How We Did it as Kids D&D

[jdrakeh]

I talked about this someplace else (using a label other than "How We Did it as Kids" to describe the style) which seemed to go over about as well as a turd in a punchbowl with one particular poster. Said poster proceeded to tell me in so many words that. . .

• I was lazy for not intricately detailing every last facet of my campaign setting prior to play.
  
  
• I was wrong for not using the players to act out plots that I, as the GM, scripted in advance.

There were some other choice taunts, though those were less criticisms than they were name-calling after I failed to let said poster shake my position following two threads and multiple pages of his best attempts to bait me with classic troll taunts.

Now, what made this amusing is what the poster in question did not know. He did not know that I was describing by the book OD&D play (per Chainmail + Rule Books 1, 2, and 3). I'd simply given it a different label and quantified it as "my style of play".

Basically, I laid down "my style of play" as an entirely player-driven, reactive, model that eschewed pre-scripted story arcs (including adventure modules) or metaplot development via NPCs and, instead, started only with a broad setting overview and built the game solely around the PCs and their actions/choices.

Hence, the label here "How We Did it as Kids" D&D. You know, how we played before there were premade adventure modules (or before we knew they existed), how we played when we were ten and trying to decipher how to read those funky dice, how we started from scratch and created our own adventures through nigh endless hours of killing things and taking stuff.

Now, I should state that I didn't start with OD&D, though I did experience all of that -- my first "D&D" was via the Holmes box set, swiftly followed by AD&D 1e. The "How We Did it as Kids" style was what my first DM adhered to when running a nearly two year long campaign and, recently I discovered that I'd never had that much fun since. More importantly, I realized why.

All of that said, this thread isn't really about the model/play style, or the fun I'm having with it (because I know that many of you already know what I'm talking about and have that same kind of fun). This thread is about the realization that I had when posting at That Other Place. I realized that what is often perceived as system bias is more accurately style bias.

The incident elsewhere demonstrated to me that it's not the game or the system that some people are really opposed to, so much as it is the underlying assumptions about actual play that a given game or game system makes. Here was a guy, a supposed fan of all things D&D, telling me that if a game wasn't about the GM creating a living, breathing, persistent world rife with metaplot, it was crap.

I don't know quite where I was going with this, though I'm certain that the observed behavior will come in handy when I tackle/expand on the application of "How We Did it as Kids" D&D in my own campaigns. Basically, I guess I'm deprogramming myself after years of Game as Art and Game as Novels play made this hobby really, tremendously, unfun for me.

[Edit: Corrected spelling errors. I got a new keyboard, and it rocks. Still have to get used to it, though.]

[crimhthanthegreat]

I think you make some excellent points, especially as to style versus system as the underlying disagreement. Have an exalt! If I detailed every last facet of my campaign setting prior to play, I still would not have played my first game session.

[jdrakeh]

Thanks. Yeah, I wasn't the only person on the Elsewhere thread to chime in about stocking dungeons and creating NPCs as-needed (i.e., if the PCs should end up needing these things defined). I was about the only person to explain in detail why I did this, though I suspect that is because some of the other OD&D players there (a few of whom are rather notorious fixtures in OD&D online communities) had already been down that road and met with much the same "Let me educate you about games as art!" responses that my explanations prompted.

[Finarvyn]

A couple of major drawbacks to messege board style discussion:
1. A reader often cannot detect voice inflection and/or sarcasm, even with smileys.
2. A poster often cannot convey the entirety of a thought, or that thought can be misinterpreted with a rather large time-lag before it can be corrected.

In other words, if I describe my own campaign setting and house rules, it's possible that I would get several people who might object and/or call certain aspects of the game stupid. In a face-to-face conversation I might quickly explain or retract a statement, perhaps in the hope of rephrasing. In an internet conversation this becomes challenging because often several others jump in with comments before the original poster can come up with the first reply.

I can see where a poster might imply in some manner a certain style of game, often based on the type of forum where the thread is being posted, and that readers might "fill in the gaps" unintentionally to respond to elements that were not stated or even intended. Thus, when you come back and say "surprise! I was talking about OD&D" it's possible that readers might shift their position with an "oh, in that case..." type of reply.

Certainly, it's unfortunate when others try to label someone's campaign style as "lazy" or "wrong". I know when I started playing OD&D in '75 we did some things that were logical to a teenager and I look back and realize that they were bad choices. But we did them and had fun along the way. I hate to say that these choices were "wrong", even if they were not intended by G&A in the original booklets.

Hopefully you don't get too many negative vibes such as those on these boards. You never stated if this discussion was here or elsewhere, but I like to think that in general OD&D players are more tolerent of others' styles since the OD&D rules are so vague and encourage players to adjust and modify rules as needed.

At least, that's my take on the matter.

[jdrakeh]

admin said:

In other words, if I describe my own campaign setting and house rules, it's possible that I would get several people who might object and/or call certain aspects of the game stupid.

Well, this was really just one individual deliberately and overtly attempting to push buttons (said poster has a history of attempting to do this elsewhere, as well). There wasn't any real miscommunication -- the posts were clear enough that everybody else knew exactly what I was taking about.

This guy was trying very hard to get me to double-back on myself by misquoting me and taking things that I said entirely out of context. For example, he very specifically asked if I mapped out and stocked dungeons with pre-plotted encounters. I told him no, that I stocked dungeons using random encounter tables.

One other OD&D fan said that he did the same.

In the offending individual's very next post, he declared that 'people' were advocating 'absolutely no setting prep' and that this was abominable. In short, myself and another respondent became "people", "dungeons" became the blanket "setting", and explaining how we did something personally in response to a question that he asked became "advocation".

And that's pretty much how the remaining two pages of said thread and the subsequent Q&A thread that I posted went.

Thus, when you come back and say "surprise! I was talking about OD&D" it's possible that readers might shift their position with an "oh, in that case..." type of reply.

The thing is, it wasn't intended as a surprise or a set-up, it just kind of turned out that way. Dude asked me how I play. I responded by saying what I summarized in the first post here.

Hopefully you don't get too many negative vibes such as those on these boards.

Oh, no. These boards are like the ENWorld of OD&D for me. Largely friendly, well moderated, and hardly ever off-topic. I prefer them to some of the more travelled places such as Dragonsfoot. I also like Canonfire a lot, though I need to spend more time there.

You never stated if this discussion was here or elsewhere

I should have been more explicit, I guess -- it was elsewhere. At one of those forums that has a somehwat negative reputation for encouraging the behavior in question. Oh, and not specifically old-school or OD&D related (though several old-school and OD&D players do hang out there).

[foster1941]

While I fully support the notion of what you're talking about (and it's pretty much the only way I'm interested in playing anymore) the "How We Did It As Kids" label is problematic because, as 5 minutes at ENWorld will tell you, people played a lot of different ways as kids, and a lot of people (apparently) had a lot of really terrible experiences playing D&D as kids -- rules-lawyering munchkin players insistent on breaking the game, sadistic powertripping calvinballing killer DMs, completely random-table-generated dungeons without even the barest attempt to add anything unique or interesting, and so on. In fact, it's curious to me why so many people who had such terrible experiences playing the game early on are still playing it...

[foster1941]

P.S. I'd be interested in seeing the original thread you're referring to here, on the other board. If your sense of propriety prevents you from posting a link in this thread, please PM it to me.

[greentongue]

This "Create it on the fly, only with a system," idea has been codified in Mythic.
Using the Mythic GM Emulator and OD&D, you can replicate the style of gaming you are describing.
(If you happen to feel that using a system to do it, and not "winging it," gives it more validity.)

www.mythic.wordpr.com/page14/page14.html
=

[jrients]

admin said:

A couple of major drawbacks to messege board style discussion:
1. A reader often cannot detect voice inflection and/or sarcasm, even with smileys.
2. A poster often cannot convey the entirety of a thought, or that thought can be misinterpreted with a rather large time-lag before it can be corrected.

In other words, if I describe my own campaign setting and house rules, it's possible that I would get several people who might object and/or call certain aspects of the game stupid.

The following is a sincere, sarcasm-free comment meant to be taken at face value: I have noticed over the years that the stupid parts of gaming are often times the most entertaining. When I'm working on something for a game and say to myself "this is totally stupid!" I don't back off or reject it, I try to drill down to the stupid parts and use 'em.

[jdrakeh]

jrients said:

I have noticed over the years that the stupid parts of gaming are often times the most entertaining.

Too true. Taking games too seriously is a large part of what burned me out on the hobby over the past several years.

[calithena]

This is a great thread idea.

Foster's right that 'how we did it as kids' is like any how we did it topic different for different people.

The main thing I remember is that we just made lots and lots of stuff up and let it into play, and d**n the consequences. Some of that was monty haul, some of it led to rules lawyering, and some of it was juvenile sexual humor (treasure hordes with boxes of old copies of Playorc magazine; goblins ceasing combat to perform "Centerfold" while a female PC did a striptease). But, some of it was the crazy DM who made us fight the 108 'true elementals' of the periodic table, all statted up for OD&D; the DM who just blew up half his campaign world (and scored a TPK) when a penguin illusionist/thief used a ventriloquism spell to say "Hastur" into one of those sonic projection devices from Dune; and later, when we got more 'serious', the character who's goodbye kiss to a god floated into the heavens and solidified into the world's fourth moon.

Or then there was the time when I totally laid it on thick for the final encounter with the evil wizard, describing whirlwinds and lightning and terrible voices, and one of my players just shook his head and said "I disbelieve". I had him roll a save and when he made it I decided his take on the situation was better and substituted a 7th level illusionist who's phantasmal force spell had just been called out for the regularly scheduled uber-baddie. I don't do that kind of thing very often but sometimes I just like the players' take better than my own, and I go with it.

And then fantasy worlds. There were at least a half-dozen hardcore GMs at my high school who had one or more well-detailed fantasy worlds, maps and binders and histories and all kinds of stuff. One of my own worlds from that time I still run in today and it's had five GMs in at least as many states and hundreds of players over the years. Making up fantasy worlds seems like it's almost a lost art with some of the new gamers in the hobby now but again, it's what I liked best about the early days, that endless creativity.

[dwayanu]

It's sort of funny to me that the "narrative-driven" style has become so popular, even dominant. I tried it a couple of decades ago as an experiment, having never encountered it before. The single player enjoyed it, but thought it too radical to catch on widely. A few years later, I ran several sessions for a group of players. I never saw it as a replacement for the traditional approach, seeing it rather as an occasional alternative. My response to Dragonlance was strongly negative.

I think that "system" tends better to support one style or another, and D&D is better suited to a more "wargame" than "storytelling" mode. For my experiments, I made up quite different sets of rules. In any case, I have certain expectations when coming to a D&D game.

"Character development" is a literary element that can easily figure in D&D. PCs and NPCs alike tend to acquire distinctive personalities, histories and relationships. A player's concept of "winning" and "losing" may even become more defined by roleplaying goals than by the built-in goals of acquiring experience points and treasure.

Plot and theme strike me as much less compatible, too often bringing in "railroading" and "fudging" that just feel wrong to me. A referee can have events proceeding in the environment toward certain conclusions -- but only with the caveat that their courses are unaltered if the players do not interfere. Once players choose to insert their characters, I think it the referee's obligation to leave consequences up to the interaction of the players' choices with the fall of the dice.

Setting detail naturally accumulates over years of campaigning. Some referees develop material rapidly because that's a sort of "solitaire game" in itself (as GDW's Traveller recognized) and they have time for it.

My own totally "off-the-cuff" sessions tend to be... weird. They tend also to involve a big dose of the sort of humorous references to gaming/fictional/current-event topics that are jarring if one is trying to get immersed in an "alternate reality." That can be fun once in a while, but get tiresome as standard fare. I'm sure (from experience with other refs) that's not as strong a susceptibility for everyone!

[jdrakeh]

dwayanu said:

It's sort of funny to me that the "narrative-driven" style has become so popular, even dominant.

True.

The thing is, using any edition of D&D to tell stories is much like using a screwdriver handle to drive a nail. D&D is, mechanically, about killing things and taking stuff. And I don't mean that as a slight. This is, by and large, what the game mechanics are designed to facilitate and reward. Everything else is secondary (or even tertiary) in nature.

Things such as collaborative storytelling don't enter into D&D mechanical design at all, period. There aren't explicit rules in D&D for shared narrative control or directing plot during play. In D&D these things are organic, logical, extensions of the things that explicit rules are provided for (e.g., killing things, taking stuff, overcoming challenges).

I submit that the reason plot-driven, story-centric, adventure seems to be such an awkward fit with D&D is because that's not what D&D is about, nor has it ever been. This isn't to say that D&D can't accommodate this kind of play, merely that it's not the best tool for the job. Or, as my .sig says, Games are Games. They aren't novels. They aren't theatre. They're games.

Mechancially, D&D is a game with very specifically supported actions and goals -- trying to run it as something other than a game or trying to alter that goal set and list of supported actions changes the fundamental underpinnings of D&D, often with some unusual (and, IME, unsatisfactory) results. YMMV, of course.

[calithena]

I want to dissent from jdrakeh's post in a minor way.

D&D is certainly good at killing things and taking their stuff, and that's what most of the mechanics support. On the other hand, people who want to make 'stories' (which, let's say, just means having their characters deal with interesting human situations and have some influence over how those situations come out) can do it pretty easily. The decisive moments in such stories come from:

- largely freeform, role-played interactions between the characters, and

- brutal, rules-facilitated fights that decide how certain things in the stories are going to go when the first doesn't

In other words, D&D-facilitated stories are going to be certain kinds of stories; stories where the alternative to humanity is violence (whether of the magical or physical kind). Which, fortunately, can include a lot of real-world stories from the Iliad to Tolkien and Howard. Crucial conflicts are either externalized through violence or negotiated between free sentient beings.

I've had a lot of good times using D&D to drive story-focused games, and challenge-focused games, and games where some players are doing one thing and some are doing the other and many are doing both. It works fine for me.

[ffilz]

Calithena,

Good point. The key though is that it is not considered a failure of play if the combat mechanics (i.e. the rules text) get invoked. Where people have had problems is when the GM EXPECTS players to NOT fight certain opponents, and then tries to steamroll the players when they actually decide to fight.

There is a risk to all the freeform play, but so long as everyone is on board, it can work well, and I suspect in all but a small handful of groups, this freeform play does exist to some degree.

Frank

[Finarvyn]

I remember back in '75 when my friend got the OD&D boxed set. He read things over and hastily ran a game and I had never gotten to read the rules. It was so neat that I rushed home and made up my own dungeon, only having not had a clue about the rules I keyed my map with things like "fight 2 orcs, lose 3 men" or the like. In other words, it was just a simple maze without any real dice rolling and where the player's choice dictated whether he lost henchmen or not.

Quite a different game from the actual, as I realized when I actually read the rules a week or so later.

On the other hand, we were kids and nobody had ever heard of this style of gaming before either.

[jdrakeh]

admin said:

It was so neat that I rushed home and made up my own dungeon, only having not had a clue about the rules I keyed my map with things like "fight 2 orcs, lose 3 men" or the like. In other words, it was just a simple maze without any real dice rolling and where the player's choice dictated whether he lost henchmen or not.

Thar's gold in them thar hills! In dead seriousness, that sounds like a very cool way to setup an introductory RPG, as it lets players get familiar with all of the fundamental basics sans funny dice, chit-counting, et al.