tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post822525625302097722..comments2024-03-19T07:16:47.924-04:00Comments on GROGNARDIA: The Two D&DsJames Maliszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-79311445620273975352008-06-14T20:44:00.000-04:002008-06-14T20:44:00.000-04:00I've got to agree that AD&D added somewhat to the ...I've got to agree that AD&D added somewhat to the view of D&D as a total-world game, but I don't think that's the hallmark of the Greyhawk supplement. Greyhawk made two HUGE changes in the game - the thief class, which changed the nature of how traps were adjudicated, and the new HD system, which made post GH material incompatible with the white box system, in terms of numbers and using them without adjustments. Moving the damage inflicted by giants from 2d6 to 5d6 and adding monsters with multiple attacks (many at less than 1d6 damage) was a watershed in the game. It added more flexibility for new material, at the cost of stark simplicity (which has its own benefits). I don't see the GH supplement as the watershed in which dungeon gaming really shifted into "total world" gaming ... I mean, there's mention of naval combat, for example.Matt Finchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07678557558458924177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-44041806053804490262008-06-13T21:44:00.000-04:002008-06-13T21:44:00.000-04:00Trollsmyth said: "Take care of yourself, James. Yo...Trollsmyth said: <I>"Take care of yourself, James. You know the drill: drink lots of fluids, get plenty of rest. We promise not to burn the place down while you recover. ;)"</I><BR/><BR/>Speak for yourself!<BR/><BR/>I'm not going to comment in regard to any paths Mr. Gygax may have led D&D down to it's own detriment; but, I would like to say that at some point in D&D's past, it would have served the greating gaming good if an archetypal, non-setting version of 'the rules' had been set up (in a more concise manner than the OD&D LBB's) to be used as the core reference for everything that came after it. A GURPS type of thing, if you will. A statement of intent, saying: "Here are the rules, now go out and make worlds, campaigns and rules to use with these concepts."<BR/><BR/>That would've meant about 12 pages of rules (as I've mentioned in the past), that set IN STONE what D&D is, was, and forever should be all about.<BR/><BR/>Get Well Soon JM!<BR/><BR/>~ShamSham aka Davehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14329116400656617173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-81513808964221191212008-06-13T20:30:00.000-04:002008-06-13T20:30:00.000-04:00Sign me up to go into the loony bin with, James!He...Sign me up to go into the loony bin with, James!<BR/><BR/>Heck, I wasn't even *born* when all these "events so long ago done and gone" took place and I am most interested in them.<BR/><BR/>And it's not out any morbid curiosity either, but because I feel knowing how it was done "back in the day" actively contributes to my gaming experience in the present.Edsanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11619248696115787815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-59333586979390702342008-06-13T17:30:00.000-04:002008-06-13T17:30:00.000-04:00I admire your enthusiasm, but I fear obsession ove...<I>I admire your enthusiasm, but I fear obsession over events so long ago done and gone does little to make things any more fun now.</I><BR/><BR/>You will note the tagline of this blog. <BR/><BR/>If that's not of interest to you, I can understand that, but that doesn't make it an "obsession" nor does it make an examination of it valueless. Judging by the very lively discussions we have here of "events so long ago done and gone," I'd say that quite a few people share my psychological deficiencies.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-70319734707260657442008-06-13T17:05:00.000-04:002008-06-13T17:05:00.000-04:00Also, I'd hardly call the idea of OD&D taking on s...Also, I'd hardly call the idea of OD&D taking on some setting-referential trappings a "split personality". An infant does nothing but eat and crap and cry and sleep, but within a couple of years, the child begins to develop it's own preferences for food, environment, clothing, habits, and behaviors. Is this a "split personality" from the child's infant-self? Hardly. The baby is growing and developing into a real person. <BR/><BR/>That's what happened to the game, and to reach further and further back into the history of the game to try and pin down when the "big change" happened that ultimately led to everything being "ruined" (which is now, according to this column, <I>less than two years after the game was published</I>), is just chasing after phantoms in my opinion.<BR/><BR/>I admire your enthusiasm, but I fear obsession over events so long ago done and gone does little to make things any more fun <B>now</B>.Jack Badelairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10932441028544500024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-28897462207754339052008-06-13T16:33:00.000-04:002008-06-13T16:33:00.000-04:00Quote:One of the things that should strike anyone ...<B>Quote:</B><I>One of the things that should strike anyone who reads the little brown books of "pure" OD&D is how bland they are. They assume the reader has a grounding on wargames and pulp fantasy by their allusions and ellipses, but the text, as written, has very little flavor of its own. In my opinion, that's one of the virtues of OD&D: the reader must engage the texts and actively make sense of them. One simply cannot read them and understand them without effort.</I><BR/><BR/>I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one. There's never an excuse for bland or flavorless writing in documentation like that. Role playing game manuals shouldn't read like server administration documentation. You want to call it a feature, that's fine. I'll call it a bug regardless.Jack Badelairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10932441028544500024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-13855952856996484002008-06-13T16:09:00.000-04:002008-06-13T16:09:00.000-04:00Take care of yourself, James. You know the drill:...Take care of yourself, James. You know the drill: drink lots of fluids, get plenty of rest. We promise not to burn the place down while you recover. ;)<BR/><BR/>- Briantrollsmythhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01895349218958093151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-41706537246047999432008-06-13T14:15:00.000-04:002008-06-13T14:15:00.000-04:00I'm not sure the divide was nearly as large as you...I'm not sure the divide was nearly as large as you suggest. After all, over half of Underworld and Wilderness Adventures was devoted to non-dungeon activities. <BR/><BR/>At the beginning, most D&D games I was personally familiar with in the mid-1970s stayed in the dungeon because wilderness adventuring was tried and seen as too dangerous. 40-400 goblins surprising a party of ten characters was not fun. It wasn't much more fun if you were not surprised.<BR/><BR/>Wilderness campaigning took off down here after I decided that entire tribes of orcs or goblins wandering through the wilderness en mass was going to be pretty uncommon -- and when it did happen one would hear or see evidence of this large horde a long ways off in most terrain. Instead, one would be much more likely to encounter a (much smaller) hunting or raiding party. The same with bandits and other large groups -- they just did not usually abandon their encampments and all go wandering through the woods together.<BR/><BR/>Reducing the size of the average wilderness encounter made wilderness adventures possible for the average group of player-characters. My "insight" quickly caught on with other groups in the area and suddenly people were doing a lot more non-dungeon adventuring.<BR/><BR/>Soon players were interested in exploring land for future taming, following treasure maps, going on missions for local nobles (or the church when someone needed major healing), etc. Dungeons and dungeon-like environments were still the mainstay of the games, but worldbuilding beyond the dungeon, the general store, and the inn started happening on a fairly major scale.Randallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13879930955049101533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-86578607308915629052008-06-13T11:52:00.000-04:002008-06-13T11:52:00.000-04:00Allan,You're correct both that Greyhawk alone does...Allan,<BR/><BR/>You're correct both that <I>Greyhawk</I> alone doesn't change all that much and that even the three little brown books do include lots of discussion of things implying the existence of the wider world. My point, which was perhaps poorly stated owing to my splitting headache, was that the 3 LBBs clearly gave pride of place to dungeon delving and that Supplement I was the first official canonization of the particulars of Gary's campaign, which emphasized some aspects of the OD&D heritage over others. <BR/><BR/>It's a subtle thing, to be sure, and I wasn't trying to bash either approach or imply that <I>Greyhawk</I> represents the beginning of the end of OD&D. Rather, what I wanted to say was that <I>D&D</I> has always been at war with itself, with two primary strains of play fighting for dominance. <I>AD&D</I> made campaign play and world building top dog, even though the seeds of that were right there in Volume 1 of OD&D. I think a lot of the debates that rage are often proxies for favoring one approach over another and that they arise when one favors one over the other to such an extent as to imply the other isn't what the game is about. I don't think Gary or anyone in the early years really did that, many people, for various reasons, took them as doing so and thus we are where we are today. <BR/><BR/>My personal feeling is that over-emphasizing one or the other approach is to make <I>D&D</I> far narrower a game than it was ever meant to be. If anything "betrays" the visions of the old days, it's that.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-31738107558566108922008-06-13T11:50:00.000-04:002008-06-13T11:50:00.000-04:00I also don't know if I agree that there is a direc...I also don't know if I agree that there is a direct dichotomy between 'generic' adventuring and world-building details. These things need not be seen as adversarial IMHO. <BR/><BR/>Is world building really such a bad thing? To me the problems arise more from railroad-y adventure modules, which not only define details about items, NPCs, politics, etc., but actually define the "correct" or "required" adventure path for characters.<BR/><BR/>This is, I think, where the real problem occurs. IMHO having lots (or even a few) of 'world details' and information about various political structures, named magic items, specific powerful NPCs, etc. is all good and only makes D&D (of whatever flavour) better...it's when these things are then taken over by a pre-scripted text into which you insert your characters (a la Dragonlance)that the problems arise. <BR/><BR/>Otherwise all of these great flavour details are nothing more than cool new items to add to the toolbox and use as you wish...after all unless you use plot-railroading there's no rule that says your characters even have to go to the pre-defined places or meet the pre-defined NPCs instead fo going to the ones you create yourself.Terry https://www.blogger.com/profile/02999230014123506716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-31073908292235144052008-06-13T10:59:00.000-04:002008-06-13T10:59:00.000-04:00Interesting thoughts, James. I think you may be d...Interesting thoughts, James. I think you may be drawing a line too cleanly, or making a distinction that's too fine, though: Gygax and Kuntz's campaigns within a year or two of their foundings had pretty detailed "campaign" elements like cities, political intrigue, established name level PCs building fortifications, etc. And all of the rules for castle construction, nautical warfare, and such in the OD&D rules certainly speak to the perceived need for this info at the onset of a game (vs. it appearing later in the supplements). <BR/><BR/>The Greyhawk supplement certainly details elements that would mature into AD&D, but I'm not at all sure that they, in and of themselves, point as broadly to a penchant for more-grand world design vs. simply providing alternatives for the core OD&D rules. While adding beholders and swords of nine lives stealing and such into the mix begins to add uniqueness to the D&D game's overall oeuvre, it's still painting the larger world at large in very broad strokes, where it paints there at all.<BR/><BR/>allan.grodoghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11800184312511280050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-32567700871762491462008-06-13T10:54:00.000-04:002008-06-13T10:54:00.000-04:00(Hi, been lurking for a while)It's interesting tha...(Hi, been lurking for a while)<BR/><BR/>It's interesting that you should mention the fact that "dungeon crawling" is used as a term of opprobrium, because I've been wondering about that a lot myself recently.<BR/><BR/>As I've been looking more deeply into "old school" game design, one thing I've noticed is the difference between actual "old school" "dungeon crawls" (apologies for the double-air-quotes) and the modern usage of the term.<BR/><BR/>The term "dungeon crawl" conjures images of a linear adventure with prescripted monster attacks and masses of arbitrary loot and combat.<BR/><BR/>A classic dungeon adventure, however, seems to be (from my limited experience) something significantly more complex and interesting - a highly interactive, highly open ended scenario with emphasis on the exploration of an unknown which, by dint of its small scale, can have an extremely high sense of internal "reality". It's a scenario where deciding whether to turn left or right at a particular intersection is actually a meaningful decision.<BR/><BR/>Of course the problem is that it's very hard to *write* a good dungeon adventure (because you need to give the players lots and lots of information with which they can make informed decisions about how they explore) and very easy to write a bad one (because hey, it's not your characters on the line), and so the "dungeon" winds up being seen as a world of arbitrary traps and linear encounters, instead of a strange and intense playground of the imagination.<BR/><BR/>Which is a crying shame really.Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.com