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Xenich's War for Rules and Realism in D&D

Old Hans

Arcane
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
1,443
From what I remember of Rob Kuntz talking about his games with Gygax, it was always more about logical thinking and describing your actions. You wouldn't roll on some chart to check for traps, you would go into careful, minute detail about how you would accomplish that. Then youd spend 30 minuites checking everything with the 10' pole
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,824
From what I remember of Rob Kuntz talking about his games with Gygax, it was always more about logical thinking and describing your actions. You wouldn't roll on some chart to check for traps, you would go into careful, minute detail about how you would accomplish that. Then youd spend 30 minuites checking everything with the 10' pole
Good times.
 

TigerKnee

Arcane
Joined
Feb 24, 2012
Messages
1,920
Man, they really didn't need to create heavily dramatized fiction like Mazes & Monsters and Dark Dungeons to show off the "dangers" of playing D&D.

The only thing they had to do was to show people this forum thread.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,999
Location
Platypus Planet
Rules also allow you to jump 30 feet if you have enough ranks, or to pick locks as a free action, this is what happens when rules and numbers take over. Also D&D has no "setting", its a fucking system. The settings designed for it arent all that logical, its mostly contrivances, but at the very least they are coherent. Go ahead and tell me FR is a logical place, or ravenloft, or greyhawk.
Sure, rules are there to emulate reality, but there are plenty of compromises, and its very far from realistic, starting from HP and going all the way up to the higher abstrations concepts of the system.

In Ravenlofts defence it's not supposed to be logical. The whole setting is about feeling disjointend and weirdly disconnected from reality. Kafka-esque.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,824
In Ravenlofts defence it's not supposed to be logical. The whole setting is about feeling disjointend and weirdly disconnected from reality. Kafka-esque.
Sure, but it works so well because the system makes it possible to handwave a lot.
 

nikolokolus

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2013
Messages
4,090
If realism is your thing, fine. Awesome. Knock yourself out. But Jesus H. Christ, pick fucking GURPS, or BRP, or anything but fucking AD&D as your example of a realistic system.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,982
I recall reading somewhere a lengthy blog or something showing that 3rd edition dnd was actually quite realistic as far as humans go up until level 6 or so. Level 5 professional characters were consistently at peak human performance across all sorts of skills if they minmax. Beyond that characters become superhuman.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
I said dungeon masters guide. I was talking about things like terminal velocity and other detailed mechanics on physics and reality to which are brought to the game. Now if someone didn't DM or wasn't heavily interested in AD&D, it is possible they never saw this stuff as it is for the DMs eyes for the most part, but it does establish the point I made.

As for the Monsters Manual, they got silly because they tried to apply quantity over quality (one of the reasons TSR folded by the way was their over loading the market with so much material in such a short amount of time that they were competing with themselves).

Hmm so the rotational axis of Faerun is.. Roll for weather patterns.. and gravitational pull of the tides from selunes ass.. and.. OH WAIT.. We are under attack by a pack of Horse Spiders!!!

:nocountryforshitposters:


3621762946_e6e7379aa3.jpg
That is clearly a Spider-horse, not a Horse-spider.
 

Whimper

Educated
Joined
Dec 11, 2019
Messages
75
I said dungeon masters guide. I was talking about things like terminal velocity and other detailed mechanics on physics and reality to which are brought to the game. Now if someone didn't DM or wasn't heavily interested in AD&D, it is possible they never saw this stuff as it is for the DMs eyes for the most part, but it does establish the point I made.

As for the Monsters Manual, they got silly because they tried to apply quantity over quality (one of the reasons TSR folded by the way was their over loading the market with so much material in such a short amount of time that they were competing with themselves).

Hmm so the rotational axis of Faerun is.. Roll for weather patterns.. and gravitational pull of the tides from selunes ass.. and.. OH WAIT.. We are under attack by a pack of Horse Spiders!!!

:nocountryforshitposters:


3621762946_e6e7379aa3.jpg
That is clearly a Spider-horse, not a Horse-spider.
Is it a spider horse though, couldn't it be a tick horse or even a mite horse? In the background appears to be some poorly laid paving, though I suppose it might be web...
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,287


Wow!

HOLY CRAP I need to throw this at my players on my next session !!! They will probably groan and say I make weird stuff up for the sake of griefing them but NO I HAVE THIS badly cropped image as proof , man it will be so good :D
Old DnD had a bunch of incredibly weird stuff. The Spider Horse and the Sea Lion are merely the two more (in)famous ones. The Sea Lion, incidentally, survived to at least 3.5 as the Sea Cat.

latest
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,758
Not to mention the Flumph, which was introduced in the 1981 Fiend Folio and later reappeared in 2nd edition AD&D with 1995's Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume 2:
DD%20MC%20Annual2%20Flumph.png
 

Brujoloco

Educated
Joined
Jan 6, 2018
Messages
72
Location
Venezuela
Man I love these weird monsters ... they are so much fun, specially for my jaded vet players. The most fun they had was when I made impromptu goblin cannibal clowns torsos on the spot on a random encounter, they love weird stuff, I think its because they enjoyed Gamma World mutants so much haha.
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
Patron
Developer
Joined
Aug 27, 2015
Messages
2,994
Location
Madrid
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Many weird critters in the old modules. This one from UK4 (When a Star Falls) is pretty original:

upload_2021-3-14_12-21-55.png
 

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