A thing about d20 D&D I didn't like, and still don't know why it was done...

[RFisher]

How good is the character at making bows? Is he just better than those who are untrained at it, or is it impossible for others without the secondary skill to even attempt? How long does it take? What equipment does he need to do the work? What supplies does he need? How much does the equipment and supplies cost? Can he make any kind of bow, or just one or two types? Can he make money making bows? How quickly and how much can he make?

I don't care. Such activity is not the focus of my game.

I recognize that it may the the focus of someone else's game. Heck, I've probably played in that game. I may have even run it.

If a player in my current game declares his PC a bowyer & wants to make a bow: I'll discuss the time & materials cost with the players. I might even (horror) do a little research. As long as they spend the costs in time & money, it'll just happen. The game I'm playing isn't really set up to model minor differences in quality, so I don't care how much better or worse than another bowyer the PC is.

Any PC can attempt anything, but if a PC with admittedly no knowledge of the craft tries it, they may make a bow but it will somehow be clearly inferior to other mundane bows. I don't need a exact, consistent answer to "how" because it isn't the focus of the game. I just come up with something that is acceptable to everyone at the table at that moment.

If a PC wants to try to make money making bows, that's retiring (or at least semi-retiring) from adventuring.

So, since we aren't using "picky resource management issues", being a hunter has no more content than writing "cool dude" on your character sheet. In other words, it is no solution at all the the problem being discussed. Good for you for admitting that.

No. "Cool dude" is not likely to be interpreted by anyone at the table to mean anything. "Bowyer", "hunter", or a background story can be. There can be more to the game than merely resolving rules.

& yes, I do admit it is no solution for the problem being discussed. (I think.)

Everyone draws a line between what their game bothers to model mechanically & to what detail. Just because one person draws the line in a different place in a different area doesn't mean that their game is broken, incomplete, unfun, or worse. It just means they have a different focus & are happy glossing over, hand-waving, or leaving to judge-fiat different things.

 

[BroccoliRage]

QFT

Yeah, put me down for that too. I really don't like rules for things as arbitrary as 'how well does my PC make a sandwich' or 'how beautiful is the finger painting my character made'. Bah, I want to adventure not live a second life vicariously through an imaginary person.

Exploring some aspects of your character's life is fun. Sitting around building crap is not.

 

[BroccoliRage]

Ya, but it messes up other things like multi classing and ecl.

how? it seems to me it would just result in staggered classes in the case of a character multiclassing (which should be an unattractive prospect anyway.)

 

[RFisher]

Part of my problem is that 1st Edition AD&D doesn't even fulfill its own premises, sometimes. There is absolutely no logical reason that it should fail in some of these things other than its own rules, and some of those rules are silly and contrived.

So, you're unwilling to consider that if it doesn't fulfill its own premises that, perhaps, you've misunderstood its premises? You're unwilling to consider that if a rule seems silly & contrived to you that maybe you've misunderstood the intent of the rule?

(Furthermore, how much effort would it have required to answer these questions in the DMG or PHB? A couple pages to cover all of the secondary skills? Gygax spent more time describing how tall an opponent a monk could use his unarmed attack ability against, or providing a random dungeon generation chart than he did on describing what the secondary skills meant, and how they might be useful).

Oh, yeah! How much I'd give for a copy of oAD&D or oD&D with additional commentary from the Gygax of today with all those years of being questioned about it. Or even from those grognards who played it differently from how I did. I can read their comments online now, which comes close, but how nice it would be to have it all done systematically & consolidated.

I think it was really hard for Gygax--or any RPG author, especially in the earliest years--to know what deserved more explaination & to what extent. It's easy for us to say, "I could've used more explaination of X & less of Y," but it's a lot harder when you're writing it & you don't have direct access to anyone else's brain. & the people around you share a lot of your same basic assumptions & such. Add to that the pressure of keeping to a profitable page count. Plus, what you could've used more explaination of might have been different from what I could have used more explaination of.

Certainly some of those choices seem like they would have been clearly strange even then, but I have to give designers the benefit of the doubt. They're just people trying to do the best job they can & getting paid too little to do it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

An elven fighter had as much chance of being a pastry chef as he did a hunter.

To be fair, the elf race has a long and storied tradition of hiding in trees and making delicious cookies. All elves should know their way around some shortbread.

"Make it up" is not a rule.

Word.

It's useful to have them say "if you don't like it, make it up," but it's not a rule, it's an admission that they can't forsee everything. They should try to forsee the most common things people are going to do with their game.

I actually agree that 1e might not be "better" or "worse" as a game, though it is "better" or "worse" for specific things (not all of which are really wanted by those who still play it). Not everybody wants elven rangers to be truly unique from elven fighters, and while that's fine, I don't think it's something most people would agree with them on.

Yeah, put me down for that too. I really don't like rules for things as arbitrary as 'how well does my PC make a sandwich' or 'how beautiful is the finger painting my character made'. Bah, I want to adventure not live a second life vicariously through an imaginary person.

Exploring some aspects of your character's life is fun. Sitting around building crap is not.

I tend to agree in broad terms, but what if a major aspect of your character's life is building crap? I mean, if I wanted to be a bowyer/adventurer, I would care about the quality of my bows, the wood the trees around me produced, the climate, the local metals market for arrowheads, which birds had the best flight feathers, any new alchemical modifications to arrows, kingdoms of ancient bow-wielders who might still have treasure laying around...being a bowyer would be a big part of my character, and some guidance on how to handle that would be entirely appropriate, and could actually lead to further adventure, rather than simply being rescource-crunching (for instance, if some dryads had taken to controlling the local wood supply, that's important to the character).

Just because I want my character to be good at making something doesn't mean that I want those rules to take over the game, but it does mean that some rules for at least "time it takes me to make it" and "a way to measure my quality" are entirely useful. It means being a bowyer, I could actually get the party good, quality arrows for cheap, while the wizard is busy making his wand and the bard is busy gathering info in the tavern, I can gather wood for good arrows, and the rules *actually* tell me how well I do this, just like they tell me how well I *actually* swing a sword or avoid a goblin's knife.

No. "Cool dude" is not likely to be interpreted by anyone at the table to mean anything. "Bowyer", "hunter", or a background story can be. There can be more to the game than merely resolving rules.

D&D is a game of imagination, right? It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that a "cool dude" would be good at wearing sunglasses at night, keeping his hair straight, wooing the laidies, getting a posse...

And while there's always going to be more than resolving rules, the game system should have ways to resolve rules. Because "make it up" isn't a rule.

 

[buzz]

If we take a page from AD&D...

FYI: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/

 

[molonel]

So, you're unwilling to consider that if it doesn't fulfill its own premises that, perhaps, you've misunderstood its premises? You're unwilling to consider that if a rule seems silly & contrived to you that maybe you've misunderstood the intent of the rule?

Pretty much. When I can't play an elven ranger in a game based in no small part on Tolkien, then that's goofy. I don't care how you explain it.

I think it was really hard for Gygax--or any RPG author, especially in the earliest years--to know what deserved more explaination & to what extent. It's easy for us to say, "I could've used more explaination of X & less of Y," but it's a lot harder when you're writing it & you don't have direct access to anyone else's brain. & the people around you share a lot of your same basic assumptions & such. Add to that the pressure of keeping to a profitable page count. Plus, what you could've used more explaination of might have been different from what I could have used more explaination of.

Random prostitute wandering subcharts. That's all I'm saying.

Certainly some of those choices seem like they would have been clearly strange even then, but I have to give designers the benefit of the doubt. They're just people trying to do the best job they can & getting paid too little to do it.

Or, you could just say, "Hey, it wasn't a perfect game, and you're right, it had some notable flaws."

Kind of like I do with 3rd Edition D&D.

It's easier by far, trust me.

To be fair, the elf race has a long and storied tradition of hiding in trees and making delicious cookies. All elves should know their way around some shortbread.

Network engineer in the row next to me: "Why are you laughing so hard?"
Me: "Oh nothing, nothing."

 

[Storm Raven]

& yes, I do admit it is no solution for the problem being discussed. (I think.)

Which is why I pointed out earlier that bringin up the secondary skill table was just about the lamest defense of 1e that one could put forward.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

FYI: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/

What's this? The EN World equivalent of "love it or leave it?"

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Random prostitute wandering subcharts.

Those were hilarious.