The 10-foot pole, antithesis of what adventuring should be?

[silentspace]

Who sells 10 ft poles? Really?

 

[Thunderfoot]

I would NEVER carry a ten foot pole! 2 five foot poles and a length of twine, now that's a different story.

Actually any character of mine that has ever gotten ahold of a Portable Hole always gets 10 or so and drops them in, they can be quite handy for other things than just poking the ground.

 

[Herobizkit]

Every civilized rogue should own a 10' pole, even if it's only use is to render the phrase "I wouldn't touch that with a 10' pole" entirely literal.

Given the dry humour of 70's Gygax and co., I wonder if that euphemism is the only reason the 10' pole even MADE the equipment list...?

 

[Odhanan]

Who sells 10 ft poles? Really?

Ebbert's, on Delver's Square, would (in Ptolus).

D&D characters are living beings in semi believable fantasy worlds, those worlds will go on whether the individual character live or dies. The onus is on those characters to maintain thier lives. If someone thinks they deserve to survive falling prey to a trap, they've fallen for Wotc's marketing ploy.

That's an excellent summary of how the premises of D&D influence the game world. Since the game world is fantastic anyway, the PCs ought to find a way to survive, since the world would survive with or without them. Even more if the world wouldn't survive without them, actually: the more you put presure on the PCs, the more the players will feel like they ought to be cautious. Right?

 

[Tetsubo]

I would carry a Longspear or two 5' poles that screwed together rather than a standard 10' pole.

If *I* (the real me) were forced to enter a dungeon I would be tossing concussion grenades down every corridor and into every room I had to enter. I am VERY cautious with my hide...

 

[RFisher]

To me the 10 foot pole represents--to me--what D&D was meant to be:

• The humor that is meant to be ever present but not to the point of constant parody
• The caution that explorers of the dark & unknown should have
• The PCs are heroes, not Heroes

When I want to play cinematic or high fantasy or something else, other games seem more appropriate.

 

[Odhanan]

To me the 10 foot pole represents--to me--what D&D was meant to be:

• The humor that is meant to be ever present but not to the point of constant parody
• The caution that explorers of the dark & unknown should have
• The PCs are heroes, not Heroes

When I want to play cinematic or high fantasy or something else, other games seem more appropriate.

So for you, R, D&D involves a part of unrealistic premises that make up the "genre" of D&D without making it "parodic". Did I understand it well enough? PCs are people adventuring, without necessarily being "Heroes" in a Classical (read: mythical) sense of the term, right?

 

[ThirdWizard]

I've never seen what was so intelligent about 10-foot pole style play. Methodical, yes. Obsessive compulsive, yes. Intelligent, no. It seems more like a playstyle where you have a checklist of things to do when you come across any given situation, not one where you think on your toes to solve delimmas. Then when you make a mistake and miss a trap or whatever, you add what would have solved that to your checklist of things to do.

It seems a style focusing more on Player vs. DM in the sense that it isn't the characters interacting with the world around them, it is the Players trying to bypass the constructed dungeon that the DM has crafted. Now, this can be a fun way to play, I'm sure, but it definately isn't for me.

On the other hand, it is at the same time building on a more "gritty" fantasy world in which death can be around the next corner and adventuring is dangerous work, because the payoffs can be so big. When the PCs find that magical sword, they know they've earned it because if they hadn't gone down that checklist thoroughly, they would probably all be dead.

Of course, I don't consider anything in D&D earned. I also would find the game much more enjoyable to die horribly by playing a character than by succeeding by my own wits that the character wouldn't necessarily have. I also find it extremely boring to be what I consider overly cautious. I would consider a game a failure no matter how well we did if it wasn't exciting, by my own definition, to succeed. I don't consider poking a door for five minutes then walking through to be exciting. YMMV (and obviously does - and that's okay)

 

[Hussar]

To be truthfully honest, I can't remember the last player I saw actually carry a 10 foot pole.

I can really understand what Thirdwizard is saying about the checklist. I remember doing pretty much exactly that way back when. Every situation had a list of SOP's that we would go through to determine if the DM was going to stick it to us yet again.

I think the movement away from DM as strong antagonist to DM as arbiter has really drifted the game away from the idea that we have to create exactly the same character every time we enter a similar situation.

 

[Crothian]

My players would never carry around a ten foot pole, so I would always point out the situations when it would have been useful.