D&D General Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played

[AbdulAlhazred]

You do know that successful Youtubers routinely use this clickbait technique to drive traffic? I guess I'm just inured to it by now, to the extent I didn't even notice.

Doesn't mean I have to like the hyping of society. In fact I think it is a pernicious element in our whole society today! Not that it is actually a new trend, I can recall it seems to have begun in the late '70s or early '80s. In fact, in the earlier days of this trend I can recall teachers and parents trying to discourage the habit. The entertainment industry though went full on no holds barred with the idea though. I guess it is like excessive salt in food, it may not be good for us, but it sells.

 

[Lanefan]

Doesn't mean I have to like the hyping of society. In fact I think it is a pernicious element in our whole society today!

Where I see over-hyping most often - and am frequently annoyed by it - is in weather forecasts/reports.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Where I see over-hyping most often - and am frequently annoyed by it - is in weather forecasts/reports.

Just watch practically any movie made in the 1960s and compare it to almost any movie made in the 2020s. The difference is quite apparent.

 

[the Jester]

Where I see over-hyping most often - and am frequently annoyed by it - is in weather forecasts/reports.

Headlines, too: "Team A SLAMS team B", "Political party A DEMOLISHES political party B", etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Doesn't mean I have to like the hyping of society. In fact I think it is a pernicious element in our whole society today! Not that it is actually a new trend, I can recall it seems to have begun in the late '70s or early '80s. In fact, in the earlier days of this trend I can recall teachers and parents trying to discourage the habit. The entertainment industry though went full on no holds barred with the idea though. I guess it is like excessive salt in food, it may not be good for us, but it sells.

I have plenty of complaints about stuff like this as well. Maybe I am just getting old. But I just think in this case, his video and the title are pretty mild for youtube, and he seems like a decent enough person who is just expression interest in an old rule. Certainly there is room to discuss how much he got right about the history and how accurately he presented things. But I don't see the value in tearing him a new one over it. Also it isn't an unreasonable position to take about this rule. It is in the book. There were people who used it, even if it really wasn't that common. It is a tool some people might be interested in hearing about.

Also with you on the salt. I pretty much stopped eating sugar and stopped using salt in my food. Made a big difference.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just watch practically any movie made in the 1960s and compare it to almost any movie made in the 2020s. The difference is quite apparent.

I prefer older movies myself. On any given day I'd probably prefer a film from the 70s over something made in the past few years. Every once in a while, a post 2010 film catches my interest but they are clearly made for audiences with different expectations than what I have (I like slower paced movies, practical effects, etc).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Where I see over-hyping most often - and am frequently annoyed by it - is in weather forecasts/reports.

I particularly dislike the coining of new, not actual weather terms, to describe slightly heavier than usual rain and snow ("Back to our coverage of the super volcano rain tsunami we're getting this week").

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think that would have been a problem. Training time, spell research, etc.

People can be contrary. That only works as long as everyone doesn't decide they wanted to hare off on week two.

(Now, mind you, if I was going to use such a rule I'd just tell them to get over it, but with some groups that wouldn't fly.)

 

[Charlaquin]

I think you could make a training rule that would function in the context of 'troupe play', yes. It is not any good for serial party play though, as it just becomes a bunch of hand-wavy book keeping. I mean, if you want training montages and a slower pace of adventure with long hiatus between them, just describe play that way, it doesn't really need mechanics! OTOH the version in the 1e DMG is just borked. I assume it was intended to suck up excessive quantities of cash that PCs were assumed to be accumulating in most games. If you took the 1-4 RP rating seriously and the average was 2.5, then you had to get almost 3x more gold than XP to advance due to training fees, which basically means you'd always be at level+1 -1XP blocked on training at all times and losing 2/3 of your potential XP. It just didn't work at all! Even if you assume all PCs earn an RP rating of 1.0 all the time, you are most often blocked by unavailability of a trainer, and at high level this becomes basically an impossible situation.

I’ve read that EGG never actually used the training rules himself.

 

[Lanefan]

I’ve read that EGG never actually used the training rules himself.

It's hard to say what he did in his own games, but he must have realized pretty fast that having the DM rate each player's roleplaying in order to set each PC's training costs was an idea born in the depths of dumbness.

That level-up training carries a cost is, in principle, perfectly fine in itself. The rating idea, however, just screams out for DM favouritism when giving ratings and-or table arguments about the ratings players get.