Early D&D play and "problematic procedures"
Gordon C. Landis:
So there's an actual play post I want to get up before Winter ends (which will be in summer, I guess), but I need to work up to it. This is a step on the way, a post about my LONG ago play with D&D back in the early days. It sprang from the discussion over at Vincent's anyways a while back about where the "problematic pocedures of play" in the RPG hobby came from.
So I was a junior high school student in '76-'78 when I started playing D&D. My "gateway" was hex-based board games, which were made available to me in some sort of after-school program for kids who seemed to need more intellectual activities than school was already providing. Upon reflection, I think both these factors (the boardgames and the "channel that overactive adolesentish thought into SOMETHING fergadsake" framework) lead to what I'd now consider some problematic habits in RPGing.
D&D itself, of course, was derived from miniatures war games, and I want to propose that there's an important difference between that history and my history. As I discovered when I attended a few gaming conventions a bit later, there was a cliqueish rivalry between the minatures-based and chit-and-hexmap based gamers. One key aspect was that the rules for miniatures games frequently included a role for a referee, to adjudicate the rules of ... well, potentially a lot, acording the the miniatures guys I eventually talked to about it. How to read the ruler, when a building or hillside did or didn't break line of sight - on the unhexed miniatures tabletop, someone to make such rulings was needed.
Me, in my hexmapped world, I expected the RULES to cover all the angles (literally). I suspect this is part of what led to my unease at the "vagueness" of many parts of D&D's rules, and why whenever a "missing" piece was filled-in ("finally, rules for Rangers! How did we play without this?"), I was literally RELIEVED to have an "official" answer. This yearning-for-total-rules-clarity, in a game that initially (AD&D was, as I understand it, at least in part inspired by Gygax growing uncomfortable with how many play styles there were) was OK with letting a referee make key rulings, was not obviously a big problem at the time. But thinking back, there was an URGENCY to my groups' need for rule clarification and "official" rules for things that "needed to be in the game" (like Rangers) that I expect groups that moved to D&D from miniatures didn't experience in the same way.
Add to that the background motivation for being involved in these games at all - the "keep overactive young minds spinning on something complex but relatively harmless" gateway I'd entered the activity through - and I spent a LOT of time over those years more engaged with the rules of the game than with the actual play of the game. I can still slide into this mode with surprising ease. Luckily, I'm much better at getting OUT of that mode nowadays. But since for some part of me early play wasn't so much about the activity itself but rather the distraction it represented ... I suspect "problematic" for actual play procedures that were NOT problematic (and often in fact were quite effective) for keeping a unfocused adoloscent brain engaged with SOMETHING are more tolerable to me than they really ought to be.
So that's some thoughts about my early play. I guess this thread would welcome other folks to talk about their early play, and why that might have lead to problems - or start your own thread. Seemed like an interesting topic here in the final days of the Forge.
Callan S.:
I'm currently going to a gaming club every saturday and playing (or GM'ing) in an ongoing AD&D (drop in game/so not a fixed party) game every fortnight (the other saturday I'm in a 4E campaign). Anyway, quite against gaming cultural trends I've experienced, this GM uses gold=XP and apart from some special rooms, the rest of the dungeons contents (including treasure) comes off a chart. Plus all the players play alot of boardgames and I notice this changes the culture alot too. They are after the gold and...I really like the enthusiasm that's at the table to go after that objective. Plus the usuage of the charts means gold will be there.
This as opposed to my early roleplay, again in AD&D, where there was this notion your supposed to have a story (and people apparently get to judge the quality of your story) and you have to investigate and the GM maybe if it suits his 'vision' puts in some gold (ie, you can't bank on it being there'), etc. If I understand reward cycles at all, it was like there was this urge to make story engagement the reward of play. But story is such an etherial notion - what isn't story? What is? What do you do to pursue it as a player, barring just waiting with expectant expression towards the GM? Whilst a hard mechanic like gold=XP is not etherial, it's quite easy to pursue and some of the crazy shit people get up to in pursuit results in story just as much (but as a side effect of pursuit, granted). Even now you can easily read on some forum a dismissive 'oh, you walk into a room with orcs and slay them - the rogue dies *snore*' or such. But maybe that's not procedure but more a kind of toxic culture that seeped in because what to do was kind of obscure (ie, the charts the guy uses at the game club are kind of obscured and tucked away (and somewhat selectively chosen/ie some procedure simply ignored)).
Gordon C. Landis:
Interesting - my suspision (well, almost an assertion) is that "etherial" and "obscure" are by no means consistent across groups/individuals. There was nothing etherial or obscure to the miniataures gamers about how respond to a referee - it was only me and my hexmap buddies that were uncomfortable. I'd in no way elevate this issue to the Creative Agenda level, but I guess the impact might be different in kind and degree depending on the agenda being pursued.
Abkajud:
Gordon,
My own early play-groups (for AD&D, Vampire, etc.) were characterized by having the absolute minimum level of interest in RPGs-as-a-hobby while still being able to enjoy play.
Only I read the gaming magazines; only I bought new supplements, eager for the Official word on this or that new concept.
Eventually I decided the best way to handle this was by refusing to play games that were supplement-heavy, and of course I did eventually stop enjoying White Wolf's fiction-writing team, which really put the stake through the heart of my bloated gaming budget.
Callan,
To me the issue is one of clearly assigning play priorities, which in turn gives players something to master, something for play to be "about". If we're all just here to enjoy someone else's plot, why use mechanics at all, beyond simply consulting the GM as to the outcome of our actions.
Gordon C. Landis:
Abakjud - it's interesting to me that "supplement" meant such a very, VERY different thing to me early-on than it came to mean later. In the early days, it really felt like additional "official" material was just covering stuff that somehow got "missed", or that segments of the playing community directly said they wanted. And yeah, groups-as-a-whole generally seemed to want it, rather than some individuals didn't care and some did.
Of course, I find the approach you reached (supplement avoidance) emminently sane.
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