When I was a kid we all played guns. We always ended up in a fight. 'I shot you.' 'No you didn't, I got back behind the corner before you shot.'

The genius of Gygax was it stopped these fights. D&D may claim board games as it's ancestors, but really it's about playing guns without everyone fighting. It does this brilliantly. You obviously played with an unimaginative hack of a game master. My campaigns have revolved around investigating morality, sexuality and heroism. My favorite type of adventure to run is a city based mystery with dozens of twists. Gary created the rules that let my friends play imagination with each other.

As a player I once had a character, a bard, who was mortally wounded by a dragon. Before I expired I recited a taunting poem (a special benefit of my bard kit.) We took a snack break and the whole while I worked on what I would say. It went something like this, 'A bite, a claw, am I now to have no breath?' and I staggered towards the dragon. In rage the dragon spent his breath weapon on me, pushing my character ridiculously beyond the point where I could be resurrected. By drawing the breath (dragons can only use there breath weapon 3 times a day and it had already used it twice) I saved my party and they slew the dragon. This was a character I had played for months. I had purchased her a home, drawn up the floor plans, detailed every outfit, every weapon my character owned. And she died. I live a boring life. For that moment I felt what it felt like to be a hero, if only for a moment.

I know I'm a geek.

That's what it's all about, Nacoran.

That is a feeling Sofge will never know.

Well played!

None of what Nacoran said changes Sofge's basic argument about the moral nature of Gygax's game as written. You get no in-game reward for what that bard did: being a hero and sacrificing one's self for the greater good.

In other words, Nacoron's gaming experience was as awesome as it clearly was precisely because it was played contrary to the moral system laid out by the rules of original D&D. The only way this can be chalked up to the difference between a good or a bad DM is if the definition of a "good" DM is one who ignores the killing=reward dynamic that Gygax built into the game.

In my experience, ignoring Gygax's reward system is a prerequisite for a good game of D&D, and this reinforces Sofge's basic argument that the game's experience point system--as designed by Gygax--is a drawback. Despite the recent RPG culture hagiography, Gygax's original game had very little to do with the sort of inspired and sincere role-playing described in Nacoran's anecdote, and more to do with the prepubescent, griefer-style power-gaming still corrupting RPGs today (PWN3D anyone?), a style of game-play which is little more than a semi-literate version of incinerating ants with a magnifying glass.

The tale of Nacoran's bard is inspiring, but it was only made possible by abandoning Gygax for a sense of morality that transcends self-promoting violence. They are two completely incompatable sets of ethics. Nacoran's own imagination and creative conscience deserve the real credit, not Gygax.

From the beginning (and I'm old enough to remember the beginning), Gygax encouraged creativity. His rules were but a framework that DMs were free to use in order to build worlds.

Anybody who played under more than one DM easily understands this. The worst of the worst were the "purist" DMs who did nothing but follow rulebooks. I wholeheartedly agree that they did nothing to encourage players. But a clever DM could have chosen to reward Nacoran's bard:

"The Gods are impressed by your sacrifice and they offer you a quest in order to regain your mortal coil..." Boom, you''ve got another chapter in the saga.

Sure, some purists wouldn't approve, but Gygax's framework allowed all sorts of interpretation.

nelsonleith:

Gygax's original game had very little to do with the sort of inspired and sincere role-playing described in Nacoran's anecdote, and more to do with the prepubescent, griefer-style power-gaming still corrupting RPGs today (PWN3D anyone?), a style of game-play which is little more than a semi-literate version of incinerating ants with a magnifying glass.

From this, it is clear you haven't actually read the Dungeon Master's Guide which was wrtten by Gygax. The DMG makes it explicitly clear, multiple times, that the rules being provided are there to guide you, are not meant to be straightjackets, that the good of the game is always more important than a die roll, and that role-playing is always to be encouraged and rewarded.

If your experience with D&D is that it's all about rules-lawyering over points, then at least one of the following is true:

1. You're a crappy player.
2. You had a crappy DM.

Shall we go for the combo?

Why do you think the DMG goes on and on about keeping things out of the hands of the players? If you look at the suggestions, it would seem to be that Gygax was trying to say that a fighter should be thrilled to have a +1 dagger and a magic-user who actually has more than the two spells he gets at startup should consider himself blessed by the gods. This was to keep the game out of the realms of Munchkin where characters walk around with +12 Hackmasters and every encounter has someone shouting, "I waste him with my crossbow!" within the first second.

By keeping the power out of the hands of the players, you force them to be creative, to think about how to solve problems without using brute force, to talk and interact, to consider new ways of using low-power items.

If you can't see that, if your DM couldn't see that, then don't blame Gygax.

He directly told you not to do that.

That's actually one of the first things in the preamble of every D&D book, ignore the rules you don't like and feel free to add new ones. We always gave about half of our XP out as roleplaying awards. The rules just gave us enough form to our 'game of guns'. When your playing Cowboys and Indians there is no reason not to switch quickly from character to character. Levels and experience points created an incentive system and a set of rules for becoming what you could imagine. You couldn't just say, "My finger is a six-shooter, bang, bang, your dead." That gets boring because real imagination comes out not when you are thinking inside the box or outside the box, but when you are thinking about what kind of box you are in and how you can use it, and how you can get out of it, and (for you deconstructionists) is there really a box there at all?