I'm not a big fan of universal mechanics in my D&D. The problem with a universal mechanic, a mechanic that is clearly labeled as the default resolution system for defining away uncertainty within the game state, is that it becomes very tempting to start phrasing the game's "reality" in terms of the mechanic. If all you need is a hammer, then everything is functionally a nail. Aside from that, you also get the issue of things which are Not The Same mechanically interfacing as if they were The Same, and thus "overloading the channel".

Suppose I'm playing a simple d100 system where I've got a target difficulty that I want to roll over. Simple, universal, easy to understand. Now I have a character type who should be good at doing X, so I write some mechanics to allow a character to get a bonus at X. And there's this magic item that should be good at doing Y, so I give it a bonus to all Y-related rolls. And then there's a race with a natural knack for Z, so whenever it's doing Z, it gets a bonus to the roll. And then somebody makes a character who is that race, that type, and using that magic item to do XYZ. Each bonus was individually meaningful, but stacked together they blow off the die. Attempting to make each factor count mechanically overloads the limited channel in which mechanical difference is allowed to manifest- the single d100 roll.

Okay, you say, just cap the maximum modifier on a given roll, or allow only the biggest modifier. That's simple, yes, but then you've just eradicated the mechanical distinction between those three elements. The single default mechanism only allows for so much mechanical granularity and meaning, and if it's the major resolution channel in the game, then every single mechanical modifier is going to be aimed straight at it. Over 473 splatbooks, these are more modifiers than any mortal designer can compass.

Against this, the BECMI/BX style thief abilities are less philosophically elegant, but they're also completely self-contained resolution systems. If you give a +5% to Move Silently to something, you aren't wondering what kind of obscure third-order effects you're going to be provoking. You have a much easier time controlling the inputs into that system, and you can tweak things so that the inputs are intuitive to the users because the entire sub-system is only dedicated to doing one thing. You don't need to master as much of the system to control the behavior of your mechanic in play.

I understand the philosophical arguments about free-form, DM led rules adjudication. And I suspect I play and like pre 3E D&D more than a lot of people who hang out here. But most of what gets said on this subject is rationalization that makes little sense.

Consider the following metaphor for old-school D&D vs. some more rationally built set of rules (say, ca. 1980 Runequest or TFT): Imagine you are hungry and get to choose between two baskets of food: one is a thoughtfully assembled balanced meal of PBJ, apple, and carrot sticks; the other is over flowing with roasted turkeys, chocolate cake and cold beers, but also contains a large tupperware container filled with dog shit. If you really like to eat, the second basket is the one to go with. But you are a fool if you pretend the dog shit is part of the feast.

Hmm, not doggy doo I smell though...something that regenerates, perhaps?

Quote from: Larsdangly;746109I understand the philosophical arguments about free-form, DM led rules adjudication. And I suspect I play and like pre 3E D&D more than a lot of people who hang out here. But most of what gets said on this subject is rationalization that makes little sense.

Trying to pass your gaming preferences as Objectively Better, especially by use of ham-handed metaphor involving canine fecal matter, won't earn you any friends, or even meaningful debate, around these parts. It feels dishonest to say that we're not really enjoying, or should not enjoy, what we tell you we enjoy; or that our taste in gaming is repulsive and wrong and not good for us, for that you know better than us what we like best.

This may be in part why theRPGsite has this reputation of being some sort of Grognard Alamut, where we spend our days high on OD&D hashish debating our visions of a descending-AC Paradise until the Old Pundit of the Mountain sends us forth to wage holy war against the Swine. People barge in with the Objectively Better Unified Mechanic spiel (and its twin sister, Rose-Tinted Glasses Nostalgia), get dogpiled (with good reason) and run back to some other site, further building on our reputation for throwing noobs into the roaring sacrificial pyres of the great god Gygax.

Nevertheless, I'm willing to attribute your choice of words to an honest mistake not made in bad faith. I'm going to suggest that you take a look at Castles & Crusades, a game that's very much true to the spirit of Old School D&D and uses a unified task resolution system. Sure, their task resolution system (the so-called SIEGE Engine) has its problems, but fret not; if you have the same issues with it as I've had, try my fix on for size.

Hope that helps.

Quote from: Old Geezer;746098There are no rules for a fighter hiding behind a door because frankly Gary and Dave didn't think anybody was stupid enough to need them.

Indeed, what people forget in these debates that the reason referees can make effective and consistent adjudications in the absence of rules is that a person can use reality as a guide. Likewise supernatural elements can be spelled out in ordinary prose which serves as the bases for adjudicating actions.

A good example of this is the D&D Vampire which is clearly derived from the popular fictional sources of the day including Stoker's book, Universal version, and Hammer Films version.

Where detailed rules comes into their own is when, a referee has an interest in the details but lacks the experience. The rules can be an effective method of conveying "This is how it works". For supernatural elements, the rules act as a shorthand for how the author intends those elements to work.

Finally, the point of tabletop roleplaying games is about the experience of being in another situation. The rules are just a tool to that end and not the focus.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746109I understand the philosophical arguments about free-form, DM led rules adjudication. And I suspect I play and like pre 3E D&D more than a lot of people who hang out here. But most of what gets said on this subject is rationalization that makes little sense.

Consider the following metaphor for old-school D&D vs. some more rationally built set of rules (say, ca. 1980 Runequest or TFT): Imagine you are hungry and get to choose between two baskets of food: one is a thoughtfully assembled balanced meal of PBJ, apple, and carrot sticks; the other is over flowing with roasted turkeys, chocolate cake and cold beers, but also contains a large tupperware container filled with dog shit. If you really like to eat, the second basket is the one to go with. But you are a fool if you pretend the dog shit is part of the feast.

You should stick to playing what you enjoy and keep your nose out of the dog shit.

What is this, rpg.net? I thought people around here were thick skinned enough to handle a salty metaphor or two. Maybe I just got too close to a sacred cow...

In any event, as I said above, I like pre-3E D&D plenty well enough - I consider it the best table top roleplaying game, so I don't think I need to stop playing it. I just think it is deeply flawed as a set of rules, in ways that were obvious at the time and haven't gotten better with age.

This game saw 5 pretty extensive revisions between 1977 and 1987. All of them, plus the original, are complicated, dense rules sets with lots of moving parts (to-hit tables; saving throw tables; shifting time and distance scales; variety of dice rolling mechanics; etc.). It is inaccurate to describe them as freeform or rules-light games. It is also inaccurate to say the intention was always for every group to have its own take on the rules — this was the default game of convention tournaments, and the main authorial statement of intent (introduction to the DMG) makes a point of telling us how important it is to have a shared set of rules. Even trivial things like THAC0 vs. to-hit tables (which are effectively exactly the same rule) led to endless arguments during this period, giving you a sense of how much importance the average player placed on the RAW.

Anyway, somehow, over all those editions and authors and hundreds and hundreds of pages of core rules, they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc. Explaining this as a philosophical stance just doesn't wash - that philosophy was apparently able to support pages of tables distinguishing the saving throws for death rays from those for petrification, pages of entirely novel mechanics for wrestling, and a bunch of other nonsense. The saving grace, of course, is that the authors had an incredibly creative and compelling vision of fantasy roleplaying, and fleshed out that vision with hundreds and hundreds of pages of amazing monsters, spells, items and adventures. But on some basic issues they were obstinate dopes.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159Anyway, somehow, over all those editions and authors and hundreds and hundreds of pages of core rules, they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc. Explaining this as a philosophical stance just doesn't wash - that philosophy was apparently able to support pages of tables distinguishing the saving throws for death rays from those for petrification, pages of entirely novel mechanics for wrestling, and a bunch of other nonsense.

Let's leave aside what the founding fathers did or didn't understand about the game. I've never been a devotee of the Cult of Gygax, but their design insights or flaws really aren't material when we're discussing whether a given piece of design is a good idea in the here-and-now. Is the fundamental rejection of a single unified resolution system a defensible choice, particularly when it intentionally leaves a resolution mechanism undefined for many foreseeable needs?

Yes. Yes, it is. There is a unified resolution system to early D&D. It's called "Ask the DM". It's incredibly powerful, cohesive, and streamlined, and virtually impossible to forget how to implement. Attempting to artificially reproduce the system with even a half-sheet of rules is apt to have unforeseen consequences in practice.

The purpose of any set of rules is simply to cue the DM as to useful ways to think about the resolution of a given state of game uncertainty. THAC0, saving throws, attribute checks, hit point damage- these are all just cueing frameworks to give the DM a basic toolbox for establishing game outcomes. To the degree they "work", they provide cues that the group as a whole find plausible and coherent. Unified resolution systems exchange this toolbox for a single tool, encouraging the DM to think about resolving all situations in this one particular way. That works wonderfully until that one particular way suddenly fails to cope with the context of the decision being made.

You ask why there's no clear, simple resolution mechanic to cover jumping, hiding, climbing, or whatnot. What clear, simple situations involving any of these things exist? What universal system is going to cover a pick-wielding athlete scrambling up a shallow slope as effectively as it handles an asthmatic oracle scrabbling up a sheer ice face while using short bursts of levitation? At best, it's going to kludge it, and if you're going to kludge it you might as well just acknowledge up front that it's fundamentally a question of DM judgment. You don't even need a half-page of rules for that.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159...they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc. ... apparently able to support pages of tables distinguishing the saving throws for death rays from those for petrification

I've done enough climbing, jumping, hiding and sneaking in real life to make some common sense rulings about those actions in the context of a game - in the event a ruling is even warranted.  

Neither I nor my players have yet to face death rays and/or petrification.  So guidance in those situations is a little more beneficial and much more useful in a game context.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159What is this, rpg.net? I thought people around here were thick skinned enough to handle a salty metaphor or two. Maybe I just got too close to a sacred cow...

Oh, we are. Trust me, if you think that was mean, just wait for some of the other posters to log in.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159In any event, as I said above, I like pre-3E D&D plenty well enough - I consider it the best table top roleplaying game, so I don't think I need to stop playing it. I just think it is deeply flawed as a set of rules, in ways that were obvious at the time and haven't gotten better with age.

I'm just having a difficult time understanding what is it about TSR D&D in general, and the RC in particular, that you might want to capture. Because as you've made pretty clear, the rules it ain't. Which is why I suspect C&C might be a great fit for you, since it's essentially a tribute to AD&D 1e using a 1d20 roll-over unified task resolution mechanic.

I play lots of games with unified resolution and enjoy them immensely, but I find the multiplicity of subsystems part of D&D's charm. Not everyone believes "one size fits them all" when it comes to task resolution.

Larsdangly: Salty metaphors are fine, nonsensical ones aren't. If you believe there's a turd-in-a-box in OD&D, why don'tcha spell out what it is?

Here's how I think about the question of which events require (or benefit from) rule and which don't: if something is attempted that has some sort of significant consequence (like, you could die) and has an uncertain outcome (like, you shoot an arrow and don't know beforehand whether or not it will hit its target), then some sort of concrete rule, agreed upon before hand, is called for. And, this rule will likely involve a die roll if the event really has unpredictable elements in it. I suspect nearly everyone agrees these are the conditions that lead us to want to have formal rules and die rolls for things like attacks.

There are a variety of actions - most of them physical - that fit these conditions but are not attacks. As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. I wouldn't accept it if the DM had the job of declaring whether or not my attacks succeed. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll, like d20 vs. DX or something.

The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. I wouldn't accept it if the DM had the job of declaring whether or not my attacks succeed. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll, like d20 vs. DX or something.

You just did precisely what people have been telling you to do all along: come up with a rule of your own (d20 vs. DEX). There's a middle ground between a rule hard-wired into the system by the "professional" game designers and the DM "pulling something out of his ass" and declaring the result by mere fiat. That middle ground is the DM coming up with an appropriate randomizing procedure for the situation at hand that takes into account all or most of the variables that can't be determined beforehand and written into the rules.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173There are a variety of actions - most of them physical - that fit these conditions but are not attacks. As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. I wouldn't accept it if the DM had the job of declaring whether or not my attacks succeed. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll, like d20 vs. DX or something.

The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

Hey we are making progress!! We have a concrete example of what you are talking about.

If we approach this attempt in an actual game and not in a vacuum there will be factors that will help us come up with the best possible solution.

Who is jumping?

What armor/encumbrance? Is the character short like a dwarf or Halfling?

The environment?

Is there room to run? How much? Is the edge slippery or crumbling?

Player actions?

Does the character have a pole and want to try and vault instead of jump?


In the game world, these factors will be readily apparent and help provide (along with the character stats) the information required to come up with a ballpark success chance.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

See, this is where your metaphor was all confused - the whole "turd among the turkeys" thing implies that something you consider awful is included in TSR-era D&D, whereas what you're actually saying is that something is absent that you think is necessary.

Given that TSR-era D&D went some 25 years before it got retired, are you absolutely sure the necessity of those rules is as "obvious" as you think it is?