Players: it's your responsibility to carry a story.

[S'mon]

Pemerton:
>>S'mon, thanks for a series of very thoughtful replies!<<

You're welcome

>> Whereas D&D, without further specification, leaves open such questions as (i) the significance of court intrigue, (ii) whether cardinals are allies or enemies (in Conan normally the latter, but in Forgotten Realms or published Greyhawk often the former), (iii) whether action is mostly urban, mostly wilderness or mostly underground, (iv) whether fame is desirable or not for PCs (ie will it bring them social power and rewards, or just attract pickpockets?), etc.<<

You see, in an exploration-based game these are all questions that can be answered through
(a) exploration of the setting (finding out), and
(b) Player determination (making it so through PC actions)

And that's an approach I often find very enjoyable. There are supports though - eg in standard D&D the Ally/Enemy status of Cardinals is largely determined by the Alignment system. Where the action is can be player choice or established by the GM.

>>The range in literary terms is slight. The range in player expectations about the game is, in my view, still fairly broad. My own experience, as well as what I see on these boards and what I used to see in Dragon, tells me that signing up for a game of D&D leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which would be answered if I signed up for a game of musketeers.<<

I think this is somewhat true, partly due to genre drift and acquired incoherence over time, partly because the open, exploratory nature of OD&D lent itself to going off on a wide variety of tangents.

>>Agreed. The lack of fit between those rules and the apparently intended game (at least as bad as 1st ed OA, maybe worse) is one reason why 2nd ed AD&D is one of my least favourite RPGs of all time.

At least in my own experience, I can know what I'm getting into if I sign up for a 2nd ed game - namely, a game in which the GM tries to railroad me into and through a story, participation in which via my PC is barely supported by the rules (whether character build, action resolution, or reward).<<

Ugh. I tend to agree; even though I never converted fully to 2e I ran some crappy games in that era, probably influenced by Dungeon Magazine, and eventually left D&D for several years.

>>My personal impression of 3E is that the character build rules want to be Rolemaster, but the reward system and the action resolution system (or at least its spells and hit point components) want to be 1st ed AD&D. An unstable combination, in my view.<<

Nicely put, I agree strongly. Is the non-combat-skills system mostly just fluff, or is it there to support a broad range of play? 3e is the only system where I've seen a PC open a baker's shop and expect me to keep running her PC in a game of Bakers & Breadsticks.

>>At least in my view, merely knowing I was playing in a 4e game wouldn't necessarily answer all the questions that are answred when I sign up for a musketeers game.<<

Agreed, although the 4e default seems a bit clearer than 3e maybe; it's save-the-world dungeon adventures in a 'points of light' high fantasy setting.

 

[Hussar]

Hmm, I think you've actually established that OD&D, at least, was originally writtten as a tightly focused game, with rules supporting exploration and self-aggrandisement in a Hyborea/Dying Earth/Nehwon type Swords & Sorcery world.
1e AD&D rules & advice emphasised medievalism over weird fantasy, but didn't change much.
2e advice & adventres saw drift into a more Tolkieny/Questy direction but kept almost exactly the same rules.
3e aimed to go "back to the dungeon", was flexible enough to allow quite a wide range of adventurous play in character creation, but the XP system emphasised killing things.
4e is quite a big departure, the rules do support a more questy approach though all the 4e WotC adventures I've bought seem to be little more than linear-series-of-fights (bought Orcs of Stonefang Pass yesterday, v disapointed).

I'm not sure that the shift to more Tolkieny style adventures occured in 2e to be honest. Dragonlance is pretty firmly 1e - the modules came out in 84, and the books before that. All of the gaming that the original series was based on is solidly 1e.

Even within 1e, you have a very broad range of themes. And, let's not forget the other side of the street with the Companion rules being released in 84 - with a very strong emphasis on the characters becoming political entities.

I think your timeline ignores a lot of the things that Pemerton is talking about. Yes, if you limit 1e to Greyhawk and Blackmoor, sure, it's a very specific game. But, 1e isn't just that. It's also Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and the Companion through Immortals rules by 1985, several years before 2e came along.

In a lot of ways, 2e was simply emphasizing a style of play that was already very popular with a segment of gamers.

I will agree that D&D's reward system has long been at odds with the rest of the rules. 2e emphasized story, but, the reward system was still pretty much the same as 1e's. 3e suffers the same thing, and with the wealth by level issues, almost enforces an even stronger "THOU SHALT ADVENTURE" theme.

I'm mostly just quibbling with your timeline honestly.

 

[Mallus]

There have been some really good posts in this thread!

re: using D&D to run a romantic comedy - I wouldn't say the rules hinder this, they simply offer little-to-no help. Play would occur in the absence of formal rules. Put that way, it doesn't sound all that different from most of what went on in the D&D campaigns I've been in over the years.

re: OD&D being a "tightly-focused game" - I think that's true, but it's more a reflection of the original creators being unable to conceive of how many different purposes the game's eventual audience would put it to. Everything from wargame-like campaigns to homegrown Tolkienesque -questing to hyperviolent fantasy slapstick (okay, I bet Gygax and Co. *did* conceive of that one...).

 

[Neonchameleon]

No, it could be anything. Any friendly contacts, positions, etc. ... Any connections to the setting gained in play are rewards of play.

What I find interesting is that that isn't what I see when I look at my 1e PHB. There are explicit setting rewards (followers, castle) attached to the various levels. 3 and 4e (and for that matter GURPS, Dogs in the Vineyard, and almost every other RPG I can think of) don't hard code setting rewards.

Hmm, I think you've actually established that OD&D, at least, was originally writtten as a tightly focused game, with rules supporting exploration and self-aggrandisement in a Hyborea/Dying Earth/Nehwon type Swords & Sorcery world.
1e AD&D rules & advice emphasised medievalism over weird fantasy, but didn't change much.

Once I understood it, I considered the XP for GP rules in 1e (I don't own anything older) to be the best rule in the game.

2e advice & adventres saw drift into a more Tolkieny/Questy direction but kept almost exactly the same rules.

From memory they dropped XP for GP and instead gave XP for behaving like a member of your class.

3e aimed to go "back to the dungeon", was flexible enough to allow quite a wide range of adventurous play in character creation, but the XP system emphasised killing things.

Defeating rather than killing - or at least they told you. Did many people take that part seriously?

4e is quite a big departure, the rules do support a more questy approach though all the 4e WotC adventures I've bought seem to be little more than linear-series-of-fights (bought Orcs of Stonefang Pass yesterday, v disapointed).

There's a reason I'm running War of the Burning Sky 4e and preparing to run a converted and modified version of Paizo's Kingmaker Adventure Path rather than any WoTC 4e modules (and Goodman Games looks like exactly the opposite of what I want).

Ugh. I tend to agree; even though I never converted fully to 2e I ran some crappy games in that era, probably influenced by Dungeon Magazine, and eventually left D&D for several years.

The 2e era was when I was learning to RP. I've never had a good game with it, but put that down to most games being crap or jokefests in my teenage years.

Agreed, although the 4e default seems a bit clearer than 3e maybe; it's save-the-world dungeon adventures in a 'points of light' high fantasy setting.

Why dungeon adventures? I've not really seen a need for dungeons in 4e.

 

[The Shaman]

re: using D&D to run a romantic comedy - I wouldn't say the rules hinder this, they simply offer little-to-no help. Play would occur in the absence of formal rules. Put that way, it doesn't sound all that different from most of what went on in the D&D campaigns I've been in over the years.

Definitely - you could run a romantic-comedy game with Chill or Call of Cthulhu or Shadowrun, too, but I don't know that I would consider any of them a great medium for doing so, however.

I've heard gamers argue over the years that you can do anything with a roleplaying game because you can roleplay whatever elements you want without recourse to the rules - it's one of the arguments made for rules-light games, in my experience, and to some degree I agree with it. But I also feel that character development and the rewards system are good indicators of what the game does well, of the style of play which is most strongly supported. It's why I've moved away from generic systems toward systems which are a bit more purpose-built.

re: OD&D being a "tightly-focused game" - I think that's true, but it's more a reflection of the original creators being unable to conceive of how many different purposes the game's eventual audience would put it to. Everything from wargame-like campaigns to homegrown Tolkienesque -questing to hyperviolent fantasy slapstick (okay, I bet Gygax and Co. *did* conceive of that one...).

I wonder how much of this was driven by the marketing apparatus of the game. My impression is that TSR wanted gamers to see D&D as a vehicle for everything under the sun, as a means of maintaining its place at the top of the heap: "Sure, you can do Arthurian romance with D&D! You don't need Pendragon!"

And as you noted, while it is possible to play the game that way, the game as written may not provide appropriate rewards without house ruling in something new.

I wonder if some of the virulence of the Edishun Warz! stems from the fact that each major iteration of D&D has changed the rewards system - and therefore one of the objectives of play - so distinctly.

 

[The Shaman]

Once I understood it, I considered the XP for GP rules in 1e (I don't own anything older) to be the best rule in the game.

"You must spread some Experience Points around . . . "


If anyone's got XP to spare, if you could hit Mallus and Neochameleon for me, I'd appreciate it.

 

[GregChristopher]

I've heard gamers argue over the years that you can do anything with a roleplaying game because you can roleplay whatever elements you want without recourse to the rules - it's one of the arguments made for rules-light games, in my experience, and to some degree I agree with it.

I think there are three approaches to this problem.

One is to strip the system down to a rules-lite shell and then the gamers provide all the detail. This seems to be very popular these days, but I dont think it works very well. Seems to just be shifting the burden to the gamers from the designers.

Another is to try to cover every eventuality. I think this may be destined to fail. GURPS and HERO try this approach. The problem is the game ends up being extremely complex with interlaced rules and people just get overwhelmed.

The last approach is to provide a quality model for representing the human mind, then providing architecture to hook in whatever skills or equipment you need to run the setting someone wants to run, and let them go. This is the approach I used in my game and I think it works pretty well.

 

[Barastrondo]

Definitely - you could run a romantic-comedy game with Chill or Call of Cthulhu or Shadowrun, too, but I don't know that I would consider any of them a great medium for doing so, however.

Depends on whether the game is explicitly a romantic comedy and nothing but. The main appeal to running, say, a romantic comedy story in a game like D&D or Shadowrun (I won't argue for Call of Cthulhu) is probably one of two things. One, it's just one story among many, and it contrasts and/or complements the other stories going on at the same time. The bard is involved in kind of an All's Well That Ends Well subplot even as the rogue is involved in more of a organized crime turf war subplot. (Edit: This seems to sum up the average D&D webcomic, actually.)

The other reason seems like it would be accepting the sensibility that a romantic comedy could happen in, say, Greyhawk, and deciding to explore what that would be like. Embracing the tropes of the game world or the game system as part of the humor. Sort of like playing the other people in the world who aren't going into dungeons for a change of pace.

I agree it's a little odd to run something like a romantic comedy in D&D if you're not using anything else from D&D and there are other games available to you. I kind of suspect, though, that it's not really the case. The melodramatic Austen-inspired romantic subplot I run with my wife in a fantasy Champions game is just one of the things that character's involved with; all the rest are pretty Champions-empowered. But the character would have that kind of subplot by dint of her personality, and mechanics don't enter into it.

 

[GregChristopher]

Depends on whether the game is explicitly a romantic comedy and nothing but. The main appeal to running, say, a romantic comedy story in a game like D&D or Shadowrun (I won't argue for Call of Cthulhu) is probably one of two things. One, it's just one story among many, and it contrasts and/or complements the other stories going on at the same time. The bard is involved in kind of an All's Well That Ends Well subplot even as the rogue is involved in more of a organized crime turf war subplot. (Edit: This seems to sum up the average D&D webcomic, actually.)

The other reason seems like it would be accepting the sensibility that a romantic comedy could happen in, say, Greyhawk, and deciding to explore what that would be like. Embracing the tropes of the game world or the game system as part of the humor. Sort of like playing the other people in the world who aren't going into dungeons for a change of pace.

I agree it's a little odd to run something like a romantic comedy in D&D if you're not using anything else from D&D and there are other games available to you. I kind of suspect, though, that it's not really the case. The melodramatic Austen-inspired romantic subplot I run with my wife in a fantasy Champions game is just one of the things that character's involved with; all the rest are pretty Champions-empowered. But the character would have that kind of subplot by dint of her personality, and mechanics don't enter into it.

But if you do this with D&D or Shadowrun, then it is your work, Ethan; not the game's. When you have a 300 page RPG book that has 90% of the pages talking about killing things; you cant very well take that game and run it on the 10% that talks about non-combat interaction. You are no longer playing that game, but some hybrid house-ruled version that YOU have created at that point.

The point of the game architecture is to fix the rules so that they are no longer arbitrary. Whatever rules you come up with for YOUR Greyhawk romance are going to differ from MY rules for my Forgotten Realms romance. That's why we make the game in the first place, to try to harmonize the rules for everyone (accepting that there will always be some degree of variation). However, I would note there is nothing to stop you from taking a romance game and saying that you are just going to play it in the Greyhawk setting.

Seems to me like you are just benefiting from the creativity you have in your ability to houserule and assuming that it is effortless for everyone; which is not the case.

 

[Barastrondo]

But if you do this with D&D or Shadowrun, then it is your work, Ethan; not the game's. When you have a 300 page RPG book that has 90% of the pages talking about killing things; you cant very well take that game and run it on the 10% that talks about non-combat interaction. You are no longer playing that game, but some hybrid house-ruled version that YOU have created at that point.

I'm not sure where house rules necessarily need to come into it. The thing about, say, a romance is that it's something that can be handled entirely by judgment calls or, if so inclined, the Charisma checks or skill checks that are entirely part of the game. Similarly, the other 90% of the game isn't necessarily being ignored or discarded. Tenser's Floating Disc may still be cast. Bar fights may break out. There may be a succubus. And I don't think there's a good authority on just how many percentile points of the book I must use before I'm no longer "playing that game" instead of just playing the same game in a very different style.

The point of the game architecture is to fix the rules so that they are no longer arbitrary. Whatever rules you come up with for YOUR Greyhawk romance are going to differ from MY rules for my Forgotten Realms romance. That's why we make the game in the first place, to try to harmonize the rules for everyone (accepting that there will always be some degree of variation). However, I would note there is nothing to stop you from taking a romance game and saying that you are just going to play it in the Greyhawk setting.

I have to say I don't really appreciate the "if you don't play the game in the accepted way, why do you play this game at all instead of going off and playing some other game?" line of questioning. It reads to me a lot like "If you're not going to use beholders in your game, or if you're going to make green dragons breathe fire and be of neutral alignment, why don't you play another game instead of calling your house-ruled game D&D?"

Seems to me like you are just benefiting from the creativity you have in your ability to houserule and assuming that it is effortless for everyone; which is not the case.

I'm benefiting from judgment calls. I'm not assuming that judgment calls are effortless for everyone, but I do think that every roleplaying game relies on them. A game that doesn't is probably run by a computer.