Shadowdark Finally Played Shadowdark

[Micah Sweet]

Then you have to make sure no class only has magic to solve their problems. Only way I see for this type of game to work is no magic classes and we just do rituals.

Disagree. This is a team game, and not every PC is going to contribute equally to all situations. And every character has their own judgment and ability as a person to fall back on and help when their class features can't get the job done.

 

[Mannahnin]

I agree. Even Gygax didn't stick to the 3d6 in order. It's been a mess since AD&D, and shouldn't be a standard method, because you end up having to mulligan and spend way more time than needed to generate characters (like rolling 15 sets of stats or whatever).

This is one reason I like the "flip/mirror" method so much, because it eliminates "hopeless characters" and raises the average a bit, without any re-rolls. There are other ways to eliminate the re-rolls, of course. In a game I ran last year I had each player generate one set of ability scores, and then wrote down all those sets on a piece of paper, and each player could use whichever set they wanted of all those generated, and arrange to taste.

But it's a fair point that random rolls don't really support a game expectation for characters to start out with stats high enough for bonuses. Probably the better baseline rule in that case is point buy or standard array. I think OD&D, B/X and BECMI also do a pretty good job with 3d6 by allowing point-trading to increase your Prime Requisite. IME with those games, it's rare not to start with at least a 13 and a bonus in your PR, and pretty common to get a 16+ and a bigger bonus.

I think Dionne's error (IMO) is pairing the 3d6 method with the ability bonus chart of 3rd edition and onward. While making ability scores even more important to character success than they were in older editions.

I don't think it's an error at all. I think it's a thoughtful design decision, paired with the advancement (Talent) charts which usually give you at least a +1 to a check on a core character function, bearing in mind that every 2 points of ability increase normally includes a +1 to such checks.

But all this is to say that Shadowdark (and the OSR) just isn't for me. I recognize that people love these games, so it must be hitting something right for those audiences. For me, if I'm gonna play a dungeon crawler, I'd prefer just playing HeroQuest.

Hey, if you've got a game that serves you and gives you fun in that role, that's great!

 

[nevin]

Disagree. This is a team game, and not every PC is going to contribute equally to all situations. And every character has their own judgment and ability as a person to fall back on and help when their class features can't get the job done.

Disagree with you. If magic is an unreliable feature then having a game where the player has to attempt to be a team member by relying solely on luck is simply unfun and unfair. Unless we are going to make all the martial stuff that random as well I consider it simply a bad idea.

 

[Mannahnin]

Disagree with you. If magic is an unreliable feature then having a game where the player has to attempt to be a team member by relying solely on luck is simply unfun and unfair. Unless we are going to make all the martial stuff that random as well I consider it simply a bad idea.

Martials have always had to roll to attack. And hope the enemies roll badly to hit them in turn. Their success has always been a combination of strategy and luck.

Having roll to cast just means it's on more of the same playing field. A mix of strategy (when to deploy spells, when to use Luck tokens) and luck (roll good!).

You could argue that under a roll to cast system casters are more at the mercy of luck, because their spells can run out on any given day, but one could argue just as well that martials are in turn more at the mercy of luck in the form of enemy attack rolls, which casters receive fewer of.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

(although they use playbooks by default to build characters, rather than traditional character creation, although you end up with very recognizable AD&D-adjacent characters)

What doe that mean concretely?

Playbooks is an aspect of PotA I haven't really dove into. I do own Beyond the Wall but haven't got to read it yet.