[D&D history/development] I wonder why...

[mmadsen]

And frogs. What is it with frogs in earlier editions? From Temple of the Frog to the frog god in Greyhawk Ruins to the slaadi - they're everywhere. Are they really creepy to most people and I never noticed. I really like frogs. And toads.

Of course most people consider frogs and toads creepy. Snakes too. And D&D owes a lot of debts to Clark Ashton Smith, who featured Tsathoggua, the toad god, in many of his stories:

[In] that secret cave in the bowels of Voormithadreth . . . abides from eldermost eons the god Tsathoggua. You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice.​

 

[mmadsen]

Did the designers ever look at the original recommended reading list and go, "Man, we've strayed so far from the original inspiration that you simply cannot run these types of games without ripping out the guts and redesigning many core aspects of the system."

Excellent point. I can remember reading the GURPS rules a long, long time ago and thinking, These rules would work so much better for Dragonlance than D&D's....

 

[gizmo33]

In the early 1990s, I grabbed some items I figured would be a good baseline value* and compared to real-world pricing. What I came up with was that 1 gp = $20.

Really, though, the difference between an agrarian vs. industrial society make it little more than academic. You won't find even wealthy merchants making $50K (1,000,000 gp) per year in a D&D setting, but that's pretty common IRL.

* I don't remember exactly what I used, but I think it was mostly food. Weapons are a very bad choice because of the difference in societies and the potentially varied laws. Really, any manufactured good is probably not good because of the introduction of assembly lines.

The 2E PHB says 1gp=$20. However, a loaf of bread in the PHB is 2 cp. 1gp=$20 means that a loaf of bread is $0.20, which I think is the wrong direction for the prices - I'm relatively certain that bread is not cheaper when you make it by hand than it is made by machines - even if there's more profit to be made. I've checked the prices too, in the past, and I came up with a rule of thumb $10=1sp for rich people and $20=1sp for poor people that seemed to be ok. I'm not hoping for exact translations, just an order of magnitude estimate = $2=1sp is one order too less IMO.

 

[Mark Hope]

They are from different literary sources: The Vorpal Blade is from The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, while The Sword of Sharpness is from Jack the Giant Killer.

Aha - there you go. Thanks .

Of course most people consider frogs and toads creepy. Snakes too. And D&D owes a lot of debts to Clark Ashton Smith, who featured Tsathoggua, the toad god, in many of his stories:
[In] that secret cave in the bowels of Voormithadreth . . . abides from eldermost eons the god Tsathoggua. You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice.

Hey, so that's where Tsathoggua is from! Never read any CAS - will have to check him out when I get through my current slew of Moorcock and Barker books.

Learn something new every day. Two somethings, in this case.

 

[mmadsen]

The 2E PHB says 1gp=$20. However, a loaf of bread in the PHB is 2 cp. 1gp=$20 means that a loaf of bread is $0.20, which I think is the wrong direction for the prices - I'm relatively certain that bread is not cheaper when you make it by hand than it is made by machines - even if there's more profit to be made. I've checked the prices too, in the past, and I came up with a rule of thumb $10=1sp for rich people and $20=1sp for poor people that seemed to be ok. I'm not hoping for exact translations, just an order of magnitude estimate = $2=1sp is one order too less IMO.

If you compare purchasing power parity across two currencies -- in this case, modern US dollars and quasi-medieval D&D coins -- the single ratio you come up -- in this case, one gold piece to 20 dollars -- cannot hold across all goods, since the ratios of prices of goods in modern America don't match the ratios of the prices of those same goods in quasi-medieval D&D-land, even if we restrict ourselves to goods that exist in both lands.

For instance, a cup of sugar and a loaf of bread may cost roughly the same in modern America, but that pure sugar would cost orders of magnitude more than a loaf of bread in a quasi-medieval land. There, it's a luxury of the highest order.

 

[gizmo33]

in this case, one gold piece to 20 dollars -- cannot hold across all goods, since the ratios of prices of goods in modern America don't match the ratios of the prices of those same goods in quasi-medieval D&D-land, even if we restrict ourselves to goods that exist in both lands.

I agree that you can't take luxury goods like sugar and use them as a basis to form comparisons. Any sort of comparison would actually reveal the relative value of such goods anyway. It wouldn't make any sense to determine that 1 gp=$20 and then go on to conclude that some item that's available only on a remote tropical island would have the same value as it does in the local supermarket. However, if you use labor or grain to arrive at the result, and then use the result to determine that a pound of sugar is worth $400 in DnD, then maybe the comparison is of some value in showing what the expectations of the people in the system are.

 

[JoeGKushner]

That's odd. I know that list very well indeed, and with 3E it was finally possible for my characters to be like those heroes. Certainly not before.

I'd say that there are a lot more mechanical opportunities for that to be true butr the default magic item assumptions, ECL assumptions, and lack of abilitiy to 'break' out of class restraints (for example, how is Elric statted up? He's never thrown a fireball, but heck, summoning a chaos god? No problem.) Conan, Fafrd, and other characters do not fall into the 3e umbrella easily unless you are heavily modifying the baseline assumptions about the magic items and monsters you'll be using. Heck, that's so true that one of the most popular d20 variants is the 'pulp' action books of Conan, Grim Tales, and Iron Heroes where the magic item assumptions are tonned way down.

 

[mmadsen]

(for example, how is Elric statted up? He's never thrown a fireball, but heck, summoning a chaos god? No problem.)

Cleric?

Conan, Fafrd, and other characters do not fall into the 3e umbrella easily unless you are heavily modifying the baseline assumptions about the magic items and monsters you'll be using.

I find it really odd that D&D has always made it difficult to model Conan, Fafhrd, and other inspirational characters. Back in the day, Gods, Demigods, and Heroes was full of characters with levels as both fighting men and thieves, when that just wasn't done for PCs.

 

[Glyfair]

Cleric?
I find it really odd that D&D has always made it difficult to model Conan, Fafhrd, and other inspirational characters. Back in the day, Gods, Demigods, and Heroes was full of characters with levels as both fighting men and thieves, when that just wasn't done for PCs.

Don't forget the Giants in the Earth columns that specifically stated they weren't following the rules for multiple classes.