Quote from: The Butcher;790587You know, after seeing this trailer for the upcoming John Wick biopic, I think everyone here should know better than to disagree with this guy.

Thread over. You win!!!!

Quote from: The Butcher;790587You know, after seeing this trailer for the upcoming John Wick biopic, I think everyone here should know better than to disagree with this guy.

About damn time that a joke about the movie came up.

Wick is back???CRAP!

Quote from: estar;790534It works in conjunction with Old Geezer comment on his group making shit up as they go.

It is perfectly consistent with not having a wealth of options to choose from. Things are only better because of have more choices to draw from when making rulings. Which choice is the "better" choice is subjective.

For you Ascending AC may do wonders for other games it is THACO, for others it is using a matrix table.  My opinion is that the vast majority of gamers prefer Ascending AC based on anecdotes and my experience. But I also have met gamers that do better with THACO and table look up.

But.. but... Ascending AC requires fewer steps and just a greater than comparison. Yes but that doesn't make it universally better than THACO or table lookup. It just makes it better for MOST people. Many other view or likes things differently enough that the other two works better for them.

And to tie it back to your original point, that why the fans of THACO and Table lookup get really fucking annoyed with other people when they act like Ascending ACs is the best solution of all time.

I been doing this a long enough to know that there is no one design or method that applies to all gamers all the time including what I do. Which is why I try to learn a variety of techniques so that I can tailor my approach, to a point, to what best for the group.

Ascending/Descending AC really is a great example of this.  You get people saying, "Ascending AC makes so much sense.  Why do it any differently?"  And it gets brought up an example of early D&D's illogic and incoherency.

But there was a logic and coherency.  They had a die. It was 20-sided.  They thus wanted to create results that landed between 1 and 20.  If you're using a roll-over system, that means improvement is represented by the target number going down.  Now whether AC ordinal variable went from 1-10 or from 10-1 didn't really matter, because a table was going to be referenced anyway.  Why tables?  Because that was the common-sense solution of the time.  Why do a bunch of math in your head?  Let the game do the math for you and just reference the table.  And that's how AC went negative, too.  You've got the table anyway; it's just a matter of adding more columns.

Now, how does all that relate to Old Geezer's WMUSSWTWF?  Very simply, they made up shit that made sense to them at the time.  They didn't ponder the benefits of Ascending AC vs Descending AC and chose one or the other; they just followed pretty common sense procedures.  d20 means 1-20, which means target numbers go down, we make up a table like this, and voila.

THAC0 developed in a similar way.  The goal was still to create results that landed between 1 and 20.  Some folks said to themselves, how can I work this so I don't have to review a table every time?  And they worked out a simple algorithm for it.  It was considered state-of-the-art at the time!  But it wasn't created out of any particular design aesthetic or goal.  It got its start with nerdy math guys who picked up on the math and started using it as a shorthand.  WMUSSWTWF.

The idea of target numbers that go off the d20, in ever escalating fashion, is truly an innovation.  And entirely counterintuitive.  That's where careful thought about design and comparison with many other mechanical examples comes in.  But with it comes a certain subjectivity.  Someone people can buy into that very easily.  Others can't.

Quote from: Will;790346It occurs to me to wonder if original sin mightn't have been naming things.

Seems like most of the fights humans get into come down to semantics.

Well that all depends on how you define "fights"...




... and "humans."

Quote from: Will;790510Yeah, but if you're claiming new games aren't better, but different, and then say 'yeah, we just half-assed everything,' I'm going to give you a Tommy Lee Jones look.

If you didn't actually think any of your shit through, dude, it's pretty likely some new stuff is going to attempt what you did, better.

That's not what I see in the event, though. What I see is people wanting to do something else, and doing that better because they're trying to do it.

Actually approaching the original intent more closely may be a quality of some revisions in the D&D line while Gygax was at the helm, and some things he put into AD&D turned out by his own later assessment to be not so good.

Quote from: Phillip;790716That's not what I see in the event, though. What I see is people wanting to do something else, and doing that better because they're trying to do it.

Actually approaching the original intent more closely may be a quality of some revisions in the D&D line while Gygax was at the helm, and some things he put into AD&D turned out by his own later assessment to be not so good.

Different games do different things?  That's just crazy talk!

Quote from: Old Geezer;790727Different games do different things?  That's just crazy talk!

Yea, Gary was clearly enjoying going in a new direction with Mythus, but his own comparisons with his previous work tended to get a "better than D&D" spin. That's a marketing frt

Quote from: Old Geezer;790727Different games do different things?  That's just crazy talk!

Yea, Gary was clearly enjoying going in a new direction with Mythus, but his own comparisons with his previous work tended to get a "better than D&D" spin. I'd say he showed great good humor in making himself the  butt of a marketing ploy; would Mr. Wick be able to lighten up that much?

Speaking of lightening up,  Lejendary Adventure was yet another something different. The games all deal with men,  monsters and magic; but each takes a different approach.

Quote from: Phillip;790735Yea, Gary was clearly enjoying going in a new direction with Mythus, but his own comparisons with his previous work tended to get a "better than D&D" spin.

Well, would ANYBODY under ANY circumstance not say "My new work is better than my old work?"

I've heard a number of writers say "The worst thing you can say to a writer is "I liked your first book best." "

Quote from: Old Geezer;790741Well, would ANYBODY under ANY circumstance not say "My new work is better than my old work?"

I've heard a number of writers say "The worst thing you can say to a writer is "I liked your first book best." "

I can dig that, but the particular "better" shtick was along the usual "D&D sucks" lines.

Meanwhile, Gary was (I gather) still having fun with a very rules-light OD&D. He obviously didn't really think it was much (if any) worse, just different.

Quote from: Phillip;790735Yea, Gary was clearly enjoying going in a new direction with Mythus, but his own comparisons with his previous work tended to get a "better than D&D" spin. I'd say he showed great good humor in making himself the  butt of a marketing ploy; would Mr. Wick be able to lighten up that much?

Speaking of lightening up,  Lejendary Adventure was yet another something different. The games all deal with men,  monsters and magic; but each takes a different approach.

I cant find the quote now but Gygax once stated that he liked coming up with new systems. He understood that a unified system was a viable foundation. But he liked trying new things or allowing others to. Hence the plethora of different systems for TSR. Star Frontiers, Marvel, Boot Hill, Conan, etc. That and hes stated more than once that he believed that a system should fit the setting and did not really believe a single system could "be everything". Which reinforces his ideal of new systems.

Quote from: Omega;790752I cant find the quote now but Gygax one stated that he liked coming up with new systems.

That's a big part of it.  We all liked fiddle fucking around with this stuff.  I wrote 3 or 4 different systems for spaceship combat that were all based on totally different ideas; one was Newtonian movement, one was more like "ROCKETSHIPS!" a la Flash Gordon, and one was sort of based off WW1 naval combat.  Approximately.

Quote from: LordVreeg;790037Wow.  
That never occurred to me as possible, since the game was spawned by Chainmail and the ubiquity of minis in every con, game mag, and hobby shop in the late 70s and 80s.

I've played AD&D 1 and 2 without ever using minis. I've played in games of Savage Worlds that didn't use minis (although usually they do). Same with GURPS, Cyberpunk, and Shadowrun.
I've run Lotfp, TMNT, Castles and Crusades, Basic DnD, Mechwarrior, and some other rpgs and have never used minis for any of them.  
The only rpg I've played where I would say minis were mandatory or at least very close to being mandatory is 4th edition DnD.

So, to someone like me, minis are not a requirement to play an RPG, especially older games. Only newer ones seem to require them (Savage Worlds, 3.5, Pathfinder, 4th edition)

Quote from: jan paparazzi;790174Hex crawls, dungeon maps, top down view of the combat, rules for flanking etc. All that stuff is pretty board gamy to me.

Something like this is very much like a boardgame and a combat simulator to me.

Didn't use any of those. Didn't play with anyone who used any of those. None of my friends even used modules, or maybe they had stopped by the time I started playing with them.

I'm starting to think that my friends and I had a monopoly on imagination.

Edit: I had never even heard the term, "hex crawl" until joining this board. Never ran a dungeon crawl until 2 years ago. Never used any sort of flanking rule until 4th edition. Hex crawls have no appeal to me because it's impossible to run a long term campaign. Dungeon crawls are boring and seem artificial. Flanking rules make me think of constantly having to flip through a rule book to look up bullshit that distracts from playing the game.