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The pentagonal trapezohedron was patented for use as a gaming die in 1906. [U.S. Patent 809,293] It is convenient for role-playing games that use percentile-based skills; however, it is not strictly necessary since the outcome of a twenty-sided die can be divided ten ways and is sometimes preferred due to its regular shape.

Subsequent patents on ten-sided dice have made minor refinements to the basic design by rounding or truncating the edges. This enables the die to tumble so that the outcome is less predictable. One such refinement became notorious at the 1980 Gen Con [Greg Peterson about Gen Con 1980: The big news of the year was that someone had 'invented' the ten-sided die.] when the patent was incorrectly thought to cover ten-sided dice in general.

chirine ba kal said:

Phil kept his campaign very organized - he used Tony Bath's book on how to run a campaign. He did lots and lots of little maps and notes, which I always made copies of so we had them for the archives. Read the Bath book for the details; it's still in print.

Phil did everyone on 3x5 index cards. We updated our cards regularly over the years, and Phil would update the NPCs. The cards were kept in 'regional' boxes, and all the dividers were for locations; as people moved around, so did their cards so Phil knew instantly knew who was who in any particular location. Very easy to run and maintain, and very handy.

I made a copy of all 1,800 cards in 1987, and I also have a copy of the 1992 computerized version. They provide a fascinating look into the campaign. I also have a copy of Dave Arneson's 'sub-routine' for the meta-game, for merchant captains and their ships - it provides for cargo, as well.

chirine ba kal said:

And you don't have to, either. This may go back to a conversation I had with Phil in the middle 1980s, when he was asking me why Gronan and I were wasting our time playing with trains. He wanted to know what we saw in it; after you put the track down on the floor, and ran the train around the circle a few times, what was left? I told him about what we call 'operations', where we simulated the operations of a real railroad on our miniature version. I told him that it was a lot like what we did when we played with our little lead soldiers - we were simulating warfare with them just as we were simulating the transport business with our models. Phil was astonished - he had no idea, the last time he'd run a toy train was back in the Lionel days.

One of the most popular operating simulation systems - the set of rules, if you will - is called the 'card order' or 'waybill' system. Here's a link to the book that I first read about it in (I hope!); you can also do a Google search to get lots of references to it:

books.google.com/books?id=or...system&f=false

The basic premise of the system is that every freight car on the railroad is represented by a card; every possible cargo that the industries on the railroad ships via rail is also represented by a card. At the beginning of the simulation session - the game, if you will - the cargo cards are either at the industries, waiting to be picked up, or on the cars already loaded from the previous session. (You can see where this is going, I'm sure!) The train is sent out, with loads and empties, and drops off and picks up the various cargos. (There's lots more on this in the book, of course.) I used to use paper clips and such in my early days, but there is now some very good computer software that does all of this.

What Dave did was substitute ships and their captains for the freight cars, and create all the various cargos that one would find all along the coasts of the Five Empires. A ship would arrive in Jakalla from Bey Sy, unload the cargo it was delivering, and then the ship would be free to load another cargo; the ships were all given with what they could carry, and so it was very easy to match everything up. The cargoes also indicated how long the voyage might take, so the time element was also factored in to the system. So, players in Jakalla can go down to the waterfront, and be told by the GM that there are ships going to where ever, and with whatever cargo aboard.

Adventures ensue.

It's brilliant. The system pretty much runs itself once you get it going, and it runs alongside Phil's larger meta-game that uses Tony Bath's book. It would work in any setting, and really provide a lot of stuff for players to get involved with.

chirine ba kal said:

Phil used 3 x 5 index cards, in the stock five colors that you can get in packs. The color code was:

White: Hnalla, Hru'u, and their cohorts;
Blue: Thumis, Ksarul, and their cohorts;
Green: Avanthe, Dlamelish, and their cohorts;
Red: Karakan, Vimuhla, and their cohorts
Yellow: Belkhanu, Sarku, and their cohorts.

Non-Twenty deities were approximated.

On the obverse of the card, the stats were listed in a column on the left, under the name and clan of the person; skills and spells were listed on the right. The reverse of the card had all the possessions and such, normally on the left; any family or relations were on the right.

It's a very simple and easy to use system; if one lives in Jakalla, and then gets sent to Bey Sy, one's card moves from the Jakalla section to the Bey Sy section, making it very east for the GM to find people as needed in game sessions. As per Tony Bath's book, once a month dice are rolled or cards cut, and the table consulted to see who's moving around - usually, people don't get transferred or moved unless they're being promoted or something, and the tables in the book account for all that. It's a very easy system to use, and a lot of fun - read Tony's book to see what I mean...

Quote Originally Posted by greentongue :

In the EPT rules there is a section on intelligent weapons.
(I gather this was an Arneson innovation that was included.)
How frequent were these found and what impact did they have?

Quote originally posted by Chirine:

Yeah, this was a section that Phil tossed in for Dave; Gary got some pet sections, too.

They were very, very, very rare in Phil's campaign. We got exactly one, in over a decade of gaming. It was the intelligent sword that Vrisa got, before we marched off to the Northwest Frontier; we never did figure out if the d**n thing was an AI or an imprisoned demon. The former was favored as a theory, but nobody wanted to get close to the thing to find out. It bonded with her, she bonded with it, and we all avoided it like the plague, as it did have a mind of it's own. It was made of the ceramet material of the ancients, and had a energy field as an edge; it would cut through just about anything, and with Kathy's close-to-max S&G stats it made her a real threat to anything that annoyed us. Saved my bacon a few times, too.