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Author Topic: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?  (Read 5853 times)

Eirikrautha

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #30 on: February 28, 2021, 04:44:15 PM »
I would suggest reading the non-rules essays in the PHB and DMG

Which ones? Part of my frustrations with classic D&D is that there are like 6 different versions of it.
Im reading the premium version 1e and the verbiage is borderline chummy. Its like a pal talking to me. Its so...down to earth.

Regardless it very much seems like not my experience. It feels like something I can get better out of a videogame nowadays.
If you think what you are reading in the 1e DMG can be found in a video game, then your issue is reading comprehension, not combat math analysis.  At this point, based on what you've said in this thread, I don't think you are going to understand, because you don't want to.  There are none so blind as those who will not see...

EOTB

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #31 on: February 28, 2021, 05:04:28 PM »
I would suggest reading the non-rules essays in the PHB and DMG

Which ones? Part of my frustrations with classic D&D is that there are like 6 different versions of it.
Im reading the premium version 1e and the verbiage is borderline chummy. Its like a pal talking to me. Its so...down to earth.

Regardless it very much seems like not my experience. It feels like something I can get better out of a videogame nowadays.

AD&D 1E PHB and DMG are the books where the designer explains the ideas behind the game the best, because in them he's talking to both OD&D enthusiasts and also D&D nay-sayers.  The holmes, B/X, BECMI books - the "just D&D" without the advanced - tell a presumably total neophyte reader a game process to apply at their table but don't really expound on the beliefs and motivations of Gygax as TSR-D&D's primary designer.  (I'm selectively avoiding all inferences to Arneson, who obviously co-designed D&D, the concept, and yet was not the primary determiner of what went into TSR D&D.)

AD&D 1E is not going to be the experience of anyone who came to D&D from the mid-80s on.  That's the point.  It's what I'm trying to convey.  You have to accept there are multitudes of mechanical widgets and terms you will recognize, and yet almost nothing about the "WHY" you've internalized over the years applies.  It completely rejects, conceptually, many many things that are now RPG commandments.

And to filter that back to the original post - that ends up bleeding heavily into the choice of math/algorithms/risk curves, which are very different than current RPGs as you've noticed (to your credit).
« Last Edit: February 28, 2021, 05:36:53 PM by EOTB »
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Pat
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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #32 on: February 28, 2021, 05:51:04 PM »
In the 1970s and 1980s, Metagaming was a publisher of wargames, specializing in the microgame format. RPGers might recognize some of them: Ogre, GEV, Melee, and Wizard.

Yep, that's where Steve Jackson started.

Omega

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #33 on: March 01, 2021, 12:43:17 AM »
On OD&D Taise Dead is gained at level 6.
Tase Dead would be a cool spell.  How do you say "Don't tase me, bro!" in zombie?  My guess: "Uhhhuuggghhhuhhh!"

Get in an accident and then try typing with ruined hands and then get back to me on how funny it is.

Omega

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #34 on: March 01, 2021, 01:06:56 AM »
If you use 3d6 rather than a 20 sider saves seem to be less harsh and easier to make.

Um...

NO?

A d20 is a flat percentage. (5% ea)
3d6 is a bell curve with the results weighted around 10-11. (12.5) The ends being rare to happen (0.5%) And oh yeah it only goes to 18. Tough luck if you need a 19 or 20.

This comes up ALOT over on BGG in game design. You can not change a system geared around a single die roll to one with multiple without needing to overhaul the system to take into account the bell curve.

Or a quick example.
Lets say we have a system using a d6. with high rolls being better. But someone wants to change it to a system using 5d2. (Both of these can generate 6 numbers) What instead you will see is a huge spike at the middle and the edges high and low will be alot rarer.
Using anydice we get this for 5d2 rolled 6 times and converted to 1-6. 3, 3, 5, 4, 1, 3 (19). Vs this for 1d6 rolled 6 times. 2, 5, 3, 5, 6, 1.(22).

Easy mistake alot of folk make. And one people not trying to make conversions do alot as well too.

Gurps and Tunnels & Trolls are built around the curve. D&D is not.. other than chargen... usually.  8)

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #35 on: March 01, 2021, 01:52:08 AM »
If you think what you are reading in the 1e DMG can be found in a video game, then your issue is reading comprehension, not combat math analysis.  At this point, based on what you've said in this thread, I don't think you are going to understand, because you don't want to.  There are none so blind as those who will not see...

I'm not interested in resource expenditure management-focused dungeon crawls. And quit lobbing bible verses at me, calling me ignorant.

And to filter that back to the original post - that ends up bleeding heavily into the choice of math/algorithms/risk curves, which are very different than current RPGs as you've noticed (to your credit).

Thanks, but in general the game appears to be not for me. I don't have a ton of fun running dungeon crawls.

EOTB

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #36 on: March 01, 2021, 03:30:58 AM »
Thanks, but in general the game appears to be not for me. I don't have a ton of fun running dungeon crawls.

I was gathering that as the process went along, but figuring out what isn't for you is almost as good as finding something that is for you.  Both are better than thrashing with something that doesn't fit.
A framework for generating local politics

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Shrieking Banshee

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #37 on: March 01, 2021, 03:42:39 AM »
I was gathering that as the process went along, but figuring out what isn't for you is almost as good as finding something that is for you.  Both are better than thrashing with something that doesn't fit.

Thanks man. I can imagine how it COULD be for somebody really.

And it has inspired me to be more lethal+ressurectiony in a game experiment I plan to try out.

Eirikrautha

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #38 on: March 01, 2021, 07:58:04 AM »
On OD&D Taise Dead is gained at level 6.
Tase Dead would be a cool spell.  How do you say "Don't tase me, bro!" in zombie?  My guess: "Uhhhuuggghhhuhhh!"

Get in an accident and then try typing with ruined hands and then get back to me on how funny it is.

That's a hell of an accident that keeps you from proof-reading, too.  It's a typo, that happened to be funny.  We've all done it.  So get over yourself.  If you don't want people to lump everyone with a handicap in the SJW box, stop acting like them (omg, someone made fun of something!  You can't make fun of me, I'm handicapped!).  You gonna pull a race card next?

Premier

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #39 on: March 01, 2021, 08:38:47 AM »
I haven't google N-grammed it, but I would be very surprised if "metagaming" as a term was even coined during the time the 1E core books were written.

Yup https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=metagaming&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmetagaming%3B%2Cc0 - looks like it appeared around 1995.

Also look at "metagame": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=metagame%2Cmetagaming&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=1 It's a much more common word than "metagaming", and actually had a massive spike in 1967-68, not very long before OD&D appeared. I'm wondering what caused it, and in what context the word was being used at the time.
Obvious troll is obvious. RIP, Bill.

Conanist

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #40 on: March 01, 2021, 11:17:53 AM »
For AD&D, the combat math is set up so that offense scales much higher than defense does in physical combat. Both offense and defense improve with better gear but the THAC0 adjustment improves offense on top of that. AD&D obfuscates that with the descending AC and THAC0 charts where more recent games simplify the concept with ascending AC and Base Attack Bonus. I don't know if the obfuscation was intentional or merely a side effect of being the first, I'm sure others could answer that better than I. Magic scales in the opposite way, with easier saves and resistant monsters. Does it make complete sense, with every variable having been carefully considered? No. It came out over 40 years ago.

In the late 70's, the Trans Am was a highly desirable V-8 muscle car. Basic 4 cylinder 2020 model cars like a  Honda Civic are faster and use a lot less gas as the engineering has improved. But if Mr. Miyagi offered me a choice between those, I'd definitely take the Trans Am. The nostalgia is a big part of the appeal, and so is the style/sensibility.

You mention video games. As a counterpoint, I see a lot of nostalgia for the old, NES era games. Newly created ones like Shovel Knight are very popular, and there is a whole cottage industry around using old consoles and CRT televisions, emulators and the like. And I just don't get it. I played those NES games when they were new and its incomprehensible to me that someone might prefer those to newer games that are exponentially better in every way. But people like them and they aren't "wrong" for that.

The point is, those OSR rulesets don't have to be "for" you. And neither do the modern systems if they don't offer everything you want. Just pick and choose the parts you want. For myself I like the OSR atmosphere and sensibilities, and like the actual mechabnics less. I've run quite a lot of DCC, oD&D, OSR adventures using modern rulesets like 5E and PF2. I liked the rules for those systems but liked the adventures a lot less. Figure out what appeals to your sensibilities, spend some time understanding that system, and then run with it. Nearly anything can be converted.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #41 on: March 01, 2021, 11:58:27 AM »
You mention video games. As a counterpoint, I see a lot of nostalgia for the old, NES era games. Newly created ones like Shovel Knight are very popular, and there is a whole cottage industry around using old consoles and CRT televisions, emulators and the like. And I just don't get it.

I think part of the cottage industry is to do with media preservation or emulation. I feel with videogames it's more like liking black and white films over color ones and there can be objective benefits to either style. Also Shovel Knight is a genuinly fantastic series of games, and I have no nostalgia for the NES.

Outside of that, thanks for the general overview of the stuff.

Pat
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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #42 on: March 01, 2021, 02:34:30 PM »
For AD&D, the combat math is set up so that offense scales much higher than defense does in physical combat. Both offense and defense improve with better gear but the THAC0 adjustment improves offense on top of that. AD&D obfuscates that with the descending AC and THAC0 charts where more recent games simplify the concept with ascending AC and Base Attack Bonus. I don't know if the obfuscation was intentional or merely a side effect of being the first, I'm sure others could answer that better than I. Magic scales in the opposite way, with easier saves and resistant monsters. Does it make complete sense, with every variable having been carefully considered? No. It came out over 40 years ago.

In the late 70's, the Trans Am was a highly desirable V-8 muscle car. Basic 4 cylinder 2020 model cars like a  Honda Civic are faster and use a lot less gas as the engineering has improved. But if Mr. Miyagi offered me a choice between those, I'd definitely take the Trans Am. The nostalgia is a big part of the appeal, and so is the style/sensibility.
That's a false comparison. Games don't improve like the engineering in technology. They're more like fashion, with popular styles changing over time.

Also, everyone knows that to hit rolls scale faster than AC. It's trivially obvious if you look at the rules, and it's blindingly obvious if you play the game. It's also incorrect to say offense scales faster than defense, because the to hit roll isn't a summary of offensive power, even if we just look at physical combat and ignore spells. Offense is a product of your ability to hit, and the damage you deal out. And the damage dealt out scales more slowly than hit points.

What happens is the game feels very swingy at low levels. Characters have about a 50% chance to hit an unarmored foe, and maybe a 5-10% chance to hit a heavily armored foe, and a single hit is frequently enough to kill. SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH HIT I WIN! The first shift as characters advance is PCs get better armor, which moves them from the lightly armored to heavily armored category, making fights much more survivable. Hit points also improve rapidly -- the difference between 1d8 and 2d8 hp is a 100% improvement, while the difference between 8d8 and 9d8 hp is only 12.5%. For simplicity, I'm ignoring the double bonus of magical armor (armor + shield) vs. the single bonus of weapons like a sword. But by name level, characters are hitting much more frequently, but doing comparably less damage. This makes combat more predictable, and also a lot safer. SWISH HIT HIT HIT SWISH HIT HIT I WIN! Hit points also become a lot more useful for assessing risk, because it's less dependent on a single luck roll.

The game designers were clearly aware of this. Gygax not only was obsessed with different systems (see his publications in various wargame journals, prior to OD&D), but it's worth remembering how intensely the early RPGs were played. Most gamers today are lucky to get a handful of friends together for a few hours, once a week or once a month. The Greyhawk and Blackmoor campaigns had dozens of players, who played multiple times per week, into the wee hours of the morning. Old versions of D&D can be criticized for many things, but unconsidered design and a lack of playtesting are not among them.


Thondor

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #43 on: March 01, 2021, 04:30:03 PM »
The game designers were clearly aware of this. Gygax not only was obsessed with different systems (see his publications in various wargame journals, prior to OD&D), but it's worth remembering how intensely the early RPGs were played. Most gamers today are lucky to get a handful of friends together for a few hours, once a week or once a month. The Greyhawk and Blackmoor campaigns had dozens of players, who played multiple times per week, into the wee hours of the morning. Old versions of D&D can be criticized for many things, but unconsidered design and a lack of playtesting are not among them.

I think this is often overlooked. As Pat says, the mechanics published emerged from tons of playing, constantly, with lots of people. The rules may not be super clearly written (I prefer OSRIC for figuring out the rules) but there is a huge amount of experiential context in the 1e books. Some of the rules seem weird, counter-intuitive etc, but at the table, with the right frame of mind they can really sing -- and the mechanics fade into the background. The focus stays on: "What do you do?" Then the GM adjudicates what happens.

I ran a 1e campaign for multiple years after 3.5 (and have revisited the system a few times since), running as "by the book as I could manage" but I've still picked up a lot of interesting context from this thread. I agree that while it certainly feels like a game -- newer versions of D&D feel more "gamey" to me then most OSR games. The later are more organic, and seem to have

The actually playing thing is so important. I think very few games these days get the kind of playtime that D&D did at it's genesis. Some games seemed to be released with no appreciable play at all. This I can't fathom. I certainly didn't get the kind of constant multiple games a week, with large player base when I was working on Simple Superheroes that D&D managed. But I did run it for 5 years, with multiple campaigns and different players, and ran it over 200 times at conventions with players making characters before I even ran the kickstarter.

Spending a lot of time playing makes the resulting game design . . . perhaps not complete, but sufficient or even ample for the needs of actual play.



 

Conanist

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Re: OSR Combat Math's: What does it mean?
« Reply #44 on: March 01, 2021, 05:59:28 PM »
Old versions of D&D can be criticized for many things, but unconsidered design and a lack of playtesting are not among them.

All right. Why is a THAC0 chart and descending AC better than (or equal to) ascending AC and a flat bonus to hit, using the exact same numbers but presenting them in a different way?

How long did it take for you to figure out how those numbers work and stop using the chart? Why didn't they?

Do you play cards? What is your opinion of Texas Hold Em? Just a modern preference or an improvement on the game?

I'm not trying to rip into GG or anyone, I just think its natural for any idea to be improved upon over time.