I miss THACO. You are this level, you hit this well. If they are attacking AC 0 you need this. Roll and see if you made it. Yay!
It was so much better than adding all these giant mods together. The new path means there is always the push to always try and get more (look at the size of these mods!). Then the ACs and HP keep going up and up, urgh.
Get rid of mods for the most part, and you will feel far more free and spend less time fiddling around with your character sheet. That is what alloy systems can do (remove the mods), or we can just head back to AD&D.
How dare he show even a tenth of the amount of condescention you routinely show when you regularly relegate the entire history of D&D prior to the d20 system as being nothing more than "Mother May I?" Everyone knows that only you are allowed to express condescension of that level!We then had a long therapy session for people who are still traumatized by having a GM have too much power in their game and feeling like they always got shafted when the games devolved to "Mother May I."Not cool, AAG. Dial the condescension back from 11 to maybe 5 or 6 and we can still talk.
Also, the whole world is not as obsessed with DungeonWorld as you are; the thread was originally talking about AD&D, if you'll recall.
Indeed. I also never played with my mother, so never got to utter that phrase. She would have made an excellent barbarian though.
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Indeed. I also never played with my mother, so never got to utter that phrase. She would have made an excellent barbarian though.How dare he show even a tenth of the amount of condescention you routinely show when you regularly relegate the entire history of D&D prior to the d20 system as being nothing more than "Mother May I?" Everyone knows that only you are allowed to express condescension of that level!We then had a long therapy session for people who are still traumatized by having a GM have too much power in their game and feeling like they always got shafted when the games devolved to "Mother May I."Not cool, AAG. Dial the condescension back from 11 to maybe 5 or 6 and we can still talk.
Also, the whole world is not as obsessed with DungeonWorld as you are; the thread was originally talking about AD&D, if you'll recall.
I did play my first session with my mom. I believe she was an elf.
I got my mom to read DragonLance, she probably cried when Flint died too.
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'How do we recapture the Essence of AD&D in Pathfinder'? I know on-topic can be difficult when we head down the rabbit hole but can we get back to concrete ideas and suggestions, please?
Only Semi-Sarcastic Suggestion: Cut up the core rules with a pair of scissors, throw away half of what you've got, and re-glue the remaining pieces in random order. Then appoint someone Sole Arbiter, and don't even let the players read half of the rules you're left with.
Bingo! You're back to 1e.
Nah. If you do that with the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, you get Kirthfinder.
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Seems nobody can exactly agree on what "old school feel is"
I've never played oldskool so I have no experience but reading this I've read the following
*unclear rules*
*less rules*
*more RP*
*less RP*
*more unique magic weapons*
*traps that kill rogues 75% of the time*
*elf was a level, so that is good*
*every elf was EXACTLY the same, so bad*
*game was more fun*
*DMs had more power oldskool*
*DM's had less power oldskool*
I have yet to see a single OBJECTIVE TRUE statement other than things like Elf was a class and isn't now...I have also learned from this thread
*Dungeon World is old school*
*Dungeon world is a narrative game, and you might as well play a diceless game or just flip coins*
*Pathfinder isn't old school because you have to optimize*
Oh and my favorite....
*old school characters died less*
*old school characters had lives measured in hours*
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I explained how I could fire blind without risking the gaze attack, and explained statistically how long it would take to kill the basilisk. The GM wouldn't allow it because the rules never spell out how to average attack rolls and miss chance. I said I could fire acid splash at the ceiling above the basilisk until it collapsed and killed the basilisk. The GM said there was no rule for that and it wouldn't work. The GM didn't allow for creative solutions to work...
There ARE rules for those actions.
http://paizo.com/prd/glossary.html#_blindedThe basilisk has full concealment if you're firing blind.
There ARE rules for using acid splash to eat away at the ceiling, depending on its material and thickness it has a hardness rating and number of hitpoints.
"Asking the DM if something is allowed" is system neutral. He could have refused your plan playing AD&D just as easily with any explanation he wants because he's the DM, while in 3e/Pathfinder the rules for giving your clever plan the greenlight DO exist. I've had games of D&D3e where the DM making stuff on the fly like "That horrible fire melded your armor to your body, -1 CON but you now have natural AC+1" or "Your hand gets cut off!" just because.
The DM can do whatever he wants in any edition of D&D. If he wanted his basilisk to kill all of you, then you are going to die.
*If I was DM'ing that encounter, I'd probably have the Basilisk try to smash through the iron bars ('cause there's rules for that) in response to its prey just out of reach splashing it with acid, or go wander off because it's not worth the trouble. Then you can collect everyone's corpses with a feeling of suspense, or the basilisk broke through the bars and you die too. That DM you had just sucked.
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What I like about AD&D was how treasure was distributed pretty much randomnly. If the only +3 weapon you have is a dagger, then you pull that out when you have to stab a golem. 3e's magic item wishlist and WBL kind of took the magic out of finding magical loot.
Monsters also had less hitpoints so a high level fighter could realistically cut through swaths of them. A Red Dragon had like 88 hit points so an archer could just kill it in a single volley if he had enough attacks that round. Hitpoint damage stayed relevant in AD&D.
My favorite retroclone is Adventurer Conqueror King, it's well presented and character generation is fast. The artwork is also stylish.
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Having just skimmed over this thread I've seen a lot of people who don't trust there DM's to play fair and think that they will abuse there position of power .
And if this is so why the F@!~ are they the DM if they can't be trusted to run an honest game don't let them run
I think that's what you had in AD&D you trusted the DM to run an honest game
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----What I like about AD&D was how treasure was distributed pretty much randomnly. If the only +3 weapon you have is a dagger, then you pull that out when you have to stab a golem. 3e's magic item wishlist and WBL kind of took the magic out of finding magical loot.
From my perspective, the two things that make Pathfinder so different from AD&D are:
1) Crazy race-class combos like Kitsune Oracle/Sorcerer (with appropriate archetypes as well). Multi-classing is severely broken in PF and results in wacky and cheesy PC's.
2) Magic item availability either via "Ye Olde Magic Mart" in every corner of civilization or PC's creating magic items via item creation feats whose only cost requires some expenditure of gold. 3rd edition D&D required PC's to sacrifice experience points if they wanted to create magic items. 1st Edition required the 6th level spell "Permanency" to create any permanently enchanted item. Each casting of that spell reduced the caster's Constitution by 1 point. Now that was a full proof way to prevent PC's from creating too many permanent magic items.
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----What I like about AD&D was how treasure was distributed pretty much randomnly. If the only +3 weapon you have is a dagger, then you pull that out when you have to stab a golem. 3e's magic item wishlist and WBL kind of took the magic out of finding magical loot.
From my perspective, the two things that make Pathfinder so different from AD&D are:
1) Crazy race-class combos like Kitsune Oracle/Sorcerer (with appropriate archetypes as well). Multi-classing is severely broken in PF and results in wacky and cheesy PC's.
2) Magic item availability either via "Ye Olde Magic Mart" in every corner of civilization or PC's creating magic items via item creation feats whose only cost requires some expenditure of gold. 3rd edition D&D required PC's to sacrifice experience points if they wanted to create magic items. 1st Edition required the 6th level spell "Permanency" to create any permanently enchanted item. Each casting of that spell reduced the caster's Constitution by 1 point. Now that was a full proof way to prevent PC's from creating too many permanent magic items.
Yeah, play in games without the cheesy class and race combination, and quite surprisingly, the cheese evaporates. Funny that.
Cheese is a big problem in pf, the elephant in the build and power obsessed room, but it is impolite to mention it.
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Seems nobody can exactly agree on what "old school feel is"
I've never played oldskool so I have no experience but reading this I've read the following
*unclear rules*
*less rules*
*more RP*
*less RP*
*more unique magic weapons*
*traps that kill rogues 75% of the time*
*elf was a level, so that is good*
*every elf was EXACTLY the same, so bad*
*game was more fun*
*DMs had more power oldskool*
*DM's had less power oldskool*
I have yet to see a single OBJECTIVE TRUE statement other than things like Elf was a class and isn't now...I have also learned from this thread
*Dungeon World is old school*
*Dungeon world is a narrative game, and you might as well play a diceless game or just flip coins*
*Pathfinder isn't old school because you have to optimize*
Oh and my favorite....
*old school characters died less*
*old school characters had lives measured in hours*
Did you play AD&D in the seventies? I can understand your confusion if you did not. No one who didn't will get the essence of that earlier game because even if you played AD&D today the conventions of games/gaming/ and RPG rules have altered the expectations of people. Some people are hostile to the idea that Pathfinder might not provide everything that AD&D did. Some people are confused by the concept.
Unless of course you're not genuinely trying to find the essence of AD&D, in that case using bullet points of every contradictory point in a thread hundreds long is trying to boil a cat whole to get a kitten. All that ever does is give you an ugly mess.
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It's ridiculous how cumbersome and counter-intuitive this system was. People forget that even THACO was a massive improvement.
I found the exact opposite was true. Cross-referencing charts is just eye-coordination; no math necessary.
*elf was a level, so that is good*
*every elf was EXACTLY the same, so bad*
.....
I have yet to see a single OBJECTIVE TRUE statement other than things like Elf was a class and isn't now...I have also learned from this thread
Actually this is wrong. Elf, Dwarf and Halfling were classes in the D&D red box, not AD&D. In AD&D, you still had a class/race duality. An elf could be a Fighter/Magic User, a Fighter/Thief, a Fighter/M-U/Thief, I think cleric might have been available for Elf as well, or any of those classes singly.
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It's ridiculous how cumbersome and counter-intuitive this system was. People forget that even THACO was a massive improvement.I found the exact opposite was true. Cross-referencing charts is just eye-coordination; no math necessary.
People think "Thac0" was some kind of innovation. It was the number from your class/level in the chart. Period. They started putting it in modules in the 1e era to make things a little quicker for DMs who might not have an official screen with the charts on them. That's it. Your "to hit" number was exactly the same.
So, if looking at your character sheet and doing some math is an improvement over just looking at a number on the chart, no math, wow, we have low standards over what a "massive improvement" consists of.
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Seems nobody can exactly agree on what "old school feel is"
I've never played oldskool so I have no experience but reading this I've read the following
*unclear rules*
*less rules*
*more RP*
*less RP*
*more unique magic weapons*
*traps that kill rogues 75% of the time*
*elf was a level, so that is good*
*every elf was EXACTLY the same, so bad*
*game was more fun*
*DMs had more power oldskool*
*DM's had less power oldskool*
I have yet to see a single OBJECTIVE TRUE statement other than things like Elf was a class and isn't now...I have also learned from this thread
*Dungeon World is old school*
*Dungeon world is a narrative game, and you might as well play a diceless game or just flip coins*
*Pathfinder isn't old school because you have to optimize*
Oh and my favorite....
*old school characters died less*
*old school characters had lives measured in hours*Did you play AD&D in the seventies? I can understand your confusion if you did not. No one who didn't will get the essence of that earlier game because even if you played AD&D today the conventions of games/gaming/ and RPG rules have altered the expectations of people. Some people are hostile to the idea that Pathfinder might not provide everything that AD&D did. Some people are confused by the concept.
Unless of course you're not genuinely trying to find the essence of AD&D, in that case using bullet points of every contradictory point in a thread hundreds long is trying to boil a cat whole to get a kitten. All that ever does is give you an ugly mess.
If you re-read the first couple lines in his post, you'll see that he says he hasn't played AD&D, but was only trying to encapsulate some of the contradictions in this thread.
Overall, it's not a bad summary. The one thing it missed, and has been covered pretty thoroughly here, is that AD&D was not a simpler system. Rather, it was pretty much the same level of complexity, but with huge gaps in the rules. Those gaps were mostly found in the skills and non-combat encounters, which were often resolved without a dice roll, usually by roleplay, DM fiat, and to a certain extent, "Mother May I". Fast talking players could usually ride roughshod over an inexperienced DM with nary a skill check or dice roll in sight!
I started playing in 1980, and I DM'd through most of the 80s. It was all AD&D/1E. I never bothered to play the red box or pick up 2nd Edition, and for the most part, I hadn't touched a RPG until jumping into Pathfinder a couple months ago. I can honestly say that, after years of experience playing and running AD&D, I'm not finding the Pathfinder experience to be lacking anything. True, the sprawling amount of character options can be a little overwhelming to old school DMs, but it's pretty easy for GMs to limit that, restricting players to CRB or CRB + APG only. If you think of the GM as an artist, the first thing you want to do is take control of the colour palette. If a certain theme doesn't fit the vision you are creating, toss it out. Perhaps that's a difference with AD&D DMs. Since more of the encounters and play were scratch-built, 1E DMs felt far less bound to follow the RAW.
The other big difference, of course, is skills. Personally, I like having the addition of skills. I'll disagree that having skill checks makes PCs more powerful. If anything, it steps on my tail a little bit. A failed Bluff check can occasionally put an end to my ruse, whereas in 1E I would've just spitballed my way through that thing.
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It's ridiculous how cumbersome and counter-intuitive this system was. People forget that even THACO was a massive improvement.I found the exact opposite was true. Cross-referencing charts is just eye-coordination; no math necessary.
I've never had a problem doing math on the fly, and if you are playing with any buffs in combat (rage, bless, bard song), you're stuck doing the math anyway.
And did you catch what I said about the small print? Some of us old-timers don't read those charts as well as we used to.
Seems nobody can exactly agree on what "old school feel is"
I've never played oldskool so I have no experience but reading this I've read the following
*unclear rules*
*less rules*
*more RP*
*less RP*
*more unique magic weapons*
*traps that kill rogues 75% of the time*
*elf was a level, so that is good*
*every elf was EXACTLY the same, so bad*
*game was more fun*
*DMs had more power oldskool*
*DM's had less power oldskool*
I have yet to see a single OBJECTIVE TRUE statement other than things like Elf was a class and isn't now...I have also learned from this thread
*Dungeon World is old school*
*Dungeon world is a narrative game, and you might as well play a diceless game or just flip coins*
*Pathfinder isn't old school because you have to optimize*
Oh and my favorite....
*old school characters died less*
*old school characters had lives measured in hours*Did you play AD&D in the seventies? I can understand your confusion if you did not. No one who didn't will get the essence of that earlier game because even if you played AD&D today the conventions of games/gaming/ and RPG rules have altered the expectations of people. Some people are hostile to the idea that Pathfinder might not provide everything that AD&D did. Some people are confused by the concept.
Unless of course you're not genuinely trying to find the essence of AD&D, in that case using bullet points of every contradictory point in a thread hundreds long is trying to boil a cat whole to get a kitten. All that ever does is give you an ugly mess.
If you re-read the first couple lines in his post, you'll see that he says he hasn't played AD&D, but was only trying to encapsulate some of the contradictions in this thread.
Overall, it's not a bad summary. The one thing it missed, and has been covered pretty thoroughly here, is that AD&D was not a simpler system. Rather, it was pretty much the same level of complexity, but with huge gaps in the rules....
Noted, I was speaking as much to the posters on this thread who are trying to derail it through dismissive contempt for the essence of AD&D and by making this an 'us' vs 'them' thread.
I heavily edited my post as I am trying to engage as many people as possible in the idea we might be able to recapture that essence.
I am pleased you feel no lack and that you have been able to maintain that same essence.
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has the biggest detail of AD&D been mentioned. That is, prior to the internet, basically, just about everyone played these games diferently even if they were using the same books.
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Oracle and Sorcerer are cheesy?
Elven Fighter/Magic Users or Human Dual Classed characters werent a thing in 1e AD&D?
You have a strange way of looking at the world.
An elvish F/MU was less powerful than a pure fighter or magic user of equal experience (points), just more flexible. If you want to find the cheese in AD&D, you need to get the first "splatbook", Unearthed Arcana.
There is far more cheese since 2e S&P came out than at any time prior, and S&P was basically the bridge between AD&D and WotC D&D. In order to get the level of cheese in a typical 3x/PF game in original (1e) AD&D, you'd basically have to cheat and ignore a ton of character creation rules. Or use Unearthed Arcana with the optional wealth and ability score generation rules.
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has the biggest detail of AD&D been mentioned. That is, prior to the internet, basically, just about everyone played these games diferently even if they were using the same books.
True that.
Occasionally, you got a taste of somebody else's play style if you went to a con. Usually we walked away from those experiences thinking, "Wow, those guys sucked compared to us". lol
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I am pleased you feel no lack and that you have been able to maintain that same essence.
Thanks! I am having a lot of fun with it.
It helps to find a good group. I'm currently playing with a GM who got his start on 2nd Edition, so we mostly see eye-to-eye on everything. Roleplay and story are both still a big factor at our table. However, as I mentioned earlier on this thread, I wasn't so lucky my first time out. It may have been a generational thing. I was playing with a bunch of young guys, and we didn't click at all. We also held up the game for two hours (!) waiting for a player (the GM's best buddy), who apparently had decided to watch the hockey game in a pub instead and it went into overtime.
We just finished the first book of our AP and are taking a two week break (his wife's birthday, plus I'm going outa town this weekend). And, well ...I can't believe how much I'm missing it! I'm really jonesing for a game, man. *laughs*
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It's ridiculous how cumbersome and counter-intuitive this system was. People forget that even THACO was a massive improvement.I found the exact opposite was true. Cross-referencing charts is just eye-coordination; no math necessary.People think "Thac0" was some kind of innovation. It was the number from your class/level in the chart. Period. They started putting it in modules in the 1e era to make things a little quicker for DMs who might not have an official screen with the charts on them. That's it. Your "to hit" number was exactly the same.
So, if looking at your character sheet and doing some math is an improvement over just looking at a number on the chart, no math, wow, we have low standards over what a "massive improvement" consists of.
Well, it did allow you to make a reference on your character sheet that didn't take up anywhere near the amount of room as putting the chart.
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Having just skimmed over this thread I've seen a lot of people who don't trust there DM's to play fair and think that they will abuse there position of power .
And if this is so why the F@@% are they the DM if they can't be trusted to run an honest game don't let them run
I think that's what you had in AD&D you trusted the DM to run an honest game
Because dms are human. They have expectations, they have egos, they can be annoyed, they can be disappointed, they can get overly caught up in what they have created. Baring people who have had the magical luck to play with the same perfect dms (and they do exist) their entire career, most gamers have experienced bad DMs. The fact is that many of the traits that would drive someone to take on the responsibility and work of a dm are the kind of traits that lead to the problems I mentioned.
In my experience, there are very few gms that can be entirely fair with their adjudication of situations not covered by rules. Whether its allowing the players to have influence over events in the story including downright interupting it with unexpected actions or somekind of insight, or the ever dreaded quick defeat of a lovingly crafted npc due to some act of luck or guile on the part of the pcs.
I also have found relatively few that are able to 'roll with the punches' of player creativity. In particularly when it conflicts with the dms goals or expectations. I have not run a single rpg session that I have not been simply flabberghasted at the choice a player has made. They just do something I was completely unprepared for. Not because I am a bad gm, stupid or not creative, but because it is the thoughts and ideas of 4-6 people against what I could think up to plan for. And I dont think the way they do.
When I am completely blindsided by a player idea, having rules to fall back on, allows me to deal with the situation fairly. Even if I dont have a precise rule for whats going on, I have a really good foundation to work with in pathfinder. When I dmed Adnd I have to make it up most of the time. I at least am not capable of making consistent and fair rulings on how ideas and actions I am completely unprepared for should work out on my own. And I think there are relatively few dms out there that can do it either.
I think there are precious few people who can keep their ego, their love of their own story, their ability to get irritated or spiteful, completely out of their task as gming. They arent bad people, or even bad gmas, just human. Often these same people are your friends. In many groups they are the only ones willing to dm regularly. And it only takes one or two bad calls by the dm to create discord among your players. They wont remember the 50 times you made fair, fun, consistent rulings. The bad ones will stick out. After a few, people will get upset. Upset players means upset dms which means a game that isnt as fun.
The simple fact is a rules heavy system allows more people to be effective and fair dms then a rules light system does. It would be ideal if every dm could be the kind of perfect dm that faces none of the challenges I have mentioned. But since we dont have dming school, and most of us taught ourselves, or learned from our friends who taught themselves, they will always be rare. Wonderful, but rare.
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I've been watching D&D Next and what they're taking from gamer feedback (they are taking a page from Paizo and making the fans a part of the process, smart move). Their brand director, Nathan Stewart, summed it up in a Forbes Magazine interview: "...the future of D&D is not the [rules sets] but it’s this feeling that you get playing Dungeons & Dragons, no matter where you do it.”
So what's the "feeling" you get?
From Mike Mearls, creative directing (summary), the 120,000+ playtesters are indicating it's the "story" element, the "idea of what a character is, that's really important." Players want to be engaged in an "evocative" story and the "mechanics are really just a means to an end." Players are less interested in the "feats/powers" than making a fun story with others.
"They’re not coming to D&D saying oh, I need mechanics." For example, "we have some basic guidelines for handling character interactions, what to do when you meet an NPC and you want to convince them to do something for you. Right now we have about two pages of rules about that, really more storytelling guidelines rather than hardcore mechanics. The big disparity between having the feedback and not having it is that without that feedback, it would have been a much more mechanical approach, a skill challenge kind of thing where you need X number of success before failing."
And bam, that hit me.
Mechanics do influence gameplay and more rules isn't always better. Is an RPG a social experience where the players make the game or is it where the mechanics make the game (how many "skill challenges" or Diplomacy checks can I succeed on?) My theory has been that creativity is expanded with less rules bloat, recognizing always there must be a core set of rules that creates a framework without becoming the framework.
Like Mearls, I want to get to the part where the characters are making the story and I'd like to see where we go next. I want a meaningful set of rules that enable this without interfering with getting to the story. I don't want to spend 2 hours making up a stat block to get started. 120,000 players were crying for less mechanics and more story. I'm sure there were innumerable more. Paizo has great writers; I'm here just as much for their skill as for the system. Maybe there's a market for a rules-bloated system, but every edition has inevitably expanded and contracted. It may be I'm looking ahead to the next inception of Pathfinder just as much as I'm looking behind for that "feeling" I used to get quite a bit more often.
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Well, it did allow you to make a reference on your character sheet that didn't take up anywhere near the amount of room as putting the chart.
True, but I could never figure out the damned reference without thinking about it for longer than a glance at the chart would take. As a DM, all I needed to know was class and level, and the player's die roll.
With THACO, it was "I rolled a 10 and my THACO's 18". So WHAT. The monster's AC is 4, not 0. You rolled 10? Now there's four pesky numbers floating in my head at the same time, and a player staring at me waiting to see if he hit. Let's see, umm, do I need to count inclusively or...hell, I don't know. "You hit."
That was my experience. I'm a college graduate, and an IT professional. Given some paper and a few minutes, I can do math. But don't ask me math questions and expect an instant answer.
For some reason, the completely additive nature of D20 is no problem for my mind at all. Your AC is 21. I rolled an 18, he's got a +3 with that weapon, he hit. It's much easier for me, conceptually, than trying to figure out THACO. For some reason, my brain just didn't work that way. I even had people explain it to me. But I could never get it on the fly. It became kind of a joke among my players, but even with my charts, they still had a great time.
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From Mike Mearls, creative directing (summary), the 120,000+ playtesters are indicating it's the "story" element, the "idea of what a character is, that's really important." Players want to be engaged in an "evocative" story and the "mechanics are really just a means to an end." Players are less interested in the "feats/powers" than making a fun story with others.
I'm not sure that's accurate. For me it is, sure, but quite a few RPG gamers are also wargamers. Their minds work differently than mine, more tactically. They like finding bits of rules that will give them a competitive advantage, even if the game is not "supposed" to be competitive. I know a guy who will spend as much time tweaking his character while pouring over tome after tome of rules as I spend setting up the adventure for the week. For some, mechanics IS an enjoyment in itself. And the more there is, the more satisfying it will be for those people.
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I'm not sure that's accurate. For me it is, sure, but quite a few RPG gamers are also wargamers. Their minds work differently than mine, more tactically. They like finding bits of rules that will give them a competitive advantage, even if the game is not "supposed" to be competitive. I know a guy who will spend as much time tweaking his character while pouring over tome after tome of rules as I spend setting up the adventure for the week. For some, mechanics IS an enjoyment in itself. And the more there is, the more satisfying it will be for those people.From Mike Mearls, creative directing (summary), the 120,000+ playtesters are indicating it's the "story" element, the "idea of what a character is, that's really important." Players want to be engaged in an "evocative" story and the "mechanics are really just a means to an end." Players are less interested in the "feats/powers" than making a fun story with others.
I game with about 10 guys; 4 of them regularly. 4 of these are tactics types. I've said it before and I'll use the example again: they feel that the 1 paragraph setup to a Descent scenario is too much fluff for an RPG. For them it's all about the mechanics, wailing on monsters and getting loot. This doesn't make them bad guys or bad gamers.
Some folks just don't dig on story. No shame in it. These particular guys have started to get into the roleplaying aspect a little just to have some fun in silly voices and such, but overall they're just there to roll some dice and make Conan proud.
Now, if you're doing the math that still means that 6 of my players enjoy plot to some degree. This is true though not all to the SAME extent, and one of these guys is ALSO a rules lawyer. This makes him equally happy engaging the NPCs in lively debate as it makes him to engage me the same way over a ruling.
I've run AD&D and 2e with guys like that before. They like gray area, because it provides the most fertile grounds for debate. Unfortunately this debate can eat up game time if you're not careful.
So I play rules-heavy PF. It smooths out the gray, helps me manage debate, and empowers the tactically minded. Is it a perfect system? No, that's ridiculous.
But when it comes to an "old school feel" I think back to my old Greyhawk books. Old school to me is more feeling than fact, and that feeling was grim, gritty. Sometimes evil won (Iuz) and madmen ruled (Robilar in the City of Greyhawk). Sometimes the gods were cruel even to their own worshippers (Cuthbert) and even solemn, helpful monks were not to be trusted (The Scarlet Brotherhood). Dungeons were deep; dragons were deadly and the world could very well kill you. THAT is what old school feels like to me.
Not surprisingly I'm very much looking forward to the next Frog God Games kickstarter tomorrow...
I wish to avoid playing with those types of people at all costs—not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I find it incredibly irritating. That's personal preference, not overt condemnation of style.
Ok, but you're missing out on some pretty epic fight scenes...
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Well, it did allow you to make a reference on your character sheet that didn't take up anywhere near the amount of room as putting the chart.It's ridiculous how cumbersome and counter-intuitive this system was. People forget that even THACO was a massive improvement.I found the exact opposite was true. Cross-referencing charts is just eye-coordination; no math necessary.People think "Thac0" was some kind of innovation. It was the number from your class/level in the chart. Period. They started putting it in modules in the 1e era to make things a little quicker for DMs who might not have an official screen with the charts on them. That's it. Your "to hit" number was exactly the same.
So, if looking at your character sheet and doing some math is an improvement over just looking at a number on the chart, no math, wow, we have low standards over what a "massive improvement" consists of.
If you consider that a "massive" improvement (considering the DM didn't normally give out AC info on the enemies), and you still had to ask if you hit (as opposed to just rolling the dice, adding str + magic bonus, and asking the same exact question), you have low standards.
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Oh, I find that epic fight scenes are more about characters than powers, Mark.I wish to avoid playing with those types of people at all costs—not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I find it incredibly irritating. That's personal preference, not overt condemnation of style.Ok, but you're missing out on some pretty epic fight scenes...
Amen. Some of my 1e games had quite a bit of "epic". Those "epic" combats just took up WAY less time looking stuff up and adding a zillion modifiers (stuff that is decidedly not "epic", quite draggy and boring, actually).
I can't say what may or may not be in terms of games improvements. I will say say that I find adding a bonus to a d20 roll to see if matches/exceeds an ascending AC makes combat much easier to explain to newcomers.
Edit: And, yeah, "epic" always had a lot more to do with emotional investment than anything else for me. I actually find that christmas tree effect/monty haul style play counteracts feelings of epicness (not a word) personally.
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Amen. Some of my 1e games had quite a bit of "epic". Those "epic" combats just took up WAY less time looking stuff up and adding a zillion modifiers (stuff that is decidedly not "epic", quite draggy and boring, actually).
That's where rules bloat gets in the way of the story. AD&D wasn't anywhere close to perfect, but there wasn't a lot of mechanics to get in the way of an epic story. If the 1st level gamer wanted to throw acid at the roof of the building to weaken the rafters to smash a rampaging basilisk that he has no chance of beating in a traditional "grid-based" combat, that's a whole lot more epic than stopping play and flipping to page 2xx to argue the relative hardness of each rafter, much less finding the rules for "cave-in" once, if ever, the ceiling falls. This may simply be a matter where a DM steps in, adjudicates "normally the acid splash is too weak to do real damage to treated wood, but termites have been working on the building along with some exposure to weather over the years. The ancient rafters give a creak and groan...you'd better think about finding something to hide under..."
There's also something non-epic about being engaged in the middle of battle with the Death Knight Lord Sinister who has razed the local church atop his flaming nightmare steed, and stopping play to recount "...ok so I get a +1 from bless, a +1 from prayer, a +2 from blessing of fervor, a +1 from (oops, that's a morale bonus, doesn't stack with bless, scratch that), a +1 from haste, a -2 because of the shaken effect, did I count that +4 for the Potion of Bull Strength, (no wait, that should only be a net gain of +2 because of my strength already)...so I hit AC 30. No wait, I forgot that I had activated a swift action to gain a temporary +2, I think that's a class bonus so it counts...(and now another player indicates his abilities grant a bonus so long as they're in proximity), and was bard song playing? What's that grant again? Hold on, I lost my count on the plusses..."
You may argue that a player should know the rules, but just as easily those same rules are getting in the way of what should be a pulse-raising battle to the finish.
Could simply be that refined mechanics are all that's needed. I certainly don't need more rules (than now) to recapture the spirit and creativity inherent to RPGs that should encourage gamers to immerse in a story about a character, not a character's stats. Make no mistake, I want some stats; I want players to brag about that time due to their great strength they lifted the portcullis in the flooding basement for everyone to escape. I just don't want that heroic story to get lost amongst memories of rules lawyering.
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Seriously, if it takes more than a few seconds to figure out all of the conditional modifiers, there's too much going on that takes you out of the moment for anything to feel epic in the moment. Once it's over and the retelling starts, that's where the "epic" comes in for me in any 3x based game. There were a lot more full immersion moments in 1e than any version of 3x, if only because the combats didn't take twenty minutes (or more) a round, even at high level.
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Amen. Some of my 1e games had quite a bit of "epic". Those "epic" combats just took up WAY less time looking stuff up and adding a zillion modifiers (stuff that is decidedly not "epic", quite draggy and boring, actually).That's where rules bloat gets in the way of the story. AD&D wasn't anywhere close to perfect, but there wasn't a lot of mechanics to get in the way of an epic story. If the 1st level gamer wanted to throw acid at the roof of the building to weaken the rafters to smash a rampaging basilisk that he has no chance of beating in a traditional "grid-based" combat, that's a whole lot more epic than stopping play and flipping to page 2xx to argue the relative hardness of each rafter, much less finding the rules for "cave-in" once, if ever, the ceiling falls. This may simply be a matter where a DM steps in, adjudicates "normally the acid splash is too weak to do real damage to treated wood, but termites have been working on the building along with some exposure to weather over the years. The ancient rafters give a creak and groan...you'd better think about finding something to hide under..."
There's also something non-epic about being engaged in the middle of battle with the Death Knight Lord Sinister who has razed the local church atop his flaming nightmare steed, and stopping play to recount "...ok so I get a +1 from bless, a +1 from prayer, a +2 from blessing of fervor, a +1 from (oops, that's a morale bonus, doesn't stack with bless, scratch that), a +1 from haste, a -2 because of the shaken effect, did I count that +4 for the Potion of Bull Strength, (no wait, that should only be a net gain of +2 because of my strength already)...so I hit AC 30. No wait, I forgot that I had activated a swift action to gain a temporary +2, I think that's a class bonus so it counts...(and now another player indicates his abilities grant a bonus so long as they're in proximity), and was bard song playing? What's that grant again? Hold on, I lost my count on...
If you're saying, "Brian the Black leaps forward clashing his axe to his shield roaring, 'Lamh-laidir abu. Let those omadhauns come! None shall pass the ax of this Dalcassian prince without tasting the whetted steel! Come, a ripe feast for the crows you'll be.'" You're doing it with the essence of old AD&D
If you say, "I'll move my character here to block the bridge it should slow any creature larger than small size unless they make a throw vs acrobatics to get past me. I'll brace my shield for defense. I should get a +3 to resist an contests of strength. You'll still have to watch for the reach weapons but since they'll be on a corner most won't be able to pass through the square." You're not in fact doing it with the old school essence of D&D.
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If you're saying, "Brian the Black leaps forward clashing his axe to his shield roaring, 'Lamh-laidir abu. Let those omadhauns come! None shall pass the ax of this Dalcassian prince without tasting the whetted steel! Come, a ripe feast for the crows you'll be.'" You're doing it with the essence of old AD&DIf you say, "I'll move my character here to block the bridge it should slow any creature larger than small size unless they make a throw vs acrobatics to get past me. I'll brace my shield for defense. I should get a +3 to resist an contests of strength. You'll still have to watch for the reach weapons but since they'll be on a corner most won't be able to pass through the square." You're not in fact doing it with the old school essence of D&D.
While I know plenty of "old school" players who did the latter, this post deserved favoriting for sheer coolness and alignment with my own preferences :)
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If you're saying, "Brian the Black leaps forward clashing his axe to his shield roaring, 'Lamh-laidir abu. Let those omadhauns come! None shall pass the ax of this Dalcassian prince without tasting the whetted steel! Come, a ripe feast for the crows you'll be.'" You're doing it with the essence of old AD&D
If you say, "I'll move my character here to block the bridge it should slow any creature larger than small size unless they make a throw vs acrobatics to get past me. I'll brace my shield for defense. I should get a +3 to resist an contests of strength. You'll still have to watch for the reach weapons but since they'll be on a corner most won't be able to pass through the square." You're not in fact doing it with the old school essence of D&D.
A very good point, but now I'm thinking. I've been playing more like option 2 since I started with a group that used a 1"=5' scale battle mat. It starts to feel like you try to do the 1st, which is more interesting, but then you HAVE to do the 2nd, because you need to make sure all the rules are accounted for to ensure that the first is even possible. And then, somewhere along the way, the description never happens and you do your move, and the next guy does his.
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If you say, "I'll move my character here to block the bridge it should slow any creature larger than small size unless they make a throw vs acrobatics to get past me. I'll brace my shield for defense. I should get a +3 to resist an contests of strength. You'll still have to watch for the reach weapons but since they'll be on a corner most won't be able to pass through the square." You're not in fact doing it with the old school essence of D&D.
And I'm okay with that.