Old RPG Words That Make No Sense

Progress in RPG design and play is held back by the words we use that don't make any sense.

Hit Points.

So many RPGs have some version of "hit points" whether it's called hits, hit points, health, vitality, or whatever, it is expressed as a representation of how much damage a character can take. Video games have copied this idea for years, and you see your little digital bonhomme getting wailed on while a bar or a number  of hit points gets smaller. Why not? It's there in the name, right? Hit points, those are points you use up getting hit, right?

Someone is hoping the undead giant is almost out of hit points

Except it's not right. Not really. Hit points have almost always been an abstraction expressing something else entirely. I've talked about the problem of damage before, but in terms of Dungeons & Dragons and many games using hit points, there is no damage until the hit points are gone. Hit points represent the ability of a character to postpone the inevitable through skill, experience, luck, or script immunity. They represent an ability for a hero to keep fighting when everyone else would be done. They are more a measure of endurance than damage capacity.

This idea is further confused by the old-school rates of healing where characters only got one hit point back per day of resting. Something ridiculous when characters can easily get to a place where they have 20 or 30 hit points. If they are healing, then they must have been hurt, right? Except that is not how it works. A character is just as effective at one hit point as they are at full hit points. Because they are not hurt unless they are at zero! In the old days if your character went below zero they were dead! Not just wounded, but killed. Luck finally caught up with them and took her due. It wasn't long before rules developed for going into negatives where a risk was involved, but not immediate death.

Fast forward to the last few years. Two different innovations double down on the idea of hit points as an abstract that expresses endurance. The first is the death and dismemberment tables that came out of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) Blogs. The idea was if your character went below zero hit points they had been wounded and could be badly hurt or even dead. Rolling on the tables got you a result that your character had to live with. Maybe they lost a limb, or an eye, and it had ongoing mechanical effect on the character. After a while they could look pretty rough. Eventually a character could even be forced into retirement by accumulating too many, "old war wounds." I'm a big fan of the death and dismemberment tables. Partially because they reinforce the concept of how things work, but also because they add a real element of risk to fighting to your last. Players with characters who can be brought around in a moment to fighting condition with no consequence are not going to have any good reason to surrender, if there is no consequence to negative hit points. The idea that the table might give them a reason to play as if getting wounded is something to be afraid of encourages more realistic role playing.

Oops! You interrupted her short rest.
What's the worst that could happen?

The other innovation is the idea of short and long rests. I think the first game I saw this idea in was Barbarians of Lemuria, where a few hit points could be recovered by taking a breather and a quick drink and full recovery required night's rest. This same approach made it into a few different small press games, and the latest edition (the so-called 5th edition) of D&D. By explicitly recovering hit points through short and long rests the D&D, and any other RPG, rules are making hit points endurance. There is nothing wrong with this approach. I like it. It's cinematic and makes for high-speed pulp-fiction action! That's all great! It allows players to accomplish more by giving them more significant choices about how they use the two resources they have, time and hit points.

The problem is the thing is still called, "hit points," and we generate them by rolling, "hit dice," when these two things are expressions of endurance. It doesn't really matter where the name hit point came from. It may be a hold-over from the war games the designers of the early versions of D&D were playing and using to inform their first RPGs. Maybe someone thought it sounded cool. The fact is, it doesn't fit and is actually misleading. All the grognards and legacy players are already composing their comments about how wrong I am and how the word doesn't matter because obviously we all know what it means.

Except we don't. Many players think the fast recovery of hit points through rest is unrealistic because you can't walk of a sword thrust to the abdomen. If we expressed it as endurance and described combat with point loss as close calls, bangs, jams, bruises, and numbness in the limbs it would be easier to get more people all in on the concept. The other problem is new players. RPGs have exploded, in no small part to the efforts of Wizards of the Coast to make D&D accessible and easy to grasp. Words like hit points get in the way of that because they suggest the character is getting hit when they lose hit points. Why set them up to fail? Why not call it what it is? Because of tradition? Meh, there are more new players now than ever before. Because someone can tell them? People are learning to play from the books and watching actual play on you tube. Terms matter in both of these cases because that is how the new players will interpret what is happening in the game. I'm not the first to come to this conclusion. The Neo-Classical Geek Revival (NGR) fantasy RPG has used the term "Luck" for these points for years.

Someone is rolling on the death and dismemberment table!

The waters are muddied further by the idea of weapon damage. When D&D was first created, almost everything on two legs had single digit hit points. Humans were all assumed to be zero level with, at most, three hit points. That means that first hit was probably taking them down. A dagger could do it, but a two-handed sword had a better chance of ending a generic cultist or town guard in one shot. Fighting fantastic monsters the assumption was they were magical or huge beasts that could actually be hit more than once with little effect. Calling it hit points under those circumstances could have made sense to the people running and playing those first games. It might even still make sense to call the ability of a dragon to keep fighting hit points now. I'll concede that point. Still, for the sake of having a consistent expression it is better to have magical creatures with endurance than characters with hit points for the reasons I outlined above.

So if a weapon doesn't do damage to a character, what does it do? The way I run it at my table is attacks remove hit points. no one takes damage until they go down. Monsters snarl in pain at flesh wounds, enemy shields buckle under the assault, or they are beaten back as they lose their hit points. I've run it like that for a couple of years now. For example, "Your shield arm is still vibrating from the blow and you lose (rattle-rattle) four hit points." It seems cleaner to move this to something like, "Sparks fly as the bugbear's axe crashes against your sword and you stumble back a step. You lose (rattle-rattle) 7 endurance."

It's visceral, it keeps everyone in the fiction, and it shows the player what they still have in the tank to finish the fight. Then they choose how far to take it. Can they push through and find a place to hole up for long enough to get their wind back? Has the alarm gone up and they are facing a running fight until they can win or get out? Endurance is no less exciting, or dangerous with the addition of a death and dismemberment table. It's also still all close enough that converting old modules and third party adventures on the fly should be no problem for a referee/game master.

I run a hugely modified version of the original Black Hack rules. I call the threat to endurance, "attack dice," and it seems to work well. The attack die represents the combat ability of a given character or monster when they attack. It's logical, accurate, and it works well in play. I like to run for new people and experienced players alike. Everyone seems to like it so far.

Belkar Bitterleaf, of the Order of the Stick

These old words, hit points, have the baggage of old assumptions based on their wargaming routes and new assumptions based on what the words mean. For ease of adoption of current gamers, the words are used. They are a short hand that no one will question. Because no one questions the short hard, the baggage follows us to new games that arguably, would be better off without them. There are a host of D&D clones and D&D-ish games out there thanks to the Open Gaming License. These new and different games all put some kind of a spin on the tabletop RPG experience. The publishers of D&D might fear losing their current base by changing too much, but small press publishers have more freedom to break new ground. That's why most of the best innovations in game mechanics, campaign settings and game art come from the small press publishers.

If we take advantage of this freedom, and we dump hit points, hit dice, and damage, what is next? What other words make no sense? Levels, maybe? There are character class levels, spell levels, dungeon levels... How many different things do we need to describe with the same word?

Character level seems sacrosanct. The concept of leveling up is ingrained in western culture thanks to video games borrowing their framework from D&D.  If characters get levels, then everything else needs to find a better word.

Dungeons could be described in terms of floors: Floor one, two, etc. That makes sense and translates well enough to real experience. I don't go to an office on the fifth level of the building, I go to the fifth floor. This seems easy enough to change and will not make it more confusing, at least.

When we talk about spells, we are talking about power. Each level a magic wielding character ascends gives them access to more spell casting power. If spells were described in terms of power, it would make more sense for a level five wizard to finally gain access to power three spells like fireball! Power one, power two... or is it first power spells, second power spells, etc? Regardless, power is a suitable replacement.

As designers and runners of games, many of us do our best to trim the fat of game mechanics so our games run fast and smooth. We should be doing the same with the terminology. If we don't we are leaving a barrier in place for no reason other than that's the way it has always been done without asking if it's the best way to do it.

I'll be trying these out in in my home game and any D&D type games I run online this summer. I'll see how it works out. If you try it, let me know how it works for you. Does it change anything?

What?
I have the Warrior Princess Prestige Class so these arrows used up temporary hit points.
I'm still at full HP!

Review: UVG - the Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City

With all the awesome things released this year it blows my mind that one I will use first is both free and, according to its author, incomplete.

Luka Rejec released an introductory version of the "Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City" last week. It's a 78 page point crawl with only one location fleshed out. According to Luka's Patreon, the complete version will be released in August of this year. While I'm looking forward to it, this teaser version has plenty to offer.

The cover by Luka Rejec

At long last, WONDER!

I downloaded UVG for the artwork. Luka's work has a way of expressing a great deal of detail and movement with a few simple lines. It reminds of the work of Jean Giraud, A.K.A. Moebius, while showing me something new and original. His work carries a sense of wonder and the fantastic while not settling in any particular genre. I am a fan.

"The Rusty Arc" by Luka Rejec

The Ultraviolet Grasslands leans into this same aesthetic. Luka is is upfront about the influence of the Dying Earth and psychedelic heavy metal on the setting/adventure. The sense of an ancient world, full of sorcery and super-science haunted by the, "long ago," is carried through the adventure's descriptions of the rotting technological remains, strange locations and local inhabitants. 

The new creatures and cultures introduced by the book add to the strangeness with a light touch. Each group, from humans to para-humans, has a brief description and then a table of rumours you can build your campaign's version of them from. Randomly generating the true and false features of these para-humans helps preserve that sense of uncertainty in the unknown and doubles down on the exploration theme of a fantasy RPG. It reminds me a bit of how Traveller's 76 Patrons was set up with a single premise or set of characters with multiple details on a table under each. It allows for the whole thing to be used more than once and be surprising for both the referee and the players.

UVG captures the wonder that the small press RPG community seems to be reaching for recently. It is exactly what I've been looking for. Judging by the sudden addition of Patreons since last week's release, I'm not alone.

"Tower and Hill" by Luka Rejec

Innovation!

It seems like almost every notable small press RPG release from the DIY D&D and OSR communities has some sort of game-changing innovation. UVG certainly delivers in this area. Luka created some new rules for travel which simplify encumbrance and travel while still making them work in a new way. His ambition was to convey both the vast size of the adventure area and the danger of travel through his weird savanna. I'll know for sure once I incorporate it into my regular game, but from reading it, I'd say he succeeds. Besides that success, he also creates a rules-light system for speculative trade that reminds me of Classic Traveller. The simplicity of Luka's system gives the players real choices about how much cargo to carry versus supplies, how large to make their caravan, and even what form of transport and retainers to use. All of these choices have an impact on the speed of travel, potential for encounters and even the likelihood of starving to death. Things like caravan speed and visibility also change the chances of starving and having an encounter.

Hacking up Treasure for UVG - Luka Rejec

I like the switch from days as a unit of time for travel to weeks. It helps to create the sense of isolation in the wilderness when there is only one encounter rolled per week. The party is on its own so they better have what they need. 

Because space and weight are issues that can kill a party, treasure can't always be hauled away with ease. Because of this feature, there are rules for hacking up the treasure for the best bits. This form of looting does terrible damage to these finds, turning the party into vandals, but it allows them to make choices about how they want to deal with large pieces of treasure.

While the UVG is a sandbox filled with all kinds of creatures and points of interest, the distance is the biggest enemy that needs to be faced. I enjoy this feeling of the vast openness as an opponent and can do a lot with it. It certainly marks this adventure as something special and reminds me a bit of how the darkness is handled in Veins of the Earth.

I like how once there is trouble, or something to explore, we return to shorter time units, from days for starvation, down to seconds for combat. It's a way of narrowing the focus and placing the players into the context of the current size of the environment they are interacting with. I'm looking forward to saying things like: "Four days into the second week you see movement on the horizon..."

Luka Rejec's Caravan Record Sheet for UVG makes tracking the new important bits easier!

How does it work?

Luka describes it as a rules-light, RPG point crawl and it is that, but it is clearly set up with some version of 5th edition D&D in mind. The saves reference the six classic statistics. Also the rolls for success use a roll high verses a ladder of target numbers. 

I tend to run a heavily modified hack of the Black Hack so the stat-based saves fit in fine, but the progressive target numbers are a bit harder to work with if you aren't using a skill system. The easiest thing seems to be dividing the stat by three and adding it to the d20 roll, but the most accurate might be to compare how much the check against a stat is made or missed by to the target number ladder. Someone using LotFP might want to multiply skill pips by two and add that amount to the d20 roll.

Despite the few 5e-isms built into the system most things are designed for cross compatibility. Encumbrance and movement rates are simplified when translated into a weekly turn system. All prices are in "cash" so it doesn't matter if you are using a gold piece, silver piece, or tic-tac as the main currency. All the creature and transport descriptions are expressed in terms of hit dice so they will work with any of the D&D editions or clones with minimal work. The weird weapons and items work with minimal conversion as well. 

Another Point of Interest in UVG - Luka Rejec

Basically the innovations are rules light and completely compatible with any system, while the details like weird weapons and armour are mostly expressed in terms of the 5e D&D rules with ascending AC for the armours and weapon terms such as, "finesse," and, "versatile." Any DM/referee using a stripped down "O5R" style rules will not need to convert anything. For the rest, it can be converted or ignored as usual.

The point crawl itself has a series of destinations arranged on the map with the different routes between them marked in how many weeks it usually takes to travel them. There are also spots for placing or generating, "points of interest," near the destinations or off the routes that the party might want to spend some time investigating. These points of interest are investigated in days instead of weeks. There is one sample, but no random generator for the points of interest. You'll need to create those on your own. I expect the full version will have more.

In this introductory version of the UVG, only the first destination, the Violet City is fleshed out. The rest are given a paragraph of description that is enough for anyone looking for inspiration, but leaves a lot of work for the referee to detail. The other locations are available to Luka's Patreon contributors up to #22, The Cage Run, but more are being added all the time. I like it as is. The paragraphs give me enough to work with that I can add details on the fly or make a few tables to generate some points of interest. I might even cannibalize LotFP's Carcosa for some points of interest and other terrors left over from the, "long ago." 

Point of interest from the "Long Ago" - Luka Rejec

UVG! What is it good for?

The sandbox can be used whole hog as described in the adventure and there are plenty of hooks to entice a wide variety of players to enter the Ultraviolet Grasslands. That's my plan.

The rules for hacking up parts of treasure for encumbrance reasons are going to be part of my campaign from the next session onward! 

UVG's rules for overland travel through what is essentially a desert are great! I'll be rolling those into my normal game for long distance travel. The simplicity and presentation of important choices to the players are the perfect tool for me. I may make some modifications for water-based travel so I can keep everything consistent. A new obstacles table is the first thing to create, but the UVG one is a great model!

The rules for trade and even market research could be used in a seafaring campaign or other trade-based adventure. If you spent a long time creating a vast world full of vibrant detail, or you spent a lot of money on supplements of the same, the trade and travel system might be a way to get the party moving around the map so you can use more of it. 

The Para-humans of the different factions in the UVG can easily be lifted and dropped into any fantasy world. There's no reason why the Cat Lords or Porcelain Princes can't be secretly be in charge of Vornhiem, Calimport, Lankhmar, or any home brewed city. 

The art is fantastic and could inspire a kick-ass campaign on its own! Knowing that the art would be awesome is a big part of why I took the time to check this intro UVG out! Without it, I might have waited for the finished product.

Final Thoughts

For a teaser product, the intro version of the Ultraviolet Grasslands is surprisingly complete and usable. The table of contents makes it easy to find specific information. The layout is clean. There are caravan tracking sheets that are well designed to be compatible with the system for the sandbox setting. The point crawl map is made to be printed, written on and used at the table. It is designed to be a tool and I can see it working well for me. The tables for obstacles and bad happenstances are nice details as well. The example of the Violet City is a fine template for fleshing out the other destinations. For a free product, I could not ask for more. It's more than a lot of referees will ever need to run a long campaign. 

It's barely referenced, but elves appear to be an affliction in Luka's campaign that infects the half-elves and turns them into tree-hugging monsters. I have my own horrific version of elves, but I'd love to know more about these ones!

I'd love a little more information about the purple mist. I may have missed it, but other than its change to the sunrise I'm not sure what it does. 

Did I mention the art? The art is great! I printed it out as an A5 booklet in black & white and it all looks great! The muted colours in the PDF set a wonderful tone and help create the feel of the sandbox setting for the adventure.

Even though I'll be incorporating the intro version of UVG into my campaign as a location as soon as I can, I'll definitely pick up the full version once it's available. Hopefully there will be a print version of some kind. Luka's ideas are different enough from mine to add a lot to my game, but still close enough I can use his work with almost no changes. I can just drop the Ultraviolet Grasslands onto the western edge of the map and start giving my players hints and hooks.

There are plenty of NPCs in UVG!

How to get UVG and more from Luka!

If I've peaked your curiousity, there are a few places to go for more: 

You can find the intro version for the PDF on Drive Thru RPG here. I printed it out as a half-letter sized booklet on a laser printer and it works great at that size. I'm torn on my expectations for the size of the final product. I am hoping the final product is A5 for the ease of use at the table, but I also want it to be A4 so the art is bigger!

There's more information on Luka Rejec's Patreon. You can get access to more detailed descriptions of the destinations by contributing as little as a dollar to the patreon. I expect I'll be sign up myself, now that the review is done.

If you are interested in seeing more of Luka's work, his website for his art and writing is here. He has a "rough portfolio" of art here. His art is also featured on his twitter here, and on his Instagram here.

#RPGaDAY 2017 - Day Four

Today's microblog topic, courtesy of #RPGaDAY2017, is the RPG I've played most since August 2016. I've easily played more 5e D&D than any other game in the past year.

I've played in a steady Sunday night game for a a couple of years or more. It's been pretty amazing. I managed to get my Warlock up to 16th level, the highest I've ever managed in 35 years of D&D. The system has adapted well to our dirty tricks under one of the best DMs I've played with. I've played a total of three characters in the campaign, but my Warlock is definitely my favourite. Had I know it would last so long, I might have chosen my class more carefully, but I have no regrets.

I ran 5e D&D campaigns for a couple of new groups of players. Both groups wanted me to specifically run "the new D&D" for them. Mostly because they had bought the books but didn't really understand how to use them. Partially because they wanted to play the new shiny D&D.

Philippe Caza

Outside of that, I've played all kinds of other games, from Marvel FASERIP to the Cypher System. Never as consistently or as long as D&D though.

The latest D&D is a pretty good game. I like the addition of backgrounds. The different types of each class that are chosen between 2nd and 3rd level remind me of the kits from 2nd edition. The feats are no longer overwhelming and merely add some colour to a character. There are enough player facing choices that t's easy for two characters of the same class to be completely different in play. All in all, it's pretty good.

I do find it fiddly at times. I don't like how much I need to consult the books during play, but it's not too bad. It's far more streamlined than the 3rd and 3.X editions. Left to my own devices I would play something more old school, but the best edition of D&D is the edition someone else is willing to run for you.

First Session Report: Journey to the Keep

Last Monday we kicked off our first real session of our new 5e D&D campaign set in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos and the Known World of the BECMI D&D era. A historic night here in Canada for all sorts of reasons but for my players it was their first game ever.

All the good stuff for the first session!

For two people who had never played an RPG before they dove right in and played well. During character generation last time they chose to link their bonds. The Tiefling Monk with the Hermit background learned his monk skills while on his hermitage and it completely changed how he interacted with the world for the better. His hermitage started because he was implicated in one of the scams run by the Elven Rogue with the Charlatan background. The Rogue's bond is guilt over burning the Monk by shifting the blame to him. Thrilled with his new worldview, Traorin (Tray) feels grateful to the Rogue, Ano, for setting him on the right path and he returned to Specularum to help her see the light too. Sadly his return caused problems for Ano, who was in the middle of a Scam at the time and they had to leave the city in a hurry. These background choices helped us get the party moving and give a reason for them to adventure. The party headed north to the Barony of Kelvin but didn't stay long because of the harsh rule of law attitude of the place. They continued north along the Duke's Road to the Barony of Penhaglihon in the Wufwolde Hills. That's where they heard about the Keep on the Borderlands which seemed like a good place to lay low for a while and scam the odd merchant from Darokin.

The pair made friends with a halfing trader named Bobberto Farstrider, who was taking a wagon load of dry goods up to the keep. Bobber was pleasant company who was flattered to be travelling in the company of an exiled elven prince from Alfhiem (Ano's default persona - she's actually a Vyalia wood elf). He happily gave up his tent to make Ano more comfortable while he and Tray slept under the wagon.

Tales of the Scarecrow cover image by Jason Rainville

The magic started when they came upon a ripe cornfield by the side of the road. They knew something was fishy right away since it was early spring and there's no way corn was going to be ready for harvest at that time of year.

Megan, who plays Ano, was not down with the cornfield. She felt her character would see no profit in exploring it and she thought it was a pretty obvious trap.

"This is a frickin people-hunting alien cornfield and it's going to eat us!"

They argued in and out of character with great reasons on both sides. Jeff, playing Tray, wants to explore and check out the strange things and Megan, playing Ano, doesn't want their characters to die in the first session. To break the deadlock, Tray asked the NPC, Bobber, what he thought. Of course the NPC wants you to go down the trail through the unnatural cornfield to the strange farmhouse! Bobber felt adding a few bushels of ripe corn to the wagon would definitely make this a more profitable trip for him and wanted to inquire at the farmhouse they could just barely see from the road.

I'm impressed with these two. Once inside the clearing in the centre of cornfield they did well. They investigated the interior and exterior of the cottage with care. They worked under the assumption that everything would kill them but were still open to possibilities. They were compassionate with the lone survivor in the house and managed to get quite a bit of information out of him because of it. They tried to save him even though they figured out he was cannibalizing his friend.

They lost all the NPCs but managed to come up with a great plan that saved themselves involving the harpsichord and the wagon. They also lost the oxen though, so they left the wagon by the side of the road with a sign warning others away from the field. I was a little worried about inflicting a Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure on brand new gamers, but as scary as they are there is always a way to think yourself out of them. I had been through the Tales of the Scarecrow once before as a player and my character came out of it well ahead. It's just a matter of figuring out how to use what you have. Besides, I gave them extra resources with the merchant and everything in his wagon (that they dumped on the ground for their plan). Turns out I didn't need to worry. They have the natural paranoia necessary to navigate an LotFP adventure.

They took the two books even though they discussed the option of just leaving them there. Both books now link them back to Specularum and I'm hoping I can use them to pull the party into B6 The Veiled Society or some other kind of shenanigans in the big city. They are hoping to sell the books since the receipt they found says they are so valuable.

They kept the Sword Which Is Uncertain, a beautifully crafted magical rapier. The rapier treats all targeted ACs as 14 no matter what armour they have. It also strikes a random target on a modified roll of 16 or 17. I'm thinking of simplifying it to an unmodified roll of 13 or 1. Ano is using it despite the curse because Megan thinks Jeff deserves to get a few random stabbings for dragging them into that cornfield.

The Keep on the Borderlands by Erol Otus

After that they hiked the rest of the way to the Keep, travelling safely and sleeping comfortably in Bobber's tent (one of the few things they were able to keep and still escape).

Once at the Keep they got a room and made friends with a Gnomish Wizard (Abjuration Tradition) who was able to identify and put a value on their loot. Their new friend managed to get close to the Caves of Chaos once, before her party was slaughtered by goblins. She knows vaguely where the Caves are and has agreed to join the party to provide some magic support.

The Tales of the Scarecrow turned out to be a great encounter adventure for the road. They could have driven past with no consequence, but I'm glad they played it out. For new players I wanted them to play a modern adventure before they got stuck into the Caves at the Keep so they'd realize there are all kinds of possibilities and more than one way to play any situation. I was also glad to see they were willing to talk and investigate since that will help them in the Caves of Chaos. They are a small party so they need to be smart.

I enjoyed seeing them get a little more sense of the world as well. Talking to the NPC they learned he was travelling out of the Duchy into the Republic of Darokin and specifically to his home city of Vornheim.

This version is WAY better! Go get one at RPG Cartography!

Next session will be the Caves of Chaos. I'm using the DnD Next conversion from the playtest for the Caves while using B2 for the Keep. I have a beautiful, colour coded map of the Caves of Chaos with the monsters listed in their locations I downloaded from RPG Cartography here. I'll be converting anyone from the Keep on the fly as needed.

It will be interesting to see how they approach the Caves of Chaos. There is a lot going on there, and they could definitely play the different factions off against each other. With a Rogue, a Monk and a Wizard, the party is also light and stealthy. They might be able to do a lot in the Caves with hit and fade tactics. I can't wait to see how they play it!

The gear for the first session:
B2 Keep on the Borderlands, GAZ1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos,
LotFP's Tales of the Scarecrow, the map of the Known World from X1 The Isle of Dread,
 and my little black book of campaign notes.

Starting my new 5e D&D campaign...

"I've always wanted to play D&D and never had the chance."

This phrase implies a barrier to play that I have never known. Based on what I've heard from others I was lucky that no one stopped me because I was too young or doing it wrong or whatever. I don't understand the wall that keeps someone from our silly little hobby but I am happy to cut a hole in it and wave them on through.

Last Monday was full of firsts. It was the first session for my new group. It was my first time running Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. More importantly, it was also the first time ever that my new group played an RPG.

We went with fifth because they have copies of the 5e Players Handbook and wanted to play the latest, greatest version of the world's most popular role playing game. As far as the editions go, fifth edition is probably my favourite. It has a good balance of streamlined rules and extra parts that can be used or not without breaking anything. If I have to run D&D (and for these guys I did) I'd rather run 5e than any of the older versions.

The character building system for 5e really shines with new players. It presents solid choices and each choice leads to another. I found the background section particularly useful. It allowed them to quickly flesh out their characters, giving them a grounding in the world. We ended up using the suggested bonds as inspiration, creating a shared history that bound them together.

(The Gazetteers and old adventures print up into a nice A5 booklet!)

After we got the characters all done I asked them about what they wanted out of the world. For people steeped in the genre like we are, the possibilities are virtually endless. As newcomers they were looking for a "Traditional D&D" experience. They wanted all the D&D stuff like elves, goblins, dwarves and dragons. Intrepid heroes pushing into the uncivilized wilderness to explore forgotten temples in search of adventure and treasure!

As we talked I got a feel for what they wanted and suggested we play in the "Known World" that was used as a backdrop fro the "B" and "X" D&D modules. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos was my introduction to the world of D&D so it's a joy for me to share it with them. It features pockets of civilization stretched across a vast expanse of untamed wilderness full of monsters, ancient ruins and mystery. The open nature of the original setting fits the modern style of sandbox play I prefer and it will give them control over their characters' fates. It also gives me plenty of room to place some of my favourite locations and adventures from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. To give them a balanced experience, I plan to use the better classic adventures like (B2) Keep on the Borderlands along side the best the OSR has to offer like Death Frost Doom. Other play will be stuff of my own and the things that develop out of their decisions. I'm wicked excited about this campaign! I don't know how long it's going to last, but I can keep us going for years!

The group is excited to play the Keep on the Borderlands. Our next game will start with them heading up the Duke's Road from the Barony of Kelvin. Perhaps on the way they'll come across a cornfield that is suspiciously lush for the time of year and investigate. Maybe they won't investigate and I won't get to use Tales of the Scarecrow after all. Who knows?

(Some of the stuff my players could stumble into over the course of the campaign.)

I'm looking forward to leaving trails of rumours and other breadcrumbs to all the corners of the sandbox. The classic modules already have their place in the Duchy so I just need to dust them off (or print them out) and read through them before they get there. That's settled, but the stuff I have from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, especially the older adventures that don't fit the new assumed real-world historical setting, can be placed anywhere.

Some of them are obvious choices. The town of Pembrooktonshire is crying out to be placed on the edge of the Black Peak Mountains north of Threshold. The hidden country of Voivodja (A Red & Pleasant Land) needs to be cradled in the Altan Tepes mountain range. Nestled between the Duchy, the Empire of Thyatis, the Emirate of Ylaruam and the Republic of Darokin, it is well positioned to secretly influence the many countries of the Known World. Rumours of the ruins of the great palace of the vampire lords that ruled Karameikos during the dark age point toward those mountains. There might be stories of gardens full of treasure for anyone brave enough to follow the Volaga river to its source.

Speaking of the Republic of Darokin, Vornheim needs a home. Corunglain, the northernmost city, seems a natural spot. Foreboding and dreary, next to the Broken Lands while sitting astride important trade routes. That's the locale that mixes melancholy and wealth together to produce Vornheim! The mountains that border Darokin and Rockhome is probably the best place for The Hammers of the Gods, an old LotFP adventure centred on the Dwarves. I bought it strictly to find out the big, bad secret of the dwarves. Maybe I'll get to use it and my players will find out too.

The Grinding Gear is another old one, with its goblins and stirges, that could be used as is anywhere around Threshold. Likewise the Black Peak Mountains could hold the little cottage from Death Frost Doom. I think I'll place it near the Lost Valley of the Hutaaka and weave into that story. Still, it might be better in the Altan Tepes Mountains, near the frost giants and Castellan Keep. I have time before I spring that one on them and I can put it pretty much anywhere if I wait until play delivers us a macguffin worth the effort.

The horror-show adventure Forgive Us could fit in any town in the Duchy on a trade route (nearly all of them). The same could be said for Death Love Doom, bu if I use that one it will be on the outskirts of Specularum. That adventure would be a good impetus to get the players to leave the Duchy for a while and head south to the Thanegioth Archipelago and the Isle of Dread (X4) or the Isle of the Unknown. Perhaps they would even go as far as the southern continent to find Qelong. I was going to put Qelong on the western edge of the map, on the other side of the Malpheggi Swamp where the Atruaghin Clans are supposed to be, but I'm thinking that's a better spot for the Slumbering Ursine Dunes (by Chris Kutalik and the Hydra Cooperative).

What I'm really going to have fun with is the God that Crawls. It can be placed in any remote location but instead of St. Augustine of Cantebury as the cursed monster prowling the maze it could be Halav, the first king and saviour of Traladara. Gnoll warlocks could have captured him after their defeat and used a ritual to transform him into the crawling monster. Zirchev would have captured him and placed him in the holding place for the cursed Blackmoor artefacts for everyone's safety. Petra built the original Traladaran temple on top of the maze so Halav could be cared for. That's probably the easiest way to work the adventure into the setting. The secret would not undermine the Church of Traladara if it got out because it only increases the suffering of Halav for his people, but it would completely destroy the Cult of Halav who depend on the idea of the Duke as the reincarnation of Halav. Halav can't be the Duke and a monster at the same time. But if he can be restored he could lead the Traladar back into a golden age. That's something the Thyatian ruling class might want to keep a lid on.

(Inside foldout image from The God That Crawls by Jason Rainville)

I'm hoping to get that one in right after they are done with the Keep on the Borderlands. It would be nice to do it earlier but I'm not sure they will take the bait and head off the Duke's road to some remote village while they have a goal in mind. It will likely depend on how things go in the first encounter.

I'm excited about this hybrid setting! All this material blends well and gives me a lot to work with before we add the influence of the players who may change things as they go knocking bout the world and looking for trouble and making assumptions about how things work. There's no better source for material than the paranoid musings of the players after all.

The rush of ideas came after I printed out the old Gazetteer for the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. I wanted to read through it to give the Keep a world to have a place in. The more of these old Gazetteer PDFs I read the more I am impressed with the Known World setting. It has its own rich history and intrigues but nothing is so important that it can't be tweaked or changed to taste.

My big challenge will be adapting the experience awards in the adventures to suit 5e. I'm reading through my new DMG in the hopes that I can figure out a fair way to assign experience since the adventures I'm using where designed to use treasure as the main source of XP rather than the conflict. I'm hoping there's something in there like the old Palladium System had or the 2e optional experience system that rewarded good ideas, RP and problem solving. If not, I'll come up with something based on what I've done in the past, test it out and we'll have an exciting blog post about experience points in 5e D&D!

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend here in Canada we won't have another session for a week-and-a-half. You can expect a session report sometime after that. Good or bad, I'll be talking about it.

New PC Race for 5e D&D: The Greenwalker

In my last post I outlined the races available for play in my home setting of the Last World. I received some negative feedback about two of the choices being uplifted animals. The derogative "furries" was tossed around a bit as well.

The two types are important to the setting background as they demonstrate the decline of the kobolds' biomancy. They are the last, stable servant-races created by the kobolds. They are also, rather poor genetic constructions that are nothing more than well-done hybrids. The first servant races the kobolds of the Last World created out of their enemies' genetic potential were completely new creatures that bore so little resemblance to the original gene seed that no one would ever have guessed the truth of their origins.

I had originally included the Ferl as NPC monster types but when I was looking at my list of playable races I realised I had no big-strong-hit-things type. I included the Ferl to cover off that spot. Fortunately for me the solution to the Ferl is a simple one. I just dip into the weird monster list of the Last World and find something that is playable. Here is something different for your 5e D&D game.

The Greenwalkers

The Greenwalkers are not a race, so much as a growth stage of the trees that make up the Bloodwood Groves. Bloodwood Groves are groups of trees from a small copse to a forest. In times of drought or emergency they can uproot themselves and move. They split their lower trunks into two or three "legs" and batter their opponents with their branches. Once their foes are killed or knocked prone they will extend roots into the bodies of the fallen and drain all the blood from them. They can move the forest and sometimes hunt by hiking trails and roads, forcing travellers into unending circles where they are hopelessly lost. After that, it's just a matter of waiting for them to make camp. The Bloodwood don't move much or often because it is taxing for them. They mostly stay stationary and push their roots deep so they can enjoy the stillness and share stories with the others in the Bloodwood. They tend to be most dangerous during droughts, floods or forest fires which require them to move great distances. For this they will need to consume a lot of nutrients (blood) from wandering meat-things.

[Anthony Francisco, Ubermonster of DeviantArt]

There comes a time in the life of every tree in the Bloodwood Groves where its sap runs fast through its limbs, it loses its leaves in a shower of colours and its bark turns from a rough, hard brown to a thin and supple green. Its lower trunk will split into leg-like appendages and its roots will retract into them. These fast-movers are known as the greenwalkers and they leave the safety of the grove to interact with the fast-world of the meat-things and learn what they can before returning with the stories that will add to the knowledge and experience of the Bloodwood. 

They feed with the retractable roots in their lower trunks. All they do is stand on a fresh corpse, extend their roots into it and draw in the blood to be processed into sap. It takes 4-6 hours to complete on a medium-sized creature and counts as a long rest. To get the effects of a long rest without feeding on blood a greenwalker must extend roots into fertile soil and stand in the sun for 5-8 hours. Regardless, they cannot go without blood for more than a week without suffering from the effects of starvation.

A greenwalker's trunk will be split into two to four leg-like appendages (player's choice), although three is the most common. They have between one and three larger, powerful limbs used for lifting and fighting (again the total is up to the player), but two is normal. They have any number of smaller, thin limbs for fine manipulation spread about their trunk and some will even have a couple on each of the larger limbs. Despite all these limbs, the thought of a tree can only move so fast and they only have the attention to take one action per round like any of the humanoid races.

When planted, Bloodwood trees and Greenwalkers can get a sense of where everything standing/moving within 60 feet of them is. Bloodwood can get even more information from the air using their leaves. These are not practical senses for the fast pace of the meat-word. The greenwalkers all have a series of eye-stocks usually growing to cover all around near the top of their trunk. They are protected by green, petal-like lids and look like green balls at the end of thick, 6-to-18-inch-long stems. They see light in much the same way as humans and other humanoid creatures do. They can see all around them but usually only open enough eyes for a single field of view since processing images from all around is trying. 

All bloodwood communicate with each other using a limited form of telepathy. To speak to meat-things they have grown thin strips under their bark that they can vibrate in various combinations to approximate most humanoid speech, although it sounds like a group of people saying parts of the words together. This can be disconcerting to humanoids the first time they hear it.

Greenwalkers have no mouths, noses or faces. Sometimes for the comfort of their humanoid companions a greenwalker will paint a face on its trunk or fix a mask to it. This practice is as creepy as it sounds.

A greenwalker's growth is slower than a rooted Bloodwood because it is spending so much energy on movement and it will take nearly 80 years for it to grow a mere 12 inches in height. 

With so much extra liquid in their green limbs greenwalkers are no more susceptible to fire or burning than any humanoid.

Ability Score Increase: Strength score is increased by 2, constitution score is increased by 1 and wisdom score is increased by 1.

Age: Depending on the growing seasons where it was rooted for its formative years a greenwalker can be anywhere from 60-110 years at the beginning of its travels. Once they grow into large creatures it begins to take too much blood to keep them supple enough for every-day movement and they will retire to a grove or seed one of their own after 70-120 years of adventuring.

Sex: Greenwalkers are not mature and are expending too much energy to keep up with the meat-world to produce pollen or seed-pods. Once they are rooted again all Bloodwood release both seeds and pollen.

Size: Greenwalkers are tall, standing well over six feet in height. Their trunks are far more dense than an average humanoid body of the same height and weight anywhere from 250-350 pounds. They are medium creatures.

Speed: Base walking speed is 30 feet.

Made of Wood: Have advantage on saving throws against charm, poison and fear. They cannot be put to sleep. They are quite buoyant and have advantage on rolls to swim on the surface of water but have disadvantage when trying to dive under unless weighed down.

Unarmed Attack: Greenwalkers can club with their large limbs for 1d4 bludgeoning damage but this sort of attack is painful. They generally prefer to use weapons produced for humanoids, which they can use with ease.

Tough: Greenwalkers have a base armour class of 12. They can only use armour which has been customized or created for their specific, individual use.

Fast Healers: Provided they can feed on at least a small creature, they heal one extra hit die on a short rest. They can grow back lost limbs and eye-stocks in 1d6 weeks and require an extra medium sized creature's blood for each week on top of normal daily feeding to complete each week's growth.

Can't See the Trees for the Forest: Greenwalkers can attempt to hide even if lightly obscured by natural phenomena such as light foliage, mist and heavy rain. They have advantage on stealth rolls when they need to be still to remain unnoticed. They are naturally good at being still.

No Bandages for Wounded Trees: Traditional healing does not work on a greenwalker. Healing potions applied directly to wounds will work provided the greenwalker makes a constitution saving throw. Magical healing works as normal. 

Languages: A greenwalker can speak any two languages.

Equipment: A greenwalker gains its initial equipment from former greenwalkers who have rooted themselves, offerings made to the grove by travellers and the humanoid victims of the grove. They start with no currency. Any equipment that doesn't make sense (rations, blankets, etc) are not recorded on the character sheet and no monetary value is given for these missing items. This process accounts for the scrounged nature of their initial adventuring gear.

That is the greenwalkers in a nutshell. Something a little different to fill out the party heavyweight position. They'd make a mean rogue too. No one wants to admit they were back-stabbed by a tree!

NOTE: I've since tested this PC race out in play on multiple occasions. From what I saw, the best class fit was barbarian. In practice the special healing positives and negatives balanced out well. The ability to sense the approach of things travelling by ground when rooted made long rests a little safer, but not in a way that broke the game. The party using the floaty character as a life raft in one instance was kind of hilarious.

The Replacement D&D - Part the First! or How to 5e Your LotFP

My Tuesday night Google+ Hangout group is awesome. A better collection of gamers you will not find anywhere on the internet. I count myself lucky to be able to call them my friends and to play with these great people on a regular basis.

We got together originally because our GM wanted to introduce a friend in another state from him to RPGs and put the word out for a group willing to be patient with a new player. The gang we have now are that player (now a fantastic tabletop gamer in her own right), the ones that responded plus a couple more fun people we picked up over the last couple of years. We all have busy lives though and sometimes one or two of us can't make it. It's no problem for the group, even a break of a month doesn't disrupt our rhythm with each other. It never seems like that long once we are talking to each other again. I'm busy too so I always find something to fill the three hours when someone has to cancel at the last minute, but it would be nice to have an RPG plan B.

Currently we are playing the new version of D&D but we've played everything from Rifts to Fate thanks to our gamer ADD. I'm enjoying 5th edition D&D and I'm still excited about exploring the possibilities presented by the new rules.

What I need is to prepare something I can run on the fly with whomever shows up when we get a last minute cancellation. I don't need to be super prepared when it comes to the actual adventure part. That can be built as we go or selected from some of the awesome I have on my shelf. My main problem is I'm not a big fan of the assumed setting for the game so I'd want to make changes ahead of time so there's something I can share with my players during character generation instead of reinventing the game while we decide what we are doing. This and one other coming post are that something.

5e D&D in the Early Modern Era or How to 5e LotFP!

I love the adventures coming out of James Raggi's team of mad geniuses over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I have a pile of them on my shelf and cancelled games from our regular campaign seem like the perfect excuse to use them. I think 5e can work well with those adventures but I need to make a handful of changes to keep the weird fantasy/horror vibe that LotFP does so well.

The first thing is encumbrance. LotFP adventures are all about tough choices and one of those choices are what you can afford to carry and what you need to leave behind. The encumbrance system is a streamlined way of making those choices a feature of play. If you are unaware of the beautiful simplicity of these encumbrance rules, you can download the free rules (with no art) here (but you should buy the version with art!) and turn to page 38. In Lamentations anyone can wear any armour but arcane spellcasters are limited by encumbrance so they can't cast if they are carrying a lot of gear and wearing armour. They can do one or the other. I think I'll just stick with the class restrictions as they are for now but I might change it later we find we prefer it the other way. I would add a feat that allows the PC to carry an extra five items before becoming encumbered like the dwarf class in LotFP. Cultures that are nomadic would be used to moving and functioning normally with extra gear. The player would need to justify it with the PC background.

The next thing is the playable races. There are no elves or hobbits running around in earth history. There are plenty of forgotten spaces hiding terrible things that go bump in the night, but no dragonborn walking around. The only player character race available is human. The players can choose the plus one bonus down all stats or take the two plus ones, the extra skill and the feat. I'm easy. Likewise, the 5e convention of roll four drop the lowest for rolling stats is fine as well since combat is so lethal in 5e. High rolls won't save anyone.

The alignment system is the LotFP duality of Law and Chaos. Almost everyone is Neutral since taking on an alignment means the PC is taking a side in the celestial struggle.

Not all the classes will work as they are with the setting. A few teaks here and there will need to be made.

Barbarian:

This one is fine the way it is but it is important to note that there are no barbarians from London or Hapsburg. These characters come from the frontiers and the fringes. An argument could be made for the highland warriors of Scotland as barbarians and I'd allow that because a maniac in a kilt and a claymore is a wonderful thing. Outside of that one exception, barbarians come from outside of civilized Europe. 

Bard:

They can stay pretty much as they are. They would be need to be careful when using magic as anyone seeing magic cast might turn them in as a witch and have them burned at the stake but that's about it.

Cleric:

No clerics. The LotFP cleric is more like the D&D paladin and I want to keep that feeling in the system. That's not to say the party won't run into NPC cultists who function like clerics from time to time though.

Druid:

The druids are going to have problems operating in early modern Europe without getting burned at the stake as witches and heretics. They would essentially be cults that have remained hidden from Christian Inquisitors and Witch-hunters over the centuries since the Romans killed most of them off. A player could make an argument for shamans from different lands having all the same abilities as druids. 

As far as alignment goes, Druids of the Circle of the Land are Lawful because they are preoccupied with the balance and embody the predicable order of nature while the Circle of the Moon Druids are Chaotic as they protect the wilds from civilization and embody the chaos of nature's changes. 

Fighter:

No change. They load black-powder firearms one round faster than other classes. The Eldritch Knight is only available if the PC finds a book of magic he/she can read or a teacher.

Monk:

No changes to the monk class, but they are likely a long way from home. Some of their abilities could get them burned at the stake at higher levels. 

Paladin:

This class is more of a Solomon Kane type than a shining knight in the early modern era.  These are wild zealots operating outside of the church hierarchy who are tolerated based on the need for them. Troublemakers could end up burned at the stake for heresy on a bad day. Like LotFP Clerics, Paladins are Lawful.

Ranger:

These mystical hunters are also far from home. Europeans had a bad habit of collecting people like souvenirs and bringing them back to Europe. Most died of disease they had no immunity for or culture shock. The ones that survived no longer had a real place in the world they came from even if they could return. Some of them become Rangers. Other rangers are frontiers-people from the New World who have learned from the cultures they mixed with. 

Rogue:

No change. Rogues are rogues. The Arcane Trickster is only available if the PC finds a book of magic he/she can read or a teacher. 

Sorcerer:

The Draconic Bloodline Origin is not available, Sorcerers are from the Wild Magic origin exclusively. Magic is dangerous and feared so the Sorcerer PC must be careful not to be consumed by their own magic or end up burned at the stake. With their magic coming from a direct connection to the very stuff of chaos, sorcerers are Chaotic.

Warlock:

Obviously the Warlock is in great danger of being burned at the stake after trading their soul for power. The dark nature of their spells should be played up in descriptions. The Fiendish and Old One Otherworldly Patrons are better fits for the setting than the Archfey. I'd probably not allow any Archfey Otherworldly Patrons unless the player came up with a great background story to fit it into the setting. This class is already so LotFP. No surprise here, dark pacts with otherworldly beings makes a PC Chaotic.

Wizard:

Remove all the damage-causing cantrips from the wizard spell list. Give them access to simple weapons and light armour. All the levelled spells that use up slots are all still available. This brings the wizards more in line with the Magic User class in LotFP. The Wizard has access to so many different spells this shouldn't stop them from being useful. It might keep them from being burned alive a bit longer too. Still, working with magic makes wizards Chaotic.

Firearms: 

Pistols are simple weapons (take the place of a light crossbow), an Arquebus or Musket are both martial weapons (take the place of the heavy crossbow). The damage is still 1d8, 1d8 and 1d10 respectively (or 1d4, 1d6 and 1d6 when clubbing with them). Because of their penetrating power all firearms have advantage when rolling to hit at short range. They take three full rounds to load when using a prepared load from a bandoleer and four rounds from a horn. The first two bandoleers of "twelve apostles" worn do not count as encumbering items, but every extra one does. A horn holds 50 shots and bag of shot holds 100 balls of ammunition. Matchlock weapons misfire on a D20 to hit roll of 1-4, wheel-locks misfire on a roll of 1-2 and flintlocks on a roll of 1. Misfires make the weapon useless for the rest of combat since it takes several minutes to clean it out and reload it properly.

Money:

Get rid of the electrum. The party may find some, but it's so ancient they can't spend it. They'll need to find a collector or middle-man to buy it from them. The silver standard is also in use in LotFP so convert all D&D pricing from gp to sp and/or use the Lamentations equipment list. I may use historical conversions as well. It depends. Otherwise 1 gp = 10 sp = 1000 cp (so 1 sp = 100 cp). 

With those changes I should have no trouble running my collection of Lamentation of the Flame Princess adventures with my group. Next post - Part the Second where I take things in a different direction...