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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="Wolfpack48" data-source="post: 9263997" data-attributes="member: 6872648"><p>Then why bring it up in the first place?</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm going to ignore your first sentence here because like your previous paragraph, I don't think it's productive.</p><p></p><p>I picked Ravenloft because we were talking about "killing monsters and taking their stuff" and I highlighted the sentence in your post that I had in mind when I picked it -- the scenario is one where the plotline and character and backstory around the adventure is important enough that there's more to it than simply killing monsters (although there is plenty of that). I could have picked Village of Hommlet or Dragonlance I suppose as they have other plot and information gathering elements besides simply killing everything in the dungeoncrawl. Dragonlance even aspires to character development along the way, though a lot of folks didn't like the sweeping narrative ("railorad-y") arc. When I talked about primordial, I meant the earliest dungeons (B2) where basically clearing out the monsters is the goal.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Now, S2 is what I would also call a classic funhouse dungeon, and If we're talking "killing monsters and taking their stuff" this is a classic example of that. Plotline? Character? Essentially zero.</p><p></p><p>Right, so the scenarios started running into situations that the rulebooks didn't cover, and so they handled this by writing adventure-specific effects. In this particular scenario, most of the spot rules were about the particular traps -- pretty common in the day. I doubt you could come with a "unified trap system" for any of these custom funhouse rooms.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Right, so what I was saying earlier applies here. My statement about "rocket science" referred to players coming up with house rules for these sorts of things, or as in this scenario, written, adventure-specific rulings. We didn't worry or care at the time about whether those were the best rules possible or whether they would be used in all instances. I actually don't even worry much about them today. At the time, there was a Dragon article about using your character stats for dealing with "skill tests" (e.g. roll under your INT to make a "Knowledge check" to get more info about something you observe. Roll under your DEX to jump across the roofs of two buildings). When I say it isn't rocket science, I mean we happily grabbed those approaches (or made our own) and didn't worry too much about whether they were official rulings -- we did what we needed to do to get by, and that was fine. Now, newer systems have nice systems for stuff like this, and we use those. Shrug? In any case, these house rulings weren't "rocket science."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, this isn't productive.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wolfpack48, post: 9263997, member: 6872648"] Then why bring it up in the first place? I'm going to ignore your first sentence here because like your previous paragraph, I don't think it's productive. I picked Ravenloft because we were talking about "killing monsters and taking their stuff" and I highlighted the sentence in your post that I had in mind when I picked it -- the scenario is one where the plotline and character and backstory around the adventure is important enough that there's more to it than simply killing monsters (although there is plenty of that). I could have picked Village of Hommlet or Dragonlance I suppose as they have other plot and information gathering elements besides simply killing everything in the dungeoncrawl. Dragonlance even aspires to character development along the way, though a lot of folks didn't like the sweeping narrative ("railorad-y") arc. When I talked about primordial, I meant the earliest dungeons (B2) where basically clearing out the monsters is the goal. Now, S2 is what I would also call a classic funhouse dungeon, and If we're talking "killing monsters and taking their stuff" this is a classic example of that. Plotline? Character? Essentially zero. Right, so the scenarios started running into situations that the rulebooks didn't cover, and so they handled this by writing adventure-specific effects. In this particular scenario, most of the spot rules were about the particular traps -- pretty common in the day. I doubt you could come with a "unified trap system" for any of these custom funhouse rooms. Right, so what I was saying earlier applies here. My statement about "rocket science" referred to players coming up with house rules for these sorts of things, or as in this scenario, written, adventure-specific rulings. We didn't worry or care at the time about whether those were the best rules possible or whether they would be used in all instances. I actually don't even worry much about them today. At the time, there was a Dragon article about using your character stats for dealing with "skill tests" (e.g. roll under your INT to make a "Knowledge check" to get more info about something you observe. Roll under your DEX to jump across the roofs of two buildings). When I say it isn't rocket science, I mean we happily grabbed those approaches (or made our own) and didn't worry too much about whether they were official rulings -- we did what we needed to do to get by, and that was fine. Now, newer systems have nice systems for stuff like this, and we use those. Shrug? In any case, these house rulings weren't "rocket science." Again, this isn't productive. [/QUOTE]
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