New Legends & Lore (Rules, rules, rules)

[Neonchameleon]

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*

Nor my recent play. But my old play as a teenager - yes.

And as for recent play, documents like the Old School Primer and blogs like Grognardia are a lot better at explaining intentions than Gygax (let alone the 2e DMG) ever was in print as opposed to in person.

There's a lot in old school D&D to encourage DMs to be jerks. Most grow out of it. And if you're still playing old school D&D you almost certainly have. But the presence of earworms, lurkers above, lurkers below, gusts of wind strong enough to blow out torches, etc. encourages jerk behaviour from DMs. However most people don't put up with DMs like that for decades on end. So the emergent play now has weeded out some of the emergent play at the time.

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.

Now this makes sense. Climb Sheer Surface is a very different beast fom Climb Walls. I don't recall there being anything in the AD&D rules saying that you don't roll if you can climb a surface with an ability check.

I'm not sure if the AD&D had rules for non-thieves climbing until the Wilderness and Dungeoneer's survival guide.

Where you don't have rules and it's a reasonable option you default to an attribute check. And if you're using Climb Walls, and have a decent attribute then your chance can be significantly better than the thief's climb check.

 

[ExploderWizard]

And as for recent play, documents like the Old School Primer and blogs like Grognardia are a lot better at explaining intentions than Gygax (let alone the 2e DMG) ever was in print as opposed to in person.

If you believe the 2E DMG was old school or had anything to do with Gygax, then turn in your old school geek card now please.

There's a lot in old school D&D to encourage DMs to be jerks. Most grow out of it. And if you're still playing old school D&D you almost certainly have. But the presence of earworms, lurkers above, lurkers below, gusts of wind strong enough to blow out torches, etc. encourages jerk behaviour from DMs. However most people don't put up with DMs like that for decades on end. So the emergent play now has weeded out some of the emergent play at the time.

Could you please quote something, anything from an old school D&D product that actually encouraged the DM to be a jerk? As I recall, fairness and giving the players as well as the monsters, an even break was stressed repeatedly.

Jerks operate independently of any rules. There is no magic ruleset that will stop them. A fair DM does not coddle the players nor does he/she go out of the way to punish them.

A lurker below is a trapper BTW and the mere existence of such monsters does not mean a jerk DM is at work.

 

[Salamandyr]

Where you don't have rules and it's a reasonable option you default to an attribute check. And if you're using Climb Walls, and have a decent attribute then your chance can be significantly better than the thief's climb check.

Uh no, walls and sheer surfaces were considered pretty synonymous, ie things without real hand and footholds. A fighter couldn't climb a wall. He could climb a hill, he could climb a tree, he could shimmy up a rope to get up a wall. What he couldn't do was climb a wall or other sheer surface lacking real hand and footholds while possessing no climbing equipment. Essentially, any surface the DM rules the fighter can climb, by RAW, the thief can climb automatically with no roll. The thiefs climb check (which started at 85% at 1st level) was only necessary when climbing a surface that other classes had no chance to climb at all.

As originally written, ability checks did not exist in AD&D. It did in Basic/Expert. Some modules did introduce ability checks for AD&D, but they were not part of core books unless they showed up in the Survival Guides, which I haven't looked at since they were new.

EDIT: the text of the "Climb Walls" ability for the thief and the climbing rule for non thieves below, the climbing rule is pasted from the Mentzer Expert set, and the thief section from the Rules Compendium (what I have available to me is kind of messed up, so making do). The RC has, instead of the climbing rule below, a skill called "mountaineering", and please note the Mentzer rule for climbing differs somewhat from my recollection of the Moldvay/Cook rule. The Isle of Dread has a different climbing rule for when players try to climb a mountain, but again, the thief's success is considered automatic, since the surfaces in question are not considered "sheer".


Climb Walls (CW): With successful use of this
special ability, the thief can climb steep surfaces, such as sheer cliffs, walls, and so forth. The chances for success are good, but if failed, the thief slips at the halfway point and falls. The DM rolls for success once for every 100' climbed. If the roll is a failure, the thief takes 1-6 (1d6) points of damage per 10' fallen. Falling during a 10' climb will inflict 1 point of damage.

Climbing: Thieves (and only thieves) have the special ability to climb sheer surfaces. But many situations can arise where some easier form of climbing is desired - up a tree, steep hill, wall with handholds, etc. Generally, any characters in metal armor will not be able to climb well. Characters in leather or no armor should be able to climb easily, with only a slight chance of falling. In situations where “normal” climbing might be attempted, first decide on a base chance of success. For example, if characters seek to spend a night in a tree with many overhanging branches, there might be an
18 in 20 chance of successful climbing by unarmored characters. Modify that chance for those in chain mail armor (perhaps to 11 in 20) to those in plate mail armor. You may wish to use a character’s Dexterity or Strength scores to find the chance of falling; success might be indicated by rolling
an ability score or less, using ld20, 3d6, 4d6, or some other means. Whatever chances you decide to use, make a note of them so they may be applied equally and fairly in future games. Remember that a falling character takes 1-6 points of damage for each 10’ fallen. But it should be very unlikely for an adventurer, however weak, to be killed by falling out of a tree.

 

[Zaukrie]

The reaction to the polls and the examples and the blog in general is fascinating to me. Monte is having a conversation with us, nothing more, nothing less. The polls are not the serious market research. Examples are examples, not strict "this is how things have been, are, or will be". Rules don't make people jerks (or keep them from being jerks).

Monte is having an online, non-live, conversation with a subset of the D&D community. That conversation is likely influencing, but certainly not controlling, his decisions on 5E. I'm not sure I understand all the fear and loathing in all the posts all the time.

But, maybe that's just because I take every rule (fluff or crunch) as a suggestion for how to play the game. In the game I run, I know the rules less well than anyone else at the table. We mostly follow the rules, but sometimes I fudge them a bit either way. Since this is not a competition, but a cooperative, story telling way to spend 4-6 hours with friends, I don't feel any great need to follow every rule to the letter of the law. YMMV of course, both over how much you follow the rules, and how worried you get over a blog post by a developer.

I agree with Tom Tullis, I'd like an "intro" version of D&D I could use to bring in new players, and a set of advanced options that build on that. There are certainly things I'd like to see 5E do differently....like I think teh rules do dilute the feeling of "magic" being magical, and I'd like to see the magic driven classes feel more different from each other somehow, but that's a topic for another thread.

 

[P1NBACK]

@Rogue Agent - 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).

I think most people's memories of old school D&D are hazy. I was the same way until I started playing the games again over the past year or so.

I've done mostly B/X stuff, but it's interesting getting back into old school D&D and trying to figure out what was going on back in the late 70s / early 80s and how they played and viewed the game to how people that play 3E / 4E play and view the game.

One thing I've realized is that a lot of my hazy memories had been tainted with crap I'd read about how sucky old school D&D was. In truth, the game is a ton of fun and most of the "problems" were really minor things overblown or solved by actual playing by the rules and not houserules.

There are some stark contrasts to the old game and newer iterations, and I think some of the essence of the game has been lost over those years.

This is why I found it surprising to see 76% of onboard with looking back and preserving the game's history. Maybe there are more people interested in old school D&D than we think?

That makes me happy.

 

[P1NBACK]

Could you please quote something, anything from an old school D&D product that actually encouraged the DM to be a jerk? As I recall, fairness and giving the players as well as the monsters, an even break was stressed repeatedly.

Exactly. Everything I've read in old school D&D stuff (pre-2E as far as I'm concerned) has done nothing but emphasize the need for the DM to be fair and reasonable.

In fact, I was JUST looking at a module last night, I think written by David Cook (maybe it was Slave Pits of the Undercity?) where in the intro to the DM he reiterates how important it is to be fair and give the players a reasonable chance to react and survive.

 

[Nagol]

Could you please quote something, anything from an old school D&D product that actually encouraged the DM to be a jerk? As I recall, fairness and giving the players as well as the monsters, an even break was stressed repeatedly.

Jerks operate independently of any rules. There is no magic ruleset that will stop them. A fair DM does not coddle the players nor does he/she go out of the way to punish them.

A lurker below is a trapper BTW and the mere existence of such monsters does not mean a jerk DM is at work.

Well, there are a couple of sections in the DMG 1e where it comes close (I'm away from the library right now so I can't get a page citation). The first is where Gygax is discussing getting a group to act and suggests surprise attacks from invisible mummies and bolts of lightning as possibilities. The second is where the DM is sternly encouraged to get the party to use cursed magic items through trickery if necessary regardless of the safeguards put in place by the party.

 

[P1NBACK]

Well, there are a couple of sections in the DMG 1e where it comes close (I'm away from the library right now so I can't get a page citation). The first is where Gygax is discussing getting a group to act and suggests surprise attacks from invisible mummies and bolts of lightning as possibilities. The second is where the DM is sternly encouraged to get the party to use cursed magic items through trickery if necessary regardless of the safeguards put in place by the party.

You mean the section on "Handling Troublesome Players" - page 110 AD&D DMG.

Bookended by:

Strong steps short of expulsion can be... Again, the ultimate answer to such a problem is simply to exclude the disruptive person from further gatherings.

I agree that using in-game methods to resolve social disputes among players is not the best advice (and he goes on to say this), but to try and portray this as regular DM advice for just being a jerk... Nah. Sorry.

 

[Gryph]

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.

Well, not having played old school D&D recently, you know after 3 decades of refinement in RPG design and style, but having played D&D extensively in the late 70's and 80's when it was at it's height; I can absolutely verify that the experiences the NeonChameleon relate were the norm of play. In fact the were the typical player responses to DMs taking the stylistic advice of the game's creator in setting up their games or, you know, running the modules that were authored by Gygax.

Frankly, your posts are sophmoric and certainly a waste of the effort, however little, you spent in writing them.

 

[P1NBACK]

...you know after 3 decades of refinement in RPG design and style...

^ You think 1.5 hour combats are a "refinement"? Awesome for you.