"D&D Poisoning"

[Barrataria]

Rather than dredge up this thread I thought I'd link it here and ask for others to relate their experiences with this. Had I not recently fallen into a new game group with strangers, I'd have switched to d6 completely by now.

But as I keep working on d6 ideas and running d6 SW, I'm wondering how many of these "D&Disms" might be affecting my gamemastering. Early messing with d6 Fantasy suggests that megadungeons/dungeon crawls are not a great fit for the system, at least in the room/monster/loot/repeat "old-school" sense.

And for those of you who didn't post your experience with players used to D&D, more stories please! Garkhal and atxgtx posted a couple, one of which I'll add here (from atxgtx):

[garhkal]

I've had plenty of adnd that has leaked into SW games. From the mentality the DM never sets anything not meant to be killed in front of the group, to the thought, we must loot everything possible.
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[Barrataria]

[Naaman]

I rather like a good dungeon crawl once in a while... gives characters a chance to let loose. But I think the most critical element of SWRPG is the "high speed" action. Chases, and time sensitive emergencies.

I think D6 does this especially well.

[garhkal]

[Quetzacotl]

Never really had that Problem with the Group I play with. Mostly because, I didn't start with a Dungeon Crawler ish game, but with one which puts emphasise on Role Playing. You only get as much points as the GM wants and he can decide completely at random, so killing everything that might be an enemy ist mostly NOT the right thing to do.

We once played D&D 4E for a few adventures, and here it started kind of like that, we wanted to explore the whole dungeon because, well, you get exp for every encounter.

If we ever tried it again we would immediately switch to a "no exp" System where you get a few adventure points from the GM based on how you play and when you got X adventure points you get to level up.
This way you don't have to walk into every single room in a dungeon because you might miss some exp, which is just stupid. Unless that's what you want to do, but you still could clean the whole dungeon, it's just optional now and not mandatory anymore.


When we played SW we never had this Problem at all. We evaded fights when possible and tryed to talk to people rather then fighting them... in my adventure there was only like 3 fights, and that only because they had to invade a battle ship (that was hopelessly understaffed with just a few droids, so no biggie getting in there) and those 3 fight where at the positions that they just couldn't get around.
Another player GMed the next adventure, and it was similiar here. We only had, as far as I remember, 1 fight, and that was at the beginning... and we just got caught up in it, we actually weren't really involved in that (2 partys on a planet fighting each other and we were supposed to negotiate with both to find a peaceful solution, but whenn we talked with the leaders of party 1 they got attacked by party 2, and we simply tried to protect the leaders of party 1).

Anyway, when then went to follow the attackers of party 2, who retreated, to find out where they are (because we didn't know about that) and supposedly, the princess of party 1 was kidnapped during the attack.
Well, we got to their den, and we decided to do it peaceful. The two Jedis (one of them was me) went openly to the entrance and said we came in peace and wanted to talk to them. Also they weren't very trusty of us, they led us in.
In the end, we got to negotiate with them and everythink worked out fine.

But just now I remember that that there was another fight... we had to kill the leader of party 1, because he was completely corrupted by the dark side and even tried to sacrifice his wife. We stopped the ritual, killed him and knocked out two of the 3 guards... the third one gave up and protected his queen after we talked (or rather intimidated ^^) with him.



So, we never really had to suffer with "D&D poisoning", because that was not our main game or the game we started to play with and that other game was absolutely deadly if there are to much enemies (if we have to fight agains a number of enemies that is double to ours, we're mostly gonna lose, if when we are much better equipped and of "higher level" then them. Getting outnumbered is still extremely deadly). So dungeon clearing was never an option. If we get into a situation, it's mostly "Mage uses a Spell that creates great chaos and we run away in the confusion" ^^

[Zarm R'keeg]

As I just posted on another thread, I suffer from D&D poisoning constantly. Especially the puzzle-trap mentality and the 'anything that moves is there to be killed' mentality.
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[Quetzacotl]

That reminds me of what spoony once said... "If yout stat it, the players will try to kill it" -.-

[Captain Xenon]

sadly, even the KoTOR games used the dungeon crawl hack n slash model. but most of the kotor garrison could be killed by a skilled splicer. its probably a side effect of the d20/saga editions.

its not a question of what game rules you use, its simply a question of social contract. some PC groups could happily murder an entire garrison, but most cant. one jedi master could probably solo a garrison.

just be clear with your mission briefings. 'recon, avoid contact', that sort of thing.

[atgxtg]

Yeah the "D&D mindset" often extends beyond the game rules. Our D6 group is comprised mostly of long time D&D players and often their whole outlook, approach, and expectations are solidity entrenched in "D&D logic". Often it causes problems.

Some examples:
-Players fighting to the bitter end rather than retreating or surrendering.
- An aversion to taking prisoners or leaving enemies alive.
-Difficulties with some basic laws, such as carrying around way too much firepower, or murdering people in broad daylight in front of witnesses.
- A problem understanding scale and damage. I.E. PCs trading shots when outgunned, thinking that experience will offset weaponry. I used to remind one player than no matter how much experience he got he'd never equal a Star Destroyer.
-Doing stuff for treasure instead of fighting the Empire to free the galaxy.
-Expecting encounters to be "balanced" (i.e. fixed in their favor). This causes them to fight on when clearly outclassed based on the idea that if something is in the adventure they must be "high enough level" to handle it.

[garhkal]

True. Though on the "we can't take prisoners/kill all they capture".. that's what the DSP is for!
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[atgxtg]

[garhkal]

I have actually once had them shown vid footage while during down time, from "Imp news" that showed the clip footage from their eye pieces where the party stunned out the 20 man group of imperials, then went around slitting throats.. Good propoganda.
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[atgxtg]

LOL! That's what happens when the PCs do something bad - they give the Empire just the sort of "evidence" they want to portray the rebels as murderers and terrorists.

In our group my character has a droid with a holocam, internal automap, etc. that I often use to record stuff. On more than one occasion our exploits have turned into good entertainment for the SpecForces. One incident, where a PC snuck up on an imperial and then blasted him at point blank range (the noise of which alerted the other imperials of our presence and raised the alarm) is always good for a good yuks and serves as an example of what not to do.


Another potential pitfall for D&Ders is narrow-focus characters. in D&D characters have well defined roles and a limited number of choices to make, so they tend to concentrate of maximizing a few key areas. For instance a warrior who specializes in longsword.

In D6 characters need to diversify a bit, or else they will get slaughtered when the bad guys take away their favorite toys. We still laugh about the big tough bounty hunter who spent all his CPs on blaster and dodge, who ran away like a scared child when he didn't have his big, bad 7D blaster.

[garhkal]

I hear gripes like that all the time, when playing Sparks, cause we DO have modules (game adventures able to be run in a 4 hr time slot at a con) that are focused on taking away their gear (like say they go to a high sec imp planet, so anything more than a standard pistol is verboten).. Those type of pcs hate it.
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