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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6731628" data-attributes="member: 42582">I am talking about those things. [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] and I have both quoted extensively from the major treatise by one of those designers - Gyagx's DMG. I have also quoted from a major participant in the early days in the UK - Roger Musson. Your response is to ignore those quotes, or assert that they also display ignorance of what D&D is.You also have a tendency to state very broad generalisations as if they have very specific meanings, which makes it hard to follow what you are saying.For instance, because I denied that it has ever been a part of mainstream play for the players to try to work out what the random tables are that the GM is using, you assert that I am denying that D&D involves strategic thinking by players. As if the only form of strategic thinking that a D&D player might engage in would be reasoning backwards from encounters experienced and dungeons mapped to the GM's random tables.Here is Gygax on the strategic thinking that the players should engage in (PHB pp 107-109 ):<s>et an objective</s><s> for the adventure. Whether the purpose is so simple as to discover a flight of stairs to the next lowest unexplored level or so difficult as to find and destroy on altar to an alien god, some firm obiective should be established and then adhered to as strongly as possible. . . </s> <s></s> <s>A map is very important because it helps assure that the party will be able to return to the surface. . . .</s> <s></s> <s>Avoid unnecessary encounters. This advice usually means the difference between success and failure when it is followed intelligently. Your party has an objective, and wondering monsters are something which stand between them and it. . . .</s> <s></s> <s>[/i]Do not be sidetracked.[/i] A good referee will have many ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible. The mappers must note a11 such things, and another expedition might be in order another day to investigate or destroy something or some monster, but always stay with what was planned if at all possible, and wait for another day to handle the other matters. This not to say that something hanging like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked must be bypassed, but be relatively certain that what appears to be the case actually is. . . .</s> <s></s> <s>If the party becomes lost, the objective must immediately be changed to discovery of a way out. If the group becomes low on vital equipment or spells, it should turn back. The same is true if wounds and dead members have seriously weakened the group's strength. . . .</s> <s></s> <s>On the other hand, if the party gains its set goal and is still quite strong, some other objectives can be established, and pursuit of them can then be followed.</s><s></s><s></s><s>There is nothing in there about trying to work out what system of dungeon generation the GM is using. And all that advice would be equally sound whether the GM determined everything in the dungeon randomly, or made up all the rooms and their contents quite deliberately, using random determination only for wandering monsters.</s><s></s><s>As I've posted more than once now, I am not looking for an amusing pastime for "telling or retelling imagined events". I am looking for a game which, in virtue of being played, will generate stories - that is to say, will give rise to a telling of imagined events which has a tolerably recognisable dramatic content and structure.</s><s></s><s>Even Gygax, in the passage I quoted, is referring to imagined as well as real things. The maps he talks about, for instance, are real, but the "alien gods" are imaginary. And the players are meant to think of them in imaginary terms - eg it matters to the play of the game whether an altar is to an "alien god" or an ordinary god, and players are expected to engage with those differences.</s><s></s><s>Where my preference differs from Gygaxian skilled play is that I am not that interested in the sort of dungeon exploration and strategy that he describes. The rules of the systems I prefer have different purposes.</s><s></s><s>For reasons I don't understand - maybe you're not familiar with them? - you seem to think that those systems don't involve game play in the sense of testing the player's personal abilities. (Which is what Edwards called "stepping on up". So you seem to agree with him at least on that point.)</s><s></s><s>Here is a self-quote from an actual play post:</s><s></s><s>How is that not a game? There is a rules structure. There is dice rolling to find out what happens (so in that respect it resembles gambling). There is the making of decisions by a player so as to change the probabilities, and those decisions include elements of resource management (in this case, trading of healing surges for bonuses). The player is also having to think about, and within the context of, the fiction - which is the same sort of game-playing as is involved in my daughter setting up her imaginary cake shop. For instance, the player has had to come up with an in-fiction rationale for how he can pull off the stunt that he wants to pull off. This belongs to that time-honoured D&D category of "the creative use of spells".</s><s></s><s>You say that I'm interfering with the fixing of the RPG hobby. I think what I've quoted shows that I'm pretty squarely part of the RPG hobby!</s></blockquote>

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