Hi folks I just saw this on Slate . Someone obviously hasn't played D&D seriously. He makes D&D to be something of a first-person shooter video game (ala Doom ) with dice. His implication is that the Experience Point system encourages "hack and slash" over "pure role-playing". Obviously the writer forgot that the DM can assign Experience Points for anything he or she wants. I remember once when I was DMing "Danger at Dunwater", the party ( 1 Ranger, 1 Paladin, 1 Cleric, 1 Wizard, and 1 Rogue) snuck into the Lizardman cave and actually resolved the whole scenario PEACEFULLY ( you know: talk to the non-humans instead of killing them ). They did have two fights ( one group of Giant Lizards at the entrance to the Lizardman complex, and the Dragon that the Lizardmen asked them to kill as a sign of good faith ( sounds like something out of KoTB doesn't it ?? ). Needless to say the Ranger, who initiated the dialogue with the first Lizardman patrol the party encountered, got lots of experience points for successfully completing the adventure. If I remember correctly, the next adventure (scouting a Sahaugin (Sp??) complex) was also accomplished with very little "bloodshed". I even DMed one adventure, the title of which I don't remember, where the objective was to kill nothing at all !! It was sort of a D&D version of Romeo and Juliet. The players later told me that they enjoyed it, but it wasn't the sort of adventure that wanted to do all the time. I will admit that there are a number of things that could be improved in D&D, but the writer totally misses the point of the game: It is what you make it. If you chose to play a "Hack and Slash" game, that's your choice. If on the other hand you chose to play a role-playing, "talk to people to find out what is going on" game" you can still have lots of fun. TRC
Fairly presumptuous. It's curious how he portrays fighting, within the context of D&D, as "violence without pretense," yet as applies to GURPS, it becomes "tak[ing] out ... real-life bitterness in a fictional killing spree," which sounds far more socially acceptable in a clinical psychology sort of way but is no less contemptible from a real-world perspective. Of course, neither 'game' is real-world. It bothers me when people presume to tell me that I have to answer to some higher social standard in the forms of entertainment I choose. :roll:
Well some one sounds bitter. DnD might have its flaws but to say theres nothing more to it than just slaughtering monsters is stupid. GURPS isn't any better, it's just different, GURPS has a lot of the features that I think DnD is lacking or fixes things that piss me off about DnD but the reverse is also true. DnD for all its shit is quite a simple straight forward system.
Thats one angry, messed up dude who managed to completely miss what D&D had to offer. Sad. Exactly where kotB got that plot from: there's even a reference to Dunwater in the dialogue. i had the same experience DMing that module: the players walked up, chatted to the Lizardman guards, went in, met with the Lizardmen etc, no hack and slash at all.
That guy never played D&D (and probably any other rpg). There ARE points for mercy. There ARE points for phobias. Pretty much each thing he mentions, exists in D&D, if you're interested, and look out. With so many books, the game it's the most complex i think (or it has enough rules to adapt what you don't like). MORPGs are popular among teenagers, cos it's easy. Besides, when you have 15-17 years old, there's just place for all that teenage rage and anger and chaos. But i bet that most of older people ( from 20 up) prefer much more pnp games, and find on line games boring precisely cos it's only hack n' slash (that's my case at least). And again, something he said, being easily bashed. He simply and truly doesn't know what he's talking. Just want to take advantage of the recent situation (Gygax death).
How violent a tabletop RPG is depends both on the DM and on the players. It's assumed there will be violent solutions to many problems, but notice how most of the D&D products are are only 5-10% about the combat system. The combat system ("Chainmail") existed BEFORE there was a D&D. If people were only interested in hack and slash, nothing would have sold for the last 30+ years. The guy's right if he's referring to what a lot of kids do with RPG's. But most of us do more than that, because we want more.
The ability to RP "real-life" situations (gab instead of stab) is what originally made my first foray into PnP D&D so wonderful. Hell, it's what got me hooked. I am not really proficient will all the verbal short hand you guys use (AAO, BAB for example) as my exp with D&D is limited. But, not needing the shorthand is what makes this RP genre great. My first experience with a live group of players had our DM giving us more exp for resolving human NPC interfacing without violence. I loved it! And so did my GF cuz she was a wizzy, lol. This boob on Slate has apparently never played D&D.
The writer of the article is obviously a jackass, but he does have some valid points. The bulk of a traditional D&D game is the classic "dungeon crawl," where the players wade through so-called "monsters" room after room, encounter after encounter. I mean, every poster in this forum has wandered into a new hamlet, bee-lined to the closest tavern, and asked the bartender, "Hey, where can I find some adventure." We're not looking for a good game of Parcheesi. We're looking for treasure and lots of it. But I think most players quickly tire of "hack and slash" adventures and start to crave a little nuance in their games. The first edition Dungeon Master's Guide has an example of real-time table-top play where the players wander into the typical dungeon, but there's a NPC who joins the party with every intention of double-crossing the players the first chance he gets. This is classic D&D play: Do you trust the NPC or not? As in real life, time will tell. Roping this post back to the TOEE, when I first played the Village of Hommlet in the early 1980s, I played a neutral halfing thief. After our party cleared out the Moathouse, I hung around Hommlet and pilfered the local farm houses. One evening, one of the farmers caught me in the act, but I was able to rob the homestead anyway by threatening the occupants at knife point. As I was climbing out the window, the husband shot me with a crossbow. This infuriated me, and I slaughtered both the husband and his wife. I didn't just kill them; I mutilated them. To this day, 25 years later, I still regret my actions. I lament "If they only would have let me crawl out of that window, I would have left them alone." At its heart, D&D is a violent game. Player characters are armed with steel and spells, itching to use both. But a good DM balances the game so it doesn't turn into a first-person- shoot-'em-up-and-ask-questions-later affair. I applaud ShiningTed for his rendition of The Keep on the Borderlands. He created encounters where it's to the player's advantage to proceed cautiously and not slaughter everything that moves. Cheers, Ted. You did a damn fine job. A recent novel by RA Salvatore, The Orc King, puts forth a very interesting hypothesis for the D&D gaming community: Can the "civilized" communities of the world (Elves, Humans, Halflings, and Dwarves) live in harmony with Orcs? The prevalent thread throughout Robert E. Howard's Conan yarns was that barbarism was more "humane" than civilization. I don't know who Erik Sofge is, the writer of the Slate article that spawned this thread, but he obviously never played a D&D session with reasonable and intelligent people, who make up the vast majority of the D&D gaming community. And by the way, I love this fucking forum. Krunch just did an in-depth post on which is better, a weapon that does 2d4 or 1d10 damage. Only in a D&D forum, baby. You gotta love it! I prefer 1d4 right in the kidneys...
