Fighting Capability

The following is from CHAINMAIL:

Here, each figure will do only as well as its known capabilities foretell, with allowances for chance factors which affect every battle (such as dice throwing in miniature warfare)…… combat is based on the historically known capabilities of each particular kind of fighting man and then expressed as a dice rolling probability in relation to like and differing types of soldiers.p6

The Lycanthrope will bring a number of animals of its were-type with it, and this adds to their fighting ability. If they are fighting inside of, or within 6" of, a wood, other than an Entwood, they will double their melee capability. Lycanthropes attack as four Armored Foot and defend as four Heavy Foot.  p34

They will fight in formations, and have a melee capability of six Heavy Foot. p34.

From the above we can see that the terms fighting ability, melee capability etc..are interchangeable references to the power of a particular combatant, as expressed in number and type, i.e. “six heavy foot”.

HEROES (and Anti-heroes): ..... They have the fighting ability of four figures, the class being dependent on the arms and equipment of the Hero types themselves, who can range from Light Foot to Heavy Horse. CM p7.

The fighting ability or melee capability of the hero is “4 figures” but depends also on their “type”, meaning one hero could equal 4 figures of Light Infantry and another equal 4 figures of Heavy Horse. 

So what’s a figure?  That depends on scale.  It can represent 20 men, 10 men or 1 man.  In individual combat such as in Man to Man (or OD&D) a figure is 1 man.  “When two figures are within melee range (3"), one or several blows will be struck…. The man striking the first blow….” p25.

Each man/figure that wants to melee, can: “Units within 3" of a melee may be drawn into it if the player to whom they belong so desires.” p16

Now here comes a bit of deductive logic not specified in the rules, but apparent.  Each single man/figure gets one attack and dies when hit, but a Hero has a melee capability of 4 man/figures.  Therefore a Hero gets 4 melee attacks (melee capability) in Man to Man combat; one attack for each man they are worth.  Likewise a superhero deductively has 8 attacks, since they are equal to 8 men/figures, and each one of those 8 men is worth one attack separately.

Now lets turn to OD&D.  OD&D has new rules which replace or supplement CHAINMAIL.  Hit dice, have now replaced mere hits for defense.  Another column, labeled “Fighting Capability”, is defined as “a key to use in conjunction with the CHAINMAIL fantasy rule…”p18M&M  Fighting Capability lists a character level, and the number of men the level equals.  Heroes equal 4 men, and Superheroes equal 8 men.

Again, it’s not spelled out, but it is readily apparent that OD&D Fighting Capability is the same thing as CHAINMIAL fighting ability or melee capability in terms of attack value/number of attacks.  A D&D hero has the fighting capability of  4 men/figures, just as a CHAINMAIL hero has a melee capability of 4 
men/figures.  A D&D hero therefore attacks as 4 men when using CHAINMAIL Man to Man.

So, when using the CHAINMAIL man to man or mass combat methods, the Fighting Capability table tells you how many men/figures a D&D character is worth, plus possible bonuses. 

For more discussion, have a look at this post: http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=menmagic&action=display&thread=8509&page=1

On the Character of Histories and the History of Characters

The past doesn’t exist; you can’t poke it with a ten foot pole.  It is a tale created from our memories and from such media and material we are able to reference in the present.  The task of a scientific investigator of the past is daunting because facts don’t speak “truth” themselves except in the most uninteresting, limited of ways.  What people really want to know, the why’s and the how’s, is often more ephemeral than the data and so arguments must be crafted and stories told.

                It is exponentially more problematic when the only records are verbal, written or otherwise, and it took a long time – well into the twentieth century - for researchers to abandon the comforts of positivism and realize that documents are but a tool, a guide, a starting point, and a not a whole and obvious truth unto themselves and never the whole truth in any case.   In our case, as part of the interest to groke the roots and compass of our hobby, we’ve looked forever at how D&D and AD&D are heavily dependant on both the mechanics and fluff found in CHAINMAIL, which in turn is directly linked to earlier wargames, fantasy literature, and ultimately cultural mythology.  Lots of people, myself included, have had a field day over the years of linking CHAINMAIL to the corresponding bits of D&D.  Yet the question of how CHAINMAIL, a table top wargame, came to be gutted and remodeled as a “Role-Playing” game, remained elusive. 

Speculations about that process often involve a discussion about what a role playing game is, but that question is, I think, both simply answered and misleading.  Rather obviously, role playing games are games where people play roles.  Cowboys and Indians is a roleplaying game, so is any movie or play you have ever seen.  Role playing is as old as time.

                “RPGs” have more to them than playing at roles, so lets be more specific. There are really two distinguishing factors between “wargames” and “RPGs”.

                  1)      Character mechanics

                  2)      Victory conditions

First, tabletop RPGs feature open ended character driven gaming.   Central to RPGs is the idea that characters affect outcomes through all their individual characteristics.  Unlike wargames, where only the material strength of the playing piece applies, RPG’s apply any of the various aspects of the character to the game.  So a character will have some kind of intelligence score, a strength score and so on.  The character may have a reputation or social standing: a set of skills, abilities, saving throws and so forth, things that define the character and can be applied to any appropriate situation that may come up, not just martial skill.  These things can be scores, numbers, or simply descriptions.  But in all cases the outcomes of challenges within the game are adjudicated with reference to both the martial and extra-martial characteristics of the Character.   

Second, the character is unbounded, both in terms of the mapboard and in terms of agency.  Theoretically the character could travel anywhere and pursue any activity and still be in the game.  Wargames, such as CHAINMAIL™ are bounded by their victory conditions, which essentially entail overcoming an obstacle on the gameboard via martial ability.  Typically, that obstacle is the enemy army, or some similar battle condition.   Victory conditions in RPGs however are determined entirely by the player.  They may follow a path of opportunity laid out by the game master, or they may go their own way and seek their own objectives, and still progress in the game.  Geographic and career agency are significant breaks from previous games where if a character or a playing piece were to leave the “campaign” to found a moon cult in the Atlas mountains, or search for the source of the Nile, it would effectively end that characters role in the game.

           There are many games which some element of character comes into play, Diplomacy and Fight in the Skies, for example, but what we call “RPGs” were the first to tie variable, open ended victory conditions with the requirement that any and all aspects of the singular character (skills, nature, background) can be brought in to play.

          In short, “tabletop RPGs” are character driven games, in which multiple and varied personal characteristics matter and the characters choose which obstacles to overcome to achieve a self defined victory goal.   

          This brings me back to the ephemeral aspects of history and a concept I’ve long argued on DF and elsewhere about David Wesely.  His Bruanstein was exactly this sort of character driven game, and such play was a new revelation to his players.  Wesely created individual characters with broadly defined roles, character backgrounds and skills, and turned them loose on the world he created for the game.  The players then decided what they wanted their characters to do, setting personal goals, and maneuvering toward that end, within the bounds of their personal characteristics.

         This unique “Braunstein element”, the player character driven and defined game, is precisely what distinguishes “tabletop RPGs” from other games, including other conflict games like CHAINMAIL or Chess.  Wargames have built in, externally defined, victory goals.  You win when you defeat your enemy.  RPGs have no external victory goal assumed by the rules.  The “end game” is player character success as defined by the player.  Along the way player victories may be won by achieving a level or creating a spell, or simply stealing all the loot in the local bank – whatever goal the player has set out to achieve with the character. 

          Take away the Bruanstein element and RPGs are left with nothing.  All RPGs are variant Braunsteins in a sense, each employing their own mechanics and set design.  At heart, D&D is a Braunstien;  Traveller is a Braunstein;  Burning Wheel is a Braunstein.   The exact mechanics and window dressing don’t change the primacy of design centered on personal characteristics and character agency pioneered in Wesely’s game.  

          Conversely, add the “Braunstein element” to almost any tabletop game and it becomes an “RPG”.  Imagine, for example, creating a Chess RPG.  One could use the rules of chess, and the names of the pieces as a basis for creating characters with various roles, positions, skills, and powers.  The chessboard must be transformed into an open map, and each character left to chart its own path in the great war of black verses white, or good verses evil, perhaps.   Is victory for John Q. Pawn promotion to bishop?  Or is it amassing a huge fortune selling arms to the knights on both sides?   The Player must decide how they will play their character, make use of its’ strengths and what direction it will take in the scheme.

That is Braunstien.  That likewise is D&D and all of its descendants.

Blackmoor Character Sheet Clues, Part III (last)

The  learned skills listed on Peter Gaylords character sheet are:

  

Horsemanship

Woodsmanship

Leadership

Flying

Seamanship

The presence of a skills list on a pre D&D sheet might stir up a hornets nest of its own for some folks.  Many a post has been written about how “skills” ruin the game, so evidence of skill mechanics in the ur game of D&D might not be welcome news to all concerned.  I won’t presume to tell anybody their idea of gaming fun is bad/wrong.  I personally think there are lots of examples of skills in the 3LBB’s as it is, but it’s true there is no detailed system.   M. A. R. Barker’s Empire of the Petal Throne™ “corrected” that “omission” as some would put it, but Arneson long contended that he had used a skills system “in so far as what I originally wanted to do ….with the different classes and the different fields you could learn.  I wanted to do that originally, but it was considered too complicated and people couldn’t handle it.  Well now that’s come back, you can do that.  You could really make a unique character class with the variability; and I always wanted to do that and I do that in my original campaign even today…. Because the players in the original campaign could learn different skills and different abilities....”  Dave Arneson, Mortality Radio interview, July 9th, 2004.

Arneson also claimed that “D&D at its start was a simple system with guidelines that could be tailored to the players...Each having strong points and weakness...  The skills (Such as found in my AIF game.) allowed you to build your character…” Official Dave Arneson Q&A Thread

« Result #30 on Jan 9, 2009, 3:25pm; Odd74 Forum

Of course, nobody familiar with AiF really thought  Arneson meant to say, strictly speaking, that AiF was exactly how it was in early Blackmoor.  Instead it seems more accurate to say that some of AiF builds on some of the concepts experimented with in the pre-D&D era, often with new or more developed mechanics.  So while AiF, or parts of it at least, may well be Arneson’s “original system”, at the systemic level, it is not true of the mechanical details, which are mostly quite altered or new altogether.   Most gamers don’t show much interest in tracing out all the stuff in AiF the way we do with D&D, and few people besides oddballs like me have done more than skim through the game.  Nevertheless, a  closer look at AiF  reveals some immediate parallels with the skill list on Peter Gaylords’s character sheet.

As mentioned previously, AiF has an “Education” sub-system.  Briefly, this is a list of 26 “Courses of Instruction”, 9 of them being in individual weapons, and several of the others being basic and advanced studies in the same subject or skill.  The courses are learned by a character through a “basic learning formula” taking into account time, intelligence, and course difficulty.  Among the 26 are:

Horsemanship (I, II, III)

 Forester/Huntsman

and

Sailor

Flying, is, of course a spell in AiF, leaving leadership the only "skill" on the Blackmoor character sheet generally unaccounted for in the game.   So we see that AiF carries a tradition of learned skills that does derive from early Blackmoor play.  That’s about as far as we can take the comparison however.  The AiF Courses of Instruction each have different benefits and game effects whereas Pete’s listed skills are pass/fail saving throw affairs.   So a final point about Peter Gaylord’s sheet we can make is that it not only illustrates an evolution of concepts found in D&D, it likewise illustrates the roots of some of the unique features of AiF.

Character Sheet Clues, Part II

Continuing from the last post in September.

Looking at the non-weapon listings on the flip side of Peter Gaylord’s Blackmoor character sheet we find a fascinating list not wholly unrecognizeable to D&D players of even the latest post TSR versions.  The page itself is titled “personality” and there are two columns on the page.  In the first we find:

Brains

Looks

Credibility

Sex

Health

Strength

Courage

The second column has

Horsemanship

Woodsmanship

Leadership

Flying

Seamanship

Cunning

So, column one is fairly clearly personal characteristics and column two a list of learned skills.  “Cunning” is the outlier here but appears to have been added later to the bottom of the short column since it is apparently not written with the same writing instrument.  For this and other reasons soon to be mentioned it should thematically belong in column one.

That gives us 8 personal personality characteristics and 5 learned skills.  Other than being (mostly) in two columns, there’s no distinctions between them.  They both have the familiar 2d6 numbers written after them.  Several of the first column numbers have a line through them with a new 3d6 number written after, but we can safely assume this indicates a later transition to the 3d6 range familiar to us from D&D.

Thus, on Pete’s sheet we see a character has personal qualities and learned skills.  The learned skills are further separated into weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, to use a later terminology.  The weapon proficiencies we looked at in the previous post being on one side of the character sheet and the non-weapon proficiencies listed on the flip side next to the personal abilities.  How all these were employed in play should by now be of little doubt to readers of this blog.  So rather than again run through the litany of supporting evidence (the most obvious of which is statements from Arneson, Svenson, and the identical mechanic in AiF) I’ll simply say each functioned in the same way as a saving throw, roll under target number.   There may have been other uses perhaps, but that’s the one, I think, obvious to just about everybody.

Looking first to the personal skills list, these are what the 3lBB’s refer to as “ability scores”; (given therein as the familiar Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma ).

Astute readers will recognize BRAINS from Dragons at Dawn and the swords section of FFC (“throw a die and compare with Ego and Brains” 1980:46), but of the other personal skills, only strength is also known to us from the FFC.  Brains in the FFC is used interchangeably with Intelligence, so strength and intelligence are easily tied to early Blackmoor.

Some of the others are less obvious but equally ancient.  In the Beyond This point be Dragons (Dalhun) manuscript the personal traits are referred to both as “Personality Traits” and “Character Traits”.  Interestingly personality is used more often, clearly echoing the “personality” heading on Pete’s sheet.  The list in BTPbD is:

Intelligence

Cunning

Strength

Health

Appearance

Ego/loyalty

Here we see two more of the traits from Pete’s sheet listed – Cunning and Health.  Note that neither BTPbD nor Pete’s sheet mention Dexterity or any equivalent.

Cunning – the Prime requisite for Clerics BTPbD, is therefore synonymous with 3lbb Wisdom.

 

Health, likewise, is synonymous with 3lbb Constitution.  The description in BTPbD; “The measure of how well a person stands up under the strain of events…” is nearly identical to the 3lbb “withstands adversity” phrase.  It may be of interest to note that “Health” is also the term Arneson later used in AiF.

That leaves us with 4 personal traits; Looks, Credibility, Sex and Courage that are otherwise unknown from D&D, the FFC, BTPbD, or AiF.  However, Looks, Credibility, and Sex are all obviously aspects of Charisma/Appearance.  Somewhere along the line, someone thought it wasn’t especially useful to list these separately and simply collapsed them into Charisma.  So while there is no looks, credibility and sex in D&D there is Charisma, which rolls these three into one.

That leaves Courage.  Courage would seem to be a useful trait, basically being a character’s morale score, presumably.  We could speculate that courage was dropped from D&D under the premise that “This is a factor which is seldom considered. The players, basically representing only their own character and a few others, have their own personal morale in reality.” (Gygax D&D FAQ, Strategic Review)

There’s an interesting hint about the evolution of this trait though in the Dalluhn manuscript.  As mentioned above, one of Dalluhn/BTPbD’s personality traits is “Ego” a characteristic very well attested in the FFC and present, at least for swords, in the 3lBB’s.  BTPbD also equates “Loyalty” with ego.  Again we see an oft repeated process here in the development of D&D of merging, as with the Charisma trait (and as would also later happen with trimming BTPbD’s 6 saving throw categories down to 5 and merging several columns of the alternate combat table).   In the 3lbb’s ego is preserved only as a characteristic of magic swords, and loyalty is preserved as a 2d6 characteristic of NPC’s, but the description given to the merger of Ego/Loyalty for use as a player character trait in BTPbD suggests a hidden third trait – Courage – might have been part of that mix.  The last bit of the Ego/Loyalty description says “or the likelyhood that a player will risk his life for you in a dangerous situation.” BTPbD, Section II, pg 4.

Recaping:

Blackmoor to  D&D

Brains    =  Intelligence

Looks, Credibility, Sex = Charisma

Health = Constitution

Strength = Strength

Courage = N/A

Cunning = Wisdom

N/A = Dexterity

In conclusion, Peter Gaylords’ character sheet effectively has 5 of the six familiar ability scores while leaving off Dexterity and adding Courage.   Although “Ability” scores, seem to some to be almost irrelevant to the play of OD&D,they are arguably at the historical heart of the game and a vestige of the earliest mechanics of character based play.

Next post we will look at the learned skills.

Chaaracter Sheet Clues to Early Blackmoor.pt. 1

Within the pages of Jon Peterson’s extraordinarily well researched book, Playing at The World, can be seen an illustration of the character sheet of Pete Gaylords’ wizard from early Blackmoor  (p367).  Though undated, we can be sure from the content that the sheet dates to the pre-D&D era (1971-73).  The sheet contains two lists.  On one side under Personality are what we would call “ability scores”, and next to it are a short list of skills,  on the flip side of the paper is another list under Weapon Classifications.  Both lists contain a thing followed by a number in the 2d6 range.  For the moment, I want to look at the list of weapons, and more on the other lists in another post.

To one familiar with D&D character sheets, the first impression of the Weapons Classifications list may be that of an equipment list.  Clearly this is not so, however, as no character could carry all 21 of the weapons at once, particularly the catapults, and weapons alone comprise the list.

What then is the purpose of listing all these weapons and what is to be made of the numbers following each weapon?  Another  guess might be that it is a price list, and indeed, Pete’s list does contain the same weapons as that listed in the FFC “Original Price/Unit Ratio list, except cannon are substituted for catapult and Pete’s list fails to include a standard bow.  There’s also stones shown in only Pete’s list but one can presume stones don’t have a presence in the FFC price list because they are free for the taking.   Even though the weapons in these two lists are near identical, the numbers in Pete’s list are entirely different from the prices listed in the FFC, which vary widely as prices do.  There’s really no reason then to think the 2d6 range found on Mr Gaylords character sheet represents a long list of weapons for sale at cut rate prices.

What then are the numbers?   Falling as they do within the 2d6 range, they appear no different from the numbers shown on the flip side for the ability scores and skills.  Of course, ability scores are familiar to us, we know they show relative talent in a given area.  It appears obvious that the numbers across from each weapon, must surely likewise be a gauge related to skill, in this case of use of the particular weapon in combat, giving us a clue to an early Blackmoor combat method.

Of related interest is the fact that Pete’s  list  unequivocally replicates the list given in the CHAINMAIL Man to Man combat table.  Pete’s sheet follows the CHAINMAIL list in order of weapons exactly, (see table below) except in the cases marked with an asterisk, which are nowhere present in the Man to Man list, but can be found elsewhere in CHAINMAIL in one place or other.  Long Bow and Composite bow would seem to break the man to man list order, but probably actually don’t, because Pete’s list appears in 2 columns and these two appear to be additions to the bottom of column 1.

The CHAINMAIL  Man to Man weapons list is, just like Pete’s list, followed by 2d6 numbers.  They are roll high target numbers in CHAINMAIL and unlike Pete’s list, where each weapon is followed by only a single number, the Man to Man table lists 10 separate columns of target numbers.  None of the columns match Pete’s numbers.  For comparison, I’ve listed Pete’s weapons and values side by side with those of the first column from CHAINMAIL (no Armor).

WEAPONS Listed	#’s	CHAINMAIL VALUES Vs. No Armor
Daggar	7	6
Hand-Axe	8	7
Mace	6	8
Sword	6	7
Battle Axe	10 +5	8
Morning Star	6	6
Flail	7	7
Spear	5	8
Hand Bow*	6
Composite*	6
Pole Arms	8	6
Halbard	8	8
2 Hand Sword	3	6
Mounted Lance	9	5
Pike	7	8
Arquebus*	7
Stone*	7
Crossbow*	6
Light Catapult*	4
Heavy Catapult	10
Bombard*	5

What can we make of this?  How were the numbers in Pete’s list meant to be used?  Could they be some kind of ThaCo’s?  Maybe.  But I can’t see anyway those numbers could be made to fit a 2d6 THAC0 scheme and the idea seems particularly unlikely to be the case in 1972. 

Given that the CHAINMAIL scores are 2d6 target numbers, we can reasonably guess that Pete’s numbers function as target numbers also.  They are too wide ranging to be much else.   But then we have the glaring problem of those multiple armor types from CHAINMAIL.  Is armor simply to be ignored in this early Blackmoor method?  It’s not impossible.  Arneson’s later Adventures in Fantasy game does actually ignore armor, except as an optional saving throw reducing or eliminating damage.

It is worth pointing out here, despite some claims to the contrary (including, unfortunately in Mr. Petersons work), that “Armor Class” in D&D, and as Arneson claimed to have designed it, is very conceptually different from armor (type, class, kind as you please) as it appears in CHAINMAIL.  In D&D AC represents a constant principle.  It is, as Arneson claimed, similar to the concept of ships armor as used in naval games such as that of Fletcher Pratt.  Arneson specified that he had followed Pratt’s idea when developing rules for a Civil War Ironclads game, which in turn inspired the D&D idea of Armor Class.  The principle being the thicker the iron used to plate the boat, the more difficult to penetrate.  Likewise D&D armor comes in fixed grades of least difficult to most difficult to penetrate.  Armor as used in CHAINMAIL is nothing like this.  Rather, individual weapons penetrate different armors at different rates.  There is of course a general rough progression, from no armor to plate armor, but significant variation occurs, such that a 2 handed sword is equally effective against an unarmed man as a man in plate, but a man in chainmail has a 1 pip advantage over either.  In CHAINMAIL then armor is a fluid factor of varying effectiveness.  

Applying instead the D&D concept of fixed gradients of Armor Class allows a possible means to make further sense of Pete’s numbers.  Instead of needing varying numbers for each weapon versus each type of Armor, only a single target number is needed.   To adjudicate attacks against different armors then, one of two methods could be employed.

1)     Each type of armor could modify the target number or the damage roll by a set amount.  Armor                       class 3 could, for example, modify the target number by 3 pips.

2)      Armor class could provide an opposed target number – a saving throw – to negate or reduce  damage.

The first faces the difficulty that we know of at least 6 armor types in early Blackmoor, and quite likely all 8 types of human armor as listed in CHAINMAIL, were employed, and the modifiers would therefore often so great as to make attacks either impossible or always certain. 

On the other hand, we do know that Blackmoor play allowed a struck player to roll a saving throw, a function handily served by AC 2-9 on 2d6, or 1-8 using 2d6-2 as in Dragons at Dawn.

The method employed then would be to roll against your target number when attacking.  So for example if Pete were attacking with a spear he would need a 5 or better if roll over, or a 4 or less if roll under on a 2d6 to hit.  If he lands that blow his opponent would then get a save, which might have been against their armor class, to avoid damage.  Basically, this is like the system of opposed rolls in Braunstein, with target numbers added.

While that’s a reasonably elegant method, the question arises of how level factors in.   Normally, skills may be expected to improve as the character grows.  We do see changes on Pete’s sheet.  His level went up at least once and some of the ability scores seemed to change from 2d6 to 3d6 scores.  None of the skills or weapon numbers appear to show changes however.

It’s worth nothing here that Pete’s average weapons score is 6.7, and 7 is the average score rolled on 2d6.  In other words, Pete’s weapon scores almost certainly don’t represent some basic starting list or some allocation of skill points.  They represent the random results of 2d6 rolls.  Just like the personality/ability scores.  So just as he rolled a 5 for his Strength Score, Pete rolled a 5 for his spear wielding prowess.  Neither score would change with level.  The FFC tells us only “As a player progressed, …he became harder to hit.”, with nothing said about gaining hitting ability, one way or the other.    

There’s one intriguing possibility though.  A single weapon in the list, the Battle Axe, has an unusual modifier; a +5.  Why? What does it modify?  Perhaps it is a damage bonus, or, in keeping with early magic swords, a  “to hit” modifier.  Another possibility is that Pete had a magical battle axe.  Such a weapon, however, would be very out of the norm for early Blackmoor where swords were by far the dominant type of magical weapons, particularly with such an unusually large bonus.  There’s also nothing about Pete’s weapon list to indicate any particular weapon is meant.  The scores are general, such that Pete has a 5 for any spear he wields, so likewise there’s no reason to think the +5 bonus applies to only one specific battleaxe, instead of any battleaxe he wields.  Arneson’s Adventures in Fantasy requires characters to train in weapons to be able to use them more effectively.  Going up in level won’t help you hit better, but training will.  Perhaps the most likely explanation here is that a similar principle is at work in this +5 modifier.  Arneson may have required his players to train in a weapon in order to improve the ability to hit with it.  It may be that Pete choose to train in Battleaxe and gained a +5 bonus (damage?) with it’s use.

Why choose the Battleaxe to train in?  Notice that Pete’s Battleaxe has the highest score of all his handheld weapons.  In terms of CHAINMAIL’s roll high target numbers, 10 would be the worst choice.  We do have that interesting statement that Robert Lionheart reported in Fight On! Magazine issue #2, 2008.  He reported that Dave told him in “his pre-1974 FRP system. It was proto-D&D but quite different: THAC0 is about rolling UNDER not equal or over. So if you had a THAC0 13, you needed to roll 12 or less to hit. 1s are crits and 20s are fumbles. This method of attacking also corresponded to your other ability and skill rolls.”    Obviously, a late, second hand statement of this sort is suspect.  The d20 THAC0 statement especially so.  But the underlying principle, roll under target number on attack, ability and skill rolls fits exactly what we see on Pete’s sheet.  Roll under target number is also the method employed in Adventures in Fantasy.  Pete Gaylord undoubtedly choose to apply the +5 bonus to his best weapon in a 2d6 roll under scheme.

The Random Orc

… you can’t assume the orcs you’re going to find are the same old orcs and you can kill them in the same old way….  Too often you sit there and the player says, “well, we’ll just assume that its 2 hit dice and armor class 8 etc.” and I like to say, “well, okay that’s the little ones, but you’re fighting a big one.”, or  “You’re fighting the tribe from that side of the hill, not the other side.” – Dave Arneson, Mortality radio interview, July 9th, 2004.

Though this statement comes from near the end of Dave Arnesons’ life, the philosophy behind it is perhaps most evident in young Arnesons gaming.  Dave created random charts for generating wilderness encounters, magic swords, treasure, “protection points” for dungeon stocking, yearly and monthly events, and even for generating whole maps and features.

Dave played a random game. Perhaps the preference for randomness is explained by Dave’s commitment to impartiality as a Referee, letting the dice decide, virtually everything in the game, including the details of the adventure itself.

And, as the quote above implies, monsters too.

The OSR has seen the rise of advocates of randomly generating monsters, partly as a response to players being familiar with the stats or same old same old syndrome.  Yet once again, looking at Blackmoor dungeon in the FFC, we can see evidence of Arneson doing much the same with monsters in the first years of the hobby.

The Monsters of Blackmoor dungeon are curious things.

Although the maps never changed, Blackmoor dungeon was frequently restocked.  The FFC gives us two fascinating glimpses into it’s inhabitants at different times.  Dave seems to have taken a very early, pre D&D dungeon key for levels 1-10 and reworked the first 6 levels for the gen con tournament of 1976.  How much content of those first 6 levels remained from the earlier key, if any at all, is impossible to know, but what’s of immediate interest here is the monsters.

There’s lots of standard monsters in those first 6 levels.  They all have exactly the stats given in the 3lbbs – the “new convention set” (whitebox) as the FFC informs us.  For example,   Wraiths, AC 3, HD 4/15 HTK; strictly by the book.

But there’s also lots of giant insects and animals.  There are 2 kinds of centipedes, 3 kinds of spiders, 2 kinds of giant beetles, Giant hogs, 2 kinds of Giant Scorpions, 2 kinds of Giant Weasels, 2 kinds of Giant snakes, and giant toads.

The instructions for stating insects and animals in the 3lbbs, is basically to make them up as seems fitting for the campaign: “ If the referee is not personally familiar with the various monsters included in this category the participants of the campaign can be polled to decide all characteristics.”

But that doesn’t seem to be what Arneson did at all.  Looking at the stats Arneson gives, they appear quite random.  For example, one type of centipede is AC 4, 2hp, another is AC 7, 12hp; one kind of giant scorpion is AC5. 7HD, 25 HTK, another is AC1, 6HD, 15HTK.   

Note that none of these, even in the case of such creatures as the giant toad or giant beetles, conform statistically to the “new” creatures of the same name found in Supplement II Blackmoor.

It’s worth noting that these aren’t “new” monsters.  They’re all in the 3lbb’s (and BTPbD).  They don’t appear in the monster descriptions, but they do appear on the encounter charts; named but undefined.

Arneson doesn’t say anything about these beasites, and there’s no way to know how he really came up with the stats, but I’d bet dollars to donuts he let the dice do it for him.

Cleric Magic

The “Vancian” magic of the OD&D magic user is a hot topic for discussion.  Funnily enough, cleric magic hardly gets a mention, but then, it hardly gets a mention in the 3lbb’s either.  Many Dungeon Masters seem to assume it’s just the same memorize, fire, forget as Magic-user spells, with the possible exception – as in AD&D – that the "memory" of the spell comes from a deity rather than a spellbook.

The first Cleric player character was played by Mike Carr in Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign.  Mike had this to say about his character  “I also recall having the ability to cast one or two spells and having the ability to help heal minor wounds, but in retrospect it's obvious my character was low level and not particularly impressive.” (Carr interview, http://blackmoor.mystara.us/forums/viewtopic.php?p=5550)

So from that we basically know that clerics had spell like abilities from the start, and while that might not seem like much, it does tell us something.  Remember, that in early Blackmoor, wizardly magic was alchemical.  Clerical magic in Blackmoor was apparently not alchemical but neither would it have been Vancian, as that was something Gygax introduced during playtesting - long after the debut of the Cleric.  The first Clerics could apparently simply cast the spells they knew, and if Mike is correct they could expect to acquire more spells as they advanced.

In fact, 3lbb magic for both Clerics and Magic-users can be read almost the same way.  We are really only told that each class level gets a number of spells they can “remember” for an adventure  and

that no spell may be cast twice in 24 hrs (M&M:18).  So a 3rd

 level Cleric can cast two spells “in an adventure”, but they can’t be the same spell in a 24 hr period.  How or when the Cleric or Magic user renews spells is vague, but would seem to have to take place between adventures.

We are also told that spells are kept in spell books, (although Gygax later explained spell books were only meant for Magic-users), so this could be presumed to be the source from which spells were “remembered”.  

Beyond This Point Be Dragons says nothing at all about remembering spells and alters the 24 hr rule by telling us the number of spells a Magic-user or Cleric is given on the Spells/Level table indicates the total number of spells that

can be cast in 24hrs.  So a 3rd level priest could cast 2 First

 level spells every 24 hrs.  That would seem to allow a more freeform renewal of spells than the 3lbb’s and add the possibility of casting more spells in an adventure that lasts more than a day.

Even so, in both BTPBD and 3lbbs, Magic-user spells and Cleric spells would seem to work in an identical fashion, until we look at spell reversal.  Anti-Clerics (evil) are given the power to cast reversed Cleric spells.  “Evil” magic users aren’t given a similar option.  There seems to be no such thing as reversing a MU spell.  Yes, MU spells can be countered by a second casting while chanting the same spell backwards, according to the Rock to Mud and Stone to Flesh spells, but If you have “Slow” memorized you can’t simply decide to cast “Haste” instead.  These are separate spells for Magic-users.

So Cleric magic and MU magic is somewhat different after all, but is it a difference of just reversal, or of how they are acquired and renewed also?

While Gygax’s Supplement I Greyhawk is predominantly a game changer for OD&D, it also contains some clarifications of meaning that aren’t meant to alter the original.  “All cleric spells are considered as "divinely" given.”, (page 8) seems to be one such clarification.  

This is further explained in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.  "It is well known by all experienced players that clerics, unlike magic-users, have their spells bestowed upon them by their respective deities. By meditation and prayer the clerics receive the specially empowered words which form the various spells...." Gygax, DMG:38.  Very, very rarely will I look to anything in AD&D for clarification of OD&D, but this quote seems to be a reasonable exception, given that the “experienced players” Gary refers to could only have been experienced OD&D players at the time it was written.

This divine granting of spells explains something else about the 3lbb's.  There's no Read Magic spell for Clerics.  Magic-user spells can only be understood with the use of a Read Magic spell.  If Clerics were expected to memorize thier spells from spell books and scrolls as magic users do, and if their magic is basically the same, then Clerics would need a Read Magic spell too.

So we do see an intended difference in 3lbb spell acquisition even from the start.  Magic-users memorize (remember) spells, whereas Clerics simply know them via divine inspiration.  Clerics therefore can simply pray and renew any spells they cast every 24 hours, and this could possibly be true even during the course of an adventure if you stretch the 3lbb rule.  Magic-users must however study a spellbook to remember the spell and, according to the 3lbb’s, can only memorize spells between adventures.

This, by the way, is exactly how John Erich Holmes interpreted the rules for his “blue book” introductory D&D rulebook.  Apparently to rationalize the "during an adventure" rule, he added the detail that spell books are giant tomes that can’t be carried on adventures, thus necessitating the MU to return to his study to renew spells.  But for Clerics, Holmes says “Since clerical spells are divinely given, they do not have to be studied to master them. A second level cleric can call on any first level spell he wants to use, thus the entire gamut of spells is available to him for selection prior to the adventure.  However, only that spell or spells selected can be used during the course of the adventure.” Holmes D&D:17.

This difference in Cleric and Magic-user magic is interesting in another way also.  OD&D Cleric magic, being non-vancian, looks very much like it preserves a simpler spellcasting system from Blackmoor.  Cleric spells are essentially an inherent ability of Clerics; they are just limited by how often they can be cast, and which spells can be cast by Cleric level.