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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2024 18:15:29 +0000
From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: What difficultly level do you play one?
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:15:29 -0400
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On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 10:15:18 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:



>
>That's the problem I have, if that really was what they thought then 
>you'd think when they introduced the game someone would have said, this 
>style of gameplay is going to be entirely alien to many people so we 
>need to provide guidance on how to get the most out of it. That's 
>especially true when you consider how many players are only going to get 
>the information from TSR products. So you mention Dragon magazine, that 
>was available in the UK (I bought a few copies) but only in specialised 
>stores. The one you could get in the local newsagents was White Dwarf 
>and that had already moved to being focused on GW products.


No, no; I get it and we're in agreement on that. They SHOULD have been
clearer on that. But it was a blindness on their part; they didn't
think they NEEDED to say that, anymore than they needed to explain,
"when we say roll the dice, we mean cup those plastic polyhedron in
your hand, rattle them about a bit, then drop them onto a hard surface
so they roll a bit." It was such a /basic/ thing to them that they
didn't think they /had/ to say it. It was just assumed. 

Remember, this was the same TSR that originally couldn't even conceive
that their customers might want pre-written adventures or settings
(they practically laughed Bob Bledsaw out of their office when he
suggested it, telling him that if he really wanted to he could sell
modules with their blessing and fully expecting him to go bankrupt in
the process). TSR /never/ was fully cognizant of what their users
needed or wanted.

It probably didn't help that for the longest time the game was only
played by TSR-insiders amongst other TSR-insiders, thus limiting their
view on how 'real world players' were experiencing the game.
Especially since many of those insiders were adult-age and more
interested in the role-playing, puzzling and politics of the game over
boisterous combat. 

And there was also the belief that players should be allowed to play
'their way', which is why I think the original rules are so light on
actual DM advice. Sure, the expectation was that the DM would try to
create a more realistic, reactive world... but if all you just wanted
to bash your stat-blocks (heroes) against the DM's stat-blocks
(monsters), well that was fine too. Just don't get mad if the game
isn't as interesting as everyone says.

(In fact, whenever Gygax suggested there was a very specific way to
play the game and everything else 'wasn't really D&D', there was
usually uproar at the idea).

Gygax's own dense writing style wasn't all that helpful either. Or the
game's own newness (people were still trying to figure out what
table-top roleplaying was all about, and how it was different from
miniature game). Or -as DT mentioned in an earlier post- the fact that
game itself grew out of the fairly slim "Chainmail" rules.

But everything I've read (about the history of the game, of
conversations of the people involved, in the rule-books themselves,
and even some of my own experiences) indicates that the assumption was
that everyone would play -indeed, would WANT to play and invariably
gravitate towards- more sophisticated adventures and campaigns. It was
an such unspoken belief that it took a long time before TSR realized
that not everybody understood that, and it had to be enunciated more
clearly. 

No, early D&D didn't encourage role-playing/re-active worlds in their
games, and this lack led to a lot of people playing fairly mindless
dungeon-crawls (to the point where you'd have dragons stuck in rooms
with entrances to small for them to get through. If you were a young
gamer of that era, you almost certainly encountered something akin to
that! ;-). But I think that was more a problem of communication on
TSRs part than an actual belief that was all the game should be. After
all, the game itself developed from 'Braunstein' games which were
anything but mindless. But a lack of clear communication on this
matter led players to take the rules as the end-all/be-all and a lot
of campaigns ended up being fairly lifeless. Leading D&D's competitors
to swoop in and offer a more exciting alternative.

Now...

How do we loop this all back to video games? Which, you know, is the
whole point of this newsgroup? ;-P