What Treasure Is

The title of this post is meant to be read literally only as applies to the D&D game. I would hope we all agree that REAL treasure is the time spent with family, friends, and loved ones (as I am often reminded by the holidays).

[and speaking of "treasured time:" we DID manage to finish our Axis & Allies game...after THREE DAYS...with the Allied forces capitulating once the Krauts had taken all of the USSR save Moscow, and after Italy had invaded the central United States through Mexico. Folks may find me silly to crow about beating a kid two weeks shy of his 11th birthday; truth is, I'm proud of how well he plays. He's also pretty sharp (he beats me in chess about one game in three these days) and a fast learner. And I was playing from behind most of the game after Italy got pwned in the Mediterranean theater and after I stupidly chose to neglect Russia till Turn 4 (I'm so used to having Japan invade from the east, and had a difficult time adjusting to the needs of the game's European Only limitations). Still, I managed to take the UK...twice!...and while London was firmly in the hands of the Allies by the end of the war, the Americanos' need to bring overwhelming force to the North Sea ended up losing them all of Africa to a German "end around"...which gave Italy the space they needed to recover their naval forces. I seriously doubt Diego will make the same mistake again]

[of course, now he wants A&A Pacific for his birthday. Oh, boy]

Onto AD&D.

I am running the kids through Hommlet. Yes, T1...not the Temple of Elemental Evil mega-set (which I own and which is a disaster to parse). This is the first time I've run T1 using the original rules for which it was intended; my only other experience with the adventure was running it as a PBEM 3rd edition conversion (you can read the transcripts which I posted to my blog a few years back). 

It's been...mm...a bit of a rough go. Mainly due to their being so few party members. The adventure itself seems fine for a group of six/seven 1st level players. We have two. They ended up hiring four of the NPC adventurers hanging around the Inn of the Wanton Wench, three of whom were of the evil, "ambush-the-party-when-they're-weak" variety...with the inevitable results; i.e. Total Party Kill. HOWEVER...the kids want to make new characters and go back to Ye Old Moat House, and I have a few workarounds that I'm going to try implementing with our next go of it. That will all be detailed in a (later) post.

[for the curious: the players are still playing in the same campaign world, but I haven't taken the time to place Hommlet on the map. I'm thinking probably down around Tri-Cities...or near them...due to the proximity to the Columbia River. Probably Burne and Rufus should be agents of the Tri-City States, though my first thought was to make them vassals of the Red Empire - i.e. Spokane - far to the north]

Treasure in Hommlet...a rather important consideration in AD&D...is quite good. Leaving aside what might be stolen from the village goodfolk, or looted from the bodies of evil henchmen, the moat house contains well over 30,000 g.p. of treasure, not even counting the sale value of magic items (which could push the total over 73K). Parties managing to find every scrap of loot AND retaining magic items (as opposed to selling them) can expect a haul of more than 41,000 experience points...enough for even a party of eight to climb to 3rd level...or higher! This is found in 17 of the 35 numbered areas, so roughly every other encounter will have something valuable for PCs to purloin. 

Certainly whets the appetites of new players. No wonder T1 is held in such high regard.

Of course, not all the treasure found is of the coin and gemstone variety. One locked door protects "30 shields, 12 suits of leather armor, and barrels of salted meat." Another hides "50 spears, 10 glaives, 6 guisarmes, 3 battleaxes" as well as "two crates holding 120 arrows and 200 crossbow bolts respectively." Along with hidden kegs of brandy and four score of "black capes" sewn with a "yellow eye of fire," these two rooms alone yield a rich hall of nearly 1,200 g.p. value (even counting the capes as a 5 s.p. traveling "cloak" from the PHB).

But JB, that stuff isn't treasure! It's just gear and supplies that can be used by ill-equipped parties or given to arm henchmen and mercenaries. Where's the REAL treasure...the coins and jewels and such? Okay, first off coins...like all money...are simply a medium of exchange. One uses coins as a portable way of acquiring goods and services. In the AD&D game they also serve an ADDITIONAL purpose of providing experience points to ambitious players. But all treasure serves that latter purpose...coins are simply going to be exchanged for provisions and supplies anyway.

Let's ask: what's the real objection here? That a sheaf of arrows doesn't glitter the same as a box of silver? Okay, fine. But leaving aside the practicality of an arrow (which can be used to kill a foe), do folks understand the cost-weight ratio is the same for an arrow as a silver coin coin? 

120 arrows = 240cns encumbrance = 12 g.p. value

240 silver = 240cns encumbrance = 12 g.p. value

And more valuable equipment has a greater weight-cost ratio:

30 shields = 150# = 300 g.p. value

1,500 s.p. = 150# = 75 g.p. value

10 glaives = 75# = 60 g.p. value

750 s.p. = 75# = 37.5 g.p. value

50 spears = 250# = 50 g.p. value

2,500 c.p. = 250# = 12.5 g.p. value

Now, sure, spears aren't worth their weight in silver (you'd rather find 250# of silver than 250# of spears), but how many times has a low-level party been perfectly happy with bagging a pile of 2,000 or 3,000 copper pieces after some fierce battle with giant rats? More than a few, I'd imagine, as starting adventurers can't afford (literally) to be picky about the loot being left around. But given the choice between retrieving six spears or a sack of 100 coppers, it's clear which "treasure" is worth more...not just for cash and x.p. but for practical value. 

The original D&D game (the LBBs) only offered only three types of coin to be found in a treasure: copper pieces, silver pieces, and gold pieces (electrum and platinum were offered as additional alternatives but their specific value was left undefined and in the hands of the referee). Rather than look at them as literal coins, I prefer to view them as valuables based on weight when building a treasure:

Copper = bulky items 

Silver = portable items

Gold = precious items

[when using electrum and platinum pieces, as in the AD&D game, this adds the categories of "semi-precious" and "very precious," respectively]

"Bulky" treasures weigh (approximately) 20# per 1 gold piece value. "Portable" treasures weigh about 2# per 1 gold piece value. "Precious" treasures are worth 10 gold pieces for every 1# of weight...again, as a rough approximation. 

Keeping this concept in mind, one can furnish and outfit one's adventure site with all manner of "treasures," rather than stashing coins in crevasses and under loose flagstones. A barracks or guardroom may have solid furniture (bulky treasure) rather than copper. A wizard's closet may have fine clothing (portable) or even expensive clothing (precious). An alchemist's lab may have glassware (portable), rare herbs (semi-precious), and an amazing collection of journals/notes (very precious). Even a torture chamber might have iron implements and strong shackles (bulky and/or portable) of value to someone.

This idea...that the coin values given in the Treasure Tables can be used in the abstract...is something I hit on a few year back when writing Five Ancient Kingdoms (my Arabian Nights version of OD&D) and it's something I've been doing ever since. I've seen others that have since stumbled onto the same concept; however, the underpinnings of this has been present since Gygax published the DMG in '79 in which he gave the following example:

A pair of exceedingly large, powerful and ferocious ogres has taken up abode in a chamber at the base of a shaft...these creatures have accumulated over 2,000 g.p. in wealth, but it is obviously not a pair of 1,000 g.p. gems. Rather, they have gathered an assortment of goods whose combined combined value is well in excess of two thousand gold nobles (the coin of the realm)...there are many copper and silver coins in a locked iron chest. There are pewter vessels worth a fair number of silver pieces. An inlaid wooden coffer, worth 100 gold pieces alone, holds a finely wrought silver necklace worth an incredible 350 gold pieces. Food and other provisions scattered about amount to another hundred or so gold nobles value, and one of the ogres wears a badly tanned fur cape which will fetch 50 gold pieces nonetheless. Finally, there are several good helmets (used as drinking cups), a bardiche, and a two-handed sword (with silver wire wrapped about its hilt and a lapis lazuli pommel to make it three times its normal value) which completes the treasure. If the adventurers overcome the ogres, they must still recognize all of the items of value and transport them to the surface...the bold victors have quite a task before them.

[from page 92]

When the Monster Manual tells you that the individual orc has 2-12 electrum pieces...or that the individual dwarf has 10-40 gold pieces...this should be taken as the value of the creature's goods on its person. "I'm going to loot the dead goblin's morning star...the PHB lists the weapon's price at 5 g.p. so I should be able to get at least a couple gold!" No, the combined value of the corpse's possessions is 3-18 silver pieces. 

[that morning star? It's a twisted piece of wood studded with spikes, teeth, and jagged metal. The goblin's helmet? Too small for a human and has an incredible stench...you'll need to purchase some strong lye just to get rid of the odor, even if you can find a halfling willing to buy it as a "collector's item." The shield? Broken when you killed the guy. His rags? Good luck selling those]

It's not like the orcs use electrum as the basic currency of their culture (though that might be interesting if they did).

D&D can, of course, be played in the abstract, and these treasure hoards facilitate that. "You find 1,000 copper, 3,000 silver, and 1,500 gold in the den of the hydra." But while this is a great expediter of play (it is!) it's also one of the main complaints voiced when detractors talk about how "boring" old edition D&D is. "Man, half our party was killed by giant rats and all we got out of it was 2,000 copper pieces."

No. What you found was 10 (or 20 depending on edition) gold coins worth of valuable food stuffs (unspoiled grain perhaps) in four large (50#) sacks. Deliver that to an inn, baker, or tavern and you can create a valuable contact and perhaps a place for rumors of further adventure. 

See, this is the thing: D&D is more than a game...if you allow it to be. It can be a place where you and your players LIVE, engaging with the imaginary setting/environment. And there's no need to write up any hoity-toity story or Uber-Quest to do so. Just develop the rules of the game that are already in front of your nose...and allow yourself the luxury of basking in the fantasy realm.

Back when we were playing through UK2: The Sentinel, the kids managed to acquire a nicely skinned giant beaver pelt (as a reward for something or other) that was worth a fair chunk of change. They took the x.p. for the piece and then, having been a bit flush with cash at the time, hired a tailor to work the think into a rich/warm lining for their armor, boots, etc.  That was the players' decision, not mine. And not only did it work fine as a bit of ostentatious display (hey! we be 3rd level adventurers now!), it also acted to make their wealth even more portable. After all, had the situation arose, they could have traded a rich, beaver-lined cloak (or whatever) for some sort of deal/negotiation with neutral/hostile NPCs.

Anyway...if you're playing Dungeons & Dragons in (what I deem to be) the correct fashion, the treasure is going to matter. What it is, what it does, what it's worth, and what it costs the players to acquire...not just in terms of hit point/resource expenditure, but in terms of weight/encumbrance. Because if you want to live in your D&D world, you're going to have to deal with the burdens associated with living which are (generally) logistical burdens. Do I have enough food? Can I afford to buy food? Can I carry more food? What must I sacrifice to eat?

It's pretty hard to make the trek to Mordor on an empty stomach.

You can deal with these things in the abstract (the treasure from that hydra den weighs 550# in encumbrance and is worth 1,655 g.p.) or you can hand wave such issues completely, instead choosing to focus on the character backstories, formal plots, and PC-NPC interaction in an attempt to create a grandiose story. However, the former approach reduces the game to something little more than the Dungeon! boardgame, and the latter...well, that's really a different animal. I find neither of these approaches to be satisfying in the long term.

So make your treasure meaningful...both to you the DM (as a substance/thing of your campaign world) and to your players (ditto). Value and encumbrance are the starting points, and then use the systems in place as guidelines to flesh out the details. It's those details that will make your dungeon loot something to be "treasured."

Isn't that why we call it treasure?

; )

Elegant Design

I don't write a lot of posts about "the biz" of publishing books, but this is a little strange...there seems to be a slight resurgence in interest in my books.

The B/X Companion for sure: just checked the PDF sales report on DriveThruRPG, and it's on pace to have its best year since 2013. Just to put that in perspective: my Companion was only made available as a PDF in 2012, and the total sales for the first two years exceeds all sales combined from 2014-2019.  

[which is still peanuts, of course (total sales over the life of the product is a bit north of 1000), but considering my lack of business skills and marketing savvy...not to mention the niche market to which my product belongs...I'll take pride in my home-baked slice of the pie]

If I had to guess about a reason for the recent sales spike, I'd probably give credit to the expanding popularity of the recent Old School Essentials (B/X) retro-clone. Back in "The Time Before Covid" I had a chance to take a look at Ye Local Gamestore and it was a pretty nice set of books. Didn't purchase it myself (money's a little tight for picking up products I already own in their original form), but I've heard plenty of praise for the thing, both in-person (from actual people) and on-line (from virtual people). 

ANYway, that's the only reason I can think of...I don't see any reviews or internet mentions of the Companion more recently than 2012 or so. Regardless, my thanks to all the people doing the purchasing...considering the many pirate PDFs of my book floating around the internet these days, I appreciate the money some folks are actually willing to put in my pocket.

Now the stranger part: while OSE offers some explanation for my B/X Companion, I don't know what could account for the renewed interest in Five Ancient Kingdoms, which is also on pace to have its best sales since 2013 (the first year it was published). 

Are people actually playing 5AK?

Allow me to be a skosh amazed at the idea. I mean, I'm not playing the game at the moment, though maybe I should be. I spent much of yesterday reading through the PDFs (for the first time in years) and, man, there is some good stuff in there. Elegant design, if I do say so myself (and I do).  Yeah, yeah...patting myself on the back again. But I like how I solved a lot of particular design issues I had with D&D, adding interesting nuance while still keeping the system streamlined and abstract.

Why did I abandon this line of gaming? 

Now THAT is a good question. I definitely remember feeling a bit pingeon-holed by the setting...even thought the books themselves offer ways to modify the system for other settings. But mostly, I think, that I felt the game lacked appeal...I could never get more than 2 or 3 players together that were willing to give it a go, back during the play-testing stage. Compare that with the offer of most any edition of D&D and you get half a dozen hands (or more) go up in the air, crying to join the table.

*sigh* I'm such a slave to what is trendy.

But no, it's more than that, I think. I worked hard on the probabilities and dice outcomes for 5AK, and they work well, but they're not as intuitive to grasp as a more granular, incremental system based on a D20 or percentile dice. Or perhaps it's just me...I am too used to these simpler granular systems, having been steeped in them for decades. Rolling 2d6 and tossing out "zeroes" just seems too "weird" from my perspective. I need some sort of damn chart/matrix to reference or I feel naked out there!

*sigh again*

As I continue to work on my own world and tinker the rules to better match the parameters of my design needs I read through these books...the three volumes of 5AK...and I keep coming across things that make me wonder "is there a way to add this to D&D?" A way to somehow incorporate these ideas into the standard D&D design without upsetting the entire apple cart? Sadly, I'm not sure there is. Systems in 5AK are built to inter-lock with each other. D&D is a hodge-podge of mechanics created on a "need" or "cool idea" basis (and often as patches when "cool ideas" ended up creating other "needs"). Functional as D&D is, fun as D&D is, its very nature precludes the addition of elegant mechanics.

Doesn't it?

Mentzer's BECMI tried to file off a lot of the "rough edges" and the game suffered for it (in my opinion). Same with 3rd edition...and 3.5 and 4th and 5th. The more well-oiled the machine becomes, the less room there is for imagination. 5AK works because it is, in the main, small scale and firmly based in its fairy tale genre. But D&D's heritage is founded in a wilder and woolier period of imaginings. 

What was it I was listening to the other day? Oh, yeah: Mother Love Bone. Andrew Wood is one of the greatest singer/songwriters that...unless you're really deep into musical lore...you've probably never heard or heard of. Unless you're, like, my age (mid-late 40s) and grew up in Seattle and liked rock music instead of pop and rap. Because Wood died right on the verge of becoming famous, and his bandmates ended up becoming Pearl Jam instead. And Vedder's a great singer and frontman, don't get me wrong, but Wood was a special talent. His music mixed the sacred with the profane, at time profound at times adolescent, all combined with sincerity and humor and beautiful singing ability, emphasizing love in all its expressions (for God, for children, for sex, for the world). I found my old CD in a mislabeled box and ended up listening to it 3 or 4 times through, just feeling...sad.

Because even if I played their CD for, say, my children or some 20-something year olds, there's just such a depth of meaning that would be lost on kids from a different generation. They just wouldn't grasp references because there's so much that doesn't exist anymore in this day and age of internet saturation and multi-hundred TV channels and social media bubbles. It's like: once upon a time the world was a smaller place, but so much more specific...and now its not. Once upon a time, every kid watched Bugs Bunny or Scoobie-Doo because you were a kid and you watched cartoons and there was only a couple channels and a couple times a week that you could watch them. Once upon a time there was only a handful of news outlets and rather than market themselves to a particular "fan base" they tried to report as quickly and accurately as possible. Once upon a time everyone knew the same songs because radio stations that catered to a particular taste only rotated the same handful of bands. We had shared understandings, shared touchstones.

We have so few of those these days, except for world-shattering events. Good things? Or fun things? Or nice things? Those are all over the board. You might know something about it if you're In The Group that cares about a particular thing (role-playing games, for example)...otherwise, it's outside your bubble, outside your sphere of interest. And you chance of having a shared knowledge with someone outside that thing is...slim. I can bitch about Trump or Covid with the other soccer parents while watching our kids practice or I can talk about soccer and soccer kids. Anything else? Chaff in the wind.

D&D...the D&D that I play and that I prefer...belongs to that older time. It wasn't created to be elegant or universal or easily consumed. It gained ascendance by being pretty much the only (or main) game in town at a time when the world was a much smaller place, when choices were more limited, and when people...players...had more shared understandings. Me writing 5AK was an attempt at...hell, I don't really know (or remember) exactly what I was attempting. But with regard to mechanics, I tried to make it as "elegant" as possible, while maintaining some sort of soul and imagination. I just don't know if imagination can exist alongside "elegant" design...it certainly seems more readily found in the inelegant systems of the wilder, woolier past. 

Ugh. This post has gone completely off the rails. Probably need to reset (and maybe eat some breakfast).  Later, gators.

Cleaned Out

Well, it appears I just sold my last print copy of my B/X Companion over the weekend (I might have another one squirreled away somewhere, but it's a long shot). Rest assured, I'm in the process of ordering a new print run...a bigger one that should (hopefully) last a couple years.

I'm a little surprised that the book continues to sell as well as it does, both in print and electronic form; I'd have figured I'd already reached the point of saturation in our niche-niche market a while back. Apparently not.

What's even more surprising is sales of Five Ancient Kingdoms has picked up recently...I've sold as many copies of it in the last six months as in the twelve months prior. Weird. No idea who's playing it (perhaps folks are just mining it for ideas?)...one of these days I'll have the "Running Beagle Games" web site up-and-working and maybe I'll get some forum discussion going on the game.

Anyway, still recovering a bit from a weekend-long soccer jamboree and finishing up the last week of school. I hope to keep the blog posting going through the summer...we'll see how that goes.
; )

New Book

I want to write a new book.

Despite the lack of time I have, despite the lack of actual gaming available, despite the sheer inertia of slack that living in this damn country seems to instill in me (well, to be fair, I'm kind of busy being a father to my children), I feel the need to complete something.

More than that, I have a completely unreasonable challenge of wanting to get something done here, in Paraguay. I don't know how much it would cost to do a print-run down here or what the quality of the product might look like, but I feel almost obligated to try...just to have the experience. I have visions of making the trip up to the U.S. with one suitcase full of Paraguayan printed books. How wild would that be?

I've been thinking about this a lot, even as I dither around with projects. I find myself frustrated when I look at the works on my hard drive that are 50% or 70% or 95% completed (CDF was completely finished, save for the art, and I scrapped and started a complete rewrite due to my dissatisfaction with the final product). I get an idea in my head and I go gang-busters on it for a few days or weeks or months, and then...ugh. It's not that I run out of gas, so much as I run out of inspiration. Or fire. Or something. I want to give something to the community that...well, that's worthwhile. And while such a thing is certainly in the eye of the beholder (like the chicken-shit reviewer that gave one of my books "1 star" without a single comment...fuck you, dude), it has to seem worthwhile to Yours Truly. It's all well and good to say, hey, let's make a cool "space RPG," but if Classic Traveller is good enough for such a concept, why do I need to write a new book?

[not that retools of past concepts are never worthwhile, just by the way. Batman '66 is, quite frankly, awesome sauce]

A friend down here recently gifted me with a very nice, hard cover journal of the blank page variety. It would make a cool sketchbook, save that the paper is a little thin for drawing. I've yet to write word one in it; I just keep turning it over in my hands and wondering what I can and will do with it...if anything. And I just keep thinking, "I need to write another book." Something concrete, something finished, something that can be handled and held and used...by both myself and others.

The hard copies of Five Ancient Kingdoms is dwindling (just checked with my mailer via email the other day)...probably about a dozen-twenty copies remaining...but it hasn't really sold well enough (in my mind) to warrant another print run. And yet I was just informed via email of a long-time gamer about to start a 5AK campaign with her gaming group. That's very cool. I want to do that again...I want to create something useful and fun and entertaining. I'm not a novelist. I don't write screenplays.  My "rockstar days" are long behind me. This is what I do...the "game thing." Blogging just ain't enough.

OOOOOkay...glad I could get all that off my chest. It's been stewing a lot lately (along with everything else...football playoffs and holiday travel and whatnot) and I really needed to put it in writing, spew it out into the universe so it stares back at me. Instead of just having it bouncing around my brain in an endless loop.

Give me the weekend to figure out the specifics of the project. Thanks.

Hating on Lizards

Fast Paraguayan Fun Fact: All over Asuncion, there are these little yellow lizards that are all about getting into your home and scaring the beJesus out of you in the middle of the night by showing up on walls and counters and such. Some are tiny...barely over an inch...though I've seen some as long as eight or nine inches (these you bat with brooms). They're a damn plague is what they are; not as bad as the cucarachas, but...ANYway, the funny thing is, they're not native to the country, or even to the continent. Some years ago, a person brought a box of lizards to Paraguay from China, and the lizards escaped into the wild and they've been here ever since. Kind of like the damn chickens in Kauai. Now why anyone would want to bring a box of lizards from China (or anywhere else) is still a mystery...

You might think this is some kind of segue into a discussion on dynamic dungeon ecosystems or something, but you'd be wrong. My brain is not working hard enough this morning to generate that kind of power. No, I just hate these damn lizards. I've never liked creepy-crawly things, I've never been a fan of the outdoors or camping, and it's a constant irritation that I'm the dude that has to deal with this shit when my wife or kids are freaked out 'cause I'm the "man of the house." Seeing as how I'm about the least "manly" man I know, you'd think I'd get a pass or...well, whatever.

[actually, now that I think of it, I do know at least a couple of guys who are "less manly" than myself (they will remain nameless), but I really had to think about it. I'm pretty much a cream puff...though I do like hiking the occasional mountain]

No need for a loincloth. Really.

Lizard men, on the other hand, is something I can definitely dig on...at least as an RPG monster.

Lizard men...I prefer that term to the gender neutral "lizard folk" because to me folk implies some sort of family/culture (which I don't like my monsters to possess) and I think the archaic use of "man" as a gender neutral term harkens back to Old School pulp of which the monster was most certainly born. Besides, can you really tell the gender of a lizard person? Shouldn't we just call 'em "lizardoids" or something?...

*ahem* Lizard men (as I was starting to write) first appear in Supplement I (Greyhawk). They are not present in Monsters & Magic (book 2 of the LBBs), which isn't all that surprising when you consider that the entirety of the original monster list falls into one of these categories:

• carryovers from Chainmail (and its Tolkien influence)
• derivations of creatures from Chain mail (horses, for example)
• human antagonists fit for wargaming (pirates, bandits, etc.)
• creatures from Saturday matinee horror flicks (vampires, giant insects, The Blob, etc.)
• creatures from (mostly Greek) myth...though these may in fact be based on film, too (of the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad variety)

It isn't till Greyhawk that we start to see creatures derived from more literary sources, especially pulp fantasy and science fiction. Though maybe these, too, are found in horror and SciFi cinema...I'm not a huge lover of the B-movie genre, so I don't have the "chops" to really give a proper analysis.

Actually, in reading a few articles on-line about where these critters came from (many derived from Gygax's mind...at least their abilities, if not their names and images)...I see I'm waaay off base in my assumptions. Many times, Gygax was just "stretching things" to make them fit the needs of his campaign. Many images of iconic monsters (like kobolds and pig-faced orcs) simply come from the artist's rendering (and we've been using those images, incorporating them into the stats and background color ever since).

Well, at least that's better than simply making monsters to fill a niche created by a class ability.

As you might have guessed, I'm thinking about monsters today (well, and lizards...though they only come out at night). A lot of fantasy heartbreakers get dinged (in part) for their zealous adherence to the same old-same old equipment list found in the PHB (and elsewhere). For me, I'm considerably more concerned with the list of NPC antagonists (i.e. "monsters") that I want to include, and making sure they're distinct from "what has gone before," as well as being part of an internally consistent cosmology.

It's not just about re-skinning ghouls as "plague zombies," or orcs as "subhumans;" it's about creating the right flavor of adventure with the right creatures. Gygax made his gnolls "hyena-headed" because he needed something "more evil" and "disliked hyenas intensely." This just feels terribly appropriate to me...I feel the same way about lizard men. While all the entries for lizard man read about the same (from Greyhawk to Mentzer), the best summary of the creature can be found in Holmes's (two sentence!) description:

"These aquatic monsters will capture men in order to take them to the tribal lair for a feast, with the man as the main course! They are at least semi-intelligent and use weapons such as spears and clubs."

Really, that's all you need to know. They eat people, but they have the rudimentary intelligence to form a tribal structure and manufacture crude weapons. In other words, they are (presumably) aware of sentient beings (being sentient themselves) but choose to eat them! How evil is that? Kill 'em all!

Of course, the fact that they are much bigger and stronger (HD 2+1) than humans with a hide like mail (AC 5), means that they're a scourge that ain't going away anytime soon. Sure, a posse of mounted knights could drive them away on the open battlefield, but it's a fool's errand to take a horse and armor into the swamp with the aim of "stamping 'em out." And if lizard "folk" multiply like lizards (birthing half a dozen at a time), how long till your pseudo-medieval countryside is crawling with them, the same way Paraguay is crawling with these little scaly bastards?

Just a thought. I like lizard men in games, because I hate lizards in real life. Those folks with pet iguanas and such? I just don't get it. I've had roommates in the past with two foot (plus) long lizard pets, and while they're "fine" in the cage, taking 'em out and letting 'em run around was just...well, let's just say I used to drink even more than I do now (*ahem*). Anyhoo...

I didn't put lizard men in Five Ancient Kingdoms (though it would've been easy enough to do so) because they don't "fit the fiction" of the game (pulp fantasy versus mythic Arabia). But they're definitely going into the new heartbreaker, if I can make them fit the cosmology. And they're going to be the kind of creature one will feel no compunction about killing, sans hand-wringing.

'Cause I really, really don't like lizards.

[as an aside, if you want to add lizard folk to your Five Ancient Kingdom game, the stat-line would look like this:

HD: 2+1, Armor: Light, Hit/Kill: 8/12, Move: 6/12, Mettle: 4, Save: H2, Hoard: D

The monster works well with the "sword & sorcery" alternate setting described on page 48 of Volume 3, Dragon Master Secrets]

Saving Throws - Eh. Who Needs 'Em?

Saving throws. Do you really need 'em?

I've blogged about saving throws before, if a long time ago: what they mean, they're abstract nature. Haven't thought about them much since...well, except for when I'm creating various saving throw tables for my RPGs (5AK, Cry Dark Future, whatever). Then yesterday I read Lord Gwyd's latest blog post about saving throws in 5th Edition, and...in addition to instilling a bit more disgust in the revamped system (for a couple different reasons which aren't pertinent to this post)...it got me thinking about the origins of saving throws and whether or not they are, as a mechanic, truly necessary to the game.

In designing the new FHB, I've yet to come up with a new saving throw matrix for the game, so maybe this line of thinking is just an "out" for me...I don't need to wrack my brain to create arbitrary "save tables" that have a modicum of logic. But if so, well, so be it...this is my SECOND heartbreaker after all; let me slide on a couple things.

The first appearance of "saving throws" is in Chainmail, the basic mechanic from which OD&D blossomed. Admittedly, my copy is the 3rd edition (which, I am told, was published after OD&D), so I may be mistaken. Perhaps Chainmail was backward engineered to add saves, but until I see a copy of an earlier edition, I'll proceed with my assumption.

Chainmail limits its dice use to D6s, so a save looks different from the D20 roll that D&D players are accustomed to seeing. However, there are very few "saves" in Chainmail. They include:

• saves versus the "auto-kill" fireballs and lightning bolts of wizards,
• saves versus the fiery breath of a dragon,
• saves versus the turn to stone effect of a basilisk,
• saves versus poison (as an example only) for a hypothetical giant spider

That's it. Other wizard spells (like Cloudkill) offer no saving throws, although the presence of a magic-user on the opposing side allows a counter-spell attempt which could be considered a saving throw of sorts (albeit, a conditional save).

For the most part, saves are only provided for exceptional fantasy units: heroes, superheroes, wizards, and powerful monsters like dragons, giants, and wraiths. Rolls to save are given for certain special effects that would otherwise auto-kill (i.e. remove from the gaming table) a piece. Dragon fire, for example, destroys

"any opponent it touches, except another Dragon, Super Hero, or a Wizard, who is saved on a two dice roll of 7 or better."

The chance of rolling a seven on 2D6 is about 58%. An 8th level fighter (a "super hero") in B/X or OD&D needs a 10 or better on a D20...that's a 55% chance. A wizard (11th level level in OD&D) news an 11, which is a 50% chance...much closer to that 7+ roll than an 8+ roll (which would be a 42%). To me, it seems obvious that Gygax and company tried to make it pretty close to the original Chainmail.

However, in Chainmail lesser character types...like Heroes (the equivalent of a 4th level fighter in most every way) don't receive a save versus dragon fire. The nice, heroic part about D&D is that the game gives ALL player characters a chance to be "saved" from kill effects, not just the best of the best and the strongest of the strong. And if you're going to have any kind of save in an RPG, that's a pretty smart way to go.

But let's look at those specific saves again.

Magic spells: in Chainmail, wizards main attack lies in their ability to throw a fireball or lightning bolt (only one or the other) every turn, during the missile phase. This magical missile auto-kills any unit except the following: Heroes, Super Heroes, other Wizards, Wraiths, Dragons, Giants, and Elementals. Dragons, Giants, and Elementals cannot be killed, only "driven back;" the others receive saves of 9, 6, 7, and 7 respectively. Other magical spells, only three of which specifically target an enemy (slowness, confusion, and cloudkill) do not allow saving throws.

Dragon Fire: as stated, this is simply a "save or die" roll.

Basilisks: these petrify "anyone, except a magic user or Super Hero (can be saved by a two dice roll of 6 or better) who looks at their face." There is a separate save for those that touch the creature...interestingly, Giants and Treants need 10s to save while most others save on a 7 or better.

Giant Spiders: again this is listed as a hypothetical possibility whose stats "should be decided upon prior to the game" in which they will be used. As an example, "a giant spider might be unkillable by normal men, but will kill them unless they roll a save of 8 or better, and it would combat fantastic opponents as if it were a lycanthrope."

What does that mean? It means that against non-Heroes (and non-Wizards and non-Super Heroes) the spider simply carries a 40% chance of "save or die." That's like saying: there's no roll to hit; YOU roll a D20 and try to his a 13 or die (a 1st level fighter in OD&D save versus poison on a 12 or better).

If we're talking about one of the "heroic" characters, than the onus is on the hypothetical spider to land a killing attack. Using the Lycanthrope line, a 2D6 roll of 8 is needed to kill a Hero, and an 11 or better needed to kill a Super Hero or Wizard...pretty long odds for that "poison" to work its evil. If we  look at that in reverse (the spider "fails" to poison on a roll of 2-7, or on a roll of 2-10), that's the equivalent of giving these heroic types a D20 "save versus poison" of 10+ for the Hero or 3+(!) for the Super Hero and Wizard.

OKAY...so OD&D gives us five saving throws: Death Ray & Poison, Wands, "Stone," Dragon Breath, and Staves & Spells. These are the same in B/X except that Turn to Stone is combined with Paralysis...a sad confusion, to be sure (does this include "hold" spells? Wands of paralysis? Or only the paralysis that occurs when one is scratched by a ghoul?). But I suppose the same issue applies with regard to the spell, Flesh to Stone?

"Death Ray" also is a little weird...it would seem to apply only to the "anti-cleric's" Finger of Death spell. Why wouldn't this save fall under the "Staves & Spells" category? Because it's auto-kill and the designers want to give PCs a break (Death Ray has an easier save than Staves & Spells)? Then why does Disintegrate get saved as a "spell" and not a "death ray?"

ANYWAY...a lot of questions there and 3rd Edition's choice to limit all saves to a static three (Fortitude, Reflex, and Will) was a pretty valiant attempt to simplify the mechanic and eliminate the confusion. Not that the ability to mix-n-match classes (and save bonuses) didn't add it's own bit of chaos (along with various bonuses and penalties...racial, situational, synthesis, and whatnot).

I go back to my original question: do we really need saving throws? That is to say, do we really need class/level/category-based saving throws? How many effects do you really want to have saves versus?

What does the Kraken need to save? A 4? 

Let's look at our B/X chassis for a moment: does level drain receive a save? Does mummy rot? Does a shadow's strength drain? Lycanthropy? The hug of a bear (or owl bear)? How about the dissolving powers of slimes and oozes and puddings? How about the attack of a rust monster? The whirlwind of a djinni?

No, they don't. Why not? Why does paralysis get a save? If a gelatinous cube paralyzes creatures with its touch, why doesn't a successful attack automatically paralyze its opponent? If a spider's bite delivers poison, why doesn't a successful bite poison the its victim? Why do we give saves for some and not for others? Because they stop a player from playing (either killing or paralyzing or petrifying)? Because its a form of de-protagonization while other attacks reduce and diminish a character but still allow them the freedom to act?

Well, okay, maybe that's valid...getting your armor rotted off doesn't automatically make you "sit on the sidelines" like other effects. But my experience has been that players tend to retreat from the dungeon when their strength or level has been drained sufficiently...or when their equipment has been destroyed by these various "screw you" monsters. And doesn't being afflicted by a curse like lycanthropy or mummy rot have a deprotagonizing effect? PCs that fall under DM control (because they're now a werewolf, for example) isn't much different from being under the influence of a vampire's charm spell, as far as I can see.

Personally, I'm coming around to the idea that if you don't want something to happen, you probably shouldn't put it in the game. My concept of a ghoul doesn't include a paralyzing touch so (in 5AK for example) there's no paralysis attack from the creature. But if you don't want players to become paralyzed (because such an attack can easily result in a Total Party Kill), then why even stick the power on the monster?

[just FYI, Chainmail lumps "ghouls" in the same category as "wights" stat-wise and then says that WIGHTS paralyze opponents they touch...which, by the way, models the barrow wight attack from Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. In OD&D, the designers gave wights level drain instead and left the paralysis for ghouls alone...and it's stuck ever since. BTW, in Chainmail? No saving throw versus this ability...but then, it doesn't affect heroic characters at all!]

Let's look at dragon fire for a moment. What do you want dragons to do? Do you want them to offer a  sufficient risk/reward to justify "huge damage" versus "huge treasure?" Ok, why not go the Chainmail route and say, 'roll a 7+ on 2D6 or die if you're caught in dragon fire?' Just have it as an effect of the monster. Forget these saving throw categories with these tables of numbers that slow down the gameplay with their search & handling time.

All right, this is running long (again) and I'm out of time (again). I'll try to write a bit more on this later. However, let me just finish up by saying that at this point I am strongly considering having all "saves" be effect based, rather than character-based. But there will be a lot fewer "effect-based" saves (or saves of any kind) in the new FHB.

Why? Because (in my opinion) most of the things requiring saves just aren't very interesting. Certainly they're uninteresting if the player saves (and nothing happens), but even their failures (especially the ones that "sideline" players indefinitely) are uninteresting. I still want to make characters suffer (because I think suffering is part of what makes the heroic journey interesting), but I want that suffering to be interesting and (perhaps more importantly) "un-savable."
: )

Revising B/X Combat (for, like, the Upteenth time)

Actually, I might as well call this "revising B/X period," but whatever. Here's a look behind the curtain of something I'm currently working on.

It is a sad state of affairs that when you start to tweak one thing, you end up needing to tweak another and another and another until pretty soon you're game only superficially (or thematically) resembles the one you used to be playing. For examples, check out D&D 3E forward, and perhaps games like, oh, Palladium Fantasy, or any other number of "fantasy heartbreakers" marketed as "new, innovative" entries into the RPG market. What starts out as a tweak or two ends up snowballing into a giant ball of house rules that might as well be (well, pretty much is) its Very Own Thing.

This is the way hack game designers (like myself) are created.

So, as usual, the original idea for a game I'm building "from the ground up" comes (in part) from some "fixes" I was making to the B/X D&D game. It's unfortunate that so much had to be revised, but c'est la vie. You've got an idea, or thought, or philosophy, and sometimes it's implantation requires redesign. In this particular instance, we're talking about a shift in paradigm with regard to variable weapon damage in small scale encounters.

In Five Ancient Kingdoms, my combat system is very, very different from what you find in B/X because it is based in the root combat system of D&D, namely the Chainmail wargame system. For those who haven't been following the blog too closely (or for those who have gotten completely lost in the meandering of my rambling thoughts on football and whatnot), I'll try to sum up quickly:

- the current system of D&D combat (D20 attack vs. armor class, roll damage, subtract from hit points) is based on an ALTERNATIVE combat system presented in the OD&D books. It went from being an "alternative" to being de facto in part because (as Arneson wrote in Blackmoor) players didn't like getting one-shotted in combat.

[I'm paraphrasing]

- Chainmail did not allow for heroic staying power in PCs...you were wounded (and out o action) or not. Large monsters (like ogres) could sustain more wounds (i.e. had more hit dice) than a human. You'd have to wound the ogre four times to kill it (unless your character was of an especially heroic type or using a magic weapon). Makes for short, sweet combats.

- What I did with 5AK was to make hit points a part of being an adventurer (PC type) only...PCs take HP damage (rolled randomly) from monsters, but monsters just take wounds. In other words, I took the same approach to my "monster manual" as was the case in early editions of D&D: a monster's profile is just plain different from a player characters (this is not the case with 3E/Pathfinder where monsters have ability scores, feats, skills, etc.). If monsters exist as challenges to be overcome (however one chooses to do that) then why the hell do they need to be all statted up? A ridiculous excess, in my opinion.

The added bonus here is that, being based on a war game (Chainmail) the 5AK combat system is easily extrapolated to mass combat situations (if you want your Arabian horde to go to battle against the northern barbarians or whatever). Small scale and large scale combat can both be handled easily.

But, okay, not everyone is interested in playing out epic sagas on the sand-swept plains surrounding Baghdad. Some people just want to go down into dungeons, yo.

SO...I began writing a new heartbreaker of a game, one with a specific objective (because, you know, objectives are good for games) but whose objective requires the plunging into the depths of the earth with small bands of adventurers. A more basic fantasy adventure game, if you will. And one that uses all sorts of dice, not just six-sided ones (maybe I'm tired of writing up all those D66 random tables).

Anyway: here's the philosophy I wanted to instill in the game design (which required tweaking of the "basic" system/chassis I was using):

1. Combat should be fast. The game is not solely about combat and should not take hours to resolve.
2. Damage should be variable. In small scale (skirmish level) conflict, some blows are more telling than others (this gets into a change in philosophy with ability scores, but that's a separate post), and players should experience both the agony of inflicting "only a flesh wound" or the rapture of carving out a big chunk from their opponent.
3. Randomness should be minimal. We want to cut down on the number of dice rolled...ideally, one die roll per player per round of combat (with the exception of possible "resistance" rolls, i.e. saving throw).

[the game is not narrative based, so "scene resolution" is not what I'm going for here...I want to play the back-n-forth of combat, even if it's still quicker than your average 3E throwdown]

In order to accomplish all this, I needed to find a way to combine the attack roll with the damage roll. Or (more specifically) make the attack roll the measure of how much damage is inflicted (rather than an additional, random throw of the die, which I hate).

What exactly is an attack roll? Well, it's a fortune (random) method of determining whether or not an attempt to hurt one's opponent succeeds. The target number (and, thus, the percentage chance of success) is based on two factors:

- the opponent's defense (how hard is it to damage this dude?)

- the attacker's skill (how easily can I inflict punishment?)

In D&D, the first factor is boiled down into one short hand called "armor class" which includes not only armor but magical protection, shield use, agility ("dexterity"), and other assorted bonuses. The second factor is determined by class/experience (one's "attack bonus"), certain enchantments, ability bonuses (depending on edition and type of attack), and perhaps a couple other random bonuses.

This final target number is the minimum number an attacker must roll to succeed...that is, the minimum number needed to successfully inflict damage on an opponent. If I roll under that target number, I fail (i.e. do not inflict damage), whether I miss it by one pip or 20. If I roll the number exactly, I have (just) managed to succeed in inflicting damage. If I roll in excess of the number, I have managed to...well, in normal D&D you haven't managed anything more than the bare success of rolling the target number exactly.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Here's the new way of looking at combat: if you roll your target number exactly, you inflict 1 point of damage on your opponent...the bare minimum damage for a bare minimum attack roll. For every point over your target number, you inflict one additional point of damage up to the maximum damage that a weapon is capable of inflicting. If I need a 14 to hit and I roll a 20, I've inflicted one + six (since 20 is six more than 14) for a total of seven points of damage. This is, of course, assuming that I'm using a weapon capable of inflicting seven points of damage.

"Ooo...that was a good roll!"

In my game, one's Strength score increases the maximum damage a weapon may inflict (you still have to roll a good hit to inflict that massive damage, though).

In my game, a magic weapon both increases the maximum damage a weapon may inflict, and reduces the target number (thus making it more likely to inflict said extra damage).

Creatures with a higher AC are harder to damage. Creatures with a lower AC are easier to damage. Fighters (with a better chance to hit) inflict more damage in combat. Other classes (with a lower chance to hit) inflict less damage in combat. That all seems to make sense to me.

Of course, PCs are heroic in my game so the way monsters dish damage is a little different from how they take it: no PC hero should go down just because the DM rolls a 20 in combat and is only wearing leather armor. However, a split between the way monsters fight and the way PCs fight is nothing new (neither to me, nor to the basic editions of D&D), and only the DM is responsible for learning both types of combat so, you know, no big deal.

All right, that's enough for now. Perhaps I'll talk about my changes to ability scores tomorrow.

; )

Warriors of the Red Planet Beta

Thomas Denmark's Warriors of the Red Planet is now available as a Beta version from Lulu for a measly $4. I follow the man's Original Edition Fantasy blog solely for the beautiful artwork, and WotRP looks like a fantastic piece of work...especially exciting, if you're interested in a Sword & Planet type game based on Burrough's Barsoom (who isn't?) using an OD&D style ruleset (ditto).

Unfortunately, being in Paraguay means I can't get this myself. Dammit.

I had some all-too-brief rules in Book 3 of Five Ancient Kingdoms for converting 5AK to this kind of setting, but Thomas has chosen to go "whole hog" and I salute him for it. Hopefully, some version of Warriors of the Red Planet will be available when I get back to the States.

You can purchase it here. The forum for discussion on gameplay is here.

Sword & Gun fantasy on the Red Frontier!

Musings on 5AK

For those who are curious, the electricians finally showed up (9:20am)...only a little more than two days late. Fast Paraguayan fun fact: the average annual rainfall in Asuncion is more than that of Seattle, WA...however, it rains a lot fewer days during the year and, what with the crappy roads and crappier drainage, the streets run like rivers on rainy days. It's as dangerous as flash floods...usually you can count on one or two fatalities every time it rains.

[no, I'm not joking]

It's been raining for a couple days now, which means my boy has been home in the mornings and I've been unable to do much writing. I did write a few hundred words on revamping ability scores, but I've since lost my train of thought on the subject, and to be honest it was kind of a meandering waste of space. Yesterday, I did get an interesting idea about the undead, causing me to go back and review my PDF files of Five Ancient Kingdoms (Book 2), but that completely derailed me, as I spent all my spare time last night rereading my own book. It's really one helluva' good read. And it makes me wonder:

Why has there been so little said about it, dammit?

People continue to buy it, after all...at least the PDF copies are still selling over at DriveThruRPG. The print copies (including dice!) sell less than print copies of The Complete B/X Adventurer (which I plan on uploading as a cheap, B&W PDF one of these days). But it IS selling...and thank you so much to those who've purchased it. I just find it...well, a little weird that I've received so little feedback. Not even negative feedback.

I guess apathy is a form of feedback. But at least I'd hope someone would say, "F you, dude, for taking my money! What a waste!"

Hell, someone (not me!) even bothered to add the 5AK books over at RPGGeek, but they didn't bother to actually review them. Oh, wait...they added a different "comment" on each separate entry; here's what Martin Ralya wrote:

This is a tight, clear OD&D retroclone with an Arabian fantasy spin, and it's a great little booklet. It's full of clever touches, notably using only d6s, those d6s having ZERO in place of one (and the accompanying rules for zeroing out), and being able to "push" rolls for extra dice with the tradeoff being that if you fail, you fail hard.

As a boxed set with all three booklets needed for the game, I'd rate the whole shebang an 8 as well.

[that's 8 out of 10, by the way]

Thanks, Martin!

But I do wish people would discuss more of those "little touches." Tenkar's Tavern started an in depth review, but never even made it through Book 1. Necropraxis gave probably the most complete summary I've seen (at least, in English). I haven't heard of anyone actually playing the game or stealing/hacking its contents.

The reason I was referencing it at all was to see how I approached the undead for possible inclusion in a new, project (I like to look back at my earlier work for ideas, because that way I don't have to reinvent the ol' wheel, you know?). What I found was a great, great monster section, and really one that I don't think I could really improve upon. Really! The work I put into those 27 pages...making them concise yet consistent with the cosmology of the setting, balancing them against the system, the streamlined stat table, the assignation of treasure hoard types (which, by the way, is handled quite a bit different from what you find in B/X and its ilk)...makes it one of the sections in which I take the most pride. But I suppose people probably skim over this section, seeing it as the "same old same old." Well, I suppose I did use the same "hit dice" for many monsters that are found in early D&D...but HD in my game operate a bit differently than in early D&D!

Oh, well...cry me a river, right? Plenty of people are publishing things and NOT making a buck on 'em. Five Ancient Kingdoms was written and laid out by Yours Truly, using only (beautiful) public domain art and with only a couple-three proof readers for help...and people are still buying it. I'm sure it doesn't help that the web site is still not up-and-running (maybe that will be my project for the week the wife is in Montevideo...she's taking the baby with her)...there aren't any forums to discuss or talk about the game or ask questions or provide feedback. Gosh, my original idea was to shoot it off into space as a "fire-and-forget" game, so why do I care anyway? It's a damn fantasy heartbreaker after all, what was I expecting?!

Actually, maybe the real reason I was thinking about it was due to a post by ChicagoWiz back in the day titled "Where's Our EPT and Blackmoor?" lamenting (in part) that the OSR wasn't doing enough to push the envelope. Granted, he was writing this in 2011 and plenty of weird and exciting product has hit the market since then, but maybe I was feeling that my little contribution to the collective "stuff" floating around the internet was kind of...uh..."pushy" and I was hoping it could be a spark for something.

But you know what? 5AK ain't a perfect game anyway. Even now, loving it as I do, there are things I'd like to have done differently and ways I coulda'-woulda'-shoulda' tightened it up. I feel like it needs a simpler, more accessible, less far-reaching version. Something a little more objective-specific. Something a bit more...how to say...basic?

Hmmm.

More later. Once again, I'm out of time.

Classless

Damn...Wednesday already?

Hate to say it, but the week has been flying by with little productive action from me. I'm working on a little something-something that I hope to have in "test-able" form for tomorrow night...but we'll see what happens.

In other news: a quick search of the web found that Five Ancient Kingdoms has been talked up in a couple places, though the only new review I've found was on a French forum. Those who can parle francais are welcome to check it out here. It's fairly complimentary (thanks pseudo!), with his main gripes being A) the resolution of the artwork, B) the blandness/unoriginality of the introductory adventure, and C) the changing of proper names from their original (real world) analogs....especially irritating to folks who already have to translate the game into their own language (e.g. from English to French).

Regarding that last complaint...sorry. At my own table, I generally stick to the actual proper names, but for the 5AK game I wanted to emphasize that the setting is fiction, not historical. I'm sure there are folks who would take umbrage with painting certain cultures with an unflattering brush...but a fantasy game requires fantasy antagonists, you know? It's like my other adventure game (only play-tested once) that makes all the fine folks of Portugal to be heinous villains because...well, you know the justification for that is really a separate post topic. But there's a reason I haven't put that one up as a free download.

(yet)

Anyway...

In completely rewriting the whole "fantasy adventure game" concept from the ground up, I find myself branching into territory that I have (for years now) been avoiding: namely the realm of gaming divorced from the concepts of "class" and "level." Ugh...gross. I like class and level, and I use it in most everything (Cry Dark Future and Clockwork being notable exceptions...but then, they're based off other RPGs that don't use class and level)...even such random concepts as DMI, post-apoc, and my supers game. Hell, even CDF has levels if not actual classes.

The problem with ridding oneself of classes and levels is you rid yourself of two very useful design concepts: an archetypal shorthand (chargen made easy) and a golden carrot (reward system). Unless you're trying to design a one-off (or otherwise short-lived serial) story game (i.e. premise addressing RPG facilitating the narrativist creative agenda) then all you're doing is setting up a sim-style game in which PCs just piddle around, in which the GM is either a dancing monkey for the players' enjoyment or a railroader extraordinaire. Neither of which I was shooting for, by the way.

Oh, and no...there's no "skill system" in the game. Get that out of your head!

So, I've been working on a different style of bean-counting reward system (literally...the mechanic is currently referred to as "beans" in the draft notes). In some it feels like I'm trying to reinvent other "chip-counting" systems like FATE or Savage Worlds...except that I'm not and the system feels a lot different from those (other than the beans).  Still...classless. The whole thing makes me decidedly uncomfortable. What's to keep players from making all sorts of random, dumb-dumb type characters?

The rest of the rules, natch.
; )

Well anyway...that's just what I'm working on this week. Who knows? Maybe it will all be scrapped by the weekend. At this point, I'm still shooting for something around the size of Holmes Basic.

Spell Works (Part 1)

A few random notes first.

RE Sport: Congrats to the US national team in qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in convincing fashion (and right on to all the gringos that came out in Columbus to support the team; I fully expected the stands to be a sea of green). Condolences to Mexico, birthplace of my wife…however, if you don’t get your shit together you’re not going to go far in Brasil anyway, even if you do make it through the New Zealand play-in. Jeez, Tri!

In other news: the Seahawks look good, and the Mariners have gone down the toilet. What else is new?

RE 5AK: All thanks to a couple people who’ve pointed out typos in Five Ancient Kingdoms. While I can’t correct the print copies at this point, the PDFs have been corrected and you can download the updated versions from DriveThruRPG…assuming you’ve purchased the PDF version (Book 1 and Book 2 are the only ones that needed fixing).

RE “Patriot Day:” Did you know how much gasoline costs in Venezuela? $0.25. That’s not $.25 per gallon; that’s $.25 per tank…like to fill up your SUV (lot of SUVs in Caracas) costs a quarter. Granted, Venezuela has reported oil reserves more than ten times that of the United States (276 billion barrels to 26 billion), but it costs me $50 to fill my fuel efficient car. Just a bit of trivia for folks.

Okay…back to work.

In yesterday’s post I said to “consider the desired end result.” What do you want wizards to look like in your game? Me, I want geezers and crones. Now, I realize that advanced age is no guarantee of knowledge or (Lord knows) wisdom, but for my money I want it to be a (usual) requirement of the former (i.e. knowledge) at the very least.

I also wrote that I didn’t want magical skill to be based on some sort of genetic hiccup…my fantasy world isn’t one of “muggles” versus magic-users. Most people just don’t have the time or inclination or resources or opportunity or dedication to learn the magical discipline. That’s why magic-users will tend to be older geezers – save, perhaps, for the occasional young prodigy or failed apprentice. However, these latter two will be exceptions to the norm, even as magic-users themselves are exceptions to the non-wizard populace. Got that?

All right, now that we’ve got that down, the next part of our design process is to consider the cosmology of our fantasy world. We know what our magic-users look like; now, we need to know what magic itself looks like. Not only that, but we need to start asking (and answering) questions about the game mechanics regarding magic spells.

Now just by the way, let’s understand that I’m not being incredibly original here: pretty much every fantasy heartbreaker published has provided a new and different magic system (i.e. different from the Vancian magic system in D&D). My gripe isn’t with Vance or his fantasy world…or even with the many worlds of D&D (Greyhawk, Eberron, Krynn, whatever). I just want something different for me, somewhat steeped in the lore and mythology of our own world’s pre-D&D fantasy.

Cosmology is the important word here, and probably one that requires its own separate post. What I mean by the term is figuring out how the “laws of the universe” works for your particular game world/system. For example, here are some of the aspects of magic in Five Ancient Kingdoms:

• Spells are ordered in degrees of magnitude (i.e. “spell level”) just like D&D
• “Miracles” are divine favors granted to saints and holy men. Magnitude measures greater miracles. Miracles don’t allow saving throws and are generally permanent in nature. There are a limited number of favors a deity will grant to a saint, with more prominent characters (i.e. higher level PCs) gaining more attention.
• Magician spells tend to be transitory in nature and allow saving throws to resist. They wreck reality (or the perception of reality), but fade and are generally non-permanent. There’s a greater variety, and magnitude reflects the difficulty of learning and casting spells (higher magnitude are more complex and take longer to cast).
• Spells are a product of knowledge; a magician may have committed some spells to memory and may have others in a written form. There is no limit to the number of times a spell may be attempted, but it must be performed correctly to take effect.
• Witches' spells, being tied to the material world through their physical components can produce some of the same permanent effects of divine favors, though unlike miracles they still need to be performed correctly and they may be resisted (saving throws) like any magician spell.
• While divine favors are granted, magician spells must be learned, found or created through research. Low level magicians begin apprenticed to a wizard who will teach them some magic; sorcerers are taught their magic by a demonic tutor who sticks with them throughout their career.
• Spells (divine or not) generally produce magical effects…they do not deal damage like spells in D&D. Dealing damage is usually a product of combat (sticking people with a sword).

This cosmology works with 5AK because it works with the setting…it models what I want it to model. It does not include rules for long-bearded geezers because, well, magicians in Arabian folklore (especially female magicians) tend to be younger, spryer folks than what you find in northern European folklore (their not basing their archetypes on Wotan/Odin, I guess).

But now I am looking at that type of model so I want to take apart the cosmology and see how to make it work for this new system and the first order of business is this: abstract magic or specific?

Specific magic means “specific spells:” spell lists in other words. This is what you find in most fantasy RPGs, whether you’re talking D&D or Palladium or Warhammer FRPG. Often spells are listed by level (what I call magnitude) with higher levels being beefier spells, but you don’t have to do this. You could simply have a list of powers to choose from, which may or may not be more difficult to cast. Think of force powers in the old D6 Star Wars. Whether or not the spells are a resource (D&D’s Vance system) or utilize a resource (“mana points” or whatever) is irrelevant at this point.

Abstract magic means “spells on the fly;” there’s no set list. This would be games like Ars Magica or Mage the Ascension or The Riddle of Steel where a magic-using character has a number of “components” with which they can “build spells” as needed. For example, in Ars you combine a form (like “fire” or “body”) to a technique (like “create” or “destroy”) to make the spells you want (“create fireball” or “disintegrate person”). Mage is even easier: you have a level (from one to five) in a particular sphere of magic (“mind” or “travel”) and the level determines what you are capable of in that particular arena. Abstract systems require a greater degree of creativity on the part of the player and a greater amount of adjudication from the GM…they also tend to be games in which magic is the dominant force and focus of the game (which doesn’t necessarily work for a D&D like game featuring many different character archetypes).

[to be continued...sorry, I'm just a bit busy today]

Wanting Better Fantasy

I started writing a big ol’, rambling post yesterday but forget all that noise. I’ve got something else on my mind.

People who have picked up Five Ancient Kingdoms and read its contents (or, God forbid, played the game) will have certainly noticed its departure from “traditional” D&D in many facets. No, I’m not talking about the inclusion of skills or “non-weapon proficiencies;” that kind of filler is something I can do without in my games.

No, here are some of the rule differences:

• No dice other than D6s (no D20, D4, D8, D10, etc.)
• Rule Zero (already discussed)
• HPs limited to player characters
• HPs rolled every game session (no carry-over)
• Hit Dice repurposed as all-encompassing multi-use combat stats
• Combat based (roughly) on Chainmail
• Magic inspired (roughly) by Chainmail and non-Vancian
• Unlimited magic for magicians
• Treasure tables removed (treasure types for monsters remain)
• Magic item creation combined into a single table-system
• Different saving throws (and based on 2D6 roll)
• XP earned for treasure/monsters scaled by level (less XP received as PCs advance)
• Additional XP bonuses for “experiences” that don’t scale
• Motivations that have (light!) mechanical impact
• Romance rules
• Warfare rules based on scaled up combat (simplified Chainmail in other words)

Those are the major rule departures; there are many more minor differences (like coinage, encumbrance, and movement rules). I’m also probably leaving out other major differences, but it’s not the point of this post to enumerate every deviance of design.

Now in case anyone’s wondering, most of these differences were created due to:

A) Repurposing to patch problems and inconsistencies

B) Removal of patches of the original designers for things not broken, and/or

C) Setting specific changes (especially regarding spells, equipment, monsters, costs, etc.)

I understand that for many people, the particular edition of D&D they’re currently playing (with or without additional house rules) is perfectly fine and dandy…it’s been working for ten or 20 or 30 or 40(!) years and they’re not interested in changing that now or anytime soon. The reasons I wrote 5AK was not an attempt to usurp the existing editions’ (nor clones’) place in the hearts and minds of role-players. Nope. My original motivation (as I’ve probably noted elsewhere on this blog) included a combination of 1) throwing my particular heartbreaker hat into the ring (i.e. my own ego), and 2) showing that such a thing could be done (and I mean, showing myself as well as others, BTW). AND I was truly irritated by the whole D&D Next thing and decided it would be a more constructive exercise to quit my bitching and just do my own version of D&D…D&D Mine, I called it.

[literally…that’s how the files are labeled on my computer]

But somewhere along the line, my original motivation morphed into something a bit different, due in no small part to the pride I’ve taken in this creation. It IS a complete game, after all…something I plan on supporting via a web site (currently under construction) and soliciting contributions for. There are FIVE ancient kingdoms after all…each could certainly use its own supplement book!

Five Ancient Kingdoms was written to be a standalone game; a cheap, packaged product (including dice) that people could pick up and use as an alternative to their standard fantasy fare. And for folks not interested in the specific setting of 5AK, I wanted the game to have a rule set that could be readily adapted to anyone’s normal D&D campaign, should they choose to roll with my deconstructed-reconstructed rules (hell, some of ‘em can simply be “dropped in” with no sweat expenditure necessary). But even more than that, my morphing motivation said: I want this to be a game for NEW PLAYERS...for people who haven’t played D&D or who don’t have preconceived notions about these things we call “table-top role-playing games.” THAT’s my main goal: distributing this game to non-players in an enticing package that says, “check this out; it’s interesting, fun, and easy to play.” That is the motivation that started percolating after I had looked upon this thing I wrought. In fact, at this point this might be the thing that matters most to me.

And dammit, that’s not what I’ve got!

You see, this is why it’s so ridiculous to try switching gears mid-stream (or even after the fact). I did not set out to create a game that was user-friendly to newbies; that wasn’t my intention, that wasn’t my initial motivation. My intention was to thumb my nose at WotC/Hasbro, and that’s what I did. I made a game that is exceptionally playable and much more affordable then the inevitable multi-volume 5^th edition that Hasbro will eventually be rolling out. Easy to use? Check. Nice handling with small books. Check. Tastefully illustrated. Triple-check (all thanks to the Arabian Nights Entertainment being dumped into the public domain). If a person can get past the lack of skills, slick color plates, and the title “D&D” on the cover, I daresay a person would select my books over 5E…assuming, that is, that they’re looking to get into something new.

But would it appeal to a new player? I don’t think so. It operates under too many assumptions; it apes too many tropes of D&D (even its look is based on OD&D). It’s designed for players who are already familiar with D&D…hell, the target audience are the people who read this blog. Sure, other folks might pick it up and check it out…people who see it on the shelf of a game shop or hear about it on the internet or who are drawn to a fantasy adventure game with Middle Eastern flavor. But that’s not hitting the market that my shifting motivations want to target.

Kids. I want to target kids.

And not just kids. People who enjoy fantasy and fairy tales and fiction based on something other than D&D-derived fiction. And by “D&D-derived,” I am not simply referring to officially licensed books based on Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms and whatnot. I’m talking about stuff like Game of Thrones. I’m talking about The Ranger’s Apprentice (and similar) that stocks the shelf and the grocery store check-out counter.

I want Russian folklore. I want The Last Unicorn. I want The Hobbit (not The Lord of the Rings). I want Vainamoinen. I want a backwards-aging, half-demon Merlin. I want Robin McKinley. I want Halloween. Is that too much to ask?

And here’s the thing: the beauty of Dungeons & Dragons is that, despite the silliness of its premise (characters go into unexplored adventure site…over-and-over-and-over again) is two-fold. First, the adventure site (i.e. “the dungeon”) is still an excellent game convention, for all the reasons Arneson outlined in various published commentaries. Second, the concept of intrepid adventurers plunging into darkness is based off a literary stable of fantasy literature (often of the “swords & sorcery” or “weird fiction” variety) which is itself based off the older mythology and folklore I’m craving.

Which means (if you kind of reverse engineer my weird-ass logic) that there must be a way to build a fantasy-based D&D-style heartbreaker that doesn't cannibalize itself. That works under different assumptions than those that it has established for itself...over-and-over-and-over again.

Maybe that doesn't make sense. Let me try putting it a different way

I'm aware of the Beyond the Wall RPG. I don't own it. I haven't read it. I've read about it. And I've looked at the downloadable character sheet. It looks just like a B/X D&D character sheet. Regardless of how it gets there (with neat, Lloyd Alexander-like character generation) it appears to be the same game. It's just D&D. And I want something more.

I've got some ideas for getting there, but I've got to do some more thinking. I keep coming back to Holmes...Holmes Basic is about the scale of the thing I want. I've read and reread and reviewed Blue Holmes and Mazes & Perils and Holmes itself and I like all of it, but I don't think they do what I want. But they're my inspiration at the moment.

That and Faust. More on this in a bit.

What exactly am I saying here? Am I going to be dumping 5AK anytime soon? No, no...like I said, I'm still damn proud of it and will continue to sell it for the foreseeable future (in print form that is...electronically, it's already available forever). But, stupid as the idea is (and I feel stupid just typing this) I'm considering writing another fantasy heartbreaker. As if one wasn't enough of a waste. I'm considering writing one with a completely different target audience...and different objective...firmly in mind.

Ugh.