Recommend a table-top pencil-and-paper role-playing game

The Game Room
81

I’ve played your style: in my Pathfinder game, I wrote an elaborate backstory for how my character got his skills and why he came to the starting point, letters home, and an architectural/design notebook.

Also, I am not sure if you were correct in your first statement. The game I GM’d last week and for which I have been GMing all summer is centered around B1 In Search of the Unknown. I have three different publications for it and they are sitting next to me right now. I see no mention of a vampire. Did they make a new version of the module for a post AD&D 1.0 edition that includes vampires? is that what you are seeing? The original module was designed with no monsters in any keyed encounter and with a list of 25 suggested monster encounters at the end. The idea was that the DM would choose about 20 of those encounters and add them to the room descriptions as the he saw fit. None of the suggestions is a vampire. Perhaps your DM decided to stock the dungeon with random monsters from the Monster Manual?

82

It doesn’t have to be. It is certainly possible to create an individual scenario with some defined plot options but not a predefined denouement; in fact, in games like Call of Cthulhu that is kind of the norm because there is a good chance that the players will not emerge victorious or sane, and can often be eliminated before they even get to the point of facing off with the big bad. That is harder to do within the scope of a larger campaign because it is very hard to create a story arc if the characters take the story completely sideways.

As for the need for rules to limit injudicious overbearing behavior by the GM, if the game has gone so sideways that the GM is deliberately making it miserable for the players then no rules are going to fix that. It is first and foremost the GM’s job to make the story interesting and keep the players engaged. A GM that jerks around his party is like a poker player who splashes the pot; pretty soon, no one is going to want to play with him.

Stranger

83

Getting into these details/debates might be counterproductive to Acsenray’s OP. We may be considered to have derailed it, myself most guilty.

I am going to mention games for Acsenray. Here comes a huge post about a game!

Fiasco is a great game that is close to pure role-playing. The game features no GM. The game is intended for the players to engineer stupid, dangerous situations that will go wrong like in the movies Fargo, A Fish Called Wanda, or Lock, Stock, and Two-Smoking Barrels.

In setup, the players choose a playset, usually from the rulebook. Two index cards are placed between each pair of players going around the outside of the table. One to represent a Relationship between adjacent players and one to represent a Location, Need, or Object where that Location, Need, or Object is connected to the Relationship next to it.

The players roll some dice (two black and two white per player) and then draft them, one at a time, placing them on one of the index cards with each card getting two dice in order. Based on the playset in use (which has tables), the numbers on the dice indicate a piece of information about the Relationship, Location, Need, or Object.

For example, lets say we are playing the Old West Boomtown playset in the main rulebook. The first player can take any die from the pool and chooses a 6 placing it on the Relationship card between two players. It doesn’t even have to be on of the Relationships that he himself is a part of! That relationship is now halfway defined. The six means that the Relationship in question is a Community Relationship as defined by the tables in the playset.

The next player chooses a 2 a places it on a different Relationship. That Relationship is now a Work Relationship per the playset. The next player chooses another 2 and puts it on the Work Relationship that was just defined. Now, that Work Relationship is more defined; the tables in the playset say that #2 under the Work Relationships means that the Work Relationship is that the two players are both miners.

The fourth player decides to start an Object card connected to the Community Relationship. He drafts a 6 meaning that the Object is a Sentimental Object per the playset.

So, each card gets two dice. You can start new cards before finishing old ones. You can define other people’s cards as well as your own. You can work on the Locations, Objects, and Needs before the Relationships. Every pair of players must have a Relationship. The table should have at least one Location. The table should have at least one Need. The table should have at least one Object. Because the last player to draft has no choice in which die he or she drafts, that die can be changed to any number.

We might end up with the following:

Between Players 1 & 2
[ul]
[li]Relationship = Work, miners[/li][li]Object = Weapon, crate of dynamite that is weeping nitroglycerin[/li][/ul]
Between Players 2 & 3
[ul]
[li]Relationship = The Past, war adversaries[/li][li]Location = Indian Country, the burnt-out log cabin[/li][/ul]
Between Players 3 & 4
[ul]
[li]Relationship = Crime, Chinese opium seller & addict[/li][li]Need = To Get Free, of this town before anyone finds out about us[/li][/ul]
Between Players 4 & 1
[ul]
[li]Relationship = Community, Society (suggestions include the temperance league, a brass band, or vigilantes)[/li][li]Object = Sentimental, a dying man’s last words[/li][/ul]

After this, the dice are pushed back to the center of the table.

Now, the table works as a team to flesh out some of the characters and situations. The two war adversaries: One was a Union soldier in the Civil War who was captured and held in the Andersonville prison camp. The other was a Confederate officer working at the camp. The confederate officer used to beat the snot out of the union soldier but was personally mortified when the union officer escaped.
Years later, the union soldier, Mark, is a gold prospector near a northern California boomtown next to some Indian territory. The Confederate officer, Stephen, ended up in the same area and is an opium addict. He buys his opium on the sly from the town minister, Kevin. The minister is, of course the leader of the town’s Temperance League. The Founder of the town’s temperance league, Justin, is a former drunk turned miner who prospects for gold with his new partner, Mark.

The two miners (Justin and Mark) both know about a crate of dynamite which is weeping nitroglycerin. This crate is currently located in a dead mine tunnel a few hundred yards from their new claim. Ever since Stephen got to the area (and addicted to opium) he has been holing up in a log cabin in Indian territory. Mark had seen his old tormentor come into town and followed him to the cabin. When Stephen was away from the cabin, Mark set it on fire hoping to drive Stephen away. But Stephen wasn’t just going to leave, not when his source for opium - Kevin - is in this town. Stephen wants to leave town but he needs Kevins source in San Francisco so that he isn’t cut off. Kevin wants out, too, before his reputation as a minister is destroyed if people find out that he is a drug pusher. But he promised his dying father (the former town preacher) that he wouldn’t abandon Justin, a former drunk who is trying to stay sober. Once Justin got sober, he found some gold and paid to build the church Kevin’s father dreamed of. He also paid for Kevin’s father’s doctors when his health turned for the worse and for Kevin’s father’s funeral. So Kevin feels he can’t just ignore his father’s dying wish as he owes Justin. Unfortunately for Justin, his luck turned sour and he has little money left so he is prospecting with his new partner, Mark.

Now it is time for the actual game. It will proceed in the following manner. There will be Act One which is divided into a number of scenes. There will be two scenes per player. Then there will be a quick interlude called The Tilt. Act Two follows with two more scenes per player. The game will conclude with The Aftermath.

In Act one, “play” revolves around the table in order, going around twice. When it is a player’s “turn” there will be a scene starring that player’s character! The player in question had a choice. He can either:
[ul]
[li]Set the scene, allowing the rest of the group to resolve the scene.[/li][li]Allow the group to set the scene while he gets to resolve the scene.[/li][/ul]

In the first scene, we might see Justin (the Star!) choosing to resolve. The rest of us place him in the saloon along with Kevin (the preacher), two drunk cowhands, four poker players, and a couple of ladies-of-the-evening. The rest of us also mention that there is a player piano playing and a bunch of empty glass bottles in a crate at the end of the bar.

Here Justin begins RPing trying to get Kevin to let him leave before the temptation gets to him. Kevin RPs back saying that they have to try to get the cowhands to stop drinking. Stephen jumps in (because his character isn’t there) and RPs the barkeep who wants the temperance league to leave because they are bad for business. Mark RPs one of the ladies who goes up to the preacher and tries to covertly get some opium as she is another user.

Scenes are supposed to last about 5-10 minutes long. At some point, any point, the resolver (Justin) will pick up a die from the center of the table, either black or white, and flash it to the others then hand it to the Star (which in this case is himself, Justin) Black means the scene will end badly for the character, white means the scene will end well for the character. The players continue to RP the scene, ending it in the indicated way. After the scene ends, the Star (Justin) will then hand that die to another player who will keep in front of them for the rest of the game.

Play then moves to the next player who stars in the next scene. This will happen eight times and eight dice will be taken (in a four player game.)

At this point, each player probably has dice in front of them and it is time for The Tilt! Each player rolls their dice getting a black total or a white total by adding up the black pips and subtracting the white pips (or vice versa should there be more white pips than black ones.) The players with the highest black and highest white totals get to make choices in The Tilt!

Roll the unused dice in the center of the table. In our four player example, there should be eight dice left there. The two players indicated will choose two dice each from that eight and use them the way they were used in setup. Each of the two players will indicate a major category from the Tilt Table by using a die from the middle. Then they will use their other die choice to narrow the choice made by the other player.

In our example, Let’s say that Kevin rolled two black dice and got a 6&3. Justin rolled a white die and got 3. Mark rolled a black 4 and a white 2. Stephen rolled a black 1&2 and a white 2. So, the totals were:
[ul]
[li]Kevin = Black 9[/li][li]Justin = White 3[/li][li]Mark = Black 2[/li][li]Stephen = Black 1[/li][/ul]

Kevin and Justin will do the honors. Kevin rolls the center pile and pulls out a 1 and 2. Justin pulls out a 2 and a 4. Kevin decides to use the 1 as the major category Mayhem (on the table) while Justin uses the 2 as the major category Tragedy. Then Kevin applies his remaining die (the 2) to narrow Tragedy to Somebody’s life is changed forever, in a bad way. Justin uses his remaining 4 to narrow Mayhem to Magnificent Self-Destruction. Thus the Tilt becomes:
[ul]
[li]Tragedy = Somebody’s life is changed forever, in a bad way.[/li][li]Mayhem = Magnificent Self-Destruction.[/li][/ul]

These are written on index cards and placed in the middle of the table. In Act Two, players are encouraged to apply these! The four dice used to choose the tilt are put back in the center pool.

The rules say to take a drink break here and talk over the situation for a few minutes.

When you restart, it is Act Two. Act Two goes in the same basic order as Act One. There are only a couple of differences. When a die is chosen for resolution and handed to the Star, the Star will add his own pile. Everyone keeps their dice from Act One and adds two more in Act Two. The other difference is that the last die is allowed to be declared either color for the purposes of scene-ending as there will be no choice otherwise.

Okay, time for the Aftermath! Everyone has a pile of dice in front of them. Each players rolls them and creates a black or white total like before. Then the Aftermath tables are consulted. There is a table for black totals and one for white totals. Each table generally describes an ending for your character. Here are some possible results:
[ul]
[li]Zero = The Worst thing in the universe. This doesn’t include death since death would be way better than what this is…[/li][li]Black Four = Savage as in something is broken or mashed…[/li][li]Black 10-12 = Pretty Good. All things considered you’re coming out of this smelling like a rose…[/li][li]White Two = Merciless. You might not be dead on the outside but you sure as hell are dead on the inside…[/li][li]White 13+ = Fantastic. It is fat times ahead, safe and secure.[/li][/ul]

Finally, play revolves around the table creating an ending montage scene. Each player picks up one of their dice and says “This is [my character] doing [something]” or similar. Then the next player does it and so on until all the dice are used. This montage should create the appropriate Aftermath for your character.

In the example:
[ul]
[li]Justin holds up a die and says “this is my guy lighting the fuse on the dynamite in the mine”[/li][li]Mark says “this is my guy hiding in a basement beneath the log cabin to escape from Stephen”[/li][li]Stephen says “this is my guy looking for a place to hide a body near the log cabin.”[/li][li]Kevin says “this is my guy refusing to tell Stephen who his source is”[/li][li]Justin says “this is my guy tripping over the unconscious body of the saloon keeper on his way out of the mine and breaking his ankle"[/li][li]Mark says “this is my guy loading a gun”[/li][li]Stephen says “this is my guy pulling a body off the horse at the cabin itself”[/li][li]Kevin says “ this is my guy being shot in the head by Stephen and having my body slung across a horse”[/li][li]Justin says “this is the dynamite exploding, sealing off the mine entrance but not immediately killing my guy or the unconscious barkeep”[/li][li]Mark says “this is my guy hearing noises above ground"[/li][li]Stephen says “this is my guy opening the trap door to the basement"[/li][li]Kevin is out of dice[/li][li]Justin says “this is my guy suffocating to death in the dark and sealed mine after the barkeep wakes up"[/li][li]Stephen says “this is my guy dropping Kevin’s body down to the basement"[/li][li]Mark says “this is my guy shooting Stephen in the head”[/li][li]Justin is out of dice[/li][li]Stephen is out of dice[/li][li]Mark holds up the remaining three dice and says “this is my guy climbing out of the basement, finding the preacher’s drug money on Stephen’s horse, and riding away. San Francisco here he comes"[/li][/ul]

So the setup here was one I actually used to teach the game to three people, but we didn’t even play a single scene. I kept the index cards, though. I made up the results for this post.

The variability in the game is large. In each playset, there are six major categories to Relationships and each has six more specific narrowings. This is also true for Locations, Needs, and Objects.

84

There was no explanation, as I said it was a random, no-name character. It was never encountered again, or brought up, or explained. The problem was that the rules weren’t followed. And I don’t mean were bent, they weren’t followed at all. Throwing dice was a smokescreen. The problem was the dishonesty; if you are going to run a diceless, free-form game where you make up the rules as you go let the players know. Don’t pretend that you’re playing AD&D then ignore stats and all written rules. Don’t have people roll dice and then ignore what was rolled. And this wasn’t the only time it happened in the game, it was every time.

I agreed with your premise in spirit; every table I’ve been at eventually has some house rule or another. Many RPGs explicitly have optional rules and what rules you choose to adopt are de facto house rules. And I know GMs can fudge rolls on occasion; I’ve run many games myself and won’t claim I’ve never done it. I’ve only done it when I felt it was honestly in the best interest of the game and the players and it is rare.

But an RPG requires following a social compact. If your entire game is being faked and you mislead the players about everything, you are cheating. To claim a GM can never cheat is BS; it just means you’ve never experienced a game where it has happened. I envy you because I wish that was the case for me also.

I’ve played games where the GM made things up because the rules were confusing and he honestly doesn’t know what he’s doing but is trying. Mostly when I was young and so was the GM. That’s a little different. When the GM says they want to run a game in a particular system and gets people to play on that premise, and then just runs his own system and hides it from the players, that’s just flat-out cheating. No philosophizing about the meaning of a “game” can avoid that clear fact.

85

Zelski, I apologize. After sleeping on it, I realized that my post came across as unduly aggressive. I am genuinely curious about your claim that players were approaching publishers at conventions complaining about GMs cheating, and that the CR system was specifically implemented to rein in GMs in response, because those are things that I’ve never heard of before. I also don’t want to further derail this thread, so at this point, please just accept my apology. Also apologies to Ascenray for the derail.

86

Unnecessary. It’s all good.

On the issue of “cheating” by the Game Master. I tend to lean toward the idea that by definition the Game Master can’t cheat. The GM is in charge of the story, and dice rolls or whatever are there to serve the story. There shouldn’t be any roll that has a guaranteed result.

I’ve played in games in which the GM rolls behind the screen on behalf of players and just tells them the result.

To me, an RPG isn’t a game in the sense that the players are trying to win against the GM. It’s a collective story. For the sake of the story, players should give up the idea that a dice roll controls the outcome.

Now, if the story isn’t good, then that’s a bad GM.

87

Back to the OP, there have been a number of good suggestions in this thread, but you seem to be gravitating towards Fate (or at least that’s the game you’ve been asking follow-up questions about). That being the case, and I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet, I highly recommend the Book of Hanz (bottom right of page, under “Fan Works”). It’s a collection of short essays by a guy named Rob Hanz about the mindset, approaches, and play style he brings to Fate, from the perspective of an long-time, old-school D&D player. Note that a lot of other Fate players disagree with him some specific points and bits of advice, but the essays as a whole seem to be pretty much universally regarded by Fate players as the best single exploration of the underlying philosophy of Fate. The game’s developers also feature it on their official resource page, so that should tell you something.

That page also has a lot of other free resources for Fate, including the “pay-what-you-want” PDF of the Core rules.

88

Cool. I’ll check that out.

89

Way too much stuff to comment on here, so I’ll just address this last post since it covers most of the salient points/

This, I’m afraid, it pretty much definitively incorrect. Whether the GM can “cheat” depends on the game. Yes, there are games that say “The GM is the final arbiter of the rules” – that doesn’t give them permission to ignore the rules, it just gives you permission to make rulings. “Is this task Very Challenging or Challenging?” is a rules arbiter decision. So is “We don’t understand how this works, so we’re going to come up with a best guess solution.” There are relatively few games that eschew the idea that SOMEONE needs to make final rules calls, and most of those games are fairly simple. That is not the same as “the GM can’t cheat.” And yes, there are games that explicitly give the GM permission to “cheat” (Lookin’ at you, Vampire the Masquerade) and there are games that explicitly say “No, the GM is bound by the rules like everyone else, and if they want to change one, they should discuss it with the players, ahead of time.” And that means that the GM does NOT have the right to, say, have a monster hit someone regardless of what they rolled “for the sake of the story.”

I am inherently mistrustful of this style, because outside of a very small number of techniques, it’s basically the GM saying “What I roll doesn’t really matter, and this game is going to go how I want it to go.” And I say this AS someone who is usually the GM. My view of “the story” isn’t more important than everyone else’s. But again: whether this is appropriate varies from game to game. I have played games that explicitly state the the GM rolls everything out in the open, and I have played games that encourage the GM to keep rolls hidden.

I find this… inconsistent. On the one hand you say “It’s all about the story” and then say the equivalent of “So we should let one person dictate everything about how the story goes.” If I wanted to be an essentially passive participant in someone else’s plot, I’d go read a book. Additionally, this piles a lot of extra weight on what is already an overloaded position. The GM has a ton of stuff to do in these games, so making them the sole arbiter of “is the story good” seems almost punishing.

A lot of the discussion here seems to come from what I perceive as an “I’ve only played games that do it this way, so it seems like the only way to do it.” mindset. I’ve been there. But it’s really not the only way to do it. You don’t need a GM cheating and fudging and tampering with crap to have a good story. You just need to give players interesting and meaningful decisions and see what comes out of them.

Of course, it also helps if you’re not playing a game where the answer to that is often “Nothing, because that character failed a save and died.” which is, in a way, the root of the problem. People are relying on the GM to fudge numbers and generate dramatic stuff and prevent people from dying “at the wrong time” because the D&D rules don’t do that otherwise. There are games that do, and they don’t require all the GM skullduggery.

90

I hesitate to continue the hijack, but I want to give my experience in role-playing games. The groups I was a part of were generally collaborative, with every player taking a turn at being game master. (Although some players would only rarely take their turn.) We also mixed rules from several games, typically using GURPS as the substrate and tacking on magic from Ars Magica and stealing monsters from D&D.

At the beginning of a campaign, we’d write up the theme and setting. We liked the Ars Magica and Shadowpunk worlds, even if we didn’t use their rules. Then we’d make our characters, with every character required to have a friendly or trusting relationship with two other characters. So every character would be able to see a chain of trust to every other character, and even if they didn’t get along, they’d have strong reasons not to kill each other.

We definitely used the “game master fiat” paradigm. Necessary considering our ad hoc rules framework. But a game master would have to defer when using elements from another game master’s story. If Alice introduced a great dragon, Betty has to confer with her when using that dragon. We also had a “warning shot” rule, which meant no character is killed without first getting a clear indication that they were in serious danger and a reasonably obvious means to avoid death. Characters did die sometimes, but only because the player actively decided that is where they wanted to take their character’s story.

It worked well for us.

91

I may be misremembering–it was about 35 years ago, the red box version with the blue manual. I remember the rules covered character levels 1-3, but the monster section of the rules included dragons and vampires. And I thought I remembered “In Search of the Unknown” including incredibly inappropriate monsters for first level–is that also wrong?

92

A few thoughts on “GM cheating,” and the like.

I’ve been playing RPGs since being introduced to D&D in '82. We played a lot of 1st edition AD&D throughout the '80s, and I hung onto all of my books; one of my gaming groups has recently begun a campaign in which we went back to those 1st edition books.

One thing that I’d always noted, back at that time, and which revisiting the old game rules has brought back in force, is that Gygax clearly saw the relationship between the DM and the players to be at least partially adversarial. Particularly in the DMG, Gygax repeatedly stresses that a DM should give the players as little information as possible. Even the information on a player’s character’s attacks and saving throws is hidden away in the DMG, rather than the PHB. The process for identifying the properties of found magic items is cumbersome, expensive, and uncertain, and Gygax meant for it to be that way. He gave out treasure grudgingly, and loved to find ways to force players to use up what treasure they had – for example, those rules stated that, when your character gained a new level, you didn’t get any of the benefits of that level until you found someone who could train you (and which, of course, cost gold).

And, Gygax relished giving his players highly challenging encounters and dungeons, frequently employing “save or die” attacks, as well as traps and challenges which required the players to think carefully (and creatively). “Tomb of Horrors” is seen as being one of the all-time classic RPG adventures, but it’s also one of the most ridiculous series of nonsensical deathtraps I’ve ever seen in gaming. :smiley:

And, as gdave notes, old-school D&D featured those random encounter tables, which Gygax stressed should be used, and which could produce nonsensical (and level-inappropriate) encounters.

But, note…none of the above was “GM cheating” – this was the way that the game was built!

Yes, with 3E, we got the CR and EL system, which (speaking as a longtime GM) made it a lot easier to gauge the relative threat level of an encounter for my players, and helped me build encounters far more easily than the “eyeball method.”

I’m also going to echo gdave here: I’m not saying that I don’t believe Zelski’s claim that the CR system (and other, similar rule systems) came from, literally, decades of players going to conventions and begging the publishers to do things to rein in “GM cheating,” but, in 36 years of playing RPGs, reading articles and blogs written by game designers, attending numerous conventions, and knowing a number of players who were involved in the playtests of both 3E and 4E D&D, I have never heard anything like this before.

I’ll also say that, even if a group is playing a game system that has CR ratings (or similar), that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) necessarily make it a guarantee that the PCs will always encounter level-appropriate challenges. That should be entirely up to the GM and the players, together, to decide, when they kick off a campaign. I’ve played in campaigns in which the GM has flat-out told us, “don’t assume that you can beat everything you come across. You may well run into things that are above your pay grade, and you should expect that you may need to run away sometimes.” IMO, that is not cheating. That’s a campaign setting choice. A good GM who’s running that sort of campaign should also be giving the players some sort of clue about that sort of encounter, or at least be giving them that chance to retreat once they realize that they’re in over their heads.

When I GM, I do, generally, work hard to create encounters and fights that are going to be challenging, but not overwhelming, for the players. Sometimes, a fight will be a cakewalk (sometimes intentionally, because mowing down tons of mooks is fun, sometimes because I underestimated how hard the PCs can hit, and sometimes just due to lucky dice rolls). Sometimes, a fight will be very challenging, and force the players to think smart, and use every resource at their disposal – if it’s a climactic combat, against the BBEG who’s been a thorn in the players’ sides for months, such a scene should be highly challenging.

On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of random encounters, nor am I generally a fan of having a way-over-your-level fight that you just randomly wandered into, and which serves no purpose in moving the story forward.

In my opinion, if you, as a player, have an issue with your GM “cheating,” to the detriment of your game experience, then the game rules aren’t the problem. You either have a lousy GM, or you have a disconnect between you, and your GM, as to expectations about how your particular game should work.

I started GMing soon after I discovered D&D. I was lousy at first, but I like to think that I got better. I’ve GMed for multiple groups, in long-running campaigns. I’ve GMed many times at major conventions, like GenCon, Origins, and Winter Fantasy. Back when the RPGA was a thing, and did GM rankings, I made it up to Master-level GM. So, I like to think I have some GMing bona fides. And, I will tell you: I cheat. I fudge dice rolls. I adjust monsters’ HP totals up and down on the fly. But, I always do it in the spirit of making the game fun, and making the story engaging for the players. If a fight is going too easily, I’ll sometimes make sure that the monsters do get in a few hits before dying. And, conversely, if the players (due to runs of bad dice rolls on their part, or huge dice rolls on my part) are struggling, I’ll fudge things a bit. That’s particularly the case when I’m running a climactic fight – if the villain crumples like a cheap lawn chair in half a round, IME, that’s anti-climactic for many players. That said, if one of the players makes an epic attack, rolls a crit, and it feels like the sort of thing that should fell a major villain, I’m not going to steal the player’s thunder at all.

As others have already said, I strongly believe that my role as GM is to work with the players to create a fun story, and a great gaming experience. I don’t have an issue with fudging dice rolls sometimes, in order to make that happen. My players trust me that I’m not going to hang them out to dry, and I’m not going to set out to screw them over. I also know (and respect) GMs who feel strongly that the dice rolls and the stats are sacrosanct, and would never ever fudge a roll (either to the advantage, or the disadvantage, of the players). I think that both approaches are perfectly cromulent, and that it’s a matter of the players and the GM having an upfront, clear understanding of expectations.

93

n/m

94

The famous “Red Box” Basic Set went through a number of re-printings and revisions, but AFAIK, it never contained vampires. It did include dragons. There certainly were vampires in other D&D books available at the time, though, that your DM might have drawn from.

As Zelski notes, B1 “In Search of the Unknown” was a blank dungeon that the individual DM was supposed to stock with monsters and treasures themselves. If your play-through included incredibly inappropriate monsters for first level, that’s because your DM stocked it that way. In your DM’s defense, the DM advice on how to stock the dungeon was not particularly extensive, or even particularly good. Especially for a newbie DM, which is what that adventure was explicitly supposed to be designed for, it would have been all to easy to simply flip through the monster section of the Basic rulebook, or another, more advanced book, and just plopped in whatever monster seemed cool, without realizing how ridiculously OP the encounter would be until the TPK.

95

It is definitely worth noting that NO changes to the rules can PROTECT you against a GM who “cheats” – except perhaps for the aforementioned “GM rolls everything in the open.” – but there is still a substantial difference between games that operate on the assumption that the GM has to maintain his Gygaxian mystery and conceal and/or fudge (Note: It’s interesting to note that I’m pretty sure Gygax was anti-fudge, but his style of mystery is very easy for GMs who want to fudge dice to co-opt.) and a game where the expectation is that everything is on the table.

Reference, for example, Blades in the Dark, which explicitly gives the players the authority to determine which Action Rating they can use to perform a particular task. The GM has a sort of ‘counter lever’ here where they are given the authority to set the effectiveness/risk level of the action, but they’re not allowed to call for a specific type of roll – if you want to try to fight someone, duelist style, using your high Finesse, you can do that, but it might be more dangerous than if you decided to use Skirmish. But it’s very clear here who is allowed to do what. It’s also a system which tells the GM not to withhold information. If an NPC is lying to a PC, there’s no “Can I roll sense motive?” mother-may-I game/guessing game there. The GM is instructed to TELL the player “Yeah, she’s totally lying to you.” and follow that up with “And you’re going to fall for it unless you can resist” or “And you can totally tell.” or the like depending on the circumstances.

These sorts of things make it much less worthwhile for a GM to try to “fudge” things or, indeed to guide “the story”. The story emerges from everyone’s contributions, rather than the GM manipulating the game outside the rules to try to produce an expected outcome.

96

Challenge rating doesn’t exist to limit the DM, but to help the DM. Players never actually complain that an encounter is the wrong CR; the complain that an encounter was too hard (or conversely, too easy). And they do this regardless of what the CR is, or if it exists. If the players steamroll over something with a CR four greater than their level, they won’t say that the DM was cheating. And if the DM TPKs a second-level party with a fourth-level kobold adept, the players aren’t going to say “Well, that was totally fair, it was only a CR 1”.

The purpose of CR, like everything else in the DMG, is to help the DM. Good DMs are trying to make the game fun for their players, which typically means encounters with some level of challenge, but which aren’t overwhelming. And it’s not always easy for a DM, especially an inexperienced one, to see what that will take. CR makes it easier. The DM doesn’t even need to match the party’s level: If he sees that the party is highly optimized and skilled at using their abilities, such that a good challenge for them is usually two higher, then he can just keep on throwing level+2 encounters at them. And the players won’t complain, as long as the result is fun.

97

First, I’m home, and looking at my copy. I no longer have the box, but it’s 3rd Edition, by which I mean the copyright page says “C 1974, 1977, 1978 TACTICAL STUDIES RULES 3rd EDITION, DECEMBER 1979.”* I think it came in a red box.

Second, vampires have their stat block on page 33, between unicorns and wights.

Third, my DM didn’t put vampires in the dungeon, but maybe I did: I was eight or nine, had never heard of the game before buying it at a yard sale, had most certainly never played it before deciding to DM it, and was trying to run it for my dad and my 5-year-old brother. I don’t remember ISOTU offering 9-year-old me much guidance in terms of challenge ratings, which was the point I was trying to make to begin with :).

  • I know from 3rd Edition, I was just amused at that text.
98

The idea that “you can’t always win” is a good one. One of my proudest moments in an old Kingdoms of Kalamar session was when I realized the cultists we were fighting were too numerous and too strong and I announced that I was dropping my weapon and raising my hands in surrender. I was a cleric of the Knight of the Gods but I saw no cowardice in saving the lives of myself and my comrades and having faith (pun intended) that we’d find a way to get the upper hand later. (We did.) My GM later said I surprised him by giving up when I did (and I impressed him) and I said my character was Lawful Good, not Lawful Stupid.

Our last session in our Torg Eternity game had literally dozens of cops trying to kill our group, and we just took cover and ran away. Maybe we could have taken them out… But why? It’s not like we’re getting experience per kill or looting their guns to pawn later.

Adventure stories are full of the heroes getting captured, or being defeated (just so they could later get revenge) and I don’t see why a tabletop game is any different. As long as you’re not ruthlessly killing everyone to feed off their tears. Back when I ran games I’d put in totally overpowered enemies to try to get the players to bargain, outwit, run away, or just impress upon them the fact that there are foes out there stronger than they are (to give the sense that they’re part of a larger world). I don’t see anything wrong with it.

99

100% agree–but it means that in RPGs more than board games or other games, you need to have some understanding and trust.

My current game started with the GM saying, “Just so you know, you’re going to encounter some creatures far beyond your level. You’ll have options, and you can try to fight them, but at certain points in the game, you’ll die horribly if you do.” Generally that’s been clear to us.

Last session, though, we said Fuck It, we’re 11th level now, let’s try fighting a demon lord, how hard could it be? We went into the fight with an exit plan–and halfway through the fight, as things were looking dire, we had to choose. Exit now, and probably lose half the party? Or double down on Fuck It and go for victory/TPK?

Of course we chose the fun option, and survived by the skin of our teeth. It was pretty great. Turned out to be a CR 23 creature.

(As a side note, an 11th level archer with an oathbow is who you want to bring along when fighting a demon lord. Holy shit, man.)

100

That’s the “Blue Box” version of Basic D&D. You’re absolutely right about the vampire. I was thinking about the “Red Box” BECMI version which came after that, and does not include the vampire in the Basic Set.