Traverse Fantasy

traditionally, torches have a constant duration of six turns or one hour. what happens when we change this up?

i'd like to look at statistically equivalent methods of handling combat in tabletop games, and draw out their differences with respect to how they affect the play experience.

the dungeon exploration procedure for the 1974 edition of dungeons & dragons  is given in volume 3, pages 8-10. here is a selection of passages throughout those pages to best understand how the procedure is structured; i have only removed parts related to sub-procedures unrelated to time and movement. THE MOVE/TURN IN THE UNDERWORLD: Movement is in segments of approximately ten minutes. Thus it takes ten minutes to move about two moves --120 feet for a fully-armored character. Two moves constitute a turn, except in flight/pursuit situations where the moves/turn will be doubled (and no mapping allowed). Time must be taken to rest, so one turn every hour must be spent motionless, and double the rest period must be taken after a flight/pursuit takes place. Time searching for anything (secret passages, hidden treasure, etc.), loading treasure, listening, ESP'ing [1], hiding, will be adjudged by the referee as to what portion of a turn will be used by the activity. Typically, ESP...

let me just give the rundown! in the original dungeons & dragons  (1974), a dungeon turn was not the amount of time it took to perform an action. instead, a turn is the interval of time between wandering monster checks. this means that after each turn, the referee rolls a die for a 1-in-6 chance of a monster appearing. what happens in between these checks is basically up in the air, and the rulebook invites liberal guesstimation. the party is afforded two "moves" (120 feet for an unarmored character) in one turn. there are ten "rounds" of combat per turn. thought-detecting can take just a quarter turn. searching a room takes a full turn. ultimately, the rulebook says, "Time spend searching for anything [...] will be adjudged by the referee as to what portion of a turn will be used by the activity." edit:  if the above paragraph feels like a controversial reading, read the companion piece ( link )! movement rates the movement rates of dungeon exploratio...

Surprise! You get some proper punctuation because I originally wrote this in a Word document.

woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! does the clay say to the one who fashions it, "what are you making?" or "your work has no handles!" woe to anyone who says to a father, "what are you begetting?"   or to a woman, "with what are you in labor?"   isaiah 45:9-10 i don't really want to talk about the discourse that led to me seeking out this work. what happened to the author, isabel fall, shows a lack of comprehension and empathy on the part of self-identified 'allies' who chased a trans woman off the internet because she produced something alien to them. with that being said, fall wrote something thoughtful and horrifying. i think it's worth to draw out the implications of this piece to better understand how it contributes to our knowledge (or lack thereof) of gender.

PART 2 last time we talked about the structural underpinnings of (old school) dungeons & dragons as a language or a system of interactions. i argued that what sets apart (old) d&d from other games is that it is open and infinite. d&d is open because instead of being contained inside its own explicitly-defined rules, it opens the set of interactions to anything the players say happens. d&d is also infinite because it is a game without an end, which it accomplishes by shifting goalposts in the form of experience levels. i talked about how these structural constraints (or lack thereof) allow d&d players to simulate their fantasy endlessly, and how the enjoyment derived from pursuing this fantasy differs between (typical) women and men. gygax is therefore correct to notice a difference in enjoyment of games along gendered lines, but he is wrong to attribute it to biological difference when it is actually a social function of how girls and boys are raised and social...