I do not know if it depends on the age or other.
Last Saturday I found myself with my old group and i mean the group with whom I started playing AD&D1 25 years ago.
We played a part of an old module of 1978 and could be for the ability of our old master that I can not compare myself in any way, but even if the plot was more narrow and there were nothing spectacular i found something i'm no more used to.
I'm speaking about that feeling of terror, the idea that each step may be the last, the riddles to solve or die...
I think balancing the game has gone us from testing the skills of the players to test the abilities of the characters.
If I'm wrong and you know about modules or paths so old fashioned that can be easily played with this century rules fell free to give me directions.
Quote: I think balancing the game has gone us from testing the skills of the players to test the abilities of the characters. Which is a good thing. I'm here to play my character. And if he is dumb, I won't solve riddles. If player abilities are everything, I'll just play a CHA- and INT-Dump fighter and use my own brain for everything.
Jeremias wrote: Which is a good thing. I'm here to play my character. And if he is dumb, I won't solve riddles. If player abilities are everything, I'll just play a CHA- and INT-Dump fighter and use my own brain for everything. I really do not agree, probably i have a different point of view cause a play from so many years.
You could even solve a riddle with your stupid warrior dwarf, of course in a different way and it became more difficult to RPG your dumb warrior and help your group.
The point for me is to put player brain power on character creation and sinergy or inside the game on different things than combat.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I started playing 1985 and I can honestly say that the gaming I enjoy now is much better than when I started. Part of it because I've matured and gotten better as a Player/GM. A blessing and a curse of the Pathfinder rules is that there are many more things codified in the rules, but there's still plenty of room for old-fashioned freestyling. I can pick up nearly any module from 25 years ago and, with a little work, convert to Pathfinder and run it just fine.
If you want to stick with Old School gaming, there's not a thing wrong with it and it's actually pretty easy because there's a lot more out there for Old Schoolers (of which I consider myself one) than there was 10 years ago.
-Skeld
Some of the better adventures from the old days definitely offered a kind of puzzle that's no longer common. The modern game is vastly better, but the tone of adventures has changed over the years.
Blueluck wrote: Some of the better adventures from the old days definitely offered a kind of puzzle that's no longer common. The modern game is vastly better, but the tone of adventures has changed over the years. Is what i mean.
I love the game and i'm a path subscriber. I would love to have some old tricks and puzzles in modern game
youvnor wrote: I'm speaking about that feeling of terror, the idea that each step may be the last, the riddles to solve or die... I've noticed this in my gaming group too. My players don't approach 3e play with anywhere near the same level of caution they did in 2nd ed. Mechanically, 3e is more forgiving, so they're comfortable just barging around and assuming each challenge is balanced to be beatable.
Ironically, this makes it just as likely for their characters to be killed as in 2nd Ed. Weird.
I do favor investigative, puzzle-solving, and even clever-roleplaying challenges to the straight-up monster fights, but they're infinitely harder to write and run properly.
Although part of the fun did come from increased character risk, I feel part of the credit goes to the mindset of module creators in that day. Nowadays the assumption is that attacking any enemy force encountered head-on should not result in a TPK; that players who make dumb decisions should not be forced to run away, surrender, negotiate, hide or go down fighting. Take a look at almost any module in those days and you'll find an area where the best idea is to stay out: the main hall of the Steading in Against the Giants and the crowded sahuagin arena in The Final Enemy spring to mind, to say nothing of the perils of opening a coffin in Ravenloft or The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. (Rise of the Runelords, I'm happy to say, contains similar zones and scenes where the PCs are blatantly outmatched, which was part of why I was willing to trust them with my gaming dollar when the Pathfinder RPG game out.)
I feel that's part of the memorability of earlier-edition D&D - not so much that the characters were less powerful (although that's true), as that the risks they ran were much higher. It wasn't enough to have a well-optimized character or even good team synergy; you had to play smart, and knowing that you (not just your character) had done well was part of the sense of accomplishment when you pulled it off.
Lincoln Hills wrote: I feel that's part of the memorability of earlier-edition D&D - not so much that the characters were less powerful (although that's true), as that the risks they ran were much higher. It wasn't enough to have a well-optimized character or even good team synergy; you had to play smart, and knowing that you (not just your character) had done well was part of the sense of accomplishment when you pulled it off.
clap clap
a lot of better words than mine
This is a restatement of the common grognard complaint that "it was just so much better then."
I should know, I'm a grognard myself who has made comments about how the game was different and better in some ways back when I started playing during the Carter administration. (Wow, time flies...)
I would agree that today's default game dynamic is much less lethal than "ye olde days". I'm not entirely certain that I agree that it was "better" then. I had a lot of characters die back then.
On the other hand, that made it feel like much more of an accomplishment to have a character survive and even thrive. As has been pointed out many times on these boards, back in 1978 if you managed to get a wizard (called "magic-user" back then) to level 5, that meant your whole player group had accomplished something noteworthy and that the reward for your skillful playing was about to be realized with the regular release of room-clearing fireballs.
Ah, those were the days...
These days it is much, much harder to kill a starting character, games are designed much more to cater to character power limitations and there is far less demand on mapping, solving puzzles and real outside-the-box thinking required to play the game.
On the other hand, it is much, much harder to kill a starting character, games are designed much more to cater to character power limitations and there is far less demand on mapping, solving puzzles and real outside-the-box thinking required to play the game.
In the end it's still plenty fun for me.
As much as I miss some of the good old-style puzzles, the bad old-style puzzles were really terrible.
With a good puzzle, the players really have to think, but can work out a solution by reasoning from in-game clues. That's really fun!
There were quite a few bad puzzles as well, like riddles for which there is only one solution, but that solution is illogical, so nobody would ever try it. Traps that will kill the whole party, and the only way to avoid them is to search every 10' of wall down both sides of every hallway through an entire dungeon.
Oh, I agree that Pathfinder is fun. Like I said, I continue to put my increasingly-hard-earned-dollars in Paizo's pocket, so they must be doing something right from my point of view.
But I've noticed that a lot of the 1st-edition modules are still considered classics today. Even if we account for the number of modules from that period that are rightly considered utter rubbish (Puppets and Flames of the Falcon, I'm looking at you!) the total percentage of really memorable adventures is higher for 1st Edition and Basic D&D than it was for 2nd or 3rd - to the point that many 2nd and 3rd-edition modules were "Return To..." modules that tried to recapture that magic. Some were successful enough to be enjoyable - others were simply mistakes (now I'm looking at Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil!)
I think Paizo has worked hard to turn that around, principally through the APs - some will say that six modules of railroading leave far too many opportunities for PCs to fly off in a random direction, but the notion of a big uniting theme and a series of ever-increasing trials to reach the big finish is pretty refreshing from a story perspective, not to mention bringing a warming glow to the heart of anybody who worked his way from Chief Nornsra of the Hill Giants up to the demon lord Lolth, way back then.
Youvnor,
Fellow Grognard here.
I think what you are missing is a couple of things.
First, there's that sense of wonder. Unfortunately, after 25 years of playing, it's difficult to recapture that. A good GM will bring it out in the custom made campaign he's put together, but it's not guaranteed.
Second, I think you are missing a sense of accomplishment/danger. This can be a little easier to recapture. To bring that danger back, you just have to do is make the encounters tougher. there's nothing stopping you from inserting that "do or die" trap in an adventure. It's just got to be a higher CR than the guidance provided. My groups do this sort of thing all the time.
Just my two coppers.
Recent threads in General Discussion
|
