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Post by delta on Feb 7, 2021 17:38:56 GMT -6
1E AD&D has the novel quality (pretty sure unlike any other edition) of reserving the attack, saving throw, etc., matrices to the DMG and (allegedly) not be player-facing.
I've got at least 3 different theories about why that might be (and I'm sure we can guess at others). Does anyone know of any source attribution or motivation for why that was done?
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Post by Falconer on Feb 8, 2021 11:37:30 GMT -6
On the face of it it seems obvious—the player rolls the die, the DM consults the chart and announces success or failure.
Or am I misunderstanding the question?
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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 8, 2021 14:33:58 GMT -6
Perhaps delta is comparing this to OD&D, where combat tables can be found in Men & Magic, which is the OD&D equivalent to the Player's Handbook.
The irony that the "roll and I will tell you" style of OD&D puts it in M&M where players can see it, while the "look up the rules" style of AD&D puts it in the DMG where players can't.
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Post by Falconer on Feb 8, 2021 15:38:27 GMT -6
Do the OD&D books ever state that players should access Men & Magic only (or at all, for that matter)?
The AD&D books do explicitly make the DMG off-limits to players. Not sure what you mean by “look up the rules” in this context.
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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 8, 2021 16:13:43 GMT -6
Do the OD&D books ever state that players should access Men & Magic only (or at all, for that matter)? They don't address the issue at all, as far as I can tell, and I was mostly commenting on the fact that the content (races, classes, XP charts, spell list, spell descriptions) are pretty much the things that one finds in a later edition PH. The AD&D books do explicitly make the DMG off-limits to players. Not sure what you mean by “look up the rules” in this context. Once my group moved from OD&D to AD&D we had many games derailed by someone who felt that there was a rule covering a specific situation and we all waited for folks to look up the rules. Very different from my OD&D games where I would wing it and move on. To me, OD&D is more about the DM makes the rulings and AD&D is more about the rulebooks make the rulings. |
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 8, 2021 17:50:52 GMT -6
Do the OD&D books ever state that players should access Men & Magic only (or at all, for that matter)? Men & Magic specifically indicates that players are intended to read the rules, even mentioning the "tables" (which would include the combat tables). There is no indication that this applies only to Vol 1 versus Vol 2-3. I assume they wanted to encourage players to buy a full set of the rules themselves, versus just copying what they needed for their character.  |
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Post by Falconer on Feb 8, 2021 22:50:53 GMT -6
Right.
Anyway, I have always forbidden my players from reading the DMG, and never had any problems; hell, I doubt they would ever want to. I allow them to look at the MM1 when they are in town but not in the field, and never the FF or MM2.
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
Posts: 370
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Post by flightcommander on Feb 8, 2021 23:32:31 GMT -6
That's a neat approach Falconer — in-town reference only. In my experience, however, the cat was definitely out of the bag. Everybody wanted a taste of DM power, plus everybody got the MM or the DMG from their doting grandmother for Christmas, so it was kind of a hopeless cause (among my peers at least) to try to police what "official" game-knowledge people brought with them to a game. I honestly think this, at least in part, is where D&D "rules lawyers" started — too many people had too much exposure to too many rules, and brought all their interpretations to the table higglety-pigglety and argued about them until the wheels came off the whole enterprise. |
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Post by howandwhy99 on Feb 9, 2021 7:35:25 GMT -6
Look for the 1970s review of the game which calls it a double blind tax review. I understand D&D to be a hidden design game, so the maze is a design as are the mechanics of it to be hidden behind the screen and gained through discovery by the players.
Players who saw the map or read about magic items or Monster designs had cheated because they knew already how to win against them. Ideally the rules of each campaign would differ too, being completely hidden from the players.
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calstaff
Level 1 Medium
Playing LotRO...as a human.
Posts: 13 
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Post by calstaff on Dec 9, 2021 16:47:40 GMT -6
IDK of anything documenting why this was done but I have always felt it was to limit "off-board" knowledge to players so that knowledge would not interfere with their immersion "in-character".
I played with a DM that would not tell us exactly how much damage we took because hit points were a game mechanic that our players had no knowledge of....
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2021 17:05:00 GMT -6
IDK of anything documenting why this was done but I have always felt it was to limit "off-board" knowledge to players so that knowledge would not interfere with their immersion "in-character".
I played with a DM that would not tell us exactly how much damage we took because hit points were a game mechanic that our players had no knowledge of....
That's a very Arnesonian approach to DMing. I think how well it works depends on the context. At the table, with character sheets in hand, I tell people the numbers they need to know. Maybe a play by post game where I'm doing all the rolling and math behind the scenes would be more narrative, like "You're badly winded and hurting but still on your feet" rather than "You're down to 4hp". I guess it depends on what the players gravitate towards, too. You could really do either approach in either situation with AD&D and it's still the same game. It just feels a little different, right? |
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calstaff
Level 1 Medium
Playing LotRO...as a human.
Posts: 13
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Post by calstaff on Dec 9, 2021 17:53:33 GMT -6
IDK of anything documenting why this was done but I have always felt it was to limit "off-board" knowledge to players so that knowledge would not interfere with their immersion "in-character".
I played with a DM that would not tell us exactly how much damage we took because hit points were a game mechanic that our players had no knowledge of....
That's a very Arnesonian approach to DMing. I think how well it works depends on the context. At the table, with character sheets in hand, I tell people the numbers they need to know. Maybe a play by post game where I'm doing all the rolling and math behind the scenes would be more narrative, like "You're badly winded and hurting but still on your feet" rather than "You're down to 4hp". I guess it depends on what the players gravitate towards, too. You could really do either approach in either situation with AD&D and it's still the same game. It just feels a little different, right? Yeah, as a DM, I wouldn't want all of that responsibility...let the players do some of the work too! As a player under that DM I mentioned, it was a more immersive feeling and he would use narration similar to your example. As we became more powerful and faced opponents that could damage us more severely, he started calling a 5 hp or so wound as being "lightly wounded", 10-15 was a "serious blow", and if anything went higher than that it was a "critical" or "crucial" wound. |
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