D&D (2024) D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024)

[Micah Sweet]

I made no value judgement except to point out that Gary's prescribed style was the grandfather of dungeon crasher games, Gauntlet being the most famous. But if you want, I'll state that the idea of D&D being best played as excursions into a dungeon for the only purpose is to get treasure (which is XP, which gains you levels, which allows you go further into the dungeon) IS a simplistic form of D&D and ignores all manner of alternative styles of play (wilderness/hex crawl, story first/immersive, adventure path, etc).

My point is that that dungeon crawl isn't any better just because it was Gary's preferred method, and the game branched out from that as the only/preferred method rather quickly.

Also, I like Gauntlet. It's a fun game. But I also like Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda. D&D can do L of those.

Has anyone claimed it was a better method?

 

[Remathilis]

Has anyone claimed it was a better method?

Only in arguing that gold for XP is a superior method of assigning XP over story awards, the latter used in other styles of play and the former born of dungeon crashing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Only in arguing that gold for XP is a superior method of assigning XP over story awards, the latter used in other styles of play and the former born of dungeon crashing.

Well, I do like it quite a bit (because I prefer that PCs not be mechanically pushed towards heroism), but I'm fine with event-based awards and combat as supplemental sources of XP. Not a fan of milestone though. Too arbitrary for me. I want the PCs to have done something to earn it.

 

[mamba]

No, the game sets the parameters - bring your treasure out of the dungeon, and earn your XP.

that is the condition, anything involved in how this can accomplished, e.g. what treasure there is, what monsters / traps / obstacles there are has been decided by the DM, that is what I meant by parameters.

The GM designs the dungeon. The players explore and loot the dungeon. The GM adjudicates their efforts in accordance with the rules of the game.

agreed

This is not the same as the GM deciding.

the DM decided what treasure there is, what traps and monsters there are, etc. I see little difference between this and DL1. That you now might want to persuade someone / something instead of either avoiding or killing it did not really make much of a difference from my perspective

How do they find their possible goals? Achieve those goals? And how does this relate to the XP and PC-improvement system?

This is all GM-controlled.

as is the entire dungeon, the only thing that changed is that the goal is no longer predetermined by the game rules

 

[mamba]

I guess this makes me wonder how much experience you have with non-GM-driven play (these days the best-known RPGs in that mode is probably either Apocalypse World or Blades in the Dark; my favourites, though, are Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant).

the comparison was between 1e as a dungeon crawl and 1e as fantasy with varied goals. Both are DM driven in much the same way to me

 

[mamba]

If @mamba was correct then @TiQuinn would be correct.

agreed

But mamba is not correct - as per what I quoted from Gygax's PHB, there are many ways that players in classic D&D establish what the rewards are, what the risks are, how to get to the treasure, etc.

disagree, unsurprisingly

the players do not establish the rewards, the DM placed them and they either find them and manage to get them out or they don’t, and whether they succeed or not is also in large part due to the dungeon the DM designed

The only way in which the players influence risk and reward is by deciding how deep in the dungeon they go (assuming they find the way down) and relying on risk and reward increasing by doing so. That is not that different from deciding how much to bet on Roulette, and I would not say that the player has a lot of control there

 

[Remathilis]

agreed


disagree, unsurprisingly

the players do not establish the rewards, the DM placed them and they either find them and manage to get them out or they don’t, and whether they succeed or not is also in large part due to the dungeon the DM designed

The only way in which the players influence risk and reward is by deciding how deep in the dungeon they go (assuming they find the way down) and relying on risk and reward increasing by doing so. That is not that different from deciding how much to bet on Roulette, and I would not say that the player has a lot of control there

Apparently, the DM doesn't decide that either, the rule books establish when and how to place treasure.

 

[dave2008]

Not a fan of milestone though. Too arbitrary for me. I want the PCs to have done something to earn it.

That is exactly what a milestone is though. A milestone is a goal that must be achieved to advance. In truth a set number XP is a milestone, it is just a simple one that can be rather boring and arbitrary. The difficulty with more complex milestones that they require a good deal of DM engagement to pull off well and I have not seen any good advice for determining them in an RPG (though my experience is limited).

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is exactly what a milestone is though. A milestone is a goal that must be achieved to advance. In truth a set number XP is a milestone, it is just a simple one that can be rather boring and arbitrary. The difficulty with milestones that they require a good deal of DM engagement to pull off well and I have not seen any good advice for determining them in an RPG (though my experience is limited).

In my experience, milestone leveling means the party levels when the DM wants them too.

 

[tetrasodium]

In my experience, milestone leveling means the party levels when the DM wants them too.

Or when the players have ignored "yo, quest is that way" in service of "WeLl My ChArEcTEr WaNtS tO..." Long enough for the group to start complaining that the gm is being too tight about letting them level since it's been since [whenever] and there hasn't been any advancement or indication of progress.

Milestone robs the gm of any reason for the other players to push back against Bob when he wants to tell a specific story by being difficult