Just a quick post today, as I have a lot going on that isn't Dungeon-related and not especially Fantastic. Not bad, just not Fantastic.
- So, James has been blogging at a ferocious pace over on Grognardia. Maybe he had a bunch of queued posts and then just started hitting Publish on them? I don't know. I missed a couple and had to go back and read them since they've coming many posts a day. Here are a few that might be of special interest:
Interview with Jeff Grubb (Part I)
Interview with Jeff Grubb (Part II)
Retrospective: Dwarven Glory
- Character Deaths in the blogs this week:
Metropolis: The Eagle is Down
and
Dragon Heresy: Fatality
The first shows the importance of multiple characters per player in a modern game with guns and no cinematic re-dos (Meta-traits like Luck or supernatural abilities.) The dice just have to hate you once to end a long career of adventuring.
The second, though, reminds of something I learned while teaching. My observation was that kids have especially keen senses of "fairness" and exaggerated senses of justice . . . that don't match adult ones. In Doug's post, 3 PCs stumbled into 4 difficult opponents. Despite sub-optimal tactics, they manage to kill 3 and chase off 1 . . . but one PC died in the process. Yet at least one player felt it was unfair. Is it? Mistakes were made and paid for, but even so they won a victory. At a cost they didn't want to pay, but sometimes you can't un-take a risk ("Oops, too tough, close the door and leave.") And I bet from the enemy perspective, losing 3/4s of their number permanently to inflict 1 casualty on an intruder is a disaster. The victory may have been Pyrrhic, but even Pyrrhus's foes would have taken his victories over their losses in those battles. It's better to win with unsupportable casualties than lose with unsupportable casualties, if said casualties can't be avoided.
Still, no one really loves losing their paper man.
- Beating Rogue straight-up is worth a blog mention at the very least. I never even came close. I beat Larn a number of times, but never Rogue. And I never got into NetHack.
You can play Larn online but I miss having it on my PC. I'll go download that if I can . . .
Speaking of permadeath . . .
- Darkest Dungeon is 75% off again.
Re: fairness, I'm not sure that this is a factor of age so much as one of changing values.
ReplyDeleteI remember when my kids started going to school, how surprised I was with how mouthy the kids were with everyone and anyone. The reason it surprised me was that when I grew up, if I had beaked off to people like that, there would have been an expectation that it carried a risk of being roughed up or receiving a minor beating. Likely disproportionate to the actual amount of disrespect. I didn’t grow up in a rough, neighbourhood, it was upper middle class, but the expectation was still there.
I think a couple of generations ago there was a more relaxed attitude regarding casual violence involving children; and consequently less of an expectation on the part of children that life was “fair”. I remember as a child it was pretty apparent that life was exceedingly unfair. Nowadays parents are much more likely to advocate for their kids, and general violence and violent bullying are not tolerated as much, so kids have come to expect fairness, at least from adults.
Not sure they are better off with the sort of pernicious cyber-bullying and lateral violence that has replaced actual violence among their peers, but I think that has a different emotional impact and doesn’t change the expectation that life *should* be fair.
Personally, I don't think this is a change in how kids feel so much as the consequences of saying how they feel and their expectations of adult responses. If a different generation could expect violence and lack of adult appreciation for their point, they don't necessarily have different values, just learn different lessons about speaking up. I think the examples you give actually back that up, not that kids weren't as concerned about fairness and justice in earlier generations. Or that, as I said in the post, this sense of fairness and justice doesn't match adult ones.
DeleteWell, in "fairness" to my nephew, what I thought was a challenging but manageable encounter was rated "deadly" by the various encounter generators for 5e...and Dragon Heresy tends to be more GURPSy in how swingy winning/losing are.
DeleteThat being said, nephew did realize that had he slowed down to Aim/Evaluate with his holy water bombs, it would have made a radical difference in the outcome.
Addionally, they are one fighter and two wizards, and one of the wizards is played by a young lad who really doesn't pay attention. Has lost his character sheet twice, forgets his dice so I have keep track of his stuff for him, etc. I emailed his dad and said "enough" and told him (nicely) that I expected him to be prepared next time.
Last: they are in dire need of a cleric. Especially for an understrength party of three, they need the buff of both Turning and Healing. The dungeon they're in is very undead-heavy on this level, and not having those abilities hurts both staying power and "fairness," since I suspect that encounters are balanced in 5e (and as a result in dragon heresy) with a tacit assumption that a cleric is available.
The lad who doesn't pay attention reminds me of Crogar's player earlier on. We cut him some slack because of his age . . . but not a lot. The person who helps him the most but cuts him the least slack? His dad. So he's steadily become a better and better player as he knows the deal - pay attention, know your rolls, do your own math, and make your own decisions.
DeleteI feel bad for him because so many times he's had characters paralyzed, knocked out, and otherwise marginalized from combat when it's his favorite part . . . but I inflict what the dice say. He's stuck with it and through my "hard mode" play style, and is a net positive to sessions.
"So now we have an idea of what a Bohemian Ear Spoon looked like. I regret nothing." Great quote from Jeff Grubb.
ReplyDeleteYes. And it was very useful, for sure.
DeleteSadly I think that AD&D would have been a little better and a lot more comprehensible with 3-4 different polearms, like GURPS later did. And it would have stopped people from taking a Lucerne Hammer on their clerics because it's a hammer, right? It says "hammer" on their allowable weapons list.