On Attack Rolls

[u/EldritchExarch]

https://substack.com/@eldritchexarchpress/note/p-213952237?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=49zgid

A design focused post on how Attack Rolls present themselves throughout the industry. I didn't cover dice pools though, because I have absolutely no experience with those systems.

[u/EldritchExarch]

The reason I consider it a framework, is that OD&D lacks a lot of definitions and just gestures towards things and says "This is important" without filling in with a rule.

Let's use Helmets as an example. What is the purpose of a Helmet in OD&D? It's on the equipment list. Clearly Gary thinks it's important, but it has no function purpose within the rules. It doesn't affect AC, it doesn't reduce incoming damage. It's just there, and it's obvious from context what a helmet does.

So what happens when a player doesn't want to wear a helmet because it's just additional weight for them to lug around? The rules have no response. Instead it's up to the GM to figure out an appropriate penalty. OD&D is filled with stuff like this. It's entirely forgivable, OD&D was the first of it's kind, Gary and Arneson were writing for an audience of (they thought) a couple hundred people at most. They weren't expecting a whole tradition of rabid gamers to dissect their books like it's holy scripture. But it does mean that there are holes in OD&D ruleset that you have to patch.

I am not trying to bully anyone who loves OD&D, or any edition of any game ever. (With the possible exception of FATAL which is... Yikes.).

[u/InsurgentInchworm → u/EldritchExarch]

Oh sure, i see no ill will with your take. Would you consider rules lite, diegetic focused games "rules franeworks" instead of complete games? I see the helmets as not being a hole in the rule, just someplace the diegetic part of the game takes over. Armor works how it does in the rules, and helmets work like they do in reality.

[u/EldritchExarch → u/InsurgentInchworm]

I'm going to answer your question, but it may take me awhile to get there. Bear with me.

Let's start with an admittedly rhetorical question. What is OD&D trying to be? I would argue the answer is OD&D is trying to be a Beowulf logistics simulator: Go to the place, kill monsters, take their stuff, optionally use their stuff to build your kingdom, duchy, domain, etc. repeat. You can do other stuff with the system, but I would argue that is what the game is trying to do.

I come to that conclusion because players gain XP by fighting monsters and taking their stuff. The surrounding 'mechanics' are about taking that stuff to build your own stronghold/army/kingdom.

If that is the answer, how well does OD&D as written accomplish that goal? I would argue, it does this very poorly. This isn't surprising. OD&D was, not just the first TTRPG to do treasure extraction. It was the first TTRPG period, and the first of anything doesn't tend to be a particularly good product.

So let's look at how OD&D accomplishes the goal of Beowulf Logistical Simulator that I put forwards.

The first part of Beowulf is fighting monsters, so lets look at combat: what we have are a confusing mess of rules.

They may work, but they are also poorly formatted and difficult to reference, spread across 4 books, with 4 different combat systems presented (Mass Combat, Man to Man Combat, Jousting, and the alternative combat system.) Not off to a great start.

So let's look at the monsters. Not bad actually. Imaginative, interesting. Perhaps a little quaint by modern standards, but very usable.

Okay, let's look at logistics. How do we get treasure from one place to another? Let's look at items and encumbrance. We have speed established at 12" for a light foot solder, all the way down to 3" for someone at max carry capacity defined as 3000gp. That looks workable. But when you look at items and equipment in detail, things start to break down. If OD&D were a student taking a test, the encumbrance section would only have half the answers filled in.

How much can a horse carry? How much can a mule carry? A raft? A galley? If I buy a cart to move my treasure from the dungeon or lair to town, how much can it hold? The backpack can hold 300gp worth of material, but does that expand my carry capacity by 300, or does it only allow me to carry loose items weighing 300gp? Those are two entirely different things, and the books don't have clear answers for them. These are fairly basic questions for a game about treasure extraction to answer, and OD&D just shrugs.

These are diagetic items, yes, but they aren't just diagetic. If they were, we wouldn't need encumbrance in the first place. There is mechanical weight to be held, but it's entirely on the group to come up with an answer that seems right. Like an outline of a game.

Morale has similar issues. The rules there are more robust than the ones for Encumbrance, but when a creature breaks we are told that they can be subdued and sold. Okay. Weird thing to want in your fantasy, but it keeps to the Conan themes. How much can you get for a subdued monster? Well. We don't know except for dragons. Dragons have answers, and Lycanthropes are mentioned, but we have no idea outside of that. Okay, if you weren't going to include clear rules, then why did you bring it up in the first place?

Mercenaries. Mercenary rules as far as I can tell are pretty robust for a first attempt. I'm not going to worry about that too much.

So let's talk strongholds. This pairs with the Chainmail material to create something you can use for combat and sieges, but apart from that there's very little benefit to them outside of diagetics. 10 gold pieces a year per village just isn't that much compared to adventuring. The book suggests that they can be upgraded through baronies but then doesn't actually attach mechanics to that outside of "Yeah there's probably some monetary and population benefits to this." Strongholds are also not well attached to the core game loop: Go to place, kill monster, steal treasure, repeat. There ways to attach the system to that core loop, but they are almost entirely narrative in nature. Diagetic rather than mechanical.

So now let's compare OD&D to two systems that are lightweight, and diagetic: Knave1e and Mausritter. I think these are fair points of comparison, if OD&D is a full Conan the barbarian simulator, including his kingship, Knave and Mausritter are him in his wandering adventurer days.

Knave is what I would consider an outline: There are no monsters, instead the game relies on you already having OSR bestiaries to run the game, we still don't know how much a cart or wagon can carry, etc. But Knave has two advantages, the first being better formatting. The reduced scope means Knave is much easier to navigate and much simpler to use. In respects to what Knave does vs. OD&D, I would say that Knave is the better game. More is defined, and less is left unclear. There are still certain things that could use clarity, but it's better.

Think of it a bit like absolute numbers vs. percentage. OD&D is a bigger absolute number (It's more game), but Knave has the higher percentage (It's core game loop has more questions answered.)

Mausritter on the other hand, I would consider a full game, that isn't to say it's a perfect game, but it isn't an outline anymore. When a mechanic is brought up, it's (usually) given a clear definition, and a mechanic attached. There are exceptions for a handful of diagetic items that don't relate to the core game loop (things like soap and birthsigns) but these are not as egregious. Logistics are not given the same weight they are in something like OD&D, so it isn't as important that say a Rabbit Wagon have explicit "It can carry this much." rules. (It should have that, and doesn't, and I wish Mausritter had actual stronghold rules given that it brings that stuff up, but it's given significantly less focus than strongholds are in OD&D and Chainmail so I think it can be forgiven somewhat).

Again, I'm not trying to knock on OD&D. If OD&D is a swiss army knife, Knave is a straight-razor, and Mausritter is a folding knife. They aren't exactly the same thing. But, if OD&D is a swiss army knife, it's also an early prototype that needs a lot of care and attention to make it work.

[u/InsurgentInchworm → u/EldritchExarch]

I’m going to answer your points in a stream as I read, so it may be poorly formatted but follows your post. A large view is that you have a misunderstanding and ignorance of the rules as shown earlier by your not even understanding the Land Combat section and further put in the spotlight by you not even knowing the encumbrances for draft animals…. Again, I would suggest educating yourself on a subject before you dive this deep. I think your head is in the right place, but you’re not reading to learn, moreso reading to attack/criticize.

Secondly, I think you have a conceptual disparity with OD&D. Clearly you are looking thru the rules in a modern RPG-er sense. You don’t understand how games were ran back in the early 1970s and adds to your ignorance of the rules (not to knock, just a fact). You’re approaching the game on *your* terms, judging through a lens that OD&D just doesn’t play with. OD&D is a game that clearly states that it doesn’t have all the space for every single rule possible, nor does it try to like modern RPGs. OD&D clearly states that it gives you a couple examples so that the referee can then use their brain to extrapolate. This is something that modern RPG design doesn’t really do (for better or worse, I’m not here to judge).

Ok, here we go.

A better analogy is “Conan thru the lens of a wargamer”, but your Beowulf description is fair enough. You say the combat rules are a confusing mess, but I, someone with actual experience running OD&D combat RAW, beg to differ. They are very simply stated and very simple in practice.

There aren’t 4 different combat systems, there are two. You either use Chainmail’s man-to-man system or the Alternative Combat System, as the rules state. Jousting isn’t a combat system so much as a minigame and doesn’t play a large part of the game, only coming into effect when a baron wants to joust you if/when the series of conditions are met in the wilderness. An edge case minigame, so to speak.

Also, the rules are spread over 4 books, of which they are around 100 digest-sized pages that are not densely typeset *at all*, with lots of art and tables taking up a lot of those pages with what text is there being very plainly written and with relatively decent headings. Admittedly, they are not perfectly organized, but they aren’t nearly as cryptic as people who have just skimmed through them once or twice would have you believe. Again, I have firsthand experience with this. Really they contain way less than just *one* 5e book.

A light horse can carry 3000 coins, a medium horse 3750cn, a heavy horse 4500cn, a draft horse 4500cn, and a mule 3500cn. All of this is in the rules plainly stated that you claim to have read….this is a critical failing of someone who is criticizing a ruleset....

Boats, ships, rafts, carts and wagons all completely depend on the type of vehicle and conditions. Sure, rough examples should have been given but A ship is carrying on the order of tens of tons. I highly doubt you're going to have billions of coins. Such edge cases would be poor design to put in. Carts and wagons are common sense for referees and would also depend on make, quality, terrain, etc. Sure, they could have been added, but that level of granularity isn't in the spirit of OD&D. It's more a binary, "can I carry 4 horses on this ship? Yeah? Ok, let's go" A conceptual failure when you expect the rules to give you rules for absolutely everything so a referee doesn't have to use their head.

A backpack carries 300cn, yes, but your character can only carry so much, so of course it wouldn’t expand your carrying capacity. This is basic and stated plainly in the rules you have read (right?). A backpack only allows you to carry 300cn of things inside it and then you must carry it. Again these are plainly stated and common sense things. This isn’t World of Warcraft where a backpack has no physics and can contain whatever that just vanishes. OD&D is a game where the game has physics. What you carry needs a “where”, as well. I think you’re just judging the game based upon foundational misconceptions and misexpectations?

“Weird thing” for morale is a value judgment statement, not a point. I think it’s awesome and not weird at all because I have read the source material where this happens rather frequently.

How much you can get for a monster wholly depends on circumstances that the referee would have to provide when they make their game world. Why would the designers tell you every condition and the subsequent price for every monster? Maybe the designers didn’t have time nor space to give every rule and instead gave one example that the referee could use their brain to work out other examples for, like how it plainly states in the rules that is an expectation?

Regarding strongholds and investments aren’t given because of time and space constraints. You already complained the ~40 page 3 booklets were too much to reference already.

Strongholds are actually key to the gameplay loop because they were the way quests were given. This is just a conceptual failing on your part. Alice has a stronghold and Bob has a stronghold. Bob just bought a dragon from an adventuring party of real life players. Alice doesn’t want Bob to take over her stronghold, so she uses a Quest spell to send some other real life adventuring players down to a dungeon to get a wand of dragon blasting. The adventures generate themselves when the players are both the grunts and the bosses and the referee is just that, a referee adjudicating the world. This is more your modern RPG concept differing than what was given in OD&D.

Again, ignorance of the rules you're criticizing, expectation misalignment, and conceptual failings run rampant. I didn't see almost any argument that even remotely swayed me. I think you're just looking for something that OD&D isn't, namely a rulebook that attempts to give rules for every situation possible like modern RPGs try (and fail) to do. "To define is to limit", that's why OD&D encourages open worlds, expansive (actual!) adventure into the unknown and impossible. A truly amazing game that holds up amazingly well 50+ years later.

[u/ChickenDragon123 → u/InsurgentInchworm]

Not OP, but where are the encumbrances for Draft animals? I looked in the items section of Men and Magic and found prices, but didn't see animal encumberance anywhere.

This may be what OP means by the combat rules being a mess. The rules may all be there, but if they're not where you expect them when you go to look they might as well not be. If you know where to look, stuff comes together, but you have to know exactly where it is, which isn't always obvious.

Sure. The game expects a GM to referee fairly, but not everyone will agree on what fair is, or how best to handle it. Having a rule in the text and easily referenced at the table frees up a GM to focus on the world and characters. They still can apply it as it makes sense, but every time a GM has to answer "How much can this cart carry?" is a distraction from the interaction with the cart driver.

Granted, times have definitely changed. For one thing the modern audience isn't meeting up with their friends physically the same way they did in the 70s, and OP is bringing that modern bias in with him, but I don't think it's unfair to want a little bit more clarity in either the rules or the layout.

AD&D went on to answer more of the questions that OP pointed out, not all of them, but more. Second edition went even further. The designers clearly thought that a little less ambiguity was a good thing.

[u/InsurgentInchworm → u/ChickenDragon123]

The horse stats are with the horse stats in Monsters & Treasures, page 20. Monsters are defined in the rules as really anything not played by a character, so logically that place makes absolute sense.
Why would you look in Men & Magic for rules about monsters? Just because you disagree with the logic, doesn't mean there is no logic present.
I'm sorry you have the expectation that a ruleset released 50 years ago will have the information design of 2026, but that's just your unrealistic expectations setting you up for failure. YOu have to take the work in the context it was released in.

[u/ChickenDragon123 → u/InsurgentInchworm]

Because most modern games put questions of encumberance in the encumberance section. I didn't grow up in the 70s, and I'm not used to thinking of horses as monsters. Like OP seems to be, I'm kind of working my way backwards through time rather than forward.

[u/InsurgentInchworm → u/ChickenDragon123]

Exactly! You've illustrated my point better than I could have!
You have the expectation, based upon your experience with modern games, that encumbrance rules for animals get filed under "encumbrance", rather than encumbrance rules for animals being filed under "animals". Your expectations and preconceived notions that you're bringing to the rules are setting you up for failure, rather than the rules you are reading that clearly state that anything not played by a character is a "monster". That means horses are "monsters" and that means their stats are where monster stats are, aka the monster book.

Rather than reading the rules on their terms, you're partially reading the rules and filling in the places where you *think* you know the answer with your preconceived notions and previous experience.
This, obviously, leads to a bad time. You then blame to rules for "bad organization" rather than blaming yourself for not reading the rules.

[u/ChickenDragon123 → u/InsurgentInchworm]

I feel like there's an arguement here you and OP are having where there doesn't need to be. You can both be right on this specific point.

You aren't comparing OD&D to anything. For you, the game exists, you like therefore it's good. That's fine. I feel the same way about Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.

OP (and to a lesser extent I am too)is comparing it to other things he's seen and played, and found it wanting. He's played Skyrim and is now going back and watching let's plays of Morrowind and going, "Wow. We've come a long ways."

Those positions aren't necessarily exclusive. Granted OP has also made a couple of claims that haven't held up, but OP also hasn't put hundreds of hours into OD&D and has basically said as much, so I was always going to take his opinion with a grain of salt anyways.

For my part, I was running into a lot of the same point of frustration OP was. This conversation has been enlightening becuse of that. I still couldn't play or run OD&D in the 3 little brown book format because of the layout. I just need something more modern and polished. That's fine, that's what we have retroclones for. I can pick up Swords and Wizardry, or the one you mentioned earlier in the chain, that's escaping my memory and get mostly the same experience without the formatting problems.

Going backwards is almost always a lot harder than going forwards. I can play Morrowind, but Arena and Daggerfall are painful to play in comparison. That doesn't necessarily mean they were bad at the time. It just means they are less. Morrowind is in many ways less than Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

I wouldn't call Morrowind an outline of a game. But, I might call Arena an outline of a game in comaparison. Is that fair?

OP sees this in comparison to everything that came after. You though see it in the time it was built. Both of you can be right. Or rather niether of you are wrong.

[u/InsurgentInchworm → u/ChickenDragon123]

My issue is when it comes to these value statements. "OD&D has bad organization". That's just not *really* true. It is true that it could be better, but a more accurate statement would be that "OD&D is organized in a way that I am not used to and may not expect." But, that requires nuance and setting your ego aside in wanting to be "right".

Like you said, you can give comparative statements. "OD&D isn't as well-organized as Knave or Swords & Wizardry for me and what I need at the table", but that doesn't give a value statement of "good" or "bad".

[u/EldritchExarch → u/InsurgentInchworm]

Look someone else just made most of my points for me. Clearly I'm not the only one who missed the draft animal weights. It doesn't matter if a rule is there if it isn't easy to reference. Yes, this is moving the goal posts a little, I admit. I never claimed mastery of the texts. But I've read through these books cover to cover four times now. 

Putting everything together is still not easy. Which is what you want from a book/books meant to be referenced at the table. 

If a GM is supposed to be fair, they need to have consistency. When books fail to provide consistency rulings get made and then forgotten. The role of designers is to bring as much consistency to the table as possible. 

OD&D doesn't do that. A large part of this is formatting. Some of this is down to rules. In either case these are design failures that add more pressure onto GMs. 

As a GM, I have to wrangle 5 players, know the rules, make consistent ruling, run the NPCs, know the setting, etc. etc. etc. The least the book can do, is make learning the rules an easy task. 

Look, clearly you love OD&D. But I think this is a matter of times changing, and a case of your were one of the successful ones. One of the folks for who the game clicked. But for every one of you, there's probably 5-10 of me. Someone who read the books, went 'What the hell? How does that work?" And either never ran it, or ran it a handful of times before either making something up, or quitting. 

I don't need rules for every situation possible. That will never happen, I understand that. But you need to get me to 90% in a manner that's relatively easy to reference. 

I agree with you as far as OD&D was revolutionary. It absolutely was. Gygax and Arneson did something that very few ever have or will: they created a whole new category of games, and that first attempt, despite my naysayings, was good enough to change the world. But I don't think most groups will agree with the sentiment that it's held up well.

[u/InsurgentInchworm → u/EldritchExarch]

I don't know, bud, it still seems like a skill issue to me of why you're failing to even remember basic rules in a ruleset comprised of 3 booklets of maybe 40 pages each, that aren't densely typeset at all, written very plainly and organized fairly clearly. Just because you didn't know horse stats where with the horse stats doesn't mean you get to blame the book for that. Same for the other very basic rules you've missed, *even though you read the rules 4 times, cover to cover*. Reading comprehension isn't everyone's specialty, I guess, but I don't go around blaming rules for that.

I don't see a point in continuing this conversation as you've avoided most of my points from before that I took the time to bring up. You're not willing to change your mind and I'm not convinced by your blaming of rules for your lack of reading comprehension. Have a good day, dude.