Wandering Monsters, You Will Serve Me

Wandering monsters are an important component of the megadungeon experience.  From a  story perspective, they create the illusion that the dungeon is an inhabited place with an ecosystem of monsters that have their own agendas and missions - they don't just lurk in the dark, waiting for adventurers.  Conceivably there are tombs and smaller non-living dungeons where the monsters do just lurk and wait, lurk and wait, but the megadungeon is giant, and has a panoply of critters.  Wandering monsters set the thing in motion and ensure the dungeon remains a hostile environment.

From a game perspective, wandering monsters exert positive pressure on the action.  They ensure players don't endlessly search without consequence; they drain party resources; they are  a principal tool you have as a referee to create problems for the "15 minute work day".  The 15 minute work day refers to entering the dungeon, visiting a room, expending all the party's resources at once, immediately leaving, resting overnight, returning to the dungeon, and doing it all over again…  Your players might still have to abridge their delve for legitimate reasons (such as having their keisters handed to them) but wandering monsters ensure it's not a great strategy.  Resource management and planning is one of the skill aspects tested during extended dungeon exploration.

In very large dungeons, the irritation factor of wandering monsters also increases the worth of elevators, secret stairs and short cuts, and alternate dungeon entrances.  Anything that cuts out superfluous encounters has value.

However, with my current campaign, I am noticing a few things I don't like due to our constraints.  First, I'm trying to run shorter pickup games here and there, sometimes only 2 hours or less.  Hitting one or two wandering monsters while trying to reach the unexplored areas can lop off a fair percentage of table time when the sessions are so short.  Similarly, if we're targeting a specific end time (like 8:30 for a school night), the players want to keep exploring right up until 8:29 and 59 seconds…  not leaving any time in case they hit wandering monsters on the way out of the dungeon.  (I could certainly make them stop 15 minutes early each night to account for travel, but that's not entirely satisfying, especially if I don't roll encounters and they could have used the time).

With these concerns now expressed, I'm considering some adjustments to the standard approach for our short games:

• When traversing areas that have been cleared by adventurers (and are slowly re-stocking), the incidents of wandering monsters is greatly reduced - 1 in 6 per hour instead of 1 in 6 three times per hour, for instance.
• When leaving the dungeon at the very end of a session (to meet our time constraints), the wandering monster rules are abridged.
• When leaving the dungeon at other times, roll checks as normal.

However, I'm not suggesting to ignore the dice if I don't like a wandering monster result… dice fudging is verboten.  If it's worth using the dice to determine an outcome, it's worth rolling them in the open and letting the dice fall.  Dice create drama and consequences, and using them temporarily shifts the referee into a spectator of the unfolding story much like the players - none of us know what's going to happen when the dice are rolling, and that's exciting.  Dice are the neutral arbiters of fate.  If you don't want to the possibility of a negative result, don't even roll them.  Make a ruling instead.

Relative and Absolute Armor Values

Modern gamers tend to take things like their damage rates fairly seriously - the rating even has an acronym, DPR.  It raises an interesting question for a game like Taenarum, set in Mythic Greece.  Do I assume that certain damage and AC ratings are absolute or relative?

For instance, D&D assumes a late medieval or early Renaissance technology level, where most heavy fighters aspire to full plate mail (AC 18 in 5E) as soon as possible.  The martial classes have access to hand weapons dealing 1d8.  So here's the interesting question - does the overall balance of the game, and the classes to each other, assume that fighters need access to the best armor and weapons to stay relevant?

If you answer yes - that getting to base AC 18 is important - you can assume the equipment values are relative, and regardless of the technology level of the campaign setting, the major armors and weapons should be mapped such that fighters can have a base AC 18 and 1d8 hand weapons in any setting.  In this way, their role as front line defenders and solid damage dispensers is preserved.

Alternatively, you can view AC 18 as absolute - the only way you can get AC 18 is with bona fide head-to-toe medieval plate armor.  When you play a campaign set in other times and places, fighters will have to make do with sub-optimal arms and armor or wait until they find some heavy duty magic items.

One side effect of treating the equipment values as absolutes is that you might force other adaptations - such as players making fighters with higher dexterity to make up for the lack of heavy armor, and choosing alternative hand weapons where the European broad or long sword is unavailable in the setting.

In Taenarum, I've chosen to treat armor and weapon as relative (for now) - meaning that the heaviest armor of a Hoplite, including breastplate, arm and leg greaves, and a full Corinthian helmet, are equivalent to AC 18 in the Greek world.  Since the spear is the premier weapon of the age, it's a d8 weapon.  I haven't decided on the Spartan short sword yet - or do I just assume there are larger variants?  Alternatively, maybe shields provide a higher defensive bonus in this type of setting?

I typically don't like these types of house rules - perhaps that's why I'm blogging about it - but I'm also loathe to upset any of the systems underlying assumptions, nor am I loathe to hurt the basic fighter.  I love fighters.


*The image is from a site on modelling - there are some cool Spartan and Hoplite models out there.

Another Look at Lamentations of the Flame Princess

I've been meaning to circle back to the topic of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LOTFP) rules set for a discussion.  We've kept it as the default rules for the Black City campaign, and I ran the first half of the previous campaign (Gothic Greyhawk) using the same rules as well.  Since one can get a legal PDF copy of the Moldvay edition of the D&D basic rules nowadays, you might wonder why I've stayed with a simulacrum.

The LOTFP book line features adventures that have a lot more horror content than typical fantasy adventures; a few feature graphic art or gruesome themes.  The (implied) default setting for many of the adventures and rules is the Early Modern period rather than a Feudal or Medieval period.  The rules themselves build off of classic D&D, but the magic has been toned down to seem more literary than the comic book style approach of default D&D, with flying men shooting at each other.  (D&D magic has pretty much carved out its own genre of fantasy after almost 40 years).  If you want to check out the LOTFP rules, a free copy of the rules is available at RPG Now.

The quality of the LOTFP printed books has been trending upward.  The last thing I received from the publisher was the hardcover printing (pictured above).  But look how tiny that hardcover looks compared to that d20!  You need a magnifying glass to read anything.  Just kidding, that's a giant sized d20 - you can read the rules fine -but the book size is smaller than the US custom - A5 print size.

There are many choices in OSR rules, not to mention the availability of the original TSR rules I mentioned.  Here's what I continue to like about the LOTFP version:

Skill System
The Moldvay Basic edition has an implied d6 skill mechanic recurring through the rules - d6 is used for hear noise, secret doors, surprise, triggering traps, and so on.  The LOTFP rules extend the d6 mechanic to cover a lot more common adventuring tasks and demi human abilities.  I like the simple, consistent mechanic.

The Thief (Specialist)
The LOTFP version of the Thief is now called the Specialist, and the thief type skills have been converted to d6's, aligning them with the demi human abilities and other adventuring skills.  (I never liked the percentage roll mechanic).  More importantly, the Thief gets to allocate his or her own points, allowing him to do some things extremely well, even at first level .  A new Thief could put 3-4 points into "tinker",  allowing a 50% or more chance to succeed at picking locks and disabling traps.  The TSR version of the class wouldn't have a 50% or higher chance until beyond 7th level - an eternity in dog years (or game time).  Of course, the traditional version of the class is well-rounded - the 1st level Thief has a 10-15% across 6 or so abilities, making him or her incompetent across all the skills equally.  I'd rather have a character than can do one or two things well, even at first level.

The flexibility of the Thief skill system is the number one reason I use this rules set - it's my favorite innovation.  I realize 2nd Edition AD&D went this path, but I like the simplicity of d6 skills on a Moldvay style D&D chassis.  The skill system is also modular and easy to extend the number of skills, allowing the class to represent other professions.  In The Black City campaign, I've added skills for Lore and Performance so that Skalds and Bards are also represented by the Specialist.

I'm still waiting for a player in my game to make a Specialist loaded with Climb, Sneak Attack, and Stealth, running around like an Assassin's Creed style parkour expert.  It could be done pretty easily and would be a ton of fun.  You could totally do it with this type of class.

Character Class Alterations
There are subtle changes to all of the character classes.  Fighters are the only characters that increase in fighting ability, and they gain some unique combat options and tactics.  Clerics lose Turn Undead as an ability; it's now a 1st level spell.  Neither Clerics or Magic Users are limited in their weapon choices (although spell casting for Magic Users is still constrained by heavy armor).  The unique capabilities of the demi humans have all been pushed slightly, strengthening their identity - Dwarves are tougher and hardier, Halflings are sneakier, and Elves are elfier.

Magic has been toned down - spells that are extremely flashy or difficult to explain in a real-world setting are removed.  No more flying Magic Users battling in the air with Lightning Bolts, Dr Strange style… and you can't go to the local church and buy a Raise Dead spell every time someone dies, either.  Experience points for Magic Users and Elves have been adjusted down slightly to account for their diminished fire power.

Combat Options
A number of simple combat options have been formalized, like Press (full out attack), Defensive Fighting, and Parry.  The suggested initiative system is "individual initiative", which leads to a more chaotic style of melee.  There are some adjustments to missile fire, an aim rule, and firing into melee.  Otherwise, combat runs much like TSR versions of classic D&D.

Design Repercussions
The changes to the Fighter and the power level of spells has repercussions to how one designs encounters and adventures.  Here are some observations from running the game for dungeon style adventures for the past few years.

First, because the other classes don't advance in fighting ability, scaling the armor class of monsters and opponents with level is a bad idea.  Adventures for this rules set often cover a much wider range of levels because there isn't such a tightly bound "sweet spot" - you often see things like "for levels 1-8" because combat is only one dimension to an exploration game.  As long as you understand this relationship between combat ability and opponent armor class, there's less concern about game balance here versus traditional adventure designs that have to account for the exponential power of wizards or the difficulty of challenging characters loaded with magic items and AC buffs.  Lower level parties absolutely need retainers to help with the front line fighting - but that goes with most old school systems.

The overall damage output of a party doesn't scale as in types of D&D - Magic Users don't have as many mass effect damage spells, and Fighters don't get weapon specialization or similar buffs.  I'd urge catuion about putting many high hit point monsters against a party, as in classic D&D.  Fights will turn quickly into attrition grinds.  Large battles with tough monsters, like G1-3 Against the Giants, would be a rough experience if run using the LOTFP rules.

Undead become excellent horror-oriented monsters under these rules, since it's much harder to nuke the whole monster type just by having a powerful Cleric along.  (That's another case where having a character above the recommended level hoses a traditional adventure module).  Choosing to take Turn Undead instead of other level 1 spells becomes a legitimate resource choice and not an every encounter freebie.

The lower powered rules set compliments my preference of putting campaigns in a real world or pseudo real world setting.

House Rules
There are a few house rules we've been using.  We use a first aid\bind wounds type of rule after combat; I allow a two-weapon fighting variant (where the off-hand weapon either provides a minor attack or defense bonus).  For natural 20's, the current 'critical hit' rule is that the player treats the damage roll as the maximum value (so a critical using a sword deals 8 damage instead of 1-8).  One other thing I've used as a treasure reward is "adamant weaponry", extremely sharp blade weapons that give a bonus to hit, but not to damage.  This has allowed some of the non-fighter classes like Dwarves or Elves to improve their chances against some of the hard to hit monsters.

There is one major change I've considered but haven't pulled the trigger.  I've been meaning to take a closer look at OD&D and explore how it used the d6 for hit points and weapon damage, and see if that would work here.  The simplicity of "nothing but d6's" is intriguing.  For instance, I'd love to be able to track monster hit points by rolling a giant pile of d6's at the start of a combat, and ticking them off on the dice directly.  One can dream!

A Sanity Mechanic for D&D Type Gaming

The other day I looked at the role of the Sanity system in Call of Cthulhu, and how it creates another mechanical stress on the players and one that helps enforce the horror genre.  How would it work in something like D&D?

First - let's be clear on the goal.  In a horror-soaked D&D game, monsters are rare and otherworldly.  The experience of the supernatural is not commonplace - they represent a disturbance to the status quo and a violation of the natural order (from a human perspective).  A system that attempts to model the mental effects of horror implies that even hardened soldiers could be unnerved by direct exposure to the supernatural that defy categorization or understanding.  A mechanic would be put in place to attack the characters from an alternate angle and put pressure on the players as they face down supernatural threats.

In general, I prefer "less is more" and don’t like adding sub-systems so  I'd like Sanity mechanics to be simple, familiar, or both.

My first thought is something like this:  all characters have a permanent starting Sanity value equal to their Wisdom; from that point on, Sanity and Wisdom are not correlated.  Temporary Sanity goes up and down over the course of an adventure, but permanent Sanity rarely decreases and represents a hard cap.  There are some ways to heal temporary Sanity during an adventure, and lost temporary Sanity usually recovers completely between adventures.

Whenever a character is subjected to a horror, there's a chance their temporary Sanity decreases; the DM rolls a d20 against the characters current Sanity score (like an armor class), and if the roll meets or exceeds the score, the character loses some temporary Sanity.  (Conversely, if players prefer to roll, they're always trying to get under their temporary Sanity and 'miss' their Sanity).

Here's are some sample Sanity losses.  The amount is rolled randomly similar to weapon damage:

• Seeing a monster at a distance, witnessing a mundane killing or a fresh corpse - 1-2 points.
• Seeing a monster up close, finding a grisly murder scene, or experiencing unnatural omens or haunting effects - 1-4 points.
• Attacked by a supernatural threat or seeing hundreds of corpses - 1-6 points.
• Attacked by an overwhelming threat, like a horde of monsters or a giant thing; seeing the corpse of a loved one or friend; witnessing a supernatural killing - 1-8 points.
• Seeing a good friend gruesomely killed by a monster - 1-10 points

Cumulative losses within a single encounter caps at the maximum for the worst loss.  If the characters are attacked by a supernatural threat (loss 1-6) and one of the party members is gruesomely killed (1-10 loss), the maximum loss for both events is 10.

Furthermore, extremely weird and otherworldly monsters would have a kicker - seeing something like Great Cthulhu might add 1-6 points of loss to the roll (seeing Great Cthulhu  rise out of the harbor and scoop up a handful of sailors and toss them back like popcorn would cause potential 1-8 and 1-6 points altogether).  Really outré monsters like the Outer Gods or Great Old Ones may always strip a point of permanent sanity.  I haven't decided if there should be a minimum loss associated with certain encounters, even if the Sanity misses.  Since we’re treating it more like Sanity attacks and damage, it might be good to stay away from "auto damage".

SANITY EFFECTS
Once a character gets to zero temporary Sanity, they receive a -2 to all of their rolls and saving throws.  Once a character gets below -5 temporary Sanity, they're in deep shock and lose a point of permanent Sanity - an are they unable to function?  Do they gain a phobia or mental derangement?  I don't know yet - I need to see how other games have handled similar things and then run the ideas through some paces at a home game  (For now I'd treat "deep shock" as a Fear effect).  I'd also suggest a saving throw versus Death to avoid the loss of permanent Sanity.  At some point I'd expect a character might go permanently mad (at permanent Sanity = 0).

Anytime an NPC retainer or henchman loses half or more of their current Sanity, they need to make a morale or loyalty check.

Example:
Xameck the Mage and his small crew of mercenaries (Bart the Fighter, the priest Montjoy, and a retainer, Squire Deegan) are hired by the Burgomeister to discover the source of the grave robberies in the lonely cemetery beyond the village.  Climbing atop the Sarkhov Mausoleum, the group huddles down for an overnight vigil.  A village goodwife, recently deceased, was interred earlier in the day, and the lookout is spying on her fresh grave across the moonlit ghostyard.

A shambling, lurching figure emerges from the mists down below, startling Squire Deegan (make a check due to Seeing a Monster at a Distance).  Raising the alarm, the characters get to their feet and prepare missiles, but the monster lurches off into the darkness, tearing up clumps of earth with its hooves.  Since these guys are adventurers, they quickly climb down and begin to follow the monster's tracks.

The monster's path leads to an opened mausoleum, and the characters take a moment to light torches before entering the black interior.  There's only a large sarcophagus with a skewed slab for a lid within the decorative chamber.  Fearing an unholy terror, Montjoy waits at the end of the sarcophagus with a vial of holy water, while the two fighters get on either end of the slab and slide it open.

With a speed belying its ungainly size, the monster springs out of the depression and slashes Montjoy down the front of his chest with iron-hard claws.  As a 1st level cleric, Montjoy doesn't have too many hit points, and the other characters watch him drop to his knees, gurgling on his own blood before he dies.  While everyone in the group makes Sanity checks and prepares to draw weapons, the monster (in this case, a Lovecraft-style ghoul) barrels down a set of narrow stairs beneath the sarcophagus, and into a subterranean realm.

At this point, the characters have been threatened by a 1-2 Sanity loss (seeing the monster), a 1-6 point loss (attacked by the monster) and a potential 1-10 loss (seeing a friend killed right in front of them by the monster).  The cumulative maximum is still 10 points because these would all count as a single encounter.  It's possible some characters with low Sanity scores are "shaken", taking a -2 to rolls, and Squire Deegan might need a morale check before being willing to enter the ghoul's realm.

Obviously, we need to try the rules on and refine the approach, but just reflecting on the sample encounter, I can see that adding any kind of Sanity mechanic changes the complexion of even a "mundane" supernatural encounter into something different and makes each encounter more impactful.  I didn't spend much time with the Ravenloft 2E rules back in the day, and I've been thinking of checking those out as well to see what the mothership was doing to support horror-flavored D&D back in the 90's.  Anyone familar with the 2E Ravenloft setting?  (Someone pointed out Crypts & Things has a Sanity mechanic too - I'll have to check it out and see how it's implemented).

RECOVERING SANITY
In the interests of carousing rules and soaking loose cash, the primary way to recover lost Sanity is to spend some money in between adventures - each day of spending 100gp (per character level) recovers 1-6 temporary Sanity points.  This money could be spent on any appropriate activity stipulated by the player as something relaxing or important to the character, but it can't provide other material benefits.  Examples include carousing, tithing to the church, research, or training.

Once per day while adventuring, the party leader can give a rousing speech to each character.  If the leader succeeds on a reaction roll (rolling a 9-12 on a roll of 2d6, modified by Charisma) the characters are inspired and gain 1-6 Sanity back.  Consider it a once-per-night pep talk or morale boost.

I'd have to go back through the clerical magic system and identify appropriate spells that should interact with Sanity hit points and damage; spells like Fear may cause Sanity damage in addition to their other effects, whereas Remove Fear could recover Sanity damage similar to a Cure Light Wounds.  Maybe high level spells like Restoration can restore permanent Sanity points.

A Few True Name Rules

Secret identities; not just for super heroes any longer.

After mulling over the literary use of True Names in popular fantasy, I think the simplest, easiest way to make them useful in the game is to make it a large modifier to the Saving Throw mechanic.  A conservative approach is like this:

When a wizard casts a spell, the wizard can invoke a target's true name; the target takes a -4 penalty on the saving throw.  Likewise, when a victim is targeted by a spell, they can call out the wizard's true name, if they know it;  calling out the wizard's true name grants the targeted character a +4 saving throw against the caster's spells.

The paranoid folks in the literature that fret about their identities are invariably wizards.  I like the idea that penalties to their magic if they lose the secrecy of their true names encourages magic users to adopt a cover.  The evil megalomaniacs will go totally over the line, eliminating all witnesses, which is a great motivation for a villain.

True names can also be embedded into magical amulets, creating a domination or charm monster effect (like the demon amulets), and weaponry can be enchanted with a true name, creating a slaying effect - an arrow enchanted with a true name would become a +4 item of named character slaying, for instance.

Some of the literature goes further, with the use of the true name stripping the victim of all magical power, but there's no precedent in the game for that kind of disarming, and I can't see it yielding good results - either villains die without a fight, or PC's feel totally abused. I did consider alternatives - should the true name grant magic resistance, or prevent all magic use, or a simple protection from evil type effect; there are already a few gigantic spells out there (like True Name in Unearthed Arcana) that grant major benefits to very high level casters.  So I want a generic mechanic that can affect lower level play without becoming game breaking.  But is a +4 or -4 to saving throws enough of a bonus/penalty when the characters unmask the identity of the town mesmerist?

I don't see the true name mechanic making a big difference to ordinary games; it's just not going to come up in random encounters during regular adventuring, assuming both PC and NPC wizards are using monikers, use names, or secret identities.  In campaign play, where the party sets their sights on taking out a major target (like a certain lich in a certain lost tomb), there's now an incentive to go the extra mile and try to ferret out the true name to gain any advantage against an intimidating foe.  Likewise, if a player character wizard starts earning notoriety as they gain power and approach name level, they now need to be worried about NPC rivals trying to do the same to them.  A true name mechanic would be put in place to give a tangible benefit to research and investigation during campaign play, and highlight an activity that gets overlooked in lieu of the full frontal assault.

True Names in D&D

I realized there's a through-line in all of the fantasy books I've been reading lately - they've all involved the importance of names and language.  I'm reading the Earthsea trilogy aloud to the oldest kiddo; those  books strongly feature the power of true names and language; the language of wizards is an older tongue (the language of dragons), and to name a thing in the old language is to have power over it.  The major arc in the first novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, is for the protagonist to learn the true name of a creature of darkness he released into the world, and thus defeat it.  There's an awesome showdown with a dragon, where the young wizard Ged rightly guesses a dragon's true name and avoids destruction - also underlining the importance of paying attention to history and study old books.

I recently finished The Chronicles of the Black Company, and am eagerly looking forward to continue the series.  Major plot elements involve recovering and guarding old records left from a fallen empire; only late in the story do the protagonists suspect the old documents contain the true names of the immortal antagonists facing the Black Company.  Ultimate success hinges on piecing together scattered lore and finding translators that read the dead languages before a final reckoning.  I greatly enjoyed the Black Company; the novels portray the pragmatism of an elite military faction weaponizing magic in a world of swords and sorcery.

It seems like I should be able to rattle off more fiction that features the power of names; I'm just not remembering… of course, the Dresden files are full of true names and the importance of little bits (blood, hair, fingernails) to target the magic; the Eragon young adult books had the theme as well.  I suppose we're all familiar with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Hellboy is bewitched when called by his true name, Anung Un Rama.  And no exorcist or demonic possession movie is complete until the priest names the demon as part of the dramatic ritual of removal.

For that matter, the power of names has a strong religious element to it in Western culture; it calls to mind the Greek "logos", and the hymn at the beginning of the gospel of John:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...  The name of YHWH, the sacred Tetragrammaton, was forbidden to be spoken because of the power and sanctity of the name.  Off hand, though, I'm not placing the first literary instance of calling out the name of the devil and having him appear.  Perhaps it was Marlowe's Doctor Faustus?  Don't say Bloody Mary seven times in front of a mirror.

Our friends in the Cthulhu space have not overlooked the theme; in the dreaded twelfth volume of the Revelations of Glaaki, reading the name of Y'Golonac subjects the reader to the attention of the god, potentially turning the victim into an avatar of Y'Golonac and a channel for demonic manifestation.

In a moment of monkey brain, my thoughts even jump to TS Eliot, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  The naming of cats is a difficult matter, after all - it isn't just one of your holiday games.  Now pardon me a moment while I go scrub my brain and get back on task.

The D&D game hasn't had a lot of interplay with the true name motif.  A few monster entries in the Monster Manual and Fiend Folio mention the value of true names - mostly involving demons and devils, and amulets or talismans that grant power of the entity.  I seem to remember Skeleton Warriors were the same way with their medallions

THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH* greatly expanded the portfolio of extra-planar spells, and many of them require the entity's true name; part of the power and allure of the Demonomicon of Iggwilv is that the master witch scribed various demonic true names in the book, giving the owner ready access to forbidden knowledge and the means to execute on it.

The spells from the Demonomicon are carried over into UNEARTHED ARCANA, and supplemented with some new ones, such as an actual True Name spell, which lets a caster run roughshod over a victim if he possesses the name - changing the creature's form, sending it far away, or making Suggestion-like demands.

The clones or sequel games haven't gone much further.  LOTFP has a high level spell named Demand, which functions akin to True Name, but requiring bodily bits of the target - straight out of Frazier and theories of sympathetic magic; I like the flavor.  Holy Word is a spell across the editions that calls to mind the forbidden Tetragrammaton.  ACKS didn't seem to have anything around true names, though it would be ideal as a high level ritual for either clerics or wizards.

The exciting thing about this motif - uncovering an opponent's true name as a means to power, whether as part of a spell, ritual, or simple plot device - is that it supports excellent quests beyond the dungeon; the characters might need to borrow a tactic from their Call of Cthulhu brethren and spend time in dusty libraries with restricted tomes, traveling to distant sages, or embarking on a bit of archaeology and tomb-raiding.  Sign me up for getting more of that into my D&D games.  As it is, I'm always this close (pinches fingers) between ditching adventure-style D&D and running my fantasy games like a Cthulhu game.

I've got some ideas of (modest) house rules or additions to make true names universally important if they can ever be discovered; what have you seen out there, either in other games or later editions, as mechanical ideas for making true names important?


*Gygaxian titles require all caps.

D&D Professional Skills

From time to time the DM might need to determine if a NPC professional succeeds at a difficult technical skill or craft - does the blacksmith make a suitable masterwork weapon on the first try, can the sage answer an obscure question, that kind of stuff.  As I collate notes for my future (Caribbean-based) saltbox setting, this extends to solving for skills like sailing, navigation, and gunnery.

I've seen the simple 2d6 reaction chart from classic D&D turned into a skill resolution chart.  It assumes a modifier scale of -3 to +3 using ability scores.  (Historical note: Charisma was capped at +2 in the Moldvay rules, but this was changed for Mentzer and the Rules Cyclopedia).  For professional skills, I'm using the following descriptors to determine appropriate "ability modifiers":

Professional Experience:
Skilled:  +1
Expert:  +2
Master:  +3
Unskilled:  -2

Unskilled characters may not even get a roll in some cases.  The basic reaction chart goes like this:

Skill Resolution (roll 2d6):
2  serious failure
3-5 failure
6-8 partial success
9-11 success
12 great success

An example usage: if the players hire a skilled navigator instead of a master navigator for their ship, they'll pay less in salary or shares, but there's a higher chance of getting lost on the way to that hidden island.  As I develop the nautical rules, I'll work on specific guidelines when hired experts would make checks and how the dice results translate into specific outcomes.

For basic D&D, I like decoupling professional skills from the class and level system and treating them as background skills for NPCs; it keeps the major emphasis for class advancement on adventuring and developing adventurer capabilities.  Nonetheless, I can see the players asking if they can develop any degree of professional skill (especially these nautical skills) if they spend enough time on a boat.

This post from an older blog (Skills: The Middle Road) provided some recommendations for education around professional skills, so I'll use those values as a starting point and will see how it goes:

Learning a Profession:
Skilled - 1 month, 1000gp
Expert - 3 months, 3000gp
Master - 6 months, 10,000gp

If a player character commits to spending time in the rigging, learning how to furl and unfurl the sails, close-haul a ship, tie the right knots, swab the deck, and so on, they can be a skilled sailor after a month of effort and a bit of money on the side.  (For sailing, assume the money goes to gambling, carousing, repairs, clothes, basic gear, dues, and so on; ordinary folks pick up the same skills at a slower pace without all the money spent).

Alternatively, I can look at a hybrid game like ACKS, that bolts a new-school inspired feat and proficiency system onto the old school chassis.  Navigation and Seamanship are already represented as choices in ACKS, and Gunnery is easy to add.  ACKS also addresses when someone would be qualified as a "master" by stacking extra picks on a proficiency.  I'm not sure the high-fantasy tone of ACKS is what I'm going for, so the actual decision on rules flavor is for sometime down the road.

Towards Simple Naval Combat

There are already RPG games that focus on swashbuckling campaigns.  They're lighter in tone, and feature the cinematic action, or perhaps a bit of politics and intrigue.  I'm coming at the pirate genre from the perspective of horror fantasy; ghost-haunted ruined Spanish castles on lonely promontories; dank swamps with zombie masters, jade idols, and mindless undead hulks; fallen jungle ruins with blasphemous temples and a fortune in gems.  The idea is to make a large wilderness hex crawl, a "saltbox" instead of a sandbox, with the sailing vessel as the primary conveyance.  The mode is D&D style play, exploration seeking  after treasure, but with the chance for a bit of opportunistic piracy on the high seas (both for and against the players), and some rowdy carousing back in Port Royal or Tortuga.

The challenge is to build simple, abstract, flavorful nautical rules that capture situations during the Age of Sail without requiring a lot of nautical interest to enjoy the style.  So far, the ship combat rules in Flashing Blades: High Seas (FBHS) strike a good tone of abstraction and flavor when compared to the fiddly bits in competing rules sets, but there are a few things to change and/or add, to adapt them to D&D style play.

Skills
First thing to add is some basic skill resolution for professional skills - unskilled, skilled, expert, master - for specialized (non-adventuring) skills like sailing, navigation, and gunnery where resolution is going to matter.  Plenty of OSR types have adopted 2d6 skill systems modeled after the reaction roll chart.  Player characters can gain knowledge of professions over time, but the system is mainly for determining how hired experts contribute during a conflict.

Evasion
An important segment of a nautical encounter is when sails are spotted on the horizon, quickly followed by a decision to evade or give chase; the zoom level of FBHS is a little too tactical (yards instead of miles), skipping the whole dynamic of evading until night fall to escape the pursuer after dark, or using fog and foul weather, for the same.  Should be simple to extend the FBHS process a bit.

Maneuvers
When a ship has successfully overtaken another, there's the opportunity to maneuver.  FBHS has solid maneuvering rules, covering positioning for broadsides, chasers and stern guns, crossing the T, etc, and suggesting how to use ship handling and a bit of piloting skill; players don't need to know about the wind gage or leeward approaches, it's abstracted into fairly simple skill rolls once they decide on a broad strategy.

Combat
I'm a big fan of the humble d6 when you need to roll a ton of dice - too many years of Axis & Allies.  Batteries of cannons should be resolved with a handful of d6's.  Some of the rule sets involve calculating a ton of d20 modifiers and rolling dozens of times for a broadside on the d20 scale.  Meanwhile, FBHS has a single die roll for an entire battery, which isn't ideal to me either, so I'll adjust to include chucking handfuls of d6's and adding up hits.

Regardless, the strength of historical buccaneers was their crack shots with the musket, so there need to be adjustments to the combat approach to account for actual historical strategies like picking off helmsman, suppressing gun ports with withering fire, and otherwise clearing the deck with small arms while closing the gap to board.  The type of buccaneer ships in the game are typically lightly armed (unlike the 3-4 mast monsters used by pirates in the later age).

Reactions
There are a number of points at which a merchant ship's reactions (or morale checks) are critical; when spotted (to determine if they lay to, evade, or come about); when they’re overtaken - do they fight or roll over; when they're boarded, do they surrender, defend the decks, or set traps and retreat to closed quarters.  Reputation for the buccaneers and pirates will be a factor influencing morale checks.

Boarding
FBHS has fast, abstract rules for handling the boarding - although, like I mentioned above, the assumption seems to be two heavily armed ships slugging it out with broadsides, movie-style, and not fast rovers raking the decks with small arms and then quickly overwhelming with a boarding action.  It also omits grenades, a practical weapon, albeit one you usually don't see in the swashbuckling movies, either.  Otherwise, the FBHS rules feature a simple d6 system that would work well with the Axis & Allies style mass d6 rolls.

Ship Stats
It'll be important to define some standard ship "types" that make sense to me, by my understanding of the ships of the period; number and types of guns are important, structural hit points, handling ability (for maneuvering), typical crew sizes, and I'll even have to solve the cargo management problem (without having to micro-manage every single item loaded onto the ship).

I plan on yoinking some firearm rules from AD&D's A Mighty Fortress (although I assume the LOTFP gun book will be available long before this campaign is ready) and I'll be scanning Backswords & Bucklers again for ideas as well.  I also need to pick up Flashing Blades sometime, I really like the approach in the nautical supplement.

So that's a statement of purpose.  More to come.

The Importance of Mechanics

For purposes of D&D, what's the difference between a Norman knight, a viking, a samurai, a Roman centurion?  What if we throw a muskeeter in the mix, a Mongolian horse archer, and a Hospitaler?

Is there something that prevents a player from being "knightly" because both the knight and the viking are represented by the fighter class?

I love this question with regards to the fighter, because the convergence of technology and tactics has created great variations in the fighting men of world history, and the differences are so easy for us to visualize.  The evolution of D&D from its original vision has involved a long line of add-ons and extensions to create mechanical differentiation among character classes - new classes and sub-classes, secondary skills, kits, feats, prestige classes, and so on.

It's a topical question for me - I'm thinking over what a game in an Oriental Adventures setting would look like using a BX style of rules, and I have a pretty good idea how I'd handle archetypes like the samurai, the bushi, the kensai, the warrior monk:  you're all fighters.  You wear different armor, use different weapons, but at the end of the day, you all get paid to slug it out with the other guy.  My work here is done.

And yet... if we run an Asian themed game using LOTFP, it has that nifty d6-based skill system, it'd be so easy to add some skills to reinforce the in-game flavor.  If we ran it with ACKS, the upcoming player's guide is filled with class-building guidelines; one could probably convert the contents of Oriental Adventures to classes balanced with ACKS.  It's so easy to start sliding down that slope - "story elements should be supported mechanically so players feel like their character can do something different or exclusive".

I'm just using the fighter as an accessible example, you can do the same thing with every class.  Is the illusionist necessary?  Isn't an assassin just a guy that kills people for money?  Does the wu-jen really need a separate spell list?  And so on.

Seems like a good time for a new poll:  How important are game mechanics versus flavor?

The Relative Importance of Plate Mail

BX D&D has a curious relationship with plate armor.

At 60gp a suit, there's a really good chance most 1st level fighters will be able to afford plate, assuming they made a good roll on their starting money.  Additionally, plate seemed to be the default fighter armor for NPCs in those early games , too.  We'd kick off most campaigns with the Keep on the Borderlands, where just about every rank-and-file soldier in the keep is dressed in plate.  It seems far too ubiquitous and democratic to be the cap-a-pie of the noble born medieval knight on a destrier.  Later in the BECMI D&D line, "field plate" was added as a new armor type to represent armor reserved for the wealthy nobility.  Nowadays, most of the retro clones and later games have upped the price on plate, making those 1st level fighters wait until they've survived an adventure or two before they upgrade to it.

However, I wonder how much of the assumed survivability for low level fighting types was contingent on AC 3 or AC 2 (or better) right from the first excursion?

It becomes an interesting question in light of the last post, where it was suggested the high middle ages of Europe might not be the best analog for the ideal adventuring society.  When you shift the milieu to the Spanish Main or the Roman frontier or some early modern period, medieval plate mail no longer makes sense as an armor choice in the wider world.

I find myself evaluating two contrary positions.  The rules approach assumes armor classes are absolute, and the medieval knight in full plate represents the armored pinnacle of personal protection.  The unarmored musketeers of the 17th century are easy to hit, in game terms, and the legionaries in their lorica segmentata or lorica hamata would be ill-protected against a medieval knight as well.  Most characters in a colonial-era game would be AC 9 in BX D&D terms!

Alternatively, you can assume the game assumes the premiere fighter of the time period should be difficult to hit, and come up with an alternate scale to allow fighters to achieve better AC regardless of the military technology of the period.  Perhaps the fighter in the 17th century increases their base AC like a monk to represent the ability to duel or fire and maneuver with better skill?  The heavily armored roman legionary in segmented lorica would be armor class 2 or 3, the pinnacle of the armored warrior of his time?

I fall into the first camp, where armor classes are absolute, and one of the side effects of shifting out of the Medieval paradigm and dropping plate mail as a choice, is that front line fighters will be less protected.  In a game with muskets and firearms, cover and concealment and personal dexterity increase in importance, and that seems like the logical progression.

House Rules for the Black City Campaign

The Black City marks our return to using the LOTFP rules for the table top game, and the first time breaking out the grindhouse edition with its adjusted XP totals and spell lists.  New campaign, new rules set = chance to re-evaluate our common house rules.

Bind Wounds
Immediately after a combat, characters can perform first aid activities to recover 0-3 hit points (d4-1).

Rationale:  hit points are vague and represent multiple factors - injuries, morale, fatigue.  Giving characters the chance to swig some liquid courage, bandage injuries, catch their breath, etc, lets low level parties stay in the dungeon longer and frees up the cleric from always carrying Cure Light Wounds, especially in LOTFP where Turn Undead takes up a spell slot.  Bind wounds does tend to act a bit like a 'healing surge'.  If a 25% chance of failure is too low, it'd be easy to adjust this rule to 0-2 hit points (d4-2).

New Armor - Ring Mail
Ring mail, AC 15, cost 50sp, encumbers like chain mail.

In a dark ages campaign with little or no access to plate armor, I wanted more variety than just leather and chain, so I slotted ring mail in there as an intermediate (this category would also cover studded leather or scale mail as an alternative).

The Skald - New Specialist Skills
New skills:  ­ Performance (1 in 6), ­ Lore (1 in 6)

Performance:
If the bard is able to perform for an audience for at least a half hour, he can add his performance skill as a charisma modifier to any reaction or morale roll for the audience members, as long as the roll isn't made more than a day after the performance.


Lore:
Whenever the bard encounters an item with legendary significance, this skill may be used to try and identify the item and recall a piece of lore or history about it that would exist in song or poem.

These two skills for specialists allow someone to tweak their specialist to cover the role of Skald, the Norse equivalent of the Celtic bard.  Since many of the opponents in the upper ruins of the city are fellow Vikings, the extra reaction roll adjustment from performances would be valuable, along with the boon to retainer morale.  And I've always liked legend and lore as an alternative to the magic user spell Identify for magic items.

Two-Weapon Fighting
A fighting style with an off-hand weapon provides a +1 AC bonus versus one melee opponent only.

This rule is one I'm still considering; in the game, one of the players asked what benefit could they get from dual-wielding.  LOTFP doesn't have an explicit two-weapon fighting rule, which is odd because you figure the fencing styles of Early Modern involved the off-hand quite a bit - dagger or gauche, for instance.

I'm thinking the off-hand weapon provides a +1 to AC like a shield, but only against a single opponent in melee; the shield is still better when fighting multiple opponents, and an off-hand weapon provides no bonus against missile fire. In LOTFP, the shield provides a +2 AC vs missile.  So there's no reason why someone should take two-weapon fighting over a shield, unless it's for encumbrance purposes.  But if style and theme are important, there's at least a small benefit to being a dual-wielder.  You do not get multiple attacks.

Strength Bonus and Damage
The strength damage applies to both to-hit rolls and damage.

Yes - default LOTFP removes the strength bonus for damage and applies it on the to-hit roll only.  You'd think I had peed in the player's drinks when I announced that one.  "Who is this Raggi guy, he needs a smack in the back of the head", grumbled one of the guys.  How many folks out there like a rule where strength doesn't improve weapon damage dealt?  Check out the new poll on the right.

I don't know if Jim has come out and defended the removal of the strength bonus; from the DM's perspective, the world is usually full of monsters that are stronger than people, and they don't frequently get a strength bonus added when they're using weapons.  You can avoid the 'how strong is the monster' debate by having all weapons deal base damage.

I find it nigh impossible to run any rules set straight up without wanting to make a small tweak here or there to better fit my vision for a home game.  This is the smallest package of house rules I've used so far.  Common ones I'm keeping out for now include a fighter cleave rule, a critical hit house rule, clerical 'convert any spell to cure light wounds', and damage by character class.

Nothing But 6's

OD&D isn't my platonic ideal for D&D; I started with the 1981 Red Box, and the Basic and Expert D&D books are still the first love.  But if there's one global rule I'd consider applying to BX or a retro clone, it'd be to get rid of variable hit dice and use nothing but 6 sided dice - the glorious d6.

I have bags and bags of d6's, tons of them from years playing Axis & Allies and similar games.  Consider the simplicity an all d6 game provides for encounters and combat.  10 orcs?  No problem, roll 10 D6's at the start of combat - there are your hit points.  The same 10 dice become your 10 HD monster - you track hit points by removing dice or adjust values as the creature takes damage.  Always rolling hit points at the table and tracking them right on the dice is immensely appealing; I'd never write down hit points again.

It seems easy enough to put some class variability into player HD using d6's; perhaps it's as easy as fighters get a +1, magic users get a -1.  The only thing holding me back for now is unwillingness to get rid of variable weapon damage.  The extreme example your hear about 'from the old days' is a group arming themselves with iron spikes and rocks (everything does a d6!) but there's also a concern with 2-handed weapons; I've seen house rules like exploding 6's for 2-handed weapons, or double dice for 2-handed weapons, or a simple +1 to damage for 2-handers.

I haven't talked to my players about this secret dream of an all d6 D&D game.   The allure of handfuls of square dice runs directly contra to the baroque mystique of using the funny sided polyhedrals.

Looking for Orcs in All the Wrong Places

I've been thinking about wilderness procedures and the issue around the 15 minute wilderness day.  Here's the quick recap if you didn't read the other post:  wilderness encounters tend to be infrequent, often days apart, so powerful groups can "go nova" and destroy the encounters by blowing all their Vancian magic and then rest, very similar to the 15-minute adventuring day.  It's especially problematic if the wilderness encounters are "balanced for level".

With that in mind, a simple approach is to use wilderness charts where "anything goes" similar to what you see in AD&D.  It doesn’t avoid the 15 minute wilderness day per se, but does lead to encounters where even a veteran group is going to have to think quickly and do something other than wade in swinging each time.  For example, the AD&D wilderness encounter for orcs is 30-300.  (-C posted examples at his place how those original wilderness tables could lead to some challenging encounters:  The wild wilderness).

What about this idea I have that wilderness encounters are spaced too far apart, always allowing rest and recovery?

I decided to step through the travel procedures for a few of the D&D versions I use to see how the systems differ.  There are striking differences.  For purposes of the examples, let's say the group is traversing a large forest - a trip of 30 miles, which should take a few days.  I tend to use 6 mile hexes, a BX standard.  The group is hoping to run into some orcs while they cross, so I included the default chance of meeting orcs using just the standard tables, too.

AD&D
In AD&D, a group can move through a forest at 10 miles a day, so it will take 3 days to cross.  In AD&D, there are 6 encounter checks per day, but each check is only a 1 in 10 (assuming this is the wilds).

Math isn't a strong suit for me, but I'm thinking that 6 checks at 10% gives a 47% chance each day of at least one encounter happening - so the group should meet something every other day.  More specifically, there's a 35% chance of one encounter, 10% of two, and 1% or lower of 3 or more encounters.  But this something that's important - an unlucky group in AD&D could run into a string of encounters each day of travel!

The other thing about AD&D is the chance of getting lost per day is 70%.  That's massive.  Without a guide or following a river or trail, the AD&D party will take longer than 3 days to make it across the forest.

The chance of actually running into some orcs using the standard tables is low - only 5% for meeting humanoids, and then a 20% of rolling orcs on the humanoid table, seems to be 1% or so.  Gah, I wish I paid attention in statistics.  You'd think a gamer should know probability.

BX D&D
Our BX party moves 12 miles a day through the forest (fairly close to the AD&D rate).  They should clear the forest in 2.5 days, assuming they don't get lost like the AD&D group.  The chance of getting lost in BX without a trail or guide is 33% per day, so they have a much better chance at clearing the forest quickly.  There's only one encounter roll per day, and it's a simple 33% chance.  I think that means a 55% chance of an encounter every two days or so - so the group has a good chance of making it through without a single encounter, and there's no multiple encounters a day unless the DM house rules it.

The chance of actually meeting orcs is also pretty low - 1/8 followed by 1/12 (compared to AD&D's 1/20 followed by 1/5).

ACKS
ACKS is influenced heavily by the BX style of D&D with refinements; it uses uses a 33% encounter chance for forest, just like BX.  However, the encounter chance is rolled per hex, not per day; our party travels 12 miles a day, clearing 2 hexes, so there's two encounter chances a day - a 55% chance of at least one encounter each day, and a slim chance of two encounters per day (also making the "15 minutes wilderness day" a risky proposition).  ACKS using the same chance of running into orcs as BX - 1/8 and then 1/12.  The ACKS procedures for getting lost are a bit different, since ACKS has a lightweight proficiency system; the default chance in woods is around 30%, fairly similar to its BX roots, but having a woodsman with navigator proficiency knocks it down to 10% chance of getting lost.

The Orc Encounter
How about if the group actually does meet some orcs in the forest?  How many is the group meeting?

In AD&D, the Monster Manual calls for 30-300 orcs (3d10 x10, I'm guessing) putting an average number somewhere near 165.  There's a 35% chance they're in the lair, which means there would be females, young, and various lair monsters there, too.

A BX wilderness encounter with orcs is only 10-60 (1d6 x10) - an average of 35 - and no differentiation between a lair or not.  In ACKS, the monster encounters express a hierarchy between dungeon encounters and dungeon lairs, and wilderness encounters and lairs.  The smallest orc unit is a gang (2d4 members, average of 5) and a wilderness encounter is a war band of 2d6 gangs (lets say 7 gangs, meaning around 35 orcs).  This is right in line with BX.  However, ACKS went back to including "percent in lair" language like the original monster manual, so the orcs are 35% in lair like in AD&D; this bumps the number up to include 1d10 war bands in the lair, making an ACKS orc lair encounter at around 190 orcs.  The ACKS lair encounter also includes the females, young, and lair monsters like AD&D.

Hope this brief survey is interesting to people - it was useful for me.  Going back to my original "problem", the 15 minute adventuring day, here are my conclusions:

The default wilderness tables in AD&D (and the ACKS clone) are plenty dangerous, but the humanoid encounters in the BX tables likely won't challenge a mid-level party.  In addition, the encounter frequency in BX supports a single encounter a day, unless the DM house rules something like "blood in the water" where a loud combat encounter triggers another check.  On the other hand, both ACKS and AD&D provide the chance for multiple encounters per day, dialing up the risk and challenging the 15 minute wilderness day.

It's clear the situations I noticed the 15 minute wilderness day happened because I was using straight BX encounter chances as written, or running The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, where wilderness encounters are intentionally paced far enough apart to allow players to go nova without a risk.  Running the wilderness AD&D or ACKS style should eliminate the issue.

Here's a follow up question - if you play AD&D, how closely do you adhere to the AD&D rules on getting lost?  70% chance of getting lost per hex seems to imply a significant amount of backtracking and remapping!

One tool that's been very successful for me was coming up with aids to help me identify the local terrain and what the party is doing at the moment an encounter occurs - some tables I put together back in December get frequent use during our hex crawls:  Too Busy Looking at the Map to Notice the Monsters.

The 15 Minute Wilderness Day

I'll be upfront in this post - I don't have the answers today, just pointing out what I've experienced as issues, and hoping to get a sense from experienced DM's if they see the same thing as a problem, what they do about it, and so on.

Here's the problem statement:  The infrequency of wilderness encounters means that a party can unload all or most of their expendable resources against each encounter; it turns every wilderness encounter into a 15 minute adventuring day.

I really saw this problem when we dabbled in 4E, because there were these uber "daily powers" and players would dump their dailies against wilderness encounters while traveling.  I didn't play a ton of 3E, but I know 3E moved away from random encounters.  In our current 1E game, the group is mid-level (levels 6-7) and the magic users and clerics have serious firepower.  They can brute force most encounters, knowing that hit points will quickly be restored through magical healing, and the mages can dump magic missiles and lightning bolts with little risk.

The referee has a couple of levers and dials to adjust the pace of wilderness adventuring:

• The frequency of wilderness encounter checks
• The probability of wilderness encounter checks
• The difficulty of the encounters

Let me cite a recent example of failure - the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.  The wilderness trek could be an exciting part of that adventure, but the encounters are a) staggered to each occur a few days apart, and b) set around the same challenge level of the party.  The result is that a group can go "super nova" on each encounter, and the encounters are basically speed bumps and time killers.  S4 Tsojcanth was originally a tournament adventure, so perhaps that's why the wilderness piece is crappy - either it was bolted on later, just for publication, or the wilderness encounters were just meant to delay groups before reaching the main structure.

Coming up with an effective approach to managing encounters in the hex crawl is a fundamental requirement.  Wilderness encounter tables are "implied setting" - they should not be overlooked.  It seems terribly important to me to get them right.  Tosjcanth is a fail.

Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about right now in the D&D space.   I don't know that anyone has done a survey on how the frequency and probability of encounters has changed over time, but it's an interesting subject to me.  Default classic had a 1d6 check per day, with a 4-6 indicating an encounter when out in the barren wilds; there were lower chances in settled areas.  The Rules Cyclopedia added a 1d12 check while camped or overnight.  ACKS has a random encounter check occur for each new 6 mile hex.

Think of the variability in the types of encounters, too - there's a big difference between tables that include mundane encounters (like peasants) versus only monstrous encounters.  Consider also the variability in difficulty; running into a weak group of goblins in one encounter, and then fleeing a wandering giant the next encounter, creates a much different experience than having most encounters in the same difficulty range.

I'm going to shift around the books and do some research.  I have a high opinion of the ACKS effort, their conclusions have seemed rational so far, so I'm curious to see how their approach to wilderness checks compares to the editions.  The ACKS hardcover just arrived, and I can research in a brand spanking new hardcover.  Behold the glory:

New books make for a happy Monday

I love me some shark-headed giant centipedes

Weapon Specialization Poll and More Fighter Ideas

Back when we started our AD&D experiment a month or so ago, I asked the readers whether they use Weapon Specialization or not in their AD&D games.  Here's what said about it:

DO YOU USE WEAPON SPECIALIZATION IN YOUR AD&D GAME?

Yes; Love it - (30%). No; Unearthed Arcana was the devil - (50%). What? - (18%).

I'm not a big fan of 1E's Unearthed Arcana, where weapon specialization appeared, so maybe those 18% of folks that said "What?" have the right of it, never having cracked open a copy of UA (along with the 50% of UA haters, where I tend to sit).  So far we are soldiering on without specialization; however, I don't mind beefing up fighters and have the impression (still to be tested) that they get left behind at higher levels compared to the other classes, and we intend to run this game through to high levels.  But I don't like what specialization does to limit weapon use .  If we were to implement that particular rule option, I would let someone specialize in a coarse-grained class of weapons, like all bow weapons, all two-handed weapons, or all one-handed weapons.

One of the commenters (Peter) mentioned that Dragon 104 had a good analysis of specialization, and it was a good read.  Len Lakofka's column runs the numbers and shows how a 2nd level fighter with specialization takes out a 4th level fighter without specialization, and has a good shot at besting a 5th level fighter without specialization, too.  That's a big jump in power - like gaining 2-3 levels by specializing.  If you consider the fighter is similar in base line power to a monster of the same level, that means your 2nd level specialized fighter is nearly a match for an ogre.

I don't think the door is totally closed for us, though.  Specialization was in base AD&D 2E, and one of the clones I like (ACKS) beefs up the fighter by giving all fighters a "cleave" ability - basically a free attack anytime you down a foe.  The nice thing about the ACKS cleave is that it applies equally to monsters; if a monster downs a PC, it gets to cleave too.  I also appreciate the LOTFP approach, where the fighter is the expert on to-hit rolls and is the only class that advances in fighting ability.  The point is, newer designs (post-AD&D and classic) have all done something to give the fighter a stronger combat presence.

Prior to our AD&D conversion, we were using "weapon by class", where magic users did a d4, all other classes a d6, fighters and dwarves did a d8 for damage or d10 for 2-handed.  That did a good job of giving the fighters a decent niche without major rules surgery.  But with the move to AD&D we're back using the quirky "damage by weapon type" along with S-M/L damage dice - that's too big a part of the 1E experience to omit!  If we don't do a form of coarse-grained specialization, the next easiest thing would be to reimplement cleave for fighters and monsters.

Playing AD&D Combat Like It's 1979

It seemed like such a good idea a few weeks ago.  "Hey, you know what fellas?  AD&D is being reprinted!  We're already playing Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced Edition Companion - it's practically AD&D now, so why don't we just convert all the way?"

Let me tell how you that's working out.

First, the good news.  I still have a group of players, and the game hasn't blown up, but then again, I haven't sent out invites for next weekend's game.  (We'll see who shows up).  After a few days of pouring over pages 61-71 of the DMG this weekend, the general consensus from the guys seemed to be, "WTF, Gygax?"

I consider EGG a creative genius; I love his adventure modules, especially those classic high level AD&D romps from the 70's, with their blend of exploration and intricate, tactical combat.  But his gift was not the art of clear and understandable rules.

Here are our observations on how AD&D by-the-book differs from the beloved editions.

Surprise
There's a requirement of calculating how much the surprised side lost the roll, because they get punched in the face over and over again for that many segments - just bam, bam, bam, straight rights, to the kisser.  Luckily, I don't foresee this happening often; the group has 2 ranger meat shields and a Brownie familiar named Packer, so they usually can't be surprised, and since they clomp around in plate mail holding continual  light spells, the only monsters they can surprise are already deaf and blind.

Initiative
The high roll wins initiative, but then you calculate the number of segments between the two rolls to determine when the other side gets to go.  So when the party rolls a 5, and the monsters roll a 2, the party actually goes on 1, and the monsters actually go on 4.  Perfectly clear.

My house rule is that the winner is the low roll, and the sides act on the segment showing on the die; in the example of a 2 and a 5, the 2 wins initiative and acts on segment 2, the other side starts on 5.  It keeps the spirit of the rule without the awesome math.

One of the characters was getting double teamed by a pair of trolls last game, and wasn't happy that all 6 attacks were happening at the same time.  Of course, I knew there was a rule calling out "attack routines" like claw\claw\bite as a single attack sequence (and not the AD&D definition of multiple attacks, which happen staggered later in the round), but of course I couldn't find it mid-game.  (It's here in the section on initiative).

Random Missile and Melee Targets
When firing into a melee, you randomly determine the target - including friends.  It turns out you randomly determine the opponent for  a melee swing, too.  No more tactics around "let's whittle down the wounded monster".  Random, I say!

Closing to Striking Range
In classic D&D, every combatant can move 1/3 of their speed each combat round and still make an attack; the typical plate-wearing fighter can move 20' and swing.  Players get used to being able to move and attack.

AD&D handles things… differently.  First off, you can move your entire movement (60' - or should I say - 6") and then neither side gets a swing for the rest of that round.  Monsters that move 12" can cover a gigantic chunk of terrain - that's like the next zip code.  Then they move in carefully the last few feet and ensure neither side gets in an attack.  One of the guys likes this, from the perspective that winning initiative is no longer a penalty - you can saunter up and tie down the front liners.  Everyone else, not so much.

If you really want to move and attack, it's got to be a charge - you lose your AC dexterity bonus, run like mad, but you get a +2 to the swing.  However, the guy with the longer weapon gets the first attack when the charger enters melee distance, and you better hope they don't have spears or pole arms.

I don't mind the AD&D approach to closing to striking range, but the players hate it.  Most of the time, monsters are coming out of the dark, and the party doesn't even see them until they enter the lighted up zone, and then the monsters tie down the front line because they "closed to striking range".  Roll a new initiative.  Muhaha.

Weapon Speed Factors
Weapon speed factors are not very coherent.    I was using speed factors to break the tie in simultaneous combat, but after a closer reading of that section, I saw that it actually says you only use speed factors when both guys are using weapons!  So a natural weapon wouldn’t count, and you wouldn't break out weapon speed factors when fighting monsters armed with claws.  But then the very next sentence goes on to point out that fist/punch (a natural weapon that uses a weapon speed of 1) would strike before a dagger, at speed 2, if there was a tie, and I was back to being thoroughly confused.

I won't even go into the next series of paragraphs, which speak to how one combatant with a really fast weapon might get a bunch of swings before the other guy gets a single swing, all in the same round.  I have no idea how that's meant to interact with multiple attacks, attack routines, and who knows what else.  Everyone should be swinging daggers!

Luckily, there's this quote over on Dragonsfoot where Gary, in later years, had this to say about weapon speeds:

"Aargh!  Forget weapons speed factors. I must have been under the effect of a hex when I included them in the bloody rules."

When the boss says a rule is bunk, I'm glad to drop-kick it.  Hey, what are the odds that WOTC takes a Sharpie to the weapon speed factor section of their reprints and puts Gary's quote in the margins?

OSRIC to the Rescue
Let's say you want to jump on the AD&D bandwagon, like us.  The new books are coming out, and in a euphoria of gamer attention deficit disorder, you too retcon your campaign.  Don't end up with edition beer goggles!  There's no need to wake up in the morning, your hand draped over the 1E DMG, reaching for aspirin and alkaselzer and wondering if you went to one of those Elvis chapels to get permanently hitched to that efreet cover.

OSRIC dumps the weapon speed factors (per the boss's quote up there) and restates the AD&D combat rules simply and clearly.  You get all the perks of running AD&D combat without having to cross-index the text, like a Biblical scholar, and deal with the obfuscation.  Plus, the OSRIC pdf is well-hyperlinked and tablet friendly; you can get your own copy here:  OSRIC.  I can truly appreciate the awesome job those guys did!

The 1E DMG is a great read, but it's not the best reference for use while actually running a game.  I'm reminded how I started with Moldvay BX, and all those years playing "AD&D" back in the 80's meant that we were really just using the BX combat system with the player's handbook and monster manual.  Judging by my player's reactions, they're encountering the AD&D combat system for the first time as well.  Wish us luck as we continue to play (mostly by the book) as if the Moldvay BX edition was never printed in 1980.

I do think the players are *really* enjoying spell components and casting times in melee.  I've got a nose for these things.

AD&D Question - Weapon Specialization

We've recently converted our D&D campaign to 1st Edition AD&D, and one of the questions is whether we should use Weapon Specialization.  Specialization was published in Unearthed Arcana, and is presented as an optional rule in OSRIC.  It was certainly carried over into 2E and beyond through feats.

Pro's:
Specialization beefs up the fighter quite a bit, if you think they need a patch; +1 to hit, +2 damage, and extra attacks.

Con's:
Without specialization, fighters are free to pick up most weapons and use them equally well (unless you're using proficiency slots, which limits the pool a bit).  Once specialization is introduced, the fighters tend to use only their specialized weapon for the rest of the game (reducing overall choice).  Most everyone picks longsword.

Previously, we were using a "weapon-by-class" house rule that gave the fighters equal damage regardless of weapon, and that was pretty awesome, fighters ended up using all sorts of weapons and were much more opportunistic.  But all house rules have been repealed since we've converted to AD&D to level set again.  One of my goals with this AD&D experiment is to try and play as By-the-Book as possible*.  Allowing weapon specialization would probably be the first house rule.

Let me know how you feel about 1st edition's Weapon Specialization.  It seems like a good time for a new poll, too.


*So far, we've only had two problems to discuss.  In Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, alignment restrictions on the paladin's companions are looser, and so a druid henchman was introduced by one of the other players.  An AD&D paladin, by-the-book , won't support a Neutral NPC in the party long term.  Our house rule will be that as long as the party's quests are supporting Law and Good, the paladin will accept the presence of the druid as a contributor on those quests.

The other one is the awesome BX Staff of Healing, which doesn't exist in AD&D.  We're using it "as is".  The AD&D Staff of Curing is significantly different.

Converting to AD&D

1E is back on top!

Ever since the announcement that 1E is being reprinted, my group has been asking the question whether we should switch completely to AD&D.  We're using Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, so we're pretty much playing AD&D with classic D&D stats and race-classes already - we have a Paladin, for instance.  But we're not actually using the old 1E books at the table, despite one of the players (Mike) bringing up the idea of converting at every available opportunity… for months.  With the 1E announcement, he's been able to sway the table - the group voted to switch whole cloth to AD&D.  The Trampier cover is back in the house.

There are some obvious things to change - the Dwarf becomes a fighter, the Elf becomes a fighter/magic user.  The more interesting question is what to do with the stats?

On 3d6, the average roll is 10.5; on 4d6 drop the lowest, the average roll is 12.24  AD&D characters have an average of 10+ more points spread across their ability scores.  And it shows.  A fighter in classic D&D gets +1 to hit at strength 13; that same fighter needs a strength 17 to get the same bonus in AD&D.  Stat inflation, baby.

What have you done for converting existing "classic: characters to AD&D's higher stat requirements?  The two options we discussed were re-rolling using 4d6 drop the lowest, but arranging the scores in the same relative order - so if Character A was highest in Intelligence, he would put his highest new stat back into Intelligence.  The simple approach is this - since AD&D characters have much higher stats, 10 more ability points, on average, just give everyone 10 more points to spend.  That fighter with a 13 strength can pump 4 points into strength, giving himself a 17 and staying on course.

I'm enthused by the 1E reprinting.  We don't know how limited will be the print run, and whether it will stay exclusive to hobby stores; I'd be delighted if it was successful and they chose to roll the reprints out to retail.  I don't need to go looking for cynical reasons to justify the reprint;  WOTC is helping the cause of getting new folks to pay attention to older games again, and that's just dandy.

Say Yes; Skill Checks in a Rules-Lite-System

The argument for and against skill checks in old school games typically involves orthogonal interests - creativity and power.  Creativity:  If its not defined as something I can explicitly do, I can't do it - versus - I can try and do anything a person can do.  Power:  Is the ability to perform an action defined mechanically in a player facing set of rules, or is it controlled by that black hat guy behind the screen making arbitrary decisions?

Let's take a simple example - starting a fire.  I mention it because I'm fairly sure "fire building" is in the Rules Cyclopedia; TSR fell in love with skills during the 2E period and they infected the various Gazetteers and Rules Cyclopedia as well.  I would also imagine everyone reading this believes they could start a fire; I won't argue, but I will point out that every season of Survivor starts with a miserable crew of cold people shivering under a tree because they couldn't get it done.  Let's assume that our fantasy characters are more skilled than 21st century Americans and can start fires when provided basic equipment.

Here's how the creativity argument works:  If a system has a fire building skill, its quite possible anyone who didn't take fire building will never try and make a fire.  "I don't have that skill".  Never mind that fire building is a mundane activity, and it's likely the skill is meant to cover fire building under adverse conditions.

The power argument involves issues like this:  we only need dice and rules to resolve actions where the outcome is in doubt; the game provides rules only for the most common situations of conflict (combat, saving throws against adverse situations).  Fire building is mundane, so the DM can just rule on it any way he sees fit.

Of course, you can start to push the situation a little… can you build a fire in the dark, or in the rain? (No Sam, I will not, will not, on a train).  How about without a tinderbox, or flint and steel?  I'll make a ruling.  And then out come the cries of DM arbitrariness and rules by fiat when the DM denies a success.

So here is a simple approach to encouraging player creativity and avoiding arbitrary decisions - it starts with "Saying Yes".

The idea of "Saying Yes" comes from improv theater; the concept requires figuring out a way to incorporate a new idea into the ongoing scene.  It's a way of channeling creativity and moving forward.  "Saying No" during Improv deflates the energy and takes the other actors out of the scene.   The key concept is understanding that you're actually saying "Yes, But…"  The "But" allows for complications.

"Can I jump the chasm?"
"Can we start a fire in this rainstorm?"
"Is it possible to climb that cliff?"

"No" shouldn't come out of the DM's mouth, unless the request is so far beyond normal experience it'd be unanimous at the table.  "Can I hold my breath underwater for twenty minutes?", is one of those times I'd say no; or more likely, I'd ask why the player thinks it should be possible.

How does Say Yes work?  It's simple.  If the action the player is requesting seems fairly mundane and you don't think there's a chance for failure, go ahead and say yes without further discussion.  "Can I start a fire, in the hearth, using my tinderbox, flint and steel, and all these dry pages of the old book?"  No one will accuse you of arbitrary thinking when the DM rules in the player's favor.

Once the DM decides there is a non-zero chance of failure, it's time to say "Yes, But".  "Sure you can try and jump the chasm, but let's talk about it a little".  Two approaches to the discussion work equally well - if the DM already knows what he thinks the chance of success should be, he can just lay it out for the player as the starting point; for instance, previous rules discussions might have set a precedent.  Alternatively, you can start a dialogue with the player or players and get them to suggest what they think are the chances of success.  Either approach creates a degree of transparency that will encourage discussion, and hopefully elucidate better problem solving from the players as they think through the situation to improve their chances.

Bad approach:  "Can I start a fire in the rain?"  DM:  "No, its just not possible".
Better approach:  "Can I start a fire in the rain?"  DM:  "Let me see, you'd be using wet wood, with water pouring down right on where you're trying to light fire?  You can try, but it seems like long odds".

If the players are new to collaborative problem solving, I would recommend that the DM  encourages them to discuss ways to alter the facts of the problem to improve their chances - for the wet fire example,  they might use cloaks to create a wind break or rain shield; they could rip pages out of a dry book from someone's backpack to provide something flammable.   The DM might point out the chance of igniting the wet wood has crept up from 10% to 50% by adding the rain shield and dry tinder; maybe dry fuel (like torches) would take it all the way to 90%, easily rolled on a d10 to determine success or failure.

The bottom line - the lack of defined skills means the players have freedom to try anything.  To encourage that creativity, the DM needs to learn to Say Yes; foster negotiation and discussion involving all the players, and reduce the problem to a dice roll when the majority agrees the chances of success are fairly represented by the DM's ruling.

I do lots of 'personality profile' type stuff through work - ongoing management and project leadership coursework requires it - so I'm consistently pegged as a consensus builder and someone willing to compromise to keep moving forward; it's no surprise I favor transparent approaches that lay the cards on the table for the players and let them decide if they want to proceed with a risky plan or not.

Note that I don't have a strong requirement for establishing any objective standard; it's quite likely that 5 or 6 gamers sitting at a table don't have a clear grasp on the actual chances of climbing a wet rope in a gusting wind with a heavy backpack; what's important is the process and the sense of empowerment it creates.  Usually, someone at the table has some relevant experience (army training, martial arts, Boy Scouts, whatever) to ensure the dice factors pass the sniff test.  For that matter, even when the DM is an expert in a given subject area and feels like he can rule without any inputs, I'd caution against it - once again, there's more value in a transparent process than being arbitrary but "right".

I also don't have any strong opinion on the actual skill roll mechanism; I try to keep everything linear and simple, so I use lots of d6's and d10's; Moldvay has an implicit d6 mechanic throughout, so that's where I go most often.  I'm not a fan of using d20 vs an attribute (it makes me feel dirty, like I'm borrowing something clandestinely from the 90's) and percentage chances are a bit too BRP.  3d6 or 4d6 against an attribute is popular, but understand the nature of the bell curve - I keep a bell curve chart handy in OneNote for the 3d6 curve so I can estimate percentages of rolling under a certain attribute if that's the way we go.

AD&D's Most Dubious Rules

I've gotten a little swamped with work and home the past few days and haven't had the chance to continue the dialogue about the wide area sandbox and the Monster Manual; hopefully tonight I'll get back to it.

In the meantime, some lighter fare for discussion; AD&D is oft criticized for rules that add complexity without making the game better; it's the rare grognard that plays AD&D 100% by-the-book.  I learned D&D with the Moldvay red box, so I mostly ran Moldvay rules with AD&D classes and monsters.

With that in mind, there's a new poll up on the right hand side - I've tried to list the rules that generate the most grief.  How many of the following AD&D rules do you ignore or modify with house rules?  Feel free to add more in the comments if I've missed one that is commonly ignored or overruled.

• Weapon vs AC
• Weapon Speed Factors
• Melee Segments
• Spell Components
• Casting Times
• Alignment
• Firing Missiles into Melee
• Helmets in Melee
• Unarmed Combat
• Morale and NPC reactions
• Training Costs
• Training Times
• Psionics
• The Bard
• The Monk
• Demi-Human Level Limits
• XP for Magic Items
• Magic Resistance