Module Design: Questions, not Answers.

[Mattachine]

By the way, Kzach, doing things your way, with an outline, suggestions, and questions, has been done many, many times.

They are called adventure hooks, and WotC ran an entire series in 3e, called Steal This Hook. Likewise, the 4e DMG (and modules) provided them as well. I often use them myself while DMing.

Why did you think those sorts of things had gone away?

 

[Kzach]

Why did you think those sorts of things had gone away?

Sigh.

I made a promise to be a good boy from now on and this is about as nice as I can tolerate being in reply to you.

 

[Mattachine]

Your style, Kzach, does have merit.

I hope that 5e supports that style of play. I think having less complex rules help, and I also think that easily designed monsters with predictable results (like in 4e) help a lot, too. Even better, if the DM is provided with a set of guidelines about the likely range of attacks, defenses, and capabilities of PCs of a given level, then running and creating adventures on the fly will be made easy.

 

[KarinsDad]

I have been playing 2e again for a while and would contend it is simpler and faster in many respects than 3e or 4e. Yes, it is less streamlined, with different dice rolls for things like initiative, nwps, etc. But these are all relatively light mechanics once you understand them. The biggest difference is combat moves so much faster in pre-3e games. There are just fewer moving parts in combat it seems.

Err, what???

Were you using all of the rules?

Like rolling initiative every single round?

And it's generally well known that THAC0 is basically harder to use than attack bonus to hit vs. AC, especially if the DM doesn't want to automatically tell the players the ACs of the monsters.


4E can be more difficult than 2E because of the plethora of conditions and bookkeeping that needs to be done, but 3E is a lot simpler in many ways than 2E. The circular initiative system, 3 save types instead of 5 (where the rules change depending on both type and origin of attack, and on types of magic), smoother to hit mechanics. Earlier versions of the game has slightly more difficult game mechanics. Streamlining of combat is one of the things that 3E did a semi-decent job on (with the exception of a few things like disarm and grapple).

Out of combat, like leveling up, 3E is worse than 2E. But not in combat. D20+x>=AC is easier then D20>=THAC0-AC. They might seem similar, but not if the DM is the one subtracting the AC every time. Granted, the player can add the monster AC to his D20 roll. But I suspect that most groups didn't do that.

 

[Mattachine]

I think that Kzach's annoyance with me came from derailing this thread.

The OP is not about mechanics that make the game faster to play, but about a philosophy wherein every outcome (of a trap, encounter, adventure, or campaign) does not need to be set out ahead of time.

 

[Guest 85555]

Err, what???

Were you using all of the rules?

Like rolling initiative every single round?

Didn't find rolling initiate every round to be much of an issue. Especially with group initatiative rather than individual initiative as the default.

And it's generally well known that THAC0 is basically harder to use than attack bonus to hit vs. AC, especially if the DM doesn't want to automatically tell the players the ACs of the monsters.

THAC0 isn't as hard as people make it out to be. First, many AD&D 2E character sheets have an area for you to calculate your thac0 against all possible armor classes. Because you aren't adding crazy modifiers to the roll, this means there is generally less on the fly math. You pretty much know by looking at your sheet what number you need to roll to hit a given target. I do understand people have reservations about it. And i thought going back to it after years of d20 would be a problem. But I actually found it was quite the opposite.

can be more difficult than 2E because of the plethora of conditions and bookkeeping that needs to be done, but 3E is a lot simpler in many ways than 2E. The circular initiative system, 3 save types instead of 5 (where the rules change depending on both type and origin of attack, and on types of magic), smoother to hit mechanics. Earlier versions of the game has slightly more difficult game mechanics. Streamlining of combat is one of the things that 3E did a semi-decent job on (with the exception of a few things like disarm and grapple).

3E has a rule for everything. 2E has a bunch of purely optional rules which are much less deep than the 3E ones. Take NWPs versus 3E skills. I found these much faster in practice than 3E skills

Out of combat, like leveling up, 3E is worse than 2E. But not in combat. D20+x>=AC is easier then D20>=THAC0-AC. They might seem similar, but not if the DM is the one subtracting the AC every time. Granted, the player can add the monster AC to his D20 roll. But I suspect that most groups didn't do that.

I had zero problem running THAC0 and frankly didn't find it any harder than d20+modifier as a GM (for the players I would argue it was easier because they calculated their thac0s in advance against all ACs). It really wasn't the monster people make it out to be. And the numbers are much more contained. But all of our combats were consistently and without fail much faster than our 3E or 4E combats. A lot of this has to do with other elements I am sure, such as how easy monsters were to hit and how many HP they had. But I ran 3E for years and years, and combats always took a while. This just wasn't the case when we went back to 2E.

 

[Spatula]

So why provide the answers at all?

Because the answers are what a lot of people buy pre-written adventures for. Because they don't have the time and/or energy and/or know-how to come up with their own material.

 

[BobTheNob]

Again, improvising and making rules judgements is not dependent on a particular edition . . . though editions require more improvisation than others.

The thing Im looking for in this is not that improvisation is something you can do by casting aside rules, but one where the rules support improvisation. I dont want a game system where I have to step outside the box to improvise : I want improvisation to work WITHIN the box.

Sure, I could improvise with 2e,3e,4e. But in all cases it involved pushing rules aside, and the more "rules tight" a system becomes, the more this becomes ill-advised. Im more looking for something where improvising IS the rule.

I keep coming back to FATE and the way its rules allowed players to inject narrative. Genius. Maybe not appropriate for D&D, but it opened my mind to thinking that there are ways that RPG design can be done on different lines to what we are currently used to in D&D design space.

In a way its thinking outside the box for deriving design so that DM's and players can improvise WITHOUT needing to leave the box.