NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7274560" data-attributes="member: 42582">Agreed.In the closing pages of his AD&D PHB (before the appendices), Gygax gives advice under the heading "Successful Adventuring". The advice is all about preparation (equipment, spell load outs, putting together the right team of PCs), then careful exploration and mapping, and about the importance of setting and sticking to a goal for the mission. A game played along those lines won't resemble REH Conan stories one bit: Conan rarely has any equipment, does not carefully explore or map (eg Queen of the Black Coast starts with him jumping his horse onto a ship bound who-knows-where to escape pursuing guards; The Tower of the Elephant has him decide to loot the wizard's tower virtually on a whim), and rarely has any clear goal that he sticks to (eg in Tower of the Elephant he starts out wanting to loot the tower but ends up saving an alien being from enslavement and becoming an instrument of cosmic justice).Then there is his example of play in his DMG, which looks absolutely nothing like a Conan story.Classic D&D, played in a way the reflects the advice and adventures written by Gygax, looks like a tactical wargame. (Which hardly seems surprising.)Which don't look S&S-ish. They are wargaming scenarios, either literally (the Giants) or in dungeon-exploration mode (Tomb of Horrors, Ghost Tower, etc).As you point to, resource management is a huge part of classic D&D play. It factors very heavily into the "exploration" aspect of the game. And resource management figures barely at all in Conan stories.Hour of the Dragon is another REH Conan story that unfolds over a significant period of time. A Witch Shall be Born is another. This is from memory - I haven't gone back to look over them to see how many others fit this description. (The Scarlet Citadel happens over multiple weeks, but is not as extended as the others I and [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] mentioned.)The quote you posted from Gygax didn't use the phrase "fast paced", but if he did use that phrase I would assume him to be talking about the writing rather than the rate of passage of ingame events. REH's writing is manifestly more fast-paced than Tolkien's. Presumably Gygax would have agreed with Moorcock's criticism of JRRT in "<a href="http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953" target="_blank">Epic Pooh</a>".REH's Conan fights humans, giant snakes, the occasional undead wizard, were-hyenas, living statutes, and the odd abomination from another dimension (eg the demon in Phoenix on the Sword, the plant with its roots in hell in The Scarlet Citadel). JRRT's characters fight orcs (ie humans in funny make-up), worgs (comparable to were-hyenas, I guess), trolls (comparable to living statues, I would say), some ancient undead kings, and ancient abominations like Shelob. I don't see the huge contrast, to be honest.An 11th level AD&D thief has earned 220,000 XP, similar to a name level fighter's 250,000.That character has the following thieving skills:Pick Pockets 90% (+ DEX mod, up to 10% at 18 DEX, -5% for each level of the target above 3rd);Open Locks 72% (+ DEX mod, up to 15% at 18 DEX);Find/Remove Traps 70% (+ DEX mod, up to 5% at 18 DEX);Move Silently 86% (+ DEX mod, up to 10% at 18 DEX);Hide in Shadows 70%(+ DEX mod, up to 10% at 18 DEX);Hear Noise 35%;Climb Walls 99.1% (which, if the DMG rules are used, becomes 98.2% on slightly slippery walls, and 91% on slippery walls - a failed check means "the thief has slipped and fallen");Read Languages 55%;Read Scrolls 75%.That character is not "near invisible" (a Cloak of Elvenkind is a fairly common item that the treasure tables present as being at the lower power level which generally gives better chances of hiding in shadows); and if scaling a slippery sheer surface has a good chance to take a fall.AD&D thieves and assassins are not really "larger than life".</blockquote>

Verification