Just to keep it simple, I'd have the player on point roll to detect the pit trap. If he detects it, he sees it.

Under oldschool, i'd use the same chances as detecting secret doors, i.e. most players will find the pit trap with a roll of 1 on a d6, thieves, elves, and dwarves would spot in with a roll of 1-2d6.

Under 3e it would be a normal difficulty requiring a DC 20 Search check. Intelligence Attribute bonuses and Search skills modifiers apply. Elves get +2, Half-elves get +1, and Dwarves get a +2 racial modifier if the pit is cut into stone.

If the guy on point spots the trap, then the whole crew gets an opportunity to disarm it (if the point guy decides to warn the rest of the party), otherwise the point guy triggers (and is caught) in the trap... and falls into the pit.

Quote from: everloss;707800It was a bit of culture shock when I first met other gamers who had to have rules for everything. If the game designer didn't figuratively use finger puppets to explain everything that a decent GM with common sense could figure out and rule on, then the game was "broken."

I generally only hear people say that who started playing games in the 2000s. It's probably a generational thing, as older games weren't preoccupied with rules, while newer games are. People are comfortable around what they are familiar with.

I don't know if this is strictly a generational thing.

Back in the day, I knew a few individuals who griped frequently about this sort of thing.  For the most part, they stopped playing D&D and other tabletop rpg games altogether.  I don't know what other hobbies they moved on to subsequently.

That's why you carry a spear, or a ten foot pole. If the GM screams, "you don't KNOW there's a trap there! You haven't even rolled," that's when you jab the spot from a safe distance.

If the pitfall trap suddenly turns into a pressure plate that summons balors, you know it's time to find a new GM.

Quote from: jibbajibba;707805Again not generational it was always thus.
Some people want to play Dave and Fred exploring the local caverns some want to play Lord David and St Frederick exploring the outer planes of existance.

We all know tales from D&D lore of old where players have Balrog PCs or Vampire PCs .... some people want more power justthe way of it.

Fine, I'll admit munchkins have existed since forever.
My point is though...that if you have Regeneration as a fighter 2nd level utility power or your rogue can crossbow everyone within 30ft as a standard action its much trickier to judge what a character can or can't do.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707813Yeah "an idea of what's reasonably possible" has pretty much always been a problem. Wizards and Dragons don't exist in reality so it's hard to say what's "reasonably possible" for them.

Heck speaking to the power level thing, D&Ds level scaling has basically always been far more bananas then most people assume. In AD&D you're 8th level fighter is a superhero, that's literally the official title for a fighter of his level. Then he can potentially level up 20 more times.

Wizards have always have fairly detailed rules for that reason.
The level titles date back to Chainmail, but past 9th level its only +3 hit points per level and some minor perks (e.g. better to-hit and saves), and at a huge cost in XP.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707813Yeah "an idea of what's reasonably possible" has pretty much always been a problem. Wizards and Dragons don't exist in reality so it's hard to say what's "reasonably possible" for them.

That's why from the start RPGs have had magic systems and stats for Dragons. I'm confused, are you mixing up RnR with freestyle play?

QuoteHeck speaking to the power level thing, D&Ds level scaling has basically always been far more bananas then most people assume. In AD&D you're 8th level fighter is a superhero, that's literally the official title for a fighter of his level. Then he can potentially level up 20 more times.

"Superhero" meaning Conan or Batman though, not Green Lantern. And it's literally just a title. Are there any actual rules that make the character at 8th level more excessively powerful in that edition than any other?

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707756The position I'm arguing against is that having PC be able work within the rules at all is badwrong and anyone who thinks that should be a thing is the cancer killing TTRPGs.

Yeah, back in Symbolic Logic 101, they call that a "straw man argument."  Look it up.  This kind of perpetual bullshit is one of the many reasons you're on a lot of Ignore lists.

Back to making sense ...

I've mulled over Haffrung's "One of the ugliest things about the modern approach to RPGs is the notion that players are entitled to have a GM who runs the game the way they like" statement, and I couldn't disagree more.  I think this is a beautiful thing.  Players ARE entitled to play with GMs who run the games they like, the same way that GMs are entitled to run the games they like, and have players at their table who buy into them.  

I play RPGs as a hobby.  This is my leisure, fun time.  I am not a public utility, I already do enough community service through helping with the regional Community Meals program.  I am required to cater to no one, I very much don't believe in "Bad gaming is better than no gaming," and I decline to put up with a game on either end of the dice which pisses me off.

That being said, yeah, put me down as being on the side of "Old School = low entropy is total bullshit."  I have a quote for you.

QuoteThis volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's.  Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are.  This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters.  When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?

That's from the foreword to the original Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes.  At the time Tim Kask wrote that foreword, D&D had been in print less than two years.

Of course, we know what happened; it wasn't that the high-power campaigns all said "Omigawd, we've been so horribly wrong!" and threw their magic item bins away.  It's that they started to brag around their gaming tables "Dude, like, man, last session we went to ASGARD, and we ran into ODIN, and we like smacked that guy UP and made him beg for his life on his knees!!!"

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Quote from: gamerGoyf;707756No I don't because that's not what's on the table. My proposition is actually the middle ground where player have things they can do within the rules and going outside the rules and into GM ruling territory is still possible. The position I'm arguing against is that having PC be able work within the rules at all is badwrong and anyone who thinks that should be a thing is the cancer killing TTRPGs.

Players do have things they can do within the rules, even in old school gaming.

Last night I DMed an OD&D session. The players had defeated some cultists and were searching their hideout caves. The dwarf had the ability to detect unusual stonework and so found the iron box of treasure under the altar. The elf was great at detecting secret doors and found the one made from a fake piece of wall just by moving past it.

Likewise a normal stuck door will open on a 1-2 on a d6, and so on. These are actual game rules that grant players certain chances to do things. The players used the abilities that they had and no badwrongfun was had.

The lack of a lot of pre-defined moves is also an incentive for players do to clever fun stuff that they might not consider if they are constantly staring at a list of semi-reliable menu options.

Earlier in the adventure the dwarf and elf had released some captives and sent them out with a hireling to escort them home. They then searched the small temple cave with the altar. The elf walked straight toward the altar, seeing the glow of gems encrusted and somehow walked straight over a floor trap without triggering it. After pocketing two candelabras he made his way back toward the dwarf and triggered the trap!

A cage fell and trapped the elf while sounding the alarm. Both adventurers heard the sound of approaching footsteps so the dwarf ducked behind the altar and hid. The cultists came in cackling with delight at capturing an elf. The elf taunted the cultist cleric into a rage (all done via actual dialogue). 2 of the cultists went to check on the prisoners while the cleric and his other 2 cronies decided to teach the insolent elf a lesson. One cultist went to the wall by the entrance and tripped the counterweight raising the cage. Initiative was rolled and the fight began. The dwarf peeked and saw what was happening. He called for the elf to fall back, which he did. The evil cleric advanced on the elf swinging his mace.  The dwarf then rushed out and went for the trap trigger. I assigned the trigger an AC of 7. The dwarf hit it solidly and brought the cage down trapping the evil cleric.

Just because the game doesn't make use of a slew of pre-defined mechanical options doesn't mean there aren't things the players can do using the rules.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707793This is my argument

a) in order for "player skill" to be a thing "meaningful choices" have to be enabled. Or in other words what players chose to do has to directly lead to successes or failures.

b) in rulings heavy games meaningful choices are impossible because

c) the parameters of success and failure are determined on the spot by the GM in response to player declarations.

The analogy I usually use for this is the Monty Hall problem, if Monty get's to decide if the door contains a car or goat after you pick it then that decision obviously wasn't meaningful. That's how ruling based resolution works because your success or failure is more the result of how much the GM likes your decision than the decision itself.

Meaningful choice has depth beyond immediate success or failure in the campaign world. Often such choices are not binary in nature. Its not like every decision point is a right or wrong answer.

The DM who hasn't decided the possible outcomes of a player choice before the player decides is engaging in illusionism to some degree. If the DM decides that event X is going to happen IF trigger Y is tripped then player action that doesn't hit trigger Y should prevent event X. Deciding after the players have avoided trigger Y that event X is happening anyway is robbing the players of meaningful choice.

Your claim seems to be built on the assumption that any DM running an old school game is engaging in rampant illusionism. If that were the case, many of us would find ourselves without players.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;707901Players do have things they can do within the rules, even in old school gaming.

Last night I DMed an OD&D session. The players had defeated some cultists and were searching their hideout caves. The dwarf had the ability to detect unusual stonework and so found the iron box of treasure under the altar. The elf was great at detecting secret doors and found the one made from a fake piece of wall just by moving past it.

Likewise a normal stuck door will open on a 1-2 on a d6, and so on. These are actual game rules that grant players certain chances to do things. The players used the abilities that they had and no badwrongfun was had.

The lack of a lot of pre-defined moves is also an incentive for players do to clever fun stuff that they might not consider if they are constantly staring at a list of semi-reliable menu options.

Earlier in the adventure the dwarf and elf had released some captives and sent them out with a hireling to escort them home. They then searched the small temple cave with the altar. The elf walked straight toward the altar, seeing the glow of gems encrusted and somehow walked straight over a floor trap without triggering it. After pocketing two candelabras he made his way back toward the dwarf and triggered the trap!

A cage fell and trapped the elf while sounding the alarm. Both adventurers heard the sound of approaching footsteps so the dwarf ducked behind the altar and hid. The cultists came in cackling with delight at capturing an elf. The elf taunted the cultist cleric into a rage (all done via actual dialogue). 2 of the cultists went to check on the prisoners while the cleric and his other 2 cronies decided to teach the insolent elf a lesson. One cultist went to the wall by the entrance and tripped the counterweight raising the cage. Initiative was rolled and the fight began. The dwarf peeked and saw what was happening. He called for the elf to fall back, which he did. The evil cleric advanced on the elf swinging his mace.  The dwarf then rushed out and went for the trap trigger. I assigned the trigger an AC of 7. The dwarf hit it solidly and brought the cage down trapping the evil cleric.

Just because the game doesn't make use of a slew of pre-defined mechanical options doesn't mean there aren't things the players can do using the rules.



Meaningful choice has depth beyond immediate success or failure in the campaign world. Often such choices are not binary in nature. Its not like every decision point is a right or wrong answer.

The DM who hasn't decided the possible outcomes of a player choice before the player decides is engaging in illusionism to some degree. If the DM decides that event X is going to happen IF trigger Y is tripped then player action that doesn't hit trigger Y should prevent event X. Deciding after the players have avoided trigger Y that event X is happening anyway is robbing the players of meaningful choice.

Your claim seems to be built on the assumption that any DM running an old school game is engaging in rampant illusionism. If that were the case, many of us would find ourselves without players.

OMG!!!

Did you let the Dwarf Hide@ without the hide skill!?!

Badwrong!

Just because there was a stone altar there, and anyone can get behind it....

You cheating GM!!!




Sounds like a great game!

Quote from: everloss;707800I didn't grow up playing old school DnD, or fantasy games for that matter, but the conventions explained in the Old School Primer is how I learned to play the games I did play back in the day.

It was a bit of culture shock when I first met other gamers who had to have rules for everything. If the game designer didn't figuratively use finger puppets to explain everything that a decent GM with common sense could figure out and rule on, then the game was "broken."

I generally only hear people say that who started playing games in the 2000s. It's probably a generational thing, as older games weren't preoccupied with rules, while newer games are. People are comfortable around what they are familiar with.

It is a generational thing because it is an educational thing.  As an employer it has been almost impossible to find young people to hire that can REALLY read & write, since ~1995.  If I don't have reminders flashed onto their computer screen every 5 minutes telling them to breathe I'd lose 20% of my staff daily.

Quote from: jibbajibba;707795it was always thus.

I don't recall systems being designed in the 80s to address player distrust of GMs. The solution to a game you didn't like was, as you said, starting your own game or playing with someone else. But judging by discussions on forums these days, and comments by designers themselves, the solution today is to design systems that give less latitude to the GM in order to make players happy. That's a fundamentally different approach to the idea that each table is different because each GM is different.

Quote from: Arduin;707923It is a generational thing because it is an educational thing.  As an employer it has been almost impossible to find young people to hire that can REALLY read & write, since ~1995.  If I don't have reminders flashed onto their computer screen every 5 minutes telling them to breathe I'd lose 20% of my staff daily.

Is this dependent on the education institutions that such young people have went through?

Whether a community college, ivy league, high ranking technical university (ie. MIT, Caltech, etc ...), private or state university, etc ...

Or is this independent of the educational institution(s) attended?

Quote from: Haffrung;707925I don't recall systems being designed in the 80s to address player distrust of GMs. The solution to a game you didn't like was, as you said, starting your own game or playing with someone else. But judging by discussions on forums these days, and comments by designers themselves, the solution today is to design systems that give less latitude to the GM in order to make players happy. That's a fundamentally different approach to the idea that each table is different because each GM is different.

Any game intended to be a fun social activity driven by the imagination of the participants that begins with the premise that the participants first goal is to shit on everyone else is doomed to fail.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707726Now you can say that you personally like playing that sort of game, but you can't claim it encourages player skill because player decisions don't actually matter.

It works consistently when the foundation of the referee decision is to describe and adjudicate as if the players were really there. If you marked down that the locale is a temperate forest glade and describe it as such the players will know that they won't find a cactus. Just as if they are at a desert oasis they are not going to find a sugar maple.

At some point the referee notes are not adequate to cover some detail the player wants to know or use. At which point you assign some random chance that it will be there. For example a rock of a given size or a branch of a given size.

Quote from: Haffrung;707925I don't recall systems being designed in the 80s to address player distrust of GMs. The solution to a game you didn't like was, as you said, starting your own game or playing with someone else. But judging by discussions on forums these days, and comments by designers themselves, the solution today is to design systems that give less latitude to the GM in order to make players happy. That's a fundamentally different approach to the idea that each table is different because each GM is different.

True. That latter school of RPG design can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned.

Quote from: ggroy;707926Is this dependent on the education institutions such young people have went through?

Whether a community college, ivy league, high ranking technical university (ie. MIT, Caltech, etc ...), private or state university, etc ...

Or is this independent of institution attended?

If they had obtained a private primary EDU we don't encounter these problems nearly as often.  Post secondary EDU seems to have little bearing on the matter (excepting purely technical acumen).  Although, I did not encounter this phenomenon with the two Service Academy Grads I hired...

So, the irreversible problem apparently stems from a wholly inadequate primary education.  The foundation, as it were, is made of sand.