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.

Gothic Greyhawk Report, Game 42

Cast of Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-6: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-5 (1): Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-6: Mike
Shy, a Fighter-6 (3):  JR
Leonidas the Paladin-4:  Nogal
Digit, the Elf Thief-5:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-5
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-5 (3)
Serge, a Fighter-4
Ireena, a Fighter-5
Donavich, Cleric-4

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AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
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This will be a short post; I spoiled the major encounter with the ghost the other day:  Beware the Ghostly Clone!

Picking up after the death of Zeke, the group waited down in the village for the snow to clear, hoping for a nice day.  When the weather improved, they set off back up the mountain, trudging slowly through the snow to make a good path along the wagon track.

Their basic plan was to continue searching the catacombs and crypts; the catacombs were vast, and the group had left off about halfway through the northern section of the crypts after encountering a spectre; that's where they resumed searching.

They reached the northern extent of the catacombs, including a wooden dungeon door leading to a new section of the dungeon, and a portcullis blocking ingress to a majestic door - the inscription indicated it was the tomb of Sergei von Zarovitch.  They passed it by for now.

Meanwhile, the paladin found a crypt door that radiated evil.  While the group prepared their tactics, they noticed a veritable moving carpet on the ceiling above them; as they angled their light towards the ceiling, they saw hundreds of bats creeping into the hallway above them from all of the surrounding passages.

"It's a vampire", they quickly theorized.  "It's summoning hundreds of bats to harry us when we breach the crypt".  Not wishing to deal with spell casting while hundreds of bats fluttered around their caster's heads, Mister Moore spent a few rounds with the wand of fireballs blasting them off the ceiling.  Hundreds of charred bats dropped to the ground all around them, and the hall stank of burnt fur.

When they got back to the crypt door, a vampire was indeed on the other side of the sarcophagus within the crypt, hissing at them and threatening.  It was Gertrude again.  The fighters rushed in and started slashing her; it seemed like it would be a quick fight, but then the cleric decided to use Turn Undead, forcing the vampire into mist form and driving it away into the darkness.  Frustrated by the vampire's escape, the fighters spent a moment chewing out the cleric.

The next occupied crypt they found involved the ghost encounter; you can get the gist of it in Tuesday's post (linked above).  

The group decided that running from the ghost was the smartest choice, and they fled the scene.  Once the party was safely back upstairs, they considered options on researching ghosts and identifying weaknesses; remembering that there were books on the undead in the large tower, they retrieved a few of the books, then decided to head down the mountain and read up on ghosts, making it an early adventuring day.  They murmured something about visiting the gypsy wise woman for advice as well.

Threat Analysis in the Weird Setting

The traditional sandbox structures- the multi-level dungeon and the wilderness hex crawl - both support a degree of transparency in the player-driven game; when formulating their plans, the players know that the deeper dungeon levels are more dangerous, and the further one goes into the wilderness is also more dangerous.  There's a geographic correlation between distance and danger.

The use of standard Monster Manuals enhances that transparency; players learn that goblins live in the woods over here, but an ogre was seen beyond the river; perhaps the orcs on dungeon level 2 warn about the bugbears on level 3.  The Monster Manual provides a common yardstick, both for the players and the NPC inhabitants of the world, when sharing knowledge and describing the dangers that are out there.

With that foundation established, let's toss out a caveat:  transparency and threat analysis is really only necessary in the player-driven game.  A fairly standard style of play is where the DM determines the upcoming adventures:  when the players are 4th level, the DM builds adventures that threaten 4th level characters; the players don't hear about those 1st level opportunities anymore.  When they're 9th level, they're hearing about plot hooks that lead to challenges for 9th level guys.  The world conforms to the needs of the player party and the DM provides appropriate adventures for the point in time.

The player-driven game postulates a different approach; the world exists, and there are opportunities appropriate to both low level and high level characters at the same time; it's up to the players to gather information and plan appropriately. It's a bit like putting The Tomb of Horrors in the swamp outside the home base right from the beginning of the campaign; it's a legendary location the group will hear about early on, but they'll also know appropriate warnings about going there, too.

Let's turn our attention to the Weird Setting sandbox and how threat analysis is different in a campaign where neither geography nor a traditional Monster Manual provide threat transparency.  I've been musing about an approach I'm calling The Library of de la Torre; the character of Luis Diaz de la Torre is like a Spanish version of Solomon Kane, a wily adventurer priest that traversed Europe during the Thirty Years War, building a large occult library and a field journal of notes.  At the beginning of the campaign, the group gets access to de la Torre's journal, giving them possession of wide-ranging plot hooks around Europe.  So the question becomes, how does the group determine which plot hooks lead to In Search of the Unknown (a classic starter adventure) and which plot hooks lead to The Tomb of Horrors (a legendary killer dungeon)?  Ideas follow.

Flatten the Power Curve
The first thought is to build adventures that are less about combat and more about problem solving; fighting is possible, but still avoidable by low level characters if they'd be overmatched.  A rules system like LOTFP works well for this style, since all of the armor classes are in a narrow range and the combat engine doesn't require increasing to-hit rolls and increasing AC across all character classes.

Embellish the Hooks
The idea here is to provide enough information directly in the plot hook, or allow research, such that a group can rank the threat level of a given opportunity.  For instance, first level characters might read about a legendary vyrkolakas ruling over a remote Greek island; a modicum of research would identify that the vyrkolakas is a Greek version of the vampire; as such they might decide it's not a good fit as their first caper.

Use a Bestiary, Anyway
I can't help but think that adventures in and around a fantastic Europe would use some monster names common to folklore - ghosts, specters, vampires, werewolves, bogeys, goblins, and trolls; even if you're not using previously existing versions of these creatures from the Monster Manual, the "weird" versions can maintain a similar power level so a group can plan a sequence for their investigations.

Balance is Overrated
The simplest idea is to toss concerns about balance out the window; who cares if the group tackles the 10th level necromancer right from the beginning?  Once they see what the opponent is capable of doing, let's hope they run and plan to circle back later in their careers when they're better prepared.

*    *    *

By blending the previous techniques, I'm confident a series of plot hooks could be presented that would still let the players evaluate the risk versus reward of the different opportunities and develop a plan.  The traditional approaches to running a small area sandbox - either as hex crawl or dungeon - make the DM's job a little easier, but nothing worth doing is ever truly easy.

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

Beware the Ghostly Clone!

The AD&D ghost

"I detect a foul evil emanating from the crypt", said the paladin during last game session.  "Well, we're here to kill vampires", was the general group consensus - let's pop that sucker open and get the stakes and garlic ready.  "This feels worse than usual, if that's possible… something more malign than a vampire".  Nonetheless, they pressed forward, breaching the crypt, and encountered their first GHOST.

Considering how common they are in real world folklore, ghosts are not very common in D&D; after long careers of playing AD&D and 3E, none of my players could recall encountering a ghost.  I couldn't recall ever running one in an encounter.  I had some vague concerns how the group would beat the ghost based on its peculiar abilities, but I let her rip anyway; players are resourceful and my group frequently surprises me.

You see, ghosts are ethereal, and can only be damaged by ethereal combatants.  Oh - and telepathy.  Ghosts are also effected by telepathy.  So how many different ways can your group current group engage in ethereal and/or telepathic combat?  (If you're like us, the answer is none).

I can think of two magic items that allow someone to drift into the ethereal plane - the lame "oil of etherealness" and the even lamer "armor of etherealness".  A few rare psionics disciplines allow ethereal travel and telepathic combat - except we don't use them.

Meanwhile, the ethereal ghost can magic jar with impunity, seizing control of a player character and using the possessed body to beat on his compatriots.

My players did their best, busting out their Potion of Undead Control (the ghost saved against the charm effect) and failing in their Turn Undead attempt.  After those failures, they Webbed their possessed companion, and when the ghost gave up the possession, they ended up cutting him free and running for it.

Castle Ravenloft has a library stocked with books on the nature of the undead, so they raided the library before the end of the night to come back at the problem with some fresh tactics after researching ghostly vulnerabilities.

After the session, I started thinking through how difficult is a ghost encounter, and started considering all the different ways they could destroy one without ethereal travel; Destroy Evil or Raise Dead (in BX/Labyrinth Lord) are the most straightforward, but both are 5th level spells.  I poured over the game text a little more to see if I should put in a folkloric element - destroying a fetter that ties it to the mortal world, or somehow driving it from the material plane (maybe via the 4th level Exorcism).  And then I noticed a key sentence - this is straight from the AD&D 1E monster manual:

Ghosts attack by two means:  Any creature within 6" of one is subject to attack by magic jar spell from the ghost.  Unless the ghost becomes semi-material to attack by other means, it can otherwise only be combated by another in the ethereal plane (in which case the ghost has an armor class of 8) or by telepathic means.  If the ghost fails to magic jar its chosen victim, it will then semi-materialize in order to attach by touch (in which case the ghost is armor class 0).

Aha!  The text implies the ghost picks a single victim to magic jar, and if it fails to capture them, it will materialize and continue to attack on the physical plane.  Semi-materialized ghosts can be swatted with magic weapons.  That's a pretty important implication - it saves the ghost from being an invulnerable road block.

The whole reason I got into a jam is because we're not actually playing AD&D 1E, we're using Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion, and the subtle language about a single target didn't make it into the text; the AEC implies the ghost's primary and usual attack is the Magic Jar; materialization is purely optional (and suboptimal).  So I'm putting out a cautionary note about the importance of cross-checking subtle language when it's imported into a retro-clone; clone authors are tossing the text to avoid infringement, and sometimes that original phrasing was important.

I do have a follow-on question for any D&D lore masters, however:  Does the Protection from Evil spell protect an individual from Magic Jar in OD&D or 1E?  I know it works that way in later editions (it's in the SRD, for instance), but I don't recall when it entered D&D - I was looking for a reference in AD&D 1E and couldn't find one.  I'm wondering if that entered via 2E AD&D or perhaps Dragon?

Why the Monster Manual is Important

Picking up from yesterday's post on D&D's competitive advantages, to wit:  players have a clear mission (finding treasure), and simple accessible archetypes for character classes.  The level progression encourages campaign play.  The classic adventure structures push decision making on the players; the class roles encourage group tactics and cohesion.

Just an aside:  Through the years, I've seen folks here and there run story-heavy D&D games, where the players go off performing quests and dealing with villains.  Note how the first thing that gets overhauled and house-ruled in such a regime is the XP system, because the objectives of that quest-oriented story-game are no longer the same as Dungeons & Dragons as written.

Learning to love it again...

Aesthetically, I like the idea of unique monsters or re-envisioning D&D without the use of a published bestiary, but it misses an important point:  the Monster Manuals are part of the secret sauce.  There are two sides to using the hierarchical creatures, with their bundles of hit dice and special abilities loosely translating into a "challenge level":  first the manuals give the DM ready-made creatures for populating dungeons and wilderness, according the right level of danger the DM wants for that locale; secondarily, they give the players enough information to calculate their relative risk and reward due to meta game knowledge.

If you've been with me a few weeks, you know I've been posting here and there about a campaign idea (the Library of de la Torre) where the players inherit an occult library with field notes; the previous owner's journal is full of adventure hooks and the players have a number of adventure choices right from day one.  It's a way of front loading a lot of plot hooks (like a rumor table) and super-charging the player driven game.  Note the difference between the following two sets of facts and how they offer different opportunities for a group just starting out:

First Version
After reading the journal, the group learns that the mine outside the old town was haunted by tommy knockers, also called kobolds; there's a lot of silver left in the mine if it could be made safe.  The peasants near the old wood are afraid of losing livestock to goblin fairies that creep out of the woods at night.  Further north, it's said travelers between two towns often disappear along a stretch of road passing through the marshland, because an ogre lives somewhere across the swamps.  And just last week a giant was seen striding back towards Snake Head mountain after stealing a cow.

Second Version
After reading the journal, the group learns that the mine outside the old town was haunted by a foul demon from beyond; there's a lot of silver left in the mine if it could be made safe.  The peasants near the old wood are afraid of losing livestock to a witch that creeps out of the woods at night, stealing animals for unknown purposes.  Further north, it's said travelers between two towns often disappear along a stretch of road passing through the marshland, because a necromancer lives somewhere across the swamps.  And just last week a "dead thing" was seen striding back towards Snake Head mountain after slaughtering a cow.

My idea behind the Library of de la Torre is for a "weird horror" style campaign in the 17th century, so a set of facts similar to the second version is more in line with what I'm thinking.  But surely you see a flaw?  If you want the agenda to be determined by the players, the rumors need to be embellished with enough information to allow a meaningful analysis of danger.  On a larger scale, this is a critique of the whole line of thinking "monsters should always be unique and unknowable".

DM's with a strong hand on the steering wheel will ensure the adventure opportunities for the low-level group are appropriate for low-level characters; the danger scales with the capabilities of the group.  That's not the approach I want to take with the wide area sandbox - I'm still recovering from my time with 4E and the dictates of balance, thank you very much.

My platonic ideal these days is with sandbox play, and a lot of my recent posts have focused on pushing the boundaries of the sandbox to test the limits - whether it's been concerns with illusionism and moving content (the Shell game post that instigated the whole 'Quantum Ogre' discussion), the use of plot hooks as "leading the players", or now looking at how we can break out of the micro-setting and build a larger wide area sandbox without hex-by-hex minutiae.

I'll return with thoughts on whether D&D sans bestiary and the sandbox are reconcilable; the key takeaway for me was the revelation that published bestiaries are as important to players in the player driven game as they are to DMs, as they provide a means for gauging challenges.

The Ongoing Campaign as Competitive Advantage

I've played many other RPG games through the years, and still like to run one-shots of other systems from time to time, but I keep returning to D&D as my primary game, particularly when it comes to running an ongoing campaign.  I'm finding there are elements D&D brings to the ongoing campaign that other game systems don't match.  Many of these game mechanics that support the ongoing D&D campaign are the same elements decried as "unrealistic" or "artificial and gamist" by D&D's detractors; however, they're the foundation of D&D's endurance in the hobby.

I'm sure I'm not the first blogger to highlight these properties, but it's important to establish my thoughts here as it will have implications for structuring this "wide area sandbox" about which I've been musing.

Class Structure
The confluence of classes and levels creates forward impetus for the players.  Characters grow in power incrementally with each level gained.  Class differentiation supports archetypes and simplistic character niches; class differentiation creates roles, propelling an adventuring party towards team-based play and group strategies.

Americans crave incremental advancement, and the class and level system is a powerful psychological pull towards repeated play and the importance of an ongoing campaign.

Adventure Structure
The level structure intrinsic to D&D also supports a diverse and hierarchical bestiary that makes it easy for the dungeon master to populate adventures with monsters appropriate for specific character levels; the estimable nature of these threats make it easy for players to gauge the types of challenges their group can handle.

The story structures most common to D&D - the dungeon and the hex crawl - are easy to create and populate within the fantasy genre.  The limiting nature of the dungeon geography forces the player group to consistently make micro-choices during exploration from a finite number of options. This is an important feature to ensure timely decisions and a fast-moving game.  Even a hex crawl structure, which seems to imply wide open choice, only allows 6 options to leave a hex, and it's likely the group will have basic information about the terrain in the surrounding hexes to inform the decision process.

Objectives in D&D are also simplistic; advancement happens through the accumulation of experience points, and experience is awarded primarily through the recovery of treasure.  Both the dungeon and hex crawl structure are intended to provide exploratory environments that facilitate the discovery and recovery of treasure.

Campaigning
A series of consecutive D&D adventures form an ongoing campaign.  The advantages of the class and level system emerge in campaign play; incremental advancement encourages players to stay with the same characters over time.  The transparency of threats within the D&D adventure structures allow group decision making on the macro scale as the group weights relative risk versus reward.  It could mean choosing one adventure site or another in a hex crawl setting, or choosing one dungeon level over another in the dungeon setting.

As a community, one of the strongest arguments we've been promoting in favor of old-school gaming is how a properly structured D&D campaign empowers player choice.  The level structure allows players to manage the ratio of risk versus reward for themselves; this supports a player-driven game that allows the players to plan and execute their own agendas.

Concept Games
Most other games do not copy D&D's structure of classes and character levels on the player side, or the strong hierarchy of threats by level for the game master to employ.

Here I'm speaking of all those strongly typed games that emulate specific genres - whether it's the various superhero games I've played (V&V or Mutants & Masterminds), the Sci Fi (Traveler), or horror games (Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Vampire or Werewolf).  In most of these genres, it requires the DM to prepare a much stronger story in order to engage the players.  Only the Sci Fi games support creation of a "sandbox" similar to D&D, but lack the transparency of threat analysis inherent in D&D's bestiaries that support a simplistic evaluation of risk versus reward.

Concept games are plenty of fun, but I find the burden they place on the DM for story is something that pushes me away from using them in long campaigns; I much prefer running one-shots or short campaigns that focus on specific story arcs for other RPGs.

So now we come to the reason for laying out my argument for D&D's strengths vis a vis other games; as I'm thinking through the Library de la Torre concept as a wide area sandbox, I'm pondering what aspects of that campaign structure do or do not take advantage of D&D's competitive advantages.

Unfortunately, Sunday chores beckon, and the NFL games are just starting up, so I'll need to continue this line of thought tomorrow!