Quote from: Voros;970050I love how everyone says 'basic initiative works fine' then proceed to write an essay explaining all the complications piled onto it.

Not at all. In case you missed it, here's the initiative system again:

Each side rolls d6. Highest side goes first. Common sense exceptions apply. The rules enumerate four exceptions.
Charging - Weapon length is determinant.
Tied initiative - Weapon speed is determinant
Multiple attacks - Evenly staggered throughout the round (first-and-last)
Attacking one doing something other than striking blows - Compare weapon speed minus losing initiative (treating negatives as positives) to time of the action.

What takes essays is arguing why over complications really don't have foundation in the rules.

Quote from: S'mon;970046Is this what you guys do on K&KA all day? :eek:

All those conversations were hashed out long ago when putting together OSRIC (and only for that purpose).  None of the common conversations (level limits, initiative, etc., etc.,) happening there is kind of the point .  It's a board focused mainly on homebrew stuff, what we're listening and drinking while putting that together, with a side of BtB conversation.

Quote from: Voros;970050I love how everyone says 'basic initiative works fine' then proceed to write an essay explaining all the complications piled onto it. As if there were a Basic system underneath that worked fine without all the rocco rules. But what could we call it??

Its the situational stuff that allways bogs things down and as you can see from Lunamancers posts theres various ways of reading the initiative rules.

And others just ignored the majority of it and stuck to the basics.

Quote from: Omega;970279Its the situational stuff that allways bogs things down and as you can see from Lunamancers posts theres various ways of reading the initiative rules.

And others just ignored the majority of it and stuck to the basics.

It's so easy to get hung up on that stuff, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention virtually all that situational stuff goes out the window in favor of just d6, highest goes first when it's character vs monster (or monster vs monster). Something I definitely remember Gary saying on multiple occasions (paraphrasing in my own word) is that it's kind of crazy to sweat this stuff when there are dragons to slay. If you just stick to d6 highest goes first, you're going to wind up being "BtB" 90% of the time anyway.

As an aside, this epitomizes where I think AD&D is a billion times more user-friendly than it gets credit for. Learning AD&D is kind of like loading a jpeg. You don't need to learn the whole thing to see the big picture. Knowing about 20% of the material covers 80% of anything that could possibly happen during play. As you come across the those situational things the core doesn't cover, you can either make your own rulings or learn how it's handled BtB.

Quote from: Robyo;967721I've never played Godbound or ACKS, but supposedly they embrace high level play.

ACKS tops at level 14*; I don't have any designer's notes handy to confirm, but part of this is because that's the last point where the author things the power curve works, part is that it fully embraces the domain game and by the time you hit lvl 14 you can reasonably be ruling over kingdoms or empires, and part is B/X nostalgia.

* Characters who succeed at becoming liches or similar transformations can advance higher, IIRC, because they're now using monster-like rules and advancing in HD. There's also a bit that basically boils down to "If it makes sense in your game, allow further advancement, but tie it to epic feats / quests / interactions with divinity, and note that there won't be any mortal NPCs of those levels".

Quote from: Lunamancer;970311It's so easy to get hung up on that stuff, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention virtually all that situational stuff goes out the window in favor of just d6, highest goes first when it's character vs monster (or monster vs monster). Something I definitely remember Gary saying on multiple occasions (paraphrasing in my own word) is that it's kind of crazy to sweat this stuff when there are dragons to slay. If you just stick to d6 highest goes first, you're going to wind up being "BtB" 90% of the time anyway.

As an aside, this epitomizes where I think AD&D is a billion times more user-friendly than it gets credit for. Learning AD&D is kind of like loading a jpeg. You don't need to learn the whole thing to see the big picture. Knowing about 20% of the material covers 80% of anything that could possibly happen during play. As you come across the those situational things the core doesn't cover, you can either make your own rulings or learn how it's handled BtB.

Yes, I agree with this entirely.  A lot of the book(s) have detail to cover specific situations where EGG desired certain things weighted in a particular fashion (and in general I agree with how they were weighted), but you can go through entire adventures where it never comes into play.

Also one thing that 1E doesn't get as much credit for in comparison to later editions - it has, I think, just the right mix of choices available to a beginner when making characters.  You can pick a race, and you can pick a class.  But you don't have to pick kits, non-weapon proficiencies, your starting spells (since they're rolled from a sub-set list of common spells), or anything like that which requires weighing options against each other.  So the learning curve for a new player is actually very low.  And even though the learning curve for a DM is higher since the control panel with all these sub-systems is on their side, so to speak, the game doesn't break at all even if the DM forgets to use this stuff 90% of the time.

The problem is that "high level" has been redefined.  Robilar at Level 14 is the highest level PC in either Greyhawk or Blackmoor.

Also, when XP comes from gold, and you divide monster level by PC level as a multiplier, leveling up starts to require ridiculous amounts of gold so it's self limiting.

How long did it take to get that far? A couple of years?

There was a time when hitting the tens in D&D was a notable accomplishment, and sometimes a change in the scope of the gameplay.

When I was 11-12, I had a small group together. The way this all got started is I was hanging out at a friends house, and prior to this he wasn't even someone I hung out with that much, but I noticed an RPG book on the coffee table. He had bought it just because it looked neat, but he had no idea what it was or how to play it. I'd been playing D&D since I was 6, so I took it upon myself to introduce him. There were a lot of factors here that created a perfect storm for starting out at 1st level and rising up to very high level.

1) Since I was teaching this kid how to play, the entire campaign was on easy mode.
2) We had the leisure of literally playing every single day. 3 hours weekdays after school, longer sessions with an expanded group on weekends.
3) I was also teaching him how to DM, but whenever we switched off DMs, everyone played the same characters in a shared campaign.
4) At that age, we also kind of enjoyed power gaming.
5) We didn't know those little nitty gritty rules. And the ones we did know tended to help us (players). There was little incentive to read, process, and adopt rules that increased bookkeeping and complexity and made it harder for our characters. So the lesser rules were a bit one-sided.
6) Although DMs did plan, the majority of the campaign evolved leaning heavily on random encounters. Along with those random encounters, full treasure was generated randomly and assumed to be on the monster for instant taking when we slew it (just like video games). This treasure was IN ADDITION to the occasional planned treasure hoard. The result was lots of treasure. No thought was given to the economy. It never occurred to us there was an economy to be concerned with.
7) Per #5, we didn't pro-rate our XP when we outclassed our enemies. And we did give XP for gold.

I seem to remember a thread a while back where we talked about average number of sessions to level. The verdict was going from level 1 to level 9 after a full year of weekly play is reasonable and kind of what Gary intended. It also matched my own experience running more strictly BtB in highschool and college. So even if we were playing strictly BtB, instead of on easy mode, instead of being ignorant of minor rules that slow down progress, etc, with how frequently we were playing, going from 1 to 9 should have taken 7 weeks. To the best of my recollection, it actually took more like 12 weeks. Then again, some of us switched off 2 or 3 characters, so I suppose that makes sense.

The thing is, after 9th level, the XP tables become linear. And since we didn't know the "divide by level" rule, time to level started to become progressively shorter as the characters continued to level. One level per week was certainly not out of the question. So by week 25, most of us had characters around 20th level. Characters were "semi-retired" at that point. We'd spend a lot of our time hashing out their strongholds and things like that. But between "clearing out the hex" and fending off attacks once the building was complete,  characters did level somewhat. At the end of the year, some of us had character levels in the upper 20's.

Quote from: Lunamancer;970852When I was 11-12, I had a small group together. The way this all got started is I was hanging out at a friends house, and prior to this he wasn't even someone I hung out with that much, but I noticed an RPG book on the coffee table. He had bought it just because it looked neat, but he had no idea what it was or how to play it. I'd been playing D&D since I was 6, so I took it upon myself to introduce him. There were a lot of factors here that created a perfect storm for starting out at 1st level and rising up to very high level.

1) Since I was teaching this kid how to play, the entire campaign was on easy mode.
2) We had the leisure of literally playing every single day. 3 hours weekdays after school, longer sessions with an expanded group on weekends.
3) I was also teaching him how to DM, but whenever we switched off DMs, everyone played the same characters in a shared campaign.
4) At that age, we also kind of enjoyed power gaming.
5) We didn't know those little nitty gritty rules. And the ones we did know tended to help us (players). There was little incentive to read, process, and adopt rules that increased bookkeeping and complexity and made it harder for our characters. So the lesser rules were a bit one-sided.
6) Although DMs did plan, the majority of the campaign evolved leaning heavily on random encounters. Along with those random encounters, full treasure was generated randomly and assumed to be on the monster for instant taking when we slew it (just like video games). This treasure was IN ADDITION to the occasional planned treasure hoard. The result was lots of treasure. No thought was given to the economy. It never occurred to us there was an economy to be concerned with.
7) Per #5, we didn't pro-rate our XP when we outclassed our enemies. And we did give XP for gold.

I seem to remember a thread a while back where we talked about average number of sessions to level. The verdict was going from level 1 to level 9 after a full year of weekly play is reasonable and kind of what Gary intended. It also matched my own experience running more strictly BtB in highschool and college. So even if we were playing strictly BtB, instead of on easy mode, instead of being ignorant of minor rules that slow down progress, etc, with how frequently we were playing, going from 1 to 9 should have taken 7 weeks. To the best of my recollection, it actually took more like 12 weeks. Then again, some of us switched off 2 or 3 characters, so I suppose that makes sense.

The thing is, after 9th level, the XP tables become linear. And since we didn't know the "divide by level" rule, time to level started to become progressively shorter as the characters continued to level. One level per week was certainly not out of the question. So by week 25, most of us had characters around 20th level. Characters were "semi-retired" at that point. We'd spend a lot of our time hashing out their strongholds and things like that. But between "clearing out the hex" and fending off attacks once the building was complete,  characters did level somewhat. At the end of the year, some of us had character levels in the upper 20's.

BTW this sounds very much like how BX-BECM/RC D&D is intended to be played. Your progression rate for time played looks very normal to me. RC recommends 5 sessions/level at name level, maybe 15-20 hours play per 120,000 XP. Sounds like you could have been doing that every week.

Quote from: S'mon;970855BTW this sounds very much like how BX-BECM/RC D&D is intended to be played. Your progression rate for time played looks very normal to me. RC recommends 5 sessions/level at name level, maybe 15-20 hours play per 120,000 XP. Sounds like you could have been doing that every week.

What we were playing was a mish-mash of BECM and AD&D. Although technically it wasn't BECM. I never owned the Companion set until, I dunno, less than 10 years ago to round out my collection. On the other hand, I did own Immortal rules, so we were playing AD&D/BEMI. Also, 2nd Ed PHB came out around that time, and it was just the easiest way to get my friend a meaty PHB.

Another take-away I think worth mentioning... this campaign was fun. Real fun. It's almost like adult gamers purposely sabotage their fun to avoid even a little juvenile power gaming, or a little Monty Haulism. Face it, while the Monty Haul campaign certain has its share of pitfalls, there's a reason DMs are warned to guard against it--because it's easy to creep in. And there's a reason it's easy to creep in. Because it's kind of fun. The extra treasure just meant we built more elaborate castles. It meant players did a good amount of world building. That in turn meant we had a richer campaign world.

We found ways to keep challenging the players. The Monster Manual does talk about mated pairs of dragons, and all the lovely bonuses they get when you beat up on their mate. And that double dragon's hoard suited us fine. We needed that treasure because apparently NPCs had Legend of Zelda style bombs and kept busting up our castles.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;970706Also, when XP comes from gold, and you divide monster level by PC level as a multiplier, leveling up starts to require ridiculous amounts of gold so it's self limiting.

Where does it say that? I've never heard of that before.

Quote from: Baron Opal;970915Where does it say that? I've never heard of that before.

Men and Magic (1974), p. 18: "Gains in experience points will be relative; thus an 8th level Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experience."

Quote from: Willie the Duck;970942Men and Magic (1974), p. 18: "Gains in experience points will be relative; thus an 8th level Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experience."

Exactamundo.

We altered it to go by monster level instead of dungeon level, so if you were 10th level, rousting goblins would net you 0.1 xp per gold.

Okay. Thanks for that.