Best Version of DnD?

[Doug Sundseth]

3 hours ago, Unruly said:

What's that supposed to mean? You got something against people with fighter brain?

 

Not as long as they understand that they're expendable.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

10 hours ago, Unruly said:

 

I think it depends on how it's handled. One of the things that I have a problem with is how some people and/or systems want to introduce 19th century firearms into a medieval fantasy setting, with things like repeating rifles and Colt-style revolvers being regular weapons. If a medieval fantasy game has black powder as explosives and single-shot muzzle loaded muskets, I've got few problems with that. Unless it's also letting you fire off multiple rounds from your single-barreled, muzzle loaded musket in a single 6-second round without magical intervention. Then I've got a problem again. Adding in multi-barrel weapons like the old pepperbox revolvers, double barreled muskets, and the like should allow you to fire multiple shots per round, but no matter what a firearm should take a minimum of 1 full D&D round to reload(per barrel). After all, the best trained soldiers of the time had trouble getting past 3 shots per minute. Getting a full muzzle loaded reload in just 6 seconds would be unheard of in reality...

 

The advantage of firearms over archery in D&D should be that firearms should ignore armor, have a longer effective range, and potentially do more damage because most early firearms used large ball ammunition that was at least the equivalent of a .50 caliber in size. I think the British Brown Bess musket of the 18th century used a .70 caliber, and I'm fairly certain that the arquebus of the 15th century typically had a caliber that was in that range as well...

 

 

What's that supposed to mean? You got something against people with fighter brain?

 

 

Actually, it's considered to be a fairly decent B-movie. So much so that they released a version with all the porn scenes cut out, and people actually bought and enjoyed it. Apparently, the plot and acting stand up half decently on their own.

 

I know. It's kinda weird. But hey, if they can make a B-movie quality porno, then I'm not gonna complain too much. After all, I think too many people have way too strong an aversion to sex in media, so having that sex be surrounded by a half decent movie just helps.

Because cutting up a quote sucks on this forum software...

 

D&D is not in a mediaeval, or even high mediaeval, setting - there is plate armor, which was, in part, a response to firearms.

 

The term 'bullet proofed' actually hearkens back to when the armor smiths would load up a pistol, walk ten paces, then fire it at the armor - the resulting dent and lead splotch was proof that the armor could withstand a bullet. The dents were sometimes decorated.

 

Firearms ignoring armor is just as bad as letting them fire every six seconds - crossbows were better at penetrating armor than firearms.

 

Heavy Crossbows also took longer to reload than firearms.

 

The advantage of firearms was that they were easier to learn than bows, but faster to load than crossbows.

 

It takes about three rounds (18 seconds) to load a smoothbore musket. (Revolutionary War muskets were slower to load than the ones in the 16th and 17th centuries - a much, much tighter fit between ball and barrel. And front loading rifles were wicked slow.

 

It took a lot longer to place the cranquin on an arbalist (heavy crossbow), crank it to lock, lock it, load it, and fire it than it takes for a musket - so if you are going to diddle with the load time of firearms, you need to take into effect that crossbows are worse.

 

Crossbows were slow.

 

But could be used with very little training. (The old adage for longbows was that if you wanted to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather.)

 

As for range, because of the loose fit between ball and barrel, early firearms had crappy range - and were often fired with the eyes closed. (You fire at a large mass of troops - harder to miss.)

 

Again, crossbows had better range, as did the longbow - the range would not become an advantage for firearms until rifling became commonplace.

 

But damage, oh dear gods, could those bullets do damage! Big, slow, and heavy - they did not just break bones, they pulverized them.

 

For the record - I leaned to fire blackpowder weapons the year before D&D was unleashed on an unsuspecting populace, as the Boy Scouts started getting ready for the Bicentennial.

 

***

 

Against Fighter Brain? Not at all - Jon has fun playing the way he does - and in real life has fun when he fights the exact same way. He is six and a half feet tall, with ginger hair - he is not a fencer!

 

He is a mastiff.

 

Molly, on the other hand, is a whippet (too tall to be a terrier).

 

Fast and maneuverable - and her rogue fights very much the same way Molly plays jai alai. She moves into a position where she can do what she wants to do, then keeps moving. (She also competes in Kendo - but I have never seen her compete, so cannot say if she fights the same way.)

 

Molly is an Asian girl, and built like a gymnast. And from experience, I can tell you that she is lethal in paintball. (Or water gun fights for that matter.)

 

And together in game, they kick broccoli! The two account for more than half the corpses the party leaves behind.

 

He wades in, and takes a stance in the middle of the battle. He becomes the point she bounces around.

 

So, kind of the opposite of having anything against Fighter Brain.

 

Even if his character also does more than half the dying as well. (The battle against a bunch of orcs with longspears in Keep on the Borderlands being a prime example. He did a hell of a lot of damage, before being a pincushion.)

 

***

Pirates also had a ridiculously high budget for a porno movie. (While tiny when compared to 'real' movies, even Grade B.)

 

And Megan is right - it tries to be good porn for both the guys and the gals.

 

I can honestly say that I got my (accidental) money's worth out of the silly thing.

 

The Auld Grump

[PaganMegan]

5 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Because cutting up a quote sucks on this forum software...

 

D&D is not in a mediaeval, or even high mediaeval, setting - there is plate armor, which was, in part, a response to firearms.

 

The term 'bullet proofed' actually hearkens back to when the armor smiths would load up a pistol, walk ten paces, then fire it at the armor - the resulting dent and lead splotch was proof that the armor could withstand a bullet. The dents were sometimes decorated.

 

Firearms ignoring armor is just as bad as letting them fire every six seconds - crossbows were better at penetrating armor than firearms.

 

Heavy Crossbows also took longer to reload than firearms.

 

The advantage of firearms was that they were easier to learn than bows, but faster to load than crossbows.

 

It takes about three rounds (18 seconds) to load a smoothbore musket. (Revolutionary War muskets were slower to load than the ones in the 16th and 17th centuries - a much, much tighter fit between ball and barrel. And front loading rifles were wicked slow.

 

It took a lot longer to place the cranquin on an arbalist (heavy crossbow), crank it to lock, lock it, load it, and fire it than it takes for a musket - so if you are going to diddle with the load time of firearms, you need to take into effect that crossbows are worse.

 

Crossbows were slow.

 

But could be used with very little training. (The old adage for longbows was that if you wanted to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather.)

 

As for range, because of the loose fit between ball and barrel, early firearms had crappy range - and were often fired with the eyes closed. (You fire at a large mass of troops - harder to miss.)

 

Again, crossbows had better range, as did the longbow - the range would not become an advantage for firearms until rifling became commonplace.

 

But damage, oh dear gods, could those bullets do damage! Big, slow, and heavy - they did not just break bones, they pulverized them.

 

For the record - I leaned to fire blackpowder weapons the year before D&D was unleashed on an unsuspecting populace, as the Boy Scouts started getting ready for the Bicentennial.

 

***

 

Against Fighter Brain? Not at all - Jon has fun playing the way he does - and in real life has fun when he fights the exact same way. He is six and a half feet tall, with ginger hair - he is not a fencer!

 

He is a mastiff.

 

Molly, on the other hand, is a whippet (too tall to be a terrier).

 

Fast and maneuverable - and her rogue fights very much the same way Molly plays jai alai. She moves into a position where she can do what she wants to do, then keeps moving. (She also competes in Kendo - but I have never seen her compete, so cannot say if she fights the same way.)

 

Molly is an Asian girl, and built like a gymnast. And from experience, I can tell you that she is lethal in paintball. (Or water gun fights for that matter.)

 

And together in game, they kick broccoli! The two account for more than half the corpses the party leaves behind.

 

He wades in, and takes a stance in the middle of the battle. He becomes the point she bounces around.

 

So, kind of the opposite of having anything against Fighter Brain.

 

Even if his character also does more than half the dying as well. (The battle against a bunch of orcs with longspears in Keep on the Borderlands being a prime example. He did a hell of a lot of damage, before being a pincushion.)

 

***

Pirates also had a ridiculously high budget for a porno movie. (While tiny when compared to 'real' movies, even Grade B.)

 

And Megan is right - it tries to be good porn for both the guys and the gals.

 

I can honestly say that I got my (accidental) money's worth out of the silly thing.

 

The Auld Grump

In the Borderlands game Jon even had an orc henchman.

 

The orc challenged him to mano a orco, then swore to him when he lost.

 

I think Grump's orcs are TNG Klingons.

 

[Sylverthorne]

27 minutes ago, PaganMegan said:

In the Borderlands game Jon even had an orc henchman.

 

The orc challenged him to mano a orco, then swore to him when he lost.

 

I think Grump's orcs are TNG Klingons.

 

 

If so, it's not uncommon; some of ours borrow that page; the hobs, too, in some settings... it's not too big a leap, for some.

 

I have a character with a worg mount she had to have a bit of a wrestling match with before he agreed to let her ride him. I'm still not actually sure who won, given that one of the other characters in that party, the clueless fighter, still owes that worg rather a lot of sheep as weregild, and the worg is sticking close to make sure he gets his sheep.

My character cut that deal, after the clueless fighter nearly killed one of the worg's wolves for no good reason, and was going to end up supper for his troubles (worg completely pasted  him, it was beautiful). Player's adamant he got a hit in. He didn't. ^^;

 

 

[BlazingTornado]

12 hours ago, PaganMegan said:

 

I think Grump's orcs are TNG Klingons.

That's funny because I had mine say "Qapla!" after a victory... during the Borderlands game.

 

17 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

 

D&D is not in a mediaeval, or even high mediaeval, setting - there is plate armor, which was, in part, a response to firearms.

Well I mean it moved on to that but back in the early days the best you could get was "plate mail"... which wasn't "I've mistakenly referred to plate armour as mail!", but a suit of chainmail complemented by pieces of plate armor.

Gary even aknowledged that full plate worked differently and happened too late to really fit into the fantasy worlds he intended the game for.

From the 1st edition DMG:
 

Quote

PLATE MAIL is a set of pieces of plate (shoulder, breast,
back, elbow, groin/hips legs) worn over chain mail. Plate armor is a late
development and is not considered, i.e. the full suit of solid plate used c.
1500 is not an armor type used, but the reader should be aware that this
form of protection was lighter and more mobile than plate mail! It is also
two or three times more costly . .

 

And here's some art of the AD&D armor types from Dungeon Master's Adventure Log:

 

But at some point, players really wanted to have the "knight in shining armor" look (even though pretty much all the legendary figures that fit that archetypes never wore such armor, pop culture deemed it so) so plate mail was slowly phased out (Pathfinder still uses it under the name "half plate") in favor of full plate.

Edited September 28, 2017 by BlazingTornado

[Unruly]

Well, to be fair, plate mail as Gygax deemed it, was actually the very beginning of the plate armor that he says it's not. The way it's drawn in that image is actually pretty good, save for how the cuirass/breastplate doesn't have the proper straps and seems like it's supposed to be attached to the chain directly. The forearms are cased vambraces, there's hourglass gauntlets, a breastplate with faulds, cased greaves and sabatons, and a barbute. Aside from the barbute, it's actually a pretty standard kit for the later half of the 13th century and early half of the 14th. Edward the Black Prince's effigy wears a very similar kit, except it completes it with spaulders, cuisses, and rerebraces while replacing the barbute with a bascinet(the barbute was primarily used by the Italians while the bascinet is generally universal throughout Europe). And generally, if you're wearing a breastplate like what's shown in the image, you're going to have those rerebraces, spaulders, and cuisses because by the time you've got widespread use of solid breastplates you've got widespread use of plate spaulders, cuisses, and rerebraces as well. I'd link to a rather detailed analysis of 1300 effigies spanning 150 years, but the man who did it and who hosts it also runs a shop on his site so I don't want to run afoul of the linking rules.

 

Actual plated mail was a series of smaller plates that were integrated into chain. Plated mail was primarily an Asian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European thing that didn't really see use in Western Europe. Same thing with ring armor, which was actually used in Asia, but was assumed to be used in Western Europe by early historians due to the way that certain tapestries and illustrations depict regular chain as having large rings. However there's no surviving text that mentions it in Europe or any extant European examples. But then banded and studded are generally misinterpretations as well. Banded armor is a mix of laminar armor(best example is Roman Lorica Segmentata) and actual plated mail. Studded armor is generally a misinterpretation of the coat of plates and/or brigandine, which both consist of a number of plates that were riveted to a cloth or leather outer material. Also, splinted armor as a body protection wasn't a thing as far as I know. It was something reserved for limbs, with the body getting something like a coat of plates.

 

As for firearms fueling the development of plate armor, I'd have to disagree. Plate armor's development was more directly influenced by the ease in which larger sheets of metal were able to be reliably created. By the time firearms made the field in earnest, even as hand cannons, plate armor was well on its way. By the time that firearms were made rather effective, with the advent of the arquebus, the evolution of plate armor had pretty well peaked. If I remember correctly, though, they did bring about a thickening of armor in their attempts to bullet proof it. And as firearms rose in effectiveness, armor began being stripped off until it pretty much disappeared altogether in warfare. It didn't really start making a comeback until WWI, where there were all sorts of weird trench armors that were experimented with.

 

Also, half plate is actually very much a thing, and the depiction of plate mail in that picture is actually pretty close to what one form of historical half armor would be...

 

*I've done some studying of armor for my SCA activities, which includes some work as an armorer(though one with a very limited skill set). Particularly because I'm currently trying to work my way to a very historically accurate late 14th century German kit, so I've done a lot of research on the evolution of early plate armors as it progresses towards the 15th century. Granted, it's pretty much just pouring over other armorers' and historians' work, but it's still research on my part. And it's research I've been doing for the last couple months, so it's all still fresh in my brain.

[TheAuldGrump]

I did say 'in part' - the full Maximillian armor was for protection against firearms and for sporting events* - but would still not stop a crossbow bolt. (In turn, those same crossbow bolts actually did less damage than a broadpoint - the same small cross section and tiny point of impact that allowed it to pierce armor also limited the damage.

 

It also led to much armor being dropped as ineffective - a bullet would largely ignore chain, while a crossbow bolt would not even be much slowed.

 

Buff coats, placarts, and tassets, as well as copps were kept, but other parts... kind of fell by the wayside.

 

It was the crossbow, more than the gun, that changed the rules of warfare - and they were outlawed by the Church, for a time. (Not very effectively.)

 

So, kings stopped taking to the field in battle - for England I think that Richard III was the last to see battle while king.

 

And even in OD&D, there were enough illos to show knights in full, field, or half plate to say that Gygax had less influence over the period of the D&D setting than he thought he did.

 

 

The Auld Grump

 

*The Knight's Tale was an amazing mix of flying purple anachronisms and little tiny details that only history buffs would catch.

[DocPiske]

Don't forget that our nice delineation and classification of arms and armor has as much to do with modern scholars liking to neatly organize information as it does medieval naming conventions. The essentially same kit could be called something different in different locations. Oh and plate owes a good deal of its existence to jousting. The rich have always found absurd ways to pass the time.

[etherial]

5 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

So, kings stopped taking to the field in battle - for England I think that Richard III was the last to see battle while king.

Richard III was the last to die in battle.

 

The last British monarch to take the field while King was George II at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession.

[TheAuldGrump]

11 minutes ago, etherial said:

Richard III was the last to die in battle.

 

The last British monarch to take the field while King was George II at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession.

I stand corrected.

 

I should have remembered it - George's horse ran off with him, pell mell across the field, and needed to be reined in by somebody that actually knew something about horses. (George II was... not much of a horseman - but better than George III would prove to be.)

 

I guess I tend to think of it as an Austrian battle, even though the House of Hanover was very much a part of it. (Georgious Secondus then alive, rich old drone from the German hive.)

 

Heck, it's where 'hold your fire 'til you see the whites of their eyes!' came from. (As well as a statement to the lack of range of smoothbore weapons - I love them to pieces, but they kind of suck. )

 

The Auld Grump - I know somebody that owns a Brown Bess that saw over a century of service, in five different armed forces. (Including the British Navy, which cut it down to carbine length, and flared the muzzle.)

4 hours ago, DocPiske said:

Don't forget that our nice delineation and classification of arms and armor has as much to do with modern scholars liking to neatly organize information as it does medieval naming conventions. The essentially same kit could be called something different in different locations. Oh and plate owes a good deal of its existence to jousting. The rich have always found absurd ways to pass the time.

Why I mentioned 'sporting events' and The Knight's Tale.

 

 

The Auld Grump

[Doug Sundseth]

52 minutes ago, etherial said:

Richard III was the last to die in battle.

 

The last British monarch to take the field while King was George II at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession.

 

The real second world war. (The first was the War of the Grand Alliance.)

[BlazingTornado]

That movie was just that strange mix of oddly enjoyable and strangely forgettable at the same time....

[TheAuldGrump]

I can honestly say that I have never found it forgettable.

 

Maybe because when I was watching it I went 'That's the Fair Maid of Kent!' - so many huge anachronisms, but also these little tiny details that show that, yes, they did do their research. (They got the scoring system for jousts right, for the love of mud!)

 

So, instead of complaining, history buffs could take it as a game.

 

I loved that movie.

 

But, here, have the official D&D movie....

(My gaming group, which did not include Megan, at the time, went to see this turkey in the theater.... By far the best part of the film was the preview for Shrek. )

 

The Auld Grump

Edited September 28, 2017 by TheAuldGrump

[Sylverthorne]

39 minutes ago, TheAuldGrump said:

I can honestly say that I have never found it forgettable.

 

Maybe because when I was watching it I went 'That's the Fair Maid of Kent!' - so many huge anachronisms, but also these little tiny details that show that, yes, they did do their research. (They got the scoring system for jousts right, for the love of mud!)

 

So, instead of complaining, history buffs could take it as a game.

 

Sounds like a drinking game to me ...

(I also love that movie; the lols ran thick and fast with most of it, and it is not unusual to hear quotes occasionally come out; sadly, I rarely get to use the 'eviscerate you in fiction' line... I do love that one).

[BlazingTornado]

Eh, you know what, I like the movie. It's a good guilty pleasure.

 

And it kinda FEELS like a D&D game come to the screen. A DM that can't flesh out villains beyond "gloriously hammy" and makes other NPCs little more than cardboard cutouts... Players who think they're playing clever characters but they're really not... And homebrew settings elements that only seem clever to the DM.

Hell even the thieves guild deathtrap looks like something someone came up with after binging Indiana Jones movies.

 

Short of The Gamers 1 and 2, it's about as D&D as a movie can get.