Simple Weapon Quality

Update 4/26/14: I failed at reading comprehension.  Read this post as praise for Brendan's cool rule.
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Weapons in old school D&D barely exist.  You chose them at character creation (whichever does most damage, probably) and then forget about them unless you encounter a rust monster or drop your weapon on a critical miss.  That's a bummer because there is a lot more richness in the source materials: weapons forged by masters, weapons forged of rare materials, ceremonial weapons, crude weapons, weapons that break, worn weapons, rusty weapons, dull weapons.  When was the last time your players honed a blade in game or visited a blacksmith to have a weapon made?

Necropraxis has a great house rule to get at this.  Go here and follow all his links to read the cool conversation about weapon wear.  While having a system of wear allows weapons to become part of the resource management of adventure gaming, I'm most interested in how this could make weapons more tangible.  So, I would probably simplify the wear aspect even a bit more.  Here's my go at rewording of it:

All weapons have a quality from 1-20.  If you roll under the quality of your weapon when you attack you "notch" it.  Notched weapons are -1.   If a weapon is notched again, it breaks.  You can hone out a notch in camp.

So, you basically have two pieces of bookkeeping (quality # and notched or not) and one thing to keep in mind as you play (did I roll under?).  I think that would be worth it.

To keep things simple I would consider a weapon that has had a notch honed out of the same quality as a brand new weapon.  In other words, I don't want to have to track how many times a weapon has been notched.  I would probably allow a blacksmith to fix a broken weapon at half original cost, but wouldn't reduce the quality because it was repaired.  I would probably not have criticals affect notching, otherwise, if a critical miss is always a notch than a #1 and #2 weapon are identical.  The same if a critical hit never notches, a #20 and #19 would be identical.

Cool Side Effects
One thing I've been trying to do in my game is make the campsite a tangible place too.  For example, music and freshly cooked food each give +1 to hit point recovery rate.  Having weapon honing be important, would give players another thing to do in camp and another reason besides recharging the magic user to want to stop and camp.

This rule would also make carrying weapon spares an interesting proposition, making encumbrance matter for more than just how much gold you can carry out of a dungeon.  And weapons found in a dungeon could become important if you don't want to risk breaking your already notched, but high quality sword.

Why No Armor?
You'll notice I've left out armor.  Armor presents a different challenge for me.  First, notching would depend on monster attack rolls so, I would have to worry not just about player AC but player armor quality as well and I've got enough to worry about in the heat of combat.  Second, if armor is found in the dungeon, it's not like your going to stop, strip off your old armor and put on the new the way you might immediately start using an axe you find in a crypt.  I think maybe a piecemeal armor system might be a possible solution, but armor is less a concern for me right now.

I'm excited to try this in play.

Class-based Rule Responsibility

I've long wanted to do some player handouts or booklets specific to each class.  Someone wants to play a fighter, give them a handout with all they need to know about fighters: how shields work, weapon damage, missile range, experience chart for leveling.  I haven't made these yet. 

But I was just thinking that in addition to giving that player everything they need to know at their fingertips, it could be quite nice for more casual players to have rule expertise in one realm and not need to worry about the rest.

So, if you have a house rule for armor wear and tear, let the fighter know about it, and they can explain it to the other players.  If you have special resurrection, level draining, or healing rules, let the cleric/priests become the expert on that.  This gives each player a reason to be important and it would probably increase the number of house rules/mini-games you could get away with without becoming too complex, because no players will have to know them all. 

Traditionally, a lot of the rules can be dealt with when need arises and only the DM needs to know the rules at all.  But when your start talking about subsystems like hunting, repair, special house rules dealing with travel, players need to know this stuff to be able to make decisions.  So, split up the responsibility of that rule knowledge.

Magic users could know about your world's languages and writing systems, all about scrolls and making them, perhaps about maps and curses and such.  Maybe also enough vague history of your realm to know what things are older than others.

I would probably include a lot about the undead for divine petitioners, and like I mentioned above, how healing and disease works.

Thieves would know any relevant lock mini-games, of course, but would be a good place to put knowledge of the values of treasure sold in different towns, the going rates for different gems and different types of coins, etc.

Simple Survival Rules II

I wasn't quite sure how to handle what happens if you get stuck out in bad weather or don't have food and water.  Here is a round up of ways it might work.  I'm assuming hours as the unit of effect.  If the party was in some sort of hyper cold dungeon room you might zoom in and make it turns or rounds (or in freezing water, hmmm, but we're getting ahead of ourselves) but for most things I think an hour will be good.  A turn would be too fine, a day too coarse a unit.


So, possibilities, every hour you don't meet the survival conditions you:

1. Can't heal any wounds you have (thanks Roger)
2. Can't rest or regain spells
3. Take 1 hit point of damage
4. Take one hit die of damage (what, you roll your hit die and subtract?)
5. Lose some fraction of your hit points (1/4, 1/2) [but that would mean the distress affects you less and less]
6. Save or die
7. Save or one of the other possibilities here happens
8. Save against your Con score or die
9. Save against your Con score or one of the other possibilities here happens (thanks Zavi)
10. Any of the other possibilities here but with accumulating negative modifiers
11. Get negative modifier to all dice rolls (combats, other saves)
12. Take damage multiplied by your level (this is related to 4 but simpler to do, again, thanks Roger)
13. Become unconscious (this is built into my game when characters reach 0 hp, so a little redundant)

Whew, that's a bunch.  Can you think of any others?  I just thought, maybe a good way to talk about this is to say when a player is "Distressed."

I think it would be easy enough to remember that 1 and 2 apply any time you are distressed but I could do without them for simplicity's sake.  I think 6 and 8 are too abrupt to allow for much drama to build in the wilderness.  For many of these, higher level characters will be much better off but not for 4, 5, 8, 9, or 12.

I'm drawn to the Constitution save because it makes sense that tougher characters could survive better.  I'm also drawn to saves in general because every hour could be a little drama where players see if they will fall unconscious or not.  And it could be interesting to have the toughest characters trying to save the rest of the party by dragging them into a shelter (or Tauntaun).

So I'm leaning toward:

Each hour you're in distress, roll under your Constitution or take 1 point of damage per level.

Once you have that simple base you can add some layers on top.  For example, for the freezing water I thought about above, keep the same rule but make it each round you are immersed.

Simple Survival Rules

Do you have simple rules for exposure or hunger and thirst?

I'd like something simple enough that players can remember (important when they are making choices and don't require constant look ups) and that take as little bookkeeping as possible.  Here are some draft ideas:

A character needs a ration of food and a wineskin of water each day.

I think the week as a unit for rations is not fine enough-- how often do you get through a week in a single session?  That means you are going to have to track partial rations.  For water, a wineskin is quite a bit, but if you consider someone traipsing about in sweat-inducing armor, taking part in combat, and hiking for miles, I think it's plausible enough to use for simplicity's sake.

I need to look back over Talysman's simple hunting rules because I'll probably use them.  One idea I had this morning was:

Each hit die a game animal has can supply one ration of food.

Again, might seem like a lot of meat is getting wasted but it's simple and the warriors are hungry.  As for exposure, what if we keep temperature to 3 levels above or below the norm.  And have a few things that ameliorate them.  Cold is easier.  You could have heavy clothes, shelter, or a fire.  As it gets colder you'll need combinations of the three.  So, it would look something like this:

normal = nothing needed
cold = one aid
freezing = two aids
bitter cold = three aids

So, for stage 2 coldness you could huddle in your heavy furs and shelter, or dress normally in your shelter with a warm fire, or brave the winds with a fire and heavy furs.

What's the penalty for not having the appropriate gear?  Maybe -1 hit point per hour?  Or to make even high level characters fear the wilderness, - 1 hit die per hour exposed.  For heat I guess shade, a body of water, and maybe shelter too (underground or something) could work.  It might be okay to make the heat less survivable, seems to be true in the real world.

I would want to figure out food and water requirements for beasts of burden.  And maybe set a threshold of cold/hot they can stand.  Outside of it they take the same damage as players.  That way it would make llamas and camels equally interesting in different parts of the game world.

What else?  Those would go a long way to adding tension to exploring harsh terrain. 

The only other thing I can think of is sleep.  But that is much more complicated.  It often happens off stage, it is by default boring (nobody is making any choices), and fiddly to determine if sleep was good or bad: was there too much noise, is the ground rocky, did you feel safe enough to rest soundly.  Maybe a better way to handle it is you need to camp every so often or you get some penalties.  But that's pretty much the default for D&D now, no?  No camping, no healing, no spell memorization.  So maybe we don't need to worry about sleep at all.  The need to camp is built into the game.  And a party harried in the wilderness, trying to find shelter from the cold will probably not camp if they can't find shelter etc.

If you have ideas or know of good simple rules that add to the verisimilitude of characters trying to survive in the wild share them below.

About Trade

What's the simplest system we could come up with for trading goods by sea that would still have some of the flavor of the real deal?  I figure some of you are very knowledgeable about this stuff (looking at you richard).

I'm thinking 3-4 tiers of.  More risk = more return. More risk will mostly = ports farther away.  Maybe have the player roll each session we play to check on the trade voyage's fate.

1. What should the probabilities of succeeding be for low, medium, high risk? If you stick with a single d6 and have the roll be 4-5-6, 5-6, or 6, that would be a fifty-fifty chance of losing a cargo even at the lowest risk.

2. What returns should I be looking at? I'd like no chart necessary, so numbers like +10%, +25%, +50% are more attractive, because I can do them in my head.  I have no idea if those are way too much or too little.

If we stick to general rates of return based on distance, we can decide later what ports have what goods and just plug them in and you could always layer shortages and rarity on top of the basic system bones.

Yeah, I realize this could ruin everything and let people make their fortune without needing to enter dungeons.  But investigating the loss of a vessel, or even traveling on your own trade vessel à la Sinbad, is right down my campaign's alley.

Blog Highlights - Simple Domino Mechanic

I'm going to be housesitting for friends the next few days and since I'm also approaching 600 posts I thought it might be a good time to slow down and reflect on some of the stuff I've blogged about.  I'll start with stuff I've used in my game and share my experiences with them.  So, let's start with something from a year ago:

Simple Domino Mechanic
This allows my Divine-petitioners to ask for aid with a diminishing likelihood of the requests being answered.  I need to ask my players how it feels to be denied at times, but they don't seem disgruntled.

I've also allowed them to ask for aid above their level of ability, with each additional order of miracle (what I call their levels) reducing likelihood of answer by a step.  This has been cool, with one party avoiding a TPK only because a cleric miraculously Held some foul creatures.

The combination of uncertainty of answer and fuzziness of "level" has made clerics work more the way I think they should and makes them feel completely different than Magic-users.

Difficulties with the Diminishing Returns Mechanic
There have been a few difficulties with the diminishing returns, though.  First, allowing it to apply to multiple prayer requests (down) and more powerful requests (across) can make it harder for players to know which step they are at. They may have asked for Hold Person (2nd order) and now they're asking to Heal Light Wounds (1st order).  I'm thinking of giving them a poker chip of a certain color to represent the chance of their next petition succeeding.

Second, you can't really apply Jeff's big purple d30 rule to dominoes.  Although, talking with my player, she said, "Yeah, you let me roll it instead of drawing." So I guess I made a ruling on the fly converting probability to a result on the d30.  Heh, I don't remember doing it.  Maybe I'm a good DM but just don't remember it away from the table :)

The third difficulty is the thorniest-- how to scale these diminishing returns to level.  I'm still working on an answer to this. As the highest level DP is just now 3rd level and they don't ask for aid all that often, I've gotten by, but it needs to be solved.

Using the Bones
As far as the logistics of using the dominoes, they work great.  Get yourself a set of thick, bone-like, plastic ones, no colored pips, no travel size.  Get yourself a sheet of green craft felt.  Have the player shake them up and pull when they ask for aid.  There is something oracular about it and more involved than a die roll.  Sucks when God doesn't heal your plague, but it's cool when God gives you a golden halo of holy light when you're in a dungeon with a roaming witch and you have a broken arm.

At first I thought I would need a set of bones for each DP being played, but unless you have a super big group or table, it doesn't take long to slide them over, and it adds to the drama.

Final Thoughts
If you're playing a one-off game with clerics of low level I don't see any reason not to try it out.  If you're planning on a whole campaign, you need to think about the level problem.

I think the reluctance to use a diminishing resource (and the chance that it might fail) has made Divine magic a rare thing in my campaign.  This makes clerics more like constrained fighters.

I'm thinking of adding permanent saint-like abilities at key levels (5th/9th?), so characters might be able to permanently talk to animals, or lay on hands once a day, or whatever players want to negotiate with me.  This could add a little more power back to the class as well as help them fulfil my vision of the archetype.

Poker Personalities

Trollsmyth did a few posts recently about how if you want your players to do social interactions in-game you need rules that will push them that way.

I think people commenting on those posts were resistant to the idea that you need any rules to roleplay at all, that it can just happen on top of anything.  That's a post for another day, but I thought I might offer an example of rules that would push players to do more social interactions in-game.

What was really enlightening about Trollsmyth's posts for me, was not that rules shape behavior--that system matters-- but that the rules often shape behavior indirectly.  In other words, if you want players to interact socially you can't just give them XP to do so, it won't work well.  Instead, we need to break down what we mean by "interacting socially" and try to implement rules that will promote, or afford, that behavior.

With the caveat that I've never played any of the World of Darkness games and am very happy with the exploration of old school D&D, I think when people talk about social interactions they mean:

1. learning about npcs and their desires through conversation
2. utilizing information learned from npcs to make things happen
3. investigating npc-npc relationships
4. building a web of npcs to interact with and gain information from
5. joining guilds/factions and climbing up through their hierarchies
6. utilizing guild/faction affiliations to make things happen

Phew, that's a lot of stuff.  But I think we can do this.  

I love using simple materials we all have around the house and have experience with, so we'll use playing cards. I think Zak may have mentioned NPC reactions with cards briefly, but I've been intrigued with the idea since I heard a game used cards to resolve pc/npc interactions (was it Shadowrun?). Last caveat, I know this is a simplistic view of humans and their motivations but we have to start somewhere and hopefully complexity will emerge from the simple system.

Okay, the players want to enter somewhere but Bob the guard is tasked with keeping people out. What to do, what to do? Here's what you do:

Draw 5 cards, 1 up and 4 down.

The first card is public knowledge, the next three are private knowledge and the last card is a deeply held secret.

To get what they want from Bob the players will have to either threaten him, bribe him or convince him with a rational argument.

What is Bob susceptible to you ask? The suits tell the tale:

• ♦: Wealth, power and advantages dealing with acclaim, fame and prestige.
• ♥: Love, lust and approaches to life dealing with the appetites-- but also nostalgia, security, and comfort
• ♣: Threats of violence and harm, fear, dread
• ♠: Reason, rational arguments involving laws, systems, explanations, and examples.

Let's follow peoples' expectations and say low cards are weaker. So, with a two of hearts, it appears Bob is really vulnerable to some aspect of that realm.  Players can determine this by briefly observing him or interacting with him.  Maybe he's a ladies man, checking out every female that walks by.

If players start following him around or asking questions of people that know him, the DM will flip over those private cards.  Maybe one card for each lead investigated. These investigations reveal:

So, after a little poking around it seems Bob is susceptible to rational convincing, but because the 9♠ is the same suit, like a flush, it strengthens his resolve here. The 7♦ offers some possibility of bribing him but it will be more difficult than utilizing his weakness in hearts.

The hole card, that last secret, should be difficult to find. Traditionally it is the npc's diary, maybe they talk to themselves when they believe they are alone, or talk in their sleep.  And in fantasy games these could be discovered through magic or mental powers such as ESP.

The 2♠ probably puts the nail in any attempts at reasoning with Bob.  Perhaps he is affable and listens politely (the appearance of weakness with the discovery of the 3♠), but is just too dumb to understand the players' arguments.  But the knowledge of all his traits does not undermine the idea that he is susceptible to persuasion through hearts.

So, knowing this what do players do?  What is the mechanism for resolving the outcome of interactions?  Two things spring to mind:  First, you could convert player stats to card equivalents.  I think subtracting 5 might work: a pc with an 8 charisma might just be able to personally seduce Bob (8-5 =3♥).  Strength could apply to ♣, Intelligence to ♠.

But what about the guild and faction interactions in our list above?  That's the second thing: give members of organizations certain leverages as they advance through the ranks.   Cutpurses in the Thieves Guild might have access to 3♥, 3♣, and 3♦.  A Mages Guild member accessing their archives might wield a 10♠ in examples and anecdotes.

I think this would push players to investigate people rather than places (discover npc cards), use what they learn to interact with them, get involved in organizations (to have access to powers greater than their stats and personal wealth allow), and continue interacting with npcs even when the short term events are finished (Bob may be useful to apply pressure to another pc in the future, or in advancement in some organization).

I also think the abstraction of the four suits leaves a lot of wiggle room for creative players.  Maybe players think to influence Bob by bringing around one of his old war buddies, this would fall under ♥s as well.

Thoughts?

Spell Components

Tim at Gothridge Manor dropped an idea yesterday about using spell components as enhancers to magic, not requirements.  I'm so taken with this, if he'd written about it a week earlier I might have included it in my house rule anthology.

When I asked for what might need house ruling there was some talk of magic in general but it didn't trigger in my mind a memory of material components.  I love them-- eye of newt, toe of frog-- what could be more magical.  And yet from my experience 1e's material component requirements for casting spells were largely handwaved, you were either assumed to have them or maybe paid a lump sum to represent the value of the components.  (Maybe anything that was largely ignored in 1e, and seems worthy of saving, would be a great place to look for possible elegant solutions).

Anyway, with Tim's suggestion spell and potions work as normal.  If you add components they work better.  This is nice because 1) everything works as a baseline; don't want to mess with components, you don't need to 2) flavor can be easily injected without complicating things-- I'm thinking small bonuses or additional damage, range etc. 3) players get to decide when to do that: have a very important charm person attempt coming up, better gather some materials 4) players can also get involved creatively in working out what materials might work 5) this makes them interact with your world more, maybe even causing hooks as they seek out certain rare things.  That's a lot of good stuff for very little in system price.

I'm going to try to re-cast it a little in my own words.  This may be the only time I've wanted to add complexity to a house rule, but I think there is room here for a little more flavor without complicating things too much.  The thing about material components is what exactly makes any one material more likely to make a spell work better.  This is where we can get the flavor of sympathy, contagion and correspondences into our games.

These ideas can overlap a little but sympathy is when the material is like the effect you are trying to get, so, little wooden wings might help a fly spell, the sand used for sleep is reminiscent of the Sandman, etc.  Contagion is when the item is infused with what you want to affect, traditionally you collected fingernails and hair clippings to cast a spell on someone, the true name of a person etc.  The two can overlap when you start thinking, does salamander skin help a fire spell for one reason or the other, or both?  I think I would artificially simplify these concepts so that contagion meant only the thing you were wanting to affect has touched, owned, loved the component.  I'd say salamander skin helps in a sympathetic way; you can make fire better because the salamander skin is very fire-like, besides you're trying to make fire not cast a spell on a salamander.

Correspondences are more systematic, even arbitrary relationships.  Take a look at the tables in Fantasy Wargaming if you have it.  Certain numbers, star signs, gems, and woods are better suited for certain effects.  The material component might be a beech wand set with seven rubies.  None of these give much hint to their sympathetic effects, but if you are an initiate into the arcana you would know what the wand would be best suited for.

So, having explored that a little, here's how I might explain to a player:

"You can cast spells as written, but sacrificing certain items will make your magic more likely to take effect and more powerful.  Using the Principle of Contagion will make your spells more likely to affect a target, the Principle of Sympathy will make your spells more powerful, and using the System of Correspondences will allow you to choose either of those results."

As a DM I'm fine with making rulings on the fly, or negotiating this with players, but I want to do a little thinking ahead of time about how I might handle things.  Below is the order I might apply effects, so if a player has used multiple components, rather than giving a target a -7 to save I might click over and do all these things before coming back around:

Principle of Contagion:
names, things owned, parts of target = minus to target save > + to damage > + to range > + to duration

Principle of Sympathy
items that are similar in nature to the desired effect = + to damage > + to aof > + to # affected > + to range > + duration

Correspondences
These numbers, symbols, items are traditionally associated with the desired effect = player chooses which effect to enhance

Rarity
For all materials, the harder it is to obtain the more effective.  Ubiquitous items may have no effect. Basically, more expensive is better.  But difficult to obtain comes into play here to: for contagion, finger nail clippings would be more powerful than knowing a target's name.

I want to make a nice, simple chart of correspondences to give to players.  I suppose you could also dish that info out as they climb in levels and are entered into the mysteries of their art, too.  Or let them find books with this info as treasure.  Lots of possibilities.  Thanks Tim!

Receding Rules - House Rules Selection

I've been blogging more than a year now but it seemed weird to celebrate that anniversary because I'd disappeared for three or four months when work got rough last winter; it wasn't a full year.  This is my 365th post.  And I realize that some of those posts were pretty trivial, but I figure it can still symbolically stand for me sticking this blogging business out.

To celebrate I wanted to share what I consider some of the coolest house rules I've encountered in that time.

Keep in mind, my blog has always been about simplicity, minimalism, doing more with less, and, really, how all those things might help bring new players and DMs into our hobby.  So, there are no charts, no lists of contextual bonuses, nothing you couldn't explain to a new player across a noisy game table.

Thanks to everyone for the fun ride so far and here is the pdf.

Update: Ahh, sorry.  Apparently I had a pdf splicing issue.  I'm working on a fix.  Until then here is the intro and here are the other 3 pages.

Update 2: Fixed due to the help of ze Bulette, scholar and gentleman.

Call for House Rules - Requests

After reading your comments to my last post I remembered another aspect of the rules on my shortlist: they often deal elegantly with an issue that DMs have been fussing and fighting with for years.

I think these are often the places that D&D is just a little too abstract for most people. Examples are critical tables and skills. Since the moment I was told about D&D, I've seen people reinvent those wheels a hundred times, trying to find a sweet spot between playability and satisfying detail.

Remembering this, I thought it might be a generative way to think of great house rules: what areas are you, and DMs you've seen, constantly house ruling. Which rule sections are almost guaranteed to get house ruled or have a question asked in a forum "How do you handle . . . ?"

I'm thinking two things might result from this 1) you may see someone commenting on X always being troublesome and remember "Hey, Joe Blow's rule really handles X well." 2) In the back of my compilation I could put a section called Requests, sort of millennium challenge for awkward D&D bits.

So, what always gets house-ruled?

Call for House Rules

I am in the process of compiling a document of what I think are elegant, and excellent house rules. Basically, the best I've encountered in about the last year. I wanted to give you all an opportunity to nominate rules to be included.

While I think a house rule gazette, or even better yet, a wiki of all possible house rules would be cool, right now my interests are much more specific.

The rules I want:

1. Can be explained to a new player in one sentence. (Two at most.)
2. Are simple to keep track of and implement.
3. Add verisimilitude, possibilities, or interesting choices for players in a way that far out weigh the cost of implementing.

Let me give you an example that is probably the most well known:

Shields Shall Be Splintered

"Any time you take damage you can opt to sacrifice your shield to avoid it."

I'll be as bold as to say that simple sentence made shields real for the first time in D&D. Oh, they were always there, the way helmets and gauntlets are there, assumed in the abstraction. But now players can feel the heft of it on their arm, or they'll want to as they enter battle. They'll remember to buy shields and their shield will be on their mind each round they fight, each time they get hit.

I want more rules like that. I currently have 5, but one of those was hidden away on the Swords & Wizardry forums and one on Knights & Knaves Alehouse. I figure there must be other elegant rules lurking on forums I don't frequent. Feel free to nominate your own rules. Thanks.

Revised Player Handouts

My brain is all afroth with ideas to post about and I'm trying to limit it to two posts a day, but I've been working on some revisions on my houseruled player handouts and wanted to post them in order to share.

I use Open Office and save to pdf, but I'm happy to post .docs, or .odfs if anyone is interested, the idea is to share something useful.

First, I mentioned going back over my fastpack-- the starting equipment I just give players in order to get play rolling. Because it added up to a lot of weight I trimmed amounts back and actually listed the weights. It should be much less likely for a normal strength human to start play partially encumbered after utilizing this list.

Get the pdf here. And, you'll need the weapon list for players to choose from . I've got all the blunts arranged together for easy cleric weapon choice and weapons listed in order of damage. Its pdf is here.

The other thing I finally accepted is that my hireling traits spur was difficult for people new to using it to read. I was seduced by symmetry. I loved having the progression from the smallest die to the largest in a nice triangle.


But you have to read the d4 with the d20 which are opposite ends of the chart, and without knowing that the chart can quickly confuse. So I've revised it. I moved dice that work together beside each other, I labeled what the rolls were for, and touched up a few other things.

I hope that will be clearer even if it looks a little more cluttered. Get it here.

I think the "remarkable" entry for physical features should probably be something else-- its too similar to "odd" and most of the other adjectives are remarkable anyway.

If you have any ideas for replacing that or how to make any of these handouts more legible or useful please feel free to share. Thanks.

Shopping in Nidus

This is still a work in progress. I've tweaked the numbers a little added local guides and now that I have my campaign's first rogue, figured I'd give him a bonus too.


I'm still thinking about making regions-- The Grand Bazaar, The Docks-- or landmarks-- The Bronze Statue of the Laughing God, The Plaza of Forgotten Gods-- that might affect the likelihood of finding certain things. But I'm hesitant to pin Nidus down too much. I want it to be bigger than life, and mapping seems to work against that.

Simple Exploration Skills

Ian of Swashbuckler's Hideout offers up some ideas on exploratory skills. First, I've blogged about my thoughts on skills in general before. I also did some thinking about skills in relation to the thief class here and some other posts that led to my Choose-Your-Own Rogue.

But, as you know, even original D&D had some skill resolution mechanics, for eample searching for secret doors.

Two great ideas I take away from Ian's post:

Characters have a chance of noticing secret doors without searching

Much the way we just roll when characters walk over a pit trap, we roll as they pass a secret door to see if they notice a breeze etc. Ian suggests this for just the front row of the marching order, and I suppose I understand the distinction (everyone behind is distracted etc.) but it seems too fiddly for little gain to me.

One cool effect of this method is that players may be more likely to stumble upon secret doors without having to search every section of wall (boring). And yet you can still have some mystery if, as Ian suggests, you make noticing a secret door not neccesarily mean you know how to open it.

Make simple skills a dice pool

So, if you are looking for traps/secret doors 6 means success (I roll high), normal characters roll 1d6, Elves roll 2d6, Dwarves roll 2d6 if it involves stonework.

Thieves start out with 2d6 and could get another d6 every three levels.

This could be applied to surprise as well with rangers, for instance, getting more dice as they climb in level.

Instead of increasing the numbers that indicate success you increase the number of dice that might yield success. So, I'm not a math guy but here is what the probabilities seem to work out to:

• roll a 6 on d6= 16.67%
• roll a 5 or 6 on d6= 33.33%
• roll a 6 on 2d6=27.77%
• roll a 6 on 3d6=34.72%

If I'm not mistaken, that looks comparable enough to take advantage of this simple and elegant mechanic.

System Chunks

In commenting on a post here. J. Rients said:

'. . . I really think we all need to look beyond this whole "system" thing.'

My interest in the quote may be far from what he was getting at. But when I read that I thought of my recent experiences as a DM and how I realized there are basically a few situations/subsystems you need to learn to take care of in order to run a roleplaying game. And once you have a system down for taking care of those things, you're set.

I like the idea that these "chunks" can be chosen or even hand crafted by each DM. Isn't that what people are sharing on their blogs anyway? How to restock a dungeon, how to handle wilderness travel, how to award experience points. The customized ways to handle these challenges that experienced DMs have developed.

I think it would be awesome, if someone sat down and wrote a book on roleplaying games that addressed each of these areas that constantly pop up, and how they were dealt with by various game systems. So, for example, skills and character differentiation could be a chapter, with class-based game examples on one end all the way to extreme skill lists on the other, with commentary on what those lead to in actual play.

The last part is the kicker-- it sounds like a big book of roleplaying rule theory, except more than anything, roleplaying reality seems pretty counterintuitively opposite what the theory often suggests, in my humble experience.

It's not a completely novel idea-- The Player's Option: Spells & Magic, book for 2e had something similar. It listed many variant magic systems including point based, sorcerous and magic granted by "alien" powers. But that isn't what I'm talking about. That book feels like a brainstorm. You would have a hard time convincing me that any of those methods had ever seen play in an actual game at time of publication.

What 'm envisioning would be someone laying out a spell point system, for example, and then people with experience with those rules give examples of the implications of those rules, how they actually affected play.

Anyway, forget the book, I still think it would be useful to think about roleplaying in terms of system "chunks." Maybe some of you already do. I think I'll try from now on. And while it might seem elegant for a rulesystem to handle things in a uniform fashion, rolling only d6s for instance, I think if you conceptualize the game in chunks you are freed up to have more appropriate systems for each of them. So, I might resolve wilderness encounters, for example, in an entirely different way than dungeon encounters. I might have NPCs that have no "levels." I might have a system that handwaves encumbrance for food and water but gets really crunchy when carrying loot out of the dungeon is concerned.

I'm also interested in chunks that aren't, for whatever reason, encountered much. Diplomacy, NPC encounter reaction/interaction (not skill rolls), espionage, and trade (or even, GASP, romance), would be cool possibilities, for subsystems, minigames, or at least ruling guidelines.

Swords & Wizardry - Warts, Houseruling, & Me

There was some discussion recently on the Swords & Wizardry forums about troublesome aspects of the core rules as they stand. Matt Finch has said his goal was not making his house rules available but restating the original rules, warts and all.

I think that's laudable and probably the best attitude he could take towards this endeavour. The community benefits from a simple, original conception to work from and house rule from. And if this remains as much in the spirit of the original as he can manage it doesn't become an argument with Matt having to justify rules to every new DM that comes along.

With the possibility of older versions of D&D being reprinted or supported slim to none, the OGL was an unlikely boon. The systems thousands have grown to love playing have at least been preserved in amber, and if enough people form a community around these simulacra, they can share new ideas with each other.

That's all well and good, but coming with the majority of my roleplaying experience with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (first edition), Swords & Wizardry did not feel like a snapshot of rules captured, or a restatement to me. It felt like a revision! And re-vision in the literal sense of, having a new vision on the philosophy of play. It felt drastically new in a way that excited me.

Part of this feeling was from all the cruft that had accumulated in the rules over the years being cleared away (paladins, druids, illusionists, gnomes, assassins, weapon modifiers versus armor class, polearms). But part of this feeling was from fundamental changes made to the basic rules- no thieves at all!, a single saving throw, and ascending armor class.

I know now that Matt had to make certain changes so that Swords & Wizardry wasn't in fact the exact same set of rules as the original Dungeons & Dragons (I don't really know why, because as I understand it, rules can't be copyrighted or trademarked, but so be it). I also know now that ascending armor class was an innovation of 3e. But when I first encountered Swords & Wizardry I was under the impression that Matt had made this brilliant revision himself and that the spirit of Swords & Wizardry was this: no sacred cows, changing the rules to make them more elegant, simpler, more playable.

It was this accident of perception that led me into my current attitude of absolute confidence that I too can add to, cut from, and edit the Swords & Wizardry rules and make them if not better, my own. (The irony is that a misunderstanding is what lead me to this tenet of the OSR community-- that houseruling isn't just accepted but encouraged).

Why does this matter? Well, for one I imagine there are more people like myself who had no experience with 0e, and so capturing those rules exactly is not an agenda for them. I also imagine, they might be in the same mindset as me-- feeling empowered and invited to make drastic rule changes of their own. To question the system.

And why does that matter? I think because it's from that very same attitude that any thought of little ol' me being able to offer up a monster, or treasure, or One Page Dungeon, that the community might like is possible. It matters because the feeling of confidence engendered by knowing the rules are just guidelines is the same confidence that will cause the next Hand of Vecna, Leomund's Tiny Hut, or Drow, to rise up from the minds of the Old School Renaissance.

You may be thinking, but of course, Gary said that from the start, that these were just guidelines. Well, yes, he also said the opposite quite a lot. And anyway, it's a very different thing to be told something and to experience it. It was was the missing thief and the armor that gets better with higher numbers that led me to the place where I am now: confident I can design a better monster, a better magic-item, a classic dungeon, and excited to share it all with you for free.

House Rules - Rogues III

I chose abilities that I thought would work best in my campaign for my Choose-Your-Own Rogue class. But I thought you might be interested in seeing some other possible abilities I ended up deciding against. I was trying to avoid choices that would override a player's abilities-- so no diplomacy, bluff, intimidate or lying. I was also trying to include abilities that covered the great roguish triumvirate of thief, brigand, and conman. So here are the semifinalists and why they didn't make the cut:

Acrobatics -- Mostly for long jump and tight rope walking, but maybe surviving falls and swinging on things. Climbing walls seems gritty and Swords & Sorcery (hey Conan did it!) in a way that jumping and flipping just doesn't. But if you want something like ninja's in your game you could squeeze wall climbing into this and be good to go.

Appraise-- Know the value of gems, jewelry and other precious items. I smooshed this in with Ancient lore, now that I think of it, it would probably fit better in street lore. The point being, it seems too small of an ability on its own.

Disguise-- Fool even people familiar with you with a modicum of materials and preparation. This just seemed like it would be useful so rarely as not to be worth adding complexity to my ability list.

Forgery-- Exactly reproduce the markings of someone else. Same as above, not useful very often, but you might include this in street lore if you want your rogues writing the princess love poems as the local pig-herder.

Gambling-- Know how to play, and how to win, whether deservedly or not. This just seemed a cheap way to get money, and not really interesting in play: "I'll lose twice then take them for everything." But, on second thought, it could cause problems for PCs. Your call, maybe (Dex/Chr)

Identify-- Know the function and provenance of magic items. I smooshed this in with Ancient Lore. I always liked the Legend Lore ability of bards and thought it was a shame to be hogged by them (and I was trying to become a bard in 1e!), but this kind of lore seem very adventurerish, Cudgel-like.

Mimicry-- Exactly reproduce the sounds and mannerisms of someone you are familiar with. Again, didn't seem like this would come into play that often.

Read Person-- Tell by looking at their clothing, posture, and facial expression, a persons mood and character. This, combined with Mimicry and/or Disguise might be a good addition for the jongleur-type rogue. Or, you could include them all as a grab bag in Minstrelsy, so a player might be more tempted to pick it.

I would caution, if you decide to add your own abilities to the rogue, not to have too many. I tried to keep them to a minimum and I'm still worried the whole Dex/Chr dual-thing might be too fiddly. I mean the point of this blog is supposed to be about doing more with less, to be more minimal. But I suppose this class could keep people from thinking they need several other classes. And if it heads off the need for a full blown skill system, I think that would be worth implementing the Rogue class right there. On minimizing choices, Delta posted about keeping things as close to 7 as possible here.

But hey, it's been a long time since I've been able to DM, you all probably have some great ideas for abilities that players are wanting to do, but you feel would require more knowledge/skill than a normal person would possess. Share them in the comments.

House Rules - Rogues II

First, this class is built on the thinking and sharing of others, like James Maliszewski, Skathros, Akrasia, and others. I want to thank them before I offer up my derivation of all their ideas.

Now, without further ado, Telecanter's Choose-Your-Own Rogue:

Rogue

Rogues find themselves on the wrong side of the law more often than not. In order to survive they have to rely on their wits, toughness, and/or flair. You might be a backstreet cutpurse, a burly thug, or a charismatic con artist. Your role is to find a way around obstacles, whether they be locks, walls, or the law itself.

Prime Attribute: One of: Dexterity, Constitution, or Charisma, 13+ (5% experience)
Hit Dice: 1d6-1 per level (gains 1 per level after 9th)
Armor/Shield Permitted: Leather
Weapons Permitted: Any one-handed

Rogue Abilities

Choose 5 of these at start of play:

(Con) Backstab – When attacking from behind roll two dice for damage and take the highest result.

(Con) Street Lore – Know who is powerful, who owes who, and find out local rumors & gossip. Know better where to roust out hirelings and followers.

(Con/Dex) Extraordinary climbing – Climb surfaces that seem humanly impossible to climb.

(Dex) Pick locks/Disarm Traps – With the proper tools, you know how to open locks and make most mechanical traps safe.

(Dex) Two-handed fighter – Using a dagger in the off hand, fighting with two weapons will get a +2 to hit and damage is the average of the two.

(Dex) Escape – No bonds can hold you for long.

(Chr/Dex) Sleight-of-hand – Make small things-- keys, blades, scrolls-- appear to disappear. Also, take things from people without them noticing.

(Chr) Ancient Lore – While anyone might know the value of gems and objects, some have heard tales of items carrying terrible curses and stories of powerful magic items and the ways they are made to work. The rogue with lore has also picked up a smattering of useful words in many languages.

(Chr) Minstrelsy – Improvise poems and songs, play musical instruments, sing and tell jokes, all well enough to gather a crowd and earn a little money.

On the Rogue's Prime Requisite: You may only have one prime requisite. You must have two skills centered on a stat in order to choose that stat as a prime requisite, but you aren't required to. If you want your 14 Con rogue to take all the Charisma oriented skills, that's your prerogative.

Rogue Advancement: After making a table of my own, I realized it was almost exactly that of James Maliszewski's found in Knockspell #2. With one exception, all saving throws are base 15 in my campaign and rogues gain a +2 to saves versus dodgeable traps.

Attracting Followers: At 9th level your reputation will attract less experienced rogues that wish to follow your leadership . . . as long as it profits them. These followers can take the shape of a gang, guild, or troupe depending on the type of rogue you play.

Design Notes:

• Ability scores are important not just for performing, but acquiring these abilities. For the Con abilities, I imagine the rogue would need to be tough to acquire them (continually falling from walls, getting beat, in the quest of rumors). Likewise for the Chr abilities ( you need to convince the old wizard to tell you about the magic sword or teach you the word for treasure in Stygian).
• Notice they are called abilities. I'm trying to push towards the idea that these are unique things the rogue can do, like the cleric's ability to turn undead, not skills anybody can pick up over a fortnight. And they are things that the rogue can do most of the time successfully.
• How to adjudicate these? DMs, you choose. I'd suggest roleplaying where possible, but you can decide if you want to roll on a d6, d20, or d%. I suggest rogues be able to perform these abilities in most cases at 1st level, be able to handle trickier situations at 3rd, better still at 6th, and by 9th only fail in the most extreme of situations.

House Rules - Rogues

There have been a bundle of thief implementations for Swords & Wizardry. I've read through them all. I like bits and pieces of each, but not all of any of them.

I've been thinking a lot about the resistance some grognards have to putting thieves back in to the game. With that much resistance I think it pays to think about why. As I understand it, they feel pre-thief anyone could try anything, post-thief everyone was limited in what they could try to do and the great slip towards skill began.

I think I'm agreeing; why shouldn't every character class, type, or race, be able to try to move stealthily? Why shouldn't they be able to climb walls? But, should they all be able to pick locks? Umm . . . I think I still have the desire to implement a roguish character. And I say rogue, because to me it includes thugs, brigands, and, yes, bards (I don't see a lot of evidence for the bard archetype in literature. Bards to me are witty, talented cons and parasites).

So, I propose a class with only those roguish skills that DMs would have a hard time allowing characters accomplishing without months of training. I also propose a small selection of skills that a player would select from at start of play. This would allow them to decide what kind of rogue they want to be, the burly bully or the delightful dandy.

The good thing about this concept is 1) it prioritizes the ability of all characters to do almost anything they can think of in play, barring the few things that would need training, and 2) you can pick and change the skills you, as DM, think would best fit that description.

Here are my thoughts on some of the most common thieving skills:

Hide in shadows-- unless this is ninja-like hiding in direct sight, it seems like anyone could try this.

Move silently-- If I take off my hauberk and boots, are you saying my fighter can't be silent enough to surprise some bandits?

Climb walls-- Is this preternatural wallcrawling, or just scaling a wall?

Pick pockets-- I think you would have to practice a lot to do this. But, of what use is this in the dungeon? This might be the poster boy for allowing players to pick their core skills.

Pick locks-- This may be one of the takes-a-while-to-learn type of skills. I wouldn't want everyone of my players running around picking open every lock. At the same time, I'd hate for them to have to bash open every chest they find. This skill may be the poster boy for why thieves are a good addition to the game.

Disarm traps-- sounds fiddly, tricky, like taking apart a watch. Experience and training are essential, but it depends on how sophisticated the trap is. I don't mind letting any character try to disarm traps through roleplaying, though.

Hear noises-- ??? Okay, am I just dense? What is the deal with this? I don't understand why it is mentioned in some systems at all. Is this meant to see who has a better chance of hearing through dungeon doors? That seems a twiddly little thing to have a rule for. Exactly the thing a DM should make rulings on (how noisy is the environment outside the door, inside the door, what kind of creatures are inside, etc.) Is this just a factor of who has sharper hearing? I think the 1e DMG talks about this, giving different races different bonuses. This seems the perfect thing for Bohemian's "Good At," system, a player could say Keebler the Elf is good at hearing. But it seems to trivial to add a whole rule to the game. So, how about our rogues? Nah, that extortionate thug over there is hard of hearing from all the punches he's taken, and the sly, dark fellow . . . well, he'd rather you put your ear against that obsidian door there.

Backstab-- anyone should be able to try it, but a person grown up in the back alleys may have a lot more practice at it. Not necessarily a dandy, though, again reason for the player to choose.

Stay tuned for Telecanter's Choose-Your-Own Swords & Wizardry Rogue

House Rules - Priests

I remember reacting negatively to the introduction to 2e. Not because of the rules, because at the time, I didn't know them yet. No, because I could sense that the game I knew would be left behind. And sure enough the mindshare shifted for, what, the next 15 years?

But after playing 2e there were a few things I found I liked about it. I thought the way specialist wizards were handled added a lot of flavor with almost no added complexity-- get more spells of your school, lose an entire other school. Another was the way clerics became the more abstracted priests. Finally, there was room for the Christian saint and the Swords & Sorcery type evil snake priest, they just had different realms of spells. I think that if D&D had been more designed and less organic, this would have been the divine character class from the beginning.

I want to implement priests in my campaign, too. I've never had the problem with Vancian magic that some people do-- it is logically consistent and works great as a game mechanic. But I do recognize the value of diversity in wondrous happenings in a fantasy world. And I, personally find a Vancian system for divine casters harder to suspend my disbelief for-- Really, Thor doles out spells every morning?!

So I've decided to make priests petition their gods whenever they need help. Clerics will still have the same limits on number of spells per day-- how often they can bother their deity, but can choose what to ask for when they need it. They will also have a small chance their deity will grant additional or more powerful petitions depending on the situation.

Clerics in my campaign were (and will be) warriors involved with holy fighting orders dedicated to various saints. Clerics from different orders had slightly different spells. The order of St. Eomund, for example, was focused on justice, righteous vengeance, and the eradication of the undead. Those clerics are bad news for skeletons!