Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 64 of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Now we will look at the example Gygax gave of a referee running a party through a Dungeon Expedition:
This is a matter of style, but for my part I have never run a game where we started here, we always started at some city, town, village or keep or some such and traveled to either a previously located dungeon or they set out to find something with a dungeon being one of the possibilities. Sometimes traveling through a rough area (later determined to be ruins) they found a hole, after tying off a rope and sliding down it into the ground they entered the dungeon. Later from the inside they located a possible exit and then dug it out from both ends. Once they are traveling you describe it, so that if they players choose to, they can map where they are going. While many dungeons are so simple and so small mapping is not a necessity, any dungeon (IMO) worthy of the name in practical terms demands a map, otherwise becoming lost is almost a certainty.
I have run games with and without a caller. Once you get over about 7 or 8 players using a caller moves form optional to IMO a real need to keep things from bogging down and moving to slowly. Although it has been my experience that good players may not formally choose a caller but default to a rotating caller depending on what is going on. Another point of style, as these things are taking place I every now and then roll dice and will grin or frown but say nothing about the rolls. Letting the players wonder what may be up.
Ideally the players will not know if they should like a high result or a low result. If so then the players can make the roll and so they do not know if the dice indicate success, they only know if they heard or did not hear anything. If the player know the rules, then the ref should roll in secret. There reason is that the players when they do not hear anything have (should have) no way of knowing if there was nothing to hear or if there was something to hear but they failed to hear it. Also it is good not to have a monolithic all corridors are 10' wide and 10' high. It is good to vary things from place to place.
Also you can see that in practice the game can proceed quite quickly without the players having long OOC discussion at every point. Using a Caller is good to establish this paradigm in your games. IMO good involved players will default to this behavior with or without a Caller. Note: I am talking about Face to Face Games. { In a PbP in order to keep everyone involved it is OK to have players commenting as we they go, because a Caller could not glance around the group and see head nods and such.)
That is right, you check to see if the gnolls are surprised. They may have heard the players and are ready and waiting. Or there could be a made and if he is not surprised the players might be hit by a spell the moment they open the door.
Assuming the players won the fight, other results are possible. From the players having to flee or the gnolls surrendering or the gnolls all dying and more. For what it is worth, the referee should not have to check to see if dwarves or elves are in the party, the referee should know and have a few notes ready at his hand to quickly check with the relevant party info. As the referee your descriptions should be giving the information needed for the players to make good decisions. Some of that will rely on the players asking good questions, fail to ask the right questions and you miss getting information. That is on the players to ask good questions and on the referee to give appropriate answers.
I would quickly make several rolls and note the results with a short hand on my stack of blank paper and at the appropriate time frame note that the watchers did or did not hear something. Again good descriptions are key, this should flow smoothly and quickly with practice.
Another style note, why would you curse the thoroughness of the player(s)? When your players are thorough, it is compliment to you and your group, IMO as the referee I quietly celebrate good play and make quick very brief notes and award experience for the same. Also if you use a Silver Standard that Copper becomes valuable and if you use the coin weight I previously noted that I use in a previous post, the players will be able to carry out satisfying amount of Copper.
Note here that I have already made the check so that if a wandering monster is indicated, I already know that whether or not it is detected. Also I would note that my players have always referred to each other by character name for the most part rather than dwarf or elf or what not. Also note that Magic-Users (and Cleric) should try to take a variety of spells. When I started gaming this was standard procedure, but I have heard that now a days, now everyone does this, but focuses only on certain spells to the exclusion of others.
In this example the players gained surprise, but more often than not it is the other way around. I suppose I should record some game play someday and write up more examples; but as I am getting ready to run a play by post I might consider extracting it from there.
Tomorrow we move on to the Wilderness!
Something to Celebrate if you Prepared in January!
Something to Celebrate if you did not Prepare in January!
Today is Part 64 of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Now we will look at the example Gygax gave of a referee running a party through a Dungeon Expedition:
This is a matter of style, but for my part I have never run a game where we started here, we always started at some city, town, village or keep or some such and traveled to either a previously located dungeon or they set out to find something with a dungeon being one of the possibilities. Sometimes traveling through a rough area (later determined to be ruins) they found a hole, after tying off a rope and sliding down it into the ground they entered the dungeon. Later from the inside they located a possible exit and then dug it out from both ends. Once they are traveling you describe it, so that if they players choose to, they can map where they are going. While many dungeons are so simple and so small mapping is not a necessity, any dungeon (IMO) worthy of the name in practical terms demands a map, otherwise becoming lost is almost a certainty.
I have run games with and without a caller. Once you get over about 7 or 8 players using a caller moves form optional to IMO a real need to keep things from bogging down and moving to slowly. Although it has been my experience that good players may not formally choose a caller but default to a rotating caller depending on what is going on. Another point of style, as these things are taking place I every now and then roll dice and will grin or frown but say nothing about the rolls. Letting the players wonder what may be up.
Ideally the players will not know if they should like a high result or a low result. If so then the players can make the roll and so they do not know if the dice indicate success, they only know if they heard or did not hear anything. If the player know the rules, then the ref should roll in secret. There reason is that the players when they do not hear anything have (should have) no way of knowing if there was nothing to hear or if there was something to hear but they failed to hear it. Also it is good not to have a monolithic all corridors are 10' wide and 10' high. It is good to vary things from place to place.
Also you can see that in practice the game can proceed quite quickly without the players having long OOC discussion at every point. Using a Caller is good to establish this paradigm in your games. IMO good involved players will default to this behavior with or without a Caller. Note: I am talking about Face to Face Games. { In a PbP in order to keep everyone involved it is OK to have players commenting as we they go, because a Caller could not glance around the group and see head nods and such.)
That is right, you check to see if the gnolls are surprised. They may have heard the players and are ready and waiting. Or there could be a made and if he is not surprised the players might be hit by a spell the moment they open the door.
Assuming the players won the fight, other results are possible. From the players having to flee or the gnolls surrendering or the gnolls all dying and more. For what it is worth, the referee should not have to check to see if dwarves or elves are in the party, the referee should know and have a few notes ready at his hand to quickly check with the relevant party info. As the referee your descriptions should be giving the information needed for the players to make good decisions. Some of that will rely on the players asking good questions, fail to ask the right questions and you miss getting information. That is on the players to ask good questions and on the referee to give appropriate answers.
I would quickly make several rolls and note the results with a short hand on my stack of blank paper and at the appropriate time frame note that the watchers did or did not hear something. Again good descriptions are key, this should flow smoothly and quickly with practice.
Another style note, why would you curse the thoroughness of the player(s)? When your players are thorough, it is compliment to you and your group, IMO as the referee I quietly celebrate good play and make quick very brief notes and award experience for the same. Also if you use a Silver Standard that Copper becomes valuable and if you use the coin weight I previously noted that I use in a previous post, the players will be able to carry out satisfying amount of Copper.
Note here that I have already made the check so that if a wandering monster is indicated, I already know that whether or not it is detected. Also I would note that my players have always referred to each other by character name for the most part rather than dwarf or elf or what not. Also note that Magic-Users (and Cleric) should try to take a variety of spells. When I started gaming this was standard procedure, but I have heard that now a days, now everyone does this, but focuses only on certain spells to the exclusion of others.
In this example the players gained surprise, but more often than not it is the other way around. I suppose I should record some game play someday and write up more examples; but as I am getting ready to run a play by post I might consider extracting it from there.
Tomorrow we move on to the Wilderness!
Something to Celebrate if you Prepared in January!
Something to Celebrate if you did not Prepare in January!
No comments:
Post a Comment