Quote from: EOTB;1101994Because a multiplication table is faster than any multiplication equation.  Same for to-hit tables being faster than any to-hit equation; adding or otherwise.  It's a single glance at something staring at me on the back of my DM screen.  It may have made more sense when everyone carried peechees.

It's a whole extra page to look at for what basic addition could cover.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1102030It's a whole extra page to look at for what basic addition could cover.

For some people, simple calculation is easier. For others, a simple table lookup is easier.

Why is it discussions in this hobby never seem aware of divergent styles and tastes or design trade-offs?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1102031For some people, simple calculation is easier. For others, a simple table lookup is easier.

Why is it discussions in this hobby never seem aware of divergent styles and tastes or design trade-offs?

Oh sure divergent styles are fine. Almost no innovations from PbtA apply to any RPG I would play.

I don't recognize to-hit tables as a proper "divergent style" it's just clunky. Now if your RPG wants to do both, then I can roll with that. Seems like wasted pages to me, but I'll deal.

As a rule though, I just don't buy OSR with to-hit tables. That kind of thinking is trapped in the past rather than trying to capture the philosophy and spirit behind OSR. I have the Rules Cyclopedia, I don't need anything just blindly re-treading old ground.

Quote from: Razor 007;110198720 years from now, I bet the tables running A D & D 1E games will be in the low hundreds, "worldwide"; if that many.

Something similar to this was said... 20 years ago. Of course that was back when roleplaying as a whole was dying. Again.

20 years from now, we will have flying cars, commercial fusion power, bases on Mars, vat-grown meat that doesn't require killing a calf, Afghanistan and Iraq will be flourishing peaceful democracies, and nobody will be playing AD&D1e. Right?

Old grognards are not necessary to play AD&D1e. But what old grognards are necessary for is perspective: understanding that while many things change, many things stay the same. We've lived long enough to have seen the promises of big quick change and everything we know and like being tossed aside, and then seeing that things move rather more slowly than promised.

There will always be a significant number of people who are interested in social creative hobbies, and a significant number of them will be interested in doing so in a simple and accessible way. Game groups, whatever they are playing, continue to be built one enthusiastic GM and one keen player at a time.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1102031For some people, simple calculation is easier. For others, a simple table lookup is easier.

Why is it discussions in this hobby never seem aware of divergent styles and tastes or design trade-offs?

Also, a side effect of having more information more readily available is that the skill of memorization atrophies.  In 1982, I had players that had memorized some of the charts from having used them so often (and not infrequently writing sections of them onto their hand-written character sheet).  I could play the same game now, but the players wouldn't memorize something they can lookup in their own book or online.  

There are still people for whom the chart is easier, but they are less likely to use it even so.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1102134Also, a side effect of having more information more readily available is that the skill of memorization atrophies.  In 1982, I had players that had memorized some of the charts from having used them so often (and not infrequently writing sections of them onto their hand-written character sheet).  I could play the same game now, but the players wouldn't memorize something they can lookup in their own book or online.  

There are still people for whom the chart is easier, but they are less likely to use it even so.

People sure do memorise a lot of random stuff.  When my son was young he and I memorised all of the Thomas the Tank Engine family but I doubt that I could rattle them all off now.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1100347Karate Kid
Conan the Barbarian
Fame
Clash of the Titans
Planet of the Apes
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Rollerball
Gone With The Wind
Total Recall

When you think of these, do you think of the original or the remake? And we could think of many others where most people never even heard of the remake...

D&D is the same.

The only remake on that list that I liked was Rollerball.

It's gotta be Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory with Gene Wilder.
Anything late 60s/early 70s with Charleton Heston.

AD&D 2e will be remembered as the happiest gaming days, (where all was abundance, from settings to table rules, and the interwebz were still at 1.0, and puritanical harridans were pushed back into their cauldrons amid a sex-positive renaissance )!

And the new children will play, gawking at the Elmore-esque AquaNet bouffonts ("So that's where the ozone went..."), and lush diversity of artwork (what's "physical media?"), and wonder, "Grandxer of the antiquated pronouns, was there really such a beautiful age to play everything from paladins and princesses to psionicist sword & planet hellscapes, where the system could fade away from Tax-Form System Mastery, and there was no Mixed-Economy of the SpeakingStick?"

:cool: And we shall say, "Yes child, it was a better time. It was when fun of one's own heart's desire was allowed for we knew there were no real world consequences from hurt 'fee-fees' while playing Let's Pretend, and people had a grounded perspective... For the outside world was a commonplace thing with which to engage, and coping skills were necessarily developed so as to function at a basic level." :cool:

Quote from: Opaopajr;1102264AD&D 2e will be remembered as the happiest gaming days, (where all was abundance, from settings to table rules, and the interwebz were still at 1.0, and puritanical harridans were pushed back into their cauldrons amid a sex-positive renaissance )!

And the new children will play, gawking at the Elmore-esque AquaNet bouffonts ("So that's where the ozone went..."), and lush diversity of artwork (what's "physical media?"), and wonder, "Grandxer of the antiquated pronouns, was there really such a beautiful age to play everything from paladins and princesses to psionicist sword & planet hellscapes, where the system could fade away from Tax-Form System Mastery, and there was no Mixed-Economy of the SpeakingStick?"

:cool: And we shall say, "Yes child, it was a better time. It was when fun of one's own heart's desire was allowed for we knew there were no real world consequences from hurt 'fee-fees' while playing Let's Pretend, and people had a grounded perspective... For the outside world was a commonplace thing with which to engage, and coping skills were necessarily developed so as to function at a basic level." :cool:

***pulls out handkerchief and dabs the corner of his eye***

Man, that was beautiful.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1102264[...] For the outside world was a commonplace thing with which to engage, and coping skills were necessarily developed so as to function at a basic level." :cool:

Never heard of it!

All of this assumes that in 20 years we will even be allowed to play RPGs anymore as they have all been deemed problematic. And those dice are choking hazards for adults! And the horrible white male plays them so they just gotta all go. Its for your own good. Think of the children! You monster!

Joking, well I hope its joking, aside... I think like most any game, that somehow, some way people will keep playing them long long after they ended.

Or groups will rediscover them and the appeal they have to certain types of gamers.

Quote from: Omega;1102524All of this assumes that in 20 years we will even be allowed to play RPGs anymore as they have all been deemed problematic. And those dice are choking hazards for adults! And the horrible white male plays them so they just gotta all go. Its for your own good. Think of the children! You monster!

Joking, well I hope its joking, aside... I think like most any game, that somehow, some way people will keep playing them long long after they ended.

Or groups will rediscover them and the appeal they have to certain types of gamers.

Ha, you discount the "D&D Underground".  They'll have to drag us out of our secret games one player at a time.

We shall initiate the chosen by the gauntlet of dice bag beatings while they "walk the path of d4s" barefoot! :mad: After that, all troubles will pale in comparison. :cool: Blood in, blood out!

Quote from: Opaopajr;1102538We shall initiate the chosen by the gauntlet of dice bag beatings while they "walk the path of d4s" barefoot! :mad: After that, all troubles will pale in comparison. :cool: Blood in, blood out!

I'm WAY ahead of my time then.

I think I'll wait a couple decades before giving an answer.