New Legends & Lore (Rules, rules, rules)

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Neonchameleon, I honestly can't take you seriously. Your comments don't reflect my (recent) play of old school D&D whatsoever and sound more like someone who's never actually played the game.

Maybe you were doing it wrong? *shrug*

Oh the Irony!

 

[P1NBACK]

Oh the Irony!

Are you saying you've played a lot of OD&D recently and had experiences similar to Neonchameleon?

Because what I gather from your posts so far in this thread, and Neonchameleon as well, is less of an understanding of old school D&D and more of a criticism of OD&D that seems utterly baseless and without any sort of real teeth to your arguments.

"Older editions of D&D suck! Ten foot poles! Argh!"

Is not really my idea of a constructive discussion.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Are you saying you've played a lot of OD&D recently and had experiences similar to Neonchameleon?

Because what I gather from your posts so far in this thread, and Neonchameleon as well, is less of an understanding of old school D&D and more of a criticism of OD&D that seems utterly baseless and without any sort of real teeth to your arguments.

"Older editions of D&D suck! Ten foot poles! Argh!"

Is not really my idea of a constructive discussion.

I'm saying that it's ironic that you are claiming you can't take Neonchameleon's valid argument seriously because it doesn't fit your view of the game.

Which makes it hard to take your argument seriously. If you can't accept his experiences, then why should he accept yours? I agree, it's not a very constructive way to have a conversation.

I've also never offered any insight to my experience with OD&D. I don't really know how your reading that into my posts.

 

[P1NBACK]

I'm saying that it's ironic that you are claiming you can't take Neonchameleon's valid argument seriously because it doesn't fit your view of the game.

Which makes it hard to take your argument seriously. If you can't accept his experiences, then why should he accept yours? I agree, it's not a very constructive way to have a conversation.

Because Neonchameleon's descriptions of OD&D haven't been much more than caricatures of actual play. It doesn't jive with anything I've ever experienced with the game.

It does remind me of a lot of new school gamers who cry foul against anything that may even relate to old school D&D - including you, who earlier in this very thread proclaimed that there was nothing to learn from earlier editions of D&D.

If you, or Neonchameleon, had a serious comments (like Balesir, for example) without devolving them into facetious slights, then it might be worth acknowledging.

But, as it stands and based on your opinions of those editions, it just seems to me if you've played the game, it's clearly been incorrectly. Is that the rules' fault?

Eh. I've wasted more effort on writing this post than it's worth.

Good day, sir.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Because Neonchameleon's descriptions of OD&D haven't been much more than caricatures of actual play. It doesn't jive with anything I've ever experienced with the game.

It does remind me of a lot of new school gamers who cry foul against anything that may even relate to old school D&D - including you, who earlier in this very thread proclaimed that there was nothing to learn from earlier editions of D&D.

If you, or Neonchameleon, had a serious comments (like Balesir, for example) without devolving them into facetious slights, then it might be worth acknowledging.

But, as it stands and based on your opinions of those editions, it just seems to me if you've played the game, it's clearly been incorrectly. Is that the rules' fault?

Eh. I've wasted more effort on writing this post than it's worth.

Good day, sir.

You're an angry dude, man. Again, why should I take your experience as gospel? You are unwilling to accept others.

I didn't claim there was nothing to learn. I said appeals to tradition will result in traditional problems.

So you're going to accuse me of being facetious while crossing yours arms and claiming that if I don't agree with you that I'm just unable to grasp the rules in their proper context?

Okay player, if that's the way you think the games works.

 

[P1NBACK]

You're an angry dude, man. Again, why should I take your experience as gospel? You are unwilling to accept others.

I didn't claim there was nothing to learn. I said appeals to tradition will result in traditional problems.

So you're going to accuse me of being facetious while crossing yours arms and claiming that if I don't agree with you that I'm just unable to grasp the rules in their proper context?

Okay player, if that's the way you think the games works.

Yeah... I'm so angry right now. Rawr. Dude, man.

Now, time to play Battlefield 3.

Good day, sir.

 

[Salamandyr]

A fighter climbs with an ability check. A Thief gets their climb sheer surfaces check. Anything else was extremely badly explained by the book, leading to Murphy's Rules.

And if you want emergent gameplay that's just annoying, ten foot poles, ear trumpets, and other tools of bizzarre paranoia.

The rules for climbing in the Moldvay/Cook Expert book , which I assume were repeated in the Mentzer Expert book, any surface the fighter could climb with an ability check, the thief climbed automatically, no roll needed. The thief only had to roll for climbing sheer surfaces or minor overhangs, which the fighter had 0 chance of climbing.

I'm not sure if the AD&D had rules for non-thieves climbing until the Wilderness and Dungeoneer's survival guide. Most modules that had climbing included some subsystem or other the writer made up. An example? The Isle of Dread, which came packaged with the Expert Rulebook, that had rules specifically for climbing, has an entirely different mechanic in the module for climbing than what was in the rulebook. A lot of people in the 80's didn't actually read the rules to play, and that seems to have included the writers. That's a big reason why everyone's table was so different.

 

[Saracenus]

Here is my issue with the L&L polls (beside being ridiculously unscientific) is that they at best tell us what people "think they want." They don't really tell you what they would really want if they were given actual play to test. I really don't see the ultility of them as they invariably become the points of contention an detract from a real dialogue about concepts monte is talking about.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk.

 

[Rogue Agent]

...and so on and so on. But, I think this was gameplay emergent from a DM-ing/adventure style, rather than the rules, as such.

That's a bit of a feedback loop between the rules a DM has available to them and the

I was reading a blog recently that talked about (Grognardia? Alexandrian? Rients?) the fact that White Box D&D had very few rules for dungeon-crawling, but one of those rules was for torches being blown out by gusts of wind. Early D&D modules? Gusts of wind all over the place.

Those rules get de-emphasized with AD&D (as a bunch of other dungeon-crawling rules are added) and the gusts of wind disappear from the adventure modules shortly thereafter.

Pre 2E, IIRC, the thieves' "Climb Walls" was just that, incidentally - not "Climb Sheer surfaces" at all. Which left a weird "grey zone" with easier climbs that, reasonably, anyone ought to have a chance at but no system existed for.

Somewhat true, but mostly not.

OD&D, Supplement 1: "- climb nearly sheer surfaces, upwards or downwards" (So here's it's explicitly sheer surfaces.)

Holmes 1977: "climb sheer surfaces" (Maintains OD&D's definition.)

Moldvay 1981: In the table it's "climb sheer surfaces". In the text it's "climb steep surfaces". (So here it becomes muddied.)

BECMI 1983: "...any steep surfaces, such as sheer cliffs, walls, and so forth." (And here the muddiness gets cemented into the rules. This is maintained in the 1991 Rules Cyclopedia with slightly different verbiage.)

So you can see the "sheer" verbiage is actually the earliest incarnation of the rules. It then evolves to include non-sheer surfaces, but still seems to stay mostly focused on sheer surfaces through the Basic line. (And this is emphasized because BECMI included explicit rules for non-thief climbing.)

Meanwhile, over in AD&D...

AD&D, PHB: "Ascending and descending vertical surfaces is the ability of the thief to climb up and down walls. It assumes that the surface is coarse and offers ledges and cracks for toe and hand holds." (Explicitly not sheer surfaces, creating that weird grey zone you're talking about.)

AD&D2, PHB: "Although everyone can climb rocky cliffs and steep slopes, the thief is far superior to others in this ability. Not only does he have a better climbing percentage than other characters, he can also climb most surfaces without tools, ropes, or devices. Only the thief can climb smooth
and very smooth surfaces without climbing gear." (As with BECMI, AD&D2 includes rules for non-thief climbing. In fact, these rules in general appear to be heavily influenced by BECMI while eschewing AD&D1's approach entirely.)

You'll notice, however, that the system was never just "climb walls".

 

[Balesir]

[MENTION=6673496]Rogue Agent[/MENTION] - thanks for doing the comprehensive research. I think AD&D was probably the one I was (hazily) recalling, but since I drifted away from D&D to other RPGs around 1982 or so and didn't really return until dipping a toe in 3E around 2000, my memories of it are unreliable, to say the least (even though I still have the books, mainly for nostalgia value).