Where are the modules where my PC could gain a significant amount of XP by political intrigue, seducing ladies, and finding the farm boy's lost puppy, etc.? Can someone name even one?
The only one I can think of is Beyond the Crystal Cave.
Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is perhaps the quintessential example of "hack and slash will get you killed". You had to be sneaky or die. A frontal assault ruins any chance of success that you might have, unless you are VERY lucky and the DM is extremely soft and generous.
Here is the report of the original team that won that tournament (Dragon 19):
We gained entry through the east side entrance, which turned out to be the kennel. After casting a silence 15’ radius spell, the dire wolves inside were quickly dispatched. We then searched a major portion of the upper level and killed four or five giants in the process, including an old matron whose potions and treasure we took.
We made a brief and fruitless entrance into the lower level only to set off a trap which left six members of our party locked in combat with four insane manticores. The manticores were killed without serious injury to the group, and a passwall spell brought about an escape from the room.
We returned to the upstairs and charmed a hill giant into pointing out which giant at the feast going on in the Great Hall was the chief. We surrounded this room from two sides and sent the charmed giant into the Hall with the order to point out the chief by kissing him on the cheek. This was also to be the signal for our two groups to attack. Two fireballs, a javelin of lightning, a confusion spell, and a good deal of slashing and hacking later, the giants were wiped out to a man and the Steading was aflame. The group, still intact, cut off the hill giant chief's head and quickly left by the front gate. The cleric blocked pursuit by casting a blade barrier across the entrance. We then cast a speak with dead on the head, and subsequent questioning revealed the next step to be taken on our quest.
I don't think this is a good counter-example to the claim that combat is the pre-eminent mode of conflict resolution in typical D&D play.
Once again you assume that just because combat takes up a larger page count then it is somehow the primary objective to the game. Since combat requires most of the rules then I would expect there to be modules. The other pillars don't require the number crunching that combat rules do
Combat had the most attention in the books because it has the most moving parts when compared to everything else.
This is often asserted, but is not true. Combat doesn't need to have "number crunching" or lots of rules. Over the past few weeks I have run two sessions of Burning Wheel (play report
here). In that time there was one combat - a friendly boxing match between a hired swordhand and a beefy sailor - and it was resolved with a single roll of the dice pool on each side. If you don't want combat to be the focus of the game, the easiest way is to not use rules that make it into that.
Most of the conflict in those two sessions was social conflict. One reason that I think combat is the most important means of conflict resolution in D&D play is that only combat tends to produce
finality in D&D rules (because of the rule that, once a character reaches 0 hp, that character's player can't declare any more actions for him/her). Unless magic is used (eg Charm Person, Suggestion) it is very hard for players to achieve finality in D&D's social resolution, and equally hard for the GM to defeat them with finality. 4e had finality by the players against the GM and without using magic - via skill challenges - but not vice versa. BW does have finality in social conflict, in both directions, and I think that makes it a better system for running adventures in which conflicts are resolved other than by combat.
I know how the game was played at conventions, general groups, and the like. They fought and took treasure. Parties were made up of very few classes that didn't have to fight and take treasure. Getting around encounters without fighting was not only impractical, but boring.
<snip>
D&D was designed to focus on combat because the most people have the most fun doing combat. Doesn't mean you can't do other things. The design of the game is built for killing and taking things. It is the paradigm of the system.
I agree that the game does make combat the main focus of conflict resolution. It will depend a bit on level and class, however. For instance, a mid-level AD&D party with a clever player of a MU or illusionist, and a flexible GM, might adopt "trick, stealth and loot" tactics with some degree of success.
But this will tend to depend heavily on GM arbitration that is not well-supported by definite mechanics. So experiences are likely to vary widely from table to table.
the non-combat rules far outweigh the combat rules in the 1e DMG, as well as in B/X.
I've been doing a lot of re-reading of my AD&D and B/X books over the past year or so, and I think this claim is contentious. Though it depends a bit on what you mean by "rules".
If, by rules, we mean "action resolution mechanics", then I maintain that these are mostly focused on combat. The exploration rules are very minimal and narrow in focus. There are dungeon rules: for lighting, for detecting invisible creatures, for finding, listening at and opening doors. And there are rules for travel times per distance and chances of getting lost, and tend to emphasise the interaction between terrain, travel time and encounters (which are scary because of the combat that they threaten). There are evasion rules, but these are framed in terms of avoid combat. The exploration rules don't include rules for (say) climbing high peaks, exploring ravines, finding water in a desert, communicating with those who speak unfamiliar languages, charting coastlines (every PC is assumed to be an impeccable mapper), etc - which are just some of the features of real-world exploration that come to mind as more important, very often, than forcing open doors.
The social rules are also fairly minimal. The reaction rules focus on the likelihood of hostility, particularly attack. There are morale rules. And there are loyalty rules, a good chunk of which interact with or replicate elements of the morale rules. In the DMG here is a stated modification to loyalty for brining a retainer back from the dead, but not (for instance) for marrying him/her to a younger sibling.
If we include class abilities under the action resolution rules - which makes sense to me - we get some which are non-combat, like the ranger tracking and thief ability rules, but we also get plenty which are, like the plethora of MU spells for debilitating or destroying enemies. Many magic items, perhaps a majority, are also focused around improving combat capability.
There is also a lack of guidance on how to use non-combat rules (which relates to my finality point above). I suspect I could do more interesting things with the AD&D social rules today than I ever did back when I was playing the game, but that is because I would draw upon approaches and techniques that I have read about in other RPGs. Whereas Gygax's DMG has a rather detailed example of the combat mechanics in use, it has no discussion at all of how the reaction and loyalty rules might be used to resolve (say) a diplomatic negotiation, or an attempt to woo a romantic partner (to allude to two of [MENTION=545]Ridley's Cohort[/MENTION]'s examples). The first AD&D book I know of that even frames these sorts of things as possible focuses of play is Oriental Adventures, but it still gives very little advice on how to actually put the mechanics to work. At best it hints at it, for instance by indicating reaction modifiers based on a character's honour.
But consider such a simple question as "How often does a henchman have to make a loyalty check if an NPC attempts to bribe him/her?" With combat we have clear rules for the ablation of hit points and their recovery (via rest, magic, etc). But if a loyalty check is made, how long must pass before the NPC can make another attempt? Without answer, or at least suggested approaches to answering, such questions, the non-combat conflict resolution rules will not be as robust, in play, as the combat ones.
For the first what? 25 years of D&D, the only way you healed was through magic. Nothing like healing surges or hit dice. And for the first 15 years, clerics didn't even get their first healing spell until they progressed in levels.
Neither of these claims is correct.
AD&D clerics typically had 3 spells at 1st level (1 from level plus 2 from WIS of 14+). This is from 1978 (PHB), so within the first 5 years of the game.
AD&D also had rules for healing damage via non-magical proficiency checks (in the Wilderness Survival Guide, and then in the AD&D 2nd ed PHB). So there was non-magical healing. (And of course there were rules for healing via resting also.)
