Avi
*eyeroll*
Could it be a self selecting issue? You, the "generic" traveler, go only to caves that are easy to travel through...
And over time, as many people walk through them, the floor becomes "smoother"
General Discussion
- Thread starter Beoric
- Start date
And over time, as many people walk through them, the floor becomes "smoother"
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
Tchya! What kind of total dork would still have his beautiful, orange, unmarked character sheets from, like, 40 years ago. What an obsessive weirdo! Psshh! Pffah. yeah...
DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Hey I won't ding you for holding on to old stuff - I think we all have a few pieces of OG D&D tucked away. I myself have a full whitebox OD&D set (even though I don't play it), and I think the last time I cracked open my still-extant copy of Deities & Demigods was as a pre-teen peeking at drawings of boobies.Tchya! What kind of total dork would still have his beautiful, orange, unmarked character sheets from, like, 40 years ago. What an obsessive weirdo! Psshh! Pffah. yeah...
I do take issue with the prevailing modern mindset that these things are commonplace, however. Replies like "well duh, you just use the table in Dragon #28" is all too common a statement around the sphere, conveniently ignoring the idea that it's fucking bonkers to just assume someone has an easy-referable copy of Dragon #28, as if we're all sitting on some archival library of early works. Or worse - the assumption that we all memorize every single piece of D&D ephemera from eons past, somehow.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
Back in my 20's when friends were just starting to shack up with their girlfriends and first wives, it was the bachelor's duty to receive the giant box o pr0n because apparently that was never going to happen again now that there was a woman in the apartment... In my case however, it was apparently my duty to receive the giant box of miniatures and RPG junk, for equally sad reasons. I've got some weird shit as a result: Dungeon Geomorphs. Official Hex Paper. 1.5e Player Character Record Sheets. MERP. Those amazing Warhammer "Realm of Chaos" books.
And the AD&D Dungeon Master's Design Kit which has surprisingly never been discussed around here...
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
You are not wrong. Older D&D material was scattered and hazard (Dragon mag, etc.), but that's because it was growing organically in real-time. No one had even the remotest template (talking 0e/1e days) for what was gold and what was fool's gold. That's why it was such a vibrant time. I've made the analogy before with regards to open-source software in the early aughts (e.g. Raymond's The Cathedral and Baazar). The OSR was a renaissance (rebirth) too (around the same time, both facilitated by the new distribution mechanism of the early internet) and grown in "bazaar" mode. We are now deep into "cathedral" design-mode, orchestrated by WotC and in typical fashion, it's slow, heavy-handed, and---to be honest---uninspiring.
Circling back to your point: yeah it's a mess, and no one can really expect you to know all the arcana---but rather than a condemnation, I look at it as part of the fun of the (original) hobby.
Primarily, I like digging for knowledge (I'm a reserach engineer) because it's so rewarding when you add another uncovered relic to your collected database. This is, after all, a hobby. Hobbies are not things served up for effortless consumption (i.e. consumer products, movies, etc.), but something your fiddle with out of sheer joy and interest. Hobbies are suppose to take time and effort, although I can see where rule-hunting might not be everyone's favorite aspect. Incidentally, this may be why rule-light versions of the game probably don't hold one's attention for quite as long, whereas something like AD&D campaigns go on for years and years.
Secondly, there's a social aspect of having to sift for info. We are all here to support each other's searching through the rubble of the ages to find those obscure elements we need for our next play-session. It's why we're on this forum, satiating that basic desire to trade tips at Byrce's generous marketsquare.
DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
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.
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
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
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
8, 8, I forget what is for
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.
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EOTB
So ... slow work day? Every day?
Who did this/where did this happen? Or is this some straw man you're tilting at.
DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
From this very thread, by you, for one easy example...
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.
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.
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EOTB
So ... slow work day? Every day?
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.
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.
DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
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
8, 8, I forget what is for
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
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
It's not a data point. And I'm not saying it was a perfect example, just a handy one.
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The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
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)...
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
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
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.
