General Discussion

[robertsconley]

That would still make him a landowner or middle-ranking servant of an aristocrat. And then an outlaw and poacher. None of that supports the argument that ordinary folks received combat training throughout their lives.

I wasn't addressing whether ordinary folks got training or not. Only your statement about the Robin Hood Legend. As for Robin Hood being a landowner the earliest ballard only state he was free which could be a lot of things. For example, he was associated with Much the Miller's son early on so he could be considered an apprentice or journeyman to a miller. The only thing consistent was he was not a villein or any other unfree status.

But the answer to that they did but the specifics ars nuanced and peasant (unfree) troops were shit in most cases. Because. their training amounted to infrequent holidays (4, 2, or 1 time a year) of drinking and eating with a little military drill on the side with the spear and other traditional militia weapons.

Feudal manorialism was big on collective responsibility. So while each serf tenant wouldn't be covered even under the lowest legal category, The serf and all his neighbors would owe the military duty of a single soldier whether they were free or unfree. The general militia existed to repel an invasion and other immediate threats. The military duty was for use by their feudal overlord for whatever purpose they saw fit although the service time was limited.

See the Anglo Saxon Fyrd, and the Assize of Arms 1181 among other things.

As time went on, most of this was converted to monetary fees with the lord hiring their troops outright. This could be a lucrative source of income for free and unfree alike. Along with the fact that the general militia was still needed for immediate threats but remained pretty much just as badly trained.

How this manifested varied a lot from region to region. Also the late serfdom of eastern Europe and Russia had it's own naunces as well.

So the general answer is yes unfree peasants got some very basic training in drill and weapons. But it was crap compared to what Knights and men at arms had for equipment and were able to accomplish with their training. But good enough that when the peasant did revolt it took a concerted effort by the king (or lords) to suppress them.

 

[squeen]

Rec sports vs. the pros?

 

[robertsconley]

Rec sports vs. the pros?

A little more serious due to the nature of the times but basically yes.

 

[The Heretic]

On a related note, monsters shouldn't necessarily have a better chance to hit you just because they have higher hit dice. This came home to in the back of the 3.0 Monster Manual II with the titanic toad.

 

[Beoric]

On a related note, monsters shouldn't necessarily have a better chance to hit you just because they have higher hit dice. This came home to in the back of the 3.0 Monster Manual II with the titanic toad.

Yeah, that has often bugged me as well, but I suspect that's a game math/balance thing. It is probably harder to balance things if a creature's defensive abilities and offensive abilities don't scale together.

I have played with this idea for 4e monsters, but that was really for things that weren't meant to be a combat challenge per se. Like a really tough, heavily armored behemoth that moves slowly and can't hit the broad side of a barn (but if it hits, look out), and is meant to be treated like a force of nature. Useless as a combat challenge: it is no match for higher level parties because it can't hit them; and foolish for lower level parties to attempt since they can't hurt it, if it gets a lucky shot you are dead, and running away is so easy. So how do you even assess XP for defeating it in combat? Best to treat it as a hazard or quest instead.

 

[Beoric]

So the general answer is yes unfree peasants got some very basic training in drill and weapons. But it was crap compared to what Knights and men at arms had for equipment and were able to accomplish with their training. But good enough that when the peasant did revolt it took a concerted effort by the king (or lords) to suppress them.

This is basically my point.

EDIT: Per my understanding of 3.5 rules, an 8th level expert weaver is equivalent to a 7th level fighter - that is they have the same CR. So is an 8th level commoner weaver, which makes even less sense to me since their statistics are objectively worse in every metric; just eyeballing the math, I expect he would actually be equivalent to 5th-6th level fighter. But even that seems dumb, especially since the reason he got to be such a good weaver is he spent a lot of time at it, and now he is middle aged and has spent his life sitting on his ass in front of a loom.

Also, take an 8th level expert lawyer, whose whole career has been spent sitting behind a desk, and occasionally rising to his feet to lodge some objection to the court. It is hard to see how he would equivalent to a 7th level fighter.

Now someone who is really familiar with 3.5 (I have never played it) might quibble with the CR assumptions in the rules and knock down those CRs a notch or two, but that wouldn't address the core problem. A real life experienced lawyer ought to have no chance against a real life somewhat-less-experienced soldier or cop, unless he is seriously committed to some kind of martial hobby, or at least a contact sport.

I mean, at least a 1e sage has spellcasting, and you can infer some extra hit dice and hit points from their connection to the mystical or something (although that always seemed a reach to me as well). But I feel like in general non-adventurer, non-military non-law enforcement NPCs shouldn't be much good in a fight at higher levels.

 

[The1True]

Mechanically, it's probably so truly weird players can take levels in Expert if they really want to without completely crippling their character (despite it being an NPC class). Probably also to dissuade players from attempting violence against high level experts. Consider it plot armour.

 

[Beoric]

James Malieszewsi's post today reminded me of this series of cartoon maps based on classic modules, which those of you who don't keep up with WotC may have missed. I looked around and a lot of them are still online, and you can purchase prints from the author. Note there are two maps for G1, as the first ended up in a TPK.

I wanted to post the T1 walkthrough for @squeen, but it is too large, so here is the link.

 

[squeen]

I wanted to post the T1 walkthrough for @squeen, but it is too large, so here is the link.

Fun! Thank you!

BTW you can post an image just using the link, like this:

 

[Beoric]

Fun! Thank you!

Welcome! I particularly enjoyed how the (player of the) MU couldn't figure out what use to make of "write", "Tenser's floating disk" and "read magic". Also where Lareth mistakes the bard for an 8th level AD&D bard instead of a 1st level OD&D bard.

 

[The1True]

I fucking love these things! The ones for S1 and S3 are particularly funny. He did the splashy colour map for Swordfish Isles (I'm waiting for the hardcopy of their second installment presently).

 

[squeen]

Welcome! I particularly enjoyed how the (player of the) MU couldn't figure out what use to make of "write", "Tenser's floating disk" and "read magic". Also where Lareth mistakes the bard for an 8th level AD&D bard instead of a 1st level OD&D bard.

Heck yeah!

 

[Beoric]

While I'm promoting awesome products in which I have no interest, I just got a notification today that Jon Pintar put out VTT maps for Return to the ToEE. I have all his other series so far, which includes A1-4, B1, B2, GDQ, I6, S1-4, X2, and the original ToEE.

Most of these are free but I would encourage you to tip.

 

[squeen]

Thanks for the heads. Up. Someday I'll learn how to make "D&D the video game" work on VTT.

I know that may sounds disparaging, but I don't mean to knock it. It was always the dream to one day have something like that.

 

[Beoric]

Thanks for the heads. Up. Someday I'll learn how to make "D&D the video game" work on VTT.

I know that may sounds disparaging, but I don't mean to knock it. It was always the dream to one day have something like that.

They are gorgeous even if you don't use them in a VTT. Also, you can print them out for a reference.

If the engineer in you likes tinkering you might try MapTools from RPTools. Lots of your own macro-building to be done to get things exactly the way you want them. I quite enjoy the tinkering when I have time.

 

[Yora]

Back in 2002, there was Neverwinter Nights, which was specifically build as a videogame in which you can slap together environments quickly and give one player control over all the NPCs and monsters and to spawn in all kinds of stuff on the go.
The game was ugly as sin and gives you eye cancer, but it did work pretty well if the GM took hands on control. (Programming dialog trees and puzzle-stuff to make single player full-videogame modules was a bit more complicated.)

 

[The1True]

Back in 2002, there was Neverwinter Nights, which was specifically build as a videogame in which you can slap together environments quickly and give one player control over all the NPCs and monsters and to spawn in all kinds of stuff on the go.
The game was ugly as sin and gives you eye cancer, but it did work pretty well if the GM took hands on control. (Programming dialog trees and puzzle-stuff to make single player full-videogame modules was a bit more complicated.)

Yeah, I got sucked into building a whole bunch of 3/4-view props and objects by some hobbyists with promises of great rewards. They were building like the whole Forgotten Realms or something in NW. I can't remember who ghosted who first.

 

[robertsconley]

Thanks for the heads. Up. Someday I'll learn how to make "D&D the video game" work on VTT.

I know that may sounds disparaging, but I don't mean to knock it. It was always the dream to one day have something like that.

Note I am not saying everybody should be using this. Just providing the info to explain what it actually entails.

To use any map in a VTT is trival with fog of war. Just load the map, make it big enough to see, enable fog of war, and just expose what the players wind up see. The exposing part is just a matter of use in a tool to draw a square or a shape and anything inside will be made visible.

To use dynamic lighting is like using dwarven forge during a face to face session. It not trivial to use it is not complex. Like setting up dwarven forge takes time to prepare.


I had to draw the purple lines to setup the dynamic lighting. The red line are separate lines I can remove to represent opening doors. It took me a 1/2 hour to setup the entire map.


What I see during play


What the players see during play


What another player not carrying a torch would see.
\
Hope this is informative.

 

[The1True]

I'm a little bit on team Squeen here. Try to avoid VTT as long as you can, because there's no turning back after. I've got boxes of neglected minis gathering dust. Our old battle-mat was only used for climactic encounters; the rest limited to theater of the mind, or quick diagrams on graph paper for clarification. Now we use Roll20 even when we play in person! Which is another thing; it's easier for friends to just not turn up and phone it in from home. Half the game was hanging out, now I'm DMing to a dude who's very obviously got 3 Reddit (I hope ) Tabs open and is barely listening when it's not their turn.

No more mapping shenanigans at either end of the D&D spectrum either. (no more correcting the players' interpretation of your descriptions/just doing it yourself. Or conversely, leaving the whole party in the dark if they refuse to transcribe the map (unless you want to re-fog-of-war the VTT as you go I guess?)). No more line of sight arguments. No more 'you're too far away to do that'. Everything is wysiwyg. It kills the imagination and some of the more imaginative approaches to encounters and leads to a video-gamey, dungeon-clearing style of play.

The onus of prep is easily doubled or tripled. Finding decent tokens is difficult (moreso now A THOUSANDFOLD CURSES AND CANCER-AIDS UPON THE FOUL MURDERER OF THE TROVE!!!) Robert made it seem a wiz to drop in a map, but it is very much not unless you size and crop it ahead of time. I also call bullshit (!) on setting up the lighting for an entire dungeon in 30 min. unless that process has somehow become automated since last I looked. Tracing lines is brutal around all but the most linear of geometry. And, prickass players expect gorgeous coloured maps like they're seeing in premade map-packs or top-of-the-line published adventures.

On the upside; once you're done, all the monsters are on the map (including randos over to the side) which can make dynamic combat easier. It's a lot easier to start moving groups in neighbouring rooms as a response to loud combats. It's also easy to rearrange/restock things if the PC's run away to rest/hide. I guess I tried to frame it as a bad thing above, but it really does cut back on rules disputes if everyone can see where everything is during a fight as well. Similarly, I complained about the asshat with 14 tabs open, but on the other hand, at least he showed up to the game? Absenteeism goes way down when you can almost always attend.

All in all, it becomes a crutch. And sometimes I miss the good old days sitting around the table; but hell, I'm on the other side of the world and half the guys live on the other side of town from each other now. There's no going back.

 

[robertsconley]

I I also call bullshit (!) on setting up the lighting for an entire dungeon in 30 min.

True I had a lot practice going back to the 90s when I got a hold of a full size CAD Drawing tablet (absolute positioning) and traced out some of my Judges Guild Map into an old version of AutoCAD running under WIndows 3.1.

The trick is not using free hand instead you use this tool.



The tracing process is a matter of click click click click just outside of the walls. When you are done with a segment you right click and you are done.



Curves are handled by using more clicks.

If your dungeon consist mostly of straight lines the amount of clicks you need to draw can be quite few.

The process I use is that I draw the outermost perimeter of the dungeon first. Then followed by any interior cutouts. Finally winding up with interior walls. Doing it this way minimize amount of clicks I need to make.

Again this is NOT trivial work but not a overbearing mindnumbing task that many make it out to be. I own and use Dwarven Forge and overall to incorporate this into you prep is about the same amount work.

The root of the problem is that to make this work for the causal user, folks need to know the right tools to use. Most I seen go for the freehand tool in an effort to follow curves more precisely. This is an exercise in frustration if you only have a mouse like most folks. It is an exercise in frustration for somebody like me who is adept at using illustration software.

I figured this out on my own because of using Judges Guild's Wilderlands. Sure I came up with a lot of my own stuff. But from time to time I needed to get a copy of a original JG map into my computer. Then somehow turn it into a vector image so I can scale up and down as needed. So I learned to put the scanned image on the bottommost layer. The figuring out how trace it fast enough without it consuming all the hobby time I have. The trick was what most software called a Bezier tool. Which allows you draw straight lines and curves. And you do this by the click, click, click method except I also had the option of making a curve by holding down the mouse button after the click and draggin.

I don't have that in Roll 20 so I just do more frequent clicks. Also you don't have to be as precise I needed to be for my MW Maps because it hard to see the line segments of a curved wall when dynamic lighting is used.

Finally there are plenty who think Dwarven Forge and even dry erase battlemats as bullshit. And that OK. Whatever level of involvement folks like for face to face can transfer over to VTTs. For campaigns that are mainly theater of the mind and a few handouts all you are really using are the dice rolls and showing images as handout if needed. For campaigns that are mainly dry erase battlemats, I recommend getting an inexpensive drawing table ($30 to $50), and use the freehand tool the same way you use dry erase pens. Then there are maps and fog of war. If you need to crop then go with Paint.NET it free and does the job. Finally there is above.