A Short Update

Nothing new to share in terms of D&D stuff, but I have to say I've been a little more productive on another project now that all social media sites are unusable garbage.

OK, I guess I could share this video from a YouTube channel called Extra Credits. It's a short history of D&D's corporate behavior. But really, it's a study of how the owners of D&D have repeatedly made the same mistakes, damaged their brand, and failed to learn from those mistakes. There are a couple points I'd probably quibble with, but it seems accurate. But I'd like to hear other opinions on its accuracy.

Long Time No Post

 Haven't been blogging in a very long time, probably not coming back right away, but I've definitely been mulling over RPG stuff for the duration. I stopped posting partly because I didn't have anything I felt needed to be said, but also because I have another project I've been working on that's taken all my time. I'd floated the idea before about posting about that here, too, but the blunt response was that they didn't want to hear about that.

I have several projects related to Last-Minute GM and/or Liber Zero still in the works. Some of them were announced here, some I kept under wraps, all went on the back burners when I shifted my focus to non-RPG matters. But I've had an urge or two recently to get back to work on those. We'll see what happens.

Drop Wolves Art

A quick post about an old monster of mine. Remember drop wolves? Well, here’s what they look like.

Drop Wolves

(Or, at least, what a text to image AI thinks they would look like. Although maybe this pic is better for droplet wolves?)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Gems: A Short Series

I’ve been meaning to do another movie review for a while, so obviously it’s time to start a series of posts discussing dungeon treasure stocking instead. Specifically, how to handle gems. It’s inspired by this OD&D forum post that’s been going on for that last month or so.

How do you assign gems to treasure? More specifically, how much information do you include, or should you include? Full description of each gem and quantity, minimum information necessary, or something in between?

I lean towards the minimum, with a few extra details. But before I get into that, I need break down the steps to assigning gem details. Loosely based on the “official” process, the steps are:

1. Check if there are gems in a treasure cache or trove.
2. Check the number of gems.
3. Assign base gem value.
4. Check how many gems are of higher or lower value.

If randomly assigning treasure, Steps 1 and 2 are handled as part of the treasure table in either Volume II: Monsters & Treasure (page 22) or Volume III: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (page 7) depending on whether it’s a wilderness treasure or dungeon treasure. Step 3 involves a roll on the Gem Base Value table on page 40 of Monsters & Treasure, followed by a d6 roll for each gem or group of 5 to 10 gems as Step 4.

In the official process, you could argue that there is a fifth step, “Record the info, along with extra details like gem type or color”. But the books do not actually say that all four steps must be done at the same time, before the dungeon key is completed.

I would argue that it’s easier to do Steps 1 through 3, record the info as Step 3.5, and put off the final roll for Step 4 when each gem is appraised.

So here is my suggested gem generation process for GMs stocking treasures:

Step Zero: Pick a Dungeon Theme

Picking a theme is of course is part of the dungeon creation process, rather than the gem generation process, but what kind of dungeon you are creating and where it is should, logically, affect what kind of gems might be available. One trivial example is pearls, usually treated as if they were gems. Underwater treasures or coastal treasures might reasonably include more pearls than someplace far from an ocean. Other gem types could be more or less common depending on the region: if jade is more common in one area, dungeons in that area or connected in some way to that area might have more jade in their treasure troves than other gems.

Step One: Pick Your Gem Types

It’s arguably not immersive to describe gems to players this way:

“You find 30 gems of 100 gp value.”

It’s more immersive to describe them this way:

“You find 20 sapphires and 10 diamonds.”

But it’s crazy to roll for each gem to see what its type is, especially since the average PC probably won’t know the exact type, just the general appearance. The easier method is to assign three gem types to the dungeon as a whole, for example opaque red, murky green, and clear yellow. All gems in that dungeon will be one of those types, simplifying the next step.

Step Two: Check the Number of Gems

As you stock each treasure trove in a dungeon, you make three rolls:

• How many gems are Gem Type 1?
• How many gems are Gem Type 2?
• How many gems are Gem Type 3?

You defined each gem type in Step One, so all you need to roll is a number. Gem Type 1 will be different for each dungeon. There is no table lookup for this step.

Since we can subtract a number from the roll and discard any result of 0 or less, we can fold “Check for Gems” into this step as well.

Step Three: Revealing Details to Players

For reasons I’ll explain more in a future post, each of our gem types has a predefined base value. We actually don’t need to roll any more as part of dungeon key creation. We just need to tell the players “You find 10 gems that look like this, 8 that look like this, and 2 that look like this.” And there’s only three "this"es per dungeon, so players can just keep a running total of each gem type found.

If there’s a dwarf in the party, or someone with gem appraisal skills, they can find out more details, including the exact value. Or they can have the gem appraised, or just sell it blindly without knowing the details.

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.

Series Index

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

(Will edit to add links as the posts are published.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Marvel Reviews: Eternals

I made my first trip to a movie theater after two years of staying home to watch the new Eternals movie, so I thought I’d give a quick review.

Eternals

Rating: C-

The Eternals movie seems like a good opportunity to mention a modification I may need to make my movie ranking system. (Full explanation of my ranking system is here.) See, I know a lot of people freak out when I rank a movie as C (Average,) because common opinion is that “average” means “bad”. Or if I rank something as C, it means I didn’t like it.

But actually I kind of like Eternals. I will probably watch it again when it hits the streaming services. I just recognize that it’s not really an important film. It’s competently made. Well, mostly competent. I did have to give it a minus for a couple flaws. But there’s really no reason to either recommend or recommend against seeing it. It’s just a movie.

The flaws are that the film drags in places and lacks enthusiasm in others. Plus, one actor issue I’ll mention later. The film really needs to be short or at least move along quicker.

Further thoughts:

• Too many new main characters for one film, so we really don’t get a feel for any of them.
• Rather than cut some of the characters, I think this really should have been two movies.
  • First movie focuses on the apparent threat from the Deviants and only involves Ajak, Sersi, Ikaris, Sprite, Gilgamesh, and Thena. It ends with Sersi contacting Arishem.
  • Second movie adds Kingo, Druig, Phastos, and Makkari, and explores more about Kro while also switching to the Emergence plotline.
• Splitting it into two movies allows us to explore more about Sersi, who seems to be our POV character in the film, but we really don’t get to know her well enough. All of the characters are treated pretty superficially, and only Sprite, Kingo, Phastos and Thena really stand out.
• Most reviewers, even if they give the movie a thumbs down, say the entire cast does a great job. I have to rewatch the film because I had a very different feeling: I kept thinking the Druig character was a pretty poor performance. Maybe I missed something.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Map Glyphs

I’m looking at the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series (links below) and wanting to simplify it some more… but also, wanting to make it more readable.

Here’s what I mean: I plan on creating customizable dungeon maps that use these techniques. It would help people a lot if I could put an instruction right on the map, so that the GM using it wouldn’t need to turn back to an instructions page. Instead, the introduction would give a couple simple icons and how to interpret them.

Example A: Side Passages

The glyph for this shows three boxes, each representing a d6. The position of each door or doorway along the main corridor is the position of each d6, in order.

Look for the lowest d6 roll first.

• If it is Odd, the exits start on the North or West side of the corridor.
• If it is Even, the exits start on the South or East side of the corridor.

If the second or third exits exist, it will be on the same side as the first exit if the d6 that represents it is odd, or the opposite side if the d6 is even.

(There would, of course, be another glyph for tunnels that run vertical on the map instead of horizontal, but I didn’t make one yet. It would look like the above glyph, but rotated 90 degrees.)

Example B: Tunnel Junctions

Same 3d6 roll as for Side Passages, but the position of each d6 is the order of branches or exits clockwise around the compass. (This is what the curved “triangle” represents.)

• If two of the dice match, the d6 that doesn’t match tells you which direction to skip (left, middle, right.) Branches or exits will be in the other two directions, in clockwise order.
• If all the dice match, roll another d6 and check the result: 1-2 = turn left, 3-4 = middle or straight, 5-6 = turn right.

In either Example A or Example B, the number of matches tells which table to use to look up the d6 result (loose, doubles, or triples,) as per the Drop Dice Exits post.

Links to Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series:

1. Tunnels
2. Tunnels update
3. Exits
4. Drop Dice Exits
5. Side Exits Update

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Ethereal Components

The way I run magic in D&D, M-Us use common, easy-to-get “material components” as spell ingredients during their spell prep (not during spell casting.) This helps explain why there is even a need for spell prep and why it is usually done between adventures rather than during them.

But one particular idea I’ve had about this spell prep is: some spell prep involves using a material object to make a temporary ethereal duplicate of that object that the spell caster “carries” with them, as if it were equipment. Examples of this for 1st level spells:

Hold Portal (object: iron spike)

Casting the spell wedges an invisible spike under the door, preventing the door from moving for a short period of time.

Shield (object: wooden shield)

Summons an invisible shield between the caster and opponents the caster is facing at the time of casting.

Magic Missile (object: arrow)

Summons an invisible arrow or large dart into the caster’s hand that can be thrown immediately at an opponent.

Light (object: lit candle)

When prepped, the light from the candle is “stored” ethereally, attached to whatever is holding the lit candle (M-U’s hand, end of a staff, etc.) When cast, the light becomes visible above the attachment point and moves with it. Max duration = max burn time for a candle.

1st level spells would only be able to bring back one quality of the object used (like the light of a candle, or the obstruction ability of an iron spike.) The object itself would not appear (not a conjuration, in other words,) so you couldn’t use Hold Portal to summon spikes to use as climbing gear, for example. The effect is short-lived.

3rd level spells would allow actual items or material to be stored ethereally and conjured when needed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Portable Holes in a One-Plane Universe

There’s a question about portable holes on the OD&D forums: do you treat it as a Bag of Holding, or just a temporary hole? The question assumes in both cases that there’s an extra-dimensional space involved, as mentioned in the Greyhawk supplement.

But I thought: What if there isn’t?

I’ve written before about how I prefer a one-plane cosmology with a material world that has additional states of matter beyond solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. To maintain that, there couldn’t be any extra-dimensional spaces under my cosmology. So where does the hole part of a portable hole come from? Where do things inside the hole go when it is removed?

How I interpret Portable Holes:

• Turns a ten-foot long cylinder of connected solid material into ethereal matter.
• The effect stops when it hits liquid, gas, or any other non-solid material and does not continue, even if solid matter resumes before the ten-foot range is reached.
• Objects or living beings that enter the hole at this point aren’t transformed. They are just normal objects occupying space previously filled with solid matter.
• When the hole is removed, any ethereal matter tries to return to its solid state. If something is already in the same space and can’t be pushed out, it remains ethereal until that space is no longer occupied.

This means that if someone is crawling through a Portable Hole through a stone wall when the hole is removed, they become embedded in stone. They will suffocate, if they need air to breathe. Meanwhile, there’s an ethereal stone duplicate of them occupying the same position. When they are removed from that position, the stone reappears. If the surrounding stone is no longer there, you wind up with a statue of a crawling person.

There are some other weird situations that could happen, but the general principle is that two solid objects or two ethereal objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time, but a solid object and an ethereal object can occupy the same space.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Side Exits from Tunnels

Readers may have noticed that the Wednesday installment of the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons (links at end of post) reduced everything down to one (semi-) drop dice method to determining exits, but there was something missing. When rolling for side exits from tunnels, the drop dice method only tells you how far along the tunnel section each exit is, but doesn’t tell you which side of the tunnel it is.

I was aware of this, but left it out for a reason: I wasn’t happy with the methods I came up with. There’s basically four obvious methods of dealing with it.

1. Roll 1d6 or flip a coin for each exit to determine which side.
2. Don’t roll again. Just pick the side that makes the most sense (no connecting back to already-mapped areas, for example.)
3. Make the exit roll do double duty. If d6 result is odd, exit is on North or West side of tunnel, whichever makes sense. If d6 is even, exit is on South or East.
4. Same as #3, but only for first exit in tunnel section. Second exit will be on the side alternate, and third exit will be on the same side as first exit.

Method #1 adds extra dice rolls, right after we trimmed some out, so it’s no good.

Method #2 is fine as a general principal to modify random results where needed, but the whole point is to make a random generator.

Method #3 is a bit predictable. For example, a loose (no match) d6 result of 1 is a side tunnel, but under this rule, all side tunnels would be on the same side of a tunnel. Method #4 fixes this a little, but still could be more random.

But since we are also rolling dice of different colors (two light-colored, one dark-colored,) we could make use of that to modify Method #4.

5. If the dark d6 result is odd, the first exit is on the North or West side of the tunnel. If the dark d6 is even, the first exit is on the South or East. Second exit will be on the opposite side, and third exit will be on the same side as the first. Modify any result that would lead back into already-mapped areas.

If we really feel the need for more randomness, flip the second or third exit to the alternate side if the d6 result is the “opposite” of the dark d6. In other words, if the dark d6 is even but the d6 for the 2nd exit is odd, that exit is on the same side of the tunnel as the first exit.

Links to Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series:

1. Tunnels
2. Tunnels update
3. Exits
4. Drop Dice Exits

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Drop Dice Version

I did some testing for the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series (d6 Dungeons 1, d6 Dungeons 2, and d6 Dungeons 3,) and decided the ratio of rooms to tunnels was too low (Oops! All tunnels!) The problem is the Side Exits roll, which works fine in its original iteration for the semi-random dungeons pamphlets, but that is because that version only has a 42% chance of at least one tunnel, instead of a 97% chance.

One solution would be to replace the Side Exits roll with the Exit Destination roll, but treat it as a freeform drop-dice roll.

1. Roll 3d6 for each tunnel.
2. The position of each d6 is the position of each door or doorway (read left to right as West to East for horizontal tunnels, North to South for vertical tunnels.)
3. For dice that match, only use the position of the first d6.
4. Read the d6 result from the appropriate Exits subtable below, depending on whether its a triple, a double, or a loose d6 with no match.

d6	Loose d6 Result
1	Simple Corridor
2	Minor Debris
3	Missing Ceiling/Floor
4	Well or Fountain
5	Staircase or Ladder
6	Statue/Monument

d6	Doubles Result
1	Animal Pens
2	Storage (roll 1d6 again)
3	Jail Cell(s)
4	Food Prep
5	Living Area
6	Guard Station

d6	Triples Result
1	Armory (Weapons/Armor)
2	Execution Chamber
3	Temple or Shrine
4	Forge
5	Library
6	Magical Lab

In some cases, the GM could improvise a second roll to specify the variants. The only example specifically referenced on the table is “Storage”, where another d6 is rolled and the same table read again as a clue to what is stored in that room. Similarly, a well or a fountain could be dry or full of fresh, stagnant or poisoned water, or acid (2d6 reaction roll, with Dry as the middle result.)

This same Exits roll could replace the Tunnel Turns roll, but using two light-colored dice and one dark.

• If no dice match, each position represents one of the three direction (left, right, straight ahead.)
• If only two dice match, read the dark d6 first to find out which direction is blocked.
  • First Position: No door or passage North in a horizontal West/East tunnel, No door or passage West in a vertical North/South tunnel.
  • Second Position: No door or passage straight ahead.
  • Third Position: No door or passage South in a horizontal West/East tunnel, No door or passage East in a vertical North/South tunnel.
• If all three dice match, read the dark d6 as the direction to use (First Position = North or West, etc.)

Inside rooms, roll 3d6 for exits in the same way.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Exit Destinations

I may be making changes to the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons and its update, but before I did so, I thought I would address the missing portion: what’s behind that door?

Usually, a room, although in rare cases, it would be another tunnel. The GM would roll on a table, but there would in fact be several tables, for different dungeon themes and styles, and there may even be multiple tables for one theme/style.

But here’s a generic approach: roll 2d6 on the table below. If the roll is doubles, use the information in the (If Doubles) column.

2d6	Room Type		(If Doubles)
2	–>		No Floor
3	Jail cell(s)		–
4	Food		Farm/Pens
5	Lair/Living		–
6	Storage		Special
7	Monument		–
8	Kill Chamber		Flooded pit
9	Guard/Defense		–
10	Crafting		Tunnel
11	Debris/Ruin		–
12	–>		Tunnel

Doubles generally means a special version of the general room type: A 4 result means food prep (kitchen, fire pit) or food storage, but double 2 means a food source: a farm or animal pen.

Since a result of 2 is always double 1, it is always one specific result, On this table, it’s a room without a floor. Double 5 or 6 is a tunnel.

The “Special” doubles result next to “Storage” means it’s special storage, like an armory or library.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Avatars and Airbenders (Review)

I of course have been bingewatching a lot of television lately, but most of it is a rewatch. But I recently binged an older series I never watched on its first run: Avatar: The Last Airbender. And then I watched the movie adaptation. Reviews of both below.

Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (TV series)

Rating: B to B+

Not only did I miss this on its first run, but I don’t think I was even aware of it. I was an adult with no kids, so I didn’t really keep track of what Nickolodeon was up to. Years later, I occasionally heard the name, but no real details. Then, about a year ago, I heard some good things about the series, but put off watching it until a few weeks ago.

Honestly, it’s pretty damned good. Even for something aimed at kids. It’s about war and morality and trauma, but not heavy-handed at all, and manages to mix in humor without spoiling any of that. In general, it’s a solid B, but there’s a few better episodes in the 2nd and 3rd seasons.

The Last Airbender (movie)

Rating: C-

And then M. Night Shyamalan came along.

I think it was the release of Shyamalan’s movie that first alerted me to the existence of the TV series. I know it was savaged by the fans, but decided notto judge the film on omissions and inaccuracies, other than “big picture” errors. And of course critics were as harsh on this film as they are on most of Shyamalan’s films, but I’ve already seen some really bad Shyamalan films, and about three decent ones. I can give him some leeway.

The Last Airbender finally helped me clarify Shyamalan’s flaws as a director.

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Yes, a lot is missing from the movie. It’s a condensed version of the show’s first season, so of course a lot of details had to be cut.

And yes, there were some odd casting choices, but you gotta figure at least some of that was due to studio pressure. Iroh doesn’t feel like Iroh at all.

And also, yes, Shyamalan decided he had to write it himself, with his stilted way of writing dialogue, a preference for “tell, don’t show”, and some weird hobby horses he likes to ride around in every movie. A bad move when adapting someone else’s material.

For example, he likes to do “spiritual” themes, so he decided to ditch the idea of the Avatar preparing for a final battle. The Fire Nation aren’t imperialists! No! They hate the spirits! For some reason! And Aang isn’t destined to fight a final battle! No! He’s got to teach everyone to be spiritual!

Granted, there is an element of spiritual rebirth in the series, and Aang does wish he could find a peaceful solution … but for some reason, Shyamalan thinks Aang is the one who has to learn to be more spiritual and more peaceful, when in the series, it’s the opposite: he learns some things, but he’s more peaceful and spiritual at the beginning than the people who’ve had to live with a hundred years of war.

But we could ignore all that and call the movie a different interpretation of the same story seed, if the movie were good. And… well, it looks pretty good, except in a couple places. And it’s no worse in terms of plot than many other fantasy knock-offs.

But the directing…

Most of the characters feel kinda dull and devoid of personality, especially when compared to the TV show. And it can’t be the acting, because a lot of these actors have done good work elsewhere. It’s got to be the directing, and to a lesser extent the writing. Watching The Last Airbender made me realize this is a recurring feature of M. Night Shyamalan movies that I somehow was always aware of, but couldn’t put into words until now. He likes drab, emotionless characters. Where that makes sense because the character is damaged or despirited in some way – Signs, Unbreakable, and The Sixth Sense – his writing and directing style are actually a plus, and he makes a good movie. Where it doesn’t makes sense, like in The Village, it makes for a kind of blah movie. Where he actually wants a different tone, especially a comedic tone as in The Lady in the Water, the movie feels like a failure.

The Avatar TV series is a potentially dark theme that’s lightened up with a lot of humor and personality. That makes the darkness easier to handle. It’s easy to watch the series and just enjoy it, then think about it later and realize there’s a lot more going on than jokes. The movie, though, has maybe one half of a joke, somewhere? The rest is just dull plodding through a storyline that Shyamalan doesn’t seem to understand except in the most superficial ways.

It’s not a terrible movie. If you’re just watching random garbage on TV anyways, you can probably make it through this one. But just remember: you have to think of it as a cheapo martial arts or direct-to-video fantasy movie, just with a bigger budget and better production values.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Update

I decided to make some changes to the graphics from yesterday's post.

What's Different: 

• Switched the dice results so that they are numbered left to right, top to bottom, which might be easier to remember.
• Switched to absolute orientation (horizontal or vertical, using compass directions) instead of relative orientation (left or right,) since not everyone can handle imagining themselves rotating in space.
• Labels for the d6 results printed on the diagram.
• Made it clearer that dice can be rolled at either end of a tunnel section to see if the tunnel continues, branches, or turns.
• Added doorways and room shapes to make it clearer where these would be drawn on the map.
• Summary of instructions in lower left.

Technically, it would have been better to center the hypothetical rooms relative to their doorways. But I use Alex Schroeder's Gridmapper for quick one-off diagrams like this, and there are limitations to what it can do. If I do a more refined version of this as a PDF, I can do fancier illustrations in Inkscape.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons

I want to revisit the semi-random dungeon generation technique. I originally developed this for my dungeon expander pamphlet series, the idea being that a GM who suddenly needs a dungeon or needs to expand an existing dungeon can just grab a random pamphlet and create a random one with a minimum of rolling. But I’ve had some ideas on how to update this for a while.

The original system involved a pseudo-map of a corridor with six potential exits and six possible kinds of exits. What I’m proposing now is a more universal framework.

d6	Exit Location	Tunnel Direction
		Right Side
1	First Third	Turn Right
2	Middle Third	Turn Right
3	Last Third	Straight Ahead
		Left Side
4	First Third	Turn Left
5	Middle Third	Turn Left
6	Last Third	Straight Ahead

1. Start with a Basic Tunnel Segment (24 paces, or 60 feet long) heading in any direction.
2. Make a Side Exits Roll (3d6) to determine where each side exit is (See Exit Location column on table above.) On doubles, the exit is a Portal (standard door.) On triples, the exit is a Special Portal (heavy door.) Otherwise, it’s an Exit (open archway.)
3. Make a Tunnel Roll (3d6) to determine the basic tunnel shape. On triples, the tunnel dead-ends in a Portal (standard door) straight ahead. Otherwise, each d6 result represents a tunnel direction, which means the tunnel may turn, branch to one side, end in a T-junction, or become a four-way intersection (See Tunnel Direction column on table above.)
4. For every Portal or Special Portal, make a Chamber Roll to see what’s behind the portal. (More on this later.)
5. After making one or more rolls for a room’s contents, end with a Room Exits Roll (Probably 4d6.) Each d6 represents one exit’s direction (1-4 = one wall of room, numbered clockwise starting at the top; 5-6 = up or down.)

You may notice the pattern of bold name followed by (italic parenthetical information.) Extracting that, we get this summary:

• Basic Tunnel Segment (24 paces)
• Side Exits Roll (3d6)
• Tunnel Roll (3d6)
• Chamber Roll (1d6 or more)
• Room Exits Roll (4d6)
• Extras:
  • Exit (open archway)
  • Portal (standard door)
  • Special Portal (heavy door)

The bold names are the underlying framework of the system, but the italicized information can be changed for custom dungeon types. For example, changing Basic Tunnel Segment to a shorter length like 12 paces or 30 feet makes tighter, twisty-er dungeon designs, while changing the Side Exits Roll to 4d6 packs more tunnels and rooms into the space. Changing Exit from open archway to curtains changes the feel of the place, perhaps making it more like a temple or palace. Swapping Exit and Portal (so that exits only appear on doubles) makes doors more common than archways. Changing Special Portal to portcullis might make more sense in a true castle dungeon or prison.

Chamber Rolls are left vague for now, but the basic idea is that there is a table of room types, possibly two separate tables, one each for portals and special portals. But there could be different tables for different dungeon themes. This is something I’m still working on, but would most likely be a 1d6 or 2d6 table, perhaps with extra numeric entries reachable only when there is a bonus to the role (for example, a +1 for every 2 full levels of depth, so that some room types only show up on deeper levels.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Even Simpler Treasure Codes

I wanted to take a break from endless treasure codes posts, but they keep reeling me back in…

I started a thread on the OD&D forums to get more feedback, and got some that caused me to think of alternatives to making the system even simpler. Two of the main goals of coming up with a new treasure system are:

1. Keeping the codes short but readable, and
2. Reducing the amount of die-rolling.

Switching to roman numerals for base values and reducing the main treasure codes to three is good, but as waysoftheearth pointed out in the thread, having two capital letters with two completely different domains of interpretation right next to each other can cause confusion. But if we replace the codes B, E, and A with actual words like “coins”, “gems”, and “magic”, or even use the standard coin abbreviations in place of “coins”, we still have a fairly short descriptive phrase while making things easier to understand.

We could also eliminate the need for a “chance of treasure” index by making the target number for a d20 roll = HD +/- hp modifier. So, a 1+2 HD creature has treasure on 3 or less on d20 (because 1+2 = 3.)

This still leaves the roll for “how much treasure”. One thing I considered early on, but couldn’t figure out how to do, was making the chance roll the same as the quantity roll. But we could use the chance roll result to set the quantity as well.

So let’s try this treasure code format:

5+1 HD monster, gp D, gem C x10, magic

How to use this code:

1. Roll 1d20 for coins. If <= 6 (HD + hp adds,) there are coins.
2. Multiply the result by 4 for number of containers. The code gp tells us these are gold coins. The roman numeral D tells us there are 500 gps per container.
3. Roll 1d6 per HD (in this case, 5d6.) Count the number of 1s and 6s you get, tracking them separately. Multiply each by the d20 result for the number of containers of coins of lower value and higher value.
4. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for gems. In this case, if there are gems, also multiply the result by x10. This is the total number of gems of base value C (100 coins in value.) You can skip figuring out higher/lower value gems until a PC tries to appraise them.
5. By default, the roll for jewelry is the same as the roll for gems, even if not listed. However, some codes may say “no jewelry” or give a different value/multiplier.
6. Roll 1d20 for magic or other items. If <= HD/2, round up (in this case, 3,) there are items in the treasure. The result is the number of special items, but the target number (HD/2) is the total number of items, so there may be “duds”.
7. Roll 1d6 per special item. On a 5+, it’s a treasure map. Otherwise, it’s magic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Simpler Treasure Codes

So, I did all that stuff about mnemonic treasure codes, and then I decided there was a way to make the mnemonics much easier to read and more compact: (1) Fewer primary treasure prefixes, and (2) Ditching table lookups for base values.

Explaining the New Codes

First, the prefixes. We only need three:

• A = Arcane Artifact or Magic Item
• B = Bulk Treasure (coins of various types)
• E = Extra (or Expensive) Treasure, for gems and jewelry

The suffixes remain the same, but come immediately after this prefix, and only when necessary: Bc specifies copper as the default instead of silver. Eg specifies gems only, if jewelry is absent or less/more abundant.

Artifacts (A) only need a numerical prefix and optionally a suffix: 3 A means 30% chance for three items and 4 A+s means 40% chance for any four items + one scroll. For Bulk treasure and Extra treasure, though, use a roman numeral, which is easier to use than the vowel system I came up with earlier.

• V = 5 coins value
• X = 10 coins value
• L = 50 coins value
• C = 100 coins value
• D = 500 coins value
• M = 1000 coins value

To shorten things a bit, though, we can mix in arabic numerals instead of using more than one roman numeral (so, B3X instead of BXXX.)

Most of the time, coins will be in small bags (BL,) large sacks (B3C,) or chests (BM.) 5 BgM means 50% chance of 5d6 chests with 1,000 gold coins each. For gems and jewelry, that roman numeral refers to the base value of each gem or piece of jewelry, not the quantity. The most common value will be EC (base value of 100 coins.) In general, all gems and jewelry can fit into a single container.

How to Check for Treasure

For arcane artifacts, only one roll is necessary: a Chance Roll to see if there are any magic items at all. There may be additional rolls to decide which items are present, but this is optional; you could just pick whatever you want, any way you want.

For coins, you can handle all treasure checks with three rolls.

1. Chance Roll (d10 roll under prefixed number, or whatever you prefer) to see if any coins are present at all.
2. Default Coin Amount Roll (prefixed number = number of d6s to roll.) Total this, then set aside highest d6 rolled; call this the secondary coin amount.
3. Secondary Coin Amount Roll (secondary coin amount = number of d6s to roll as a dice pool.) Every 1 rolled is an extra container of lower-value treasure and every 6 rolled is an extra container of higher-value treasure.

So, if the code is 5 BsM:

1. Roll d10. If result <= 5 (50% chance,) there are coins in the treasure trove.
2. Roll 5d6, get {1, 3, 3, 4, 4}. Total is 16 chests of silver, 1,000 coins each.
3. Since highest d6 in Step 2 was “4”, roll 4d6 and get {1, 1, 2, 6}. Result is two chests of copper and one chest of gold, 1,000 coins in each chest.

If a prefix has two suffixes (Bsg,) roll Step 2 twice, but only set aside one d6 as the secondary coin amount for Step 3. The lower-value treasure is below the lowest value listed as a suffix, while the higher-value treasure is above the highest value listed. In the case of Bsg, this means there would be copper and platinum.

For gems and jewelry, either roll the same as you would for coins, using the third roll for gems or jewelry of higher and lower value mixed in with the rest, or just roll for chance and quantity, then follow the procedure in Monsters & Treasure, p. 40.

Using Treasure Codes for New Monsters

When designing new monsters, you would want to follow a more rational pattern than the original treasure types:

• Don’t worry about minimum quantities, only max quantities.
• Don’t use the plus or minus modifiers.
• Don’t split probability and quantity. Just use one number. If you want the treasure amount to be higher or lower than the probability would indicate, adjust the roman numeral instead (poor monsters might have small bags instead of chests, for example.)
• Only record the most common type of coin, letting the rules above handle other types.
• To make treasures fit better with each monster, focus on exclusions and bonuses. 4 A+2s no w as a magic-using monster’s artifact treasure is a much better customization than randomly raising and lowering coin amounts. 3 BgM no s might make sense for custom lycanthrope treasure.

Instead of assigning numbers to treasure probability and amount at random, work out a formula tying this to monster level. I think this is a good start:

Hit Dice	Quantity X	Base Value	G/J	Magic
up to 1+2	max hp/2	X BL	x1	1 A
2 to 10+	HD/2	X BM	x1	X/2 A
11+	HD/4+1	X B2M	x10	X+1 A

Replace the X in columns 3 and 5 with the value from column 2 (round up) to get the coin and magic treasure codes for a monster. For gems and jewelry, use X EC, replacing X with the value from column 2, then add the multiplier from column 4 as necessary. So, for example:

• For a 1+1 HD hobgoblin lair: 4 BL 4 EC 1 A.
• For a 6 HD troll lair: 3 BM 3 EC 2 A
• For a 10 HD hydra: 5 BM 5 EC 3 A.
• For a 12 HD dragon: 3 B2M 3 ECx10 4 A.

This starter code could then be customized, shifting some low-HD monsters to copper instead of silver, for example, or adding a x10 multiplier to gems for a gnome lair, or adding bonus magic items to mid-level monsters that have more powers than usual.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Treasure Codes and the Treasure Table

I wrote a lot of posts over the past couple weeks about a new mnemonic way to mark treasure in monster descriptions:

• Part One: treasure codes
• Part Two: coins
• Part Three: gems and jewelry
• Part Four: maps and magic items
• Part Five: dice and probabilities

I promised translations for the existing treasure types, although I will warn you right now that they look pretty ugly. This is mainly due to the treasure types not being very well thought out. Aside from scattered patterns I've already mentioned (higher treasure amounts for hoards and active treasure collectors, for example,) there's no real rhyme or reason behind assigning probabilities and quantities. This means you have to record lots of info for each type and can't compress it down to something simple.

And I confess: after I finished writing up the conversion table, I decided I wanted to improve the mnemonic system even more, and maybe do a complete overhaul of the treasure types, which really are quite bad. But for now, here's the conversion table.

Type	... Converts to This Code
A1	2:1 Coyc 3:1 Coys, 3:2 Coyg, 5:6 Gee/Jee, 4:3 Xu
A2	2:1 Coyc/s-1, 2:1 Coyg, 5:1 Gee/Jee-1 x10, 6:3 Xu
A3	6:5 Coyg (no cs), 6:1 Gee/Jee x10, 5:1 Mu
B	5:1 Coyc+1, 2:1 Coys, 2:1 Cyog-3, 2:1 Gee/Jee, 1 Xuw
C	2 Coyc, 3:1 Coys-1 (no g), 2:1 Gee/Jee-1, 1:1 Xu
D	1 Coyc+1, 2 Coys, 6:1 Coyg, 3:1 Gee/Jee+1, 2 Xu+p
E	(1/2):2 Coyc-2, 3:2 Coys, 2:1 Coyg+1,1:2 Gee/Jee-2, 3 Xu+s
F	1:4 Coys-4, 4:2 Coyg, 2:4 Gee/Jee, 3 Xu+ps (no w)
G	7:1 Coyg-1, 3 Gee, 3:2 Jee-2, 4 Xu+s
H	3:4 Coyc, 5:2 Coys-2 x10, 7:1 Coyg x10, 5:2 Gee-2 x10, 5:1 Jee-1 x10, 2:4 Xu+ps
I	5:2 Gee+2, 5:2 Jee+2, 2:1 Xu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Treasure Codes: Thoughts on Quantity and Probability

This is Part Five in an ongoing series re-examining treasure types in OD&D and discussing a possible mnemonic replacement.

• Part One: treasure codes
• Part Two: coins
• Part Three: gems and jewelry
• Part Four: maps and magic items

Today’s topic: Dice ranges for treasure amounts and the probability of finding each variety of treasure.

I mentioned one way of sorting the treasure types in Part Three based on quantity. But we could also sort based on likelihood of finding maps or magic. Mixing the two methods and splitting off Type I as an outlier gives us six categories:

Types	Category Name	Examples
A1/A2	Active Treasure Collectors	bandits
A3	Active Waterborne Collectors	pirates
B-F	Standard Treasure Troves	orcs, ogres
G	Dwarven Hoard	dwarves
H	Treasure Hoard	dragons
I	Individual Items	rocs

Active treasure troves have generous quantities of gems and jewelry and high chances of magic items, although pirate treasures (A3) have no magic, only a map, which is why it’s separate.

Standard treasures have smaller quantities of all monetary treasure varieties and lower the chance of copper coins in a trove as you progress through the alphabet: 50% for Type B down to 0% for Type F. Oddly, the chance of a magic item being in a standard treasure trove increases as the number of items increases. It’s roughly a 10% chance for each item, excluding bonus items like potions and scrolls.

Dwarven Hoards have generous quantities of gold coin, gems, and jewelry, no other coin varieties, and follow the same pattern for magic items as Standard treasure troves.

Dragon Hoards have generous quantities of just about everything, but half the expected chance of finding magic items.

Individual Items have no coins and low quantities of everything, although the chances for gems, jewelry and a magic item are high.

Treasure types with generous quantities of coin, gems, and jewelry have at least 50% chance for each, while almost all types with standard quantities of a category have a chance less than 50%.

Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern linking quantity (dice) to chance of finding (probability.) But we can ignore that and create a link, just to make the mnemonics easier. I’ve already assumed all quantities are rolled with d6s only. Modifiers to the roll can be placed after the mnemonic code. This gives us:

• 3 Coyg = 3d6 chests of 1,000 gold coins each

• Jee-1 = 1d6-1 (or 1 to 5) pieces of jewelry, base value 100 coins each
• 4 Gee x10 = 10 to 60 gems, base value 100 coins each
• 2 Xu +p = any 2 magic items, plus one potion

The base probability for any of these is 10% per die rolled for quantity. So: 30% chance for the 3d6 chests of gold, 10% chance for the jewelry, 40% chance for the 10 to 60 gems, or 20% for 2 magic + 1 potion. No need to use percentile dice: roll a d10 instead, any result less than or equal to the number shown means that treasure is present. If the probability doesn't match the number of dice, use a target number prefix followed by a colon and the dice number:

• 6:3 Coyg 60% chance of 3d6 chests of gold
• 4:2 Xu +p 40% chance of 2 magic items + potion

Some options:

• d20 instead of d10: double target number
• 2d6 Drop 6s: Treat each 6 on a die as a zero, for number from 0 to 10. Target number is the same, but probability is no longer linear.

Next up: I finish this long series by translating the existing treasure types into mnemonic codes to create a new treasure type table.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Treasure Codes: How Items Work

This is Part Four of in a series re-examining treasure types in OD&D and discussing a possible mnemonic replacement.

• Part One: treasure codes
• Part Two: coins
• Part Three: gems and jewelry

Today’s topic: maps and magic items.

Unlike other treasure items, the monetary value of maps and magic items is not used in the treasure types at all. One obvious reason for this: the random treasure tables include cursed items mixed in with useful items. That’s kind of what you want, if you are aiming for an old-school experience: players never know if an item is useful or cursed based solely on superficial examination.

Instead, items are sorted by their general form and function, which is why I originally chose to assign one letter to each form:

• M for Maps
• P for Potions
• S for Scrolls
• W for Weapons or Armor
• X for Any Magic Item

But in way, this doesn’t make sense. Because:

Any time a treasure type specifically includes a Map, Potion, Scroll, or Weapon, it’s one added item of that type, over and above any other maps, potions, scrolls, or weapons that are rolled by accident.

In other words, “Any 4 + 1 Potion and 1 Scroll” may mean:

• 5 potions and a scroll,
• 1 potion and 5 scrolls,
• 1 potion, 1 scroll and 4 items that aren’t potion,
• Some other mix of 6 items that includes at least one potion and one scroll.

Since the only vowel code that makes sense for items is “unique” (u), it makes more sense to cluster all magic items together in one “word”.

So: 4 Xu+ps would be a better way to write “Any 4 + 1 Potion and 1 Scroll” than “4 Xu Pu Su”, because it’s more compact. Besides, the repeated “u” codes makes the code look repetitive.

There’s only one roll to see if a treasure trove includes maps and/or magic items, not one roll per potential item.

Again, the “4 Xu Pu Su” code would be misleading, because it looks like there are four rolls: one for four magic items of any type, one for a potion, and one for a scroll. It should actually be a single all-or-none roll.

You can still use M/P/S/W if there is only one item type. One example: pirates do not have magic items, but do have a chance for a single treasure map. This would be the code Mu.

Next week: dice and probabilities.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Treasure Codes: How Gems and Jewelry Work

Topic Two in a series of explainer follow-ups for the treasure codes post is gems and jewelry. The original treasure table specified that gems and jewelry are rolled separately, but in all but two cases, the chances of finding each and the quantities found are the same for any given treasure type. They are just combined into one column to save space.

There are two broad categories of treasure in relation to quantities of gems or jewelry in the trove: standard quantities (in the 1 to 3 dice range) vs. generous quantities (either 6d6, 1d100, or 1 die x10.) Gems/jewelry collected by bandits and other large bands of humans are generous, as are dragon hoards. All others are in standard quantities.

[There’s a similar distinction for gold possessed by pirates, dwarves, or dragons (generous) vs. all other treasures (standard,) which when combined with gems and jewelry gives us four categories: standard, generous gold, generous gems, and doubly generous.]

Vowels in gem and jewelry codes should be used to represent base values of each item, rather than the multipliers we use for coins:

i for inferior gems (10 coins base value)
a for average gems (20 coins)
e for excellent gems (50 coins)
ee = 100 coins
o = 500 coins
y = 5,000 coins
u = 50,000 coins

Most of the standard gem values are represented here, with a few extra. If the base type is y or u, don’t roll a d6 for the number of gems, but instead assume it’s a single gem (or, for example, 5 gems if the code is 5 gy, etc.) Jewelry will normally just be joo, but the value can go up or down for either gems or jewelry.

Each piece of jewelry, gem, or group of 5 or 10 gems of the same value, gets a d6 roll on the value adjustment table:

d6 roll	Gem Value	Jewelry Value
1	half normal	3d6/10 x base
2-5	normal	1d6 x base
6	doubled	2d6 x base

This is a simplification of the way gems and jewelry are handled in Monsters && Treasure.

As for suffixes, most of the time there won’t be one. If you really want to specify different kinds of gems, you could use codes like r(ed), g(reen), b(lue), and y(ellow), or p for pearls. But probably the most useful suffixes would be those indicating size.

gyl is a large gem (10x normal size, about the size of someone’s fist)
gyh is a huge gem (100x normal, about the size of someone’s head)
gyt is a titanic gem (1000x normal, about the size of someone’s torso)

The size multiplier doesn’t affect the base value, but it affects the space it takes up in a bag, sack or pack. You can’t fit a titanic gem into a large sack, but 1 to 3 huge gems could fit. These size codes would be especially useful if we added another code, F, for fancy items like vases, urns, paintings and other decorations.

Next up: maps and magic items.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.