[D&D '74] Experience Benefit Analysis

[Ron Edwards]

All quibbling about the diagram is god damn off-topic! This is to help Marshall and to develop his points, remember?

OK, I've revised the hell out of it, with an eye toward some temporal integrity so you can scan horizontally and get at least some idea of what kind of crazy influences were hitting anyone involved both from the past and in terms of what was appearing right at that moment.

Let's get back to 1974, however. Marshall, one thing that jumps out at me is the phrasing about whatever was happening at Gygax's "table." This table, it seems to me, is starting to take on the mythic quality that martial arts blowhards assign to the mythical street, as in, "Yeah, but would that work on the street?" Perhaps unromantically, I hold no faith whatsoever that the content of the 1974 text reflected play of any kind. I think it's a magical-thinking construct instead, mashed together from Arneson's (real) table and Gygax's existing Chainmail rules, reflecting neither particularly well or accurately. Whether any characters prior to this thing's publication ever actually underwent this sequence of levels and alterations - I am not claiming knowledge, but rather my current perception is that this never happened.

If memory serves, most D&D culture around 1979-1980 was very dismissive toward the 1974 rules, thinking of them as "that old crap thing" whereas real players were up-to-date, using the newest thing (AD&D, the latest Dungeon article about assassins, some RPGA statement or other, the S series ...). I really don't think that rules-set developed a genuine play-culture at all! When it first came out, no one had it. When it became widely available in 1978, people were already completely fixated on the developing Advanced books, perceived at that time as high-end production and an imminent mainstream breakout. During this entire time, people learned way more D&D from adventure modules than anything else, and their rules presented a crazy-quilt of local practice and varying source texts, even those published by TSR.

[KarlM]

Hi

Has anyone read Shannon Appelcline's work in this area? (RPG history in general, broader than just TSR publication history, or the specific original intent of this thread)

Or his take on 70s era TSR?

He has a column here:
http://www.rpg.net/columns/designers-and-dragons/designers-and-dragons26.phtml

which links to various PDFs of early modules WotC has re-released on rpgnow - Each product on that site has a "Product History" blurb which Shannon wrote, including year of original publication. eg 1981 Moldvay D&D
http://www.dndclassics.com/product/110274/D%26D-Basic-Set-Rulebook-%28Basic%29

Also Evil Hat has made one chapter of pre release version of the expanded 4-volume edition of his RPG history freely available, the TSR chapter for the '70s volume:
http://www.evilhat.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DD70s_PreRelease_TSR.pdf

I can't find any evidence of the first edition still being available, but it got some good reviews.

I might get around to reading the pre-release TSR in the 70s chapter in the next couple of weeks.

Cheers
Karl

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

I've read a fair amount of Shannon's writing about this so far, although I'm waiting for the big tome o'gaming history to come out before I sit down and study it. (His section on the Forge and independent publishing is good too.)

Although the textual history of D&D is endlessly fascinating, I want to focus on why I posted the diagram. It's to emphasize the memory holes in the understanding of D&D and role-playing in general - that a myth has replaced memory, and now that people are looking at the documents again, they're doing it through a lens of myth. It's like those absurd historian-archeologists who struggled to justify why the Nemean lion's skin might have been considered "iron-hard," as a genuine historical event; there's even a word for this, euhemerism.

I bring it up here because again, I challenge the notion that there existed a play culture, however small, prior to 1974, which produced the 1974 publication called Dungeons & Dragons as a record or expression of that actual activity. As I've written before, the various evidence and accounts indicate to me that this publication was far more artifactual, a publication effort without the kind of foundation that we're assuming. Was there a play culture prior to this point, with many features you and I would call role-playing? I think so. I think it would be found not only at Dave Arneson's table, but also among probably dozens or even hundreds of wargamers or group story-creators who didn't give it a new name, merely calling it "how we play."

But today, steeped in decades of developed role-playing culture, people read these poor little booklets and imbue them with mythic power. Whatever they say, must be the ur-essence Teh Awesome of role-playing, a nugget of design genius, after all, they were first, they invented it, right? And then on inspection, they turn out to be exactly what Marshall said, a hot mess - so the myth merely writhes and says, oh, well, they must be a poorly-written or incomplete expression of that design-genius and Teh Awesome play that was happening at the table. (Has anyone ever documented that Gygax and Arneson played together in the first place? prior to the writing and publication, I mean.) The booklets receive the most generous reading possible, retroactively injecting them with all manner of inferred play-practices that didn't develop until years after their publication.

What I see you grappling with, Marshall, is the possibility that so such thing had been happening at all, and in your investigation of the possible design genius - rightly cleaving straight to the improvement/consequence rules - you find that there isn't a "vision," there. As a non-adherent to the ur-myth, I'm not surprised.  I don't think anyone ever played a character from 1st to 10th level in the way the book (kind of) describes, before it was published, and after that, probably hardly anyone ever did it, if anyone. That's why I was interested in the Holmes book, which as I recall was messy by today's standards but regardless, was an actual playable text with a sense of structure and potential accomplishment, and I know a lot of people played the hell out of it for a couple of years, albeit well-spiced with Dragon articles and Judges Guild materials. When the AD&D Monster Manual came out, the Holmes book was the only core book nearly anyone actually had, and an enormous number of tournament games - some of them seminal - were played with that mis-matched combination of texts as the only authority.

[glandis]

Personal anecdote and the OSR/orthodoxy discussions may color this comment beyond usefulness to Marshall, but in case not: my '76-'81 D&D play never once, not ever, with at least 4 somewhat-distinct groups, several dozen boys/men & girls/women, plus some convention attendance (i.e., some exposure to hundreds of RPers), never was gaining levels anything but "it happens when we think it should." Calculating XP was occasionally done as a sort of interesting exercise, but that's it.

Tunnels and Trolls, there I saw some XP tracking. D&D, never in any serious way.

[Ron Edwards]

So, to your goals in posting, Marshall:

... to arrive at a personally satisfactory currency based on the experience point for my own OSR-type purposes

... it is all rather wonky, and unfortunately doesn't help my mission of developing Unified Experience Point Theory except by showing me lots of things to avoid doing.

If I recall from my game eight or nine years ago, 3.0/3.5 used a uniform experience point table for all the classes. I never played AD&D2 in any sustained way, if ever, and don't know those texts well, but my impression is that its experience/level progression is more like AD&D and earlier forms, being class-specific. Can Moldvay/Mentzer fans refresh my memory about that version? I played Mentzer when its second edition came out, in 1985, but not since then, so I can't remember. I remember that Holmes had very specific "encounters per level" in the text.

Let's not forget the role of treasure, too. I remember from my first D&D period (1978-1982 or so) that people expected serious magic items in the first few sessions of play, as a huge and immediate level-booster to get the fuck out of 1st and into 3rd/4th, which was pretty much when AD&D became playable at all. (Younger people reading this may not know that 1 GP = 1 Experience point back then, and this applied to all things of value found, including magic items.)

I currently admire what I'm reading about encounters, experience, and levels in 4E, and I look forward to seeing it in play. It's about as close to a unified-experience-point mechanic as I can imagine. I confess that the whole idea of "old school D&D" in my head practically dictates that experience points and consequent level gain are weird and arbitrary and all over the place.

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Ron, that's a very good point about the '74 text's (lack of) foundation in actual play. My reading and playing of it suggests that to me (even though I consider it playable, within limits). Are you familiar with Dragons at Dawn? It's one guy's attempt to reconstruct some semblance of the game that happened at Arneson's table prior to the (unholy?) alliance with Gygax. Although, as a work of historical scholarship, I don't trust it any further than I can throw it (actually, I can throw it pretty far. It's rather aerodynamic. But you get my point), it's different enough from any form of D&D that it's given me the hypothesis that Arneson told Gygax all about what he was doing, then Gygax sat down to write a text, changing things according to his own instincts (and in ways that pushed Chainmail as much as possible -- I can't help but roll my eyes and chuckle every time the rules refer you to Chainmail), filling in gaps where he perceived them, and omitting things that he perceived as unnecessary or otherwise unworthy. And then that, without any play or probably even testing, was the '74 text. All speculation, of course, but I get the vibe strongly.

Regarding "Unified Experience Theory," I meant that in the sense of, say, unified string theory. Not a way to unify the XP mechanic, but rather a way to survey the XP mechanic and explain how it does, can, and maybe ought to work. I'm uninterested in the versions that actually are unified (I'm also uninterested in AD&D2, because it's just too much to handle).

It's been my general observation that, prior to AD&D3, 90% of D&D is cruft. Legend has it that even Clerics came to be because of some vampire character running amok, so a guy with power over the undead is introduced to bring balance to the Force -- the Cleric as we now think of it had nothing to do with the origins of the Cleric, and those origins did not spring from vision or ludodynamic principle, but rather from an ad-hoc patch (if the legend is true. It certainly has "truthiness"). One thing that interests me in my exploration of OD&D and OSR is how much of the game is actually essential to the game (not very much, by my reckoning, and I think Eero would agree, based on his exploits). And then, when you've figured that out, which bits of cruft do you keep or discard, and why? And what are the ludodynamic and social-aesthetic principles that contribute to the long-term adoption and transformation of game features, while others are discarded? Why, for instance, have the Druid and Ranger -- surely the two most stylistically heinous D&Disms -- persisted to this day, yet the d6 hit die and damage roll (comprising a neat, accessible damage system in which you can count on each hit die saving you from one hit, yet moment-to-moment you can pray to your dice to let you do better than that) are forgotten?

I also agree, Ron, about "OD&D" strongly implying asymmetry and all-over-the-placeness. Part of the reason I want to work within that framework is that those qualities speak to me on some level. So it is one of my hopes that this series of analyses will reveal to me why that is.

This desire began when I sat down to actually decipher and then play '74 D&D as close to RAW as possible -- I found that, structurally, I really really liked it. The problem remained that stylistically and Color-wise, D&Disms just don't do it for me. So I took five minutes to barf forth a world and style that excited me, and got a steaming pile of references to Richard Brautigan, Captain Beefheart, Ray Bradbury, Super Mario, and the band Eisley, all across a scaffold of economic satire (it has occurred to me that economics are the common thread in all of my design projects that I actually care about). And it was immediately clear that I had to throw out everything. I kept the Fighter and Magic User, but I fucked with them conceptually (deeply so in the latter case); everything else went. So how to build all the new things that need to go in here, with progression etc? And so here we are.

(Another concern of mine is a loose idea of compatibility with other OSR endeavors. Not full compatibility, or even close to it, but a certain similarity. The phenomenon of FLAILSNAILS transports me in a way I can't describe, and I'd like to be a part of it or something similar. But this is such a loosey-goosey, close-enough-for-blues kind of thing that it barely qualifies as a concern.)

[Callan S.]

I honestly don't know if it's AD&D or AD&D2 (there's an AD&D2? There's a difference? Heh, okay, that's being cruel...) but it might be worth looking at the random dungeon generation tables. I actually had no idea they were so extensive, with the monsters all categorized into tables and the encounter chart actually including all applicable levels in the random encounter roll (ie, level one monsters could still show up in a level 10 dungeon).

If you look at what you have to face in order to get XP, that might be an evaluation metric.

Now one might assume fighting some orcs (even a scaled amount) is wussy at that point, gamism wise. 'Cus you're not gunna freakin' die! But the tricky thing is that treasure is not tied to the level of the monster. That's what made a weenie fight satisfying - because IF they had treasure (2 in 6 chance, I think. Maybe 3), it was ALWAYS scaled to level!! So a weenie fight was a good gamble! Because it got you a treasure roll equal to your level, merely for bopping a few kobolds on the head.

Which is interesting to contrast against 3rd edition. I thought it was great at first, in third - the tougher you face, the more XP! But it turns into a grind - you get exactly as much as you put in. Which is...how being an employee works! Blah! Where as fighting a few pissy kobolds and then rolling f'n awesome on the treasure roll was like winning the lottery (ie, the opposite of being an employee! Freakin' high roller! Literally!)

It complicates the value, but it's also something that adds to the value of XP (since gold was worth XP back in AD&D(2???))

[Ron Edwards]

Fascinating ideas and project. I like the way you're focusing on my two lighthouses in RPG design and reflection, Color and Reward. Callan's point speaks to me too, in that these two principles are obviously and only meaningful ("important," "fun," whatever you want to call it) in the context of fictional Situations.

Your, uh, fucked-with Fighters and Magic Users ... I'll be really interested in what situations you envision them in, and how that might get wrapped into situation-construction mechanics, which is what the random dungeon generators were and are. Some of the modern free on-line forms are really well-done, too.

[Marshall Burns]

I've always wanted to check out dungeon generation systems. This is a pretty good excuse to do so. Although I will have some reconstruction to do in that area, as well, because I'm defining "dungeons" differently. Rather than being the dark places of the earth, they are the resonant places of the earth: the parts of the world that are still wild, dangerous, beautiful, full of some combination of wonder and terror. They are, in fact, the points of light.

I've also gone and messed with magic items. The traditional +X magic weapons and their ilk don't exist. Instead of enhancing the functions available to you, magic items alter them or add new ones. For the most part, using a magic item to your advantage is a matter of ingenuity -- magic in general in this world is either apparently useless or too dangerous to use.

As for the PCs, they are all by definition people who don't fit in the established social order. The Fighter and Magic User are better described as Campaigner Who's Out Of Work Because All He Knows How to Do Is Fight And There's No Wars These Days, and Student At a Wizard University Who Is Still Too Young And Wild At Heart to Be Consumed By Pointless, Incestuous Academia. Another way of putting it is that all PCs have a built-in reason to go on adventures: because there is nothing else for them.

[Miskatonic]

I actually do have rules for every version of Dungeons & Dragons at hand. I'm tempted to start geeking out and doing an infodump, but... I'm still having a hard time understanding what this thread is trying to discuss. Mathematics of level progression? Suggested XP rewards? Not sure what's relevant. I'll happily attempt to research any specific questions.

I should mention The Acaeum is probably the best reference for the publication history of all the old Dungeons & Dragons products.

edited to fix link code - RE

[Marshall Burns]

For the moment, my main focus is to describe the value of XP in terms of the benefits provided for each of several versions of D&D, with occasional musings. Once I'm done describing, I intend to shift gears fully to doctrine and philosophy re: how, where, why, and when to tweak, adjust, and otherwise modify the workings of XP for the purposes of my own game (The Laughing City).

If you've got any thoughts to add about XP and its benefits, especially (for this thread) regarding D&D '74, by all means, post 'em!

[Marv]

An interesting discussion. I began playing D&D '74 (which I call OD&D) back in 1975 and have encountered some of these XP issues long ago. My solution was basically to stop counting XP altoegther.

What I do is simply to "level up" characters when we hit a convenient resting point in the adventure (a "Rivendell" moment, if you will) or at the end of a plot arc. I don't worry about the fact that some characters like thieves advance in levels faster than other characters. My group is very "team" oriented and tend to work cooperatively together, so they see the characters' abilities as a group resource.

Anyway, I got tired of counting XP long ago, realized that the XP scale tended to control the pace of my game, and decided to assume control myself.

[Marshall Burns]

I see where you're coming from, Marv, and absolutely agree that the XP scale controls the pacing (and also scope) of the game. But I think I differ from you in that I like it that way. It would seem that we have different basic approaches to the game, so I'll clarify mine in order to provide further clarity to what I hope to accomplish here.

I don't think of the game in terms of "adventures" as the term is generally understood by RPG folks or in terms of plot arcs, but rather in terms of "expeditions." And if the whole of an expedition turns out to be five minutes skulking in a hole followed by a fighter and two hirelings getting eaten by a Hobogoblin, followed by everyone else saying "NOPE" and getting the heck out of that hole and back to town, then not only am I fine with that, but I'm excited about it.

Basically, I approach it entirely as a strategy game. We play to find out if the players are lucky and clever enough to profit from the expedition, and how much.

And I want to be clear that I make no claims whatsoever that this sort of play is somehow superior to or truer than any other sorts of play; I'm just saying that it's what I'm into, as far as D&D and D&D-like setups go.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I play along the same lines as Marshall, couldn't imagine the game without the xp system. Entirely different, much more freeform.

4th edition on the other hand, there freeform xp makes perfect sense. By that point it's become a truly dead appendage to the endeavour :D

[Ron Edwards]

Eero, I'm getting really tired of your edition wars posting. (1) It's off-topic in this thread, (2) it's embarrassingly inconsistent with your ecumenical and friendly-intellectual approach to D&D concepts, and (3) it's flatly wrong in terms of assessing games' quality. No more, please.