D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

Greg K said:

As I recall, Tomb of Horrors was deliberately written for high level characters and he wrote Tomb of Horrors , because a lot of people were bragging about their high level characters despite having not played nearly as long as his own players whose characters were not nearly as high a level. ToH was easy way to smack down those players and demonstrate that the players had not the skill to have earned characters of such high level

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Close.

It was his own players (Rob Kuntz and Ernie Gygax) doing the bragging claiming that everything in Greyhawk was too easy. So he wrote ToH to be as hard as possible.

Net result: They completed it, taking all the treasure, and without losing any PCs.

(There's actually a pretty simple trick to beating ToH that if you know it makes it very easy. They knew Gygax well enough to guess it).

Neonchameleon said:

Fate is pretty Trad. It's no further out there than Unisystem or even Marvel Superheroes.

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I don't know. Reading Fate Core, I admire the design, but it does seem (to me), a little more out there than either Unisystem or Marvel

Greg K said:

As I recall, Tomb of Horrors was deliberately written for high level characters and he wrote Tomb of Horrors , because a lot of people were bragging about their high level characters despite having not played nearly as long as his own players whose characters were not nearly as high a level. ToH was easy way to smack down those players and demonstrate that the players had not the skill to have earned characters of such high level

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I'd say that's about as tailored as it gets no?

pemerton said:

That's not really coherent, because it confuses the imaginary and the real.

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Naw, it's clear enough if you're not out to deliberately misread it. It's the codification of what GMs were doing anyway for a long time, either writing (or buying) their adventures to suit the present group or building a sandbox setting and letting their players explore the parts of it as they would with whatever level their PCs happened to be at the time. It's simple and I'm going to assume that you and Hussar actually do understand it and also understand that the point I am making is that this was a "spelling out" of what was already in practice. I'm going to make this assumption regarding your understanding because at this point you are so keen to argue you are actually arguing against your own point, one you made earlier that I am making for you now, about how many GMing practices were around since very early on. Oddly, this is a place where, no matter what you now argue, we have some agreement since I have been saying that same thing regarding how what was in practice was later codified. Sorry, buddy. You've been hugged. You've been hugged good and hard and you're going to stay hugged.

Neonchameleon said:

You started with 2E. And what you are saying is completely in line with 2E However 2E is not and has never been 1E and 1E is not and has never been oD&D. Zeb Cook's edition of D&D is not Gary Gygax' edition of D&D. Most of the rules may overlap - but the reasons, the motivation, and the worldbuilding have all changed away from the original D&D.

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That's a fair assessment. I'm glad we're all in agreement. Different people hold different ideals, and different editions appeal to each.

If anything, the lesson here is that "traditional" is not a useful descriptor in this context.

Hussar said:

I'd say that's about as tailored as it gets no?

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It is to me. I saw 1e modules (most of which were designed for tournaments) to be tailored. However, there was a lot of status quo stuff from what i recall in the DMG with regards to the random Wilderness Encounter charts

Greg K said:

It is to me. I saw 1e modules (most of which were designed for tournaments) to be tailored. However, there was a lot of status quo stuff from what i recall in the DMG with regards to the random Wilderness Encounter charts

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Indeed. Published adventures did exactly that though that sort of thing wasn't codified in the rules until later. As to adventuring by the rules, we need only look at the third booklet of (O)D&D to see how sandboxy / status quo things could be in regard to the mindset presented in the rules early on. The 1E AD&D rules were very similar in how deadly things could be with respect to wandering encounters for 1st-level PCs, in dungeons and the wilderness.

Look how often something from list three or four can wander around the first level of a dungeon.



Except for within a city, can you imagine how often something from the dragon list can show up in wilderness encounters?






“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Bilbo via J.R.R. Tolkien

But, MarkCMG, aren't you proving the point? Those random encounter matrixes are tailored. Deadly, true, but, tailored doesn't mean that all encounters have to be easy. Let's not forget that my adventuring party should be about 8-15 characters deep. Between 6-8 PC's, half a dozen henchmen/hirelings, maybe a dog or four, suddenly meeting something off of the fourth list isn't quite as impossible as it seems. Although, to be fair, Wraith would be a right bitch for a 1st level party without magic or silver. Although, again, the cleric(s) in the party can turn wraiths even at 1st level.

Of course most elements in the game are tailored. It makes sense to tailor to some degree. Again, we don't bomb dragons on 1st level parties. That's generally considered a bad idea.

But, damn, that's a lot of dragons.

Hussar said:

But, MarkCMG, aren't you proving the point? Those random encounter matrixes are tailored. Deadly, true, but, tailored doesn't mean that all encounters have to be easy. Let's not forget that my adventuring party should be about 8-15 characters deep. Between 6-8 PC's, half a dozen henchmen/hirelings, maybe a dog or four, suddenly meeting something off of the fourth list isn't quite as impossible as it seems. Although, to be fair, Wraith would be a right bitch for a 1st level party without magic or silver. Although, again, the cleric(s) in the party can turn wraiths even at 1st level.

Of course most elements in the game are tailored. It makes sense to tailor to some degree. Again, we don't bomb dragons on 1st level parties. That's generally considered a bad idea.

But, damn, that's a lot of dragons.

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They certainly aren't tailored to the PCs, as you point out astutely, but they are meant to be balanced to the idea of a setting being more difficult away from civilization. Some folks see the word balanced, and it is sprinkled around the rules in places, and they make the mistake of reading it as one would read it in a modern RPG, meaning balanced to the PCs level of experience, but obviously that isn't the case. So, too, a dungeon being populated with more difficult "monsters" the deeper you go isn't done because PCs might start off weak and get stronger as they go deeper, it is to show a hierarchy of toughness, if you will, among "monsters" in regard to a setting. This is a setting conceit that doesn't restrict PCs from finding a way to get deeper even if they aren't ready for it. Just as PCs aren't stopped at the gate before they leave town and told they are not allowed to go outside the city until they are ready to defeat dragons.

So, understand, you don't want to use the word tailored in this context and assume it means the same thing as in the 3.5E core rules context where it truly means tailoring encounters directly to PC level. Nor do you want to read "balance" in the 1E AD&D rules and assume it means the same thing as modern RPG designers mean when they suggest a GM balance their game to suit the PC experience. Both are simply misreadings of the text as evidenced by even a glance at pages like the ones I included above.

KarinsDad said:

The players do not know everything that is going on. The DM does. As a general rule most of the time, the DM will not introduce things that are inconsistent with what is going on. The players might. Of course, if the DM notices that, no problem. The DM just says no. The problem comes in when the DM is busy and does not notice.

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Having re-read this after having cliked the "Reply" button, which I clicked after my first read of it, I feel a slightly greater degree of agreement. No doubt, GM's have a responsibility to manage backstory in most RPGs, and avoiding obvious continuity glitches is part of that.

Still, I think it is possible to exaggerate this - both it's importance (in my group, which consists of middle-aged guys meeting once a fortnight, minor continuity slips are simply going to pass unnoticed, including by me as GM!), and it's likelihood as a result of "saying yes".

A related issue - the less the GM takes a firm view on what is "going on", the easier it is to avoid continuity problems - you just build the continuity out of the most salient things, including things introduced as a result of saying yes to players.

KarinsDad said:

Actually, it's a huge leap from "the players control their PCs" to "the player control their PCs and external world events and objects".

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That's not what I said.

The players, in a typical D&D game, are entitled to expect that when they turn up for a session the GM will have some sort of ingame situation or location - an event, a dungeon, whatever - that will be exciting and interesting for their PCs to engage with.

It is not a very big step from that expectation to expecting that the GM's orientation of presenting stuff that they want to get their PCs involved in will cash out at a more fine-grained level too - so if a player asks "Are their boxes?" or "Does the NPC have a beard?", the GM might answer in a way that goes along with the players' hopes rather than against them.