Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;850234I hate the entire fucking chargen process.  If it takes more time then 3d6 in order six times it's stupidly overcomplicated.

O/A/BX/(and maybee even 2e) D&D had pretty fast chargen. Roll dice, choose class and race. Maybe buy some gear if shopping isnt part of the startup RP. Select one or two spells and off we go. Ive never seen chargen take more than 5 minutes.

Quote from: Spinachcat;850591I have no experience with pre-Chainmail wargames so I can't disagree with you, but other than Little Wars (and its variants), what were the mainstream wargames?  My only pre-1970s wargame play was Avalon Hill's Tactics and Blitzkrieg and those were chit wargames with boards.

He said miniatures wargaming. It's an important distinction from board game wargames that usually featured chits for units and a hexagonal or area based map (area based is like Risk). Some board games allowed you to create your own scenarios, but many, probably most did not.

Miniatures wargames, on the other hand, often included playing extended campaigns where the players recruited (and painted) their own armies or built them via a point buy system. The campaign featured a series of battles rather than just a single engagement. Unit losses and recruitment was tracked over time. Big campaigns included a large scale map or maps, teams of players might run entire countries or alliances of countries combining strategic level play on a paper map with sand table based miniatures combat.

Many of the elements of the campaign style of D&D you see in 1972-1976 are direct outgrowths of what was already being done by minis gamers.

Quote from: soltakss;850603I've never thought of it in that way, but you are right, chargen is part of the game itself.

I would say only in Traveller. For other games it's a necessary prequel, like setting the table or even cooking the dinner. It's not the meal.

Quote from: Bren;850624I would say only in Traveller. For other games it's a necessary prequel, like setting the table or even cooking the dinner. It's not the meal.

  I don't know that I'd say 'only' in Traveller--I think chargen can be part of the game when it's a group activity, and involves defining the party and the world beyond just the individual characters. That's probably too narrative, new school, or swinish for this place, though.

Quote from: soltakss;850604One of the players in an old gaming group used to shake the dice, pause, shake them again, pause, shake them again, say something, shake them again, pause, shake them again, look puzzled when we said "Just roll the bloody dice", shake them again, pause, shake them again and then roll.

In RQ, we had a roll for attack and then a roll for damage, both with the same effect. Really annoying.

Yes. OCD meets die rolling.

The other annoying thing is the person who throws the dice so hard they knock over miniatures, bounce off the table, and roll under the sofa and they do it about every other time they throw the dice for anything important. I get that some people just have Hulk hands with hard to control super strength, but for Crom's sake once you've been rolling dice for 20 frickin years you'd think you get get it done right at least 80-90% of the time.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;850626I don't know that I'd say 'only' in Traveller--I think chargen can be part of the game when it's a group activity, and involves defining the party and the world beyond just the individual characters. That's probably too narrative, new school, or swinish for this place, though.

It's not really a narrative/non-narrative thing. Other than the fact that I play RPGs to actually play the RPG. The other stuff associated with playing RPGs, like GM planning, talking about or tweaking the pitch or setting, creating characters, picking a time and location, setting up the table, pulling out the dice or setting out minatures - even buying, modifiying, and painting miniatures. All that is part of the prep. Some of it is boring and frankly work. Some of it is fun.

I like GM prep. I find talking about characters is useful. Sometimes it's fun. But it's not playing the game.

I chose the dinner party analogy with intent. Setting a time and place for dinner, shopping for the meal, and arranging the place settings are all useful. Cooking with your friends or family is fun. But neither one is eating the meal. They are the things you do to have a meal.

Quote from: Old One Eye;850259Please explain how your proposed fastest system meets dude's criteria of doing everything that system B (ADnD) does.  Because it sounds like you are arguing against something that nobody claimed.

AD&D was not specified. The claim presented was apparently universal, for any and every set of priorities. My point is that quickest completion of the game is obviously not universally a priority at all, since close enough to nobody in fact chooses the optimally quickest game (or even anything in the same ballpark).

If the criterion is literally "doing everything that AD&D does," then only AD&D itself satisfies it. A faster process is a different process, faster because it does not do something that was adding to the time.

What is actually being specified, then, is "does everything that I value in what AD&D does." Who am I (or anyone else) to insist that you (or anyone else) must share that valuation? What arbitrarily privileges my opinion to make sharing it incumbent upon you?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;850288Here's the 20 page summary of how initiative works in AD&D 1st Edition.

Basically nobody actually plays AD&D.

Many people believe they are. Virtually all of them are deceiving themselves.

What most people are playing is a version of Basic D&D with a couple of bits form the AD&D core rulebooks grafted on. (These bits almost always include selecting race and class separately. They only rarely include weapon speed factors, and they virtually never include all the rules for weapon speed factors.) The version of Basic D&D might be the one they started with; or it might be the one that their DM (or their DM's original DM) started with. But it's still Basic D&D with a couple of bits from AD&D.

We call it "just plain D&D." Not that we really give a toss how some self-appointed pundit -- apparently heedless of what the AD&D books say about THE DUNGEON MASTER (all caps and bold in the original) being THE FINAL ARBITER FOR HIS OR HER CAMPAIGN -- chooses to define "actually playing AD&D."

Quote from: soltakss;850604One of the players in an old gaming group used to shake the dice, pause, shake them again, pause, shake them again, say something, shake them again, pause, shake them again, look puzzled when we said "Just roll the bloody dice", shake them again, pause, shake them again and then roll.

In RQ, we had a roll for attack and then a roll for damage, both with the same effect. Really annoying.

HUH??? Roll for attack has the effect of determining whether any roll for damage is applicable in the first place (and, in combination with a parry roll, and/or perhaps a fumble or critical or impale result, applicable to what).

Quote from: Phillip;850734We call it "just plain D&D." Not that we really give a toss how some self-appointed pundit -- apparently heedless of what the AD&D books say about THE DUNGEON MASTER (all caps and bold in the original) being THE FINAL ARBITER FOR HIS OR HER CAMPAIGN -- chooses to define "actually playing AD&D."

Isn't that the same place in the DMG where Gygax places the campaign as second, subordinate to the AD&D game?

EDIT: It's the Afterword, p. 230: "WITHIN THE BROAD PARAMETERS GIVEN IN THE ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS VOLUMES, YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER.   BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE."

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;850745Isn't that the same place in the DMG where Gygax places the campaign as second, subordinate to the AD&D game?

The bold text I had particularly in mind is near the start of the PHB, but the message is repeated throughout the several hundred pages prior to that Afterword in the last of the first three volumes.

QuoteEDIT: It's the Afterword, p. 230: "WITHIN THE BROAD PARAMETERS GIVEN IN THE ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS VOLUMES, YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER.   BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE."

What does that mean? If you will read the many prior pages, perhaps you will see that it means not being too hasty to cater to whims. The author has pointed out the Scylla and Charybdis that in his view brought many campaigns to untimely ends, and addressed those with advice as to how to avoid them.

Quote from: Phillip;850798What does that mean? If you will read the many prior pages, perhaps you will see that it means not being too hasty to cater to whims. The author has pointed out the Scylla and Charybdis that in his view brought many campaigns to untimely ends, and addressed those with advice as to how to avoid them.

    True, but wouldn't that be assumed under "the campaign" as prioritized over the players, without that odd little bit about "the game itself?" From the opening of the DMG to its closing, there is an undertone--at least in my own reading--that while you're free to improvise and create within the AD&D parameters, stepping outside them is not a good thing. Perhaps this was just a reaction against the way people were 'doing xD&D wrong'--we've certainly seen that sentiment produce enough crazy things over the past forty years, and Gygax had more reason for it than most. Or maybe it was the result of years of experience saying 'varying from these things causes bad campaigns', with the somewhat pompously tongue-in-cheek tone that Gygax apparently used.

   You see similar things in the PHB about "playing the game well" and the like, with the idea that there are certain techniques, parameters, etc. that should be assumed by the AD&D game and play should work within those boundaries. (I was amused to see Gygax wholeheartedly endorse overruling the dice on p. 110 of the DMG. ) If D&D was 'make it up', AD&D is 'make it up but within these specific parameters'.

  Of course, I'm a latecomer--started in 1990 or so with a handed-down 1E PHB, 2E DMG and 2E MC--and my interest in this is largely academic. If there's a 'right way' to play AD&D, fine--just make that clear to everyone so they know up front whether the experience the game provides is the one they want. I think a lot of the angst surrounding the D&D family of games is that, through a combination of marketing, misunderstanding and necessity, it wound up being treated as a game to do any flavor of fantasy when it really wasn't suited to that.

Again, if one reads the books, Mr. Gygax explains what the concerns are. He went into more detail in The Dragon about ambitions for a common framework that would enable players from different cities or even countries to play a game called "AD&D" without having to learn a whole new game -- as had often happened with "D&D" -- and to have tournaments and rankings and so on premised on this basis.

As it happened, this has been more fully realized in the Wizards of the Coast era than it was during Gary's tenure at TSR.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;850745Isn't that the same place in the DMG where Gygax places the campaign as second, subordinate to the AD&D game?

Heloooo cherry picker. Arent you special? No. No you arent. You are just pathetic.

QuoteIt is the spirit of the game. Not the letter of the rules which is important. Never hold to the letter as written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game. As you hew the line to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by the players. WITHIN THE BROAD PARAMETERS GIVEN IN THE ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS VOLUMES, YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER. BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE. May you find it as much a pleasure in doing so as the rest of us.

IE: Dont let the players get out of hand. This is your rules, your world, your players. If you are fair and consistent with your changes then you are playing AD&D as it was meant to be.

Quote from: Omega;850808IE: Dont let the players get out of hand. This is your rules, your world, your players. If you are fair and consistent with your changes then you are playing AD&D as it was meant to be.

Yes. The biggest problem was player boredom. Lots of people had got D&D (with its very little advice) and run give-away games that rocketed characters to godlike status within a year or two. Then they were jaded, and their ennui hardly encouraged new players.

Neither did the opposite extreme of "killer DM."

Nowadays, there seems to be a pretty big influx of people who actually prefer sheer wish fulfillment and put down the challenge that was (and is) essential to many other players' enthusiasm.

Mr Gygax was naturally addressing the situation he saw rather than the fetishes of three decades later.

The importance of tournaments cannot be understated.  In wargames conventions back then tournaments, with prizes, were a big part of it.  When D&D got popular D&D players wanted tournaments too.

The 1976 Origins D&D tournament had 250 players, as opposed to the 10 to 20 of a typical wargame tournament.  You cannot referee that many players with one referee.  Once you have multiple referees for a single "official D&D tournament," you HAVE to set up everything to make the sessions as uniform as you can.

This was, I'm fairly certain, the major reason for Gary's reversing himself from his earlier "make up some shit you think will be fun" attitude.  Once TSR Inc saw D&D tournaments as a major advertising source, it was necessary to serve that principle.