Me and the DMG

[Beoric]

To me, this is the point where I feel it's more of a boardgame than a roleplaying game (even if technically not true). Fiction first, I say: If it just doesn't make any sense in the fiction, then make a ruling to override the mechanics. And if it's an ooze-centric campaign, make a new rule.

I agree entirely. My approach to mechanics is that they are an aid to adjudication of actions that apply to most cases. They are useful as a guideline to help DMs adjudicate consistently in most situations, and to help players assess their odds of success at most actions. However, if applying the mechanics leads to an absurd result, the mechanics have to be overruled.

I see systems and DMs that try to apply rules to all eventualities making two common mistakes (IMO):

1. Force the general mechanic to be applied in all circumstances. This leads to absurd results and makes the mechanic more important than the narrative. The 4e rule for knocking an opponent prone is an example of this.

2. Trying to make a rule for every possible eventuality, or at least as many as you can think of. This leads to a proliferation of rules that must be remembered even though they are rarely required, like aspects of AD&D initiative. It can also lead to a lot of work for the designer, like having to assign, for each weapon, a reach and speed factor, not to mention "to hit" adjustments for every armor type; which in turn increases the probability that users will find at least some of the numbers to be wrong or counterintuitive. It doesn't actually cover every eventuality, which means you haven't actually avoided the need for rulings outside of the rules.

And the more granular the rules, the more likely your armchair physics will be wrong, or at least debatable. Take weapon speed factors: it is at least debatable that reach is a more important factor than the agility of the weapon in determining who strikes first, even when you aren't charging. At best they cancel each other out to some degree. The issue is avoidable with AD&D speed factor, since those who recognize its patent idiocy disagree with it can excise it from the game, but I would suggest that picking a side in what is, as written, a non-optional rule leads to an lot of unnecessary arguing (like in this forum).

Moreover, I would argue that both forcing a general mechanic to be used, and trying to write rules for every situation, stifle creative play, because they box players into the rules. If you want players to try to improve their odds of survival through intelligent play, you need to signal that they are free to try things that the rules don't cover, and that you won't just shoehorn every action into the existing ruleset. For example, if I am parleying with a thief, and I have my sword pointed at his chest, which he must get past in order to stab me with his dagger, and he still gets the benefit of speed factor, its going to discourage me from trying to engage with the game world narratively. (Also, its going to piss me off. True story.)

A less controversial example might be that clever narrative investigation should be able to obviate the need for a thief to check for traps. If there is no way to find traps short of a "find traps" roll, you can't expect your players to attempt narrative ways to find a trap.

 

[Johann]

You cast bad light on later editions for something entirely out of their purview - Magic items can only ever proliferate a game via one of two inputs: 1) an uncreative module author, or 2) the DM. That's it, two sources - if you worry about magic items getting out of hand, those two are literally the only culprits to which blame/responsibility can be assigned. It's not the system. Don't blame the system for the failings of individuals.

I disagree. D&D 3e has a table in the DMG with expected wealth by level. It's a guideline, sure, but it does create expectations: I've had a player who was frustrated because he was unable to realize his pre-planned character build for lack of money. He expected to have roughly x gold pieces at level y, which would have been enought to buy several items synergizing with his planned character build.

I've seen the same phenomenon in regard to challenge rating and encounter level: An encounter was perceived to be unfair because it was beyond EL +4, the maximum difficulty suggested in the DMG (i.e. an encounter four levels above the average party level).

I wonder what that player would think about the T-Rex my players' 3rd-level characters encountered two weeks ago. Everyone scattered in a panic and it ate two henchmen --- which was pure luck: It attacked from the rear where the henchmen were (marching order had been established and I rolled the direction from which the T-Rex approached openly). Could've been two PCs.

(But I fulfilled my quota the next evening when both of the party's spellcasters died. )

Anyway, expected wealth by level, CR, EL etc. are guidelines and can be useful for some purposes. But they also create expectations incompatible with some playstyles. Hence, 3e etc. are inherently less suitable for sandboxes, among other things.

 

[squeen]

(But I fulfilled my quota the next evening when both of the party's spellcasters died. )

Made me smile.

 

[Beoric]

(But I fulfilled my quota the next evening when both of the party's spellcasters died. )

This made me laugh out loud.

Anyway, expected wealth by level, CR, EL etc. are guidelines and can be useful for some purposes. But they also create expectations incompatible with some playstyles. Hence, 3e etc. are inherently less suitable for sandboxes, among other things.

Every edition with treasure tables, and encounter tables graduated by monster strength, creates expectations. Which is, let me take a few minutes to confirm ... every edition, starting with the Magic/Maps Determination Table in Monsters & Treasure, and the Monster Determination and Level of Monster Matrix in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Heck, the Monty Haul campaigns Gygax complained about resulted from using his own treasure tables.

DMs have been managing expectations for 46 years. The only change now, if there is a change, is one of culture, and the changes in culture resulted, at least in part, from a change in presentation - largely through modules and organized play.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I disagree. D&D 3e has a table in the DMG with expected wealth by level. It's a guideline, sure, but it does create expectations: I've had a player who was frustrated because he was unable to realize his pre-planned character build for lack of money. He expected to have roughly x gold pieces at level y, which would have been enought to buy several items synergizing with his planned character build.

Anyway, expected wealth by level, CR, EL etc. are guidelines and can be useful for some purposes. But they also create expectations incompatible with some playstyles. Hence, 3e etc. are inherently less suitable for sandboxes, among other things.

1) That table is for estimate purposes only. It's primary use is during character creation, when the DM wants players to start beyond level 1. Your player was wrong to align his wealth expectations with it, because it's an estimate. It'd be like if he got angry that he rolled a 3 for his Barbarian's hitpoints on level up because the book says that the average roll is 6.5, so he should have 6.5.

2) Your players should not be building expectations about the game based on information in the Dungeon Master's guide. They are players; they conform to the PHB guidelines. The DMG has always been about advice for the DM rather than hard guidelines - that's why you don't need it to run the game, you only need the PHB.

3) In a roundabout way, you've kinda just confirmed my point about problems in the game being mainly caused by different, individual people, and not so much about the rules. This case was a problem of expectations management - your player caused this problem by taking guideline information not generally available to him and building expectations around them without communicating those expectations to you, the DM. I fail to see how this is in any way the fault of the system and not the fault of your player.

 

[Johann]

1) That table is for estimate purposes only. [...] Your players should not be building expectations about the game based on information in the Dungeon Master's guide.

I'm familiar with this line of argument (including "For DM eyes only.") and I disagree.

Rolemaster has one of its three core books, Arms Law, entirely dedicated to attack and critical hit tables. It's certainly possible to run a non-violent game with Rolemaster, but I do think the mere presence of Arms Law shapes expectations and hangs over ANY Rolemaster game (quite possibly ironically, as in "We thumb our noses at Rolemaster and have another session without any combat, LOL!", or creating suspense, as in "When will we finally break out Arms Law and find out exactly how our characters die?").

Expectations created by the rules - and a host of other factors - are part of the game, a psychological factor not to be underestimated. Handwaving such things seems no different than arguing, say, that you can always ignore or change a rule a.k.a. invoke rule zero. Consider me unimpressed.

Beoric has got a point, though: The various treasure tables in older editions certainly make it possible to somewhat estimate wealth-by-level, too. The extent to which the rules suggest the presence, amount, everyday occurence, availability (for buying and selling) of magic items is a matter of degree. Which is what I was saying.

 

[Beoric]

Change of topic. @Johann's post got me thinking about estimating wealth by level in a GP = XP system, since on the surface it looks like there would be a large correlation between wealth and gaining a level. But then I realized that you needed to deduct training costs. At which point I noticed that training costs are generally much larger than the number of GP that is required to gain enough XP to level. At which point I started wondering if the experience tables mean anything at all.

Take a level 1 fighter, who needs 2001 XP to get to level 2. Let's say he can expect to get 20% of his XPs from combat, with the balance from treasure (I have seen various estimates and usually use 15% as a rule, but 20% makes for easier calculations). So he expects to get 400 XP from combat, and 1601 XP from treasure.

He is assigned a number between 1 and 4 based on his "performance", which appears to be measured in terms of adhering to the character's class role and alignment (actually this number is assigned every time XPs are awarded, but let's simplify). Basically you are judged on certain elements of your roleplaying. (Note Gygax considered thieves to be playing poorly if they didn't try to lift a little extra treasure for themselves.)

That number is an indication of the number of weeks that must be spent training. The character then spends 1500 GP/level for each week he trains. So if the fighter's performance is perfect he will have 100 GP left over after training, but if he scores a 2 or worse then he is in the hole. If he scores a 2, then he will need to come up with an additional 1400 GP. How does he get that? Adventuring.

So he goes back to the dungeon until he gets another 1400 GP. On average this will require some combat, lets say another 350 XP worth. So he has now earned 750 XP from combat, and another 3000 XP from treasure, for a total of 3750 XP. Except he isn't allowed to gain any experience until he levels, so regardless he is still at 2001 XP.

Which is bad enough for the fighter, but even worse for the thief. The thief was absolutely perfect, no flaws, and scored a 1, so he only needs one week of training, at a cost of 1500. But he only needed 1251 XP to get to level 2.

Eventually the problem goes away because training costs increase in a linear fashion and XP costs increase geometrically - until you get high enough level, at which point XP costs per level stop increasing at all but training costs continue to rise. So it looks like at low level and at high level the XP tables are essentially meaningless. Am I missing something?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Expectations created by the rules - and a host of other factors - are part of the game, a psychological factor not to be underestimated. Handwaving such things seems no different than arguing, say, that you can always ignore or change a rule a.k.a. invoke rule zero. Consider me unimpressed.

Is not addressing every individual point to be made on the matter "handwaving"? Who's handwaving anything?

Also - I'm sorry you're not... impressed. Would you like a refund or something?

Rolemaster has one of its three core books, Arms Law, entirely dedicated to attack and critical hit tables. It's certainly possible to run a non-violent game with Rolemaster, but I do think the mere presence of Arms Law shapes expectations and hangs over ANY Rolemaster game (quite possibly ironically, as in "We thumb our noses at Rolemaster and have another session without any combat, LOL!", or creating suspense, as in "When will we finally break out Arms Law and find out exactly how our characters die?").

There's a difference between an entire core book, and a single table - this is an absurd comparison.

With the exception of your unique case, nobody is basing the fun of D&D on exactly what one line of table says how much gold a 6th level Bard should start with. But omitting combat entirely, well that's a much more extreme fun-affecting decision which (again) is not the fault of the system but rather a choice made on the individual level. Your real-life player was disappointed in a character build idea, once; Those players in your example are rebelling against the entire game.

 

[squeen]

@Beoric : K&KA has a similar thread on the BtB training costs at low levels. Apparently a common solution is that the PCs go in debt to raise the extra funds which beholdens them to another power and generates more adventuring hooks (e.g. the Guild requires a mission, etc.)

Regardless, if training costs retard level gain, I see that as an unqualified plus.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I'll admit, as someone who's played 3.x off and on for about 20 years now with at least six different groups, the expected wealth by level table absolutely sets player expectations in my experience, and does so in a way that sets DMs up to have to actively address those expectations when they deviate from there.

In the 3.x campaign I was in that TPK'd at the end of August, one of the ongoing discussions between the PCs and then occasionally with the DM was that we had drastically fewer magical items and much less wealth than a typical PC party of our level, and it made a lot of the challenges more difficult, and locked in caster supremacy. Discussions like this have occurred in every 3.x group I've been in during those two decades.

And then it regains its semi-rigid shape after six seconds? And if it loses its shape wouldn't it increase the floor area it covered?

Think of oozes as an assembly of contained, self-repairing, cells which expand, shrink, flex, compress, rotate etc. to produce the ooze's movement. So yeah, you cut or smash a few of them and it temporarily loses rigidity before it either shifts new cells into place or repairs the damaged ones.

Also, another problem is that the same maneuver is used to knock humanoids prone. And you can use different weapons, so you might be proning with a club, or your fist, or a net. And even if you justify that example, there many different proning powers, and some may imply that it's more of a shove than a trip, or a blow to the head, or a blow from a missile weapon, or that they fall down because they are dizzy or confused, or think they are falling in an illusory canyon, or for any other number of reasons - all of which you also have to justify as being the same maneuver or spell used on humanoid creatures with a very different mind and anatomy.

Sure, I think if you tag oozes as immune to mental effects you cover most of the egregiously difficult cases to explain, but if there's some difficulty, ruling oozes as just immune to being knocked prone is a relatively minor buff that I don't think would mess with the core math of monster creation in 4e.

 

[Beoric]

Think of oozes as an assembly of contained, self-repairing, cells which expand, shrink, flex, compress, rotate etc. to produce the ooze's movement. So yeah, you cut or smash a few of them and it temporarily loses rigidity before it either shifts new cells into place or repairs the damaged ones.

Sure, I think if you tag oozes as immune to mental effects you cover most of the egregiously difficult cases to explain, but if there's some difficulty, ruling oozes as just immune to being knocked prone is a relatively minor buff that I don't think would mess with the core math of monster creation in 4e.

I don't really care about most other oozes, you could flip over an ochre jelly or a gray ooze and I would see it being out of sorts of a few seconds. But a gelatinous cube is a cube. If you flip it over or knock i ton its side it is still cube shaped.

And you are right, it wouldn't mess with the monster math. In fact, 4e encourages you to alter monsters freely, and granting immunity to a condition is not uncommon. That is what is so infuriating about the manner in which this rule gets applied. It is likely that the guy who wrote the 4e version of the gelatinous cube just didn't consider the impact of the prone condition, or he might have made it immune to proning. So working hard to justify an oversight on the fly, instead of correcting the oversight, just doesn't make sense to me.

Consider this:

* WotC encourages customizing monsters and would have found it acceptable to rewrite the cube to make it immune to proning.
* WotC encouraged altering encounters on the fly to meet the DM's expectations respecting encounter difficulty. (FYI I'm not endorsing this, its just what they did.)
* WotC promoted the idea that the rules should be applied as written, and discouraged making rulings that overruled a written rule; and I believe they made an official ruling that a gelatinous cube could be proned.

Those statements don't add up; this is one of the reasons I say that WotC didn't understand its own rule system. If you have a system that allows you to make monsters immune to certain things, and encourages you to customize monsters, and encourages you to alter encounters on the fly, it is illogical to take the position that you can't make rulings on the fly. There are more than 5300 4e monsters, not all of which were completely thought out; tweaking things on the fly to fix obvious oversights ought to be acceptable.

Also, I'm not sure if I find the irony of receiving pushback, when I'm criticising my own preferred system, is amusing or bemusing. Maybe a bit of both.

 

[Beoric]

I don't really care about most other oozes, you could flip over an ochre jelly or a gray ooze and I would see it being out of sorts of a few seconds. But a gelatinous cube is a cube. If you flip it over or knock i ton its side it is still cube shaped.

And you are right, it wouldn't mess with the monster math. In fact, 4e encourages you to alter monsters freely, and granting immunity to a condition is not uncommon. That is what is so infuriating about the manner in which this rule gets applied. It is likely that the guy who wrote the 4e version of the gelatinous cube just didn't consider the impact of the prone condition, or he might have made it immune to proning. So working hard to justify an oversight on the fly, instead of correcting the oversight, just doesn't make sense to me.

Consider this:

* WotC encourages customizing monsters and would have found it acceptable to rewrite the cube to make it immune to proning.
* WotC encouraged altering encounters on the fly to meet the DM's expectations respecting encounter difficulty. (FYI I'm not endorsing this, its just what they did.)
* WotC promoted the idea that the rules should be applied as written, and discouraged making rulings that overruled a written rule; and I believe they made an official ruling that a gelatinous cube could be proned.

Those statements don't add up; this is one of the reasons I say that WotC didn't understand its own rule system. If you have a system that allows you to make monsters immune to certain things, and encourages you to customize monsters, and encourages you to alter encounters on the fly, it is illogical to take the position that you can't make rulings on the fly. There are more than 5300 4e monsters, not all of which were completely thought out; tweaking things on the fly to fix obvious oversights ought to be acceptable.

Also, I'm not sure if I find the irony of receiving pushback, when I'm criticising my own preferred system, is amusing or bemusing. Maybe a bit of both.

It is up to 1 XP for a gold piece of treasure won through risk perilous to the character’s level, but not certainly 1 XP for every gold piece that is written on your character sheet.

I juice up my campaigns with treasure. Random encounter tables include the possibility of “found loot”. No XP for it but it spends the same.

And as squeen mentioned, very common to trade services for training, or magic items not critical to rounding out the party.

Treasure maps are another pillar of old school play often dropped by the wayside. If there’s no guardian/little risk, they can inject a lot of liquidity that isn’t 1GP=1XP.

A good rule of thumb in a campaign is that it has sufficient cash flow/services trade to allow training reasonably close to eligibility, good equipment purchases and replacement, retaining common mercs and hirelings as needed + occasional expensive specialists or needed spells, and lastly, the acquisition of game-centric “property” : a wizards lab and library, a consecrated shrine where the cleric can make holy water, a thief’s network of informants, etc.

Far too many DMs choke the life out of their campaigns keeping them poor. The advice against Monty haul giveaways was in the context of people claiming millions of gp and 300th level characters.

It wasn’t to make 75% of the game outside the dungeon into something characters were too poor to participate in.

A lot of DMs just don’t want to deal with anything beyond running modules, and poverty is convenient to that end

Both of these are good examples of the folly of trying to create complete rulesets. Gygax billed AD&D as being complete, and 4e tries to force aspects of it to be treated as complete even when they are not, but both editions have elements that require adjustment in order to work.

 

[squeen]

I don't think Gygax billed any version of D&D as complete (i.e. covering ever eventuality of a whole-world simulation). That's impossible.
See Trent's post again. Even if he did, that was a salesman's hyperbole.

Also, I don't think EOTB's post in any way speaks to that point. He is not talking (above) about any outside-the-rules kludges.

What's more, an "incomplete" system with a stipulation for a human referee to cover non-routine situations is total different than "broken" --- which is the point I feel you are reaching for: i.e. "all the rule sets are broken, so you have to make up your own mechanics to fix them which makes all of them equally good."

The point I was originally trying to make with this thread was that 1e---despite the claims of it's detractors---holds together surprising well given the massive impossibility of what it is trying to cover. There is a system and internal logic that covers many situations in a holistic, balanced way. It was in many ways a "fix" for the pitfalls of OD&D based on massive play testing (and most importantly to me, without an eye for dumb-ing it down for mass curb appeal).

Again, with respect to Trent's "rulings in spirit of the game" vs. "encyclopedic knowledge of the rules":

First, an honest attempt to understand what's already there, the "why" as well as the "how" must be undertaken---after you get the groove, then you will be more comfortable "winging it" during actual play while keeping inside the spiritual framework.

Even without it being 100% perfect, you can still marvel at the craftsmanship. No painting is perfect...but some are still great. 1e is great and totally usable. It adds/improves on OD&D in a nice way---if you have the stomach for more complexity. IMO its the ultimate edition, but also probably the most difficult to learn---ergo not suitable for mass con$umption. Math is difficult too---and yet some people learn put in the effort to learn it because of what it allows them to do. I believe Second Edition (and especially B/X) was largely an attempt to make it "better = easier = more marketable", not "better = more awesome fun when used by an adept". Elitist as all get-out by design: 1e's a nerd-game for creative, obsessive, brainy nerds.

And "yes" it requires a lot of the DM (and players). But to learn it---really play the hell out of it---is a challege with a huge pay off, because it's intended to be deep and long-term. Not for the casual-player or faint-hearted.

Everything since, including pre-fab story games (Ravenloft and beyond), have also looked to remove the need for a skilled DM (and players, too) to make D&D shine. Not my cup of tea.

(admittedly, I think 4e was designed to be quite different and attract the video-game crowd with crunchy fights---but that's a whole other thing of which I am largely ignorant and not really searching for)

 

[squeen]

Also, with regard to the training costs thingy---I used it as a hook: a retired high-level thief was willing to train on the cheap if the party went into the Earth Temple and answers a nagging question of his (surround his wife's death the previous spring). He was the only avenue for training in those parts, and that was sufficient motivation to get the party to detour into a dungeon.

I could have hand-waived training (like we used to in OD&D), but I brought a little bit of "1e goodness" into my game and it payed dividends. The party returned to the Earth Temple multiple times for other self-appointed quests (over several real-time years).

A real-world example of an aspect of 1e that appears "broken" or bothersome at first glance...until you grok its context. 1e is going for the Greater D&D here...it's a system designed for the extended campaign. Patience required. (Thanks for the tip Gary. It worked!)

 

[Beoric]

Uh-huh. I could characterize my fix of the 4e proning rules as applied to gelatinous cubes as "using it as intended" as well. I could even accurately portray it as consistent with other rules. That wouldn't make the characterization accurate, because it requires my intervention to make the existing rule work. And it seems self evidence that rule is not working as intended if it requires intervention to work properly.

I mean, you can call the rules that work perfect because they work, and you can call the rules that don't work so well perfect because you found a workaround you have deemed to be the original intention, and you can omit elements you don't like and still call them perfect because "personal preference", but at some point it begins to look like your judgement on this topic isn't entirely objective.

 

[Beoric]

Did you read the last entry, by @The Heretic? Or look at the post he was responding to? Or @squeen's post, included in your list, which says:

To my eyes, its a Masterpiece of game design. Unequaled since. And just like there is no perfect painting or sculpture, it has flaws....but I find I can happily live with them.

So not perfect, but an unequalled masterpiece, like a Da Vinci or a Rembrandt. Yeah, you proved your point.

 

[squeen]

To my eyes it is a masterpiece. No joke. It's how I feel about 1e. I think it's amazing. As I discover more of the little fiddle-bits and how they were/can be used to practical effect, I am even more impressed. I love seeing how some of the parts I nevered used dovetail with my campaign...I'm like, "WOW! So this is AD&D!" It think it's got layers---all great works do. Why does that offend? I don't think any later edition has equaled it---but I'm no expert on them. You know that.

I'm not demanding you or anyone else share my enthusiasm---I just like talking about things as I discover them. That's why I started this thread (and others). It should be not more contentious than saying I like a particular rock band and think they are the best. Something I go a bit further and constrast it with things I don't like (e.g. late 80's Hair Metal or whatever the heck it is that Byrce keeps posting video links to...)---but I'm just voicing an opinion about what I think is great (or not so great). Why be bothered?

Something is rotten in the State of Denmark. Beoric, what's really eating you?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The jellycube prone thing was probably an oversight. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fix for it out there issued under a pile of errata.

Regardless, the option to change things is always on the table. Why not just go ahead and declare that the cube can't be made prone and leave it at that?

"It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important" - Gygax, DMG p230

 

[Johann]

There's a difference between an entire core book, and a single table - this is an absurd comparison.

I think it's merely a matter of degree. All sorts of things influence our expectations - a game's cover, the equipment list, heck, even the order of the chapters. The presence of a table with expected wealth by level changes the game, perhaps subtly (though Pseudoephedrine's and my experience suggest otherwise).

And sorry about the "unimpressed" comment -- I must have been daydreaming that you'd go all "Whoa, Johann, you're damn right! I've never looked at it that way" before. I shouldn't have engaged with a line of argument I'm tired of...

 

[Beoric]

"It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important" - Gygax, DMG p230

He should have remembered this when he was berating his customers in Dragon magazine editorials.