Starting "Old SChool" gaming

[Raven Crowking]

This is a particularly galling strawman to see continually come up.

I thought of also referencing the closely related strawman from the document linked in the OP, the idea that "if you don't have a feat, you can't do it."

And I was also galled by the idea that these rules have created a culture of "rollplaying" but that's not so much a strawman as it's just an unsubstantiated assertion that I disagree with.

Given that he said that it wasn't so much a straw man as an unsupported assertion, it seems to me that no such claim has been made.

You are correct; the claimed "strawman" was a pair of different supposed "strawmen".

However, the first two strawmen are not strawmen (although they may be galling); calling them such does not constitute a counter-argument.


RC

 

[Ariosto]

I couldn't decide which one galled me more. Mostly the idea that having a lot of options = restrictions.

The ONLY reason you have MORE options is because you have decided in the first place that you have ONLY the options in the book. The essential premise is one of restriction.

That is simply how rules work!

It is not a subtle observation, just a statement of the obvious. To argue that a structure of formal rules is not a set of restrictions would be utterly absurd.

 

[rogueattorney]

The perception check, whether the 3e version, or the many kludged pre-3e versions I've seen have always been weird to me. It just doesn't match my style of play.

There's a gold goblet under the bed. Do the pc's see it? Don't know, depends on whether the pc's look under the bed. There's no roll to it. Either they look under the bed or don't.

I know, taken to the extreme, this can lead to pixel bitching. The key as the DM is to be reasonable. There's no reason to hide this stuff if you bothered putting it into the adventure in the first place. If the pcs are reasonably close let them succeed in finding whatever.

From a skill-based system's standpoint, I can see how I would be a horribly frustrating DM. Your rogue dumps all those skill points into perception-type abilities, and I let the dumb fighter's player find that stuff just by asking about it.

 

[Matthew_]

There is room for both, there always has been. The only question is where do you lay the emphasis with regard to your playing preferences. Do you want to resolve action A with a die roll or do you want to "play it out"? At what point does one interfere with the other? When a player has a search skill of +24 (or whatever) he no longer needs to interact with his environment in a specific way when searching for things that have a low search DC. If he discovers nothing after rolling, he may choose to start prodding about with a pole. On the other hand, it can be boring to describe everything your character is doing in a room every time, and it may be preferred that such routine explorations are handled with an abstract probability of success.

A lot of people who post after reading the primer say stuff like "I forgot that is how we used to play, I want to play like that again." Others respond by saying "I never want to have to play like that (sometimes "again")." Totally subjective preference. I have played AD&D with a skill system in the past, I might do again in the future, depends on the collective preference of the group.

 

[Umbran]

However, the first two strawmen are not strawmen (although they may be galling);

Do you want me to go down the rathole of rhetorical technicalities with you? Because I will. The meat of my argument will be that your definition of "strawman" is not the only one extant, and by others those points do qualify. I figure we could take a week on that.

How about instead we not try to discredit his argument on the basis of whether he used a piece of internet jargon correctly, and instead concentrate on whether he's got a point despite the technicality.

 

[mmadsen]

It's a while since I've read the Primer but from the discussion it seems to be making the case for Amber Diceless Roleplaying rather than AD&D 1e.

The Primer makes the case for original D&D, not Advanced D&D, which, as you point out, added on all kinds of detailed subsystems.

Also, I don't think that going diceless is synonymous with rulings, not rules. One very "old school" method of adjudication is to rely on a random roll, but without any pre-ordained rule: "Let's say there's a 1-in-6 chance that the guard's asleep." Or, as the Primer suggests, the DM can make up plausibly bad consequences for rolling a 1 ("You swing, miss, and fall into the pit trap!") or plausibly good consequences for rolling a 20 ("The spray of blood blinds his ally!").

Conversely, you can have complex rules without any random element, like most of the character "build" process, which isn't "old school" at all.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Consider a 1e character skill like 'Find Traps'. This was never the only way to find a pit trap.

The description for this 1e Thief function is:

Finding/removing traps pertains to relatively small mechanical devices such as poisoned needles, spring blades, and the like. Finding is accomplished by inspection, and they are nullified by mechanical removal or by being rendered harmless.

When running 1e, I typically don't allow Thieves to use 'Find Traps' to locate large construction-type traps like pits and such. (Although dwarves have a relevant racial ability that can help them out.)

Other DMs prefer to leverage the DMG's note that "small or large traps" can be found to expand the scope of the function; I prefer the more focused scope, or an interpretation that allows Thieves to act on mechanical/clockwork-type traps where there is access to the mechanisms, regardless of size. More of a case-by-case judgment call. (Actually, I prefer the OD&D approach, where the Thief lacks a Find Traps ability -- it's limited to Remove Trap.)

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

There is room for both, there always has been. The only question is where do you lay the emphasis with regard to your playing preferences.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the issue. I use both die rolls and descriptive searching, depending on the situation.

 

[Celebrim]

It is not a subtle observation, just a statement of the obvious. To argue that a structure of formal rules is not a set of restrictions would be utterly absurd.

There are two ways to look at rules. The first way is this: "If rules are restrictions, then everything that is not covered by the rules is permited."

In my opinion, having a structure of formal rules is actually enabling. I don't see rules as telling me what I can't do, as give me the DM (or player) tools for handling common situations in a fair, uniform, and comprehensible manner. Because I see the rules as a set of restrictions, the rules aren't in the way except where I want them to be, like "You can't walk through walls without a special exemption that lets you do so."

And in this sense, a set of formal rules is no more restrictive in practice than a set of informal rules. In practice, no matter how informal the DM likes his rules, there are restrictions he wants to impose. The restriction that, "You can do everything you can in real life, and nothing more.", is actually a pretty heavy restriction. Worse yet, informal leads to all sorts of arguments about what you can and can't do in real life because the player feels like he's restricted by the heavy burden of the DM's (often unjustified) opinions. Worse yet, informal rules puts a very heavy burden on a DM to be a master rulesmith capable of spinning up fair, balance, and comprehensible rulings on every subject on a momments notice. This isn't a terribly big burden to me, because I am a pretty good rules smiths (if I do say so myself), but an enormous number of campaigns have gotten derailed by bad rulings from otherwise good DMs.

The alternate approach is one I see from time to time put forth by proponents of modern gaming, and it is, "The rules are a set of permissions telling you what you can do." I've met otherwise rational and logical players that insist on this interpretation because they think it is empowering somehow, but in fact it is entirely disempowering. If the rules are a set of permissions, then everything not mentioned by the rules is forbidden. I think it is actually that interpretation of the rules that brings 'old school gamers' into contention with 'modern gamers'.

I don't think it is whether or not you have a formal rules set. One only has to puruse 1e rule books, old copies of Dragon magazine, and even some of D&D's competitors at the time to see that when it came to wanting a rule for everything, nothing quite surpassses the 'old school' style. (This is the frequent subject of humor in literature that spoofs the 'old school style, such as 'Knights of the Dinner Table'.)

 

[Celebrim]

The description for this 1e Thief function is:

When running 1e, I typically don't allow Thieves to use 'Find Traps' to locate large construction-type traps like pits and such. (Although dwarves have a relevant racial ability that can help them out.)

This seems like a rather small point of interpretation to me, because I'm perfectly happy to make all of my examples with small mechanical traps and not larger ones. The point I'm trying to make about the interplay between character and player would still hold I think regardless of the size of traps that may be discovered.

My personal interpretation of the passage was that there generally wasn't much difference between the process of inspection to find large traps and small ones, but that there might be a very great difference between disabling a large trap and a small one. Rendering a small trap harmless or removing it is usually just a matter of delicacy, but rendering a large trap harmless would generally require the application of special tools and lots of additional labor.

The classic example is again the covered pit trap. A successful 'remove trap' roll on a covered pit trap at best leaves you with an uncovered pit. Actually rendering it harmless is a matter of filling it up, which is more effort and labor than is implied by a single remove trap check.

(Actually, I prefer the OD&D approach, where the Thief lacks a Find Traps ability -- it's limited to Remove Trap.)

This however results in another difficulty, but I'll leave that aside for now.