Matt’s Maps & Ability Scores
I’ve mentioned Matt Jackson and his excellent maps before, many of which you can admire at this link. Matt’s maps have made two of my publications better, those publications being Ean Illiam’s Cavern Stores for Dungeon World and Clever Title Using Hack & Class: The Second Edition for The Black Hack.
Matt has a book available over at Amazon. With a $7.99 sticker price, Matt’s Dungeon Master’s Book of Cartography has made it onto my Amazon wishlist. If no one else gets it for me for Christmas, I’ll get it myself. Matt’s book’s blurb reads (in part):
Dungeon Masters should never get caught without a good dungeon map! This booklet contains 15 detailed maps with a note page to allow Dungeon Masters to flesh out write their own adventure.
Sounds excellent, and having seen Matt’s talent as an RPG cartographer and having confidence in his work ethic, I’m excited at the prospect of adding this book to my library.
Anyhoo, speaking of The Black Hack, which is a astonishingly good rules-light game, part of that system’s rules has made it into the Tanelorn Keep Player’s Guide, a campaign starter inspired by my recent revisitation to my 2E AD&D books.
(Nota Bene: The link for The Black Hack is an affiliate link; if you click and purchase, I get some cents.)
Action resolution in The Black Hack is based on rolling against an ability score, which are the familiar six from the various versions of D&D. When your character levels up, you roll to see if certain ability scores improve. I like this idea, and so I glommed and tweaked it to read as follows:
Increasing Ability Scores
When your PC gains a level, choose one of his prime requisites (assuming he has more than one) and one other ability score. For the prime requisite, roll 2d20. If either result exceeds your PC’s prime requisite score, increase that prime requisite by +1. For the other ability score, roll 1d20 and follow the same procedure. Apply all of the benefits of an increased ability score as appropriate.
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