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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6314896" data-attributes="member: 18">Sadly I have never played Liar's Dice, nor Candyland, and even reading about them this comparison is somewhat lost on me. I take it Candyland is not similar to say, The Game of Life (because you have actual decisions in the latter), but is more akin to Snakes & Ladders or something, where it's pure chance?The big problem I had with Gygaxian dungeons is that a lot of them seemed to just encourage ultra-cautious. ultra-methodical play, which felt absolutely nothing like the tales of fantasy and derring-do I'd been raised on. I came to D&D to play a brave knight (completely seriously, this is what made 10-year-old-me's eyes open so wide when D&D was described), but when I played with people running "Gygaxian" stuff (mostly not written by Gygax, but of that style), it seemed like brave knights and their ilk had no place - rather it was a game of methodical, potentially-backstabbing and heartless professionals, willing to sacrificing henchmen without blinking, who took their 10' poles, their torchbearers and so on, and carefully, slowly, and sadly, somewhat tediously crept through a dungeon.Often these fellows would have alignments like LG, but in no way did they seem to act the part, unless required to by the DM or their character class (even with the latter, it was typically begrudging).I think it's one thing to encourage people to plan before battle where possible (but it shouldn't always be possible), and act like smart people who want to live, but it's quite another to traumatize players until they're living in what some have described as "Fantasy F**king Vietnam". All too often "Gygaxian" is code for either that, or terrible puzzles that make no sense in context.I mean, ignoring the "FFV" aspect, personally, as someone who always loved archaeology and history, a lot of so-called "Gygaxian" stuff drove me nuts because it didn't make any sense - who built this? Why did they build it? Why is it still operational? If I couldn't at least answer those questions for myself, it wasn't going in my adventures, and I didn't like it much when others put it there (this design problem is still a common one - 4E's H1 and H3 had huge problems with "Even in this bizarre context, this makes no sense and even contradicts the lore of the dungeon!" - H3 was explicitly designed as Gygaxian, too)Fair enough! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I don't think it has much to do with either armed forces or 1E/Gygaxian experience, though, Henry. It's more to do with the mindsets of the specific players. I have a main group (all in their 30s) who are a lawyer, a very senior doctor, a day-trader, a journalist, and a systems analyst/IT manager, and occasionally a diplomat/entrepreneur. All of these people lead very organised lives and have to think very hard about what they are doing, plan ahead and so on, in their work. None of them have any armed forces experience. Yet in game, those who plan most, those who scheme most and so on does not correlate well with their work or lives. I could go into details but we'd be here all day - suffice to say, some people enjoy planning/scheming, some people enjoy tactics, some enjoy both, some neither. What they all share is a love of RPGs.</blockquote>

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