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Post by cadriel on May 31, 2014 16:03:02 GMT -6
Hmmm, I think having shields as part of the equation may be confusing the issue. For the sake of argument, let's say neither character has a shield. One character is armed with a sword only and his opponent is armed with both a sword and a spear. We are also keeping in mind the abstract nature of OD&D combat and the time that it occurs. 2-3 feet is not a very large distance and can be closed or withdrawn within seconds by simply stepping forward or backwards. Maybe I visualize it differently By your logic, the player with the sword should not be able to attack opponents with spears or vice-versa because one or the other is not in optimum range Overall, the real reason I allow two seperate attacks is because that is really what the player is after. I think -2 to hit (as well as no AC adjustment) is a severe handicap in OD&D for the benefit of wielding two weapons. This simple modifier doesn't require me to keep track of things every round either. But I can appreciate other's take on the issue. Well, you're correct about the sword-wielder not being able to strike with the sword unless he closes the distance against the spear. If we set up your scenario in real life, what would probably happen is that the person with the spear would try to use his spear to jab at his opponent while keeping him out of sword range. The sword-wielder would try all kinds of maneuvers, feints, even perhaps grabbing the spear shaft to get close enough to use his sword. If the spear-wielder actually had two attack rolls, he'd be relinquishing his dominance with the spear so he could try and get a hit in with his sword - a foolish thing, since as soon as he closes with the sword he's no longer fending off his opponent. OD&D doesn't get to this level of detail. Its abstraction is not well served by 1 to-hit roll per weapon at -2. At AC 2 that would be going from one 20% chance to hit, to two 10% chances to hit. At AC 9, this is going from one 55% chance to hit, to two 45% chances to hit. That makes dual-wielding marginal against someone in plate and shield, and amazing against an opponent without armor. +1 to hit is perfectly balanced with the +1 he is giving his opponent to hit him, though +2 could be justified if you play with shields granting their AC bonus versus all opponents.
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Post by cadriel on May 31, 2014 13:23:09 GMT -6
I see your point cadriel and I like your suggestion for dual wielding weapons. Allowing the same for shields gets a little too fiddly to keep track of IMO. Also, you are essentially saying with this rule that weapons are equal to shields and shields are equal to all weapons. I don't quite agree. I do see off-hand weapons as fundamentally defensive with a rare opportunistic attack potential. Shields are generally better at the defensive function and less so at the offensive side of things, but not so much so that I think it's worth modeling in the D&D combat system. A blow-by-blow system would obviously need to differentiate the two, but probably by a system involving a chance that an opening is for the primary or the offhand weapon. Not particularly. Think about the logistics: is your target in spear range, or sword/axe range? There's probably 2-3 feet of difference. So let's say you have a spear and a short sword. Closing to attack with the sword means you are now too close to effectively stab with the spear. Stepping back to use the spear means that your opponent is out of sword range. You could use your sword to block blows from a second opponent, maybe, which is the defensive function - but you're not going to be able to swing at one with the spear and the other with the sword in any meaningful sense.
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Post by cadriel on May 31, 2014 7:58:22 GMT -6
In D&D terms, a secondary weapon should be considered ... well, roughly the same as a shield, or maybe a +1 to hit. In Renaissance sword-fighting, a buckler shield, a main-gauche or a cloak were all used as off-hand weapons with a rapier in the main hand. They had different specific utility; the cloak was often used to grab the opponent's blade in the off-hand, while the buckler could be used for bashing and the main-gauche for stabbing. But they were primarily defensive. You were using the main-gauche to parry more than to attack - the longer rapier made more sense for this.
The idea that dual-wielding should get extra attacks over weapon plus shield makes one very bad assumption: that shields weren't used as weapons in the first place. A shield is a big, heavy thing and makes an excellent head-basher. If you had an opportunity to whack your opponent with your shield, you did it; some historical martial arts explicitly train in these moves.
People generally didn't wade into combat with a sword in each hand. It's not like this got you extra opportunities to whack at an opponent in the same period of time; you spend a lot more time getting yourself into position and then maneuvering around their defenses than you do actually swinging the blade. Now, you might get a few more advantageous positions where you can strike with your off-hand weapon, but that's also true of fighting with a shield. We really can't model this with extra attacks.
So I'd either allow them to be used to parry (bonus of 1 to AC) or get a +1 to hit, but not both. I'd also allow a shield-bearing warrior to do the same: sacrifice the usual shield AC bonus for a +1 to hit.
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Post by cadriel on May 29, 2014 8:31:12 GMT -6
I have to say - this thread is terrific. The stories you guys have are excellent. Can't wait for Mike's book, and would encourage Chirine to think of one as well. I would seriously buy a book full of anecdotes like you have shared.
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Post by cadriel on May 27, 2014 9:29:22 GMT -6
The dialog between Vader, Tagge and Motti confirms that the Death Star is new as of Star Wars.
But here's a theory for you. Early on, Luke and Ben discuss the Clone Wars.
Later, when R2-D2 displays the full message:
So Vader appears to be saying that Obi-Wan should not have come back to Alderaan specifically. It's possible, if we ignore the other movies, that Vader and Obi-Wan have some history together in the Alderaan system that was meaningful, possibly that this was a battleground in the Clone Wars.
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Post by cadriel on May 26, 2014 9:57:18 GMT -6
It's an interesting idea. I haven't done it with physical dice but I've offered mulligans - players get to make one re-roll in the course of a game session (no exchanges, refunds or transfers; mulligans have no monetary value; all mulligans expire at the end of the play session). It usually only comes up when, for instance, a player blows a saving throw and I ask if they want to use their re-roll. Otherwise they mostly forget it exists.
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Post by cadriel on May 24, 2014 6:47:49 GMT -6
Smaug has at most 7 hit points. He's slain by a single magic arrow, which per OD&D rules does a maximum of 7 HP. The logical deduction is that he's somehow a 1 HD dragon with maximum 6 hit points, but his AC is -4 (which would require a 21 from a Hero to hit). Or that OD&D doesn't model a single-shot kill very well.
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Post by cadriel on May 20, 2014 14:46:42 GMT -6
I might get the adventures, if they're discounted on Amazon ($30 is a bit much). Wizards is awful at adventures but they didn't do these ones, Kobold Press did.
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Post by cadriel on May 20, 2014 4:13:28 GMT -6
3) Greyhawk was FULL of weird sh*t. Once you got below the fifth or sixth level the odds of encountering anything "usual" except as a wandering monster was virtually nil. Go look at Rob Kuntz' "Bottle City" for an example. It was ALL weird! Awesome. Can you get that put on a t-shirt?
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Post by cadriel on May 19, 2014 9:27:39 GMT -6
1L H 2O = 1 kg. 1 kg = 2.2 lbs = 22 GP weight in D&D. A traditional wine or water skin (I'm thinking of a bota bag)would hold 1-2 L, or 22-44 GP weight of water. OD&D lists a wine skin as weighing 30 GP, which would be a full 1L skin. Technically a human should have a bit more than 2L of water per day. If you figure that the weights in OD&D are all wrong anyway, it makes sense to say PCs need to carry a 2L waterskin, call that 40 GP of weight, or in the system you're describing, 1 encumbrance unit. Adventure locations should have some source of water. The things that live there need to drink somehow. Rivers, lakes, wells - of course it's the PCs' responsibility to find out somehow if it's safe to drink or not. As far as water deprivation, after 3 days I'd probably use the "withstand adversity" rules. Each day I'd bump them down a category (possibly through Constitution loss), with the result that everybody dies after 6 days without water.
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Post by cadriel on May 15, 2014 7:46:34 GMT -6
Some fresh questions for Gronan...
1) How much of a role did missile weapons play in the dungeons? Would you expect to have a round or two of fire before melee, and did people ever try firing into melee?
2) Did PCs around, say, 8th-9th level have a lot of magic items or only a few?
3) OD&D lists a bunch of increasingly weird options at the end of the monster types - dinosaurs, living statues, robots, androids, etc. Do you remember any encounters with that kind of creature?
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Post by cadriel on May 14, 2014 18:26:57 GMT -6
Ignoring its increasingly weird sequels and poorly written prequels, DUNE, with it's de-emphasis on technology, fuedalistic politics, and scenes of blade combat, could be called a "planetary romance." Yes, very much so. Dune is a planetary romance – but it subverts the usual heroic fiction tropes in favor of a focus on ecology and politics. (It's also my favorite novel, bar none.) Messiah and Children are generally worthwhile in themselves. The other Frank Herbert novels are strictly for Dune fanatics, and everything released by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson is not fit for human consumption.
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Post by cadriel on May 14, 2014 6:26:49 GMT -6
Empire of the Petal Throne is available in PDF format for $11: www.rpgnow.com/product/2060/Empire-of-the-Petal-Throne?it=1It's a shame they don't offer a Print on Demand option for this excellent book. It also provides a lot of insight into OD&D, having been an adaptation of its system to Tékumel. You can pretty much use its monsters as straight-up D&D encounters, if you want a different "feel."
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Post by cadriel on May 13, 2014 12:58:33 GMT -6
There are several candidates for a spotted lion. The Congolese Spotted Lion or lijagulep is a double hybrid; the result of breeding a male lion with a female jagulep (jaguar-leopard hybrid). The hybrid leopon (leopard-lion hybrid) also fits the bill. Given that this is supposed to be a mountain-dweller, the Marozi seems to fit the bill; it is a putative spotted lion that lives in mountainous areas, possibly a leopon or other hybrid. The other possibility is that it meant an American lion, which was found in La Brea along with sabre-toothed cats and dire wolves, which appear right alongside it in the Optional Mountains listing. It's not known whether the American lion had spots or not, but it would be a good fit. OD&D came out only four years after the English release of On the Track of Unknown Animals, which is pretty much the foundational text of cryptozoology. If Gygax read that book, spotted lions could well be Marozi, which are discussed therein. Otherwise I'd be inclined to think it was an interpretation of the American lion from La Brea. Either way, it should be a slightly bigger version of the lion, like a dire wolf compared to a common wolf.
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Post by cadriel on May 8, 2014 8:11:53 GMT -6
Start with the 1975 TSR EPT book. Everything after uses the version of the material published there.
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Post by cadriel on May 7, 2014 16:46:23 GMT -6
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Post by cadriel on May 7, 2014 13:19:12 GMT -6
I agree with gronan's sentiment. I will often just ask a player to roll a die and not tell them whether they even want high or low. Particularly easy with OD&D where it's almost always either a d6 or a d20. Character sheets should be like index cards.
The question of how to present the rule for elves finding secret doors is interesting, though: do you put it with the secret doors rules, or with the elf rules? There is an attitude that all the elf rules should be together, or that all secret doors should be together. Today, with PDFs and easy print-on-demand, no reason you can't do both. It's not like someone is painstakingly typesetting the rulebook and you need every precious inch of space.
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Post by cadriel on May 7, 2014 9:00:08 GMT -6
If you two, Falconer and Cadriel, want to continue cutting and pasting your 'knowledge' straight from HoME then start another thread to do it in. Cut and pasted from HoME? That's not accurate. I'm basing most of my assertions on the book's creation on Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Charles Kane. He lays out how The Silmarillion was constructed by Christopher Tolkien from drafts that are available in HoME. It's a bit dry but it shows, in detail, how the book this thread deals with was made. Each paragraph is dealt with, including the inventions by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay (which I feel mar the resulting work). It seems odd to want to exclude scholarship dealing with The Silmarillion from a thread about the book.
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Post by cadriel on May 6, 2014 8:46:58 GMT -6
The Rest of HoME, in the other hand, are more something like an academical or erudite work, rather than litteraty work, to me . For me, I fell in love with the Beren and Lúthien story (and to a lesser extent, the Gondolin and Túrin stories) to the point where I was willing to go through all the drafts to see what glimpses of that tale Tolkien had left. Even though the Lúthien and Túrin chapters are the longest in the published Silmarillion, I still don't feel it did them justice; that's why I am critical of the published work.
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Post by cadriel on May 5, 2014 11:31:23 GMT -6
No, it is not a compilation of notes. Tolkien actually wrote a piece of literature which he called The Silmarillion. It is, however, more chronicle than romance. That is, its genre is closer akin to Appendix I of LotR than to the LotR proper. It's not exactly accurate to say this. Tolkien worked throughout his life on the stories that are presented in the "Quenta Silmarillion" in The Silmarillion, but the format in which they are published in that book is not a literary invention of J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien had tried to put the stories down in a format that was consistent, satisfying to him, and publishable as a book. The only time he wrote a complete version of the legendarium was the short "Quenta Noldorinwa" found in The Shaping of Middle-Earth. Every other attempt was incomplete in one way or another, missing various parts. His post-LotR efforts ( Morgoth's Ring and The War of the Jewels) broke it into two parts: the two sets of Annals (The Annals of Aman, dealing with Valinor, and the Grey Annals, dealing with Arda), and the Quenta Silmarillion, which focused on the creation and theft of the Silmarils. The published Quenta Silmarillion follows the incomplete post-LotR material where it can, except that it doesn't deal with the round-earth issues at all (Tolkien was torn on this), and to the extent it can be, it is a composite of the Annals and the later Quenta Silmarillion. This is supplemented where necessary by material from the pre-LotR work. In a few cases, chapters are shuffled around (such as "Of Aulë and Yavanna") or heavily invented (particularly in "Of the Ruin of Doriath"). I'm not saying this to be pedantic. People get confused about the genre of The Silmarillion, because it is a mixture of a flowing narrative (Quenta Silmarillion) and annalistic history (Annals of Aman / Grey Annals). It's made up of parts of both, with predictably odd results.
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Post by cadriel on May 5, 2014 7:07:46 GMT -6
Arduin Grimoire has air sharks. Clearly people use Shark to talk to their Air Shark mounts.
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Post by cadriel on May 5, 2014 4:43:25 GMT -6
Basic Fantasy RPG can be had from Amazon.com for $4.16 (with free shipping). A decent starter adventure, The Chaotic Caves, is $2.81. A wilderness adventure, JN2 Monkey Isle, is $2.77. So that's $9.74 with free shipping for two adventures and a complete rulebook - it's like the Basic and Expert boxed sets, except all you need is dice. So there is a cheap and pretty good old-school way into the hobby, and to be honest I think we as gamers should promote it more.
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Post by cadriel on May 1, 2014 7:08:44 GMT -6
I've been interested recently in some of the early post-apocalyptic work that I think was a sizable influence on D&D. The books that made the DMG's Appendix N are Margaret St. Clair's The Sign of the Labrys (a sort of proto-megadungeon as well as a disease-based science fantasy apocalypse and Wicca elements) and Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey (a wilderness bash with lots of psionics, very recent when the DMG was written). Indirectly, Andre Norton's Star Man's Son / Daybreak, 2250 A.D., a post-nuclear wilderness exploration from the early 1950s, is lumped along with Witch World and the Warlock/Forerunner stuff under Norton's entry.
A conspicuous absence is John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, a tremendously successful apocalypse caused by a type of plant (surefire material for a D&D monster type). And Richard Matheson's I Am Legend had not yet gained its full influence but it had already been adapted twice before OD&D came out, once as The Last Man on Earth and once as The Omega Man.
The other work I think about is how OD&D came about during the reign of Planet of the Apes and its increasingly low-budget sequels at the top of the sci-fi movie food chain. Star Wars wasn't out yet and the Apes franchise had to loom pretty large. Of course the big reveal of Planet is that it's a post-apocalyptic film, and the connections to the sort of post-apocalyptic science fantasy vibe get much more pronounced in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, with underground cities and psionic mutants.
Anyway I'm interested in people's favorites among this genre, both movies and novels, as well as how you see them as influences on D&D and on your own gaming.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 30, 2014 13:49:50 GMT -6
There were various British and Irish army units known as rangers (King's / Queen's Rangers, etc), no?
Given that the Rangers of the North and the Rangers of Ithilien were effectively military units, "ranger" was probably chosen by Tolkien as a word that implied both a military unit and some travel on the part of the members. It's important to recall that the conceit of The Lord of the Rings is that the entire book is translated out of Westron, with the exception of Sindarin and Quenya names, so in Tolkien's imagination these groups probably had Westron names just like Frodo was Maura Labingi.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 29, 2014 13:50:11 GMT -6
No.
OD&D doesn't have the mechanic of elves moving silently. It's an AD&D-ism.
In AD&D, an elf can only get his surprise bonus if alone or 90' away from a party. Thieves can move silently every time they move - including from standing next to a heavily armored fighter.
I'm also not sure where you get the bonuses in your post. I don't see them either in the Thief or Surprise sections of the PHB or the DMG.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 28, 2014 16:25:08 GMT -6
Your garbage, on the other hand, was just an island full of one-time mutations that make no sense and have no point. I cut out everything that wasn't an argument in the RPGPundit's post, and this is what was left. Everything else is bombast. This claim is factually false. On the face of it, Geoffrey's book contains five types of elements - chimeric creatures, magic-users, clerics, statues, and towns. The RPGPundit's entire argument about the book is essentially that he doesn't like the creatures. And that's his right, but it's simply not factually true that Isle of the Unknown contains only "one-time mutations." There is some elaboration on the argument that follows: Again, these claims are simply not true. Simply looking at the full-page pictures will reveal that the magic-users are themed according to the Zodiac. The clerics are plainly based on medieval Crusader orders. The statues clearly take inspiration from Greek and Roman mythology. You're free not to like any of it, but to state that there is simply an "incoherent environment" is false on the face of it. There are pretty clear themes expressed in the book; even the chimeric creatures, being consistently animal-based, reflect a basic level of coherence not far below that of the Wilderlands. I don't mind if people don't like the book. I do, and opinions differ. But stating that it's just a bunch of random creatures is saying something fundamentally false about the book. It presents several different and clearly themed types of elements. It's fair to say you would rather have had strong, explicit connections between these elements, but Geoffrey has made it abundantly clear that this is how he likes his RPG products.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 28, 2014 5:24:11 GMT -6
geoffrey, I think you were almost too subtle in your themes here. You seem to be on a different wavelength than a lot of gamers; it's part of why I enjoy your material, but I think a lot of the potential audience misunderstands and overreacts. It's clear that the chimeric creatures, zodiac magic-users and clerics all follow themes, but the material doesn't draw a lot of clear connections between them. The critics have generally been so thick-headed as to claim that it's all random to the point of being insipid. Personally I like it because it's creative and non-Tolkienesque, and gives me good material for mining (my preference is for a mix of vanilla and weird elements), but since there's no canonical statement of a big "reveal," the Isle's key mystery is essentially left for the referee to present to the players as he likes (if at all). That leaves a lot of people unsatisfied who want a module to, as Gygax put it, do more of their imagining for them.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 27, 2014 6:10:14 GMT -6
I think this review is awful and Isle of the Unknown is one of the under-appreciated products in the RPG scene, though I confess I like Dungeon of the Unknown a bit more because it has the glop generator in it. The review is basically demanding things that a cursory reading of the book's introduction (or more still the longer introduction that you posted here) would have immediately dispelled as not being what the book is about, and manages to pregnant dog about the quality of the chimeric creatures, which I've actually used in games and come across as interesting and fresh encounters as opposed to the same handful of monsters featured in most modules.
The rant at the end about "insult propaganda" comes across as paranoid and psychotic, and I think this review really helps show that the RPGPundit is not worth listening to in anything he says.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 25, 2014 15:06:57 GMT -6
I agree with Zulgyan. if it is something that experience affects, use saving throw. If it is something that innate ability affects, use attribute checks I think it's worth looking at the evolution of saving throws, which Jeff Rients talks about here. Rients notes that the OD&D categories include "Stone" which is useful against non-petrification attacks, as well as Death Rays which inspired one of my blog's most popular posts. ( Save vs. Death Ray!) Looking at the OD&D list, we really can't use the matrix in the way Scottenkainen suggests (which I believe is derived from the AD&D charts rather than OD&D). Clerics are just better at saving throws than everybody else, and everybody's best score is against Death Ray or Poison. Fighting-Men are better versus Dragon Breath than Clerics or M-Us, and vice versa for Spells and Staves. M-Us are marginally better against Stone. Most of the things you can really extend them for (falling rock, dodging something that's not dragon breath or a death ray, etc) are still saving throws at the core. One thing to consider is semi-attribute dependent rolls. OD&D has a general standard like this: Attribute 6 or less: -1 on 1d6 Attribute 8 or less: -1 on 1d20 Attribute 13 or more: +1 on 1d20 Attribute 15 or more: +1 on 1d6 This is a good rule of thumb if you don't want to go to straight roll under attribute on 1d20: you could set a target on 1d6 or 1d20 and give the appropriate bonus or penalty for attributes.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 25, 2014 10:47:48 GMT -6
I gave up ability checks a long time ago. Frankly, I don't see any mechanical need they serve that saving throws do not already do. I've used saves in this way before, particularly the saves vs dragon breath and death ray, both of which are nice "dodge" mechanics. (Much more so than Dexterity; I never understood why hand-eye coordination became confused with overall agility and nimbleness in later editions. The game really should have added an Agility score.) But I've never found general uses for the others. What specific things do you do for, say, whether a character can lift a heavy object?
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