DM Screen for AD&D2e

 

I've printed out and assembled my new DM's screen for AD&D2e.

Structurally, it's 2mm grey-board covered with some of my home-made book-cloth. I didn't have enough of a single pattern to do the whole lot, which is why it's in two different patterns.

The most useful in-game charts are on the two centre panels. The outer panels are less likely to be needed day-to-day, and I've added some hinged smaller pages (to the left) with other less important information. If I find there are other charts I feel the need for instant access to, I'll put other hinged panels on the right.

The main thing is to learn where everything is, so that I minimise searching time and garner a wholly undeserved reputation for omniscience.

The pages on the outside are more or less temporary; that's where I'll put any player info. In this case they deal with how I'm handling saving throws and critical hits / fumbles.

NOTE: I laminated the sheets before I glued them to the panels, and in hindsight I think that was a mistake. The glossy surface makes the content more difficult to read due to annoying reflections.

Very Late Paradigm Shift

 

When I first started playing AD&D, back in '81 when I first went to university, we all had a lot of time on our hands. We could play as often and as long as we liked, and as a result our campaigns tended to be very long-lasting and wide-ranging.

What it has taken me an unreasonably long time to come to terms with is that that situation no longer applies. people have lives and obligations and things to do besides playing D&D. 

Even with a schedule of only playing face-to-face once a fortnight, it's not unusual that somebody won't be able to make it from one session to the next.

What this means for me, as the DM, is that I can't really expect to be able to run an extended story-arc campaign any more. Any adventure I present pretty much has to be capable of resolution, one way or another, within two or three hours of play. 

That's a bit limiting of course, but it's not an insuperable creative challenge. It just means that we can't indulge in any sort of leisurely build-up to the action, and because the length of time between sessions might be long, any foreshadowing may well be forgotten and wasted by the time it becomes relevant.

Essentially, what it means is that we're going to have to play in an episodic ST:TOS framework, not a series-long ST:DS9 story arc milieu.

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On a side-note, apparently D&D (et.al.) is taking off in retirement homes across the USA. It's proving to be excellent for providing a social focus and engagement for retirees who would otherwise risk isolation, as well as being excellent for cognitive maintenance.

I imagine it would also be good for actually running a game, since unless somebody has died in their sleep, you can probably rely on them actually being there. Which is by no means certain or even likely out in the real world.

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Addendum: I bought a second copy of the AD&D2e PHB softcover reprint from DriveThreuRPG, since it seems we need more than one at the table, and everybody else is too goddam cheap to get one of their own.

I have a copy of the 1989 edition hardback, but the page numbers are all different to the fancy-schmancy 1995 "black book" edition, which I prefer. I have an original one of those too, but for the hurley-burley of the tabletop I prefer to have something that's basically expendable. 

Secondary Skills in AD&D(1e)

 I've spoken before about the two-edged sword that is a formalised skills system in any TTRPG.

The mere existence of a list of available skills tends to guide both players and game masters towards the attitude that if a character doesn't have a specific skill written down on their character sheet, then they just can't do that thing.

Also, a formalised skill resolution system has a tendency to replace imagination and roleplaying with a simple mechanical die roll — boring!

Nevertheless, people persist in desiring lists of skills, worked out in excruciating detail, for their characters to pick and choose from. I suppose it makes them feel safer or something.

AD&D (1e) has no formal skill lists or skill resolution system. The nearest it comes to it is the presence in the DMG, on page 12, is a list of "Non-Professional Skills", or Secondary skills.

They're not detailed in any way except for being named, and in theory at least, they're assigned randomly at character creation.

In terms of function, they're intended to act much more like the character backgrounds used in D&D (5e) than as a definitive list of skills, and when used that way, as a flavourful adjunct to the character rather than as a mechanically defining feature, they work well enough. The key is to use them properly.

Let's take, as an example, the entry for d% 55-57 — Teamster/freighter. Boo! Boring!

A character with this background would have a working knowledge of a wide range of skills. They would need to know how to manage and care for draught animals like oxen or horses for a start. They would need to know how to maintain and drive wagons and maybe barges. They'd have needed sufficient leather and wood working skills to keep their transportation working. They would need to know how to balance and secure their loads, so they'd be familiar with knots and nets and the like. They'd have had to move heavy objects about, so they may well be familiar with the construction and use of impromptu gantries, and they'd be aware of the benefits of pulley systems for mechanical advantage. They'd have to have been adept at judging the lie of the land ahead, to avoid (if possible) steep slopes or deep rivers or other obstacles, and if unavoidable, how to get their wagons over them. And once they'd got their load to its destination, they may well have needed a familiarity with licences, docking fees, bureaucracy and bribes to get it into a town or city to be offloaded.

I have undoubtedly missed or forgotten much that would be relevant, but you can easily see how this simple one-line entry can really flesh out the assumed knowledge of the character, knowledge that could be applied in all sorts of situations.

When it comes to applying this knowledge in the game, the onus is on both the GM and the player to bring it to the fore — the player will doubtless want to stretch definitions to breaking point when it comes to taking advantage of it, and the GM's job there is, for the most part, to say "Yes, okay" unless the justification is patently ridiculous, in which case a simple "What? Are you serious? Come on, get real and pull your head in" will suffice.

Most of the time, a die roll for success or failure will be unnecessary; the character is supposed to know this stuff. At most, you might want (for dramatic purposes) to determine how long something takes, or how well (or badly) it was done, and that sort of determination is easily made on the fly. A formal resolution system is almost never necessary.

If a die roll is deemed useful, I would suggest that 3d6 is the best option as it gives a decent bell curve with a minimum of fuss. If it's being used to determine the quality of a result, then a result of 9-12 would be dead average: the higher the number above that range, the better the employment of the character's knowledge and skill, and vice-versa for a result below 9. If it's used to determine time taken, then the GM must first imagine what would be a normal average time to do the task, and then use the position on the bell curve to determine whether the performance is faster or slower than usual, and by how much. I would read the result from left to right, with a 3 being grindingly slow and an 18 blisteringly fast, but that, as always, is really up to the individual GM.

DMing Hiatus (again)

 I managed to paint myself into an inescapable corner with my AD&D campaign, and burned myself out trying to find some way to wriggle out of it. So, I'm taking a rest from DMing for a time, while I regather my mojo.

My problem is that I tend towards grandiose world-shaking plotlines, and that alway turns out to be too much weight to carry. Especially since my predictions of how any given player will react to a situation always turn out to be wrong. I have tried second-guessing myself, on the assumption that I'll be wrong, so I plan for the other likelihood, whereupon (of course) they'll always choose the original path. Hey-ho.

I think I'd be better scaling things back to a much more localised episodic murderhobo campaign — simple loot-gathering, and maybe some "Seven Samurai" defending-the-peasantry scenarios so that the paladin can get some moral satisfaction.

I'm still left with the problem of how to get out of the current campaign believably, but maybe I'll just ignore believability and do a "with a bound they were free" scene shift and ignore the whole thing.

Marsh Dwellers Environment

 

Marsh Arabs, southern Iraq. Almost wiped out by that Grade A rotter, Saddam.

This will, without doubt, make its way into my FRPGing as an environment perfectly suited to piss off and frustrate my players.

As a side note, the two character abilities I prefer to keep out of my FRPGs are flying and seeing in the dark. Both of those things immediately reduce, or even remove, the feeling of danger in moving around a potentially hostile environment.

Unless it's actually the focus of the game, the FRPG trope I detest the most is that of a bunch of demigod-like super-people rampaging through a world of hapless, defenceless peons.

Perilous Assumptions

D&D RC

D&D CC

I made a semi-fatal error recently, when I used a monster (three of them, in fact) straight out of the D&D Creature Catalogue, intended for use in BECMI D&D, but used instead in my AD&D game.

It was a critter that I'd used in other editions of the game, so I thought I knew pretty well what to expect from it.

What I discovered is that a BECMI monster type stands a good chance of being considerably more powerful than its AD&D equivalent. That's something I was not expecting.

It could have been worse I suppose; I only ended up killing one PC, but another one was drained away to a mere shadow of his former self.

I will have to be more careful in future.

A New Adventure Begins...

After a bit of a break from DMing, I've started back with a new adventure for our lovable bunch of rapscallions....

The Seven Brides of Vecna*

The session logs are at http://mojobob.com/roleplay/campaign/eyeless05BridesOfVecna.html

The first episode is related here. It.... did not go as smoothly as it might have.

* Seven Brides For Seven Liches will be a title for another time, but that could be a good adventure hook too.

Musings on Class

Druids? Or just grubby old men in blankets?

I have a fondness for AD&D, but one of the things that drove me away from it back in the distant past was the emphasis on restrictive and overly pernickety class definitions.

It seemed (and still seems) to me that it was just stupid that only a character with the Thief class could hide in shadows, and that only a Ranger could track things in the piney woods.

There are ways to play around this, of course, but as far as I can recall, the rules as written offer no really useful advice on the matter. It's just assumed that if you want to be able to find and/or disable traps, then you'll be a Thief. That's a Thief with a capital T.

It's a situation that came up for me not all that long ago, when somebody wanted to play a druid in my game. The difficulty was that the game, at that time, was taking place in a geographical region other than that were the Pseudo-Celts hold sway, so the player's character would be entirely divorced from their hierarchy and authority. It wouldn't matter much, day to day, but it would have been an issue when it came time to level up and what-not. That person ended up not playing in the campaign; I don't know if the social restrictions being placed on their character conception played a role or not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

The thing is, as I realised later (too late), they didn't really want to play a Celtic priest and law-giver. What they wanted to play was a crazy old nature-wizard who hung out in the forest and made friends with the little fluffy animals of the earth. I'd trapped myself, and them, into arbitrary restrictions based on preconceptions about a class title in the PHB, and there was really no need for a Druid (capital D) to be a druid at all. Or for a crazy old nature-wizard to be a capital-D Druid.

Names Are Important

When you name something, you immediately begin to define its parameters. That's a useful thing; it makes a thing immediately identifiable, and reduces ambiguity and confusion. If someone names an animal as a bird, then immediately the qualities of "bird-ness" jumps into our minds. It's probably going to have feathers and lay eggs. There's a good chance that it will be able to fly, but maybe it won't.

A name like "bird" is pretty general though; a kiwi and a condor, though both birds, have little in common. They both have feathers, but their feathers are, though fundamentally similar in structure, in actual use and appearance quite different. They both have a beak, but the condor's beak could never be mistaken for that of a kiwi, and they're used in fundamentally different fashion. Still, they are both birds.

I don't have a basic objection to the concept of character classes in roleplaying games; they provide useful archetypal starting points. However, where I do have a problem is when they become prescriptive and proscriptive. I don't want a player who wants to play a condor being forced to play a kiwi, just because a kiwi is what the author was thinking of when they wrote up the "Bird" class.

Class Names in Roleplaying Games

I believe, that for a class system to be useful in a RPG system, it needs to build from the very general to the particular, and the class names should reflect that progression. I also think that the level of particularity should be left entirely up to the individual player to decide.

A class separation I've seen somewhere (I don't recall where) that I rather like splits characters into one of just three fundamental types:

• Magic Users — anyone whose focus is primarily on spell use, regardless of how that magic is defined. It would include both structured and free-form magicians (e.g. in AD&D, Wizards, Sorcerers, Clerics, Druids). The specific abilities and restrictions on the final character design are largely irrelevant except as special effects.
• Fighters — anyone whose primary focus is physical combat. In AD&D, these would be the Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, and Monks, but those names might not be appropriate to the specific character conception, so let's not get hung up on them. It doesn't mean that the character can do nothing but fight, but fighting is definitely the most important part of the character conception.
• Adventurers — pretty much everyone else. Jack-of-All-Trades characters like AD&D Thieves and Bards would be slotted in here, but again those names are less important than what the character can actually do. These would be your "Indiana Jones" characters.

So... What Then?

Re-jigging D&D to a more generic class system isn't entirely straightforward, but it's not impossible. The main difficulty is that we're dealing with a system that has been in print for a long time now, so its class system carries a lot of baggage.

Probably more useful than devoting vast effort to rewriting everything would be just to make a change of mind about how to manipulate the existing system. Think about what we want to do with a character first, and then see how the available classes can be used to achieve that end, rather than going about things the other way around. And, if the existing classes won't work for what we want to do, then CHANGE THEM. I promise you, nobody is going to lock you in prison for this.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Think it's an eeeeeevil castle? Bet it is.

I was thinking about the various RPG settings I've seen (and made), and about the fact that they tend to be pretty fucking bleak in one way or another. There seems to be a persistent tendency to give them miserable, dystopian backgrounds.

The standard D&D setting is often described as being "points of light in a sea of darkness" — tiny patches of civilisation surrounded by evil monster-infested wilderness. But even those patches of civilisation are often portrayed as suffering from either an overt or covert rottenness. It does has the advantage of giving the characters lots of things to fight without having to go very far, but it would be a depressing sort of world to have to live in.

I can't think of a single example, in a RPG setting, of a Utopian society that doesn't have some dark secret beneath it.

It's true that such a setting would be pretty dull, from the hack-and-slash point of view, if that were all there was in the milieu. But surely there's no reason why such a place couldn't exist somewhere in a made-up world, if only to provide a contrast to all the other sinks of corrupt viciousness.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last.....

NOTE: This is NOT the actual OSRIC cover.
Which is a pity.

Things have been slowly digesting and percolating in my tiny brain, and I've come to a realization which is long overdue.

Pretty much all my tinkering and messing around with fantasy roleplaying game systems over the years has been, essentially, an attempt to recapture the joy I had in playing AD&D, while trying to avoid the things about AD&D that irked me. Of which there were quite a few, but not so many as to be insurmountable I think. The rules are now easily available again, both as reprints of the original books (expensive) and via the OSRIC project (cheap). I have a nostalgic fondness for the old books, but I think OSRIC is a more useable and accessible resource.

This full-page illustration, in fact.

OSRIC is available as a very convenient A5 paperback for $13.50 or as a full size hardback including a full-page illustration by Your's Truly for $26.00.

So anyway, I've decided to dip my toe back into the murky waters of DMing, and return to my first love..... mostly.

These are the modifications I intend to make to the rules:

1. I discard dual-classing; everyone can multi-class, as long as they have the minimum requirements. You can start a new class when training to go up a level, but from then on all XP (and hit-points) is split between all your classes — there'll be none of this taking one level in a class to get its benefits and then ignoring it forevermore.
2. I am keeping the demi-human level limits, so only human characters will be unlimited in all classes.
3. I will adopt the Character Background idea from 5e to determine the sort of basic range of knowledge the character has, along with the "Good At" skill system at the rate of one slot per 5 whole points of INT and WIS. The idea that a character can only perform a certain skill (like picking locks, or tracking) if they have a certain character class is stupid and dumb, and I'm doing away with it.
4. All characters start with the standard range of Thief Skills at 50% of the ability of a 1st level Thief. Only Thief characters can improve from this level though (though if one or more of the character's "Good At" slots is applied to one of those skills, I guess it could be improved by level gain... we'll see).
5. I will replace AD&D's Descending Armour Class and attack tables with the d20 model Attack Bonus and Ascending Armour Class. They're easily calculated: 20 – THAC0 = Attack Bonus, and 20 – AC = AAC.
6. I intend to adopt the Advantage/Disadvantage system from D&D5e, because it is elegant and works very well indeed.

I've made a new dust-jacket for my A5 copy
of OSRIC so that I can give it the
cover I prefer as well as hopefully making it
a bit sturdier and durable.

There may be some other bits and pieces I've forgotten or haven't determined. For example, I haven't yet decided whether to stick with AD&D's slightly baroque saving throw system (easier to use 3rd-party stuff), or go with a much simpler single save with CHAR-based bonuses/penalties (easier to use in play). Probably the latter.... but maybe not.

The campaign will begin with the party operating as a "snatch" team, working for a Big Fucking Wizard to find and retrieve things the BFW wants or needs. I'm thinking of starting the campaign on about 10,000 XP, but if anyone desperately wants to start at first level, far be it from me to say nay.

Character creation will be by my Character Generation Wheel, using 3d6. For a change, I'm not placing any restrictions on character species.

I'm not averse to trying out Crabaugh's Custom Character Class Creator, though I have a suspicion it could be used for Evil. I'll be keeping a very, VERY close eye on anything created by that means.

Character Generation Wheel

This is the system I like for generating characters for my D&D-ish games.

It provides players with a reasonable degree of flexibility in choosing the class they want to play, providing decent characters without churning out a never-ending string of superheroes.

Here's the PDF file (21.3KB, opens in a new tab or window). It's laid out with two A5 pages on A4, and instructions are included.

Note that this is NOT a character sheet, though I guess you could use it as one. It's simply an aid to character generation.

Note also that this is just a no-frills version of a much fancier one I've presented before. This one just requires no assembly, is all.

The Itch, It Returns To Trouble My Slumbers

That OSRIC cover always makes me think "Jazz hands!"

If I were to start GMing my fantasy campaign again — and it's quite a big if — I think I'd probably go with an AD&D / OSRIC based system. (Or maybe I'd revive my increasingly eclectic version of S&W).

There are elements I'd add from more recent systems, such as D&D5e's Advantage/Disadvantage system, and the much more intuitive ascending AC system with attendant combat bonus. There are other things that would need to be adjusted too, to get around absurdities like only thieves ever being able to even attempt to pick a lock or only rangers ever being able to have any chance of tracking.

I've seriously considered using D&D5e with all the "Old School" optional rules and restrictions in place to make it a bit less of a fantasy-superhero game, and that could conceivably work quite well for what I want, but I think it would tend to be confusing for the players who would have a whole bunch of expectations from other campaigns which would be doomed to disappointment, leading to resentment and muttering.

Anyway, it's just the germ of an idea at this stage.

I'm done.

It's finally been brought home to me, after many years of faffing about and tinkering with system after system, that nobody else is really very enthused about playing the kind of games I want to run, nor, for that matter, running the kind of games I want to play. So, I'm out.

I'm not interested in GMing any more.

Superhero Bloodbath of DOOOOOOOM!

I was wondering why creatures that should be mighty and fearsome tend to do more poorly in combat with Our Heroes than I would have expected, so I did some sums;

• Bea, getting two attacks a round with her magical flail and one with the shortsword, assuming she hits with every blow (which is not unlikely since she gets +7 or +8 to hit), will do an average of 28 points damage a round. Double that if she doing her superheroic enemy-blender "Combat Surge" thing.
• Roe, whacking twice a round with her great-axe, does an average of 22 points a round. Again, double that if Surging.
• JZ, assuming she's doing a puny 1st-level version of Dissonant Whispers, adds another ten points or so. Up to 18 points with a good roll, more if she uses a higher-level spell slot.

So, on an average combat round, the party is dishing out 60 points of damage a round, and up to double that if they're rolling well. If the fighters are Surging, the average party damage goes up to 110 points, and possibly (though improbably) as much as 220. Bloody hell. And if anything, the situation is only going to be getting more imbalanced as they rise in level.

Even HUUUUUUUUUGE critters seldom have more than 100 hitpoints, or maybe 120, and most have considerably fewer. Pretty much anything that is whackable is going to be mince if it makes the mistake of getting anywhere near our lovable gang of mincing machines.

Clearly, big hulking brutes of monsters are just not going to be an effective challenge when they can be swatted aside without Our Heroes even raising a sweat. I shall have to get a lot sneakier. And fiercer.

Motivation Challenges (Whining, Basically)

I do really enjoy GMing, but it's difficult to maintain enthusiasm sometimes, especially in the face of constant negativity. It saps the fun out of the game for me, whether I'm GMing or playing.

Another big motivation hurdle is wasted effort — I like to think up Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine, but it's just a fact of life that nobody else really cares, and the chances are pretty good that the players will just ignore all that shit and go off and do something else entirely*. I'm not generally in favour of railroading an adventure, but it would be nice to be able to use my lovingly-imagined creations from time to time. It sometimes feels as though curiosity and adventurousness are an unwelcome intrusion into the game, rather than the underlying stimulus for the whole thing.

And another thing — I'm really not a big fan of constant city and/or detective and/or political and/or wilderness adventuring. It's fine as a leaven, but not all the time. I'm not good at acting and presenting NPC interactions, and all of those genres tend to require quite a lot of it.

I'm beginning to think that drawing a world map in the first place was a terrible idea. I should have just stayed with dungeons. In fact, I'm tempted to just send the whole campaign to Hell. Not metaphorically.

* The most recent example of that has come back and bitten the players in the arse though; if they hadn't ignored everything around them in their haste to go somewhere else, they would have found something that would have taken care of a certain problem that one of them has been whining about incessantly. Well, they missed it, so tough.

What, naked AGAIN? Oh, for goodness' sake!"

The Shieldmaiden by Danes

This is how all the characters always seem to end up equipped in my games.

I swear I don't do it on purpose.

Shrine On You Crazy Diamond

The Titan Wood Shrine by Josh Eiten

From Talysman the Ur-Beetle, on G+:

"I wrote something up about holy shrines. The basic idea: don't give NPC priests levels, just assign the spells/miracles to the shrine instead. One benefit of this that I didn't mention was that it encourages adventure: if you want to cure disease and don't have a cleric that can cast it, you don't just find any old NPC cleric, you seek out the shrine known for curing disease. It's a place you have to travel to, not something you can advertise around town for. And if you want a local shrine that will provide multiple services on demand, consider investing in a shrine and praying for the miracles you need."

I like this idea a lot. A whole lot. Of course it does mean that I'd actually have to give some thought to what shrines where do what, but that's probably all to the good. I've been pretty slack about sorting out the religious side of my campaign world.

I can think of some good adventure hooks around dealing with evil shrines too.

Spell Research

Last night, Our Heroes got off much more lightly than they should have because of our collective ignorance about how some of their spells actually worked.

Today, I've been reading through the spells in the PHB to clarify matters for the future.

My players may come to regret making me do my own rules-learning, because I'm getting lots of ideas. Oh yes. LOTS.

[Insert maniacal Evil-Overlord laugh here]

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Having just finished my initial read-through of the new DMG, there are a few options that I'll be adopting, some of which are new(ish), some of which restore some features of earlier editions.

• Hero Points (p.264) is one — I prefer it to the Inspiration mechanic. I suspect a major use might be to stop people dying of crappy saving throws.
• Healer's Kit Dependency (p.266) — I'll have to sort out just how much, in terms of game mechanics, a Healer's Kit can be used before it's exhausted and has to be re-stocked.
• Action Options (pp.271-272) — Climb on to a bigger creature, Disarm, Overrun, Shove aside, and Tumble are all options I'm happy to adopt. I'm not convinced about Mark, and probably won't use it. I'll also reinstate Cleaving Through because I like the trope of fighters cutting a bloody swathe through legions of mooks, though it may very well make being mobbed a bit less frightening.
• Lingering Injuries (p.272) — I'll use this, but only for when characters are reduced to 0 hit-points but not killed, not also for critical hits. It will mean that restoration/regeneration magic will be more necessary, of course.

I like the Chasing rules (pp.252-255), which will make chasing and escapes a lot more interesting and fun.

Something we haven't been doing, which we should get back into the habit of, is declaring actions before Initiative is determined, for the purposes of spell-casting interruption and so forth. I'd like to get back to using Speed Factor Modifiers (p.271) for initiative too, even if only for spell-casting and potion-glugging and the like.

Apart from anything else,
it gives me an excuse to use
my Judge Dredd playing cards.

I'm also wondering about modifying initiative determination from die rolls to secret card-drawing, and then running each turn through an initiative count-down. We'd use a standard deck of playing cards, with your initiative being the value of the card you draw (1 to 13 — Ace to King) plus or minus any DEX or situational modifiers. Maybe if you draw the Joker, you get to go first OR swap it with another player's (or DM's) card. (?) That would mean that if you have an absolutely vital spell in the offing, you can give the Joker to your wizard and be secure in the knowledge that she's not going to be interrupted in the casting... or not for that turn, anyway.

When the deck runs out, it's shuffled and re-started.

The advantage of all this is that it makes combat ever so slightly less predictable, since none of the combatants will know exactly when any of the others is going to act.

Hey Boys & Girls, It's Neato-Keano Time!

My DMG just arrived from Amazon, precisely on schedule.

So, that pretty much takes care of any of the other things I might have had planned for today.