Operationalizing Honor

Last week, noisms of Yoon Suin fame wrote a blog post about a "single class paladin campaign" except he's not really talking about a single class paladin game, he's talking about how to operationalize honor for RPGs in a way that will facilitate and motivate a game built around honorable heroes doing honorable things. He admits that various character classes could be used in such a game, as long as the game revolves around matters of honor and correct, heroic behavior, rather than typical D&D "adventuring" or "murder-hoboing" or what have you. Instead of everyone being the Paladin class, they all are behaving by a code of conduct and in service to some greater power.

I was definitely interested in what he had to say, as it's something I've had to deal with with only limited success in Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara. Yes, FSRPG includes notes about the xia code, and what is expected of a wandering martial hero in Chinese stories/movies. But that's it. The XP system is still revolving around defeating enemies (of any type) to gain XP, and doesn't stipulate that the combats need to be won honorably. And granted, there are anti-heroes or those that skirt the line in wuxia fiction, and they don't necessarily need to be penalized. 

I think I got a step closer with Chanbara. I re-conceptualized the carousing rules from Arneson's original campaign. But instead of saying you're spending your hard earned treasure on drunken debauchery and flashy displays of wealth until you're broke and need to go adventure again, it's explained as donating that hard earned treasure to your various lords, patrons, and clan to aid them in their endeavors. That's a step up from "hey, just role play it!" but I admit it still leaves something to be desired. Collecting the treasure is still a necessary step in play. If we're really wanting to make our campaign seem like the legends of King Arthur and Charlemagne, or of honorable samurai loyal to their lords and so on, "getting the treasure" seems out of place.

So, what sorts of rewards could we offer in a game that would encourage players to play Captain America instead of The Punisher? Galahad and Percival instead of Fafhrd and the Mouser? That's not an easy question to answer. 

So what's been done before? Marvel Super Heroes, the old 4 color resolution chart game from TSR, had a huge list of dos-and-don'ts that could earn you Karma points, or take them away. The 1E OA book also had a big long list of "honorable and dishonorable" actions, which earned or reduced honor points. 

I'm not a big fan of this method. For one, it's fiddly and arbitrary. It also requires everyone to be paying attention to a level of detail in the game that can hurt immersion. Finally, it polices play, rather than encourages it. XP for gold and fighting monsters encourages play. It tells players what the goal is, but not how to go about achieving the goal. Lists of "Thou shalt not..." doesn't give you a goal, it just mediates your choices in game. And giving a goal of "be honorable" doesn't spur action the way "get gold" does. 

I don't have a lot of history with the Palladium or White Wolf systems, but from what I remember, Palladium has a lot of strictures for keeping your alignment a la the MSH Karma and OA Honor systems, but I don't remember if that had an effect on XP or not. It's been a while since I've done anything with that system. 

For White Wolf, I haven't played Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, or Changeling. I've played Trinity and Street Fighter. In both of these games, at the end of a session (and the end of an adventure that takes place over multiple sessions), certain criteria are given or questions asked, and determine how much XP each character earns. This, I think, may be a better way to handle XP for the sort of "all paladin" game noisms wants to run. 

For those that don't know, players get 1 xp just for taking part in the session, and then additional points if they can demonstrate that their character learned or matured in some way, a point for good role play, a point for sticking to the character concept well, a point for heroism (at least in Street Fighter, which I have). If I remember, for Trinity there was one criteria for using your powers to aid the mission. 

This seems like the way to go to quantify honorable behavior to me. Make a list of criteria. The Chivalric Code. Bushido. The Way of the Jiang Hu. The Cowboy Code. Klingon Batlh. Probably best to keep it to under six tenets (the Cowboy Code as often shared on the internet these days has lots of pithy sayings that basically boil down to the same few concepts). At the end of a game session, go through each tenet and ask each player how they felt they upheld that tenet. Award chunks of XP for each tenet they upheld. 

Of course, WW games use XP as a spendable currency to develop skills and abilities, rather than a measure of progress in class level, but that can be adjusted. If someone wants to keep the D&D class & level paradigm, either adjust XP values needed to level up down (divide by 100, maybe?) or tie the amount of XP awarded by the criteria to the level of the character.

How I do Exploration XP

 I received this comment from Reese Laundry on my post about not dividing the XP: 

Like Daren, I do this in my BX/OSE games for monster XP only, but not treasure. IT's a minor boost and not unbalancing, I don't feel. I've considered the idea of exploration or mission XP, but haven't tried it yet. I'd be interested in seeing a post at some point on how you do it and how it's worked out for your table!

 Since I've got a bit of spare time today, might as well address it. 

When I started my West Marches game, one of the things I did was go back and read a post from Jeff Rients about exploration XP, and decided to work that into the game. 

Each hex that gets explored has a basic XP value. Any monster lair has a value for its discovery, as well. These values increase the farther the party gets from town. I've got bands 4 hexes deep (or about 1 day's travel) that set the value of these. 

Special locations, or performing certain actions at special locations, or encountering an iconic creature in a certain region, are all worth bonus XP. 

Originally, I set the game up for 5E because that's what all the players wanted to play. So the XP values were pretty small, especially in the initial band. When I switched to Classic D&D, I didn't shift the values right away, so they ended up being inconsequential. After a while, I upped them. 

One thing that I need to improve about my game, actually, is telegraphing where the special areas are that can earn bonus XP. For quite a while now, the group has been setting their own goals. And I've not found the right balance of throwing out rumors and keeping things mysterious. I'm working on it. 

I think I need to make a Google Docs with the rumors and just post the XP amounts on it if the rumor is successfully investigated. 

Anyway, here are the current values I'm using for exploration of a hex and discovery of a lair. The special area XP is pretty variable, but usually two to five times that of a lair discovery award, depending on how easy/hard or influential I think that special is. 

First Band (1 to 4 hexes from Silverwood): Hex 100xp, Lair 200xp

Second Band (5 to 8 hexes): Hex 200xp, Lair 500xp

Third Band (6 to 12 hexes): Hex 500xp, Lair 1000xp

Fourth Band (13 to 16 hexes): Hex 1000xp, Lair 2500xp

Fifth Band (17 to 20 hexes): Hex 2500xp, Lair 5000xp

Sixth Band (21 to 23 hexes): Hex 5000xp, Lair 10,000xp

Undivided XP - a potentially unbalancing idea

 I was inspired to make my home game a West Marches campaign from a play-by-post game I've been in for a few years. It's a 5E game, so it has a different scale of progression anyway, but since it's PbP, the DM doesn't divide XP among the group members. If we face a group of monsters worth 700xp total, we each get 700xp. 

Since PbP is a really slow moving way to play, this means we still level up fairly often, especially with 5E's expedited numbers for leveling. 

In my game, the groups recently tend to be on the large size, so much so that most of the players have stopped hiring men-at-arms. They tend to be around level 4 to 5, but with a few at 6 and a few still at 3. But despite the presence of level 5 and 6 PCs, they still tend to think they're only able to handle the level 3 stuff. Fair enough, it has been a deadly game (no dead PCs this past weekend, but two weeks ago one PC and the last of the henchmen were killed). 

I'm wondering if maybe I should switch to a thing like the PbP DM does, and not divide the XP. Being that this is Classic D&D, I'd of course stick to the rules that no more than one level can be gained per session, so when they get a dragon or giant's massive treasure, we won't see someone shooting from level 3 to level 7 at once. It would speed up advancement which would help the lower level PCs catch up level-wise, and maybe give the players a bit more of a feeling of toughness. 

Part of me feels like they're operating below their capacity for risk, sticking to the safer areas, and avoiding some of the dungeons (which often are a bit more challenging than the area they're in). 

Part of me feels like I should just let them do this, as it means I can take my time on expanding the keyed areas of the map. If they're leveling faster, I'll need to prepare stuff in farther regions faster than I am right now. 

Also, part of me feels like this will unbalance things. The benefit of a huge party (6 to 8 PCs, a tiger and a dire wolf as mounts for two of the PCs, plus occasional henchmen or leveled retainers) is that they can handle more danger. The drawback is that the XP gets divided more ways. 

I probably will not implement this idea, but it is an interesting idea to consider. Maybe in another campaign some day.

A dual-track XP system?

 Brushing off the cobwebs and blowing clouds of dust.

Just when I think I'm gonna get back on the blogging regularly horse, real life intervenes.  I'm now a university English instructor, which is better than my last job, but since I don't need to keep regular 9-5 hours, I'm spending more time at home with the wife and baby which means less time for blogging. 

Additionally, I received some awesome feedback from JB of BX Blackrazor regarding Flying Swordsmen, and he's got me thinking of all sorts of cool things I could do to create a worthy wuxia game.  I might call it Flying Swordsmen 2nd Edition, but the way I'm thinking now, it won't be a D&D-based game so it wouldn't really be a new edition.  Just another wuxia game (with mechanics to hopefully better emulate wuxia fiction/film's drama elements) that also uses my campaign world of Zhongyang Dalu.  Tentative title for the new game would be "Wu Xing" (that's the 5 Chinese Elements). 

I'm only halfway through my point-by-point response to his lengthy feedback.  Need to finish that up and get it to him. 

And that leaves me pondering just what to do with Chanbara.  Should I keep it as a fairly OSR compatible game like Flying Swordsmen, or start modifying it so it will be compatible with the eventual release of FS2/Wu Xing.  Many of JB's ideas actually already parallel things I've been modifying in Chanbara, but he's got me considering going back to my original idea of a classless, skill-based system for FS2/Wu Xing.

Today (finally getting to the question I pose in the title of this post), I was thinking about the feasibility of a dual-track XP system.  Would it kill the game (Chanbara, where the idea is to have samurai and ninja battling spirit-creatures, demons and monsters in order to protect the lands of Man) with complexity to have to earn XP the traditional way, by slaying things and taking their stuff (then giving the stuff to your lord) to earn levels [hit dice, attack bonus, saves], but also have a "justify your actions" type set of questions for the end of each session to earn Skill Points which can then be spent as you wish to improve your various martial/magical/ninja abilities (or raw ability scores)?

Just to clarify --
Kill monsters, earn XP
Donate loot to your liege (daimyo, temple, clan, etc.), earn XP
Role play appropriately within the tropes of Japanese fiction, earn Skill Points

XP gain you levels when you hit certain benchmarks, continue to accumulate, and are measured in the thousands.  Standard D&D fare.
SP are small awards (1 to 5 per session) and are then spent between adventures/sessions to improve certain aspects, with increasing costs to gain higher levels [borrowing from Star Frontiers].

So, what do you think?  Too complex?  Should everything be tied to only one or the other method of character advancement?  Or would something like this work? 

Chanbara: Coming Together

I've been making some mental notes about how to put together a "running the game/GM advice" chapter for Chanbara, as well as introductory text.  This was actually inspired by some of my academic reading, so maybe studying for a Ph.D wasn't such a crazy idea after all.  It's making my game writing better.*

First of all, considering the audience (likely to be primarily experienced RPG gamers), I think the introduction will have even LESS "what is an RPG?/How do you play?" stuff than Flying Swordsmen did, and I cut a lot of that out of FS.  Instead, I'm probably going to go straight to the heart of the style of game and the goals of play (as I see it).

The goals (what the game is about in Story RPG terms) is two-fold.  First of all, the game lets you emulate Medieval Japanese hero tropes battling against traditional creatures from Japanese folklore (and/or Medieval Japanese villains).  That's the surface level game.  Secondly, the game is about exploring social bonds, duty, responsibility, and reciprocity.  This is the deeper game.

Chanbara can be played at a "beer and pretzels" surface level, and hopefully will be fun.  "I'm Hattori Hanzo, you're Abe-no-Seimei, together we fight Orochi."**  Killing monsters and taking their stuff, D&D in funny hats, katana and sorcery pulp action, call it what you will.

But with the Allegiance system, every character will have a family bond, a patron or lord, and possibly another group or professional organization (trade guild, religious affiliation, etc.).  This replaces alignment in the game, and is heavily influenced by the Allegiance system in d20 Modern, but not identical.  Characters will earn XP for defeating monsters and overcoming challenges.  They can also earn XP for treasure acquired IF they donate it to one of their lieges***.  And this is where the deeper game can come into play.

Each family/organization/master will have different goals and desires, threats they must overcome, etc.  They can easily provide adventure hooks to players.  Also, when players donate treasure to them, they can advance their goals, and there should be rewards in it for the characters.  However, it's hard to serve two masters.  Donate all of your wealth to your daimyo, and the head of your family clan may turn against you.  The master of your shinobi clan's goals may contradict those of the trade guild you also serve.  This is built in conflict, and that's a good thing!  Not only does it give the GM and player something to use to spur adventures, it is something players can negotiate with the GM to make the game more fun.

Players that wish to explore the deeper game will hopefully get an experience closer to a lot of the fiction I'm drawing on as inspiration.  Players will go on adventures (sometimes of their own choosing, sometimes at the behest of a patron/liege.  When they're successful, they then have to make choices about which patrons/lieges to support, if any!  After all, in order to build up their own social/political power, they'd want to keep as much treasure for themselves as possible.  Duty, responsibility, loyalty, honor -- some of the main tropes of Japanese fiction right there, folks.

Or at least that's the goal.  We'll see if I can pull it off.





*I kid.  The Ph.D course has been great, actually.  I've learned a lot and actually enjoy learning more about teaching English to non-native speakers.  Even if I never get a position as a professor, it's been worthwhile.

**Hattori Hanzo - famous ninja (historical)/Abe-no-Seimei - famous onmyoji (historical)/Orochi - 8-headed serpent (mythical)

***Thinking of changing the name to Patron as it's an easier term to use, but that's not an exact fit.

In Retrospect

I've been thinking a bit about Flying Swordsmen.  You know, that free OSR game I made, a retro-clone of a little known freebie from WotC just prior to 3E launching named Dragon Fist, all about wuxia fantasy Chinese martial arts magical action?

Yeah, that one.  Probably you downloaded it.  Maybe you even read some (or all?) of it, and thought it seemed pretty cool. 

But did you play it?  Probably not.

Did you make a Flying Swordsmen PC and run it through a FLAILSNAILS game?  Never heard of anyone doing that, and I was pretty much too busy with grad school stuff and our local games to do it myself (although I wanted to).

Did you at least throw one or two of the monsters into your megadungeon just to mess with the expectations of your players who are jaded from years and years of the same old Monster Manual listings (which they know by heart because hey, they're often DMs too)?  Why the hell not?

Anyway, the point of this post isn't me trying to guilt trip you into trying to actually play my game.  There are lots of pdfs of games and supplements and adventures that I've downloaded, maybe looked at and thought it was neat, and there it sits on my hard drive collecting virtual dust.  It's actually sort of the opposite. 

A confession.

I've tried to run it several times, and while in theory it should be a lot of fun, something about the game just doesn't work the way it's intended.

Flying Swordsmen is about emulating all of the awesome wire work/CGI stunts you see in Hong Kong martial arts fantasy action movies.  Dancing over the helmets of a troop of warriors.  Fighting across a crowded inn while balancing a tray of dim sum on your head.  Standing on a swaying bamboo branch and fencing with a master who outclasses you.

But what happened when I ran the game?  "I roll to hit." [clatter clatter] "I roll for damage." [clatter clattter]. 

The problem wasn't that the system didn't support the desired actions.  Flying Swordsmen, and Dragon Fist before it, both do.  The problem is that neither game rewards such play.

If a player is fighting a villain, they can make a risk-reward analysis each round of combat.  Should they attempt something flashy just because it's cool?  Or should they just make an attack to whittle down the villain's hit points?  In my experience running the game, they choose the latter.  And why not?  The only thing going for the first one reward-wise is bragging rights.

Flying Swordsmen needs to reward players for having their characters attempt crazy wuxia stunts.  Something simple, like a 5xp times your level for attempting and failing a stunt, and 10xp times your level for achieving your desired result.  When I finally get around to revising FS, this is going in the rules.  If I ever get a chance to run the game before it's revised, I'll use this.

Is it OK to be arbitrary?

Working on Chanbara again today, and I'm almost done with the revisions to the actual game-play parts.  I decided to do this part first this time, to better build the classes and special abilities.  Last time, I did the classes first and then tried to match game play rules to the classes.  It's going much faster this time, partly because I only need to rewrite or tweak sections of the previous version, rather than construct it whole cloth.

And I'm now at the part about rewards.  The game will allow standard D&D style play, where you go fight monsters and bring back loot.  It's a good way to run a fun game, so Chanbara supports it.  But since this is a Japanese fantasy game of samurai and ninja, I want the game to do more than that.

I mentioned a while back that I was re-inspired to do more than just D&D in funny hats with this by some posts by Tedankhamen.  I want to reward players for behaving in genre appropriate ways, but without needing to go into pages and pages of blather about Confucian societies, Bushido, etc.  Because really, I'm not an expert on that stuff, so it would be blather.  Maybe better blather than someone who's only experienced Japan through anime, but blather nonetheless.

Giri, or duty/obligation, was easy.  I'd figured that one out before Ted penned his pieces.  PCs have allegiances to their feudal lord, high abbot, jonin ninja, sensei, family, comrades in arms, peasant association, etc.  The norms of a Confucian culture expect one to respect these bonds.  In game terms, the simple way to do that is to award gold for XP, but ONLY for gold donated to one of the (NPC) groups a character is allied with.  Of course, story awards can also be given for performing some duty or quest, but the fastest advancement comes from giving up your hard earned loot to advance the goals of the group in which you are a member.

Ninjou, or humane/compassionate acts, is harder.  As a GM, you can't railroad your players into behaving that way.  At least, not if you want the campaign to go anywhere.  So there needs to be some system to recognize and reward such acts.  But again, assuming the average person who buys Chanbara* and plays it won't have a strong grasp on Japanese culture and genre traditions, it's going to be hard for them to figure out what constitutes an act of "ninjou" and what doesn't.  And how to reward it?

At first, I thought about an Action Point or Story Point mechanic as a reward.  But I don't think having meta-game mulligans will add anything to play.  So that leaves us with XP awards and in-game rewards.  In-game rewards should of course be possible, but then they are also possible for acts in line with Giri as well as acts that aren't in line with either giri or ninjou.  So there's no point in trying to codify them.  The XP rewards, though, are trickier.

In adventures I write and publish, I could always include examples of how an encounter could be resolved to earn a "ninjou" reward.  But that doesn't really help the GM making his or her own adventures a lot.  I could do a bunch of research and blather on for pages and pages in a (probably vain) attempt to get the reader to understand a foreign cultural concept - but I won't.

Instead, what I'm thinking of now is something like this.  Acts of "ninjou" will have a set reward level, something like 5% or 10% of the XP needed to reach the next level.  I'll give a brief example of the idea of what acts of ninjou are like (similar to Ted's post linked above).  During play, any player may elect ANOTHER player's actions as deserving of a "ninjou" award.  Arbitrarily.  All other players and the GM must agree that the action was in-line with their understanding of the concept.  If they agree, the player earns the bonus XP for their character.  Again, arbitrary.  And while it means that some groups will misunderstand the concept and award things that a Japanese person might feel doesn't qualify, I think it won't matter.  It will be as rare or as common as the group wants, and will hopefully get players thinking of ways to RP their character so as to earn the award.

And groups that just want to loot ruins full of bakemono and rokuro-kubi can ignore it and have fun hacking and slashing through their adventures with nothing lost from the game-play.

Best of both worlds, I think.



*yes, I'm going to have it for sale, which means a PDF and a PoD version since so many people asked me for print versions of Flying Swordsmen.

Chanbara - The Missing Piece

In my spare time, I've been thinking about how to make Chanbara (and Flying Swordsmen when I finally get around to revising it) into more playable games.

Flying Swordsmen was about creating a retroclone of Dragon Fist, but since I couldn't clone the setting, the whole "improve your kung fu until you are strong enough to take on the evil Emperor Jianmin" thing had to go.  That left it with a strong kung fu ruleset bolted onto a D&D frame, but murderhobo play doesn't really fit exactly with a wuxia setting.  There's room for treasure hunting and dungeon delving within the genre, but there's more to it than that.

With Chanbara, the samurai & ninja themed version of FS, I decided screw it, delving dungeons for treasure is what drives D&D, it should drive this game as well, since it's built on the frame of D&D.  But then that leaves a lot of genre tropes on the cutting room floor, although the subgenre of supernatural Japanese comics/period action movies exists that this game would serve.  War between humans and the bakemono/yokai is not a bad idea for a fantasy adventure game.

But tonight, thanks to musing on JB's latest multipart essay over on BX Blackrazor (well, the first two parts anyway), I was considering ways to tweak what I've got to get it right.  And I think I may have stumbled upon the answer.

I'll borrow "allegiances" from d20 Modern (sorta like alignment, but different), and a variant on "carousing for XP" which I'd originally come up with for a Beowulf style Germanic Iron Age campaign idea way back when.  It will tie in the thematic elements of chanbara film/fiction with game play, and provide a solid objective for play.

Each character in Chanbara will have up to three alegiances.  The first is to family/clan.  The second will be to lord (the Emperor, a noble house, the Shogun, a daimyo), and the third to some sort of professional organization (trade guild, monastery or religious sect, yakuza gang, military brother(sister)hood, etc.).  To get XP for treasure collected, it needs to be donated to one of your allegiances.

XP for combat and for achieving group or personal goals will still exist, so players that need to save up for some purpose aren't completely screwed out of XP while adventuring.

In one fell swoop, this gives a good solid objective to play (fight ghosts, oni and spirit creatures to protect humanity - and take their loot), while also playing up one of the big themes of samurai history and fiction: the interplay between duty and honor in a Confucian culture. 

Of course, each clan, daimyo, sect, or what have you will have conflicting goals and desires.  Each player will have a duty to each, and how they dole out the treasure they earn, and what missions they undertake on behalf of one of their "lieges" will provide fodder for the GM to create interesting stories that fit the genre.

If the GM and players want, that is.  The beauty of it is that if a group wants to play murderhobo in funny hats with the rules, the GM can just ignore the potential for conflict between clan, lord and profession and let the PCs adventure.

Now to find time to write all this up in a succinct way in the rules...

Are you experienced? Part 2

A little more detail about my post from yesterday.

First of all, Stables of PCs.  The idea is that each player will have two to five* PCs rolled up before game time starts.  That way, if one PC meets an unfortunate end, a replacement can show up on the spot.  Also, sometimes a "specialist" might be needed for certain missions, so a player might opt to run one of the "backup" PCs instead of their main PC.

The drawback is that players need to spend more time creating characters.  Luckily, with Classic D&D as a base for my house rules, that doesn't take too awfully long.

What I'll do for XP is this - whichever PC a player uses for a session gets full XP for that session.  All other PCs in the Stable will gain 1/3 of that amount.  Imagine that Player A has four characters in their stable and Player B has only two.  Each selects one of their PCs and they delve the megadungeon successfully, earning 900xp each (to keep the math simple for the demonstration).  Player A has three characters in reserve, each of whom will receive 300xp.  Player B only has one reserve character, who also receives 300xp.  Let's call it "downtime XP."  Fairly simple.

Like I said yesterday, I plan to use an XP Bank.  If a PC dies, all the XP that character earned up until death goes into the Bank.  If a PC gets hit by an energy drain attack and loses XP, again it goes into the Bank. 

The main purpose of the Bank is to be able to create replacement PCs that won't be too far behind the other characters in a party.  Also, I feel that players earn XP, they should be entitled to keep it.  When a player adds a new PC to their stable (one with 0XP), they can withdraw as much of their banked XP as they wish to give to the new PC.  Yes, that means a player with a lot of banked XP might be able to create a replacement of a higher level than the one that was lost.  So be it, they earned all that XP previously.

Now, things get a little tricky when factoring in our group's practice of awarding 100xp bonuses for pictures or session reports.  With my Bank idea, doing these things would be the only way to transfer banked XP to an already active character (one with 1xp or more).  Using the above example, Player A draws three pictures of the adventure.  The PC that Player A used earns a 300xp bonus.  Player A could choose to distribute up to 300 banked XP to each of the three reserve PCs.  But let's say Player A only has 500xp in the bank.  Then he can, if he wishes, divide that 500xp among the three reserve PCs as he wishes, or leave it in the bank.

One final note - bonus XP from pictures, and Bank withdrawals, will not gain any Prime Requisite bonuses.  The 1/3 granted to backup PCs from an active PC should be calculated before that PC's Prime Requisite bonus, if any.  If any backup PCs get a PR bonus, they gain the bonus on the "downtime XP."

Hopefully that all makes more sense.  But I have a feeling I went on a ramble.


*Today, I'm feeling maybe 5 is too many.  I may limit it to three or four.  I'm still working out the details of how I want to run this thing.

Are you experienced?

Rethinking how I want to handle XP, stables of characters, and loss from energy drain in my Megadungeon campaign, and maybe other games in the future as well.

First off, I don't want to change the whole way XP is handled in D&D.  I like getting and awarding some XP for monsters defeated and some for treasure acquired.  I've been using the OD&D 100xp per HD for monsters so far, but I am considering going back to BECMI standards for that to encourage more clever approaches to monster encounters.

I originally tried out the 100xp per HD as a way to speed up advancement, since we're all adults, we don't play as often as we used to, and stuff like that.  But it did have the unwanted consequence (to me anyway) that players can benefit a lot just by monster hunting.  I know lots of DMs that complain about the ridiculous amounts of loot PCs get in standard D&D play, but I actually want to encourage that!  I like the whole "build a castle and carve out a dominion" end-game of D&D, and for that PCs need ridiculous amounts of gold and jewels wrested from the bloody remains of eldritch horrors (or stolen when said horrors were looking the other way).

The main thing I'm thinking of modifying, though, is how players deal with their XP.  My idea is to create an XP Bank for each player in the campaign.  If a character dies or gets level drained*, the lost XP goes into the bank.  When they create a new character, they can withdraw as much of the XP as they want from the bank to create a new PC.  So players will never lose earned XP.

I also want to codify how we deal with alternate/backup PCs, FLAILSNAILS PCs dropping in from other realms, and the like.  Right now I don't really have any hard and fast rules for this.

What I will propose is that in the campaign a player can have up to 5 active PCs.  This can include FLAILSNAILS characters from other games.  When a PC in the stable gains XP, one third of the amount is awarded to each alternate. 

In addition, when a player draws a picture, writes up a session report, or something similar, we've been giving 100xp bonuses.  This will go to the PC that participated in the session related to the work.  If the player desires, they can deduct 100xp from the bank for any alternate PCs at this time.  This is the only way a character that has more than 0XP can benefit from the Bank.  Otherwise, Banked XP can only go to new, unplayed, replacement characters.

*My current house rule on Energy Drain is that a drained character loses attack bonuses and saving throws (if they drop below one of the threshold levels), spell casting, and Thief Skills, Turn Undead, or whatever.  HOWEVER, they keep their hit point total, and as they regain levels, they don't roll for new HP until they exceed their old level.  So if your 8th level PC gets hit by a Vampire, they lose XP and act as a 6th level character but with the hit points of an 8th level character.  They don't gain hit points upon regaining 7th and 8th levels but do gain hit points again at 9th level.

And with the new rules, that XP will go to the Bank, meaning a new character can be made using that XP to avoid endless low level play.

An alternate way to earn experience?

Just a thought I had while walking from work to a private lesson this evening.

Monster XP in D&D could be factored in such a way that there would be a combat XP total for defeating the monsters, and a non-combat XP total for outwitting or successfully negotiating with the monsters.

Proposed idea for combat XP:

Monster's hit points x maximum possible amount of damage in a round

Proposed idea for non-combat XP:

Monster's Int x Hit Dice

Of course, this is just off the top of my head, and doesn't yet factor in such special attacks as poison or energy drain or paralyzing touches.  But it does make dragons and other creatures with similar attacks like storm giants quite choice prizes, as their combat XP would be their hit points squared.  For lower level adventurers, low hit die creatures with multiple attacks again offer the biggest rewards, but also the most danger (bears, with their bear hug ability, would give choice XP awards, for example).

And the non-combat XP means that outwitting a T-Rex gets you a little bit of XP, while outwitting a lich gets a lot more XP.  Outwitting rewards are small, but could be earned any number of times, as long as the party is able to continue outsmarting their opponents.  And for a game where the DM wanted more XP to come from clever thinking than hacking and slashing, they could add a multiplier to the non-combat XP formula (total x10 or whatever), or change it to Int x Hit Points.  Of course, the down side (for those without a system that gives monster Int scores) is that Int scores need to be determined for all monsters.

It would be a bit more work for a DM than in Classic D&D, but compared to AD&D, where hit points need to be added to the base value and whatnot, it might actually be easier.  The numbers might not scale well, though.  Haven't done the math yet.  But the idea seems promising.

Being lazy, though, I may institute the second part for my games, since I have the RC which gives an Int score for each creature, and general Int levels are given in the AD&D Monster Manual, but keep the normal awards for combat.

The Pace of Advancement.

The other day, Justin asked how many sessions we had played of his Vaults of Ur campaign. He thought it was around nine.  I checked my write-ups of the adventures. There have been seventeen sessions (I missed the very first one). 
In that time, Thidrek has advanced to 4th level. He had his first outing as a Sleestak Hero last game.  Very Elder Karl is also 4th level.  Ripper the Orc is 3rd and approaching 4th (Jeremy lost some hard earned XP through unfortunate PC deaths). 
The game is rather treasure poor, but Justin allows us up to 300 bonus XP per session for pictures and play reports. Without the bonus XP, Thidrek would only just be hitting 3rd level. The pace seems good to me, though. Having played in some faster advancing games (3E or Pathfinder), I can honestly say I like this slower speed. It gives us more time to develop our PCs.  Leveling up also feels like an achievement, rather than an entitlement.

Next, please...

Yes, please read the title of this post as either eagerly enthusiastic or sarcastically uninterested depending on your feelings about the upcoming new edition of the game.

I still feel this is the worst title ever.  I'm not super thrilled about what I've seen in the first release playtest packet.  But it looks interesting enough that I'm going to run a session of it on G+ this Saturday night (Korea time, Saturday morning in North America).  The rules seem simple and fairly intuitive for someone like me who has played plenty of 3E and other d20 System games.  I'm likely to forget some of the 4E style tactical special maneuvers of the monsters, but oh well.

I'm going to make only a few small changes when we play.  As Jeremy/Oxide pointed out, they list heavy crossbows as being modified by Strength, not Dexterity.  Huh?  The mechanical advantage of the crossbow is all about making the user's strength not part of the equation, unlike with a longbow (making bows Str or Dex, like the finesse weapons, might not be a bad idea). 

Secondly, a few numbers don't add up.  The Dwarven Cleric of Moradin has chainmail (AC 15), a heavy shield (AC +2), and a -1 Dex.  Yet he's listed as having an 18 AC.  Even if you interpret the rule that says heavy armors aren't modified by Dex and it removes the penalty (I've seen crazy justifications that it "prevents" you from moving into the wrong spot like some sort of Mr. Bean short), it should only be AC 17.  I'll likely drop it down to 16, though, just because I don't think heavy armor should make you better at dodging a blow than you are when you're unarmored.

Finally, I'll offer XP for treasure.  There sure isn't a lot of treasure, though.  Then again, PCs don't need all that much to level up.  I'm thinking though, I'll give 1XP per 1sp worth of treasure recovered.  That way they've got a chance to see level 2.

And to wrap up this blog post, continuing with the idea of XP.  Experience points reward what the designers (or dungeon masters) think the players should be doing.  3E and 4E primarily offer XP for combat.  So far, the Next playtest document also only awards XP for combat (yes, Mearls has mentioned XP for treasure, interaction, story awards, and what not).  The subtle implication to players then, is that you should kill everything that moves if you want to level up.  Yet there's also this power creep in PCs because of the fear of combat.  Everyone wants to get into a fight, no one wants to die.  It's really bizarre.  Not a new observation, but one that percolated up into my brain again as I was pondering XP for the 5E Caves of Chaos.

Anyway, mission for today: name the various humanoid tribes, their leaders, and the important NPCs at the Keep.  Then write up my own rumors list to give out to the players.

Blending Alignment and Treasure Hunting

Building off of my last post, and Jaap de Goede's comment on it, I started thinking back to my earlier breakdown of Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic as the conflict between civilization and the forces that would destroy it.

Hunting for treasure is not in and of itself anti-heroic. 

XP for treasure is a simple way to include "story" awards in D&D.  Too much treasure kicking around the campaign can be a problem for certain styles of game.

Alignment can be problematic, but the simpler version of Classic D&D works for me.

Taking all of the above together, let's combine my ideas on alignment with the Dave Arneson houserule that you only gain XP for 'frittering away treasure on hookers and blow.'

• Lawful characters, being concerned with advancing Civilization, only gain XP for donating their treasure to some agent of Order and Civilization.  This could be their liege lord, the Thieves' Guild, a temple or church, the Tower of Magery, a museum, local charities, and the like.
• Neutral characters, being concerned with their own interests first, only gain XP for wasting their treasure on some hobby, or their own pleasure (the standard Arneson rule, in other words).
• Chaotic characters, being concerned with halting and reversing Civilization, only gain XP for destroying or hiding treasure in some way.  And it has to be gone in a way that it's not likely to come back soon.  Sinking a treasure ship before raiding the hold, dumping coins down bottomless pits, crushing gems to powder, melting down jewelry, using alchemy to turn gold into lead, or feeding it to a powerful dragon all count.  Simply burying it in the woods pirate style to dig up later doesn't.

XP for Outwitting

In my post about XP for HD last night, my buddy Josh makes a good point in the comments.

My goal of increasing XP per HD at the low end of the scale was not to increase the value of fighting (so you only need to kill 20 orcs to level up instead of 400), but to increase the speed of leveling.

My preferred style of play is to encourage creative ways to get the treasure without resorting to combat more than it's necessary.  So why not stick to the original XP values for combat, but institute XP awards for outwitting/outmaneuvering/trapping monsters than killing them?

Of course, in this case, I'd not want to give XP for the combat prowess of the monster, which is what XP per HD (bonuses for special abilities) does.

Taking a look at AD&D's descriptive levels of monster intelligence, it wouldn't be hard to institute something like this:

Nonintelligent--0 xp
Animal Intelligence--25 xp
Semi-Intelligent--50 xp
Low Intelligence--100 xp
Average Intelligence--200 xp
Very Intelligent--500 xp
Highly Intelligent--1000 xp
Exceptionally Intelligent--2000 xp
Genius--3000 xp
Supra-Genius--4000 xp
Godlike Intelligence--5000 xp

Of course, these would be awarded per group, not per individual outwitted.

Other useful side effects would include more XP for using a Sleep spell but not slitting throats immediately after, making me as a DM pay much more attention to the Int. level of all monsters when I roleplay them, allowing more ways for the Thief to shine, and giving more reasons for M-Us to memorize non-combat spells.

The downside?  Big HD but low intelligence creatures.  If you're out for XP, why try to outwit the 20HD T-Rex (other than to avoid its terrible bite and almost guaranteed chance to hit each round) if outsmarting it is only worth 25 xp? 

I'll need to think about this a bit more before implementing it, obviously, but it may be a step in the right direction.

Revising the XP per HD tables

So two years ago, when I started compiling my own version of the Classic D&D monsters to be able to print out and use in my games, I decided to use the original OD&D version of XP per hit die, 100 per.  For special ability bonuses, I used a straight +50.  This is nice and simple, and allows low to mid-level characters to rise in power faster.  For me, playing as rarely as I do anymore, that's a good thing.  Yes, it makes combat more lucrative, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that high level monsters can get devalued.  Monsters without special abilities aren't much different after 9 hit dice, but those special ability bonuses get big fast.

So in order to increase the value of powerful monsters with special abilities a bit, I'm considering the following:

Less than 1 hit die: 50xp, bonus 25xp
1 full hit die or more: 100xp per hit die base
1 to 5 hit dice: bonus +50xp
6-10 hit dice: bonus +100xp
11-15 hit dice: bonus +250xp
16+hit dice: bonus +500xp

Bonuses are counted for any asterisk after hit dice or the monster's name (only hit by magic weapons), and for any bonus hit points on top of hit dice.  So a hobgoblin, 1+1 hit dice, is worth 150xp. 

It's still a lot lower than the normal tables, though.  I may increase it further after I think about it a bit more.

I'd rather not have monsters more valuable to fight when PCs are most vulnerable, and less valuable to fight when they actually may stand a chance (or can more easily bring those fallen back).

Playstyle and Mechanics--there's the rub

Yesterday there were a series of very interesting posts by Carl at Backstage Pass: A DM's Secrets.  The basic gist is that Carl and Carter of The Lands of Ara played a 4E game.  Carter didn't enjoy the experience, but Carl contends that the fault is not so much in the way his game was run, but in Carter's lack of interest in digesting 4E rules.

Carl contends that with sufficient 'mastery' of a game system, then any group can play any game "old school" or "new school" style.  System matters, but only so much that everyone playing should know that system.

Now I agree that any group can play just about any RPG in just about any style.  But I'm not sure that I agree that this is as easy as Carl thinks it is.  Sometimes, I feel, the system encourages one playstyle over another.  And it's not simply linked to a rules heavy/rules light dichotomy.  Or a detailed/simple character generation system.

I feel that the system's reward system is also a big factor. A system that rewards teamwork and creative thinking when tackling puzzles will naturally play differently than a system that rewards success in combat by any means, fair or foul.  A system that rewards repeated skill use regardless of context will play differently than a system that rewards you for completing story goals.

Now, any DM and group of players can play against type, and do it successfully, if, as Carl contends, everyone knows the system well enough.  But in my eyes, getting that level of system mastery is a lot easier with something like BX/BECMI D&D than it is with 3E/4E D&D.  (AD&D is somewhere in the middle.)

Anyway, I think this is an important discussion, so I wanted to let others know it's going on.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle that dungeon!

Last night I finished up my map for the 4th level of the Megadungeon.  I recycled a few other dungeon maps that I could fit together easily with a bit of slight modification only, and drew one page of natural caverns for a quick and easy 4 sheets of graph paper level (plus a small sub-level tacked on to one side).

I'm thinking this will take me forever to get it all stocked, and it's only 4 levels.  Don't worry, though, Old School fans, I'll just take my time, persevere, and eventually get this thing worked out.  Most likely as soon as I've got players going through what I've already worked out, keeping just ahead of them.

Thinking about the overall layout of the place, though, I think after level 5 I'll start shrinking the levels down again, so the overall shape is like a diamond.  I was originally of the opinion that each level should have about 3-4 times the amount of XP that an average party (5-6 characters of various classes) would need to level up.  That way, they could still have things to explore after that level up (when they could venture deeper).  Also, when characters die, there would still be plenty of loot left for leveling up replacements.

At the higher levels, though, characters don't stay dead as much, and also they're likely to be doing some explorations in the wilderness (I don't think I could run a standard campaign without throwing in a trip or two to the Isle of Dread, for example).  So they won't need to get all of their XP from the Megadungeon.

So the lowest levels likely don't need to be so big, they just need to be fairly epic.  It might not make much sense to have a small level packed to the gills with dragons, balrogs, vampires, and giants, but well, we'll see when we get there.  Besides, if it can work in games like Ultima and Wizardry, I'm sure I can get it to work in D&D.

Have your cake and eat it too?

Just a quick thought.  Lots of old school folks (and maybe some new schoolers too?) like the idea of GP=XP, as it spurs exploration and treasure hunting.  Lots of old school folks dislike the idea that adventurers end up with literally tons and tons of gold by the time they hit name level (in my experience, the new schoolers have long since converted all that cash to magic items as they go).

So why not keep the standard XP for treasure brought successfully out of the dungeon, AND use the Arneson carousing rules, where you get XP for any monies wasted in drinking and wenching, or donated to a worthy cause, etc.? 

It provides the players a bit more control over how fast they level up, gets rid of excess gold from the game, and speeds up advancement for groups that only meet every so often, as many of us on adult schedules do.

Zero Sum Gaming Redux

Thinking about my post, and the comments I received, I came to this conclusion, which I think states my point a bit more succinctly.

TSR D&D has an unstated but implied 'goal' of the game--exploration.  Leveling up is a reward within the game, but not the main point of playing.  Leveling up helps you with exploration, but careful play at low levels will result in successful exploration without levels.

WotC D&D has an unstated but heavily implied 'goal' of the game--leveling up.  Exploration results in some rewards, but it's not the main point of playing.  Gaining that next level so you can continue your 'character build' is the point.

I think that boils it down to the essence.  3E and 4E are about the metagame exercises.  That's where the fun supposedly lies.  That's why you don't need a sense of advancement or greater power as you level up, because what they think is fun is deciding how to customize and improve your character as you level.  It's about the destination rather than the journey. 

Lots of people like that.  I'm not one of them.

Older editions are about the journey.  How you get there is where the fun is, and the rewards are just that--rewards, not a goal unto itself.

I think this ties in with my earlier posts about XP for activities outside of combat, and character motivations, and all that.  Also, with my idea that the 'special abilities' of most high level characters ARE their magic items--the rewards of exploration in game, assuming most old school campaigns don't have magic shops in every town.

Hmmm, my nice simple post to clarify things now turns into something I need to think about a bit more...