|
Post by waysoftheearth on Apr 1, 2013 16:13:20 GMT -6
Except that unless you want to end up skewered by a random number between 1-300 orcs at first level, it seems to play more of a combat avoidance game of treasure finding, in my experience. Don't let them off so lightly; it's 30-300 Orcs isn't it? ;D
|
|
zeraser
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 184
|
Post by zeraser on Apr 1, 2013 16:18:58 GMT -6
In my experience, no DM sics 300 orcs (or even 30) on a first-level party. Is this one of those situations where the table-to-table variation in D&D makes it difficult for us to have a meaningful conversation, or am I being obtuse?
People fight monsters in D&D, right? I mean, right?
|
|
|
Post by Mushgnome on Apr 1, 2013 16:30:14 GMT -6
April Fools!
|
|
|
Post by tombowings on Apr 1, 2013 16:35:43 GMT -6
In my experience, no DM sics 300 orcs (or even 30) on a first-level party. Is this one of those situations where the table-to-table variation in D&D makes it difficult for us to have a meaningful conversation, or am I being obtuse? People fight monsters in D&D, right? I mean, right?Last night we playtested a game on G+. it was basically 4 dirty peasants trying to kidnap a countess guarded by a vastly superior force of 10 footmen and 5 knight. There were 3 attack rolls made, but most of the session involved creating and executing a daring and heavily thought out plan. Ao yes, there was combat, but I wouldn't really call what we did a combat game. That seems much more representative of both my home game and those played on g+ than a game about slaying monsters. And there's nothing wrong with slaying monsters, just that getting into a straight-up fight were the PCs will usually win is really boring to me, personally. I would rather take on a far superior force and have to come up with a way to nap the treasure without resorting to violence (cause that just makes you dead).
|
|
|
Post by waysoftheearth on Apr 1, 2013 17:54:28 GMT -6
In my experience, no DM sics 300 orcs (or even 30) on a first-level party. To be fair, the 160-odd Orcs you might roll up are distributed throughout a lair complex. They are "in the local area", sure, but they are not all in one room. I think the most Orcs I've had attacking players was a force of 200 that besieged the PCs in a keep, and a group of 80 that attacked the PCs encampment from three directions at once. In both cases, the PCs prevailed after some losses.
|
|
|
Post by talysman on Apr 1, 2013 23:19:15 GMT -6
OK, I'll bite. In what respect is D&D "not a combat game"? Certainly one doesn't have to include combat in all (or even any) sessions of play - but given a) the amount of pages in published materials that deal exclusively with combat and b) the game's lineage in miniatures wargaming, it seems like a rather polemical provocation to assert that D&D is "not a combat game." What's your agenda here? If you just look at the LBBs, there's not that many pages of material on melee combat at all. Even when you add the naval and aerial sections, most of it has to do with movement; there are only a couple pages in each section on actual combat. The bulk of the rules are spells, monsters, and magic items, plus a few pages on advancement, exploration, evasion, and interaction with NPCs and monsters. The fact that the rules say you can either get Chainmail or use the simple alternative combat system is a pretty clear indicator that a "combat system" is of secondary importance to the real point of the game, which is adventure.
|
|
machpants
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Supersonic Underwear!
Posts: 259
|
Post by machpants on Apr 1, 2013 23:47:39 GMT -6
I take it you mean "exploration and the liberation of wealth to the nearest town/pub/brothel" when you say "adventure"?
A lot of those spells are combat spells and the monsters are mostly combat stats, right? I don't have ODnD, just clones, so inferring here.
|
|
|
Post by waysoftheearth on Apr 2, 2013 4:27:08 GMT -6
I don't have ODnD, just clones, so inferring here. FYI -- I'm giving away a complete OD&D boxed set, another set of 3LBBs, all the OD&D supplements, and a bunch of other goodies ( see here).
|
|
|
Post by Stormcrow on Apr 2, 2013 7:36:41 GMT -6
A lot of those spells are combat spells and the monsters are mostly combat stats, right? I don't have ODnD, just clones, so inferring here. Because combat requires statistics; negotiating, bartering, and sneaking don't. The idea that D&D is about kicking down the door, killing the monster, and taking its stuff is a modern one, meant to reduce D&D to a pithy caricature of itself. It is always followed up by either a parody (a la Munchkin) or an "improvement" to add either "role-playing" or "realism."
|
|
zeraser
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 184
|
Post by zeraser on Apr 2, 2013 8:03:14 GMT -6
OK, I see what the issue is. When the term "D&D" is used here, it refers to a way of playing OD&D and similar early editions of the game that cleaves closely to the published rules and requires the players to show a great deal of restraint.
I imagine there was a fair amount of this kind of play taking place in the early 1980s too. But regardless of when people started kicking down doors and killing monsters, that seems to be a widely embraced MO in D&D broadly defined. To put it another way, D&D may be "not a combat game" at your table, or yours or yours or yours, but at many tables it is - and that fact doesn't mean that what they're doing isn't D&D.
Having said that, arguing over what gaming practices fall within the definitional boundaries of "D&D" and which don't is mad tiresome. I'm sorry I hijacked the thread to do so!
|
|
|
Post by Stormcrow on Apr 2, 2013 10:26:52 GMT -6
arguments over what gaming practices fall within the definitional boundaries of "D&D" and which don't is mad tiresome. Sorry. You did bite...
|
|
|
Post by talysman on Apr 2, 2013 14:48:36 GMT -6
OK, I see what the issue is. When the term "D&D" is used here, it refers to a way of playing OD&D and similar early editions of the game that cleaves closely to the published rules and requires the players to show a great deal of restraint. It's not so much that as: D&D can include combat, but it's not *defined* by combat. The combat system can even be replaced completely. I think a lot of arguments about playstyles are not really arguments about playstyles at all, but about one person saying "D&D isn't X" (a combat game, a role-playing game, whatever,) and someone interpreting that as "D&D doesn't *include* X"... or someone saying "D&D is X" and someone thinking that means "D&D requires X". In this case, when I (or, I'm sure, Stormcrow) say "D&D is not a combat game", we're not denying that combat can take place in D&D, or even dominate the game for a session, or dominate every session for a particular group. We're saying that combat isn't essential; you can remove combat completely, actually, and still have D&D. But, I would say, you can't remove adventure from the game and still call it D&D. If the players don't interact with the fictional world as characters in that world, and don't take risky actions, they're doing something other than D&D. I take it you mean "exploration and the liberation of wealth to the nearest town/pub/brothel" when you say "adventure"? A lot of those spells are combat spells and the monsters are mostly combat stats, right? I don't have ODnD, just clones, so inferring here. Depends on what you mean by "combat spell", I suppose. Just about any spell can theoretically be used in combat, but being slightly generous, I count 22 M-U combat spells out of 68 spells in Men & Magic. The monsters? Again, it depends on what you mean by "mostly combat stats". The stats of monsters in M&T are basically just a two-page table. These are "mostly" combat, counting Move as a combat stat, but "# appearing", "% in Lair" and "Treasure" aren't combat stats. The descriptions of the monsters are very brief, if they're just meant to be a combat obstacle (like kobolds and goblins,) but there's a bit more detail about social structure and behavior for the men types and the orcs, and many of the other monsters have details that make them threats or challenges whether they are involved in combat or not. Do you have to fight nixies, for example? Or should you maybe bargain with them to get them to return people they've charmed and taken away?
|
|
rms
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 11
|
Post by rms on Apr 10, 2013 23:57:14 GMT -6
If you just look at the LBBs, there's not that many pages of material on melee combat at all. Of particular note here, the example of play in the LBBs skips the combat as being of little interest and deals with only the interesting things, such as exploration, mapping, and movement.
|
|
|
Post by Stormcrow on Apr 11, 2013 7:43:59 GMT -6
"Combat at best is something to be done quickly so as to get on with the fun." --Gary Gygax, White Dwarf #7
|
|
|
Post by bestialwarlust on Apr 11, 2013 10:36:54 GMT -6
"Combat at best is something to be done quickly so as to get on with the fun." --Gary Gygax, White Dwarf #7 Cool quote I like that. And that's missed by a lot of players. I even missed it back in my early days of running games. Now I just have to retrain my group a bit. But I've noticed a lot of games seem to be more about moving from combat encounter to combat encounter. Again nothing wrong with that if that's what your group finds fun but there's so much more to it the game than combat.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2013 10:56:57 GMT -6
If you just look at the LBBs, there's not that many pages of material on melee combat at all. The negotiation rules take up far more space in OD&D than the combat rules. Anyone who says "OD&D is all about combat" is telling you nothing about OD&D, but a great deal about themselves.
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Apr 11, 2013 11:29:19 GMT -6
Anyone who says "OD&D is all about combat" is telling you nothing about OD&D, but a great deal about themselves. A fantastic observation. :-) This really illustrates a fundamental philosophy of OD&D compared to many other RPGs!
|
|
|
Post by talysman on Apr 11, 2013 13:10:35 GMT -6
Anyone who says "OD&D is all about combat" is telling you nothing about OD&D, but a great deal about themselves. A fantastic observation. :-) This really illustrates a fundamental philosophy of OD&D compared to many other RPGs! The other thing in Gronan's comment was pretty important, too. "The negotiation rules take up far more space in OD&D than the combat rules." That says a lot about the philosophy of OD&D.
|
|
|
Post by cooper on Apr 11, 2013 15:39:12 GMT -6
A fantastic observation. :-) This really illustrates a fundamental philosophy of OD&D compared to many other RPGs! The other thing in Gronan's comment was pretty important, too. "The negotiation rules take up far more space in OD&D than the combat rules." That says a lot about the philosophy of OD&D. Well...All the combat rules were in CHAINMAIL, gygax and areneson didn't need to rehash charging, or knocking a someone off their horse because those rules were already established, what the supplement to CM (haha j/k) did was add rules on exploration, negotiation, et al that were missing from CM. It doesn't imply which was most important.
|
|
machpants
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Supersonic Underwear!
Posts: 259
|
Post by machpants on Apr 11, 2013 16:15:34 GMT -6
Really interesting discussion, I found 4E very much moving from encounter (of hours in length) to encounter. Is it December yet so I can get my copy of ODnD?
|
|
|
Post by waysoftheearth on Apr 11, 2013 17:06:49 GMT -6
|
|