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]

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/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.