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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6313299" data-attributes="member: 42582">There was a reaction table, influenced by CHA. Otherwise, I think the norm was free roleplaying.Yes, there is a mutual agreement. "Playing D&D" means turning up with your PCs ready to enter a dungeon and explore it.Gyagx's PHB (1978) makes a similar assumption (p 107):[A]ssume that a game is schedule tomorrow, and you are going to get ready for it . . . [T]alk to the better players so that you will be able to set an objective for the adventure. Whether the purpose is so simple as to discover a flight of stairs to the next lowest unexplored level or so difficult as to find and destroy an altar to an alien god, some firm objective should be established . . .Exploring a dungeon is the default assumption for play. Hence the short ranges on spells like Locate Object, and the inclusion of otherwise quite baroque magic items like Potions of Treasure Finding and Wands of Metal and Mineral Detection.I don't think this was particularly directed at me, but as OP I thought I'd say a bit more about why I posted it.I think this advice is interesting, and potentially helpful. It sets out a particular approach to play quite clearly (I think with greater clarity than Gygax does) and advises the participants on how they can best do things that way. It also diagnoses, 7 years before Dragonlance, the threat of railroading that comes with more story-oriented play. I think the diagnosis is sound, and I have suffered under GMs who would have benefitted from reading this.That's not to say that I'm against story-oriented play. As I said in my OP, there are techniques that can make it work. But that doesn't change the fact that Pulsipher has accurately diagnosed a problem that was very real - and virtually dominant in the hobby from the late 80s through the 1990s.Anyway, just to highlight some diversity of approaches from the early years, I'm going to start another thread with advice on similar topics from Roger Musson, another inveterate contributor to the early White Dwarfs.</blockquote>

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