Waterborne and aerial Wandering Monsters

[retrorob]

Vol. III, pg. 17-18 covers Wilderness Encounters. The passage about waterborne and aerial monsters is especially interesting to me:

For travel afloat or in the air two die rolls are made — a 5 on the first one indicates

an adventure in the mid-point of the day with waterborne or aerial monsters; a 6 on

the second die roll indicates that there is a normal adventure at the end of the day,

and the table below is used.

I understand a need for 2 separated rolls, but... why a "5" and not a "6"? Wouldn't it be easier? Can someone explain it? Is it some lost rule?

[linebeck]

Jul 21, 2020 7:25:00 GMT -6 retrorob said:

Vol. III, pg. 17-18 covers Wilderness Encounters. The passage about waterborne and aerial monsters is especially interesting to me:

For travel afloat or in the air two die rolls are made — a 5 on the first one indicates

an adventure in the mid-point of the day with waterborne or aerial monsters; a 6 on

the second die roll indicates that there is a normal adventure at the end of the day,

and the table below is used.

I understand a need for 2 separated rolls, but... why a "5" and not a "6"? Wouldn't it be easier? Can someone explain it? Is it some lost rule?

I don't think there is any sense to it but try this rationalization:  

The rules state that encounters on a river occur on a five or six.  So I guess it can be read as follows:  

If first roll is five: river encounter, middle of day.
If first roll is six:  river encounter, end of day.
If second roll is six: "normal adventure" end of day.  I guess the normal adventure would be based on the terrain of whatever type of hex the river is traveling through.

This makes river travel very dangerous -- every day you travel by river there is 43% chance of some type of encounter (either in the middle or at the end of the day) and a 29% chance you have two encounters at the end of the day.

The above assumed that you do not sleep on the boat and disembark. This is because the rule also states: "Ships which remain continually in water will roll but once daily for encounters, with a result of 6 indicating such an encounter."

[delta]

The Beyond This Point Be Dragons manuscript says this:

If flying, roll for a 5 or 6 at the end of each "day" for encounters. If an encounter is rolled, use only the matrix for flyers (Table 19). If on water (ship, boat, raft, etc.), do the same for waterborne (swimmers - Table 19) encounters.

So at some point there was just one die, and encounters would only be with fliers or aquatic types in each case. Probably someone said, "Wait, so they get to avoid all kinds of land encounters, like a force of goblins on the riverside, or animals when they land for the night?". They could have separated out two die rolls, or made the 5 the flier and 6 the land on the one die. Wires got crossed and they did both, which comes out wonky.

Hypothesis: Now, there could have been a middle step where the rule was "One die: 5 is aerial/aquatic encounter midday, 6 is land encounter at day's end". Then someone further critiqued this: "Wait, aren't these independent, should there be a chance that both happen in the same day?". And then they separated out the two die rolls, but keeping the difference in the 5-or-6, even though that's now unnecessary.

I'll say that I went through the same evolution with wilderness rules of my own, e.g., added men encounters on a road. I think initially I was having a chance that any road encounter was merchants (similar to DMG patrol rule), but then thought -- wait, shouldn't there be a chance for both? Then I separated out an extra die and now occasionally my PCs encounter monsters attacking a merchant train, say. So it's easy for me to empathize with that evolutionary complication.

[linebeck]

Jul 22, 2020 14:03:04 GMT -6 delta said:

Hypothesis: Now, there could have been a middle step where the rule was "One die: 5 is aerial/aquatic encounter midday, 6 is land encounter at day's end". Then someone further critiqued this: "Wait, aren't these independent, should there be a chance that both happen in the same day?". And then they separated out the two die rolls, but keeping the difference in the 5-or-6, even though that's now unnecessary.

I think your hypothesis is probably correct.

[retrorob]

delta you may be right, especially if BTPBD manuscript matches the Guidon draft in that regard. Besides, look at the footnote under the table 18 in BTPBD: it introduces two rolls a day for adventure (encounter) in the wilderness, while in Vol. III there is only one roll (two "during a day at rest"). So there was a tradition of 2 checks.

Meanwhile I came up with another idea. What if "a 5 on the first one" means 5+? Also:

First roll of 5-6: aerial/waterborne adventure, midday
Second roll of 6: land adventure, day's end

[linebeck]

Thinking about it a little more I’m even more baffled

The rule seemingly doesn’t work as drafted because it creates a paradox by calling for an encounter in the middle of the day which is contingent on actions taken at the end of the day. Retrorob’s rule potentially fixes that paradox.

Consider: the characters start the day in a boat on the river.

In scenario one the characters remain on the boat all day. In that case there would be only one check at the end of the day (turn)and there would only be an encounter on a six.

In scenario two, the characters travel by boat for three hexes and then get off the boat. In that case, there would be two checks: one at mid day for a water encounter on a roll of five and one in the evening for a regular encounter on a roll of six.

Let’s assume under the second scenario the referee rolls a five which means there’s an encounter in mid day. The encounter is a giant snake that swallows the boat killing all the characters.

My question is should that encounter have ever occurred?

The paradox occurs because the characters are all dead and never technically left the water. Accordingly, the midday encounter should never have happened.

You only encounter monsters in mid day on the water if you leave the boat at the end of the turn. However you don’t know if you’re going to be able to leave the boat at the end of the turn until after you’ve survived the mid day encounter.

One way of trying to make it work would be using a variation on retrorob’s rule where a five is a midday water encounter and a six is an evening encounter.

The characters start the day on the water. The referee rolls the die but, and this is key, doesn’t begin the encounter until the characters indicate whether or not they plan on getting off the boat that same turn.

If the ref rolls a five, he or she knows that if the characters try and get off the boat in this turn they will have a water encounter in mid day but he necessarily waits to see if that’s what they’re going to do before beginning the encounter. If the characters end up not getting off the boat then there’s no encounter that turn because he didn’t roll a six.

If the ref rolls a six then he knows that the characters will have an encounter on the water at the end of the day if they don’t get off the boat. However if they do get off the boat, there is no water encounter for that day but there is still a chance of a regular encounter on land at the end of the day.

[delta]

In a general sense I agree with linebeck that there's a lot of wonkiness in those wilderness rules if you look at them carefully. For example, I'm not fond of the "lost die at start of day" and "encounter die at end of day" bits. That's (1) super inefficient: I'd really like to roll two dice simultaneously, and (2) lets PCs start in clear hex, pass through mountain hex, end in clear hex, and never risk any danger from the mountain hex. Plus the roll-low-for-lost, but roll-high-for-monster irritates me (although that comes directly from Outdoor Survival, granted those rules are specified in two totally different documents and the encounter is an optional rule).

My interpretation of the linebeck paradox is that all movement is pre-declared at the start of the day-turn, and then dice are rolled to discover what has happened throughout that day-turn. It's not literally decided and resolved in linear play time (the game wasn't as granular as we expect from modern play). This would echo the "simultaneous movement system" for initiative in Chainmail (and arguably in man-to-man D&D?), i.e., pre-written orders at start of turn before resolution, also explicitly called out for the Vol-3 aerial combat rules, as well as the naval combat rules.

[retrorob]

Thanks for feedback, it's much appreciated! Of course it is quite possible that this "5" was merely a typo and should be "6" in the first place

[Punkrabbitt]

Jul 24, 2020 7:40:25 GMT -6 retrorob said:

Thanks for feedback, it's much appreciated! Of course it is quite possible that this "5" was merely a typo and should be "6" in the first place

I'm pretty sure there were no typos in OD&D. Why else would it be such an enduring classic?