The silver baton torch stub in T1

[Bullgrit]

I will say that I've very little sympathy for the player that demands of the DM easy access to treasure with little effort as the player's right.

I agree with this, though I'm not sure why you bring it up.

I will also add, I've very little patience for the DM that demands of the Players very extensive oral explanations (or mindreading) to find treasure as the DM's duty (or fun).

Bullgrit

 

[Celebrim]

I agree with this, though I'm not sure why you bring it up.

I bring it up because I consider it the most central aspect of the discussion of hidden treasure. I have encountered both at the game table and here on the boards a species of player which considers it entirely unfair for treasure to be hidden by the DM because, if treasure might not be found, then it implies that the player might not have his expected wealth by level. And, if the DM doesn't ensure that the player has his expected wealth by level that the DM is in violation of everything it means to be a good DM. The implication is that once a challenge is disposed of, the DM ought to without prompting, recite to the players a detailed description of the treasure earned as a result of this encounter. If the DM tries to hide the treasure, or if the DM doesn't report the value of the treasure, the DM is violating the rules of the game. In other words, there is according to these players only one true way to play, and DM's that hide treasure are bad people or at least just don't understand how to play.

I consider that to be a severe challenge to the game of D&D. I think that there is a creeping 3e and 4e assumption that a fully fungible treasure is just dropped in the players lap when the monster is killed and that this treasure, if it isn't exactly what the player wanted, can be easily redeemed for exactly what the player did want once they return to the nearest village. Moreover, there is a since of entitlement, like the treasure was a automatically deposited paycheck that the DM is contractually obligated to provide to the players in a way that they find convienent and that anything else is not fun.

As both a player and a DM acustomed to an earlier style of play, I find this rather unsatisfying and strongly resist this culture taking over and completely replacing the game that I know.

I will also add, I've very little patience for the DM that demands of the Players very extensive oral explanations (or mindreading) to find treasure as the DM's duty (or fun).

I'm not entirely sure what this means. I think I have some sympathy for it, but not knowing where you draw the line there, I'm not sure how much I agree. So rather than try mindreading, I'll just give my opinion coming from the opposite direction.

1) The DM should provide the resources the players need to overcome the problems. Generally speaking, its better to err on the side of providing too many resources on the assumption that the players will not behave in an optimal manner, and unlike a computer game, the game tends to play better when you don't have to push 'restart' very often.
2) The DM should craft problems which are suitable to the skill level of his players, always pushing towards more skillful and creative play, but never pushing so hard as to frustrate the players. This means that lower skill players shouldn't be given very difficult problems. On the other hand, eventually any DM worth his pizza will get such a skillful set of players, the sort that chew tournament modules up and spit them out as too easy, that he'll have difficulty challenging them because they are pushing him so hard.
3) The DM should encourage a pacing which doesn't bore the players. The environment should provide suitable clues to an attentive and skillful player as to when slowing the pacing of their play will be rewarded, and when a slow pace will just slow things down. That means that when a trap is placed, it ought to make sense for the situation. Lethal death traps shouldn't show up in random places in the dungeon. The players should be able to tell whether this is a situation where traps make sense and so caution is warranted, or when traps don't really make sense and so a faster pace of play isn't likely to cause undo difficulty. The players should be able to evaluate what degree of search is warranted, and there should be clues to help attentive players guess what things are worth looking at closely.

I imagine in my head two parties comparing notes (assuming equal skill by the DM) going into a particular dungeon:

Party #1: "That dungeon sucked."
Party #2: "Really? We had a blast."
Party #1: "The DM made us pixel bitch to find all the treasure."
Party #2: "Really, the gold chalice and that chest full of coins wasn't too hard to find?"
Party #1: "Yeah, but we had to eventually resort to tearing down the walls and shredding the furniture to find the silver and saphirre necklace. It took an hour play time and a whole day of game time."
Party #2: "Oh, well we didn't find that."
Party #1: "And the bone scroll case containing the rope trick scroll was a total pixel bitch."
Party #2: "Oh, we didn't find that either."
Party #1: "And we had to spend four days game time looting the dungeon of everything we could strip out of it before we even realized that the soot covered painting was an antique masterpeice worth 1000 gp."
Party #2: "Oh, it was worth 2000 gp when we sold it, and that was a pretty simple appraisal check once you clean the soot off."
Party #1: "You waste skill points on appraisal? It's a useless skill. Heck, it's not even fair that the DM asked for an appraisal check. Did you find the jade broach in the pond?"
Party #2: "No."
Party #1: "Did you find the uncut agate in the rubble filled room?"
Party #2: "No."
Party #1: "Sheesh. You barely found anything. You really need spend more time making search checks."
Party #2: "Maybe, but we beat the BBEG and we had fun doing it."

 

[Bullgrit]

if treasure might not be found, then it implies that the player might not have his expected wealth by level.

That's probably our disconnect. The subject in the OP is about an AD&D1 adventure. "Wealth by level" isn't part of AD&D1.

When a particular thread topic is about a specific edition of D&D, I tend to think about and respond within the context of that specific edition. Then when someone comes in and makes a gripe related to a different edition, it kind of confuses me.

I'm not entirely sure what this means. I think I have some sympathy for it, but not knowing where you draw the line there, I'm not sure how much I agree.

Well, I've never really sat and determined where the line is. But I guess, if I were to take a few moments, right now, to draw a line off the top of my head. I'd say:

I don't want to waste more time to "pixel bitch" to find something worth X experience than it does to fight and defeat something worth X experience.

So in the case of this silver baton worth 30gp = 30xp: if it takes more time than it would to kill 2 orcs (worth ~15xp each), it wastes my time and enthusiasm. This isn't a hard and fast rule; it's just off the top of my head.

Some people prefer the action of fights more, some people prefer the twenty-questions game more, some people like a balance.

Bullgrit

 

[ExploderWizard]

How do the numbers cited by Grodog interact with the "talky talky" nature of 1E searches.

In other words, if the PC's enter the room, hear the description and one player immediately says, "I've never heard of a cresset, I want to take a look at it and this torch thing." That takes a round or two, right?

Yeah, I would say about the same time as a standard door is about right.

 

[Witty Comeback]

That's probably our disconnect. The subject in the OP is about an AD&D1 adventure. "Wealth by level" isn't part of AD&D1.

When a particular thread topic is about a specific edition of D&D, I tend to think about and respond within the context of that specific edition. Then when someone comes in and makes a gripe related to a different edition, it kind of confuses me.

What Celebrim said:

I have encountered both at the game table and here on the boards a species of player which considers it entirely unfair for treasure to be hidden by the DM because, if treasure might not be found, then it implies that the player might not have his expected wealth by level. And, if the DM doesn't ensure that the player has his expected wealth by level that the DM is in violation of everything it means to be a good DM.

What you quoted is in italics. In fact, he was rebuking the sort of play style you are accusing him of playing.

I suppose it is easy to get confused by a post when you only read certain portions of the sentences.

 

[Celebrim]

That's probably our disconnect. The subject in the OP is about an AD&D1 adventure. "Wealth by level" isn't part of AD&D1.

When a particular thread topic is about a specific edition of D&D, I tend to think about and respond within the context of that specific edition. Then when someone comes in and makes a gripe related to a different edition, it kind of confuses me.

Hmmm... I see a continuity across editions. While the formal notion of 'wealth by level' is new to 3e, the general problem that the idea of 'wealth by level' was intended to address - how much treasure should the DM place in the dungeon is an old problem not at all specific to the edition or even for that matter to a particular game system.

In general, I make the following distinction. If the thread is about rules, then its specific to an edition. If the thread is about interesting encounter design, or adventure design, or good DMing, then the question isn't specific to an edition and the problem can be addressed through the lens and language of D&D as a whole. About the question of the silver baton torch stub in T1, I feel that answers of, "How should this room be run?", are not only not edition specific, but that edition specific answers that address the encounter in terms of that particular editions stock of tools are useful ways of looking at the problem regardless of which edition you play. Thus, I consider it relevant what a 4e DM considers to be the 'best practice' regarding the room with the silver torch stub in T1, and what a OD&D DM considers to be the 'best practice'. Both answers potentially would inform my approach to the problem. Indeed, an answer that looks at the room through the lens of GURPS or some other system is also interesting.

Moreover, if it really is an edition specific question, it probably shouldn't be in the General RPG Discussion forum.

I don't want to waste more time to "pixel bitch" to find something worth X experience than it does to fight and defeat something worth X experience.

That's an interesting answer. It touches on an approach to the game that I think was encouraged by 3e and strongly encouraged by 4e. In your response, you set up a formula with two inputs: experience points and time. This seems to imply that there is some value to experience point velocity - the amount of experience you earn per unit of game time. In my opinion, this approach tends to lead to gaming as an experience of leveling up, or to use a succinct term with negative connotations 'leveling treadmill'. The point of playing is to 'level up', and somehow you are in a race to get the end (or 'the good stuff' that happens at 'high level') and nothing sucks more than slipping behind in the race.

I recognize that you don't take the above statement as an absolute or complete description of your gaming, but that it comes to mind first means it probably has some high priority for you (and for alot of other players).

So in the case of this silver baton worth 30gp = 30xp: if it takes more time than it would to kill 2 orcs (worth ~15xp each), it wastes my time and enthusiasm.

In this case, finding the silver baton probably does not take more time than it would to kill 2 orcs, so it meets your XP/time standards well I think. But I think that there are alot of other different ways to look at the problem depending on how the player prioritizes his play, such as:

risk/reward
fun/time
fun/risk

And 'fun' is itself generic and fun/time might mean things like:

choices/time
challenge/time
laughter/time
variaty/time
story/time

depending on the player. I think it might be a little too easy to focus on XP as a marker because its quantifiable, but on the other hand, just because it is quantifiable doesn't mean it has actual value. Divorced from game context, XP is meaningless and the earning of XP is meaningless.

Some people prefer the action of fights more, some people prefer the twenty-questions game more, some people like a balance.

Personally, I like a balance. But I remember at one time going 4 or 5 sessions with out drawing my weapon in a campaign, and one of the most enjoyable sessions I was ever a part of involved like 8 hours and no dice. So, I'm open to 'fun' being a wide variaty of things, from classic dungeon crawling to low drama and pretty much everything in between.

 

[Bullgrit]

What you quoted is in italics. In fact, he was rebuking the sort of play style you are accusing him of playing.

I suppose it is easy to get confused by a post when you only read certain portions of the sentences.

Huh? I haven't accused him of playing a certain way.

I think I've agreed with Celebrim.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your post at all.

Bullgrit

 

[Bullgrit]

That's an interesting answer. It touches on an approach to the game that I think was encouraged by 3e and strongly encouraged by 4e. In your response, you set up a formula with two inputs: experience points and time. This seems to imply that there is some value to experience point velocity - the amount of experience you earn per unit of game time. In my opinion, this approach tends to lead to gaming as an experience of leveling up, or to use a succinct term with negative connotations 'leveling treadmill'. The point of playing is to 'level up', and somehow you are in a race to get the end (or 'the good stuff' that happens at 'high level') and nothing sucks more than slipping behind in the race.

I recognize that you don't take the above statement as an absolute or complete description of your gaming, but that it comes to mind first means it probably has some high priority for you (and for alot of other players).

Yeah, you probably put more thought and effort in that analysis than I did in coming up my "effort forumula."

In this case, finding the silver baton probably does not take more time than it would to kill 2 orcs, so it meets your XP/time standards well I think.

You saying this means you and I could probably play reasonably well together. It's a DM who thinks fighting orcs is boring and would rather play the twenty questions search game that I would get tired of pretty quickly.

I'm not one who wants/expects to just roll a die to search, but I also don't want to have spend 20 minutes guessing what exact question the DM is waiting to hear before he tells me I find some hardly hidden bauble.

Bullgrit

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Just to add to the confusion, are house rules. We hardly ever used the GP = XP rule, nor did we use wandering monsters very often. So our approach to finding hidden treasure was undoubtedly different from EGGs. If poking around looking for hidden treasure in a given module/adventure resulted in finding more traps than treasure, we stopped. After all, the actual monetary value was pretty much nil. Finding any magic items, however, would increase our searching. Those were useful! And if there were frequent monsters around, we'd often wait until the place was cleared out and then go over it with a fine tooth comb. (Greyhawking, I believe its called.)