Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[fredramsey]

Sorry, YOU might have never used movement in your game, but it WAS there in D&D since Diaglo's time.

1. Never said I didn't use movement. Would have made it hard to get to the monsters. But round-to-round movement was never a tactical factor because of lack of need, when you could walk practically the length of the dungeon in one round.

2. I'm not going to go back through the posts, because it is not my job (I know what I was responding to), and it wasn't OD&D or Diaglo. It was 1st Edition AD&D, specifically.

And posting a bunch of rules from a game that was not the one I was addressing doesn't do much but wear out my mousewheel from scrolling.

And so, I think that about wraps that up.

 

[Gentlegamer]

None of the combat for AD&D or Mentzer D&D (or the Rules Cyclopedia, with is Allston edited Mentzer D&D) requried the use of a battlemap. A battlemap could be used a visual aid, but it wasn't in any way required. Most of the time, I was able to make out basic positioning of combatants mentally on my DM map. That is, movement and positioning in those games was not tactical. Tactical combat didn't come to AD&D until the aptly named Combat & Tactics rulebook. Like the old Swords & Spells, it was completely optional.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The game play in the middle of the game is not any different, nor should it be. People still role-play, they still roll dice, they still eat cheesy poops and drink Mountain Dew.

Wow, you guys sure play some weird games ...

 

[buzz]

It's becaused no one I ever ran into all those years used segments that much, only for spellcasting....

Nope, never saw anyone in all the years I played 1st Ed & 2nd Ed do that. You couldn't represent the action that way....

So no one bothered to move, except to step up to the next opponent, or for area of effect spells. There was no need, no rules to support why you would do that.

So, no one playing on any table I can imagine counted out squares in an outdoor fight.

I think the point of contention here is that you're describing 1e as you played it, as opposed to what's written in the books. This is understandable, as the 1e rules are a mess; I don't think many people played them as written. Heck, Gygax didn't play them as written.

Strategic? Yes. But not tactical.

Well, then this is a semantic issue. "Strategy" is an equally apt term for what you would do with a simulationist RPG and what you would do with a narrative one, i.e. "a plan of action." "Tactics" is the use of manuevers against an enemy, or more generally, manuevers or proceedure used to achieve a specified goal.

AD&D1e most definitely provided manuevers and adjudication for the deployment and mvoement of "troops" (i.e., characters). The simple fact that there were bonuses for flank and rear attacks, that any scale converting inches to feet/yards was presented, and that reach and range mattered (more than 10' away and you could not make a melee attack), demonstrates pretty readily that 1e was "tactical". As has been shown by myself and many others, most all of the manuevers in 3e exist in some form in 1e. The difference is just that 3e's rules are comprehensible.

Whether you played it that way is a different issue.

Honestly, read the 1e DMG chapter on combat, especially the example of combat. It's not particularly different from 3e in the grand scheme of things. Unarmed and nonlethal combat is just much simpler now.

 

[Remathilis]

1. Never said I didn't use movement. Would have made it hard to get to the monsters. But round-to-round movement was never a tactical factor because of lack of need, when you could walk practically the length of the dungeon in one round.

2. I'm not going to go back through the posts, because it is not my job (I know what I was responding to), and it wasn't OD&D or Diaglo. It was 1st Edition AD&D, specifically.

And posting a bunch of rules from a game that was not the one I was address doesn't do much but wear out my mousewheel from scrolling.

And so, I think that about wraps that up.

1.) If you could walk the length of the dungeon in one minute, most of them dungeons were pretty dang small.

2.)Lots of other people have posted the rules from AD&D1. You are simply ignoring them or twisting them as you see fit (based rightly or wrongly on your preceptions of the game).

You moved 120' in one round. 1" = 10" feet on the grid. Simple math says thats 12 1" squares (120/10 = 12). Did you use that movement to move up and hit the thing? Probably yes, there wasn't anything else to do.

This is the same for OD&D, Basic D&D, and AD&D 1 and 2. SAME. Combat and Tactics ushered in 5' squares and 10 second rounds. These were adapted for 3e. I posted the clearer version using the book I had (online btw, no I didn't type it). My AD&D book (pg 39) says the scale is the same. It listed all movement in inches because inches equaled feet indoors, yards outdoors.

So Redgar (120" movement) moved 120' in a dungeon per round, 120 yards outside. He moved 1/2 of that and could still attack.

Certainly more than the 2 ft your PCs were moving.

If you wish to continue assuming you've won, go ahead. I can't convince you otherwise. But let it be known, for the record, that you have misconstrued something along the line.

Good gaming.

 

[buzz]

None of the combat for AD&D or Mentzer D&D (or the Rules Cyclopedia, with is Allston edited Mentzer D&D) requried the use of a battlemap. A battlemap could be used a visual aid, but it wasn't in any way required.

This is very true. It's not explicitly stated anywhere in 1e that minis are required, and it seems like even Gygax didn't play on a battlemat all that much as D&D evolved.

However, the RAW do imply a relation to a battlemat (the use of inches and talk of scale), and there are plenty of combat rules that care about position, area, distance, and movement. Use of a battlemat would certainly be pretty useful for a game that, as written, cares about all this stuff. And it's not like the game explicitly states that you shouldn't use minis. And given that there's been D&D-branded minis since the seventies, one would assume that somebody at TSR figured that D&D players would find them useful.

And on the flip side, I've seen plenty of people here on the boards who don't use minis with 3e and seem to be having a good time.

Personally, if the rules care about the kind of thigns a battlemat helps track, I'll use a battlemat; adjudication is easier that way. If the rules don't address those issues, then the mat goes back up on my gaming shelf.

 

[Silverleaf]

Fighting Withdrawal
A character can only perform this maneuver when he begins his combat round in hand-to-hand combat with an enemy. With this maneuver, the character backs away from his enemy at a rate of 5' per round. He makes no attack unless his enemies follow him later in the same combat round, on the enemies' own movement phase. If they do, he can make his attack at the end of the enemies' movement phase, before the enemies begin their own attacks. The character's attack is the same as a normal attack. If he is not in handto-hand combat with his enemy when his movement phase comes around in the next round, he can go to running speed that next round.

Just in case you don't already know, that 5 ft/round is actually an error in the RC. Both the Moldvay/Cook and Mentzer books had Fighting Withdrawal set to 1/2 your PC's encounter speed. The RC was supposed to be a compilation of the BECM rules rather than a revision or new edition, so there was no valid reason to change it.
In fact, the combat chapter is a bit contradictory in a couple other places. It's a very good book otherwise, just could have used some better editing.
BTW, there a really nice "RC Errata and Companion Document" here:
http://rcerrata.redirectme.net
(it's really big because most of it isn't actual errata, but clarifications and alternate or expanded rules)

 

[fredramsey]

Honestly, read the 1e DMG chapter on combat, especially the example of combat. It's not particularly different from 3e in the grand scheme of things. Unarmed and nonlethal combat is just much simpler now.

Don't need to. I read it when it came out, and over and over for years after that.

Semantics? If that's what you want to call it, fine.

 

[Remathilis]

Just in case you don't already know, that 5 ft/round is actually an error in the RC. Both the Moldvay/Cook and Mentzer books had Fighting Withdrawal set to 1/2 your PC's encounter speed. The RC was supposed to be a compilation of the BECM rules rather than a revision or new edition, so there was no valid reason to change it.
In fact, the combat chapter is a bit contradictory in a couple other places. It's a very good book otherwise, just could have used some better editing.
BTW, there a really nice "RC Errata and Companion Document" here:
http://rcerrata.redirectme.net
(it's really big because most of it isn't actual errata, but clarifications and alternate or expanded rules)

Ah yes, I forgot about the errata page. No book is perfect. That is a great site BTW.

 

[buzz]

Oh, the thread drift.

So Redgar (120" movement) moved 120' in a dungeon per round, 120 yards outside. He moved 1/2 of that and could still attack.

If I remember what I read last night correctly, Regdar didn't move 120 yards outside if he was in combat. He would move 120', and I'm not even sure if he could move the entire 120' and still make an attack, if you were being zealous about segments.