Platinum pieces

One of the many oddities of D&D is the role of platinum pieces.  In the game, platinum pieces are usually highly valued as readily portable currency, but they are far more problematic than most groups assume.

Arguing Alignment

It's hard to set foot in an online forum for discussing RPGs without coming across an on-going alignment argument.  I doubt that anyone has heard a sample of every position advanced in such debates, but it seems to me that the problems mainly boil down to a fairly simple system from the early TSR years being partly re-purposed as the objectives of D&D changed.  I'll mainly be advocating going back to the interpretation of alignment in AD&D 1e, as this interpretation can be used in any D&D (or successor game, such as the Pathfinder RPG) that uses the "3x3" grid.

A necessary simplification in pursuit of realism

This is something of a follow-up to my musings on Concreteness, Inquiry, and Rationalisation.  It's not necessary to go back and read the prior post, but it might help to understand the outlook here.

This post's wordy title alludes to a commonplace view that in order to get at "realism" in games, one must add more complicated rules.  Of course, to state this view is to dispel it, as everyone knows of games that are nowhere near realistic while still being overly complicated.  Rather than bore the reader to death with a purely abstract discussion, I'm going to address the ability scores.

Concreteness, inquiry, and rationalisation

An internal view of 15th. century Brigandine.

The question "why is this stuff in RPGs?" has been thrown around a lot lately.  In the interests of making that discussion a little more safe, let's talk about continued existence of "studded leather" armour in D&D and its successors.  I would like to think that's going to be something that can be talked about without anyone reliving past harms - and if I'm wrong about that, I sincerely apologise for my ignorance.  (There's also a reference to Rust Monsters being tied up later on, but it's not particularly explicit.)

Winning Dungeons and Dragons

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

There's a long-standing view that role-playing games are not things that can be won or lost.  There's always more of the game to play, and in any case the players are mainly collaborating with one another so it doesn't make sense to talk about competition.  To make sense of this, let's consider a group of players - for simplicity's sake, we'll call them FCB.

FCB are a group with different ages and backgrounds, but they're united by their enjoyment of the game.  Every year, they'll be off to different locations, running the risk of defeat and injury in the hopes of winning fame and prizes.  Due to conflicting interests, schedules - not to mention the difficulty of wrangling a large group - many of the group won't be at a particular game.  In addition, some of their players are more skilled and more active, and these elite players tend to get the lion's share of the rewards.  On the other hand, the less skilled members of FCB often learn a great deal from the better players.

The revenge of Blood and Guts

Ray Chapel at Quasar Knight has been talking about hit points, one of my favourite topics for RPG argument.  He does a nice job of summarising the usual case for the "action movie" interpretation of hit points (in which hit points are luck, fitness, and the like) being the natural one for D&D and leaves off by saying that if hit points are going to be blood and guts it's going to take some conversion work.

Now, I don't necessarily disagree with the points Ray made, but I think he's left out the source of the controversy: death's door.  If characters simply die at 0hp, then clerical "healing" magic is in fact some sort of special pleading to the saints (or whoever) for renewed favour.  But we know from descriptions of characters at negative hit points that they are gravely wounded and need attention or they will die.  How is it that the same effects - including the warlord's "shouting" - can restore such characters?