Gary did nothing wrong.   I think it was a bit meta to take control of the dwarf...but he clearly did it to warn anyone listening.  Ranger kid was not listening.  The clay pot....cast spells on it use some detection, etc.  But if you walk up to it and hit it....you failed the test (a very easy intelligence test).   I do not see 4 wights as some insurmountable threat to a party of 6 level characters and likely only became a big problem when the ranger charged in solo and opened himself up to being in close quarters and surrounded by level draining undead.   

      I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
      I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

That was a common practice back in the day.

Quote from: Scooter on September 27, 2023, 04:35:56 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
      I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

That was a common practice back in the day.

I know for your day to day DM.  To take a stranger's sheet seemed heavy handed, but I never played in a con game back then. 

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:40:22 PM

Quote from: Scooter on September 27, 2023, 04:35:56 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
      I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

That was a common practice back in the day.

I know for your day to day DM.  To take a stranger's sheet seemed heavy handed, but I never played in a con game back then.

For any GM.  It was viewed as a bit of cheating to bring a dead PC into a game without clearing it with the GM

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
        I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

Taking a PC sheet has been normal up until the past 5 or 6 years.  Your PC dies, the GM gets the sheet.  In the original Star Wars game, it's actually written into the rules that when a PC turns to the dark side the GM takes the sheet.

Quote from: BadApple on September 27, 2023, 05:31:55 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
        I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

Taking a PC sheet has been normal up until the past 5 or 6 years.  Your PC dies, the GM gets the sheet.  In the original Star Wars game, it's actually written into the rules that when a PC turns to the dark side the GM takes the sheet.

Most newbies don't know this

And DCC has the death stamp, which is a neat take on it.

Quote from: Scooter on September 27, 2023, 05:45:13 PM

Quote from: BadApple on September 27, 2023, 05:31:55 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
        I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

Taking a PC sheet has been normal up until the past 5 or 6 years.  Your PC dies, the GM gets the sheet.  In the original Star Wars game, it's actually written into the rules that when a PC turns to the dark side the GM takes the sheet.

Most newbies don't know this

Heck, I've been playing since the 70s and had never heard of this.

Quote from: Tod13 on September 27, 2023, 06:46:36 PM

Quote from: Scooter on September 27, 2023, 05:45:13 PM

Quote from: BadApple on September 27, 2023, 05:31:55 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on September 27, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
        I do not in any way see where he used his supreme DM powers to do anything wrong to the kid....other than taking his sheet....that seems a little strong.

Taking a PC sheet has been normal up until the past 5 or 6 years.  Your PC dies, the GM gets the sheet.  In the original Star Wars game, it's actually written into the rules that when a PC turns to the dark side the GM takes the sheet.

Most newbies don't know this

Heck, I've been playing since the 70s and had never heard of this.

I run into conventions I've seen my entire life in RPGs being questioned by other long term veterans.  I think there's been a lot of geographic cultural differences in how house rules have developed.

I remember that handing the character sheet back when you died was a thing at UK conventions in the early 1980s, but that was during tournament style play where each player's character sheet was given out by the referee at the start of the session - and he was likely going to use it again the next day with a different group. Never heard of a person's own character sheet being taken away by the ref.

I did know this guy who used to play Chivalry and Sorcery wherever he could find a game and insisted on using his own character in each game he found. He learned I was running a C&S game with some friends and begged me to let him join so he could get treasure for his character's projected domain play. I never understood why he didn't just play solo, or just cheat and give his character a castle and be done with it, but I guess he was dedicated to the journey.

Quote from: shoplifter on September 27, 2023, 01:58:33 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 27, 2023, 01:02:43 PM
Exactly. Instead of acting like an Adult, Gary wanted to make an example of him by acting all passive aggressive, pretending everything was OK, and then whipping out his DM dong.
He should have just told the guy his character was too high level compared to the rest of the group. Assuming the story wasn't creatively embellished for Dragon Magazine in the first place.

Nothing at you personally. I'm sorry if you got that impression.

Quote from: jhkim on September 27, 2023, 02:04:28 PM
If a dwarf acted bravely and then suddenly scared, as a player, I might question what he was up to. Maybe the dwarf is genuine, but maybe he is a traitor trying to lead us into a trap by scaring us away from the unguarded entrance. Or maybe he was mistaken in what he thought he saw.

Yep. Every door in a dungeon is potentially dangerous. Either in what's on the other side, or even the door itself. The Dungeon (TM) is a perilous place by design. Someone being scared of what's behind it is far too vague. It might be he's afraid of rats and saw a mouse turd.

A boiling pot? Man, everything in a Gygax dungeon is a trap of some kind. Better off staying home and farming gong.

That's why my advice would be to simply talk to the player like an adult. His game got twisted and adversarial and I wouldn't trust the DM in that situation to be fair or impartial.

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 27, 2023, 06:31:44 PM
And DCC has the death stamp, which is a neat take on it.

I always took that as a joke. But probably a joke with a kernal of truth, in that old school killer DM vein.

Quote from: jhkim on September 27, 2023, 12:31:22 PM
I had thought that the dwarf was an NPC, since the GM was controlling him.

I don't know. I've never read the article before. I'm just going by what's posted here. There could be an error due to the scan-to-text. I see a couple of errors for sure in the OP. Fudging, in quotes, has an apostrophe asterisk instead of the close quote. Towards the end, a word that's clearly supposed to be 'it' shows up as 'ft'.

On first read, I thought it was an NPC dwarf also. But before I replied, I double checked to make sure I wasn't just assuming. The line is: "a bold dwarf broke off and opened a nearby door. Rather than telling the player what he saw, I told the players this:" Emphasis mine.

If the dwarf is an NPC, why would Gary have to tell the dwarf's player what he saw? This is pretty clearly saying the dwarf was a PC.

If the scan-to-text dropped an s and the word should really be players, then, sure, I could interpret that line as "Rather than [as the dwarf] telling the players what he saw. . ." But I could also interpret the plural as Gary telling the whole table, rather than slipping a note or taking that one player aside. With the s, it's ambiguous. Without the s, I'm not seeing how this is an NPC.

QuoteIf the dwarf was a PC, then on what grounds does the GM get to snatch the PC away from player control and decide what the PC dwarf says and does? The GM plays the world, he doesn't get to decide what the PCs do. Wights don't have a Fear effect. The dwarf player should be able to decide for himself what he does when he sees the wights, and what he tells the other players.

In actual authentic old school play, the GM can do anything, period. Whether the GM should is a different question. The fact is there doesn't need to be any special grounds. That's more of a modern theory-wank conceit that we draw lines so neatly and without exception.

I would point out, though, that if what happened to the ranger happened to the dwarf, who was mid-level (say 6th), being drained of 4 levels, leaving him with the hit points of a 2nd level character, then applying the actual damage of the Wight attack might have killed the dwarf. And there's no expectation that the players get to control dead characters. Nor is it rare that a GM might rule a less-harsh outcome, softening what would have killed the character to merely forcing the character to flee. And why not? The game does have subdual damage. Characters and creatures can attack with an intent other than to kill.

QuoteI'm not familiar with Hall of Many Panes. What is the example of a barbarian acting brashly?

There's not much more to it than what I described. The main idea is that sometimes a player might choose something that is tactically foolish in the interest of role-playing the character, such as one playing a barbarian who chooses to charge brashly because that's what the character would do. And if that's the case, he advises the GM to take it easy on the character.

He also had written right into the module mechanisms for bringing characters back. In Hall of Many Panes, there is a prankster god that's pulling the strings behind the scenes, and so in the event of a TPK, he'll bring the entire party back to life. He gives them a bit of a lecture, calls them foolish, but says that foolishness has amused him, and making it clear next time he won't be so nice.

You can like this stuff or not. The point is not in any of the minutia. I was refuting the claim that he's harsh in how he ran the game.

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 27, 2023, 09:24:16 AM
Now let's all make a huge mistake and go on over to Reddit. Specifically r/RPG

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16sj06l/looking_for_an_old_article_by_gary_gygax/

The amount of people completely dismissing Gygax's legacy and using this story as proof he was an awful DM is depressing. Lots of the usual words thrown around. "Gatekeeping" "Exclusionary" that kind of thing. It really does show how entitled certain RPG players have gotten. They see the idea of challenge and failing challenge as a personal attack on them. Not their characters As if losing a few levels and handing your sheet to the GM means you can't even play RPGs anymore or the spectre of gross chud neckbeards will materialize to boot you out of the game shop. It's become a huge problem where RPG players just see their characters as avatars of themselves. And thus all consequences on their character are consequences and judgements on them in real life. Absolutely bizarre and foreign behaviour.

I rarely even glance at Reddit unless someone points me at something or it turns up in a search.

Overall the people on say r/DnD are overall reasonable. With the occasional flare-ups of ruthless stupid.

There is a woke faction lingering there that despises Gygax and loves to cherry pick anything they can to "prove" what a horrible "-ist" he was for things like daring to have rules where women are not as strong starting off as men. GASP!

And so on ad nausium.

Theres also a hate group on Reddit that just makes up alot of the worst stories and will go after about anything D&D when they arent being passive/aggressive pathetic.