"Old Geezer" (Mike Morand) è un personaggio noto e caratteristico dei forum di rpg USA. Uno dei giocatori della "vecchissima scuola" (ha giocato sia con Gygax che con Anderson dal 1971 - cioè 3 anni prima della pubblicazione di D&D - e nel mondo di Tekumel con l'autore R. A Baker), caustico e sarcastico contro le degenerazioni moderne dei gdr tipo l'interpretare i personaggi o immedesimarsi...
Nonostante questa visione estremamente Old-school, non è un troll e anzi è apprezzabile la maniera con cui tiene pubblicamente le distanza da certe frange di ottusità (sul rpgsite per esempio non posta più dopo un addio molto polemico)
Per dare l'idea del personaggio, ecco la sua firma su rpg.net:
"Problems with your gaming group/GM/player(s)?
Sit down and have an intelligent, adult discussion with them to achieve a reasonable compromise.
And when that fails, kill them and take their stuff."Perchè lo trovo molto interessante come personaggio? Perchè è quello più attivo in forum e newsgroup (anzi, diciamo pure l'unico attivo) fra i giocatori dell'epoca, e come tale è praticamente l'unico "testimone diretto" a cui fare domande. Non sulla TSR come ditta (con cui non ha mai avuto a che fare, e poi sulla TSR invece di testimoni ce ne sono tantissimi), ma sulla genesi del gioco precedente alla pubblicazione.
In questi giorni ha proposto (probabilmente per pubblicizzare un suo prossimo libro, che apparentemente dovrebbe avere come titolo "'We Made Up Some Shit We Thought Would Be Fun.' - ma visto il tipo, può darsi che sia uno scherzo) un thread di "domande e Risposte" su rpg.net, lo trovate qui:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?633165-SoCito alcune frasi:
- Sull'immedesimazione (Immersion" in inglese)
"I'm not sure. "Immersion" is such a loose word I have come to fear it; some people make it sound like dementia.
When we played, we usually said "My character does this" or "My character does that"."- La lista dell'equipaggiamento "obbligatorio" per infilarsi in un dungeon:
Rope
10 foot pole
Spikes
Hammer
Lantern by preference over torches... if you throw a lantern, it's oil and fire together.
Spare oil.
Holy water.
Garlic.
Wolfsbane.
Holy symbol.- Come si tiravano i personaggi: le caratteristiche in ordine, o scambiandole per fare i personaggi voluti?
3d6 in order, strictly. OD&D does allow for a bit of point swapping, and as you say, stats weren't so critical.- lo spirito di OD&D, e cosa è cambiato con AD&D:
The original game was indeed very much intended to be different for each referee, and that was a deliberate feature.
Based mostly on what I've picked up from here, a major paradigm shift came with AD&D 1st Edition and Gary's insistence that the rules had to stand. Now, D&D convention tournaments had become IMMENSELY popular, and had multiple referees for a single tournament, so I do see the logic of fixed rules... if you have nine judges, they have to run things quite similarly to be fair.
But in this old fart's opinion, things took a turn for the worse when the zeitgeist of the game went from "Anything not forbidden is permitted" to "Anything not permitted is forbidden." - Sulla separazione fra GM e giocatori:
Everybody who played also ran a game. For years, every time somebody played, about two weeks later they had the first level or two of their own dungeon. This strict referee/player divide baffles me still. - La sua isposta tipica alle domande sul bilanciamento o sui GM assassini:
I don't quite understand.
"Take out the PCs" makes no sense. As referee, I have an infinite supply of orcs; if I want to kill the PCs I can kill the PCs.
Remember, this is a "Build the world first" game. If outdoor hex AA23 has 15 orc bandits in their cave lair with one 4th level leader and a 2nd level cleric (shaman), I will sketch out their defenses and their plans. When the PCs encounter them, they encounter them. If I am playing an intelligent creature, that creature is INTELLIGENT. NPCs try to win, just like players.
The game is about exploring a world full of excitement and danger. Danger is...well, dangerous.- Alla domanda "How big were adventuring parties back in the day? Were they just eight PCs, or did everybody have their own little retinue of hirelings, followers and henchmen for more of a platoon size rather than squad?":
"Everybody had a small to medium sized retinue, so that you could adventure alone. Party size was usually six to twelve, tops, so if there were multiple players you would usually bring only yourself or yourself and a top henchman.
A party much over twelve would be suicidally unwieldy. "- Come iniziavano le campagne? ["How did a campaign begin? "You all meet in a bar" type of thing and then straight to the dungeon? And how detailed was the world outside of the dungeon? Just the immediate surrounding environs, or was it more global in scope?"]
"Everybody ready? Okay, we go out to the dungeon."
Most worlds started small and grew over time. - Sull'annosa questione "ma usavano le regole di Chaimal con i d6 o il d20 opzionale di Arneson che poi divenne il metodo standard per D&D?" ["Did the group initially use the "original" IIRC 2d6 based Chainmail combat system, or was it always the "alternate" d20 based combat system?"]
Always the d20. However, even the d20 system assumes you are thoroughly familiar with CHAINMAIL. For instance, morale is discussed, but not what it means. There will be a chapter on this in "We Made Up Some Shit We Thought Would Be Fun." (WMUSSWTWBF) - Alla domanda: "Remind me, did the players normally control their henchmen, narrate their actions on their turns, etc., or was that the referees prerogative? Also, holy hell, but a party of 12 is massive by today's standards! I find 6 to be pushing it these days."
1) Usually yes, unless a PC ordered a henchman to do something extraordinarily dangerous or stupid.
2) Usually 9. Also, remember that we were a close-order infantry squad fighting shoulder to shoulder. Three fighters in front with the center one being a dwarf if possible so the magic users could throw spells over their head. Second rank would be your spell users. Third rank was clerics and fighters as a rear guard.
Vary some depending on exact composition. - Una domanda sulla Creative Agenda.. :-) "To what extent were character decisions driven by tactics and player knowledge as compared to characterization? For example, how would the table react to a player saying "Yeah, it's really weird that there's a treasure chest just standing there and it's probably a trap or a mimic or something, but my guy Grolgnar *is* pretty dumb and we haven't found *any* treasure so far so he's going to walk up to the chest and open it"?"
100% the former. - "What player requests (if any) annoyed EGG the most? Hit locations? Critical hits? Hobbits?"
"Evil" campaigns. Because the people who wanted that thought "evil" meant explicit torture and explicit rape. And it wasn't one or two people; EVERY time Gary got a request or submission involving "evil" PCs that's what you got. As Tim Kask said, "these people are fucking sick." - "Would an entire adventure be a single foray into the dungeon, or would you go back and forth to the city during a single expedition? How long would such an expedition take (one day, one week or just the 15 minutes before the Magic-User's spells ran dry)?"
1) It varied. Usually one trip to the dungeon, but sometimes we'd do more. It was one way to help level up a starting player. GO to the dungeon, go to the first level, break open a door, the 1st level character makes an attack, kill the monster, go back to town, give all the gold to the first level character so they get all the XP and level up.
2) About half a day. The game was about resource management, magic users didn't do the "blow all your spells in the first fight" thing I've seen described. We would have thought that to be exceedingly poor play.- "Also, did M-U's cast a lot of utility spells back then? What would happen if the only M-U frontloaded on combat spells (as they tend to do these days)? Would the referee punish this by throwing a lot of obstacles in the way that would have required utility spells?"
Remember... the world was created first, THEN the characters were created to explore it. The way Gary, Dave, and the rest of us did it, we would set up our dungeons such that you would need a selection of both combat and utility spells. Choosing how to allocate your limited spell slots was part of the fun, as was dealing with not having a certain spell where it would be useful.
The world came first, so changing the world based on player spell selection would have been cheating. It's about the only way for the referee to cheat, in fact. Any ref who changed things on the fly to punish players based on that day's spell selection would have found themselves without any players.
What was there, was there. There was a nest of six trolls on Level 1 of Greyhawk. If you went there with three first level characters, you found six trolls. If you went there with nine 11th level characters, you found six trolls. Changing the world as you seem to be describing above would have been anathema. It is really the only way to cheat as the referee.
- Come sono nati molti mostri di D&D:
Tom Champeny walked in with a bag of critters and started pulling them out. "Hey Look, a Rust Monster. Hey Look, an Owl Bear. Hey look, a Land Shark." He/we named them on the spot. The rust monster was the color of rust. - Sul fatto "strano" che i Vampiri in D&D toccano e non mordono (e in generale sulla descrizione del round)
We considered a "hit" meant the vampire 'put the fangs to you.' With one minute combat rounds, OD&D combat is EXTREMELY abstract. Don't think of it as representing one blow, think of it as "What has happened at the end of a minute." - "How descriptive did combat tend to be? In other words, did the fighter...
1) hit the orc for 4 points of damage, or
2) did he "swing his longsword in a broad arc, crying 'Death to the Goblin King!' , slicing the blade deep into the creature's shoulder for 4 points of damage.""
The former. In fact, the latter STILL annoys the shit out of me. It would be like somebody moving a knight in chess to take a pawn and saying "My knights gallop forward in a cloud of dust and ride down your hapless peasants." And then the EARS, I get the IDEA, get ON with it.
I have my own methods for making combat exciting. One is to be expedient; I can run a one minute combat round in a minute or less. More in my book.
EDIT: We would "quip" once in a while, though. If we rolled a one we might say "The sword drops from my nerveless fingers." If we rolled a twenty and did a lot of damage we might say "I hit him on top of the head so hard his balls explode." But it was a piss take, not serious description. - A domande varie sulle idee dei giocatori importate in OD&D, sulla varietà del gioco, e sulla presenza di Halfling...
Well, OD&D mentions things like allowing players to play intelligent monsters, so yeah. I played a balrog in three different campaigns, starting off as a "young" 1HD balrog in each case.
Vast amounts of the rules are due to player input, including all Tolkien references. Gary hated LotR. Also, it's hobbits, not halflings; halflings came much later.
CHAINMAIL is also full of Tolkienisms.- La risposta sul giocare Balrog provoca altre domande, a cui tisponde:
They were like Balrogs. Just because you're evil doesn't mean you can't cooperate with other creatures. Or do I misunderstand your question?- Alla domanda: "What would be the reaction of the group if the referee didn't declare any such thing? Have you heard of this happening?
Also, how often did TPKs occur in the games at the time?"
I don't know. I never heard of Gary wiping out an entire party with a surprise wandering monster. Also, "the group" was a nebulous concept, since Gary had a pool of some 15 players of whom 3 to 5 would play at once.
"How often?" Again, I have no idea statistically. They happened. The first game I ran at the U of MN in 1973 ended in a TPK against 4 kobolds, of whom 3 were undamaged and one took 3 out of 4 hit points. The players' reaction, after five seconds of silence, was "Let's roll up some new characters and get those little fuckers!" - Infine, alla domanda: "How common (if at all) was PC vs. PC conflict? Did characters who went on to establish baronies and the like ever come to blows?"
Sadly I didn't stick aroud long enough, in 1973 I went to Minneapolis. I would assume the intention was that it would become a "Game of Empires" since Gary was in the "Castle and Crusade Society" and that's what they did.
The first PvP is when Ernie Gygax' MU found a great clerical artifact, the "Orb of Clerics". Tom Champeny had a high level cleric and spent a couple weeks trying to persuade Ernie to sell it. Ernie wouldn't.
So Tom's character got Ernie's character out in the wilderness, killed him, and took the Orb.
Ernie laughed and said "I guess I should have sold it to you" and rolled a new character.
He was 14. (Non ho quotato tutte le risposte, solo quelle (per adesso) più interessanti per me, se le volete tutte (o volete fare altre domande) andate a leggervi il thread.)
E' interessante vedere come veniva giocato, e le radici di molte disfunzionalità successive. Giocavano veramente "alla wargame", descrivendo le azioni in terza persona e senza parlare in character, e con un distacco totale dal personaggio (muore? ne faccio un altro).
L'immagine è quella di un gioco gamista funzionale (anche se per me con un design carente troppo legato nel bene e nel male al giudizio del GM e alla sua voglia di farsi un xxxx così). Però basta pensare a giocatori che inizino a sviluppare immedesimazione per quella miniatura di metallo, con la sua storia e con i png, e BAM, ecco che quello che prima era funzionale si trasforma in fretta nelle storie comunissime di GM assassini, giocatori viziati, prime donne, etc.)
P.S.: se siete interessati ad altri post su Monard, segnalo questa serie di post in un blog:
http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard
