D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Filthy Lucre]

Deleted.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As to getting by without after a few levels, how did you protect your magic users once you started the wilderness adventure portion of adventuring, and you couldn't keep them behind the front line in conveniently narrow corridors? We certainly implemented workarounds (mostly homemade interception rules/gentlemen's agreements that enemies stopped and fought the front line), but that was us moving far afield of the rules (and certainly Gygaxian playstyle, presumably).

Magic items, or just the fact in plenty of wilderness areas there was a big enough physical gap when you saw things. Keep in mind, most of the groups I saw were 6-8 players back in the day, so a MU or two wasn't being left entirely alone even with a single character each; might have been a different story if you were only working with four players.

My completely personal take on the situation is that the original wargamers (mostly male) and west coast wing (which had a significant female contingent) were just overwhelmed by an influx of middle school through college-age people who mostly fit the 70s/80s 'nerd' archetype (which, again in my experience, was predominantly white males, but the actual ratio is not clear).

Well, keep in mind I'm specifically talking about the 70's; I moved out of D&D for many years after 78. Though there were still plenty of female players out here in the games I moved into, so if they drowned out female players completely for a while, I certainly didn't see it.

(Note, this is not me trying to say that there were not some gender imbalance things going on during that period; SF fandom itself, though more representative than wargame fandom, was not a gender balanced hobby. But starting with Trek fandom and growing slowly with time this evened out considerably, even if some attitudes of the male end were still, well, special).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, two ways: one, the second PC in most cases was going to be at least somewhat more capable than a random henchman; they might be a spellcaster, a thief or something else, and even a fighter was usually slightly better. Second, they were more likely to have at least a vestige of personality (to the degree the player's characters had any in the first place).

I don't follow. Henchmen are constructed in basically the same fashion as any other PC, are they not? Certainly before the introduction of the 1e DMG in 1979 there were no rules for rolling up beyond "3d6 in order 6 times." They had the same class choices, etc. Since there were no other rules for them of which I'm aware it is impossible to say if they were 'different' in some way, that would have been a choice dictated by an individual GM. If we take the 1e DMG henchmen rules as roughly how Gygax did it, then they might have had less equipment, perhaps? Usually the first treasure haul rectified any such lacks. As for the personality, our experiences may differ I guess? PCs had precious little personality in most cases to start with, its hard to go down from there!

Also, a lot of the people talking about the henchman-support games have talked about a hell of a lot more than 4-6. I've seen quotes of as many as 20.

There are hard limits imposed by Charisma, though even a 12 will let you get up to 4 'hirelings' (the term henchmen and any distinction between them and hirelings is purely an invention of AD&D). I'd note that the limits in 1e are, IIRC, somewhat lower, but only apply to true henchmen. Thus, going by the rules on PP10-13 of Men & Magic, a starting first level party would be hard-pressed to get much, as each hireling requires a minimum of 100gp to enlist! Granted, once a party has delved a few times it would be possible to have 20, sure. I only rarely saw anything like this, and in those cases they were mostly AD&D hirelings, 0 level non-advancing humans who can be hired for perhaps a dozen GP or less and wouldn't even HAVE stats.

Again, there seems a big difference to me. In addition, after a few levels it was entirely possible to get by without extra characters at all (though people had usually gotten in the habit of playing two by then, since especially with smaller groups it didn't make some of the less usual classes an expensive luxury).

We did often allow 2 PCs, but again I would say that was not super different from henchmen, per se. Also remember that the original rules are a bit different in that they emphasize leadership and service. Monsters can be attracted to your service with reaction checks! Charm is a permanent condition, and it isn't all that unusual to have charmed servitors. Monsters could also be subdued (again refer to Men & Magic in the 'NPCs' section around P12). So, the game, as originally written, was intended to allow for an entourage, and indeed was built on the chassis of Chainmail where 'heroes' are leaders of armies.

Anyway, I still contend that a lot of groups had and allowed for a type of entourage, though the Gygaxian conceit of PCs each having their own wasn't that common IME. The party itself was more of a collective entourage, whereas in the Ur Campaigns it seems there were dozens or 100's of players and they formed parties on an ad-hoc basis. We were not gifted with such numbers of players! If we had 5, that was super, but I only remember having maybe 20 players in a group once or twice in the mid 80s. At that point things did take on a bit more of the form that Gygax seems to envisage.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think there is anything wrong with comparing one medium to another like that. Sorry I just don't.

And when its used, as it has been quite frequently throughout the time of the hobby, to try to gatekeep, I do.

I don't think we have anything further useful to say on the subject.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And when its used, as it has been quite frequently throughout the time of the hobby, to try to gatekeep, I do.

I don't think we have anything further useful to say on the subject.

Not liking and edition because you think it feels too much like a video game isn't gate keeping

 

[Aldarc]

And when its used, as it has been quite frequently throughout the time of the hobby, to try to gatekeep, I do.

I don't think we have anything further useful to say on the subject.

Not liking and edition because you think it feels too much like a video game isn't gate keeping

However, your feelings or how you liked the edition isn't the point; the fact that this was most definitely used to gate keep is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Something I have wondered about after finishing the Elusive Shift is whether the explosion of popularity of D&D after Egbert had the strange effect of decreasing the number of female gamers (relative to the total).

Its possible; another poster suggested that. During the period from about 78 though 2000 I was pretty much out of the D&D end of the hobby, so I'm not qualified to say what was going on there then. It didn't seem true in the games I was primarily doing during that period (various, but with a lot of focus on Runequest and the Hero System), but that could just prove the dynamic within and outside of the D&D-sphere were different, which would not surprise me.

The 70s culture, especially the sci-fi and west coast coast culture that wasn’t brought in from wargaming, was quite different than the influx of younger gamers in the 80s and from the war gamer culture.

Though you can get an idea that there was a more strong separation there than was entirely the case. As a well-known example, Steve Perrin had a foot pretty firmly planted in both camps, and he wasn't alone. I ran in that direction myself (I wasn't very active in SF fandom, but it was a more natural place for me that with most of the wargamers even though I had a hell of a lot of wargames, but it wasn't a coincidence so many of them were SF or fantasy based).

IIRC, there was an anecdote about a misogynistic piece published in a zine in the late 70s that was met with swift censure - and yet I doubt it would have done so if published just a few years later.

It was certainly a volatile period in the hobby however you look at it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not liking and edition because you think it feels too much like a video game isn't gate keeping

Telling other people they aren't really playing an RPG because of that absolutely is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

However, your feelings or how you liked the edition isn't the point; the fact that this was most definitely used to gate keep is.

That isn't how I saw it. I saw it as there was a genuine divide over an edition, and plenty a lot of folks who didn't like the edition, felt it was too much like a video game for their taste. How is that gate keeping?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Telling other people they aren't really playing an RPG because of that absolutely is.

I don't think 4E isn't an RPG. So I never said that. But even then, people can have honest disagreements over what makes something an RPG.