Just by way of random silliness for the week, rather than one of the serious posts I’m halfway through writing, I bring you ... STUPID PC TRICKS.
No, this isn’t a list of idiotic things I’ve seen characters do. (The majority of these were perpetrated by just one player, and I may post that one day.) It’s a list of idiotic gaming shibboleths that just keep rolling along, decade after decade, without a lick of sense behind them.
* 10' foot poles: Seriously? Alright, I have an experiment for you. Just for the sake of argument, folks, go grab a 10' length of PVC tubing from your local hardware store. Try walking around with it for an hour. Now try walking with it indoors. Now get a group of a half-dozen people to do the same. Now hope that someone has a video camera handy, because you'd score a hundred thousand YouTube hits in a day with that comedy gold. Whether it was Gygax or Arneson who was the one to think up the notion that one could carry one of these things underground I have no idea, but you have to wonder if either of them had ever held a 10' long piece of hardwood in their lives, never mind in confined quarters.
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| THAT is a 10' pole. Go ahead. Strap it to your back in a dungeon. I dare you. |
* Speaking of dungeons ... dungeon mapping. Yeah, right. So ... who’s going hands-free in the dungeon and balancing a writing desk, inkwell and quill, scribbling and blotching on a piece of skittering parchment in indifferent lighting conditions, where you can't readily erase or correct your mistakes. How long does it take to set that stuff down and get out your weapons in a tussle, and how likely is it that nothing disturbs the desk? Speaking of likely, I’ve another exercise for you. Go outside to the nearest intersection. Now draw that intersection on paper. Now go back inside and compare your drawing to (say) Google Maps. You were only off the mark by 5 degrees, say? That’s pretty good! Want to guess how many five-degree errors it will take to make your dungeon map completely screwed up? Not very many.
* Giant packloads. Third experiment of the day: take a backpack. Stuff it as full of books as it will fit. Hoist that on your back. Do some exercises, jog some, move around. Pretty heavy and unwieldy, isn’t it? That packload you’re toting is only 25 lbs, about. Seriously. I agree that the military trains with 50 lb loads, but while that’s feasible for thirty soldiers going into a battle with a few minutes to prepare -- and oh, by the way, how they're fighting is NOT leaping about and swinging swords -- it just is not feasible for a small party that gets ambushed and needs to react in *seconds*. (Never mind that low-tech camping gear is a good deal heavier than similar stuff is today. Nylon vs canvas, plastic vs hardwood, titanium vs iron, rayon vs hemp, synthetics vs wool, concentrate vs ...)
A quibble on the third one - standard pack loads for only-modestly-in-shape hikers are 25-30% of body weight, so 50 pounds is common. That's with a modern backpack, so you might want to discount a bit assuming more primitive gear, but that's also people who aren't necessarily adventurer-grade.
ReplyDeleteAnd a quibble with the second - try stylus on wax tablet? Or writing with raw lead, which is not as dark or erasable as pencil graphite, and might have some long-term toxicity, but works. Yes, visibility is a problem, to be sure.
The whole "ink pen" is also a bit more plausible at the ridiculously slow rates of old-fashioned dungeon movement - if you're only moving 120' every 10 minutes, it ought to be easy to sharpen your quill, sketch a bit on a sheet of vellum, put it all away, and have time left over...
On the first part, sure: but as I did say, that presumes modern-day materials and weights. And that hikers aren't carrying weapons or armor. And that the average hiker has next to zero chance of having to *fight* carrying that packload. Toss on 20-30 lbs worth of armor and a sword, and I guarantee (from experience, actually) that the hiker is going to be far less interested OR able to have a heavy packload for a march route.
DeleteAs to dungeon mapping, it isn't as if wax tablets or raw lead involve much less fuss, bother, potential breakage (what are the odds that the fireball/gelatinous cube got the map too?), tying up of the hands or sheer inaccuracy. The ridiculously slow statutory movement of OD&D dungeoneering could stand for a stupid PC trick of its own, if it were less imbedded in the rules and more a simple shibboleth of parties.