AIF: The Restatement, Restated

[aldarron]

Hey all,

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).

Coolness. However AiF is very defnetly not 90% early Blackmoor, if that is what you meant (not "late" 70's).

The Character sheets are maybe 50% similar as I'm sure you've seen on my blog, and some principles, like averaging ability scores and roll under saves get a lot of re-use. Oh, by the way, the best way by far to get a handle on AiF character's is to study the characters Arneson created for Thieves World.

AiF Combat has some aspects derived from Arneson's 1975 material for Supplement II, and seems to build on ideas Arneson was developing for D&D (i.e. the Scott Rich letter), but has little in common with actual 1971-73 practice. I can tell you that in his development notes for AiF, Arneson had some very different ideas. I may be blogging about those notes soon if I get permission.

Magic in early Blackmoor, or spell casting at least, was nothing like what you see in AiF, however, it is a bit like magic in the Richard Snider Variant ruleset and I can say with confidence that is where it grew from, just as Powers & Perils magic obviously grows from the same root.

There's also a lot of entirely new material in Aif. The education rules, the treasure rules, the experience rules, the ageing rules, the social rank rules, the calendar, and so on, were invented whole cloth for the game.

AiF does reflect a lot of Arneson's ideas and also a lot of Snider's and some of them do go back to gaming practice 6 or 7 years earlier, but not 90% by a long shot.

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.

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 There is definitely a tension between trying to present the rules as written since AIF is an important historical document and the temptation of fixing the little things that would make the system better.

Yes please to the link. If you feel something needs to be "fixed", a side note is best.

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.)

Arneson thinks of Strength in wargamer terms and you see him employ the term that way at times (TotF forex). The strength of a character is like the strength of a unit in some ways. Health has more to do with resistance to disease etc.

I don't quite follow what you mean by " in very early Blackmoor rules hits and damage ("strength") were correlated." I guess you mean the theory the HD = damage dice? But I'm not sure how that as something to do with health.

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?

No. One action per turn was the norm. Multi-armed or hasted creatures excepted.

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).

I guess what you mean here is Percentile dice not HD as in shouldn't damage be 1d10? Is that the question?

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"?)

Useful here if you cite the page. In general though IIRC, Knowledge applies to the education system.