Quote from: GameDaddy;588511Define "basket weaver"

Mr. GC.

He's a basketweaver from a small Appalachian community where no other RPGs besides D&D 4th edition are played. Every night his mom-sister chews him out for playing characters that aren't optimized for combat, which makes him cry, but is also the only real attention anyone in his family pays to him so he came to therpgsite for solace.

Though close to thirty years of age he never recieved a real education and didn't graduate high school, so his English and math skills are somewhat below that of a 3rd grader. In fact, he's actually typing in a weird pishogue language and having babelfish translate it for him before posting, which is why his posts make little sense.

Lord Mistborn is his transexual twin "sister" (actually once a conjoined twin).

Quote from: Benoist;588704I'm not denying that if your characters were to die "more often than Kenny", which I'd take to mean, in the context of an RPG, dying every single session once, this might represent some barrier for some players to get invested in their characters.

I'm thinking more than once per session, but even once per session is still about 20 times too high when talking about character attachment.

QuoteYou are putting words in my mouth. Note that I didn't say that any instance of these 1st level character deaths were "random". Most of them actually had to do with me making some pretty blatant tactical and/or strategic mistakes.

Dude, you're 1st level. You do everything right, one enemy rolls high on their to hit/THAC0/whatever you want to call it and down you go. It is, indeed just randomness.

QuoteMoreover, I wouldn't conflate the 'funnel' of 1st level characters having a hard time surviving until some of them make it to higher levels with the entirety of the campaign. Besides, a "campaign" here doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not "a story arc" or whatever. A campaign in this case means an ongoing game set in a particular setting, with players often having multiple characters of different levels, adventuring with varying groups, characters being killed off and created, and so on. It's not the same paradigm, in other words.

If it were just a single story arc that'd both make things better and worse. That said, treating it like an MMO setting is definitely not typical.

QuoteI don't know what example you are talking about. I probably missed it or don't remember it right off the bat so I can't comment on that.

In "actual examples of old school play" several people mention the sample dungeon thing. Where one PC instantly dies by one of four enemies. I forget if there were four PCs, or something like 5 or 6 but with 4 ghouls it's likely if they didn't cut off the example of actual play there, it'd consist of the entire party being killed by their first real fight (the joke encounter with the spider doesn't count).

QuoteOkay. So you are telling me you have played First Edition until around 10ish level, but haven't DMed it.

Nope. I answered your questions in sequence. That one was "how old were you".

Quote(1) How old were you?
(2) How many DMs have you played AD&D 1e with?
(3) How many characters did it take you to get one at 10ish level?
(4) Were you, or any other players, playing different characters at once? Were they the same level, all of them?
(5) How long, in real time, and at which frequency of play, did it take you to reach level 10ish?

Skipping what I've already answered, 3, never happened (too much random death), I think at some point we just started playing multiple characters or having new characters respawn in the dungeon or something to keep the game moving despite the constant death, and N/A.

QuoteOK. That's all fine and good, but you haven't answered my question.

Which other role playing games, other than D&D, have you played? Which have you GM'd?

I just said I regard those other games as pointless and worthless and not worthy of my time then elaborated as to how and why this is and pointed out how irrelevant it is to even ask. How is this not an answer?

Is "hell no" not clear enough?

QuoteSo you are telling me you haven't run White Plume Mountain, or played it, correct?

Correlary question: do you think rules should be playtested?

Course they should, but we're not talking about rules here. We're talking about a module where most of the scenarios are "fuck you and die", often going out of their way to specifically shut down most of the ways you'd not die (such as green slime that you can't "be clever" about and get off with oil, and instead must use your one Fireball, centered on yourself to deal with if you even have that still).

You don't need to actually play it to realize the likely outcome of a long series of fuck you and die encounters is that you are fucked and die. I mean, even the neutral reviews compare it to Tomb of Horrors which is an exercise in "guess what the DM is thinking, blow him, or hire a bunch of losers to do this shitty adventure for you" which, interestingly enough is exactly how Tomb of Horrors was won.

QuoteHave you?

Have you actually read the First Edition PH or DMG? ALL you've said about First Edition, from the ability score generation that was wrong, to the rules about being below zero hit points that was wrong (you don't die at 0 HP, you're unconscious), to well... honestly now. EVERYTHING you've said so far about First Edition has been utterly, totally, completely wrong.

So I am asking you honestly: have you ever read the First Edition PH, or DMG, and if so, how long ago, and how old were you?

At 10, a few years ago, and now.

We've been over ability scores already.

Changing from "you die" to "you are in a coma for an extended period and are still down in whatever dangerous situation" isn't much of a practical change. You're still going to die anyways at level 1 because healing is so limited that once you go down all that's changed is that your official death is time delayed a few rounds. So when we change the actual situation accordingly... not a whole lot does change.

QuoteThat experience doesn't pan out with mine at all: you are not "dying all the time" playing AD&D 1e, and I certainly can get in the skin of a character and get attached to them in about a session or two, the time for me to grow into them.

If you're living a session or two, then at the very least you've passed the suicide shuffling stage (meaning, you now have the stats to not instantly die in a fight).

QuoteThe notion that optimization is required for role play is nonsensical to me. Purely, and simply. Role playing doesn't depend on success. It just occurs. You are either role playing your character, or you are not. Given that I don't have problems role playing my characters in AD&D First Ed, I have a hard time understanding where you are coming from on this.

I'm curious now to have answers to my questions above, because maybe they'll help me understand where these strongly held convictions of yours come from.

So, do you mean to tell me that people regularly do dangerous things that they are not good at?

Because last I checked, that isn't true at all. Even in the real world, which is far safer than any D&D world you get shit like this:

Non comprehensive list of physical, mental, and educational requirements to run into burning buildings and save people from them.

Non comprehensive list of what is required to serve and protect in a general community.

If you consider non civilian positions, the danger, and thus the standards rise further. Why aren't you allowed to work these positions if not qualified? Because it's not safe. And while there's no one in the D&D world there to stop you from signing on as a murdering hobo, you'd still have to question why you, or anyone would want to if not qualified.

So if you are not good at a dangerous thing and are doing it anyways that means you are 1: Roleplaying an insane character. 2: Not roleplaying. Because if you were roleplaying, you'd be roleplaying "Holy shit, this is dangerous. I'd better stay at home." You know, the reason why most people run away from dangerous situations.

Needless to say the former is not trustworthy.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588698Also, given that even if you do everything right and do manage to hit your attacks aren't going to dent anything if you seriously fuck up your build you seriously get the situation where you have a 5% chance to take off 1% and otherwise you waste your entire turn.

Congrats. You have persuaded me. If you want to have a decent high level Fighter in 4e you have to start with not actively awful Strength (20 is hardly required), put most of your stat increases into Strength again, find magical weapons in your adventuring (I mean seriously, having magical items are a problem now for some reason? or you can just play with inherent bonuses and skip the issue entirely, not that you would know that) and pick whatever powers you want.

That is quite a burden compared to making an effective high level Fighter in the perfectly well designed d20 which requires merely... no, wait a second...

QuoteAll of which means that in 4th edition optimization manages to be required, ineffective, and boring all at the same time. At least in 3.5 optimized characters kill things quickly and do not die quickly, and the game breaking stuff is interesting, and not just infinite damage or something boring. It should still be banned of course - no one is seriously advocating Pun-Pun, but when it isn't even fun to break something into many pieces it's a good sign everyone involved has failed.

And now we get to the heart of the problem. 4e actually requires you to play the encounters and does not let your easy mode wizard skip them with a couple spells. Boo fucking hoo. Cry me a river, Justin Timberlake.

Maybe you meant to complain that 4e is not broken enough because that seems to be your issue.

Quote from: vytzka;588719Congrats. You have persuaded me. If you want to have a decent mid or high level [strike]Fighter[/strike] anything in 4e you have to start with [strike]not actively awful Strength[/strike] maxed prime stat including racials [strike](20 is hardly required)[/strike], put [strike]most[/strike] all of your stat increases into [strike]Strength[/strike] prime stat again, find magical weapons/implements in your adventuring [strike](I mean seriously, having magical items are a problem now for some reason? or you can just play with inherent bonuses and skip the issue entirely, not that you would know that)[/strike] and pick [strike]whatever powers you want[/strike] only the best standard powers for your build and spec or GTFO.

That is quite a burden compared to making an effective high level Fighter in the perfectly well designed d20 which requires merely... no, wait a second...

Which requires a lot of effort and yields results that are medicore at best. However mediocrity is far superior to what 4th offers. Just a basic Dungeoncrasher tripper who knocks enemies around and down has more and better distinct abilities than any 4th edition character and that is fucking sad.

Fixed.

QuoteAnd now we get to the heart of the problem. 4e actually requires you to play the encounters and does not let your easy mode wizard skip them with a couple spells. Boo fucking hoo. Cry me a river, Justin Timberlake.

Maybe you meant to complain that 4e is not broken enough because that seems to be your issue.

Play = grind for hours, finally kill them, forget why you were fighting them and not have the time for a second encounter.

Given that I'd happily take Wizard facerolling any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Of course I'd much prefer a game that actually engaged the Wizard, which is why I play D&D more like Dark Souls.

If I wanted to break it... last I checked Orbizards are a Wizard build and automatically win all games forever, so you can just choke on a barrel of cocks right there. I could also do infinite loops with other classes, but as I said before it's a game that's boring even when you're breaking it (and it is beyond trivial to break).

Awwww a one hit trip pony has more distinct abilities than a 4e Fighter, you're so cute. Dumb and dishonest as shit, but cute.

This circus has gone long enough. I have to stop clicking 'view post' every time, honest.

Quote from: vytzka;588730Awwww a one hit trip pony has more distinct abilities than a 4e Fighter, you're so cute. Dumb and dishonest as shit, but cute.

This circus has gone long enough. I have to stop clicking 'view post' every time, honest.

If you were both smart and honest you'd know that just about every 4th edition ability is "move enemies down and/or around, and also damage them". A Dungeoncrasher tripper (which actually does two things) does everything a 4th edition character of any class does except better (because their attacks will actually hit, and have better chances of moving enemies in the desired manners).

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715I'm thinking more than once per session, but even once per session is still about 20 times too high when talking about character attachment.

Are you saying you need 20 sessions to get attached to a character?

If not, how many sessions does it take for you to be able to role play a character, in your mind?

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715Dude, you're 1st level. You do everything right, one enemy rolls high on their to hit/THAC0/whatever you want to call it and down you go. It is, indeed just randomness.

Well first, there's no THAC0 other than a monster reference in the DMG, in AD&D 1e. Another thing that spells clearly out loud that you don't know much about 1e, to me and the others who happen to know this game on this thread.

Now, if you do everything right, that's not what happens. If you do everything right, you have sneaked past the monsters, waited until they left camp to take their treasure when they weren't looking (GP accounts for about 2/3 of the XPs you're actually gaining, in my experience), created diversions, or ambushed them one by one so that you could kill them outright without them having the chance to reciprocate, etc. Now assuming you're not playing solo as I did, there are indeed plenty of ways in which you could kill a party of goblins, kobolds and the like on the surprise rounds. In other words, you survive because you don't put yourself in that situation where they roll against you with the chance to kill you outright at every encounter in the first place. It's a shift in game play from expecting every encounter to play nicely at equal CR, for sure, but it works in the context of this game.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715If it were just a single story arc that'd both make things better and worse. That said, treating it like an MMO setting is definitely not typical.

There's no such thing as a "story arc" in my games.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715In "actual examples of old school play" several people mention the sample dungeon thing. Where one PC instantly dies by one of four enemies. I forget if there were four PCs, or something like 5 or 6 but with 4 ghouls it's likely if they didn't cut off the example of actual play there, it'd consist of the entire party being killed by their first real fight (the joke encounter with the spider doesn't count).

Is it conceivable for you that some players might know the game better than the players represented in the example you are speaking of, and manage the circumstances differently, in your mind?

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715Nope. I answered your questions in sequence. That one was "how old were you".

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715Skipping what I've already answered, 3, never happened (too much random death), I think at some point we just started playing multiple characters or having new characters respawn in the dungeon or something to keep the game moving despite the constant death, and N/A.

Ahhh I see. I misread that part. Sorry.

So you were around 10 when you played AD&D First Ed. Now what I understand is that you never reached level 10ish playing the game, that you played with 3 different DMs at the time (were they about your age?), and that you can't answer the last question because you never reached 10ish level.

OK. That's helping. So, how long and at which frequency did you play AD&D 1e? Were your DMs around your age, too? What is the max level you reached in the game, ever?

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715I just said I regard those other games as pointless and worthless and not worthy of my time then elaborated as to how and why this is and pointed out how irrelevant it is to even ask. How is this not an answer?

Is "hell no" not clear enough?

Well that's not an answer. Here's how this pans out:

Q: What RPGs have you played or ran?
A: No.

You don't answer "no" to a question that begins with "what", you see what I mean? I think it's relevant to me to understand where you are coming from, which is a different matter entirely than what you thought I was asking that for.

Now, which other RPGs have you played or run?

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715Course they should, but we're not talking about rules here. We're talking about a module where most of the scenarios are "fuck you and die", often going out of their way to specifically shut down most of the ways you'd not die (such as green slime that you can't "be clever" about and get off with oil, and instead must use your one Fireball, centered on yourself to deal with if you even have that still).

You don't need to actually play it to realize the likely outcome of a long series of fuck you and die encounters is that you are fucked and die. I mean, even the neutral reviews compare it to Tomb of Horrors which is an exercise in "guess what the DM is thinking, blow him, or hire a bunch of losers to do this shitty adventure for you" which, interestingly enough is exactly how Tomb of Horrors was won.

That's where I actually disagree. I think that, especially where old modules are concerned, just reading them to make the kind of judgment you are making is misguided (to say the least). You need to play them to be able to see how different scenarios might play, and given you've just told me that you played AD&D when you were about 10-ish, I think your perception and extrapolation based on what's written on the page might be a tad off.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715At 10, a few years ago, and now.

At 10, I'll believe you looked at the charts in the books and read some spells' descriptions. Bonus question: you told me you were not a DM of 1e. Did you read the DMG? If so, to which extent? Did you read it cover to cover?

A few years ago, maybe, I'm also willing to believe you given I know what it is to read the PH and DMG and refresh my memory regularly about certain points of the rules.

Now? You're lying. You are not reading the PH and DMG of First Edition right now. Not by most people's standards of "reading" anyway. You just made way too many mistakes talking about 1e to lead me to believe that. As a matter of fact, I honestly can't remember if you said anything *correct* about 1e. Seriously.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715We've been over ability scores already.

Yes, and what you were saying was totally wrong as far as 1e was concerned.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715Changing from "you die" to "you are in a coma for an extended period and are still down in whatever dangerous situation" isn't much of a practical change.

It is, when the campaign assumes you are playing multiple characters and just phase one out for a while to play another and back and forth. Your problem here is that you're not seeing the context of the campaign and are thinking about it in terms of "1 player = 1 character" and "on the rails of the plot we go". That's not how a 1e campaign plays in practice.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715You're still going to die anyways at level 1 because healing is so limited that once you go down all that's changed is that your official death is time delayed a few rounds. So when we change the actual situation accordingly... not a whole lot does change.

Actually, keeping in mind that surviving at level 1 and doing things "right" (see above) basically means you are sneaking around, stealing the creatures treasure, ambushing them to get rounds of surprise and the like, that change is actually pretty significant. Not to mention, it's on par with 3rd ed's, which was your point when you brought up the wrong answer in the first place.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715If you're living a session or two, then at the very least you've passed the suicide shuffling stage (meaning, you now have the stats to not instantly die in a fight).

Actually not. You generally don't level up in one or two sessions to level 2. The advancement rate in AD&D 1e is much slower than what you know of 3rd ed.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715So, do you mean to tell me that people regularly do dangerous things that they are not good at?

Actually, being level 1 means that you're already a cut above the normal world. You're still within its boundaries, in the sense that you started dabbling in magic, you are a veteran of a few battles and the like, but you're already one cut above the level 0 populace (i.e. most of the population of the world). So stricto sensu, the PCs are characters who have just taken their first step into the wider, wilder world, above ground, and below.

As for humans doing things they have not attempted before, I'd say that yes, that's pretty much the story of the human race. Otherwise, we'd still be living in caves and killing each other with rocks to have the chance to pull a female to our side and that'd pretty much be the be-all, end-all of existence for us.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715Because last I checked, that isn't true at all. Even in the real world, which is far safer than any D&D world you get shit like this:

Non comprehensive list of physical, mental, and educational requirements to run into burning buildings and save people from them.

Non comprehensive list of what is required to serve and protect in a general community.

These people would be level 0 or level 1, in AD&D 1e parlance. Which means, yes, if you strike them with a broad sword there's a huge chance for them to die. If they fall in a pit trap they didn't see coming, there's a possibility they'll end up knocking their head and passing out, needing to recuperate at a hospital for the next few days. If they jump head on into flames and take on fire, flames are not "EL appropriate", and they die.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715If you consider non civilian positions, the danger, and thus the standards rise further. Why aren't you allowed to work these positions if not qualified? Because it's not safe. And while there's no one in the D&D world there to stop you from signing on as a murdering hobo, you'd still have to question why you, or anyone would want to if not qualified.

Because you are already one cut above the rest. You are level 1. Pretty much the rest of the mundane world is level 0.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588715So if you are not good at a dangerous thing and are doing it anyways that means you are 1: Roleplaying an insane character. 2: Not roleplaying. Because if you were roleplaying, you'd be roleplaying "Holy shit, this is dangerous. I'd better stay at home." You know, the reason why most people run away from dangerous situations.

Needless to say the former is not trustworthy.

Not at all. It just means you haven't considered all the parameters of play and don't know what you are talking about, as far as AD&D 1e is concerned. From there you have basically two options: (1) go "Oh OK! I didn't see that way!" and basically admit you don't know what you're talking about, maybe talking about the games a little while longer with me or others here, maybe rereading your 1e books for the first time in ... ever? Or (2) continue to claim you know what you are talking about while you have gotten pretty much every single little detail you could come up with about AD&D 1e wrong, and remain the laughing stock of this board.

Assuming you stay long enough without being so much of a shithead you are banned, of course.

Remember the fate of your buddy Lord Mistborn.

Your choice.

Quote from: Benoist;588736Now, if you do everything right, that's not what happens. If you do everything right, you have sneaked past the monsters, waited until they left camp to take their treasure when they weren't looking (GP accounts for about 2/3 of the XPs you're actually gaining, in my experience), created diversions, or ambushed them one by one so that you could kill them outright without them having the chance to reciprocate, etc. Now assuming you're not playing solo as I did, there are indeed plenty of ways in which you could kill a party of goblins, kobolds and the like on the surprise rounds. In other words, you survive because you don't put yourself in that situation where they roll against you with the chance to kill you outright at every encounter in the first place. It's a shift in game play from expecting every encounter to play nicely at equal CR, for sure, but it works in the context of this game.

Reading a bit of Sun Tzu works wonders for increasing skill as a player.  No need to completely master the text, but being familiar with it is an almost incalculable boon.

Quote from: StormBringer;588738Reading a bit of Sun Tzu works wonders for increasing skill as a player.  No need to completely master the text, but being familiar with it is an almost incalculable boon.

Yes. Seizing your enemy, knowing its weaknesses, choosing the battlefield, playing opponents against one another, etc. I can see how that can prove useful playing a game of AD&D First Ed, certainly. The Prince comes to mind, as well.

So does pretty much anything from the Appendix.

Quote from: StormBringer;588738Reading a bit of Sun Tzu works wonders for increasing skill as a player.  No need to completely master the text, but being familiar with it is an almost incalculable boon.

That could do with a better translation away from inscrutable in most cases, military doctrine needs to be utterly clear and precise. Also I spotted a few baffling errors and omissions until it occurred to me that the last thing you want to do is publish the full documentation on your tactics for your enemies to pick up. Then again maybe the old fox threw them in there to create great doubt, his own take on a koan.

On topic, I've recently and inexplicably learned to my lasting regret at the waste of neurons what a "denner" is and I like this bucket of shite of a thread not at all. Just one man's opinion of course, take it as you will.

Quote from: Benoist;588741Yes. Seizing your enemy, knowing its weaknesses, choosing the battlefield, playing opponents against one another, etc. I can see how that can prove useful playing a game of AD&D First Ed, certainly. The Prince comes to mind, as well.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;588742So does pretty much anything from the Appendix.

Both good suggestions.  Maybe I will make a thread wherein we can discuss the stuff in those that helps improve player skill...

Quote from: TristramEvans;588712Mr. GC.

He's a basketweaver from a small Appalachian community where no other RPGs besides D&D 4th edition are played. Every night his mom-sister chews him out for playing characters that aren't optimized for combat, which makes him cry, but is also the only real attention anyone in his family pays to him so he came to therpgsite for solace.

Though close to thirty years of age he never recieved a real education and didn't graduate high school, so his English and math skills are somewhat below that of a 3rd grader. In fact, he's actually typing in a weird pishogue language and having babelfish translate it for him before posting, which is why his posts make little sense.

Lord Mistborn is his transexual twin "sister" (actually once a conjoined twin).

Enough, please.

Quote from: Mr. GC;588609Being successful, winning at D&D if you'd prefer is a factor of building effective characters but it's also a factor of playing them well, of both getting and using resources well. So if say, I made a character and gave it to a basket weaver they'd still die horribly because they couldn't use it right, and they'd probably do something like turn a fairly standard Wizard into a Fireball spammer or something noobish like that.

It's important to note that in your definition of playing the game right is impossible to find any reference to playing a role.

QuoteSo if you want to actually deal with traps successfully, you start pole dancing and you leave the worthless thief at home.

The description of the environment and your actions is not playing any part of the game. I get it.

QuoteIt's a stupid monster. You fly over it and move on. It's welcome to go eat the gimpy, non flight having Fighter and Rogue. See if I care.

You have avoided the question. I guess it is because youa re still pretending that all fights happen in featureless arenas.

QuoteOh look, someone who is a mental health expert on the Internet. And yet is getting played like a lute by a bored powergamer. What's that say about you?

The only part true in your statement is that you are a bored powergamer. What's that saying about you? That you are just a bored kid whith no gaming experience whatsoever other that a very limited niche?

Quote from: Mr. GC;588624If only the basket weavers would just go away... the fact of the matter is they spam their petty obstructionist bullshit everywhere, and are ultimately the reason why good tabletop gamers are near nonexistent (either because they left, or were ruined by bad players, or whatever).

If you or the likes of you are supposed to be a model of good gamers, we should be thankful that good gamers are near nonexistent.

Guys, you're arguing with someone who is 13 or 14.  Let it go.  If I read him correctly, he said he was 10 when he read the AD&D books "a few years ago".


I actually feel kind of bad now for allowing myself to get caught up in the drama.  Dude's just a kid.