I wrote about a new concept to map onto the term alignment some years ago here: https://spellsandsteel.blogspot.com/2015/12/alignments-that-arent-stupid.html. I wanted to write a little about using this system in action in a recent game.
The TL;DR of the above system is using the concept of alignment to denote who the NPC looks to for their opinions, and what is guiding their actions. Not Law or Chaos, or Lawful Good, or anything like that, but rather an alignment of "Reeve" (the character likes and supports the Reeve of the village, and agrees with them about most things), or perhaps "Outlaws".
What I've added to this system recently is the concept of true (or secret) alignment and open alignment - characters can act in public, or to strangers, like they are of one alignment (say, Reeve), but in private, they secretly are aligned with the Outlaws.
The setting is a village in Nottinghamshire in about 1347. The King is away in France, and in his absence, the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire (that perennial villain), is abusing his power. When randomly generating the families in the village, I added a line to the random generator which generated their alignment in the sense described above (with a chance of a second, secret alignment). Children under 18 didn't get opinions, but older children did (with a higher-weighted chance of having one of their parent's opinions).
So, when the players were canvassing their neighbours, looking for support, I would have entries for the village households like this:
Head of Household: William, 37; Sheriff (secretly Outlaws)
Partner: Alice, 34; King (secretly Sheriff)
Children: John, 14; Jane, 7
Right away, we have drama. William and Alice openly support the Sheriff and the King, so there's conflict there, but secretly William supports the Outlaws (who are working against the Sheriff) and Alice secretly supports the Sheriff (the natural enemies of the Outlaws). Maybe William is just sympathetic, perhaps because the Sheriff has wronged him or his friends, or maybe he actively aids the Outlaws with food or weapons. If the players can gain his trust, he could put them in touch with the Outlaws.
But Alice, who in public talks about the King's justice and how things will be put right when he returns, secretly supports the Sheriff. Maybe she was a childhood friend of the Sheriff, or one of his retainers. Or maybe Alice can just see which way the wind is blowing, and wants to throw her lot in with the winning side.
So, depending on who in the household the characters approach, and what tactics they use, I'm set up to roleplay an interesting encounter. If the characters are aligned with the Outlaws, William will be reluctant to help them publicly, but if they can get him alone and convince him of their bona fides, he could possibly put them in touch with the Outlaws or give them assistance. If they approach Alice, she's likely to rebuff them in public or private, talking about how the Outlaws are operating outside the King's justice and how the King will deal harshly with them when he returns - but since she's secretly aligned with the Sheriff, she's likely to inform him (directly or indirectly) of her conversation with the PC's, causing them trouble down the line.
Alexis at Tao of D&D talks about "features" in his book, How to Run. This is a design-mindset approach which asks, how will this thing be used? NPCs are there for the characters to interact with, but the traditional approach to character traits (distinctive physical features, backstory, verbal tics, mannerisms) are not features, and do not offer nothing for the players to interact with. Anything the players can't interact with is, in a real sense, irrelevant to the game.
Alignments, as presented, very much are features of the NPC: they define and colours all interactions with them, define whether they will support or oppose the player, and (with secret alignments) add depth and reward for continued interaction.
I will be generating alignments like this for all NPCs in my games going forward.
11 March 2019
12 October 2018
Phased Real-Time Combat - The Solution You Didn't Know You Needed
Phased Real-Time round structure dates back to the 1824 Kriegspiel rules; that is to say, to the very origin of wargames and of roleplaying games. The 1959 board game Diplomacy is a more familiar example. It appears in computer games and simulations, as well, such as TacOps v4 and Combat Mission.
Roleplaying games have largely eschewed this structure in favour of the deeply flawed Sequential round structure. I hope to re-popularize Phased Real-Time rounds.
Within each phase, there is no concept of "order" or "initiative" as there would be in a Sequential round structure. All operations are considered to happen in real time, as they do in the fiction.
In a cooperative game like D&D, it is hardly necessary to keep the players in the dark as to each other's intentions. Interesting and tense results could be had from enforcing secrecy and non-communication, but in a friendly cooperative game this is not worth the trade-offs. A degree of honesty is required on the part of the DM; they must not alter the orders of the monsters in light of information gleaned during the turn.
Roleplaying games have largely eschewed this structure in favour of the deeply flawed Sequential round structure. I hope to re-popularize Phased Real-Time rounds.
What is Phased Real-Time Round Structure?
PRT breaks a "round" down into phases - typically an orders phase and one or more resolution phases.Within each phase, there is no concept of "order" or "initiative" as there would be in a Sequential round structure. All operations are considered to happen in real time, as they do in the fiction.
Orders Phase
Here, each player outlines what they choose to do on their turn. In a competitive game, generally speaking there must be some element of secrecy to this phase. Diplomacy, for example, requires the players to write their orders down on paper using a specific (and strictly enforced) syntax. Kriegspiel keeps the staffs of the two sides in separate rooms, where they write orders on paper and hand them to the umpires.In a cooperative game like D&D, it is hardly necessary to keep the players in the dark as to each other's intentions. Interesting and tense results could be had from enforcing secrecy and non-communication, but in a friendly cooperative game this is not worth the trade-offs. A degree of honesty is required on the part of the DM; they must not alter the orders of the monsters in light of information gleaned during the turn.
Execution Phase
Here, the accumulated orders are resolved. Generally speaking, there will be obvious groupings of orders which must be resolved together, and which can be resolved independently of any other grouping.
In a game like Diplomacy, resolution is strictly algorithmic, requiring no interpretation on the part of the participants. This is possible because of the extremely regimented nature of a board game. In a roleplaying game, some amount of interpretation may be required. In this case, participants must apply their judgement of the reality of the fictional world to the unique situation at hand. This makes the participants and the fictional reality first-class citizens in order resolution.
What is Sequential Round Structure?
Sequential Turn Structure breaks a round down into one turn per agent. Each agent's actions are declared and resolved in a certain order, one after the other. The order of the turns can be set or changeable. There are sometimes mechanisms for interrupting another agent's turn, which can create highly complex situations.
Each turn is considered completely resolved and completed before the next begins (except for interruption rules), with all other agents frozen in time and space for the duration of the turn.
Freezing of inactive agents either requires tactical decisions informed only by the game rules and not by the fictional reality, or complex rules surrounding interrupting the active agent's turn.
There is a certain amount of fudging of the interaction of the game rules and the fictional reality required. A sequential resolution of actions takes more fictional time than a simultaneous resolution of the same actions, but we assume only the time required for simultaneous resolution has passed. This allows exploits like the infamous Peasant Rail Gun, for which the best answer of a sequential ruleset is to add additional game rules which corral the fictional issue.
Why Phased Real-Time Round Structure?
Sequential round structure works well in wholly abstract games like Chess. Chess is not modeling any kind of reality, and so the "freezing" of the black side during white's turn is not a problem of verisimilitude. In a roleplaying game, however, there is a fictional reality being modeled. Sequential round structure fails when asked to model a fictional reality. Verisimilitude is broken when the artifacts of the sequential round structure defy the obvious realities of the fictional world.
Phased Real-Time has no such issues. Actions are resolved within a finite and defined amount of time. The fictional reality, as interpreted through the judgement of the participants, is paramount. Complex special rules for interruptions are not required.
How to Switch to Phased Real-Time Round Structure?
Switching over to phased real-time round structure is quite easy for most RPGs, requiring little more than abandoning initiative, attacks of opportunity, etc. and substituting PRT. My suggested protocol is as follows:
- Orders Phase
- DM Hints at Monster/NPC actions
- Players Declare Actions
- Execution Phase
- Interdependent Groups are Identified
- Actions are Resolved Group by Group (using your existing ruleset)
Let's examine each step in turn.
DM Hints at Monster/NPC Actions (Orders Phase)
This step gives agency to the players. Having a hint of what their opponents are doing allows them to make an informed choice about their own actions.
Players Declare Actions (Orders Phase)
In whatever order is convenient (clockwise from the DM's left works well), the players declare the action they would like their character to undertake this round. There will inevitably be tabletalk regarding what everyone should do. This is a normal and natural part of the game, and should be allowed.
Interdependent Groups are Identified
Rare is the mass melee, where all combatants are engaged in a single interwined struggle. More typical is several fairly discrete combats happening simultaneously. One of the beautiful parts of the PRT round structure is these groups are identified and resolved together, creating a narrative structure to the round which is lacking in Sequential round structures.
Actions are Resolved Group by Group
Resolve each group entirely before moving on to the next. This best allows for the application of judgement to the resolution, as all the facts can easily be kept in mind.
You can use most any existing RPG ruleset to resolve the actual combat.
Whither Initiative?
If you are enamored of initiative, PRT round structure actually can actually make initiative more meaningful if you choose to incorporate it. Here is one example of hooking in an initiative system.
If the players have the initiative, the DM tells them what the monster actions will be and lets them give their orders in full knowledge of the monsters orders. If the monsters/NPCs have the initiative, the players must declare their actions blind and the DM may assign the monster/NPC orders with the knowledge of the player's orders.
Example of Play
Orders Phase
DM: The Pig-faced Orc is drawing a flaming sword and is moving towards Bill, the Horned Orc is charging Jane, and the Fanged Ogre is preparing to throw a rock. What are your actions?
Bill (fighter): I'm going to draw my sword and attack thePig-faced Orc.
Wilma (cleric): I'm going to help Bill fight the Pig-faced Orc.
Steve (wizard): I'll cast Figface on the Fanged Ogre.
Jane (thief): I'm going to flip the table to block the Horned Orc's advance, and look for my Horn of Fury in my pack.
Phil (fighter): I'll shoot an arrow at the Horned Orc to hopefully distract it from Jane while she looks for the Horn.
Execution Phase
DM: Ok, so Bill, Wilma, and the Pig-Faced Orc are engaged. Jane, Phil, and the Horned Orc are engaged. Steve and the Ogre are engaged, as the Ogre is throwing its rock at Steve.
DM: Bill, Wilma, roll to-hit against AC 7. The Pig-faced Orc rolled a 19, and hits Bill for 5 damage.
Bill: I missed.
Wilma: I hit for 3 damage.
DM: The Pig-Faced Orc makes a morale check for taking damage, and it fails! It turns tail.
DM: Jane, you flip the table well before the Horned Orc reaches you. Roll a Dex check to find the Horn of Fury this round. The Horned Orc's charge is blocked by the table; he's clambering over it, though.
DM: Phil, roll to-hit against AC 5.
Jane: Damn, I failed the roll. I'll have to keep looking next round.
Phil: I miss the Horned Orc.
DM: Cool. The Ogre is throwing a big rock at Steve, and Steve is trying to get off the Figface spell to blind the Ogre. Since your spell will be ruined if you're hit by the rock before you cast it, Steve, roll a tiebreaker with the Ogre - d10+Dex Mod [note that this is basically an initiative check like we would see in a Sequential system, but in a PRT system, it is reserved for actions where order matters and is non-obvious].
Phil: I get a 7.
DM: Bad news, the Ogre got a 10. He's going to get his rock attack off before you blind him.
DM: But, the Ogre rolled a 5 to-hit on his rock attack, and the boulder smashes harmlessly into the wall behind you. Your spell shrivels its face up, blinding him and making it very hard to breathe.
Conclusions
Phased-Real Time is a simple drop-in substitution for your existing Sequential round structure. It is simple to understand, and fluid in practice. It produces combats consisting of integrated small scenes, rather than a monotonous series of disjointed actions. It is fiction-first, and respects the reality of your game world. It puts the participant's judgement in the driver's seat regarding action sequencing, while keeping standard initiative rolls in its back pocket for corner cases.
Phased-Real Time is strictly superior to Sequential. Switch your game over today!
16 August 2018
Healing: The Disabled List and Character Rosters
Major League Baseball has something called a disabled list. I'm sure other sports have something similar, but I only follow baseball. Athletes get hurt. Sometimes badly, and sometimes often. With limited rosters, teams need flexibility to bring in a replacement, usually from the team's AAA affiliate, sometimes elsewhere in the farm system, or more seldom by trade/free agency.
Adventurers also get hurt. Sometimes badly, and generally often. In most games, however, players don't have a roster of characters that they use. What if they did? And what if they could put a character on the disabled list in order to call up a fresh replacement "from the farm"? And what if, like a major league team, the roster size was limited, creating (hopefully) interesting decisions about when to DL a player, when to soldier on, and what to do about the roster crunch created by characters coming off the DL?
I feel a mechanic like this is especially important when using a descriptive damage system as I do. Characters tend to get pretty roughed up, and there needs to be a better way of dealing with it than bogging down the whole party going back to home base.
The active roster is 5 characters, and the secondary roster is 10 characters.
Once a character has been put on the DL, they are an NPC and simply rest and heal for the duration. They are safe and will not die. They remain an NPC until their time on the DL is up (either 14-day or 60-day).
When you put a character on the DL, either roll up a fresh 1st-level character, take over a henchman or 1st-level hireling, or bring in a standby character from your roster.
The player doesn't have to play a gimped, wounded character in the meantime.
It encourages procurement and maintenance of a home base.
It gives the party more stamina to work more than a 15-minute adventuring day.
Characters get 2 "options". Optioning a character uses up an option.
Adventurers also get hurt. Sometimes badly, and generally often. In most games, however, players don't have a roster of characters that they use. What if they did? And what if they could put a character on the disabled list in order to call up a fresh replacement "from the farm"? And what if, like a major league team, the roster size was limited, creating (hopefully) interesting decisions about when to DL a player, when to soldier on, and what to do about the roster crunch created by characters coming off the DL?
I feel a mechanic like this is especially important when using a descriptive damage system as I do. Characters tend to get pretty roughed up, and there needs to be a better way of dealing with it than bogging down the whole party going back to home base.
The Character Roster
What?
Players have an "primary roster" (edit: also called the "active roster") of characters they can choose to adventure with (edit: adventure with as player characters). They also have a "secondary roster" which consists of their active roster and any henchmen they have.
The active roster is 5 characters, and the secondary roster is 10 characters.
Why?
Players can't just freely put people on and off the disabled list with no consequences. There's pressure to choose their favourite characters, creating interesting decisions.
How?
At the beginning of an adventure (i.e. when leaving "home base"), the player may choose to play any character from their active roster. They may take along any henchmen from their secondary roster.
The Disabled List
What?
There are 2 disabled lists, the 14-day DL and the 60-day DL. Characters on the 14-day DL are removed from the primary roster. Characters on the 60-day DL are removed from the secondary roster.
Once a character has been put on the DL, they are an NPC and simply rest and heal for the duration. They are safe and will not die. They remain an NPC until their time on the DL is up (either 14-day or 60-day).
When you put a character on the DL, either roll up a fresh 1st-level character, take over a henchman or 1st-level hireling, or bring in a standby character from your roster.
Why?
The character is healed of all flesh wounds after 14 days, and all (non-permanent) wounds after 60 days. The character is removed from the active roster, making room for a fresh character.
The player doesn't have to play a gimped, wounded character in the meantime.
It encourages procurement and maintenance of a home base.
It gives the party more stamina to work more than a 15-minute adventuring day.
How?
Declare you are moving your active character onto the disabled list, and specify which one.
Requirements:
- character is not in immediate danger (in combat, in quicksand, surrounded by fire)
- character could plausibly make it back to base safely (if they can't walk, someone has to go with them)
- they're not stuck in a pit; they're not surrounded by enemies; they're not being actively hunted for)
- must have a "home base" available owned/leased by the party (somewhere they can get food and warm bed)
Roster Moves
"Option"
The character is removed from the active roster and becomes an NPC henchman, with all that entails (they are an NPC with a morale score, they are nominally controlled by the DM but in practice are largely controlled by the PC, etc.).Characters get 2 "options". Optioning a character uses up an option.
"Recall"
A henchman becomes a PC, with all that entails."Release"
The character is removed from both the active and secondary roster. They are forever more an NPC, and leave the party to make their own way in the world. The DM is free to have the character resurface as a rival, friend, or acquaintance; or perhaps they will never be heard from again; or maybe they'll turn up dead - in any case, their fate is out of the hands of the player.12 August 2018
Archery: Variable Range Increments
Following up from yesterday's post. A reminder on methodology.
I've taken men's longbow classifications from the Braintree Bowmen in the UK, ranging from 3rd class to Grandmaster Bowman; analyzed them with a tool I made to convert archery scores into to-hit rates on a d20; and applied those results to a variety of ranges for a 65cm target, which I reckon to be comparable to shooting at a human torso.
Each line on the chart represents a score in a "720 round" of archery, converted to be hit/miss against a 65cm target at the stated range.
Analyzing this chart, a thought occurred to me: instead of fixed range increments and a rising attack bonus, what if we had fixed attack bonuses/penalties and range increments that vary with level?
What we get is a system that seems (to me) much more verisimilitudinous. At short range, there's little to no difference in skill. At long range, shots that are essentially impossible for an unskilled bowmen will be easy for a skilled shooter.
What we give up is some granularity in progression, as we probably don't want the range increments to change in such small steps between levels that it makes no real difference.
Now, how about changing target size? The following charts show the effects of changing the target size by doubles and halves.
I've taken men's longbow classifications from the Braintree Bowmen in the UK, ranging from 3rd class to Grandmaster Bowman; analyzed them with a tool I made to convert archery scores into to-hit rates on a d20; and applied those results to a variety of ranges for a 65cm target, which I reckon to be comparable to shooting at a human torso.
Each line on the chart represents a score in a "720 round" of archery, converted to be hit/miss against a 65cm target at the stated range.
Analyzing this chart, a thought occurred to me: instead of fixed range increments and a rising attack bonus, what if we had fixed attack bonuses/penalties and range increments that vary with level?
What we get is a system that seems (to me) much more verisimilitudinous. At short range, there's little to no difference in skill. At long range, shots that are essentially impossible for an unskilled bowmen will be easy for a skilled shooter.
What we give up is some granularity in progression, as we probably don't want the range increments to change in such small steps between levels that it makes no real difference.
| 65cm target | 0 | -5 | -10 | -15 | -20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3rd Class | 5m | 10m | 15m | 20m | 25m |
| 2nd Class | 10m | 20m | 30m | 40m | 50m |
| Bowman | 15m | 30m | 45m | 50m | 65m |
| Master Bowman | 20m | 40m | 60m | 80m | 100m |
| Grandmaster Bowman | 25m | 50m | 75m | 100m | 125m |
| World-Class Bowman | 30m | 60m | 90m | 120m | 150m |
Now, how about changing target size? The following charts show the effects of changing the target size by doubles and halves.
What we can notice is that for each doubling of target size, it's as if the lowest-skilled (31 score) bowman is shooting as if they were a middle-skill bowman (157 score). For the "Bowman", it's like shooting as a "Grandmaster Bowman", and so on.
So, changing target sizes can be fairly easily modeled by shifting the effective skill of the
archer - double the target size, increase the effective skill two
increments. So a "3rd-class" bowman shooting at a target 1.3m across
would use the "Bowman" row on the chart.
This is for considered shots in good conditions. Later we will examine more adverse conditions.
8 August 2018
Archery: Towards a Foundation
I was thinking of archery, and was immediately reminded that Delta had done some good work on the subject some time ago: http://deltasdnd.blogspot.ca/2014/04/a-model-of-archery-for-d.html
There's some good stuff there, and I think the methodology is promising, but I think some upstream errors make it less useful/accurate than it could be. With that in mind, I set out to build on those ideas.
Delta used an article in an old Dragon magazine by Robert Barrow (Dragon #58, pp 47-49) as his starting point, which in turn cites Archery by Longman and Walrond, published New York, 1894. I was not able to find that edition online, but did find Archery by Longman and Walrond, London, 1894, which surely must be different edition (likely the original edition) of the same book. Unfortunately, the page numbering is different, and Barrow's citation of pp 240 leads us to a discussion of the history of the Royal Company of Archers in Scotland, which, while no doubt interesting in its own way, bears not at all on the matter to hand. There is a helpful chart on pp 264, which I would have surmised is the one used by Barrow, except that when I tabulated the data, it doesn't quite match the figures he quoted.
Barrow quotes 92%, 81%, 54% hits at 60, 80, and 100 yards, respectively. I calculated 96%, 86%, and 65%. Perhaps there was an error in his calculations; it was, after all, 1982, and he likely did not have a spreadsheet to do the calculations quickly and easily. Or perhaps he was simply using different data from a different part of the book and the editions are even more different than seems likely. In any case.
What I've done is write a little commandline tool that allows us to enter in a wide range of archery scores and get back out a hit rate for a given range and target size. The Archery data was useful, as it had a hit rate and a score, whereas most modern sources only list the score, and this was very useful to make sure I was getting sane results. I can set the output and input ranges and target sizes to be the same, and the compare the hit rate my model predicted based on the score with the actual hit rate in the data set. I found results were typically within 10% or so, which I'd say is more than good enough for our purposes.
One thing I can tell you - modern archers are much, much better than the archers in the Archery dataset.
So, with this tool in hand, I set out to find some data on how good archers are. I didn't just want a soup of scores, I wanted some guidance/interpretation of what those scores meant. Eventually, I found this site, which helpfully lists scores for 6 "classes" of archers, from 3rd class to Grandmaster. It didn't go all the way to Grandmaster for the 720 round scores I had calibrated my tool for, but this site helpfully allows you to convert a score from one type of round to another (using a similar approach to the CLI tool I made).
So, this got me scores with meanings attached, and my tool allows the conversion of these scores into hit rates for any target size and any range. Results of my investigations in a subsequent post.
There's some good stuff there, and I think the methodology is promising, but I think some upstream errors make it less useful/accurate than it could be. With that in mind, I set out to build on those ideas.
Delta used an article in an old Dragon magazine by Robert Barrow (Dragon #58, pp 47-49) as his starting point, which in turn cites Archery by Longman and Walrond, published New York, 1894. I was not able to find that edition online, but did find Archery by Longman and Walrond, London, 1894, which surely must be different edition (likely the original edition) of the same book. Unfortunately, the page numbering is different, and Barrow's citation of pp 240 leads us to a discussion of the history of the Royal Company of Archers in Scotland, which, while no doubt interesting in its own way, bears not at all on the matter to hand. There is a helpful chart on pp 264, which I would have surmised is the one used by Barrow, except that when I tabulated the data, it doesn't quite match the figures he quoted.
Barrow quotes 92%, 81%, 54% hits at 60, 80, and 100 yards, respectively. I calculated 96%, 86%, and 65%. Perhaps there was an error in his calculations; it was, after all, 1982, and he likely did not have a spreadsheet to do the calculations quickly and easily. Or perhaps he was simply using different data from a different part of the book and the editions are even more different than seems likely. In any case.
What I've done is write a little commandline tool that allows us to enter in a wide range of archery scores and get back out a hit rate for a given range and target size. The Archery data was useful, as it had a hit rate and a score, whereas most modern sources only list the score, and this was very useful to make sure I was getting sane results. I can set the output and input ranges and target sizes to be the same, and the compare the hit rate my model predicted based on the score with the actual hit rate in the data set. I found results were typically within 10% or so, which I'd say is more than good enough for our purposes.
One thing I can tell you - modern archers are much, much better than the archers in the Archery dataset.
So, with this tool in hand, I set out to find some data on how good archers are. I didn't just want a soup of scores, I wanted some guidance/interpretation of what those scores meant. Eventually, I found this site, which helpfully lists scores for 6 "classes" of archers, from 3rd class to Grandmaster. It didn't go all the way to Grandmaster for the 720 round scores I had calibrated my tool for, but this site helpfully allows you to convert a score from one type of round to another (using a similar approach to the CLI tool I made).
So, this got me scores with meanings attached, and my tool allows the conversion of these scores into hit rates for any target size and any range. Results of my investigations in a subsequent post.
3 March 2018
Response to "Fight Semantics" at Tao of D&D
Alexis and I were discussing why players always want to don their armour before a fight, and we got drawn into the question of the weapon's role in the defense. Alexis is of the opinion that the weapon is already accounted for in the D&D system by the fact that we do not auto-hit an unarmed combatant. This was originally in comments on this post on Tao of D&D, and then continued here, in a new post by Alexis.
Incidentally, that first post is an excerpt from Alexis' "Masterclass" on DM'ing, available to his patrons on Patreon (of which I am one). I can highly recommend it. Alexis analyzes the DMing techniques he has used in his online campaigns in detail, outlining his thought process, what he was trying to do, what worked and what didn't, and generally giving a fascinating look inside the mind of someone who has run more D&D and thought more about the game than probably anyone around.
Alexis is uniquely suited to running a class like this, having DMed for decades, being one of the most considered thinkers on the game (as demonstrated by his long-running blog and several thoughtful books), and by virtue of having two fairly long-running campaigns run on line using Blogger (and which are therefore preserved in their entirety, and available for extensive analysis and discussion).
You should go sign up! Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming. I promise I'm not being paid to say that, haha!
Weapons on the Defensive - not in D&D!
Alexis was making the case that the weapon's role in your defense is already accounted for in the system.
There's only one problem with that idea - dropping your weapon does not change your opponent's chance to hit you whatsoever.
Which I would say is proof-positive that the weapon's defensive role is not, in any way, included in the system. Increasing defensive prowess with level is included (as represented by increasing HP per level). The weapon's role is decidedly not.
In Chainmail, one hit was one kill. In OD&D, *on average* one hit was one kill, but they made HP and damage both 1d6 to add a little randomness. The idea was still the Chainmail conceit that one hit killed a normal person. The Chainmail "hero" took 4 hits to kill, essentially giving the hero 3 mulligans on death, and that's the same approach that OD&D took - each additional hit die *on average* is one mulligan against death. A "hit" was always supposed to be a lethal, fight-ending blow. This neatly explains why characters fight at 100% until they're dead. The waters were muddied as time went on and hit dice and weapons started being different dice, but if you clear away the murk, that is the foundation of the current system.
This muddling causes a variety of issues. For just one, a giant-thrown boulder falling on you doesn't care one whit about your defensive abilities or your armour. It just does damage, and will do damage to Lancelot or his squire equally. But because defensive abilities and life force are rolled into your hit points, and because armour and dexterity are rolled into your hard-to-hit, it's difficult or impossible to tease out how to apply damage in a scenario like that. Theoretically, it would be something like having the giant roll against "touch AC" (which I think only existed as of 3e, being your armour class not counting your armour) and then roll damage multiplied by level (to remove the effect of increasing defensive ability being rolled into the hit points).
Also, because damage doesn't scale up with level, it means that two high-level characters who are equally matched will take a long time to finish a fight, whereas two low-level characters who are equally matched will finish quickly. Which doesn't pass the smell test to me.
Healing is difficult to reconcile into this system, because ostensibly some of your hit points are meat and blood, and some of them are fatigue, and some of them are your increased defensive ability. Well, which ones does a cure spell work on? Which ones get whittled away by walking hours in the cold? It's unclear, because the HP is a mixed metaphor from the get-go.
I don't think any of this is better just because it's more "realistic" (although it is). It's better because it makes each stat clearly model something understandable. This makes it intuitive, easy to understand, and easy to apply to edge cases that weren't necessarily envisioned by the designer. Because the model is explicit and understandable, it's easy for the user to tinker with it, and easy for the DM to make rulings on the fly.
Incidentally, that first post is an excerpt from Alexis' "Masterclass" on DM'ing, available to his patrons on Patreon (of which I am one). I can highly recommend it. Alexis analyzes the DMing techniques he has used in his online campaigns in detail, outlining his thought process, what he was trying to do, what worked and what didn't, and generally giving a fascinating look inside the mind of someone who has run more D&D and thought more about the game than probably anyone around.
Alexis is uniquely suited to running a class like this, having DMed for decades, being one of the most considered thinkers on the game (as demonstrated by his long-running blog and several thoughtful books), and by virtue of having two fairly long-running campaigns run on line using Blogger (and which are therefore preserved in their entirety, and available for extensive analysis and discussion).
You should go sign up! Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming. I promise I'm not being paid to say that, haha!
Weapons on the Defensive - not in D&D!
Alexis was making the case that the weapon's role in your defense is already accounted for in the system.There's only one problem with that idea - dropping your weapon does not change your opponent's chance to hit you whatsoever.
Which I would say is proof-positive that the weapon's defensive role is not, in any way, included in the system. Increasing defensive prowess with level is included (as represented by increasing HP per level). The weapon's role is decidedly not.
Increasing Defensive Skill and Hit Points
As Alexis points out, D&D uses increasing hit points to model increasing defensive ability with level, but not quite in the way Alexis described (at least not in its original incarnation, which I would argue is still the metaphor used in the game today, despite its origins being lost in time).In Chainmail, one hit was one kill. In OD&D, *on average* one hit was one kill, but they made HP and damage both 1d6 to add a little randomness. The idea was still the Chainmail conceit that one hit killed a normal person. The Chainmail "hero" took 4 hits to kill, essentially giving the hero 3 mulligans on death, and that's the same approach that OD&D took - each additional hit die *on average* is one mulligan against death. A "hit" was always supposed to be a lethal, fight-ending blow. This neatly explains why characters fight at 100% until they're dead. The waters were muddied as time went on and hit dice and weapons started being different dice, but if you clear away the murk, that is the foundation of the current system.
The Issues with Defense in D&D
In analyzing the issues with defense in D&D combat, we need to tease out and treat individually each of the three factors to defense: hard-to-hit, hard-to-hurt, and hard-to-kill. D&D rolls hard-to-hit and hard-to-hurt into one stat (AC), but also puts some of the hard-to-hit into the hit point. It ignores the role of the weapon in hard-to-hit, despite being (possibly) the most important factor. The hit point then involves some hard-to-hit and some hard-to-kill. It's all very muddled.This muddling causes a variety of issues. For just one, a giant-thrown boulder falling on you doesn't care one whit about your defensive abilities or your armour. It just does damage, and will do damage to Lancelot or his squire equally. But because defensive abilities and life force are rolled into your hit points, and because armour and dexterity are rolled into your hard-to-hit, it's difficult or impossible to tease out how to apply damage in a scenario like that. Theoretically, it would be something like having the giant roll against "touch AC" (which I think only existed as of 3e, being your armour class not counting your armour) and then roll damage multiplied by level (to remove the effect of increasing defensive ability being rolled into the hit points).
Also, because damage doesn't scale up with level, it means that two high-level characters who are equally matched will take a long time to finish a fight, whereas two low-level characters who are equally matched will finish quickly. Which doesn't pass the smell test to me.
Healing is difficult to reconcile into this system, because ostensibly some of your hit points are meat and blood, and some of them are fatigue, and some of them are your increased defensive ability. Well, which ones does a cure spell work on? Which ones get whittled away by walking hours in the cold? It's unclear, because the HP is a mixed metaphor from the get-go.
Solutions
You can actually fix all this pretty easily in D&D combat by making the following changes.Hard-to-hit
Weapons and level influence hard-to-hit (i.e. your "AC" is set by a level modifier and a per-weapon modifier). One should actually have three hard-to-hit stats - dodge, block, and parry. Dodge is used against the giant's boulder, a ballista bolt, dragon breath, etc - anything that can't be blocked or parried. Block is used against normal missile attacks and includes the shield. Parry is used against normal melee attacks, and includes the weapon's defensive bonus.Hard-to-hurt
Armour influences hard-to-hurt (i.e. it reduces incoming hit point damage).Hard-to-kill
And hit points represent only hard-to-kill (i.e. just meat and blood - all hit point loss is of a constant magnitude). This integrates naturally with Alexis' hit points for mass system.Conclusion
Really, the only difference mechanically from D&D combat is including damage reduction, which is easy enough and better matches our intuitive understanding of what armour does anyway. D&D needs the three categories of hard-to-hit, it just ignores the difference (to its detriment), and it's easy enough to add these to the character sheet.I don't think any of this is better just because it's more "realistic" (although it is). It's better because it makes each stat clearly model something understandable. This makes it intuitive, easy to understand, and easy to apply to edge cases that weren't necessarily envisioned by the designer. Because the model is explicit and understandable, it's easy for the user to tinker with it, and easy for the DM to make rulings on the fly.
18 December 2017
Railroads vs. Sandboxes
In response to Alexis, here: http://tao-dnd.blogspot.ca/2017/12/everything-is-road.html
This is interesting food for thought, but I don't know that I'm sold on such a broad definition of a railroad - unless I've misunderstood, Alexis is saying any voyage with a destination is now a railroad.
In my mind, the defining features of railroads are the permanence and inflexibility of the route, the scheduled departure and arrival, and the impossibility of changing destination once en route. On a railroad voyage, you are not in control except at stations (where your only choice is to disembark or remain on board until the next station). I cannot board a train and go to my home town. The trains haven't gone there for sixty years. It is impossible. I can go to Montreal, but once I have boarded, I can get off at Kingston or a few other points, but I cannot decide to go to Barrie without disembarking and purchasing a new fare.
Contrast this with a road and a car. I get in, I can pull off the road at any point, stop at a rest stop or just on the shoulder, change destinations at will (along the road network, of course, but at any time). I am in control of the route, the schedule, the destination, and even the moment-to-moment course of the vehicle, whereas with a train I am not.
The word railroad - emphasis on the "rail" - describes the most restrictive form of travel. Even airlines and cruises, which are superficially similar (set schedules and destinations), have more freedom than railroads. The captain can choose to change destinations at any time to anywhere within range with an airport/harbour, say, in the event of a medical or mechanical emergency, or a hijacking.
I don't think it's coincidental that we use the most restrictive kind of travel as a metaphor for the most restrictive kind of games. An rpg railroad doesn't merely have a destination. It is controlled by an engineer. It is running on rails. Your options are to get off (and find another game group), or continue to the destination. You will visit the scheduled adventure sites in the scheduled order. Anything not on the itinerary is just so many telephone poles whipping by at sixty miles an hour.
So, at one end we have literally the most restricted form of travel. At the other, we have the sandbox - the ultimate example of self-directed, structureless play. Even more so than on the road network, I'm in control in the sandbox. I can make a hill and raze it, build a road network and have my toys run along it until I'm bored and I decide it's a river and we're rafting along it, then build a town and a forest and play at bandits.
In a game context, we can farm mustard until we get bored, then wander the roads helping travellers until we tire of that and decide to open a river freight business, or go be bandits in the woods, or anything else.
The distinction isn't between whether there is a direction/destination/goal/series of obstacles, it's who is in charge. In a railroad, the DM is the engineer, the conductor, the train, the rails, the stations, and the tycoon who planned the route, while the player is the Sunday tourist seeing the sights by rail.
In a sandbox, the player is the child and the DM is the sand.
From Alexis' conclusion:
"Choosing to set themselves on the path to find a McGuffin and obtain some clues is not how a sandbox works; it only shows a willingness for players to buy their own tickets for the destination they choose. That's nicer than being told which train we're going to board, but it is STILL a railroad."
I don't know about that. If it's a railroad, then they can't get off, visit the stations in any order, or decide to fuck it and just set up as bandits because it turned out this MacGuffin was boring. If it's a railroad, they'll find the DM-as-conductor putting obstacles in any other path to dissuade them, or sweetening the pot, or otherwise coercing/outright forcing them back onto the rails, because in a railroad, the DM is in charge.
If it's a sandbox, they can decide they don't care about the MacGuffin at any point and make the game about being bandits in the woods, and the DM will roll with it, because the DM is the sand, and there to provide the medium of play.
8 June 2017
Dungeon Design: Shortcuts in the Souls Games
One of the things that drew me into the *Souls video games (Demon Souls, Dark Souls) was their use of shortcuts.
For those not familiar with the series, it is a punishing game where even the humblest enemies are a threat. You die and respawn a lot, and every time you do, all the enemies respawn as well. Your range from the spawn point (they are few and far between) is largely determined by your healing potion supply. It can be hard to push just that little bit farther, every encounter is sapping your strength, and you don't know how you'll be able to reach the boss at all, let alone with enough health to prevail.
However, the worlds are heavily Jacquayed. As you progress, you will find ways to open up shortcuts. This lever raises that portcullis near the spawn that seemed impenetrable, allowing you to bypass the first ten minutes of the level. Here, there's a ladder you can drop down, allowing you to climb up the tower directly instead of wending your way through the castle. After opening up a few shortcuts, you can often get from the spawn to the boss in a few minutes, instead of the hour(s) it took you to find and open all the shortcuts.
The biggest thrill in the game isn't finding a new weapon, or more armour, or another healing potion. It's finding these precious shortcuts!
I love this. I think it should be a part of every dungeon larger than half a dozen rooms.
I'd go so far as to say any megadungeon requires the presence of many such shortcuts.
Get your players looking for ways to cut down their time in the dungeon through shortcuts.
For those not familiar with the series, it is a punishing game where even the humblest enemies are a threat. You die and respawn a lot, and every time you do, all the enemies respawn as well. Your range from the spawn point (they are few and far between) is largely determined by your healing potion supply. It can be hard to push just that little bit farther, every encounter is sapping your strength, and you don't know how you'll be able to reach the boss at all, let alone with enough health to prevail.
However, the worlds are heavily Jacquayed. As you progress, you will find ways to open up shortcuts. This lever raises that portcullis near the spawn that seemed impenetrable, allowing you to bypass the first ten minutes of the level. Here, there's a ladder you can drop down, allowing you to climb up the tower directly instead of wending your way through the castle. After opening up a few shortcuts, you can often get from the spawn to the boss in a few minutes, instead of the hour(s) it took you to find and open all the shortcuts.
The biggest thrill in the game isn't finding a new weapon, or more armour, or another healing potion. It's finding these precious shortcuts!
I love this. I think it should be a part of every dungeon larger than half a dozen rooms.
I'd go so far as to say any megadungeon requires the presence of many such shortcuts.
Get your players looking for ways to cut down their time in the dungeon through shortcuts.
26 December 2015
Forest Excursion - Night-time
I walked some of the same path as the previous post in the dark. Conditions were clear, starlight for illumination. The moon was half full and not yet up. Obviously, there are no photos, as they would not have looked like anything (or, if I used a long exposure, just more or less like an overcast day - this is occasionally surprising to people, as our perception of night is so different, but really it's exactly the same but darker).
First, some general thoughts. While I'm far from an experienced woodsman, this is land I grew up on, that I've walked countless times. I fumbled and lost my way occasionally, even on the path. Even on familiar ground, in a world with no monsters, it was a little unnerving traveling through the woods in the dark. I was glad to have a stout stick with me, silly as that sounds. I'm sure that unreasoned fear would fade if I often traveled by night, but I have grown city-soft from living in Toronto.
The quiet was overwhelming, especially for someone who's lived in the city for ten years. I could hear a leaf fall out to perhaps thirty yards. I could hear hunting dogs barking and howling that could not have been closer than a mile (for that's the nearest neighbour in that direction), and that were probably more like 3 or 4 miles away. I could hear branches break for hundreds of yards.
Once my eyes were adjusted, I could follow the path fairly easily, although I soon learned to keep my arm up to ward off the odd branch that hadn't been pruned back, and to use my walking stick to feel for obstacles. I was able to make a fairly normal pace, only straying from the path and getting caught in thickets a few times.
The denser pine forest, difficult terrain during the day, was impassable at night. During the day, it is noticeably dim under the pines. At night, it was completely dark. No starlight filtered through. Anything hiding in there would have been able to remain completely undetected without the slightest difficulty. I could have passed within ten feet of any number of unspeakable horrors, completely ignorant of their presence.
At one point, something dense and heavy fell from a tree near me with a dull thud. I have no idea what it was, it sounded like it weighed perhaps four pounds and was made of something the consistency of suet. Perhaps a small creature breathed its last breath and fell dead from a tree...
After the end of the path, in the more open deciduous forest, there was enough light to make my way fairly easily, although I don't think I could have sustained a normal pace without a fairly high probability of wrecking my ankle. If I was navigating, the stars were visible, as would be the moon (if it was up), but that was only the case because it was autumn and half the leaves were down. In the summer, the cover is about 70%, and getting a good view of the stars would be pretty much impossible. The silence was worth noting again - I could easily hear a twig snap, or a small creature moving a hundred yards away or more. I could see dimly about forty yards, it felt like, although movement would probably have been visible a little further away.
And silent movement was completely impossible. Anything within several hundred yards or more that was listening would have been well aware of my progress. The ground cover was dead leaves that rustled with the slightest movement, and it was impossible to take more than a couple steps without crunching a twig or branch. Lest you think "oh, just don't step on them", firstly, you cannot see them, and secondly, sometimes they are beneath the leaves and cannot be seen even in daylight. Branches and small bushes, invisible until it was too late, were constantly getting in my way and rustling or snapping.
An ambush would have been trivial. Concealment wouldn't even be necessary, merely crouching at the base of a tree and remaining very still would hide you until I got within probably ten yards or less - you would just blend in with the tree.
When I turned around to head back for the path, I immediately lost my way. I hadn't gone very far from the end of the path - perhaps a hundred yards - but I couldn't find my may back. I stumbled around, getting caught in thickets, and making an ungodly ruckus for maybe ten minutes before finding the path back into the denser woods.
Back on the path, as an experiment, I used my cell phone screen to approximate a torch for a bit. The light was definitely comforting, although also a little unnerving. In addition to making noise announcing my presence, I was now also waving a huge sign saying "HERE I AM". It didn't really improve the distance I could see, although it made it much easier going - I could step without fear of hurting my ankle. Obviously, it also made me nightblind and totally dependent on it. When I put it out, I could see nothing, where before I could see dim shapes.
All in all, I covered almost exactly a mile in about half an hour, mostly using a path, over familiar terrain, under starlight, stopping occasionally to listen around me. I achieved about 60% of normal walking speed under fairly ideal conditions (it wasn't overcast, it wasn't muddy or raining, no wind, comfortable shoes, well rested and well fed, confident that there are no monsters). The only possible improvement would have been to have a strong moon.
If I had been on unfamiliar ground, without a path, I would have made far, far worse time. I can't imagine I could have managed a half kilometre in a straight line in those 30 minutes I was out. In all likelihood, I would simply have ended up lost and bumbling from thicket to thicket.
First, some general thoughts. While I'm far from an experienced woodsman, this is land I grew up on, that I've walked countless times. I fumbled and lost my way occasionally, even on the path. Even on familiar ground, in a world with no monsters, it was a little unnerving traveling through the woods in the dark. I was glad to have a stout stick with me, silly as that sounds. I'm sure that unreasoned fear would fade if I often traveled by night, but I have grown city-soft from living in Toronto.
The quiet was overwhelming, especially for someone who's lived in the city for ten years. I could hear a leaf fall out to perhaps thirty yards. I could hear hunting dogs barking and howling that could not have been closer than a mile (for that's the nearest neighbour in that direction), and that were probably more like 3 or 4 miles away. I could hear branches break for hundreds of yards.
Once my eyes were adjusted, I could follow the path fairly easily, although I soon learned to keep my arm up to ward off the odd branch that hadn't been pruned back, and to use my walking stick to feel for obstacles. I was able to make a fairly normal pace, only straying from the path and getting caught in thickets a few times.
The denser pine forest, difficult terrain during the day, was impassable at night. During the day, it is noticeably dim under the pines. At night, it was completely dark. No starlight filtered through. Anything hiding in there would have been able to remain completely undetected without the slightest difficulty. I could have passed within ten feet of any number of unspeakable horrors, completely ignorant of their presence.
At one point, something dense and heavy fell from a tree near me with a dull thud. I have no idea what it was, it sounded like it weighed perhaps four pounds and was made of something the consistency of suet. Perhaps a small creature breathed its last breath and fell dead from a tree...
After the end of the path, in the more open deciduous forest, there was enough light to make my way fairly easily, although I don't think I could have sustained a normal pace without a fairly high probability of wrecking my ankle. If I was navigating, the stars were visible, as would be the moon (if it was up), but that was only the case because it was autumn and half the leaves were down. In the summer, the cover is about 70%, and getting a good view of the stars would be pretty much impossible. The silence was worth noting again - I could easily hear a twig snap, or a small creature moving a hundred yards away or more. I could see dimly about forty yards, it felt like, although movement would probably have been visible a little further away.
And silent movement was completely impossible. Anything within several hundred yards or more that was listening would have been well aware of my progress. The ground cover was dead leaves that rustled with the slightest movement, and it was impossible to take more than a couple steps without crunching a twig or branch. Lest you think "oh, just don't step on them", firstly, you cannot see them, and secondly, sometimes they are beneath the leaves and cannot be seen even in daylight. Branches and small bushes, invisible until it was too late, were constantly getting in my way and rustling or snapping.
An ambush would have been trivial. Concealment wouldn't even be necessary, merely crouching at the base of a tree and remaining very still would hide you until I got within probably ten yards or less - you would just blend in with the tree.
When I turned around to head back for the path, I immediately lost my way. I hadn't gone very far from the end of the path - perhaps a hundred yards - but I couldn't find my may back. I stumbled around, getting caught in thickets, and making an ungodly ruckus for maybe ten minutes before finding the path back into the denser woods.
Back on the path, as an experiment, I used my cell phone screen to approximate a torch for a bit. The light was definitely comforting, although also a little unnerving. In addition to making noise announcing my presence, I was now also waving a huge sign saying "HERE I AM". It didn't really improve the distance I could see, although it made it much easier going - I could step without fear of hurting my ankle. Obviously, it also made me nightblind and totally dependent on it. When I put it out, I could see nothing, where before I could see dim shapes.
All in all, I covered almost exactly a mile in about half an hour, mostly using a path, over familiar terrain, under starlight, stopping occasionally to listen around me. I achieved about 60% of normal walking speed under fairly ideal conditions (it wasn't overcast, it wasn't muddy or raining, no wind, comfortable shoes, well rested and well fed, confident that there are no monsters). The only possible improvement would have been to have a strong moon.
If I had been on unfamiliar ground, without a path, I would have made far, far worse time. I can't imagine I could have managed a half kilometre in a straight line in those 30 minutes I was out. In all likelihood, I would simply have ended up lost and bumbling from thicket to thicket.
23 December 2015
Forest Excursion - Daytime
A year ago I took a hike over the family lands and took some pictures and recorded some notes in the interest of writing some D&D-related stuff from it. I went with my sister's dog, who tended to wander off on its own and back periodically, which was interesting from the perspective of "would there be an encounter if we weren't together" - i.e. at what point do I become aware of it.
Some of the photos are pretty hideous, but they're supposed to be illustrative and not artistic, and I'm sure the reader will understand. I also struggled with taking photos that really capture the nature and difficulties of the terrain; I experimented with panos, multi-tile fisheyes, and normal photos. I'm not sure which are most successful, if anyone has thoughts, I'd be interested to hear them. Keep in mind that in a 360° panorama, the right and left edge are pointing the same way. Things half an image width apart are 180° from each other.
Weather
Rained slightly night before, 12° C (54F), occasional faint breeze, overcast.
Speed
Moving carefully, investigating things, stopping for photos, etc., I averaged about 3kph along my route and about 2kph as the crow flies.
On my way back, I just went straight home, and averaged a little over 5kph, which is pretty close to my normal walking speed, but that only ended up being about 4kph as the crow flies.
Thoughts
The dog - about a 40lb ball of energy - was not nearly audible as much as I would have thought. It didn't seem windy at ground level, but the wind in the trees masks a lot of noise. With the dog at full gallop, I couldn't hear her past about 40-50 yards.
The narrow stream (not the larger one in the wetland photos) was audible at about 20 yards (we're talking about a foot across and maybe six inches deep).
Without carrying any gear, and without armour or pack, I quickly overheated and needed to shed my jacket, then my sweater, then my toque.
When the dog was around, she made it hard to listen. She was always moving and shifting about, rustling the leaves, and wasn't well-behaved enough to stop and be quiet. Horses don't make nearly as much noise in my experience.
Terrain
Some on a good path, mostly moving across open forest. A bit of pushing through what I'd call "closed" forest, where movement and vision is seriously impeded by undergrowth and dense conifers or hawthorn/apple/other short/dense deciduous trees. A bit in the long grass around a large stream/seasonal wetland.
If this was a 1-mile hex, it would contain a farmhouse/barn, two notable wetlands (one of which I went to), a variety of open and closed forest, a large hill (didn't go to). If it was a six-mile hex, it would contain additionally several other scattered houses, another large hill, fields, more wetlands, and the nearby village.
Open forest
Description: Middle-aged deciduous, limited/no undergrowth, 100% dead leaf coverage (noisy), large spacing between trees (~10-20 ft). Movement easy in any direction typically, occasional thicket where some conifers were eking out an existence that could hide ambushes/spies. Occasional hidden muddy patches that look like normal ground but could easily ruin your day by sucking off a boot or wetting your socks. Also, would make a good ambush site - since you sink in with every step, running is almost impossible (moreso with a pack and armour).
Encounter Distance: 10-200 yards, ranging from when you're passing by a thicket, ridge or fold, to when you're on a hill or in a valley with good sightlines.
Gameable features: thicket (reduced visibility, ambush site, impedes movement), ridge (good view from top, more visible, blocks view), small stream (clean water), soft ground (movement impeded, running impossible, ambush site, wet feet)
Closed Forest
Description: Dense conifers, low-lying hemlocks, balsams, etc. Visibility limited (sometimes only a few yards in any direction) and movement extremely slow. Impossible to move quietly, but very easy to hide if you're still. Easy to get scratched up if you're wearing short sleeves or light clothes.
I can't imagine crossing this kind of terrain with a horse/mule/donkey. I'm sure it's possible, but it certainly wouldn't be on its back.
Exists as thickets inside open forest.
Encounter distance: 5-150 yards. Encounters beyond 20 yards would be hearing something moving, but not being able to see it.
Gameable features: clearing (improved visibility within, possible campsite), chance of lost/damaged gear, attrition (hit points/flesh wounds for crossing), stream, large puddle (drinkable)
Seasonal Wetland
Description: Grasses 3-4ft tall, could have hidden any number of enemies. Easy to stumble into a hole and get a soaker.
Stream forms core of wetland. Occasionally a serious obstacle if you want to stay dry (1-2 ft deep, 6ft across) when only twenty yards up or down stream it was easy to cross (either by fallen tree, or because it had broken up into numerous smaller streams). At times, broadens into a swamp-y/pond-y thing 100 yards across or more.
Boundary between forest/wetland characterized by bad footing, slippery rocks, difficult-to-see holes about a foot across full of water waiting to twist your ankle in. Can't see anything past the boundary from the wetland, can see out a little from the forest.
Encounter distance: 1-200 yards. Close encounters with things hidden in the long grass. Far encounters with things on the far boundary, or standing/walking in the grass.
Gameable features: dry crossing point (fallen tree, or simply where the stream narrows/splits), islands.
Some of the photos are pretty hideous, but they're supposed to be illustrative and not artistic, and I'm sure the reader will understand. I also struggled with taking photos that really capture the nature and difficulties of the terrain; I experimented with panos, multi-tile fisheyes, and normal photos. I'm not sure which are most successful, if anyone has thoughts, I'd be interested to hear them. Keep in mind that in a 360° panorama, the right and left edge are pointing the same way. Things half an image width apart are 180° from each other.
Weather
Rained slightly night before, 12° C (54F), occasional faint breeze, overcast.
Speed
Moving carefully, investigating things, stopping for photos, etc., I averaged about 3kph along my route and about 2kph as the crow flies.
On my way back, I just went straight home, and averaged a little over 5kph, which is pretty close to my normal walking speed, but that only ended up being about 4kph as the crow flies.
Thoughts
The dog - about a 40lb ball of energy - was not nearly audible as much as I would have thought. It didn't seem windy at ground level, but the wind in the trees masks a lot of noise. With the dog at full gallop, I couldn't hear her past about 40-50 yards.
The narrow stream (not the larger one in the wetland photos) was audible at about 20 yards (we're talking about a foot across and maybe six inches deep).
Without carrying any gear, and without armour or pack, I quickly overheated and needed to shed my jacket, then my sweater, then my toque.
When the dog was around, she made it hard to listen. She was always moving and shifting about, rustling the leaves, and wasn't well-behaved enough to stop and be quiet. Horses don't make nearly as much noise in my experience.
Terrain
Some on a good path, mostly moving across open forest. A bit of pushing through what I'd call "closed" forest, where movement and vision is seriously impeded by undergrowth and dense conifers or hawthorn/apple/other short/dense deciduous trees. A bit in the long grass around a large stream/seasonal wetland.
If this was a 1-mile hex, it would contain a farmhouse/barn, two notable wetlands (one of which I went to), a variety of open and closed forest, a large hill (didn't go to). If it was a six-mile hex, it would contain additionally several other scattered houses, another large hill, fields, more wetlands, and the nearby village.
Open forest
Description: Middle-aged deciduous, limited/no undergrowth, 100% dead leaf coverage (noisy), large spacing between trees (~10-20 ft). Movement easy in any direction typically, occasional thicket where some conifers were eking out an existence that could hide ambushes/spies. Occasional hidden muddy patches that look like normal ground but could easily ruin your day by sucking off a boot or wetting your socks. Also, would make a good ambush site - since you sink in with every step, running is almost impossible (moreso with a pack and armour).
Encounter Distance: 10-200 yards, ranging from when you're passing by a thicket, ridge or fold, to when you're on a hill or in a valley with good sightlines.
Gameable features: thicket (reduced visibility, ambush site, impedes movement), ridge (good view from top, more visible, blocks view), small stream (clean water), soft ground (movement impeded, running impossible, ambush site, wet feet)
 | |||
| Open Forest, 360° Pano (click for fullres). The open space in the centre of the photo is soft and wet - easy to lose a boot if they're loose. Hard to tell without stepping in it if you're not using a stick to check your way (I was). |
 |
| Open Forest, 360° Pano. Ridge in centre, with a more closed conifer stand on it. Firm ground, easy travel. Can walk at same speed as on path. |
 |
| A stream. If you're not familiar with the outdoors, or the area, it would be very easy for a thirsty traveler to never notice this stream. You can't hear it from more than 20-30 yards away, and it doesn't really look like much. |
Closed Forest
Description: Dense conifers, low-lying hemlocks, balsams, etc. Visibility limited (sometimes only a few yards in any direction) and movement extremely slow. Impossible to move quietly, but very easy to hide if you're still. Easy to get scratched up if you're wearing short sleeves or light clothes.
I can't imagine crossing this kind of terrain with a horse/mule/donkey. I'm sure it's possible, but it certainly wouldn't be on its back.
Exists as thickets inside open forest.
Encounter distance: 5-150 yards. Encounters beyond 20 yards would be hearing something moving, but not being able to see it.
Gameable features: clearing (improved visibility within, possible campsite), chance of lost/damaged gear, attrition (hit points/flesh wounds for crossing), stream, large puddle (drinkable)
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| Have fun getting through there in your armour with a pack, weapons, bedroll, etc., and forget horses. |
  | |
| Closed forest thicket in surrounding open forest, crop of a fisheye. Jacket for scale. Perfect ambush site - if people come to fill their canteens in the stream at the bottom of the photo, they are vulnerable to missile fire from the top of the hill, while the assailants are protected to either side by dense growth, and straight on by the fallen tree and the treacherous, rocky ground. Charging up the hill against a few people with crossbows would be suicide. |
Seasonal Wetland
Description: Grasses 3-4ft tall, could have hidden any number of enemies. Easy to stumble into a hole and get a soaker.
Stream forms core of wetland. Occasionally a serious obstacle if you want to stay dry (1-2 ft deep, 6ft across) when only twenty yards up or down stream it was easy to cross (either by fallen tree, or because it had broken up into numerous smaller streams). At times, broadens into a swamp-y/pond-y thing 100 yards across or more.
Boundary between forest/wetland characterized by bad footing, slippery rocks, difficult-to-see holes about a foot across full of water waiting to twist your ankle in. Can't see anything past the boundary from the wetland, can see out a little from the forest.
Encounter distance: 1-200 yards. Close encounters with things hidden in the long grass. Far encounters with things on the far boundary, or standing/walking in the grass.
Gameable features: dry crossing point (fallen tree, or simply where the stream narrows/splits), islands.
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| 360° pano of wetland, stream portion. The stream isn't very deep, but that's not immediately obvious. It's about 100 yards to the far side (the stand of conifers about 1/4 in from the right). The wetland meanders for about a mile in both directions. The stream is easily crossable anywhere if you don't mind a soaker, and if you spend ten or fifteen minutes looking around, you can cross it safely without getting wet. |
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| From about the same point as the previous pano, about ten or twenty yards from the edge. Can you spot my jacket hanging in a tree? It's just inside the forest, no more than fifty feet away, and yet it's almost invisible. The break in the grass in the bottom right is a little offshoot of the main stream. |
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| 360° pano. Pond/swamp portion of wetland. This is only a couple hundred yards east of the previous pano. Crossing at this point would require wading - probably up to your chest, but I've never tried. If you spend half an hour looking around, though, you'll discover it narrows to what you saw in the other photo just a little ways down. It gets less passable in the other direction (quite wide and deep, maybe 200 yards across, and probably at least six feet deep, if not more). |
21 December 2015
Alignments that Aren't Stupid
While alignments as proposed by Gygax are thoroughly stupid, the concept of alignment could perhaps be a useful one, albeit in a manner fairly unrelated to the most common six-axis view of the system.
If you asked me, in real life, what my alignment is, I'd probably tell you my political affiliations. I'm a socialist, and am aligned with Canada's socialist party, the NDP. Someone else might be strongly influenced by their faith - they're aligned with the Catholic Church, say, or Sunni Islam.
This means that, on a broad range of issues, our ideas line up - they align. And this is useful and gameable information. If you're running an NPC in modern Canada, and you know they're NDP-aligned, that tells you a lot about them. Any issue that you're not sure how the NPC feels about, you can fall back on their alignment, and say that there's their opinion.
This needn't be as grandiose as supporting warring dynasties like being aligned with the House of Lancaster or York. Peasants in a village could be aligned with the Reeve or the Lord of the Manor, or perhaps the outlaws in the woods. Villagers could be aligned with a Guild, or the Mayor, or the Bishop.
Like in real life, people could be aligned with more than one faction. Someone could be aligned with the Catholic Church, the local Reeve, and the King, in that order. So, if you don't know how they feel about something, you can default to one of those positions as a shortcut.
So, an alignment line on an NPC sheet could look like:
Alignment: Pope>Reeve>King
Denoting that the NPC is Catholic and strongly aligned with the Pope and his beliefs. On matters that don't include the Pope's opinion (say, whether the village should plant more beans next year), the NPC will generally side with the Reeve. And on matters that involve neither (France is an enemy), they'll side with the King.
If you asked me, in real life, what my alignment is, I'd probably tell you my political affiliations. I'm a socialist, and am aligned with Canada's socialist party, the NDP. Someone else might be strongly influenced by their faith - they're aligned with the Catholic Church, say, or Sunni Islam.
This means that, on a broad range of issues, our ideas line up - they align. And this is useful and gameable information. If you're running an NPC in modern Canada, and you know they're NDP-aligned, that tells you a lot about them. Any issue that you're not sure how the NPC feels about, you can fall back on their alignment, and say that there's their opinion.
This needn't be as grandiose as supporting warring dynasties like being aligned with the House of Lancaster or York. Peasants in a village could be aligned with the Reeve or the Lord of the Manor, or perhaps the outlaws in the woods. Villagers could be aligned with a Guild, or the Mayor, or the Bishop.
Like in real life, people could be aligned with more than one faction. Someone could be aligned with the Catholic Church, the local Reeve, and the King, in that order. So, if you don't know how they feel about something, you can default to one of those positions as a shortcut.
So, an alignment line on an NPC sheet could look like:
Alignment: Pope>Reeve>King
Denoting that the NPC is Catholic and strongly aligned with the Pope and his beliefs. On matters that don't include the Pope's opinion (say, whether the village should plant more beans next year), the NPC will generally side with the Reeve. And on matters that involve neither (France is an enemy), they'll side with the King.
19 October 2014
Alignments are still stupid
Just in case anyone had forgotten, alignments are still stupid and valueless.
We get along in daily life just fine without alignments. We know that ISIS are a pretty bad lot, and we don't need a know alignment spell for that. Thing is, nothing is as simple as an alignment makes it out to be. They don't think they're evil. They think they're good, and we're evil. They're not, like a demon, out to cause suffering - they're out to *right wrongs* and *fight evildoers* and *do god's work*. They're the *good guys* - to them.
Contrast that with something unambiguous, like a demon. It lives to cause suffering, sow confusion, turn brother against brother. It feeds on discord and disharmony. It has one goal: harm. It is *evil*. But that's not an alignment, that's its *nature*.
Was Donald Rumsfeld chaotic evil? He certainly seems like it, but a more probable explanation than the apparent one (he just wants to cause mayhem and suffering) is that he's on a deeply misguided quest to help himself and his friends and maybe his country. So, is he lawful good? Chaotic good?
He's not evil or good or lawful or chaotic - he's just a person, like anyone else.
Sure, you could assign an alignment to him, argue your case, and I could assign another one, and argue my case, and at the end of the day - how has that helped us understand him? How does that help us in any way?
Assigning an alignment to Rumsfeld doesn't help us at all.
Another example: was Gaddafi chaotic evil? He did some twisted shit, to be sure, but he also eradicated homelessness in Libya, fought for the rights of women and blacks (elements of society traditionally crushed underfoot in North African/Arab/Muslim society), worked to reduce income inequality, sought pan-Arab and then pan-African solidarity - creating the African Union. He worked within the law when it suited him, and outside the law when it suited him. Sometimes he did good, sometimes he did evil.
Was he Chaotic Good? Was he Lawful Evil? You could make a convincing case for both. You could make a strong case for Chaotic Neutral.
The point is, the alignment system doesn't actually work. Everybody is all of the alignments some of the time. We're people, we're complex. We can't be reduced to a two-axis chart.
I should hope your PCs and NPCs are the same.
We get along in daily life just fine without alignments. We know that ISIS are a pretty bad lot, and we don't need a know alignment spell for that. Thing is, nothing is as simple as an alignment makes it out to be. They don't think they're evil. They think they're good, and we're evil. They're not, like a demon, out to cause suffering - they're out to *right wrongs* and *fight evildoers* and *do god's work*. They're the *good guys* - to them.
Contrast that with something unambiguous, like a demon. It lives to cause suffering, sow confusion, turn brother against brother. It feeds on discord and disharmony. It has one goal: harm. It is *evil*. But that's not an alignment, that's its *nature*.
Was Donald Rumsfeld chaotic evil? He certainly seems like it, but a more probable explanation than the apparent one (he just wants to cause mayhem and suffering) is that he's on a deeply misguided quest to help himself and his friends and maybe his country. So, is he lawful good? Chaotic good?
He's not evil or good or lawful or chaotic - he's just a person, like anyone else.
Sure, you could assign an alignment to him, argue your case, and I could assign another one, and argue my case, and at the end of the day - how has that helped us understand him? How does that help us in any way?
Assigning an alignment to Rumsfeld doesn't help us at all.
Another example: was Gaddafi chaotic evil? He did some twisted shit, to be sure, but he also eradicated homelessness in Libya, fought for the rights of women and blacks (elements of society traditionally crushed underfoot in North African/Arab/Muslim society), worked to reduce income inequality, sought pan-Arab and then pan-African solidarity - creating the African Union. He worked within the law when it suited him, and outside the law when it suited him. Sometimes he did good, sometimes he did evil.
Was he Chaotic Good? Was he Lawful Evil? You could make a convincing case for both. You could make a strong case for Chaotic Neutral.
The point is, the alignment system doesn't actually work. Everybody is all of the alignments some of the time. We're people, we're complex. We can't be reduced to a two-axis chart.
I should hope your PCs and NPCs are the same.
10 October 2014
More about Poleaxes
I am happy to see that my old post about my favourite medieval weapon, the poleaxe, has been generating some discussion lately. It is a weapon sadly neglected in RPGs, which is odd given its ubiquity on the high medieval battlefield.
T. Woolley wrote a lengthy post on the poleaxe with some cool ideas for modular magic weapons down towards the bottom. T. Woolley is also noteworthy as someone with some experience with medieval weapons; something of a rarity in RPG circles!
And JB wrote this great post, to which the rest of this post addressed. I was going to post this as a comment, but it got rather long. He provides some interesting historical perspective on poleaxes in RPGs, and the absence of the polearm from Gygax's radar - I didn't realize that they were omitted from AD&D 1e (I only have the DMG)! I figured since Gygax was obsessed with polearms, they would be front and centre, so I was interested to learn he was completely ignorant of them!
My response to JB:
Glad to see the poleaxe getting some love!
While interesting for historical reasons, I would take basically everything Gygax said or wrote about weapons and armour and throw it in the trash. It's unfortunate (for a medieval weapons buff such as myself) that he's been so influential in defining the discourse on these matters since the game's beginnings, as he really didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about.
I also wouldn't put much stock in stuff written before WWII, especially Victorian and Edwardian stuff (i.e. the sources Gygax used). Useful for descriptions of artifacts, mostly. Their interpretation is largely bunk. It is from them that we get such execrable ideas as "banded mail", whatever the hell that was supposed to be.
He's not *entirely* to blame for his ignorance, as AFAIK there were very few historical fighting manuals available in English in the seventies. I think Fiore's work was first translated in the eighties, for instance. George Silver's work would have been available to him, as it is in English (well, the kind of English Shakespeare wrote, so not the clearest to a modern audience, but totally intelligible). There were also some important historical works out, perhaps most notably European Armour, by Claude Blaire. So there's really not any good reason why he relied so heavily on that old stuff.
I would also point out that the defining feature of the poleaxe is not the axe head or the hammer head or the beak, but the langets and the fashion of attaching the implements to the head. Whereas a halberd is superficially similar, a halberd head is forged out of a single piece, with a cone that fits over the shaft to attach it.
A poleaxe, on the other hand, has each piece forged separately, and held down by langets - metal plates - that also serve to strengthen the end. This makes the poleaxe much tougher and heavier duty, and better suited to attacking armour. The tip generally lacks an edge, and is typically square in cross-section, which again, makes it much tougher than a spearhead or halberd tip.
Bec de corbin, lucern hammer, etc. are all really just poleaxes - poleaxe is definitely not reserved only for weapons with an axe head. In fact, the reference for the Bec de Corbin and Lucern Hammer wiki pages is the MyArmoury page on poleaxes!
Fiore, in his 15th century manual, uses the term"adza" azza or aça (I typoed before and wrote adza, and neglected to mention the alternate spelling), or axe to describe what we would call the poleaxe, and it is depicted with a hammer and a beak - no axe head. So the use of "axe" to refer to poleaxes without axe heads is not a neologism, but dates back to at least the late 14th century (in Italian, anyway).
T. Woolley wrote a lengthy post on the poleaxe with some cool ideas for modular magic weapons down towards the bottom. T. Woolley is also noteworthy as someone with some experience with medieval weapons; something of a rarity in RPG circles!
And JB wrote this great post, to which the rest of this post addressed. I was going to post this as a comment, but it got rather long. He provides some interesting historical perspective on poleaxes in RPGs, and the absence of the polearm from Gygax's radar - I didn't realize that they were omitted from AD&D 1e (I only have the DMG)! I figured since Gygax was obsessed with polearms, they would be front and centre, so I was interested to learn he was completely ignorant of them!
My response to JB:
Glad to see the poleaxe getting some love!
While interesting for historical reasons, I would take basically everything Gygax said or wrote about weapons and armour and throw it in the trash. It's unfortunate (for a medieval weapons buff such as myself) that he's been so influential in defining the discourse on these matters since the game's beginnings, as he really didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about.
I also wouldn't put much stock in stuff written before WWII, especially Victorian and Edwardian stuff (i.e. the sources Gygax used). Useful for descriptions of artifacts, mostly. Their interpretation is largely bunk. It is from them that we get such execrable ideas as "banded mail", whatever the hell that was supposed to be.
He's not *entirely* to blame for his ignorance, as AFAIK there were very few historical fighting manuals available in English in the seventies. I think Fiore's work was first translated in the eighties, for instance. George Silver's work would have been available to him, as it is in English (well, the kind of English Shakespeare wrote, so not the clearest to a modern audience, but totally intelligible). There were also some important historical works out, perhaps most notably European Armour, by Claude Blaire. So there's really not any good reason why he relied so heavily on that old stuff.
I would also point out that the defining feature of the poleaxe is not the axe head or the hammer head or the beak, but the langets and the fashion of attaching the implements to the head. Whereas a halberd is superficially similar, a halberd head is forged out of a single piece, with a cone that fits over the shaft to attach it.
A poleaxe, on the other hand, has each piece forged separately, and held down by langets - metal plates - that also serve to strengthen the end. This makes the poleaxe much tougher and heavier duty, and better suited to attacking armour. The tip generally lacks an edge, and is typically square in cross-section, which again, makes it much tougher than a spearhead or halberd tip.
Bec de corbin, lucern hammer, etc. are all really just poleaxes - poleaxe is definitely not reserved only for weapons with an axe head. In fact, the reference for the Bec de Corbin and Lucern Hammer wiki pages is the MyArmoury page on poleaxes!
Fiore, in his 15th century manual, uses the term
5 October 2014
Things I'm Thinking About
Mostly just posting for my own benefit. These are the things I'm thinking about these days. Mostly things that have come up during play.
Alternative casting rules
I'm finding that using a d6 dice pool is resulting in spells either being more or less automatic (for easy spells) or more or less impossible (for hard spells). I had thought there would be a tension in rolling each round to cast spells, but it turns out that currently most spellcasting is outside of combat.
And spamming of low-level spells (especially detect magic type things) annoys me. It makes magic very mundane.
So, a new system is required for that.
New Spells
I'm finding that magicians, especially, are not enjoying combat as much as perhaps they could, as they currently don't really have any combat-applicable spells.
So, I'm thinking about what spells I can add that keep the flavour I want for magicians, but that can be used in combat. Illusions are something I'm leaning towards.
Descriptive damage rules for large creatures
The descriptive damage system I outlined a while back (in this post) is working swimmingly for humans and humanoids.
It does not currently have anything to say about large creatures. The couple times I've had to run large creatures since implementing descriptive damage, I simply used a basic hit point system. And that worked ok, but I'd like to be able to include the grit and interest of the descriptive damage system into fights with giant creatures.
Making Burglars more interesting
Both in combat and out. The main thought I'm having at the moment regarding this is making them a little better at combat than they currently are, and including some social abilities, persuasion-type stuff. We shall see how that plays out.
XP and Advancement
For want of a better system, we're currently just using a negotiated level up system. When the party has done a remarkable feat (or a few), we chat about it, and decide if they're deserving of a level up. This is working fine, and is essentially what most systems boil down to in any case, but perhaps a little more guidance would be good for a published game.
Something sort of similar to Paolo's system in Adventure Fantasy Game sounds plausible, but instead of treasure being the driving force, using great deeds (which he also supports, actually). His advancement system is worth checking out, as is his game.
While I've been a defender of XP for Gold, and while that is a perfectly workable system, I'm not sure it's right for Spells and Steel. For one thing, cash is scarce in my world, and I don't have the kind of economic system in place yet that Alexis does, so I'd have to be coming up with cash equivalents for all the treasure...
So what I'm thinking at the moment is guidelines for the kinds of feats and challenges are appropriate to trigger a level up. More thought is required.
Things that are working well
Descriptive damage is great. I've also got some rules on hand for infections and disease, which I'll get around to putting up when I feel like it.
Combat in general, and the Fighter class are working very well. Which makes sense, since that's where a lot of my effort has gone to date.
Classes are strongly differentiated, which is something I wanted, but I'm starting to wonder if that's such a good thing.
I've been avoiding "+X" magic weapons, and am loving it (something I talked about before, as have others). The players actually have yet to identify any of their magic items, but they are using them and benefiting nonetheless.
Alternative casting rules
I'm finding that using a d6 dice pool is resulting in spells either being more or less automatic (for easy spells) or more or less impossible (for hard spells). I had thought there would be a tension in rolling each round to cast spells, but it turns out that currently most spellcasting is outside of combat.
And spamming of low-level spells (especially detect magic type things) annoys me. It makes magic very mundane.
So, a new system is required for that.
New Spells
I'm finding that magicians, especially, are not enjoying combat as much as perhaps they could, as they currently don't really have any combat-applicable spells.
So, I'm thinking about what spells I can add that keep the flavour I want for magicians, but that can be used in combat. Illusions are something I'm leaning towards.
Descriptive damage rules for large creatures
The descriptive damage system I outlined a while back (in this post) is working swimmingly for humans and humanoids.
It does not currently have anything to say about large creatures. The couple times I've had to run large creatures since implementing descriptive damage, I simply used a basic hit point system. And that worked ok, but I'd like to be able to include the grit and interest of the descriptive damage system into fights with giant creatures.
Making Burglars more interesting
Both in combat and out. The main thought I'm having at the moment regarding this is making them a little better at combat than they currently are, and including some social abilities, persuasion-type stuff. We shall see how that plays out.
XP and Advancement
For want of a better system, we're currently just using a negotiated level up system. When the party has done a remarkable feat (or a few), we chat about it, and decide if they're deserving of a level up. This is working fine, and is essentially what most systems boil down to in any case, but perhaps a little more guidance would be good for a published game.
Something sort of similar to Paolo's system in Adventure Fantasy Game sounds plausible, but instead of treasure being the driving force, using great deeds (which he also supports, actually). His advancement system is worth checking out, as is his game.
While I've been a defender of XP for Gold, and while that is a perfectly workable system, I'm not sure it's right for Spells and Steel. For one thing, cash is scarce in my world, and I don't have the kind of economic system in place yet that Alexis does, so I'd have to be coming up with cash equivalents for all the treasure...
So what I'm thinking at the moment is guidelines for the kinds of feats and challenges are appropriate to trigger a level up. More thought is required.
Things that are working well
Descriptive damage is great. I've also got some rules on hand for infections and disease, which I'll get around to putting up when I feel like it.
Combat in general, and the Fighter class are working very well. Which makes sense, since that's where a lot of my effort has gone to date.
Classes are strongly differentiated, which is something I wanted, but I'm starting to wonder if that's such a good thing.
I've been avoiding "+X" magic weapons, and am loving it (something I talked about before, as have others). The players actually have yet to identify any of their magic items, but they are using them and benefiting nonetheless.
21 August 2014
Easy Cover
Hard cover against missile fire is incredibly easy to adjudicate. (For the few who don't know - hard cover will stop the projectile, soft cover merely conceals you. A stone wall is hard cover against pretty much anything, plywood is hard cover against arrows but not bullets, a hedge is soft cover).
Estimate the amount of cover - 1/4, 2/4, 3/4.
Then, when rolling your attack, also roll a d4. If you don't roll higher than the cover amount, you miss, no matter what the d20 says.
Simple, predictable results. Fast to play. Easy to understand. Realistic. Everything you need in a rule.
This is unlikely to be an original idea, but apparently 5e uses an AC modifier, which is a very stupid way to handle cover, and this was my alternative.
EDIT: Caveat - this only makes sense when the marksman's original chance to hit is 100% or less, so that any reduction in target size causes a commensurate reduction in chance to hit. That's not necessarily always going to hold true - I'm sure that I could put 20/20 arrows into an 8ft2 target at 6ft, and 20/20 arrows into a 4ft2 target at 6 feet, but I don't ever see >100% CTH in my games, so I'm unconcerned about that oddity.
Estimate the amount of cover - 1/4, 2/4, 3/4.
Then, when rolling your attack, also roll a d4. If you don't roll higher than the cover amount, you miss, no matter what the d20 says.
Simple, predictable results. Fast to play. Easy to understand. Realistic. Everything you need in a rule.
This is unlikely to be an original idea, but apparently 5e uses an AC modifier, which is a very stupid way to handle cover, and this was my alternative.
EDIT: Caveat - this only makes sense when the marksman's original chance to hit is 100% or less, so that any reduction in target size causes a commensurate reduction in chance to hit. That's not necessarily always going to hold true - I'm sure that I could put 20/20 arrows into an 8ft2 target at 6ft, and 20/20 arrows into a 4ft2 target at 6 feet, but I don't ever see >100% CTH in my games, so I'm unconcerned about that oddity.
2 March 2014
Castle Cost Calculator Error Fixed
There was an error in the Castle Cost Calculator spreadsheet in the sidebar - the amount of land required was mistakenly based on the time to completion, instead of the workforce size. This has been rectified.
21 February 2014
Simple Fatigue Rule
I've been struggling with fatigue rules that aren't just some lousy modifier to keep track of, and this is what I've come up with. I'm trying it currently in my game, and it seems to be working - it's simple to understand, and fairly severe in its implications.
When exhausted, lose all levels, and move as if fully encumbered. If already fully encumbered, you movement is at a shuffle (essentially 0 for overland travel).
Thus class skills are no longer accessible - Burglars can't free-run or climb, Magicians can't cast spells, Fighters get no attack/defense bonuses.
You're just a slow, normal human when exhausted.
When exhausted, lose all levels, and move as if fully encumbered. If already fully encumbered, you movement is at a shuffle (essentially 0 for overland travel).
Thus class skills are no longer accessible - Burglars can't free-run or climb, Magicians can't cast spells, Fighters get no attack/defense bonuses.
You're just a slow, normal human when exhausted.
19 February 2014
Summoning
Here is my take on summoning spirits, demons, fey, etc., and a few other bonus spells.
- Ex Aethere, Servus (Out of the Ether, a Servant) (Mathias Penshawe)
- PL: 20 + X
- Duration: Until task is performed
- Mechanism:
- Summary: Summons an arbitrary fey or daemon to perform one task. Requires an envoy, a path, a gift, and a timer.
- The envoy seeks out the summoned being, the path brings them to the caster, the gift binds them to serve, and the timer forces them to appear at a specific time.
- Onerous service, complicated tasks, or tasks "beneath" fey can offend. They will comply, but may seek retribution.
- X can be added to the PL to summon a more powerful fey:
- 0: minor sprite, brownie, etc. - can do minor physical tasks (fetch this, mend that)
- Gift: food
- +5: lower fairie: some minor magic, can enchant people to misdirect them
- Jewelry, etc. worth ~1£
- +10: lower demon: will directly harm foes as a 5HD monster
- animal sacrifice, goat or pig
- +15: fairie: magic: can create masterful illusions
- Jewelry, etc. worth ~10£
- Must know specific name of fairie to be summoned, requires research
- +20: daemon: very dangerous to summon, will directly harm foes as a 10HD monster
- multiple animal sacrifices or human sacrifice
- Must know specific name of demon
- +25: fairie noble: exceedingly dangerous to summon - will almost certainly resent being forced to serve, but can perform any magic (this is, for instance, the only way to resurrect the dead)
- Unique magic item, human slave
- Must know specific name
17 February 2014
More Spells
A few more spells.
- A Spell for Heating Hearths (Miles Tilghman)
- PL: 12
- Duration: Instantaneous
- Mechanism: Sight
- Summary: Cause an allied or neutral mass of flammable material (up to a few pounds) to ignite.
- I Need Not Hear You (Dorothy Ackworth)
- PL: 10 + X
- Duration: 10 minutes + X minutes
- Mechanism: Affinity
- Summary: Subject cannot speak or make a sound.
- A fey or other magically attuned individual will be able to see a rose flower covering the mouth of the subject.
- My Secrets Are Mine Own (Dorothy Ackworth)
- PL: 15
- Duration: Permanent until dispelled
- Mechanism: Affinity
- Summary: Subject cannot discuss a certain fact / event / person. Any attempt to do so leads to them burbling nonsense.
- A fey or other magically attuned individual will be able to see a rose flower covering the mouth of the subject.
15 February 2014
An Example of Bad Pricing in D&D
LS over at Papers and Pencils has written an interesting piece about a trouble many people seem to have - what should their players do with all their money?
I don't tend to have that problem, as I use historically researched prices and plausible starting money, which ends up resulting in what a lot of people would probably think of as a pretty meagre starting-out package.
To illustrate why I think the traditional D&D prices and starting money are broken beyond belief, here's an example.
Consider that in England about 1450, a suit of mass-produced Milanese plate armour cost about 8 pounds sterling - about 2000 silver pennies.
A skilled labourer would make about 4 silver pennies a day.
Now consider that in D&D starting gold is 3d6x10gp, and a suit of plate mail costs 60gp.
That means that an average starting character in D&D has saved up the equivalent of 750 days pay for an average day labour BEFORE THE GAME STARTS, based on this example.
Where I am, the minimum wage (what a day labourer would make) is about $11/hr, skilled labour maybe $15. 750 day's wages at that rate is about $90,000 - three years salary. Consider that for a moment - if you use Basic Edition prices, you're starting your players each with enough money to pay cash for Porsche 911, or live comfortably for about three years without working.
Think about what you would do with $90,000 in cash. What material wants would you have unsatisfied if that was dropped in your lap today?
If you're having trouble finding things for the players to buy in town, consider that things are too cheap and starting gold too high.
I don't tend to have that problem, as I use historically researched prices and plausible starting money, which ends up resulting in what a lot of people would probably think of as a pretty meagre starting-out package.
To illustrate why I think the traditional D&D prices and starting money are broken beyond belief, here's an example.
Consider that in England about 1450, a suit of mass-produced Milanese plate armour cost about 8 pounds sterling - about 2000 silver pennies.
A skilled labourer would make about 4 silver pennies a day.
Now consider that in D&D starting gold is 3d6x10gp, and a suit of plate mail costs 60gp.
That means that an average starting character in D&D has saved up the equivalent of 750 days pay for an average day labour BEFORE THE GAME STARTS, based on this example.
Where I am, the minimum wage (what a day labourer would make) is about $11/hr, skilled labour maybe $15. 750 day's wages at that rate is about $90,000 - three years salary. Consider that for a moment - if you use Basic Edition prices, you're starting your players each with enough money to pay cash for Porsche 911, or live comfortably for about three years without working.
Think about what you would do with $90,000 in cash. What material wants would you have unsatisfied if that was dropped in your lap today?
If you're having trouble finding things for the players to buy in town, consider that things are too cheap and starting gold too high.
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