My responses are all over the board and all are in detail ignorant of the B/X version.
You presented a lot to unpack. So I'll take them in order. I apologize for the LONG post.
Player teamwork? Classically always seemed like a spell caster going blink the party is now fully escaped from the scenario and basking at home or some other extreme effect because I pushed the win button. That is often a feature of spells in early edition and they brought it back in 5e. Of course only casters get those buttons or extreme benefits, because flank teamwork. But non caster abilities...nope cannot do it.
There are very few situations where a spell caster in B/X can blink the party home in an instant. You are thinking spells like teleport (which are both high level and also somewhat risky… it is possible to fail a teleport and end up lost miles from where you intended to go).
The closest spell I can think of that is accessible at low levels and acts as a win button would be Sleep. It is true; this spell can negate an entire encounter. But there are significant trade offs…
- A MU (Magic User) is likely only going to have one casting of the spell. A 2nd level MU could have 2, but they would have to memorize 2 copies of the spell and forgo the use of other potentially useful spells. MU's get very limited spells per day.
- Sleep is only effective on weaker creatures, at the point where a MU is powerful enough to afford multiple castings of the spell the threats they will face will likely be immune.
- Casting spells needs to be declared before initiative. If the MU loses initiative and takes damage, the spell fails and is lost. The act of casting in combat is inherently risky.
All of these things put the MU on par balance wise with the rest of the party. The MU can negate an encounter, once. They get the spotlight in this case, but once that is done, they are relegated to supporting roles in future encounters.
When we discuss character skills vs player "skill" as I said without very clear systematised effects it becomes playing the DM not the game which is what I seen in AD&D - that said I suppose its possible the same kind of clarity could be done that is done for combat ... i am not thinking it has been.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by playing the DM. Are you talking about trying to manipulate or trick the DM?
There are many clear elements in B/X where player skill at the game directly impacts the success of the session that don't require manipulation.
- Time management. Making skilled choices in deciding actions in the dungeon weighed against time it takes. Making good judgment on whether an activity should be attempted… weighing against risks such as depletion of light sources and wandering monsters.
- Encounter management. Choosing when to engage in combat and when to evade or attempt talking. Making judgments on the value of sacrificing treasure or food to avoid an unwanted encounter.
- Spell management. Making judgements on the best time to utilize limited resources like spells or wands.
These three items alone provide systematic game play that requires player skill and the skill of the player in this directly effects whether they are successful. There is zero playing the DM involved here.
I do not have the nature skills (or atleast incredibly few) of my character I am not a fine singer nor expert swimmer and the procedural elements I seen brought int to AD&D came off eventually as memorizing or reciting from this laundry or shopping list to me I do not see any of that as functionally playing a role other than the role of "me", it is good when you can have things which help create the illusion of connectivity between my "game choices" and "game world effects", for instance am I direct or deceptive.. or analytic or just shooting from my gut am I taking a lot of risk to gain advantage later or now am I exploiting something now - and similar general choices and with actual methodical means, that might be one way of letting me influence the details of something neither I nor the DM really do not know.
None of these are necessary. Your character is your avatar / playing piece in the game, not you, yourself. Player skill has nothing to do with this. The skill comes from making the choices as a player to use the abilities of your character. If this sounds very similar to the approach that 4E takes, it is because it is similar. Its just the mechanism is different.
Are you going to ask the player how his character swims which stroke for use in a storm and decide his character is going to drown because he didnt pick a side stroke attempting to get to that island, which btw takes very little energy? No that doesnt make too much sense.
No of course not. But if their character is a fighter and/or came from nautical background then its likely they'll have the skills to make it to the shore. Instead of a laundry list of skills or a massive suite of powers, I can work with the player to reach a reasonable judgement about the capabilities of a character.
And while me trying to guess the things the DM sees as important is never avoidable it happens in every version of the game (including those skill challenges) I think its better to reduce than encourage too much. I am utterly dependent on what the dm OR system provides with regards to what I see and even what the character can understand as important I can be given resources but when it gets down to it my game choices really just need to be symbolic of real choices of the characters in part because we cannot really know the details without being the character.
I agree that players are indeed dependent on the DM. I disagree on the approach to solution.
D&D is a game. Like any other game worth playing, it requires a certain amount of skill… both as a player and as a DM. People can be bad at D&D, they can lack skill. But like any other game, the more effort you put into the game the more skill you develop. At least for me, a significant part of any game is not just the experience of playing the game but the accomplishment of becoming better at it.
For me personally, instead of striving to reduce the influence of the DM, effort should be put into helping DM's improve their skill.
To be frank, if a DM is forcing you to guess at what they see as important, then they are not a skilled DM.
They should be providing clear choices and they should be clear about the consequences of your choices. A skilled DM will ask the player what their intention is and explain the risks and consequences in a manner that allow the player to make an informed choice.
Excess pretence that is the player being "tested" is just excessive pretense to me. AND its usually presented with a very haughty we are better than you attitude - not to mention gygaxian adversarialism... ooh you forgot to listen at the door this time shame on you die or you listened one too many times die from ear mites.
I'm not trying to make claims that I am better at anyone else.
To be honest the statements you make about the 'door situation' are just as perplexing and off base as statements about 4E being 'just a video game'.
No one who wants to run an old school game in good conscious and with honesty does that.
You are describing poor DM'ing or flat out a**hole behavior. It's not a game system problem.
There is a certain amount of proxying of game for character success too, but unless that is regulated in interesting ways the higher abstraction can avoid tedium of laundry list behaviors.
I'm not sure I understand this comment. I would welcome clarification if you would be interested.
A skill challenge is a structure for DM tracking progress towards a difficult to achieve goal and it encouraged DMs to make certain that some single spell (or even single skill) wasnt being allowed overwhelming benefits in the big picture, like a teleport trivializing what might be an interesting set of choices and skill applications. It is indeed mostly a back end element of the game a tool for DMs but it also in general encouraged thinking about how those character skills might be leveraged multiple ways while allowing them to be significant. I actually didnt start 4e till after they had ironed out some core elements of the mechanical kinks in skill challenges.
I am familiar with skill challenges. I've run 4E for over 5 years… so I understand the mechanic. I understand the primary vs. secondary skill and the complexity ratings.
I was never able to run skill challenge as its own encounter in a satisfying way.
I got better use out of them as a part of an encounter. For example: the party has to complete a skill challenge to deactivate an eldritch machine while its guardians attack them.
It tied advancement of the characters to challenging of the characters (with yeah that does your skill application make sense to us mixed it) and served as a basis for advancing characters (giving out experience points) for something other than greed or killing its how difficult is the adversary (in this case not a being). 2e actually implied with a grab bag of experience sub systems some sort of way to give experience for this non-combat stuff but to me it really wasn't really very clear and often seemingly utterly arbitrary *(you saved the princess here is some XP... how many shrug... some.) Oh and earlier than that you saved the princess this is the gold reward..and the XP to make sure that is what you do, but make it a barmaid you saved and meh.
Sure. You are talking about reward systems here and campaign tone.
Personally, I am a fan of XP for gold (as presented in B/X). I see XP for gold as an objective advancement tied to challenging the players. The choices and actions taken by the players result in the acquisition of treasure. Good choices lead to more treasure, poor choices don't.
But there some middle ground here. Players are not purely rational actors.
Just because you get experience for gold, doesn't mean that players will rob every living thing they come across and not save barmaids. In my experience running B/X for a decade, the game doesn't really turn everyone into murderous larcenous psychopaths.
Of course it does create a more cavalier approach to heroism. Characters aren't heroes they are adventurers.
If you want a campaign of heroes you don't use XP for gold.
I do not know the edition you are talking about and i have actually heard some positives but I am not familiar with a procedural approach that ends with positive results instead of tedium.
The game I am most familiar with is B/X.
I enjoy the procedural elements of the game, but I preface this in that they tend to be better suited to a dungeon delve / adventuring tone as opposed to a heroic tone.
But what I am talking about is the interactions between Turn based dungeon / wilderness exploration, wandering monsters, random reaction rolls, light source depletion over time. There is a lot of interesting game developments that happen just with the random procedural engine.
Some, examples…
Rolling an orc encounter with a friendly reaction result. Why are they friendly? Maybe they are being hunted by some even more powerful creature… maybe they will negotiate for help from the party.
Rolling a brigand encounter with No. Appearing 1. Why is one lone brigand wandering the dungeon? Perhaps he was the last survivor of his adventuring party. Perhaps he's wounded. Will the party help him? What can they learn from him?
A stuck door that is not able to be forced open. Does the party hack it open with axes? It will take time and the noise will call for possible encounters. Should they continue to explore, intead, and maybe find a way around it?
These are all examples of encounters that happen that are besides the set piece room encounters. Events that require some improvisation and willingness to let the session go in unexpected directions. To me they are like improvisational prompts that challenge me as a DM to read the 'tea leaves' and piece together something from some random events.
The game isn't fully known even to me. As a DM, I am playing along with the players and discovering the world with them. Sometimes a random encounter and the procedural element shapes the entire evening of play.
