What Was Gygax Thinking?

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Gygax’s primary concern was creating a fun and playable game, not recreating or simulating pre-existing works of fiction, so everything in D&D is filtered through that lens and distorted from whatever inspired it. D&D thieves find and remove traps and pick locks because those are useful skills in a D&D dungeon (moreso than picking pockets, which is more of a flavor thing). Hobbits are good thieves in D&D because of Bilbo but they’re better at it than Bilbo because the premise of the game is that PCs are “professional adventurers” who do this stuff repeatedly and are good at it, not regular folks in over their heads who have one adventure and retire (and also because hobbits need to be good at something to be a viable character type).

The game-structure of D&D dictates that characters all start out relatively weak but gradually power-up, that they have limited/siloed skill-sets so they’re encouraged to work as a team of equals (rather than solo or one main guy with minor sidekicks), and so on, so every character type lifted from a fictional source is modified to fit that paradigm. D&D characters (and monsters and spells and magic items) are drawn from and inspired by fiction and mythology and history, and are intended to resonate and remind you of that source material, but it’s all in the context of the game-structure first and foremost: a team of professional adventurers making repeated forays into dangerous underground mazes and untamed wildernesses in order to fight a variety of exotic monsters and recover treasure and gradually increasing in power (allowing them to fight more dangerous monsters and gather more valuable treasure) in an endless feedback loop.

No pre-existing work of fiction has that structure (because it wouldn't make for very good fiction) so no work of fiction is exactly like D&D and Gygax knew that, which is why he always stressed that D&D should be looked at as a game, not a simulation. But it’s a game with echoes and resonances to a bunch of other stuff, which is one of the things that makes it so compelling and addictive. You’re character isn’t literally Conan or Elric or Bilbo or Sir Lancelot or John Carter, but they’re recognizably connected to them - enough to make it feel like the adventures you’re having are similar to the ones they had (but more open-ended, and shared with friends).
 
Seriously though, while "the one they want to" is pretty reasonable because motivation & enthusiasm are great and all, there are some systems that probably aren't going to be easy or fun to first time GM for. Plus a good number don't actually have any practical advice for the most common issues in their system.

There is more truth to your example than you probably know. I started in emergency medicine in the early 1990s. Modern emergency medical services really only started in the 1970s so when I was starting there were still a lot of guys (it was mostly guys then) working who were there on the ground floor when it all started.

Back then the job paid nothing, so there was a major shortage of employees. Lots of people told me stories of going to apply for a job, and being handed a uniform and an application then pointed to their new partner and sent out on an emergency call, just fill out the application when you have time.

One story relayed to me was a guy starting his first day. At that time only the "ambulance driver" (they weren't EMTs or Paramedics yet) was required to have CPR and first aid, the attendant (the guy in back with the patient) just needed to be able to fog a mirror. So here he is on his first call, a cardiac arrest and he is doing CPR while the driver is yelling instructions over his shoulder to him while flying down the highway to the hospital. Back then good patient care was closely tied to horsepower. This guy was working in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 70s, not some place in podunk.

It is crazy how far things have come just in my lifetime, I can remember when 911 was introduced.
 
I find it hard to pronounce the difference between the two when speaking :hehe: :tongue:
Yeah, and I don't think they're that different, and would prefer it if the movements were mixed. Old school games do share a certain logic, which I'm finding very useful when GMing.

I think I'm going to be difficult and just start using the term Retro-GrogNerd instead.
RGN sounds nice:grin:!
...I might adopt it for non-D&D-inspired old school games, instead:devil:!

Lol. I also remember reading about people who thought that turn undead meant the zombies spun around in place. There were a ton of strange interpretation of the rules and sometimes those strange interpretations would spread within a particular circle of friends and become their norm.
I've read that some people believed it was about turning into an undead...:grin:
(Not Tristram, unless someone else had posted about the session on TBP).

OSR as anything more than some sort of retro clone of D&D or D&D inspired (mechanics) rule set is meaningless to me. Just relating to "old" games, fine which games? how old?
All those that were created in the 70ies and 80ies and those that strive for the same approach today.
Though if you ask my daughter, that would include those from the 90ies, 00s and 10s:thumbsup:

Is a game looking back on Traveller for inspiration really that similar to one based on Runequest? Is Traveller really more alike to D&D than GURPS or even Vampire (which doesn't seem to be "old School" despite being 32 years old)?
In my book, yes.
GURPS...well, that can go either way, and that's exactly why it's not usually considered.
Same for Vampire, but even less likely.


To me it’s more like;

1970-77 - Stone Age (rpgs are invented and codified)
1978-85 - Golden Age (rpgs become popular and professional)
1986-93 - Silver Age (rpgs become bloated and decadent)
1994-2000 - Copper Age (rpgs fade into near-irrelevance in the face of CCGs and computer games; a lot of legacy publishers fold)
2001-08 - Bronze Age (rpgs have a revival centered around d20 bringing back Golden/Silver Age players)
2009-14 - Brass Age (D&D stumbles, the D&D-alikes (Pathfinder, OSR) have their moment)
2015-22 - Tin Age (streaming and Kickstarter change the landscape and rpgs become more popular than ever before but D&D feels more dominant than ever)
2023+ - ? (either the hobby moves online & effectively merges with computer gaming (if WotC gets their way) or the rest of the industry steps in to fill the void & the 20+ year dominance of D&D is finally broken (if they don’t))

2030s RPGs run by AI's online
2040s, The AI having been trained by running rpgs, now play elaborate games against each other in the post apocalyptic wasteland using the last remaining humans as living game tokens.
2050s: some of those humans, having developed weird abilities, are now consolidating their power base. Even more worrisome, they're looking at the heavens and shaking a fist.
20XX: the campaign begins:gunslinger:!
 
Gygax’s primary concern was creating a fun and playable game, not recreating or simulating pre-existing works of fiction, so everything in D&D is filtered through that lens and distorted from whatever inspired it. D&D thieves find and remove traps and pick locks because those are useful skills in a D&D dungeon (moreso than picking pockets, which is more of a flavor thing). Hobbits are good thieves in D&D because of Bilbo but they’re better at it than Bilbo because the premise of the game is that PCs are “professional adventurers” who do this stuff repeatedly and are good at it, not regular folks in over their heads who have one adventure and retire (and also because hobbits need to be good at something to be a viable character type).

The game-structure of D&D dictates that characters all start out relatively weak but gradually power-up, that they have limited/siloed skill-sets so they’re encouraged to work as a team of equals (rather than solo or one main guy with minor sidekicks), and so on, so every character type lifted from a fictional source is modified to fit that paradigm. D&D characters (and monsters and spells and magic items) are drawn from and inspired by fiction and mythology and history, and are intended to resonate and remind you of that source material, but it’s all in the context of the game-structure first and foremost: a team of professional adventurers making repeated forays into dangerous underground mazes and untamed wildernesses in order to fight a variety of exotic monsters and recover treasure and gradually increasing in power (allowing them to fight more dangerous monsters and gather more valuable treasure) in an endless feedback loop.

No pre-existing work of fiction has that structure (because it wouldn't make for very good fiction) so no work of fiction is exactly like D&D and Gygax knew that, which is why he always stressed that D&D should be looked at as a game, not a simulation. But it’s a game with echoes and resonances to a bunch of other stuff, which is one of the things that makes it so compelling and addictive. You’re character isn’t literally Conan or Elric or Bilbo or Sir Lancelot or John Carter, but they’re recognizably connected to them - enough to make it feel like the adventures you’re having are similar to the ones they had (but more open-ended, and shared with friends).
I'm not sure I could have come up with anything eloquent like that, but man, you have nailed it.
 
Gygax’s primary concern was creating a fun and playable game,

I'll grant you fun, but some of his choices call into question whether playable was a primary concern for him. With the rules as they are written, you pretty much need rule zero.
 
I'll grant you fun, but some of his choices call into question whether playable was a primary concern for him. With the rules as they are written, you pretty much need rule zero.
Bah; we have fun with playing AD&D 1E as close to rules as written as we can in my bi weekly 1E group. Most of us played as kids, and we definitely didn’t play RAW back than, so it is a mix of nostalgia and challenge for us.
 
Bah; we have fun with playing AD&D 1E as close to rules as written as we can in my bi weekly 1E group. Most of us played as kids, and we definitely didn’t play RAW back than, so it is a mix of nostalgia and challenge for us.
As close as you can is key - you can't run it completely RAW though. For the most fun, you'll be making a lot of changes (by all accounts, Gary was like that himself, and Kevin Siembieda, who is probably the most similar designer to Gary is also known for that).
 
Hobbits are good thieves in D&D because of Bilbo but they’re better at it than Bilbo because the premise of the game is that PCs are “professional adventurers” who do this stuff repeatedly and are good at it, not regular folks in over their heads who have one adventure and retire (and also because hobbits need to be good at something to be a viable character type).
I suspect you're arguing against something you thought I said, but didn't.
Hobbits can be thieves in OD&D and AD&D, but I wasn't talking about them.
I was arguing that Hobbits as Fighters in B/X was correct from an emulating fiction perspective.
So, if anything, I'm saying Gygax was right - not criticising him in this aspect.
The game-structure of D&D dictates that characters all start out relatively weak but gradually power-up, that they have limited/siloed skill-sets so they’re encouraged to work as a team of equals (rather than solo or one main guy with minor sidekicks), and so on, so every character type lifted from a fictional source is modified to fit that paradigm. D&D characters (and monsters and spells and magic items) are drawn from and inspired by fiction and mythology and history, and are intended to resonate and remind you of that source material, but it’s all in the context of the game-structure first and foremost: a team of professional adventurers making repeated forays into dangerous underground mazes and untamed wildernesses in order to fight a variety of exotic monsters and recover treasure and gradually increasing in power (allowing them to fight more dangerous monsters and gather more valuable treasure) in an endless feedback loop.
Unfortunately in the case of Thieves in D&D they start out crap, and end crap compared to any other character class (that bit's a criticism of Gary - but it's not an unusual perspective).
 
As close as you can is key - you can't run it completely RAW though. For the most fun, you'll be making a lot of changes (by all accounts, Gary was like that himself, and Kevin Siembieda, who is probably the most similar designer to Gary is also known for that).
The idea that “a lot of changes” are needed is entirely subjective and not true for us.
 
I’ll bite, will you please expand on this.

D&D was always meant to be improvisational, using the rules as the DM sees fit based on the situation. The rulebook was originally just meant to convey a process with examples. But folks kept asking Gary for more rules, so he'd just write more rules, because that's what sold.
 
D&D was always meant to be improvisational, using the rules as the DM sees fit based on the situation. The rulebook was originally just meant to convey a process with examples. But folks kept asking Gary for more rules, so he'd just write more rules, because that's what sold.
Correct, so if you play OD&D your way you are playing RAW :wink:
 
I thought the original statement was a joke about how the OD&D rules are so confused and contradictory you can't play them as written. Which was funny and true!
It wouldn’t be the first time something flew over my head
 
I'll grant you fun, but some of his choices call into question whether playable was a primary concern for him. With the rules as they are written, you pretty much need rule zero.
Not really. There are a handful of infamous cases in the 1E DMG (initiative, unarmed combat) that are broken due to either being unplaytested junk that was thrown in out of a sense of obligation (see my post upthread: Gary’s own preferred playstyle was “wing it with judgment calls” but he felt the audience wanted/demanded more formalized rules so he tried to provide them but didn’t do a very good job of it because it was contrary to his nature and actual play-experience) or was mangled by the editor, or both (I’m convinced the initiative rules were drafted as two independent systems that the poor editor (Mike Carr) gamely tried to merge together). But you can toss that stuff aside (as, in my experience, pretty much everybody did BITD - it’s only in this century online that I’ve seen people actually try to use and advocate for that stuff) without doing any harm to the rest of the game. [It’s also worth noting that Gary knew the AD&D rules needed to be revised and freshened up and was planning to do so before he parted ways with TSR - he made no secret in later years that he never liked the unarmed combat or psionics rules or some of the other fiddly combat stuff like the weapon vs AC table or that cockamamie rule about using weapon speed factor for spell interruptions.]

There’s also a lot of stuff that assumes a particular play-style or campaign structure without those assumptions being clearly stated in the text that looks weird or nonsensical or bizarrely punitive if viewed without that context, but 2 decades of online exegesis have identified and cleared up most/all of those - if you actually set up your campaign and play in the way Gary envisioned (which, admittedly, very few people ever have unless they’re making a conscious effort to do so - it’s not intuitive nor is it clearly explained in the text) that stuff actually does work and IMO produces as good or better a play experience than the other playstyles and campaign structures that became more popular and defined the mainstream in the 80s-00s.
 
Up to 73 - The “I got an idea!” Era.
1974-1980 - This new-fangled D&D and some other stuff Era.
1981-1990 - The Best Era because of DC Heroes and other stuff.
1991-1999 - The “I got other shit to do than play RPGs” Era
2000-2009 - The Nostalgia Era.
2010-Present - The “I blow a lot of money on RPGs” Era.
 
Not really. There are a handful of infamous cases in the 1E DMG (initiative, unarmed combat) that are broken due to either being unplaytested junk that was thrown in out of a sense of obligation (see my post upthread: Gary’s own preferred playstyle was “wing it with judgment calls” but he felt the audience wanted/demanded more formalized rules so he tried to provide them but didn’t do a very good job of it because it was contrary to his nature and actual play-experience) or was mangled by the editor, or both (I’m convinced the initiative rules were drafted as two independent systems that the poor editor (Mike Carr) gamely tried to merge together). But you can toss that stuff aside (as, in my experience, pretty much everybody did BITD - it’s only in this century online that I’ve seen people actually try to use and advocate for that stuff) without doing any harm to the rest of the game. [It’s also worth noting that Gary knew the AD&D rules needed to be revised and freshened up and was planning to do so before he parted ways with TSR - he made no secret in later years that he never liked the unarmed combat or psionics rules or some of the other fiddly combat stuff like the weapon vs AC table or that cockamamie rule about using weapon speed factor for spell interruptions.]

There’s also a lot of stuff that assumes a particular play-style or campaign structure without those assumptions being clearly stated in the text that looks weird or nonsensical or bizarrely punitive if viewed without that context, but 2 decades of online exegesis have identified and cleared up most/all of those - if you actually set up your campaign and play in the way Gary envisioned (which, admittedly, very few people ever have unless they’re making a conscious effort to do so - it’s not intuitive nor is it clearly explained in the text) that stuff actually does work and IMO produces as good or better a play experience than the other playstyles and campaign structures that became more popular and defined the mainstream in the 80s-00s.
Exactly. Heck we have even used the unarmed combat rules. Again we are a bunch of mature guys having fun together playing a game and flipping and turning through the rulebooks on occasion is part of that fun. To be honest we don’t even touch the books for 75% of our sessions because combat is fairly rare, we do lots of in character roleplaying.

We do use the weapon vs AC, weapon speed (for the couple instances when it comes up) and even use training and the DM rating of players for experience as detailed in the DMG.

As I stayed none of us played that way in the 80’s but to say you can’t do it is just plain wrong.
 
My take on roleplaying games is that first and foremost they are about creating experiences. A combination of luck, smarts, and hard work allowed Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax to invent virtual reality but one implemented by using the rules of a wargame, pen, paper, and dice. The key mechanic that enables this is the core mechanic of tabletop roleplaying.
  • A human referee describes a setting,
  • The players describe the characters they want to play in the setting
  • The referee describes where the players first find themselves as their characters.
  • The players describe what they do as their characters.
  • The referee describes the consequences.
  • The referee describes the new circumstances and it loops back to the players describing what they do as their character.
  • This loop is repeated throughout for as long as the group wants to play out the campaign, adventuring in the setting.
The rules, such as the first system, OD&D, are an aid to make this happen within the time one has for a hobby. Because there are so many ways to describe a setting, characters, and what characters can do, different systems focusing on different things at different levels of detail were developed and continued to be developed. Various forms of OD&D continue to be the most popular aid to making a tabletop roleplaying campaign happen.

This allows folks to feel that they experienced the adventures they are having. This is akin to but not the same as immersion. And like all experiences, the stories come after. Stories that describe what happened. Another implication is that rules are a preference not a requirement to run a tabletop roleplaying. The only require mechanic is the procedure listed above. In practice trying to run a tabletop roleplaying without a formal system for many folks is not fun and involves way more time than they have for a hobby. More common are successful campaigns that are run with minimalist systems.

The advantage of thinking of looking at tabletop roleplaying this way is shifting the focus away from the endless quest some folks have of finding the perfect system. To a focus where folks think of something fun they want to experience as adventurers or to roleplay. Then create or pick the best system to help run that campaign.

My two cents on the topic.
 
raise your hand if you ever used the full initiative rules from AD&D 1e
I think I maybe tried to for a couple sessions c. the early 2000s after reading posts at Dragonsfoot, but gave up on it as a fool’s errand almost immediately. A.D.D.I.C.T. matches the text of the rules pretty well (except where it doesn’t…) but absolutely does not produce a smooth or fun play experience, and I will always prioritize the latter over the former.
 
Well, that's again with the terminology. Everything should be scaled by adventure standards. Is this an easy task in a day to day situation? No. Is it an easy task in a life or death situation? Yes. And again, DC 10 is "perform life-saving first aid on someone actively bleeding out, with no medical gear". That's the benchmark for "easy".
I don't think it's a good benchmark because it's probably set low to help PCs not die and to make performing that action in combat not seem like a wasted action.

I think it's striking that in the section of the PH on using abilities that discusses what they are for, there are no sample DCs.

Looking in the DMG, it does discuss this a little, mainly noting that 'easy' means 'about 50%' for a non-proficient non-talented individual. It doesn't even note that a 'moderate' task will have about a 50% chance of success for a low level, proficient, and talented character. Overall there's only part of a single column of text that discusses DCs.

Moving on, I find some examples DCs (for tracking). Those for tracking say it's DC10 to track someone through snow. Hmmm. Then there are some for conversations with beings you meet. That's it.

There's far more discussion of advantage/disadvantage than of setting DCs. There's more discussion of an optional rule for proficiency bonuses than of setting DCs.

I'd not noticed this before, not having DMed 5e before, and not being too concerned as I'd have just winged this like always - but I've been GMing for 40 years.
 
Seriously though, while "the one they want to" is pretty reasonable because motivation & enthusiasm are great and all, there are some systems that probably aren't going to be easy or fun to first time GM for. Plus a good number don't actually have any practical advice for the most common issues in their system.
I suspect that the most common issues in a system exist because they're where the designer and their group did things in such a way it never came up or their way of doing things 'automatically' dealt with the issue - i.e. it wasn't an issue for the designer, so they never needed a rule that worked for that. Thus they'd never think to explain how to deal with that issue.
 
I don't think it's a good benchmark because it's probably set low to help PCs not die and to make performing that action in combat not seem like a wasted action.

It's the benchmark we have. I think it is good because it sets the expectations for properly heroic levels. Saving someone's life with first aid with only improvised equipment? That's an easy check. And there's no reason for this not to be the benchmark.
 
maybe "easy" is just a poorly chosen term for it
I think so, but the problem is then that if people will benchmark it against their ordinary life, the lowest difficulty level would have to be "Very difficult" or similar. Maybe it should be.
 
maybe "easy" is just a poorly chosen term for it
Don't we have a thread discussing probabilities? I have one on perception and stealth and such...


What would really help is to have more discussion of just what sorts of tasks actually become challenging in extreme situations and when they become so.

Maybe this is part of why so many RPGs focus on combat so much. If two people are fighting to the death, either they are equally matched in which case they have a 50-50 shot of winning (though there is some chance both lose... not all games allow for that - so what) or one side has an advantage. Then there is just a case of managing expectation of what kinds of opponents fall where on the curve from pushover to equally matched to oh shit... But everyone expects at least SOME opponents to fall on any part of that curve, well, some folks may prefer not to see one or both of the extremes. But again, manage expectations. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to have enough consistency that players can learn what falls where.

But what's your chance to jump a chasm? Much harder to manage expectations, especially as soon as real life dimensions are given.
 
The idea that “a lot of changes” are needed is entirely subjective and not true for us.
So is the idea that the rules as written were "fun"...:shade:

raise your hand if you ever used the full initiative rules from AD&D 1e
The ones with speed factors of the weapons, right?
*raises hand*

(Not for long, but then I didn't keep with that group).
 
Don't we have a thread discussing probabilities? I have one on perception and stealth and such...


What would really help is to have more discussion of just what sorts of tasks actually become challenging in extreme situations and when they become so.

Maybe this is part of why so many RPGs focus on combat so much. If two people are fighting to the death, either they are equally matched in which case they have a 50-50 shot of winning (though there is some chance both lose... not all games allow for that - so what) or one side has an advantage. Then there is just a case of managing expectation of what kinds of opponents fall where on the curve from pushover to equally matched to oh shit... But everyone expects at least SOME opponents to fall on any part of that curve, well, some folks may prefer not to see one or both of the extremes. But again, manage expectations. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to have enough consistency that players can learn what falls where.

But what's your chance to jump a chasm? Much harder to manage expectations, especially as soon as real life dimensions are given.


Standing Long Jump Test (Broad Jump)
rating(cm)(feet, inches)
above average231-2405' 11.5" — 6' 2.5"
average221-2305' 7.5" — 5' 11"
below average211-2205' 3.5" — 5' 7"
poor191-2104' 7.5" — 5' 2.5"
 
easy is a 50% chance...just trying to think how many things I do in my life that I have even close to a 50% chance at failing at.

Not much
Back in the early 90s Frank Chadwick commented that, when writing Traveller: The New Era, they changed the names of task difficulty levels because calling the default level 'average' confused people (and this was what T2K did) - the designers set that as 'about 50%' for a character with what they thought was 'average' skill in that area. Players were expecting an 'average' character to succeed in an 'average' task most or all of the time.

So, in TNE (and thus T2K v2.2), that level of task was called 'Difficult', and an 'Average' task doubled you chances, and thus characters with reasonable skill in something would succeed in an Average task almost all the time.
 
What I never get is the idea that dice should only be rolled in stressful situations.

This has always seemed to be a response to games that get their probabilty wrong more than anything.

I mean if I'm searching a desk for hidden compartments, I'm probably not doing it to find the key that will turn off the bomb with 60 seconds left on the counter most of the time.

I tend to think as well, that while it's good GMing to not make PCs roll for things that are generally quite easy to do, some GMs are going to call for rolls anyway, and in particular newer GMs, so I generally prefer to have a system that still allows a resolution where my athletic character can climb a tree and succeed more than 90% of the time if he is asked to roll.
 
What I never get is the idea that dice should only be rolled in stressful situations.

This has always seemed to be a response to games that get their probabilty wrong more than anything.

I mean if I'm searching a desk for hidden compartments, I'm probably not doing it to find the key that will turn off the bomb with 60 seconds left on the counter most of the time.

I tend to think as well, that while it's good GMing to not make PCs roll for things that are generally quite easy to do, some GMs are going to call for rolls anyway, and in particular newer GMs, so I generally prefer to have a system that still allows a resolution where my athletic character can climb a tree and succeed more than 90% of the time if he is asked to roll.
I generally lower the stakes for non-stressful situations, rather than cancel the roll, assuming I see there's a chance for failure. (and I'm not bored and wanting things to move along). You want to climb the nearest tree because a buffalo is charging you? You roll, and if you fail the tree is too small and it and you get trampled, or you fall out of it and get trampled (I'd probably give some kind of a dodge/save check, but that's another story). If you're just climbing a tree for the heck of it failure just means you barely get started before you can't find any further purchase and you have to give up - embarrassing and time wasting, not dangerous. If there's a fumble mechanism in this latter case if you fumble you might also find the tree had a climbing rose in it, or wasps. Painful, embarrassing, but not deadly.
 
But what's your chance to jump a chasm? Much harder to manage expectations, especially as soon as real life dimensions are given.
In 5e:

DM: Okay everyone there's a 10ft long chasm full of acid.
Fighter: Ok I got this, I have the best Athletics of all of you.
Wizard: Misty Step
Warlock: Misty Step.
Rogue: (Arcan Trickster): Misty Step
Paladin: Misty Step.
DM: Is that a Paladin spell?
Paladin: Subclass.
Fighter: Aahh. I jump, time to show off my excellent Athletics ability.
DM spends 5 minutes trying to find jump rules.
Fighter. I roll a 3.
DM: Splash.

(This exact situation happened in a game).
 
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