Grognards: Was the Dex Check a Common House Rule Before 1e?

[Sepulchrave II]

Does the Dex check have a good pedigree?

 

[billd91]

Does the Dex check have a good pedigree?

Was it a common house rule for what? For keeping balance, catching on to things as you fall, etc? Yes. For determining if investments in small businesses paid well? Not so much.

Is that a good pedigree? Hard to tell.

 

[Morrus]

Dex checks before 1E? So in OD&D, etc.? For what?

I honestly can't remember. Probably not.

/Thouroughly flummoxed by the bizarre question.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Apologies if I wasn't clear, on reflection I might have worded that better.

I'm asking, for those who played OD&D, did you ever use a Dexterity check in your games? Was the notion of "Rolling under your Dexterity" to achieve a certain result (e.g. successfully balancing on a log and fighting) in common practice? I'm wondering where it first appeared, otherwise. It seems a very intuitive mechanic.

 

[jdrakeh]

I'm asking, for those who played OD&D, did you ever use a Dexterity check in your games?

I play OD&D now but I've been told by those who played it back in the 1970s that the "roll under Ability on a d20" check was one of three ways often used to handle such things (the other two methods were "roll under arbitrary number on d100" and "pure DM fiat").

 

[grodog]

Apologies if I wasn't clear, on reflection I might have worded that better.

I'm asking, for those who played OD&D, did you ever use a Dexterity check in your games? Was the notion of "Rolling under your Dexterity" to achieve a certain result (e.g. successfully balancing on a log and fighting) in common practice? I'm wondering where it first appeared, otherwise. It seems a very intuitive mechanic.

My gut says that the ability score check almost-certainly originated with OD&D, but that it got legs with the Holmes Basic set in 1977, which used a straight Dex comparison as the determiner for who got first swing/initiative.

 

[Henrix]

I seem to recall that it at least was a fairly common house rule, and that it actually influenced the rules of RuneQuest (the rules of which started out as Steve Perrins D&D game set in Staffords Glorantha, IIRC.)

 

[Aus_Snow]

I play OD&D now but I've been told by those who played it back in the 1970s that the "roll under Ability on a d20" check was one of three ways often used to handle such things (the other two methods were "roll under arbitrary number on d100" and "pure DM fiat").

This is in line with my understanding of it. It certainly shows up in a number of 80s RPGs, that I've seen, and in some cases played [and/or run]. Even though I got to them some time after the 80s were over, mind you.

But yeah, um. . . pedigree? Er, maybe/maybe not. Who cares? And what does it mean, anyway?

 

[Garnfellow]

I think the most influential proponent of using ability scores to resolve task checks within D&D was probably Katherine Kerr in her article "You've Always Got a Chance" in Dragon 68 (December 1982). This was a classic roll-under mechanic, but the beauty was it didn't require yet another convoluted subsystem: it worked simply and cleanly within the existing ability score framework.

I'm sure she wasn't the first to come up with the basic idea, and I'm sure other games probably had a similar task resolution system, but I suspect Kerr was the first to wrap it all up as an elegant universal mechanic for D&D and that her article had far and away the widest circulation.

The basic concept then made its way into a lot of TSR material in the late AD&D 1 period.

 

[Kask]

I think the most influential proponent of using ability scores to resolve task checks within D&D was probably Katherine Kerr in her article "You've Always Got a Chance" in Dragon 68 (December 1982).

By 82 it was a pretty universally used mechanic. Katherine just echoed what was. There was no need for advocacy by that time. I think we used both % & roll under in OD&D.