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Post by sepulchre on Sept 5, 2015 23:02:14 GMT -6
Waysoftheearth wrote:
Right, my bad - just thinking about him attacking last on the first round, yes, please proceed.
Indeed, you did not; I wondered how much thought had gone into the choice of these numbers. My 'comment' above was meant to be a thoughtful one. If the successful employment of a dagger and two-handed sword are represented by the same numerical values, mathematically something else has to be considered should one wish to rightly contrast their differences. So, as you point out, weapon class might be the variable that plays into the difference in the odds to kill with each weapon. To that point, Gygax and Perrin might have been taking full advantage of a beer coaster or two.
Obliged Ways for your savy statistics work, just not my strong suit. Very helpful to see the mathematical relationships between the numerical values respresenting the weapons. You've also given me a deeper lesson in applied statistics, one that I can do with pencil and paper ;-)
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Post by sepulchre on Sept 5, 2015 9:48:01 GMT -6
Thanks Waysoftheearth! A question and an observation:
Mathematically, how did you arrive at the 98% effectiveness of the dagger on the second round (all occasions is clear: [0.28 x 0.98 = 0.27])? I realize one is taking the 72% effectiveness and combining it with 2 additional chances, but my statistical acumen escapes me at this point.
It's advanced by some that the chances of success in Oe were often "eye-balled", that appears a fair estimation sometimes. The design you are laying out looks rather calculated.
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Post by sepulchre on Sept 5, 2015 0:11:24 GMT -6
Waysoftheearth wrote:
Ways just wanted to be sure I understood your point by attempting to restate it first. As both weapons strike an unarmored person on a 6, they are equally likely to slay an opponent, i.e, there is 72% lethality with either weapon. As the dagger is the last weapon to possibly land a telling blow, there is a 28% (the remainder of chances out of 100 - 72 which represents the two-handed sword) the dagger will land a telling blow 85% of the time. The 85% up from 72%, accounts for extra attacks based on weapon class?
C.W.C. Oman's "Art of War in the Middle Ages": Predictably, it has not solved the divide over the dagger and the two-handed sword, but it is a spectacular read.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 29, 2015 9:34:02 GMT -6
Kesher, 'the pact', interesting expansion on the immunity to paralysis, very cool. I have always followed the paralysis connection to fear (paralyzed by fear or flee in panic) as described in the AD&D MM. Should we be gaming with a fantasy element in the campaign, the immunity of elves to paralysis speaks to their essential nature being one of light and thus they are not subject to many of the depredations of the undead.
Drow, not so much these days, but humans working together with much the same Machiavellian, clandestine and sadistic appetites, yes...criminal organizations and those trafficking in the dark arts. Magic and sadism can make for some rather alien atmospheres.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 24, 2015 22:04:37 GMT -6
Cooper wrote: If the reference to D&D means OD&D, I don't see what you are driving at. Searching for a secret door requires a full turn (10 minutes). Moreover, "some doors are more difficult to discover, the linear curve being a d8 or d10 (97 AD&D/DMG). Should the party fail to discover a door they believe is hidden there (as Gandalf believed in your example), they may spend another turn searching and so on. There is a cost: a wandering monster die is rolled each turn (10 U&WA). There could be a trap. Depending on how much time passes searching, resources (hit points, arrows, flasks, provisions and water, spells)will be expended should a monster arrive and without advancing the exploration of the dungeon.
Elevating the level of danger apply this ruling on listening at doors to the search for concealed and secret doors: "Only three attempts can be made before the strain becomes too great. After the third attempt the listener must cease such activity at least five rounds before returning to listen again" (60 AD&D/DMG). Given the search for secret doors is defined in turns, the cessation of the search should be in turns.
Hedgehobbit wrote:
Agreed. The example from The Fellowship is rather exceptional, as the secret door is not in question, but more so how long it will take to open it, i.e. what spell or words will open it.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 23, 2015 13:23:04 GMT -6
Cooper wrote:
As this relates to player's imaginations, density of content is not sought, just enough overarching content (a door, a stair, a fire etc.) and minimal and sometimes colorful description (a great door, a long stair, a conflagration) to be supplied by the referee.
A thoughtful interpretation. The obverse: the less of the abstraction/dice in the hands of the players lends to "leading with the fiction".
You're far afield. Part of the difference between say pencil and paper rpgs and console gaming or even competitive wargaming is an inherent reliance of trust and cooperation players engage in with the referee.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 23, 2015 10:20:02 GMT -6
Cooper wrote:
Keeping the abstraction out of the minds of the players leaves the referee something to interpret and feeds the imaginations of the players.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 23, 2015 9:09:24 GMT -6
Vile wrote:
Precisely, the players need to be interacting with the world of the game, not the abstraction. Metagaming is just a consequence of placing the preponderance of mechanics in front of the screen.
Finarvyn wrote:
Barring player attack dice most everything, and sometimes the referee rolls all the dice. Even something like a saving throw is interpreted more within the bounds of a dungeon key, a d6 or 2d6 probability.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 23, 2015 9:02:14 GMT -6
Peterlind wrote:
Your point underscores the question of what is assumed in the design, the use of tables - a behind the screen approach, that is, how much do you wish players to handle?
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 21, 2015 23:58:22 GMT -6
Rastus, I believe you and your company can rock AC, ascending or descending, as you like. Nonetheless, it's worth reiterating some of the argument for descending AC. The problem with ascending AC is inherent of the concept, not the content. - Armor class really is a class: AC 3 means a type of armor with strengths and weaknesses vs. particular weapons.
AC 18 is more of an index, it just means 'higher number'. There is nothing intuitive about it. - Ascending AC is an attempt to 'evolve' away from the use of tables to a more 'intuitive' concept of AC born around the idea that 'the greater the number the better'. Yet, the emphasis on tables and thus the referee makes it difficult to think of the game in terms of numbers or stacking - lending greatly to the suspension of disbelief and forgetting one is playing a game.
- This preoccupation with the 'higher number' is conceptually related to the 'metagaming', munchkin mentality that found its stride in the era of 3E design culture emphasizing 'rules mastery',regardless of whether or not one chooses to subtract dexterity modifiers or magical adjustments from the 'to hit' die.
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Post by sepulchre on Aug 20, 2015 9:43:06 GMT -6
Oakesspalding wrote:
Agreed.
Talysman wrote: This approach goes against the grain of Gryhwk weapon factors and the MTM as weapons are numerically defined by their relationship/impact on particular armor types, resulting in a 'kill' (MTM) or 'hit points of damage' (3LLBs)which may also yield a kill result.
With the monk and other figures one wishes to distinguish with an AC modifier, I would levee a negative adj. against the opponent's 'to hit' die, the monk's armor type being 'none'. One means of justification: The weapon factor is based on the actual type of armor; a footman's flail vs. mail grants a +2 'to hit' adjustment or is recognized by a '6' regardless of whether dex and magical adjustments should bring his AC down to 1.
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Post by sepulchre on Jul 23, 2015 23:04:50 GMT -6
Osprey's Lion Rampant.
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Post by sepulchre on Jul 18, 2015 12:44:05 GMT -6
Haha! Thanks Derv I couldn't resist.
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Post by sepulchre on Jul 18, 2015 12:19:54 GMT -6
Scalydemon wrote:
And there's always..."There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know" - Donald Rumsfeld
Finarvyn wrote:
Good find.
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Post by sepulchre on Jul 17, 2015 11:39:46 GMT -6
Smubee wrote:
Ha! Yes, a good place to find inspiration, I have had much the same experience.
Yeah, that's a great introduction to table top rpgs, and a welcome alternative to console gaming.
Fair enough, my sense of things is many on the board believe OD&D really ideal, if not the ideal, for DIY and simplicity rather than other formats. I imagine that is why there is some contention with your post. Cooper is quite justified in taking up the notion of tradition, as this is very much the place for it. On the other end of the spectrum from your post, I favor a low and ceremonial magic milieu, working with a 3d6 version of Chainmail MTM and some 2d6/1d6 options from the 3LBBs and Dungeon. That format turns out to be both equally spare and creative and avoids departing from the spirit and more often than not the letter of the OD&D tradition. I think many on the board, including myself, are concerned with keeping to a sense of the tradition in our games, and like you, look to engage a format that unfolds whatever we might attempt to simulate or merely imagine.
Understood. I would be happy to look over a PDF of what your developing when you are able to share it.
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Post by sepulchre on Jul 17, 2015 9:08:08 GMT -6
Smubee wrote:
This sounds more like a campaign setting, not so much another game. In that case, redact and/or expand spell casting and spells in OD&D, for example, to fit with the Potter milieu. Red Baron's Harry Potter-themed compendium of additional spells, monsters, and miscellaneous magical items fits with the approach. Moreover, if for the sake of setting, you need to rename the knock spell "bombarda", so be it. As others have recalled, the guidelines set down as OD&D are a framework (one that may contract or expand) for any campaign setting. Maybe I am putting a finer point on this and that is what you really mean to say... That said, a wizarding world simulating or merely reminiscent of Hogwarts and the world of Dagon Alley sounds like a fun evening.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 27, 2015 21:24:40 GMT -6
Thanks Kesh! Campaign tends towards a dark/weird medieval version of muggle chronology.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 27, 2015 19:33:28 GMT -6
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 25, 2015 9:50:25 GMT -6
9. For the 'corpse trade', the doctor pays well.
10. To interrupt a ceremonial ritual, thievery being the enticement.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 20, 2015 10:50:23 GMT -6
Hedgehobbit wrote:
So more like a CEO, LoL! I imagine this eventually affects the locals, local mages, and the economy, but I get the picture you are painting.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 19, 2015 1:40:38 GMT -6
Derve wrote:
Yeah, I noticed this as well, ran with the title you posted for the PDF, but for myself ordered the two volume set.
Found his prose most compelling, spare - yet dramatic, makes for great reading.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 19, 2015 0:36:01 GMT -6
That's a good question, and I am certain others here, much better read in the genre than myself, could provide some useful examples. Geas for a specific item is a strong example, and there are many ways by which to deepen this motif. A company of adventurers is sufficiently more qualified for the task of exhuming or recovering the item(s) from a dungeon than a mage. Now, imagine if the party is geased to retrieve a spell book known to be in the possession of another mage, rumored to have taken up residence rather anonymously in the old quarter of the city. This mage could be a rather nasty adversary and offer a lot of opportunity to ply your imagination. The tome, itself, could be perilous to handle, ensorcelled with a host of curses (increased chance of wandering monsters, combat and save disadvantages, etc.), spells inscribed in an ancient tongue long lost to thought, and harboring a secret exceeding its sorcery. More spell casters could be engaged, ones to decipher text and lift the curses,only to find as long as the object is within one's possession the curses remain operative. The book might act like an artifact bringing on paranoia and possessiveness, impelling part of the company to split off, possibly becoming lost within, beneath or outside the city and thus imperiled.
Magic users belonging to the genre traffic with demons and thus are not entirely human, having given up some of their humanity to manifest these entities. Moreover, by their supplications or manipulations, they may themselves have risked becoming inimical to much of humanity. Hence they are not to be trusted. 'Limiting' I might take to be "well-defined", offering some boundaries by which a magic user is recognized and the latitude to express multiple figures.
Geas, then is a way of describing a wizard's nature, his natural hold over the minds of non-wizards, it is something essential to being a wizard; a sort of unfriendly version of Gandalf's forming of the company of 14, though one might interpret that as a geas as well.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 18, 2015 23:20:29 GMT -6
I think this is more of a sword and sorcery trope. I don't run a wilderness campaign in this way, but it's appropriate should your fantasy milieu cleave tightly to the genre. In a low-magic campaign like my own, spell casters enjoy the anonymity and isolation superstition provides their profession. The study and practice of eldritch rites benefit from the quiet and undisturbed obeisance to the unseen, be it in the attic residence of the old quarter, or among the dolmens on the hill. They are not particularly interested in adventurers, infants and lowly maids will feed the dark entities. Performing magic is about establishing and sustaining a contact with an entity(ies)that will become a guide and guardian to them, possibly a tormentor or nemesis to others, and all taking shape as the spells of the caster.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 16, 2015 20:36:20 GMT -6
Derve wrote: Thanks for the reference and your comments. I will take a look. I own a copy of Stone's A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor which Gary has mentioned in both a positive and negative light on a few occasions. Gary's prose in Classic Warfare I imagine reflects quite a bit of Oman's scholarship. Looks like this is easily affordable, will get hold of a copy. In the meantime, for anyone else interested, here is a link for the PDF version (it may take a few minutes to load): The Art of War in the Middle Ages - C.W.C. OmanOrdered and very much enjoying the pdf read while I await the post. Reading how the Varangian guard, serving the Byzantine Emporer Alexius, drove a Norman host of foot and horse into the sea. Yet, due to their brashness impelling them to press ahead of the Byzantine ranks, they were cut off from the main army and surrounded. They took refuge in abandoned church nestled on a knoll above the sea. The Normans gatherered flammables and set the building ablaze, forcing the Varangians out of the sanctuary where they were cut to pieces by archers and cavalry alike. Speaks very much to cooper 's previous post on tactics and mortality.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 16, 2015 10:12:16 GMT -6
With reference to armor type, I am asserting the weapon itself is being considered, while you are advancing a particular wielder is the subject of consideration, both of us are considering the weapon's proficient use (a pointless exercise otherwise) - there is more than a semantic difference here and it goes back to understanding the similarities in 'kill values' and the later differences in weapons factors. Using the unarmored figure as a base, wielding a dagger, a morning star, and two-handed sword with lethal consequence in my opinion should not carry the same probability; moreover why a bardiche should bear a +3 adj, while a two-handed sword and a glaive receive none, all of which are heavy bladed weapons with similar speed factors exceeds my understanding. It doesn't appear to me that 'who are or what I associate with numbers' will 'help to explain' any of these iterations, as you assert above. Again, these disparities are part of the reason why I have stated our associations (like the Landsknect) or skill variations are best revealed by morale and not the combat matrices.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 15, 2015 22:33:59 GMT -6
Derve:
Sure, and all of us are in that boat if this is how we arrive at the numbers. You're thinking English archers, I'm thinking heavy foot (vikings), maybe light foot (Celtic skirmishers) or even medium foot (footman during the Hundred Years War). Given that, I should also be considering these associations for weapons class, a unified system would mean considering troop type for this abstraction as well. The immediate problem is that our cast of likely suspects is too broad and again I find considering troop type more than once redundant, much like using both weapon factors and variable damage in D&D.
I am tempted to say, just imagine who might wield this weapon with proficiency and there you will find the source for the 'kill values'. After that, call it a day. However, what if my conception of who is wielding a mace is a lowly footman, while Gary's is a trained, but unseasoned knight, a non-veteran? The skill variation included in the morale ratings which is pivotal in mass combat and apparent in the morale dice for MTM becomes rather hard to recognize once we arrive at the MTM combat table with this example.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 15, 2015 21:01:29 GMT -6
Derve wrote:
Indeed, you are saying this. And it's fair to say if you want an example of someone proficient with a two-handed sword, look no further than the Landsknect. In effect though you are advancing some idea of skill, if not character skill, then skill by troop type which bears the same consequence. This is fine for a two-handed sword, it is problematic for weapons like, dagger, axe, mace and even sword - weapons wielded by both commoner and nobility. Who is being considered when eye-balling a fixed value for the first three weapons, a man of the militia, a light footman, a heavy footman, armored footman? This conception behind how the values are arrived at begins to fall apart the greater the prevalence of these weapons in use is considered. And maybe you're right Gary may have based his consideration of the weapon off a particular troop type, but we have no way of knowing which one, and that matters the greater the prevalence of the weapon's circulation.
That said, though relevant,I believe we are a bit afield of where we started. The point is the fixed values for weapons of various consequence against unarmored opponents are the same. Deciding that a particular troop type is whom Gary drew from to arrive at a 'kill value' does not clarify or resolve the question of why dagger, morning star and two-handed sword are represented by identical values.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 15, 2015 18:06:19 GMT -6
Derve, I don't believe you are talking about 'exactitude', as much as you and I conceptually read the numbers differently.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 15, 2015 9:20:09 GMT -6
Cooper wrote:
Got it now, confusing knight and peasant in my reply - too late when I am responding to posts, thought all of your points to be well-considered.
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Post by sepulchre on Jun 15, 2015 1:43:29 GMT -6
Derve wrote:
I am aware of this, and it applies for all figures. I am not sure why you are restating it, so please press on...
Your position, if I understand correctly, is the 'kill values' imply who or what type of figure is wielding the weapon. How would one infer or 'guess'? Where we differ then is where the emphasis on training falls; I am suggesting the 'variation in skill' is assumed under the abstraction of morale, you appear to be asserting that emphasis is considered throughout. I don't see this as a tenable position. I understand why you believe this might be so. As it is unclear as to whom is wielding a dagger, an axe, even a sword in some cases (non-noble man-at-arms, a knight, maybe a Norseman) I have to assume the 'kill value' implies a uniform proficiency among all bearing weapons (barring leaders and berserkers being permitted to modify the attack dice).
This again suggests the primacy of initiative for a different yet equally plausible reason than the realism reflected in the weapon class values. It is implied that if the figure is wielding the weapon in the first place, he receives the benefits of its weapon class. It's not about which figure is wielding the weapon, but that the weapon itself is wielded at all. If this were not the case we would be bandying the argument over 'kill values' for weapon class as well. Why press for the variation of skill consideration in the 'kill values' and not weapon class? I am suggesting the unified system is in how combat itself is addressed. It's unity is that proficiency is implied in that any figure is wielding said weapon. The same goes for donning armor, something other games might more finely grain and require a proficiency system. That proficiency or skill is one of the components of morale is true, but morale is a separate albeit complimentary operation to the combat dice in MTM.
Gronanofsimmerya wrote:
The reason I didn't respond, simply is that you are so full of yourself. If you could stand to be objective and carry on a civil dialogue, I would be happy to respond. Take a lesson from our friend, Derv, he appears quite capable.
Waysoftheearth wrote:
Agreed. The problem is the MTM as presented (that is without any combatants to refer to for more information) does not give us any clue what kind of figure is wielding a weapon. One could guess, that is, when looking to the 'kill value' or weapon class for dagger or axe I might be able to infer the wielder, but that would merely be guessing. Armor would be a consideration once we had two combatants to work with, otherwise the variations of skill are assumed under the abstraction of morale. It can be argued that more information can be inferred from the attack dice values in the mass combat table, but that does not bear out on the MTM table.
I, myself, don't see this as a problem. It's rather elegant. I just disagree with the fixed 'kill values' as written.
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