On my own Initiative
Posted: March 13, 2011 Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons, rules 3 Comments
I don’t currently run a game and with each passing month it seems become less and less likely that I ever will… but I find myself very interested in and drawn to some of the games I see documented around the web… like adventures taking place under the Rotted Moon… or the Adventures in the Pnakotic Ruins… or Fomalhaut… or Terry’s Dunrawl Campaign… or others. And theres lots more. So to distract myself I like to spin out a little sometimes and wonder what it might be like if I did run another game and had all my druthers.
Scaling Wandering Monster encounters in the great outdoors
Posted: February 18, 2011 Filed under: games, monsters, rules 2 Comments
I also like the wandering monster tables that are either environment appropriate (i.e.: you are unlikely to encounter camels in the arctic or fish in the desert if you roll on the right chart) and the ones that are ‘scaled’ for dungeon level… especially the ones that make it likely that you will encounter 1 hit dice creatures on level 1, 2 hit dice on level 2, etc., but the players can also occassionally encounter a monster from a deeper level that has ‘wandered up’… but such ‘deeper level’ monster encounters are less likely.
Has anyone created tables that are keyed to both environment and average party level/power? Thus you level 1 group is more likely to encounter a band of orcs while wandering in the woods while the 4th level party will encounter ogres instead (or maybe just a great many more orcs?).
I suppose I could put such tables together myself, but it seems a real pain in the ass. Maybe someone has already done the work for me.
OWCH MY HITPOINTS!
Posted: February 4, 2011 Filed under: rules 6 Comments
This is a quote from some message board that has been cited in an internets conversation that is making the rounds of my inbox:
The first thing our DM told us when we sat down was that we would not be keeping track of our own health. This sounded strange at first but he asked us to trust him and now I’m sold on the idea. The way it works is when a monster hits you the DM describes the hit, “it was a glancing blow.” or “The blade bites deep into your arm and your vision swims.” but never tells you how much damage you took. instead he keeps track of that on his side of the screen. He gives you general ideas sort of like a terrorist threat level. You are winded, bloodied, injured or teetering on death for example.
The person introducing this quote to my inbox is the DM of the current 3.5 e game (a heavily house ruled 3.5e game, I might add) that I am involved in. The idea that the DM ‘keeps track’ of the players hitpoints is an idea I remember hearing about time and time again, but, like the baby in the microwave oven, it is not one of those things that I (nor anyone of my immeadiate acquaintence) has had any direct experience of. Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who once talked to someone who might have sat at a table in Dave Arneson’s basement when they did it that way, but no one I have met has actually done it that way themselves.
I’d be interested in seeing how it worked out. It does seem odd that the player character knows that information when he / she is trading blows with a troglodyte in a dungeon tunnel. “Oh dear, that troglodyte just clawed me for 3 hitpoints and I only have five, so if he hits me again I am in trouble…” Sometimes suspension of belief just buckles.
On the other hand, D&D is a ‘game’ and knowing your character’s current hitpoints and other vital info can affect your decision making process. Although it is a game where ‘playing’ rather than ‘winning’ is the point, taking that information away from the player will handicap the player’s decision making process and makes the player more dependant upon the dungeon master, which is an aspect that kind of rubs me the wrong way. I really hate it when the DM controls too much of the lives of the PCs; I feel that character decisions, for good or ill (and suspension of belief notwithstanding) should be made by the players, not the DM. By taking away exact knowledge of the player character’s resources (like ‘how many hit points do I have left?’), the player becomes more dependant upon the DM.
I also worry about the amount of number crunching that this requires. It becomes one more thing the DM needs to keep track of, meaning that the DM turns more of their attention to record keeping and less to the players, which may cause the game to lose focus.
Thoughts?
"But your character wouldn’t know about that!"
Posted: January 20, 2011 Filed under: Dragonsfoot, Dungeons and Dragons, philosophy, rules 2 CommentsBochi, over on Dragonsfoot, posed a pretty simple (but thought provoking) question about whether or not players should be allowed to peruse books like the DMG and the Monster Manual.
This opens up the whole, “player knowledge” versus “character knowledge” debate.
That said, I find it fun (and refreshing) to play with people who don’t know the Monster Manual inside and out. I think as a fellow player, the “gee whiz I wonder what will happen next” idealism of new players just introduces more fun and a less jaded energy to the group.
If I were to DM, I would not mind that player characters acted on player knowledge… to expect a seasoned player to sit there and let a rust monster eat his character’s +5 sword just because the character never encountered a rust monster before (but the player HAS) seems the height of folly to me. It’s a game, not a pure simulation. Just like someone playing their 10,000th game of chess is going to have an advantage over a new player who is still asking, “How does the horse one move again?,” so, too, the player who has been playing D&D for years can be expected to have a few advantageous nuggets of wisdom that may help his character in a pinch… then again, players that assume that everything is going to be the same in my campaign as in the one run by their chum in highschool might be dissapointed (I think it’s fair game to introduce variant monsters like a variety of green slime that is vulnerable to cold instead of fire or traps that strike the area that most seasoned players might expect to be safe). If you need a justification, just allow that the new character sat on his grandpappy’s knee every night while that retired adventurer told him about rot grubs, green slime, harpies and gelatinous cubes.
You just can’t go back…
Posted: November 29, 2010 Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons, games, philosophy, rules 7 Comments
Sometimes I wish I could re-create the fun my young friends and I had back in 1978, starting with the ‘basic set’ (pictured at right). Maybe I’m looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, but it seems as though we were less jaded that the players I encounter (or the player I have become) today.
One of the most obvious changes seems to be in the number of options and choices available to the players in preparing a character to play. Here I guess I’ll start to sound like the old Dana Carvey curmudgeon who wheezes about walking barefoot fifteen miles to school in the snow each day, uphill both ways, “and we liked it,” but I actually find myself nostalgic for the very basic and simple ‘cookie cutter’ characters and classes in the original D&D. One started character creation by rolling dice to determine your strength, intelligence, wisdom, etc., and then, based on what you rolled, you chose a character class. One could adjust your scores in very minor ways: you could swap two points of intelligence for one point of strength if you were a fighter, etc., but one usually ended up with characters whose average ability score was 8 to 10.
My memory of those games is that as players, our pleasure in the game was much more immediate and less abstract — what we as players decided to do or not do seemed to have more bearing on events than anything written on our character sheets. There seemed to be less ‘rules lawyering’ because there were fewer rules to lawyer with. Instead of resolving all actions through balanced universal d20 mechanics with things like ‘roll a dice to notice’ or ‘roll a dice to listen’ or ‘roll a dice to use your engineering knowledge,’ we would talk about what we wanted to do. “I want to look under the bed and behind the dresser” instead of “I roll a search check.”
I’m thinking about these things because recently a friend of mine, who was running a session of a newer RPG told me that the last time they met “he had the worst session ever.” I don’t honestly think that a different set of rules would have helped or hindered (the problems were probably more a set of abrasive personalities rubbing each other the wrong way), but our conversation about what went wrong at the session made me want to think about what goes wrong or right when we sit down and play (I was not at this horrible session, BTW).
May all your hits be crits…
Posted: September 24, 2010 Filed under: arduin, critical hits, Dungeons and Dragons, rules Leave a comment
Recent posts circulating the blog-o-sphere, especially those dealing with Hargrave’s original Arduin, have caught my attention. Zeitgeist seems to have struck again, and people are talking and writing about critical hits and fumbles… some of my favorite things.
Years ago, I remember encountering a very basic critical hit/fumbles table in a Judges Guild Adventure (I think it was called “Dragon Hall” or something similar). We loved it and adopted it immediately. Over the years, we added to it from Runequest and similar games that had critical hit and fumble tables. Years ago I even created one myself (see below). Up until now, this has been on a tattered sheet of notebook paper stuck into my DM’s binder; typing it up represents a big improvement.
One of the advantages of my ‘critical hit’ and ‘critical miss’ tables (if I may toot my own horn a bit) is that better (higher level combatants) are less likely to suffer bad fumbles and more likely to inflict horrendous criticals. However, I like all the possible effects of the Hargrave Arduin table (with noses being chopped off, buttocks being torn off, etc.) so I may try to figure out a way to combine the two. Perhaps when you roll a ’20’ on your critical confirmation roll (in other words, you roll two 20s in a row in an attack routine), I will add a roll from the Hargrave table to the result… which, if someone else has done their math right, means there is a 1 in 400 chance of a Hargrave critical with every attack.
Limpey’s Critical Hits/Fumbles:
Possible crits occur on a roll of 20 on the d20. Possible fumbles occur on a roll of 1 on the d20. Confirm and determine after rolling a 20 or a 1. Player characters with multiple attacks can score more than one critical in a round.*
Critical Hit: On a roll of 20 on the d20, a crit has occured. Have the player roll a d20 and modify the roll as follows:
- add +1 for every +1 of a magic weapon
- add +1 for every 3 levels of fighter (or every 3 hit dice of a monster*)
- add +1 for every 4 levels of cleric or thief
- add +1 for every 5 levels of magic user
Roll 1d20, add modifier and apply the results below:
01-05 Roll damage as normal
06-10 Roll damage 2x and add any adjustments
11-14 Maximum damage possible
15-16 Roll damage 3x and add any adjustments
17-18 Roll damage 4x and add any adjustments
19-20 Roll damage 5x and add any adjustments
*I did not allow monsters with multiple attacks to score more than one critical in a round, although I did not clue players in on this fact.
**A peek behind my DM screen: after killing a lot of PCs, I began to not add adjustments for hit dice to the roll on crits for most monsters and just used a straight-up d20 roll for monsters, but players still got the bonuses. I didn’t tell the players this because I wanted them to fear the crit!
Limpey’s Fumbles: On a roll of 01 on the d20, a crit has occurred. Have the player roll a d20 and modify the roll as follows:
- add +1 for every +1 of a magic weapon
- add +1 for every 3 levels of fighter (or every 3 hit dice of a monster)
- add +1 for every 4 levels of cleric or thief
- add +1 for every 5 levels of magic user
- subtract -3 for Dex of 3
- subtract -2 for Dex of 4
- subtract -1 for Dex of 5
- no modifier for dex of 6-15
- add +1 for Dex of 16
- add +2 for Dex of 17
- add +3 for Dex of 18
Roll 1d20, add modifier and apply the results below:
01-03 Strike self or nearest comrade(50% chance of either); roll to hit and damage as normal
04-06 Possible break weapon (save vs crushing blow) or, if attacking with hand/claw/etc., take 1d3 damage and lose next attack
07-09 slip and fall (lose round to recover; enemy gains extra attack at +2)
10-13 Drop weapon or shield or other object (1-8 feet away in random direction)
14-17 Off balance; lose next round
18+ No effect
What do I see? What do I know?
Posted: September 8, 2010 Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons, rules Leave a comment
If you are not familiar, a ‘knowledge’ check is a rules mechanic within an RPG where you roll the dice to see if your character knows something. If you roll well, the referee will give you a hint or a nudge in the right direction. If you roll poorly, you get no hint (or maybe even a hint in the wrong direction). If your character is smart or knows something about the subject, you might get a bonus to the roll of the dice or vice-versa.
‘Perception’ checks are similar, but instead of seeking to decide what your character does or does not know, they seek to determine what your character notices or sees. If you decide your character wants to look for the footprints of the person you want to follow, you roll a dice to see if you pick up the trail. If your character is a skilled tracker, you might get a bonus. If it has been raining and the tracks are faint, you might get a penalty.
It is worth noting that when I started playing rpgs (1978), ‘perception’ and ‘knowledge’ rolls or rules were unknown (at least to us). I quit playing for a while, and when I returned to rpgs(~2000ish), such rules or concepts were common.
In one of the first 3e games I played when I had ‘returned’ to playing RPGs, I had a character who had high STR and CON and abysmal other stats. He could fight well but I was very limited in whatever else the character could do. It was my first 3e game and I didn’t know the rules at all well, but I remember getting frustrated and bored because there was so little my character could do other than attack things. We were constantly being asked to do ‘notice’ and ‘listen’ and ‘search’ and ‘spot’ rolls… and, not to toot my own horn too much, but when the DM would describe the setting, I paid attention and try to formulate my character’s actions according to what I knew from the description I had been given — so if there were tapestries in the room, I would say that I wanted to look to see if I could spot anyone or anything hidden behind them, whereas some of the other players would just roll a dice and say, “I got a 26… what do I know?” This left me thinking that such ‘notice’ and perception rules were not a development I was interested in. Other folks I currently play with are less annoyed by the knowledge or perception rolls; they see these as means to introduce new info to the players or allow opportunities for further detailing of the environment.
Perhaps it is best to strive for a middle ground — if the player is engaged and takes initiative, and listens to what the DM says and attempts to use his or her own noodle to extrapolate info from what the DM has said or details that may have been offered up earlier, then a low “wisdom” score on the character sheet shouldn’t be as much of a handicap (perhaps the character is not naturally gifted in wisdom, but he or she is paying attention at the right time (since the player is paying attention)). One of the terms that I hear tossed around a lot that rubs me the wrong way is ‘flavor text.’ To me, ‘flavor text’ implies that the words don’t have any meaning or substance — so if the DM describes a red rug and a green metal chest, if it’s just ‘flavor text’ the colors will have no potential significance and the players can just roll ‘search’ to check for traps and whomever has the most skill points in search or perception is most likely to discover if the rug or the chest are trapped.
What I would prefer is having a situation where players can affect outcomes through thinking and remembering and describing actions and asking questions. Perhaps other items they have encountered have been color coded and the players might get a hint if they remember this… or maybe the red rug is just a rug. Players might get a bonus to their search roll if they describe what they are doing (i.e.: “I use my spear to lift up the edge of the rug and look under it — and I rolled X on my search — do we think it is trapped?” as opposed to “We search for traps and I rolled X — do we think it is trapped?” I know that creates more work for the DM, but I really like being able to interact with the environment and figure stuff out.
One of the first DMs I ever played under used the standard rules for ‘search’ for secret doors, but made us describe how we were going to open it — so even if you rolled a 1 on a d6 which meant you found the door, you might have to pull on a torch holder or press on a special brick to open it… which usually had to be determined by trial and error… which could be quite exciting/nerve racking if you were in a hurry. I thought that was a nice touch, and if I were to have my druthers, the ‘pure talking’ method of resolving such events would be my method of choice.