1E vs Forked Thread: Is 4E doing it for you?

[Tewligan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Dungeoneer's Survival Guide have NWP as well?

It did, as did the Wilderness Survival Guide. Sadly, they didn't see fit to reprint the Origami and Tea Ceremony NWP's, though.

 

[MerricB]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Dungeoneer's Survival Guide have NWP as well?

Oriental Adventures was first.

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

There was a kinda half-assed skill table in the 1e DMG, actually. It wasn't until Oriental Adventures that proper nonweapon proficiencies came about, though.

Secondary Skill table. With no rules.

And OA had it first and the various survival guides kicked it up a notch later until it was termed, not skills in 2nd ed, but "non-weapon proficineices"

 

[RFisher]

See, I really question how risky fighting was though. Most monsters were pretty wimpy in combat. Unless the monsters had a save or die effect, which far too many did, a straight up combat monster was usually just a bag of XP waiting to get whacked. Why avoid combat?

Well, in my 2006 classic D&D campaign, the PCs avoided combat whenever they could. The exception being that when a monster fled they usually knew they had the upper hand and would often give chase. Maybe they did this for other reasons, but the talk around the table certainly indicated that monsters not being worth much XP was a consideration.

But then, I would also give them monster or NPC XP for “defeats” other than killing.

There was a kinda half-assed skill table in the 1e DMG, actually. It wasn't until Oriental Adventures that proper nonweapon proficiencies came about, though.

I made fun of the 1e secondary skill table for a long time. Probably as late as 2002. I love it now. It’s so odd to me how my preferences have shifted. Am I narrowing in or am I penduluming?

So the "avatar" thing is a bit of a misnomer, I think. Even in the most "avatar" driven old-school game, there is a degree of "role-playing/character playing" happening. The question is how much.

Sure. We’re trying to make distinctions so we focus on the differences.

 

[Silver Moon]

Gotta love these Edition Wars threads.....folks, I'll stick to my old standby line:
"It's all D&D to me!"

Game mechanics are secondary, the key to a game is a group of smart players with overactive imaginations and a gamemaster who wants to tell an entertaining story with everybody having fun. That's it. You can do that with any edition.

 

[Hussar]

am I penduluming

I dunno. I'm kinda back and forth on the issue.

One thing I do truly miss from older versions of D&D is the morale rules. I always loved those.

 

[Korgoth]

Secondary Skill table. With no rules.

And OA had it first and the various survival guides kicked it up a notch later until it was termed, not skills in 2nd ed, but "non-weapon proficineices"

The Secondary Skills table is great.

Look at a 'modern' game that has the same sensibility: Over the Edge. In OTE, you can have stats like "Surgeon: 3 dice" or "Ex-Green Beret: 4 dice". What do those stats cover? Whatever a Surgeon or an Ex-Green Beret should be able to do.

The Secondary Skills table is the same way. You were a smith? OK, so you can shoe the horses and construct a forge. You were a tanner? Well, you know a lot about p***. And so on.

Though I don't actually need the table. Just write down your background. That's what you know how to do. Why do I need rules for that?

 

[Orius]

If you say you search the whole room, I tell you that it's going to take 20 minutes (2 turns) to do it thoroughly; a cursory search would take half that (it's just a spot call based on room size). If you do a thorough search, I ask about your light source. If you have an easily portable one like a magic source or a lantern, you notice the discolored stone beneath the bed. In dim or guttering light, you won't notice it. And of course those 2 turns are important because of wandering monster checks, rest frequency and light source consumption. And when you do notice it... do you pull it? Press it? Where are you standing in relation to it? etc.

In other words... I don't know why someone would make you name every specific object in a room. That doesn't seem reasonable at all.

Ugh, that's just wasting time calling out every bit of dungeon dressing. The way I run it, if there's something hidden, there's a Search check to be made, and it eats up x amount of minutes, whether or not there's a success. I don't bother to worry about the details, if the players take the time to bother with a search, then they find what's there on a successful check.

I find that's all I really need to do, since often the people I've played with don't bother to search a room unless I make it obvious with a big honkin' chest. I don't always toss in chests though, no there's stuff in hidden compartments, or hidden in plain sight and the like, which they don't get to know about without doing a Search check. So my players have missed on small caches of money, little magic items like rings of protection, etc. Far be it from me to tell them what they missed.

I liked Remathalis' description of "Avatar play". Very old school. In my dungeons your character may get killed if you didn't pay attention in your (the player's) basic chemistry class, for example. Tricks, traps and assorted weirdness are all there to tease the brains and test the wit of the players. They're the ones actually sitting at the table, after all.

I'I'm playing a character in an open-ended play. I want to occasionally play a character who is smarter, tougher, wiser, quicker, or smoother than I am. I want to play heroes and villains wildly different from who I am when I put down the books and dice.

Avatar play doesn't reward this. The PC isn't a unique character, its me in drag. I'm not a smooth talker, so I can never play a Cary Ewes-inspired bard character, by that model. Similarly, barring D&Ds prime-requisite rule, if my wizard has int 3 or int 19, it wouldn't matter since its my IQ on the line, not Gozar the Dark's.

I kind of go in the middle. I'll certainly not hesitate to zap a PC with a trap if the player wasn't paying attention or was careless. That's the sort of table behavior that carries over to the dungeon well. When exploring the old ruins, one should be cautious.

But I don't really care about lots of method acting and the like. You want to active role-play fine, I'll even use it to drive the campaign along. But I'm not going to enforce it, and I'm not going to penalize a player who runs his character more mechanically with dice rolls because you prefer something else.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Though I don't actually need the table. Just write down your background. That's what you know how to do. Why do I need rules for that?

Yeah, why would you need rules to cover anything the characters try to do? Because when you decided what those background stories did, you'd have to houserule it?

And (looks around), some people want to play the game. They didn't come to the table to write a background. They came to kill some gobos! Not everyone's play style of course but not everyone wants to write background and (gasp!) not every GM wants to read it.

 

[Aus_Snow]

There's no 'I' in 'everyone'.