I was reading an interesting post on Mythmere's blog about some of the differences between OE through 2E and the follow-up comments.
One of the comments (by Brendan) struck a note with me, part of which I cite here:
"The more I have been reading old modules, the more I think this is one of the key differences between old school design and new school design. Old school challenges will often be totally unaffected by PC "build" choices (example: 1 in 6 chance of falling off a slippery beam), whereas new school design keys almost everything against something on the PC character sheet (athletics check, dexterity check)."
What struck me is that I really hate the notion of character builds. I mean I really fucking hate character builds and the god-damn min-maxing that goes along with it. Builds are a reflection of an exception based system and I fucking hate that too. Why? I don't have the time to read all the crap. Moreover, when I'm DMing I know exactly what the character classes do and can't do and can better judge accordingly.
This is actually something (now that I think about it) that I really had to explain to my new old school players. The notion that the ability scores don't really matter that much, it is the player skill that matters most - not which build you have or feats, or whatever.
The flip side of the discussion is that classes can't be too narrow either. I really hated weapon proficiencies back in the day. They were way too limiting. I suppose this is one of the reasons why I like B/X-LL D&D so much. I just don't have to worry about any of that crap.
Agreed. Went to a 4E game, spent 1.5 hours making a character, was criticized for not putting high points in certain attributes. THAT ain't my idear of fun...
ReplyDeleteYeah I despise them too, I played a pathfinder game were I was a low con Barbarian...game sucked.
ReplyDeleteWhat amazes me in my new game where the d6 tends to rule I have gotten more player interaction than ever I got running 2e or higher.
I have the same problem with character "balance". It has ruined player involvement, older editions where more concerned with party "balance".
ERIC!
ERIC!
I also hate builds. I'd rather think up an interesting character than have to make sure my numbers click with all my other numbers to maximum efficiency... and I'd rather not play a game where I'm actually punished for not taking Face Punch when I should have taken Eye Gouge to get the synergy bonus.
ReplyDeleteLike Eric and Ted said, the part I hate most is that the newer systems give you just enough rope to hang yourself, and then punish you for building in a way that the designers didn't anticipate.
ReplyDeleteLook, if you're going to expect that my Warlock have a high charisma, why not just cut the shit and make it easy for me? Why not take the extra nine steps out of character gen and say "Warlocks have X Strength, X Dexterity, X Con, (etc)" so I can go on to puzzling out which of these three nearly identical "spells" I want to learn?
Character choice is cool, but not if it's not meaningful in an actual way, what's the point of all this complexity?
Challenge being building character / challenge being actual play and all that falls out from that (balanced encounters, story-based vs exploration, splat books, min-max, power creep) is the biggest difference between old school and everything 2nd ed and later.
ReplyDeleteI really loved the old days when everything I needed to know about whatever character I was playing fit on one side of a piece of paper torn out of my spiral notebook. If that guy died, I flipped it over and created a new guy on the back.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's my imagination and rose colored glasses, but I seem to recall that the less we as players needed to write down, the more we seemed to engage personally in play... so rather than worrying about whether or not I had the right skill or ranks to search, negotiate or do, I would ask questions, tell the DM what I would say to the NPC to try to get him to like me, etc. "I look under the bed," will always be more fun to me than "I rolled a 23 on my search!"
Damn straight Limp.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHey anonymous troll, where did you learn to spell dude?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete