I can't argue with that.
I have the same complaint about GURPS magic system. What's with all the damn prereqs?
The whole 'pursuade/con/beg/manipulate' the GM aspect is one thing I hated about AD&D during my very brief experience with 2E. I love the freedom available when a GM basically decides to go 'rulings not rules' but not the dependence that comes with it. If that makes sense.
Setting your character up to do really well in a game is a form of manipulation. Now you can do it with builds, rules and mods, or you can describe and present it, both are you trying to manipulate the scene to your advantage. The AD&D crowd that find they like the old to the new, preferred the freedom of not needing a great build to do great things, and being able to suggest a course of action and then roll for it if needed, rather than having to select a feat to do something.
I think this conversation is really going places, and is very illustrative of the different ways of playing fantasy games and the transitions we can now see in hindsight.
It especially screws over the fighter. The game pretends to give him a bunch of bonus feats, but locks most of the cool feats he might actually want behind feat chains and undsrwhelming fear taxes. He ends up with LESS feats he actually gave a damn about than classes with no bonus feats.
Yeah, absolutely. Manoeuvres +2 vs. 3.5's +4.
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@ ParagonDire Raccoon: Treasure Hunt for 0-level players, someday I'll convert this to PF. It's a trope in most heroic stories that at some point the hero is stripped of everything but their wits, creativity. While it should be sparingly used, it's designed to test characters when their sheet doesn't tell them what they can and can't do. Treasure Hunt is probably the truest form of "making it up as you go."
For those who haven't experienced such "old school" style of play, there may be no life experience telling them they can play an RPG with more creative freedom. An RPG is far richer when the players and GM can interact with one another rather than with the dice.
I also took note of a prior post where the ranger character you made probably looked similar to a dozen other rangers out there. So to distinguish him, you added flavor, story. Your strongest memories weren't of times "I rolled a 12 and the king became friendly." They were more of the times you went "outside" the figurative box and did something novel, and it either spectacularly succeeded or failed. You tried it because there wasn't anything telling you that you'd fail or couldn't.
Mine is more along the lines of a Chinese proverb:
How can you catch tiger cubs without entering the lair of the tiger?
Yes, the tiger may kill you (or the massive rock trap).
My players. They are determined to capture every cute monster or animal it seems.
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Either someone wants to play a game with story elements, or someone wants to tell a story with game elements.
The first doesn't mind character death because it's part of the game they're playing. The second does mind because they're not really playing a game, they're enjoying a session of cooperative story making.
Either way is fine, but the two groups do not mix well.
For the record, I like games. I'm not looking for a story with dice rolling that means little. So I don't seek out that type for my table.
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Yeah, when I run a game, it's near 100% game, but it's my creative task as DM to then cover that game with a compelling story as well. Like a mechanical bull with such cunning taxidermy over it that it looks exactly like a real one (or, if I fail, more like a bunch of gears with some mangy fur stuck to them, I guess).
My bad DP.
I went back to AD&D 2nd ed from Pathfinder as I burned out on it. Last Amazon order had 2 PF bestiary, 1 PF core book and 3 Castles and Crusades adventures which is basically Pathfinder for 1st ed AD&D.
One of my players has decided to DM for the 1st time with his sister and her friends. I added the PF books to my Amazon order. My current C&C group is basically all Pathfinder players and it seems like we have settled on C&C/PF for our D&D fix depending on what mood we are in.
Both are well supported by adventures. The 1st 2 Kingmaker adventures and Assault on Blacktooth Ridge are some of the best "D&D" adventures I have come across since the TSR era and PAizo Dungeon run. The d20 clones based off AD&D or BECMI are the easiest D&D I have ever DMed.
I picked this up for $5 on Amazon as well. Think very very basic but it uses ascending ACs and stuff.
http://www.basicfantasy.org/downloads.html
I like the AD&D playstyle a lot, mechanics not so much. In 2nd ed I have houseruled in BAB instead of THAC0 and use ascending ACs. Still buying a minimal amount of PF stuff but mostly stopped running it. Happy to play just not DM.
Hey guys, seems like a good place to put this.
I'm running a play by post game based on a lot of the ideas discussed in this thread.
FGG, multi-party sandbox.
Running for about 4 months now, currently full, but taking some new people in July.
The recruitment thread that's open right now is more of a slow interest check, I'm really taking time filling these last spots so I can find people that are really interested in this idea and will get a lot out of it.
Please head over there and take a look at what I'm doing.
Lost Lands Mega-Campaign Recruiting
All the games in my profile are part of this one campaign, so click around if you want, there's some info about the setting in the campaign info tab and on the wiki page (obsidian portal).
There's a lot there, so if you want to post in the recruitment thread I linked above, don't worry about asking questions I might have already answered somewhere. I don't expect anyone to read thousands of posts to get up to speed.
I'd like to see some extension of the discussion that happened here to continue in my recruitment thread but hopefully with less distraction from the peanut gallery.
At some point I'll try to distill things and put the pith of it right out front and center on the wiki and the campaign info tab.
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Well our weekly Pathfinder/RotRL group threw in the towel and are going back to 2nd edition Homebrew AD&D. It was unanimous decision.
There is a lot we liked from PF and we plan on adopting some of it, such as the simplified saving throws.
We just got to about level 8-9 and the bloat of feats and crazy damage numbers just did not scale with armor and healing. So it just becomes a game of winning initiative and dealing your damage before the monster does. We found that battles, while strategically interesting lack a lot of the drama mostly because they are over so quickly.
I do greatly enjoy Pathfinder, particularly at the low levels and thankfully I have another group that plays every so often that I can get my PF fix in.
But to recapture the essence of AD&D we decided to just play AD&D. House-ruled to death...because that's how you play AD&D no?
-MD
I'd be careful about adopting PF saving throws. An essential part of the AD&D balance was lost when saving throw DCs were allowed to scale up instead of high level characters actually getting better at saving.Well our weekly Pathfinder/RotRL group threw in the towel and are going back to 2nd edition Homebrew AD&D. It was unanimous decision.
There is a lot we liked from PF and we plan on adopting some of it, such as the simplified saving throws.
We just got to about level 8-9 and the bloat of feats and crazy damage numbers just did not scale with armor and healing. So it just becomes a game of winning initiative and dealing your damage before the monster does. We found that battles, while strategically interesting lack a lot of the drama mostly because they are over so quickly.
I do greatly enjoy Pathfinder, particularly at the low levels and thankfully I have another group that plays every so often that I can get my PF fix in.
But to recapture the essence of AD&D we decided to just play AD&D. House-ruled to death...because that's how you play AD&D no?
We are not planning on DC's.
We are simply planning on merging the 5 saves into the three intuitive names you see in PF and 3.5. Fort, Relex, and Will. Fort would receive the con hit point bonus, reflex the dex bonus, and will the wisdom bonus.
But they would scale and act just as they do in 2nd edition.
I'm not sure I'm explaining it well but that's what we will attempt to do in a nutshell.
-MD
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Yeah, I've thought about that. It's probably workable. May require a bunch of upfront work to put everything into a category, but there's precedent in 3.x for most things.I'd be careful about adopting PF saving throws. An essential part of the AD&D balance was lost when saving throw DCs were allowed to scale up instead of high level characters actually getting better at saving.Well our weekly Pathfinder/RotRL group threw in the towel and are going back to 2nd edition Homebrew AD&D. It was unanimous decision.
There is a lot we liked from PF and we plan on adopting some of it, such as the simplified saving throws.
We just got to about level 8-9 and the bloat of feats and crazy damage numbers just did not scale with armor and healing. So it just becomes a game of winning initiative and dealing your damage before the monster does. We found that battles, while strategically interesting lack a lot of the drama mostly because they are over so quickly.
I do greatly enjoy Pathfinder, particularly at the low levels and thankfully I have another group that plays every so often that I can get my PF fix in.
But to recapture the essence of AD&D we decided to just play AD&D. House-ruled to death...because that's how you play AD&D no?
We are not planning on DC's.
We are simply planning on merging the 5 saves into the three intuitive names you see in PF and 3.5. Fort, Relex, and Will. Fort would receive the con hit point bonus, reflex the dex bonus, and will the wisdom bonus.
But they would scale and act just as they do in 2nd edition.
I'm not sure I'm explaining it well but that's what we will attempt to do in a nutshell.
Honestly, this is just a numbers fix. If you control what changes DCs you control the DCs.
Ex: Make DCs tied to a CR or Level score instead of a formula based on 1/2 HD + Stat mods (both of which are hyper-inflated in 3rd ed/PF).
You then control the numbers and as a consequence you can more easily assign class based save values to match expectations. So a 3rd level spell would have a fixed DC of X for being a 3rd level spell, instead of base DC 13 + super stat mods + feats + items which increases the range of the DC wildly.
You just cut all the wild number variables and go straight to the expectation or standard you are looking for. It can be done, just requires some up front work (as you said).
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That's not the upfront work I was talking about. That was just assigning each thing to Reflex, Fort or Wis.
Doing what you suggest is the exact opposite of how AD&D worked and of what I'd want to keep. A 3rd level spell has the same DC as 1st level spell and as a 9th level spell. Your saving throw bonus goes up.
High level characters (and monsters) are actually less effected by all magic, not just low level magic.
No, it isn't the exact opposite, all I'm doing is addressing that a 3rd level spell is more powerful than a 1st, the save paradigm is still heavily weighed on the Character Ability Charts (Fort, Ref and Will), those numbers are all mutable to match expectations. If the save expectation for a given level or HD don't work (like how they do not work in PF) you re-set them vs. a Fixed Value or DC.
If all my 1st level spells have a save DC of 12, and a character at level one gets +2 on all saves (say a Fighter) he is starting with a baseline of 50% success vs. spells he will likely encounter at that level of play.
And again, those numbers are mutable - he could have + 4 across the board or the baseline for a 1st level spell can be lowered.
I don't think AD&D's "don't roll anything but a 1" vs. Fireball or an Imprison spell made sense. It's one of those things about a closed save system that IMO I would not want to go back to. Some aspects of nostalgia are exactly that, they are nostalgic and do not make sense.
We can go back for a similar feel without going backwards on system advancement and what we've learned over the last 14 years since 3rd ed came out.
All that being said - you can keep the DC system and still make it easier for higher level PCs to make their saves, what I presented was a reason for using higher level spells vs. higher level foes (managing expectations), the success rate is tied to the numbers (all mutable) and the generator of the DC effect does not get to make a DC 11 into a DC 21 by stacking on 1 million variables to his spell or SLA (which breaks the current game).
What I am offering also does eventually outstrip and outpace lower level spells/effects as the character levels up. The approach of Grease being as effective as Imprison on a high powered creature without Magic Resistance is silly (sorry). It was one of the bad things about 1st and 2nd ed.
We ran a mock up battle using 2nd edition to refresh the rules in our wee brains. (It's amazing how quickly I forgot them.) Anyway we had a blast. Hexes on the table instead of squares, figurine facing, weapon speed, rolling initiative each round, battles lasting a bit longer allowing for more variables...it just was fun.
I know you can house rule any of those things into PF. But it's just not the same. I can't say why...it just is.
-MD
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What a bunch of nonsense, thejeff. Everyone knows that His Royal Godness, Monte Cooke, invented stories being in RPGs in 2000. Those who claim otherwise should burn like those liars Gygax and Arneson, who kept trying to claim they were playing D&D in 1974. Stupid fools can't even do math, don't they realize that Monte Cooke didn't publish the game until 2000?!?!?
I actually think part of the problem is that the sense of wonder isn't perceived as "kewl" nowadays. Jadedness and affected blasé are far more de rigeur.
The sense of wonder is a hard thing to create in any game system. Even more so with gamers who have played for a while.
Also the term "Raising the bar" really applies to games. Once you have had that bar raised it's harder to enjoy games under that bar.
-MD
A lot of times, AD&D was played WITHOUT miniatures and a vinyl map.
The closest thing you had was a map drawn on graph paper by the designated mapper in your group based on the DM's description of the room.
Combat rounds were one minute long and you could get a lot done in one round.
Spells had a casting time based on segments of the round (if I remember right, both fireball and lightning bolt had a casting time of 3 segments) that meant if you started a fireball spell on your initiative, It did not go off until 3 initiative ticks later. Getting hit during that time could mess up your spell.
Find Familiar was a spell not an ability.
Combat took place in the imagination of those involved so vivid descriptions were a must for players and especially DM's this required some story telling skill.
If you really want to get an AD&D feel, try playing without minis or a battlemat.
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But positioning is so important in PF... I mean, it was important in AD&D too, what with fireballs that 'fill the available area' and all that, but flanking and all that have really become a lot more significant.
It's pretty easy to do this with GM adjudication and no map, though. It's certainly what I do. A conversation like this can easily ensue:
"I flank him with Joe's character."
"You can do that, but you've gotta go all the way around him, so that'll provoke an AoO."
"Uh...I can't just skirt his threatened area?"
"Nope, you don't enough movement. Not if you want to flank this round."
"Alright, I'll eat it."
But that's less immersion breaking than the map for many people. And it all works fine. It's really not even that hard.
Adjudication's probably not always a perfect reflection of what you'd have with a map, but it's pretty close, and tends to err in the direction of fairness and an interesting story if you've got a good GM...which isn't a bad thing, IMO.
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AoO were created as a stop gap put into 3rd ed when the got rid of declared actions and timed actions.
You bring those back and you eliminate AoO and the need to have hyper-accurate positioning tools. This can be done (with work) to PF.
You still need a method to track positioning (minds' eye, graph paper, minis) for other game effects but running past an enemy (who rolled lower than you) would just mean he didn't move fast enough to interpose (AoO) and get an attack. Everything resolves at its own speed, rinse - repeat.
If we are dissecting big mechanical changes in systems that could have affected "feel" this would be one of them.
The creation of AoO and elimination of timed or declared actions was simplification. 14 years later - with multiple companies launching minis lines (Re: product), with increased complication (and dissatisfaction) of the table-top aspect of the game, I would say that this was a failure in design, for me at least. They replaced an abstract system (timed initiative) with a miniatures based positioning system.
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My opinion on how to "recapture the essence of AD&D in Pathfinder" is to not give a crap about the numbers. I still get that old "sense of wonder" when I play, but that quickly fades away when those around me are talking numbers.
I used to DM all the time in 2nd edition, from 1998 until the release of 3rd edition. My approach to the games I play is reflective of those times. I still approach play like I did then, and that is not focusing on the numbers. And I have gotten a LOT of crap on these boards for that.
It's why I haven't taken up the GM Mantle since 2004, except once that ended in disaster, because all I ever come across anymore are people who care only for the numbers on the paper. If I wanted a game about numbers, I would go play an MMORPG.
And Auxmaulous: People have been using minis for decades, not just since 3rd edition. There was a huge miniatures business during the AD&D era (Reaper Minis being the more widely known).
To get that AD&D feeling again, you can play AD&D, or one of the many retroclones. Or you could possibly do like me, and not care about the numbers. It will be difficult unless the players around you have the same mindset. I joke with my brother-in-law that the reason people focused more on story and not numbers was because of how convoluted THAC0 was, and not many people understood it. I was the only one in the group who did, which was good for those few times we did have combat.
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And Auxmaulous: People have been using minis for decades, not just since 3rd edition. There was a huge miniatures business during the AD&D era (Reaper Minis being the more widely known).
Gimme a break, I've been playing since 79 - miniatures didn't start having their own hard-coded rules (as in, part of the core game - spare me the "but teh chainmail!" responses) since they were pushed in 3rd ed.
LOL@reaper miniatures comment, they didn't start making fantasy gaming minis till the mid 90's. Think Ral Partha and Grenadier minis, they were the default mini vendors and the precursor to Reaper by decades.
The point I was making (which was lost on you) is that 3rd ed hard-coded map/board maneuvering into the system - if you want to use miniatures, peanut shells or even just markings on a sheet of graph paper it doesn't matter - spacing, moving past foes, AoO all do matter. That is big the change.
They changed the game from you can use miniatures if you like to you really should use miniatures because all of our rules heavily depend upon it.
Oh, did we mention that we also are selling miniatures?
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I remember trying to explain the game to other people in the early days:
AD&D/D&D
"It's a game? So..... where's the board?"
"Well, it's not like other games. You do use dice for actions but the game is mostly in your imagination as you interact with the world and other players."
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3rd ed/PF
"It's a game? So..... where's the board?"
"Oh, let me get out the battlemat and set up the minis"
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But I will agree with you about one aspect you mentioned Adjule - "not caring about the numbers" isn't the solution but it's part of it. Maybe a game that cares less about numbers (player choices out of the game) and more about player choices in the game would be the ground to look for.
You're right. Sure we used Mini's from the start, but rarely a board. Just an idea of who was who and where they were in party order.
I actually think part of the problem is that the sense of wonder isn't perceived as "kewl" nowadays. Jadedness and affected blasé are far more de rigeur.
+1,000
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All this talk about AoOs, hard coding rules for maps and such, it got me thinking about a game of PF I played recently. The GM is running w/out a map and minis but still has AoOs. Regardless, the big thing is no map.
So we get to this farmhouse and start to investigate. Before anything else happens I (a ranger) ask to move from the farmhouse toward the direction of the dungeon area which I've been told is "east" since we think that the farmer has been dragged there. The barbarian declares he's using Survival for tracking and heading out toward the fields (which was depicted to us as being to the north and WEST of the farmhouse).
I roll tracking, get a 19, for a total of 30 on my check; the barbarian takes a 20 and ends up with a 27. The barbarian finds a set of tracks "leading away toward the demon cyst (the dungeon area)". I interrupt: but I was tracking toward the dungeon. No, you were headed east. Yeah, toward the dungeon? Oh, the dungeon is to the west.
Meanwhile 2 of the PCs were guarding an enemy witch. Said witch's familiar happened to be a quasit and now they're attacking it. There were 3 separate occasions during the fight when it seemed as if the creature should have been flanked by the pair and thus given the rogue SA but it never got applied, based on the difference between what the GM was thinking and what was said. We all let it go as the GM then later gave the rogue SA on a thrown weapon "since he was flanking" which should only apply to melee, but whatever.
Bottom line I remember that a lot in my old "theater of the mind" games. Inevitably my vision of the room didn't match at least one player at the table, and sometimes all of them. When a fight would break out someone would ask to sketch it anyway just so we were on the same page (pun intended).
At least THAT aspect of old-school gaming; the no-maps/no-minis thing, I'm glad to be done with. I don't mind ditching AoOs - I know it takes work and so far I don't have player buy in but I may eventually push the game that way, but I don't think it adds anything fun-wise to the game unless the PCs are built that way.
But I LIKE having maps, minis, and a consistent vision of what's going on. Sure it slows things down, but no more than things used to be when folks would argue w/me that they were running the opposite way, or behind a monster not in front, and so on.
Recently a buddy told me he got a job in Denver and is leaving in 2 months. I only play monthly so I've got him for 2 more sessions. Now, I've had other players come and go in my game, even guys I've known for years, but I've been able to shrug it off in the past.
When this guy said he was leaving, I was genuinely upset.
On a personal level he's one of my best friends. But then on a gaming level he, like me, has come up through every edition of D&D, including 4th, and returned to PF. When the 2 of us are at the table, no matter which one is GMing, it's epic and fun. It doesn't have anything to do with the rules - we just get it and click together. I don't have that with any of my other players.
I'm going to miss my friend.
Anyway, my point is that our games could have and did use multiple other systems. We've played 3x, GURPS, 4ed, Pathfinder, and dozens of board games. We have consistently had fun, laughed, argued, gotten pissed off and even quit gaming only to come back together for some truly epic moments. We had good games, and that had nothing to do with the rules.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: play YOUR game and make it your own.
Nice one Mark.
We always drew maps of combats and marching order, and we used Citadel and Grenadier miniatures. Oh and Ral Partha.
I think Mark has a good point on the relative merits of a map that gives a consistent vision and also actually eliminates time-wasted in arguing just where everybody is.
Which leaves plenty of room for arguing about how they got there, who might suffer an AoO, who can do what in what initiative order, and just which hireling should have bought it instead of you. All while taking weapon speed and weapon vs armor modifiers into account. So. Much. Fun. Was. Had. Back. In. Teh. Dei. ;)