4E, as an anti-4E guy ...

[Ariosto]

Yep, everything old is new again.

Well, it is not old but really new that Wizards has its own line of miniatures -- a different case than when TSR was merely licensing the AD&D trademark.

 

[Obryn]

I started using minis in AD&D only after Pool of Radiance came out. Before that we just took note of marching order.

I learned three big things from Pool of Radiance.

(1) Waiting for 80 orcs to take their turns and uselessly shuffle back and forth in place kinda sucks.

(2) Stinking Cloud is the most powerful spell ever written, and you should prepare as many of them as possible at ALL TIMES.

(3) When given the option, having an 18 in all stats sounds pretty good, actually.

-O

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I learned three big things from Pool of Radiance.

(1) Waiting for 80 orcs to take their turns and uselessly shuffle back and forth in place kinda sucks.

(2) Stinking Cloud is the most powerful spell ever written, and you should prepare as many of them as possible at ALL TIMES.

(3) When given the option, having an 18 in all stats sounds pretty good, actually.

-O

1. Its not so bad on autobattle when playing on an Apple IIgs. At least if you have the AC to make Orcs trivial. Go grab yourself a snack.

2. It sure is nice to trivialize Dragons. Being able to save before every battle made Stinking Cloud doubly great.

3. In the sequel, Curse of the Azure Bonds(which was a far better game), they even seemed to assume everybody would have an 18 in everything.

 

[Obryn]

1. Its not so bad on autobattle when playing on an Apple IIgs. At least if you have the AC to make Orcs trivial. Go grab yourself a snack.

Agreed! IIRC, they concentrated more on "Fewer, tougher foes" in CotAB. But still, it was a waste.

2. It sure is nice to trivialize Dragons. Being able to save before every battle made Stinking Cloud doubly great.

Yep! Keep re-loading until the BBEG fails his save! Then kill him with an arrow.

-O

 

[Ariosto]

At http://www.enworld.org/forum/4832276-post140.html

I pointed out how far AD&D was from equating 1" in the rules with 1 inch on the table. In fact, the assumption was that it should translate either to 3" or to 9"!

The original set assumed familiarity with Chainmail, which had a 1:20 figure:man ratio -- or 1:10 with figures smaller than 30mm scale, as they covered less area. Likewise, the naval rules in Volume 3 suggested:

For movement purposes 1:1200 scale models can be used, so a playing area about the size recommended for aerial combat will suffice. For play involving boarding and melee it will be necessary to prepare deck plans scaled to the size of figures used (or to counters if figures are not used).

"Necessary" here should not be taken to mean that figures or counters are themselves necessary. Note further that height is throughout given in the form of "40 feet" and so on.

Then there is the Eldritch Wizardry combat-round system.

Suggested scale: 1":2'. Movements should be made simultaneously.

This is open to several different interpretations, given the ambiguity of the context.

The really basic assumption throughout is not that figures will be used, but that the reader, given examples, can work out such issues of scaling as necessary and adapt representation to whatever is appropriate to the affair at hand.

The use of a grid, although mentioned in AD&D, is not really pertinent to the rules. The 4E rules are a bit tricky to use without a grid of squares. Not that it can't be done, of course.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

At http://www.enworld.org/forum/4832276-post140.html

I pointed out how far AD&D was from equating 1" in the rules with 1 inch on the table. In fact, the assumption was that it should translate either to 3" or to 9"!

The original set assumed familiarity with Chainmail, which had a 1:20 figure:man ratio -- or 1:10 with figures smaller than 30mm scale, as they covered less area. Likewise, the naval rules in Volume 3 suggested:"Necessary" here should not be taken to mean that figures or counters are themselves necessary. Note further that height is throughout given in the form of "40 feet" and so on.

Then there is the Eldritch Wizardry combat-round system.

This is open to several different interpretations, given the ambiguity of the context.

The really basic assumption throughout is not that figures will be used, but that the reader, given examples, can work out such issues of scaling as necessary and adapt representation to whatever is appropriate to the affair at hand.

The use of a grid, although mentioned in AD&D, is not really pertinent to the rules. The 4E rules are a bit tricky to use without a grid of squares. Not that it can't be done, of course.

Still, the assertion that this would be played without any sort of physical representation is tenous at best. The ambiguity here I would interpret as not requiring actual dedicated minis, with substituting some sort of counter in their place. The rules assume physical representation on a table.

 

[La Bete]

Interestingly enough, the module Keep on the Borderlands has a list of TSR products on the back cover including "Dungeon Geomorphs".

Anyone got any idea what these are? Dungeon Tiles for Basic D&D?

(as an aside, these conversations go much more amusingly at RPG.net - Old Geezer would have popped in by now...)

 

[Ariosto]

Still, the assertion that this would be played without any sort of physical representation is tenous at best. The ambiguity here I would interpret as not requiring actual dedicated minis, with substituting some sort of counter in their place. The rules assume physical representation on a table.

Oh, make no mistake -- I make no tenuous assertion as to what "would be"! I attest from first-hand experience as to what was until just a few months ago, when I started a game for 3E/4E veterans who insisted on using figures and a (hex-gridded) "battle mat".

While only paper and pencil need be used, it is possible for the characters of each player to be represented by miniature lead figures.

When eventually we acquired them, our few figurines represented characters in a "Lappoy the Unexpected looks like this" sense. They got ployed into "marching order", and then generally forgotten. Monsters? Who had a collection of those adequate for a board-game approach, even had we wanted to draw the dungeons to scale? We might use markers (or just pencil marks) on sketched maps, but precise positions were not only unnecessary to the default combat system -- they were misleadingly contrary to its basic assumptions.

That's par for the course for what I saw right into 2E. Often enough, we played while sitting around a living room without a table. Much use of figures or other markers was unusual (but sometimes quite spectacular, especially with modeled terrain); the game was fundamentally a verbal one.

It's quite a stretch from that to 4E, in which moving pieces from square to square is central to the design.

 

[Rechan]

(emphasis mine)

Sir, the proper term is either Bunnies of Color or Bunnican-Americans!

I laughed.

But seriously, there's a blue, purple, green, and yellow bunny. Often when I first play with a group, that's what players use for their minis. Eventually people brought their own.

Also counters. I like counters. Frankthedm has a whole mess of video game sprites. I like to print them out and make counters with them. I once had a player who complained 4e was videogamey - so I said, "Fine, if it's video gamey, you're going to fight video game monsters."

 

[Ariosto]

"Dungeon Geomorphs". Anyone got any idea what these are?

They are sections one can cut out, rotate, and combine to make dungeon maps. They have a grid of a few squares per inch, each square in old D&D typically representing 10 feet.