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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6467009" data-attributes="member: 6680772">Foraging and hunting rules are on page X51 of Cook/Marsh, and page 21 of Mentzer.  They are indeed missing from the 1e DMG, or at least I couldn't find them.  The PHB mentions the need to hunt or forage on page 101, but it isn't addressed in the DMG.  In OD&D, such rules were offloaded to Outdoor Survival, much like the combat rules were offloaded to Chainmail.Yes, but my reply was specifically about the degree to which monsters attacked on sight in B2.I think your "narrow and artificial" statement is fine as it stands, as long as we acknowledge that a) it is also true of combat, and b) that even if the game play of exploration is narrow and artificial, it's still about exploration.  I guess my point is, the rules are not meant as a simulation of real world phenomena, but rather to facilitate play as a game, within the paradigm I described above.  It's about making choices.  Naturally, given the difficulty of any game system to accurately and comprehensively model the real world, it is selective in the kinds of choices it foregrounds.  In early D&D's case, it's concerned primarily with movement, carrying capacity, equipment, and certain degrees of perception (e.g., light and sound).  Now, to be sure, this might not be everyone's cup of tea when it comes to exploration.  Some folks would perhaps prefer more detail.  Others would prefer to make things even more abstract.  Others might prefer other details to focus on altogether.  But that's a separate issue from whether the primary mode of play of early D&D dealt with exploration.As far as the social interaction goes, and Luke Crane's example, this goes back to the game's inability to even approach a mechanics/rules driven simulation of real world interaction, and the "making results make sense is the DM's job" thing I've talked about before.  Here, the DM's ability to set context is paramount, and why he is the impetus behind social interaction mechanics.  In the specific case of Luke Crane's example, they are playing B1, "In Search of the Unknown".  One of the distinct features of B1 is that it does not come pre-stocked.  The rooms and special features are described, but it's up to the DM to stock the dungeon, using either the dungeon stocking rules in Basic, or rolling/choosing from a list of possible encounters in the back of the module.  Notably, the list of possible encounters does not include any background information on the monsters -- it's up to the DM to fill in the blanks.  So, why did the goblins let the character get away?  Perhaps Luke gave them the back story of being goblin adventurers, there to plunder the abandoned castle themselves.  In which case, they would not see the characters as intruders, but rather as "monsters" -- to be avoided if too strong, parleyed with if possible, and ambushed and attacked if the reward outweighed the risk.  This is just speculating, but given that this party of hobgoblins were demanding treasure, it's a reasonable assumption.And the key is, this is both emergent and explosive, despite being light on rules.  DMs can have ideas of how they think monsters may react, but players can surprise them, and quirky inspiration can strike.  Combat in this paradigm is a resolved -- this means that it has a clear, predefined end state.  Reaction roll-based interaction, OTOH, has no defined end state, so it might take up very little time, or it can take a great deal of time.  And again, if you resolve a combat in 10 or 15 minutes, but then spend that amount of time or more on interaction with NPCs and monsters, then I think it's fair to say that combat is probably of lesser importance.Combat in D&D is incredibly artificial.  Especially in early D&D, when using the Combat Sequence and Morale (which is very much like the reaction roll mechanics).  Why does magic always go off before missile fire, which always happens before melee combat?  Why does a monster that fails its morale roll runaway?  (Or more likely in many combat heavy campaigns, why do almost all monsters fight to the death?)  Why do whole groups get to act first, rather than individual people?  These are all things that can be explained by an improvising DM, but the game's not really interested in answering them itself.  Because combat is just an abstract resolution system, not a simulation.Sure, but I don't see how that is quite relevant to my point.  My point is not that it can't be done, simply that the game was not designed with the assumption these mechanics are the primary mode by which players interface with the game.  A party can (and generally will) let a high-CHA character do the talking in order to get a bonus to the reaction roll.  But they must still say what they are going to say to the DM, who will add whatever other modifier he thinks necessary (so a player who phones in the interaction, relying purely on his CHA bonus, may find the DM giving the roll a penalty that largely mitigates his bonus), and it's the DM who will make the roll and interpret the results.  The player running from the spider may decide to drop gear in order to run faster, but a) this is perfectly keeping within the headspace of the character, and b) because he's interfacing in the game through the DM, the DM may rule that he is unable to drop gear with much precision and maintain his speed (e.g., dropping his entire backpack is probably doable; dropping heavy items that are in his backpage, probably not).  In fact, given the blurring of player and character, the DM may not give him the option of perusing his equipment list at his leisure.  Take the example of the player fleeing the spider while referring to his map.  He is not given the option of simply following the map, and when he misspeaks, the DM does not allow him to correct himself.Essentially, decisions informed by the mechanics is still different from the mechanics being the player's interface with the game.  And again, there's no need to exclude the middle here.  It's a spectrum that varies throughout the game's history, and according to the situation.  There are moments in early D&D where mechanics are how they interface with the game -- the attack roll, the saving throw, their sense of how healthy their characters are.  And there are moments in WotC D&D where no mechanics are involved at all.  It's a tension that goes back to Gygax (mechanics!) and Arneson (DM!).  Or heck, even before then (free Kriegsspiel!  strict Kriegsspiel!).  The difference is at the design level.  You see a lot of things given to the DM to decide in early D&D, while 3e and 4e tried to handle more of the load.  My point is that TSR D&D didn't do that because they didn't know how to design mechanical rules for things, nor because they thought those things were unimportant or a minor parts of the game.</blockquote>

Verification