Poll: Tabletop Ability Score Generation

[Airk]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Supposed by whom? Gygax? Arneson?

Gygax; Arneson, as far as I can tell, while he contributed many ideas, didn’t do a whole lot of the writing down, and as a result, a lot of his ideas were marginalized.

Simply wrong. I could easily design a game system that discourages fighting. It would look nothing like D&D or AD&D. The game evolved from a tactical mini game, as you know.

It did, yes. And I too could design a game that discourages combat without looking like D&D, but that’s like saying “I have a fruit here that’s clearly not an apple, so the fruit you have MUST be an apple.”

Excluded middle. Gygax was a great game designer, a revolutionary game designer. Later designers have built on his shoulders and made games far superior to what he created, but to deny him his due is like criticzing Edison for how inefficient his light bulb was. It’s like saying his light bulb was intended as a cooking element.

Exactly. Which is why we must believe that he built the extreme lethality and general randomness of combat for a reason. Maybe he didn’t initially have enough insight to realize that super deadly combat encourages people to avoid it, but I can’t see how he could have missed that consequence in play. And good designer, bad writer, or whatever, he played a lot of his own game.

This makes no sense. If he was a crap designer, then surely he did not intend this consequence.

That’s why there was an ‘OR’ in the earlier statement. EITHER:

Gary was a good designer, and wrote a game that had intended consequences (Extreme lethal combat, XP for getting loot = desire to get loot with a minimum of combat)
OR
Gary was a bad designer, and wrote a game with unintended consequences.

I think he was a good designer, therefore, the game was intended to not be all about killing stuff.

However, you seem to have missed the difference between being a good DESIGNER and a good WRITER OF RULES. I don’t think anyone is going to argue with me if I say that the early D&D rules were confusing, hard to follow, and generally didn’t actually explain how the game worked. It wasn’t until you got like 3-4 revisions in, with the Mentzer BECM sets that the game started to properly actually explain how it worked. Even AD&D, frankly, was pretty muddled in terms explaining the process, which resulted in the aforementioned situation where basically everyone played the game differently, because no one could really entirely figure out how it was supposed to work.

Great design. Bad writing, aka “Bad communication of the design.”

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Airk

That’s why there was an ‘OR’ in the earlier statement. EITHER:

Gary was a good designer, and wrote a game that had intended consequences (Extreme lethal combat, XP for getting loot = desire to get loot with a minimum of combat)
OR
Gary was a bad designer, and wrote a game with unintended consequences.

The middle is still excluded. I think Gygax was a good designer who wrote a game with unintended consequences, because he was writing a game of a sort nobody had done before.

As for my evidence about how Gygax intended for it to be played, I present you with an account written by my friend of playing a session DMed by Mr. Gygax Himself. Note the pattern: first level characters kill monsters, take their stuff. Rinse, repeat. Note that Gygax offers them advice on how to play, e.g., where to start the map.

Now, you’re likely to come back and say that this was thirty years after he wrote the game, or that he intended for them to sneak past the skeletons and gnoll and orcs and gelatinous cube and steal the treasure, or something else. But that’s nonsense. The game, as written, was intended by the authors to involve players killing monsters and taking their stuff.

More proof? From the 1E Player’s Handbook:

Swords & sorcery best describes what this is all about, for those are the two key fantasy ingredients.

(note the lack of “heist” in that description).

The Dungeon Master will act the parts of “everyone else,” and will present to you a variety of new characters to talk with, drink with, gamble with, adventure with, and often fight with!

(Note the lack of “steal from” in that description–while that was part of the game, it wasn’t important enough to mention in the introduction).

There’s one section that is related to what you’re saying:

Avoid unnecessary encounters. This advice usually means the difference between success and failure when it is followed intelligently. Your party has an objective, and wondering monsters are something which stand between them and it. The easiest way to overcome such difficulties is to avoid the interposing or trailing creature if at all possible. Wandering monsters typically weaken the party through use of equipment and spells against them, and they also weaken the group by inflicting damage. Very few are going to be helpful; fewer still will have anything of any value to the party. Run first and ask questions later. In the same vein, shun encounters with creatures found to be dwelling permanently in the dungeon (as far as you can tell, that is) unless such creatures are part of the set objective or the monster stands between the group and the goal it has set out to gain. Do not be sidetracked.

Note, however, that the advice is discussing a general objective, not a heist.

So I’ve offered several quotes from Gygax’s book along with an example of how he intended the game to be played, based on how he ran it. He spoke extensively on ENWorld before his death about the game; you’re welcome to find threads there. You can look through your copy of the 1E DMG for the example play section–y’know, the one with ghouls.

Nowhere will you find anything indicating that he intended the game to be played as a heist. This is simply a nonsense idea you invented, and you should back away from it.

[Airk]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

The middle is still excluded. I think Gygax was a good designer who wrote a game with unintended consequences, because he was writing a game of a sort nobody had done before.

Sure, but you’re ignoring that fact that the game was in a constant state of revision for at least the first seven years of its existence. If it were producing an unintended result, surely he had time to fix it.

As for my evidence about how Gygax intended for it to be played, I present you with an account written by my friend of playing a session DMed by Mr. Gygax Himself. Note the pattern: first level characters kill monsters, take their stuff. Rinse, repeat. Note that Gygax offers them advice on how to play, e.g., where to start the map.

Sorry, but this, as you point out, isn’t at all relevant to the discussion. If you had an account of how people were playing D&D with Mr. Gygax in, say, 1976, then it would be relevant. But lets face it - how GG intended the game to play when it wrote in 1975 and how he played it in 2006 or whatever are very, very different things.

More proof? From the 1E Player’s Handbook:

(note the lack of “heist” in that description).

Oh c’mon. Swords and Sorcery is a genre. And as we’ve mentioned, GG is bad at communicating what his game is about.

(Note the lack of “steal from” in that description–while that was part of the game, it wasn’t important enough to mention in the introduction).

You are taking this way too literally. The point is not that the characters are cracking safes or scaling buildings or something. But they are, without a doubt, most interested in the money.

Note, however, that the advice is discussing a general objective, not a heist.

But the “objective” in D&D is to “get XP”. And how do you get XP? You get money.

So I’ve offered several quotes from Gygax’s book along with an example of how he intended the game to be played, based on how he ran it. He spoke extensively on ENWorld before his death about the game; you’re welcome to find threads there. You can look through your copy of the 1E DMG for the example play section–y’know, the one with ghouls.

Sadly, my copy of the AD&D DMG is elsewhere. That said, it was also published 5 years after the game I’m talking about. Maybe he was trying to correct course, but if he was, he did a bad job, and I’d like to give him more credit for that.

If you want to make a game in which characters fight things, those characters should expect to be able to survive more than one encounter using the rules as written. This isn’t really the case. Sure, you COULD survive more than one encounter, but that would be an example of the dice favoring you more than anything else. Or, y’know, it could be you approaching the encounter in a way so as to avoid the rules.

Nowhere will you find anything indicating that he intended the game to be played as a heist. This is simply a nonsense idea you invented, and you should back away from it.

Aside from the fact that all the game rules support this? And yes, fine, it’s not a “heist” it’s just a story about people trying to get money out of a guarded location with a minimum of getting into fights (because fights will kill them, quickly). Sorry if my semantic choice disagrees with you.

In all seriousness, which of my points do you disagree with? Do you not think early D&D combat is random and lethal? Do you not think that the vast majority of rewards in the game are for getting loot? Do you not think that as a result, the best way to get loot is not to fight things? Or maybe you feel that the various rules for minimize combat, like say, morale checks, which got mysteriously dropped from every subsequent edition because the game was becoming more about killing stuff, don’t support this idea?

At the end of the day, I don’t really think that Gary’s memories of why he did what, as presented 30 years later, after two strokes, are the most reliable source for what was going on in 1974, and I find your book examples to be reaching. “Sword and Sorcery” tells us nothing about the intent of the game beyond the setting.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Airk

Aside from the fact that all the game rules support this? And yes, fine, it’s not a “heist” it’s just a story about people trying to get money out of a guarded location with a minimum of getting into fights (because fights will kill them, quickly). Sorry if my semantic choice disagrees with you.

No, all the game rules don’t support this. Only one class has any chance of moving sneakily in the original rules, and at first level, that chance is very low. Every class has a chance of hitting enemies and killing them at first level. Killing or capturing enemies and taking their treasure gives greater rewards than sneaking past them and taking their treasure. Examples of play do not include sneaking past enemies and taking their treasure. (Edit: and if you’d like to apologize, I’ll accept an apology for you making a lame point, but not one for a “semantic choice that disagrees with me,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean ).

The only rule that supports your claim is that it’s a possible way to play that’s safer than the standard form of play. But that’s something of a loophole–and as you admit, it’s not a particularly fun way to play (adventurers are famous for taking suicidal risks–for that reason, a friend of mine always recommended taking the vice “foolhardy” in any system that allowed vices, since it wasn’t a vice but a standard character trait for adventuerers).

Nobody I’ve ever heard of plays this way. Even you haven’t claimed you’ve played this way. You’ve shown no evidence that Gygax intended for the game to be played this way; the best you can do is to ridiculously wave away the evidence I’ve offered.

Your point is completely unpersuasive, and at this point, I think I’ve made my point. I’m done here unless you bring some actual positive evidence that the style of play you’re talking about was played by some significant fraction of people, or that Gygax or any other designer intended the game to be played this way.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

One last point, which I remembered when I pulled out my Blue Book, the 1979 reprinting of D&D: lest you get too caught up in the idea that Gygax was a genius of a game designer, his rules state that a cautious adventurer moves 120 feet every ten minutes, or one foot every five seconds. Yeah, that’s cautious all right! If the character is not wearing armor, he (definitely “he”) can run 720 feet every ten minutes, or 6 feet every five seconds. Before you respond, I’d like you to stand up from the computer and run, and try to run six feet in five seconds.

Gygax was building on Chainmail, the fantasy mini fighting game, a point repeatedly mentioned in the blue book introduction. The game is predominately based on fighting monsters and taking their treasure, within a mini context. Trying to extrapolate different the true intentions of the game from the wrinkles in the original rules is going to lead to absurdities. What, for example, what Gygax’s clever purpose behind limiting running in this fashion?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Y’know, the blue book is an interesting read. Sorry, I know I said I was done, but some more notes might be helpful:

Look at the two examples of play on pages 21. In the first, Bruno the Battler smashes down a door and immediately begins fighting the “big goblin in chainmail” on the other side. Burno takes a hit but hits back and kills the goblin. IN the second, the DM rolls on the wandering monster table, pulls up six large spiders, and immediately sets them up 100 feet away, beginning combat. In the course of the combat, Bruno the Battler fails a single save and “dies a horrible death.”

That, apparently, is how it’s intended to be played.

The section on monsters includes ridiculously powerful monsters (basilisks, chimeras, etc.) that’ll obviously kill characters levels 1-3. The advice given for dealing with them isn’t sneaking past them or negotiating with them, however: the advice is to have them “partially shrunk by a high-level magic user, reducing its hit points” or “there might be a special magic sword, effective only against this chimera, hidden in the dungeon.” Again, the intent is clearly that PCs fight these critters.

[Chimera]

@Jophiel

Could the rest of the party just carry you around in a coma until you soaked up enough group xp to hit level 2?

“How long is your friend going to be in the coma?”

“Until we drag him through enough combats to get him up a level”

[Airk]

Just going to leave this here as well.

I retract all statements about Gygax knowing WTF he was doing. He must clearly have produced a game that works better if you don’t use the rules completely by mistake.

[stpauler]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

No, all the game rules don’t support this. Only one class has any chance of moving sneakily in the original rules, and at first level, that chance is very low. Every class has a chance of hitting enemies and killing them at first level. Killing or capturing enemies and taking their treasure gives greater rewards than sneaking past them and taking their treasure. Examples of play do not include sneaking past enemies and taking their treasure. (Edit: and if you’d like to apologize, I’ll accept an apology for you making a lame point, but not one for a “semantic choice that disagrees with me,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean ).

The only rule that supports your claim is that it’s a possible way to play that’s safer than the standard form of play. But that’s something of a loophole–and as you admit, it’s not a particularly fun way to play (adventurers are famous for taking suicidal risks–for that reason, a friend of mine always recommended taking the vice “foolhardy” in any system that allowed vices, since it wasn’t a vice but a standard character trait for adventuerers).

Nobody I’ve ever heard of plays this way. Even you haven’t claimed you’ve played this way. You’ve shown no evidence that Gygax intended for the game to be played this way; the best you can do is to ridiculously wave away the evidence I’ve offered.

Your point is completely unpersuasive, and at this point, I think I’ve made my point. I’m done here unless you bring some actual positive evidence that the style of play you’re talking about was played by some significant fraction of people, or that Gygax or any other designer intended the game to be played this way.

So yesterday I joined a meetup event that was playing “Classic” D&D and the DM was changing some stuff up in case anyone had played this before. We were a party of 10 people playing a reworked CM8-The Endless Stair.

Let me set up the scene, we just had encounted a phoenix, a gellatinous cube and then reached the stairs. About halfway up, the group was attacked by some beaky/clawed creature in the fog. We killed it and heard it thump on the ground. At this point, half the group wanted to go down and loot the creature thinking it had treasure on it. The other half, including me, wanted to avoid more “surprises”. So we split up. 5 people moved over to another room and the DM went back and forth as they went down and we went up the stairs. I came up with the idea of throwing a rope over the side. If we got in trouble, we’d tug twice and vice versa. Right about the time they get to the bottom, we’re about 3/4ths of the way to the top. Suddenly, we feel two tugs on the rope. What’d we do? We booked it the hell up the stairs. I felt another two tugs then suddenly a yank. I immediately dropped the rope (die roll-success) and we get to the top and bust down the door and get through.

We hear a glurging noise and rapidly approaching gellatinous cube (again) this time, it’s carrying all of the people from below, including the gnome who had been tugging at the rope then attempting to climb up it. We then try and shut the door.

Did we on the top have fun? Sure. Our actions fit our characters’ personalities and we thought it was done as they would have intended. It wasn’t a loophole to retreat, it was a character reaction. Sometimes the best solutions are a bit more elegant than hack n slash. Maybe you’re playing with less creative folks?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@stpauler

Did we on the top have fun? Sure. Our actions fit our characters’ personalities and we thought it was done as they would have intended. It wasn’t a loophole to retreat, it was a character reaction. Sometimes the best solutions are a bit more elegant than hack n slash. Maybe you’re playing with less creative folks?

Please understand I’m not saying that retreating isn’t often necessary for early D&D games (and even later ones: I’m not above killing off a PC if the party clearly values standing their ground more than they value their PCs). My objection is to the idea that the “objective was to go in, get as much money as possible, and get out while engaging with the minimum possible amount of stuff,” that it was intended to be a heist game. I don’t think many people played that way, I don’t think the evolved wargame was evolved to be that way, I don’t think it’s more fun that way, and I don’t think it’s necessary to play that way.

[Airk]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Please understand I’m not saying that retreating isn’t often necessary for early D&D games (and even later ones: I’m not above killing off a PC if the party clearly values standing their ground more than they value their PCs). My objection is to the idea that the “objective was to go in, get as much money as possible, and get out while engaging with the minimum possible amount of stuff,” that it was intended to be a heist game. I don’t think many people played that way, I don’t think the evolved wargame was evolved to be that way, I don’t think it’s more fun that way, and I don’t think it’s necessary to play that way.

It’s certainly not “necessary” to play it that way - you can play almost any game however you want - but that’s what the rules encourage. Was it “intended” to be so? Maybe, maybe not - one wonders why you’d offer XP for treasure at all in a game about fighting stuff, treasure should be its own reward. I think it’s telling that you only get XP for non-magical treasure, with, presumably the assumption that a +1 sword is its own regard.

I think the idea that this game really isn’t about being “heroic” in any kind of modern sense certain can’t be argued, and that the idea of it being a ‘fantasy heist’ not so far off as you might think when you start looking at some of the inspirational material and what fantasy was (in terms of what people were writing and reading) in the mid 70s.

On a somewhat related note, I think this is a very interesting and entertaining video that goes in influences and the state of early D&D a bit.

Modernizing Fantasy RPGs

[Lowdown]

4D6, drop lowest. Arrange them in any order you want.

I like characters without limitations, but straight 3D6 can give you miserable results. Point-buy is too min-maxy and sucks all the fun right out of it, in my opinion. It’s boring as hell. I prefer the chance to get great rolls or crappy ones. It adds some spice.

That being said, any reasonable DM will let you mulligan truly awful stats.

[Jophiel]

@Airk

I think it’s telling that you only get XP for non-magical treasure, with, presumably the assumption that a +1 sword is its own regard

Do you think it’s telling that you DID get experience for magical treasure in 1st ed AD&D? Because you did.

In the 1st edition of AD&D, each normal (i.e., not cursed or an artifact) magic item has an experience value and a GP value; these statistics are used in item creation. The experience is awarded to player for finding the item, while the GP value represents the amount of money a character would typically get for selling it.
[…]
In the 2nd edition of AD&D, each normal magic item again has an experience value, which is given to the player character for successfully finding or creating it.

[Airk]

@Jophiel

Do you think it’s telling that you DID get experience for magical treasure in 1st ed AD&D? Because you did.

That’s nice. It’s not entirely correct though:

[QUOTE=1st Edition DMG, Page 85]
(Those magic items not sold gain only a relatively small amount of experience points, for their value is in their usage.)
[/quote]

Also, this rule clearly contradicts Keep on the Borderlands, indicating an evolution of design philosophy.

[QUOTE=Keep on the Borderlands]
Experience points are awarded by the DM to player characters on the basis of non-magical treasure recovered and monsters killed or overcome.
[/quote]

Original sources, yo.

[Ludovic]

@Airk

That’s nice. It’s not entirely correct though:
Also, this rule clearly contradicts Keep on the Borderlands, indicating an evolution of design philosophy.

Original sources, yo.

When did they release KotB for AD+D?

[Airk]

@Ludovic

When did they release KotB for AD+D?

They didn’t. Technically. It was designed for use with “D&D”, not “AD&D”. The module itself actually came out around the same time as the AD&D DMG, but it was designed for use with an older ruleset.

Early (A)D&D publications were a mess. Small wonder no two groups played it the same.

[Jophiel]

@Airk

That’s nice. It’s not entirely correct though

That you gained xp from them at all is noteworthy. The value of a (non-magical) suit of splinted armor or a crossbow is also in its usage yet you didn’t get experience from them. Magical treasure was extraordinary beyond its usage value in granting experience points.

[Airk]

@Jophiel

That you gained xp from them at all is noteworthy. The value of a (non-magical) suit of splinted armor or a crossbow is also in its usage yet you didn’t get experience from them. Magical treasure was extraordinary beyond its usage value in granting experience points.

My point about evolving design stands, however.

And again, you could sell an ordinary suit of splint mail for X GP, which would be equal to XP gained from it, but if you sold a magic item, there was a large XP gain from doing so.