D&D General In defence of Grognardism

[dragoner]

While technically correct, I don't think it's valid to say "Hey, the game wouldn't be around without us buying the books, you should thank us!" anymore than it is for Christopher Columbus (that is, if he wasn't dead) to say "Hey, I 'discovered' the Americas, all of you who are descended from Europeans that emigrated to this country should thank me!"

That's not really a reason for praise. I'm a bit grateful for that, as I really like D&D and am thankful that it's still around, but this still sits funny with me, like it would for someone that was adopted who met their biological parent for the first time, only for the parent to say, "You should thank me! You wouldn't even be born if it weren't for me! Ignore that bit about me abandoning you for 2 decades, you should be grateful!".

See my point?

"One day, if you play you cards right, all this will be yours." Like I said, the seats were cheap, all we had to do was not die or something. Not only is there grumbling, there is also extra added grunting too, such as when getting up from the couch.

 

[Eltab]

While technically correct, I don't think it's valid to say "Hey, the game wouldn't be around without us buying the books, you should thank us!" anymore than it is for Christopher Columbus (that is, if he wasn't dead) to say "Hey, I 'discovered' the Americas, all of you who are descended from Europeans that emigrated to this country should thank me!"

That's not really a reason for praise. I'm a bit grateful for that, as I really like D&D and am thankful that it's still around, but this still sits funny with me, like it would for someone that was adopted who met their biological parent for the first time, only for the parent to say, "You should thank me! You wouldn't even be born if it weren't for me! Ignore that bit about me abandoning you for 2 decades, you should be grateful!".

See my point?

One of the classic "the problem with Grognards" complaints is the notion that we expect subservient behavior from everybody else.
We don't. We expect you to pick up the game and have fun !

 

[Malmuria]

Several roleplaying games of the 1980s dealt directly with the Cold War, or the possible consequences if it turned hot – Paranoia (1984), Twilight 2000 (1984), and The Price of Freedom (1986). This post is about the reviews of the latter two in the British roleplaying magazine, White Dwarf, and subsequent debates in its letters pages.

Twilight 2000 is set in Europe two years after a nuclear exchange. The PCs are American soldiers or their allies. Marcus L Rowland's review in White Dwarf #68 (1985):

While the system is playable, the moral stance and attitudes it exemplifies are fairly loathsome. The rules favour the style of behaviour found in 'fun' war films; player characters will occasionally get killed (but not terribly often)... There are rules for infection and radiation poisoning, but they aren't nearly harsh enough. The setting, two years after the last nuclear weapon was used, has evidently been designed to avoid showing the worst effects of the bomb; the random encounters don't include civilians suffering from third degree radiation burns, blind children, and the hideously dead and dying victims of blast and heat. Starvation and plague are occasionally mentioned, with the implication that characters can always use their weapons to get food and medicines...​

​

The suggested theme (which beautifully explains the attitude of this game) is to 'return home' to America: Europe evidently isn't worth anyone's time or effort. The rules never say anything about the possibility of rebuilding settlements, negotiating local peace treaties, or doing anything else to start civilisation working again. The box blurb says 'They were sent to save Europe. . . Now they're fighting to save themselves', and it's evident that this game has been written by and for Americans, with little or no understanding of European attitudes or desires.​

A letter from Tom Conway in White Dwarf #71 (1985) agreed with Rowland: "Congrats to Marcus L Rowland for sticking the boot in the Americanised 'Battlefield Europe' views of Twilight 2000 – it was asking for it!"

If it's true that American roleplaying games were capable of exerting influence on British public opinion during the Cold War, changing attitudes to be more in favour of the US, then Twilight 2000 would have to be considered a failure of soft power, at least on Rowland and Conway.

The Price of Freedom is about US resistance to a Soviet invasion. Ashley Shepherd's review in White Dwarf #86 (1987) is mostly positive. Its presentation is "excellent", game system "competent", and GM-ing advice "some of the best to appear in any game." But Shepherd strikes a different tone regarding the game's message:

The whole presentation of the game is far from that of Twilight 2000, which presented a terrible world picture, but did so in a relatively neutral way. Price drops all pretence of being a neutral game system: 'Go out and kill them Commies!' is the message.​

​

I have the feeling that Price is intended to be taken as a tongue-in-cheek game. At least, I hope it is…​

The game was debated in the letters page of White Dwarf #87. Alan Reid wrote:

Your reviewer cheerfully mentions that the game mainly involves killing 'commies'; these might be members of an alien species fit only to be killed in this game, but in reality the millions of people who might call themselves, or might be called, communists are human beings. The game promotes a casual disregard for human life and lends itself to the justification of all manner of repression, torture and massacre in the real world, by effectively branding anyone who might come within a certain range of political views as sub-human.​

​

You may reply that the game is really tongue-in-cheek; if so, it is not very detectable from the advertising.​

Marc Gascoigne, the letters page editor, added:

Having both read Price and talked to its author, Greg Costikyan, I still find myself rather disturbed by its premises and assumptions. Sure, it's a game where people take on personas, like actors, but I don’t happen to like the characters they are forced to adopt. I personally feel it is a fantasy game, but a very unpleasant one. Obviously some of our correspondents disagree. We've had quite a few indignant letters defending both sides of the argument, but there is one very interesting common point which they all seem to share, and it is this: regardless of whether the game is fantasy or a disguised political statement, you'd have to be very, very stupid to spend your money actually buying The Price of Freedom. The designer of the game has admitted that he wrote this game purely and simply to make money, to prey on the gullibility of right-thinking American gamers, and I say good luck to him. If people really want to buy the game that's their look-out.​

Gascoigne was removed from his position at White Dwarf for this response, though he continued to work for Games Workshop. The next issue features a reply from Costikyan, several positive letters, all from Americans, and an apology to Costikyan from the editor, Mike Brunton: "Apologies for the tone that was taken in the editorial comment. Fact is, Greg is one of the best designers in the biz."

As with Twilight 2000, I'm not sure any of this could be seen as a victory for American soft power.

Very interesting!

Looking these up further, I found this review (coincidentally, considering the title of this thread, from Grognardia):

In an amusingly titled section of the rules called "A Note to Liberal Readers," Costikyan asks his readers to "think of the game as The Lord of the Rings meets William F. Buckley" -- in short a fantasy roleplaying game, but with an Evil Empire and "orcs" grounded at least partly in the real world. Costikyan goes on to say, "The question isn't whether or not such a terrible thing could happen, but whether or not you could enjoy pretending it has." My limited experience suggests that a lot of gamers could not bring themselves to do so. Indeed, I met many who seemed to believe that The Price of Freedom was deadly serious, a kind of right-wing fever dream given life as an RPG. How anyone familiar with Greg Costikyan's earlier work could think such a thing beggars the imagination, but there it is.

Meanwhile, Free League is publishing Twilight 2000 4e in September, using the same system as the one from Aliens:

Twilight: 2000 - Free League Publishing

freeleaguepublishing.com

I feel like the coldwar lends itself to strategy type games (this might be influenced by Wargames (the movie)). But maybe a spy thriller rpg could have interesting cold war themes, and post apocalypse is of course always on the table.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We expect you to pick up the game and have fun !

You’re not the boss of me!

 

[GreyLord]

I feel like the coldwar lends itself to strategy type games (this might be influenced by Wargames (the movie)). But maybe a spy thriller rpg could have interesting cold war themes, and post apocalypse is of course always on the table.

One should try Supremacy (board game). It's amazing how many times everyone ends up nuking the planet...

Only goes to show we were lucky we somehow avoided that fate...if Supremacy is any indication...there are probably 75% of the alternate realities out there that got nuked to annihilation and everyone on that Earth is dead.

 

[Nefermandias]

I think you were quoting me. My point was survival is only one kind of challenge. Others exists.

Even accepting that survival is the primary challenge of old-school D&D, there's evidence that waned over time when you look at all the lethality-mitigation rules that got adopted both informally (max HP at 1st level, "we start at level 3") and formally ('death's door" rules, higher stat generation methods, various spells to help PC survive early levels) as you move from Original to AD&D 2e.

Then there's the nature that challenge itself. A lot of low level survival comes down to pure dumb luck in OD&D/AD&D. Not the 'smart play' that got talked up in OSR rhetoric. What can a group do about poisonous monsters until somebody makes 7th level as cleric? Which I'm about to do in our Labyrinth Lord campaign, BTW.

In some ways, later editions allow for smarter play because lower-level PCs are assumed to have access to more of the tools they need. So it becomes a logistical problem to solve, not just a matter of rolling high on a d20...

That's irrelevant to what I said and quite frankly, a bit pedantic.

Older editions = more lethal.

I thoughts it was clear enough in my first post.

 

[Fanaelialae]

That's irrelevant to what I said and quite frankly, a bit pedantic.

Older editions = more lethal.

I thoughts it was clear enough in my first post.

IME, lethality and challenge both have more to do with how the DM runs the game, irrespective of edition.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

IME, lethality and challenge both have more to do with how the DM runs the game, irrespective of edition.

I mean, I don't think it's really arguable that earlier editions both had mathematics that favored a higher likelihood of death (lower HP, higher monster damage, save-or-die effects...sometimes no-save-just-die effects...) and advice/presentation targeted at DMs that encouraged pursuing such things.

There is such a thing as a system that either supports, or works against, the intended goal of using it.

Edit: And things like the "character funnel" were developed specifically to speed up the "one lucky character makes it out" process, so players could get to the part where a character was a bit more likely to stick around while still keeping the "harrowing survival" experience that they enjoyed from yesteryear.

 

[Nefermandias]

I mean, I don't think it's really arguable that earlier editions both had mathematics that favored a higher likelihood of death (lower HP, higher monster damage, save-or-die effects...sometimes no-save-just-die effects...) and advice/presentation targeted at DMs that encouraged pursuing such things.

There is such a thing as a system that either supports, or works against, the intended goal of using it.

I can't believe how hard people push back against this fact every time I bring it up
Thank you.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I mean, I don't think it's really arguable that earlier editions both had mathematics that favored a higher likelihood of death (lower HP, higher monster damage, save-or-die effects...sometimes no-save-just-die effects...) and advice/presentation targeted at DMs that encouraged pursuing such things.

There is such a thing as a system that either supports, or works against, the intended goal of using it.

Edit: And things like the "character funnel" were developed specifically to speed up the "one lucky character makes it out" process, so players could get to the part where a character was a bit more likely to stick around while still keeping the "harrowing survival" experience that they enjoyed from yesteryear.

We can talk about the white room of abstract systems, or we can talk about how those systems were actually used at the table.

I've played BECMI, 2e, 3e, 3.5, 4e, and 5e. I've played in BECMI and 2e games that were low/no lethality. I've played in later editions that were very high lethality. I stand by the idea that it's more about the DM than the edition. Granted, I've also played earlier edition games that were high lethality, and later edition campaigns that were low lethality. It comes down to the DM more than any other factor IME.

If you want to argue that earlier editions had a higher prevalence of random death (where it's entirely up to the dice and the player doesn't have much input in the process beyond rolling) then sure, I'd agree with that.

That the random lethality of earlier editions was such that it made the game more challenging than later editions? No, I don't agree with that.

Random lethality is a particular type of lethality, but it isn't inherently more challenging than other forms of lethality. In fact, I would argue it is inherently less challenging, since it is entirely based upon luck, rather than skill. Any edition can be run in a lethal or non-lethal manner, depending on the DM.