Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
OSR Gripes
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7633235" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Well, the debate definitely preexisted the evolution of the idea of skillfulness in D&D.</p><p></p><p>In general, it was mostly climb/find traps/remove traps that I think presented the biggest ideological problems. I've never heard anyone suggest for example that characters were assumed to have skill in picking pockets or picking locks. I think people easily accepted that picking pockets or opening locks were skills most people didn't have.</p><p></p><p>Remember, you have to look at this through the lens of the Braunstein inspired ruleless open ended game versus the modern notion of a universal fortune system. How did people check for traps before 'check for traps'? Well, they proposed the character carefully inspecting and looking at the object, and if they looked at the right thing carefully enough they maybe convinced the GM that they found the trap. I don't think this process usually involved a fortune test, because when I've witnessed this debate in the past the grognard side normally hates the whole idea of a fortune test. There idea is that by careful play by the player you find the trap and that is how it was done back in the day. </p><p></p><p>Similarly, I wasn't just pulling out of the air the whole take off your boots and armor thing. That's how I've been told stealthy movement was done back in the day. Again, I don't think the system was, "If you take off your boots and armor <em>and you roll under Dexterity</em> then I'll let you move silently." The judge simply decided whether or not the plan was good enough work and if it did it didn't and if it wasn't it wasn't. If the fortune system preexisted the Thief and was in any way widely known and accepted, my expectation is that the thief would have referenced it instead of having its own table of skills by level and we would have gotten the idea of a NWP way before we did. Nor have I heard anyone, Jordan Peterson included, describe such a nascent skills system.</p><p></p><p>The problem of course that you always ran into as a DM is that you know had this system for adjudicating extraordinary actions but it only applied to thieves. You had no system for adjudicating extraordinary actions for non thieves and more importantly you had no system for adjudicating ordinary actions. For rather ordinary actions, you still basically had the old Braunstein system of deciding for yourself if something was climbable. Climb a ladder? Yes. (No check.) Climb a dressed stone wall? No. (No check.) Climb a tree? Err.... Yes? Maybe? Not this tree?</p><p></p><p>And that's where the system started failing. Yes and No were easy answers but the thief skill system still really didn't address the in between cases well. Remember, we wouldn't have a notion of difficulty built into the system until 3e. So how much easier was it to climb a tree than the nearly sheer wall the thief was climbing? How much harder was it to climb a nearly sheer wall of ice? Rules smiths and module writers and other DMs started having to try to work with the system as it was, and as you might expect - just with other attempts to jury rig a skill system - the suggestions that they made were all over the place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7633235, member: 4937"] Well, the debate definitely preexisted the evolution of the idea of skillfulness in D&D. In general, it was mostly climb/find traps/remove traps that I think presented the biggest ideological problems. I've never heard anyone suggest for example that characters were assumed to have skill in picking pockets or picking locks. I think people easily accepted that picking pockets or opening locks were skills most people didn't have. Remember, you have to look at this through the lens of the Braunstein inspired ruleless open ended game versus the modern notion of a universal fortune system. How did people check for traps before 'check for traps'? Well, they proposed the character carefully inspecting and looking at the object, and if they looked at the right thing carefully enough they maybe convinced the GM that they found the trap. I don't think this process usually involved a fortune test, because when I've witnessed this debate in the past the grognard side normally hates the whole idea of a fortune test. There idea is that by careful play by the player you find the trap and that is how it was done back in the day. Similarly, I wasn't just pulling out of the air the whole take off your boots and armor thing. That's how I've been told stealthy movement was done back in the day. Again, I don't think the system was, "If you take off your boots and armor [I]and you roll under Dexterity[/I] then I'll let you move silently." The judge simply decided whether or not the plan was good enough work and if it did it didn't and if it wasn't it wasn't. If the fortune system preexisted the Thief and was in any way widely known and accepted, my expectation is that the thief would have referenced it instead of having its own table of skills by level and we would have gotten the idea of a NWP way before we did. Nor have I heard anyone, Jordan Peterson included, describe such a nascent skills system. The problem of course that you always ran into as a DM is that you know had this system for adjudicating extraordinary actions but it only applied to thieves. You had no system for adjudicating extraordinary actions for non thieves and more importantly you had no system for adjudicating ordinary actions. For rather ordinary actions, you still basically had the old Braunstein system of deciding for yourself if something was climbable. Climb a ladder? Yes. (No check.) Climb a dressed stone wall? No. (No check.) Climb a tree? Err.... Yes? Maybe? Not this tree? And that's where the system started failing. Yes and No were easy answers but the thief skill system still really didn't address the in between cases well. Remember, we wouldn't have a notion of difficulty built into the system until 3e. So how much easier was it to climb a tree than the nearly sheer wall the thief was climbing? How much harder was it to climb a nearly sheer wall of ice? Rules smiths and module writers and other DMs started having to try to work with the system as it was, and as you might expect - just with other attempts to jury rig a skill system - the suggestions that they made were all over the place. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
OSR Gripes
Top