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the world needs more dungeons
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an outer space thing
So here’s an idea I woke up with this morning. Writing this thing at the same time as my Cultural Theory homework was really weird.
The Peace of Vann
The Peace of Vann is one of the oddest known interstellar polities. At the last galactic census it numbered 55 worlds scattered across 6 sectors of the galaxy. These worlds are not connected by any known FTL routes. None of the planets in the Peace of Vann can be designated its capital world, a subject of extreme curiosity even on member-worlds of the polity itself.
The procedure for a world to join the Peace has been the same for the entirety of the present cycle of interstellar civilization: occasionally a seemingly random assortment of worlds will simultaneously receive brief radio transmissions that application for membership may be made at a certain location. The last such application period, 176 years ago, involved at least 32 planets scattered across four different sectors all receiving the message “The Peace of Vann is now accepting applications for new member worlds. Please send a delegate to Susarik-4 to apply.”
Delegations from twenty-seven worlds arrived at Susarik-4, a lifeless asteroid in neutral space with a previously uncharted starbase apparently constructed specifically to receive applicants. An unprecedented two out of twenty-five applications were accepted (zero or one new member is typical), leading to Reyjar’s World and Monubarra joining the Peace. The last two delegations to arrive were ignored, as if either an unstated deadline to apply had elapsed or the limit on new applications or admissions had been reached.
(Three of the remaining 5 planets invited to apply were balkanized worlds that could not agree on who to send as delegates. One of these worlds, Rimbak-12, escalated the conflict into a full scale atomic-powered planetary war and effectively self-destructed over the issue. The planet Sessuratamak, ruled by religious separatists, opted not to apply. Another invited world, Venubajh Minor, has no known intelligent inhabitants. An automated navigational beacon in orbit around the lifeless iceball planet recorded the invitation, but it was only discovered during routine maintenance several years later.)
The other vessel in the official fleet of the Peace of Vann is known simply as the Transport. While outclassed by some megafreighters in terms of sheer size, it is the largest commercial vessel known to land on a planet with an atmosphere. No one has ever met the crew of the Transport or visited a primary section of the ship (engineering, bridge, etc.). Upon landing, the six cargo pods of the Transport open automatically, allowing unrestricted embarking and disembarking; it is up to local officials to control this activity, if so desired. New member worlds general require a few visits from the Transport (which generally occur once or twice a year at irregular intervals) to work out their relationship with the new influx of passengers and/or cargo from far-flung worlds.
The protection of the Peacemaker ensures the absolute security of the member worlds of the Peace of Vann while the Transport enables a minimum amount of cultural and economic exchange between members, but these advantages come with significant economic and political ramifications. Member worlds in troubled regions of space often become havens for refugees, sanctuaries for interstellar criminal cartels, and banking centers that tend to vacuum capital out of less stable worlds. The small but steady influx of ideas, technologies and peoples from distant sectors tends to destabilize the economic and ideological status quo of the region.
Additionally it should be noted that the Peace of Vann regularly invites applications from worlds that are already under the purview of another interstellar government. Initially, the entry of the world into the Peace of Vann is hailed as a benefit to the entire polity. But at some point conflict between the member-world and its government leads to a parting of the ways. Often this comes in the form of the member-world figuring out that it no longer needs to pay taxes. In one case a government, the Krimchek Dodecalliance, actually moved its capital to the newly admitted member of the Peace. This policy led to nearly fifty years of prosperity for the Dodecalliance, until it ran afoul of the Peace of Vann’s rules of interstellar conduct.
The enforcers of the Peace do not publish their code of interstellar conduct. However, it is known that any member world pursuing interstellar wars of aggression will stop receiving visits from either the Transport or the Peacemaker. Other offenses to the sensibilities of the Peace can also lead to interdiction, as when member-world Uluri Beta began importing slave labor. In each case the interdiction ended soon after a change in local policy. Who sets these mostly unknown rules and how worlds are monitored for compliance are just as great a mystery as the other riddles surrounding the Peace of Vann.
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inevitable 5e post
Okay, let’s take this baby out for a test spin. I’m going to make a couple of NPCs in both my beloved ‘81 Basic/Expert rules and this new-fangled edition, just to see what happens.
I’m going to base my two NPCs on this illo by comic artist Dave Cockrum.
We’ll start with the BX versions. I’m going to use the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 arranged to taste) rather than rolling dice because my dice bag is in the other room and I’m feeling lazy. Besides, the standard array is one of the WotC folks’ better ideas. especially for NPCs. Anyhoo, here we go:
Armor Class:3
Thac0:17
Hit Points:27 [average for a F6 with no Con bonus]
Str15 Dex14 Con12 Int10 Wis8 Cha13
equipment: [something we will pretend protects as well as] chain, shield, sword, dagger, 500gp in various jewelry (armbands, jeweled scabbard, etc)
AC:8
Thac0:17
HP:21 [average for an MU6 with Con 13]
Str10 Dex14 Con13 Int15 Wis8 Cha12
spells: sleep, ventriloquism, continual light, ESP, fly, lightning bolt
equipment: concealed dagger, spellbook [back home?], 1000gp ruby cloak pin, hella sweet boots
Okay, that took about 5 minutes (the little graphics not included). It’d take a little longer if I wanted to give them some magic items. But since the 5e Basic download contains no items, I’m skipping it. Low magic rules, anyway. So now we’ll give the new version a whirl.
Armor Class: 18
Proficiency Bonus: +3
Hit Points: 52
Str18 Dex15 Con14 Int11 Wis10 Cha14
[all attributes are +1 over the BX version because all 5e humans get +1 across the board, plus stat pushes for levels 4 and 6]
Background: Criminal
Skill Proficiencies: Deception, Stealth
Tool Proficiencies: knucklebones, thieves’ tools
Skills: Animal Handling, Survival
Fighter Abilities
Fighting Style: Defense (+1 AC while in armor)
Second Wind: d10+6
Action Surge
Champion Archetype: Improved Critical (19 or 20)
Extra Attack
equipment: chain ‘shirt’, shield, longsword, dagger, 500gp in various jewelry (armbands, jeweled scabbard, etc)
Sonja Stormwitch, neutral human wizard level 6
AC: 12 (15 when Mage Armor is in use)Proficiency Bonus:+3
HP: 38
Str11 Dex15 Con14 Int18 Wis9 Cha13
Background: Folk Hero
Skill Proficiencies: Animal Handling, Survival
Tool Proficiencies: calligraphy tools, vehicles (land)
Skills: Arcana, Investigation
Cantrips: Minor Illusion, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp
Spell slots: 4/3/3
Spells Prepared Per Day: 10
Evoker
Evocation Savant
Sculpt Spells
Potent Cantrip
Spellbook
First: Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic, Identify, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Shield, Thunderwave
Second: Flaming Sphere, Misty Step, Suggestion
Third: Fly, Lightning Bolt, Dispel Magic
equipment: concealed dagger, spellbook [back home?], red crystal arcane focus, hella sweet leather jacket
Putting those together took longer than I expected, but I can't report a fair time for it because I got distracted by Futurama.
As I experienced with 3e, picking spells was the opposite of fun. Give me lists sorted by class and level any day. Heck, I don’t even know if I picked the right spells to go with Evocation School abilities, because I decided to pick spells by name rather than scrolling up and down the alphabetical list. If I were to run this version, I’d have to redo the spell lists.
Overall, the 5e version of Ororo the She-Devil looks fun and manageable, certainly less of a headache to manage than similar fighty NPCs made under previous WotC editions I’ve used. But the new wizard seems like a pain in the ass to run as an NPC. In BX I can get away with spells known = spells memorized, this strikes me as a bigger fuss to deal with. Maybe players will dig it, but if I ran 5e I’d probably be cludging together wizards rather than building them according to the PC rules. Which I kinda do in BX, by the way. NPC wizards always have something weird and messed up about them, because, hey, they’re wizards. But I generally prefer bolting weird new stuff onto a simple set of rules rather than wrestling a more sophisticated system to the ground.
So 5e looks better than anything I've messed around with from the Wizard o' the Coast, but I don't see anything yet to dislodge my irrational attraction to the older versions.
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Fire in the Hole
I have a few nitpicks about the spells in the 5e Basic rules. Sleep only lasts a minute, Charm Person last only an hour. Revivy, basically a combat time Raise Dead, is only a third level spell. Fireball and Lightning Bolt are no longer d6 damage per caster level. There are other things in the spell section I could get worked up about.
Instead, I’m going to talk about something I like: the return of the dangerous Fireball. Ditching the skirmish-minis friendly burst template of 3.x (I honestly have no clue how Fireball worked in 4), instead we’re back to the golden era of the Fireball that forms a 20’ radius sphere of blazing death. The implications of this change are enormous for dungeoneering play.
Feel free to check my math with Wolfram Alpha or look up how to calculate the volume of a sphere on wikipedia (if you know the formula, give yourself a math nerd point), but my calculations indicate that a 20’ sphere has a total volume of 33,510 cubic feet. In short, a Fireball loosed into a dungeon environment expands to ignite targets in 33½ cubes of 10’ by 10’ by 10’.
That’s a helluva lotta dungeon, my friends. Using this volume calculation for most of the 30+ years I’ve been DMing has resulted in more toasted party members than I can count, and more than one magic-user self-immolation. Hell, I roasted myself at least once back in the eighties, and I don’t play nearly as often as I DM. Many players I’ve known only throw one Fireball inside a dungeon their entire gaming career; even if they survive the first try the resulting blowback is so harrowing they learn to only use the spell in an open environment.
Cole Long asked if I have a rule of thumb for adjudicating Fireball situations and I do. First I’m going to lay down my basic precepts, them I’m going to run through an example.
1) Make sure the spellcaster has all the info they should have and not a jot more.
This is a general good rule of DMing, but it really matters here. Distance to target is a key factor for deciding whether to throw a fireball or not, so I’m usually generous in giving out that info. Put on the spot in a dangerous situation I probably couldn’t decide if a slobbering blugblatter was sixty feet away or seventy, but I lean towards more info rather than less on this point. I’m going to be hard on the PCs in other ways later, so who cares? If the party has a map, I usually let the player of the MU mark a small X on the map to indicate the exact placement of the Fireball, unless they say something rash like “I put the Fireball right up the vampire’s nose!” In which case, I pick the detonation spot. Usually, I go for the middle of the room.
As with any dungeon operation, lighting is a key factor in limiting player knowledge. Is the lighting sufficient that they can determine the size of the room they are Fireballing? If not, they are going to have to find out the hard way.
2) Assume 5’ and 10’ wide dungeon corridors are 10’ tall unless otherwise noted in the key.
The easy way to do this is to count in ‘cubes’, with each stock 10’ corridor equalling one cube, and a normal ceiling 5’ wide corridor as one half a cube. A 5’ wide corridor with a low ceiling is only a quarter cube per 10’ of distance covered.
IMPORTANT: Do you have giants or other large upright creatures stomping around this dungeon? To be fair, you might need to assume 1.5 cubes or even 2 cubes ber 10’ of corridor.
3) Assume any room larger than 600’ square feat (i.e. 20’ x 30’) has a high ceiling unless otherwise noted in the dungeon key.
Imagine a 30’ x 30’ room gridded out to 10’ per square. That center square that does not touch the outer wall of the room? That’s where the high ceiling is, as far as my rule of thumb goes. Imagine an extra 10’ x 10’ x 10’ cube over that center square. So that room is 10 total cubes, rather than the 9 shown on the map. Similarly, a 30’ by 40’ counts as 12 cubes total, 3x4 plus 2 extra for the 2 center squares. Here’s a diagram that might help you dig what I am saying:
This is a general good rule of DMing, but it really matters here. Distance to target is a key factor for deciding whether to throw a fireball or not, so I’m usually generous in giving out that info. Put on the spot in a dangerous situation I probably couldn’t decide if a slobbering blugblatter was sixty feet away or seventy, but I lean towards more info rather than less on this point. I’m going to be hard on the PCs in other ways later, so who cares? If the party has a map, I usually let the player of the MU mark a small X on the map to indicate the exact placement of the Fireball, unless they say something rash like “I put the Fireball right up the vampire’s nose!” In which case, I pick the detonation spot. Usually, I go for the middle of the room.
As with any dungeon operation, lighting is a key factor in limiting player knowledge. Is the lighting sufficient that they can determine the size of the room they are Fireballing? If not, they are going to have to find out the hard way.
2) Assume 5’ and 10’ wide dungeon corridors are 10’ tall unless otherwise noted in the key.
The easy way to do this is to count in ‘cubes’, with each stock 10’ corridor equalling one cube, and a normal ceiling 5’ wide corridor as one half a cube. A 5’ wide corridor with a low ceiling is only a quarter cube per 10’ of distance covered.
IMPORTANT: Do you have giants or other large upright creatures stomping around this dungeon? To be fair, you might need to assume 1.5 cubes or even 2 cubes ber 10’ of corridor.
3) Assume any room larger than 600’ square feat (i.e. 20’ x 30’) has a high ceiling unless otherwise noted in the dungeon key.
Imagine a 30’ x 30’ room gridded out to 10’ per square. That center square that does not touch the outer wall of the room? That’s where the high ceiling is, as far as my rule of thumb goes. Imagine an extra 10’ x 10’ x 10’ cube over that center square. So that room is 10 total cubes, rather than the 9 shown on the map. Similarly, a 30’ by 40’ counts as 12 cubes total, 3x4 plus 2 extra for the 2 center squares. Here’s a diagram that might help you dig what I am saying:
The 60’ x 60’ room shown is big enough to safely drop a Fireball, as it has well more than the 33½ cubes. Basically, we are assuming every large room is built like a step pyramid made of empty cubes.
That’s a gross approximation, but a useful one, much like the spherical cows of physics jokes. For weird shaped rooms, just try to imagine a similarly-sized rectangular room and make your best guess. This isn’t rocket science.
SIDE NOTE: In a large enough space a Fireball aimed at the floor/ground will explode into a hemisphere of 25’ diameter. That’s the way to do it when throwing fireballs at armies.
4) Assume that the concussive blast of the fire can open doors and destroy thin walls.
I don’t think I have a rule to back me up on this one. I just like to think of Fireballs as bad action movie explosions. So when a Fireball effect reaches a door, I roll a normal Open Doors check, i.e. 2 in 6 chance the force of the explosion will throw open the door. If I roll a 1 then I normally declare the door burst off the hinges. Because that’s cool. Also, if the dungeon has any thin walls (‘thin’ defined as the width of a pencil line on the map) I give a 1 in 20 chance of the wall being blown away. You can deduct one cube of volume for each door opened or wall destroyed, if you're feeling nice.
5) Assume the fire flows like a swift liquid, running in all possible directions equally.
Every time the widening effect of a Fireball reaches an intersection, it will choose both/all directions. That includes pits, chimneys, shafts, stairs. A well-place vertical tunnel can really save the PC’s bacon.
6) Don’t forget to melt the loot!
Know what rules about breaking stuff you prefer and enforce the heck out of them. BX D&D notes that fire damage reduces all jewelry to half value (pB47). OD&D indicates fire will melt jewelry sufficiently to reduce value by 25% and gives an optional 10% chance of heat destroying gems (Monsters & Treasures, last page). AD&D1 has the awesome Item Saving Throw charts (DMG p80):
item type---save vs. fireball
That’s a gross approximation, but a useful one, much like the spherical cows of physics jokes. For weird shaped rooms, just try to imagine a similarly-sized rectangular room and make your best guess. This isn’t rocket science.
SIDE NOTE: In a large enough space a Fireball aimed at the floor/ground will explode into a hemisphere of 25’ diameter. That’s the way to do it when throwing fireballs at armies.
4) Assume that the concussive blast of the fire can open doors and destroy thin walls.
I don’t think I have a rule to back me up on this one. I just like to think of Fireballs as bad action movie explosions. So when a Fireball effect reaches a door, I roll a normal Open Doors check, i.e. 2 in 6 chance the force of the explosion will throw open the door. If I roll a 1 then I normally declare the door burst off the hinges. Because that’s cool. Also, if the dungeon has any thin walls (‘thin’ defined as the width of a pencil line on the map) I give a 1 in 20 chance of the wall being blown away. You can deduct one cube of volume for each door opened or wall destroyed, if you're feeling nice.
5) Assume the fire flows like a swift liquid, running in all possible directions equally.
Every time the widening effect of a Fireball reaches an intersection, it will choose both/all directions. That includes pits, chimneys, shafts, stairs. A well-place vertical tunnel can really save the PC’s bacon.
6) Don’t forget to melt the loot!
Know what rules about breaking stuff you prefer and enforce the heck out of them. BX D&D notes that fire damage reduces all jewelry to half value (pB47). OD&D indicates fire will melt jewelry sufficiently to reduce value by 25% and gives an optional 10% chance of heat destroying gems (Monsters & Treasures, last page). AD&D1 has the awesome Item Saving Throw charts (DMG p80):
item type---save vs. fireball
bone/ivory---17+
book/leather---13+
ceramic---5+
cloth---20+
crystal/vial---10+
gem/small stone---7+
glass---11+
jewelry/metal, soft---18+
liquid---15+
metal, hard---6+
paper/parchment---25+ [yes, on a straight d20 roll]
rope/wood (thin)---15+
rope/wood (thick)---11+
And remember to melt a bunch of the gold and copper coins! I’ve had players use crowbars to pry up lumps of melted metal where the dragon’s hoard used to be. I’ve also done straight up 50/50 rolls for anything I think might burn. A fun trick is to hand the players a list of loot and then make the poor bastards roll the dice themselves and cross off the stuff they almost had.
7) When in doubt, set the party on fire.
If you aren’t sure about ceiling heights in some areas or you use a lot of weird-shaped rooms with hard-to-estimate volumes, just light ‘em up. Every self-respecting adventurer gets set on fire by a comrade at some point. It’s a rite of passage.
EXAMPLE
The party consists of three PCs, a fifth level fighter named Sturm Von Drang, a fourth level magic-user Merlac the Malevolent, and a third level elf, Organa le Fay, Faerie Princess of Alderaan. The party is accompanied by two of Sturm’s henchweenies, Bob (F2) and Notbob (F1). They are looting the Pits of Paratime, having entered the current level from the staircase located at room 52 (bottom left corner).
Sturm has opened the northern door of room 45 (at the apex of the triangle) and the group is proceeding along the long north-south corridor at mapping speed, Sturm and Princess Organa in the lead, followed by Merlac and Bob, with Notbob bringing up the rear. Both the Princess and Notbob are carrying hooded lanterns equipped with Continual Light sources.
And remember to melt a bunch of the gold and copper coins! I’ve had players use crowbars to pry up lumps of melted metal where the dragon’s hoard used to be. I’ve also done straight up 50/50 rolls for anything I think might burn. A fun trick is to hand the players a list of loot and then make the poor bastards roll the dice themselves and cross off the stuff they almost had.
7) When in doubt, set the party on fire.
If you aren’t sure about ceiling heights in some areas or you use a lot of weird-shaped rooms with hard-to-estimate volumes, just light ‘em up. Every self-respecting adventurer gets set on fire by a comrade at some point. It’s a rite of passage.
EXAMPLE
The party consists of three PCs, a fifth level fighter named Sturm Von Drang, a fourth level magic-user Merlac the Malevolent, and a third level elf, Organa le Fay, Faerie Princess of Alderaan. The party is accompanied by two of Sturm’s henchweenies, Bob (F2) and Notbob (F1). They are looting the Pits of Paratime, having entered the current level from the staircase located at room 52 (bottom left corner).
Sturm has opened the northern door of room 45 (at the apex of the triangle) and the group is proceeding along the long north-south corridor at mapping speed, Sturm and Princess Organa in the lead, followed by Merlac and Bob, with Notbob bringing up the rear. Both the Princess and Notbob are carrying hooded lanterns equipped with Continual Light sources.
As the party starts to creep past the doors to rooms 42 and 44 (which they opt not to open), the light from Organa’s magicked lantern starts to pour into room 29. Seven figures come into view. The Dm describes six of them as primitive reptilian humanoids. He’s vague (as usual) but they’re probably lizard men, possibly troglodytes, maybe sleestacks. The seventh he describes thusly: “The last reptile man stands taller than the rest by a full head, which I will get back to in a moment. His body is proportioned like a Greek God, albeit green and slightly scaly. Instead of the brutish clubs the others wield, this one holds a shiny silvery trident that refracts your Continual Light into a rainbow of bad lens flare effects. Oh, and he has a bunch of tentacular eye-stalks sprouting from his head in random locations.”
“By Crom’s Stanky Loincloth, a DM custom monster!” shouts the fighter.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” deadpans the elf.
“Fuck that with a stick!” cries the magic-user, as he pulls a stick out of his sleeve. It’s the wand of fireballs he stolefound last session. Dude’s been dying to use it on someone and a half lizard king/half beholder sounds like just the right guy. “I fireball his stupid face.”
Sturm and Organa see what’s about to go down and do a simultaneously slow-mo “Nooooooooooo!” as Merlac intones the command words “Goodness gracious!” A pea-sized pellet of shimmering green energy flies through the air, stopping in front of the DM’s pet horror just long enough for three or four eyes to blink, then hellfire explodes all around it.
This old fashion wand does a flat 6d6 damage and Merlac rolls an astonishingly good 32 points of damage. The DM forgets that lizard men have 2+1 hit dice rather than 2, so he declares all the normal foes in the room dead (including the four the party hadn’t seen yet). He saves figuring out whether the Big Bad is dead for last, because the DM’s a dick. Instead, he turns to the volume of the expanding fireball.
Room 29 is 40’ by 30’, that’s 12 cubes plus 2 for the step pyramid approximation outlined above. The DM checks the key and see that it notes the room as possessing a “high vaulted ceiling”, so he graciously adds one more cube to the total. Out of 33.5 cubes, we’ve accounted for 15 of them.
There are five ways the flame can pour out of the room, all of which the fire will attempt to use. First, the fire will take up a half a cube flowing to each door. At the same time, I’d mark one cube down each corridor. Like this:
That’s four more cubes of fire, 19 total thus far.
Now it’s time to roll dice. Is either door forced open by the blast? So 2 rolls of d6, each 1 rolled indicating the door is blasted off its hinges, each roll of 2 meaning it is merely forced open. I roll a 1 for the door to room 30 and a 5 for the north door. The former is blown away, the latter holds fast.
What about the secret door? For the latter, I’d check to see if my key had any specifics about the door. Is it particularly massive or flimsy? Let’s assume no and treat the secret door the same way we would a regular door. A roll of 1 also blows it open.
Looking at the map, nothing weird is going to happen until the fire reaches room 33, so we can advance the fire like so:
That’s 14.5 cubes beyond the initial 15 of the room, for 29.5 cubes total. We’ve got only four cubes left and five directions it can flow, so it looks like the party is safe… this time. The remainder of the fireball fills room 30, setting any inhabitants on fire. Anyone in room 31 probably sees the flames light up their section of the dungeon. The door to room 33 holds, but the inhabitants of it certainly hear the blast. I’d roll a hear noise check for anyone in areas 28, 42 and 44 as well. There are a lot of doors to control the flow of sound on this level. In a more open, flowing arrangement I would also throw an extra wandering monster check.
The party lucks out, the fireball ends about 10’ from the front rank. Had one more door not blown open, the PCs would be on fire right now. Sturm and Organa give Merlac six shades of hell for throwing grenades when nobody has cover. Meanwhile the Lizarolder slinks away to find reinforcements. Bob might have noticed this, but a quick 50/50 roll indicates that he was momentarily distracted by the sight of the wall of flaming death rushing down the corridor and opted to soil his armor rather than watch for escaping monsters.
Final note: I normally shade in the fireball area as scorched on my map if there’s any chance another expedition will visit the dungeon.
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| Close Effin' Call |
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5e Player Spellbooks
In case you missed them over the last couple days, here are links to two hand-outs I made based upon the 5e Basic rules document.
Cantrips and 1st Level Spells - arranged by class and level, to make spell selection easier for newbies
2nd and 3rd Level Spells - similarly laid out
Cantrips and 1st Level Spells - arranged by class and level, to make spell selection easier for newbies
2nd and 3rd Level Spells - similarly laid out
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Fireballs and Dragonbreath
So Ian Harac and Delta have reasonably made the case that I am reading too much into the 5e fireball rules. They maintain the overall burst effect rules do not allow for the free flowing 33 1/2 cubes of fire I talked about yesterday. Way to rain on my parade, guys!
I think my way of doing it is cooler by a country mile, but they seem to be on the money with their arguments that the dreaded Rules As Written support lamer, non-volumetric fireballs. I think Delta is wrong about my fireball rules being too complicated, but he plays OD&D so I expect him to want things even simpler than I do. My fireball rule is not complex, but it does stop play in its tracks while the DM figures out where all that magical fire goes. I find that the pause builds suspense. Even in combat not every moment needs to be go-go-go, as long as the pauses are for effect and not to look up the AC of lizard men.
(Seriously, on that last point, a lot of time can be saved by knowing a handful of monster stats and thinking comparatively. What monster do you know something about is it close to in hit dice? Is it as tough as an orc? A gnoll? A hill giant? Is its hide tough as leather, hard as plate, or roughly in-between? Should one blow from it have a chance of outright killing a man, or be likely to do so? Answering these questions can be much quicker than looking up the stats. Also: you would be astounded by the number of big, scary monsters my players have fought that were mechanically the exact same as an ogre.)
Anyway, I got to thinking that the same rules I threw out yesterday for fireball volumes could be used for red dragon breath. Using the BX D&D rules, a red dragon breaths out a cone 90' long that's 30' wide at the far end. That comes out to 21 cubes of 10' x 10' x 10'. That could make life interesting in small spaces.
Green dragon breath takes up even more space! Their cloud of deadly gas comes out to 40 cubes in BX. The AD&D1 dimensions are slightly larger, resulting in 60 cubes of volume. Of course, poison gas doesn't behave the same way as a blast of fire. I wouldn't roll to blow open doors and I would assume the gas is heavier than air, so it would only float down or sideways, only going up if there was no other place for it.
White dragon cones are slightly smaller than red dragon blasts, amounting to 19 cubes in BX but only 11 1/2 in AD&D1. Whether the cold blasts of a white dragon behave like fire blasts is up to the individual DM, but I like the idea. Blue dragon breath ought to follow the same rules as lightning bolt spells, which is maybe another post for another time. The 60' long, 5' wide stream of black dragon acid does amount to much, only 1.1 cubes. However, that equals about 8,800 gallons of acid! Where that drains after each blast might be worth considering.
I think my way of doing it is cooler by a country mile, but they seem to be on the money with their arguments that the dreaded Rules As Written support lamer, non-volumetric fireballs. I think Delta is wrong about my fireball rules being too complicated, but he plays OD&D so I expect him to want things even simpler than I do. My fireball rule is not complex, but it does stop play in its tracks while the DM figures out where all that magical fire goes. I find that the pause builds suspense. Even in combat not every moment needs to be go-go-go, as long as the pauses are for effect and not to look up the AC of lizard men.
(Seriously, on that last point, a lot of time can be saved by knowing a handful of monster stats and thinking comparatively. What monster do you know something about is it close to in hit dice? Is it as tough as an orc? A gnoll? A hill giant? Is its hide tough as leather, hard as plate, or roughly in-between? Should one blow from it have a chance of outright killing a man, or be likely to do so? Answering these questions can be much quicker than looking up the stats. Also: you would be astounded by the number of big, scary monsters my players have fought that were mechanically the exact same as an ogre.)
Anyway, I got to thinking that the same rules I threw out yesterday for fireball volumes could be used for red dragon breath. Using the BX D&D rules, a red dragon breaths out a cone 90' long that's 30' wide at the far end. That comes out to 21 cubes of 10' x 10' x 10'. That could make life interesting in small spaces.
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| red/white cones, blue/black lines, green clouds |
Green dragon breath takes up even more space! Their cloud of deadly gas comes out to 40 cubes in BX. The AD&D1 dimensions are slightly larger, resulting in 60 cubes of volume. Of course, poison gas doesn't behave the same way as a blast of fire. I wouldn't roll to blow open doors and I would assume the gas is heavier than air, so it would only float down or sideways, only going up if there was no other place for it.
White dragon cones are slightly smaller than red dragon blasts, amounting to 19 cubes in BX but only 11 1/2 in AD&D1. Whether the cold blasts of a white dragon behave like fire blasts is up to the individual DM, but I like the idea. Blue dragon breath ought to follow the same rules as lightning bolt spells, which is maybe another post for another time. The 60' long, 5' wide stream of black dragon acid does amount to much, only 1.1 cubes. However, that equals about 8,800 gallons of acid! Where that drains after each blast might be worth considering.
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tiny thoughts about tiny hexes
Much has been made of the fact that the classic Wilderlands of High Fantasy is actually rather small in scope; its five mile hexes results in a cramped environment more on par with Europe rather than a world of adventure. Now, I've never been to Europe, but I hear it's a reasonably big place. Still, of you want your players to travel the globe, meet new people, and kill them, then the Wilderlands isn't quite big enough.
Of course, there is no ideal hex size or campaign map size. There's only finding the right fit for your campaign. If world travel is a major goal of your campaign, by all means break out the 24, 30 or 36 miles hexes. Personally, I'm thinking that 5 miles per hex is too big for my needs. According to Wolfram Alpha a five mile hex is half a Manhattan, or one third of Walt Disney World (not just the Magic Kingdom, mind you, the whole dang operation). If my math is right, a 5 mile across hex encloses 16.24 square miles. Any hexcrawl campaign that posits only one thing in such a space is letting the artificiality of the hexagon do some of the thinking for it. Which is okay, that is why we use simplifications like hexes. I'm just for consciously considering the ramifications of such a choice.
Bob Bledsaw and crew knew that although 5 mile hexes might sound small in the age of the automobile, they are actually big enough you can get lost in. Here's a favorite bit of mine from page 38 of the classic Judges Guild supplement, Ready Ref Sheets:
I run dungeons mostly, so the campaign world exists primarily as the context for the dungeon adventures. My new campaign map is based on a model of one league per hex. We don't use leagues very much any more, but one way of defining them is the distance a man can walk in a hour, roughly 3 miles. Of course, someone in chainmail might need 90 minutes, should you wish to make use of those sorts of rules. Someone on a riding horse needs only 30 minutes to cross the same hex. Something like this:
Of course, this chart basically comes down to one hour per hex, plus a few simple modifiers.
Basically, I want a game world where getting to the dungeon is a good, refreshing hike and travel times to cities and castles can be measured in hours or at most a few days. So I'm scaling my world accordingly.
Of course, there is no ideal hex size or campaign map size. There's only finding the right fit for your campaign. If world travel is a major goal of your campaign, by all means break out the 24, 30 or 36 miles hexes. Personally, I'm thinking that 5 miles per hex is too big for my needs. According to Wolfram Alpha a five mile hex is half a Manhattan, or one third of Walt Disney World (not just the Magic Kingdom, mind you, the whole dang operation). If my math is right, a 5 mile across hex encloses 16.24 square miles. Any hexcrawl campaign that posits only one thing in such a space is letting the artificiality of the hexagon do some of the thinking for it. Which is okay, that is why we use simplifications like hexes. I'm just for consciously considering the ramifications of such a choice.
Bob Bledsaw and crew knew that although 5 mile hexes might sound small in the age of the automobile, they are actually big enough you can get lost in. Here's a favorite bit of mine from page 38 of the classic Judges Guild supplement, Ready Ref Sheets:
"When entering a hex containing a village, tower or castle, a 6 on a six-sided die indicates that the feature in question has actually been found, a 5 indicating that a small farm or hamlet (10-60 population) has been found instead. Players following a road, coastline or river that intersects a village negates the necessity of 'encountering' same." (p38)Elsewhere in the Wilderlands material is a note that any five mile hex contains 0-5 additional items not in the key, but I can't find it at the moment.
I run dungeons mostly, so the campaign world exists primarily as the context for the dungeon adventures. My new campaign map is based on a model of one league per hex. We don't use leagues very much any more, but one way of defining them is the distance a man can walk in a hour, roughly 3 miles. Of course, someone in chainmail might need 90 minutes, should you wish to make use of those sorts of rules. Someone on a riding horse needs only 30 minutes to cross the same hex. Something like this:
TERRAIN TYPE | Unarmored | Chain | Plate | Riding horse | Warhorse or mule |
Clear/city/trail/grasslands | 1 hour | 1 ½ hours | 2 hours | 30 minutes | 1 hour |
Forest/hill/desert/broken | 1 ½ hours | 2 hours 15 minutes | 3 hours | 45 minutes | 1 ½ hours |
Mountain/jungle/swamp | 2 hours | 3 hours | 4 hours | 1 hour | 2 hours |
Road | 40 minutes | 1 hour | 1 hour 20 minutes | 20 minutes | 40 minutes |
Of course, this chart basically comes down to one hour per hex, plus a few simple modifiers.
Basically, I want a game world where getting to the dungeon is a good, refreshing hike and travel times to cities and castles can be measured in hours or at most a few days. So I'm scaling my world accordingly.
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Random Hamlet Names
My new campaign map indicates the location of cities, towns and villages. Hamlets are smaller-than-village units (10-60 inhabitants according to Ready Ref Sheets p38,) that can be found in any 5-mile hex containing a castle, town, or village. On my smaller scale wilderness map I also assume at least one hamlet in any hex marked as cultivated land. (The 1st edition DMG uses a slightly different definition of "hamlet" with a population of 100-400, while a "thorp" has 20-80 (DMG p 173).)
Since I'm working on "where the heck are you from" charts for PCs, I might need names for these tiny burgs. Rather than mark and name each individual place, I thought a random table would be more fun.
Random Hamlet Name (2d30)
Since I'm working on "where the heck are you from" charts for PCs, I might need names for these tiny burgs. Rather than mark and name each individual place, I thought a random table would be more fun.
Random Hamlet Name (2d30)
| 1st Roll | First Element | 2nd Roll | Second Element |
| 1 | Arse- | 1 | -back, beck |
| 2 | Barmy- | 2 | -borough, burgh, bury |
| 3 | Bog- | 3 | -bourn(e), burn |
| 4 | Bollocks- | 4 | -bridge |
| 5 | Bugger- | 5 | -by, bie |
| 6 | Bung- | 6 | -chester, cester, caster |
| 7 | Cock- | 7 | -cotte, cote |
| 8 | Cramp- | 8 | -don |
| 9 | Crap- | 9 | -field |
| 10 | Crud- | 10 | -ford |
| 11 | Dung- | 11 | -gate |
| 12 | Fart- | 12 | -hall, hale |
| 13 | Flea- | 13 | -ham |
| 14 | Grunt- | 14 | -head |
| 15 | Knicker- | 15 | -heath, hythe |
| 16 | Muck- | 16 | -ing, ings, ington, ingham |
| 17 | Pig- | 17 | -ley, leigh |
| 18 | Piss- | 18 | -minster |
| 19 | Puss- | 19 | -ness |
| 20 | Rat- | 20 | -or |
| 21 | Rot(ter)- | 21 | -stead, sted |
| 22 | Rust- | 22 | -stock, stowe |
| 23 | Scab- | 23 | -ston, stone |
| 24 | Shag- | 24 | -thorpe |
| 25 | Sludge- | 25 | -thwaite |
| 26 | Smeg- | 26 | -ton |
| 27 | Sod- | 27 | -tree, try |
| 28 | Stink/Stank- | 28 | -wall, well |
| 29 | Tick- | 29 | -wich, wick |
| 30 | Turd- | 30 | -worth, worthy |
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oh, look. a monster.
We live in a visual age. The advent of photography and cinematography plus earlier advances in the reproduction of images followed by the invention of the world wide web have resulted in a culture where we share images with one another constantly. As a result, some guy in LA can immediately share the paintings he's created with the entire world. While some other dude in the midwest can have a tumblr account that is 99% him recirculating images other people have created and posted. Earlier ages would have called these activities miracles, but for us they are now routine components of our lives.
Now I am not a luddite by nature. I like having a lever in the kitchen that causes fresh, clean water to erupt from a spigot, for example. However, we live in a fallen world where every boon has its unintended consequences. For us, one of those consequences is the way that our hyper-visualized culture can ossify parts of our imagination. Allow me to demonstrate: take a moment to think about Frankenstein's monster. I feel pretty confident you could immediately call up an image of the monstrous star of books, comics, films, etc. And I also feel pretty confident that most of you imagined something like this. The original novel by Mary Shelley has almost no description of the creature. You can just about count on one hand the number of sentences that describe him. And none of them mention green skin, bolts in the neck or a flat-top head at all. Our collective imagination relies on the visual of the 1931 Universal Pictures film.
Which is not to say that I am arguing that you should all read the original 1818 novel (you should, but I'm not arguing that here) nor am I trying to argue that the yellow-eyed creature with translucent skin portrayed therein is superior to Boris Karloff all dolled up by make-up man Jake Pierce. The latter version continues to haunt us for a reason. However, I do think we should take a moment and reflect on what our hyper-visual culture does to our games.
Particularly, I am thinking about how monster books or chapters are put together. This thing we do where every monster comes with a glamour shot is bugging me today. Are we not doing to ourselves what the 1931 Frankenstein did to us? For example, in my crazy brain I think I know exactly what a level 4 shambling krenshar looks like, because when the krenshar appeared in 3.0 the nice folks at Wizards kindly supplied us with this illo:
![]()
This monster is a hyaena-leopard thing that shows you its own skull before you die. I think that's a pretty effin' cool concept. But I'm not sure the art direction here delivers that concept. In fact, I think this picture takes away rather than adds to freaky-deakiness of the krenshar. What could be a monster instead becomes an interesting specimen from a wildlife documentary.
You know who did this crap right? Sandy Peterson and the crew at Chaosium back in the 1983 Call of Cthulhu boxed set. Dig it:
![]()
That little black silhouette suggests rather than defines the look of the Star-Spawn. I would go so far as to say it raises as many questions as it answers. What color is this creature? A lurid green? Jaundiced yellow? Or perhaps it's pale white and shot through with creepily visible red veins? That knobby head, is that an exposed brain, maybe? Does this creature have a mouth under those tentacles? If so, is it a slobbering, fanged maw or a snapping beak or a puss-dripping sphincter? Etc, etc.
I'm not saying I'm against monster art. I like pictures of monsters and little miniatures of monsters and videogames where you do nothing but blast hordes of monsters. What I'm concerned about is the effect of definitive visual representations in monster reference books. The systematic representation of monsters goes a long way to de-mystifying them, which takes away part of the numinous joy of having your PCs head ripped off by some unknown thing.
However, there are some things that I think you can do to put a little but of that frisson back into a game that doesn't involve chucking the beloved canonical monsters. I'll try to cover those in my next blog entry. Feel free to yell at me on G+ if I haven't posted by Saturday.
Now I am not a luddite by nature. I like having a lever in the kitchen that causes fresh, clean water to erupt from a spigot, for example. However, we live in a fallen world where every boon has its unintended consequences. For us, one of those consequences is the way that our hyper-visualized culture can ossify parts of our imagination. Allow me to demonstrate: take a moment to think about Frankenstein's monster. I feel pretty confident you could immediately call up an image of the monstrous star of books, comics, films, etc. And I also feel pretty confident that most of you imagined something like this. The original novel by Mary Shelley has almost no description of the creature. You can just about count on one hand the number of sentences that describe him. And none of them mention green skin, bolts in the neck or a flat-top head at all. Our collective imagination relies on the visual of the 1931 Universal Pictures film.
Which is not to say that I am arguing that you should all read the original 1818 novel (you should, but I'm not arguing that here) nor am I trying to argue that the yellow-eyed creature with translucent skin portrayed therein is superior to Boris Karloff all dolled up by make-up man Jake Pierce. The latter version continues to haunt us for a reason. However, I do think we should take a moment and reflect on what our hyper-visual culture does to our games.
Particularly, I am thinking about how monster books or chapters are put together. This thing we do where every monster comes with a glamour shot is bugging me today. Are we not doing to ourselves what the 1931 Frankenstein did to us? For example, in my crazy brain I think I know exactly what a level 4 shambling krenshar looks like, because when the krenshar appeared in 3.0 the nice folks at Wizards kindly supplied us with this illo:
You know who did this crap right? Sandy Peterson and the crew at Chaosium back in the 1983 Call of Cthulhu boxed set. Dig it:
That little black silhouette suggests rather than defines the look of the Star-Spawn. I would go so far as to say it raises as many questions as it answers. What color is this creature? A lurid green? Jaundiced yellow? Or perhaps it's pale white and shot through with creepily visible red veins? That knobby head, is that an exposed brain, maybe? Does this creature have a mouth under those tentacles? If so, is it a slobbering, fanged maw or a snapping beak or a puss-dripping sphincter? Etc, etc.
I'm not saying I'm against monster art. I like pictures of monsters and little miniatures of monsters and videogames where you do nothing but blast hordes of monsters. What I'm concerned about is the effect of definitive visual representations in monster reference books. The systematic representation of monsters goes a long way to de-mystifying them, which takes away part of the numinous joy of having your PCs head ripped off by some unknown thing.
However, there are some things that I think you can do to put a little but of that frisson back into a game that doesn't involve chucking the beloved canonical monsters. I'll try to cover those in my next blog entry. Feel free to yell at me on G+ if I haven't posted by Saturday.
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↧
about Zak
It's 5am here in central Illinois and I should be writing a preposterous paper on how object oriented ontology explains the relationship between the faux medieval verse of Thomas Chatterton and John Keats's long and ridiculous poem Endymion. But I guess that can wait for later, because I am a little annoyed and need to talk about Zak's present situation.
Do I need to tell you about Zak or do we all know who I'm talking about? Zak S(mith/abbath) is a guy with a weird haircut and a dragony tattoo on his head who makes art and writes about playing games with adult video performers and occasionally produces excellent gaming supplements you can buy but more often just throws brilliant free stuff you can steal onto his blog. He is one of the key people who got the old school scene to embrace Google+ as a play venue, leading to a crapton of great gaming.
I think I've known him about five years now, but my memory for dates is hazy and it could be longer than that. We've never met in person but I've read a bunch of stuff of his and talked with him online and exchanged emails with him. All the stuff you do with online friends. Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like I've known him long enough and well enough that if he were this kind of jerk, I would know about it. To me, the idea that he uses the followers of his blog as some sort of invisible harassment legion would be laugh-out-loud ludicrous, were it not also such an easy way to ruin someone's reputation.
I still kinda want to laugh, though. The man is one of most overt people I know. Apparently some people really think a guy with a dragon where half his hair should be, who also makes it a point to tell you in the title of his blog that he plays D&D with porn stars, is some sort of sneaky bastard. I am baffled. He may be a bastard, but he ain't sneaky about pretty much anything. (However, maybe some confused individual is misreading Zak and thinks that when he criticizes someone he is sending a secret telepathic signal to harass that person. If you are that guy please KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF. Seriously.)
Zak's "here is a picture of me with my dick out, now let me write 3,000 words about goblins" overtness can really throw people off their game, especially in places like RPGnet, where some days it seems like Sneaky Bastardry is an official sponsor. In such venues simple interrogatories like "I am asking you point blank: are wizards awesome or not?" often function as rhetorical land mines. You say yes and the other person writes three paragraphs explaining how, by clear logic, anyone who likes wizards obviously endorses the Holocaust. So when Zak asks similar-looking questions with all sincerity, people freak the heck out. People also freak out sometimes when he says things like "We're having this theoretical argument about gaming and it's getting pretty heated, but I suspect that at the game table we have more in common than we think. Howabout I run a game for you and we see what happens?" Apparently gaming discourse in some circles has gotten so messed up that an invitation to play a game is sometimes misinterpreted as someone laying a trap.
Zak's also been accused of being sexist and transphobic. As a cis het male, I am not in an ideal position to evaluate these claims. Scrap Princess confirms my own gut reaction to accusing him of transphobia. I guess I could see how at first pass Zak flaunting his association with porn stars could be read as a bro-tastic performance of hypermasculinity, but from where I'm sitting, my impression from reading his blog shows him treating his adult actress associates as players, as friends and as people. And female characters in his game writing are way more interesting than I would expect from a sexist jerkwad. Does that mean Zak has somehow magically escaped the patriarchal systems in which the rest of us mere mortals are trapped? No. I'm not putting the guy up for sainthood. I simply suggest that he's one of the people acting in good faith, trying to get it right. Like most other people, I'm sure he gets it wrong sometimes.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that Zak is okay in my book. If you want to call him out on something, that's completely cool with me. We all need to be called out once in a while, I think. But cite your damn sources, please. Passing on vague rumors is a bullshit move and you damn well know it.
Do I need to tell you about Zak or do we all know who I'm talking about? Zak S(mith/abbath) is a guy with a weird haircut and a dragony tattoo on his head who makes art and writes about playing games with adult video performers and occasionally produces excellent gaming supplements you can buy but more often just throws brilliant free stuff you can steal onto his blog. He is one of the key people who got the old school scene to embrace Google+ as a play venue, leading to a crapton of great gaming.
I think I've known him about five years now, but my memory for dates is hazy and it could be longer than that. We've never met in person but I've read a bunch of stuff of his and talked with him online and exchanged emails with him. All the stuff you do with online friends. Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like I've known him long enough and well enough that if he were this kind of jerk, I would know about it. To me, the idea that he uses the followers of his blog as some sort of invisible harassment legion would be laugh-out-loud ludicrous, were it not also such an easy way to ruin someone's reputation.
I still kinda want to laugh, though. The man is one of most overt people I know. Apparently some people really think a guy with a dragon where half his hair should be, who also makes it a point to tell you in the title of his blog that he plays D&D with porn stars, is some sort of sneaky bastard. I am baffled. He may be a bastard, but he ain't sneaky about pretty much anything. (However, maybe some confused individual is misreading Zak and thinks that when he criticizes someone he is sending a secret telepathic signal to harass that person. If you are that guy please KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF. Seriously.)
Zak's "here is a picture of me with my dick out, now let me write 3,000 words about goblins" overtness can really throw people off their game, especially in places like RPGnet, where some days it seems like Sneaky Bastardry is an official sponsor. In such venues simple interrogatories like "I am asking you point blank: are wizards awesome or not?" often function as rhetorical land mines. You say yes and the other person writes three paragraphs explaining how, by clear logic, anyone who likes wizards obviously endorses the Holocaust. So when Zak asks similar-looking questions with all sincerity, people freak the heck out. People also freak out sometimes when he says things like "We're having this theoretical argument about gaming and it's getting pretty heated, but I suspect that at the game table we have more in common than we think. Howabout I run a game for you and we see what happens?" Apparently gaming discourse in some circles has gotten so messed up that an invitation to play a game is sometimes misinterpreted as someone laying a trap.
Zak's also been accused of being sexist and transphobic. As a cis het male, I am not in an ideal position to evaluate these claims. Scrap Princess confirms my own gut reaction to accusing him of transphobia. I guess I could see how at first pass Zak flaunting his association with porn stars could be read as a bro-tastic performance of hypermasculinity, but from where I'm sitting, my impression from reading his blog shows him treating his adult actress associates as players, as friends and as people. And female characters in his game writing are way more interesting than I would expect from a sexist jerkwad. Does that mean Zak has somehow magically escaped the patriarchal systems in which the rest of us mere mortals are trapped? No. I'm not putting the guy up for sainthood. I simply suggest that he's one of the people acting in good faith, trying to get it right. Like most other people, I'm sure he gets it wrong sometimes.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that Zak is okay in my book. If you want to call him out on something, that's completely cool with me. We all need to be called out once in a while, I think. But cite your damn sources, please. Passing on vague rumors is a bullshit move and you damn well know it.
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Re-reading Is Fundamental
Which brings me to an idea I've been pondering for a while now: levels of spell comprehension. Because the world needs one more way to make M-U's more complicated, right?
Level 1 Comprehension
At this level you don't understand the fundamentals of the spell enough to memorize it. You can roll to cast it (see below) only if you have your spellbook open in front of you, at the right page. If you blow the roll you cannot attempt again without further study (i.e. try again tomorrow, chump).
Level 2 Comprehension
You can memorize the spell, sorta, but you have control problems while casting it and must roll with every casting. If you fail the roll the spell is gone with no effect.
Level 3 Comprehension
Call this Basic Mastery if you like. You can memorize and cast the spell, just like in normal D&D play.
Level 4 Comprehension
As per level 3, but you may be able to retain the pattern sufficiently for multiple castings. Every casting after the first requires a roll to cast. Once you fail you are done for the day. Kinda like DCC.
Level 5 Comprehension
As per level 4, but you do not lose the spell if you blow the casting roll. Wizards in the original Chainmail work like this, I think. Those dudes just fling fireballs all over the damn place.
Level 6 Comprehension
Ultimate Mastery. You no longer need to memorize the spell to cast it, but you must roll when it isn't memorized.
SOME ISSUES TO CONSIDER
ISSUE #1: What to roll to cast?
There are lots of ways you can go with this. An Int check. An Int check with a penalty equal to the spell level. A Spellcraft check for you weirdoes that use non-thief skills in your game. You can adopt the Chainmail 2d6 system, which would look something like this:
2-5 Fail - Snake-eyes sends you to some sort of mishap chart, maybe?
6-7 Delay - Spell goes off on your initiative next round.
8-12 Success - Boxcars results in the spell being overpowered and out of control, perhaps.
-1 for a first level spell, -2 for a second level spell, etc.
+1 caster level 1-2
+2 caster level 3-6
+3 caster level 7-8
+4 caster level 9-10
+5 caster level 11+
If you want caster Intelligence to figure into the 2d6 roll, here's a chart for that:
Int 3: -2
Int 4-8: -1
Int 9-12: no modifier
Int 13-17: +1
Int 18: +2
Another alternative would be a percentile roll. Dave Hargrave's PHUMBLE PHACTOR math gives a 50% chance of success, +2% per level over 1st, +5% per point of Dex over 12 and -5% per point of Dex below 9. The other percentage system you could use is Empire of the Petal Throne:
Caster Level...Percentage Chance of Success
1...40%
2...50%
3...60%
4...70%
5...80%
6...85%
7...90%
8...95%
9+...100%
Given the comprehension rules above, this system is actually quite generous to high level casters, so -5% or -10% per spell level would be in order here.
Note that EPT has an extra stat that modifies your spell casting percentages, Psychic Ability. Here's my 3d6 version of it (the rest of them are here). You could sub in Intelligence for Psychic Ability here if you didn't want to introduce a new ability score.
PSYCHIC ABILITY
3-7 Non-Psychic Cannot use spells or magic
8-9 Barely Psychic Cannot use spells greater than 2nd level
10-11 Average Psychic Cannot use spells greater than 4th level
12-13 Somewhat Psychic +5% spell casting chance
14-15 Quite Psychic +10% spell casting chance
16-18 Highly Psychic +15% spell casting chance
(Hargrave and Barker both list percentages to fail to cast, but I re-expressed them as success chances because that makes more sense to me.)
ISSUE #2: Any old spellbook = Level 1?
As a DM, you need to ask yourself if you want the MUs in the party to be able to open any old grimoire and start casting random shit out of that bad boy. I say thee nay, since I generally think spellbooks not as handy users guides, but as the highly idiosyncratic journals of madmen. They take some time and effort to sift through, and maybe read magic and/or write spells depending on the rules systems. And I'm pretty sure I read once many years ago a serious occultist (Al Crowley, maybe?) who claimed that the Goetia only works properly if you hand copy out the entire text before your first summoning. The effort of making your own manuscript copy is what gives the text its occult juice.
On the other hand, maybe you want to trick the party into summoning Orcus's Mom. That's easier to pull off if MU's can skim any old musty tome and get Level 1 comprehension.
ISSUE #3: Starting spells
This one is easy for me, since I run '81 Basic. BX D&D allows for newly minted MU's and elves to possess a single pitiful level 1 spell in their book. I can do all sorts of things and it will totally be a step up from the rules as written. Example: all arcane PCs get one spell at level 3 mastery [per the standard rules] plus two at level 2 and three at Level 1.
IIRC my Labyrinth Lord rulebook allows starting MU types to possess a second level spell (or maybe two) in their starting spellbook. Under the LL rules they can't do a darned thing with that magic until level 3. Set the comprehension of those spells at L1 and the new PCs can begin using them right away, IF they dare to bring their spellbooks to the dungeon AND page through it in the middle of a combat.
For AD&D1, which gives players 4-5 first level spells at the start (and lots of cantrips, if Unearthed Arcana is your bag) you might have the player simply roll d4 for each spell. The same thing would work for straight up OD&D, where I usually assume that starting PCs begin with all first level spells. If you are feeling brave, change that d4 to a d6!
The free spells you get when you level up would come at L3 comrpehension, while spells added to your book might call for a d3 roll.
ISSUE #4: Advancement
How does comprehension increase over time? Two main options spring to mind: allocate some points or roll some dice. Each time you level up you get so many points (say, your new level plus your Int mod, minimum 1) and each comprehension advance costs points. Maybe double the current level of comprehension plus the spell level.
Or maybe upon leveling you roll a d for each spell in your book. If the result is higher than the current level of comprehension, advance it to the die roll. Once per level-up you can trade in two d4 rolls on spells you don't care about to roll a single d6 on a spell you do.
And/or maybe successful spell research 'aimed' at a spell you already possess raises the comprehension by one level.
ISSUE #5: NPCs
Honestly, I would probably ignore this system or streamline it considerably for NPCs. I prefer giving enemy wizards Weird Powers that don't fit the magic system designed to make sense to the players.
ISSUE #6: Level 6 Mastery will fuck up your campaign.
Your campaign world probably could use a good fucking up.
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Vorpal Wind
So here's one of my favorite bits of dodgy old background material from an obscure RPG. And incidentally, it totally works as a half-assed justification for campaign-hopping FLAILSNAILS shenanigans.
--pages 9-10 of Excursion to the Bizarre by Brian Carlson and D. Wolfgang Trippe.
Vorpal Wind
A Vorpal Wind is one of those complicated things that’s real hard to explain, but easy to describe (especially when you made it up in the first place.)
Not too long ago a vast interstellar war occurred in another dimension. During the final battle the KKjhasn decimated the Gak’n”e fleet leaving the KKjhasn the rules of the known universe. But the Gak’n”e flagship (a super-heavy dreadnought with an experimental ‘weave’ drive) escaped. The KKjhasn gave chase to the only surviving Admiral with his prize ship and soon had the Gak’n”e boxed in, ready for the capture.
Well, the Gak’n”e Admiral (Bob was his name), couldn’t bear to see his arch-enemy, the evil Commander Karok, pluck his prize ship, so Bob (the Gak’n”e Admiral) decided it was time to test the ‘weave’ drive in a desperate attempt to escape.
Bob rang the ship’s engineer, “Give me full power Scrottie,” Bob said, “I want to hit weave-9!”
“Aye Cap’n, Ah woul’, bu’ ah cain get noo powwerrrr!!!” Scrottie replied.
“Just do it, Scrottie,” Bob ordered firmly, “If she blows, she blows. And Scrottie, it’s Admiral, not Captain.”
Scrottie did as ordered, by shutting down all other ship systems he managed just enough power to engage the weave-drive at the untested nine factor. Unfortunately for all on board Scrottie had to down the life-support systems in order to get the power necessary to hit “weave-nine.”
The weave-drive was designed to literally “weave” the ship through the dimensional fabric that separates all alternate realities, without ripping or tearing the thin substance. Instead, due to damage sustained during the terrible battle, the drive malfunctioned and shredded a gaping hole in the fine vorpal fabric. The ship plummeted at ever increasing vorpal speeds ripping through one dimension after another and upsetting for the first time the laws of dimensional separation.
Dimensional pressures became unbalanced and the result was deadly Vorpal Winds blowing in seemingly random patterns between neighboring dimensions. The winds tangled up time-flow and caused all manner of other physical and dimensional side effects. The Vorpal Winds have now stabilized somewhat and though they appear to have no pattern, a determined player can figure them out.
--pages 9-10 of Excursion to the Bizarre by Brian Carlson and D. Wolfgang Trippe.
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Jeff goes Phandelving
So on Friday night David, Thaddeus, Kara, Katy, Ben, Mark and I gathered around David’s newly purchased plastic folding table. I first meet Thaddeus, Kara and Katy at the orientation for new graduate assistants a year ago and they’ve been friends ever since. David and Mark are new to my department this year, and as such they may labor under the impression that I know what I’m doing, as I was one of the leaders for their orientation. But they’ll wise up soon enough. Ben is Katy’s boyfriend and is the only person in the group who isn’t in grad school for English studies. He has a real job, working for the local megacorporation that secretly controls all our lives. As a group, they have a wide variety of role-playing experience, much of it in the 3e/4e/Pathfinder range of D&D variants.
For this get together I had purchased, opened and even slightly read the 5e Starter Set. I hadn’t followed the development of this set very closely, so a lot of it was new to me. Since the box comes with 5 PCs and I wasn’t sure how many people would show up, I also printed the pregens from this post at Beyond the Black Gate. Thanks to Chris Sheppard for pointing that out to me. Three of the Starter pregens were selected: the dwarf cleric, elf wizard and halfling rogue. The rest of the party were Malakus the Wizard, Gorum the Butcher and Frodoric the Halfling (renamed Frankoric for reasons unknown) from Beyond the Black Gate.
Selecting the characters took longer than I thought it would, so we didn’t get too far into the adventure. As per the book the party started out in Neverwinter. I told the players that they were all drinking individually in this seedy bar when one by one they all figure out that everyone in the room knows Gundren Rockseeker. I decided that dude is the Bill Brasky of dwarfs: twice as big as any normal dwarf, with a beard of three different colors, and capable of legendary exploits.
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| To Gundren Rockseeker! |
As they are enjoying another round of toasts to the health of their infamous friend, who should walk in but the dwarf himself, who immediately begins buying rounds like Ragnarok is scheduled for tomorrow.
The next thing the party knows, they regain consciousness hung over as hell and walking alongside a donkey cart. Gundren in finishing his speech thanking them for agreeing to escort these supplies to Phandalin and rides off on his horse. (Gundren Rockseeker is the only dwarf big enough to ride a fullsized horse. Everyone knows that.) So of course the players needed to futz around with the cart for a while and inspect its contents and try to secret the beer barrels away in their backpacks (not happening). And then there was the debate as to whether or not to just got back to Neverwinter and sell the stuff. Standard player behaviour.
Later, the party stumbles across two dead horses, one of them obviously Gundren’s. They search for clues but soon come under attack by goblin archers. The combat went fairly smooth except for a couple of minor problems:
- I spent an extra moment or two hemming and hawing over whether there was such a thing as a Ranged Touch Attack in this edition or if hitting with a firebolt, etc. was the same as shooitng someone with an arrow. I still don’t know the right answer.
- I forgot about the stupid fire-and-pop-back-down ability of the goblins. This is partly my fault, as my prior rules knowledge kept telling me that of course goblins don’t have special abilities. But the decision to put all the monster stats in an appendix in the back of the adventure also kept me disoriented.
But this was a test run anyway. Goblins were slaughtered and looted (at least the ones that weren’t burnt to crisps) and the party eventually tracked the little blighters back to their lair. That’s all we got to before we were all pooped out, especially me. I was double booked that night and had come from a grad school thing where I had made tacos for a dozen people. That’s how busy grad school is for me nowadays: I had scheduling problems on Friday night.
Overall, the new system seemed pretty decent. I’m not sold on it as a replacement for my B/X rulebooks, but for my purposes it seems like a perfectly cromulent iteration of D&D thus far, much moreso than 4e. And it seems to have a lighter touch to it than 3.x. However, the adventure itself isn’t really lighting anyones jets. Many people at the table, myself included, were annoyed by the plot rails we felt attached to. I understand why many adventures are structured that way nowadays, but I just don’t want that sort of set-up. My guess is that we’ll finish the goblin lair next session and move on to something else. Whether we switch systems or not, we’ll see. But we’ll probably go on some other type of adventure. You know, like a bigass dungeon or a wide open sandbox.
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Update
So I've got a serious offer to write a second dungeony dragony type book, even though the first one is still delayed. (I've seen a sample of the new layout and a draft of the cover and they are both hella sweet, by the way.) I don't feel right talking about the business details of the new thing, except to say that if I were to take this offer, here are the things that would have to come together for me:
1) The book would have to overlap with my research interests here at school. So either a Wessex book or a book in which Romantic poets beat up goblins. The former would be a hex-and-key, hey have some dungeons, and treasures and whatnot book. The latter would be more like what if Masks of Nyarlahotep was set in 1816 London. I'm up for either but I have a LOT of material already for Wessex and since my classes next semester are set to kick my ass*, I should really choose the path of least resistance.
2) I told my new player group that if I take this gig the system and setting will be determined by my writing needs and most of them were cool with that. So I've got the green light from them.
3) As I've been thinking this through I've come to the conclusion that I need to get back in the saddle with respect to blogging and flailsnailing (yes, it's a verb now). But I can't do this without all y'all backing me up. I need some cool peoples to step up and promise to give me sixteen shades of hell if I let a week go by without a blog post of some kind or two weeks without running a game online. I probably don't have time to follow the sweet new releases or to keep up on the gossip, but I am going to make time for the thing itself.
So that's the deal. New Wessex stuff, a new dungeon, new blog posts, as long as you promise to hassle me if one week from today there is no new post or if I haven't run a game in 2 weeks.
*In my program only a fool takes two PhD seminars in one semester and I am that fool come January.
1) The book would have to overlap with my research interests here at school. So either a Wessex book or a book in which Romantic poets beat up goblins. The former would be a hex-and-key, hey have some dungeons, and treasures and whatnot book. The latter would be more like what if Masks of Nyarlahotep was set in 1816 London. I'm up for either but I have a LOT of material already for Wessex and since my classes next semester are set to kick my ass*, I should really choose the path of least resistance.
2) I told my new player group that if I take this gig the system and setting will be determined by my writing needs and most of them were cool with that. So I've got the green light from them.
3) As I've been thinking this through I've come to the conclusion that I need to get back in the saddle with respect to blogging and flailsnailing (yes, it's a verb now). But I can't do this without all y'all backing me up. I need some cool peoples to step up and promise to give me sixteen shades of hell if I let a week go by without a blog post of some kind or two weeks without running a game online. I probably don't have time to follow the sweet new releases or to keep up on the gossip, but I am going to make time for the thing itself.
So that's the deal. New Wessex stuff, a new dungeon, new blog posts, as long as you promise to hassle me if one week from today there is no new post or if I haven't run a game in 2 weeks.
*In my program only a fool takes two PhD seminars in one semester and I am that fool come January.
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Timeliness is next to Godliness
One of the most mocked and most important lines in the first edition Dungeon Masters Guide is “YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT” (page 37).
This is one of those great moments when Uncle Gary speaks directly to us, the Dear Readers. It is also one of the places where EGG breaks out the dread ALL CAPS. Two more good examples of the latter can be found on page 39, where we find the rule that PC magic-users gain “1 (and ONLY 1) spell” when they level up and that hench-MU’s will “ABSOLUTELY REFUSE” to share spells. I’m also fond of the all caps Afterword on page 230. You might have missed that bit, as it is right above that charming succubus drawn by Darlene Pekul.
Anyhoo, today I want to yank out two words from the above all caps sentence to focus on: meaningful and strict. I feel if that line is to be anything more than throwaway Gygaxian bloviating, then we need to parse out those two words in particular.
How does one have a meaningful campaign? I think there are two main ways of answering that question. The first is to do the artsy-fartsy thing, weaving a big theme into your campaign. Despite my use of the term “farsty” I am totally on board with this sort of thing, providing one aspires to grand themes while at the same time making sure to leave room in the campaign for regular type players. But then, I‘m perfectly happy having Johnny Beat-Up-The-Orc play at my table. If you only want roleplaying artistes in your superthematic game then you’re probably better off running Nobilis or Dogs in the Vineyard or whatever game the cool experimental rpg folks are up to nowadays. (Don’t let me talk you out of running D&D as hippy-dippy performance art if that’s what you really want. Just warn players ahead of time, please.)
But that’s not the kind of meaning I think Gygax is going for in his declaration about time in the campaign. I suspect he meant something much simpler and more fundamental about player agency in roleplaying games. Meaning in this sense is created by player choice leading to comprehensible (if not always expected) consequences. Keeping track of time allows for the natural unfolding of those consequences, whether we are talking about short term items, like a torch going out, or medium term, like lycanthropy or some other dungeon-induced disease, or long term, like building a castle or the aging rules catching up with you after your consistent, ridiculous abuse of the haste spell.
Now let’s talk about the strict part. Sometimes when reading the DMG the trick is grokking the general principle and ditching Gary’s idiosyncratic execution. So maybe the one day between sessions = one day of campaign time rule doesn’t fit your campaign. Chuck it out. But the basic concept, that you need some standard of how time flows in your game, remains valid. Pendragons use of one year per session proves that other standards work well to produce different kinds of meaning. Since I like to roll dice, I’m considering d6 weeks between sessions for my next campaign.
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Wyrminghall Campaign Info
Here I am trying to blog while my buddy Pat has put on the RiffTrax version of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I haven't seen this thing in its entirety since the original broadcast. Anyway, I wanted to talk today about my new FLAILSNAILS game. Here are the basic details.
- We'll begin with some standard dungeoneering.
- The game will run from about 4 to 6 am Central Time (UTC -6) on Fridays. Please don't sign up if you aren't regularly available during this time.
- Since this is a FLAILSNAILS game, you can import some sort of terrible PC from other games. PCs above 3rd level will be subject to the standard FLAILSNAILS handicapping chart. Or you can make a PC of your own using the rules below.
- The rules will be based upon Lamentations of the Flame Princess. A free no-art version of the Rules & Magic book is available for download here. For those unfamiliar with LotFP, it's not that different from D&D Basic/Expert.
- Since the setting is pseudo-historical (mid 12th century England plus elves), some items on the standard LotFP price list are not allowed. I'll get a revised price list up eventually, but for now the key item is no plate armor of any type. (FLAILSNAILS visitors wearing platemail may find their armor subject to Chronotonic Degradation, whatever that means.)
- Clerics must pick a religious affiliation that they obsessively champion: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Satanism, and Paganism are all legit options.
- MU's and Elves must pick a starting Blasphemy. This is some sort of idiosyncratic, heretical belief about the universe. Basically all arcane casters are cosmic conspiracy nuts.
- Fighters can begin play as Knights if the player so desires.
- Halflings are ridiculously, horribly French.
- Interested? To get into the player pool, fill out this brief Google Form. On Wednesday or Thursday I'll contact some folks from the pool to put together a party.
Questions?
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This may seem somewhat familiar...
Official Wyrminghall Background Info
Lo! You have heard the story of the Dragon-Knights of old, now hearken to the tale of kind King Ægidius founded the realm known as the Little Kingdom. The former alehouse bully achieved this feat by subduing the great dragon Locheed and claiming its great hoard of treasure. He was able to achieve this victory with the aid of a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range. The king imprisoned his pet dragon in a great pit and built over it a great feast-hall, which became known as Wyrminghall, owing to the great wyrm contained below it. From his mighty hall the king founded Order of the Wyrm, a small order consisting of His Majesty and his nine bravest vassals. Although he paid nominal tribute to Alfred the Great, the lord of Wyrminghall ruled the Little Kingdom free of outside interference.
Despite the king's ineptitude as an administrator, the Little Kingdom flourished, owing in large part to the fear of neighboring kings. None dared make war against the realm, for fear that the last thing they saw would be a flash of green scales shimmering in the bright sunlight, followed by an enveloping gout of fire. Another factor in the success of the kingdom was the influence of Queen Matilda, wife of the Lord of Wyrminghall. More shrewd than her husband, she was also known as a witch. It was said that she first expanded the pits below Wyrminghall, adding a series of vaults to better protect the treasures of the realm and fiendish traps to guard the vaults as well as a series of dungeons and torture chambers for the benefit of local tax evaders. Some tunnels below the hall are said to be the result of the dragon attempting to burrow his way out of bondage to the king. Another tale suggests that some of the excavations originated from deep below the hall, made by the the undergnomes known as the smurfnibblins in an attempt to locate the gold and silver of the king.
The first Lord of Wyrminghall enjoyed a long reign, as many as eighty winters by some accounts, before dying in bed of a bad sniffle. His wife ruled as regent for several years until their son returned home from fighting as a mercenary in France. The son of the original king and queen of Wyrminghall, George, ascended to the throne. Barely adequate as a warrior and terrible at everything else, the second Lord of Wyrminghall's reign was short and disastrous, with most of the Dragon-Knights dying in battle against marauders or seeking service with a more worthy liege. The second lord died without issue, leaving the tattered realm in the hands of his henchman Sir Suovetaurilius. Eventually the hall was abandoned completely. What remained of the Little Kingdom was absorbed into the Kingdom of Wessex. Much later, Wilchester the Mad, one of the founders of the Invisible School of Thaumaturgy at Christminster University, briefly took up residence in the now ruined hall. No one knows when the dragon left Wyrminghall to return to its native Wales, but all authorities agree the beast is long gone from the vicinity.
Lo! You have heard the story of the Dragon-Knights of old, now hearken to the tale of kind King Ægidius founded the realm known as the Little Kingdom. The former alehouse bully achieved this feat by subduing the great dragon Locheed and claiming its great hoard of treasure. He was able to achieve this victory with the aid of a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range. The king imprisoned his pet dragon in a great pit and built over it a great feast-hall, which became known as Wyrminghall, owing to the great wyrm contained below it. From his mighty hall the king founded Order of the Wyrm, a small order consisting of His Majesty and his nine bravest vassals. Although he paid nominal tribute to Alfred the Great, the lord of Wyrminghall ruled the Little Kingdom free of outside interference.
Despite the king's ineptitude as an administrator, the Little Kingdom flourished, owing in large part to the fear of neighboring kings. None dared make war against the realm, for fear that the last thing they saw would be a flash of green scales shimmering in the bright sunlight, followed by an enveloping gout of fire. Another factor in the success of the kingdom was the influence of Queen Matilda, wife of the Lord of Wyrminghall. More shrewd than her husband, she was also known as a witch. It was said that she first expanded the pits below Wyrminghall, adding a series of vaults to better protect the treasures of the realm and fiendish traps to guard the vaults as well as a series of dungeons and torture chambers for the benefit of local tax evaders. Some tunnels below the hall are said to be the result of the dragon attempting to burrow his way out of bondage to the king. Another tale suggests that some of the excavations originated from deep below the hall, made by the the undergnomes known as the smurfnibblins in an attempt to locate the gold and silver of the king.
The first Lord of Wyrminghall enjoyed a long reign, as many as eighty winters by some accounts, before dying in bed of a bad sniffle. His wife ruled as regent for several years until their son returned home from fighting as a mercenary in France. The son of the original king and queen of Wyrminghall, George, ascended to the throne. Barely adequate as a warrior and terrible at everything else, the second Lord of Wyrminghall's reign was short and disastrous, with most of the Dragon-Knights dying in battle against marauders or seeking service with a more worthy liege. The second lord died without issue, leaving the tattered realm in the hands of his henchman Sir Suovetaurilius. Eventually the hall was abandoned completely. What remained of the Little Kingdom was absorbed into the Kingdom of Wessex. Much later, Wilchester the Mad, one of the founders of the Invisible School of Thaumaturgy at Christminster University, briefly took up residence in the now ruined hall. No one knows when the dragon left Wyrminghall to return to its native Wales, but all authorities agree the beast is long gone from the vicinity.
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new Wyrminghall campaign, session 1
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| Wyrminghall before it fell into ruin |
The party had some difficulty gaining entrance to the hall, as Sir Ward accidentally pulled the massive front door down onto himself. The noise of this nonsense drew the attention of some wandering killer platypi, one
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| the new face of terror |
Once inside the hall the players the menaces of weak floorboards, time slippages, mysterious purple mists, and a monstrous domestic dispute in the room next door. The party came *super* close to a confrontation with the deadliest creature in the above ground portion of the dungeon with nary a clue that they were that near to their doom. They recovered a single treasure: an elaborately carved ivory box containing a matching self-grooming appropriate for a dwarf lass, which was promptly sold off.
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| Sorta what they found under the pillow-monster's bed |
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Dye-jobs and Doxies
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| There is no Volume II. |
"All types of crazy crap" does a pretty good job of describing the contents of the Ready Ref Sheets, now that I think about it. Imagine if you took the 1st edition DMG, removed everything but the charts and sprinkled it with extra pixie dust and nonsense. That's Ready Ref Sheets. It's so jam-packed with random dice charts, slim but potent rules and useful charts that I discover or rediscover something upon every reread.
This time I found a gem in the section on Women (pages 5 and 6). This part of the book is infamous for the small chart that allows one to calculate the bust, waist and hip measurements of female characters based upon their Charisma and Constitution scores. But that's not what is intriguing me today. Instead, I want to look at this chart:
Following this chart, nearly a quarter of all women in the City State of the Invincible overlord have fantastic hair colors, except for the 1% of them that are bald. Note that, as written, neither race nor age modify this chart. Furthermore, although Auburn is listed as a hair color, Red Sonja style full on redheads don't appear here.
The other column is even more amazing. 1% of the women in the City State are Newhon Ghouls/Carcosan Bone Women. The asterisks indicate that furred women also have cat tales (evidence of cat girls in a D&D manual circa 1978!), feathery women have wings (are they functional or vestigial? the note doesn't say), and scaly women are "half mermaid." Would that be one quarter fish, three-quarters woman? If this chart is to be believed, the demographics of the Wilderlands is pretty wild before you even take monsters and demihumans into account.
The situation with Tress Tints gets even more interesting when you look at the modifiers. One kind of woman you can encounter in the City State (via the gorgeous chart filling most of page 2) is "Daughter." Few details are given, but the intent is clearly for the PCs to try to make some time with one of these gals and get in trouble with dad. Daughter's are listed as taking a -30% penalty on the Tress Tints roll. That means a Daughter can only have Sable, Auburn, Blonde or Brunette hair, with Brunette being the most like color by a large margin. My read of this is that all the other listed colors are dye jobs. The fathers of these Daughters won't allow them to wear their hair silver or lilac, so they all end up going out with their natural hair color.
Since Houris (i.e. prostitute) roll a +30% on this chart, I think the intention was that only women of dubious reputation or daring fashionistas dye their hair in the City State. But here's the weirdest part: because a 00 is a result of Bald, any Tress Tint roll for a Houri of 70 or more will result in a bald sex worker.
What the heck is going on in the City State that 3 out of ten prostitutes shaves their head? Is this some kink that's popular with the local johns? Is shaving your head part of the initiation ceremony to join the Courtesan Guild, which according to the random guild chart on page 3, is a real thing? I don't know what the deal here is, but if your City State campaign does not include bald harlots then you are clearly doing it wrong.
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| Bubs says "Buy Ready Ref Sheets today!" |
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little rules
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| More like A Game of Kicking Ass |
Anyway, I started flipping through the rulebook because I always loved the probably untenable Post-Apocalypse in Space vibe of the early BattleTech fluff. The further along the game got, the more space operatic it seems to go, and the less I dug any part of it except the big robots blowing the bejeezus out of each other. The one-two punch of the Clan invasions and new rules in the Solaris boxed set soured us on the game. But before those came out we played the crap out of this game. I'm talking weekend long games with 36 mechs a side, plus whatever shorter games we could fit in during the week.
Which is why I surprised that as I flipped through the amazingly familiar rulebook that my eyes fell on a rule I do not remember. I've played and read a jillion games with a jillion rules, but the two rule sets I know best are Moldvay Basic D&D and this rulebook. To find a rule that I have no memory of whatsoever just flabbergasted me.
BattleTech normally uses a 2d6 hit location system to see what part of the mech you blasted. A roll of seven hits the torso. If your shot comes in from the right, it's a hit to the Right Torso, from the left its a hit to the Left Torso, and from the center arc the hit lands in the Center Torso. With me so far? A roll of snake-eyes on the same chart indicates the same locations hit, except that after the location listing it says "(Critical)". Critical Hits are the key to defeating a BattleMech. The normal way you get them is by blowing away all the armor in a location so you can start scoring internal damage. A roll of '2' on the hit location chart is the other way.
For the more common way of scoring crits (piercing the armor shell) you go to the Critical Hit Effects Table and roll another 2d6. 2-7 means no critical. An 8 or 9 means you get one roll on the location based critical chart for your target Mech (more rolling, yay!). A 10 or 11 gives you 2 rolls on the appropriate crit chart. A roll of 12 either scores 3 hits, or if the location is a limb, the limb is blown clean off. Sweet! One legged mechs are hilariously bad at hopping around the BattleField-I mean battlefield. And other mechs can pick
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| No, no, no. That's a Crusader from BattleTech. You're clearly mistaken. |
Anyway, prior to yesterday I would have bet cash money that a 2 on the hit location chart sends you to the same Critical Hit Effects Table, or as we usually called it, the Possible Critical Chart, to see if you inflicted 0, 1, 2, or 3 rolls on the appropriate Torso chart. It doesn't. A rule at the bottom of page 14 says you roll 2d6 as per normal. A 2-7 is no effect again, but an 8 or higher destroys the location. Note that destroying the Center Torso destroys the Mech.
The consequences of this rule is that 1 in 36 hits to the front or back of the mech runs an almost even chance (41 and change percent) of being killed with one shot. That doesn't sound like a lot but when you fire more than 36 shots per game and play regularly for several years, that ought to add up to a nice little pile of dead BattleMechs.
I've got a point here beyond complaining that I'm owed more kills than I am credited with in BattleTech. (So are my friends from those days, to be fair.) With the exception of super-elegant games like S. John Ross's Risus: The Anything RPG, little rules like this can fly under the radar. I run up against these all the time in various editions of D&D. The crummy helmet rule in AD&D1, the 1 in 6 chance of dropping anything held if you are surprised in Holmes Basic, the chance for anyone to find a trap in Moldvay are three examples off the top of my head. Forgetting any of them won't kill your game, but remembering them add a little spice to the game. Moral of the story #1: reread your rulebook once in a while. You might find something cool even in a game you've been familiar with for 3 decades.
The other thing going on here is the effect of the BattleTech reference sheet. The back page of the rulebook is all the key charts of the game. Early on my group made photocopies for easy reference. If we ever knew the special rule for snake-eyes hit locations we probably forgot it because the chart sheet didn't mention it. Meanwhile, the Possible Crit Chart is right on the same piece of paper. Why wouldn't we use it? Moral of the story #2: If you think a fiddly little rule is important, put it in your easy reference sheet or on your screen. For example, whenever I run a new edition of D&D, I make sure I have the specifics of Sleep on my screen or otherwise handy. I've never seen an official screen that has the rules for one spell on it, but my screen for my game needs it.
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