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<blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 6313195" data-attributes="member: 158">I well remember Lew Pulsipher's articles, especially one of my favorites, the &quot;be aware, take care&quot; article from Dragon Magazine, where he gave the kind of advice you'd expect from one veteran mercenary to a newbie to try and keep him alive more than the first day. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I also think there needs to be a little MORE of that thinking returning to the table - not to the &quot;insane paranoid&quot; level of &quot;checking all coins in a hoard for numismatic value&quot; or &quot;prepare poison and smoke powder for the wizard to save spells through the power of suggestion&quot; - but so many groups have been raised on the &quot;guided tour&quot; philosophy that if you present them with the smallest mystery, or one of the old Gygaxian puzzles like the circular stone holes with splinters in them from the AD&amp;D 1 DMG, many players go blank, and just stop thinking.Many, many, MANY parties of players i've seen wont even talk to form a coherent battle plan, they go in, each pick a separate enemy, and do their own thing, sometimes even getting in each others' way. Pulsipher in the Dragon Mag article used example of a group of fighters who charge into a grassy field to the enemy, another subgroup of the fighters and thieves sneaking in the grass, and a group of magic users who turn invisible and move around shooting fireballs. In his words, without communication, or even setting code signals or rendezvous, the enemy could leave the field and the party still might have friendly fire losses. I've seen this level of cooperation in actual play, and it's disappointing! For goodness' sake, even Monopoly needs more system mastery than that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Henry, post: 6313195, member: 158"] I well remember Lew Pulsipher's articles, especially one of my favorites, the "be aware, take care" article from Dragon Magazine, where he gave the kind of advice you'd expect from one veteran mercenary to a newbie to try and keep him alive more than the first day. ;) I also think there needs to be a little MORE of that thinking returning to the table - not to the "insane paranoid" level of "checking all coins in a hoard for numismatic value" or "prepare poison and smoke powder for the wizard to save spells through the power of suggestion" - but so many groups have been raised on the "guided tour" philosophy that if you present them with the smallest mystery, or one of the old Gygaxian puzzles like the circular stone holes with splinters in them from the AD&D 1 DMG, many players go blank, and just stop thinking. Many, many, MANY parties of players i've seen wont even talk to form a coherent battle plan, they go in, each pick a separate enemy, and do their own thing, sometimes even getting in each others' way. Pulsipher in the Dragon Mag article used example of a group of fighters who charge into a grassy field to the enemy, another subgroup of the fighters and thieves sneaking in the grass, and a group of magic users who turn invisible and move around shooting fireballs. In his words, without communication, or even setting code signals or rendezvous, the enemy could leave the field and the party still might have friendly fire losses. I've seen this level of cooperation in actual play, and it's disappointing! For goodness' sake, even Monopoly needs more system mastery than that. [/QUOTE]

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