Parvati V wrote:

> tussock wrote:

> 

>> Which he does by arbitrarily deciding what the players will hear and

>> what they won't hear (when the difficulty is of a lower tier than

>> your skill, you succeed without needing to act).

> 

> ... i.e. the passive checks of 4E.

    Sort of. It's more like take-0 though. Everyone seems to have called it 

take-10 or passive checks, but the later articles have talked about the 

/next/ rank check being a DC 10 check, and the one after DC 20. It's 

effectively DC 10 stuff for PCs with a +10 base skill mod.

>> But that's one of the bits of 3e that gets my goat. The fact that

>> some tasks like opening locks, searching carefully, or handling traps

>> aren't random, but have the result predetermined by the DM. I find

>> that detracts from the "game" aspect of D&D for me when I'm running

>> it: I don't want to know that much information beforehand.

> 

> I, on the other hand, have come to agree with the opinion stated in Dogs

> in the Vineyard (and other games): without information reaching the

> players, there is no game.

    I like that for most things. Roll to hit tells you the creature's AC,  

roll to damage tells you it's hit points. Trying diplomacy tells you their 

attitude. I want the players to have all the information their characters 

might perceive, but /not what they can't/.

<snip>

> Mind you, I'm not saying that the DM should spill everything at once.

> I'm saying that the pacing of secret uncovering should not belong with

> the dice. It belongs with the adventure building process.

    I think of it that I've built two adventures. A longer one where the 

players take the dungeon on head first, later to find the secret passage 

they missed; and the shorter one where they find the secret shortcut but 

have to be careful not to get overwhelmed by intact forces on the way out.

    I like not knowing which one the PCs are on until they get there. Not 

just the players surprising me, but the adventure too: random encounters, 

randomised attitude and morale, and randomly found traps, treasures, and 

secret passages.

    I want to react to the player's progression, not just describe it.

> What use is putting in the adventure fancy bits and then doing your

> best to ensure that they never come up in play?

    If everything I write is seen by the PCs, how is their input as they 

travel meaningful? By telling me what to write for next week? Anyhoo, I 

don't mind when the players miss stuff, adds some interest to thinking about 

what happens to the place after the PCs leave.

>> I quite like how his system lets players override the dice by doing

>> stuff (though perhaps as a base +5 bonus rather than +10), but this

>> thing where he assumes I /want/ that much concrete information in the

>> game before the players get there and try stuff, that's missing the

>> point a bit for me.

> 

> On the other hand, this doesn't have to be done through concrete

> information put in the adventure beforehand. You could simply make it on

> the fly, reacting to your players' ideas.

    I have no objection to riffing off the player's ideas for most things, 

often better than mine anyway; but not the physical game world. /Why/ the 

Ogre is in some room is often open to interpretation, but the room itself 

isn't, and nor is the existence of the Ogre (unless it's an illusion, or 

polymorphed, or cursed, ..., but they're all real things too).

> In fact, I stopped writing in detail how the players are supposed to

> overcome this and that obstacle at all.

    Hit on that same trick myself. I like to think of it that the NPCs and 

monsters are creating /problems/ for the players, not solutions: I'm playing 

the monsters, the players get to play their PCs, they get to imagine the 

solutions.

>> Plus, while Mike's original idea was messy, the attempt to make the

>> whole skill system optional means unskilled characters don't ever get

>> left behind (unlike here, though at least they can jump through hoops

>> to win).

> 

> That's a fine goal for me, but reaching it through making the whole

> skill system optional means giving up.

    Not sure, any system where the unskilled can compete /somehow/ with 

those that are highly skilled should mean you can ignore the skills. 3e 

probably works better if no one can ever buy skill ranks. 8]

> Why then am I playing the new game instead of good old BECMI again?

    That, my son, is a *very good question*. It's fairly easy to fix up.

-- 

    tussock