Do you "save" the PCs?

[Fifth Element]

The dm should never tailor encounters to a party's strength. <snipped>

That describes the sandbox style pretty well. That's not how my groups like to play, though.

I never said it was any "one true way." It's how the game was designed, though.

"The game", presumably, meaning OD&D or AD&D? Of course, this thread is not edition-specific. I submit that 4E, for example, is decidedly not designed for that style of play.

By all means, nerf everything to the character's abilities. I don't see the point in every fight being fair or tailored to the character's particular abilities. They may as well stay first level and fight goblins forever if the entire world levels up with them.

And you wonder why we interpret your posts as one-true-wayism? You don't see the point in our playing the game in a way which enjoy? The point of that should be self-evident: we enjoy it. You don't have to enjoy it. But if you realize that people play in different ways, how can you not see the point?

But by all means, go right ahead and tailor the world to the pcs if that floats your boat. It certainly isn't "wrong." It's just different from how the game was designed.

And there you go again. The tone here is very paternalistic and condescending. "Go ahead, play that way, so long as you realize it's not the way you're supposed to play..."

Also, who cares if the game was designed in a particular way? We play it how we want, which gives us fun. What's the point of saying "that's not how it was designed"? It gives the distinct impression that you consider your playstyle superior, because it's "purer". If not, why post what you've posted?

And I maintain it's not a slam on anyone's playstyle, it's just a divergence from how the game is supposed to be played.

So?

And my boring comment was a personal observation. I thought that was implied in the syntax. What is boring for some might be quite entertaining for others. Do I really have to put "imo" in front of every subjective comment?

That's true - I would find your campaign boring, for instance. For most people, "IMO" is not necessary. But with the style of your posts, I'd suggest you use it for clarity. Hussar interpreted it as one-true-wayism, and so do I. If you don't want to miscommunicate, be more clear. This is what it sounds like:

A: "Your playstyle is stupid and boring. My way is how it should be done."
B: "But there's no one right way to play the game."
A: "I wasn't saying your way is 'wrong.' Just that it's stupid and boring."

 

[ExploderWizard]

"The game", presumably, meaning OD&D or AD&D? Of course, this thread is not edition-specific. I submit that 4E, for example, is decidedly not designed for that style of play.

Designed or not we are having a great time with my current 4E sandbox game. Mechanics only dictate playstyle insofar as the players let them.

 

[Fifth Element]

Designed or not we are having a great time with my current 4E sandbox game. Mechanics only dictate playstyle insofar as the players let them.

An excellent illustration of my point. How one plays the game depends little (if at all) on how it was "intended" to be played.

 

[Janx]

An excellent illustration of my point. How one plays the game depends little (if at all) on how it was "intended" to be played.

Amen. There's too much passage quoting of the holy Gygax to prove some point that matters little to using the actual product.

I think that for most gamers, the ruleset covers the execution of the game reality. How to build a PC, how to resolve actions.

Anything covering play-style or setting is just a suggestion. Considering the tales of D&D players playing Vampire like a dungeon crawl, I think this is apt.

An RPG is a flexible beast. It's a tool. I ordered the D&D books sight-unseen, because I saw a vehicle for fantasy adventure. It worked just fine for me, so I'm pretty sure it does what it was intended to do.

 

[Ariosto]

Ariosto had already mentioned 'The Play's the Thing' a few posts back.

I had also quoted, at greater length, from that section of the DMG! (Post #146, covering a lot more ground than this excerpt, on page 10 of this thread)

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time.

Right there is the plain advice, which is all the book can give a Master of the game.

Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done.

Note the conditions here:

It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for player character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!

In my circle, that is clearly the case when

The dice rolls are bad. The tactics have failed. The situation is grim. Yet, they won't run away.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In answer to the question "Do you save the PCs?", quite a lot of people have replied, essentially, "never".

My reply was "sometimes". In the 1e DMG, Gary's reply is also "sometimes". It has been claimed that the reply of "never" is more true to the game's roots. I submit that on the evidence so far, that claim is false and, in fact, the reverse is the case.

 

[Mallus]

He merely places the encounters, monsters, and treasures where they would logically appear in the game world

Dungeons are logical?

I've always though they only made sense in metagames terms: as stacked 'boards' where the 'game' takes place. Sure, I've messed around with rationalizations for them, but that was mainly a form of gamer in-joke. We all know the real reason why the Mad Wizard Milton of Bradley constructed the Dungeon of Challenging Obstacles Sorted in Descending Order From Weakest to Strongest -- it's so players can play there.

From an in-setting perspective, dungeons are wholly nonsensical. There are better ways to protect your assets than chess-board puzzles, reverse-gravity chambers, chatty Sphinxes and hominid vermin infestations.

 

[Ariosto]

That other find though -- very interesting! Not at all my cuppa

Well, Doug McCrae excised this prescriptive sentence (immediately following the last, merely descriptive, bit he quoted):

When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!

Also, the earlier sentence actually urging a particular course of action is buried in a long paragraph:

In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time.

An excellent illustration of my point. How one plays the game depends little (if at all) on how it was "intended" to be played.

Actually, whether it depends little, not at all, or a lot is one's own choice! If one happens to want to be informed by the intent, and to put in the effort to digest the work, then that outcome is likely. It is also possible to misinterpret intent, but one's own intent might still be that how one plays the game should depend on how it was intended to be played. If one does not care about the intent, then to that extent any correspondence is coincidence on some other basis.

Anything covering play-style or setting is just a suggestion.

In Advanced D&D, everything is "just a suggestion".

"Play-style" is just vague jargon I don't recall encountering therein.

Pronouncements there may be, but they are not from "on high" as respects your game.

... The systems and parameters contained in the whole of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons are based on a great deal of knowledge, experience gained through discussion, play, testing, questioning, and (hopefully) insight.

No doubt the same holds for 4e, which was designed by different people for different tastes than the original. Yet there is no "authority" to keep Exploder Wizard from using whatever may be Exploder Wizard's First Rule.

 

[Ariosto]

And he definitely does recommend tailoring the encounters (it might be more appropriate to say the area) to the party.

It appears to me that he does not, for he proposes no such thing as "the party" in the first place! This is a doubly misleading injection (1) of a term not present in the context, and (2) of an anachronistic meaning, different from what it would have meant had it been present.

The discussion is of the preparation of the upper levels of a dungeon, the terms being used in their functional sense in old D&D (as opposed to some specific spatial or architectural sense). Those ought to be geared to novice players if (as Gygax expected) inexperienced players will be the ones playing inexperienced characters.

What this is not is a suggestion to "Nerf" the challenges on deeper levels, much less to "save" players by fiat when they play poorly.

 

[Fifth Element]

Actually, whether it depends little, not at all, or a lot is one's own choice!

To rephrase slightly, how one plays is not determined by the "intent" of the designer. If you choose to follow that intent, that is your choice, as you say. The point being (in the context of this discussion), that there is a choice to me made there.