Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8276565" data-attributes="member: 6790260">[Citation needed]Prove it. Show that a crunchy system causes players to have less ingenuity or "less room for skilled play." And if you can't do that, consider whether that is part of why this topic tends to be controversial.Caveat: despite most of this being true and allegedly made explicitly known, many, MANY groups did exactly the opposite. Many groups treated it as something to be dropped into an ordinary campaign with their "main" characters rather than intentionally throwaway ones.And it's not like that attitude is unprecedented. Never forget that Melf, of acid arrow fame, was called that because his player never bothered to add more than "M elf" to the top of his sheet. That is, "Melf" isn't a name; it's just treating "M[ale] elf" as though it were one.Did all characters--or even most of them--work that way? Probably not. Was this ultra-meatgrinder module a valid application of the intended process of play? Maybe, maybe not: Gygax is somewhat notorious for doing or saying seemingly conflicting things depending on source cited. As noted, Tomb of Horrors was explicitly NOT meant to represent ordinary play...but was then USED as ordinary play by a lot of people, very proudly. Likewise, proponents of the old-school "skilled play" style often cite that challenges should have the potential to be overcome even at first blush (e.g. the ultra-common "a prepared party should have a chance of taking down an ogre" line), but dangers like cursed items and ear seekers seem to directly contradict that, demonstrating challenges that are literally designed NOT to be overcome until the PCs have already fallen victim to them at least once. As with the above aside on 10' poles, the lines of demarcation are so arbitrary and (often) only loosely linked with concrete, grounded consequences (ear seekers are almost blatantly an anti-natural, "made solely to mess with players" hazard; slamming things with 10' poles never alerts monsters, etc.), it feels very much like real and enduring failures to live up to the alleged standard of "skilled play" are brushed under the rug and ignored.That's part of what makes this so thorny; it's basically impossible to separate the "rightly done" versions of old-school skilled play from the "obviously degenerate" cases in any way that doesn't come across as as-hoc (or, worse, "no true Scotsman"). Doubly so if the speaker wants to write off all new-school play in the process, since it's quite easy to argue that the oft-cited problems of "not thinking beyond the sheet" and "roll-playing" etc. are just as much undesirable degeneracies as "killer DM" and "throwaway characters" etc., rather than demonstrative cases of the "true" nature of the approach.Except that, as I said above, people pretty demonstrably FAILED to know that the module wasn't for casual consumption. That's pretty bloody important here.So where does this leave us? Gygax is often upheld as providing just what you describe as a "logical" setting, yet he's the one who invented ear seekers and cloakers etc., which come across as pretty bald "illogical gotcha" setting elements. If even the most beloved, central exemplar was engaging in what you call "very bad DMing," what CAN we say about "good" DMing in this style? And if this somehow isn't what you'd call "very bad DMing," how do you justify such actions without ad-hoc readjusting your position?Why not? That seems like exactly the kind of reason that would make it not about "skilled play" as you have described it.</blockquote>

Verification