Hidden in Shadows

A while back, Zenopus Archives  http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/06/holmesian-random-names.html 

featured a random name generator based on the names found in the J. E. Holmes basic set of D&D.  It’s a great little tool for coming up with new names and a lot of fun.  I like the idea a lot and have used it a few times with happy results.  One caveat for me though is knowing Holmes D&D didn’t shy away from such campy names as Presto and Boppo or common names like Fred.  I started to think I might like something a little more exotic, foreign and less Holmesian.  That’s when I hit upon the idea of looking to Magira.  Magira is the world collectively created in the late 1960’s in Germany as the location of a character based war and adventure game.  It’s pre D&D European roots seemed like a rich opportunity for a different feel altogether in the names generated.  So I turned to the 1970’s novella about an adventure set in the game world as written by one of the original Magira players, titled “Wargamers World” in the English translation.  Between the character and place names, there was just enough to make the new syllables list given below.  The procedure for using it is otherwise exactly that given on the Zenopus archives blog – repeated here with permission.

First, roll d100 for the # of syllables in the name:

01-10 One syllable (double the last letter if desired)

11-70 Two syllables

71-90 Three syllables

91-100 Four syllables

Syllables can be placed together to form one word, or separated by spaces or hyphens.

Second, roll d100 for each syllable: 

Finally, if desired add a title (pick or d20):

of the North/South/East/West/City/Hills/Mountains/Plains/Woods/Coast

the Bold/Daring

the Barbarian/Civilized

the Battler

the Black/Blue/Brown/Green/Red/Yellow

the Fearless/Brave

the Fair/Foul/Lovely/Loathsome

the First, Second, Third, Fourth etc (roll d20)

the Gentle/Cruel

the Great

the Merciful/Merciless

the Mighty

the Mysterious/Unknown

the Old/Young/Boy/Girl

the Quick/Slow

the Quiet/Silent/Loud

the Steady/Unready

the Traveller/Wanderer

the Unexpected 

the Hooded/Cloaked/Robed

Sample Magiran names generated randomly:

Thanar

Di

Gadkan

Tornva

Ag

Raope

Zonpel Ran

Tiris

Oshuic

Ma’ag

Treasure, and the hunt for it, have been at the heart of D&D since the beginning.  Tables for randomly generating the fantastic wealth to tempt adventurers long have been a staple of the game.  The OD&D treasure types included chances for copper, silver, gold, gems, jewelry and magic items.  AD&D changed these tables but little, adding only electrum to the treasure spectrum.  Conspicuously missing from these lists is a staple of Hollywood style treasure hoards – miscellaneous objects of value, such as tapestries, ivory, works of art and so forth.

When Arneson & Snider wrote Adventures in Fantasy, a lot of old ideas were reworked and repackaged, body types and hit location from Supplement II, for example.  Treasure Types were another idea that received a re-skin.  There are none of the familiar lettered treasure types in AiF, but there is treasure still.  The same categories are there – copper, silver, gold, gems, and jewels, but rather than assign a particular type to particular monsters with varying chances in each category as D&D does, AiF uses a one-size-fits-all 10 x 10 table allowing the possibility of almost any treasure being assigned to any eligible monster.

A different approach, to be sure; but, for the most part, familiar hordes of silver and gold result.  However, of the 100 possible treasure options, 4 contain a new category of either 1 or 2 objects of Miscellaneous treasure.

The category of Miscellaneous Treasure is one of the most interesting and potentially useful distinctions found in AiF.   Basically, it works as follows; when a miscellaneous treasure is called for a roll is made on a table containing these ten categories:

Kegs (various goods)

Tapestry

Tableware

Decorative weaponry

Riding Tack

Clothing

Ivory (raw)

Sculpture

Artwork

Furniture

Except for kegs and ivory, each category has a value modifier that is multiplied times an amount of coin – 5 gp for example – determined randomly on a table.  Some items’ value modifiers are fixed at 1 and some have a range of 1-4 or 1-10, so some items, such as a tapestry can range from a few coppers to thousands of gp in value.

There is also a subtable for the contents of kegs:

Iron

Copper

Wine

Ale

Salt

Spice

Ambergris

Perfume

The keg items have fixed gold piece values, except for perfume, which ranges in value from 100 to 600 gp.

For the most part, details, such as what kind of clothing or sculpture or piece of art, are left to the referee to invent.

All in all, The Adventures in Fantasy miscellaneous treasure is a fairly simple yet versatile way to add some real color to your treasure haul. 

Integration with D&D is fairly seamless too.  In AiF there is always a 4% chance any given treasure will contain a miscellaneous item or two.  In D&D there is likewise always a chance any given treasure could contain gems or jewels, so all one needs to do is add one more roll when generating a D&D treasure and allow a chance for a miscellaneous treasure too.  I go with 5% instead of 4% just because chances on the D&D tables are always in multiples of 5.

Move over Jack Vance….

So The Tempest, a play by Shakespeare written in 1610, features a wizard named Prospero living in a seclusium on an island in the sea.  That’s pretty cool; cool enough that I’ve been intrigued by it for some time.  So I checked around and discovered this excerpt of a book by William J. Rolfe from 1904

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/thetempest/magictempest.html

Prospero has all the trappings of a D&D Magic-user:

His robe is a magic garment

He carries a magic wand that can move objects, including removing weapons from the hands of enemies.

He possesses a magical staff of great, but unspecified power.

Prospero practices a kind of  Elemental magic, effecting his spells through the command of “spirits” of the four elements.  These four elements are "in sea or fire, in earth or air," as Rolfe points out by quoting Hamlet from a different play.  Specifically these spirits are “sea nymphs” (water), Ariel (fire), goblins (earth) and elves? (air).  It doesn’t require much imagination to equate these “spirits” to Jack Vance’s idea of “plasmids”, the magical creatures who cause “Vancian” magic in his novels.

To cast spells, Prospero masters and commands these elemental spirits; "..my spirits obey,.. untie the spell," as one line puts it.  Rolfe notes that Prospero is able to command, cajole, and compel these spirits to create the magical effect he desires because of his commanding intellect.  As with D&D, intelligence significantly improves Prospero’s ability to perform magic.    

Nevertheless, spells can be spoiled, especially by noise or commotion. “Hush, and be mute, or else our spell is marr'd.”  D&D may be a bit more lenient in this regard, but it is a familiar theme.

It isn’t a simple matter of intelligence, will and a few undisturbed moments however.  Prospero acquires his ability to create specific magic through the study of spell books. His spell books  were of key importance to his art; for without them “He's but a sot”, and does not have even “One spirit to command.”  Prospero must first resort to his books to prepare his spells.  Without them, he cannot prepare a new spell.  Take away a D&D Magic-users spell books under the original rules and eventually they will exhaust their spell and, like Prospero, have no ability to cast magic.

The last point to mention about Prospero and his magic in relation to D&D is its’ abstract nature.  Shakespeare, unlike his contemporaries does not surround Prospero with grotesque details.  His magic is clean, intellectual and as Rolfe puts it “…at once supernatural and natural… the highest exercise of the magic art”.  There’s no eye of newt and dissected goat livers involved, no midnight chicken sacrifices, or anything of the sort.  His magic is primarily verbal, a manifestation of power through will and ability, not devilish gimmickry.  Again, it’s an awful lot like original D&D.

I’m not suggesting that Gygax and Arneson modeled D&D magic on Shakespeare.  It could all be a coincidence, but Its an interesting parallel for sure.  Then again there may be a path of influence though Vance.   I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack Vance was at least somewhat inspired by The Tempest and there’s no doubt that Gygax modeled his idea of Magic-users on Vance’s excellent work.

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

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.

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.

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.

Within the pages of Jon Peterson’s heavy tome, 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).

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.

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.