oldkat
Level 6 Magician
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Post by oldkat on Jan 28, 2016 11:02:30 GMT -6
I'm not a CM-er; never played it; never seen it played; only heard and read stories about it. I have seen, in forum discussions here, there, and everywhere, that even among CM-ers, there is a lot of heated disagreement/s as to what the "rules", of it, say/imply. Moving on to OD&D (the LBBs), after a few years of scrutinizing them myself, and more years of just plain involvement in the hobby, it's my impression that these were written not for the non-initiated player, but for the referee, from which to teach one's players how to play. It was, after all, small printings of the original rules, with a portion of the sets (I've heard said) being given away to "DMs" around the local area. I hope folks that were there, then (like Mike, Rob, Tim, etc.) can comment on this suspicion. Yet, in the INTRO itself, it clearly suggests the original rules were meant to be purchased by a public including players-- This statement is kind of puzzling to me. For one, how can a player be in an existing campaign if they or their group does not have the rules? What kind of campaigns were going on, back there/then, before these rules came out? Mini war gaming? As my wind is running out, I would simply like to direct folks to much of Rob's comments on this and other forums, when he reiterates (again, for us that need reminding) that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks is important--rules wise--to your game. There is no such thing as a definitive RULES SET, designed to pigeonhole everyone into following a(the same) formula; especially not one that removes your own critical and creative management of your game. There! out of wind!
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oldkat
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 431
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Post by oldkat on Jan 28, 2016 13:17:56 GMT -6
when yu start writing your own facts then you cross a line. i'll never not call down a factual error when I see one. I must have missed this somewhere. And this is in reference to...?
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 28, 2016 13:58:04 GMT -6
Rob always has interesting things to say, but they are biased by his own personal experiences and can't always be assumed to be the "only" answer to a question about the early days. Part of what can be tricky is that there were a couple of different groups with different rules at different times. Gary's campaign and Dave's campaign would have developed differently since they were far apart both geographically and in time, so what happened in one campaign might or might not mirror what happened in the other. (Most of the names mentioned thus far were from the Lake Geneva crowd, I believe, and not as representative of the Twin Cities evolution. I don't know for certain which years Michael Mornard played in Dave's game, so I don't know if he played in Dave's game before Dave showed Gary his Black Moor game.)
For example, Dave's campaign divided fighting men into flunkies, heroes, and super heroes. Hit points at some stages of the early game were derived in a manner which is similar to the hit dice attributed to these levels from Chainmail. This designation clearly follows Chainmail. It doesn't prove that the Chainmail combat system was used, but it does support some level of familiarity with the rules. Dave's First Fantasy Campaign notes clearly show that his Blackmoor campaign used military unit types pretty much straight out of Chainmail. We do know that Gary's pre-Chainmail rules were circulated to folks in the Castles & Crusades society and it would seem strange that folks would get them but never try them or never be influenced by them, and the line between Braunstein and early OD&D is a fine one so it's hard to say when a miniatures game might have transitioned into a role-playing experience and at what point man-to-man battles might have been fought using army rules.
I know that my own group played Chainmail prior to our discovery of OD&D in the 1970's, and we acted the role of a general a lot in negotiations, etc, along the way. Not a true RPG at that point, but not far off, either. So, while I can't say what other games did back in the day, I can say that my group played some early OD&D campaigns using the Chainmail combat system.
Anyway, I guess my point is that the above quote might reflect Rob's experience but may or may not be the total picture.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 28, 2016 14:03:09 GMT -6
in the INTRO itself, it clearly suggests the original rules were meant to be purchased by a public including players-- This statement is kind of puzzling to me. For one, how can a player be in an existing campaign if they or their group does not have the rules? What kind of campaigns were going on, back there/then, before these rules came out? Mini war gaming? (1) The earliest campaigns really were a blend of miniatures and role-playing. (2) I think the statement suggests that a player in some game (where the GM already owns the rules) might find it to his advantage to also own a copy of the rules. I suppose in a way one could say that Gary is suggesting that players could become rules lawyers in order to become better players.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 28, 2016 15:09:34 GMT -6
if rob tells me the author of the game didn't use CM to develop D&D and that corroborates the word of the co-authors and those who played in the campaign i'm inclined to accept his word. i'm sure others in the early days played it other ways but stating the intention of the author when his intent has been well established just isn't facts. Agreed. Except that there were two authors of the game and I don't think that Rob played in Dave's game. (And Dave's game came first.) The assumption that "if Gary didn't do it then we must assume that Dave didn't do it" would seem tenuous at best. Greg Svenson (The Great Svenny in Dave's original Blackmoor campaign, and actually the participant of the first-ever dungeon crawl) has stated that he has some notes from Dave's OD&D campaign scribbled in the margin of his copy of the Chainmail rule book. It would seem odd for him to write OD&D stuff in a book that was never used for OD&D.
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Post by Stormcrow on Jan 28, 2016 15:25:58 GMT -6
Rob always has interesting things to say, but they are biased by his own personal experiences and can't always be assumed to be the "only" answer to a question about the early days. Part of what can be tricky is that there were a couple of different groups with different rules at different times. Gary's campaign and Dave's campaign would have developed differently since they were far apart both geographically and in time, so what happened in one campaign might or might not mirror what happened in the other. (Most of the names mentioned thus far were from the Lake Geneva crowd, I believe, and not as representative of the Twin Cities evolution. I don't know for certain which years Michael Mornard played in Dave's game, so I don't know if he played in Dave's game before Dave showed Gary his Black Moor game.) Rob said there that "we" (meaning the players in Lake Geneva) didn't use Chainmail for the playtests (meaning the rules Gary drew up for the concept that Dave gave him). He's not talking about how Dave handled combat or how proto-D&D games handled combat. He simply said that the stuff Gary came up with never used Chainmail for combat. The published rules were designed around the alternate system, with some references to Chainmail where they would be useful.
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 28, 2016 15:35:42 GMT -6
if memory serves Dave tried it one or 2 sessions, gave up on it, and never used it again. so we come back to anyone saying d&D is based on CM being in the worng. Let us assume you are straightforwardly and blazingly right in every way. Why does it matter to you? What work does it do for you? And why such evident pleasure in showing certain folks to be wrong, dead wrong, just wrong wrong. So what?
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18 Spears
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Post by 18 Spears on Jan 28, 2016 15:40:11 GMT -6
post deleted sorry to bother you.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 21:18:00 GMT -6
This statement is kind of puzzling to me. For one, how can a player be in an existing campaign if they or their group does not have the rules? What kind of campaigns were going on, back there/then, before these rules came out? Mini war gaming? The original scope of the game was that only the referee needed the rules. Gary ran Greyhawk for almost two years with most of us never seeing the rules. That quoted section refers to a player, not the referee.
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oldkat
Level 6 Magician
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Post by oldkat on Jan 28, 2016 21:22:02 GMT -6
I wish I had a time machine. I'm beginning to think, that the more I learn about all this, the more I would have preferred playing under those conditions.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 22:20:09 GMT -6
What's keeping you from doing so?
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Post by Stormcrow on Jan 29, 2016 2:09:32 GMT -6
After reading Rob's comments, I would be curious if he'd like to expound on where Gary got this notion of including/suggesting/promoting Chainmail as the apparent primary combat resolution mechanic, if it was never so. Rob seems to be suggesting that there was NO connection to OD&D with Chainmail at all- an almost blissful ignorance of it's existence and influence during the development of D&D. You're putting words in Rob's mouth. All he said was that D&D was designed and tested using the "alternate" rules instead of Chainmail for combat. The game is obviously hugely indebted to Chainmail, but you don't play Chainmail inside D&D. The "alternate" tables derive from Chainmail's man-to-man tables, many monsters derive from Chainmail fantasy figures, but using these is not using Chainmail.
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Post by cadriel on Jan 29, 2016 5:31:50 GMT -6
Three points on why Gary included Chainmail references:
1. As Rob says on the Ruins of Murkhill thread, there was a compatibility element to this. The idea of D&D was new, so letting people use Chainmail as a sort of familiar starting point from a more typical wargame made sense.
2. There was an expectation that experienced wargamers would have their own way of resolving situations that would come up in D&D combat. It was a small scene and changing the existing rules was the norm.
3. Gary had a financial interest in D&D drumming up some sales for Chainmail. He wasn't blind when it came to money, and if one game could help sell copies of another, all the better.
There was certainly no expectation that forty-two years later, people would be parsing his rules with a fine toothed comb and discussing them as we are today.
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Post by increment on Jan 29, 2016 10:35:35 GMT -6
I am not parsing rules here. I am responding to Rob's comments that occurred in a certain context on another forum. Can someone link to the source that started all this; if it's above I don't see it? Just curious.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 29, 2016 11:30:49 GMT -6
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 29, 2016 16:23:12 GMT -6
Rob always has interesting things to say, but they are biased by his own personal experiences and can't always be assumed to be the "only" answer to a question about the early days. Part of what can be tricky is that there were a couple of different groups with different rules at different times. Gary's campaign and Dave's campaign would have developed differently since they were far apart both geographically and in time, so what happened in one campaign might or might not mirror what happened in the other. (Most of the names mentioned thus far were from the Lake Geneva crowd, I believe, and not as representative of the Twin Cities evolution. I don't know for certain which years Michael Mornard played in Dave's game, so I don't know if he played in Dave's game before Dave showed Gary his Black Moor game.) Rob said there that "we" (meaning the players in Lake Geneva) didn't use Chainmail for the playtests (meaning the rules Gary drew up for the concept that Dave gave him). He's not talking about how Dave handled combat or how proto-D&D games handled combat. He simply said that the stuff Gary came up with never used Chainmail for combat. The published rules were designed around the alternate system, with some references to Chainmail where they would be useful. I agree, but the original post (since deleted) gave the impression that all of the early campaigns were done the same way (without Chainmail) and my main point was that Dave's pre-Gary game has many elements that suggest an overlap with Chainmail and that comments made by Greg Svenson seems to support this. I'm certainly not trying to challenge Rob's authority in this matter. Not when it comes to the Lake Geneva campaigns.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2016 21:42:31 GMT -6
"An elephant is warm and mushy."
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2016 21:13:16 GMT -6
Also, as I've said elsewhere, I moved to Minneapolis and became a regular in BLACKMOOR in September 1973. By that time they were NOT using CHAINMAIL any more.
I suspect CHAINMAIL lasted about six months, because we all liked inventing new systems.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2016 21:14:40 GMT -6
if memory serves Dave tried it one or 2 sessions, gave up on it, and never used it again. so we come back to anyone saying d&D is based on CM being in the worng. Let us assume you are straightforwardly and blazingly right in every way. Why does it matter to you? What work does it do for you? And why such evident pleasure in showing certain folks to be wrong, dead wrong, just wrong wrong. So what? BECAUSE HISTORY EXISTS, IT IS NOT WHAT A BUNCH OF GOOBERS DECIDE IT IS. Every false "fact" obscures the historical record.
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Post by tetramorph on Feb 1, 2016 9:56:15 GMT -6
@gronanofsimmerya, the past exists. Yes. And history, as a discipline which interprets the shreds we recall and have any evidence concerning exists. Yes. Very good.
What is the debate about? There is a lot of heat but not much light here. All I am asking for is light.
The only reason we tell stories about the past (beyond their entertainment value, which, I am sure we can all agree, this discussion has little to none) is to help us make decisions today.
What I am asking, @gronanofsimmerya, is why this matters? How does it affect us? How might it change any of our gaming decisions?
I would be very curious to learn about that.
Otherwise, it just sounds like a bunch of anger.
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Post by increment on Feb 1, 2016 12:54:00 GMT -6
Also, as I've said elsewhere, I moved to Minneapolis and became a regular in BLACKMOOR in September 1973. By that time they were NOT using CHAINMAIL any more. I suspect CHAINMAIL lasted about six months, because we all liked inventing new systems. A slightly philosophical aside here. I think a lot of the confusion in this discussion comes from what people mean by "using Chainmail" or "abandoning Chainmail." I mean, by September 1973, the D&D rules were pretty much fully formed, and both the groups in Wisconsin and Minnesota would both be using mainly those new systems. But those systems have a certain debt to Chainmail: in how they do classes, and spells, and monsters, and armor class, and hit points, and saving throws. Chainmail isn't just a melee combat resolution system. So when we talk about how Arneson "abandoned" Chainmail, we can't really mean he threw out Chainmail concepts entirely; instead he incrementally varied and expanded things like the combat system to a point where some of those elements were different enough that people started regarding it as a new game. All of the surviving transitional material amply substantiates that this process was indeed incremental. Remember though that this is the same thing everyone did to D&D after it came out. Many early adopters didn't favor, or didn't understand, D&D's spell memorization system, so they decided to use spell points instead - or klutz magic. They added critical hit and critical fumble systems. They added new monsters and classes and spells and so on. But when does it get to a point where we say they "abandoned" D&D? It seems to be largely self-selecting: Ken St. Andre, for example, believed very early on that he'd taken things to a place where his game was no longer D&D, even though the basic idea of T&T is pretty much the same (I'd say T&T is closer to D&D than D&D is to Chainmail). Other people who designed variants more fundamental than T&T still framed their rules as extensions to D&D rather than as new games. Gygax often went on record that if you crossed certain lines, you were no longer playing D&D, and this served his own commercial purposes - he wanted to sell new products that fit in with his company's previous releases, and to do that, he needed some consistency in the system. So the question of when (or even whether) Arneson "abandoned" Chainmail is not really a question with some objective historical reality to it - it is a highly subjective question about how we understand the transitions between systems as variants evolve. Presenting this as a matter of historical fact rather than a judgment will unsurprisingly cause controversy.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2016 15:07:08 GMT -6
The only reason we tell stories about the past (beyond their entertainment value, which, I am sure we can all agree, this discussion has little to none) is to help us make decisions today. That is utterly, categorically false.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2016 15:10:45 GMT -6
Also, as I've said elsewhere, I moved to Minneapolis and became a regular in BLACKMOOR in September 1973. By that time they were NOT using CHAINMAIL any more. I suspect CHAINMAIL lasted about six months, because we all liked inventing new systems. A slightly philosophical aside here. I think a lot of the confusion in this discussion comes from what people mean by "using Chainmail" or "abandoning Chainmail." I mean, by September 1973, the D&D rules were pretty much fully formed, and both the groups in Wisconsin and Minnesota would both be using mainly those new systems. But those systems have a certain debt to Chainmail: in how they do classes, and spells, and monsters, and armor class, and hit points, and saving throws. Chainmail isn't just a melee combat resolution system. So when we talk about how Arneson "abandoned" Chainmail, we can't really mean he threw out Chainmail concepts entirely; instead he incrementally varied and expanded things like the combat system to a point where some of those elements were different enough that people started regarding it as a new game. All of the surviving transitional material amply substantiates that this process was indeed incremental. Remember though that this is the same thing everyone did to D&D after it came out. Many early adopters didn't favor, or didn't understand, D&D's spell memorization system, so they decided to use spell points instead - or klutz magic. They added critical hit and critical fumble systems. They added new monsters and classes and spells and so on. But when does it get to a point where we say they "abandoned" D&D? It seems to be largely self-selecting: Ken St. Andre, for example, believed very early on that he'd taken things to a place where his game was no longer D&D, even though the basic idea of T&T is pretty much the same (I'd say T&T is closer to D&D than D&D is to Chainmail). Other people who designed variants more fundamental than T&T still framed their rules as extensions to D&D rather than as new games. Gygax often went on record that if you crossed certain lines, you were no longer playing D&D, and this served his own commercial purposes - he wanted to sell new products that fit in with his company's previous releases, and to do that, he needed some consistency in the system. So the question of when (or even whether) Arneson "abandoned" Chainmail is not really a question with some objective historical reality to it - it is a highly subjective question about how we understand the transitions between systems as variants evolve. Presenting this as a matter of historical fact rather than a judgment will unsurprisingly cause controversy. Well, I got from this thread that people were specifically referring to the combat systems of CHAINMAIL. If that is not the case, my thoughts and observations are irrelevant.
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oldkat
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 431
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Post by oldkat on Feb 1, 2016 15:25:44 GMT -6
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Post by tetramorph on Feb 1, 2016 15:56:54 GMT -6
That is utterly, categorically false. I am not interested in whether we have comparable philosophies of history. That was not the point of my post. I was looking for light, not heat.
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Post by Stormcrow on Feb 1, 2016 19:11:47 GMT -6
I am not interested in whether we have comparable philosophies of history. That was not the point of my post. I was looking for light, not heat. Light: Nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail for D&D's combat system by the time Dave demoed it for Gary and Rob. Most people who were involved have confirmed this. This fact does not sever D&D's connection to Chainmail. Elements of Chainmail combat were included in the published rules to get wargamers to see it as an extension of a wargame, because this was the main audience for the new game.
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oldkat
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 431
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Post by oldkat on Feb 1, 2016 19:34:13 GMT -6
And yet I wonder, how many of those did he lose/or turn away, because of this: If that didn't rankle some neck hairs, then I'm the son of a sea cook!
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Post by increment on Feb 1, 2016 21:26:25 GMT -6
I am not interested in whether we have comparable philosophies of history. That was not the point of my post. I was looking for light, not heat. Light: Nobody involved in developing D&D was using Chainmail for D&D's combat system by the time Dave demoed it for Gary and Rob. Most people who were involved have confirmed this. This fact does not sever D&D's connection to Chainmail. Elements of Chainmail combat were included in the published rules to get wargamers to see it as an extension of a wargame, because this was the main audience for the new game. So, speaking as someone who was not "involved," I have some remarks on this - but as a roundabout way of stating them, I'm going to change the subject a little. We all know that on pg19 of Men & Magic, there is an "Alternative Combat System" listing the d20 values required to score hits against various armor classes. What is less commonly acknowledged is that virtually nothing in the LBBs gives you the slightest inkling what it is for or how to use it. There is no text that explains a combat turn sequence, initiative, surprise, or even how much damage a hit deals (that text in the 6th+ PDFs saying that a hit deals 1-6 damage does not appear until the 4th printing, well after Greyhawk). 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.
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Post by tetramorph on Feb 2, 2016 8:32:08 GMT -6
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Post by aldarron on Feb 2, 2016 8:58:41 GMT -6
That's a great post Jon; particularly the observation of the parallel quote from CM.
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