Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Falconer wrote:Sorry, but this is ridiculous. You can’t name any one thing that makes it suddenly “not AD&D”. Early on, someone mentioned the four classes. Well, guess what? If you took out the Thief but left the rest of the game 99% BTB, is it “not AD&D”? (Anyway, what’s the difference between a party that just doesn’t happen to have a Thief as opposed to a campaign where the DM has outlawed the class?) This whole debate on initiative is the same thing. You’re not going to find any criteria that everyone here will all agree on, so what’s the point? If the AD&D books are your reference (or arguably OSRIC) to some degree, then it’s AD&D. I mean, unless it’s ridiculous and you really on purpose change 75% of the rules. If you’ve got a house rules document of a modest page count, besides which house rules it’s BTB, then that is fine.

Well, I think even you would eventually say, thats not 1E. Its just a matter of how far off the ranch you have to go before you don't recognize it as 1E and its not experianced as 1E, which is a personal opinion thing I suppose. I agree though, its probably a combination.

I'm the most thief-hating ornery bastich but I don't leave them out. However if someone wants to play a "bard" then we have a fundamental disagreement on what constitutes the aesthetics of what I want to play.

"Well, Gene, the troubadour was ever present in historical Eur--..."

Gimme dat fucking lute, you mood killin' prick...

KABONGGG!!!



Seriously, this angle is chief. It isn't about leaving or adding but what the heck does it taste like? Adding in the right flavor is great and leaving in the right flavor is great (psionics, bard class, illusionists, monks, druids, rangers, ac adj, etc). D&D3 book has the spectre of CHAINMAIL right over its head. Sure you can play it straight out but isn't that really Basic in feel?

geneweigel wrote:I'm the most thief-hating ornery bastich but I don't leave them out.

That's how I feel about it, too. I'm not an admirer of the Thief class, but I wouldn't forbid a player from playing a Thief PC if he really, really wanted to.

(Seems like I read Rob Kuntz saying that he couldn't remember any Thief PCs being played in Gary's Greyhawk game, although I may be misremembering that. Anyone know, offhand?)

Philotomy Jurament wrote: (Seems like I read Rob Kuntz saying that he couldn't remember any Thief PCs being played in Gary's Greyhawk game, although I may be misremembering that. Anyone know, offhand?)

Gygax had this to say about the thief:

Col_Pladoh wrote: The thief is a strong archetype in fantasy and adventure stories in general. The main drawback to having one in the party was...theft! Otherwise, we always appreciated a thief PC being able to scout ahead, check for and remove traps, pick locks, climb up where the rest of the PCs couldn't reach easily, and even pop out of shadows to strike a dangerous opponent for added damage.

As encounters became more complex and dangerous, the party's thief became a lot more in demand. Just being able to have a member go ahead, see what was awaiting, and return to warn the other PCs was often the difference between success and failure.

Thief characters that prospered understood that their purloining had to be kept to a reasonably modest "extra share," or else the other PC would grab them, turn them upside down, and shake them Of course when I was DMing I did my best to encourage thieves to be greedy, so as to give the party problems from within, that seeming logical when they had a sneaky stealer of wealth along.

When I played a multi-classed demi-human with that ability I made sure to keep on the good side of the non-thief PCs too.

Assuming that is accurate, it seems unlikely that there were no thief player characters exploring Castle Greyhawk.

T. Foster wrote: I suppose the direction I've been approaching the topic from, and think is a more interesting and fruitful topic of discussion, is not the theoretical but the practical -- what would make me as a player not accept a game as AD&D (or at least think of it as "variant AD&D") even if that's what the GM called it. And that's the list I came up with (though in light of Falconer's last post I'll modify the inclusion of the class and race descriptions slightly -- one or more of the classes and/or races in the PH can be absent, but if they are present they need to function pretty much as described in the PH -- "you can't play a cleric in this game because this world is trapped in a pocket-dimension where communication with the gods is impossible" = still AD&D; "here's our version of the cleric class that replaces the spell lists with various ritual incantations and sacrifices that have to be performed at certain places and times and with certain tools that you will quest for" = not-AD&D).

I guess part of it from my point of view as a player is that I will pretty much go along with anything that the game master wants to do, and not worry too hard about stuff that does not aesthetically fit my preferences, but part of that is because I only really game with my friends. So, when it comes to identifying something specifically as "first edition" as opposed to "AD&D" I have pretty narrow criteria, as I expect we will be trying to play as close to the book as we can manage. Gene makes a good point about the "feel" of the game, but I reckon that has more to do with the adventure, paraphernalia and players than it has with much of the specific structure of the system. I imagine we could play B/X and still more or less have the "feel" of AD&D (though that is admittedly an untested off-hand proposition)!

Interesting. (FWIW, I like the thief as an archetype, it's just the implementation of the class that I'm not as keen on.)

Edit: Also, I'm sure there were NPC thieves and probably some thief multi-class PCs as well. What about single classed Thieves as PCs?

I think this thread (started by Gene, oddly enough) must have been what I was thinking of.

Rob Kuntz wrote:Most of the Greyhawk/Kalibruhn PCs were established before the release of Supplment 1, Greyhawk. Even with the redoing of new PCs for the new dungeon (second Greyhawk dungeon which is being redone as CZ) not many of the LG players attempted thiefs, no doubt out of familiarity for their prior characters. Lots of magic users, fighters and clerics; Terry Kuntz tried the Paladin (short lived) and of course the monk.

As noted by Gary in the "Colonel's Corner," he doesn't recall a thief PC either, and I am guessing it is for the very same reasons I do not recall one (note DCAS, I did not say "remember" this time).

I do believe that Luke Gygax played a multi-class PC which included a thief, but EGG would be better prompted for that; and that would have occured later in the history of the GH dungeon/campaign.

RJK

Part of why I don't run AD&D these days is because I can't stand the thief class. Never did like it or see much point in having one.

ETA: I should elaborate...every game in which I have played in the last 15 years or so that had a thief PC (usually multiples) went down the same way: everyone (players) sits around bored while the thief sneaks around doing stuff. Eventually, something might happen. Maybe. If the thief doesn't steal everything first.

I'm currently in a game with 5 hyper-active thieves. Oy! We're doing very little but waiting on them. I have no doubt there will be no treasure for my cleric at the end of the dungeon crawl.

I love the thief class, and can't imagine the game without a couple guys scrambling up a demon idol, trying to pry the gems out of it's eyes while the fighters and wizards debate what is on the map below . . .

- Wheggi

Philotomy Jurament wrote: Interesting. (FWIW, I like the thief as an archetype, it's just the implementation of the class that I'm not as keen on.)

I have similar misgivings, but for the most part I find the class okay. The biggest tweak I have made is to dump discrete thief abilities in favour of a general "thieving ability" score as an analogue to "fighting ability", which is basically the level of the thief, and let the player try whatever he thinks is most thief-like with that as a guide to setting a probability of success. I give them slightly better combat abilities as well (instead of 2 points every 4 levels, 1 point every 2), and rarely worry about weapon restrictions.

Philotomy Jurament wrote: Edit: Also, I'm sure there were NPC thieves and probably some thief multi-class PCs as well. What about single classed Thieves as PCs?

I think this thread (started by Gene, oddly enough) must have been what I was thinking of.

Enticing; I could not find the post Kuntz was referring to on a cursory search in the "Colonel's Corner", but if anybody else turns it up I would like to read it. I know Gygax has mentioned elsewhere about the literary sources on which he based the thief...

Col_Pladoh wrote: The thief was based on Jack of Shadows (Zelazny) and Cugel (Vance) with a touch of REH's Conan, rather than solely on the Gray Mouser. Mouser was too good a swordsman to serve as the pure model.

...but I cannot think of any thief characters from his campaign off-hand, though maybe the Rogue's Gallery would shed some light on the subject (interesting comment on his perception of the reaction of gamers to Swords & Spells in that post as well, by-the-by).

Flambeaux wrote: Part of why I don't run AD&D these days is because I can't stand the thief class. Never did like it or see much point in having one.

ETA: I should elaborate...every game in which I have played in the last 15 years or so that had a thief PC (usually multiples) went down the same way: everyone (players) sits around bored while the thief sneaks around doing stuff. Eventually, something might happen. Maybe. If the thief doesn't steal everything first.

I'm currently in a game with 5 hyper-active thieves. Oy! We're doing very little but waiting on them. I have no doubt there will be no treasure for my cleric at the end of the dungeon crawl.

Ha, ha. Like Wheggi, I love the thief class, but I sympathise with what you are saying. It probably depends on how sick you are of triggering traps and being surprised by monsters, I suppose. Letting them run off and essentially having their own adventure sounds like very little fun at all.

Wheggi wrote:I love the thief class, and can't imagine the game without a couple guys scrambling up a demon idol, trying to pry the gems out of it's eyes while the fighters and wizards debate what is on the map below . . .

I agree on the thief concept/archetype. In fact, I think the thief as an archetype has better "source literature/inspiration" support than the cleric. I'm just uncertain on the Thief class being a good implementation of that concept.

For better or worse, though, the D&D-style Thief class has become an iconic archetype in its own right (much like the D&D Ranger, which I have some similar misgivings about as a character class).

Matthew wrote:I have similar misgivings, but for the most part I find the class okay.

My stance on the Thief has softened, over time. I still have some issues with it, but I agree that they're easily worked around, even using the by-the-book Thief.

Addendum: Rogue's Gallery mentions that Greg Fleming played a halfling thief character called Gormadoc, and that Al Hammack played a human assassin called Lassiviren the Dark. Not popular class choices by a long stretch, even in that questionable resource. However...

Col_Pladoh wrote: Whoa! Recalling many details from late 1974 on ain't likely. My campaign players were the testers of all the new ideas, so the thief and assassin were played by me as NPCs in the middle of the year, 1974, as I began to compile material for a supplement to the D&D game. The thief was immediately popular, so quite a number were played before GREYHAWK hit in 1975. One or two assassin PCs were played also, but the party was always charry about them. Minor pilfering of party treasure was tolerated, but having a PC offed by an assassin was most annoying. That happened once, maybe twice, with the offending PC then leaving the game, the player returning as a different character.

thedungeondelver wrote:The AD&D rules. I mean ultimately it is "just like that". As to what constitutes the AD&D rules...well, on discussion with Gary, anything from the UA backwards are the AD&D rules. He's stated (to me) that OA, MotP, WSG and DSG are all 2e-books-in-sheep's-clothing and that's all the authority on the matter I need.

(now how much of Unearthed Arcana I do or do not use...well that's a different matter entirely).

LOL ... Unearthed Arcana, I don't touch that turd

Its easy to hate UA and hard to love it. Thats the problem. Demihuman level shifts set a trend that hit like a tidal wave and the "clunk" of the barbarian can be told directly from me. (Grok, my barbarian, took years to go up in level once he got to a certain point while peers were in the teen levels.) Roger Moore's gods being given legitimate status is beyond wrong (Thats fanfic garbage if I've ever seen it.) theres so much you could rip right out of it. But why is it still accessible and Oriental Adventures is teetering on the edge of the garbage pail? I think this is the case in an analogy:

UA must be treated like FREE SUPER SPICY SALAD UPGRADE WITH NON-SPICY DINNER

That is you can A) take it and get real bad digestion problems or B) skip it and enjoy your "meal" as it is but wouldn't you really rather C) pick a very small amount in certain sections for a small side bowl?

Thats the thing that gets overlooked these are things compiled from Dragon then overthought and/or thrown out too quickly. Its the Best of Dragon hardcover that got overcooked and left raw in some parts.

geneweigel wrote:Its the Best of Dragon hardcover that got overcooked and left raw in some parts.

Yeah, if given the choice I'd much rather have my Dragon Mag Archive to pick and choose from than the "official" UA.