Quote from: Bren;908269The base rules were written by people who played wargames. The original rules were written by and for people who played wargames. The designers assumed that the players would use tactics to the best of their abilities in the circumstances they were confronted with. The rules to OD&D and AD&D did not assume that all tactics were baked into your PC's To Hit roll. (I won't speak to 3E, 4E, or 5E, but I'd be really shocked if all tactics were baked into to hit rolls and various class abilities. I've certainly never read anything that would lead me to believe the rules assume that nor that they prevent using actual tactics of some kind.)

And your misunderstanding of what tactics are and how they get used is why you don't get to have nice things or play with the big kids.

To be fair it does help to make sure that the referee and players have congruent ideas of what constitutes "tactics."  For anybody over the age of 15, this means a ten minute conversation.

Is it time for the "show us on the doll where the goblin touched your magic user in a bad way" joke yet?

Quote from: Omega;908316Except then the MU is in the possible splash range of the flask if its just thrown at the fighters feet.

Yes, but what's burning is not-very-pure fish oil or something similar, not napalm.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;908318Yes, but what's burning is not-very-pure fish oil or something similar, not napalm.

I allways wondered about that.

As described in the rules the stuff seems to be something more flammable than fish oil, (or olive oil which was a common lamp oil?) since you can light it off with just a touch of a torch?
Could not find anywhere in OD&D info on using oil other than that it stops pursuit.
In BX a flask poured out makes a 3ft puddle and can be lit by a torch, burning for 10 rounds/minutes thus, or only 2 rounds if thrown on someone.
In AD&D it splashes anyone in 3ft of the impact point.

Still have to light the stuff after.

Quote from: Omega;908316Except then the MU is in the possible splash range of the flask if its just thrown at the fighters feet.

Well, you pays your money and you takes your chances. If the bad guys are playing bowling for MUs and you thought they were tossing the oil over the front two ranks then you are screwed. Assuming that is that the flask doesn't break well in front of the MU and that the front rank didn't kneel with shields while the second rank raised shields over their heads in a semi-testudo. In any event, I find the notion that Chris seemed to be putting forth that the splash from a flask of oil will splash beyond the shields to ignite the 3+ people it would need to affect to actually get to the MU who is sheltered in the third rank rather far fetched.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;908317To be fair it does help to make sure that the referee and players have congruent ideas of what constitutes "tactics."  For anybody over the age of 15, this means a ten minute conversation.

Is it time for the "show us on the doll where the goblin touched your magic user in a bad way" joke yet?

Probably.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;908318Yes, but what's burning is not-very-pure fish oil or something similar, not napalm.

I suggested earlier that lamp oil was not that flammable. Or we could suppose they are Greek Goblins tossing flasks of Greek fire. But at that point, it would seem a hell of a lot cooler to just give the goblins fire siphons and call it a day.

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GURPS Fantasy and I think TFT speculated that it was Greek Fire or some form of Naptha.

Really, I'm thinking late 19th century Kerosene.  D&D tends to mix up its technology levels, much like Lord of the Rings.

Think about Shire Hobbit society and how much more advanced it must be than the rest of Middle Earth just based on the descriptions of things in Bilbo's house.  Kettles, lamps, clocks and all.  Of course, The Shire is intended to be the familiar pre-war England from which the story progresses into the world of myth and legend and the Brandywine Bridge is no less transitional than Lewis's Wardrobe.

Hmmm...Middle Earth has fireworks, and the text seems to indicate that Gandalf isn't alone in producing them as his are particularly wonderful.  Even in the books, Saruman's blasting fire even seems to be gunpowder. That puts the Shire in a good position to develop guns.  The Imperial Shire, a very different fourth age.

Quote from: David Johansen;908336That puts the Shire in a good position to develop guns.  The Imperial Shire, a very different fourth age.

The sun never sets on the Shireish Empire.

Quote from: Bren;908334Well, you pays your money and you takes your chances. If the bad guys are playing bowling for MUs and you thought they were tossing the oil over the front two ranks then you are screwed. Assuming that is that the flask doesn't break well in front of the MU and that the front rank didn't kneel with shields while the second rank raised shields over their heads in a semi-testudo. In any event, I find the notion that Chris seemed to be putting forth that the splash from a flask of oil will splash beyond the shields to ignite the 3+ people it would need to affect to actually get to the MU who is sheltered in the third rank rather far fetched.

I suggested earlier that lamp oil was not that flammable. Or we could suppose they are Greek Goblins tossing flasks of Greek fire. But at that point, it would seem a hell of a lot cooler to just give the goblins fire siphons and call it a day.

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1: Keep in mind that D&D flasks of oil arent molotovs. All tossing the flask does is coat the target, or those in the splash range, in some sort of oil thats sufficiently flammabe a torch can set off but a candle apparently cant.

One of the very first things I learned as a player in BX when using oil.
"Congratulations. You have now created an oil covered goblin."
And thus the Slippery Twit Goblin Tribe was born... errrrr...

2: We assumed lamp oil and flasks of oil were two seperate things.

It would be a proper constitutional monarchy I suppose.

Aragorn sighed deeply and looked Peregrin Took in the eye, "And this document means what?"

Not to worry it will just take some of the book keeping and management details out of your hands and put 20000 Hobbit Musketeers on the walls of Minas Tirith.  Don't worry about the Goblin resurgence in Dol Guldur. The eagles assure us that the new petard loads are light enough to allow bombing runs from The Misty Mountains to arrive before sunset.  We're actively recruiting Goblin sepoy units to do local peace keeping in Mordor and up north.  They're actually quite clever with mechanical things.  There's been some experimentation with steam engines and rails that will revolutionize troop deployment in out time, I'm told.

The king sighed and watched his son play with the toy the Hobbits had brought as a gift.  The wheels rolling lightly on the little wooden tracks.  He had a feeling Arwen wouldn't be pleased with this latest development at all.  When had it come to this?  After he signed the moot act giving the Hobbit parliament increased power to govern and enforce laws in the north.  Or was it before that?  The ring falling into the lava.  Maybe Sauron hadn't been so far off the mark.  But it was too late now, far too late, Hobbit musketry outranged elven arrows.  Hobbit breeding, who knew they were so prolific?  Sauruman's downfall had opened the doors to social change and the stodgy old Shire had gotten down right lascivious thereafter, what with the raging popularity of The Travellers.  It was when Bilbo and Frodo left of course.  That's when the last of the old stodginess and prudishness went out the door and down the road.  He'd heard rumours that Peregrin had more lovers than the old Took himself.  But what with the post war Hobbit baby boom and the casualties from his own disastrous eastern Adventures, they needed troops to replace their losses and the hobbits were spreading at an alarming rate.  When they started trading with the Goblins of The Misty Mountains was about when they came up with their infernal muskets and cannons.  With Goblin industry and hobbit persistence, the world was changing far faster than anyone had imagined.

If you lack soap and water, oil's also good for making stairs nigh impassible.

Quote from: Omega;908294I thought Chris was on about throwing flasks over the shield wall. Not at. Which was what I was later pointing out. Most fantasy dungeons have high enough ceilings that you sure as heck can try to lob flasks over the front ranks. Theres even videos up of protestors doing exactly that to riot police.

I'd argue the contrary: most fantasy dungeons nowhere near have ceilings high enough to lob flasks over the front ranks.  Take a good close look at those videos.  For anyone NOT in a front-rank position trying to toss something just over the head of the guy right in front of him, the arcs are fifteen, twenty feet high.  If they're fighting in a cathedral or a ballroom, sure, but seriously, outside of an atrium, theatre, shopping mall or enclosed performance space, where do you see a ceiling that high?

If I was a sword-and-board guy standing within arm's reach of a goblin with a firebomb, my reaction wouldn't be like your average riot police and a "You first, sir."  I'd do my level best to gut the sonuvabitch.

Quote from: David Johansen;908336Really, I'm thinking late 19th century Kerosene.  D&D tends to mix up its technology levels, much like Lord of the Rings.

That wouldn't work either; it's not nearly as volatile as people imagine.  A standard trick is to get a pot of kerosene and toss lit matches into it.  It won't light.  Soak that goblin with kerosene, he'll burn just dandy.  Pour kerosene onto a stone floor, and you'll have just as much luck setting it on fire as if you'd poured water instead.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;908234That's a bit of a disappointing story. I mean, I would hope that players with real world expertise could understand that it's fiction that we're playing at. Trek itself is pretty freaking far from real world navies. Not just from being set in space, but from being a fictional universe where writers of most episodes probably know less about navy experience than you do.

It depends how much verisimilitude matters to you.  To me, it matters a good deal, and I don't want my reasonable presumptions trampled, or to do so myself as a GM.

I was in a one-shot once where the group was outside a US nuclear power plant, and the GM had a shipment of high-level radioactive waste ‡ leaving the plant ... in the back of a rental Ryder truck.

And I went apeshit: what were the plant authorities thinking?  I could scarcely imagine how many laws and NRC procedures they were breaking.  What the pluperfect hell?

See ... I'd worked at a nuke plant for a year, and during a refueling outage.  That was when (and only when) spent fuel was shipped out, once every few years.  High-level transport containers are about the size of your living room, about 8-9' tall, are over a foot thick with concrete and reinforced steel, and you load them onto a giant-ass flatbed -- reeeeally slowly -- with giant-ass cranes.  That flatbed holds two of them, and goes reeeeeeally slowly, under police escort.  Putting the waste instead into a Ryder rental is, on the NPC Competency Scale, something on a par with the arresting officers asking the perps to hold their service guns, pretty please, before handcuffs were applied.

Obviously, the GM hadn't given a moment's thought as to how nuclear waste was transported, which was ironic, given that the gaming session was taking place less than ten miles away from the only site in the US then accepting such waste.  Ooof.


‡ - For those of you who might not know the difference, "high-level" radioactive waste = spent uranium fuel.  "Low-level" is just about everything else ... including all trash generated and discarded at a nuke plant.  The sandwich wrapper you threw away at lunch?  The crumpled up paper in the secretary's wastebasket? That's legally "low-level radioactive waste."

Quote from: yosemitemike;908278There are some very dangerous herbivorous species.  I wouldn't call a hippopotamus peaceful though.  They're territorial and very aggressive.

Certainly.

Still, I was thinking about bison-like species, which usually aren't that aggressive if left alone. Hippos, rhinos - those are figuratively and literally heavy weight examples.

Quote from: Ravenswing;908348I'd argue the contrary: most fantasy dungeons nowhere near have ceilings high enough to lob flasks over the front ranks.

Most?

Quote from: Omega;908297Gurps Autoduel?

Ah, if only. We are creating our own system. Sadly, because of our car fanatics, the car building system is beginning to look like GURPS 3E Vehicles.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;908352Most?

Well, therein lies the problem. What does the typical fantasy dungeon look like? If we are using realism (which the 'is D&D oil like kerosene or like fish/olive-oil?' tangent indicates, there is some call for), then those underground stone corridors should have vaulted ceilings, or else they'd collapse. I'm sure others really like a straightforward 10 or 15 foot tall flat ceiling.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908361What does the typical fantasy dungeon look like?

I wouldn't even be sure whether the majority of players would agree on what fantasy dungeon is and what it is not. I mean, sure, you look at some crypt filled with skeletons and say "it's a dungeon, alright", but heck - Tolkien's (or rather "Jackson's") Moria or caverns big enough to contain whole palaces (and some indeed containing such pieces of an architecture) are dungeons too. Or are they?

That's the problem with plenty of RPG discussions - people often assume things are universally defined and everyone follows same definition. 2-3 comments later they start to argue over some details, throw insults at each other, because it turns out at least one didn't think that a building without walls might still be a functional building, or something like that. :rolleyes: