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[–]ZakSabbath 2 points3 points  (16 children)

If you're admitting to hyperbole then it's impossible to fully evaluate what you said in any of your statements. When caught in a lie or mistake, you can just claim "hyperbole".

The logical building blocks of your arguments are these hyperbolic claims. Without them it's impossible to tell which things are actually what you believe and to what degree.

Hyperbole in the online RPG sphere doesn't help anyone or serve any useful purpose--and has lead to a lot of pointless harm to a lot of people because naive folks believe it and then attack creators and fellow gamers for imagined crimes. The edition wars--which made it very difficult to find accurate information about games online for many years--were basically caused by people using hyperbole.

In addition, by exaggerating a claim, it makes it harder for you, the writer, to really analyze what factors are involved in your rejection of a work--because the exaggeration slathers over the fine detail that makes things work for people who aren't you. It impedes articulate thought. Using it is either a mistake or a conscious troll tactic.

If you'd rewrite your article without the hyperbole I'd be happy to evaluate it again.

But nobody should be asked to take seriously an article where the author admits up front they haven't been conscientious in their claims. This isnt' the Daily Show and the Maze isn't oppressing anyone--there's no upside to imprecise language. It's not like thousands of children will die without the emotional impact created by you exaggerating your claims for effect.

Even now you've made several easily disprovable claims in these comments--but every single one you could just go "hyperbole!" so there's not much point.

You built a sandcastle. You painted it to look like a building--but you just admitted its made of sand. So... Im not sure why you'd bother keep defending it.

[–]leenxa 2 points3 points  (15 children)

There is a high tendency in RPG circles, and many other gaming circles, to deny the reality of the 99% if a 1% exists. If I say that a videogame RPG battle "is impossible" because it requires the player to rig the RNG to an absurd extent and cannot realistically be beaten in all other cases, I do not feel the need to specify "This battle is impossible in all cases except this one unusual instance." I will simply say that it is impossible because it will indeed be impossible to the vast majority of people. Similarly I feel well within my right to say that a monster that can attack up to 10 times per round aided by others with equally terrifying effects appearing in an instance where the players are starving, locked in, or forced into a tiny room, when they are between level 2-4, will absolutely kill a player character in 99% of instances and therefore results in inescapable death. I examined many instances where the Maze could generate truly absurd encounters. These arguments seem to be completely ignored, only the claim that there are inescapable deaths.

When the only way to counteract these deaths is DM fiat or disregarding the text, they are in effect unavoidable by the premise of the text. Writing this all in my review would result in a full paragraph that tells no educated person anything that they do not already know. I already received more than enough criticism for explaining the obvious, I do not need to give my readers even less credit.

[–]ZakSabbath 2 points3 points  (14 children)

"When the only way to counteract these deaths is DM fiat or disregarding the text,"

But this isnt true. There are lots of ways to avoid these deaths.

Or are you going to claim this too is hyperbole?

[–]leenxa 1 point2 points  (13 children)

I'm going to attempt to end this circular argument: You posted something about a 1 HP thief on your blog at one point. The post was all about "player ingenuity" as you define it, illustrating how far it can take you even with an incredibly gimped character.

I'll be blunt. I am skeptical that this even happened, and if it did, I am sure that it happened entirely out of the DM's favor, or because you went many sessions without random encounters. A character with 1 HP will die in one hit to absolutely anything, meaning all it takes is a singular instance of damage and they are dead. If such a thing happened in your games, it is pretty much absolute confirmation that the way you run monsters and/or encounters is absolutely nothing like anything I have ever seen or heard of. The likelihood of you never taking damage for more than 2 sessions even in a relatively combat-light game is absurdly low, and the only way I can think of such a thing being even conceivable is if the player did everything in their power to avoid combat at all times, ignoring treasure, their party and NPC friends, and any enticing mysterious objects. And that's without random encounters. How many D&D games have you played where you were never ambushed by an enemy, ever?

It is not hyperbole to say that a 1 HP character living more than a few sessions in a place such as the Maze or any LotFP module would be out of the question. Even if they received a full hit die on their next level up they would be so behind the curve that they would still die to one hit to any other dangerous creature. The prolonged existence of such a character, in my games or any other I've seen, would indeed be flat-out impossible unless the DM decided to take pity on them.

[–]ZakSabbath 2 points3 points  (12 children)


So your entire arguments rests on denying reality.

Ok, well:

This is Ben L's blog-- http://maziriansgarden.blogspot.com/ --Ben ran the sessions until Failure The Halfling--the 1 hp thief--leveled up. He can tell you how Failure not only helped his party but survived until he leveled up.

While you're at it, you can talk to John: https://twitter.com/weeatart and ask him about how I played my 2 hp wizard.

And then talk to Joe: http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/ and ask him how we got through all of Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and only had one fight and most of us took no damage.

And then you can go over to Jeff Rients: http://jrients.blogspot.com and ask him about the rest of Failure's career as an adventurer and how he survived many many random encounters.

And after that you can ask him about Blixa, who was part of a party that LOVED a wardog named Gleichman for many many sessions because it was the only thing in the party with 2 hit dice.

And ask them all if it was fun, too.

In old school play, if you get hit once while first level--that often means you made a mistake. You want to be ultra-cautious and tricksy and if you're a 1 hit point thief you use the environment and help your friends by sniping from cover and whatnot.


Or you could skip all that and just play a hangout game some time, and see what you've been missing.

[–]leenxa 0 points1 point  (11 children)

I was considering paying your anecdotal evidence back in turn with some of my own, as I can inform you of many, many instances where players have acted with excessive caution and still took damage. But I realized all I really need is to cite the fireball spell:

1d6 damage per caster level in AD&D. You save for half damage. You get hit with a fireball, you are taking damage, full-stop. As is the case with many, many, many other instances of damage. If any of these abilities are used on you, you will take damage. If your definition of "player ingenuity" is someone so absurdly paranoid, and so ridiculously lucky, that they can block out, negate, and deny every single instance of these abilities being used on their character, it is so outrageous that is outright wrong. D&D as written is a game where you will always, always take damage at least once, and that is okay. But people start to complain if you play a game where damage is frequently excessive for the situation, stems from seemingly random sources, and is near-inescapable.

[–]ZakSabbath 2 points3 points  (10 children)

Your claim was that what happened to my character did not happen.

Telling stories about fireballs doesn't change that. One true anecdote about my character existing and surviving is sufficient to disprove your claim (unless you believe all these people are in a conspiracy to lie to you about fun for a decade ). Thats how "This didn't happen" claims exist. No amount of anecdotes about other peoples' characters change that.

You can't prove John Lennon is still alive by saying him getting shot is a mere "anecdote" and lots of other people are alive.

You can't go "nobody can walk on the moon" then when someone goes "what about the moon landing?" say "Well that's an anecdote"

That's not how denying the existence of a possibility works.

Play an old-school game online and you'll probably find a lot of people who are way better at not getting fireballed than you are.

But don't pretend they don't exist.

[–]leenxa 1 point2 points  (9 children)

In that case, fine. How about I admit that you might be an exceptionally capable D&D player and that you have surrounded yourself with other like-minded people that have this same degree of competence--a level of skill that is so ridiculously high that even people who have played D&D for decades and have written many, many articles about it cannot reach or even comprehend. And that you have somehow managed to accomplish things in extremely deadly modules that most cannot even manage in a combat-light, death-on-player-consent-only game.

Even if this were true, it would not change the fact that holding others to this standard is ridiculous, and that the random encounters within the Maze very frequently result in death, especially early on. Even if the people who die to these encounters are somehow unexceptional or under-performing players, it does not change the fact that these encounters function strangely from a narrative standpoint and are, early on, very often not approachable in any regard.

[–]ZakSabbath 2 points3 points  (8 children)

I never said I made a module for average players.

I made a module for my players--and anyone who has tastes similar to them.

I've never claimed otherwise.

If you want to make the hyperbolic claim "this can't be run and it can't be survived as written" then I will say you are lying or misinformed.

If you want to say "This--like all creative works--is not to everyone's taste." then, yeah, of course.

If you want to say it's a niche taste--yeah, of course. We only printed 1500 on the first print run.

If you want to say only very skilled and inventive players can survive it--yes, absolutely. It's an OSR megadungeon. That's what we do.

If you want something that the authors do not actually enjoy but which they have calculated to fit what they view as the broadest taste possible, there are many publishers who provide this service--but we don't do that here. And that's why the people who do like OSR stuff like it. We make things that we ourselves enjoy.

[–]leenxa 0 points1 point  (7 children)

It's true that you never said you made a module for average players. It's just as true that you never said you made a module for anyone. So much of my review was going over how utterly void of explicit creative or designer intent MotBM is. If you are saying here and now that you made a module for your magic fireball-dispelling players, and anyone else with magical fireball negation, then I suppose that is better then never saying it at all.

As I said, the main reason why I reviewed the Maze over any other given product was that it provided clear examples of problems I see frequently in module design. If you are telling me that here that the module was made with no regard for the average player, then I can at the very least admit that it was perhaps unwise to use it as my example as it was designed for an extreme minority of people. However, I don't think it's unfair for me to criticize the module's failing for an average player considering there is nowhere in the text or in it's advertising that says "Hey, only buy this if you can negate fireballs at least 50% of the time". I did in fact mention this in my review, where I compared it to Tomb of Horrors, which does specify that the players must be prepared to accept extremely unconventional design or else lose their characters.

Furthermore, even if all the issues I described in the review have some sort of stylistic intent behind them, they still remain excellent examples of my problems with RPG design. Though at this point I must admit that I should have, at the very least, drawn my criticisms towards RPG modules as a whole from at least one other contemporary module.