Where do crits come from?

[Glyfair]

The RQ fumbles tables were filled with all sort of horrible things happening to friends (it was "friends" in our translation) close to the fumbling combatant. Hence the famous cry at our table of "I'm not his friend and I'm not close to him!"

Remember, it was based on things that happened to the author in the SCA (he must have lost a lot of friends in SCA combats)

Runequest, IMO, was a good system. However, it rode a lot on the strength of the campaign world (Glorantha, one of the classic RPG worlds) and players looking for an alternative to D&D. Runequest was possibly the most popular of the early RPGs that wasn't tied to a class system.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd say that, while crits in RPGs and wargames are conceptually related to reality in the form of a single lucky shot that takes an opponent down, as a game mechanic, they'd date back to the beginning of dice games- hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago.

I say that because so many games that use dice reward or penalize you for certain rolls, especially multiple series of doubles- the same result on 2 dice. Think of games like Craps, Backgammon, Pachisi, etc.

Since there were so many other games that did that with dice, those wargames that used dice probably followed suit because that was expected, and likewise with the RPGs that followed them.

 

[blargney the second]

Dammit, I was looking forward to a pithy reply of "Storks.", but you've banned that from this thread.

FWIW, Danny's got a good point.

 

[Gez]

Well, you see...

And I don't want to hear "When a mommy crit and a daddy crit love eachother very very much..."

... Oh, bummer.

Anyway, I suppose they were introduced first to make fights more random and less predictable. Also, the idea of "lucky shots" and "fell swoops" is pretty common in literature, but there aren't many ways to make them possible in an RPG: if they're restricted by randomness, you get critical hits; if they're restricted by being a resource that the player spends when needed you get action points; and if they're not restricted at all you just get a very deadly combat system.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I know that OD&D didn't have them and yet lots of amateur press magazines introduced them (we were using critical hit tables in our OD&D before RQ2 appeared.

Runequest had critical hits & fumbles. They were supposed to represent the sort of things that were "realistic" because they were the sort of thing that happened to them on the fields of SCA events (as if comparing seasoned fighters with guys hitting each other every few weekends was realistic). It states this in the rulebook.

Frankly I found Runequest (RQ2) combat felt much more realistic, much more like 'real' combat than any other system I've played before or since. It sounds like you are poking fun at it because it was based on guys hitting each other ever few weekends to get a feel for realism... and yet the alternatives are based on guys sitting down and just thinking about it (not doing anything), so what does it say about those alternatives?

RQ2 for the win, I say

 

[Glyfair]

Frankly I found Runequest (RQ2) combat felt much more realistic, much more like 'real' combat than any other system I've played before or since. It sounds like you are poking fun at it because it was based on guys hitting each other ever few weekends to get a feel for realism... and yet the alternatives are based on guys sitting down and just thinking about it (not doing anything), so what does it say about those alternatives?

Without critical hits & fumbles perhaps. The sheer stupidity of some of the results of the fumble tables (and the frequency of appearance) hurt the "reality the game for me."

And honestly, "real" combat feel was never a selling point for me. The number of characters with missing limbs in RQ until they worked up to a spot where Heal 6 was common was staggering.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Without critical hits & fumbles perhaps. The sheer stupidity of some of the results of the fumble tables (and the frequency of appearance) hurt the "reality the game for me."

I do admit that options like "hit self, do critical damage" or "impale self" could be rather too awful (and somewhere on ENworld there is a thread where somebody talks of a baboon who allegedly fumbled his bite, and critically hit himself... in the head ?!!), but in years and years of playing we only had a few of those crop up. I only remember one person killing himself with a fumble, and one person killing someone else with a fumble (these were much more likely as low 'level' characters - by the time the game was getting near 90% skills and above fumbles hardly ever happened, and never got those really bad rolls)

Hey, the fumble and critical hit tables we used when we played OD&D were at least as bad (and Rolemaster had far, far worse ones!)

For those who are interested, here is the RQ fumble chart

 

[Huw]

Pachisi: Throws of 0, 1 or 6 gave you an extra turn.
Backgammon: Doubles give you an extra turn.

Not sure if they count as critical hits, but the idea of certain die rolls giving you a boost beyond what the actual roll is is an old one.

 

[BlackMoria]

Conjecture - the ideas of the crits in D&D in specific probably had their origins in The Hobbit where Smaug is laid low by a lucky arrow strike in the vulnerable spot over this heart.

I think crits originated as the notion of overcoming a powerful monster by a very skillful or lucky hit (like Smaug) was considered useful in the D&D game because it has it roots in literature and people wanted to simulate the same in the D&D game.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

hear "When a mommy crit and a daddy crit love eachother very very much..."

Get the hell out of my head!

I was just about to reply "When mommy natural 20 and poppy successfull confirmation roll had a little too much mead and get together, limbs are flying and things are going to be wet and wild."