Custom Mini: Roywyn Raulnor

In my previous post, I said that my DM bought us custom minis; they finally arrived last week, so here's mine!

Daggers, short arrows, and Fire Bolts - it's all the same to Roywyn.

This character's a gnome gnamed Roywyn Raulnor; her friends call her "Pock", allegedly. (I chose the name because I figured it would be too hard for everyone to pronounce, but they just call her Roywyn.) Since the DM is running D&D 5th Edition, she's a rogue with the "Arcane Trickster" archetype, but if I ran her in AD&D 1e or 2e - one can dream, I suppose - she would be a multi-classed illusionist/thief.

A brief comment on the new dark grey plastic that HeroForge is using: it's great. The detail is at least as sharp as a lot of Reaper's "Bones" miniatures (if not better), and so far it seems durable; nothing has broken off or crumbled as others have said happened with the older high-detail material. I should be getting an order of Bones minis in the mail shortly, and I may do a quick comparison of them then.

Save vs. Employment, with a -2 penalty

So I finally managed to land a real job - possibly two real jobs, if my schedule allows - which is both a good and a bad thing. On the positive side, it means that I'll now have income and experience for necessities (like healthcare and, once I leave my current situation, rent), as well as some spending cash for luxuries like game books and miniatures. My other projects, like the LED lightsaber I'm still in the process of building, can also resume to a limited extent.

On the negative side, it means that I'll have less time for gaming... though not none, by any means. I may still be participating in my usual weekly and biweekly games, and at the gaming club's Halloween event, I met two cool players who have expressed interest in playing Vampire: The Masquerade if I run it (using the Introductory Kit). If I don't take the second job, I'll have more time; but if I do, I'll have more money.

Furthermore, the DM for the biweekly 5e session I play in surprised us with an announcement of an early Christmas present: custom miniatures of our characters, made on HeroForge! I'll be sure to post a picture when I get it.

But yes, as things stand, gaming cannot be my highest priority the way it was in university, and blogging about gaming must take a burner even further towards the back. I'll still try to drop by, hopefully with at least one or two posts a month. (I should quit quoting times - it'll only get me in trouble...)

Poll Results: Can the DM Cheat?

(Fair warning: there will be some anger, and some accompanying strong language. Online interactions not rated by the ESRB.)

So, a little while back I asked Ozymandias if I could borrow a survey he had made on a Facebook page, to ask some of the gamers in my own alma mater's tabletop club; he graciously agreed. I made it into a Google survey, and posted it in the group chat... and was promptly informed that I was apparently supposed to ask the officers' permission before doing so. (A fact which was never indicated in writing anywhere, in the official rules channel or in the general chat - but as you can see below, I shouldn't really be surprised.)

Quick note: I did modify the wording of some of the choices slightly, to make them more consistent and clear. I waited just over two weeks before closing the survey, and at that point had received only 10 responses, one of which was my own (made to ensure that the poll was working). Here is the complete text of what I posted for people to respond to.

Given any or all of the following definitions of the word "cheat": (1) to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud; (2) to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice; (3) to practice fraud or trickery; (4) to violate rules dishonestly; is it possible for a DM to cheat at D&D?

1. No. The DM has responsibility for maintaining fun at the table, and they may do anything in support of that goal.
2. No. The rules serve as a guide for the DM but their (the DM's) authority makes them exempt from cheating.
3. Depends. Really, there are so many different variables that it's difficult to say for certain one way or the other.
4. Yes, but only if the DM takes away player agency by dictating PC actions.
5. Yes. Game rules apply to a DM just as they do to the players.
6. Other (please comment).

Google Forms has an option to shuffle the order of the response options, which I think is great. Here's a pie chart with the percentage of responses; keep in mind that exactly 10 responses were received, so 10% = 1 person.

For those who can't see the image, here's the breakdown: #1 got two votes,
#2 got one vote, #3 got two votes, #4 got three votes, #5 got one vote, and
#6 (Other) got one vote.

There were two comments made; interestingly, only one person voted for "Other", so the second commenter must have wanted to expand on their rationale for voting the way they did... except that these are anonymous, and so not linked together. Here are the two responses in their entirety.

Response #1: "Unless the DM is an asshole"

Thank you, that is extremely helpful.

Response #2: "It depends on the intent of the action that could be considered "cheating". I occasionally fudge rolls at my table, both for and against the players. That could be considered cheating in most games, but here the objective is to use the rolls for storytelling. We don't want a level three player getting crit to instant death, but we also don't want the end boss of a cool dungeon to go down in one round without him doing anything significant to a party member.

"There are ways a DM can cheat however. A few examples include: 1) allowing dice that shouldn't be used if the table doesn't agree to let him do so occasionally, and 2) if the intent of the game is that it's DM vs players. The first would have the example of "loaded dice" or dice that favor a number. If the players ask for visible rolls at all times, and one uses a loaded die, it is breaking the player DM relationship of trust for the sake of a better roll more consistently rather than having the dice fall where they may. In a player vs DM mentality, the intent in the game I run where I occasionally change numbers for story would change drastically if my objective for the party is to throw them in a pit Fighting arena society where I control their lives. Dnd is not a game designed for pvp, and that goes for players and DM's."

Wordier, but has more content. I have no idea who wrote this (as I ensured that the responses were anonymous), so this will be based entirely on the response, and the assumption that this DM is referring mostly to D&D 5th Edition - and, considering I had the DM role removed from my profile in the group chat because I don't run their 5e organized play thing, that seems extremely likely.

If this person fudges both for and against their players, and doesn't consider that cheating, then why would it be considered cheating for a player to fudge their own rolls? After all, they're using the rolls for "storytelling", too; in their own preferred version of the story, their character doesn't get killed. If "storytelling" is the entire point, then why use the dice at all? Why roll a random number generator if you're going to ignore the number that it generates?

They go on to say that a 3rd-level character dying is not desired. Why? Is it because the player will throw a temper tantrum and quit the game? (I've had this happen with two 1st-level characters, for crying out loud.) Is it because this DM has, rather foolishly, based the integrity of their entire game world around a particular set of player characters? (This is foolish for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that both the player and the character can drop out suddenly.) Or is it because it will take too much time to create another 3rd-level character from scratch? (And this is how it's done in the club's organized play system for 5e; none of this "1st-level" crap for them, no ma'am!)

Also, if you don't want a 3rd-level character to be "crit to instant death", you might want to think about revising some of the rules that would let that happen, rather than lying about the result of your dice roll.

There's a brief refrain that "we" don't want this or that. Who exactly is "we"? Am I to infer from this that there are multiple DMs who think this way? Well, considering that six out of the ten responders apparently think so, that isn't exactly an unfair inference. (I was going to make a reference to The Big Lebowski, but I'm saving my quota on that for another point.)

This person goes on to enumerate that, while fudging - either for or against the players - isn't cheating, there are things that are. The first is deliberately using unbalanced dice, and I agree wholeheartedly with this; some DMs I've played with tend not to allow so-called "spin down" dice, the kind that are used for keeping track of points in Magic: the Gathering. While I haven't yet seen enough evidence that these dice are unfair in their results, I'm willing to concede the point and use a different icosahedron until further results are in.

The other thing that is cheating is "if the intent of the game is that it's DM vs players". Apparently fudging against the party is fine, so long as you're not actually against them.

...What?!

The whole point of using dice is that it takes the arbitrariness out of the DM's hands! If reactions, hits, misses, and the choice of whether to surrender (or flee) are determined randomly, and not on the whim of the DM, there's a lot more reason to trust the DM's decisions as being fair. On the other hand, if the DM says that their super-powerful evil blood-sorcerer NPC boss was successful in an attack, when the numbers say that they were not, then that's fucking cheating!

Jeez... And making certain legal attacks not hit, for the purposes of "the story", is considered a perfectly valid behavior for someone who's supposed to be fair. Just imagine someone pulling that crap in a game of baseball, or chess, or a wargame. Is it any wonder that other gamers' opinion of tabletop RPGs is so low?

Things like this are what make me refer to myself more often as a "Referee" than a "Dungeon Master". My goal isn't to "tell a story" or "maintain fun at the table" at the expense of playing the game according to consistent procedures. It's to facilitate a game - that is the service I provide to my players, and sometimes we don't win at games. But that's no excuse to throw a tantrum like a fucking five-year-old until the facilitator can't stand your whining any more and gives you what you want just to shut you up.

And this ties in to what happened when I so much as posted the poll. The president of the club chided me for breaking a "rule" that had not been written down anywhere, and only existed in their head. Previously, they temporarily banned one of my friends from the chat for doing something that was not covered in the official club rules or constitution (and also misgendered them multiple times). Considering the attitude that most of the respondents had - admittedly, ten isn't a big sample, but I've seen enough of this attitude in person - is it any wonder that the "Dungeon Master" of the club feels free to fudge the rules of the club just as freely as they fudge the dice rolls of their games?

Trimming the Fat II: The Trimmening

Here's the promised followup to my previous post. Last time, I pruned a few extraneous classes, and hung question marks over many more; today, I'll be looking at the typical selection of character races. As with the last post, to qualify here, the race in question must have appeared in the core rules of at least two "editions" of D&D.

Dwarves and Halflings

(First playable appearance: Men & Magic, 1974)

Dwarves have long been a staple of D&D, due to their ubiquity in Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories - major party members in The Hobbit, less so (at least directly) in The Lord of the Rings. These roles have been reversed in the latter, where four of the central characters are hobbits. These two races have often been grouped into similar categories; in original D&D (pre-Supplements), they are both restricted to the fighter class, while AD&D (both 1e and 2e) allow them to be thieves in addition. (1e is unusual in that halflings cannot be clerics, but halfling NPCs are allowed to be druids!)

The reason that I group these two together is as follows: I feel that having both as distinct species is a bit redundant. Short people, sometimes with long beards (including female dwarves, at least according to Gygax), who can't usually be wizards? In my campaign, I've long considered merging the two into a single species, with the subraces having different characteristics; perhaps it's the "Tallfellow" or "Stout" dwarves who are longer in leg and beard.

Elves

(First playable appearance: Men & Magic, 1974)

Elves are pretty much essential components of any high-fantasy game. They look and act similarly enough to humans that the two can conceivably adventure together, but are just different enough that a Referee with any creativity can put vast oceans between the two species just under the surface. (This is another reason that the Vulcans on Star Trek tend to pop up as major characters; in fact, one can easily draw parallels between the two). And if these are different species, not just different ethnicities of humans, then it makes sense that they would have some classes that are harder (or flat-out impossible) for them to pursue. An acquaintance pointed out that, logically, they should also be able to do things that humans can't do, and this is why I think multi-classing (with a few limits) is a good way to differentiate demihumans from humans.

Gnomes

(First playable appearance: Players Handbook, 1978)

Oh jeez... If dwarves and halflings as separate species seems superfluous to me, gnomes are about as useful as a third thumb. Rarely do I see anyone play them; in fact, I've only encountered two gnome player characters in any fantasy RPG I've run or played (one of which is my own PC, Roywyn Raulnor). Considering Tolkien's influence, it seems fairly obvious that their origin lies in Tom Bombadil, but it doesn't really seem necessary to have yet another species of short height and long beards.

"I gnow thee gnot, old man."
(model from Battle for Middle-Earth II)

The main point of interest is that, in AD&D (both editions), gnomes are the only demihuman race that can be illusionists; I concede that my own gnome PC, if ported over to AD&D from her current home of 5e, would be a multi-classed illusionist/thief. But I say just let the combined dwarf/halfling species be illusionists, and free up the gname of "gnome" for fey creatures more resembling those seen on American lawns.

Half-elves

(First playable appearance: Supplement I: Greyhawk, 1975)

Half-elves do technically appear in The Lord of the Rings. Elrond is called "Half-elven", although his parentage has little actual impact on his mortality or the way he is viewed by others (at least from what I read - I read all of The Fellowship of the Ring, but couldn't get through more than about a quarter of The Two Towers). He chose to identify with his elven ancestors, and so he's considered an elf.

If a player character wants to be a "half-elf", that's fine by me, but they have to choose whether that means they will identify as an elf or a human; there's no real reason for such a strong level of incomplete dominance that they're considered a separate race. I get the feeling that the desire for half-elves is largely based on min-maxing, as half-elves get more classes to choose from than elves, but still have some special abilities. In that cast, why not just let elves have more classes, and drop the mechanical differences of half-elves?

Half-orcs

(First playable appearance: Players Handbook, 1978)

Same here as for half-elves. If a Referee wants to let players be a potentially "monstrous" species, just remove the status of full orcs as mindless, faceless evil minions, and let players be orcs. The games in the Elder Scrolls series, starting with Morrowind, did this with great success; orcs are integrated into society for the most part, and their fierce reputation serves them well as soldiers.

Dragonborn and Tieflings

(First playable appearance: Player's Handbook, 2008)

I'm inclined to just say "no". Tieflings have a bit more history, appearing initially in the Planescape setting for AD&D 2e, but dragonborn have no excuse aside from Wizards of the Coast trying to cash in on the humanoid races popular in World of Warcraft. If someone wants to play a dragon-like character, there were already half-dragons for over ten years by the time 4e came out! Also, as Preston Selby pointed out here:

"I just think there's a sort of breakdown in the game when a player can say their character is a half-dragon with a horny lizard-head and a breath weapon, and there is an expectation that the character can walk into a town and an inn with the humans and the halflings and everyone will act like this is totally normal. At that point, the game has seriously damaged its potential for weirdness and wonderment."

At that point, discrimination by non-fire-breathing humans and dwarves isn't necessarily based on irrational, prejudicial fears (although there's probably an element of that); it's a very rational fear that the dragonborn might sneeze too hard and burn down your house!

I realize that this gets into the same thorny area as X-Men (as much of a prick as he was, Senator Kelly was right when he referred to powerful mutant teenagers as "weapons in our schools"). This is why fantasy and sci-fi can only use metaphors for racial and religious discrimination up to a point.

Ack, back on topic: I don't think dragonborn should be a "standard" species in the kind of games I like to run. As always, these are just my opinion, not some kind of holy pronouncement.

The Tally

Playable: Dwarves (including Gnomes and Halflings), Elves, Humans, possibly Orcs

Trimming the Fat

I've been thinking a lot about the necessity of certain classes in D&D (and similar games). Fighters, mages, and thieves are pretty much essential in terms of both tone and gameplay. Clerics might not always fit tonally, but they're almost always a necessity for gameplay purposes (as the party needs to not die too quickly). Having these four as the "core" classes - a tack taken by virtually every iteration of D&D calling itself the "Basic Set" - gives a good range of options for players. The subclasses of these, however, are less clear-cut in their necessity.

Note that I'll only be talking about those classes that have been central options available in multiple editions. The class has to have been in the Player's Handbook or equivalent, and have appeared in more than one edition in such a capacity (so no cavaliers or gunslingers).

Warriors

Barbarians are completely unnecessary, and the RPG archetype is ridiculous; even Conan the Cimmerian, one of the most famous "barbarians" of fantasy literature and film, wore armor when it was appropriate. In my opinion, there's no need to have them as a distinct class from fighters.

Paladins are basically fighter/clerics, with the weapon selection of a fighter and some of the spell and turning ability of the cleric. Tonally, they might as well just be clerics, so in my view they aren't needed as a separate class.

Rangers' tracking ability and (in some editions) proficiency with two-weapon fighting are nice extra abilities, but not essential in a primarily dungeon-focused game. They might not be needed as a separate class from fighters.

Priests

Druids are a tough case, as besides their extra powers (like shape change), they sometimes have a very different set of spells from their parent class; in oD&D and AD&D 1e, they don't even get cure light wounds until second or third level! The issue is that having both clerics and druids can lead to some tonal mismatches. I might elaborate on this in a different post, but the jury's out on the necessity of druids.

Rogues

Assassins are in a similar boat as rangers, as they're basically normal thieves with some extra abilities. Assassination is largely redundant considering thieves can already backstab, but their disguise ability has so much potential; admittedly, it could just as easily be assigned to regular thieves instead (shades of Lupin the 3rd?). Since they're also of little extra use outside of cities, I'll call this one a draw.

Bards, on the other hand, are excellent to have in one type of game: one with a small number of players. In a group of six, it's easy to have at least one player character to fill each basic role, with some doubling-up as needed or desired. This is harder to do in a group of three or four, and while the bard is certainly no substitute for a fighter or a spellcaster (except in AD&D 1e, but that's a whole other kettle of fish), they can certainly pull their weight in a pinch. The problem comes when bards are designed to be equal or superior fighters, thieves, or spellcasters compared to actual, single-classed fighters, thieves, and spellcasters; 5th edition has this problem in a big way. I'll chalk this one up as a maybe due to their utility for some groups.

Wizards

Illusionists, if their spell lists are different enough from standard mages, can have interesting possibilities. I'm not a big fan of them in AD&D 2e due to the fact that mages can access every spell, with illusionists' (and other specialists') only advantage being more spell slots and easier learning. What are not different enough are...

Sorcerers. This step-headed redchild is so bafflingly similar to its parent class that both sorcerers and wizards share exactly the same spell list in D&D 3.5; even in 5th edition, their selection of cantrips is identical. If you prefer the sorcerer's more cleric-like method of casting spells, that's fine. But the presence of both sorcerers and normal wizards in the same setting destroys any reason to play the latter, and also destroys the entire rationale for wizards being somewhat rare and secretive.

The Monk (or Mystic)

Monks are... an odd case. AD&D treated them as the fifth core class, and with good reason: their means of attack, defense, and other abilities can't be easily slotted under the warrior, priest, rogue, or wizard groups (although some editions, including oD&D, consider them a cleric sub-class for attack and hit dice purposes). Even in BECMI, the rechristened mystic was added as the only other human class available at first level (the druid, as well as the name-level fighter trifecta of paladin/knight/avenger, being more akin to WOTC's prestige classes). Tonally, they might not fit certain settings in their default form, but I would argue for their inclusion.

The Final Count-up

Assassin - Maybe
Barbarian - No
Bard - Maybe
Cleric - Yes
Druid - Maybe

Fighter - Yes
Illusionist - Maybe
Mage - Yes
Monk - Yes
Paladin - No
Ranger - Maybe
Sorcerer - No
Thief - Yes

(Reminder: this is all my personal opinion. Feel free to disagree, but please do so civilly.)

Change, changing places

A lot has been going on, both inside and outside cyberspace. In the "real world", I've had very little success in gathering people together for games - at least the kinds of games that I want to run or play. I've used that time in overhauling my hex-map of my campaign world, finally adding roads (or at least trails) and cleaning up the coastlines.

Here's a snippet of my campaign world, rendered in Hexographer.
(Scale: 1 hex = 6 miles. The tan lines [heh] are roads.)

In cyberland, I have been neglecting this blog, though that's mostly due to the lull in actual play; without continuing to run, I run out of new challenges and new ideas. Hopefully my attempts at getting a group together will produce results; at the very least, I can post about some of my ideas that I've been working on (and I will very shortly).

Meanwhile, Stelios of The Word of Stelios has converted his gaming blog into a writing blog. Thankfully, he hasn't deleted any of his old gaming-related posts, and his few posts on writing thus far have been quite specific and relatable (as opposed to just rehashing "advice for new writers" that I had to read a lot of in junior high). DM Wieg of Save Vs. Poison has also started posting again, with some interesting content; hopefully he'll be able to share some similar content as time and occasion permit.

I'll try not to neglect this blog as much, more for my own sake than for anyone else (though I am thankful for the comments of those who do read it!), and maybe get some feedback on a few ideas.

Yet Another Post About Helmets

"A helmet is usually thought to be very heavy, but when one is attacking a castle or something similar, and arrows, bullets, large rocks, great pieces of wood, and the like are coming down, it will not seem the least bit so."
- from the 11th chapter of Hagakure

Helmets have been around since the literal beginning of D&D as a commercially available product, but their actual use in play has never been straightforward. I won't go into detail on the rules for helmets tucked away in an obscure paragraph of the 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide, but instead I'll focus on the edition in which I've logged the most designing time (refereeing time is a close tie with B/X): AD&D 2nd Edition.

The Player's Handbook for 2e has two types of helmet listed: the basinet and the great helm. Their use or employment is never described, even though the designers thought that the people actually reading the rules would need an explanation of what a magnifying glass does. As much as I want to keep things in the core books whenever possible (to cut down on the strain on my back, if for no other reason), the solution is found in supplements.

The Complete Fighter's Handbook (PHBR1) gives several types of helmets, but doesn't provide specific rules as to what helms should be used with what armor. I realize that such is a task I could undertake myself, but there's little point in doing so if someone else has already done it. In Player's Option: Combat and Tactics, there are more specific rules for different helmets, along with corresponding Armor Class values.

In my current house rules, I use helmets a little bit differently (though still heavily inspired by both of those books), so I'll provide the pertinent rules below.

Fuzzy's Helmet Rules for AD&D 2nd Edition

AC 8-7 (padded, leather, studded leather, ring mail): Leather helm
AC 6 (brigandine, scale mail, hide): Cap
AC 5 (chain mail): Mail coif
AC 4 (splint mail, banded mail, bronze plate): Open-faced helm
AC 3-2 (plate mail, field plate): Closed-face helm
AC 1 (full plate): Great helm

A helmet can be worn with different armor (i.e., wearing a great helm with bronze plate), although in some cases this will look off-putting to observers, though not usually resulting in any penalty to interaction. A mail coif can be worn underneath a great helm; this does not provide a bonus to protection, but still allows some protection for the head if the great helm must be removed.

The main function of helmets is to prevent called shots being made to the head. If the head is unarmored, it has AC 10, and a successful called shot will deal the maximum possible damage for that weapon (so a long sword against a Medium opponent would deal 8 points of damage, plus Strength bonus if applicable).

Unofficial Rule (need to test this out in play first): A natural 20 on a called shot to the head will result in the target being instantly reduced to 0 hit points, thereby falling unconscious and "hovering on death's door".

Reheated Leftovers

My previous post on the lack of creativity in the modern "hobby" reminded me of a quote from Ed Wood:

"So, uh, you made the movie, and now you wanna make it again?"

The urge to remake old stuff for each new edition is funny to me. We've had versions of The Temple of Elemental Evil for AD&D (the original version), 2e (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil), 3e/3.5 (in both module and computer game formats), 4e (twice!), the D&D Adventure System boardgame (which is based on 4e's mechanics), and 5e.

The only place where such retreading is this common is in the movie industry, although I have to say that (for the most part) things have slowed down a bit since the heady days of the 1920s through the 1940s, when a movie might be remade several times within the same decade.

I'll just leave this here...

The Matter of Magic

After Ozymandias expressed some curiosity as to the specific attributions alluded to in this post, I decided to write this up here - both to share it with anyone else who might find it useful, and to create yet another backup of this information should my hard drive and cloud storage fail. I was concerned about my players finding it, but my players are becoming less and less of a factor in my ongoing development of my campaign setting (largely by "substance of absence", or in layperson's terms, "not showing up"). Even if they find this blog, they'll still have to create a wizard to take advantage of this information.

Note that the first section is mostly a primer for those unfamiliar with AD&D 2nd Edition's magic system (as I'm intending this to be useful as a handout to players in the future); if you're already familiar with it, go ahead and skip down to "Correspondences".

The Schools of Magic

Wizard spells (also called "arcane magic" or "thaumaturgy") are each classified into one or more schools defining their function. There are eight of these schools in total, although there is a ninth "pseudo-school" that is sometimes added to these (described below).

Abjuration spells are protective in nature, shielding the caster or others from mundane or magical effects. Specialists in this school* are called abjurers; the schools opposed to Abjuration are Alteration and Illusion/Phantasm.

Alteration (also called Transmutation) spells reshape the environment or the caster in some way; these spells are among the most common ones used by wizards. Specialists are called transmuters; the opposition schools are Abjuration and Necromancy.

Conjuration/Summoning spells call forth objects or beings from other planes, to serve various functions. Specialists are called conjurers; the opposition schools are Divination and Invocation/Evocation.

Divination spells seek to gain information about people, places, or things, in the present or future. The spells of the fourth level and below in this school are sometimes referred to as "Lesser Divination", as they may be learned by any mage or specialist; only the "Greater" spells of the fifth level and above are forbidden to certain specialists. Those who specialize in this school are called diviners; the only opposition school is Conjuration/Summoning.

Enchantment/Charm spells seek to affect either beings or items in some fashion; the former tend to be mind-affecting and temporary, while the latter are permanent if the right conditions are met. Specialists are called enchanters; the opposition schools are Invocation/Evocation and Necromancy.

Illusion/Phantasm spells are focused on creating effects that only seem real, often attempting to disguise themselves as the work of other schools. The specialists of this school, illusionists, are among the most common of all specialist wizards (not that specialists themselves are all that common!); their opposition schools are Abjuration, Invocation/Evocation, and Necromancy.

Invocation/Evocation spells call upon magical energies, acting on and with them how the workings of Conjuration/Summoning spells involve objects and beings. Specialists are called invokers; the opposition schools are Conjuration/Summoning and Enchantment/Charm.

Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and death for various purposes, with many spells involving the undead in some fashion. Specialists are called necromancers; the opposition schools are Enchantment/Charm and Illusion/Phantasm.

It is important to note that some spells fall under more than one of these schools. A select few - such as the 1st-level spell cantrip - are classified under all eight of these schools simultaneously, because they can be cast using any of the methods and energies available to a wizard.

* (In my current house rules, the only specialist wizards allowed are illusionists; this may change in the future, and in any case the reader is free to do as they please.)

Correspondences

The following table gives a summary of the attributions of various qualities and types of matter to the eight schools, as well as certain other parts of existence.

You might need to view the image separately to see it properly, depending on your screen resolution.

Certain terms here bear explanation. Pachyderms are considered mammals in the modern "real" world, yes, but to a pseudo-medieval mindset, elephants and rhinoceroses would seem pretty strange animals. Similarly, the category of "live-rearing fish" includes dolphins and whales as well; the attribution of this category to the Patron Saint of Executioners is because of the legendary viciousness of certain species of sharks, and their popularity as animals of execution in the Principality of Le'var. And as the Patron Saint of Warriors (St. Girtus) traditionally has a longsword as his weapon, what better representative in the animal kingdom than the swordfish?

Finally, "Primortal" refers to St. Desial's title "Patron of All Mortals"; they are traditionally thought to be the first ancestor of all mortal races, including humans, demihumans, and humanoids. (I thought of the contraction as I was making the table, and it just seemed too cool - in a Katanas and Trenchcoats way - to pass up.)

And here's an edited version of the eight-color wheel, with my terrible Microsoft Paint skills used to add the school symbols from the reprinted 2nd Edition Player's Handbook.

Combat Rounds

I'll give you my thesis up front: One-minute combat rounds - at least where melee combat is concerned - are ridiculous.

How do I know this? Well, I've been irregularly sparring with one of my friends for a few months now, using various wooden and polypropylene practice weapons. As time goes on, and we acquire more and more Martial implements, the level of physical strain being placed on our bodies increases. My friend lives out in the middle of nowhere, has two horses and a stable of standard poodles, and works as a furrier; the result is someone who is more accustomed to physical labor and exertion than a Dungeon Master with a liberal arts degree. Despite this, even recreational sparring with arming swords and hand-held bucklers (and hopefully other weapons in the future - check out my list of budget-priced practice arms, if you're interested) is a massive effort; I can't imagine doing so in full maille or plate armor, on a hot day, after a mile-long march.

After one especially intense list, I estimated the total duration of that match-up: two minutes. In AD&D terms, two combat rounds. Ridiculous.

Granted, neither of us are in the kind of shape required of a medieval (or present-day) mercenary soldier, let alone a knight trained from birth. But I'd estimate that I am at least in good shape as the average 0-level human, or an especially kapable kobold. Let's measure two minutes out in combat rounds, by edition of D&D.

• Basic/Expert D&D: One round is ten seconds, so two minutes translates to twelve rounds. Not too shabby in game terms, as this would be a tough and grueling fight for low-level characters.
• D&D 3rd Edition (and onwards): One round is six seconds, so two minutes translates to twenty rounds. I could buy this, if the pumped-up nature of d20 System heroes is taken into account.
• AD&D 1st or 2nd Edition: One round is one minute, so two minutes translates to... two rounds. One set of attack rolls on each side, except for fighters with weapon specialization or those using ranged weapons.

See the problem? Even if a combat round has more than one "attack" being made in it - as Gygax argued in AD&D - how fun would it be to require a full turn or more spent resting every two rounds?

Being the literal stubborn bastard that I am, I set out to fix this. The simplest solution seemed to be to change the rounds to ten seconds long. This keeps the idea of segments intact (even if they're never mentioned by name in 2e, they're still there), only reducing them to 1 second and thereby removing the need for a specialized term; 1 round = 10 seconds, 1 turn = 10 minutes. It also allows everyone to continue using a low d10 roll for initiative. But a big problem immediately comes up: rate of fire.

In AD&D, certain ranged weapons can make multiple attacks per round. Additional melee attacks (for fighters of sufficiently high level, or those with weapon specialization) are no problem, since they start off pretty low at 3 attacks for every 2 rounds. But weapons like the bow (2 attacks per round) or the dart (4 attacks per round for specialists) start getting a bit out of hand. I saw only two solutions to the suspension of disbelief that would snap like a guitar's high E string if the ROF was left intact: limit all weapons to the number of attacks granted to melee weapons - thus still allowing for specialists to shoot faster - or just limit everything to 1 attack per round, the way they are in B/X.

But then the thought occurred to me: if I'm going to change the whole combat system to be like B/X, why not just run B/X? This ties in with my previous post on my issues with excessive house-ruling. In the case of AD&D, it's even worse, because I want the Player's Handbook to still be a useful reference for players in as many cases as possible. The more I change about the fundamental mechanics of the game, the more of that book (that somebody paid good money for - I wanted to eventually give several of my players their own copies) becomes dead weight, useless to anyone who delves into my campaign.

The poor correspondence of one-minute combat rounds to the realities of melee battle (more irritating than the continued classification of maille as being lighter in weight than field plate armor - one of the few areas in which I grudgingly concede that 5th edition did something right) is one of the reasons I might convert my campaign over to B/X or Basic Fantasy. From Basic it came, and to Basic it may yet return.

"Break Out Your Wallet and Buy About 30 Games"

This snippet is originally from a comment I was going to make on this post by Alexis; I excised it because it started to get a bit long for a comment. Still, it perfectly sums up my feelings towards the current "market".

Even worse, there's this almost universal fixation on the current, inaccurately-numbered "edition" over virtually anything else; I keep telling my sympathetic friends that what the hobby really needs is gamers who can sit still for five minutes without chasing after the nearest shiny object. These same players, rather than using things that are quite visible within the books they already own (and that see little use as is - gnomes, anyone?) feel compelled to buy the latest expensive hardcover that is literally a repackaging of something that came out 20 or 30 years ago.

A lot to unpack here. Recently, the tabletop club at the university of which I am an alumnus was all abuzz about the live stream of Wizards of the Coast's presentations at some industry convention or other. Much excitement about this stuff that brought back some character or other from 2nd Edition.

Me? I realized several years ago that it's not necessary to keep buying things for a game in order to continue playing it. At least, that's how a game should be designed. From what I understand, this is still largely true with 5th Edition; after buying the Player's Handbook, and then the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual if you're a DM, you're good to go. (The original intent was to have this also be true of the free Basic Rules PDFs, but evidently those are less useful to DMs than they should be.)

And yet, the other club people were SO FREAKING EXCITED that they might get an official gunslinger class. As I've repeatedly stated to several friends, why is there a need for a separate gunslinger class? If the DM is one to include firearms in their campaign (for the record, I'm not), then why not just have the gunslinger be a ranger and have the character buy a gun? Or, in 2e, even a plain old fighter - who could take advantage of weapon specialization to have a further bonus to hit with their gunshots?

Even worse than this was one 5e game I played in where, apparently, fighters didn't exist... but gunslingers did. Because a cast piece of steel with moving mechanical parts and explosive powder is more common than a stick. (I really need to write a full post on this yahoo's game soon.)

One GM whose Pathfinder game I played in for a while was in the habit of bringing their rulebooks with them in a milk crate. And apparently Paizo has rewritten part of the dictionary and included it in one of those tomes, since the very definition of "core" has apparently changed in Pathfinder. Core classes are not just the ones included in the Core Rulebook, no ma'am; core classes also include the ones from the Advanced Class Guide, Advanced Player's Guide, Occult Adventures, et cetera. It baffles me that anyone would voluntarily subject themselves - and worse, their players - to this level of rules bloat.

If the original D&D rules were released today, they would be seen as mysteriously backwards. Not only with how primitive some of the mechanics are, or the poor art, or the laughable lack of organization. I can imagine a modern "conspicuous consumer" type gamer looking at it:

"You mean that's it? Just three booklets in a box, and you don't have to buy anything else? How are you supposed to keep your players' interest, if you're not constantly adding new shiny books and buying more elaborate dice?"

Someone else would then step in and try to explain the value of, you know, running a game that people actually want to keep coming back to because they're having fun, but without a literal sales pitch hawking TSR's reheated leftovers, the CC gamer would quickly lose interest.

There is enough stuff here already. There are more RPGs on the market, past and present, than any one person or group would ever be able to play. I read an interview with Bob Dylan where he said something similar about music, and I tend to agree. RPGs are an even more special case; a huge portion of the product is pre-written modules and settings, which back in the old days were not as widely used. Instead, the DM would actually write their own material.

Now, the simple fact of a DM creating their own campaign from scratch - rather than just reading boxed text out of a hardcover book with boring artwork* - is bizarre to people like those that make up my gaming club. They refer to such strangeness as "homebrew". They spent over one hundred dollars on tools allowing them to make their own games, and rather than do so, they continue to pay other people $50 at a time to make the games for them. And not just once or twice, so they can see how such a thing might be done; they have to invent a label to "other" those weirdos who actually sit down, pay attention, and put in the necessary work to make something of their own.

It's depressing, really.

*The artwork for most of the 5e books is not bad from a technical perspective, but it's so boring. Curse of Strahd and Tales from the Yawning Portal both just have a person sitting or standing there, Dungeonology (yeah, not technically a rulebook, but a lot of people in the club have bought it) shows a picture of a monster that most characters will not meet until much later in the game, and all of the core books except for the Monster Manual fail to give an impression of what actually happens in the game. Compare them to the original Players Handbook (or even the Rules Cyclopedia) and you'll see what I mean.

The Boons and Banes of House Rules

As I obliquely hinted at in my previous post, part of my search for "the perfect game" - not the one rules set that will be perfect for everyone all the time (because there isn't one), but the one that best fits my needs and the needs of the players in this particular campaign - is finding a game that requires the least house-ruling. If I was so desperate to attract new players that I ran 5th edition, but told them "no dragonborn or tieflings, and no sorcerers or warlocks", and altered the rules for the amount of space taken up by creatures on the battlefield... why not just run 3rd edition?

My general policy with new rules systems has always been to try them 100% Rules As Written - at least for the first session or two. If there's something that proves problematic in play, then I'll make a note of it and bring a solution to the next running (either from a different iteration of D&D, from the Web, or from my own rapidly-decaying positronic brain). When I ran Drunk D&D, I made sure to stick to RAW as closely as humanly possible, and I ultimately succeeded without any of the PCs dying.

I doubt that anyone under the age of 50 (besides me) will laugh at this.

This also allows me to easily introduce new players to the game. "Here are the rules," I say, showing them a book with a (hopefully) cool illustration of intrepid adventurers on the front cover. As their eyes grow to a size usually reserved for tennis balls, I chuckle a bit. "Don't worry - you don't have to know all of them at the start. That's my job; you'll be able to learn as you go."

(You might notice that my above description specifically excludes certain iterations of the game; if you've read my past posts, you'll know which ones they are without my having to name them here.)

Referring to the rulebook in all but the most fringe cases also gives an important impression to new players: this is a game. Games have rules, and it's sticking to them that gives a game its challenge. When I was a kid, I made liberal use of cheat codes and external devices in my video games, but as I grew up I understood that I never really beat those games - I had cheated my way through the game, and by doing so I cheated myself of some rich experiences. (I have no regrets about a few of those, though; to steal a line from El Santo, Super Mario Land sucks so hard it has an event horizon.)

One particularly glaring issue came up for me recently in AD&D 2nd Edition, thanks to some experiences in both the game world and the "real" world... but that's a topic for another post. Probably the next one (if my own laziness doesn't catch up with me), so stay tuned!

Converting the Campaign Yet Again?

As my campaign has gone on (yet another) unintended hiatus, there are a few things I've been wondering about the structure and style of it. I've tried to do a sandbox campaign, but the players are so used to "story" campaigns that I have had to throw in a few more linear settings for them to explore. I've tried asking the players what they want to do, and gotten no useful response, forcing me to assume what they might want to do, and whipping something up to fill that space. Then, come game time, one or two of the players all but refuse to do the thing that I prepared for them to do.

I shouldn't be surprised, but I am frustrated by it. First, they refuse to tell me what they want to do; second, they say "no" to every option that I have spent time preparing (in some cases, several hours of time). As for what one player in particular actually wanted to do, I still have no idea; and now, the point is moot, as the player in question has dropped out of all of my campaigns due to this unsolvable conflict between DMing style and playing style.

(I should elaborate on this in a later post - and I probably will - as this is getting way off topic.)

Anyway, another issue that has cropped up is that my DM skills - as far as rules mastery are concerned - have grown rusty due to disuse. In the last abortive session of my 2e campaign, I had to stop several times to look up pretty common rules. Were I to have more interested players, I would simply delegate some such duties to them. Unless I can get back into a situation where I'm running 2e every other week (if not more often), I cannot keep up my usual "flow" without the players meeting me halfway. Some of them are mild powergamers, so I just need to convince them to brush up on the rules in between sessions - or even during sessions, as this would be a far more productive task than simply watching magical-girl anime or playing Heroes of the Storm while I'm trying to run a game. Heck, this is the exact reason that I gave one of my closest friends - who was also, at one point, one of my most loyal and consistent players - a copy of the Player's Handbook for her birthday.

I realize that some may be reading this and scoffing at my lack of skill. AD&D 2nd Edition, if run without most of the optional fiddly rules (as it is at my table), is not that complicated. Certainly not as complicated as 3.5 or - Gods help you - Pathfinder. And indeed, as I hinted above, when I'm at the top of my game I can wrangle it rather effectively. But in the face of player disinterest, lack of preparation time (mostly my own fault), and frequent interruptions, I can't stay afloat.

I've been preparing a contingency plan for both possible outcomes to this situation. If I can gain the commitment of enough players - players who are willing to help me, and each other, keep the game moving efficiently - then I'll stick with 2e. But if not... well, that's where it comes down to a tough decision.

There are three basic options I'm looking at. B/X (my perennial favorite iteration of D&D) has a lot of advantages: character creation is fast, combat is fast, and its deadliness belies its newbie-friendly nature. In fact, I recently ran a second round of "Drunk D&D" for three players: one who has played in a few sessions of my campaign; one who has previously played in a D&D Fast Play Game (run by me); and one who was both completely new to RPGs, and had completely failed to understand the concept of pen-and-paper RPGs. This third player was also the most drunk out of the three.

On the spur of the moment, I retrieved my "trusty" laptop, bought some cheap six-siders on a grocery run, and helped everyone roll up their characters and write down their information on blank printer paper. Running them through a Fast Play module, they played fairly smart, the drunk newbie (playing a cleric) got to use his Turn Undead ability, and they narrowly escaped with their lives before they got to the boss. Little experience or treasure was gained (although the fighter managed to sell an ancient dagger she grabbed from the skeletons for 5 gold pieces), but a grand time was had by all. I was especially proud of them because I did not fudge in their favor, except by invoking my table rule of one re-roll per player per game, and extending it to the DM as well (this resulted in the thief being injured in a pit trap, rather than immediately killed).

This, to me, illustrates why I love B/X. It's simple enough for complete neophytes to pick up in a single short session, yet challenging and deep enough to keep veterans on the edges of their seats. The downsides are the extreme lethality and the limited selection of classes; this is one reason I've been wringing my metaphorical hands over it, as one of my players (and closest friends) has a druid character that she's very attached to.

The second option available to me is Basic Fantasy. I like it, always have; it's based on B/X and has most of its simplicity, while having many optional supplements to add things (like druids). But the supplements present another problem: supplement bloat. If I allow the Druids supplement, why not the Gnomes supplement? Or the Half-Humans supplement, or the Necromancers supplement, or, or, or...

(And it doesn't hurt that every single one of the four or five variants on the bard class for Basic Fantasy sucks... although the jester class, which swaps out inspiring songs for demoralizing taunts, is something I've been wanting to try out in its place.)

The third option is original D&D. This one has the issue of supplement bloat as well, and I've looked for a compilation of all of its Supplements into one book that didn't have to modify things for the sake of the OGL. Fortunately, Mothshade of 3d6, Traps and Thieves recently came out with something that solved that problem right away, and I realized some things I hadn't before - like the fact that half-elf druids in oD&D are technically allowed without houseruling. The problem with oD&D is that the rules are pretty vague and incomplete, which would require me to either have a binder full of houserules or mix-and-match from other editions.

So, if I convert the campaign, I'll still have to do a lot of work. But at least B/X is small enough that it's okay for the entire burden of knowing the rules to fall on the DM; after all, it's a lot less headache to flip through 128 pages over two books than 500+ pages over three books.

 (Warning in advance: this brief post has strong language, and probably won't make any sense to anyone who isn't either me or an obsessive scourer of my previous posts.)

Fuck it; Duemerans aren't Anglo-Saxon any more, they're Mediterranean. There don't need to be two subraces of white humans; I've already got German dwarves, Irish halflings, and elves who speak Greek with a Received Pronunciation accent.

From this point forward, in my campaign, the default "Imperial" human ethnicity is one closer to ethnic Greeks and/or Italians in the "real world". This makes sense, since it was the Greeks and then the Romans who had major empires, only followed centuries later by the English - and the stereotype of Romans speaking with a "British" accent is 100% an artifact of the English idea that they were the successors of the Romans, much like the Romans (and the Byzantines, but that's a whole other kettle of fish) thought of themselves as the successors of the Greeks.

(Case in point: one of the free steampunk RPGs I downloaded years ago was titled Pax Britannica.)

There will probably be some artifacts of Anglo-Saxon stuff in the Duemerans. They will still speak English (as I am only fluent in English... although I might convert the elves to being French if my aptitude in the language increases sufficiently), and they'll probably have a Dark Ages tolerance of homosexuality, particularly with the pansexual polyamorous high elves and wood elves running around. Unless, of course, the aromantic asexual grey elves get their way.

Rambling now. Woke up too early after 4 days with no sugar (and therefore, no caffeine). It's 3:03am local time as I'm typing this, but I wanted to get it down in writing before I forgot.

Brief update on the Fuzz

So, it has been almost two months since my last post. There are several reasons for this, but they all stem from university life; dealing with finals, as well as trying to keep the tabletop gaming club from imploding, have left little time for running or playing games, let alone blogging about them. Fortunately, I now have good news on both fronts: I should be graduating with a B. A. in English, and the club's first major transition of power went well enough that some of the new executives bought me The Complete Wizard's Handbook for 2e as a graduation present!

In other gaming-related news, here's a brief summary of my gaming activities over the past two months.

• One of my friends has been running a regular Pokémon game using the Pokémon Tabletop United ruleset. It is, to use the favorite expression of one of my fellow players, a shitshow.
• I finally got a chance to run Halberd. Character creation was indeed fast, and play was similarly fast; the downside is that the rules are so loosely written and sparse (to the point of lacking equipment prices aside from weapons and armor) that I had to make a lot up on the spot. Way too much for my comfort. Sadly, I will probably not be running this one again, though I'm glad I gave it a shot.
• I bought Underground, a fairly obscure 1993 pseudo-cyberpunk/pseudo-superhero game by Ray Winninger. The art and the setting are amazing, but the system will take some figuring out; worst case scenario, I might end up chucking the system and running the setting using Savage Worlds. The PDF is available at DriveThruRPG (at full cover price, though it's currently discounted to $12.50) for anyone who's interested.
• On a related note, I was dismayed to find that there was no PDF of the character sheet available online. I sent a request in to the DTRPG people, and they soon provided one and made it publicly available - a huge "thank you" to Steve W. for doing so!
• I finally got to run AD&D 2nd Edition again after having zero opportunities to do so during the semester. Even better, this was a long session, lasting from around 7:00pm to 2:00am, though we hung out and talked until well past 4:30am. One of my best friends - who was unable to attend any other games this semester, due to an especially harrowing calculus class - was even able to attend, and I got one of my friends who had previously sworn off the system (as well as most fantasy games) to agree to play. Fun was had by all, although...
• I used Alexis' XP system once again, as I had done with my original "comeback" session detailed here. The issue that cropped up was one of balance; the players breezed through enemies that had previously given most of them a great deal of trouble (and resulted in one TPK). They also played smart, which meant that the elven thief with 19 Dexterity was up on the roof shooting two arrows per round, and went from 2nd to 3rd level in a single session. Meanwhile, my friend who I convinced to rejoin - playing a fighter with 18 Dexterity and good armor - had rotten luck with the dice, meaning that he could neither deal nor receive damage in most of the fights, and therefore got very little experience. As much as I like Alexis' XP system, my players demand a more balanced awarding of XP, so I will probably go with the individual class-based awards in the 2nd Edition Dungeon Master Guide.
• This will also be necessary because I might soon be running a group of my two best friends and some of their LGBTQ+ friends - a veritable "Queer D&D" as they call it - and they plan to focus more on exploration and social stuff. Since a common complaint in my games is that it takes forever to level up (an issue of monster balance; either they breeze through and get very little XP, or they struggle and nearly get wiped out), I'll have to keep XP from non-combat-related achievements in mind. I also bought a very nice, discontinued Chessex vinyl mat to use as a wilderness map as they explore.
• Finally, I managed to get my gray-market PDF of the HackMaster 4th Edition Player's Handbook printed and bound at a local copy shop. I realize that actually running this would require my violating part of the Player Code of Conduct (no distributing scanned or photocopied HM books), but since 4e is no longer legally available new in any form, I don't feel bad about it.

Now that I'm done with school for several years, and will only be working a part-time job (if any), I should have more time for gaming - and for blogging about such.

Thoughts on Chainmail

A lot of ink has been spilled, and pixels inverted, on just how exactly the Chainmail miniature rules are meant to be used with the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. I've decided that I want to give them a try, if for no other reason than the presence of some cool-looking jousting rules.

Here are my thoughts, in no particular order. Keep in mind that I'm using the 3rd Edition of Chainmail, as that's the only PDF I've been able to find (and the only one that's available for sale right now). I would normally attempt to use the earliest iteration of something possible, but this was published back in the days when "edition" meant "an error-correcting and possible expansion of the work", instead of "a completely new thing with a similar name". I will also be frequently referring to Jason Vey's Supplement VI: Forbidden Lore, and the multi-authored, Aldarron-edited "Using Chainmail to Resolve OD&D Combats".

1. According to Vey's interpretation of the Man to Man combat system, the pluses of a character's Fighting Capability score would refer to extra attacks, so a 1st-level Fighting Man would get 2 attacks per exchange of blows. This not only provides a boost to characters of all classes (although Magic-Users and Clerics obviously progress more slowly), but would make combat run much faster in general against humanoid opponents. It would be pretty easy to assume that, for instance, all orcs would be wearing leather armor and wielding clubs; I could just as easily change the entries for "No Armor", "Leather or Padded Armor", etc. to the corresponding AC values as detailed in Greyhawk.
2. The Troop Type system seems pretty impractical unless actual mass combat is taking place, so I probably wouldn't be using it for a while yet.
3. The fact that a combatant can't even attack on the Fantasy Combat Table (against dragons, giants, etc.) unless their Fighting Capability is equal to a Hero - or at least Hero -1 for some of the weaker opponents - is another good reason for me to consider starting characters off at 3rd or 4th level. This would at least allow fighters to use this system. Then again, I might as well just use the Alternative Combat System from D&D.
4. Jousts seem pretty integral to D&D from the way they're described in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, and as I develop the wilderness of my planned game, I'm making sure to take jousting into account. (This leads to some interesting complications, given that one of the possibilities for the guards of a Superhero is a group of Heroes riding on rocs; one of my wilderness castle-dwellers is particularly fond of aerial jousts...)
5. Hobbits are still present in the PDF that I have of Chainmail, as are ents and balrogs. I have no qualms about keeping these as their names in the campaign itself. If I had ten bucks for every time this conversation happened, I'd be rich:
   
   Me: "You can play as a human, or a dwarf, elf, or halfling."
   New Player: "What's a halfling?"
   Me: "A hobbit."
       
6. I need to get together with one of my friends and try out some of the Chainmail systems on their own, just to figure out how they work in play, so that I could better present them to my players.

Spell Scrolls By Way of 10Rogue

So, continuing on from my previous post, here's my examination of how scrolls work in 10Rogue, and how I've been applying it to my various D&D games.

In the original game, the player can find scrolls with magic words written on them. Similarly to D&D, each can be used only once (no multiple-spell scrolls here). When initially found, the scroll is only distinguishable from other scrolls by the particular nonsense words written on each: there appears to be no pattern or hint. The only way to figure out what a scroll does initially is to read it aloud, which still doesn't always reveal its effects initially. For instance, after reading aloud a scroll, the player might receive the message "You hear a high-pitched humming noise", and is given the option to name the effect to be able to distinguish it again later.

The only way to identify scrolls with certainty (unless the effect is immediately obvious, such as a scroll of sleep) is to use a scroll of identify; this is also the only way to figure out what a scroll, implement, or potion is without reading, zapping, or quaffing it. But the primary difference between 10Rogue and old-school D&D is that past experience is a reliable guide to the future, whereas D&D encourages DMs to vary the appearance of their magic items in order to yank their players' figurative chains.

I think that initially there shouldn't be clues, so as to encourage experimentation, but after that there should be some amount of consistency and repeatable results. The two exceptions to this are poisons and cursed items, which by their nature should be designed to fool the unwary. After all, if the players just shotgun every blue potion they see - without bothering to check the consistency, scent, opacity, etc. - it would just be natural for their cavalier approach to give bad results once in a blue moon. "Nope, upon closer inspection, the potion does not smell like peppermint; it smells like garlic. It's also thick and chalky, instead of thin."

Anyone have any feedback as to whether this would have good, bad, or sideways results in a long-running campaign?

Magic Items, By Way of 10Rogue

Brief bit of background beforehand: I have been playing a small, little-discussed game called 10Rogue off and on since middle school. A classmate was playing it, and I asked for the name, interested as to what such a primitive-looking game might be like; when I downloaded it and started playing, I was hooked. Even though it took the better part of 5 years to understand most of the mechanics (mainly due to the fact that Googling "10rogue" mostly brought results about MMOG players discussing how best to optimize their rogue character builds... and now those people have taken up D&D 5e), I still found it fascinating. I took it for inspiration when I tried to make a pen-and-paper version of it, until I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and learned that I had been essentially reinventing the wheel.

For those who aren't familiar with it, 10Rogue is a freeware clone of the original Rogue, the game that spawned an entire subgenre of "roguelikes". I'd be tempted to call 10Rogue a retroclone, except that it came out in 1984 - less than 5 years after the introduction of the original. It simulates a randomly-generated dungeon crawl, with the primary divergence from old-school D&D being the lack of a distinct class or race system; the player's character can use any weapon, armor, magical implement, or scroll, and can search for secret doors. The main reason that I prefer 10Rogue over the original Rogue is that the interface is very stripped down and streamlined (you can use the arrow keys or the numpad to move). The ASCII graphics are also a huge plus, as any version of Windows prior to 8 can run it in a command prompt window, although I still prefer to use DOSBox so that the save/load and scoreboard features work properly.

Here's one example of Rogue; graphically, it's almost
identical to the version that I play regularly, 10Rogue.

Getting back on topic, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that 10Rogue cemented in my mind the way that RPGs should work. It definitely comes from the old-school way of thinking about dungeons: monsters are there to kill or be killed; the only way to learn what an item does (aside from using a scroll of identify) is to use it, with potentially deleterious effects; and if your character dies, they're dead. The only flaw with 10Rogue is that having a party of multiple characters - essential for any old-school D&D session - is impossible, which means that the odds are stacked against you from the start. But this is part of the reason I pull no punches as a DM of B/X. Your character died? Do you want to pay/go on a quest to have them raised? You can't? Oh well, better make another one.

(I also haven't pulled any punches when I've run the original West End Games Star Wars, but that's for an entirely different reason; it's damned difficult to kill characters in that system!)

The main thing that I like about 10Rogue mechanically, though, is the way magic items are handled. When you find an implement, potion, or scroll, you don't know anything about it other than what your eyes tell you. This staff is made of mahogany; this potion is blue; this scroll has the words "jujmon lij dodlom" written on it. Unless you have a scroll of identify, the only way to figure out what an item does is by using it - wave the staff or wand, quaff the potion, read the scroll aloud. After this is done - and if the effect is immediately obvious, which it isn't always - then other items of the same appearance are automatically "remembered" as being of that particular type. The appearances are consistent from item to item, within the same game - but when you start a new game, everything changes.

This process of risky discovery is what I want to capture in my B/X sessions. I personally don't like the rule that every single potion, even one with identical effects to another one, is a different color (and presumably scent, opacity, etc.), so I decided to make them uniform. This doesn't mean that a potion couldn't be deliberately adulterated to resemble a different one - indeed, poisons almost always are designed to resemble beneficial potions - but in general, two blue potions of identical size, scent, and viscosity will have the same effect. This allows the party to gradually discover more about the world by experimenting.

I didn't want to just haphazardly assign color values and materials to magic items, though, nor did I want to give too many cute clues (a red potion heals, a transparent potion confers invisibility, etc.) to the players. Since I quite enjoy the system of the eight "schools" of magic in AD&D 2e, I decided to use them as the basis for a unifying scheme of colors, metals, woods, and gems. This was partly inspired by my research into Alchemy and the Hermetic Qabala, but I was careful to not apply them too similarly out of respect for the traditions. (Not like I could, anyway; most Western esoteric systems are based on 3-, 7, and 12-part schemes, whereas magic in AD&D 2e has eight divisions.)

Yep, an eight-part color wheel. At least it allows
for opposition, unlike its seven-part counterpart.

I won't go into too much detail about the specific attributions I used, in case some of my players stumble across this post. But the advantage of using the schools of magic in this way is that it allows me to assign specific color values, as well as corresponding materials, for both main types of magical effects - thaumaturgic (arcane/wizard spells) and theurgic (divine/priest spells) - because the designers of AD&D 2e were helpful enough to include the appropriate school of magic even in the priest spell descriptions. This does mean that not every potion or implement is unique; there are obviously multiple potions in B/X whose effects fall under the school of Necromancy or Alteration, for example. But I still like this system a lot.

As for scrolls... I'll have to deal with those in a separate post. Stay tuned!

Duemeran Species: Elves

The elves, or erev in their own language, are a demihuman species that live all over the Continent. The Sylvans (or "wood elves") and Varlans (or "high elves") are found throughout the Kingdom of Duemerus, while the Thelvi (or "grey elves") live mostly in the Principality of Le'var to the west.

Elves are outwardly very similar to humans, standing five to six feet high at maturity (20 years) and having soft skin in a human-like range of tones, with Sylvans tending to be darker and Thelvans having ash-grey or white skin. Their primary distinguishing features from humans are their much lighter frames, pointed ears, and lack of facial or body hair. Upon closer inspection, however, even the "hair" on their heads and brows is not actually hair, but very thin feather-like growths. Their extremely light weight is due to having a hollow bone structure; these traits suggest that the elves may have descended from birds rather than land animals.

A close-up of kiwi bird feathers, which have
a texture resembling the "hair" of elves.

Although elves are shorter than most humans initially, they do not stop growing in height after they reach physical and sexual maturity. Because of this, and their extremely long lifespans (often up to 200 years), many elven elders stand well over seven feet tall.

There is virtually no difference in appearance between male and female elves, and in fact their culture holds no difference socially between the sexes aside from the roles played in procreation; attitudes are virtually identical regarding same-sex relationships as heterosexual ones. With an increasing number of elves living in human-dominated cities, same-sex relationships are increasingly seen as desirable among the younger generation who do not want to raise families. A number of elves also have an androgynous persona, which is also normalized by their native language having no grammatical elements of gender.

Despite having very different physiologies, elves do have a limited amount of reproductive compatibility with humans, although the resulting offspring (being of two different species) will themselves be infertile. A sexual relationship between a biologically male elf and a biologically female human is extremely hazardous, however, as the longer gestation period of elves - about twelve months, compared to humans' nine months - will usually result in the mother dying in childbirth. This, coupled with the "half-elf" having a lifespan shorter than their elven parent, but longer than their human one (typically about 120 years), leads many half-elven offspring to have trouble fitting in to whichever society they choose to join; it has been suggested that this is a reason why many adopt the nomadic lifestyle of the adventurer. There has been no evidence suggesting that elves are reproductively compatible with dwarves, gnomes, orcs, or other demihuman or humanoid species; fertilization could hypothetically occur with halflings (due to their physiology being almost identical to that of humans), but such would not result in a child being brought to term, as the mother would die of the strain on her body if a miscarriage did not occur early in the pregnancy.

Elves' hollow bone structure makes them much lighter and more maneuverable than the average human, giving them a +1 bonus to Dexterity; it also makes their bones more vulnerable to breakage, giving them a -1 penalty to Constitution. Half-elves tend to have "chambered" or semi-hollow bones which make them lighter in weight, but do not affect their agility or durability to a significant extent.

AD&D 1e PHB Available on Print-on-Demand

Well, it looks like the AD&D (1st edition) Players Handbook is now officially back in print. I believe the DMG and MM are also available in this fashion.

It's currently on sale, so if you want a high-quality PDF along with the book, I'd grab it soon.

I'm sorely tempted to pick one of these up, as I don't yet own the PHB. If I do, I'll write up a post about it, comparing the physical quality to my genuinely premium-reprinted DMG.

Happy gaming!