Quote from: Opaopajr;770128LBB OD&D... and 2e.

Don't need much beyond a single 9 in one of four stats, and most of the penalties float around 3-6, and don't hurt much until closer to 3, and mostly on something like CHA with a GM that rolls reactions.

Stat inflation has nothing to do with need. In 2E high stats provide the same kinds of bonuses as 1E.

If a big bonus exists in the game and YOU don't happen to have it then you are hopeless, a gimp, etc.

Thats the attitude. :rolleyes: Nothing at all to do with qualifying for anything or being a viable character. Everything is about needing the best numbers to survive.

Thats why OD&D stands alone. A 12 STR character can adventure right beside an 18 STR character and the 12 STR character's player doesn't have to watch the 18 STR character get +3 to hit and possibly even more damage killing nearly every 1 HD opponent in a single swing.

In OD&D both fighters are in the human STR scale and have 0 bonus to hit/damage. The 18 STR guy can lift & carry more and gets bonus XP if he is a fighter. Thats it.

Once crazy significant bonuses that affect every combat roll are part of the stat spectrum, players who don't happen to get those high stats feel like Santa left a lump of coal in their stocking or something.

Quote from: S'mon;769926I've been playing the awesome new version of Ancient Domains of Mystery every day recently - http://www.ancardia.com/download.html - it has graphics!

For all of the time I spend thinking about games (all day every day) and all the gaming systems my family owns, I don't spend a ton of time playing. When I have a free hour and the desktop PC, I am usually adding to my homage RPGs and original concept games.

It's like the other side of the char op coin I guess. System op.



Also, it smells like manginas in here.

Quote from: mhensley;770179I've recently been reading up on early D&D history from the Hawk & Moor ebooks on amazon (which are pretty good reads) and one thing that stuck out to me is that the earliest pc's survived a lot.  The guys running literally the very first D&D pc's (Robilar, Tenser, ect) survived everything that Gygax threw at them.  This seems strange to me considering how random death is in much of old D&D and also because everything would have been brand new to them.   Either Gygax was doing some serious nerfing of results or they were the luckiest guys in the world.  I've run a bunch of basic and it's a rare pc that even make 2nd level.

I think Kuntz (Robilar) sneaked around invisible a lot, and avoided a lot of needless combat. Not sure about Gygax fudging. I have no insight into how he GM'd.

Quote from: JRR;770170It is if the DM used method 3 - my preferred method.  It generates strong characters, and (que Forest Gump) you never know what you're going to get.

Method 3:
Scores rolled are according to each ability category, in order, STRENGTH,
INTELLIGENCE, WISDOM, DEXTERITY, CONSTITUTION, CHARISMA. 3d6 are
rolled 6 times for each ability, and the highest score in each category is retained for that category.

Yes, some of the options merely jack up average scores aross the board without giving the player any choice in distribution. But those are all options and non-exhaustive suggestions ; there is no rule imposing one or another.

This is a very minor note, not a disagreement with a central point of the article.

Quote from: Will;770185I'll point out that some of us refined low-lethality games because we -hated- that high mortality way of playing.

Heck, in the 80s I ran some near-system less games where you only died if you really did something stupid (or martyrly).

I do think people should revisit older types of play, though, because even if they don't end up liking it, it might inspire cool ideas or refinements.

Like a lot of people in the 1970s, I played D&D along with a wide variety of games from Avalon Hill, SPI, etc.. Different games focused on different subjects, or different aspects of the same larger subject.

What was superfluous to one game might be central to another, and vice versa. Enjoying one did not necessarily, or even usually, preclude enjoying others.

Whether a given frequency of character demise adds interest or merely frustration, can vary not only from player to player but also depending on the game at hand.

Ludicrously obvious illustration from hypothetical video games: I dig Frogger, but if it were too hard to cross the road, the game would be boring. On the other hand, getting stuck trying to survive a trip across town would be a drag in a game advertised as being about championship football or world conquest: I want to get on with the real game!

The real-world lethality of a weapon may be as much beside the point of one game, as a host of much, much more actually common causes of morbidity and mortality are to one of the more conventional sort of combat-oriented RPG.

Quote from: mhensley;770179I've recently been reading up on early D&D history from the Hawk & Moor ebooks on amazon (which are pretty good reads) and one thing that stuck out to me is that the earliest pc's survived a lot.  The guys running literally the very first D&D pc's (Robilar, Tenser, ect) survived everything that Gygax threw at them.  This seems strange to me considering how random death is in much of old D&D and also because everything would have been brand new to them.   Either Gygax was doing some serious nerfing of results or they were the luckiest guys in the world.  I've run a bunch of basic and it's a rare pc that even make 2nd level.

We were all wargamers, and Robilar and Tenser were the best of the best.

Rob has a photographic memory... he NEVER got lost, and NEVER mapped.

And no, Gary DIDN'T fudge.  In fact, "Tomb of Horrors" got started because Rob (Robilar) and Ernie (Tenser) complained that the game was getting boring because it was too easy!

Yeah, Tomb of Horrors, that horrible soul scarring module that killed all your best characters and made you cry, got beat by a 14 year old kid.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;770191[...]If a big bonus exists in the game and YOU don't happen to have it then you are hopeless, a gimp, etc.

Thats the attitude. :rolleyes: Nothing at all to do with qualifying for anything or being a viable character.[...]

[...] Once crazy significant bonuses that affect every combat roll are part of the stat spectrum, players who don't happen to get those high stats feel like Santa left a lump of coal in their stocking or something.

Ahh, attitude, yes. Which was hilarious because all the really high stat TSR character I've seen were living on like borrowed time, how quickly they all died. But yeah, without straight 18s it is like Santa's reindeer themselves pooped in their stockings.

Quote from: Old Geezer;770254We were all wargamers, and Robilar and Tenser were the best of the best......

Yeah, Tomb of Horrors, that horrible soul scarring module that killed all your best characters and made you cry, got beat by a 14 year old kid.

Those bastards. Just because they had Monty Haul for a GM they had to go and ruin it for the rest of us.

D&D's real "Monty Hall" was Jim Ward, who had plenty of nifty stuff either used by mighty monsters or guarded with treacherous traps.

Quote from: Phillip;770287D&D's real "Monty Hall" was Jim Ward, who had plenty of nifty stuff either used by mighty monsters or guarded with treacherous traps.

I meant Monty Haul.

This is Monty Hall

I thought the actual reference _is_ Monty Hall, and people started using Monty Haul because they didn't realize where the term came from.

However you choose to spell it, the evocation of game show "Let's Make a Deal" tends to suggest an easy, "give-away" game. As Ward wrote in an article in The Dragon, though, he was really into a game with what iirc he called "equilibrium" as opposed to tidy "balance".

I gather that instead of trying to keep characters "reasonably" weak, he thought it was more fun to see what they would do with magical goodies. He ramped up both reward and risk to provide a challenging high-powered environment in which figures that survived -- he was big on using traps to guard treasures -- could wield tremendous powers and face the consequences. lf something really looked to spoil the fun of the game, he was not above a Hand of God intervention.

That's also my impression of Dave Hargrave's style in his Arduin campaign, but the "gonzo" ethos is perhaps most popularly associated with Ward's Gamma World.

From what I've gathered, James Ward is also a big fan of high-powered, over-the-top elements for their own sake--he was the one who pushed for "really big, mean dragons" in the DRAGONLANCE: FIFTH AGE game.

  And I say this as one of the half-dozen people on Earth who likes the Great Dragons and the original Fifth Age.

Quote from: Will;770310I thought the actual reference _is_ Monty Hall, and people started using Monty Haul because they didn't realize where the term came from.

We knew who Monty Hall was. Back in the day there were so few TV channels that it was almost impossible not to see Let's Make a Deal on TV. But Haul evoked hauling loot out of the dungeon, thus we used Monty Haul for the overly generous DM.

Quote from: Phillip;770238Yes, some of the options merely jack up average scores aross the board without giving the player any choice in distribution. But those are all options and non-exhaustive suggestions ; there is no rule imposing one or another.

This is a very minor note, not a disagreement with a central point of the article.

They are not really optional, in that there is no single default.  Rather, they are interchangeable.