So what's gold gonna be for?

[Wulf Ratbane]

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.

I think part of your problem is that you think "Kill the bad guys and take their stuff" is snarky.

It's not snarky, it's friggin genius.

 

[Reynard]

I think part of your problem is that you think "Kill the bad guys and take their stuff" is snarky.

It's not snarky, it's friggin genius.

I don't the statement is snarky -- I think it is simplistic and all too often used in a denigrating fashion.

The concept -- absolutely genius.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I think it is simplistic and all too often used in a denigrating fashion.

By whom? Who uses "Kill the bad guys and take their stuff" in a denigrating fashion?

Why can't I, who enjoys Killing bad guys and taking their stuff, use that phrase?

I'm seriously at a loss here.

I'm sitting here feeling like... I dunno. Like I just said, "Damn, I love cheap beer!" and somehow the wine connoisseur feels insulted.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I understand that 'kill the bad guys and take their stuff' can be usefully used as a core story of D&D, and I'm sure I read an article on the WotC site saying as much.

However, I think that the original core story of D&D was dungeon exploration.

case 1: the basic setup has a DM with perfect knowledge of a situation and 1 or more players who don't know the situation and explore the dungeon (most commonly) or situation/mystery (gradually became more common) in order to have fun 'resolving' it.

case 2: when Gary Gygax DMed and adventure for some lucky mods at Gencon this year, IIRC it was largely about exploration (Piratecat or someone else who was there might be able to comment on that).

"kill the bad guys and take their stuff" has a thriving internet meme behind it, for very good reasons, but I'd never heard D&D described that way in the pre-internet days.

Might be worth thinking about.

Cheers

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I understand that 'kill the bad guys and take their stuff' can be usefully used as a core story of D&D, and I'm sure I read an article on the WotC site saying as much.

However, I think that the original core story of D&D was dungeon exploration.

case 1: the basic setup has a DM with perfect knowledge of a situation and 1 or more players who don't know the situation and explore the dungeon (most commonly) or situation/mystery (gradually became more common) in order to have fun 'resolving' it.

case 2: when Gary Gygax DMed and adventure for some lucky mods at Gencon this year, IIRC it was largely about exploration (Piratecat or someone else who was there might be able to comment on that).

"kill the bad guys and take their stuff" has a thriving internet meme behind it, for very good reasons, but I'd never heard D&D described that way in the pre-internet days.

Might be worth thinking about.

Cheers

This might be splitting hairs a bit when the question at issue is whether D&D is fundamentally about building keeps or killing monsters. If the core idea is that you go into dungeons and kill monsters, or explore wildernesses and kill monsters, or talk to people in town to find out which one of them is the werewolf and then kill him, it's much closer to "kill things and take their stuff" than it is to "build a keep and tax the commoners".

 

[Doug McCrae]

I agree the exploration is as important as the killing and looting.

My formula would be:
Explore the unknown, kill what lives there and take its stuff.

Gary's description of what games revolved around in the early days, taken from an ENWorld post -

"The usual was explore, solve problems, locate adversaries, combat adversaries, run away from triumphant foes or loot defeated ones."

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I agree the exploration is as important as the killing and looting.

My formula would be:
Explore the unknown, kill what lives there and take its stuff.

Gary's description of what games revolved around in the early days, taken from an ENWorld post -

"The usual was explore, solve problems, locate adversaries, combat adversaries, run away from triumphant foes or loot defeated ones."

Yeah, that's pretty much the formula as it stands today. Kill Things & Take Their Stuff is a subset of this.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

"kill the bad guys and take their stuff" has a thriving internet meme behind it, for very good reasons, but I'd never heard D&D described that way in the pre-internet days.

Might be worth thinking about.

That's akin to saying that gravity did not exist before Newton.

The fact that nobody was thinking about D&D on that particular level of design does not mean that the "core story" didn't exist.

Design is evolving.

I don't even want to start the argument about what was or wasn't discussed much before the Internet. The Internet has facilitated the transmission of knowledge in ways that are significant far beyond this hobby.

1e D&D awarded XP primarily for killing monsters-- and for each gold piece found on a 1:1 basis! Call me crazy, but that's a pretty clear indicator of intent.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Gary's description of what games revolved around in the early days, taken from an ENWorld post -

"The usual was explore, solve problems, locate adversaries, combat adversaries, run away from triumphant foes or loot defeated ones."

He went on to add, "Oh, and levying taxes upon the peasants, of course."

 

[Plane Sailing]

That's akin to saying that gravity did not exist before Newton.

The fact that nobody was thinking about D&D on that particular level of design does not mean that the "core story" didn't exist.

Design is evolving.

I don't even want to start the argument about what was or wasn't discussed much before the Internet. The Internet has facilitated the transmission of knowledge in ways that are significant far beyond this hobby.

1e D&D awarded XP primarily for killing monsters-- and for each gold piece found on a 1:1 basis! Call me crazy, but that's a pretty clear indicator of intent.

Any particular reason why you are quoting part of my post and responding to it out of context?

sheesh.