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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6727692" data-attributes="member: 37579">Originally posted by wrecan:Yes. Yes, it was. Mostly to emphasize that icedcrow's original hypothetical was one DM and 1 player (the player uniquely qualified to handle this encounter), ignoring the other players. I thought that was a telling feature.In the DMG, which gives a hypothetical dungeon with traps that work in that fashion. In the various "gygaxian" modules that worked that way.In hindsight, it all seems very mean, but AD&D was designed for high mortality at low levels. It wasn't mean to kill off a character because it took all of ten minutes to roll up a new one. Also, AD&D was absolutely designed for spotlighting different characters at different times. Rust monsters forced melee characters into the background so arcanists could shine. Magic resistance and antimagic fields shunned the wizards in favor of the fighters. Undead generally favored the clerics and traps favored the thieves. It wasn't a flaw; it was a feature.But it also had the effect of forcing people to sit on the sidelines. But I don't think it fair to blame them. RPGs were new in 1978 when this was being invented. And they came out of wargames where it was common to create scenarios where one type of piece was useless. The difference is in wargames, one player controls all the pieces for one side; in RPGs each player controls one piece.But we learn. It's a process. People can feel nostalgia for all the times your thief singlehandedly removed the trap or picked the pocket that changed the plot, or the wizard who roasted the ice dragon with his delayed blast fireball set with no delay. But that's bcause nostalgia sloches over the broing parts where your wizard sat and waited for the thief to check for traps in every tile and every stone for traps, and where your rogue sat and did his puny 1d2+3 damage against the gelatinous cube with no back and acidic ooze that would eat all your weapons (except your sap) while the fighter wailed away with his improvised cudgel. I get that. It's totally natural.But let's not blind ourselves to the flaws of prior editions (or this edition for that matter). And let's not denigrate the current edition as if its played only by ADHD ritalin addicts. Okay?This is a fallacy known as the Oberoni Fallacy, which states that a design flaw is not less of a design flaw just because the DM can fix it. In AD&D only thieves (sometimes bards) could remove traps. Traps were a unique obstacle where the thieves were intended to shine. Can a DM work around the system to correct for it? Yes. Does that mean the system didn't have this flaw? No.it's a player issue because it's a flaw in the system.I wholeheartedly vehemently disagree. In my experience player issues are as often as not the product of a flaw in the system.</blockquote>

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