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<blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8592025" data-attributes="member: 2209">I would disagree.In AD&amp;D xp was in the DMG, the ideal presented was for players to not know the DMG mechanics except through exploring in game. So xp structure incentives were mostly a black box to reward and penalize certain playstyles after the fact, but not primarily to telegraph to players up front what the game was about by incentivizing specific math with monster kills. Many players would just know they got x xp after a game, not what for or what the opportunity costs of their choices were, so the comparative math incentives were not apparent.B/X was fantastic and a much more straightforward presentation of rules and playstyle advice.However while the game can be focused in on a neat survival exploration in a dungeon where you balance weight of loot versus speed and such, encumbrance was explicitly an optional rule.[ATTACH=full]154709[/ATTACH]My group in the early 80s sometimes figured out encumbrance when creating a character and buying individual waterskins and such but then quickly not sweating it in actual games when we were focused on exploring a dungeon where there might be hidden giant spiders or poison gas traps in the next chamber. We focused more on description clues and less on optional encumbrance math tracking systems at that point.Group focus varied a lot on what was central to their D&amp;D experience.Combat was a big focus in my experience from the beginning.One of the class names was fighter after all. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Voadam, post: 8592025, member: 2209"] I would disagree. In AD&D xp was in the DMG, the ideal presented was for players to not know the DMG mechanics except through exploring in game. So xp structure incentives were mostly a black box to reward and penalize certain playstyles after the fact, but not primarily to telegraph to players up front what the game was about by incentivizing specific math with monster kills. Many players would just know they got x xp after a game, not what for or what the opportunity costs of their choices were, so the comparative math incentives were not apparent. B/X was fantastic and a much more straightforward presentation of rules and playstyle advice. However while the game can be focused in on a neat survival exploration in a dungeon where you balance weight of loot versus speed and such, encumbrance was explicitly an optional rule. [ATTACH type="full"]154709[/ATTACH] My group in the early 80s sometimes figured out encumbrance when creating a character and buying individual waterskins and such but then quickly not sweating it in actual games when we were focused on exploring a dungeon where there might be hidden giant spiders or poison gas traps in the next chamber. We focused more on description clues and less on optional encumbrance math tracking systems at that point. Group focus varied a lot on what was central to their D&D experience. Combat was a big focus in my experience from the beginning. One of the class names was fighter after all. :) [/QUOTE]

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