[D&D] Editions, Metacosmology and Setting
David Berg:
Hey Grim, this separation makes a lot of sense to me too, largely because I found different bits appealing from different editions, and would like to use each edition for the one thing it did best. What did you enjoy most about the cosmologies in play? I think that'd nicely clarify the value of the categories you're drawing, plus meet the AP requirement!
Personally, my 2e games were very much about discovering a world and plots and factions, where cosmology mattered, especially as characters advanced quickly and came to matter on a large scale. My 1e games were isolated dungeon crawls, but even there, cleric players got really into their relationships with their deities. Verbal and material components got roleplayed and everything. Sacrifices and prayers galore. This went out the window in my 3e games; I don't remember any gods at all. I don't know whether any of this was owed to the actual published material or just who I was playing with at the time, but I'm curious to hear your own experience on this front (if it's relevant to your mission here, that is).
Grimcleaver:
I think in view of some of the feedback I've gotten on my Site Discussion post "Help me Ron Edwards, You're my only hope" I'm going to take a step back and maybe ground some of my experiences of "what D&D is" for me and mine with some of our experiences with it.
I have two good friends (who actually were the same guys who told me about the Forge in the first place) who hated D&D. They'd read things like Order of the Stick, or Munchkin's Guide to Powergaming and laugh and laugh. To them D&D was just a bunch of irrational dungeon cells filled with orcs standing in front of treasure chests patrolled by wandering monsters of a table. I finally threw down the gauntlet. I would run a Dungeons & Dragons game for them and they would love it. Their stipulation, I couldn't use any house rules--it had to be 100% played the way it is in the books, and it had to be epic level. If the game could survive both of those things and still manage to be a good game, I'd win. Nearly a year later we ended probably our most fondly regarded, certainly most often referenced games we ever played. We set it in the Forgotten Realms. One of the two guys played Thorin, a paladin of Torm--the crusader god against evil: but instead of spending as much time as I think his player thought he'd be spending riding forth to slay evil, he spent a lot of time sorting out the life wreckage of the years that had brought him to epic level, dealing with the consequence of the backstory he'd come up with. The baby he'd rescued from his former wife and her poisonous Loviatar worshipping religion was now a 16 year old young woman who was tired of all her dad's bravado and the trauma it had caused her seeing him fly into rages and slay people he saw as evil. She just wanted to settle down and embrace a life where she just tried to accept everyone. But slowing down and settling in the city of Teziir meant that his ex would eventually track them down--and that would mean a reckoning. Meanwhile the other guy played the archmage Rondel, an ooze merchant who spent most of his retiring years engaged in the pleasant hobby of meeting and greeting the wealthy strata of society and teaching them the wonders of ooze-keeping for security or just as a liesure activity. But he had his own issues. He'd promised his wife--a homespun, but still frightening archmage in her own right, that he would stop adventuring to pay attention to his family. He has a son who he believes is off in magic school, but who actually has run away to become a bard. Most of all he has to square with the past he has run away from--as General Talthea, the Scourge of the North, the merciless and relentless Icewind warlord who devoted most of his adult life to murdering barbarians and orcs for increasingly dark reasons. He locked away the paraphinalia of that life in a demiplane to dispose of that part of himself years ago--but its still there, and as the world once again is threatened by great evil he will have to choose to face it as either the eccentric and easygoing Rondel, or give in to the dread general that lurks within his soul.
Anyway more on that later--suffice it to say I won the bet, and learned a lot about good storytelling--that the best story tends to come from delving deep into a setting, it's gods, its history and its cosmology--but most of all good storytelling comes from abandoning the idea as a DM that you're there to tell "your" story. The most interesting stories almost always belong to the characters, and really it's their story after all.
Erik Weissengruber:
I am liking what you are saying about game setting and table outcomes.
The only RPG setting that I ever fell in love with was Stafford's Glorantha (with M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel a d i s s ... t a n t 2nd). It was, however, Stafford's creation before it was game fodder.
To further your Actual Play discussion:
Can you recall any moments where the results of a roll or the outcome of a spell really made people around the table say "yeah, that's it, that is how we roll here in the Forgotten Realms"?
Any moments where a rule from the edition you were using made you stop and say "nuh unh, that just doesn't sound like the kind of things that happen in the Forgotten Realms"?
And character death: one time when a character bought it, did you say "suck it up, that's how you die -- FR style" or "wow, that was a really lame way for a Realms hero to go out"?
Grimcleaver:
Quote from: Natespank on February 15, 2011, 12:13:26 PM
Gygax wasn't actually involved in 2nd Ed, was he? I think the last edition he participated in was advanced 1e. I'm nitpicking though- I don't actually object. Where's your source material for this idea of Gygax's? I wouldn't mind reading it :D
Researching it, yeah it looks like he left the company four years before 2nd edition came out, but really this is how I look at it. Second edition, with skills and powers, really is the mechanical summation of all the stuff in it that speaks to me of "old school" D&D gaming: Thac0, Non Weapon Proficiencies, Kits, The Man-at-arms/Magic User/Priest/Rogue breakdown. From looking at other older editions it feels like some of it is there, but it really isn't until 2nd ed. that all of that stuff is under one roof. So chronologically I guess Gary Gygax's D&D isn't 2nd edition at all--but it feels the most like his.
I actually did quite a bit of digging to find out what his ideas were, including finding a forum on EN World where you could actually talk to the man himself and ask him questions. His family still own the rights to his work and have forums at a place called garygygaxgames.com. I took a lot of it from the cosmology sections in the Cyclopedia and the old Deities and Demigods as well as from the cosmology sections in The Hall of Many Panes, and Epic of Ayrth. Some chunks were in articles and interviews in Dragon Magazine. But I guess I've been mining around for all the information I could get for a while now and pinning down a single source is hard--because I really couldn't find one single source myself.
Caldis:
That's a pretty cool set up for a game. I wonder though how much of it really had to do with the rules of D&D any edition? I mean you've added issues that concern each of these characters that are not mentioned in any D&D book, children? hidden tragic pasts? life as an ooze merchant? I dont see any mention of hit points or armor class or challenge ratings or even experience points. You've got a lot of cool play that sounds like it only barely touches on the rules of the game. It looks like the character issues are what is really driving the play, and that you may have loosely tied them to the cosmology of the game world/used setting info to give a feel of a real place/inspire ideas for opposition.
IME all the editions of D&D are too clunky for what I'm after and I cant be bothered with the hassle of levels and spells and all that mechanical jazz but there settings have often been interesting and tieing those to character issues could be amazing. 2nd edition had a lot of their best setting work with Planescape and Dark Sun even Al-Qadim had interesting bits.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page