Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9729934" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I think it ends up being a situation where we each define the term/the limits of the term before deciding when it started. On some level, just the existence of rolling for attributes (and starting hp and gold) means there's some notion of excelling with (/being able to plan out) a character's trajectory outside of actually playing them (and the emergent quality thereof). That seems to me to be the primordial nub of what builds and optimization are (or at least are attempting to do).Adding weapon proficiencies with AD&D certainly started there being decisions outside of play session that influenced success. That was kinda muted, I feel, since there were so few real decisions/such optimal choices (especially once you knew if your DM used the DMG magic weapon distribution and/or the WvsAC rules). Sacrosanct's mention of all those different alternate classes (and races/species) that showed up in Dragon and homebrew) certainly seem to mine the same vein. Likewise with AD&D just having specific races that could be certain classes (/multiclasses) and alter stats to achieve the minimums necessary (and a host of very specific mins, maxes, and prerequisites for those races and classes) certainly fostered poring over those options and mentally combining them well outside of an actual game being played. Certainly the mindset of planning out your character would have come in from outside sources like GURPS or Champions (or Traveller for ships) --or predating D&D in building point-buy armies for wargames-- well before UA. I will agree, that --in my personal gaming experience-- Unearthed Arcana is a watershed in how things were thought of. Allowing/getting the DM to allow a specific Dragon magazine class in a campaign was an anecdotal event, akin to a really convenient treasure find. Opening up UA and picking the race+class+proficiencies/specialization you were going to choose to play next (dice willing) was a process you did.</blockquote>

Verification