Challenge the Player, not the Stat Block (D&D)

[LandonSuffered]

quote]The crux of it, though, is this: challenge the player, not the character's stats. That's probably the single most important difference between old school and contemporary roleplaying games. I think that it's at the root of why most old schoolers have an instinctive hatred of skill systems in RPGs. Skill systems often imply not just what your character can do but also what he knows. That creates both a powerful separation between player and character knowledge but also creates the expectation that a character's knowledge ought to be able to give the player the solutions needed to solve in-game puzzles, tricks, traps, etc. Tomb of Horrors<Hidden Shrine of Tamochan?  Or White Plume Mountain?  Or Dwellers of the Forbidden City<Tri-Wizard Cup<Trail of Cthulhu or Mutant City Blues whole philosophy about giving the players the clues they need to proceed (a philosophy I agree with FOR THOSE GAMES Tomb of Horrors<Hidden Shrine of Tamochan?  Or White Plume Mountain?  Or Dwellers of the Forbidden City<Tri-Wizard Cup<Trail of Cthulhu or Mutant City Blues whole philosophy about giving the players the clues they need to proceed (a philosophy I agree with FOR THOSE GAMES

[Callan S.]

I think the need to generate material to actually play within plus the practical ramification that dead PCs might mean a significant portion of that material doesn't gets used or seen (and all the heart and effort in it essentially get discarded) was a conflict of interest against gamist play that was set to boil over, and eventually did so at a global level ("OMG, it's about the story!"). Or something else and I don't know what the hell happened? Anyway, that problems still there and in addition a culture where people make a dex guy (or similar) simply so he can be a guy who jumps over or dodges around things - not in the cause of winning, not as an attempted winning stratagem, but simply to depict a dex guy. Even if you solve the problem, there isn't a culture that's looking for a solution to it.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

i]your own<

[LandonSuffered]

Callan wrote:

I think the need to generate material to actually play within plus the practical ramification that dead PCs might mean a significant portion of that material doesn't gets used or seen (and all the heart and effort in it essentially get discarded) was a conflict of interest against gamist play that was set to boil over,never be completely cleaned out and which would be constantly revisited by the player characters during the course of the campaign.

Actually, reminds me a bit of the background for Dragon Fire Castle <Dungeon Quest<Hidden Shrine of Tamochan<PLAYERSFrank wrote:

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Jonathan

[Caldis]

My experience with those old modules was markedly different.  When we played we very rarely found the modules to be challenging.   I dont know if it was a comprehension problem on my part as a young teen reading these modules and running them for my friends but I never got that impression of how to run the game.  Of course I was big into Tolkien and fantasy novels in general so that influence affected me, how do you get play like those fantasy novels if you are trying to challenge the player and risk the characters death at every turn? 

So when I ran games they werent really challenges, they seemed like challenges that threatened the characters but they didnt really.  With the general power creep that happened in Ad&d products (and it was there in dragon magazine at least long before 83) it became easier and easier to have situations that seemed dangerous but really werent.  The death at -10 hp rule was a big one and that came in the DMG, characters could be bashed around and knocked unconcious but it never really hampered the game.

[LandonSuffered]

i]the Hobbit animated film probably BEFORE I picked up my 1st D&D set, I had neither read the Lord of the Rings, nor knew its story.  But check out how the Hobbit <one campaign objective)
-   More than half the characters die<Lord o the Rings or even Dragon Lance<AFTER <narrative agenda drift.



the Hobbit [/i] animated film probably BEFORE I picked up my 1st D&D set, I had neither read the Lord of the Rings, nor knew its story.  But check out how the Hobbit <one campaign objective)
-   More than half the characters die<Lord o the Rings or even Dragon Lance<AFTER <narrative agenda drift.

[Caldis]

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[Frank Tarcikowski]

Quick correction: I actually mixed the trad games up there, Labyrinth Lord is an OD&D retro-clone and not a new design, what I meant was Castles & Crusades. Whatever, you get what I mean.

- Frank

[Callan S.]

I think the need to generate material to actually play within plus the practical ramification that dead PCs might mean a significant portion of that material doesn't gets used or seen (and all the heart and effort in it essentially get discarded) was a conflict of interest against gamist play that was set to boil over,never be completely cleaned out and which would be constantly revisited by the player characters during the course of the campaign.

Actually, reminds me a bit of the background for Dragon Fire Castle <Dungeon Quest<Hidden Shrine of Tamochan<PLAYERSThe root problem isn't so much funneling play toward content once play is underway. The problem is the group gets killed in the first corridor/misses alot of material and doesn't play again. Or they decline to play at all. These are valid gamist outcomes. But they clash with having prepped all that material - without play, it's like a canvas half painted and uncompleted. Atleast if you write short fiction but no one reads it, you can say you did finish writing some short fiction. With the dungeon material, you can't say to yourself you've completed anything - it sort of sits in limbo. Add on top of it the heart and effort often use and it's a major clash with gamist priorities. Bottlenecks and forced challenges work to show material only if someone is playing at all.

So that hasn't solve the problem, except perhaps in the commercial area, ie modules were sold - the writer being paid for his work regardless of whether it was played, and the group being able to write off an expense should they wish not to play it.

[LandonSuffered]

Callan:

Ahh...I see your point.

Yes, I guess for the thing to work, you have to have players willing to play the game, and the challenge presented has to be commensurate to the players' ability (note: PLAYERs' ability, not characters).  Certainly, I can recall players that would horribly fail/die no matter how many what cool magic items they or exaggerated ability scores they possessed...for the most part, though, the challenge was just about right, perhaps because my friends and I were all within about the same age, from the same socio-economic background, and educated in the same type of schools...we had a certain pool of (real world) experience to draw upon, so it was a fairly even playing field with regard to player ability.

Still, while you'd need to gage the abilities of your players (perhaps with a warm-up adventure or two), and gradually scale up your challenges (certainly many of the old adventure modules with connecting threads did this).

But if your players are just going to throw up their hands and leave, or if they are looking for a different style of gameplay, well then "old school" D&D is NOT necessarily the right game for them.

Still, I really do think it's a worthwhile notion to keep in mind with regard to game design...do you want your game to challenge the player or the character?  Does your system appear to (inherently) skew towards one or the other?  Or to put it another way: do you need to do a lot of EXTRA work to facilitate one form of play?  With the original D&D game, I think that the same amount of work gets used whether you're challenging the player OR the character (whether you're stocking an adventure with a devious trap or a devious monster makes no nevermind).  On the other hand, I think it is much harder to craft a D&D3 adventure that challenges players and not just their character stats...and you have to really work hard if you want to find non-rule breaking ways to pull off certain effects.





 

[contracycle]

So that hasn't solve the problem, except perhaps in the commercial area, ie modules were sold - the writer being paid for his work regardless of whether it was played, and the group being able to write off an expense should they wish not to play it.

Thats not a terrible solution though, modules - parting with a few bucks is very different from spending hours with the graph paper and filling notebooks with details, and much morte accessible.  The inability to play and continue is much less onerous if its "only money" rather than personal investment that is lost.  Sometimes we sit through a movie we don't, or get a computer game we can't comnplete, and for the most part we just treat that as unfortunate outcomes, and fire up the next one.  It's the combination of personal creation and wasted material that was explosive; if that creation is impersonal and external, it's much more palatable.

[LandonSuffered]

You know, thinking back on those old games, even our personal dungeons/creations were impersonal. That is to say, we (well, me for sure) had no emotional investment in what I had created.  For example<No.<Tomb of Horrors <still available Conan stories, even as the party of strange classes/races is informed by Lord of the Rings<Tomb, the riddling sphinx in White Plume Mountain, the gateway to the Abyss in Vault of the Drow<NOT to be played with a lot of emotional attachment.  I mean your characters DIEDchallenging the players, IMO, gives you much more bang for your buck as far as intense entertainment.  I think it showcases what a table-top RPG can do (as opposed to a video game).  Old school D&D was encouraging and (by example) masterful

[greyorm]

Hrm, but isn't the stat block the method through which one challenges the player? I guess, for me at least, I like skill lists and character-based challenges. I'm still the one using the pieces I have to solve the puzzles, after all.

And I say that because I don't like being relied on myself to come up with solutions that my character would know even if I, the player, am clueless or unskilled. Such as my guiding example: the social arena. I'm no smooth-tongued diplomat, but if I run a character that is? Then they better BE, regardless of my personal ability or performance (I'm not LARPing, fer chrisakes).

I've been burned in the kind of games you mention when my high CHA character fails because I stutter and bumble, which I found incredibly distasteful. In some cases to the point where I don't even feel like playing any longer because my character wouldn't stutter, or my character WOULD know what to do even though I don't (that's why I took those skills, after all).

My question always has been: why should my character's success depend on player skill at some task?

Seriously, I'm not asked to actually learn orcish in order to have my character know orcish, and if I manage to solve a piece of the dungeon puzzle because my character has the key to it (knows orcish, or has an 18 intellect, or is a puzzle-master, etc), I don't see that as not challenging me. I'm winning through the use of an optimal character build for the situation, which is itself a challenge: "Oh yeah? Let's see how THIS works in your grimy dungeon!"

Because what's the point of "Intelligence" or "Charisma" or whatnot, if all such really is are stats for "extra languages" or "spell power" and "number of henchmen"? Why not just call it that, then, and avoid the whole illusion of it being something it isn't? If "Intelligence" doesn't really mean how smart your character is?

Note I say all this coming from an old school background: I loved and played the heck out of old D&D and AD&D. I still love OD&D, dungeon crawls, pure Pawn-stance Gamism. So I really wonder if this is "the difference" because I'm not attracted to what you're saying at all, yet love the same old stuff. I'm guessing I'm the flip-side of the old school that James is presenting, and I--well, I'm surprised to admit--I guess I find it slightly distasteful(?) that he's presenting his version of old school play as THE way we did it or thought about it back-in-the-day.

[LandonSuffered]

i]challenge the player<intellectual <DM fiat <from a design standpoint<Dragon Quest <players are going to be challenged, DM should allow leeway for creativity<myintellectual <DM fiat <from a design standpoint<Dragon Quest <players are going to be challenged, DM should allow leeway for creativity<my

[JoyWriter]

Do you think there is any way to make rules for this stuff? As in GM prep aids that help them to build internal logic to their dungeons so that people can work out puzzles from each other, or flag systems so that GMs can see what kind of puzzles they like defeating? See to me that sounds like a perfect use for the mental stats! Or something close to them. So if my character has high tactics rating, then put in more grid combat, if he has a high linguistics or literary-ness or whatever, give him more word puzzles. If you allow players to choose say 3 of these and rank them, then you can use them as a way of keeping track of GM loads. I'm not sure which is harder, lots of players who are good at the same stuff, or who are good at everything. But perhaps there are methods that could be used to make a GM who is good at dealing with one better at another.