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Post by cadriel on Aug 27, 2013 7:56:58 GMT -6
That's true too! Which means... the FAQ appears to contradict M&T, so either the FAQ fighter example supersedes M&T entirely, OR the FAQ example applies to fighters and the M&T statement continues to apply to monsters. What a mess In my games I think the FAQ will supersede M&T, because I like the consistency of monsters always using their HD on the attack matrix rather than switching based on number of attacks. Yeah, a lot of fumble rules are fairly heavy penalties on the players. I've found in practice even +1 damage on a critical is enough for players to be happy, so I want a correspondingly simple penalty on a fumble.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 27, 2013 5:27:47 GMT -6
Nice work cadriel My comments (since you ask) are as follows: . You might consider having 13+ strength adjusting "to hit" rather than damage. The 3LBBs allow +1 on a d20 with an ability score of 13 or more, but to adjust a d6 by +1 (which is thrice as good!) they require an ability score of 15 or more. See here. . You might consider introducing the saving throw bonus at 13+ wisdom for the same reason. That's good stuff. I had put the Wisdom bonus at 14 for the sake of variety but I think it's an interesting enough threshold to use. I was on the fence about the damage thing, I'll leave it so only special magic weapons and critical hits add to damage. Yeah, I might just go with that. I was trying to go for an "either or" approach but trying to rationalize out going from 1+1 HD to 2 HD is too odd. Rerolling at each level makes the most sense for using the Men & Magic progression. That's an interesting question. I would actually think that reinforcements that can see / hear a combat would be considered "in combat time" and move appropriately relative to the combat. The D&D FAQ specifically notes that the Hero gets 4 attacks versus 1 HD orcs, at his 4th level attack rank (he needs an 11 to hit versus AC 6, which matches 4-6 in the attack matrix). So I'm OK with him getting those attacks as a fighter. I also don't want "Normal Man" to go up to 2 HD for the specific reason that Veterans shouldn't be treated as "Normal Men." The Super-Hero rule is my own extrapolation because I rather like the idea that a Super-Hero can fight 2 ogres at once. I appreciate the commentary, I know you've spent a lot of time with this math and it's good to make it consistent. From a number-crunching standpoint, do you think a fumble should have a bigger penalty? Specifically to offset +1 on 1d6 - wouldn't the equivalent be a -3 on 1d20? Or is that too harsh?
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Post by cadriel on Aug 26, 2013 14:14:00 GMT -6
I'd happily play under your rules here. They seem good and mostly conventional. I'm not totally sure I got your HP advancement scheme; seems a little more involved than necessary. A lot of it is the oddity introduced by going from 1+1 HD to 2 HD or similar - technically you aren't going up a full HD. If you just roll another die at second level, you could in theory have the result that you have 13 HP on 2 dice. Unless you view that as intentional. The other option is the EPT-style "reroll at every level" method. I'm not really into the "maimed heroes" thing, and if I wanted it I'd probably go for something more like Runequest where it's a natural part of the system. I'm just for giving a chance to not instant kill PCs.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 26, 2013 11:54:11 GMT -6
Curious what the folks here will think of my current draft house rules for a game I'm going to try and get together soon.
Character Abilities
All characters are generated with 3d6 in order. One swap may be made between two statistics that are not Charisma in addition to the point swapping described in Men & Magic.
Strength: 8 or less: -1 on damage for all melee attacks (minimum 1) 13 or more: +1 on damage for all melee attacks
Wisdom: 7 or less: -1 on saving throws versus Spells 14 or more: +1 on saving throws verus Spells
Allowed Races
Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Hobbit.
Elves may be fighting-men / magic-users. In this case they decide before an adventure starts which class will receive experience for that adventure. Such types may only cast spells in armor if they are wearing Elven Chain (cost: 100 x the cost of normal chain mail).
Level limits are enforced. Any race may be Fighting-Men but only to level 4 (elves and hobbits) or level 8 (dwarves and half-elves). Elves and half-elves may be magic-users but only to level 8. Any race may be Specialists without limit in level.
Nonhuman characters who have reached the limit in levels may not advance further in hit dice, spells, etc. However, they may begin advancing in Specialist skills other than Sneak Attack. For every 100,000 XP gained, such a character may allocate 2 points to Specialist skills.
Character Classes
The following character classes are available:
Fighting-Man: as per Volume I: Men & Magic Magic-User: as per Volume I: Men & Magic Cleric: as per Volume I: Men & Magic. Must always be Lawful or Chaotic. Specialist: abilities as per Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, but fights as a Cleric, and uses the Magic-User charts for saving throws and hit dice. Druid: as per Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry but follows the cleric hit dice progression from Volume I: Men & Magic. Must be Neutral. Paladin: A fighting-man may become a paladin (as per Supplement I: Greyhawk) but only after having reached 4th level (Hero).
Hit Points
At character creation, if a 1 is rolled for hit points, the player should re-roll.
Upon gaining a level, the player may choose to gain an extra hit die in addition to their character’s current hit points, or re-roll all hit dice. In the former case, if the character gains less than a full hit die, they subtract the difference from the roll. For example, a Swashbucker (5+1) becoming a Myrmidon (6) can only gain 1-5 hit points if adding to an existing total. A Super Hero (8+2) becoming a Lord (9+3) gains 2-7; when he becomes a Lord, 10th Level (10+1) he only gains 1-4 hit points, and so on. There is always a gain of 1 hit point regardless of method used.
All character types use one of the hit dice tracks from Volume I: Men & Magic.
Combat
Rounds are 10 seconds long. That doesn’t effect anything, it’s just how long they are.
Initiative is rolled using 1d6 for each side. The high roll goes first. Tied rolls mean that action is simultaneous.
A character using a long weapon (spear, polearm, halberd, two-handed sword, lance, pike) gets +3 on initiative for the first round of a combat, acting before their group. In each subsequent round, characters with such weapons have -1 to initiative, acting after their group.
Weapons do 1d6 damage. Two-handed weapons roll two dice and take the better damage.
Spellcasters on a side that has lost initiative, who receive damage in a round, cannot cast a spell. Their spell is interrupted, but is not lost.
If a character rolls a natural “20” on the to-hit die, they get +1 to damage. If they roll a natural “1” on the to-hit die, their next roll to-hit is at -1.
Characters firing arrows into melee will have their targets randomly determined by the referee before rolling to hit. This determination will take into effect the relative visibility of each target. The player may ask the rough chance to hit a given target, but not which target they will hit.
Starting at 2nd level, fighting-men may attack once per round per level when fighting against creatures of 1 HD or less (HD of 1+1 counts as more than 1 HD). When the character reaches 8th level (Super-Hero), he may attack twice per round so long as the total hit dice of opponents is equal to or less than his hit dice. A Super-Hero (8+2 HD) can fight two ogres (4+1 HD each) but only one Troll (6+3 HD). Such extra attacks always apply against different targets.
Death and Dying
Characters reaching 0 hit points die. However, death is not necessarily instantaneous. It takes 1d6 rounds for a character at 0 HP to die. For every HP the character was reduced below 0, subtract 1 from the die roll. A result of 0 or less means instant death. While the character is dying, they may not attempt any action, but magical healing (spells, potions etc) may be performed on them. Restoring a character to 1 or more hit points ends the dying state.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 23, 2013 9:24:54 GMT -6
OK, so:
Diplomacy Tactics II Chainmail Braunstein
Empire of the Petal Throne Runequest (2, 3, or 6) Gamma World
I guess I'd also add that I'd like to play Traveller and Pendragon going beyond 1 session.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 18, 2013 15:21:09 GMT -6
Looks great! I'm happy to have made a small contribution to this zine. Dungeon Crawl #3 contains my first article in an independent publication outside my blog/site. It's called "Lesser Magic Items" and describes twenty weak magic items for 1st level characters. Wayne arranged for three pictures of the items which is quite neat to see. Yeah, I thought those worked really well. A lot of the artists wanted to work on the pieces I had picked for your article, you did some very evocative items. My favorite is Miniature Item with the small wagon.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 17, 2013 10:33:49 GMT -6
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Post by cadriel on Aug 8, 2013 22:39:39 GMT -6
I actually found the links here, but I'll reshare them for anyone who's missed them. International Catacomb Society site (with pop-up viewer): www.catacombsociety.org/maps.htmlUnderlying images: Via Latina: www.catacombsociety.org/images/randanini_map/vialatina_map.gifRandanini: www.catacombsociety.org/images/randanini_map/map.gifVia Torlonia: www.catacombsociety.org/images/randanini_map/viatorlonia_map.gifWhat I did was first adapt some of the Via Latina room shapes (since they are fascinating shapes) then attached them to a map loosely based on the Randanini map. But this didn't really work for a gameable map so I wound up doing a lot of "surgery" to give it a workable flow. This is actually a habit I have. By the time I have a map I'm happy with, it tends to be a composite of two or three earlier drafts that had problems in the overall design, or weren't fully completed. I think this is because flow is important in my mapmaking, and when I'm first laying out a map I have a hard time both fitting all the rooms I'm interested in and keeping it from being linear.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 8, 2013 17:30:02 GMT -6
Think about what kind of structure was built underground, say, a crypt beneath a monastery or ancient castle. I've loosely based dungeon maps off of crypt maps (i.e. maps of real Italian crypts), because they had interesting paths. But they were no good for gaming, because actual crypts tend to lack the kind of rooms that can hold interesting encounters. My current dungeon started with some real crypt ideas but I had to deviate really far from them to make it a game-worthy space. No one does that, and I think you're making a weird strawman attack here. I'm responding because I want to continue this discussion with the people who want to have a good-faith talk about the structure of megadungeons. But a megadungeon isn't supposed to have a perfectly logical, calculated map. I think it's more important for it to be a game-worthy space, which many published dungeons fail to be. A dozen rooms in a straight line? Nah. A megadungeon is a place of chaos, it's weird because the magic beneath it has gone bad and it is devious by design. There are several design principles I use - levels that are not flat, large and small scale looping, and design that is deliberately difficult to map. That's why rooms are all weird in shape, and there are mazes and teleporters (they're lettered). The level I have the photo of does not yet have internal elevation shifts or traps laid out, but there will be such things. Each of these things is intended to make the megadungeon an interesting game space, where exploration will be a logistical and strategic challenge. For instance, looping is very important. If there are small-scale loops in the dungeon it makes the environment tactically interesting: intelligent monsters (or PCs) who know the layout can use it to make a sneak attack. Large-scale loops are pretty much the only way to ensure that a level is nonlinear. Dungeon nonlinearity is important because it implies that there isn't a "right" way to go through it, and difficult rooms can be bypassed or attacked from a different angle. But no part of design gets to compromise the game space element. My dungeon, even in concept, was dug by kobolds (the evil dwarf-like kind) who want to make exploration deadly without killing all the monsters within. So it's going to look ... strange. That's very much the conceit of a megadungeon game.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 7, 2013 21:06:13 GMT -6
With regard to Chronology it is a crucial aspect when reading collections. Leiber, for example I believe is best read in the order first published rather than published as collected. Something you notice in that way is how Leiber introduces the two fighters as he conceives them rather than on reflection. I read Leiber in something of an odd order. The first time I read any of his stuff was in the 1990s when I had acquired a copy of the 1e DMG from a local library, read Appendix N, and started searching out for everything I could find from it. I lucked out that White Wolf was in the middle of publishing the Lankhmar stories at exactly that time, and I found Lean Times in Lankhmar ( Swords in the Mist / Swords Against Wizardry) before Ill Met in Lankhmar ( Swords and Deviltry / Swords Against Death). By some odd luck, I read "Adept's Gambit" first and "Lean Times in Lankhmar" second, which was a rather delightful way to get a taste of the characters. Then of course I went through everything else in the volume, and followed that with everything in Ill Met. Those two volumes remain some of my favorite fantasy.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 7, 2013 20:52:04 GMT -6
Im going to offer a particular criticism of what I see is a flaw with the megadungeon LEVELS presented so far. Gasp, criticism. Well, unless you are mapping building plans on a surface I can't think why so many connected rooms would be on the same LEVEL. Any underground constructions, particularly architectural accretion over time, will tend to be clustered in 3d rather than form vast expanses in 2d at exactly the same depth underground. Jaquays understood this for the OD&D adventure Night of the Walking Wet as early as 1977 and all his subsequent adventures gave further illustration. This would be obvious to DM designers who consider the architectural purpose of the dungeons rather than blurt out some sort of rectilinear pencil sprawl on paper that has nothing to do with functioning and more to do with naive, preposterous and easily scribbled spaces underground. There is a school of thought in dungeon design (Philotomy expressed it best) that says that the whole notion of "purpose" you are talking about here is counter to a megadungeon proper. My own concept of the megadungeon is that it's something that was "seeded" by human architecture but subsequently grew into weirder and different underground spaces. So I partly reject the idea that dungeons should necessarily have a tight correlation to function. As far as elevation, my levels aren't as flat as they look, I just haven't added internal elevation shifts to the map that I posted. My first level has three internal tiers complete with stairways that stay on the same level, so it's in a kind of staggered step pattern; the second level is supposed to have at least two, I just have to figure out the logistics of it all.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 7, 2013 14:32:54 GMT -6
It's definitely one that needs to be up on rpgnow as a pdf download. The publication rights must be complicated however, due to the product/layout/maps being produced by Judges Guild but copyright to Arneson. Bob Bledsaw reverted the rights of the FFC to the Arneson family before both men passed away. WotC holds the rights to Blackmoor. Possibly WotC could block a republication of the FFC, but OTOH they did allow a guy to publish a game report book from the Living Greyhawk Campaign. Obviously IANAL. -Havard Dave Arneson's Blackmoor is up for sale on RPGNow, so I don't imagine it'd be much trouble to sell FFC there as well.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 7, 2013 14:18:44 GMT -6
I'm reading Playing at the World, currently in the part about the history of fantasy literature. It's a little bit interesting, correcting some places where I was wrong about the chronology of American pulp fantasy, but it's nowhere near as interesting as the parts that go into previously unexplored wargaming history of the first part.
I'm also trying to get into some of a Clark Ashton Smith collection that I have (the re-release of Out of Space and Time). The writing is very ornate but it's interesting, I read "A Night in Malnéant" which seemed almost a Poe pastiche more than a fantasy story. The next one is "The City of the Singing Flame."
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Post by cadriel on Aug 7, 2013 10:58:28 GMT -6
The First Fantasy Campaign has the first ten levels of the Blackmoor dungeons, roughly as Arneson used them in convention play during the mid-1970s. (The maps and description coincide closely with Bill Paley's actual play report in Alarums & Excursions, which I reprinted here.) It also has lots of info about how Arneson actually ran a large-scale game. So yeah, it's definitely different from Blackmoor and the DA series.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 4, 2013 21:32:55 GMT -6
My current project I have mapped levels 1 and 2, and plunked down two stairways that will be in level 3B. One thing I've done is to be very aware of where the levels stack. For instance, there is a massive staircase from level 1 that avoids levels 2 and 3 and goes down to level 4. There are five stairways down in level 2, and three of them go to level 3A, with two going to 3B. Level 2 - which I just finished today and doesn't have any traps or internal elevation shifts that I intend to add - looks like this: This one was done on 5x5 graph paper and combines two sublevels I had previously been working on. If you follow the paths there are several intentional large and small scale loops, and many rooms are irregular in shape - this was a wizard's laboratory and various summoned or created beings had to be kept in irregular settings. I also wanted to have rooms that are pretty massive in scale. There's one room whose shape I shamelessly borrowed from Benoist's excellent AFS #3 map.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 4, 2013 7:14:15 GMT -6
This is from my blog. (Full post here.) I thought it was worth bringing up on this board for discussion. In The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, it says: Philotomy noted, I think wisely, that this makes the dungeon a bit more of a weird, underworld-ish environment. The problem is, in everything I run lately, players seem to have fantastically bad luck at this roll. Three PCs will sit there for two or three goes each before someone finally gets the door open, having made a ton of racket in so doing. Which makes their lives harder strategically, and I'm fine with that, but the actual act of bashing open doors gets a bit tedious and can slow down play. I'm thinking of a variant rule where you roll a d6, and the number you rolled gives you the number of tries it takes you to open the door, with a 6 indicating that you are totally unsuccessful and need to make further attempts. A 1 or 2 will not give monsters around a general alert and will still require the monsters to roll surprise, while a 3, 4, or 5 will not allow a surprise roll and should draw an extra wandering monster check. This would keep the original rule's spirit in tact while not letting the game get stuck in a loop where the referee says "come on, roll a 1 or 2 already." What do folks think of that variant?
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Post by cadriel on Jul 29, 2013 12:09:31 GMT -6
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Post by cadriel on Jul 29, 2013 7:05:40 GMT -6
I wrote about pacing in a recent series on my blog: initiativeone.blogspot.com/search/label/megadungeonsI think that explains a lot of what I was talking about above. Allan's dungeon levels are good, but there can be a lot of blind poking about before you get somewhere. My recent train of thought stems from the fact that, in a lot of older dungeons, there were really the possibility of tactical missions - exploring to find a way to the treasure rather than stumbling onto it through monster attrition. Fast and slow levels are concepts that I derived from this possibility, like the first level of Blackmoor with nine ways down. The challenge of that level is figuring out which of the nine gets you to the treasure without getting killed in so doing. Slow levels are the ones where the treasure is, and you explore to find it. The thing about geomorphic levels is that unless you have a TON of ways down, it's harder to have fast levels in this sense, and you have a danger of it being a grind. A lot of this comes not from Allan's dungeons (which are fun) but from my experience running Stonehell, which is all slow and gets REALLY grind-heavy in the first level. Fundamentally I want to avoid grinds and create levels that alternate between 1-2 sessions and longer levels based on how treasure-dense they are.
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Post by cadriel on Jul 28, 2013 19:31:03 GMT -6
Yeah, I did an approximation by figuring the rough number of across each way and using that to determine the overall area of the map, rather than trying to find the area of the total number of hexes, which isn't completely accurate since hexes don't conform to the edges of a square map. But 30-31K square miles is approximately right as per OD&D.
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Post by cadriel on Jul 28, 2013 19:13:07 GMT -6
I've been thinking a lot about this myself, and I really appreciate grodog posting some of his maps. I was reworking a level I'd designed and run a little of earlier this year, and I've been trying to apply some Jaquays-style techniques such as internal height changes, loops within levels, and multiple entrances / exits within a level, all with a style that uses rooms like in the old TSR modules. In digging through my maps for the one I'm modifying, I also found a couple of maps I drew as an extended riff on the Dungeon Geomorphs. I still find that I prefer thick stone walls, because I can really imagine a place that they are. Whereas with the geomorphic levels, the maps look neat but the place is secondary. To me those maps are really "about" being interesting maps. Also, I think pacing - which I wrote about in my blog not long ago - is harder to do with geomorphs. If you're in a huge dungeon like that, you pretty much are going to have to do a lot more exploration to find anything, which means an "all slow levels" dungeon is more likely.
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Post by cadriel on Jul 20, 2013 6:23:45 GMT -6
I guess this is a way of saying that I've seen every possible kind of initiative system and don't like any of them. Makes sense. It's a hard thing to figure out, particularly with the abstract nature of D&D combat. I just find some weapon length considerations to be compelling since thinking about spear formations and pike hedges historically, both the advantage before a foe has closed and the disadvantage after - but technique makes a huge difference there. Maybe I'll just use a "closing" rule where the longer weapon wins when people are first getting entangled, and after that it's a roll-off.
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Post by cadriel on Jul 18, 2013 9:22:53 GMT -6
Much as I love the Ready Ref Sheets, the JG system doesn't do the Chainmail-style switch, which is what I really want out of this. I do like the armor and Dexterity adjustments and would have to think about whether they complicate things too much, possibly playtest with and without them.
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Post by cadriel on Jul 17, 2013 18:47:43 GMT -6
The OSR blogosphere isn't dead, my blog has never been as active or as popular. We don't have a Grognardia and Jeff's not posting as much, but they were never more than a piece of the whole picture. The blogs have changed but there's still regular fresh blog content.
G+ is thriving, join the OSR group if nothing else. It's probably a better way to stay on top of the blogs and the other things going on than almost anything else.
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Post by cadriel on Jul 17, 2013 17:34:08 GMT -6
So I'm thinking about a Chainmail style initiative system for OD&D. I think I'd do it like this:
The first round, the longer reach weapon* wins initiative, unless the weapons are within 2 classes of each other (i.e. sword vs hand axe). In subsequent rounds, the shorter reach weapon wins initiative, again except for weapons within 2 classes of each other. If the combatants' weapons are within 2 classes, they do a one-time d6 roll for initiative, high roll wins. Monster reaches can be approximated, or left vague. Innate abilities and spellcasting both use dice to determine who goes first - which allows a magic-user to be interrupted if hit before a spell goes off.
I like this because it's comfortably within Chainmail tradition; it also makes good sense. A PC with a spear can fend off a goblin with a dagger at first, but as soon as the goblin closes the gap the dagger is just faster than the spear. It would also encourage actions like real soldiers performed, such as switching from spears to swords after enemies closed in range.
*For those without Chainmail, OD&D lists the weapons in length order in the equipment chart.
Any thoughts?
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Post by cadriel on May 21, 2013 4:13:14 GMT -6
I talked a bit about this on my blog yesterday, as a total coincidence: initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/05/holmes-on-options.htmlIn theory I like the sub-classes but I'm currently running Swords & Wizardry Complete and I'm finding them a bit off. I think it's useful to consider exactly what options you are offering and tailor them simply to the game, rather than coming up with a whole ton of rules off the bat. One thought might be using the Monsters & Treasure "human" types as extra classes. For instance, you could have a relatively simple berserker class that gets better hits but wears lighter armor; maybe at higher level their "ferocity" is useful against types other than normal men. But really the sky should be the limit for character types, with the proviso that characters "begin relatively weak and work up to the top."
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Post by cadriel on May 15, 2013 21:45:38 GMT -6
nobleknight.com has the expanded Lamentations of the Flame Princess version - my understanding (I have the original) is that this contains everything from the unexpurgated edition, plus new material, I think a chunk of it expanding the hexcrawl.
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Post by cadriel on May 15, 2013 13:57:09 GMT -6
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Post by cadriel on May 10, 2013 16:49:59 GMT -6
How did you arrive at 31,500 sq. miles? My computations are pretty different, then. By my count my copy of the OS map (I don't know if the various printings had slightly different areas or features) has 1,447.38 hexes (approx 33.66 hexes by exactly 43 hexes), with each being an area of 16.238 sq. miles*. Thus the total I came up with was 23,502.55644 square miles. I guess I'll have to go back to the OS board and count again. _________________________ *AREA OF A HEXAGON: [(√3/2)x3] r^2=A where r = radius of circle in which the hex is inscribed and is the same as the side of the hex. I think I had a similar number of hexes but was measuring 5 miles across, not five miles per side. It was very back of the envelope math and could be off a bit.
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Post by cadriel on May 10, 2013 10:16:02 GMT -6
Not a bad article. One thing to make clear, though, is that we were in no way limited to the area of ONE Outdoor Survival map; you could keep going in any direction. The OS map was simply the "generic terrain map" for any section of outdoors. That makes sense. I was interested in what it would look like if we treated the OS map as a setting in its own right, since it's pretty big if you measure it. What I really liked was how different it felt from, say, the published World of Greyhawk as I figured out exactly how things should look extrapolated from the charts.
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Post by cadriel on May 10, 2013 7:42:34 GMT -6
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