Looking for Orcs in All the Wrong Places

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming to terms with AD&D

Alex over at the Autarch blog had this interesting perspective on Gary Gygax, and it's been rolling around my head now for a few weeks:

I once had the pleasure of lunch with John Zuur Platten, the business partner of Flint Dille, Gary Gygax’s old friend and collaborator. Through Flint, John had had the chance to learn much about Gary Gygax and the origins of D&D. John explained to me that “to understand D&D, you have to understand that Gary thought like an insurance actuary. D&D is fantasy fiction through actuarial science.”


Re-reading the 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide, the truth of this claim becomes obvious. Previously inexplicable rules – like the disease tables, or potion mixing – clicked. Gary wrote those rules because he wanted to account for the actuarial risk of living in a fantasy world. Gygaxian Naturalism exists in a like manner...

"(AD&D) is fantasy fiction through actuarial science."  Take a moment and flip through the 1E DMG or Monster Manual and the truth of the statement does indeed become evident - both of those books are practically textbooks or field guides for quantifying and classifying life in a fantasy world, reducing incidents, demographics, and ranges of results to percentages and tables.  This view really helps me get a handle on why AD&D 1E holds such baroque charm.  It's why I refer back to the books so often, regardless of which version of D&D I'm running at the time; it's implied setting and rule books all-in-one.

I recently came to terms with another aspect of AD&D, as well.  I used to hold this belief pattern:  D&D combat is abstract and not a simulation, so there's no value in adding rules and game elements to enhance simulation - therefore, weapon vs AC, weapon speed, and various new combat rules, don't improve the game.  (Looking at the AD&D poll on the right, lots of folks have ignored some of these rules as well).

These days my view is more nuanced; D&D combat isn't a simulation, but adding tactical complexity in AD&D creates interesting choices for gamers.  Providing interesting choices is a different end goal than enabling combat simulation.  Rules like weapon speeds, segments, weapon vs AC, etc, look a little different when you treat them as rules that create tactical choices; they give folks wanting more of a war game experience more knobs and levers to control.

Sometimes we speak of "authorial voice" and those AD&D books certainly have a unique style (Gygaxian prose).  Taking it a step deeper, its useful to see how Gygax's background and passions (actuarial science and war gaming) created the big differences between OD&D and the AD&D books he penned solo.

One thing I'm not familiar with is why ability scores were changed so dramatically between OD&D and AD&D.  Why was the 4d6 drop the lowest score adopted as the primary ability score generation mechanism?  I'd be grateful if any AD&D scholars can point me to old Dragon columns or online sources that might discuss the reasons for the change.

My weekly game continues to pull in more AD&D into Moldvay BX and Labyrinth Lord by using Goblinoid's AD&D-like supplement, the Advanced Edition Companion.  I'm hoping to do a ton of the classic AD&D modules as we continue the Gothic Greyhawk campaign (Tsojcanth, the Giants and Drow series are somewhat on the horizon), so we'll either continue to convert monsters back to BX style, or make the switch over to AD&D entirely.

I get the sense most old school bloggers play the more stripped down games, like OD&D or Moldvay BX (or the clone equivalents).  But I'd wager many of you still get wrapped up in the "baroque charm" of those AD&D books as well.  Go on, you can talk about it-

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