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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6306758" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, I generally agree with Moldvay on all of that, and typically only depart from Gygax over the subject of how antagonistic the DM is to be with respect to the PCs and any advice that Gygax gives which comes from the mindset of running nightly games for an ever rotating large cast of players (the former possibly being a subcategory of the later).The only area in the quoted rules that I disagree with Moldvay over is his ad hoc rules creation of miracles.  I generally dislike fudging the rules and doing anything ad hoc at all.  It's inconceivable to me that you'd introduce a chasm into play without as a condition of the chasms existence giving some thought to where it goes, it's physical dimensions, and what lies at the bottom.   Hence, the DM has put himself in a terrible situation of having to rule on the life and death of a player character with no fiction established.  Without a fiction being established, there is no way for the DM to fulfill his obligation to the player to be an unbiased neutral referee.  Although Moldvay is attempting to fulfill his obligation in this situation, I'm not a fan of how he does it or how he communicates.First of all, a fall of 60' into sufficiently deep water is survivable if you enter feet first.  Falls into water are lethal generally beginning at around 150', or at a lower distance depending on how you enter.  This suggests to me that the damage from falling 60' into water (in BD&D terms) is not 6d6, but say 2d6 or even (as it would be in 3e) 1d6.  So the question becomes, what's the chance of falling into deep water?  With 7 hit points left, if the PC hits water (well) there is a strong chance of survival (possibly 100%) of at least the immediate hazards.  And even if we assume shallow water that reduces the damage from 6d6 to 5d6, that means the chance of survival falling into a shallow pool is about 1 in 1000, and onto rock about 1 in 50000. I see no reason to pick a single number - 2% - as the approximation of this.  Either figure out what the player lands on from the map, or randomly generate a result based on the possibilities implied by the map and then apply the rules accordingly.Moldvay seems to be giving it as 2% based on not knowing whether there is water or not or perhaps even worse knowing that there isn't water but wanting to give the plan some chance of success.   However, he deliberately makes this chance of success tiny and then deliberately tells the player his plan is almost hopeless, reveals metagame information that the character could not possibly have, and all but tells the player not to act on his plan.   While some of that may be justified in the situation, particularly with a new player, that general approach is basically railroading.Conversely, if Moldvay decides that there is a high likelihood that a deep slow moving river actually flows through the chasm (as opposed to knowing this when the chasm is established), and assigns a 98% chance of survival, and then communicates this metagame information that the character couldn't possibly have  to the panicking player he's all but telling the player to jump, and again deciding for himself what the story should be (presumably because he likes the story of the player jumping into the chasm, or wants to save the player).  Again, the DM is failing in his basic duties as a GM.  The players aren't really free to choose, and the GM is overruling their actions in a way that means that players aren't responsible for and can't claim their own actions.  They win because the GM gave them the win and the story they are creating is the one that is satisfactory to the GM.   And in general, I hate pulling numbers out of the air because they 'seem right'.  What does a 2% chance of life or death have to do with the rules anyway?  For that matter what does a 'saving throw' have to do with this situation?  If a saving throw has something to do with this situation, why can't and shouldn't a player receive a saving throw every time that they fall off something?  And if they don't receive such a saving throw purely because the DM has decided they don't in this situation need one, how is that not the DM choosing for himself what he wants to happen?Moreover, quantifying the game situation in numeric terms is a direct violation of the principle behind not telling the player the hit points of a monster.  The whole point is for the DM to begin to transcend the game and immerse the players in the situation.  If your narration is liberally sprinkled with numbers and game rules references, what you are communicating is that this is a game and should be experienced as a game.  This in my opinion is a playing an RPG at a lower level of skill than experiencing the game as a story in an shared imaginative world where the rules exist only to arbitrate consequences for the characters of that world.  The skillful DM doesn't give a monsters hit points but instead narrates the reactions of the monster and consequences it has suffered - "bleeding profusely", "grieviously wounded", "panting and puffing", "whines in pain", etc. - because he's seeking to draw the players into the experience of imaginative play and at least partially out of a boardgaming/wargaming mindset that might otherwise dominate play.   Things like, "You have a 2% chance to survive" or "The monster has 14 hit points left" work contrary to that goal.Basically, in my opinion the skillful DM creates the fiction according to the standards he sets for his world, and the rules according to the standards he sets for his game, and then he having done so largely subjugates himself to these things - concealing and laying down his absolute power - for the sake of the player's freedom of action.   Although the DM has the power and right to override his own rules and fictions, the wise DM applying the best techniques of game mastering does so only rarely.  To act otherwise is to be a tyrant and deprive the players of a chance to truly influence the game.</blockquote>

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