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Why PCs should be competent, or "I got a lot of past in my past"
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9263439" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I'm going to pick on you here because you gave me a really nice introduction to the topic, but this post is really a response to the entire thread.</p><p></p><p>First all, this conversation almost never is productive and I think I'll have to drop it because invariably this topic creates a lot of defensiveness about whether or not they are a good DM, or whether they had good DMs, or what it means to be good DMing and I'm really not interested in those topics and least of all when discussed from a defensive standpoint. </p><p></p><p>But that said it is so incredibly obvious from this claim that I'm not communicating well and you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. </p><p></p><p>Because absolutely, I6 Ravenloft (my favorite adventure of all time) is just a simple dungeon crawl. Indeed, it's a simpler dungeon crawl than a lot of the things that are on offering up that point. The great thing about say I6 or Hickman's other masterpiece 'Pyramid' is that Hickman takes the tools that 1e AD&D provided and he doesn't demand anything of the system other than what it already provides for and supports. I6 Ravenloft is a pure dungeon crawl of check for traps, kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and take their stuff in its purest form. But what he does is make that pure dungeon crawling experience powerfully evocative and literary by the use of a great framing story, by the use of a proactive antagonist, and by the use of great atmospherics including probably the best designed map in the history of gaming. But there is nothing going on in the game other than dungeon crawl and one of the ways you can tell that is that Hickman has to create relatively few inline rulings or minigames to describe the encounters that he designed. </p><p></p><p>I6 Ravenloft is not a module that shows off 1e AD&D's limits as a game. Quite the contrary, it's a module that shows off the game's strengths. If you want to show off the weaknesses of the system you are much better off picking another even older dungeon crawl and that's S2 White Plume Mountain. This is a "dungeon crawl" that is anything but a classic kick down the doors dungeon crawl and instead envisions the entire dungeon as a series of custom minigames where the rules of the game are encoded into each encounter area. Read the text of S2 and then imagine you're a brand manager or design manager for the game tasked with reviewing a writer's submissions and making sure that he is adhering to the game rules and making sure that single set of rules are utilized by all the various writers, designers, and contractors you've hired. It's really clear that there is absolutely no concept of that in publishing S2 and also that the designers of the dungeons are getting more creative than the rules allow. Sure, there is less story and literary value here than in I6, but I6 sticks within what the game knows how to cover. S2 however immediately creates the problem that 1e AD&D's lack of a unified skill system means that how a particular challenge is handled by the game is all over the place, not only across the brand but sometimes even within the same product.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I played back then as well and we had blast and for the first few years this was all so novel that I didn't even realize we were having problems or what they were and I sure as heck didn't have a clue what the solutions were. But as for the claim this isn't rocket science, go look at the text of the flooding room trap in C1 and evaluate it as a set of skill rules for swimming with the intention of using it as the basis of general rules for swimming/drowning/rescuing people ect. Imagine the rules used for PC's as lifeguards on the beach or something if you think it wasn't rocket science to shift game focus.</p><p></p><p>Because like I said, the fact that you evaluate I6 as something other than a simple dungeon crawl is hugely revealing that this problem never even struck you back in the day and you really never had a lot of soul searching about it. I'm not saying that to attack your DMing, because I sure as heck am not defending all my DMing back before age 23 or so or even heck to this very day (I still learn and make mistakes). But we are really really on different pages.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9263439, member: 4937"] I'm going to pick on you here because you gave me a really nice introduction to the topic, but this post is really a response to the entire thread. First all, this conversation almost never is productive and I think I'll have to drop it because invariably this topic creates a lot of defensiveness about whether or not they are a good DM, or whether they had good DMs, or what it means to be good DMing and I'm really not interested in those topics and least of all when discussed from a defensive standpoint. But that said it is so incredibly obvious from this claim that I'm not communicating well and you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Because absolutely, I6 Ravenloft (my favorite adventure of all time) is just a simple dungeon crawl. Indeed, it's a simpler dungeon crawl than a lot of the things that are on offering up that point. The great thing about say I6 or Hickman's other masterpiece 'Pyramid' is that Hickman takes the tools that 1e AD&D provided and he doesn't demand anything of the system other than what it already provides for and supports. I6 Ravenloft is a pure dungeon crawl of check for traps, kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and take their stuff in its purest form. But what he does is make that pure dungeon crawling experience powerfully evocative and literary by the use of a great framing story, by the use of a proactive antagonist, and by the use of great atmospherics including probably the best designed map in the history of gaming. But there is nothing going on in the game other than dungeon crawl and one of the ways you can tell that is that Hickman has to create relatively few inline rulings or minigames to describe the encounters that he designed. I6 Ravenloft is not a module that shows off 1e AD&D's limits as a game. Quite the contrary, it's a module that shows off the game's strengths. If you want to show off the weaknesses of the system you are much better off picking another even older dungeon crawl and that's S2 White Plume Mountain. This is a "dungeon crawl" that is anything but a classic kick down the doors dungeon crawl and instead envisions the entire dungeon as a series of custom minigames where the rules of the game are encoded into each encounter area. Read the text of S2 and then imagine you're a brand manager or design manager for the game tasked with reviewing a writer's submissions and making sure that he is adhering to the game rules and making sure that single set of rules are utilized by all the various writers, designers, and contractors you've hired. It's really clear that there is absolutely no concept of that in publishing S2 and also that the designers of the dungeons are getting more creative than the rules allow. Sure, there is less story and literary value here than in I6, but I6 sticks within what the game knows how to cover. S2 however immediately creates the problem that 1e AD&D's lack of a unified skill system means that how a particular challenge is handled by the game is all over the place, not only across the brand but sometimes even within the same product. I played back then as well and we had blast and for the first few years this was all so novel that I didn't even realize we were having problems or what they were and I sure as heck didn't have a clue what the solutions were. But as for the claim this isn't rocket science, go look at the text of the flooding room trap in C1 and evaluate it as a set of skill rules for swimming with the intention of using it as the basis of general rules for swimming/drowning/rescuing people ect. Imagine the rules used for PC's as lifeguards on the beach or something if you think it wasn't rocket science to shift game focus. Because like I said, the fact that you evaluate I6 as something other than a simple dungeon crawl is hugely revealing that this problem never even struck you back in the day and you really never had a lot of soul searching about it. I'm not saying that to attack your DMing, because I sure as heck am not defending all my DMing back before age 23 or so or even heck to this very day (I still learn and make mistakes). But we are really really on different pages. [/QUOTE]
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