Aimlessly rambling on the Ultimate boardgame + PnP RPG hybrid

[HRose]

Still a couple of things to add to the above. After I wrote all that, I decided to search and read online if there were similar analysis of the THAC0, and I found a few.

There’s more historical insight about the wargaming origins of the system:

In the beginning, Gary Gygax played wargames. In wargames, you would have something like an Attack value and a Defense value. You would also have a table on the game’s rulebook: If attacker’s attack value is x, and the defender’s defense value is y, you roll a die and cross-reference the result against the chart (attack values on the x-axis, defense values on the y-axis) to see if you scored a hit.

Specifically, he played naval wargames. The term Armor Class refers to ships: how thick, and how well-covered the ship was in armor plates. An AC of 1 was very good: it meant first-class armor. AC 2 meant second-class, and so on, such that a higher numerical value for AC meant that the protection granted by the armor was worse, and so it was easier to score a damaging hit against the ship.

But it’s interesting because no one seems to analyze the same aspects I did above, like the split between knowing whether you hit or not, and the odds of the roll. Instead they make DIFFERENT observations that even lead to another set of formulas.

So again if I thought I exhausted the topic, I was wrong again. My perspective if wholly mechanical, or practical when it comes to “smooth” the formulas so that they are simpler to use. But their angle is instead completely different:

A player of the game ISN’T SUPPOSED TO KNOW the Armor Class of a monster. Because this adds mystery to those monsters. It increases uncertainty and tension in the game. The idea is that you are supposed to role-play, not play the rules. And that means that sometimes the mechanics are better hidden.

How this converts to the THAC0 if the system is about subtracting Armor Class from that THAC0? It’s simple, you have to move around the formula again:
1a. roll + attack bonus = THAC0 - AC
1c. AC = THAC0 - (roll + attack bonus)
1d. (simplified) AC = cumulative THAC0 - roll

Let’s say you got TACH0 16, with a +2 strength bonus trying to hit a monster with AC -1.

The standard formula says you get to a cumulative THAC0 of 14, then add the 1 for AC. So you need to roll 15 or more.

Under the new method first you roll the die, let’s say you roll a 12:
14 - 12 = “I hit Armor Class 2” (then the master will say if it’s enough, it’s not in this case)

Now I wonder… how those other formulas deal with this other approach of keeping AC unknown?

I’ve written down some examples and it seems the third method is the one that works best by far:
It’s just roll + attack bonus, the result is the Armor Class you hit.

You roll 12 and attack bonus is 7? You hit up to AC 19 (or 1 in AC descending)
You roll 8 and attack bonus is 3? You hit up to AC 11 (or 9 in AC descending)
You roll 19 and attack bonus is 5? You hit up to AC 24 (or -4 in AC descending)

If instead you wanted to know the odds, in those two examples, while knowing the exact AC:
19 - 7 = you need to roll a 12.
11 - 3 = you need to roll a 8.
24 - 5 = you need to roll a 19.

Do we have a winner? Is there anything else to all this? The THAC0 keeps (mis)giving.

[Brooski]

@HRose

A player of the game ISN’T SUPPOSED TO KNOW the Armor Class of a monster. Because this adds mystery to those monsters. It increases uncertainty and tension to the game. The idea is that you are supposed to role-play, not play the rules. And that means that sometimes the mechanics are better hidden.

How about not even knowing if you hit, or if you did, if the hit did any damage? In the old naval wargames you reference (primarily miniatures rules) one of the uses of a referee was to keep the hit effects secret from the opposing player. Thus, a player may be able to see his shot falling accurately, but not know if it had penetrated or not, or even was a dud. Part of the “role-playing” mechanics in that system was the referee telling a player firing that “you see a huge flash between Warspite’s A and B turrets, followed by billowing smoke” while only telling the player controlling Warspite what the actual damage was. Or perhaps even withholding some information as part of the “fog of war” until some damage assessment was done.

Advanced Squad Leader does this with “Unconfirmed Kills” where you might hit a tank and stop it momentarily, but only on the next turn do you roll to see if it was actually knocked out or just stunned.

Btw, Gygax played a lot of classic wargames: he was a bit of an expert on Avalon Hill’s Stalingrad.

[HRose]

@Brooski

How about not even knowing if you hit, or if you did, if the hit did any damage?

It’s an interesting mechanic but I don’t think it applies all that well to D&D and similar.

Realistically you know when you swing your weapon if you’ve done any damage. It also goes against the most current trend. In general players roll their own actions, and rolling for damage is part of the satisfaction of “swinging the sword.” So in classic PnP it makes sense that you roll those dice personally.

There’s also this modern trend of letting the players roll ALL the dice. It comes in two flavors, either the NPCs and monsters have fixed stats, or every possible action is turned into a pro-active player action. For example in combat the players either roll their attacks, or their active defense. So when it’s the monsters’ turn it’s once again the players performing their defenses against incoming attacks.

Even in D&D you don’t usually know the exact damage because while Armor Class is usually known, the monsters’ HPs are instead generally rolled by the DM and kept hidden. So the system naturally mimics this aspect of realism. You know what kind of damage you’ve made, but you don’t know when combat is going to end.

It’s interesting to know there used to be referees in wargames too. It really does seem there’s not a single original bone at the roots of RPGs ;)
Part of this thread was about a “what if”, taking RPGs and removing one of their core parts, the DM. And so the idea of “solo boardgame” applied to a roguelike, dynamical world but with boardgame style mechanics. Just another hybrid (with no original bones, too).

Anyway, after the last pass above I think I might have essentially exhausted this THAC0 controversy. I’ve read a few more things but they only focus on aspects within the analysis above.

There’s an interesting one here, that deals with the mathematical translations more competently:

What is the Best Combat Algorithm?

If you scroll down to the comments, the first one is from Mike Mearls, the lead designer of D&D 5e.

This discussion precedes 5e, so it’s interesting to know that in the end they decided to go with what I described above as the third method, the one where both the attack bonus and AC are ascending.

Now… that blog is well written and tries to promote this True20 style, that corresponds instead to the second method described above. The problem is that it doesn’t take into consideration the practical use. That’s what someone points out in the comments:

I think that attempts such as this to redefine the THAC0 system into a ‘better’ formula fail for one simple reason.

I think that they fail on actual use the in the game. […]

A d20 system (and, in truth, the original THACo system) works better in actual play because each actor need only know their own part of the equation.

And, in my opinion, of those an ascending AC system is preferable because it operates through addition - and because it deals with the better ACs (those that would be negative in a descending system but are merely larger numbers in an ascending system) in a more intuitive way.

And another:

I think it comes down to the fact that you must consider the source of the of the variables, and how easy each is to obtain. The d20 usually comes first, whether playing or GMing the die is already rattling around in my hand when it comes time to make my attack. Level and mods for the most part come from my character or monster’s stats, likely on a piece of paper right in front of me. The AC, however, is external. I must query another human for that value. Therefore, I find it easiest to keep it on one side of the algorithm all on its own, so I can calculate one side all by myself, and then query the other human for the AC value to compare to my result.

The blog author responds:

It’s not a terrible point that the 3E system has all player-scores on the left and the DM-score on the right of the inequality. But that doesn’t mean that it’s easier.

In practice with the Target 20 system (which is indeed how I run all my D&D games), the player performs d20 + FtrLevel + Mods, and reports that to the DM. Then the DM adds the AC and compares that to 20.

I’m confident that this is still significantly easier than the 3E system. (1) It’s easier for the DM to lookup, or even flat-out remember, a single-digit DAC than a double-digit AAC. (2) I’m confident that it is indeed easier to add a small single-digit number and compare to 20, than to compare to any random, large, odd number. (3) If the player reports a raw score of 20+ (actually, as long as the first word out of their mouth is “twenty…” anything), then I can just ignore the second digit, skip the last operation, ignore the AC entirely (!) and announce a “hit”.

But I don’t think (3) is correct, since descending AC can go negative. And I’d argue about (2) too.

I don’t think that taking a number like 12, adding 7, and comparing the result to 20 is actually faster than taking a number and comparing it to an AC you have under your eyes. Simply put, I think that addition + fast comparison is always consistently slower than one single slower comparison. Taking a number, mentally add another and taking the result requires more memory work and mental gymnastic… I can’t even imagine this being subjective.

Ultimately the best algorithm is the one that can handle well both cases: starting with AC hidden and then letting the players know the odds before rolling the die, after they figured out the AC.

Let’s see the breakdown of all four methods in each of the two most relevant cases:

a) keeping AC hidden (requires knowing the roll)
b) knowing the exact odds (requires knowing AC)

1. THAC0
   a) THAC0 - roll = the minimum AC you hit
   b) THAC0 - AC = minimum roll you need to hit

2. True20
   a) roll + attack bonus = DM adds AC, sees if 20 or above (but the player will mentally calculate 20 - the roll to eventually guess the AC of the monster)
   b) (20 - attack bonus) - AC = minimum roll you need to hit (but not very smooth)

3. 5e
   a) roll + attack bonus = the max (ascending) AC you hit
   b) AC - attack bonus = minimum roll you need to hit

4. roll under
   a) roll - attack bonus = the minimum AC you hit
   b) attack bonus + AC = the number you need to roll under

THAC0 is not intuitive but works fine after you memorize the procedure and stick to it.
True20 is a bit gimmicky. It works superficially, but gets clunky if you want to grasp the mechanics.
5e is the most straightforward despite the larger numbers.
The “roll under” works best in the second case, not so much in the first (and it strays away from the tradition of rolling high).

If you read 5e rules there’s no mention at all that the DM should keep monsters’ AC hidden. The formula given implies an explicit AC value, so no reference to option (a) here.

With both cases the “roll under” mirrors 5e, but since AC is descending the numbers are overall smaller. So without a preference for the two cases the “roll under” is one step ahead. And if we consider that players start with (a) and then would eventually settle with (b) the consequence is that (b) is more important in the longer term, and the fourth method is the one that makes it easier.

[Fishbreath]

Thing 1: you might enjoy browsing the r/RPGDesign subreddit—there’s usually good stuff there.

Thing 2:

@HRose

Part of this thread was about a “what if”, taking RPGs and removing one of their core parts, the DM.

The GM-less RPG is uncommon, but not unknown. There may be things worth gleaning from some of those games.

[Ran2]

Because of this… I did make “new” maps for the “Valkenburg Castle” game and posted them on BGG… you can find me there… Greetings

[HRose]

Here I am again for a brand new SIDETRACK! The loops ever getting wider and wider.

The whole point of the above whole, was to go dig in the lost tradition of RPGs, not when they were simple and naive but when they were ambitious and convolutedly eccentric. That’s the real root main of RPGs that we collectively abandoned and forgot: wargames.

So one of these sidetracks was retrieving some of those games I looked for a long while when I was a kid, but never ended up trying on a real Commodore 64.

https://i.imgur.com/vYJHXKm.jpg

The title I remember (reading reviews of) is “Halls of Montezuma.” As you can see there are a few, all using the same “Battlefront” engine or some variations of it. In some of the comments I read most of these were only a collection of scenarios and only the Russia game had a proper campaign, so I picked that one.

I employed the well practiced strategy of poking at things to figure them out without a manual, and it’s all relatively straightforward. Some menus to toggle on/off some map features, some text screens to see reinforcements and various statistics, and so on.

The only problem is that I couldn’t find a command to actually MOVE stuff on the map, and I’ve tried for quite a while.

I suppose that menu is to set up ground and air support for that precise attack, and then there’s a menu with various options, like: ASSAULT - PROBE - DEFEND - RETREAT

And there seems to be some upper level “directive” that only switches from “resting” to “normal”.

Units that aren’t shown engaged in combat can only switch from “hold” to “deploy”.

That’s about it?

After trying for a while I went looking for some discussions online, and it does seem that you don’t push counters in this game… It should be some higher scale strategic thing, so you pretty much only set up the intensity of an attack, but it’s the AI that is in charge of the tactical game.

I guess this can help the game to be more balanced, since it’s all the AI doing those moves. With the player only playing from the backseat the game probably holds up better when it comes to challenge, but it still feels quite limited… and dry.

You’d expect me to stop here, after having an idea of how the game works. But instead I’m looking for very specific things one doesn’t usually care about.

This time I started wondering how they put together that “tiled” hex map. Because after a quick analysis it doesn’t seem like they use the same “grid” that they used for text. So I started to wonder, are they using two separate graphic modes, shared on the same screen, one for the map and another for all the text?

Yet that tiled hex map defied my first attempts at deconstructing it. The vertical spacing makes sense, it’s horizontally that it does something weird.

To find a solution I had to remove that ugly CRT filter and resize to a native resolution. The final result is a grid of 8x10:

Horizontally the sequence is two tiles forming an unit, then one tile used for the hex grid. The hex grid goes all around the two unit tiles, so each unit tile has 10 grid tiles surrounding it. Those tiles can be empty, but they can always only contain the hex grid.

Now you can see that vertically the hex tiles form a column from the top to the bottom of the screen (horizontally with multiples of 3), whereas this doesn’t happen horizontally, because horizontally we have two unit tiles followed by four hex tiles. Producing that slanted offset…

Why should one waste time to figure out these relics of map representation? Because for my own game thing I was trying to figure out how to best represent an hex map having only available a square grid. So not only I need to find some graphical solution to this that looks nice, but also the “algorithm” that would build such thing.

It’s not as trivial as it might appear, and it was very interesting to go back and dissect this game.

This series was made by SSG, but the better known in the field is SSI. I haven’t dug as much here because I got sidetracked again, but SSI has its own way of building an hex grid, and its own solution produces an arguably prettier result, since these looks more like proper hexes compared to the hamburger-ized version of SSG.

(a matter of scale…)

…In the future I’ll try to code my very own solution. Because about two months ago I stumbled on this problem of “building hex grids with square tiles”, and after fiddling with the most common solutions for a while I eventually ended up with some weird hybrid that I’ve never seen used before. Only accidentally I now stumbled on these SSG wargames, and that solution has something in common with mine… But not quite the same.

So what’s the sidetrack that sidetracked me? That from SSG I moved to SSI, and the SSI catalogue is quite huge.

https://i.imgur.com/qbTVeik.jpg

For most of everyone SSI is only synonym of the GoldBox games, but as it happens with the pen and paper RPGs the true root was in the wargame genre. SSI was primarily a wargame publisher.

My story is that before getting watered down, pen and paper RPGs were after simulation and complexity.

Is it possible that this is true even on the computer side? Is it possible that the GoldBox games were watered down designs coming from more complex systems that preceded them and then got erased from our collective memory?

OH YES!

I introduce you to: Wizard’s Crown + The Eternal Dagger

https://i.imgur.com/A3SH3ao.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RexildI.jpg

In the SSI catalogue these are the only two fantasy games showing up as “intermediate”. Everything that belongs to fantasy is otherwise “introductory”. The system contemplates three tiers, but the “advanced” one is only reserved for the actual wargames.

The Digital Antiquarian reinforces the story:

At their best, though, the rules behind these games felt more consciously designed than the games in the bigger, more respected series — doubtless a legacy of SSI’s wargame roots. This quality is most notable in Wizard’s Crown. The most wargamey of all SSI’s CRPGs, Wizard’s Crown was not coincidentally also the first CRPG to be designed in-house by the company’s own small staff of developers, led by Paul Murray and Keith Brors, the two most devoted tabletop Dungeons & Dragons fans in the office. Built around a combat engine of enormous tactical depth in comparison to Ultima and The Bard’s Tale, it may not be a sustainedly fun game — the sheer quantity and detail of the fights gets exhausting well before the end, and the game has little else to offer — but it’s one of real importance in the history of both SSI and the CRPG.

And confirmed by the wikipedia:

Wizard’s Crown was the first RPG designed in-house by SSI, previously known as a wargame company. Its detailed tactical combat system came from Murray and Brors’s background in wargaming, and they brought the complexity of those games to Wizard’s Crown’s tactical combat. For instance, shields block attacks only from the front and left (shielded) side, and not from the rear and right (unshielded side). Spears can attack two squares away, flails ignore the defender’s shields, and axes have a chance of breaking shields. There is an option for “quick combat”, and regular combat can take as long as 40 minutes per encounter. This combat system influenced SSI’s later Gold Box series of RPGs, but it was streamlined and simplified.

https://i.imgur.com/vasShwg.jpg

I think The Eternal Dagger implements one idea I also had for my game (that I didn’t know existed already in this form): when you are in a dungeon the whole party is a “blob” represented by a single unit, but when you enter combat you instead deploy all the party units onto a separate tactical map. Actually Ultima does something along these lines already. The difference in my idea is that I wouldn’t use a separate map, but deploy directly the party on the same map, smoothing this transition somewhat.

https://i.imgur.com/X4xGj3A.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/eX7bWRM.jpg

The game system has a plenty of good ideas. No levels, skill based. Experience points are spent directly to improve skills. Every skill increased has a fixed cost, then the amount of the increase is rolled randomly, and goes 1 to 8 if the skill is below 100, then 1 to 4, 1 to 2, and just 1 when you go above 200, progressively slowing down.

https://i.imgur.com/CQ88oIj.jpg

On the excerpt above there’s interesting differentiation between weapon types (in the image you can see the considerable attack range when using a spear), but it goes further as damage is divided onto “thrust”, “cut” and “bash”, and of course this is matched by the armor types and their damage absorption values.

https://i.imgur.com/ha2OYBj.jpg

Another important feature is the facing and how it’s handled. If you aren’t moving you can switch the facing how many times you want, up to three movement steps you only have 1 facing change, and above three you just can’t change facing at all.

It becomes relevant because facing is used in combat calculations

https://i.imgur.com/Z7hnNUK.jpg

There’s distinction between front, rear, shielded and unshielded side. Side a rear add a to-hit attack bonus, the shield adds to the defensive skill, since the to-hit roll is essentially attack skill versus defensive skill, plus some randomness added. The defensive skill is the weapon skill, but halved, so that’s why a shield is probably quite important since without one the mechanic favors massively the attacker.

But there are also a bunch of situational modifiers. Fatigue and morale, but also injuries. If the defender moved more than half his points, then his defensive skill is halved again, BUT only if it’s a melee attack, because if instead the attack is ranged then his skill is DOUBLED, because by moving he gets harder to hit.

And there’s more. Four types of melee attacks: normal, defensive, aimed and killing.

The difference between these four is how they modify to-hit chance and damage. “Aimed” attacks lower to-hit to increase damage, “killing” lower defense to increase damage, and “defensive” attacks lower to-hit to increase defense, with the manual suggesting to use this option when you are threatened by enemies on your sides and rear (since they’ll have their to-hit bonus due to their positional advantage).

In Wizard’s Crown aiming behaves differently, it skips one turn to give a higher to-hit and damage, but only in the next turn.

Wizard’s Crown also has an option to stand or go prone, so that you can actually DIVE and avoid arrows, on the other hand making you more vulnerable to melee attacks. And a “shield bash” can be executed to SEND a character prone (but it doesn’t inflict damage).

Wizard’s Crown also seems way more complex when it comes to determine damage. The manual explains the process without giving much insight in the formulas. But it does mention the damage is made of both injury and bleeding, and that these are applied through a “multiple” that is determined by hit locations: chest and stomach causing more bleeding, limbs and head more injury. Bleeding is what causes death directly, injury instead can knock someone unconscious and also affect fighting skills.

Even here the horrible trend is showing, The Eternal Dagger, being the sequel, simplifies the rules instead of enriching them. All reviews seem to agree that Wizard’s Crown is the better one.

It might sound complicate to organize mentally, but the manual gives some good tips:

https://i.imgur.com/7BabLZ4.jpg

There are plenty of good mechanics everywhere:

https://i.imgur.com/Y21eyLz.jpg

The general idea I get out of these two games is that they had an excellent system waiting to be used in a broader game. On their own they also end up rather dry since there’s not much outside handling the combat. You have to camp frequently, eat and recover morale/fatigue. It’s essentially tactical hack and slash with a very bland setting.

The CRPG Addict of course played and completed both:

Wizard’s Crown (1985): P1 | P2 | P3 | Revisit

Eternal Dagger, The (1987): P1 | P2 | P3 | Won

And this is what he has to say:

“I can only say that I’m glad that they simplified it for the Gold Box games, because there are enough statistics and options in combat to give a migraine to Sun Tzu.”

My opinion is slightly different. A lot of what doesn’t work with this game depends on interface and controls. Moving around and switching the facing are extremely clunky, the command menu is a list of 20 letters you have to memorize, and not all mechanics are immediately clear even in the manual. But the system overall is elegantly designed and manages to make all the right choices: skill based progression, tactical movement and facing, weapon classes with perks, damage types, armor as absorption.

Once you have the overall picture the system is actually simple. Its basic matrix is well done and built on what matters. The problem is again that putting it into practice the handling is rather clunky.

[Brooski]

Very nice post. On the hexes vs square grid issue, and especially if you are investigating SSI (I played the heck out of 1985’s Kampfgruppe) you should look at Chris Crawford’s magnificent Eastern Front 1941 which was so far ahead of its time that no one copied it. It used the diagonal squares as “half-ZOC” that only stopped units if another unit contributed the other half of the ZOC. A beautiful solution to a solvable problem. It is available on Atari emulators.