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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3742095" data-attributes="member: 30001">I agree.  I think it's an overstatement to say that 1E wasn't conscious of challenge levels, or balancing such things for adventures.  There's plenty of stuff written by Gygax and others with regards to that.  I never had the impression that you were saying anything other than what you were saying here.  I thought another poster was taking the 4 quotes in the OP and trying to make them say something that they weren't saying.But the 4 quotes to me say something that is a matter of degree, and that is that there was less of a focus on the challenge rating being the only criteria for what PCs ought to face.  It seems to me that the 3E rules and literature focus almost exclusively on that in any kind of systematic way.  1E on the other hand had significant written statements showing that versimiltude (what makes sense) should be used for encounters.  For example is the section on the DMG where Gygax describes how a lair full of creatures responds to raids by the PCs.  The actions of the monsters in this section is not based on the PC level, but instead based on the alignment and general culture of the monsters.1E also repeatedly warned players that their PCs should expect to run away and fight another day.None of these things are rules though, and there is no reason that you can't do the same things in 3E.  It's the culture of 1E and 3E that are different, and granted that's highly subjective.  And CR has given players a tool to complain about encounter difficulty that they didn't have before.  Combine that with the lack of the kind of advice and I think maybe you can see that the 1E and 3E general experience are different in these areas, and that IMO comes through prettly clearly in the 4 quotes you post and is something I agree with.</blockquote>

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