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Post by Stormcrow on Feb 2, 2016 10:00:40 GMT -6
But my philosophical point is that the alternative system as originally intended looks more like Chainmail than we might think once we look carefully at the evidence for how combat was originally supposed to work. This gets a lot more complicated when we then add into the mix the various evidence of transitional systems like the Mornard Fragments (which bluntly state that you use "modified" Chainmail for combat), the Chainmail elements on the Wizards Gaylord sheet, and so on. Reducing this to a blanket statement that "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail" discards enough nuance that it is probably just false. Nobody is saying elements of Chainmail didn't make their way into the D&D system; they certainly did. But weapon classes, formations, fatigue, the missile-fire table, gunpowder weapons, troop classifications, post-melee morale, troop point values—none of these things made the transition to D&D. Chainmail is a game played according to specific rules; in D&D nearly all of those rules are replaced by umpire decisions. You'll note that I didn't say "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail," as you quoted me. I said "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail for D&D's combat system." Elements of the former that you pointed out transitioned into the latter. I'll even add the places where D&D tells you to use Chainmail's jousting or morale rules and where it lists characters' Chainmail fighting capabilities. But it would be impossible to watch a game of Chainmail and a combat in original-players D&D and be confused in any way as to which was which. Yes, D&D's combat system grew out of Chainmail, and D&D's published rules make many references to Chainmail. But when the players who were there say they didn't use Chainmail for D&D combat, I believe them. They lifted some tables from Chainmail, modified them heavily, and used some procedures familiar to any wargamer. That's not even close to playing Chainmail.Or are we arguing the difference between the words use and playing?
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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 2, 2016 11:26:43 GMT -6
You'll note that I didn't say "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail," as you quoted me. I think that Jon's "quote" was actually in reference to the original post (since deleted) which used Rob's statement as "definitive proof" that nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail. I may be mistaken on this point, but that was how I read it.
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Post by increment on Feb 2, 2016 11:27:14 GMT -6
Chainmail is a game played according to specific rules; in D&D nearly all of those rules are replaced by umpire decisions. I could do a post of similar length to my last one to show the statements about umpire discretion that Gary Gygax made about Chainmail before D&D was published, but it's a digression from the points here about the combat system (and it is discussed in PatW on the bottom of pg63, for the curious). You'll note that I didn't say "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail," as you quoted me. I said "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail for D&D's combat system." I didn't mean to misrepresent you; clearly my post was about the (man-to-man) combat system though, so I hope no harm done. Elements of the former that you pointed out transitioned into the latter. I'll even add the places where D&D tells you to use Chainmail's jousting or morale rules and where it lists characters' Chainmail fighting capabilities. But it would be impossible to watch a game of Chainmail and a combat in original-players D&D and be confused in any way as to which was which. If we're comparing the way Chainmail was played in 1971 and the way D&D was played in 1976 (let alone 1985), you're surely right that we couldn't be confused, outside of a few corner cases. But if we're talking about transitional playtesting in 1972 and 1973, I think this distinction could not possibly have been so clear as it is in retrospect. This was the subject of my first philosophical post: the question of when the people who build variants on a game think they've stopped playing the old game and are now playing a new, different game. Yes, D&D's combat system grew out of Chainmail, and D&D's published rules make many references to Chainmail. But when the players who were there say they didn't use Chainmail for D&D combat, I believe them. When Gary Gygax typed up his draft D&D notes in mid-1973 that happened to have been preserved by Mike Mornard for all these years, the section on "Scoring Hits" begins with the line, "Generally Chainmail rules will apply as modified by the following." What I read in that line is that, in 1973, Gary Gygax at least thought that the combat system they were playing by was "modified" Chainmail. I think he counts as one of the players who were there. And this is what he thought in 1973, not in 2016. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and we know that it includes decades of bitter attribution disputes. Because the degree that Blackmoor depended on Chainmail is absolutely crucial to those attribution claims, it is extremely difficult to extract unbiased information about this post-1978 or so. We also exaggerate the differences between Chainmail and 1974 OD&D when we ignore the fact that OD&D shipped without a clear "alternative" combat system and instead we fill in the blanks with what we know of later systems, which was much more different from Chainmail than the apparent intended original system (per my second post). Whether or not you or I think the combat system was modified enough by 1973 that it was no longer Chainmail is, as my philosophical post suggested, kind of beside the point too. Ken St. Andre was pretty quick to think his game had broken free of D&D's constraints and was a new game. By the time Gygax typed the text preserved as the Mornard Fragments, he clearly knew he had a new game on his hands, one that expanded on Chainmail. But to the very narrow question of whether he thought the combat system was a Chainmail variant or a wholly new invention, I think we have absolutely decisive evidence that he claimed in 1973 it was a Chainmail variant. Per my own methods, I favor this sort of evidence over contemporary testimony. The question of whether or not Chainmail was "used" in 1973 is just a matter of semantics, a pseudo-problem, but one intimately bound up in bitter questions of attribution. We shouldn't let those attribution claims conceal the transmission of ideas by hiding history behind reductive statements like "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail for D&D's combat system."
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Post by increment on Feb 2, 2016 12:21:35 GMT -6
But weapon classes, formations, fatigue, the missile-fire table, gunpowder weapons, troop classifications, post-melee morale, troop point values—none of these things made the transition to D&D. This particular sentence warrants a bit of an aside, because it's a good illustration of the problem here. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would point out that versions of the weapon class system and the missile table did in fact make it to D&D, as they are featured in Greyhawk (pg12). But it is far more important that weapon class figures very prominently in the transitional systems. The Wizard Gaylord sheet lists out weapon classes. It appears in Dalluhn combat, as does the missile table. These things were clearly in use, in various ways, in 1972 and 1973, through to 1975. It is less well known how the troop point values of Chainmail transitioned into the "protection points" that keyed dungeon rooms in Blackmoor, but if there's anywhere on the Internet this argument should be made, it would be here. They were in use in 1972. The clarifications Gygax wrote for the Strategic Review v2n1 do cover post-melee morale, and make it clear how you could just use Chainmail: "The system which is used is likewise up to the referee, although there is one in Chainmail which can be employed..." And while Troop classification and formations and fatigue do not make it into D&D - again, the Strategic Review clarifications tell you to use Chainmail for mass combat actions where those things might matter. But gunpowder weapons, agreed they are not included.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Mar 14, 2016 4:21:28 GMT -6
Knowing later systems, we are tempted to project our understanding of combat back onto the lack of text in early OD&D, and assume that this was how people played when the game first came out (and in the playtesting communities, for some time before that in 1973). That would be a mistake. We know that because we see vestiges of the intended system pigeonholed in the LBBs (and from here I paraphrase PatW pg338, footnote 227). The most telling is the note in Monsters & Treasure pg5 about monster attacks, which grant a monster "one roll as a man-type for every hit die, with any bonuses being given to only one of the attacks; i.e. a Troll would attack six times, once with a +3 added to the die roll." This is in fact a Chainmail system, one documented by Gygax in 1972, that fantasy figures "gain more than one hit/round if they are rated as multiple foot/or horsemen," where your value in "men" became equivalent in D&D to your level or (for monsters) hit dice. It parallels the way that in mundane combat in Chainmail, a Hero, due to having the "fighting ability of four figures," get four attacks. The lack of an defined alternative combat system in OD&D caused a lot of early adopter complaints, and thus Gary issued some clarifications, which give us our only direct evidence for how he intended the initial system to work. The FAQ in the Strategic Review v1n2 is probably the best source on how he saw the combat system, though by this point he was already hinting at some of the Greyhawk modifications. He clarifies what a melee round is, that each hit does 1-6 damage, how you roll for initiative, and so on. But still, he gives examples where a Superhero gets eight attacks per round, and a Hero four attacks per round; though he does somewhat murkily specify that the number of attacks is effected by the ratio of the attacker's level to the defender's. But bluntly, it's the Chainmail system above, just as we can barely discern in those troll rules in M&T. Furthermore, note how in the Hero vs. Orc example in the FAQ he then says "so this is treated as normal (non-fantastic) melee, as is any combat where the scope of one side is a base 1 hit die or less." This furthermore suggests that in a fantastic melee, you might be using a different system entirely. Now, of course all of those Chainmail-like Hero attacks would be rolled with a d20 instead of the 2d6 of Chainmail in this "alternative" system, and instead of doing one hit of damage, they do 1-6 hit points of damage. But my philosophical point is that the alternative system as originally intended looks more like Chainmail than we might think once we look carefully at the evidence for how combat was originally supposed to work. This gets a lot more complicated when we then add into the mix the various evidence of transitional systems like the Mornard Fragments (which bluntly state that you use "modified" Chainmail for combat), the Chainmail elements on the Wizards Gaylord sheet, and so on. Reducing this to a blanket statement that "nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail" discards enough nuance that it is probably just false. An important post Jon, thanks for sharing. I would add that, in addition to the above, we see Chainmail combat echoed in the Protection from Evil spells, magic armor, and the ring of protection. All three state they subtract from the attacker's number of hit dice, which is the exact reverse of how magical swords function in CM normal combat: "In normal combat they merely add an extra die" (CM3 p38). I.e., magical weapons add one die, magical protection removes one die. It's also difficult to overlook that Elves can split move and fire, and that they gain the advantages noted in CM when fighting certain fantastic creatures. Easier to overlook, perhaps, the combat details given to Cavemen, Pegasi, Unicorns (and possibly others) that are clearly described in terms of CM's MtM combat, or something very similar to it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2016 8:10:34 GMT -6
This was the subject of my first philosophical post: the question of when the people who build variants on a game think they've stopped playing the old game and are now playing a new, different game. When we started rolling a d20 instead of 2d6 (or the 1:20 chart). At least that's what we thought. But it was a metamorphosis, not a binary state change.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 18, 2016 19:09:27 GMT -6
This was the subject of my first philosophical post: the question of when the people who build variants on a game think they've stopped playing the old game and are now playing a new, different game. When we started rolling a d20 instead of 2d6 (or the 1:20 chart). At least that's what we thought. But it was a metamorphosis, not a binary state change. I'm a bit late to the discussion, and what little I have to offer may be entirely missing the point, but it seems that there are multiple ways in which a changing game becomes something other than what it used to be. What Jon has posted about the identity of a game being largely up to the intention of the designer or referee is undeniably true, but Mike also has a very good point. The impression of the game experience on the players—the reception, or the 'feel' of the game—is just as important, and even changes that we might consider only cosmetic in terms of design, like what shape of dice to roll, can have tremendous impact on how the game 'feels' to the players. For example: many newer skirmish wargames today use pools of 6-sided dice with a 3-stage hit/wound/save system, which can be traced back pretty far but realistically draws from the Warhammer paradigm. A close analysis of Tomohawks & Muskets, for example, shows that it is at its core a house-ruled variant of the Warhammer rules, but I have never heard anyone call it anything other than its own game. In this case, the setting helps change the game's identity, as well as slight changes to rules on issuing orders or the turn sequence, but 'cosmetic' design changes also produce the effect: changing the names of abilities and stats, or 'dropping' armour rules (which are in fact not dropped at all, but only used silently, since all typical figures in the game are assumed to have the same armour values). In the same way, a friend of mine once told me how he ran a game of RoleMaster for a group who just didn't want to play a D100 system. He 'converted' the game into a D20 system for them, but did not mention that all he was actually doing was multiplying all of the rolls by 5 in his head and consulting the charts as normal. The mechanical effects were basically identical, but the aesthetic of using D20s instead of D100s, and of having character sheets with familiar +1s instead of cumbersome +5s, was apparently enough to give the players the impression that they were playing a genuinely 'different version' of RM, largely incompatible with the game as it was published. Ultimately, asking whether a certain state of early D&D was fundamentally using Chainmail or 'something else' for combat resolution is both completely relevant and very interesting, but the answer can never be anything more than a nuanced complexity of subjective truths and more open questions. At some level, we can look at the mathematical properties involved and say, well no—the alternate combat matrices produced a fundamentally different curve in combat results from the CM tables; at a design level, I think Jon has pretty convincingly shown that it remained very much indebted to CM for several years, since in many ways the only complete and true change was in rolling 1D20 on an ability matrix rather than 2D6 on an equipment matrix; at the level of play, though, as Mike's post implies, the mathematical results and design features—and even the authorial intent—are not necessarily as important as the experiences of the players themselves. In this case, even if the D20 matrix had exactly mirrored the original 2D6 table in every mathematical detail, it's perfectly understandable that players would take to that version as a 'new' game.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2016 19:30:00 GMT -6
The problem is the phrase "using CHAINMAIL." Some assert that Dave Arneson used the Chainmail combat system entire for Blackmoor as long as he ran it, which is not so. But I'm not aware of anybody denying CHAINMAIL's influence on OD&D, including some direct references.
As in so many things, it would help if people defined their terms BEFORE writing posts. Jon is one of the few that actually tries to be clear about it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2016 19:39:07 GMT -6
What I read in that line is that, in 1973, Gary Gygax at least thought that the combat system they were playing by was "modified" Chainmail. I think he counts as one of the players who were there. And this is what he thought in 1973, not in 2016. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and we know that it includes decades of bitter attribution disputes. Because the degree that Blackmoor depended on Chainmail is absolutely crucial to those attribution claims, it is extremely difficult to extract unbiased information about this post-1978 or so. We also exaggerate the differences between Chainmail and 1974 OD&D when we ignore the fact that OD&D shipped without a clear "alternative" combat system and instead we fill in the blanks with what we know of later systems, which was much more different from Chainmail than the apparent intended original system (per my second post). But for those of us who played without seeing the text, this system didn't seem all that derivative from CHAINMAIL. As we played it in 1072-1974, you rolled a d20 to hit and a d6 for damage. Sure, we included a lot of stuff from CHAINMAIL, but it was more in the form of underlying assumptions... "Those orcs are getting pretty beat up, they've lost over a third, isn't it about time for a morale check?" And stuff like "plate armor is better than mail," but, well, duh. For those of us who were part of those first groups it wasn't "fill in the blanks with what we know of later systems," it's "this is how we played" and, more importantly, how I propagated the game when I started running it at the University of Minnesota in fall of 1973. I am still in contact with three of the people who were in my very first Minnesota adventure, so I can refer you to them, because memory is tricky. The fact that people started playing WITHOUT seeing the text of the rules only serves to make things more foggy. And as always, it's all what we mean by things like "depended on CHAINMAIL."
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flightcommander
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"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
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Post by flightcommander on Mar 18, 2016 21:17:48 GMT -6
As we played it in 1072-1974... Man, you are old!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2016 21:20:49 GMT -6
And I only got up to 9th level in that much time!
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Post by increment on Mar 19, 2016 11:11:19 GMT -6
Some assert that Dave Arneson used the Chainmail combat system entire for Blackmoor as long as he ran it, which is not so. It was the opposite extreme viewpoint that drew me into this thread, actually, that Arneson "abandoned" Chainmail and that "no one was using Chainmail in 1973." I'm sure parts of Chainmail were very quickly jettisoned in the Twin Citites: I get the sense Dave wasn't a fan of Appendix E combat, say, so it was just dropped. But Appendix B combat survives in transitional documents, including Dalluhn, and the Mornard Fragments refer to their combat system as "modified Chainmail." Ultimately, OD&D contains more vestiges of Chainmail system than is common acknowledged. So neither extreme can be correct. But for those of us who played without seeing the text, this system didn't seem all that derivative from CHAINMAIL. Obviously I can't argue with your memory of how the system struck you at the time, as it's your memory. I do think the evidence I gave of Gygax writing in 1973 that he considered the combat resolution system to be "modified Chainmail" illustrates how he conceptualized it at the time. And I suspect "the system" was also a moving target in 1973, both in that it changed over time, and in practice was implemented slightly differently in different groups. From the transitional documents, we get the sense that some people were using percentile resolution with decks of cards for combat resolution rather than using d20s. Again, I'm sure there was a lot of diversity in practice in 1973.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2016 12:17:45 GMT -6
Sure, there was a lot of diversity. For us that was part of the point. But playing with Gary, it was the d20-d6 combo. Which proves nothing other than that we used a d20 and a d6, of course.
But I reiterate, a big part of the problem is defining what "using CHAINMAIL" means. It seems to me like part of what you're doing is actually trying to tie that down, and the simple fact is definitions are slippery little things. Especially 40+ years after the fact.
And like I said, the fact a lot of us never saw the text enters into it. If we never read all the times Gary referred to CHAINMAIL, we only had how it was implemented in play to go on.
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Post by kersus on Mar 25, 2016 12:36:00 GMT -6
I find this fascinating. My biggest problem is that I've never wrapped my head around how Chain Mail actually works despite playing it at Gary Con once. It was fun but hardly illuminating. My best understanding comes from the Platemail 27.0 and Spellcraft & Swordplay RPGs. The Chain Mail book I do have is a 7th printing of 3rd edition.
While off topic, I think I'd like top remove the d20 and go with a system that utilized d100 and d6s exclusively. Yet what do I do with my beloved d30s? I like % skills, but d6 for combat and exploding damage.
Please return to your history discussion. I have read this thread and been entertained (which for me is often learning).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2016 20:54:11 GMT -6
Like most miniatures wargames, the core of CHAINMAIL is ridiculously simple.
1) Move (written orders or move/countermove) 2) All missile fire is resolved 3) All melee is resolved 4) Post melee morale is resolved.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
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