DMing philosophy, from Lewis Pulsipher

[pemerton]

I don't know what mechanical resolutions were typical for social deceptions back then.

There was a reaction table, influenced by CHA. Otherwise, I think the norm was free roleplaying.

His DMing advice requires the players to only act within the framework that the DM has pre-established. What is causing them to do that? Are they being forced in some way to go to the dungeon and not do something else? Is there a mutual agreement beforehand that this is what everyone wants to do and they won't do anything else?

Yes, there is a mutual agreement. "Playing D&D" means turning up with your PCs ready to enter a dungeon and explore it.

Gyagx's PHB (1978) makes a similar assumption (p 107):

[A]ssume that a game is schedule tomorrow, and you are going to get ready for it . . . [T]alk to the better players so that you will be able to set an objective for the adventure. Whether the purpose is so simple as to discover a flight of stairs to the next lowest unexplored level or so difficult as to find and destroy an altar to an alien god, some firm objective should be established . . .​

Exploring a dungeon is the default assumption for play. Hence the short ranges on spells like Locate Object, and the inclusion of otherwise quite baroque magic items like Potions of Treasure Finding and Wands of Metal and Mineral Detection.

Why try and parse statements written 37 years ago, particularly in a fairly negative fashion?

I don't think this was particularly directed at me, but as OP I thought I'd say a bit more about why I posted it.

I think this advice is interesting, and potentially helpful. It sets out a particular approach to play quite clearly (I think with greater clarity than Gygax does) and advises the participants on how they can best do things that way. It also diagnoses, 7 years before Dragonlance, the threat of railroading that comes with more story-oriented play. I think the diagnosis is sound, and I have suffered under GMs who would have benefitted from reading this.

That's not to say that I'm against story-oriented play. As I said in my OP, there are techniques that can make it work. But that doesn't change the fact that Pulsipher has accurately diagnosed a problem that was very real - and virtually dominant in the hobby from the late 80s through the 1990s.

Anyway, just to highlight some diversity of approaches from the early years, I'm going to start another thread with advice on similar topics from Roger Musson, another inveterate contributor to the early White Dwarfs.

 

[pemerton]

I never knew of the author but his playstyle is exactly mine.

I well remember Lew Pulsipher's articles, especially one of my favorites, the "be aware, take care" article from Dragon Magazine

<snip>

I also think there needs to be a little MORE of that thinking returning to the table

Thanks for the posts. Even though the article is very old, I think it still has relevance, and feel somewhat vindicated in that view by these responses.

 

[pemerton]

Although he's not really into "story", Pulsipher does recognise the importance of what now would be called "fictional positioning" - ie the players engaging the game world as if it were real, and extrapolating from the imagined reality in thinking through what is feasible, what would be sensible for their PCs to do, etc.

Consider, for instance, the following:

One of the most destructive notions I've encountered in D&D is the belief that "anything goes". This is fine for a pick-up or silly-fun game, but contributes to an air of unreality and recklessness which can be fatal to a campaign . . . [A]n "anything goes" campaign tends to be one in which player skill counts for little . . . [because, inter alia] players have no foundation to base decisions on; never knowing what to expect, they cannot plan a rational response. . . . Even fantastic fiction, despite the name, possesses an internal self-consistency . . . Each referee must ask himself as he sets up his campaign what rules and items would seem believable if he read about them in a fantasy novel. . . .

Just because D&D is a fantasy game doesn't mean you can forget logic. Don't put five Balrogs [in a] 20 by 20 foot lair. . . Pretend you're a monster looking for a lair that is convenient and defensible, but you don't know specifically what might attack - men, animals, monsters, who knows? . . .

Many dungeons are full of occupied room which can be reached only through other occupied rooms. One wonders why none of the monsters fight each other . . . I have yet to hear a believable reason why they wouldn't fight; usually the excuse is that a thirtieth-level something-or-other runs the entire dungeon and won't let them. This is tantamount to saying that God Almighty has ordained that they shall not fight each other and shall only fight intruders. Why? No, it does not seem real.​

It seems pretty clear to me that the reason for emphasising "realism" is not aesthetic - it's not to improve the "story" - but rather as an element of game play. Skilled players engage the game via reasoning and problem-solving, and they can't do this if they can't reasonably extrapolate from the ingame situations that the referee describes to various possible courses of action. "Realism" in the set-up facilitates this.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I also think there needs to be a little MORE of that thinking returning to the table - not to the "insane paranoid" level of "checking all coins in a hoard for numismatic value" or "prepare poison and smoke powder for the wizard to save spells through the power of suggestion" - but so many groups have been raised on the "guided tour" philosophy that if you present them with the smallest mystery, or one of the old Gygaxian puzzles like the circular stone holes with splinters in them from the AD&D 1 DMG, many players go blank, and just stop thinking.

Many, many, MANY parties of players i've seen wont even talk to form a coherent battle plan, they go in, each pick a separate enemy, and do their own thing, sometimes even getting in each others' way. Pulsipher in the Dragon Mag article used example of a group of fighters who charge into a grassy field to the enemy, another subgroup of the fighters and thieves sneaking in the grass, and a group of magic users who turn invisible and move around shooting fireballs. In his words, without communication, or even setting code signals or rendezvous, the enemy could leave the field and the party still might have friendly fire losses. I've seen this level of cooperation in actual play, and it's disappointing! For goodness' sake, even Monopoly needs more system mastery than that.

Henry, I feel you on this, but you offer zero reasoning as to why people should be forced to deal with "Gygaxian puzzles" (which were largely junk, in my experience, and designed to be metagamed by people who knew the solutions from previous, dead, characters, according to actual first-hand accounts of Gary's games), when they apparently want what you call "guided tours"?

I'm also curious, how have you come across these players, such that they cause you concern? Is this a "Kids today..." thing?

Further, preparation and cooperation are two different things. I've seen groups who could form insane, terrifying ambushes with battle plans, but once things got real, none of them cooperated (they just trusted the wizard not to kill them, even as they stymied some of his plans by their positioning), and I've seen players who don't ever express a plan beforehand but cooperate magnificently and save the day in actual combat.

In fact, my experience is that people who are "planners" and people who are "team players" are actually opposed personality types for the most part, when it comes to D&D (less so IRL, but there's still a tension there).

But like I said, I feel you on this - I could see some more planning come back, some more equipment mattering, and so on (it's been largely irrelevant since 3E), I just wonder at the "why" on forcing tourist-y groups into Gygax-y situations, and how you've experienced that.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Yes, there is a mutual agreement. "Playing D&D" means turning up with your PCs ready to enter a dungeon and explore it.

Pretty much what I thought.

Even in a modern roleplaying context, I don't think it's at all unusual for a GM to say up-front: "This campaign is about [x], so make characters that fit into that."

Sometimes, but I get very nervous about doing that. The character creation process is the part of the game where the characters have the most control and exert the most influence, so taking that away from them is a potentially tyrannical approach that will infuriate a lot of players.

That's why I think the advice is unfeasible in the modern age; how many people see D&D as being a game where you sign up to explore a dungeon anymore?

 

[Emerikol]

That's quite a lot of planning. It's a luxury. I wish I had the same luxury, but I haven't for quite a while.

This is why I tend to prep for my games far in advance of running one. I may work six months on a campaign before even discovering who my players will be. I put out a notice that I'm running a game and here is the flavor and ground rules. Those interested opt-in. I always have plenty wanting into the game. I believe there are many ways in roleplaying to have fun so I'm not criticizing other approaches. I am saying that my own style matches up with what Pulsipher says and I do that style really well. I base that upon the demand to get into my campaign.

I don't know about that. Hewing to preconceived notions of what the game is another kind of bias, and those preconceptions may very well relate to metagame concerns like the kind of DMing under discussion. Which maps to what we call railroading.

I do a sandbox and I never force my players down any path. It's just like our real world. I know if I jump off the roof I can't fly. It's not a limitation on my freedom that gravity pulls me downward. I present the players with a world. It has rules and it works in a certain way. I fill that world with interesting NPCs and monsters who have their own agendas. The PCs are then totally free to do what they want within the context of the design of that world.

Balancing the need to think things out to avoid bias with the need to be flexible to avoid railroading is quite a challenge. It's part of learning to DM. A big part.

When I talk about thinking out things, I'm not talking about designing a single adventure that the group has to play. I'm talking about designing and NPC and making sure that NPC plays appropriately to his intelligence and has a set of preplanned actions given certain events so that I am not tempted to unconsciously make a biased decision. That NPC may never appear on stage in the game. If the PCs turn left they might meet a totally different NPC and the first is never met. I have no agenda when it comes to what the PCs do. In fact I avoid like the plague any scenario like a "save the world" scenario. I want the world to operate with or without the PCs input. I want the PCs to affect the world but in the manner of their own choosing.

I suspect most of us must run games that are "good enough" for our groups. Whether they would match up to the Pulsipherian ideal I doubt.

I think you are over thinking. Many of us aim for perfection but no one hits it. That does not mean though that that is not our goal. I honestly believe that from what I read of the article that my game is very much the sort of game he is talking about. I realize that I learned my playstyle from Gary Gygax and people of his philosophy (during the late 70's and 80's). I made it work and work well so I haven't wanted to change it since.

I want my players AND characters challenged. I love puzzles and traps. I love when the players figure out a way to totally turn a tough fight into an easy one. I love when they use the dungeons traps against the inhabitants. All of that sort of play is exactly the game I love. I'm not saying others can't enjoy their own approaches. I just have one that for me works great.

 

[Ahnehnois]

This is why I tend to prep for my games far in advance of running one. I may work six months on a campaign before even discovering who my players will be. I put out a notice that I'm running a game and here is the flavor and ground rules. Those interested opt-in. I always have plenty wanting into the game.

That's another luxury in some ways. For me, and for a lot of us, we have a different luxury, which is that we have "the" players. Which is nice, but also means that when they show up, we have to work for them specifically, which is very different than having a static prepared game that people can choose whether or not to do.

I do a sandbox and I never force my players down any path. It's just like our real world. I know if I jump off the roof I can't fly. It's not a limitation on my freedom that gravity pulls me downward. I present the players with a world. It has rules and it works in a certain way. I fill that world with interesting NPCs and monsters who have their own agendas. The PCs are then totally free to do what they want within the context of the design of that world.

That really doesn't sound much like the Pulsipher idea wherein the players play within a fairly narrow framework. He doesn't sound like he's talking about a sandbox.

When I talk about thinking out things, I'm not talking about designing a single adventure that the group has to play. I'm talking about designing and NPC and making sure that NPC plays appropriately to his intelligence and has a set of preplanned actions given certain events so that I am not tempted to unconsciously make a biased decision. That NPC may never appear on stage in the game.

That on some level is an ideal, but one that's very difficult to meet. To me, I look at an NPC as something that if I spent time on it, I damn well plan to use it. Now, I might not know when or how I'm using the character, but I don't consider the NPC as a static part of the game world who may or may not be in the players' path, because that is simply too much work on my part.

I want my players AND characters challenged. I love puzzles and traps. I love when the players figure out a way to totally turn a tough fight into an easy one. I love when they use the dungeons traps against the inhabitants. All of that sort of play is exactly the game I love. I'm not saying others can't enjoy their own approaches. I just have one that for me works great.

That's fine; no argument there. For my part, I ran one real dungeon and have no desire to do it again, my players hate puzzles and traps (and so do I for that matter), and I run a wildly different game, both in process and content.

 

[Emerikol]

That really doesn't sound much like the Pulsipher idea wherein the players play within a fairly narrow framework. He doesn't sound like he's talking about a sandbox.

I only read the snippet in the first post so if he said more elsewhere that is another matter. Based on what he said in the post, he didn't address sandbox or not sandbox. I was saying that if you play sandbox it can fit what he did say in that snippet very well.

 

[Umbran]

Many, many, MANY parties of players i've seen wont even talk to form a coherent battle plan, they go in, each pick a separate enemy, and do their own thing, sometimes even getting in each others' way.

*shrug*. My experience is the opposite - parties that generally do too much planning, and then fines their plan falls apart in the face of the enemy. sop they used up a whole lot of game time in something that turns out to be useless.

 

[Sadras]

*shrug*. My experience is the opposite - parties that generally do too much planning, and then find their plan falls apart in the face of the enemy. So they used up a whole lot of game time in something that turns out to be useless.

It might be bad of me, but I generally enjoy when that happens. It's hard to remain impartial all the time. I keep failing my will save.