Darkvision Ruins Dungeon-Crawling

[Micah Sweet]

Its hard to see how you could have it work both ways as a default.

Theoretically, magic could be presented in more than one way (or power level) equally.

 

[Reynard]

I'm not talking about class descriptions. I'm talking about the way I saw it play out in games in 1975 on until I bailed out of D&D. Light was just never the biggest limiting resource because it was too cheap to come by. The only thing you couldn't primarily address by throwing money at it was hit points and spell slots, so that was, in the end, what really mattered the vast majority of the time.

Anecdotes and data and all that.

More importantly, these elements have seen a -- wait for it -- renaissance of late, and so what people did "back in the day" is mostly irrelevant.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I do accept that. I just don't see any value in talking about how many people prefer one playstyle over another. All it does is present a false sense of value.

When the question is why things like reusable cantrips and darkvision have become the common case, popularity is the answer and I don't see much point in acting like it isn't. And some of it isn't new; I saw a rather lot of people who thought the best their "magic user" could do a lot of the time was throw knives being pretty dumb right at the start.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When the question is why things like reusable cantrips and darkvision have become the common case, popularity is the answer and I don't see much point in acting like it isn't. And some of it isn't new; I saw a rather lot of people who thought the best their "magic user" could do a lot of the time was throw knives being pretty dumb right at the start.

And they are welcome to feel that way. But it's not a better way to feel, or a superior style, than the way the rules used to be designed, or the way OSR rules are designed now. And talking about how many people do feel that way doesn't change that.

And I was not talking about why reusable cantrips and darkvision have become more common. I know why. But it doesn't make it better, just more popular. And those things have a cost.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Anecdotes and data and all that.

Someone is welcome to explain to me how, given the cost involved for mundane lighting, running out of torches or lamp oil was likely to be a problem anywhere. It wasn't like OD&D characters didn't have plenty of gold pretty quickly they had nothing to do with.

More importantly, these elements have seen a -- wait for it -- renaissance of late, and so what people did "back in the day" is mostly irrelevant.

Unless you change the above (and some games of course do via abstraction--Torchbearer seems to land there from what I can see, but you can question whether that fits people's idea of realism either) I don't entirely think it is.

I mean, seriously, while darkvision has some advantages over torches and lamps, its not like the situations where its superior are constant.

 

[Reynard]

Someone is welcome to explain to me how, given the cost involved for mundane lighting, running out of torches or lamp oil was likely to be a problem anywhere. It wasn't like OD&D characters didn't have plenty of gold pretty quickly they had nothing to do with.

Someone's GM did not charge them for level training...

Unless you change the above (and some games of course do via abstraction--Torchbearer seems to land there from what I can see, but you can question whether that fits people's idea of realism either) I don't entirely think it is.

I mean, seriously, while darkvision has some advantages over torches and lamps, its not like the situations where its superior are constant.

Resource management, including light, is fundamental to the dungeon crawl. I don't know what else to tell you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And they are welcome to feel that way. But it's not a better way to feel, or a superior style, than the way the rules used to be designed, or the way OSR rules are designed now. And talking about how many people do feel that way doesn't change that.

Bluntly, so? The main question in this thread has been about lighting. It, firstly, asks a question to which the answer seems "no", and secondly assumes there's a massive gap between darkvision and carrying your own light, which carries a whole bunch of assumptions in and of itself (because most of the situations where torches and lamps become immensely worse have other elements involved--extremely tight spaces or water--where most of the time if they're really common people are going to turn around and go home anyway.)

 

[Xenolith234]

Bluntly, so? The main question in this thread has been about lighting. It, firstly, asks a question to which the answer seems "no", and secondly assumes there's a massive gap between darkvision and carrying your own light, which carries a whole bunch of assumptions in and of itself (because most of the situations where torches and lamps become immensely worse have other elements involved--extremely tight spaces or water--where most of the time if they're really common people are going to turn around and go home anyway.)

The poll doesn’t reflect the answer as “no”. The difference in darkvision and torches is that torches have a cost. It’s a potential drain on resources; whereas darkvision is only a source. Freebies for all! No restrictions, no pain points, no resource management.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Someone is welcome to explain to me how, given the cost involved for mundane lighting, running out of torches or lamp oil was likely to be a problem anywhere. It wasn't like OD&D characters didn't have plenty of gold pretty quickly they had nothing to do with.



Unless you change the above (and some games of course do via abstraction--Torchbearer seems to land there from what I can see, but you can question whether that fits people's idea of realism either) I don't entirely think it is.

I mean, seriously, while darkvision has some advantages over torches and lamps, its not like the situations where its superior are constant.

There were in classic D&D games (and are again in OSR games) plenty of things to spend gold on. Training, food and water, weapons and armor, exploration gear, medicinal herbs, carousing, home base stuff, hirelings and henchmen, charitable works, church tithes, the list goes on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Someone's GM did not charge them for level training...

OD&D did not charge you for level training. As I recall that was an AD&D thing.

Resource management, including light, is fundamental to the dungeon crawl. I don't know what else to tell you.

And I'm suggesting that unless you're using a massively different economic model than most D&D games--even most OSR ones do--the cost of light is too low to be a significant factor in that. You have to be talking, at best, a multi-day operation for it to matter, and even there it does so less and less over time if you're willing to hire bearers.