Does Arneson's "Cunning" stat map to Dex rather than Wis?

[increment]

Jun 16, 2017 10:21:37 GMT -6 Cedgewick said:

we can see the likely forking of Cunning (which now appears twice) by Gygax to Wisdom and Dexterity for OD&D, to provide a prerequisite ability for Gygax's prerequisite system (Wisdom serving no other purpose in OD&D), followed by Arneson eliminating Wisdom.

While it may be that someone forked Cunning into Wisdom and Dexterity at some point, Cunning was already a "prime requisite" for Clerics before it was forked. While I agree that Gygax seems to have been the prime requisite guy, it is no more clear to me who introduced cunning.

And to be clear as well, the transitional character sheet I mentioned doesn't have an ICSHA "side" or show ICSHA values, it is a SIWCDCh sheet - it is just clear from the context that the character was a port from an ICSHA character, and we might infer the fuzziness about Wisdom and Dexterity resulted from that.

Also I would really urge you to call AiF "Arneson + Snider".

[Cedgewick]

I took "CHOPS" tables 14 & 15 from the BTPBD/Dalluhn manuscript and tried deriving Attack Matrix 1 & 2 from pgs. 18-19 of Men & Magic.  I was able to numerically derive both tables in Excel from the "CHOPS" tables.  The equations I used are on the top of the columns on the Men & Magic tables.  This strongly suggests that the Attack Matrices in OD&D's Alternative Combat system were directly derived from the "CHOPS" tables.  More to Hedgehobbits point, the "CHOPS" tables could indeed be the tables Arneson used when he demonstrated Blackmoor for Gygax in November 1972.  In the Dice interview I cited above from 1994, Arneson said:

After Don't Give Up the Ship I started in on Blackmoor (the forerunner of D&D), and the 20-siders resurfaced. Magic, being the strange, arcane thing that it is, cried out for strange dice.  The early players readily accepted them (the same ones who had rejected them for the more serious military miniatures games). That there were only three pairs was no problem.  Generally, we felt that we were nuts and no one outside of my parents’ basement bunch would ever play this fantasy thing. We kept at it because we were having such a blast playing Blackmoor.I was positive that such a set of random number generators would revolutionize the military miniature games back home, doing away with the percentage determination table that we used with the 6-sided dice...Then our ‘sister’ group in Lake Geneva was exposed to Blackmoor. With a copy of Blackmoor and a pair of the 20-siders, what was to become Dungeons & Dragons was born.

(EDIT: for those just tuning in, the 20-siders at the time were numbered 0-9 twice.  A pair of 20-siders could be used to generate percentages)

I've attached an Excel spreadsheet of the derivations of the two tables to this post, in case anyone wants to check them out.  The first row in the Attack Matrix tables in the pictures below shows the equations I used to get each particular column.  The player table is very simply derived, but the monster table incorporated more power level tweaks in going from BTPBD/Dalluhn to the OD&D Attack Matrices, probably due to desired changes from the play-testing.

Attachments:

Derivation of ODD Attack matrices from BTP....xlsx (14.54 KB)

[Zenopus]

Cedgewick, thanks for the Ability comparison table, it's useful to see everything side-by-side like that.

It seems Cunning disappeared around the time Looks/Appearance/Leadership/etc became Charisma.
Another possibility is that the idea of Cunning (in its slyness/guile definition) was also merged into Charisma. Particularly since Charisma modifies Reaction rolls.

[Cedgewick]

Jun 16, 2017 14:18:50 GMT -6 increment said:

Cunning was already a "prime requisite" for Clerics before it was forked.

The connotations of "cunning" are not a good fit for the prime requisite of the generally benevolent Cleric concept though.  The forking provided the much more acceptable Wisdom ability score as the prime requisite.

it is no more clear to me who introduced cunning.

Why is cunning on Gaylord's character sheet? If you say that it could have been put there during the D&D playtest, then explain why nothing besides the 5 abilities was changed on the Gaylord character sheet.

And to be clear as well, the transitional character sheet I mentioned doesn't have an ICSHA "side" or show ICSHA values, it is a SIWCDCh sheet - it is just clear from the context that the character was a port from an ICSHA character, and we might infer the fuzziness about Wisdom and Dexterity resulted from that.

Can you please post all the abilities and numbers for that character sheet and explain the context?  Or better yet, post a scan of it?  It is certainly very relevant to this topic.

[Cedgewick]

Jun 16, 2017 15:02:08 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Cedgewick, thanks for the Ability comparison table, it's useful to see everything side-by-side like that.

It seems Cunning disappeared around the time Looks/Appearance/Leadership/etc became Charisma.
Another possibility is that the idea of Cunning (in its slyness/guile definition) was also merged into Charisma. Particularly since Charisma modifies Reaction rolls.

Yes, I think Cunning disappeared during the Gygax editing process, where the renames of Health and Appearance also occurred.  As The Perilous Dreamer pointed out, it could be that some of the traits such as courage, credibility and leadership were also rolled into Charisma.  Seeing what was erased/crossed out (or whatever Increment means by context) on the transitional character sheet would shed some light on what happened.

[derv]

Jun 16, 2017 15:02:08 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

It seems Cunning disappeared around the time Looks/Appearance/Leadership/etc became Charisma.
Another possibility is that the idea of Cunning (in its slyness/guile definition) was also merged into Charisma. Particularly since Charisma modifies Reaction rolls.

This seems to be a reasonable alternative.

Something also worth pondering is this idea that prime requisites are solely the handywork of Gygax. I'm spit balling here by suggesting that they're simply a reinterpretation of what Arneson was already experimenting with. Early on Arneson was developing his concept of quantifying a character's role and it's improvement over time. Since we are looking at many of these attributes in light of task resolutions, perhaps the first row of personality traits/abilities on the Gaylord sheet are those that improved over time through "experience". In OD&D ability scores become marginalized. They lose this association with task resolution. The long list of skills disappears. Their primary function of helping determine a characters role is emphasized and the idea of improving with experience is shifted entirely to gaining levels through the benefit of "prime requisites".

[Cedgewick]

Jun 16, 2017 8:28:24 GMT -6 Cedgewick said:

If this is early D&D, where is his Ego score-- it appeared in early D&D character sheets

I was thinking about this and about how I took Dalluhn off the character sheet table because it is a branch of early D&D.  For the same reason, Ego might be an addition only in the Dalluhn manuscript, in which case no Ego ability on a character sheet doesn't necessarily mean anything.  increment, can you tell us if Ego is on any of the pre-Dalluhn manuscripts that are in the direct lineage of D&D? 

[Finarvyn]

[admin hat]
By the way -- I'd just like to express my appreciation to everyone for the civil nature of this thread. At one point it looked like it was going to get really heated, but cooler heads prevailed and solid scholarship-style discussion is happening here. Thank you!
[/admin hat]

[Deleted]

Fun stuff here!

We definitely encourage more exploration in regard to how the attributes evolve. Yet often with things like this one can easily make huge leaps; in order to fit the pieces neatly into one's Connect-the-Dots-Assertions.

The OP's chart makes many assertions. Even the first line that omits guts as being possibly equivalent to strength is a very big assertion. What if it is the source for two attributes? We just don't know with any certainty. Changing the order in which the attributes appear, to what is used in OD&D, merely confuses things.

The idea of parallels in attributes IS interesting, but how can the premise be adjusted to suit what may be evident within the documents and 1st person descriptions?

There is a lot of good commentary here that would indicate that a need for adjustment may be worth consideration. If Peterson and Boggs are coming to similar assertions on why something is a certain way, we are likely to take a look at it and ask for proofs in a PM OR EMAIL. We don't always agree with either of Jon or Dan, but this peer review, even person to person, is very important.

Sorry to see this discussion take a wrong turn in places. I would say that it would be helpful to use ones "grown up language" AND "manners". And for people not directly mentioned to not jump in on either side, as it only fans the flames.

Cedgewick,
We will say that Jon Peterson tends to present himself as a bit more important than the subject he studies. He has a unique way of pissing people off, perhaps without meaning to, we can't tell. In many circles his kind of passive aggression is called trolling. We have known many nerds like this in our time, we tend to avoid them. We certainly don't invite them to game night.

A statement such as "I don't know of any reason to think ability scores were used for task resolution in Blackmoor in this era." comes because Jon has decided that 1st person narrative is not a qualifiable form of research, yet if you examine any document on research it is clearly listed as such, Jon could call any original Blackmoor player, or better yet all of them, to verify this. So we must forgive him for his personal research aesthetic, which is not adhered to by most qualified experts around the world; after all, Jon is merely an independent scholar like the rest of us, and we are all on equal footing here.

Imagine what any newscast or documentary would be like if it did not use 1st person narrative. News Anchor: "We would like to present a person to you who saw the whole shootout, but their perspective could be flawed and biased. Instead we will show you some pictures of flowers." We tend to be more open minded in this regard because we make films.

We also tend to look at things oddly and use different qualifiers for what is what, so we'll throw out some of our thinking and you can consider that as well.

Odd thoughts begin here:
We are more inclined to agree with those who foster the idea that attributes were created based on how much they were used and needed. In the case of Wisdom, Gary's style seems to be one of adjusting things so as to create an all encompassing system. We got clerics, we need a special attribute for em. We have plenty of interviews where people describe how Gary often ignored play test reports in favor of simply doing what he wanted to do with a game rule. In conjunction with Arneson's early seat of your pants design; this would indicate that some things just get created and thrown into the mix, and or, removed from the system entirely.

Good point HowAndWhy99! about comparing the Attribute to NPC rules.

We see one very big difference, between some early attributes and later ones, is the creation of limits in terms of a players ability to act in any way they wish. Case in point: Guts/Courage. We don't know how this is applied in game play, but it would seem to be a limiting paremeter if it is comperable to morale. Attributes have a definite usage within all RPG's later on: A player announces what they want to do, and a rule + roll is applied to see if they succeed. If guts and courage are morale, then yes we follow the same method to indicate we are using this rule " I attack the monster", but it would limit a player's ability to enter into combat if he failed. So much for free will.

Odd thought:
While no one will argue that FRP's come from War Gaming, what we see in the attribute is a transition that may be caused by Role Playing and a player's need to have free will during game play. Consider that this Attribute is not merely dumped, but rather it gets moved to the section on NPC hirelings and morale. Maybe there is a corrolation there as HowandWhy99 has asserted.

Also, What we may be seeing is an understanding of how certain attributes function and are to be distributed between character types: we're seeing a split here between PC's and NPCS within the attributes?

Arneson's approach to design seems to be one of allowing possibility. Gary's seems to be more one of creating limitations. A good example of this is Gary's obesession with creating balance within D&D between the classes. i.e. In Arneson's game wizards can use swords! and in D&D they end up with daggers; just imagine Gandalf wielding his trusy magic dagger Glamdring into battle. Arneson used personal motive, just as wesely did in Braunstein, to define personas; once again open ended and limitless. Gygax came up with a contraption called allignments; which is like a wet sleeping bag on a player's free will.

We would like to pose some statements and questions of our own here:
Gary's true grasp of some of the rules seems to be fairly limited, and or he changed his perspective with time, yet he drafted the rules for OD&D. Example: Despite characters having attributes the attributes serve no purpose in the original game aside from some minor bonuses.

Example: in the case of Clerics, there seems to be no real difference between a wisdom of 3 and one of 18.

Based on what we've heard from Blackmoor players, the mixture of Attribute/Skill Parameters WAS used during game play. We're inclined to think that the use of these values came on fairly early as well, Royal Spanish attributes support this theory. Certainly if Arneson created attributes for the Spanish Royals, he was including them as a game mechanism to be used. We will defer on whether the type of play was role playing, or not; the point is that if the rule is created. then it is likely Arneson would have used it, so it is more than probable that Arneson had a much different idea about the function of attributes in his game as opposed to Gygax's final edit for D&D.

More odd thoughts here:
Also, the OP's attributes chart has neglected to include the attributes for swords. The magic swords are most likely an Arneson concept that leaked into the system being created by Gary; thus polluting an all encompassing attributes system with some extraneous junk that does not fit the plan.

Again, these ARE attributes! Yet we may be seeing a split between Strong Willed swords with Iq and Egos and PC's with, you got it -- Free Will. Consider that NPC's need to be controlled and Magic Swords need to do the controlling!

Ironically, Swords get 2d6 attributes (oops it gets changed to 1d12 Gotta figure out how to use those 12 siders more.) and Characters get 3d6!

Odd thought, but we don't recall if anyone mentioned dice averages:
The possible reason for switching to 3d6 is most likely so as to even out the curve for attributes. We don't know if this is the WHY for using 3d6, but it would make sense. You get less characters with 3's than you get with 2's. While everyone desires a high attribute, no one wants lots of 2's.

Odd fact:
And of course "Dexterity" is the Thieves attribute! Yet, they are not invented by either Gary or Dave until later on. (Megarry plays a thief from the get-go, but it is interpretted differently.) Gary Shweitzer and his group in California invent them, and then they are adopted by Gygax who wrote the rules as published in gaming fanzines. (GPGPNL July, 74) As with many rules that come later, they get plugged into the existing system willy nilly. Well gee, we can use Dexterity and it will -seem to- follow a pattern we want to create.

So how does Dexterity apply here? How does it fit the pattern, or is there no pattern except to adapt as things come along? (Uhm, what about rangers; they have numerous attributes as primaries. Uh Oh.

Most of how the rules come about seems to support D&D game design as an analogy to Object Oriented Programming, rather than a top down scripted language approach; where it is easy to create a mechanism for something where one is needed, plug it in, and use it only as needed.

We have found this within Arneson's napoleonic campaign rules where players are indicating they want to do some task, and a rule is created to make it something that can be reproduced without bias whenever it needs to be applied. David Wesely's Piracy Rules are a good example of this plug and play.

Odd thought:
What seems more interesting is the quantity of attributes one finds in most games. Somehow 6 seems to be perfect for creating enough diversity to cover all situations. Too many and you get a truly complex rules set, as each attribute needs to be addressed in writing. Too few and you really are limited to how a persona is quantized. So many games use 6 attributes, hmmmm… (immitating Dave Arneson's hmmm.)

The OP's chart shows a pattern. We start with 6 and then we end up with 6. hmmmmmm... (immitating Dave Arneson's hmmm.)

We would like to note that regarding the Spanish Royals, it would be nice to see a citation: Secrets of Blackmoor, Dan Boggs 2017. You cite Jon peterson as you should, but not us. We found it. We passed it to Dan to see his ideas on it. We published on our FaceBook as he published on his blog on the very same day. And yes, web citations are valid now.

Oh, and the date of creation would likely be close to the date of receipt, which is right on there in Dan Nicholson's handwriting. And which Dan Boggs was so clever to notice is at the very same meeting when the actual Blackmor campaign begins!

Two things we'd like to mention as well:

John Snider, although away in Germany in the military, had frequent contact with Arneson via letters. John asked Arneson for game products because he could not find them locally. John's personal game collection, which he gave to us, is very extensive and all 1st edition stuff. OD&D components, AD&D entire set, JG City State, etc. John is very well versed in all the contemporary systems of his time. He even had several computer dungeon games in his collection. He was adapting game systems of all kinds in order to create his own Blackmoor: Egg of Coot Campaign in the 90's. (If you haven't seen them, they are on our facebook page and at havards BLackmoor site.)

A LOT OF TALK ABOUT BTPBD:

As to the BTPBD manuscript. It is likely we know more about it's Origins and Patrimony than anyone on else.

It's amusing how it is supposed to be some kind of secret. Yet we've recieved copies from numerous people over the years now. Perhaps it's time to simply get it out there to more researchers; since it is simply out there already.

Feel free to email us, if you need a copy "For Research Purposes" at:
[e-mail]

This sharing falls under "fair use" and does not breach any copyrights. We see no issue with doing so.

It is a sad state of affairs that most do not share scans of documents in order to help the research community.

We are glad to help other game researchers with documents and we frequently post them on our facebook page for people to see and use. (just cite us as we would with anything you share with us. Let us know what you are looking for.

An email stating something like: "I want everything you have", may get ignored. With the exception of a few choice "Scoops", we see no reason not to share if we have it and time permits.

We are searching for Twin Cities gamer photos above all things, along with some early Gary and Rob Pictures. If you possess originals that you can license to us for use, we'd love to see them.

Secrets of Blackmoor

Toodles!

[Deleted]

Jun 16, 2017 18:38:37 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

Fun stuff here!

SNIP - A lot of interesting stuff here!

A LOT OF TALK ABOUT BTPBD:

As to the BTPBD manuscript. It is likely we know more about it's Origins and Patrimony than anyone on else.

It's amusing how it is supposed to be some kind of secret. Yet we've received copies from numerous people over the years now. Perhaps it's time to simply get it out there to more researchers; since it is simply out there already.

BTW, who are you?

As for BTPBD I understand there are some pages missing - do the multiple copies that you have received differ in number of pages or do all of them have the same missing pages or do they together as a group have no missing pages?

[robertthebald]

Reading all of this made me look up a few things that I still have. My character Robert the Bald dates back to the first year of Blackmoor. The character sheet lists the following:
Strength 9
Intelligence 16
Wisdom 14
Constitution 11
Dexterity 14
Charisma 14
There is no mention of cunning. This could have been something that other classes like clerics or thieves had; I do not remember having a PC in either of those classes.
Our characters were very personalized in the beginning, we were continually coming up with new ideas that Arneson would work into the game.
I do remember that the above characteristics could affect our actions and actions against us by opponents( or non player characters).
Just saying (for what it is worth).

[Deleted]

Jun 16, 2017 22:34:00 GMT -6 robertthebald said:

Reading all of this made me look up a few things that I still have. My character Robert the Bald dates back to the first year of Blackmoor. The character sheet lists the following:
Strength 9
Intelligence 16
Wisdom 14
Constitution 11
Dexterity 14
Charisma 14
There is no mention of cunning. This could have been something that other classes like clerics or thieves had; I do not remember having a PC in either of those classes.
Our characters were very personalized in the beginning, we were continually coming up with new ideas that Arneson would work into the game.
I do remember that the above characteristics could affect our actions and actions against us by opponents( or non player characters).
Just saying (for what it is worth).

Is this from 1972? Can you scan it for us?

Thanks Bob. I hear you are carrying on the tradition very effectively in the most recent 46th annual Blackmoor game.

[sixdemonbag]

I wonder if the Armor Class listed at one point was a d20 roll under to hit? It would match the percentages in the first column of Table 14, exactly.

Note: The given percentile values are not the chance to hit but the chance to miss!!

[robertthebald]

I am taking this from a Blackmoor Campaign Character Record Sheet that is dated 1/1/2000 (signed and dated by David Arneson).
I doubt that this is the original because there are no erasures on it, and it shows me as being Level 20 (the highest level in the campaign).
Sometimes David allowed us to dust off our old characters for special occasions; perhaps this is from one of those times.
As to the annual game, we managed to finish the adventure started last year.
No one died, although there were occasions when players had to be dragged or carried for a period of time.
Everyone there seemed to enjoy it, so I will probably continue the storyline in the future.

[sixdemonbag]

Jun 16, 2017 18:38:37 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

Fun stuff here!

/snip 

Secrets of Blackmoor

Toodles!

Whoa. That's quite a first post!

[Deleted]

Jun 16, 2017 23:02:03 GMT -6 robertthebald said:

I am taking this from a Blackmoor Campaign Character Record Sheet that is dated 1/1/2000 (signed and dated by David Arneson).
I doubt that this is the original because there are no erasures on it, and it shows me as being Level 20 (the highest level in the campaign).
Sometimes David allowed us to dust off our old characters for special occasions; perhaps this is from one of those times.
As to the annual game, we managed to finish the adventure started last year.
No one died, although there were occasions when players had to be dragged or carried for a period of time.
Everyone there seemed to enjoy it, so I will probably continue the storyline in the future.

The way Megarry described it, you ran it in the old way. David was more than effusive about how perfect the game ran. Very true to Arneson's vision as a rules free roles prevalent game. At this rate, the original game is still running strong. Have you considered that you may have to get an apprentice who can carry on the tradition when you are done?

[derv]

Jun 16, 2017 18:38:37 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

There is a lot of good commentary here that would indicate that a need for adjustment may be worth consideration. If Peterson and Boggs are coming to similar assertions on why something is a certain way, we are likely to take a look at it and ask for proofs in a PM OR EMAIL. We don't always agree with either of Jon or Dan, but this peer review, even person to person, is very important.

Sorry to see this discussion take a wrong turn in places. I would say that it would be helpful to use ones "grown up language" AND "manners". And for people not directly mentioned to not jump in on either side, as it only fans the flames.

Cedgewick,
We will say that Jon Peterson tends to present himself as a bit more important than the subject he studies. He has a unique way of pissing people off, perhaps without meaning to, we can't tell. In many circles his kind of passive aggression is called trolling. We have known many nerds like this in our time, we tend to avoid them. We certainly don't invite them to game night.

Passive aggression seems to be a common accepted behavior among the nerd culture, particularly among those who consider themselves "academic" or "professional" on a topic that really only has clout among a niche group of in obscure part of the hobby.

Please tell me you are not going to blow in here and on your first post diss Jon and lecture long standing members in how to behave on a public forum, while ignoring questions from some with the only intent of engaging those who meet what is on your agenda.

[aldarron]

Jun 16, 2017 12:09:51 GMT -6 Cedgewick said:

...... What if it lists only the 5 abilities Increment mentioned, which just happens to be the same abilities that were modified on Gaylords character sheet?  That would be strong evidence that the other abilities on Gaylords character sheet were not being used at the point in the campaign when the character sheet was marked up with the pen.  That would mean Arneson had only Appearance, and Gygax expanded Appearance into Charisma, adding back the aspects (courage, credibility, leadership, etc...) that Arneson had dropped.

I'm fairly skeptical of the idea that it was Arneson who initiated the switch to 3d6, but it is an intriguing line of discussion. What struck me about the comment above is that we do have a precedent for Arneson droping items from the character matrix. Dave Megarry's second character sheet drops all but 4 of the 22 weapon categories he started with on the first sheet.

[aldarron]

Jun 16, 2017 22:34:00 GMT -6 robertthebald said:

Reading all of this made me look up a few things that I still have. My character Robert the Bald dates back to the first year of Blackmoor. The character sheet lists the following:
Strength 9
Intelligence 16
Wisdom 14
Constitution 11
Dexterity 14
Charisma 14
There is no mention of cunning. This could have been something that other classes like clerics or thieves had; I do not remember having a PC in either of those classes.
Our characters were very personalized in the beginning, we were continually coming up with new ideas that Arneson would work into the game.
I do remember that the above characteristics could affect our actions and actions against us by opponents( or non player characters).
Just saying (for what it is worth).

It is always a treat when you chime in Bob. I think those stats may come from the TSR DA1 "Adventures in Blackmoor" module published in 1986. Your Robert the Bald character has the same stats in that publication except the Charisma score is listed as 10 instead of 14. Of course, it is entirely possible that they go back further to an old character sheet from the '74-75 era.

Now if I could only convince you to write an adventure....

[Finarvyn]

Jun 16, 2017 22:34:00 GMT -6 robertthebald said:

Reading all of this made me look up a few things that I still have. My character Robert the Bald dates back to the first year of Blackmoor. The character sheet lists the following:
Strength 9
Intelligence 16
Wisdom 14
Constitution 11
Dexterity 14
Charisma 14
There is no mention of cunning. This could have been something that other classes like clerics or thieves had; I do not remember having a PC in either of those classes.
Our characters were very personalized in the beginning, we were continually coming up with new ideas that Arneson would work into the game.
I do remember that the above characteristics could affect our actions and actions against us by opponents( or non player characters).
Just saying (for what it is worth).

Bob, just curious if you have your ORIGINAL character sheet, or if it is a revised version of the original character. In other words, is this the actual 1972 doc or is it possible that as Dave's rules evolved you edited your sheet to reflect the current system? (I'm not challenging you, just curious.)

[Deleted]

Jun 17, 2017 5:08:40 GMT -6 derv said:

Jun 16, 2017 18:38:37 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

There is a lot of good commentary here that would indicate that a need for adjustment may be worth consideration. If Peterson and Boggs are coming to similar assertions on why something is a certain way, we are likely to take a look at it and ask for proofs in a PM OR EMAIL. We don't always agree with either of Jon or Dan, but this peer review, even person to person, is very important.

Sorry to see this discussion take a wrong turn in places. I would say that it would be helpful to use ones "grown up language" AND "manners". And for people not directly mentioned to not jump in on either side, as it only fans the flames.

Cedgewick,
We will say that Jon Peterson tends to present himself as a bit more important than the subject he studies. He has a unique way of pissing people off, perhaps without meaning to, we can't tell. In many circles his kind of passive aggression is called trolling. We have known many nerds like this in our time, we tend to avoid them. We certainly don't invite them to game night.

Passive aggression seems to be a common accepted behavior among the nerd culture, particularly among those who consider themselves "academic" or "professional" on a topic that really only has clout among a niche group of in obscure part of the hobby.

Please tell me you are not going to blow in here and on your first post diss Jon and lecture long standing members in how to behave on a public forum, while ignoring questions from some with the only intent of engaging those who meet what is on your agenda.

The only reason we even looked in on this was because someone posted a link to us in a message on our facebook. We think it was probably someone who wanted to stir the pot a bit and launch us at this discussion in order to create conflict. It's a common trolling technique.  We've gotten several on our facebook who have dragged Jon in on our posts.

This discussion is only relevant to us, as something we had found is prominently used by the OP; without a citation as to who found it and who published on it. Certainly Dan Boggs should be credited as he did a lot of analytical work on the artifact. ( And we should thank Jon for his postive comments about this find as well.)

A lot of time was spent considering some of the earlier posts. By the time we posted, a lot more people had posted, so our post was only addressing the first 2 pages.

Our "agenda" is that currently the history is very skewed. We can pose our perspective as an optional view point. Not as The Only Viewpoint, but rather as a "What about this?" counter point.

It's hard not to tease Jon about how he throws his weight around. From everything we know, Jon is a really nice guy. We know a lot of people who know him, and that is what they tell us. Yet Jon has a tendency to be clipped and dictatorial in his comments online, and certainly in his facebook posts he's left us, which sometimes comes off as being rude. (He has plenty of comments on our Movie's FaceBook page where he comes in to "correct us".) I've told him, "just email me if my facts are wrong, I will examine what is being corrected and fix it -- if it needs fixing." We also suggested this method because we ARE creating a product and facebook is where we create interest for our product. We'd rather not have factual pissing contests on the page.

Besides, this is a small community. Eventually, we'll meet Jon in person and sit down for a scotch together and laugh about all of this.

We are always open to corrections on our interpretations. Sometimes, we just see it differently, at which point it's just a matter of saying "ok, you believe A and B, whereas, I am seeing C and D." But that is not Jon's approach, he has to be correct even if he is possibly incorrect on a particular issue. To his credit, even on this discussion, Jon himself has stated that he has changed his mind on some things because the evidence points somewhere else.

As is stated in our previous post, if both Jon and Dan are saying they see something, we're gonna pay attention to that and want to know the why's of it. We may still disagree!

Our Agenda, more methodology again:
We have spent several years visiting with and recording interviews with most of the players in the Twin Cities and their perspectove is much different from what we see in the Lake Geneva crowd. It isn't one of this person is right and that person is wrong either. What we see is that everyone had contact with people and then did not have contact with people. Some people were there in the beginning and not later, and other vice versa. The stories one hears differ greatly, depending upon who was where. Anyone from Lake Geneva will only have contact with RPG ideas starting after Arneson introduces his game to them. The Twin Cites guys are like, we were doing it from the beginning. It was all little baby steps. etc. It's actualy quite fascinating.

In our work, we sometimes find ourselves examining something we have very little knowledge about, so we try to get other people interested on things. We asked Dan for help on something and he suggested Zenopus. Zenopus did some nice work on a world map that Megarry had. We truly know little about the Greyhawk and Blackmoor maps, so we let the experts do their thing. Side note: Rob Kuntz says that an interesting thing about the published Domesday maps, is that Gary asked Dave to draw one up and then did not like it. So Gary drew one up of his own to use in Domesday. Somehow the printing company misplaced the Gary map and the Arneson map is the one that gets used in the first article on the medieval campaigns.

Oh, and if you look at our post on it, you'll find a comment by us about how it looks like the map is a copy of a copy. Look at it yourself and on a scan it looks like this. Jon's response is something along the lines of, "nope it isn't" without any sort of kindess like, "gee, I can see where you could make this mistake, but I have the original and..." his response is the typical clipped missive with implied idiocy on our part. We just assume it's Jon's personality flaw to not show kindess to others, while expecting ultimate respect from everyone.

Regardless of that, Jon Peterson is the Hagellian counter argument by which we test some of our theories. And we do respect his work greatly.

Yet, to see Jon barge in and squash someone's ideas here, with no supporting data, merely because he is Jon, and then be egged on by Mornard's Nasty Personal Attack "Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack, you are a pisshead.
I admire Jon's patience in even interacting with you, because I won't any more. You are a rampaging butthole."; well, it was just too much. It felt like the time to join in and even the playing field. We are all on equal footing as we said before, so if someone is posing a theory then lets be kind and use our manners, which some weren't.

Clearly no one else was going to stand up for Cedgewick, so we did.

As to the actual discussion, the one tiny comment by Howandwhy really tied in with our own ideas about Sword atrributes that we've been keeping in the back of our heads. It gave us much to ponder, which is why our response took a long time to compose as we were formulating new ideas about our own work based on that tiny assertion and it seemed very valid. If we seemed pompous in how we wrote, it's because we were busy changing our own assertions in light of that comment.

Our other comments are based on our experience and knowledge.

Within gamer circles there is an evident Nerd House Rules mentality that we find useless. Of particular uselessness is the tendency of collectors to hoard and hide things. It IS our agenda to reveal relevant artifacts. There is no reason that a passionate researcher should not have access to the same material everyone else does merely because She/He can't afford to travel to places and or purchase them. ( certainly, if one intends tp publish on a unique item, they should keep it back for a short while, but that is an instance of delay, rather than horading and hiding.)

If we had a dollar for every time someone said "I have this amazing thing, but you can't see it!", or "I'll share this with you, but don't let anyone know you have it because -- Secret Stuff.", we'd be millionaires.

Yup, gonna call Bullshirt on all of that. Exhibit A: BTPBD. No one is supposed to have it, yet everyone seems to have it. So lets just cut to the chase and actually make it available because it is available, but only to those in the secret stuff club.

Our attitude is pretty straight up. We find something awesome and unique, we put it on our facebook page for everyone to see. Right Click and view image, then Right Click and download image, it's yours to print out and examine.

And again, if we had not had this attitude, no one would even know about the Spanish Royals right now. We could have held off for splash effect in our film, but we felt it was too important for the research community to not publish straight away.

So to get back to the quoted comment above, yes we have an agenda. Yes, we will smack Jon around a bit in good fun. (We make sure to include winky and smiley faces as an emotional signifier of playfulness on our part.) We are busy, so may not post too much in the future unless it relates to our own work.

This discussion has gone a bit off kilter with the Combat Charts, which we aren't really interested in for now. We're going to continue with our ideas about the splitting off of attributes as it relates to in-game utility on our own. Thank you Howandwhy!

Toodles!

[derv]

So, the short answer to my question seems to be "yes, that is what we're doing."

What you may not have considered is that cedgewick only joined the forum in April and only has two threads that he started, both of which begin by quoting Jon, who has been a member here for a while. Sure Jon can come off as pretentious at times. Many people do. Could it also be that cedgewick has a bone to pick that he carried over from another forum?

Now, I imagine Jon is a big boy who can handle these things himself. If not, that's what a mod is for. I also assume that cedgewick is a big boy since he originally initiated the conversation.

It's not my intent to discourage you (or anyone else) from sharing here. I think that's great. It is a public forum devoted to the original game, after all. Continue the good work. But, maybe you can appreciate that I'm seeing things a little different than you.

[howandwhy99]

Jun 16, 2017 18:38:37 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

Good point HowAndWhy99! about comparing the Attribute to NPC rules.

We see one very big difference, between some early attributes and later ones, is the creation of limits in terms of a players ability to act in any way they wish. Case in point: Guts/Courage. We don't know how this is applied in game play, but it would seem to be a limiting paremeter if it is comperable to morale. Attributes have a definite usage within all RPG's later on: A player announces what they want to do, and a rule + roll is applied to see if they succeed. If guts and courage are morale, then yes we follow the same method to indicate we are using this rule " I attack the monster", but it would limit a player's ability to enter into combat if he failed. So much for free will.

Odd thought:
While no one will argue that FRP's come from War Gaming, what we see in the attribute is a transition that may be caused by Role Playing and a player's need to have free will during game play. Consider that this Attribute is not merely dumped, but rather it gets moved to the section on NPC hirelings and morale. Maybe there is a corrolation there as HowandWhy99 has asserted.

Thanks. I was thinking, Guts/Courage could as easily be a Fear Save too, for PCs. Like vs. Dragon's Fear.

This goes to my previous point, though. Without access to the design to which these terms referred, we really aren't going to be able to match anything up. Which is why I've been sitting out. Were any of the stats categorized before OD&D? AC and To Hit are unique stats, Saving Throws are of a type, and Ability Scores another type. And then Hit Points and Gold Pieces are resources (mostly). Maybe some of these ideas were not even in place yet?

Funnily enough, in my previous post I overlooked "Hits", which means "Health" eludes me. Maybe it's a Save, sorta?

[peterlind]

First, to the original post: Is it possible that Cunning was replaced by Wisdom as the prime requisite for clerics and that the addition of Dexterity might not have taken place at that time, but perhaps at an earlier or later stage in the design/playtest process (i.e. in a manner unrelated)?

Second, a question on the Pete Gaylord character sheet: Could the changed Ability scores (marked out and increased) reflect some form of training that led to an increase in the Ability? According to First Fantasy Campaign, characters were allowed to spend their hard earned GP on Hobbies, among other Special Interests. See page 51. On page 52, we read under examples of Hobby interests, a character spending GP/time training on "Increasing Intelligence." So is it possible that the increase in Intelligence on the character sheet could have resulted from training? Does anyone know how the training in Hobbies worked in the First Fantasy Campaign?

[robertthebald]

Secrets of Blackmoor- It is very difficult to recreate something from almost half a century ago, especially when it was something as new and innovative as Arneson did with Blackmoor.
Basically I had to take away everything that players had learned over that period of time. The only way I could think of to do that was to imitate David and keep the rules away from the players and out of their mind. This forced them to revert back to their own personalities, and to basically just have fun in the adventure. The bonus was that I also had fun running it. As far as passing this on to another individual, the best way I can think of to accomplish this, is to continue running these adventures and making people enthusiastic enough about them that they want to run adventures themselves. Hopefully in the same style that I am doing them. This is actually what happened with David and Blackmoor, once we had a set of rules in our hands. Unfortunately, this meant that we were back to playing a game with sets of rules. Kind of defeated the purpose of what David wanted. David was noted for "thinking outside the box", and this is what he wanted us to do, instead of just following the rules. Oh well; we still had fun. I am glad that the players are enjoying themselves.

[robertthebald]

Hi Aldarron, thank you for the welcome.
You are correct about my character stats being in that module. They were put in there by Arneson. The important thing to remember is that they were taken directly from my character record sheets, which date back to the beginning of Blackmoor. Of course, it took a long time for me to build up my character to the point that David retired him.

[robertthebald]

Hi Finarvyn.
This is a very good question. I of course had to update my character sheets as I developed new abilities and skills. It took a long time and many adventures to reach the 20th level. This would have required either erasing and filling in new stats, or starting new sheets (probably both). The sheet I have in my possession is rather immaculate, with no erasures (it is filled in with pencil). I recognize the handwriting as being my own, but my handwriting has not changed over the years. It is possible that it is an original record sheet that was brought out for some special event in 2000, the date David marked on it. I am afraid that I no longer remember. Sorry about that. If it helps any, the record sheet is a regular form that I was probably given by David. If I can figure out how to do it, I will try to scan the form, then send it to Secrets of Blackmoor. Perhaps he would then post it on Facebook and someone could recognize the form and put a date on when they were available. As I started when we were using two of the six sided dice, but these stats obviously needed three of the six sided dice, then they must have been updated in some way.
I apologize for so many posts at one time, but I felt each post I answered deserved the courtesy of a separate answer.

[Deleted]

Jun 17, 2017 14:33:15 GMT -6 derv said:

So, the short answer to my question seems to be "yes, that is what we're doing."

What you may not have considered is that cedgewick only joined the forum in April and only has two threads that he started, both of which begin by quoting Jon, who has been a member here for a while. Sure Jon can come off as pretentious at times. Many people do. Could it also be that cedgewick has a bone to pick that he carried over from another forum?

Now, I imagine Jon is a big boy who can handle these things himself. If not, that's what a mod is for. I also assume that cedgewick is a big boy since he originally initiated the conversation.

It's not my intent to discourage you (or anyone else) from sharing here. I think that's great. It is a public forum devoted to the original game, after all. Continue the good work. But, maybe you can appreciate that I'm seeing things a little different than you.

Derv,
Actually, with the exception of the Jon taunts, most of the commentary was sort of meant for the OP to consider.  i.e. If Jon and Dan both agree on something we'd take a look! Some was inspired by howandwhy's comment. Threw in some obvious things, but comments without context lead to misunderstandings. And while discussing things here, also found an old article in a fanzine that is mentioned, which seems to be common knowledge about thieves, but it seemed relevant to this convo. Aaand, some things were just inspiring and caused a long rant in a semi shamanistic state of stream of consciousness.

Onward.

Just going stream of consciousness here, sorry if it sounds lecture like. And most of this is for consideration by Cedgewick as it relates to the creation of the visual aid chart.

While the OP is applying a linear deductive approach, The howandwhy "Theory of Splitting Attributes" is more inductive and not linear at all, this is interesting because it pointed us to something we'd been thinking about ourselves. Not in terms of agreeing with it, and only wanting what you agree with, but merely that as the design develops some things began to appear more useful within alternate sections of the rules and they get moved. Again, this kind of stuff IS interesting to us, you can chase this and feel almost like you're getting in the designer's head.

It brings up the issue of how both Gary and Dave designed things. There is a uniquness to their appraoches, that seems beneficial to the other. Dave seems to approach things from an additive method of design, where Gary seems to be using a subractive method. Example: Dave always wanted a skill based system. Here you are as character X. Here you are as character X + sword skill. Gary liked classes. Everyone can do everything, except if you are X class, you can't do Y.

For you both Cedgewick and Jon:
This brings us back to Skill Test rolls. The OP has neglected to include weapons skills from older Character sheets. (Here we agree whole heartedly with Dan that all things are equal on the character sheets) This is a problem. If players are using weapons skills, which in early blackmoor games are no different than Attributes, then we can clearly support the conclusion that in Blackmoor attributes ARE used for die rolls in tests. No matter what happens later, Arneson's weapons, to his way of thinking, are merely other attributes by this point. So why go to the trouble of naming all those attributes, be they persona, skill, or weapon? Perhaps in early Blackmoor openning a door required a strength test.

It should be considered that Arneson took notes, but had no rules per se. So while some would say that a lack of a written rule precludes any possibility for the use of abilities as test, the fact that we see them on people's character sheets also implies plausible use. One cannot speak with certainty to either side of this. Yet, the oral history may weigh more strongly toward plausiblity.

Another argument favoring plausiblity is that we can see an evolution regarding what abilities stay and what one's go. This would point to in game utlity.

(pardon the continual use of the pronoun Us, but we are a working team and it seems disingenuous to say Me)

So another thing we tried to point to was the idea that some attributes get merged. (others were saying this) The OP does not indicate this with: Sex and Looks can be merged into and become Appearance on the chart. Maybe it's in the comments. We get pretty ADD when we read long threads.

Zenopus mentions cunning being rolled into charisma as well, which seems plausible. And also, just contemplating Charisma is compelling.

The idea Zenopus was mentioning sort of related to the next thing we wanted to discuss. There is a big change in the function of the attribute when it becomes Charisma. Purely from a semantic standpoint the attribute seems to take on a more variable context. It's something we've thought about since we first started playing the game: You can be beautiful to look at but have zero charm. The inverse is true as well, ugly as spit but able to charm anyone into doing anything.

More variability in meaning and use, some of this repeats other people's comments. You can see Arneson's ideas about Leadership and Credibility in the earlier sheets. And now we get back to what inspired us from Howandwhy. There is a tendency to desire simple paths of evolution that go from A to B to C. But as has already been proven with evolution, it is possible to get devolution. The actual function of Charisma in D&D is as possibly an overall physical appearance, personal charm, ability to lead, and how convincing you are attribute, as someone mentioned. This seems to relate to Arneson's earlier attributes, but what if...

Another obsession of ours is Time.
It should also be considered that while Arneson has been exploring ideas about role playing games for some time (4 years by the publication of D&D); and don't forget he's been world building via napoleonic campaigns for even longer too. Gary is on a steeper learning curve due to less time and contact with the concepts (only 2 years by the publication of D&D).

So while we see early attributes that seem to reflect later attributes, it could be that Gary has sort of Re-invented them out of a need for them, and is sort of catching up to some of the concepts Dave had already encountered. So while they have similar function, the names are different, and they are new inventions that kill any tracing of an attribute's evolution through time.

Consider that while cunning is used the same way as wisdom, perhaps the transtion should be viewed as a kill point. (We merely say this because continuity and linearity are often imposed by our personal will, rather than by the facts.)

Perhaps the methods being used to chart all of this are limited by the visualization tools being used to present them in the OP's charts. ( maybe it needs a spider chart/ bubble map.) And, as relates to the attributes that get split off to other sections, maybe the utility of these attributes becomes clearer to Dave and Gary as they move forward. As Jon mentioned somewhere else, Spanish Royals most likely were not used the same way someone would use attributes in an RPG, but it does indicate a relationship between wargaming and role playing. (paraphrasing his comments mind you.) So as the attributes are moving toward an RPG, their usefulness will change. There would be drastic difference in what is needed between spanish royals and what follows. Which also relates to what Zenopus said about cunning. If you are still exploring these new ideas for role playing, you may not be quite to the point of realizing that having attributes for something like cunning, would maybe be more apt for an NPC, and the same goes for Ego.

The idea of limiting analysis to only what seems like a character sheet seems like a flawed approach, as an attribute is an attribute no matter where it ends up. IMHO The list of character attributes for OD&D should reflect the moves that were made to Magic Swords and NPC's, as a OD&D subcategory, since they are still being used as attributes and have merely been moved to another section of the rules. And this split and move is interesting to us again. (again, tallking to cedgwick here)

The reason for re-itterating the need for tracing ALL attributes, is that the things that get moved seem to indicate a deeper understanding of role playing games in general for Dave and Gary. With Spanish Royals there is Guts, wich seems to be bravery and or moral. It precludes personal free will. Sorry if we sound like we are talking down to anyone, but free will is the essence of all RPG's. By the end of the chart, all elements that limit free will have been removed from player characters. This is a very critical conceptualization for attributes and it seems like not including these paths in the OP's chart is to lose a lot of valuable information.

All of what we're saying is obvoiously just our own inner babble. You may, or may not, find it of use.

Toodles!

[Deleted]

Jun 17, 2017 23:45:26 GMT -6 peterlind said:

Second, a question on the Pete Gaylord character sheet: Could the changed Ability scores (marked out and increased) reflect some form of training that led to an increase in the Ability?

If scores were increased through some sort of training mechanic, you'd expect them to increase one at a time. However, if you look at the character sheet, the scores increased by +2, +5, +4, and +3. That's an average of 3.5 which is the same average of a d6. From this, it appears as if the player simply rolled 1d6 and added it to his current score, thus "converting" 2d6 to 3d6.

[Deleted]

Jun 17, 2017 23:53:03 GMT -6 robertthebald said:

Basically I had to take away everything that players had learned over that period of time. The only way I could think of to do that was to imitate David and keep the rules away from the players and out of their mind. This forced them to revert back to their own personalities, and to basically just have fun in the adventure.

I'm planning on performing a similar experiment later this summer with my kids. While they are fairly well versed with boardgames and card games, they haven't really played RPG other than a basic free-form game and a card/RPG Pokemon hybrid that was lots of fun.

So, I'll basically start them off in a RPG where only the core resolution mechanic is set. Everything else, classes, races, ability scores, spells, monsters, etc will derive from their request. I'll post a log to see where all this ends up.