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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7716411" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think I agree with this one. If you don't notice it via elf-iness then you spend a charge from your wand of secret door detection, or your wand of metal and mineral detection, or use a detect magic ability of some sort. The default "classic" D&D game assumes a very high degree of commitment to, and actual playing out of, exploratory activity. Hence the fact that around one-quarter of magic swords (some of the most common magic items) have some sort of detection ability which is only useful in dungeon-scale exploratory RPGing.A player who relies just on elf-iness is making a choice, and is gaining a benefit or suffering a (hypothetical) loss on a basis in which that choice plays a significant role.What I really feel your example does is (i) drive home how little most contemporary RPG play reflects those classic defaults, and (ii) how early in the game's history a significant quantity of players were playing the game in a way which didn't prioritise those defaults. I mean, a really obvious thing is to swap out the inane detection abilities of intelligent swords in favour of something that resonates at least a little bit thematically (eg thinking of swords like Stormbringer, Narsil/Anduril, Excalibur, etc). But once you do that - eg the sword, instead of detecting gems in a 60' R gives a bonus to reaction rolls with NPCs who honour its lineage - then the ability of a player to mitigate his/her sole reliance on elf-iness is lost.The same thing will happen if a GM thinks "It would make more sense for these goblins to have a wand of fear rather than a wand of detecting random treasure stuff at short distances."So as soon as people start to take the theme/story elements of the game seriously - which is such an obvious thing to do in this sort of game, and something Gygax himself advocates for in his DMG (p ), then the foundations for classical play as a game of "skill" rather than luck start to erode dramatically.And to add some more controversy to the above analysis: on the whole the replacement takes the form of "setting/story tourism" of the sort that Lewis Pulsipher was well aware of back in the day, and advocated strongly against.</blockquote>

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