Dragon Reflections #88

Dragon Publishing released Dragon #88 in August 1984. It is 100 pages long and has a cover price of $3.00.

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The cover is by Jim Holloway, one of my favourite RPG artists, and depicts a rogue hiding from an orc patrol. Interior artists include Keith Parkinson, Jeff Butler, Brian Born, Roger Raupp, Kurt Erichsen, Tom Wham, Dave Trampier, Mark Nelson, and Larry Elmore.

This month's special attraction is "Elefant Hunt," a light-hearted board game by Tom Wham. The players are big game hunters who explore the African interior in search of wild animals and other valuables. The cute art and interesting hunt mechanics elevate this above the typical roll-and-move game, but it will most likely appeal to kids.

There are three articles on falling in AD&D, and old-timers will know this was a real chestnut back in the day. "Physics and falling damage" by Arn Ashleigh Parker argues for a more realistic velocity-based falling system. He follows up with "Scientific facts behind the system," which uses natural-world physics to derive a falling damage equation. All the math boils down to "the number of d6 damage dice equals 5 times the square root of the distance fallen in feet, divided by 4." Parker was a physics major with a handful of published credits in Dragon.

In a brief rebuttal called "Kinetic energy is the key," Steve Winter argues that velocity is less important than kinetic energy and that the original falling damage system in the Players Handbook (1d6 points of damage for every 10 feet fallen) is pretty good. Winter was an editor working in the TSR game department at this time.

"The Ecology of the Rust Monster" by Ed Greenwood delves into the biology and behaviour of this favourite D&D monster. In the voice of Baerdalumi the sage, Greenwood describes the monster's temperament and biology and gives some practical tips for dealing with it. The game notes detail the effects of certain spells on the creature and address edge cases around their antenna attacks.

"Beyond the Dungeon: Part 2" continues Katharine Kerr's exploration of wilderness adventures. She explains how to create engaging encounters by pitting players against harsh terrains, environmental obstacles, and the challenge of resource management. The article also emphasizes the integration of non-dungeon settings into the broader campaign world to deepen storytelling. I enjoyed this much more than the first article, which was a bit pedantic for my taste.

"Key to Ramali" is a short story by Ardath Mayhar. A weary intergalactic negotiator needs the help of his malfunctioning mechanical camel to secure a trade deal. It's a humorous little tale with patches of creativity, but it is no more than light entertainment. Mayhar published dozens of science fiction, fantasy, and western novels.

Len Lakofka brings us a diverse trio of new "Gods of the Suel pantheon." This month, we have Syrul, Goddess of False Promises and Deceit, Fortubuo, God of Stone, Metals, and Mountains, and Wee Jas, Goddess of Magic and Death.

"Off the Shelf" returns with reviews of the latest sci-fi and fantasy:
  • The Chaos Weapon by Colin Kapp is a rousing tale of space marshals confronting a chaotic menace and is "well worth reading."
  • The Paradoxicon by Nicholas Falletta is a comprehensive exploration of paradoxes and is of great use to "those who like including puzzles and riddles in their game campaigns."
  • The Sword and the Chain by Joel Rosenberg continues this series about college gamers transported to a fantasy world and is "delightful."
  • Across the Sea of Suns by Gregory Benford, a tale with confusing dual plots about an interstellar mission and an alien invasion, is "a disappointing book."
  • Salvage and Destroy by Edward Llewellyn, about aliens awaiting the end of human civilization, is "a good science fiction tale from a talented writer."
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson, a dark and gripping vision of our cyberpunk future, is "a novel worth reading."
There is a feature-length game review in this issue. Rolemaster by Iron Crown Enterprises is a comprehensive RPG system offering exceptional player flexibility and detailed mechanics, but it is burdened by inconsistency and complexity. Reviewer Arlen P. Walker says, "If you want a freer, more open game than you are currently playing, I'd say it is probably worth it."

Finally, the Ares Section includes four articles:
  • "Before the Dark Years" by Jim Ward and Roger Moore is a detailed timeline of the Gamma World universe.
  • "The Marvel-Phile" by Jeff Grubb details the diverse inhabitants of the Marvel Superheroes RPG.
  • "The Battle at Ebony Eyes" by William Tracy is a Star Fronters game scenario.
  • "Yachts and Privateers Return" by Douglas Niles has revised statistics for various Star Frontiers ships.
And that's a wrap! There was a little too much physics in this issue, but I did enjoy Katharine Kerr's article on wilderness adventures. Next month, we have new monsters, special shields, and war words!
 

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M.T. Black

M.T. Black

The falling damage article was impactful on me to this very day, as it got me thinking about how damage could be modeled better to our expectations and experience, such that falling off a ladder is potentially lethal but also people have survived falling out of planes. This lead to a long series of falling damage rules with much higher spreads of possible results still clustered around 3.5 damage per 10'. The wider range meant that players wouldn't treat falling from a height as trivial, because bad luck could result in death, but that on average a pit trap wouldn't be lethal and wouldn't have to be 100 feet deep to be threatening.
 

I guess the real question is would you rather fall ten feet or get stabed with a spear? they both do 1d6 points if damage.

The answer: get hit with a quarterstaff. The bast way to take 1d6 AD&D damage in real life.
 

I guess the real question is would you rather fall ten feet or get stabbed with a spear?

Most people playing D&D have always struggled with this very example in various ways depending on how they conceive the hit point.

When a person is hit with a spear they are not necessarily stabbed with a spear in the sense of being impaled. When in combat any weapon does damage to a target we compare the targets hit points to the damage done by the spear to determine what the narrative is regarding that blow. If in combat a spear does 3 points of damage to a human target with 30 hit points, we might say that the target mostly parried aside the thrust, or that the armor prevented a deep penetration, or that the target jumped back from the thrust so that it was not deep. So we would equate 3 points of damage to being in some fashion just nicked by the spear or bludgeoned by it or whatever we could use to justify 3 points of damage. What we would not say in this situation is that the character was impaled by a spear thrust and therefore took 3 points of damage, since intuitively we understand that getting impaled ought to be debilitating at the least and likely life threatening. Our knowledge of the fiction is created after the knowledge of the hit point loss.

If out of combat in D&D you just stood still and took a spear thrust, this counts as a lethal attack. In 1e AD&D you are just dead, no saving throw. In 3e D&D this is an automatic critical hit (triple damage) and you must save or die. This is a very different situation because we know before the damage is dealt approximately what the fiction is thus we change how we model the damage done compared to the abstraction of combat.

Falling is like this later case. We know for certainty that the character fell and so we must now model that falling rather than applying some damage and then inventing a narrative to go along with it. Knowing the fiction but not the damage is different than knowing the damage but not the fiction. We might refine our knowledge of the fiction somewhat once we roll for damage yet we do know that they fell. So from the very early days of D&D, DMs have been trying to make the model for falling more like what we would expect from the fiction - an 80' fall is potentially very serious indeed.

Similar cases apply to things like touching lava or emersion in acid. What's going on here isn't like combat.

Now, if you are happy inventing the fiction on the fly regardless of what has been prior established, this goes away. You can always just make up some new circumstance that wasn't prior established and apply luck to the situation, but this can be silly even with the most imaginative and inventive DM trying to come up with new narrative devices to explain the damage mechanic. In some cases it's best to just accept that the fiction has been established and make the results model that fiction.

So, no, in fact both falling and spear thrusts don't do 1d6 damage in D&D despite what you might first think.
 

I like light entertainment. Kind of feels disparaging the way you put it.

I've never cared for realism in my fantasy games. I get others do.
 


Most people playing D&D have always struggled with this very example in various ways depending on how they conceive the hit point.
If I recall, a lot of those articles were in response to player behavior, not just the rules themselves. That is, player had characters would do stupid things like fall off 100 foot cliffs because "they could take it" knowing the math would never add up to certain death. Later versions of D&D added massive damage rules, but a lot of these arguments predate those rules.

Related to this is metagaming. Because players know the underlying system that determines damage, they can do calculations a "real person" would not. Falling 30 feet would never be considered "okay" by most standards. But players in a situation where damage calculations have to be made will do just that with their characters.

I had a NPC jump off a balcony to his doom 30 feet below, and my players were astonished "he had so little hit points." Like, to make it "feel dangerous" he'd have to jump off a 100 foot balcony. This is a challenge with simulationist damage, because inevitably other uses of the system (a spear, forex) become comparative, and then that fall doesn't seem so bad.

As you said, combat is erratic and leaves room for interpretation. But everybody has the same experience when they hit maximum velocity.
 

If I recall, a lot of those articles were in response to player behavior, not just the rules themselves. That is, player had characters would do stupid things like fall off 100 foot cliffs because "they could take it" knowing the math would never add up to certain death. Later versions of D&D added massive damage rules, but a lot of these arguments predate those rules.

Related to this is metagaming. Because players know the underlying system that determines damage, they can do calculations a "real person" would not. Falling 30 feet would never be considered "okay" by most standards. But players in a situation where damage calculations have to be made will do just that with their characters.

Agreed. While at the time of the article realism was fetishized as the solution to all table problems, there real and meaningful table problems that they were trying to fix. They weren't just being realistic for the sake of realism.

This particular problem that was trying to be addressed had to do with immersion. Both players and GMs felt taken out of the game when on a whim, not at heroically dramatic moments but just because they could, players would treat falls as minor inconveniences and chose to do things like deliberately jumping off 60 foot high ledges because it didn't threaten their character. I think it would have been less of a problem if at a dramatic moment the hero attempted the leap in order to save the innocent and the player was immersed in the fear of that choice and the risk they were taking, but they just were because they could do the math and it wasn't going to hurt them much.

I won't call "realism" the solution exactly here because there is nothing about hit points that is realistic per se nor have I ever seen any system that actually has realistic injury and trauma systems, but in this case the general inclination that "falls are risky" that realism promotes is I think the right solution.

In my own system, a 30' fall would probably average about 13 damage which is around what 3d6 would produce, but the maximum damage from a 30' fall in my game would be around 78 damage. This later result would be extraordinarily rare though, like 1 in 100,000 falls. I don't use a normalized curve. The result is that I can have pit traps that have a challenge about like you'd expect but players learn over time, "Falling is bad" because relatively soon they get hit by a 30 foot fall that did say 40 damage and left them near death (or dead) so while the average result doesn't wreck the game, there is a strong incentive not to treat falling as trivial. Falling becomes 'exciting' in a way real falling is exciting. "Oh crap!" moments.
 
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