D&D General Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Magic Missile: Why Gygax Still Matters to Me

[Guest 85555]

That last post also raises a point: if you run 2E and start characters at higher level, don't tell everyone to make X level characters, tell them to make characters with X amount of Experience Points

 

[Voadam]

The original thief from Aero games that Gary stole borrowed did not use percentiles, but was based off a MU chassis and had never-fail abilities instead of spells.

I would really like to see that version sometimes. Do you know if it is available anywhere?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I would really like to see that version sometimes. Do you know if it is available anywhere?

I have not been able to find an actual version of the text of the Aero Games (Switzer) Thief.

I have seen people reliably relay that the class (a "Box Man") used spell slots for the abilities.

"It came about like this, one group had a dwarf who wanted to try picking locks with his dagger, so I had the idea for a Burglar class, which we drew up like a Magic user but with skills (like Lock picking) instead of spells. The consensus was to call the class “Thief”. According to D. Daniel Wagner.

I should note that in more recent times, Wagner has disputed the Switzer origin, and said that he invented the class and Switzer just reported it to Gygax.

 

[Mannahnin]

I have not been able to find an actual version of the text of the Aero Games (Switzer) Thief.

I have seen people reliably relay that the class (a "Box Man") used spell slots for the abilities.

"It came about like this, one group had a dwarf who wanted to try picking locks with his dagger, so I had the idea for a Burglar class, which we drew up like a Magic user but with skills (like Lock picking) instead of spells. The consensus was to call the class “Thief”. According to D. Daniel Wagner.

I should note that in more recent times, Wagner has disputed the Switzer origin, and said that he invented the class and Switzer just reported it to Gygax.

Yup. Darrold says he wrote them back in Santa Monica and then lost the original copies. I haven't seen a copy of them anywhere yet.

I run into him occasionally in an OD&D group on FB.

 

[Mannahnin]

That last post also raises a point: if you run 2E and start characters at higher level, don't tell everyone to make X level characters, tell them to make characters with X amount of Experience Points

With any pre-3E edition this is a key thing to remember.

I'm in the middle of running Praise the Fallen for some friends using B/X, and I ran it earlier this year at a convention, and I set the pre-generated characters at 20k 10k xp. Enough that the Thieves are 5th, the Elves 3rd, and everyone else 4th.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Precisely this. I've seen repeated instances of people saying "Lovecraft was egregiously racist even by the standards of his time."

No, he wasn't.

Egregiously racist for the standards of his time was putting on a white sheet and committing mass murder and domestic terrorism against an entire swath of the population. It was not writing a racist poem (that was only published after he died), or giving his cat an offensive name, or writing stories with themes of xenophobia and othering.

Suggesting that Lovecraft can be held up as any sort of example of what African-Americans had to deal with one hundred years ago is incredibly reductive to what the reality of life was like back then for people who weren't white.

He also managed to sour on Hitler and condemn Kristallnacht when guys like Lindbergh were still shilling for him. Anyone claiming Lovecraft was a super-racist by the standards of pre-WWII US simply doesn't understand how much more racist the world around him was. Birth of a Nation was being played in the White House! Lovecraft was married to a Jewish woman at a time when people wouldn't even socialize with them.

 

[Emerikol]

<snip>

That. And you think I am wordy!

But not a bad read.

Maybe I'm getting old myself, but, I don't think saying the average woman is weaker than the average man is misogynistic. it's realistic. I think as a rule for generating NPC's in general, having women have lower Strength makes sense. Now, we have to consider the women who choose to be fighters. Are THEY weaker? Well maybe not. As a PC rule it may best we hand waved away in the interest of fair play at the table. I'd argue that depending on how you want to describe stats that women have better scores than average in at least half the stats is an easy argument to make.

I think there is "pressure" to not say obvious truths out loud sometimes. It is not healthy for our society. We can very much denounce a view but we should not ostracize a view except in the extreme. I'd happily play at Gygax's table this very day if he were around. I'd probably consider him a bit antiquated in his thinking on some things and I probably would dismiss it as age. We are way too uptight these days on all sides of issues.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That last post also raises a point: if you run 2E and start characters at higher level, don't tell everyone to make X level characters, tell them to make characters with X amount of Experience Points

I had forgotten this until I read this... the time a DM let someone bring in a character to a high level game and gave them some god awful high amount of XP... so they made a human who went 3rd level fighter then X level thief and then made it to X+1 in wizard. so he had a x3 back stab and weapon speac and could use all of it with his wizard levels... he was WAY behind us in those wizard levels but a wizard with HP and thief skills was amazing... and as he adventured with us and got xp he started catching up with wizard levels.

 

[jolt]

But not a bad read.

Maybe I'm getting old myself, but, I don't think saying the average woman is weaker than the average man is misogynistic. it's realistic. I think as a rule for generating NPC's in general, having women have lower Strength makes sense. Now, we have to consider the women who choose to be fighters. Are THEY weaker? Well maybe not. As a PC rule it may best we hand waved away in the interest of fair play at the table. I'd argue that depending on how you want to describe stats that women have better scores than average in at least half the stats is an easy argument to make.

I think there is "pressure" to not say obvious truths out loud sometimes. It is not healthy for our society. We can very much denounce a view but we should not ostracize a view except in the extreme. I'd happily play at Gygax's table this very day if he were around. I'd probably consider him a bit antiquated in his thinking on some things and I probably would dismiss it as age. We are way too uptight these days on all sides of issues.

The problem is that, even in 1E, Strength represents more than just upper body power. In any case, the attribute system isn't nearly granular enough to even begin to model the biological distinctiveness of male/female. When someone tries to do so anyways, it feels arbitrary and shoe-horned, if not outright ignorant.

 

[Emerikol]

The problem is that, even in 1E, Strength represents more than just upper body power. In any case, the attribute system isn't nearly granular enough to even begin to model the biological distinctiveness of male/female. When someone tries to do so anyways, it feels arbitrary and shoe-horned, if not outright ignorant.

There is not a single athletic event based on strength or even stamina that males would not dominate a competition with females IN GENERAL. the high school track champion of many states in America would be an olympic gold medalist if a woman with similar results. Now what I am NOT saying is that there are not women a lot stronger than most men. It's why when we are talking PCs, we can ignore it. The bell curves are broad enough to overlap in a 3-18 range.