The mystery of the circle and squares.
Now here is a fun one.
You'll recall from the first post in this series (in point three) I
mentioned two new stat which were added to the character sheets and placed near
the character name. These stats were
unlabeled and distinguished from each other by having either a square or a
circle drawn around the number. Here's a
close up of a couple:
It's hard to see in the pics I copied to the blog so here is
a link where you can download better resolution jpegs.
So to reiterate, the "circle numbers" came first,
at the time the Hercebeiner characters were created. Then came the square numbers, and Megarry
drew circles and squares around them to mark them as different.
What are they?
Before your mind goes racing to all the obvious D&D
stuff, take note of the zeros, and keep in mind the ranges found on the 2 sheets; square numbers
range from 0-4, whereas circle numbers range from 0-7.
My first thought was that they might perhaps represent
levels. Dave Arneson once said
"Because the players in the original campaign could learn different skills
and different abilities, virtually everybody who was a fighter also wanted to
be able to throw magic. And it seemed
like everybody who was a magic-user also wanted to be able to fight.“ Dave Arneson, Mortality Radio interview, July
9th, 2004. In FFC material, quite likely
to be contemporary with Megarry's characters we read of an assistant to the Ran
of Ah Foo who is "Level 7 Warrior and Magic". (1977:19)
However, when I presented the idea to Dave Megarry, he disagreed, "The only character that had some magic type ability was the Scholaress:
she had the shape changing amulet and the vial of basilisk blood. I was not a
magic user: my vision was more of Aragorn rather than Gandalf, if you get my
meaning." Personal Communication, 2016
Mr. Megarry further explained that he knew what the squares
were. "The square numbers were the hit class / armor class of the characters.
I am having a problem remembering what the round numbers meant. Arneson added
something at the time or made us add the information at the time I did the Herk
characters and I filled it in for my previous characters (for consistency, I
guess:). The Herk series is the three
characters that were related to each other or part of the household in red....
The armor class dealt with what type of armor you had bought or acquired: no
armor = 0; leather armor = 1; chainmail = 2; plate armor = 4. I think these are
straight from the Chainmail combat system." Personal Communication,
2016
I suggested to Mr. Megarry that if it was from CHAINMAIL, then the numbers were
probably no armor = 0; shield only = 1, leather armor = 2; chainmail = 3; plate
armor = 4., and Dave Megarry thought that was probably it.
The puzzling thing about that is that it skips the
"with shields" columns, so why use these numbers? I mean, if you are just counting across on
the Man to Man table "3" is leather and shield, not chain. So it would seem to make more sense to just write "chain" or to number across all the column so as to avoid confusion.
I wondered if Mr. Megarry had gotten the circles and squares
backwards, since circle numbers can be found as high as 7 (the Gester) which
would be Plate armor, counting across.
Again, however Megarry corrected that notion, "The two characters, Earl's Jester and Hero Trany both have circle
7's and I know they did not have plate armor with shields!" Personal
Communication, 2016
In fact, full plate seems to have been a rarity in
Blackmoor. I think it quite likely that
the numbers in the squares do indeed refer to the Man to Man armor types in
CHAINMAIL just as Megarry claims, but it is simply the case that none of Megarry's characters ever
wore armor any more robust than type 4. He said, "I was not much into shields as they used one arm in combat and was hard to carry. I liked bow and arrow weapons and did not use shields. I did like leather armor as it gave a minimal protection for a relatively cheap cost. The Scholaress did have chainmail as she had money..." Personal Communication, 2016. The Scholaress, by the way, has a square number of 4. For reference here is the CM list, with numbers added:
0
|
no armor
|
1
|
Leather/Padded
|
2
|
Shield only
|
3
|
Leather + shield
|
4
|
Chainmail
|
5
|
Chainmail + shield
|
6
|
Plate
|
7
|
Plate + shield
|
There's also this odd little note in the FFC, "ROBOTS - I roll one Six sided dice for Armor Class," (1977:74)
I also wondered if the circle and square numbers could both
be armor class, like ascending vs descending, but the circle and square numbers
do not correspond in any way that would allow them to be describing the same
sets of armor, therefore, if they both represent a defense number of some kind,
and the square numbers are a shorthand for CM armor types, it would seem that the
only real option for the circle numbers would be helmets, or possibly shields.
Of course, there is no table in CHAINMAIL for shield types
or helmet types - so if the numbers were intended to be a separate armor rating
for either shields or helmets, Arneson would have to have created his own tables
for them. That seems a bit fiddly, and
there is no evidence for such. Also,
when we look to the FFC, we find three kinds of helmets and 9 kinds of shields
(three kinds of small, medium and large).
Since our number ranges in the circle and square figures are 0-4 and
0-7, helmets clearly don't fit the range.
Shields however remain a possibility for the 0-7 range of
the circle numbers, but this again is problematic. Yes, shields are already included on the Man to Man table, but it is conceivable that Arneson developed a shield rule like that found in the Dalluhn draft and in somewhat different form in the 3lbb booklets; namely that a magical shield would only "catch" a fraction (like 1/3rd) of the blows depending on the direction of the attack. However, even this idea doesn't stand up well to scrutiny. The numbers can't be a separate shield rating within the Man to Man method because the number combinations on the character sheet don't correspond in any meaningful way.
Remember also that the circle numbers came
first. What sense does it make, for
Arneson to have switched from a single "to hit" target number to
determine a hit on a character, to a wholly unknown to hit table based on
whether a character has a shield or not?
Well it doesn't. About the only way it could make sense was if the circle numbers were a shield 2d6 saving throw number. If a saving throw based on shields came first, then it might make some sense if armor were added in the manner Megarry suggested (no armor = 0; shield only = 1, leather armor = 2; chainmail = 3; plate armor = 4) because then the "with shield" column on the Man to Man table would be redundant. Then again, type 1 "shield only" would seem to be redundant too.
There are two bits of circumstantial evidence that might support this; namely there is an "X5" shield, otherwise unexplained, in the treasure of the original Temple of the Frog (First Floor, Room 4, p37) and a cryptic comment in the FFC that "...the player received a "Saving Throw" against any hit he received." (1977:2). Both are rather thin sauce, as the first might be a typo and the second doesn't seem to have any dependence on possessing a shield, but who knows.
Perhaps the only way it could make sense for the circles to
represent shields and the squares to represent armor is if the numbers have
nothing to do with the Man to Man table, and are instead "ablative"
armor, like that found in the original Temple of The Frog and Craig Grasteck's
"Rules to the game of Dungeon".
This type of armor will absorb a number of hits until it fails.
Honestly though, there's very little evidence for this type
of armor in early balckmoor. Further the
numbers don't really fit well. If the
circles represent shields, then shields are significantly better than body
armor according to the numbers. They
also don't come anywhere close to the number of hits the one known example
found in the 1975 TotF. That suit of
armor could take 65! hits. True it was
space alien technology, but it is still a tremendous gap between the 2's and
3's we see in the circle and square numbers and 65.
My last, best guess is that the circle numbers could
represent an attack bonus, possibly also applicable to saving throws and such. If you'll remember a good while back when I
discussed Pete Gaylord's character sheet, there was an unexplained
"+5" written next to his best weapon, the pole axe. At that time I pointed to the "Blackmoor
Military Manpower Distribution" list (FFC 1977:17), where following each
Player Character, their Hit Dice are listed, and many of them include a bonus
ranging from 1-5, though only Svenny has +5 and the rest are +1 or 2. Maybe the circle numbers are this sort of
bonus.
Okay, that was a lot of verbiage, so I'll summarize:
Squares: These numbers represent armor class corresponding to the Man to man table in CHAINMAIL. They range either 0-4 or 0-7.
Circles: These numbers could be:
* A shield saving throw rating possibly in cojunction with a 0-4 AC range
* A bonus applied to attacks, most likely to damage rolls
* Something completely different
l'm afraid I have to leave it at that until more information
becomes available, but feel free to speculate in the comments.
