Thursday, May 22, 2008

Torias Anyone?

"The new character introduced in the middle of the game is always in the next room, held captive by the bad guys. Thus it was handed down to us from olden times."

From here.

4 comments:

Leelu said...

And now Lin. Tiger thinks being found in an iron maiden beats being merely unconscious on a taxidermy table.

Degolar said...

Awesome link. That was a great read. Two especially good pearls of wisdom:

Well here smaller weapons were faster. So fast that some rounds you get to attack twice. And on those rounds, you could parry your enemy AND attack! It was simple, and it worked. Simple to understand, simple in execution. I always understood the premise behind the weapon speed rules we never used in AD&D, but now I saw the OTHER rules they worked with to make them useful and meaningful. 32 year old game, still has something to teach.

That's an excellent idea, both because it's realistic and because it could improve game play. There needs to be some incentive to use smaller weapons besides a cool character concept and in the current system(s) the numbers just don't encourage it.

Yeah, ok, maybe it’s just me. But first level for us was all about avoiding the dice. It was about luring the goblins into slicks of lamp oil, and then lighting them ablaze. Or even better, trapping them between the blazing oil and the gelatinous cube. Or bribing the orcs to fight the goblins for us. If you had to go to dice, it meant someone was likely to die. So you did everything you could to avoid it.

That’s not what most folks think of as D&D these days, but back before computer games, when our models were Harryhausen movies and Norse myths, lateral-thinking our way past the goblins rather than duking it out with them seemed the obvious way to go.


And that's what I love about starting characters at first level--there's more thinking and strategizing and tactics instead of infinite dice rolling. There's more to it, and your characters have more opportunities to develop personalities and styles.

Hadrian said...

In Hollow Earth Expedition, there is a weapons speed and initiative system that is, in my opinion, second to none. It makes allowances for just this sort of thing. Why else would you use low damage pistols instead of a high damage elephant gun?

scott said...

Using weapon speed is a cool concept, but it's one more thing for a player (and DM) to keep track of. We should make a list of houserules.