|
|
Post by captainjapan on Jul 5, 2021 16:02:19 GMT -6
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. How can I find out more about this 1974 David Arneson letter reprinted in the Great Plains Gamers Newsletter? |
|
|
|
Post by dicebro on Jul 30, 2021 7:00:39 GMT -6
Taking multiple hits was a pretty common idea, I guess I'm not sure what people are saying Strategos variants added here. We can call them another parallel, but what did Strategos add to the idea of hit points that D&D couldn't have gotten from any of of the other places? Didn’t Totten revolutionize the role of the referee? The experienced referee was permitted discretion in matters not covered by the normal game rules. The experienced referee was expected to change the rules. Dave Wesley would have naturally related this information to Dave Arneson, who infected Gygax. When Arneson and Gygax coauthored D&D they were naturally presented with the game designer’s issue of realism v playability (I.e. at what point does the simulation of reality ruin the playability of the game). Combat, injury and death in the new fantasy game would have been a topic for discussion. Regarding the idea of Hit Points for individual characters, Tim Kask recalls that HP was a number that reflected a creatures ability to evade “the fatal blow”, and not a measure of how much damage an individual could take. Could it be that Gygax & Arneson, in OD&D, left that issue to be resolved later? After play testing What would become AD&D, could it be that Gygax had a moment of inspired genius? |
|
|
|
Post by captainjapan on Nov 30, 2021 18:30:42 GMT -6
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. How can I find out more about this 1974 David Arneson letter reprinted in the Great Plains Gamers Newsletter? is the follow-up from Jon's blog. It (Scott Rich's contribution to the Great Plains newsletter) stands in direct contradiction to Greg Svenson's "Life and Death" notes for refereeing Blackmoor. Arneson says that player character hit points should be rolled as 1d6 X d6, i.e., throw a six-sider and use the result to determine how many (1-6) more dice will be rolled to come up with a pc's hit points. The original hit point total never goes up. It will be the same at level forty as it was at character generation. Arneson also says (to Greg Svenson) that hero-type pc's have 14 hit points and, after killing "1000 points of of anything" they will become superheroes with 28 hit points. There is no roll mentioned, although 14 hit points is the average roll on 4 Hit Dice and 28 hit points is the average on 8. I have doubts as to whether the Great Plains h.p. generation scheme was ever actually instituted in the Twin Cities. If I were Dave Arneson and someone told ME that they were going to publish my game, I might also try submitting rules tweaks that were untested, but that I thought were better than what was currently being used. |
|
