Quote from: robiswrong;741404I think there's a very strong point here, that at some point "how to be unique" went from "what you did with the character" to "what unique mechanical widgets do you have?"

If I held a seminar on Advanced Roleplaying for the Modern Gentleman, I'd have the participants bring character sheets for their most beloved PCs. I'd have them tell me their coolest anecdote about something that PC did in an adventure. Then I'd light the character sheets on fire one by one, drop them in a trash can, and tell the players they have lost nothing important.

Quote from: Ladybird;741425Everybody was a crap GM to start with. Everyone leaping to keyboards to refute me was too crap to know they were crap. But everybody is crap at something when they start doing it, so it's fine; congratulations to all of us on sticking with it and getting better.

My first year or two playing D&D, when my friends and I were 11-12 year-olds  making it up as we went, were some of the funnest times of my life. We were young gods. Promethean. If I could sprinkle a spoonful of that neophyte gold dust into the air vents at GenCon today, the pleasure level of everyone at the convention would red-line.

We were crap? May as well say my son is crap at playing with his Star Wars Lego and desperately needs a solid set of guidelines to improve his play.

Quote from: BenoistWhat if the referee makes a GOOD call? What if the referee was a human being able to learn from practice to get better at the judgment calls he or she makes when refereeing the game?

Quote from: BenoistI  disagree. I've seen much more back and forths occurring about the letter of the rules in any one situation in game, rather than the alternative where it's understood from the get-go that the DM is the referee, he makes a call, and we move on with the game. I also disagree that more or less options would automatically make the game more or less consistent. It depends on the nature of the rules, and their implementation in game play.

These are both good points.  What they highlight - and perhaps part of what I'm I was trying to get at? - is that just as the different editions provide different experiences for players they make different demands on the skill-sets of DMs.

In OD&D, the ability of the DM to make on-the-fly decisions and ad-hoc rulings that remain balanced with the rest of the game is privileged. An OD&D DM, in other words, is called on to make up mechanics more regularly than a 3.X DM, and so needs to be better at inventing, implementing, and on-the-fly balancing new mechanics.  A good DM is going to compensate for the lack of tactical specificity and granularity in OD&D by making, good, balanced, consistent rulings and encouraging player creativity and tactical thinking, even if the rules themselves don't provide an extensive set of tactical options.  A bad OD&D DM is going to make inconsistent or poorly thought-out rules that frustrate players, stifle creativity, or upset the combat mechanics.

Conversely, the ability of a DM to explain and interpret the rules, and to mitigate rules-lawyering, is privileged in a 3.X game.  A 3.X DM doesn't have to worry as much about making up new mechanics and ensuring they're balanced, because the game has already done that work for them, but they do need a greater awareness of how that large body of rules can be adapted to different situations and of how to deal with certain types of gamers.  A good 3.X DM is going to encourage player creativity and strategic thinking by interpreting the rules flexibly and fairly.  A bad 3.X DM is going to end up mired in lengthy debates about the letter of the rules, stalling the game and causing friction.

Quote from: BenoistI don't think people who are playing with later editions are having badwrongfun. I would strongly object to the characterization these people would be making of other play styles they would like less, however, calling them inconsistent or inefficient or whatever else, if that actually does not reflect the objective reality of these play styles in action (i.e. some DMs are great, some DMs are bad and unable to ever improve because of personality or hang-ups or whatnot, and most are somewhere in between, making mistakes from time to time, with the ability to improve over time).

Strongly agreed.  I'm all for debating the specifics of different play styles, not the superiority or inferiority of said play styles.  The question I'm interested in is whether older editions - which emphasize DM fiat/referee authority while leaving the combat rules relatively amorphous, reliant on DM judgment and player creativity - are better at encouraging a particularly "tactical," detail-rich style of gameplay for fighters, in which fighters can feel especially "unique," than newer editions are.

It seems to me that since some newer editions lay out a greater plethora of options for fighters without curtailing or delimiting improvisation, they have the potential to offer a richer tactical landscape, at least in the hands of a capable DM (and, as you point out, we should generally assume that the DM is basically competent).  With a list of abilities already "at hand," the fighter's player has a greater number of options already at their disposal, and the codified nature of those options ensures that they have partial (but not complete) information that might help them evaluate the efficacy of particular strategies concretely.  This greater number of options shouldn't constitute a prescriptive list of moves from which fighters can't deviate, though; a 3.X fighter should be capable of everything an OD&D fighter is capable of.

In other words, I feel that newer editions offer a more baroque, extensive toolkit for detailed tactical combat and character customization than older editions.  Naturally this detail-rich approach has major drawbacks (for example, the peril of the game devolving into a pissing contest between "builds"), but I do think it provides a certain experience the old school doesn't.

Does that make sense?

Quote from: Frundsberg;741371Has he finally achieved demonhood?

Fortunately, I can be propitiated with beer.

Quote from: Steerpike;741456In other words, I feel that newer editions offer a more baroque, extensive toolkit for detailed tactical combat and character customization than older editions.  Naturally this detail-rich approach has major drawbacks (for example, the peril of the game devolving into a pissing contest between "builds"), but I do think it provides a certain experience the old school doesn't.

Does that make sense?

Sure, and OD&D provides a certain experience that newer editions don't.  A friend who cut his teeth on 3.5 E and Pathfinder switched to OD&D after playing in my campaign for 6 months because, as he put it, "if I want to sneak up behind somebody and knock them out, I just say so, you roll dice, it either happens or it doesn't, and we get on with the damn game."

Different people like different things.  It's too bad that "wrong" had to enter the equation, but it happened a long time ago and I don't know how to un-open Pandora's box except by trying hard not to go there.  But it's hard once somebody has characterized your play style as "wrong" or "bad" or "stupid" not to respond heatedly, no matter what play style that is.

Quote from: JeremyR;741336It's like some other thread saying how wonderful D&D was before the thief was invented, because everyone could do thief stuff.

Kicking out the thief is one of my most favorite ideas from the OSR.

Kicking out the thief as a class suddenly adds so much more to actual play since the rest of the table just can't sit back and let the thief do it. Now, everybody is a reaver which is a lot of fun.

Quote from: Old GeezerSure, and OD&D provides a certain experience that newer editions don't. A friend who cut his teeth on 3.5 E and Pathfinder switched to OD&D after playing in my campaign for 6 months because, as he put it, "if I want to sneak up behind somebody and knock them out, I just say so, you roll dice, it either happens or it doesn't, and we get on with the damn game."

Full agreement here.  In practice I think a good 3.X DM compensates for the clunkiness and excessive rolls of the granular mechanics to streamline play just as a good OD&D DM thinks on their feet and gets really good at improvising consistent mechanics for things.

Quote from: Old GeezerDifferent people like different things. It's too bad that "wrong" had to enter the equation, but it happened a long time ago and I don't know how to un-open Pandora's box except by trying hard not to go there. But it's hard once somebody has characterized your play style as "wrong" or "bad" or "stupid" not to respond heatedly, no matter what play style that is.

Definitely!  This is why I was trying to interrogate the opening post (though I didn't get a response from Black Vulmea ), which seemed to be implying that liking the baroque character options and codified rules for combat maneuvers was stupid/wrong, and that those who wanted such options should just shut up and organically develop their characters through the game, like men did in the old days

Quote from: Ladybird;741425Erm, because different GM's are different people with different experiences and takes on the rules and the situation, and with different groups and different plans. We all know this, GM'ing is an art form rather than a science. Of course everyone will do it differently.

Saying everybody will do it differently is an extreme. You don't need mechanics to judge what happens when you fall off of a 100' cliff. You will die barring special circumstances.

If you are playing Dungeons & Dragons you expect to be playing in a setting with normal world physic hold true. Unless otherwise specified (like being on another plane).

Quote from: Ladybird;741425You can cure being crap with experience, but the game designer should also try to help people get up to speed with how to run their game and have fun doing it; it's kinda their job. That doesn't mean "here are the rules for all of the combat maneuvers:", but some "here are some examples of how to judge situations in play:".

The problem that I have (and other do as well) is the many modern RPGs system are infested with the euro-game mentality. Build a game first and then just write some fluff text to turn it into into a RPG. Settlers of Catan is a fun and eminently playable game. But despite all that, the whole settlement stuff is just fluff and the mechanics don't really reflect how real world settlement works even in an abstract sense.

When you build a RPG this way, nobody can assume anything. It is a lot harder to extrapolate from what you visualize (as if you are there) into  mechanics. The only way to play is to master the rules.

In contrast a game like GURPS, D&D, Runequest. Mechanics have a 1 to 1 correspondes to the reality of the setting. Abstractly in the case of D&D, detailed in the case of GURPS. In both cases it easy to start by visualizing as if you were really there and figure out which mechanics to apply to adjudicate the situation.

And because the non-supernatural elements of most games are things we experience in our normal everyday lives (at one time or another) there is a common base from which all of us are making our rulings. So while the particulars may vary, they all variation on the same theme.

Jumping a 10' chasm is possible without supernatural aid, a 100' chasm is not without supernatural aid. Falling off a 20' cliff is survivable but may hurt you, while 100' is pretty certain death.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with anything you are saying. However you are missing the issues that gets a lot of us annoyed. Too much focus on the rules first and non enough in learning to adjudicate based on circumstances the players actually are in.

Quote from: estar;741566If you are playing Dungeons & Dragons you expect to be playing in a setting with normal world physic hold true. Unless otherwise specified (like being on another plane).

I feel that this is extremely important because the wonder, awe and other-worldliness of magic, magic items, weird creatures and bizarre planes need to have a point of reference. Strangeness isn't strange if EVERYTHING is, right?

Quote from: Monkey Boy;741341We already had this thread. It was the fighters are boring thread. It's been going on a lot on the internet lately. It seems to be the new Alignment arguement. It's just as boring.

It makes more sense to counter these arguements at the source rather than post about them here.

But you see, that'd be a normal response rather than a polar equivalent of grognards.txt.

Quote from: Steerpike;741304Is this supposed to be a dig at 3.X/Pathfinder and the impulse towards mechanical customization and a codified abundance of character options?

'I like x' != 'y sucks.'

Quote from: Steerpike;741487This is why I was trying to interrogate the opening post (though I didn't get a response from Black Vulmea ) . . .

"Interrogate" my post? What the fuckity fuck does that even mean?

And I have a fucking life, dipshit.

Quote from: Steerpike;741487. . . which seemed to be implying that liking the baroque character options and codified rules for combat maneuvers was stupid/wrong, and that those who wanted such options should just shut up and organically develop their characters through the game, like men did in the old days

Get yourself a fucking fainting couch, Pauline.

Oh, and in case you missed it the first time, 'I like x' != 'y sucks.'

Quote from: JeremyR;741336Want to play someone like Zorro? Someone like Bruce Lee? It's just not going to work with the D&D fighter no how matter much you want it.

BULLSHIT.

Quote from: JeremyR;741336Mechanically, the D&D fighter can basically do one thing - wear armor and hit stuff with a weapon.

Let me give you a hint: this has nothing to do with D&D fighters.

Quote from: Monkey Boy;741341We already had this thread. It was the fighters are boring thread.

Let me give you a hint: this has nothing to do with D&D fighters.

Quote from: robiswrong;741404I think there's a very strong point here, that at some point "how to be unique" went from "what you did with the character" to "what unique mechanical widgets do you have?"

And that's why this has nothing to do with D&D fighters.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;741612Let me give you a hint: this has nothing to do with D&D fighters.

.

That threw me off a bit too.  The part about mechanically all fighters do is wear armor and hit stuff.  And I'm assuming he's talking about pre-3e before feats were a thing.

Looking at mechanics only, fighters can take the most punishment.  They can use the most magical items.  They get followers.  They can specialize and get % strength bonuses (as well as bend bars, lift gates, etc).  They get NWP.  They have awesome saving throws.  They have the best ability to hit with any weapon.

I'm sure there are others, but those are just off the top of my head.  Now, some of those things do reinforce the traditional sword and board fighter who just goes in and attacks, but it's certainly not limted to that.  There's a lot of versatility there.  If you (general you) think fighters are boring because all they have mechanically are wearing armor and hitting things, then that's on you for lack of creativity and ignornace of other mechanical features of the game that benefit the fighter

Quote from: Black Vulmea;741612And that's why this has nothing to do with D&D fighters.

Presuming that the emphasis is to disambiguate between WotC D&D and TSR OD&D, B/X, and AD&D, I think that means we're in complete agreement.

Gimli of Arabia is a great example.

Yeah whenever I hear anecdotes about characters the last thing that I want to know is what fucking elaborate combination of feats/powers they chose. I know that this is some people's cup of tea, but frankly I'm more interested in what sort of cool stuff the character did or what they experienced. My favorite anecdotes tend to be about cleverness, adaptability and/or defying crazy odds.

I found the Dwarvish Lawrence of Arabia story to be pretty cool, actually.

Quote from: Black Vulmea"Interrogate" my post? What the fuckity fuck does that even mean?

Sorry, I'll use smaller words.

I was trying to figure out what you were getting at with your post.  It seemed to be part of an implied critique with regards to later editions' character creation strategies and combat rules, but it was a little diffuclt to suss out exactly what you were trying to say.  So I was trying to figure that out by asking questions (that's what that fancy word "interrogate" means).  I assumed that by making a thread about it you wanted discussion about the topic.

Maybe that assumption was flawed.

Quote from: Black VulmeaGet yourself a fucking fainting couch, Pauline.

My response was supposed to be tongue in cheek, hence the emoticon

Quote from: Black Vulmea'I like x' != 'y sucks.'

Obviously I'm just being dense here.  I understand what this means, but are you endorsing this little formula, or criticizing it?  I certainly don't think this way; I was trying to figure out whether you did.

You might try explaining things instead of posting cryptic little notations and quotes from people and endlessly repeating yourself and maybe actually articulating opinions.  Again, I'm operating under the potentially flawed assumption that you are actually interested in discussion of the topic that you created.  Perhaps you only wanted discussion if everyone in the thread agreed with your opening assertions?

Quote from: robiswrong;741619Presuming that the emphasis is to disambiguate between WotC D&D and TSR OD&D, B/X, and AD&D, I think that means we're in complete agreement.

Actually, the larger point isn't specific to any iteration of D&D at all.

Like you said, is your character unique because of what's on the character sheet or how you play him? There's a measure of both in every character, but players shade in different directions along that spectrum.

I get why some players want the widgets and builds and such. I'd like for those players to maybe better understand why they're not as important to me.

Quote from: robiswrong;741619Gimli of Arabia is a great example.

:hatsoff: