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Admittedly, I've been looking at 1st edition AD&D stuff recently and it's scary how small the damage and HP numbers are. Even the big scary stuff rarely exceeds double digit HP, and most damage rolls are a single die from d4-d8 with a relatively small plus... Of course, the scary stuff might have three or more attacks per round.

That's not so bad if the game supports it. My own homebrew game has most starting characters and most NPC's with less than 10 HP, but my system assumes an average of 3-5 HP of damage on good roll. It's a game where the number of combatants for a (good) fight is more realistic, rather than 4 heros versus 12 Goblins being a fight that's firmly in the heroes' favor. Once they get outnumbered in my game they would be in for trouble, but there is also plenty of options for in-combat healing that can easily return 3-4 HP at a time, too, or sacrificing a change to attack to parry all damage from an enemy attack.

Giant HP pools seem unnecessary to me. Even simple games like Dragon Age have starting characters/enemies with 20-30 HP, and weapons that only whittle away 5-10 Hp at a time.

It's just a weird experience coming from playing 4th edition D&D where high HP totals are common. I've heard that this was an admitted error in early-edition stuff; monsters had tons of HP and mediocre damage which could cause long not-fun fights, but it's also just the way the game evolved.

HP totals in 4th were very 'swingy' as well, as there was a lot of minor healing thrown around (including powers that at higher levels did an attack and maybe a little healing on a character) especially due to the use of the 'bloodied' half-hp status as a key to a lot of abilities.

I think there might be some sort of weird feature on display analogous to codex-creep in some ways: In Edition Y your characters regularly do 3-4 points of damage, but in Edition Y+1 we've boosted that to 6-8 because it's much cooler! (of course, it's a false comparison as HP totals are also increased, but it feels better.)

At the core, though I feel like there's an unspoken difference in what some base concepts mean in various D&D editions. In AD&D 1st and earlier, a Level 1 character is a pretty replaceable warm body. 2nd eds a few features, but is only marginally better. 3rd and then 4th scale this up: in "options" I'd say a 4th edition character at level 1 is much more like a 1st edition character at level 2-3, maybe higher.

A lot of this is really just 'modernizing' the game. I've been reading Playing at the World which discusses the origins of RPGs (mainly D&D) and a major point is how D&D was based off several wargames at various levels. While the early D&D and pre-D&D games were certainly 'story driven' it was in a very different sense from modern games, and player characters were definitely meant to be replaceable parts. (I love that one anecdote about Dave Arneson's pre-D&D Blackmoor games even used the D&D cliche of character being replaced by near-clones ("Ok, Throg the MIghty died, so he'll be replaced by his son, Throg the MIghty II") that would feel very out of place in a lot of modern RPGs.

Well D&D 4th has its own little issues.
It is to Balanced: If you tinker with it two much it breaks badly.
Bad Press: A lot of the old timers hated it for killing off “Sacred Cows” and changing to much.
[My example is our old DM (the one with the binder) did not like most of them even though they tacked all of his problems with the game, but not “His Way”
Nomenclature: The changed the name of so many Magical Items that some signature items were not familiar any more.
It is now a Roll-Playing Game, not a Role Playing Game: That statement at least for me is false. RPGs became Roll-Playing Games the moment a Skill System came into existence.

I have played in many RPG Games and Campaigns from 1st Edition D&D to Firefly. Some were good and some were bad. All of them though it was not the system, but the Game Master who made the biggest difference, sometimes the System, but mostly the GM.

I had come up with a saying that used to piss off some of my group, but they could never deny it.
“The System Is All Important!”
“The System Is Unimportant!”
What this means is you can adapt any system to any stetting, but some do the job better. Nothing beats D&D [any Edition] for High Fantasy. I have tried Palladium, Stormbringer, GURPS and even Warhammer Fantasy. None of them has felt right. I have also played d20 Modern, it worked until the characters got to about 12th or 13th, then the whole thing broke down when it was taking 2-3 30 round clips from a M-16 to take down a Guard.

I agree with Anpu42 and have subscribed to his newsletter.

 Balance wrote:
I agree with Anpu42 and have subscribed to his newsletter.

Great now I have to come up with a newsletter!

 Anpu42 wrote:

 Balance wrote:
I agree with Anpu42 and have subscribed to his newsletter.

Great now I have to come up with a newsletter!

It's OK. I have enough sitting in my 'to-read' pile anyway.

 Anpu42 wrote:

What this means is you can adapt any system to any stetting, but some do the job better. Nothing beats D&D [any Edition] for High Fantasy. I have tried Palladium, Stormbringer, GURPS and even Warhammer Fantasy....

To talk for Warhammer Fantansy, the setting is actually Low Fantasy, not High Fantasy; might be why it does not ahve the same "punch" as D&D

First time I have ever actually been able to play a game of RPG. I had always wanted to and we already had the chance. Sadly, nobody in our group was experienced at the time (and it has so far been my only time to rpg). DnD 4th edition was the name of the game. I have a group of friends that usually hang out so we all set up to try it out. Well, I was the only one that got to make my character, and the game was a disaster. There was never any progress. No level ups, he had some npc kill the monsters because he pit us against too much and our rolling was sub-par, he tossed us into a town where we could go to a shop. Then we were tossed to enter a dungeon to capture the princesses' baby dragon. We killed monsters, the combat taking forever, and planned strategies only to have boobie traps on a door that would blind you to make you step into a jelly that would gobble you up trap. Our plan became worthless. The other doors would not budge, the other door was magically locked (that's all we could get) and at that point our friend got stupid and bored and jumped through a portal well taht was actually supposed to kill him. Instead it sent him back in time so we all had to jump into it. We were getting bored and so he tossed a worthless hat and a talking ice magic sword at us. Anyways, I finally figured out the door trick (you just had to open it slowly) and the dragon was right there). He told us we would have to reason with it to make it follow us. I finally succeeded. Promptly he made the place shake and was going to make the dragon run away deeper. We compalined and he stopped. Gradually, we began to leave when everything fell apart into just nonsensical stupidity and laughing.

He was new to GMing so I can't blaim him but honestly it was miserable for all of us and it makes me not look forward to gming my first game (cause nobody else will do it)

I think the worst that a GM can do is railroading. I have only run two gaming sessions as a GM, and it's a very hard thing to fight down as an urge. Considering that I have not build up very much confidence yet in rolling with what the players might randomly do, I think that's where it stems from.

Also, it doesn't help that many of the standard D&D/clone adventure modules are written in a very railroading fashion, which I think stems from having much of the old stuff come written as pretty linear dungeon crawls. My advise to newbie GMs is to only write the beginnings and the goal of a session/adventure in a concrete fashion (most gamers groups need a solid framework on each end or they flake out) and then just have generic ideas that can be used in the middle/come up with stuff on the fly.

Too many GMs are control freaks and try to somehow smack down the players for going off-road. If you are having a session where the players have to stop goblins from attacking a town, then only worry about having a concrete idea for how they get to the town, and what happens when they finally find and attack the goblin's hideout. Ad-lib everything else.

My personal "Bad GM" story is not really a "bad" GM, but works just fine. I occasionally play a game where I think the GM is very uncomfortable with conflict, so our sessions have little to no combat, and if they do, it's ludicrously short or easy. I usually feel like three-quarters of the rulebook is being ignored, and lots of times we can kill the threat in one-two rounds of combat. I am a story guy, but sometimes you just need some good combat to get the blood pumping!!

I actualy can find "Railroading" can be a good tool and if the players are aware of it an ok with it. In fact sometimes it is nessasary.
I run a Modering game simlart to CSI or NCIS and somtine if I don't push them on occasion they will sit around not knowing what to do. Of course occasinal I have to tell the players "It it 2:30am (Game Time) nothing is going to happen until all of you go to sleep and see what inormation comes from the Lab Results or Creature is not going to come out again tonight."

Bit of a Noob question, but what is railroading?

Railroading is when a GM basically 'holds your hand' and walk you through the mission/campaign/scenario/scene without giving you any chance of doing what you want or forcing you to do X before you can have your 'player time';
Example, you're in a city, to bring some file to a guy. You past the gates and decides to go buy a sword and visit a stable for your horse before heading to meet the guy and give him his file. No, said the GM, you *must* deliver that thing before doing anything else.

Sometimes railroading a bit is necessary because otherwise the players will ignore the framework of the session. Even free-roaming video-game RPG's have a framework once you "take a mission" from an NPC. Also, a time-limit can be an interesting plot device, rather than hand-holding.

But I am trying to make it a goal to get better at letting players roam around town a bit, and just making up characters for them to meet if/when they do. Even if the ultimate goal cannot be changed (because that is the point of a session), the illusion of free will is usually enough to make anyone happy. Sometimes players are even canny enough to make the goal of the session play out more interesting.

But really, I hate GMs who don't like conflict and fighting in their games. That is usually what about 80% of the rulebook for a game hinges on.

Railroading generally requires excessive effort to restrict player actions to the desired 'track.' As with a lot of things, the line of what is railroading and what is just keeping them focused.

I understand now, thank you!

No, you need it explained two more times before you can move on.

I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

It's also perfectly fair to plan big, scary conflicts with some 'escape routes' if it gets too ugly. Don't overuse these techniques, but you can dos tuff like having the enemies try to take prisoners; have the enemies fight among themselves; have a 'frenemy' show up, do something cool to scare off the main enemies, then run off (great if you're in a setting where villains that make the heroes do all the heavy lifting are a thing); or similar.

For example, years (decades, really) I ran the Ravenloft D&D setting for a couple friends. They were fighting some nasties and were, as far as they knew, in the middle of nowhere, in an old ruin. Fight goes south, when in comes Lord Soth. Lord Soth is a Death Knight from the Dragonlance setting. In case the word 'Death' doesn't set the tone right (and remember, we're a long way before Warcraft) he's a cursed knight who is evil, but still holds on to the shreds of his honor. He's paid with his life for one romantic misadventure (long story, but he also contributed to an entire world getting screwed). A later romantic misadventure left him as a Lord of a domain of Ravenloft, effectively cursed again. To keep it short, he couldnt even recreate the centuries-old routine of his life as the domain kept changing things on him... One night a walk from his castle would be 100 paces as it had for over three hundred years "at home". The next, it'd be 99... Just to mess with him, personally. Ravenloft hates adventurers as well as the Dark Lords that are cursed to rule portions of it.

Anyway, so this Serious Bad News makes a dramatic entrance,scatters the whatever. The players know that fighting Lord Soth is not much of an option, but he's willing tot all, and gives them a mission, in fact... He wants the same vampire that's recently moved in to his turf eliminated, so he'll let these adventurer types go... If they offer to help him out. I believe the adventure also involved some good-aligned stuff that Lord Soth probably couldn't touch easily himself but, again, decades ago.

The fight could've been a TPK (Total Party Kill) but I had already noted that Lord Soth could make an appearance if needed.

You don't learn how to balance things without doing so.

Modern games often have actual guidelines for building encounters, too.

 Balance wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

It's also perfectly fair to plan big, scary conflicts with some 'escape routes' if it gets too ugly. Don't overuse these techniques, but you can dos tuff like having the enemies try to take prisoners; have the enemies fight among themselves; have a 'frenemy' show up, do something cool to scare off the main enemies, then run off (great if you're in a setting where villains that make the heroes do all the heavy lifting are a thing); or similar.

For example, years (decades, really) I ran the Ravenloft D&D setting for a couple friends. They were fighting some nasties and were, as far as they knew, in the middle of nowhere, in an old ruin. Fight goes south, when in comes Lord Soth. Lord Soth is a Death Knight from the Dragonlance setting. In case the word 'Death' doesn't set the tone right (and remember, we're a long way before Warcraft) he's a cursed knight who is evil, but still holds on to the shreds of his honor. He's paid with his life for one romantic misadventure (long story, but he also contributed to an entire world getting screwed). A later romantic misadventure left him as a Lord of a domain of Ravenloft, effectively cursed again. To keep it short, he couldnt even recreate the centuries-old routine of his life as the domain kept changing things on him... One night a walk from his castle would be 100 paces as it had for over three hundred years "at home". The next, it'd be 99... Just to mess with him, personally. Ravenloft hates adventurers as well as the Dark Lords that are cursed to rule portions of it.

Anyway, so this Serious Bad News makes a dramatic entrance,scatters the whatever. The players know that fighting Lord Soth is not much of an option, but he's willing tot all, and gives them a mission, in fact... He wants the same vampire that's recently moved in to his turf eliminated, so he'll let these adventurer types go... If they offer to help him out. I believe the adventure also involved some good-aligned stuff that Lord Soth probably couldn't touch easily himself but, again, decades ago.

The fight could've been a TPK (Total Party Kill) but I had already noted that Lord Soth could make an appearance if needed.

You don't learn how to balance things without doing so.

Modern games often have actual guidelines for building encounters, too.

Balancing all that is work.
The game I like running the moast is a Modern/Horror Game, that with my old group I could not have "Bad things" happen or one of my players whould just hate me for the next 6 month. He is still mad about me killing off a throw away NPC that was in 2-3 sceens in front of the PCs.

 BrookM wrote:
If a GM gives his mooks gear to specifically counter your new kit, he needs to stop right then and there.

Agreed. +1 exalt.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

This is some great advice. The rules come second to people having fun and being engaged in the campaign. But without making the rules completely lose their structure. It's a fine balance but if everyone is having fun then you are doing great.

As for worst GM I encountered.. It would likely have to be the Dark heresy game I joined that never even got going one time. Initially contacting the guy seemed to be fine. But he insisted on having a long drawn out voice chat ( online campaign ) that was at a really inconvenient time for me, rolling the character together using "custom rules" he basically ruled on a whim every time I wanted to try and customize my starting character. Ignoring pretty much all of my input for my vision of the character. It resulted in a character nothing like the one I wanted to roll because his final say on what the char was like was final. Resulting in me not feeling any real significant connection to the character or his back story that the gm pretty much made up for me over this 2 hour voice chat online ( often with random traits he made up out of thin air ). After it finished I backed out and said I couldn't make it. I am fine with the GM having final say. But I would like to be able to actually make a character I want to play that isn't warped by the GM making the character for me. Otherwise it is hard to bother about the character in my opinion.

Ah yeah, my brother did that for Shadowrun, everybody can be anything they want, except I had to be the Face of the group. While I grew into it over time, my first few sessions were less of a joy and more of a chore.

I make characters for my games sometimes, but only the basic framework, and only if I know the players well. I basically fill in the dots and let them determine their persona and stuff; and after the first session always give them the opportunity to move stats/powers/spells whatever around if they want.

I started doing this after I ran a game which I clearly explained would take place in Flint, Michigan in 1987, and my only requirement was that characters be between 16 and 19 and have a reason for being in Flint, Michigan during the summer.

It took an entire session to make characters because I had to work around or explain why the crazy ideas my players had wouldn't work. Yes, you can be a Samoan, but why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be ex-military, because you are 19 at the oldest. Yes, you can be Navajo, but once again, why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be a private eye. No, you can't have five dots in Occult, you are a regular teenager. You can be a goth or Lovecraft fan and have two dots in Occult, maybe three. Why do you need five dots in Occult, seriously? Fine, go ahead and leave. NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DR. PEPPER FOR THE ROAD!

 Bromsy wrote:
I make characters for my games sometimes, but only the basic framework, and only if I know the players well. I basically fill in the dots and let them determine their persona and stuff; and after the first session always give them the opportunity to move stats/powers/spells whatever around if they want.

I started doing this after I ran a game which I clearly explained would take place in Flint, Michigan in 1987, and my only requirement was that characters be between 16 and 19 and have a reason for being in Flint, Michigan during the summer.

It took an entire session to make characters because I had to work around or explain why the crazy ideas my players had wouldn't work. Yes, you can be a Samoan, but why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be ex-military, because you are 19 at the oldest. Yes, you can be Navajo, but once again, why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be a private eye. No, you can't have five dots in Occult, you are a regular teenager. You can be a goth or Lovecraft fan and have two dots in Occult, maybe three. Why do you need five dots in Occult, seriously? Fine, go ahead and leave. NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DR. PEPPER FOR THE ROAD!

Why Flint, Michigan? Isn't Flint, Michigan the kind of thing people play role playing games to escape?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
I make characters for my games sometimes, but only the basic framework, and only if I know the players well. I basically fill in the dots and let them determine their persona and stuff; and after the first session always give them the opportunity to move stats/powers/spells whatever around if they want.

I started doing this after I ran a game which I clearly explained would take place in Flint, Michigan in 1987, and my only requirement was that characters be between 16 and 19 and have a reason for being in Flint, Michigan during the summer.

It took an entire session to make characters because I had to work around or explain why the crazy ideas my players had wouldn't work. Yes, you can be a Samoan, but why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be ex-military, because you are 19 at the oldest. Yes, you can be Navajo, but once again, why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be a private eye. No, you can't have five dots in Occult, you are a regular teenager. You can be a goth or Lovecraft fan and have two dots in Occult, maybe three. Why do you need five dots in Occult, seriously? Fine, go ahead and leave. NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DR. PEPPER FOR THE ROAD!

Why Flint, Michigan? Isn't Flint, Michigan the kind of thing people play role playing games to escape?

It was a horror game, to be fair.

Well played, then.

All the wanted that Summer was to escape. Escape from Flint, Michigan! DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUUUUN!

We had a game master once set his Vampier Game in Denton, yes the Denton of Rocky Horror Fame!
He forced the group to sing the Theam Song "Denton" everytime Deton was said or they lost EXP.
I am so glad I did not play in that game.

I think David Khan had to be one of the worst GMs ever. Daniel Snyder is pretty damn terrible. So was Kevin McHale.

But Matt Millen or Isaiah Thomas have to get the #1 spot, right?

 cincydooley wrote:
I think David Khan had to be one of the worst GMs ever. Daniel Snyder is pretty damn terrible. So was Kevin McHale.

But Matt Millen or Isaiah Thomas have to get the #1 spot, right?

What? Who?