There's a lot in the published Tyranny of Dragons campaign that's nonsensical, and the whole reason is because this storyline is a bad fit for the Forgotten Realms. Stripped of the setting of Faerun, and this adventure is almost exactly the Dragonlance storyline condensed into two volumes. The way to fix the fundamental story flaws is to bring that War of the Lance goodness back into plot.
No, I don't mean bring back Goldmoon and Raistlin.
In the adventure as written, Tiamat is almost an entirely passive entity and if run strictly by the book she should not appear at all at the Well of Dragons, as the Cult of Dragon's plans to resurrect her would be completely thwarted. What fun is that? Instead of such an anticlimactic end, Tiamat should be given a more active role in the story by taking cues from Dragonlance's Takhisis and restored to her place as the main antagonist of the story.
Similarly, Bahamut is not mentioned or used at all in this storyline, and the only time the Metallic Dragons are involved is during a turgidly dull political council scene. Instead of that scene, whisk the players away to Bahamut's castle, in Celestia from 4e's Scales of War adventure path, or Paladine's Glitter Palace, and have the heroes undergo Paladine's tests of worthiness.
The final assault on the Well of Dragons is meant to be a massive clash between the armies of good and the Cult of the Dragon, exactly like the climax to the War of the Lance, but this first publication for 5e lacks any sort of mass combat rules so it all falls by the wayside. Honestly though, I would rather leave it there, as I feel that shoehorning in a mass combat wargame would only detract from the chapter. Contextualize the PCs as a special unit sneaking behind the battle lines while the main forces of good hold off the enemy just long enough to give the players an opening.
The Well of Dragons itself is a terrible dungeon, as it only exists as an area for a large battle and a pit for Tiamat to rise from. Replace it with any of the Temples of Takhisis or Tiamat.
These suggestions change the ending, and in doing so re-contextualizes the whole adventure. Now it truly is an epic battle between good and evil, between the two dragon deities, and not a hodgepodge collection of loose allies from around the Sword Coast fighting a demented cult and some scheming wizards.
To build up to this finale, I sprinkle in references to the two dragon deities and explicitly have their mortal avatars show up in certain instances. For example, Takhisis speaks to Frulam and Cyanwrath in the dragon hatchery just before they are interrupted by the players, and Paladine is encountered during the long caravan ride and offers words of wisdom and caution.
This also resolves my issues with the "half-dragons" introduced in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, as they are clearly meant to be Dragonlance's Draconians, but the official races of 5e have already retrofitted Draconians into the Dragonborn race, so why do half-dragons even exist? Well now they don't, they're just evil dragonborn leading an army of dragon kind in service of the Queen of Dragons.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Monday, December 2, 2019
Retooling Hoard of the Dragon Queen...again Chapter 1
I'm starting to run this campaign again, because I just can't let it go. I posted a retrospective and a "what I would have done better" blog entry earlier, but now that I have more experience as a DM I have a lot harsher criticisms for this module and a lot more restructuring I would want to do.
Starting with Chapter 1, I like the metaplot of this chapter - a dragon attacks a town. It's the stuff of high fantasy and a great set-piece introduction. However the implementation of this chapter is terrible. The missions and encounters are written to be given to the players in a purely reactive manner. The DM is supposed to spring the encounters on the players in a random order, or have a quest giver NPC, Governer Nighthill, merely give players the missions in sequence, like an NPC in a video game. I do not like running my games this way and I prefer players to be more proactive and choose the encounters that they are involved in.
I never run the opening as written, where the PCs are assumed to be a random band of adventurers who see Greenest being attacked in the distance, and take it upon themselves (i.e. are railroaded) to help. Instead, I always use the classic opening - the players meet at an inn. I give them time to introduce themselves and their characters, and form some base level of comfort with each other. Then I tell them that they can hear sounds of an attack outside. The tavern that they're inside is in Greenest.
From there I let the players choose what they want to do. I've given them the basic hook - they're being attacked and the city is burning around them. Whether they choose to fight or flee is up to them. I'm still using some subtle railroading, but its much more interesting than the heavy handed method that the module itself provides.
But I do run one thing as written, which is the first encounter with Linan Swift and her family. I use this to give the players their first goal - run to the Keep for safety, and it helps me keep them on the rails in a subtle manner. The usefulness of Linan Swift as the voice of the DM cannot be understated.
But the worst part of the opening chapter is how the players get to the keep. By the book, for every 100 feet the party moves, the DM is to roll for a random encounter, then have those encounters sprung on the players. This is awful, because who is going to measure 100 ft increments? And with what map, the tiny quarter page one in the book? What is there to keep the players from simply making a beeline to the keep? Instead, I run this sequence as scenes of rioting or street fighting. I have Linan direct the way to the keep, but the party will frequently find their path blocked by fighting, looters, or fires and other hazards. This lets them choose whether to fight or find another way around. Sometimes I let them escape from the bands of kobolds and cultists roaming the streets, sometimes I have them give chase. Eventually the players reach the keep and bargain for entry with the Sergeant of the Guard, where they can finally rest and recover some HP and spells. By this point they should advance from level 1 to 2, and make it a little of the way to level 3. Since level 1 characters are fairly fragile, only one or two encounters are really necessary for them to cross into level 2, and if HP is a concern, a single short rest somewhere in the town should be enough, or the encounters can turn into roleplay or skill challenges instead of combat for XP. Inside the keep, I offer professional healing services and some minor provisions for the players to replenish their fighting capacity.
The advice in the DMG is that players should have around 6 encounters per level, one easy, one hard, and four of moderate difficulty. I think that results in a bit too much combat for this chapter, so by granting all players 100XP just for reaching the keep I lower the number of encounters necessary to level up by two. Using the option to grant players XP for saved civilians also lowers the necessary requirement, and boosts them on their way to level 3.
This means that the missions in the Keep bring the characters along the way to level 3. Honestly, I only run 3 of the encounters in this chapter - the secret tunnel with the swarm of rats, an optional save the mill, sanctuary or sally port, whichever is the player's choice, and the dragon assault. After the dragon assault, the players engage in the duel with Cyanwrath. With these 3-4 encounters, the players can make it just shy of level 3 and prepare themselves for Chapter 2.
As I said before, I think the assault on Greenest is a fantastic set piece battle, but the actual direction for running it in the book is lacking. By restructuring it so that players have more freedom of choice and more agency in their character actions, and by keeping a closer eye to the mechanical details of XP progression and encounter challenge, the event becomes much more enjoyable for the players, much less frustrating for the GM, and a better springboard into the larger campaign.
Starting with Chapter 1, I like the metaplot of this chapter - a dragon attacks a town. It's the stuff of high fantasy and a great set-piece introduction. However the implementation of this chapter is terrible. The missions and encounters are written to be given to the players in a purely reactive manner. The DM is supposed to spring the encounters on the players in a random order, or have a quest giver NPC, Governer Nighthill, merely give players the missions in sequence, like an NPC in a video game. I do not like running my games this way and I prefer players to be more proactive and choose the encounters that they are involved in.
I never run the opening as written, where the PCs are assumed to be a random band of adventurers who see Greenest being attacked in the distance, and take it upon themselves (i.e. are railroaded) to help. Instead, I always use the classic opening - the players meet at an inn. I give them time to introduce themselves and their characters, and form some base level of comfort with each other. Then I tell them that they can hear sounds of an attack outside. The tavern that they're inside is in Greenest.
From there I let the players choose what they want to do. I've given them the basic hook - they're being attacked and the city is burning around them. Whether they choose to fight or flee is up to them. I'm still using some subtle railroading, but its much more interesting than the heavy handed method that the module itself provides.
But I do run one thing as written, which is the first encounter with Linan Swift and her family. I use this to give the players their first goal - run to the Keep for safety, and it helps me keep them on the rails in a subtle manner. The usefulness of Linan Swift as the voice of the DM cannot be understated.
But the worst part of the opening chapter is how the players get to the keep. By the book, for every 100 feet the party moves, the DM is to roll for a random encounter, then have those encounters sprung on the players. This is awful, because who is going to measure 100 ft increments? And with what map, the tiny quarter page one in the book? What is there to keep the players from simply making a beeline to the keep? Instead, I run this sequence as scenes of rioting or street fighting. I have Linan direct the way to the keep, but the party will frequently find their path blocked by fighting, looters, or fires and other hazards. This lets them choose whether to fight or find another way around. Sometimes I let them escape from the bands of kobolds and cultists roaming the streets, sometimes I have them give chase. Eventually the players reach the keep and bargain for entry with the Sergeant of the Guard, where they can finally rest and recover some HP and spells. By this point they should advance from level 1 to 2, and make it a little of the way to level 3. Since level 1 characters are fairly fragile, only one or two encounters are really necessary for them to cross into level 2, and if HP is a concern, a single short rest somewhere in the town should be enough, or the encounters can turn into roleplay or skill challenges instead of combat for XP. Inside the keep, I offer professional healing services and some minor provisions for the players to replenish their fighting capacity.
The advice in the DMG is that players should have around 6 encounters per level, one easy, one hard, and four of moderate difficulty. I think that results in a bit too much combat for this chapter, so by granting all players 100XP just for reaching the keep I lower the number of encounters necessary to level up by two. Using the option to grant players XP for saved civilians also lowers the necessary requirement, and boosts them on their way to level 3.
This means that the missions in the Keep bring the characters along the way to level 3. Honestly, I only run 3 of the encounters in this chapter - the secret tunnel with the swarm of rats, an optional save the mill, sanctuary or sally port, whichever is the player's choice, and the dragon assault. After the dragon assault, the players engage in the duel with Cyanwrath. With these 3-4 encounters, the players can make it just shy of level 3 and prepare themselves for Chapter 2.
As I said before, I think the assault on Greenest is a fantastic set piece battle, but the actual direction for running it in the book is lacking. By restructuring it so that players have more freedom of choice and more agency in their character actions, and by keeping a closer eye to the mechanical details of XP progression and encounter challenge, the event becomes much more enjoyable for the players, much less frustrating for the GM, and a better springboard into the larger campaign.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Wargaming
Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming including Setting Up a Wargames Campaign
This book is amazing
Fuck Dungeons & Dragons and fuck roleplaying games, true tabletop gamers play wargames. This book contains all the material that's also in the original Dungeons & Dragons LBB, and then some, but written by someone who could actually write a coherent system. The book is divided into three parts, the first section is a straight set of rules for war games set in the ancient era, the second section is the meat of the book and describes the creation of wargame campaigns, and the last section gives a sample setting called Hyboria and discusses fantasy wargaming. In effect, everything that was covered in original D&D is also here, just much more fleshed out, coherent, complete, and sensibly written.
The byline for 0e D&D was also "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures". Did Gary Gygax read Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming, and if he did, did he assume that his audience was familiar with the material and so didn't belabor it in his own book? I think the further that D&D strays from its wargaming roots, the less real appeal it has.
The real bonus in this book for me is the section on creating and traversing a hex map, which is explained in much better terms than in either OD&D or AD&D, and hexcrawling isn't even mentioned in later editions.
Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming
Wargaming also lends itself more easily to solo play, and to faciliate that I've also picked up another book. This one is more focused on playing single battles solo, so is more focused on mechanics. Maybe when I dive into it more fully, I can incorporate more ideas for my own solo play.
This book is amazing
Fuck Dungeons & Dragons and fuck roleplaying games, true tabletop gamers play wargames. This book contains all the material that's also in the original Dungeons & Dragons LBB, and then some, but written by someone who could actually write a coherent system. The book is divided into three parts, the first section is a straight set of rules for war games set in the ancient era, the second section is the meat of the book and describes the creation of wargame campaigns, and the last section gives a sample setting called Hyboria and discusses fantasy wargaming. In effect, everything that was covered in original D&D is also here, just much more fleshed out, coherent, complete, and sensibly written.
The byline for 0e D&D was also "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures". Did Gary Gygax read Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming, and if he did, did he assume that his audience was familiar with the material and so didn't belabor it in his own book? I think the further that D&D strays from its wargaming roots, the less real appeal it has.
The real bonus in this book for me is the section on creating and traversing a hex map, which is explained in much better terms than in either OD&D or AD&D, and hexcrawling isn't even mentioned in later editions.
Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming
Wargaming also lends itself more easily to solo play, and to faciliate that I've also picked up another book. This one is more focused on playing single battles solo, so is more focused on mechanics. Maybe when I dive into it more fully, I can incorporate more ideas for my own solo play.
Monday, November 4, 2019
A breakdown of Mystara between versions
An interesting comment I found on this Dragonsfoot thread:
I think there are some distinct phases. The world was effectively rewritten four times, and each time marked a change in theme, tone, scope, cosmology, and even geography.
1981 to 1983 -- the Continent. Gods and demons are explicitly mentioned, and religion tends to be dark with a Mythos slant. Modules have elements borrowed from Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. The known world is not yet an official setting, only a sample wilderness. Mapping was exclusively 24-mile and 6-mile B&W. The Moldvay-era world did not have any planes, but did have dimensions, including dimensions of Ice, Nightmare, Arik's prison dimension, and the Dimensional Vortex.
The tone was grim and sorcerous with no humor. The lands were wide open and fairly empty. Many modules featured lovecraftian tentacled nightmare things (B4, X1, X2, X5) or demons and cults (B1, B2, X1, X4, B5) and gods (Expert rules, B1, B4, B5, X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, O1). We have a Sauron-style villain that threatens the known world, and a secret mind-control cult.
Scope: This era included the "Map of the Continent" from X1 plus Sind, Slagovich, Hule, and the Moon. In X4, Sind is included as a part of Darokin rather than a separate kingdom. It is implied that Karameikos is part of Thyatis. Module X1 provides a paragraph on each nation and suggests a RW analogue for some, but does not say how close the parallel is. Module X5 says that the Black Mountains betwen Sind and Hule are part of the "known lands", which implies that the known world of Moldvay includes the Great Waste and Hule.
Canon: B/X, B1-5, X1-5, MSOLO1-2, O1, AC1
1983 to 1987 -- the D&D Game World. Mentzer publicly announced (in early 1984?) that the sample wilderness from X1 is being adopted as an official D&D Game World, and said that the Jurassic world map from the Master Set had already been completed in 1983. He places existing modules to fit into this map. At this time Mentzer begins de-emphasizing gods and replacing religions with philosophy, but this is not yet official and not binding on module writers. However, most writers begin adopting the Mentzerian model. The setting has no official name; X10 refers to The Continent from the Expert Set and also refers to it as "the entire civilized world." Maps continued to be 24-mile and 6-mile (see X6, CM1, X9, X11, etc). While the setting was official, it was only detailed in the core rulebooks and in modules, so canon was limited and sporadic. Demons were renamed Fiends in the Immortals rules. Mentzer adds the concept of planes alongside dimensions. Immortals are explicitly not gods and not to be worshipped, and this is reinforced in module IM2.
The tone seems a little lighter, but still not overtly humorous. Lovecraftian elements disappear. It strikes me as a mix of lighthearted "saturday morning cartoon" feel (esp the black eagle and bargle), and more serious work. We start seeing very high production values like X8 and B10. We still have world threatening mega-villains in X10 and X11. A lot of history and interesting places are established in this era.
Scope and Changes: Adds the Serpent Peninsula, Savage Coast, Norwold, Wendar and Denagoth, the Isle of Dawn, and Blackmoor, as well as the world map in the Master Set and the planes and Immortals. Module X10 expands a bit on each nation and expands on the RW parallels with cultural details and NPCs.
Canon: BECMI, B6-10, X6-12, XS1-2, XL1, CM1-8, M1-4, IM1-2, AC2-9, DA1-4, O2
1987 to 1990 -- the Gazetteer Era. To me this is distinct from the Mentzer era in that the world received a top-to-bottom rewrite in exhaustive detail, and hexmaps were changed to the familiar 8-mile color maps. There were four major changes. First, the new trail maps did not always agree with the older B&W maps. Second, while the nations had a very loose correlation with RW cultures before, they were still generic fantasy realms. The Gazetteers explicitly connected most nations to a RW culture and rewrote them in great detail as a virtual clone of that culture. Third, nations need religions, and the Gazetteers used the immortals for this, so that the immortals started to be treated as gods. There were fewer modules; gazetteers were the main published product. Fourth, the world was much more civilized and populated; cities in Karameikos have a population ten times higher than the Known World versions. Toward the end it starts being referred to as the Known World; Dungeon #26 from 1990 refers to the world as the "known world of the Expert Set and the Gazetteers."
In terms of Tone, we see a clear swing into overt humor (GAZ3, GAZ4, GAZ10, AC11). Previously the setting had a mix of lighthearted and serious tone; the gazetteers firmly established a light tone for the entire setting. Villains were not evil, they just had conflicting cultures and goals. The one overtly villainous nation, the broken lands, was changed to a cartoon comedy land. Dark cults were banished to the distant past of Nithia. War has been abolished by the Darokin diplomats. Instead of murder hobos, you go on a Disneyland safari in Ierendi where nobody gets hurt. While nations are modeled on historic cultures, they are flltered through an enlightened modern lens of tolerance and democratic values. Even the dwarves and elves don't fight, they just play pranks on each other. There are no world-threatening evils, and the events fo X10 are retconned into the distant future.
Scope and Changes: Adds Serraine, Undersea, Alphatia and the Sea of Dawn, planes. Rewrites and remaps the central areas, including detailed treatment of some areas never before done. Thyatis gains a corps of dragon riders, and Alphatia gets flying ships.
Canon: GAZ1-12, DOTE, B11-12, X13, CM9, M5, IM3, AC11 PC2, TM1-2
1990 to 1995 -- Mystara. This is the Allston and Heard era, defined by the Rules Cyclopedia, Wrath of the Immortals, and Almanacs. The world was officially named Mystara. in this era, immortals effectively became gods and were treated identically to gods. At this point, claiming that "mystara doesn't have gods" is reduced to a semantic technicality; they are not "gods" only because that's not their official title. The setting was given ongoing metaplot via the Almanacs, and immortals become very active in the setting. I start this era in 1990 with the publication of the Hollow World. This era saw more changes to established canon via the Hollow World, Champions of Mystara, etc. We start seeing peaceful utopian societies as settings designed for stories rather than adventures. Many new nations are nonhuman.
Scope and Changes: Adds the Shadow Elves and the Hollow World. The almanacs detail places in Skothar and Davania among others. The Heldannic Knights appear as pseudo-nazis. The great waste, serpent peninsula and the savage coast are rewritten almost from scratch, nearly obliterating all previous canon. Heavy metaplot includes gods dying and new gods forming, sweeping changes to politics (NACE, kingdom of karameikos) and even the landscape itself (Alphatia, Alfheim, Great Crater). Some old adventures and materials are rewritten such X2 and GAZ1.
Canon: GAZ13-14, RC, Hollow World, WOTI, Champions of Mystara, PC3-4, DDA1-3, HWA1-3, HRW1-3, HWQ1, KKOA, Red Steel, Almanacs
1995 to present -- Pandius. After Mystara was cancelled, fans took over and the Vaults of Pandius was established as a semi-official repository. This is really a continuation of the Mystara era, with extensive embellishment, alternate-realities, and proposed rewrites and retcons in order to reconcile the different eras that came before. Pandius really embraces and thoroughly studies all the material, not just the most recent, but as a whole the 1995 version is taken as the baseline canon. Everyone approaches it differently, but overall the fans take it much more seriously than TSR did, and Geoff Gander's lovecraftian "outer beings" pull the setting back towards its dark and grim origin.
Fanon: Everything in the Vaults of Pandius. The most widely accepted and polished products are the continuation of the Almanacs, the Fan Gazetteers (GazF), the Threshold magazines, and Thorf's maps, but these only scratch the surface.
There is some bleed-over between eras. Any modules that were in progress when Mentzer took over were building on the foundation Moldvay laid, so I would expect some stuff published in 1984 may fit better into the earlier era. I have not investigated this, its just a hunch. XS1 Lathans Gold for example mentions the temple of the spider goddess (I think).
As RogueAttorney mentioned, I tend to lump Moldvay and Mentzer together as "Known World," and Gazetteer/Mystara together as "Mystara." What is in my mind as the "known world" is actually closer to Moldvay's vision, but there was a lot of great stuff from the BECMI era too, so its mix and match. I really prefer the dark and lovecraftian version of the setting.
Monday, October 28, 2019
Original D&D (Single Volume Edition) by Greyharp Review
The DM of a group I was playing in wanted to switch over to Original Dungeons and Dragons, and shared this PDF of the 3LBBs compiled into one volume. This volume is mostly just a reorganization and mild editing of the original 3 volumes, but the results are astounding. Presented in this manner, the OD&D rules are clear, concise, and as simple and complete as E. Gary Gygax always claimed they were. In fact I'd go so far as to say that this version of the rules is flatly superior to AD&D.
The opening foreward of the book is written by the compiler, and he addresses the criticisms that I have had about OD&D: That they are incomplete, poorly presented, and more of a toolkit for the referee to flesh out than a full game in themselves. He disagrees strongly, and to prove his point presents the rules in a manner that does make them a complete game. I've read the original 3 LBBs deeply and can find no great inconsistencies with this volume, so I would have to say that he has succeeded by far.
Here's the thing, though. To understand OD&D you need a strong foundation in some other edition of TSR D&D - whether its AD&D, B/X, BECMI, or the Holmes Basic book. This PDF is written with such an audience in mind, one that is very familiar with classic D&D and has been playing it for some time. OD&D is not a game for beginners or newbies to tabletop role playing games.
While actually playing the game, however, I found it mechanically indistinguishable from the BECMI games I'm fond of. In fact, while playing, I was missing some of the options from a fully featured BECMI game. It felt like I was playing the same exact game, just with less stuff.
In fact I had done an experiment myself a while back, where I considered just throwing out all later rulesets and running a game of OD&D by itself. To that end I printed out the reference tables, and was in the process of putting together a game session. What I noticed was that all the material on the OD&D tables was identical to BECMI, there was just less content - less monsters, less magic items, and an entire class was missing.
However, this compilation of OD&D has also changed how I view the B/X and BECMI rules. Instead of a separate game, I now see the BECMI boxes as intro sets to OD&D, the first literally being the beginner's set from levels 1-3.
Friday, October 18, 2019
Hirelings
AD&D combat works best as a tactical skirmish game. This is hard to execute when every player only controls one character, so for this reason I think the early editions of D&D implemented retainers or henchmen and hirelings. However, I never understood henchmen as written. It seemed needlessly complicated to acquire and employ them, ordering them around added extra steps to every action, and in the strictest case the DM is supposed to run them, making it extra work on top of everything else. In the sense of using them as replacement characters for the players, I never understood why you couldn't just reroll a new character when your main one died, and a level 1 PC who would ostensibly need henchmen as backup is not allowed to recruit them as written, as they do not have enough fame to attract any followers. So its safe to say that I never used henchmen as written in AD&D.
Instead I use the hirelings list and allow players to employ mercenary soldiers as level 0 or level 1 fighters. They come with their own arms and equipment, and require the monthly cost as well as a split of treasure, and generally I let the players run the hirelings unless they wanted to do something exceptionally dangerous, which is when I call for a morale roll. The OD&D rules for retainers is much more usable, and much less complicated for handling their loyalty, morale, and general use. I still cap the number of hirelings in the dungeon to the PC's charisma score - otherwise players will march whole armies down into the dungeon for a clean sweep.
Using this method transforms AD&D into a more tactical game, and away from the traditional RPG. Its advantage is that it makes combat more interesting and less instantly lethal, and it forces players to care about characters beyond their own, but the downside is that it takes away from the pure roleplaying experience and many players do not want to run multiple characters at once in this fashion.
One thing I had noticed, though, is that players love subjugating and turning enemy NPCs into their service. Goblins, especially, are prey to players who like to threaten them within an inch of their life and then force them to become minions. Honestly, I love it. I'd prefer it if players kept turning enemy NPCs into their henchmen. The caveat, of course, is that when the PC dies, the monster henchmen all desert.
Instead I use the hirelings list and allow players to employ mercenary soldiers as level 0 or level 1 fighters. They come with their own arms and equipment, and require the monthly cost as well as a split of treasure, and generally I let the players run the hirelings unless they wanted to do something exceptionally dangerous, which is when I call for a morale roll. The OD&D rules for retainers is much more usable, and much less complicated for handling their loyalty, morale, and general use. I still cap the number of hirelings in the dungeon to the PC's charisma score - otherwise players will march whole armies down into the dungeon for a clean sweep.
Using this method transforms AD&D into a more tactical game, and away from the traditional RPG. Its advantage is that it makes combat more interesting and less instantly lethal, and it forces players to care about characters beyond their own, but the downside is that it takes away from the pure roleplaying experience and many players do not want to run multiple characters at once in this fashion.
One thing I had noticed, though, is that players love subjugating and turning enemy NPCs into their service. Goblins, especially, are prey to players who like to threaten them within an inch of their life and then force them to become minions. Honestly, I love it. I'd prefer it if players kept turning enemy NPCs into their henchmen. The caveat, of course, is that when the PC dies, the monster henchmen all desert.
Friday, October 4, 2019
Random dungeon generation for solo play
Is almost exactly like homework. In fact, using dice for all content generation and action resolution requires you to write notes in a log to keep track of it all, an exercise that’s mechanically indistinguishable from doing actual paperwork. Playing D&D solo leans heavily on the “theater of the mind” play style, which necessitates the need to record everything. As a solo RPG player, you take on the role of the DM, player, and as many PCs and NPCs as exist in the game, and managing all that with pen and paper is tedious. The bookkeeping killed solo RPG for me.
So I looked to board games, miniatures, map tiles, and any other tactile player aids I could use to eliminate the massive overhead of solo play, and more accurately emulate a live session of D&D, where nobody records anything but everyone is following along.
I accomplished this by limiting the scope of the game. Instead of the freewheeling open nature of a full RPG, I restricted it down to just dungeon crawling and hex crawling. The AD&D 1e rules are very comprehensive on the topic of dungeon crawling, and while its wilderness travel rules aren’t the best, they are extensively detailed. These rules can be supplemented and in cases replaced by the more elegant, streamlined rules from the BECMI sets.
Randomly generating an endless dungeon or wilderness becomes boring in short order, but the BECMI books have a crucial bit of advice that’s completely absent from the AD&D text, which is to first create a goal for players entering the dungeon. This is also an idea lifted from the D&D adventure system games - create a goal room, and add it to the random generator table. The point of the game then becomes to adventure until the goal room is reached.
The Basic rule book admonishes to choose a scenario first when creating a dungeon, but the 5e DMG has the most comprehensive list of options, and even tables for story content and plot twists that can occur during the game. These story game charts can add an extra dimension to the otherwise staid dungeon crawling.
And the easiest way to replace dice rolling on a table is to transfer the entries onto cards, then after drawing a card, replace it into the deck and reshuffle it.
So I looked to board games, miniatures, map tiles, and any other tactile player aids I could use to eliminate the massive overhead of solo play, and more accurately emulate a live session of D&D, where nobody records anything but everyone is following along.
I accomplished this by limiting the scope of the game. Instead of the freewheeling open nature of a full RPG, I restricted it down to just dungeon crawling and hex crawling. The AD&D 1e rules are very comprehensive on the topic of dungeon crawling, and while its wilderness travel rules aren’t the best, they are extensively detailed. These rules can be supplemented and in cases replaced by the more elegant, streamlined rules from the BECMI sets.
Randomly generating an endless dungeon or wilderness becomes boring in short order, but the BECMI books have a crucial bit of advice that’s completely absent from the AD&D text, which is to first create a goal for players entering the dungeon. This is also an idea lifted from the D&D adventure system games - create a goal room, and add it to the random generator table. The point of the game then becomes to adventure until the goal room is reached.
The Basic rule book admonishes to choose a scenario first when creating a dungeon, but the 5e DMG has the most comprehensive list of options, and even tables for story content and plot twists that can occur during the game. These story game charts can add an extra dimension to the otherwise staid dungeon crawling.
And the easiest way to replace dice rolling on a table is to transfer the entries onto cards, then after drawing a card, replace it into the deck and reshuffle it.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
A brief of different editions of D&D for solo
AD&D 1e is the best edition for solitaire play. It not only comes with a section on "Random dungeon generation for solo play", but with the Random Wilderness Generation table, it can also be used for solo wilderness exploration, and the many, many other charts can easily be adapted into random generators as well. This means you can randomly create whole towns, npcs in detail, encounters, and even new monsters and magic items. Using all this content generation with the random encounter chances, and the solo player can readily simulate the procedural creation and exploration of a roguelike videogame, such as the Diablo series.
AD&D 1e is a very rules-heavy game, and has many subsystems governing player actions, and many rules for resolving those actions. This makes adjudicating certain situations just a matter of following the guidance in the book, and whole games could be played without any external resources. Although, AD&D does place a lot of importance on the role of the Dungeon Master, but those situations that the book does not cover can be filled in with a GM emulator, such as the Mythic GME. This, however, means that playing AD&D solo is excruciatingly slow, and requires a lot of bookkeeping.
D&D BECMI is very similar to AD&D but is much simplified. In fact, many of the rules and systems described in BECMI have a direct counterpart in AD&D, but with simpler mechanics. What the BECMI rulebooks are missing, though, is a random method for creating a map or a dungeon, but they do suggest a procedural method for creating one, and then randomly stocking them with monsters, treasures and traps in the case of dungeons, or with random encounters in the wilderness. The Expert book also comes with maps of Threshold, Karameikos and the Known World, so maybe creating a custom map is unnecessary when the player can follow the adventuring rules to gallivant across the prebuilt setting. The looser nature of the D&D rules means that the player is freer to pursue any imagined course of action, without consulting the rules, and without needing a die roll for everything.
5th Edition D&D is built upon the chassis of the d20 system, and as such has a universal system of conflict resolution, which the AD&D and OD&D systems lack. 5e's basic method for handling any situation is to assign it a "Challenge Rating", and then resolve success based on the roll of a d20, modified by ability and skill scores. This makes the base system much easier to learn and run, and provides an elegant solution to any unknown situation. The 5e DMG also took cues from the 1e AD&D DMG, and contains charts and tables for random generation and stocking of content. The dungeon generation chart in particular is more balanced than its 1e counterpart. 5e is more story oriented than 1e, though, and as a result has a section devoted to generation of quests, NPC motivations, and plot twists. This could theoretically elevate the nature of the game from the procedural dungeon crawling focus of the earlier games to one more goal oriented, but I haven't actually tested it out.
5e is also an evolution upon 3e D&D, but is a lot lighter on the rules. An explicit design choice in 3e was to reduce the role of the DM from the adjudicator of all scenarios to a referee of the rules, and there were rules for many, many scenarios. The rules heavy nature of 3e makes it more workable to facilitate a game solo as there are a lot less unknowns. 3.5e and Pathfinder are still popular choices when it comes to tabletop roleplaying, but I've never played them.
AD&D 1e is a very rules-heavy game, and has many subsystems governing player actions, and many rules for resolving those actions. This makes adjudicating certain situations just a matter of following the guidance in the book, and whole games could be played without any external resources. Although, AD&D does place a lot of importance on the role of the Dungeon Master, but those situations that the book does not cover can be filled in with a GM emulator, such as the Mythic GME. This, however, means that playing AD&D solo is excruciatingly slow, and requires a lot of bookkeeping.
D&D BECMI is very similar to AD&D but is much simplified. In fact, many of the rules and systems described in BECMI have a direct counterpart in AD&D, but with simpler mechanics. What the BECMI rulebooks are missing, though, is a random method for creating a map or a dungeon, but they do suggest a procedural method for creating one, and then randomly stocking them with monsters, treasures and traps in the case of dungeons, or with random encounters in the wilderness. The Expert book also comes with maps of Threshold, Karameikos and the Known World, so maybe creating a custom map is unnecessary when the player can follow the adventuring rules to gallivant across the prebuilt setting. The looser nature of the D&D rules means that the player is freer to pursue any imagined course of action, without consulting the rules, and without needing a die roll for everything.
5th Edition D&D is built upon the chassis of the d20 system, and as such has a universal system of conflict resolution, which the AD&D and OD&D systems lack. 5e's basic method for handling any situation is to assign it a "Challenge Rating", and then resolve success based on the roll of a d20, modified by ability and skill scores. This makes the base system much easier to learn and run, and provides an elegant solution to any unknown situation. The 5e DMG also took cues from the 1e AD&D DMG, and contains charts and tables for random generation and stocking of content. The dungeon generation chart in particular is more balanced than its 1e counterpart. 5e is more story oriented than 1e, though, and as a result has a section devoted to generation of quests, NPC motivations, and plot twists. This could theoretically elevate the nature of the game from the procedural dungeon crawling focus of the earlier games to one more goal oriented, but I haven't actually tested it out.
5e is also an evolution upon 3e D&D, but is a lot lighter on the rules. An explicit design choice in 3e was to reduce the role of the DM from the adjudicator of all scenarios to a referee of the rules, and there were rules for many, many scenarios. The rules heavy nature of 3e makes it more workable to facilitate a game solo as there are a lot less unknowns. 3.5e and Pathfinder are still popular choices when it comes to tabletop roleplaying, but I've never played them.
Friday, September 13, 2019
Rolling for initiative
I don't like the convention of having the players roll for initiative at the start of combat. It's an invention brought in by the 3rd edition of D&D and maintained all the way up to the present day. The problems are manifold and have been belabored to death elsewhere, so I'll just point out my solution. AD&D and BECMI don't work like this. In both systems, players must make an intention of action BEFORE the initiative die are rolled. This sounds like a wargaming practice, but it also works great in narrative combat.
Focusing on D&D narratively, as if we were playing purely in 'theater of the mind', the players would be doing whatever they want, until one of them comes into a situation and will say "I attack". At that point, their attack should automatically succeed, unless it is opposed by an enemy or monster, who decides to fight back. The monster should also announce its action, such as "I breathe fire." Only then are initiative die rolled, simply to determine which action goes first. After that single round of combat, narrative play would resume, unless the two combatants opt to continue a series of attacks (or opposed actions)
This is a subtle genius woven into the original D&D framework that is not effectively communicated in either the rulebooks, or from most groups online. I've been part of AD&D and Original D&D groups where the DM used 3e style individual initiative, simply because it seemed to be more fair in giving all players a turn. For that matter, I found the O/AD&D turn sequence to be much more fair, as every player has his or her own say every turn if they have to describe their actions to a caller, who would then relay those actions to the DM. I personally don't use the caller, or rather as a DM I also act as the caller, and ask my players to describe all their actions per turn to me first before I resolve their actions all at the same time. I describe my method more in depth here
I read a blogpost on AngryGM where he disparages the initiative roll as the "whoosh" of loading the combat screen from a videogame rpg, and I agree. But using O/AD&D style encounter rules, and rolling the initiative die only IF two sides decide to take opposing actions, and only AFTER they've made their declaration, allows you to weave combat into narrative gameplay without breaking the flow of the narration, and still allows players who do not wish to be in combat to go about and do their own thing. The only thing to remember, to keep everything balanced, is that 10 rounds of combat equal 1 turn, so you can pace the players' actions accordingly.
Focusing on D&D narratively, as if we were playing purely in 'theater of the mind', the players would be doing whatever they want, until one of them comes into a situation and will say "I attack". At that point, their attack should automatically succeed, unless it is opposed by an enemy or monster, who decides to fight back. The monster should also announce its action, such as "I breathe fire." Only then are initiative die rolled, simply to determine which action goes first. After that single round of combat, narrative play would resume, unless the two combatants opt to continue a series of attacks (or opposed actions)
This is a subtle genius woven into the original D&D framework that is not effectively communicated in either the rulebooks, or from most groups online. I've been part of AD&D and Original D&D groups where the DM used 3e style individual initiative, simply because it seemed to be more fair in giving all players a turn. For that matter, I found the O/AD&D turn sequence to be much more fair, as every player has his or her own say every turn if they have to describe their actions to a caller, who would then relay those actions to the DM. I personally don't use the caller, or rather as a DM I also act as the caller, and ask my players to describe all their actions per turn to me first before I resolve their actions all at the same time. I describe my method more in depth here
I read a blogpost on AngryGM where he disparages the initiative roll as the "whoosh" of loading the combat screen from a videogame rpg, and I agree. But using O/AD&D style encounter rules, and rolling the initiative die only IF two sides decide to take opposing actions, and only AFTER they've made their declaration, allows you to weave combat into narrative gameplay without breaking the flow of the narration, and still allows players who do not wish to be in combat to go about and do their own thing. The only thing to remember, to keep everything balanced, is that 10 rounds of combat equal 1 turn, so you can pace the players' actions accordingly.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Mythic Game Master Emulator Review
The Mythic Game Master Emulator provides three powerful tools that allow you to play tabletop roleplaying games without a GM: The Fate Chart, the Random Event tables, and the Adventure Sheet.
The Fate Chart is the core of the Mythic GME system and provides the basic foundation for play. It is a complicated yes/no system, a so-called "oracle", that is meant to handle any random question with an unexpected result that would normally be asked of a DM. The Fate chart provides the entirety of Mythic's task resolution system, and the outcome of every action should be posed as a yes/no question to be rolled for on the chart. The Fate chart also acts as the main content generator for the system, and it is implied that worldbuilding tasks such as setting up the features of a setting, NPC encounters, and social situations can all be handled through it, though there is an admonishment in the book not to go overboard with dice rolls but use logic instead.
The Random Event Focus and Event Meaning tables are the only concrete tables in the book. They present a list of items that, when combined, must be interpreted to create a new event occurance in your game. The GME says to use these tables only on a double number dice roll, but they're also useful at any point when you're unsure of what to do next in game. The Event Meaning tables are essentially just tools for guided inspiration in story telling, much the same as Rory's Story Cubes, or a Tarot Deck, or any other such tool that invites creative interpretation. The Event Focus chart is meant to give the Event Meanings a concrete effect in your game.
The Adventure Sheet is the framing device that holds the rest of the game together. Every game session, or every adventure, is meant to be a collection of scenes in which a dramatic conflict is posed and resolved. The worksheet itself contains entries for scene setups and resolutions, as well as places to list NPC actors and story threads. The story threads are also a unique idea that provide guidance to the flow and purpose of the game, as well as adding another element of unpredictability.
I found the Mythic RPG to be more useful as a creative writing tool rather than a fun game to play solo. In fact, when it comes to specifically playing solo, I found the experience of using the Mythic RPG to be more akin to doing English Literature homework with dice or doing my taxes instead of actually playing a game.
The greatest weakness of the Mythic RPG is that it tries to be completely generic. I understand that the goal is to allow the players to fit it into whatever setting or type of story they want, but as a result it loses concrete mechanics to actually support an individual fantasy. In fact, for any type of game you want to play, it is better to use a system with concrete mechanics and only use the Mythic GME to fill in the missing "gaps".
Its clear that the main appeal of the Mythic system is the GM Emulator. The instincts of the author were correct in first creating an RPG to show off the Emulation system, but then separating the Emulator out to be its own standalone system. The Mythic system is too abstract and generic to support actual play, unless layered on top of another RPG system.
The traditional role of a Game Master is to describe the environment to the players, and to narrate the results of their actions. Or, to restate in technical jargon, the GM provides content generation and action resolution.
The sea-change, breakthrough moment of the Mythic GME is in using the Fate chart for action resolution. Every action can be posed as a yes/no question and rolled for a result on the Fate chart. Every scene should begin with a question describing the dramatic conflict ("how do my player characters overcome this immediate challenge") and a series of answers rolled on the Fate chart can provide the resolution ("are they successful"). Once you separate the distinct tasks of content generation and action resolution from one another, the use of the Fate chart, Adventure Sheet and Event tables become more clear.
But the book itself does not do this. Instead, it confuses the issue by using the Fate chart for content generation and action resolution, and then admonishing the player not to go overboard with content focused questions. A better solution would be to use the many random charts, terrain, events, and encounters that can be found in an RPG such as D&D or on online blogs for content generation.
The D&D Dungeon Master's Guide has appendices devoted to random generation of terrain, dungeon layout, wandering monster encounters, and even random generation of NPC personalities. The 5th Edition DMG also provides a chapter on random generation of quests, story, and plot twists, which can be used to buffer the Scene Setups worksheet. D&D also provides a robust action resolution system, such as the d20 system.
OSR players are generally comfortable creating an entire world through random tables, and are happy to simply wander about this world in search of treasure and to fight monsters, but need a GM to supply concrete action resolution as the rules can be conflicting or incomplete and OSR gameplay stresses creative thinking and unpredictability in action. For this, the Fate chart is the most useful.
Modern D&D and 5e players have a universal system for action resolution and just need to provide an appropriate CR to modify their chance of success, and the thresholds are helpfully given in layman's English to make this determination easier, but they are generally floundering when it comes to a purpose for their game, as they are trained to seek "plot" and "narrative" as reasons to play. For them, the Adventure Sheet and the Event tables are the most useful.
In my own games, I found the Mythic GME of limited use. I could create a game world straight out of the random tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide and adventure through it, and I could use all the rest of that game's mechanics to resolve my successes. I only needed the Mythic GME to fill in the gaps of certain elements that weren't immediately obvious. The Mythic system might have changed the way we see RPGs, and probably kicked off the whole solo RPG community, and its definitely worth the read to understand how, at a fundamental level, the tasks of a GM work and how they can be represented mechanically through dice rolls.
However, I will complain that this book is presented backwards. It shows you its most important mechanic first, the Fate Chart, followed by everything that's connected to it. This leaves you to puzzle out for yourself how to actually use all its mechanics. Instead, it should have presented the Adventure Sheet first, as its the first thing that you'd pull out for your game session, and explained it first before moving through the Randomness chapter, Event Tables and then Fate Chart, as that's generally how you would use them during actual play.
The Fate Chart is the core of the Mythic GME system and provides the basic foundation for play. It is a complicated yes/no system, a so-called "oracle", that is meant to handle any random question with an unexpected result that would normally be asked of a DM. The Fate chart provides the entirety of Mythic's task resolution system, and the outcome of every action should be posed as a yes/no question to be rolled for on the chart. The Fate chart also acts as the main content generator for the system, and it is implied that worldbuilding tasks such as setting up the features of a setting, NPC encounters, and social situations can all be handled through it, though there is an admonishment in the book not to go overboard with dice rolls but use logic instead.
The Random Event Focus and Event Meaning tables are the only concrete tables in the book. They present a list of items that, when combined, must be interpreted to create a new event occurance in your game. The GME says to use these tables only on a double number dice roll, but they're also useful at any point when you're unsure of what to do next in game. The Event Meaning tables are essentially just tools for guided inspiration in story telling, much the same as Rory's Story Cubes, or a Tarot Deck, or any other such tool that invites creative interpretation. The Event Focus chart is meant to give the Event Meanings a concrete effect in your game.
The Adventure Sheet is the framing device that holds the rest of the game together. Every game session, or every adventure, is meant to be a collection of scenes in which a dramatic conflict is posed and resolved. The worksheet itself contains entries for scene setups and resolutions, as well as places to list NPC actors and story threads. The story threads are also a unique idea that provide guidance to the flow and purpose of the game, as well as adding another element of unpredictability.
I found the Mythic RPG to be more useful as a creative writing tool rather than a fun game to play solo. In fact, when it comes to specifically playing solo, I found the experience of using the Mythic RPG to be more akin to doing English Literature homework with dice or doing my taxes instead of actually playing a game.
The greatest weakness of the Mythic RPG is that it tries to be completely generic. I understand that the goal is to allow the players to fit it into whatever setting or type of story they want, but as a result it loses concrete mechanics to actually support an individual fantasy. In fact, for any type of game you want to play, it is better to use a system with concrete mechanics and only use the Mythic GME to fill in the missing "gaps".
Its clear that the main appeal of the Mythic system is the GM Emulator. The instincts of the author were correct in first creating an RPG to show off the Emulation system, but then separating the Emulator out to be its own standalone system. The Mythic system is too abstract and generic to support actual play, unless layered on top of another RPG system.
The traditional role of a Game Master is to describe the environment to the players, and to narrate the results of their actions. Or, to restate in technical jargon, the GM provides content generation and action resolution.
The sea-change, breakthrough moment of the Mythic GME is in using the Fate chart for action resolution. Every action can be posed as a yes/no question and rolled for a result on the Fate chart. Every scene should begin with a question describing the dramatic conflict ("how do my player characters overcome this immediate challenge") and a series of answers rolled on the Fate chart can provide the resolution ("are they successful"). Once you separate the distinct tasks of content generation and action resolution from one another, the use of the Fate chart, Adventure Sheet and Event tables become more clear.
But the book itself does not do this. Instead, it confuses the issue by using the Fate chart for content generation and action resolution, and then admonishing the player not to go overboard with content focused questions. A better solution would be to use the many random charts, terrain, events, and encounters that can be found in an RPG such as D&D or on online blogs for content generation.
The D&D Dungeon Master's Guide has appendices devoted to random generation of terrain, dungeon layout, wandering monster encounters, and even random generation of NPC personalities. The 5th Edition DMG also provides a chapter on random generation of quests, story, and plot twists, which can be used to buffer the Scene Setups worksheet. D&D also provides a robust action resolution system, such as the d20 system.
OSR players are generally comfortable creating an entire world through random tables, and are happy to simply wander about this world in search of treasure and to fight monsters, but need a GM to supply concrete action resolution as the rules can be conflicting or incomplete and OSR gameplay stresses creative thinking and unpredictability in action. For this, the Fate chart is the most useful.
Modern D&D and 5e players have a universal system for action resolution and just need to provide an appropriate CR to modify their chance of success, and the thresholds are helpfully given in layman's English to make this determination easier, but they are generally floundering when it comes to a purpose for their game, as they are trained to seek "plot" and "narrative" as reasons to play. For them, the Adventure Sheet and the Event tables are the most useful.
In my own games, I found the Mythic GME of limited use. I could create a game world straight out of the random tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide and adventure through it, and I could use all the rest of that game's mechanics to resolve my successes. I only needed the Mythic GME to fill in the gaps of certain elements that weren't immediately obvious. The Mythic system might have changed the way we see RPGs, and probably kicked off the whole solo RPG community, and its definitely worth the read to understand how, at a fundamental level, the tasks of a GM work and how they can be represented mechanically through dice rolls.
However, I will complain that this book is presented backwards. It shows you its most important mechanic first, the Fate Chart, followed by everything that's connected to it. This leaves you to puzzle out for yourself how to actually use all its mechanics. Instead, it should have presented the Adventure Sheet first, as its the first thing that you'd pull out for your game session, and explained it first before moving through the Randomness chapter, Event Tables and then Fate Chart, as that's generally how you would use them during actual play.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Why I like d6 for initiative
Because even if you roll a 6, there's still 4 segments of time remaining for you to act.
In Defense of AD&D
Most modern gamers, myself included, have faulted AD&D as being a grab bag of contradictory mechanics, some poorly developed, that may or may not have been tested and that the author himself may not even have used. However, a way of excusing the material incorporated into AD&D is to not see it as a single, coherent system, but rather as the amalgamation of everything that had been published under the D&D name since the release of the original booklets, including articles from The Strategic Review, fan submitted works, and answers to frequently asked questions. In that way, AD&D can be seen as a culmination of all things D&D up to that point, whether or not Gygax himself personally used it or even thought it was a good idea. With that view, the books seem more like a gift to the budding RPG community, rather than the adversarial dictation many view it as.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
The Turn Sequence
I've been thinking a lot about this, how to incorporate by-the-book time tracking into my AD&D sessions. Time is a very important element in the AD&D game, with almost every subsystem requiring or mentioning the passage of time as a factor in resolving an outcome, yet in actual play this element is almost completely ignored. Most parties either abandon it totally or consider the recording of time only randomly when it feels appropriate. The only situation where it gets any focus is during combat and initiative. The DMG itself admonishes, in all caps, to keep strict time records and I feel that a significant portion of the game's balance is bonded to the time system.
For this reason I have an experimental idea - to record the passage of turns first, and then adjudicate which actions can occur within it.
For example, within 1 turn a PC can either move up to his movement speed x10ft while exploring and mapping a dungeon, or search a 20ft by 20ft area for secret doors, or listen behind a door, or disarm a trap, etc. If a PC wanted to do some of these things in combination, for example, moving up to half his total distance, approaching a door and listening for sounds behind it, then only his movement action can resolve on the first turn and he must wait in position before attempting to listen at the door on the next turn.
In a party situation, this would allow PCs to take separate individual actions and resolve their successes at the same time, at the end of the turn. For example one PC could check for traps, another might search a section of wall for a hidden door, another might try to force open a closed gate, etc. Combat is always rounded up to the next full turn.
This feels more like a tactical game to me, where characters move into and hold a position before continuing on to the next turn. A lot of concepts from tactical games have started to appeal to me as a method of playing D&D, such as moving and fighting in formation rather than as individuals.
The DMG has a guideline for searching a room, where if there is nothing in a room a single round check will make that obvious to the PCs, but otherwise a 20' by 20' area can be searched in one turn. With a little bit of math, we can extend this to a room of any size, and simply divide to find out how many turns are required, rounding up to the nearest full turn.
Obviously the main drive for this type of strict timekeeping is in running my solo games, but I feel that this could be used in live play as well. For a live situation, the DM can call out the turn and ask what the PCs decide to do during it. I have no idea if players will take to such a procedure or if it will be quickly abandoned.
For live play, I like to hide dungeon areas that are outside the PCs line of sight. To incorporate this turn system, I would simply let my PCs walk into any area, revealing what they can see as they go, until they reach the limit of their movement distance per turn. Of course in such a situation, ambushing the PCs with monsters becomes much easier.
There are tools to aid DMs in tracking time, such as the OSRIC turn tracker, but I assume that this method would make those tools mostly superfluous, except as reminders for torch burning times and monster checks.
For this reason I have an experimental idea - to record the passage of turns first, and then adjudicate which actions can occur within it.
For example, within 1 turn a PC can either move up to his movement speed x10ft while exploring and mapping a dungeon, or search a 20ft by 20ft area for secret doors, or listen behind a door, or disarm a trap, etc. If a PC wanted to do some of these things in combination, for example, moving up to half his total distance, approaching a door and listening for sounds behind it, then only his movement action can resolve on the first turn and he must wait in position before attempting to listen at the door on the next turn.
In a party situation, this would allow PCs to take separate individual actions and resolve their successes at the same time, at the end of the turn. For example one PC could check for traps, another might search a section of wall for a hidden door, another might try to force open a closed gate, etc. Combat is always rounded up to the next full turn.
This feels more like a tactical game to me, where characters move into and hold a position before continuing on to the next turn. A lot of concepts from tactical games have started to appeal to me as a method of playing D&D, such as moving and fighting in formation rather than as individuals.
The DMG has a guideline for searching a room, where if there is nothing in a room a single round check will make that obvious to the PCs, but otherwise a 20' by 20' area can be searched in one turn. With a little bit of math, we can extend this to a room of any size, and simply divide to find out how many turns are required, rounding up to the nearest full turn.
Obviously the main drive for this type of strict timekeeping is in running my solo games, but I feel that this could be used in live play as well. For a live situation, the DM can call out the turn and ask what the PCs decide to do during it. I have no idea if players will take to such a procedure or if it will be quickly abandoned.
For live play, I like to hide dungeon areas that are outside the PCs line of sight. To incorporate this turn system, I would simply let my PCs walk into any area, revealing what they can see as they go, until they reach the limit of their movement distance per turn. Of course in such a situation, ambushing the PCs with monsters becomes much easier.
There are tools to aid DMs in tracking time, such as the OSRIC turn tracker, but I assume that this method would make those tools mostly superfluous, except as reminders for torch burning times and monster checks.
Magic-User houserules
Magic-Users have a few well known problems when played in AD&D. Since I play a lot of one shots, I've added a few house rules in order to allow players to have fun with Magic-Users while trying not to unbalance the class in relation to the other classes.
Hit Die, level progression, spell progression, spells per day, weapon restrictions, armor restrictions, weapon proficiencies, spells per day remain the same. A magic-user must purchase any spell components necessary for spells he or she may want to cast.
I'm not a fan of Vancian magic but I understand the need in gamist terms, so here's where my house rules come into play. A magic users "spells per day" ability now refers to spells "memorized" per day. They now recover their spells at a rate much faster than in the book, where recovering a single spell of 1st level will require 1 full day of rest. Instead, for every 1 hour (6 turns), the magic-user will recover a 1st level spell. For every 2 hours, they will recover a 2nd level spell, and so on.. To change the specific spells they have memorized for the day, the magic-user must take a day's rest.
Scrolls and even the spellbook can now function differently. Scrolls can be seen as a physical analogue to spell memorization. Creating a spell scroll inscribes the magic words onto a physical form in the same way that memorizing a spell creates the magic in the magic-users' mind. A magic-user can then read any spell inscribed on a scroll, but in doing so the magic words are burned off the scroll and it is lost. Rules for creating scrolls are in the DMG, and remain unchanged. The spellbook, now, can be in a pinch used as a list of scrolls. If the magic-user does not have a certain spell prepared, he or she can read it straight out of the spellbook, but doing so burns the spell out of the book and it is lost. Procedures for copying spells into the spellbook remain unchanged.
While this will instantly make a magic-user far more powerful for one combat every six turns, I think they make up for it with their fragility and lack of options outside of magic. It's not quite the cantrip solution that is presented in Unearthed Arcana, bu neither does it replace the base AD&D system with something completely different like At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers. And, hopefully, this will also put an end to the 5 minute work day.
The Quarterstaff is the most overlooked AD&D weapon. Magic-Users can wield it, and its free. They don't have to be dagger slaves.
Hit Die, level progression, spell progression, spells per day, weapon restrictions, armor restrictions, weapon proficiencies, spells per day remain the same. A magic-user must purchase any spell components necessary for spells he or she may want to cast.
I'm not a fan of Vancian magic but I understand the need in gamist terms, so here's where my house rules come into play. A magic users "spells per day" ability now refers to spells "memorized" per day. They now recover their spells at a rate much faster than in the book, where recovering a single spell of 1st level will require 1 full day of rest. Instead, for every 1 hour (6 turns), the magic-user will recover a 1st level spell. For every 2 hours, they will recover a 2nd level spell, and so on.. To change the specific spells they have memorized for the day, the magic-user must take a day's rest.
Scrolls and even the spellbook can now function differently. Scrolls can be seen as a physical analogue to spell memorization. Creating a spell scroll inscribes the magic words onto a physical form in the same way that memorizing a spell creates the magic in the magic-users' mind. A magic-user can then read any spell inscribed on a scroll, but in doing so the magic words are burned off the scroll and it is lost. Rules for creating scrolls are in the DMG, and remain unchanged. The spellbook, now, can be in a pinch used as a list of scrolls. If the magic-user does not have a certain spell prepared, he or she can read it straight out of the spellbook, but doing so burns the spell out of the book and it is lost. Procedures for copying spells into the spellbook remain unchanged.
While this will instantly make a magic-user far more powerful for one combat every six turns, I think they make up for it with their fragility and lack of options outside of magic. It's not quite the cantrip solution that is presented in Unearthed Arcana, bu neither does it replace the base AD&D system with something completely different like At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers. And, hopefully, this will also put an end to the 5 minute work day.
The Quarterstaff is the most overlooked AD&D weapon. Magic-Users can wield it, and its free. They don't have to be dagger slaves.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Even Tim Kask agreed
He decided to buy the original rule book and a set of dice. However, he said he couldn’t just take the game straight to an SGS meeting — he could hardly figure out what the rules meant.
Kask was a veteran war games player and a pretty smart guy, but he said he couldn’t make heads or tails of “these horribly written rules.”
“These things suck,” he remembered thinking. He all but told Gygax as much, too.
Kask was a veteran war games player and a pretty smart guy, but he said he couldn’t make heads or tails of “these horribly written rules.”
“These things suck,” he remembered thinking. He all but told Gygax as much, too.
https://thesouthern.com/news/local/an-siu-gaming-club-played-an-integral-part-in-the/article_a2c8bcd5-0d4c-5df3-a4cf-1f3a4225286d.html
Sunday, July 7, 2019
OD&D vs B/X and BECMI
Again, what’s striking to me is how much is the same. I was initially under the impression that AD&D was a compilation of everything OD&D, while the “Basic” strain of D&D was a restructuring by different authors using the same underlying principles. But after cross referencing the source rule books a few times, I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s not the case at all. The rules and information in the Moldvay and Mentzer sets are very similar as what’s given in the three original D&D booklets, just vastly improved in clarity, organization and explanation.
Like the Moldvay set, OD&D basically runs on a d6 system, not just for weapon damage but for resolving success of most situations, such as finding hidden doors and avoiding traps. The d20 is only used for combat resolution on the alternate combat table. OD&D is notorious for how much of its game system is actually not detailed in its core books, and those gaps are filled in by the Basic and Expert sets.
It actually gives me more confidence in considering the whole line of "Classic" D&D rules to be one continuous strain beginning with OD&D and re-edited right up to its last revision with the Rules Cyclopedia.
The modern OSR attitude seems to be that OD&D and B/X/BECMI are two different strains of the game, but I believe that part of that might be driven by an urge for purism in rulesets and a highly elitist attitude among OSR gamers. During the '80s and '90s when these books were in print, there was no distinction between the flavors of Classic D&D since they were all branded as the same, and I think the OSR attitude is an overreaction to that which focuses on the most minor differences in wording and table values. And this is understandable, since most OSR games owe their very existence to minor differences in wording and table values, and legally could not exist without them.
Coming back to D&D, the high degree of compatibility between the successive versions makes it much more useful to cross reference between them, and to use the information in one book to fill in the gaps of the other.
Like the Moldvay set, OD&D basically runs on a d6 system, not just for weapon damage but for resolving success of most situations, such as finding hidden doors and avoiding traps. The d20 is only used for combat resolution on the alternate combat table. OD&D is notorious for how much of its game system is actually not detailed in its core books, and those gaps are filled in by the Basic and Expert sets.
It actually gives me more confidence in considering the whole line of "Classic" D&D rules to be one continuous strain beginning with OD&D and re-edited right up to its last revision with the Rules Cyclopedia.
The modern OSR attitude seems to be that OD&D and B/X/BECMI are two different strains of the game, but I believe that part of that might be driven by an urge for purism in rulesets and a highly elitist attitude among OSR gamers. During the '80s and '90s when these books were in print, there was no distinction between the flavors of Classic D&D since they were all branded as the same, and I think the OSR attitude is an overreaction to that which focuses on the most minor differences in wording and table values. And this is understandable, since most OSR games owe their very existence to minor differences in wording and table values, and legally could not exist without them.
Coming back to D&D, the high degree of compatibility between the successive versions makes it much more useful to cross reference between them, and to use the information in one book to fill in the gaps of the other.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Traps and Thieves solo
There is an oft-repeated ruling that every character has a 1-in-6 chance of detecting a trap in a 10'x10' area if they spend a turn searching for one. This ruling exists only in the Moldvay Basic set, and not in BECMI or AD&D. The closest I can find is in volume III of OD&D Underworld and Wilderness Adventures: "Traps are usually sprung by a roll of a 1 or a 2 when any character passes over or by them. Pits will open in the same manner".
To me this means that there is a chance that the trap will be triggered, not that it will be found. Managing traps while playing solo is actually quite tricky, since it seems very silly to have your characters rush headlong into a trap you have placed yourself. However, using the guidance from OD&D, its possible to manage traps independently of DM/Player metaknowledge with a new procedure:
For every room that has a trap in it, if the players pass through the room, a trap will be sprung on a roll of 1 or 2 on a six-sided die.
This seems a fair method to me and saves me from either triggering every trap automatically when my characters move into it, or avoiding them all completely. A Thief character can use his class skill to detect a trap beforehand and the Cleric could cast a Find Trap spell, while the Fighter and Magic-User would be the helpless victims of fate. Unfortunately this method encourages "roll play" instead of "role play". Finding traps, deducing their nature and avoiding or overcoming them is one of the most inventive and engrossing parts of live D&D play, and that element is completely removed in solo play. Unfortunately in this manner D&D turns from a game about ingenuity and imagination into one of probability and statistics.
A similar procedure exists in B2: Keep on the Borderlands for falling into a pit trap, where PCs in the front rank will fall in on a 1-2 on d6, and PCs in the second rank will fall in on a roll of 1.
The random dungeon generator in AD&D also provides options for pit traps and the like, but in that case pits are sprung on a chance of 3-6. Arrow traps and spear walls do instant damage, 1-3 per missile, while poison, gas, acid and the like force a saving throw. All of these traps, if not found by a Thief, would be sprung automatically, making AD&D more deadly than the earlier systems.
Perhaps a middle ground can be reached where after the trap is detected, overcoming it is an exercise in spending equipment and PC abilities to disable or avoid it. The only other option would be to borrow D&D 4e/5e's "Perception" checks.
Locked chests are easier to handle. Depending on the size of the chest and the strength of its construction, a Fighter can force it open with either a Lift Gates or Bend Bars attempt. Magic-Users have an infamously easy "Knock" spell, and the Thief can use his class skill.
To me this means that there is a chance that the trap will be triggered, not that it will be found. Managing traps while playing solo is actually quite tricky, since it seems very silly to have your characters rush headlong into a trap you have placed yourself. However, using the guidance from OD&D, its possible to manage traps independently of DM/Player metaknowledge with a new procedure:
For every room that has a trap in it, if the players pass through the room, a trap will be sprung on a roll of 1 or 2 on a six-sided die.
This seems a fair method to me and saves me from either triggering every trap automatically when my characters move into it, or avoiding them all completely. A Thief character can use his class skill to detect a trap beforehand and the Cleric could cast a Find Trap spell, while the Fighter and Magic-User would be the helpless victims of fate. Unfortunately this method encourages "roll play" instead of "role play". Finding traps, deducing their nature and avoiding or overcoming them is one of the most inventive and engrossing parts of live D&D play, and that element is completely removed in solo play. Unfortunately in this manner D&D turns from a game about ingenuity and imagination into one of probability and statistics.
A similar procedure exists in B2: Keep on the Borderlands for falling into a pit trap, where PCs in the front rank will fall in on a 1-2 on d6, and PCs in the second rank will fall in on a roll of 1.
The random dungeon generator in AD&D also provides options for pit traps and the like, but in that case pits are sprung on a chance of 3-6. Arrow traps and spear walls do instant damage, 1-3 per missile, while poison, gas, acid and the like force a saving throw. All of these traps, if not found by a Thief, would be sprung automatically, making AD&D more deadly than the earlier systems.
Perhaps a middle ground can be reached where after the trap is detected, overcoming it is an exercise in spending equipment and PC abilities to disable or avoid it. The only other option would be to borrow D&D 4e/5e's "Perception" checks.
Locked chests are easier to handle. Depending on the size of the chest and the strength of its construction, a Fighter can force it open with either a Lift Gates or Bend Bars attempt. Magic-Users have an infamously easy "Knock" spell, and the Thief can use his class skill.
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Moldvay vs Mentzer
What's striking to me is how much is the same between both. Even short, throwaway rule guidelines from the Moldvay book are carried faithfully forward by Mentzer into his revision. It's clear to me that Mentzer did not intend to change the rules much at all, merely re-edit and present them in a more expansive, instructional format. The few changes he did make are mostly to be more generous to players, for example encumbrance limits are raised. The big exception are the Thief skills, which were a casualty of marketing - they had to be stretched out to 36 levels, so their actual gain per level is slower, which makes the Thief more useless for longer. The actual mechanics, however, such as movement, speed, combat, item prices, etc. are exactly the same.
Neither Basic set contains a method for random dungeon generation. Instead they contain guidelines on building a dungeon and how to stock it, but the actual layout and method is left up to the DM. The Mentzer Basic book is actually the same as the earlier revision's, just expanded. This makes the AD&D random dungeon generation table (copied from an article from TSR magazine) unique.
The big pillars of the OSR community are the Moldvay, Cook and Marsh B/X sets, and Allston's Rule Cyclopedia. The BECMI sets sort of get lost between them, since they're assumed to be superseded by the Rules Cyclopedia. The value of B/X and Rule Cyclopedia is that they're both written as reference works, and thus much easier to look up during actual play, while the big flaw of the BECMI sets is that the rules are divided between Players' books and DM's books, and the rules, items, and magic lists are scattered between the 5 sets, making them tedious to look through during a campaign.
Fans of B/X prefer its "simplicity". Restricting itself to 14 levels (though it Cook's Expert hints at 36), the Basic and Expert sets cover dungeon crawling and overland adventures, which is the same focus as D&D's original Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, and to it's proponents that's all you need. It's hard to argue otherwise, since modern D&D doesn't do anything different.
The Rules Cyclopedia, on the other hand, combines everything from the development of the Basic/Classic line into one book. This means it pulls in optional material such as skills and demihuman classes from the Gazetteer books, the large scale combat and dominion rules from the Companion set, and the weapon mastery and immortal paths from the Master sets, and even some hints from AD&D 2e. It takes an "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to the rules and those who have it give it nothing but praise for combining everything about D&D you would ever need into one volume.
However, people who quibble about the rules differences between the editions are barking up the wrong tree. The Rules Cyclopedia replaces some of the edits put in by Mentzer by carrying forward the original rules written by Moldvay, but then in other places uses the same text as Mentzer's BECMI set. The Classic D&D line does not have the major differences between editions that AD&D 1e and 2e, or D&D 3, 4, and 5e have had.
Neither Basic set contains a method for random dungeon generation. Instead they contain guidelines on building a dungeon and how to stock it, but the actual layout and method is left up to the DM. The Mentzer Basic book is actually the same as the earlier revision's, just expanded. This makes the AD&D random dungeon generation table (copied from an article from TSR magazine) unique.
The big pillars of the OSR community are the Moldvay, Cook and Marsh B/X sets, and Allston's Rule Cyclopedia. The BECMI sets sort of get lost between them, since they're assumed to be superseded by the Rules Cyclopedia. The value of B/X and Rule Cyclopedia is that they're both written as reference works, and thus much easier to look up during actual play, while the big flaw of the BECMI sets is that the rules are divided between Players' books and DM's books, and the rules, items, and magic lists are scattered between the 5 sets, making them tedious to look through during a campaign.
Fans of B/X prefer its "simplicity". Restricting itself to 14 levels (though it Cook's Expert hints at 36), the Basic and Expert sets cover dungeon crawling and overland adventures, which is the same focus as D&D's original Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, and to it's proponents that's all you need. It's hard to argue otherwise, since modern D&D doesn't do anything different.
The Rules Cyclopedia, on the other hand, combines everything from the development of the Basic/Classic line into one book. This means it pulls in optional material such as skills and demihuman classes from the Gazetteer books, the large scale combat and dominion rules from the Companion set, and the weapon mastery and immortal paths from the Master sets, and even some hints from AD&D 2e. It takes an "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to the rules and those who have it give it nothing but praise for combining everything about D&D you would ever need into one volume.
However, people who quibble about the rules differences between the editions are barking up the wrong tree. The Rules Cyclopedia replaces some of the edits put in by Mentzer by carrying forward the original rules written by Moldvay, but then in other places uses the same text as Mentzer's BECMI set. The Classic D&D line does not have the major differences between editions that AD&D 1e and 2e, or D&D 3, 4, and 5e have had.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Underworld and Wilderness Adventures
The actual method of how to play D&D is contained in this volume. Men and Magic and Monsters and Treasure describe the things in D&D and how to use them, but the actual explanation of what to do in the game is written in Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.
And there's not a lot in there. The first section describes dungeons and how to build one followed by a brief discussion on how to explore it, with a couple of short asides on how to actually use some of the items detailed in the equipment list.* This is followed by a discussion of combat procedures in the dungeon, which explicitly directs readers to Chainmail for an in depth explanation, or they can use the very sparse charts from the alternate combat system in volume I.
The next section is Wilderness and it basically directs the reader to Outdoor Survival for the actual exploration rules and a map on which to play. A short discussion on converting the Outdoor Survival map for D&D play follows, and the rest of the book is taken up by combat procedures on land, aerial and naval.
What's striking is what's missing. There is no discussion of roleplaying, no mention of town adventures, of chats with NPCs, no instructions for the creation of a campaign or set up for heroic quests. D&D is primarily and explicitly only about combat, on a 1:1 figure scale in a fantasy setting either in the underworld or overworld, with monsters and heroes. What people actually consider an RPG to be is completely absent.
Maybe all of that is contained in the supplements and Strategic Review magazine, but then that would mean that to canonically play D&D as an RPG requires a whole host of sources beyond the basic 3 booklet set. Everything I've mentioned that was missing is actually in AD&D and the later Basic sets.
*which I found way more helpful than most other D&D source books since this information is not restated anywhere else until the Mentzer red book.
And there's not a lot in there. The first section describes dungeons and how to build one followed by a brief discussion on how to explore it, with a couple of short asides on how to actually use some of the items detailed in the equipment list.* This is followed by a discussion of combat procedures in the dungeon, which explicitly directs readers to Chainmail for an in depth explanation, or they can use the very sparse charts from the alternate combat system in volume I.
The next section is Wilderness and it basically directs the reader to Outdoor Survival for the actual exploration rules and a map on which to play. A short discussion on converting the Outdoor Survival map for D&D play follows, and the rest of the book is taken up by combat procedures on land, aerial and naval.
What's striking is what's missing. There is no discussion of roleplaying, no mention of town adventures, of chats with NPCs, no instructions for the creation of a campaign or set up for heroic quests. D&D is primarily and explicitly only about combat, on a 1:1 figure scale in a fantasy setting either in the underworld or overworld, with monsters and heroes. What people actually consider an RPG to be is completely absent.
Maybe all of that is contained in the supplements and Strategic Review magazine, but then that would mean that to canonically play D&D as an RPG requires a whole host of sources beyond the basic 3 booklet set. Everything I've mentioned that was missing is actually in AD&D and the later Basic sets.
*which I found way more helpful than most other D&D source books since this information is not restated anywhere else until the Mentzer red book.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Monday, June 10, 2019
Difficulty Checks
UPDATE: I no longer like Difficulty Checks at all, and I never use them.
Frankly, I find the d20 + ability modifier + proficiency bonus (optional) mechanic to be simple, elegant, and nearly universal for resolving undefined actions. It's a much better system than 2e's Non-weapon proficiency and 3e's skills. The 2e and 3e systems were actually very restrictive on characters who didn't choose the skill, as it meant that the player could not even attempt an action that they didn't have the skill for. The 5e system is very different, choosing a skill only applies an optional ability bonus, and anything else can be attempted simply by rolling a d20 and applying an appropriate attribute modifier. This actually frees player characters to attempt anything, and their chance of success is modified by their personal attributes.
I like this system so much I'm back porting it into my 1e game. This solves a lot of issues I have when resolving the outcome of player actions. Otherwise, I either have to give players a 100% chance of success solely dependent on their ability to convince me that their plan would work, or invent some contrived system involving percentile dice, or a chance out of 6, or something else complicated and obtuse. That sort of refereeing led to all the exceptional cases and disassociated mechanics that plague the 1e DMG.
The 5e difficulty check is the best iteration of the mechanic. The result of the modified roll is compared against a difficulty class table that is universal for player characters of all levels, and the referee only has to choose whether the difficulty of success is easy, moderate, hard, or nearly impossible. This is quick, simple, and usually able to reach the consensus of the players without argument.
But importantly, this is invaluable in solo play when there is no mechanic for solving a problem. The OSR technique for overcoming an unknown obstacle is to convince the dungeon master of your action's attempt, but this cannot be done solo. You either give yourself a 100% chance of success, or avoid the attempt entirely. A difficulty check now allows you to play solo and attempt anything, with the vague notion that your success or failure is fairly adjudicated by the dice and the makeup of your player character. That might be too modern of an attitude for OSR D&D, but it works too well to be dismissed out of hand.
And this whole thing was inspired by me asking the question "how do you open a lock without a thief in the party?"
and here's some answers I like: https://followmeanddie.com/2015/02/21/locks/
http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/07/has-osr-mostly-embraced-thieves.html
https://blog.d4caltrops.com/2008/06/rules-cyclopedia-hacks-and-house-rules.html
Monday, June 3, 2019
The Cleric Problem
The Cleric class started life as a pastiche of Peter Cushing's portrayal of Abraham Van Helsing in Hammer Horror's Dracula movie. I love that movie. Dave Arneson was very liberal in using '70s pop culture in his early roleplaying sessions, and in one game he had been playing with two teams against each other where one of the players created an evil vampire named Sir Fang who had become too powerful to stop, so the proto-cleric class was created as a counter. When Gary Gygax included the class in the original Men & Magic booklet, he retrofitted them to reflect the Crusaders of Militant Religious Orders and tasked them with the power of turning undead and casting miracles. Mechanically, they were the midway point between the Fighting-Man and Magic-User classes with a unique spell list which included 3 healing spells and the ability to resurrect allies from the dead, which lead to the unintended consequence of their role being reduced to healing bots.
The problem came when Gygax's players asked the natural question "Where do the Clerics' powers come from?" Gary Gygax's flippant answer was originally "the gods" but as his players pressed the issue, he created two fictional dieties, St. Cuthburt and Pholtus, and then eventually antagonistic dieties, and then it spiraled out of control into a whole pantheon and cosmology based around alignment charts and planar existence and spheres of power, and other assorted overly complicated junk.
Every OSR blogger trying to make a retro clone or attempting to streamline their own game has tackled this problem one way or another. Some throw out the Cleric class altogether, others change their nature into being some kind of atheist heal bot, and yet others go down the 5e path of giving each Cleric a unique spell list dependent on the individual god they serve. To me, these are all bad solutions as they solve a problem by creating even more problems, are based on an erroneous understanding of mythology, and tend to dilute the essence of the class. And it all comes back to Gygax's misstep in mentioning that a Cleric's powers came from "the gods".
Now, Gary Gygax has stated that he felt that including real world references to God and Satan were inappropriate for a role playing game. I read an anecdote of a group where the DM stipulated that Cleric players had to pray to the actual God for their abilities, and it caused an uneasy awkwardness at the table. So I totally agree with that sentiment and even revised my own homebrew setting to throw out references to real world churches and religious organizations, but a really elegant solution was hiding under our collective noses the whole time.
According to some Christian traditions, Saints who are thought to be in Heaven can intercede on the behalf of parishioners and are prayed to themselves. Though there was a real, historical St. Cuthbert, the one invented by Gygax bears no relation to him and can easily be a purely fictitious patron for Clerics and other religiously motivated characters. And for antagonists, the Monster Manual is full of lists of Devil Princes and demons for evil clerics to beg for favor.
Personally I cannot conceive of a world set in the Middle Ages that doesn't have a strong Christian influence in everything from deed, to dress, to song, to architecture. Every fantasy world tries to handwave that away, and I feel that it cheapens the setting a bit. Settings that rely on a pantheon of gods would better reflect the Roman world of Classical Antiquity than the Medieval Era.
This method of using St. Cuthburt as a stand-in for a religion that mimics, but isn't explicitly Christian, creates an elegant context for the Cleric's spell list and abilities, and a justification for the existence of the class. Having religious characters as a player class adds an element of immersion to the game, beyond just having holy men and priests as background NPCs.
So, in my setting, there exists only one deity, however nobody prays to that deity directly. Instead the Patron Saint of the land is St. Cuthburt, and all faithful direct their worship to him as an intercessor on their behalf, and the devoted seek to gain his blessings and favor. Those blasphemous that seek unholy power would be fallen Clerics that have studied the teachings of St. Cuthburt, but seek to corrupt and reverse them for selfish means. The knowledge such used could be used to summon demons and devils from the lower planes. Druids and Rangers, who take neither side in the battle between good and evil, instead call upon the animistic spirits of Nature.
This resolves neatly with the alignment chart, as St. Cuthburt would dominate the Good alignment and Nature worshippers would have to remain Neutral, and followers of other beings would fall into the Evil categories. It also fixes Alignment Language into something understandable - the language of Law and Good would be the language used by the Church in formal discourse, as a stand in for Latin, the language of Neutrality would be the words spoken to commune with Nature, and the language of Evil would be reversed and corrupted forms of the language of Good. This would also explain why evil clerics are subject to the same weapon restrictions as their good counterparts, because to do so otherwise would rob them of their power.
tl;dr to fix Clerics, use a monotheistic campaign setting. All worship is based on the Good/Evil alignment axis. The patron for Good is St. Cuthbert, for evil Asmodeus or any other devil prince, for Neutrality is Nature animism. The class breakdown follows:
Clerics and Paladins: St. Cuthburt, and Paladins can only be Lawful Good.
Druids and Rangers: Nature worship
Evil Clerics: Corrupted teachings of St. Cuthburt.
links:
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2011/01/bishop-carr-first-d-cleric.html
The problem came when Gygax's players asked the natural question "Where do the Clerics' powers come from?" Gary Gygax's flippant answer was originally "the gods" but as his players pressed the issue, he created two fictional dieties, St. Cuthburt and Pholtus, and then eventually antagonistic dieties, and then it spiraled out of control into a whole pantheon and cosmology based around alignment charts and planar existence and spheres of power, and other assorted overly complicated junk.
Every OSR blogger trying to make a retro clone or attempting to streamline their own game has tackled this problem one way or another. Some throw out the Cleric class altogether, others change their nature into being some kind of atheist heal bot, and yet others go down the 5e path of giving each Cleric a unique spell list dependent on the individual god they serve. To me, these are all bad solutions as they solve a problem by creating even more problems, are based on an erroneous understanding of mythology, and tend to dilute the essence of the class. And it all comes back to Gygax's misstep in mentioning that a Cleric's powers came from "the gods".
Now, Gary Gygax has stated that he felt that including real world references to God and Satan were inappropriate for a role playing game. I read an anecdote of a group where the DM stipulated that Cleric players had to pray to the actual God for their abilities, and it caused an uneasy awkwardness at the table. So I totally agree with that sentiment and even revised my own homebrew setting to throw out references to real world churches and religious organizations, but a really elegant solution was hiding under our collective noses the whole time.
According to some Christian traditions, Saints who are thought to be in Heaven can intercede on the behalf of parishioners and are prayed to themselves. Though there was a real, historical St. Cuthbert, the one invented by Gygax bears no relation to him and can easily be a purely fictitious patron for Clerics and other religiously motivated characters. And for antagonists, the Monster Manual is full of lists of Devil Princes and demons for evil clerics to beg for favor.
Personally I cannot conceive of a world set in the Middle Ages that doesn't have a strong Christian influence in everything from deed, to dress, to song, to architecture. Every fantasy world tries to handwave that away, and I feel that it cheapens the setting a bit. Settings that rely on a pantheon of gods would better reflect the Roman world of Classical Antiquity than the Medieval Era.
This method of using St. Cuthburt as a stand-in for a religion that mimics, but isn't explicitly Christian, creates an elegant context for the Cleric's spell list and abilities, and a justification for the existence of the class. Having religious characters as a player class adds an element of immersion to the game, beyond just having holy men and priests as background NPCs.
So, in my setting, there exists only one deity, however nobody prays to that deity directly. Instead the Patron Saint of the land is St. Cuthburt, and all faithful direct their worship to him as an intercessor on their behalf, and the devoted seek to gain his blessings and favor. Those blasphemous that seek unholy power would be fallen Clerics that have studied the teachings of St. Cuthburt, but seek to corrupt and reverse them for selfish means. The knowledge such used could be used to summon demons and devils from the lower planes. Druids and Rangers, who take neither side in the battle between good and evil, instead call upon the animistic spirits of Nature.
This resolves neatly with the alignment chart, as St. Cuthburt would dominate the Good alignment and Nature worshippers would have to remain Neutral, and followers of other beings would fall into the Evil categories. It also fixes Alignment Language into something understandable - the language of Law and Good would be the language used by the Church in formal discourse, as a stand in for Latin, the language of Neutrality would be the words spoken to commune with Nature, and the language of Evil would be reversed and corrupted forms of the language of Good. This would also explain why evil clerics are subject to the same weapon restrictions as their good counterparts, because to do so otherwise would rob them of their power.
tl;dr to fix Clerics, use a monotheistic campaign setting. All worship is based on the Good/Evil alignment axis. The patron for Good is St. Cuthbert, for evil Asmodeus or any other devil prince, for Neutrality is Nature animism. The class breakdown follows:
Clerics and Paladins: St. Cuthburt, and Paladins can only be Lawful Good.
Druids and Rangers: Nature worship
Evil Clerics: Corrupted teachings of St. Cuthburt.
links:
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2011/01/bishop-carr-first-d-cleric.html
Friday, May 31, 2019
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
AD&D 1.5
purely conjecture here, since I haven't read any of the books, but apparently AD&D "1.5" comprises the releases of Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, and the Wilderness Survival Guide. As big of a weaboo as I used to be, I might enjoy playing a fantasy Japan themed setting with the new rules bloat from non-weapon proficiencies and such. Though I imagine that in almost 40 years, a much better RPG system to emulate feudal Japan must have come out.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Playing aids for AD&D
I started this journey to actually play AD&D by the book a few months ago now, and I'm still not at the point where I'm prepared enough to run a campaign, as in DM it myself and play with a character.
I've found the extra playing aids put out by TSR to be almost essential when running the game. I cannot imagine the arduousness of having to play straight out of the book. I will link the playing aids I found to be the most helpful, and where possible I will link official or open license versions that are as close to the TSR originals as possible.
First off is Mad Irishman's AD&D Player Character Record replicas: http://www.mad-irishman.net/pub_dnd_1e.html#1e_adnd2 I found these to be invaluable in recording my players' accumulated information, as the days when all a PC's information could fit on an index card a la OD&D are over. AD&D has too many conditional adjustments and statistic modifiers to keep track of.
Unfortunately Mad Irishman's PDFs only reproduce the actual sheet, and not the instructions. There is a lot of useful information in the instructions that would help fill in these sheets, information that should be in the PHB but isn't, and the only way to get it is to track down a copy of the original product.
Secondly the adventure record sheet, linked on the same page, which reproduces a lot of the information on the character sheet, but has a useful section on tracking turns or days.
The next absolutely essential aid is the DM screen, reproduced on Dragonsfoot: https://www.dragonsfoot.org/cs/index.shtml#22 . After reading through the DMG I came to the conclusion that there was no way I was going to remember all those rules and exceptional cases myself, and I was ruminating on creating a "cheat sheet" for reference, but then I found half the work was done for me with the DM screen. While it is little more than just a collection of tables, some of them apply directly to the Character sheets with information that's not obvious from the book.
And Finally, the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log, for which I could not find a free legal copy online. Not the log itself, but the instructions to the log is what's valuable, as it collects a bunch of adventuring rules that were scattered throughout the DMG in a concise and readable layout.
The most valuable aids for me are ones that provide quick references to the rules and charts from the DMG and PHB. Using these aids has taken a lot of strain of preparing and organizing a play session of off the DM and make it possible to play without constantly flipping through the source books. These aids also provide an organized and structured way of describing the events and results of a session without defaulting to haphazard and unreliable loose paper notes. Surprisingly, some of the information recorded on these sheets is not mentioned in the core books themselves, meaning there are some essential rules missing from the books. I found that these aids greatly enhanced my experience in AD&D and I consider them to be as essential to game play as the source books.
I've found the extra playing aids put out by TSR to be almost essential when running the game. I cannot imagine the arduousness of having to play straight out of the book. I will link the playing aids I found to be the most helpful, and where possible I will link official or open license versions that are as close to the TSR originals as possible.
First off is Mad Irishman's AD&D Player Character Record replicas: http://www.mad-irishman.net/pub_dnd_1e.html#1e_adnd2 I found these to be invaluable in recording my players' accumulated information, as the days when all a PC's information could fit on an index card a la OD&D are over. AD&D has too many conditional adjustments and statistic modifiers to keep track of.
Unfortunately Mad Irishman's PDFs only reproduce the actual sheet, and not the instructions. There is a lot of useful information in the instructions that would help fill in these sheets, information that should be in the PHB but isn't, and the only way to get it is to track down a copy of the original product.
Secondly the adventure record sheet, linked on the same page, which reproduces a lot of the information on the character sheet, but has a useful section on tracking turns or days.
The next absolutely essential aid is the DM screen, reproduced on Dragonsfoot: https://www.dragonsfoot.org/cs/index.shtml#22 . After reading through the DMG I came to the conclusion that there was no way I was going to remember all those rules and exceptional cases myself, and I was ruminating on creating a "cheat sheet" for reference, but then I found half the work was done for me with the DM screen. While it is little more than just a collection of tables, some of them apply directly to the Character sheets with information that's not obvious from the book.
And Finally, the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log, for which I could not find a free legal copy online. Not the log itself, but the instructions to the log is what's valuable, as it collects a bunch of adventuring rules that were scattered throughout the DMG in a concise and readable layout.
The most valuable aids for me are ones that provide quick references to the rules and charts from the DMG and PHB. Using these aids has taken a lot of strain of preparing and organizing a play session of off the DM and make it possible to play without constantly flipping through the source books. These aids also provide an organized and structured way of describing the events and results of a session without defaulting to haphazard and unreliable loose paper notes. Surprisingly, some of the information recorded on these sheets is not mentioned in the core books themselves, meaning there are some essential rules missing from the books. I found that these aids greatly enhanced my experience in AD&D and I consider them to be as essential to game play as the source books.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Race As Class
I like Race as class. I think AD&D’s system of racial class restrictions is not very different from B/X’s, and effectively only gives slightly more race-class options. Modern D&D pigeon holes certain races into certain class archetypes anyway, thus granting one only the illusion of choice.
Monday, May 6, 2019
Was OD&D Gygax's preferred system?
The closest I can get to a source is from this quote:
Also a good quote here:
The best things about AD&D are the portions adapted from OD&D, tournaments, and Gygax's own home games. Meaning, they were at least playtested.
The worst things about AD&D are the parts he invented for the book, because they seemed like a good idea at the time.
"I run three-booklet OD&D now and again myself, adding some house rules to make 1st level PCs a bit more viable and allowing Clerics a spell at 1st level if their Wis is 15 or higher."
src: http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/03/gary-gygaxs-whitebox-od-house-rules.htmlThere's other posts by Gygax on the ENWorld and Dragonsfoot forums where he states that he preferred rules-light systems in his later years over the rules-heavy approach of something like AD&D.
Also a good quote here:
AD&D is an interesting beast ... Gygax was distilling all the work done on D&D into one coherent system ... To my mind, his biggest problems come when he invents new material (such as the initiative system) rather than adapting the old.
src: https://merricb.com/2014/06/08/a-look-at-armour-class-in-original-dd-and-first-edition-add/To me, this tracks with my current impressions of AD&D:
The best things about AD&D are the portions adapted from OD&D, tournaments, and Gygax's own home games. Meaning, they were at least playtested.
The worst things about AD&D are the parts he invented for the book, because they seemed like a good idea at the time.
Friday, May 3, 2019
Best comparison of Holmes Basic, B/X, and BECMI that I have seen
From RPG site forums
USC professor, occasional novelist, and (apparently) D&D fan Dr. J. Eric Holmes, as legend has it, took the OD&D rules (including Supplement I: Greyhawk), his own understanding of how some of the more cryptic parts were supposed to work, and possibly some common house-rules (it appears he must've had at least second-hand knowledge of "The Perrin Conventions" -- a set of combat house-rules used at Bay Area con games from 1976 on and eventually published in vol. 2 of Chaosium's All the World's Monsters), and decided on spec to re-edit the whole thing into something that made better sense and was more comprehensible to beginners, and then approached TSR with his manuscript and said "want to publish this?"
As this occurred right around the time D&D was beginning to really take off in popularity, and while Gary was immersed in is own attempt to compile OD&D+supplements into a more comprehensive and comprehensible game (AD&D) they took him up on his offer. Gary Gygax "revised" Dr. Holmes' manuscript and made a few changes -- mostly inserting plugs for the upcoming AD&D game, but also inserting a few tidbits from the working drafts (a couple spells, a couple monsters) -- and TSR released it as the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Basic Game Set in the summer of 1977, both as a stand-alone book and in a boxed set together with copies of TSR's already-released Dungeon Geomorphs Set 1 (a set of blank maps), Monster & Treasure Assortment Set 1 (tables of pre-rolled encounters & treasure-lists) (Judges Guild hadn't yet proven to TSR the potential popularity of pre-designed dungeons, i.e. modules), and a set of dice.
Unsurprisingly, given its genesis, this was a strange set -- it includes some (but not all) of the new rules content from Supplement I (thieves are included, but only for humans (whereas SuppI allowed all races to be thieves); the convoluted chance-to-know spells by Int stat table is included for magic-users, but not the combat bonuses by Str table for fighters; variable attacks and damage are included for monsters (e.g. ghouls having 3 attacks for 1-3 damage each) but not characters (so all weapons do 1-6 damage regardless of size), and so on), its advancement tables only cover levels 1-3 but there are numerous unexplained references to higher-level characters and spells and a lot of included monsters (giants, dragons, vampires, trolls, etc.) that are way-overpowered for level 3 characters (not to mention the tables in the Monster & Treasure Assortment which contained numerous monsters, level 4+ character-types, and magic items not described in the rulebook), and the combat rules (which were largely absent from OD&D -- each individual referee was expected to cobble something together from Chainmail and his own common sense) don't bear much similarity to any TSR edition of D&D before or since (including anomalies like that each combat round lasts 10 seconds but 10 combat rounds equal a 10-minute exploration turn, that initiative order is determined by Dexterity score (which requires assigning Dex scores to every monster encountered), the fact that (even though all weapons do 1-6 damage) daggers attack twice a round and two-handed weapons attack once every 2 rounds, and that flaming oil is WAY better than any other attack form (doing 3d8 damage across 2 rounds)).
However, despite all this, and even after the AD&D books were released and had significantly-enough different rules from OD&D to render all those references Gygax had inserted incompatible, this set was popular enough to be reprinted about a half-dozen times over the next 2 years (including "upgrades" to the boxed-set version to include full modules -- first B1: In Search of the Unknown, later B2: The Keep on the Borderlands -- instead of the geomorphs & tables, and a downgrade when TSR ran out of dice sets and started including a sheet of "chits" instead).
Finally, in 1980, TSR decided to finally take the old OD&D whitebox (which had been sold as a legacy product, the "Original Collector's Edition," since 1977) out of print and replace it with a new, mass-market-friendlier edition (rumor has it TSR's legal settlement with Dave Arneson, who received co-author credit and royalties on D&D products but not on AD&D products, was also a factor in this decision -- that they were required to keep the former in-print, and distinct from the latter, to keep him from suing). This ended up being two sets, the Basic Set (a new revision of the Holmes set by Tom Moldvay) and the companion Expert Set (filling in all the gaps from the OD&D rules that weren't included in Basic, edited by David Cook and Steve Marsh).
Tom Moldvay's Basic Set is clearly based on the Holmes set -- it includes all of the same classes (including human-only thieves), most of the same spells (including Gygax's added AD&D spells like Remove Fear and (Tenser's) Floating Disc), more-or-less the same monsters and magic items (including those drawn from Supplement I like rust monsters, stirges, carrion crawlers, and gelatinous cubes that had no basis in pre-D&D literature or mythology) -- but the rules are considerably cleaned up and streamlined, with a lot of the weird little anomalies eliminated or made to fit more logical patterns. For the first time with Moldvay's set, the D&D rules actually worked and made sense as-written, without requiring each individual to essentially co-author the game.
The Cook/Marsh Expert Set was a direct sequel/companion to Moldvay's set that was also usable with the Holmes set (including a page of conversion notes at the front covering the main differences between the two), covering levels 4-14 (not sure why that particular number was chosen -- perhaps because it looked aesthetically pleasing on the book cover, or because that's where the thief's abilities max out in Supplement I) and including all of the "missing content" from the OD&D set -- the expanded advancement tables, higher level spells, more (and tougher) monsters and magic items, and the rules for wilderness adventuring (which had been completely glossed-over in the Holmes set) and castle-building (the original "endgame" for D&D) -- all slightly tweaked to fit and be compatible with Moldvay's revision of the system. Interestingly, nothing from Supplement I -- neither spells, nor monsters, nor magic items -- is included in the Expert set unless it had already been included in Holmes and Moldvay. So the Expert Set doesn't include, for instance, the Monster Summoning spells (or any spells above 6th level), the tougher Greyhawk monsters like ogre magi, umber hulks, and beholders, or anything from Greyhawk's extensive magic item lists (except for those couple of items -- bag of devouring and rod of cancellation -- that Holmes, and therefore Moldvay, had included).
These sets were also on the market for about 2-3 years (from late 1980 to mid 1983) and proved even more popular than the Holmes set (these were the "D&D fad" years, with 1982 apparently being TSR's all-time high water mark) and it was eventually decided to make an ever more beginner and mass-market friendly version of the game, and simultaneously "complete" it with the level 15+ rules that had been hinted at in the Expert Set (as the "D&D Companion") but never released (or, from what I understand, written). This job fell to Frank Mentzer, who had already had success overseeing TSR's line of choose-your-own-adventure "Endless Quest" books.
Mentzer's Basic Set is ruleswise almost identical to Moldvay's (there are a couple small differences, but nothing a casual or even moderately-dedicated player would notice) but radically different presentation-wise. Moldvay's book is organized as a straight-forward reference book; Mentzer's is a step-by-step instruction manual, including a (presumably Endless Quest-inspired) choose-your-own-adventure intro that takes up the first 20 pages of the book and lets the reader "play" D&D before actually presenting any of the rules. The result is that the same amount of rules now fill up double the page-count, and are much easier for beginners and young players (the boxed recommends ages 10 & up, down from Holmes' "adults ages 12 & up"), but are less convenient for in-game reference and have an authorial voice and tone that comes off as mildly condescending.
Mentzer's Expert Set is really just a reorganization of the same content as the Cook/Marsh version to better match the organization and look of the new Basic Set, and with some of the progressions slowed down at the upper levels to allow more "room at the top" for the planned Companion & Master sets. In addition to slowing down characters' saving throw advancement, thieves' skills, and cleric & magic-user spell acquisitions, a couple of the more powerful spells, monsters, and magic items are also held back and (IIRC) the castle-building rules are less detailed. Instead, we get a detailed sample base-town, and a couple pages discussing in-town adventures (something that OD&D had covered very briefly in a couple paragraphs and Cook & Marsh had ignored completely).
The D&D Companion Set (released in 1984, a year after the revised Basic & Expert Sets) was also written by Frank Mentzer, and includes both more complex optional rules (new sub-classes, new weapons with special effects (like nets and bolas), rules for wrestling and jousting) and extensive rules for higher-level (15-25) characters, focusing mostly on the establishment and administration of Dominions. There were also a set of abstract mass-combat rules, and some new, tough monsters. In retrospect this is where the line between mass-market-friendly D&D and hobbyist-oriented AD&D began to blur -- with the former becoming in some ways more detailed and complex than the latter (which never had an equivalent "High Level Campaigns" book in this era, and pretty much petered out after about 18th level) -- and the two lines began to look less like alternate approaches to the same general game and more like two distinct, competing games.
In the Holmes era, it was explicitly spelled out that you were supposed to play with the Holmes set until you hit level 3 (which was envisioned as taking about a dozen up to maybe 20 sessions) and then you'd switch over to AD&D. The Moldvay-Cook-Marsh sets don't actually say that (possibly because they couldn't because of their settlement with Arneson), but this still seemed to be the way they were actually used in practice -- start out with the Basic Set, play it up to level 3, get an Expert Set and play it for awhile, but eventually "graduate" to AD&D. I know plenty of people who played up to about level 6 or 8 (i.e. about 6-9 months of play) in Expert D&D before switching gears to AD&D, but I didn't know of anyone at the time who actually stuck with it all the way up to 14th level (which would, at the assumed advancement rates, take at least a year of play, possibly more like 2-3).
Thus, the Companion Set seemed weird, like it was saying that you weren't supposed to switch over to AD&D and were instead supposed to stick with this game for a multi-year campaign (which was reinforced even further with the release of the Master Set (covering levels 26-36) in 1985, and the Immortals Set (essentially a whole new game for characters who have "won" Master Set D&D and become immortal) in 1986 -- to actually get to use either of these in play would require several years of dedicated, regular play, which was (as we had always thought) what AD&D was supposed to be about, not the mass-market kid-friendly version).
I'm convinced TSR simply never thought this through, never considered that they were setting these games up not to have the mutually-beneficial symbiotic relationship they'd had in the Holmes and Moldvay days (start with the simple set, spend a few weeks to a few months playing through it and learning the game, then move on to the Advanced game which you can (at least theoretically) continue playing for years) but to be in competition against each other -- that by encouraging players to stick with D&D through the Companion, Master, and Immortal levels they were no longer adding to but taking away from sales of their flagship game.
But then, considering that this was the same era when TSR began introducing multiple different AD&D campaign settings and marketing each one as, essentially, a separate game -- that Dark Sun and Ravenloft and Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms (and, ultimately, more than a half-dozen others) didn't really overlap and characters or adventures intended for one couldn't really be used in the others, meaning that casual fans would pick one favorite setting and ignore product branded for use with any of the others, thus hopelessly fragmenting the customer base and ensuring that nothing would achieve the kinds of sales levels that "universal" products and adventures saw back in the early 80s -- I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised...
(tl;dr version: the OD&D, Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer sets are all pretty close to the same, especially if you compare A to B, B to C, and C to D instead of A to D; TSR made a dumb mistake from 1984 on by ceasing to use the D&D line as a de-facto introduction to AD&D and instead trying to make it into a complete stand-alone (and thus competing against rather than feeding into AD&D) game)
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Buyer's Remorse
I bought AD&D intending to follow it as closely as written as possible in order to get the full vision of the creator. I felt kind of defrauded after learning that the author didn't use the rules as written himself. In Gary Gygax's case it could be excused, as D&D probably just existed in his head, and he would have no need of a graven rules reference in order to play. However the fraudulent part is with the rules that he didn't play with, didn't playtest, and only included in the AD&D core books because of a friend's insistence or because they seemed like a good idea when writing. It makes the experience of actually playing AD&D a frustrating one, as these rules create large internal conflicts that must be addressed by each GM individually. An option would be to simply play OD&D + Greyhawk supplement, but OD&D and AD&D share the same critical flaw in not explaining themselves very well, and thus it again falls on the shoulders of the GM to make its systems work.
I'd say for Gygax, D&D lived in his head so he really didn't need written rules, and the impression I get is that he wasn't much of a strict rulekeeper at the table either, and so expected other GMs to follow his lead.
For another perspective, I was interested in Basic D&D, primarily through the Rules Cyclopedia but in modern OSR circles the Moldvay and Cook B/X version is regarded more highly. Instead I chose the Frank Mentzer revision and bought the BEC sets (out of BECMI) because of their promise of continued explanation and tutorial of the system as opposed to dry rules. I'm quite happy with these sets as I feel that I got exactly what I wanted - a system that works on its own merits with little requirement to houserule, and clear explanations of its features. Some of the systems are a bit too streamlined however, and I feel that AD&D has some good features that don't exist in BECMI.
One bonus for me in the Mentzer sets over the B/X or Rules Cyclopedia is the art. I know a lot of people online prefer the weird and grungy Errol Otus art because "it more accurately depicts the actual experience of playing Dungeons and Dragons", but as an amateur artist myself I appreciate the technical beauty of the Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley artwork. Since the Rules Cyclopedia tosses all that beautiful artwork out, I feel like I dodged a bullet by not buying that book.
I love reading the AD&D books, but I like playing BECMI a lot more.
I'd say for Gygax, D&D lived in his head so he really didn't need written rules, and the impression I get is that he wasn't much of a strict rulekeeper at the table either, and so expected other GMs to follow his lead.
For another perspective, I was interested in Basic D&D, primarily through the Rules Cyclopedia but in modern OSR circles the Moldvay and Cook B/X version is regarded more highly. Instead I chose the Frank Mentzer revision and bought the BEC sets (out of BECMI) because of their promise of continued explanation and tutorial of the system as opposed to dry rules. I'm quite happy with these sets as I feel that I got exactly what I wanted - a system that works on its own merits with little requirement to houserule, and clear explanations of its features. Some of the systems are a bit too streamlined however, and I feel that AD&D has some good features that don't exist in BECMI.
One bonus for me in the Mentzer sets over the B/X or Rules Cyclopedia is the art. I know a lot of people online prefer the weird and grungy Errol Otus art because "it more accurately depicts the actual experience of playing Dungeons and Dragons", but as an amateur artist myself I appreciate the technical beauty of the Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley artwork. Since the Rules Cyclopedia tosses all that beautiful artwork out, I feel like I dodged a bullet by not buying that book.
I love reading the AD&D books, but I like playing BECMI a lot more.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
My beef with high fantasy
I love history, especially of the Ancient, Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern time periods. I'm one of those nerds that's a huge stickler for "historical accuracy". Which is why the standard "high fantasy" setting triggers me, and Angry GM does a great job explaining why:
"Technologically, it’s a mess of stuff from the late Roman Empire through to the early Renaissance. Except gunpowder. Unless there’s gunpowder. Politically, religiously, and socially it’s the modern world except that the predominant governing system is hereditary monarchies or aristocracies and the predominant religion is easily ignored polytheism that is ridiculously tolerant of atheism. They have nothing to do with actual feudalism or paganism. But they claim to be feudal. In short, it’s a standard high fantasy setting."
source: Drawing an Unnecessary Map of Nothing At All
"Technologically, it’s a mess of stuff from the late Roman Empire through to the early Renaissance. Except gunpowder. Unless there’s gunpowder. Politically, religiously, and socially it’s the modern world except that the predominant governing system is hereditary monarchies or aristocracies and the predominant religion is easily ignored polytheism that is ridiculously tolerant of atheism. They have nothing to do with actual feudalism or paganism. But they claim to be feudal. In short, it’s a standard high fantasy setting."
source: Drawing an Unnecessary Map of Nothing At All
Roleplaying
I'm not a fan of the amateur improv theater that most players seem to consider role playing as being. I also don't like DMs who approach the game as a collaborative creative writing session with dice. I prefer D&D as a game, to be played like a game, which is why I like gridded battle maps, miniature figures, and overland hex crawls.
Its undeniable that pure theater of the mind speeds up play, but most people's definition of role play belongs on a therapist's couch, or in an acting class, or in the bedroom with their significant other(s).
Its undeniable that pure theater of the mind speeds up play, but most people's definition of role play belongs on a therapist's couch, or in an acting class, or in the bedroom with their significant other(s).
Real world rules in (A)D&D
Gary Gygax asserts in the opening chapter of the Dungeon Masters Guide that between the approaches of the realism simulation school and the pure gamist school, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is primarily a game that does not seek to model realism or deeply simulate anything either. Originally, this statement made sense to me and instilled the notion that considerations of fun and smooth play took primacy over the necessity of laborious detailing of real world minutiae. But then, the rest of the 230 pages of the Dungeon Masters Guide are devoted to the simulation of a fantasy world, and laborious details of real world minutiae are precisely the sticking points of the text that have caused me to create this blog just to understand how they were intended to work. As with everything in the Guide, I find that the sentiment is fine but the practical implementation of the mechanic contradicts itself.
One thing I found fascinating was Delta's D&D's assertion that following the real world provided him with an elegant solution to most of the gaps with the OD&D system, explained in his post Realism in Game Design
Angry GM also makes an assertion that all rules firstly model the real world, then are modified and replaced by rules that seek to provide a more streamlined game experience, in this post Why Rules Exist , in which he also explicitly calls out Gary Gygax's assertions.
One of the things that drove me away from D&D 5th Edition was the lack of depth in the game system. I couldn't really articulate why I felt this way, because as much as anyone I dislike numerous and cumbersome rules, but I now take to the understanding that 5th Edition throw out many rules necessary for a comprehensive system, and its thin real world simulation is actually a design flaw.
Depth in gaming is a big, pervasive theme in this blog, whether I'm talking about tabletop RPGs or video games. Some of the deepest first person shooters have absolutely nothing to do with reality, such as Quake 3 Arena, but their simulation is so comprehensive that it stands by itself. On the other hand, 'realistic' shooters have gained unbelievable popularity in recent years and have almost completely supplanted pure game shooters, and that trend doesn't seem to ever be going away.
I feel that AD&D leans much harder into the real world simulation camp than Gygax would have you believe, probably as a result of general trends in wargaming from the 70's, and definitely more than modern editions of D&D.
One thing I found fascinating was Delta's D&D's assertion that following the real world provided him with an elegant solution to most of the gaps with the OD&D system, explained in his post Realism in Game Design
Angry GM also makes an assertion that all rules firstly model the real world, then are modified and replaced by rules that seek to provide a more streamlined game experience, in this post Why Rules Exist , in which he also explicitly calls out Gary Gygax's assertions.
One of the things that drove me away from D&D 5th Edition was the lack of depth in the game system. I couldn't really articulate why I felt this way, because as much as anyone I dislike numerous and cumbersome rules, but I now take to the understanding that 5th Edition throw out many rules necessary for a comprehensive system, and its thin real world simulation is actually a design flaw.
Depth in gaming is a big, pervasive theme in this blog, whether I'm talking about tabletop RPGs or video games. Some of the deepest first person shooters have absolutely nothing to do with reality, such as Quake 3 Arena, but their simulation is so comprehensive that it stands by itself. On the other hand, 'realistic' shooters have gained unbelievable popularity in recent years and have almost completely supplanted pure game shooters, and that trend doesn't seem to ever be going away.
I feel that AD&D leans much harder into the real world simulation camp than Gygax would have you believe, probably as a result of general trends in wargaming from the 70's, and definitely more than modern editions of D&D.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Bounded accuracy
This feature alone makes 5e a better system than 4e, which had level dependent scaling defenses and accuracy
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
More AD&D movement issues, this time for outdoor movement and encumbrance
The PHB states that under normal encumbrance condition, a PC can move '12" ', whatever that means. Whether its measured by a ruler on a tabletop, scaled to the miniature figure used in actual play, or scaled to the table map used in actual play is a huge problem. Still, the guide in AD&D is that 12" equals 120 feet in-game.
The DMG states that under normal encumbrance, a PC can move 30 miles per day.
If calculated from the PHB, where it states "Each 1" of movement equals the number of miles...in one-half day's trekking" (p.102), it would seem that the actual number for an unencumbered character would be 24 miles per day, so of course the two measurements are incongruous.
I, personally, would rather choose the explicitly stated rule in the DMG over the calculated measurement.
And a final note, "normal" encumbrance means up to 35 lbs.(PHB p 101) or 350 gold coin weight (PHB p.102) without strength bonuses.
p.27 of the DMG lists armor weight in pounds, which needs to be multiplied by 10 to get gold coin weight, in order to determine the total weight carried by a character, which can be used to determine accurate encumbrance.
And finally, the actual gold piece weight values of regular items is in an Appendix in the back of the DMG (p. 225) instead of in the inventory lists of either the PHB or DMG!
Putting together these rules piecemeal is a real pain
For exploration, the PHB states that movement is 1/10 the rate given in the combat movement table, which means that for 12" a character could only move at 12 feet per minute, much less than the actual human walking speed of 276 ft/min. I don't buy the in game explanation that mapping and being cautious reduces speed to this number, so this is a total house rule I use to make regular movement through a dungeon room or through a city to take 1 turn total, whether the distance is 12 feet (normally a round in exploration), 120 feet (normally a turn) or 1200 (beyond a turn).
yay someone collected the encumbrance rules into a "Master Encumbrance Table":
https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FT&fileid=175&watchfile=0
Delta's got a great breakdown of the issues with Movement and Encumbrance:
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/p/primary-house-rules.html
The DMG states that under normal encumbrance, a PC can move 30 miles per day.
If calculated from the PHB, where it states "Each 1" of movement equals the number of miles...in one-half day's trekking" (p.102), it would seem that the actual number for an unencumbered character would be 24 miles per day, so of course the two measurements are incongruous.
I, personally, would rather choose the explicitly stated rule in the DMG over the calculated measurement.
And a final note, "normal" encumbrance means up to 35 lbs.(PHB p 101) or 350 gold coin weight (PHB p.102) without strength bonuses.
p.27 of the DMG lists armor weight in pounds, which needs to be multiplied by 10 to get gold coin weight, in order to determine the total weight carried by a character, which can be used to determine accurate encumbrance.
And finally, the actual gold piece weight values of regular items is in an Appendix in the back of the DMG (p. 225) instead of in the inventory lists of either the PHB or DMG!
Putting together these rules piecemeal is a real pain
For exploration, the PHB states that movement is 1/10 the rate given in the combat movement table, which means that for 12" a character could only move at 12 feet per minute, much less than the actual human walking speed of 276 ft/min. I don't buy the in game explanation that mapping and being cautious reduces speed to this number, so this is a total house rule I use to make regular movement through a dungeon room or through a city to take 1 turn total, whether the distance is 12 feet (normally a round in exploration), 120 feet (normally a turn) or 1200 (beyond a turn).
yay someone collected the encumbrance rules into a "Master Encumbrance Table":
https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FT&fileid=175&watchfile=0
Delta's got a great breakdown of the issues with Movement and Encumbrance:
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/p/primary-house-rules.html
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