Protagonism mechanics. For AD&D1. In a TSR module.

[The Butcher]

Know, o Prince, that between the time when TSR picked up the Conan license and the rise of the TSR Conan RPG, there was an age undreamed of, with two Conan modules statted up for AD&D1 spread across the TSR catalogue like jewels upon a cloth etc.

Anyway, this popped up on my Google+ feed a few hours ago: it seems even in the far-off, exotic and decidedly old school epoch of 1984 there was some effort and thought towards bad, naughty, no-good swiney "genre emulation" and, God forbid, protagonism mechanics.

So much for "we never intended to simulate stories anyway", I guess? ;)

Thoughts?

 

[opaopajr]

So blurry... my phone refuses to believe you. ;)

 

[CRKrueger]

There's always been individuals who for some reason prefer to "roleplay" within an OOC framework in which their character is a protagonist in a story guided by tropes, themes etc. instead of roleplaying a character in a living world where things are guided by...well...life.

People for the most part got along too, even when they talked and debated in the Usenet days.

It was only with the advent of Narrativism as proposed by Laws and Edwards that those who prefer to "OOC roleplay" decided that everyone plays that way whether they knew it or not, or believed it or not. The where all the objective definitions and judgements came from. The Intarwebz and the narcissistic culture of social media hasn't helped elevate the debate much.

Meanwhile, the people with a different definition of roleplay (ie. playing a role) are still here, always will be, and will always remind our literary-minded brethren that we don't do what they do and have no need of rules that lets them do it better, especially when it forces players to as well.

So, my thoughts are, people should introduce all such pages to their alimentary canal, via whatever ingress point seems most convenient. ;)

Or as Doc Sammy might say:
Top Secret Rules, James Bond 007 Drools! :cool:

 

[Doc Sammy]

There's always been individuals who for some reason prefer to "roleplay" within an OOC framework in which their character is a protagonist in a story guided by tropes, themes etc. instead of roleplaying a character in a living world where things are guided by...well...life.

People for the most part got along too, even when they talked and debated in the Usenet days.

It was only with the advent of Narrativism as proposed by Laws and Edwards that those who prefer to "OOC roleplay" decided that everyone plays that way whether they knew it or not, or believed it or not. The where all the objective definitions and judgements came from. The Intarwebz and the narcissistic culture of social media hasn't helped elevate the debate much.

Meanwhile, the people with a different definition of roleplay (ie. playing a role) are still here, always will be, and will always remind our literary-minded brethren that we don't do what they do and have no need of rules that lets them do it better, especially when it forces players to as well.

So, my thoughts are, people should introduce all such pages to their alimentary canal, via whatever ingress point seems most convenient. ;)

Or as Doc Sammy might say:
Top Secret Rules, James Bond 007 Drools! :cool:

This guy gets it. I find both approaches to role-playing (both the story-driven style and the immersive style) to be equally fun for different reasons and I really don't see the whole argument against story-driven RPG's that Pundit rambles on about over at his site.

My games are a mix of immersion and story, personally. Best of both worlds, if you will.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Well there's 3 ways to approach this:

1. This is canon, and AD&D1 was a lie.
2. This is one-off stuff in a module and does not reflect the AD&D1 line as a whole (many 1e modules presented different rules, and not all of them meshed with the core AD&D rules - for example in C1 and A4 there are disparate swimming/drowning rules), and therefore does not impinge upon AD&D, really.
3. This, from The Space Gamer: "Rick Swan reviewed the adventure in The Space Gamer No. 73. Swan felt that David Cook gave a good shot at "what is in essence a pretty cheesy assignment" by adding new rules such as a Fear Factor for monsters to inspire terror, Luck Points to allow player characters to perform heroic feats, and a healing rule to mend wounded characters faster. Swan felt Cook had approached the material with respect although "Conan isn't a particularly good choice for the D&D system" because his world is barren, without magic or interesting monsters. Swan concluded by saying that "Conan and D&D go together like peanut butter and tuna fish—it can be done, but you can bet there's going to be a funny taste."

 

[CRKrueger]

Conan's world has no magic or interesting monsters? WTF? Every single story has either magic or a unique monster or both.

 

[TristramEvans]

Image is dead for me, but overall this is my experience, remembrances, and conclusions based on research...

D&D was originally written for a very specific audience - the wargamer community - and thus took a number of wargaming conventions as implied. Immersion as we currently understand it was not a specific goal, but rather an emergent property of the game under these circumstances.

Starting with Holmes onward, but peaking with the Red Box and AD&D, D&D (and RPGs in general, which had only just acquired that name to distinguish them, arguably arbitrarily, from the wargaming community) entered the mass market, primarily college groups, and most of these lacked a background in wargames and the assumptions that came with that. Hence, everyone began playing the game differently. Narrative storygames all the way to hardcore immersionism all started here with college D&D groups, along with a host of other playstyles only loosely defined today because they don't fit into the narrow and intellectually dishonest GNS formula. There was no "correct" way to play RPGs, there was just the norms of any individual group. Even Gygax would run the game differently for his home group vs the tournament games he ran at conventions. His advice in "Role-playing Mastery" is more akin to a videogame strategy guide than anything to do with role-playing.

Some posit this as a weakness or "bad design", mostly of the school of thought that believes its a game designer's job to dictate how people play the game, but I suggest this is instead old school D&D's greatest strength. The game was everything to everyone, and developing a playstyle as a group was an interactive experience that contributed to making the game a reflection of the uniqueness of each group of friends playing it.

But this also meant that the publishers struggled for years in attempts to explain the game to new players. The Satanic Panic was largely fueled by the inability of outsiders to comprehend how the game actually worked. I've always found it hilarious to watch media interpretations that flailed around at this, particularly Mazes & Monsters, but even better was an episode of Greatest American Hero that interpreted D&D as some insane mix of cosplay, riddle games, and math problems, where characters "leveled up" by switching races.

So these multitude descriptions usually went for metaphors and analogies. Originally, older posters here may recall a lot of these analogies tended more towards improvisational theater and film, but soon it became standard to make the 'interactive story" analogy. But for new people to the hobby, these weren't seen as analogies, but instead how the games were "meant" to be played. This led to games in the 90s rebranding themselves as "storytelling games" (which shouldn't be taken as synonymous with 'storygames' as the term is currently used). I think the first to do this was Prince Valiant, and I suspect the reasoning was less orientated towards narrative playstyles rather than trying to reach an audience outside RPGs or avoiding the negative public image RPGs had acquired at that point.

Anyway, kind went on a tangent, but my overall point is that the idea of a standardized "old school playstyle" is a misnomer at best. The OSR may be represented by people who largely prefer a specific style of play, but its nothing inherent to D&D once it superceded the wargaming audience.