Quote from: Ras Algethi;1041088Charisma "primary function is to determine how many hirelings" one can hire/retain and what their loyalty is. And as stated, "in all probability" would be hiring "Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and/or Clerics". Oh, there is an aside about how "charisma score is usable to decide things as whether or not a witch capturing a player" will kill them or fuck them and attracting various monsters to their service. All pretty much combat orientated.

That's a rather ungenerous reading of the section. Score X determines how many people you can successfully get to (relatively loyally) work for you is pretty much combat oriented? Well sure, if you use those hirelings for nothing but combat. But that's somewhere between cart before the horse and declaring a model of knife a combat knife because you personally have never used it to cut rope or whittle. And using your charisma to determine if a [witch or anyone else] will try to kill a PC or not... how is that not the definition of using the game rules to resolve a situation without resorting to the combat rules?

QuotePage 12's reaction table is pretty bland and doesn't seem to take into account different Charisma scores. It also covers some "morale dice" for surrendering men or intelligent monsters but it's rather incomplete.

Incomplete (or at least 'less complete than it could be') is an inescapable fact of oD&D. Whether it is good or bad [insert multi-page argument here over whether making a semi-exhaustive ruleset/sufficiently large but solid box inhibits using your imagination and thinking outside that box, I see no reason to rehash it here], it is true. oD&D is not complete. If that is a problem for you, then you will not like the edition. 'Nuff said. That doesn't really address how much the game is about combat or not.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1041096That's a rather ungenerous reading of the section. Score X determines how many people you can successfully get to (relatively loyally) work for you is pretty much combat oriented? Well sure, if you use those hirelings for nothing but combat. But that's somewhere between cart before the horse and declaring a model of knife a combat knife because you personally have never used it to cut rope or whittle. And using your charisma to determine if a [witch or anyone else] will try to kill a PC or not... how is that not the definition of using the game rules to resolve a situation without resorting to the combat rules?

I guess you'll point out, where in the rules, that you would use the hirelings for. I mean if you're hiring Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and Clerics I don't think it is a mystery what they will be used for. As for Charima and witches, it's after the witch (or anyone else) has fucking captured you....

QuoteIncomplete (or at least 'less complete than it could be') is an inescapable fact of oD&D. Whether it is good or bad [insert multi-page argument here over whether making a semi-exhaustive ruleset/sufficiently large but solid box inhibits using your imagination and thinking outside that box, I see no reason to rehash it here], it is true. oD&D is not complete. If that is a problem for you, then you will not like the edition. 'Nuff said. That doesn't really address how much the game is about combat or not.

What is your point exactly? It's a table of "they attack you", "they might attack you" or "they'll listen to your offer to join them".

Quote from: Ras Algethi;1041114I guess you'll point out, where in the rules, that you would use the hirelings for. I mean if you're hiring Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and Clerics I don't think it is a mystery what they will be used for.

This is begging the question. If you don't already agree with your premise (and thus think the only thing you can do with Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and Clerics is use them to fight), then this doesn't actually add to the argument that all that you can do with them is fight.

QuoteAs for Charima and witches, it's after the witch (or anyone else) has fucking captured you....

Yes, in this very specific example (and not giving the book any benefit of the doubt about generalizability), you are in a situation of having been captured, and rather than resorting to combat, you are using your charisma to resolve the situation. That seems like a perfect example of not automatically defaulting to combat.

QuoteWhat is your point exactly? It's a table of "they attack you", "they might attack you" or "they'll listen to your offer to join them".

:confused: That oD&D being incomplete, and using examples rather than exhaustive rules is an inescapable, valid critique that seems to me to be entirely tangential.

Look, I'm not against the idea that the game is an awful lot about combat (other than not really convinced that these games are 'about' things)-- the game was derived from a friggin' wargame (yes Gronan, plus Braunsteins). I'm just commenting/critiquing arguments, and saying I don't find the inclusion of 1-in-6 stats and a regarded-as-important (if not high in page-count contribution) resolution table designed for potentially not ending every encounter with bloodshed is an argument for the combat side of things. That's all.

Seems like a similar discussion is happening over here: http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/21677/personal-insight-concerning-player-goals-and-the-blame-of-playing-it-wrong

The usual suspects have it out for D&D, of course.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1041131This is begging the question.

"Ya THINK, DiNozzo?"

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1041131This is begging the question. If you don't already agree with your premise (and thus think the only thing you can do with Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and Clerics is use them to fight), then this doesn't actually add to the argument that all that you can do with them is fight.

Really? Are you actually going to argue that the mentioned classes are not combat classes or, at the very least, heavily combat focused?

 

QuoteYes, in this very specific example (and not giving the book any benefit of the doubt about generalizability), you are in a situation of having been captured, and rather than resorting to combat, you are using your charisma to resolve the situation. That seems like a perfect example of not automatically defaulting to combat.  

Being captured is pretty much the result of failing combat..... and is somewhat mentioned on page 13 under the "capture of non-player monsters".

Quote:confused: That oD&D being incomplete, and using examples rather than exhaustive rules is an inescapable, valid critique that seems to me to be entirely tangential.

Look, I'm not against the idea that the game is an awful lot about combat (other than not really convinced that these games are 'about' things)-- the game was derived from a friggin' wargame (yes Gronan, plus Braunsteins). I'm just commenting/critiquing arguments, and saying I don't find the inclusion of 1-in-6 stats and a regarded-as-important (if not high in page-count contribution) resolution table designed for potentially not ending every encounter with bloodshed is an argument for the combat side of things. That's all.

Too bad the old guard will insist that it was neither incomplete or missing things.

Quote from: Ras Algethi;1041159Really? Are you actually going to argue that the mentioned classes are not combat classes or, at the very least, heavily combat focused?

That is the point of this discussion. If you use a potential result/conclusion of a debated point as evidence towards that conclusion, it is begging the question. This is I am guessing literally from your high school rhetoric text.

QuoteBeing captured is pretty much the result of failing combat..... and is somewhat mentioned on page 13 under the "capture of non-player monsters".

Sure. Why not? It could have been for any number of reasons, but if you really want it to be, why not? You are still using your non-combat abilities to resolve the situation, aren't you?

QuoteToo bad the old guard will insist that it was neither incomplete or missing things.

And then they would be foolish. It is a book that relies on example where a general rule would work and take roughly the same amount of space and be more clear. oD&D, particularly the printed version that those of us not privy to sitting at EGG's actual table (or one of his other word-of-mouth taught adherents) had to have, is a genuinely limited product. One that would have benefitted greatly from more editing and more proofreading time, and lots of other could'a'bens-that-weren't. I still do not see how this is anything but a completely irrelevant tangent. Am I coming in at the tail end of some argument or something?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1041131(other than not really convinced that these games are 'about' things)

I think one of the problems here is a miscommunication of definitions. Most people saying D&D is "about" combat are meaning to say: the primary reason you would choose to play this game is because a significant amount of its mechanical focus concerns combat, pursuing it, avoiding it, or how to use abstract means to mitigate the consequences of it.

The "about" is more a matter of the primary reason people choose that game over another. Like how one might say Unknown Armies is "about" going insane, because it has a considerable mechanical focus on making the player characters feel confused, scared for their lives, and on the brink of a mental break down.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1041096That's a rather ungenerous reading of the section. Score X determines how many people you can successfully get to (relatively loyally) work for you is pretty much combat oriented? Well sure, if you use those hirelings for nothing but combat. But that's somewhere between cart before the horse and declaring a model of knife a combat knife because you personally have never used it to cut rope or whittle. And using your charisma to determine if a [witch or anyone else] will try to kill a PC or not... how is that not the definition of using the game rules to resolve a situation without resorting to the combat rules?

It's almost as if the game were written to allow a variety of play styles.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1039781I don't presume to speak for every designer who had to hear the criticism that their crunchy combat system meant that their game is all about combat. I've heard that said about many games since D&D first came out and here is how I replied in my own rules:
"That I provide elaborate combat rules does not mean that combat should be the focus of your campaign. Your GM can provide you many situations and challenges where combat can be avoided and some where it isn't even an option. The rules are there for when you need them.
I ran an eighteen-month campaign where the PCs were performers and roadies in the world's first Elven Fusion rock band. There was some fighting but it was far from a major feature of the campaign."

What is the benefit to engaging someone who enjoys hating on D&D?  They're not looking for reasons to stop categorizing it that way.  At best the conversation becomes "bring me a rock".

Quote from: Hastur-The-Unnameable;1041177I think one of the problems here is a miscommunication of definitions.

Well it must be. I've gotten some of the weirdest pushback on this (straight disagreement I get, getting called 'post-modernist?'- I'm still scratching my head).

QuoteMost people saying D&D is "about" combat are meaning to say: the primary reason you would choose to play this game is because a significant amount of its mechanical focus concerns combat, pursuing it, avoiding it, or how to use abstract means to mitigate the consequences of it.
The "about" is more a matter of the primary reason people choose that game over another. Like how one might say Unknown Armies is "about" going insane, because it has a considerable mechanical focus on making the player characters feel confused, scared for their lives, and on the brink of a mental break down.

Okay. If a focus on avoiding combat is part of a combat-centric game, that does push D&D towards the about-combat end. Although, if your typical dungeon-crawling/get-as-much-treasure-as-you-can scenario (holding off arguments on if that is typical D&D) has three main avenues towards getting the treasure -- sneaking/stealing it, fighting for it, or bargaining for it, is one more 'what it is about' than the others?

As to the significant amount of mechanical focus part, I just have a problem buying that page count, etc. is the primary metric. Take social to start with. There is this whole separate side-debate over whether charisma stats and diplomacy skills and the like turn talking into just another dice challenge (and the resultant counterpoint of what do you do then if the character is better at social stuff than the player). That's a valid debate and I don't particularly care which side you come down on. But the EGG and the co. came down mostly on the minimalist rules. Fine. And so the negotiation part is mostly a single chart, one attribute, and a few pages on how to use them. Does that mean that they consider the negotiation/diplomacy part of the game to be less significant than the combat part? I posit that they might, but that this isn't evidence to that effect. An even better example might be the sneaking/stealing (or just in general 'interacting with one's environment'). Up until the introduction of the thief class, there were pretty much no rules on traps (finding, disarming, I'm still amazed that there is a save category for 'Polymorph or Paralization' but not for 'pit traps' etc.), does that mean that traps weren't a big part of the game? Seems that they were, it was just posited that they would be so case-by-case that specific rules would quickly become obsolete in each game group. I'm not saying that all these decisions were necessarily perfect (the multiple overlapping sneaking and surprise rules certain have frustrated many), but I'm not convinced that amount of mechanical support has a strong correlation with what the game is 'about,' either as the designer(s) envisioned, or as people used the game.

I think it goes back to the old "roll-playing versus role-playing" elitism. To be fair, for most games the mechanics for combat are typically much more complicated than the mechanics for non-combat task resolution. Unless you are playing something like Risus where all conflict resolution relies on the same basic/simple mechanic. On the other end of the spectrum you have social/mental combat mechanics which are just as complex as physical combat mechanics but with a slightly different structure.

A failing of virtually all social combat systems is that they are founded on the assumption that social combat (and physical combat, for that matter) operates entirely on a binary win/lose outcome. There are no rules for friendly sparring, much less building a friendship.

I suspect the two biggest reasons for the animosity toward social combat systems are 1) unless you are playing Call of Cthulhu you don't want your character sheet to dictate your behavior and 2) you need flow charts to keep track of mental states and social influence.

Well, I've gone over it before. D&D covers X topics, and Y examples in the printed modules. There may have been a very good technique for doing stuff that wasn't in the books, but if it's not covered well in the books, you can't blame players for that.

I feel the issue is, at least most of the time, a lot of important and memorable instances of those dungeons, and the things (at least in my experience) that a lot of PCs prepare for are combat, and given that the game has a very strong emphasis on exploring dungeons, the potential for, and use of combat rules are significantly increased over, say, a game about political intrigue. The setting of a Dungeon just makes combat, at the very least feel, more present of a danger.

Take, for example, Agone. It is a very high fantasy game, but trying to run it as a Dungeon Crawl game has a considerable number of problems, unless you plan on banning more than half of the character options, because characters can just begin the campaign with abilities that just allow them to reshape the structure of a building with magic, and the only way that is reasonable to tell them no, is to put them in a place where their magic wont actually work on anything. As a result, the more compelling game play ends up being Noir esque fantasy mysteries, which does involve combat, but usually not as much, and the PCs almost never get the luxury of anticipating it well in advance.

As for the page count argument, it's less that there are x pages for y concept, and more the fact that the other rules have a strong tendency to tie back in with the combat rules, as though it is expected for you to be in combat most of the time. Each class generally has some significant and explicit combat role, and several of the spells are given effects in terms of combat application (be it hindering the enemies in some way, or even direct damage). I can see your argument that lack of rules doesn't necessarily, but I would argue that leaving rules out just encourages people to use the rules that are most prevalent, and if most of those involve combat, I would argue most people will play a game full of combat.

Quote from: Hastur-The-Unnameable;1041330I feel the issue is, at least most of the time, a lot of important and memorable instances of those dungeons, and the things (at least in my experience) that a lot of PCs prepare for are combat, and given that the game has a very strong emphasis on exploring dungeons, the potential for, and use of combat rules are significantly increased over, say, a game about political intrigue. The setting of a Dungeon just makes combat, at the very least feel, more present of a danger.

You are correct, a game focused on dungeons are not going to have many political intrigue-filled courts (although they might have a few...). Dungeons will have 'monsters' in them (to fight, avoid, or negotiate with), along with natural or emplaced hazards (traps, pitfalls, etc.). So at the very least, the focus of a dungeon is certainly weighted toward direct mortal peril, compared to something like the more long-term peril of a political intrigue game or loss of sanity like CoC, etc., etc.

QuoteTake, for example, Agone. It is a very high fantasy game, but trying to run it as a Dungeon Crawl game has a considerable number of problems, unless you plan on banning more than half of the character options, because characters can just begin the campaign with abilities that just allow them to reshape the structure of a building with magic, and the only way that is reasonable to tell them no, is to put them in a place where their magic wont actually work on anything. As a result, the more compelling game play ends up being Noir esque fantasy mysteries, which does involve combat, but usually not as much, and the PCs almost never get the luxury of anticipating it well in advance.

I think I get it. However, if we stick with the same model ('It is a very ___ game, but trying to run it as a ____ game has a considerable number of problems, unless you plan on...') and apply it to TSR-era D&D and you come up with 'It is a very cautious game, but trying to run it as a full-on combat game has a considerable number of problems, unless you plan on massively modifying the premise/healing/something else' because TSR-era D&D, if you just run a dungeon like 'go to room 1, fight what is in there, go to room 2, fight what is in there,' etc., your characters will die. Or have to retreat after one level, or the like. The hp, AC, and healing does not keep up. Certainly not everyone (maybe even a majority of not everyone) played that way, but that involved house rules or changes to the assumptions of the game, etc., such as to allow us to hack and slash to our hearts content). So we are back to the question of if the game is about combat, and the necessary avoidance thereof, is it still about combat (or alternatively, is the game about what people routinely modified it to be)?

QuoteAs for the page count argument, it's less that there are x pages for y concept, and more the fact that the other rules have a strong tendency to tie back in with the combat rules, as though it is expected for you to be in combat most of the time. Each class generally has some significant and explicit combat role, and several of the spells are given effects in terms of combat application (be it hindering the enemies in some way, or even direct damage). I can see your argument that lack of rules doesn't necessarily, but I would argue that leaving rules out just encourages people to use the rules that are most prevalent, and if most of those involve combat, I would argue most people will play a game full of combat.

There is definitely a reasonable argument to be made to that end. No argument here. Certainly the decision to make the diplomacy system mostly left in the hands of actually saying the words and the DM making some modifications to a 2d6 roll, and leaving most of the skills systems and other noncombat resolution mechanics* vague or at-DM-discretion can lead to the argument that the game incentivizes making it quite a bit about combat.
*mostly in terms of the dice rolls. D&D, even oD&D, actually does have quite a bit of interacting-with-the-environment rules. They are mostly however things like how much does travelling get slowed by moving through X terrain or how much gold is spent furnishing an army of Y soldiers for Z months or whether boats lose their oars in a collision/ram, and very few rules for how a individual player rolls to interact with the world, outside of combat.

However, I would pose it more this way: oD&D takes a very minimalist perspective on what the rules are for. Them being there only for those things that are 1) uncertain, and 2) the DM would have a hard time consistently ruling fairly on. Within that context, the majority of the page space is spent on rules revolving around combat. Thus, if you choose to, you can very easily make the game about combat, and a lot of people have historically chosen to do so. It is probably an arbitrary distinction, but that's where I'm landing at this point in the discussion.