Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Dimensional Traveler Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Re: What difficultly level do you play one? Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2024 09:02:43 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 120 Message-ID: References: <52sv8j9vso886a8q9r37ulq9lk6681d5mn@4ax.com> <2u659j1t0cotol194i1ge7apej95e0jfpc@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2024 18:02:43 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="3422c60bd573b67929e75ca5d45972d0"; logging-data="3847048"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+xI3dS4i/nnZ4GD8zqsqrb" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:0zxGrCVQ1V+6GLbjoGD1NxWK5xw= Content-Language: en-US In-Reply-To: <2u659j1t0cotol194i1ge7apej95e0jfpc@4ax.com> Bytes: 7908 On 7/13/2024 8:43 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote: > On Sat, 13 Jul 2024 09:45:12 +0100, JAB wrote: > >> On 11/07/2024 16:23, Spalls Hurgenson wrote: >>> On Thu, 11 Jul 2024 09:31:05 +0100, JAB wrote: >>> >>>> On 10/07/2024 12:22, Zaghadka wrote: >>>>> On Wed, 10 Jul 2024 09:28:12 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Another one of my pet peeves, monsters that just inhabit rooms waiting >>>>>> to be killed by some passing adventurers. Do they never eat, sleep, work? >>>>> >>>>> Ah, the Gygax approach. Yeah, that's why 2e introduced this whole novel >>>>> concept called "ecology." That and the idea that creatures - that should >>>>> be mortal enemies - are just hanging out in one room, never leaving, >>>>> while the other group they hate hangs out in another is silliness. >>>>> >>>> >>>> That chimes with my experience of playing AD&D 'back in the day'. We >>>> used to run pre-written modules mixed with homebrew ones and naturally >>>> the 'formula' of the former was the basis for the latter. Get to >>>> dungeon, kill everything and grab the loot. We even had a DM that >>>> dispensed with all the faff of finding the dungeon and just placed you >>>> at the entrance. >>> >>> >>> In fairness, while the conceit of the dungeon-crawl was fairly basic >>> in the day, even the early modules had the expectation of a more >>> robust and reactive world. But the modules were rarely written with >>> that intention stated outright, almost never giving out specific >>> alternatives and details on what to do should the players stray from >>> the expected path. It was left unsaid, and so many DMs -sticking to >>> the text- played the game exactly as written, which led to a lot of >>> very static dungeons where you COULD rest at will, with enemy NPCs >>> (who were little more than hit-points and stat-blocks) that cheerfully >>> remained cloistered in their assigned rooms until the players stumbled >>> upon them. >>> >>> Worse, this behavior became self-reinforcing to a point where players >>> played the game and then expected that's what D&D was about, and so >>> created their own modules that were loot-heavy combat-focused >>> dungeon-crawls. But I don't really see that as the intent of TSR and >>> Gygax. It was just a result of the style of writing; of creating a >>> fairly bland 'sand-box' setting that expected the DM and players to >>> give it life without providing much in the way of assistance on how to >>> do that. >>> >>> That D&D -and the hobby- was so new was partly to blame, of course. It >>> wasn't really known what sort of assistance players would need in this >>> area. Especially since -at the start- TSR couldn't even /imagine/ >>> adventure modules would be a thing; surely, they thought, everyone >>> would just make their own adventures rather than buy a pre-build >>> adventure! >>> >>> And TSR's own format hampered them as well; early modules were quite >>> short in page count (24pp) but expansive in territory. They often >>> included multiple cities and dungeons, and there was only so much >>> detail and advice they could squeeze into every booklet. Later >>> adventures became smaller in scope, longer in page count, and a lot of >>> this extra space was generally used to enliven the settings beyond >>> just listing the inhabitants and contents of each room... because the >>> authors learned that players /needed/ that extra detail if they were >>> going to do anything beyond a brain-dead dungeon-crawl. >>> >>> (In fact, I've read that the world's most famous dungeon crawl module, >>> "Tomb of Horrors", was written as a take-down of this sort of >>> gameplay. 'So this is the sort of dungeon crawl you want? Well, here, >>> delve into this and watch your characters suffer and die.' I guess the >>> hope was players would bash their heads against the ruthless >>> difficulty of Acererak's dungeon and learn to play smarter ;-) >>> >>> The TL;DR is that while a lot of D&D modules come across as fairly >>> uninspired dungeon-crawls (and undeniably that is how most of them >>> actually /were/ played), I don't get the impression that's how the >>> writers EXPECTED them to be played. >>> >> >> Is that's really what they thought I haven't seen any real evidence of >> it and they did an awful job of saying that's how the game was supposed >> to be played which is what I would have expected at least somewhere. > > I don't disagree with that. ;-) > >> There really is almost nothing in the official written material that >> pushed forward that's how the game was supposed to be played. > > A few hints are scatted in the official rulebooks that the world > should be reactive (DMG 1E p104, for instance) but I agree, actual > recommendations on the matter were fairly scarce. Then again, actual > advice on how to play the game /in general/ wasn't that common either; > almost the entire focus of those original rulebooks was on > dice-rolling rather than the more ephermeral roleplaying. Still, There > was a lot of stuff written in The Dragon Magazine with suggestions > along these lines, although how 'official' you may consider that is up > to debate. But if you read on how Gygax played his own campaigns, you > do see that he didn't run adventures where everything was static and > dependent on player actions. > > That lack of clear language was a result of a blindness on the part of > Gygax and TSR; a failure to see that such obvious (to them) > instruction was required. They slowly started adding in clearer > instructions piecemeal, scattered across various books (the > Dungeoneers / Wilderness Survival Guides, Dungeon Masters Design Kit, > and with examples with later 1st Ed adventure modules and campaign > settings where there was more focus on how NPCs and monsters would > react to player actions. But it wasn't until 2nd Edition that TSR > would formalize the idea, in books like DMGR1 Campaign & Catacomb > Guide and DMGR5 Creative Campaigning, which were purposefully written > to aid DMs in creating more robust campaigns and pulling the game out > of the dungeon-crawl. > Something that I think is worth remembering is that D&D was at its very beginning based on a small rule book for a table-top miniatures wargame, 'Chainmail'. -- I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky dirty old man.