Me and the DMG

[The Heretic]

Finally, for Dangerous Puhson:

CANADA ROCKS.

(well except for Alberta, but I guess everyone has to suffer through their own Texas)

 

[Beoric]

I think you are both misunderstanding my meaning. When I talk about adjudication, I mean it in the same sense that Gygax uses the words "referee" or "neutral arbiter".

The skill bonuses belong to the PC. But the determination of which skill applies, and the determination of the target number ("DC"), belong to the DM. In a properly adjudicated skill system, the player does not get to tell the DM what skill he uses. The player tells the DM what approach he takes, just like with he would in a system without skills. Based on that approach, the DM determines (a) whether the approach automatically succeeds of fails, or (b) if the approach does not automatically succeed or fail, how difficult the attempted action is. Many skill systems provide guidelines as to the DC to set for an easy, moderate or hard an action is, but guidelines are not mandatory, and the DM can fix whatever number he wants. Moreover, the DM is free to grant bonuses or penalties to the roll if the approach is particularly clever or stupid. In other words, the DM owns the numbers that matter.

And that is the only difference between what you do and what I do, from the DM side of the screen. If a player wants to try something that I think is "hard", I have a guideline to help me decide what "hard" means. From the player's side of the screen, he has a sense of what he is good at and what he is not good at.

@ EOTB the "narrative bypass" I discuss above is not for purely physical tasks. For example, if players take the time to research the Duke's likes and prejudices and phrase their argument in a way that is likely to appeal, and persuade or leverage his advisors to agree, then no Diplomacy check is required. (A Diplomacy check is also not required if they instead insult him and the Barbarian tries to intimidate him.)

As for "moving silently even in areas where other classes can't move quietly if they want to and try very carefully", may I point out how difficult it is to move silently in areas of dry leaves or dry tall grass? Which is something a Ranger ought to be able to do in ideal conditions, and ought to have a shot at if he is scouting or attempting to ambush an orc party.

I will also point out that ad hoc adjudication requires more DM skill than adjudication with a skill system, and is less accessible to newer players, whereas the skill system adjudication methods I describe can be employed by a novice DM. You may be skilled at assigning appropriate and realistic probabilities to actions; other DMs are not. As I mentioned above, two-thirds of my group during my teens was composed of athletes and hunters, and the other third was composed of couch potatoes. When the couch potatoes DM'd (and they DM'd a lot, having more time to make stuff up), there were frequent arguments about what was physically possible, and I remember at least one occasion where the argument was settled by the player actually doing the thing in RL that the couch potato said was impossible.

 

[Beoric]

This is very true. If you are playing with min/maxers, they will take advantage of the skill system to get ungodly high skill bonuses. This with limitations in the system itself (rolling a d20, not 3d6 or some other mix of dice, means you don't have a nice bell curve to work with) can make the system into a disaster.

Another problem is that if you base skill points on hit dice, you get monsters with ridiculous skill ranks. There was a colossal toad statted out, with Spot at something ungodly high (+30? +50?) because of the amount of hit dice the toad have. That was ridiculous. I would have thought that the toad probably would have trouble noticing anything tiny like a human, and even with the size modifiers the spot skill on this toad seemed too high.

A player in a previous power-gamer group I dm'ed told me about his experience playing D&D online. He created a half elven sorcerer and put everything in Charisma to get a super-high diplomacy skill. The in game effect of this was that you would get better rewards the higher your diplomacy skill. Eventually they realized that this was a mistake and nerfed it in a patch. He was so ticked he stopped playing the game.

Not sure about 3e or 5e, but in 4e the DM has the express right not to include certain game elements (like feats, powers and magic items) in his game. That means you can effectively forbid certain obnoxious combos. If a player has a strong reaction to that, well, it's nice to know in advance that someone won't be a good fit for your table.

 

[EOTB]

One other thing that really bugged me about 1e was that the lack of wilderness skills for rangers. We always took it that the existence of skills for climbing, moving silently and hiding for thieves, and the absence of same for rangers, implied that rangers couldn't do any of hose things. I liked playing rangers, and thought they should be able to climb natural features and stalk prey, but I always had to MC thief if I wanted to do any of that stuff.

In a properly adjudicated skill system, the player does not get to tell the DM what skill he uses. The player tells the DM what approach he takes, just like with he would in a system without skills. Based on that approach, the DM determines (a) whether the approach automatically succeeds of fails, or (b) if the approach does not automatically succeed or fail, how difficult the attempted action is. Many skill systems provide guidelines as to the DC to set for an easy, moderate or hard an action is, but guidelines are not mandatory, and the DM can fix whatever number he wants. Moreover, the DM is free to grant bonuses or penalties to the roll if the approach is particularly clever or stupid. In other words, the DM owns the numbers that matter.

And that is the only difference between what you do and what I do, from the DM side of the screen. If a player wants to try something that I think is "hard", I have a guideline to help me decide what "hard" means. From the player's side of the screen, he has a sense of what he is good at and what he is not good at.

Beoric, I pointed to a section in the game that could have handled and addressed a youthful misunderstanding that if it didn't have an explicit mechanic, that meant it was beyond the class being played.

I noted that the very dynamic you admit to in your youth is inherent to skills systems. It is. It's why you felt the way you did playing that ranger. A mentality expecting a comprehensive skills system was already being applied to a game that said such comprehensiveness wasn't a goal worth chasing.

Now it is later argued that in a properly adjudicated skills system, a player supposedly has skills but can't declare their use - they are deciding upon their action without knowing whether the skills they've chosen even apply. So we're back to the ranger who didn't know if he could hunt, climb trees, or be quiet. And yet apparently just knowing a skills system exists whether it applies or not removes the frozen moment of deciding whether or not to try? I'm just not buying the argument; it's all over the place.

This argument feels to me like "The game I left behind was incomplete, and there's no saying it wasn't!!"

@ EOTB the "narrative bypass" I discuss above is not for purely physical tasks.

Right, that's what I said. For anything that can't be discussed through, it's going to come down to chance. The question is whether or not you're going to accept my numbers or some other RPGers numbers. But let's not pretend that RPG companies bring in subject matter experts in these areas and define true-to-life, accurate success ratios.

What most people desiring a skill system really want is some other person to cast responsibility for the listed success ratio upon, because they're passive introverts who don't take well to an assertive player aggressively arguing with them.

Much of modern RPG design is about trying to control the interaction of the passive with the aggressive through the passive tool-of-choice...text written by someone else who must be an expert, which therefore can be deferred to with the very act of deference being a sign of the passive person's intelligence.

As for "moving silently even in areas where other classes can't move quietly if they want to and try very carefully", may I point out how difficult it is to move silently in areas of dry leaves or dry tall grass? Which is something a Ranger ought to be able to do in ideal conditions, and ought to have a shot at if he is scouting or attempting to ambush an orc party.

You're still equating moving silently and moving quietly. All you need to do to surprise someone is move quietly, which anyone can do. This the point I'm trying to make - when someone sees "move silently: 55%"...they mentally default to "well, that's a 45% chance to be detected". And so moving quietly gets thrown out in a false binary way of thinking. Rangers can move very quietly in leaves and dry grass. That's why they have a 50% chance to surprise something that is attentive and watchful while standing in an area filled with leaves and dry grass. If the situation is even more favorable than this, the DM can adjust that surprise chance upwards. A ranger is always going to be better than a fighter because they start out at 50% instead of 33.33%

I will also point out that ad hoc adjudication requires more DM skill than adjudication with a skill system, and is less accessible to newer players, whereas the skill system adjudication methods I describe can be employed by a novice DM.

You say this as if it's a point in its favor. As if we all should live with the cruft and overhead of skills systems because it will get us closer to the mythical, platonic ideal where any sack of meat with a pulse can DM a roleplaying campaign in a way that's satisfying. In counterpoint, I offer nearly all of Bryce's module reviews as evidence that such training wheels retard the growth of a DM in ways far beyond their exact application.

 

[Beoric]

What most people desiring a skill system really want is some other person to cast responsibility for the listed success ratio upon, because they're passive introverts who don't take well to an assertive player aggressively arguing with them.

I suppose I should be happy you didn't call me a "fucked up DM" this time. Yeah, I saw that post before you edited it. I'm down for a courteous conversation, but if you are going to insult me you can forget it.

 

[EOTB]

I never called you a fucked up DM. That sentence was unchanged in the edit, only moved.

I can’t know whether you’re a passive introvert or not - that’s why I said “most”. Which I very much believe to be true, and stand by.

 

[Beoric]

So squeen said something over on the 5e thread

That's what the Me and the DMG thread is suppose to be about---the discovery process---mentally connecting those pieces and understand where they fit in the whole.

and it got me thinking about the initiative thing again, and its impact on gameplay. I am curious, for those of you who have internalized 1e initiative to the point that you use it more or less RAW, how does knowing that system change the decisions you make, both as a player and as a DM? How does it impact your strategic and tactical decisions, and are those decisions made mainly before the start of combat, or during combat?

 

[EOTB]

As a player, certainly both before and after. As a DM I'm trying to play monsters "straight", according to their natures. I could play monsters as my extensions and all that I conceive would work well in that moment, but it's more satisfying gameplay if their actions feel like something natural to them and not like "me".

But yes, as a player I'm trying to hold the initiative as often as I can, or not let losing it spoil what I'm trying to do. This is mainly in spellcasting choices, but also such things as keeping high-dex characters free to use missile weapons and such.

Surprise is really the killer app in 1E. It's not about who goes first when both can act so much as it's about who can get in uncontested strikes. Combat isn't about killing the enemy so much as making them break. If you can take out leader-types before the other side can act, break a wedge through their front line to the soft middle of their casters, seize high ground so they're attacking at penalties, etc., then you can tilt the field when surprise ends. Then your side quickly pushes the other to a state of retreat (hopefully full-broken flight so you can get licks in uncontested again, just like how you started off if surprising them).

RPGs aren't all about combat, but combat always comes to the fore at some point. And combat that's only an abstract dice shoot out of "I attack that guy...<roll, roll, roll>...OK, can I attack the other guy you talked about? <roll, roll, roll>...that's just boring. My primary gripe about playing with creative-types is that great conflicts are set up by all this creative thinking that they can't really execute; they don't have much acumen for tactical thinking. Instead the tense set-up often just boils down to an abstract dice shoot out + fudging if the dice don't cooperate.

 

[Beoric]

Not sure I'm following all of this. How do you influence surprise by tactical choices, other than having a ranger in a party (which is really a personnel choice, or arguably a high level strategic choice)?

I get how spell choice can affect attack order, but I'm not sure I get what you are saying about deployment of high dex characters. Are you saying that you tend to give them a missile fire role, and put low dex heavy armor types on the front line? If so, does that mean you tend to lose control over where the front line is (if the other side gets to move its front line into position first)?

 

[EOTB]

Not sure I'm following all of this. How do you influence surprise by tactical choices, other than having a ranger in a party (which is really a personnel choice, or arguably a high level strategic choice)?

The same way squads have achieved surprise throughout history. Put out screeners; make contact without giving yourself away; manufacture contact to your advantage.

You have to accept a modicum of risk. Halflings and elves start out at level 1 with 4:6 surprise in light armor. They're perfect screeners. Have them out ahead of the main party. They might get hit with a trap or something, sure. You've got to take care of your screener with healing them up to full whenever they take any damage. (But even then - what's better for your healing reserves? That one or two characters get zapped by a trap or the whole party gets zapped?) By mid-levels invisibility is available; so is flight. They combine nicely. Infravision becomes available to human spellcasters as well (or possibly by magic item). Familiars may be able to give a heads up and not look out of place. An illusionist can change self and reconnoiter looking like one of them - they don't have to go all through the enemy location and subject themselves to close inspection, just get the gist from nearby without looking immediately suspicious. There's a ton of options - it really just comes down to what assets the party has available to it.

And (at least in 1E) if you surprise something that doesn't necessarily mean they saw you. Anything with surprise can always choose to retreat without much risk whether seen or unseen. The screener is also at max movement; most stuff is moving slower, or at best tied. So the risk of getting run down is low; they're either unseen or have a good head start. And if they are seen (DM judgement) they're leading someone who thinks they're chasing weakness right back into the teeth of the party.

So let's say that they aren't seen - they make contact, observe for a few seconds to get the gist, and slip away like a good guerrilla fighter does without anyone the wiser - the party has a ton of options now for how to manufacture surprise. Invisibility, subterfuge, illusion; In low-light environments hide the majority of the party behind a darkness screen you cast on a rock tied to a string you pitch ahead of you as you go, using this and silence to mask your advance on a known enemy in a known place while your screener goes out in front of those driving "blind" just to make sure the way is as expected. - the list goes on.

Prepared ground is another way to manufacture surprise. If the party makes a nice little nest of hidden equipment somewhere, they can lead attackers back to it where they have camouflaged stakes, ditches, loaded crossbows, etc., waiting. The classic ambush. Even if only a portion of the enemy followed them, its defeating in detail. (and eventually that enemy is going to send out a 2nd patrol or come out in force when no one comes back) Etc., etc., etc.

D&D came from a minis wargame. That war game is still at the heart of the engine. Use it to the fullest.

I know a lot of players would rather everyone blunder around as a group because they dislike stretches of game where some other player is in the spotlight for long periods of time, or no one wants to take what they see as risk instead of reward. And that's fine too. When DMing, I don't care if players want to give up advantages because of such concerns. When I'm playing, we're all sitting around the same table so I don't particularly care if what I'm hearing the DM say is because my character is seeing it or another character is seeing it. I'm here to explore, kick butt, and get rich so I have the resources to create more as a player. Whatever tilts the field in my direction so I can do more of that, longer, in the least risk possible is my objective.

I get how spell choice can affect attack order, but I'm not sure I get what you are saying about deployment of high dex characters. Are you saying that you tend to give them a missile fire role, and put low dex heavy armor types on the front line? If so, does that mean you tend to lose control over where the front line is (if the other side gets to move its front line into position first)?

If I have tactical input into my party I'll always suggest high-dex characters shooting whenever it makes sense to do so, which is often. Only for missile attacks does your dexterity reaction bonus reduce your initiative. So if you have a 17 dex character and they're shooting with their bow/sling/whatever, they always go 2 segments earlier than they would have if they didn't have a high dexterity. Basically, they have the benefit of the best possible initiative outcome 50% of the time, and segment 4 at worst. When you're trying to disrupt enemy spellcasters no one else on your side has closed to melee with before they can launch a stinking cloud or whatever, this is very beneficial. If your missilers are always able to attack as they choose from the very start of the round, and spellcasters are always finishing spells at a delay of X segments of casting time...

Or they can pick off heavily wounded enemies and finish them before they get in a strike; or if they're fleeing without someone able to cut them down the archer can hit them before they get around the corner. Say the rest of your party doesn't have init until segment 3, but the wounded bugbear will attack your wounded cleric on segment 2 - but your archer goes on segment 1...(there are times when shooting into melee is the best risk; I always want the option).

As for front line, encounter distance manages this much more than dex. I presume you're talking about surprise? High dex reaction to surprise is individual. And as mentioned in the other thread, I don't allow high dex characters to take their own action during surprise, only to drain away the surprise segments of those trying to strike them. Even if I did allow action - how many high dex characters are there? I don't want them establishing a farther partial front line of one or two PCs against 4-8 enemies; that's just those characters getting flanked at +2 to hit. Better to stay in formation.

 

[squeen]

I love it. I think it would be a massive service to the hobby if EOTB (co)authored a little pamphlet called something like "EOTB's Combat Tactics for AD&D". Some of his great grasp of the game (including the whole grapple-en mass to bring down high-level PCs, etc.) could highlight what 1e makes possible in the realm of tactics.

I wouldn't limit it to strict BTW rules. I would also (duely noted) include EOTB's interpretation of some of the ambiguities. Optional rules like allowing (readied) missile-fire to proceed a charge (that also ends in an attack with a second weapon).

I think a document like that would be long remembered and treasured. I am willing to help with the layout.

Turning the tables back @Beoric : Would you mind describing some of the tactical options that exist in later editions? Things that are missing from 1e? I am curious.

 

[Beoric]

Turning the tables back @Beoric : Would you mind describing some of the tactical options that exist in later editions? Things that are missing from 1e? I am curious.

I plan to get to it when I have more of a 1e baseline to draw on. The reason I asked the question is because I am very interested in how mechanics affects the way we play.

For example, I like how the surprise mechanic encourages scouting as a way to avoid surprise, which is something you would naturally expect. The surprise mechanic in 4e does the same thing, although it operates very differently in other respects.

I am less enamoured by the suggestions that the initiative rules encourage the tactical decision to have high-dex characters employ missile attacks as much as possible, because that looks like a decision made entirely in the metagame. I am sure people have come up with in-world justifications for it, but to me it is not intuitive that someone can draw an arrow, nock it, draw, aim and fire a bow before swinging a melee weapon; in a one minute round the melee character may be feinting and dodging, but a bowman also has to worry about dodging enemy fire, finding a clear target, and possibly defending against melee attacks with no effective way of parrying.

This sort of think isn't limited to 1e; I'm sure I will find examples in 4e when I start parsing through those rules to outline how they affect tactics. But I mention it because in my view, whatever ruleset you choose, when a mechanic encourages a metagame response that is dissociated from the in-world response, it is worth looking at whether improvements can be made to the mechanic. I also think it is worth looking at if a mechanic neither drives nor results from any player choices; this is why I think critical hit tables, like frozen yogurt, often seem to disappoint.

So, anyway, keep telling me how initiative affects your choices; when that well it dry I will write a comparison to 4e.

 

[squeen]

EOTB will hopeful correct me if I've gotten it wrong, but those DEX-based initiate bonuses only apply if you have your arrow/what-not notched and ready. I make my players state this now.

(..or at least, I'm TRYING to get in the habit of making my player state this, now. 1e fun!)

 

[Beoric]

EOTB will hopeful correct me if I've gotten it wrong, but those DEX-based initiate bonuses only apply if you have your arrow/what-not notched and ready.

Does this imply it cannot be used after the first round?

 

[EOTB]

Nope, it applies any time their declared action is shooting/hurling a missile. "Notched and ready" isn't really a concept in 1E rules except in UA (don't use it, so would have to look it up) where archer specialists get some special rule when they declare such.

 

[EOTB]

because that looks like a decision made entirely in the metagame.

1E does presume, even demand metagaming. Concerns about metagaming were a 2nd generation reaction and/or desire for a certain type of immersion that the 1E rules don't even conceive of, or attempt to implement. If a DM is against metagaming, the 1E rules will fight against them, instead of helping them, every step of the way.

 

[squeen]

Nope, it applies any time their declared action is shooting/hurling a missile. "Notched and ready" isn't really a concept in 1E rules except in UA (don't use it, so would have to look it up) where archer specialists get some special rule when they declare such.

To be clear: I won't let the high-dex player who's side lost initiative (by a couple of points) get off a shot before the opponent if they are just "walking along a city street on their way to see grandma", or "just finished climbing a rope", etc.

Basically, "notched" means "I declared that my bow is out and in-hand" *BEFORE* the combat started. That applies to the first round shot.

Once in melee, they can continue to use their missile weapon and get a timing bonus. (unless changing weapons---which is another thing I am trying to standardize how I handle it.)

Have I got it BTB, EOTB?

 

[EOTB]

If they can shoot/throw in a round during which they throw an initiative die, they take their dex reaction bonus off the roll result. That's it. Anything else is a DM fine-tuning with their own ideas to get a result they want under their authority as DM. There's nothing wrong with this.

 

[squeen]

...ok...now wonder where the heck I got "it" from.

 

[Beoric]

1E does presume, even demand metagaming. Concerns about metagaming were a 2nd generation reaction and/or desire for a certain type of immersion that the 1E rules don't even conceive of, or attempt to implement. If a DM is against metagaming, the 1E rules will fight against them, instead of helping them, every step of the way.

To be clear, I am not saying that making decisions according to the metagame has to be a bad thing, I am just trying to analyze what a given mechanic does. I am identifying a mechanic as being dissociative, and stating that it has a certain impact on the game, which is that metagame player strategy ends up outweighing in-world character strategy. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a decision I think should be make consciously if possible. It is anti-simulationist, which is also not necessarily a bad thing. It also means that you are effectively out of character when you make such a decision, which is also not necessarily a bad thing.

My preference is for non-dissociative mechanics; if prefer as much as possible to make decisions in-character, or at least based on a proxy for character knowledge. There are dissociative mechanics in 4e (notably daily powers for non-spellcasters) which I do not particularly like and have spend a certain amount of thought on how to re-associate them. But as long as you aren't taking away agency, which this mechanic does not do, I don't really care if you prefer it or not. I do think it is worthwhile to analyze what mechanics do, both for its own sake and to help people identify why they like or dislike a particular rule,