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From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Gary Gygax & "playing by the book"
Message-ID: <1197@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Oct-84 18:43:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: eosp1.1197
Posted: Wed Oct 24 18:43:31 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Oct-84 04:10:54 EDT
References: <3905@decwrl.UUCP> <393@uwmacc.UUCP> <145@uwai.UUCP>
Reply-To: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Distribution: na
Organization: Exxon Office Systems, Princeton
Lines: 36
Summary: 

Let's not forget the "falling damage" controversy that occurred, I
think, early 1984 in the Dragon Magazine.  We read in greatest
hysteria that it had just been discovered that:

Gary Gygax calulated falling damage not as <n>d6, where "n" is the
number of tens of feet, but as <m>d6, where "m" is the triangular
number of tens of feet, thus:

1d6	for 10'
3d6	for 20'
6d6	for 30'
etc. (I hope I remembered this right.)

We learned that Gary had always done this, so it should be "official",
and also, it was more realistic.  Actually it is not realistic, and
you can find modules authored by Gygax which state the good old
<n>d6 rule (I think S4 is one of them).

For awhile it looked as though Dragon Mag would persuade all of
our characters to stay away froms all walls, pits and traps, but sanity
seems to have set in, adn newer adventure modules are still using
<n>d6.

I think I'm going to get some flames for this note, so let me state a
position -- I really don't care what the penatly for falling is, or
how realistic it is, as long as it is planned and tested with the
rest of the system, and the adventure modules that use it.
Suddenly changing the falling damage in AD+D would have seriously
unbalanced a lot of the existing game.  It is one of the more charming
aspects of AD+D that serious falls can easily happen, and do remarkably
little damage.

	- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
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