Voadam said:
Unless you want to know about character advancement, gaining xp, training, how your THAC0 improves, how your saves improve, or how the different classes compare on THAC0 or saves when making a character. Or perhaps how initiative is supposed to work when you get into combat.
Well, as merely a player you wouldn't NEED to know how the DM is calculating the XP he's awarding all the PC's, though you might be curious why some monsters seem to be worth more/less, why some class activities might earn your PC more xp than the activities of other PC's with different classes. Since you would be able to see the starkly different xp progression tables by class you might wonder WHY they are so different.
THACO is 2E, not 1E. But even in 2E not only THACO but base saves are something that only changes when you level. While it might be convenient for you as a player to simply have that information handy it's hardly that great an INcovenience to simply ask the DM WHEN the time comes for you to level up. But it IS rather unanswerable why this might actually BE information to be kept away from players.
1E initiative is a near-indecipherable, craptastic mess. It wouldn't help any player to have actually read it. I did run ONE campaign where I began with the intent of keeping it as close to RAW as possible and initiative was the first thing to get houseruled, and that after the first combat proved what a sad affair the campaign would be if we really DID try to stick to that. It was not until I read ADDICT in 2006 that I ever thought it COULD theoretically be run as-is, though even with ADDICT it would probably still be better to use simpler house-ruled methods instead
I can relate that my own experience with the DMG as a player was that I did NOT read, nor even attempt to read, the DMG for quite some time. As a player it was not necessary to play and information in it that I needed for my character could easily be provided by the DM. If my DM provided it by simply handing me the DMG then by and large I simply took the information I needed and did not make much effort to read the rest. As I began to get more deeply interested in the details and nuances I started by borrowing the DMG from my DM's and then soon after just bought my own. Even then, I felt I probably SHOULD be trying to run a campaign if I was going to be having this information. The DMG told me so in sections that have already been quoted upthread that this information WAS NOT FOR PLAYERS.
That, however, was complete and utter shash. My first DM certainly did hold to that belief of exclusivity to an extent (and that probably kept me from getting very curious about other aspects of the game outside of being a mere player) but he believed it probably only because it told him to believe it. I would have to say that the only things that the DMG revealed that would be desireable to keep from players eyes is the idea that the DM MAKES THINGS UP (rules, monsters, whatever) and the sections of text where the DM is effectively given instructions to be not only adversarial but seemingly vindictive. Things like... spell research should cost just slightly more than the PC can actually afford, and they should be gleefully allowed to waste all their time and money on research the DM has decided for unstated reasons WILL NEVER SUCCEED.
In fact, it sure seems to me that even while Gary may have written some of these things, he may not have particularly believed them, or if he did he didn't adhere to them strongly, or perhaps he just ingnored what he wrote for the rules and for his own game just continued to run things as he always had regardless of what his own printed words my have suggested; sometimes being by-the-book, sometimes being in direct contradiction of the book. Certainly he has publicly stated that some of the rules that were in there he never personally used or cared about but had only included them to appease friends who DID use and care for them. Is it hard to believe that some of his prose may have been equally disposable to him? Could it not be that he wrote that the DMG should be kept sacred for DM's simply to please some people who actually DID think that, despite it's inclusion of a lot of material that was regularly used by players or at least was of an UTTERLY non-sensitive nature?
Rather than snipe at each other about what was or wasn't intended, select participants in this thread ought to simply post to Gary's threads here and ASK? Though given the disproportionate passion some people seem to hold on the subject I wouldn't blame him for not wanting to respond and be drawn into the morass.
