So what's gold gonna be for?

[FireLance]

The only ways to get parties to put in some downtime is by training, or by having them somehow get themselves involved in a non-adventuring project that eats up time...building a party stronghold, helping with the local harvest, preparing for a particular celebration or event, etc.

Or you know, talking to the players and explaining that their characters can either wait six months game time for the next adventure, or you are going to house-rule the rate of advancement so that it requires six months of constant adventuring to make a level.

If the players don't don't realize how important it is to you that the PCs advance more slowly in terms of game time, you can always stop DMing for them.

 

[JDJblatherings]

EDIT: Sure, OK.


I think you're just as wrong as Wulf, and for the same reason. There's no "one true core story" to D&D; it can be a lot of different games. That's part of its "enduring brilliance." 9th level fighters may be "LORDS" in your campaign, but maybe they're not in Wulf's or mine; and no one is doing anything wrongbadsuck.

There is no "one true story". But the rules did support "go get rich and build yourself some worldly power" . In the old days the rules told you your 9th level fighters were Lords, it was part of the rules. Playing it otherwise was playing it in a spirit different from the rules. All the gold collected along the way was supposed to be spent on being a lord and spent on training (another hugely ignored rule that got washed away, thankfully).

 

[JDJblatherings]

And let's not tell people they're ignorant because they don't agree with you, eh? There are better ways to get a point across, and they don't involve being rude.

sorry piractecat, ignorance doesn't = stupidity. I don't consider it an insult to be pointed out there is something I don't know. I apologize if someone feels that to be an affront.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

sorry piractecat, ignorance doesn't = stupidity. I don't consider it an insult to be pointed out there is something I don't know. I apologize if someone feels that to be an affront.

I don't consider "ignorant" a slur either.

And trust me, fella, I'm not ignorant about the origins of the game. Whatever ignorance is on display in this thread, it's not coming from me.

 

[JDJblatherings]

I don't consider "ignorant" a slur either.

And trust me, fella, I'm not ignorant about the origins of the game. Whatever ignorance is on display in this thread, it's not coming from me.

great!

So why purge the castle lording/empire building element from the game? It's a great gold pump and a reason to keep adventuring. Adventuring goes from grubby dungeon crawling for scaps to protecting ones realm and people (while hopefully getting larger scraps). Players having PCs build estates and enterprises provide many channels to cearte a unique campaign in a fashion that romping thru dungeons alone will seldom if ever accomplish.

 

[Piratecat]

sorry piractecat, ignorance doesn't = stupidity. I don't consider it an insult to be pointed out there is something I don't know. I apologize if someone feels that to be an affront.

Calling someone ignorant has much more of a subtext than claiming that they're not familiar with a fact. We expect folks to use good judgment and err towards the side of civility, because without body language it's easy to infer an innocent comment as an insult.

In the future, incidentally, please drop me (or any mod) an email instead of discussing moderator comments in the thread. We like to handle discussion off-line.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

So why purge the castle lording/empire building element from the game?

For all intents and purposes THERE IS NO EMPIRE BUILDING ELEMENT TO D&D. Any castle lording/empire building element to D&D is peripheral to its core design. Very peripheral.

One line on the 9th level fighter's advancement table does not a Lord make. Two or three pages of castle construction costs does not a fiefdom make.

Your subjective experience with the game simply does not square with objective reality.

This is not an indictment of your playstyle.

There are a few folks for whom this element of the game is important. From time to time a designer will revisit the subject, and a publisher might "take a gamble" every now and then with a product solely dedicated to this playstyle.

Birthright was the most ambitious attempt to cater the design to this playstyle. I will let that speak for itself.

You point me to any evidence you have that D&D is about empire building, and I will give you 10-to-1 evidence that it is about dungeon delving.

That's what the vast preponderance of the rules are designed for, it's what the vast preponderance of the published material supports, and it's how the vast preponderance of players play the game.

It is simply not open to debate.

You should take some pride in the fact that you have transcended the game for 30 years. Games such as yours (and others here, apparently) that transcend the game are typically lauded as a testament to the DM, and for good reason: because it's recognized that the DM has managed to make something more of the game than the rules easily support.

But that is no reason to hold on to a romanticized notion of what the game was and is designed and marketed for.

I refer you again to the ice carving/chainsaw analogy.

 

[Doug McCrae]

There is no "one true story".

It depends on what you mean by that.

The default adventure for D&D is the dungeon bash.
The default adventure for Birthright is part dominion management/part dungeon bash.
The default adventure for Call of Cthulhu is investigative.

The games aren't the same, they don't support the same style of play.

Yes you can play D&D as part dominion management. Yes you can play investigative scenarios. Yes you can run a dungeon bash with Call of Cthulhu. Yes, you can use a pair of pliers to hammer in a nail.

More than any other style of play, D&D supports the dungeon bash. It's what 95% or more of the game text is about. This is what it means to say the dungeon bash is the essence, or core, of D&D.

 

[GlassJaw]

The last I checked, almost all of the early modules involved various locales filled to the brim with baddies for the players to kill. The plots were extremely thin but the overwhelming "core" element to them was:

1. Go to XYZ place.
2. Kill everything.
3. Take their stuff.
4. Repeat 1-3.

Simple as that.

 

[Reynard]

The last I checked, almost all of the early modules involved various locales filled to the brim with baddies for the players to kill. The plots were extremely thin but the overwhelming "core" element to them was:

1. Go to XYZ place.
2. Kill everything.
3. Take their stuff.
4. Repeat 1-3.

Simple as that.

When was the lasty time you checked? Because while you are correct, it isn't the whole story. Those old modules also had people to talk to, mysteries to solve, wilderness and ruins to explore. Yes, the dungeon is at the heart of D&D but it has always been surrounded with much, much more.

As much as us grognards can often look back with rose colored glasses, others look back through the lens of snark and stereotypes that aren't any more true of old school play.