NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6464589" data-attributes="member: 6680772">Uh, no.As a matter of fact, of the total 96 encounter areas in Keep on the Borderlands, monsters that attack on sight take up only 17 (the lizard men, the kobold ambush, the rats, the wandering goblins, the gray oozes, the owlbear, the stirges, the fire beetles, the minotaur, possibly the guard gnolls, 5 encounter areas with undead, the torturer, and the gelatinous cube).  Everything else is subject to the reaction roll.And of course, the 27 encounter areas in the Keep often get completely ignored, as you did here.  The adventure doesn't "start" when you leave the keep and go to the caves.  It literally starts with you approaching the keep, and the very name of the module is the Keep on the Borderlands.  The keep is not just a place to buy equipment and come back for healing.  And no, NPCs don't have names, but that's not because they aren't important or worth interacting with, that's so the DM can take the module and put it in his own world.I mean, here's the thing.  The guys who invented, playtested, and wrote D&D in the 70s and early 80s were wargamers.  When they wanted to play combat, that's where they went.  D&D was invented specifically for all the stuff that wargames didn't give them.  Look at the example of play in OD&D.  It literally dispenses with combat with a paranthetical comment (Here combat is resolved, etc.)  The example of play in Moldvay does the same thing.  Play through the solo adventure in Mentzer Basic -- fighting anything is likely to get you killed, but the best way to go through it is the one where you avoid fighting.  People talk about combat taking up the most rules, but the non-combat rules far outweigh the combat rules in the 1e DMG, as well as in B/X.Likewise, no one is saying that combat doesn't have a place in D&D.  But the largest pillar?  Not in OD&D.  Not in B/X and BECMI.  With all the dungeon and hex mapping?  No.  Maaaybe in late 1e and 2e, but not in early AD&D.  And given 2e's emphasis on story and its detailed monster ecologies, I'm hesitant to say it's the largest pillar there, as well.Not surprisingly, the Conan stories are a good comp here.  There's a bit of combat in every Conan story.  It would almost not be a Conan story without any.  But are the combats the fattest pillar in Conan stories?  Not at all.  There's all sorts of sneaking around and exploration, negotiating and talking with people, and Conan succeeding by his smarts and daring as much as, if not more than, with his strength of arms.I can't speak for others, but with the group I've been playing with since the 80s, combat is there not so much to be played as to be resolved.  The main stuff of the game comes between the combats.  If you're surprised this subject is deemed controversial, may I suggest that there are a lot more people out there playing like that than you may have previously suspected.</blockquote>

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