Spes Magna Games

In the past few weeks, I finally got my library remodeled. New shelving installed, new paint, new floor, better use of space, et cetera. It’s a roomier, brighter place now with more exposed wall on which to display framed art, my Greyhawk maps, and a selection of LPs above my turntable. During the reshelving process, I found 18 pages stapled in the upper lefthand corner. The pages summarize a dungeon that I wrote some time after I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (so, after the summer of 1985). The dungeon itself is written for 1E AD&D. After this paragraph, you’ll see a column of pics of the dungeon. Each pic embiggens when clicked upon (caveat: the pictures might not open in a new tab).

The dungeon had an poetric intro, which I’m pretty sure I wrote in the form of an epic limerick. I strung together several limericks that told the story of four evil brothers who built a fortress in a swamp. Mondo, a paladin, assembled a team of heroes, who assaulted the evil brothers’ fortress, emerging victorious but only after many goodfolk fell in battle. Unfortunately, I no longer have that epic limerick, thus making the world a poetically poorer place.

The fortress itself is divided into five parts. Each brother lived in one of the sections accessed via tower (the circular rooms to the northwest, north, east, and southwest). Each tower leads into a quadrant (loosely speaking), and each quadrant is not directly accessible from any other quadrant. Each brother had his own motif, and the chambers in his quadrant reflect that motif. For example, one brother was a thief and a glutton, and his quadrant included a sumptuous dining hall, extensive kitchens, and a collection of treatises on lockpicking. Each brother also had a special item that enabled them to control the maze in the center of the fortress.

I don’t recall the exact workings of the maze, and that description isn’t in the dungeon’s write-up. I remember that each brother had a special item (which are mentioned in the dungeon’s write-up). These items could somehow be used to change the configuration of the maze. Why and how? No idea. There might have been some sort of dimension travel possible when the last maze configuration was unlocked through the use of all four items at once.

Looking the Wandering Monster Chart, a few things become clear. First, I used the 1E AD&D’s Monster Manual II method to construct a random encounter table. Using 1d8+1d12, the table produces results from 2 to 20, “with a large flat spot of equal probability in the 9-13 range” (to quote MM2, page 138). The more common monsters go in the slots near the center of the table. As one moves closer to 2 and 20, the monsters become increasingly rare. Returning to the Wandering Monster Chart, I see that there is a death knight in the dungeon, but that fearsome monster isn’t likely to be encountered just wandering around the place. The most common encounter is “no encounter”, with hordes of giant rats or a solitary mist horror being somewhat less common.

Also, with at least a small nod to a sensible dungeon ecology, most of the monsters are undead, not particularly intelligent, and/or small enough to access the fortress via the narrow arrow slit windows that pierce its walls. The major villains in the fortress, based on the Wandering Monster Chart, would be the aforementioned death knight as well as a ghoul lord and a night hag (whose presence hints at the dimension travel angle that is perhaps connected to the maze).

Take a look at the stat blocks. Notice the circled portion. After HD and hp, there is a bonus. This is something I picked up from gaming with Lewis Pulsipher, game designer and contributor to the Fiend Folio and Dragon magazine. A giant centipede has a +1 to-hit bonus. By contrast, the night hag (not shown) has a +8 to-hit bonus. THAC0 worked like this:

Character’s THAC0 – (d20 +/- all relevant modifiers) = AC hit

So, a character with a THAC0 of 18 scores a 15 on his to-hit roll. This hits AC 3 (18 minus 15). Lew’s method kept everyone’s THAC0 at 20 with a variable attack bonus equal to the difference between 20 and the creature’s THAC0. So, a night hag has a THAC0 of 12, and 20 minus 12 equals 8, so a night hag has a +8 to-hit bonus. (This also means I either goofed the giant centipede’s attack bonus or else I wanted robust giant centipedes.) Using Lew’s system, THAC0 ends up like this:

20 – (d20 +/- all relevant modifiers) = AC hit

So, if that night hag scores a modified 22 attack roll (14 + her bonus of 8), then she hits AC -2 (20 minus 22). Lew’s system sped up combat by keeping the minuend at a constant 20. This system also foreshadows 3E D&D’s base attack bonus system, which I’ve long maintained is just THAC0 standing on its head.

In the last picture, we see handwritten notes about the dungeon. For whatever reason, those last pages never got typed. What likely happened is this. I had a leave coming up, probably for Christmas. I knew gaming with my old group from high school would be part of that leave, and, therefore, I needed something to DM. So, I drew the map, and then used one of the few military computers I had access to where I worked. The paper on which the print appears was fed through a dot-matrix printer in a continuous feed. I can see where I separated the pages and removed the left and right strips along the perforations. Then, I ran out of time, and so I hand-wrote the rest of the dungeon while on leave but before we met to play.

I remember running the adventure. There are a few marks here and there in the text that indicate which encounters the players faced. I fondly recall the ambush on the party by the githyanki warband (yet another dimension travel hint), but I’m not sure what happened after that. The githyanki might have been the encounter that broke the party, especially since the githyanki managed to catch the PCs by surprise in a crossfire of rebounding lightning bolts.

Ah, good times.

Tags: 1E AD&D, dungeon crawls, place of power

From the AD&D Monster Manual, page 76:

“Leaders and above will always have two weapons. If a subchief is with a group the tribal standard will be present 40% of the time. The standard is always present when the tribal chief is. The standard will cause all orcs within 6″ to fight more fiercely (+1 on hit dice and morale check dice).”

Way back when, our characters fighting hordes of orcs (or similar evil humanoids) targeted leaders. The idea was simple: Those leaders were stronger. Defeating them clearly showed that our characters as more powerful, which caused the rank and file to lose morale and flee. My main character, Lord Korbok, even had a magic spear that pointed out enemy leaders within a certain distance (6”, if I recall correctly).

As a DM, I loved using large groups of humanoids. I even used the typical weaponry breakdowns to determine how many of the monsters were armed with what weapons. Leaders were assigned X number of subordinates. Organized humanoids, such as lawful evil orcs and hobgoblins, fought with as much military precision and discipline as I thought I understood. The leaders barked orders, and the position of the standard bearer shifted in order reinforce weak points, signal a push in a particular direction, or indicate a specific target.

The benefits from being within 6” of the standard are simple: “+1 on hit dice and morale check dice”. Orcs inspired by the standard’s proximity are less likely to break and run. I applied the “+1 on hit dice” as an attack roll bonus, but I’m not sure I like this interpretation as much at age 54 as I did at age 14.

If I were to run that humanoid horde today, I’d be more literal. An inspired 1-HD orc would fight as a 2-HD monster. This changes the orc’s THAC0 from 19 to 16, an effective +3 to-hit bonus. I’d also be inclined to grant the affected orcs more hit points (what later editions of D&D refer to as temporary hit points). Not only does the more ferocious orc hit harder, but it’s also harder to kill due to an additional 1d8 hit points.

For additional fun, at least some standards ought to be magical.

Magical Standard: All magical standards must be held aloft by the bearer, and the magical standard must be visible for it to have any effect. This requires the use of at least one hand. Creatures allied to the bearer who are within 6” of the standard fight more fiercely, gaining an additional hit die (to include hit points) and a +1 on morale checks (if applicable). A magical standard has one or more additional powers, all of which function the same way as the aforementioned effects. Roll 1d8 and consult the following:

1-2: +2 bonus on saving throws versus charm and fear

3-4: 50% magic resistance to sleep

5-6: +2 melee damage bonus

7: +1 melee attack per round

8: Same as result 7, and roll 1d6 to determine a second power.

Tags: 1E AD&D, magic items

Today, I continue to explore expanding OSRIC to include narrative elements inspired by Margaret Weis Productions’ Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game (MHRG). In the first post on this topic, I looked at how characters and monsters create assets and complications that affect Attack, Defense, Saving Throws, and Damage. It’s now time to turn to noncombat applications of the idea (“noncombat” meaning not applicable to Attack, Defense, Saving Throws, or Damage).

OSRIC does not have a skill system, and I’m certainly not proposing to add one. Instead, I’m going to start with tried-and-true idea of ability checks, which were widely used as a house rule in 1E AD&D, morphing into nonweapon proficiencies with 2E AD&D.

An ability check is simple. The player proposes a course of action, the success of which is not obvious. The DM designates an ability score that governs that action and determines the action’s difficulty. The players rolls one or more dice and compares the result to the ability score to determine success. The lower the result, the better.

Let’s formalize some of this by tying the number of dice rolled to the difficulty of the action. The harder the action, the more dice the player rolls, which leads to higher totals on average and reduces the odds of success.

Easy: 2d6
Average: 3d6
Hard: 4d6
Heroic: 5d6
Nigh Impossible: 6d6

The player rolls and totals the results of the indicated number of dice. If this total is equal to or less than the governing ability score, the character succeeds. (Nota Bene: This system assumes that no other part of the rules covers the proposed action. For example, it wouldn’t be used to open a door as that task is already governed by Strength.)

For example, Wiggles the halfling thief wants to jump up on a table in order to pull a tapestry down onto a well-armed and armored ogre. Can Wiggles make the jump onto the table? There’s no good reason why he ought not be able to try. The DM judges that Wiggles’s height compared to the table’s height added to the constricted area due to the ogre and other combatants makes jumping onto the table on Average task governed by Wiggles’s Strength of 11. Christopher rolls 3d6, totals the dice, and compares the result to Wiggles’s Strength.

But, what if there’s something in Wiggles’s background that hints he’s good at jumping? How does this factor in?

Going back to MHRG, we find the concept of Distinctions, which are “defining backgrounds, personality traits, or catchphrases that summarize important facets of the hero’s outlook and approach to life.” An MHRG hero usually has three Distinctions, one of which helps form the dice pool rolled to determine success. Applied to OSRIC during character creation, a player should write three Distinctions for his character. Of course, the DM must approve these Distinctions.

For example, Christopher wrote these Distinctions for Wiggles: Circus Runaway, Plans for the Worst, and Shy, Yet Brave

We can now see that the reason Wiggles thinks he can make the jump onto the table in the middle of a pitched melee is because Wiggles spent time with a circus. This Distinction does not require an action to get into play. It is part of the character’s background. Consequently, Wiggles enjoys the benefit of an asset die when doing things related to having worked for a circus. Since Wiggles is a 2nd-level thief, his asset die size is d4. Christopher rolls 3d6 and 1d4, and subtracts the d4 from the total (because the d4 is a benefit and goal is get the lowest possible total). He rolls 3, 4, and 6 on the 3d6 and 3 on the 1d4, giving a total of 10 (3 + 4 + 6 – 3). Wiggles succeeds!

Another thing to note is that the modifier provided by an asset or complication might apply to a task governed by a d% roll. In this case, treat each unit as plus or minus 5% to the d% result.

For example, Wiggles needs to sneak past a couple of guards. Being only a 2nd-level thief, his move silently chance is not impressive, but it’s much better than Bric’s and Brac’s chances. Since Wiggles Plans for the Worst, Christopher explains how Wiggles carefully studies the routes so as to maximize staying out of line of sight while minimizing the odds of stumbling over something or stepping on something noisy. The DM thinks this sounds a lot like creating an asset. Christopher rolls 1d20 + 2 (Wiggles’s level) – 1 (since each guard is a 0-level NPC, the DM rules they count as half a Hit Die each). Christopher rolls a 16, which yields a result well above the 11 needed to create an asset. Wiggles gets his d4 asset die, which translates into a 5-20% modifier to Wiggles’s chance to move silently.

A final caveat: Care must be exercised with Distinctions. They should probably not ever directly affect Attack, Defense, Damage, or Saving Throws, at least not without having to create an asset or complication as previously described. Distinctions can otherwise apply more or less automatically to a wide range of activities, or they can be used to create assets and complications.

Tags: 1E AD&D, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, OSRIC

Today’s musings about OSRIC, venture into strange territory. Let’s set up the first steps into this new land with some background.

Back in the day, Basic D&D and AD&D had rules that covered quite a lot of the in-game activity that characters might attempt. These rules covered topics as diverse as hiring mercenaries, exploring wilderness regions, building strongholds, and researching new spells. Some rules applied to specific characters. Can a thief move silently? Well, maybe, but there’s a defined percentage chance for that.

Can non-thieves move silently? Well, maybe, and here the rules get a little loosey-goosey. Elves and halflings can some of the time. What about fighter? Can he move silently? His choice of armor probably answers that question. Is he wearing plate mail? Then, nope, he’s not moving silently, but what does that mean? How noisy is he? One answer might be, “Not so noisy that he still can’t surprise most creatures on a 1 or a 2.” That’s a third of time, which is better than any 1st-level thief’s chance to move silently, and that doesn’t seem right, which shows that the answer doesn’t quite work.

1E AD&D has a secondary skills table in the Dungeon Masters Guide. Lord Korbok, my dwarf fighter/thief, was a teamster/freighter. What does that mean? If he’s loading or unloading a wagon, is there a die roll involved? Can he demand union wages for his labor? It would seem so because later the Dungeon Masters Guide shows that a teamster earns 5 silver pieces a day for his work, but what if the teamster is also a 9th-level fighter and a 12th-level thief? (Okay, that question is probably a bit silly.)

Questions such as these (and many others) didn’t have defined answers. These answers boiled down this: Whatever the DM says is the rule. Players could make suggestions, but the DM had the final say. Often when I’ve DMed, I deferred anywhere from in part to in whole to the players for these sorts of answers. In the process, the players help define the minutiae of the campaign world. I know other DMs have done the same sort of thing.

In short, no rule set can possibly account for every variable or answer every question.

Which brings me to the brilliant Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game (MHRG) published by Margaret Weis Productions. MHRG is about as different as 1E AD&D as a game can get. There are no secret dice rolls in MHRG. Everything occurs out in the open as part of a shared story, and both players and the GM can use their dice rolls to modify the game in some interesting ways. Two of those ways are the creation of assets and complications, which are kind of the opposite of each other.

An asset is created when a dice pool generates a total that succeeds against the target number. In 1E AD&D terms, this is like an attack roll. The successful action has an effect die (analogous to 1E AD&D’s damage roll). This effect die, however, may not represent damage. It may represent an asset or complication. Put most simply, an asset increases the odds of success for another action, and a complication decreases the odds of success for another action.

Let’s say I’m playing Captain America leading a team of heroes past a group of A.I.M. guards. Stealth is of the essence. As Captain America, I could rely on my Covert Expert specialty, but that doesn’t really help the other heroes, some of whom may not be particularly sneaky. So, I explain to the GM that I’m going study the guards’ patterns, analyzing their fields of vision and habits to find the best way to slip past their post without being noticed. I roll my dice pool and succeed. Let’s say my chosen effect die is a d8. This becomes an asset called Best Route d8, which can then be used to aid another hero’s attempt to be sneaky. (Nota Bene: If I spend a Plot Point, that asset becomes persistent, able to be used by more than one hero.)

A complication is an asset in reverse. Imagine that I’m playing Henry Pym as Ant-Man instead of Cap, and that the situation involves a fight with a giant, nigh-invulnerable robot. As Ant-Man, none of my attacks stand much of chance of damaging the robot. So, instead of fighting, I use a combination of shrinking and scientific expertise to get inside part of the robot. After criss-crossing a few wires and dislodging a transistor or two (represented by a successful dice pool roll), I create a Systems Malfunction complication (which would have an effect die attached to it).

All of this leads up to to the topic for my next blogpost: What if OSRIC had a simple but meaningful system to simulate this sort of narrative control?

Tags: 1E AD&D, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, OSRIC

While I am growing quite fond of OSRIC, and I remain quite fond of 1E AD&D, no game is perfect, even if the room for improvement amounts to little more than a preference for This rather than That. I didn’t start RPGs with AD&D. I started with the Basic D&D blue box, the rule book cover being depicted to the right.

In that version of D&D, humans were the only race that had a class. Humans could be cleric, fighters, magic-users, or thieves. On top of that, I could choose instead to be a dwarf, elf, or halfling. Dwarves, elves, and halflings didn’t have classes per se. Instead every dwarf and every halfling was very much like a fighter, and every elf was both a fighter and a magic-user. That was more choices in a slim book than the number of both UHF and VHF channel choices on the TV. What luxury!

I remain enamored of the race-as-class concept. My first D&D character was a dwarf. When we switched from Basic to Advanced, my dwarf came along for the ride. Since in Basic he’d been violent and larcenous, in Advanced he became a fighter/thief, but he firstly he was a dwarf. Fighting and stealing were means by which he expressed his dwarven-ness.

While reading OSRIC, jumping from section to section rather than progressing page by page in numerical order, the novelty of race-as-class returned. Could such a thing work in OSRIC? If so, how so? Well, I’ve already explained how I think ability score generation should go. Let’s now focus on dwarves, elves, and halflings, treating each race as a class. The other demihuman races could be treated in a similar manner.

When creating an OSRIC character, I might choose a race other than human. For the three that I’m focusing on, each class would be treated as a class/race combination but without me needing to worry about meeting the class ability score prerequisites. Instead, all I need do is meet the race minimums and maximums. Let’s review those:

Dwarf: STR 8/18, DEX 3/17, CON 12/19, INT and WIS 3/18, CHA 3/16

Elf: STR 3/18, DEX 7/19, CON 8/17, INT 8/18, WIS 3/18, CHA 8/18

Halfling: STR 6/17, DEX 8/19, CON 10/18, INT 6/18, WIS 3/17, CHA 3/18

Each race defaults to a specific class (or classes, in the case of an elf):

Dwarf & Halfling: Fighter.

Elf: Fighter/Magic-User.

(Nota Bene: Either an elf with an 8 Intelligence would be just a fighter since a minimum of a 9 Intelligence is needed for a magic-user to learn spells, or the DM could just treat an 8 Intelligence as a 9 Intelligence and keep the elf as a fighter/magic-user. I think I favor the latter option.)

For added variety, a demihuman might still multi-class. For example, a dwarf might be a dwarf/thief. In this case, the minimum prerequisites of the additional class would be in play. An elf would effectively add a third class, becoming, for example, an elf/cleric. Otherwise, each race would be treated as a either a single-classed fighter (dwarf or halfling) or a multi-classed fighter/magic-user (elf) in matters related to armor, weapons, level advancement, et cetera.

One campaign-level consequence of this idea is that the worst of human fighters would still be somewhat better than the worst dwarf. Due to my preferred ability score generation method, the lowest STR, DEX, WIS, and CHA scores a human fighter would have are 9, 6, 6, and 6, respectively. The dwarf would win out in Constitution, since the lowest Constitution a dwarf would have is 12 versus 7 for the human fighter. The same sort of thing happens when comparing the human fighter to the halfling.

A human magic-user compared to an elf lags behind in the minimums except for Intelligence, but the human magic-user is single-classed, whereas the elf technically has two classes and therefore must divide XP between fighter and magic-user. So, in many respects, the elf is the better magic-user, except for speed of advancement. When the human magic-user reaches 2nd level with 2400 XP, the elf is still 1st level with 1200 XP in fighter and 1200 XP in magic-user. By the time the elf hits 2nd level in both fighter and magic-user, the human magic-user has reached 3rd level.

And the lag would be even greater when comparing a human thief to dwarf/thief, halfling/thief, or elf/thief, especially in the last instance, since the elf would be dividing XP between three classes.

Tags: 1E AD&D, OSRIC