Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;445607(And another friend in my group is planning on using DW to run a one-off adventure based on the old 'Blood Valley' books in a month or so, though I don't think that he particularly doesn't Legend).

Blood Valley as in the Duelmaster book? I used to own a Speccy computer game based on that.

Quote from: GrimGent;445630Blood Valley as in the Duelmaster book? I used to own a Speccy computer game based on that.

Yep that's the one! He knows I've at least browsed it (if forever ago) so he's probably redoing it a fair bit, but it'll definitely be set on Orb still.
Interesting - I hadn't known there was a computer game.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445629There's a pile of Earthdawn core books, ED companion, and adventures at my local Half Price Books. All 2e. ... I wasn't so keen on the setting or the mechanics. (They seemed like someone had taken D&D 3.x and then changed how all the die rolls work.).

Actually, historically the relation goes the other way round. One of the more interesting (early) reviews of the 3.0 PHB on Amazon suspects the class progression and customization system in 3E to have been designed by someone rather familiar with Earthdawn.

While D&D 4E's design goals and the history of its designers is well documented, the creative roots for 3.0 are far less well documented... I get it, everyone thinks Tweet and Cook were creative geniuses, but I'd really appreciate one day to read a simple straight story of where they got their ideas from.

Some games mentioned herein -- The Fantasy Trip, Dragonquest and Chivalry & Sorcery, for instance -- have I think been rated pretty fairly.

TFT is a bit rare, but so far from being under-rated it is perhaps very slightly over-rated by those of us (for I am one) who are big fans. I cannot think of any less than glowing review of the game system ever, and it seems to be known of much more widely than its actual distribution.

Dragonquest might be a little more obscure -- hence really not so much under-rated as simply not rated at all -- than its design warrants. However, I think it got a pretty good push back in the day and expecting it to find much more popularity today is probably unrealistic.

C&S was from the start aimed at an especially committed breed, and the mode of campaign for which it provides has only become less prevalent over the decades. It gets plenty of appreciation from a distance, I think, considering how rare it has ever been to find it actually being played. It's not the only of FGU's games with an exaggerated reputation for complexity, but the exaggeration is not by too much.

Empire of the Petal Throne is another case, I think, not of many gamers under-rating it but of many fans over-rating its appeal to John Q. Public. I mean here not just the original game but the beautifully depicted world of Tekumel that made it such a different experience from D&D.

Quote from: Windjammer;445637the creative roots for 3.0 are far less well documented... I get it, everyone thinks Tweet and Cook were creative geniuses, but I'd really appreciate one day to read a simple straight story of where they got their ideas from.

Tweet designed "Ars Magica".

I still think GURPS 3e makes for some of the coolest low fantasy gaming there is.  It's not so hot at the high powered stuff like the Myth game, but for grungy medieval life where what magic there is may take you years of study just to light a candle, it's pretty damn awesome.

I still have fond memories about the two adventures in the original 3e Basic Set, and the look of the pre-revised book was just so awesome, very old-fashioned look to it.

Have I recommended Everstone: Blood Legacy?

Quote from: Windjammer;445637Actually, historically the relation goes the other way round.

Oh, I wasn't claiming that one was derived from the other, although your comment is interesting. My point was more that since I'm not too keen on 3e, ED is an even harder sell.

Quote[T]he creative roots for 3.0 are far less well documented...

Some have claimed to see some Talislanta in it; Tweet revised Tal 3e for WotC, so that would make sense. Pretty much all of Tal is now freely downloadable, so you might take a look at that if you're curious.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445662...
Some have claimed to see some Talislanta in it; Tweet revised Tal 3e for WotC, so that would make sense. Pretty much all of Tal is now freely downloadable, so you might take a look at that if you're curious.

Maybe a little Ars Magica with its attribute + skill + d10 compared to a target difficulty. Also by J. Tweet.

Quote from: Windjammer;445637Actually, historically the relation goes the other way round. One of the more interesting (early) reviews of the 3.0 PHB on Amazon suspects the class progression and customization system in 3E to have been designed by someone rather familiar with Earthdawn.

While D&D 4E's design goals and the history of its designers is well documented, the creative roots for 3.0 are far less well documented... I get it, everyone thinks Tweet and Cook were creative geniuses, but I'd really appreciate one day to read a simple straight story of where they got their ideas from.

I don't know if you've seen this discussion/link by Caesar Slaad ?

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;29180"The other designers already had a core mechanic similar to the current one when I joined the design team, and I've seen the same basic idea in a few other games as well." - J. Tweet.

(Link for reference, as well as my own purposes, because I know I am going to have to look this up again.)

There are lots of influences that go to and fro in the game community, and lots of parallel evolution. I think it's fair to cite some RQ, ars magica, and Rolemaster (remember what Monte was doing before he started working for TSR/Wizards? ), but I think that RPGPundit has a good point in that its more likely than not that many things that supposedly D&D got from other games, D&D got from earlier iterations of D&D.

This link here also discusses some more details of how Runequest influenced Tweet
http://www.jonathantweet.com/jotgamerunequest.html
the link from there where he says 'I owe a lot to Runequest' - notes a number of rules ported directly from RQ to 3E, including nonabilities, Sz modifier to AC, object hardness, defined item creation, prestige classes, monster templates, armour check penalties and crits.

Moving into IMHO territory, Rolemaster has a system of class and cross-class skills, as well as maximum Dex from armour I believe, which is presumably Monte Cook influence. There was a Piazza article on this that I'm getting that from, but finding the link is going to be awkward.  

Skip Williams has noted that he created the sorceror and given his Sage background I'm inclined to believe he'd be pushing for tighter rules definitions through the text - stuff like how many halflings fit inside a behir. Presumably he pushed for the full-round casting time limitation on spontaneously cast spells (such as Quicken Spell) out of fear he'd create something unbalanced.
 
Attacks of opportunity are from Combat and Tactics in 2E, which Skip also designed - move actions are a cleaning up of its 'half-move' rules. I'd also peg him as a source for Enlarge and perhaps some size category notes - previous Sage rulings in Dragon indicate he's aware of the square/cube law.
I vaguely recall one of the books immediately prior to 4E release (maybe the Rules Cyclopaedia for 3E?) discussing origin of flanking as something which appeared in-house (not from anywhere in particular).
The source of 5' steps is unknown to me, though the same thread with CS' post above I think discusses either Champions or the Rules Cyclopedia for Basic as possible sources.

Monks from 1E were the source for evasion (its a redefinition of a 1E monk ability just described as 'taking no damage on a successful save'), added also to rogues. Other than that from memory, multiclass limitations on monks and paladins were added due to playtester feedback (playtesters thought these classes' organizations wouldn't take kindly to characters leaving their orders, and the limitations were added).

Considerable controversy was seen in Dragon Magazine late in 2E which probably led to some of the specific overhauls from 2E including over-poweredness of multiclassing and crossbow damage being historically inaccurate (though I think increased x-bow damage might also have appeared in Combat & tactics). Dragon #249 has Adkinson preaching on ascending AC - though this is a fairly obvious change and was also previously seen in the fourth edition of Gamma World.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;445634Interesting - I hadn't known there was a computer game.

You haven't missed much. It was a pretty poor adaptation, all in all.

Quote from: GrimGent;445673You haven't missed much. It was a pretty poor adaptation, all in all.

Alas. Oh well, for curiosity's sake have started a new thread in 'Other Games' discussing gamebook adapted games, anyway.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;445672-snip-

Wow... thanks! And, Elliot, I'll track down Talislanta 3rd. (The Ars Magica reference (thanks too) I had already known, but never knew what to make of it.)

Where did attacks of opportunity originate from?

Going back further into history, the THAC0 mechanic used for the to-hit attack rolls in 2E AD&D, was well known to Gary Gygax and Tim Kask back in the 1970's before the 1E AD&D DMG was released.

A recent post by Tim Kask.

http://dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1045226#p1045226

Quote from: Tim Kask on THAC0I "stole" THAC0 for my OD&D style (which freely advocates stealing whatever looks good and fits well) as soon as Gary and I came up with it, which was actually some months before the book was published. Lots of people that were exposed to it used it; lots more didn't. We saw it as a means to facilitate quick mental computations for the DM.