tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post8716470998371620743..comments2024-03-28T00:42:25.420-07:00Comments on Grognardling: Why Skills are Dangerous: A PreludeChristopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16988517412357391012noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-36847181107985335502012-01-28T23:38:38.669-08:002012-01-28T23:38:38.669-08:00Sounds like a great gaming session. Your approach ...Sounds like a great gaming session. Your approach to the chances of success sounds very much like what I would do in the DM's chair. Certainly, some of the most enjoyable moments in D&D are when players come up with ideas that completely surprise you, and you have to come up with a "chance of success" at the drop of a hat. Even more fun when they succeed!Niccodaemushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12969643475763823901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-30697112815289346772011-06-12T19:16:23.394-07:002011-06-12T19:16:23.394-07:00What the rules cover with the most detail, though,...What the rules cover with the most detail, though, isn't necessarily what the game, as written, is about, as Trollsmyth points out. But, yes, while I don't have much experience with any editions of D&D other than 3.5 and S&W, the rules, and the focus, from what I read around the OSR blogosphere, and from what I read when I wonder off to check out what other gamers are saying, shift as you progress to later editions. 4e, from what I hear, is very much *about* tactical fighting, while I'm not even sure what 3.5 is about. I never studied it for purposes of running it and I haven't read as much theoretical criticism of it as I have of 4e.<br /><br />I also think that's a lot of what the OSR is about, or at least what one of the OSR's conceptual starting points is: reacting against the shift in D&D from a game about exploration to a game about fighting. It's about other things too, and it goes off in new directions, sometimes even taking 4e and homebrewing it with Old School ideas instead of discarding it out-of-hand, but I think that this idea of reacting against a shift in what the point of a game with "D&D" stamped on it is a crucial cornerstone to understanding the OSR.Christopherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16988517412357391012noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-72267341741737208952011-06-12T07:10:34.510-07:002011-06-12T07:10:34.510-07:00"Old School D&D, as I understand it, is a..."Old School D&D, as I understand it, is about exploration"<br /><br />Initially, yes. I think as the years went by, though, even Basic became more about vanquishing evil and discovering fantastic treasure. With every edition, though, the majority of the game rules seem to have been about combat. I daresay that the rules in most RPGs are primarily combat-oriented these days.Ben O.https://www.blogger.com/profile/01362794638243300594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-8031965859117454762011-06-11T10:51:56.211-07:002011-06-11T10:51:56.211-07:00@nigralbus: I'm mostly just going to echo what...@nigralbus: I'm mostly just going to echo what mikemonaco said. If the players hadn't had any ideas concerning how to scale the waterfall, they wouldn't have scaled the waterfall. This would have been especially awkward for them because they were being chased by podmen, and so their previously plural number of options for exiting the dungeon had been narrowed down to scaling the waterfall or facing the podmen. In short, if they had not been able to figure out a way to scale the waterfall, they would have been met with failure, and, in this particular case, with failure of a quite deadly flavor. In other cases, their failure would not have had such dire consequences: they'd just find another way. Without the opportunity for failure, though, success becomes meaningless. If you know you haven't earned an achievement, at least in my way of thinking, then, while you and everyone else might pretend you achieved something, you know you didn't really achieve anything and it is meaningless to you. Does that make sense?<br /><br />@Ben Overmyer: I don't think that's necessarily incompatible at all. I don't think that very specific mechanics, especially for games that *aren't* D&D and *are* new, can, because of the particular numbers added to particular dice rolls, cease to be Old School. It's true that the use of Talents in the equation slides Ingenium a bit farther up the spectrum of "skillsiness" than the particular scenarios I described, but I don't think that that has to be a bad thing. <br /><br />What I think is important for the "Old School feel" that this post was about is that whatever the game is about- and I don't know what Ingenium is about- isn't reduced to dice-rolling, but gets roleplayed out. <br /><br />Old School D&D, as I understand it, is about exploration, broadly defined, so the activities of exploration in the scenarios got roleplayed, with only actions that were uncertain as to outcome, like bluffing and being able to hook the grapple onto a rock, rolled for while, say, the combats that the party got into were abstracted out to one-minute rounds and lots of dice rolls.Christopherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16988517412357391012noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-84523602439061276482011-06-11T08:33:54.582-07:002011-06-11T08:33:54.582-07:00The RPG that I wrote and published under Silver Gr...The RPG that I wrote and published under Silver Gryphon Games, Ingenium, uses d10+Attribute+X as its base mechanic. It doesn't have skills per se, but many of the Talents in the system (it uses ability trees rather than classes or skills) give bonuses to the d10+Attr roll in specific instances.<br /><br />I think that's not incompatible with the old school feel you describe here... what do you think?Ben O.https://www.blogger.com/profile/01362794638243300594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-29655044554911610752011-06-11T05:36:30.670-07:002011-06-11T05:36:30.670-07:00Great post.
nigralbus -- Re: dead ends ... that i...Great post.<br /><br />nigralbus -- Re: dead ends ... that is a feature, not a bug. Adventurers sometimes come to dead ends and have to think of another way. That is one reason most 'old school' dungeons are nonlinear.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-91204277438657629652011-06-11T05:15:55.941-07:002011-06-11T05:15:55.941-07:00Sounds like a fun and productive session!Sounds like a fun and productive session!Carter Soleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01286436801953647693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-72012164550952550442011-06-11T04:29:38.584-07:002011-06-11T04:29:38.584-07:00Okay. So what if none of your players had the bril...Okay. So what if none of your players had the brilliant idea of using their pole to catapult the grappling ? I admit the outcome is awesome, but the whole thing relies on your players being creative enough to try this kind of stuff. Lacking this, this waterfall could quickly become a frustrating dead-end, couldn'it ?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283938885302784821.post-68705303478331499462011-06-10T22:23:07.433-07:002011-06-10T22:23:07.433-07:00Cool. Being specific and detailed on what the char...Cool. Being specific and detailed on what the characters do is way more engaging than rolling dice, say to search a 10x10 area. Older games encouraged this kind of play by not having a formal system at all. I was just talking about this on the forums for the DCC RPG beta tests.Reverend Dakhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15589927717583694031noreply@blogger.com