D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts

[MGibster]

There's a difference, isn't there, between an adventure presenting a situation in which hostile, potentially violent, beings are present and "having a fight*?

Is there? In my experience, D&D players expect violence. For their players I mean. I haven't read every D&D scenario, and I know in many of them there are ways to avoid particular encounters, but at the end of the day every one I have read ends in violence. You're not getting through Castle Ravenloft without a fight.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, it was usually a callback to a previous ruling that the player thought was similar or at least in the same spirit.

Edit: Interesting now that I look back...it almost always seems to be someone wanting to argue over physics. I wonder if that's a good way of catching oneself, whether it's a GM or a player; ask yourself "Am I arguing about the physics? If so, remember this is fantasy, and carefully reconsider."

That line is different for everyone. For example, I want anything that goes beyond action movie physics (and not all of those, to be honest) to be explicitly supernatural.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But a true one. The horror stories of PCs spending 30 real minutes in standing in front of a door came from somewhere (and welcomed the wandering monster roll into existence). They came from DMs emulating the Tomb of Horrors, Keep on the Borderlands, and other OS classics.

It may be true for some, but it isn't the sweeping generalized truth you made it out to be.

 

[Remathilis]

It may be true for some, but it isn't the sweeping generalized truth you made it out to be.

I believe I said the fosters negative behaviors, not that they are automatically created. Drinking fosters alcoholism, but not everyone who drinks will be an alcoholic. That doesn't mean that their isn't any dangers involved either.

 

[DarkCrisis]

They also learn a bunch of negative behaviors as well: spending undo amounts of time hyper analyzing every door, chest, and 10 ft floor tile for traps/mimics, assume every NPC is a doppelganger/succubus, and searching for every possible way to parse a DMs words to gain advantages.

If your DM wants to play it that way, sure. Luckily for my players I didn't. Turns out DM's don't have to be dicks or make things a slog. Even in Old School.

 

[TiQuinn]

To me, OS play and OS rules are not inseperaable. I played a lot of Goodman Games DCCs during 3x and those were all "Third edition rules, first edtion feel" and guess what they meant by "first editon feel?" Traps on traps. NPCs waiting to betray your party. Gotcha encounters. They only worked because generally speaking they played by 3e's rules for encounters and traps, meaning they were rarely the auto-kills that older D&D had. But when you mix that "1e feel" with OS assumptions on lethality, you get the perfect brew for paranoid players treating every doorknob likes its covered in contact poison (save vs poison or die). Even the ones to their own innrooms!

I remember a lot of those too but as I’m looking around, I am seeing some evolution in the style of play. I think there’s a number of people who aren’t comfortable with the phrase “old school revolution/revival” as it historically has meant, I think in part to some of the issues with playstyle and others for some of bigotry that some folks have wrapped themselves in (just as examples.)

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Revisiting the NSR

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[TiQuinn]

That line is different for everyone. For example, I want anything that goes beyond action movie physics (and not all of those, to be honest) to be explicitly supernatural.

I think because that line is different and because not everyone agrees that it would be supernatural is what leads to those arguments, but as you mentioned, this is where discussion both before the game (Session Zero*) and during the game (clearly understanding what a player wants to do and is intending with their actions, and negotiating what is possible within that game world.)

* Edit: meant Session Zero, not Rule Zero

 

[Micah Sweet]

I believe I said the fosters negative behaviors, not that they are automatically created. Drinking fosters alcoholism, but not everyone who drinks will be an alcoholic. That doesn't mean that their isn't any dangers involved either.

You said they learn a bunch of behaviors you see as negative. I don't think that's universally true.

 

[Arilyn]

They also learn a bunch of negative behaviors as well: spending undo amounts of time hyper analyzing every door, chest, and 10 ft floor tile for traps/mimics, assume every NPC is a doppelganger/succubus, and searching for every possible way to parse a DMs words to gain advantages.

This was common back in the day, unfortunately, which is why I disliked D&D. It totally flies in the face of the modern OSR philosophy, however. Modern OSR play encourages GMs to telegraph danger so that players can make informed decisions. Dungeons should have multiple entrances and loops. There should be interesting things for players to interact with, not just traps and monsters. Players should be thinking creatively to overcome obstacles, but not be spending an hour of real time examining every door. It's also nice to have factions or dungeon denizens the party can roleplay with. There is definitely danger but when characters die, it should be from calculated risk taking, not just out of the blue.

I'm sure there are tables still playing the way you describe, but I don't know how common that is anymore.

Gavin Norman, Kelsey Dionne, Ben Milton, Amanda P., Brad Kerr and Yochai Gal, just to name a few off the top of my head, are fantastic sources for great OSR adventures and games. Daniel Norton of Bandit's Keep you Tube channel has a group of very heroic old school players, who avoid most combats, and felt so bad about one of their porters getting killed they spent money on resurrecting him.

 

[Gus L]

I started in AD&D and I remember a lot of the classics (and some of the not-so-classics) but a lot of Gygaxian advice (some of it from Gygax himelf). I also spoke with a lot of players back in the day and every one of them remembers the issues I outlined being rather prevalent in gaming. System, table, or both, they were all elements of OS D&D. The assumption was that since anything can be trap and there was no guarantee on survivability (the prisoner is really a medusa, save vs petrification) you treated EVERYTHING like it was a lethal encounter and a.) either gave it the upmost caution and deliberation, scutinizing all elements of it in case the DM was screwing with you or b.) Yolo, charge in, and grab 3d6. To me, neither of those endpoints are particularly appealing.

I'm not one to defend some of Gygax's more irksome advice or every design decision made in 1974 - 1985 ... but what you're focusing on it the worst aspects of early design ... and presumably if you're not over 60, kids playing D&D. I had those same experiences in the 1980's. 12 year olds aren't usually the best referees, but that's not system dependent. Most everything else is contextual.

For example you also mention Tomb of Horrors - it gets brought up a lot as a horror ... but rarely with the acknowledgement that it's the first published attempt at a "puzzle dungeon" and that it's a higher level tournament module. The ending is a big FU even! That's Demi-Lich has no treasure!

Why?

Because you're supposed to be playing it with pre-gens and it's meant to kill off almost every group that goes into it ... it's rewards are the meta-game goal of winning the tournament. Worse, it was designed back before Gygax et. al realized that tournaments needed scoring and because scoring based on how far one could get through the adventure doesn't work! 10th level PCs are able to deal with what ToH throws at them. Of course ToH was beloved by jerk 12 year olds everywhere and certainly has opportunities for gotcha type situations, but it's not impossible, not even overwhelmingly difficult in it's own context. Not that most people want to play in that context ...

Which brings up my points here:
A) Sure, older editions and play styles aren't without problems, but these problems do not exist to the degree you're describing them unless one has a bad referee.

B)The OSR, partially through silly maxims like "Combat is a Fail State", was a largely successful effort to resolve a lot of these problems. Using the actual old rules (or modern variations on them) around exploration help a lot. The play style is still susceptible to bad designers and bad referees of course ... and they can take many of the forms mentioned - but that's hardly a unique situation.

It is also a higher lethality style then more character narrative focused play styles ... but PC death is also a correspondingly less serious issue. I've had I think 8 characters die in the campaign I'm running right now in about 23 sessions. It's not been a problem and none of them has felt unfair as far as I know. At the end of the day for any system player expectations and referee understanding of the play style are key.