Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 4501925" data-attributes="member: 7635">Perhaps its generational, but I started in 2e (after a quick and torrid affair with Rules Cyclopedia D&D) and found the following true of my games as well as most, if not all, of the people I played with*1: Combat was an enjoyable premise. While not every game had to feature it heavily (or at all), a combat typically was something fun to do.2: Combat was typically between roughly even sides. Hence the world GAME in Role-Playing Game, as apposed to "Fantasy World Simulator". It meant adventures for 1st level PCs feature kobolds, 6th level feature gnolls, 10th level feature giants, and 15th level feature demons. That's not to say all fights were fair, or even winnable, just most DMs I knew didn't throw unreasonable challenges at PCs, because if they did, they knew that was the end of the campaign, and they'd rather avoid pointless TPKs in order to keep a game going.3: Combat was the primary method of acquiring XP. There was no GP = XP in 2e on, so they only way to gain XP was to fight monsters and gain story/RP awards. You avoided a fight because you thought it was death, but avoiding many fights meant stagnant level growth.4: A later feature (D&D 3e and on) was that we didn't have a lot of small combats, but a few meaningful ones (this came from the sheer amount of time needed to run 3e combat). This lead to fights that were hard, but winnable (see 2) and not a lot of random or pointless encounters. A foe too hard was wasted breath. A foe too easy was wasted time. Hence, most DMs didn't bother with fights unless they were interesting and worthwhile fights.5: We mostly were self-taught DMs, and we learned a lot from modules. Most of the modules I fondly recall (White Plume Mountain, Keep of the Borderlands, Shattered Circle) were combat heavy. When in Rome...6: Our groups tended toward heroism, not selfish mercenary-ism. Sure, we had an occasional cynical merc, but most of our group liked heroic knights, paladins, rangers, clerics of righteous deities, and even honorable thieves. As such, we did use smart tactics (ambushes, terrain advantages, wolf-pack tactics, etc) but if there was a dragon terrorizing the countryside, you damn well knew we were going to fight it, not head to the next country. 7: (Here it comes). Most of my generation was raised on video games, particularly JRPGs (Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, etc). Running from monsters in those games was a stupid thing to do, since that was the ONLY way to gain XP/GP. (Running in FF often cost you GP). As such, when you got into an encounter, you fought it, since that was how you advanced. FWIW, we never used mercenaries/henchmen/followers either, and most of our group cared nothing for followers you gained at 9th/10th level. We were adventurers and heroes, and enjoyed that style of game.</blockquote>

Verification