General Discussion

[DangerousPuhson]

Kind of.

We (well you guys, not me) seem venerate the old stuff far too much around here for my tastes. It's cool to look at them as curios; products of a bygone time when documents were written on typewriters and maps were printed in blue as a form of janky piracy protection. Folks were still scrambling to build the hobby from scratch back then. The expected questions were posed, and the answers left to float around out in the wilderness of print media until pointed to. It's all very romantic... in the days of pre-internet.

Post-internet is a different story. Now all that stuff that was written way back when has been revised and refined and re-edited and re-posted as blogs and videos. The information carried forward into the new medium, all of it, in a million different iterations. These days I don't need to read some penned letter in a back-issue of Polygon from 1984 to get an answer anymore; I can just Google it now. It's easier, faster, more convenient, more thorough... there's really not much reason to physically open any old books/magazines these days, because all that shit is all captured digitally in a dozen different formats now, picked at and analyzed and polished for better usage.

As a researcher, surely you can appreciate when someone has already scanned and archived everything you're looking for into one digital space - you'd probably pretty miffed too if every time you sought something you were deferred to back catalogues of physical materials you needed to personally source, pay for, and go through by hand.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

And the AD&D Dungeon Master's Design Kit which has surprisingly never been discussed around here...

The authors of that thing have some chops, that's for sure.

However this part in the Wikipedia article (from a reviewer of the thing) sticks out to me:

He felt that while the forms are "useful reminders of all the details that may be needed in an adventure design," they seem to imply that the Dungeon Master should plan and record all those details before running an adventure even when "no one method of planning and recording details will be satisfactory for all, or even many, DMs". He also said that "Almost any instinctive narrative impulse is likely to produce a more lively adventure than following the suggested procedures in this kit."

Important to remember as folk who make materials for DMs.

 

[squeen]

As a researcher, surely you can appreciate when someone has already scanned and archived everything you're looking for into one digital space - you'd probably pretty miffed too if every time you sought something you were deferred to back catalogues of physical materials you needed to personally source, pay for, and go through by hand.

Of course! Just saying the arcane nature of the info is part of the mystique and fun for me. The dopamine hit for finding something buried is much higher than if it has already been discovered, sorted and repackaged.

There's a upper limit to that, obviously. We need efficiency most of the time.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

From this very thread, by you, for one easy example...

Blueprint for a Lich article by Lakofka in Dragon 26. So this clarification was put out very shortly after the MM was published, and by someone in the TSR inner circle. The Lords of Darkness undead supplement (late 1E-era) also makes this explicit.

But honestly I see this shit everywhere - forums, blogs, Reddit, everywhere. Or do you want to just keep accusing me of inventing my own problems?

Look, I'm not saying you can't cite older works or that they should be disregarded in favor of newer works - I'm just saying I'm tired of the baseline assumption that we've all read the same things, experienced the same issues, have the same table quirks, etc. TTRPG groups and individual DMs are not so homogenous as that. We need to start having conversations from scratch again, rather than offloading to hard-to-get niche publications as if they were still accessible.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Hey, you linked it so all I can hope is that people follow the link and read that exchange. I'm willing to stand behind it as just helping someone find a reference instead of a "well duh just use X" statement.

Inventing your own problems wouldn't be quite accurate. Instead that you seem (often) incapable of summarizing what other people say in a neutral and accurate fashion.

The "duh" part was not you, no. But the rest basically is.

The exchange goes as thus:

Heretic: I forget, do 1e Liches have phylacteries?

Beoric: I think so, per a suggestion in Gygax's DMG.

EOTB: *goes into authoritative explanation as to how a phylactery is supposed to be*

Beoric: I don't see that anywhere in the official materials.

EOTB: It's in *obscure sources*.

Now from your perspective, you're just helping someone find an answer, and pointing them to where you got your answer from. I get that. But from an outside perspective, you've definitively claimed a nebulous concept to be a certain specific way by citing obscure sources as authoritative evidence - no discussion, no opinion, no expanding, just "check the things from 197X, it's there". I find that kind of discourse less than helpful, that's all I'm saying.

 

[Beoric]

The "duh" part was not you, no. But the rest basically is.

The exchange goes as thus:

Heretic: I forget, do 1e Liches have phylacteries?

Beoric: I think so, per a suggestion in Gygax's DMG.

EOTB: *goes into authoritative explanation as to how a phylactery is supposed to be*

Beoric: I don't see that anywhere in the official materials.

EOTB: It's in *obscure sources*.

Now from your perspective, you're just helping someone find an answer, and pointing them to where you got your answer from. I get that. But from an outside perspective, you've definitively claimed a nebulous concept to be a certain specific way by citing obscure sources as authoritative evidence - no discussion, no opinion, no expanding, just "check the things from 197X, it's there". I find that kind of discourse less than helpful, that's all I'm saying.

Well, @EOTB's post wasn't in the context of giving advice to the wider world, he was answering my question, in which I was specifically asking for that information. Because I do have a lot of older products, including Dragon 26.

I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, I'm saying this data point isn't evidence of anything.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, I'm saying this data point isn't evidence of anything.

It's not a data point. And I'm not saying it was a perfect example, just a handy one.

 

[The1True]

It was a helpful reference to esoterica, and I got to dig something up from my bookshelf that I'd never truly looked at before, which was pretty cool.
But, I get what DP is saying, Reddit and Giant in the Playground are littered with some pretty obscure "well actualies". I think the "duh" part was in good faith and not meant to offend (but I'll let the man fight his own battles)...

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I'm considering the topic closed anyway. It was originally an offhand comment about my preference for keeping things more accessible; if EOTB thinks I'm just imagining an issue and wants to downplay my opinion, that's his prerogative... but for both our sakes, I sincerely hope he puts me on his "ignore" list - I heartily endorse it actually. Would be better for both of us.

 

[Beoric]

I'm having trouble getting this posted; the site seems fine with my second paragraph but doesn't like my first?

Ugh, I give up. Here is a cropped screenshot of it.

 

[squeen]

Why not give it "in game" rather than abstractly via a mechanic?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

If you're looking for a new reward metric, I guess social rewards would be a suitable vector to explore. Points for it seem a little too meta-management for my tastes though - XP is already ethereal enough. Maybe a slightly less nebulous concept like "renown" or "fame" could substitute.

 

[Beoric]

Why not give it "in game" rather than abstractly via a mechanic?

I am giving it in game. The mechanic helps me decide how much goodwill they have obtained, and when they have worn out their welcome. It also gives me a sense of what NPCs might reasonably demand in favours if they have helped the PCs in the past. And in a GP=XP game, it helps me to award the appropriate XPs in situation where I'm not giving out GPs; I'm already trying to quantify such situations in terms of XPs, so I will already have the number right there in front of me, I may as well use it.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I think what squeen means when he says "give it in game" is that points are arbitrary and non-tangible in the game world, whereas the reward should probably be something that the characters get to own or experience - a letter of endorsement, invite to a fine family supper, or choice of the best horses, etc. rather than "+3 social points" or what have you.

However, I know you probably plan to do it this way and only use the points for your own DM-facing personal tracking. It just didn't seem clear that was the intent.

 

[Beoric]

I think what squeen means when he says "give it in game" is that points are arbitrary and non-tangible in the game world, whereas the reward should probably be something that the characters get to own or experience - a letter of endorsement, invite to a fine family supper, or choice of the best horses, etc. rather than "+3 social points" or what have you.

However, I know you probably plan to do it this way and only use the points for your own DM-facing personal tracking. It just didn't seem clear that was the intent.

That is my intent. "Your money is no good here," If you ever need a favour, just write me," etc.

 

[squeen]

Sorry guys for dropping out of the conversation. All I meant was (as DP said) the reward should be received as game events and not a player-sheet quantity the PCs "spend". This is in the vein of a player talking to an NPC and making a convincing argument vs. making a "diplomacy skill check". I was afraid that @Beoric was totally abstracting the rewards by quantifying it. Sounds like that's not intended to be the case.

As a DM, I adjust NPCs reactions automatically (on the fly) based on the party's history, sans metric.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

As a DM, I adjust NPCs reactions automatically (on the fly) based on the party's history, sans metric.

Same, though I think there's something to be said about characters becoming famous later down the line - when the party hits a tipping point and more strangers know about them than don't, players eat that shit up. When they are greeted by groupies and fanboys, when they get invites to the swanky aristo events, when they never have to pay for a drink at a bar again... it's almost like a full game paradigm shift, going from nobody rat-catchers to full-on hero celebrities. Normal reaction tables would never cut it.

 

[Beoric]

Same, though I think there's something to be said about characters becoming famous later down the line - when the party hits a tipping point and more strangers know about them than don't, players eat that shit up. When they are greeted by groupies and fanboys, when they get invites to the swanky aristo events, when they never have to pay for a drink at a bar again... it's almost like a full game paradigm shift, going from nobody rat-catchers to full-on hero celebrities. Normal reaction tables would never cut it.

I'm not sure the reaction or morale tables were meant to cover the annual Rotary Christmas Gala.

 

[squeen]

Whole heartily agree. The PC go from nobodies that can't get a seat at the local bar to hobnobbing with high society over the course of a long campaign. Eventually, kings, generals, or kingmakers.

 

[Beoric]

I was looking at the 1e loyalty rules, and in the "TYPICAL LOYALTY, OBEDIENCE, AND MORALE CHECK SITUATIONS" section, one of the situations was "ordered to testify against liege" and I'm wondering just what sort of courtroom drama Gygax was running.