Am I the only one who doesn't like the arbitrary "boss monster" tag?

[slobster]

Wow, that is so vulgar, offensive, edition warring, and most of all, wrong.

Well if you disagree with what he's saying you're free to share, but the act of airing an opinion that you don't agree with isn't edition warring. Even if you think he's being inflammatory, giving the benefit of the doubt before blasting away is probably more conducive to an actual discussion.

And I think he has a point, personally.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Well if you disagree with what he's saying you're free to share, but the act of airing an opinion that you don't agree with isn't edition warring. Even if you think he's being inflammatory, giving the benefit of the doubt before blasting away is probably more conducive to an actual discussion.

And I think he has a point, personally.

I disagree (illustrating your "point" exactly), personally, but there is an agenda...

I do agree with having an (adult) discussion, though...

 

[Tony Vargas]

And here's where I perceive the problem to be. oD&D/1e were not cooperative excercises in story building, and the rules were not designed towards that end in the slightest. They were unashamedly gamist games about the exploration of absurd and hostile environments with an almost adversarial relationship between DM and players. It was almost pure step on up play. 2e and 3e both attempted to use this gamist game and drift it hard into cooperative excercises in story building but didn't change the underlying assumptions that made D&D a very gamist RPG.

Sure, D&D has always been first and foremost a game. In the 90s, 2e went off on the setting-based kick and rapid publication schedule that was the trend in that decade, but it remained very much a 'roll playing' game (in the vernacular of that same decade). But, D&D has also always been played in a lot of different ways. For a while, it was the only RPG option for most of us. Not that there weren't other RPGs, but we either didn't know about them (no internet back then!) or didn't have anyone else ready to play them. So D&D got adapted to all kinds of improbable things, not just intense RP instead of hack & slash, not just Monty Haul vs Killer DM, but different settings and even different genres.

D&D no longer needs to pull such broad/varied duty - and, in any case, there's d20 as a core system that can be used for that purpose if you want to leverage familiarity with D&D...

 

[Obryn]

Wow, that is so vulgar, offensive, edition warring, and most of all, wrong.

This is the second time just this thread that the term "edition warring" has been used in an exceptionally broad and somewhat baffling way.

I'd suggest reporting it if you think so. But I don't really think that particular paragraph is troublesome... What's vulgar and offensive there? "Gamist and adversarial" closely matches the game's roots. And it's a style of play I think can be a ton of fun.

-O

 

[Steely_Dan]

This is the second time just this thread that the term "edition warring" has been used in an exceptionally broad and somewhat baffling way.

I'd suggest reporting it if you think so. But I don't really think that particular paragraph is troublesome... What's vulgar and offensive there? "Gamist and adversarial" closely matches the game's roots. And it's a style of play I think can be a ton of fun.

Total, but people stating that certain editions of D&D are adversarial does not sit right, as they weren't, inherently, we make of this (absurd) game what we will...

 

[slobo777]

Total, but people stating that certain editions of D&D are adversarial does not sit right, as they weren't, inherently, we make of this (absurd) game what we will...

Yeah, I'd go for "gamist" - although the label is seriously ret-conned by at least 20 years. I think that early D&D can be positioned nicely on the gamist side of gamist <-> simulationist, but it was released when such a map was beyond anyone's understanding. If anything, it created the first points on that map, for games like Runequest to react to.

But "adversarial"? Depends on who picked up the books . . . a lot of people have D&D memories that also parallel their own social and mental growth from age 10 plus. That can put a huge spin on older versions of the game.

 

[billd91]

So ... the PCs are special?!

It's the same with the Warrior class. There's no sensible reason anyone would be a Warrior instead of a Fighter, given that there are no actual prereqs listed.


This isn't real life, though, this is D&D. If your players have choices in their classes, the NPCs do too. Even if level 1 is set somehow by their background, they can always multiclass - especially if they're human. If you're a farmer or Janitor, you're a better farmer or janitor if you're using the mechanics of the Expert class. Or, heck, Rogue!

And I'd argue a city guard is a better city guard if they're a Fighter instead of a Warrior. Advancing as a Warrior is senseless.

1e's 0-level makes better sense, if you need to stat out commoners at all - if you haven't adventured and haven't gained any XP from looting dungeons and killing kobolds, you don't have a level.

-O

This viewpoint strikes me as being very oriented toward rules of the game determining the reality of the campaign setting. And I find it unfortunate because it is privileging the rules over the story, setting, and verisimilitude. There are no barriers for entry into any of the base classes (including NPC classes) because it gives the person building the PC/NPC free choice to select the appropriate class for the situation at hand. That says nothing about whether or not there are real barriers from the POV of the character. When the player/DM makes the selection, we are to assume all of those prerequisites are met for that case - some explicitly like literacy for a wizard, all PCs being literate except for barbarians, some implicitly like a town-dwelling freeman coming up with the money to pay a master to take his child on as an apprentice and thus offer entry into the expert NPC class.

There are commoners in 3e D&D (and I really enjoy the rules for advancing NPCs so that there is more than 0-level NPCs running around) because they couldn't meet the implied prerequisites for a better class or chose to do something else rather than pursue them.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Yeah, I'd go for "gamist" - although the label is seriously ret-conned by at least 20 years. I think that early D&D can be positioned nicely on the gamist side of gamist <-> simulationist, but it was released when such a map was beyond anyone's understanding. If anything, it created the first points on that map, for games like Runequest to react to.

But "adversarial"? Depends on who picked up the books . . . a lot of people have D&D memories that also parallel their own social and mental growth from age 10 plus. That can put a huge spin on older versions of the game.

Yes, I agree: control-freak DMs, that's never cool, regardless of edition.

 

[slobster]

An adversarial GM doesn't mean one that is necessarily out to kill the PCs. It means one who sees it as his job to challenge them, within the rules, which also means not bending the rules for or against them. He sets up a scenario which he knows has a chance of killing off his characters, because for their table success is only fulfilling if it happened in the face of a very real chance of failure.

I don't consider myself an adversarial GM. If a kobold gets a lucky crit on one of my character's whose player is very invested, I'll fudge it so that instead of killing her it just sends her into negative hp.

An adversarial GM would never do that, because softening the blow ruins the whole point of the game, which is that PCs snatch success in the face of danger. A good adversarial GM would never turn a normal attack into a crit, though, just because his players were having it too easy. Instead he would adjust the parameters of later encounters, within the rules and according to what he considers in-game logic, so that his players get better challenges.

At least, that's how read the "Adversarial GM" style. Definitions obviously differ.

 

[slobo777]

An adversarial GM doesn't mean one that is necessarily out to kill the PCs. It means one who sees it as his job to challenge them, within the rules, which also means not bending the rules for or against them. He sets up a scenario which he knows has a chance of killing off his characters, because for their table success is only fulfilling if it happened in the face of a very real chance of failure.

I don't consider myself an adversarial GM. If a kobold gets a lucky crit on one of my character's whose player is very invested, I'll fudge it so that instead of killing her it just sends her into negative hp.

An adversarial GM would never do that, because softening the blow ruins the whole point of the game, which is that PCs snatch success in the face of danger. A good adversarial GM would never turn a normal attack into a crit, though, just because his players were having it too easy. Instead he would adjust the parameters of later encounters, within the rules and according to what he considers in-game logic, so that his players get better challenges.

At least, that's how read the "Adversarial GM" style. Definitions obviously differ.

I see "adversarial play style" and assume the usual negative connotations. But thanks for pointing out that it could be taken as a more neutral style description.

I probably meet your definition of "adversarial", but that's because my group is generally roll-in-the-open and we'd rather write off long-running characters than rescue them from the dice. The odd in-between story-driven rescue is still ok though, so perhaps its not the same thing . . .