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 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.

XP for Gold: Clearly Defined Lines

After wrapping up his Watchmen stint, superhero/evil genius Ozymandias was kind enough to leave this comment on my post about XP for Gold: Reputation and Confidence:

How do we delineate when gold acquisition counts for experience?

The argument I've seen often goes to the extreme end right away: If I find a chest of gold on the side of the road (fell off the back of a merchant's caravan), do I get experience for it? Clearly the answer is 'no.' There was no danger. There was no trial. There was no test of the character's skills. But what about the party that avoids the dragon to lift a few choice items from its hoard? What about using diplomacy or trickery to get the orcs to leave their lair unguarded? What about a thief who spends a few days playing the crowd?

The problem with XP for GP is there's no clearly defined line when it comes to assigning the bonus. And I've been all over the 'net looking for justification or explanation; it seems the task is too difficult for people, so most of them just drop it.

If you're looking for no grey areas, play Chess. Or better yet, Go, as Go never ends in a draw (as so many Chess games do)

An RPG is a reflection of the real world, and just like the real world, there are grey areas. And the only way to deal with grey areas, whether in the rules, or in the real world, is to draw on your life experience and good judgement, and make a call.

The problem Ozymandias sees with XP for GP simply isn't a problem - the DM looks at the situation, and makes a call.

Remember that even in the most artificial and restrictive RPG ruleset imaginable, the *bulk* of the game still comes down to simple DM fiat at the end of the day (Why did that chest fall off the caravan? Was there a way to avoid the dragon? How many GP in that horde? Are the orcs willing to talk? How many orcs are there? Is the King a nice guy? Is the Vizier banging the Queen?).

The point is, *everything in the game* lacks a clearly defined line. How many orcs is too many? How many HD for the dragon are too many? How much treasure is too much? Why is the King *this* nice, and not nicer? Why is the Vizier risking everything to be with the Queen?

You can lay down endless guidelines for all of this stuff (and people try, I seem to recall 4e dictating not only how tough the monsters should be but also how many magic items the players should be getting!!!), but you can *never* get away from the fact that the DM is making the world, running the world, and that the DM is a human being, and therefore necessarily fuzzy, fallible, and not really designed for clearly defined lines.

I mean, you can ask that question about anything in an RPG. So you get XP for killing monsters. Do you get XP for killing a beggar? Maybe? What about a child? What about the blacksmith - he could defend himself. What about an orc if you're a level 10 character? The orc is certainly no more threat than a child is to a Level 2 Fighter. Where do you draw the line?

And please, don't suggest that the rulebook covers it. The rulebook can *never* clear up all of the soft edges. It can never leave a clearly defined line. There will always be grey.

And that's why we play RPGs - for the grey. For the fuzziness. For the *realness* that can only come from dealing with another human being and all the vast complexities of their mind.

That lack of a clear line isn't a flaw, it's the *whole reason RPGs exist*.

Noisms and D&D Combat

Passages in italics are quotations from Noism's post D&D Combat is More Abstract Than You Think, which kinda got me riled up, so I apologize in advance for the acerbic tone.

...it's important to remember that the D&D combat rules evolved in a context of a 1 minute combat round: in OD&D and AD&D 1st edition, the combat round is a minute in length.

OK, but 1-minute rounds are just stupid. Just because it was in 0e or 1e doesn't mean it made any sense, or that it's good game design. There's any number of things in the old editions that are stupid and that have been houseruled away by generations of gamers.

One of the big parts of the OSR is our willingness to deconstruct the rules and modify them to suit us, not point to them as gospel.

...the famous idea of Gary Gygax's that a D&D fight should resemble the sword fight between Robin Hood and Sir Guy of Gisborne in the Errol Flynn iteration.

Firstly, the notion that Errol Flynn-style combat is worth emulating is far from a universal notion. It bears no similarity to reality, it has no real risk or danger, and is extremely ill-suited to a dice-driven system like D&D.

That kind of combat exists for one purpose only: advancing the plot of a film. It's more the kind of combat you see in a story game, where the relative advantages and disadvantages in the fight reflect and comment on the dialog of the characters, and no-one gets hurt or dies except for maximizing the dramatic effect.

It is literally the exact opposite of old-school D&D combat, which is random and messy - people die and get hurt with no consideration for what that might mean for the "story". The dice reign supreme, as opposed to the story.

D&D combat bears exactly zero similarity to that style of combat, and that combat bears exactly zero similarity to real life (except that there are humans, and they have swords). That Gygax said that says it was his inspiration says little about his knowledge of combat or game design.

So much for the idea of Errol Flynn combat.

You're rolling to see if, over the course of 1 minute, you manage to wear down your opponent's defences, either through actual physical damage or moral 'damage' or exhaustion or whatever.

Your hit points represent you capacity to stay in the fight, which slowly gets reduced over time (the higher your level, the longer this takes).

I covered this in my recent post on Hit Points.

Hit points exist as a proxy for your defensive abilities, not your physical or mental stamina, or physical ability to absorb damage. The notion in (0e, at least) was that a single blow would kill a normal person about half the time - that is to say, you essentially don't have any HP, you are simply killed by a single hit and have a base 50% chance of "save vs. death".

This can be seen as an evolution from the Chainmail 1 hit = dead every time, no chance to survive. The move to D&D gave you a 50% save vs. death built-in.

So HP are, in a real sense, nothing. Trying to map them onto stamina or morale or life force or blood pressure doesn't work, as they're a statistical increase to the average life expectancy, nothing more.

And your movement rate, which seems absurdly slow, represents the fact that you are scooting around and manoeuvring for position while avoiding blows, missile attacks, what have you.

There can literally be no defense of 0e's absurdly low movement rates. There is no way you can slice them that makes a lick of sense.

They are most likely an error in the move from Chainmail mass battle to D&D single combat.

The fact that only one or two shots are permitted in a 1 minute round indicates that the archer is waiting to pick his moment to fire.

There's probably a reasonable middle-ground between 1 arrow every 6 seconds to 1 arrow every 60.

If you're taking a minute for an arrow, though, that's definitely excessive. Your odds of hitting are going to be much higher sending more shafts downrange than waiting for that "perfect chance" that may never come.

I would question why there really needs to be even an arbitrary length to a combat round of 1 minute.

Yes, and - as I said before - I agree. If you interpret D&D combat as you clearly do, then do away with rounds altogether. Just make an opposed d20 roll to see who wins.

What is the purpose of a combat round? It gives a chance for everybody to decide what they want to do and then act.

Well, it's supposed to give a way to direct a continuous action in discrete steps. As such, you need to know how long the step is going to be so you can plan your action.

It doesn't matter: there is no credibility to stretch because we are not dealing with a system which has to make sense in the way that a less abstract one does. We are not rolling dice 'to hit', despite the name: we are rolling to see how far we attrit (that is a word: I looked it up) the opponent.

If character A can attrite (I've always seen it with the 'e', but apparently both are used) character B by an average of 3 'units' per 10 seconds, then yes - it does matter one hell of a lot how long a round is. If character B has 10 'units' to attrite away, then he can last 4 rounds of 10 second, or less than 1 round of 1 minute.

I don't see how this is so hard to grasp...

Whether you're using a highly abstract system or a highly detailed one makes no difference, unless you're abstract to the point of story-gaming.

Another good reason for preferring abstract combat is just that realism may be something of a fool's errand.

It may be, but as I wrote before here, realism is to be infinitely preferred to not-realism (all other things being equal).

The short version, for the lazy, is that if the system isn't realistic, then the players need to master the system to make sensible choices. The more realistic the system, the more the players can leverage their knowledge of the real world.

For example, in reality, dropping a 25lb 10ft down onton someone's head would probably at the very least stun them, and possibly knock them out cold, maybe even kill them.

In D&D, it would have one of two effects: none, or kill them stone dead. Since that's not what would happen in the real world, a player needs to know the system well enough to understand that even though in the real world X would happen, Y will happen in the game.

I really like the idea of Western Martial Arts but I'm not persuaded that they are entirely realistic; until people start actually fighting to the death using these techniques, and agreeing that if they are injured they will only use medical techniques that were in use in the 14th century, I think that "what happens in a real sword fight" is still a matter of considerable conjecture and will likely remain so.

Sorry, but that's just ignorant. I don't really know what else to say to that.

Your ignorant, uninformed opinion based on literally nothing compared to 30 years of dedicated scholarship and experiment? It's easy to see where the weight of evidence is, and it's not on your side.

I mean, what would you think if I said something like (I seem to recall that your field is philosophy of law, or something related - apologies if it's not), "I really like the idea of the philosophy of law, but I think that scholarship in that field has revealed nothing and that everyone who has ever studied it has completely wasted their time"?

That's literally what you just said about students of historical Western martial arts.

The Long Road to Better DMing

Noisms recently wrote a post, the gist of which was to extol the virtues of practical experience as a GM over mere technical knowledge. It can be found here.

I would tend to agree with that, but I think an even more important consideration is being overlooked.

Noisms asks the question, "who is the better DM - the person who has only been trained in the rules or the person who knows the rules but has 10 years' experience at the table?" He and I agree that it will likely be the person with more experience.

But an even more important question is this, "who is the better DM - the person whose total knowledge of the world and humanity comes from daytime television and trashy novels, or the person with a rich social life who is well-read in both great literature and non-fiction?" I think the answer is obvious.

But so often gamers seem to think that the game begins with prep and ends when the last hit point is expended (Alexis at Tao of D&D is a notable exception - he has often written on the importance of being a well-rounded, well-educated human to gaming, and that is one of the reasons why I have so much respect for him). So often the importance of being a good human being is ignored.

Without an understanding of politics, economics, geography, physics, meteorology, sociology, military science, etc. etc., it is very difficult to run a convincing game world. Without extensive experience of varied social interaction and without exposure to the depths of humanity present in literature, it is very difficult to run convincing NPCs (or PCs, for that matter).

One of my favourite quotes - it was said regarding musicianship, but can be applied equally well to playing D&D - is "Remember that sitting under a tree is also good for your playing." It was a reminder that beyond the technical and the practical is the human, and D&D is nothing if not a game that is deeply human.

So, get out there - read Dostoyevsky. Watch Kubrick. Experience Rodin, Mondrian, Matisse. Fall in love, argue passionately, make and lose friends.

If you want to play great games, live great lives.