V5 Quick Starters are here

[waysoftheearth]

As a nod to the 10 year anniversary of Delving Deeper and as a step on the road to V5, I've put together a couple of Quick-Starters; one for players and one for referees.

The public beta versions of both have landed, and they looky like this:

I'm sure you'll agree the amazing Tim Ide cover art alone makes them worth the (free!) download.

So what's inside?

The Player's Quick Starter fits on three letter-sized sheets of paper and includes:

* Cover art,

* 16 pre-generated PCs,

* Some words on how to actually play,

* Tactical (in-game) advice for fighters, magic-users, and clerics,

* Class/level, arms/armor, and equipment tables for generating even more pre-gens,

* Summary of the core m-u/cleric spells and saving throws,

* All the above for (optional) thieves,

* A (golden rod inspired) character sheet.

The Referee's Quick Starter fits on four letter-sized sheets of paper and includes:

* Cover art,

* A sample dungeon (with crappy hand-drawn map by yours truly; I'm still in the market for a map person if you know one) and 55 keyed areas,

* Some words on each of:

--> How to be a referee,

--> How to prepare the players for adventure,

--> How to run a dungeon exploration game,

--> How to run a dungeon combat game,

--> How to allocate XP after the adventure,

--> How to scale to a wider campaign.

* Among the words are super brief tables for loyalty, turning, attacks, saves, and morale.

Download the Quick Starter for Referees and/or the Quick Starter for Players or else visit my DD supplements file share here.


Thanks to all reviewers so far but especially to derv who really has gone above and beyond.

And finally, bear in mind these are beta versions. Your questions and comments are welcome! Help make the final version the best it can be by posting your comments right here

Enjoy!

[mgtremaine]

Love the covers... Love the covers placed side by side even more. Well done!

-Mike

[hamurai]

I agree, the cover is really cool!

[hamurai]

I've had a closer look at the books and I couldn't help but ask myself if new players would understand the difference between normal men and heroes as used in the quick start.

The Ref book says Fantastic Combat is between figures with specific attack modes, when 1 side lacks these, it's normal combat. But PCs always lack these, don't they? Edit: So it's not necessary to include the numbers in a quickstart at all, is what I mean. 

[waysoftheearth]

Thanks hamurai,

Yeah, I did consider saving some space and fuss by limiting everything to lowbie players and normal combat. But the normal/fantastic combat distinction is one of the features of OD&D that DD continues to celebrate, so I couldn't really leave it out.

You'll notice that the pregens include a 3rd level fighter (with hero-1 FC) and there's an option for 3rd level fighters in the further PC tables. There is also a potion of heroism in the starter dungeon near to the dragon lair, and there are wights and an anti-hero about. And there are a couple a magic weapons to be found which, arguably, could elevate an elf to heroic FC--although that detail isn't mentioned in the quick starter. Perhaps it should be?

So fantastic combat could, theoretically, happen with the quicker starter material, but admittedly the moons would have to come into alignment.

I'll check back on exactly how the words distinguish fantastic combat. Thank you

[hamurai]

This sentence under the header Fighting Capability could be confusing to new players:

Normal tier figures (including starting out player types) have

no fantastic fighting capability.

Maybe changing it to "(including most early-level player characters)" or something would help.

And the 3rd-level fighter only lists normal FC (3 men). My impression was you wanted to leave out fantastic combat in the quickstart, actually.

True, some enemies are fantastic, but fantastic combat would then only occur if they fought each other (maybe some clever PCs could manage to get them there?) or if the 3rd-level fighter was played.

Maybe the 3rd-level fighter and rules for fantastic combat would be an idea for optional advanced rules in the quickstart, sort of as a look at what's to come at higher levels.

[waysoftheearth]

Oct 17, 2022 6:17:18 GMT -6 hamurai said:

And the 3rd-level fighter only lists normal FC (3 men). My impression was you wanted to leave out fantastic combat in the quickstart, actually.

Good pick up. Yeah, that was me going back and forth with it... looks like I left heroic FC out of the players. I'll fix that.

[Red Baron]

My favorite post on odd74 is a short article by Cooper, entitled something like "od&d: a mapping game" where he points out
1. most of the text is devoted to exploration, and not combat.
2. You can tell the emphasis of a game by which subjects it devotes word count and page count to.

That is to say, I appreciate that the referee quick starter focuses on these exploration elements.

I wrote up a condensed 1 page rule set for d&d at one point, which summarized "the underworld" portion of "ta&wa": light, time, 2 moves per turn, opening doors, listening at doors, finding and opening secret doors, pits, and running away. To me, this is really what d&d is as a game. And this is where the 3lbbs really shine: they offer a tight well defined sequence of game play. In later editions, the exploration rules become muddled and secondary.

[Sean Michael Kelly]

These are awesome, Simon! For the ease of use of others, here's the two booklets imposed for easy booklet printing. (short-edge duplex)



www.dropbox.com/s/1crxmj1lrkt0714/DDv5%20quick_start_players_beta_20221014-conv.pdf?dl=0

www.dropbox.com/s/508s2p4n8qhdb1f/DDv5%20quick_start_referees_beta_20221014-conv.pdf?dl=0

[waysoftheearth]

Great job SMK, thanks

[blindaudelay]

I love that you've made Quick Starters for Delving Deeper, waysoftheearth . Some feedback on the Players guide from someone who started with OD&D this year:

First, there's one small typo: on the bottom of page 3, under the Elves and Dwarves section, there should be a comma after "characteristics."

I would make it clearer that the opening list of "example" characters is intended to be a set of characters for the player to pick from when they roll 3d6. This could be communicated with a phrase that's more obvious than "Examples follow," such as "Roll 3d6 and use the result to determine which figure you'll play." Maybe some reassurance that the player will likely not know what any of the acronyms mean, but that the referee will tell them all they need to know... or ask them for information that players can read off of their character sheets and let the referee handle the rest. I recognize that this quick start is designed to give players the absolute minimum needed to get going with a knowledgeable referee, but I figured I'd toss this out there anyway.

I would reorganize the sections in the following order (forgive me if I missed one):

1. 3d6 figures
2. The level titles and what they mean (i.e., title pertains to what level of what class). Otherwise, I could see new players trying to figure out why the three classes have all these various descriptors.
3. Game Statistics
   
4. Role of the Referee
   
5. How to Play
6. Advice for Fighters
7. Advice for Magic-Users
8. Advice for Clerics
9. Spell list
10. Turning Away the Undead
11. Saving Throws
12. Getting Organized
13. Into the Underworld
14. Additional Player Figures
15. Thieves
    

I think that reorganizing it a bit will help new players follow through the pamphlet. I know that the first time I read it I was a tiny bit lost with how to parse some sections due to the order in which they were presented, as well as the laconic nature of some phrases in particular.

Under Game Statistics, I would offer a brief explanation for each category, just so that players can parse each acronym, not just know what each acronym stands for. If this makes the pamphlet too long, no need — I understand.

Finally, I think it would be helpful to create a numbered list of what you need to do to create a character in a concise format within the "Additional Player Figures" section, similarly to how Fantastic Medieval Campaigns did it with its fmc_ref sheets. What you have is excellent, though.

Just some thoughts. Thank you for Delving Deeper. Can't wait for V5

[waysoftheearth]

Thanks for the feedback blindaudelay. I'm guessing some of this is down to the tight word count and layout, but I'll be reviewing all the feedback when I get around to the next iteration.