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Monday, October 13, 2025

Gems III: Assessments

In this series on gems (four years in the making!) I’ve talked about how to set up gem types for a dungeon and how to assign gems to treasure. But how do the players find out what those gems are worth? How do you determine the actual value of the gems brought back from an adventure?

It’s best to postpone this assessment until the end of an adventure.

Gem Appraisal

The main reason it’s best to wait until the end to identify gems and appraise their value is: the PCs have to find someone who’s able to do it. Gem appraisal is a job for an expert, and usually PCs don’t have the skill to do it themselves. So, they bring their treasure finds back from the dungeon to town and show the gems to a jeweler or someone else with the appraisal skill.

Finding an Appraiser

If the PC home base is a fairly large town or city, there’s really not that much effort needed to find an appraiser: just go to the Street of Jewelers or maybe even any merchant and ask “Can you tell me how much these gems are worth?” If you really need to know how long it takes to find someone like that, decide first if it’s going to take at least a turn (ten minutes) or an hour, then roll a d6: on 5+, it takes exactly one turn or one hour, while on a 1 to 4, it takes that many extra turns or hours.

If there’s some reason why it’s not obvious where the merchants and jewelers hang out, like “gems are outlawed” or “we don’t speak the language or understand the local customs, so we can’t tell who the jewelers are”, you might want to make the process of finding an appraiser more difficult, like requiring a reaction roll to see how well things go. On a Good or better reaction, the PCs find an expert. On a Normal reaction, the “expert” isn’t that good and takes much longer for an accurate appraisal. On a Bad reaction or worse, the PCs will need to look somewhere else.

Making an Appraisal

Even a beginner at appraising who’s no expert can tell the PCs the names of any gems found after about a minute of examination, but it takes 1 to 5 minutes for an expert or 10 to 50 minutes for someone less skilled to determine the actual value. This part doesn’t normally require a roll if the appraiser has plenty of time to use their skills and no outside stress to mess things up. If the GM or players needs to know how long the appraisal takes, a d6 roll like the one described for finding an appraiser will do the job. In many cases, you can make this roll after giving the appraisal.

There’s only one or two rolls that are absolutely needed:

  • A reaction roll (maybe) to see if the appraiser is honest, shorts the PCs a little, or straight up lies. This is usually only rolled once, with the first reaction carrying over for all future interactions unless the PCs take actions that warrant a reroll.
  • The actual value adjustment roll for each gem involved. The basic roll is a d6 adjustment roll, which I’ve described before.
d6 roll adjustment
1 halve the gem’s value
2-5 no adjustment
6 double the gem’s value

If there are 1 to 5 gems being appraised, roll 1d6 for each gem. If there are more, split the gems into 2 to 5 groups (whatever works best) and roll 2d6 to 5d6, reading each d6 result individually, left to right. If you need to roll the reaction roll and you use a d6-based reaction roll, you can roll all these dice at once, although that means you might be rolling 7d6 in some cases.

(The reason I cap the number of dice rolled at five is because I think rolling too many dice at once actually slows things down. Plus, if you are using these “literal” dice rolls read left to right, rolling more dice can make things harder to interpret and may even cause dice to ricochet off each other, maybe sending one or two dice flying off the table. If you’re one of those people who likes the excitement of rolling huge handfuls of dice, though, you can go another way with this.)

DIY Appraisals

Some PCs may have an appraisal skill, or may train to become experts at appraisal. I’m one of those people who assumes dwarves and gnomes are experts at appraising gems, Some people assume thieves know how to appraise the value of “found” goods like gems as well. Personally, I think I’d allow most thieves to make amateur appraisals (taking 1 to 5 turns for appraisals,) but thieves with Int 16+ would be experts, taking only 1 to 5 minutes. I might even allow PCs in general to be amateur gem appraisers if their Int is 16+. You might want to check out my pamphlet on Liber Zero Adventurer Skills for more information on backgrounds, previous professions, and training in new skills.

Do It in a Dungeon, Save Time

If the PCs wait until they are back at home base, or at least until they reach some kind of safe zone, before they make any gem appraisals, there’s no need to roll for time. Just make the 1d6 to 5d6 appraisal roll to find the adjusted values of each gem.

If, however, there’s a chance of being interrupted, make the 1d6 situation roll to see how quickly the appraisal can be done: 5+ means it takes only one minute for an expert or one turn for an amateur to make an appraisal, while a roll of 1 to 4 adds an additional 1 to 4 minutes or turns.

It only takes 1 minute for either an expert or an amateur to identify what kind of gems they’ve found (the in-world names of the gem types.) The d6 roll only determines how long it takes to work out the actual value of each gem. If the whole appraisal takes more than one minute and wandering monster rolls are applicable, an expert might be interrupted by a monster arriving, and an amateur might never make it all the way through the appraisal.

Adverse Appraisal Conditions

I’m assuming here that the appraisal is happening in steady, bright light and the appraiser is using a jeweler’s loop or some other magnifier. An expert can skip using the jeweler’s loop as long as there are no other adverse conditions.

Adverse conditions make appraisals harder. If there is at least one adverse condition, roll 2d6 vs. Int. If the roll fails (higher than Int,) look up the result on this modified reaction roll table.

Appraisal Skill Failure

2d6 Roll Appraisal Skill Result
2 appraisal fails
3-5 amateur appraisal fails, otherwise time x5
6-8 multiply time needed x5
9-11 triple time needed
12 double time needed

If there are two adverse conditions, halve the appraiser’s Int score before comparing the result. If there are more than two, halve Int again and treat everyone as an amateur.

Adverse conditions include:

  • Dim or unstable light (very dim counts as two adverse conditions)
  • amateur without a magnifier
  • expert without a magnifier and at least one other adverse condition
  • sleepy or fatigued
  • mist or haze
  • watery eyes
  • distractions

And anything else that reduces vision or affects the ability to focus.

Summary

The short version of this series on gems is: reduce the number of gem types for a location to just three or four, optionally rolling to set the base types if you don’t already have a concept, then figure out which treasures include gems in what proportions. Give players simple visual descriptions, but save space in your own notes by using gem type codes. When the players are ready to sell, appraise the gems to find out the real values.

Series Index

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Thursday, October 9, 2025

Media Discussion: My Favorite Western

I’m not into westerns, which I suppose is why I never bought Boot Hill. But I was exposed to a lot of westerns as a kid, because my dad liked westerns. We watched Gunsmoke, Alias Smith and Jones, and a lot of John Wayne movies. But I didn’t stick with them after I grew up.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of westerns I actually like, some of which I would recommend as quintessential. And there’s at least one western I’d recommend for people designing pseudomedieval fantasy adventures.

The Magnificent Seven

I’ve been wrestling with whether I would rate the 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven as an OK movie or a Great movie. For those who don’t remember, I pared my ratings system down to just three ratings: Bad (i.e. don’t watch these,) OK (watch these if they seem like your thing,) and Great (consider watching these even if you don’t like that genre.)

Just because I like or even love a movie doesn’t mean it’s a Great movie. Hardly any movies are Great. But being OK isn’t bad. If a movie hits the right spot for you, either because it’s a genre you like, or it’s got stuff in it you enjoy like rocket ships, or it’s got actors or a director you like, then go for it. I’m OK with the vast majority of stuff I like being just OK.

But I sometimes struggle with deciding which movies are Great. Remember, my criteria for being Great is that it’s something you should watch even if you would never normally watch that kind of movie. Sometimes, a movie is just too technically, stylistically, or historically important to pass up.

The problem with The Magnificent Seven is: I’m a guy who doesn’t like the vast majority of westerns who has watched The Magnificent Seven many times, enjoys it every time, and has recently realized I love it and it’s probably my favorite western ever. So is it a Great movie, or am I just being subjective?

A Detour Through the Stars

Let’s get sidetracked for a minute and talk about the Star Wars movies. I think almost all the Star Wars movies are OK. I enjoyed some of them well enough, even the ones with flaws, but I’m not a Star Wars fan and I don’t think I should recommend, say, The Empire Strikes Back to someone who doesn’t like space opera. They aren’t Great movies.

But I struggle a bit with Star Wars: A New Hope, the movie most people just call “Star Wars”. I liked it. I know Star Wars fans think The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie, but as a non-fan, I think A New Hope is the best. It moves along at a good clip, and it’s the one you don’t need to know all the background lore to enjoy.

But is it a Great movie? I wasn’t quite sure about this, but I think I’ve settled on “yes”. A New Hope was one of the movies that changed how movies were made. It ushered in the era of blockbusters, film franchises, and big budget sci-fi adventure. It revolutionized special effects.

Great or Not?

So back to The Magnificent Seven. It’s certainly been an influence on other films in the west, but famously it’s a remake of Seven Samurai. Neither of them invented the idea of assembling a team of champions, not even one specifically made of seven champions to fight in a battle; see The Seven Against Thebes for a counterexample in literature. But for some reason, movies didn’t seem to be interested in that kind of story telling before Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.

But the real way that The Magnificent Seven copied Seven Samurai wasn’t the triviality of “a team of seven champions”, but in its theme. Both the samurai and the gunslingers are presented as relics of a bygone era that is on its way out. They help the peasants, despite the low pay, because few people in the world need that kind of hero anymore. The peasants are the real winners. Both movies flat out tell us this in the dialogue at the end. They both have a sense of something lost and a dark undertone that I enjoy. They aren’t the only movies like that, but they were part of a trend, included with others like High Noon or Shane.

The Magnificent Seven certainly had its influence, even including the fantasy genre. Hawk the Slayer is basically “The Magnificent Seven, but with only five champions and a pseudomedieval setting.” It’s a very D&D movie. There’s a bit of “gathering the champions” in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a movie I love. (Aside: It has the best dragon fight ever. No, not the first dragon fight. The second.)

So maybe I just love the movie because it’s such a D&D movie. Or maybe because I may have accidentally seen Westworld (1973) before The Magnificent Seven and now my head canon says Yul Brynner is playing the same character in both.

But I still can’t decide. Is The Magnificent Seven a Great movie just because I love it even though I’m not a fan of westerns? How does everyone else feel?

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Monday, October 6, 2025

Gems II: Quantities

In Part I of this series on gems, I talked about limiting the kinds of gems in each dungeon to just three, maybe four if you really want a fourth type. But what I described was more about designing the top-level dungeon theme than actually stocking the individual rooms with treasure, which is what most GMs are thinking of when we talk about “rolling for treasure”. How is this actually done?

Treasure Troves and Dungeon Loot

In the original D&D booklets, treasure can be divided into what I call “treasure troves” (aka wilderness lair treasure) and “loot” (aka dungeon room treasure.) The chance of gems being part of a trove are based on monster type, per the table in Volume II (Monsters & Treasure), page 23, while loot stashes are based on dungeon level, per the table in Volume III (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures), page 7, which can be summarized as “percent chance equal to 10 times half the dungeon level, round down, minimum 5%, maximum 50%.” The troves of many wilderness lairs and loot in rooms on dungeon levels 1 through 7 usually have about 1d6 gems, loot on dungeon levels 8 and below can have 1d12 gems, while the lairs of bandits, pirates, dwarves, dragons, and the like have much larger quantities.

You could, of course, use these by-the-book methods of determining the total number of gems found, then splitting them up into three batches:

  • A quarter of the gems found (round down) will be low value gems,
  • Half the remainder (round up) will be mid value gems,
  • Whatever is left over will be high value gems.

Make My Treasure Fast!

What I’d like to do, however, is roll all the dice at once. It would also be nice if the procedure were easy to memorize so that I could do it all without consulting a table. We need to modify the chances and quantities to do that, however. Here’s one approach.

Roll 3d6 and read the dice results individually from left to right. Interpretation is roughly the same in all cases, but there are differences between upper levels of the dungeon versus the dungeon’s deeper levels.

Fast Loot for Dungeon Level 1

Gems are rarest on the uppermost level of the dungeon, because this is usually where the dungeon entrance is and it’s thus the easiest level to raid for treasure.

  • First d6 and Second d6 values match: Gems are in the loot if both dice are odd.
  • Second d6 value: Max number of gems in the loot.
  • Third d6 value: Number of mid-value gems, up to the max number.

If the second and third d6 match, half the mid-value gems will actually be high-value gems, round down.

Fast Loot for Dungeon Levels 2 and 3

Nearly the same as for Dungeon Level 1.

  • First d6 and Second d6 values match: Gems are in the loot.
  • Second d6 value: Max number of gems in the loot.
  • Third d6 value: Number of mid-value gems, up to the max number. Half of these gems will be high-value if the 2nd and 3rd dice match.

Again: if the first two dice do not match, there are no gems in this loot.

Fast Loot for Deeper Dungeon Levels (4+)

Not as complicated, but basically the same.

  • First d6: Triple the result rolled. Gems are in the loot if this result is <= dungeon level (max level 10.)
  • Second d6 and Third d6 Total: Max number of gems in the loot.
  • Third d6 value: Number of high-value gems.

Subtract the number of high-value gems (third d6) from the total number of gems found. Half of these (round up) will be mid-value gems.

Fast Treasure Troves

Treat treasure troves as if they were Dungeon Level 6: triple the value of the first d6 and compare it to the dungeon level to see if there are any gems. There are a couple modifications for some monster types: pirates, bandits, brigands, berserkers, dervishes, mercenary armies, dwarves, and dragons all roll 4d6 instead of 3d6. The first d6 is still the chance of gems in the treasure trove, but the other three dice are used for the number of gems, as follows.

  • Dwarves (and other wealthy humanoids): Triple the value of the first d6 as for deep dungeon loot on Level 6. The three other dice are the total number of gems.
  • Bands of Humans (bandits and so on): Double the value of the first d6 instead of tripling it when you compare the value to Level 6. Double the total of the remaining dice for the number of gems, and double the value of the third d6 for the number of gems that are high value.
  • Dragons: As for Bandits, but the multiplier for the number of gems is x5 instead of x2.

Unique Treasures

The standard practice for stocking dungeons and wilderness lairs is “stock unique treasures first, then roll for the random stuff”. If there’s a special artifact, gold statue, magic tome, or other unique treasure that is essentially part of a story or at the very least a memorable moment during play, it should be placed manually, with thematically appropriate monsters, traps, or environmental features.

This applies to gems as well. Those three or four gem types that you assign to the dungeon as a whole are ordinary kinds of gems, even if some of them are rarer and thus more valuable than others. But your unique treasure might include gems that are either unique or of a special extremely rare type.

I previously described gem types as being mad of Size, Color, Opacity and Miscellaneous. The Miscellaneous details are usually reserved for these extremely rare, manually-placed gem types and usually means “unusual behavior, perhaps magical”. For example, you might have an exotic, very rare gem called a “zap diamond”, label it Cw2 (small transparent white gem.) But zap diamonds have a Miscellaneous feature: if two zap diamonds touch, they make a bright flash that has a chance to blind people for up to 4 rounds. It takes an hour for the charge to build back up so the zap diamond can be used again.

These zap diamonds would need to be place manually, since they are not strictly treasure, but more like magic items, or at the very least a minor puzzle to figure out. They are not simply something to cash in for coins without thinking about them.

There are some Miscellaneous qualities like stripes or speckles that aren’t special powers, just ways of distinguishing two gem types of the same color and opacity. These don’t need to be placed manually.

But How do I Describe This?

I’m assuming three stages of play in these posts:

  • world-building, where you create gem types for your world and then place them as treasure in a dungeon;
  • adventuring, where the players explore, discover treasure, and return home;
  • housekeeping, where the players sell off loot, spend their gains, and prepare for the next adventure.

The gem codes, like Lb9 or Dg2, are meant to be a shorthand for the GM to record what a gem looks like and about how much it is worth. You aren’t going to tell the players the actual codes, of course, but you especially should not tell them that second part, the gem’s actual worth, at least in most cases. I wouldn’t even say the number of gems, if there’s more than about six of any given type, unless the PCs literally take time to count them (worth at least one wandering monster roll, I’d say.) Descriptions of what the PCs find should be broad and somewhat fuzzy, becoming more concrete once they return to base and begin the housekeeping phase.

The first letter of the code describes the Size, which can be broken down into small (V and X,) medium (L and C,) and large (D and M.) Remember, this is for opaque gems; transparent, translucent, and murky gems will be smaller, but still worth the same amount. Any gem that appears smaller than V/X can be called “very small”, and those of Size 2M or larger are “very large”.

The second letter is the color, and the numeral at the end is the opacity. I would not normally count Lb8, Lb9, and Lb10 as different types of gems, but one type of gem in different grades of quality. I break it down as:

  • 0-2: transparent (passes light, can see through these gems)
  • 3-5: translucent (passes light, can see shadows, but not details)
  • 6-7: murky or cloudy (passes light only)
  • 8-10: opaque (doesn’t pass light, although Opacity8/9 glisten or glow a bit)

Color + one of the above opacity terms = one distinct gem type. A Miscellaneous quality might make this a distinct type, however. Each gem type can come in a variety of Sizes, but speckled translucent blue gems and striped translucent blue gems might have different size ranges.

So, when the PCs find gems, the GM would describe them as something like “three small translucent blue gems, a few medium transparent green gems, and a bunch of large opaque orange gems”. The players would (presumably) write these down the same way, perhaps risking counting the gems to get the exact numbers of green and orange gems, while the GM would record exact numbers and codes in the “loot found” list as:

Lb4 = 3 gems
Dg1 = 9 gems
Cor9 = 15 gems

Thus, the GM keeps track of the approximate value of the treasure, but the precise value is only revealed in the next post in this series.

Series Index

  • Gems Intro
  • Gems I : Types
  • Gems II : Quantities (this post)
  • Gems III : Assessments

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Thursday, October 2, 2025

Were We Really Looking for "Crunch"?

I found out about a post on B/X Blackrazor (via Dennis Laffey ): Why “Light Games” Suck. JB’s post started a minor cross-blog discussion about who likes “rules lite” and who doesn’t. I don’t deny JB the right to like the games he likes and dislike the games he dislikes. I’m pretty turned off by the current endless retreads of the “rules lite dungeon crawl” concept, although there were a couple rules lite games I played and liked (TOON, InSpectres.)

But that’s not what I want to address. Especially since that’s not even the main point of JB’s post.

The Quest for Crunch

JB’s main point is that the current OSR is obsessed with creating rules lite dungeon crawls, when many of the prospective players, both now and Back in the Day, are actually searching for more rules, not less. D&D players like crunch, because that’s what we were all looking for when D&D first became a phenomenon. Here’s a highly-edited series of quotes that introduces that point:

See, Back In The Day (that’s the 1980s for me but, presumably, the late 70s also) Dungeons & Dragons was a game for NERDS […] SO…Dungeons & Dragons was totally our jam. Here was a game that appealed to our interest in all the fantasy literature we enjoyed reading […] AND required a high degree of intelligence to parse and make sense of […] But here’s the thing, Youngsters: “light rules” was ZERO part of the appeal of these games. We WANTED our rules “crunchy.” The more crunch, the better!

(Be sure to check out JB’s original post for comparison. I’m leaving a lot out.)

But this rubs me the wrong way. Superficially, that might resemble my own experience: I learned to play D&D from a friend back in either late 1975 or early 1976, and part of the appeal was the fantasy lit inspiration behind it. I consumed more D&D, getting AD&D as it was published, trying out other games like The Fantasy Trip that got into the nitty gritty of tactics, getting enamored with the ridiculous detail of Rolemaster and Fantasy Wargaming.

But was I really looking for a rules-heavy game? Was anyone?

Details, Details…

See, I think JB is seeing his own past D&D experiences through the lens of decades of experiences. When I look back at my own experiences and ask “How did I really feel about D&D and more rules back then, ignoring all the things I thought about and argued about and discovered later?” I think I really didn’t know what I wanted. How could I? It was all new. RPGs didn’t exist before. They were nothing like the board and card games most of us started with, and unless you played wargames, which wasn’t that well-known a hobby itself, you didn’t have any point of comparison.

Even the RPGs designers had no clue. No one had designed fantasy RPGs before, so they had no clue what would be good design and what would be bad. So they just made supplements and advanced editions and clones and other games that were “D&D, but in space/post-apocalyptic Earth/some other genre setting”.

And we were eating up these rules additions not because we wanted more rules, but because we were either curious or hypnotized. “Wait, you can add extra detail to magic with a complicated system of astrological correspondences? You can add tables and tables of weapon-specific combat results, instead of sticking with a binary hit-or-miss system? You can add a potion miscibility table to see if your alchemical experiment explodes? I want to check that out!”

I never heard the terms “rules lite” and “crunch” back in the day. They came along in the '90s, maybe the late '80s at the earliest, after people had been playing a while, trying out rules supplements, experimenting with new ideas, until they realized what they wanted. Some people wanted more improv and a lot less rules and that led to Tunnels and Trolls, TOON and eventually to “rules lite” games. Some wanted more options for character creation and a toolkit approach and you got Hero System and GURPS. Some wanted more realism and you got Fantasy Wargaming, Hârn, Guns Guns Guns, and books with real physics formulas.

A Different Kind of Crunch

And there’s also the issue that “crunch” is hard to define because it’s not really just one thing. I think deep down JB knows this, because he gives several examples of RPG complexity. Here’s my own breakdown.

  • Background Detail: Some RPG supplements didn’t add any rules at all, but just described elaborate fantasy worlds in detail. Whether or not the game used was “crunchy” or “rules lite” was irrelevant.
  • Options Detail: These are the books of new spells, the ever-increasing lists of character classes and fantastic races, the equipment lists, new features like skills systems for games that didn’t have them, feats, or psionics. Some of these had additional rules, some didn’t.
  • Tactical Detail: Expanding conflict resolution systems beyond the binary approach-or-retreat, attack-or-defend, hit-or-miss approach. Players get several combat or magic options, any of which could be “good”, and different chains of actions could be amazingly good or amazingly bad, if you can just figure out the best choices for the current situation.
  • Structural Detail: Not the rules for simulating specific tasks or resolving conflicts, but the rules surrounding those rules, that provide a framework for when to do each thing.
  • Intellectual Challenge: At least, that’s how I interpret JB’s comment about how D&D “required a high degree of intelligence to parse and make sense of”, or his admonition that “it is complexity that gives a game its richness and provides a more robust experience.” Sometimes, people want the joy of figuring out something tough.
  • Realism: Making sure that chances of dying from falling, drowning, or being hacked to pieces matches the real world probabilities. Or just adding a wider variety of possible outcomes to a critical hit table. A lot of “crunch” comes from wanting a game to be more “accurate”.

All RPG materials back in the day dabbled in at least a couple of these at the same time, and we all tried them out, eventually learning through trial and error what our own preferences were. Me, I think I lean more towards what Dennis Laffey said about structure. I think that’s the most important for me. I don’t necessarily need to have every rule for every remote possibility worked out beforehand; I just want to know how reuse existing rules to make up a new procedure when I need one, plus that framework that tells me how to run the game. To a lesser extent, I also want tactical detail, but not to an extreme. Even though D&D came from a gaming tradition, I actually don’t treat it like a game, and I’m not interested in being a hardcore gamer.

I struggle sometimes with my blog posts because I begin to question whether I’d actually use some of the ideas I’m spitballing in posts. I still toy around with options details like new character classes and races, or with realism, or even with just figuring out if there’s a creative way to add some feature to D&D. But I suppose what I’m really doing is working out structures that make those suggestions possible.

If you want to call that “crunch”, so be it. But I sometimes think of my approach as being “rules lite”.

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Monday, September 29, 2025

Gems I: Types

I ended the first post of my series on gems (Gems Intro,) with this paragraph:

I plan on detailing each of these modified steps in a separate post, with appropriate tables. I won’t be posting before next week, however.

That was four years ago, so I was right.

Part of the reason for the delay was that I had finished (or nearly finished) the next part, but then lost all my draft posts, somehow. And after I found them again last month, I had to review what I’d written to figure out what I was aiming for. Also, I’ve changed my mind on some things, so I had to rewrite parts of it. But basically, my first post laid out three or four steps for generating gems in a pile of treasure.

  • Steps Zero and One: Pick a Dungeon Theme and Gem Types to Match
  • Step Two: Roll for How Many Gems Are in Each Treasure Trove
  • Step Three: Assess Each Gem

Step One happens before stocking individual rooms, Step Two happens when stocking the rooms, and Step Three happens during the game session.

But Why?

What are my basic goals for making new gem rules?

I want two or three things:

  • To reduce the amount of information that needs to be tracked per gem,
  • To simplify and compress the generation process,
  • And maybe to make it easy to improvise without actually looking at a table?

Reduce

There’s really only about eight or so gem names people are really familiar with: diamond, emerald, jade, opal, pearl, quartz, ruby, sapphire, maybe a couple others like jet, topaz or turquoise, but not everyone’s going to be able to recognize the same batch and most of the others are just different types of quartz, anyways. So recording gem names or being meticulous about base values for each type seems like a waste.

Instead, I say: reduce gem information to just Size, Color, Opacity, and Miscellaneous. The first three can be written in a single keyword, like “Xb5”. “Miscellaneous” only pops up if you want a gem with a special (magical?) ability.

Recycle

I’ve used Roman numerals before for things like size categories, so of course I’m going to do that again. We only need V, X, L, C, D, M, because who cares about Size I, anyways? And the hard part of Roman numerals is counting and subtracting, but we only need one letter per gem code. Here’s a table we only need to read once and never need to look at again.

Numeral Size Reference Default Gem Value
V bead-sized (small) 5 coins
X pebble-sized (small) 10 coins
L marble-sized (med) 50 coins
C eyeball-sized (med) 100 coins
D egg-sized (large) 500 coins
M fist-sized (large) 1000 coins

Reuse

One thing I use a lot is a simple d6 “table” for adjusting values on just about anything:

d6 roll adjustment
1 move value down one
2-5 no adjustment
6 move value up one

You don’t even really need a table for this. It’s just “lowest possible result = down one, highest possible result = up one”.

I also like to use dice positions, reading left to right, to roll multiple things at once. I can reduce the number of rolls that way and speed things up immensely.

Building the Dungeon

I suggested that GMs creating a dungeon key should pick a small number of gem types for their entire dungeon. Specifically, I suggest three or four gem types per dungeon, with a color scheme that matches the dungeon’s theme. One gem will be the low value gem, a second would be the middle value, and the third would be the high value. If necessary, a fourth type matching either the low or middle value, but with a different color, opacity, or additional feature like a glow can be added when it’s thematically appropriate.

If you don’t have an idea what color you want your gems to be, just use the rainbow colors (Roy G. Biv.) Start on yellow for the low value, green for the mid value, and blue for the high value. Roll 2d6 and read the dice individually, left to right.

  • First d6: 1 = shift values left one color, 6 = shift values right one color
  • Second d6: 1 = shift low value gem down, 6 = shift high value gem up

Size

The default gem size for a given dungeon is based on deepest dungeon level / 2.

Level Gem Size
1-2 C
3-4 D
5-6 M
7+ 3M

This is for the high value gems. Low value (common) gems will be two sizes smaller by default (X to D.) Mid value gems will be one size smaller. Values above M use an Arabic numeral multiplier: 3M, 5M, 10M, 30M, 50M.

Roll 3d6 in order and read the dice individually, left to right.

  • First d6: 1 = shift all sizes down one, 6 = shift sizes up one
  • Second d6: 1 = shift low value gem down one size, 6 = shift high value gem up one size
  • Third d6: Opacity

Opacity

Opacity is recorded as an index value (9 = 90% opaque, 5 = 50% opaque, 0 = less than 5% opaque.)


The third d6 rolled is the base opacity for the high-value gem, treating a 6 as zero. For mid-value gems, add +4. For low-value gems, add +8. Opacity is capped at 10, which is completely opaque.

Opaque gems are the listed size for their size value, but murky, translucent, or transparent gems will appear smaller.

  • Opacity 0 to 2 reduces apparent size down two steps without reducing the value.
  • Opacity 3 to 7 reduces apparent size down one step.
  • Opacity 8+ is the listed size.

Gem Codes and Names

So let’s say you’re making a four-level dungeon. You start with the default gem colors of yellow, green, and blue, from low value to high value. You roll 3d6 and get (6, 4, 2). How do you write this in your notes?

  • The low value gem is Cy10, an opaque yellow gem the size of an eyeball.
  • The mid value gem is Dg6, a murky green gem of the same size, despite being worth 500 times as much as the low value gem.
  • The high value gem is Mb2, a translucent blue gem that’s also the size of an eyeball, but worth 1000 coins.

The actual values of the gems can vary up or down during both the next step (stocking treasure in rooms) and the final step (getting the gem appraised.)

But what about the names? Unless a particular gem sounds like a diamond, sapphire, or emerald to you, I think you should stick to fantasy gem names specific to your world. Opaque yellow gems the size of an eyeball might be known as “Ra’s Eye gems”. Murky green gems might be “mossmist gems”. These names wouldn’t be listed in the dungeon key, but on a “list of gems in this world”, which you would build as you expand your campaign.

When players discover these gems, however, they won’t get the gem names or values immediately. Instead, just say "three small translucent blue gems, a few small murky green gems, plus a whole bunch of small yellow stones.

But more on that in a future post.

Series Index

  • Gems Intro
  • Gems I : Types (this post)
  • Gems II : Quantities
  • Gems III : Assessments

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Monday, September 22, 2025

The (Lost) Series on Gems

 Good news, everyone!

I was looking at my old posts to figure out all the times I said "I have more to say" and then never got around to saying it, because I vanished from blogging. The worst example of this was the first post in a series on gems. That post even has a list of upcoming posts in the series, none of which ever appeared.

The problem: I was sure I started writing (and maybe even finished) the next post in the series, but I couldn't find it anywhere. That was because I was using Stack Edit as my editor and the draft was stored inside my browser... and it appeared all those drafts and archive copies of old posts were gone. And I had know idea where I was going with that series.

Except! Now they seem to be back, and I found the draft for Part II, which might be done? I'll look it over. Anyways, it will be coming soon, although I'm not sure when Part III or IV will be ready.


Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Wednesday Review

I finished Season 2 of the Netflix series Wednesday, based on the Addams Family character, then realized I never reviewed the first season. So here we go.

Wednesday

Rating: OK
Standouts:

good performances
story is a bit incoherent
not really very Addams Family-ish

Season 2 of Wednesday came out three years after Season 1 concluded. I only remember two things about Season 1:

  1. It’s’ “Addams Family, but really Harry Potter”
  2. That one dance

It’s not a bad show, but obviously it’s something you enjoy for a little while, then (literally) forget about. But why?

It’s not the performances. I liked most of the actor performances. Many stood out: Jenna Ortega is good as Wednesday Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones is good as her mother Morticia. I liked Luis Guzman’s Gomez Addams less, but still liked him. Fred Armisen is deranged as Uncle Fester; I like it. Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley was the break-out character of Season 2. Of the other teen actors, Emma Myers as Wednesday’s roommate Enid stood out, and Evie Templeton’s Agnes was very creepy, but the rest did a decent job, too. I just didn’t care about their characters.

As for what’s wrong: well, it’s a tad long, feeling more like a really long movie instead of a TV show, but that’s typical of TV shows made for streaming services, and it’s not as bad as other examples. But the story feels a bit incoherent. Too many things that don’t seem to have anything to do with the story. I think this is why I couldn’t remember much about the first season; I just couldn’t keep the story in my head.

Another issue that might be a problem for some: it doesn’t really feel entirely like the Addams Family. For one, in the '60s TV series and the '90s movies (mostly,) the family always felt like they really liked each other. Sure, the kids torture each other, but then they like torture, so it’s a sign of love. In Wednesday, however, Wednesday is at odds with her parents, especially her mother. Morticia’s at odds with her own mother. Everyone treats Thing as a slave.

The other reason it doesn’t feel like the Addams Family is because of the Harry Potter influence. They wanted magical kids at a magical kid school. But… the joke of the Addams Family has always been that the family thinks of themselves and their lifestyle as “normal”, while their neighbors and other people they encounter are weirded out.

That’s the opposite of the Harry Potter series, where the students all think “weird” is normal and only Harry is baffled because he grew up isolated from the wizarding world.

Wednesday can’t decide which way to go, so it oscillates back and forth. Wednesday’s schoolmates sometimes act like she’s weird, even though they are gorgons, werewolves, vampires, and the like. And then, suddenly, they all think Wednesday’s perfectly normal. Meanwhile, there’s a “normie” town nearby. You’d think that the townies would be the ones baffled by Wednesday and the students of Nevermore, but no… they are hostile towards Outcasts, but know all the lore.

So I can’t recommend Wednesday to the general public (in other words, it’s not Great, it’s OK.) But I also can’t necessarily recommend it to Addams Family fans. If you just want a goth girl mystery-comedy, or a replacement for Harry Potter because of the politics of the author, this might fit your needs.

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Monday, September 15, 2025

Non-Human PC Races

Previously, I wrote about non-human fantasy races, although my main point there was that many, if not most, of the fantasy races we think of as “non-human” are really just variant humans in disguise.

Bur whether they are really non-human or human variants, the question to ask is: When should a fantasy race become a player character race? When should a fantasy race remain exclusively for NPCs?

I have some thoughts.

Races Relevant to the Story

Let’s ignore the trivial case of unique monsters or NPCs that aren’t “races” at all (for now) and focus instead on the obvious cases where a fantasy race should not be available to players.

  • Mystery Races: Unknown or nearly unknown races that players can choose to investigate. The Pnume from Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure series would be one example.
  • Villain Races: Mystery races that are secretly behind multiple evil schemes. The Drow, Dero, and Mind Flayers were probably all originally used this way.
  • Secret Ally Races: Mystery races that are either currently helping the PCs secretly or could be asked for help. The Arisians from Doc Smith’s Lensman series and the priest-kings from the Gor series would count here.

The common theme here is that these races are somehow tied to the goal of a potential adventure. They have information, artifacts, or raw power that the players want. Naturally, if a player were allowed to begin the game as one of these races, it would short circuit the mystery.

Mentors or MacGuffins

That trivial case I mentioned where a monster or NPC is unique, perhaps the last (or first) of its kind, or the sole current visitor from an inaccessible world or dimension, is pretty much disqualified for the same reasons. You as GM may have notes on an NPC’s innate talents or skills, knowledge, and technology available to their race, but the race itself technically does not exist. These unique beings typically exist as story or plot elements, in much the same way as the mystery villain/ally races.

If the PCs contact the last known Atlantean, who becomes their mentor, they may gain a significant advantage. But the GM may want to supply information or assistance when needed, rather than grant them unlimited access. It’s hard to justify why a PC Atlantean wouldn’t have access to the same secrets as their mentor, so it may be better to simply not allow Atlanteans as a PC race.

Overpowered Fantasy Races

Related to the villain and ally fantasy races mentioned above are high-powered fantasy races in general. It’s not completely out of the question for a player to have an angel character, or a djinn, or a godling of some sort, depending on the intended beginning power level of the game. But if other players have all created standard human warriors, dwarves, and elves, one player demanding that they be allowed to play Q from Star Trek is generally considered to be a warning sign. There shouldn’t be an enormous disparity between character power levels.

A PC that begins as a member of a standard race who is later polymorphed into a member of another race, even one not normally allowed as a beginning PC race, is not subject to the same restrictions, for two reasons:

  1. Polymorph spells don’t alter the PC’s skills or cultural knowledge. It’s basically just a really good disguise.
  2. The PC may not be able to use that race’s innate abilities at first, especially abilities the player has not yet seen used. The PC may have to train for a while before achieving the full power of that race.

Surprise! It’s a Fantasy Race!

Other fantasy races may be added as minor mysteries to solve. Not full-blown plot devices, but more like little surprises to keep exploration exciting. Such a fantasy race would be unavailable as PC races at first, but once they have been encountered and their culture or other unique features have been discovered, there’s no harm in allowing players to make new characters from that race.

A slightly similar idea is a reasonably-balanced fantasy race made up by a player, or borrowed from a fantasy novel the GM has no intention to adapt in full. I feel that this kind of custom fantasy race fits in with that well-known section on “Other Character Types” in the original booklets:

There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.

OD&D VOL. I (Men & Magic), p. 8

If the race is player-created, especially if the race’s culture and history are being improvised during play, that player should have the same kind of control over whether other players are allowed to play characters from that race.

In Summary

I think all of the above could be boiled down to just a few rules:

  1. Keep fantasy races NPC-only if finding out more about the race is the whole point.
  2. Unique monsters or NPCs are “races” in name only.
  3. Otherwise, if there’s no longer any surprise factor and the race is reasonably balanced compared to other beginning PC race, go for it. There’s no real harm.

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Monday, September 8, 2025

No Mapping, Just Map Rolls

Back in my post about why players might map and why they should be allowed to choose not to map, I teased “there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map.”

I have an idea.

Map Skill vs. Minimalist Maps

Chaosium’s Stormbringer, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, had a Map skill. The GM would roll percentile dice vs. Map skill to see if players make it to their destination. We could use the Int ability score in a similar way. It still feels too bland to me, so I would repurpose the reaction roll (again!) and break the trip to any destination into stages.

Players could (should?) still make simple maps, but only to show which areas of a dungeon are connected. Each area would be represented by one box each, regardless of how many rooms are in each area and where they are in relation to other rooms. The areas are labeled “outer gates”, “crypts”, “treasure vaults”, “prison”, “library”, “caves”, “fungus farms”, or whatever the function or theme of that area is. Each pair of boxes is either connected (draw one line connecting them) or not connected (no line.) No individual tunnels are marked.

If the players have a map and are looking for the exit, they would follow the lines from box to box, with the GM making a reaction roll for each transition to the next area: treasure vaults to crypts, crypts to outer gates, and outer gates to exit would require three rolls.

Map Use Result Table

If the map roll is less than or equal to the Int of the character using the map, use the “Map Success” column for the result. If the roll is higher than Int, use the “Map Failure” column. Halve the Int score if the map is damaged or otherwise incomplete, or if the character is drunk, befuddled, or otherwise inconvenienced.

2d6 Roll Map Success Map Failure
2 3x time to reach next area lost in new (unmapped) area
3-5 1.5x time to reach next area lost in random area
6-8 normal time to reach next area lost in previous area
9-11 half time to reach next area stuck in same area
12+ half time, no wandering monster rolls 5x time to reach next area

Maps Made by Other People

The steps above assume the character reading the map also created the map. If not, the GM needs to know both the Int of the map maker (or assign it randomly) and the Int of the character using the map. Roll against the lower of the two scores when using the map.

The character using the map can substitute their Wisdom if it is higher than their Int, but only when using a map they didn’t make themselves. If the map has a lower Int rating than either, however, it’s not going to help.

When buying a map, make a reaction roll to check if the map is a lie (odd rolls below a certain threshold.) These maps automatically are treated as half Int.

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