TheRPGSite

I'm re-discovering my love for my Rules Cyclopedia version of BECMI - this is clearly the tightest and most functional edition of 'core' D&D, and would be my hands down favorite if it had better art.

That said, I am at a loss as to how anyone could play a thief in this edition without going crazy waiting to get a skill or two up to a useful percentage. For the first ~5 levels of experience, thieves have incredibly low chances to succeed at core activities, and there is no mechanism for jacking up the odds to some reasonable level (i.e., no racial or attribute based bonuses, as in 1E AD&D). They are basically useless characters unless you do something to up their abilities.

I'm struck with the idea of treating thief skills as just like any other skill in the BECMI skill system. It would be in keeping with the basic structure of the game, at least. But that would radically increase the odds of success and mostly divorce chances of success from level advancement, which seems bad.

How do the rest of you deal with this?

I think that it is a great idea.  This will allow you to also modify the rolls based upon circumstance, difficulty, gear, and etc.

I'd adopt a thief skill system that better suits you from one of several compatible retro-games. LotFP uses 1d6 and loses granularity but leads to quicker growth. AS&SH's is 1d12-based, which actually strikes me as a neat compromise. ACKS uses the ever-popular 1d20 roll-high.

One of the methods I've seen lately is the use of the B/X Thief skills progression table used with a higher Level Progression. The Level progression goes to 20+ but the Thief skills cap out at L14.

The problem with RC Thief was the fact they were trying to spread the skill progression over 36 levels which just broke the Thief completely IMHO. By using the B/X progression, the Thief is still viable at lower levels, and they will cap their Thief skills at 14 instead of actual Level cap.

I like my house rules to be pretty minimalist, as I feel like most totally novel mechanics end up being at least as broken as what they were meant to fix.

So, I was thinking of treating Thief skills a special set of skills, where instead of having your success chance equal your stat on a d20, it equals half your stat (round properly) plus your level, with suggested modifiers that more or less equal what we might today call the level of the challenge (e.g., a trap in a '5th level dungeon' might be -5 to spot or remove).

What I like about this idea is that it is rooted in the skill system you already use for every character in BCEMI, but allows for level progression and starting chances that are more or less in the range of chances for fighter attacks, etc.

The only thing that would require a serious tweak is how you resolve climbing; i.e., if your chance to succeed at a climb is ~50 %, the penalty for one failure shouldn't be instant death. Maybe the penalty for a first failure is just that you give up or can't make more progress unless you make a second risky effort, where that second effort leads to a fall if it fails. Or something like that.

My take is to jettison the self justifying bitches and make thief a background option. :)

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;745970The problem with RC Thief was the fact they were trying to spread the skill progression over 36 levels which just broke the Thief completely IMHO. By using the B/X progression, the Thief is still viable at lower levels, and they will cap their Thief skills at 14 instead of actual Level cap.

Agreed. Just using the B/X progression is the easiest fix. It's also important to keep in mind what Thief skills are, and aren't. For example, Move Silently isn't your chance of quietly getting close to someone (that would be a Surprise roll), it's the chance of being completely silent. Similarly, a Climb Walls check isn't for climbing a tree, rope, or sloped rock face, it's for climbing sheer surfaces. Open Locks is for when you don't want to bash through a door, or smash open a chest. Find Traps is for the stuff you didn't or can't find through player interaction, making it like an extra saving throw. Keeping this in perspective helps ameliorate the pressure on the Thief who is probably only going to make ~20% of their low-level checks. You can also grant bonuses to the chances for some tasks that are particularly easy, but still within the purview of only the Thief.

The other thing that helps a low-level Thief is avoiding catastrophic consequences for routine checks. For some checks this is unavoidable (e.g. Climb Walls), and others have specific stipulations (e.g. Pick Pockets and the victim's level/chance to notice), but not every failed check should end in disaster (e.g. failing Find Traps doesn't trigger the trap). Also try to avoid stacking multiple checks into a single operation just because; the worst offender for this, in my experience, is Move Silently and Hide in Shadows to surprise or Backstab someone, leaving a 1st level Thief a 2% total chance of success. That's just bad DMing, as most circumstances aren't going to require both (or possibly either; for example, a previously hidden Thief attacking from the rear against an opponent engaged with the rest of the party).

The last important piece of the puzzle is making sure the Thief player understands the capabilities and limitations of their character. Trying to Hide in Shadows to surprise and Backstab an Ogre when scouting alone is a foolish proposition. Climbing a 40' wall is risking certain death. Choose options that have reasonable chances for success and consequences for failure that you can live with. And, above all, get support from the rest of the party.

Keeping the points above in mind, you can actually play a BECMI Thief RAW. It's hard, certainly, but quite doable. I still get the desire to "fix" the Skill percentages, and B/X is the most straightforward way of doing so.

I've heard that Frank Mentzer is currently working on revising the thief's skill progression.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;745979My take is to jettison the self justifying bitches and make thief a background option. :)

What is this supposed to mean?

Quote from: Larsdangly;745998What is this supposed to mean?

It means that the class only exists if you tell the other classes that only thieves can do thief stuff.  The thief was the unfortunate beginning of the character sheet defines all mentality.

Bobblah summed things up fairly well. The core activities of the thief were available to the other classes to a great extent. Once these were codified and assigned probabilities, a large portion of the player base interpreted that as a transfer of those abilities to the thief instead of the thief having a bit of an edge in those areas-which IMHO isn't enough to base an entire class around.

Only by denying the other classes of those abilities does the thief class have a place at the table, thus it is a self justifying class.

That's fine, but there actually aren't any rules to speak of that cover what the thief does, other than the rules for the thief class. There is a surprise die roll, but that isn't really the same thing as a move silent attempt. There are no climbing rules. There are generic saves vs. traps but no spot or remove trap rolls that are explained outside of the thief class. So, while I agree that any character should be able to attempt anything they want, the game is actually mute on most of these points. You can make it all up by house rules, but that is sort of a stupid point — you could say the same thing about any subject you wish.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746011That's fine, but there actually aren't any rules to speak of that cover what the thief does, other than the rules for the thief class. There is a surprise die roll, but that isn't really the same thing as a move silent attempt. There are no climbing rules. There are generic saves vs. traps but no spot or remove trap rolls that are explained outside of the thief class. So, while I agree that any character should be able to attempt anything they want, the game is actually mute on most of these points. You can make it all up by house rules, but that is sort of a stupid point — you could say the same thing about any subject you wish.

This is a wordier way to say "anything not expressly forbidden is permitted", which was the standard for the game as originally published.

+ Dexterity?

The axiom that anything not forbidden is permitted is a fine philosophical stance, and I value that D&D grognards hold onto this idea, but it is not a useful quotation to throw around when thinking about the way the game actually works. It basically says that you are allowed to tip toe or climb a wall or whatever, regardless of your class. But HOW are you supposed to resolve these things? The game says nothing. Of course you can make it up; I can make up anything I want any time I choose. But that is a crappy rationalization for bad game design. You could say the same thing about attack rolls and saves vs. death rays and so forth, and the game provides plenty of rules for those. Basically, the original designers of D&D kind of shit the bed when it comes to core rules for things other than fighting - even very simple things that come up all the time - and for whatever reason they never went back and tidied it up when the opportunity presented itself. Compare the way Basic D&D was evolving ca. 1978-80 to what Chaosium was presenting in its games. Runequest gives you a simple mechanic in a few easy pages that covers all this stuff. It would have been so easy to do right!

I think perhaps that if you don't actively enjoy making up things for the parts where the rules are silent.....then maybe you're trying to crawl into bed with the wrong game.


You mention something along the lines of "thinking about the way the game actually works".  The way the game actually works is "enjoy making up stuff for where the rules are silent".

You either like doing that or you don't.  If you don't, don't torture yourself.  Find a more fitting game.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746026The axiom that anything not forbidden is permitted is a fine philosophical stance, and I value that D&D grognards hold onto this idea, but it is not a useful quotation to throw around when thinking about the way the game actually works. It basically says that you are allowed to tip toe or climb a wall or whatever, regardless of your class. But HOW are you supposed to resolve these things? The game says nothing. Of course you can make it up; I can make up anything I want any time I choose. But that is a crappy rationalization for bad game design. You could say the same thing about attack rolls and saves vs. death rays and so forth, and the game provides plenty of rules for those. Basically, the original designers of D&D kind of shit the bed when it comes to core rules for things other than fighting - even very simple things that come up all the time - and for whatever reason they never went back and tidied it up when the opportunity presented itself. Compare the way Basic D&D was evolving ca. 1978-80 to what Chaosium was presenting in its games. Runequest gives you a simple mechanic in a few easy pages that covers all this stuff. It would have been so easy to do right!

Why do you think that you're less competent at coming up with some method for resolving such actions than those "professional game designers" who simply happen to have their names on the covers of a few books?

I understand and like lots of games, including old school D&D. That doesn't mean I can't notice when they have obviously screwed up.

The notion that old school D&D has done us a favor by leaving open room for improvising sounds great, and it is great when you are talking about settings and roleplaying social interactions, and monster powers, and ancient spells, and so forth. But it doesn't wash when you are talking about basic mechanics of events that come up all the time and probably have to be resolved with a die roll. Would we say it was 'creative' if they had forgotten to tell us the AC rating of half the armors in the equipment table? Or if they had left off the saving throw numbers for half the classes? Of course we could make those things up. But we shouldn't have to, and it would sow pointless chaos by having every person who plays the game make them up on the spot. It is particularly frustrating given how many rules there are for other things.

If you are going to have a game that specifies rules and takes them seriously, those rules should be unobtrusive but useful, self consistent and relevant to the sorts of things you are trying to adjudicate. That isn't a statement about D&D; it is a statement about not having your head up your ass when designing a game with rules. Unfortunately, arguably the best table top role-playing game ever made was written by people who couldn't get it done on this count.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746068If you are going to have a game that specifies rules and takes them seriously, those rules should be unobtrusive but useful, self consistent and relevant to the sorts of things you are trying to adjudicate.

Code name: 3.x
It's common knowledge that when Gary and Co. started getting letters asking for more of this sort of thing, they scratched their heads and wondered why these people couldn't just do what they did and make up their own rules. D&D was originally conceived as a loose framework to be filled in by each playing group as they saw best.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746026The axiom that anything not forbidden is permitted is a fine philosophical stance, and I value that D&D grognards hold onto this idea, but it is not a useful quotation to throw around when thinking about the way the game actually works. It basically says that you are allowed to tip toe or climb a wall or whatever, regardless of your class. But HOW are you supposed to resolve these things? The game says nothing. Of course you can make it up; I can make up anything I want any time I choose. But that is a crappy rationalization for bad game design. You could say the same thing about attack rolls and saves vs. death rays and so forth, and the game provides plenty of rules for those. Basically, the original designers of D&D kind of shit the bed when it comes to core rules for things other than fighting - even very simple things that come up all the time - and for whatever reason they never went back and tidied it up when the opportunity presented itself. Compare the way Basic D&D was evolving ca. 1978-80 to what Chaosium was presenting in its games. Runequest gives you a simple mechanic in a few easy pages that covers all this stuff. It would have been so easy to do right!

Can a character tie his shoes?

There is nothing specifically in the rules that says he can so I suppose adventures the multiverse over walk around with untied shoes. :rolleyes:

In an abstract archetype driven game there will be many things the everyman can just do. If you prefer that every capability be detailed and noted, there are systems better suited to the task than D&D.

As to the "how?" of the resolution its actually quite simple. Look at the situation that is actually occuring in the game and assign a success probability based on present circumstances.

A fighter wants to sneak past some guards at night, and is taking precautions to be quiet (wearing dark clothing, no noisy armor, and moving slowly and carefully) and the guards are in "secure" area and prone to laziness- 85% to succeed.

Hey that fighter is only first level! Why such a high chance?

The circumstances were very favorable. Success chances based on actual conditions beat the hell out of static by the rules dictated fail rates. This gives the player more control and more options to mitigate failure factors . The player has incentive to engage with the in-game situation and make a difference rather than serve as just a die rolling monkey engaging the rules.

You can call this bad game design if you wish, but from a players POV, I prefer the actual situation and an ability to influence it more satisfying gameplay than pushing ability buttons on a character sheet. YMMV.

Then why would you use any rules at all? When that fighter swings a sword at an ogre, do you use the rules to resolve whether or not he hits and what damage he does, or do you just wipe the slate clean and make up something from scratch that makes sense? 10 bucks says, if you tell the truth, you always or almost always use the rules. WHY?

Quote from: Larsdangly;746078Then why would you use any rules at all? When that fighter swings a sword at an ogre, do you use the rules to resolve whether or not he hits and what damage he does, or do you just wipe the slate clean and make up something from scratch that makes sense? 10 bucks says, if you tell the truth, you always or almost always use the rules. WHY?

No matter what game I run, I tend to use the rules that exist and make up the ones that don't.  

And no matter what game you play, there are going to be things that come up that aren't covered by the rules.  It's a continuum.  Some games cover more than others.  BD&D covers less than most.  But it's not like BD&D having you come up with stuff is unique.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746078Then why would you use any rules at all? When that fighter swings a sword at an ogre, do you use the rules to resolve whether or not he hits and what damage he does, or do you just wipe the slate clean and make up something from scratch that makes sense? 10 bucks says, if you tell the truth, you always or almost always use the rules. WHY?

The choice isn't between rules and no rules. It's between your rules and someone else's rules, someone who has no knowledge of what's going on at your game table. Most of us probably do use the combat rules more-or-less as written, because we find that they work well enough for what they were designed to do. But at the same time, if I found that they didn't work the way I think they should, I wouldn't hesitate to replace them with my own. A perfect example is the weaponless combat rules in the DMG. Almost everyone finds that they're clunky and unwieldy, so they make up their own to replace them. That's not a design flaw in AD&D, that's how it's supposed to be done.

I played a B/X thief just recently. I made it all the way to 3rd level before I committed suicide to avoid having to play Tower of the Stargazer anymore.

Anyway, at no time during his life did it ever seem like any rules were missing. No did I ever feel useless. Sure, once melee started my impact was minimal but that was only a small portion of game time.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;746083Anyway, at no time during his life did it ever seem like any rules were missing.

I think what Lars means is that rules are missing for the non-theives who want to try similar things.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746026Of course you can make it up; I can make up anything I want any time I choose. But that is a crappy rationalization for bad game design.

I wish this argument would proverbially die in the proverbial fire.  In TSR D&D, at least up until 2nd Edition, the rules are not the medium for interacting with the game.  The DM is the medium for interacting with the game.  So-called "rules" (guidelines, really) are just handy, but perforce limited, structures to help the DM adjudicate.  It was not expected that everything, or even most things, the players do would require a resolution roll, let alone a hard-and-fast rule.  That may not be design you like or a way you want to play, but it does not make it "bad design".

Quote from: Larsdangly;746078Then why would you use any rules at all? When that fighter swings a sword at an ogre, do you use the rules to resolve whether or not he hits and what damage he does, or do you just wipe the slate clean and make up something from scratch that makes sense? 10 bucks says, if you tell the truth, you always or almost always use the rules. WHY?

And this argument should join the other one in fiery doom.  That DMs like having a few handy structures to turn to for help in adjudication does not mean that everything must be so resolved, or else no rules used at all.  The game cannot, and specifically does not attempt to provide resolution mechanics for everything the DM might have to adjudicate, because every DM will have a different threshold for necessity.  The game provides a base on which a DM may expand or shrink as fits his needs.  Feature, not bug.

I think the starting percentages are a bit too low really, but if you can get to around level 5 the Cyclopedia thief becomes more competent. But after level 5 or so the Cyclopedia starts to stretch out the progression unnecessarily.

Keep in mind that the  thieves abilities are mostly through training. Climbing sheer surfaces without at least a little training is unlikely to go well. Detecting traps, yadda yadda. And the PCs can test for traps, there is that 10ft pole for a reason. They just arent going to be as good ever as someone whos devoting time into learning all the nuances of ever more sophisticated traps and tricks. Why should a fighter be able to do everything a thief can?

This is one area where 3rd eds skill system was viable. You COULD have a fighter with some thieving skills. IF you blew points into it.

One option that was used way back was to adapt the class creation system and just tack on an EXP penalty if someone wanted to pick up some abilities outside their class.

Quote from: Larsdangly;745960That said, I am at a loss as to how anyone could play a thief in this edition without going crazy waiting to get a skill or two up to a useful percentage...How do the rest of you deal with this?

I wouldn't use the BECMI/RC Thief.  

I also wouldn't go with "general skills," which I think are pretty crap as a mechanism in D&D, to begin with.  

You could use the '81 B/X version, although even that may not completely satisfy.  You could roll your own Thief class.  And/or you could think about how Thief abilities should work with the rest of D&D system.

For example, take the example of a PC sneaking up on a guard.  Anyone can attempt this: Fighter, Thief, MU, whatever.  The core built-in mechanism for handling this kind of thing is the surprise check.  However, the Thief has the possibility of moving with no sound at all.  If he succeeds, he increases his chance to surprise.  If he fails to move silently, it shouldn't mean his entire attempt to sneak up on the guard fails.  It means he's moving quietly (like a Fighter might), rather than silently.  He'd still have the normal chance to surprise, just no extra bonus from moving silently.

As far as rolling your own Thief, I made a quick pass at something along those lines, somewhere...[runs off to Google]...here it is (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=281470&postcount=6):

QuoteLevel/HD/Attacks as Supplement I Thief

Stealth - When actively sneaking or hiding, the Thief gets +1 to surprise (e.g. instead of a standard 2:6 chance of surprise, the Thief gets a 3:6 chance of surprise). At level 9, this increases to +2 to surprise. (Note that a group uses the surprise chance of the least stealthy group member.)

Perceptive - The Thief is only surprised on a 1:6, rather than the standard 2:6. He can detect secret doors on a roll of 1-3. When listening, he hears noises on a roll of 1-2. At level 6, his ability to hear noises improves to 3-6.

Mechanical Manipulation - With proper tools, the Thief has a chance of opening mechanical locks without damaging them, or of removing or disabling small mechanical traps, like spring-loaded poison needles and the like. (Note that traps can also be disabled or bypassed with other precautions, described in-play.) His chances to do so are as follows:
Level 1-4 = 2:6 (roll 1-2 on 1d6)
Level 5-8 = 3:6 (roll 1-3 on 1d6)
Leve 9+ = 4:6 (roll 1-4 on 1d6)

Sneak Attack - When making a melee attack on an enemy who is unaware of the PC, a successful attack deals maximum damage. At level 5, this improves to maximum damage + 1d6. At level 9, this improves to maximum damage + 2d6.

Amazing Climber - The Thief can climb sheer surfaces that most would find impossible without ropes and climbing gear. His chances to climb such surfaces are as follows:
Lvl 1-4 = 17:20 (roll 4-20 on a d20)
Lvl 5-8 = 18:20 (roll 3-20 on a d20)
Lvl 9+ = 19:20 (roll 2-20 on a d20)

That was done off-the-cuff, isn't playtested, and had original D&D (rather than B/X) in mind, but it might be a decent jumping off point.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746078Then why would you use any rules at all? When that fighter swings a sword at an ogre, do you use the rules to resolve whether or not he hits and what damage he does, or do you just wipe the slate clean and make up something from scratch that makes sense? 10 bucks says, if you tell the truth, you always or almost always use the rules. WHY?

The rules are there to make it easier for me to resolve stuff.  I could indeed simply adjudicate combat, but using rules makes it easier.

My players do not have copies of the rules, only I do.  The rules are my notes that I've taken to make the game easier for me to referee.  I don't want more rules than are in the original three little brown books of D&D.

The only rules I use are the to hit charts and saving throw charts and player character progression, because that makes life easier for me.  EVERYTHING else in the rules, from monster description to 3 characters fitting in a 10 foot wide corridor, is a suggestion.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;746075Can a character tie his shoes?

Ah, yes, the old SKILLS!  "Use Rope," "Eat Food," "Take Shit," and other necessary skills.

Any boob can hide behind a door, or in a dark room.  A thief can hide in SHADOWS, not darkness.

There are no rules for a fighter hiding behind a door because frankly Gary and Dave didn't think anybody was stupid enough to need them.

Thief abilities aren't "skills" as later RPGs define them.  They are "I win" buttons to bypass dungeon obstacles.

Suddenly, the (low) percentages actually start to make sense.

I'm not a big fan of universal mechanics in my D&D. The problem with a universal mechanic, a mechanic that is clearly labeled as the default resolution system for defining away uncertainty within the game state, is that it becomes very tempting to start phrasing the game's "reality" in terms of the mechanic. If all you need is a hammer, then everything is functionally a nail. Aside from that, you also get the issue of things which are Not The Same mechanically interfacing as if they were The Same, and thus "overloading the channel".

Suppose I'm playing a simple d100 system where I've got a target difficulty that I want to roll over. Simple, universal, easy to understand. Now I have a character type who should be good at doing X, so I write some mechanics to allow a character to get a bonus at X. And there's this magic item that should be good at doing Y, so I give it a bonus to all Y-related rolls. And then there's a race with a natural knack for Z, so whenever it's doing Z, it gets a bonus to the roll. And then somebody makes a character who is that race, that type, and using that magic item to do XYZ. Each bonus was individually meaningful, but stacked together they blow off the die. Attempting to make each factor count mechanically overloads the limited channel in which mechanical difference is allowed to manifest- the single d100 roll.

Okay, you say, just cap the maximum modifier on a given roll, or allow only the biggest modifier. That's simple, yes, but then you've just eradicated the mechanical distinction between those three elements. The single default mechanism only allows for so much mechanical granularity and meaning, and if it's the major resolution channel in the game, then every single mechanical modifier is going to be aimed straight at it. Over 473 splatbooks, these are more modifiers than any mortal designer can compass.

Against this, the BECMI/BX style thief abilities are less philosophically elegant, but they're also completely self-contained resolution systems. If you give a +5% to Move Silently to something, you aren't wondering what kind of obscure third-order effects you're going to be provoking. You have a much easier time controlling the inputs into that system, and you can tweak things so that the inputs are intuitive to the users because the entire sub-system is only dedicated to doing one thing. You don't need to master as much of the system to control the behavior of your mechanic in play.

I understand the philosophical arguments about free-form, DM led rules adjudication. And I suspect I play and like pre 3E D&D more than a lot of people who hang out here. But most of what gets said on this subject is rationalization that makes little sense.

Consider the following metaphor for old-school D&D vs. some more rationally built set of rules (say, ca. 1980 Runequest or TFT): Imagine you are hungry and get to choose between two baskets of food: one is a thoughtfully assembled balanced meal of PBJ, apple, and carrot sticks; the other is over flowing with roasted turkeys, chocolate cake and cold beers, but also contains a large tupperware container filled with dog shit. If you really like to eat, the second basket is the one to go with. But you are a fool if you pretend the dog shit is part of the feast.

Hmm, not doggy doo I smell though...something that regenerates, perhaps?

Quote from: Larsdangly;746109I understand the philosophical arguments about free-form, DM led rules adjudication. And I suspect I play and like pre 3E D&D more than a lot of people who hang out here. But most of what gets said on this subject is rationalization that makes little sense.

Trying to pass your gaming preferences as Objectively Better, especially by use of ham-handed metaphor involving canine fecal matter, won't earn you any friends, or even meaningful debate, around these parts. It feels dishonest to say that we're not really enjoying, or should not enjoy, what we tell you we enjoy; or that our taste in gaming is repulsive and wrong and not good for us, for that you know better than us what we like best.

This may be in part why theRPGsite has this reputation of being some sort of Grognard Alamut, where we spend our days high on OD&D hashish debating our visions of a descending-AC Paradise until the Old Pundit of the Mountain sends us forth to wage holy war against the Swine. People barge in with the Objectively Better Unified Mechanic spiel (and its twin sister, Rose-Tinted Glasses Nostalgia), get dogpiled (with good reason) and run back to some other site, further building on our reputation for throwing noobs into the roaring sacrificial pyres of the great god Gygax.

Nevertheless, I'm willing to attribute your choice of words to an honest mistake not made in bad faith. I'm going to suggest that you take a look at Castles & Crusades (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/105322/Castles--Crusades-Players-Handbook), a game that's very much true to the spirit of Old School D&D and uses a unified task resolution system. Sure, their task resolution system (the so-called SIEGE Engine) has its problems (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21683), but fret not; if you have the same issues with it as I've had, try my fix (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=503852&postcount=29) on for size.

Hope that helps. :)

Quote from: Old Geezer;746098There are no rules for a fighter hiding behind a door because frankly Gary and Dave didn't think anybody was stupid enough to need them.

Indeed, what people forget in these debates that the reason referees can make effective and consistent adjudications in the absence of rules is that a person can use reality as a guide. Likewise supernatural elements can be spelled out in ordinary prose which serves as the bases for adjudicating actions.

A good example of this is the D&D Vampire which is clearly derived from the popular fictional sources of the day including Stoker's book, Universal version, and Hammer Films version.

Where detailed rules comes into their own is when, a referee has an interest in the details but lacks the experience. The rules can be an effective method of conveying "This is how it works". For supernatural elements, the rules act as a shorthand for how the author intends those elements to work.

Finally, the point of tabletop roleplaying games is about the experience of being in another situation. The rules are just a tool to that end and not the focus.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746109I understand the philosophical arguments about free-form, DM led rules adjudication. And I suspect I play and like pre 3E D&D more than a lot of people who hang out here. But most of what gets said on this subject is rationalization that makes little sense.

Consider the following metaphor for old-school D&D vs. some more rationally built set of rules (say, ca. 1980 Runequest or TFT): Imagine you are hungry and get to choose between two baskets of food: one is a thoughtfully assembled balanced meal of PBJ, apple, and carrot sticks; the other is over flowing with roasted turkeys, chocolate cake and cold beers, but also contains a large tupperware container filled with dog shit. If you really like to eat, the second basket is the one to go with. But you are a fool if you pretend the dog shit is part of the feast.

You should stick to playing what you enjoy and keep your nose out of the dog shit.

What is this, rpg.net? I thought people around here were thick skinned enough to handle a salty metaphor or two. Maybe I just got too close to a sacred cow...

In any event, as I said above, I like pre-3E D&D plenty well enough - I consider it the best table top roleplaying game, so I don't think I need to stop playing it. I just think it is deeply flawed as a set of rules, in ways that were obvious at the time and haven't gotten better with age.

This game saw 5 pretty extensive revisions between 1977 and 1987. All of them, plus the original, are complicated, dense rules sets with lots of moving parts (to-hit tables; saving throw tables; shifting time and distance scales; variety of dice rolling mechanics; etc.). It is inaccurate to describe them as freeform or rules-light games. It is also inaccurate to say the intention was always for every group to have its own take on the rules — this was the default game of convention tournaments, and the main authorial statement of intent (introduction to the DMG) makes a point of telling us how important it is to have a shared set of rules. Even trivial things like THAC0 vs. to-hit tables (which are effectively exactly the same rule) led to endless arguments during this period, giving you a sense of how much importance the average player placed on the RAW.

Anyway, somehow, over all those editions and authors and hundreds and hundreds of pages of core rules, they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc. Explaining this as a philosophical stance just doesn't wash - that philosophy was apparently able to support pages of tables distinguishing the saving throws for death rays from those for petrification, pages of entirely novel mechanics for wrestling, and a bunch of other nonsense. The saving grace, of course, is that the authors had an incredibly creative and compelling vision of fantasy roleplaying, and fleshed out that vision with hundreds and hundreds of pages of amazing monsters, spells, items and adventures. But on some basic issues they were obstinate dopes.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159Anyway, somehow, over all those editions and authors and hundreds and hundreds of pages of core rules, they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc. Explaining this as a philosophical stance just doesn't wash - that philosophy was apparently able to support pages of tables distinguishing the saving throws for death rays from those for petrification, pages of entirely novel mechanics for wrestling, and a bunch of other nonsense.

Let's leave aside what the founding fathers did or didn't understand about the game. I've never been a devotee of the Cult of Gygax, but their design insights or flaws really aren't material when we're discussing whether a given piece of design is a good idea in the here-and-now. Is the fundamental rejection of a single unified resolution system a defensible choice, particularly when it intentionally leaves a resolution mechanism undefined for many foreseeable needs?

Yes. Yes, it is. There is a unified resolution system to early D&D. It's called "Ask the DM". It's incredibly powerful, cohesive, and streamlined, and virtually impossible to forget how to implement. Attempting to artificially reproduce the system with even a half-sheet of rules is apt to have unforeseen consequences in practice.

The purpose of any set of rules is simply to cue the DM as to useful ways to think about the resolution of a given state of game uncertainty. THAC0, saving throws, attribute checks, hit point damage- these are all just cueing frameworks to give the DM a basic toolbox for establishing game outcomes. To the degree they "work", they provide cues that the group as a whole find plausible and coherent. Unified resolution systems exchange this toolbox for a single tool, encouraging the DM to think about resolving all situations in this one particular way. That works wonderfully until that one particular way suddenly fails to cope with the context of the decision being made.

You ask why there's no clear, simple resolution mechanic to cover jumping, hiding, climbing, or whatnot. What clear, simple situations involving any of these things exist? What universal system is going to cover a pick-wielding athlete scrambling up a shallow slope as effectively as it handles an asthmatic oracle scrabbling up a sheer ice face while using short bursts of levitation? At best, it's going to kludge it, and if you're going to kludge it you might as well just acknowledge up front that it's fundamentally a question of DM judgment. You don't even need a half-page of rules for that.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159...they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc. ... apparently able to support pages of tables distinguishing the saving throws for death rays from those for petrification

I've done enough climbing, jumping, hiding and sneaking in real life to make some common sense rulings about those actions in the context of a game - in the event a ruling is even warranted.  

Neither I nor my players have yet to face death rays and/or petrification.  So guidance in those situations is a little more beneficial and much more useful in a game context.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159What is this, rpg.net? I thought people around here were thick skinned enough to handle a salty metaphor or two. Maybe I just got too close to a sacred cow...

Oh, we are. Trust me, if you think that was mean, just wait for some of the other posters to log in. :D

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159In any event, as I said above, I like pre-3E D&D plenty well enough - I consider it the best table top roleplaying game, so I don't think I need to stop playing it. I just think it is deeply flawed as a set of rules, in ways that were obvious at the time and haven't gotten better with age.

I'm just having a difficult time understanding what is it about TSR D&D in general, and the RC in particular, that you might want to capture. Because as you've made pretty clear, the rules it ain't. Which is why I suspect C&C might be a great fit for you, since it's essentially a tribute to AD&D 1e using a 1d20 roll-over unified task resolution mechanic.

I play lots of games with unified resolution and enjoy them immensely, but I find the multiplicity of subsystems part of D&D's charm. Not everyone believes "one size fits them all" when it comes to task resolution.

Larsdangly: Salty metaphors are fine, nonsensical ones aren't. If you believe there's a turd-in-a-box in OD&D, why don'tcha spell out what it is?

Here's how I think about the question of which events require (or benefit from) rule and which don't: if something is attempted that has some sort of significant consequence (like, you could die) and has an uncertain outcome (like, you shoot an arrow and don't know beforehand whether or not it will hit its target), then some sort of concrete rule, agreed upon before hand, is called for. And, this rule will likely involve a die roll if the event really has unpredictable elements in it. I suspect nearly everyone agrees these are the conditions that lead us to want to have formal rules and die rolls for things like attacks.

There are a variety of actions - most of them physical - that fit these conditions but are not attacks. As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. I wouldn't accept it if the DM had the job of declaring whether or not my attacks succeed. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll, like d20 vs. DX or something.

The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. I wouldn't accept it if the DM had the job of declaring whether or not my attacks succeed. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll, like d20 vs. DX or something.

You just did precisely what people have been telling you to do all along: come up with a rule of your own (d20 vs. DEX). There's a middle ground between a rule hard-wired into the system by the "professional" game designers and the DM "pulling something out of his ass" and declaring the result by mere fiat. That middle ground is the DM coming up with an appropriate randomizing procedure for the situation at hand that takes into account all or most of the variables that can't be determined beforehand and written into the rules.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173There are a variety of actions - most of them physical - that fit these conditions but are not attacks. As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. I wouldn't accept it if the DM had the job of declaring whether or not my attacks succeed. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll, like d20 vs. DX or something.

The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

Hey we are making progress!! We have a concrete example of what you are talking about.

If we approach this attempt in an actual game and not in a vacuum there will be factors that will help us come up with the best possible solution.

Who is jumping?

What armor/encumbrance? Is the character short like a dwarf or Halfling?

The environment?

Is there room to run? How much? Is the edge slippery or crumbling?

Player actions?

Does the character have a pole and want to try and vault instead of jump?


In the game world, these factors will be readily apparent and help provide (along with the character stats) the information required to come up with a ballpark success chance.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

See, this is where your metaphor was all confused - the whole "turd among the turkeys" thing implies that something you consider awful is included in TSR-era D&D, whereas what you're actually saying is that something is absent that you think is necessary.

Given that TSR-era D&D went some 25 years before it got retired, are you absolutely sure the necessity of those rules is as "obvious" as you think it is?

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159This game saw 5 pretty extensive revisions between 1977 and 1987. All of them, plus the original, are complicated, dense rules sets with lots of moving parts (to-hit tables; saving throw tables; shifting time and distance scales; variety of dice rolling mechanics; etc.).

The details got extensive revisions, the game itself remained the same until 2e's skills and powers. The result is that settings, adventures, and supplements are relatively interchangeable from early 2e to OD&D. Orders of magnitude easier than going to Rolemaster, GURPS, Hero system, etc.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159It is inaccurate to describe them as freeform or rules-light games.

OD&D, Moldavy/Cook B/X, and 2e core, I would characterize as freeform rules light systems. BECMI, and AD&D have more subsystems and details but they can easily be ignored in favor of the approaches taken by the other editions. In practice often were.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159It is also inaccurate to say the intention was always for every group to have its own take on the rules — this was the default game of convention tournaments, and the main authorial statement of intent (introduction to the DMG) makes a point of telling us how important it is to have a shared set of rules.

That is a defining characteristic of AD&D only. And in practice people ignored it anyway. 2e was designed to allow for a wealth of setting, OD&D had to be interpreted.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159Anyway, somehow, over all those editions and authors and hundreds and hundreds of pages of core rules, they never got it together to write the half page of instructions that would be needed to explain how you resolve the 5-10 most common non-combat challenges players face; e.g., climbing, jumping, hiding, sneaking, etc.

Tell me how to climb a 20 foot cliff. Seriously forget any game or system and explain to all of us how does a person climb a 20 foot cliff.

Or how does a person jump over a 5 foot gap.  

What you are failing to acknowledge is that OD&D was born of actual play. It wasn't designed it evolved in response to the crazy shit Old Geezer and his crew tried to do. Hence it only had rules when rules were needed to cover something that group did.

And this exerted a founder's effect on the subsequent editions. Once you understand its history D&D makes sense in why it is the way it is. The main failing of Gygax and TSR was not in the design of the game but that they failed to explain everything that was needed.

And in the alternate history where OD&D was presented much better, OD&D still wouldn't have rules for climbing, jumping, etc. Because the advice would have boiled down to "Use your fucking common sense.".

That what Old Geezer been trying to explain to you in his acerbic way.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746159But on some basic issues they were obstinate dopes.

I suggest you read Jon Peterson's Playing at the World (http://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047) because you obviously don't know shit about how D&D came about.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173As a simple example, say I try to jump over a 10' wide gap in a ruined wall. It isn't obvious whether or not I'll make it. 1' is obvious; 100' is obvious; 10' is not. What do we do? The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D.

Well circa 1970 Gygax and crew knew that the current world record for the running long jump was 29 feet and the current world record for a standing long jump was 12' Declared that what a 18 strength person could jump and scale it down from there. Say 10 strength is half of both values rounded to 15 feet and 6 feet.

Realizing that given time and consideration, failure become statistical noise. So only a on 1 on a d20 will you fail.

If you are in the middle of combat, then I would call for a saving throw with a bonus for shorter distances. This represents the character being able to focus enough to make the distance.The exact distance doesn't matter (other than the maximum) because the problem is being poised enough to setup for a jump in the first place.

All developed using the mechanics found in OD&D, reasonable knowledge, and common sense.

Now why didn't OD&D have an explanation or attempt to teach the reader how Gygax and Arneson did this?

That where the history of the game came into play. Gygax and Arneson wrote D&D targeting the audience they knew. The relatively close-knit circle of miniature wargamers that communicated regularly through the newsletters. They didn't write down the things they thought this group would automatically. And one of those things was a history with recreating historical battles with miniature and using third party referees to adjudicate disputes that arose during the game.

Which would have worked save for the fact that D&D exploded out of its niche into groups that didn't share the knowledge or experience of miniature wargamers.

Within a short amount time (from 1974 to 1977) Gygax figured out how to deal with this and had the Holmes basic set made as well as creating AD&D.

Alongside this OD&D was continued in the form of B/X and later BECMI.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173if something is attempted that has some sort of significant consequence and has an uncertain outcome, then some sort of concrete rule, agreed upon before hand, is called for.

The opinion you have expressed here is far from universal.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173The DM could pull something out of his ass that effectively declares the outcome, but that is unsatisfying in a game with the basic 'flow' of D&D. So, this sort of event calls for a rule and probably a die roll.

Again, this opinion is far from universal.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746173The turd in the basket of pre 3E D&D is that there are no rules for a half dozen really obvious things like this.

Menzter Red Box DM Booklet p. 20.  1983

...........................................................
New Rules

During the play of the game, a player will eventually try something not explained in these rules.

If a character wants to do something that could be based on an ability score, a test of that score could be used. For example, if a huge boulder blocks the corridor, and a Fighter says "I'll try to move it", this action is based on Strength.  The two ways a DM might handle this are:

1. If the Strength score or less is rolled on 1d20, the attempt succeeds. Penalties for heavier objects are decided by the DM by adding a number to the roll.

2. If the Strength score or less is rolled on 3d6, the attempt succeeds.  More or different dice are used for heavier objects (4d6, 5d4, 3d8, 5d6, and so forth).

Be sure to write down any rules you create, and apply them fairly to everyone.

These are only suggestions; you are free to make up any reasonable rules and apply them as needed.  
.........................................................


You can't get much more clear than that.

Quote from: Enlightened;746195You can't get much more clear than that.

I like that 3d6 rule, but I'd use 2d6 as the baseline. Strong characters then can't fail mundane checks, which seems reasonable to me, but they get tested by harder stuff.

(Re-theme statement as applicable for other attributes)

Quote from: Warthur;746184See, this is where your metaphor was all confused - the whole "turd among the turkeys" thing implies that something you consider awful is included in TSR-era D&D, whereas what you're actually saying is that something is absent that you think is necessary.

Given that TSR-era D&D went some 25 years before it got retired, are you absolutely sure the necessity of those rules is as "obvious" as you think it is?

The fact that ol' Lars has conflated brown box OD&D with AD&D shows he's already pretty confused.  The editorial intention of AD&D was drastically different from the editorial intention of OD&D.

I don't care about you guys and your discussion. I read the thread title, OP and then found this:

(http://i61.tinypic.com/o9prwy.png)

Make of it what you will. If it is of use, good.

To OP, some options you may toy around with:
Add the thief's dexterity to his skills (but add his Int to Find Traps and his Wisdom to Hear noise)

Allow the thief to use better armor at a penalty:
Scale imparts -20% to all skills
Chain armor -30%
Banded -40%
Plate -50%

Give the thief access to all weapons (like B/X did I'm not sure BECMI does)

Give Thieves improved backstab according to level a la AD&D.

If using Weapon Mastery (but I suggest you don't unless you heavily houserule most of it) allow only Fighters and Thieves to get mastery ranks above Basic.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;746300I don't care about you guys and your discussion.

That's okay, we don't care about you either, but here's a nice juicy dog turd for you to suck on.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;746300I don't care about you guys and your discussion. I read the thread title, OP and then found this:

[redacted]

Make of it what you will. If it is of use, good.

This is actually really good; thanks for that. Where did you find it?

And I agree with you about the discussion, which I abandoned a couple of pages ago!

Quote from: Larsdangly;746330And I agree with you about the discussion, which I abandoned a couple of pages ago!

Says the one who started the discussion (and posted one page ago).

Quote from: Old Geezer;746097The rules are there to make it easier for me to resolve stuff.  I could indeed simply adjudicate combat, but using rules makes it easier.

o.k., I'll bite: One last rejoinder - my argument in a nutshell, spoken out of the mouth of Old Geezer. This is perfect. Now just extend it by ~1 % so it covers all the stuff you do during the ~50 % of the time you aren't trying to hack someone's head off.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746334o.k., I'll bite: One last rejoinder - my argument in a nutshell, spoken out of the mouth of Old Geezer. This is perfect. Now just extend it by ~1 % so it covers all the stuff you do during the ~50 % of the time you aren't trying to hack someone's head off.

You didn't see THIS:

Quote from: Enlightened;746195Menzter Red Box DM Booklet p. 20.  1983

...........................................................
New Rules

During the play of the game, a player will eventually try something not explained in these rules.

If a character wants to do something that could be based on an ability score, a test of that score could be used. For example, if a huge boulder blocks the corridor, and a Fighter says "I'll try to move it", this action is based on Strength.  The two ways a DM might handle this are:

1. If the Strength score or less is rolled on 1d20, the attempt succeeds. Penalties for heavier objects are decided by the DM by adding a number to the roll.

2. If the Strength score or less is rolled on 3d6, the attempt succeeds.  More or different dice are used for heavier objects (4d6, 5d4, 3d8, 5d6, and so forth).

Be sure to write down any rules you create, and apply them fairly to everyone.

These are only suggestions; you are free to make up any reasonable rules and apply them as needed.  
.........................................................


You can't get much more clear than that.

There are a couple of options, and there are others around as well. Each playing group should choose the options that make the most sense for them.

There is no bog standard LAW that every table must follow nor should there be.

That's a good find but doesn't actually say anything broader than the AD&D strength tables. This implies a rules system for other kinds of events, in a way you might say other sub-systems in D&D do. But it isn't such a sub system. My gripe is simply that it would have taken trivial effort to tighten the whole thing up by providing a clear set of guidelines. It makes no sense to worry the game would be somehow ruined; saving throws use an elaborate sub-system with a bunch of unique tables and modifiers and address a fairly narrow set of circumstances; that didn't 'break' D&D.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746357That's a good find but doesn't actually say anything broader than the AD&D strength tables. This implies a rules system for other kinds of events, in a way you might say other sub-systems in D&D do. But it isn't such a sub system. My gripe is simply that it would have taken trivial effort to tighten the whole thing up by providing a clear set of guidelines. It makes no sense to worry the game would be somehow ruined; saving throws use an elaborate sub-system with a bunch of unique tables and modifiers and address a fairly narrow set of circumstances; that didn't 'break' D&D.

There are numerous ways to go about things. That is the beauty of a light rules system. Those who want to "tighten up" task resolution can do so quite easily.

Tighter rules can be beneficial OR they can be a giant stick up your ass.  Extra rules suggestions are simply handing you the stick without shoving it in. I much prefer the aforementioned stick an optional component than one rammed home by default.

Dave & Gary assumed players would be more comfortable without such a stick. It is kind of sad to see how many times this assumption was wrong.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;746358There are numerous ways to go about things. That is the beauty of a light rules system. Those who want to "tighten up" task resolution can do so quite easily.

Tighter rules can be beneficial OR they can be a giant stick up your ass.  Extra rules suggestions are simply handing you the stick without shoving it in. I much prefer the aforementioned stick an optional component than one rammed home by default.

Dave & Gary assumed players would be more comfortable without such a stick. It is kind of sad to see how many times this assumption was wrong.

Dave & Gary rammed an enormous number of large, pointy sticks up our asses; its just that the community mostly pulled them back out by ignoring the rules. Weapon vs. armor class tables? Weapon speed rules? Unarmed combat rules? How about those hit location rules in OD&D? I could go on.

This whole discussion is sort of like an argument about the bible between a talmudic scholar and atheistic copy editor. The talmudic scholar has infinite capacity to milk wisdom from the ambiguous words, but has to constantly engage in an orwellian double think to avoid noticing the obtuse inconsistencies in tone and content. The atheistic copy editor can come across as a soulless boor, but at least is living in reality and working toward something that makes sense.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746365Dave & Gary rammed an enormous number of large, pointy sticks up our asses; its just that the community mostly pulled them back out by ignoring the rules. Weapon vs. armor class tables? Weapon speed rules? Unarmed combat rules? How about those hit location rules in OD&D? I could go on.

This whole discussion is sort of like an argument about the bible between a talmudic scholar and atheistic copy editor. The talmudic scholar has infinite capacity to milk wisdom from the ambiguous words, but has to constantly engage in an orwellian double think to avoid noticing the obtuse inconsistencies in tone and content. The atheistic copy editor can come across as a soulless boor, but at least is living in reality and working toward something that makes sense.

Once again showing your tendency to conflate OD&D and AD&D.

Quote from: aspiringlich;746370Once again showing your tendency to conflate OD&D and AD&D.

Before you catch me in a Talmudic 'gotcha', check your scrolls. The ornate hit location rules I referred to are in ODD. Like I said in my post. I expect you'll find some other reason to point out I'm being a baffoon, but let's at least get our facts lined up.

We are basically in a culture clash here rather than a specific disagreement. I suspect I actually know, and play, and love old versions of D&D at least as well/much as most people here. But I have a world view that makes it seem lame to talk in reverential rationalizations every time someone notices and wants to talk about something wonky in the way it works. I think it is pretty obvious that the two signature traits of pre ~1995 D&D are outrageously creative imagination and appallingly poor engineering of the nuts and bolts parts of the rules (which all of us use constantly, no matter how many times you sniff at their irrelevance). It is humanly possible to love the sinner while hatting the sin.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746365Dave & Gary rammed an enormous number of large, pointy sticks up our asses; its just that the community mostly pulled them back out by ignoring the rules. Weapon vs. armor class tables? Weapon speed rules? Unarmed combat rules? How about those hit location rules in OD&D? I could go on.

This whole discussion is sort of like an argument about the bible between a talmudic scholar and atheistic copy editor. The talmudic scholar has infinite capacity to milk wisdom from the ambiguous words, but has to constantly engage in an orwellian double think to avoid noticing the obtuse inconsistencies in tone and content. The atheistic copy editor can come across as a soulless boor, but at least is living in reality and working toward something that makes sense.

Wow, way to demonstrate your ignorance of what the phrase "optional rules" means, ignorance of the heuristic of scriptural study, and astonishing need to tongue my pee hole all in one swell foop.

I wasn't tonguing your pee hole; you do enough of that to yourself, so I don't think any more is needed from me. I was actually quoting something you said that shows you agree with me even if you don't know it.

Anyway, this is less fun than I thought it would be. I don't mind the crude badinage, but the defensiveness and close mindedness is boring.

Perhaps the only additional thing worth noting is a positive example of what I'm talking about. Castles and Crusades is, in my opinion, the only version of D&D that gets close to that sweet spot between the creative voices of Gygax and other first-generation authors and a mechanical design that both retains the really strong 'gamey' structure of the original (levels, hit points, classes, etc.) and presents something more rational, intuitive and complete than the pile of scribbled house rules we got in most other editions.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746403Anyway, this is less fun than I thought it would be. I don't mind the crude badinage, but the defensiveness and close mindedness is boring.

Translation: I'm close-minded and like to think that my preferences are objectively superior because it makes me feel better about them. I mean, really...you're making yourself look like a complete tool. Sure, there are some people here who are close-minded, but you mostly haven't been talking to any of them in this thread. Most of those who have replied to you (myself included) don't even play 0D&D or AD&D (or even BECMI/RC, in my case) as our main game due to enjoying things that those games don't do. We're just not delusional enough to think those preferences are somehow objective. That's what the bulk of the responses have been trying to point out to you: that what you see as objectively superior is no such thing. And for people not agreeing with you on that point, they're close-minded?

Quote from: Larsdangly;746403Perhaps the only additional thing worth noting is a positive example of what I'm talking about. Castles and Crusades is, in my opinion, the only version of D&D that gets close to that sweet spot between the creative voices of Gygax and other first-generation authors and a mechanical design that both retains the really strong 'gamey' structure of the original (levels, hit points, classes, etc.) and presents something more rational, intuitive and complete than the pile of scribbled house rules we got in most other editions.

Well, I mean obviously if you like Castles and Crusades it's objectively better, amIright?!

This is absurd. I have been assuming, and will continue to assume, that anyone old enough to find their way onto this site can discuss or debate something without being constantly reassured that their debating opponents' statements are subjective opinions rather than the stentorian voice of god. Obviously everything people say that involves judging the relative merit of old games is subjective. And not very important, I might add.

That doesn't make all statements equally worthy - someone who thinks My Little Pony is as artistically worth while as Death of a Salesman has shared a subjective opinion, and it isn't in any objective sense 'wrong', but it is still obviously 'stupid'. That subtle nuance - that subjective opinions are not all equally interesting or worth while - is what drives people to express disagreements with each other over hobbies like 80's rap or old roleplaying games.

I'm embarrassed to even have to qualify the arguments I've made this much! And if you think that makes me sound dickish, I really don't care.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746412That doesn't make all statements equally worthy - someone who thinks My Little Pony is as artistically worth while as Death of a Salesman has shared a subjective opinion, and it isn't in any objective sense 'wrong', but it is still obviously 'stupid'.

The only ridiculous thing in this thread is how oblivious you are to being an arrogant ass. Equating "don't need a rule for everything vs. need a rule for everything" to "My Little Pony vs. Death of a Salesman" only shows how disdainful you are of a style of play different from the one you prefer. There are objective reasons for why a preference for My Little Pony over Death of a Salesman is stupid; there are none for why your preference for hard-wired rules for things like swimming and climbing is better than our preference for adjudicating such things on the spot. In fact, a number of us have suggested that there are objective reasons for just the opposite view. Yet we're the philistine fundamentalists and you're the enlightened bearer of Truth.

Quote from: Larsdangly;745960I'm re-discovering my love for my Rules Cyclopedia version of BECMI - this is clearly the tightest and most functional edition of 'core' D&D, and would be my hands down favorite if it had better art.

That said, I am at a loss as to how anyone could play a thief in this edition without going crazy waiting to get a skill or two up to a useful percentage. For the first ~5 levels of experience, thieves have incredibly low chances to succeed at core activities, and there is no mechanism for jacking up the odds to some reasonable level (i.e., no racial or attribute based bonuses, as in 1E AD&D). They are basically useless characters unless you do something to up their abilities.

I'm struck with the idea of treating thief skills as just like any other skill in the BECMI skill system. It would be in keeping with the basic structure of the game, at least. But that would radically increase the odds of success and mostly divorce chances of success from level advancement, which seems bad.

How do the rest of you deal with this?

We've come a long way from this OP.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746403Perhaps the only additional thing worth noting is a positive example of what I'm talking about. Castles and Crusades is, in my opinion, the only version of D&D that gets close to that sweet spot between the creative voices of Gygax and other first-generation authors and a mechanical design that both retains the really strong 'gamey' structure of the original (levels, hit points, classes, etc.) and presents something more rational, intuitive and complete than the pile of scribbled house rules we got in most other editions.

Which leads me back to my last, unanswered question.

Why do you want to play RC D&D, when C&C's got you covered?

Quote from: The Butcher;746438Which leads me back to my last, unanswered question.

Why do you want to play RC D&D, when C&C's got you covered?

This is actually a tough one, because C&C is the only recent D&D variant that gets close to the creative tone of the original. Let's just say I vacillate; some days original creative tone wins and I want to doctor up the loose ends in the craptastic mechanics, and some days great mechanics wins and I'm willing to put up with the dilution that comes with re-writing an original.

Quote from: aspiringlich;746414The only ridiculous thing in this thread is how oblivious you are to being an arrogant ass. Equating "don't need a rule for everything vs. need a rule for everything" to "My Little Pony vs. Death of a Salesman" only shows how disdainful you are of a style of play different from the one you prefer. There are objective reasons for why a preference for My Little Pony over Death of a Salesman is stupid; there are none for why your preference for hard-wired rules for things like swimming and climbing is better than our preference for adjudicating such things on the spot. In fact, a number of us have suggested that there are objective reasons for just the opposite view. Yet we're the philistine fundamentalists and you're the enlightened bearer of Truth.

I can't find the emoticon that gives someone a raspberry. So I'll just comment that some dudes are way too hormonally emotional about this shit.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746464I can't find the emoticon that gives someone a raspberry. So I'll just comment that some dudes are way too hormonally emotional about this shit.

Troll.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746464I can't find the emoticon that gives someone a raspberry.

It's :p

Thanks! That's sure to come in handy some day.

Yeah, I'd say at this point that you're either terminally stupid, or a rather ineffective troll.

Quote from: Bobloblah;746563Yeah, I'd say at this point that you're either terminally stupid, or a rather ineffective troll.

Why must we choose? ;)

Quote from: Exploderwizard;746566Why must we choose? ;)

There would need to be a rule for that

I might be stupid and a troll, but I'm definitely not sorry and I'm not going away. The original sin I got raked over the coals for in this thread, somewhere on page 2, was to stick to an opinion about a game when several people told me I just didn't understand what I was talking about. For several pages I stayed focused on opinions about the game while they focused on opinions about me and what I supposedly was too stupid to grasp. I never got pissed off at anyone (in fact I'm not pissed now); they quickly got defensive and fell back on ad hominem horse shit. So, it is pretty clear in my mind who the ass holes are here.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746463This is actually a tough one, because C&C is the only recent D&D variant that gets close to the creative tone of the original. Let's just say I vacillate; some days original creative tone wins and I want to doctor up the loose ends in the craptastic mechanics, and some days great mechanics wins and I'm willing to put up with the dilution that comes with re-writing an original.

Have you considered keeping most RC classes, while adopting the C&C task resolution mechanic?

That reminds me of one of my countless BD&D re-hash projects — things that are about an order of magnitude more complicated than a set of house rules, but not really a new game. I have a bunch of these sitting in folders; some tack Prince Valiant 'modules' onto Moldvay D&D, etc. A BD&D that had all the structure and content of the original but stripped out the original mechanics and replaced them with C&C's would be amazing. The Siege Engine is, in some respects, more in the spirit of BD&D than the BD&D is. I think of Basic as the game you play when you want to sit down, say fuck-all to the fiddly rules and just rock out with your crossbow out (or magic missile or whatever). And it is a lot like that, but still has all these tables and sub systems and stuff. Wouldn't it be great if it looked felt and smelled just the same, but replaced its mechanics with the 2-4 pages you would need to make it work like C&C?

No, not really. I don't particularly like C&C.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746582A BD&D that had all the structure and content of the original but stripped out the original mechanics and replaced them with C&C's would be amazing.

Come think of it, there's one OSR game that feels like B/X with a unified resolution mechanic: Spellcraft & Swordplay (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/94105/Spellcraft--Swordplay-Core-Rulebook). The one caveat is that it uses 2d6 instead of 1d20 for both combat and non-combat resolution (cribbed from Chainmail, actually). I'd say it's well wort a look; it might be exactly what you're looking for.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746582The Siege Engine is, in some respects, more in the spirit of BD&D than the BD&D is. I think of Basic as the game you play when you want to sit down, say fuck-all to the fiddly rules and just rock out with your crossbow out (or magic missile or whatever). And it is a lot like that, but still has all these tables and sub systems and stuff.

I do find the "tables and sub systems and stuff" part of the charm and simplicity of the game, but I guess we'll just agree to disagree there. :D

Quote from: Larsdangly;746582Wouldn't it be great if it looked felt and smelled just the same, but replaced its mechanics with the 2-4 pages you would need to make it work like C&C?

That is actually very easy to do. You don't even need to write anything down. Just roll up characters as per RC, and when play starts ignore the RC and use the C&C engine whenever you feel it's more sensible. That too is part of the beauty of GM-centric, rulings>rules design. ;)

Quote from: Exploderwizard;746566Why must we choose? ;)

:popcorn:

Quote from: The Butcher;746586I do find the "tables and sub systems and stuff" part of the charm and simplicity of the game, but I guess we'll just agree to disagree there. :D

If somebody thinks Basic D&D is too complex, they need a kind of help we are not competent to give them.

I recommend they flip a coin to resolve all actions.

Quote from: The Butcher;746586That is actually very easy to do. You don't even need to write anything down. Just roll up characters as per RC, and when play starts ignore the RC and use the C&C engine whenever you feel it's more sensible. That too is part of the beauty of GM-centric, rulings>rules design. ;)

No no no, there must be rules on how you can override the rules!!!

Larsdangly if you like simple, D&D-like, unified systems I can't reccomend Microlite 20 enough.
Go for Microlite 20 Essence (http://donjon.bin.sh/m20/Microlite20.pdf (http://donjon.bin.sh/m20/Microlite20.pdf)) if you want something really basic,
or try Dungeonfinder (a Microlite20 variant) for a full-fledged system.
My guess is you will love them.

If you want to keep with B/X I do have some extra suggestions.
Basic D&D has a task resolution system baked in: roll x or less on 1d6.
LOTFP is one of the clones that  made good use of it, you can too!

Give all characters a 1in 6 chance of doing things, including Thief skills.
Thieves have a 2 in 6 base chance.
Each level after first the thief can add 1 to one of his skills.
Armor heavier than leather imparts a -1 penalty, heavier than chain imparts a-2 penalty.
High Dexterity (13+) gives a +1 bonus, low dexterity (8-) gives a -1 penalty.
Difficult actions might impart a -1 penalty, while easy actions might give a bonus of +1 or more.

You can use this system for practically everything and it works like a charm keeping the game simple.
For example you could give non thieves extra skill points too (1 every two or three levels for example) and open up the skill list to other things.

Quote from: artikid;746617Larsdangly if you like simple, D&D-like, unified systems I can't reccomend Microlite 20 enough.
Go for Microlite 20 Essence (http://donjon.bin.sh/m20/Microlite20.pdf (http://donjon.bin.sh/m20/Microlite20.pdf)) if you want something really basic,
or try Dungeonfinder (a Microlite20 variant) for a full-fledged system.
My guess is you will love them.

If you want to keep with B/X I do have some extra suggestions.
Basic D&D has a task resolution system baked in: roll x or less on 1d6.
LOTFP is one of the clones that  made good use of it, you can too!

Give all characters a 1in 6 chance of doing things, including Thief skills.
Thieves have a 2 in 6 base chance.
Each level after first the thief can add 1 to one of his skills.
Armor heavier than leather imparts a -1 penalty, heavier than chain imparts a-2 penalty.
High Dexterity (13+) gives a +1 bonus, low dexterity (8-) gives a -1 penalty.
Difficult actions might impart a -1 penalty, while easy actions might give a bonus of +1 or more.

You can use this system for practically everything and it works like a charm keeping the game simple.
For example you could give non thieves extra skill points too (1 every two or three levels for example) and open up the skill list to other things.

Thanks for the tips. The system you describe does appeal to me; it actually reminds me of the basic approach I took with a Chainmail clone/homage that I circulated a year or two ago ('27th edition Platemail; you can find it online if you are curious). The 'sweet spot', rules wise, for me is something that reminds you of the basic structure of a table top skirmish game, but with the wide open setting and play structure of D&D. That is basically where I started with gaming, using Chainmail as the rules, and perhaps it is unsurprising that this is where I've ended up years later.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746403Castles and Crusades is, in my opinion, the only version of D&D that gets close to that sweet spot between the creative voices of Gygax and other first-generation authors and a mechanical design that both retains the really strong 'gamey' structure of the original (levels, hit points, classes, etc.) and presents something more rational, intuitive and complete than the pile of scribbled house rules we got in most other editions.

I have a different opinion, and no use for C&C, but if you feel that strongly about it I think you'd be better off just playing C&C instead of TSR D&D.

Larsdangly, yes I do know platemail 27th edition and found it interesting.

A further elaboration of the X in 6 universal system (courtesy of Paolo Greco, blogger extraordinaire).
Characters can get competent quite quickly, but let's say that a roll of 6 is always a failure.
This makes skill ratings higher than 5 useful! How?
On a roll of 6, a character with a skill of 6 or more gets to re-roll for success at (skill rating-5). If the character fails but the modified skill chance is still higher than 5 he gets a re-roll at (reduced skill-5) and so on.

It seems like C&C doesn't get much love around here; a couple negative 'sniffs' in one thread, and I haven't seen anyone else mention it. I find that surprising given how close it is to its 1E AD&D starting point and the involvement of Gygax in the last few years of his life. Any particular beefs with the system, or is the playing field just too crowded for it to get any attention?

C&C can be quite different from D&D in actual play.
The way Saving throws (and practically everything) scale is the main gripe.
Surprise is another hot topic.

Quote from: artikid;746946C&C can be quite different from D&D in actual play.
The way Saving throws (and practically everything) scale is the main gripe.
Surprise is another hot topic.

Do you mean the way your saving throw success chance scales more or less with the difference in level (or HD or equivalent) between yourself and the thing you are saving against? I always figured that was a good thing.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746943It seems like C&C doesn't get much love around here; a couple negative 'sniffs' in one thread, and I haven't seen anyone else mention it. I find that surprising given how close it is to its 1E AD&D starting point and the involvement of Gygax in the last few years of his life. Any particular beefs with the system, or is the playing field just too crowded for it to get any attention?

We're had a few threads (http://www.therpgsite.com/search.php?searchid=438273) about it in the past, this one (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=26888) being the most recent.

I obviously cannot speak for everyone, but (from this recent thread) this is my sticking point:

Quote from: The Butcher;664573Prime Attribute checks work off a base DC of 12 + Challenge Level, vs. a non-Prime's 18 + CL. All characters have to take a Class Prime (e.g. Dexterity for the Thief, Wisdom for the Cleric) and get to choose any one (two for humans) additional Primes.

One of the problems with this is that class skills hinge on non-class-requisite Primes. The best example is the Thief's ability to Find Traps which relies on Wisdom. A Cleric with Wisdom as a Prime will roll 1d20 + 6 (Prime) + Wisdom modifier, compared to the Thief without Wisdom as a Prime (1d20 + Wisdom modifier + level). Assuming the same Wisdom score, the Thief will take 6 levels (more likely 7 to 9 with a Cleric's very likely Wisdom 13+) to outperform the Cleric.

And this is my solution:

Quote from: The Butcher;664573Ditch the idea of Prime Attributes.

Ditch Challenge Levels. I use the D&D 3.0e DC table.

Resolve everything with 1d20 + ability score modifier + level. Everything. Saving throws, stealth, anything that calls for a roll.

If it's relevant to your character class, you get +5. So the Cleric gets +5 to identify a relic, the Ranger gets a +5 to find his way in the wilderness, your Thief gets a +5 to do all thiefy stuff.

If you're using Secondary Skills (which I sometimes do), +5 is good too. Your gemcutter Dwarf Thief rolls 1d20 + Int mod + level +5 to appraise a piece of jewelry, and your bowyer/fletcher Half-Elf Ranger can roll 1d20 + Int mod + level + 5 to craft his own arrows.

But isn't it true that a thief could chose to have wisdom as a prime? And, given that humans get three primes, won't many thief characters easily cover all the important skills with primes (i.e., Dex, Int and Wis)? It makes a certain amount of sense to me that a thief who chooses to have St or Con or Cha as a prime (maybe a brigand or confidence man?) would be kind of lame at some of the classic B&E skills.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746967But isn't it true that a thief could chose to have wisdom as a prime? And, given that humans get three primes, won't many thief characters easily cover all the important skills with primes (i.e., Dex, Int and Wis)? It makes a certain amount of sense to me that a thief who chooses to have St or Con or Cha as a prime (maybe a brigand or confidence man?) would be kind of lame at some of the classic B&E skills.

True, but if every Thief needs to have Dexterity and Wisdom as Primes, it's not much of choice. It's a "trap" and a false choice and I'm not a fan of this sort of game design.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746950Do you mean the way your saving throw success chance scales more or less with the difference in level (or HD or equivalent) between yourself and the thing you are saving against? I always figured that was a good thing.

I did not say good or bad, I said different. I've learned not to expect a precise and faithful "D&D experience" from C&C.

In D&D I expect a 10th level character to be fairly resistant to all kinds of harm, not so in C&C. The difference between Primary and Secondary attributes also plays its part.

In the end it largely depends on what you want at your table: if you expect character level to be an absolute indicator of a character's awesomeness/toughness C&C is "bad" and Old school D&D is "good".
If you want your heroes to be a little less tough and maybe just a tad more nuanced C&C is "good" and Old school D&D is "bad".

A personal note: I would have made the effect of level/HD as a modifier in the Siege Engine a little less powerful (I'd use half level/HD rounded up as a modifier) and would have lowered the base target for Secondary stats to 16.

The things I really hated in C&C were:
The silly encumbrance system.
The horrible amount of typos (another common gripe).
The vagueness of some things (like the magic item creation rules).
The way monster saving throws are handled.
Basically Monsters & Treasures is probably the worst thought-out/written and edited RPG book I can think of except for Decipher's LOTR rpg.

That said, don't think I hate C&C.
I enjoyed GMing C&C it's just that I'm used to be extremely critical of all games that I play, even those I actually love.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746943It seems like C&C doesn't get much love around here; a couple negative 'sniffs' in one thread, and I haven't seen anyone else mention it. I find that surprising given how close it is to its 1E AD&D starting point and the involvement of Gygax in the last few years of his life. Any particular beefs with the system, or is the playing field just too crowded for it to get any attention?

I played C&C for a while.  I liked it at first, but the more I played it, the more I found that grated on me.  I should say that what drew me to C&C in the first place was the idea that it was an "in print" game that played like TSR D&D.  The idea of being "in print" no longer matters to me, and the things I disliked about C&C were mostly where it differed from TSR D&D.  For a while I house-ruled C&C to try and make it more like TSR D&D, but eventually I realized I'd be a lot better off actually *playing* TSR D&D.

The thing that most annoyed me about C&C is the thing that many C&C fans like: the SIEGE engine.  Its use everywhere causes C&C to work in subtly (but significantly) different ways than TSR D&D, when the SIEGE engine replaces discrete subsystems like saving throws or surprise or class abilties.  There are other things I found different: spell choices for classes, the way classes are designed, et cetera.  C&C isn't necessarily bad or wrong, but it's often different, and usually different in a way that I dislike compared to TSR D&D.

As far as Gary's involvement, I'm unimpressed by claims that he was involved, if that tries to imply some sort of preference for C&C as a system.  I know for a fact that the material Gary wrote that was published for C&C was not written "in C&C."  (Nor was the C&C material Rob Kuntz authored.)  Instead, they wrote in AD&D terms, and relied on TLG editors to convert the material to C&C stats and equivalents.  In Gary's case, some of his material was written in Lejendary Adventures terms, prior to conversion by TLG.  Relying on TLG for editing expertise is probably somewhat risky in the best of circumstances, and when conversion between systems is involved it makes it even worse.  TLG has a deserved reputation for poorly edited products.  From what I hear, that hasn't changed, even with some of their recent "premium" kickstarter efforts.

I don't hate C&C, by any means.  I'd rather play C&C than something like 3E, for example.  However, C&C doesn't fill a useful need, for me.  I can play TSR D&D, or a very close clone like OSRIC, which doesn't have some of the drawbacks I find in C&C.  And C&C being "in print" is no great advantage, these days.  There are more OSRIC and S&W and LL and other "OSR" supplements being published, today, than I can keep track of.  That's really what it boils down to, for me.  C&C just doesn't offer me anything I want or need.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;747134The thing that most annoyed me about C&C is the thing that many C&C fans like: the SIEGE engine.  Its use everywhere causes C&C to work in subtly (but significantly) different ways than TSR D&D, when the SIEGE engine replaces discrete subsystems like saving throws or surprise or class abilties.

Yeah.

At best, "uniform resolution mechanic" is a null for me.  And I see absolutely no need to take a game I know and like like OD&D and take away things like the saving throw table and different advancement rates for XP "just because."

That the thing, isn't it? At some point after playing "game X that emulates game Y you played years ago" you wonder what stops you from playing game Y, exactly. Answer: not one thing. So you end up playing the game you actually wanted to play all along, not the game that claims to be "just like it".

Quote from: estar;746185The details got extensive revisions, the game itself remained the same until 2e's skills and powers. The result is that settings, adventures, and supplements are relatively interchangeable from early 2e to OD&D. Orders of magnitude easier than going to Rolemaster, GURPS, Hero system, etc.

OD&D, Moldavy/Cook B/X, and 2e core, I would characterize as freeform rules light systems. BECMI, and AD&D have more subsystems and details but they can easily be ignored in favor of the approaches taken by the other editions. In practice often were.

That is a defining characteristic of AD&D only. And in practice people ignored it anyway. 2e was designed to allow for a wealth of setting, OD&D had to be interpreted.

Tell me how to climb a 20 foot cliff. Seriously forget any game or system and explain to all of us how does a person climb a 20 foot cliff.

Or how does a person jump over a 5 foot gap.  

What you are failing to acknowledge is that OD&D was born of actual play. It wasn't designed it evolved in response to the crazy shit Old Geezer and his crew tried to do. Hence it only had rules when rules were needed to cover something that group did.

And this exerted a founder's effect on the subsequent editions. Once you understand its history D&D makes sense in why it is the way it is. The main failing of Gygax and TSR was not in the design of the game but that they failed to explain everything that was needed.

And in the alternate history where OD&D was presented much better, OD&D still wouldn't have rules for climbing, jumping, etc. Because the advice would have boiled down to "Use your fucking common sense.".

That what Old Geezer been trying to explain to you in his acerbic way.

I suggest you read Jon Peterson's Playing at the World (http://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047) because you obviously don't know shit about how D&D came about.

This is just the same old argument that gets trotted out and its bollocks.
Lar's point is entirely valid in as much as there are a dozen basic things that early D&D fails to define.
It is totally unimportant where D&D came from and its roots and blah blah all totally meaningless. By the time OD&D had morphed into AD&D the old mind set had gone and gygax et al should have defined some basic ways to adjudicate.
the fact that you are challenging someone as to how you climb a 20 foot cliff proves that even you believe its not simple. So what makes you think that a random DM is going to have a better grasp of it that the designer who could have you know done some research.
Lar's isn't asking that every little thing be defined merely that the broad strokes be defined and I think he would be happy with a statement saying what parameters the DM should consider and what typical resolution mechanics could be used. There are a couple of these in the DMG if I recall. catching a scroll case as it spins past in a stream appears in a DMG play example and I think the DM assigns a to hit to it ratherthan a dex check...

So you don't need rules for everything but you need to give a structure through which rulings can be made. And for the top dozen things a simple explanation with examples woudl be great. Like Lars said Runequest has it at this point and so do all the other games coming out.

Quote from: jibbajibba;747151the fact that you are challenging someone as to how you climb a 20 foot cliff proves that even you believe its not simple. So what makes you think that a random DM is going to have a better grasp of it that the designer who could have you know done some research.

Total bullshit. Do you honestly think the designers of 3e researched the physiology of climbing, or the political science of diplomacy, when cooking up their rules for these skills? They threw down something that was more-or-less consistent with the overall system and left it at that ... which, yes, any DM past 8th grade can do.

Quote from: aspiringlich;747172Total bullshit. Do you honestly think the designers of 3e researched the physiology of climbing, or the political science of diplomacy, when cooking up their rules for these skills? They threw down something that was more-or-less consistent with the overall system and left it at that ... which, yes, any DM past 8th grade can do.

Not denying they didn't do it merely saying they could have done it and in fact should have done it.

Take the catching the scroll case going past in the stream. Now I am recallign this and it's been what 20 years since I read it and my books are all in the UK but in the extended play example in the DMG that is near the sample dungeon map on graph paper (sorry this is vague but I am getting old). The call is a scroll case or similar whizzing down a fast stream and the DM calls that the player needs to roll a to hit vs AC6 (??) to catch it. Now most of us would call for a dex check the odds therefore are wholly different.
Is there an explicit rule that says when trying to roll to catch grab somethign make a to hit roll vs an appropriate AC, no. Is there a rule that says to stop yourself slipping off a wall make a dex check, no. Would the game be much clearer if the designers had given some clear examples of when to use what sort of check, Stat check, Saving throw, to hit, or whatever...

Now am I saying that the 3e designers built a water tank and tested how easy it was to catch a scroll case at different speeds? no don't be daft.
But when we looked at climbing it was worth talking to a guy. So I phoned up some climbing instructor and asked him a few questions about climbing took 30 minutes and I learnt how much harder it was to climb in the rain vs the dry, the difference between climbing a sheer surface vs a slope etc etc .
Now those are questions that would have been interesting, a bit like the stats that used to get dragged up by posters we can not mention on the chances of dying based on falls of certain distances (meaning dying is better simulated by a save rather than straight damage for example)

Quote from: jibbajibba;747178Take the catching the scroll case going past in the stream. Now I am recallign this and it's been what 20 years since I read it and my books are all in the UK but in the extended play example in the DMG that is near the sample dungeon map on graph paper (sorry this is vague but I am getting old). The call is a scroll case or similar whizzing down a fast stream and the DM calls that the player needs to roll a to hit vs AC6 (??) to catch it. Now most of us would call for a dex check the odds therefore are wholly different.

And some of us would say that Dex checks are crap because abilities are static, so you're saying that you shouldn't be any better at this sort of thing at 10th level than you are at 1st. At least an attack roll against an AC depends on THAC0, which does improve with level.

QuoteIs there an explicit rule that says when trying to roll to catch grab somethign make a to hit roll vs an appropriate AC, no. Is there a rule that says to stop yourself slipping off a wall make a dex check, no. Would the game be much clearer if the designers had given some clear examples of when to use what sort of check, Stat check, Saving throw, to hit, or whatever...

Any plenty of us would have said the rule they wrote is worthless and come up with our own instead. So having it hard-wired into the rulebook just makes for an additional pain in the ass when trying to rip it out and replace it with something better.

QuoteBut when we looked at climbing it was worth talking to a guy. So I phoned up some climbing instructor and asked him a few questions about climbing took 30 minutes and I learnt how much harder it was to climb in the rain vs the dry, the difference between climbing a sheer surface vs a slope etc etc

You needed an expert rock climber to tell you that?!

I don't think it is that important whether you think a typical referee knows enough about jumping or climbing or whatever to come up with a fair and informed rule. (For what it's worth I actually don't; most of the referees I know can barely climb out of a chair; the case in point of the 10' jump in the thread above is a good one - I dare anyone here to put 50 pounds of gear on their back and try to jump a 10' gap between two buildings). My main point is that it makes a game feel more fair and accessible to a player if he or she understands the mechanics of common activities that are resolved by die rolls. This is true in canonical D&D for attacks, opening doors, bending bars and lifting gates, listening at doors and a few other things. It isn't true for jumping, climbing, and a few other things.

I can play an rpg without knowing any mechanics.

I tell the gm that my fighter stabs at an orc with his sword, roll whatever the gm tells me to, and the gm explains the result of my attempt to stab the orc.

I will learn how good I am at stabbing orcs, if I survive enough battles, to get a feel for how difficult that is.

I don't need to know I have a 35% chance to hit the orc.

I would expect the gm to advise if my character would know generally how dangerous an orc is to a fighter of my caliber.

Quote from: Larsdangly;747195IMy main point is that it makes a game feel more fair and accessible to a player if he or she understands the mechanics of common activities that are resolved by die rolls.

Skip? Skip Williams, is that you?

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/interview-skip-williams.html

Quote from: aspiringlich;747211Skip? Skip Williams, is that you?

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/interview-skip-williams.html

Thanks for reminding me of this. :banghead:

Quote5. Of the principal designers of Third Edition, you're the only one who had a direct connection to the earliest days of the hobby. Do you feel your longstanding, personal connection to those days informed your work on 3e and, if so, how?

Mostly what I brought to the design effort from those days was a sharp sense of how things can go wrong. Whenever we came to a place in the rules where I knew DMs and players were going to clash, I'd tell a "campaign from hell" story, in which a character (mine or someone else's) was in peril and the DM made the most illogical and completely off the wall ruling you could imagine. I tied to be very careful that all the loose boards in the system were well nailed down. Of course, people still found ways to pry them loose again.

6. For many years, you acted as "the Sage," providing official answers to questions about the rules of D&D in the pages of Dragon, a role you continue to assume for Kobold Quarterly. I remember Gary once complaining that, in the early days, fans of D&D would call him at his home to ask him rules questions and he was baffled as to why anyone needed him to come up with answers, a feeling many early TSR staffers apparently shared. Do you see any contradiction between the desire of many fans for official answers to their questions and the belief of many early designers that players should come up with their own answers?

It's a huge contradiction. The early designers were wrong. It comes down to this: If you want to be in control of your character, you have to have some idea how anything you might try is going to come out. and you can't know that unless you have some idea of how the rules are going to handle the situation. If the GM is making capricious decisions about what happens in the game, you're always shooting in the dark and you have no real control over your character at all. Think of how hard it would be to, say, learn to ride a bicycle if the laws of physics were constantly in flux. The game just works better if the DM and players have similar expectations about how the rules handle things.

7. I think most gamers are sympathetic to the concern about capriciousness by the referee, but some would nevertheless argue that having official answers can have the opposite problem of reducing the referee to being a less active participant in the adjudication of the rules than he might have been in the early days of the game. Given that, what do you see is the proper role for the referee as it relates to the adjudication of rules?

The referee is there to keep the game moving. As Patton once said, a good answer today is better than a perfect answer next week.

A well-written rules set is the best friend a DM can have. It helps manage the player's expectations and gives the DM a leg to stand on when things don't go the players' way.

Quote from: aspiringlich;747180And some of us would say that Dex checks are crap because abilities are static, so you're saying that you shouldn't be any better at this sort of thing at 10th level than you are at 1st. At least an attack roll against an AC depends on THAC0, which does improve with level.

I totally agree. But most DMs use stat saves for this stuff. Look don't get me wrong I continuously create my own rules for everything. I usually play a house ruled game where none of the rules are even recorded but I always work from the same paradigm so my rules are consistent. Because early D&D gave no paradigm to work from its harder for DMs, especially novice DMs to establish a ruling on the fly.
Remember when you started playing how games would be interrupted by people trying to find specific rules for the few odd things there were specific rules for or getting into that discussion cos the DM made a ruling maybe a shit one that contradicted a rule in the book (either as a DM or a player).
Stuff like movement, encumbrance, attack modifiers for cover, facing darkness are all included in odd little places but they have no rule for say, a human can jump their current movement rate +1d6 feet given a 10 feet run up or half that as a standing jump.

QuoteAny plenty of us would have said the rule they wrote is worthless and come up with our own instead. So having it hard-wired into the rulebook just makes for an additional pain in the ass when trying to rip it out and replace it with something better.

The same is true of a lot of the other rules as well though :)

QuoteYou needed an expert rock climber to tell you that?!

To tell me the actually relative values wet stone is x% harder to climb than dry stone, or that a 10% slope means that a skilled climber can more easily transfer the weight to their legs etc etc ... yes I think a 30 min chat to a bloke who climbs stuff would be useful certainly wouldn't hurt. These days I can google it so ....

Depends on the rock, and what type of climbing you are going to do. I have often gone climbing even though it is raining and just dropped a couple of grades. It can be quite unsatisfying climbing way below your limit, though.

If the rock is super smooth (e.g. basalt) then you are going to have more issues then if it were course granite or gabbro.

Sandstone is the wild one, though. When Sandstone gets wet it weakens quite a lot. See this video of my buddy Kurt climbing a route at IC, not knowning that it rained a day earlier - he had arrived late the night before - and the rock was still not completely dried out (though the surface felt completely dry).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ854rwQZUI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ854rwQZUI)

Quote from: Bill;747200I can play an rpg without knowing any mechanics.

I tell the gm that my fighter stabs at an orc with his sword, roll whatever the gm tells me to, and the gm explains the result of my attempt to stab the orc.

I will learn how good I am at stabbing orcs, if I survive enough battles, to get a feel for how difficult that is.

I don't need to know I have a 35% chance to hit the orc.

I would expect the gm to advise if my character would know generally how dangerous an orc is to a fighter of my caliber.

All that is fine but what if the DM doesn't know how hard it is to sneak past a bloke playing dice, or how far a bloke can jump or how long it takes to walk 3 miles through a forest.
Fine as a Player to rely on the DM but who does the DM have to rely on?

Quote from: aspiringlich;747211Skip? Skip Williams, is that you?

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/interview-skip-williams.html

:rotfl:

Here is comment from that blog interview that is quite interesting:

"Writing RPG rules to counter bad DMs is like writing software to fix a broken computer.

I'm sympathetic to the idea, but human society has existed for thousands of years and has yet to find a solution for jerks. I don't think RPG rules are going to solve that."

                                                               Mike Mearls June 30 2009

This seems to be a direct contradiction to comments that he made in 2005.

I don't think fixing bad DM's or stealing the DM's power has anything to do with a rational and reasonably complete set of rules. All this business about the DM's prerogatives feels like a straw man argument to me. I don't actually notice any difference in the dynamic of DM/Player interaction in D&D vs. Runequest or any other 'rule for everything' game.

Everyone here uses rules when they play D&D. The rules are flexible around the margins and can be added to or subtracted from, but there is a readily identifiable 'core' that nearly everyone uses in some recognizable form. There are better and worse ways to write that sort of core to a game's published books. That is true even if you know you will modify the game during play. This whole long winded argument and all of its ad hominem digressions basically boil down to my thinking there are a couple of irritating omissions in the published core mechanics, and several of you thinking I am a troglodytic moron for saying something like that out loud.

Well, no, although I'm beginning to think you're thick. Allow me to spell it out for you: no one thinks you're stupid for "thinking there are a couple of irritating omissions in the published core mechanics", only that you're stupid for suggesting this is objectively true, as opposed to being little more than your preference.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;747225:rotfl:

Here is comment from that blog interview that is quite interesting:

"Writing RPG rules to counter bad DMs is like writing software to fix a broken computer.

I'm sympathetic to the idea, but human society has existed for thousands of years and has yet to find a solution for jerks. I don't think RPG rules are going to solve that."

                                                               Mike Mearls June 30 2009

This seems to be a direct contradiction to comments that he made in 2005.

Mike Mearls does that. A lot.

Quote from: jibbajibba;747222All that is fine but what if the DM doesn't know how hard it is to sneak past a bloke playing dice, or how far a bloke can jump or how long it takes to walk 3 miles through a forest.
Fine as a Player to rely on the DM but who does the DM have to rely on?

No gm knows everything. No ruleset covers everything.

You have to allow the gm to make judgment calls.

Otherwise, there is no need for a gm.

Quote from: Benoist;747245Mike Mearls does that. A lot.

Didn't we have a thread here, not too long ago, about people who re-discovered the advantages of old school D&D play after going through a "rules for everything" phase?  Does Mearls not get the same opportunity to grow as a person and change his mind?

Quote from: The Were-Grognard;746099Thief abilities aren't "skills" as later RPGs define them.  They are "I win" buttons to bypass dungeon obstacles.

Suddenly, the (low) percentages actually start to make sense.

Ding ding ding.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;747225:rotfl:

Here is comment from that blog interview that is quite interesting:

"Writing RPG rules to counter bad DMs is like writing software to fix a broken computer.

I'm sympathetic to the idea, but human society has existed for thousands of years and has yet to find a solution for jerks. I don't think RPG rules are going to solve that."

                                                               Mike Mearls June 30 2009

This seems to be a direct contradiction to comments that he made in 2005.

Quote from: Iosue;747252Didn't we have a thread here, not too long ago, about people who re-discovered the advantages of old school D&D play after going through a "rules for everything" phase?  Does Mearls not get the same opportunity to grow as a person and change his mind?

As I said in the thread where I was tearing apart some of his earlier posts, I can only hope he's changed his mind in the last decade.  Hopefully this means he has.

Quote from: Iosue;747252Didn't we have a thread here, not too long ago, about people who re-discovered the advantages of old school D&D play after going through a "rules for everything" phase?  Does Mearls not get the same opportunity to grow as a person and change his mind?

I hope that is the case.

Everyone knew the thieves weren't balanced well in 0D&D.

That's probably why we had adopted the Gamelords Thieves Guild as our go-to supplemental rules for roguish endeavors.

http://www.diffworlds.com/gamelords_thieves_guild.htm (http://www.diffworlds.com/gamelords_thieves_guild.htm)

Quote from: Bobloblah;747237Well, no, although I'm beginning to think you're thick. Allow me to spell it out for you: no one thinks you're stupid for "thinking there are a couple of irritating omissions in the published core mechanics", only that you're stupid for suggesting this is objectively true, as opposed to being little more than your preference.

You are kind of a tool. Just for future reference and what not.

NERD RAGE RAP BATTLE: DISENGAGE

Actually, the reason why I think you are at least acting like such a tool is that you seem to think that I should shut up because you cleverly recognized my opinions as opinions. Of course they are opinions! I'll go further and point out they are irrelevant opinions, like all the rest of the things people post on gaming message boards. Not only are none of them right; none of them are even wrong. We are effectively arguing over whether Superman is stronger than The Hulk. Actually, I think it's more like we're arguing over whether Superman is stronger than Aquaman, but we can just list that with my other opinions. The fact that I don't shut up when you disagree with me makes me irritating (at least to you and perhaps a few other people). The fact that you can't handle that is what makes you the tool in this argument. Even when the nerd rage is blazing like a million white hot suns, I'm still allowed to think Superman is lame and The Hulk is obviously stronger, even if I say it after you disagreed with me. That is my right as someone who bothered to come here and participate in the exchange of pointless opinions. So, suck on that.

Quote from: Bill;747246No gm knows everything. No ruleset covers everything.

You have to allow the gm to make judgment calls.

Otherwise, there is no need for a gm.

Of course, but isn't it totally common sense to say pick the 12 non combat events that happen most often in a typical D&D game and give the noviate DM some guidance on how to make those judgement calls?

No one is saying hey we need a rule for 34 different types of Polearms (hey they provided rules for those) or for how much your PC weighs (hey we have rules for that too) or for randomly generating unique magical artifacts that only turn up one game in 50 (we have rules here again), but basic guidance on rules for running, jumping, climbing, sneaking, crossing wilderness on foot etc you know the stuff that is going to come up all the time, that might be kind of sensible.

Quote from: jibbajibba;747303Of course, but isn't it totally common sense to say pick the 12 non combat events that happen most often in a typical D&D game and give the noviate DM some guidance on how to make those judgement calls?

No one is saying hey we need a rule for 34 different types of Polearms (hey they provided rules for those) or for how much your PC weighs (hey we have rules for that too) or for randomly generating unique magical artifacts that only turn up one game in 50 (we have rules here again), but basic guidance on rules for running, jumping, climbing, sneaking, crossing wilderness on foot etc you know the stuff that is going to come up all the time, that might be kind of sensible.

I agree up to a point.

Speaking for myself, I find the more detailed the rules are for jumping, diplomacy, whatever, the more intrusive and distracting they become.

Conan leaps the chasm, either landing easily on the other side, or perhaps he falls short and has to pull himself up. I like it to be quick and immersive.

What I don't care for, is a five minute rules discussion about exactly how far Conan can leap based on a chart of modifiers.

Quote from: Bill;747388I agree up to a point.

Speaking for myself, I find the more detailed the rules are for jumping, diplomacy, whatever, the more intrusive and distracting they become.

Conan leaps the chasm, either landing easily on the other side, or perhaps he falls short and has to pull himself up. I like it to be quick and immersive.

What I don't care for, is a five minute rules discussion about exactly how far Conan can leap based on a chart of modifiers.

I'm totally with you on this point. The level of rules that I think best suits D&D is along the lines of, everything fits on 1-2 pages, but the content of those pages is thoughtfully planned out, so you don't feel like you are on your own to dream up mechanics half the time. Mechanics are intrinsically un fun; I like spending as little time as possible thinking about them!

Quote from: Larsdangly;747428I'm totally with you on this point. The level of rules that I think best suits D&D is along the lines of, everything fits on 1-2 pages, but the content of those pages is thoughtfully planned out, so you don't feel like you are on your own to dream up mechanics half the time. Mechanics are intrinsically un fun; I like spending as little time as possible thinking about them!

First edition gamma world is an interesting example. The entire game is in one very short book, but it is quite complete.

Quote from: Bill;747388I agree up to a point.

Speaking for myself, I find the more detailed the rules are for jumping, diplomacy, whatever, the more intrusive and distracting they become.

Conan leaps the chasm, either landing easily on the other side, or perhaps he falls short and has to pull himself up. I like it to be quick and immerse.

What I don't care for, is a five minute rules discussion about exactly how far Conan can leap based on a chart of modifiers.

Like I said
Jump = mv rate +1d6 feet with a running start else half it.
For wilderness movement a PC can cover 1/4 of their mv rate in miles each hour. DM can impose modifiers for terrain.

That is all the level of detail you need its not exactly War and Peace.

Quote from: jibbajibba;747178Not denying they didn't do it merely saying they could have done it and in fact should have done it.

Horseshit.  It's a fucking game, not a treatise on mountaineering.  Further, way to increase production cost by a factor of ten, because of course EVERYTHING needs to be researched extensively.

Quote from: Benoist;747217Thanks for reminding me of this. :banghead:

Many words to say "I was a dumb kid who played with my head up my ass and died a lot, and now I'm going to fix the rules so my 14 year old self doesn't get killed."

This is what happens when people who don't understand Frei Kriegspiel get put in charge of a game based on Frei Kriegspiel principles.

Quote from: jibbajibba;747750Like I said
Jump = mv rate +1d6 feet with a running start else half it.
For wilderness movement a PC can cover 1/4 of their mv rate in miles each hour. DM can impose modifiers for terrain.

That is all the level of detail you need its not exactly War and Peace.

Don't be silly, that's space wasted when it could be used to print "use common sense" or "wing it" for the umpteenth time.  :P

Quote from: Bill;747388I agree up to a point.

Speaking for myself, I find the more detailed the rules are for jumping, diplomacy, whatever, the more intrusive and distracting they become.

Conan leaps the chasm, either landing easily on the other side, or perhaps he falls short and has to pull himself up. I like it to be quick and immersive.

What I don't care for, is a five minute rules discussion about exactly how far Conan can leap based on a chart of modifiers.

Oh, sweet Crom's hairy nutsack smudged with Ishtar's lipstick, yes.

You want to jump a chasm?  Roll 2d6 and get high.  In a marginal case I'll take things like level and dex into account.

I've managed to convert at least one 3.5 E player to OD&D for that very reason.  "If I want to sneak up behind somebody and knock them out, I say that, you have me roll dice, it either happens or it doesn't, and we get on with the damn game."

Quote from: Old Geezer;747762"If I want to sneak up behind somebody and knock them out, I say that, you have me roll dice, it either happens or it doesn't, and we get on with the damn game."

See, here's my problem with overly detailed "skill systems" to handle this kind of thing.  When a player says something like this to me (e.g., "I want to sneak up on him..."), I immediately have some idea of what his chances should be.  I might think, "yeah, this PC in these circumstances has about an 80% chance of success..."  If I'm running a game with a detailed skill system, I usually would need to translate my instant analysis of his chances into whatever numbers and modifiers the skill system uses: "Okay, to give him that chance of success he needs a difficulty number of THIS and a modifier of THAT..."

Fuck that shit.

I don't want to "back into" the number.  It's much easier for me to say "He should have such-and-such chance of success, so 'Player, roll this...'".  It's a lot less work for the same result.

This isn't hypothetical, either.  I found myself doing this running 3E and C&C.  I found myself trying to back into the probability that I thought appropriate, kind of "reverse engineering" the system to fit what I wanted it to do.  What a waste of time.

It just wasn't worth it, for me.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;748024I don't want to "back into" the number.  It's much easier for me to say "He should have such-and-such chance of success, so 'Player, roll this...'".  It's a lot less work for the same result.

I honestly don't understand this criticism, because as far as I understand skill mechanics (And I'd like to think I'm pretty familiar with them by now):

"yeah, this PC : This is on the character sheet, the GM doesn't need to worry about it.
in these circumstances : This relates to the game world, this is what the GM needs to adjudicate into situational modifiers, target number, whatever (Varies by system).
has about an 80% chance of success..." : The rule system returns a probability chance of success.

It sounds to me that you like to make the entire call when you GM, rather than just provide another variable to the mechanics - would that be it, or am I entirely misreading you?

Quote from: Ladybird;748049I honestly don't understand this criticism, because as far as I understand skill mechanics (And I'd like to think I'm pretty familiar with them by now):

"yeah, this PC : This is on the character sheet, the GM doesn't need to worry about it.
in these circumstances : This relates to the game world, this is what the GM needs to adjudicate into situational modifiers, target number, whatever (Varies by system).
has about an 80% chance of success..." : The rule system returns a probability chance of success.

It sounds to me that you like to make the entire call when you GM, rather than just provide another variable to the mechanics - would that be it, or am I entirely misreading you?

Speaking for myself, it's more a matter of "one roll to resolve them all," instead of "okay, what's your per segment movement rate, what's your SNEAK skill rating, what's the guard's alertness rating, how many alertness rolls does he get while you approach, what kind of armor does he have, what's his base defense when flat footed," etc, etc, etc.

As opposed to, "Roll 2d6.  11?  Okay, you knocked him out.  5?  Okay, he spotted you.  In between?  Give me ten seconds."


As Dave Arneson said the last time I saw him, about 2 weeks before his passing, "Modern games have too many rules.

Quote from: Ladybird;748049It sounds to me that you like to make the entire call when you GM, rather than just provide another variable to the mechanics - would that be it, or am I entirely misreading you?

Ultimately, the GM always makes the call.  The GM assigns the difficulty chance or target number.  The GM applies whatever modifiers are deemed appropriate, and adjusts to fit the circumstances as he sees them (which might be different from similar examples listed in the rule book).  

I find that just assigning a reasonable chance and calling for a roll works better in my games.  Even if you have a skill system that supplies huge lists of example target numbers and modifiers to cover an enormous variety of circumstances, I find that a quick evaluation of the chances in my head works better.  I'm not a computer: I'm slow at accessing a big database of recorded target numbers and modifiers and applying them through a specific formula.  But I can do the same kind of mental evaluation in my head, processing all sorts of qualitative info about the situation, and come up with a chance very quickly.

Also, I've found that, counter to what some might think, doing it "my way" seems to produce results that are just as "reasonable" or "realistic" as applying a more quantitative formula.  YMMV, of course, but I haven't had any players complain.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;748207Ultimately, the GM always makes the call.  The GM assigns the difficulty chance or target number.  The GM applies whatever modifiers are deemed appropriate, and adjusts to fit the circumstances as he sees them (which might be different from similar examples listed in the rule book).  

I find that just assigning a reasonable chance and calling for a roll works better in my games.  Even if you have a skill system that supplies huge lists of example target numbers and modifiers to cover an enormous variety of circumstances, I find that a quick evaluation of the chances in my head works better.  I'm not a computer: I'm slow at accessing a big database of recorded target numbers and modifiers and applying them through a specific formula.  But I can do the same kind of mental evaluation in my head, processing all sorts of qualitative info about the situation, and come up with a chance very quickly.

Also, I've found that, counter to what some might think, doing it "my way" seems to produce results that are just as "reasonable" or "realistic" as applying a more quantitative formula.  YMMV, of course, but I haven't had any players complain.

But take combat.

If I swing a sword at you and you are defending the chance of me hitting you is say 20%.  If I hit you with a sword the chance you dying is say 50%.
These are the basic rules of most war games.

Why do you need to add more to combat rules than existed in the base war game rules?
Why do PCs gain HPs as they get experience why did they add rules for different weapons etc
Because they were moving from the very abstract to a more detailed system that tried to simulate more stuff with a degree of accuracy.
If you do that for combat then why not do it for exploration and other aspects of play.

My main issue with the output of the simple rules model is that it has quite complex rules for combat and fuck all rules for any thing else. If you add D&D magic then you have complex magic rules, fairly complex combat rules (very complex if you add weapon vs armour table) and fuck all rules for anything else.
This isn't a rule lite system its a rule system where the rules are skewed to a single area of play.

the sneak example.... If D&D had had the idea of opposed rolls. You sneak 2d6 +dex bonus they observe on 2d6+perception bonus (how can they not have a stat for perception :) ) highest wins. DM adds appropriate modifiers.

that is another rule that takes a single line to explain something that happens  all the time. Its not like there are a lot of these its like a dozen and once the idea of the opposed roll is there it can be used to make rulings on an infinite number of things.

Quote from: jibbajibba;748254Why do you need to add more to combat rules than existed in the base war game rules...Because they were moving from the very abstract to a more detailed system that tried to simulate more stuff with a degree of accuracy...If you do that for combat then why not do it for exploration and other aspects of play.

There's not a right and wrong; it's more about where you want to be on a continuum, and where you want more or less rules focus.  One of the reasons I like the versions of D&D that I play is that they have the right amount of detail and focus in the right areas for how I like to play the game.  I like the level of crunch in OD&D or AD&D combat, and the reliance on class/level as an abstraction without bringing in the full weight of a skill system.  It works well for me.

I've tried D&D + heavier/detailed skill systems.  It *doesn't* work as well for me.  It's really that simple.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;748255There's not a right and wrong; it's more about where you want to be on a continuum, and where you want more or less rules focus.  One of the reasons I like the versions of D&D that I play is that they have the right amount of detail and focus in the right areas for how I like to play the game.  I like the level of crunch in OD&D or AD&D combat, and the reliance on class/level as an abstraction without bringing in the full weight of a skill system.  It works well for me.

I've tried D&D + heavier/detailed skill systems.  It *doesn't* work as well for me.  It's really that simple.

I still play OD&D, so I **DO** play with a combat system that's as abstract as everything else.

Quote from: Old Geezer;748366I still play OD&D, so I **DO** play with a combat system that's as abstract as everything else.

So do I.  I agree combat is abstract, but I don't think it's quite as abstract as some other areas in the game.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;748369So do I.  I agree combat is abstract, but I don't think it's quite as abstract as some other areas in the game.

Yep.  I LIKE the skirmish miniatures game aspect of OD&D combat.