What are the intangibles that make D&D fun?

[Dausuul]

I don't really agree with the idea that games are/were only fun because of nostalgia either.

One thing I wonder about your game?

Was it really more freewheeling because the rules promoted it, or because the people playing were under the impression that the system promoted it, so were more willing to accept it?

Well, that's why I drew a distinction between old-school rules and old-school social contract.

Although, I think old-school rules more or less necessitate a freewheeling social contract; there's so much stuff that the rules simply do not cover (all the material that in later editions would be handled by the skill system, f'rex). If the DM isn't allowed to fill in the blanks by fiat, there just isn't a game any more.

And it's not like we had long conversations beforehand about the social contract and the rules system. The players were coming to BECMI more or less cold.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I knew a guy who started spraying metallic spray paint on paper towels, lighting them on fire, and then smoking them like cigarettes.

He un-knew a WHOLE lot of what he once knew.

I stand corrected!

 

[Scribble]

Well, that's why I drew a distinction between old-school rules and old-school social contract.

Although, I think old-school rules more or less necessitate a freewheeling social contract; there's so much stuff that the rules simply do not cover (all the material that in later editions would be handled by the skill system, f'rex). If the DM isn't allowed to fill in the blanks by fiat, there just isn't a game any more.

Sure-

I think though we could probably (and I don't want to) start an endless debate about whether the rules were built this way to promote freewheeling/creativity or simply because Gygax didn't think these things would come up, and when they did it forced DMs to account for it (claiming it adds creativity to the game as an excuse.)

And it's not like we had long conversations beforehand about the social contract and the rules system. The players were coming to BECMI more or less cold.

Cold or not, I think there are a lot of "preconceived" notions about earlier game editions, for even people who never played them...

 

[Mallus]

Although, I think old-school rules more or less necessitate a freewheeling social contract; there's so much stuff that the rules simply do not cover (all the material that in later editions would be handled by the skill system, f'rex). If the DM isn't allowed to fill in the blanks by fiat, there just isn't a game any more.

I'm not so sure that's true. In every edition of the game, a great deal of the action occurs outside the purview of the rules, in one way or another.

The sheer volume of odd, outlier things players try to do over the course of a campaign makes any version of the D&D rules look woefully inadequate. And even where there are rules, like the skill system in 3e or 4e, they're often so vague and open to interpretation so as not to of much practical use.

What does a 26 Diplomacy mean exactly, when you're pestering the King for some troops to help fend off an orc incursion? The rules are silent here.

 

[Dausuul]

Sure-

I think though we could probably (and I don't want to) start an endless debate about whether the rules were built this way to promote freewheeling/creativity or simply because Gygax didn't think these things would come up, and when they did it forced DMs to account for it (claiming it adds creativity to the game as an excuse.)

I doubt it was a deliberate choice to promote creativity; after all, we're talking about the early days of D&D here, when people were still figuring out the basics of how to make an RPG go. My guess is, Gygax and Arneson simply didn't give it much thought. They were too busy hammering on the core rules to worry about the peripheral cases.

Cold or not, I think there are a lot of "preconceived" notions about earlier game editions, for even people who never played them...

Maybe for people who hang out on ENWorld and see all the discussions of AD&D and OD&D and the merits of various editions. That does not describe most of my players, though.

The sheer volume of odd, outlier things players try to do over the course of a campaign makes any version of the D&D rules look woefully inadequate.

But some versions are... I was going to say "more inadequate," but that implies a denigration of the smaller rulesets, so let's go with "more non-comprehensive" than others. The 3.5 rules were clearly intended to provide support within the rules for every likely scenario, hence the elaborate skill system and combat maneuvers and so forth. They didn't cover every possibility, but they covered enough that when a weird situation came up, "look it up" was a reasonable default response; there was a good chance there would be rules for it somewhere.

In the early editions, BECMI especially, looking it up was a waste of time. You knew it wasn't gonna be there, so the DM just made a ruling on the fly and you went with that.

 

[Scribble]

I doubt it was a deliberate choice to promote creativity; after all, we're talking about the early days of D&D here, when people were still figuring out the basics of how to make an RPG go. My guess is, Gygax and Arneson simply didn't give it much thought. They were too busy hammering on the core rules to worry about the peripheral cases.

While I might agree wih you, I have no doubt in my mind there are others who would argue the other case is true.

I don't really know the truth though, and as I said- I don't want to turn the thread into a debate like this.

Maybe for people who hang out on ENWorld and see all the discussions of AD&D and OD&D and the merits of various editions. That does not describe most of my players, though.

Well... I think it applies further then just online/on enworld, but that said I was not intending to imply this is what was happening with you or your players, only questioning it as a possibility.

Shrug.

 

[Diamond Cross]

The randomness of the dice.

Coming up with a creative way to use something to solve a problem.

For example, casting a Cantrip to make a villains hair grow really fast and really long to disrupt his spell casting.

And sometimes just enjoying a good fight against incredible odds.

 

[Mallus]

The 3.5 rules were clearly intended to provide support within the rules for every likely scenario, hence the elaborate skill system and combat maneuvers and so forth.

My point was even with the elaborate skill system, the game still really ran on judgment calls, when you get right down to it (because the system was terrible at giving concrete examples and specific results).

I'm not trying to say later editions didn't attempt to be more comprehensive... I'm saying that in practice, they didn't really work our that way.

 

[pemerton]

While I have some issues with the Skill Challenge rules, the best thing about them, which I believe are only partially-stated, is that they offer an incredibly flexible system for players to affect the game environment.

<snip>

4e removes most spells, turns some into Rituals, and then goes even further by adding this --admittedly wonky-- tool for doing almost anything in-game.

Trying to: start a war? Open a success trade route? Make your own artifact? Kill a dragon with a folding boat? Why not use a Skill Challenge...

The specifics are still buggy, but the idea that you can produce almost any effect in/on the game is golden.

Agreed that they're flexible, appealingly open-ended, and very wonky.

What does a 26 Diplomacy mean exactly, when you're pestering the King for some troops to help fend off an orc incursion? The rules are silent here.

The 4e skill challenge rules try to answer this by specifying DCs by the level of challenge. The GM still has to make a judgment call about the difficulty of the particular skill check, but it is a greater degree of constraint.

Linking this to the wonkiness - Robin Laws' discussion of the pass/fail cycle in DMG2 would be a lot more useful if it was connected to the setting of complexity and difficulties for skill challenges, rather than trying to directly incorporate aspects of HeroQuest that don't really fit into the rest of the 4e rules.