What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's also possible some alternate roll-up methods had already been trial-ballooned in Dragon Magazine. All before my time.

Yeah, I'm not sure how or where or when such things originated. I equally suspect that some people knew of them before the publication of the 1e PHB and, as I said, Gygax may have even had that in mind since 1 year later he published the DMG with several alternative optional methods.

It meshes if the players read into it that the characters they inhabit are going to have some sort of self-preservation instinct and thus use lots of caution etc. But let's face it, in reality we all played gonzo for a while, and filled the graveyard in so doing.

And you're right about a lot of the RP happening outside the structured dungeon, though a lot also happened between the PCs all the way along. I think this comes from many of the early modules (say, pre-1983 or so) providing very few if any decent opportunities for RP with the dungeon inhabitants; this changed with DL, Ravenloft, and - of all things - a few Judges Guild modules.

Right, I think there was a steady movement in the direction of more RP, less arbitrary character death, etc. You can almost plot that in terms of changes to the game. In OD&D you roll 3d6 in order (you can lower one score by 2 to raise one by 1, that's it). Then you get a d4/6/8 hit points and are basically on average WEAKER than some level 1 monsters (like an orc). Clerics don't even get a heal spell until level 2, and there aren't any bonus spells.

In 1e hit dice are upped, so its d4/d6/d8/d10 (and even 2d8 for the specialist ranger). Clerics get THREE level 1 spells (with a 13 WIS, probably not exactly hard to attain) IIRC, AND d8 hit points. Fighters get d10 hit points, and enough cash to buy chain armor most of the time, making them better than an orc.

2e doesn't change this much, but specialist wizards now get 2 spells to start with, and a better spell selection (probably, its a bit unclear). Characters also get to do a bunch of WP stuff (its an optional rule but only marginally so). Later 2e supplements add a lot more 'bennies', making even level 1 PCs considerably better equipped and survivable.

3e doesn't change too much, but does provide more options.

4e obviously makes low level characters considerably more insulated from 'the winds of fate', though relative to monsters they're not any stronger than in 1e or 2e. Its more like you start at the AD&D equivalent of 3rd level where you aren't expected to die every other session anymore.

5e is a little more equivocal, but characters are basically as survivable as in 4e.

So there's a pretty strong progression towards survivability. In every edition from 1e onwards there's also further moves towards being able to pick your character type instead of being dictated partly by luck. 1e has better dice rolling, 2e the same, 3e has point buy, etc. Basically in WotC D&D you choose your stats out of a budget so you always play the character you want. This is the endpoint of a trend that started in 1978.

Interesting.

In the game I play in we're up to about a 10th-level average at the moment, and in our year-end awards the only pure Fighter in the party was just voted most valuable character for the 5th time in 6 years, this time after a tiebreak with the pure Ranger! Two non-caster* classes - what does that say?

* - the Ranger's spell ability at 10th is still so trivial that it might as well not count.

Its hard to say. I mean there's a lot of variation. I had a ranger that was in that level range. He was an integral part of a long-running story, so he just WAS in that party, regardless. At that level he was equipped with some sort of vampiric armor, a vampiric sword, a ring of regen, and a number of other quite strong items that made him ALMOST immune to death. I recall he once leaped off a 200' cliff into the middle of an enemy army and proceeded to simply slaughter them by the 100's until the whole army basically ran away. By that time his vampiric sword had given him several 1000 hit points and he proceeded to kill a number of demons.

He still didn't hold a candle to my equally high-level straight human MU (who admittedly also had some pretty nifty equipment). In terms of "which would straight up contribute more to party success" it wasn't even a contest. The ranger still was probably the vastly more popular of the two characters with the DM and the other players as he was an endless source of amusement and plot hooks. The wizard was fun, in a "how do we game this stuff" sort of way, and had a pretty good story too, but frankly playing that sort of character was a lot 'easier' in some respects.

I disagree here. Both the PH and DMG, for example, point out the need for tracking things like gear, arrows, encumbrance, and so forth; and of hiring porters or buying/renting pack mules to carry what you cannot.

Right, but this doesn't mesh well with the idea of 'heroic play', at least in my mind. I mean, in the Odyssey for instance there's some mention at one or two points that the characters are needing to replenish supplies, but it isn't a primary concern, more like a bit of a device to explain why they choose to land on an island now and then. That and maybe things like the part of LotR where they visit Lothlorien and get resupplied are about the extent of such things in heroic source material. I wouldn't consider focusing on this to be particularly heroic and thus meshing too well with Gygax's text, though TBH it doesn't actually CLASH with it either.

Huh?

Somehow in there you jumped from logistics play to story-driven play. They're not the same thing by any means, though one can tangentially influence the other.

Well, I think that, while 2e fails in real rules terms to enable heroic play, it at least called it out as more than a blurb, and there ARE rules in 2e, the XP rules being the main example, that actually DO try to work in that direction. So 2e doesn't do 1e-type play so well, but it doesn't do heroic play really either. Its a weird game.

3e I cite as an example of the idea that 'playing in the dungeon' (IE Gygaxian play) WAS in fact the goal of, presumably, 1e, and that 2e strayed from it. I don't assert that 3e ACTUALLY gets you back to it mechanically, its much more like 2e there, but it does fly its flag on that hill. That just tells me how little WotC thought of Gygax's assertion in 1e PHB, they are asserting that 1e is a dungeon-crawl game!

It can provide a home base for the party, but not much else. That said, I think the assumption is that when a Fighter goes the stronghold route (or the Cleric builds her own temple, or whatever) that character is also pretty much retiring from adventuring. Result: many characters IME put off this step until they think they've done their career, which might be several levels later.

Right, and in the Ur-game, maybe even before OD&D when it was emerging, I think the concept was that the 'real' game was the strategic empire-building game where you raised armies and played out Chainmail fantasy supplement battles against other kingdoms (probably even PC run ones). The stronghold rules are sort of a vestige of that IMHO. They don't contribute at all to the 'heroic game' except in some way maybe some color (you are now a ruler, which is kinda heroic). As you say, its more an invitation to retire. Few people actually run the empire building phase, so in effect the character either exits stage left or maybe gets trotted out to defend his lands now and then.

This looks like the start of a D&D-as-sport vs. D&D-as-war discussion; where I see it as war and you (going by what you've said here) see it as sport. Fair enough.

I never liked that formulation of the debate, but I understand what you mean. I think its the difference between:

1. Gygaxian Play - game as test of playing skill, can you survive the dungeon and make Nth level?
2. DM-centric Story Play - the GM presents a story, the players engage it from character stance only and some elements are hidden from them. This can also incorporate sequences of Gygaxian Play as a variation. They might also incorporate some elements of Narrative Cooperative Play, though neither are primary.
3. Narrative Cooperative Play - All participants shape the story, some play PCs and one usually plays the NPCs and often takes on tasks inherited from type 1 and 2 play's DM role (IE rules interpretation, maybe some backstory and thematic authority, etc).

In type 3 play, there simply isn't conflict at the table, no adversarial role exists. At least not inherently, players could create such as part of their play style and they can of course engage in bouts of type 1 and 2 play to whatever extent their chosen rules system allows for.

So the players can author their own surprises?

Isn't that kind of like wrapping your own birthday present?

Sure, I take your meaning. As I say, there's always the option to agree on some hidden element which can foster entertaining/challenging play. I simply advocate that these elements are embedded in a fundamentally egalitarian matrix where no one participant's 'vision' is per-eminent. It isn't even REALLY that radical in practical terms because even Gygax had to cater to his player's desires if he wanted to remain in possession of a group to play with. So there's ALWAYS been some practical balance of or limits to authority of GMs in all games. I just prefer a convention where this is explicit and if a GM wants to hide something from the players that there is a buy in of that. I guess it doesn't need a vote or debate, but when the GM presents a 'mystery' as a narrative element without giving away the details to the players, then they COULD exercise meta-game authority to stop that. If they don't, well they must want that mystery!

This sounds more like group storytelling on a D&D chassis than anything else. It's neither sport nor war; it's more like two teams getting together before the game and deciding what the score will be, who'll get the goals, and whether the referee will be given the chance to send someone off - and then going out and playing it through to that result.

See, you talk about teams and agreements and things. I see only one unitary 'team' at the table. I think your stance actually harks back to Gygax. In his conception the DM has a role as 'the antagonistic force' and thus there's a certain division into 2 asymmetric teams. This doesn't exist in modernistic play, but D&D has carried it over implicitly even as it has tried to achieve a non-Gygaxian (what I call type 2 above) play style. It is kind of problematic in ways that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have discussed many times in various places. Obviously it WORKS, but I contend there's always been an element of dissatisfaction starting with that blurb you quoted in the 1e PHB. Other RPGs have more and more grown up in that unclaimed territory. D&D is a big game with a lot of milieu, lore, material, etc. that has accreted to it, but it has never really figured this part out.

Again, you're very lucky with your players that they don't abuse this authorial power.

I literally cannot, in my mode of play, internalize 'abuse' as a concept. It just doesn't make sense. I guess I could recruit a group of players and they could decide to go off and construct a narrative that was completely uninteresting to me. I wouldn't consider this a game design issue, its a table issue. I suppose if that happened I'd have to assess my needs/desires/tastes and decide if I wanted to GM that game or not. If it was a case of me running a game in my persistent campaign and say the players wanted to totally rework the campaign, or turn into comedy or something. I'm happy with that if we're all having fun. I'm not obliged to incorporate that play into the 'canon' of my world if I don't want to. I'd probably just call it an 'alternate reality' or something.

I've done that - the party rile up some powerful opponents somewhere and the next thing they know their home base is getting turned into Swiss cheese by the retaliation.

Lanefan

Yeah, it was fun, but mostly because this particular guy is so much fun in terms of the characters he makes up and situations and whatnot. I think if you had 1000 DMs no other one could pull off the degree of 'railroad' that was in that game. I don't consider him an example of anything except that every generalization has its exception.

 

[Lanefan]

XP for a thoughtful reply, even if I don't agree with some of it.

Right, I think there was a steady movement in the direction of more RP, less arbitrary character death, etc. You can almost plot that in terms of changes to the game. In OD&D you roll 3d6 in order (you can lower one score by 2 to raise one by 1, that's it). Then you get a d4/6/8 hit points and are basically on average WEAKER than some level 1 monsters (like an orc). Clerics don't even get a heal spell until level 2, and there aren't any bonus spells.

In 1e hit dice are upped, so its d4/d6/d8/d10 (and even 2d8 for the specialist ranger). Clerics get THREE level 1 spells (with a 13 WIS, probably not exactly hard to attain) IIRC, AND d8 hit points. Fighters get d10 hit points, and enough cash to buy chain armor most of the time, making them better than an orc.

2e doesn't change this much, but specialist wizards now get 2 spells to start with, and a better spell selection (probably, its a bit unclear). Characters also get to do a bunch of WP stuff (its an optional rule but only marginally so). Later 2e supplements add a lot more 'bennies', making even level 1 PCs considerably better equipped and survivable.

3e doesn't change too much, but does provide more options.

4e obviously makes low level characters considerably more insulated from 'the winds of fate', though relative to monsters they're not any stronger than in 1e or 2e. Its more like you start at the AD&D equivalent of 3rd level where you aren't expected to die every other session anymore.

5e is a little more equivocal, but characters are basically as survivable as in 4e.

While the 4e-5e model you present does allow for jumping right into the deep end as a local hero, as it were, it also completely negates any thought of playing a character up from "nobody" to said local hero: the riskiest part of an adventurer's career. With 4e in particular there's quite a big gap between a commoner and a 1st-level character, probably holding enough design space to squeeze three or so more levels in there. In 1e that commoner-to-1st-level gap is much smaller; small enough that it's easy to envision how the progression would naturally occur; and even more so if one incorporates 0th level as a stepping stone.

I don't mind greater choice in class and race of character than raw 1e gives, and I've done away with most racial level limits (a race can either be a class or it can't) while also toning down some of the non-Human racial benefits. I'm also more generous than 1e RAW in how many spell slots casters get at very low levels - figuring out how many they should have at higher levels remains a work in progress...I'll get it right one of these decades!

So there's a pretty strong progression towards survivability. In every edition from 1e onwards there's also further moves towards being able to pick your character type instead of being dictated partly by luck. 1e has better dice rolling, 2e the same, 3e has point buy, etc. Basically in WotC D&D you choose your stats out of a budget so you always play the character you want. This is the endpoint of a trend that started in 1978.

I rather loathe point-buy or array systems for reasons I've pointed out in other threads that largely boil down to preferring luck to be and remain a big factor in char gen - thus mirroring reality to some extent.

Its hard to say. I mean there's a lot of variation. I had a ranger that was in that level range. He was an integral part of a long-running story, so he just WAS in that party, regardless. At that level he was equipped with some sort of vampiric armor, a vampiric sword, a ring of regen, and a number of other quite strong items that made him ALMOST immune to death. I recall he once leaped off a 200' cliff into the middle of an enemy army and proceeded to simply slaughter them by the 100's until the whole army basically ran away. By that time his vampiric sword had given him several 1000 hit points and he proceeded to kill a number of demons.

He still didn't hold a candle to my equally high-level straight human MU (who admittedly also had some pretty nifty equipment).

I play the human MU in our game, and even though she's 10th level I think half the PCs in the party could wipe her out in a 1-on-1 arena situation, rising to nearly all of them if I lost initiative on the first round.

Right, but this doesn't mesh well with the idea of 'heroic play', at least in my mind.

Here's another difference between us, then: you seem to be looking for heroic play where I'm looking for something a bit more gritty where the characters maybe end up as heroes at the finish.

And in all honesty I find that the full-on logistical play only lasts for the first few levels, after which everyone (players and PCs) kinda knows what they're doing and can put it on autopilot. Couple that in with things like Continual Light and Create Food and Water coming into play and before long the most important things remaining to track are ammunition and party/personal wealth. But that introduction to logistics is IMO vitally important.

Well, I think that, while 2e fails in real rules terms to enable heroic play, it at least called it out as more than a blurb, and there ARE rules in 2e, the XP rules being the main example, that actually DO try to work in that direction. So 2e doesn't do 1e-type play so well, but it doesn't do heroic play really either. Its a weird game.

3e I cite as an example of the idea that 'playing in the dungeon' (IE Gygaxian play) WAS in fact the goal of, presumably, 1e, and that 2e strayed from it. I don't assert that 3e ACTUALLY gets you back to it mechanically, its much more like 2e there, but it does fly its flag on that hill. That just tells me how little WotC thought of Gygax's assertion in 1e PHB, they are asserting that 1e is a dungeon-crawl game!

By the late '90s 2e had really lost its way, and was drowning in bloat. The 3e designers, backed by their customer research, realized that there was a common desire for a) simplification and integration of the rules and b) a return to good old-fashioned dungeon-crawling as a point from which to start over. On (a) they half-succeeded: the rules became well-integrated but they sure didn't get any simpler! On (b) they hit a home run, with this and other factors leading to a rather massive resurgence in the game's popularity.

Right, and in the Ur-game, maybe even before OD&D when it was emerging, I think the concept was that the 'real' game was the strategic empire-building game where you raised armies and played out Chainmail fantasy supplement battles against other kingdoms (probably even PC run ones). The stronghold rules are sort of a vestige of that IMHO. They don't contribute at all to the 'heroic game' except in some way maybe some color (you are now a ruler, which is kinda heroic). As you say, its more an invitation to retire. Few people actually run the empire building phase, so in effect the character either exits stage left or maybe gets trotted out to defend his lands now and then.

In fairness, it can also be seen as an invitation to the DM to slowly transition from a bash-and-haul type of game to something with a lot more courtly intrigue in it; though not all DMs or players would go for this.

I never liked that formulation of the debate, but I understand what you mean. I think its the difference between:

1. Gygaxian Play - game as test of playing skill, can you survive the dungeon and make Nth level?
2. DM-centric Story Play - the GM presents a story, the players engage it from character stance only and some elements are hidden from them. This can also incorporate sequences of Gygaxian Play as a variation. They might also incorporate some elements of Narrative Cooperative Play, though neither are primary.
3. Narrative Cooperative Play - All participants shape the story, some play PCs and one usually plays the NPCs and often takes on tasks inherited from type 1 and 2 play's DM role (IE rules interpretation, maybe some backstory and thematic authority, etc).

In type 3 play, there simply isn't conflict at the table, no adversarial role exists. At least not inherently, players could create such as part of their play style and they can of course engage in bouts of type 1 and 2 play to whatever extent their chosen rules system allows for.

(1) is most often RPG as war - it's deadly; (2) is most often RPG as sport - we'll beat each other up on the field then all go down to the pub for a beer; and (3) is RPG as...well, kinda not much.

You can't have a story without conflict, and in an RPG that conflict can only come from two places: the DM (acting as the game world and its inhabitants) and-or the other players (acting as their PCs); and as many tables ban PvP that only leaves one source of conflict.

(I don't count conflict against self here - if someone wants to play out their own character's internal angst that's fine, but it's not much fun for anyone else who has to sit through it)

Sure, I take your meaning. As I say, there's always the option to agree on some hidden element which can foster entertaining/challenging play. I simply advocate that these elements are embedded in a fundamentally egalitarian matrix where no one participant's 'vision' is per-eminent. It isn't even REALLY that radical in practical terms because even Gygax had to cater to his player's desires if he wanted to remain in possession of a group to play with. So there's ALWAYS been some practical balance of or limits to authority of GMs in all games.

Agreed.

I just prefer a convention where this is explicit and if a GM wants to hide something from the players that there is a buy in of that.

So, you can buy me a birthday present but only if I allow you to. You're not allowed to surprise me without my foreknowledge.

I guess it doesn't need a vote or debate, but when the GM presents a 'mystery' as a narrative element without giving away the details to the players, then they COULD exercise meta-game authority to stop that.

Or I can tell you to return whatever you bought me to the shop for a refund.

See, you talk about teams and agreements and things. I see only one unitary 'team' at the table. I think your stance actually harks back to Gygax. In his conception the DM has a role as 'the antagonistic force' and thus there's a certain division into 2 asymmetric teams.

Of course. That's how it works.

The DM has a very different role within an RPG than do the players, much like a football referee and linesmen have very different roles in football from those of the lads kicking the ball around. The DM and the referee are not playing the game even though they are directly involved in it; instead they are facilitating the game and making sure things stay vaguely within the rules.

In an RPG the DM is in an odd situation in that she's filling the roles of both referee and opposition; and all involved just have to trust that she can do this fairly.

This doesn't exist in modernistic play, but D&D has carried it over implicitly even as it has tried to achieve a non-Gygaxian (what I call type 2 above) play style. It is kind of problematic in ways that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have discussed many times in various places. Obviously it WORKS, but I contend there's always been an element of dissatisfaction starting with that blurb you quoted in the 1e PHB. Other RPGs have more and more grown up in that unclaimed territory.

I'm not so sure I'd say "grown up" but rather "branched out"; as "grown up" implies that what went before was childish - I hope that's not what you're trying to say.

And one can argue that this branching out has in some cases gone so far as to produce entirely new plants, some of which aren't really growing in the RPG garden any more but are instead sprouting up out of the collaborative storytelling soil just near it.

I literally cannot, in my mode of play, internalize 'abuse' as a concept. It just doesn't make sense. I guess I could recruit a group of players and they could decide to go off and construct a narrative that was completely uninteresting to me. I wouldn't consider this a game design issue, its a table issue.

That's not abuse as I see it, it's just boring for the DM.

I suppose if that happened I'd have to assess my needs/desires/tastes and decide if I wanted to GM that game or not. If it was a case of me running a game in my persistent campaign and say the players wanted to totally rework the campaign, or turn into comedy or something. I'm happy with that if we're all having fun. I'm not obliged to incorporate that play into the 'canon' of my world if I don't want to. I'd probably just call it an 'alternate reality' or something.

By 'abuse' (as in abuse of the play-style or system) I mean it'd be very open to players making things far too easy on their PCs and, in effect, Monty Hauling the campaign. Without meaningful opposition they could (and many IME probably would, given the chance) turn a high-risk high-reward game into a low-or-no-risk high-reward game; and providing this meaningful opposition and risk in the form of the game world and its occupants is in part what the DM is there for.

They'd then get awfully bored with the whole thing and probably blame the game, but in the end it'd be a boredom they had brought upon themselves.

Lan-"sure I want it all, but it's more fun if I have to fight to get it and there's no guarantee I'll win"-efan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

XP for a thoughtful reply, even if I don't agree with some of it.
While the 4e-5e model you present does allow for jumping right into the deep end as a local hero, as it were, it also completely negates any thought of playing a character up from "nobody" to said local hero: the riskiest part of an adventurer's career. With 4e in particular there's quite a big gap between a commoner and a 1st-level character, probably holding enough design space to squeeze three or so more levels in there. In 1e that commoner-to-1st-level gap is much smaller; small enough that it's easy to envision how the progression would naturally occur; and even more so if one incorporates 0th level as a stepping stone.

There are two parts to this. The 'gap between commoner and level 1' part is really a little hard to judge. There is literally no standard in 4e of what a 'commoner' is, because 4e doesn't posit that statistics are the world. There is a bigger gap between the weakest possible generally usable stat block in 4e and a level 1 PC than in say 1e (where the weakest PC and a Kobold and a notional '0 level human' are all pretty close, with the PC having some special class abilities and maybe equipment, but not a lot else). In 4e a level 1 minion is a LOT weaker than a level 1 PC. I think its fair to say we can imagine commoners occupying some range in there, but some of them COULD be about on a par with PCs (certainly there are examples of 'townspeople' in Fallcrest, the only really developed 'normal' town in 4e material) who are on a par with PCs, so its a hard call actually. Some may be a lot weaker.

The second part, about 'riskiness', I dismiss out of hand. Risk doesn't exist in D&D. You play a character, the GM determines what dangers exist. He can threaten, and indeed carry through on, killing any PC regardless of statistics, and he can do it without using any fiat simply by what he places in the challenges that the character faces. Risk is thus an illusion, or at least it is simply an agreement between the GM and the player as to what sort of game is being played at the table. Thus it is entirely orthogonal to what rules set is being used. If risk of character death (wagered on player skill and luck with the dice in most games) is an element of a particular scenario, then so it is. Even then DMs have traditionally (even 4e has Rule 0) absolute fiat power that ultimately decides life and death.

I rather loathe point-buy or array systems for reasons I've pointed out in other threads that largely boil down to preferring luck to be and remain a big factor in char gen - thus mirroring reality to some extent.

Eh, I can see an argument from the standpoint of trying to move players out of their comfort zone and get them to play something new. The original point, to make the choice of which type of 'pawn' the player had to attempt to solve the dungeon with a matter of both chance and skill in deciding if it was better to be a suboptimal wizard or an optimal fighter, doesn't matter in anything but Gygaxian play however. The philosophical notion that there is a 'luck of the draw' in what attributes we are born with is so dubious to begin with that to attach any 'realism' constraint to it is practically meaningless IMHO. Again, I think its valid to want to both express the full range of possible characters and push players into new experiences, though it obviously has to mesh with what the PLAYERS want. I actually don't have an issue with random 3d6 in order character creation. I personally find it entertaining. Maybe some time I will run a game like that and see who is interested. I'm OK with point buy though for a lot of games. I actually thought the Traveller process, where the player makes some choices and rolls some dice, was pretty interesting.

I play the human MU in our game, and even though she's 10th level I think half the PCs in the party could wipe her out in a 1-on-1 arena situation, rising to nearly all of them if I lost initiative on the first round.

Yes, but such 'spherical cow' type evaluations are meaningless. You won't ever even see Questioner of All Things coming, nor ever get surprise on him. Even if you did, he long ago took specific magical precautions against that sort of thing. You might cause him a significant inconvenience, at best, if you were to catch him at unawares going about his presumed daily routine life or something like that. GMs of course rarely stoop to that kind of thing, though in a certain type of game I don't think its unfair. As I say, Q has countermeasures. DMs are of course equipped with infinite resources, so you can't say I'm proof against any possible plot, but it would require a level of resources, preparations and knowledge that a GM would be hard pressed to justify NPCs having in order to succeed.

In any case, just because your fighter could gank my wizard from a standing start at a range of 5 feet with a 50/50 toss of the initiative die doesn't make him my equal in an adventure.

Here's another difference between us, then: you seem to be looking for heroic play where I'm looking for something a bit more gritty where the characters maybe end up as heroes at the finish.

Even zero-to-hero doesn't necessarily need to have this gritty kind of logistics sub-game. DW for instance has a pretty abstract concept of character resources. They exist, and you can track them to whatever detail you want, but they aren't generally central to play of the game. In fact they're more a sort of 'plot hook' (so for instance the GM in that game might reveal an unpleasant truth, your last torch is guttering down and the exit is nowhere in sight, a 'soft' move, but yet kind of nasty depending on the mix of PCs in the party).

By the late '90s 2e had really lost its way, and was drowning in bloat. The 3e designers, backed by their customer research, realized that there was a common desire for a) simplification and integration of the rules and b) a return to good old-fashioned dungeon-crawling as a point from which to start over. On (a) they half-succeeded: the rules became well-integrated but they sure didn't get any simpler! On (b) they hit a home run, with this and other factors leading to a rather massive resurgence in the game's popularity.

I think in terms of (a) they took the mass of disfunctional 2e kits and supplements and rationalized it into a set of workable character options, which was good to some degree. On (b) I think there was a huge pent-up demand for a new set of core books, since 2e was over 10 years old at that point. 3e was thus a pretty good bet, they could have sold almost anything to people that hadn't had a new product in 5 years aside from a few things left over from TSR's pipeline. I'd note that, while 3e was pretty popular it doesn't seem to have ever reached the levels of 1e (nothing since has) and it quickly faded, so quickly that 4 years later they had to roll out 3.5e to keep selling books. I think 3e has its good points in a sense, but I'm not real convinced it was all that incredible a product. There are certainly plenty of grounds upon which to criticize the particular design choices it made. I'd also say that 'back to the dungeon' is no more than a slogan, the rules don't support it at all.

In fairness, it can also be seen as an invitation to the DM to slowly transition from a bash-and-haul type of game to something with a lot more courtly intrigue in it; though not all DMs or players would go for this.

Yeah, that's a possibility. You could work out some sort of milder form of 'Birthright' kind of game as well, or various things. Battlesystem was, I think, one of several attempts to revitalize that aspect of the game that ultimately failed. Court intrigue is fun, but D&D doesn't really support it well. You need rules that outline how to progress through stories and really do a better job of defining character's capabilities. OA does it better than any other part of 1e. 3e can do it fairly well, which is maybe its strongest suite really.

(1) is most often RPG as war - it's deadly; (2) is most often RPG as sport - we'll beat each other up on the field then all go down to the pub for a beer; and (3) is RPG as...well, kinda not much.

You can't have a story without conflict, and in an RPG that conflict can only come from two places: the DM (acting as the game world and its inhabitants) and-or the other players (acting as their PCs); and as many tables ban PvP that only leaves one source of conflict.

(I don't count conflict against self here - if someone wants to play out their own character's internal angst that's fine, but it's not much fun for anyone else who has to sit through it)

This might all be true if you assume that antagonism must involve different game participants taking each side. However, because the antagonism is at the CHARACTER level, the participants are free to make decisions about any or all sides in the conflict, THEY aren't on any side, inherently, because they aren't part of the narrative.

It would be perfectly feasible for a player in a game to say something like "Wait, when the guy in the helmet raises his visor, its General Zongo, my family's nemesis! I channel all my anger into one mighty surprise attack against him!" Obviously there may be game mechanics that govern the details of what the player can establish, when, how often, to what degree, who else needs to concur, etc. The conflict between the PC and General Zongo is no less a conflict simply because it was arranged by the same game participant who decides what the PC does about it.

So, you can buy me a birthday present but only if I allow you to. You're not allowed to surprise me without my foreknowledge.

I would say that one considers one's knowledge of a particular person, and generally only a fairly significant understanding of that person leads to good presents. It isn't exactly controversial to ask people what they want. Anyway, the analogy shouldn't be stretched too far. You wouldn't consider it an appropriate present for me to buy you a coupon to have your old sick cat euthenized. I think maybe I'd ask before I introduced a plot element that totally re-arranged the basis of your character's history or something too.

Of course. That's how it works.

The DM has a very different role within an RPG than do the players, much like a football referee and linesmen have very different roles in football from those of the lads kicking the ball around. The DM and the referee are not playing the game even though they are directly involved in it; instead they are facilitating the game and making sure things stay vaguely within the rules.

In an RPG the DM is in an odd situation in that she's filling the roles of both referee and opposition; and all involved just have to trust that she can do this fairly.

I think this is a perfectly OK way to play, but the way you state it is as if it is THE way it HAS to be, not just one of many options. Now, I don't think you and I are anywhere near disagreeing that we both play an RPG, or think the other guy's playing style is somehow badwrongfun or anything like that. HOWEVER, I've heard much more militant versions of what you stated here that basically do amount to that, many times! There are people that have posted a bit here even that have pretty much told me that what I do isn't RPing, isn't a game, etc. You may hear [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that way at times, but I think, at worst, he's just got strong preferences of his own. You could probably go through his activity over the last year and find a LOT of times he's been told he's off the reservation and not even playing an RPG. Its a bit like the old Edition Wars where certain things just got to be silly.

Anyway, not that we're fighting, this is a fun conversation, and I don't even totally disagree with you, there's a very strong tradition of D&D where what you're saying is how its played. I even like a lot of those games, in moderation.

I'm not so sure I'd say "grown up" but rather "branched out"; as "grown up" implies that what went before was childish - I hope that's not what you're trying to say.

Yeah, I meant 'grown up like weeds' more than 'as in more mature' in some fashion. I think we can safely say that playing ANY kind of RPG is often seen by the world as childish, lol. I actually think Gygaxian D&D is a very clever and surprisingly 'mature' game in terms of the evolution of its forms. Its restricted enough that it got there in a relatively short period of 5-6 years, but Gary himself was quite good at welding together game elements to do what he wanted. OD&D is messy, but once you mix in Greyhawk it is a pretty tight dungeon crawl game. The higher level/other elements are a bit 'out there', but it does dungeons really well. Heck, Mentzer is really just a distillation of that one part of OD&D.

And one can argue that this branching out has in some cases gone so far as to produce entirely new plants, some of which aren't really growing in the RPG garden any more but are instead sprouting up out of the collaborative storytelling soil just near it.

Well... I think as long as each player is associated with a character, and that there are genuine mechanical constraints on the player's game activities, they're pretty much playing an RPG. Its a different kind of game than classic D&D maybe, but there's still a lot of 'game' in it.

By 'abuse' (as in abuse of the play-style or system) I mean it'd be very open to players making things far too easy on their PCs and, in effect, Monty Hauling the campaign. Without meaningful opposition they could (and many IME probably would, given the chance) turn a high-risk high-reward game into a low-or-no-risk high-reward game; and providing this meaningful opposition and risk in the form of the game world and its occupants is in part what the DM is there for.

Again though, I think this concern is only cogent in terms of a sort of Gygaxian-like type of game where treasure and advancement is the main goal and the GM's main function is to act as the opposition standing in the way of that goal. Once that paradigm is discarded, then the concern is no longer present. There may of course be OTHER concerns which are equally significant in say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game, which he's got to address in whatever ways you address those.

They'd then get awfully bored with the whole thing and probably blame the game, but in the end it'd be a boredom they had brought upon themselves.

Yeah, if you play to find loot and beat the GM's traps and monsters and such to get it, then the non-existence of such traps and monsters, or your ability to edit them away, would be problematic. I could see a game however where the players had the ability to set the level and nature of the opposition, and then lets say that the referee set the corresponding reward (or some sort of game mechanic did so). That could work as a system with both challenge (IE you can lose) and a feasible reward mechanism. I actually haven't seen a game like that in action, though the idea seems obvious enough that SOMEONE must have experimented with it by now!

 

[Sebastrd]

How can you believe this to be so when this is exactly the sort of GMing that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates throughout this thread: that the players must guess the location of the map as he, as GM, has preauthored it, and that if that slows the progress of the game to a halt while the PCs run through a sequence of rooms making checks until they succeed at a check in the correct room, well, then, them's the breaks?!?

My statement stands for itself. I'll leave it at that.

 

[innerdude]

. . . the REAL pitfall IME is that the game of D&D never really provided the means to play out the sorts of fantasies that many players envisaged. DMs were increasingly, especially as AD&D evolved, forced to 'fudge things' to try to get that to work, and the discrepancy between the exploration-focused rules and the story-focused table expectations becomes a breaking point. No amount of pre-generated content, pseudo-realism in game systems, or attempts at even-handed refereeing really fixes it.

This rings so very true to me. I think the proliferation of Marvel universe movies is a glimpse into this mindset---the de rigeur line of thinking that the players are going to be the earth-shatterers, the apocalypse-makers for their game worlds. They're going to be the ones holding the "Tri-Force" at the end of the game and deciding the fate of the world. And if the story doesn't manage to TAKE their characters into that "superhero" space, that the "story" behind the gameplay is a waste.

And truthfully, I don't know that any RPG is up to the task of making that kind of storyline possible without a tremendous amount of GM force in the background.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, it is, usually, possible to play in a sub-optimal way and take the class you want, or at least the 'base' class (its VERY hard, even with 4d6 ordered as you want to qualify for the 'sub' classes in 1e). That assumes you aren't using 3d6 in order, which was the only known method when 1e PHB was released. With THAT method you are entirely incorrect, and I think its fair to judge what Gygax wrote in that light. Nor do I know anything in the PHB (or even the DMG) which 'strongly implies' anything. It was a known fact that if you dumped players with a sucky character they didn't like they would just find a way to die and roll again. So it wasn't uncommon to bow to the inevitable a bit and allow a player to start over if the result was particularly bad AND they weren't in the mood to ham it up and try to make a go of it (which we often did, heck it could be fun for a while). OD&D even codifies this to a small extent by allowing you to reduce one stat by 2 points and increase another by 1 point, though that was never implemented in 1e.

Going purely by the 1e PHB, it very strongly implies that the DM should allow re-rolls if the player doesn't roll two 15's or higher on those 3d6. If the DM didn't allow that, it was a DM problem, not a game problem. With two 15's or higher, you can be almost any class in the book. Ranger and Paladin being the two super hard to qualify for classes under 3d6.

It was an inevitable consequence of play in that era using those processes. I was there, and no amount of telling me different is going to change that. I mean, I have actual character sheets that have names like 'blah blah blah #7' and such written on them. It happened quite often. It was also common to just not bother to NAME the character until after a few levels since then you weren't stuck with some crappy name on your high level guy. In my friend's campaign there was a very high level wizard called 'Tribord VII'. Well, we thought it was amusing, and the character eventually obviously got a real history and some personality, but you can only imagine the endless hours of slogging away with nameless low-level throw-away PCs before that happened. I speak truth, and many others will corroborate this.

If it was so inevitable, why did it almost never happen where I could see it? Other than a few really bad players, I didn't see this "inevitable consequence" happen. We lost a lot of characters, but didn't resort to that sort of BS. And I didn't even see it for the first time until 2e.

You are missing the point Max. The whole point was that the prefatory description of play in 1e that Gygax put in the PHB in 1978 simply doesn't match the reality of play that his system actually presents AT ALL.

In fact you play a character of a type drawn from a fairly narrow range of choices with attributes at least partially mandated by dice, and said character is then projected into a gritty world of dungeon looting in which their chances of reaching even 3rd level are fairly thin, at best. Its an interesting enough game, but it isn't AT ALL what was 'on the tin' so to speak. This is equally true of Original D&D, all three versions of Basic D&D, and of 2e.

I remember how deadly it was. We were still able to, and did roleplay our PCs. The mechanics didn't prevent or discourage that. It just meant that we had several backup concepts in mind for when a PC died.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

46 pages of forum postings on the topic of "worldbuidling". Still not a continent, kingdom, principality, or hamlet in sight. Must be Waterworld but with a lot less Costner.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This rings so very true to me. I think the proliferation of Marvel universe movies is a glimpse into this mindset---the de rigeur line of thinking that the players are going to be the earth-shatterers, the apocalypse-makers for their game worlds. They're going to be the ones holding the "Tri-Force" at the end of the game and deciding the fate of the world. And if the story doesn't manage to TAKE their characters into that "superhero" space, that the "story" behind the gameplay is a waste.

And truthfully, I don't know that any RPG is up to the task of making that kind of storyline possible without a tremendous amount of GM force in the background.

Well, IMHO, that only holds if the expectation is that the player's agency is only through their characters viewpoint agency and its up to the GM to build all the world detail. At that point GMs find themselves in a bind where, if they want to make their content relevant, they must limit the character's options to those which advance things in a direction they have envisaged. Otherwise they must perforce improvise. MOST GMs, given the choice of improvising away their carefully constructed story arc, will resort to GM force (in some degree). When the characters are comic superheroes, classically of very great character agency and power, then this becomes LOTS of force. This same issue afflicts high level classic D&D play, making it increasingly untenable. That is to say that after some level, say 9th, 'dungeons' can no longer really function to channel character agency, they can start to pass through the walls, break down all the doors, detect all the traps, etc. The characters then go through increasingly remote and less constrained environments, the wilderness, outer planes, etc. until the GM either 'kills them' or the game simply can't accommodate them anymore.

There are definitely games, however, which can accommodate arbitrary amounts of character agency. They simply aren't going to have as an agenda the overcoming of DM presented challenges as their primary focus. My own private form of 'D&D' for instance works largely like this, there's really no problem with 20th level PCs, the scope of their actions is quite large, but the issues they face are the same, fundamentally, as low level PCs. The activities of the players are largely the same too, just with a different stage to set them on and different tools.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton and those who enjoy his style of play
1. They feel they lack agency if they cannot shape the world as they play in it. It is not enough to control their own character's actions. They want to control the environment so that they can set up situations that they enjoy. I think I understand what you want. I think agency is the wrong word for it which might be the confusion.

2. The world is grown organically far more than it is crafted.

<snip>

3. I think what is widely regarded as worldbuilding really is of little use to Pemerton's playstyle.

<snip>

I don't like games with "metagame" controls. I disliked 4e, parts of 5e, dungeonworld, savage worlds, etc... Those games give players more control than the fictional character has and that goes against the style I prefer. I am sure for those who enjoy some hybrid version of mine and Permerton's, they might like such metagame rules. In Permerton's case they probably aren't enough.

I agree with 2 and 3. Metagame controls aren't that important to me: Burning Wheel, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic all have the to a modest degree (but less than, say, OGL Conan); Classic Traveller and Rolemaster have them not at all.

This relates to your 1, 2 and 3.

2 and 3 are both (in my view) true.

1 is not true. When I play an RPG I want to play my character and control my character's actions. Being able to shape the world as I play in it is not a big deal. What is a big deal is that the outcomes of my character's actions aren't settled by the GM's pre-authored setting.

EDIT: And likewise when I'm GM, with appropriate changes of role: I like to see the players' declare actions for their character that engage with the unfolding fiction, and I don't want the outcomes of those actions to be pre-determined by me.

As I hope this thread has made clear, there's a category of actions whose outcomes typically is not predetermined by GMs (eg a running race against a NPC - opposed checks to resolve; or a fight with an orc - use the combat mechanics) but another category of actions whose outcomes often are predetermined by a reasonable number of GMs (searching for a map in the study; finding a bribeable official; etc).

Upthread I described this second category as ones in which the PC is learning about the world rather than changing it. If these correlate to actions in which the player learns about the GM's authorship decisions rather than contributes, via action declaration and resolution, to the unfolding shared fiction then I find that unsatisfying both as GM and as player.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Going purely by the 1e PHB, it very strongly implies that the DM should allow re-rolls if the player doesn't roll two 15's or higher on those 3d6. If the DM didn't allow that, it was a DM problem, not a game problem. With two 15's or higher, you can be almost any class in the book. Ranger and Paladin being the two super hard to qualify for classes under 3d6.

I'm unaware of any such text in the 1e PHB, and I can almost quote the darned thing. Beyond that, getting 2 15's out of 6 rolls of 3d6 is actually fairly unusual. You'd have to allow at least 6 or more rerolls for most players to manage that. Nobody in my experience was doing that, although the DMG methods considerably change the odds. 1 in 3 characters using method II will have 2 15s. Method III will AVERAGE 3 15s, and Method IV should produce roughly 2 sets of stats with 2 15s. I'm not sure about method 1 exactly, I don't have dice calculator I feel like playing with to get that one, but IME 2 15s using Method I is similar to Method II. Note that not all these methods let you pick WHICH stats the 15s will be in, assuming you get them. Method III was widely considered too generous, but nice for rolling up higher level PCs (which tend to be the ones with better stats if you played them out).

Again though, no hint of this exists in PHB. I think its safe to say that the DMG tells us Gygax WAS aware of the problem, and was interested in giving players something more like what they wanted. Truthfully ability scores in OD&D pre-Greyhawk were of marginal mechanical use anyway, so he probably just didn't think it was an issue back then. It was only with the advent of Greyhawk and then the codification of stat bonuses into 1e along with the 'advanced' classes that the issue really became acute. DMG helps relieve it some, but paladins were still RARE IME.

If it was so inevitable, why did it almost never happen where I could see it? Other than a few really bad players, I didn't see this "inevitable consequence" happen. We lost a lot of characters, but didn't resort to that sort of BS. And I didn't even see it for the first time until 2e.

Look, I played from 1975 until the end of 2e classic D&D. In the early 1e days I was in a gaming club that had 300+ members. We played D&D sometimes continuously for a week at a time with rotating DMs even. I saw plenty of it. Characters were nothing. They died left, right, center, up, down, and all around. If you made 6th level that was rare. There were some 'easy' DMs of course, but mostly nobody even bothered to name a character at level 1, or just called it by some generic name, or maybe it was a new guy and he named his character, which we thought was funny. Usually after a session or so the character's got some kind of nickname or whatever. That's just how it was back then. Maybe where you played everyone was gung-ho to RP every character fully and the DMs let them all live, I dunno.

I remember how deadly it was. We were still able to, and did roleplay our PCs. The mechanics didn't prevent or discourage that. It just meant that we had several backup concepts in mind for when a PC died.

Well, I'm not saying you couldn't or didn't RP. I'm saying that the blurb in the PHB is largely not born out by the rules as-written, which lead to high character attrition and low player agency in selecting what to play. There's nothing wrong with low-level 1e, it just doesn't match what is commonly desired by a lot of players, a cool character they identify fully with.

This is not a controversial conclusion, Gygax basically admits it on page 11 of the DMG in the intro to the methods for rolling up characters, where he actually kind of disparages the 3d6 6 times standard as producing many unsuitable PCs and many that are not what the player really wanted.