The Trouble With Rules Discussions

[Emerikol]

In the example of play, the Moldvay rules are followed for number appearing and creature reactions. If I sat down to play a game of classic D&D, I would expect the GM to follow those conventions for handling wandering monsters - otherwise it's pretty hard for the players to demonstrate their skilled play.

I never viewed these as anything more than suggestions. Most rules though in my world about DM activities are suggestions to the DM. Player rules need to be clearer and consistent enough of course but even then in any given single moment things may not work as they thought. For any number of reasons unknown to the characters.

 

[Bill Zebub]

P.S. Thoughts on 'skilled play'.

I was GMing a session (of Shadowdark) for new players. They were facing a passage in which they had deduced (correctly) that the floor was covered with pressure traps that would shoot poisoned darts. I had thought of several solutions, but they came up with something I hadn't expected: they went back to retrieve bricks from the caved-in entrance, and tossed the bricks ahead to make stepping stones down the passage.

This didn't require any use of, or even knowledge of, specific rules, and yet it's exactly what I think of as 'skilled play'.

Post Script: and those two players were totally hooked on RPGs as a result.

 

[bloodtide]

This is a HUGE thing in my games.

So many gamers think rules, rule interpretations, House Rules, The Agreement, and what "everyone does" are universal.

It's bad enough when some players think things like "I never keep track of stuff, I just say my character has whatever and 'pop' they do". And I have to tell the player, "nope, not in my game. I don't care if your last 100 DMs did it that way. You keep track of exactly what your character has on them in my game."

It just get worse for the more style type stuff. The PCs try to cross a trapped bridge over a river....and fall in the river. The players automatically assume their characters automatically hold on to everything. And they are beyond shocked when I have them roll and drop items. Again I will hear something like "my last 100 DMs never had any of my characters drop anything ever!".

And the whine increases a hundred fold when the kobolds come out of the woods to attack the PCs on the riverbank. And a player of a martial PC will whine and complain that it is not fair their PC dropped their two handed sword in the river.

Or when the player of the spellcasting PC just wants to cast a spell and "blast all the kobolds". And I tell them that in the 360 battlefield there are nine groups of kobolds, and point to the miniatures. The player gets super upset they can't just "blast all the kobolds" as they are spread out all around the area. And the player will endlessly complain "all the other 100 DMs they have played with have always had only one easy to target group of kobolds to blast."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Also the "pages of houserules" isn't something I've seen since AD&D 2nd. Frankly, there are so many RPGs out there that who would ever play in a game with pages of house rules - just find a ruleset that fits. With zero excuse of "but we like/familiar/want to play D&D" because your actions say you don't.

Well, the answer could be "because no ruleset we've found fits, so we just have to hack the one we're most familiar with/seems closest to." This can be particularly easy if you're fussy.

Your example loggerhead is "A DM gave me the wrong information, telling me the effect was as a spell, so I argued for that with another DM instead of what the item actually did". You weren't even wrong, the first DM who referred you to the spell was. If the rules are kept from you and then misrepresented, you aren't at a loggerhead for rules discussion, you're stuck because you've been misinformed. Whole different argument. If you had access to the actual rules, none of that would have happened.

Its not even a loggerheads then, unless you insist on resisting the person you're arguing with telling you your information is wrong.

 

[Voadam]

"Can I run up the body of a water elemental and stand on it's head?" -some player, somewhere.

With a ring of water walking? About as easily as you could run up the body of an earth elemental I would expect.

I wouldn't really expect to stand on the head though. Head-ish area/wave crest?

 

[pemerton]

I don't think I understand what you are saying. It sounds like that leaves no room for GMs to write their own adventures, or make up their own monsters.

Well, in Moldvay Basic an "adventure" is a dungeon, and the GM is expected to write up those. There is a whole chapter that sets out very good guidelines on how to do it.

When it comes to wandering monsters, the GM might write up their own wandering monster table, but I would expect them to adhere closely to the precedent set by the published tables, in so far as these establish what is appropriate difficulty for a given dungeon level.

I'm also confused about how you are defining "skilled" play. If I ignore the wandering monster table and instead of 2-8 Hobgoblins I pick 20, and instead of "neutral" I pick "hostile", there is still plenty of opportunity (and more urgency!) to demonstrate skilled play.

I don't know if you have access to a copy of Gygax's PHB. If you do, read the section, which is at the end just before the Appendices, called Successful Adventures. That contains advice to players, but from it you can also see very clearly how Gygax expects the game to be played.

He particularly emphasises planning, with multiple layers: planning load-out (gear, magic and spells) with a close eye on the goal of a dungeon expedition; gathering information, so that goals can be rationally formed and pursued (this connects to the "exploration" aspect of play, mapping, listening at doors, and all those other similar components of classic D&D); not being distracted from a goal once it is set and the expedition has set off; as part of the preceding, avoiding wandering monsters or otherwise dealing with them as effectively as possible.

If the GM is going to make decisions about monster placement, numbers, reactions and the like ex tempore, in ways that render collection of information and planning impractical or even impossible, the game has changed very significantly from what Gygax set out. (And what Moldvay's edition is also written to support.)

I personally don't play Gygaxian D&D very often, and am not its biggest fan - I find it a bit tedious, as I lack the patience it requires to be done well (both by the GM and the players) - but the approach is a clear one, and Gygax's PHB and (at least parts of) his DMG set out a clear framework for doing it; and Moldvay Basic is an even cleaner set of rules for that sort of game.

Generally I play games where the GM is expected to make decisions about encounters with NPCs ex tempore. But those are not really "skilled play" games, at least in the Gygaxian sense. And there are still a whole host of principles that govern how those encounters are framed, although they are different from the combination of map-and-key + wandering monsters that govern the Gygaxian game.

 

[pemerton]

I was GMing a session (of Shadowdark) for new players. They were facing a passage in which they had deduced (correctly) that the floor was covered with pressure traps that would shoot poisoned darts. I had thought of several solutions, but they came up with something I hadn't expected: they went back to retrieve bricks from the caved-in entrance, and tossed the bricks ahead to make stepping stones down the passage.

This didn't require any use of, or even knowledge of, specific rules, and yet it's exactly what I think of as 'skilled play'.

This is certainly one example of it, yes! It reminds me of taking the doors of the hinges so as to surf down the frictionless corridor over the super-tetanus pits in White Plume Mountain.

Did you ever see this old thread of mine, which goes into some of the issues around this sort of "ingenious use of the fiction" skilled play in the context of wacky "old school" traps? D&D General - Is this a fair trap?

EDIT: Although TB2e draws heavily on classic D&D for tropes and for some parts of its game play, it also has some core departures. With the example you give, for instance, there are two natural steps in the resolution: a Labourer test to carry the bricks back; if that succeeds then a "good idea" to get across the trap (a good idea means no test required, so no advancing of the Grind, but also no check marked for advancement); if that fails, then either a condition (eg you become Exhausted from carrying all those bricks) or a twist (which could be anything that makes sense give the fiction, both established and map-and-key: in your example it could be accidentally trigger a dart while dropping/throwing a brick, or maybe a creature hearing the noise of the carrying and hence coming to investigate, or anything else the GM thinks makes sense and is fair).

 

[Bill Zebub]

EDIT: Although TB2e draws heavily on classic D&D for tropes and for some parts of its game play, it also has some core departures. With the example you give, for instance, there are two natural steps in the resolution: a Labourer test to carry the bricks back; if that succeeds then a "good idea" to get across the trap (a good idea means no test required, so no advancing of the Grind, but also no check marked for advancement);

The One Ring 1e worked this way also: succeeding on rolls (sometimes) granted advancement points.

if that fails, then either a condition (eg you become Exhausted from carrying all those bricks) or a twist (which could be anything that makes sense give the fiction, both established and map-and-key: in your example it could be accidentally trigger a dart while dropping/throwing a brick, or maybe a creature hearing the noise of the carrying and hence coming to investigate, or anything else the GM thinks makes sense and is fair).

In that scenario I just gave the new players a success, but ideally I like to give players two distinct options, with different risks. For example, I could have given them the choice between doing it quickly, and having to make Dex checks to successfully navigate their sparse stepping stones, or spend longer and making more trips to build a safer path, but potentially attract attention while doing it. (Or even a sliding scale: "Each trip reduces the DC of the Dex check by 3, but I'll make a wandering monster check each time."). Then let them choose which risk they want to face. Or possibly come up with a different plan because they don't like either risk.

I do generally agree with the sentiment that you have expressed, and is part of 'playing by the rules', that players should have an idea of what the odds are before making decisions. Again citing The One Ring, much of which I like, I specifically do not like the Journey rules (in either edition) because you just roll dice and generate the fiction from the result. "Oh, looks like we rolled this kind of Hazard, player X will have to make a successful Hunting check or you each lose 1 Endurance." There's no decision-making, no hard choices.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Again citing The One Ring, much of which I like, I specifically do not like the Journey rules (in either edition) because you just roll dice and generate the fiction from the result. "Oh, looks like we rolled this kind of Hazard, player X will have to make a successful Hunting check or you each lose 1 Endurance." There's no decision-making, no hard choices.

I'm going to qualify your statement a bit -- but then mostly agree with you! There are a number of decision points that a journey allows:

1. Before taking the journey, they may decide to search out for rumors on the journey that will aid them (but will take from their very limited set of potential actions in the fellowship phase)
2. The players drawn on the map the route they need to take. In the last journey may players made, they elected to go quite a ways off course so as to travel by boat downstream, and then make a fast journey across the wilds to the southern pass (They elected not to force the pace -- though they could have). I had rather expected them to cross the mountains immediately and maybe stop somewhere more friendly on the way, but they decided otherwise.
3. My players swap roles based on how much hope each has, if they think their useful items will help them and occasionally because they just don't feel lucky.
4. They have to choose whether to spend hope on journey rolls, which can be quite a hard choice, if you are hovering right on the edge of weariness.

So there is a fair amount of choice, but I'm going to generally agree with you, because most of the above is planning, and the actual journey can be pretty simple. When I run it, I take the required skill to be tested as the default one, and will entertain others if they seem appropriate. I have a set of potential events that can happen as "flavor text", and if you have a skill that fits the flavor text, I'm happy for you to use it. So, for example, a "terrible misfortune" might be the following:

THE CRUMBLING BRIDGE
While crossing an ancient stone bridge, the structure begins to tremble ominously. A sudden crack echoes through the air as a section of the bridge collapses, sending one hero plummeting.

I'd be happy with a CRAFT roll to replace the usual roll, or if the player had some variety of stone-cunning, I might give a bonus dice to the standard action. I find that having a good description for the players helps a lot with the otherwise bland mechanical journey mechanics.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm going to qualify your statement a bit -- but then mostly agree with you! There are a number of decision points that a journey allows:

1. Before taking the journey, they may decide to search out for rumors on the journey that will aid them (but will take from their very limited set of potential actions in the fellowship phase)
2. The players drawn on the map the route they need to take. In the last journey may players made, they elected to go quite a ways off course so as to travel by boat downstream, and then make a fast journey across the wilds to the southern pass (They elected not to force the pace -- though they could have). I had rather expected them to cross the mountains immediately and maybe stop somewhere more friendly on the way, but they decided otherwise.
3. My players swap roles based on how much hope each has, if they think their useful items will help them and occasionally because they just don't feel lucky.
4. They have to choose whether to spend hope on journey rolls, which can be quite a hard choice, if you are hovering right on the edge of weariness.

So there is a fair amount of choice, but I'm going to generally agree with you, because most of the above is planning, and the actual journey can be pretty simple. When I run it, I take the required skill to be tested as the default one, and will entertain others if they seem appropriate. I have a set of potential events that can happen as "flavor text", and if you have a skill that fits the flavor text, I'm happy for you to use it. So, for example, a "terrible misfortune" might be the following:

THE CRUMBLING BRIDGE
While crossing an ancient stone bridge, the structure begins to tremble ominously. A sudden crack echoes through the air as a section of the bridge collapses, sending one hero plummeting.

I'd be happy with a CRAFT roll to replace the usual roll, or if the player had some variety of stone-cunning, I might give a bonus dice to the standard action. I find that having a good description for the players helps a lot with the otherwise bland mechanical journey mechanics.

Yes, I agree with you: there are choices that players can make to prepare for a journey that will improve their chances, but the events along the way are still just "roll the dice and see what happens to you."

For the latter part, I always tried to design journey hazards that give choices. In the bridge example, using Craft might increase the durability of the bridge* but it will take time and consume supplies. Alternately they could try climbing down into the ravine and out the other side, but there's a foul stench coming from there...

The TOR supplement I always wanted was scores of such Hazards, each with multiple solutions with different risks.