1 round = 1 minute

1 turn = 10 rounds = 10 minutes

I think that they came up with the "turn" terminology because they wanted a shorter way of saying that a spell lasted for so many multiples of 10 rounds. That said, it just made things confusing as fuck.

So, I'm still confused. You have a timer and you have to count off the minutes for spells?

No, it just means that for every round that happens, in game a minute advances, since the game doesn't advance according to real world time. If it takes 5 minutes in the real world to end a combat, but 3 rounds happened, then the time in game advances only three minutes. It's only really used to keep track of in-game time when there is some sort of ticking clock going on ("you have five minutes to take out the scouts before the horde catches up to you!"), but otherwise doesn't mean anything outside of some silly moments when you realize that the day long session only translated to a half hour of game time due to the Mage's player taking forever to look at his spells before doing anything.

Okay, that answers it.

I still love AD&D 2nd Edition ruleset. I remember when it was released (1989 IIRC) sigh...

Played the paper & dice version for my entire youth.

From what I recall, you've got the wrong data. 1 round = 6 seconds, 1 turn = 10 rounds = 1 minute. So a spell that lasts 5 minutes = 5 turns = 50 rounds.

Of course, it has only been more than a decade since I last looked at this, so I might be confusing it with 3rd ed.

And like you, I want to know what the devil was being fought that took a day in-game. The battle should be over (one way or another) in maybe an hour in game. Maybe it was siege situation in the 9 hells?

Yeah, pretty sure the whole 6 seconds to a round thing was 3rd edition's doing. As for the month long fight, in terms of in game time, I shudder to imagine what was being fought. If it were a month of real time, sadly that's not out of the realm of possibility. The Hecatonceres or whatever the fuck it's called alone would take a full session to attack, since it has 100 arms, each of which is carrying a weapon, and each of which gets its own attack a round; then again, that's in the Epic Level Handbook, which is usually the point where the designers throw up their hands and say 'fuck it'. There's also one nightmare story that someone told me on Disqus about how the party was so buffed and prepared to fight the climactic big bad, that they stomped him fairly quickly in game, but that the sheer amount of needlessly complicated math that needed to be handled made that one fight drag on for the whole session, spilling over into the next however many; mind, it's the net, and I take anything I get off of it with a giant bag of salt, but from what I've seen while gaming, it's not that much of a stretch.

I'm pretty sure the round=6 seconds is just a CRPG thing.

When I played actual pens and dice D&D we just went round robin through everyone doing their action, and tada that was one round. The time that actually elapsed in the game world was pretty arbitrary and determined by the DM!

Even more confusingly, the word 'Turn' was a synonym for 'Year' in the game language slang!

No, the 3rd edition rules set out that particular rule. That said, DMs are free to modify or ignore it, just like every other rule in the book.

I can't recall any game setting (aside from Planescape) where they referred to a year as a turning. Then again, it's been a while since I last tried to play BG, and even longer since I finished IWD1.

Ha, forgot about this post.

I can't specifically recall. I think it was a huge battle, we may have been playing Spelljammer or attacking a castle, I know there were several campaigns where we were taking on tons of crap.

And yes, round = 1 minute, turn equals 10 rounds.

In GURPS, each turn is 1 second. 1 turn is going around in the circle to all PCs and NPCs. As others in the thread have stated, sometimes it's important to know how long a battle lasts. For example, if battles last days of game time.. wouldn't your character get hungry?

Also, if you played everything out in real speed, a sword fight either A) takes seconds, or B) Is a series of attacks, parries/blocks and lulls. That's why D&D thought it was logical that each round would be a minute, pretty sure it said as such in the manual. Problem with that logic is that means that literally within a minute's time (which if you've got adrenaline rushing through you, a minute is a LONG time.) a 1st level fighter has like one possibility for attack, that in all likelihood will miss. And yet also a bowman could fire off an arrow in the same amount of time.

In GURPS, you have a one handed sword, you attack, the opponent can either dodge, parry or block. They fail, then you have the possibility of damage. Roll that, and then see what armor they have, minus the DR (Damage Resistance) and apply damage type (Piercing does double on internal organs, while cutting does 1.5 whatever passes the DR.) So while you can hit, you could still potentially do 0 damage. 4th edition even adds in that if you hit some poor sap with a mace, and they're wearing leather or chain mail (flexible armor) it'll still do some trauma. Someone mentioned 1st Ed AD&D doing that, I don't recall that (may have been a supplemental thing?) but that would have helped my respect for 2nd Ed. Where Armor somehow simply made you harder to hit. It was also hilarious that it wasn't until 3rd edition that I saw any rules that said "you're wearing plate mail, you should not get a dexterity bonus to dodge."

By the way, if you really want a rough game, GURPS' combat is extremely deadly as well as detailed. You can very realistically lop off someone's arm with a good hit. I recall in 2nd Ed DM's guide, where it said 'it wouldn't be very fun to play a character with one arm, and is blind in one eye." Sure it would! In fact, GURPS' Advantage/Disadvantage system lets you do that very thing from character creation! It definitely gives you A) personality for your character. B) strong desire to role-play instead of hack/slash.

That was always my problem with D&D (all editions) characters don't have much personality, they're a grouping of stats, and they're defined in their advancement by those stats and what sort of loot you can find.

(sorry for the long post HA!)

I think D&D is dead since was bought by HASBRO, is one of those brands that have this "political correction thing" and that "children/family focus" that makes the whole D&D thing becoming more mummified, day by day...

?

5th edition has just come out and is getting a lot of very good reviews...

D&D is as active than it has ever been. D&D doesn't have to be massive, it just has to be consistent.

There are campaigns being run and recorded live, then uploaded to YouTube. I've watched a few sessions to get back into the spirit of the game.

D&D is really a game thespians, traditional gamers, mathematicians or even folks involved in politics would enjoy.

Rules has nothing to be with the old spirit of the franchise

Well, D&D is still pretty good, both E4 and E5 have some great ideas, despite bad reception of E4 (E4 would actually be PERFECT for a video game, it just didn't work as Pen&Paper so well).

The problem that Hasbro brings with it is just all the licensing issues. Suddenly everybody who wants to make a useful tool for D&D gets a C&D letter from Hasbro and they are trying really hard to prevent anyone from making a D&D fangame. It's really really hard to get the license to be allowed to create a D&D game at all and that's the main problem.