D&D General D&D Editions: Anybody Else Feel Like They Don't Fit In?

[JohnSnow]

Henchmen survived slightly less long than an unnamed marine in a xenomorph attack.

No matter how many characters set out, it very quickly became equal to the number of players.

I wonder how much we glossed over the notion that henchmen were intended to be along as extra bags of hit points and melee attacks so that the adventuring day could last longer.

Like the random soldiers who went with Perseus in "Clash of the Titans," nobody expected them to make it, they were just there to throw a few attacks and suck up damage. They were, quite literally, "tanks."

There's no (mechanical) difference between that and giving each PC twice as many hit points and a second attack. Unless that attack is a spell, of course.

 

[Mannahnin]

No. "Skilled play" is not metagaming. Skilled play is being aware of the scenario situation, thinking proactively, responding to challenges with clear thought and deduction, using your character's skills and abilities intelligently, acting as a team, and applying common sense.

Those are also aspects of skilled play, but Skilled Play, or Gygaxian Skilled Play also involves understanding the rules and intelligently exploiting them* and employing tactics where relevant. Many of the rules are directly designed to simulate tactical advantages or disadvantages from reality and from fiction. Like the bonuses to hit for flanking or attacking from the rear.

Using reach weapons to allow your party to get more attacks in a limited frontage is both a smart use of the rules and a tactic directly derived from real life. It's also the reason 40% of Hobgoblins are typically armed with spears or polearms (per the 1E MM), 30% of Orcs, 30% of goblins, etc.

*(As an example, Gygax's instructions about playing NPCs super stingy and expensive about sharing spells with PCs on DMG p39 note that "superior players will certainly co-operate; thus, spells will in all probability be exchanged between PC magic-users to some extent.")

 

[Emerikol]

I never once saw or heard about this strategy being used prior to reading this post. I would not call that typical Ad&D play. That does sound like trying to run AD&D like a war game, which must have been very challenging.

All the PCs that ignored formation in my games died. Formation in D&D was fundamental at 1e. When they essentially went to the "run into the room and get surrounded" strategy in later editions I shook my head. Fighters and Clerics protecting the Magic User was fundamental to the game.

At higher levels it transitioned a bit but was still there but in a different form. Bunching up too much was too dangerous when facing enemy spell casters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The example of play in the 1E DMG has the party getting arranged into this kind of ranked formation to optimize attacks, though they don't get into any corridor fights so you don't see it showcased in use.

We never had enough characters or had enough limited frontage fights when I was young for us to get into using spears and ranked formation regularly, but it's a tactic I've seen a lot since I started playing OSR ~15 years ago.

I saw it much more when we started playing RuneQuest, but you can make an argument that most RQ characters are fighter-mages so there's rarely a crunchy middle to worry about in the first place, and we had six player groups more often than not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not knowing about something doesn't make it rare or atypical. It's a well-known strategy on old-school forums like Dragonsfoot and The Piazza. As wargamers before becoming RPG players, it made sense to us and we didn't find it challenging. It couples very well with side initiative and it is a very efficient way to survive encounters against large numbers of humanoids, which are common in TSR modules.

It's called 'Skilled play' by Grognards.

If you're talking about the second-rank spear thing, the fact you saw it a lot doesn't mean it was typical over-all either; back in the OD&D days I played with a lot of different groups and don't think I saw it even once. Not everyone who played D&D were wargamers; in fact, as time went on, I'd suggest less and less were.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder how much we glossed over the notion that henchmen were intended to be along as extra bags of hit points and melee attacks so that the adventuring day could last longer.

Like the random soldiers who went with Perseus in "Clash of the Titans," nobody expected them to make it, they were just there to throw a few attacks and suck up damage. They were, quite literally, "tanks."

There's no (mechanical) difference between that and giving each PC twice as many hit points and a second attack. Unless that attack is a spell, of course.

I think the word is Red Shirt.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I had a different experience. We had a wargaming club in high school on Saturdays. The age range varied from 15 to 30. I was 16 and fascinated by the wide array of games they played. It's where I met other D&D players. Everything we learned at the club was transferred to AD&D as valid tactics, which are reflected in the DMG.

Now, if a group went from BX, bought the AD&D MM and the Players Handbook but never fully read the DMG (as in, just used the encounter and treasure chapters), I can see how rank & file tactics would not be part of their experience.

It also wasn't much of the experience for all the people who poured in from SF/Fantasy fandom, far as that goes. The fact very few characters were likely to carry spears in the first place and use of henchmen being very limited didn't help.

 

[Azzy]

I started in Basic (All New -> RC) and moved to 2e, and A LOT of things that I'm told were "common" in AD&D read like a whole different game than the one I played. We played 1 PC per player. Henchmen were rare, but DMPCs were common. Nobody used polearms, and we fought monsters as often as we fought orcs. We played the style of play 90s TSR pushed: story driven and character intensive. We just played it with rules derived from a game style created in the 70s and no longer en vogue. No wonder I don't feel anything for the OS movement: it doesn't match the game I played back in the day. It might as well be advocating for GURPs for all it resembles the AD&D I played, except in the archaic rules it held onto for compatibility.

I had the same experience (but started with BECMI) and feel the same about OSR.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I had a different experience. We had a wargaming club in high school on Saturdays. The age range varied from 15 to 30. I was 16 and fascinated by the wide array of games they played. It's where I met other D&D players. Everything we learned at the club was transferred to AD&D as valid tactics, which are reflected in the DMG.

Now, if a group went from BX, bought the AD&D MM and the Players Handbook but never fully read the DMG (as in, just used the encounter and treasure chapters), I can see how rank & file tactics would not be part of their experience.

I was at boarding school, and it definitely didn’t have a war games club (Rugby was the socially acceptable activity), nor did we socialise with different forms.

 

[Theory of Games]

A lot of people did, though. After all, what was going to teach most people what was appropriate? To develop judgment, you have to have some kind of model to work from.

What's "appropriate" is whatever the group agrees to, or the GM enforces

No. "Skilled play" is not metagaming. Skilled play is being aware of the scenario situation, thinking proactively, responding to challenges with clear thought and deduction, using your character's skills and abilities intelligently, acting as a team, and applying common sense.

Depends on the table. IME "Player Skill vs. Character Skill" = Metagaming.

I wonder how much we glossed over the notion that henchmen were intended to be along as extra bags of hit points and melee attacks so that the adventuring day could last longer.

Like the random soldiers who went with Perseus in "Clash of the Titans," nobody expected them to make it, they were just there to throw a few attacks and suck up damage. They were, quite literally, "tanks."

There's no (mechanical) difference between that and giving each PC twice as many hit points and a second attack. Unless that attack is a spell, of course.

Retainers were for more than that: they can carry treasure that the PCs would have to come back for