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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6466645" data-attributes="member: 6680772">But the module under discussion is B2, which was designed to be played with Holmes and Moldvay Basic, so I'm not entirely sure the AD&D reaction rules (which I've long thought are needlessly complex, and are possibly the reason reaction eventually fell by the wayside) are really applicable.As for avoiding combat, sure that takes time, but that's time spent in the exploration and social interaction pillars, not the combat pillar."Narrow and artificial sort of exploration" is still exploration.  I mean, when we get to brass tacks, only a very narrow and rather artificial sort of combat is supported.  Not to mention that (IIRC, I don't have my books on hand at the moment) there are for hunting, foraging, and finding water in the Expert set.  I'm surprised if they are not also in the AD&D DMG.But more to the point, I think the paradigm you are describing here is quite different from the paradigm in which D&D was designed and developed.  In the paradigm you are describing, the medium through which the players interface with the game is through mechanical resolution.  Ergo, if there are no rules for a thing, that thing is not supported, and thus doesn't really play a part in the game.The disconnect here, IMO, is that OD&D and B/X D&D (and to perhaps a lesser extent 1e) were designed with the idea that player interaction with the DM is the interface of the game.  And that as such, IC and OOC lines are blurred.  The goal of the game is to put the player, to an admittedly artificial and limited degree, into the mind of the character.  So that the choices the players makes are exactly the choices the character is making.  Do we go left or right?  What gear should I take?  What spells should I prepare?  Mechanics, then, are not an interface, but merely the game's representation of random chance.Take the reaction table.  PC's never get better at monster reactions.  Players, however, do; as they through trial and error and practical experience develop strategies that encourage the DM to give a bonus to the roll, if not do away with it altogether.  PCs do get better at the raw probabilities of combat, mainly because players can never practically get better at that.  Better at avoiding it, better at settings up favorably tactically or strategically, sure.  But not better at literally surviving and winning at an exchange of blows.Consider mapping, both dungeon and wilderness hex mapping.  Anyone who's played with a mapper can tell you that making the map takes up some time.  But the mapper isn't just a metagame job for one particular person -- his character is mapping (remember, blurred lines), and the map represents the players' greater understanding of their surroundings, which maps (no pun intended) to the characters' understanding.I can't speak for [MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] and [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION], but I suspect their games may resemble mine, where a lot of game is spent getting the map made, debating choices that need to be made, scouting ahead, racking our brains and brainstorming ways to search a room, tracking encumbrance and who's carrying what, and so on.  This is the meat of the game.  Straight up combat, OTOH, tends to be dispassionate die rolls; "AC 5."  "Okay that's a hit."  "7 points damage."  "Okay, that goblin falls, dead."  That's just resolution, and on the whole, I'm not in my character's head-space, not feeling what they're feeling and thinking what they're thinking.  (Unless, of course, things go south, and both my character and I are going, "Oh crap, oh crap, OHH CRAAP!  Run away!  Run away!")So, even when you have 50% of encounters going to combat, that doesn't account for all the stuff that happens between the encounters, stuff that's as much part of the game as anything else.  Our group may get into combat five times in a session, but only choose and buy equipment once.  And the rules for buying equipment and the equipment lists take up far less space and have far less intricacy than the combat rules.  But that choosing and buying of equipment is probably going to take more time than those five fights put together.Another (anecdotal) example is <a href="http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/15909/a-tale-of-two-maps/p1" target="_blank">this</a> write up by Luke Crane about playing Moldvay basic.  Yeah, there's a little combat in there, but the meat of the story, the thing everyone remembers is the stuff other than that combat.I don't believe this kind of play is an outlier.  I do think through the 80s and 90s it became an old-fashioned, out-of-date, unpopular way to play, and changes were made to the game to reflect that.  But I also believe that it was the kind of play Arneson, Gygax, Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer were designing the game around.</blockquote>

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