That's right. But this is our games only. When we did Greyhawk Supplement #1 which intros the Paladin (and Thief) this left it up to straight rolls from players in other games. By then it was becoming intuited, I feel, that some of these rolls had to be discarded. The "Argh" Rule by both Gary and myself was when players rolled 3 1's, "Just roll that over" was our staple response.
And yet the only PCs that are long remembered from the earliest days of my campaigns (the mid 70's) were exactly the ones with some horrible stat, like Gilladian the Dwarf, with, IIRC a 4 INT and a 3 WIS (but survived to max level for a dwarf fighter) and was stupider than the party Mule, technically. There was also 'Grog' the half-orc (I think later it was retconned to half-ogre) that was equally dim, but had 18/00 strength. I honestly cannot even remember the names of the supposed 'good' characters, except there was one that was so ridiculous it qualified for 1e Bard and ended being almost godlike in power due to the way hit points for bards worked (you could get well over 100 hit points without much trouble if you had high CON).
Well, I made no claim to best stats/worst stats. In Brian Blume's short-lived game (late '74) I elected to play a dwarf and proceeded to roll a 4 intelligence for him. Brian said I could roll over but I decided to keep it and name him "Dorf". I RPd him to the hilt. Many funny parts, such as sneaking into the inner palace and Dorf is asked by the sentry what the password is, etc. Short-lived PC/Game, lots of fun and a few sterling memories.
It was a card on a single common sheet that got left in the set by accident when the change was made from a standalone set with a different back to a standard set. It was not a rare by design, so it does not support your argument that rares are not designed to be balanced with each other.
My argument also doesn’t rely on rares being balanced against each other. The point is, in the context of a limited format, rarity is a balancing factor. Rare cards are able to be more powerful and “bomby” because they are more rare. You couldn’t have a card like Jace the Mindsculptor at common, it would ruin limited. But at rare, it’s a powerful bomb that certainly helps someone who pulls it (if their pool supports a double blue at CMC4, which is far from a given) but it isn’t going to make your deck the best in the pod by itself.
In a play format where rarity doesn’t actually limit access? Absolutely. If there’s nothing stopping you from getting as many copies as you want of whatever cards you want, rarity isn’t a factor at all. This is analogous to the way D&D is typically played, where you can re-roll stats until you’re satisfied with the array you get, or use alternate stat generation methods that give you a better chance at higher scores. In this case, stat requirements are a non-factor. And if the stat generation methods are strictly enforced, it can in fact be very unbalancing. Like if everyone just got a single card from a Magic pack, obviously the player who got the one rare in the pack would have a big advantage over everyone else.
What are you talking about??
1e’s design was deeply flawed, I don’t deny that. It was highly idiosyncratic to the way Gary and his group played, and there is value in trying to understand why he made the decisions he did. The question is not “is this objectively good or bad design?” It’s “what was the context in which this design choice made sense to Gary?” Context is extremely important to game design, as what is “good” or “bad” depends very heavily on what you are trying to accomplish. Rarity as balance didn’t work for the way most people actually played D&D, just like it didn’t work for constricted Magic: the Gathering. But, the way most people actually played D&D wasn’t the way Gary imagined them playing it, just like the way most people actually played Magic wasn’t the way Richard Garfield imagined them playing it. And that’s ok! WotC was smart to move away from that type of design in favor of balance between each individual characters, because that was what their customers wanted. But it’s still valuable to understand the context Gary and Richard we’re designing for and why they made the decisions they did. Because, hey, maybe some folks want to play Limited, or a troupe game, and maybe in that context, some of the old designs would actually have merit.
www.enworld.org
Because it's fascinating for what it says if you read between the lines, at least to me.
I mean... The question was rhetorical, we pretty well know the answer.For posterity we have Gary's answers on several questions asked in this thread under the user name Col_Pladoh:
TSR - Q&A with Gary Gygax
This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.
LOL! Sure but not everyone knows. ;-)
Haha wow. With how passionate people get these days about orcs just being always-evil. Can you imagine how a setting where all this was made textually explicit would be received nowadays?Because it's fascinating for what it says if you read between the lines, at least to me.
Recently, I went back and re-read the AD&D 1E PHB, DMG, MM, and Deities & Demigods for the pertinent information about orcs, and realized something that I hadn't fully grasped before. Both the DMG (page 38) and Deities & Demigods (page 9) outline how clerics and druids receive higher-level spells from progressively more powerful sources. 1st- and 2nd-level spells come from their religious teachings alone, needing no higher faith. 3rd-, 4th, and 5th-level spells come from the servants of their deity (which Deities & Demigods tells us may be as strong as demigods themselves). 6th- and 7th-level spells come from their deity personally (which D&Dg also clarifies further, saying that lesser gods can grant 6th-level spells and greater gods can grant 7th-level spells).
So far, so good, right?
Now, the Monster Manual is silent on the issue of orcs and divine spellcasters. But D&Dg only has one god for orcs, that being Gruumsh. In fact, this is the case for all PC demihumans, since they wouldn't get their pantheons expanded until a series of articles from Roger Moore in Dragon magazine in 1982. So what you have is a large number of human deities who are very interested in currying favor among humans, but none of whom are actually the racial creator god of humans; contrast this with the small number of demihuman creator deities who don't care very much about their creations.
Why do I say that they don't care about their creations? Well, let's look at the PHB and DMG. The DMG section on Tribal Spellcasters (p. 40) notes that, at most, shamans will be able to cast clerical spells of 4th level. So in other words, the indicated races - bugbears, giants, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizardmen, and orcs - are basically being given a few spells by the servants of their deity, with their deity apparently not wanting to personally bother with them. Even the divine servants seem begrudging in what they grant, since the section specifies that only certain spells will be given. (Ettins, ogres, troglodytes, and trolls are disregarded even by their gods' divine servants, since they can't become shamans of greater than 3rd level, which means they can't progress above 2nd-level spells, which you'll recall are granted from religious practices alone).
Now, take a look at the level-limit restrictions in the PHB (page 14):
All of a sudden, we can see that there's a lot of subtext going on here! While it's no surprise that all the gods want human servitors, most don't seem to trust half-elves very much, with their servants barely granting them access to 3rd-level spells; only nature gods are content to fully welcome them into the fold (i.e. as druids).
And half-elves are the success story among demihumans. No god wants halfling clerics at all for some reason, and the servants of nature gods will only give them modest spells. The same thing is true for elves, dwarves, and gnomes who become clerics (and can't become druids at all); apparently their gods can't be bothered to give them any divine magic, and their servants will only grant them a modest number of spells (albeit a wider selection than humanoid shamans receive); that they can only be PCs suggests that those demihuman gods have religious strictures against adventuring, to boot.
But half-orcs? They're shut out by everyone. Only able to progress to 4th level as clerics, they can't ever receive more than 2nd-level spells, the kind you get from religious rites only. Even full-blooded orcs can coax a few spells out of Gruumsh's servants, but half-orcs are apparently too human for Gruumsh's servitors, and too orc for those of the human gods.
Half-orcs, under the game rules, are spiritually unclean.
It's a fascinating look at the world as presented under the game rules, far more than a bland "anyone can be any class to any level" take that later editions have, and this kind of reading between the lines to reveal hidden truths about the game world is why I still hold earlier editions of D&D in such high regard.
