REACTIONS TO OD&D: THE SCOPE OF THE GAME

From Volume 1: Men & Magic, pg. 5:

From Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure, pg. 3:

And from Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, pg. 16:

These passages, colletively, refer to a style of gaming quite distinct from the modern standard in which a "campaign" refers to a stable group of roughly half a dozen players. And, in point of fact, they refer to a style of gaming quite distinct from that found in most of the published modules from TSR.

OPEN TABLE: The first distinction of classic play is the "open table". When Arneson and Gygax talk about a single campaign involving fifty players, they don't mean that they lived in mansions with massive gaming tables where 50 players could huddle around a battlemat.

Under the open table model of gaming, the adventuring party was fluid. This Saturday your companions might by Bob, Steve, and Lucy. Next Tuesday it might be Steve, Suzanne, Ben, and David. And then on Wednesday you might get together with the DM for some solo play.

This kind of mass participation in a single campaign had a significant impact on how scenarios were designed: The dungeon complex was never designed to be "cleared" or "won", because if you cleared the dungeon complex where was Tuesday's group going to go?

OPEN DMING: Both Arneson's Blackmoor campaign and Gygax's Greyhawk campaign featured co-DMs who would run adventures within the same setting and for the same players. For example, Rob Kuntz, who receives special thanks on the title page of "Men & Magic", is known for having become Gygax's co-DM for Castle Greyhawk and co-designing several levels of that infamous dungeon.

It was also common for characters to adventure in both Arneson's campaign (which was based in Minneapolis) and Gygax's campaign (which was based in Lake Geneva). And this kind of "campaign visitation" was common.

In fact, my gaming buddies and I used to do the same thing when we started playing: We each had our stable of personal characters, and these characters would be used interchangeably in all of the campaigns we would run (and we all had our own campaigns).

(On a tangential note: Some people ascribe this style of play as having been lost in the mists of time, but I'm not sure that's actually true except on a personal level. Certainly as I started to place a higher value on verisimilitude and coherent character arcs, the "illogical" nature of campaign-swapping meant that I abandoned this style of play. But on those rare occasions when I've seen younger players, they often have the same carefree style of freeform gaming that I used to have.

So if this is something that you miss or that you want to have again, consider simply embracing it anew.)

MULTIPLE CHARACTERS: Part and parcel with all this is that it was apparently fairly typical for players to have more than one character playing in the same campaign. Sometimes they would be playing them simultaneously, but it was also quite typical for you to be playing one set of characters on Wednesday and a different set of characters the following Monday.

BEYOND DUNGEON-CRAWLING: You know what I'm tired of hearing? That D&D is a game about "killing things and taking their stuff" and nothing else.

Has combat and treasure-hunting always been a part of the game? Sure. But the game is about a lot more than that, and it always has been. For example, here's the description of the fighting-man class from Men & Magic:

The idea that successful characters were destined for more things than dungeon-crawling was part and parcel of the game. There are rules in OD&D for stronghold construction, political assassination, the hiring of specialist tradesmen, baronial investments (in things like roads, religious edifices, and the like), assembling a naval force, and so forth.

And when you realize that this type of "realm management" play was an integral part of the original gameplay of D&D, then tables in which "40 - 400" goblins were capable of appearing begin to make sense: Sometimes you were a bunch of 1st level nobodies trying to root out the local goblin gang that had taken root in hills north of the village. And sometimes you were a band of nobles riding forth at the head of your host to wipe out the goblin army marching on your barony.

Now take a moment, if you will, and consider the type of game that arises when all of these elements are true: Some of the PCs have become the local nobles. Others are still lower level dungeon-delvers. And the entire world is developing and evolving as a result of their cumulative actions.

OFFICIAL SUPPORT

Ironically, this style of play never received any meaningful support from TSR. Not even in its earliest days. Have you ever seen a module with 400 goblins in it? There are a few glimpses of it here and there -- in the Wilderlands campaign setting from Judges Guild or B2 Keep on the Borderland. But for the most part, the type of game being played by Arneson and Gygax -- the type of game that led to the codification of the D&D rules -- was not the type of game that was being supported through published modules.

Partly this is because that style of game is organic in its nature. You can't actually capture the essence of the Greyhawk or Blackmoor campaigns, for example, because they were always evolving. (When Wizards of the Coast published Jonathan Tweet's Everway, a member of the company memorably said something to the effect of, "If we could just include a copy of Jon in every box, we'd sell a million copies." They couldn't and they didn't.)

But, on the other hand, that shouldn't stop you from publishing the raw material from which a rich sandbox campaign could be played. But the Wilderlands campaign from Judges Guild is probably as close as we've ever gotten to that.

What stood in the way? Well, partly the resources. Publishing such a product in a single volume would have been a huge investment. And by the time TSR was capable of pursuing such an investment, that style of play was already becoming "outdated", Arneson was long gone, and Gygax was already beginning to lose his control of the company.

And even if the resources had been available, such an undertaking would constitute an incredibly large and complex project. Gygax himself spent 30+ years trying to get Castle Greyhawk into print. It has never happened.

So what got published instead? Tournament modules. The earliest TSR modules -- stuff like the A series, G series, and S series that we now think of as classics and defined the concept and format of what a "module" is -- were all designed for tournament play. And tournament play is almost precisely the opposite of the type of game that Arneson and Gygax were running: The scope is limited (because you have to finish it within a single convention slot), the outcome premeditated (because the next round of the tourney was already designed), completion anticipated (so that scoring could be done), and the impact to the wider world nonexistent (because there was no wider world that could be effected).

For better or for worse, those were the modules that the gamers at home were buying. And they became the models around which their games were fashioned.

And, hand-in-hand with that, the mechanical support for those styles of play were purged from the rulebooks. 3rd Edition -- designed by old school grognards working for a company which was, at the time, run by another grognard -- saw a return of some of that lost mechanical support. But 4th Edition, of course, has reversed course once again.

The designers of 3rd Edition understood the value of open-ended, fully-supported play. You can see it in Ptolus (the campaign setting Monte Cook used to playtest the 3rd Edition rules). The designers of 4th Edition, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that the game was all about killing things and cited that getting back to those "roots" was one of their primary design goals.

Talk about your false premises.

GARY GYGAX'S HOUSE RULES FOR OD&D

I stumbled across these in a post over on Troll Lord's messageboards:

Given the recent Reactions to OD&D essays, I thought it might be of interest. These help spread a little love around the prime requisites, fix the oddly incomprehensible rules for Constitution, and gives Charisma a front-end effect as well as a back-end effect (Charisma already had a really important role in governing follower loyalty in OD&D).

March 6th, 2009

REACTIONS TO OD&D: CHARACTER SHEETS

On page 10 of Men & Magic we get the first RPG stat block ever published. "A sample of the record of a character appears like this:"

This is also the closest thing we get to a character sheet in the OD&D rules. (Like many things in OD&D, you have to reverse engineer the general principle out of the example.)

I think the simplicity exemplified by this character sheet is something that a lot of gamers (including myself) look back on fondly: Roll your stats. Pick a class. And you're ready to go.

Of course, like many things tinged with nostalgia and viewed through rose-colored glasses, this idyllic simplicity never actually existed. Xylarthen's player still needs to select a race (since he's an M-U he must be either a human or an elf), equipment (budget those 70 gp wisely), and his spells (well, a spell). And then he still needs to roll or calculate hit points, AC, encumbrance, and speed.

This division between between perception and reality actually proved quite vexing during the early design work for Legends & Labyrinths. I kept trying to get the game to the point where it was literally "(1) Roll ability scores; (2) pick race; (3) pick class". And, of course, I kept failing. It wasn't until I took a step back and re-analyzed what I was really trying to accomplish that I was able to get a satisfactory result.

But I digress.

The other interesting thing about Xylarthen is the description of his hypothetical creation: "This supposed player would have progressed faster as a Cleric, but because of a personal preference for magic opted for that class."

I'm fairly certain that this makes OD&D the only edition of the game to put the idea that not all characters need to perfectly optimized front-and-center. But I also find the passage interesting because it highlights one of the features of rolling your ability scores in order: You are given the raw core for a character. What you choose to do with that core is up to you.

When was the last time you saw a wizard who didn't have their highest ability score in Intelligence?

The insistence that the game can only be "fun" if your character is perfectly optimized limits the scope of the game. It takes character concepts off the table.

Of course, there are plenty of people who would argue that the guy playing Xylarthen is destined to have "less fun" than if he'd played a cleric. (Or was playing in a game where he could tweak his stats so that Xylarthen looks like every other magic-user in the game.)

And I get that. I can also appreciate that it can be annoying to come to the session saying, "I want to play a magic-user." And then rolling an Intelligence of 6 and making the character you want to play completely untenable.

And this does, in fact, become less tenable because of the expected longevity of most characters in modern RPG's. When a character has an expected lifespan of a couple of sessions (if he's lucky), you can be a bit more philosophical about tackling an unexpected challenge than when you're expecting to be playing this guy for the next year and a half.

But, on the other hand, Xylarthen sure looks like fun.

The counter-argument, of course, is that nothing stops me from making a wizard with his highest abiltiy score in Wisdom. True. But there is a distinct difference between facing a challenge and dealing with a self-imposed handicap. Just as there is a difference between being given a character and seeing what you can make of it and carefully scultping every detail of the character for yourself.

And I think there's also a tendency to read the word "challenge" and think that I'm merely talking about the gamist side of the game. But I'm also talking about a creative challenge. The act of creation does not always have to begin with a blank slate. In some cases, deliberately eschewing the blank slate will give unexpected and extraordinary results which might never have been achieved if you limit yourself to a tabula rasa.

The Holmes Basic Set has an interesting section on "Hopeless Characters":

The act of rolling up a set of ability scores is literally perceived as the moment of creation. When you reject a stat block you aren't rejecting numbers which aren't appropriate for your character, you're rejecting a character who is unsuitable for your play.

The shift in perspective is subtle, but notable. 

And this, again, gets back to the idea that character creation itself is a part of the gameplay -- not merely a means to an end, but an important part of the process itself. Character creation is not being seen as a prelude activity in which you craft the character you will be playing. Rather, from the moment you pick up 3d6 to roll up their Strength, the game has begun: The ability scores give you the character you will play. And then, from that point forward, it's your decisions that shape that character's destiny.

RANDOM SPIDEY

That's from Marvel Comics Presents circa #48-50, written and illustrated by Erik Larsen. I'm not a huge fan of Larsen's work, but seriously... Mess o' Saturdays.

I  JULIA NUNES!

Julia Nunes rocks my world.

Ms. Nunes plays a variety of cover songs and original works in YouTube videos. And she is simply delightful. There is something effervescent in the palpable joy that she brings to her music. You can see it in her face and hear it in her voice. It's a joy that's infectious. It leaps from her voice and into your heart.

Let me show you the two videos that turned my into a raging fanboy:

Convinced? Good. Come join the rest of us. We're having a marvelous time.

RULES vs. RULINGS?

I'm calling shenanigans.

Of late the meme has arisen that the difference between "new school" and "old school" gaming is "rules, not rulings". The free Lulu PDF A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming seems to be a primary infection point and I don't think we'll go too far wrong by quoting it:

There are several problems with this meme.

BAD EXAMPLES

The Spot and Search skills tend to get targeted a lot by people trying to explicate the "rules, not rulings". For example, the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming goes into a pair of lengthy examples of "old school" vs. "new school" play.

In the "new school" example, a player says they're searching a hallway. They find a pit trap. They ask the GM if they can disarm it. They GM rules that they can. They jam the mechanism. (The results of the search and disabling attempt are handled by skill checks.)

In the "old school" example, a player says they're checking the hallway. They fail to find the pit trap, but they're suspicious so they try a different method of searching. They find the pit trap. They ask the GM if they can disarm it. The GM rules that it can't be disarmed. They go around the trap instead. (The results of the search and disabling attempt are handled by GM fiat.)

Now, if you're trying to establish that the difference in play here is GM fiat vs. dice rolling, then these examples would be just fine. But what the author actually does is load up the "old school" example with a bunch of details -- using a 10-foot pole; carefully inspecting the floor; pouring water onto the floor to detect the edges of the trap -- and then tries to attribute that additional detail to the GM fiat.

But the GM fiat has nothing to do with it. It's an artificial conflation of two different distinctions between the examples. The use of GM fiat vs. predefined mechanics only matters in he moment of resolution. The amount of detail that goes into searching a particular stretch of hallway, on the other hand, is an entirely separate issue.

The "old school" example could just as easily read:

And the "new school" example could just as easily read:

Here's a different example:

The poster here ascribes the difference to "creativity", but that's not what the example is actually demonstrating. Although the poster obfuscates it by giving different outcomes to the "old school" and "new school" games, the core of the example boils down to a single question: "Will I be able to cross this ledge?"

In the "old school" system the GM determines this by fiat (automatic success, automatic failure, or some probability of success based on an arbitrary dice roll). In the "new school" system the chance of success is determined mechnically.

Isn't the "old school" GM getting to be "creative" because he determines the probability of success? I guess. But, of course, the "new school" GM also gets to determine the probability of success -- he set that probability as soon as he described the ledge as being only 2 inches wide.

LOSS OF CONSISTENCY

So we've discovered that "rulings, not rules" is really just a mantra for, "I like GM fiat." Fair enough. What's the problem with pervasive GM fiat?

The loss of consistency.

Ben Robbins' essay "Same Description, Same Rules" is an excellent summation of the problem. Here's a quick quote:

I recommend reading the whole thing. Robbins' basic point is that players cannot make logical, informed decisions if their actions have inconsistent results.

The problem with pervasive GM fiat is that you are either (a) creating inconsistency or (b) creating house rules on the fly. And if you're creating house rules on the fly then:

(1) You have to keep track of them.

(2) Hasty decisions will frequently have unintended consequences.

(3) Even if the house rule you came up with on the fly is good the end result is no different than if you'd had a good rule to start with.

OLD SCHOOL DID WHAT NOW?

So you say, "Screw that. Ben's wrong. Consistency is vastly overrated." Well, sure, that may be true. Everyone's entitled to their own tastes and opinions after all.

But that really brings us to the crux of the issue: The whole concept of using "rulings, not rules" as a distinction between "old school" systems and "new school" systems?

It's complete, unmitigated bullshit.

For example, take a peek at the example given in A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming: The difference between GM fiat and mechanical determination of success in disabling traps. That's a distinction that's been around since the Thief class was first introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk.

In 1975.

But this extreme example only highlights the other core failure of the meme: It claims that the great thing about the "old school" is the lack of rules (which, in turn, allows for GM fiat). But all of those "old school" games seem to feature all kinds of incredibly detailed, nitpicky rules -- betraying a bugaboo for the exact sort of constistency that the "old school" movement is now trying to forswear.

Having a Search skill changes gameplay? Sure. But let's not pretend that's any kind of systematic preference for rulings vs. rules, because you know what else changes gameplay? Explicit mechanics for determining the loyalty of hirelings. And those rules are part of OD&D, but not 3rd Edition or 4th Edition.

The truth is that the game has moved towards GM fiat in some cases and away from GM fiat in other cases.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

There is, I think, a legitimate philosophical divison being alluded to here: The difference between "do what you want and we'll figure out a way to handle it" and "you can only do what the rules say you can do". But let's not pretend that this is a division between "old school" and "new school" play. The term "rules lawyer" is older than I am.

In addition, I think the truth is that a properly structured rule system facilitates rulings -- assuming, of course, that you're not using the word "rulings" as an ad hoc synonym for "GM fiat". The 3rd Edition skill system doesn't just give you a tool for differentiating character concepts -- it also provides a robust and open-ended mechanic which can be used to make any number of rulings.

It's certainly possible to look at any ruleset as being a set of shackles that prohibits you from doing anything not explicitly proscribed. But, in my opinion, a properly designed ruleset is a flexible foundation on which an infinite number of structures can be securely built.

Honestly? The whole "rules, not rulings" thing was a valiant effort. But you're going to have to keep trying if you want something more than "old school is what I point to when I say 'old school'" as your definition.

MARCH 2009: 

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5 - PART 6

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