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Friday, May 8, 2020

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day One Hundred and Twenty-Nine

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!

Today is Part 72 of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.

**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**

This next rule is something that some people do not like or they will claim that their character could just wade through the villagers, no big deal. At least so I have read.



My take on it is this: One I have never had to invoke this rule in 45+ years of playing OD&D, Two it is incomprehensible to me that I would have a friend that would ever make this necessary, and Three if a player did something in game that would trigger a rule like this, then I sadly misjudged the character of this "friend" that I invited into my game. If I were running a public game and had unvetted players who decided to go off on an evil murder spree, then this rule would come down on them hard and fast
 


 I love this rule and IMC players have frequently traveled to other worlds.Depending on the choices that players make, this could happen almost anytime. When another world comes up I can visualize it as a planet rotating in space and then I can zoom in to anywhere that I want and see what is there. If you have never had other worlds in your campaign, I encourage you to experiment with them as a highly valuable component to your game.


I have never used this in game, although I have spent time looking at it over the years.On those occasions, where larger numbers are in play, I usually just do something quite and dirty that gets the job done.


BITS and FITS. We have had some aerial battles over the years, but it has not been a frequent thing.


This is  a good setup and IMO works really well.

 I highly recommend simultaneous movement. As I use a 6 second melee round, there is no time for anyone(anything) to just hand around and watch all the action.


IMO this is one of the more crucial rules for FITS, if your combat is going to satisfy the necessary "suspension of disbelief" 


The only real surprise in this table IMO is that a Flying Carpet is not a lot more maneuverable, so I bumped it up to 5 and 3 respectively.


This is really all straight forward IMO.


In other words, climbing is a lot slower than diving maintaining the same level.


Almost anything can be attempted and I suggest that when emulating fighter plane maneuvers you just place a small movement penalty on the action.  


These tables are crucial in Aerial Combat IMO. You must account for some hits causing creature to fall out of the sky.


Simple, yet complex. these things are fun to run and good description is the key to making them fun.


This involves paying attention to perspective and remembering what target looks the biggest from any given angle.


IMO where a significant portion of the overall body of the creature is their tail the Probability of a Critical Hit is not NIL. I used 10%, because a huge tail hanging limp throws the maneuverability of these creatures off and could even result in a crash.


Normal falling damage protocols.


I used this as  a score of 7 is a Direct hit and a score of 6 or 8 was half damage and everything else is a miss of the specified target.


Absolutely! 


Melee, even, in the air just comes back to normal combat, once they are close enough together.

Tomorrow Naval Combat.

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