What are meaningful choices?

I often go over to the Wizards of the Coast Dungeons and Dragons board. This is not because I have any interest in Fourth Edition, but rather because I've taken somewhat of a liking to seeing people's head explode over the Legends and Lore columns written by Mike Mearls.

The vast majority of contractors to these columns are raving fanboys. They also presume things about Dungeons and Dragons as a brand, as well as past editions, that are quite false. Its often amazing to see how people there can be so wrong about the hobby as a whole and the role of it's flagship brand.

However, something was said that got me steaming.

  "Balance isn't just encounter balance, it's presenting players with a wealth of /meaningful/ choices, class and race might be a starting place, but you need a lot more than that."

The passage above was written by one, Tony_Vargas of the WotC boards. Now, what about this stirs me up and makes me shake my head? Well, there seems to be an implication on what 'meaningful choices' are and what they are not. To say the least, I disagree full heartedly with this implication.

So, what are meaningful choices to Mr. Tony_Vargas? Well, it seems that they are a number of feats, powers, skills and other class mechanics - and only that. I find this a repugnant notion, and one that is antithetical to role playing.

What about in game choices? Is it not a meaningful choice to choose to save the princess or not? Or to believe the begger giving you a rumor rather then throwing it away as a lie? Why must Power A or Power B be necessarily a 'meaningful choice' while others are not?

I agree that race and class are the base of the 'meaningful choices' that you get in Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the idea that more then simply that is needed. However, what those things that are needed is something that I'd dispute.

You see, the beauty of the older editions (0e, 1e, 2e etc) is that they didn't offer too many mechanical choices beyond the basics. The player would make choices based on the present action of the game, not based off of the idea of 'character build' (I shiver at the mention). Should my fighter jump up on the table to get a better vantage point? What if I cut the cord to the chandelier, and have it fall on top of my foes? What if I try to bargain with my enemies (and I don't mean some BS skill roll either)? What if I betray my employer at the last minute, or if I strike and alliance with the orc band?

Conversely, it seems that 'meaningful choices' in later editions boils down to: What feat should I get? What about power? Prestige class/Paragon Path? What mechanics should I use?

Now, I'm not suggesting that the meaningful choices as I see them are impossible to be addressed in modern games. That would be deceptive. However, it would be equally (if not more) deceptive the suggest that the focus of later editions are on such meaningful choices that involve the present action of the game (chess board battle tactics aside) rather then the "build" of a character. (By the way, characters are not built - they are developed - and that is a topic for another post)

Don't believe me? Ok, I'll give you a rundown.
When I speak with my friends who enjoy Fourth Edition about said edition, what are the topics of the conversation? It's about feats, about power combinations and other mechanics. What conversations, oh non-believer, do  you have when discussing 4e with friends? What about the WotC boards? The conversations mostly come down to, once again, mechanics.

I'm not saying mechanics is all that bad of a topic. Hell, mechanics get talked about a bit with older editions as well. However, the overwhelming focus of conversation regarding 3e/4e are on mechanics. This is not so with older editions. 

So, what am I up to?

Well, first of all, my group's main two games have been put on hold for a bit. This is because some of the members have been busy/absent a few weeks in a row. So, to counter act this, I've decided to run The Keep on the Boarder Land, by Gary Gygax.

For those who don't know (and I'm sure all of you do), keep on KotB was a module first produced for the Holmes, and later, the Moldvay basic set around the late 70's and early 80's. Since it's induction, this module has become a classic among gamers.

Now, I've never really run too many modules in the past, although I've wanted to run some here and there. It is partly because of this that I decided to run KotB - being that it is the quintessential 'starter' module.

To accommodate the lack of party members (we only ever managed to get three player's at a time) I've allowed the players to make two characters each - as well as buy off as many henchmen as they could afford. I'm sure a skilled party could make it through the module with fewer members, but that would require a certain skill that my players lack. (This is not to say that my players a 'bad' - they're quite good role players - it's just they are accustomed to later editions of D&D where a role of the dice could replace such skill).

Now, before I go on, I'll need to explain that we are using the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to play. I know that is not the system that is most directly tied to the module (Holmes or Moldvay), but it serves my purpose as I have surplus of player's handbooks - rather than the one booklet. Also, I'm setting my game in Oerth, and placing the keep near the boarder of Iuz - to explain all the evil of the caves.

In any case, the game started off with the six characters making it to the keep, and exploring the area only a little (to my frustration) before going off towards the caves. They made their way to area D, and went to a total of but a few rooms (room 17) and proceeded to put the goblins to sleep via the spell, sleep.

On the way back to the keep, the party encountered a bear on the road, and hid from it. When it came closer, the other mage in the party (there were two) decided to jump out of the bushes and also use his sleep spell. Unfortunately for him, the bear was immune as it's HD was too high. The bear proceeded to attack him, roll an 18, and get the mage into a hug. This killed him almost instantly.

The others in the party flew from the encounter back towards the keep.

More has happened since then, but I think I'll save it for another post.

What is a "Neo-Grognard" anyway?

So, for my second post, I'd like to explain a bit about the idea of a Neo-Grognard.

Essentially, in the most simple of terms, it means someone who started out with newer or more recent versions of RPG games, namely Dungeons and Dragons. For me, I started out with third edition (3.0 to be exact), and moved on all the way through a significant portion of the fourth edition.

However, after a while of DMing 4th edition, I became increasingly less satisfied with the game as a whole. Now, I don't mean to say that 4th edition is necessarily a bad game. It just happened to be not of my taste. There was too much unneeded symmetry between classes, the mechanics babied the PCs too much for my taste, and some of the mechanics just seemed to lack any sense beyond the need to "balance" things.

So, what did I do? Well, I decided I'd get a the roots of my Dungeons and Dragons obsession and see where the game came from. The main spark from this was through reading online blogs such as Grognardia and the forums of Dragonsfoot.

So, slowly in the early summer of 2009, I started ordering via Amazon and EBay the core books for both the first and second editions of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. After reading through the core books, and further blogs and forums, my taste for the game grew. As this happened my collection expanded much farther then my original intentions called for, until I had a regular stock pile of game supplies. Eventually I would posses not only a large amount of resources for the AD&D editions, but also content from more TSR editions. I currently have access to play every notable version of Dungeons and Dragons published under TSR. This includes OD&D (I got this and Greyhawk off of EBay for just over $50!), Holmes basic, B/X, Mentzer all the way up to Masters, Rules Cyclopedia, and both editions of AD&D. (I don't count many of the challenger sets in the 90's as being notable as they are more or less derivative of the RC)

To this day, I currently run a more than year long campaign with Second Edition AD&D - as well as occasionally dipping into the first edition and OD&D, and must say I am quite pleased.