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akooser
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Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Thread Started on Jun 8, 2012, 9:43am »

Luke (Burning Wheel) talks about his 10 session ongoing Moldvay game on google+

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111266966448135449970/posts/Q8qRhCw7az5

It's very well written and informative.

ara

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monk
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #1 on Jun 8, 2012, 11:20am »

Quite apart from any stance on dungeon ecology or structural accuracy, I LOLed at this comment about B3's castle layout:

"If you have to get downstairs, you have to go through the Court Magician's lab. He must love that."

I can just see the Court Magician at his alchemical lab, pouring some tiger pee into a big beeker and looking up as a hobbit cruises through the room. "Dammit, I'm in the middle of some serious experimentation here, man! What could you possibly need down there at this time of night?!"

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moonlapse vertigo
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #2 on Jun 8, 2012, 11:51am »

that's a great write-up, and very refreshing to see that he "gets" it instead of trying to shoe-horn it into something else.

I liked his comment in response to one of the later posts:

"I've learned that it's a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news." [emphasis mine]

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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #3 on Jun 11, 2012, 4:49pm »

Great stuff. Hopefully he will be giving BECMI a go next. Way too few people seem to have experienced the unique joys of Companion level play

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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #4 on Jun 12, 2012, 8:34am »

Jun 8, 2012, 11:20am, monk wrote:

Quite apart from any stance on dungeon ecology or structural accuracy, I LOLed at this comment about B3's castle layout:

Although I am 100% convinced no specific thought was given to this mapping decision, here is something to chew on. Our concepts of privacy is a very modern concept, and spaces dedicated to that privacy were simply missing before something like the 18th, or really more like the 19th century. People would be walking all over each other and passing through several private rooms to reach their goals even in the castles of the aristocracy.

That alchemist is, perhaps unintentionally, but completely realistic!

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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #5 on Jun 12, 2012, 11:37am »

I have a feeling that most of the realistic details in my homemade adventures are accidental, too!

Luckily, my players are not worrying about accuracy so much.

Players: "Are there any monsters in the room?"

Me: "The room appears empty other than a few pieces of furniture and--"

Players: "Are there any plasma guns or light sabers or anything?!"

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gronanofsimmerya
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #6 on Jun 12, 2012, 12:22pm »

You're lucky! Most players I've encountered would be convinced that the old broken furniture was made of incredibly valuable wood, or that the random debris on the floor was hiding a magic item.

You can't fluffing win. If your dungeon is bare, they say it's unrealistic. If you add random flavor decorations, they spend fifty-three gaming sessions convinced that the bent nail they found is a magical artifact and that I'm trying to hide its powers from them.

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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #7 on Jun 12, 2012, 1:22pm »

Haha, too true!

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vargr1105
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #8 on Jun 12, 2012, 7:09pm »

Jun 12, 2012, 12:22pm, gronanofsimmerya wrote:

Gronanofsimmerya, you have got it made, what are you complaining about? Player (over)imagination and paranoia fuels games.

I knew a GM out of the UK once; this person ran entire adventures without pre-preparation relying solely on player tendecies to act like you described. He ran convention games like that and no players suspected he was just throwing bullcrap in their direction and letting them run with their own overindulgent imaginations.

If your players think the old broomstick they found in the goblin lair is a piece of the fabled Spear of Longinus, by all means let them. You can always decide it was a portion of the Holy Spear of Destiny at an appropriately dramatic later date.

When this happens your players will assume your are a master GM with near-prescient abilities that managed to pull off a great tale, rather than the mean GM that wont allow them to discover the mighty powers of the Nail of Awesomeness +5 they are cherishing and keeping during a multi-session span.

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gronanofsimmerya
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #9 on Jun 12, 2012, 9:50pm »

Vargr, I exalt thee!

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Michael Mornard
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #10 on Jun 13, 2012, 7:20am »

I'm reading it right now. Luke Crane is a great game master and designer. (You can find some videos on Youtube with Luke running one of his games.) That's why I have him in my signature.

I loved this in particular:

I've a deeper understanding why fudging dice is the worst rule ever proposed. The rules indicate fudging with a wink and a nudge, "Don't let a bad die roll ruin a good game." Seems like good advice, but to them I say, "Don't put bad die rolls in your game."Excellent reading.

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gronanofsimmerya
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #11 on Jun 13, 2012, 10:13am »

Hmm. I look at it differently.

There are no "bad" die rolls, there are no "good" die rolls.

There are only die rolls.

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Michael Mornard
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #12 on Jun 13, 2012, 10:16am »

I've exchanged a few emails with the man and he seems a pleasant and thoughtful fellow, and I know his Burning Wheel game is somewhat popular and I think it had something to do with encouraging the indie/experimental game movement. But otherwise I must confess ignorance. Is luke as "famous" as some of you seem to imply?

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monk
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #13 on Jun 13, 2012, 11:08am »

On the dice rolls, there seems to be at least three perspectives:

1. I/We have a story we want to tell, and we're not going to let a dice roll change the outcome to something we don't like.

2. I (as DM) set up a situation in which the die rolls matter, and change the outcome of the story that is being made up while we play, but I try to exclude situations where the die rolls might result in seemingly meaningless death and/or frustration.

3. I set up a situation and players interact with it. Player choices and die rolls end up creating a story. Sometimes that story is about a PC that got killed in the first round of his first combat against a kobold. But those stories build up into an interesting framework and continue to color the world created by the DM.

Obviously those are all simplified versions of the myriad styles of play available in an RPG, but maybe they provide a kind of continuum wherein one can locate his own style of play. I think Luke and his crew found their way from perspective 1 to perspective 2, which is a tremendous achievement involving some very open minds. I'm not saying he "evolved" or anything, as he seems to have been having lots of fun playing a game more like #1 above, and I don't mean to devalue that or any other style of play.

My own game is pretty close to the #3 above, and so there really aren't any "bad die rolls". I think this might be what you were alluding to, Gronan, if I understand you correctly. In my game, some of the best "stories" have been about disastrous bad luck. Or even better, players finding ingenious ways to survive/conquer despite some really unlucky rolls that put them in a terrible situation.

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gronanofsimmerya
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Re: Luke Crane on Moldvay D&D
« Reply #14 on Jun 13, 2012, 11:56am »

Monk, well said. Yes, I'm definitely "Group 3." I get that not everybody is, and that's OK.

In my VERY FIRST OD&D session that I ran at the U of MN, the brand new players with their brand new PCs encountered 4 kobolds.

When the dust settled, one kobold had taken 3 points of damage... it could take 4 ... and ALL the PCs were dead.

There was about five seconds of silence... then one of the players said "Let's roll new characters and get those little f*ckers!!!"

Which they did.

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Michael Mornard
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