Core Activites: D&D, the Third and One Half Edition

I'm skipping around a bit, since I thought I'd tackle the two editions of D&D that I've played before I risk the rest of the versions that I'm familiar with mostly by hearsay. More importantly, there are more differences, and more significant differences, between 3rd edition (and its identical for our purposes revision) and its predecessors than between any of the older games. Best to get the broad strokes laid out before diving into minutiae.

Not that the differences between the game I started with and the older versions I'm just now discovering are staggering. It's still got the same basic core activity of every edition of D&D -- kill things, take their stuff, level up. How you get XP is a little different, loot is a little different, and what you get when you level up is quite different, but the outlines remain the same.

The experience system suffers mostly stylistic changes. I'm not well versed enough in the lore of AD&D to know if the business about "overcoming challenges rather than killing monsters" is unique to 3rd Edition, but even if so there's not as big of a difference as you might think. The book does suggest "XP for achieving story goals" and "XP by fiat" as options, and there's some talk in the challenge rating system about adjusting those ratings to take into account the difficulty of the circumstances, but CRs, and the accompanying XP, remain mainly attached to monsters.

Loot -- particularly of the magic variety -- contains some more significant differences. The CR system assumes that the PCs have a certain amount of magical equipment at each level, and magic items can, in a normal campaign, be purchased freely. There's no mention of XP for treasure since gold is now it's own reward, effectively becoming a point buy character generation system tacked on to the existing level based one.

The changes to treasure only foreshadow the really big innovation of third edition: powers. I don't use that word in the 4e sense (though that is where they end up) but rather just as a general term for all the mechanical stuff that PCs in third edition get. Spells, feats, class abilities, skills -- not to mention all the strange new subsystems introduced in books like Magic of Incarnum, Book of Nine Swords, and the Psionics Handbook (and its Expanded descendant).

In many ways, the proliferation of powers is a good fit for the core activity of D&D. It's an addition that most of the video games based on the game have made, and it grows naturally out of spells, and special ability based classes like the monk. It adds a new angle to play -- the character build -- that provides a good "away from the table" activity for players. But mostly it just means that everyone gets a decision or two when they level up, strengthening that particular motivation, and the core activity as a whole.

But it does tend to shift the focus. The proliferation of powers, and associated uniqueness of each character and difficulty in creating new ones, naturally leads to a greater focus on the characters and away from the campaign that contains them. (I suspect that the changes to third edition reflected a pre-existing shift in play style rather than forcing a new one on everyone, but it does have an effect on new players picking up the game.)

Even a dungeon crawl--heck, even if you're using the same dungeon--in third edition will differ significantly from a dungeon crawl in OD&D, due to the changes in the kill/loot/XP/level cycle and to all the little peripheral adjustments in third edition. One game will be about conquering, or being conquered by, the dungeon, and the other will be about the characters doing the conquering. Just because systems share a core activity doesn't mean the games you run with that system will be the same.

Core Activities: D&D, the Editionless Edition

Often known as OD&D, but on the tin it's just D&D, no number, no "Advanced," no hint of any other game that was or will be. This isn't a game I've played, and indeed my knowledge of it is based mostly on Swords & Wizardry and hearsay. But even that gives me enough to know that this game is different in many ways from its descendants, and it has its own variation on the basic D&D core activity.

In OD&D, there's none of this "you get XP for challenges" nonsense. You can get it from killing monsters, though they're usually not worth the trouble, even if your DM includes bonus XP for special powers instead of basing it exclusively off hit dice. Instead, the main source of XP is treasure.

Thus, the dungeon. Even 4th Edition gives a few nods to that classic adventure location, since it provides a convenient source of clearly defined areas full of interesting terrain, but OD&D lives it. If the standard set up is to get XP for "overcoming challenges," or even just fighting monsters, there are plenty of other places to get it. But the dungeon, as traditionally defined, is just about the best place anywhere to find a lot of treasure. (Unless you're running an Ocean's Eleven style palace heist game, which could be fun. Make it a single race party and call it "Ocean's Elves" for maximum player irritation.)

Leveling also provides a slightly different reward than in the more recent versions of the game. True, wizards and clerics get spells, but not as many or as often, and fighters don't get any powers except from magic items, which are in turn much less common. (Monty Haul campaigns notwithstanding.) In the style the game is intended to be played, player cleverness does what modern games do with skills and feats, and the game tends to stay more down to earth. What leveling up does provide is a measure of survivability. A few more hit points, a slightly better chance to hit, and now your character can stand toe to toe with a goblin for more than a round.

But even without getting a whole lot in the way of neat powers, OD&D is still fun. It spawned a hobby, and is still played to this day. This is largely because the activities involved with gathering XP -- outwitting traps, solving puzzles, fighting monsters -- are fun in and of themselves. Later editions shifted XP a little more away from "scorecard" and a little more towards "currency for cool things," but even they depend on the fact that getting that XP is fun.

Core Activities: D&D

Core activities, like many things in RPG, are about motivation. What do players want, and how do they get it? A good core activity helps a GM harness what players want to create situations that are interesting in play.

Dungeons & Dragons has a very good core activity. Players, like a lot of people, like power. They like being able to do cool things and have control over their world, or in this case, the game world. D&D has power in spades, in discrete, easy to use packages -- spells, class abilities, magic items, and in later editions feats -- and a direct, simple path to it. Collect XP, level up.

It gives the PCs a reason to go out and do things. Whether its rumors of a dungeon filled with peril or a glimpse of some guy getting mugged in an alleyway, XP gives extra bite to any plot hook. It also makes it easier for PCs with very different motivations to get along. The guy who's out for revenge against his father's killer and the guy who mostly just wants to get rich are both willing to go along with the do-gooder's latest crusade, because there'll at least be a level in it for them, and maybe a neat magic item. Whether leveling up is an end in itself or something that will help them achieve other goals, XP gives everyone something in common.

Now, each edition has a slightly different take on how you get XP and exactly what those powers do, and I'm going to work out some of those details in later posts, but that's the idea at the heart of them all. It's a major part of why the game has kept going for so long. And thanks to computer games, it's an idea that will likely outlive D&D itself. Just another debt we owe to 1974.

Core Activities: Introduction

I've been thinking a lot lately about what Mike Mearls calls "core stories," and what Joseph at Greyhawk Grognard has called "campaign tentpoles." Not that they're nearly the same concept, but they both contain the kernel of the same basic concept. Mearls applies it mostly to settings, and Joseph to campaigns -- and a particular kind of campaign at that -- but they both posit that successful game has some kind of repeatable, foundational activity to it, that GMs can vary or diverge from as they please, but that still remains, a touchstone for the campaign no matter how crazy things get.

Although Mearls focuses on the setting elements involved, it's as much mechanical as it is story or setting based, which is why I'm using the term "core activities." D&D's core activities include the "leave civilization, kill things, and take their stuff" elements that he identifies as the core story, but they also include the mechanical tidbits involved in that process -- gaining XP, leveling up, and using new powers and magic items. If you took the core story he identified and ran the game using, say, GURPS, it wouldn't be the same game. While you do gain XP in GURPS, "leveling up" is very different. Such a game could certainly be run, but you'd have to deal with the fact that a GURPS character has much less intrinsic motivation to descend into a dungeon, fight monsters, and find treasure than the average D&D character.

A good core activity makes it much easier to pick up and run a game, and it makes it easier to pick up and run. Pretty much anyone can pick up some D&D books and run a game. Not necessarily a good game, but I know a lot of folks can attest to how much fun even a simple dungeon can be if its new and different from anything they've ever done before. A more experienced DM doesn't need to lean on the core activities as much, if they have some cool new idea they want to try out, but for a long running game its nice to have something fun and familiar for when everyone needs a breather.

Having been inspired by the excellent Storytelling Engines series at Fraggmented, I'm going to take a shot at examining some different core activities, starting with D&D (and its derivitives) and working my way through the rest of the games on my shelf. I'll try to figure out what the major elements of the core activities of each are, what works and what doesn't. In particular, I'm going to try to examine the mechanical aspects of these activities, and how they interact with setting and other social or conventional aspects of play, since that's what got me interested in the topic in the first place.