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?
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Saturday, February 18, 2017
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.
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.)
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!
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!
Saturday, February 4, 2017
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.
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.
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.
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