Old D&D Improvisation?

[soldersbushwack]

I have read about about how combat in original D&D focused more on improvisation and cunning then in the newer D&D editions and wasn't just searching for the right spell or ability. How did that work exactly?

[Jay R]

There weren't rules to cover most situations, so you did what seemed reasonable, and the DM made judgement calls. Here are two examples.

Spoiler: First example

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In the first D&D tournament I entered (Tacticon I, in 1976), they had a room with a 134-hit die monster.

No, that's not a typo. The hydra had one hundred thirty four heads. The tournament organizers had set it as a trap for any group stupid enough to try to fight a 134-hd monster.

And we killed it.

We opened the door, saw it, and closed the door. Then we made plans. It was in a 10x20 room, just the size of a Web spell. And an area effect attack will hit all the heads.

Player 1: I open the door.
Player 2: I cast Web.
Players 3 & 4: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 5: I throw in a torch:
Player 1: I close the door.

The DM decided that each head took 1-6 points of damage. After doing it twice, all the heads were dead.

Second example

Spoiler: Second Example

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1st Level Wizard: [Round one] I cast my sleep spell.
DM: Roll your dice. Ok, 6 of the goblins fall over asleep.
…
1LW: [Round 2] I’m out of spells. I get on my hands and knees behind the goblin facing the fighter.
Fighter: I shove the goblin backwards over the wizard.

[Yora]

One important element certainly was the lack of skills. You could not say "I want to scare the guards away with an Intimidation check". You had to describe to the GM what you are doing, and the GM would decide what happens based on how convincing he found it and what would feel right for the adventure at that moment.

Another thing is the frequency of web-like dungeons instead of linear ones. There often was no "final room at the end" because there was no end. Most rooms could be reached through multiple paths through the dungeon and very often there were only one or two rooms you really had to visit to accomplish the goal of the adventure. As a result of this, players always had to consider if it's worth dealing with an obstacle or instead trying to find a way around it.

This goes hand in hand with only a very small portion of the XP coming from fighting monsters. The majority of XP comes from collecting gold. Killing a monster and taking its treasure could be very risky and would surely cost some hit points and spells. Stealing a treasure without fighting the monster still gets you most of the XP, but with some luck it doesn't cost you any hit points or spells and so you can continue looking for more treasure. Getting 75% XP three times pays out much better than getting 100% XP a single time.

Almost everything you encountered was optional. It was very rare that you knew for certain that you really had to win a fight and that running away was not an option. Because failure was always an option, not every obstacle would have to be beatable and GMs probably will have you find enemies that you could not beat in a straight fight. Since you never fully know if a fight is beatable or not, it's much safer to not take any chances with an even fight and always try to come up with plans that would lead to a very uneven fight in your favor.

[BWR]

The lack of skills or other fixed mechanics to accomplish things also resulted in (IME at least) a lot of ability score checks when then outcome of stated actions was in doubt. Roll a d20, get equal or lower than your relevant ability score (with modifiers). In the aforementioned intimidation check, roll Charisma (alternatively Strength) and hope the dice are in your favor.

[soldersbushwack]

Well, Jay R your first example is just silly as a single flask of oil really shouldn't be able to cover a full 10 by 20 room (you'd need maybe around 8 flasks in 5th edition) and your second example is just an aid another action in 5th edition that would give the Fighter an advantage on the shove attempt. It really isn't that improvisatory or non-mechanical.

Yora, I agree that dungeons shouldn't be super linear and that giving most XP from killing monster is bad as that just makes players murderhobos.

BWR, I don't follow. Rolling an ability score check for Charisma or Strength IS a fixed mechanic that is not fundamentally different from making a skill check. The big difference between ability score checks and skill checks is that one mechanic is more generic and gives freedom to govern more types of actions. Maybe skill checks make the best sense for very specific skills such as picking a lock or other tool using skills.

[Knaight]

Well, Jay R your first example is just silly as a single flask of oil really shouldn't be able to cover a full 10 by 20 room (you'd need maybe around 8 flasks in 5th edition) and your second example is just an aid another action in 5th edition that would give the Fighter an advantage on the shove attempt. It really isn't that improvisatory or non-mechanical.

While this indicates that you would probably make a different judgement call there, it doesn't change how in the example, in the absence of a more codified system, the group did something within the fiction and then the DM figured out how it would happen. In this case, the plan involved setting up a web, lighting the web on fire on the assumption that the web itself was flammable (which is a pretty reasonable assumption), and letting it burn. This worked, partially because of the way the game did fiction first definitions, where it was understood that the primary effect of the Web spell was not the mechanics of being stuck in a web, but that in setting it puts a giant web somewhere.

There's also the matter of how the extent to which a system is defined affects how people play the game. In another thread I have a post regarding the implementation of the 5e combat system compared to the 5e skill system, and how the 5e combat system isn't so much complete as appearing to be complete because of how it gets used. It's a long post to retype, but it basically comes down to how the "more complete" design involves both the codification of a space (via a grid) and the heavy codification of actions taken (via a list), and how if the space is altered to fit the grid and the actions taken to fit the list the game can be run with no DM based rules adjudication. If people want to have their characters do things that aren't o n the actions list and don't work well with the codification of space, suddenly there's a heavy need to adjudicate, but the need appears not to be there because people are playing differently than they would if they weren't looking at the heavily codified system.

I had a few examples, but the big ones were the way the DM made spaces that mapped well to a 5'x5' square grid (a lack of things like 3' or 8' wide hallways, floors and ceilings both snapping well to the same grid, etc.), the way players had PCs move in ways that fit the grid (not standing in the middle of a 10' space, not packing more than 1 to a square, etc.), and the way a number of actions that could be attempted in fiction weren't defined but didn't come up because people didn't use them (the example here was the fighter trying to tackle an orc to the ground so the rest of the party could jump over the two of them to keep running from something).

Early D&D tended to be a lot less defined, and because of that game design style there was a lot more improvisation, as it affected how players reacted. You can see the same ting to an even greater extent if you look away from D&D entirely, towards traditionalist rules light games.

BWR, I don't follow. Rolling an ability score check for Charisma or Strength IS a fixed mechanic that is not fundamentally different from making a skill check. The big difference between ability score checks and skill checks is that one mechanic is more generic and gives freedom to govern more types of actions. Maybe skill checks make the best sense for very specific skills such as picking a lock or other tool using skills.

It's the difference between the application of a broad mechanic, and the application of a more narrow mechanic that can only be used in certain places. There's an inherent trade off in skills, where making more things covered by skills and making skills more specific allows for better and better mechanical representation of a character's capabilities, while at the same time effectively shutting more and more options that are likely to be there for a character that is painted in broad strokes. On one extreme, you could have the game Monostat, where every character has a numerical Goodness rating they roll against for literally everything. Anyone can try anything, improvisation is basically mandatory and will crop up a lot, and as a mechanical framework to represent a character the game is just about completely useless (it was intended as a joke to make a point to begin with, and as far as I know it's never been played seriously).

[Jay R]

Well, Jay R your first example is just silly as a single flask of oil really shouldn't be able to cover a full 10 by 20 room (you'd need maybe around 8 flasks in 5th edition)...

The web filled 10 feet by 20 feet. That is from the description of the spell, and was the only part of the maneuver that had any rules support. The oil was to make sure the web caught fire.

.. and your second example is just an aid another action in 5th edition that would give the Fighter an advantage on the shove attempt. It really isn't that improvisatory or non-mechanical.

The fact that rules to cover it were written nearly forty years later doesn't mean we weren't improvising in 1976.

It was improvisatory in that we improvised it, without any text in the rules to refer to. It was non-mechanical in that there was no rule or mechanic for it. No rule for shoving, either.

The rules for original D&D fit on 29 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of paper. Call it the equivalent of the first 29 pages of the PHB, except in a larger type face.

[manny2510]

1e has alot of adventures where the solution is past the problem. Sometimes looting the castle prior to clearing hostiles will be far more rewarding.

[neonchameleon]

A big part of it was what a good combat is. In oD&D the right time to kill a dragon was when it was asleep in the surprise round before it woke up. Combat was for schmucks - and you got most of your XP from GP rather than killing monsters. Loot the troll cave when the troll is somewhere else and you gain roughly 75% of the available XP for less than 10% of the risk.

In 2e you gain your party XP mostly from killing monsters. Fighting's therefore encouraged.

[Knaight]

The rules for original D&D fit on 29 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of paper. Call it the equivalent of the first 29 pages of the PHB, except in a larger type face.

Gygax also had a gift for using a paragraph where a sentence would do, so it's probably worth trimming that estimate down a bit.

[Jay R]

Since there were very few rules for using Int, Wis, or Cha, and no skills, that meant anybody could try to search, spot, listen, convince, bluff, intimidate, etc. It usually meant that the player was trying to outwit the DM.

Consider the following, with a player who has no bluff or intimidate skills.

A guardsman was trying to not allow my lower-level wizard into the city. I said, "I pull out my Wand of Frost and tell him that if he doesn't move, I will freeze him."

He let me through, but about five minutes later the DM said, "Hey, wait a minute. You don't have a Wand of Frost."

"I know. It was a bluff."

"But you don't have a wand."

I replied, "It's been on my character sheet for the last four games. Here, look."

There, in my inventory, it very clearly said, "fourteen-inch polished stick of wood."

[2D8HP]

The fact that rules to cover it were written nearly forty years later doesn't mean we weren't improvising in 1976.
It was improvisatory in that we improvised it, without any text in the rules to refer to. It was non-mechanical in that there was no rule or mechanic for it. No rule for shoving, either.
The rules for original D&D fit on 29 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of paper. Call it the equivalent of the first 29 pages of the PHB, except in a larger type face.

The memories are fading, but I mostly remember oD&D as being almost nothing but improvisation. The rules as written were incomprehensible! (%Liar?). We got the gist of the RAI but as written? Not so much (we sure had fun trying!). I remember that when Holmes and especially 1e came out, trying to play RAW was a real adjustment. Last year when I re-read the Men & Magic booklet, I had two thoughts, "Man this takes me back", and "Nope, I still wouldn't get it"!

[Yora]

I imagine playing AD&D 1st edition by RAW would be an adventure in itself.

[hamlet]

Since there were very few rules for using Int, Wis, or Cha, and no skills, that meant anybody could try to search, spot, listen, convince, bluff, intimidate, etc. It usually meant that the player was trying to outwit the DM.

Consider the following, with a player who has no bluff or intimidate skills.

A guardsman was trying to not allow my lower-level wizard into the city. I said, "I pull out my Wand of Frost and tell him that if he doesn't move, I will freeze him."

He let me through, but about five minutes later the DM said, "Hey, wait a minute. You don't have a Wand of Frost."

"I know. It was a bluff."

"But you don't have a wand."

I replied, "It's been on my character sheet for the last four games. Here, look."

There, in my inventory, it very clearly said, "fourteen-inch polished stick of wood."

OK, that's just spectacular. Bluff the guard and the DM all in one swoop!

Of course, if I were the DM, the guard would have let you pass, but about 10 minutes later, most of the rest of the guards in town would have been told about the dangerous and fickle wizard who'd just forced his way in . . .

[Jay R]

The memories are fading, but I mostly remember oD&D as being almost nothing but improvisation. The rules as written were incomprehensible! (%Liar?). We got the gist of the RAI but as written? Not so much (we sure had fun trying!). I remember that when Holmes and especially 1e came out, trying to play RAW was a real adjustment. Last year when I re-read the Men & Magic booklet, I had two thoughts, "Man this takes me back", and "Nope, I still wouldn't get it"!

It's worth remembering that many of the rules only made sense after the first supplement (Greyhawk) came out, with a D&D-specific combat system instead of using Chainmail. In a very real sense, the first really playable game is original D&D plus Greyhawk.

[Falcon X]

Here's a pretty good article on what OD&D did better than current D&D.
Summary of topics:
- Lethality
- Higher cooperative play
- party focus
- value of bland PCs

http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2...ality.html?m=1

[Jay R]

... and your second example is just an aid another action in 5th edition that would give the Fighter an advantage on the shove attempt.

The difference was that I couldn't say, "I perform an Aid action to give him an advantage on a shove attempt," because there were no rules to indicate what aiding an attempt was, and no rules for shoving. I had to describe the specific action. You can interpret that as aiding another action only because you grew up with a different approach to role-playing.

Similarly, I couldn't just roll a bluff attempt or diplomacy check. I had to invent what the character said, and try to be convincing. One result is that my cleverness mattered more than my character's Intelligence, and my persuasiveness mattered more than my character's Charisma, and my description of searching a room mattered more than my chracter's Wisdom or (nonexistent) Search skill.

OK, that's just spectacular. Bluff the guard and the DM all in one swoop!

That's pretty much what bluffing meant.

[hamlet]

That's pretty much what bluffing meant.

Oh, I know, I just don't see it very often even at my AD&D 1e table. Stuff that awesome is absolutely great.

[Yora]

It's used so rarely because there are so few situations where you could use it. So in games with skills, people usually put no points into it. With no points in it the chance of success is negible, so barely anyone tries to use it.

And this is why more rules options generally mean that the players have fewer viable options in play. There is little room for spontaneous ideas if you have to customize your character for it 4 levels in advance.

It's not just adventure design that makes AD&D, and especially Basic, so much more improvisational. The rules also make a big difference.

[Knaight]

And this is why more rules options generally mean that the players have fewer viable options in play. There is little room for spontaneous ideas if you have to customize your character for it 4 levels in advance.

That's not a matter of more rules options so much as it's a matter of how D&D 3e specifically set itself up, particularly with things like the prestige class and feat tree system.

[LibraryOgre]

That's not a matter of more rules options so much as it's a matter of how D&D 3e specifically set itself up, particularly with things like the prestige class and feat tree system.

I have to agree with this. In 3.x, many of the combat options required a feat (or more) to be viable. "If you don't have X feat (which has Y and Z prerequisites), then attempting this opens you to an attack of opportunity" is pretty much a way of saying "Doing this will hurt you."

[hamlet]

I have to agree with this. In 3.x, many of the combat options required a feat (or more) to be viable. "If you don't have X feat (which has Y and Z prerequisites), then attempting this opens you to an attack of opportunity" is pretty much a way of saying "Doing this will hurt you."

I've found that it also tends to focus players on their character sheets much more intently than any other version of the game rather than getting into their character's head. When you have mechanical rules covering what used to be a matter of DM adjudication and spontaneity, it means a lot more focus on "what can you do?" rather than "what do you want to do?".

That is not to say, though, that it's universal or a hard and fast rule, just something I've experienced.

[Yora]

Yes, when players encounter an obstacle and start looking at their character sheet if there is something that might be useful, something has gone wrong.

[Scots Dragon]

I have to agree with this. In 3.x, many of the combat options required a feat (or more) to be viable. "If you don't have X feat (which has Y and Z prerequisites), then attempting this opens you to an attack of opportunity" is pretty much a way of saying "Doing this will hurt you."

I'm going to have to start making a properly numbered list of things that severely irritate me about 3rd edition at the rate I'm going, and honestly this one would be near the top of the list.

[Yora]

I ranked it as number 3 of the biggest errors in the evolution of RPGs.

[Scots Dragon]

I ranked it as number 3 of the biggest errors in the evolution of RPGs.

I don't agree with all of the ones on that list (I quite like Vancian Magic, the Storyteller System, and Alignment), but yeah.

[Mordar]

I have to agree with this. In 3.x, many of the combat options required a feat (or more) to be viable. "If you don't have X feat (which has Y and Z prerequisites), then attempting this opens you to an attack of opportunity" is pretty much a way of saying "Doing this will hurt you."

Well, that's certainly one way to view it...and maybe the dominant way. I believe the intention had always been "if you have X feat you are better at that thing than average people", but the risk-averse view point (in the case of AoO) or optimization viewpoint says "If I am not specially trained to do exactly that thing, I shouldn't do it because I might get hurt, or I am failing to optimize the value of my action".

I think this is both a cause of and a reinforcement of the drive to specialization and "spamming X" as rote character actions. Kind of too bad that you have to go to the opposite extreme (Feng Shui, 7th Sea, etc) to get people to try things other than spamming X (even if x = "cast this, this and this, destroy opponents").

- M

[Khedrac]

I have to agree with this. In 3.x, many of the combat options required a feat (or more) to be viable. "If you don't have X feat (which has Y and Z prerequisites), then attempting this opens you to an attack of opportunity" is pretty much a way of saying "Doing this will hurt you."

It's actually slightly worse that this - for most of them the action is also negated if the attack of opportunity hits (e.g. attempting to grapple without improved grapple/improved grab).

[hamlet]

Well, that's certainly one way to view it...and maybe the dominant way. I believe the intention had always been "if you have X feat you are better at that thing than average people", but the risk-averse view point (in the case of AoO) or optimization viewpoint says "If I am not specially trained to do exactly that thing, I shouldn't do it because I might get hurt, or I am failing to optimize the value of my action".

I think this is both a cause of and a reinforcement of the drive to specialization and "spamming X" as rote character actions. Kind of too bad that you have to go to the opposite extreme (Feng Shui, 7th Sea, etc) to get people to try things other than spamming X (even if x = "cast this, this and this, destroy opponents").

- M

Yeah, except people don't actually think that way. If you find yourself facing a challenge in life, you don't worry about "optimizing the value of your action," you worry about how you're going to overcome the situation.

[Scots Dragon]

It's actually slightly worse that this - for most of them the action is also negated if the attack of opportunity hits (e.g. attempting to grapple without improved grapple/improved grab).

To compound this, AD&D does actually have explicit rules for all of those manoeuvres, albeit not always by the precise same name and sometimes merged or split off to become different manoeuvres. There are also, thanks to the Player's Option books, two versions of each (and in a rare instance, the Player's Option: Combat & Tactics versions are better handled). They do not incur attacks of opportunity.

Similarly, the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide has similar options that do not require feats or special combat styles. The few special combat styles that do exist in this context are treated as a bonus to the roll rather than a penalty.