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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6687703" data-attributes="member: 4937">I prefer to think that 3e gives the option of rolling the dice to decide the outcome, but nothing within the text requires dice rolling to be the only approach to anything in the game.I've written on that extensively before, but this I the first time I've had the opportunity to address this criticism in the context of 1e.I actively played 1e AD&D for about 14 years.  I'm well aware of how the game worked, and I've since I think grasped even to a greater degree how it was supposed to work, what assumptions it made about play, and why it was written the way it was in the years since then.And I don't understand the attempt at contrast here.  Not only was 1e AD&D a dice rolling game in many aspects, but it was a dice rolling game that as written didn't even give opportunity to influence the results through play or spending character resources.   The aversion that skillful 1e players developed to rolling the dice was a result of the fact that the AD&D mechanics were often arbitrary, unknowable, and rigged against you.  Read or run modules like The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (particularly the internalized swimming rules during floods) or White Plume Mountain (particularly the swinging platforms) and then get back to me about the dice rolling game.  Not convinced?  Look at the again and tell me how you resolve someone reaching out a hand to grab someone during the disasters?  When AD&D didn't devolve to a game of "If you can roll the high number seven times in a roll - you win!", it devolved into a metagame where the goal was to convince, conjole, and bully the DM in accepting there was no way your plan could fail, so he shouldn't even toss the dice but instead admit to your proposed outcome, validate it, and thereby make it so.  Or often as not, it involved plugging in to the problem the same versatile under-costed 'I win button' spell-powers again and again and again, assuming your M-U could survive long enough to have them.Now, I'm not saying that 3e radically departs from that, because so much of 3e is obviously intended to be familiar and retro to players of 1e who might have been frustrated by aspects of 2e, but I am a bit baffled at seeing a disconnect between 3e and 1e.  Particularly with regards to dice rolling, the only real difference I see is that in 3e its possible that asserting character skill and knowledge won't require debate on what is 'realistic', won't require badgering the DM in any way, and has a reasonable chance of success and as such isn't always an approach to be avoided.</blockquote>

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