Quote from: Lunamancer;877532Not incorrect.

The remainder of your post is dedicated to showing how preferences and expectations are two different things. Congratulations. That's EXACTLY what you were just telling me I was incorrect about.

Keep struggling.

With an open campaign, whether old style or something like officially sponsored D&D events at shops, I think it's just fine for people to find out that something isn't to their taste. In that context, I don't see a very big difference from board games, card games, etc., that might or might not rock the boat of Individual X.

If you're settling down to have The Usual Suspects show up every week, then it's more important to make sure everyone is on the same page.  Part of the appeal of the RPG form is that it's so flexible, a "make your own game" game. That's also a potential for friction, which I think gets emotionally boosted because everyone involved has a creative investment -- and because of the role-playing aspect, to which people tend to bring more attachment than to pawns in an ordinary game.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877311I have 42 years of experience running and playing in RPGs that proves the direct opposite.

NOTHING fucks a game faster than mismatched expectations, and fifteen minutes of discussion can clear up 90% of the most severe mismatches.

Of course, if somebody tells me "No thanks, that doesn't sound like fun to me" my widdle ego isn't crushed.

Two things:  

(1) Experience counts for nothing to the inexperienced. They assume you're out of touch (says my 20 years in education).

And

(2) The idea that discussing expectations will prevent misunderstanding is so self-evidently true, that I cannot believe anyone is arguing against it. (And yet, here we are...somehow...):-/

Quote from: Omega;8775291: I haven't.

Didn't say you have. Talking about "most" was your idea. I was just responding to it.

Quote2: Um. How are you supposed to know these would-be players are unworthy without talking to them first?

There are a number of ways to know this. Including talking with them. Who said I wouldn't be talking with them? I said I won't discuss the expectations of the game with them at the table. And in fact, I won't even invite them to the table. This is what I mean about the strawman. It's not enough to invent an imaginary person. You also beam him in from outer space. Be realistic. Is he a guy from work? Was he talking about how awesome his character is at the con? How did he find out about my game? Is he inquiring about joining, or am I actively recruiting players?

QuoteSome of the expectations and preferences a player have may not be apparent until at the table or well in if you do not take the time to do a little Q&A. Even if its as simple as "Im running Spelljammer want to play?"

This question is obviously an invitation type question. So why am I asking this? Do I know the guy? Or have I already been casually conversing with the guy and then segued into inviting him? If so, the content of that conversation must have informed me that he's good to give it a shot.

Or this guy a total stranger I am approaching to get a group assembled as quickly as possible? If so, that wouldn't be my leading question. I would first ask if he was looking for a game. Obviously I'm only continuing if the answer is yes. Then I would have a couple of qualifying questions. None of these questions would be about his expectations. How could he have any? I haven't even told him a thing about the game yet, who's playing it, or even if I'm running one.

Based on his answers, I would "pitch" him the game a way that educates him as to how to get what he wants out of the game.

I would not discuss things like whether or not PC death is possible. If he brings it up, this is a feature, not a benefit. I would ask follow up questions to find out what benefit he derives from that feature. My only concern would be whether or not it's possible for him to derive the benefits from my game. I could care less if his preference on PC death is a match to mine. If he receives the benefit, he'll be happy. If it's possible for him to receive the benefit, he will if he deserves to.

All of this comes before he's even offered an invitation. And at no point do his answers actually influence what I intend to run.

QuoteAre these preferences? Expectations? Psychoses?

Preferences are what he likes or dislikes. They are subjective. A distinction between feature and benefit is also important.

Expectations are what he thinks will happen. They are either right or wrong as reality will soon determine. It's rare anything happens exactly as expected. Reality can prove better (closer to preference) than expected or worse (further from preference) than expected. So the assumption that a mismatch is somehow automatically bad is highly suspect.

Psychoses is nothing I've brought up. If you want me to make up something on topic that first the term for the sake of completeness, I would say any strongly-held preference or expectation that is unrealistic belongs here.

Whether or not he believes PCs can die is an expectation. If he finds PC death intolerable, that's his preference. If he strongly believes PCs can't die despite my not telling him they can't, then his expectation is unrealistic. If he finds PC death intolerable and chooses to join a group without getting a verbal commitment that PCs won't die, it's psychosis.

Quote from: cranebump;877573Two things:  

(1) Experience counts for nothing to the inexperienced. They assume you're out of touch (says my 20 years in education).

That's putting it diplomatically.

Part of my job is deciding who to hire. If I hear the candidate keep referring to his years of experience without ever actually demonstrating his knowledge by explaining in detail how things work as informed by that experience, this is a red flag. The guy is more stuck in his ways than he is knowledgeable. He's not a good hire.

To Gronan's credit, I think he's pretty open about that. He doesn't claim to play each and every style under the sun. He's good at sticking to his schtick. That's consistent with my read on the signal.

Quote(2) The idea that discussing expectations will prevent misunderstanding is so self-evidently true, that I cannot believe anyone is arguing against it. (And yet, here we are...somehow...):-/

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.
If you tell a man what to expect, you'll minimize misunderstandings right until conditions change.
If a man learns to adapt expectations, you'll minimize misunderstandings for a lifetime.

I'm arguing in favor of #3.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507Can you "watch" the GM fudge? I don't doubt some do it openly. Generally, I think it is done secretly. In any case, if I fudge, I do so secretly, so this passage certainly has zero relevance to me.

Not entirely on-topic, but players aren't idiots.  In my (and many other forum posters') experience, they tend to be pretty good at identifying when the GM fudges, even if it's done in secret.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507Expectation: "A strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future."

Thank you.  We seem to be using roughly the same meaning (I described my usage above as "assumptions about how the game will work").

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507So to restate my case in light of that, I would say when you discuss expectations, you are in fact creating expectations. Maybe you're creating new expectations by discussing existing ones. Or maybe you're creating the very expectations you're discussing. Maybe the player would be fine either way, PC death, no PC death, it's all good.

Yes, I would agree with that.  However, I see this setting of expectations as a good thing.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507But now that you've discussed it, you've pigeon-holed the game. You've created a strong belief about whether or not PC death will happen in the future.

Depends on the specific expectations which you set in that discussion.  On the topic of PC death, mine is "I let the dice fall where they may and don't fudge to 'fix' their results.  If this means that a PC dies, then they're dead and cannot be resurrected."  This does not mean that PC death will happen - I've never presided over a TPK and even the death of a single PC is rare - only that I won't intervene to prevent it.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507You chose to interpret it as an attack on your position rather than me saying "I except your examples of expectations as expectations. Here's how they apply to my concerns." That's your problem. I also explained what I meant by "dominant" in my last post and you still chose to interpret it as meaning "common." A pattern. You seem to misinterpret beyond the degree that is believably accidental.

No, what I interpreted as attacks in my previous reply were that, in the post I was replying to, you stopped just short of openly accusing me of arguing in bad faith, then later asserted that I didn't understand what we're talking about.  I chose to refer to them as attacks on my position because that was the most generous interpretation available and I didn't want to jump straight to accusing you of ad hominem.  You now imply that I'm deliberately misunderstanding you and the jump is looking smaller by the minute.

Is this the "explanation" of "dominant" that you're referring to: "What is meant by "natural" or "dominant" is that they don't require general agreement."?  My contention is that uncertainty is not the "natural" or "dominant" expectation in the plain English meaning of those words.  Most people will expect that PC death will be handled in the same way that they are most accustomed to, based on previous campaigns they've participated in, or perhaps in the way which is stated in the current game's rules, if it uses a system which makes an explicit statement on the matter.  I'm not aware of ever encountering anyone who goes into a game with a new GM or new group thinking "I wonder if PC death can happen in this game?", although it's not something that is often talked about, so I suppose it could be more common than I expect it to be.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507So it would be impossible to measure mismatch when things are going right. If they are actually contributing to the fun of the game, by your own admission, you'd have no way of knowing it.

Yes, fair point.  However, if they're enjoying and contributing to the game, then the very lack of disaster implies that the game fits their preferences, even if it violates their expectations.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507If after a round of kumbaya, we decide we're going to use AD&D 1E to play a pirates campaign, and some of us show up expecting there to be gun powder and others not, you can say, "Hey, the problem of mismatch is because we didn't discuss gunpowder expectations." But I would be pointing out that the problem is that you DID discuss the expectation to play pirates. And that's what led to the mismatched expectations over gunpowder, because it's in-genre. If we had just said we were getting together to play 1E and leave it at that, nobody would expect gunpowder because it isn't included in the rules.

Indeed they wouldn't.  They wouldn't be expecting to play pirates at all, with or without gunpowder, because that's not in-genre for the generic AD&D campaign that you implied would be played when you chose not to set any expectations beyond "AD&D1".

Quote from: Lunamancer;877516Most of you are saying waste table time discussing expectations.

I don't recall anyone saying expectations should be discussed at the table.  I find the pitch for the game (whether an open invitation or inviting an individual) to be the most efficient place to deal with them.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877516And raising strawman nightmare scenarios if you don't about quasi-autistic gamers who throw a fit if they don't 100% get their way.

About a year and a half ago, I had a player who occasionally complained about not liking my policy that, if your character dies, you make a new starting character as a replacement.  He wanted to carry over all his experience, gear, etc. to the new character, but I didn't really think much of it because no PCs had died anyhow, so it had no practical effect either way.

Then, one night, completely out of the blue, he went off into a 20-minute rant about how horrible it was that he'd lose everything he'd earned in the game if his character died.  A couple weeks later he disappeared.  And then, a few months after that, I was talking to another local GM who asked me why I thought it was important for replacement PCs to be starting characters and told me that was the reason this guy had quit my game.

So, yeah, it does happen, and not just in straw men.

Prior to that, I had a guy who had expected a very social campaign which ended up being more of a hexcrawl, so, one night, he told me, "Hey, your game is great for what it is, but that's not what I want, so, nothing personal, but I think I'm gonna bail."  Mismatched expectations can lead to players leaving in a mature fashion without a disaster, too.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877516I'm saying those gamers don't get an invite in the first place. So not only do I not waste x amount of table time discussing expectations with them. I save y amount of pre-table time not inviting them.

And how do you know who not to invite?

Quote from: Lunamancer;877587Based on his answers, I would "pitch" him the game a way that educates him as to how to get what he wants out of the game.

And how does it "educate" him?  By telling him what to expect in the game?  I'd call that "setting expectations" and is exactly the kind of thing I've been advocating all along.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877516Expectations are what he thinks will happen. They are either right or wrong as reality will soon determine. It's rare anything happens exactly as expected. Reality can prove better (closer to preference) than expected or worse (further from preference) than expected. So the assumption that a mismatch is somehow automatically bad is highly suspect.

I don't think anyone has said that, either.  Any discussion of expectations, if detailed enough, will inevitably turn up mismatches because no two people will ever have exactly the same expectations absent a long shared history (and quite possibly not even then).

The point is to come to a shared understanding of what is to be expected, then see whether that shared expectation includes any dealbreakers and, if so, decide on how to deal with it.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877516Whether or not he believes PCs can die is an expectation. If he finds PC death intolerable, that's his preference. If he strongly believes PCs can't die despite my not telling him they can't, then his expectation is unrealistic.

No, I would say that, if you haven't given him any indication of what to expect, then any expectation he may have is going to be pretty much equally realistic.  Strongly believing that PCs won't be able to die in your game may be incorrect, but it's not [/i]unrealistic[/i], given that many GMs will not allow PCs to die in their games.

In any case, if the player's preference is such that he finds PC death intolerable, my preference is that he knows up front that, in my game, PCs can die, thus allowing him to choose whether he wants to find a way to tolerate that possibility or if he'd prefer not to participate.  Your apparent preference to allow him to play without realizing that, in your game, his expectation is incorrect seems to me like a recipe for bad feelings when that expectation is proven to be in error.

Quote from: nDervish;877701Not entirely on-topic, but players aren't idiots.  In my (and many other forum posters') experience, they tend to be pretty good at identifying when the GM fudges, even if it's done in secret.

Players only ever know fudging has happened those times that they are aware of it. There is no way of knowing how often it happens without their knowledge. Conversely, there are times when players believe the GM has fudged when the GMs haven't. Are these falsely recorded and counted as one of those times the GM tried to put one over on the players, but the players were just too darn clever for that?

I recall one time I was accused of fudging to have a new player find some really great magic items. Other players in the group shouted him down, correctly surmising that I had rolled up the magic items randomly and that's just how the dice fell. The player who did the accusing was himself a GM that, while some players enjoyed playing other, most of us regarded as a pretty terrible GM. He fudged pretty much everything.

Now I could imagine the one player yapping on a forum about that time the GM tried to slip one by him and he caught him. He might even admit to fudging himself and claim that gives him expertise in spotting it when others do it. Would the other players chime in on such a thread? Probably not. Who gets on a forum to talk about that time the GM didn't fudge? Some pretty goofy biases emerge from forum discussions when you stop and think about it.

I have a pretty solid track record on fudging completely undetected. If you don't undermine player choice (and this includes the benefits of counterfactual prudent action that they could have taken), they have no reason to think anything is off.

QuoteYes, I would agree with that.  However, I see this setting of expectations as a good thing.

Except there are certain expectations, a few of which I have noted, where there is a benefit to ambiguous space. And in any event, to me, a good player is one who is capable of adapting his expectations as befits a dynamic world. I want to develop good players. I could care less about catering to bad ones. The idea of 'setting expectations' as being sacred--or the meta-expectation the consequences of not doing so are dire--is off-putting in the extreme.

QuoteDepends on the specific expectations which you set in that discussion.  On the topic of PC death, mine is "I let the dice fall where they may and don't fudge to 'fix' their results.  If this means that a PC dies, then they're dead and cannot be resurrected."  This does not mean that PC death will happen - I've never presided over a TPK and even the death of a single PC is rare - only that I won't intervene to prevent it.

The point has nothing to do with how often a PC death happens, or even if it happens at all. It has to do with how the belief that PC death is possible affects their choices. In my opinion, the experience is richer if players believe PC death is possible. Even if it isn't. So if it isn't? I have two choices. Lie or say nothing. I choose to say nothing.

QuoteIs this the "explanation" of "dominant" that you're referring to: "What is meant by "natural" or "dominant" is that they don't require general agreement."?  My contention is that uncertainty is not the "natural" or "dominant" expectation in the plain English meaning of those words.

Dominant: the most important, powerful, or influential. Here, I'm using it to mean the most influential. I talked about the usage of the word in game theory as far as dominant strategies go. In biology, they might talk about dominant genes. If you've got two of the recessive gene types, you exhibit the recessive trait. If you've got two of the dominant gene types, you exhibit the dominant trait. But if you've got one of each? You also exhibit the dominant trait. It's the most influential. You could have a population consisting of 9000 people with the recessive gene and 1000 with the dominant one. It's not about probability or frequency. It's about consequence.

As it applies to uncertainty and PC death, as you point out, even when you make it explicit in your games that it is possible, it doesn't make it probable. But it is consequential.

It's clearly logical that if you're not sure what type of campaign you're playing, death-enabled or death-disabled, you can't rule out the possibility that PC death is possible. You can't just play the probabilities. You have to play the consequences.

Does that mean there are gamers for whom this logic does not occur to them? No. Might they even be in the majority? I can't speak to that. But if you go in thinking your guy can't die and you find out the hard way you're wrong, you have two choices. Quit. Or learn a lesson. Remember, I'm not out to cater to shitty players with shitty attitudes. I'm looking to develop players into good, adaptable ones. This serves my purpose quite well.

QuoteMost people will expect that PC death will be handled in the same way that they are most accustomed to, based on previous campaigns they've participated in, or perhaps in the way which is stated in the current game's rules, if it uses a system which makes an explicit statement on the matter.

Again "most" is not something I can speak to. Past experience may shape your perception of the probabilities. If you've never played in a game where a PC has died before, you might thus conclude that if it ever does happen, it must be extremely rare. That does not mean you automatically conclude it's impossible. Only a fool makes that leap. And a player that finds PC death intolerable who doesn't prioritize possibility over probability by making sure to get a verbal commit before he sits down to play is a damned fool. And, yes, I can spot a damned fool from a mile away.

QuoteI'm not aware of ever encountering anyone who goes into a game with a new GM or new group thinking "I wonder if PC death can happen in this game?", although it's not something that is often talked about, so I suppose it could be more common than I expect it to be.

While again I can't speak to what's absolutely the case with the majority, I suspect most players have a good, healthy attitude towards gaming. They don't go into a new GM or new group wondering such things. They go in with a certain awareness that they don't know what to expect so they're going to feel things out as they go. Once they get the hang of it, their emergent expectations will more closely match the reality than any expectations that might have been discussed before hand.

QuoteIndeed they wouldn't.  They wouldn't be expecting to play pirates at all, with or without gunpowder, because that's not in-genre for the generic AD&D campaign that you implied would be played when you chose not to set any expectations beyond "AD&D1".

The DMG has a section on waterborne adventures. The magic items list has a few items specific (or at least at their best) either on or under water. The monster manual includes monsters you'd only encounter at sea. The players handbook includes seagoing vessels in the equipment section and a few spell provisions geared towards that play. If the players want to play pirates, the generic AD&D campaign can do that. There are even a few good modules that will work great.

QuoteI don't recall anyone saying expectations should be discussed at the table.  I find the pitch for the game (whether an open invitation or inviting an individual) to be the most efficient place to deal with them.

The original post for this thread quotes me on expectations from the social encounters thread. In that thread, I was accused of not doing "discovery" on what the players want because I won't sit around hashing out such things before starting up the game. Even though my contributions to that thread was specifically about persuasion in the real world and the steps I use in a real life pitch. It probably ought to have been assumed then and there that's how I was gathering a group if I needed to recruit total strangers. But even failing that, I wrote in post #30 from this thread:

I think there's an analogy to be drawn to selling a product. The customer does not get to muck around with the product. Typically, the customer has no expertise to even do so anyway. That's why the customer is buying a product. Whatever it is he gets out of it is something he can't get on his own.

It falls upon the sales person to understand the customer, to know what the customer needs or wants, and then demonstrate how the product can deliver those things. The sales person does not change the product to suit the customer. The sales person educates the customer on how the product works.

If you translate this to RPGs, the GM is typically both wears two hats, as both producer and salesman. The GM puts together something that reflects what SHE wants and in HER style without player input. Then the GM switches to salesperson mode to assemble a group. If it isn't a match for a particular player, the player just doesn't join the group. So getting a group may entail finding out what various players are hoping to find in the game and then explaining how her idea provides that.

I guess this goes to show even when you do spell out exactly how things work in advance, belligerent people are still going to swap in their own version of things. I'm sure even you allowed XP and gear to transfer over to a replacement PC, your 20 minute rant player would have found something else to bitch about. Someone who's going to disrupt play like that has issues that have nothing to do with how you choose to play a game.

QuotePrior to that, I had a guy who had expected a very social campaign which ended up being more of a hexcrawl, so, one night, he told me, "Hey, your game is great for what it is, but that's not what I want, so, nothing personal, but I think I'm gonna bail."  Mismatched expectations can lead to players leaving in a mature fashion without a disaster, too.

One time I was a player in a game where the up-front expectation was that this was going to be exploration & commerce. So we go off and find some uncharted island where we come upon a slaver camp that had set up a mining operation. So far so good, right. Exploring and commerce.

Then the murdergrind player decides to go about murdergrinding to free the slaves. Since the rest of us are good players, we adapt and roll with it. Once the slaver band is dispatched, we're thinking two things. 1, we need material rewards from this "quest" because obviously an exploration & commerce campaign is going to track resources and provisions--even some murdergrind/dungeoncrawl styles demand that. 2, the elephant in the room, the greatest source of wealth, was the mine itself.

So, we decided to get the mine operational again. With paid labor this time to appease Murdergrind. Now this is still exploration & commerce. After all, we did need to explore the surrounding area still. It's just a little heavier on the commerce side. Murdergrind quits, complaining he didn't sign up to play "Papers & Paychecks." Two points. 1, we were clearly willing to adapt to his idiotic playstyle but he's not willing to adapt just a hair off from what he agreed to play, and 2, we were only in this position because of his actions.

The problem isn't preferences of expectations. The problem is he doesn't even think through his own actions or have a clear idea of what he wants. He'd quit with a 20 minute rant midway through masturbating.

QuoteAnd how does it "educate" him?  By telling him what to expect in the game?  I'd call that "setting expectations" and is exactly the kind of thing I've been advocating all along.

It educates him by telling him how to get what he wants. Not telling him what to expect. Or even that we'll accommodate his playstyle.

QuoteThe point is to come to a shared understanding of what is to be expected, then see whether that shared expectation includes any dealbreakers and, if so, decide on how to deal with it.

Again, we're using the word "expectation" to mean what we think will happen, or a belief about the future. The game that actually emerges may differ from what we expected. I'm not sure what the advantage is, if the expectations prove to be off, for the entire group to be wrong together. If one guy believes PC death is possible and is always advising the group on prudent action while another guy believes PC death is impossible and is always advising the group on taking a chance, to me that's a great party dynamic of balance/counter-balance. And whoever ends up wrong, it's not like they didn't have the fair warning of the guy who was right.

QuoteIn any case, if the player's preference is such that he finds PC death intolerable, my preference is that he knows up front that, in my game, PCs can die, thus allowing him to choose whether he wants to find a way to tolerate that possibility or if he'd prefer not to participate.  Your apparent preference to allow him to play without realizing that, in your game, his expectation is incorrect seems to me like a recipe for bad feelings when that expectation is proven to be in error.

Here's what your missing. Whether or not PCs can die in the game is a feature. Not a benefit. The trick is to find out why they prefer that feature, discover what benefit they derive, and then see if your game can deliver that benefit.

Your 20 minute rant guy, assuming I'm wrong and he's not just a broken human being, in another life he might have been anti-PC death? Why? Because he wants to keep his XP and his stuff. So maybe your game doesn't suit him after all. But what about a dynastic campaign, where he can come back playing the child of his original PC, inhering his stuff, maybe not all the XP (he doesn't have to start at 0 either) but I believe 1E Oriental Adventures and Hackmaster for sure allows some transfer of special benefits according to the honor of your original character. Maybe that would suffice to make him happy. Maybe not. But if so, we've discovered it's not really PC death, or losing his XP and stuff that truly matters to him.

So I don't address features or set expectations based on them. I focus on benefits. What players really want, and I don't set them up to expect to get them, I try to show them how they get them. It's up to them to take the ball and run with it. This is where the "give and take" mentioned way up thread comes into play.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877507If after a round of kumbaya, we decide we're going to use AD&D 1E to play a pirates campaign, and some of us show up expecting there to be gun powder and others not, you can say, "Hey, the problem of mismatch is because we didn't discuss gunpowder expectations." But I would be pointing out that the problem is that you DID discuss the expectation to play pirates. And that's what led to the mismatched expectations over gunpowder, because it's in-genre. If we had said we were getting together to play 1E and leave it at that, nobody would expect gunpowder because it isn't included in the rules.

How would everyone already know before play that gunpowder isn't anywhere in the AD&D rules?

Assuming that everyone knows the AD&D rules in minute detail is not at all logical. Most players don't. Many, probably most, know very little. And unless you ask them about gunpowder you don't know what expectation they have. They may well expect gunpowder since it appeared in Chainmail and in OD&D. Thus, according to you, no gunpowder in D&D cannot be the dominant expectation because it is illogical to believe it. Players who expect "no gunpowder" because of AD&D are as illogical (or logical) as players who expect no death because that's all they've experienced in other games.

Also, is it even true that gunpowder isn't in the AD&D rules? Anywhere? Because OD&D included gunpowder in setting and by reference in the rules. I ran AD&D way back when and I don't remember that gunpowder was excluded. Did AD&D totally drop all references to bombards and such?

Quote from: nDervish;877701Is this the "explanation" of "dominant" that you're referring to: "What is meant by "natural" or "dominant" is that they don't require general agreement."?

Lunamancer claims to mean dominant in a game theoretic sense, e.g. in a classic prisoner's dilemma the dominant strategy is one where each player loses.

EDIT: Though now I see he is prattling about Mendelian genetics. He has no idea what dominant means other than dominant expectations are what Lunamancer expects people should expect.

He doesn't understand that communication, side agreements, and collusion between the prisoners is prohibited in the artificial constraints of game theory. Whereas what everyone else is talking about is the simple ability to communicate preferences and adjust expectations before play starts and to collude or make side agreements about expectations in play. All of which is disallowed in the prisoner's dilemma. Or to put it another way, in the context under discussion "dominant" isn't an applicable term to use.

Quote from: Lunamancer;877740I have a pretty solid track record on fudging completely undetected.

Of course you do you manipulative genius, you. Players are just putty in your fudgy little hands.

Quote from: Bren;877754Also, is it even true that gunpowder isn't in the AD&D rules? Anywhere? Because OD&D included gunpowder in setting and by reference in the rules. I ran AD&D way back when and I don't remember that gunpowder was excluded. Did AD&D totally drop all references to bombards and such?

Off topic.

In AD&D no. No gunpowder in the core rules. (Not counting crossover rules with Gamma World or Boot Hill) But I do not have the DMG handy and could be wrong there.

In 2e. Yes. Gunpowder. Though not in the core rules that I recall. It did show up in the setting books. Especially Spelljammer.

There were also some articles in Dragon and I think White Dwarf introducing guns.

Quote from: Bren;877754How would everyone already know before play that gunpowder isn't anywhere in the AD&D rules?

Not to mention, "pirates" existed almost from the first moment cargo traveled by water, and in many cultures WITHOUT gunpowder.  So why does "playing pirates" necessitate gunpowder?  Gee, if only the players had talked about it...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877808Not to mention, "pirates" existed almost from the first moment cargo traveled by water, and in many cultures WITHOUT gunpowder.  So why does "playing pirates" necessitate gunpowder?  Gee, if only the players had talked about it...

No different from how just about every treatment of nautical matters in "medieval" fantasy games looks pretty much like 19th century Age of Sail.

Quote from: Ravenswing;877923No different from how just about every treatment of nautical matters in "medieval" fantasy games looks pretty much like 19th century Age of Sail.

Pilot's Almanac for Harn actually seemed pretty solidly rooted in early Atlantic/Baltic seafaring, maybe Hanseatic.

Quote from: Ravenswing;877923No different from how just about every treatment of nautical matters in "medieval" fantasy games looks pretty much like 19th century Age of Sail.

No gunpowder or cannons in my Red Shetland RPG book. All catapults, rams, ballistia, archers if close enough, and a few weird science mechanical devices as well as any magical backup might be had.

Even after Spelljammer most D&D ship battles were still conventional and not a sight of cannons.

Quote from: Naburimannu;877928Pilot's Almanac for Harn actually seemed pretty solidly rooted in early Atlantic/Baltic seafaring, maybe Hanseatic.

No one familiar with Harn fails to recognize it as the great counterexample to the truism that most low-tech fantasy RPGs are only superficially medieval at best.

Quote from: Omega;877995No gunpowder or cannons in my Red Shetland RPG book. All catapults, rams, ballistia, archers if close enough, and a few weird science mechanical devices as well as any magical backup might be had.

Fair enough.  But, of course, weapons are just a small aspect of the lot.  Do your ships have wheels (only invented in the 18th century) or steering oars or tillers?  Do they have sternpost rudders (only ubiquitous by the late 14th century)?  Do your anchors have the arm-and-curved-shank design with pointed flukes?  That's strictly modern-day; none of those elements predate the 18th century.  And so on and so forth.

Quote from: Ravenswing;878134Do your ships have wheels (only invented in the 18th century) or steering oars or tillers?  Do they have sternpost rudders (only ubiquitous by the late 14th century)?  Do your anchors have the arm-and-curved-shank design with pointed flukes?  That's strictly modern-day; none of those elements predate the 18th century.  And so on and so forth.

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Medieval cogs and Viking longships were the standard ships in the D&D of my youth. I've got a supplement down in the basement from (I think) Judges Guild that included ships of those types. Personally, I'm partial to triremes and longships so mostly I've had steering oars. Though they might have a right angled tiller arm. Honestly I don't think I ever drew an anchor. If I did it would likely be rock.

EDIT: Or maybe like this:

Spoiler