Procedural Lockpicking Revisited

A few years back I offered an idea of a way to make lockpicking more engaging and interesting for players.  You can go back and read that post here.  The problem was some of the things I say in the post (like traps at certain points in the flow chart) make it so locks would have to be designed individually, like mini-dungeons.  Way too much work for it to be used by me.  Zak posted a simpler method of guessing using dice and Arkhein did something as well using cards.

Both are sharp mini-game solutions to the problem of needing to make locks.  Unfortunately they don't allow for something else I'd like in a solution, a way that players can get to know locks and feel like they are gaining expertise, not just their characters through abstract level bonuses.  Today I offer another attempt at it.

First, if we limit the number of actions involved to 3 (I'll use Bump, Probe, and Rake) and limit the "tumblers" of each lock to 3, and even further, say that no action is ever used in a row, then we can whittle down the possibilities to something more manageable and discoverable.  If I'm not mistaken the possibilities for these constraints with actions ABC should be:

1. ABA
2. ABC
3. ACA
4. ACB
5. BAB
6. BAC
7. BCA
8. BCB
9. CAB
10. CAC
11. CBA
12. CBC

Now, if we limit the types of locks players encounter we can roll on that table to assign these combinations to give our different campaigns different lock solutions. So you might end up with something like this:

1. Tin          CAC
2. Copper   ABA
3. Brass      BAB
4. Iron        CBC
5. Steel       CAB
6. Strange  ACB

Strange locks are anything weird: crystal, organic, mythril.

The procedure to pick a lock is pretty simple, you try an action and if you get it wrong the lock gets stiff, letting you know that.  If your second attempt is correct you get to go on to the next tumbler.  If your second guess is also wrong the lock jams and will have to be smashed off.  Here is a handout you can use to record the lock solutions for your world and give to players to record their guesses:

As you can see, I've decided that each lock type will have certain number of hit points representing durability; how much damage you have to do to just break them off. I left the action names blank so you can put in what you want (I suppose I should have done the same for the lock types).

The challenge here is to balance the complexity a player will have to encounter in trying to pick a lock and the diversity of locks available in the world.  This depends a lot on how many locks you have in your dungeons and how lucky players get.  They might figure out Tin locks the first time they encounter them and know them ever after.  But they might not.  I think I'll have to just playtest this and see how it works.

I should probably leave it at that until I try it out but I have a few more ideas.

Modifiers could increase lock diversity without increasing the complexity of solutions too much.  Here's what I was thinking:

Lock Modifiers

1. Cracked – more forgiving, first step, any action works
2. Worn – more forgiving, first jam doesn't happen
3. Normal
4. Banded – Twice as many hit points required to smash it off
5. Corroded – less forgiving, wrong action goes straight to Jam
6. Spiked – less forgiving, each wrong action results in 1hp damage to the lock picker

More Locks
Because there are 12 possibile solutions on our chart you could also add 6 more types of locks of just duplicate the default 6 but call them Goblin locks (goblin tin, goblin brass, etc) or Dwarvish locks or whatever.

Character Level
This system doesn't take into account levels at all, you might assign levels to locks by rolling a d10. So, for instance, giving you a 7th level iron lock.  You might assigning penalties and bonuses from the modifiers chart like, locks above the picker's level act as if they are corroded or locks below your level act as if they are worn.  But that might get a bit fiddly.

I like Zak's suggestion that every level you get one get out of a jam free card, but only one.  That might be simpler.  Again I'll have to try this out and see how fast the lock types get solved.  If half the types are still a mystery at 5th level then level might not even be much of an issue-- actual player knowledge standing in for the assumed character's skill increases.

Locks as Monsters

What if different difficulty of locks had different hit dice?  And specific locks had hit points, even armor classes?  Then roguish characters could roll a special lock "attack" to "hit" a lock and do a certain amount of damage per "hit."  This "attack" would go up with level.

Not too different in conception from rolling against a percentage chance, but it would be more familiar with players.  It should be more clear that some locks will take multiple rounds to get through, that some locks might be "unhittable" or unbreakable for this rogue at this level.

And if you imagine that these locks are crude and require scraping and banging on, then rolling for wandering monsters each round could be a thing.  And players should have a good sense of how many rounds it would take to "defeat" a lock.

Misc VIII

I try to gather up ideas that seem a little too thin to warrant a separate post into these miscellaneous posts.  Usually they are small house rule mechanics or campaign setting ideas.  Anyway, here are a few more:

Word Eater
They look like obese children with mouths slightly open and drooling.  They amble out of stark wastelands to follow parties and listen.  They appear mute.  If they hear a word of particular interest to them, such as a name or a word shouted with emotion, they will "eat" it.  The word then disappears from the mind of the speaker.  They cannot say it, read it, or understand it as language if it is spoken to them.  Some say the only way to get the word back is to slice open the belly of the Word Eater and extract it.  But such a butchering might release a flood of strange and ancient words.

Blight Writing
Some wise women have the ability to draw a malady from a person by "writing them out."  This involves several strange ingredients as well as bird guano and willow bark.  A set of scratchings will appear on the bark that resemble both quail tracks and cuneiform writing.  If a spell is cast to allow reading this willow scroll, the reader will catch the malady there recorded.

Extended Stat Check
To see how long the burly fighter can hold the collapsing ceiling up, the swimmer can hold their breath, or the rogue can balance on the swaying tightrope, try this: Roll a d6 each round and when the total of the results surpasses the character's appropriate stat they finally reach their limit.  I think this could be much more dramatic than a single stat check or saving roll and since a player with their character in such a situation will probably be static while the rest of the party frantically does something else, it will give them something to do each round.

Simple Charges
When you first use a wand or staff roll a d6.  A result of 1 means it just fails to work.  You can try to use it once a round until it does work.  Once it works, however, the failure range moves from just 1 up to 1-2.  This continues with each successful use.  Once the failure number is 6 the item will never work and must be recharged if that is possible. 

To recharge a single level, cast a spell of equal level on the object, then roll the number you would need to succeed if it had that level charge left.  For example, a completely dead wand would need a sixth level spell cast into it and then the caster would need to roll a 6 on the d6.  If successful, then a fifth level spell would need to be cast on it and then a 5 or 6 rolled for it to "take."  And so on until it is fully charged.

Bard Songs

Bards don't get too much interest in the OSR from what I can see, not metal enough.  And while I'm not too interested in a Alan-a-Dale type troubadour in a deadly old school dungeon myself, I think there could be room for something like warrior-poets. 

The problem is that resolving music or poetry with an abstract die roll or feat is boring.  To make it interesting I want something actually happening at the table.  Of course we can't expect players to be improvisational poets or to whip out a guitar and start jamming.  Here are two ideas about how you might do it:

Real Songs
Have all the players independently bring in a list of "inspiring" songs or "get-your-blood-pumping" songs, or whatever you want to call them.  The bard player can talk with everyone about what genre of music they like maybe even what bands, but not what songs.  When combat comes around the Bard has to recite some lyrics from a song (maybe a single stanza/chorus).  Every player that has that song on their list gets the boon effects (whatever you decide them to be, probably should be a little better than the cleric chant spell).  This might be clunky but when I imagine the player starting off with "When I see lightning . . " or "Cruising down the street in my six-four . . ." , or whatever, and the players recognize their song getting happy because they realize they are getting a combat boost, I think it would be fun.

But do songs work more than once?  It would be interesting if the bard had to memorize some lyrics from songs they didn't know to get an effect.  So maybe they can only use a repeat after they've cycled through all the songs on everyone's list?  Maybe to simplify, they can never sing the same song in a row?

Patterned Songs
Most inspiring songs tap into shared cultural stories and symbols, but in an imagined world the made up histories and gods aren't going to actually be inspiring (the Ballad of Vecna).  But we do have the shared experiences our party has been through.  You could give the bard templates and have them extemporaneously fill them in at the time of recitation.  Something like:

Hireling Song
Remember ______the _______ who died by/who was  ___________ at _________
Remember ______the _______ who died ___________ at _________
Remember ______the _______ who died ___________ at _________
This battle is for them.

Here a tally of all the lives lost to get where you are grants power.  You might give more bonuses the longer the list.  That would make this song particularly powerful for ill-fated or experienced parties.

Victory song
When the ________ arrayed against us,
and hope was lost amongst us,
we still rose up in triumph because
You [character name] did _________________, and
You [character name] did _________________, and
You [character name] did _________________, and
Now rise up and do the same!

This is more about remembering a recent (maybe the last) victory and recounting it to instill confidence.  Telling which characters got criticals or landed massive blows, etc.  I like this idea because it makes the semi-random events of the gameworld feel more important and historic.

Anyway, some ideas.

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.

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games VII

For those of you just joining this series, I realized that the default for travel in the wilderness is usually-- nothing happens-- and that there was little to differentiate traveling through one type of terrain from another.  So I set out to try and create strategic games to both, give players something to do while travelling, and to make travelling through the desert feel different than travelling through the jungle.

Because I don't have any typical images in my head for travel through the luminous aether, I made this one a little more abstract.  Also, I don't have any experience DMing folks through planar journeys, but I imagine this could be modifiable to lots of different applications-- travelling through dreams or psionically, for example.  For that reason, though, I have no idea what unit to use here, whether it be time, space, or number of planes jumped.  I leave you to figure out the particulars.  Here we go:

The character that initiated the travel begins in the center.  The rest of the travellers are arranged around the initiator concentrically.

Every unit of travel each traveller must move one position as they are jostled about in the aether.  Before moving each player rolls a d6.  The position they can move to can only be their die roll or lower.  Only one player can occupy a spot at a time. 

If a player rolls lower than all adjacent spaces they must move to the lowest space next to them.  If a player on a 2 spot rolls a one or has adjacent spots blocked, they slip into the void.

Once a journey, players with exceptional intelligence can add their bonus to any persons die roll.

If the party is attacked while travelling, characters receive penalties to combat depending on which ring they have been jostled to: the three spots are -1, and the two spots are -2.  A player lucky enough to be on the six spot receives +1 to combat that round.
_______________________________

So, it isn't too likely for someone to get jostled off unless the party travelling is large and starts blocking each other.  But with the penalties to combat, players will still want to stay as close to the center as possible.

What does slipping into the void mean?  Seems like a pretty good adventure hook to me, probably they end up in a plane they least expected.  What happens if the initiator of travel slips off?  Ooh, seems like they'd take everyone with them, don't you think?

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games VI

The desert is a grueling waste and the best way to deal with it is spend as little time there as you can.  For every three days the party travels in the desert their food and water needs will multiply.  Each day the party will see features that they can choose to explore or ignore.  Exploring them will require an extra day.  The features that might be seen during each three-day-span are linked with dotted paths.  Landmarks are tombs and ruins or ancient stelae which might hold riches in gold or ancient knowledge.  An oasis will provide food, water, and shade to a party for as long as they like; will allow them to re-stock their supplies; and will reset their place on the chart to the start.  Caravans can offer food, water, and unerring transport, but may also be hostile bandits or slavers.  Unfortunately, 50% of the time any of these will be mirages.  And 25% of the time they will be one of the other two features.

Once a party member cannot meet the food and water requirements they must make a save each day to continue.  Failing this save means they are unconscious.  Each day they are unconscious they must save or die.

Every landmark visited will offer a bonus against getting lost on subsequent journeys through the same area.
________

Note: I probably should have put a couple check boxes for local guides or rangers that give you one free non-mirage.

The idea here is that the desert becomes more and more deadly the more time players fiddle around in it.  They may decide to strategically search for an oasis or caravan if supplies start running low.  A DM would need to prepare several landmarks ahead of time.  These could be anything from full blown dungeons to just obelisks.  I envision using my trackless wastes chart to help players know where they think they are going.  I also envision using this with the normal getting lost chances, which could make excursions into the desert very dangerous.

I can imagine situations where a few tougher party members desperately seek out an oasis or caravan with all the rest of the party left behind, unconscious.

Update 10/12:

I simplified the chart to three sections and lowered the multipliers to the still easy to remember but more believable 2,3, and 4x.  I like this better, it looks cleaner. 

I would have the multipliers just apply to water now.  I think it fits the tropes better.  I also added the reminder boxes for rangers and locals getting one free I'm-certain-that-is-no-mirage per journey.  (funny how I put rangers and druids and such on all these charts when I don't even use them in my campaign.  I guess that is just me trying to be helpful to you all-- rangers, druids and equivalent situations-- players with magic items or special backgrounds-- should all work equally well on these simple rules).

I was in the process of changing the three day increments to four but reverted them back, I think, while I had it too brutal before, it needs to feel like a dangerous and slippery slope-- four days of travel equivalent to just being on a normal road was a little too easy to do that in my opinion.

Also, I don't think I ever mentioned that the whole dotted line mess isn't just for aesthetics, I was trying to limit when players might find certain things.  I didn't want a party, fresh and confident, checking to see if every oasis is a mirage.  But as things get desperate there are chances available to get out of the situation, like being picked up by a caravan.

Mysterious Miracles

Jeff asked a question about cleric spells on G+, the normal Vancian system being too much like "a snap-your-fingers-and-God-comes-running affair."

I agree wholeheartedly, and if you've been following my blog you probably know I have my players draw dominoes to see if petitions for aid are answered.   I've spent a lot of brain cycles on this, trying to make it simple enough for even new players.  And just when I think I have the system as simple as it is going to get, I find I'm not really satisfied with it.

Sure, the ways of the gods, or your ancestors, or your totem, are mysterious.  They know more than you and are wiser.  How can you know whether a petition will be answered or not?  But as a mechanic it really sucks when in the heat of need, your petitions go unanswered again and again and again.  I've seen more players disappointed than helped by this system.  And I'm pretty sure my players have little interest in playing the class because of it.  So what to do?

A New Approach
I want to keep the mystery in divine aid, but not in whether prayers will be heard or not.  So maybe I can shift the mystery to how prayers are answered.  What if I made a more general spur-type chart of aid granted?  Clerics will get a certain # of petitions answered a day, but how they are answered is up to the divine power (or in this case our interpretation of the chart).

This will require more work, but could be potentially cool.  I'd want the aid to come in a form that fits the power where possible; Zeus tends to send lighting & thunder, the wolf totem- a wolf.  But I'd also like to have a bit of choice for the petitioner so that the miracles will fit them, maybe they like little animals coming to their aid, maybe they are more of the persuasion of melting enemy faces off.  Either way, pc clerics would begin to resemble distinct saints as they grew in power.

I need to think more about how I'd construct this "Aid Granted" chart, maybe for any dangerous situation it would have general entries of the type: "smite enemies," "escape granted," "unharmable," "hidden," etc.  I guess it takes away some of the strategy if miracles just become get-out-of--jail-free cards.  Then the player's choice becomes: when do I ask for help because I can only ask a few times.

Another possibility that could work in tandem with the mysterious miracles above are random boons clerics would get at the beginning of each game session (this idea comes from Jeff's question).  This would make for miraculous powers that are more useful and tool-like for players-- "I've been granted the ability to walk on water, lets go to the sunken dungeon!"  But I would want a big list, at least 100, so that it would always be fresh and interesting.  Probably should have room for the flavor of their divine power too.  Hmm, I wonder if I could just use my Spell-Like Effects spur for these boons.

A Couple Questions

1 Has anyone tabulated monsters from various old D&D versions into spreadsheets?  I've noticed a few differences and I'd like to track what changes there are-- mostly HD and damage dice going up or down.  That's a lot of typing, though, so if someone's done it, it would save me work.

2 Do you know of any discussions in blog posts or forums about multiple attacks by monsters, like 1d4/1d4/1d8?  I thought saw something a year or so ago.  I'm curious about why these show up at the HD levels they do, whether they're intended to help monsters have a better chance of hurting higher level characters, or take on groups of pcs, etc.

Thanks.  I hope you're all avoiding heat stroke.

Simple Mental Powers

Some caveats:

• Read this post from me to see where I'm coming from.  Today's post concerns inherited mental powers.
• If you're looking for something more conservative in how it clarifies and reorganizes D&D's Psionics system check out Mr. Campbell's work here.
• This is a portion of an unfinished system.  The other parts I'm working on are a tree-based power selection for learned mental powers and a flavorful but simple means to resolve mental combats.
• I loathe bookkeeping and calculations and have sacrificed options and power potency to avoid it as much as possible.
• This is a draft that I haven't tried in play yet.  Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Okay, so here, in 4 steps and 2 pages, is a way to offer your players some new toys/tools.  It is much more likely that players will have powers than in the older systems (someone with one exceptional stat has a 1 in 3 chance), but I figure what's the point in having a cool subsystem if no one gets to use it (do you know how many times I rolled for psionics in 1e and failed?!).

I've tried to limit the powers so that even if a whole party gets them they won't be flinging dragons around and flying about like Glitterboys.

I wasn't sure whether the player-empowering choice of abilities or the fun of randomness was the best approach so I tried to have my cake and eat it too.  Players can sacrifice choice for additional power.  This also offers a way to mitigate really crappy power rank rolls.

I tried organizing the powers by how much of an affect they can make in play, and making those most powerful less common, but this order could be easily changed-- moving Hypnosis up, for example.

Of course, you could tinker with everything here-- like making the units of weight 100s of coins rather than stones-- I think the main innovation I'm trying, is to avoid power point tracking by using the more granular session, game day, hour divisions inspired by 4e's encounter powers.

The briefness of the power descriptions will require some thought from each DM, but I'm hoping this is just enough to make a system while stepping out of the way to let you decide how things run in your game.

Update: Whoops, I made a copy paste error, I originally intended the telekinesis power to allow for moving 1 stone per power rank, which is 1/10 the power listed in the first pdf I posted.  So, if you saw that someone with TK could move half-ton boulders and thought what is he talking about "I tried to limit powers," umm, that's why.

Of course you can make it whatever scale you want but I would suggest something that is easy to remember for your players.

3 Ways to Forsee III

The Future as Web (aka the Grand Destiny)
This view of the future isn't really a third model, but a complication of one of the other two.  It's just the idea that events have more than one cause and to change the future can be a complex undertaking.  Avoiding a negative future is more difficult than just assassinating one person.  Ensuring a good future equally involves chains of smaller events that have to happen or be avoided.

Trapped in History
I think his view of the future has become popularized, oddly enough, by seeing the future from the past.  In other words, time travel stories.  A character travels back in time and the problem becomes, not predicting the future, but how the choices that character makes interact with a future we already know.

In that sense Future as Web is most commonly related to a Future as Fate.  The events in the time traveler's future are inescapable because, well, that's our history.  But the Future as web isn't about that so much as a means used to prevent any change from happening.  Oh, you think you can stop WWII from happening just by killing Hitler?  Well, you actually killed a body double who was conspiring to replace Hitler.  Or, you miss your shot and make Hitler more paranoid and dedicated to his war aims.  If the Future as Web is used with the model of the future being fated, the layers of causes act as a buffer to any change to the future that's already known.

Alternate Histories = Future as Possible Paths
There are some examples of the opposite, though, basically any story where history as we know it is malleable.  This is frequently seen in time travel stories where something has been screwed up by the traveler and they need to make things right so the future happens as expected.  A familiar example is Marty McFly trying to get his parents to fall in love.  This is the Future as Possible Paths, because we see, even when Marty succeeds, he returns to a different present.  Again, Future as a Web is not in reference that he could change the future but the idea of the interconnectedness of all the causes that result in what will become the future.  It isn't as easy as just getting his parents in the same room, he has to deal with Biff, the principal, and the time crunch of scheduled events.

The Future that's Bigger than You
Because Future as Web is about something harder to change with many interconnected causes , it's usually about something bigger than any one person.  It is a kind of Grand Destiny.  Wars, the succession of Kings, great plagues, these are foretold.  To avoid destiny takes more than a single act.  The seer will still be affected by future events but this future isn't their personal fate (even with Marty, there's also the existence of his siblings hanging in the balance).  Future as a Web is less "how do I prevent the halfing from stealing my purse" and more "how do we ensure the Empress Dowager is dethroned?"

Mechanics
I think these Grand Destinies can come into play either as adventure hook prophecies that players hear, or when players desire to make a big change in the world and go to someone with sight of the future to give them guidance on how to achieve it.

Rather than a table here to generate particular Grand Destinies, I'll just say they should be things that happen in a sandbox but not require players to interact with them.  My post here looks at some possible examples and one way of handling them, escalating things over time if players don't get involved.  Contrary to my advice in the Future as a Possible Paths post, because these destinies are harder to avoid, I don't think they should be related so closely to things the PCs own or people they know.  That route leads to frustrating railroading.

Now, how you model predictions of these magnitudes depends on which of the two views of history you are using.

If Future is Fate, I think you can choose a destiny and several smaller trigger fortunes.  Then, use Zak's method of allowing players to say when a foretold event happens except that those smaller fortunes either a) have to happen in a particular order, or b) need to happen simultaneously.

Example:  The Empress Dowager will lose her throne when a feast is prepared but not eaten, a rope snaps as music plays, a crown rolls across a stone floor.

The PCs realize the heir apparent will be hung for the pleasure of the Empress and her court and wish to prevent it for their own reasons.  They interrupt the execution/banquet, manage to snap the noose, and roll the hereditary Great Crown they've recovered across the floor for all to see.

The courtiers and generals present are shocked and pivot to support the heir.

Here, the predictions become a kind of key to the prophecy; if players can arrange a situation where they all happen, then the prophecy comes true.

If the Future is Possible Paths, it becomes trickier (for the DM at least).  Because prophecies are just one possibility, players can just work against them to make them not happen.  There isn't the sense of "stickiness" or difficulty in working against destiny.  Here's an idea for a way to allow players to do what they want and still give that sense of the complexity of changing what is destined:

Usually players will be trying to prevent foretold events, because otherwise they could just stand back and let them happen.  For a particular event of great importance that players want to stop, come up with 4 smaller events or preconditions that will affect its likelihood.  Let these be discoverable by players-- wise npcs advise them, they find them in books, they see them in dreams.  When it comes time to see if players can prevent the destined event roll 1d6, 6 = yes.  Modify the roll by +1 for each of the smaller events that PCs managed to make happen.  I think I would make this transparent to players, to give them a sense that they are up against that die roll and destiny itself.  But allow players to come up with additional factors that would result in modifiers.

Example:  Prophecies say the Empress Dowager will rule for a 1000 years.

PCs learn that getting her generals against her will make a difference (+1), they learn that the Great Crown that true Imperials wear has been missing (+1).  They learn the heir apparent is secretly held captive in a tower (+1).  Coming up is an important political/religious ritual where the Imperial power is reaffirmed (+1).

They speak with the generals, even performing some tasks for them to win them over. They rescue the heir apparent and recover the crown. They plan to present him to the court on the ritual day. But, worried this won't be enough to shake the 1000 year reign, they decide to search for evidence of the unlawful way the Empress Dowager seized the throne and present it to all as a magical projection (+1).

That is enough, the heir apparent takes the throne. The prophecy has been avoided.

To liven it up, agents of the parties desiring the prophesied outcomes could actively work against the PCs-- the cultists wishing the World Plague to occur, the rebels desiring the Elf-Dwarf War.  If this works as I envision it, any time Players chafe at a grand prophecy could result in a whole mini-campaign of them trying to overturn it.

3 Ways to Forsee II

Future as Possible Paths
This kind of foretelling is the opposite of inescapable fates.  The future is an infinite number of paths stretching forward from Now.  Any time someone peers in to a crystal ball or has a precognitive vision they see the most likely future.   It will happen if everything remains unchanged, but there is plenty of time between now and then for things to change.

This might be a more modern view of the future-- a future of variables and probabilities. Future as an equation where the inputs are fuzzy and prone to change.

These kinds of visions of the future can be specific and visual, like dreams or scenes in the mind.  They could just as easily be vague like Future as Fate predictions, something like "misfortune will strike your friends" with the understanding that the misfortune could be avoided.  But, because Future as Fate can only give these vague kinds of predictions, why not be distinct and present visions of future possibilities as rich visuals.

This kind of foretelling is much more useful to players because it is about gathering information to help make choices.  Why find out a friend is going to die if you can't change it?  This vision of the future is more active and empowered.  Players find out about the future like scouting a foreign country.

A Mechanic
There won't be a single, elegant solution like Zak's for this kind of future because there are so many variables, but I think we can at least come up with some guidelines

Which Part of the Future to Show
Because the possibilities are open it becomes hard to decide what part of the future to even show.  How far ahead should be shown?  And what about physical distance from the seer's current location?

One thing to keep in mind is that if a future path depends upon decisions, each decision you assume for the players makes a particular path less and less likely.  It might be a good rule of thumb to either show the future as the outcome of one particular choice or show the future up until the next big decision point.  The first will help players decide if that is in fact the choice they want to make.  The second will prime them for the upcoming big choice, and hopefully build dramatic tension.
 
In general, though, a week ahead would seem quite far, a month probably the limit for things revolving around the PCs (See the next way to foresee for grander destinies).  As for physical distance, again a week's travel would seem far. But this still doesn't lay out what choices a vision of the future would show.

Probably the best guidance on what to show is to remember that players will want to use it to inform them.  So the PCs' present situation is a good starting point: 

The Players Have No Plans
If the players are in a safe place and have no particular plans it might seem odd that someone would be looking into the future.  But there are things besides the PCs themselves that grant visions.  A place might grant visions to those that sleep there.  Fevers, drug use, or magic items all might grant a glimpse of things to come.

If players have no particular plans, this kind of DM granted vision can essentially act as an adventure hook.  These may not be about choices so much because you won't be sure that players even want to get involved.  The choice is, in effect, this thing is going to happen do you want to stop it, or maybe take advantage of it?  But a vision that involves strangers or strange places will amount to the same thing as hearing a rumor.  To be more magical and interesting these visions should probably provide a glimpse of something happening to the PCs, their friends, or their belongings. Here is the simplest chart I can imagine to help you with this:

Example: Someone hated by the PCs is ravaging a familiar object out of greed.

You see the orc One-Eye who killed little Bobby the link boy last session.  He's in a 10'x10' room sweating as he stoops over something, hammering.  You see it now, it is the Great Crown you've been searching for.  He's hammering on it to get out the rubies and the beautiful piece of art is mangled before your eyes.

The Party is Heading on a Journey
For wilderness travel you can roll encounters and weather for a week ahead of time and relate that to players.  This will let them make decisions about what to bring and how to prepare for this particular journey.  Likely decision points might include which of several routes to use, or, after a dangerous encounter-- whether the party should even continue.

The Party is Heading into a Dungeon
A dungeon zooms things in considerably and it becomes difficult again to decide what part of the future to show. But there are a few focuses that players might be interested in knowing about.  You could either decide which of the following is most important for this dungeon, or roll randomly to determine which of these to show them:

1) A Terrible threat. Choose the most dangerous foe the dungeon holds in store for this particular party.  Show them fighting it and, if defeat is likely, show them getting slaughtered in vivid detail.  This is one of the few times you might impress on players the lethality of the game and the real possibility of death without them suffering the consequences. A party might take this as an opportunity to plan carefully to take on this foe, but they also might feel empowered to just run at the first sight of it, if they've already seen themselves getting slaughtered by it.

2) Many Challenges.  A Rocky-like montage of difficulties, especially terrain-based is another option.  Show the PCs using ropes, iron spikes, burning oil, string to navigate mazes.  This would basically serve as an overview to help players prepare.  In some ways it would function as the Pre-Mapped Dungeon, but the players don't necessarily know where the images they see are located within the dungeon.  It is also a way to show them many smaller scale challenges instead of a single large one.

3) Treachery.  A Preview of desertions and double-crossings from factions in the dungeon and/or hirelings.

4) A Dilemma or Big Choice.  There might be one particularly important choice in the dungeon, for example, releasing a bound demon or not, or starting up magical machinery.  The vision could show the choice being made in one way.

A Player Wants to Know the Outcome of a Particular Choice
While the archetype of those that can see the future is often about getting visions you can't control, I think it will be more interesting to everyone if the visions are useful to players.  For that reason, I don't see anything wrong in just asking the players involved "What are you interested in seeing?"  They might answer any of the things we've mentioned above ("I want to see what happens if we take the shortcut in the woods," or "I want to see who will betray me in the caverns.") or they may ask about turning the handle one the big, creepy door to the left.  This can essentially defang traps, but if your traps are set up more as obstacles anyway, knowing what happens won't necessarily tell the party how to get through the door safely.  Also, spells, magic items, and precognitive abilities will most likely have limitations on frequency of use that will prevent layers from avoiding all uncertainty.


The next way to foresee is really a subset of both these first models.  But the Future as a Web is different enough that I think it warrants a separate look.

3 Ways to Forsee

Like a lot of fantasy elements, how to implement foretelling the future in an rpg is complicated by the fact that there are multiple conflicting archetypes at play.  Let's try to tease those apart and work towards some simple but distinct mechanics.

In this case the origin of the competing archetypes is pretty easy to see.  Because we can't know the future any attempt to predict things will fall into two categories: becoming vague enough to make sure the prediction fits what actually happens or presenting predictions as possibilities which give you an out when things go completely differently.  We humans have actually established two different metaphors of time and the future that correspond to these tactics.

Future as Fate
One way of understanding the future is as an inescapable fate.  The fortune teller reads the cards, the seer the entrails, and no matter what you do the fate will happen.  In fact, your struggling against it will often ironically bring your fate about.

To reach this level of certitude, though, requires turning the dial down on specificity.  One way to do this is to be cryptic about actors.  You never make a prediction about someone-- King John, Tom, your sister Kate--  but about friends, shepherds, or important men.   These can be interpreted whichever direction you need: literal, symbolic, or even as a riddle for someone named Shepherd.  Another way to be less specific is to tap into universals that are likely to happen because they happen to all humans.  Romance, misfortune, sickness-- it happens all around us everyday.  Newspaper-horoscope-vague: "your efforts will be noticed," "a friendship is tested," etc.

If you give humans these two features in a prediction 1) common life occurrences happening to 2) no specific "who," it turns out our natural pattern matching software does a great job of making those predictions fit life.

A Mechanic
So how do we utilize this in-game?  Turns out Mr. Zak Smith has offered a way to do it in Vornheim.   A random fortune is rolled for on a chart.  These fortunes are all vague but intriguing.  Then players decide when to apply the fortune in play.  the DM can also decide to apply the fortune.  So it is presumably in the best interest for players to get the fortunes out of the way before the DM does because it will go easier on them.

Example: "A crown will roll across a stone floor."

The players find themselves in a 10'x10' room with an orc guarding a crown.  The player remembers the fortune, invokes it, and the DM decides the surprised orc drops the crown.  It rolls toward the party, who snatch it up and retreat without needing to engage in combat.

Now, if the player hadn't invoked the fortune then-- let's say the party gets the crown the old fashioned way, by killing the orc -- the fortune is still free for the DM to invoke.  The party is leaving the dungeon, running along a chasm pursued by trolls and the DM invokes the fortune.  The crown slips free from the character holding it and roll toward the chasm as the trolls close . . .

I think giving players the task of making predictions fit is brilliant for a lot of reasons.  It gives them agency, it keeps them engaged and paying attention looking for opportunities, and it gets them involved creatively.  And, like I mentioned above, this kind of pattern matching is something we humans are pretty good at, even new players should be familiar with horoscopes.

Some Concerns
I do have a few concerns with it as a mechanic, though, primarily that it sets the DM up to be an adversary.  I'm happy to make connections as DM, to tie coincidences together, but I'm uncomfortable with a mechanic that requires the tension of me being on the look out to apply the worst possible meaning of a fortune to players.

Another concern is that I've got enough stuff to remember without having to constantly be thinking about when to apply various players' fortunes.

Last and least, it uses a chart that is consumed in play-- I know most people prefer these, and that you can really have a list of fabulous results this way-- but I'm more interested in giving DMs a tool to create their own charts.  Especially because then you can also bring players in to the creative act at the table if you want to.

Addressing Concerns
Zak largely avoids my first concern, that of pitting DM vs.player, by making most of the fortunes in his table more complex than simple binaries, not clearly advantageous or disadvantageous.  So not, "a good friend dies" and it's between you and the DM to decide which of your friends is meant. In this way the fortunes become toys that invite both player and DM to get involved in the creative act.

But I wonder if the very act of making them less dangerous for the DM to enact makes them less interesting toys for the players to want to play with.  In other words, as a player would you pay someone to tell you "a crown rolls across a floor"?

There's not much I can think to do about the concern of requiring the DM to remember these.  Either limit the number of unresolved fortunes possible in play or make them solely the player's responsibility and provide some other method of tension so the player will want to resolve them.

Lastly, any vague generative tool could be adapted to make you more fortunes including Tarot, Lotería cards, Hanafuda decks, dominoes or regular playing cards. Here is the simplest chart I can think of, knowing full well it won't give the flavor of Zak's fortunes, but might require more collaborative creativity from Players and DM.  Roll 2 differently colored d6:

I think my next step for a more detailed fortune creator would actually list universals that would apply to rpgs, like "will fumble," "will fail when least expected (fail save)."

More about a Fated Future
Let me recap a little based on what I've learned from Zak's solution and my thinking about Future as Fate in play: 

• Inescapable negative fates are really just curses, so there is no reason for players to seek them out in play.  Why should I ever talk to a fortune teller if it always leads to a hireling dying?  Why cast future predicting spells if it means you'll have to face more dangers?
• So some predictions must be really good, to make players even interested it getting involved.
• But predictions can't all be good, or they just becomes a fate point system where the player changes occurrences in the game to their advantage.
• There must be some kind of tension to get these fortunes resolved--to say they have happened-- or pretty soon you'll have hundreds of fortunes hanging around.
• One source of tension (besides an adversarial DM) could be a limit on fortunes: one fortune must be resolved before any further aspects of the future can be seen.  The fortune teller keeps rambling on and on about the rolling crown.
• Again, this would mean some predictions must be really good, or the first negative fortune would mean players would just leave things on hold, never invoking that fortune, and not messing with fortunes again at all.
• Fortunes should probably be owned by specific players, that way there is some interesting tension as they decide which friends and hirelings to apply negative fates to.
• Perhaps you could give players a small XP reward for resolving fortunes.
• If the knowledge of future events is coming from dreams there could be negative repercussions from lack of restful sleep until they are resolved.

These inescapable fates can be colorful for things gypsies scream at adventurers, recurring dreams, or drug induced visions but, in the end, because the future holds both good and bad for us, Future as Fate will always have the problem of whether players will want to get involved at all.  I think we need to look to the other views of the future for something more attractive to players.

This post got longer than I thought it would be.  I'll give you Future as Possible Paths next time.

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games V

Here's another attempt at a simple way to engage players while they travel the wilderness while making different types of terrains feel different.  (Maybe a better name for these things would be Terrain Challenges, or Travel Challenges Simon?)

This might be the simplest one yet (I'm sure the seed of the idea came from Zak's critical range choice he gives his players):

Each day the party has to move one box.  The idea is that in the dark woods you can either be safe or know where you are, but it's hard to do both.  Running from encounters leads to getting turned around and all the stands of trees look alike.  You can try to mark your way, but your bread crumbs might lead something to you.  Treat each box as a corresponding bonus or minus to the wandering monster and getting lost rolls.

If you have any of the folks at the bottom in your party they can shift one box per day as well.

Depending on how you check for monsters and getting lost you might want to cut each side down to 3 boxes.  I'm assuming a d6 with results on a one, so you would never completely avoid the chance to have encounters or get lost.

No players will want to get lost, but I'm thinking low level characters may push towards safety just to survive.  Hopefully they will stumble upon a road or an interesting ruin before they are finally eaten alive.

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games IV

First, I never mentioned that I would consider any kind of road or known track to be civilization and by using them players can avoid these mini-games.  I intend these for going off-road or trailblazing.  I suppose that could lead to boring trips along roads in the wilderness, but I'm thinking we should probably all have charts for terrain-specific road encounters and travel on a road should feel quicker anyway. I imagine hand-waving road trips would be less of an issue than whole expeditions through difficult terrain.

Second, obviously these don't have to be used for the terrain they are named for.  If you have a different terrain that you want to keep interesting as players travel across it, choose the mini-game that fits it best.  So far we have terrains that:

• wear parties down with a single, relentless element (swamp)
• drive hirelings mad through isolation and discomfort (ocean)
• are technically difficult and require gear and planning (mountain)

and today I'll give you:

• consume hirelings with hidden dangers (jungle)

Now, the jungle.  I had a hard time with this one.  While I knew that I wanted something like I remember from watching old Sinbad and Tarzan movies-- porters and bearers dying every step of an expedition into the dark jungle-- I didn't want to interfere with the game's system of playing out dangerous encounters and combat.  I'm hoping this might balance both well enough:

The idea is the jungle devours men and women-- quicksand, silent constrictors, piranha filled streams.  Every other day one hireling will disappear.  Having any of the special folks at the bottom of the chart in the party can save one hireling per journey.

Once per journey, a character with an exceptional strength, dexterity, or constitution can prevent a disappearance.

Otherwise the party must leave the hirelings to the jungle or challenge this cruel fate by rolling a d6.  A result of 5-6 means crisis averted-- you grabbed the hireling's hand just as they were about to slip off the cliff trail. A result of 3-4 means the scene becomes a full-blown encounter-- determine what the hazard is, whether environmental or wandering monster, and play it out.  A result of 1-2 means the scene becomes a traditional encounter as well, but you've escalated the danger of the situation-- 1d4 additional hirelings are knocked into the quicksand, are encoiled by the giant anaconda, etc.

I'm hoping that players that really don't want to lose hirelings can avoid it, but that in tense situations, chases or parties lost in the jungle, they may just let hirelings go to avoid losing even more hands to the wilderness.

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games III

And now to the culprit that left me wanting something better, the sea.  I thought about it for a while and I decided a cool archetypal challenge for the sea would be your crew.  What, you think you can drift around in the doldrums for weeks without hearing some grumbling from those shady characters you hired at the last port?  Here's what I came up with:

On the second day at sea with no encounter start the game by placing a marker on the first square (Now that I think of it I should have designed it with the track around the edges so you could use a paper-clip).

Each following day move one square, encounters don't matter any more.

When you land on a square with a black spot your crew has become unhappy and is grumbling.  Roll 1d6 to see how they challenge you.

If one of the party members has an exceptional score in the ability challenged the crew is appeased and you halt their descent into darker moods. An exceptional ability can only be used once a journey. 

If you don't have the right ability bonus you can offer up the secondary item: a change of scenery, wine women and song, or cold hard cash.  As long as you meet their challenge you can hold the crew's discontent on that square.  But every day you'll have to roll for another challenge.

Fail the challenge and the marker moves to the next box.  Once you get to the fork, a challenge failed for 3 starts the crew spiralling into madness, depression, and possible suicide.  A failed 4 or 5 will head them toward angry revolt, and either assaulting or marooning the party.

Keep in mind, successfully meeting the challenges will only stall the inevitable.  Once the game is started the only thing that can reset the board is port, or at least having the majority of the crew go ashore somewhere.

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games II

Some more thoughts on spicing up travel through the abstract wilderness.  Keep in mind I intend these in addition to encounters and in addition to terrain-based encounters.  I'm just trying to shift the default from nothing happens to- there is some slow-burning tension.

One thing I've done in the past is add npcs to converse with on a ship.  But that takes some prep and players don't seem to want to interact with anything that isn't explicitly a boon or a hook.

After my last post I was worrying that all terrain might be seen as an element wearing you down: thirst in the desert, cold in the tundra, etc.  So I pushed my brain trying to think of a different approach for a mini-game.  Here's an idea for steep and rocky terrain:

Once a day (or hex, whatever works best for your scale) the treacherous mountain terrain will consume a random piece of equipment.  Ropes and spikes used to cross ravines will need be left behind.  Poles will be lost into deep drifts.  grapnels irretrievably wedged on ascending rock faces.  If the party has a dwarf, ranger or local in it they can absorb one of these losses per journey.  Characters with wisdom or intelligence bonuses can substitute one item for another once per journey-- think of it as cleverly rigging something up: the torches melt through the ice wall they can't scale, a pole is used to clamber up a steep spot.

As long as the party has one of the item type that the roll says is consumed, then things are okay.  If not, movement decreases (halved?) and things start getting harder (food and water consumption double?).

Well, it's similar to the swamp travel in that it's still wearing away at the party which I guess is what all resource management amounts too.  But I was hoping with this, the party could be shown the chart before travelling, see what is consumed more commonly, and try to prepare for the trip accordingly, to give the feel of a big expedition.  It could even make finding the remains of a previous expedition, with spikes and rope, treasure-like.

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games

Hill Cantons just posted about the tedium of wilderness travel and I was recently struggling with the same thing (you think a hex crawl is boring, try the ocean!).  The first default answer to this is to include terrain-based encounters on the wandering monster table.  That's fine, but if you don't roll an encounter  . . . the default is still nothing happening. 

Weather charts try to balance interest with plausibility, so usually you have the kind of weather you'd expect for the season and it doesn't change much.

You could just make something happen each day of travel and prepare a big chart.  That's how I handle my abstract city Nidus.  Every trip into the city rolls on the table, often these are more exciting things than what the players intended to do in town.  But two things, 1) players entering Nidus are playing a mini-game (they have to roll dice to find what they want), so it's more interesting than just something happens guaranteed and 2) a teeming fantasy city should feel different than the trackless wastes.  Do we really want something happening every day of travel or every hex travelled in the wilderness?

So how do we avoid the boredom of nothing happening while giving the feeling of travelling through vast, treacherous territories?  I think a mini-game is the solution.  Almost exactly a year ago today JDJarvis suggested a roll-to-get-out-of-hex-mechanic to spice up wilderness travel.  I think he was on the right track.  I think it should be a little more involved than that though-- complicated enough that players can make decisions and devise strategies.  I also think each kind of terrain should have a different mini-game.  The challenges of travelling through the Arctic are different than the challenges of the swamp.

What the games would be I haven't quite figured out yet.  Maybe you could help.  But here is a proof of concept I whipped up for swamps:

I think the biggest ongoing threat from wetlands is . . . well, the wet.  The damp gets into food, ruins boots, and wears down pack animals trudging through soft, sticky earth.  So you might make every day in the swamp (travelling or not) give 1+ 1d4 squares of dampness damage.

Players can choose where to put this dampness damage: on boots and armor or on pack animals.  The idea is you can privilege your gear, keeping it dry by overloading your animals or save the animals by trudging through the wet muck yourself.  When the dampness bar is full, the animals are through.  They are lame.  They've been left in sinkholes.  For the boots/armor I'm not sure.  You could say all armor becomes worthless, but that's pretty harsh.  Maybe start taking dampness damage off of AC, once the bar is full, one a day.  Loss of boots should mean slower movement rate too.

You can reset the bar by finding a dry enough spot to camp-- one square cleared per day of fire and rest in camp (props to Wilderness Survival for that idea).

The squares on bottom are if you have a one of any of the labelled folks in the party.  You can sink one square of dampness damage per day into them. The idea is that through know-how and experience they help the party avoid some of the most difficult terrain.

So what choices would this give a party?  Well, in an emergency they could work the animals so hard they sacrifice them, but then you would need to be strict about encumbrance to make that matter.  Or if they are going to need their animals on the other side of the swamp they could store all their armor, sacrifice their boots and travel very slowly.  But if nothing else I'm hoping there would be tension as they split dampness between both bars and looked for a decent camping spot.  You could even set a minimum elevation ahead of time and use this technique as a sub-mini-game.

What do you think?  Can you invent entirely different games for desert/tundra/ocean that would be interesting and "feel" like those places?

NPCs as Locks

I posted twice about trying to make rules that actually encourage more interaction with NPCs here and here.  I've used the card system outlined in those posts to generate backgrounds for some of my NPCs but never did much more with those ideas.  Here's an idea for a simpler if more mechanistic method:

NPCs are Locks
Some set of topics will "open" them.  Opening them will mean different things depending on who they are.  A merchant could give a discount or offer black market goods.  A guard allows entry into restricted areas or gives gossip on crime in the area.  You get the idea. 

I would keep the "keys" to three topics or less and record them along with what it unlocks in your DM notes.  Something like:

Prophet of the Pot - ask about his health, ask about his sons = reveals location of a new temple risen from the sea.

You could check off each "tumbler" in your notes after players have engaged the topic.  If it's been a really long time you might decide they have to start over and ask again about his sons, which makes sense if weeks and weeks have passed.

A great DM could probably do this in their head, but I'm interested in anything that can make my life as DM simpler.  And if you keep in mind that you might have to talk to other NPCs to even know what the Prophet of the Pot cares about, this could give a reason for your players to interact with the folks milling about your imaginary cities.

Triggered Player Notes

I've never used this, don't know how useful it would be, but as I was falling asleep last night I thought of giving a player a sealed envelope with "Open When __________" written on top.  So let's think about the possibilities.  What could be the triggers?

• Open when you next score a critical
• when you next critically miss
• next session
• when you are at half-hp or less
• when a spell is cast on you
• when I ask you to make a save
• when I ask you to roll any dice
• when another player is hurt
• when you're in water

Let's pause there and think about some reasons you might do this.  Because with the last one I realized you could set up some real tension for a player-- should they seek out water or desperately avoid it-- if you make the triggers something they have control over.  And that's a great meta reason.  But what are some possible in-game reasons for the sealed message?

• the pc is cursed
• has lycanthropy
• will go berserk
• is suffering hallucinations
• has a magical ailment
• has a regular disease which will start manifesting itself (maybe this obscures the causes-- my critical miss game me the black pox!?)
• something about prophecy, or foretelling
• maybe they fulfilled some aspect of a legend
• maybe it's a tricksy way of introducing an adventure hook (the open next session, for example, tell about a specific merchant that seeks the player out)
• they have learned a new ability
• a newly found magic item will manifest itself
• maybe a tricksy way of adding a plot complication ("open if attacked at night" could reveal the info that npc Bob is not in his bed, where is he?)

Okay, I also thought last night of printing a pocketmod with taped together pages.  The cover would be a trigger, the first page the info revealed, the second page would be an additional trigger, and so on.Why?  I don't know it just seems like it would be incredibly intriguing.  You could make something happen based on player choices, but shrouded in mystery.  Maybe the little booklet is for spell research-- "Open page if you spend more then 2000gp", or "Open page if you fail to maintain your experiment with 1000gp per session."  Or maybe this could be an abstracted way to deal with an npc relationship that isn't really the focus of the whole party, maybe a romance.