Ecco le cose che ritengo personalmente più interessanti nei commenti: sono tutti post di Luke Crane (e sono quasi tutti quelli che ha postato, a parte qualche risposta breve), perchè è l'unico che ha dato esplicitamente il permesso, ma anche perchè finora mi sembrano le cose di gran lunga più interessanti del thread (altri commenti di altri utenti SEMBRANO informati ma sono pieni di errori storici) e sono comprensibilissimi anche se letti da soli.
Mi sono permesso di accentuale alcune parti (quelle con cui concordo, ovvio). I post originali non presentano NESSUNA sottolineatura, grassetto o corsivo. Sono tutti miei:
----------cut and paste, da qui in poi è roba scritta da Luke Crane:----------------Responses by person (This should get fun):
+Tommaso Galmacci Are you speaking about modules and boxed sets from the 80s? If so, I disagree with you about the nature of the involution. There were good modules and bad modules, but modules on the whole were beneficial. +Thor Olavsrud believes they were responsible for spreading the culture. They provide a little piece of shared experience that gamers from Italy and gamers from the US can compare. For me (and here is where I think we agree), the involution rapidly begins as they try to make D&D do more and more.
Expert sense strains credibility. Companion, Master and Immortal are a series of poorly implemented ideas. But to say it began there isn't true either. It truly begins in 1978 with the publication of the Player's Handbook. Here is where Gygax exercises his true vision. And his vision is not the same as that of Moldvay. Moldvay indicates that there should be no "hopeless" characters. Gygax states straight away that the characters must be heroes, and proceeds to change the character creation math: skewing all stats to 13 or higher. To me, this is a signal that the designer was at odds with his design. Rather than recognizing the good in the original design (and by good I mean "elegant probabilities"), he mucks about with the math and thus sets generations of gamers down a muddled path.
+Chris Carpenter I have a diagram too and it doesn't look like Tommaso's. I'm trying to upload it now.
[Edit: il diagramma è qui, finchè non viene cancellato da Google]+Patrick Marchiodi Yes. I expect you to translate all of the comments! (Just kidding).
And my comments about the game are very general. I didn't expect this to be a vindication of D&D. Only that my group discovered this old game, played it as written and found it profoundly enjoyable. I could properly review the game, I suppose and break it down by segment.
For everyone who is reading this essay and taking away the idea that D&D is fun and easy, let me disabuse you. This game is hard. It demands focus and discipline beyond even what Burning Wheel asks of you. It is unflinchingly deadly. Between six players, we lost 13 characters in 12 sessions. And that doesn't include archers, men-at-arms and torch-bearers. Such a death toll is unheard of in contemporary games. My girlfriend plays 4e. In 12 months, not a single character has died. These are two different games. And this game does not cater to our modern sensibilities. And that is why we bowed our heads to it. It seemed deceptively simple, and almost friendly. But truly it is a harsh master, laying the lash across our backs as we map, call, fail our saves and get swarmed and killed by kobolds.
---------------- commenti successivi-------------+Tommaso Galmacci I can't speak to inspiration or the talent of the author's at TSR in the late 80s and early 90s. Planescape, Dark Sun and Forgotten Realms all seem rather beloved.
I can agree that the tone of the game changed. It became more character focused, more "heroic." This is reflected in the rules, the art and the culture. Moldvay does speak to the idea that your characters should be heroes, but he does so with a light touch. And, once we played the game, we saw that if we were to make these characters heroes, it would be by deed and accomplishment, not due to some inborn nature. The two longest surviving characters have the worst stat blocks. Their players are inordinately proud of these characters. Their deficiencies give them great personality and flavor; they certainly don't detract. Unfortunately, the game rapidly moves away from such storied heroes. As I mentioned, it begins in 1978 with Gygax's PHB and it rapidly progresses outward from there into the Unearthed Arcana and onward.
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For anyone interested in further reading about my experiences with Moldvay D&D, you can read these two threads on Story Games:
http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=15909http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=16050