AIF: The Restatement, Restated

[Havard]

Hey all,

Hi there NeonNecromancer! Welcome to The Comeback Inn!

If you haven't done so already, feel free to introduce yourself to the rest of the bunch over at the hello thread.

While researching Dave Arneson's work for an "Arnesonian" RPG supplement I'm working on, I started a cheat sheet of the Adventures in Fantasy rules (since the character, combat, and magic rules appear be be 90% similar to accounts of Blackmoor in the late-70s). This then led me into getting into the idea of cleaning up the entire rules to make them more understandable and then finding The Semi-Retired Gamer's posts on the subject on his blog.

Got any useful links?

After talking to Charlie at The Semi-Retired Gamer, I've started a semi-sharable Google Doc (if anyone else wants in, I can send them the link) for a new version of the rules. I have the character creation process with stats and simplified combat rules right now. So far everything in there is fully backwards compatible with the original books (I think). There is definitely a tension between trying to present the rules as written since AIF is an important historical document and the temptation of fixing the little things that would make the system better.

Count me as interested! I've been working on the same, but since I always have too many projects, its been left on the backburner.

Surprisingly, most of the text can be used as-is with minor modifications; it's mostly been a lot of just adding introductory sentences to everything (like "after you roll to hit, then roll damage") and reformatting tables.

Yep. I am not that surprised actually. Dave had plans for a 2nd edition, but sadly it never happened. I am sure that would have cleaned up many of the things that leave gamers confused.

There are a lot of things that need to be clarified, though. My biggest gripes right now:

Why does STR matter the most when determining hit points? Why isn't HLT included at all? (This actually does almost have a slight historical precedence, since in very early Blackmoor rules hits and damage ("strength") were correlated.)

I don't know why, but the way I understand it, Health is used to determine ability to recover wounds, resist disease, poison etc.

I think it might be worth considering replacing STR with Health for Hit Points, or combining Health and STA in order to make each Characteristic about as useful as the rest. STR already seems pretty useful so removing it from the formula for determining HP would probably not matter too much.

It doesn't seem to say anywhere that you can't fire a missile weapon and melee during the same turn. Does anyone think this would have been allowed?

Sounds a bit absurd if allowed?

In combat, it says all and any damage is 1d6, but that is clearly contradicted by the notion of hit dice (which doesn't seem to be explained in the text).

Maybe it means that d6s are used, but that it could be more than one d6?

Does anyone actually know what Knowledge (the almost-hidden second optional stat) is supposed to be used for? (Also, would its abbreviation be "KNO" or "KNW"?)

I am not sure, but could it be that Knowledge is used to roll when determining if Education rolls are successful?

I could also see it working for checking general knowledge related tasks. Ie to determine if a character knows this or that. I don't know if Knowledge is used more in the Magic rules? I would have to read up on those

-Havard