Quote from: mightybrain on April 16, 2022, 02:21:35 PM
One group, correct?

Well, it's an open table. The players can vary from week to week. But even with the same exact set of players, we have different groups of characters.

im finishing up inappropriate characters with jeffro, so far it's kind of annoying listening to two nerds yell at each other. Playing with rules like 1:1 time and such seem great for club play but it's not one size fits all. The way he pitches the game, he shouldn't be the salesman for this BROSR movement it makes me not want to touch it without a ten foot pole. He claims to know how Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were thinking when they wrote the game, and not taking into account what they didnt write down or what actually transpired at their table.

I'm curious though, Jeffro keeps talking about wargamers in the 70s and 80s... is Jeffro a wargamer? Warhammer? Historicals? Indie? Frostgrave even? warmahordes? Literally anything?

You have to be careful with tracking the wargamer because there is table top miniatures on one side with DBA/DBM in the late 80s, Battlesystem in the mid 80s,  and Starguard in the late 70s, and variants or descendants of H.G. Wells' Little Wars going quite a wats back.  Robert Louis Stevenson was seen by many as the innovator of toy soldier gaming but he didn't publish his rules. And Prussia made table top wargaming part of their war academic curriculum in the mid to late 1800s.

Chainmail was put out in 1971.

Then on the other side you have board games that were war sims of various stripes which Avalon Hill and GMT were putting out with chits and counters, and later the micro games genre allowed smaller versions to be sold in a little plastic bag which gave us Ogre, Rivets, Car Wars, Chitin 1, Revolt on Antares, and TSR made a few of their own.

Both sides got a bit of a push from stuff like the Tolkien boom in the 60s and Star Trek on TV and a certain Heinlein novel.

D&D sprung from wargamers and wargaming but wargaming itself is a big tricky mess to chart 

I think the situation they were trying to avoid was one group jumping 30 days ahead of another. It's a non issue if you only have one group.

Quote from: palaeomerus on April 16, 2022, 08:05:27 PMwargaming itself is a big tricky mess to chart

And then on the shared fictional world side you have the Brontës who as children in the early 1800s created the fictional Empire of Angria for their toy soldiers to inhabit. They probably weren't the only children to do this, but due to their later fame and the fact that they wrote down the campaigns of these soldiers we know the idea goes back at least this far.

The #broSR/Jeffro shtick is to basically act like a mix of Trump and a WWF heel. That's why he talks the way he does. Except he's also serious. It gets a lot of attention. That and he basically claims he either discovered what Gygax MEANT for D&D to be played all along that nobody else realized in the last 40 years, or that he figured out a better way to do it.

I thought the podcast was an awful convo run by RPGPundit, it just felt like the equivalent of two out of the loop guys making fun of a nerd. The fact that everyone who posted about it in this thread still has no idea what was going on is proof of this. It would have been better if they played it more like Joe Rogan and actually tried to get information out of the guest. Luckily I already read up on most of this stuff so I'm familiar with it already. That said, I would tune in if there was a Round 2.

The way the time advancement works is, some people WILL get ahead of others -- but as long as they don't need to intersect, it doesn't matter. Who cares if player A is 2 months ahead if he's in antarctica? As far as the rest of the game is concerned he doesn't exist and it doesn't matter for the purposes of deciding what player B does in a town in Africa. With time advancing every day offscreen, everyone else will eventually catch up -- and if they do need to interact before that, you just "time lock" the player who is up ahead until the other player catches up. That's why you play multiple characters, while another one is doing stuff in the future or waiting to catch up, for example by being in the mountains training to level up for 3 weeks, you switch to your other PCs so you can keep playing.

It's interesting seeing this kind of idea take off -- I started something like this 2 years ago and it was unheard of then, at least on Twitter or reddit which is where all this stuff gets talked about.

Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 11:08:08 AM. And it's a twisting of what the DMG actually says. There is a clear example in that same section of the DMG that contradicts it.

The section on page 37 of the AD&D DMG doesn't contradict 1:1 Time During Downtime. First, it includes the guideline itself, "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening." Clearly Gygax doesn't intend the example in which the guideline is embedded, the example that guideline is intended to illuminate, to contradict that guideline.

In fact, at the start of the example given, all five players get together to play, and B, C, and D choose to hang around town. (Weird game session, frankly, but whatever.) Four actual real days later, and four in game days later, they have hung around town and go to a dungeon. So in this example, Gygax gave the principle the BrOSR calls "1:1 Time During Downtime" and Gygax showed it happening.

Second, the crux of the example is about when all the players meet again and are "ready to play about the same actual time [...] only A is at Day 77, B, C, and D are at Day 54, and E and F are at Day 58." Gygax says the three middle players (B, C, and D) can go back to the dungeon or wait for other PC's to show up and because of this people say (not you, but people on Twitter and people in comments to the stream), they say "See? 1:1 Time During Downtime isn't in the AD&D DMG!" Except Gygax isn't talking about downtime. He's talking about what people can do during play time, game time, table time, adventuring time, or whatever you want to call it.

At the table those three can skip 4 days and do nothing, find something in town to do for those 4 days, or go adventuring. If they go adventuring the players of A, E, and F can skip the session, or they can play another character (one of B, C, and D's henchmen maybe, or a convenient NPC), roll up a new character, or play another character they already have ready to go.

Then, right after the example concludes on pg. 38, Gygax says, "generally, time passes day-for-day". That is one day in the real world, for one day in the game world. An example that shows time passing in downtime 1:1 real days for game days, bookended with two quotes about how time outside of game time is expected to flow day-for-day is clearly not an example intended to disprove that principle.

Again, during in-game time, things are fluid. You could get hit with a curse and find yourselves awakening a day, a week, or a millennium later. It doesn't matter.

But during down time, that is, outside of when you are actually playing the game, "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day". Which is clearly what Gygax intended, so he didn't misinterpret the DMG at all.

What Jeffro is saying is that, while playing AD&D with the goal of using all the rules as written, they ran across day-for-day time during down time, and implemented it. And it made the game much better in many, many ways.

And now they're telling others about it.

Quote from: mightybrain on April 16, 2022, 08:23:19 PM
I think the situation they were trying to avoid was one group jumping 30 days ahead of another. It's a non issue if you only have one group.

In the section of the 1E DMG where it discusses the importance of tracking time, where it is suggested to have one game day pass for each actual day that goes by when not playing, it has an example that contemplates what happens when one group gets ahead of another, grabs a particular treasure in the dungeon, and then when the behind-the-time group goes down there chronologically later in real time but chronologically earlier in game time, the DM is instructed to just accept fate had deemed that group didn't get the treasure. Perhaps the Minotaur was out at the time they came by.

Because of this example, I can say quite confidently that Jeffro's 1:1 time is NOT the exact same thing that you see in the book.

Now I can understand why you might want to handle it Jeffro's way instead. The By-the-Book way burdens the DM two-fold--by making time-keeping trickier, and occasionally putting the DM in a position to have to make up some lame excuse to patch a hole in the timeline. And then, for the players, it arguably robs the second group in the above example of their fair shot at the treasure.

But that's the key. Players don't want to be robbed of in-game opportunities just because they were a little late out-of-game. So they have an incentive to try and keep up. 30 days behind the lead group? Simple. Now would be a good time to start advertising that they're looking for henchmen. The DM then fastfowards 30 days and hits them with the results then in there, instantly. Now they're at an even place in time with the leading group and can head into the dungeon with the benefits of their new henchmen.

As long as there's plenty of stuff to do in downtime, this "problem" tends to solve itself. And this is where rules knowledge can be helpful, because Gary certainly crammed a lot of stuff in there. If you know about it, it's super easy to draw upon. And in doing things this way tends to push the in-game clock forward faster, which gets me what I like--the "dynastic campaign" where players can play the descendants of the original party.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 16, 2022, 08:40:27 PM
The #broSR/Jeffro shtick is to basically act like a mix of Trump and a WWF heel. That's why he talks the way he does. Except he's also serious. It gets a lot of attention. That and he basically claims he either discovered what Gygax MEANT for D&D to be played all along that nobody else realized in the last 40 years, or that he figured out a better way to do it.

I thought the podcast was an awful convo run by RPGPundit, it just felt like the equivalent of two out of the loop guys making fun of a nerd. The fact that everyone who posted about it in this thread still has no idea what was going on is proof of this. It would have been better if they played it more like Joe Rogan and actually tried to get information out of the guest. Luckily I already read up on most of this stuff so I'm familiar with it already. That said, I would tune in if there was a Round 2.

The way the time advancement works is, some people WILL get ahead of others -- but as long as they don't need to intersect, it doesn't matter. Who cares if player A is 2 months ahead if he's in antarctica? As far as the rest of the game is concerned he doesn't exist and it doesn't matter for the purposes of deciding what player B does in a town in Africa. With time advancing every day offscreen, everyone else will eventually catch up -- and if they do need to interact before that, you just "time lock" the player who is up ahead until the other player catches up. That's why you play multiple characters, while another one is doing stuff in the future or waiting to catch up, for example by being in the mountains training to level up for 3 weeks, you switch to your other PCs so you can keep playing.

It's interesting seeing this kind of idea take off -- I started something like this 2 years ago and it was unheard of then, at least on Twitter or reddit which is where all this stuff gets talked about.

The general idea has been around for a long, long time, allowing for some variations in parameters in implementation. Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1980) had you create a stable of up to 20 characters to take out into the dungeon, no more than 6 at a time. Jagged Alliance (1995) has you playing a contractor who hires mercenaries to complete missions. This game provides you with a stable of unique mercenaries. Sometimes some mercs were unavailable due to being on a mission. Even those on your payroll could sit out missions for training, or to repair equipment, or to take time off to heal, or to do medic work for those healing mercs. Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games allowed for multi-player play, and so the other player's hiring of mercs could also make said merc unavailable. I remember ~20 years ago or so hearing a lot of people talk about Ars Magica with it's "troup" style play. I never played the game, so I don't know what it is. I've always assumed it's pretty similar to the exact thing we're talking about.


One thing we haven't discussed in this thread that Pundit did push back on was the idea that The Book tells you to have a player or players play bandits and whatnot rather than just their regular PCs. Jeffro insisted it is in the book, if you interpret it right, but he didn't articulate a very good defense of it. In fact, I thought the response he gave was anti-convincing. And I would be 100% sure Jeffro was wrong on that point. If not for the fact that I've got some other info that says there might be something to it.

To my knowledge, and my knowledge of the 1E material is pretty strong, nothing in there tells you have players jump into domain play, running NPC types, or any of that. Jeffro seems to be just making that up. However, it is absolutely 100% true that Gary did have that exact same idea and wrote about it. And not "sort of" the same idea. I'm talking the EXACT same idea. And I can prove it. I just can't prove that he had the idea at the time he was writing 1E. Here's what I've got on it, though.

As some of you know, in 1999 Gary put out the Lejendary Adventure RPG. What's lesser known is LA was just the fantasy version of a Science Fantasy RPG he wrote that was never published called AsteRogues. In there, he explicitly describes having players play multiple characters, and specifically characters who operate on different tiers of action--like one group that does straight-up adventuring, another that does domain management type stuff, and so on.

He even gave it a name. The multi-tiered campaign.

I happen to have a copy of the beta version manuscript. It bears a copyright date of 1994. And presumably he had the idea at some point in time before he actually sat down and wrote it. So the idea is at least that old. Maybe he did have it when he wrote 1E. Maybe this was the vision behind every thing he actually did write into 1E. And maybe Jeffro is astute far beyond his ability to articulate that he was able to pick up on that just from the totality of 1E. *shrugs* I was never able to, and as I said earlier up thread, I put my 1E fu up against literally anyone in the world. But who knows? Maybe Jeffro saw something I didn't see. Or maybe this is all just a coincidence.

The good news is (what this site is good for a lot really), is that the BrOSR is getting talked about. Some of the ideas are useful (I really like the idea of player's running factions). But it's not a one size fits all.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 14, 2022, 05:58:03 PM

I might try Pundit's own Star Adventurer,

I hope you do!

Quote from: Ocule on April 16, 2022, 06:06:10 PM
im finishing up inappropriate characters with jeffro, so far it's kind of annoying listening to two nerds yell at each other. Playing with rules like 1:1 time and such seem great for club play but it's not one size fits all. The way he pitches the game, he shouldn't be the salesman for this BROSR movement it makes me not want to touch it without a ten foot pole. He claims to know how Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were thinking when they wrote the game, and not taking into account what they didnt write down or what actually transpired at their table.

I'm curious though, Jeffro keeps talking about wargamers in the 70s and 80s... is Jeffro a wargamer? Warhammer? Historicals? Indie? Frostgrave even? warmahordes? Literally anything?

Considering that on the show he said he started with the Red Box in elementary school, he obviously was not a 1970s wargamer.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 16, 2022, 08:40:27 PMWho cares if player A is 2 months ahead if he's in antarctica?

Distance is not a factor for those with access to teleportation magic.

Are there any RPG systems that attempt to deal with time travel? It would seem such a system would need to explicitly handle the kinds problems that can arise in this kind of asynchronous play.

Quote from: mightybrain on April 17, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
Are there any RPG systems that attempt to deal with time travel? It would seem such a system would need to explicitly handle the kinds problems that can arise in this kind of asynchronous play.

The LUG Star Trek game had a book covering time travel. However, it was Star Trek time travel, which means it works differently each time for whatever technobabble reason the GM and/or players decide.

Quote from: RPGPundit on April 17, 2022, 01:29:15 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 14, 2022, 05:58:03 PM

I might try Pundit's own Star Adventurer,

I hope you do!

Actually, we were on the verge of trying it out. 

Then I found Dungeons and Delvers: Dice Pool Edition.  It has such a simple and effective way to play that it was our next test run game. 

But, I'm going to play Star Adventurer.  I've already rolled up my Star Knight (psychic warrior) and have the basic Galaxy lore figured out.  Aka, it's a lot like Star Wars, but it's literally not that universe.  For example, psychics are made, but only rarely born with powers.  You have to convince an existing psychic to transfer power to you, dropping that psychic down a level.

Those two games are about as "D&D" as I want to go.  The official game holds no appeal for me.  I'm not a fan of gaining lots of hit points and a fixed armor class.