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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9054888" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, those players did know the procedures of play: the player tells the GM what their PC does, and the GM tells them back what happens as a result. What they didn't always know was the method the GM was using to decide what to say back, except in rough terms: some combination of consulting a map and key, and making dice rolls and reading the results of either an actual table or a notional table (as in, the table sits inside the GM's head).It's pretty clear that there was a mainstream assumption, in 1970s D&D play, that players would get better at the game over time, by learning more about particular elements of the game (eg monster immunities; how to deal with pit traps; etc). That's why there are so many weird puzzle monsters in the Monster Manual, why the equipment list includes 10' poles, etc.Part of what causes this sort of play to break down, though, is its commercialisation: whereas at the original tables the players had to learn, through play (or through having read the right novel or short story!) how to defeat trolls and grey oozes and the like, and had to invent ideas like prodding with poles, searching for secret doors, and so on, new players who buy the rulebooks don't need to think up these things. They can see 10' poles in the equipment list and intuit what they are for; they can read the rules for searching for secret doors; they can read the Monster Manual; etc.Thus, from some time around the late 70s, there are really only three options. One is to invent new puzzles that can't be solved simply by being familiar with the published material - that is, to undertake the same process as happened at those original tables, albeit generating different content. A second option is to drop the puzzle conceit altogether, and to shift the focus of play onto something else. This is the general trend of FRPGs like RQ and RM (in the late 70s and 80s) as well as more recent RPGs like Burning Wheel: puzzle monsters and baroque traps and the like figure less prominently in these systems than in D&D. We even see strong hints of a change in this direction in Gygax's DMG, where the account of how to set up a campaign and how to adjudicate a dungeon is much more "living world" than is presented in the PHB. (Although the actual sample of play in the DMG is a closer fit with the PHB.)A third option is to keep the puzzle conceit, but to change the style of play from the puzzle-solving of the original tables to some sort of karaoke/emulation, where players who do know about trolls, poles, pits and the like play characters who don't. To me, this third option is extremely weird, but it seems to be quite popular.When it comes to reading modules, I think it's quite different. It's pretty hard to make a case that someone who reads the rulebook (and thereby learns about 10' poles, trolls, he rules for searching - which of course make searching a salient action declaration - and the like) is cheating. Whereas reading the secret information for a game that is supposed to be played on a "hidden gameboard" is pretty obviously cheating.</blockquote>

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