Reaction Risks

To continue with the idea of 2d6 reaction rolls... obviously since both the player and the DM are rolling dice, there's the possibility of doubles on either side, and thus quite a potential of variety. What can we do with this potential?

The DM is rolling for a response from an essentially passive participant in the reaction process. The NPC or creature isn't trying to do anything, yet, just reacting to the PC. Thus, they aren't really risking anything. However, doubles can be used to create unexpected results; if the default reaction is "friendly" or "hostile", the DM's roll of doubles means the reaction becomes more extreme. If the default reaction is "neutral", a doubles roll pushes the default towards "hostile" on a 1-3, or towards "friendly" on a 4-6.

The player, on the other hand, is almost always risking something on an initial reaction roll, and sometimes takes a risk on later rolls as well. Exactly what is being risked depends on what the player is doing:

• intimidation risks making the default reaction move towards "hostile";
• bribery risks discovering that the target is incorruptible;
• lying risks the target actually knowing more about the truth than the PCs hope.

Note that each of these leaves room for successful persuasion even though something unfortunate has happened. Successfully intimidating a now-hostile creature means it may do as the PC asks, but now has to be watched closely. "Successfully" bribing an incorruptible NPC may mean a stern warning or lecture, if the NPC feels otherwise positive about the PC. "Successfully" lying to an enemy that discovers your lie may mean that the enemy reads more into your dishonesty than you expected, or maybe is just impressed by your pathetic attempt.

Edit: Hell if I know how I misspelled "reaction" in the title and nowhere else.

Reaction Rolls

I haven't felt like making a big post for a while, but I have been meaning to post something about reaction rolls since even before the morale post. So let me just post my general thoughts and I'll work out the details later.

What I'm thinking, of course, is ditching the standard reaction roll and replacing it with the "best roll of 2d6, doubles may indicate a risk takes effect" system. (Which, incidentally, I call "Paris", which should at least explain one of the obscure tags in my sidebar.) If you reinterpret Charisma as not only a pleasant personality, but also a strong one, reaction rolls are basically a Charisma vs. Charisma challenge. Each side rolls 2d6, pick the best roll for each side, and the side with the higher Charisma gets a +1 bonus. If the PC gets a higher roll, the NPC feels more subordinate, which may result in a more positive reaction; if the NPC gets a higher roll, they feel more dominant and will act pushy, at the very least.

The default reaction is "neutral", which may sway back and forth from positive to negative. NPCs or creatures who feel their territory is being invaded or who are from a rival species are "hostile", which will probably lead to attack or at the very least angry demands. Other NPCs or creatures may have a default "friendly" reaction, which may lead to helpful behavior. The extremes are "immediate attack" versus "unconditional aid".

I want to think a little bit about the risks in reaction rolls before continuing in the next post.

How Tolkien-ized Is D&D?

I debated whether to weigh in on the discussion about Tolkien's influence on D&D, seen on Grognardia and other places. I lost.

The Tolkien elements are pretty minimal. Elves and dwarves exist in pre-Tolkien fiction; so do little people (halflings or hobbits.) Orcs, even in Tolkien, are really just bigger goblins. "Barrow-wight" is technically an English translation of Daoine Sidhe, although Tolkien turns them into ghosts. Ents, Balrogs, and mithril are definitely Tolkien, and were-bears seem to be, as are elven cloaks and boots. Rangers, too. And dragons can talk and seem fully intelligent, as opposed to the way they're usually presented in western myth and literature pre-Tolkien, although Dickson's "St. Dragon and the George" (1957) is a significant exception.

Consider also what D&D didn't take from Tolkien. Magic in Tolkien is pretty stunted. Gandalf knows how to make light and fire, but apparently only because he wears the elven ring of fire. He's literally a wizard: a wise one, someone who knows a lot of old lore. The only other magicians are ring-wielders (Elrond, Galadriel) or ring-makers (Sauron.) It's been decades since I've read LotR, but I don't recall Sauruman doing any of the magic tricks in the book that you see in the movie. Giant spiders can be intelligent in Tolkien, but are more like animals in D&D.

The main thing Tolkien did to D&D was humanize the elves, dwarves and little people. Elves in Tolkien are non-ghost versions of the Daoine Sidhe. Elves or fae exist in numerous fairy tales, Arthurian romance, and in pulp fiction, like A. Merritt's "The Woman of the Wood". But these are weird, otherworldly beings; Tolkien downsized elves considerably. Dwarves, of course, used to be called dwarfs, drow, trow, or trolls, and are everywhere in fairy tales; Tolkien changed the spelling of the plural and made them bearded miner/warriors, which stuck in D&D. Little people used to be brownies, leprechauns, and the like, but again Tolkien named them, took the magic out, and gave them some traits and behaviors that stuck in D&D.

Without Tolkien, elves, dwarves and little people would have definitely been included in D&D, but would have been closer to their sources, and probably not as character races. That would have definitely changed the hobby; "race as class" would be the norm. So Tolkien's influence is simultaneous narrow and deep.

Edit: Duh, "St. Dragon and the George" wasn't written in 1057.

Morale

I want to tackle morale, loyalty, and reaction rolls next, since morale is related to fear/sanity. I want to keep this post shorter than usual, though, since I think I've been over-explaining some very simple rules variants. As you can probably guess, I want to dump standard morale and use the roll 2d6 and pick the best method, with the possibility of a risk on doubles. That's my answer for almost everything.

When NPCs or opponents are faced with something that might make them flee, the GM rolls 2d6. The higher of the two die results is the effective perceived threat. Add +1 for each factor that might make the situation seem more threatening (phobias and the like.) Then, triple the number; if it's higher than the NPC's loyalty, the NPC breaks morale; if it's equal to loyalty, only NPCs that have taken more damage than the roll break morale. If doubles are rolled and the NPC breaks morale, they surrender rather than flee.

There are two side factors to consider:

1. I would only roll once for all NPCs on one side. Individual NPCs may have different phobias or traits that modify the base roll in distinct ways. Thus, we can get some NPCs to flee or surrender while others fight on, all out of a single roll.
2. Some NPCs or creatures may have special rules, such as "never flee", "never surrender", "suicide attack instead of surrender"; others may have special risks that take effect on doubles even if they don't break morale, like "betray leader".

I suggest the "triple modified die result" method so that base loyalty can be equal to the leader's Charisma score. Figure most monsters have a loyalty of 12 (leader with average Charisma.) Of course, some henchmen or hirelings will have higher or lower loyalty, but that's for a follow-up post.

Are Sanity Mechanics Done Sucking Yet?

So, suppose neither of the sanity mechanics solutions I've already suggested work for you. Suppose you are a firm believer in scaring players instead of characters, but still hope for some insane behavior, without sanity rolls or sanity points.

Suppose you also have a problem with insanity in D&D as written, treated as mental illness from a 20th-century viewpoint. Many modern mental illnesses wouldn't even be considered madness, just a possibly unpleasant personality -- like sociopathic disorder. Treating insanity scientifically, like most other subjects, does not fit a fantasy feel.

Usually, madness in the Middle Ages and earlier is seen in terms of curses and possessing spirits. It's not forced behavior, it's something only the madman can see and hear, but which still has an effect; the mad behaviors are the madman's reaction to what he sees and hears. This is why Hercules has to be punished for killing his family in a fit of madness; the sensations that made him want to kill them are a curse from the gods, but his actions are still his choice: he could have fled, or done something else entirely.

If a character is afflicted with madness, describe something only they can see. Make sure you tell other players present that their characters don't see the same thing. Nothing the other characters do, except something like magically curing the madness, has any effect on the mad vision. However, there is a 1 in 6 chance that anything the mad vision does becomes real. One of your dead enemies attacks you? 1 in 6 chance each attack does real damage. Swarms of rats cover your pack? 1 in 6 chance they gnaw through and destroy it and your food rations.

I basically see fantasy madness as being one of three forms: phobias, which create illusions that harm; manias, which create illusions of objects of desire; and delusions, which create confusing illusions that are not necessarily hostile. There is a 1 in 6 chance that a phobia will harm you or otherwise inconvenience you, if not dealt with. There is a 1 in 6 chance that treasure will turn into the object of a mania, unless you keep yourself supplied with your obsession. There is a 1 in 6 chance that a delusion becomes true, closing off actual passage ways, creating new passage ways, changing the contents of rooms or the behavior of NPCs. Everyone is inconvenienced by a mad character, even if the character tries not to react to their madness.

Do Sanity Mechanics Still Suck?

Continuing to comment on James Raggi at LotFP's comments on Horror in (Fantasy) Role-Playing; my solution to the problem of sanity rolls yesterday was to turn fear reactions into strategic options: instead of being told "your character runs away in fear", you have the option to gain a speed bonus if you choose to run in fear. Another solution I have is similar, but is based on the common defense of sanity mechanics "Sanity Points are like Hit Points".

There's a problem, though: we're all familiar with the luck versus physical health argument. Most sanity point mechanics interpret these mental hit points as the mental equivalent of the latter. Compare that to the InSpectres Lovecraftian variant UnSpeakable: there is no temporary insanity, there is just permanent insanity when you hit 0 Sanity. It's the "luck and endurance" equivalent of sanity points.

For horror in D&D, I'd treat sanity points in a similar manner. Sanity loss is tracked against hit points, rather than deducted from a separate sanity point pool. Sanity loss equal to or greater than hit points means either death from a heart attack or a coma, depending on the cause; in general, supernatural entities that deliberately cause fear can opt to make a victim comatose instead of frightening them to death, while impersonal forces always kill.

Most things would not cause sanity loss; certainly, anything a character has seen before has no effect, and neither would most things they've heard of. I'd only track damage from three things:

1. magical fear/insanity effects;


2. the first time a character takes damage from a horrendous, never-before-imagined attack;


3. any time a character takes damage from an attacker the player believes can't be damaged or defended against.

Number one is easy: turn fear/insanity-based spell effects into damage spells of the same level. For number two, keep in mind that the attack has to be powerful and have side effects the character has never experienced before, and in general hasn't heard of, or only heard vague information of. This will be setting-dependent, but I certainly wouldn't include traditional weapon or claw/bite attacks from skeletons, or ordinary dragon breath. As an example of number three, imagine that the players know nothing about werewolves; their characters encounter one, and their weapons do no damage. After they discover this, each damage roll by the werewolf does both physical damage and sanity damage; once the party discovers that werewolves are vulnerable to silver, they no longer take sanity damage: they have an idea of what to do. Even if the party doesn't discover the effects of silver, if they discover some defense against werewolves (like wolfsbane,) they no longer take sanity damage while they have access to that defense.

I would combine this point mechanic with the approach I suggested for critical injuries; to avoid taking more sanity damage and possibly dying of fright, players can suggest in a semi-freeform manner some disadvantage equivalent to the critical injuries (trembling knees: half movement, penalty on using legs; jitters: risk dropping items, penalty on using hands.) Each such sanity injury would have a point value equal to the amount of damage the character is avoiding; it would be healed in the same manner as critical injuries, but with Remove Fear replacing Cure Light Wounds.

There's still another possible solution, one that the "scare the players, not the characters" proponents might actually like. But I'll save that for later.

Do Sanity Mechanics Suck?

Over at LotFP is a post about handling horror in fantasy RPGs. James Raggi raise an interesting criticism of sanity mechanics: NPCs can be overcome by horror, but don't take control of a PC as a result of a failed sanity roll, and certainly don't have PCs frightened by stuff they normally would just fight.

Now, the last part is pretty solid advice, but there may be a problem with PCs never feeling the effects of fear unless the players choose to. There is a Cause Fear spell, after all. The main problem with sanity rolls, as I see it, is player resistance to being told how their characters react. Players accept the risk of death, and should, logically, also accept the risk of fear. But how can you implement this without taking over player characters?

Maybe make fear results beneficial, so that players might opt to choose fear?

A quick fix would be to allow a panic bonus: if a player opts to be panicked, the character can run at triple speed away from danger, but risks fatigue damage from the exertion. Simple. No one is being forced to do anything, but a player now has an incentive to choose panic. Likewise, you could allow a "paralyzed with fear" bonus: paralysed characters would get some kind of bonus against being physically forced closer to the object of their fear and may even be partially or wholly immune to hypnotic/magical commands to move closer, but the character must make a save to regain the ability to attack or take other action.

I have another idea on this, which I'll save for another post.