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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 7:22:44 GMT -6
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. MAR Barker reverted Charisma back to Appearance in his Empire of the Petal Throne for this very reason. "In “Dungeons and Dragons” there is the separate basic quality of “charisma” which is often used to determine beauty or handsomeness, as well as to give a rough idea of the character’s power of persuasiveness, leadership abilities, etc. In actual play, however, these latter qualities are rarely considered, since the player (or the player acting for his/her non-player character) almost always acts as he or she wishes without regard to an originally-determined dice roll. It seems more practicable to allow this leeway in the present game, rather than to try to limit the players to some kind of dice-determined behaviour." |
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Post by Cedgewick on Jun 18, 2017 10:33:37 GMT -6
I would like to draw attention to this conversation that happened in this thread, as I think it is very important to the topic: Since this is a difficult matter for you to let rest, I was thinking of a sheet that apparently shows a character that was ported from ICSHA to SIWCDCh (so, perhaps an early 1974 sheet). The W and D scores both show ranges rather than numbers, and have question marks next to them, as if they were tentative assignments, whereas the other four abilities are given as firm values. This document is not conclusive evidence of anything in particular, but you might infer that the person doing the porting didn't know to convert Cunning into either Wisdom or Dexterity, so they kind of left those two up in the air. So, expanding what increment gave us from the transitional character sheet(s) (I suspect the "context" increment is alluding to is that there are actually 2 separate character sheets for the same character, the second one having D&D stats) to make it easier to understand, we have this: Intelligence Cunning Strength Health Appearance which became the D&D ability scores we all know: Strength Intelligence Wisdom Constitution Dexterity Charisma So we have here 5 stats becoming 6 stats. Additionally, we have neither Wisdom nor Dexterity on the first set of stats, and they are suddenly appear together, at the same time on the second set of stats. I propose that one of them (I suspect it was Gygax) split Cunning into its two component meanings. Recall the first definition I gave for Cunning from the 1913 dictionary: Merriam-Webster (1913):1. Knowledge; art; skill; dexterity. Let my right hand forget her cunning. - Ps. cxxxvii. 5. A carpenter's desert Stands more in cunning than in power. - Chapman. 2. The faculty or act of using stratagem to accomplish a purpose; fraudulent skill or dexterity; deceit; craft. Discourage cunning in a child; cunning is the ape of wisdom. - Locke. We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom. -Bacon There is both a Dexterity aspect to Cunning and a Wisdom aspect to Cunning. Someone (probably Gygax), realizing this, may have split Cunning into two separate scores, providing a prime requisite for the Cleric via Wisdom. The number ranges on the character sheet are tentative because the player hadn't yet decided which of the two he wanted to have as the higher ability. If you give us the number for Cunning and the two number ranges, perhaps some relationship will be apparent. Could be, for all I know. Actually, the way the ranges are structured Dex is higher. Wis average, Dex above average. It would really help to have the numerical values for Cunning and the two ranges. The player may have been asked to distribute points between Wisdom and Dexterity. For example, each of the new scores of Dexterity and Wisdom could have started as a roll. The player was then asked to distribute additional points between the new Wisdom and Dexterity scores as he saw fit. Let me give an example of some stats (I made them up because we haven't been given the numerical values) and show why I think that Cunning was split into Dexterity and Wisdom based on the number ranges for Dexterity and Wisdom on the transitional character sheet(s): Intelligence Cunning 15 Strength Health Appearance which became: Strength Intelligence Wisdom 8-12? Constitution Dexterity 12-16? Charisma what the player might have been told to do during the conversion process was 1) roll 2d6 for Dexterity and Wisdom, and 2) to distribute for example 4 points between Wisdom and Dexterity as they saw fit when the split happened. So, the player could have chosen: Wisdom 8 Dexterity 16 or Wisdom 9 Dexterity 15 or Wisdom 10 Dexterity 14 or Wisdom 11 Dexterity 13 or Wisdom 12 Dexerity 12 At the time the player recopied the character sheet to D&D, he hadn't decided how he was going to do the split, these being new rules after all. Therefore, he put the possible range with a question mark for each. Also, Increment speaking about averages instead of actual numbers suggests that the first character sheet, which appears to be a Blackmoor character sheet, has ability scores indicative of 3d6 stats. As these character sheet(s) could be the crucial clue to showing that Cunning was split into Wisdom and Dexterity, as well as possibly revealing 3d6 stats in Blackmoor, isn't anyone besides me interested in seeing a scan of them? |
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Post by increment on Jun 18, 2017 10:48:55 GMT -6
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. I would break out the party hats if you were just willing to get on the phone with me. I have to insist yet again that I did not "barge in" here - the post that started this thread calls me out in its first line - and that when I did chime in, it was to say that the post was making a reasonable line of argument. And I feel like most of what I'm asked to do in threads like this is supply supporting data, which I do, even when I would rather not. The only core thing I am trying to express here is that this period of history is messy and complicated, that we have to infer a lot from the sparse data points we have, and that attributing some aspects of the system to either Gygax or Arneson is complicated. |
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Post by increment on Jun 18, 2017 11:04:55 GMT -6
isn't anyone besides me interested in seeing a scan of them? In cases where I think it's important to share scans to make my point, I do - like I recently did in that thread on the Spanish Royal Family, say. I don't see that need in this instance. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 11:31:14 GMT -6
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. MAR Barker reverted Charisma back to Appearance in his Empire of the Petal Throne for this very reason. "In “Dungeons and Dragons” there is the separate basic quality of “charisma” which is often used to determine beauty or handsomeness, as well as to give a rough idea of the character’s power of persuasiveness, leadership abilities, etc. In actual play, however, these latter qualities are rarely considered, since the player (or the player acting for his/her non-player character) almost always acts as he or she wishes without regard to an originally-determined dice roll. It seems more practicable to allow this leeway in the present game, rather than to try to limit the players to some kind of dice-determined behaviour."If this post was for the analysis for a chess game it would get an Exclam!. We give it three !!! Your quote is fascinating. It is the first analytical commentary of D&D rules we've seen and at the same time a definition of an attribute. Clearly, even if Arneson and Gygax were not so aware of what they were doing, the linguist had a lot to say about the purpose and meaning of these words. Go Phil! Again, the theory about Attributes posed by Cedgewick is creating a lot of synaptic burn for some of us. Combined with some other comments, this is all very ellucidating.  Since the theory needed testing it has expanded the scope of questions being asked and that is intruiging. Please continue the expansion. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 12:42:46 GMT -6
... isn't anyone besides me interested in seeing a scan of them? Just for the record I am at all times and under all circumstances in favor of all documents over 25 years old being available to everyone to view and use. The fact that things that were published when I was 18 will still be under copyright when I die of old age, even if I live to be 100 (very unlikely), is IMO ridiculous. For the little bits and pieces of background information to be in the same boat is even worse. So no, you are not the only one who would like to see these documents. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 13:05:33 GMT -6
Jon Jon, Jon! uhm gee. The OP's 1st comments were not calling you out, but rather calling you in. We can't see mean-ness there. Clearly your intent is not such, but your first response can appear as a shut down "I don't know of any reason to think ability scores were used for task resolution in Blackmoor in this era." There is no supporting evidence! It just comes off as so bossy and we know you don't mean it this way. So it's hard not to harrass you about it. It does also point to your bias in regard to all things Arneson, especially anecdotal 1st Person Narratives. If you truly want to know what Arneson was doing, you can't rely on documents alone because there is a clear pathology within the Twin Cities group of not always writing down the rules and there is a clear pathology from war games to Blackmoor. So regarding the anti Arneson bias that can blind one to the most simple facts and make one seem simple - Smiley Faces! We are using a playful jokular tone here. As we will clearly demonstrate to those with open perspectives, there is an enourmous quantity of supporting evidence for counter argument with this statement "I don't know of any reason to think ability scores were used for task resolution in Blackmoor in this era.". We are very much exemining all the war gaming, as that is the genesis. Often with the wargaming the artifacts are limited to scraps of paper. But within a scrap of paper one can often find elements that indicate mechanisms. AND there are so many scraps of paper. So when you look at something like Megarry's sheet, you (Jon) seem to ignore that all those categories for abilities have numbers. All those numbers seem to indicate task resolution. The players themselves (Robert Meyer is on record for saying this, Thanks BOB!) say that as they recall that is the function of these things on these sheets. We're pounding our collective head on the table as we respond, because you (Jon) just can't see this. Speaking of which, this degression into earlier games leads us to ask, Do you have anything from Brown Stone Texas? We think Duane's game is the turning point in many ways. We need em for our movie. ok, on-nerd and upward. The use of abilities is a lot like the search for life: If you can find it in two places, then you can theoretically find it in all places given the right circumstances. Anecdotal reports indicate that Arneson would collect all character sheets between sessions so the likelyhood of finding one of these sheets is rare. (Someone needs to get Clingman to Cough Up his little trove of goodies) Yet everyone had a piece of paper that said "This is You!" (Just to be clear we are being metaphorical here, It doesn't actually say this is you. Smiley Face! ) Often Arneson is overlooked in the huge, but seemingly tiny, leaps he is making. This is why WE don't work backward from D&D to see what is going on, but forward from 1963 and Strategos. We know that you know all the guys in th Twin Cities and we are amazed that you have never gone to visit them and play games with them. WE DID! What did we see? A napoleonic battle played using Strategos! What did we learn? When the guys play Strategos they have unit information sheets. This is the birth of the Character Sheet. It has information on it. Stuff like: Unit Description; Unit Category/type; Movement Rate; Number of men ( this is like strength and health/hit points all in one!); Morale (EGO/Loyalty?); Etc. Early on the attributes we see on character sherts are seemingly not so well understood by Arneson himself, as they are in some cases limiting to role playing such as morale. This does not hold any impact on what is being seen in the pathology for the function and use of these abilities. By the time Arneson does both Spanish Royals and Blackmoor characters (As Dan Boggs has noted, it happens at the same meeting!), he is well aware of the utility of mechanisms. Some of his mechanisms may be clunky and not frequently used, but the mere presence of these new abilities indicates that Arneson expects to be using them. Jon, Why can't you see this? Somehow anti Arneson bias always makes him out to be a complete moron. We don't buy it. He is already a fully fleshed game designer via numerous house adaptations and the publication of DGUTS. He knows what he is trying to do because he's played Braunstein and Brown Stone for several years now, both as player and GM. His Napoleonic Campaign is full of refereed skirmish events that harken to Braunstein. So while you (Jon) are willing to acknowledge that a unit sheet is being used for tasks in a wargame (Actually, there is no proof they ARE using these Strategos unit sheets for anything accept doylies; so many drinks and food bowls on the wargaming table at these times.  ); somehow when we get a unit sheet for a character, you claim that the Twin Cities Gamers don't use any of it for tasks. We are once again pounding our collective heads on the table. Jon, you love seeing patterns. There is a clear pathology here. Why can't you see the glowing magical golden path of adaptation and invention that Arneson has sprinkled about for you to follow?  What is truly perplexing, is that by the time Gygax gets these rules, he no longer understands the correlation between a character sheet and a unit sheet. Gygax puts attributes into D&D, but completely ignores it as a method for testing. The Gygax as Genius bias would lead one to ignore the fact that maybe Gygax has very little understanding of what Arneson is trying to do by this point. And the anti Arneson Bias often leads one to ignore how Dave often assumes you know what he means by things; so when actual abbilities tests are NOT cited within the rules, he would just assume you know to do this because that's what numbers are for! We await your response with gleefully twittering fingers. Toodles! |
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Post by sixdemonbag on Jun 18, 2017 14:17:43 GMT -6
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. That's a great idea. You could see if certain common elements of RPG's are naturally emergent. It will be hard to avoid decades of habits, but it sounds really fun. Kids have a way looking at things very directly and intuitively. Keep us posted on how it goes! |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 14:26:33 GMT -6
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. I would break out the party hats if you were just willing to get on the phone with me. Jon, We are bound by our religeous beliefs, and common decorum, to wait for the first double green moon of a lackluster argyle anaconda's warbling. Be assured we will speak on the phone though. |
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Post by sixdemonbag on Jun 18, 2017 14:31:48 GMT -6
Isn't the burden of proof on the OP?
"Here is my theory, here is my proof." I found the hypothesis interesting and well reasoned.
If Jon says, "I have no proof to add to this discussion," shouldn't that be the end of his obligation? What am I missing? Is @secretsofblackmoore actually asking Jon to prove that he doesn't have proof? I hope not.
That said, I agree with PD and there is no such thing as too much information. No harm in sharing. However, Jon has very valuable documents and so I totally understand his desire to release these historical artifacts on his own terms. I would do the same. Verifying authenticity, legal issues, respecting any personal requests, etc. should not be taken lightly.
Carry on...
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Post by increment on Jun 18, 2017 14:58:56 GMT -6
It does also point to your bias in regard to all things Arneson, especially anecdotal 1st Person Narratives. If you truly want to know what Arneson was doing, you can't rely on documents alone because there is a clear pathology within the Twin Cities group of not always writing down the rules and there is a clear pathology from war games to Blackmoor. I do understand that you believe requiring more than just the remembrance of his friends, and well, of Gygax's enemies, constitutes anti-Arneson bias. My method is different; we'll end up with different results. People will listen to the results they find compelling, and people are compelled by all sorts of things. I have no illusions that I'll persuade everyone. I'm sure that tone will come through to the people you are hoping to convince. But I really don't think this is a productive area of discussion for this thread, or forum for that matter. |
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Post by peterlind on Jun 18, 2017 15:44:37 GMT -6
> 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. <
This is a great idea. Does anyone have any anecdotes for how Blackmoor characters were created before the release of OD&D? If so, how were they created?
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Post by derv on Jun 18, 2017 16:33:10 GMT -6
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. That's a great idea. You could see if certain common elements of RPG's are naturally emergent. It will be hard to avoid decades of habits, but it sounds really fun. Kids have a way looking at things very directly and intuitively. Keep us posted on how it goes! @hedgehobbit There seems to be some interest in what you are doing here. I'd be curious in how you plan to set this up. Not sure if you want to discuss this further, but if you do, it might make a good thread. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 18:46:16 GMT -6
> 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. < This is a great idea. Does anyone have any anecdotes for how Blackmoor characters were created before the release of OD&D? If so, how were they created? Yes, I do, but all your brains would explode if I told you. All of you good folks would have had conniption fits watching my games yesterday at the Free RPG Day event at the FLGS, where I was running my games just like I learned from Dave, all those years ago (with a big helping from Gary and Phil along the way, of course) at Coffman Union. Do carry on, as Gronan would say; I'm laughing myself silly watching this thread. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:08:56 GMT -6
That's a great idea. You could see if certain common elements of RPG's are naturally emergent. It will be hard to avoid decades of habits, but it sounds really fun. Kids have a way looking at things very directly and intuitively. Keep us posted on how it goes! @hedgehobbit There seems to be some interest in what you are doing here. I'd be curious in how you plan to set this up. Not sure if you want to discuss this further, but if you do, it might make a good thread. I second that motion!  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:11:30 GMT -6
This is a great idea. Does anyone have any anecdotes for how Blackmoor characters were created before the release of OD&D? If so, how were they created? Yes, I do, but all your brains would explode if I told you. All of you good folks would have had conniption fits watching my games yesterday at the Free RPG Day event at the FLGS, where I was running my games just like I learned from Dave, all those years ago (with a big helping from Gary and Phil along the way, of course) at Coffman Union. I can guarantee that mine will not, please start a new thread and share some a lot of them. If other brains explode that is not my problem.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:14:08 GMT -6
Verifying authenticity, legal issues, respecting any personal requests, etc. should not be taken lightly. It is a shame that legal issues on things 40+ years old is a consideration. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:29:23 GMT -6
That's a great idea. You could see if certain common elements of RPG's are naturally emergent. It will be hard to avoid decades of habits, but it sounds really fun. Kids have a way looking at things very directly and intuitively. Keep us posted on how it goes! @hedgehobbit There seems to be some interest in what you are doing here. I'd be curious in how you plan to set this up. Not sure if you want to discuss this further, but if you do, it might make a good thread. We did something very similar several years ago. It brought up a lot of interesting issues we hadn't even considered before. We went so far as to not even use graph paper and just hand draw everything as we went along. Bob Meyer's recent game was a similar experiment. Curious to find out what this game will reveal and if some of our issues, and Bob's, will re-appear. Although Bob was running the Blackmoor Bunch and they just know how to do these things. We began our game so that all the players were trapped in these giant opaque balls located on a large surface like a dish. It took them a while to figure out that one person rolling their "gaint ball" from the inside to the edge of the lip couldn't get over the lip of the thing onto the spikes that surrounded it, but several, all pushing from inside their balls could. And the free'd one could then help the others. We told all the players they were "People". We did not explain that to them that people are giant spiders, and or possibly ahoggya. After that, all the other creatures were described in an alternate context of spider perspective. Humans became sausage people, due to their puffy limbs. It was a space station mashup of EPT and Metamorphosis Alpha. It will be interesting to see how your players deal with your game. What the others mentioned in previous posts relate to some of our problems. Yet, you are testing for much different things than we did, you may not get the same results at all. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:32:44 GMT -6
Verifying authenticity, legal issues, respecting any personal requests, etc. should not be taken lightly. It is a shame that legal issues on things 40+ years old is a consideration. Anyone that would deny access due to some strange concept of copyright, is lying to you. They are also being a dinghus. "Fair use is a legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders." Research falls under fair use, and does not breach any publication issues. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:42:07 GMT -6
It does also point to your bias in regard to all things Arneson, especially anecdotal 1st Person Narratives. If you truly want to know what Arneson was doing, you can't rely on documents alone because there is a clear pathology within the Twin Cities group of not always writing down the rules and there is a clear pathology from war games to Blackmoor. I do understand that you believe requiring more than just the remembrance of his friends, and well, of Gygax's enemies, constitutes anti-Arneson bias. My method is different; we'll end up with different results. People will listen to the results they find compelling, and people are compelled by all sorts of things. I have no illusions that I'll persuade everyone. I'm sure that tone will come through to the people you are hoping to convince. But I really don't think this is a productive area of discussion for this thread, or forum for that matter. For the record when it comes to published works, I tend to place little weight on opinions that are formed solely based on documents and do not include talking to eyewitnesses who are still living and still available. IMO there is and can be only one reason not to talk to anyone who was there and that is so you can pretend that none of them have any information that will contradict your conclusions. When you completely ignore and devalue the input of eyewitnesses you devalue your conclusions IMO. I am looking forward to the film by @secretsofblackmoor with all of the filmed interviews. There is a weight to the statements of people who are willing to go on the record like that. When you rely only on documents of which you have the only copy you can report the parts you agree with and bury forever the parts you don't agree with and that is the suspicion that that always exists with document only books. I am old enough now to have learned that many of the things I learned in history class 40 to 50 years ago were deliberate fabrications and research has since uncovered multiple sources that show the truth is most likely something much different. So when it comes to books like PatW, while I have no reason to suspect foul play, the possibility always exists as long as every cited document is not available for my perusal and there is always some doubt in my mind. On the other hand if all the documents were available on line in toto and there were extensive interviews quoted with the originals available on line (some documents & interviews free to view and a reasonable subscription to view the rest) then I could make my own decision about who of the interviewed have the highest veracity compared to the documents and to each other. On the other hand it is a fact that there are many people out there, none of whom are in this thread that are forwarding a dominant narrative that contradicts the text of OD&D itself before you even dig any further, so I know for a fact that the dominant narrative is self-serving BS since none of them were there until well after OD&D was published. That is why for those of us who were not there in the Twin Cities or Lake Geneva this is fascinating stuff. On the other hand I do understand where chirinebakal is coming from with his comments above and if I were in his shoes I would likely feel the same way. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2017 19:51:03 GMT -6
We did something very similar several years ago. It brought up a lot of interesting issues we hadn't even considered before. We went so far as to not even use graph paper and just hand draw everything as we went along. I've never used graph paper and I hand draw things up as I go along, I have never done it any other way. My players do not normally see the rules. Also I just tell them if they hit, I never give them a target number. Bob Meyer's recent game was a similar experiment. Curious to find out what this game will reveal and if some of our issues, and Bob's, will re-appear. Although Bob was running the Blackmoor Bunch and they just know how to do these things. I am quite curious as to what kind of issues you have had. We began our game so that all the players were trapped in these giant opaque balls located on a large surface like a dish. It took them a while to figure out that one person rolling their "gaint ball" from the inside to the edge of the lip couldn't get over the lip of the thing onto the spikes that surrounded it, but several, all pushing from inside their balls could. And the free'd one could then help the others. We told all the players they were "People". We did not explain that to them that people are giant spiders, and or possibly ahoggya. After that, all the other creatures were described in an alternate context of spider perspective. Humans became sausage people, due to their puffy limbs. It was a space station mashup of EPT and Metamorphosis Alpha. I have done this, started the players out with no knowledge of who or what they are and had them in chains in cells. It will be interesting to see how your players deal with your game. What the others mentioned in previous posts relate to some of our problems. Yet, you are testing for much different things than we did, you may not get the same results at all. I would like to hear more about this, perhaps in another thread. |
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Post by 18 Spears on Jun 18, 2017 20:51:52 GMT -6
> 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. < This is a great idea. Does anyone have any anecdotes for how Blackmoor characters were created before the release of OD&D? If so, how were they created? Yes, I do, but all your brains would explode if I told you. All of you good folks would have had conniption fits watching my games yesterday at the Free RPG Day event at the FLGS, where I was running my games just like I learned from Dave, all those years ago (with a big helping from Gary and Phil along the way, of course) at Coffman Union. Do carry on, as Gronan would say; I'm laughing myself silly watching this thread. chinrie i dont' know you'uns so pleese dont think i disrespect, and i don't post to this thred becasue everybody yells at me when i talk. But if you'uns know some thing of use to gamers? share it and pay no never mind to the grumpuses. some of us'ns listen when you'uns talk - like me! |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2017 1:20:31 GMT -6
It does also point to your bias in regard to all things Arneson, especially anecdotal 1st Person Narratives. If you truly want to know what Arneson was doing, you can't rely on documents alone because there is a clear pathology within the Twin Cities group of not always writing down the rules and there is a clear pathology from war games to Blackmoor. I do understand that you believe requiring more than just the remembrance of his friends, and well, of Gygax's enemies, constitutes anti-Arneson bias. My method is different; we'll end up with different results. People will listen to the results they find compelling, and people are compelled by all sorts of things. I have no illusions that I'll persuade everyone. Wrote a huge response. Decided to delete. We are clearly on different wave lengths about things and that is ok. |
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Post by increment on Jun 19, 2017 5:57:40 GMT -6
I tend to place little weight on opinions that are formed solely based on documents and do not include talking to eyewitnesses who are still living and still available. IMO there is and can be only one reason not to talk to anyone who was there and that is so you can pretend that none of them have any information that will contradict your conclusions. I guess if you really went out of your way not to talk to anyone it would have to be for some reason like that. But rather like the tiresome debates over whether every single iota of credit should be awarded as a unit to either Gary or Dave, this characterization paints things as black and white way too hastily. Do people here seriously think I didn't talk to Arneson or Gygax, like ever? That I didn't play games with the Twin Cities guys, conduct rounds of interviews up there? I guess if people think I didn't, maybe that's what I should be posting scans of: of the picture of me playing Student D in Wesley's 2008 Braunstein reconstruction at Gen Con, or of me and Arneson together, or of Dan Nicholson as we went through boxes of his material, or take your pick. Honestly, how do people think I even got these documents if I don't talk to people like this? Again, doesn't that just sound unrealistic to you as you say it? "Completely ignore and devalue"? It's much more gray, and more much in the weeds than that. Trying to steer this back around to the topic of the thread, do you think I didn't put the Wizard Gaylord sheet in Pete Gaylord's hands, back in 2009 or so? At the time I had a fair idea what it was; Gaylord said he didn't know what it was. I've had a lot of witnesses tell me all sorts of things, some elucidating and some not. Sometimes even ancedotes I couldn't confirm went straight from the Twin Cities folks into PatW: like say, the one where Dan Nicholson described how the characters were introduced into Blackmoor, or the one where Greg Svenson talked about leveling up by getting a magic sword. It's not that I don't use these things, it's that, like any piece of evidence, they have to be used judiciously. Where we can't be certain what happened, I try to fess up to that, and maybe include what I've heard with an appropriate caveat. But documents are useful for showing what was going on at a particular place and time. Personally, I use them more to rule out possibilities than to prove things. So do the eyewitnesses, I think. These people are not just hard drives we extract data from, they are participants in on ongoing discussion that shapes us and them. Dave Megarry was just telling me a story at GaryCon this year about how he had believed something about Blackmoor right up until he saw some contrary evidence; he put out his palm and said, "Before I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles this high that it was like this." I hear slightly more profane versions of that from Gronan, from time to time. Not to put too fine a point on it, but just like a page or two ago in this thread we had an eyewitness report that his sheet, dating back to the first year of Blackmoor, used SIWCDCh with no Cunning. Should we take that as evidence that the Wizard Gaylord sheet is inauthentic? We (or at least I) believe the Gaylord sheet is authentic because it hangs in a loose cluster with some other data points, from Megarry, from the FFC, from other documents, that seem coherent. There are limits to what you can do with documents, and there are limits to what you can glean from interviews. No one is adopting some ridiculous posture that excludes either, and it merely drags this discussion farther into a toxic and counterproductive place to paint things that way. I've many times now encouraged people to watch the movie when it's out. I'm sure there will be a lot of value in those filmed interviews. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2017 6:54:27 GMT -6
But rather like the tiresome debates over whether every single iota of credit should be awarded as a unit to either Gary or Dave, this characterization paints things as black and white way too hastily. Do people here seriously think I didn't talk to Arneson or Gygax, like ever? That I didn't play games with the Twin Cities guys, conduct rounds of interviews up there? I guess if people think I didn't, maybe that's what I should be posting scans of: of the picture of me playing Student D in Wesley's 2008 Braunstein reconstruction at Gen Con, or of me and Arneson together, or of Dan Nicholson as we went through boxes of his material, or take your pick. Honestly, how do people think I even got these documents if I don't talk to people like this?
Second, perhaps you don't realize it but you come off very much in most of your posts that I have read as discounting anything that is not a document. If that is not the case COOL! IMO you would serve yourself well by providing more of the things you have just mentioned. Those human interactions will aid your scholarship and documentation of history. Making history very dry and clinical has never been a good way to do things, it has always been counterproductive to learning by the reader. One of my history teachers encouraged us to study history by taking the dry stale textbook and providing context and background that could have been in the book but were not.
It's not that I don't use these things, it's that, like any piece of evidence, they have to be used judiciously. Where we can't be certain what happened, I try to fess up to that, and maybe including what I've heard with an appropriate caveat. But documents are useful for showing what was going on at a particular place and time. Personally, I use them more to rule out possibilities than to prove things. So do the eyewitnesses, I think. These people are not just hard drives we extract data from, they are participants in on ongoing discussion that shapes us and them. Dave Megarry was just telling me a story at GaryCon this year about how he had believed something about Blackmoor right up until he saw some contrary evidence; he put out his palm and said, "Before I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles this high that it was like this." I hear slightly more profane versions of that from Gronan, from time to time.
There are limits to what you can do with documents, and there are limits to what you can glean from interviews.
No one is adopting some ridiculous posture that excludes either, and it merely drags this discussion farther into a toxic and counterproductive place to paint things that way.
I've many times now encouraged people to watch the movie when it's out. I'm sure there will be a lot of value in those filmed interviews.
In the context of the original pages of notes that Arneson gave to Gygax, and the notes that Kask was given to edit for the Blackmoor supplement, it is reported that there was much that Gygax could not make heads or tails of (which is one of the reasons he put in his own mechanics in many places) and Kask says he tried to categorize things every which way and failed. Kask also states that Arneson's notes had many different and contradictory ways of handling things. It is obvious to me that Arneson saw the supplement as a grab bag of ideas in many ways on a smaller scale similar to the Arduin Grimoire, while Kask by his own statements never even considered such a thing, and due to that lack of imagination and his self-confessed hatred of Arneson we all lost out on those notes. It is those things that you and others cannot make heads or tails of that I especially want to see published. |
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Post by Cedgewick on Jun 19, 2017 8:25:38 GMT -6
Do people here seriously think I didn't talk to Arneson or Gygax, like ever? That I didn't play games with the Twin Cities guys, conduct rounds of interviews up there? I guess if people think I didn't, maybe that's what I should be posting scans of: of the picture of me playing Student D in Wesley's 2008 Braunstein reconstruction at Gen Con, or of me and Arneson together, or of Dan Nicholson as we went through boxes of his material, or take your pick. Well, have your own interviews with Arneson or Gygax ever been documented? You mentioned that you interviewed them in your book and you've referred to these interviews repeatedly in various forums, but to my knowledge, no transcript has ever been published by you of these interviews. Since they both passed on nearly a decade ago, I think it would be reasonable to assume that your memories of what they said to you back then are no more infallible than those of anyone else you have criticized over the same issue. Same thing goes for "the Twin Cities guys," Wesley, Nicholson, or anyone else you claim to draw authority from without providing any interview transcripts. Shouldn't you yourself be held to the same high standards that you hold everyone else to? |
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Post by aldarron on Jun 19, 2017 11:13:01 GMT -6
Yes, I do, but all your brains would explode if I told you..... chinrie i dont' know you'uns so pleese dont think i disrespect.... Chirine = Jeff Berry. Check the EPT threads or Havaards Blackmoor forum for more. You'uns: I'm always a bit puzzled when I see you use this antiquated spelling. Being yinzer born and bread myself, I can assure you that yuins or yinz are more common modern spellings. Yuins is more Appalachian highlands (Pa, Md, WV) whereas Yinz is more 'burgher. Just an FYI. |
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Post by aldarron on Jun 19, 2017 11:46:38 GMT -6
...... Does anyone have any anecdotes for how Blackmoor characters were created before the release of OD&D? If so, how were they created? Hmmm, I have the feeling you would find the sorts of things you've been asking for Peter in my 'blog posts. Here's a place you might start Do people here seriously think I didn't talk to Arneson or Gygax, .... Well, have your own interviews with Arneson or Gygax ever been documented? You mentioned that you interviewed them in your book and you've referred to these interviews repeatedly in various forums, but to my knowledge, no transcript has ever been published by you of these interviews. There are a lot of really interesting points in this thread, and I think there is lots more that can be developed in this discussion, but I feel focusing on Jon Peterson's research perspectives is heading down a rabbit hole. I'm also not sure how relevant to this kind of topic any of Jon's interviews might be as Jon has mentioned before that a focus of his questions to Gygax and Arneson was driven by an interest in tracking down historic records and any period publications they may have been involved with. <shrug> Since they both passed on nearly a decade ago, I think it would be reasonable to assume that your memories of what they said to you back then are no more infallible than those of anyone else you have criticized over the same issue. Same thing goes for "the Twin Cities guys," Wesley, Nicholson, or anyone else you claim to draw authority from without providing any interview transcripts. Shouldn't you yourself be held to the same high standards that you hold everyone else to? Indeed memory is imperfect for everyone and some folks are better at remembering than others. Pete Gaylord was mentioned above for not remembering his own character sheet, though perhaps he should be excused given that he died suffering from dementia. Of a bit more relevance to the OP and the remembered use of "scores", it might be fun to once again point out Robert Lionheart's quote from Dave Arneson, Blackmoor and Me!, in Fight On! Magazine issue #2, 2008. He says “I just got home after playing Blackmoor D&D with Dave Arneson for five hours!... I picked his brain both in and out of game. Fascinating! … Dave runs Blackmoor...not just the setting, but his pre-1974 FRP system. It was proto-D&D but quite different: THAC0 is about rolling UNDER not equal or over. So if you had a THAC0 13, you needed to roll 12 or less to hit. 1s are crits and 20s are fumbles. This method of attacking also corresponded to your other ability and skill rolls.” So there's a bit of second hand info doubly reliant on memory, but it's a fairly basic factoid, that does fit the pattern (attacks, skills and saves all used a "corresponding" mechanic). Make of it what you will. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2017 11:50:43 GMT -6
chinrie i dont' know you'uns so pleese dont think i disrespect.... Chirine = Jeff Berry. Check the EPT threads or Havaards Blackmoor forum for more. You'uns: I'm always a bit puzzled when I see you use this antiquated spelling. Being yinzer born and bread myself, I can assure you that yuins or yinz are more common modern spellings. Yuins is more Appalachian highlands (Pa, Md, WV) whereas Yinz is more 'burgher. Just an FYI. I grew up with “y’all” as the preferred term. I have not really used it in writing, though I have used "you all" and "all of you" in writing. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2017 11:55:20 GMT -6
There are a lot of really interesting points in the thread, and I think there is lots more that can be developed in this discussion, but I feel focusing on Jon Peterson's research perspectives is heading down a rabbit hole. I'm also not sure how relevant to this kind of topic any of Jon's interviews might be as Jon has mentioned before that a focus of his questions to Gygax and Arneson was driven by an interest in tracking down historic records and any period publications they may have been involved with. <shrug> And not necessarily asking the questions that some us are the most interested in. Good Point! |
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Since the theory needed testing it has expanded the scope of questions being asked and that is intruiging. Please continue the expansion. 
); somehow when we get a unit sheet for a character, you claim that the Twin Cities Gamers don't use any of it for tasks. We are once again pounding our collective heads on the table.
