Quote from: Brad on June 27, 2023, 01:11:56 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 27, 2023, 12:57:47 PM
The best overall treatment of combat and weapons I have played with in a game was with GURPS. Honestly the only reason I am not running it nowadays is that support for it is pretty much dead. Fantasy is only supported with powered dungeon romping. Gone are the days of Harkwood & Tredroy. I just don't have the time these days to write everything myself. If I did then there wouldn't be any time to actually play it. I feel really let down by SJG after buying over 60 GURPS books and fourth Ed which I actually liked then ........nothing.

I know I am repeating myself, but GURPS 3rd is the best RPG for gritty fantasy using just the main book. You don't need anything else. When I was a poor school kid and could afford only one book, I got the GURPS basic set and ran many, many games using the solitaire adventure and the caravan one as a template. One of the major appeals were the weapons and combat system, which I felt were vastly better than AD&D during my "Fuck Gygax, fuck TSR" phase. At one point I vowed to only play GURPS forever more which lasted about a couple weeks before I got Rifts...anyway, I ended up selling a complete set of 4th edition hardcovers because I really didn't care for it compared to 3rd. of which I have about 30(?) sourcebooks. I'd play GURPS now if someone wanted to run a campaign, and I'd run it if they wanted to play in one. But Munchkin probably brings in 99% of the revenue for SJGames, which means GURPS' days are probably numbered unless you want to buy Yet Another 12 page PDF about some random bullshit.

EDIT: ^^^seems we're all on the same page here

Another GURPS fan, nice! Yeah, GURPS had weapons of different qualities and even obsidian weapons in the core rulebooks, which really impressed me (at least in 4e; I played 3e more but remember it less). Also has critical hits tables, which I enjoy. And I had a similar experience not being able to buy Supers for some reason and trying to adapt spells to function like powers (which is a thing in 3e Magic).

Unfortunately it seems SJG just isn't keeping up with the times.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 27, 2023, 11:43:25 AM

Quote from: Brad on June 27, 2023, 09:29:40 AM
Yeah, that's true. He says they're more trouble than they're worth. But AD&D just isn't Conan, it's also Elric and the Gray Mouser, HP Lovecraft, a little bit of John Carter and Flash Gordon, etc. An amalgam of all the pulp stuff in varying degrees so you have to make concessions in some places. Or just not use Greyhawk, which pretty much means you can't use AD&D without A LOT of work, and in that case you might as well make your own game, as stated. Which is what everyone under the sun does once they get tired of AD&D.

QuoteAnd "realism" is not really the point, I agree.

It is just that some things sticks out like a sore thumb for me. Could be just a matter of taste, since I like medieval weapons, for example. I'm not particularly interested in armor, so if there is something wrong with gambeson, leather or scale, or if there is redundancy in "chain mail", it doesn't bothers me as much as a weak mace.

It's the same reason I get annoyed with how some modern games treat certain weapons, ESPECIALLY shotguns. Half the time I'm wondering if the writers have every used a firearm in their lives...but that's life. Change stuff as needed to fit how you think they should work.

QuoteTake tieflings, for example. Shouldn't be a problem in a game where you fight dragons, or you could BE a balor/dragon originally. And I'm mostly okay with them, but recently they started to bother me, and I've started seeing the value of an all-human campaign. Again, not about realism, but the fact that there are demon-people walking around without notice started to wreck my suspension of disbelief as much as garlic costing 5 gp.

(Again, setting-specific: I'm okay with them in Ravnica, Planescape, etc.)

AD&D stresses humanocentric campaigning because outside of Lord of the Rings most of the important pulp and fantasy characters are human (or human enough); it emulates S&S and pulp fairly well when you use mostly humans. 5th edition D&D has gone the other route and essentially emulates modern videogames like World of Warcraft. It's much more cartoony in appearance and outlook, and crap like tieflings does nothing but stress this aesthetic. I would be okay with stuff like dragonborn and tieflings IF they weren't so fucking ubiquitous and actually acted alien. Instead they're just humans with scales or horns and some Hot Topic clothing; the game starts to feel more like an episode of Three's Company than an epic Kull tale.

5GP garlic is part of a dumb economy meant to get to the good parts of the game; tieflings radically change things to such a degree you're playing cartoon characters instead of adventurers.

Good points.

- Elric, Gray Mouser, HP Lovecraft, John Carter and Flash Gordon... they don't get tons of magic items either IIRC. But maybe Hawkmoon does! Or Vance characters (not sure).

- Guns: Exactly this! I have much more experience with martial arts (and maybe even math) than guns, which is why I can easily overlook the differences between different guns in modern games, but spend hours trying to daggers and maces to work as I'd like in the game.

- Garlic x tieflings: I'll concede garlic is much easier to ignore and 'fix" than tieflings!

Quote from: Slambo on June 27, 2023, 10:11:12 AM
To further this, Appendix N when refrencing Moorcock iirc says Especially Hawkmoon and hawkmoon gets new magic items every book, besides the Black Jewel which is a detriment but is an aspect of the Black Sword he also get, the mad gods amulet, the sword of the dawn. And the runestaff and im probably forgetting a few (not counting the Flamelances since they're hi-tech energy weapons)

Good catch!

"Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; "Hawkmoon" series (esp. the first three books)"

I haven't read it, but I love Elric (and Corum, although I only read a little). Maybe I should check it out.

STORMBRINGER is also a good example. OOH, I love the book and the whole concept of an intelligent sword, OTOH I think D&D takes it to extremes with rtoo many intelligent swords.

Vance characters go from some having just a few magic items to some having mansions full of magical doodads. Especially IOUN stones

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 27, 2023, 11:43:25 AM
- Elric, Gray Mouser, HP Lovecraft, John Carter and Flash Gordon... they don't get tons of magic items either IIRC. But maybe Hawkmoon does! Or Vance characters (not sure).

Well, John Carter, Flash Gordon and most of the HP Lovecraft stories are more sci-fi than fantasy, so the amazing technology is doing the work of magic. Haven't read/seen that much Flash Gordon. John Carter is pretty low tech for sci fi. Aside from the actual interplanatary travel, I think it's mostly just guns, airships and domesticated alien creatures. Lovecraft has a lot of amazing stuff, from lightning guns to brain jars, including some more apparently magical tools like the Elder Sign or the Silver Key, but that stuff is mostly used against the protagonists, rather than by them. The same is true of a character like Conan or Kull. There's lots of magical items in those stories, but the protagonists don't personally wield them. Solomon Kane has his magic staff, but that's it.

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser get a fair few magic items throughout the stories, but they're usually one-offs that are foisted on them by Ningauble and/or Sheelba, and only appear in one story.

Moorcock is usually the odd man out in this conversation. Elric has a tremendous amount of magic at his disposal. Not just Stormbringer (which is absurdly powerful alone), but he also has the Actorios Stone in his ring, which is critical to his ability summon demons and elementals, and later gets the Sad Giant's Shield and the Horn of Fate.  That's on top of the various potions he uses throughout the stories, and his own native sorcery and ability to control dragons.

Much as I love the Elric stories, he's probably one of the most overpowered characters in all of fiction. 

EDIT: It's a general trend in swords-and-sorcery fiction that wizard = bad guy. That's one of the biggest reasons that I argue D&D will never be good at emulating that genre. In instances where you do get wizard protagonists (such as Vance and arguably Elric) the magic items tend to flow a lot more freely.

It may be worth mentioning that in 1E, clubs are essentially free, so within the umbrella of old-school, there is no limit to how low the price of a club can be. Meanwhile, in the real world, you'd need about 600 oz in gold to buy Babe Ruth's first bat. Somewhere in between I'm sure there's a custom pimp cane usable as a baton-style weapon priced right around 5 gp, whatever that is (definitely not a half pound of gold).

The fact is (real life economics) wine is not expensive because good vineyard land is expensive. Rather good vineyard land is expensive because people are willing to pay high prices for wine.

The most salient factor in the prices on adventurer-grade equipment are the prices that PCs are willing to pay for them. The costs of production are going to adapt to that. Sure. Adventurers are a tiny percentage of the population. But I don't think the amount of wealth adventurers deal is insignificant. The pareto rule estimates 80% of wealth will be held by the top 20%, 64% of wealth will be held by the top 4%, and 51.2% of wealth will be held by the top 0.8%. As we often hear, the wealthiest 1% controls more than half the wealth. In the section on finding henchmen in the 1E DMG, there's an intimation that adventures/leveled characters make up 0.5 to 1 percent of the population.

Adventurers aren't the entire economy. But they are half of it. And I think that's what you find in 1E. I think it's done an admirable job of handling both realistic and mythical levels of play, and doing it under one system so you can walk through from one to the other in the zero-to-hero system. And the in-game economy likewise hybridizes the economy that makes sense when it centers around adventurers while also having a normal economy. You can see this when the 1E DMG gets into the prices of hirelings. The going rate for unskilled labor is 1 gp per month. But a Blacksmith is 30 gp per month, and an armorer 100 gp per month. There's definitely an intentional telescoping effect.

Quote from: Lunamancer on June 28, 2023, 08:17:00 AM
It may be worth mentioning that in 1E, clubs are essentially free, so within the umbrella of old-school, there is no limit to how low the price of a club can be. Meanwhile, in the real world, you'd need about 600 oz in gold to buy Babe Ruth's first bat. Somewhere in between I'm sure there's a custom pimp cane usable as a baton-style weapon priced right around 5 gp, whatever that is (definitely not a half pound of gold).

The fact is (real life economics) wine is not expensive because good vineyard land is expensive. Rather good vineyard land is expensive because people are willing to pay high prices for wine.

The most salient factor in the prices on adventurer-grade equipment are the prices that PCs are willing to pay for them. The costs of production are going to adapt to that. Sure. Adventurers are a tiny percentage of the population. But I don't think the amount of wealth adventurers deal is insignificant. The pareto rule estimates 80% of wealth will be held by the top 20%, 64% of wealth will be held by the top 4%, and 51.2% of wealth will be held by the top 0.8%. As we often hear, the wealthiest 1% controls more than half the wealth. In the section on finding henchmen in the 1E DMG, there's an intimation that adventures/leveled characters make up 0.5 to 1 percent of the population.

Adventurers aren't the entire economy. But they are half of it. And I think that's what you find in 1E. I think it's done an admirable job of handling both realistic and mythical levels of play, and doing it under one system so you can walk through from one to the other in the zero-to-hero system. And the in-game economy likewise hybridizes the economy that makes sense when it centers around adventurers while also having a normal economy. You can see this when the 1E DMG gets into the prices of hirelings. The going rate for unskilled labor is 1 gp per month. But a Blacksmith is 30 gp per month, and an armorer 100 gp per month. There's definitely an intentional telescoping effect.

Yes this is all linked to what I was talking about when a relatively large hoard of wealth coughed up from a dungeon is brought to town that is normally fairly cash poor. Everyone in that area will be doing whatever they can to get their hands on as much of that gold as they can. The more remote the locale ( and thus the least competition) the higher prices will increase for unique goods and services. Simple economics in action. Even in todays world with consumer protection laws there are instances of localized price hiking during a crisis. Even products no one really needs skyrocket if there is a hint of an upcoming scarcity. Remember a few years back when Hostess was getting sold that the Twinkie was getting discontinued. Boxes of Twinkies were being sold on E-bay for outrageous prices-and selling.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 26, 2023, 08:11:00 PM

In our own civilized world, it is absurd to think that something as mundane as a sword could be worth more than its weight in gold. In a fantasy realm where a good sword is not so common and there is danger everywhere, and gold is rather common due to so much of it being injected into the economy by adventurers, it is easy to imagine a good sword being worth more than its weight in gold.

This would be true if a good sword was not so common, but in most milieus everyone and their dog carries a sword, up to and including the town militia.

That said, you aren't wrong that a fantasy world is just that- a fantasy world, and all money if fiat when you break it down to nuts and bolts. A world in which gold is the principal specie is not more fantastic than one in which a wizard can shoot fire from his fingertips and dragons can fly.

I like the silver standard because it actually gives silver and copper some use in the game world, rather than being left behind as 'too valueless to carry out.' The other thing I do is NOT use electrum as coinage, because to me, for the average joe in the game world, it would be too difficult to discern the gold content of the coin, thereby making it next to impossible to determine its actual value.

Quote from: jmarso on June 30, 2023, 02:16:07 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 26, 2023, 08:11:00 PM

In our own civilized world, it is absurd to think that something as mundane as a sword could be worth more than its weight in gold. In a fantasy realm where a good sword is not so common and there is danger everywhere, and gold is rather common due to so much of it being injected into the economy by adventurers, it is easy to imagine a good sword being worth more than its weight in gold.

This would be true if a good sword was not so common, but in most milieus everyone and their dog carries a sword, up to and including the town militia.

That said, you aren't wrong that a fantasy world is just that- a fantasy world, and all money if fiat when you break it down to nuts and bolts. A world in which gold is the principal specie is not more fantastic than one in which a wizard can shoot fire from his fingertips and dragons can fly.

I like the silver standard because it actually gives silver and copper some use in the game world, rather than being left behind as 'too valueless to carry out.' The other thing I do is NOT use electrum as coinage, because to me, for the average joe in the game world, it would be too difficult to discern the gold content of the coin, thereby making it next to impossible to determine its actual value.

Greetings!

Interesting. In historical Carthage, the Empire of Carthage actually minted electrum coins as part of its economy.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on June 30, 2023, 05:05:28 PM

Greetings!

Interesting. In historical Carthage, the Empire of Carthage actually minted electrum coins as part of its economy.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I'm going to have to research that a bit just for fun. Carthage was a big enough city-state that I presume they must have had a standard of weights and measures that the citizenry had some trust in.

Semper Fi!

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 24, 2023, 10:55:28 AMencumbrance preventing hauling a lot of treasure out

I've been playing the survival game The Long Dark recently. You can carry 30kg normally, or 35kg if you're "well-fed" (haven't starved in the last 3 days, takes work to keep up). This declines if you're fatigued. Clothing sufficient to stave off a blizzard is 10-15kg or so. So you've got 20-25kg at most to carry tools, firestarting gear, and so on. In practice that's another 10-12kg. So really you have 5-10kg of extra stuff you can carry.

You can actually carry up to 45/50kg in all, so 15kg over that normal 30/35kg limit... but you're slooooooow. And your character grunts as they're tramping through the snow. This is a huge test of your patience, and so you naturally start looking for things to dump. But maybe sometimes you really need that stuff, so you put up with it.

In a tabletop rpg, players are spared the personal experience of this sort of tedium, so you have to have stricter rules on it. Otherwise every player will declare that their character is some sort of uber-stoic spartan. "I will carry 200lbs for 100 miles on nothing but iron rations every day."

Quote from: VisionStormOR, maybe DMs could just tone down the amount of treasure awarded in their campaigns.

As I said, you can have whatever kind of game you like. I'm just saying that game rules are designed as a whole, like a car engine. You can't take out part of the engine and then complain it doesn't work. You start fiddling around in there, at some point you either break the thing completely or you've made a new engine.

You want a different engine, that's fine. But the engine you need for a tractor is different to the one you need for a drag racer. Different game styles need different rule sets. That's why I've written rpgs, I wanted a system that did different things to any I'd seen, or emphasised this or that more.

Quote from: VisionStormAlso the OSR: Why aren't you letting the rules micromanage your in-game economy and -

The main one's the training rule. That's once a level. That shouldn't be happening every session, so I don't think it can reasonably be called "micromanaging," which implies something more constant like Limberg coming by your desk multiple times a day.

Quote from: ExploderwizardIn our own civilized world, it is absurd to think that something as mundane as a sword could be worth more than its weight in gold

My wedding ring has gold in it, and cost more than its weight in gold. Cost of materials + cost of labour + profit = final cost.

That said, I like a silver standard with more historically-analogous coin weights. I just like the atmosphere that gives in play. In movie terms, more like Conan and less like The Hobbit. Low fantasy rather than high.

Quote from: jmarsoin most milieus everyone and their dog carries a sword, up to and including the town militia.

And a silver standard can make this less so. Again, not objectively good, just my personal taste. Funnily enough, historically the scabbard cost more than the sword!

Anyway, I like settings where the men-at-arms at least start as guys with gambeson, spear and shield. One rule I add to help this is "shield wall" - you get AC+1 for each person at your side, so +2 for the guys in the middle, +1 for the flank guys. Needs a "sergeant" in charge, someone with HD1 or more - including a PC or henchman, of course. Kobolds etc can't do it. In other words, I've made tactics more important than gear. That takes AD&D1e a tiny bit back towards its wargaming roots.

Quote from: jmarso on July 01, 2023, 11:30:09 AM

Quote from: SHARK on June 30, 2023, 05:05:28 PM

Greetings!

Interesting. In historical Carthage, the Empire of Carthage actually minted electrum coins as part of its economy.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I'm going to have to research that a bit just for fun. Carthage was a big enough city-state that I presume they must have had a standard of weights and measures that the citizenry had some trust in.

Semper Fi!

Sunday, July 2, 2023
Greetings!

Hey there, Jmarso! SEMPER FI, INDEED!

Yeah, the Empire of Carthage built their empire that embraced most of North Africa, Iberia, parts of Gaul, as well as the Beleric Islands, the island of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. They had many cities, and advanced, sophisticate towns. The Carthaginians also used insurance policies and advanced banking systems and investments, especially for ships and shipborne trade and cargo. An investor in Alexandria, for example, could go and get reimbursed for their investments in cargo lost in a fleet off the Pillars of Hercules, or through piracy or warfare. The Carthaginians had the Silver Shekel, which was the standard currency, as well as Gold Staters, and an advanced coin-based economy. The Carthaginians minted their coins with a relief symbol of a Palm Tree on one side, and an Elephant, or the face of their great mother goddess, Tanit, depicted on the obverse side of the coin. Very nice, and very sophisticated. Over some time, they also had bronze coins, of lower denominations, and the Electrum coin which was an alloy of silver and gold, which served as an in-between value coin between the Silver Shekel and the Gold Stater.

The Carthaginians are an often historically neglected pillar of Western Civilization, right there during the action with Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire. Before the celebrated Roman Empire, there was the gorgeous and stunning and advanced civilization of the Empire of Carthage. Carthage had paved roads, sophisticate cisterns, water reservoirs, advanced irrigation systems—as well as civic plumbing and sewer systems—long before Rome. When Rome was nothing more than some, mud-covered town of barbarians—the people of Carthage were using fine civic plumbing, drinking piped-in fresh water, and eating fruits brought to them from thousands of miles away. They were also living in gigantic, six-story high sophisticate stone and marble apartment buildings in the great and beautiful plazas of Carthage—and many other cities and towns of the Empire of Carthage. In recent decades, archaeologists have discovered a modest town in North Africa—not a huge, important town—but a modest town—which featured marble flooring inlays, individual, private bathrooms, sewer systems, water reservoirs, and more, for every individual house—not just for the wealthy elite—but for everyone. Carthage developed industrial mining on metal ores— a system not equaled until the 19th Century, A.D. The Carthaginian contributions to exploration, discovery, finance, government, engineering, are enormous— and much of what made Rome great—came from inspirations from Carthage.

Carthage also pioneered the IKEA-like system of pre-fabricated ships—allowing the Carthaginians to produce and assemble fleets of 300 warships every 45 days. Anyone else required at least 6 months or more to even come close to such an accomplishment—an also with much higher cost—as they had to pay expensive engineers and shipbuilders—whereas Carthage did not. Carthage could use skeleton teams of engineers, supervising normal labourers, thus saving immensely on the cost involved for every warship. The Carthaginians also developed an advanced system of manufacturing—coordinating specialized labour and craftsmen, on a mass scale—to provide immense supply of a whole range of specialized consumer goods, and storage and transporting these huge deliveries from where the factories and shops were organized, to transport such goods thousands of miles away, on reliable, constant schedules. Kitchen goods, furniture, urns, tools, clothing, shoes, boots, religious icons, incense, spices, and more—such as Garum—and huge wax-sealed amphora of salted fish—were produced in mass quantities, organized, and shipped half way around the world on a regular basis—and while also tailoring each such goods to the colours and styles desired by several different cultural and ethnic markets—again, all routinely accomplished by the Carthaginians before 400 B.C.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome were all great—but also remember Carthage. Remember that Carthage took much of what those civilizations had accomplished—and improved upon them. Furthermore, Carthage pioneered many innovations, technologies, systems, and techniques unequaled by any other civilization. Much of Rome's greatness, and subsequent systems developed and embraced through the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages, were rooted within inspiration from Carthage.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on July 02, 2023, 12:24:59 AM
And a silver standard can make this less so. Again, not objectively good, just my personal taste. Funnily enough, historically the scabbard cost more than the sword!

And by the 15th century longbows cost more than most swords, while a quiver of arrows cost more than the bow. 

Swords were not uncommon because they were expensive; although they seem to have been fairly uncommon & expensive in dark ages northern europe. They were fairly uncommon because they're not a very good primary weapon. So they were used as side arms, and generally only the upper classes needed a side arm. The main advantage of swords is that you can wear them comfortably.

Quote from: S'mon on July 02, 2023, 03:01:11 AM
Swords were not uncommon because they were expensive; although they seem to have been fairly uncommon & expensive in dark ages northern europe. They were fairly uncommon because they're not a very good primary weapon. So they were used as side arms, and generally only the upper classes needed a side arm. The main advantage of swords is that you can wear them comfortably.

It must be time to crack out good old Lindy Beige.

It's a long time since there were enough people running around with either for this to be properly-established either way, I think. All I'm certain of is that while Lindy Beige is interesting to watch on YouTube, he'd be a total pain in the arse at the game table. 

I love me some Lindy and some Matt Easton.