[over the course of the month of April, I shall be posting a topic for each letter of the alphabet, sequentially, every day of the week except Sunday. Our topic for the month is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: how to approach it, how to run it, how to enjoy a system that deserves to be played NOW, nearly 50 years after its inception. Consider this a 'crash course' in the subject]
L is for Limits...and believe it or not, we really, really like limits in our Dungeons & Dragons game.
Limits are what makes a game a game...at least a game worthy of play. When you play basketball with your friends, you don't score a point just for touching the ball...to score a point you must put the ball through an elevated hoop, suspended higher than (most) people can jump. It is a simple game, but it is a challenging game, and the challenge is a large part of what compels people to play and enjoy it.
AD&D has LOTS of limits built into its rules. There are limits to what classes a given species can play. There are limits to what level a given class-species combination can achieve. There are limits to ability scores based on species and gender (we'll talk about that one in a second). There are limits to how a character may advance and how experience points are acquired. There are limits to what may be carried, limits to resources (arrows, oil, torches, potions, spells). Limits to the number of hit points of damage a character may sustain before winding up dead-dead-dead. Heck, there are even limits to WHICH characters are eligible to be raised from death by magic (sorry to all the elves and orcs!).
All these limits provide boundaries that shape the look and feel and play of the game. They all provide challenges to the participants' desire to do "anything they want," despite ad copy claims to the contrary ("...a game of limitless imagination!").
And challenge is what makes it a game worth playing.
FOR EXAMPLE: the character is the player's tool and vehicle for exploring the game world; however, that "tool" is only as effective as the limits of its level. A 1st level character is VERY limited in effectiveness, compared to a 10th level character...even if the two were equipped in similar fashion (equipment and magic items tend to act as a "force multiplier;" they do not (usually) "make" the character). Advancing in level requires the player to earn experience points. Experience points are earned through finding and recovering treasure (these are adventurous treasure-hunters, after all) OR...more minimally...by defeating opponents in combat (valid, given that much of a character's effectiveness is measured in combat ability). However, engaging opponents in combat COSTS RESOURCES...players lose time, lose hit points, lose consumable equipment, lose spells...and this cost must be weighed against the potential gain. Because depletion of resources means a reduction in the RANGE at which the player can operate.
[if I spend an hour of my four-hour game session locked in a large combat, I'm using up a quarter of my real world game time in a single encounter, leaving LESS time for more exploration/adventuring. If I lose a large amount of hit points (or fellow player characters) or spells and resources in this large encounter, that leaves me with a decreased amount for further exploration/adventuring. The question becomes: was the battle WORTH it? If pursing this large combat resulted in a large treasure, or opened access to a large treasure, or provided a clue for finding a large treasure...then, maybe. If not, that large combat may end up being a Pyrrhic victory. Assuming it results in victory at all]
But that is the challenge of game play...it is what makes AD&D the game it is. In the present D&D culture, it is a common practice to NOT award experience points but simply to "level up" players at arbitrary chosen places as a reward for accomplishing story goals set by the DM. This is pretty much the opposite of "player agency." Players must jump through the hoops specified by their DM in order to get their cookie. And since the award is subjective and arbitrary (the DM can choose to award a level whenever they "feel like it") nothing the players actually DO or accomplish in the game matters in the slightest. It only matters how generous the DM is feeling on a particular day (which may ranged from "overly generous" to "downright stingy").
Some of us prefer our actions to matter. Some of us prefer to have agency.
HOW ABOUT ANOTHER EXAMPLE: when creating their character in the game, players are LIMITED by two factors: 1) the ability scores they roll, and 2) the class-race combinations that are allowed. Since ability scores are randomly determined, this tends to create a broader swath of "humanity" (including demi-humanity) among the players in some semblance (verisimilitude...again!) of "real life." Not everyone has what it takes to be a paladin, or a ranger, or a monk, or a bard. And so those classes appear with less frequency than simple fighters and clerics and magic-users and thieves...as they should. Likewise, not every species trains the same type of profession. Elves are not particularly religious (perhaps because they cannot be raised from the dead?) and there are no adventuring clerics among their number (their priests are all "stay-at-home" types and limited to NPCs)...this is implied world/setting material as well as a LIMIT on what players can choose.
While the non-humans have limits of choice when it comes to their profession, they also have limits to their maximum achievable effectiveness. 8th level might seem to be an impossibly lofty rank to low-level sloggers of OSR "lite" games, but it's barely more than "mid" for an AD&D campaign...my players can hit 8th pretty easily within a year of play (even with level draining undead). As one might expect, this means the bulk of long-term characters...especially fighter types...are going to end up as humans (who have no level restrictions). The trade-off? Humans gain none of the special abilities of the non-human species (and there's a LOT, especially for dwarves, elves, and halflings), nor do humans have the ability to multi-class (advance in two classes simultaneously) which is a decided advantage of the non-humans, especially at the low-mid levels of play.
Again, we can contrast this with present day (5E) game culture where any character can be any species-class and can achieve any level. Without boundaries, there is no particular challenge save, perhaps the challenge of playing something "original" in a world where all is permitted. However, that by itself (for me) breaks any semblance of verisimilitude as such a world of half-orc bards and halfling paladins, where the greatest fighter in the land can be a gnome and the greatest wizard a dwarf, is just a little too "gonzo" for my taste. I like my fantasy grounded in an accessible world of SOME naturalism, not the cartoon anti-logic of the wildest anime-come-to-screen. There are other RPGs for anime play.
ONE FINAL EXAMPLE: and here I'll talk about the ability score discrepancies between males and females. AD&D places limits on ability scores based on species and that is fine...I have no issue with one species being less agile than another, or less educated, or not built as robustly as another. These are issues of culture (setting/world building) and fantasy physiology. However, with regard to the STRENGTH ability score, AD&D places limits based on female strength in comparison to male strength for each individual species. It looks like this:
- Halfling (M/F) Max: 17 / 14 +1/+1 or 0/0
- Gnome (M/D) Max: 18(50) / 15 +1/+3 or 0/0
- Elf (M/F) Max: 18(75) / 16 +2/+3 or 0/+1
- Half-Elf (M/F) Max: 18(90) / 17 +2/+4 or +1/+1
- Dwarf (M/F) Max: 18(99) / 17 +2/+5 or +1/+1
- Half-Orc (M/F) Max: 18(99) / 18(75) +2/+5 or +2/+3
- Human (M/F) Max: 18(00) / 18(50) +3/+6 or +1/+3
For those who are new to AD&D, understand that the strength ability score goes from 3 to 18, but fighters (including rangers and paladins) with an 18 score roll percentile dice to achieve a "bonus" score of 01 to 00 ("100"). High strength scores provide a bonus to melee combat (very important for sword-swinging fantasy, doubly important for fighter types), as well as a +10% bonus to experience points for fighters with a score of 16+ in strength. Consequently, even though the a max STR male halfling is only getting a +1/+1 to attack/damage rolls versus his female counterpart, the female halfling will be earning less x.p. (as a fighter) because her STR is capped at 14. With this in mind, female gnomes and halflings should probably not even consider fighter as a class.
In my youth, we just rolled with these, as is. Our group included two girls (one my co-DM), both of whom played fighters, and it was never an issue (as in, it simply never came up). There may have been one or two complaints from BOYS in our group (who occasionally played female characters), but we'd simply say "them's the rules, fella." Any player was allowed to play any gender, and we stuck by the rules as written. These days, I'm of a different mind.
For one thing, while combat issues the major part of STR, in AD&D the issue only starts to get crazy with fighter percentiles...all non-fighters are limited to a max 18 STR, and that's never giving you more bonus than +1/+2. In other words, not much bonus. However, the real issue for me is the added weight allowance, in which any character with STR greater than 11 gets additional carrying capacity. ENCUMBERANCE is one of the limits we LOVE, as it keeps the game firmly grounded in pseudo-reality, rather than the "Minecraft mentality" of unlimited inventory.
Real world carrying capacity is tied to BODY WEIGHT. Yes, men (on average) have a more upper body strength than women, but their ability to carry loads over distance is pretty much the same percentages: 20-30% of body weight for sustainable load over distance; 10-20% of body weight is optimal for speed and endurance, 30-35% sharp drop off in pace with fatigue/injury risk...this latter amount would be a military-style "heavy" load. Military and trekking studies show that women can average 15-25% of their body weight for sustained movement, while men average 20-30% and that fitness and experience matter more than gender for carrying capacity.
It's a fascinating thing to study...and once you do you start seeing the STR chart in the PHB is INSANE. A +300# weight allowance? Even the +100# of a woman limited to 18/50 STR seems outrageous...unless these were additions to the maximum encumbered (staggering around) load. However, it is explicit that this amount is added to the unencumbered rate of movement. Probably because it's a fantasy game and some rules are written for the sake of expedience.
And if it's a fantasy game, then it doesn't matter to me whether the the women-folk are equally strong as the men-folk. As such, in my campaign all members of a species (male, female, and...I suppose...non-binary) use the same maximum STR score (i.e. they all use the number listed for the "male" of their species).
I guess we only really, really like MOST limits.
; )
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