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Post by James Maliszewski on Dec 10, 2007 12:19:25 GMT -6
The first question I would have is whether it is a result of a change in Gamerdom, in contemporary culture, both or neither. Tough question. On the one hand, my gut tells me that the change started in contemporary culture, perhaps coinciding with the advent of better and more sophisticated video/computer games that could provide a lowest common denominator sort of gaming experience. However, I also remember well third party D&D products and many a Dragon article with the latest and greatest "NPC" classes (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) that catered to players rather than encouraged cooperation and negotiation with the DM. So, I don't know precisely when or where the shift occurred, let alone why; I can only tell you that it definitely happened had long term repercussions for how the hobby evolved.
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Post by James Maliszewski on Dec 10, 2007 12:21:51 GMT -6
I don't deny that making a well-built Champions (where 'build' came in BTW) My own fear and loathing of math does me in once again! I avoided Champions like the plague back in the day -- still do -- preferring the simplicity of Villains & Vigilantes, with its glorious Jeff Dee art. But you're right: this whole concept has ancient roots in the hobby. I'd love to hear your insights, because I think this is a very fascinating question.
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Post by ffilz on Dec 10, 2007 12:31:25 GMT -6
I'm very torn on the idea of race as class. In a way, I actually like the way OD&D handles it. There aren't racial classes, but the reality is that the non-human races don't have a choice (except for thief - and that I'm limiting to humans, and halflings, and for halflings, I'm imposing a level limit).
As far as loss of GM trust: I think that has come about in part due to the illusionist gaming of the 90s, where the GM had a story to tell and he was going to tell it come hell or high water. The players purpose was to help the GM tell his story, with an illusion of freedom.
Character build came about from a desire to tell stories. In part, it can be blamed on illusionist GMing. One thing character build allows a player to do is tell the story of his character in a way the GM can't mess with it. The problem is that often the character's story is "done" before play starts.
Character build as an expression of min-maxing design though derives from points building of armies, which pre-dates D&D (Chainmail being one such example).
What I think is interesting is that while RuneQuest was an early example of a game that had room for character build, our early play did not exploit character build. Yes, you had a lot of choice as to how to advance your character (with training, including the guild loans that allowed a starting character to do some training), but the character advancement was driven more by play than by "character concept." I didn't really see "character concept" until I started playing Champions (though folks had been advocating point building of attributes for D&D since at least the early 80s, if not earlier - perhaps partly inspired by D&D's attribute exchange rules).
There's defintely no doubt that my recent gaming has been very non-humanocentric. D&D 3.x really promotes play of non-humans (though I was playing Arcana Unearthed/Evolved - which I think actually promotes non-human play even more than D&D 3.x). But even before then, our PC parties were looking like menageries. For me, I think it started with my Fantasy Hero campaign in 1985, with the largest break towards humanocentric play being my RuneQuest campaigns (I think RQ promotes humanocentric play by making the non-humans so bizarre most players aren't willing to play them - which is nice - the non-humans serve as accents to a largely human party), though the homebrew I played in college also facilitated humanocentric play (primarily because I made sure the non-humans did not make better core characters than humans, the non-humans always made unusual character choices more effective).
Frank
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2007 15:58:52 GMT -6
That would indeed be an interesting thread for sure, Calithena.
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Post by James Maliszewski on Dec 13, 2007 16:38:22 GMT -6
I'm very torn on the idea of race as class. In a way, I actually like the way OD&D handles it. There aren't racial classes, but the reality is that the non-human races don't have a choice (except for thief - and that I'm limiting to humans, and halflings, and for halflings, I'm imposing a level limit). You raise a good point. As I've been working things up for my OD&D one-shot this coming weekend, I've realized that the "race as class" jibe at the game is in some ways a misnomer. The reality is that OD&D postulates that dwarves and halflings are basically fighting men with some alterations. There are no separate XP charts for them; they use the same as fighting men. Elves are an odd case, but, even there, what we're talking about is not an "elf" class so much as the meta-setting notion that elves are equally familiar with fighting and magic, so they may freely switch between the two classes. I think many times we read back into OD&D something that's not really there. It's probably not helped by the fact that in the Basic sets, there's a more explicit move toward categorizing the races as classes, but even there, if you read between the lines, it's clear that what these classes represent is your typical adventuring members of various species. Demihuman adventurers in OD&D are thus more stereotypical than archetypal, which is fine by me, since I favor a humanocentric world anyway.
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Post by thorswulf on Dec 15, 2007 18:51:05 GMT -6
This is indeed a most interesting topic. Jamesm's comments on the suspicion ofa shift ata sociological level isn't far off I would guess. I think part of the problem stems from the games origins as a very elaborate skirmish wargame. "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniatue Figures", is the subtitile to D&D.
Think about it for a second. Is there any mention in OD&D's LBBs about getting into character? Nope! In booklet three there is a short example of what might happen during a game, but there are no characterizations mentioned. Oh sure there are callers and mappers and the like, but nobody is ROLE playing. They are ROLL playing! I make this distinction, because it seems to me that OD&D evolved the role playing process. The Holmes Edition certainly planted the seed in me! I would guess the Holmes/later editions did the same for others as well.
What we experienced was a sociological change. Was it for the better? I think so, as it got many people interacting socially with others in a very positive manner. Even the internal conflict in gaming groups gave most of us a good lesson in manners at the very least!
O.K. I'll get off my reinforced soap box now.
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Post by coffee on Dec 16, 2007 1:19:33 GMT -6
As far as a sociological shift, I think there may genuinely have been one.
It dawned on me the other day that there were two broad groups of players in my original group: Those older than me, and those younger than me. Seemed like nobody was my same age!
And later it dawned on me that I'm pretty much tail-end-charlie of the baby boom. All the older players are boomers and the younger ones are not.
Not sure how significant that is. But I have noticed that older players tend to be more likely to play lawful and/or good characters, and the younger ones like the chaotic and/or the evil. Is this part of our upbringing? Part of the post-60's world, it's effect on each of us depending on whether we were warm and breathing at the time or not?
I'm not qualified to say, but I thought I'd throw it out there and see what people thought.
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 18, 2008 7:29:02 GMT -6
That said, I am also convinced that humanocentrism is one of the key tenets of what makes D&D the game that it is. While I would opt for demihuman class and level restrictions in my own campaigns, the class as race approach is simply a different solution to the same problem, namely how to promote humanocentric fantasy without simply disallowing the playing of demihumans. I think they're both equally valid, with the race as class, I think, being the "stronger" of the two in terms of promoting humanocentrism, since it not only reduces the power of demihuman PCs (which the other approach does as well) but also reduces demihuman PCs to a narrower range of archetypes, which further limits their attractiveness in game play. I finally figured out why I was having so much trouble with this retconning of demi-human class limits. Let me see if I can explain: Maybe I'm just reading something similar to what you've been suggesting, but from a different starting point. I started playing miniatures before playing D&D, and I spotted level limits as an element of the rules from a miniatures perspective a long time ago (but never really thought about it). Now that we've been examining it, I've picked up on something different in this discussion. Although you, Evreaux, Foster, et. al., have described OD&D as focused on humans and less so on demi-humans, I think a good chunk of that has less to do with a coherent fantasy worldview in the rules and a heckuva lot more to do with a wargamer's mindset about keeping units in balance with one another. Put another way, I think it has less to do with the setting, and a lot more to do with the miniatures rules for "fantastic medieval wargame campaigns" (or so it seems to me). If you have humans, which as a kind of unit have no particular special abilities, and demi-humans, which can act as two different kinds of unit AND have special abilities past that, then you need some sort of balancing factor, such as level limits, to keep them from mopping up other units on the battlefield. If you mix in the experience of Sir Fang - the vampire as player-character in Blackmoor, which led to the creation of the cleric class (according to Michael Mornard), then you begin to see how this might have worked. Not so much about a coherent view of fantasy (which I would suggest isn't there), but a coherent view of wargaming. I'm sure that having humans as the default was an original assumption of the game. And I'm also sure that demi-humans were seen as "options" past that. But I think you all might be reading a much more coherent "deeper" zeitgeist into the rules than might have really been there. Just a caution (and as usual, I might be wrong).
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Post by James Maliszewski on Mar 18, 2008 7:35:42 GMT -6
I'm sure that having humans as the default was an original assumption of the game. And I'm also sure that demi-humans were seen as "options" past that. But I think you all might be reading a much more coherent "deeper" zeitgeist into the rules than might have really been there. Just a caution (and as usual, I might be wrong). I suspect there's something to this, although exactly how much is an open question. I do know that other aspects of OD&D derive ultimately from elements of wargaming "balance," so it's certainly possible that demihuman level limits are another example of it. All I can say is that I did ask Gygax about this question on a couple of occasions and, each time, he responded that he felt that demihumans should be a marginal option and should never overshadow Men, either mechanically or within a setting. As with many things Gygax said in his later life, he may have been conflating his current beliefs with his past ones, but there's no way to know for sure.
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 18, 2008 16:41:51 GMT -6
I suspect there's something to this, although exactly how much is an open question. I do know that other aspects of OD&D derive ultimately from elements of wargaming "balance," so it's certainly possible that demihuman level limits are another example of it. All I can say is that I did ask Gygax about this question on a couple of occasions and, each time, he responded that he felt that demihumans should be a marginal option and should never overshadow Men, either mechanically or within a setting. As with many things Gygax said in his later life, he may have been conflating his current beliefs with his past ones, but there's no way to know for sure. I have no doubt that Gary had this as an intention at some point. And I rather expect that Dave did, as well. But the point I'm trying to make is that I think this resulted from a wargaming perspective, rather than as a fantasy worldview perspective, and the latter got retconned into explaining how the rules were written. And maybe I'm not giving Gary enough due in what he wanted the game to be - I'm just not convinced it's as coherent a perspective as some people have suggested.
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Post by James Maliszewski on Mar 18, 2008 16:48:18 GMT -6
I'm just not convinced it's as coherent a perspective as some people have suggested. Nor should you be. Believe it or not, I share your perspective on this. I don't think we should be so quick to assume that because OD&D did this or that that Gary or Dave intended this or that to be a philosophical statement of anything other than "Yeah, I guess that works." As someone who's designed more than his fair share of game rules for publication over the years, I can tell you that the design process often does come down to something like that in many cases. However, I do think, given that OD&D, moreso than any edition of D&D, was strongly informed by pulp fantasy themes and conventions, demihuman marginalization, whatever its immediate origin, serves to buttress those themes and conventions rather nicely, which is why I often speak of them as if that was Gary's intention, even though it's very likely that that wasn't foremost in his mind (for the reasons you correctly cite).
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Post by ragnorakk on Jan 27, 2009 3:43:57 GMT -6
Fascinating thread.
I didn't like the race-as-class mechanic at the time (Red Basic) - I was already used to them decoupled in AD&D. And one of the few things I really liked in 3e was the Arcana Unearthed/Evolved race levels. Variety in characterization shouldn't have to be hard-coded into the mechanics, but I think that the Elf class, Dwarf-class, etc hard-coded uniformity - encouraged characters-as-stereotypes. It is a matter of personal taste in the end, of course.
As far as the sociological shift and the player-DM-contract-of-trust - I experienced that shift also, and have always tried to understand what was going on - I wonder how much of that change was predicated by TSR corporate decisions/changes, though I have no real theory to forward there as I was getting out of the game a little before 2e...
I suspect that this ephemeral change in tone might have some connection to naive vs informed play - as more players become familiar with DM material, the "3rd wall" broke. I can remeber the first game I played in which I did not trust the DM. It sucked. He was min-maxing for me, and I resented it...
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Post by dwayanu on Jan 27, 2009 10:30:16 GMT -6
The original depictions always seemed appropriate to me, even when I was cooking up all sorts of freaky combos with the Supplements and Arduin and so on. Getting outside of that "gamer" context and back to the literary sources, what do we see?
I keep seeing an assumption that in my experience came in (rather by the designer's intent, I think) with new crew AD&D brought in, and that now seems to prevail widely. I'm talking about the notion that D&D is a prescription you've got to follow. If The Company (once TSR, now WotC) publishes something about Dragonborn Paladins, then by golly that's D&D ... whereas beforehand it was "not (Proper) D&D."
To me, that's just weird. I've absorbed it a bit regarding what feels like AD&D to me, but on a deeper level it's still weird.
One can fit only so much in so many pages, and after all "why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" It's YOUR world; the mechanics are just a way to explore it. Do Human Swashbuckler / Conjurer / Cutpurses haunt the alleys of the City of White Shadows? Do Satyr Dancers venture from the Crimson Clover in search of adventure? Are Dwarfs shunned for their reputation as Necromancers? Are Elves or Halflings to be met with at all?
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Post by snorri on Jan 27, 2009 12:24:50 GMT -6
For Epées & Sorcellerie, I made a little treachery to the original rules. The races (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc) can all go up to level 12, but halflings and elves can't have more than 4 HD and dwarves 7HD. So, it keeps the pleasure for a group to grow together, but there is a limit (anyway, a 4HD halfling reroll all dices each level aven after level 4).
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Post by kenmeister on Jan 27, 2009 17:39:08 GMT -6
Neat ideas so far, and no edition bashing. That's what I love about this group! Since I started with OD&D, it only seemed natural to make race different from class, but I can certainly see how it simplifies things to make them blend together. What would be nice is to see a better "elf only" spell list, however, because elves as generic spellcasters just seems ... wrong somehow. Are you familiar with exactly that from Gaz5? Once you make the shift to the Gaz5 spell list, suddenly BECMI shines with distinction. I'm starting an RC campaign next month, and the class choices are: Human Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief, Mystic, Illusionist*, Bard*, Warlock**, Shaman (Gaz 11 I think) Not-quite human Ranger* Elf (with Gaz 5 spell list; after 10th level they decide whether to pursue fighting or magic) Dwarf Fighter Dwarf Cleric (Gaz 6) Halfling Fighter Gnome Fighter (with optional shaman/wokan casting, PC3) I think that what people are most going to ask for is a halfling thief. I'm not sure how to answer that yet. * Best of Dragon I ** Dungeoneer 16
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Post by apeloverage on Jan 29, 2009 1:45:50 GMT -6
My guess would be that dwarves, elves and hobbits were put in to appeal to Tolkien fans, not because Gary Gygax particularly wanted them. The rules about hobbits seem to have an air of "you want to play a what? I mean, I guess so..." I'm just not convinced it's as coherent a perspective as some people have suggested. Nor should you be. Believe it or not, I share your perspective on this. I don't think we should be so quick to assume that because OD&D did this or that that Gary or Dave intended this or that to be a philosophical statement of anything other than "Yeah, I guess that works." As someone who's designed more than his fair share of game rules for publication over the years, I can tell you that the design process often does come down to something like that in many cases. However, I do think, given that OD&D, moreso than any edition of D&D, was strongly informed by pulp fantasy themes and conventions, demihuman marginalization, whatever its immediate origin, serves to buttress those themes and conventions rather nicely, which is why I often speak of them as if that was Gary's intention, even though it's very likely that that wasn't foremost in his mind (for the reasons you correctly cite).
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Post by geoffrey on Jan 29, 2009 9:41:52 GMT -6
My guess would be that dwarves, elves and hobbits were put in to appeal to Tolkien fans, not because Gary Gygax particularly wanted them. The rules about hobbits seem to have an air of "you want to play a what? I mean, I guess so..." I agree. And consider the level limits: dwarves: 6th level elves: 4th/8th level hobbits: 4th level humans: none (and 20th-level humans are mentioned) Plus look at the PCs in Gary's Greyhawk campaign? The vast majority of them were human.
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Post by dwayanu on Jan 29, 2009 10:56:46 GMT -6
With that appeal to the "final arbiter of fantasy role-playing," we can feel free of heresy in including or excluding the critters (or any others)!
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Post by supernaught on May 19, 2009 12:53:48 GMT -6
I absolutely agree! Players play a "roll" in the game. The advent of "getting into character" seems to evolve as people started to move away from the original paradigm. If you watch the Wrath of the Dragon King, the DVD has an interview with Gary Gygax. He describes the fighter as the "tank" the magic-user as the "artillery" the cleric as the "medic" and clearly the thief becomes the "recon" of the adventuring party, which is basically a fantasy version of a military unit. This idea clearly fits with the evolution of gaming from miniature war-gaming to role-playing, as characters become the "units" in the game. Even the terminology of campaign evokes a military activity; however, instead of a series of military engagements, we have a series of character exploits that often involve a lot of battles ;D
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Post by supernaught on Jun 23, 2009 13:27:41 GMT -6
Gary Gygax said:
Thus, we have a clearer picture of how the game was played. Each participant did indeed play a "roll" in the game that challenged the players and not the characters. Ad hoc amateur play-acting was not the major focus of the game but did indeed have its place. Clearly, the emphasis was on action and adventure and player DM interaction, not character dungeon master interaction, which I think, is an important distinction.
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