Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937626Sometimes, you don’t know the enemy is there until the lead unit dies.

In Squad Leader, to form a scout a squad must first pass a morale check. That's right there is why.

Chirine and Gronan; you both ought to combine both of your books into one!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937626Here's another chapter you might find amusing, Chirine.

UNSTATED ASSUMPTIONS – D&D AND TRACTICS.

Yes; this. Interestingly, I had almost this exact same exposition with the D&D group I played with. They were discussing the 'marching order' - although they didn't use that particular term - and I spoke up and suggested that we have a couple of people hang back as a rearguard to both keep a lookout for anything and to provide the rest of the party with some warning if we got jumped from the rear. I also - since it was my idea - volunteered to be one of the 'trailers'. The players hadn't , I gathered, thought a lot about this concept, and I pointed out that by keeping the rest of the party under observation - what we used to call 'traveling overwatch', actually - the party would also have a reserve to meet any attack from the front; there was some concern expressed that the trailers wouldn't get any action or XP from the game session.

So, of course, while the party is dealing with a nasty surprise to the front, we got jumped from the rear by a couple of much higher-level orcs. I got killed, and the player with me badly wounded, but the rest of the party had been keeping their us under observation and came thundering back down the passage to rescue us. It all worked fine; one player asked me how I felt about it, and I pointed out that while I was dead, the rest of the party was alive and able to carry me out of the dungeon.

There were a lot of very thoughtful looks, after all this...

So, yes; there is risk, but it can be minimized by things like 'observation'.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;937771there was some concern expressed that the trailers wouldn't get any action or XP from the game session.

Jesus Wept.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;937771It all worked fine; one player asked me how I felt about it, and I pointed out that while I was dead, the rest of the party was alive and able to carry me out of the dungeon.

There were a lot of very thoughtful looks, after all this...

While I guess it is gratifying to see the lightbulb go on...that is tempered by the realization that you had to tell people they were in the dark and that light was the solution.

It's to be expected. Most games, whether board games like monopoly or computer games like Civilization or Call of Duty, have the player as Lone Warrior. Unless you've played chess or some wargame, or had experience in the military or a team sport, you just won't have the concept of specialists working together, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and so on.

A related issue is players having no concept of unit cohesion and morale. In computer games like Fallout 4 or the old Command & Conquer, everyone fights to the last man. This is related to the software limitations etc, plus people like to shoot and blow shit up. Nothing wrong with that, except that the player comes in thinking of killing the enemy rather than defeating him.

This also ties in with computer games having people be automatically enemy - they just start shooting at whoever goes past. Mindless killers have no morale, and you can't reason or bargain with them, you just have to kill them.

"Kill them all!" requires less tactical savvy than "defeat them." So the emphasis turns to dealing shitloads of damage rather than other stuff.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937626This carried over into D&D in a couple of ways. First, we were used to being very careful about where we were looking, and specifying it exactly. Even though we weren't limited to a 4" wide path, we assumed that observation was important. Possibly the most famous instance of this is Terry Kuntz, who, every time he stepped through an opening, would announce "I look up and down and all around."

If a player did that at my table... well I probably couldn't keep from laughing. Are we to assume that the characters are willfully not observant until the player declares it?  What else do they have to declare? It sounds like the kind of

QuoteOpening a door and then saying "We look around before we enter" was second nature. If you just went blundering in, you deserved whatever happened to you. (Note that this is not the same as the referee saying "You didn't say that you were looking specifically for a black dragon on top of a pile of gold, so you didn't see it and it kills you." The technical term for that is "the referee is an asshole.")

thing you bring up here. There are better ways to judge perception and observation than requiring some rote "I look at things" statement every time there's a scene change.

PBEM Diplomacy is good practice for that aspect of D&D. My favorite strategy is to goad people into quitting out of despair which is as close as you can get to a morale check in multiplayer gaming.

Quote from: Daztur;937812PBEM Diplomacy is good practice for that aspect of D&D. My favorite strategy is to goad people into quitting out of despair which is as close as you can get to a morale check in multiplayer gaming.

I once won a campaign by making the enemy player in charge fail a morale check.

We were playing a long term campaign using Avalon Hill's "Starship Troopers" for tactical combat.  We had done everything we needed to do except take the spaceport.  So, I decided to stop mucking about and drop my entire force on the spacecraft -- an entire COMPANY of Mobile Infantry.  (minus 2 squads total worth of KIA and wounded inactive.)

The referee told the player when the first ship arrived in orbit and started firing capsules from all tubes.  For the next three or four turns more ships arrived, all pooting capsules like crazy.  Once all the Terran ships were up there (we had long ago destroyed his space defenses) all shooting capsules, the Skinny commander looked at me with an expression of utter horror and said "Good Lord! You're dropping the entire company!"

The Skinnies surrendered before my commander had blown his capsule.

Quote from: Daztur;937812My favorite strategy is to goad people into quitting out of despair which is as close as you can get to a morale check in multiplayer gaming.

You sound like a fun guy to game with.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;937837You sound like a fun guy to game with.

Hey. It's Diplomacy. I'm a mushy carebear by Diplomacy standards. I barely ever stab people (on average maybe slightly less than one abject betrayal per game?), but when I stab I want to make sure I really draw blood.

In Diplomacy a determined and intelligent and player with a good position can take FOREVER to grind down if you're hitting them 2 v 1. Diplomacy works pretty damn well at modeling WW I fronts. Hitting them 3 v 1 so they quit immediately makes things so much easier.

I loved both the immolation failure story and the Tractics comparison. This is gold. A few thoughts...

Quote from: chirine ba kal;937581You're getting almost the exact same reactions I've gotten with my own little effort ("To Serve The Petal Throne", 127,000 words at the moment) with almost the dead same quotes from people. I've also had the same issues with my writing rubbed in my face, what with being told that an account of yours and my adventures with some of our friends in a cramped little basement room is BADWRONGFUN and I need to provide information on the smelly little cheroots Phil used to set himself on fire with, or the colors of Dave Arneson's plaid shirt.

I think there's a desire for there to be a Big Secret Truth (TM) to the creation of D&D (and EPT) and people want to be in on the secret. I think the idea that it was mere mortals taking existing game knowledge and making something 'we thought would be fun' is anticlimactic. Just like people keep pouring through the Silmarillion/Pottermore trying to find something that will enhance their enjoyment of LotR/Harry Potter.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;937795It's to be expected. Most games, whether board games like monopoly or computer games like Civilization or Call of Duty, have...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;937797If a player did that at my table... well I probably couldn't keep from laughing. Are we to assume that the characters are willfully not observant until the player declares it?  What else do they have to declare? It sounds like the kind of...
thing you bring up here. There are better ways to judge perception and observation than requiring some rote "I look at things" statement every time there's a scene change.

I think these two are related. People, in general, adapt to the game that they realize they are playing. I've met a few truly stupid people playing wargames and TTRPGs, but not many, and even fewer natural geniuses (or geniuses at the games, if they are geniuses in the rest of their lives, that's their business). It's much more about personal experience. If the game makes all moving sprites on the screen enemies you have to kill, it's not stupidity that makes people not try diplomacy, it's playing into the expectations of what kind of game they are playing. Take people used to that and start them playing dungeon crawls where they can do things other than fight things they meet (to the death) and where they have to declare when they are carefully looking for danger, and they will mess it up until they learn the new parameters of the new game.

I rarely declare that my character is looking up, down, and around when going through a door, but I do specify "okay, we're going to be moving through these rooms slowly and carefully, looking for traps and creatures hiding, etc., because we know this area is occupied, and we know they know we are coming." So kinda presetting the expectation that my character is looking around and being more careful than when, I don't know, chasing down a corridor after an enemy I can't let inform his reinforcements.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937626Here's another chapter you might find amusing, Chirine....
 It’s not surprising that wargames based on tanks would have rules about observation. Virtually every WW2 game I’ve ever played uses some sort of observation rule, whether it’s dummy markers, or dice rolls to spot, or a variety of other methods. What TRACTICS uses is an “observation path.”...

I've never actually read the Tractics rules. Given that this is set up on a sand-table where you personally can see the tanks behind hills and off to the sides where your tank can't see, is there a mechanism for not being able to act on information that your tanks don't have?

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;937585God willing, I'll be here when your book is ready for prime time OG. In the meantime, I placed an order for Playing at the World and that should keep me busy until then.

It's a good read. I think Pundy's concern from the beginning of the thread turned out not to be the case. It certainly helped fill in the gaps for me about what was the state of gaming (and the publications that were occurring, etc.) at the time that Chainmail/D&D was being devised.

While I am sure there are folks looking for the secret sauce of the origins of D&D, I think these antedotes and stories are invaluable for bringing out the human side of how D&D was developed. That this is what most are looking for. Prior to the early 2000s what we had was a pretty sanitized view now a much more complete and more human picture is emerging. And to me that is what interesting.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;937869I rarely declare that my character is looking up, down, and around when going through a door, but I do specify "okay, we're going to be moving through these rooms slowly and carefully, looking for traps and creatures hiding, etc., because we know this area is occupied, and we know they know we are coming." So kinda presetting the expectation that my character is looking around and being more careful than when, I don't know, chasing down a corridor after an enemy I can't let inform his reinforcements.

Yeah. general declarations by situation are understandable. I do assume that every character is being as perceptive as the situation warrants. And sometimes there are tradeoffs, like sprinting after someone or slowing down and checking things out. A character really couldn't do both in that case.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;937869I've never actually read the Tractics rules. Given that this is set up on a sand-table where you personally can see the tanks behind hills and off to the sides where your tank can't see, is there a mechanism for not being able to act on information that your tanks don't have?

I haven't revised this chapter yet, and you're the second person to ask.

In TRACTICS there is ALWAYS a referee.  He either marks movement on the map or puts the minis on and takes them off again until spotted.  Only once a miniature is spotted is it left on the table for the other team to see.

Fiddly, yes, but EXTREMELY effective.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937927I haven't revised this chapter yet, and you're the second person to ask.

In TRACTICS there is ALWAYS a referee.  He either marks movement on the map or puts the minis on and takes them off again until spotted.  Only once a miniature is spotted is it left on the table for the other team to see.

Fiddly, yes, but EXTREMELY effective.

Which was why you kept your eyeballs peeled and looked around a lot; we normally indicated to the GM who was looking where, and the guy seeing the opposition would be able to get on his radio to blab to everybody else that there was a Tiger under the Pink Tree Of Death (which see) and then we'd deal with it. Which also, if I may make an aside, is why early war scenarios with the scarcity of radios made for some pretty exciting games - see also my misadventures with my little tank, a Pz. I with no radio and a pair of colored flags to let my boys know that the damn British had bought some new-fangled Yankee tank with a honking big gun on it. (I knew this from the size of the shell bursts landing around me, thank you.)

We ported this over into Tekumel, playing with Phil; we assumed, as anyone would from a reading of EPT, that everything was out to get us and we needed to be on our guard accordingly.