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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6732023" data-attributes="member: 3192">I think we're working from different vocabularies. That's why this thread might be useful rather than perhaps a "calling out"?<s>What you are quoting is strategic advice for the players. It's like reading a strategy guide for Chess or any other wargame. It's isn't rules, but helpful insight for playing the game more capably. </s><s></s><s>1. As he is saying, Players set their objectives in D&D, not the DM. The DM must not change anything regardless of these decisions.</s><s></s><s>2. Recording what you learn (mapping) is generally useful in any game so heavily focused on memory, D&D a code breaking game, but not a requirement of play.</s><s></s><s>3. Avoiding encounters is only one goal. Seeking out encounters, even specific creatures is a large part of D&D too. Both require players to decipher the maze they are in based on all sorts of factors the DM is using. Population density. Environmentally-preferred habitats by creatures. % in lair vs. out wandering. Etc. This is directly the players "trying to work out what system of dungeon generation the GM is using".</s><s></s><s>4. "A good referee will have many ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible." (Gygax) - This doesn't mean the GM is actively improvising actions in competition with the players (though it is known Gary would do things like that). It means the map will be filled with game challenges, but new discoveries on it can be as much a source of distraction as interest. Succeed at what you have prepared yourself to succeed at. I.e. Stay Focused, as general play advice.</s><s></s><s>5. Gaming the maze is exactly why delving is what D&D players do. They run from encounters, they take short trips into dungeons as they need to cover all the needs their characters have to survive and succeed. Getting lost, even on a grassy plain, can be days or weeks of difficulty and use up all sorts of hard won wealth. (Hell, with OS you could die in a big enough field even with no wandering encounters)</s><s></s><s>6. If you have an easy success, peek around. All information the DM is giving is treasure. (They are revealing what is possible within the system even in world design alone).</s><s></s><s>Everything the DM does to create that map is rule following. Everything the DM is allowed to tell the players is from that map. The system is the game. It is an algorithm that results in a function map in which the playable pattern is inherent. Everything the players do to game the game as a design is deciphering those repeating patterns the DM uses to generate a design. (And in so many, many ways, how the proverbial "dungeon" is stocked)</s><s></s><s>Players are playing a massive grand strategy system that enables results in many minor skirmishes, treasure finds, magic explorations, dialogues, and chances for, well, outright robbery. That's because it isn't a simulation of "everything" anyone could ever think of, but solely systems covering everything relevant to the roles (class) players are expected to play. Their improvement through play of the game is directly related to their game score, per role, and thereby level. This is why Munchkins are people who showed up at a game with a 9th level character without no working understanding of the game. They didn't play that character in a game which led them to increasing their own game mastery of it. They just showed up at another gaming group claiming the character was legitimate. (That no campaign should use the same system wasn't en vogue then I believe, given the proclamation of the official "real D&D" AD&D rules to allow tournament and cross group play. I don't believe that is functionally possible.)</s><s></s><s>Quite frankly, I don't see how any of the advice you listed could in any way be considered credible in an entirely improvised game that had no underlying design for players to game. What are you seeing in those points?</s><s></s><s>Fair enough. </s><s></s><s>Players' imagination in D&D are being tested. That's because their capability to imagine a highly complex design and remember it directly relates to their ability to play the game successfully. Don't pay attention, and you lose out. All the things Gary is referring to are real things in that they are really on a gameboard before play begins. If you want an "Alien God" you need to design what deity and alien mean in your game prior to play - or the players during campaign creation, if they want it added. In that way D&D is a symbolic language referring not to our world, but the game world/board. All the common language is jargon to it.</s><s></s><s>All game play is skill play. That is the purpose of game design, to enable players to improve themselves against the structure of the game.</s><s></s><s>Playing many Indie games to achieve ends within their designs may enable actual game play for players seeking those ends. I think it's a case by case judgment. But almost all of those games' rules do not refer to a design to be played by the players, but a collaborative narrative to be invented by all participants. The games can be very tight, well balanced systems. But they are still storygames focusing on making up stories which are not part of the game system rather than playing the actual game which is. </s><s></s><s>The key difference here is invention rather than discovery. D&D players are involved endless Eureka moments as their comprehension of the underlying pattern comes together over and over. That the design is so gargantuan in 1000 hour games (wargames too) of such complexity is the pleasure of such moments.  That happens by learning the game through play. (The game of Chess, card games, boardgames, etc...) That everything that ever happened in the entire length of the campaign informs, relates, and may even effect everything else that ever happens for the rest of the campaign is the awe inspiring accomplishment of D&D design.   ---Something missing in non-design, improv sessions called games.</s><s></s><s>What game time and entropy (chaos) are in the D&D game should be understood by the DM for their own system. That may sound like a non sequitur, but if you've been building functional D&D world designs, you know these come up. The result of the effect your player is proposing is still limited to what is possible within the system. If it isn't, the Player's explanation would need to be described until such terms are covered by the game and then proper results could be determined. If "entropy" is already a design element in the game, one that can be swapped out according to game rules, then those suppositions by the player were him sussing out the pre-existing game design. However, I'm guessing they weren't so. That you were simply adding an untested, unbalanced game effect into the system by the player's rationale rather than what was possible in the game. </s><s></s><s>While there is a lot of terminology in your story about what happened, symbols that could relate to design elements, playing a broken game system until anyone involved "just makes it up" is still disabling of game play. That this was a basic understanding of what all games could not do was not missed by Gygax. I think this understanding not only enabled him to use previous and create highly insightful game mechanics, but also drove him to create as many encompassing subsystems as he did.</s><s></s><s>Just for fun, my understanding would be absolute entropy is not just the end of time, but the end of everything. Entropy of is the absencing of stuff. It's like coming to the edge of the universe. There isn't even space beyond. There is no "beyond". IMO, such a powerful effect would require very high level ability and not be "swappable" for alternate game damage or conditions or however the system you used worked. (Terminology generalizations aren't the actual design for D&D anyways, but useful abstractions for fast calculations by the DM. There is supposed to be an actual design pattern underlying those scores and abilities)</s><s></s><s>There is no game design the rules are referring to, the field of play. The actual design upon which a person moves themselves (a sport) or a piece of the design. Cards are their own field. So too are game boards and the pieces upon them. I feel like in your game players are projecting their desires and gaming for the right to have their imaginings be added to the "game", i.e. narrative. They are not attempting to decipher, discover, and game the system based upon their current understanding of it. </s><s></s><s>Can such actual gaming happen in part with a partial system? Yes, but any game that allows players to add elements to it is about adding rules specifically, not "narrative content". That way new rules can be accounted for by players in planning their future strategies. Not to mention new rules cannot usually contradict old rules. </s><s></s><s>A new spell or weapon in D&D would require the DM to assign all the design elements for it to be covered by the rules. Take a new weapon for example, Size, shape, weight, substance, length, sharpness/pointedness/flatness, hit points, AC, saves, etc., etc. And then the player needs to playtest the item in the system to see how it ranks compared to others. Not to mention how it was created in the game world and the costs commonly involved, material components, crafting effects tools must do... Like everything else in D&D, that stuff can be later abstracted for quick judgements. We know it requires steel, at this level we don't need to get hung up on the quality of the steel. (I got carried away here)</s><s></s><s>No, every caster casting a spell is learning the effects of what that spell does in a particular game situation based upon the current design of the board behind the screen. Gravity pulls the ice wall down on people. We know the stats for the people, for the ice wall, and how high it was cast above them (ask when necessary). In a highly complex game there may be several more factors for the DM to keep track of too. But that scale is up to the individual DM. Creativity for D&D players means doing something in a personally novel way and learning what that means in the pre-existing game, not making stuff up and playing a game for the right to say it.  The former increases player knowledge of viable game strategies and is vital to scoring (XP) as a player.</s><s></s><s>To me, what is sounds like you were doing applied to D&D was allowing a player to create a spell without study, cost, or time requirement - which is built in to so you can do work out of session to test the balance of such. Or whether they could even create such a level of effect in the first place.</s><s></s><s>I'm saying the RPG hobby has been usurped by the story making hobby. Anyone can choose to look for recognition of that fact and stop perpetuating it.</s></blockquote>

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