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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cyberen" data-source="post: 6425032" data-attributes="member: 69074">I have failed my Wis save...On the top of my mind, I recall having breaked the so called "traditional paradigm" on the other side : as a DM, making decisions for a player (or, as a player, acting as a puppet of the DM), in order to enact the trope of a hero being possessed/dominated/replaced by a monster, without the other players/characters knowing it. Was this gameplay against tradition ?Also, to make possible/give teeth/have fun with a "Our Base is Under Attack !" scenario, I have sometimes switched side across the screen, so that the invaders experience the heroes' stronghold as if it were a dungeon.As far as I am concerned, I read the 1e DMG as "Advice as Intended", not RAW. This advice is about having fun roleplaying situations from Fantasy tropes. Some explicit advice is "Engage the characters !" (for instance, when suggesting to introduce rival organisations when a character establishes one), or "Cut the crap !" (for the stronghold location case cited by pemerton, I believe Gygax doesn't think player empowerment, but rather Take 20). The tech of the game gives power to the players almost exclusively via magic... but I think it would be a mistake to reduce the game to its RAW. First, because we know this RAW is simply a picture of the state of the art when it was written. Gary and co were rules tinkerers, as was any 1e DM, and I believe player fiat played an important part at every table where new material was introduced (as in "I want to play a Van Helsing type "). Second, some of the tropes explicitly invoked by the game blur the frontier between the characters and the world : how would you Alice in Wonderland or the Amber saga without Player fiat ? You can have convoluted mechanisms based on the Wish spell... or you invent Fate points. Early D&D was very much a tool box waiting to be expanded. Calling natural expansions "untraditional" seems self defeating at best. Some people claiming any relevant element should be created beforehand seem myopic to the great resilience of the game they love. No, material can be and has been generated on the fly : dungeons, worlds, wounds, or character backstories (especially for a Male Elf delver !) are fluid before they hit the table/get narrated. Depending on your style, you/your table will agree on the level of precision or artistic blur of the description, but I clearly don't see it in the rules.Tl; dr : my young self would not have allowed the boxes to appear in the alley, because I was ignorant and insecure. It would be a shame to call bigotry tradition.</blockquote>

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