When Adventure Designers Cheat

[Victim]

Divinations are supposed to be cryptic. If everyone knew the answer to everything, all adventurers would do is sit around and wait for the "chosen one" to go finish it off.

Except that other people would be throwing out divinations and would have all the info they need on the chosen one's weak points. It's not like perfect information provides the solution to everything. And there's both defenses against divination that powerful people can have, and the limitation that you have to know enough to aim the divination appropriately.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

+20 to each would be effectively the same at the level one can first cast them, but it would certainly preserve the ability to make them not an auto-win as well.

That's a pretty good change. I may houserule that.

Wizzy, check out the Sean K Reynolds article that I linked to in post #70. It may be the type of thing that you're looking for.

Olaf the Stout

 

[megamania]

Sometimes it is good to "cheat". It keeps players on their toes and wondering. However, that being said, "cheating" should only be done for effect. Alien creatures or magic should have a different look or feel to it. However, every thug in the neighborhood shouldn't have leather armor +20.

Be sure it makes sense.

 

[pemerton]

Does DnD assert this? I think the core rule books (or really any of the rule books) largely ignore the issues of play style - at least explicitly. The only explicit treatment of playstyle that I've ever seen in the literature has been very superficial. IMO DnD's philosophy on playstyle has to be inferred, and while I think it strongly points to a certain conclusion, I can't be sure that is intentional on the part of Gygax, TSR, WotC, or any of the other custodians of the rules over the years. I've never seen a chapter in a core DnD game book entitled "when to use an unkillable NPC for plot purposes".

I haven't gone through my (3e) DMG to see exactly what it says on this topic. But various articles on the WoTC web site (eg Save My Game-type columns) seem to imply that a variety of styles is possible. And in my experience on these boards, the suggestion that the D&D ruleset does support one particular play style - broadly, tactical or resource-management style - over other styles, like thematic or emotional immersion, tends to produce a very hostile repsonse from the majority of posters.

When it comes to what Gygax intended, I think 1st ed D&D has conflicting tendencies. Parts of the system - eg weapon vs armour, stronghold building and maintenance, the long discussion of taxation in the DMG - seem intended to support a medieval immersion game like Chivalry and Sorcery; other parts, like the adventuring advice in the PHB and the XP rules, seem intended to support a 3E-style resource-management game.

Either sort of game can be a fun way to spend one's time, but I do think it is hard to combine them: resource-management play does not tend to produce very realistic medieval simulation, nor simulation of any of the main literary genres: neither LotR nor Conan stories involve the protagonists making choices guided primarily by resource considerations.

 

[Psion]

Funny though, WPM is a beloved adventure module, at least in the circles I run in.

I find is annoying that it's held up as one of the best adventures 1e has to offer. I appreciate many 1e adventures, but this is not one of them.

 

[Slife]

neither LotR nor Conan stories involve the protagonists making choices guided primarily by resource considerations.

Yeah. If they had, Tolkein would have been an entire book about characters trying to increase their resources. Perhaps they would have had to go on a long quest in order to get gold and magic weapons for their characters. There might even have been mundane resource management, with characters worrying about running out of food.


Boy, I'm glad that nobody wrote that novel. It would have been awful.

[/sarcasm]

 

[Psion]

Divinations are supposed to be cryptic. If everyone knew the answer to everything, all adventurers would do is sit around and wait for the "chosen one" to go finish it off.

Though I don't care for the mechanics, Mongoose's EA: Chronomancy has some excellent reasons you want divination to be vague.

And in a roundabout way, its the same reason the DM would want them to be vague.

 

[Crothian]

I find is annoying that it's held up as one of the best adventures 1e has to offer. I appreciate many 1e adventures, but this is not one of them.

I love it!!

 

[Psion]

I love it!!

Are you taunting me?

That's fine. It's your right to like crappy modules.

 

[Psion]

That said, to play devil's advocate, my character is not casting a spell because I know it would break the adventure open we are playing right now. I guess I feel the need to reverse-metagame in this situation. Sort of the metagaming equivalent of "I'm going to duel him left-handed!"