Something, I think, Every GM/DM Should Read

[chaochou]

Well, I think play-styles and GM-ing styles changed precisely because some players found the 'old school' style a complete chore. If everyone had loved it we'd still all be playing that way, but some people bring other values to their games.

The example in the link shows a player 'checking' for a trap because he is 'suspicious' in a place where there is a pit. It's typical of games of this style to give examples which allow a character to succeed and make the play and mechanics look like they work - but to disguise the fact that they only work because of the specific set-up in the example.

Why had the player not checked 10 feet back? Would that not also be 'good play'? What about the 10-feet before that? And before that? Do you want to play that scene out for every single 10-foot section of corridor? If you do, fine. I don't.

Frankly, I can't think of anything worse than having to check every door, corridor, hinge and torch bracket with a pole and waterskin and torch and bag of dust to ensure my character's survival. Utter dullness for me. If others see it as 'good play' - more power to them.

But if I play for 4 hours, I want important things to happen in that 4 hours. I don't want to spend two of those hours inching down a corridor behind a paranoid thief.

IMO it doesn't take 'skill' to find a thing in an arbitrary place, it takes grind - relentless, repetitive checking. I think it's easy to look back 30 years with a sense of nostalgia but, for me at least, the reality of gaming in the early 80s is best left long behind.

As for rules.... rules are the mediator by which the GM and players agree what's happening in the fiction. More rules means more mediation in more situations. Some players and groups like that certainty. Others don't feel they need it.

But I simply don't buy that 'old school' games had fewer rules. It's demonstrably untrue. I was flicking through the original DMG yesterday - and there's a table for EVERYTHING. Gem value, morale levels of retainers, matrix grids of results for psionics, the effect of Bigbys Crushing Hand on castle fortifications... jeez, where's the room for GM improvisation in that lot?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I don't have it in front of me, but the 1e and 2e rule books all have a paragraph in the beginning that reads(paraphrase) these are just guidelines, feel free to change them to fit your game

Funny thing; 3e and 4e also have this speech.

But I simply don't buy that 'old school' games had fewer rules. It's demonstrably untrue. I was flicking through the original DMG yesterday - and there's a table for EVERYTHING. Gem value, morale levels of retainers, matrix grids of results for psionics, the effect of Bigbys Crushing Hand on castle fortifications... jeez, where's the room for GM improvisation in that lot?

Maybe the real reason 2e seemed to have fewer rules are that DMs had to ignore many of them!

I think old-school did some things well and some things poorly. I wouldn't want to go back to old-school though. I'd rather modify modern games to have the "good parts" of old-school.

 

[amerigoV]

Just to be clear, I'm not telling anybody how to play. What I am saying is that, in my opinion, the game has blown up a bit with a rule for everything.

Player: "I've got an enemy in front of me and an enemy behind? I've got initiative. I'm going to dodge to the right and see if there's a chance they'll strike each other!"

DM: "Um...no. Sorry. Not a chance. There's the Pantherish Twist combat maneuver, and it says you have to have Improved Uncanny Dodge. I know you don't have it, so there's absolutely no chance you can pull that off."

Player: "Not even a 5% chance? If I roll a d20 and get a 20?"

DM: "No sorry. No cool moves today. Roll your regular attack."

In an old school game, the DM might think it unlikely, but might still give the player some sort of chance just because it was "fun".



And, that's probably a bad example.

No, it is a fine example. Some systems support this better than others (D&D 3.x and above do not naturally, but that is not to say a GM cannot get it to do so). In Savage Worlds, that is a simple Agility trick against the two opponents. If the PC wins, the enemy will either have lower defenses for a round or if a Raise (rolls much better than the enemy) it will stun them.

I am sure other systems have examples as well.

Rules are hard to balance to actions. The more you define, the more it shifts from GM arbitration to player system mastery. Both have their plusses and minuses.

 

[amerigoV]

Another thought on your example. In D&D 3.x+, its just not advantageous to do it. Since the classes are all good in combat, its just better tactics to burn them down. In older D&D and in other systems, each class/concept is not equally good in combat. The old saying Necessity is the Mother of Invention holds true. If I am a 1/2 Orc Barbarian with a 22 str, I am just going to crush whatever is in front of me. If I am playing a scholar with little combat ability, I will have to be creative to contribute to combat.

For example, pushing a stack of boxes over or cut the rope holding a chandelier is a suboptimal action for a class good in combat. But that might tip the balance in a 1e fight if the thief does it instead of firing his 1d6 damage bow into the fray.

 

[Hautamaki]

Rules are hard to balance to actions. The more you define, the more it shifts from GM arbitration to player system mastery. Both have their plusses and minuses.

This last is a great point. A lot of players, myself included when I play, get enjoyment out of devising effective tactics and figuring out how to defeat enemies in combat using the least amount of resources possible. In order for this play-style to be meaningful, it absolutely must rely upon predictable, consistent rules. If your plans and tactics must perforce come down to DM ruling fiat, and he rules against you for whatever reason, it's a crushing blow to your ability to enjoy that battle. Equally frustrating would be when you work out excellent tactics according to the RAW but then another player comes in and attempts something you think is downright silly (I distract the opponent by flashing him my bare buttocks then stab him in the eye while he gapes), but the DM rules in his favor and your plans come to nothing, once again, it's taking me out of the moment.

Without a predictable and consistent structure, where all decisions become arbitrary, the game system loses a lot of meaning. Why have character sheets and statistics at all? Why even play a game if your real goal is just to imagine yourself exploring a dungeon and doing incredible stunts? You can do that just by chatting.

Not saying of course that anyone actually does that or goes that far, just pointing out that the opposite extreme isn't any more attractive than the caricature of the 'mechanics only numbers is everything' stifling play that the new school is accused of supposedly devolving into.

 

[ThatGuyThere]

Re: The Rogue Example in that document...

The problem here is that the Rogue's success (in the "classic" example) does not represent an excercise of skill; it represents the player being Clever.

What if the man-at-arms, or wizard, had poured the water? Would they notice it flowing down? Or can they not notice that, because they're not rogues? Can they ever learn how to notice it? Can they improve their ability to notice it?

What if the party's ranger is played by a city slicker? Does he have to learn, out of character, how to light a fire and put up a tent?

Does the player of the wizard have to learn how to cast spells? Does the player of the fighter have to learn how to swing a sword?

I used to engage in the type of gameplay described here - until I realized, no matter how good the rogue gets at Find Traps, if I require him to narrate finding the trap, his skill will never matter - it'll all be based on his description.

Characters, in the type of gaming described, have no skills their players lack. That's a blow to versimilitude, and to fun.

Edited to add: The modern guy is also terribad at flavour text. When the Rogue succeeded, why didn't he say, "You get down on your knees, and go along the rim of the tile with your theives' tools. It quickly becomes obvious it's a concealed pit, and you disable it"? ...mostly, because the writer of the document wanted the "classic" version to seem cooler.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Player: "I've got an enemy in front of me and an enemy behind? I've got initiative. I'm going to dodge to the right and see if there's a chance they'll strike each other!"

DM: "Um...no. Sorry. Not a chance. There's the Pantherish Twist combat maneuver, and it says you have to have Improved Uncanny Dodge. I know you don't have it, so there's absolutely no chance you can pull that off."

Player: "Not even a 5% chance? If I roll a d20 and get a 20?"

DM: "No sorry. No cool moves today. Roll your regular attack."

In an old school game, the DM might think it unlikely, but might still give the player some sort of chance just because it was "fun".

A creative DM like Piratecat can make this work in 4e. In fact, it works even better than in 3e.

Piratecat used the damage expression figures/level bonus to help. If a PC wanted to do that, they play the "cool thing" card. I believe that cost an encounter ability or possibly an action point. Doing so gave them the ability to do a "cool thing" like that.

While I don't recall that particular maneuver from his reports, there were maneuvers that did damage, equal to a standard attack +50% damage of a monster of their level for that card. Same thing if there's something special in the background, like an explosive barrel: it would deal AoE damage based on level, and could be set off by either side. (Realistic to base damage on level? No. But then surviving standing next to an exploding barrel isn't realistic either.)

I've done that once in my game. The PCs had rescued a bunch of ex-slaves, and a fight broke out. They told the ex-slaves to push over a giant wagon onto the bad guys (who being soldier-types had high AC scores). I made it attack (vs Reflex) and do damage as a 1st-level monster's AoE encounter power (the ex-slaves were 1st-level). One of the bad guys got very flat.

It's even easier for other maneuvers not covered in the rules. You want to do a flying tackle? Make it up as you go; a consistent rule system actually helps with this. Make a standard Strength non-weapon attack vs your victim's Fort defense (or Reflex, if you think that makes more sense). If you hit, you knock them on their behind, but you do low damage (as an unarmed attack). I came up with that example in about five seconds.

While that deadly dodging thing got praise from another poster, as a DM I'd be a little annoyed by that particular example. It's almost like the bad guys are taking penalties for flanking a PC. I've had players who are always trying to extract a no-cost benefit like that, and it's irritating.

 

[Mark Chance]

Maybe the real reason 2e seemed to have fewer rules are that DMs had to ignore many of them!

DMs didn't have to ignore them, but the DM could without borking the entire system. OS D&D was sort of like a pyramid made out of alphabet blocks. You could knock a block out here, a block out there, and the pyramid stayed standing. D&D today, it seems to me, is more like a house of cards. The system has been so slavishly "balanced" that there almost literally must be a rule to cover every possible contingency.

A creative DM like Piratecat can make this work in 4e. In fact, it works even better than in 3e.

Piratecat used the damage expression figures/level bonus to help. If a PC wanted to do that, they play the "cool thing" card. I believe that cost an encounter ability or possibly an action point. Doing so gave them the ability to do a "cool thing" like that.

That is indeed cool. But it's not actually part of the rules, right?

 

[nedjer]

this seems to ignore many new games systems that do are fast moving and don't get bogged down in the rules. Claiming all modern games are like 4e is very inaccurate. It's almost as bad as claiming all older gamers are like 1e.

Very true.

It's surely an oversimplification to frame RPGs as Old School or New School:

Old School: surely most of us moved beyond pure hack and slay 30 years ago

New School: hexy D&D appeared in TSR's Dragonquest and Sniper 30 years ago

Middle School: looked for a balance between 'old' and 'new' over 30 years ago

Future School: delivers browser supported, quick turn, naturalistic setting, mesh mechanic, accessible systems that promote collaborative play and challenge focused missions.

Take AD&D 4e in transition as an example, browser-based DDI, design team talking about speeding up combat, Essentials adding accessibility, Wrath of Ash's collaborative model . . .

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

That is indeed cool. But it's not actually part of the rules, right?

Neither were those DM calls in old-school games the thread is talking about. In either case, the DM is allowed to be flexible.