There's an argument to be made about who decided that Certain Folks get to be the sole arbiter of what 'the soul of D&D' is and whether someone is attacking the Very Lifeblood of the Game Itself when they try and fix things about the game they don't care for. 'Course, the original thrust of the thread had nothing to do with Tasha's Cauldron Ruining D&D Forever(C), that's simply what any thread with enough pages turns into once Certain People get their fangs into it. The original thrust of the thread can be boiled down to "powergamers suck and I wish they'd stop playing D&D".
Which, frankly, is a mighty curious stance for anyone who states they love a challenging, grueling game of D&D. Those sorts of campaigns are the ones 'powergamers' tend to crave - people who're maximizing their character's abilities are doing so because they want to be tested. Those folks are looking to demonstrate their mastery of the system, show that they're excellent players of the mechanical game aspect of D&D, and that they're equal to any (fair) challenge the DM can throw at them. Hardcore D&D is where 'powergamers' thrive. So...why do so many DMs who love Brutal Hardcore You-WILL-Die-If-You-****-Up Adversarial DM-style Old School D&D claim to hate the exact players who're most likely to be absolutely on board with that mentality?
There's an argument to be made about who decided that Certain Folks get to be the sole arbiter of what 'the soul of D&D' is and whether someone is attacking the Very Lifeblood of the Game Itself when they try and fix things about the game they don't care for. 'Course, the original thrust of the thread had nothing to do with Tasha's Cauldron Ruining D&D Forever(C), that's simply what any thread with enough pages turns into once Certain People get their fangs into it. The original thrust of the thread can be boiled down to "powergamers suck and I wish they'd stop playing D&D".
Which, frankly, is a mighty curious stance for anyone who states they love a challenging, grueling game of D&D. Those sorts of campaigns are the ones 'powergamers' tend to crave - people who're maximizing their character's abilities are doing so because they want to be tested. Those folks are looking to demonstrate their mastery of the system, show that they're excellent players of the mechanical game aspect of D&D, and that they're equal to any (fair) challenge the DM can throw at them. Hardcore D&D is where 'powergamers' thrive. So...why do so many DMs who love Brutal Hardcore You-WILL-Die-If-You-****-Up Adversarial DM-style Old School D&D claim to hate the exact players who're most likely to be absolutely on board with that mentality?
Good question and I have an answer for you.
Because the definition that Old School D&D is an adversarial "hardcore" brutal "you will die if you F up" style of game is a disparaging stereotype of old school gaming given to it by contemporary gamers who want to insult, discourage and claim dominance over the old school gaming scene and style.
BL, many players in this exact thread have gone on - at length - about how 'Old School D&D' is about having a dungeon, filling it with increasingly vicious threats, and seeing how many PCs the players go through before reaching the bottom. That the Sacred Prophet's words are that no player shall know the rules of the game, no player shall escape a dungeon un-killed, and no plot shall intrude on one's dungeon crawl.
What is 'Old School D&D' supposed to mean, then? You seem to use the term differently than everyone else. Why?
They yes your focus is out.... But do they notice you are casting a spell without the V/S components? Not idea and was DM fiat.
Now we know the intent was that the focus alone makes it very clear you are casting a spell. This means that subtle spell will not work for any spell with M components.
Seeing that material components were not even mentioned in Subtle Spell, I fail to see how this is a change.
As a clarification it certainly runs counter to how ruled it (and will continue to, regardless).
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BL, many players in this exact thread have gone on - at length - about how 'Old School D&D' is about having a dungeon, filling it with increasingly vicious threats, and seeing how many PCs the players go through before reaching the bottom. That the Sacred Prophet's words are that no player shall know the rules of the game, no player shall escape a dungeon un-killed, and no plot shall intrude on one's dungeon crawl.
What is 'Old School D&D' supposed to mean, then? You seem to use the term differently than everyone else. Why?
Please provide the specific post number that even alludes to that.
What is the difference between 'Player-Centric' and 'Character-Centric'? Players play the game through the means of their characters - you can't play D&D without a character, unless you're the DM. And in that case, your character is The World (DIO DA, so on and so forth). How can a game be player-centric whilst ignoring characters?
BL, many players in this exact thread have gone on - at length - about how 'Old School D&D' is about having a dungeon, filling it with increasingly vicious threats, and seeing how many PCs the players go through before reaching the bottom. That the Sacred Prophet's words are that no player shall know the rules of the game, no player shall escape a dungeon un-killed, and no plot shall intrude on one's dungeon crawl.
What is 'Old School D&D' supposed to mean, then? You seem to use the term differently than everyone else. Why?
Though obviously there are many subtle things, rules preference, aesthetics, focus on different types of details and placing importantance on different aspects of the game, if I were to give a brief description the primary difference is that Old School games are Player Centric games while contemporary systems are character centric games.
What is the difference between 'Player-Centric' and 'Character-Centric'? Players play the game through the means of their characters - you can't play D&D without a character, unless you're the DM. And in that case, your character is The World (DIO DA, so on and so forth). How can a game be player-centric whilst ignoring characters?
The difference between a player-centric game and a character-centric game has to do with who the challenges of the game are aimed at and how they are expected to be solved.
For example. Let's say you go into a room and hidden in this room, at the bottom of a barrel is a hidden false bottom, which when removed reveals a hidden ring wrapped in rags, this rag however is laced with a toxin that gives off a subtle odor and when it touches your skin could be lethal.
Now this is a pretty classic scenario in old school D&D modules. The intent here is for the DM to describe the room / situation and for the players to potentially find this ring and avoid the trap. However, there is no mechanic for "searching a room" and its not going to be a "find traps" check in old school D&D. This is not a character centric puzzle where a DC 25 when searching the barrel will reveal the hidden false bottom and a DC 20 find traps checks will reveal the rag is laced with a poison. The DM will describe the room and circumstances and its up to the players to guide their character to a point where they specifically lead their characters to discovering the false bottom, cautiously deal with the toxic rag and recover the ring aka, they have to specifically tell the DM how they search, where they look, how they avoid the trap. The challenge is to the players to find the object, and cautiously avoid their traps with their wits, not their character, its not a mechanical challenge to their characters, its a narrative challenge to the players.
This style of running the game is a very old school approach and the old school systems are very specifically designed, mostly my omitting mechanics to support these sort of narrative challenges to the player.
I think the thing to understand is that old school gaming is less about system and more about lack of system, its about evicting the system from the experience and focusing the game on the players, on their ability to work together, think together, its not about them having mastery over the game mechanics, character options and knowing how to execute them. The challenge involves a dialogue with the DM, asking questions, considering the answers, trying to solve the puzzle themselves.
Fun Fact: I put this exact trap in a dungeon in my last game, the players found the ring, avoided the trap and dice were never rolled. The Ring was a Ring of Magic Missile with 25 charges on it.
Legitimate question then (from someone who has only been playing/DMing in 5e, and only for about 4 years). What is the purpose of ability scores in such a game? If D&D originally required no/little dice rolling outside of combat (or in combat?) and most everything was player/DM narration, then why have stats at all?
I've played some "rules-lite" TTRPGs that are very much about narrative and roleplay with very little dice rolling (and much simplified dice rolling when used), and enjoyed them, so I'm not knocking the concept.
What is the purpose of ability scores in such a game? If D&D originally required no/little dice rolling outside of combat (or in combat?) and most everything was player/DM narration, then why have stats at all?
The ability scores were for combat or for character-based challenges. Most D&D modules of the old school were a pretty even mix of challenges for the player, and challenges for the character.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
What is the difference between 'Player-Centric' and 'Character-Centric'? Players play the game through the means of their characters - you can't play D&D without a character, unless you're the DM. And in that case, your character is The World (DIO DA, so on and so forth). How can a game be player-centric whilst ignoring characters?
The difference between a player-centric game and a character-centric game has to do with who the challenges of the game are aimed at and how they are expected to be solved.
For example. Let's say you go into a room and hidden in this room, at the bottom of a barrel is a hidden false bottom, which when removed reveals a hidden ring wrapped in rags, this rag however is laced with a toxin that gives off a subtle odor and when it touches your skin could be lethal.
Now this is a pretty classic scenario in old school D&D modules. The intent here is for the DM to describe the room / situation and for the players to potentially find this ring and avoid the trap. However, there is no mechanic for "searching a room" and its not going to be a "find traps" check in old school D&D. This is not a character centric puzzle where a DC 25 when searching the barrel will reveal the hidden false bottom and a DC 20 find traps checks will reveal the rag is laced with a poison. The DM will describe the room and circumstances and its up to the players to guide their character to a point where they specifically lead their characters to discovering the false bottom, cautiously deal with the toxic rag and recover the ring aka, they have to specifically tell the DM how they search, where they look, how they avoid the trap. The challenge is to the players to find the object, and cautiously avoid their traps with their wits, not their character, its not a mechanical challenge to their characters, its a narrative challenge to the players.
This style of running the game is a very old school approach and the old school systems are very specifically designed, mostly my omitting mechanics to support these sort of narrative challenges to the player.
I think the thing to understand is that old school gaming is less about system and more about lack of system, its about evicting the system from the experience and focusing the game on the players, on their ability to work together, think together, its not about them having mastery over the game mechanics, character options and knowing how to execute them. The challenge involves a dialogue with the DM, asking questions, considering the answers, trying to solve the puzzle themselves.
Fun Fact: I put this exact trap in a dungeon in my last game, the players found the ring, avoided the trap and dice were never rolled. The Ring was a Ring of Magic Missile with 25 charges on it.
This is a good example and helps me better understand the viewpoint so thank you for sharing that!
I think that where this disconnects for me is that sometimes the old modules (heck even the puzzles that came in Tashas) sometimes take a fairly large leap in logic to solve. This example is fairly straight forward but I find that even now it would be helpful to have someone roll an investigation check (DC 20)...if they roll well enough they notice the barrel is lighter than the others. This doesn't give the whole puzzle away but it does give those characters who have chosen to put a high investment into investigation or use a resource (Enhance Ability spell) to increase their odds an edge to figure it out.
I like that you can run that with your players and find it fun...but to me having some mechanics to help those who do not want to sit through 3 hours of describing how they investigate every inch of the room in detail is more fun for my group.
This is why social encounters could also use some help as people who have invested resources/character features to increase their ability having some mechanical backing (But not SOLVING the issue completely) is fun for them as that makes the choices they made matter.
Wouldn't this also make a barbarian just as good at spotting traps as a rogue with expertise in investigation?
If the barbarian player is better at describing how to search they will be better at just finding the answer without having invested anything into it? Or am I missing something?
And there was little to no taboo against PCs using skills and abilities on each other back then. The Thief stole from party members sometimes for example. It’s just what happened.
I legit had to stop myself from snapping at that. That answer got me exceptionally angry; had to walk back and calm down for a few moments.
That said...
What you're ascribing to 'New School'/modern/pointless-whippersnapper players is not 'character-centric' play, it's Dice Chucking. E.G. "I chuck dice at my tray until the DM decides I got a high enough number." That has never been the proper way to play the game or resolve any situation, and in my forays as DM I've made damn sure players knew that at no point were they allowed to ask if they could roll a check of any kind.
To take your "Gotcha, you're dead!" trap as an example? No, a player does not get to just throw Investigation checks until they get what they want. A player at my table would specifically have to tell me they're checking out the barrel and describe to at least some extent how they're doing so - visual inspection from afar, hands-on inspection, something else. That determines what they roll and what the DC is. They'd find the rag ring if they did well enough, and passive perception would be checked to see if they pick up the scent of toxins before doing anything else. After that, their method of investigating would determine what, if anything, they rolled - or whether they were making a Constitution save to avoid a debilitating poison.
I tell my players to tell me what the characters they're portraying do. Do not ask me to make a check, tell me what you're doing and I will decide if a check is needed and if so, which one. The character's capabilities are important, but the player has to use them properly. This is why players need to know the rules of the game, despite what the Sacred Prophet said about killing anyone who reads a DMG. Players need to know how the physics of their game world works, which is represented by the mechanical systems of the game. Not knowing those rules means players cannot create characters with the sorts of capabilities they want to bring to the field. "If I make this choice, it will let me excel at these sorts of tasks in the game world, and that's the sort of character I want to play" is exactly the thing a player needs to know.
What you describe sounds more like ignoring the character completely; if Muscules the GARbarian has an intelligence score of 4 but Stuart, Muscules' player, is a research chemist by day job? Then Muscules gets a free pass on figuring out the Poison Rag issue because Stuart-the-research-chemist knows all the right questions to ask. Conversely, Alicia the Starbucks barista has never spent a day outside Example City in her entire life and couldn't survivalist her way out of a city park; that means she can't play any sort of woods-wise druid, ranger, or other such character because even though she can imagine what those skills might be like, she does not have them herself and thus can't use them in a D&D game.
People these days call that (the wrong kind of) metagaming, and it's decried for any number of generally more valid than not reasons.
I'm disappointed more than anything else, now. I'd honestly hoped for better. Ugh.
This is a good example and helps me better understand the viewpoint so thank you for sharing that!
I think that where this disconnects for me is that sometimes the old modules (heck even the puzzles that came in Tashas) sometimes take a fairly large leap in logic to solve. This example is fairly straight forward but I find that even now it would be helpful to have someone roll an investigation check (DC 20)...if they roll well enough they notice the barrel is lighter than the others. This doesn't give the whole puzzle away but it does give those characters who have chosen to put a high investment into investigation or use a resource (Enhance Ability spell) to increase their odds an edge to figure it out.
I like that you can run that with your players and find it fun...but to me having some mechanics to help those who do not want to sit through 3 hours of describing how they investigate every inch of the room in detail is more fun for my group.
This is why social encounters could also use some help as people who have invested resources/character features to increase their ability having some mechanical backing (But not SOLVING the issue completely) is fun for them as that makes the choices they made matter.
Yeah but its just preference, this is what old school D&D is like, its a bit detailed oriented, more a fantasy survival adventure, less focus on mechanics. I mean. Some people like it, some people don't, its really no big deal. But sometimes the way old school gaming and old school gamers are described to be like and how the old school style of play is disparaged and all of the assumptions about it being some sort of game for psychopaths who like to beat each other with sticks.. its just silly and completely false. Its a different style of play and I agree with whoever said that this style of play is possible in 5e, because it very much is and 5e is very adjustable to other old school aspects as well as shown with systems like Five Torches. Old school systems of course do it much better in my opinion but its because they are specifically designed for that style of play.
The thing I find a bit odd though is that although you CAN do this with 5e....there are literally spells, checks, and features that players add to characters to assist with checks just like this that you invalidate but avoiding them all together. I cannot reasonably assume that this was the "intended" way of playing 5e to ignore all these additions to the character. It takes a Olympian levels of mental flexibility to think that IMHO.
You misunderstand. Back then, the player was not so married to their PC as they are now. It was almost like there were two parties, the Players and the PCs and they were both working in synchronicity to beat the DM. It was the group of players working together as a whole, and the group of PCs working together as a whole, both to “beat the DM.” Your entire concept of a “bespoke character” would generally have been laughed at because nobody gave a shit about any one PC, they were eventually gonna die, and usually die bad. As long as at least one PC survived, “the party” survived and got new recruits. If that lone surviver was the next casualty, the new recruits were “the party,” so the party survived to keep trying to “beat the DM.” Characters weren’t “bespoke,” they were meat. It was “the party” that mattered.
Hm. Let me tell you this, BL. It may make a lot of what I say much more clear.
I despise "Tradition".
Not just in D&D, but in general. "Tradition" is a word people use to justify not bothering to think or examine their methods or actions, simply doing something a given way because 'this is just how it's always been done'. Tradition, in the past, was useful for providing people with an incomplete understanding of their world ways and means of accomplishing things that were largely proven to work, and for informing people of ways and means in which they could arrange a community that could tolerate each other well enough to continue surviving. Tradition is also very commonly used as a chain, however. To choke off progress and new ideas, and to beat those who espouse progress and new ideas into submission.
Many people see 'Tradition' as a splendid thing, a cherished treasure worth preserving. I tend to view tradition as a dangerous tool of the dogmatic and oppressive, something to be challenged as often as any newer idea is and discarded when it is no longer of any use. 'Old School' is usually an epithet to me, not a compliment, and those who poo-poo modernization attempts as just 'twisting tradition' get me upset. No, not all modernization attempts work, and 'changing things for the sake of changing them' is not inherently good. Nor, however, is "keeping everything the same forever because Tradition."
In the Case of the Poisoned Rag, I would not make a player roll checks if they didn't do anything that required a check. If they rolled barrels over and started staving in the bottoms with a warhammer to search for secret compartments, they'd find a secret compartment. At best there would be a low-DC Strength check, more to see if something comedic happened or determine the time the task took than to prevent the action. If they spot the rag and somebody immediately said "I cast Mage Hand to grab the rag and shake it out twenty feet away from me", there would be no check, simply a ring dropping to the ground.
I would not, however, allow the players to spend three hours searching one single room due to an extreme overabundance of caution and the knowledge that if they don't say exactly the right thing, I will kill them for it. The characters' abilities are accounted for as much as the players' - there's no point in having a character at all if you can't rely on that character's abilities to help out where your own civilian (in most cases), non-Adventuring-trained player brain falls short.
If the character's abilities don't matter, then you're not DMing a role-playing game - you're posing theoretical fantasy escape-room challenges to your friends. Which is fine, and a good way to spend time with your buddies if that's your thing, but it's not an RPG.
If the players' own gaming skills don't matter, then you're not DMing a role-playing game - you're running a Dice Chucker randomization experiment with a whole lotta fantasy trappings. Which...okay, if that's a thing you enjoy doing, more power to ya. Not my bag, but that's increasingly the way of it these days.
The avatar's skills, abilities, training, and equipment are all paramount to the role-playing part of RPG. The player's ability to make effective use of those things is paramount to the game part of RPG. Both are necessary for an ideal experience. And when 'Tradition' says one or the other is unimportant and should be ignored, Tradition is simply wrong.
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There's an argument to be made about who decided that Certain Folks get to be the sole arbiter of what 'the soul of D&D' is and whether someone is attacking the Very Lifeblood of the Game Itself when they try and fix things about the game they don't care for. 'Course, the original thrust of the thread had nothing to do with Tasha's Cauldron Ruining D&D Forever(C), that's simply what any thread with enough pages turns into once Certain People get their fangs into it. The original thrust of the thread can be boiled down to "powergamers suck and I wish they'd stop playing D&D".
Which, frankly, is a mighty curious stance for anyone who states they love a challenging, grueling game of D&D. Those sorts of campaigns are the ones 'powergamers' tend to crave - people who're maximizing their character's abilities are doing so because they want to be tested. Those folks are looking to demonstrate their mastery of the system, show that they're excellent players of the mechanical game aspect of D&D, and that they're equal to any (fair) challenge the DM can throw at them. Hardcore D&D is where 'powergamers' thrive. So...why do so many DMs who love Brutal Hardcore You-WILL-Die-If-You-****-Up Adversarial DM-style Old School D&D claim to hate the exact players who're most likely to be absolutely on board with that mentality?
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Perfect.
BL, many players in this exact thread have gone on - at length - about how 'Old School D&D' is about having a dungeon, filling it with increasingly vicious threats, and seeing how many PCs the players go through before reaching the bottom. That the Sacred Prophet's words are that no player shall know the rules of the game, no player shall escape a dungeon un-killed, and no plot shall intrude on one's dungeon crawl.
What is 'Old School D&D' supposed to mean, then? You seem to use the term differently than everyone else. Why?
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I didn't realize that there was a quota...
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As a clarification it certainly runs counter to how ruled it (and will continue to, regardless).
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Please provide the specific post number that even alludes to that.
What is the difference between 'Player-Centric' and 'Character-Centric'? Players play the game through the means of their characters - you can't play D&D without a character, unless you're the DM. And in that case, your character is The World (DIO DA, so on and so forth). How can a game be player-centric whilst ignoring characters?
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This^^^
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Legitimate question then (from someone who has only been playing/DMing in 5e, and only for about 4 years). What is the purpose of ability scores in such a game? If D&D originally required no/little dice rolling outside of combat (or in combat?) and most everything was player/DM narration, then why have stats at all?
I've played some "rules-lite" TTRPGs that are very much about narrative and roleplay with very little dice rolling (and much simplified dice rolling when used), and enjoyed them, so I'm not knocking the concept.
The ability scores were for combat or for character-based challenges. Most D&D modules of the old school were a pretty even mix of challenges for the player, and challenges for the character.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
This is a good example and helps me better understand the viewpoint so thank you for sharing that!
I think that where this disconnects for me is that sometimes the old modules (heck even the puzzles that came in Tashas) sometimes take a fairly large leap in logic to solve. This example is fairly straight forward but I find that even now it would be helpful to have someone roll an investigation check (DC 20)...if they roll well enough they notice the barrel is lighter than the others. This doesn't give the whole puzzle away but it does give those characters who have chosen to put a high investment into investigation or use a resource (Enhance Ability spell) to increase their odds an edge to figure it out.
I like that you can run that with your players and find it fun...but to me having some mechanics to help those who do not want to sit through 3 hours of describing how they investigate every inch of the room in detail is more fun for my group.
This is why social encounters could also use some help as people who have invested resources/character features to increase their ability having some mechanical backing (But not SOLVING the issue completely) is fun for them as that makes the choices they made matter.
Wouldn't this also make a barbarian just as good at spotting traps as a rogue with expertise in investigation?
If the barbarian player is better at describing how to search they will be better at just finding the answer without having invested anything into it? Or am I missing something?
And there was little to no taboo against PCs using skills and abilities on each other back then. The Thief stole from party members sometimes for example. It’s just what happened.
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Okay.
So.
I legit had to stop myself from snapping at that. That answer got me exceptionally angry; had to walk back and calm down for a few moments.
That said...
What you're ascribing to 'New School'/modern/pointless-whippersnapper players is not 'character-centric' play, it's Dice Chucking. E.G. "I chuck dice at my tray until the DM decides I got a high enough number." That has never been the proper way to play the game or resolve any situation, and in my forays as DM I've made damn sure players knew that at no point were they allowed to ask if they could roll a check of any kind.
To take your "Gotcha, you're dead!" trap as an example? No, a player does not get to just throw Investigation checks until they get what they want. A player at my table would specifically have to tell me they're checking out the barrel and describe to at least some extent how they're doing so - visual inspection from afar, hands-on inspection, something else. That determines what they roll and what the DC is. They'd find the rag ring if they did well enough, and passive perception would be checked to see if they pick up the scent of toxins before doing anything else. After that, their method of investigating would determine what, if anything, they rolled - or whether they were making a Constitution save to avoid a debilitating poison.
I tell my players to tell me what the characters they're portraying do. Do not ask me to make a check, tell me what you're doing and I will decide if a check is needed and if so, which one. The character's capabilities are important, but the player has to use them properly. This is why players need to know the rules of the game, despite what the Sacred Prophet said about killing anyone who reads a DMG. Players need to know how the physics of their game world works, which is represented by the mechanical systems of the game. Not knowing those rules means players cannot create characters with the sorts of capabilities they want to bring to the field. "If I make this choice, it will let me excel at these sorts of tasks in the game world, and that's the sort of character I want to play" is exactly the thing a player needs to know.
What you describe sounds more like ignoring the character completely; if Muscules the GARbarian has an intelligence score of 4 but Stuart, Muscules' player, is a research chemist by day job? Then Muscules gets a free pass on figuring out the Poison Rag issue because Stuart-the-research-chemist knows all the right questions to ask. Conversely, Alicia the Starbucks barista has never spent a day outside Example City in her entire life and couldn't survivalist her way out of a city park; that means she can't play any sort of woods-wise druid, ranger, or other such character because even though she can imagine what those skills might be like, she does not have them herself and thus can't use them in a D&D game.
People these days call that (the wrong kind of) metagaming, and it's decried for any number of generally more valid than not reasons.
I'm disappointed more than anything else, now. I'd honestly hoped for better. Ugh.
Please do not contact or message me.
The thing I find a bit odd though is that although you CAN do this with 5e....there are literally spells, checks, and features that players add to characters to assist with checks just like this that you invalidate but avoiding them all together. I cannot reasonably assume that this was the "intended" way of playing 5e to ignore all these additions to the character. It takes a Olympian levels of mental flexibility to think that IMHO.
Yurei,
You misunderstand. Back then, the player was not so married to their PC as they are now. It was almost like there were two parties, the Players and the PCs and they were both working in synchronicity to beat the DM. It was the group of players working together as a whole, and the group of PCs working together as a whole, both to “beat the DM.” Your entire concept of a “bespoke character” would generally have been laughed at because nobody gave a shit about any one PC, they were eventually gonna die, and usually die bad. As long as at least one PC survived, “the party” survived and got new recruits. If that lone surviver was the next casualty, the new recruits were “the party,” so the party survived to keep trying to “beat the DM.” Characters weren’t “bespoke,” they were meat. It was “the party” that mattered.
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We're off topic and we've delved into personal attacks. This isn't in the spirit of the forums.
Yurei does not identify as “a guy.”
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All of us old grognadrs talk and think like that. Didn’t you know?!?
NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
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Hm. Let me tell you this, BL. It may make a lot of what I say much more clear.
I despise "Tradition".
Not just in D&D, but in general. "Tradition" is a word people use to justify not bothering to think or examine their methods or actions, simply doing something a given way because 'this is just how it's always been done'. Tradition, in the past, was useful for providing people with an incomplete understanding of their world ways and means of accomplishing things that were largely proven to work, and for informing people of ways and means in which they could arrange a community that could tolerate each other well enough to continue surviving. Tradition is also very commonly used as a chain, however. To choke off progress and new ideas, and to beat those who espouse progress and new ideas into submission.
Many people see 'Tradition' as a splendid thing, a cherished treasure worth preserving. I tend to view tradition as a dangerous tool of the dogmatic and oppressive, something to be challenged as often as any newer idea is and discarded when it is no longer of any use. 'Old School' is usually an epithet to me, not a compliment, and those who poo-poo modernization attempts as just 'twisting tradition' get me upset. No, not all modernization attempts work, and 'changing things for the sake of changing them' is not inherently good. Nor, however, is "keeping everything the same forever because Tradition."
In the Case of the Poisoned Rag, I would not make a player roll checks if they didn't do anything that required a check. If they rolled barrels over and started staving in the bottoms with a warhammer to search for secret compartments, they'd find a secret compartment. At best there would be a low-DC Strength check, more to see if something comedic happened or determine the time the task took than to prevent the action. If they spot the rag and somebody immediately said "I cast Mage Hand to grab the rag and shake it out twenty feet away from me", there would be no check, simply a ring dropping to the ground.
I would not, however, allow the players to spend three hours searching one single room due to an extreme overabundance of caution and the knowledge that if they don't say exactly the right thing, I will kill them for it. The characters' abilities are accounted for as much as the players' - there's no point in having a character at all if you can't rely on that character's abilities to help out where your own civilian (in most cases), non-Adventuring-trained player brain falls short.
If the character's abilities don't matter, then you're not DMing a role-playing game - you're posing theoretical fantasy escape-room challenges to your friends. Which is fine, and a good way to spend time with your buddies if that's your thing, but it's not an RPG.
If the players' own gaming skills don't matter, then you're not DMing a role-playing game - you're running a Dice Chucker randomization experiment with a whole lotta fantasy trappings. Which...okay, if that's a thing you enjoy doing, more power to ya. Not my bag, but that's increasingly the way of it these days.
The avatar's skills, abilities, training, and equipment are all paramount to the role-playing part of RPG. The player's ability to make effective use of those things is paramount to the game part of RPG. Both are necessary for an ideal experience. And when 'Tradition' says one or the other is unimportant and should be ignored, Tradition is simply wrong.
Please do not contact or message me.