Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Uhwop

I remember those games as being all about character development.  You had magic items and item quality, but that wasn't what defined your character.

How much of the damage you do on a single hit comes for skills/abilities, and how much from gear?

The further that equation is balanced toward the right, the less important the character is.

 It depended on the game honestly.  Rift was a futuristic sci-fi/ magic game, so some characters were skills while others were skills that related to piloting a mecha or using certian weapons. 

Heroes unlimitted was mostly about skills, unless you played a bionic type character or something like a gadgets character that relied on equipment.  A gun would do a certian amount of damage, based on the gun and possibly ammo used, but the ability to hit always came down to the characters skills.  You didn't get a gun that gave you +1 initiative/ +1 attacks per melee/ +1 damage + 2d6.  If it was a .357 with hollow tips it did as much damage as every other .367 with hollow tips.

Palladium was a fantasy, D&D style game, with magic items.  Even it was about your character though.  A sword that had +10 damage was useless if your character didn't have skills to use it properly. 

Never played a PnP RPG that was about gear.  Always about the character.  If your items are more import than your character, then what are you really roleplaying? 

Originally posted by Uhwop

Never played a PnP RPG that was about gear.  Always about the character.  If your items are more import than your character, then what are you really roleplaying? 

That is a damned good question.

But one that makes developers unhappy--a gear-based design is easier and cheaper.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Uhwop

Never played a PnP RPG that was about gear.  Always about the character.  If your items are more import than your character, then what are you really roleplaying? 

That is a damned good question.

But one that makes developers unhappy--a gear-based design is easier and cheaper.

 Sad but true.

Originally posted by jtcgs

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by lifesbrink

Is it EQ?  Or does this go back farther?  It really bothers me that progression went from levels and skills, something I was used to from the days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, or other games, to needing gear to be able to fight at all.  So who's bright idea was it to screw us all with this?

E. Gary Gygax.

 Exactly.

+1 boots of escaping

I have boots of escaping:  http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/911308/

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by graggok

Originally posted by username509

Dungeons and Dragons the board game.

*Facepalm* as an avid D&D'r ......I groaned at you calling it a board game

 

Dungeons and Dragons....by mattel

 

Not by mattel...by Wizards of the Coast.

Originaly, it was by TSR [Tactical Studies Rules] which was bought by Wizards of the COST in 1997.

UO tried things differently (no gear based progression) and was vastly out numbered in popularity by EQ.

The majority seem to enjoy chasing after pixels and levels/stats instead of simply enjoying emergant game play.

Originally posted by jtcgs

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by lifesbrink

Is it EQ?  Or does this go back farther?  It really bothers me that progression went from levels and skills, something I was used to from the days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, or other games, to needing gear to be able to fight at all.  So who's bright idea was it to screw us all with this?

E. Gary Gygax.

 Exactly.

+1 boots of escaping

Negatory.

I dont think there was ever a D&D or AD&D module release that was was about gearing up your character. There was some about retreaving and item of power, but you never went on adventure/quest/dungeon-crawl because you were hoping that the boss dropped a flameberge +4 of life stealing.

They were about finding out why the caravan disapeared, or rescuing the madiens fair from the band or orcs, or finding out why the farmers on the edge of the county are vanishing, or just hearing about an old ruin with rumors of a ruby the size of your hand still hidden there somewhere. It was about story.

It was never about- hey guys I heard this band of orc may have a bastard sword +2, you want to go clean them out and see? Or hey did you hear that group of wild elves that are attacking people in the forest may have Boots and Cloaks of the Evenkind, be perfect for our thief, want to kill them and find out?

*When I DM'd, I was very stingy with magic items. Because they were supposed to be rare and magical. Which is why I prefered the Greyhawk setting over the Forgotten Relms setting, medium low magic vs medium high magic.

If your olnly experience with AD&D/D&D is a gear grind, I feel sorry for you, youve had a bad DM.

Because you can get that in WOW brought to life on your computer screen.

Originally posted by BadSpock

UO tried things differently (no gear based progression) and was vastly out numbered in popularity by EQ.

The majority seem to enjoy chasing after pixels and levels/stats instead of simply enjoying emergant game play.

 Uhm....

Perhaps you didn't hear, UO was a FFA pvp and full loot MMO.  Up until shortly after EQ released and they introduced an expansion that created a copy of the world that had no pvp (which coinsidentally drove people to EQ pvp servers.).  Not to mention, EQ was a full 3d MMO, and we all know that graphics are shinies and people like shinies.

And you still chased after pixels in UO, unfortunetly a lot of the times the pixels being chased also happend to be other players. 

I'm pretty sure that EQ was the first MMO that was all about PvE.  Meridian 59 which came out before UO, and UO were both FFA full loot pvp. 

EQ was the game that tried things differently.   EQ showed that more people would play a game that was PvE only, and not PvE and PvP without consent.

Originally posted by Uhwop

Originally posted by Ramanadjinn

i've never been in any D&D pen and paper game that i once considered it to be any sort of gear-based progression.  

i haven't played it though since 2nd edition though so i have no idea what kind of wierd games these kids are playing these days.  i just wouldn't say it started with D&D because i don't think a gear-based progression game is what Gary Gygax created.

note the word "based" the OP used.  a game may have gear of varying usefulness but not have "gear-based progression" as the OP mentioned.

 

 I never played D&D, I played pretty much everything Paladium though.  While not D&D, those books are pretty similliar in their rules, and were designed to be a more streamline and easier to use ruleset.

I remember those games as being all about character development.  You had magic items and item quality, but that wasn't what defined your character.  Even Rift, which had robots and mecha like armor, was still about character progression and not what gear I had.  I never had a player get a new Glitter Boy that had better stats, they had the same Glitter boy suit until it either got destroyed or was beyond repair and they were able to actually buy a new one. 

The first time I remember playing an RPG that was focussed on getting better gear to improve my character was actually in games like Zelda, and some really early D&D PC games that did really bad jobs of translating the rules and always had you finding new weapons and armor as you played through the game.

I couldn't imagine playing a table top game that had me roleplaying a sword and armor, instead of a character that I that I controlled and developed over the course of many years.  That's what mmo's that are all about gear progession feel like to me.  Like I'm playing an RPG, but instead of a character, I'm looking after gear. 

Maybe that's why so many people call them "toons" instead of calling them characters today?  You level a character, you just slap gear on a toon.

This, +5 to wis.

My 2 cents:

Sure there are pre-MMO origins, but what the OP is wondering about is the switch from levels being main source of progression to gear being the main source.  This is something that really only started with leveling MMOs that had expansion-pack cycles - the level cap now marks the minimum amount that even the most casual player is expected to achieve between expansions, while the gear progression is used to create the endgame treadmill that continues on after the level cap, but is immediately made obsolete by the next level expansion.  I might be wrong, but this is something that I feel has only been consciously formalized recently ... for a long time it seemed to just happen by accident as developers scrambled to add new challenges and rewards.

Originally posted by Uhwop

Originally posted by BadSpock

UO tried things differently (no gear based progression) and was vastly out numbered in popularity by EQ.

The majority seem to enjoy chasing after pixels and levels/stats instead of simply enjoying emergant game play.

 Uhm....

Perhaps you didn't hear, UO was a FFA pvp and full loot MMO.  Up until shortly after EQ released and they introduced an expansion that created a copy of the world that had no pvp (which coinsidentally drove people to EQ pvp servers.).  Not to mention, EQ was a full 3d MMO, and we all know that graphics are shinies and people like shinies.

And you still chased after pixels in UO, unfortunetly a lot of the times the pixels being chased also happend to be other players. 

I'm pretty sure that EQ was the first MMO that was all about PvE.  Meridian 59 which came out before UO, and UO were both FFA full loot pvp. 

EQ was the game that tried things differently.   EQ showed that more people would play a game that was PvE only, and not PvE and PvP without consent.

Actually UO stopped being what you say in 2000 due to the Trammel / Felucca split.

They only kept 1 server the old fully Felucca only (Siege Perilous)

So in Trammel, it was just as FFA and Full Loot as EQ PvE servers were.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Uhwop

Originally posted by BadSpock

UO tried things differently (no gear based progression) and was vastly out numbered in popularity by EQ.

The majority seem to enjoy chasing after pixels and levels/stats instead of simply enjoying emergant game play.

 Uhm....

Perhaps you didn't hear, UO was a FFA pvp and full loot MMO.  Up until shortly after EQ released and they introduced an expansion that created a copy of the world that had no pvp (which coinsidentally drove people to EQ pvp servers.).  Not to mention, EQ was a full 3d MMO, and we all know that graphics are shinies and people like shinies.

And you still chased after pixels in UO, unfortunetly a lot of the times the pixels being chased also happend to be other players. 

I'm pretty sure that EQ was the first MMO that was all about PvE.  Meridian 59 which came out before UO, and UO were both FFA full loot pvp. 

EQ was the game that tried things differently.   EQ showed that more people would play a game that was PvE only, and not PvE and PvP without consent.

Actually UO stopped being what you say in 2000 due to the Trammel / Felucca split.

They only kept 1 server the old fully Felucca only (Siege Perilous)

So in Trammel, it was just as FFA and Full Loot as EQ PvE servers were.

 I'm pretty sure that's what I said?

You said stuff, then I said stuff to point out that your was stuff inacurate, and then you said the same stuff I said.  Are you pulling reverse psycology on me?  I don't understand what you're trying to do here.

Originally posted by Hokie

Originally posted by jtcgs

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by lifesbrink

Is it EQ?  Or does this go back farther?  It really bothers me that progression went from levels and skills, something I was used to from the days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, or other games, to needing gear to be able to fight at all.  So who's bright idea was it to screw us all with this?

E. Gary Gygax.

 Exactly.

+1 boots of escaping

Negatory.

 

I dont think there was ever a D&D or AD&D module release that was was about gearing up your character. There was some about retreaving and item of power, but you never went on adventure/quest/dungeon-crawl because you were hoping that the boss dropped a flameberge +4 of life stealing.

They were about finding out why the caravan disapeared, or rescuing the madiens fair from the band or orcs, or finding out why the farmers on the edge of the county are vanishing, or just hearing about an old ruin with rumors of a ruby the size of your hand still hidden there somewhere. It was about story.

 

It was never about- hey guys I heard this band of orc may have a bastard sword +2, you want to go clean them out and see? Or hey did you hear that group of wild elves that are attacking people in the forest may have Boots and Cloaks of the Evenkind, be perfect for our thief, want to kill them and find out?

 

*When I DM'd, I was very stingy with magic items. Because they were supposed to be rare and magical. Which is why I prefered the Greyhawk setting over the Forgotten Relms setting, medium low magic vs medium high magic.

 

If your olnly experience with AD&D/D&D is a gear grind, I feel sorry for you, youve had a bad DM.

Because you can get that in WOW brought to life on your computer screen.

Did you ever read through the original giant series modules?  they had swords of giant slaying for the characters to find to gear them up.  Look at the amount of treasure in most of the modules.   Look at the treasure for monsters as well.  E.G.G had lots of loot in his game even though he was against monty haulism.  Perhaps your DMs didn't give out a lot of it, but if you look at the old products with HONEST review, you will see it.

Originally posted by username509

Dungeons and Dragons the board game.

Sorry, not DnD.  The only requirement at mid to high level to is to have some sort of magic item or weapon.  From that gear is very encounter specific.  Ghost touch weapons for undead, various situation potions,  adamantium weapons for constructs, silver for werewolves.  

Can't say in 30 years I've sat there and said "i don't have 20 toughness, won't be able to go in this dungeon, lets grind imps until i can get the money ..."

Remember, situational, giant slaying will only hurt giants and because these items were random most encounters are designed to be defeated without them.  

IN the ealry editions, they would specify party make up, but that was phased out in 2e.  

Dnd has always been designed so a DM, like me, can give out magic items on a rare basis and the game and encounters are still balanced for the level you are dming.  A typical group will upgrade their armor 2 maybe 3 times over hte course of a campaign.  And ifthey don't have high AC they figure out other tactics.  

Originally posted by dontadow

Originally posted by username509

Dungeons and Dragons the board game.

Sorry, not DnD.  The only requirement at mid to high level to is to have some sort of magic item or weapon.  From that gear is very encounter specific.  Ghost touch weapons for undead, various situation potions,  adamantium weapons for constructs, silver for werewolves.  

Can't say in 30 years I've sat there and said "i don't have 20 toughness, won't be able to go in this dungeon, lets grind imps until i can get the money ..."

Remember, situational, giant slaying will only hurt giants and because these items were random most encounters are designed to be defeated without them.  

IN the ealry editions, they would specify party make up, but that was phased out in 2e.  

DND didn't have toughness.  You certainly didn't have the crazy gear stats.  For you 30 years experience I suspect that wasn't enough.  You think in terms of how things are today and say dnd wasn't exactly like that.  OP was asking where IT STARTED.  You needed better gear to take on those tough monsters, such as improved armor class and the crictical savings throws bonuses.  Look at the amount of hit points the origianl bard class could have.  IIRC, my original bard had 132 hit points.

Originally posted by BadSpock

The majority seem to enjoy chasing after pixels and levels/stats instead of simply enjoying emergant game play.

I personally don't mind this, as long as it's relevant to the content.  IE there are super hard world bosses that REQUIRE you to be uber geared and skilled in order to kill.  Like in FFXI, I was on a never ending quest for better gear because I wanted to down the world dragons, or on WoW I was on a never ending quest because I wanted to beat the Lich King one day. 

The never ending quest for better gear is tolerable with those goals in mind, but lacking any of those goals, I can't stand it. 

/my 2 cents.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by dontadow

Originally posted by username509

Dungeons and Dragons the board game.

Sorry, not DnD.  The only requirement at mid to high level to is to have some sort of magic item or weapon.  From that gear is very encounter specific.  Ghost touch weapons for undead, various situation potions,  adamantium weapons for constructs, silver for werewolves.  

Can't say in 30 years I've sat there and said "i don't have 20 toughness, won't be able to go in this dungeon, lets grind imps until i can get the money ..."

Remember, situational, giant slaying will only hurt giants and because these items were random most encounters are designed to be defeated without them.  

IN the ealry editions, they would specify party make up, but that was phased out in 2e.  

DND didn't have toughness.  You certainly didn't have the crazy gear stats.  For you 30 years experience I suspect that wasn't enough.  You think in terms of how things are today and say dnd wasn't exactly like that.  OP was asking where IT STARTED.  You needed better gear to take on those tough monsters, such as improved armor class and the crictical savings throws bonuses.  Look at the amount of hit points the origianl bard class could have.  IIRC, my original bard had 132 hit points.

 

YOu needed to be a specific level ,but gear was never a requirement, nor discussed. If you had it great, if you didnt you thought of new tactics.  The idea of gear grind, is, get more gear to do better dungeons to get more gear to do better dungeons. 

Dungeons and Dragons has centered around "defeating the evil".  Whether your group became loot focused or not was a DM decision.  And if your DM didnt give out a lot of loot, it wasn't a problem, cause the mechanics of the game insured you wre the appropriate level for what you were fighting. 

I can see someone who doesnt understand dnd (a game developer) attempting to copy this system and clumsily stumbling into the gear grind we had today, but i took the questino to mean, where did  it actual start, not what inspred the thought pattern. 

Gear grinding is the bizzaro of dnd adventuring. 

People like gear progression. It seems to be a pretty popular part of being human.

Look at cars, phones, computers, weapons, toasters, TVs, etc. They all get progressively better leaving people feeling satified when they upgrade to the next nice thing. Gear progression is a part of the human experience, not just a game system.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by Hokie

Originally posted by jtcgs

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by lifesbrink

Is it EQ?  Or does this go back farther?  It really bothers me that progression went from levels and skills, something I was used to from the days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, or other games, to needing gear to be able to fight at all.  So who's bright idea was it to screw us all with this?

E. Gary Gygax.

 Exactly.

+1 boots of escaping

Negatory.

 

Did you ever read through the original giant series modules?  they had swords of giant slaying for the characters to find to gear them up.  Look at the amount of treasure in most of the modules.   Look at the treasure for monsters as well.  E.G.G had lots of loot in his game even though he was against monty haulism.  Perhaps your DMs didn't give out a lot of it, but if you look at the old products with HONEST review, you will see it.

 Nope, never read thru. But I did play thru them (well all except 1).

And just because youre getting treasure and magic items to help in your adventure doesnt mean it equates to a gear grind. AD&D was a level grind I'll admit, gear wasnt that critical because you could (sometimes) talk your way out of, or past some, bad encounters.

A person didnt play Against the Giants G1 just to gear up so they could play G2 and then to play G3 modules, that then lead them into the D series, and last to the Q series. Thats EQ (thanks grimfall for the clarification)

Once again it was about the story the reason to play wasnt to gear up. You could start at any point in the series. And as a matter of fact I did. I went G2,G3, Q1 just because we couldnt find G1 or the D series. My DM just ran his own custom adventures in between G3 and Q1.

As a matter of fact our Cleric never did have a magic weapon thru all that. Best he had was +2 shield and +1 plate and if I remember a peridot of wisdom. We were woefully underpowered but we damn near beat the module except for some crappy rolls back to back.

Now about the amount of treasue. If your DM was playing by the rules a group couldnt carry 1/2 of what the won out. Unless he was giving out Bag's of Holding like they were large sacks. Encumbrance was a major part of teh game, ignored by most bad DM's. Our group always adventured cause we were always broke, especially my Magic-User. And our DM was there with a fresh story the next weekend.

Im guessing the only games you ever played were based off gear grinds where the story came second or may third after gold (yes Ive had those DMs, its why I stopped playing). But anyone that ever played a classic AD&D game, run by a 1/2 way decent DM, knows this whole "its D&D fault" is just BS.

AD&D may be the grandfather of almost all adventure, RPG, and MMO games.  But it didnt start the whole you have to kill this guy to get this [insert weapon, armor, etc] to continue, so you can kill this tougher guy so you can get this better [insert weapon, armor, bleh]  to continue further, so you can kill yet again this even tougher guy...and so on ad nauseam.

So once again like I said before , look to The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy, theyre the ones that brought the gear grind to the main stream. They are (almost) 100% focused on the gear grind, with (in the case of Zelda) an overly simplistic "rescue the princess" story not even worth mentioning.

Originally posted by Hokie

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by Hokie

Originally posted by jtcgs

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by lifesbrink

Is it EQ?  Or does this go back farther?  It really bothers me that progression went from levels and skills, something I was used to from the days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, or other games, to needing gear to be able to fight at all.  So who's bright idea was it to screw us all with this?

E. Gary Gygax.

 Exactly.

+1 boots of escaping

Negatory.

 

Did you ever read through the original giant series modules?  they had swords of giant slaying for the characters to find to gear them up.  Look at the amount of treasure in most of the modules.   Look at the treasure for monsters as well.  E.G.G had lots of loot in his game even though he was against monty haulism.  Perhaps your DMs didn't give out a lot of it, but if you look at the old products with HONEST review, you will see it.

 Nope, never read thru. But I did play thru them (well all except 1).

And just because youre getting treasure and magic items to help in your adventure doesnt mean it equates to a gear grind. AD&D was a level grind since most encounters you couldnt talk you way out of.

 

A person didnt play Against the Giants G1 just to gear up so they could play G2 and then to play G3 modules, that then lead them into the D series, and last to the Q series. Thats WOW.

Just a point of correction here, that's not WoW, that's Everquest, specifically the Kunark Expansion, and it was codified during Velious and written in stone for Luclin.

The idea of reaching max level, then raiding for gear to help you do more max level only content is solely EQ's baby, but it's a natural extension of what would have happened if you played an AD&D campaign which had two things, a level cap and no character retirement.

I am about 85% sure that there was no more than 1 sword of giant slaying in the G series, if any at all.

Your characterization of AD&D gaming sessions... not so on target from my experience... though I am curious why your DM didn't let you haul all the treasure out of a dungeon... did you guys not think to leave someone there to guard it and send someone back for pack horses?