Once you understand that the role of the DM is actually that of judge/referee, combat is a hell of a lot easier to run. I ditched AD&D initiative and combat sequence a long time ago and approached it as a game, not a simulation, using my own fucking brain to figure out what made the most sense instead of relying on a ton of ambiguous rules. If I'm playing SFB or ASL without a ref, of course I need tons of combat rules. If I *do* have a ref, who I believe to be impartial, 3/4 of those rules are unnecessary. The DM should set the scene, tell the players what is possible, and explain the outcome based on their actions.

The biggest mistake ever made in RPGs was the move away from ref to simulation via rules.

ITT: Delusional people claiming they don't change the rules while listing all the ways they change the rules.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;850343By mid 1975 TSR was receiving dozens of letters per week about D&D.  Dave and Gary were gobsmacked; Vol 3 plainly said "decide how you want it to be, and then make it just that way," but people wanted to have the "right" answers.

I wonder why so many folks have such a hard time wrapping their head around the obvious fact that this -- as with so many other gaming controversies -- is not an either-or.  It's a continuum.  It's not that "chargen more complex than 3d6 six times" is stupid: it's just more than you personally want.  It's not that rules more complex than OD&D are a waste of time -- it's that some people want more structure than others.

And given that there are a lot of freeform RPers out there who use -- or need, or want -- no black-letter rules at all, no doubt a lot of them would sneer at those of us who lean on the crutch of OD&D and wonder how in the frigging hell anyone could possibly need 112 pages of rules in order to roleplay.

But if we didn't argue incessantly over which method of playing Let's Pretend was more or less mature, perverted, ethical, moral, creative, accurate, realistic, sexist, racist or objectively more fun whatever would we talk about?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;850288Here's the 20 page summary of how initiative works in AD&D 1st Edition.
.

I just read those rules and...first off, its only 15 pages because of the incredibly bad formatting and citations on each page. Secondly it doesnt just cover initiative, it covers a ton of other stuff. Which leads to the third point: they rules arent actually that complex, there are just a copious amount of extra rules for very specific alternate situations that might come up.

So, going through it step by step...

Lets say a PC party and a group of snorks meet, parlay quickly breaks down, and a fight begins...

1. Determine if anyone is surprised.
Nope, optional rule that doesnt apply. So we skip pages 1 and 2.

2. Determine distance, if unknown, between the parties.
Nah, distance is known. Another optional step that can be discarded.

3. Both parties declare their intentions.
PCs say what they're going to do. Gm decides what monsters are going to do. Standard stuff.

4. Pre-Initiative Actions are Resolved
All optional special cases. Skip this as well.

5. Resolve Psionic Combat.
No Psions in the party. Skip.

6. Determine Initiative by rolling a D6 for each side.
So, this is just like FASERIP Initiative, in that one entire side acts at once, followed by their opponents. So far, this is actually faster than modern D&D Initiative systems.

So everyone uses the same Initiative, but if anyone has any Initiative penalties, these are applied individually. So even if your team goes first, you might go later if you're using a slow and clumsy weapon or are suffering from some disability. Makes sense.

GM has the option of choosing one exceptional monster from a group and rolling a d8 for its Initiative instead of d6. Can see where this might occasionally be useful, but doesnt apply to this situation so...

Oh, thats it. Thats the Initiative rules.

Or, thats your giant strawman up in flames, I should say.

Quote from: TristramEvans;850431Oh, thats it. Thats the Initiative rules.

Was it written in triple spaced 72 point font or something?

Quote from: Bren;850458Was it written in triple spaced 72 point font or something?

It just gives one step per page and then lists all the options for very specific cases, with page/book numbers. Many of them from alternate sources like Dragon, Unearthed Arcana, etc.

Why are Surprise and Encounter Distance included in the process of Initiative? They are their own functions and often handled on the GM side of the screen. That would be like including the Random Encouter Table and Number Appearing rolls into Initiative. Strange.

Quote from: Opaopajr;850491Why are Surprise and Encounter Distance included in the process of Initiative? They are their own functions and often handled on the GM side of the screen. That would be like including the Random Encouter Table and Number Appearing rolls into Initiative. Strange.

Padding, basically.

It was meant to make a very simple rule look needlessly complex.

Quote from: Phillip;850125Many beholders happen to see beauty in the same things.

..and then the beholders shoot the beauty with their death rays!!!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;850234I hate the entire fucking chargen process.  If it takes more time then 3d6 in order six times it's stupidly overcomplicated.

I am okay with 15 minute chargen.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;850343By mid 1975 TSR was receiving dozens of letters per week about D&D.  Dave and Gary were gobsmacked; Vol 3 plainly said "decide how you want it to be, and then make it just that way," but people wanted to have the "right" answers.

On one hand, its quite understandable. What mainstream game before D&D ever gave the players such latitude to create the game experience?  

Before D&D, you bought the game in the box, read the rules, played by the rules, rinse and repeat, so for many people, the freedom to experiment was too foreign an idea.

Of course, "the right answers" published in the Dragon only helped the cause of the rules lawyers who could now dig through Dragon issues to "prove" their DM did something "wrong."

Quote from: Spinachcat;850569Of course, "the right answers" published in the Dragon only helped the cause of the rules lawyers who could now dig through Dragon issues to "prove" their DM did something "wrong."

Back when we started playing we argued about rules a fair bit. It was, in part, a carry over from playing Avalon Hill and SPI war games that had a fixed rule set and no referee providing oversight. So people would discuss and argue over a rules interpretation in a wargame. But there was a natural balance that prevented people from too much stupid arguing or overly favorable interpretations with wargames. The rule that gave you a big advantage this time, would work against you the next time you played the game. So people became accustomed to looking at what was a reasonable, balanced, fair interpretation of the language for the attacker and the defender rather than just nit picking the shit out of grammar.

When we picked up D&D we did the same kind of arguing. And since most of us played in games run by different GMs and many of us who were arguing for an interpretation today as a player were going to get stuck using the same interpretation tomorrow when we were the GM. Failure to do so would open that GM up to ruthless mocking for being a hypocrite who was, at best, one step removed from being a cheating bastard.

Also, back then it was clearly the DM's game. So we all knew and agreed that when push came to shove, the DM could and would say, "Well that's not the way in works in my game." And the argument was over.

Quote from: Spinachcat;850569On one hand, its quite understandable. What mainstream game before D&D ever gave the players such latitude to create the game experience?

Many miniature wargame rules.  They gave the basic rules, but did not give scenarios, or battlefields, or anything about actual wars of the period.  A LOT of supplementary work was necessary before running a CHAINMAIL battle, not including getting miniatures!

I have no experience with pre-Chainmail wargames so I can't disagree with you, but other than Little Wars (and its variants), what were the mainstream wargames?  My only pre-1970s wargame play was Avalon Hill's Tactics and Blitzkrieg and those were chit wargames with boards.

Quote from: jibbajibba;849992I want chargen to be fun because I am already playing.

I've never thought of it in that way, but you are right, chargen is part of the game itself.

Quote from: Bren;850149No. It depends how high you toss the coin and how long your shake the dice.

One of the players in an old gaming group used to shake the dice, pause, shake them again, pause, shake them again, say something, shake them again, pause, shake them again, look puzzled when we said "Just roll the bloody dice", shake them again, pause, shake them again and then roll.

In RQ, we had a roll for attack and then a roll for damage, both with the same effect. Really annoying.