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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7728965" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], good post, some thoughts that were prompted by reading it:This - or something in the neighbourhood of this - seems to get to the heart of classic D&D/OSR-type RPGing, and why it falls apart as the game moves into the 2nd ed AD&D era and beyond.For that sort of RPGing to work, these changes in gamestate (1) have to be pre-given, and (2) have to be knowable by the players.(1) is (meant to) be achieved by a combination of (a) pre-authored GM notes on the dungeon (that mention the pits, the secret doors, etc) and (b) generic resolution systems. An example of (b) is provided by the rather elaborate rules for evasion and pursuit found in Gygax's DMG.(2) is (meant to) be achieved by a mixture of mechanics (everyone knows you can search for secret doors, with a default 1 in 6 chance of finding one if it's there) and unmediated fiction (there are 10' poles on the equipment list; you can capture an orc and use ESP to learn the layout of the dungeon).If there is a breakdown in either (1) or (2), the players can't change the gamestate. (1) can breakdown even in a dungeon - eg the GM places a clue that the treasure is in the room with the red ceiling, but then forgets to note the ceiling colours in his/her dungeon key; as a result, when the players start trying to collect information about ceiling colours the GM has to just make it up.(1) really starts to creak in classic D&D wilderness adventuring - <a href="https://plus.google.com/+lukecrane/posts/Q8qRhCw7az5" target="_blank">Luke Crane has commented on this</a>, in the context of playing Moldvay Basic:I'm nervous about the transition to the wilderness style of adventure, since the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set. . . . [W]hile the original designers may have wanted an inclusive and expansive design, their best rules focused on underground exploration and stealing treasure. . . . The Basic D&D line is a product line. As you know, each successive product attempted to reintegrate into the game the features [eg wilderness adventuring, aerial and naval combat] present in the earliest editions. My assertion is that none of those rules were as well-designed or well-supported as those for the core activity of dungeon crawling. . . . I understand that the designers may have thought their game could do anything. I understand they may have wanted to bend it to a variety of circumstances, but in truth their design had narrow application. It does most things poorly, and a few things exceedingly wellWilderness adventuring, even in the ecologically and culturally sparse wildernesses of classic D&D, makes (1) virtually impossible, and the random tables that are substituted in make (2) almost impossible on the (non-GM) player side. Once we get to the "living, breathing worlds" beloved of 2nd ed-era D&D players, (1) and (2) are both gone completely, and the sort of situation you decribe becomes more and more common. Even when the game itself is confined to a pre-authored dungeon, the sorts of devices (like swords and wands with detection powers) that used to underpin (2) have been dropped from the game; and that's even before we get to the advocacy of GM fiat to manage outcomes and prevent the players "running roughshod" over the campaign world (as seen eg in the discussion of the infamous chamberlain on these boards, back in the day).</blockquote>

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