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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7584584" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Gygax's 'Havens' are consistently weird and I've never fully understood the design of them. I suspect that they are gamist in design (that is to say some metagame considerations guides the design), but exactly what game that they are intended to support I've never been sure.</p><p></p><p>The village of Hommlet in 'T1: Village of Hommlet" shares with the Keep similar features:</p><p></p><p>a) There is a lot of attention lavished on the items of value to be found, and relative to their HD and combat capabilities many of the villagers have more stuff than the bad guys do. That seems weird unless the game is explicitly "rob the villagers".</p><p>b) The village leaders on the other hand are vastly more capable of facing the threats and being the heroes that the party is expected to be than the PCs are. This only makes sense of if the purpose is explicitly to deter a game of "rob the villagers", because otherwise, why does the Castellan need to be a 6th level fighter with magical plate, a magical shield, and a magical sword? See also the 6th level cleric, 8th level M-U, 6th level fighter, 4th level thief, and 7th level Druid that lives in Homlett - who are described as greedy and desirous of adventure but who don't apparently decide to form up and check out the abandoned moathouse despite the low risk and high reward such an adventure would have for such puissant of a group. Who needs the PCs? Why not cut out the middle man?</p><p>c) The two together inherently create a situation where PC's expect "friendly NPCs" to act illogically and even hostile to not only the PCs but to their own interests as NPCs. My guess is that this is to deter the PCs from seeing anything but the dungeon as where the game happens. Yet ironically, this encourages the PCs to see the NPCs as worthy of robbing (because they are hostile idiots) and all the treasure possessed by the NPCs rewards that, so is this in fact some sort of double fake where Gygax indeed expects the party to "rob the bank"?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7584584, member: 4937"] Gygax's 'Havens' are consistently weird and I've never fully understood the design of them. I suspect that they are gamist in design (that is to say some metagame considerations guides the design), but exactly what game that they are intended to support I've never been sure. The village of Hommlet in 'T1: Village of Hommlet" shares with the Keep similar features: a) There is a lot of attention lavished on the items of value to be found, and relative to their HD and combat capabilities many of the villagers have more stuff than the bad guys do. That seems weird unless the game is explicitly "rob the villagers". b) The village leaders on the other hand are vastly more capable of facing the threats and being the heroes that the party is expected to be than the PCs are. This only makes sense of if the purpose is explicitly to deter a game of "rob the villagers", because otherwise, why does the Castellan need to be a 6th level fighter with magical plate, a magical shield, and a magical sword? See also the 6th level cleric, 8th level M-U, 6th level fighter, 4th level thief, and 7th level Druid that lives in Homlett - who are described as greedy and desirous of adventure but who don't apparently decide to form up and check out the abandoned moathouse despite the low risk and high reward such an adventure would have for such puissant of a group. Who needs the PCs? Why not cut out the middle man? c) The two together inherently create a situation where PC's expect "friendly NPCs" to act illogically and even hostile to not only the PCs but to their own interests as NPCs. My guess is that this is to deter the PCs from seeing anything but the dungeon as where the game happens. Yet ironically, this encourages the PCs to see the NPCs as worthy of robbing (because they are hostile idiots) and all the treasure possessed by the NPCs rewards that, so is this in fact some sort of double fake where Gygax indeed expects the party to "rob the bank"? [/QUOTE]
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