EGG Links

Here's links to three really impressive Gygax obituaries:

Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2185914/

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09rogers.html

The Economist: http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10838120

1-2-(3)-Infinity

Nowadays I'm big on the 7+/-2 rule of game design construction. (Again, a psychological rule-of-thumb for how many things people can store in short term memory at once -- and therefore, I think, the maximum number of options anyone should have at one step in a character development process.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_plus_or_minus_two

Now, there's something else that just burbled up at me: I'll call it a rule of "Max 3 repetitions" until I come up with something snappier.

Here's the basic idea, again arising from some psychological experiments. It seems as if things repeating 3 times takes up the same mental space as things repeating infinitely. For example, there's a polling experiment referred to as a "Beauty-Contest Experiment" where people pick a number, and the winner is the one who guesses two-thirds the average. People who don't think about it at all pick a random number (average 50). People who realize that's what happens randomly pick two-thirds of that (33). People who can frame that line of reasoning as common, pick two-thirds of that (22).

And then the next most common selection group is to pick zero (0). That is, if people take a third step in this process, they assume the reasoning continues infinitely, reducing their guess to the limit of zero.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/438.html

Here's some other places this pops up. Quite a number of more primitive languages have words for "one, two, many". That is, anything beyond 2 they just lump all together with a word that means "many" (3 and infinity holding the same mental space for them). Also, you many notice that all professional jokes are written in a pattern of 1-2-(pause)-3. I think that's because after 2 repetition beats, our minds fall into the pattern, assume it goes on regularly and indefinitely, and are then kicked out of the repetition with the pattern-breaking punch line (on the 3). End result: laughter.

Okay, so what's got to do with game play? Well, don't do the same thing more than 3 times because then we're all bored with it. I might recommend not having the same monster or kind of encounter happen more than 3 times (I picked up on this in an old Gygax module today -- there's one single place in the adventure where the same basic encounter might happen two dozen times in sequence. Whoops.) Also, don't let someone use a "special ability" more than 3 times in any day because then it's inherently not "special" or "magical" anymore. So with that I'm thinking that 3E spontaneous healing, or 4E healing surges (6/day by everyone) are superfluous. More than 3 times per day is for mundane stuff (sword blows, arrow shots), no more than 3 times for day for anything you want to feel magical (spells & supernatural powers).

One thing you'll find in any piece of literature (book, comic book, etc.) is that practically no one uses the same power or move more than once in any fight. Certainly not more than 3 times, then it gets boring for everyone. That basically happened automatically in OD&D and 1E with the very limited number of spell slots that wizards & clerics had. Being able to duplicate spell slots (e.g., fill all spell slots of one level with the same spell) would be an exploit that would really break the game experience, I think (and fortunately I never saw it in play). Spontaneous casting in the d20 System falls down the same hole pretty badly.

Bummer

I got used to asking Gary minor questions on the ENWorld forums (or sometimes by email). Last night I was reading one of his old adventures again, and woke up this morning thinking, "Oh, I really need to ask Gary how he'd handle such-and-such in an actual game session," along with questions about map scale, possibly swapped illustrations, etc.

And then I realized that I can't anymore. Freakin' bummer.

Gygax Died Today

Yeah, dammit. Gary Gygax died today -- he would have turned 70 this July.

So at this point I have to mourn and salute the guy. No one had a greater impact on my personality and interests than Gygax. Everything that I know about gaming, number systems, probability, statistics, logic, ancient and classical history, technology, languages, acting, the military, comparative religion, literature, fiction and nonfiction writing, vocabulary, reading for pleasure, philosophy, nature, biology, physics -- and general intellectual curiousity -- has its origins in his works and writing.

He was one of those Renaissance men who knew a ridiculous amount about everything, and utilized all of it in his creation of fantasy worlds and systems. I clearly remember reading his books at a young age, feeling that he was speaking directly to me, and lighting a white-hot fire to know more about everything he was talking about. He made it addictive to know stuff.

A lot of people can recognize him as the founder of RPG's, but he was more than that. Here's a secret that you may or may not know -- in every video game company I know of, behind the scenes, all the game designers and engineers play D&D. It's ultimately the root of every computer game, in any genre, that's been made to date. Gygax spawned not just RPG's, but the whole idea that games could be an important part of your life and a big industry to boot, video games included.

I never met Gary, but a number of times I did correspond with him by email, and he was suprisingly generous with his time and insights. That's a guy who really was unique and you won't see another one like him, I don't think, ever. We'll miss him pretty badly.

Those Blasted Clerics

Random idle research topic: Where did D&D clerics get all these blasting spells from?

OD&D -- Good clerics don't have any direct-damage spells whatsoever. The closest thing to offensive spells they have are hold person, sticks to snakes (no stats for the snakes), and insect plague (which routs weak creatures but does no damage). The chaotic Anti-clerics do get to use reversed cure wounds spells and ye olde time finger of death.

1E AD&D PHB -- Now all clerics can use the reversed spells if they feel they really need to. You also have the damage-dealing spiritual hammer, blade barrier, earthquake, and my favorite outright blasting spell, flame strike.

1E AD&D UA -- Adds stuff like magic stone, spike stones, and spike growth. (Hmmm, seems like a lot of stoning going on there.)

2E AD&D PHB -- At this point you fold in all the spells that were previously unique to druids into a single, unified cleric spell list (and give pretty wide access under the 2E "spheres" system), such as: entangle, shillelagh, fire trap, flame blade, heat metal, produce flame, trip, call lightning, hold animal, pyrotechnics, snare, produce fire, wall of fire, fire seeds, animate rock, creeping doom, and fire storm. (You know, suddenly it makes a lot of sense why the long-running cleric character I had, made first for 2E, was something of a pyromaniac.)

3.0 D&D PHB -- So here some of those spells above again become restricted to just druids, but you also add stuff like: magic weapon, death knell, shatter, sound burst, searing light, greater magic weapon, energy drain, implosion, and storm of vengeance. Certain domains even add more stuff than that, like burning hands, wail of the banshee, disintegrate, incendiary cloud, Bigby's clenched fist et. al., subeam, sunburst, power word stun/ blind/ kill, ice storm, cone of cold, acid fog, horrid wilting, plus chaos hammer, unholy blight, holy smite, and order's wrath. Hey-o!

Okay, so the point is, when clerics started out, they were almost entirely defensive -- they could paralyze or drive off creatures with their spells, but not directly damage them. Except for the chaotic Anti-clerics. That's basically maintained throughout the OD&D supplement series, except for Druids being given a big heaping helping of fire-based attack spells (and there's some confusion in the Eldritch Wizardry supplement about whether they're supposed to be a sub-class of Clerics or Magic-Users). Then with 1E AD&D clerics get the flame strike spell outright, and we're sort of off to the races. Nowadays we don't think much at all of clerics having a wide array of long-distance direct blasting spells, even though that was (literally) the Antithesis of clerics in their original conception.

No OGL For 4E

One month ago in my "Promise of OGL" post, I wrote this about Wizards of the Coast with regard to 4E D&D (Jan-2, http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2008/01/part-iii-promise-of-ogl.html ):

They claim that there will be an OGL version of the rules, but details are extremely vague (frankly, I remain skeptical at this time).

And as of today, that's turned out to be the case. There won't be on OGL for 4E; instead there will be a brand-new license called the "Gaming System License" that is a far more restricted grant of rights than 3E allowed (Feb-2, http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=218031 ):

Mike: Why is Wizards of the Coast calling it the OGL when it really doesn't seem quite open?

Linae Foster: We decided that yeah, OGL isn't the best name for it. So we're going to call it The Game System License from now on or GSL.

You can see comments and links to the prior "OGL" post here about why that was probably necessary. In particular, it's been pointed out that OGL v.1 Section 9 actually makes forward-referencing grants of rights to anything ever released under any OGL. (i.e., WOTC wants OGL v.2 with lots more restrictions, but OGL v.1 says you can take any such content and just re-release it under the less restrictive OGL v.1 anyway.)

So, as of today no more use of OGL by WOTC. I actually think that's positive, in that they're being up front about it and not trying to confuse/FUD-up the legal standing of the first OGL.

Defenses in D&D

One of the wierd things about D&D is how the use of defenses actually works to the detriment of the defenders in a standard game of D&D. (Whenever I boot a game of Diablo for a half-hour break this occurs to me.) Here's what I mean: 

In the real world, defenses and strongholds are meant to bolster a weak party against a strong party. For example, castles were built to allow a small number of defenders to hold off a large army (for an amount of time, perhaps until an allied force arrives, or the invader runs out of money to pay his troops). The basic idea is that by channeling invaders down some narrow passage, you can fight them one-at-a-time, at equal odds or advantageously, instead at the skewed odds against all the attackers at once. 

Now, this assumes one critical criteria -- That the defenders are, man-to-man, about equal or stronger than the men in the attacking force. In the medieval real world, this is basically always true. 

But this key requirement is perfectly upended in the standard D&D game. Here, the general gameplay is for a very small number of PCs to be invading the territory of some sizeable hordes of evil beasts or minions, and the PCs are generally much stronger than most of the defenders they're fighting against, man-to-man. It's almost always desirable for the PCs to fight man-to-man if they can (they overpower most of the defenders), while it would be in the defenders' best interest to bring the whole weight of their numbers to play at once (they could surround, flank, and get many attacks per single attack of the PCs). 

And that's why, counter-intuitively, almost all the "defenses" and tactical terrain in a D&D game wind up working for the PCs and against the monsters. It's actually the PCs who want to restrict mobility and fight the monsters one at a time. It's the monsters who are hurt by not being able to move freely and pig-pile the PCs. 

The best possible case for the PCs is, usually, a single doorway where the toughest PC fighter can stand and chop down the monsters one by one. That's why smart PC fights wind up tactically with the PCs defending some narrow passage, and the native monsters acting the part of the attackers, getting mowed down as they try to wiggle through their own defenses. 

And that's one of the reasons why the canonical "warren of kobold tunnels" never ever works (in my experience), because kobolds coming one at a time against the PCs is actually the best possible thing the PCs could hope for. They're the ones who are outnumbered (and facing weaker opponents), and therefore want limited mobility in the fight. Defenses help the small party -- and in D&D that's practically always the PCs. 

How to deal with this in-game? Well, as a rationalization, you could say that standard stronghold/dungeon defenses do in fact keep out the hoi poloi (normal soldiers), and that's exactly why you need to send in extra-powerful PCs to root out the evil stronghold all the time. On the other hand, it argues for actual defenders arming themselves almost exclusively with missile weapons, and arranging defenses that allow the entire defensive host to rain down missiles on the attackers all at the same time -- perhaps narrow entryways that open into big spaces or courtyards which are basically firing ranges. A whole bunch of spread-out archers or missile-throwers can be the toughest thing for a standard PC party to deal with (assuming the archers have any kind of appreciable chance at punching through the PCs' armor, which is sometimes not the case).