share the desire to go back and play 1e, I understand the sentiment. I had a lot of fun back in the day, making (and abiding by) ad hoc rulings that couldn't be ripped apart by rules lawyers...and if I had (or was) a good DM, that worked fine. It's just that these days, I vastly prefer playing with a good DM using 3.5's extremely well-defined framework over playing with a good DM using 1e/2e/4e's looser bunch of rules.

 

[prosfilaes]

Feats limits what you can do, and the same goes for skills.

They define what you do. Some feats or skills let you do things no DM would let you do without them. Others do separate out things you can do and things you can't, which allows for character differentiation, and I don't think without them DMs would be very consistent in letting you do some of them; if you want your desert dwarf to be able to swim, it might be nice to point to the skill on your sheet.

Multiclassing feels silly, since you end up "dipping" which is a silly concept because a class is your profession and what you do.

I once read an article about a lady with a Ph.D in psychology who decided to take up truck driving. Barack Obama is a College Professor/President, and Herbert Hoover was an Engineer/President.

When does a fighter takes time to become a wizard? I can't really get my head arround that.

Perhaps he studied it some before he started adventuring; maybe it just doesn't take that long to learn how to sling a magic missile.

I fail to see the appeal of an unified xp chart. Sure, John the thief levels faster than anyone, but he has a d4 hit die and can't hit the broad side of a barn.

When the adventure says for four adventures of level 6, do they mean thief level 6, or wizard level 6? Without a unified xp character, character level doesn't mean enough. Plus, it removes a half-dozen charts from the game.

But if I'm playing with that person it means that I trust his judgement and I respect it's authority. I'm not at the table to argue or search rules, I'm there to have a fun time and excess rules get in the way of that.

It's not unreasonable for the DM to rule your desert dwarf never learned to swim, and it's not unreasonable for you to want your desert dwarf to have learned to swim. Without a swim "skill" (feat, some sort of optional extra-class choice), there's no way you can have two dwarf fighters, one of which can swim and one of which can't.

 

[His Dudeness]

They define what you do. Some feats or skills let you do things no DM would let you do without them. Others do separate out things you can do and things you can't, which allows for character differentiation, and I don't think without them DMs would be very consistent in letting you do some of them; if you want your desert dwarf to be able to swim, it might be nice to point to the skill on your sheet.

I define what my character does, not a sheet. With no feats I can try anything and I only have to ask the DM. With feats I have to search for the feats from a feat library to chose the right one.

And character differentiation comes from the player and how they play the game. I have yet to see two thieves or two warriors play identically at my table.

I once read an article about a lady with a Ph.D in psychology who decided to take up truck driving. Barack Obama is a College Professor/President, and Herbert Hoover was an Engineer/President.

They are not adventurers, they are regular folks that live in the age of information age and have a great ammount of resources.

Perhaps he studied it some before he started adventuring; maybe it just doesn't take that long to learn how to sling a magic missile.

Maybe it does not, depends on your world I guess. My point is that wizards give up a lot of things in order to be able to use the arcane. Having a warrior just passing by and learning the arcane arts between games does not work for me.

When the adventure says for four adventures of level 6, do they mean thief level 6, or wizard level 6? Without a unified xp character, character level doesn't mean enough. Plus, it removes a half-dozen charts from the game.

Sure, the module stops working if one character is lvl 5 and the other is lvl 8. Check tech support. And we could use that chart space to add more feats.

It's not unreasonable for the DM to rule your desert dwarf never learned to swim, and it's not unreasonable for you to want your desert dwarf to have learned to swim. Without a swim "skill" (feat, some sort of optional extra-class choice), there's no way you can have two dwarf fighters, one of which can swim and one of which can't.

If I want to have my Dwarf being able to swim I write it down as background info, and vuala! A dwarf that can swim. Maybe my friend did not think of that and chose to have his dwarf be an apprentice tailor. Now his dwarf can't swim but can make clothes and my dwarf can swim but can't make clothes.

 

[prosfilaes]

I define what my character does, not a sheet. With no feats I can try anything and I only have to ask the DM.

That works so well with Power Attack and Maximize Spell. There's a lot of options that feats can bring in that no DM I've ever heard of played with pre-3ed, and that porting back into older editions would require a lot of adjudication.

They are not adventurers, they are regular folks that live in the age of information age and have a great ammount of resources.

Hundreds of thousands of men fought in the American Civil War and then went home and became farmers and cobblers. People have been handling multiple professions since the beginning of time.

Having a warrior just passing by and learning the arcane arts between games does not work for me.

Then forbid it. Warriors taking arcane levels is hardly the keypoint of 3ed multiclassing; it's much more common for a warrior to learn a few rogue or barbarian tricks.

And we could use that chart space to add more feats.

Charts are irregular things that have to be referenced. The more there are, the more they get in the way of playing the game without constant reference to the books.

If I want to have my Dwarf being able to swim I write it down as background info, and vuala! A dwarf that can swim. Maybe my friend did not think of that and chose to have his dwarf be an apprentice tailor. Now his dwarf can't swim but can make clothes and my dwarf can swim but can't make clothes.

So now if I want to add a swimming challenge to an adventure, I need to look at all the sheets background information to see who can swim and who can't. Knowing, of course, that some people who didn't write it down will expect it to be a freebie.

I quantify skills for the same reason I quantify combat prowess. I want to know who can do what and how well, and not by looking at every character's background info and making guesses. You could obliviate all stats, and run everything that way, and some games, like Dread, do, but there's a reason why there's a numeric system to figure out how hard it is to hit a creature and how much damage it does in D&D.

 

[ourchair]

I like it when you can get rules lawyers to work for you, but if they become antagonistic due to their insistence that the existence of a rule in a complex system abnegates your ability to hand-wave, then I simply get all smart-ass on them in the way one would smart-ass canon lawyers.

"That's not in Forgotten Realms!"

"It is now. It's MY Forgotten Realms!"

BECOMES:

"The rules of 3.5 disagree with you!"

"Well, this isn't 3.5. It's a 'homebrew'!" *wiggle shoulders and raise chin in sarcasm*

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Quote:
Multiclassing feels silly, since you end up "dipping" which is a silly concept because a class is your profession and what you do.

Multiclassing makes a LOT of RW sense to me.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer is a Sniper/PhD.

Barry Sheck is an MD/Lawyer.

Bruce Dickenson is a Fencer/Commercial Pilot/lead singer for Iron Maiden.

Brian May is the guitarist for Queen and haw a PhD in Astrophysics.

Skunk Baxter plays in the Doobie Brothers and is a military contractor.

The former lead guitarist for Faith No More is also a farmer.

If you look at former athletes and actors, you'll find many in politics.

One of the founding members of Sha Na Na is a forensic writing analyst.

I went to law school with dentists and engineers.

I'm a Lawyer/S&E marketer soon to be dipping into conflict resolution.

 

[JeffB]

I think the point/counterpoint of multiclassing in the past few posts , brings up a far greater item of importance.

realism/simulation? or not?

I think HOW you look at D&D is key to what rules you will prefer. Classes were not meant to be realistic professions, but rather give a broad archetype in a game world sense.

If you approach D&D with realistic/simulation-ism mentality:

wizards can't use a sword?
That makes no sense!- Gandalf used a sword!
But..was Gandalf a D&D wizard? No, he didn't have to memorize anything, and he didn't really cast (m)any spells.
Still anyone can pick up a sword!
Yeah, but actually he's an Angel, with like maybe a couple levels of wizard. Oh, & fighter levels so he can get a sword proficency and weapon focus too.
So more like a Half Angel 10/Wizard6/Fighter3?
Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he's got a few levels of Mystic Theurge?


Of course thats all ridiculous- He's a literary character and doesn't have to fit D&D rules. But if that "makes sense in a realistic/simulation way" is your normal mode of thinking, and feel that things have to be defined to that level, I can totally see why people would love an extremely complex system full of pre-made adjudication/options like 3.X/PF or RMSS, or whatever.

Somewhere, at some point, D&D began to focus less on the gamist side of things, and started to bring in that simulation focus. I would say this initially started when AD&D was being worked on to conform and codify many things. At the time of course Gary was adamant about it being neccessary (for many reasons) over time of course we found out that his heart lay back in that wild & wooly OD&D mode.

3.x, has gone the complete opposite way of OD&D and is totally focused on the simulation of a realistic world (as we know it) with some magic & gods tacked on. 4E, a little less so.

pardon my morning ramble-

 

[BryonD]

Hey Jeff,

Just for the record, I am a big fan of "simulation", but I don't at all recognize my preferences in what you have described.

There seems to be a constant attempt by the anti-simulation side to mischaracterize it as some kind of absolutist obsession. It is a straw man and is wrong.

Now, it certainly may be that you honestly perceive it that way. And there is certainly no need to care since you like what you do have. But it might be worth knowing that your dislike of simulation may have more to do with your own vision of it than anything that actually happens at my (and other's) table.

I do agree with you that 3X went far away from OD&D. But the "magic and gods *tacked on*" line is simply boggling. That is exactly opposite of accurate. The fantasy elements are the foundation and the core, everything builds up from there. If the setting and story conflict with the mechanics the mechanics MUST adapt because the simulation is a complete slave to the ideas it is simulating.

 

[Mercurius]

The fantasy elements are the foundation and the core, everything builds up from there. If the setting and story conflict with the mechanics the mechanics MUST adapt because the simulation is a complete slave to the ideas it is simulating.

This, I think, well sums up the so-called simulationist approach, that the mechanics adapt to fit the setting and story. I think what Jeff is getting at in terms of a polar approach is when the mechanics don't have to adapt because 1) They are free-form and loose enough to "bend" to whatever situation arises, and/or 2) The default approach is one of ad hoc decision making and "handwaving," not finding or creating a relevant rule.

In some ways I think this comes down to a matter of different temperaments, which could be characterized as Dionysian and Apollonian. When a conflict of story and rules arises, the Dionysian approach is to either ignore the rule or over-rule it with DM Fiat, in favor of the story. The Apollonian approach is to adapt the rules or create a new one. The Feat system that both 3E and 4E use is the embodiment of this more Apollonian simulationism: Want your character to be able to do something? We have a feat for every occasion and if we don't have one we'll make another up. The Dionysian free-form approach says: Want your character to be able to do something? Sure, he can try, so make a roll (or "Sure, just write it down and we'll figure out how it works").

The thing, though, is that very few players and DMs are at one extreme or the other. Sure, we've all met diehard Dionysians--this is where we get the lightest of "rules lite" games, Amber Diceless, Everway, etc. And we've all met diehard Apollonians--they tend to have huge binders of house rules or play GURPS or Rolemaster . But most gamers are somewhere in-between, on the spectrum, so to speak.

I do think it is safe to say that the locus of D&D has moved from "left of center" to "right of center" (if Dionysian is left and Apollonian right), with 4E moving slightly back a bit left from 3.5 (emphasis on "slightly" and "a bit").

For me the Holy Grail of D&D would be a design in which the entire spectrum is served, because all approaches are valid, all styles welcome within the D&D Family. You want to chart out Demogorgon's skills and feats, down to how well he can shine shoes and throw a bola? Fine, go right ahead. You want to bypass all feats and powers in a completely free-form approach of character actions? Sure, why not?

Some would say that a game that tries to please too many masters, that tries to be too many things, loses its vitality. This may be true, or at least it is easier to make a more tightly focused game of quality, but I don't think it is something written in stone, that a single version or edition of D&D has to serve only one sub-set of the total D&D population. You're never going to please everyone, but like Zeno's arrow I think you can continue to halve the distance infinitely.

At the least, why not die trying? To paraphrase a famous quote, "I'll give you my dice bag when you take it from my cold, dead hands!"

 

[Celebrim]

One of the things about OD&D is that is particularly prone to the creation of a 'common law' approach to the game rules. It's rules are such that there is no Constitution covering the basics of governing the game. Most player propostions fall firmly into areas outside the rules. What tends to happen is that a group that plays together for a long time creates a body of table rules which, though they haven't been formalized or written down, nonetheless have the same force of law as written rules. Once a DM rules in a particular way on a subject, then the players have the expectation that he'll rule again in identical situations in the same fashion, and once a DM has ruled in a particular way on some subject it's easier to resolve the situation in the same manner rather than inventing a new way. So the group as a whole becomes bound by an acknowledged or unacknowledge type of 'stare decisis' and eventually this dominates table play far beyond the actual written rules.

For example, OD&D has almost no rules regarding the use of skills in the game. Every OD&D through 1e AD&D table ends up incorporating some set of unwritten rules for how skill challenges are handled, and how the fortune, risk, or randomness to any such proposition is handled. Effectively, each group grows their own informal skill system. Some of these skill systems are quite elaborate and their users could with thought formalize them. Others are less obvious and less susceptible to easy analysis, but nonetheless are still rules systems for handling skills.

For example, a table might informally adopt a 'secondary background' for each character. The character then gets what is officially a non-delimited and non-enumerated list of 'nonweapon proficiencies' based on this list. Of course, in point of fact, some informal rule and social agreement actually governs how extensive the list of skills you are allowed to claim actually is, and so in fact the list is delimited and could be post-hoc enumerated. That's actually the critical difference between a skill system like 3e and what you might describe as OD&D's skill system. A 3rd edition DM or player is uncomfortable unless he knows ahead of time what he is allowed to do and how well he can do it. But based on their experience, an OD&D player is uncomfortable with a clearly delimited list because he fears, somewhat correctly, that formalized skill systems are hard to balance and tend to favor narrow specialization over broad base knowledge. In effect, what the OD&D player says is, "I trust my judge to be fair better than I trust written law."

But, and this is my point, the OD&D in effect - though it isn't on his character sheet - has some sort of skill list that grows over time and is based on background and experience and which is designed to be fair to all the other players and not let the cardinal rule of roleplaying - "You can't be good at everything" - be broken. And if the OD&D player allowed it, it could be formalized. But, of course we know that the fear of formal rules will keep that group firmly in the land of common law and adjudication and to a certain extent in the self-delusion that they don't have formal rules. They just aren't formal rules in the sense we are used to thinking about, but every British subject of the Crown for example knows the reality and power of Common Law.