Taiga Wilderness Random Generator Page Rules & Tables

As near as I can tell, I've completed this page, as part of the random outdoor generator I've been working on.  Added today are rules explaining how "agency" works, as well as an order provided for how the rules are resolved each day.  Anybody wants to weigh in, I'd certainly appreciate any suggestions for things that need clarification.

Sorry about the title, I just wanted it to be very, very, very clear what I'm talking about here.

Readers have every reason to doubt it.  No one has ever built a sustainable, relevant, game-friendly and useful outdoor generator before, so there's no reason to think I've done it.  However, I believe the agency rules are a staggeringly brilliant idea, I believe it makes the wilderness interactive for players, I believe that it provides terrific detail that can be built upon both for the taiga environment and for other environments, and I believe I've done the impossible in just under three weeks.

In any case, I'm in a position to run my two characters in the tutorial again, in which they try to find their way out of the wilderness.  Incidentally, I think this system works just fine for those trying to find their way into the wilderness, and gives rules for stumbling around in the dark looking for the dungeon that's wanted, rather than going straight to it as though the entrance is lit up by neon, even though the players have never, ever, actually been to that dungeon before.

Under these delusions, I'm of course quite happy and insufferably pleased with myself.  Please feel free to throw onions.

Happenstance

Okay, so here we are, with some of the work done.  Those who are interested in "a page full of taxonomic detail" and who have trouble "filling hexes" may find this information about moving through hexes in a taiga environment interesting.

"Happenstance" refers to a single random roll that occurs each day, which yes, incorporates the possibility of a random monster encounter.  Sorry, can't help that, this is still D&D and that's what the monsters are for.  Throughout the content being shown, there are hints and links to as-yet not created content, which I'll get to work on when I'm able over the next few days.  So far, there are nearly 4,000 words written on the page and I feel like patting myself on the back and putting up a post here about it.

"Agency" refers to the last post here that I wrote Sunday.  In addition to these things occurring randomly, most of them can be actively searched for, usually two per day, apart from anything else the players might also want to do that day, such fabricate something or meditate.  This includes trying to find the next hex (basically, "travel"), locate food, locate a nearby river should one exist, this sort of thing.  This is the next portion I'll be working on.

It's a first attempt, and many will argue that it needs "testing," which is patently obvious. This is exactly what I intend to do with it, having Arliss and Bertrand run through it.  I think the larger point is that the randomness is, in fact, irrelevant.  It's a place to go if the DM wants to invent something out of thin air, that applies to this environment.  The randomness only exists because I'm inventing a self-play mechanic for the purpose of teaching my game.

Anyway, I've written lots already today and I'm cutting this short.  Enjoy the link; there will be more content on it soon, perhaps tonight, definitely tomorrow.

Cracking the Encounter Nut

As I try to get my nutcracker around this nut ...

Having invented an initial list of 'contents' for a taiga's wilderness hex, where the players randomly turned out to be, I'm confronted by a glaring problem that's I've met before, though not for some time.  But first, let's list off those contents:

predator, wood for tools, fuel, animal tracks and signs, seasonal camp, monster, drinking water; pond, lake, attract attention with smoke?, humanoid footpath, treacherous ground, grazing animals and other game, detect intelligent presence, animal trail, wildfire, natural shelter, identify sunrise/sunset, artificial light source at night, storm, gathering food, natural landmarks, creek or stream, dungeon, fishing, viewpoint, next hex, shrine; glade, ally; adventurer.  This isn't an exhaustive list; just what I was able to clearly identify last night.

Some of this may be counterintuitive, so briefly — since we're assuming that the players are moving through an area they don't know or maybe can't find their way out of, instead of creating a "get lost" roll, I'm simply adding the next hex over as something the players "discover," in the same way they stumble across a lake or a bear.  Finding an ally or adventurer is simply game play; the likelihood of an actual adventurer stumbling around in the hex with the players is ridiculously low, but for playability sake, we can rate that at, say, 1%.  Because it's fun.  Detect intelligent presence means that the players have just found some object or sign that indicates there's a potentially dangerous and intelligent monster in the area, something uncivilised; this being distinct from the humanoid footpath or seasonable camp, which are things that have been made by civilised persons, but which is presently abandoned.

But the key to this list is this: some of these things are random occurrences, and some of these things are so common that one can't shake a stick without hitting one.  Wood for tools and fuel, for example, or the choice to light a signal fire and attract attention (the roll is meant to indicate a place where this is realistic; obviously, any tree can be lit on fire, to the party's detriment in the long run).  Still other things can be searched for (grazing animals, foraging) while some definitely cannot (storms, wildfire).

Plus, and this is important ... it's an extremely boring hex if we only make one 'contents' roll per day.  An environment such as this cannot be reduced to one thing, even once per day.  As the players move through, they're going to pass over various features; as well, sunrise and sunset are going to occur every day, though not necessarily where they're helpful to the players.  We cannot see where the sun rises if there's a dense pass of 100 ft. trees that blot out visibility beyond a hundred yards.  Thus, this particular "event" is meant to specify that the players happen to be in a place where, yes, they can glimpse the horizon and where the sun comes up, orienting themselves.

If, however, we give four rolls a day, that's four chances that a random monster's going to come up.  We can assess for that by adjusting the chance of a monster from an overall 1 in 6 per roll to, say, 1 in 24 per roll.  But we'd have to do the same for wildfires, storms, grazing animals and so on, drastically reducing the chance of a single die roll producing something interesting.

I have a proposal, but it strikes me as ... hard to organise.  Suppose we accept that there's only one roll chance for all those things on a d100 table that can arise by chance.  Then, for everything else, things the party would definitely want to find and obtain, we could assign a "number in something" chance on a separate column, based on that table.  We could then give the players two rolls on this column, hoping to be lucky.  Effectively, we carve the day into two halves for the players intentions (find their way out of this hex, climb up a ridge looking for a viewpoint), and at some point during that day, something unintended happens all on its own.

For example, let's say there's a 2% chance of stumbling across a viewpoint, even though the characters are in hill country, simply because the conifer growth is too thick.  Or say there's a 6% chance of finding a pond.  And now let's say that instead of waiting for these things to happen in the daily-roll, the players instead say, "We try to find a pond."  Then we could assign a triple-times chance of their successfully doing that ... a 18 in 100.  And if they don't we could either (a) dictate that there is no pond in the hex, or (b) dictate that if there is a pond, it's going to be stumbled across randomly.  It can't be searched for again.

From that point forward, we have to decide which things can be searched for and which cannot.  In some cases we can assign things (wood, for instance) as not being part of the random table, since it's always around the party.  And an automatic chance of the party finding it.

Can the party deliberately search for a monster?  Sure.  Further, we can argue that, having found one (or a pond, for that matter), the chance exists for trying to find another one the next day, until the chance fails (the monsters are really buried).  Thus, a "dungeon," starting with a 1% chance randomly, can be found with a 3% chance if searching for it.

This, however, argues that if the players remain in the hex long enough, eventually they will find a dungeon, or anything else on the table.  It's inevitable.  I'd propose a ten-roll limit ... after that, the contents of the hex are more or less what they are.  'Course, there can always still be a wildfire or a storm; another monster can always drift in from another hex; there might yet be an adventurer.  This would seem to require a separate, "residual" table, that could be rolled on, oh, once a week, or a fortnight (two weeks), that wouldn't include dungeons or viewpoints, or any permanent notable feature that might be used as a guide for getting out or finding this particular hex again.

These are my thoughts so far.  Want to let them stew a bit before I start to order them into a proper table.

No Empty Hexes

Continuing yesterday's conversation, let's just talk about how to best generate the wilderness.

I recognise that there are many who strongly resist the use of hexes, or any means that "parcels" the wilderness into areas ... but I must point out that with movement upon the earth's face, we've been subdividing the surface for the last 300 years.  Surveying has existed since the ancient Egyptians, but it didn't become common practice until the late 17th/early 18th centuries ... so it's right to think that for those in the so-called game world, anything other than measuring ground with chains to see who's farm is whose, or putting up markers, little subdivision of land takes place.  But this is all the hex is: a means of parcelling a large space of land so we can assign characteristics to it, and so that we can identify one parcel from another.  And so that our accounting of the land can apply to what character's can do or see in a day, those parcels have to be fairly small.

For those who still insist on creating maps in this century using pencil and paper, when there are far greater resources that are available, I understand that making a lot of "hexes" is demanding.  Squares are far easier, since they merely need a straight edge, and for best results, a T-square.  Draughting tools for making hexes are more complex and inconvenient.  Not for me, however.  I have "hex paper" on demand, as much as I want of it, so for things like this I find it very easy to apply.  Moreover, since a hex is more nearly like a circle than a square, the center point of any hex is equidistance from its bordering hexes, which cannot be said for the square.

All that is such a waste of time to say, because it convinces no one, but yeah ... I somehow feel before plunging into this that I should explain why I'm using hexes, and not straight lines.  Though why, I can't guess.

But okay, so, the players enter a hex.  Forgetting the hex's topographical and other details, I'll need to explain the point of adventuring in this fashion ... that is, what exploring accomplishes that a pre-fabricated adventure, or a dungeon, does not.  Forgive me if I descend into pedantry at this point, but the internet has plenty of ink and I do feel we need to fully grasp the game's structure beyond the nonsense storytelling/collaborative/lore and "epicness" jargon that we're spoonfed online.

The dungeon's function is to deliver experience and wealth into the party's possession, while presenting situations that are engaging and include a reasonable measure of risk.  This last stipulates that for the party entering, there is a high likelihood of success, better than one might obtain at a craps table; in fact, better than betting on red on a roulette wheel.  Were I to rate the odds, there ought to be a 20% chance that one character dies during the effort, 6% that two die and 1% that everyone dies.  But this doesn't include the possibility of someone losing an arm or a hand, beings struck blind, losing a valuable magic item, losing a considerable number of resources and, naturally, making an enemy that will continue to pursue the party until, in fact, someone is actually killed.

Worse odds than this and there's little reason for players to enter the dungeon.  It's just experience and coin, after all, which only goes so far as a motivation.  If players aren't entering dungeons, its either because they have no reasonable expectation of surviving as a group, OR, the demand for money in the game world isn't high enough to make the risk worthwhile.

Along the same lines, the wilderness ought also to exist to provide things the players want.  It's not there to look like a real world, it's not there as "flavour" and it's fucking useless if it's empty.  Each and every hex has to provide the players with something.  Otherwise, like a gun hanging on a wall in a play that never gets used, it shouldn't be there.

I feel this needs to be hammered upon, because the Gygaxian poison from the 70s continues to run rife through this culture.  Gygax, and most of the creators of his era, were lazy.  So lazy, in fact, that where it came to a game world, he and his intellectual kin kicked the can down the road by suggesting that the board from another game entirely be used to fill in the hole created by their laziness.  That game was Outdoor Survival.  Here's the map board that was suggested for use as the D&D "wilderness."

Apart from the extreme crippling incompetence of the era's proposal, something for which everyone attached to the original books ought to have apologised for the rest of their lives, please note how ungodly empty this map is.  This made sense for the Outdoor Survival game, which I've played ... though admittedly, it's just a longer, more dimensional version of playing the children's game Candyland.  And as I pointed out yesterday when I discussed the wilderness generation page in the original DMG, when Gygax proposed to randomly generate an outdoors, his system basically presents an even emptier version of the above.

There's no "game" here.  It delivers nothing into the hands of the players.  It is nothing more than an extremely boring obstacle between where the players are and where they want to be, "filled in" with random monster encounters which, by the original rules, are ridiculously deadly to players while putting nothing whatsoever into the player's pockets.  You enter the 1st level dungeon and expect to fight, at worst, 7-12 orcs with one HD, with an expectation of treasure.  Then, on the way home, as a random encounter, you're beset upon by 2-20 wolves with two HD, with jack shit.  Why would anyone ever enter the wilderness?

The very idea of the wilderness was poisoned from the beginning by such half-assery, accompanied by a steady resistance and laziness that declares the wilderness impractical or otherwise undesirable as an adventure environment.  As I sit to start creating a random generator, I have exactly zero resources, accumulated from over 50 years of D&D, to draw upon.  Oh, there were "attempts."  The infamous, massively incompetent "Wilderness Guide" of 1986, which did wake me up to things the game definitely needed, but which that rule book absolutely whiffed upon.  I've read and sometimes owned other so-called guides, mainly from 3rd edition, which provided a terrific degree of random shit, without any organisation applied to it.  Basically, when the party was in the desert, you could slap some "black sand" in front of them for, again, flavour.  But beyond a short paragraph description, there were no game rules or metrics attached to it, so in essence, it was painting the desert black.  Hands in the air, now: Worldbuilding!

Very well, what does the wilderness supply?  Well, it need not be the same things as a dungeon. After all, there are things that can't be found in a dungeon: food, for one thing, that the players can safely eat. Wood to make tools, fresh water to drink ... horses, and grass for them.  Places where houses and storerooms can be built, places where men-at-arms and supplies can be held at the ready. A safe place to sleep.

There are, I believe, four things that the wilderness supplies to players, which contribute deeply to the fabric of the game beyond the necessity of passing through: threat, supply, knowledge and deliverance.  Each covers a wide range of possibilities, which the wilderness designer, whether or not randomly generating a space, needs to be aware of.

Threat includes everything that makes the players feel unsafe.  No matter where they are in the game world, there are always threats; but this concept includes not only the threats themselves but the means by which the players protect themselves against those threats.  This includes, naturally, the monsters that are present in the hex — and here I'm arguing that every hex has monsters, always and without exception, though most of the time due to circumstance, the size of the hex and pure chance, the players are liable to pass through a hex without seeing one.  But this needs to be clear ... if the players go looking for a monster, they will find one ... at least, until that monster and others are "cleared out" of the hex.  Because finding a monster, and knowing one is there to find, is a bloody point of this game!  The value is in the monster's presence; the players knowing they'll find it, or them, whatever form it or they take.  It's having a reason to be there in the first place, since some of the monsters that can be found will, as with a dungeon, have treasure.  Hell, so far, "Grimstone Hollow" may only be this lair of these hobgoblins.  So far, there's nothing the players have found to indicate this is anything more than that. 

Where the players camp, how they camp, what equipment they bring along and what vigilance they adopt, these too are part of this hex's presence.  At no time can players be made to think that if they're moving through wilderness they're safe because a little piddly die roll has to come up a 1 in order to attack them.  That perception goes on the fire.  The players must be taught that preparation is what will keep them safe, not the odds.  Take this exchange:

Players:  We turn in.

DM:  You turn in?

Players: Yeah, it's dark, we're not travelling at night.  We make camp and we turn in.

DM:  O ... kay ...

Players:  What?

DM:  Nothing.  You turn in.  Got it.

It's my temptation as a DM to explain, um, maybe they better explain what preparations they take beyond "setting a guard," who can be feathered with nine arrows from the darkness as said watch stands next to the fire, in plain view, bored, getting warm.   Is it worth making an encampment?  Is it worth trying to find a place where their backs are against a stone wall, where there's a gap in the rocks that covers their front, where some kind of alarm exists to warn the watch upon falling asleep?  I don't know.  If the "monster" out there smells the party, they'll come and look.  They'll look and decide.  They might go away, they might stay.  But it shouldn't be a "random monster roll" that decides one way or the other.  It should be what the player's camp looks like.  It can be a die, but not that die.  Not one the players think they can count on.

Threats come from the terrain, too.  Slips, falls, maladies, bad weather, rain, dropped equipment, torn clothing, soiled or stolen food ... anything and everything that might happen in a wilderness is a threat.  These things too need to be accounted for.

Supply is king in this environment.  We're not entering a dungeon for an hour, we're crossing a considerable amount of land, during which time we need to sleep, rest, eat something and thus dwindle our resources.  And while the environment threatens that supply, it should also offer boons that help the players out.  A brook where it's practical to waste an hour or to and catch fish.  A berry patch.  A bee hive.  Naturally occuring salves that can be used to cure wounds, which can only be used here because they can't be feasibly stored.  Grazing animals, of course, that might be taken down with a lucky shot.  Their leather, though wet, can be dried out in a few hours to a day, and rinsed too if possible.  It can be used wet, though it's difficult to work with.

My sage abilities are designed to handle some of these problems, but suppose, like Arliss and Bertrand, that it's unlikely either has any scouting, foraging or hunting ability (they could take logistics, I suppose).  Even a dope can stumble into a deer, however; I know, because I've done it multiple times.  One time, I was just 8 feet from the deer when it stepped out from the wood next to me.  I didn't have a shot gun, I was fishing; it was June.  But the players always have weapons.  In a low-technological society, without guns, this sort of thing should be fairly common, just as it was moreso in Alberta in the 1960s and 70s than it is now.

Like with a threat, every hex ought to have something.  That doesn't mean it will be found; hell, it might be a gold mine, passed over and over with the players never knowing.  Specific resources have to be looked for, by persons who know how; but it's reasonable to assume that if I know how to hunt for mushrooms, and we're in a temperate deciduous forest, there are mushrooms to be found.

Knowledge is key to getting out.  Being able to cross a piece of land and find the tiny brook in it that leads to the creek, that leads out onto the plain.  Getting atop a hill to a viewpoint and being able to see the land two hexes away, to see if the hills keep going, or if perhaps there's the sign of a river below, or fields in the distance.  Seeing any distance in the wilderness is hard due to the terrain and vegetation, the weather and the height on which we stand.  Potentially, from a 200 ft. rise, I can see about 17 miles before the curve of the earth ... but the last third of that distance will be hazy and indistinct without aid (or even with, given the time period's technology).  The problem is, where 200 ft. rises occur, there are usually other such rises, and they get in the way.

Still, it gives a reason to climb out of the valley to see if this is a good place to look.  This means giving up the river-as-guide technique, where the river may lead a party on quite a merry chase before it reaches a civilised hex.

There are the various signs of life, too; things they leave behind: spoor, scents, kills, shucked skin, actual signs that say, "you've already entered our land, prepare to die," that sort of thing.  As players move through the land, they need to be told things that they can use to make intelligent decisions about where to go next.  It cannot just be a random choice of go left or go right.  They should regularly be given enough reason to believe that if they choose to go in this way, there's a better possibility of them finding their way out, or their way to whatever they're looking for.  And if using a random generator, this knowledge should adjust what does get encountered next, proving the legitimacy of the system.

Deliverance is, obviously key.  Somewhere out there, there are civilised people, with farms and things to sell, where there are taverns with beer and inns with semi-clean beds, at least a roof anyways, and something more to see than trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks ... you know.  "Canada."

Desirably, by contriving these four guidelines to play, the wilderness ought to be constructed, even randomly, into a more intuitive, creative, meaningful place to adventure.  My personal feeling is that the environment ought to be as rich in combat and treasure as the dungeon, or perhaps there should be little difference between the two.

Why Bother?

I consider that it's my responsibility as a writer to keep others appraised of whatever knowledge I've accumulated from time to time.  Until very recently on this blog, I would write about what I was doing, hoping for feedback and perhaps a better idea how I could approach something, especially if I had some project over which I was puzzled.  The early concept of hex groups, for instance, or NTME, or how that developed into infrastructure and the description of facilities.  Similar patterns related to sage abilities also manifested over the years on this blog, rising from the extremely simplistic system I had in 2008 to the impossible-to-complete system I have today.  I do have my online players at the same to thank for that, as they encouraged me to give sage abilities to every class, which started that snowball.

Today's subject is the "RWG," as yet unlaunched, or even as yet had the ground broken ... the "random wilderness generator."  The vote on my patreon seems bent on having Arliss and Bertrand leave the dungeon to seek additional help destroying these hobgoblins, which sets them outside in a world they do not know, which I do not know, because that sounds more practical for the reader here.  I could just have them step out into my world, in Romania or Slovakia or Bratslaw, but then what value would this have for the reader, whose world is not my own?  It seems better that if we're going to produce a "random" generator, it ought to assume that nothing exists outside the dungeon until the die designates it so.

Here, I'm not looking for feedback, but to inform.  I expect that many of my typical readers have at one time or another, and probably closer to when they started playing than to the present, tried to randomly generate the outside world.  The original DMG's effort is utterly pathetic.  It consists of two tables, one that includes all of 10 possible terrains (of which one is "pond"), with 9 types of "settlement," with a slightly less than 1 in 7 chance of finding any person at all.  Thus, it creates a very grey-paste empty world, much like Gygax's dungeons, only more so.  When rolling a "city," absolutely no information or description is given, except that it has d6 x 10,000 people in it.  The whole thing consists of three-quarters of a page, a third of which is a single picture having nothing to do with the wilderness.

Though, admittedly, I did think it was one of the book's better pictures.

I expect that were I to receive feedback, most of it would boil down to, "why bother?"  Which is, I think, the first question to be answered.

Tuesday, I heard from an erstwhile friend of mine, featured in this video, who pressured me to "brand" the hell out of my videos, as he's sold his soul to the business world; he'd be the first to admit that.  He encouraged me to invent some sort of name for the overall "campaign" that's been launched through the existing videos and the content I've produced for the wiki, so that I have it for the title cards I learned how to create all of seven days ago.  "Grimstone Hollow" is just this dungeon; I expect there will be other dungeons.  So, at the moment, I'm playing with the notion of calling the overall campaign, "A Story that hasn't Finished Yet."  Because, first, it has the word "story" in the title, which is one of those buzz words in D&D that's a crap-concept, but actually means something apart from what the company has stamped on it, and second, because I think it gets to the heart of what we do here as dungeon masters and game world designers.

The title hit me as I tussled around with chatGPT, which can be a good sounding board for these things, as it has lots of really garbage ideas (like anyone, including myself), what at the same time it's tapped into vast amounts of human knowledge, much more so than my tiny ape brain holds.  Anyway, it was going on about standard D&D ideals and I was explaining for it, and myself, why I'm opposed to those ideals, and I stumbled across the principle that "a happy ending is a story that hasn't finished yet."  Which is true, and is in fact one of the oldest take-downs in human history, where the smart-as-a-whip scholar Solon bitch-slaps Croessus in the 6th century BCE.  Not how my classics professors would have put it, but they were always stuffy.  Wikipedia is pretty lax on it's tale-telling; the original can be read at the outset of Herodutus' The Histories.

I had chat discuss what it felt about the sentiment, "A happy ending is a story that hasn't finished yet," and found in its overwritten answer the phrase, "The Game is the sum of all events, including those yet to come."

That ... is brilliant.

And it is D&D.  In my last post, I argued that a quintessential part of this game is that it doesn't end, and to that I'll add that the lack of ending means that, much of the time, in an engaged campaign, the party lives as much in the future of the campaign as it does the past.  That is, they're going somewhere, they're thinking about where they're going, they're planning for what they'll meet, they're buying equipment and toughening up their characters abilities for when that time comes ... and this incorporates a considerable amount of the game's discussion and play.  Hell, the creation of the character itself is a plan for the future.

Most people are not future-oriented.  They are present oriented, or past oriented; they're either hedonistic, living for pleasure or avoiding pain, or they don't think it pays to play; or they remember all the good old times, or their thoughts are nothing but regret about all that they've done.  Both these mind sets are anathema to D&D, because either the game becomes about what we've accomplished, or it becomes about what momentary bit of pleasure or excitement we can invent for ourselves in this immediate moment.  These people can't be encouraged to engage in a long-term campaign because they're not built for it.

I haven't ever seen that so clearly before.  The first question I should ask a perspective player is, "what are you doing next month?"  If the answer is, "I don't know, I'll probably be working," I should say, "Thank you, you wouldn't be a good fit for my game."

If their answer is a long description of how they're having their backyard remodelled, or how their sister is visiting and all the things they're going to do, my answer can be, "C'mon and play."

I live in the future.  A writer has to.

Like others, the argument has been for more than a decade that the "story" shouldn't be made before the players sit down to play, and that it's this reason that the concept of "story" in company-oriented D&D is such a crap concept, because the company is pounding the drum for stories that are fully invented and in place before we know who the players are.  But the game itself isn't about having the future come to pass, it's about rushing towards the future and seeing what happens.

When I began recording this combat, I had no idea what was going to happen; I didn't want to script it, or run it through and then record it; I wanted to maintain the premise that whatever happened, I'd just sort it out afterwards.  If the characters died, then I'd roll new characters and end things there. Because this is what D&D is ... it's trying something in the future, having that future happen, then picking up the pieces, whatever they happen to be.

Nearly all the destruction of D&D that's taken place has been a decades-long effort to obliterate this functional part of the game.  Players don't want to accept consequences, DMs don't want to deal with unexpected events, even die rolling has become overwhelmingly designed to produce less and less random results.  This is all that hyper-multiple modifiers to a die roll are, or exhortations for "average damage rolls," because rolling a d8 is too random, takes too long, or otherwise threatens to upset the expected results of the battle.  We want to get the battle over with as fast as possible, within 75 seconds if possible, because battle is a problem to be solved, not a part of the game's thrill.

Listened to that podcast all the way through yesterday; not so bad, for what it is.  Part of the argument being made is why rolling both attack dice and damage dice at the same time still isn't fast enough, since average damage rolls are even faster; roll to hit with a long sword, and if success, it always does 5 damage.

Overall, it sounds strange to me.  The video combat I recorded runs not quite 14 minutes; and it wouldn't last more than 6 if it weren't for my explaining things.  I grant that D&D combat in the later editions is ridiculously long, for reasons the video describes; but then, when you're rolling so many dice for damage, what would you expect?  At it's heart, however, D&D isn't hockey.  It's baseball.  With a well-designed version, when the attack die succeeds, the damage die is like watching the hit ball soar up into the air, not knowing if it's going to be caught, not knowing if its going to be a home run ... it's a paced, carefully orchestrated moment of tension to have that die bounce and turn up a good hit or a bad one.  Gutting this feature, for the sake of time, would be like automatically awarding the player two bases with every hit as an "average."

Average damage is really fucked-up thinking.

But to get to my point, I didn't know how the combat would turn out.  And now, if they do go outside, I don't know what's waiting for them there.

Not an "adventure," at least not in the way that the company, or even some others I respect, imagine it would be.  The adventure doesn't have to be following a set of guidelines that are guaranteed to produce a particular result that the player is fine with.  It can be a series of "who-the-fuck-knows?" incidents that, together, produce the unexpected, perhaps difficult, perhaps astounding consequence.  It's picking up a thread on the ground that runs ten thousand miles and following it, to see where it goes.

It the way I'm using it, a random generator does this.  It's not the best strategy for a real-life game, because we don't have the kind of time it takes to check tables or, as in my case, to build them from scratch out of nothing.  But by seeing how theoretical tables could work, by seeing what needs to be accounted for, or how this leads to the next thing, we may grasp certain fundamental concepts that tell us how to design that thread for our players.  This is why its worth bothering about.  Because it provides a framework for our thinking process, when we have to instantly decide on the next thing, because the players are there now.  A framework that, as it grows in complexity, becomes a template for designing on the spot something that otherwise would take weeks to set up and get ready.

Truly Game-style Modifiers

I wanted to write a note about a result I'm incorporating into my intelligence table - a result that has a chance of being picked up by any character, even one with an intelligence of 3:

"The character possesses a remarkably good horse sense; when following a plan of this character's making, one die roll made by anyone, including the DM, can be adjusted 2 points in the character's favor, one time per day."

Essentially, there's a chance (I'm not sure what the chance is, yet, I'm still adding things) of picking up this 'ability' at the start of the character's creation.  It does require a little more description than what the above includes, in order to clarify what's being said and to narrow down the effect somewhat.

"Horse sense" is an idiom that developed to convey an "unsophisticated, country type of sense."  The link makes the connection that horses are often sort of dim, being associated with words meaning nonsense of stupidity, such as horse feathers or horseshit (a dumber form or shit than most others).  Having been around horses just a little bit, I feel the term derived from a sort of 'sense' that horses have about bad paths, bad footing or just places they don't want to go - places where the rider overrides the horse's will and finds out the horse was dead right about not going into that hidden cactus patch.

In any case, a horse is always dumber than the dumbest human, so any character of any intelligence fits into the category.

"A plan of this character's making" would be any plan that was originally proposed by the player, which is now being followed.  It can only include the player's ideas specifically - not the ideas of others who advanced the original plan by adding features and corrections.

Thus, the player with the ability says, "I think we should dive into the pool and see what happens."  If the character with horse sense or any other character actually dives into the pool, then the +2 bonus can be applied in that situation.  If, on the other hand, a character suggests easing into the pool, paddling around for a bit and then going underwater, that would not be the plan proposed and the bonus could not be applied.

It must be remembered that the bonus is not applied to the character making the plan, but to the plan itself - though the character with horse sense does get to decide where the bonus is applied (saving throw, to hit die, damage done, amount of treasure found, etc.).

If the plan is carried out and the character does not think of using the bonus (or can't use it, as no dice are thrown) until after the situation is resolved, then the character must invent a new plan to regain the unused bonus for a new situation.

"Favour" expresses a positive result that encourages survival and success.  The die roll cannot be used to bring woe or misfortune to another character (player or non-player).

Would I, as DM, accept the modifier at the player's behest?  *smile*  Absolutely!

Physical Power Adjustments

I was shown a new trick with excel exactly a week ago and it gave me the motivation to do some work in excel programming this week - namely, going through the Character Generation program I devised some years ago.  There are some strange results that occur with it, which I've largely ignored . . . but I always knew that one day I'd get around to fixing them.

Naturally, if you're going to rework something, might as well add to it: so here is a table showing the new possible results for the physical power side of the strength table:




No doubt, some of that is going to be difficult to read.  I've done the best I could - it's huge.

To remind the reader, the "adjusted d20" roll is a d20 minus the character's strength.  Thus, a roll of 17 against an 11 strength would give a result of +6.  This would be a moderately bad roll, denying the use of a heavy warhorse, reducing weapons range, giving a penalty for using a sword, making the character slumberous after a long walk OR subtracting from the die against low intelligence creatures (out of sympathy is the idea).

The character does not get all those penalties, just one, whichever is predetermined under the five headings of toughness, energy, performance, aggression or forbearance [misspelled on the table - I'll fix that).  With the rework, those are basically random - but I plan to adjust the chance of receiving each category based on constitution (forbearance), dexterity (energy), wisdom (aggression) and so on, depending on the character's highest stats.  That means what you put under dexterity can affect what bonuses/penalties that are received under strength.

As soon as I figure out just how to do that.

Anyway, I know that players like tables full of adjustments.

RDG

Why can't I leave random dungeon generation alone?

Since I first saw those frustrating and yet tantilizing tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide all those years ago, I have pursued the idea like a Holy Grail, with about as much success. I have rebuilt the original tables, I have tried versions of my own, I have spent hundreds of hours conjecturing and rethinking the premise, and in all this time I have concocted exactly nothing of use.

I have tried giving up the idea, too. But here I am, this past weekend, thinking about it again.

There is an inherent promise in random generation. It suggests a crutch that a DM can lean upon from time to time, near the end of a session when the party has moved through planned things a little faster than expected, and something is needed on the fly. The habit of human thought is to give the same things over and over, and a random table will sometimes break that habit - which makes it a good thing.

There's also something about random dungeon generation that promises, well, that I might be able to play a bit, 'against the house' as it were. My partner Tamara has said she'd like to play with me instead of my being the DM all the time. Just her and I, you understand; and it seems like 'RDG' would be a good way of accomplishing that. Just a bit of dungeon crawling, nothing too deep, a light game without much depth but with fighting and treasure.

But every generator seems to be, well, shit.

The problem with the one in the DMG, and the problem with most every generator I've ever seen, is that it seems bent on creating 'white space.' Just a lot of useless, boring, empty hallways and rooms. What is the value in a room being 'empty'?

Oh, I know. The argument has been, forever, that empty rooms provide 'tension.' The party gets all worked up, they open the door and - nothing! OMG, we were so worried there for a moment. Okay, no problem, search the room, move forward to the door and get worked up - and nothing! Again! Wow, feel the tension. Okay, no problem, search the room, move forward ... look, it's a door. Oh, fuck it, why bother getting worked up. Just open the door. Oh no! Orcs!

Seriously?

I have heard this scheme pitched for about ten thousand years now and guess what - my parties are not a) so stupid that they can't just make up a checklist that they hold up whenever the come to a door; and b) so stupid that they think this is clever. It isn't clever. It is BAD serial-writing from the 1930s, reprocessed as role-gaming by guys who thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea. Here we are, decades later, and this is still a thing? No it's not. White space in a dungeon is BORING. It is never anything except BORING.

The other problem, however, is that if you remove the white space from a dungeon generator, you get ... well, a bunch of absurdly connected rooms without sense or logic occupied by a strictly random set of monsters.

My personal experience is that dungeons work best when each 'level' or spreading section has one to three monsters in it. Typically, the main creature plus a supporting creature (goblins with wolves, a wizard with thirty pet owlbears, that sort of thing), and then some sort of vermin for the quiet corners, like spiders, rats, snakes, oozes, etc. This is then separated from the next section by a secret door, a cavern chimney that's difficult to navigate (thus logically keeping the sections separate from one another) or some sort of installed block/barrier where the upper creatures are trying to keep the lower creatures from invading them. This the party can then destroy, break through, move through ten minutes of white space thereafter and get back into the juicy death zone that's actually interesting.

And random generators NEVER, ever, make dungeons this way.

I've never seen one that does, anyway. And while I have recognized for years that a generator would have to create this sort of thing, I haven't ever figured out how to do it.

But ... I probably will go on wasting my time trying. Because, well, it still sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately.