Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Introducing Complications Without Forcing Players to Play the "Mother May I?" Game
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 7562347" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>One thing people do often overlook is how a lack of internet and rules that were not always 100% clear, meant people ran these games very differently sometimes. I remember a GM in my area who mapped out his game world into an insane level of detail (like truly deeply granular---here is a 30 mile hex, here is a map of each of the ten miles, then 1, then maps of all the little locations). He wasn't doing it wrong, he was just doing it on a level of detail no one I knew engaged in. It was like computer sim level detail. I knew another group that had two GMs. There were often vastly different interpretations of the same rule. Gaming styles were pretty varied from one group to the next. Some people ran concrete linear adventures, some people just let you lose in the game world, etc. Some groups had an adversarial GM approach. Each game group felt like a small island of gaming culture, isolated from others. I had one GM who would just put a map on the table and ask where we wanted to go. I had another GM who planned everything out like a story. At the time, I tended to run more monster of the week type adventures. And in terms of mechanics and system, even for a game like D&D, things were all over the place. Even in the 90s things were not as cut and dry as people often remember. When 2E came out, we still used lots of the 1E material. I had a friend who ran TORG, but half the time he ran it using GURPS (though he retained the Drama Deck). </p><p></p><p>I think traditional can mean so many different things in those kinds of conversations. Any time you drill down into a term like that, and particularly if you really go back and examine stuff closely, there will be surprises to anyone carrying around a simplified memory of what is going on. This was exactly my experience when I tried 2E again for example. I had a bunch of memories about the system and the era. I remembered it being clunky, I remembered it being heavily about the GM forcing a story on the players, etc. But when I went back and re-read all teh Ravenloft material, all the relevant complete books and core books, I realized I was greatly simplifying the memory. For example, the GM forcing a story on the players, wasn't nearly as cut and dry or as ubiquitous as I recalled (and it really varied a lot from product to product). It was present. It just was definitely not there day 1, and it depended on the product line, the writer, and the year. Some modules were actually quite open and unusual (again, I highly recommend looking at Feast of Goblyns for example, which has some really cool ideas in it). But other modules were guilty of some heavy, heavy railroading. Castles Forlorn had some really interesting stuff in it too. There was one module, which was actually rather good, called The Created (not to be confused with the Van Richter Guide to the Created). That module had a great premise and concept, some really cool scenarios, but included some massive story railroads. There is even one part of the module where the text says flat out that an NPC simply can't die no matter what the PCs do (and if I recall he is basically just a normal man). </p><p></p><p>Thinking back to other games from that period, many of them don't fit neatly into the concept of 'traditional RPG' people carry in their head. Especially since a lot of other games that came out were a response to D&D, so they often tried to do things very differently.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 7562347, member: 85555"] One thing people do often overlook is how a lack of internet and rules that were not always 100% clear, meant people ran these games very differently sometimes. I remember a GM in my area who mapped out his game world into an insane level of detail (like truly deeply granular---here is a 30 mile hex, here is a map of each of the ten miles, then 1, then maps of all the little locations). He wasn't doing it wrong, he was just doing it on a level of detail no one I knew engaged in. It was like computer sim level detail. I knew another group that had two GMs. There were often vastly different interpretations of the same rule. Gaming styles were pretty varied from one group to the next. Some people ran concrete linear adventures, some people just let you lose in the game world, etc. Some groups had an adversarial GM approach. Each game group felt like a small island of gaming culture, isolated from others. I had one GM who would just put a map on the table and ask where we wanted to go. I had another GM who planned everything out like a story. At the time, I tended to run more monster of the week type adventures. And in terms of mechanics and system, even for a game like D&D, things were all over the place. Even in the 90s things were not as cut and dry as people often remember. When 2E came out, we still used lots of the 1E material. I had a friend who ran TORG, but half the time he ran it using GURPS (though he retained the Drama Deck). I think traditional can mean so many different things in those kinds of conversations. Any time you drill down into a term like that, and particularly if you really go back and examine stuff closely, there will be surprises to anyone carrying around a simplified memory of what is going on. This was exactly my experience when I tried 2E again for example. I had a bunch of memories about the system and the era. I remembered it being clunky, I remembered it being heavily about the GM forcing a story on the players, etc. But when I went back and re-read all teh Ravenloft material, all the relevant complete books and core books, I realized I was greatly simplifying the memory. For example, the GM forcing a story on the players, wasn't nearly as cut and dry or as ubiquitous as I recalled (and it really varied a lot from product to product). It was present. It just was definitely not there day 1, and it depended on the product line, the writer, and the year. Some modules were actually quite open and unusual (again, I highly recommend looking at Feast of Goblyns for example, which has some really cool ideas in it). But other modules were guilty of some heavy, heavy railroading. Castles Forlorn had some really interesting stuff in it too. There was one module, which was actually rather good, called The Created (not to be confused with the Van Richter Guide to the Created). That module had a great premise and concept, some really cool scenarios, but included some massive story railroads. There is even one part of the module where the text says flat out that an NPC simply can't die no matter what the PCs do (and if I recall he is basically just a normal man). Thinking back to other games from that period, many of them don't fit neatly into the concept of 'traditional RPG' people carry in their head. Especially since a lot of other games that came out were a response to D&D, so they often tried to do things very differently. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Introducing Complications Without Forcing Players to Play the "Mother May I?" Game
Top