Nyarlathotep Made Me Do It

All my recent business travel has given me a lot of time to get caught up on RPG reading, but not as much time for blogging.  I'll be able to put up more reviews coming in the next few weeks.  One thing that's been strikingly clear re-reading pieces from the Chaosium back-catalog is that many writers suffer from "too much Nyarlathotep" syndrome.

Lovecraft's Mythos is indifferent to humanity - or at least, his most powerful tales express cosmic indifference.  The frightening beings of the Mythos are either powerful aliens or totally monstrous gods that are oblivious to us.  Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, Nyarlathotep, the supposed Crawling Chaos and messenger and soul of the outer gods, morphed into the boogeyman.   Nyarlathotep is the one that left the toilet seat up, let the air out of the tire, or drank the last of the milk and put an empty back in the fridge.  Every oddball demon is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, and every cultist plot is being moved along by Nyarlathotep like a 4-color super villain.  Muhaha.

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling investigators.

It's convenient to have a personal adversary for humanity, if you're writing a pulp action campaign and/or supernatural horror.  I happen to love Supernatural Horror; I've been digging the world of Innistrad, for instance, from the Magic the Gathering card game.  It would make a fine D&D setting.  The protector of the world, a powerful angel, was trapped in the selfsame prison she was using to exile demonkind.  Humanity has been left alone to fend for itself in a  nightmare world of vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night.  Everyone is a victim.  It's a great set up for all the gothic horror tropes, and the fall of the world's angelic guardian creates a sense of both loss and hope in the setting as humans cling to their lost faith.  No matter how dark the setting appears, players could always hold out hope of learning how to restore the lost guardian and return light to the world.  It would make a spectacular campaign arc for dark fantasy.

Yeah, but none of that belongs in a Lovecraft setting.

It's not particularly easy to run a bleak campaign built around themes of cosmic horror, I get it.  Much easier to write something with two-fisted action and guns blazing, and this is the form of many of the larger Call of Cthulhu campaigns, like The Masks of Nyarlathotep.  (Although I do think it would be super cool to convert Masks to a fantasy rules set and run it like a D&D game - brothers and sisters, can I get a "Huzzah" for a "Lamentations of Nyarlathotep" game?)

So yes, I blame Mythos adventure writers looking for a convenient way to string together their convoluted plots with a supernatural puppet-master pulling the strings and twirling his moustache.  But Nyarlathotep-made-me-do-it is also a problem with trying to be inclusive with all of Lovecraft's writing - does the high fantasy of the Dreamlands really have anything to do with the author's later works, which express a scientific world view and the passage of geologic time?  Nyarlathotep's speech at the end of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" is the most exposure we get to the being, and he's downright chummy with Randolph Carter in a good-on-ya-chap-sort-of-way, in the final sequence.

Individual referees can apply their own interpretation to reconcile the Nyarlathotep-boogeyman with their perspective on cosmic horror in the campaign, so I realize there are apologists out there; in Trail of Cthulhu, Ken Hite offers a wide range of ideas to help sort the mess, from 'Nyarlathotep is human perception anthropomorphizing cosmic reality' to a telepathic construct of the Great Old Ones, the true form behind all the gods, or even just a powerful agent.  And yes, he can even be The Boogeyman.  If you must.

Scions of the OSR

Yesterday's post presented a definition of OSR gaming - it’s about identifying the great bits about 1970's sandbox gaming, beyond just D&D, and applying what we've learned in 30 years of table top gaming to add improvements to that style of play.  Various DIY publishers have been leading the charge for a few years now.  So what kind of products have pushed the state of the art?

Stonehell
This megadungeon was one of the first OSR products I encountered a couple of years ago, and it taught me to love the 1-page dungeon format with minimalist descriptions, leaving a lot of room for DM improvisation.

LOTFP Adventures
The various Lamentations of the Flame Princess site-based adventures show complete contempt for game balance and will treat your home campaign with reckless disregard - long term consequences are thrilling and liberating.

Stars Without Number/Red Tide
Sine Nomine has developed a system of using simple descriptors, "tags", for quickly generating sandbox relationships and complications in a way I'd never seen before.  Plus, the publisher adapts a class and level system to some new genres (science fiction, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk).

Vornheim
Hex crawls and dungeons are heavily dependent on maps and predefined content; Vornheim is full of alternative techniques for presenting fantasy cities on the fly.

Points of Light
The Points of Light supplements were born out of Bat in the Attic's step-by-step sandbox creation guides, and are excellent examples of putting theory into practice.

ACKS
ACKS (Adventurer Conqueror King) is a retro clone rules set that adds campaign rules and some 3E style feats and combat options onto the classic D&D chassis to extend old school play beyond exploration, into the character's long term career arc.

There are tons of high quality adventures, hex crawls, and small rules supplements that have been written using the OGL for the retroclone games; I'm not listing them here because most of them present their maps and content in a way substantially similar to TSR's content - there's more of it, and many of the books break out of the cliché settings (like Carcosa, or Anomalous Subsurface Environment).   I highlighted the books above because they're the ones that opened my eyes to totally new or different ways of doing things.  The OSR is more than mimicking the 1970's; it's about distilling what rocked in those early game styles and evolving it with appropriate ideas from the full spectrum of games.  It also means adapting modern technology and methods, like the G+ hangouts or the use of crowd-funding.

My list can't be exhaustive - I'm one guy, and clearly can't speak for all - what do you see out there that's been a game changer for how we run our old school games?

What is OSR Gaming About, Anyway?

OSR gaming is not about nostalgia.  It's not about playing an old rules set just because it was old.  It's about updating or rediscovering a style of table top gaming that was left behind by mainstream game publishers, and evolving the style with the benefit of 30 years of experience.

You may have a different definition of OSR gaming.  There are plenty of primitive screwheads arguing on message boards whether a game that drops clerics can still be considered an OSR game, for instance.  What follows is my definition, and it explains much of the focus of my blog.

OSR Gaming:  The role of the game master is to act as an impartial referee and present a pre-defined setting, while giving the players complete freedom to make their own choices within the setting.  We shorthand it nowadays as "sandbox gaming".  To me, it's that simple.  OSR gaming requires giving the players the freedom to explore a setting, and using rules that facilitate exploration as the primary mode of play.  Everything else is just details.

(I like the word "setting", but I wonder how many times "milieu" shows up in the 1E DMG?)

Building hex-crawls, site-based locations, random tables for content, those are all tools and techniques for defining the setting.  Those are the kinds of things that are evolving by borrowing ideas from 30 years of game publishing.  Those are the types of things that are maturing through the efforts of the DIY publishers and the talented bloggers out there.

What about the choice of rules?  The simpler rules of early games make it a lot easier for a referee to create a sprawling setting for sandbox play than a heavy system - like those systems where a monster stat block takes paragraphs and pages.  But folks have certainly tried to play modern rules-heavy games in the older style, and there are plenty of Pathfinder or GURPs bloggers in the OSR blogosphere taking part in the conversations.

Games like early Dungeons & Dragons, where an over-arching objective is to recover treasure and level up your character, provide a strong incentive to interact with the sandbox regardless of the setting details or story.  But not all OSR games have a class and level system, either.

Conversely, just because a particular adventure or campaign uses an older rules set doesn't make it an OSR style game.  Dragonlance was published for 1st Edition AD&D, but the plotted nature of those adventures, and the use of pre-made characters, takes those adventures completely out of the realm of player-driven sandbox play.

My pocket is still full of opinions, but alas, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.  I want to discuss some of the publishers doing DIY OSR games and why they get me all fired up with the sandbox joy.

Your World in the Balance

The green dragons that terrorize the Elderwood rarely cross the river; the stone castles along the borderland that face the river are built to withstand acid, and poison gas, and the men that guard those walls cut back the brush for 100 yards or more, to provide clear lines of fire for the massive ballistae that face across at the Elderwood.  At least once a year, a caravan tries to traverse the desolation of the dragons, and it goes heavily armed, with a column of sturdy knights and dozens of mercenary archers along each flank.  Even so, it's a risky business, guiding caravans across the wilds.

You shouldn't be asking the question, "Are things in the game balanced for the player characters?"  The world doesn't give a flip about the player characters or their level.  A better question is, "Is the world balanced to itself?"  Is there a reason the ogres haven't eaten all the orcs in the nearby forest, or the people are able to live in the valley while the giants live in the mountains?  Why do kobolds live on dungeon level 1, and the hobgoblins live on dungeon level 2?  Have you ever looked at the "number appearing" on any wilderness charts in the early editions of D&D?  The wilds are a dangerous place, and the only way to survive out there is to go big or go home.

When running an old-school D&D game, the DM's job is not to provide fair, balanced encounters for the players.  The player characters are not precious and unique snowflakes.  The job is to provide a coherent setting, an impartial setting, and give enough information for the players to make their own decisions.  It's not my fault if a 1st level party ignores the warnings, crosses the river into the desolation of the Elderwood, and gets promptly eaten by the green dragons that terrorize the place.  They should have listened to that old geezer at the tavern.

If your game world features a megadungon, then that place represents a bizarre underworld that follows different logic than the surface world, but it is consistent to itself, and it too holds your player characters in little regard.  It's up to them to gauge the amount of danger they can handle, not you.  In the underworld, monster encounters are loosely equal to other monsters also inhabiting the same dungeon level as themselves.  Your guess is as good as mine why it works out that way.  I suppose they're drawn to the deeps by the lure of treasure, but settle to an appropriate depth where they can survive and still hoard the most wealth.  It's why the underworld is such a strange place - the dungeon levels.  But it's not your job to fully explain it, either; make it coherent, so it follows its own internal logic, and then let the players figure it out from there.  Whatever you do, don't balance it down to their level of incompetence.

This is going to be my true test for 5th Edition, whenever we're able to see enough of the system to evaluate it - can it be used to create a coherent fantasy world?  If we're back to minions and solos and monsters that change roles and games stats in relation to the player characters, the answer, not surprisingly, will be no.

Lessons from Running Mega Dungeons

A few years ago, I ran a summer-long campaign using the Stonehell dungeon.  The lessons learned were invaluable, and heavily influenced some of my decisions in structuring my current campaign, The Black City.  Some of the things I got right; there are plenty of things that still need refinement.  Running your campaign using a megadungeon, campaign dungeon, or tentpole dungeon (pick your term) as the centerpiece offers a lot of benefits, but it's not a risk free proposition.  There are a couple of basic things you have to absolutely get right, or it's going to crash and burn on you.

Feed the Player Choice Engine
Choice (or agency,as the cool kids call it) is the magic engine that makes the mega dungeon work.  Information is the fuel.  The megadungeon needs an interesting background to engage the players, and they need to learn enough about the dungeon to plan their own capers.  Making blind decisions is no better than a coin flip, and when the players don't have the right information, they're choices are meaningless.  OSR luminary Matt Finch said it much better than I could on a comment here at the Lich House:  Running a better sandbox game.  Read and gain 1 point of Wisdom.

Information tools include things like campaign background, rumors in town, clues picked up within the dungeon, rumors from other adventuring parties or dungeon inhabitants, treasure maps, and so forth.  These tools are tried and true.  The players need to be able to plan, and their plan needs inputs.

I would elevate this as the # 1 reason, bar none, mega dungeons fail - failure to feed the engine.

Engagement
Interesting environments develop engagement.  You've all heard the advice - make sure your megadungeon has some distinct levels and areas, to limit repetition and monotony.  Design set piece areas, that are intricate, tactical, or otherwise very cool.  Add factions to the dungeon so the group can engage in non-combat roleplaying, or a bit of politics.  Make sure the rooms have interesting encounters that provide a challenge, or the chance to learn something (even if its an empty room).  This is all common advice, good advice.  My list is not exhaustive, and one can certainly argue more or less special ingredients need to be in that sauce.

But engagement requires information, first and foremost, and that means feeding the engine.  Putting in a wicked cool 'Fountain of Serpents' as a major set-piece location is less valuable when the player characters don't hear about it, learn why it's cool, and get enough information to plan a mission to try and find it.  Multiple competing factions are irrelevant if the group doesn't discover how to take advantage of the rivalries.

The Dwimmermount Controversy
Tenkar over at Tenkar's Tavern recently ran his crew through a level of Dwimmermount (Closing the door on Dwimmermount) and it spawned discussion there, and on TheRPGSite.  The players didn't like it - and ink has been spilt.  Dwimmermount discussions always seem to have popcorn value, since it's a high profile project that has veered off the road a bit.  James Mal has one of the largest pools of OSR readership, perhaps encouraging a bit of schadenfreude - I just know, mention Dwimmermount, and folks come out swinging hatchets.

However, if players aren't excited to step foot into the dungeon or plan a targeted excursion, they clearly don't have the right information.   I can't say if the drafts are to blame - I'm a project backer for Dwimmermount, but haven't bothered with the downloads yet.  Tenkar's group did explicitly set out to run the levels they used "as is", without heavy improvisation or enhancement by the DM.  It's spawned lively discussion about empty rooms, evenly distributed copper coins hidden in rat poo, and nothing less than the very death of the megadungeon format!

No published megadungeon can capture the magic of the campaign that birthed it.  Running a game session is performance art, and the more sparse are the published notes, the more improvisation is required to bring it to life.  The manuscript needs to fire the imagination and give the DM something to work with, too.  Keep your popcorn handy, where will this saga go next?  I should I probably get off my keister and actually download some of the evidence, experience the drama firsthand.  I'm still a popcorn muncher.

I had expected to spend time talking about what's going wrong and right with the Black City, but I'll have to save that for tomorrow.  My soapbox is about to collapse under the weight of self-importance, and I've got enough bruises this week already.

Scoreboard: Grading the Crowdfunding

So - how are you feeling about your pledges to various Kickstarters and Indiegogo's these days?

Smarter folks than me have discussed the new tools at length.  I've decided to group projects into one of three broad types and categorize them roughly.  I've observed crowdfunding is being used for:

1) venture capital for an undeveloped product
2) a way to expand or polish a nearly complete product
3) an alternative to a traditional preorder

All three uses seem pretty valid - the problems crop up when you think you're pledging to one type of program and you find out later it was another.  The key is understanding what you're being asked to support and make sure you're willing to accept the risk if the project falls into another category.

Many of these gaming projects are being done by hobbyists in their free time, not professionals as a day job.  There are likely going to be delays - even under the best of circumstances.  Heck, even professional and corporate products are frequently late.

I decided to run down the various kickstarter-a-gogo's I've been funding, relate how they're doing, and point out how they fit into the "three point model".  Since many of these are hobbyist products, it's unsurprising how many are running behind schedule.

ACKS Player's Guide
Late
The player's guide was a number 2 - a full manuscript was ready early on.  However, the rewards system allowed backers to increase the depth and breadth of the book quite a bit, expanding the initial manuscript.  The hard covers for this one are running a few months behind the estimated date.  However, backers have had access to the final draft of the work for a while, pacifying anyone lacking a little patience.

Adventurer Conqueror King
Completed
ACKS seemed to be a number 2 to me; the rules draft was available almost immediately, but backers had the chance to tune the final rules while art was solicited.  This was a great project to support.

Barrow Maze 2
On schedule
This is clearly a number 1; Barrowmaze 1 was excellent, and the online response motivated the author to create a sequel; the funding project launched before the manuscript was in place.  However, it seems to be on schedule, so far, so good!

Bumps in the Night
Completed
Pagan Publishing used Kickstarter mostly as a preorder mechanism to get this collection of horror scenarios for Call of Cthulhu printed (#3).  It was ready for Gencon.

Dwimmermount
Late
The campaign promised a July delivery; from what I see with the updates, this one looks like actual delivery will be sometime next spring - 9 months or more behind schedule.  The natives are restless.  It is what it is at this point - a project that's behind schedule.

Horror on the Orient Express
On schedule
The campaign isn't even done yet; I'm pointing this one out since it blurs the line between 2 and 3.  HOTOE is a finished product using Kickstarter to get reprinted, much like a preorder, but Chaosium is also using the kickstarter to do updates and overhaul the presentation, adding flavors of a number 2 project.

LOTFP God that Crawls and Monolith Beyond Space and Time
Partially Late
Both of these were presented as number 2, finished manuscripts that needed art, layout, and finishing.  Vagaries of layout and page counts have introduced delays and additional writing, creating split shipments.  However, communication has been up front, backers are being treated well, so I haven't seen torches and pitchforks forming outside Finland.

LOTFP Hard Cover Reprint
On schedule
This involves a straightforward reprint of an existing product (essentially a #3) but included a funding goal to get a brand new Ken Hite adventure written (# 1).  The risk of a professional designer not delivering seems fairly low.

LOFTP Grand Adventures
On schedule
This was clearly a risky # 1 - soliciting backers to fund a bunch of elevator pitches from folks known for work in adjacent games or media.  If a lot of unproven writers had gotten funded here, there probably would have been quite a bit of glass breaking at some point.  As it is, the selections that got funded all seem dependable.

Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man
Late
This is a niche Call of Cthulhu product by Dennis Detwiler, a co-author of Delta Green.  It's a number 2, a manuscript that used kickstarter to fund artwork and enhancements.  It doesn't seem far behind schedule for a one-man product.

Seneca Crane Must Die

I had this guy as a DM once...

The Hunger Games movie recently hit DVD, so most of you should have had the chance to see it, assuming you didn't read the book last year.  My wife fanatically tore through all three books of the trilogy last year, eventually loading the audio books and making them mandatory listening on one of our overnight road trips this summer.  In this way I've managed to take in the first two books, and am working my way through the third now.  As an avid table top gamer, it's hard not to see parallels between the referee and the role of Seneca Crane - the Head Game Master of the 74th Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games novel describes a dystopian future where a vicious central authority, the Capital, has its boot on the throat of the twelve districts, after a bloody civil war concluded some 75 years ago.  As punishment for the rebellion, the districts must send a pair of children each year to the capital to compete in "The Hunger Games", a 24-person elimination blood sport where only a single child emerges alive from a specially prepared wilderness arena.  The annual games are designed to demonstrate the impotence of the districts, and the futility of struggle against the might of the Capital.

The main character of the story, Katniss Everdeen, volunteers to attend the games on behalf of her kid sister, who gets selected in the random lottery to represent District 12.  But I don't want to discuss Katniss; let's just take a look at the games themselves and the character Seneca Crane.

Each year, the games are held in a specially prepared arena designed with meticulous care by the current Head Game Master.  It's a sprawling wilderness terrain littered with natural hazards such as poisonous plants and dangerous fauna.  The 24 players (Tributes) begin at a central depot called 'the Cornucopia', where the Game Master has provided weapons and gear for the taking.  Players thrust into the game must choose between fleeing immediately into the wilds, or trying to weather the inevitable bloodbath that erupts at the Cornucopia as players fight to the death over weapons and gear.

Here's a crucial piece of the equation; the Hunger Games are televised throughout both the capital and the districts as entertainment and political message.  Seneca Crane's role doesn’t stop with the creation of the arena;  he's expected to deliver exciting television to the viewers back home and send an object lesson to the districts.  Fairness in the games is irrelevant.  If a player moves too far away from Crane's action, the arena is manipulated to guide them back towards harm's way.  If a player or group of players is doing too well, Seneca Crane inflicts additional hazards on them.  We see an example in the movie, when Katniss continually eludes her opponents, and Seneca orders her to be herded arbitrarily towards a group of murderous Tributes by a rampaging forest fire.  Along the way, she is blasted by fireballs and seriously injured, further decreasing her odds of survival.  Later, Crane conjures mutated hounds to chase her down as she continues to elude him.

Seneca is no hidden creator, no unrevealed prime mover, who lifts the curtain on the stage and then steps out of the spotlight.  He is a celebrity in his own right, interviewed on national TV by Caesar Flickerman.  He covets the stage.  He considers himself quite important - after all, he is privy to the secret thoughts of the President.  He has an agenda, and he will not be denied.  His manipulations infuriate the players, just as much as his meddling infuriates us as readers.

I would hope the applications to table top gaming are evident.


Capsule Review:
Stepping off the soap box a moment for a capsule review, I will say the books are an entertaining, fast read.  The series follows in the footsteps of great dystopian works like Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid's Tale, and 1984, holding up a mirror without too much overt proselytizing.  The parallels to reality TV and the Survivor phenomenon are compelling.  As a fan of mythology, I appreciated the allusions to Theseus and the use of the term "Tributes" to describe the unlucky children chosen for the games.  It's a theme that echoes in the other books.

I recommend the series if you like science fiction, and don't mind it toned down just a bit to fit the 'young adult' genre.  Young adult does't mean unintelligent.  You might even pick up a few useful ideas for tricks, traps, and puzzles from the arenas, for use in your own role playing game setting.  I certainly did.

LOTFP Campaign Target: Broodmother Sky Fortress

If you're out here following different OSR blogs, I'm sure you've seen a mention or two or five about the LOTFP adventure campaigns - James Raggi's ambitious (or insane) plan to get a slew of LOTFP adventures funded and published.  You can follow the link and go read a bit more about the campaigns and authors.

Here's an observation: I would guess there's a fair amount of "analysis paralysis" and wait-and-see going on; some of the higher reward levels involve funding one campaign, but getting free books from the other campaigns, but those perks only make sense if multiple campaigns actually get funded.  (To mitigate the risks, James is offering a sizeable store coupon if not enough campaigns get funded).  Heck, I'm still undecided the best approach myself, bouncing between going and funding a few individual campaigns that I really like, versus putting a big chunk down on one and hoping more get funded on their own.

So let me offer a suggestion:  if you're on the fence about which one to pick, let's get behind the Broodmother Sky Fortress campaign.  Here's the author's recommendation:

You know what your crapsack campaign world needs?  Giants made out of sharks and elephants, lurking in a haunted house in the clouds, ready to jump out of cyclopean shadows and murder your PCs right in their stupid faces.

If that's not enough to motivate you, the author, Jeff, has a video blog over at his place talking about the adventure in a bit more depth and seriousness:  Jeff's video blog.  Who doesn't want an adventure inspired by Against the Giants, that breaks new ground on structuring encounters and challenges with giants?  Jeff is a prolific OSR blogger, and having read quite a few of his game reports, I have to think he'll come up with an excellent adventure.

I'd be remiss without pointing out that the artist is a big draw as well (Stuart Robertson).  Stuart puts some art on his blog from time to time (Strange Magic), and his style is heavily influence by Mike Mignola and all those Hellboy comics I love.  This looks to me like the can't-miss team up.

For practical purposes, a reason to get behind the Broodmother Sky Fortress campaign is simple; it's the front-runner and is almost half funded already.  There are a bunch that sound real interesting to me; I love Jack Vance's writing, so I'd love to support  The Seclusium of Orphone.  The House of Bone and Amber also sounds good; I've really enjoyed Kevin's games, and I own great stuff from many of the other authors as well.  But I'm going to throw some weight behind Broodmother Sky Fortress, and we'll see what happens from there.  It's possible that when one of these things gets over the hump, folks on the fence will start supporting the next runners up.

Do you listen to podcasts?  I usually listen to some on the way to the office.  The Jennisodes podcast has been featuring various LOTFP authors talking about their campaigns.  I recently heard Jonathon Bingham, Vincent Baker, Kevin Crawford, and Ville "Burger" Vuorela talk about their story ideas.  It's a good chance to hear the authors explain their ideas, as well as some of the other games they've worked on.

A Challenge For 5E

There was lots of recent chatter on the old school blogs about 'dissociated mechanics' and how this doomed 4E.  The hanging question, is WOTC still doing the same thing in 5E?

I have a different requirement for 5E:  I want a set of rules that support simulation of whatever fantasy world I'm building for my campaign.

I know the word "simulation" is loaded; I don't want a game that simulates real world physics.  But I want the rules that define the game elements to follow some internal consistency, and apply equally to players and non-player characters and the world at large.  I want a rules set that is coherent for simulating an interesting D&D world for placing adventures.

4E is littered with examples where the rules of the game lead to a game setting that has zero internal consistency or logic.  Monsters have ridiculous armor classes that make them impossible for the ordinary inhabitants of the game world to damage them.  Other monsters have 1 hit point each (as minions) and die when someone gives them a good push.

Just look at the subjective logic of treating dragons as "solo monsters" in some instances, or "elites" based on the combat role the DM wants them to possess, in the next.   The monster has no objective reality in the setting; its role and mechanical footprint is completely subjective, and based only on how it's defined in relationship to the chosen ones, the player characters.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were eventually dragon "minions", too.

I was stubborn with that game system - we gave it a long leash, trying multiple campaigns and getting deep into the 'paragon tier', against my better judgment.  I drank multiple cups of the kool aid.  I won't be nearly so gullible with 5E.

So this is my personal criteria for a successful 5E.  The rules and mechanical bits need to present a world with internal consistency regardless of the presence of player characters.  The mechanical styling of a 4E game world only made sense when viewed from the perspective of providing a perfectly balanced challenge for a set of player characters of superheroic stature with manifest destinies.  It was basically West World, Future World, and any one of those Yul Brenner theme parks (Medieval World, Roman World).  It drove me nuts.

I haven't looked that closely at 5E yet to know if it passes the test.  We probably haven't seen enough regarding the roles of monsters and NPCs in the setting.  I've heard the buzzword "bounded accuracy", which seems to mean The Mearls has abandoned scaling armor class and gone back to the older approach, where armor classes exist in a consistent range across the game setting.  That's really a great first step.  But I've also heard that level 1 characters have super high hit point totals and wield the crazy at-will powers.  (Like, dude, where's my first level?).  If NPC opponents have the same ridiculous hit points and the laser-beam clerics and the zap zap zap wizardy powers, then perhaps the system will have some internal logic.  It might be a good system for gonzo high magic fantasy where all the clerics walk around shooting lasers out of their holy symbols and all the wizards shoot ice rays out of their fingers, and that's just how the world works.

I don't see that happening; I have to think the final version of 5E will keep the players as the super heroic chosen ones of destiny, with over-the-top abilities no one else in the game world seems to possess.  This will probably mean I'll skip 5E entirely.  I can live with some dissociated mechanics.  I won't buy into another incoherent WOTC game that panders to power gamers.  I truly hope to be proven wrong!

The Crowd Funding Revolution Continues

What an interesting turn of events has developed in our part of the hobby!  In the space of just a few years, do-it-yourself publishers and small presses have gone from creating home made PDFs available with print-on-demand services, to full-blown print runs funded in advance through crowd-funding services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.  The need for an overarching corporation maintaining the game is quickly dwindling.

There are plenty of interesting funding campaigns underway for some upcoming games.  Here are a few I'm watching:

Barrowmaze 2
I loved Barrowmaze 1 - there's a review kicking around on the blog here somewhere - (Review of Barrowmaze) - so I'm looking forward to the sequel.  This one is already funded, but gets over in June - I'll be signing up for at least the PDF.  I find I actually like putting megadungeons in binders (easier to lay flat) and just writing notes on the map and margins of the print outs.  I don't think I'd do that to a nice hardcover.

Rappan Athuk
Holy moly!  An old school product breaking the $75k marker.  Ah, on closer look, you can see it's split between Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry.  That right there gives you an idea on the popularity of Pathfinder.  I would love to have a copy of Rappan Athuk, but I don't know if I can see myself spending $40 for a PDF.  This is one to pop a reminder on the calendar to see how my funds are looking in late June and decide then if the hardcover is worth it.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess
I've been clamoring for a hardcover copy of the LOTFP rules, so this one is a must-do.  I'll have to chat with my group if anyone else wants a copy of the hardcover - the deal where you get 4 copies for a group is enticing.  Here's the main thing:  I'd love to see the Ken Hite LOTFP adventure get funded, so expect to see me make some noise as this one gets closer to D-Day.  Maybe we'd see more premiere horror adventure creators dip back into the world of D&D and bring the fear.

Weird West Miniatures
I have no interest in lead painted miniatures, but this is a fascinating campaign because it shows the democratization that's happening with production - we're seeing dice, miniatures, all sorts of nifty gaming accoutrements getting created without a big company sponsor.  Even if you don't want the miniatures, there's an option to get the Weird West book printed and sent out.  I'll be sending $5 that way.

What are the downsides of the crowd-funding madness?  The first issue I'm seeing is wallet fatigue - I've got a limited gaming budget so I have to be selective.  There's the risk of vaporware.  I haven't heard of a major campaign that failed to deliver anything, but the risk is out there.  Which project will be the first to go 'poof'?  I'll probably stick with publishers that have a track record of success, or invest at the lower levels if it's a product in development or a newer publisher - just common sense precautions.

I'm also seeing more established publishers and authors moving to the crowd funding.  I keep thinking it's only a matter of time before Chaosium or some of the other Cthulhu publishers start pre-selling or funding their print runs this way, too.

The crowd funding revolution is a big problem for WOTC.  If their stated goal is to develop a future D&D that appeals to old school players, it's got to be good enough to lure us away from rules that work, and the wide choice of adventures and published supplements for those rules coming from DIY and self-publishing campaigns.  I just don't see it happening.  Creation by committee (or public tally) doesn't work.  I hope they're successful, because retail and big box stores are ways to reach new gamers, and the big companies have that reach.  That 5E open play test is in a few weeks; it will surely be worth perusing.

Where's the BX Love, WOTC?

I saw more rumors and announcements this week of WOTC reprints.  The AD&D 1st Edition books are being reprinted, there's a new version of the boardgame Dungeon!, and rumors that a reprint of 3.5 might be coming this fall.  Where's the love for the classic Basic and Expert books, WOTC?

Arguably the widest played retro-clone is Labyrinth Lord, a game that tracks very closely to those original BX red and blue books.  The well-regarded retro clones, LOTFP Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, and Adventurer Conquer King are essentially refined interpretations of the BX rules set (or the BECMI edit, if you're feeling pedantic).

I would love to see either the BX books or the BECMI books collected into a hardcover for reprinting.  Maybe even the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, although to be fair, I didn't like TSR's layout and art styles in the early 90's as much as the older styles.  We need that Erol Otus interior art and covers.

I've seen posts through the years that the classic D&D boxes were far and away the best selling versions of D&D because they were in mass market, box stores, and translated into various international languages.  (Frank Mentzer has frequently pointed that out on the boards).

The argument for reprinting them:  they're the best selling versions of D&D of all time, they're already optimized for introducing new gamers and kids (ie, building the hobby), and they're the darlings of the OSR retro clone movement.  What's the hold up, WOTC?

Seems like a good time for a new poll - posted to the right.  Which edition of D&D would you like to see reprinted?  Maybe this is the beginning of a period of "reprint madness" and we'll even see hard-to-find modules and supplements put into large collections or omnibuses.  One can hope.

The DM Has a Big Mouth

Let me ask you if you have this problem, too.  The party just got pasted by a monster, they run out of there dragging their dead companions and cursing the unfairness of gaming, the session wraps for the night, and you mouth off about all the things they forgot.  "You didn't even have to fight the Elemental.  What's-his -name has the Protection from Evil 10' radius spell and you guys could have hedged it out and moon-walked across that room…"

If I have a fatal flaw as a DM, it's giving the players the DM's perspective after their failures and not letting them figure this stuff out for themselves through head banging, frustration, and trial and error.  It's one thing doing an after action review with some newbies, but I'm always blabbing my mouth off about play refinements, even with the seasoned vets.

Case in point from the other night, and this one came back to get me.  The party was making camp in a stand of evergreens (they're way up in the mountains) and their ranger scouts noticed a small group of grizzly bears come down out of the opposite trees and start splashing in the river that split the valley.  Then one of the bears rises on it's haunches, sniffing the air.  Did it smell their horses, or the cooking meat?

The druid goes out there with a sack of food, cautiously uses Speak with Animals, ends up convincing the bears to be on their way, after giving them a few weeks worth of rations to drag off.

So they're camping later that night, and I snicker, "Good thing you didn't remember you took Animal Friendship…"  That's the spell that lets druids turn an animal into a permanent companion.   The gears started turning in the minds of the players… could they afford to miss a day of travel, and have the rangers and druid double back and track the bears, so the druid could attempt Animal Friendship?  Dang it!  By the next night, the druid was working on teaching his new bear companion some tricks, after burning a few Speak with Animals and Charm Mammal spells out in the wilds.

In all truth, this was a fine turn of events for the players, the druid guy loves his new animal companion - "I have a bear!" - the players laugh during Speak with Animals when the bear talks like the Yogi Bear cartoon character, and seeing a grizzly bear maul hobgoblins later in the session was entertaining all around.

But seriously, I need to learn to shut the hell up!

The 1970's Sandbox as a Post-Modern Experience

We often use the term "emergent stories" to describe what happens in the free-form sandbox style of play.  The DM presents an environment for play, without a preordained plot or story, and the players exert freedom of choice in how they choose to interact with the setting.  As they move about the place, gathering information and making decisions, we derive enjoyment from the resolution of conflicts, the approaches used to overcome challenges, the successes and failures.  Many things come together at the table - the DM's artistry of description and presentation, often humorous role playing by the players, and the anticipation of seeing how the dice roll at a given time.  "We explore dungeons, not characters".  The story "emerges".

Herb pointed out an observation he made regarding emergent story in the sandbox - he called it Memoir as Story.  (Definitely go read it, if you missed it previously).  Herb's analysis hit me hard in two places - first in how it should define the goal of actual play, and then how it informs the after-play report.

When you step back and consider a person's day-to-day life, it's a meaningless string of incidental events - morning coffee, a drive to work, stop at the drive-thru for a bagel, reading the morning email.  Is that upcoming meeting with a client important on a cosmic scale?  How about on a personal scale?  It's only after the fact that we fully appreciate the meaning of life's mundane events.  Herb's point was that the biographer or memoir writer superimposes importance on life's mundane occurrences in order to create a narrative out of an otherwise undifferentiated string of incidents.  Your life is a sandbox adventure, my friends.  We all suffer a bit from apophenia and pareidolia - we're the unsung protagonists of our individual lives.

It's been many years since I've stalked the halls of academia, so forgive me if I'm misusing the term, but when comparing the sandbox to story games, wouldn't that make the D&D sandbox a post-modern experience?  The argument is that the individual creates a narrative where none exists, by attributing subjective meaning to things.  The party happened to stumble into the toughest monster on a dungeon level at an inopportune time, but they manage to prevail due to some lucky rolls; it's only afterwards, when resistance crumbles and they learn they're left as the toughest hombres on the block, that they declare, "Boy that was some climax to clearing that dungeon level".  Prior to fixing the definition in place, the entire experience was sans plot and fairly elastic.  Who knew how it would turn out?  The other piece that's interesting is that there's no one version of the truth; since each individual constructs their own mental narrative, If you have five players, they could come away from the experience with five distinct stories.

Speaking of the number five, I'll reserve special antipathy for that darling of the new school set - the "five room dungeon".  I'll defer the invective for now; I don't want to derail this post too much with an impromptu barrage of vitriol.

Back to the main item, the other place the Story as Memoir metaphor holds truth is in the process of writing a campaign journal or session report.  The journal becomes an external artifact reflecting this internal process of attaching meaning to events; categorizing, sequencing, sifting, and otherwise editing our memories in order to present a view of what happened that's compelling for someone else to read.  I know when I write game reports for Gothic Greyhawk, I try and skip as many trivialities as possible.

Here's the lesson for sandbox dungeon masters; don't get caught up with concerns about story or driving the action in your campaign to any preordained conclusions.  The human condition is such that your players will take care of superimposing a narrative structure on what's happening for you; when it's all said and done, the group will be able to reminisce when a story arc started, when it was getting intense, and when it concluded - even if there was no premeditated story there to start.

Your job is to fill the sandbox with compelling elements - interesting places to visit, challenges waiting to test intrepid adventures, and strongly characterized NPCs.  The rest will take care of itself.


We explore dungeons, not characters:  Does anyone know who originated this quote?  I recall it was part of Evreuax's Sig on Dragonsfoot some years back, so it predated my entry into blogging.  Just curious - it sums up the old school gaming experience on so many levels.

The Artifact Rant

The future of Gothic Greyhawk

Here's how the 1E DMG describes the artifacts:

Each artifact or relic is a singular thing of potent powers and possibly strange side effects as well… Those artifacts and relics which you bring into play should be so carefully guarded by location and warding devices and monsters that recovery of any one is an undertaking of such magnitude that only very powerful characters, in concert, and after lengthy attempts have any chance whatsoever of attaining one.  [An artifact] is a super-weapon that is certain to blast the whole campaign to smithereens, unless it is given proper limitations (and also a nemesis creature in some cases).
--1E Dungeon Master's Guide

You get the gist of the sentiment.  Artifacts hold game-warping power, so the official advice is to gimp them by the difficulty of finding one, consigning artifacts to the end-game.  A slew of drawbacks and side effects afflict the owner, ensuring artifacts are a self-limiting problem.  Alternatively, they show up as mere plot devices and macguffins.  The 4th edition took it a step further, having the artifact literally disappear after a short while (I'm not kidding - they bampf!). 

I hate the mentality of dangling something amazing and then yanking it away before anything meaningful happens.  (Horrible side effects, I can live with).  It calls to mind all the things I dislike about bad sci-fi or fantasy.  "Let's introduce something amazing and cool, a one-shot silver bullet or magic pill, and then remove it before the status quo is permanently affected".

Quite a bit of sci fi or urban fantasy can be analyzed in this manner.  Indy recaptured the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis used it to change the war, but the authorities can't have that magic box running around; better hide it in a massive warehouse with all of the other unmentionables.  Powder dies, ET phones home and hops on a ship, John Travolta with all his mind powers gets killed by a tumor, and pretty much every episode of Star Trek included a MacGuffin that disappeared at the end of the episode.  The aliens always melted into green goo before Mulder and Scully could get their proof of extraterrestrials.  The truth is still out there.

Don't get me started on the comics.  The worst offenders at dangling untold power and world-changing stories, only to reset everything back to the status quo, are those jokers writing the comics.  My criteria for a good comic series usually involves the degree to which main characters get wasted and the world gets messed up.

Progressive writing allows the setting to move forward, for better or worse, and explores or alludes to the changes in the coming new world.  The cure for cancer is real, or nuclear fusion works and the world has an endless source of renewable energy; the old regime crumbles away.  The aliens discovered at the bottom of the sea stop World War 3 when we're at the brink of destruction.  Things will never be the same again.  It's much more interesting to imagine how that new world looks, than return again and again to the way things were.

This is how it needs to be with artifacts and truly powerful magic items. You don't come back to town with a Staff of Wizardry or a Holy Sword or the Hand of Vecna and act like nothing happened.  If a group finds a campaign warping item or artifact, let the campaign get bent and warped.  Oh man, I just had an epiphanous moment - I'm basically coming at this the same way as James Raggi a few weeks ago over on LOTFP - one important ingredient for weird fantasy is total disregard.

Yes - I am most definitely advocating total disregard.  The next phase of Gothic Greyhawk involves a quest for some world-breaking artifacts, and I fully intend to let the campaign get warped and bent out of shape if they get recovered.  The players are already squatting in Strahd's old million gold piece castle and we'll be dealing with the ramifications, both positive and negative, of what it means to win a kingdom (or at least a remote mountain barony).  They destroyed their previous home area by unleashing a horde of zombies and ghouls; the post-zombie world is certainly more interesting than it was as "medieval mundania".  Blowing shit up is fun.  Don't be afraid of letting the party win the lottery, and then watch them figure out how to handle the problems brought by too much money.  When the party is presented with a plunger attached to a big chunk of dynamite, you need to take off the safety switch and let things explode.  Failure *is* an option.  Kill your darlings, as the writers say; Mary Sue needs to die, and you need to stop being a slave to the campaign's status quo.

--This PSA brought to you by Dreams in the Lich House is more of a pep talk and manifesto for my upcoming campaign, than sound advice for any of you, but any discussions of dead Mary Sue's and world-breaking super weapons in the comments would be much appreciated.

Sage Advice: Adventure Details

There's clear tension between the amount of adventure detail in a published work, utility at the table, and required preparation time.  The X factor is the DM's ability to think on his or her feet and improvise interesting details.  It could probably be represented as an equation:

X = Y:  Detail requires reading and preparation; walls of text are useless while running the game, so all the prep is necessary for memorization, creating notes, and highlights.  Meanwhile, sparse notes are easy to read and parse while running the game, but the important details need to be improvised.  There are correlations between detail and prep time, and improvisational ability and the degree of sparseness the DM can handle.

There was a post over at Telecanter's place that laid out the case against too much details; it went like this - detail is expensive (it takes up a lot of time), it demands mastery (you need to keep the details straight), and it's dominant - once something is tagged, it's hard to change the descriptors, the details stick.

One sheet of notes for a huge level

There's been a whole minimalist movement in the OSR, starting long before I was out here posting, to recapture that sense of 'creation at game time', where the adventure is laid out in the loosest level of detail imaginable, and the DM improvises on the fly.  The "one-page dungeon" movement and Sham's empty room principle captures this aesthetic well; sparse description and empty space transforms the effort of DMing a game from rote memorization and regurgitation into an effort of creation on the fly.  Remember those interesting Gygax pictures, like this one, of Gary running his famous Castle Greyhawk?  The map might be intricate, but  the prepared notes seem as brief as possible.

On the other hand, there are adventure writers like James Raggi that insist on extensive detail, and make impassioned defenses both of the published adventure and copious detail.  Consider this excerpt from the introduction to LOTFP's Hammers of the God:

It is the atmosphere and flavor which I feel is the most valuable in a commercial adventure. Anybody can make maps and stock them with monsters and treasure. You can even do it randomly. Off-the-cuff refereeing is a skill that indeed requires no outside support, be it commercial or free. But I know when I buy an adventure, I am seeking in-depth descriptions that make the map and the contents of the location come alive, and hopefully in a way that I would never have done on my own…

There are some valid points there; note that he doesn't denigrate off-the-cuff refereeing, he just opines that there's not much you'd need from a publisher.  We'll come back to that point later.  He goes on to make another interesting observation, one that I agree with; one way to learn how to run your own games better is observing how other DMs do things.  You can't always sit in when other DMs run their games (although Google+ games seem to be changing that!) but you can pick up staging tips if a module author makes it a tacit goal to impart that kind of help through the module presentation:

Becoming a good musician starts with having a good record collection. Being a top athlete means competing against the very best. I think a Referee can only benefit from taking another’s adventure and adapting their style to the author’s presentation, instead of doing the commonly-vaunted reverse method of always adapting published material to the Referee’s own campaign.

The "problems" of detail have different solutions for the home DM vs the RPG Publisher.  In the home game, we should strive to run wild with that minimalist style; write down just enough to keep the facts straight and jog your memory if you get fuzzy.  You are your campaign.  The reason there is no published Castle Greyhawk is because Gary was Castle Greyhawk; how do you catalog and document a life-time of running adventures in a location you mostly improvised?  You don't.  That's why we'll never have the real thing.  Go make your own.

For publishers, the answer is different.  When I look to buy a published module, it's for one of three reasons - either the author has established a specific theme or tone (using the authorial voice Mr Raggi discusses in his quote above), or the author is providing new tools for enabling the home DM, or the module covers a significant amount of scope.  I've done a fair amount of reviews the past year, with more on the way, and those adventures that score highest  in my personal ratings do something new and different in one of those three areas.  For everything else, you'd probably be better off just home brewing it yourself.

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Gaming Reflections for a Sunday

Confessions of a 4E Survivor

Hill Cantons had a recent post about running a version of Greyhawk where the Archclericy ofVeluna was a repressive state, and the campaign involved pushing the players to foment a rebellion in Veluna; he was a bit apologetic (now) for working out some angst-ridden issues through the medium of the RPG.  But it's very honest, isn't it?  Running a game is expressive, and the DM can't help but to influence the game based on a wide range of internal factors - aesthetic tastes, political views, artistic influences, high minded goals.  I'm right there with you, Chris; circumstances this past week inspired me to reflect on my own gaming philosophy and how I got here after some rather forgetful experiences.

I started this blog almost a year ago after returning to old school gaming, the current Greyhawk campaign, after  a year long 4E experiment.  Prior to the Greyhawk campaign, I had been running a kid's game using Moldvay BX, and running an adult game using 4E.

When we returned to old school gaming, I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve - I wanted to run a game where the players could go anywhere; I'd just present an interesting world for them to interact.  The game would use lots of random tables and rulings on the fly.  It would heavily feature dungeons or site-based locations that encouraged exploration.  I was on Dragonsfoot prior to blogging and I really liked the maxim, "We explore dungeons, not characters". Of course, since becoming a member in this online blogging community, I've had the opportunity to classify and reflect on a lot of these techniques and identify what makes them work in terms of game theory.  I'm well along the path of having a personal philosophy of gaming.

While doing some reflecting this week, I had a bit of an epiphany; if our 4E game hadn't ended in such an ugly manner, we might still be grinding our way through it like Plato's cave dwellers, not remembering the outer world of the forms.  My philosophy was born like a phoenix out of the ashes of a disastrous campaign.

Apologies in advance to anyone who still really likes 4E; this may cross over into 4E hate, and I don't mean to wage any edition war.  My priorities in a game are just different than folks that still play 4E, and I have friends that do like it still.  First, let me take a moment and discuss how the DM's side of those games went:  prep for the following week started at the end of the previous session, where I'd quiz the players on their intention for the next game night.  During the week, I'd prepare the 2-3 encounters for the next adventure, building highly intricate and detailed encounters with all of the monster roles (skirmishers, brutes, artillery, etc), interesting terrain, and some hand-picked treasure based on what the character's needed.  In 4E, magic items are a necessary buff so players can make their numbers, and the DM is recommended to hand-select the items based on group need.  Prior to game night, I'd have the battle map pre-made in dungeon tiles, I'd have all the right monster minis pulled, and usually when the players showed up, we could practically start with the minis on the table, ready to fight.

Looking back, there's a world of difference between prepping the two styles; 4E involved lots of intricate planning to create those detailed encounters, and time spent doing all the physical props - the right tiles and the right minis.  It wasn't like preparing for a role playing game; weekly prep was more like army building for one of those warhammer games.

The tactical fights were complex and very challenging; skirmishing in 4E is tight.  However, all we had time in a game session was for a couple of fights (each encounter could be an hour or more).  There really wasn't much exploration, and only a modicum of story.  In between sessions, players would pour over their characters, looking for ways to tune their proficiencies and power selections.  Character optimization for the next week's fighting happened weekly.

We had this one guy who hadn't played D&D since 1E, we'll call him Darth K, and his expectations were all set by 1E games when he was a kid; every week he would bemoan the fact that there were no wandering monsters, that treasure wasn't randomized, that he couldn't go anywhere on the maps or do anything, that hijinks were discouraged, that every week was a scripted set of linear encounters prepared by me.

It reached a head one night when a patron gave the group the adventure for the night, and when the group retreated to plan how to tackle the mission, Darth K pipes up, "This mission blows.  Let's pass and take the next mission."  Jaws dropped.  "No, seriously, let's hire some other adventurers to do this adventure for us, we can offer them less money and pocket the difference.  Then let's head out of town and find something new to do.  Besides, my character has some role playing reasons why he'd skip this one - it might involve breaking a law and snooping around, so I'm going to pass no matter what".

That derailed the game for the night; we had a smaller crew that night, and they started arguing for and against doing the mission, and then I chimed in pointed out that they could do something else, but we'd break for the night because these were the only battles that were prepared; 4E wasn't good for improvising new battles on the fly.  It was a bad scene all around.  In the ensuing email discussion, it came up that each 4E night was a rail road from a role playing perspective, because only a single delve or mission was prepared, and the players had to do it or there were no battles; Darth K ended up calling me an inflexible dick, everyone else had no back bone, 4E was a shitty system, and we could all go to hell.  He quit.

In retrospect, I was indeed a crappy 4E DM; maybe someone else would have done better.  I didn't have the time or energy to build multiple adventures per week; most of the time I'd have a couple of different plots leading to the same adventure (hiding the rail road tracks a bit), but this particular time was a down week, and it showed.  Darth K was lacking in some social skills, and was insensitive to the amount of prep time I put in each week, but he wasn't wrong, either; there were material differences between how 4E was working and the kind of game he really wanted to play, and the need wasn't met.

Shortly after Darth K's blow up, the 4E game started to wane in attractiveness.  As mentioned, I was running a kid's game in parallel to 4E, using Moldvay BX.  I'd laud from time to time how free form the game was, and how much fun it was to prepare and run; I finally got the 4E adults to agree that starting a sandbox style campaign using Moldvay BX would cure the 4E blues and let the guys engage in a free form game, too.  It was a leap of faith, and a willingness to let go of all the monetary investments in 4E, but we haven't looked back.

I've had a rough week this week - I was away at a conference, and lots of fires blew up back at the office, requiring long hours in the evening and weekend.  It seems like a strange time, a midst some work chaos, to get all introspective about a personal gaming philosophy, but there it is:  everything our current play style represents is a direct consequence of those blow ups and personality clashes that derailed the 4E campaign.  Darth K was more of a gamer acquaintance than friend; if there was real substance there, it wouldn't have ended a friendship.  It's unfortunate, too, because he was a good gamer and he'd be absolutely delighted with everything about our current campaign; I've often considered dropping him a line.

Okay - that's a bit of cathartic navel gazing; I'm thankful for the experiences, because it sent us in a new direction, and the rest of the group is enjoying our return to D&D's roots immensely.  Back with regular posts shortly!

Drifting from Looting

I've been thinking a lot about "back to basics" D&D lately and how the traditional adventure structures complement the game's objectives.  Characters advance by gaining experience; the most efficient experience is gained from the recovery of gold while exploring dungeons.  In Moldvay and similar versions of classic D&D, you get about 4-5 times more gold than monster experience when using the suggested dungeon stocking methods; you see this formula loosely followed in the published modules, too.

Hex crawls and multi level mega dungeons are exploratory by nature, and provide plenty of opportunities to recover gold.  Coincidentally, the hex crawl and the mega dungeon are the old school structures that support massive player agency and have gotten the most attention in the OSR as we rediscover these old forms.  They emphasize site-based exploration over combat.

It's a worthy issue to consider, because it raises the question - how closely should your game cleave to the strengths of D&D?  Or put another way - how much of your D&D game should be exploration versus fighting?  And to put a practical application on the question - as I consider something like the wide area sandbox - should the plot hooks and adventures be focused on plundering ancient sites and locations vesus monster hunting or cult bashing?  Here's a note from the boss on the question of drift:

The danger of a mutable system is that you or your players will go too far in some undesirable direction and end up with a short-lived campaign... Similarly, you must avoid the tendency to drift into areas foreign to the game as a whole. Such campaigns become so strange as to be no longer "AD&D". They are isolated and will usually wither. Variation and difference are desirable, but both should be kept within the boundaries of the overall system. Imaginative and creative addition can most certainly be included; that is why nebulous areas have been built into the game. Keep such individuality in perspective by developing a unique and detailed world based on the rules of ADVANCED D8D.
--Gary Gygax, Dungeon Master's Guide (Preface)

There's a steady trajectory across versions of D&D that's moved the game from an exploration model to a fighting model.  If Moldvay and earlier versions put the emphasis on exploration and treasure recovery versus combat, AD&D increased the value of fighting; AD&D 1E literally doubled the amount of experience gained from fighting monsters, compared to BX D&D.  By the mid-80's, we see things like Dragonlance, where XP for story rewards have crept into AD&D's twilight years.  2nd Edition had an alternate XP system as well (my memory is shaky here, but I remember class rewards); 3E focused on the combat encounter and CR (challenge rating) as the basis for XP, and 4E dispensed with XP for treasure entirely - 4E rewards are 80-90% tactical combat, 10-20% recommended for quests, and 0% for treasure.

Drift indeed.

Turn Undead, Meet the Nerf Bat

As a Dungeon Master, there are few abilities I loathe more than Turn Undead.  It's the one ability that neuters an entire class of encounters; in the post-zombie hype world, it turns an entire style of campaign - the undead zombie apocalypse - into a non-starter.  After 30 years of D&D, Turn Undead is a fairly iconic power of the cleric, but other than Hammer Horror films, it doesn't have a strong literary tradition.  (Clerics turning fairies is another matter…)

There are some options.  A DM could accept the status quo, and just use lots of other monster types - default D&D is fairly "wahoo" and full of monsters; when undead are encountered, the cleric just racks up auto-wins for the party.  When an undead is important to the adventure, the DM makes sure it's a much higher level, hurting the chances it gets affected by the "I Win" power of the cleric.

Apparently Gary Gygax had issues with the ease that clerics Turn low level undead, seeing as even the introductory adventure,  Keep on the Borderlands, features a cave full of undead each with an amulet making it harder to turn.  There's an important lesson there; when the DM doesn't like a power the players have, it's okay to cheat and nerf it.  No - I'm lying - that's a horrible solution, especially coming from the author of the rules.

In AD&D, the DMG presents an optional way to nerf the power - if the undead are in a group, the DM may opt to make the undead unable to be turned unless the strongest undead can be turned.  It's a variation on the option above - don't let the Cleric be awesome by making sure the threat is outside of his range - but now it extends an umbrella to the minions, too.

If you're playing a low magic setting modeled after the pulp fiction, monsters are rare and undead feature heavily in those types of settings; a zombie or skeleton would be an unnerving experience in such a setting.  But not if there's a level 1 or 2 cleric nearby - Turn Undead is a deal breaker.  I like the approach Raggi took in LOTFP, converting Turn Undead into a level 1 spell.  It's still a "I Win" power, but now it brings the ability into the realm of strategic and tactical choices, as well as resource management.  Turn Undead becomes more like a Sleep spell - potentially decisive, but requiring a meaningful choice.  I like that approach better than the artificial patches - constantly equipping the undead with "Amulets of Protection from Turning" or jiggering the "important" undead encounters to overload the cleric.

But maybe that's just me - seems like a good time for a new poll - posted up to the right.  Do you nerf* Turn Undead in your game?

• We use it as is; clerics are awesome
• We use mixed groups of high and low undead
• I limit its daily use (like LOTFP)
• We don't use clerics
• House rules - see comments

*Nerf:  reducing the effectiveness of a game element (named after the popular foam toys...)  I figure most gamers know the term, but you never know...

Get Ready for Twenty Five Days of Terror

I'm jumping in to participate in the OSR September of Short Adventures thing and will be posting 25 short adventure stubs.  Each one will feature a horror themed encounter with a unique 'monster'.

Some months back I mentioned that one of the things I'd like to work on is a Weird Horror themed sandbox setting; I wanted to adapt some of the Chaosium Lovecraft Country stuff to D&D.  Cranking out 25 short horror encounters should give me a nice push in that direction (though to be fair - a lot of these will be general horror, not purely Lovecraft-themed).   If I like how some of them turn out, I could see elaborating them with stats and putting them in a sandbox setting.  The material should be system neutral, though I'll be writing it with the LOTFP assumptions in mind - post-Medieval European.

Integrating a new adopted son into our family has eaten up a lot of computer time for learning new creative tools (ie, good mapping programs) so the Black City has stalled temporarily; this will keep me writing the good stuff in the meantime.

My brainstorming tables are ready to go, including my first D30 table; I'll post them when I get the chance and proudly join the Order of the D30.

First trip into terror will be tonight!

Creativity, Standardization, and Cranky Grognards

It's funny how the mind can correlate unrelated blog posts.

Today I was over at Alexis's place - he's been railing against the RJK interview that happened over on the Hill Cantons.  Anyway, one of his many theses seems to be that D&D needs standardization (bear in mind, the only right way to play D&D is his way).  So I'm just another useless blogger.  Man, I love that guy.

Then you read about Ark and his frustration with 4E.  We played 4E for almost two years before returning to classic D&D; we know all about it.  Let me tell you, 4E is chock full of standardization.  Mountains of standards.  Rules and a core system that cover everything.  Go check out Ark's piece to see how he really feels about all those mechanics.

Then I'm over at Grognardia reading how Ed Greenwood doesn't bother with the rule book or roll the dice unless its combat, adjudicates all the non-combat bits by pure DM fiat, and it's a rip-roaring session.

The Standard for old school play needs to be Creative DMs.  There, I've solved it.

Edit:  Added Links
Alexis argues for conformity and standards
Ark rails against 4E's Mechanics
Grognardia recounts gaming with Ed Greenwood