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Rutibex posted:In old school D&D the dungeon master just picked a die and rolled it (usually a D6). They didn't set up the weapons for every bandit. Then why do all the modules specify the weapons being carried by every humanoid npc and the damage they do, The Monster Manual contain sections for every humanoid entry that lists the percentage of any given group that will be wielding a particular type of weapon and the damage per attack entry in every monster stat block list damage as "by weapon type"?
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Jun 26, 2022 19:39
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Gary was a fuckin nerd.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:39
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KingKalamari posted:Then why do all the modules specify the weapons being carried by every humanoid npc, The Monster Manual contain sections for every humanoid entry that lists the percentage of any given group that will be wielding a particular type of weapon and the damage per attack entry in every monster stat block list damage as "by weapon type"? Because Gary Gygax is a weirdo. All those weapon types and stuff are player options you don't need to worry about it as DM, just roll a die. In theory every goblin has a charisma score, but you don't need to roll it right? Check out this weapon chart from White Box  
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Jun 26, 2022 19:44
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The AD&D PHB has a weapon table lists fifty weapons with three damage dice between them, and a weapon vs armour chart that doesn't even work.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:46
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KingKalamari posted:Then why do all the modules specify the weapons being carried by every humanoid npc and the damage they do, The Monster Manual contain sections for every humanoid entry that lists the percentage of any given group that will be wielding a particular type of weapon and the damage per attack entry in every monster stat block list damage as "by weapon type"? Mixture of Gary Gygax being a weapons nerd, to accommodate for people who like being finicky with mechanics, and for flavor purposes
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Jun 26, 2022 19:55
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KingKalamari posted:Then why do all the modules specify the weapons being carried by every humanoid npc and the damage they do, The Monster Manual contain sections for every humanoid entry that lists the percentage of any given group that will be wielding a particular type of weapon and the damage per attack entry in every monster stat block list damage as "by weapon type"? In case you want to use the Chainmail Man-to-Man combat rules to handle exactly what happens when character with a morning star, shield, and chainmail fights a character in leather armour armed with a halberd.  (Also weapon-specific damage appears as soon as the first D&D supplement, Greyhawk.)
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Jun 26, 2022 20:48
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Rutibex posted:Check out this weapon chart from White Box
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Jun 26, 2022 20:55
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Don't forget the 2E Arms and Equipment Guide, a whole splatbook with in-character discussion of exactly when you would want to use each of those fifty different polearms.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:18
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LatwPIAT posted:In case you want to use the Chainmail Man-to-Man combat rules to handle exactly what happens when character with a morning star, shield, and chainmail fights a character in leather armour armed with a halberd. I like that it just says "Roll two dice" without specifying what kind. I get that that was probably specified in the text description accompanying that chart but it's much funnier to think they just forgot to mention things. Which reminds me of my one other big complaint about the notation of earlier editions, which is Gygax and co. only ever listing a range for damage rolls and just leaving it up to the reader to figure out what dice they actually have to roll to accomplish it. They couldn't think of any way to more clearly notate 1d4+1 than "2-5"?
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Jun 26, 2022 23:34
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KingKalamari posted:I like that it just says "Roll two dice" without specifying what kind. I get that that was probably specified in the text description accompanying that chart but it's much funnier to think they just forgot to mention things. Which reminds me of my one other big complaint about the notation of earlier editions, which is Gygax and co. only ever listing a range for damage rolls and just leaving it up to the reader to figure out what dice they actually have to roll to accomplish it. They couldn't think of any way to more clearly notate 1d4+1 than "2-5"? e: whoa, some people were using it as early as 1975; that's much earlier than I expected Elephant Parade fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jun 26, 2022 |
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Jun 26, 2022 23:42
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I listened to it in audiobook form or I'd find and post the exact quote, but in Jon Peterson's Game Wizards, there's an early 80s quote where Gary admits that he doesn't use most of those charts that got added in with AD&D, and just added them because people had made them and some people liked charts. (And Arneson copyright shenanigans).
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Jun 27, 2022 01:40
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I can't remember if I've impugned him in this thread or just other ones but that motherfucker would not admit a misstep under any circumstances like any time that a normal person would have said " I'm sorry that I did that, " EGG, Jr said "I'm sorry that nebulous unnamed persons talked me into publishing that"
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Jun 27, 2022 02:01
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Empty Sandwich posted:I can't remember if I've impugned him in this thread or just other ones but The DM is always right
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Jun 27, 2022 02:07
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Rutibex posted:The DM is always right exactly my point Gary was so wrong so often
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Jun 27, 2022 02:14
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Empty Sandwich posted:exactly my point So, so often.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:46
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Can highly recommend the book, then, as it's basically a year by year analysis of things Gary (and the rest of TSR, but mostly Gary) do wrong.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:49
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KingKalamari posted:Which reminds me of my one other big complaint about the notation of earlier editions, which is Gygax and co. only ever listing a range for damage rolls and just leaving it up to the reader to figure out what dice they actually have to roll to accomplish it. They couldn't think of any way to more clearly notate 1d4+1 than "2-5"? I think some of it comes from Gygax and/or other people just not really caring about how the number in the 2-5 range is sampled. As long as it's an integer in the [2,5] range, it doesn't matter if it's generated by rolling 1d4+1 or sampling a log-normal distribution or by the last digit on a random passerby's social security number. Because the important feature is that the number is bounded and random, not the shape of its probability distribution. It's an instruction to find some way to generate those numbers. (And, to some degree, it's largely intuited that any range is a uniform distribution.) Of course, this is nonsensical for a standardised game (and the intuitive uniform distribution is clearly not the case for '2-12') and provides little guidance on how to generate some of the more esoteric combinations like 3-20 or whether 10-100 is 10d10 or 10x1d10, but the "find a way to do it as long as it's one of these" method would have been natural for people working within the amateur, DIY-heavy gaming scene at the time, with an eye towards simulation where the important part of '2-5' was not the method by which that number is generated is not important, but its real-world value of "between 2 and 5 inclusive" is. Add on top of this that the average gamer in those spaces might not know the difference between 3d4 and 2+1d10 in practical terms (people still struggle with this), and you could easily have design that just didn't care: 3-12 is 3-12.
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Jun 27, 2022 04:00
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He understood normal vs linear distribution at least, there's section right at the beginning of the dmg about it.
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Jun 27, 2022 11:31
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How did you do to hit rolls without a d20? I know before dice there was this idea of using little number chits and pulling them randomly, but I wasn't sure if they were using d6s for to hit rolls. It doesn't seem like there's enough range there.
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Jun 27, 2022 13:37
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You roll some number of d6 and consult a table, like the one LatwPIAT posted above.
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Jun 27, 2022 14:05
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Siivola posted:You roll some number of d6 and consult a table, like the one LatwPIAT posted above. Oh okay, I didn't look close enough at that chart. So a dagger vs a guy in plate with a shield requires box cars on 2d6, and then that kills the guy in armor.
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Jun 27, 2022 14:10
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a buddy of mine made paper polyhedral dice. I've still got them around here somewhere. they didn't roll true but it was still pretty impressive. he's a physicist and a statistician these days.
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Jun 27, 2022 14:17
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A Strange Aeon posted:Oh okay, I didn't look close enough at that chart. So a dagger vs a guy in plate with a shield requires box cars on 2d6, and then that kills the guy in armor. So basically, minions are older than D&D itself.
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Jun 27, 2022 14:17
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A Strange Aeon posted:How did you do to hit rolls without a d20? I know before dice there was this idea of using little number chits and pulling them randomly, but I wasn't sure if they were using d6s for to hit rolls. It doesn't seem like there's enough range there. The best non dice analog solution I've seen for randomizing numbers was the "Paper Dice" method Whitehack used to include, I'll have to dig up my copy to explain it in more detail
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Jun 27, 2022 19:04
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I remember those Lone Wolf game books had a grid of random numbers in the back and you were supposed to close your eyes and pick one at random instead of rolling a d10 or whatever, but I think I'd always know the general area to get the number I wanted. Cheating myself in a single player game book is one thing, but I can't imagine that method working at the table with others.
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Jun 27, 2022 19:56
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Imagining a number, asking someone else to do the same, then adding them up and rolling over as needed (so for a d10, 5 plus 2 is 7, 9 plus 5 is 4 ) is a surprisingly foolproof way of getting a random number.
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Jun 27, 2022 20:29
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sebmojo posted:Imagining a number, asking someone else to do the same, then adding them up and rolling over as needed (so for a d10, 5 plus 2 is 7, 9 plus 5 is 4 ) is a surprisingly foolproof way of getting a random number. I think that's what they do in prisons where you aren't allowed to use dice or paper
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Jun 27, 2022 20:31
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A Strange Aeon posted:I think that's what they do in prisons where you aren't allowed to use dice or paper Yeah, my brother did this for a while when they started confiscating paper spinners at his prison.
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Jun 27, 2022 20:45
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There was an arc in KODT about dudes playing in prison--how popular of a hobby is it? I feel like you would have the time for fun campaigns, even if the supplies are unorthodox. It reminds me of soldiers who are sort of in a similar boat with lots of free time and in a constrained space.
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Jun 28, 2022 13:36
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A Strange Aeon posted:There was an arc in KODT about dudes playing in prison--how popular of a hobby is it? I feel like you would have the time for fun campaigns, even if the supplies are unorthodox. https://www.vice.com/en/article/padk7z/how-inmates-play-tabletop-rpgs-in-prisons-where-dice-are-contraband Vice posted:"I never ran or played in a game where the PCs had to escape from jail or prison. Too on the nose. Come to think of it, we tended to avoid the trope of being in a dungeon filled with monsters as we were already in a dungeon filled with monsters." — Micah Davis Edit: These toilet paper dice are pretty impressive: 
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Jun 28, 2022 13:47
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That was a good read! That one prison that banned RPGs made my blood boil. There's just no reason for that. The two styrofoam cup system was cool as well!
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Jun 28, 2022 14:58
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Siivola posted:Yeah. Never read the game myself, but from what I've gathered, the average Chainmail model had a single hit point while heroic characters had multiple, much like modern Warhammer or whatever. Chainmail has three different combat systems: the regular miniatures system where a single figure is 20 men, who all die when a successful attack is rolled by an attacking 20-men figure, a man-to-man system where each figure is one man, who dies when a successful attack is rolled by an attacking single-man figure, and a Fantasy Combat Table for magical creatures, who die when a successful attack is rolled by a different magical creature. What gave birth to D&D was the wizard figure and to a greater extent the Hero and Superhero figures, who had certain special rules. In the case of the Hero, in the miniatures system a hero-figure represents a heroic figure (and, presumably, 19 men under their command, though this is not detailed anywhere), who attacks with the strength of 4 figures (i.e. 80 men), and can only be killed by the enemy getting 4 simultaneous kill results. No guidance whatsoever is given for how Heroes act in the man-to-man system, but they have their own entries on the Fantasy Combat Table. In contrast to the requirement for 4 simultaneous "kill" results, an Ogre can be killed by an "accumulation" of six kill results, which is closer to how D&D hit points work. Unless they're being attacked by Elves, who do it in 3 hits, or Heroes, who do it in one. Though Gygax was, of course, somewhat fond of peppering his language with too many cludgy synonyms so maybe that's supposed to be 6 hits "accumulated" on a single dice pool, not a hit point system. Who knows.
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Jun 28, 2022 15:48
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It seems that Gygax probably yoinked some of that stuff from another forgotten pre-chainmail game anyway. Though I do wonder if those were just ideas floating in the air of wargaming. I would bet that the idea that leader figures attached to groups are killed last was a common wargaming rule that had nothing to do with the idea of fantasy wargaming, and I wouldn't be surprised if simultaneous or cumulative hits were prior art of grotty old wargames anyway.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:36
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I was just reading the First Fantasy Campaign thing about Blackmoor that Judges Guild put out and Arneson mentions "super berries" which came about because some OO/HO trees had orange fruit on them that kept falling off. It just reminded me that the game they were playing was so different from what D&D would become.
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Jun 28, 2022 19:52
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That mention of the OO/HO trees actually puts into context something that had always baffled me about the original incarnation of the Greyhawk setting guide for 1e: While I still think it was a stupid idea, it at least explains the they thought making the second section in the book a detailed list of what species of tree were common to the Flanaess was in any way useful.
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Jun 28, 2022 20:24
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It's an interesting read, though a bunch of stuff is very skippable. He had a rule where the characters don't get experience until they spend their treasure on a hobby or an interest they have, like breeding animals, and if you just liked collecting gold, that was fine, but if it got stolen, you'd lose that experience and possibly levels as well.
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Jun 28, 2022 20:58
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The trees-by-region list seems like a great use of half a page, honestly. It saves the non-arborist GM from having to google things like "what trees are common in the northern hemisphere", which would've been particularly helpful in 1984 when Google didn't exist yet. I'm yoinking it for my own use; I tend to fall back on every tree being an oak or pine, when I bother to describe it as a specific kind of tree at all. e: I'm a little less hot on the page and a half of fantasy tree descriptions that follow, but hey, it's a shortcut to a kind of set dressing that'll come up in practically any surface scene Elephant Parade fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jun 28, 2022 |
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Jun 28, 2022 21:00
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Sax Solo posted:It seems that Gygax probably yoinked some of that stuff from another forgotten pre-chainmail game anyway. D&D was invented in 1812 when George Leopold von Reisswitz added an umpire to wargames, which at that point were basically just Chess variants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel
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Jun 29, 2022 00:28
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Elephant Parade posted:The trees-by-region list seems like a great use of half a page, honestly. It saves the non-arborist GM from having to google things like "what trees are common in the northern hemisphere", which would've been particularly helpful in 1984 when Google didn't exist yet. I'm yoinking it for my own use; I tend to fall back on every tree being an oak or pine, when I bother to describe it as a specific kind of tree at all. Yeah, but I would have put it somewhere closer to the back rather than making it the second section in the book. There's a theoretical utility for it, but it's not the thing people are going to be looking for when they first crack open this book detailing a magical land of fantasy adventure... Honestly all of the major campaign setting books I've read from that era have that problem of not really structuring their content in an intuitive way? Like, I'm amazed that anyone was able to make it through the original Forgotten Realms box set with how thematically disorganized everything was...
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Jun 29, 2022 02:56
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So my group of friends have been expanding our rpg experience and we are on a bit if an OSR/Indie run after I ran a couple years of Starfinder and two failed attempts at a 5e game (the GM running it wanted to use hot springs island because of the cool handbook and hexcrawl style, but wanted to run 5e...which was a terrible combo) We had a fun Mork Borg small campaign for a few months, and are on month 3 of a Troika run (one of the group's first time GMing and she's doing well). I just ordered a copy of Mausritter to be my next game, looks like a neat game with a tactile equipment/incumbrance system and nice open feel. I am a little concerned with the auto hit, go straight to damage style of combat though, we definitely have a murder-hobo in residence, and I can see the party charging in to fight and just getting slaughtered real quick. Has anyone else tried Mausritter, and how did it go? Any complications encountered I should be aware of to tweak/be prepared for?
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Jun 29, 2022 07:27
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