The way I view 1st Ed. is that - you don't spend the better part of a decade developing a game without figuring out a thing or two. Yes, Gygax knew what he was doing. I play and enjoy playing all of the four games I used for illustration in the video - there's no inference that one system is better than another. They're just... different, and vive la difference! Where we live now in an ocean of OGL and D20 games, and a sea of retro-clones, games with different approaches remain stand-out and refreshing. I will admit to having completely forgotten the 1st Ed. helmet rule! I've been compiling a 1st Ed. document for use at the table that gathers the rules we use from the various sources into one place - I'm glad you reminded me of this one before I got to print the thing off!

I'll add that, to a small extent, there was indeed an official critical hit system in 1e in the form of certain magical weapons. Even a low level character armed with a vorpal blade could waltz into the tulgey wood, slay the Jabberwock with a single lucky attack roll, and then come galumphing back while Gygax himself applauded the victory.

@@kathykoenig6512 That's more down to the properties of vorpal swords and swords of sharpness than a critical system. Is it a system, when it includes only two very specific extraordinary magic items?

This is why the 1st Ed. DMG is still an important book - it is filled with examples where Gygax doesn't just present rules, or merely show how to use them - he breaks them down and explains why. It's good that you enjoy crits at your table - as I said in the video, there's nothing essentially wrong with using them in D&D (despite Gygax's misgivings) - I just rail when they are injected into the game under some pretence of adding realism, which just shows a lack of understanding, in my opinion. DCC I've read, not played. There's a fair few chunks of it I like - using level as a modifier when rolling for spell effect and so on. I can't say I like or dislike its crit methodology as yet - I haven't pulled it apart enough or tested it at the table. Watch this space, though - I'll get to it eventually.

That sounds like a shamanistic journey into the plane of contemplation on game mechanics!

Makes it based on skill (I.e. target) etc. Which is much better than randomly slapping rules down without thought about how they domino with the rest of a system.

I haven't heard of The Riddle of Steel. Given it has a very Conan-esque name, I'll have a hunt for it! BRP combat amounts to three rolls - attack (on the part of the attacker), Dodge or Parry (on the part of the defender, if they are able), and damage. Damage is only rolled if avoiding the attack fails. A Special adds a second damage dice roll. There's no table lookup, except when it comes to modifiers that might affect rolls. No tables, because skill is represented directly as a percentage chance to succeed (e.g., 40% longsword skill). I hope that answers your question!

@@WillyMuffinUK Reply keeps disappearing. Maybe third time is the charm. Thanks for the reply. Might be interesting to post about how long a round takes in different systems, and what that means regarding waiting time for individual players.

@@WillyMuffinUK About TROS, it's out of print, but there are copies around in various places. It's supposed to be a realistic system, so I'd like to hear what your opinion on it would be.

@@BarnerCobblewood KZfaq is sometimes weird... I had to cover round length in my archery in RPGs video - basically, how it correlates (or not) to rates of fire. Might be an idea to do something specifically focused on it, though!

@@BarnerCobblewood I will hunt :)

You need to be careful with exploding dice, as the odds of rolling huge damage for a dagger are greater than for weapons that should (due to larger damage die size) inflict more damage. Rolling a 4 on 1d4 is 25%, rolling a 10 on 1d10 is 10%... But again, if it works at your table and you have fun with it - enjoy! I am a fan of open-ended resolution rolls, though. Rolemaster uses these in core, but it works for D20 resolution, too. Basically - roll unmodified max on resolution die, roll again and add (a la exploding dice). You can work it at the low end, too - roll unmodified min, roll again and subtract. Once you're done rolling, add mods and see if you hit, or saved, or whatever. In quite a few ways, that's better than an auto hit/miss on 20/1, and is a better place (IMO) to use exploding dice methods.

@@WillyMuffinUKIll send more of my system your way. But I am doing hit points just as a running total of damage, that is later saved against. The save check uses your hit points as a target number with every 7 points below giving a death marker. If you get 3 your character is unconscious and 5 death. If you roll 7 above you can subtract the death markers.

@@jamesrickel3814 Sounds convoluted, but that just may be my read of your summary. I look forward to reading more!

Combat & Tactics - one of the Player's Options series. It's mainly been a problem that every critical system thrown at D&D has just felt tacked-on and out of place, and unnecessary. Mileage varies, of course.

For RQ, I started with RQ3 (which is why my review videos of RuneQuest editions begins there). I'm currently enjoying RQ: Roleplaying in Glorantha (latest edition from Chaosium) - it's very tied to Glorantha, though. The current edition of Basic Role-playing is, however, the best it's ever been, in my opinion. I'm also having fun going retro with SoloQuest and RQ2 - but again, very Glorantha. So in answer there, my favourite RuneQuest edition is probably RQ3, but when I use non-Glorantha RuneQuest-like rules in my games, I tend to go for Basic Role-playing rather than any edition of RuneQuest. For Rolemaster, I like both RM2/Classic and RMSS. I tend to use the Classic core rulebooks combined with RM2 Companions etc. - at this point, my RM2 books have been thoroughly played with and deserve the rest. RMSS I consider a separate game, in the same way that AD&D and D&D are - familiar, but not the same. I prefer the RMSS version over the RMFRP iteration of it simply because I prefer the way the RMSS books are organised. Regardless of edition, it's the magic system that attracts me to RM, too. Related spells collected into lists that are then learned as a character progresses appeals to me - it's like a wizard slowly getting to understand a big grimoire of, say, fire-based spells. In fact, my own house rules take a Basic Role-playing base, but arrange related spells into grimoires that a spellcaster then learns - the character develops skill for a grimoire, and the spells within that grimoire are of increasing difficulty. In essence, it's a tweaked mash of RuneQuest and Rolemaster concepts.

Yes, something I forgot - you're not the first to point it out 😉 Thanks, though!

Darn libertarian of me!

On Hits/Concussion Hits - see RMC Character Law, p11. Yes, the results of certain criticals and effects that can cause bleeding, that is represented by loss of Concussion Hits (or, just Hits - they are the same thing). The wound is one thing (usually from a critical), the effect is another (sometimes measured in terms of Concussion Hit loss - either an immediate amount, or an amount over a period of time). Yes, characters can bleed to death, and sometimes the cumulated bleeding from several critical effects can be devastating. I forgot helms count towards DB. Thank-you for adding that.

@@WillyMuffinUK As I was saying, we only call them hits. Please don't rule lawyer me, there are 6 editions of Rolemaster. You separated D&D into it's different editions, but only used one edition to represent Rolemaster. We only separate the hits when it come to healing, because concussion hits and bleeding hits heal at different rates. Damage from disease can be recovered faster with the right medications.

​@@SageMasterRPG No attempt to rules lawyer you was made prior to you attempting to rules lawyer initially. Your comment noted that I made mistakes with respect to Rolemaster - I acknowledged the element you picked up that I had omitted regarding helms, and returned the correction favour regarding concussion hits. The term "concussion hits" exists in every edition of Rolemaster from 1st through to Unified - whether you're using 1, 2, Standard, FRP, Classic, or Unified, the terms "hits" and "concussion hits" are interchangeable within the rules. Each of those editions uses OB, DB, AT, and the terms Concussion Hits and Hits in exactly the same way - there was little point, for the purpose of this video, in separating editions of Rolemaster out, but for clarity I specified RMC. A similar argument applies to RuneQuest - RQ1, RQ2, RQ3, and RQ:AiG are all similar enough to warrant lumping together with one stated representative - in that case, RQ:AiG. MgRQ1 & 2 and its offshoots are a little different. However, for D&D and the purpose of this video, separation needed to be made, as - unlike RQ and RM - there are editions of D&D that have no critical mechanism at all, and there are editions that do. I took a sample edition from each column for the purpose of each comparison. For Rolemaster, hits recover at the same rate, regardless of source (although recovery rate differs slightly, depending on edition). Injuries - including bleeding - heal separately to that, and different methods reduce or negate the effects imposed by an injury (action penalty, hits/round, breaks, organ damage, etc.). You can heal bleeding injuries of "x hits per round" - it stops or lowers the rate of bleeding, it doesn't restore the hits. With respect to disease, you're healing the disease - and diseases generally come with specific effects, usually represented by a penalty to action rather than hit loss. Regardless, the video's scope was not a detailed dive into each of the four systems, but a comparison between two well-known systems that are constructed with critical systems at their core (RQ and RM), a system that has no critical system at core (AD&D), and a system that has a bolt-on, simple critical system that makes little sense beyond being of a "reward for high roll" game mechanic (D&D 5E). When you note "we only call them hits" - who's we? Certainly not the rulebooks and their authors, and not every Rolemaster gamer. I can directly attest to that. Similarly, the rules themselves don't separate bleeding and concussion hits. Hits are hits, bleeding is an effect that causes hit loss per round. I'm interested in hearing what edition of Rolemaster you're playing, and where within that edition the separation of hit reduction from different sources is recorded?

@@WillyMuffinUK I didn't recite book and page, you did. Thus you tried to Rule lawyer me.

@SageMasterRPG **sigh** if you say so. I was simply providing source for my correction of your correction. It's common to cite source. There's an example right in the comments here - @elliotvernon7971 gave me a correction and citation for it on helmets in AD&D. The difference is what you do with that. You can get upset and call it "rules lawyering" - or, you can look up the citation and see if there's anything you missed. In @elliotvernon7971's case, I did exactly that, and thanked him for the correction - it's something I'd missed that should have been mentioned in the video. When you're playing at a table, and a player starts dragging the game out by citing rules etc. - that's rules lawyering, and it gets in the way of game play. But, that's not where we are - we're discussing and comparing the rules of various games, so page and book references are very relevant - as they would be in any forum of discussion. What isn't acceptable in such a forum is "you're wrong, because we houserule it like this". On that, @Tjrush-rm4jj gives a good example. Here, he understands the comparison, but puts forward that he enjoys the houserule crits his table uses and why. All cool with me. I'm not really sure where to go from here with you. You don't seem to be familiar with common terms used within Rolemaster or how some of its systems work, so... Sure, the helmets note - that was appreciated and was something I'd missed, but what you've put forward so far on concussion hits, hits, bleeding, and healing is - well, not from the page of the game, shall we say.

That's cool - you enjoy them. But as you say, it takes additional overhead to make sense out of them.

Ah, now I'm not judging systems to be better than each other - at least not in this particular video!