Pathfinder 1E This is why pathfinder has been successful.

[TheAuldGrump]

Are you sure? I mean, at the time TSR was publishing Boot Hill and Gamma World, and very soon after Top Secret and Star Frontiers. And it's not just that these are different genres. They are mechanically different, and - at least as I understand it, never having played it - at least Boot Hill emphasises a different sort of play from AD&D.

And the intro to the DMG has not-very-subtle digs at Chivalry & Sorcery and Tunnels & Trolls, saying in effect that if you like the ultra-sim of the former, or the wackiness of the latter, then AD&D is not for you.

Mr. Gygax was not above digs at other games, or at things that he considered challenges - I remember a quote where he said something along the lines of 'Skill based systems are the bane of role playing games' - most likely a jab at Rune Quest, and of course saying that J.R.R. Tolkien was a bad fantasy writer, back when they had some legal tangles with the Tolkien estate.

I think this was exaggerated at the time, and remains an exaggeration now. Dogs in the Vineyard, FATE and The Burning Wheel both came out in that time - three pretty innovative and influential games.

My Life with Master, The Dying Earth, and HeroWars/Quest also all came out in that time (although the original HeroWars right at the start of that period).

I would say that we actually saw a lot of RPG innovation in the d20 period. (And a lot of it influenced 4e, for better or worse!)

I will agree with that, but you also had some... strange stances, where there were a few companies that thought that the purpose of the OGL/D20 STL was to put them out of business. (I seem to recall Chaosium being one of them.)

I think that D20 codified a portion of the RPG market, which is not the same thing as stifling innovation.

The Auld Grump

 

[BryonD]

Although this suggests that your conception of "offscreen failure" may be narrower than mine.

...

If a PC action on screen would cause future failure to be unavoidable, but at the tme the players had their PCs perform those actions the players didn't know the stakes, then I would categorise that at offscreen failure.

I think we are reaching the point where virtually every instance will be a unique example.

Of course, there is then also room for different conceptions of what counts as the players knowing the stakes.

Exactly. I think I have a rather high standard of expecting players to understand that their actions have consequences. But at the same time, I rather loathe "read my mind" or gotcha DMing. In my case I'm far more likely to tinker with the players minds by giving too much information and some red herrings than I am to put them in a situation in which they don't have the information needed to make a call.

Are you talking about your own game here?

Yes. I should have been more clear there.

 

[BryonD]

Are you sure? I mean, at the time TSR was publishing Boot Hill and Gamma World, and very soon after Top Secret and Star Frontiers. And it's not just that these are different genres. They are mechanically different, and - at least as I understand it, never having played it - at least Boot Hill emphasises a different sort of play from AD&D.

And the intro to the DMG has not-very-subtle digs at Chivalry & Sorcery and Tunnels & Trolls, saying in effect that if you like the ultra-sim of the former, or the wackiness of the latter, then AD&D is not for you.

My point is more with regard to intent than pure success....

I think this was exaggerated at the time, and remains an exaggeration now. Dogs in the Vineyard, FATE and The Burning Wheel both came out in that time - three pretty innovative and influential games.

My Life with Master, The Dying Earth, and HeroWars/Quest also all came out in that time (although the original HeroWars right at the start of that period).

I would say that we actually saw a lot of RPG innovation in the d20 period. (And a lot of it influenced 4e, for better or worse!)

I would agree that the complaints were exaggerated. But the point is that it was an easy critical comment to throw out because of the general popularity of D20 leant itself to it.

 

[Rogue Agent]

But is this going on every day?

But, again, as Pemerton says, is EVERYTHING in your game this time dependent?

And yet again with the weird-ass strawman that has been explicitly contradicted in this thread multiple times.

There's clearly no point in continuing the discussion when you're both completely unwilling to actually listen to what the other side is saying.

 

[Hussar]

I can't speak to Isle of Dread but certainly time can always be a factor in Keep on the Borderlands. If the PCs weaken a lair but retreat and come back to finish it off another day, they will find the occupants of the lair have fled with all the treasure (thus no exp points gained), allied with another lair to make their defenses 2x as strong, or been wiped out by a rival lair and had all their treasure taken (again no exp points gained). 15MAD style play is punished because the PCs must play well enough to take out the entire lair in 1 assault, otherwise they will find their efforts wasted. How much they rest in between lair assaults isn't really important, yes, but certainly trying to rest with a lair half-cleared is sub-optimal play that is logically punished by the parameters of the scenario.

And all or any of these things occur in the 12 hours that the PC's have been gone? That's more believable? Really? The PC's go in, gank, say, 30% of the inhabitants of the cave and the remainder are either wiped out instantly by their neighbours (with no losses to those neighbours apparently) or immediately pack up and leave?

 

[William Ronald]

At least this time they are doing marketing research, and hopefully listening to the research and paying attention to playtesters. (Yes, the debacle with the skill DCs still ticks me off.)

Deep down, I suspect and fear that 5e will fail. I don't want it to fail, but I think that WotC broke their market with 4e and the way they rolled it out. I don't think that they can mend the divide.

Still no word, as far as I know, on what I consider the most important piece - the license. And the longer they wait the more I suspect that it is going to be another attempt at the GSL, rather than a return to the OGL.

I like the Pathfinder rules better than 4e, but I do not blame the rules for the divide - I blame the marketing during the run up to 4e, and the attitude in some of the books, rather than the rules themselves.

Pathfinder, especially since the APG, fits my needs better than 4e - I would have to work around the rules in 4e to get the results that I want (much as some folks claim for 3.X/3.P). It would be awkward and unnecessary, since I have Pathfinder to hand.

The failure of marketing for 4e worked to my advantage - had they done their job right in regards to marketing then I would almost certainly not have Pathfinder.

And I know that Paizo listens....

I worry about 5E as well, as I see the base as being very divided. So, I share your fears. (It seems that different people want very different thigns from the upcoming game.) However, it seems like WotC is trying to listen to people with the playtesting program.

A successful new iteration of D&D would be good for the hobby, and might draw in some new players. While I can see the hobby going forward regardless of what happens with a new edition of D&D, I would prefer to see our hobby flourish and grow.

 

[pemerton]

time can always be a factor in Keep on the Borderlands. If the PCs weaken a lair but retreat and come back to finish it off another day, they will find the occupants of the lair have fled with all the treasure (thus no exp points gained), allied with another lair to make their defenses 2x as strong, or been wiped out by a rival lair and had all their treasure taken (again no exp points gained). 15MAD style play is punished because the PCs must play well enough to take out the entire lair in 1 assault, otherwise they will find their efforts wasted.

And all or any of these things occur in the 12 hours that the PC's have been gone?

Besides Hussar's comment, the other thing that struck me about the Keep example is how connected it is to classic D&D XP mechanics - the "penalty" for resting is missing out on treasure and/or having to fight against harder defences to find treasure. In either case, this means having to do more fights with only your lower level stats to rely on.

Once you drop XP for treasure rules, the incentive drops away - so in 2nd ed AD&D or 3E, for example, it is not necessarily a penalty to have to do more fighting, because that's what you need to do to earn XP in any event.

 

[S'mon]

Exactly. I think I have a rather high standard of expecting players to understand that their actions have consequences. But at the same time, I rather loathe "read my mind" or gotcha DMing. In my case I'm far more likely to tinker with the players minds by giving too much information and some red herrings than I am to put them in a situation in which they don't have the information needed to make a call.

That's good GMing advice. Also, if the PCs are supposed to know something, it doesn't hurt to keep repeating that something until you're sure the players know it too. At worst I'll use low-DC INT (etc) checks if it's something a smart PC would remember, but not absolutely obvious.

 

[Hautamaki]

And all or any of these things occur in the 12 hours that the PC's have been gone? That's more believable? Really? The PC's go in, gank, say, 30% of the inhabitants of the cave and the remainder are either wiped out instantly by their neighbours (with no losses to those neighbours apparently) or immediately pack up and leave?

Certainly. In the case of the goblin/hobgoblin and the two orc caves, they are actually connected to other caves and presumably have daily contact with each other. In the case of kobolds, they do daily chores for the other lairs and so have daily contact with almost all of the other lairs. The bugbears have a little shop and pub for the other denizens of other lairs. And in any case, all of the entrances of the caves are in the same little valley and you can see from one cave entrance directly into most of the others. It's obvious that this is a very tight little ecosystem that exists in precarious balance, and if the PCs come along and upset that balance, the consequences will be felt very quickly. All of this is made explicit in the DM's text. If the PCs go into the cultist cave, the owlbear cave, or the minotaur cave, or perhaps even the gnoll cave, there will probably not be immediate consequences felt on the rest of the area. But all other caves are very connected to at least one other lair.

 

[Hautamaki]

Besides Hussar's comment, the other thing that struck me about the Keep example is how connected it is to classic D&D XP mechanics - the "penalty" for resting is missing out on treasure and/or having to fight against harder defences to find treasure. In either case, this means having to do more fights with only your lower level stats to rely on.

Once you drop XP for treasure rules, the incentive drops away - so in 2nd ed AD&D or 3E, for example, it is not necessarily a penalty to have to do more fighting, because that's what you need to do to earn XP in any event.

Yes, I agree that a lot depends on how you award XP. So if you are running the Keep in 3rd or 4th edition you need to realize that the standard method of awarding experience (overcoming a challenge of difficult X automatically yields Y exp) doesn't work well with the Keep. The main fun in playing Keep is figuring out the best way to get the treasure off the monsters. The best strategies usually actually involve lots of roleplaying in fact: playing the different monster lairs off against each other for example. And this could often be done by having rogues or wizards or some such sneak into different lairs and steal treasure, then plant it in another lair. Or you could just design an adventuring party as powerful as possible and take treasure by brute force. First edition really did reward all different play styles, although the goal was limited to treasure.

The module I downloaded was written for 4th edition and the adaptor made sure that plenty of bonus XP was in the offing for clearing monster caves, regardless of the method used.

But in a case where the only XP to be had is by defeating the monsters in combat, much of the player's decision points become meaningless. Any decision that did not result in the PCs directly confronting and slaying enemy monsters was basically a waste of time at best. If the monsters could be manipulated into killing each other off screen, the PCs would get nothing out of it except their treasure, much of which is useless to them anyways if it doesn't give them XP.