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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3231956" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a good sword to get from beating three trolls which are probably the equivalent of Hill Giants with extreme daylight vulnerability.This is where we have different views about what constitutes 3E D&D. The DMG is called a Core Rulebook, and it has rules for encounter design and treasure by level. Of course, one can house-rule these away, as one can Rule Zero anything else.I was talking about the 3E play experience. Once you change the play experience to a different sort of game, who knows what will happen!! Maybe you get a game like OGL Conan, although I think that game has its own problems in its reward system, as I outlined above.I find it interesting that, on another recent thread I was attacked left and right for suggesting that the FAQ could be useful for those interested in playing with the RAW, while here I assume that the game will be played with RAW and get told I'm not talking about the true D&D.As I said in an earlier post, there is a tendency on the part of D&D to present itself as a ruleset suited to any variety of gaming. This leads to an assumption that you can change the reward and encounter structure willy-nilly, while holding character design and action resolution rules constant, and still be playing the same game. I think this assumption is false. I think its falsity is born out by the fact that what some people on this thread are calling good adventure design, others are calling bad. That is because they are, in effect, playing different games, with different expectations about the relationship between player goals and character goals. The fact that one part of the mechanics - namely, the character builds and action resolution - is shared does not make the games the same, anymore than OGL Conan or D20 Cthulhu is just a D&D variant.The final few sentences of your post almost seem to say that, if one plays 3E D&D out of the box as written, including the rules for encounter generation and treasure by level, you get a bad game. If that is true, that is a harsh criticism of a pretty significant part of the D&D ruleset. As it happens, I don't think it is true. While I find a lot of the WoTC adventures built in accordance with the rules a bit lame, I think some of Monte Cook's work (to pick on a well-known author whom I happen to like) shows that D&D can be made into a pretty fun play experience.</blockquote>

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