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Post by Stormcrow on Mar 26, 2024 15:13:05 GMT -6
But why would a Superhero i.e. 8th Level Fighter be rolling 8 Hit Dice? Because player characters that start at 1st level aren't the only characters running around out there. Superheroes can be encountered on any dungeon level between 2 and 12, they can be found in castles fairly often, and they can be found in the wilderness occasionally. And when that happens, you roll 8+2 hit dice for their hit points. That's not how it works. As a player-charcter fighting-man, at Veteran level you have 1+1 hit dice, so you roll a die, get 4, add 1 for a total of 5. When you become a Warrior you have two hit dice, and you've already rolled one of them, and you lose the +1, so you have the previous 4, now you roll 3, so you have 7. When you rise in level, you don't add a hit die to your current hit point total; you take your previously rolled hit dice, and you add them to any new hit dice, then include whatever the bonus is. So for instance, if you're a Champion with 7+1 hit dice, that means you've rolled seven separate dice, each with its own value. When you become a Superhero, you're owed 8+2 hit dice, so you take your seven previously rolled dice, roll one more so that you have eight rolled dice, then add 2. When you become a Lord, you're owed 9+3 hit dice, you already have 8 of those dice, so you roll another one and add 3. Neither of these points demonstrate rerolling hit points at each level advancement. I know a lot of you like to do it, but this isn't evidence that it's anywhere in the text of the rules.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 23, 2018 10:16:41 GMT -6
If you'd like to argue that I haven't seen what you're talking about because I haven't happened across everything out there, that's fine. But by the same argument you can't claim to have a complete overview of social media either. Your experience is as anecdotal as mine.
Someone on this board lobbing accusations of One True Wayism at other boards strikes me as particularly funny. This board has more One True Wayism than most I've been to (I'll reserve the top spot to Ruins of Murkhill).
In any case, I didn't say you were delusional, and I don't doubt that you've experienced what you say you did. I do think you're looking at things through a distorted lens, attributing more significance to your experience than it objectively warrants. I called your argument a straw man not because your experience was false, but because I think you've overgeneralized your experience.
In general, people don't go out of their way to villify "basic" D&D the way you describe. When they dismiss it, I believe they usually do what I said: consider it insignificant.
Have you got a link to any of these conversations where people diss D&D this way? Especially the ones you were involved in. I'd like to see the context in which these reported accusations were made.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 23, 2018 7:41:58 GMT -6
Soooo, I IMAGINED people recently saying to me on groups that it was designed for teenie-boppers and was a joke that was built to be an insult to "grown up D&D players?" Huh. Interesting. Never knew I was delusional. No, dude, but that sort of thing is definitely not the norm. The way you describe it, it sounds like you were just trolled big-time by people who know what triggers you.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 21, 2018 12:02:48 GMT -6
I commented on it when it came out, probably on Dragonsfoot. Where it presents lists of new things, monsters, magic items, spells, it does well. But it spends much text trying to SEEM like the real Companion, telling us things we already know about the game, rather than actually innovating. This facet of it is a missed opportunity.
So as a filler for additional levels beyond 14, it's good, but nothing you couldn't get from the Mentzer Companion, not to mention Masters and Immortals. It's more like a way to satisfy an OCD need for completing what Moldvay started than an absolutely essential piece of the high-level game.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 21, 2018 11:51:34 GMT -6
Many players dismiss the various basic versions of the game as targeted at children, being juvenile or purile, or any number of other value-judgement-based insults. I think people who want to defend the "basic" line largely imagine that people are insulting it. There certainly used to be a perception that the "basic" line was simpler and targeted at kids, but that perception largely ended when the "basic" line ended, and was never really insulting, just "Advanced is better though, right?" I think you're defending the game against a straw man.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 17, 2018 9:34:48 GMT -6
I never thought the level titles were something used in game. You know, NPC knowledge. They were more a legacy from wargames and not referenced by characters in the game, like stats. Yes and no. Yes, they are a legacy from wargames in that each type of figure has its own name, and yes, they are like stats in that the game can refer to a character by its "figure type" instead of its class and level (e.g., a Veteran instead of a 1st level fighter or a Wizard instead of a 11th level magic-user). But no, in that in the early days there wasn't much push to separate player and character. Characters were often named after the players playing them and were viewed simply as avatars for the players in the game world. A player might very well reference a level title as a wargame stat while speaking in character.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 14, 2018 20:30:53 GMT -6
I'm a member of that board and I read his posts all the time. I've been known to argue with him about D&D there. He's written many of the most highly regarded GURPS supplements.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 14, 2018 12:02:17 GMT -6
Why don't you ask him about it? (Login required for that link.)
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 10, 2018 20:31:19 GMT -6
I have yet to read "Three Hearts and Three Lions", but read "Operation Chaos" when I was a teen. Does "Three Hearts and Three Lions" provide a parallel description of Law and Chaos, or does it explain matters that aren't in "Operation Chaos"? In Three Hearts and Three Lions, Law and Chaos are the sides in the battle between advancing civilization and the primordial world. In the beginning everything was wild and magical. All was wilderness, there were no rules, and anything could happen. This was Chaos. Then civilization began, mostly by human beings. They tamed and cleared the forests, brought rule and order to their lands, and established Christianity, which tends to stamp out magic. This was Law. The two forces are diametrically opposed. Civilization advances into the primeval world, while the primeval world tries to destroy their advances. Most humans prefer their safe realms, and side with Law. Many fairy creatures prefer the old ways of magic and unpredictability. Although every population has a tendency toward one side or the other, each individual is free to choose a side. If you choose Law, you're not going to be wild and treacherous because that's not what you fight for. If you choose Chaos, you're not going to form orderly realms or religions because that's not what you fight for. Your alignment does not determine your attitudes or personality; you choose the alignment that fits your beliefs and preferences.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 3, 2018 14:07:07 GMT -6
On the other hand, circles of protection are a common trope in magic and fantasy. There's no telling whether the two spells are related or a case of parallel development.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 22, 2018 10:31:57 GMT -6
It's not surprising that twenty-sided dice existed long before D&D, since the twenty-sided die is simply a regular icosahedron, one of the five platonic solids. I was going to say I'd be more impressed with the pentagonal trapezohedron if it were used as a (10-sided) die prior to D&D, but then I came across this on Wikipedia: "The pentagonal trapezohedron was patented for use as a gaming die (i.e. "game apparatus") in 1906. [U.S. Patent 809,293]." Hey look, a page dedicated to listing dice patents!
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 17, 2018 20:30:41 GMT -6
They aren't even en-dashes. In the Chainmail table, they're good, old-fashioned hyphens. To their small credit, they didn't use actual minus-signs here.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 13, 2018 8:29:14 GMT -6
But hey, you typed it: "D&D grew out of Chain Mail" - you! I typed it as an example of the thing you're already arguing against. I wasn't declaring it to be so. They are not my semantics; they are the semantics you were already arguing against, and I just repeated them. If you're just arguing semantics, you could probably better employ your energy elsewhere. If you know what people mean when they say "D&D grew out of Chainmail," then just do what I said: don't complain about the semantics; add a more complete narrative. For my part, I'll say that D&D did grow out of Chainmail — in that much of its base of rules were adapted right out of it. That's not to say the idea of a role-playing game grew out of Chainmail — it didn't, except in that players of wargames tend to start to identify with or favor certain figures representing certain characters or troops, though this phenomenon was never confined strictly to Chainmail. It's not to say that all its rules come from Chainmail. D&D represents a lot of different sources drawn together to achieve something new. It grew out of Chainmail; it grew out of Blackmoor; it grew out of Diplomacy; it grew out of Strategos and Kriegspiel and all the others; it grew out of novels; it grew out of movies; it grew out of cops and robbers and cowboys and indians. To complain that "D&D grew out of Chainmail" is false is itself false; it's true, but incomplete.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 12, 2018 11:07:01 GMT -6
If you say it -Grew out of CM- then you say it originates with CM. That unclear language leads to a misunderstanding by most people. Don't put words in my mouth. "D&D grew out of Chainmail" does not mean D&D has an exclusive source in Chainmail. The statement may be incomplete, but it is not wrong, and it is not being absolute. By all means, add to the statement that "D&D grew out of Chainmail" with further information ("Chainmail wasn't the only source; there were also these things..."), but don't accuse the speaker that they're being exclusive. If your concern is the understanding of people who hear the statement, address their understanding; don't mischaracterize the speaker's statement. I would point out that Jon's book is all about sussing out the myriad sources of D&D, and he doesn't spend a great deal of time tracing elements of Chainmail.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 12, 2018 10:11:07 GMT -6
The main point is that there is a common fallacy that all things come from CM The only people I see saying that are the people trying to disprove it. Sometimes people will say that D&D "grew out of" Chainmail or some such, but that's not attributing an exclusive origin to Chainmail. The statement seems a bit of a straw man to me.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 10, 2018 5:12:07 GMT -6
What *I* have seen throughout the OSR when there are two possible interpretations is that people will generally believe the more elaborate, they-had-a-master-plan-in-all-things interpretation instead of the simpler, and usually true they-made-stuff-up-they-thought-was-fun that you yourself say. It is not an issue of playability; only people outside the OSR, who don't play the game at all, tend to look at it and proclaim it unplayable.
You underestimate the ability of people to be confused by this. They're not proclaiming Chainmail unplayable; they're proclaiming themselves unable to understand that table, but they'd like to. When I myself was confused by this, I KNEW I was misinterpreting something, but I didn't know WHAT.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 9, 2018 20:36:11 GMT -6
Prove to me a LOT of people went through that. I can't prove it to you, because I haven't recorded links to the many messages of people I have seen on Internet forums who had this exact problem, then said something like "Ohhhhhhh!" when they had it explained to them. Prove to me that you've never, in 47 years, come across someone who thought those were minus signs before they had them explained. "I don't understand this minus sign here" is also a reasonable reaction. Early TSR publications were not exactly paragons of editing. Those things totally look like minus signs. I don't understand the value you see in shouting about how stupid people must be not to understand it. Why not just say, "Those aren't minus signs, they're dashes"? Problem solved, everyone is happy, no one feels belittled.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 8, 2018 21:26:31 GMT -6
In 47 years of playing CHAINMAIL I have never before heard of anybody reading that as a minus sign. Because doing so makes no d**n SENSE. Look at it the other way. When I first looked at that table, I couldn't make sense of it because it seemed to be saying things like "-1 die per man." I couldn't find the rules that explained when you'd impose penalty to your dice... and the penalties seemed backward, worse when you should have had a better chance. I knew I was obviously reading it wrong, but I couldn't figure out why. It didn't occur to me that it wasn't actually "-1 die per man," because that's what was printed. It wasn't until one day — I still hadn't played it because I couldn't understand it — that it suddenly dawned on me that the dashes were just a poor typographical choice, not a minus sign, that I understood the table and could play. A LOT of people went through this. The game seems unplayable until you figure out that those aren't minus signs.
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Post by Stormcrow on Oct 8, 2018 12:04:38 GMT -6
I don't find that table any easier to read. Once you realize that the Chainmail tables use a hyphen as a colon instead of a minus, they're really easy to understand.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 30, 2018 12:44:02 GMT -6
I don't know about Gary, but I always use a dot in a door to indicate that it's locked.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 18, 2018 13:19:42 GMT -6
By the way, spectres are listed as chaotic in Men & Magic.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 18, 2018 13:18:30 GMT -6
Who says spectres, or any monster, can't be friendly? The existence of a random reaction table suggests otherwise.
Think of Tegel Manor. If you walk in the front door the ghost of a balrog appears and politely asks to take your hats and coats. No stats are provided because he's not interested in fighting.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 17, 2018 17:22:41 GMT -6
Note that there is a third edition that nobody ever mentions: the original Patrick Stephens Limited edition. Its size is in between the large version and the book club version. The cover is red and it has a dust jacket with the usual image on it. It took me a while watching eBay before I found one. It does not have the printing errors of the large version. The biggest difference is that all prices are in pounds, shillings, and pence instead of Florins, and the value of the various coins that DO appear in the other versions are also given in pounds, shillings and pence instead of being equated to each other. Unfortunately, the references between the warrior table and the armor table are just as borked as in other editions.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 15, 2018 21:42:32 GMT -6
Pulp fantasy was around for decades before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, but it never became a phenomenon of popular culture the way Tolkien did.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 11, 2018 10:21:28 GMT -6
I think the popularity of Tolkien was the main driving force of everything fantasy in the '60s. Not the only force, but by far the biggest in the public consciousness. Without it or something to perform the same function I think it's quite possible that no special interest in fantasy wargaming would have emerged. You might still have gotten role-playing games, but either they'd remain a niche of wargaming or they'd end up based on Star Warsy science-fiction.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 3, 2018 18:56:49 GMT -6
I don't take Gary literally when he says that the Fantasy Supplement was about man-to-man combat. Maybe what he meant was the fantastic figures fight each other at 1:1 (using the Fantasy Combat Table), while the mundane figures (Hobbits, Elves without Magic Swords, Goblins, and so on) fight at 20:1 as do normal men — because that's how the system works. This is what he states in D&D, in any case, in the paragraph about land combat.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 3, 2018 8:12:08 GMT -6
Many of the resources offer various versions of the same stories and I know that the Professor never had a chance to select the "final" version of each and/or put them all into a consistent history either so my question may be nonsensical because it can't be done with any certainty after his death. At the same time, I'd like to get a better picture of what are the "best" versions to read, etc. The History of Middle-earth series is organized the way it is because there is no such thing as a "correct" internal chronology or a "final" version of anything. Tolkien would often write a detailed story that started to get away from him, stop, go back, and change forms from, say, a myth inside a framing story into a historical document and outline. He'd reframe the original story in this new form, ignoring — but not contradicting — stuff that wasn't appropriate in the new format and then letting the outline get away from him again, adding new stuff and slowing changing into a narrative. The text that we eventually got, The Silmarillion, was Christopher's attempt to turn his father's various texts more or less into a coherent whole in the form of a novel. It wasn't that Tolkien was working toward a novel form of the legendarium the whole time and just didn't get to finish it. The search for absoluteness in Tolkien's works is in vain. You're much better off learning the various version of a given story and choosing your favorite features to focus on.
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Post by Stormcrow on Sept 3, 2018 8:04:01 GMT -6
That's a long-winded way of saying that yes, you could use the mass combat rules even on a 1:1 scale. Although, there are specific rules for man-to-man combat provided, as well, to give the ref more options and granularity. And to better match reality. The mass combat designations of Light Foot, Heavy Foot, Armored Foot, and so on, don't represent layers of armor but melee effectiveness as a group. Heavy Foot doesn't mean "wearing mail"; it means fighting as a group more effectively than Light Foot: maybe better armor, maybe better training, maybe a closer formation. The Foot and Horse designations don't match specific armor types. But when going to 1:1 scale, much of that goes out the window: you're not just a component of a group with a single statistic; you're a unit unto yourself, with very specific armor and weapons, and you can't fight in formation with yourself. So a different system is needed for man-to-man fighting. You COULD use the mass combat system for man-to-man combat, but the values become largely meaningless. The man-to-man system is made to fix that problem. It's not just that having options is nice at the 1:1 scale; it's that the 1:1 scale is below the resolution of the mass combat system.
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Post by Stormcrow on Jul 28, 2018 7:50:37 GMT -6
If that's how you run it, that's fine. [...] YMMV and that's fine. Good luck to you. How about telling me "Bless your heart" and have done with it? They also say, in the same place, that "The time for dungeon adventures considers only preparations and a typical, one day descent into the pits." If YOU want to interpret that as taking multiple days to memorize spells, YMMV and that's fine, good luck to you. It doesn't say that, though. "Preparations" could mean anything. It's a rule of thumb for abstract time-keeping, not a description of magical physics. Also notice that a wilderness turn, equaling one day, includes "days of rest and recuperation." At the very least, by this hyper-parsing of the text, there should be some unspecified number of days in the wilderness where it SHOULD be possible to rememorize spells. Surely that's part of "recuperation"? I wouldn't extend a week's preparation for a dungeon expedition to mean any time spent in town is resolved in week-turns. It's just saying that when your group goes on a dungeon expedition, the referee should advance the campaign calendar one week to allow the abstract preparation to take a suitable amount of time. Do you also require that a week spent not playing the game equals a week that passes in the game world? That's a rule that very few people follow, mostly because it comes from a time when it was expected you'd have players clamoring at your door every day to play the game, which is not typical nowadays. Yes, sure, everyone can do it one's own way. That doesn't really get at how the game is supposed to work. We have the benefit of knowledge outside of the original rule books to tell us what they meant.
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Post by Stormcrow on Jul 27, 2018 7:57:33 GMT -6
Being an obsessive pedant, I note that M&M p19 says (Spells & Levels) The number in each column … indicates the number of spells of each level that can be used (remembered during any single adventure)" (emphasis mine). So... even if you allowed spell casting "between adventures" (which, FWIW, I do too)... one spell per turn of campaign time away from the adventure wouldn't seem unreasonable. So, what was the rest of the game world doing while the cleric spent years meditating on light spells? Possessing a certain number of spells per adventure obviously doesn't mean you don't know any spells when you're not on an adventure. Since anyone is quite capable of going on a new adventure every day, there's no reason to think you can't memorize Continual Light once per day of adventure. And if you can memorize it once per day of adventure, there's no reason why you can't memorize it once per day of no adventure. Therefore, there's no reason why a Conjurer or (better) a Bishop can't produce one permanently lit object every day, or 100 such objects in 100 days. But is this really an effective use of your time? As for duration: continual means "continues... until dispelled," per the 2nd level magic-user spell description. It's permanent.
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