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Monday, January 11, 2010

Quoteable Gygax

The following is from p. 25 of B2 Keep on the Borderlands by Gary Gygax (emphasis mine) in a section entitled Tips to Players:


Arguing among players will cause delays, attract monsters, and often result in the deaths of some or all of the members.
Wow, talk about a tough campaign! I mean, Gary brought monsters in to get rid of his most argumentative players! Reminds me of that scene from The Gamers movie that took TPK to a new level.

All kidding aside, this is more to illustrate the point of how little difference was made in early publications between the players and the characters in the game. I see this as another point in the argument that Old School games were meant to challenge the players and not their characters. Hence no lengthy tables of skills and feats.

2 comments:

  1. In one session of my Training Dungeon, I made slightly more rolls on the Wandering Monster table than were perhaps justified, just to punish some severe dithering on the part of Junior Grognard. Thereafter, I just had to reach for the d20 and he got the message.

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