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.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
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.
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