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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 9749828" data-attributes="member: 21169">Good to interact with you again, pemerton!I completely agree that Gygax and Pulsipher are describing the same playing style. There is a small difference of emphasis, I think. When Gygax gives advice to DMs his main concern is to avoid making things too easy for the players whereas Pulsipher warns against arbitrary, unpredictable DM-ing. "If players believe that the referee's decisions are unfair or illogical or that he manipulates them or makes things up… the campaign will not be successful."I also completely agree with the point you make in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/dming-philosophy-from-lewis-pulsipher.355801/page-5#post-6313324" target="_blank">this post</a> in the linked thread that, for Pulsipher, a consistent and believable game world serves to support skilled play of the sort he prefers. Challenge-oriented play, D&D "as a game", is, for him, of primary importance.In the 1e AD&D PHB, there's a paragraph on pg. 8 that serves as a nice summary of the advice in the "Successful Adventures" section on pages 107–109.Skilled players always make a point of knowing what they are doing, i.e. they have an objective. They co-operate — particularly at lower levels or at higher ones when they must face some particularly stiff challenge — in order to gain their ends. Superior players will not fight everything they meet, for they realize that wit is as good a weapon as the sword or the spell. When weakened by wounds, or nearly out of spells and vital equipment, a clever party will seek to leave the dungeons in order to rearm themselves. (He who runs away lives to fight another day.) When faced with a difficult situation, skilled players will not attempt endless variations on the same theme; when they find the method of problem solving fails to work, they begin to devise other possible solutions. Finally, good players will refrain from pointless argument and needless harassment of the Dungeon Master when such bog the play of the game down into useless talking. Mistakes are possible, but they are better righted through reason and logic, usually at the finish of play for the day.There is some other advice given on playing one's character near the start of the 1e PHB that seems at odds with the "skilled play" approach advocated elsewhere and in favour of acting-in-character. In his foreword, Mike Carr describes the players as "actors and actresses" in a "fascinating drama". He advises players to "use your persona to play with a special personality all its own." On pg. 7 of the PHB even Gary Gygax writes that a player will become an "artful thespian". They will interact with other players "not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic!" I think it's fair to say that this is Gygax at his least Gygaxian!</blockquote>

Verification