Very interesting thread. I generally don't sweat the exact time a "round" takes... except that movement matters. FWIW, and I am not sure this is relevant, a 10 second combat round would mean 6 combat rounds in a combat turn... as in 1d6. I dunno. Just brainstorming.
This would address my concern with the odd 6 or 12 'turn' duration of spells. If they are actually 6 or 12 combat rounds in duration, then that's 1 - 2 minutes.
What intrigued me the most was it's initial assumption about combat, if you look at the magic-user and how it evolved, or more accurately, subsequent weakening, by the time of the greyhawk supplement, it is possible to attribute this to the change from being able to cast one spell per combat turn to being able to cast one spell per round. This heightened the power of the magic users magic by ten fold! So it's little wonder that gygax decided to cut their hit points down considerably.
Er, uh, what? Lowering the magic-user's hit die wasn't about the length of combat rounds; it was about giving fighters more hit points than magic-users. There are textual references to this.
I know you've got some kind of theory about turns changing into rounds or some such, but I don't subscribe to it. The terms were simply used carelessly until the distinction between turn and round was established.
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Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #32 on Jan 26, 2012, 5:01pm »
Except turn and round were clearly established in CHAINMAIL and they meant specific things and weren't just thrown around as synonyms--as you well know since you started the thread explaining to everyone the multiple rounds per turn!
Wizards in chainmail cast spells once per turn and fighters attacked per round--if by the time of greyhawk supplement, everyone was having wizards casting spells every round, then yeah---the fighter needs more hitpoints.
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Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #33 on Jan 27, 2012, 3:30am »
A round in Chainmail isn't the same thing as a round in D&D. In Chainmail a complete melee takes one turn, and is finished when one side is killed or fails its morale check. Rounds are simply the sequence of attack/morale you cycle through until the melee is concluded. Wizards don't cast spells in melee because they are considered artillery pieces.
But in D&D an encounter lasts a turn, and it is broken into rounds that consist of all kinds of activities, including casting spells. Your choices of what you can do in a round have changed. And the D&D books do use "turn" to mean "encounter round" as well as "movement turn." There is no reason to think that magic-users operate on the old Chainmail system anymore. This wasn't a change with Greyhawk.
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Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #34 on Jan 27, 2012, 9:56am »
Where in men and magic do gygax and arneson inform the reader that the combat turn changed from chainmail? Why would gary feel the need to pen an article in strategic review outlining the change to a 1 minute round on account of lethality if the text of the rules didn't imply a 1 minute turn?
It is perfectly acceptable and encouraged to run combat using chainmail w/the updated and expanded fantasy supplement we call d&d and many things in the text support doing so.
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Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #35 on Jan 27, 2012, 2:15pm »
Quote:
... Why would gary feel the need to pen an article in strategic review outlining the change to a 1 minute round on account of lethality if the text of the rules didn't imply a 1 minute turn?
Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #36 on Jan 27, 2012, 2:39pm »
Re-reading this thread, to me the weight of the evidence suggests:
Chainmail: turns are "roughly one minute" (pg 8), one turn contains multiple rounds of combat of unspecified length (pg 25).
OD&D: movement is in 5 min blocks, and "two moves constitute a turn" (UW&A, pg 8). In melee, "ten rounds of combat per turn". No further time lengths are indicated for combat, so some (many?) assume that in combat 1 round = 1 min, 10 rounds = 1 turn (10 min). And IIRC this is how it was interpreted in the later D&D rules. But note it never says that the combat turn is the same length of time as a movement turn. Furthermore, as Aldarron stated above certain spells in M&M have similar durations in turns as in Chainmail, suggesting they were intended to last but for minutes. For example, Levitate is 6 turns in Chainmail (6 minutes), 6 turns + casters level in turns for both OD&D and Holmes.
Holmes: Clarifies that movement turns are 10 min, and that rounds are ten sec, with 10 per combat turn (100 sec).
The turn/round lengths are actually remarkably consistent if looked at this way.
"Story tellers are always careful to point out that the reputed dungeons lie in close proximity to the foundations of an older, pre-human city, to the graveyard, and to the sea.” - Holmes rulebook
Zenopus Archives - Holmes Basic D&D - website & blog
... Why would gary feel the need to pen an article in strategic review outlining the change to a 1 minute round on account of lethality if the text of the rules didn't imply a 1 minute turn?
A to piggyback on zenopus' point. Exploration turns are not just 10 min. Underground exploration turns are 10 min, but outdoor turns are 1 day, so clearly exploration and combat use variable turn lengths.
Re-reading this thread, to me the weight of the evidence suggests:
Chainmail: turns are "roughly one minute" (pg 8), one turn contains multiple rounds of combat of unspecified length (pg 25).
OD&D: movement is in 5 min blocks, and "two moves constitute a turn" (UW&A, pg 8). In melee, "ten rounds of combat per turn". No further time lengths are indicated for combat, so some (many?) assume that in combat 1 round = 1 min, 10 rounds = 1 turn (10 min). And IIRC this is how it was interpreted in the later D&D rules. But note it never says that the combat turn is the same length of time as a movement turn. Furthermore, as Aldarron stated above certain spells in M&M have similar durations in turns as in Chainmail, suggesting they were intended to last but for minutes. For example, Levitate is 6 turns in Chainmail (6 minutes), 6 turns + casters level in turns for both OD&D and Holmes.
Holmes: Clarifies that movement turns are 10 min, and that rounds are ten sec, with 10 per combat turn (100 sec).
The turn/round lengths are actually remarkably consistent if looked at this way.
Much of the grief in reconciling time periods parallels the discussion within the SoA Ancients rules which were one of the sources for Chainmail. One of the problems therein is trying to square the circle of movement rates vs. combat round length/battle duration at various scales, resulting in the former being an accurate representative of distance that individual troops could move within a small time segment of the actual combat round (for the larger scale battle).
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
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Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #39 on Mar 16, 2012, 10:17am »
Empire of the Petal Throne, which was written before Greyhawk was published and is very closely based (word for word in some places) on the 3lBB's. It says "A normal "turn" is assumed to take ten minutes. In combat, however, there are ten "combat rounds" per turn of one minute each." section 724 "The Combat Round"
The combat turn in EPT is one minute because that's what I used when I taught Phil to play D&D.
We always read "ten minute turn" as only applying to dungeon exploration.
Thanks Mike! Phil's wording is actually a little ambiguos in that paragraph. It looks like he is saying the rounds are one minute each, but I suppose he meant the Combat Turns are one minute each!
Looked through the EPT mimeo version just made available and found it a little different: "Moves in battle are fast and furious: there are ten “combat rounds” to the normal “move”" section 550
So how long is a combat move? <shrug> we are only told it is "fast and furious".
There is a comment on the "exploration move" with is essentially the same as that in OD&D - 5 minutes. So it does look as if Barker's intention was that combat rounds were matters of seconds in a "fast and furious" one minute move, as we've been suggesting was the intention for D&D. Otherwise we'd be talking about ten 30 second rounds in a "fast and furious" 5 minutes. I don't think that's what he meant.
Empire of the Petal Throne, which was written before Greyhawk was published and is very closely based (word for word in some places) on the 3lBB's. It says "A normal "turn" is assumed to take ten minutes. In combat, however, there are ten "combat rounds" per turn of one minute each." section 724 "The Combat Round"
Thanks Mike! Phil's wording is actually a little ambiguos in that paragraph. It looks like he is saying the rounds are one minute each, but I suppose he meant the Combat Turns are one minute each!
Looked through the EPT mimeo version just made available and found it a little different: "Moves in battle are fast and furious: there are ten “combat rounds” to the normal “move”" section 550
So how long is a combat move? <shrug> we are only told it is "fast and furious".
There is a comment on the "exploration move" with is essentially the same as that in OD&D - 5 minutes. So it does look as if Barker's intention was that combat rounds were matters of seconds in a "fast and furious" one minute move, as we've been suggesting was the intention for D&D. Otherwise we'd be talking about ten 30 second rounds in a "fast and furious" 5 minutes. I don't think that's what he meant.
Doesn't the delta between the mimeo and the TSR released version solidify that it was in the process of editing/translating to TSR rules that the clarified definition of 1 combat turn/round = 1 minute versus exploration = 10 minutes?
It seems like rock solid proof that Gygax intended/clarified this in the EPT rules as released.
Doesn't the delta between the mimeo and the TSR released version solidify that it was in the process of editing/translating to TSR rules that the clarified definition of 1 combat turn/round = 1 minute versus exploration = 10 minutes?
It seems like rock solid proof that Gygax intended/clarified this in the EPT rules as released.
Nope.
I wouldn't assume that it was Gygax who inserted that into EPT, in any case, there's nothing clear about "rounds per turn of one minute each." Are the rounds one minute or the turns? The sentence starts with "However" as if saying this is something different from the previous ten minute turn. I honestly don't know how long an EPT round was meant to be from that statement, but the more I read it the more I think it might well mean the turns were one minute.
At some point Gyggax clearly did adopt a one minute combat round and wrote that into AD&D. No debate there, and who knows, it may have been as early as 1974 (though the FAQ seems to indicate otherwise), and it is possible that Gygax was trying to re-engineer EPT to fit that (but then why not alter Holmes too?).
That doesn't much matter though; the argument here is that the great bulk of the OD&D rules were not written with 10 minute "Turns" in mind.
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Re: Length of a Combat Round « Reply #42 on Mar 16, 2012, 6:52pm »
It's very interesting to read about what came before and after, but what was printed in the 3LBBs seems quite clear on time underground, at least:
Quote:
Movement ... is in segments of approximately ten minutes. Thus it takes ten minutes to move two moves ... . Two moves constitution a turn
(UW&WA p8)
Quote:
There are ten rounds of combat per turn.
(UW&WA p8)
It is perhaps unfortunate that the term "turn" is used synonymously throughout the 3LBBs to mean "exploration turn" and "combat turn". On the other hand, we have clarifications from EGG's other works, so it hardly matters too much.
Doesn't the delta between the mimeo and the TSR released version solidify that it was in the process of editing/translating to TSR rules that the clarified definition of 1 combat turn/round = 1 minute versus exploration = 10 minutes?
It seems like rock solid proof that Gygax intended/clarified this in the EPT rules as released.
Nope.
I wouldn't assume that it was Gygax who inserted that into EPT, in any case, there's nothing clear about "rounds per turn of one minute each." Are the rounds one minute or the turns? The sentence starts with "However" as if saying this is something different from the previous ten minute turn. I honestly don't know how long an EPT round was meant to be from that statement, but the more I read it the more I think it might well mean the turns were one minute.
At some point Gyggax clearly did adopt a one minute combat round and wrote that into AD&D. No debate there, and who knows, it may have been as early as 1974 (though the FAQ seems to indicate otherwise), and it is possible that Gygax was trying to re-engineer EPT to fit that (but then why not alter Holmes too?).
That doesn't much matter though; the argument here is that the great bulk of the OD&D rules were not written with 10 minute "Turns" in mind.
My recollection may not be perfect, but I recall reading about working EPT into the way it was released from his ms. Whether it was Gygax himself or someone else at TSR at the time (is it more than 5 people at that point?), it seems pretty indicative that the previous manuscript had nothing concrete in it, but the released version which was ODDized does. I suppose it's possible M.A.R. himself did it and then TSR picked up on it, but that just doesn't jibe with the facts, even in this very thread:
ODD had some turn/round confusion/lack of clarity. It was cleared up in GW and then very much in AD&D. It's not a large departure from the literature in the 3LBB. EPT has the same language as was later clarified, but only after it goes to/comes out of TSR.
I think I could convince 12 members of the public.
It's very interesting to read about what came before and after, but what was printed in the 3LBBs seems quite clear on time underground, at least:
Quote:
Movement ... is in segments of approximately ten minutes. Thus it takes ten minutes to move two moves ... . Two moves constitution a turn
(UW&WA p8)
Quote:
There are ten rounds of combat per turn.
(UW&WA p8)
It is perhaps unfortunate that the term "turn" is used synonymously throughout the 3LBBs to mean "exploration turn" and "combat turn". On the other hand, we have clarifications from EGG's other works, so it hardly matters too much.
In the context of the rest of the 3lbb's its doesn't seem particulalryl clear to me, given the many instances in the 3LBB's pointed to in this thread already where the length of a "turn" is clearly inconsistent with the statement in Move/Turn. What's clear from the above is Gygax envisioned 5 minute moves, and ten minute turns to cover movement underground. He may have meant combat rounds underground were one minute too, but if he did then he did nothing to revise the rest of the work accordingly.
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