CODEX OF OLD SCHOOL AXIOMS
Old school Dungeons & Dragons is not a mystery, a brand, or a philosophy; rather, it is a practice. Its principles were never hidden or lost, only buried under decades of misinterpretation. The purpose of this Codex is to restate those foundations clearly, stripped of pretense, so that anyone who wishes to run or play the game as it was designed can do so with understanding and purpose.
These twelve axioms do not belong to me. They arise from experience...from years behind the screen, dice in hand. If they sound authoritative, it is only because they've been proven by play.
I. THE NATURE OF THE GAME
1. Dungeons & Dragons is a Game of Fantasy Adventure
D&D is a procedural game with rules, turns, and objectives; it is neither a story nor a performance. The structure of the game is built upon the premise of adventurers facing dangerous perils in a fantastical world with the hope of obtaining fortune and glory.
2. The Dungeon Master is God of the Table
The DM embodies the game world and enforces the rules; there is no game without a DM. All authority for administering the game and defining the situation and environment being explored by the players rests with the DM. The DM is both creator and referee and, ultimately, owes fealty to nothing but the game.
3. Rules Matter
The rules are not suggestions; they are the mechanics that set the scope and limits of the world, transforming imagination into a functioning game, generating fairness, challenge, and consequence. It is the responsibility of the DM to know and apply rules with precision. Rules are the parameters by which we agree to play the game; without rules, there is no game.
4. The Dungeon Master is the Adversary
The DM opposes the players out of necessity; the premise of the game rests on the players being challenged. It is the DM's responsibility to provide a dangerous environment that demands both courage and intelligence. Worthy challenge makes victory meaningful; fairness lies in consistency, not mercy. Arbitrary challenge is undesirable, but the rules of the game provide a model for challenge based on both game logic and the needs of play.
II. THE ENGINE OF THE GAME
5. Treasure is King
Wealth is the measure of success and the engine of advancement, tying risk, exploration, and reward into single elegant loop. It drives the game's economy and purpose, unifies the players' motivation, provides an objective goal of play, and inspires a deeper investment in the DM's world building. Any treasure worth having requires effort, and the balance of risk versus reward is a core tenet of game play.
6. Violence is Inherent to the Game
Combat is not the only solution, but it is the defining risk of the game. Violence shapes the economy of resources, time, advancement, and survival. Rules pertaining to violence are a central part of the mechanics, and are an inescapable element of play. All characters are combat-worthy by rule, and the threat of death is a staple of the game.
7. Magic is Limited
Power comes with constraints. Magic breaks the rules of reality, but within finite uses and with clear costs. Its rarity preserves the game's tension, while its presence provides a means to increase player effectiveness and a method of advancement. The game portrays a magical world, but the use of magic must be earned through effort and risk.
8. Play Happens at All Levels
Low, mid, and high levels are distinct phases of the same campaign, not different games. The shift from dungeon to domain is part of the makeup of the game. The rules support play through all stages of advancement, and all stages have value. Game play is not limited to a particular portion of the players' advancement path, and it is the DM's responsibility to ensure appropriate challenges exist at every point along the route, using the rules as a guide.
III. THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME
9. World Building is the Heart of Campaign Play
The world must exist before adventure can matter. Coherent geography, history, and economy give weight to every action. For the DM, creation is its own reward; the joy of creation is in sharing it with the players at the table. Investment of time and effort by the DM creates excitement; shared excitement creates player engagement. As a DM matures and grows in knowledge, so, too, shall the DM's world develop over time.
10. Players Have Agency
The game lives in meaningful choice. Players decide where to go, what to risk, and when to run. The DM provides the world; the players drive the action through consequential behavior. The character is the vehicle for a player's exploration of the game world; it is the interaction of player choice with the world of the DM that creates the story of the campaign.
11. Cooperation is the Key to Success
D&D is a team game. Skill sets of characters are asymmetrical and each individual contributes to the success of the group's endeavors, whether by performing a particular role, providing a useful idea, or absorbing the damage inflicted by dangers and perils. Both variety and redundancy contribute to group success, and groups that learn to respect, trust, and communicate with each other will find this enhances their ability to survive and thrive.
12. Immersion Comes From Engagement
True immersion...losing one's sense of time and space as you become hyper-focused on the task at hand...comes from attention to procedural game play and emotional investment in decision-making. When the stakes are real, practical, and supported by the rules of the game, engagement becomes the byproduct of risk, consequence, and participation, leading to an immersion that is un-matched by playacting or the drama of a told story.
Old school D&D exists in action, not argument. Every choice, every risk, every triumph and failure reaffirms the principles outlined here, guiding players and DMs through landscapes of danger, reward, and consequence. Apply these axioms with thought and discipline and let the game itself be the final arbiter of play. There is no secret wisdom...only the rules, the will to play, and the fortunes of chance.
I stumbled on this post and wanted to emphasis point one, by way of Michael Mornard, who had a habit of emphasizing that D&D was a game. Whether I capture his specific meaning in what I'm about to say, I don't know, but I take that to mean that if we were to think of D&D as a board game without a board, it all kind of makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThe DM builds a board (or squares if a dungeon, of hexes if wilderness) on which players move their pieces to explore and find gold.
Pretty simple.
And to your point, JB, about rules and rulings, there needs to be a modicum of rules for their to be an understanding of what a ruling is, lest all we do when we meet for a game is end up just storytelling.
In which case, why did the DM need to put in all the effort to create the board in the first place?
Um, right. That's probably why I don't use the word "ruling" at all in this Codex, instead emphasizing that there are already rules (because the game is a game) that should be followed.
DeleteThe earliest players of the D&D game (like Mornard and others) understood the thing to be a game. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that over the decades. Wish it were easier to pound the message home.
Agreed.
DeleteAnother Mornard-ism, circa 2012, about it being a game.
"That said, I have always scoffed openly at "realism". As Gary used to say, 'It's just a stupid game.' When Phil Barker and a few others gave me crap about 'what do these monsters eat' I put a McDonald's on the sixth level, complete with a menu with prices in copper pieces."
Ha! That's one way to do it!
DeleteAnother is to say that they eat each other (or the local villagers or whatever). For an ongoing campaign, a certain amount of verisimilitude is preferred. While D&D IS a game, it doesn't need to be overly simplistic; part of the joy of DMing is the creation aspect of world-building.
(which is to say, I probably wouldn't throw a McDonald's into my dungeon)
; )
Your last two articles have been an excellent read JB. However, your assertions have led me to many questions I have been unable to answer. For example in your prior article you claim that descriptive role play is garbage, and that a character(for traps at least) should just make a dice roll. I agree with this for the most part (mechanics should be the main crux of the game) but often at early levels, a thief ability to find traps is far too low to consistently avoid many dangerous obstacles. Isn't having the player describe how they interact with the environment still valid? Isn't it good that players have to say, use a ten foot poll to open a chest or check a floor tile? Furthermore, their are many things in DND which do not have rules, is this not when a "ruling" would be its most valuable? For example, a character wants to jump over a pit trap, or wants to partake in a drinking contest. Wouldn't it be simple to make a ruling that "The character must roll under their dexterity stat" or "Make a save vs Poison?"
ReplyDelete[Hm. Could have sworn I replied to this last night. Let me try again:]
DeleteThese are several distinct questions. The short answers (in order) are:
#1 Not necessarily.
#2 Maybe.
#3 Sure...with caveats.
#4 It WOULD be simple...but not necessarily RIGHT.
You're seem to be asking specifically about traps, so let's get into it. AD&D doesn't have an explicit procedure for non-thieves (other than dwarves) to find traps, although one can infer that it is much the same as the chance to detect secret doors (see the Wand of Secret Door & Trap Detection, which expends the same amount of resources - charges - to find either). That puts the chance at 1-in-6, for non-dwarves/non-thieves, which seems pretty reasonable given traps are usually "hidden" (much like secret doors).
[side note: 1-in-6 chance to discover traps when searching is the explicit procedure given in B/X: see page B22]
So, tapping with 10' poles or interacting with the environment, all that "descriptive" stuff? That's just the player saying to me "I'm checking for traps." In which case I can say "roll a d6 to see if you find anything." Because maybe they didn't tap the right stone or maybe they didn't notice the trip wire or maybe the trapdoor was a little rusty and didn't budge under the prodding with the pole.
Some things are self-evident: could YOU jump over a 10' wide pit? The UA makes that the purview of an 8th level acrobat with a running start. Most adults aren't going to jump farther than their own height...and that's if they're unencumbered (say, not wearing armor, weapons, a backpack, etc.). Others can be sussed out: the DMG offers categories of intoxication (slight, moderate, great) without telling how many drinks it takes to get to each category (probably because intoxication is a matter of WHAT is being consumed by WHO)...if I was going to include a drinking contest in an adventure, I'd certainly come up with some rules for it beforehand.
All of these, however, are examples of RULINGS made by Yours Truly because (other than the B/X rule on traps) there are no explicit (i.e. written) rules on these particular topics. However, I try to work within the framework of the existing game systems, so as to maintain consistency; the rulings never trump the existing rules (unless I have decreed some house rule my home table).
So, for example, it matters not a bit that someone makes some great, flowery speech to 'rally the troops;' what's your CHA score, pal? This is D&D, not Toastmasters! In similar fashion, I'm not going to say that the players "narrative description" of searching for secret doors or traps is going to trump the rules/mechanics ALREADY BAKED IN to the system...their description is ASSUMED as part of the act of "searching."
"But doesn't this make things hard on low-level thieves?" Not really. I mean, how many traps are they facing and what kind? If we're talking a bandit or goblin lair, you're probably not going to be seeing anything more than a pit trap (1d6 damage) or a rigged-up crossbow (1d4+1 damage...if it hits). Maybe some sort of rockfall? But traps shouldn't be EVERYwhere, and estimating risk versus reward is part of the game...the players don't HAVE to open the chest, right? They can choose to AVOID an area that looks like it might have a pit trap (or take precautions like having a *feather fall* spell ready).
Poison is EXPENSIVE...at least the deadly ones. Have you seen the price list for them in the DMG? A few doses of the greater ones are a fine treasure in and of themselves (if they can be found and recovered)...they're not going to be spread willy-nilly all over the dungeon. Likewise with magical traps: firetraps and glyphs and symbols are mid-high level magic, only present because of a mid-high level spell-caster. And they're not going to be placed randomly for no reason.
Anyway, we already have an existing mechanic called "saving throws" for such things. I vastly prefer those to "roll under [ability]" checks...for multiple reasons. However, that's me...you may be different.
It seems our views on III. The Spirit of the Game are closer than I thought. That's cool.
ReplyDeleteObviously we're pretty opposite on many aspects of I and II but that's to be expected. We play very different games.
Still and all, I like this alot. It gives me greater and clearer insight into 'how the other half lives' so to speak.
Oh, good. Glad it was helpful!
DeleteThis is good.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Delete