Thursday 25 December 2014

Beyond Nietzsche: 1984, Law and Evil

From 1984:

'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone -- free -- the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.'
.
.
.
'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'
Here (particularly in my added italics) Orwell expresses the idea of the D&D Lawful character—that the group is immortal and the individual a cell in its body. Just as each cell in the human body is committed to the whole but is replaced many times over its life, the member of a group is committed to its collective goals and sees the continuance of the group's existence as a form of immortality, similar to the way some people view having children.

Separating the specifics of the character's intent, there's nothing in this which is inherently evil. The character could apply the same attitude to medical research, cleaning up polluted rivers, founding orphanages and so on, and many people have. This is the essence of D&D's Lawful alignments—working with others and subsuming personal goals into a bigger picture.

The book picks up on the other aspect of the Smith's interrogator's alignment a bit later on:

'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'
Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.
'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'
This matches up well with what the DMG defines as Evil. Evil in D&D is suffering without purpose; suffering without a balancing redemptive outcome; suffering, above all, as a demonstration of domination. The DMG text for all the evil alignments mentions strength and domination - something that Nietzsche talked about a lot too and Orwell's Party is the logical end point of his "philosophy".

In the real world, these two attitudes do exist, although they are rarely articulated so clearly (the most important exception being the testimonies at Nuremberg, especially Goering's). Nietzsche and Arendt were both wrong - not only is there evil which is the opposite of good, but in its true form it is never banal except to those who are mentally undeveloped enough to expect monsters to have fangs.

So what are the opposites of these things? What is Chaotic and what is Good? For one thing, they are not simply the absence of these attitudes, they consist in the efforts to undo them and to oppose them.

The chaotic says that subsuming one's desires into a group kills the soul. It is the individual who is uniquely creative and therefore uniquely able to achieve the heights of human potential; Lawfulness, they would say, is compromise. Compromise may achieve some things, and perhaps it avoids the worst depths but at the cost of never reaching the highest peaks either. Lawfulness is a form of slavery; groupthinking is the opponent of freethinking.

Goodness seeks to minimise suffering; to eliminate it if possible. To steal from a fat cleric's tithe barn to feed the starving peasants on his estate is not evil, it is good. But to steal from the starving peasants to fill the tithe barn is evil. The former alleviates more suffering than it creates, and the latter does the opposite. The neutral position is to not get involved.

When D&D was originally released, it was with a simple one-axis alignment system of Law and Chaos. This was an odd choice and it was instantly obvious that it was a bad one and by page 6 of Supplement I: Greyhawk Gygax is conflating Chaos and Evil, and by Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, it was necessary to footnote the Mind Flayer's Lawful alignment with "highly evil but otherwise lawful". This was a bird that was not going to fly much further.

Perhaps if Gygax had introduced the game with just Good Vs Evil alignments we would never have seen the nine-pointed alignment system, as that is a much more commonly depicted system in stories, but the Law/Chaos axis is not unknown before D&D and it does express an idea which crops up in rhetoric, although there it is often conflated with Good/Evil. Interestingly, it's normally conflated in the opposite way to D&D: Chaos=freedom=good.

In any case, the original system was inadequate and was replaced in the fifth issue of Strategic Review by the two-axis system. Now intelligent creatures could fight "the system" and do so for the good of mankind (or thingkind as the case may be), or set up oppressive hierarchies of diabolical and sadistic faceless bureaucrats, as well as the simply cruel or charitable who did not care about such things and the plain officious or mule-headed. All was at peace....as if!

One place where confusion enters is the subtle distinction between an act which fits the stereotype of an alignment and being that alignment. This is rather like the distinction between weather and climate, although there's perhaps more of a ratchet in alignment than in climate.

Simply put, stealing an apple doesn't make a Neutral Good character Neutral, although killing the apple seller and throwing the apples in the canal probably will.

But even if the appleseller is murdered, the question of alignment is still about patterns of behaviour, not simply the last action taken, because the word "alignment" is not casually chosen or used. It expresses the fact that the game system is concerned with what philosophical view the character is aligned with, and that represents how useful to the real (in game) metaphysical forces the character is. A character who has a bad day and lashes out is not necessarily a reliable tool for the powers of Evil; a character who takes pity on a stray dog is not necessarily a reliable tool for the powers of Good etc. A single unprovoked killing may be a sure sign that the character is not reliably Good but it's not proof of the opposite.

Within the game's metaphysical laws of thermodynamics, the characters are able to do things that 99% of the population can not because they are being granted those abilities by the Alignments that find them useful. To keep things fair, the game assumes a post-rationalisation that each alignment contributes in more or less the same way, and that neutral characters receive "contributions" from multiple alignments so that it all balances out. But, ultimately this is why changing alignment causes the loss of level—the Powers lose confidence in the character and withdraw some of their sponsorship for a while, even the one(s) to which the character is now aligned. These powers (hit points, saving throws etc.) are investments and a return is expected; fickle characters are a risky proposition.

Similarly, detect evil doesn't function on characters below name level because they simply haven't enough of the good/bad stuff invested in them.

If the DM treats the four main alignments as NPCs who are not stupid but are not omniscient then it can be a lot easier to judge the effects of character actions. These Powers have goals, as discussed above in relation to 1984 and if they see creatures advancing those goals then they will pay attention to them. That attention is what changes the creature's alignment because it reflects their attunement to the Power. The lack of omniscience is why, in D&D, actions speak louder than words and a character who does good things for bad reasons will remain aligned with Good. It's of no benefit to Evil if a character feeds the starving millions just because they want to be adulated and be able to have sex with a different partner every night; the fact remains that the starving have been fed!

However, the Powers are not stupid and being forced to act against them is something that can be tolerated, but the character has to show that they regret the actions after the fact. Hence, there is an atonement spell and it is not available for voluntary actions.

Friday 19 December 2014

Super-fast islands in Gimp


  1. New image, any size but 1024x768 works well
  2. Filters->render->clouds->solid noise. Randomize seed, set detail to 10; x-size to 4ish and the y-size set to make the same ratio as the size of the image.
  3. Set  the current gradient to Caribbean Blues
  4. Colours->map->gradient map.
  5. Done

You can extend this in various ways. For a start you could add a gradient which produces a slightly more topographic feel. If you make the width of the image 2 times wider than the height (and adjust the y-size accordingly) and turn on "tilable" you get a decent world texture.

In theory you should be able to map this onto a sphere using the Filter->Map->Map Object tool, but at the moment it seems as if that expects a square texture. In any case, you'll need to add ice caps by hand (hint: try using white to black gradients in another layer using the "Addition" or "Dodge" layer modes).

If you want to adjust the ruggedness of the map you can fiddle with the x- and y-heights before generation, or use the colour levels dialogue to modify the range and distribution of heights.



The above world map was created using the gradient file linked to here in about 10 minutes (most of which was fiddling with the poles). It's been squashed into a square so that it can be turned into a sphere

Here's the above map turned into a sphere using the Map Object function. As you can see, the polar area isn't completely satisfactory but the whole process is so quick that for a game like Traveller where the GM needs planets almost on demand, it's not bad.


Tuesday 16 December 2014

The d8 Book Club Round-Up

Due to the wonders of commuting in cramped conditions, I was able to read a great deal over the last few months. Here's a bunch of capsule reviews, marked out of 8.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, Rodger Zelazny
This one has been sitting on my shelf for about 20 years. It has a gushing introduction by Theodore Sturgeon which rather set the book up to fail given how high the praise was. In the end, of the four stories in the collection, only one really flopped.

The title story about an Earth linguist attempting to come to grips with the ruins of a Martian civilization and The Furies, about a group of unusual—Vance-line—assassins tracking down a rogue ex-special forces commander pretty well made it up to the mark and rattle alone pretty well, although Rose suffered slightly from the assumption that the Martians were identical to humans and that the reader would also assume that, and so it didn't need to be mentioned until context finally made it the only explanation. At that point I had to stop and reconsider everything in the story up to that point as my assumption had been that the aliens would be alien-looking. I blame Giger.

Of the other two stories, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of his Mouth must come close to winning the least-appropriate-title-ever and I can only assume that Zelazny thought he had cancer or something and would never have a chance to use such a great name for any other story ever, so he just slapped it on this so-so story of salmon fishing on tropical pulp-age Venus.

The Graveyard Heart is a nice piece of social satire, and a better fit for its title and suffers slightly from having been redone by others in the time since, but the characters are interesting and the setting believable enough to frame the philosophical point being made. Using hibernation-sleep technology, The Set, circle the world in fast-forward, partying like it's 1999 and beyond, aging only 1 year for every 20 in the world outside their exclusive club. But some find that immortality drags after a while and that the lifestyle they lead can mess with people's minds.

d8 score: 6

The Great Book of Amber, Rodger Zelazny
Having enjoyed Rose, I decided to go back and have another go at Amber. I had read Nine Princes in Amber years ago after playing the computer game and had enjoyed it. As luck had it at the time, I wasn't able to locate the next book in the series and so I picked up Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers, which had been doing the rounds in an omnibus edition. I didn't get far into it before I realised that the setting was very, very similar to Nine Princes and when I checked the date I saw that Farmer's book was the original. This coloured my opinion of Zelazny for years afterwards and I didn't bother reading anything else apart from a comic adaptation of Demolition Alley (itself ripped of mercilessly by John Wagner for his Judge Dredd story The Cursed Earth).

Anyway, I eventually read an interview with Zelazny where he was asked about the similarity to the World of Tiers books and he said, basically, that he'd liked the idea but wanted to read about the characters' relationships which Farmer had not focused on, so he just wrote his own version. Well, fair enough, I guess. After reading Rose, I went to get a new copy of Nine Princes and discovered an omnibus edition of all ten Amber books (running to 1200 pages of fairly small text) which I gradually read on the Tube.

The Ten books are divided into two sets of five, the first five dealing with the struggles of Corwin, one of the nine princes in question, as he tries to deal with the fact that the king of Amber, Oberon, has vanished and his siblings are jockying for position either directly for the throne or to be on the good side of the eventual winner. Corwin is unsure that he wants the throne himself but most of his brothers, at least, assume that he does and his apparent doubts are clever manœuvring. On top of that, Amber is one end of a long sequence of parallel worlds which run from The Pattern to the Courts of Chaos. In between is every imaginable world, including ours, that of the magical Camelot, Wonderland, and presumably every world of fantasy or science fiction ever written about. Corwin and other "real" people can travel over these worlds but for the Amberites they are seen as essentially figments of their imaginations, "shadow" worlds and in those shadow worlds real people stand out as especially strong, intelligent, and/or plain magical. Corwin finds a lot of these pre-conceived notions challenged as he tries to take control of his destiny in preparation for a final confrontation between Law and Chaos where the only possibility for a third option looks to be a lethal one.

The second set of five books concerns Corwin's son Merlin's similar struggle with becoming his own man as the consequences of Corwin's actions reverberate around the multiverse. Zelazny never suggests that this Merlin is the Merlin of legend, which I found refreshing to be honest, but he is a magic user all right, unlike his Dad who was a fighting man. In fact, Merlin is, to my surprise, a Vancian caster!

The first five books do not deal much with magic so having a spellcasting central character was a bit of a change of pace in itself but it was really a bit out of left-field when Merlin started to prepare spells for later use, "hanging" them in his terminology. There is a bit later on where he talks (all ten books are first-person narratives) about using up all the prepared spells and then starting to battle another wizard with "raw power" which is a lot more tiring, so it's not completely AD&D, but it's interesting to speculate whether the game had influenced the books (possibly the influence came directly from Vance, of course).

The second set of books suffers only slightly from "been there, done that" but I felt that Zelazny had trouble making the characters of Merlin and Corwin really distinct beyond their "classes". On top of that, Corwin's main enemy has a epiphany late in the game and throws in with him, something which seems to have happened a lot in books I've read recently and as this was the third time I'd seen it in a year I was a bit tired of it, never mind that Zelazny had done it first—I hadn't read his first.

Very long but overall rewarding and fun read, even if the second set made magic seem a bit too easy which undermined the value of it and implied some unanswered questions about the plot of the earlier books.
d8 score: 7

1Q84, Haruki Murakami
Junk. A classic example of a writer who thinks fantasy must be easy because anything can happen, leading to lazy plotting, lazy characterization, and a setting that is almost see-through in its flimsiness.

Although it is presented as one book in three parts, the book was clearly not written that way. Book 1 is far better than the others and it's obvious that Haruki wrote it in a burst of ideas and then found that he didn't know what to do next. Book 2 is tolerable and Book 3 is a bad joke.

Briefly, the story concerns a woman who is working as a feminist assassin, killing (in an inventive way) men who have mistreated or even killed women but managed to remain above the law. One day in 1984, stuck in a traffic jam on the way to a hit, she gets out of a taxi and climbs down an emergency staircase from the freeway to the ground below. When she arrives there, she is in an alternative reality where the US and USSR have a joint moonbase on the larger of the two moons and there are subtle differences about police uniforms related to events at a mountain commune where several policemen were killed—the deaths being attributed to the old-fashioned nature of Japanese police equipment.

An alarm bell did ring for me even at this point, because as Aomame gets out of the taxi the driver says something portentous and mysterious about the nature of reality. It really couldn't have been clunkier or more clichéd if Arnold Schwarzenegger had said it. But I glossed over it, giving the author a bit of a fool's pardon on the grounds that it was a translation and maybe the original was a little more smoothly done.

Book One progresses well from there and it becomes clear that there is a love story here but as we fade into Book Two the love story starts to sound forced, a love-at-first-sight, haven't-seen-each-other-since-school routine that might fly in Mills and Boons but was creaking under the strain of passing itself off for an adult audience. Gradually it loses all coherence, as does the story itself which may or may not involve aliens or maybe elves or perhaps some sort of albino smurfs which travel magically via roadkill.

Nothing is really resolved except through deus-ex-machinae and the alternative reality setting is apparently completely pointless and holds the writer's interest not much longer than the various characters that drift in and then out again when they've done their bit for the plot regardless of whether their actions have any internal motivations at all.

Treated as a single book, it is the worst book I've ever bothered to finish.

d8 score: 1

1984, George Orwell
Now, here's a thing. A cornerstone of our culture which is rarely actually read any more; better known through stock phrases and iconography than in its original form. I don't know if this is currently on the national curriculum but I think it probably should be. As a study of evil and the dangers of party politics it's a gem.

Orwell dissects the political mind and the need for an unending war with an amazing level of penetration for someone writing no later than the year after the end of WWII; he has no illusions at all about the grand gestures and the mirror-image opponents of the oncoming Cold War (we are at war with the Soviet Union; we have always been at war with the Soviet Union; we are at war with Terror, we have always been at war with Terror). I don't know much about his life but I do know that he spent some time as a policeman in Burma where he had to participate in hangings, and the mistrust of motives and patriotism he learnt serves him well in the depiction of a political class which has harnessed behavioural science and linguistics to control the emotions of the people who supply it with luxury and pleasure.

The weak points are the physical setting (the effects of post-bombing radiation and fallout were not yet well known and so the portrayed after-effects of a nuclear war on Britain seem fairly ridiculous to the modern eye) and the central character of Winston Smith.

Smith is a fool, basically. Although it is easy to understand his desire to rebel, it's not so easy to understand why he's quire so bad at it. He's weak and fatalistic from the start and although the trap he is caught in is a surprise when it arrives, the fact that it arrives is not. When he is broken in Room 101, his reaction and manner of collapse is strange and not entirely convincing. It's also hard to have any sympathy for him or his lover, they are so obviously doomed by their own lack of either gumption or discretion.

These points make the book feel like a play at times, where the set is dressed to give enough of an impression of place but is not really important. Which is fair enough, really, but it still felt odd when Smith and Julia went for a day out in the countryside, regardless of the suggestion that they are worried about being watched; it still reminded me of the original ending to Blade Runner when they run away into the beautiful forest.

Orwell is strongest when he is presenting the logic of The Party's policies and the motives of its inner circle, devoted to the perpetuation of the system as their personal slice of immortality and their own triumph over the weak. That material is sadly all too realistic.

The book ends with an appendix which discusses Newspeak, the language that The Party is phasing in to replace Oldspeak—English and the other languages of its empire. This is another insightful piece of writing and could almost be a guide to modern political and economic language in places; it certainly catches the intent of a lot of this sort of writing and speaking. The goal, Orwell says, is to create a language where the brain is not needed, speech will come automatically from the larynx as an animal response to the correct stimulus. Dumbing down the language is a specific tactic to make it hard to express anything which could challenge established ideas and the use of contractions is encouraged in order to slip ideas past the brain quickly without any critical analysis.

I'll have a look at 1984 and Evil in a later post.

d8 score: 7

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
A classic story of a cursed magic item which seems on the surface to be a great gift. Gray, like 1984, is a study in evil, but a more insidious evil in the form of Lord Henry Wotton who first steals and then corrupts the young Dorian Gray from Basil Hallward, the painter of the picture in question.

Wilde was a great, possibly the greatest ever, writer of fairy tales and this is a fairy tale of wishes coming true, set in a very real and adult world and like all good fairy stories it is replete with hidden sexual tension and social commentary and ends with a moral.

The book has many layers, not least in its care never to state directly that the older two men are homosexuals, and somewhat predatory ones at that, although Basil seems not to be bold enough to really force himself on anyone at all. Henry/Harry is a different matter but his attention to Dorian is not out of love but of cold, detached, manipulation for the pleasure of it. The painting's role is to hold out the promise of not simply immortality but also of absolution to Dorian and thereby, perhaps, be the catalyst for Harry's influence on the young man. Or perhaps that is simply Dorian's excuse; perhaps without the painting he would have been just the same, as his shoddy treatment of a girl he professed to love seems to imply. The text is ambiguous in many, and artfully constructed, ways. Wilde diced with trouble even publishing this version and the text of it would in fact be used against him in his trials.

Wilde said that Basil was who he really was while Henry was his public image and it's interesting the degree to which the former chastises and even mocks the latter, and the number of times that the narrative voice undermines Harry or points out his deviousness. His clever quips and amusing attitudes are routinely framed in such a way as to highlight their shallowness.

Under the evil that is done by Harry and his puppet Dorian, and perhaps that of the magic in the picture, the story is about power and the dangers of irresponsibility - both Dorian's freedom from consequences gained from the painting, and Harry's immunity from blame as his machinations are carried out by his young proxy, leaving him blame-free in the eyes of the wider world, if not Basil's. And that is the only real difference between the evil of Dorian Gray and 1984: in Orwell's book the evil has won and no longer has to hide from the wider world. But both evils have the same nature and same ultimate fear—the past. Both Dorian Gray and The Party of 1984, consciously alter the memory of the past in an effort to avoid its rebuke; the chance that they can be shown to be wrong. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, and, Zelazny's The Graveyard Heart, immortality is the goal that drives the core of the story, and immortality stores up a great deal of past to be afraid of.

d8 score: 8


Monkey, Wu Ch'êng-ên, trans. Arthur Waley
Who doesn't like a bit of Monkey Magic?! Anyone that said so can leave now. Actually, those that do like Monkey, should probably also steer clear of this abridged translation of the original story and keep their memories intact.

The main problem is not the translation (although that is a little dated now, having been done in 1942), nor in the fact of the abridgement. Indeed, if it had not been abridged I doubt that I would have completed it.

I guess I was expecting a novel, albeit a very early novel and full of fantastic nonsense. But I got a selection of rather repetitive folk stories which have very little internal consistency, satire of things that don't exist any more, and a bunch of characters that have no purpose.

The book starts with stories of Monkey's youth wherein he demonstrates that he is, as advertised, the Equal of all Heaven and it is only though rather unconvincing trickery that the forces of Heaven are able to finally bind and imprison Monkey. This is the key problem, as it establishes Monkey as an almost unstoppable factotum capable of anything. Going to India and back is no more a challenge to him than scratching his big baboon bum would be. Yet we have to traipse through 350 pages of him accompanying Tripitaka on his expedition to get the scriptures from a bunch of moronic and bad tempered Buddhist spirits who don't even give them the right scrolls.

On the journey he has to contend with Tripitaka's gnat-like attention span while occasionally calling on Pigsy or Sandy to do some minor feat that we know Monkey could do in his sleep because we saw him doing much greater things in the early chapters.

So, if you're still interested, read it in the frame of mind that it is not a novel, or even a coherent story. It is a very run-of-the-mill collection of the sort of folk stories that might just about entertain folk with a mental age of 7. Compared to Norse or Celtic mythology and folklore this is very definitely third-class material.

d8 score: 2

Against All Things Ending, Stephen Donaldson
The final Thomas Covenant series has been a slow progress, each book being about 600 pages long and the series itself being four books instead of three. This third book sees the action pick up a bit as Covenant himself begins to make his mark on the story, having been turned into a god, then back again, killed, and resurrected over the course of events since the close of the original three books.

Donaldson has experimented with writing this series much more strongly from the point of view of Linden Avery, Covenant's love interest from the second series and for me it has not been a success. Avery is basically a dickhead and every minute of her company is like walking over glass to a viewing platform where one can see the most incredible vista; I put up with it because I love the vista, but I really would prefer an alternative. With Covenant returning to centre stage a bit, that's at least a help.

Meanwhile, Covenant's insane wife and his estranged son are out to kill him at the behest of good old Lord Foul. Covenant's experience as the Arch of Time has given him insights, but his reincarnation in mortal flesh makes accessing his omniscient memory hard and unreliable, but he knows that at last he understands Foul and that he can not kill him without breaking the universe in which The Land exists. Much hilarity ensues. Apart from the hilarity, that is.

Exciting, interesting, and often rousing when T.C. (Thomas Covenant, not Top Cat) gets angry and starts doing things, the plot still relies far too heavily on people not saying even the simplest things to each other. It's sometimes like a French Farce played for blood. But, ah! the giants! The wonderful giants.
d8 score: 6
The Last Dark, Stephen Donaldson
Ever see an author collapse from sheer exhaustion? Well, read The Last Dark and see what it looks like. For a 600 page book, it feels incredibly rushed. Plot lines start to collapse, in some cases because the protagonists are finally getting to grips with their situations and sorting things out, but in other cases because it feels like the author has himself collapsed and frankly doesn't care any more. A major antagonist switches sides and T.C. pulls everyone's fat out of the fire and everyone lives happily ever after. There's even a rainbow. I am not joking.

Not that I didn't want Covenant to have a happy ending, but this was too pat somehow. The struggles of the previous books deserved an ending where the costs were acknowledged without casting a shadow over the victory but it just didn't feel like that to me.

Overall, a partial success but badly marred by the obvious desire to stop writing this damned series. Which is a shame after 30 years, but maybe it was just too much to ask.
d8 score: 3

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, Michael Moorcock
It was a long time since I had read any Elric and I had a hankering, as they say. So when I saw this and Stormbringer in a second hand stall I picked them up. I was slightly wary because I knew that these were among Moorcock's earliest work and that I was pretty young when I last read them. With that slightly low expectation in mind, I wasn't let down.

Sailor is a set of three linked novellas which chart Elric's travelling adventures, starting on a mysterious ship who's captain is initially putting together a crew to find and kill a pair of alien beings before they can end the world (bloody aliens; set UKIP on them, I say). To this end, the captain has sailed the multiverse and found not just one but four incarnations of The Eternal Champion—Elric, Erekosë, Corum, and Hawkmoon who then select various henchmen from the other sailors on the ship. Elric is unaware of his connection with the other four until the final showdown wherein they combine into one super-being to slay the aliens (hoorah!)

Of this first story, the most memorable parts are the aliens who are initially mistaken for buildings, and the city they are found in which, although ruined by time and/or war, the shadows of the original intact architecture are still somehow cast across the empty streets.

The second briskly gets Elric off the ship, which sails off in search of legendary Tnemlorn, and into a rather dull sort of love story which is notable only for its introduction of Count Smiorgan Baldhead, who's an entertaining sidekick, although this being Elric we all know he's doomed from the moment he says 'hello' to our Albino jokester.

The final part of the book takes us to the original home of Elric's Melnibonéan race, revealing that long before they conquered Melnebone, they dwelt in a Howardesqe jungle on another island in the middle of a river. I was half expecting winged apes to swoop down on the party as they explored it and gazed up at the huge statue of Arioch, Elric's patron Lord of Chaos and all-round bad egg.

As it happens, this is the story that sets Elric on a collision course with Arioch and lights the fuse of the apocalypse which eventually overcomes the world in Stormbringer.

d8 score: 5

Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock

He's got nothin' you need,
He's going to make you bleed...
Deep  Purple, "Stormbringer"

Absolutely the epitome of adolescent angst and moodiness, Stormbringer is everything British fantasy used to be before the Tolkien juggernaut rolled over everything, followed by hordes of vampires and werewolves. Elric chooses his side, and decides that it will be no side; using the Lords of Law as a weapon against those of Chaos but ultimately playing both ends against eachother as he searches for a middle way.

In the process, Bruegel is unleashed on the world, and not the nice one that did the pictures of people having a booze-up at a wedding: the other one that painted skeletons chopping people's heads off.

Apocalypses are hard to pull off. I find that most attempts either don't capture the scale or overwhelm the characters with the presentation of the scale. Moorcock, it seems to me, pulls the trick off here because the world is not in fact destroyed but turned into a living incarnation of Chaos. When Elric brings the whole thing to an end replacing it with, it is implied, our real world, the feeling is indeed one of cleansing and even his final death at the blade of his own sword manages not to overplay the moment. So, all in all, I was pleasantly surprised. Or maybe I've not grown up very much in the last 30 years after all.

d8 score: 6

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, Isabel Greenberg
Boy meets girl, boy and girl are magnetically repulsed by an invisible force, boy tells his life story to pass the time, book ends very abruptly.

What there is of Encyclopedia is excellent. But because there is a substantial appendix of bits and pieces (including some stories), there's no feeling that you are coming close to the end of the book until you turn the page and find the word "Appendix" blaring out at you. It was a real shocker, as the storyline seemed to heavily imply that more was going to happen. But it didn't; the boy and the girl die without ever overcoming their magnetic resistance problem and that's dealt with in a single page.

I could have done with a book twice as long with a better ending. If I could only have one of those I'd pick the longer book as what there was, was great.
d8 score: 4

Economics: The User's Guide, Ha-Joon Chang
A good overview of the world's main economic religions theories and models and a welcome return of the Pelican imprint with its distinctive light blue covers.
d8 score: 7

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Mass Combat 3: Counter Punch

So, I said in the previous instalment that I prefer to use counters than figures, so here's how I make my counters - a bit of Perl and a bit of plainTeX. If you have a Mac or a Linux machine then you should be able to use these files without any real problem; it's possible that even Windows has managed to catch up with the 1980's enough to use them—I don't know. The end result should be a 2 page PDF (see here for example based on the defaults below) which you should be able to print to get double-sided counters with one side representing the unit at full strength and the other side half. My ancient Epson 1290 manages to produce accurate enough registration for this so I assume printers made this century (yes, it really is that old) will be able to cope.

Blogger can't handle this sort of thing very well, so you'll have to trust me that you can cut and paste from the following mess into a file editor to get usable results (this is also why there's no images in this post).

The first file is units.tex which sets up some macros for the later code:


\hsize 6.2677true in%
\vsize 9.69true in%
\special{papersize=210mm,297mm}%

\newdimen\csize
\newdimen\tsize
\newdimen\twidth
\def\setsize#1{\csize=#1
        \tsize=.93\csize
        \twidth=.87\csize
        \font\BODY=phvr at .222\csize
        \font\SMALL=phvr at .18\csize
        \setbox0=\hbox{\BODY ()1234567890}
        \global\setbox\strutbox=\hbox{\vrule height \ht0 depth \dp0 width 0pt}
}
\setsize{27pt} % default
\def\centre#1{\hfill\strut #1\hfill }
\def\inline#1{\setbox99=\hbox{\BODY #1}\ifdim\wd99<\twidth\hbox to
\tsize{\centre{\BODY #1}}\else\hbox to \tsize{\centre{\SMALL #1}}\fi}
\def\line#1{\hbox to \tsize{\thinspace\strut #1\thinspace }}
\def\slip{\hrule width 0pt height .4pt }
\footline{\hfil}
\BODY
\def\newline{\par\noindent}
\def\newpage{\par\vfill\break\noindent\parfillskip=0pt\leftskip=0pt
plus 1fil\rightskip=0pt}
\def\unit #1 #2,#3,#4,#5,#6 {\vbox{\hsize\csize\hrule height .8pt
\hbox to \csize{\vrule width.8pt\hfill\vbox to \csize{\hsize=\csize
\slip
\line{\BODY #3\hfill #4\strut}\vfill
\inline{#1}\slip\slip%%%% Max width<23.36pt
\inline{#2}\vfill
\line{\BODY #5\hfill #6}\slip
}\hfill\vrule width.8pt}%
\hrule height 0pt depth .8pt}\penalty0}%
\setbox12=\hbox{0000000}
\offinterlineskip\parindent=0pt\parfillskip=0pt plus 1fil\rightskip=\parfillskip\leftskip=0pt\noindent

\endinput
\bye

Then we have the main counter defining file makeunits.pl. This contains the hard coded definitions of the counters you want to to produce. The default ones in the file should be enough to work out how to modify it for your own use. The only slightly unclear parameter is probably "count" which is simply the number of copies of that unit you want; they will be numbered so you can track damage and so on.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

@lines=();
@currentline=();
$width=shift || (27/72);

$maxline=6/$width;

$width*=72;

#Count, name, cl, ac, mv, number
units(30,"Kobold",0,7,6,40);
units(10,"Goblin",1,6,6,40);
units(10,"Orc",2,6,9,20);
units(5,"Lizardman",5,6,"6//12",20);
units(4,"Militia",0,5,9,20);
units(10,"Reserves",0,8,12,20);
units(10,"Mob",-2,10,12,20);
units(1,"Pixie",0,"1(5)","6/12",80);

print '\input units.tex';
print "\n";
print "\\setsize{$width pt}";
print '\newline';
print "\n";

pageone();
pagetwo();
print '\bye';

sub pageone
{
    if(@currentline)
    {
 push @lines,[@currentline];
 @currentline=();
    }
    for $l(@lines)
    {
 @currentline=@$l;
 for $u(@currentline)
 {
     print "$u";
 }
 print "\\newline\n";
    }
}

sub pagetwo
{
    print "\\newpage\n";
    for $l(@lines)
    {
 @currentline=@$l;
 for (1..@currentline)
 {
     $u=pop@currentline;
     ($s)=$u=~/,(\d+)\s*$/;
     $s/=2;
     $u=~s/,\d+\s*$/,$s /;
     print "$u";
 }
 print "\\newline\n";
    }
}

sub units
{
    my ($dups,$name,$cl,$ac,$mv,$size)=@_;
    local $i;
    for $i(1..$dups)
    {
 push @currentline,"\\unit {$name} $i,$ac,$mv,$cl,$size ";
 if(@currentline==$maxline)
 {
     push @lines,[@currentline];
     @currentline=();
 } 
    }
}

To use this, you pass the size of the counters you want as a fraction of an inch and redirect the output to some other file, for example

./makeunits.pl .626 >sheet.tex

Finally, you turn this TeX file into a pdf in whatever method you normally do, if nothing else then

pdftex sheet.tex

Should have a good chance of producing a file called sheet.pdf which you can print.

AC comes out at top-left; move rate top-right; combat ability (ie, the equivelant fighter ability) goes bottom-left; and the number of individuals represented by the unit goes in the bottom-right. The combat ability, as well as the tables in part 1, are intended for use with my combined combat tables but aren't hard to use with the standard tables.

Next post will probably be about something else, but in the post after that I plan to get down to some discussion of how to actually resolve some real combat with these rules (and one more table).

Saturday 29 November 2014

Mass Combat 2 - A Question of Scale

Miniature figures can challenge
even the greatest minds
Scale is something that has to be grappled with, or at least decided on when dealing with mass combat - scale of time as well as distances. D&D and then AD&D used a multi-purpose system based on ignoring the gameworld measurements and instead concentrating on the size of things on the table in front of the players, measured in literal inches as measured with a ruler or tape-measure by the DM. Sounds good, but somehow it all became a little tricky...

One of my most common arguments with other D&Ders is the question of whether one increases the size of area effect spells when using the outdoor ground scale or not. Basically, I say you do and everyone else says you don't. Luckily for me, they're wrong. Which is also lucky for you if you're interested in mass combat with D&D monsters and spells because it eliminates a load of pointless calculations.

The main cause of the arguments is the badly worded section in the PHB on the topic (p39):

Magic and spells ore, most certainly, devices of the game. In order to make them fit the constrictions of the underground labyrinth, a one for three reduction is necessary. It would be folly, after all, to try to have such as effective attack modes if feet were not converted to yards outdoors, where visibility, movement, and conventional weapons attack ranges are based on actual fact. (See MOVEMENT.)

Distance scale and areas of effect for spells (and missiles) are designed to fit the game, The tripling of range outdoors is reasonable, as it allows for recreation of actual ranges for hurled javelins, arrows fired from longbows, or whatever. In order to keep magic spells on a par, their range is also tripled. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT OUTDOOR SCALE BE USED FOR RANGE ONLY, NEVER FOR SPELL AREA OF EFFECT (which is kept at 1” = 10’) UNLESS A FIGURE RATIO OF 1 :10 OR 1 :20 (1 casting equals 10 or 20 actual creatures or things in most cases) IS USED, AND CONSTRUCTIONS SUCH AS BUILDINGS, CASTLES, WALLS, ETC. ARE SCALED TO FIGURES RATHER THAN TO GROUND SCALE. Note that the foregoing assumes that a ground scale of 1” to 10 yards is used.


Of course, sometimes the players
will enjoy using the wrong scale
The text is, in fact, a slightly modified extract from an extended piece on the subject in issue #15 of The Dragon where Gygax ponders the question of scales in June of '78, a couple of years after the publication of the final D&D supplement: Swords & Spells, which was a mass-combat system

He rightly puts his finger on the fact that for mass combat, ground scale is the most important issue as the players will be constrained by physical space and that time scale is affected by ground scale insofar that movement must be noticeable. He does make some assumptions about what the reader already understands, however, and never fully explains the reason behind the use of "inches" and D&D.

He also assumes a rather generous 5'x10' playing surface—much larger than most people have today—and picks a scale that makes that equal to 600 yards by 1200 which he takes as a typical battlefield for mediæval combat. Now, when one inch on the table represents 10 yards in the game world (1:360 scale), then a round must be a minute to give reasonable movement rates, where "reasonable" means easily handled by a typical ruler of 12" length. Since the ruler and the table are taken to be fixed sizes, there is a direct relationship between ground scale and time scale; double one and you must double the other or units will be making tiny movements.

Taking the outdoor ground and time scales to be 1":30' and 1rnd=60 seconds this means that the indoor ground scale of 1"=10 feet (1:120 scale), requires a round of 20s to give reasonable open-air movement rates. The important thing is that a fighter makes an attack every round and everyone can only make a charge movement once in ten rounds and so on, all while a combat can be contained on the table in front of the players.

Now, an underground round is not 20s long, of course, it is in fact still a full minute. There's two reasons for that and one of them is the question of moving about in dark corridors with slippery or rotten floors with the chance of sudden ambush around every bend. The other reason—magic— is more problematical and I'll deal with it below.

A significant presence
Next we enter the rabbit hole as Gygax raises the issue of figure scale. If 1"=10yards, then you can get a lot of people into that. With spears or other thrusting weapons, a 10 yard line might take 16 men standing shoulder to shoulder and each being backed by another 16, for 256 men in that one inch. This is very dense packing of the sort probably only encountered in special formations like Alexandrian pike phalanxes or Roman shield tortoises, but that's okay, really. Most figures have slightly smaller bases than that but then they are normally taken as representing 20 men. Except, this is fantasy and a single person can be a massively significant presence on the field of battle and therefore require their own figure.

Life being what it is, the figures used in D&D, Chainmail and other table-top games are all a certain size, and don't come with tiny versions to represent individuals. So, the idea was introduced of using some figures to represent player characters and important NPCs while some other figures the same size represent 10, 20, or 100 people. This was not a good move at all and led directly to the text in the PHB quoted above.

In short, the problem becomes one of spell effects. A spell effect is given in inches as normal for movement and weapon range. So long as the target(s) are/is in the same scale, that's fine. But what happens if the spell, say fireball or flame strike, or even bless land on a group of six figures that represent, not 120 orcs but 6 PCs. Well, Fig-1 shows how this plays out - first the party in marching order (each grid line is 1"), then a fireball is "called" and lands on the Reverend Bill's head.

At first glance, it doesn't look too bad for the party - Villa's safe and Corry and Fred will be saving for half or no damage as they are mostly outside of the fireball's area.

But this is all wrong. That fireball is 4" wide, as required by the PHB, but that's 40 yards wide. On the scale of these figures that... Well, actually it's hard to know what that is. A figure base of 1" is typical of 25-30mm figures, which is roughly 1"=6' (1:72 scale) or 1"=5' (1:60 scale). Taking the latter, as that's currently popular and it's easy to work with, the fireball is now a measly 20' wide in relation to the party. That's not right. The book says that the fireball even in indoor mode should be 40' wide, or twice the size it is here. Villa should be fried with the rest of them.

Well, okay, then, we'll stick with that. But what if the party are near some troops? Now the scale only works part way (fig-2) and we have a problem: if the party's figure/indoor scale is used (i.e., an 8" fireball on the tabletop, the outer circle) then not only the party but all the 120 goblins are turned into leather armour pop-tarts. But a fireball scaled to the goblin's outdoor scale (the inner circle) would have, if centred on the cleric, completely missed them all. And neither circle is even the "official" indoor scale of 1"=10', which would be a third circle bid-way between the other two, again affecting the goblins incorrectly. What a mess.

Transferring the indoor scale to the battlefield leads to the problem which Gygax says in the Dragon article was pointed out by none other than Len Lakofka:

"A huge area can be covered with webs from a lowly magic-user’s second level spell. Of course this is ridiculous, as the 1" = 10 yards scale only applies in cases where all other scales are in proportion."

Which is what we see here with the fireball. This quote sums the problem up but also gives the correct answer at the same time - keep all the scales in proportion. Don't use a separate figure scale in the first place! If you do, you will have headaches; no one wants to have to deal with this crap during a game.

The text in the Players Handbook tries to say this, but fluffs it. It should, for clarity, instead read (my addition in bold): "IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT OUTDOOR SCALE BE USED FOR RANGE ONLY, NEVER FOR SPELL AREA OF EFFECT UNLESS A FIGURE RATIO OF 1 :10 OR 1 :20  IS USED FOR ALL FIGURES".

This means that a single figure or counter is used for a group of PCs, just as it is for a group of orcs, goblins, or knights. This allows us to represent the area of effects consistently as shown as the still unnumbered fig-3 at left where we can clearly see that no goblins were harmed in the production of this diagram.

The crucial factor in all this is that miniature figures are three-dimensional and therefore very hard to overlap. In fact, instead of replacing the party with a single token, we could mostly solve the problem by allowing units to stack.

Stacking also allows us to eliminate the need for different sized tokens for different sized creatures—Swords and Spells uses ⅝" wide stands for humans and 1⅜" wide ones for ogres, trolls, and some horse units. We can instead simply adjust the maximum number of individuals represented by a token or counter. So, if a 1" counter could normally represent 100 men, it can only represent up to 45 horses, say.

Since an individual counter can represent from 1 to 100 or more individuals, it may seem that the DM must have a system for judging the actual placement of those individuals within the area covered by the counter. I personally have never found this necessary and the normal D&D 1" melee-range fuzziness generally covers all rationalizations, at least when the counters are 1" or less in size.

A New Type of Encumbrance (goody).

If the DM keeps an idea of a "stacking limit" in their head, things start to work quite smoothly. Taking 100 men as the normal limit in a 1" square, we can count a centaur as 2 men and say that a counter of 25 men and one of 37 centaurs can stack together and still move normally (other issues, such as facing and formation will have to wait for a future post); if we allow over-stacking to, say, 250 men in a square then we can penalize them for movement as they are perforce moving in a tight formation. The DM can regulate this as s/he sees fit, but it means that it's allowable to have working units of mixed fire giants and hell-hounds, for example.

"This is all jolly interesting, isn't it, Frodo?"
"Strictly's on soon; can we go?"
Magic Problems
I said that magic is one of the things that undermines the idea of completely abstract ground scale adjustments. The reason is that such ground scale adjustments logically require time scale adjustments, as mentioned above. But the players are told in the PHB that a casting time of one round represents a minute and a segment 6 seconds and this runs counter to the intent of the system.

That intent is that a game can be played in a balanced way regardless of how much space the players have to work with. A fireball's width is always a third of an unencumbered human's move rate; walls of force and thorns always represent the same level of obstacle, and charging units are always exposed to ranged fire for the same number of turns. Realism is completely ignored for the same of playability at scales other than 1:360.

Of course, you can scale a fireball up too far
This even works for fighters because we know that to-hit rolls are not made for every single blow; with a different time scale we just gloss over the fact that by the clock the combatants are getting more rolls, the important thing is that they get the same number of rolls per round.

Same for spell-like powers...can you see the problem? If spellcasters are taking a set time to cast spells, then the abstraction breaks and spell-like powers become disproportionately strong compared to real spells. This can, obviously, be fixed by simply ignoring the casting-time to real-time linkage, and that can be fun, but many players will find this hard to swallow, I have found.

There is a further problem, and that is missile (and spell) ranges which have to be "topped out" so that at large scales thieves are not throwing daggers half a mile, but that's much easier to accept than fiddling with time for various reasons.

Counters
In the next post I'll put up some software for making double-sided counters (one side is full strength, the other half strength).

Monday 17 November 2014

Mass Combat 1

Mass combat in D&D can be handled quite nicely by rolling a d20 and applying a bit of binomial theory. I'm not going to bore anyone with the theory but the results are a bunch of to-hit tables which vary based on the number of attackers.

Using the tables is pretty easy. Combat is from an attacking side consisting of identical figures from one or more units and a defending side consisting of figures from a single unit.

First, you decide how many figures on one side can attack the defending unit. If a row of goblins are attacking a unit of humans, perhaps the front 10 goblins can attack. If a mass of archers are firing at a single dragon, maybe hundreds can take a shot while it's in the air while a dozen knights on horseback might be able to charge it on the ground.

Next, find the attackers' to-hit needed using the normal methods. E.g., a gang of berserkers attacking a row of men in mail and shield decide to take a single attack at +2 with their bastard swords rather than once each with that and their hand-axes; they need a 15 to-hit. If using two-handed swords and armour Vs weapon rules, they would need 13. As another example, a 10th level fighter attacking the same men with a longsword would require a 7 (probably a lot less if strength and magic are applicable), and would roll using the "10 attacks" table.

A d20 is rolled for the attackers. This is found on the left-hand side and cross-indexed with the to-hit score to find the number of attackers who hit. E.g., 8 of the berserkers mentioned with the bastard swords are attacking the men-at-arms and roll a 13. The to-hit score was 15, so 3 of them hit.

Damage is then found based on the number of hits.

In the case of the berserkers, damage is easily handled by rolling 3d8 and applying it to the defending unit, moving the defenders down when damage accumulates equal to half the total hit points of the members.

But with larger units this can become unwieldy and it may be easier to become more abstract if you have a calculator to hand. The first option is to simply multiply up the average damage rather than rolling it, so our berserkers do 14 damage (13½ rounded up) and applied as before.

But with bigger units, or units with lots of hit dice (the infernal legions of pit fields, for example) these numbers are still too tedious to work with and we can fall back on calculating damage based on hit-dice. For this, the paper record for each unit is simply a count of total dice, calculated as average hp divided by 4.5. So 20 goblins count as 16 dice, and ten pit fiends have 130 HD, and a dozen trolls is 88 HD.

For this method, each hit has to be related to hit dice - take the average damage and divide by 4.5 (note this with the unit). Each hit in battle does that number of hit dice damage. So, our berserkers' attack simply does 3 damage; if using hand axes they would do 7/9th x 3 = 21/9 = 2 damage; with two-handed swords, 11/9 x 3 = 33/9 = 4 damage. If the berserkers were attacking the trolls, these numbers would become 13/9 x 3 = 4, 5/9 x 3 = 2, and 7/3 x 3 = 7 damage because of the trolls' large size. Of course, the trolls are regenerating 9 damager per round ((3x12)/4), so that's not going to matter much. As I said, the damage per hit against large and small can be recorded with the unit's record and a calculator makes all this tolerably fast.

If the number of figures doesn't fit one of the tables given, make two rolls on those that you have, so 18 figures roll twice on the 9-attacks table, or 13 roll once on the 6-attacks and once on the 7-attacks table etc.

Once a unit has taken half its maximum damage, it's knocked down to a unit of half the original size, and therefore half the original attacking potential.

As an aside, let's assume the trolls can bring 6 of their members to bear on the berserkers for a reply. The berserkers have 8 HD and the trolls' attacks do 13/9, 13/9, and 14/9 each. Their to-hit against AC 7 is 6. Three rolls are made: 6, 2, and 5. This equates to 4, 3, and 4 hits, for a total of 16 HD damage. The berserkers are shredded, even with these relatively poor rolls.

Initiative and stuff

I generally count all units closing as if it were "precipitous" so the longer weapon gets first attack; defender in a tie. After being joined, faster weapon goes first unless it's more than 5 speed factors better than the opposing weapon (in which case, it's deemed to be too short to take advantage). On ties, or when I can't be bothered, just dice for it.

If a unit is partially damaged at the end of a combat, I assume that the percentage hit points or dice lost is reflected in the casualties, but this has to be mapped to individuals' fates. If a unit of 10 2nd level clerics has suffered 16 HD of damage, then a quick estimate is that only 2 have survived with 20% of their hp. A more detailed method is to roll the 16 dice damage (i.e., 16d8) and spread it evenly over the unit. If the end result is that more survived than were still fighting or that none survived then this can be explained as stragglers returning to the unit after combat or dying from wounds as applicable.

Leader figures with individual hit points take proportionately more damage if involved in the combat. For example, our 10 2nd level clerics are lead by their high priestess (9HD), so the unit has 29HD. 16 HD damage is rolled and comes up 82. That would be 7.45hp each, but the high priestess takes 9/2=4½ shares, so she takes 34hp damage, leaving 48 for the others, who suffer 5 damage each. This sort of detail is something that only really comes up when player characters are involved, of course.

I've glossed over things like constitution, magic and strength bonuses, but it should be obvious that they are simply converted to hit-dice equivalents.

Fireball!

Area effects such as fireballs and dragons can affect multiple units, but in each unit the damage done is limited to the hp of one figure and then multiplied by the number of figures struck. So a 5d6 (35/9HD) fireball which hits a unit of 50 orcs (50HD) and affects 20 of them does 20 HD damage to the unit. Against the 12 trolls it does a total 47HD damage as each individual troll has more HD than the spell does damage.

88hp from a dragon is equal to 20HD and would obliterate the trolls, as it should.

Notes

I've used variations of these "rules" many times, sometimes with figures or counters, but mostly without any physical representation at all. They're very loose and the DM can apply whichever rules from standard D&D that they like - morale, multiple attacks (which can be subsumed into one big attack), time and movement, flank and rear attack bonuses, shield use, and even surprise for units of hobbits and elves. It's very much an on-the-fly method but if you're not too much of a wargamer they're probably enough for most needs and the degree of abstraction can be slid up and down to fit the importance or interest of the battle, as can the size of units.

3 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
132211111000000000000
232221111110000000000
333222111111000000000
433222211111100000000
533222221111110000000
633322222111111000000
733322222111111100000
833332222211111100000
933332222221111110000
1033333222221111110000
1133333222222111111000
1233333322222211111000
1333333322222221111100
1433333332222221111100
1533333333222222111110
1633333333322222211110
1733333333332222221110
1833333333333222222111
1933333333333332222211
2033333333333333333322

4 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
143222111110000000000
243322221111100000000
343332222111110000000
444333222211111000000
544333222221111100000
644333322221111100000
744433332222111110000
844433332222211110000
944433333222211111000
1044443333222221111000
1144443333322221111100
1244444333322222111100
1344444333332222111100
1444444433333222211110
1544444433333222221110
1644444443333322221110
1744444444333332222111
1844444444433333222211
1944444444444333332221
2044444444444444443332

5 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
154332221111000000000
254433222211110000000
354433322221111000000
454443332222111100000
555443333222111110000
655444333222211110000
755444333322221111000
855444433322221111000
955544433332222111100
1055544443332222111100
1155544443333222211100
1255554444333322211110
1355554444333322221110
1455555444433332221110
1555555444443332222110
1655555544443333222111
1755555554444333322211
1855555555444433332211
1955555555554444333221
2055555555555555444332

6 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
165443322211110000000
265444332221111000000
365544333222111100000
465544433322211110000
565554433322221110000
666554443332221111000
766555443333222111000
866555444333222111100
966555444333322211100
1066655544433322211100
1166655544433332221110
1266655554443332221110
1366665554443333221110
1466665555444333222110
1566666555444433322111
1666666555544433322211
1766666655554443332211
1866666665555444332221
1966666666555544433221
2066666666666655544332

7 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
176544332221111000000
276554433322111100000
376655443322211110000
476655444332221110000
576655544333222111000
676665544433222111000
777665544433322211100
877665554443322211100
977666554443332221100
1077666555443332221110
1177766555444333221110
1277766655544333222110
1377766655544433322110
1477776665554433322111
1577776665554443322211
1677777666555443332211
1777777666655544332211
1877777766665544433221
1977777776666555443321
2077777777777666554432

8 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
186654433322111000000
287655443332211100000
387665544333221110000
487765554433222111000
587766554433322111000
687766555443322211100
788776655443332211100
888776655444332221100
988776665544333221110
1088777665544433221110
1188777665554433222110
1288877666554443322110
1388877766555443322110
1488877766655443332211
1588887776655544332211
1688887776665544333211
1788888777665554433221
1888888877766555443321
1988888887776655544322
2088888888887766655433

9 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
197665543332211100000
298766554433221110000
398776554433322111000
498776655443322211000
598876655443332211100
698877665544332211100
798877665544333221100
899877766554433221110
999887766554433222110
1099887766554443322110
1199887776655443322110
1299888776655443322210
1399988776665544332211
1499988877665544332211
1599988877666554433211
1699998877766554433221
1799998887766655443221
1899999888776655443321
1999999988877666544332
2099999999988777655443

10 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
197665543332211100000
298766554433221110000
398776554433322111000
498776655443322211000
598876655443332211100
698877665544332211100
798877665544333221100
899877766554433221110
999887766554433222110
1099887766554443322110
1199887776655443322110
1299888776655443322210
1399988776665544332211
1499988877665544332211
1599988877666554433211
1699998877766554433221
1799998887766655443221
1899999888776655443321
1999999988877666544332
2099999999988777655443

15 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
1151311109876654432211000
21513121110986665443221100
315131211101098765543321100
415141312111098776544322100
515141312111099876554332110
6151413121110109876654432110
7151413121111109887654432210
8151413131211109987655433210
91514131312111010987665433210
101514141312111110987765443211
111515141312121110998765543221
1215151413121211101098766543221
1315151413131211111098776544321
1415151414131211111099876554321
15151514141312121110109876654321
16151515141313121111109887654321
171515151414131212111010987655432
181515151414131312111110988765432
1915151515141413131211111098876542
20151515151515141413121211109987653

20 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
1201716141211108766544321100
22018161514111010987654332100
320181715141312111098765432110
420181716151312111098765432210
5201817161514131211108766543210
6201917161514131211109876543210
7201918161514131211109876543210
8201918171615141311109876543221
92019181716151413121110987654321
102019181716151413121110987654321
112019181716151413121110987654321
1220191818171615141312111097654321
1320201918171615141312111098765421
1420201918171615141312111098765431
1520201918171615141413121098765432
16202019181817161514131211109875432
17202019191817161514131211109876532
182020201918171716151413121110986542
192020201919181716161514131211987643
2020202020201918171716151413121098754

25 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
125222017161413111097654432100
2252221191616151312119876543210
32523211918171514121110976543210
42523212018171614131210987643210
525232220191716151312111087654210
625232220191816151412111097654321
725232221191817151413121098754321
825242221201817161413121198764321
9252422212019171615131211108765321
10252423212019181615141211109765421
11252423222019181715141312109865431
12252423222119181716141312119875431
132524232221201817161513121110876432
142524232221201918161514131110976532
152525242321201918171514131210986532
162525242322211918171615131211987542
1725252423222120191816151413111087642
1825252423222120191817161413121098643
19252525242322212019181715141311108753
202525252524232221201918171615131210864

30 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
13026242119171614131110875433210
230272523211918161513101097653210
330272523222018171514121198654210
4302826242221191716141311108754320
5302826242321191816151312109764321
6302826252321201817151412119865321
7302826252322201917151412119875421
83028272524222019171614131110875421
93029272524222119181615131210976431
103029272624232120181715131210976431
113029272624232120181715141211986531
1230292826252322201917161413111086532
1330292826252322211918161513111087542
1430292827252422211918161513121097542
1530292827262423212018171514121197642
1630302827262523222019171614131198642
17303029282625242221191816151312108753
18303029282725242321201917151412119753
193030292827262524222119181615131210864
203030302928272625242321201817151412975

40 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
1403632292724222018161412108654310
24036343129262422201816141210875320
34037343229272523211917151311975421
440373432302826232119171513111086421
540373533302826242220181614121086431
640373533312927242220181614121097531
740383533312927252321191715131197531
840383634312927252321191715131197532
9403836343230282624222018161412108642
10403836343230282624222018161412108642
11403836343230282624222018161412108642
12403837353331292725232119171513119642
13403937353331292725232119171513119752
14403937353331302826242220181613119753
154039373634323028262422201816141210753
164039383634323029272523211917141210863
174039383635333129272523211917151311863
184040383735333230282624222018161411964
1940403937363433312927252321191715121074
2040404038373635333129272523211917141295

50 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
15044403734312926232118161311975320
250444239363431282623201816131195321
350464340373432292624211916141297531
4504643403835323027252220171512108531
5504744413835333028252320181513108631
6504744413936333128262321181613118642
7504744423936343129262421191614119642
8504745423937343229272422191714129742
95047454240373532302725222017151210752
105048454340383533302825222017151210752
115048454340383533302825232018151310853
125048464341383633312826232118161311853
135048464441393634312926242119161411863
145048464442393734322927242219171411963
155049474442403735323027252220171512963
1650494745424038353330282523201815121074
1750494745434138363431292624211816131074
1850494846444139373432302724221916141185
1950504846444240383533312825232017151295
20505049474644424038353330282522201714116

100 Attacks

To-hit
1234567891011121314151617181920
110090847872666055504540353026221713842
2100928680756964595449443934292420151162
3100938781767165605550454035302521161173
4100938882777166615651464136312621171273
5100948883777267625752474237322722171383
6100948983787368635752474237322823181384
7100948984797368635853484338332823181494
8100958984797469645954494439342924191494
9100959085807569645954494439342924191495
101009590858075706560555045403530252015105
111009591868176716661565146413631252015105
121009691868176716661565146413631262116115
131009691868277726762575247423732272116116
141009692878277726863585348433732272217116
151009792878378736863585348433833282317126
161009793888379746964595449443934292318127
171009793898479757065605550454035292419137
181009894898580767166615651464136302520148
191009895908681777267625752474237322621159
2010099969388847975706661565146403429231711