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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8867497" data-attributes="member: 6696971">So I'm not [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] but looking at your response here reveals some of the differences that we're trying to navigate in this conversation.  What I'm seeing above from you is an improvised action by a player (being resolved using the very straight-forward, proto-Ability Check, action resolution mechanics of Moldvay) being contrasted with the procedures for Wandering Monsters.  These are very, very different kettles of fish that imbue play with very different properties.The collective of (a) Wandering Monsters + (b) having to Rest 1 every 6 Turns (or face penalties) + (c) the attrition of your light/supplies/spells/HPs + (d) the demands of skillfully navigating the dungeon-scape and its regime of obstacles/puzzles creates an "engine of pressurized exploration action economy."  You are on the clock and the game you are playing is navigating a suite of individual decision-points (centered around how to spend your turns, where to go, how to ration your resources, what treasure to pack-out and what to leave behind, what obstacles/puzzles/conflicts to face and what to evade, when to press on and when to turn back) that is informed by many converging parameters that must be considered.  And that entire suite of decision-points faced and resolved make up the through line of the entire delve, which is a speculative risk profile that is yet another overriding parameter to consider in each of these micro-decisions.A GM improvising Wandering Monsters (something that deeply governs, via an intense and known parameter of pressure) fundamentally changes the delve experience because one of the key components of that "engine of pressurized exploration action economy" suddenly goes from a table-facing, known value that informs players' decision-matrix to "qualitative mush" that can't be acted upon in the same way or to the same degree.  Now players have to spend table time trying to assess that qualitative mush:* Is this just color, aesthetic, mood, tone (my 2 category of dungeon play)?  Or is the actual gameplay machinery?* Ok, if it is gameplay machinery, how is the GM operationalizing this equivalent of Wandering Monsters so that we (the players) can turn that qualitative mush into something we feel is sufficiently actionable to inform our individual decisions and our collective through line of decisions as we move through the delve?* Alternatively, they just passively accept this important lack of game information/understanding and heed forth headlong into the relative (or complete) unknown.  If this becomes the rote dungeoneering approach, play has definitely changed and not by a little.  Play has firmly toward the direction of my (2) category.This goes equally for my (b) through (d) above.  As key delve parameters become increasingly opaque, inscrutable, unreliable, inconsistent, disconnected, absent, devoid...the nature of delve play changes dramatically.  I'll call back to my most recent Lasers & Feelings vs Apocalypse World post just upthread as a robust example of this.  Same thing for Mouse Guard (proto-Torchbearer) vs Torchbearer.  If you just add onto Mouse Guard two of the great many mechanical layers of game tech that Luke and Thor added onto Mouse Guard to create Torchbearer then you have a profoundly different play experience when running Mouse Guard Missions.  Just the low-hanging fruit of adding The Grind, which is a brutal attrition clock like Wandering Monsters, and making Gear/Inventory as intense as it is in Torchbearer will deeply change play in terms of the cognitive orientation and demanding qualities of play...and that is just scratching the surface.If a GM freeform operationalizes Wandering Monsters + doesn't enforce Rest 1 in 6 turns + handwaves Inventory/Encumbrance + doesn't actually track light sources with meticulous scrutiny?  Again, the cognitive orientation and demanding qualities of play for Moldvay Basic change significantly.  Play moves from my (1) upthread to my (2) upthread.</blockquote>

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