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Post by waysoftheearth on May 3, 2021 21:49:06 GMT -6
I'm with jeffb on the: I'd have NO initiative except for certain situations where a "roll off" might be necessary. It just so much quicker. And has the added benefit of offering the players an opportunity to earn the first blow by their clever play. It possibly might even make them a tad fearful of not getting the first blow... I'm also not a fan of declaration followed by execution*. This seems related to writing down orders before executing them in the wargame context (e.g., CM's simultaneously move system) which I'm also not a fan of. Both seem like doing everything twice; it takes longer for questionable added value/fun. It's certainly way quicker to just go around the table and execute each player's turn immediately. * The exception is the PBP format where--due to time lags--it's virtually essential that players state their orders before the ref collates and executes them, and then reports back (potentially days or even weeks later).
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Post by jeffb on May 4, 2021 7:01:31 GMT -6
And I should add, I also do not have a declaration phase or missle/melee/magic phases using group initiative. I cannot be bothered with all that for my DMing style.
Sometimes the players will decide who goes in what order for the PCs if they have a strategy, sometimes I may ask who has the highest DEX, sometimes I may decide which PC has the upper hand, etc all depending on the sitch.
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Post by Aralaen on May 17, 2021 11:31:16 GMT -6
Late to the party. But I like his videos but this one was an underachiever. I saw it the day he posted and didn't finish it. i understand that he used Rogue and Wizard instead of Thief and Magic-user as his audience are new school and might not get the reference. But as for research he could have simply googled Gary Gygax's House Rules and tons of hits come up, even a blog post that copied the house rules from the Troll-lords forums. It was a bit lazy of him.
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Post by Zenopus on May 21, 2021 7:55:44 GMT -6
The DR thing was definitely mentioned by Gary himself at one point, on the Troll Lord Games forum. Sadly, that's been flushed down the commode by the internet over the years. It's referenced multiple times, including an old thread here. It's a shame the original TLG forum no longer exists, of course. There's still multiple archived internet threads of Gary talking about how he ran his home games, though, notably at ENworld and DF. I know he made some comments about his white box games there a time or two but I'm not sure how much those comments apply here and there's a ton of threads to dig through to find relevant Gary quotes. (That's a good problem to have!) The Troll Lord Games forums, including Gary's original post, are still around; they've just moved in the intervening time which has resulted in broken links. Here's the current link to the post with "Gary's OD&D House Rules" from August 2007. I also put that corrected link in the older thread here that you linked above. For posterity, here's an exact quote of what Gary wrote there. I again stress that these are his 2007 rules for convention games. They aren't exactly the same as what was reported in 2005, and most certainly differ from what he used in the 1970s. As a followup to what you wrote above, I don't see anything about damage reduction here.
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Post by captainjapan on Mar 3, 2024 13:55:45 GMT -6
I really liked his Group Initiative video from a couple days back. What he describes is nearly what I used in my 5e group when I took over in 2016 or so. Luke confirms this, again, in a follow-up released last week (along with a couple of Gary's other house rules):
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