Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
Because my recent posts are all D&D related, D&D is taking over Caturday this week. Here’s my top ten list of cat-related D&D creatures. WordPress won’t allow me to use descending numbers, so in this case, my favorite will be #10.
Sea Cats. Basically, they’re mentioned because there aren’t enough cat-like monsters to fill this list. Kind of funny, though, so they beat out the semi-feline dragonne for the bottom spot.
Tabaxi. I’m at least curious about playing a a Tabaxi. As a cat person, I could probably make a good run of it, but I never have. Curiosities don’t get to land high on a list.
Displacer Beast. These guys are probably lower on my list than they would be on the lists of most players. I never had the fanboy reaction to them that so many others did. I’m not sure why. They just didn’t do it for me.
Tressyms. Clearly, I’m a cat person. What cat person wouldn’t want a flying kitty cat? But I’ve never played one because I don’t play wizards, and the only context in which I’ve seen a player have a tressym is as a familiar. As with Tabaxis, theory doesn’t rank as high as practice.
Wemic. Leonine centaurs? How wonderfully majestic. In Sumerian mythology, they were called Urmahlullus, and they appear to be good guys. To my recollection, they’ve been considered neutral in D&D with respect to their alignment, but that certainly doesn’t mean they can’t be played as helpful to a party of PCs.
Manticores. Not only do manticores appear in a few of my favorite old-school adventures (ah, nostalgia), but they pose an interesting tactical challenge. Manticores can fly, but even if you nullify that ability, they’re equally dangerous in melee.
Tembos. I’m taking some license here and calling these denizens of Athas cats (from the Dark Sun campaign setting). I have doubts that they are; however, much like hyenas are feliforms (catlike) that appear to be canines (doglike) because of the space they occupy in their ecosystem, the Tembo appears roughly like a smilodon. When I first took a look at the stat block in 4e, I knew they were trouble, but when the DM threw one at our party, I realized how little I actually knew. It was hard not to immerse yourself in the gaming moment considering the unspeakable horrors it committed against you. (Unspeakable Horror was a fitting name for one of its 4e powers.) You may have well been fighting a creature three of four levels higher. Sometimes you just want a fight, and this thing delivered.
Sphinxes. This creature is right up my alley. My favorite aspect to D&D is solving puzzles, and a sphinx is loaded with them. Encountering sphinxes and being able to circumvent their threat using my real-world wits makes for a great and memorable encounter.
Leonines. What’s better than meeting a sphinx? Playing one. Duh. Grexes was my a leonine (anthropomorphic lion) from the Mystic Odyssey of Theros campaign setting, and I presented him as someone with an obsession admiration of sphinxes. He often spoke in riddles, for example asking a greeter at the inn for “that which has four legs but cannot run.” It took a second, but the DM quickly realized I was asking for a table. Maybe Grexes should have made my list of my favorite TTRPG characters.
Snuggles. Snuggles was a jaguar, but more to the point was the name I gave to my 4e beastmaster ranger’s animal companion. That was a fun class to play. Super mobile, varied attacks, high damage output, and always able to self-flank using Snuggles, which means he hit fairly often. Snuggles was the shit.
Dungeons & Dragons, Mystic Odyssey of Theros, and Dark Sun are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to nor endorsed the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
Oh, shit. It’s on now. It’s a good thing my blog isn’t popular. I’d get hammered if this went viral.
What happens when a lawful good, mortal character picks up the Book of Vile Darkness? It burns, right? In 5e, she suffers disadvantage. In 4e, she grants combat advantage and has a penalty to attacks and saves. What happens when a neutral evil, mortal character holds it? Nothing, right? Well, that makes no sense. If the book is covered in acid, radiating electricity, or otherwise sending off harmful waves, it should hurt anyone who holds it that isn’t resistant to the damage. But it doesn’t. Why? Because what it’s radiating is evil, and in fantasy RPGs, law, chaos, good, and evil aren’t just philosophies. Philosophies can’t burn you.
Though philosophers can.
Instead, law, chaos, good, and evil are forces of nature, just like electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. As Lord Gygax wrote, “it is very difficult for a character to voluntarily switch from one [alignment] to another. . .” (1e PHB, 34). This shouldn’t be hard for a D&D player to accept. We already accept the notion of the elements — air, earth, fire, and water — as fundamental aspects of nature, which is terrible science. Alignment can easily fit into that same approach. It’s an even stronger position to take considering that, in a fantasy setting, gods are fueled by prayers. These alignment forces provide a medium through which prayers and deeds fuel the power of the gods. Accordingly, you should expect the gods to engage in a divine arms race, infusing their mortal races with alignment energies, which results in an instinct to worship their respective creators. In other words, it makes perfect sense that Gruumsh would infuse orcs with both chaos and evil, and make them in his own image. Exceptions aside, who else would orcs worship?
Stories
Many wonderful stories that permeate not only RPGs, but our culture in general, are often a direct result of, and deeply intertwined with, this idealized approach to alignment. I understand that some of those stories have troubling themes (e.g., Sleeping Beauty was raped), but there’s no reason that such themes must exist as part of this approach. That’s a matter of story only. However, I will say that sometimes you need a story to be extreme in order for the audience to appreciate it.
A Few Problems Remain
If the point of keeping alignments is the stories, you have to make sure alignment doesn’t negatively impact the story. I see that happen when, for example, every player safely assumes that every monster they meet is evil.
Even if 99.99% of, e.g., hobgoblins are evil, the percentage of evil hobgoblins the characters actually meet should be much lower. Otherwise, every encounter with hobgoblins becomes as “kick the door down, kill everyone, and steal their shit” encounter. That’s too easy and boring.
So, even assuming you accept my position that alignments should remain, and you make sure a high percentage of exceptions exist among the humanoid NPCs the characters meet, there are two more problems that yet remain, and they have nothing to do with the social controversies surrounding it.
First, it sometimes seems that everyone has a different definition of each of the alignments. Over on Facebook, someone recently asked, “Just for fun, what alignment(s) suit Indiana Jones?” Here are the answers:
Unless “awesome” and “bitchen” are synonyms for evil, they all agree Indy isn’t neutral evil or chaotic evil. Well, that doesn’t exactly narrow it down. Without agreed-upon definitions for these terms, it’s hard to deal with them. Lord Gygax acknowledged this.
Naturally, there are all variations and shades of tendencies within each alignment. The descriptions are generalizations only.
PHB, 33.
This suggests, as do the explanations given in that Facebook post, that part of the problem is that everyone has their own opinion as to where the line is drawn between two alignments. Several of the 125 answers drew the boundaries around some alignments more narrowly than others. That is, they’d cite a single instance of Indy going off alignment as proof that he wasn’t of that alignment at all. For example, one person said chaotic good because Indy would occasionally break a law. Even a lawful good character would break a rule once in a blue moon, but “occasionally” breaking a rule sounds like neutral good to me. Chaotic good is a disrespect for all but the most important laws (e.g., murder), and even those were flexible. This poster apparently wouldn’t tolerate a single rule break before designating Indy chaotic good.
Maybe these will help.
I’m not sure this problem is solvable. Both 2e (IIRC) and 3e were reasonably thorough in their discussion of alignment, yet we still have this problem. However, we just need the problem solved on a per-table basis. That can be done at a session zero and as the campaign proceeds. So, for the sake of argument, let’s say everyone at a particular table fully agrees on how a character of a particular alignment should act under a particular set of circumstances. This leads us to the second problem: Some people don’t play alignment properly even where we all agree on what that alignment demands of the character. Some players choose an alignment for some mechanical benefit, but play the character as a different alignment simply because it’s more fun, or perhaps to take advantage of a different mechanical benefit. I can think of far worse things players have done, but you lose something from the gaming experience for yourself and others if you play that way.
The Solution to These Problems
These problems can be (have been?) mitigated in two ways: 1) lessening the mechanical benefit of alignment forces; and 2) having a robust reputation system. If a lawful good paladin holds the Book of Vile Darkness, then it should burn him and provide a mechanical penalty, because that’s a penalty that applies to only a small number of related encounters. The moment alignment has a larger impact on mechanics than these exceptional cases, players have an incentive to claim an alignment that they won’t actually play. Still, any incentive at all could be a problem, so we’re not out of the woods yet.
The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment.
1e DMG, 23
The other solution is a robust system of reputation. 4e’s D&D Encounters had such a system, but it wasn’t as strong as I’m suggesting. At any moment where the players are going to increase their reputation, a DM must disclose to a player that a given act will have appropriate consequences. They will be seen either as someone to rely on or someone not to be trusted depending on what choice they make. Some choices don’t carry any ethical weight to them but still add to a character’s reputation. Thus, characters accumulate good, bad, and neutral reputation points. The total number of points they accumulate determine their reputation (i.e., how well-known they are), but the difference between their good and bad points determines how certain institutions and organizations will view them. If you’re a thief with more bad points than good, the ruling noble won’t trust you, but the Thieves’ Guild will help you out. Alignment and reputation can work well together, and I see no pressing need to omit alignment from RPGs, but if you do omit alignment, you should certainly replace alignment with reputation.
Dwindling down to Nothing
As more elements are removed from the game, there won’t be anything else left to play. Alignment is yet another fine idea that’s about to be removed because people are connecting a fantasy world to the real world. The last time I dealt with this point of view, the Satanic Panic kicked my ass. The panicked saw the mythological elements of D&D as competition for their own religious views, which meant they were taking both mythology and games far too seriously. This campaign against alignment shares the same mentality, taking a game too seriously and treating it as you would the real world. The last time I checked, there are no goblins running around my neighborhood, and evil isn’t anything more than a state of mind, so there’s no need to eliminate many powerful stories from our arsenal. If this trend continues, future generations won’t be able to tell any stories at all. I’d rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There. I’ve spoken my peace. I’ll never publicly discuss this alignment bullshit again.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
If there were a subtitle to this post, it would be, “1st Edition AD&D; where logic goes to die.” I think this post exists just so I can reinforce this crazy rule in my brain, but perhaps many of you reading this have never played 1e (or have forgotten it), so it’s still useful to illustrate a point.
The notion of Armor Class Ratings (“ACR“) adjustments is fascinating and logical.
The idea is that some weapons are better suited to attack specific types of armor than others. For example, the long sword is probably the best weapon a Fighter could carry for a number of reasons, but a morning star works better against a shield (+2 v. +1). Why? Perhaps because when the morning star is blocked, it’s bludgeoning force can transfer through the shield to damage the enemy’s arm. Similarly, a footman’s military pick (+2) can better find the gaps in plate mail than a battle axe (-2). These advantages are reflected in attack bonuses and penalties against ACRs. What do I mean by ACR? You’re going to be sorry I asked myself that.
Your ACR (a.k.a., base AC, AC type) is based on a chart provided below. It ranges from 2 to 10, though in Unearthed Arcana that range is extended down to 0. This is a number distinct from your actual Armor Class value (“AC“). So, if, for example, you’re wearing plate mail, your ACR is 3. Add a shield to that, and it becomes 2. The ACR is the AC the armor would grant on its own before any other adjustments are made; therefore these numbers are fixed as long as you’re using that armor. Your actual AC can be different due to a bonus or penalty granted to you by your Dexterity score, magical influence, or circumstances. So, the Fighter in plate mail has an ACR of 3, but could have an AC of -1. Your ACR, however, is the basis for the weapon-based attack bonuses and penalties for your enemies.
Type of Armor
ACR
None
10
Shield only
9
Leather armor // padded armor
8
Leather + shield // padded armor + shield // studded leather // ring mail
7
Studded leather + shield // ring mail + shield // scale mail
6
Scale mail + shield // chain mail
5
Chain mail + shield // splint mail // banded mail
4
Splint mail + shield // banded mail + shield // plate mail
3
Plate mail + shield // field plate armor
2
Field plate armor +shield // full plate armor
1
Full plate armor + shield
0
Data from PHB, page 36. Data in italics from Unearthed Arcana, page 26.
The Downsides
But here’s the thing. First, it’s crazy complicated, both on the DM end and the player end. It’s yet another layer of rules to apply to combat that, sadly, isn’t even included on the Dungeon Master’s Screen. Moreover, players playing fighters have yet another factor in picking what weapons to carry around, and they must be able to think on the fly as to what weapon to use in any given scenario. For example, as stated above, almost every fighter is going to have a longsword (-1 v. plate mail) or battle axe (-2 v. plate mail) as their primary weapon, but will also need a dagger (-3 v. plate mail) or short sword (-2 v. plate mail) for close-quarters combat, and some form of ranged weapon in case there’s a lot of distance between them and their enemies, the best against plate mail being the long bow and heavy crossbow (+0 v. plate mail). Because of ACR, the fighter will also want a footman’s flail, military pick, or two-handed sword (each +2 v. plate mail) strapped to their back in case they run into an enemy wearing plate mail, but they also want a spear in case they charge, or are charged by, an enemy. Did I mention that a Fighter is proficient in only 4 weapons until 4th level (PHB, 37)? Have we gone over encumbrance rules yet (PHB, 101)?
This won’t happen unless you hit him with the correct weapon.
Second, the basis of the rule is logic, but that logic quickly breaks down. As you can see from the chart, the base AC for splint mail and a shield is the same base AC for plate mail without a shield. So why would the morning star react to both the same way? Without the shield, the morning star shouldn’t get any sort of bonus, so as complicated as this rule is, it should be even more complicated, instead tying ACR bonuses and penalties to the specific armor used rather than on the numerical AC they inherently give. That is, instead of saying a morning star grants a +2 against any combination of armor that would, unadjusted, grant an AC of 2, the rules should say that a morning star grants +2 against any opponent relying on a shield regardless of what else they’re wearing. Maybe. If I really thought about it, an even more complicated rule could be appropriate. Fortunately/unfortunately, logic cedes ground to abstraction, because otherwise, well . . . .
Don’t forget to tune in next week for psionics! Maybe. I doubt it.
So Why Am I Going Use Them?
First, I want the full 1e experience, so I’m going to use this in my game at least to start. Second, I’m optimistic that this won’t be much of an issue because this applies only to enemies using armor. Monsters that don’t wear armor aren’t considered to have ACRs (DMG, page 28). Their AC is what’s needed to properly balance the system. At least that’s what the creators claimed.
Because of my 23-year hiatus from D&D, I completely missed 2nd Edition D&D. I’ve played three sessions of it since returning to the game, once for two hours, and then twice in successive weekends as part of a single adventure (probably about 5 hours each session IIRC). In the first of those latter two sessions, the DM (Erik) game my bard a wand of magic missiles. He randomly rolled the number of charges for me, and it was ridiculously high. There’s no way I was ever going to run out of magic missiles. So, every time I tried to use my rapier, cast a non-healing spell, or use any non-standard attack, the entire table said, “No! Use the wand!” Thereafter, the game bored me, and Erik actually apologized. He thought he was doing a nice thing but wasn’t thinking about how it would impact the way I like to play.
ACRs make things a slight bit more interesting. A party may insist that the Fighter always swing a longsword, but sometimes it won’t be the best option. As a player, swinging a morning star isn’t very different — roll a d20 to hit, and if you do, roll damage — but there are other useful things a character can do in combat. If the longsword isn’t as valuable as grappling, knocking a bookshelf over, or swinging from a chandelier to kick an enemy prone, then a Fighter will no longer be a one-trick pony. Combat modifications like ACR will leave a player looking for the right tool for the job. Assuming the system turns out to be workable, wouldn’t that be more fun?
That brief shot of his left eyeball is solid gold.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
I don’t think this post will go over well with the professional game designers. Or the amateur ones. I’m being completely unreasonable, but professionals should always listen to their most demanding clients, right? Well, that’s me. I just want to play, and the quickest way to do that is to play a rules-light system. However, once I’ve got the hang of it, I want a rules-heavy system thorough enough not to leave itself open to conflicting interpretations.
I want my cake and to eat it too.
Why So Tense?
One of the tensions in game design is whether an RPG should be rules heavy or rules light. 1e is certainly rules heavy, at least when it comes to a combat system that micromanages so much. There’s a huge disadvantage to that: Learning such rules is a barrier to entry for new players. I get that point of view, especially when you have a system like 1e that requires you to jump from page to page, or even book to book, to get the complete rule (made easier by the hard work of David Prata mentioned in yesterday’s post on Initiative). Some game designers have tried to improve on this by simplifying processes, further abstracting how the system deals with the topic at hand. Well, I think it’s time for some reification.
Whiny Players
Here’s a grossly paraphrased conversation I’ve had since returning to D&D in 2005. In my experience, this is by no means an unusual conversation to have in this or other contexts.
Me (3-5 times while describing the scene): Are you sure you don’t want to do anything else? Table: Nope. Me (placing the minis on the table): Okay, you’re surprised. Table: How? We had a lookout. Me: I asked you several times if you had anything else to tell me, and you never mentioned it. Table: But we always have a lookout. We’re adventurers. We know to do that. Me: Well, they’re ambush predators. They know how to sneak. Table: Show me in the rules where we must be surprised in this instance. Me: The rules can’t possibly provide every example possible, so no such rule exists. Table: Then we can’t be surprised. Me: The very fact that surprise rules exist cuts against your argument. Table: You’re a terrible DM. You don’t know the rules.
Truthfully, I am a terrible DM, but this isn’t an example of that.
1e Combat
The 1e combat system is rules heavy. Yes, it’s spread out over different pages of the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but that’s a failure of execution, not concept. I’m discussing concept in this post, so let’s stay focused on that.
The system does two things that I absolutely love but haven’t appeared in D&D in some time. First, surprise is handled by a simple die roll in almost all combats. There are a few things that negate a poor roll, but in general, roll a 1 or 2 on a d6, and you’re surprised. Second, the distance between the parties at the precise moment of engagement is handled through a separate die roll. The rule takes into consideration practical matters such as line of sight, whether the encounter takes place in a 20’ x 20’ room or outdoors on a flat plane of low grass, etc., but no one can say that they were surprised because the DM didn’t properly set the scene or otherwise withheld important information, and they also can’t argue as to whether they were in striking distance at the moment they were surprised. The baseline is that these dice rolls govern, so the burden shifts to the players to point to something they expressly said they were doing, or circumstances of the scene, that justify ignoring or modifying those dice rolls.
So, should all RPGs be designed like this? Maybe not. A ruleset covering all the bases is going to be long and complicated, which can slow down the game even if you know the rules. Even worse, beginners will face a barrier to entry. They’ll take one look at David’s work and say, “Twenty pages? Nope. That’s too much to read just to get to sit down at the gaming table.” Is there some way to avoid that?
Beginning v. Advanced Systems
A possible solution to the problem of the barrier to entry is to go backwards. 1e published the Basic Set (followed by some others) that served this purpose, and it was reasonably compatible with the Advanced Dungeons & DragonsPHB and DMG (what I’ve been calling 1e). I never played this, but I seem to remember them having noticeable mechanical differences from 1e, which turned me off to it. This was probably arrogant because, believe it or not, when I first started playing “Blue Box” AD&D, we didn’t use ability scores at all. I don’t remember how that played out and can’t even guess how it worked, but I remember a conversation with a kid named Louis, who explained ability scores to me in 6th grade, which was two years after I started playing. The point is that you could abstract what you wanted, and once comfortable, drill down to a more complicated but well-defined system, but that was haphazard. Game designers should instead provide the roadmap by designing a combat system, then removing complexities from it in such a way that it maintains the balance between the two sides. What’s left is the “basic” system suitable for new players, existing players that prefer a rules-light system, or any player looking for an occasional quick and easy combat. Modern RPGs create alternate rules (e.g., methods for ability score generation), but that’s not the same thing.
A favorite RPG of mine, the FASA Star Trek RPG, did this quite well for starship combat. There was a basic subsystem and an advanced subsystem. The core mechanic was the same, with the base system dividing values by 3 (rounding down), but the advanced subsystem was more than just larger scalar values. It also introduced a more complicated means for bridge officers to affect combat. Not only did this eliminate a barrier to entry into the game, but I suspect that in order for this to work, the design methodology necessarily facilitated either subsystem being played as a board game. That opened the game to a lot of Star Trek fans who somehow thought RPGs were too nerdy. (I’m not kidding.) The rules were divided across five, short handbooks, all contained within the game’s box set.
There Are Still Concerns
Execution aside, publishing multiple subsystems, or even just one excessively complicated one, is not without its concerns. Players don’t want to purchase a nonnegligible amount of product just to move from one level of abstraction to the next. To allay this concern, the core rulebooks should disclose alternate subsystems even if an introductory box set exists. This leads to at least three other issues. The first issue is that game play could be slowed to a crawl if the rules get too complicated, even if you know exactly how they work. This could result in your advanced system almost never being used, making them a wasted effort. Ergo, there will still have to be trade-offs on that advanced system in order for it to have practical value. The second issue is that the core rulebooks could get too long if there are too many alternate subsystems across the entire game system. For both issues, game designers must pick their battles when deciding which rules to abstract/simplify. Perhaps that’s what’s raising my concerns here. Maybe they’ve picked their battles, and I just don’t like the ones they’ve picked, or maybe I don’t even perceive the battles they’ve won and therefore don’t appreciate them. I just know what gives me the most headaches as a DM and looking at all the PHBs and DMGs I’ve used, most have a little room to spare. Also, this is why I’m suggesting only two subsystems and only for combat, where one subsystem is just a compatible extension of the other.
For the record, the third issue, which for now I’ll call the Head of the Table writing method for now, will be discussed in a later post.
It’s All About Me
Let me know when I can stop apologizing.
Believe it or not, I know it’s a lot to ask of game designers to incorporate a second, simplified ruleset for combat, especially considering that my opinion may be a minority one. However, I suspect it would cut down on tension at the table, and designing in-game conflict resolution systems is the primary function of the game designer. Campaign settings are nice, but many people write their own. Not many write their own combat systems, and most can’t do that well. If any system is appropriate for division into a beginner and advanced system, it’s combat. So why not have your cake and eat it too? You could appeal to both the rules-light and rules-heavy crowds, broadening your customer base.
In general, I prefer a thorough system. Considering the conversation above, you can see why. Lightening the rules has led to a notion of DM empowerment in order to make the game playable, but it creates far more “us v. DM” tension than I enjoy at my table regardless of whether I’m behind the DM screen. The conversation above couldn’t occur often if we were playing 1e. I could point to the dice on the table, and that’d largely be the end of it. The biggest problem I’ve faced as a DM is the fact that many players don’t like to lose. By “lose,” I mean fail to solve a puzzle, miss a major piece of treasure, take a single hit point of damage, or get surprised. Just try to kill the average player’s character, and you’ll see how angry they can get. But the dice don’t lie. Thorough rules lead to predictable, and thus fair, results. Though it failed in clarity, 1e had the right idea. The FASA Star Trek RPG got it right. None of that would ever stop a DM from customizing those rules to suit their needs, especially if elements of the advanced subsystem were presented as attachable modules to the basic subsystem. I suspect multiple attachable modules would be harder to implement while maintaining balance, but 1e armor class adjustments, weapon speeds, and weapon lengths were effectively detachable rules that many people ignored, and the game was still playable. I’m looking for a well-defined subsystem that provides a clearer roadmap.
*sigh*
Hey, you chose game design as a career. You have no choice but to try to make me happy.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
Initiative in 1e starts off simply but doesn’t stay there. Each side gets a single roll, but each character deals with that roll differently. Characters may add bonuses or penalties based on their Dexterity scores and, if a character has multiple attacks per round, staggers those attacks. For example, if a character attacks twice per round, and its enemy attacks once per round, then then character attacks first and third in the round. Maybe. It depends in part on surprise. The net effect is that, unlike every other RPG I’ve ever played, initiative affects combat resolution but isn’t dispositive of it. Instead, other things largely determine combat order, and where there’s a tie, initiative breaks that tie. I was so confused by the writing that I posted to various social media outlets looking for clarification. Even worse, rules aren’t presented in a couple of paragraphs under an appropriate header. Instead, the rules for initiative are found in two different places in the Players Handbook, and elsewhere in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. This isn’t uncommon. Optional rules are in Unearthed Arcana. You really have to do a lot of research just to get the rule for initiative, and that’s just a small part of combat as a whole.
To get clarity, I often go to the Facebook and MeWe hiveminds. Unsurprisingly, there was only a sliver of consensus in the responses I received from my question on initiative, so other people’s interpretation of the initiative rules as written still left me confused. In the end, here was the best response I received from Pete on Facebook (referencing the entire ruleset):
The rules are crazy complex, have some bizarrely overpowered aspects, and tons of exceptions and unexplained aspects. I found it best to take what I liked, toss out what I didn’t, write up my initiative system on my game wiki so everyone understood it, and play like that.
This makes sense, except there are some real issues with rewriting initiative. Many spells have casting times given in segments, so you can’t ignore those divisions of a turn unless you want to rewrite a lot of 1e rules. No thanks. Fortunately, David Prata did a lot of research and work to clarify and summarize the entire combat system, complete with references in the footnotes. The linked document seems like the kind of thing I’d write — it’s a 20-page outline with footnotes — and it makes the system a lot easier to understand.
Why is this a big deal to me?
My predictive text just suggested "DM" after I typed "totalitarian." Funny thing is: the next word I was going to type was "DM." #DnD#rpg
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) July 24, 2021
True story.
Among the many reasons I’ve stopped playingD&D, I don’t like DMs that treat the game like it’s their table, and not our table. I never intentionally DM like that, which means, in part, the rules should be open and understandable to everyone.
So, my current plan is to stick with initiative as is. Once I get the hang of it, it should be fine. However, tomorrow I’ll discuss some other aspects of the combat system, and the push and pull between strict and flexible systems. As with languages, 1e has some really good things to offer that modern game designers have left behind.
Last Saturday, I did something that I rarely do: I took a nap. It’s probably been about a year since I did that, and I haven’t taken naps more frequently than that since college. I also did something else that I hadn’t done since September: I went to the movies. I used to do that almost every Sunday, but with the pandemic, that’s non longer common practice.
I think these two things are connected. I took a nap, felt revitalized, and figured I see a movie at a late hour. I bought a ticket to Old and almost immediately regretted it. I wanted to see The Green Knight first and didn’t realize it had been released. Fortunately, Old ended right about the the Green Knight‘s start time. With previews, I didn’t miss a thing.
The Green Knight dragged at times, but I’ve come to expect that from movies about legend and mythology. We sometimes say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that’s certainly true of a movie. As a result, most myths can be told in 45-60 minutes on film. Filmmakers have two choices: borrow material from other myths and legends or fill in the story with creations of their own. I usually see the former, but in this case, it was the latter as far as I could tell. If they were borrowing from specific myths and legends, I didn’t recognize them. This is where it dragged, but for an apologist for such things, I still enjoyed it.
This also means that it’s probably not the story you know beyond the broad strokes. Besides the original filler, the filmmaker took some liberties with the story, but this can hardly be considered inappropriate. From generation through generation, Arthurian legend is essentially a collection of fan fiction. It appears to have changed with almost every telling of a story. Who’s to say that the filmmaker is wrong for doing their own thing?
The cast was great, BTW.
I give it a B+, but remember that comes from an apologist. YMMV. Old was good too, but I like everything M. Night Shamalamadingdong does, even including the much-maligned The Village. So yeah, YMMV.
So, now that this is over with, let’s gear back up for my continuation of my 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragonsrevisit by asking why the hell haven’t I seen the Green Knight appear in any official D&D text after the original Deities and Demigods? Even in that source, there was very little provided by the description. What villain could provide a greater hook than one whose villainy is merely teaching you a valuable lesson? FYI, A24 created an RPG based on the movie, which they released about a year ago. Googling it provides several reviews of it from CBR.com, Polygon, and others.
I didn’t think there’d be a post-credit scene in a movie like The Green Knight, so I left too early. Oops.
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, it’s nothing silly, but it’s someone else’s work.
I ran across a story dispelling the misconception that Kirk and Uhura’s kiss on Star Trek was the first interracial kiss on television. The writing is hardly academic, always looking to qualify every sentence with the sentiment, “It shouldn’t matter!” which is obvious to everyone. In doing so, the author dilutes the importance of that kiss. Not only was it an important moment in television history, but also an important moment in United States history, taking the next significant step. TV shows can’t often pull that off, but this is Star Trek I’m talking about.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes by me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
This post covers three topics, but the division of labor is short.
Division of Labor
I’m a controller!
Over on Facebook, someone replied to one of my 1e posts with the following:
“I find the biggest difference in 1st Ed is how essential the thief class is, because there is no option for anyone else learning their skills. In later editions, it was relatively easy to work rogue skills like stealth, climbing, and trap detection into other classes.”
— Rick
That’s the entire quote, and I didn’t think to ask whether he’s saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it’s a good thing. I also suspect Rick has never played 4th Edition D&D (“4e“). 🙂 4e went out of its way to make the division of labor clear by identifying each class as a defender, leader, striker, or controller. 1e inherently did the same because there were only a few classes (some with subclasses) that were noticeably different. I prefer this because in order for a character to shine, a character needs a specific set of circumstances that it, and not others, was well suited to address. A clear division of labor inevitably leads to moments where one character has a chance to shine above all others. That’s the very essence of heroism. Bravo, 1e, but for systems with far more classes, expressly stated categories may be helpful.
Units
And now it’s time for something completely uncontroversial: 1e was a tangled mess of confusing units. In combat situations, a character with movement rate of 6″ could move 6′ in a segment.
Wait, what? Why? Why not just say 6′? I’m pretty sure I know the answer. These guys were used to using rulers to measure distance on their dining room tables, and as RPGs evolved, the terminology didn’t. Maybe 1″ grid maps didn’t exist yet, but damn that was confusing to 9-year-old me, and why would the nonexistence of 1″ grid maps matter for theater of the mind anyway?
Next we get to outdoor movement. There, a movement rate of 6″ meant that a character could could move 6 miles in “one-half day’s trekking.”
Kirk could trek faster.
Okay, this is exposing an elegance in the math, so Lord Gygax is pulling me back in. The same movement rate is applied in a uniform rate to different situations even if the precise choices defy logic.
Spock does not approve of defying logic.
That makes things easier but still doesn’t justify using a quotation mark instead of an apostrophe. We’re bound to associate the movement rate with what we expect the character to move, rather than what we expect the player will measure with his ruler. Not that it would matter, because indoors, 1″ = 10 feet, whereas outdoors 1″ = 10 yards (PHB, page 39).
Wait, what? Why? You’ve lost me again, Lord Gygax. I get it. You want to say that the range of a bow is always 210″ even though the indoors made archery more difficult, but handling the numbers this way is counter-intuitive. Just say that the range of a bow is 210′ indoors and 630′ outdoors, because that’s exactly what you mean. Even wargamers shouldn’t have a hard time adjusting to this. By converting everything from inches to feet, what do we lose? We lose a uniform statement as to distance. That is, 210″ will no longer be the range of the bow in all cases. However, I could live with that. There’s a reason this was abandoned by . . . everyone, I think.
Time
In adventuring below ground, a turn in a dungeon lasts 10 minutes . . . . In combat, the turn is further divided into 10 melee rounds, or simply rounds. Rounds are subdivided into 10 segments. . . .
PHB, page 39
I really don’t miss this. When you ask the DM whether it’s time for you to go, what do you say? “Is it my turn yet?” How about we just call each time a player acts as its turn (an abstraction), and, since we’re going around the table taking our turns, a full set of turns a round (6 seconds, because in truth they’re all going at the same time, so it’s all crammed into 6 seconds)? Ah, but then we’d have to call 10 minute periods 10 rounds! It appears Lord Gygax didn’t believe we could multiply or divide by 10 in our heads. Well, we can, so now we do. Besides, who cares about 10 minutes when you’re in a battle that usually takes less than 5 minutes to resolve?
Nevertheless, as I’ll discuss in my next post on 1e, segments are deeply embedded into the fabric of the game. We can’t get rid of them without a major rewrite of the rules. I, for one, am not willing to do that, and they don’t ruin the game for me.
Gratuitous Star Trek >> Star Wars image.
This post was clearly about weaknesses of 1e rather than its strengths. It’s impossible to write or talk about any system without landing on its weaknesses. 1e clearly had more of the former than the latter, but that’s exactly what you should expect from a pioneer.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes by me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
In light of yesterday’s post on the inconvenience caused by having multiple uses of the word, “level,” I purposely added a fifth in the title of this post.
When I say, “dead levels,” I’m referring to ability scores. Point buy has become the favored means to determine your base ability scores, but it always results in a stray +1 that in turn results in one odd ability score. This, of course, seems like a wasted value. I know my cleric is wiser than yours, but it doesn’t play out in any meaningful way. That can be a mild source of frustration adding to a chorus of frustrating sacred cows of game design. Interestingly enough, AD&D does a better job avoiding this problem despite a greater range of valid player character scores. The solution: Bring dead levels to life.
Okay, enough calling it a “dead level.” Instead, I’ll borrow from grammar and refer to it as a “dangling ability point.”
“Dead level” it is!
Some Oppportunities
One such opportunity to bring a dead level to life is with languages. As I said recently, I want to see players have the opportunity to speak an amount of languages beyond common, and a dead level in intelligence is the perfect place to add some. Very simply, if your character winds up with a 13 in Intelligence, they know an extra language. If your character winds up with a 15 intelligence, they know yet another extra language, or maybe two. This would apply at character creation, but depending on your design philosophy could also apply when a character increases their Intelligence through leveling up or magic. Because these adjustments occur during downtime, it’s not a burden on the player. All it does is give the player a further opportunity to flesh out their character.
Another opportunity is with poison resistance. A dead level of Constitution could grant a character a very minor poison resistance that stacks with all other sources of poison resistance. This wouldn’t be enough to create a huge mechanical difference, but it technically would create a mechanical boon that logically follows from the nature of the higher Constitution score. It remains more flavor that mechanics, clearly distinguishing the character from other characters for which other choices were made.
These two examples show how a player can really flesh out their character concept, and how the relationship between mechanics and character concept can be reciprocal. For example, a player’s character concept could be that of a dwarven ranger with a tragic backstory involving giants. Ergo, the ranger’s favored enemy is giant. Moreover, the player boosts the ranger’s con score because a adding poison resistance to a dwarven woodsman (that sounds weird) makes sense. However, the ranger now has one point to place in another ability. The player puts it in Strength, and suddenly the ranger has a small amount of necrotic resistance. That feeds the backstory, giving the player the idea that the leader of the giants was vampiric. On the other hand, perhaps the player is playing in Ravenloft or otherwise knows that the campaign will use a larger than average number of undead. In that case, the needs of the campaign can be fulfilled by the player’s choice as to where to place the extra point. This isn’t a novel idea; it’s just one more opportunity for it to manifest.
Still Simple
As I said, neither of these two design elements make character creation or management significantly more difficult, but they give players yet another opportunity to fine tune their character designs. Not everyone agrees. I had a too-brief argument with Stephen Radney-MacFarland about this last February at Winter Fantasy. It got sidetracked by other attendees of the Zoom room long before either of us could state our positions with any level of detail. Maybe this post will rekindle that argument.
Where I suspect Stephen and I might agree is that ability scores certainly shouldn’t range from 3 to 18. That range originates from the need to create a perfect bell curve for random ability generation, and 3d6 was the only way to do that. Even D&D itself acknowledges how foolish that is, having all but eliminated scores below 8 as being possible for PCs (neither point buy nor standard arrays allow for it, and 4d6 drop 1 is a conscious attempt to make it rarer). WotC probably keeps the scores in that range for historical reasons and for allowing random generation to still be a thing. It certainly allows us to acknowledge that tigers are smarter than spiders. None of those reasons are compelling justifications to me. So, D&D scores actually run from 8 to 18, which means they should run from 0 to 10. For the record, I hate negative ability score modifiers, so I’d prefer 10 to 18, which maps to 0 to 8, but the math for a different game system may have a more appropriate range. The point is to go from 0 to X rather than 7.5 to the square root of 300. If you really want random generation of those numbers to follow a bell curve, force it through use of a table that maps a d100 roll to an ability score. I haven’t worked out the math on this yet, but instead you could add 1d8-1 (treating negatives as 0) to 8. This would on average generate numbers (15, 14, 12, 10, 10, 8) that could almost maps to the standard array from 5e (15, 14, 13, 10, 10, 8), but would be weighted too much towards the middle. Being able to freely transfer points among the scores would fix that, but if we’re doing that, just roll a 2d12 to generate a random pool of points that can be added to starting ability scores of 7 across the board. I’m certain we could work out a better die roll than these.
A Hippie’s Bad Idea
Stephen’s solution to dead levels is to eliminate them altogether. Your ability bonus is your ability score, such that your Strength is (+)2, your Dexterity is (+)1, and so on. This not only eliminates the dead level but also eliminates the math you have to do to calculate your ability score bonus. Dragon Age RPG uses this method, and I enjoyed that game. It also limits the difference between characters’ ability bonuses to 5 or 6 (I’m not sure what the range is in DelveRPG), which is a good thing I’ll address in a future post. Finally, if Stephen wants to give poison resistances, languages, etc. based on ability scores, he can still do that. However, that math isn’t that hard, and once you resurrect those dead levels, you’re creating a solution for a problem that no longer exists. I also suspect that most players would prefer a range from 0 to 10 more than they would 0 to 5 (or 6). That would make players feel that there’s a greater distinction between the characters, and filling in dead levels certainly feeds both that perception and reality without screwing up the math.
Ultimately, I suspect either way works just as well as the other, so Stephen shouldn’t be rushing to redesign DelveRPG. But don’t be too kind to Stephen. The man is a liar. I never said I didn’t appreciate Desperadoes Under the Eaves. I just said that it wasn’t my favorite Warren Zevon song, and as a lawyer, how could it be? Dirty hippie.
I told you I was an asshole.
Follow me on Twitter @gsllc Follow Stephen through Delve RPG @DelveRPG
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to nor endorsed the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Play What You Want 