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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trollwad" data-source="post: 2618079" data-attributes="member: 19187">I think mearls is right only if your players play a bunch of videogames.  Most people that Ive played with over the past twenty odd years who cut their teeth on old gygax or were totally new but didnt play videogames were good players in the sense of surviving and employing multiple tactics, parleys, negotiations, checking background, etc.  Video game players simply do not ever do this without extensive dm coaching.  gygax himself has opined that many modern players today tend to die like mayflies in his dungeons because they are simply too one tracked to ever run away.  My own experience with modern videogame type players is similar -- one 17 year old gamer addict that we played with lost more characters in a month than I have in 27 years of playing. Personal opinion, the first level of maure castle is really good and evocative, the lower levels are ok, the statuary level is also pretty good.  Banewarrens is one of the worst, least imaginative dungeons Ive ever seen (ok its better than 'Puppets', 'Gargoyles', the first Dragonlance modules, the final Ravenloft modules and the two counterfeit Castle Greyhawks) -- with Banewarrens as a precursor, I shudder to think how bad, how overwritten, how 'balanced', how modern and politically correct Ptolus will be. The Adventure Path stuff that mearls and others equate with 'modern' is technically proficient but horribly linear, incredibly balanced (when did obsessive balance become a good thing?) and basically predetermined without any memorable introductions of new monsters like the drow or the Lovecraftian and Gothic aspects of some pioneering modules like Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun or Ravenloft.Think about the Tharizdun module, it is like Maure castle, it exists not just in physical layers of exploration but in mental layers of comprehension and even with perfect understanding of the nature and purpose of the place, there is ambiguity and room for the DM to create.   Only determined and intelligent players will figure it all out and that is the way it should be.  Its not like the 'modern' Adventure Path where every room or module leads ('yawn') clearly to the next, little is hidden or unknown.  In Maure Castle, Ravenloft, the Drow Series, Tharizdun, Saltmarsh and Hommlet, if your players want to bash monsters, open the chest, pick up the golden key and move onto the next room, then they simply will never figure out anything.  Tough s*^t.  They dont deserve to perceive more than a simplistic dungeon crawl.  Modern dungeons are generally graded on a curve where everybody passes and no one gets left behind.  Old school dungeons are like the cranky old socratic professor that wants you to figure out things on your own and is perfectly content to let you live with the consequences of your actions if you arent up to the challenge.Returning to objectivity, Maure Castle did win an Ennie and evidently it sold very well so the detractors arent that representative.</blockquote>

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