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Now in thinking about it, Gygax originally encouraged competition and min max. He expected you to die and rage quit. Tomb of Annihilation. No body was making it through that 100% without being either stupidly over powered or completely willing to sacrifice your teammates so that you and you alone can walk out of the dungeon with whatever you can carry (Gold has weight back then). It's kinda amazing how that has now changed, the way I play the game is not at all the way it was intended, and I realize that now.

power game away I guess, and thank you for helping me realize my error!

Yeah, that is precisely why I am not into D&D much anymore. However, a few of my core group of players do not want to try other things at all.

Murderhobo 4 Life!

I get that, but I try to pick and choose my battles. I try and play more for the RP Skill crowd, because I hate that 75% (Those Pesky Skills and non combat spells) of the game gets ignored for the 25% (Combat and attack spells) that constitutes hitting things until they fall over.

For instance, Wizards/Sorcs/Magic Users past level 5. Never seen a one pick anything but Fireball/lightningbolt, counterspell, or Haste. I'd love to see Wizards Expand their spell books. I'd love to see more versatility than "How hard can I hit this thing with elemental X?" That's why spells like "sleep" get so much love for me.

The game is literally just how fast can you kill. What is the point of even having non-combat spell slots?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I get that, but I try to pick and choose my battles. I try and play more for the RP Skill crowd, because I hate that 75% (Those Pesky Skills and non combat spells) of the game gets ignored for the 25% (Combat and attack spells) that constitutes hitting things until they fall over.

For instance, Wizards/Sorcs/Magic Users past level 5. Never seen a one pick anything but Fireball/lightningbolt, counterspell, or Haste. I'd love to see Wizards Expand their spell books. I'd love to see more versatility than "How hard can I hit this thing with elemental X?" That's why spells like "sleep" get so much love for me.

The game is literally just how fast can you kill. What is the point of even having non-combat spell slots?

So the solution is to drastically limit the number of spells that can cause harm and how effective they are at doing that so that utility becomes more than novelty. If just pummeling the thing to death is too slow, you need to find ways to buy yourself time. Slow them down. Debuff and buff. Isolate factors in the combat to be dealt with later. etc etc...

DnD will never cut it's spell list down though. It's only going to grow. For every problem a spell to solve it at the cost of a slot until your next rest.

In original D&D you don't even get a damage causing spell until you are level 5. Seriously.

Magic Missile was a later addition.

But that doesn't mean Magic Users are useless- there are entire categories of problem that only they can solve, and spells like detect thoughts and detect magic have much longer durations, making them really useful for getting information about the environment and helping to set up favourable conditions for your fights and preventing ambushes (which are devastating in that edition). The real damage dealer is always your Fighter, even when Wizards finally get damaging spells they don't have enough high level slots to compete with Fighters until much later.

I find it's a totally different dynamic when it plays out like this.

Yeah, I tend to find "Optimal play" in D&D super boring and same-y.

You need to check for traps? Cleric Guides, someone with proficiency in investigation helps, and highest skill Investigate checks for traps..... every. single. time. If that fails, best save and armor leads with a polearm poking everything, a summoned minion in the lead, or a prisoner. Snore.

Same with combat. People use the same approach over, and over, and over again. Get into the combat box/formation and do your thing until the enemies have been killed. Snore.

These snorefests are all rational reactions to the mechanics for trying to "win" D&D.

Ah yes, when the 0-4 hp wizard could literally be killed be a single attack of the weakest monster in the game, a goblin with a sling. I'm so glad that people today get to complain when their level five wizard only has 26 hp. I want so badly for DnD Beyond to allow me to jokingly set all my party players to ADnD rule hp. And be like, OK MR Big BURLY FIGHTER, you now have 38 HP. And AC? What is that? Your THAC0 is -7. Here is your abacus to figure that out)

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Ah yes, when the 0-4 hp wizard could literally be killed be a single attack of the weakest monster in the game, a goblin with a sling. I'm so glad that people today get to complain when their level five wizard only has 26 hp. I want so badly for DnD Beyond to allow me to jokingly set all my party players to ADnD rule hp. And be like, OK MR Big BURLY FIGHTER, you now have 38 HP. And AC? What is that? Your THAC0 is -7. Here is your abacus to figure that out)

Older D&D was more about getting loot and getting out. It was, if I know my history, much less "Heroes and their adventures!" and more "Dungeon-crawling looters trying to get rich and powerful."

Which, for how the older editions were designed? Made sense. Characters were relatively quick to create and henchmen were expected, both of which made replacing PCs easier. Death was easier, but getting back into the game was quicker.
Gold equaled XP, not fighting or milestones; so you'd often be encouraged to NOT fight. Just get in, get your loot, and get out.

Modern D&D, starting with 3rd Edition, changed it considerably. Now, character creation was a lot longer, and characters were meant to last longer. You'd be much more likely to see the same four characters through a whole campaign, instead of trading out PCs as they do or become less useful. Everyone was supposed to be balanced against one another, roughly, so that each PC was able to be fun. (Success was on that metric was not good, but the attempt was made.)

Which is better? That's entirely subjective. There's plenty of old-school style fantasy heartbreakers, with Torchbearer as one I can recall off-hand, but modern D&D is not the same, and has different needs.
Also THAC0 was an awful idea. It's basically the same as +X to hit AC Y, but in reverse and harder to parse because of that. There's a lot of cool elements from OD&D-but THAC0 is not one of them.

THAC0 was designed with the same intent as the people who designed Subnets and Subnet Masks.

"Hey, lets invent this totally cool fun thing that will be very helpful to us, but will forever prohibit those nasty mean jocks from ever stealing our secrets!" And to this day, I still do not understand the reasons why subnetting is the way that it is, I just hate on my network engineers. Let's just chalk it up to nerds made a obtusely complicated system in an effort to promote efficiency.

tl;dr: "it made sense at the time"

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
THAC0 was designed with the same intent as the people who designed Subnets and Subnet Masks.

"Hey, lets invent this totally cool fun thing that will be very helpful to us, but will forever prohibit those nasty mean jocks from ever stealing our secrets!" And to this day, I still do not understand the reasons why subnetting is the way that it is, I just hate on my network engineers. Let's just chalk it up to nerds made a obtusely complicated system in an effort to promote efficiency.

tl;dr: "it made sense at the time"

You really need to stop coming up with wild theories about things you know nothing about.

Gary & Dave 'borrowed' AC from some naval combat games they liked, where a ship with 'armor class 1' was better at defending than 'armor class 5'.

When they put a leveling system into their mass combat game, they needed progression. It was originally just big cross reference charts (attackers class and level vs target's AC, with the value needed as the result).
But since it was a progression, it could also be put into simple formulas. THAC0 became a shorthand for the charts by the RPGA and 'tournament' modules, and got incorporated officially into 2nd edition rather than keep printing pages of charts (which were more of a pain for page layout and editing at the time, since they largely weren't working on computers).

https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/THAC0

I was recently pointed towards this video




(Warning its long)

Which covers a lot of the psychological impacts of mechanics on players through the lens of mmorpgs (and in particular wow). It's not DIRECTLY about that. But it so inherent to what the video is about that it applies directly to our discussion. And if this subject isn't too game theory dense for you it could be easy to see how the same things apply to TTRPGs (and any game type for that matter).

Voss wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
THAC0 was designed with the same intent as the people who designed Subnets and Subnet Masks.

"Hey, lets invent this totally cool fun thing that will be very helpful to us, but will forever prohibit those nasty mean jocks from ever stealing our secrets!" And to this day, I still do not understand the reasons why subnetting is the way that it is, I just hate on my network engineers. Let's just chalk it up to nerds made a obtusely complicated system in an effort to promote efficiency.

tl;dr: "it made sense at the time"

You really need to stop coming up with wild theories about things you know nothing about.

Gary & Dave 'borrowed' AC from some naval combat games they liked, where a ship with 'armor class 1' was better at defending than 'armor class 5'.

When they put a leveling system into their mass combat game, they needed progression. It was originally just big cross reference charts (attackers class and level vs target's AC, with the value needed as the result).
But since it was a progression, it could also be put into simple formulas. THAC0 became a shorthand for the charts by the RPGA and 'tournament' modules, and got incorporated officially into 2nd edition rather than keep printing pages of charts (which were more of a pain for page layout and editing at the time, since they largely weren't working on computers).

https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/THAC0

Don't care, didn't read. Needs a 16 to hit is a far simpler method than THAC0. No one thinks THAC0 was better. And no I literally can't tell if you're comment is in reference to my DnD analogy or my Networking/Subnets sarcasm? You should really try harder to pick fights on the internet. I can think of a LOT of things to defend about Early DnD, but THAC0? That's new!

That's... That's Voss explaining the history of THAC0.
That doesn't read as an endorsement of it. Just "Here's why it happened."

I wonder if it's feasible, if wanting still a 'dungeon crawling' type game but does have the non combat skills to be more relevant, to silo each pool in levelling so you cannot sacrifice one side for the other and vice versa.

Or even treat the non combat part as a separate, parallel progression which doesn't step on or get it's toes stepped on by the combat progression.

 Daba wrote:
I wonder if it's feasible, if wanting still a 'dungeon crawling' type game but does have the non combat skills to be more relevant, to silo each pool in levelling so you cannot sacrifice one side for the other and vice versa.

Or even treat the non combat part as a separate, parallel progression which doesn't step on or get it's toes stepped on by the combat progression.

I would say the issue is less siloed progression and more... depth of options and associated systems.

So you have a "tactical combat system". If it's dnd roughly a1/3rd -2/3rds of the entire page count are dedicated to things that related to combat in one way or another. So what does social skills look like? What are their uses? What about "jobs" like crafting, maintenance, survival (hunting, fishing, tracking, foraging etc...)

Even if you create 2 or 3 silos of progression, what do those other silos actually do?

Some games really emphasize a social aspect including social conflict and mechanics. Traditional dungeon crawlers are not that.

I really feel that dungeon crawling is very much it's own genre, and any of the social stuff that comes with it is a pleasant bonus to the main event which is the exploration, discovery and combat.

Social focused RPGs either don't need much at all, if all you want is some improv theatre, or a pretty well thought out system if you want to try and simulate things.

Never really got into dungeon crawling - lot of our games from th beginning had alot of social interactions and whilst plenty of combat could and often did take place it was not go to a dungeona nd kill your way through it.

Played alot of D100 games where alot of non combat skills mattered.

I was a late convert to the joys of dungeon crawling, and for me more than the fights you need lots of interesting underground geography to traverse with lots of meaningful choices, and lots and lots of interesting things to interact with in the environment. Combat is a nice spice, but not the main course.

But it's not for everyone - I'd say most people playing RPGs are playing it for immersion in a fictional world and the ability to act out their character's personas, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that!

As a player of 30+ years, I was this many years old when I got into my first campaign that involved literally dealing with having to manage a town we'd saved. Taxes, economy, guards, etc. It was a second job. We negotiated a treaty that took two real world hours. I hated it, but other players loved it because it allowed them to flex their character back grounds.

Everyone has their own RP flavor, that's perfectly wonderful. I prefer smaller scope RP, giving a speech to a group of guards about to hold a position against a small force of orks, enchanting a local magistrates wife with tales of far off daring doo, to make her give favorable terms to our parties bid to purchase local arms and armor for the militia. That sort of thing. Planinng out tax schema with a group of gnome bankers for the 800 person town we saved from an ice dragon, not my cup of tea....

 Overread wrote:
Basically they are just playing the game, according to the rules, from a numerical point of view - really well. Asking them to not do that is tricky because from their point of view you're saying "I want you to play this game, but play it badly; but don't actually play badly just don't play as goodly." And that gets really hard to actually put into practice.

That's why I put limits on what books are in use. If I see something abusive in a book, odds are there are other abusive things in that book I missed. So by saying "A, B, and C books only", I avoid the abusive elements I don't want. The powergamer can go nuts within the options of books A, B, and C and be just fine in the game. But if he starts whining about me not allowing X option out of Y book that I find abusive for Z reasons and won't take a 'no' gracefully, they get uninvited from the game. "I'm sorry, but we're here to ALL have fun, and it looks like you're not going to find my game to be fun. Catch you later."

 Da Boss wrote:
I was a late convert to the joys of dungeon crawling, and for me more than the fights you need lots of interesting underground geography to traverse with lots of meaningful choices, and lots and lots of interesting things to interact with in the environment. Combat is a nice spice, but not the main course.

This RPG seems to be exactly about that - a crazy, horrific, exciting underground environment that swallows you whole As is always the case with Quinns, one immediately imagines playing or running this game to their friends and having tons of creative fun

Restrictions on character creation can be useful to ensure consistency and balance in the game world, especially if it has special rules or themes. I've personally played games with various restrictions on character creation, and often it helps to focus on the story and character interactions rather than mechanics or characters from exotic sources.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I have yet to see a player use an Artificer and not try to somehow build guns into a world. So yeah, without beating this to death, I'll just say I think MarkNorfolk is 100% correct. You agreed to play the game you agreed to play. You didn't agree to play CyberPunks and Dungeons, or argue with me regarding how much the DMG says the item should cost. If you don't like it, or don't want to play it, there is the door.

I have. Character was a githyanki artificer who worked on their astral plane ships and Silver Swords before running away to the Prime Material.
Not a gunsmith. Ran around with a golem as muscle to protect him cause he was kinda scrawny while tinkering and making all kinds of useful gadgets for the party and himself.

Bran Dawri wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I have yet to see a player use an Artificer and not try to somehow build guns into a world. So yeah, without beating this to death, I'll just say I think MarkNorfolk is 100% correct. You agreed to play the game you agreed to play. You didn't agree to play CyberPunks and Dungeons, or argue with me regarding how much the DMG says the item should cost. If you don't like it, or don't want to play it, there is the door.

I have. Character was a githyanki artificer who worked on their astral plane ships and Silver Swords before running away to the Prime Material.
Not a gunsmith. Ran around with a golem as muscle to protect him cause he was kinda scrawny while tinkering and making all kinds of useful gadgets for the party and himself.

I'm seriously glad that you had that interaction. It sounds like it was a really cool concept and a cool player. I hope you both enjoyed the time.

Yeah it was good fun. Not arguing that the artificer isn't OP, or can't be a bad fit depending on how they're played and the setting, but a little creativity can go a long way.

Plus I've always loved the planes and Planescape, so playing with someone who dipped into that was good fun twice over.