Random Roll: DMG, p. 61

Page 61 of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide features a lengthy section entitled "Encounters, Combat, and Initiative." The section is so long and so full of fascinating asides that I'm going to focus only on those paragraphs that address the sometimes contentious topic of the one-minute combat round. Before starting, it's important to remember that, while the one-minute round is most well known is AD&D, it's not unique to it. Both OD&D and Empire of the Petal Throne, two games with which I am quite familiar, also make use of it. However, other versions of D&D, most famously Tom Moldvay's 1981 revision, do not, preferring shorter lengths of time. I'm genuinely agnostic on the matter myself, not seeing it as a hill to die on one way or the other. For this post, my interest is solely on Gygax's reasoning behind one-minute combat rounds.

He begins:

Combat is divided into 1 minute period melee rounds, or simply rounds, in order to have reasonably manageable combat. "Manageable" applies both to the actions of the combatants and the actual refereeing of such melees.

Right off the bat, Gygax suggests that one-minute rounds exist primarily for practical reasons. He continues:

It would be no great task to devise an elaborate set of rules for highly complex individual combats with rounds of but a few seconds. It is not in the best interests of an adventure game, however, to delve too deeply into cut and thrust, parry and riposte. The location of a hit or wound, the sort of damage done, sprains, breaks, and dislocations are not the stuff of heroic fantasy. The reasons for this are manifold.

In typical Gygaxian fashion, these sentences are at once commonsensical and querulous. I think his general point that "highly complex" rules for combat get in the way of the running of "an adventure game" (a term he uses often in the DMG – but that's a possible topic for another post). My own decades-long experience is that, with a few exceptions, I personally prefer simple, straightforward, and easy to adjudicate combat systems over those with more detail. That said, I can't wholly sign on with Gygax's contention that more complex systems "are not the stuff of heroic fantasy," which almost seems like a calculated slight against other RPGs with different priorities than AD&D.

In any case, Gygax uses this as an opportunity to talk about hit points and how AD&D's conception of them ties into the one-minute round. 

As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the types of damage caused are not germane to them. 

Again, perhaps I am an outlier, but this makes perfect sense to me, especially in light of the one-minute combat round. If an attack roll does not represent a single cut or thrust but rather an abstraction of many such actions over the course of a minute, I think it quite reasonable that hit points should be similarly abstracted. Oddly, he immediately follows up with this: "this is not true with respect to most monsters, it is neither necessary nor particularly useful." I'm not sure how to read this. Is Gygax suggesting that, for most monsters, hit points are a measure of physical damage or is it that the location of hits and types of damage caused would be germane to them? 

In any case, he quickly gives us more to unpack.

Lest the purist immediately object, consider the many charts and tables necessary to handle this sort of detail, and then think about how area effect spells would work. In like manner, consider all of the nasty things which face adventurers as the rules stand. Are crippling disabilities and yet more ways to meet instant death desirable in an open-ended, episodic game where participants seeks to identify with lovingly detailed player-character personae? Not likely! Certain death is as undesirable as a give-away campaign. 

I think Gygax starts off with an excellent point about charts and tables. If one prioritizes speed in handling combat, too much detail can be a serious impediment. D&D in all its forms has always tended toward the fast and abstract. That's either a bane or a boon, depending on one's own interests, but I don't think it's a "flaw" in the game's design. I've played – and enjoyed – RPGs with more complex combat systems and would happily do so again. There are many unique pleasures in that style of play, just as there are in D&D's. I take no issue with anyone who prefers one over the other, so long as we all recognize the subjectivity of such a preference.

More remarkable, I think, is Gygax's description of D&D as an "open-ended, episodic" game. I don't find that description at all controversial, but I still take note of Gygax's use of it nonetheless, just as I do of his claim that it's a game "where participants seek to identify with lovingly detailed player-character personae." This certainly seems at odds with the popular belief that, for Gygax, player characters were little more than "pieces on a board" to be discarded and replaced with ease. In like fashion, the implication that instant death was not desirable is further evidence that he was no "killer DM" of the sort players have been whining about for as long as I've been involved in the hobby.

With complex combat systems which stress so-called realism and feature hit location, special damage, and so on, either this option is severely limited or the rules are highly slanted towards favoring the player characters at the expense of their opponents. (Such rules as double damage and critical hits must cur both ways – in which case the life expectancy of player characters will be shortened considerably – or the monsters are being grossly misrepresented and unfairly treated by the system. I am certain you can think of many other such rules.) 

Again, I think this comes down to taste. In my House of Worms campaign, I've made use of EPT's critical hit rules since I begin it more than six years ago and I've used it equally against PCs, NPCs, and monstrous enemies. My experience is that it's occasionally proved decisive in a combat but that, by and large, it's not upended things to such an extent that I'd caution against using it. No PC has died due to a critical hit in this campaign (though a couple did in my Dust of Gold campaign set in Mu'ugalavyá). On balance then, I don't share Gygax's concerns about critical hits.

One-minute rounds are devised to offer the maximum of choice with a minimum of complication. This allows the DM and the players the best of both worlds. The system assumes much activity during the course of each round. Envision, if you will, a fencing, boxing, or karate match. During the course of one minute of such competition, there are numerous attacks, which are unsuccessful, feints, maneuvering, and so forth. During a one-minute melee round many attacks are made, but some are mere feints, while some are blocked or parried. One, or possibly several, have the chance to actually score damage. For such chances, the dice are rolled and if the "to hit" number is equalled or exceeded, the attack was successful, but otherwise it too was avoided, blocked, parried, or whatever.

This is a very helpful section, because it makes more clear what Gygax saw as happening during the course of a single one-minute round. He elaborates on this later, explaining that "a round of combat is not a continuous series of attacks," nor is it "just a single blow and counter-blow affair." That has long been how I conceptualize a round; it's also why, when refereeing a combat, I generally don't describe it in any detail, preferring instead to speak of it in very broad terms. 

I should end here, but Gygax makes one brief aside that I think worthy of attention. He talks about monsters and their hit points. 

With respect to monsters such damage is, in fact, more physically substantial, although as with many adjustments in armor class rating for speed and agility, there are also similar additions in hit points.

For some reason, this doesn't sit well with me, perhaps because Gygax had just previously indicted critical hit systems for treating characters and monsters unequally. Now, he is admitting that he does the same with hit points. Is this an unforgiveable or game-breaking design choice? Hardly. Yet, it does make much more explicit the extent to which all combat systems need to make concessions of one sort or another in order to make them playable and fun. The question is simply what aspects of combat one wishes to emphasize and where one draws the line between "simple" and "complex."