Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9623034" data-attributes="member: 42582">I ask again what is the point of play? As I already posted upthread, Moldvay Basic (at p B4) notes that, over time, the players' map will come to more-and-more closely resemble the GM's map. That is one of the goals of play - to create an accurate map of the dungeon. So handing over the map at the start would be self-defeating - the game would become impossible. (One of the beauty's of Moldvay's presentation of the game, and to a lesser extent Gygax's in his AD&D rulebooks, is that they are not coy about the goals of play, and aren't afraid to talk about things in terms of what play actually involves in the real world, as opposed to relying on references to fictional cause and effect.)A rough analogue to open-map classic D&D would be playing bridge with all the cards on display. This is something that is often done as a teaching tool: instead of having to infer to the hidden information from the bidding and the subsequent play, play becomes purely logical (like, say, solving a chess puzzle for white to mate in 3 moves). And so it can be used to explain how the relationships between the cards, the lead, the winning of tricks, etc all works. But it's not really playing bridge.But if the point of RPG play dos not include solving architectural puzzles, then revealing the map can easily make play better. Over the past several years I've used a few pre-prepared maps in my Classic Traveller game (from the modules Shadows, Annic Nova, and Amber to Red), and on each case I haven't bothered to keep them secret from the players. Because puzzling out the architecture of the installation or the plan of the vessel simply wasn't a point of play.To speak more generally: RPGs, in general, don't involve a focus on discovering initially-secret architecture. That's a distinct D&D-ism, and its carryover into other contexts of play is in my view not that helpful. I mean, I have CoC modules with maps and keys in them just like TSR dungeon modules, and it's a bit silly. It just gets in the way of the actual focus of play (in those modules, generally, piecing together bits of information found in written records, by way of interview, or by looking in cupboards).</blockquote>

Verification