Dean's World

Also with tabletop, who follows the rules in the books anyways? I'm not gonna stop to look up the damage of a chair to someone's face, just make it up and move on. One of the reasons the white wolf games always appealed to me, their reliance on only one sort of die, and a very stripped-down system made everything a lot more streamlined.

That's pretty funny. I remember the arguments between various gaming factions back when Diablo first came out. The "new era in real-time RPGs" camp vs "just Gauntlet with more blood" AD&D snobs vs the "pale shadow of NetHACK " bearded UNIX gurus. Ah, those were the days.

One of my kids is a junior artist for a major game design studio around Madison, Wisconsin. And one of his older brother is part way through a second associate degree in computer animation. Their stuff looks good, and blows my mind as well.

I grew up on comic books, like any other kid old enough to go to school without pissing his pants in the early 1940s. They were the source of not a few of my inspirations about life in general, and even history.

Later, I graduated to real books, then learned to write. But that's another story.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Good point, jaymaster: I've been reading this series of posts--which imagine a group of standard hack and slash RPG'ers encountering LOTR for the first time as if they'd never heard of it before--and it's topnotch stuff. The first post in the series is here. Check it out and give Shamus some comments: it's great stuff.

Trust Andrew to bitch about a petty detail...

Heh.

No, really. Only mindless game Nazis absolutely insist upon PERFECT GAME FIDELITY. Feh.

For those who know, D&D originated from the classic Chain Mail tabletop rules, so group actions should be cake for any GM with a brain.

But that's the rub, isn't it? Too many gamemasters insist upon some sort of loyalty to a particular system.

The elemental challenge faced by any modeling system reflects the dichotomy between flexibility and realism. The more realistic you get, the less flexible, and vice versa.

The only time you have a problem is when you are trying to model real-life scenarios. This is less of a problem for RPG than real-life military simulations, of which the first creative approach would be COL Dupuys's Quantified Judgement Model. This addressed the fact that most computers models of historical battles did not reflect historical reality.

1st Edition AD&D probably reflects the best compromise between group battle and individual melee in a mass-media application. Further editons merely reflect additional detail, as opposed to superior technique.

The simplest technique is probably that of Tunnels &Trolls, which uses only six-sided dice. All weapons and monsters damage rolls are expressed in terms of nD6+adds, so a dagger might be 1d6, a short sword 2d6, and a long sword 2d6+3. This is independent of character "adds" reflected by strength or dexterity.

Bottom line: in a group fight all the dice, plus all adds are summed up for one side (say three short swords = 2d6 times three, or 6d6) and a dagger and two long swords on the other: 1d6 plus 2d6+3, or 1d6 plus 4d6+6, or 5d6+6). Basically, add up all the dice, and roll (include adds). Do the same for the other side. The greater number wins, and everyone on the losing side takes the difference in damage. So in the above example, if the three short swords roll a total of 21, while the two long swords plus dagger roll a 24, the three long swords party takes 3 points damage each.

It may sound complicated, but the process is operationally simple.

If you want real combat, with hack by hack accuracy, try Iron Crown Enterprise's Arms Law; one of the more "realistic" combat systems available.

Another route would be supplementing First Edition (AKA "the only real edition") AD&D with Chain Law tabletop rules, which allow cardboard markers. Or you can try a variation of T&T and try some sort of "group roll" resolution.

And I haven't even mentioned Traveller or Thieves World* yet.

The whole point here is the goal of the simulation, or (more specifically) the goal of the RPG session in question. Does your group orient more towards role-playing, combat, hack'n'slash treasure-gathering, or something else?

Whatever your local group can agree to is "right," even if that "violates" some arcane part of "official" AD&D.

Whoops! Missed some of the more-recent posts.

I haven't purchased miniatures for a long time (read: over 10-15 years) but Ral Partha used to make some great stuff. I even have the Fineous Fingers group over here. :)

M. Scott's link to the "first post in the series" contains significant errors. While LOTR was a major influence on AD&D, Poul Anderson's fantasy work was equally influential, especially for the question of "lawful vs. chaotic" which later expanded to a 2nd dimension of "good vs. evil."

The post also misses the massive influence Jack Vance had on AD&D, including the Dying Earth and Cudgel the Clever books.

Look, guys, the best stuff I've seen around here (locally, in the Cincinnati area) comes from guys who modified FRPG rules for local preferences. Call it "open source" RPG, ok? Heh...




*no, not the Robert Asprin anthology!.... Google it. :)

Sheesh!! What a bunch of geeks! ;)

Sorry, but I prefer nice, simple games like Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, etc. While what you guys are describing is most likely pure gaming theory, and it is fascinating, I just don't see D&D, et al, as "play." Pretend, yes, but not necessarily play--if there is such a difference.

Cardeblu:

There isn't a game on this planet that doesn't strike someone as idiotic, including baseball, football, golf (especially golf) and Monopoly. Monopoly is a fairly complex game actually.

Roleplaying games are fun. I like Scrabble too. I like golf too, now that I think about it.

Here's the deal.

If it's fun, it's probably something you can call a "game" at some level or other.

"Geek" is a perjorative term, by the way, it would be comparable to me saying "Scrabble? Trivial Pursuit?" what a moron!"

cardeblu:

Fair enough, but "gentle ribbing" is hard to get across in a blog comment.

I guess I would qualify as "geek" in most of the pejorative senses. I'm a role playing fan, I was a computer programmer for many years, I still program for "fun" and I am fascinated with technical gadgets like cameras, telescopes, GPS devices, etc.

I don't know if "geek" applies so universally to most role players though.

Although this is not an uncommon conversation between role players who have met after an extended separation:

"Hey Doug, wanna get a campaign going?"
"Sure Bob, that's great, what's the theme?"
"Well, I know you like fantasy, what about Tim, is he still around?"
"Well, he got a girlfriend...."
"Oh... I see. Well, we can still play..."

Sigh.

If your hobby doesn't turn girls on, it's geeky.

By that definition -- and playing to broad stereotypes here, there are always exceptions, etc., etc., etc. -- then the following hobbies are geeky:

Football. Mostly a male thing, relatively few women.

Deer hunting. Ditto.

Poker, though this is becoming more equal opportunity.

NASCAR. Again, becoming more equal opportunity, but still probably 70/30 male fans vs. female. And drivers and crew are probably more like 90/10.

Strip clubs. Even though there are clubs that cater to women, they're largely outnumbered. I see billboards for strip clubs in many major cities, but almost never for the clubs where the men are dancing.

Meanwhile, the gaming groups I know are split roughly 50/50. Our own group is split 5/4, which is as close to 50/50 as you're going to get without expensive surgery. It's also 1/3 second-generation gamers.

I know what makes a geek hobby, and there's a lot more to what makes a geek hobby than just whether the girls are interested. Invariably, they're hobbies that appeal to curiosity, escapism, intellect, or all of the above. Historically, those have been the pursuits of a rather small subset of the populace. Trust me. I was geek before geek was cool.

And for you older geeks who haven't caught on yet, geek is cool now. Oh, 40+year-old-overweight-geek isn't cool; but the geeks in high school are cool. When we went to school, only the geeks had anything to do with computers. Today, everybody has them, and almost everybody has problems with them. The geeks know how to fix those problems, and how to make the computers do cool things. Heck, think about it: if it weren't so commonplace, what could possibly be more geeky than connecting up to some remote computer, downloading some tunes onto a portable device, and taking that music on the road with you?

The geeks have won. No, they're not the top of the social heap, but they're in a place of pride within it. (And just wait until those kids move into the workplace, and find that a lot of them are working for geeks!) I knew vindication a decade or so ago, and geek cool has only risen since then. I knew these guys in high school: the typical all-star jock, and the typical fun-loving party guy. Well, about a decade ago, both of their sons were dating two of my nieces. And if an uncle can say so, my nieces are hot (proving that genetics can take some odd twists). Well, both of those guys basically wanted to grow up to be me. They wanted to be programmers and play with computers for a living. They were in awe that I got paid -- yes, and damn well! -- to do what they did for fun. So yes, we geeks can score hot women just fine these days. (Some of us even did it back in the old, pre-geek-cool days. My hot woman's waiting at home as I write here.)

Huey Lewis (who, by the way, was an engineering student before he went into music) was ahead of the game, but he got it just right: Here, there, and everywhere -- It's hip - hip - It's hip to be square!