Hit Points and Experience taking their roots from Strategos

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2018 17:00:07 GMT -6 increment said:

Sept 17, 2018 7:23:36 GMT -6 aldarron said:

The assignment of points to figures then, to mitigate instant kills on the FCT, was clearly not suggested by the mass combat statistics of Ogres, but was an adaptation of a tradition already in place (especially in naval gaming), traceable, as you've noted to multiple sources.

I understand that there is some interest in falsifying, as the original linked blog post says, the claim that "everything [Arneson] designed in Blackmoor must also be a derivation from Chainmail." Not that anyone actually maintains that, nor is anyone even holding a torch for the claim that experience derived from Chainmail, to my knowledge. But is Strategos A really "a more likely source for the application of hit points" on the strength of this single phrase that an elephant requires "5 hits to kill"? More likely than the rules Arneson characterized as "the basis of all our combat" in Blackmoor -- even if we want to caveat that with "at first" -- rules which describe a variety of circumstances where units could withstand multiple hits of damage before they perished?

This isn't a matter of something being suggested, it's just already there... to the degree that Chainmail is clear about what's there. The Ogre is a great example because the text goes on to describe how they take six hits in "normal combat" -- but slightly-magical elves can kill them in three hits and Heroes in one. So hits in Chainmail are, well, relative, I guess. There are threads elsewhere on this board trying to figure out how the fantasy system and "normal combat" were supposed to interface. I have no doubt Arneson looked at this muddle and substituted in a variety of alternatives over time, and could have drawn on all sorts of existing systems for inspiration in that. I still don't understand what is supposed to be unique to Strategos that can be discerned in Blackmoor's resulting treatment of hits.

You are ignoring the Pathology of Behavior within the Twin Cities group.

They know Strategos intimately. Certainly their core group of Ref's do.

They are adapting that system from a very early stage. I would argue that as early as 1965 they are working on it. 1st person narratives support that. (It is always ironic how Gary Gygax accounts are never questioned, yet a slew of people from the Twin Cities are somehow in collusion to create false hoods when they make statements, but that is a side issue.)

Arneson and Hoffa exhibit an understanding of the need for a multi hit creature, the elephants in Strategos A. You have it, you know it predates Chain Mail.

The origin coming from what is very familiar to them seems most plausible. Strategos being the older text also gives it a certain cache historically.

Of course, Arneson also has his naval systems, so who knows. Yet, if I have a system for sword battles in ancient times, the difference mechanically between medieval and ancient isn't a very big mental leap.

If one is using your own methodology that you use in PATW, then if I have a piece of paper that shows X component that predates others, the result is a plausible connection between X and Y. Yet, you seem to be denying plausibility here, and that somewhat confounds me.

[robertsconley]

Oct 11, 2018 10:45:25 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

To assume they are not some of the sharpest people around even as 20 somethings, is to misunderstand who these people are, and were then, even if all they are doing is inventing games.

I don't see how what I said is incompatible with what you just said.

I emphasized in several places reading the primary and secondary sources. Where do you think Dave's knowledge of mathematics and what to apply in order to come with diagrams of search areas and probabilities comes from? The fact he able to come up with that level of detail for his campaigns is indeed impressive. Similarly for Weseley and Barker in how they leveraged their knowledge and experience for their campaign.

In addition I don't see how fudging is implied by what I said.

Sure if one not familiar with something that comes up during a session, yeah I suppose there is fudging things to keep the game going. But only in the sense of adjusting or manipulating facts or figures so as to present a desired picture. Not in the sense of presenting or dealing with something in a vague, noncommittal, or inadequate way.

It obvious from the accounts and anecdotes that many of the hobbyists of that time went above and beyond in their research. That they were smart to begin with.

My point in outlining what I did is to get help folks get a taste of what it was like start up a campaign back then. That it was not the rules they used back then but the process by which they created their rules where the "magic" happened.

For example you have a set of rules by Dave created for finding pirates. Now put that away and try to make your own set of rules for searching for pirates. What did you use for references? How did you figure out what important to include and what not include. How did the result work in actual play? That the spirit that symbolizes the early days of the hobby.

Of course we know it possible because we are standing on the shoulders of Gygax, Arneson, Weseley and the rest. They didn't have that. Which make what happened that much more amazing. But still the exercise is worth doing because it improves what you do as a gamer. And from my own experience by dealing with the nuts and bolts of the creative process, you get ideas for stuff you didn't consider before that makes for fun and interesting campaigns.

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Oct 11, 2018 10:22:23 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

If one is using your own methodology that you use in PATW, then if I have a piece of paper that shows X component that predates others, the result is a plausible connection between X and Y. Yet, you seem to be denying plausibility here, and that somewhat confounds me.

If component X is the idea that a figure can withstand quantified damage in combat, then there are scores of systems with that property which predate Blackmoor. But only one of them was described by the referee of that campaign as "the basis for all our combat." It was not Strategos.

No one is pretending that withstanding quantified damage is somehow unique to Chainmail. It was an element in Patt, and Bodenburg, and de Gre. It was common in roster systems, which it so happens that Strategos A incorporates. It could be found in Totten, in a form that derives from Reiswitz. But what is not clear to me is which properties of managing quantified damage in Strategos A exerted some discernible influence on how hit points worked in D&D. Sure, hit points work differently in D&D than hits do in Chainmail, but Strategos A does not get us any closer to hit points than does an ogre taking six hits.

[Stormcrow]

Oct 12, 2018 8:56:15 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

The main point is that there is a common fallacy that all things come from CM

The only people I see saying that are the people trying to disprove it. Sometimes people will say that D&D "grew out of" Chainmail or some such, but that's not attributing an exclusive origin to Chainmail. The statement seems a bit of a straw man to me.

[Stormcrow]

Oct 12, 2018 10:15:44 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

If you say it -Grew out of CM- then you say it originates with CM. That unclear language leads to a misunderstanding by most people.

Don't put words in my mouth. "D&D grew out of Chainmail" does not mean D&D has an exclusive source in Chainmail. The statement may be incomplete, but it is not wrong, and it is not being absolute. By all means, add to the statement that "D&D grew out of Chainmail" with further information ("Chainmail wasn't the only source; there were also these things..."), but don't accuse the speaker that they're being exclusive. If your concern is the understanding of people who hear the statement, address their understanding; don't mischaracterize the speaker's statement.

I would point out that Jon's book is all about sussing out the myriad sources of D&D, and he doesn't spend a great deal of time tracing elements of Chainmail.

[aldarron]

Sept 17, 2018 17:00:07 GMT -6 increment said:

Sept 17, 2018 7:23:36 GMT -6 aldarron said:

The assignment of points to figures then, to mitigate instant kills on the FCT, was clearly not suggested by the mass combat statistics of Ogres, but was an adaptation of a tradition already in place (especially in naval gaming), traceable, as you've noted to multiple sources.

I understand that there is some interest in falsifying, as the original linked blog post says, the claim that "everything [Arneson] designed in Blackmoor must also be a derivation from Chainmail." Not that anyone actually maintains that, nor is anyone even holding a torch for the claim that experience derived from Chainmail, to my knowledge. But is Strategos A really "a more likely source for the application of hit points" on the strength of this single phrase that an elephant requires "5 hits to kill"? More likely than the rules Arneson characterized as "the basis of all our combat" in Blackmoor -- even if we want to caveat that with "at first" -- rules which describe a variety of circumstances where units could withstand multiple hits of damage before they perished?

This isn't a matter of something being suggested, it's just already there... to the degree that Chainmail is clear about what's there. The Ogre is a great example because the text goes on to describe how they take six hits in "normal combat" -- but slightly-magical elves can kill them in three hits and Heroes in one. So hits in Chainmail are, well, relative, I guess. There are threads elsewhere on this board trying to figure out how the fantasy system and "normal combat" were supposed to interface. I have no doubt Arneson looked at this muddle and substituted in a variety of alternatives over time, and could have drawn on all sorts of existing systems for inspiration in that. I still don't understand what is supposed to be unique to Strategos that can be discerned in Blackmoor's resulting treatment of hits.

I can't speak to the OP. My only interest is factual, and where particular arguments are weak or unbalanced sometimes there is value in challenging them. We do that all the time to each other around here. "The basis for all our combats" may serve as a conversation stopper when unsituated, but contextualized the statement can only be applied to the use of magic swords in player versus monster combat. It is far from clear, and therefore an over-generalization to assume that Arneson's statement applied to the mass tabletop battle rules, whether "at first" or not. Nor were HP a natal feature of Blackmoor gaming, as CHAINMAIL was, but rather a solution to a problem inherent in the Fantasy Combat rules. In any case, we have the HP of Ogres in Blackmoor on record in multiple instances, and it does not conform to the rule you cite, ergo it is not logical to claim that rule as an inspirational source, no matter how much it reminds you personally of HP.

I'm not arguing that the OP argument is right, in fact I think it is overdrawn, and perhaps misleading, but no more so than assumptive arguments like "surely the fact that ogres can take an accumulation of six hits in Chainmail is a proximate cause."

[Stormcrow]

Oct 12, 2018 20:32:34 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

But hey, you typed it: "D&D grew out of Chain Mail" - you!

I typed it as an example of the thing you're already arguing against. I wasn't declaring it to be so.

Seriously though. I am not putting words in your mouth. I am commenting on your semantics. And those semantics seem to be a point of discussion and argument when looking at origins for D&D. 

They are not my semantics; they are the semantics you were already arguing against, and I just repeated them.

If you're just arguing semantics, you could probably better employ your energy elsewhere. If you know what people mean when they say "D&D grew out of Chainmail," then just do what I said: don't complain about the semantics; add a more complete narrative.

For my part, I'll say that D&D did grow out of Chainmail — in that much of its base of rules were adapted right out of it. That's not to say the idea of a role-playing game grew out of Chainmail — it didn't, except in that players of wargames tend to start to identify with or favor certain figures representing certain characters or troops, though this phenomenon was never confined strictly to Chainmail. It's not to say that all its rules come from Chainmail. D&D represents a lot of different sources drawn together to achieve something new. It grew out of Chainmail; it grew out of Blackmoor; it grew out of Diplomacy; it grew out of Strategos and Kriegspiel and all the others; it grew out of novels; it grew out of movies; it grew out of cops and robbers and cowboys and indians. To complain that "D&D grew out of Chainmail" is false is itself false; it's true, but incomplete.

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Oct 12, 2018 19:57:15 GMT -6 aldarron said:

"The basis for all our combats" may serve as a conversation stopper when unsituated, but contextualized the statement can only be applied to the use of magic swords in player versus monster combat.

I don't buy that this passage can only read as "the basis for all our combat [with magic swords exclusively in player versus monster combat]." Any more than I would read Arneson's 1978 statement "Actual combat used the Chainmail system" with the words "for magic swords exclusively" implicitly appended to it. Or to his 1979 "Chainmail to handle the combat at first." 

What is perhaps more interesting here is what we can glean about the time after "at first" when it comes to withstanding hits. Hit points are not taking hits. Various things in Chainmail took multiple hits, as did a thing in Strategos A. I'd probably be comfortable with a statement of the rough form that Arneson modified the use of taking multiple hits to apply to places in the Chainmail rules where Gygax never intended for them to apply - or maybe where the intention of the Chainmail rules is unclear -  but the relationship of that modification to hit points as we see them in OD&D is more complicated. In that 1978 article, Arneson lists four modifications he instituted which, he argues, made Blackmoor sufficiently distinct that we should not consider it a Chainmail variant anymore: "hit dice, hit location, armor type/protection and weapon classes."

I think we'll all agree that hit location, a la Blackmoor (1975), is not in Chainmail. I would also say "hit dice" are not. Hit dice mean something more like hit points than taking hits does. If the linked article at the top of the thread had shown that hit dice originated in Strategos A or some other game, I'd find that mighty interesting. So...

Oct 12, 2018 19:57:15 GMT -6 aldarron said:

In any case, we have the HP of Ogres in Blackmoor on record in multiple instances, and it does not conform to the rule you cite, ergo it is not logical to claim that rule as an inspirational source, no matter how much it reminds you personally of HP.

Do we have the hit points of ogres on record, or just the number of hits they could take? I don't think it's a matter of great consequence in system design whether ogres can take six or six hundred hits, once they can endure more than one - the idea that these specific fantastic things could take multiple hits is the inspirational source I was claiming. Len Patt had heroes take five hits, and Chainmail lowered that to four, but Chainmail was still inspired by Patt. I'd be correspondingly cautious about saying that hit points as we know them are a Blackmoor system - because Arneson insisted D&D got hit points wrong, for better or for worse. Most likely, I'd go in for a rough statement like that Arneson played with several systems for taking hits and hit dice which were adapted into the hit point system of D&D during his collaboration with Gygax. 

Spinning this around to what Stormcrow is saying in this thread, pushback against the strawman that "all things come from Chainmail" can easily lead to the pendulum swinging too far, to the point where we reject that there's any sense in which Blackmoor, and by extension D&D, "grew out of Chainmail." The original linked blog post is just a supporting argument, I imagine, to help position us so "we can now draw the inescapable conclusion: The battles in Blackmoor were being fought with Strategos as the go to rules, not CHAINMAIL." (If only that were just a strawman I made up.) But when we drill down into this argument, it's not convincing, and the conclusion is flatly contradicted by Arneson, Gygax, and all of the contemporary documentation I am aware of, no matter how many places we read "with magic swords exclusively" into.

[Deleted]

Complete side note, but I do want to point out that research should be tempered by first hand accounts.

After we posted the article on hit points and experience we received this response, which should be noted:

DAVID A WESELY
7/28/2018 03:33:31 PM
These are good observations, but I remember the concept of PCs gaining skill and power through experience was taken from Mike Carr's WW1 air combat game "Fight in the Skies". David and I met Mike at Gencon 2. He and his group were then merged with ours. At that time Mike was already working on what became "Fight in the Skies". In his game one operated only one airplane at a time, but would maintain a "stable" of pilots, usually from different air forces, allowing one to fly different aircraft from game to game not be stuck flying the same thing every game. Every time your pilot survived a mission, he gained experience and a small increase in his flying skill for later missions. Players took to maintaining card files on their pilots, and recording their status (wounded for three months, awarded Croix d guerre, has girlfriend named Babette, etc) which began to take on some RPG aspects. At the same time Dave and I could see that it resolved some problems with early Blackmoor games, where each player had one character (nominally himself) and kept playing him until he died: too much invested in the single PC to accept his death, or being stuck with his history, even if the there were more interesting things one could be doing with a different character. David had also developed rules for improving the "morale grade" or "eliteness" of our battalions in his Napoleonic campaign (using Strategos-N): Making successful morale rolls in a battle in spite of casualties, capturing enemy colors, etc, could give them improved value in later battles, while absorbing a large number of green reinforcements to replace casualties could "water down" their eliteness. Thus experience points grew out of the cross-breeding of several different still unpublished rules sets that were being developed and played within our group in the 1965-1970 time frame, all before we saw Chainmail.

[Malchor]

Oct 14, 2018 15:42:55 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

DAVID A WESELY
7/28/2018 03:33:31 PM
These are good observations, but I remember the concept of PCs gaining skill and power through experience was taken from Mike Carr's WW1 air combat game "Fight in the Skies". David and I met Mike at Gencon 2.

In the few interviews I’ve heard with Mike Carr—and knowing his role as a game designer, in not the Twins Cities as a gamer, and his roles at TSR—this is a sharp guy who likely knows many of the answers we seek, but also sharp enough and diplomatic enough not to share. I kind of kid, but seriously, it seems like Mike Carr is a guy to ask about many of things.

Another example of why not ask Mike was at NTRPG, two vendors were going on about the mysteries of some of the production and print changes and irregularities, mostly in in the AD&D pritinings. Knowing how printing worked back then would give you some clues (these guys did not get printing) but an easier way to find out would be to ask the guy who had to suffer through the variability (paper supplies, ink, the weather, who was on press that day, were changes to the layout made correctly, condition of the plates, etc.) of every one of those print runs. And that would be Mike Carr.

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Oct 15, 2018 5:52:12 GMT -6 Malchor said:

I kind of kid, but seriously, it seems like Mike Carr is a guy to ask about many of things.

The irony is that Mike Carr asked me about this earlier this year. It's not just a matter of being sharp and diplomatic, though he is both of those things: Carr is also the kind of guy who is comfortable saying he doesn't know. But even he has to be curious about his own legacy.

He asked me about this because other people are asking him about it, and indeed, I couldn't have contrived a better example of how first-hand accounts end up being tempered by research. We can talk about a need for these things to temper one another, but they've already been tempering one another for the past forty years. The people we now turn to for first-hand accounts have been barraged with questions since long before any of us came on to the scene (not you, Gronan, sit back down), and those questions are often provoked by some document, say an article someone saw in Space Gamer or something. And ultimately, researchers often frame their investigations around further questions that these first-hand accounts raise.

It's true that there is experience in FitS - but not the 1968 self-published edition that was given away as prizes at Gen Con I. And not in the 1972 Guidon Games edition either. It isn't until the 1975 TSR edition that there is a "Pilot Experience" section of the rules (p21). If we want to hone in on when an experience system became attached to FitS, we can fortunately look to the FitS Society fanzine Aerodrome. Pilot experience appears in Aerodrome #38, undated, but late in 1973. In fact, that article, by Paul Cote and Phil Grant, helpfully explains that these rules were devised directly after Gen Con in 1973. The article is called "Revised FitS Revisited or Don't Look Now Mike But Your Game's Been Changed Again." Albeit, in the system eventually published in FitS 1975, Carr expands a bit on Cote and Grant's original.

I think that article should count as a first-hand account - Cote talks about how they collaborated when Grant stayed over at his house for a few days, and even says that Phil gave him a cold. He too is reporting on something that happened in the past, and is saying what he remembered, though it was just a couple months prior - probably about as long before as it has been since Wesely wrote that note above. But still, taken in context, I would say it's more likely that experience in D&D influenced FitS than vice-versa. I told Mike I thought the timing didn't quite work - it was more like these ideas about experience grew up together.

So if you asked Carr about this now, he might just tell you what I told him. Or maybe not - it was just a casual conversation, not a transcripted conference. Probably it's somewhere in the middle, that this becomes part of the background that makes him cautious to say things one way or another. But the point is that the people we ask for first-hand accounts have always been in a push-and-pull with us. Even if Major Wesely were to read that Aerodrome article and decide he must have misremembered and totally disown his note on that blog post (which he might or might not), it will continue to exist, for the eternity of the Wayback machine, as part of that push-and-pull of the historical record. But if I take it upon myself to engage with Wesely on this, am I tempering, or tampering?

[Edit: And just to be clear, only talking about experience in FitS here, not about FitS helping trigger role-playing or experience in Strategos.]

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Oct 15, 2018 11:00:14 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

For this, i had two people who do not hang out together all the time.

But would those two people still say the same thing if they reviewed Paul Cote's article? Do you, or I, or someone, have some responsibility to intervene when we see someone picking this up as a talking point, or should we stay out of it and we watch people gel into mutual corroboration without giving them the benefit of evidence that might change their minds? Should we still temper the research discussion with their recollection even if we believe it is unlikely their recollection is accurate?

These aren't easy questions, and I'm not pretending I have easy answers. I suspect we are always intervening with these guys, whether we intend to or not. That's why first-hand accounts from people today who are caught up in that push-and-pull, who have suffered many barrages of questions before, who have spent decades hashing this out, just need to be handled differently than first-hand accounts like Paul Cote's, written in 1973, before experience points became "a thing" that anyone would ask anyone about. I know that when I say that, some people hear me grumbling that contemporary interviews are worthless. But I've gotten a great deal of value out of my discussions with Wesely, Carr, Cote, and many others.

Sometimes I knowingly tamper, like when I sent Major Wesely a piece about his combat calculator that I chanced over earlier this year which showed it was actually earlier than he had thought; people are usually happy to hear news like that. But the social dynamic of challenging people's memories can be a delicate one - no doubt more so for you than me, as you are counting on these people to literally tell the story of your project on camera.

Not sure I understand your premise re: Greg Scott. He was clearly around and active in the club into the 1970s, not sure what bearing it has that he and Arneson were feuding.

[Malchor]

Oct 15, 2018 10:07:59 GMT -6 increment said:

Oct 15, 2018 5:52:12 GMT -6 Malchor said:

I kind of kid, but seriously, it seems like Mike Carr is a guy to ask about many of things.

The irony is that Mike Carr asked me about this earlier this year. It's not just a matter of being sharp and diplomatic, though he is both of those things: Carr is also the kind of guy who is comfortable saying he doesn't know. But even he has to be curious about his own legacy.

Hold it right there pardna, you miss my meaning.

I was simply saying Mike Carr seem to be on the short list of people who tend not to be consult enough—and gave an example of something Mike would know about,

I was not talking about the effluence of Flight in the Sky on Blackmoor. As that could have happened without Mike’s participation or knowledge.

Unless “this” in the post you quoted me in refers to AD&D print runs you have some editing to do in that post above as that is the only “this” I was specifically on about.

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Oct 16, 2018 11:43:59 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

RE: Greg Scott

Because his affiliation is limited, I can use his statements to bracket dates. Thus his absence from Arneson's home group is a strong indicator that his statements about using Strategos very early seem a lot more plausible, thus supporting other people's similar statements. He is also doing his own thing and running his company, so he is not spending time with the other guys going over details.

Well, we have a strong data point in that COTT, in early 1968, says a "compact version of the Strategos rules" is being done then by Greg, Jim Clark, Mike Norman, and Wesely. So... wouldn't he have been working on it then?

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Oct 16, 2018 14:08:03 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

I am curious to have some kind of date bracketing for an early adoption.

At the risk of being pedantic, is there some reason you don't go with the first sentence of the Strategos N 1970 booklet, which reads, "These rules represent a simplified and shortened version of the rules our group has used for Napoleonic Wargames during the past three years?"

[Malchor]

For those of us following along and without copies of COTT or the 1970 edition of Stratego N, three questions;

1. Where there any other documented mentions of using Stratego by the Twin City group, in COTT or otherwise? If so, what? (This question takes no sides on the validity of other forms of sources).

2. Did the 1970 edition of Stratego N specifically call out the contributions of Greg, Jim Clark, and Mike Norman?

3. Any evidence that Greg, Jim Clark, Mike Norman and Wesely completed a “compact” Strategos rule set in 1968? In print or otherwise? (Oh, sorry that triggered question four, does a solidification of rules in ‘68 preclude earlier experimentation? And is it reasonably possible to refer to the point solidification without precluding prior use?)

[robertsconley]

Oct 15, 2018 16:07:33 GMT -6 derv said:

For example, is LARPING the same as Blackmoor? You might say yes. I would say no, though they are similar and use the same play method.

While LARPing is a form of roleplaying game, a game where the players focuses on playing a individual character. The method of playing is not the same as tabletop roleplaying. The use of live action imposes a lot of changes as how how the campaign is run. This is speaking from the experience of running numerous LARP events in the 1990s and early 2000s and as the owner and operator of ARGO LARP 1999 to 2003.

If folks want the details I will be happy to go into them. I will note that based on his own account from a voice interview of David Wesley, the Braustein games shared many elements of a LARP.

[aldarron]

Oct 13, 2018 14:05:21 GMT -6 increment said:

Oct 12, 2018 19:57:15 GMT -6 aldarron said:

"The basis for all our combats" may serve as a conversation stopper when unsituated, but contextualized the statement can only be applied to the use of magic swords in player versus monster combat.

I don't buy that this passage can only read as "the basis for all our combat [with magic swords exclusively in player versus monster combat]." Any more than I would read Arneson's 1978 statement "Actual combat used the Chainmail system" with the words "for magic swords exclusively" implicitly appended to it. Or to his 1979 "Chainmail to handle the combat at first." 

What is perhaps more interesting here is what we can glean about the time after "at first" when it comes to withstanding hits. Hit points are not taking hits. Various things in Chainmail took multiple hits, as did a thing in Strategos A. I'd probably be comfortable with a statement of the rough form that Arneson modified the use of taking multiple hits to apply to places in the Chainmail rules where Gygax never intended for them to apply - or maybe where the intention of the Chainmail rules is unclear -  but the relationship of that modification to hit points as we see them in OD&D is more complicated. In that 1978 article, Arneson lists four modifications he instituted which, he argues, made Blackmoor sufficiently distinct that we should not consider it a Chainmail variant anymore: "hit dice, hit location, armor type/protection and weapon classes."

I think we'll all agree that hit location, a la Blackmoor (1975), is not in Chainmail. I would also say "hit dice" are not. Hit dice mean something more like hit points than taking hits does. If the linked article at the top of the thread had shown that hit dice originated in Strategos A or some other game, I'd find that mighty interesting. So...

Oct 12, 2018 19:57:15 GMT -6 aldarron said:

In any case, we have the HP of Ogres in Blackmoor on record in multiple instances, and it does not conform to the rule you cite, ergo it is not logical to claim that rule as an inspirational source, no matter how much it reminds you personally of HP.

Do we have the hit points of ogres on record, or just the number of hits they could take?

Generally speaking, hit points are just taking hits. They are points for taking hits. HIt points are hits.

If you are now distinguishing D&D HP from "hits". and I absolutely agree we can, then the distinction is their variability. Variable hit points is the important design breakthrough. Hits in wargames are an assigned stat. D&D HP are derived by a mechanic which allows variable outcomes for the number of hits. That idea of variability was apparently developed in Blackmoor with the hit variations given to monsters in d6 increments. So 15 point CM ogres became 18 points "with variations" and 75 point true trolls got 36-72 points, for example.

I see no reason to think Arneson was making that particular fine point distinction when he claimed he took the idea of HP from his naval gaming. The clearest cognate is that naval games had large HP totals 10, 15, 20 points and more, and this is an idea we see repeated in Blackmoor. Blackmoor and Naval wargame "Hits"are Orders of magnitude above the usual 2, 4, 8, hits we see in medieval wargames. It is this idea of larger hit totals allowing for increased chances of longer character survival that seems to have inspired Arneson. That the idea of a few hits per figure that can also be found in CHAINMAIL, Morschauser, and frankly the Strategos A game too, is simply a footnote in my opinion.

The larger question of what inspired Arneson to create the key concept of HP variability remains, to me at least, unanswered. It may be an outgrowth of his protection point stocking mechanic wherein he would potentially have leftover points in a room, insufficient to purchase a full strength monster. Once the idea of "weaker" monsters was accepted, HP variability exists.

Oct 13, 2018 14:05:21 GMT -6 increment said:

I don't think it's a matter of great consequence in system design whether ogres can take six or six hundred hits, once they can endure more than one - the idea that these specific fantastic things could take multiple hits is the inspirational source I was claiming. Len Patt had heroes take five hits, and Chainmail lowered that to four, but Chainmail was still inspired by Patt. I'd be correspondingly cautious about saying that hit points as we know them are a Blackmoor system...

If "Hit points as we know them" refers specifically to Hit points as derived in D&D by rolling d6 equal to your HD, then no, that does not appear to be a Blackmoor method, per any known documentation. The closest *might* be the apparent use of Hit Dice (damage dice) averages for a player characters Hit Points (e.g. a hero rolls 4 "hit dice" for damage and has 14 hp). It seems likely to me that using Hit Dice to roll Hit Points was an idea that Gygax came up with while writing the first draft.

Oct 13, 2018 14:05:21 GMT -6 increment said:

- because Arneson insisted D&D got hit points wrong, for better or for worse. Most likely, I'd go in for a rough statement like that Arneson played with several systems for taking hits and hit dice which were adapted into the hit point system of D&D during his collaboration with Gygax. 

Honestly, I'd like to know where Arneson insisted this. You may have in mind some other source, but, if memory serves, you are making this characterization based on comments Arneson made in a letter to Tony Scott reprinted in the GPGPN, where Arneson made clear that he had wanted a different HP method for characters in D&D, whereby the HP wouldn't change or grow with level. If this letter is what you are referring to, then it is quite a big stretch to characterize the letter as insisting the hp in D&D are wrong. In the letter, Arneson is only talking about player characters, not HP in general and isn't in fact insisting anything. He begins with a complaint, surely, about the mechanic of player character "hits", writing, "Another point of mixup was that players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress. Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time..." and following this he details what he had proposed for PC's.

Echoing Stormcrow's point, exact language matters. It's also worth pointing out the letter is about the design of D&D and has absolutely nothing to do with Blackmoor.

Oct 13, 2018 14:05:21 GMT -6 increment said:

Spinning this around to what Stormcrow is saying in this thread, pushback against the strawman that "all things come from Chainmail" can easily lead to the pendulum swinging too far, to the point where we reject that there's any sense in which Blackmoor, and by extension D&D, "grew out of Chainmail."

In the first, I have no idea why you are appealing to a fear of social pendulums or who the "we" is that are seemingly so fickle and wind blown that they must be protected from competing ideas.

Secondly, I'm not interested in trends, fads, ideologies, or spin crusades, and I dare say that most of the good folks of this board aren't either. I think most of us here are most interested in separating the fact from the fantasy. D&D is deeply fused with CHAINMAIL and CHAINMAIL was a key, primary resource in Blackmoor. Nobody who knows anything disputes either of those statements

Oct 13, 2018 14:05:21 GMT -6 increment said:

The original linked blog post is just a supporting argument, I imagine, to help position us so "we can now draw the inescapable conclusion: The battles in Blackmoor were being fought with Strategos as the go to rules, not CHAINMAIL." (If only that were just a strawman I made up.) But when we drill down into this argument, it's not convincing, and the conclusion is flatly contradicted by Arneson, Gygax, and all of the contemporary documentation I am aware of, no matter how many places we read "with magic swords exclusively" into.

<sigh> Honestly, what does my blogpost from last year have to do with HP origins or anything else we were discussing here? Nothing? Yes, nothing. So why bring it up except as a thin ad holmium retort? I had nothing to do with the OP and the opinions expressed in it are obviously not mine.

In any case, on the blog I created a deductive syllogism of which you are quoting the conclusion. As I would hope you would be aware, deductive conclusions are indeed inescapable, provided the premises hold. If the premis fails then the conclusion also fails. Which is precisely a point I made on the blog. So where is the strawman? To mix metaphors, it appears the strawman is in your court, not mine and while it is not my concern what you may or may not be convinced of, I am at a loss as to what "drilling down" are you referring to. I recall a few superficial objections but nothing of any substance.

Further, to conflate and overextend later, ambiguous comments about "combat" with a close and particular analysis of the contemporary data regarding tabletop battles occurring in Blackmoor, doesn't get us any closer to reality. I contend that the evidence is quite good that Strategos was in fact used in Blackmoor mass battles. Note that I never claimed it was the only system ever used, as you seem to be implying. I claimed it was the preferred, familiar one. Also no one is reading "with magic swords exclusively" into anything - it is simply what the section is about as anyone who reads it can plainly see. Claiming it is certain to have broader meaning is eisegetical - a leap of faith which I will not take.

Regardless, that's all a sideshow distraction and has nothing at all to do with the op or your claims regarding CM being the proximate cause of concepts that clearly predate CM and come from multiple sources. Since we seem to be veering quite far from the point of the thread and contributing nothing, I'll simply leave it at that and apologize to all for the unintended hijack.

[increment]

I think we largely agree that variable hit points (hit dice) are the interesting departure from the prior wargames that include taking hits. And that how they appear in D&D does seem to have arisen from the collaboration, rather than something fully formed to Blackmoor. Also agreed I don't think Arneson stated that a naval wargame inspired variable hits in Blackmoor as such. But that brings us to what it did inspire...

Oct 17, 2018 16:28:41 GMT -6 aldarron said:

The clearest cognate is that naval games had large HP totals 10, 15, 20 points and more, and this is an idea we see repeated in Blackmoor. Blackmoor and Naval wargame "Hits"are Orders of magnitude above the usual 2, 4, 8, hits we see in medieval wargames. It is this idea of larger hit totals allowing for increased chances of longer character survival that seems to have inspired Arneson.

I had previously said I didn't think it made much difference in system design whether an ogre (or a hero) can take six or six hundred hits, but I suppose it does make a difference if a hero can withstand four points of damage or 26,000. The figures we see in Fletcher Pratt are more like the latter, because a shot can do 500 points of damage. If what you're saying is that Arneson's comfort level with ships taking a lot of damage helped steer him towards having ogres take 15 hits instead of 6, I guess that could be part of it. Or maybe he just thought at 6 ogres died too quickly, and once he'd swapped in Chainmail point value for hits, he decided true trolls were too tough at 75, so he averaged that down. It is, as we seem to agree, the "variations" that made it interesting from a design history perspective.

Oct 13, 2018 14:05:21 GMT -6 increment said:

It's also worth pointing out the letter is about the design of D&D and has absolutely nothing to do with Blackmoor.

The letter to Scott Rich was Arneson venting about how Gygax had overruled his design for hit points, so I agree he's talking about an idea that he pitched during the collaboration toward D&D which was shot down. But... the principle that "as the player progressed he did not receive additional hit points, but rather he became harder to hit," is one that Arneson represents as part of the original Blackmoor design. He even made this a talking point at his panel at Origins in 1977. It's something I at least have understood as a difference between how Blackmoor and D&D managed withstanding damage. I guess I see "hit points" not just as a number, but as a cog in a broader system of how damage is delivered, withstood, or mitigated. If hits can do an obscene quantity of damage, or they cannot be avoided or mitigated, then it could make sense to have a hero with 26,000 hit points. Okay, not that many, but a lot if you are high level; if we grant that Blackmoor kept to a more modest, fixed hit point total for characters, maybe the big fat ships aren't so much a clear influence.

Oct 17, 2018 16:28:41 GMT -6 aldarron said:

Honestly, what does my blogpost from last year have to do with HP origins or anything else we were discussing here?

Claims that hit points were inspired by Strategos rather than Chainmail are claims that support the general proposition that Blackmoor combat used Strategos rules as a baseline rather than Chainmail rules. I get that you don't endorse the blog post at the start of this thread, not trying to pin it on you, but it is part of a pattern of argument that I attributed to that swinging pendulum. Understood you personally are affirming that Chainmail and D&D are intertwined; all of this discussion is not a matter of trying to shield people from ideas, it's hopefully about doing our collective best to figure what actually happened. I didn't start this thread, or the one about your post last year; if these things show up here, I assume it's because people want to discuss them.

Oct 17, 2018 16:28:41 GMT -6 aldarron said:

I contend that the evidence is quite good that Strategos was in fact used in Blackmoor mass battles.

I quoted in my previous post from a few articles in the late 1970s, from the time when lawsuits were looming, where Arneson was emphasizing the marginal importance of Chainmail to the development of D&D, in which it seems to me that he would have happily volunteered that Strategos was the "go to" system for battles rather than Chainmail, if it were. Or like anywhere in the First Fantasy Campaign? Wouldn't Strategos have warranted at least a mention if it was a historical part of the activity? What would be his motivation for excluding it? There are few places where Arneson talks about Strategos, like the foreword to Valley Forge, but that doesn't mention they used it for Blackmoor. I hesitate to even volunteer that what Gygax had to say about this, before the lawsuits and disputes, could be salient, but realistically it probably is. The aggregate of these sorts of data points means we would need something really solid to convincingly argue that Strategos was the "go to" rules for anything in Blackmoor.

I was reminded of your argument here because, despite the fact that it is much more complicated, I think it is built on a similar line of reasoning. E.g., I don't think we can argue from scattered references (in a descriptive text that we'll say is of disputed dating and context) to arithmetic in a morale system that it was in fact invoking Strategos, as there are many morale systems where that arithmetic could conceivably be applied - just like I don't think an elephant taking hits in Strategos A means that it was a source for Blackmoor or D&D. It's not that I'm opposed to arguments of this general form, I've made ones for showing the influence of Len Patt and Charles Sweet on Chainmail - but those are cases where there is a decisive relationship between narrow elements of rule texts we can compare. Morale, attack "value," and withstanding hits are just things that are in a lot of wargames.

And to repeat a previous caveat, I'm not saying there couldn't be evidence out there that substantiates a connection between combat in Blackmoor and Strategos - only that I don't think we're near the bar for that. Sometimes, as with Len Patt, the evidence forces us to contradict the authors about their sources; for Strategos, it feels more like a case where we would be doing the forcing.

[increment]

Oct 17, 2018 7:14:25 GMT -6 Malchor said:

Oh, sorry that triggered question four, does a solidification of rules in ‘68 preclude earlier experimentation?

No, it doesn't. But to the general point here of finding bookends, it is pretty much impossible to point to a piece of evidence and claim that it proves people weren't doing something earlier than the evidence might suggest. In response to seeing Paul Cote's FitS article, you could always argue, "Sure, that's when Paul Cote wrote it down, but people had been playing with pilot experience for years beforehand and nobody ever mentioned it in writing." I think evidence like Cote's article creates a burden of proof, though, on anyone making arguments of that form. A 1970 statement that people had been using Strategos for the past three years creates a similar burden - a slightly weaker one, I'd say, but it's a start, for anyone interested in crafting bookends. There are plenty of mentions in Strategos in the literature of the Twin Cities like CoTT into the 1970s. But of course, by the spring of 1969, Strategos had gotten a two-page spread in Strategy & Tactics, and was made available in facsimile by Jim Dunnigan's group (the 1880 version that is). It was by no means exclusive to the Twin Cities.

Strategos N does not credit anyone directly other than Wesely, but you get a sense from the introduction that these rules resulted from his group's activities. I think there are good grounds to think that Wesely was still working with, say, Mike Norman on the development of the rules in 1969. But then Norman was less active by 1970. It is not unusual for works in progress to shed authors as they develop. The first printing of Tunnels & Trolls lists several authors; only in later ones would it reduce down to exclusively Ken St. Andre. I'm sure other similar examples come to mind...

[Deleted]

I was reading above. Comments about Chain Mail influence and such.

Consider that when Gygax receives the 16-18 pages of rules from Arneson, he immediately says we need to redo all these rules.

Consider that Arneson says he used the combat chart from CM; he uses the singular in most cases.

Consider that D&D is full of CM elements and references.

Consider that Arneson had dumped almost all CM rules when he created his own Blackmoor Systems and that Gary Gygax re-inserted the CM elements into what became D&D as editor.

It's highly plausible.

[increment]

Oct 18, 2018 10:20:27 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

And also the semantics of "These rules represent a simplified and shortened version of the rules our group has used for Napoleonic Wargames during the past three years?" Ok, what does this truly mean?

Well, a naive reading would be consistent with the CoTT data point that a "compact version" of Strategos was in progress, but not complete, early in 1968. Understood about Wesely's collegiate travels, but I see no reason why development work couldn't proceed nonetheless - the N rules weren't frozen in 1968 and then thawed for publication in 1970.  They were certainly using Strategos already in 1967, but if anything, I might think that use of Strategos is what triggered the need for a "compact version."

Oct 18, 2018 10:38:00 GMT -6 @secretsofblackmoor said:

Consider that Arneson had dumped almost all CM rules when he created his own Blackmoor Systems and that Gary Gygax re-inserted the CM elements into what became D&D as editor.

Rather than "dumping," Arneson explained that he hacked in things like hit dice, hit location, weapon class etc. to the point where he no longer considered it a CM "variant." Seems like there's reasonable evidence to support that. We've sometimes talked on this board before about how much you need to alter something before it's correct to call it a whole new game, and the answer is inevitably however much the person doing the hacking thinks it requires. That much said, there's surely some truth in that the statement that Gygax inserted lots of hooks for Chainmail that wouldn't have appeared in D&D otherwise. 

[aldarron]

Okay Jon, that response was reasoned well enough. Of course, regarding this:

Oct 18, 2018 8:11:15 GMT -6 increment said:

I had previously said I didn't think it made much difference in system design whether an ogre (or a hero) can take six or six hundred hits, but I suppose it does make a difference if a hero can withstand four points of damage or 26,000.

I was referring to Arneson 10 - 20 point ironclads and battleships, mimicked by the 14 -28 point Heroes and superheroes, not to Pratt's extreme totals.

[aldarron]

Oct 21, 2018 8:19:34 GMT -6 derv said:

Oct 17, 2018 16:28:41 GMT -6 aldarron said:

If "Hit points as we know them" refers specifically to Hit points as derived in D&D by rolling d6 equal to your HD, then no, that does not appear to be a Blackmoor method, per any known documentation. The closest *might* be the apparent use of Hit Dice (damage dice) averages for a player characters Hit Points (e.g. a hero rolls 4 "hit dice" for damage and has 14 hp). It seems likely to me that using Hit Dice to roll Hit Points was an idea that Gygax came up with while writing the first draft.

Do either of you view Arneson's description of Dragons in the FFC as a possible bridge of HD and variable hp's? It seems he may also have combined the idea of amount of damage that could be sustained with the potential damage that could be delivered into a common concept.

If memory serves there are at least 3 such descriptions (maybe 4 if you count the bit about the Ran's breeding dragons bit). I think you are referring to the section credited to Richard Snider where dragons are given 10 levels? An option in that section is for the max damage of a dragon to equate to its hit (points) rather than its hit dice (damage dice). So in a sense HP become HD.

I think it very unlikely Arneson created variable strength monsters based on Sniders ideas here, primarily because I think the HP variability in question had likely already become a feature of Blackmoor monsters as seen in the mini monster manual at the end of the FFC. Sniders dragons piece is likely a late addition to his RS variant rules. Now if you are asking could Sniders dragon write up have influenced the decision (presumably by Gygax) to equate HD with generating HP, then all I can say is that it isn't impossible, but it would have to mean first that it was written prior to circa December 1972 and second that Gygax got a copy. Both of those are very open questions and since there are other, perhaps simpler ways for Gygax to have derived/invented the HD for HP mechanic, I'd be very hesitant to say anything more than it is an interesting possibility to keep in mind.

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2018 9:06:05 GMT -6 aldarron said:

I think you are referring to the section credited to Richard Snider where dragons are given 10 levels? An option in that section is for the max damage of a dragon to equate to its hit (points) rather than its hit dice (damage dice). So in a sense HP become HD.

In the dragon write up in the FFC, there is one term missing. To determine a dragon's hit points, you first determine it's level (also called "age level") and multiply it by another number (7 for white dragons, 8 for black dragons, etc) to determine that dragon's "Max H Damage" or hit points. Now, that fix number is listed as a range (presumably for small, medium and large specimens). But what was that number called? Gygax converts that number into Hit Dice in OD&D and then in AD&D replicates that number, as hit dice, to work exactly as in Snider's original chart.

As I pointed out, the early manuscript for Empire of the Petal Throne uses the term "hit dice" to refer to the dice rolled to see of you hit, the dice you roll for damage, the dice you roll for hit points (sometimes called "hit dice points") and the damage you've taken ("hit dice damage")

So I wouldn't say that "Hit Dice" moved from damage to hit points, but rather than the term "Hit Dice" was used for a variety of things (just like level) and only one meaning remained after OD&D.

Converting hit points to dice rolls seems to have gone both ways. Greg Svenson's Chainmail notes give Heroes and Super Heroes a fix 14 and 28 hit points respectively, exactly you you'd get if you convert the hits required by Chainmail to kill them into an average roll of d6s. Likewise, Ogres in Blackmoor have 15 hit points due to their cost from Chainmail (via protection points) which converts nicely to 4d6+1 which is their hit dice value in OD&D.

Arneson was probably thinking about the number of hit dice of damage when assigning his fixed hit point values as the four mentioned on those notes are 7, 14, 21, and 28 which match exactly to the average roll of 2, 4, 6, and 8 dice of damage.

[retrorob]

Oct 3, 2018 15:41:59 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Sept 18, 2018 4:53:35 GMT -6 Malchor said:

Will add that playing live with physical items (e.g., figures and dice) will give a different perspective than virtual tabletop with scripts to run calculations and deal with accounting. That's how I went down the road of 1 die per man, being 20 dice for a fresh figure representing 20 men,not arguing that's how it is, but that that was how my group interpreted it, and while we actually played, playing virtually with a script to toss buckets of dice—of course, if we were playing live, I'd toss those 20 throws in batches and just count the 6's, which is not that hard.

But to @gonanofsimmerya's point, I'm making a mini Chainmail set of all paper tokens to try it out in a physical space.

And throw away your scripts and other electronics. PLAY the game with the technology used to WRITE the game.

For instance, last year at GaryCon, in "Battle on the Ice," 10 Heavy Horse charged a unit of Light Foot.

By the combat table, HH vs LF is 4 dice per man. Plus one die per man for charging.

Times ten figures.

That's fifty dice. If you multiplied that by 20 men per figure, that would be

ONE THOUSAND DICE.

There is absolutely NO circumstance under which it is reasonable to ask players to throw ONE THOUSAND DICE for a single combat. Especially since, in the SAME TURN, we had 10 HH attacking 15 Medium Horse, and 10 Heavy Foot meleeing 20 Levees.

Which gives you now 1400 DICE.

Get out of the virtual world! Get some counters, some dice, some rulers, and some sample scenarios from Paul Stormberg, and RUN THE GAME.

Because the only rational answer to somebody asking you to roll a thousand dice is to hold their head under water until they change their mind.

Funny. That's how I understood 20:1 scale & "dice-per-men" myself, ie. for each 1 figure representing 20 Heavy Foot I rolled 20d6 (or 10d6 when attacking Armored Foot etc.) and couted hits. So now I need to hold my head under water

[Deleted]

Rolling a thousand dice in batches of 10 would take about 17 minutes. You never got the feeling something was wrong?

[captainjapan]

Has anyone else noticed that none of the Blackmoor character sheets have space for hit point tallies? The surest sign of table play has got to be struck hit points. I have seen the Gaylord sheet, the Nicholson sheet, and the two Megarry rosters, same as probably everyone else. I can conceive of two possibilities. One, the players didn't track their own hitpoints. Or two, damage was so high that characters were taken out completely, in a single melee. Both of these scenarios seem unlikely.

[increment]

Taking that one step further, the earliest TSR sheets (the 1975-6 sheets shown here) don't have a field for hit points either.

I think the former hypothesis, that players didn't track their own hit points, has been most commonly advanced to account for this. I don't think it's so unlikely.

[captainjapan]

Feb 24, 2020 17:52:23 GMT -6 increment said:

Taking that one step further, the earliest TSR sheets (the 1975-6 sheets shown here) don't have a field for hit points either.

I think the former hypothesis, that players didn't track their own hit points, has been most commonly advanced to account for this. I don't think it's so unlikely.

I adopted the rules I'd done earlier for a Civil War game called Ironclads that had hit points and armor class. It meant that players had a chance to live longer and do more. They didn't care that they had hit points to keep track of because they were just keeping track of little detailed records for their character and not trying to do it for an entire army. They didn't care if they could kill a monster in one blow, but they didn't want the monster to kill them in one blow.

-Dave Arneson
Game Spy, August 2004

I don't know WHAT to believe, anymore!  Seriously, though, does anyone think that Blackmoor players recovered their full hit points between adventures?