Quote from: Haffrung;645111A lot of people figured out D&D's game mode from published adventures. Even a "puzzly" dungeon like White Plume Mountain has a fuckload of combat encounters that you pretty much can't avoid. And the G series? Bloodbaths. Whether revisionist jihadists admit it or not, hack and slash was always a popular - and probably the default - mode of play.

I agree, but would like to think that people learn to enjoy the roleplay aspects at some point even if they start off focused on combat.

I enjoy a good wargame but not neraly as much as I enjoy a good role playing game.

I have run into gamers over the years that admit they play roleplaying games like a wargame for the tactical combat.

Quote from: Benoist;645120It'd be nice if you took your head out of your ass-cheeks and realized that nobody's talking about whether combat had a big part to play in the D&D game from the start or not: it did, and it does.

The contention is whether combat was THE focus of the game throughout its iterations, and THIS is flat-out wrong. And I know that from playing the game personally, from reading through OD&D and AD&D thoroughly, from talking to people like Rob Kuntz, Luke and Ernie Gygax and what their games, game-mastered or played, felt like, and everything tells me that the idea bandied about ever since Mike Mearls started talking about D&D being about "killing things and taking their stuff" on his livejournal is total bullshit.

Now you might have played with DMs that made it all about combat and construed "hack and slash" as just kicking a door, rolling to hit and getting the treasure for whoever was left standing, but that's not what hack and slash actually is, that's not how the game was played originally, and that's certainly not how the game books of OD&D and AD&D formulated it either, if you cared to re-read them and got over your own bloody bias.

I was fortunate as a young gm to be told by a player that I was doing it wrong. When I first started gming I thought you made dungeons with level one monsters on level one, level two monsters on level two, etc...
Fill up those rooms with monsters!

So my early adventures were nothing more than dungeons filled with monsters to fight.

After this reality check from a player, I learned to focus on roleplay and setting.

I went from lame ass gm to good gm fairly quickly.

Also I was fortunate to experience a few really horrid gm's that demonstrated what not to do.

But combat was what I assumed the game was about when I first discovered Basic dnd and adnd.

Quote from: Benoist;645120It'd be nice if you took your head out of your ass-cheeks and realized that nobody's talking about whether combat had a big part to play in the D&D game from the start or not: it did, and it does.

The contention is whether combat was THE focus of the game throughout its iterations, and THIS is flat-out wrong. And I know that from playing the game personally, from reading through OD&D and AD&D thoroughly, from talking to people like Rob Kuntz, Luke and Ernie Gygax and what their games, game-mastered or played, felt like, and everything tells me that the idea bandied about ever since Mike Mearls started talking about D&D being about "killing things and taking their stuff" on his livejournal is total bullshit.

But you didn't play a whole lot of D&D back in the day, did you Benoist? Like so many of the OSR jihadists, you've learned about True Old School ways from forums. But why in fuck should how Rob Kuntz, or Frank Mentzer, or Gary Gygax himself played matter, except as a historical curiosity?

The way D&D was played once it was out in the wild by 1978 is what old-school D&D was, not what a bunch of forum wanks parsing the Scrolls of Olde Lake Geneva claim. I played in a thriving local city scene from 1978 to 1986. I saw how 10, 15 different groups played. Lunch-time school groups. Neighbours. Conventions. And while playstyles certainly varied, the norm was very different from what the forum revisionists claim.

Yes, there were often monsters that you had to run away from. But you killed most monsters on sight. Yes, there was a lot of exploration and puzzle-solving. But at the end of the day, you tried to clear out a dungeon level because that was the only way to be sure you got all the loot. This notion that D&D was primarily about sneaking in to get the golden crown and sneaking out again is bullshit. It may have been the way some groups played sometimes. It certainly wasn't the norm at the table, or even the norm for published adventures. Get your hands on one of the old DM's Adventure logs. A table to fill in the list of PCs and their stats on one page, and a table to fill in the monsters, their treasure, and XP on the facing page. And the example has a full page of kills.

Quote from: Benoist;645120Now you might have played with DMs that made it all about combat and construed "hack and slash" as just kicking a door, rolling to hit and getting the treasure for whoever was left standing, but that's not what hack and slash actually is, that's not how the game was played originally, and that's certainly not how the game books of OD&D and AD&D formulated it either, if you cared to re-read them and got over your own bloody bias.

I went through the Dark Tower with a first level party. How's that for fantasy fucking Vietnam? We had to hunt down and kill every giant rat in the place in order to level up and start hunting down every goblin in the place, and then make ourselves useful to Avakris and his ambitions, all the while avoiding Vredni, Eater of the dead. But that certainly wasn't the norm. My DM had a reputation as a killer DM, and even for him this was an extreme case.

I get that some people have always played D&D that way. What gets on my nerves is claiming it's the way most people played, or (worse) claiming it's the way the game was meant to played. Once D&D was out in the wild, it was everyone's game. It's sad that a lot of younger players who weren't around then have to go by second-hand accounts to learn about old-school D&D. The problem is that a very particular mode of play has been evangelized by a small clique of forum posters and bloggers who, out of incendiary hatred of WotC and its fans, employ revisionism to foster a model of old-school D&D as different as humanly possible from modern D&D.

Quote from: Bill;645179I was fortunate as a young gm to be told by a player that I was doing it wrong. When I first started gming I thought you made dungeons with level one monsters on level one, level two monsters on level two, etc...
Fill up those rooms with monsters!

So my early adventures were nothing more than dungeons filled with monsters to fight.

That style of play was actually encouraged by TSR supplements like Dungeon Geomorphs and Monster and Treasure Assortments. Or look at the section of the AD&D DMG on creating random dungeons. You do, in fact, roll on a monster table corresponding to the level of the dungeon.

I think most people grow out of that mode of play. But you certainly weren't doing it wrong. It was a common, and as I said earlier, default mode of play for a while there. What's the Caverns of Chaos in the Keep on the Borderlands except a bunch of monster lairs jammed together, organized roughly by difficulty?

Quote from: Haffrung;645183That style of play was actually encouraged by TSR supplements like Dungeon Geomorphs and Monster and Treasure Assortments. Or look at the section of the AD&D DMG on creating random dungeons. You do, in fact, roll on a monster table corresponding to the level of the dungeon.

I think most people grow out of that mode of play. But you certainly weren't doing it wrong. It was a common, and as I said earlier, default mode of play for a while there. What's the Caverns of Chaos in the Keep on the Borderlands except a bunch of monster lairs jammed together, organized roughly by difficulty?

While the caverns of chaos are mostly just a lot of monsters, the entire module has some depth. I ran that module again recently and it was a blast.
Full of plot hooks, things to do, and interesting npc's.

Quote from: Benoist;645120The contention is whether combat was THE focus of the game throughout its iterations, and THIS is flat-out wrong. And I know that from playing the game personally, from reading through OD&D and AD&D thoroughly, from talking to people like Rob Kuntz, Luke and Ernie Gygax and what their games, game-mastered or played, felt like, and everything tells me that the idea bandied about ever since Mike Mearls started talking about D&D being about "killing things and taking their stuff" on his livejournal is total bullshit.

I believe you.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;645167System does matter. Perhaps not for the reasons that Edwards claimed it does, but it is relevant. System impacts how and why decisions are made.

This quoted part is right for the wrong reasons.

D&D, among many people, was as Ben described. It was, for most people, as GnomeWorks and Haffrug have described.

The problem is, the playstyle Ben describes was allowed by the rules, but not taught by them.

So most players didn't play that way.

"Because they were fucking fucktards!"

Maybe. It doesn't matter. The game manuals didn't explicitly teach that style of play, and in the absence of such guidelines (not rules which compel it, but guidelines — "here's ways to have fun within the rules") most people fell back on the most easily grasped, lowest common denominator aspect of RPG's: killing evil things and taking their stuff.

(Plus, power fantasy. Crack to kids. "I totally kicked it's ass!" "My dude has 18/00!" etc.)

GM's don't spring up from nowhere. And most games are relatively good about teaching them the rules, and how to apply them.

But most are really bad about — "Hey players and GM's: in addition to the rules, here's ways of thinking about challenges in the game. Here's some things to do, that will be more interesting than killing. Here's all the cool stuf we do, that aren't part of the rules, but which are totally the shit."

Let's stipulate that Ben's right on the facts. Let's further stipulate that the described mode of play is fun as fucking hell.

I'll speculate that mode (and close variants) drives much of the OSR love, and "movement". But the OSR people don't seem to understand that their rules set doesn't, in and of itself, explain or establish this mode of play. (And doesn't have to. And probably shouldn't.)

But, in addition to the rules, there's the advice. And the advice on how to play in the "outhinking the dungeon" mode is woefully absent.

The playstyle isn't just some magic thing that, if you crack open OSRIC, will magically appear at the table, "because that's what OS D&D is about!"

So, instead of preaching the virtues of 4 classes, weapon/armor modifier tables, and what the fuck ever, Old Schoolers should probably be teaching people how to play the game in the old school way. Not the moments of zen, that shit fucking sucked (because it was all about mechanics, and wrong to boot), but how to outthink a dungeon.

It's not the system, stupid. It's the play style.

So stop banging on about how awesome the system is and teach the playstyle.

That's my two cents.

Hi, new poster here.

I didn't play a lot of D&D in the 80s (or most RPGs in general), but saying that D&D was about combat more than anything else... I mean, that's not the way I remember.

Using the same logic, my conclusion is that D&D was about mapping. It was about filling a square grid paper with the corridors, until you had a complete copy of whatever was in the DM's square grid paper.

Each room could have a monster, a trap, an unguarded treasure, nothing, flavor text, I don't know. But I wouldn't say it was about combat, because you had about equal chance of finding either of these. And from what I remember, monster treasure tables had a separate value for what they were usually carrying, and what they had stashed away (most of their loot was in their lair, so yeah if you killed them there you'd probably get nice shiny stuff and had to fight for it, but you might not even find the monster at all if he's just walking clockwise down the corridors same as you ).

So, in conclusion, D&D was about completing the map. What you found in each "40' x 30' room, with a long table" blah blah was just a situational hazard.

And now, those forum hippies with their "well you'll probably remember the layout of the dungeon so you can find the exit" can git outta my lawn.

(EDIT: for the record, not having to draw a map in 10' grid paper most of the time is an improvement to me)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645200It's not the system, stupid. It's the play style.

You can't just ignore mechanics, though. As has been observed elsewhere, good mechanics ideally help engender interesting gameplay, while bad mechanics obstruct it.

I wasn't trying to say system is the only thing - obviously there needs to be more, as you pointed out - but it is a thing, and it shouldn't be ignored. Bad mechanics can just as easily kill a game as a GM with minimal grasp of what makes the game interesting.

Quote from: Haffrung;645180I get that some people have always played D&D that way. What gets on my nerves is claiming it's the way most people played

Something I have not said once.

Quote from: Haffrung;645180or (worse) claiming it's the way the game was meant to played.

Never said that either.

What I did say is that the contention that "combat was the main focus of the game throughout its iterations" is WRONG. Period. The end. And that if you actually care to play the game, you'll find out that combat doesn't have to be the main focus of the game for one thing, that if you read the original booklets of Dungeons & Dragons there's a THIRD of the game that's named "Underworld and Wilderness adventures" which details what the rules of Men & Magic and Monsters & Treasures are supposed to be used for, which is, you guessed it, exploring dungeons and the wilderness, which both come with a variety of potential threats and tactics, not solely combat, not even mainly direct brainless kick the door confrontations, especially at low levels, that AD&D (the *ADVANCED* game) does not have a "main focus" on combat EITHER, because the main focus is instead the campaign milieu, the world to explore - just read your DMG for God's sakes.

As for Fantasy Fucking Vietnam, I played AD&D 1st edition solo with the DM running Temple of Elemental Evil for months. I was 11 years old. And I went through easily more than half a dozen characters before one of them made it to level 2, who got then killed later at level 2. It took me a dozen characters to reach heroic levels (4th plus). But I did it. I was learning. The DM (my much older cousin, in his twenties at the time) was tough, and fair. I adventured with some other people recruited at Hommlet, I stole treasure avoiding the ogres. I did whatever it took to get into the less trouble possible. And it was a blast, let me tell you.

You got me all wrong dude. You put me in a little box with "OSR jyhadist" on it and think you've got me all figured out. I don't know what "OSR" is supposed to mean anymore, if it ever actually meant something clear, and I don't give a shit. What I do know is that I enjoy the games, I've read them (and not 15 years ago, mind you, I read them again NOW, as I'm playing and running my games and working on my own stuff - it's not a vague memory, I'm still using the books now), I play them, and I know plenty of people, including some of the people from Lake Geneva whom I call friends, who are also still playing the games and know what the game is and isn't and what it can be in the ends of a competent DM thinking for himself, instead of a drone thinking that the rules are the game.

Who cares? I CARE. That's who. You don't have to give a shit. You can still harp on the same bitter tone about how "OSR jyhadists are full of lies and ruined your breakfast" and keep at it until Kingdom Come. But I do give a shit. And there's nothing you can do about it.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;645210You can't just ignore mechanics, though. As has been observed elsewhere, good mechanics ideally help engender interesting gameplay, while bad mechanics obstruct it.

There is no evidence that the mechanics of OD&D obstruct the playstyle Ben is endorsing.

The problem is, they don't teach it, either.

Whether the mechanics compelled combat heavy gameplay or not, that was the default. It's what most people played. Assertions otherwise are mere fantasies.

If there was a better play style, then those who love it should have taught is, demonstrated it, showed it to people, instead of bunkering up and obsessing over mechanics. Because the mechanics didn't cause the play style. They allowed it; they didn't cause it.

I don't see there being a strong recognition of that fact among the OSR people I've read. For a group that bristles at the mere mention of "system matters", the entire OSR is about pushing system — the mechanics of "old school" D&D.

What do they hate? System — the mechanics of 3e and 4e.

What do they love? System — the mechanics of Old School D&D. (And variants and interesting and well-done derivatives like SWN, and Hulks & Horrors, and Arrows of Indra...)

What does the flagship manifesto of OD&D, the moments of zen malarky, bang on about? System. Mechanics. Rules.

Not play style.

System clearly matters to them.

The problem is, the virtues of the Old School play style were not primarily based in the system. And they weren't obvious deductions from it. So when a 12 year old cracked the mother open, they didn't find it. It wasn't there.

Maybe they should, you know, help people find it, is all I'm saying. Then people might come to love the Old School play style.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645219The problem is, they don't teach it, either.

YES, they do. Underworld & Wilderness Adventures is the third booklet for a reason, dammit.

Also, read your first edition DMG. NO, I don't mean using the matrixes and ignoring the text because it's "boring" or something, or remembering those days decades ago when that's exactly what you or others used the book for to then say on forums how you know the book backwards and forwards. I mean read it. Now. Fresh. And actually think about what the book is talking to you about in the text. It's there.

Quote from: Benoist;645220YES, they do. Underworld & Wilderness Adventures is the third booklet for a reason, dammit.

Printed in 1974, went out of print in 1976.

After that?

It wasn't there. Not clearly, not compellingly.

The play style you advocate was not taught.

Quote from: Benoist;645220And actually think about what the book is talking to you about in the text. It's there.

The expectation that a novice player — who's never picked up the game before — can and should read the DMG and grok from it the playstyle you're advocating for is mistaken.

I point to the simple fact that most people didn't. Even those who wanted to learn the game inside and out.

And the problem isn't that Gygax prose is boring — it's obscure and overwritten. (At least, by the AD&D era.)

People played what was immediately apparent. And if that was the default playstyle expected, it should have been clearly and simply stated, up front, in the PHB (and in the Basic sets.)

It wasn't.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645221The play style you advocate was not taught.

It is. Read your PH, DMG and MM.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645219There is no evidence that the mechanics of OD&D obstruct the playstyle Ben is endorsing.

...I know?

You said it's not the system, it was the playstyle. I was reiterating my stance that system matters, and that it has a hand in encouraging or obstructing particular styles of play.

Quote from: Benoist;645222Read your PH, DMG and MM.

...which?