The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms

SubHexCrawl Tools: Landmarks

2012-01-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Beyond the shape of the land a party of adventurers passes through and the vegetation and other stuff covering it, there are the individual objects dotted around the landscape. This would be individual trees (if there are no woods or forest present,) clearings (in woods or forests,) boulders, territory markers, cairns, totem poles, statues, lampposts, buildings, or even more fanciful features (water spouts, glass pillars, snowmen, unexploded artillery shells.) A GM decides which landmarks are necessary for a particular area and rolls separately for each, or rolls several colors of dice all at once to generate the exact locations.

This roll always uses d6s with pips instead of numbers, unless you can find other types of dice labeled with pips. Each pip represents one object, for things like trees or boulders, with 2 and 3 representing a line of two or three trees, boulders, or other items, 4 or 5 representing a cluster of objects, and 6 representing a double line. For clearings, the pips represent areas of a standard size (larger than the predefined space between trees in a forest, for example,) and the pips are merged to get clearings of different sizes and shapes; this could apply to pools of water, bubbling tar, or other liquids as well.

Note that these "landmarks" are mostly of the common feature or obstacle variety, rather than a unique object used for navigation. However, as long as you know what a special landmark is (old church, fountain with snake motif, giant stone head,) you can use the same procedure to place it exactly; just roll one die instead of two or more and interpret the pips in most cases as indicating shape and size, as for clearings.

You want to place elevations and landmarks before drawing paths (roads, streams.) I'll get to paths in a future post, since I'm still considering a couple different methods of doing them. Sometime after that, I'll do an example, as requested, but I need to do diagrams for that first.

XP Levels in a Game Without Levels

2012-01-27T17:00:00.000-08:00

As a few of you may remember, the project after Liber Zero (and its associated project Liber Blanc) is Alternative V, an atomic age horror game set in the pseudo '50s by default. Instead of "kill monsters, find treasure, become a hero" or "solve the mystery", the goal of the game will be to create scientific advancements while fighting off saboteurs, commies, mutants, and aliens. For that style of game, it doesn't make much sense to use standard character advancement and character levels, but I still would like to keep the game very close to the standard class-and-level system. How do you do that?

Here's a way: although characters will have classes (archetypes,) the levels will be applied to their projects. For example, take the default project of "land a rocket on the moon". You start the project at 1st level, much as you would a character. There's a level goal, similar to the goal of 9th level to start your own barony; when you reach that level, you're ready for your actual mission. There will probably be additional supporting projects, defined by the GM, such as "new rocket fuel", "space suit", and "protection from cosmic rays". And there can be side projects, designed by players, with the level goal set by the GM.

When you earn experience points, they go into any appropriate project; reaching the next level gets you closer to completion. Each level increase can earn you an additional related technological achievement appropriate to that level. As a guideline for now, consider a scientific or technological project to be equivalent to a D&D Magic-User, and compare the stated goal of the project to M-U spells; you can finish the project when the project is a high enough level to "cast" a "spell" equivalent to what the project does. Thus, if we make a rough comparison of "land on the moon" to the Teleportation spell (5th level,) our project needs to be 9th level before we can reach the moon.

The "spell list" for technological projects obviously needs to be worked out, and there may be other "project classes", like political projects, military projects, espionage projects, and public relations projects. But I think that's enough detail for me to get a better grasp of where Alternative V is heading, and what it will finally look like.

SubHexCrawl Tools: Layering

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

In addition to general elevation (where various mounds, cliffs, caves, and pits are located,) you can also roll for layers of distinct substances to further refine the details of an area. To illustrate what I mean, let's start with a two-layer or three-layer process that doesn't require a separate roll: distribution of plants or water. In an area of fields or hillocks, grass or other plants may not be evenly distributed across all surfaces. Milder slopes would be covered with the same kind of plant life as flat areas, but as a hill or pit becomes steeper, parts of it may fall away to expose dirt or rock beneath. Thus, you can assume that a layer of grass covers all flat and Slope 1 or 2 areas, but Slope 3 areas would have patches of exposed dirt and Slope 4 (cliffs) would have no grass at all, only dirt or rock (and perhaps brush, moss, or lichen, as appropriate.) Similarly, you can decide that, in a wet or marshy area, any low areas turn into ponds of water, becoming part of a "water layer".

The position of these grass, rock, and water layers are determined by the elevation roll, but you can use a separate roll to establish more variety. For example, roll three dice for the location of underbrush or thickets, as opposed to grass. One of the main reasons I selected d4s for the elevation roll in the previous post was so that I could simultaneously roll d6s for vegetation varieties, or patches of mud, or other layers of various materials. For layer rolls, the numeric result of each die indicates different material types; thus, if you have a field (grassy base layer) with patches of bare gravel, thickets, and light woods, you can break down the d6 results this way:

1 Gravel
2-5 Thicket
6 Woods

The exact numbers vary based on the overall feel of the area. You can give more weight to Woods and increase the number of d6s if you want a more equal mix of woods and fields.

The dice rolled for distribution of layers are interpreted as areas rather than individual objects. Draw boundary lines around each die, merging any areas of similar composition together if they are no farther away than the width of one die. If the layer is composed of individual objects, the objects are assumed to be evenly distributed; woods, for example, would be defined as multiple trees with an average distance of 5 or 10 feet between trees. If you want much smaller clumps of individual trees, you would roll for landmarks instead, which is what I will cover next.

SubHexCrawl Tools: Elevation Rolls

2012-01-26T14:38:00.000-08:00

I wasn't very clear in my post on the subhexcrawl concept. I'm actually not talking about "subhexes" as a unit of measurement, but the "subhex level" of travel, somewhere between the dungeon scale and the wilderness scale, but much closer to the former. The scale isn't fixed, but if hexcrawls take place at the "1 turn = 1 day" scale, the subhexcrawl takes place at the "1 turn = 1 hour" scale; 120 yards every ten minutes, plus ten minutes of rest. Also, I'm not wondering what these maps would look like, but what a tool for sketchbox-style play at this level would look like. I started thinking about this after last Saturday's game, which involved a short boat-trip across the Scarlet River and a short walk through a wooded area to the ruined tower. I glossed over the details of the geography because we were just trying to get the characters to the tower so they could explore. I didn't draw the locations of trees, rocks, or mounds on my map. But what if I wanted that information, on the fly?

As an example of what I'm thinking of, let's take something Niccodaemus mentioned: elevation. I'm thinking of something like this: get 3d4 of one color and 3d4 of another color (let's say "light" and "dark".) Roll them right on a sheet of paper. The light dice represent higher elevations than the default, while the dark dice represent lower elevations. Draw contour lines around the location of each die; if two or three dice of the same color are close together (one die width or less,) it's one hill or pit, possibly with different elevations at different parts. If a dark die is almost touching a light die, the dark die represents a cave.

The numbers 1 to 4 on the dice represent different slopes:

Light Slope: 10% to 25% grade (steep enough to be noticeable.)
Medium Slope: up to about 50% grade (possible risks based on surface, but still walkable.)
Steep Slope: up to about 100% grade (more of a scramble, requires use of hands)
Cliff: 150% or more (definitely climbing rather than walking now...)

Essentially, the dice establish various layers, which will be important in a future post.

Blog Research Tool

2012-01-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever vaguely remembered reading something on a Blogger blog and wanted to find it again, but you're not sure you know what to look for? You just think you'd recognize it if you see it?

Or maybe you've discovered an interesting blog that has a lot of posts, and you're not sure how to sift through them? And the blogger doesn't like tags or labels, for some reason?

Here's a trick that works on Blogger: add /view/flipcard after the URL.

Examples: GROGNARDIA, Sham's Grog 'n Blog, Jeff's Gameblog,

Blogger offers other views, too, but the flipcard view is the one that packs the most information into the smallest space. Doesn't work for all blogs: Playing D&D with Porn Stars has this feature disabled, for example. But I use the trick with my own blog from time to time to find stuff I vaguely remember writing.

SubHexCrawl

2012-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Think, for a moment, about hexcrawls.

I don't mean just a wilderness adventure, in a pre-designed wilderness. I'm talking about sketchbox hexcrawls, starting with the most rudimentary geographic features and no details of what is found in each hex (or often, what is found beyond the local mapped area.) I talked a little bit before about possible mapping tricks for settlements (the basic barony mapping procedure, mapping routes to the next settlement during conversations with NPCs, mapping settlements with a dice map.) I've got some rudimentary ideas on some other hexcrawl tricks I'll be mulling over.

Your basic hex is 2 leagues across, and adventurers on foot travel 6 leagues a day. When a party travels over long distances, we customarily skip step-by-step detail, in contrast to short-distance travel in a dungeon. We don't say where the peak of a hill is, where a grove of trees is, or which way a stream turns when describing long-distance travel; we just mention the general landscape and any specific landmarks of interest (in other words, stuff we may have mapped as an encounter.)

But what if the adventurers are in a town and they don't want to go a full hex away, but just explore "things along the north road" or "the small hills in the east"? That sounds like the potential for another variety of exploration, a middle scale between dungeon exploration and wilderness exploration: the subhexcrawl. Exploration of mapped outdoor encounter areas is pretty well covered, but there are no tools that I know of for a truly random, sketchbox-style subhexcrawl.

What would tools for a sketchbox subhexcrawl look like? I have some ideas, but I thought I'd ask what others thought.

Self-Referential D&D

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

James Maliszewski recently covered a Dragon article about familiars that coincidentally touches on the self-referential nature of modern f/sf media and D&D in particular, something he complained about before (I swear he had another article that criticized self-referentialism in later D&D in much more detail, but I can't find it now.) Which reminds me that I meant to continue discussing some points I raised earlier in my post about the family gamer.

What I meant when I raised the specter that D&D might be too self-referential is this very concept of the game becoming its own inspiration, developing too much of a "canon" that players must invest in and learn before they can understand and enjoy D&D. There are a number of ways this occurs in post-original D&D.

Speciation (turning unique individual monsters first into a type, then into a common species, possibly with an entire economic system based around them.
The equivalent Genericization of other items (stores that specialize in spellbooks, mass-market potions and swords +1, etc.)
Industrialization of magic (lighting cities with thousands of Continual Light lamposts, for example.)
Over-Systemization (creating equivalents of every class, monster, spell, etc., for each alignment, terrain, element, ability score...)
Jargonization (turning system-level terms into "creative" elements and elaborating them into new classes, monsters, spells or other fictional elements.)

And so on. To a certain extent, combining or inverting ideas that already exist to come up with new ideas is a fine idea, but to then canonize these inventions, and their derivatives, and let them take over as the primary creative engine leads to overly-elaborate and rather bland game supplements. The article on familiars that James cites is a good example: the author looked at the list of special familiars in the Find Familiar spell, decided that there weren't enough familiars for every alignment (over-systemization,) and created very artificial stand-ins for the "missing" familiar types. Another example is the plethora of "buff spells". Once the general concept of adding a bonus to an ability was created, "designers" came up with equivalent "buffs" for everything in the game that could be expressed as numbers. The decision was made to "fill the void" left by stats that didn't have buff spells yet, instead of thinking about magical transformations that could indirectly improve various stats.

It's my feeling that players should be looking for ways to make their characters stronger, not looking for things that add a bonus to Strength.

Inconsequential Technical Achievements

2012-01-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Not that it really matters, but I made two technical improvements recently.

A minor one: have you ever noticed that I'm really anal about spelling "melee" as "melée"? Even though it's supposed to be spelled "mêlée"? The reason why I don't spell it completely correctly is because I have the key sequence for "acute accented e" memorized, but not for "e with a circumflex". But I've installed a little keyboard macro app called "TyperTask". Trivial, but it means I can set up macros for things like monster stat blocks, so I'm happy.

A less minor one: Money's been tight, but I finally decided to spring for a low-end tablet (Nook Tablet.) The main reason is so that I can read PDFs more comfortably, carry books around easily, and take notes when I'm not at my computer, which will improve work on Liber Zero. I'm currently having a problem with transferring these notes to my desktop computer (I have to walk to wi-fi, so Google Docs and "cloud computing" in general are not an option.) But I may root the thing so I have a better selection of apps.

I may switch to keeping room encounter notes on the Nook, because my eyesight is getting worse. So far, though, the only effects on the actual game are occasional table look-ups and the scary possibility that I will be running modules in the future that I only have in PDF format. These would be Tomb of Horror, The Grinding Gear, and Death Frost Doom.

The players have been warned.

MegaModule: Rotating Circular Chamber

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

I know I've done this before as an unkeyed geomorph, but this version of the old rotating room cliché is arranged a little different. The interpretation here is that the room is designed to control access to a living/working area, located to the east of the map. The center is a circular chamber with a couple stools and a gong; when the gong is rung, slaves or some other team of laborers in a room below begin pushing a large horizontal wheel with spokes, causing the stone wall resting on top to rotate. A single 10-foot gap in the wall lines up with different exits as it rotates. Another ringing of the gong lets the laborers know when to stop; they may also have instructions to stop after one full rotation.

Edit: I had deleted the treasure content of the chest because I was going to change it, then forgot to actually do so. Sorry! The chest contains 300 gp in addition to the listed books. Module text now reflects that change.

The dungeon I am currently running is not a megadungeon and has a much smaller conceptual area, so the rotating room the players dealt with yesterday worked quite differently; it was more of a puzzle room than a control point, and there were no guards or living areas. Instead, the room rotates continuously, and in the center of the room is a capstan. Turning the capstan in different directions changes the rate of rotation:

Reference Point: room rotates counterclockwise once per day
1 Complete Turn Clockwise: room stops rotating
1 Complete Turn Counterclockwise: room rotates once per hour

There's another capstan in one of the connecting rooms which has the same effect. The players figured this all out, so they can now enter and exit the area without problem.

Sack Size

2012-01-22T14:36:00.000-08:00

Has anyone noticed how small sacks are in OD&D?

I just realized this yesterday, when we were trying to figure out how the PCs were going to retrieve a nice-sized treasure hall. A small sack holds 50 gp or 5 pounds (less than a grocery bag;) a large sack or pack holds 300 gp or 30 pounds. Thus, the large sack, when full, looks like a sack of potatoes; it's not quite as big as a sandbag. The small sack is more like how I imagined a large coin pouch. I'm guessing this is an artifact of the original equipment lists being "gold pieces only"; the cost for a small sack -- actually, a pouch -- should be about 3-4 sp; the 1 gp small sack should be about half the size of a large sack, maybe about the size of a bag of fast food, but sturdier.

First Kill

2012-01-21T18:51:00.000-08:00

We had our first death of the new campaign. Dern the Dwarf is Deceased. Slain by a rather large worm with paralytic saliva. There were almost two other deaths from a pack of rat-sized beetles, but the party made it out alive with a chest full of a substantial number of coins. They managed to haul that chest up the 180-foot shaft of the Great Spiral Stair using nothing but a bunch of 50-foot ropes without incident; if that chest had dropped, man, it would have made a great noise.

Mounted Combat

2012-01-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

After seeing Aaron's post on horse power, I was all set to throw out some ideas about how I'd handle mounted combat, but I guess I haven't changed them much since I posted about splintering horsies. The main things I would keep in mind is:

Add the hit dice of mount and rider together for the purposes of attack and damage;
Maybe give a defense bonus to a mounted rider based on the mount's hit dice, too, except against weapons designed to be effective against mounted warriors (like weapons braced for a charge;)
Adjust attack or defense for various advantages where applicable (height of rider, defender's weapon too short to reach, etc.)
Without long weapons, attacks on a mounted warrior may randomly strike the mount instead;
Remember that the rider's attack is separate from the mount's move, so riders can overrun opponents or potentially escape counterattack;
If running down footmen, make a situation roll (1d6, 5+ means defender knocked down, adjust for relative size;)
If it's a potentially scary experience, make morale rolls.

I've switched terminology to "mount" instead of "horse", because seriously, why not use it for other things, too, like a wizard riding a golem, or a war elephant, or a pixie mounted on a dragonfly? Ok, for very small mounts and riders, you might need a special rule for the hit dice, since both mount and rider might have less than 1 HD. Use the higher HD as the base HD, convert the other HD to a simple number by subtracting the hit point modifier from 6, add the resulting modifier to the base HD. Example: kobolds (d6/2, or HD 1-3) mounted on giant rats (HD 1-2) would have an effect HD of 1+1.) You can adapt these rules to other things, too, like warriors possessed by the ghosts of their ancestors. Your cleric can use Turn Undead to exorcise possessed creatures, but the effective hit dice is higher than normal...

Ordinary horses don't have to make morale rolls against ordinary opponents (other than snakes) while being ridden; they do have to roll morale in combat if the rider dismounts. Warhorses never check morale against ordinary troops, even when the rider dismounts. Unusual situations or opponents are another matter. Elephants aren't as reliable, but at least they get a bonus to morale for their relative size unless they feel overwhelmed or are seriously wounded. War elephants have a lot of good points to balance out even that unreliability: can carry several archers who all attack at once, overrun attacks are killer, and few weapons can even reach the rider or archers in a howdah.

Improvised, Non-Lethal, and Nuisance Weapons

2012-01-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

Comments on the post about throwing crossbow bolts are getting heating, which I suppose is to be expected. It touches on a deep divide between two interpretations of the rules:

Damage Rolls are an abstraction of how lucky or skillful your attacks were in a given round;
Damage Rolls are a representation of actual physical damage done by a weapon.

I and those fully embracing the "all weapons do 1d6 damage" principle belong to the first camp, so we're likely to just say "yes" when a player says "I throw crossbow bolts at my enemies." Others belong to the other camp and prefer adjusting damage rolls based on mass, sharpness, or perceived effectiveness. There are in-betweeners, like those embracing class-based damage. There's no authoritative interpretation, because Gygax went with the first interpretation in the LBBs, but quickly switched to the second, which he elaborated in Supplement I and AD&D.

I prefer differentiating weapons based on what they can do rather than on some damage rating, so if I'm going to distinguish between a crossbow bolt fired from a crossbow, a bolt thrown by hand, an arrowhead, and a bowstring (all examples cited in the previous post,) I'm more likely to roll a d6 for each and just interpret the damage differently. Here's a quick system, rewritten from earlier posts on punching and kicking and using sporks or throwing kittens.

Standard weapons do 1d6 damage; giants do more damage when using weapons designed for them, but otherwise size only affects reach.
Some weapons can be used for unusual actions in addition to or instead of their normal attack (for example, disarming someone using a flail.) Roll the d6 as you would for damage, but on a 5+, the unusual action works. This roll can be modified: knocking someone down with your shield might get a bonus or penalty for Strength, for example.
An improvised weapon of substantial size mostly works as a regular weapon, but there may be improvised limits imposed by the form (can't throw it as far as a dagger, weapon has a chance of breaking, etc.)
In keeping with #3, if you judge a weapon to be undersized for the job, you could reduce damage (halve it, or only allow 1 point except on 5+ and then halve it, or only 1 point on a 5+.)
Non-lethal weapons do full non-lethal damage, tracked separately, plus reduced normal damage as in #4. If ordinary + non-lethal damage is more than hit points, opponent is unconscious.
Nuisance weapons do reduced non-lethal damage. If they are sharp, they will do 1 point of real damage on 5+. They may also have unusual actions, as per #2.

So: a bolt fired from a crossbow is a standard weapon; a bolt used as a dagger is an improvised weapon (can't pull bolt out on 5+;) a bolt thrown by hand has reduced range and perhaps reduced damage; a punch is non-lethal; a bowstring is a nuisance weapon (trips and does 1 point non-lethal damage on 5+;) thrown arrowheads are also a nuisance weapon (no damage except on 5+.)

Class and Level Systems

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

In keeping with yesterday's table comparing ability score names across multiple early system, I thought I'd do the same for other terms common to class and level systems. I dropped RuneQuest and Traveller from this chart, since neither has classes or levels. I've added Rolemaster, since I at least remember RM used the terms "class", "level" and "experience points". However, I don't remember for sure whether it had the terms "hit dice" and "hit points", and my knowledge of Tunnels & Trolls terminology is kind of hazy, too.

I used to run TFT, so I was able to be more definitive with that column. TFT had experience points, but these are traded to increase ability scores, so TFT is a class system, but levels are only implied. Similarly, TFT tracks damage against total hit points, but total hit points = ST.

D&D	T&T	TFT	Rolemaster
Class (3)	Class (3)	Class (2)	Profession (20?)
Fighter	Warrior	Hero	Fighter
Magic-User	Wizard	Wizard	Magician
Level	Level	n/a	Level
Experience Points	Experience Points	Experience Points	Experience Points
Hit Dice	n/a	n/a	Body Development Points
Hit Points	(CON)	(ST)	Hits

Again, shaded cells in the same row indicate the terminology is identical. I'm pretty sure T&T used the terms "class" and "experience points" and had concepts that matched the others, but I'd like confirmation, as well as confirmation for Rolemaster, if anyone has that information. Basically, I'm looking for:

Did that system use the concept?
What was the concept's name?

I've restricted individual class names to the primary combat and magic classes, since the others jump around quite a bit. I don't remember how many classes Rolemaster had in the main book, or what the names were; I think my friend who ran Rolemaster actually only bought individual supplements (Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law) anyways.

Thrown Crossbow Bolts

2012-01-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

Brendan at the Untimately blog has some commentary on a 4e player's (positive) experience with OD&D. It's a very interesting read in its own right, but I thought I would have a little tangent on one of his comments, prompted by the 4e player's first experience with "all melée weapons do 1d6 damage":

An important assumption of OD&D, in my mind, is that unless otherwise stated things work relatively realistically. This is the wargaming context at work. In other words: I don't think the rules suggest that a thrown crossbow bolt should be considered a weapon.

The rules don't suggest this, but should it be allowed?

In keeping with the assumption of "relative realism" Brendan alludes to, the limiting factor to a crossbow bolt thrown by hand should be its short range and imprecision. You can throw a dagger, so why not throw a crossbow bolt? Essentially, it becomes a dart, close in size to a lawn dart, actually. Lawn darts are illegal in the US specifically because of their potential lethality, so it's not that far-fetched that you could use one as a weapon. Later editions of D&D certainly didn't seem to think so.

The main reason you wouldn't throw a bolt is that firing the bolt from an actual crossbow improves your range. Any thrown object is limited to fairly close quarters in D&D; short range is 10 feet, which is also melée range, so you gain little by throwing the bolt instead of stabbing with it. If you have a house rule that ranged weapons fired in ways they weren't designed for are at half range, it's even worse: 10 feet would be medium range, 15 feet would be long range. (I'd probably use this house rule myself; it could apply to firing bolts from a regular bow as well.)

Ability Score Name Comparison

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a table comparing the names of the ability scores across five early RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, RuneQuest, The Fantasy Trip, and Traveller. These five games all have a 1970s version (TFT wasn't complete until 1980, but Melee and Wizard were published in the '70s.) All the shaded cells in the same row match in name and basic function; I also use an asterisk in these cells to show that the name is repeated. The double-asterisk for TFT's Charisma indicates that the name is the same, but it's not an ability score; it's a talent instead.

D&D	T&T	RQ	TFT	Traveller	Rolemaster
Strength (STR)	* (ST)	* (STR)	* (ST)	* (STR)	* (STR)
Dexterity (DEX)	* (DEX)	* (DEX)	* (DX)	* (DEX)	Agility (AGI)
Intelligence (INT)	* (IQ)	* (INT)	* (IQ)	* (INT)	Reasoning (REA)
Constitution (CON)	* (CON)	* (CON)	n/a	Endurance (END)	* (CON)
Charisma (CHA)	* (CHR)	Appearance (APP)	** (talent)	Social Standing	Presence (PRE)
Wisdom (WIS)	Luck (LK)	Power (POW)	n/a	Education (EDU)	Memory (MEM)
--	--	Size (SIZ)	--	--	Quickness, Intuition, Empathy, Self-Discipline

I am unsure about some RuneQuest entries, because the names of Basic Role-Playing abilities change depending on the version. Some BRP systems use Charisma, just like D&D and T&T. I also forget whether Call of Cthulhu replaced INT with EDU or whether EDU was an additional ability; I don't have my CoC book handy to check.

I don't remember the ten ability score names from Rolemaster, but they were so divergent from the names in these five systems that I'm rejecting Rolemaster as an outlier. (Edit: Added RM stats, courtesy Guy Fullerton's comment below.)

The first five rows work pretty much the same across all five systems (not so sure about Traveller, because I only played briefly and never had the original books, but the concepts are obviously very similar to D&D's stats.) The sixth row is unique for each system, and only RuneQuest has the seventh ability.

The conclusion I draw from this is: since Tunnels & Trolls, RuneQuest, The Fantasy Trip, and Traveller did not have the benefit of the OGL and yet were not the target of a lawsuit (and since all but TFT exist in some form today,) the concepts behind the first five abilities are not intellectual property, and neither are their names.

Overlevel Abilities

2012-01-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

The tail end of yesterday's post, where I started rambling about handicapping characters with abilities that are too powerful or too numerous, got a little bit confusing, even in the comments when I tried to explain it better. So let me start that section over.

The core of what I'm getting at relates to Articles 2, 4 and 5 of the FLAILSNAILS conventions. GMs can decide how to import or convert characters from a game that is "roughly the same genre and system" as whatever they are running; they can also decide what the level limit is for a given session and how to handicap or modify characters, spells, powers, or magic items that are "overlevel".

Certain classes seem inherently overlevel to me, because they add additional unnatural powers beyond what other characters of a similar level have. I'm not talking about abilities that are mechanical implementations of what an OD&D player would assume any character could try, like a sweeping blow. I'm talking about a 1st level character who is equivalent to a 1st level fighter in all ways, but has a couple extra pseudo-magical abilities, like Darkness 15-Foot Radius or Shapeshift. I wouldn't be comfortable allowing one player to play a character way above what the other players in my campaign have available to them.

What I'm thinking is that the best way to handicap these is to interpret them as if they had changed classes. A Darkness power is basically equivalent to a 2nd level spell, which means that fighter could be explained as a 3rd level Magic-User who switched to Fighter. That's worth at least one handicap. "Low-level" characters with lots of high-level powers would have more handicaps, or one or two severe handicaps. Since we're talking FLAILSNAILS, here, the handicaps go away as soon as the player takes the character to another GM's game.

Captured Spellbooks and Spell Research

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about captured spellbooks and how they would impact spell research, particularly since one of the players in our game has snagged someone else's 1st level spellbook. Originally, it was essentially just supposed to be treasure in book form, able to be sold in any town that has buyers interested in magic. But I did tell the elf player, "there may be some additional spells beyond those on the standard 1st level spell list." I didn't say what spells, because I haven't decided which way to approach this:

Randomly roll for four additional spells, per the creative variants in my previous post;
Let the player make up spells she'd like to have and say "those are in the spellbook";
Just add some spells from other published sources, like maybe some modified druid or cleric spells.

Whichever choice I make, this means the player will eventually do spell research... which means I need to know how a captured spellbook affects spell research. Originally, I was going to just convert the spellbook into a sale value and use that to offset research costs. I figured the sale value of a spellbook is half the cost of replacing a spellbook: 1,000 gp for a 1st level spellbook, double that for each level above the first. But now I think this should only apply to spells that *aren't* in the spellbook. Spells in the spellbook should be easier to research, so I'd say that a spellbook with an unknown spell in it halves the research costs to learn that particular spell. That doesn't really affect M-Us who spend the minimum amount to research a spell, but those who spend more have much better odds: a 5th level M-U researching Fireball who spends 12,000 gp has the following odds of success:

30% by default;
40% with a captured spellbook that does not contain Fireball;
60% with a captured spellbook that contains Fireball.

Flail, Don't Fail!

2012-01-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

OK, I said this was all I was going to say about the Monte Cook article, but obviously I was wrong. But on the plus side, this post will be more practical, since I believe I can apply these ideas to my interpretation of the FLAILSNAILS conventions, should I choose to use them.

What FLAILSNAILS does is advertise a GM's willingness to include characters from more than one system, but it does not promise that a GM will use the *mechanics* of any system other than whichever one that GM normally uses. The limits of compatibility and degree of conversion are up to each GM. What the Monte Cook article sounds like (although it's ambiguous) is a promise that each *player* decides which mechanics will be used with a character, and the GM must comply. The article is claiming that 5e will include methods of making multiple subsystems work together, as opposed to methods of translating multiple subsystems into a consistence system on the GM's side. (Also, I note that Monte specifically states here that this won't be a new version of D&D, but it will be the standard in use right now, so presumably there are no new mechanics, only methods of translating 0e, 1e, and 3e style characters into 4e. But that's beyond the scope of what I want to address.)

I don't think you can or should support multiple mechanics based on player demand. Translating different levels of character complexity might be another matter. The way I see it, you can define a sliding scale of character ability, something like:

Ability Scores,
Skills/Proficiencies,
Feats,
Powers

And different scale for character classes:

Basic (two class abilities,)
Advanced (multiple but minor ability packages,)
Heroic (amped-up abilities,)
Epic (abilities plus power.)

(The numbers sort of match editions, but that wasn't intentional...)

What the GM does is tell players one or two breakpoints for each of these scales. Anything up to the first breakpoint is allowed without modification ("I will be using the six basic abilities plus skills".) Anything beyond the first breakpoint up to the second will be allowed, but will be modified and may require a handicap ("I will allow feats, if I understand what they are supposed to do in terms of the setting, but they will be limited to adding a bonus based on one of your ability scores.") Anything beyond the second breakpoint will not be directly allowed ("If you have psionics or any at-will or encounter powers that can't be translated into something less powerful, they won't work directly in my game world.")

The word I want to emphasize is "directly". For anything beyond the first breakpoint, the key is that the flavor text of the ability or class is what gets used, not the mechanic. Stuff in the middle range (1st to 2nd breakpoint) will be turned into mechanics by the GM, but not necessarily the mechanics the player expects. For example, I allow backgrounds or secondary skills (per the DMG) in my campaign, but not proficiencies or 3e-style skills, so if someone wanted to port their 3e character into my game, I'd ask what the various skills mean, then assume that's just part of their background and ditch the d20 skill roll and high skill bonuses. And stuff beyond the second breakpoint? You can translate it into flavor, but I'm not applying any special mechanics to it. You have Super Mind Control? If you win a fight (standard attack roll) or persuade an NPC (standard reaction roll,) feel free to say it's because you were able to control their minds.

One of the things I'm thinking of is: if I adopt FLAILSNAILS for my real-world campaign, how would I handicap feats and classes with too many abilities for my taste? Some of the Advanced-level classes I could see condensing the power list, probably the way I did the druid (bundling lesser powers into a replacement for Turn Undead, using the same mechanic.) But for others, and for anything beyond that level, I'd probably limit the total class ability in terms of hit dice and require one handicap per "hit die" of power. For example, you come to me with a special magical fighter, with full fighter ability plus at-will Detect Magic, Read Magic, and Detect Invisible, all at 1st level. I'd total the spell levels and treat that as four extra "dice" of power. That character would need at least one handicap worth four dice (maybe a periodic uncontrolled polymorph to a weak form?) or four handicaps worth 1 die each. I haven't worked out all the details on this, other than equating magical/psychic powers to spell level and equating damage dice to hit dice. Maybe I'll divide the extra "hit dice" of power by the character's actual level, so the same magical fighter at 4th level would only require one handicap.

FAILSNAILS

2012-01-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

The only thing I have to say about the latest Monte Cook article about D&D 5e is that, as others have pointed out, it seems to be talking about the FLAILSNAILS conventions. Or rather, it seems to be saying that they will be inventing their own FLAILSNAILS-like conventions, and they plan on doing it wrong. FLAILSNAILS is a way for GMs to accommodate characters from many game systems, but the vague descriptions of what WotC wants to do sound more like player entitlement.

MegaModule: Great Spiral Stair

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Another megadungeon module based on an element I used in my local game. This one is a spiral staircase leading down a deep shaft. When I used this originally, the location of the landings was slightly different and there were no wandering monsters, no pool at the bottom, and no visible doors, but the elf found a secret door at the bottom. I've added several doors to this version and the other elements to make it an interesting dungeon entrance, or perhaps a boundary zone between the upper levels of a dungeon and the lower ones below the broken stair. I've also included my jumping rules, in case your players decide to take that risk; mine chose to climb down ropes instead.

Because this version of the spiral stair is mean to be a generic connecting point rather than a themed module, there are no suggestions for surrounding room types, other than a general suggestion that the southern exit should be treated as a sublevel of the southwestern level.

Depths are given relative to the start level, which is connected to the eastern exit. Thus, if the eastern exit leads to the surface (Level 0,) the northwestern exit will connect to Level 1, the southwestern connects to Level 2, the southern exit is Level 2 1/2, and the northern exit is Level 3. I probably should have labeled the exits as +1 Level, +2 Level and +3 Level, instead of using -1/-2/-3, but it should still make sense.

Casual vs. Family

2012-01-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

I'd like to go back to the post on family gaming and the follow-up where I contrasted hardcore gamers and casual gamers. The implication in my post is that family gamers are casual gamers. They are, but they are a distinct subset. Two distinct subsets, in a way, since Devin brought up in a comment the distinction between playing with distant family members during a holiday visit vs. playing with close family members on a weekly basis. Playing Life, Payday, Operation, or Monopoly with cousins at Christmas is pretty much identical to other forms of casual gaming, although it does have a little twist.

The goal of casual gaming is, as I suggested previously, entertainment. It's a way to pass the time. A casual gamer may have some favorite games, but is not invested in the game itself. The goal of playing a game with relatives during the holidays is entertainment plus group activity; it's a way of reinforcing your identity as a family member. For family members who have a regular game night, the group activity aspect is the dominant goal; any game designed for family play has to be subservient to that goal of reinforcing the group.

Games aimed at the casual gamer are competing with other games *and* other media, like television; games aimed at the family gamer are competing with any group activity, such as crafts or conversation. Games that create rivalries and risk complaints of unfairness are thus at a disadvantage against more family-oriented games. Consider this: there is a rule in Monopoly that hardly anyone uses (the auction,) abandoned precisely because younger children may feel that it is unfair.

The basics of D&D actually could be a family-friendly game, since famously it is more of a cooperative game than a competitive game. However, there are threatening elements: the Dungeonmaster and the thief. A traditional DM plays the role to the hilt, stocking dungeons with an eye towards tricking players and hitting them with surprises; this could potentially stir up accusations of unfairness. Similarly, if the thief class is included and played the way we sometimes see among the hardcore (stealing from teammates or outright betraying them,) there are going to be a lot of hurt feelings.

Either of these issues can be worked around in a number of ways, but it might be better to admit that the default "family" D&D should be a little bit different from what we consider "real" D&D, with a full DM or interparty rivalry being options for more advanced play.

Captured Spellbooks

2012-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've said before that I prefer not writing down every spell an NPC wizard knows. Captured spellbooks, or spellbooks found some other way, are an obvious exception. But I'd rather not roll dice to determine how many spells are in a spellbook, then roll for each spell. So here's a quick hack that's much shorter.

For 2nd level spellbooks or higher, assume there's about 6 spells in the book. Using one of the standard spell lists, roll a d10 once to find the first spell in the book; the five spells after it on the list are also in the book by default. Follow up with 4d20 and look up each result on the list; if the result is a spell already known, drop it; otherwise, add it. Any d20 result that is higher than the number of spells on the standard lists means no spell.

If a wizard is particularly inventive, there will be non-standard spells in the spellbook. If you have no ideas or other spell lists to steal from, divide the wizard's Int by 6 (round down) and roll that many d20s on the Quickie Dice Tool; ignore any rolls higher than the number of spells on the standard list, but treat other rolls as indicating the base spell, modified by the Material, Ability, or Action indicated.

First level spellbooks always contain all the spells on the standard list and 0 to 3 additional non-standard spells.

Reactions in OD&D

2012-01-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

Looks like there were a bunch of side issues raised in my previous post about armor, since everyone has a different interpretation of how reaction rolls are supposed to work. Let's have a discussion about the way it's used in practice... I'm going to set things off by discussing some practices, making sure to distinguish "what's in the books" from what people have done past and present.

There are two sections on reactions in the three original rulebooks. Book I (Men & Magic) has a section on non-player characters, pages 12 and 13, in between the section on rolling up ability scores and the section on buying equipment. Obviously, this is because hiring mercenaries, torchbearers, and porters is seen as an important part of creating a character. The section on ability scores sets up the NPC section by defining how many hirelings of "unusual nature" may be hired, based on Charisma; ordinary men-at-arms are specifically exempted from this limit, but not from the effects of Charisma on loyalty.

The NPC section points out several things:

The only NPCs you can hire outright in town are normal men (as mercenaries and labor) and low-level classed characters;
Monsters, including higher-level humans found in the dungeon and wilderness, can be lured into service (limited by alignment) or charmed (no limit);
Luring into service requires an actual offer, not just sparing the monster's life, although a monster that is subdued or surrenders can be offered treasure and lured into service;
The 2d6 reaction table is introduced as a way to determine if a monster accepts an offer to serve;
If hirelings or monsters agree to serve, a 3d6 loyalty check is made, which determines modifiers to morale rolls;
GMs are given the option to use Chainmail's morale system or the 2d6 reaction table to check morale.

The second section on reactions is in Book III (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures,) near the bottom of page 12, just after a section on avoiding monsters. The setup here is that monsters will automatically attack or pursue any adventurer they detect unless an intelligent monster encounters an obviously superior group of adventurers. The rules then state that such intelligent monsters will act randomly and offers a simplified version of the 2d6 reaction table (three possible reactions, instead of five.)

What's clear here is that the reaction table is not meant to be used for most monster encounters; the reaction is predetermined ("hostile".) What happened in practice is that GMs started rolling more frequently for reactions, to make things more interesting; not every monster attacks immediately. Another change in practice, endorsed by Gygax in AD&D, is for negotiations with merchants.

There's also a change in the way alignment affects reactions, spurred by a change in the way alignment is interpreted. Originally, alignment was just a side or faction, which is why there were only two sides and a neutral, unaligned middle ground. Alignment limits which monsters will accept offers to serve an adventurer; there's no explicit guidelines, but my interpretation is that opposed alignments have a default reaction of Hostile (and will not serve,) while any any mixed alignment interaction will have a default reaction of Neutral. When alignment changed to a behavior guideline instead of a faction, GMs start using modifiers for specific alignments; there's a table of modifiers in the DMG, for example.

There's some more I could say about judging monster reactions, but I'd like to open this up to examples of how everyone actually uses the reaction rules. Do you roll for every monster? Predefine all reactions? Only roll for certain kinds of offers or behaviors?

Too Much Armor

2012-01-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

There's a post on B/X Blackrazor about the ridiculousness of armor in space. This reminded me of one of those perennial GM complaints about less futuristic settings: why won't PCs take off their armor? Who wears armor constantly? Shouldn't there be some kind of downside?

The usual solution is to add overly-detailed rules for fatigue caused by wearing armor for a long time. However, JB's comment about the cinematic reason why characters in films like Star Wars choose to mostly go without armor (so that we can see their faces) got me thinking about a different solution: limit reactions.

A character in full armor can't have any reaction better than Hostile when meeting an NPC for the first time. A character who removes a helm or otherwise has a fully-visible face can't have a reaction better than Neutral. This is because people treat the sudden appearance of someone in armor as a threat, mollified somewhat if the other person exposes their head. There are exceptions, of course; if this isn't the first meeting, the reaction is based on the existing relationship (if your friends show up in full armor, you don't suddenly hate them.) If an NPC is expecting someone to be in armor (such as a stranger signing up for a tourney,) there's no modification to reaction.

Hardcore vs. Casual

2012-01-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks, everyone, for commentary on my questions about the family gamer. I did intend the questions to be serious, but some of them may have no answers, or at least I have no preconceived answers. Those questions were meant more as something to think about. But some of the questions touch on some topics I have thought about; I have some concerns whenever the topic of broadening the player base comes up and I don't think people ever address them. People periodically say "we could get more players if only we did X", but "X" never works; the next time someone offers that solution again, no one seems to remember that it didn't work the first time, and that potential game designers are making the same mistakes over and over.

One of these issues has to do with the distinction between hardcore gamers and casual gamers. Now, I don't mean "hardcore" in the sense of pornography or punk rock or anything like that, and I don't entirely mean extreme immersion in gamer culture (that has more to do with my comments about fetishism and self-referentialism.) By "hardcore", I mean "really seriously dedicated to and invested in". The hardcore gamer spends a lot of time playing the game, preparing for it, and analyzing it, and purchasing supplemental products.

About ten or so years ago, I read an article in either Wired or possibly one of the video game magazines about a problem with the design of video games: game designers were focusing on appealing to the hardcore gamers. These are the people who spend a lot of time playing video games, figure out all the combo moves and strategies quickly, have well-honed game playing talents, and usually wind up writing all the walk-throughs and exploit articles. Because they have a huge amount of experience playing games and examine every new game so closely, gaming comes easy to them, and they quickly become bored with a new game that doesn't challenge their highly-evolved skills. Because they get bored so easily, they're always on the look-out for the next big game, and because they often spend hundreds of dollars a month on games and are early adopters that will spread the news, they are a lucrative target market. Video game designers wound up designing new games to appeal to players who expect to play four to eight hours a day for an entire weekend at a minimum, possibly an entire week.

The problem, of course, is that most people aren't like that. Most people are casual gamers, looking for a game not because they are bored with the last one they conquered, but because they are bored right now and just want some entertainment to kill the time. They want to be able to pick up a game and start playing at a moment's notice, play for an hour or two, and move on to something else. They aren't novice gamers, but they also don't have highly specialized gamer skills, so games designed to challenge hardcore gamers just wind up pissing them off. Although the video game industry does pretty well appealing to the hardcore gamers, every once in a while, someone will design a game that appeals to casual gamers as well, such as The Sims -- a game franchise with profits that crush the sales of most other games, because it has a broader appeal.

Shift the focus to tabletop RPGs. These are being designed by people who are dedicated RPG enthusiasts for an audience of their peers. This is an audience that argues about the benefits of class-based vs. skill-based systems, the best dice mechanics, how much tactical depth each game has, how to optimize each class, how balanced the system is... in other words, hardcore gamers. What a lot of us don't realize is that absolutely none of these things appeal to casual gamers; they don't care. They won't play RPGs with us not because they are novices, or because WoW has better graphics, or because our games are not politically correct, or because they are about fantasy combat instead of romance or drama; they won't play RPGs with us because they are interested in playing a game, not dedicating their lives to one game. They want to be able to pick up and play a game on a moment's notice, and drop it just as easily.

Experience Points vs. Level

2012-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

Over on the aimed blows post, I mentioned in passing a simple interpretation of standard level drain. For those who don't want to read that entire post: when a wight or wraith drains a level from a character, lower the level, but not the experience; to regain the lost level, the character has to go on an adventure and earn at least one new experience point. If a character has lost several levels, only one level can be regained per adventure (not necessarily "per session"; a character could go on several short excursions, returning to town after each combat or treasure find, no matter how trivial.)

Brendan commented "... that does mean that level and XP are not ways of expressing the same thing". But wasn't that always true? A dwarf saves at 4 levels higher, according to the original books; a more extreme example would be potions of heroism and superheroism, which give temporary level boosts. Occasionally, a monster or NPC has combat or magic ability at a higher level than would be indicated by the creature's hit dice. So, although D&D tends to stick to a strict marriage of XP and level, there are exceptions, and thus no reason not to embrace it fully. In fact, I make it a rule that experience points can never decrease, only increase; there is a correspondence between your XP and your normal maximum level, but your effective level can be temporarily lower or higher.

Questions About the Family Gamer

2012-01-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

I want to write something about RPGs aimed at "family gamers", inspired by this post at Greyhawk Grognard. Specifically, I have some different ideas about what would work for an RPG that could be played by a whole family of non-geeky people who are just looking for something to do on game night, as well as how this relates to the casual gamer. I also have some commentary inspired by some recent reviews of Lego Heroica, which sounds like exactly what family gamers would be looking for.

Unfortunately, I'm distracted by some other issues (fortunately, they're related to RPGs.) So I can't really go into my thoughts in detail right now. Instead, I'll just leave everyone with some questions:

How much detail do you think is needed to make a game an RPG?
Can a game be designed to appeal to both the family gamer and the hardcore gamer?
Do typical RPGs fetishize combat and fantasy elements too much to appeal to family or casual gamers?
Do they fetishize math too much?
Are they too self-referential?

Aimed Blows for the Win!

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

In a discussion on the Underworld Cleaning Service blog about level drain, I mentioned one of my old ideas: if draining levels seems too extreme, you can have wights, wraiths, spectres and vampires "aim for the soul" instead. It's an elaboration of the aimed blows and wound levels, buried in a post about an alternate version of Shields Shall Be Splintered. I didn't really explain the aiming part completely there.

Aimed shots to the head, torso, or limb are ordinary attacks, no special modifier, standard 1d6 damage on a hit. Really small targets (eye, finger, heart) are treated as AC 0. The character actually makes several feints, near hits, and grazing blows in the round, exactly as normal, but if the d6 roll is 5+, the body part is "broken" or "deep cut" or "burn", whatever is appropriate. On 7+ or a repeated wound to the same area, upgrade to "very" or "bad(ly)" or some other comparative in front of the wound type. On 9+, the damage is total. However, some creatures do not have a heart, or can only be slain by smashing a gem on their forehead, or some other special rule.

Wound levels mean the wounded limb or organ is useless for a certain time:

Wounded: useless until bandaged (-1 or half move after being bandaged)
Badly Wounded: useless until healed
Crippled/Severed/Lost: permanently useless. For head or vital organs, this equates to death.

Anything that modifies the damage roll modifies the wound test as well, which is the main way to severe heads or limbs with a single blow. If the damage roll is 2d6-1 or more, the modifier is applied to the highest die roll only, but each die result is treated as a separate test for a wound; multiple successes mean more serious wounds as well. Giants are very dangerous!

The opponent's Con bonus modifies the target number. A character with -1 hp per hit die can be wounded on a 4+, while those with +1 per die are only wounded on a 6+.

I'm debating whether armor should make aimed attacks ineffective until an attacker either find a vulnerable point or damages the armor. Maybe leather armor blocks critical hits from blunt weapons, and metal armor blocks all critical hits, which would explain why you might want to take that AC 0 aimed blow for the eyeslits of an opponent in plate armor.

Within this context, you can make up other targets and apply the same wound system. Thus, a wraith draining the life force from an opponent could be handled as "aimed blow towards the victim's soul"; draining isn't automatic on a hit, but goes much more quickly. But on the other hand, I don't think standard level loss is that bad as long as you don't drain experience points as well, which seems to be the standard interpretation from AD&D. If you just drain levels but keep xp the same, then a character can regain one level after each successful adventure, which means that severe level drain doesn't last as long.

Huckleboar Blood

2012-01-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

On the rejected monsters post, Omlet suggested something I hadn't thought of: using huckleboar blood in traps. I imagine something like: victim triggers a trap that drops a fragile container on the victim's head; victim gets splattered with huckleboar blood (perhaps diluted;) trap also releases catches on cages all around the perimeter, releasing ferocious beasts who head immediately towards the tasty-smelling victim.

That's actually not something I had thought of; I was thinking that adventurers braving the huckleboar fens would be gathering blood because of its value as a flavoring. The trap idea is pretty good, though. It makes me think there would also be some use for huckleboar variants. Imagine there are multiple colors of huckleboar, and the blood of each variety has a different effect. The blue-tipped huckleboars have the blood that induces hunger cravings. Other varieties:

Greenback Huckleboar: scent causes extreme territoriality; all wild animals, including normally docile ones, act as if cornered or protecting young, and tame animals turn on their masters.
Rednecked Huckleboar: rage-inducing odor causes beasts to attack anyone splattered with this blood; if the blood-splattered victim can't be reached, the effect is the same as greenback huckleboar blood.
Whiteflecked Huckleboar: fear-inducing odor paralyzes any who smell it; if attacked by a wounded whiteflecked huckleboar or someone splattered with its blood, frightened creatures either flee or react as if exposed to greenback huckleboar blood.
Goldentail Huckleboar: alcoholic blood causes confusion in those who smell it; monsters are randomly enraged or frightened by a random target; used to make huckleboar beer.
Blackspotted Huckleboar: soporific odor causes sleep; drinking two vials of undiluted blackspotted huckleboar blood is potentially poisonous.

Prices for a vial of goldentail huckleboar should be double or triple normal, while blackspotted huckleboar blood is probably worth closer to ten times normal (but also probably illegal.)

Rejected Monster Ideas

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Huckleboars: Like regular boars, but when they bleed, the sweet smell of their blood attracts predators. Make wandering monster rolls every round. Their blood can be bottled and sold for 3-18 gp a vial, however. It takes one round to fill a vial...

Crack Horror: Mysterious subterranean creature that opens small fissures in the surface. When someone attempts to investigate a recently-opened crack, an arm or tentacle whips out and grabs the victim, pulling them in. Full exposure to daylight (such as by opening the crack wider) acts like poison to crack horrors.

The D&D Solution

2012-01-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

I'm sure everyone will be posting and talking about WotC's announcement of playtesting for 5e (and the New York Times article about it.) (EDIT: I wrote this post before I read the blogs, so I can confirm: everyone is talking about it. The best round-up to date is this list by Tim Brannan.)

What WotC does, of course, is not all that big a deal to me or to other OSR gamers. But I'd like to quickly point out that one of my personal goals with Liber Zero (quickly becoming the central goal of LZ) is to strip the game down to easily-memorizable elements so that the game can be played without reference to books, whereas the WotC goal (and late TSR goal) is the opposite: define as many elements as possible in as much detail as possible to create official resources to be used during play. There's certainly a bit of business-exec-think behind that decision (create as many products as possible,) but I think there's a lot of hobbyist publishers who think the same way, for non-marketing reasons. They think RPGs need to be strict, rather than loose. And it's going to be very hard for WotC to appeal to both extremes of gaming and "unify the tribes" again.

Just about the only way I can see of WotC accomplishing this goal of creating a core game that can be expanded to meet the needs of those who prefer 4e, those who prefer 3e, those who prefer AD&D, and those who prefer OD&D, as well as weird variants, is to make the core game truly core. Not "core" in the sense that the multiple, big books of 1e and 3e were core, but truly stripped down. What you have in 3e, for example, is a character built by setting ability scores, selecting one of 8 to 12 classes, selecting one of several races, selecting skills (weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, in AD&D,) and selecting feats. But if OD&D players want to play OD&D with 3e rules, they may have to drop skills and feats to get the right experience, because they aren't core. And they may even have problems with some of the classes, or the way races are written, because they're designed for more elaborate needs, not core needs.

What WotC needs to do is not write a game book with a substantial number of classes and races (selected according to popularity,) plus skills and feats, and later publish supplements that add more of each. Instead, they need to write a game book with minimal classes and races, selected so that they illustrate how classes and races work, and define simple ways of accomplishing stuff, but with no skill system or feat system... THEN publish a skills supplement that introduces an optional system, and publish a feats supplement that introduces an optional feat system, and other supplements: a class book, expanding the way classes work and detailing how to modify the original classes; a race book, doing the same for races; alternative magic systems; alternative experience and challenge systems that emulate different styles of game; and of course alternative settings. You can even have multiple class books, geared not towards "power sources" but towards different approaches to using classes (heroic classes with a couple extra abilities, epic classes with 4e-style power trees.)

This makes the core rules much smaller and the supplemental books more numerous, but it also makes the whole thing more modular, especially if the setting books and the magic system books do not depend on the skill system or the feat system. You can have old school players buying just the core book plus a point-based psionics-style magic system book plus a setting book, to meet their specific needs, and new school players buying a different set of books to meet their specific needs.

Of course, WotC will not do this. Despite all their talk about making the game modular, the execs are absolutely terrified that they won't sell as many books as they could. What if someone buys just the one core book and makes up their own setting? Never mind that other people are buying many more books; you're losing a sale!

(EDIT II: ... And before my scheduled post went public, someone else also suggested that a core book needs to be more core. Although I don't think he'd agree with me about putting the entire skill system in an optional book. I guess that makes me "hard" core.)

(EDIT III: Another Hard Core D&D proponent: Jason Vey of Elf Lair Games.)

MegaModule: Abandoned Wizard's Library

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

I want to get Map Mondays back on track with a series of "megadungeon modules". The plan is to develop the technique I mused about in Megadungeon Format Tricks and its sequel. In summary: each megadungeon module is a single room or set of rooms focused on a single concept (puzzle room, throne room, crypt of a knight, arcane prison of a demon, elaborate trap, guard room, gateway...) This is what I sometimes have called a "hub". The module is in a one-page dungeon format with a 10x10 or less map, structured like a geomorph, with exits (if any) in one or more of the standard geomorph exit locations; it also includes a full write-up of the room or rooms and a list of one to four supporting room types, monsters and treasures. To use the module, you position it on your level map and padded the borders with ordinary rooms, which you draw by hand or fill in using geomorphs or random mapping techniques. Designate the surrounding rooms as being of one of the types defined in the module and randomly stock them as described for each type; thus, it does not matter where "storeroom with 1d6 rats and 2d12 silver coins in a sack" is located, how it's shaped, or what it connects to.

I would like to try out each module concept before I write it up as a module, so to start off, here's a module based on a couple rooms the players in my group explored last month. It's not exactly the same; I've changed the shapes and connections, added some things, removed some others. The basic concept is a library for magical research, abandoned by the library's owner; in our game, the wizard is said to have fled the area about a century ago. I've changed the "abandoned familiar" from the one I actually used, since the little bat-winged critter in our game is still hanging around because of a Charm Person spell. Can't give the party any clues as to what that little guy is!

My test download of this MegaModule fits all on one page, but it was difficult to get Google Docs to do that, so I fully expect people will report problems with the document. Google Docs doesn't like the one-page template; I had to fight the format to get everything to fit. One weird problem was that the map image would disappear if I changed one of the headings to a different size. I hope the changes in this version stick, so that I can just create a copy and edit it to create future MegaModules.

Quickie Dice Tool: Legends

2012-01-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

I plan on doing a full document explaining the Quickie Dice Tool, of course. It should be much easier with the new version. I've already done some diagrams illustrating what the different labels in different positions mean.

The bold letters in the column labels (top edge) and the row labels (left edge) are used as initials of adjectives, verbs and nouns to inspire ideas for dungeon dressing; if you can't think of a word that begins with one of the initials, the index number behind the letters can be used to look up words from the central lists.

Row labels have a variety modifier in the upper left corner of each box (acid, dry, twisted, quivering, etc.) These are meant as descriptive modifiers for geography, but can be used to describe other items as well. In the lower left corner of each box are two other labels: the first line is a creature category that defines generic monster forms, while the second line is a type of territory (defined as how nearby people interpret or use a geographical area.) Note that both creatures and territories can be of the "enchanted" type, so only one label is printed here.

Column labels have an action type printed vertically in the lower right corner of each box (break, empty, throw, etc.) These can provide general guidelines for what an object does or a monster is doing; they can be replaced with conceptually similar actions or any action beginning with one of the initials, if the listed verb makes no sense in the context.

The column labels across the bottom edge are printed vertically in the upper right corner of each box. The first word is a color, the second is a material category; either can be used as descriptive modifiers for various kinds of dungeon dressing. The bottom edge also has index numbers, which can be used to emulate a d6-1 dice roll; if you read the zero as a six, it becomes a standard d6 result of 1 to 6. This can be read as a column index for the central lists.

The row labels across the right edge have an equipment category printed in the upper left corner of each box, instead of a variety modifier. This can used as a simpler, broader alternative to the object lists in the center. "Armor" is assumed to be any defensive equipment, so it can be broadened to fur parkas or gas masks, if these seem appropriate; "Travel" equipment includes climbing or riding gear as well as vehicles; "Light and Senses" covers not just torches and lamps, but anything that improves detection, such as a stethoscope. The lower right corner is labeled with the six standard abilities, which can be used to indicate what an NPC excels at, what ability is penalized by a poison or disease, or many other uses.

Levels and Their Limits

2012-01-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

I really should write that post about the AD&D/Greyhawk way of handling abilities and why they suck. However, I'm going to do another spin-off of the sucky AD&D subsystems post: my thoughts on levels and level limits, inspired by the *other* Jeff Rients post.

The first thing I have to say is something I think I've said before, somewhere: I do not see "levels" as "training". I regard the whole topic of formal training as being separate from what a class is meant to represent. Anyone can learn to use a sword, spear, or shield, and anyone can learn to climb or pick locks, and anyone can learn to read maps in various languages. A 1st level character is thus, in my eyes, fully trained in the skills relevant to their background. The level title for a 1st level Fighter even reflects that idea: they aren't "fighters in training", they're "veterans", in other words someone who's had some experience fighting. What makes the 1st level Fighter different from an ordinary warrior is not training, but an unusual knack for fighting.

The Magic-User and Cleric might at first seem to be contradictions to that view. However, the added ability to prepare or memorize spells is inherently unnatural; it's something over and above what a person could train for. Thus, I'd allow anyone to learn to decipher magic and perhaps use scrolls, with a chance of failure; only a Magic-User can actually cast a spell without a scroll, with only a few words and a gesture, and only a Magic-User can create magic items.

So, I don't see levels as formal ability. Instead, I see them as a combination of intangible, general experience and reputation. A 4th level Fighter isn't a better fighter because of training in new combat tactics or learning a new weapon, but because of increased confidence, efficiency, awareness, and impressiveness. That's why their hit points increase, and why they improve at things like resisting spells; they don't train to shake off the effects of a Charm or dodge a dragon's fiery breath, they just become more wise in the ways of the world and more intuitive about impending danger. They pick up subtle clues easier, because they remember something they've seen before, and this lets them respond quicker to danger. That's also why Magic-Users improve their combat ability; do you really thing M-Us put in several hours of dagger practice every week to hone their skills?

But I said "general experience and reputation". 4th level Heroes aren't heroes just because of what they can do, but also because of what people think they can do. It's why a Lord is able to found a barony and collect taxes at 9th level, but a Superhero can't; it's not because a Superhero is incapable of clearing an 8 league radius or building a castle, but because people won't feel they owe fealty to an 8th level Fighter.

Which brings me to the level limits for dwarves, halflings and elves. A dwarf can train to be just as good a fighter as any human; a dwarf also picks up intangible benefits of experience, becoming more confident, more aware, and more efficient. But it's a human world, and humans are less impressed with a dwarf warrior than a human warrior, and are less likely to feel loyal to a dwarf who claims to be a baron. A dwarf cannot reach the heights of reputation a human can, and so cannot make it past 8th level and become a Lord over humans. In fact, a dwarf can only make it to 6th level, and a halfling can only make it to 4th level; I'd say that a dwarf is 3/4ths the height of a human, and so can only make it to 3/4ths of 8th level; likewise, a halfling is half the height of a human, and so is limited to half of 8th level. This is why I set the level limit for the Minotaur earlier today at 8th level; they aren't smaller than a human, so the only limit is that they can't become a Lord.

Elves likewise are limited to 8th level, but as Magic-Users instead of Fighters. The rationale here seems to be to prevent Elves from using the highest spell levels; they can't cast reincarnate, can't contact another plane, can't conjure elementals or invisible stalkers. Because their gimmick is that they are magical fighters, but more on the magical side, their Fighter level limit is half their Magic-User limit; a hypothetical race that was semi-magical, but more towards the mundane side, would swap limits. A mildly-magical race of dwarves would get limits of 6th level Fighter/4th level Magic-User. Using the same rationale as the M-U level limits (block access to spell levels 5+,) a hypothetical Clerical race would be limited to 6th level.

This method of setting level limits is easier than the one I proposed much earlier (subtracting levels based on special abilities.) Trying to balance racial abilities is probably a bad idea; instead, think of racial abilities as compensation for the racial limit.

As later editions added more classes, the system starts to fall apart. The Thief is problematic, but still a workable idea; it's certainly the most mundane of the classes, so it has no racial limit. The (original) Paladin also has problems, but it is expressed as a Fighter who has additional benefits from a supernatural authoriy, rather than a separate skill set. Other classes start adding specific abilities learned at specific levels, ruining the pristine vision of levels as intangible benefits instead of training ranks. And in AD&D, the vision is undermined even more, with the addition of several classes that feel very much like professions, as well as racial level limits that feel more arbitrary and unconnected to society's perception of the role.

This is why I roll back the clock on classes and try to express new classes as modifications of the main four, rather than as improvements. So, my druids don't get bonus abilities, they replace clerical abilities with druidic equivalents; my illusionists are just Magic-Users with a different spell list, not different class abilities.

Minotaurs

2012-01-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago on one of the forums, someone posted a minotaur "class". It's an interesting idea: GURPS Fantasy had minotaurs as a playable race, similar to the way TFT had gargoyles as a playable race. I wouldn't do it the same way, but I'd certainly be willing to include one as a PC, with the restriction that minotaurs are true monstrosities, not a species, so the minotaur PC would have a magical or unknown origin. Here's how I'd do it:

starting AC 6 (head only, can't wear helm, can wear body armor,)
starts human size, but grows to about 7-8 feet by 6th level,
starts with 1+1 HD and progresses as a fighter (max level 8,)
does minimum of 1+3 damage at 5th level,
poor vision (30 feet,) ranged weapons limited to vision range,
sharp smell (60 feet,) can fight invisible enemies or find maze exits by tracking,
NPC reactions are Hostile by default, best reaction is Neutral

I wouldn't set a minimum Strength score or add a bonus to the ability roll, but I would adjust feats of strength based on size, if the minotaur PC is 4th level or higher. An alternate approach is to treat new minotaur PCs as 4th level fighters with 0 xp; starting higher than 1st level is an advantage, but they have a longer wait until they reach the next level.

Quickie Dice Tool v 2.1

2012-01-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to let anyone who downloaded the Quickie Dice Tool that I updated it to v2.1, so you may want to download it again. This includes the correction to the list of Variety modifiers, which has been relocated to the left edge, and the addition of a Labyrinth column, for subterranean features. Also, I corrected some minor layout issues, including some problems with borders.

The underworld features focus on broad structural effects:

Cavern: A rough, natural cave system of some kind.
Exit: Stairs, an upward ramp, or some other connection to either the outside or another area.
Tomb: An enclosure for the dead, or possibly for a monster that has been deliberately entombed.
Quarry: Any excavated area, either a mine or construction in progress.
Vault: Any large chamber or network of chambers designed to protect contents.
Sewer: Abandoned, or in service, wet or dry; possibly originally a canal system, rather than a sewer, but now filthy.
Maze: Twisty passages, all alike. This may be a simple network of tunnels with confusing branches, or it may be large and sprawling.
Hole: A pit straight down, optionally with a ladder or spiral staircase leading to another level.
Gate: Some kind of entryway, perhaps with a portcullis, double doors, or other blockable portal.
Rubble: A collapsed room or tunnel. If adventurers can get past the blockage, they may find other features.

Quickie Dice Tool v2.0

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here is the updated version (2.0) of the quickie dice tool, a dice map (aka "drop-dice chart") useful for improvising details during play or for inspiration during prep. Almost all the changes mentioned in the v2.0 planning post are included. Unless I set the print size way too small to be useful, I don't think I can add extra lists; however, I was able to number the rows and columns as planned, which makes it easy to describe how to use the tool.

The right-hand side of the tool now has the six abilities and six item categories. This makes the tool more useful for NPC or found item generation: roll 1d6 interpret as people (horizontal) + highest ability (vertical,) with a result of 5+ on the die indicating the exotic column for people instead of the ordinary one; simultaneously roll 3d4 and interpret each die as material (horizontal) + item category (vertical) to quickly equip the NPC.

The table labeled "Suggested Dice Interpretations" is designed so that you can roll any die (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) and read a result of 1 from the row labeled "Low" and a max result from the row labeled "High"; intermediate results use the row labeled "Medium". Use whichever column seems appropriate for your current needs.

After I check this version for errors and write up a separate key, I can release the updated dice map.

Edit: Found one error so far. The "Kelp Fields" entry in the Water Features column was accidentally split across two columns, replacing the "Hazy" result that should be in line 8 of the Variety column.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of moving the Variety results to the top left corner of the boxes along the left side of the sheet, making room for a Subterranean Features column in the lists.

Open-Ended Endgame

2012-01-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

There's a forum discussion about the "lost" endgame of D&D (most amazing revelation: Old Geezer is back on RPGNet.) A couple people have been talking about it in the blogosphere as well; see, for example, this Hill Cantons tangent on how solo play figures into this. One of the issues raised in the discussion is the fact that kids coming into the hobby in the '80s weren't interested in building and running a barony.

But who says that has to be the only endgame?

Consider this: one of the features of old school play is that your character develops during play. Characters are often pretty sketchy at 1st level, with few details; playing the character helps you develop your backstory and your goals. For fighters, that goal is often "build a barony", but we have a non-political example for wizards (create magic items.) Why not allow players to substitute other long-term goals in place of those goals?

If a PC has a large, mundane long-term goal, such as establishing a trade route or guild or marrying into royalty, assume that the goal can't be accomplished until 9th level. The PC can begin work towards the goal at any time, but there's no permanence or sustainability until the character reaches the reputation, sustainability, experience and instinct represented by 9th level.

If a PC has supernatural assistance to achieve a mundane goal, there's a one-level bonus; in other words, the goal can be accomplished after reaching 8th level.

If a PC has a long-term supernatural goal, such as apotheosis, the goal can be completed after reaching 11th level.

Achieving the goal will also involve several in-game (role-playing) actions. The goal may be achieved quickly, or may take a while; there may be setbacks along the way. If all the necessary in-game tasks have been completed before the minimum level, a complication arises, which the PC must resolve. If it is resolved and the character is still not at a high enough level, another complication arises.

Resolution of tasks may involve dice rolls or may be pure role-playing, in much the same way that lesser tasks (disarming a trap) may involve either.

One-Roll Populated Areas

2012-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

So, I looked at the impromptu routes post and thought "what if I used a dice map instead?"

Here's a tentative result.

Print the image so that it's an 8 inch by 8 inch square. The center represents the starting settlement. For heavy population density areas, roll 5d6 on the sheet; everywhere a die lands represents one settlement in that direction relative to the starting point. The ring it lands in tells you what size settlement; if there is a multiplier, multiply the die result by the given number to get the total leagues to the settlement.

If a die lands in the center, feel free to define underground settlements.

For lower population densities, use 5d12 (light density) or 5d20 (sparse density.) To map out nearby kingdoms, the dice results are in weeks of travel instead of leagues.

Annoying Bits in AD&D

2012-01-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Jeff Rients is asking what the most annoying rule or subsystem in AD&D is. He offers a short list, all of which I find annoying to one extent or another, but I thought I'd comment in detail here, instead of there.

Demi-human Level Limits: Actually, not all that annoying. Same goes for demi-human class restrictions, which weren't listed, but are related (think of a ban on dwarf clerics as a level limit of 0.) I'm more annoyed by the term "demi-human" than the level limits. Still, it's a restriction I'm willing to lift; I think I'd just treat advancement beyond the level limit as changing classes (in other words, you need a 16+ in the prime ability and may need to do some specific questing.)

Weapon Speed: The basic idea isn't too bad, but I don't like the implementation. A crude guesstimate based on length is enough for me; looking up numbers and applying them to segment calculations is annoying. But that leads into...

Initiative: Discovered I don't need it. The original books don't mention initiative or anything like it. The side with the benefit of surprise gets to go first; otherwise, ask the players what they are doing first, determine the actual order of actions based on crude weapon length; Dex is a tie-breaker. If other actions are involved, use Dex to determine order. Much simpler than the fiddly AD&D initiative system.

Weapon vs AC: Used it a few times, found it annoying, dropped it. But I'm toying with a much simpler system, so it's not the basic concept, just the implementation as a bunch of numbers arranged in a table.

Material Components: Do magic-users really need to be more limited than they are in Men & Magic? It's like people are still afraid of magic, even in a made-up game. Again, additional look-up time involved in spell components (or casting times, or many other spell stats) just annoy me. I'd rather have material components as a way to expand standard spells, instead of as a requirement. So, adding powdered goblin heart when casting Monster Summoning I lets you specifically summon goblins instead of some random 1st level monster.

Psionics: It's the annoying subsystem: extra numbers to track, unique attack resolution that slows play and removes the participation of the non-psionics. Same applies to the grappling rules or the non-lethal combat rules. Why not just use the standard combat system with a couple adjustments?

Training to Level Up: Not a big deal, but it doesn't jibe with my interpretation of "level' as a combination of reputation and general experience. And honestly, I don't need a method of extracting more money from player characters; the 1% maintenance tax is more than enough.

What I find most annoying about AD&D is the minimum and maximum ability scores. Actually, pretty much anything to do with the way AD&D handles ability scores. But that's probably best reserved for another post.

Ease vs. Effort

2012-01-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

There's a post over at Gothridge Manor asking whether differences between old school game systems really do matter when it comes to publishing adventure materials, monster manuals or other supplements. I commented that I think it's less a matter of actual system differences and more a matter of how much system-specific material an individual reader expects, vs. how much divergent material the reader will tolerate. I don't think I articulated this very well, so I want to elaborate here.

Let's start with something that is pretty much universal across editions: opponents have hit dice and hit points. The exact numbers may vary across editions, but these differences can be ignored. In old-school systems, you need to know hit dice to determine attack capability, so adventure modules will normally list a monster's hit dice. You *could* roll the hit points yourself, when needed. So should a publisher list hit points for individual monsters, or not?

My inclination is to leave them off. I never list hp when stocking my own dungeons, and find it kind of annoying to see long lists of hp totals in a product. But I've seen other people complain about products that don't list the hp for every creature encountered. This is a difference in our expectations: I find it extremely easy to just roll hp as needed, so listing hp seems unnecessary to me and wastes space; other people consider rolling hp for 23 goblins to be more effort than it is worth, so they object to authors who slack off and don't provide that information.

When you talk about actual rules differences, such as clerics getting a spell at 1st level in OSRIC but not in Swords & Wizardry, it's really not a question of whether it's possible to convert materials to another system, but whether a particular customer's taste is for having as much prep done as possible beforehand or for removing as much clutter as possible. Again, my preference is to not even list which spells a spell-caster has prepared except for those that matter to the caster's style. "The evil high priest will cast Silence as soon as he sees an enemy spell-caster." Other spells, I can improvise; if a particular spell seems like it would be useful, roll 5+ on a d6 to see if that spell was prepped. I don't need a whole list of prepped spells. Other people would freak if they saw an encounter written up that way. How do you know what the cleric can cast? And a subset of those people would gripe if it turns out the encounter listed too many spells, or not enough, based on the system they prefer.

It seems to me that there's no tried and true method for an OSR publisher to judge how much information needs to be included and how much can (or must) leave out. It's a matter of taste, not compatibility; you just have to guess what the typical taste of your average potential customer will be and cater to that.

Looking Ahead: 2012

2012-01-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

So, now the follow-up to the 2011 retrospective. What am I planning to do in 2012, both blog-wise and project-wise?

Well, naturally, I've got Liber Zero to work on. I'm still putting it off until I get a chance to see what Delving Deeper is all about, but I am making some arrangements that may make it easier to work on LZ and actually get stuff done. Plus, I have some ideas I want to present; some I'll present pretty soon. I'm also testing some LZ stuff in the weekly game here; I can already tell you that the revamped Situation Roll works great. If I get a chance to test any of the weirder innovations, especially class and race stuff, they'll wind up in the companion project, Liber Blanc. Another possibility: should I rewrite the improv stuff, put it into a PDF, and call it The Last-Minute GM?

I want to get back into weekly maps in 2012. I'm not sure I can do geomorphs again, since I feel like I've drained that well dry. But I'm not having particular luck with completing an entire level a week, either. I think maybe what I can do is map "hub" rooms that mesh with the megadungeon format tricks I've talked about before. Essentially, these are fully-stocked geomorphs with a list of associated encounters or treasures to be placed in surrounding rooms you would map out yourself. You could use standard geomorphs for the surrounding area, or random generation; you could map it out beforehand or wing it during play.

I also want to do more monsters, especially the "vice squad" that I started working on once before. In my original conception, there were potentially 42 monsters, but I only wrote up three, that I can recall. That's practically its own little monster manual, all monsters linked by a unifying theme. We'll see what happens.

The '50s atomic age horror RPG (Alternative V) and its rocket patrol spin-off (Populuxe Planet Patrol) are also on my list of stuff I want to work more on this year. Given how much else I have to do this year, I may not get as far on that, but I want to get it started.

Blog-wise, I need to finish some changes I started. I added stand-alone pages for Maps, Links, and LMGM material. The Maps page needs to be updated, and the other two need a serious clean-up. In particular, I need to create an index to posts in a series; the Links page could include Clerics Without Spells and its spin-offs, and the Infernal Neighbors posts; the LMGM page is missing lots of more recent material, like the improvised town posts. In addition, I can probably add some other pages bundling together some topics. I just need to reserve some pages for Liber Zero, Liber Blanc, and maybe Other Games.

I created two tags in the past year: "obsolete" and "todo". The first was for old material that I've re-written; the idea is that the obsolete tag lets people know there's another, better version of the rules. The other tag was a reminder of things I planned to expand later. Unfortunately, I didn't apply these tags as vigorously as I need to, and I'm behind on a number of little things I planned to do. Where's the last Infernal Neighbors post? When am I going to turn dungeon shorthand into something usable?

Also, I'd like to prune the "houserules" tag so that it represents actual house rules I'm using in my current game, as opposed to suggestions that could be used as house rules.

Summary: Lots to do, lots of plans to make my blog more useful and interesting.

Impromptu Routes

2011-12-31T12:21:00.000-08:00

No heavy posting for today, because I'm planning to go to a New Year's party, but I did leave something out of the post from a few days ago on mapping baronies, provinces and other settled regions during play instead of in advance. What if the players are in a town at the edge of your mapped area and they ask around about what's further up the river or coast, or along the old abandoned road?

As you may recall, the previous post had a 2d6 roll to determine if there is a settlement. For really quick mapping when an NPC is giving directions, use a pool of six dice instead, reading each die separately from left to right as settlements (first die = first settlement, second die = second settlement, etc.) The number rolled on the first die is the number of leagues to first settlement in that direction; each additional die gives the distance between additional settlements. Double the distance in lightly populated areas, triple it in sparsely populated areas, and multiply by 10 if the players are on the edge of the wilderness.

The size of each settlement is also based on the roll; if the d6 result is 3 or lower, it's a hamlet. On a 4, it's a small village, a 5 is a large village, and a 6 is a town. If the starting location is a town, all additional settlements except the one farthest away are one size smaller; if starting from a city, they're two sizes smaller.

If you want population density to potentially change, every 6 rolled indicates one change in population level. The change is normally a shift down, if moving up river or away from the coast, but you can shift the density up for every 6 rolled if heading down river or towards the coast into an unmapped area.

You can get trickier with this roll, using where the dice land as a rough guide to how twisty the river or road is when traveling in that direction. You could, for example, read the dice in different directions based on compass direction asked about:

East: read dice left to right, leftmost dice are closest to current location
North: read dice bottom to top, dice closest to you are closest to current location
West: read dice right to left, leftmost dice are farthest west
South: read dice top to bottom, closest dice are farthest south

2011 Blog Retrospective

2011-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd do an end-of-year look back at how my blog is doing. What do I think were the highlights of this past year? And do the stats agree?

Three of the top posts from 2010 were still in the Top Ten for 2011, one of which (The 20-Sided Quickies table) got a boost because I recently revamped it as the Quickie Dice Tool. A couple new posts I didn't think were all that important (Wandering Modules, Hard) also got a surprising number of pageviews. The breakout post of the year was Clerics Without Spells, which I developed into several spin-off posts (including recent alternative druid and necromancer classes.)

Here's the full Top Ten posts, with stats:

Clerics Without Spells (using Turn Undead to work miracles) - 1,378 pageviews
Hard (commentary on a now-forgotten kerfluffle) - 639 pageviews
A Clone in Your Head (stripped-down clone idea) - 240 pageviews
Impromptu Towns - 195 pageviews
20-Sided Quickies (old random dressing tables) - 184 pageviews
Wandering Modules (random book titles, just for fun) - 175 pageviews
How's the Weather? (using reaction rolls to generate weather) - 170 pageviews
Aurichale Empire (old setting description) - 157 pageviews
Quickie Dice Tool (updated 20-Sided Quickies) - 154 pageviews
(tie) The Quarter System (simple town layouts) and D&D for $2.99 (thoughts on a super-cheap version of D&D) - 143 pageviews each

I'm also getting a lot of hits on the stand-alone pages. Maps are, of course, a popular item (425 hits,) even though I ran out of steam after 60-some geomorphs. I hope interest doesn't die out by the time I get around to reviving Map Mondays. The Last-Minute GM features get a lot of hits, and the Links/Tags page gets enough views that I feel I should update both of those; they're kind of a mess.

Google Analytics gives significantly different results: a much lower count for "Clerics Without Spells", complete absence of last year's Top Five, and some pages with unusually large pageviews that somehow didn't make it onto the Blogger stats: the Perverse Polymorpher -- probably the craziest-looking thing I have ever done -- comes in with 240 pageviews, followed by a post on Logistical Problem Solving with 198 pageviews; Where and How to Search has 180 pageviews; Megadungeon Format Tricks has 153 pageviews.

The top key words that direct people to my site include variations of "nine and thirty kingdoms", of course, as well as searches for Liber Zero, but also:

"planet generator" (people looking for this, perhaps)
"hot elf chick"
"clerical vows"
"etheric beings"

In a couple days, I'll post a follow-up on the blog's future.

Inspiration Challenge

2011-12-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

Someone should go look at these pics on the OBI blog and use them as inspiration for an adventure module. I particularly like the enchanted chairs, which look like something out of an unpublished James Raggi module, and the tomb of the Rosicrucian.

Wheelbarrows

2011-12-29T09:34:00.000-08:00

No really substantial posts planned for today, but I'm about a third of the way through this article on the history of the wheelbarrow and it's pretty damned interesting. Not only does it provide some useful information about transportation in a low-tech setting, it's pretty good at capturing the feel of a setting like what I'm aiming for in The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms campaign: any infrastructure that may have once existed has decayed so much that it's nearly useless, and people stick close to the rivers as their primary transport, but would use things like carts and wheelbarrows for the rare times they depart from the waterways.

Plans for the Quickie Dice Tool

2011-12-28T17:46:00.000-08:00

I've started working on version 2.0 of the Quickie Dice Tool. The primary changes I'm planning are:

Merge the right side of the page with the left, and add numbers; this leaves the right side free for a different vertical scheme.
Swap the top and bottom; this change is meant to support the next one...
Add letters and numbers as grey background to the (new) top scale; this makes it easier to label (top left corner is "1 ABC" on two different axes.)
Renumber the (new) bottom scale (color and material) to 0-5; again, this makes it easier to label (bottom left corner is "0".)
Rearrange the lists in the middle a bit, and number the rows and columns to make them easier to use with the (now-) numbered rows and columns.
Minor font and layout changes; key may wind up on a separate sheet.

I plan on adding a few other lists; for example, an animal parts list and a subterranean features list. I also plan on adding the six ability scores, probably along the (now-) empty right side, to ultimately replace the old Ability dice map and add more potential dice keys. For example, you could roll up smart berserkers or charming slaves with a single roll.

Since I'm in the process of rewriting it anyways, now's the time to make any suggestions about what you'd like to see or what you think would work.

Quickie Dice Tool: Events and History

2011-12-28T09:00:00.001-08:00

The previous posts on the quickie dice tool focused on nouns: how to roll for random people, places, and things. This post will focus instead on events.

I've already mentioned one way to roll for a random event: you can roll d4 + 3d6 to generate descriptions of ceremonies or other ritual behavior, with the d4 representing the character who must take action and each d6 representing one action that character must take; the numerical result on each d6 describes the order of the action. This process can be generalized to other events; if you have an invasion or influx of migrants or refugees, a quick d4 + 3d6 roll determines who they are and what they are going to do. Likewise, a 3d4 roll with vertical position interpreted as a beast, horizontal position interpreted as behavior, and numerical result of each d4 interpreted as season (fall, winter, spring, summer) gives you notable animal behaviors for the year, which could prompt some adventure opportunities. ("Why are the moose throwing themselves off a cliff this winter? Let's investigate! Or harvest some furs!")

A similar trick is to roll 3d6, with each d6 interpreted in order as a territory roll, to figure out the general history of a region. You may have a currently ruined area which used to be a town, but which was overrun by an influx of nomads.

A more elaborate approach would be to merge this process with the sketchy random history technique I described some time ago. There are a total of 12 lists in the middle of the sheet, so you could number them 1 through 12. Roll a d12 + 4d20 on the sheet:

The d12 is the founding event for the region's dominant culture. Numerical result = list to use for interpreting vertical position; horizontal position = behavior or material, whichever seems more interesting.
A d20 result of 1 to 12 is an event in recent history (about 100, 75, and 50 years ago, in any order desired.) Interpret position as for founding event.
A d20 result of 13+ is a major shaping event. Interpret the vertical and horizontal position as for a Territory roll. Record the events in numerical order, with the last event occurring about 200 years ago and other events occurring further in the past, in 200-year increments; dice that match indicate events that happen around the same time, give or take a few years.
If there are no major shaping events, the culture has lasted about 200 years. Otherwise, add 200 years to the relative date of the oldest shaping event to get the total duration of the culture (400 to 1000 years.)
For current local events, follow up with a separate 3d20 roll and remove any dice results of 13+, then interpret as for founding events or recent history.

Note that these rolls use all 12 of the lists on the sheet, including the land and water geographical lists. This seems appropriate to me, since the sudden appearance of a geyser or forest can represent magical events. If this seems too far-fetched, though, all results of 11 or higher can be treated as major shaping events, using the Territory list instead of geographical features.

The twelfth list, labeled as "Descriptive", is meant to describe changes to geography, weather, or flora in the area. It can help determine miscellaneous events like earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. When used to describe events, it's probably best to combine this with the Material interpretation for horizontal dice position; thus, you can have rainstorms or tidal waves of acid, or animals twisted into grotesque forms.

Mapping Provinces and Baronies During Play

2011-12-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

Previously, I gathered up a bunch of techniques to use when adventurers explore an unmapped village, town, or city. This works great for what I call "sketchbox" play. But I also mentioned that I plan on running the current campaign as a full sketchbox, by which I mean it's not just the towns and cities, but entire regions that are mapped in only the loosest sense. I use a very loose version of real-world geography as a framework, put a couple names of landmark cities along the coast and on a couple rivers, and fill in the rest as needed. So how would you do something like that?

You could include "settlement" as a possible wilderness encounter. There have been a couple versions of this approach; for one example, see part one of "The Champions of ZED" by Daniel Boggs (in Fight On! #12.)

What I'm going to do fits more with my concept of our campaign area. I've said before that The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms setting is fairly normal low fantasy along the coast and rivers, where the populated areas are, but gets weirder and wilder pretty quickly when you leave the waterways. So, I start with a couple categories of population density, each associated with a typical settlement type from the impromptu town table:

Heavily Populated: Large Village, automatic settlement every 6 leagues
Lightly Populated: Small Village, automatic settlement every 12 leagues
Sparsely Populated: Hamlet, automatic settlement every 18 leagues
Wilderness: None or Temporary Camp

The coast starts out as Heavily Populated, as do the lower parts of rivers. Whenever PCs left a known area to head into an unmapped area, I would use a 2d6 reaction roll every league, starting two leagues from the last settlement: on a Very Low, the population density drops one rank, and on a Very High, it increases one rank, with doubles for any result meaning a settlement is present.

Average/Neutral reaction (double 3 or double 4) = default size as listed above
Low / High reaction (double 2, double 5) = one size smaller or larger
Very Low / High reaction (double 1, double 6) = two sizes smaller or larger

As long as the adventures stick to the coast, the roll is unmodified, but if no settlement is encountered after 6 leagues, automatically place one at the six league mark.

If the adventurers travel up a river, the population density drops one level every time you are forced to place one of these automatic settlements. Traveling down river raised the population density every time you must automatically place a settlement.

If the adventurers travel away from the waterways, it works the same as for traveling up river, but with a -1 to the roll for every day's travel away from the river or coast. This makes cities and towns become less likely the further inland you travel, and it causes the density to drop pretty quickly.

I'm still considering whether I want to have "negative population densities" representing the likelihood of weird settlements and kingdoms far away from civilized lands.

Quickie Dice Tool: Terrain and Territory

2011-12-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

In addition to random generation of NPCs, monsters, and objects found in dungeons, the quickie dice tool has a couple lists dedicated to describing geographical landmarks or regions, wild or inhabited. This can be used to roll up a quick description of some unmapped, legendary land when characters find maps or scrolls, or as a tool for mapping out a region hex by hex, either during prep or during play.

The geographical rolls are divided into two basic types: terrain and territory. Terrain rolls describe the physical characteristics of a location' the procedure is similar to rolls for basic beasts, but using a list of Land features or Water features in place of the Beast list. The horizontal position sets the color of the feature, so that you can have red deserts, blue canyons, or a black lake. For more exotic geographical features, you can substitute Material for Color, or perhaps a mix of the two; if the d6 roll is even use color, and if it is odd, use material. Keep in mind that the exotic option has the potential to make really weird geographical features; a hill of glass is pretty unusual, but a glacier of flesh is even more so. You may wish to limit such exotic features to limited regions.

The d6 roll can also be used to set the rough size of the geographical feature. In general, this means that if you are rolling for the contents of a single hex, the default size of the feature is also one hex, on whatever scale you happen to be using. The extreme lowest and highest results on the d6 change the size; on a 1, the feature is smaller than normal, with the bulk of the hex being a different geographical type (rolled separately, or based on bordering geography;) on a 6, the feature is larger than normal, either twice as wide and three times as long, or roll 2d6 for the length in hexes for each dimension, whichever seems more appropriate. If you want to combine the size roll with the even/odd rule given above for ordinary versus exotic geography, note that all features smaller than one hex will be exotic and all multi-hex features will just be standard features in various colors. This helps avoid mountain ranges made of flesh or glass, in case you don't want exotic geography to dominate the map.

Alternative dice rolls are possible. By default, you pick whether a feature is land or water and use the appropriate list. You can, however, roll a d4, with a 50/50 chance for either list, or only use the 50/50 roll for the first hex of a fresh hex map; other hexes would be weighted towards the same general geographical type as their bordering hexes. One approach:

1-2 Same type as border hex, or majority of border hexes.
3 Same type as border hex, but different Material instead of Color
4 Opposite type (coastline or river bank,) different Color

In contrast to the purely physical aspects of the terrain roll, the territory roll describes how humans (or the dominant intelligent race) use the region. You won't roll this for every hex on a map; the territory roll is used for urban hexes or their bordering hexes, with everything beyond that either uninhabited wilderness or another settled area. The vertical position of the die determines how the territory is used; some of the results, such as a forbidden zone, ruins, or a battlefield, won't normally have a population, and nomad lands will be very sparsely populated. The horizontal position can provide a quick guide to what the buildings, if any, look like, using either the material or the color. The result of the d6 roll is a rough population size, with 1 (small) indicating a hermit or very small campsite and a 6 (large) indicating a city. It's possible to switch this to a d8, using the 8 for cities, so that you can roll territory and terrain simultaneously. A more elaborate method would be to roll three dice: a d6 for terrain and size, a d8 for territory type and population size, and a d4 to determine whether the area is mundane (use colors) or exotic (use materials,) as described earlier. The position of the d4 can add a little more description to the roll; for example, it could determine the dominant class or inhabitant type, or the primary economic activity. It could also be used for current events, but there will be more on that in a future post.

More Resources

2011-12-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

I just thought I'd post a link to the Secret Santicore PDF, for any of those who haven't seen it elsewhere. I didn't contribute to the project (didn't even really know about the project, although I saw a couple references to the phrase "secret santicore".) But there are a couple familiar names in there, and I've seen a couple blog posts by contributors describing their contribution.

Basically, it's several short adventures, lots of random tables, and a couple other useful bits. It's mostly for D&D-ish games, but those of you doing Shadowrun or Mutant Future will find a couple things in there as well.

Quickie Dice Tool: NPCs and Other People

2011-12-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm back from a two-day break with another elaboration of the dice tool.

I shouldn't have to say much about using the dice tool to roll up NPCs or human opponents, since most of the same rules apply as for rolling up monsters. There are two "human" lists, one slightly more exotic than the other; a couple of non-humans with a human form are included on the lists, and other humanoids can be substituted where appropriate. The basic roll for humans is a little simpler than for rolling up ordinary animals; by default, it is just a character type and the color clothes they wear, with the d4 result itself as the number of humans of that type. If, for some reason, you are rolling NPCs one at a time and don't want a group of 3 or 4 traders sitting at a table in the tavern, you can ignore the die result, or just use it to decide which of the two lists to consult.

Because it is so similar to the roll for animals, you could use a d6 roll on this sheet for encounters, using the number on the die as which column to use (1-4 indicates one of the four beast lists, 5 and 6 represent the last two "human" columns.) It's best not to use this for every wandering monster roll, however, but instead build an area-specific encounter list with inspiration from the dice tool, either building the wandering monster table beforehand or filling it in as you go. Otherwise, the random encounters become a little too varied.

The character types do not have to be linked to the classes or even to profession. These mainly indicate how the character is dressed and what equipment they might be carrying, as well as their general attitude. A bard might not actually be a bard, but would be carrying a musical instrument of some kind. A lord or lady would be dressed very expensively, but might actually be a con artist of low birth.

Clothing color can either be just a fancy detail or may indicate livery: tavern patrons dressed in white may actually be in the service of a particular noble house or other faction. If you are rolling up multiple NPCs simultaneously for a public gathering and decide to use the livery rule, you can make simple reaction rolls of each faction present to randomly determine local feuds.

Many of the variations used for monster rolls could be applied to people rolls as well. You can use materials instead of colors, either as the material used for a statue or the material of the clothing worn: "metal" might indicate actual armor, or it might indicate lots of copper buttons and decorations; "glass" might indicate someone dressed like Disco Stu; "liquid" might be someone drenched to the skin. Or a second d6 roll could be used to define animal body parts for otherwise humanoid statues, or to define the appearance of gods or saints ("Braxor, god of jugglers, has the upper body of a hippo.")

There is also an NPC behavior roll to help decide what NPCs are doing when the adventurers encounter them. By default, this uses a different die than the base NPC roll, so that both dice can be rolled simultaneously. The roll answers the question "What is the NPC doing, and to what object?" Horizontal position indicates the behavior, vertical position indicates the target object. NPCs may be throwing used armor away, lifting a pillar into place, moving barrels, or making masks. Since this behavior roll can be applied to statues or other artwork as well as to living beings, the information can be used to set up clues for elaborate triggers: in one room of a dungeon, a bas relief displays an elf holding a scroll in one outstretched hand. Another room has a statue of an elf in the same position, hand outstretched, but empty. Placing a scroll (perhaps a specific scroll) in the statue's hand opens a secret door or activates a spell.

Alternatively, you can use the second die roll as a power roll as for an enchanted creature; in other words, not the NPC's current behavior, but a behavior the NPC could do if needed. That berserker might be able to use magnetism to throw opponents dressed in metal armor against a wall, or the gnome may be able to shatter lanterns. Or swap a beast list for an object list, to give NPCs weird powers over specific animals, or to describe other kinds of artwork.

The number rolled on the behavior die can be used for extra information. For example, if a d6 is used, the simple body part table can be used to define specific poses: lifting objects over the head, holding them on a shoulder, throwing (kicking) them with a foot. If exact position or even exact object are unimportant, the behavior can be merged into the base NPC roll, so that one die roll can set an entire event ("You discover a trio of dwarves filling a pit".) One trick useful for such merged NPC+behavior rolls is to use a d4 with the simple Elements table to indicate a much more general target for behaviors: a knight who throws fire, a scholar who fills the earth. These can be interpreted abstractly or as literal supernatural abilities.

Aside from the obvious use of NPC rolls to describe people actually met or depicted in artwork, the basic roll can be used to define:

prejudices for entire communities or for individuals;
respected professions;
political powerful groups;
dominant economic activity.

A quick 3d4 roll quickly determines which groups of people stand out as being lower status (1-2) or higher status (3-4) than average. Similarly, a couple NPC behavior rolls can define forbidden (1) restricted (2-5) or required (6) behaviors, either in general or for a specific religious festival. The merged NPC+behavior roll is especially useful for this, since you can roll 3d6 for a kingdom's legal oddities; use a 1d4 + 3d6 roll to describe religious ceremonies and who must perform them, with the d6 results indicating the order of each action ("Today is The Great Day of Renewal, when hunters must empty their bags in the temple, put on a mask, and throw food in the air.")

Holidays

2011-12-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

Posting will probably be lighter for a couple days. I will probably log in tomorrow and on Christmas Day, but I don't plan to write any big long posts. Next scheduled post is for the day after Christmas. I'll be doing a couple more posts about using the quickie dice tool, all while working on version 2.0 to make it easier to use and maybe pack more information into it.

Happy Holidays to all!

Quickie Dice Tool: Monsters

2011-12-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

"Monsters", either in the general sense of dangerous creatures or the more specialized sense of unnatural beasts with freakish appearance and fantastic powers, are usually in pretty high demand. Even a GM who sticks to tried-and-true published monster lists wants a little variety every now and then, and more daring GMs want a unique monster for every dungeon or locale. In addition, animal rolls can be used to build compound meaningful names for people, towns, or taverns, or to determine the shape of a statue, or the main food source of a village, or ingredients in a potion, or many other things.

The default roll for a random beast is a single d4 or other die, with the vertical position read as the first letter of an animal name and the horizontal position read as the color variant. By default, the color of the beast is just that: color; however, some colors may be more useful as camouflage in some environments, while others may be more valuable as trophies; when looking for animals with medicinal uses, there could be a 1 in 6 chance that this particular variety can be used to heal whatever condition you are looking to cure. Also, you can link each new color of beast to a different animal behavior or immunity; the white beasts may be resistant to cold, the green beasts might live in the tops of trees. One suggestion: give a 1 in 6 chance for each color that this particular variety of beast has an ability associated with the material listed below that color.

Green: Arboreal, attacks by surprise from above
Red: Aggressive, does +1 damage
White: Fragile, has one less hit die
Gold: Tough, has improved armor class
Blue: Aquatic, swims at double speed
Black: Burrower, digs through earth at half speed.

The default d4 also indicates whether the creature is vermin, ordinary, or predatory. Ordinary beasts are exactly like their real-world base form, with herbivores being dangerous if threatened. Vermin are much smaller and more of a threat to food supplies, non-metallic equipment, or defenseless casualties. Predatory beasts can be a surprising variant, if the base animal is not normally a predator; if it *is* normally predatory, the altered version is a larger, cunning man-eater. Alternatively, use the d4 result to indicate which column to use of the four beast columns (standard, exotic, common, other) instead of picking an arbitrary column or restricting the result to a specific column.

Instead of a d4, you can also use a d6, either as a size roll (small, medium, large) or to indicate which body part is abnormal. Thus, you could get a Blue Elephant with some kind of head modification (on a 6 result,) which might mean a horned elephant; a roll of 2 for a Black Tiger might indicate ridiculously elongated legs.

All of these are fairly normal beasts; using Material instead of Color can create creatures that are borderline supernatural. Flesh as a material would indicate a standard beast of the type rolled; Wood might be a plant in the shape of a beast, or a beast with woody tendrils sprouting from its body. Liquid might represent a creature that can change into water to escape or ambush, or it can be changed into an ice creature.

The more abstract monster roll is to read the vertical position as a general monster type and the horizontal position as its attack form or other behavior. The monster types focus on general features: avians fly, enchanted creatures have magic powers, incorporeal creatures are mists or spirits, fiends are supernatural outsiders or extra-planar entities, undead are evil re-animated corpses, shapeless monsters are slimes or mimics, plants are usually mindless and stationary, hybrids are two or more beasts mixed together, golems are manufactured, reptiles are scaled and presumed to be more like dinosaurs or dragons than standard reptiles. Combined with the attack behaviors, you can get some fairly varied fantastic creatures; spirits that grapple and paralyze, plants that throw thorns, zombies that grow in size as they add corpses to their bodies.

Several of these types require additional rolls for powers or other details. For example, a hybrid creature is part of one beast mixed with part of another. One of the rolls can be a d6, interpreted as the point where the two beasts join. You can have a turtle with the head of a boar, or a toad with a snake's tail.

For an extremely varied monster, roll three dice all at once: d10, d4, and d6.

Read the d10 as generic monster type + material, looking up the d10 result itself as a behavior (using the numbers across the bottom of the page;)
Read the d4 as basic animal type (d4 result = column) plus color;
Read the d6 as appropriate for the monster type indicated by the d10 roll (power of enchanted creature, second animal of hybrid, extra details, (in)vulnerabilities, etc.)

Millions of monsters, at your fingertips!

Quickie Dice Tool: Dungeon Dressing

2011-12-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

More tricks and examples of how to use the quickie dice tool. One of the most frequent reasons I have for rolling random details is to answer dungeon dressing questions. "No monster, treasure or trap in this room, but completely empty rooms are boring. What's in this room?" Or: " What's in these crates?" Or: "What kind of statue is in the middle of the fountain?"

The basic idea behind all the dungeon dressing rolls is that the vertical position indicates the first letter of the name of the item. There are ten vertical positions, each with two consonants; also, you can use the vowels AEIOU in place of BDJFL, or Y instead of Z, if you can't think of a noun beginning with those consonants. Thus, if your mercenaries feel ho-hum because they are all swordsmen or spearmen or crossbowmen and you want some new ideas, assume the next squad you place has training in two weapons and roll two dice on the sheet; use the letters rolled as a hint for the name of a weapon: (battle)axe, dagger, trident, flail, lash, sickle, mace, hook, net, rapier... or any other weapon those letters make you think of.

Although you can create impromptu lists, like that weapon list, for any specific need, I included several premade lists in the center of the sheet, including a list of "Equipment" -- mostly items you would expect adventurers to carry (well, maybe not a mask...) while the "Object" list is a scattered sample of other items you might find in a room or at a market; there's also a list of materials you might find stored in crates or in bins at a merchant's stall.

The horizontal position of any dice you roll for dungeon dressing injects a little variety in these lists. Across the top are six colors that seemed to be the most useful, and six broad material categories. You can thus roll for "red armor" in a merchant's stall, and elaborate that as a maker of dyed leather armor, or a someone selling rusty plate, or maybe even reddish bronze scale mail. Combining a noun with one of the materials across the top can produce more exotic items, like a glass shield or a net made of flesh.

The result of the dice roll itself can be used for further details. The example given in the key is to use a d4 to represent the four classical elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire.) Object + color + element can result in some pretty exotic items, like The Shield of Green Water. Or the elements can be used as a guideline to other characteristics: Earth for heavy, dense items, Water for flexible items, Air for transparent items, Fire for shiny, sparkly or glowing items. Or the more rarified elements (Air, Fire) can represent gems and metal, with the color helping to specify the type (green metal for copper, white metal for silver, red gem for ruby.) The choice here depends on how fancy or arcane you would like the result to be.

Instead of a d4 elemental association, you can use a d6 body part association, combined with color + material, to specify types of clothing: red linen shoes, green bone gauntlets, black silk tunics. Or the d6 could be used as a size roll, with most items being average but a few being tiny or gigantic. Or you can improvise a d4 social status roll (peasant, tradesman, merchant, noble) to define the quality of goods found. Or divide the d6 roll by two to get a column number, so that you can use all three columns for items (Equipment, Object, Material) on a single roll.

Across the bottom of the page are the what I call the behaviors. These are verbs, selected mainly by the letters associated with each digit in Lewis Carroll's old cypher, but I did try to focus on active verbs describing a change of state, with only a couple exceptions like "hold" (although even that could be used to describe grappling, for example.) When used in combination with objects, these could signify:

what you would normally do with the object (a tool for breaking things, a bag meant to be thrown;)
what has been done to the object (an empty/blank scroll;)
an item that is used to do something to an object (tools for making idols;)
a place where an action is done to or with an object (the shop of barrel-fillers.)

In some cases, you may have to stretch the meaning of the verb; "empty" could also mean "dig", or "remove", "throw" could mean "send", "swing" could mean "move". In extreme cases, you can always substitute another verb that starts with the same letter, whatever comes to mind; after all, this is an inspiration tool, not a straight jacket. The behavior+object combination just seems like a really fast way to define things like room types or artifacts based on general function, rather than relying on large predefined lists.

One specific way to use the behaviors is for meaningful fantasy names. In addition to made-up names like "Dyarquel" or "Phyngor", fantasy characters often have names that look more like nicknames, like "Headcleaver" or "Axegrinder". The object list (or an impromptu list) plus the behavior list can be used for this kind of name. For example, if we use yesterday's 2d4 formula for dwarven first names, we can add a d6 to get a compound last name: vertical position is the first letter of a weapon name, horizontal position is the verb that follows; the verb can be changed slightly to fit the weapon or to increase the impact ("Axeshatter" instead of "Axebreak", "Speargut" instead of "Spearempty",) or a noun connected to the verb could be used ("Axebreaker", "Boltvolley", "Spearsnatcher".)

Similarly, the objects generated can be used in other abstract ways: tavern names ("The Fleshy Kettle", "The Scarlet Shield";) images in murals or paintings, either static or active ("the tapestry depicts a band of peasants lifting a giant mask above their heads";) principal exports of cities, or trade goods in high demand; topics of books found in a library.

Dungeon Dressing rolls will resurface in combination with other rolls in future posts.

Milestones

2011-12-22T14:00:00.000-08:00

I made it to 160 followers a few days ago, which some of you may recall is the Pundit level for the RPG Blogger character class. I didn't announce this immediately, partly because I figured it may go down again, then go back up (it did.) But also, I noticed I was coming up close to another milestone: my thousandth post at the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms.

That's quite a lot of blogging. And that's for just this blog; I used to blog a little on my Livejournal, until I decided to split the RPG material off from TV/movie reviews and my more mundane posts. And there's more to come. And so much to finish.

I'd do a retrospective of some of the blog's highlights, but I'm kind of planning that for a year-end post.

Another Shot at Armor

2011-12-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

As a follow-up to the weapon selection post, I suppose I should comment on armor. I've already mentioned my decision to use spell failure for elves wearing non-magical armor in our local campaign; that decision was made mostly as a retcon for in-game events. In addition, magic armor is only magical when worn by a Fighter or Cleric; Magic-Users could theoretically wear armor, but unless they were previously Fighters who switched classes, magic armor will remain staunchly non-magical for them, making spell casting difficult.

But the main thing I want to bring up is my attempts at (limited) weapon vs. AC adjustments. I've mentioned before that I think the official versions (in Greyhawk and AD&D) are terrible, and I've previously suggested a greatly simplified version. I explained to my players that I would be using a version of this, but it actually hasn't come up; they've mostly been fighting bugs and animals, so it hasn't been relevant. And so, having time to reconsider, I've decided it's too clunky, even with only four or so weapon types to worry about. I think I can get by with just three armor rules:

two-hand melée weapons treat plate as simple mail;
small missiles (like arrows) striking plate armor roll 2d6 for damage and take the lowest;
other piercing weapons roll 2d6 for damage and take the highest, if harder than the armor, or the lowest, if more fragile than the armor.

Edged weapons no longer get any bonuses when compared to blunt weapons; they just get to chop people's limbs off.

Quickie Dice Tool: Names

2011-12-21T17:30:00.000-08:00

I want to explore the many ways of using the quickie dice tool in more detail, starting with the simplest use: rolling random letters for fantasy names. The basic procedure, as described in the key, is to roll 2d4 to 4d4 on the tool to get a name of 4 to 8 letters; the dice are read in numerical order, based on their results. Each die's vertical position represents a consonant, read from either the left side or the right side of the sheet as you prefer; each die's horizontal position gives a vowel, read from the top of the sheet. The letters are read in consonant+vowel order by default, giving names like "Mavido" or "Lykora". If you roll two 1s, for example, then those two dice are read as a consonant cluster followed by a pair of vowels; if the consonant cluster looks hard to pronounce, as in "Mvaido", move one of the vowels to the front ("Amvido",) or insert an apostrophe and pronounce it with a short schwa-sound ("M'vaido".)

You can reverse these rules for forming syllables, reading the results in vowel+consonant order, for names derived from another culture. You can also set each culture to a different number of dice: two for halfling names, for example, giving names like "Mavi" or "Lyko". If you are rolling d4s, rolling 3 or 4 dice increases the chance of consonant clusters and rolling more than 4 dice guarantees clusters. On the other hand, you can use just 2 to 4 dice, but use larger dice to decrease the chance of consonant clusters. Elven names might follow a rule like "roll 3d20 of one color for the first name, 3d20 of another color for the last name, read in vowel+consonant order." This gives names like "Amivod Ylokar".

Another way to vary naming rules by culture is to add more specific prefixes or suffixes depending on the actual dice result. For example, you may decide that all dwarven first names end in "-d", "-n", or "-r". Roll 2d4 and read the letters in consonant+vowel order, then add a "-d" if both dice are odd, an "-n" if both dice are even, and an "-r" otherwise. This creates names like "Mavin" or "Lykor". On the other hand, you could roll 3d6 for orcish names, but only use the first vowel rolled, dropping the others, to create short names heavy in consonants.

The dice can be interpreted as more than just two-letter syllables, though. Consider what happens if you use the habitation type (on the right side) instead of one of the consonants; use the first part of the word as the entire first syllable of a name. Instead of a vowel, use part of the behavior (across the bottom) as the second syllable of the name. Each die rolled becomes a two-syllable name, so that the same roll that produced "Mavido" could have been interpreted instead as three names: "Pateen", "Legite", and "Enold", among other possibilities. Or, alternatively, use one die per syllable, replacing the vowel in the first part of the word rolled with the vowel rolled, which would create names like "Lyg", "Holl", or "Ran".

There's a way to get more meaningful names, but I'll cover that in a future post.

Situational Factors

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

Brendan and I have been discussing bonuses to climbing, which has reminded me of something I said once about how I handle modifiers to rolls to avoid too much bonus inflation. It might be worth it to cover this as its own topic.

Let's take an attack roll as an example, instead of climbing. You sneak up behind a guard and try to wrestle him to the ground so you can tie him up. The guard isn't asleep or helpless, so presumably there's an attack roll. You toss a pebble in a different direction to distract him right as you strike. What kind of bonus do you get on the attack roll?

I think most GMs would figure it out this way: There's a +2 or +4 bonus to attacks from behind, plus your Strength bonus (wrestling,) plus your Int bonus (or maybe a Wis bonus) for the pebble trick, minus the guard's Strength and Int bonuses.

The way I do it is: the guard is alert, but isn't all that remarkable. Let's say you are stronger than the guard, but not as clever. Those two factors cancel each other out, plus you have the advantage of striking from behind and tossing the pebble; total bonus is +1. If you had been stronger and smarter, that's significantly more advantages in your favor, so it would be +2. I only look at who has the overall advantage and give a +1 to that side, +2 if there are several more advantages.

Here's another situation: you're trying to cross a narrow bridge without falling. The bridge is slippery and rickety, but you have high Dex. That's a -1; if there were also bees attacking you and you had an injured leg, it might be a -2.

So: having lots of factors in your favor doesn't improve your chance of success much, but it does improve your chances of getting a +1 or +2. This seems natural and easy to me; I could just eyeball the situational factors and think "oh, sounds like the PC has the advantage here." I don't discuss it much because I think it doesn't feel natural to most other people; they would rather have explicit additions and subtractions, and want some situations to be much more beneficial than others, such as rear attacks being easier than flank attacks, which are in turn easier than normal attacks.

There's only a few things that I count separately from situational factors, or that give bonuses higher than +2. Armor, for example, comes in various grades, and the number of hit dice a creature has adds directly to the attack roll. It's possible to treat these as just another situational factor, especially if you are modifying a 1d6 roll and don't want to give too high a bonus. For example, instead of giving a 9th level thief a +5 when trying to pick a pocket, you could give a +1 when trying to pick the pocket of a 4th level Fighter, or a +2 when picking the pocket of a 2nd level fighter; the thief could get a +1 when trying to pick a complicate lock while drunk with improvised picks. For 1d6 situation rolls, I sort of do this, in that any level bonus of +2 means no roll is necessary, anyways. But I still allow open-ended level bonuses on general principal. Those who would rather cap the bonus are welcome to do so, however, and the situational factor method might be one way to do so.

Quickie Dice Tool

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

Remember the old d20 Quickie Tables?

It took several posts to explain them all, and I uploaded two single-page PDFs that included all the tables (but not much explanation on how to use them.) I've always intended to go back and tweak some entries, then add both tables to unified document with full explanations and examples.

But as an experiment, I thought I'd try doing them as a dice map in the style of Zak S.'s "drop-dice" tables. And I got it all on one page! Some of the lists are compressed (I condensed the 28 entries for Events and Modifiers to terrain into a single list of 10 descriptions, for example.) But it's still tons of information.

The left and right margins contain the consonants, in the order that Lewis Carroll used in his mnemoic cypher. The vowels are across the top, digits from 1 to 0 are across the bottom. The directions are in the middle, upper right corner. The key -- what used to be the d20 formulas -- is in the upper left corner. The lower half of the instructions is a set of lists; if you can't think of the name of animal that starts with "L" or "V", just look those up in one of the lists. The order is the same as in the left and right margins, with the vowels AEIOU occasionally subbing for BDJFL.

Some explanations for the verbs/behaviors might be helpful: whenever necessary, you can substitute a different verb with the same conceptual effect. If you roll "Break Food" as the behavior of a random monster, for example, you would probably change "Break" to "Rot" or "Spoil". "Empty" means "remove", "unload", "unpack"; you can use this for digging, for example. "Throw" can also be "Toss", or any ranged attack; "Swing" can be any melée attack or any general tool-use action. "Lift" can be expanded to moving or repositioning objects in general. "Grow", or any other verb for that matter, can be swapped for its opposite, if it seems appropriate. "Zero" not only represents the number zero, but "zero action", for those rare instances when you want a creature, trap, or other item that does absolutely nothing.

Similarly, the colors and materials can be modified when necessary. "Gold" can become "Yellow" or "Orange", "Earth" can be clay or sand, "Liquid" might merely mean wet.

The dice rolls are optimized so that you can roll multiple dice all at once. For example, you roll 2 to 4 d4s to get a name. Roll a d4 and a d6 to describe an NPC and what the NPC is doing (great for statues as well.) You can roll a d4 and a d6 to get a hybrid beast (like a gryphon, minotaur or pegasus.) It's easy to modify the key as well to suit special needs. You can, for example, roll a bunch of d6s instead of d4s for statues of "Egyptian"-style animal-human hybrid gods, to get results like "Jade statue of Toad-headed god" or "Clay statue of god with pig's feet."

Edit: There's an error in the key for "Monster". It direct you to use the top edge of the sheet for the monster's behavior, when you should, of course, use the bottom edge; the arrow is pointing in the wrong direction.

As previously mentioned, I wasn't able to get the PDF to work correctly after upload. This is a weird "feature" of Google Docs; sometimes, when you make a PDF on your computer and then upload it, some images in the PDF disappear inexplicably. The problem is that I added the key and lists sections as images, because it was easier to lay them out first in another app, then import them into Inkscape. I may be able to fix this later by re-doing the PDF in InDesign, but that takes a little more time. In the meantime, the image above redirects to a large PNG image, which makes the text a tiny bit blurry, but still readable.

Weapon Selection

2011-12-20T17:00:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in a comment on the druid post that I'd have to do a post about weapon restrictions. It's also a particularly important question for thieves, since the standard old-school versions of the thief list a bunch of weapons that are hard to characterize. I've been toying with several different ideas on how to handle class restrictions for months, if not years. I've finally reached these conclusions:

Magic weapons are limited as described in the LBBs. A magic sword is not magical when picked up by a cleric. No magical weapon is magical for a magic-user, except for a magic dagger or magic staff.

Only blunt one-hand magical melée weapons are magical when wielded by a cleric. Only magic short swords, magic crossbows, and small magic melée weapons are magical when wielded by a thief.

Zero-level NPCs only get their HD bonus on attacks using weapons they are trained to use: natural attacks (punch, kick, bite) and maybe two weapons, rarely more than two. They can be trained by an employer to use additional weapons.

Clerics, Magic-Users, Thieves, and most other classes are the same: they only get their HD bonus on weapons they've been trained with. Lawful Clerics also have religious vows they must abide by, but in theory could train with other weapons. To make things simple, first level characters are trained in whatever weapons they paid for during character creation; other weapons require training. If they use any other (untrained) weapon, they attack as a zero-level NPC.

Fighters do not need training; they can use any weapon they pick up.

Fight On! #13 and Cantrip Errata

2011-12-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure many have heard by now, Fight On! #13 is available on Lulu.

You can buy the print edition here:

http://www.lulu.com/product/18762771

and the PDF edition here:

http://www.lulu.com/product/18762783

It's packed with several adventures and the usual supporting material, including some stuff for Tunnels & Trolls. It also includes another article I wrote, "Cantrips Gone Wild!", which as you can probably guess is a simple cantrip system usable with OD&D.

I let an error creep into the article. In the cantrip verbs table under the entry for Open/Close, it reads: "Thisaffects an object up to human size or weight and can [...], but doesn’tcause changes on a surface as would Touch." I've looked at two different draft versions and couldn't find the missing phrase, but I believe it should be "... can produce one physical change that could be accomplished with a simple hand movement, but doesn't cause changes on a surface..." That would bring it in line with the text for the Touch verb, which Open/Close references. Sorry about the omission.

There's also a couple minor typos that don't affect readability, but I don't see any other major lapses of information.

Simplified Climbing

2011-12-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Roger and I started talking about climbing (and slipping while climbing) in the post on my thief class and I came up with this simple approach to climbing:

Take half your character's Move; that's your max speed per turn when climbing.
When exploring, you normally have to rest 1 turn in 6. If you are climbing for less than six turns, there's no problem; you just rest at the end of your turn.
If you have to rest while climbing, there's a risk of falling; roll for surprise to see if you avoid it.

These rules are kind of similar to the simplified jumping rules I whipped up not too long ago. They eliminate rolls in many circumstances and they're easy to remember, for me at least. "Half Move" may be too fast, though; maybe it should be Move/3.

What does everyone else think?

Nine and Thirty Thieves

2011-12-20T09:30:00.000-08:00

Just for the record, here's my rewrite of the Thief I'll be using. I've optimized it for the style of play I prefer: the less time spent looking up rules, the better; no skill rolls, but rolls for unexpected results are OK.

(Side note: looks like Google is trying to force us to switch to the new interface... rich text editing is disabled for the classic editor. And completely off-topic: am I the only person who winces when referring to WYSIWYG HTML editing as "rich text editing", when it doesn't produce Rich Text Format documents?)

This iteration of the class is basically a merging of JB's "automatic" Thief and my previous modifications of the Thief. It depends on the fact that I handle surprise using the now-standardized Liber Zero Situation Roll (5+ on 1d6 means the situation changes.)

Concept: Sneaky thief, of course. Mostly the Grey Mouser. Robin Hood and Zorro don't pick pockets, that I can recall, but they certainly rely on silent movement and hiding from view.

Alignment: Any. It's called "Thief", but the character can be reskinned as a non-criminal. Besides, Law does not necessarily mean the legal system; the legal system can be corrupted to cause Chaos. Both Robin Hood and Zorro oppose what they see as injustice.

XP/HD: Already posted. Basically, same hit dice as a Magic-User, but half the needed XP.

Abilities: Trained in trap removal, climbing, stealthy maneuvers, and observation. Any class can do these, but the Thief does have some advantages. Thieves add +1 per HD to their d6 surprise result and subtract the same bonus from an opponent's chance to surprise. All Thief abilities are basically an elaboration on the surprise rules.

Listening through a door is an extra chance to avoid surprise. Again, anyone can do this, but the Thief has a better chance of hearing tiny noises.

Picking a pocket or filching a key from a table requires a surprise roll to avoid detection; if the opponent is a higher level than the Thief, subtract the opponent's level. There's sometimes a chance something else will go wrong, like dropping a slippery object; if nimble fingers can avoid this, add or subtract the Thief's bonus from the d6 result as appropriate to reduce the chance.

Hiding in shadows and moving silently also take advantage of surprise; subtract 5 from the surprise result to see how many rounds a Thief can remain undetected. If a Thief attacks someone by surprise, add the surprise result to the damage done.

Small trap removal risks triggering the trap -- in other words, being surprised by the trap. Subtract the Thief bonus from the d6 roll to trigger the trap; a modified result of 5+ means failure. A lock is basically a small trap that prevents opening a door without breaking it down; the risk when picking a lock is jamming it, but otherwise, it's the same as removing a trap. Thieves, unlike ordinary folk, can "pick" a magical lock; this doesn't remove the enchantment.

If a character is "surprised" while climbing, a handhold or foothold comes loose. Thieves have a better chance of avoiding this. Only a Thief can climb a sheer vertical wall with no obvious hand- or footholds; the bonus to avoid falling is 1/4 normal, however, unless employing equipment.

For treasure maps in another language, basically the writing would warn you about one or more possible things that could surprise you; roll 1d6 for each item and modify each roll by 1/4 of the Thief bonus. Anyone can try this, but only the Thief gets better at it. Magical writings use the same rule, but there's an additional modifier based on the spell level.

Teaser

2011-12-19T22:17:00.001-08:00

Bad news: I experimented with Zak's drop dice tables in the Vornheim PDF and discovered that I couldn't use them as-is with my digital dice roller; the shapes are incompatible. I would need to create a modified "screen" version that fit around the shape of the dice roller I have. This doesn't mean I can't print'em out and use them as intended, of course...

Good news: I've been working on another experiment, which I'll post here in a couple days. Looks nifty so far! I did run into a problem: I uploaded a PDF of the original version of the experiment and, as I've seen happen before, Google Docs removed some embedded images from the PDF. I've been forced to redo it as a giant PNG image instead.

More later.

Magic Traps

2011-12-19T16:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure there's much I can say about magic traps, compared to the physical trap triggers and effects I've been describing for the last couple weeks. It's not that magic traps don't have as much variety as mundane traps (quite the opposite!) But magic traps get their variety from the enchantments used as triggers and trap results; the way a magic trap functions, on the other hand, is pretty simple, as is the way it is detected.

The simplest magic trap is an object created by magic that is dispelled after a set time or when a set condition occurs. For example, a wall or floor created with Phantasmal Forces will vanish when touched by a living being, allowing pit traps covered by false floors, or blinding light sources obscured by false walls. Another example would be a trap door in the ceiling which opens naturally under the force of gravity, but is held shut by a Hold Portal spell; when the spell ends, the door opens, depositing whatever was resting on it down below. An inverse example is a Wizard Locked door that is ajar when found; closing the door for any reason prevents returning down that path. Other magical effects that last longer than traditional spells or which end when specific conditions occur would fit here, too; magical water that raises when anyone not bearing a golden trident enters the room, or a pillar of ice supporting a (physical) lever that lowers when the ice melts (perhaps triggered by bringing any flame larger than a candle within ten feet...)

Next up is an otherwise ordinary trap where the trigger or the link from the trigger to the actual trap is replaced with an intangible, magical connection. Take, for example, a magical floor tile which causes a slab to rotate whenever someone steps on it. The effect of the intangible connection is that it removes pulleys, gears and levers that might otherwise be detectable, plus it can make it difficult to determine what the trigger actually activates. Another for this variant is to limit ordinary traps to highly-specific targets. Physical triggers can be set to trigger under a specific weight, or after a specific delay, or the trigger can be positioned so that it can only be tripped by creatures of a certain height; magical triggers may be "dwarf only" or react to (or be disabled by) a specific password.

Then there are traps with magically-created results. The infamous Magic Mouth is one obvious example, producing sound when a particular event occurs; others may resemble physical effects, but the effect comes from nowhere (traps that throw endless fireballs or lightning bolts, for example, or Exploding Runes.) Many State Effects are produced magically, which is why the previous trap effects post specified Physical State Effects; Magical State Effects, like freeze traps, work differently.

There's also the petty example of an ordinary physical trap with various components made resistant to damage via magic, or which is reset magically.

The main difference between magical traps and physical traps is that the magic removes one or more physical clues, often making the trap much harder to detect. However, magic itself is a detectable feature, via a Detect Magic spell or some other means. We can consider a Mag/S detection method as equivalent to Odor/S, Warm/S, or El/S.

Nine and Thirty Necromancers

2011-12-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

A while ago, Brendan posted a B/X Necromancer class and challenged me to post my own version, which depends a little on the Clerics Without Spells approach. Here's the class as it will probably be used for NPCs in the current campaign; players can potentially become necromancers, but it's kind of nasty behavior, so it will be a serious in-game challenge to play one... The class resembles the druid class I posted the other day.

Concept: Obsessive magical type who gets power from spirits of the dead (Voudoun bokors, for example. Or New Age channelers)

Alignment: Neutral or Chaotic, no Lawful Necromancers (because necromancy violates the natural order.) The Neutrals think the dead are too useful ignore, no matter what society thinks. The Chaotics are egomaniacs or just plain maniacs, bent on destruction.

XP/HD: As pre-Greyhawk Magic-User; Int is prime ability. They can use mundane or magical daggers and any staff a cleric could use.

Spells: None by default. Can research M-U or Cleric spells that cause total, partial, or pseudo-death effects, but spells known can't be "memorized", only written as scrolls. Necromancer scrolls require a fresh bone stylus and ink made from fresh blood, both from a sentient being with HD equal to the spell's level.

Other Abilities: Command Dead (undead or spirits) as a Cleric would Turn Undead. This includes binding spirits of the dead to a corpse, object, or locale to make skeletons, zombies, fetish objects, or haunts. Minimum effect HD of target is 1; to created haunted locales, use the higher of the spirit's HD or 1 HD/10 yards.

Necromancers can locate a spirit with a spell-like ability (use magic research rules and/or adventuring) and attempt to bind it to a bone wand or bone jewelry as a fetish; use the higher of the spell level or spirit's HD as the effective HD. The spell can be evoked by a successful Command Dead roll.

Animate Dead is also a binding, but if the spirit's HD is lower than 5, use 5 instead. Necromancers can research how to create undead more powerful than simple skeletons and zombies, but can never command more undead at once than the necromancer's current hit points.

If the 2d6 roll to command or bind the dead is 2 or less, the necromancer gains Impiety. An Impious necromancer can be poisoned by holy water or crossing holy ground. Once a week (or at the beginning of an adventure,) roll 2d6 and subtract Impiety; if 2 or less, some or all of the undead currently under the necromancer's control turn on their master. The necromancer can attempt to bind them again, destroy them, flee, or any other option that comes to mind.

Traps: Physical State Effects

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that the other three result types can all be expressed in terms of objects moving into the target space (Material Effects,) structural elements moving in or around the target space (Structural Effects,) or victims or their possessions being moved through or out of the target space (Motion Effects.) But some physical changes do not involve spatial changes at all; they involve changes of state, such as light, temperature, humidity, air pressure, noise level, odor, magnetic properties, or other sensory qualities named as trap detection methods.

Audible State Effects create noise, either as an alarm, as a distraction (to cover the sound of monster movements, for example,) or as a trick; extremely loud noises may even act as a weapon, stunning or causing damage in those who hear it.

Visible State Effects would include light or color changes, such as a bright flash to blind victims or a projection of a shadow to trick them. A room can also be lit to begin with, perhaps luring adventurers into dousing their torches, only to suddenly kill the lights right before they enter a room full of pits, or before releasing a monster.

Odorous State Effects can be odors designed to trick victims into believing a dangerous monster is nearby, scents to mask a real danger, or odors that have a side effect, such as sneezing or gagging.

Warmth State Effects or temperature effects involve increasing or decreasing the temperature of an area to make it unbearable or even cause damage. This could be wide area (an entire room reduced to frigid levels, to cause hypothermia,) or it could be a very focused target (heating a metal door handle to make it impossible to open without causing damage.)

Electrical Effects work in much the same way. A subcategory, Magnetic State Effects, can be used to slow or halt movement of victims wearing metal armor.

Tactile or Gustatory State Effects probably won't be stand-alone effects, but will be included with another effect, such as painful light or noise.

All of these are physical state effects and generally based on some kind of Material Effect. For example, temperature effects are usually accomplished through superheated air or boiling water, and gagging odors are usually produced with odorous material. If the material is introduced directly into the area (pouring boiling water on victims, for example,) State Effect traps are detected in the same way as Material Effect traps. However, many state effects involve the indirect application of materials, such as pumping wretch-inducing sewage into pipe beneath a floor and only allowing the stench to escape. These indirect trap effects are often more difficult to detect, since the material that produces the state does not have to enter the room.

The subtype of state effect is of course detectable by the named sense. A trap that produces a blinding flash involves some device that is visible, so it should be detectable by sight (Vis/S.) Some traps that have been used previously, but are not currently active, may leave lingering signs of their effects: the wretch-inducing sewage may leave a faint odor after it is pumped out of the area.

Nine and Thirty Druids

2011-12-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

When we started our local OD&D game, I pretty much restricted classes to the basic four (although Thieves are a little different, mostly better and simpler than the original class.) I'm willing to allow the occasional deviant class, but all the mechanics for class abilities will be expressed as variants of the four base classes: M-Us with a different spell list, bards as clerics with druid spells and a mood effect that replaces (and uses the same mechanics as) the turn undead ability; that sort of thing. No "piles and piles of powers", like we see with other classes added to D&D. Since druids look like they are going to figure prominently as a focal point of local conflict, I'll whip up a druid replacement as an example.

Concept: More like druids in the Merlin TV series than nature-loving hippies. They're in conflict with the mainstream religion, The Church of Urizen.

Alignment: Neutral or Chaotic, no Lawful Druids (because Law is linked to civilization in my campaigns.) The Neutrals are maybe willing to tolerate civilization, the Chaotics are rebels.

XP/HD: As pre-Greyhawk Magic-User. They can use mundane or magical daggers and any staff a cleric could use.

Spells: Druid spell list, same number spells per level as M-U. No scrolls or written magical writings; they restore spells by finding a specific sacred animal in the wilderness (each character picks one animal.) Druids can have familiars as "spellbooks". They can't research spells exactly, but may find new spells on wilderness adventures.

Other Abilities: Turn Animals/Plants as a Cleric would Turn Undead. Also used to gain a familiar during play, add a new standard spell to their "spellbook", or occasionally other powers. For example, Druids don't automatically get a "shape-change into animal" ability, but must seek out either a supernatural Animal Master or another druid who can shape-change to "win" the ability; druids can learn three specific animal forms, one each for Sea, Land, and Sky. This is simplified from my earlier discussion of stripping druid powers.

City Districts

2011-12-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

I left something out of yesterday's post about developing towns and cities as you play and never planning them in advance. When I realized I forgot it, I thought, "I won't edit the post, I'll just do a follow-up later." Then I forgot what it was for a while. Since I've just remembered what it was, I'm doing the post now in case I forget again.

The quarter system can be used recursively: as I've mentioned in the original post, you can divide each quarter into four districts around a central "hub district", with each district getting its own flavor. In really huge cities, you can keep doing this (it's districts all the way down!) But that's not the point I wanted to make. Rather, I'd like to point out that each district can be designed as a hamlet or village, using the town table. The district will have houses/shops dedicated to the main trade or occupation of that district, plus at least one central building or feature relevant to that trade (a guild hall, for example,) plus miscellaneous trades useful or interesting to the district inhabitants. The district may also have one or more taverns or other public gathering places that cater specifically to people in that district, and may even have its own informal methods of justice. The weekly/daily market can be replaced with an informal trade network, and the blacksmith can be replaced with some other support craft relevant to the district's occupation.Here's an example:

Bigvillia's Temple District (in the noble quarter)
inhabited by priests, temple workers, and those with a religious bent
Unique Feature: Conclave of All Faiths, where priests go to argue.
Tavern: replaced with tea house w/ meditation garden.
"Smith": replaced with incense maker.
Trades: 2 other church support trades.
Market: an informal trade in relics and religious texts meets at the Conclave every week.
Moral Leader: The Revered Master Polygarth is respected as a great peace-maker between the teeming sects of Bigvillia
Justice: there's a Masked Inquisition that secretly roots out atheists and those who endanger all cults or sects.

Edit: Forgot to add that you would, of course, develop specifics for the Temple District during play with the rules from the previous post. You would want to roll for the general characteristics of NPCs in the district, using the NPC/Town Type system; I just rolled "Petty" for mine, which would mean that most priests in teh district are concerned with trivial personal interests (increasing the congregation, keeping a tight fist on the church's purse, vying for preeminence among priests...) You might roll Compassionate instead, or Unpleasant, or Scheming, any of which would give your temple district a different flavor. And, of course, you'll have a few outsiders living in the district, which could be a spur to adventure; why does that retired carpenter live in the temple district, and why does he keep his windows covered?

Traps: Motion Effect

2011-12-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

Traps with a Motion Effect affect the movement of a victim. These are distinct from traps that move an object or substance into or out of a room (Material Effect) or move walls, floors, or ceilings that compose a room (Structural Effect,) although either of the latter two can have a Motion Effect as a side effect. There are two practical forms of this trap result: Impeding and Repositioning.

Impeding Effects slow the victim's movements or otherwise make them difficult. Caltrops, for example, can potentially cause damage, but this can be avoided if the victim slows movement to avoid the tiny spikes. Marbles or an icy surface either slow movement or introduce a risk of falling. Waist-high water slows movement, but has no risks unless the victim is knocked unconscious. Most Impeding Effects depend on a Solid or Liquid Material Effect, so detection is pretty much the same: typically, Vis/S to spot a shutter or valve that releases the caltrops, marbles, or water, Aud/S to hear them as they rumble or pour down the pipes. Damage-causing traps aimed specifically at the legs can have an indirect Impeding Effect as well, and may have entirely different chances and procedures for detection. A rotating floor or conveyor belt, or a trick staircase that turns into a slide, uses structural elements to impede movement and thus might be a little easier to notice, but difficult to avoid or disable.

Repositioning Effects change the location of the victim in some way. Chutes are Repositioning and Diverting traps, covered pits are Repositioning and Blocking traps. Repositioning Effects based on Solid Material Effects often cause damage as well (log attached to ropes that acts as a ram, causing 1d6 damage and knocking victim to one side;) those that depend on liquid or gas usually involve a blast of fluid and are less likely to cause damage.

There's a theoretical third type of Motion Effect; instead of reducing movement, a trap could increase it. I can't think of an example of this or how it would be useful, unless you want to include the trick staircase that turns into a slide which does not cause an immediate drop, but instead forces victims to choose between moving at double speed with a risk of falling, or half speed with no risk. Another theoretical example could be a canal with a gate that can be opened to increase the waterflow, making it difficult to reach a particular disembarking point and instead hurtling the victim's raft over a waterfall; however, that might be better classified as an Impeding and Repositioning Effect.

Mapping Towns and Cities During Play

2011-12-16T16:15:00.000-08:00

Let's think about combining some techniques:

We have the table I did that allows us to quickly define hamlets, villages, towns and cities with a handful of labels and die rolls, plus the rules that let us define individual trades as needed, instead of in advance.
We have the quarter system as a generic town and city layout; it can be modified slightly to provide other layouts (use parallel strips instead of quadrants around a hub, drop the merchant/noble quarter for smaller settlements.) It even gives us up to 21 neighborhoods.
We can roll for the generic town type, derived from the NPC types, to determine the general character of a town or city's inhabitants. We can even roll this for each neighborhood to provide more detail (don't go in the temple district, those priests are schemers!)
We have Zak's technique in Vornheim to define major thoroughfares in a neighborhood as needed, instead of mapping them out in advance. You can use other words, such as keywords describing each neighborhood or Roman Numeral dice, instead of spelling out the names of the numerals every time.
We have another Zak technique to define the layout of an unmapped building: roll a traditional d6 with pips instead of numerals and use the pip arrangement as the room arrangement. Maybe roll 1, 2 or 3 dice on a sheet of paper to define more elaborate layouts on the fly.
We can modify Zak's room layout technique to define building layouts in a given block. Roll one or more d6s; each pip on the die represents one building, and the arrangement of pips is the arrangement of buildings. A 5, for example, indicates four buildings on a block surrounding a courtyard that contains a fifth building.

What we can do with all this is define an entire city in a matter of minutes, using a few paragraphs, and defer all details until later. You don't need to define *any* towns or cities in advance; all you need to determine are the name, main economic activity, and distinctive feature(s) of the city, and everything else is random or improvised. Even the name, economic activity, and features can be randomized, with things like random medieval occupation lists or my 20-Sided Quickie tables or Risus Monkey's DungeonWord tables.

As the adventurers explore the city, they will discover more details about it, as much as they desire. When the GM has an interesting idea for an in-city location, it's an easy matter to map it and drop it into an appropriate neighborhood, wherever it will fit without disturbing what the players already know.

Traps:Structural Effect

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Continuing with trap results to pair with the trap triggers previously described... Structural Effects are those that alter barriers, surfaces, cover, or routes in the environment. They're all fairly simple to describe and perform one or more of these functions:

Block access,
Open access,
Divert traffic.

The simplest Blocking effect is a triggered tunnel collapse; variations on this effect is to collapse the tunnel floor (exposing a pit) or fill a tunnel with some material other than falling masonry (water, lava, a colossal pile of leeches.) Any of these effects are basically one-shots; a more controlled Blocking effect is the portcullis trap, which can be dropped or raised again. Similarly, a lever can lower a bar across a door, to prevent it opening. A Blocking effect trap may injure a victim caught in its path as if it were a Material effect trap, and some materials used to block access may have side effects, or may only block certain kinds of access; a water-filled tunnel will only block access to those who need air to breath and can't make it to the other side while holding their breath.

The reverse is an Opening effect, which enables access, usually for a hostile opponent. The first thing that comes to mind is probably a wild animal or monster enclosed in an adjacent room; activating a trigger releases a latch, causing a false stone wall to drop, allowing the beast to enter the area and attack. Secret doors are sometimes used in this way; an alarm can alert intelligent dungeon occupants, allowing them to use secret passages to maneuver behind an unsuspecting party of adventurers.

A Diverting effect is, in a sense, a combination of the other two structural effects. Before the trap is triggered, the adventurers have access to one area; after a wall shifts to one side, that access is blocked and a second route is opened. If the diversion is designed to make detection difficult, such as rotating or shifting walls in a maze, the adventurers may become lost and confused, unable to find their way back to a safe zone. A more obvious diversion would be a covered chute trap that opens, dropping unsuspecting adventurers to another level.

In general, structural effects have to be fairly large scale, involving entire walls, floors, or ceilings that move to block, open, or divert routes. Thus, the moving structural element will probably have visible seams (Vis/S, Vis/P if concealed.) Covered pits and chutes can be disguised with sand, mud, or other materials to prevent visible examination, but the ten-foot pole will be useful here, as might pebbles or rocks (Tact or Aud/C.) One-time effects powered by gravity, such as a stone block that seals a passageway, probably use very simple triggers which will be difficult to detect; repeating or continuous effects, such as walls that slowly rotate, will probably require very large gear or pulley systems, which will make a detectable noise (Aud/S.)

Traps: Material Effect

2011-12-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

After thinking about trap results and effects for a few days, as opposed to trap triggers, I've come to the conclusion that there are four basic trap results that occur singly or in combination: Material, Structural, Motion, and State. Let's look at traps with a material effect first, since they're pretty common; they add some substance or material to the environment. There are basically three forms of matter, with distinct ways they may be deployed, plus a fourth form, fire, that is really just a flammable version of one of the other three forms.

Solid Matter traps thrust, throw, or dump solid objects into the target area. The simplest of these would be a deadfall, which drops rocks or other heavy objects onto victims. Weapon traps of various kinds are just an elaboration of this basic principal: a weapon is just solid matter in a specific shape, to increase damage or cause specific injuries. A third variant is sand or dust, meant to smother or suffocate victims. Occasionally, Solid Matter traps have a Structural, Motion, or State side effect (blocking a passage, knocking a victim down or into a pit, dumping hot stones into water to heat it up, filling the air with thick dust to reduce visibility.) Deploying solid matter requires either a vent or duct with a shutter or valve on one end, dumping the material into the target area when opened, or a channel or track which the object rests on until propelled out by a spring, hammer/lever, or blast of air or water. The opening or shutter that the object passes through as it enters the area will be visible, discoverable by either slow (Vis/S) or paranoid (Vis/P) inspection, depending on size and concealment; ducts or vents, or hollow compartments for firing mechanisms, are detectable by tapping (Aud/C); the movement of the object after the trap is triggered will probably be audible, depending on size of material (Aud/N through Aud/P.)

Liquid Matter traps spill, squirt or pour liquid into the target area. Simple liquids like water are less likely to cause direct damage from impact, but drowning is still a possibility, as is damage from other liquids like acid. Liquid traps are thus more likely to be used to create water hazards, making travel slow, difficult, or impossible; there are also the side effects of liquids seeping into clothing and containers, to possibly damage scrolls, spellbooks, maps, food, or other items that should be kept dry. Liquids are usually deployed the same as solids, but because they can seep through sand and other particles, liquid outlets can be completely covered, making them hard to find (Tact/C). They can also seep through cracks, which will be easily visible (Vis/N,) but easily mistaken for ordinary stonework. Once triggered, a slow-moving seeping or dripping liquid may be detectable as a spreading damp spot in sand (Vis/S) or a gurgling or dripping sound (Aud/S in most cases.)

Gaseous Matter traps inject gasses into an area. There are two basic types: those that blow gas, possibly to push victims in a particular direction or blow out torches and candles, and those that fill an area with gas to suffocate, poison, or otherwise affect targets. Opaque gasses (or smoke, which is really a solid suspended in air) can be used to obscure vision as well. Gas is deployed in pretty much the same way as liquid, but the gas vents can have tinier openings (Vis/P or worse,) and gas seeping through cracks or sand particles may be visually undetectable if the gas is invisible; there may not even be a sound, unless the deployment is quick (Aud/P even then.)

Flammable Matter traps inject materials that are either on fire now or will soon catch fire. The exact deployment depends on the type of matter, which is usually flaming oil (Liquid) or a flame jet (Gaseous,) but burning coals are also a possibility. Flammable gasses are a good option, since they are invisible and do not need to be lit if the trap building assumes the intruders have torches. If the material is not pre-lit, the ignition source may be detectable (Warm/P, or El/P for some kind of small leyden jar that produces a spark.) If it is pre-lit, the burning substance may produce more heat (Warm/S, for a specific spot) and possibly smoke (Odor/S.)

If the material in a trap has unusual properties, there may be leakage or remnants of a previous victim that can provide clues to the trap's presence or nature: debris (Vis/P;) damp spots in sand (Vis/S, definitely any Tactile search;) odors of poisons or methane (Odor/S or P.) The traditional method to detect poisonous gas is with a small animal like a canary; the animal is affected first, providing a warning of a gas leak.

Brief Vornheim Review

2011-12-14T17:37:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a few days back, I bought a Vornheim PDF when LotFP was having that incredible sale. One sentence impression: I like it. I didn't think I'd like it a lot, because of the difference in aesthetics, and because of the emphasis on d100 tables, but those turned out to be differences I could live with. What's more important is that ideas in the table entries are pretty good, and the other mechanics geared for on the fly city gaming fit with some of my own mechanics, or inspire mechanics similar to both.

One example: The random building interior mechanic using d6s with pips fits well with my dungeon layout mechanic, and inspires an elaboration based on layering or zooming. I could see designing whole dungeon levels with just d6s and memorized rules instead of tables.

The "drop-die charts" -- what I call dice maps -- are another example. I shied away from Zak's technique at first because of my own experiments with "linear dice maps", with a sheet of paper numbered or keyed along its length. I switched to radial dice maps because I didn't have to worry about the die actually landing on the paper. But I've had a problem with digital dice rollers; the one I have rolls 3d dice and uses a physics engine of some kind, but it doesn't allow me to change the background, so it's hard to use it with dice maps. Zak's rectangular drop-die charts, numbered along two dimensions, could work, though, by adjusting the zoom on the PDF, then positioning the dice roller window so that the page edges are visible around the app.

If it works, I may even celebrate by redoing some of my earlier dice maps as Zak/Vornheim-style drop-die charts. I've got an idea for an easier-to-use NPC attribute roller...

The Elder Shaft

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Nope, not an octogenarian detective... the square spiral staircase leading down below the Elder Tower in last Saturday's OD&D session. I and the players both had some problems visualizing what was going on, so I did a mock-up in Sketch-up.

Here, we see what the adventurers saw when they opened the bronze doors in the floor: a spiral stone staircase around a central shaft, 180 feet total depth total, but I said something about it looking 150 feet deep. The stairways are 10 feet wide, with a 30 by 30 foot open space in the center, so the shaft is 50 by 50 foot total. You can also see that each flight of stairs has a square landing in the corner.

Here's a side view of the shaft. We can see that the first flight of stairs ends suddenly; the second flight, which should be along the west wall, is completely missing, probably broken in some horrific battle now long forgotten. The third flight (along the north wall) and all further flights of stairs are intact, however.

Each flight descends 30 feet, so the last step of the first flight of stairs is 30 feet away and 30 feet above the first step of the third flight of stairs. Quite a jump! Assuming someone could make the horizontal distance, that's still 3 dice of damage. Missing the jump would mean a 150-foot fall and 15 dice of damage. It's only 120 feet down from the end of the first flight to the landing at the top of the last flight, though. Any of these jumps would have helped me to introduce my injury system!

Fortunately, the party didn't try to jump, but instead tied together three ropes and anchored it to a larger timber that had been used to bar the door down into the shaft. I was kind of skeptical of the way they wedged the timber against a wall, but they made it down to the landing at the top of the last flight of stairs. I'm not sure why they didn't use spikes; I don't think they brought any, but the timber had been spiked to the floor, so they had at least two spikes.

The stairs are kind of steep. Most stairs are at a 30 degree slope, but I've been using 45 degree slopes in my maps, because it makes things easy. There are real-world stairs with a steeper slope, like steps on a Mayan temple, but those are unusual.

Traps: Detection Methods

2011-12-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be good to summarize my previous posts on trap triggers using a list sorted by detection methods, so that GMs could compare the party's behavior to the kinds of triggers they would find. (This doesn't include trap results yet, because I haven't categorized them.) The detection methods can be sorted by the standard senses, arranged according to how close you have to be:

(Aud)ible,
(Vis)ible,
(Odor)ous, (Warm)th, (El)ectric (...),
(Tact)ile,
(Gust)atory (taste)

"Audible" and "Visible" can switch places, depending on environmental factors (obstacles to sound or light.) I place "Audible" first because it will always work, whereas "Visible" details are only visible when there's light available.

Odors generally require getting closer; figure you have to be in the same room at least, with distance diminishing for fainter odors. I also group things like sensing temperature or having your hair stand on end because of static electricity into the same category.

"Tactile" and "Gustatory" both involve direct contact, but since many poisons and potions require consumption, I ranked it as being "closer" than merely touching an object.

If you are surprised by a trap, you are caught in it; thus, you attempt to detect it beforehand, to eliminate a surprise roll. We can use the same detection methods as I described earlier, although I've renamed them slightly here so that I can abbreviate them in my sorted list:

(N)one, just blunder in: roll for surprise as normal;
(S)low Entry: no surprise roll if obviously Audible or Visible;
(P)aranoid Entry, stop and scan first: no roll if obviously Audible, Visible, or Odorous;
(C)autious Entry, test from safe distance where possible: no roll if obviously Visible, Odorous, or indirectly Tactile, or any Audible details;
(T)horough Tests: no roll needed for any senses, but may suffer effects.

Sensory details can be hidden by some obstacle or disguise from senses that act over a distance (Audible, Visible, Odorous, Warmth, Electric.) To make the detail obvious, a person searching must mention what they do about the obstacle. For example, a door is usually plainly visible, but a door behind a tapestry is hidden until the tapestry is moved. Hidden details also include audible, visible or other phenomena that only occur under specific tests, like a hollow sound made by tapping an object; this is why Cautious Entry detects any Audible sounds, not just obviously Audible sounds. In general, a hidden detail requires increasing the thoroughness of a search procedure by one level.

Some details can also be observed indirectly, which provides less information. For example, a backlit creature or statue around a corner will cast a shadow; observant characters will see the shadow, but not know what object is casting the shadow. This distinction is most important for tactile details; touching an object or surface with a pole or weapon only allows indirect Tactile details, such as pressure or "give".

Detection methods, sorted first by sense and second by thoroughness, and the kinds of triggers or details they discover:

Aud/N: really large gear or pulley systems, huge volumes of pouring water used in delays
Aud/S: typical gear/pulley systems or water/sand delays
Aud/P: short delays (tiny volume of water or sand pouring into or draining out of container)
Aud/C: secret ducts or compartments (tap area;)
Vis/N: obvious mechanical systems of any kind, such as tripwire in lit room
Vis/S: obvious vent, catch, or lever; typical tripwires and pressure plates
Vis/P: tiny vent, hidden shutter, backlit springs, latches or other mechanics when viewed through a crack
Vis/C: tiny spring or lever triggers
Odor/S: delay that uses burning material
Tact/C: pressure plates (press plate, but may trigger;) buried plates (poke through sand/mud;) hidden springs, wires, or levers (poke through crack)

I've grouped all compression and equilibrium plates together with pressure plates in the above list, since they are about equally hard to find; the differences between them mainly deal with how they are reset or how versatile they are. However, a plate that incorporates a bellows or lever might be detectable by sound as well as visually.

Grinding and Doom

2011-12-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

I haven't been purchasing a lot of game materials lately, because money is real tight. However, I spent an enormous sum of money last week: SIX! BUCKS! I purchased LotFP PDFs that were on sale: The Grinding Gear, Death Frost Doom, Vornheim. Stuff I'd been curious about but worried that it was too far from the what I need or prefer to be useful. I also bought a PDF of Action Castle, because hey, it's low priced, too, and I've been curious about that for a while.

I've given the Grinding Gear and Death Frost Doom a first read-through, and they are pretty good, as I'd heard. There are some features that I'm not sure I'd use, and some mechanical choices I'd grump about, but I guess the only thing that I'd definitely, positively have to change is the d100 table in Death Frost Doom. I'd want something that fit entirely on one page and was easy to use quickly, like a dice map.

No danger of me springing either module on the local OD&D group in the near future, because I have no working printer or e-book or portable computer. Perhaps a blessing for the players!

Unprepped Mayhem

2011-12-11T12:24:00.000-08:00

The second session of my new local OD&D group went well, despite the fact that I prepped two dungeons and a couple miscellaneous encounters which the adventurers never found, instead going to a ruined tower across the river I'd just barely started on. But I had some material to rely on:

- I had drawn some floor plans for "standard towers". I even knew that there would be a "standard tower dungeon" with barracks, prison, storage and armory, so I could use that as my "Level One".

- I had a random encounter key for woods in the general area. I may have intended for the adventurers to explore the woods on the village side of the river, but I had something to fall back on when they surprised me.

- I had a "local mythology". I knew there was a now-eradicated "old faith", so I knew that the Elder Tower was tied into that old faith, and to its eradication. I could answer questions about the history of the tower, even before I'd consciously worked it out.

So I had something to work with; I wasn't completely in the dark. And not being prepped may be a blessing in disguise, because I intended for this dungeon to be the really tough one in the area. If I'd written everything out, not realizing the players would pick that as their second adventure, it would have been a TPK. Now, I can scale it down from what I was originally planning...

(Actually, although I'd barely started designing the Elder Tower, I did have a few notes already. Including my version of stirges roosting in the upper levels (I don't call them stirges, but it's the same basic idea: bloodsucking evil birds.) Turns out the stirges came close to killing a few party members, but fortunately they've survived, so the adventure can continue when we all come back from vacation.)

Spells and Armor

2011-12-09T08:53:00.000-08:00

There's another local OD&D game tomorrow; I'll need to do a quick wrap-up of some issues from last session, including a quick xp awards calculation, which we didn't have time for at the end of session last week; it's easy, since I already know the base xp, but I need to write down who has an xp modifier based on high or low prime ability scores. Also, since the elf cast a spell while wearing normal armor, even after I had explained that it shouldn't work, but I allowed it anyways because the situation was pretty dire, I'll need to explain my loosening of the restriction.

I've decided on this house rule: since an M-U's magic deals with funneling magical energies and armor is just too thick, most of the time a spell's energy dissipates into the armor worn. Magic armor doesn't affect spells this way, but magic armor is non-magical when worn by anyone but a Fighter or Cleric; elves get the magic armor exemption because they are split F/M-Us, but a human with a very high Int could get a level or two of Fighter, switch to M-U after finding magic armor, and get the same benefit.

If an M-U or elf tries to cast a spell while wearing normal armor, there's a chance that the spell will work: 5+ on d6, which is the same as the standard situation. (I even rolled this at the time in our game, because there was another question about whether the spell should even work, but fortunately I rolled high.) At the very least, an M-U must remove any gauntlets, to allow magical gestures, and also remove any helm that completely encloses the head. If the roll is less than 5 or if wearing a completely enclosed helm, most spells are nullified by the armor, but a few are reflected back on the caster or even backfire.

Scrolls are a way around this; the magical energies have already been evoked and channeled into the scroll during its creation, so the M-U only needs to remove helm and gauntlets to cast a spell from a scroll. Magic items, similarly, are easier to work with.

Schemes for Schemers

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

The simple little table I added to yesterday's post can do double duty to provide inspirations for devious plots and schemes, or at least one kind of scheme. Assume that schemers not out to conquer, rob, or take revenge on others are actually trying to profit from a manufactured conflict between two groups. A simple 2d6 roll, as previously described, can be used to define the two groups.

Example: You randomly determine that the local baron is Scheming. A 2d6 roll results in (3, 6) as a result. The baron is pitting thieves or entertainers against the opposite sex. Perhaps spreading rumors that traveling actors who have recently arrived in town are Peeping Toms? Now, you just need to brainstorm what the baron hopes to achieve by creating this panic. Given that it's "the opposite sex", perhaps the baron is trying to woo a stubborn lady and wants to create a fake reason to defend her honor, and the honor of all fair maidens in his barony.

Unlike standard plot hooks, you aren't setting this up in advance to drive PCs into a predefined "story". Instead, the players said, "Let's go talk to the baron and see if we can offer our services to clear out monsters," and you needed to figure out quickly what kind of person the baron is, and what he's up to. The baron doesn't have a specific plan for the PCs, but instead you play the baron based on what the players do and what you know the baron wants. He may direct them to a fake "trouble spot" so that they happen upon a "peeping actor", report to the captain of the guard, and inadvertently spread the rumor. If one of the PCs is a bard or minstrel, the baron may decide to frame him.

Generic Town Types

2011-12-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

Lots of people are looking at the posts on impromptu towns and villages. Not so many are looking at the generic NPC types. So naturally, why not mix the two topics?

When I was working out the table for the NPC types, I was thinking about how the odds of having a subverted type would change if you applied bonuses or penalties to the roll. For example, you could decide that all NPC magic-users are a tad unpleasant, subtracting 1 from the 3d6 roll; or maybe halflings are too pleasant to produce utter villains, so you add 1. You could do the same with different regions, or in fact characterize an entire town or village as Pleasant or Villainous, modifying NPC personality rolls accordingly. This works well with the impromptu approach: pick your settlement size and export type, roll for number of trades per the table, and roll 3d6 to set the general character of the inhabitants, which modifies NPC rolls.

Villainous: -8 to roll. Cruel: -6 to roll. Unpleasant: -3 to roll.
Idealistic: +8 to roll. Compassionate: +6 to roll. Pleasant: +3 to roll.

If the unmodified dice roll is doubles or triples, elaborate or subvert the personality as previously described. One of the side effects of this is that Cruel and Compassionate can now be subverted; subverted Cruel NPCs have a Soft Spot for one type of character, while subverted Compassionate types have a Prejudice. Either pick the target, or roll 2d6 and interpret each individual d6 using this simple table:

Cleric/Religious
Wizard/Scholar
Thief/Entertainer
Fighter/Nobility
Underdog/Lower Class
Opposite Sex

Only characters who meet both criteria are the target of the NPC's Soft Spot or Prejudice. Thus, you can have a psychopath bandit leader who won't harm noble-born wizards, or a philanthropic merchant with an irrational hatred of nuns. If the roll is doubles, the target is the most extreme example of that result: the holiest saints, the most flamboyant wizards, the most brazen thieves, the most courageous knights, the most oppressed underdogs, the most beautiful members of the opposite sex.

Villains and Idealists are subverted by default, so applying a modifier to the roll could produce non-subverted versions: villains who just start killing without any duplicity or subtlety to their actions, idealists who really are as pure and good as they seem and not, actually, jerks. There's also a possibility of getting a subverted form of one of these extremes from a roll that would not otherwise indicate a villain or idealist; I think I would subvert these as if they were Cruel or Compassionate, giving the Villain a Soft Spot or giving the Idealist a Prejudice.

Traps Series

2011-12-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

I do plan on continuing the traps series, but the next parts will probably deal with how to detect and disable different trap results. This requires some mulling over, however; I want to break delivery systems down into types the way I broke triggers down. It may take a while. Also, I should go through the posts and create a summary of the information, sorting by search procedure instead of by trigger type or result type, so that GMs can listen to how the players plan to search and look up what kinds of triggers and results they will detect.

In the meantime, here's a round-up of all the post links, in order:

Impromptu Towns and Search Order

2011-12-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

The Babbling Bane posed a question in the comments to the post on impromptu towns: given a settlement like Ducksborough, with two temporarily undefined local craftspeople, what do you do if the PCs search for three or more different trades, like glass-blower, basket-weaver, and armorer?

One simple answer is that I would ask them who they are looking for first. This means that in theory, players could meta-game the system, looking for the most useful crafts first. However, they are hampered by the fact that they don't know what I rolled for the number of crafts, or if I've gone ahead and selected all the local crafts beforehand (as I have for the village I'm currently using in a game.)

If there's three or more PCs, they could conceivably look for all three simultaneously, at which point I'd roll in this order:

Associated with regional economics but not "do it yourself"
Common but not "do it yourself"
Luxuries that peasants can do themselves
Rare or completely unrelated to regional economics

There's two bits about this list that need explanation: what counts as "DIY" and what counts as "rare". Anyone doing limited research into pioneer America, Old West prospecting, or medieval Europe would soon discover that farmers or peasants didn't buy all that much, only necessities they couldn't find or make themselves. Almost everyone should be able to cook, build an ugly shelter, make ugly furniture, and make simple containers. Many pioneers and peasants routinely made their own soap, candles, butter, cheese, and pottery. If they had horses, pioneers probably knew enough about blacksmithing to shoe a horse and could maybe even perform crude repairs on ironware; medieval peasants might be less likely to know how to do this, but they might instead know a little bit about tinkering, enough to repair a tin pot. At the other extreme, you have skilled crafts that rely on other trades, special materials, or special needs; these will be rare for an area that can't really support them. If there's no sand or clay locally, you're unlikely to find a glass-blower or a potter; if there's no trade in tin or tin goods, there's not likely to be a tinker; if there's no steady stream of military types, there's not likely to be an armorer.

Thus, "basketweaver" in Ducksborough is a luxury (the locals could probably make their own crude baskets.) "Butcher" would also count as a luxury (they can slaughter their own ducks,) but maybe a dairy would be ranked as a common non-luxury craft. A glass-blower is unrelated to the regional economics, but not necessarily rare (there might be easy access to sand,) while an armorer is unrelated AND rare. I would subtract 1 from the number of potential armorers, except at fort settlements or others with military activity, which means small villages always have zero armorers, unless specially placed. Bowyer, on the other hand, makes sense regionally (if the locals are duck hunters rather than duck farmers;) bowyer would be treated as a common non-luxury.

If players do a simultaneous search for a glass-blower, a basket-weaver, and bowyer in Ducksborough, I'd do bowyer first, then basket-weaver, then glass-blower. Since Ducksborough is a small village, there's only one tradesperson per trade, so there's no roll and therefore would be no glass-blower; if the players specified a different search order, there might be one. In a small town, there's an actual roll for the number of craftspeople in a given trade, so there's actually a chance for things like armorer.

Any craft that the players don't find is either imported (hit the weekly market...) or can be made by just about any of the locals (ask a peasant if they'd like some extra cash.) Or flat-out unavailable, for rare trades. For repairs, modifications or crude facsimiles, rather than normal trade items, some trades can act as emergency stand-ins for others. For example, I neglected to include "blacksmith" in the notes for Ducksborough, even though the table clearly indicates that there would be one. A blacksmith could repair minor damage to metal armor and might even be able to make crude armor, although there would be a risk of malfunction in battle and possibly a reaction penalty as well when your opponent sees your leather jacket covered with linked horse shoes.

Generic NPC Types

2011-12-05T10:46:00.000-08:00

In a Dragonsfoot thread that started out being about "bad DMing," but turned into an argument about whether improvisation counts as "bad" or "good", I made a point about how good improvisation is actually based on preparation; you have a set of stock characters, lines, and actions that you can adapt to the current situation. I started to give an example based on generic NPC types, but realized, "hey, why waste that example on a random DF thread when I could write about it on my blog?"

What I'm talking about is not a list of actual NPCs, but a list of broad types, broader even than professions. The obstructionist NPC, the scheming NPC, the friendly one, the self-sacrificing saint. Thus, when the players say "we need to find a couple mercs," you can either use one you've written up already, if you have one, or you can just apply one of the broad types to the generic idea of "mercenary warrior", maybe add a random interest or oddity to make the NPC more distinctive, and you're basically done.

Here' my first attempt at a broad types list. It's based on the reaction roll categories, but adapted to a 3d6 roll instead of 2d6. That way, we can have special results for doubles and triples.

(3) Villain: Minor to start out with, but possibly evolving into a major villain. Of course, the NPC won't act immediately villainous, but will seem friendly or neutral, leading the PCs astray.
(4-5) Cruel: Openly hostile and violent, probably a criminal. They take what they want and don't care who gets hurt. If the PCs make any successful deals, it's only a temporary alignment of interests; these guys will turn on you, once their goals are met, if there's no compelling reason not to.
(6-8) Grouchy: Mean, but not necessarily out to harm anyone; just generally uncooperative. If subverted, this is a grouch with a heart of gold: actually helpful, but struggling to maintain a tough facade.
(9-12) Petty: Cares about job, family, close friends, and other things in their self-interest. If you can make friends with them, great, but otherwise, it's just business. If subverted, the NPC is scheming, using the PCs as pawns; the schemer is not necessarily aiming to rob or harm the PCs, but is definitely going to manipulate them where possible.
(13-15) Pleasant: Easy to make friends with, not likely to be dangerous unless given no choice. If subverted, the NPC has a dark secret and may be blackmailed into doing the wrong thing, or may have been a much worse person in the past.
(16-17) Compassionate: Kind to all, helpful to strangers. You may think these NPCs won't be dangerous, but what if they feel the need to prevent the PCs from victimizing someone else? These guys will report you to the town guard, if you look suspicious, and will fight to protect the weak.
(18) Idealist: Has big plans to help others and save the world. Unfortunately, the PCs have no guarantee they won't be sacrificed for the greater good.

If the 3d6 roll is triples, the type becomes subverted (Pleasant turns to Dark Secret, Petty turns to Scheming, Grouchy turns to Grouch with Heart of Gold.) Note that Compassionate and Cruel can't normally be subverted (can't roll triples,) but you can deliberately choose to design a subverted Cruel NPC with a soft spot in his heart, or a Compassionate NPC who's got a violent streak. Villain and Idealist are subverted by default (evil guy pretending to be good, good guy who can do evil things.)

If you roll doubles but not triples, use the die that doesn't match to determine an unusual interest or feature on this table:

Fighting, Feats of Strength, Weapons
Toughness, Stoicism, Bitterness
Nimbleness, Acrobatics, Finesse
Cleverness, Scholarly Pursuits, Reason
Social Events, Politics, Romance
Morality, Religion, Justice

Pick one, two, or all three of the results on a given line.

This 3d6 roll, plus another roll for the NPC's prime requisite, if necessary, can provide a wide variety of characters; if desired, you can also roll for the prime requisite of the unusual interest, so that you can have blacksmiths who are idiot scholars or priests who are lousy at their job, but great lovers. You can also use a fourth 3d6 roll for a rough determination of social level, if you really want to.

Impromptu Towns

2011-12-04T11:36:00.001-08:00

Here's a slightly-modified table version of the information in the Hamlet, Village, Town post from Friday.

You can use either HTML version on Google Docs (which gives you the option to copy and paste) or the PNG version, which looks pretty.

To use the table, pick the size of your settlement and note its column on the table. Read the first five rows straight across, up to your selected column, to find out what's generally available. Roll the dice indicated for Miscellaneous Trades to find out how many other crafts or trades are represented in the settlement; write this down as a "trade counter". Thus, all you need to record for a new settlement is something like this:

Ducksborough (Small Village)
exports: duck meat and bags of down
has: food/down packer, blacksmith, weekly market, tavern, priest, posse when needed
trades: 2

Edit: As mentioned here, I forgot to include the blacksmith indicated on the table.

When players state they are looking for a glassblower, a basketweaver, an armorer, or some other craftsperson:

Roll the dice to figure out how many tradespeople there are in that trade, subtracting 1 or 2 dice if the craft is uncommon or rare (if the number of tradespeople per trade is already 1d6 or less, subtract a flat modifier of 1 or 2 instead of reducing the number of dice.)
If the number of tradespeople is less than 1, that trade or craft is not available locally.
If the number of tradespeople is 1 or more, lower the "trades" counter by 1 and write the name of that trade after the numeral; when the trades counter is 0, any search for a new type of trade or craft will fail.
Roll the dice, if necessary, to determine how many people practice the new trade or craft and record this number after the trade name.

When the players state they are looking for ordinary schmoes to serve as porters, guards, torchbearers, or whatever, roll for the number of hirelings available that week. Subtract the number of hirelings reported dead or missing; this penalty can be reset by successfully returning without losses or taking a long break, long enough for people to forget how dangerous associating with those clowns really is.

Fill in names, personalities and other details for NPCs as needed.

The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms Live!

2011-12-03T17:31:00.001-08:00

I haven't GMed in a while, only played, because of travel and schedule issues, but I got to GM for a small group today in what now seems to be the first of several sessions. And that means I got to use the actual Nine and Thirty Kingdoms "sketchbox" setting I've been talking about. The session went well, although the party came close to ticking off the locals a couple times. No enraged villagers with pitchforks yet, though!

The small party (elf, dwarf, cleric) spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how to get into one of the two dungeons I'd prepped for this area, but eventually they found the easier "backdoor". Centipedes were diced and smashed, skeletons were shattered, and the elf's Charm Person spell came at just the right moment to avoid what might have been a humiliating defeat at the hands of a tiny bat=winged humanoid made of stone. Technically, Charm Person probably shouldn't have worked, but I decided to give the spell a chance, and I ignored the fact that the elf was wearing plate, even though I'd said beforehand that spells require removing non-magical armor. Maybe I'll loosen that restriction to a one-third chance of successfully casting a spell while armored, modified by Dex.

The dwarf diligently checked and double checked for traps in every location except where two traps were actually present.

The cleric almost bit it when a centipede injected a mild poison, but wine saved the day!

Treasure haul was small, but we were all getting used to a new group and new setting, with two of the players being completely new to OD&D. Good times!

Hamlet, Village, Town

2011-12-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

While working on some town and village maps, I decided I really need a good set of guidelines for improvising town and village contents. I don't like the usual village generation systems, with their arbitrary labeling of specific population ranges. Do I even need to know exactly how many people are in a village? Or how many members of each trade there are? I think I just need to know how to describe its size and how likely it is characters can find what they need.

The quarter system seems like a good start for larger population centers, but smaller areas are going to be mostly peasants and tradespeople, with zero to three of each of the other two quarters. So here's my current scheme:

Hamlet: Has one service the local peasants need: a mill, for example. Has 1 to 3 other tradespeople or craftspeople. There's a maximum of 6 peasants in the area willing to serve as hirelings in mildly risky enterprises, but only 1-2 at a time; after the first expedition in an area, if a hireling has died, there will be 0 to 2 replacements available each week (half of d6 -2) until the limit is reached, after which the locale just can't spare any more of their friends, family, and neighbors.
Small Village: Like a hamlet, but also has these services: a blacksmith, 1 to 3 other trades or crafts, a weekly market, and a tavern that can double as a place to crash for the night. There will be a religious leader of some kind, but not necessarily a formal church (services can be held in a common area.) There are 0 to 4 (d6-2) hirelings available each week; no max limit for the area, but use the number of deaths for a given expedition as a temporary penalty to the roll.
Large Village: Has one locally-defined service like a hamlet, a blacksmith, 1d6+2 other tradespeople or craftspeople, a weekly market, a tavern PLUS an actual inn with rooms and a dedicated trader with a general store or trading post; there's probably also domesticated animals for sale, such as horses and mules. The religious leader will have an actual dedicated church or shrine to administer. There are 1 to 6 hirelings available each week, again with no max limit.
Small Town: Like a large village, but with a daily market and 1 to 3 members of each common trade (apply penalties for the less common ones.) Instead of one blacksmith, one tavern, and one church, there will be 1 to 3 of each. There will be some kind of formal authority (mayor, town council, baron) and town guards or constables. Double the number of available hirelings.

Larger towns and cities can be extrapolated from the small town. The general idea I'm shooting for is just doing a sketch-map of a settlement's buildings, labeling any taverns, inns, market areas or trading post, and churches, and rolling for the rest as needed. All the dice rolls are based on d6/3, d6/2, d6-2, or multiples of d6, so it's easy improvise.

Half-Elves

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

Today, Stuart at Strange Magic makes a good case for making elves less human. This might potentially even include making elves and humans incapable of cross-breeding. That means no half-elves, right?

Wrong. You could redefine half-elves in terms of something other than sex. I think one good use for them is for fey-touched humans. In fairy tales, there are stories of people taken to Faerie who later return and are out of place in the human world; there's also stories of fairies stealing children and replacing them with changelings, which tends to focus on what happens to the replacement instead of the fate of the child. What if the child is raised by elves, and returns as an adult? The result is a freak: a human being who doesn't act human, who might even be referred to as a "half-elf" by townsfolk.

It's a tempting redefinition.

Traps: Wheels and Axles

2011-12-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

Wheels and axles allow a couple useful modifications to the trigger mechanisms described so far. As mentioned in the post on delays, the rotation of a wheel can be used as a timing mechanism, either to repeatedly activate a trigger after a standard duration or as part of a series of wheels (gears) designed to count off a delay.

Consider a gear with one tooth. The tooth is, in essence, a lever, which can be used to activate another trigger; the fact that it is mounted on the rim of a wheel means that, as the wheel rotates, the lever repeatedly activates the second trigger. As long as the wheel rotates at a constant rate, the duration between trigger activation events remains fixed.

Another use for a wheel is as part of a pulley, to magnify the force of a trigger, extend it, or change its direction. It can also be used to rewind or reset another part of the trap; a wheel with a crank handle that can be used to wind up a rope or chain can be used to manually raised a portcullis that has been dropped by a trigger.

One particular use for a pulley or spool system is as part of a gravity-powered delay or repeater. Start with a spool on an axle, with rope attached to the spool's hub; attach a weight to the other end of the rope and wind it up. Add a peg to one rim of the spool that is positioned to be stopped by a catch (lever trigger.) On the other rim, add a flexible bracket (spring) with a mallet connected to the end; place a bell within range of the mallet. When the catch is released, the weight pulls the rope, which spins the spool, which rotates the mallet, which repeatedly bangs the bell; the result is an alarm trap. Replace the mallet and bell in the alarm trap with sharp blades mounted on poles and you have a rotating blade trap.

If the wheel is actual a gear, or has a gear attached, it can be used with chains to drag an object, or with a toothed rail or long screw to extend a pole (for a thrusting spear trap, for example.) This would be one way to create the iconic "crushing walls trap": replace the mallet/bell in the alarm trap with a gear that meshes with a long screw; embed one end of the screw in a slab of some material. When the catch is released and the weight causes the wheel to spin, the screw is moved along a track, pushing the slab. The same principle can be used for walls in a maze that reconfigure themselves, or for elevators.

If a wheel has a hole in it, it can be used as a shutter or valve. When the wheel rotates, sometimes it will align with the hole in a container, like a reservoir filled with sand, and sometimes it will not align, blocking the hole. When the holes are aligned, sand pours through the openings.

Wheels can also be used in the delivery system (the trap effect, rather than the trigger.) For example, the wheel could be a grindstone; it would have to spin pretty fast to cause damage, though. Similarly, the wheel can be a turning platform with an upright slab on it, for another variation of the maze that reconfigures itself. A really big stone carved into a wheel shape can be placed on a ramp with a wedge or catch underneath the front end; when the wedge is removed by a trigger, the wheel will roll down the ramp, perhaps doing damage

Wheels used as turntables are, in general, as easy to detect as pressure plates and related triggers; the crack between the turntable and the rest of the floor is usually visible. Wheels used as rotating shutters are sometimes even more obvious, depending on the thickness of the wheel or any wall covering it. Other wheels are generally hidden behind walls, ceilings and floors, so they aren't readily visible; they will, however, make a noise as they turn.

Wheels can sometimes be jammed by wedging an object between the wheel and another surface, but if the force rotating the wheel is strong, the wedge may simply be smashed or ground up after only a short delay. If the wheel has an axle that is exposed to access and can be damaged, the wheel can be prevented from spinning. Otherwise, adventurers should concentrate on disabling the trigger that causes the wheel to turn or the trigger activated by the turning wheel, rather than the wheel itself. Or, of course, avoid the trap entirely.

Heads Up!

2011-11-30T16:34:00.001-08:00

Here's some administrivia: I just tried to follow a Blogger blog using the Friends Connect button. Unless I'm high or insane, I remember this allowing you to use your Blogger profile as well as other profiles (Google, of course, but also Facebook and Twitter.) This time, though, even though I was logged into Blogger, it did not allow the Blogger profile option. I even tested this on my own blog, in case the other blog was specifically configured to behave that way; same result on my own blog.

What this probably means: Google+ links to Blogger are being improved or expanded. Which is to be expected, since both are Google services; but soon, the link will be much more explicit.

I know some of you worry about stuff like that... plus, in general, anytime a provider updates their software, you should expect things to go wrong. So we may have some error messages to look forward to...

Traps: Trigger Delays

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

Adding a delay to a trigger pretty much just involves knowing how long some event takes to finish and setting up a mechanical test for completion. In pseudo-medieval settings, it's probably going to be one of these three:

Quantity: How long does it take for a container to fill or empty?
Consumption: How long does it take something to be used up?
Speed: How long does it take for an object to travel a given distance?

The quantity test usually involves a container sitting on a compression or pressure trigger (activated when enough weight has been added or removed,) or a container with a lever trigger inside it (activated when the contents of the container reach a certain height.) For example, if a trap designer knows how long it takes for water to drain from a barrel, the designer can place a float in the barrel attached to a lever, exactly as you would see in a toilet tank, and connect another lever trigger to a cork in the bottom of the barrel. When one lever is tripped by, say, an adventurer opening a door, the cork is pulled and the water begins to drain. When the barrel is empty, the lever on the float reaches its "triggered" position, triggering a trap to go off. This allows a trap designer to make a portcullis drop 1 turn after adventurers have entered a room, for example. Alternatively, a trigger can be designed that drains a small amount of water into a reservoir each time the trigger is activated; tripping the trigger a certain number of times fills the reservoir completely, raising a float lever to the proper height and triggering a trap. Other substances can be used, for example sand in a trigger that must sit unattended for years, or pebbles dropped one at a time onto a pressure plate.

Water that empties from a barrel can also be seen as a consumption test, which provides clues as to how to set up other such tests. For example, instead of draining a barrel, a trigger can merely open it and allow the water to evaporate, for a very long delay. Other consumption tests may involve fire; a candle attached to a lever pushes it down with its weight, but if it is lit, wax lost to melting reduces the candles weight, eventually activating a trigger. A simpler, more iconic method is the candle slowly burning through a rope; when the rope breaks, whatever it is holding up drops.

The speed test generally involves an object falling or rolling a given distance, triggering a lever or pressure plate when it reaches its destination. The mechanism is less complicated in some ways than quantity or consumption tests, and requires less material; a marble dropped into a grooved track is much smaller and will last longer than a barrel of water waiting to be drained. On the other hand, a speed test usually requires more space than the other two tests, especially for long delays. A variation of the speed test involves a waterwheel or windmill that can be connected to a series of gears arranged as a mechanical counting device. Tripping one trigger engages the power source to the gears; every time the first gear completes a revolution, it advances the second gear one increment, and when the second gear completes its revolution, it increments the third, and so on; this allows for more precise delays, but obviously involves more planning. And similar to the quantity test, the wheels can be set to advance every time an event occurs, instead of continuously after a single event, so that a trap can be set to go off after every 12 pulls of a lever.

The mechanism of any delay counts as a separate item that can be searched for, in addition to the trigger that activates the delay or the final trap triggered by the whole system. They are usually hidden inside wall or ceilings, or below floors, making them hard to see, plus the adventurers may notice an initial pressure plate and assume everything is safe when it is triggered from a distance, but appears to have no effect. There may be other clues to the mechanism's presence; water draining from a barrel may spill a little and seep through cracks, while a burning rope may give off an odor. Also, there may be a slight noise from water or sand falling, or quite a bit more noise from wheels squeaking as a stone weight tied to a rope descends, or a marble rolles down a series of ramps.

Traps: The Equilibrium Trigger

2011-11-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

An equilibrium or balance trigger is a balanced plate with lever, spring, or compression triggers near two or more edges, instead of in the center. If an object is placed directly in the center or lifted straight up, the trigger isn't activated; if an object moves from the center or lands on an edge, the trigger is set off.

This has several potential uses, the most obvious being a platform for a treasure chest. Inhabitants can remove the chest without disabling the trap by lifting it straight up; adventurers are more likely to push or drag the chest, shifting the plate and setting off the trigger.

A variation of this is to make an entire section of floor into a large equilibrium trigger. If the plate is large enough, even moving a few feet from the center might not set it off, at least not right away; trying to reach the door, on the other hand, activates the trigger. Dwarves will be able to notice the slight slope as the floor tilts; others might not notice until the the tilt is enough to activate a lever. Options for this would be to drop a party in the center of a room via a chute or to have a large hidden catch or support under the floor in front of one entrance, so that adventurers can reach the center but not an exit on the opposite side. Avoiding this might involve jumping to the center of a room, then to the doorway, assuming the door is open.

One gimmick that pressure triggers and compression triggers don't share is that each tilt direction can have its own, separate mechanism, which means different traps can be triggered depending on which direction an object moves across the balanced platform. A floor with a balanced platform might trigger portcullis traps for individual doorways, based on the direction an adventurer is moving towards.

Equilibrium triggers are detected in the same way as pressure and compression triggers. Methods to disable them, aside from jumping over or into the middle of floor triggers, involve using multiple objects to keep the platform balanced; for example, if adventurers notice a floor beginning to tilt, they can split up and move to separate corners in an attempt to escape the trap. If the ceiling above a trigger is low enough, two or more braces can be used to prevent the plate from tilting.

Traps: The Pressure Trigger

2011-11-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

Pressure triggers are similar in concept to compression triggers; in fact, pressure triggers can be based on a bellows compression trigger, although they can also be based on levers. They detect a change in pressure, at which point the trigger is activated, creating a change in a linked object (releasing a catch, firing a crossbow, or producing some other result.)

The simple lever pressure triggers involve a plate or piston adjacent to a lever. When pressure is added, for example by being stepped on, the plate moves the lever, triggering another action. Placing a spring between one end of a lever and a surface that it moves towards when activated means that the lever will return to its original position after pressure is released; this can also be done by attaching a spiral spring in its relaxed state to one end of the lever and the fixed surface it is closest to, so that when triggered, the spring will be stretched, snapping back when the pressure changes. One use for this is a repeating pressure plate which automatically resets when the trigger is no longer activated. Another use is for pressure plates that detect the removal of weight (the idol that triggers a trap when removed from the pedestal.)

A hydraulic pressure trigger uses a fluid that can't be compressed, like water, to transfer pressure from one pressure plate or piston to another. A pipe or channel of any shape or length is filled with water and a loose plug is placed in either end. Pressing one plug in causes the water to push the second plug out, and vice versa. If there is a lever or spring trigger in contact with one plug, the movement of the plug will move the trigger. This is a great, simple way to transfer one trigger effect to another location, especially if a rope and pulley system would be too complicated.

Another use of the hydraulic pressure trigger is to leave one end uncapped, so that the fluid is squirted out of its tube, perhaps creating a slick area or squirting flammable liquid into an open flame. However, this use is perhaps closer in form to a pure compression trigger, instead of a pressure trigger.

Either kind of pressure trigger can have horizontal plates or pistons instead of vertical ones, creating a simple button. This is mostly of use to trigger secret doors, puzzle locks, or to disengage another trigger, disabling a trap.

Pressure triggers are detectable in the same way that compression triggers are: visible difference in coloration or texture between the plate and the surrounding floor or wall, gaps around the plate, plate protrudes slightly, or is recessed slightly into the surface. Tapping a pressure plate may detect a hollow area, but you might not want to tap it, if it is very sensitive. If the mechanism behind the surface is large, the hollow area may be larger than the plate, which means the hollow is detectable by tapping around the plate. A hydraulic trigger might have some leakage, plus the pipe or tube system might be traceable by careful tapping.

Pressure triggers are hard to jam, although it might be possible. The usual procedure is to avoid them or deliberately use a pole or rolling object to trigger them from a distance, although the latter doesn't do much good if it's a repeating pressure trigger. If the trigger detects the removal of pressure instead of an increase in pressure, another object of the correct weight may keep the trigger from activating.

Traps: The Lever Trigger

2011-11-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

Lever triggers are pretty common; most tripwires, for example, are connected to levers of some kind, and trapped doors usually involve the door moving a lever. The class of lever, as it turns out, is not usually all that important, although levers that act as compression triggers will probably be Class 2 levers*. What's actually important is what the lever does.

*Since lever classes aren't all that important, I'm not going to define them; see Wikipedia or some other source if you'd like more information.

There are three main jobs a lever can do as a trigger: block, yank, or tap. A catch blocks another object from moving until more pressure is applied. For example, a trap door in the floor might have a catch keeping it closed until it is pulled open by a wire being tugged, or until it gives way under too much weight. Or the catch is normally open, but another trigger pulls it closed, blocking a door. You could, for example, have a hefty metal bar on an axle next to a door; if one end of the bar is pulled away from the door, the bar turns so that the other end blocks the door, keeping it from opening all the way. Place this bar and axle assembly above a door and attach a chain to one end that runs through pulleys, connecting to a trigger on the other side of the door, and you have an entrance that can be sealed after a room is entered. This can be circumvented by not allowing the door to close, or not allowing the bar to turn, perhaps with the use of spikes.

A tripwire yanks another trigger or an object when the lever is moved, or the lever does the yanking; the wire itself is really just an extension of one end of the lever, or acts as a lever itself. One example is a lever mounted on a door frame so that opening the door moves the lever, yanking a wire. The direction the wire is yanked depends on how the lever is mounted (fulcrum in the middle, fulcrum on one end) and where the wire is connected. The tripwire can run across the ceiling of the room where it is located to trigger something else (pull the trigger on a crossbow, for example,) or it can run through a hole in the wall and across the ceiling of the corridor on the other side of the door, perhaps triggering a trap behind the adventurers opening the door. If one end of lever is flush with the door and a spring under tension keeps it pressed against the door, the lever can even be on the side opposite the direction the door opens, which makes tripwires on doors very versatile.

As an aside: Richard brought up in a comment the idea of traps that haven't been "plumbed in", in other words were added after the original construction was finished. Unless the inhabitants have only moved in recently, though, or are loathe to do construction themselves, the main guts of a trap can always be hidden with false ceilings, walls, and floors, which create instant ducts and chambers for tripwires and gears; a dwarf will automatically detect this new construction. There needs to be some kind of opening (perhaps shuttered) for the deployment of the "payload", and the other end of the trigger or series of triggers needs to be exposed or connected to something that is exposed, so that adventurers can trigger it. The tripwire and spring combo mentioned above can be hidden quite well, unlike some of the other triggers mentioned in the series so far; carve a hole in the frame of a door or lip of a container so that the door or lid covers the hole, then place the lever and spring in the hole, so that opening the door or lid allows the spring to push the lever out, triggering the trap. This kind of trigger would be very difficult to detect, so use it sparingly, unless you want to provoke player outrage.

A hammer trigger hits or touches another object when the lever is moved. Levers used as compression triggers to break some object would be one example, but the intention can be something else entirely; for example, a hammer trigger could strike a bell, to act as an alarm, or it can push a bar in a groove, to bar a door. The giant electric switches in old mad scientist films are another example; moving the lever causes the metal part to touch a metal plate, completing an electric circuit. Going back to more violent uses, a hammer striking an object can be another method of launching a projectile; perhaps a trigger on a door is linked to multiple hammer triggers in the form of mounted croquet mallets, which hit balls across the room to create obstacles to trip over.

Lever triggers are visible if an adventurer can see the location where the trigger is located. Levers on the other sides of doors can't be seen without magic, of course, but sliding a blade between a door and its frame might contact the lever, and might even reveal a hollow in the frame itself. Disabling levers generally involves wedging something in between the lever and the direction it moves towards; the iron spike can be your friend, here, as it could even disable the hidden spring and lever trap mentioned earlier. If a lever moves something else through some kind of channel or groove, the channel itself can be blocked.

Traps: The Compression Trigger

2011-11-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

A compression trigger is related to pressure triggers and equilibrium triggers, which I will be describing soon. I almost called it a "crush trigger", but I thought people might misinterpret that as a crushing walls trap. This is a trigger: compressing or even breaking an object, such as by walking over it, triggers a result. There are two basic types, based on whether the trigger breaks or compresses an object or is itself broken or compressed.

The first type is the fragile compression trigger or "breakaway" trigger. The most basic example is a pit trap covered with a weakened platform or lid, such as balsa wood or glass, which won't support any additional weight (this is distinct from a trap door, which will support weight, but is held in place by a catch which can be opened by a trigger.) Breakaway triggers are usually pretty obvious visually, although sometimes, the floor and the platform are covered with sand, mud, pebbles, or some other substance to hide the exact location; in this case, there is an obvious visual clue that a trigger is present, but another method (such as tapping to locate hollow spots.) Variants involve something that breaks on contact that is not necessarily a platform, such as a weak support column that will break if hit by a door that's been kicked open, causing the ceiling to collapse.

The second type is an indirect compression trigger. A simple example is a loose flagstone placed on top of one or more fragile containers (glass, thin bladder, pottery, or a gourd.) Stepping on the flagstone crushes the containers, releasing their contents, which could be poisonous gas, or chemicals that catch fire when mixed with each other or when exposed to air. For the door variant, a glass flask or other fragile container could be attached to the other side of the door, so that if it slams against something, the contents are released.

Instead of a solid surface, it's possible to use sand, mud, snow, or another substance which compresses under weight. This can be a variant of the breakaway trigger, or the substance can cover a fragile container as above. This is essentially a primitive equivalent to a landmine. Inhabitants of a lair may place multiple "mines" in a room, leaving a path only they would know so that they could pass safely. If multiple adventurers cross such a room one by one using the exact same path, the first person would definitely trigger a "mine", but the second person would have a slim chance to miss any remaining mines; each time a mine is triggered along the same path, the chance improves a little bit more for anyone taking the same path, as the triggers are slowly used up. If the contents of the container leave a "stain" in the sand, mud or snow, or if victims bleed when affected, this could leave a visual clue to the danger.

Not all compression triggers involve breakage. Consider a bellows or a sturdy bladder with a valve; stepping on a flagstone compresses the bellows or bladder, forcing air or some other fluid out, perhaps through a pipe. One simple use for this is to have some kind of fine, powdery poison or dust in the tube, blowing it up into the air around the person stepping on the trap. This could cause coughing, blindness, suffocation, or some kind of toxic reaction. Similarly, a needle or dart could be loaded in the tube to be fired when the bellows is compressed. The more common use for this variant is to use the air stream to trigger something else; this can be one form of pressure trigger, for example. The benefit of a bellows trigger is that it's repeatable, as long as it's not linked to another trigger that has to be manually reset or reloaded. You could design a stack of needles that drop into a tube one at a time, with the tube connected to a bellows trigger, to get a repeating needle trap.

There's not much that can be done to disable a compression trigger. Usually, you would just avoid it, or attempt to trigger it from a distance (rolling barrels or boulders over sandy floors, for example.) Compression triggers linked to doors that are opened too far or too violently are hard to detect and thus hard to avoid, but if adventurers can peer through a crack in the door or the keyhole, or otherwise find some way to see what's on the other side of the door, they may have enough warning to try opening the door carefully. For a bellows trigger, adventurers can locate the tube to cut it or otherwise block it, which would actually disarm the trigger.

Traps: Shutters and Valves

2011-11-25T20:00:00.000-08:00

I hadn't planned on doing shutters and valves next, since they are almost always activated by other triggers, like levers. But I've already mentioned shutters in the previous post, and they're a fairly simple topic, anyways (no need for an illustration, either;) so, I might as well tackle them now.

I'm using the term "shutter" to mean an obstruction that blocks a hole; a valve usually has a more complicated structure, but it does basically the same thing. The most common shutter, of course, is a door or lid; when closed, it can not only block access or vision, but it can also prevent the release of tension in spring triggers, as we've already seen. Another trigger can be used to open a shutter, releasing dangerous substances. Consider this: subterranean dwellers discover a large underground vent of deadly gas; they carve a channel or construct a pipe through rock to direct the gas to a particular area, then cover the vents with shutters, opened by another trigger. A similar concept is to use a shutter as a floodgate; opening the floodgate dumps water (or sand or boiling oil.)

Shutters can be left open by default instead, with a mechanism to close them when triggered. This is your basic portcullis trap: the gate is raised by default with a catch to keep it in position, with a trigger to release the catch, dropping the gate and preventing access.

Detecting shutters is usually pretty easy visually, except in darkness. Tapping on the wall should also reveal hollow areas behind shutters. If the shutter blocks release of a gas, liquid, or grainy substance, there will probably be some leakage, either visible or perhaps detectable as an odor. If the shutter is open, either adventurers will see the propped-open shutter, or there will be a hole in the threshold of the route the shutter would block. Disabling a shutter trigger usually involves a wedge to keep it open or a spike to keep it shut.

Traps: The Spring Trigger

2011-11-25T10:00:00.000-08:00

I figured I would start with spring triggers. These are not necessarily the spiral-based springs we're all familiar with, but instead are often mere tines of springy material, like steel, which stores energy when it is bent back, releasing it when tension is released.

A basic spring bar makes a very simple trap. A thin, flexible metal, wood or bone bar is embedded in a floor one spear-length from a door that opens away from the bar. The butt of a spear is placed against the bar so that the bar flexes back as the door is closed. The door now maintains tension in the spring; opening the door causes the tension to be released, and the spear is thrust forward. There may also be some form of support between the bar and the spear head, to help keep the spear horizontal and guide it as it is thrust forward; to eliminate this, a menacing spike can be welded to the bar instead of using a spear. The spear or spike targets the person directly in front of the door and can be automatically dodged if the character is not surprised.

This kind of trigger isn't immediately visible unless it's in a lit room; in that case, looking under the door will reveal a shadow cast by the bar, at the very least. If an adventurer can slide a long, thin tool under the door and swish it back and forth, the adventurer can feel an obstacle; however, the tool used must be longer than the spike or weapon (spear, javelin, bolt, dart) used in the trap.

A spring bracket is my made-up name for a smaller version of the same kind of trigger. Unlike the large spring bar trigger, the spring bracket is placed so that the door opens towards the trigger. The bracket is placed near one edge of the door with one tine against the door, under slight tension. As the door is opened, it flexes the tine more and passes it, causing the tine to suddenly release. The tine is usually connected by string or a wire to another trigger, such as a crossbow trigger; triggering the spring bracket yanks the wire and triggers the crossbow.

A spring bracket, like a spring bar, can be detected by sliding a thin object between the door and its jamb, lintel, or sill. However, because it is much smaller and right next to the door, a knife or dagger is usually long enough to reach it.

Although I've described these in terms of a door, the same principal can of course be applied to lids of containers, or the spring bar can be used with some kind of catch which is released by another trigger. It's just that the door traps described are the simplest to visualize. When used to trap a door, usually there are two or three doors heading toward the same direction; one door is safe and untrapped, the other two are trapped and lead nowhere. Those who set the traps know which doors to open and which should remain shut.

When a simple spring bar with a spike on it is used in a chest or any other container, there are more options. Consider this diagram of a chest with a lid that has a rim. If the bar is placed perpendicular to the lid, the spikes can be held in place by the rim and will stab towards the lip of the chest if it is opened only a crack (Arrow A.) If the bar is parallel to the lid, the spikes stab upwards (Arrow B.) This arrangement can be detected if someone opens the lid a crack and slides a knife blade in to swish around, but this method may be dangerous for Type A.

Most other detection techniques will have no effect on these kinds of chest traps, although if a lid looks like a flat slab, but actually has a hollowed-out area to create a rim for a Type A trigger, tapping the lid in several places will detect the hollow area. Normally, an adventurer wouldn't disarm this kind of trap, either, but instead would try to avoid the path of any such trap, for example by standing behind an obstacle, or lifting the lid slightly with a long object.

A spiral spring with a catch can be used to launch a needle or dart in any direction, including through holes in the lid, front or sides, or from a trap located underneath a chest that has legs. Darts and needles have a longer range than a spike that is part of a spring trigger.

I Search For Traps

2011-11-24T10:38:00.001-08:00

This post is inspired by my previous post (or, more accurately, the comments from Richard and Brendan,) but it's not actually what I planned for the trap series. The trap series will actually focus on kinds of triggers that seem reasonable for a pseudo-medieval setting, what kind of clues would alert adventurers to them, and what could reasonably be expected from some standard trap detection techniques. I figure I'm perfect for this kind of article, since I have great trouble-shooting experiencing (I worked for two different tech companies,) but I have no special training in traps or engineering, so I'm an ordinary guy who's a natural problem-solver -- exactly like most people, especially those who are typical players, or typical PCs. Consider this post to bonus material for the DVD.

I don't like the idea of a simple skill roll to search for traps, but that doesn't mean I like or use the extreme pixel-bitching approach to traps, either. I'm probably just a little more detailed than Brendan describes for his own technique. If someone says "I search the room", I ask "how", but all I'm expecting is general details: Do you enter the room, or stay outside? If you enter the room, do you just blunder on in, walk normally, or creep along slowly? Are you just searching visually, or are you touching things (with or without a 10-foot pole?) And if you're touching things, are you actually tapping or knocking, or are you moving things around?

So, basically, it breaks down to speed and direction, stance, senses and tools used, and any changes to the environment made. I assume, unless told, that you do everything that could be included in the general description of what you tell me, without going too far. You stand in the doorway and do a visual search? Then anything that *could* be seen from where you are standing is seen, no roll necessary, and no weaseling out by saying "you didn't say you were also looking at the ceiling". I figure that these are the basic search procedures:

Blundering In: You enter the room without searching. This always applies for those fleeing monsters, unless you say otherwise.
Careful Entrance: You enter, but not necessarily quickly, and look at stuff as you enter. This action stops as soon as you spot anything out of the ordinary (no roll needed, as long as it's visible and not hidden.)
Stop, Look and Listen: You don't enter the room, so no traps triggered by movement or pressure will go off. Anything visible or audible -- or smellable, or detectable by any other sense that works over distance -- is automatically detected.
Cautious Test: You use a ten-foot pole or similar technique to test from a distance. Discovers a few things you'd miss by the previous techniques. If you also add tapping with the pole, you discover hollow spaces as well.
Thorough Test: You touch what you're searching, everywhere. Discovers hidden catches, buttons, and the like.

All of these assume you are standing up, bending and crouching only as needed, and make no changes (nothing is moved or opened.) A careful entrance assumes you look under things, on top of anything you can see the top of, behind anything you can see behind, and around every corner you can look around. The first time you would notice something out of place or out of the ordinary, I describe that, and assume you stop until you tell me what you do next. If you have to move something or open something to continue a search, I ask if that's what you want to do.

Richard's comment brought up the topic of expectations. What do I lead players to expect, and how do I want them to behave? I think that depends on the general type of location.

Wilderness has natural dangers that may function like traps, but nothing too devious in most cases. The expectation is that adventurers will proceed carefully and stop, look and listen when discovering something new.
Inhabited lairs are going to have alarm traps and sentry points, plus a few check points where you have to enter the area in a certain way to avoid injury or capture (like the one-way corridors.) If they have time and resources, there will also be branches where you have to chose the correct path or walk into a trap. The expectation is that adventurers will scout a known inhabited area and try to observe the behavior of the inhabitants. Once scouted, careful entrance would be the norm, with cautious testing of missed areas and treasure containers.
Ruins and abandoned lairs will have pits, the occasional untriggered lair trap, and some natural hazards from crumbling structures. Untriggered traps would be dealt with as for inhabited lairs, but there's a chance the trap simply doesn't function, due to age.
Legendary vaults and tombs will be known to have escaped looting, somehow, so this is where the truly devious stuff would be. Adventurers are assumed to have picked up a few rumors about the scary dangerousness (and tempting riches) of such a place beforehand, so the expectation is that this is where the adventurers should be paranoid.

A megadungeon is basically an underground wilderness with individual areas that stand out. Most of the time, the adventurers would worry only about being spotted by dangerous creatures, missing interesting discoveries, or blundering into something obviously different. Within this framework, there will be lairs (inhabited or not) and occasional legendary areas.