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Post by aldarron on Nov 26, 2009 10:05:07 GMT -6
The general trend sounds about right but if you move 1972/73 back to 1971/72(?), I'd be happier. Yeah, I'm sure you're right. 71 not 72 was reportedly the first year for Blackmoor. I should have started there. |
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Post by snorri on Nov 26, 2009 15:42:07 GMT -6
Still a lot of questions to solve in the inner chronology of Dave's tinkerings. I fear he did changed a lot of things along with the progress of the game - his style or masterising and the fact players don't need to know all the rules made him his easy. The issue of co-dming should be explored further. My point on the matrix is, I cant' find so much formulaes in OD&D, in FFC, in Blackmoor and in EPT. When they appears, it's rarely basic games mechanics, but ad hoc points on some specific rule. In Chainmail, in OD&D and in EPT, combat is ruled by tables or matrix - as in any other wargame. The roll under is barely used, and I can't find written evidences of "roll under stats" So, I had a closer look to the "assassin table". No clear evidence it was a fighting table at first, but a few strange facts. Have a look (this is the original table, I ust coloured the importants facts and add the assassin level numbers for readability):  1) On the "victim level" line, from 1 to 8, we got a linear progression, then it suddenly change. 8 is the "superhero level", but it also fit the 1-8 AC table from Chainmail, we discussed allready in the Blackmoor combat thread. 2) The progression is from 5 to 5 % against victims of level 1 to 3, then sudenly change to 10, then 15, at level 4 and 6. 4 is Hero Level, 6 Myrmidon, the highest fighter level in the "original" levels of Castle Blackmoor in FFC. Note the gap is on the same sense than the 1), which makes a problem to make it fit as the AC. 3) There is a gap also with the Guildmaster in the assassin' level lines, but this could be explained by the fact this is the top level. Maybe too much interpretations, but as long as Dav's manuscripts aren't published, we cannot do much better than using the methods 2 & 3 that Aldaron explained. By the way, couldn't it be possible to discuss that point with Dave's family? |
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Post by aldarron on Nov 26, 2009 17:46:19 GMT -6
My point on the matrix is, I cant' find so much formulaes in OD&D, in FFC, in Blackmoor and in EPT. When they appears, it's rarely basic games mechanics, but ad hoc points on some specific rule. In Chainmail, in OD&D and in EPT, combat is ruled by tables or matrix - as in any other wargame. The roll under is barely used, and I can't find written evidences of "roll under stats" This is a good point. One thing that seems contradictory to the the roll under AC idea is Arnesons statement in the FFC that "all normal attacks were carried out in the usual fashion". That is hard to reconcile with anything other than rolling against an attack matrix. So, I had a closer look to the "assassin table". No clear evidence it was a fighting table at first, but a few strange facts. Have a look (this is the original table, I ust coloured the importants facts and add the assassin level numbers for readability): 1) On the "victim level" line, from 1 to 8, we got a linear progression, then it suddenly change. 8 is the "superhero level", but it also fit the 1-8 AC table from Chainmail, we discussed allready in the Blackmoor combat thread. 2) The progression is from 5 to 5 % against victims of level 1 to 3, then sudenly change to 10, then 15, at level 4 and 6. 4 is Hero Level, 6 Myrmidon, the highest fighter level in the "original" levels of Castle Blackmoor in FFC. Note the gap is on the same sense than the 1), which makes a problem to make it fit as the AC. There is more to puzzle out here I'm sure. When read just straight across from cloumn 1, the way the numbers jump doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even considering the hero and superhero breaks. The 100% success at level 6 seems unlikely for a combat table. But, something that stands out to me is that the table seems to be based off of column 8, not column 1. Column 8 begins at 1 and prgresses by 5% up through level 13. Columns 8 through 5 are ofset by 10%, then a switch to 5% jump occurs at level 4. Curious. Will play with the numbers a bit. Regarding the Arneson family, the fact that someone from the family posted on this very website after Dave's passing suggests that they might very well be open to having someone examine his papers for the production of an article or some such that highlights historical aspects of Arnesons early Blackmoor. That person would likely have to have some academic or jounalistic credentials (not a problem  ) but would also have to be in Minnestota for some time to conduct the research. The alternative would be for someone in the family, such as Malia, or close to the family to do it but I don't know how likely that is. |
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Post by snorri on Nov 27, 2009 15:18:49 GMT -6
I was thinking about a technical problem which should be kept in min about the precise chronology: Dave explains clearly he had been to England and found there "double-ten d20". A rare thing, so. How much did he buy, he didn't said, but probably two, and certainly not a dozen.
During game sessions, did he let his d20 turn among players when they needed it, or did he used it for his own rolls [by the way, when did the DM screen appears?] - as it was suggested. If he didn't, that could explain why his players -including co-DM's - didn't make use of d100: there was just no enough dices available!
It pose a lot of problems, for sure - which probably have been solved when the dices wre sold by TSR. Could have Dave roll all the dices, inclduing those for players. No evidence for that - even if he kept allmost secrets the characters sheets, so the players probably didn't knew exacctly what they were rolling for.
Another remark about armor class. It should be checked in the first / second printing of Chainmail, for the happy few who owns it - as Dave probably started from this set of rules. In the 3d edition, the "Individual Fires With Missiles" use expressivly the expression "Class of armor worn by defender" with ascending numbers from 1 to 8.
To end this post, I found another quote: "he increases the chance to hit by 20% (+4 on his die)". Could you guess where?
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Post by aldarron on Nov 27, 2009 19:58:07 GMT -6
Still a lot of questions to solve in the inner chronology of Dave's tinkerings. By the way, couldn't it be possible to discuss that point with Dave's family? Looks like the man himself had already made arrangements. (from the interview thread) Btw there are no secret letters to be revealed. Badger is writing a book and I have pretty much given him free access to my records and stuff. I will review what is actually published and there are a lot of the old players still around as well. I tend to save things like a pack rat. And my story has been consistent for over thirty years as well. As well as those of my players. Dave Arneson "Dark Lord of Game Design" Perhaps we should nudge Victor.... |
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Post by aldarron on Nov 29, 2009 13:05:18 GMT -6
A note on Dice in FFC: as Fin noted, there are lots of references to percentile dice in FFC - there are also lots of references for d6's. Conspicuosly for a D&D compatible product, there is almost no refernce to any other kinds of dice; no d4's, no d8's, no d12's. The only exception to this I can find is the portion of the Magic Swords & Matrix section describing how to generate magic swords, about which Arneson wrote "Later on a new table was formulated and used for generating swords in other castles. After the 3rd year there were four other castles in the Blackmoor campaign and I had at least three myself, so more uniform rules were needed." The only use of the "funny dice" (excepting the d20), then mentioned in FFC occurs in rules Arneson specifically state were written after the adoption of the OD&D rules for Blackmoor. That has got to be more than coincidence.....
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Post by badger2305 on Jan 2, 2010 13:41:30 GMT -6
Thanks for the nudge.
Here's what I know right off the top of my head: the first Blackmoor game took place on May 21, 1971 (gotta double-check my notes about this); this is based on a reference in Dave's own Corner of the Table clubzine. The Great Svenny can back me up on this.
Dave and Gary ran their games quite differently. This was confirmed when a player from Gary's campaign came to the Twin Cities for college, and was pretty unfamiliar with how Dave ran Blackmoor. Dave also made a rather disparaging comment about said player-character showing up "loaded with magic goodies - but didn't know what half of them did!" This would've been Fall of 1973 or so.
What is also interesting was that proto-D&D was played enough in club and semi-public settings to allow a member of the Minnesota Science Fiction Society to half-remember his game experience, which got turned into a club-specific game called "Dungeon" (not to be confused with the later board game). In "Dungeon" there were four ranks, with fighters and magic-users - can't recall if there were clerics. The idea of a dungeon-crawl was in fact central to the game, except with a heckuva lot more idiosyncrasies from referee to referee.
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Post by gsvenson on Jan 11, 2010 12:53:30 GMT -6
I have not been following this thread and just noticed it. I was one of the original players in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor group. I was thinking about a technical problem which should be kept in min about the precise chronology: Dave explains clearly he had been to England and found there "double-ten d20". A rare thing, so. How much did he buy, he didn't said, but probably two, and certainly not a dozen. I had not heard this until just a few years ago when Dave told me about it. Dave Wesley also obtained d20's in England in 1968 or so as I recall, but I never saw either set. During game sessions, did he let his d20 turn among players when they needed it, or did he used it for his own rolls [by the way, when did the DM screen appears?] - as it was suggested. If he didn't, that could explain why his players -including co-DM's - didn't make use of d100: there was just no enough dices available! I never saw a d20 before D&D was published in 1974, since it came with them. It pose a lot of problems, for sure - which probably have been solved when the dices wre sold by TSR. Could have Dave roll all the dices, inclduing those for players. No evidence for that - even if he kept allmost secrets the characters sheets, so the players probably didn't knew exacctly what they were rolling for. We always rolled 2d6s for our results. Dave did lots of secret rolling and never showed us the results or explained what he was roling for. I am sure that sometimes he rolled dice just to make us nervous... Another remark about armor class. It should be checked in the first / second printing of Chainmail, for the happy few who owns it - as Dave probably started from this set of rules. In the 3d edition, the "Individual Fires With Missiles" use expressivly the expression "Class of armor worn by defender" with ascending numbers from 1 to 8. My copy of Chainmail is 2nd edition which came out in 1972. I had an older copy but I threw it away when I got the new one (fool that I was)... To end this post, I found another quote: "he increases the chance to hit by 20% (+4 on his die)". Could you guess where? Sorry, I am no help there. We did use a number of d6s to get a specific probability in our gaming, but I don't recall using that in Dave's Blackmoor games. |
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Post by snorri on Jan 11, 2010 13:02:24 GMT -6
Thanks a lot Svenny!Any bit of information is needed |
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Post by aldarron on Jan 11, 2010 21:02:54 GMT -6
We always rolled 2d6s for our results. Dave did lots of secret rolling and never showed us the results or explained what he was roling for. I am sure that sometimes he rolled dice just to make us nervous... Hi Greg! What about for damage rolls? If you've had a look at the Blackmoor Combat thread, I've argued that "hit dice" for Dave Arneson usually meant damage dice, meaning that high level characters would be rolling a handfull of d6's for damage. |
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Post by havard on Jan 13, 2010 11:31:54 GMT -6
I was thinking about a technical problem which should be kept in min about the precise chronology: Dave explains clearly he had been to England and found there "double-ten d20". A rare thing, so. How much did he buy, he didn't said, but probably two, and certainly not a dozen. I had not heard this until just a few years ago when Dave told me about it. Dave Wesley also obtained d20's in England in 1968 or so as I recall, but I never saw either set. Dave Wesely talks about his introduction of the polyhedra here: www.acaeum.com/forum/about3888-0-asc-20.htmlHavard |
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Post by gsvenson on Jan 14, 2010 8:30:44 GMT -6
We always rolled 2d6s for our results. Dave did lots of secret rolling and never showed us the results or explained what he was roling for. I am sure that sometimes he rolled dice just to make us nervous... Hi Greg! What about for damage rolls? If you've had a look at the Blackmoor Combat thread, I've argued that "hit dice" for Dave Arneson usually meant damage dice, meaning that high level characters would be rolling a handfull of d6's for damage. My recollection is that a flunky or man-at-arms rolled 1d6, a hero rolled 4d6 and a superhero rolled 8d6 for damage. Warriors only had three levels in the days before D&D was published. I think that Dave just told us how many hit points of damage we could take. I have not read the other thread, maybe I can check it later. |
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Post by snorri on Jan 14, 2010 10:32:44 GMT -6
Great! Thanks Svenny !
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) but would also have to be in Minnestota for some time to conduct the research. The alternative would be for someone in the family, such as Malia, or close to the family to do it but I don't know how likely that is.
