Apparently this blog has been around over six months, but I just became aware of it today. I've been reading it all day, and really enjoying it! If you haven't already you should check it out:
http://in-the-cities.com
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Familial D&D Adventures with the Girls (Part 1 of 2)
Last weekend two of my nieces, ages 9 and 16, spent the night so as to give their parents some much needed leisure time. My lovely wife had her hands full with our new baby, so I decided to do my best to help keep everyone entertained. I went with what I know best... games!
I got my 3-year-old daughter and the 9-year-old niece together, and we started rolling up some characters. I explained how Dungeons & Dragons was a game where you sit around a table with your friends, eat lots of junk food, make jokes, and possibly have an adventure if you get around to it. They definitely got it. You should have seen these girls stuffing their faces with chips and chugging root beer! The greasy kid-hands all over my dice and pencils kind of made me cringe, but I was able to ignore it with a bit of effort.
I was happy to get a chance to use my new expanded Outland race tables, and I took out a few of the half-character-sheets I made a while back. I tried to get the 16-year-old involved as well, but she didn't seem interested, so I didn't press the issue.
My daughter rolled first and got a human (1-67 on the percentile table is human, although there is a fair chance of a Carcosa-colored-human). She had a crestfallen look on her face, so I asked if she would prefer something else. She said yes, so I just had her roll d30+70 to bypass all the human results. She got a Half-Giant. My niece got a Deodand. Then I had them roll their stats, 3d6 in order. I wrote the results for my daughter, since her handwriting isn't so good yet :)
My daughter chose to make her character a thief named Conan (she always names her characters Conan). My niece decided to go with a wizard which she named "Penny the Great". I was extremely happy that she threw in the title!
Now, here is where I started to become torn. I already knew in my mind that if either of them died, I fully intended to make them roll up a new character. Thus, I wanted to give them some durability, but I also didn't want to give away the store. I place great importance on "working your way up" from less-than-stellar beginnings. So on the spot I decided I would just have them roll 1d3 and that would be their level. Both rolled 2, and that seemed to work out really well. I had each roll their hit points twice and take the better result. My niece was concerned that my daughter had more hp, but a simple explanation about the frailty of wizards cleared that up.
I had them roll their starting gold (3d6x10), and again, my niece expressed displeasure at my daughter getting 100gp while she only got 60gp. I just explained a little bit about the game and how it uses dice and sometimes you are lucky and sometimes not so much. It seemed to satisfy her.
I also had them roll their backgrounds. Turns out the deodand wizard was a fisherman before she started her adventuring career, so she got a fishing rod and a stylish fishing hat. Conan was a goat-herder, so she got a shepherd's crook. The 9-year-old was familiar with this item, so she explained it to my daughter. This brought me back to when I first started playing D&D, and I would pore over the equipment list... "What the hell are crampons? Sounds like tampons!" D&D really does teach us quite a bit, even if a lot of it is trivia.
I gave them their saving throw values, weapons, and armor, and off we went.
Wizard: wizard robes + magic staff
Thief: leather armor, short sword, dagger, bow & arrows, thief tools
I decided to use my Tegel Manor ripoff haunted house, since I had already run it several times, so it would require minimal brainpower on my part. Then I could have more to help them out. I also decided that since it was just a party of two, that they each hired two "helpers" to come along to the dangerous haunted house, in exchange for a share of the loot. The 9-year-old promptly chimed in, "I'm only going to pay them 5 gold and I'm going to keep the treasure we find." She's a natural! The deodand's helpers were named Bob & Joe, and my daughter named hers Jasmine and I don't remember the other. She wanted to make sure that I knew that it was Jasmine from the Conan cartoon, and not Jasmine from the Aladdin movie. Oh yeah, she wanted to name her other helper after the girl from the Pirates of Dark Water, but neither of us could remember her name, so we agreed to watch an episode in hopes of finding out after the game.
We didn't bother statting these guys. I just figured they have +0 attack bonus, d6 damage, 16 for all saves, and treat ability scores as 10 if it comes up. This is how I generally handle zero-level mooks.
Anyways, I present them with a description of the old, run-down manor with 3-foot tall weeds all over the place, and thick forest blocking out most of the sun's rays. I explained how the front door creaked open by itself once they got within 30 feet of it.
At this point, there was some debate, as one would tell me one thing, and the other would tell me something completely different. I explained how they needed to decide together what they were going to do and then tell me, since it was a bad idea for them to become separated in such a dangerous place. Really, I just didn't want to be running two separate adventures for a pair of kids that have yet to develop any attention spans worth mentioning. Immediately after this conversation, the 9-year-old says she is going in the door, and the 3-year-old says she wants to go around the back. I said, "okay", and I was just going to roll with it, when the 9-year-old changed her mind and decided to join sneaky Conan and try the back way.
There was indeed a back door, but it was locked. My daughter tells me, "I USE A KEY!" I explained to her how she had some lock picks, and they were like keys, but didn't always work. I made something up to have her roll, and she was successful! The door creaked open and I told them of the darkened hallway beyond. The wizard's player immediately tells me how she wants to have her magic staff illuminate the place. "Of course, yes, your magic staff can do that!" At almost the same time, my daughter tells me how she turns on her flashlight! That was just too awesome, so I was like, "Yes, you have a flashlight in your pack, so you get it out and turn it on!" Then my daughter tells me, "We leave our car outside", looks at me for a second like she's really confused, and thinking really hard, "Wait, daddy, do we have cars?" "No, sweety, you don't have cars, you guys walked there, but it wasn't too far. There are horses, like the kind Conan rides, but you guys didn't use any since the haunted house was so close anyways." I grinned to myself as I watched her grapple with the idea of a world without cars.
Then we had a brief sidebar, so my daughter could tell her cousin about the time she rode a black horse named Thunder on my mom's friend's farm, and how Conan has a black horse named Thunder in the cartoon, too. What can I say, the girl loves Conan!
So fast forward a bit, and the first room they went into had a kid's rocking chair, rocking by itself. There were some jacks, a doll, and a teddy bear on the floor. Periodically, the ghost of a little girl would appear in a random spot in the room, look at them, scream, and then disappear. 9-yr-old wizard decides to ready a magic blast from her staff for when it appears again. A few more on-the-spot decisions on my part, and I told her that her magic staff has basically an at-will 1d4 magic missile, but she would have to make a DEX check in order to get the thing off in time to hit the ghost. (Of course I used actual English while explaining this to her.) She failed her DEX check and blasted a scorch mark in the back wall. So, she decided to do what any good adventurer would do, and repeatedly blasted the wall until she blew a hole into it. The hole went right out to the back yard, but that wasn't where they wanted to go, so they tried another room.
Now this part is interesting. Before running the adventure, I had decided to "wall up" the stairs that went to the second floor and the basement, since those weren't fully fleshed out. I figured there was plenty of stuff on the ground floor, and why make myself think if I don't have to, right?
Well, it turns out, the next room they went into was free of dust but completely empty. The room itself started breathing, and the walls began to flex as the room began to take deeper and louder breaths. So naturally, the wizard starts blasting the west wall, until she blows it open. What's on the other side? The stairs going down of course!
So, they went down. I had the cave at the bottom keyed with "3d6 child zombies". I rolled an 18. Wow! I just described them as short zombies, since even my twisted self found child zombies to be somewhat repulsive. The wizard is getting ready for a fight, and I'm getting worried the adventure is about to end. Then my daughter says, "If I shine my flashlight at them, does it scare them?" "Of course it does!" I was so proud of her! Our deodand wizard followed up with a sleep spell, and then she and her cronies went about relieving the disabled zombies of their heads and limbs (note that I did not suggest this course of action!).
Back when we were creating the characters, I told my niece that Charm Person and Sleep were the best spells. I had to decide that Sleep would work against these undeads in order to not make a liar out of myself!
Of the 3 tunnels leading out of this chamber, they chose to go northwest. The next room, I don't really remember, but I think it was just a room full of bones that they weren't much interested in. they continued south.
The next room had a large pedestal in the center. In it was set a huge sword that glowed with a blue light, and a mannequin wearing an ornate amulet that also glowed. I described a faint humming noise that permeated the room. My daughter said she wanted to get the sword, so I asked, "You just run over and grab it?", leading her into the trap just as I would any player. "Yes," she says. So she took d6 damage from an electrical shock, but from her new position, she could she a lever on the wall in the back of the room.
I sort of struggled here. It was difficult for me to throw dangerous monsters and traps at them. I wanted them to have an awesome time. But I also wanted the challenges to be genuine. As difficult as it is sometimes, I think learning how to lose or not be successful is very important. Luckily for my sake, it wasn't a lesson I had to take part in teaching for this particular adventure.
At this point, I told them about the "magic healing water" that they had with them, using the same rules I normally use, but using water instead of wine. Kids that age shouldn't be drinking alcohol, you know. I explained that they each had a waterskin with two drinks worth of magical water that would heal them for 1d4 hit points. My daughter gives me a quizzical look... "THERE'S WATER IN THEIR SKIN!?!?" I did my best to explain what a water/wineskin was, but not sure she really got it. My niece knew what I was talking about at least.
So my niece had her wizard, in an extremely careful and brilliant fashion, flip the lever with her staff. This was extremely fortunate, because the lever did indeed deactivate the electrical trap on the items, but it also opened up a pit trap right beneath the lever's location (with spikes at the bottom, naturally). Since she used her staff, she was not subjected to the fall. We did high fives all around.
So my daughter got the magic two-handed sword (d24 attack die, +1d6 lightning damage), and my niece got the magical amulet, which allows a 1/day casting of a 6-die lightning bolt. There was also a drawer set in the pedestal, inside of which were some coins and gems rolled up from the LBBs, and I let them each roll for a miscellaneous magic item. The wizard got a bag of holding, and my daughter's half-giant thief got a flying broom! We all had a good chuckle about Conan, the half-giant thief with her flashlight and magical broomstick!
Good times were had by all. We added up experience, and they both had enough to advance to level 3.
We took some time to eat dinner, and played a game of My Precious Presents as well. Jim Ward gave me a copy last summer - quite a fun game, ironically more fun to play with a group of adults than kids. I asked if they enjoyed the game. My niece said, "It was pretty fun, but not as fun as DUNGEONS & DRAGONS!" A while later, they were asking me about dragons, and if they could go after one. I politely explained how dragons definitely have the best treasure, but they are very fierce, and people usually go on a lot of adventures before they become strong enough to challenge a dragon.
My explanation was met with a chorus of pleas, "PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE!"
Of course I agreed, even though I was quite tired at this point. I would tell you all about it, but I think this next adventure warrants it's own post!
To be continued....
I got my 3-year-old daughter and the 9-year-old niece together, and we started rolling up some characters. I explained how Dungeons & Dragons was a game where you sit around a table with your friends, eat lots of junk food, make jokes, and possibly have an adventure if you get around to it. They definitely got it. You should have seen these girls stuffing their faces with chips and chugging root beer! The greasy kid-hands all over my dice and pencils kind of made me cringe, but I was able to ignore it with a bit of effort.
I was happy to get a chance to use my new expanded Outland race tables, and I took out a few of the half-character-sheets I made a while back. I tried to get the 16-year-old involved as well, but she didn't seem interested, so I didn't press the issue.
My daughter rolled first and got a human (1-67 on the percentile table is human, although there is a fair chance of a Carcosa-colored-human). She had a crestfallen look on her face, so I asked if she would prefer something else. She said yes, so I just had her roll d30+70 to bypass all the human results. She got a Half-Giant. My niece got a Deodand. Then I had them roll their stats, 3d6 in order. I wrote the results for my daughter, since her handwriting isn't so good yet :)
My daughter chose to make her character a thief named Conan (she always names her characters Conan). My niece decided to go with a wizard which she named "Penny the Great". I was extremely happy that she threw in the title!
Now, here is where I started to become torn. I already knew in my mind that if either of them died, I fully intended to make them roll up a new character. Thus, I wanted to give them some durability, but I also didn't want to give away the store. I place great importance on "working your way up" from less-than-stellar beginnings. So on the spot I decided I would just have them roll 1d3 and that would be their level. Both rolled 2, and that seemed to work out really well. I had each roll their hit points twice and take the better result. My niece was concerned that my daughter had more hp, but a simple explanation about the frailty of wizards cleared that up.
I had them roll their starting gold (3d6x10), and again, my niece expressed displeasure at my daughter getting 100gp while she only got 60gp. I just explained a little bit about the game and how it uses dice and sometimes you are lucky and sometimes not so much. It seemed to satisfy her.
I also had them roll their backgrounds. Turns out the deodand wizard was a fisherman before she started her adventuring career, so she got a fishing rod and a stylish fishing hat. Conan was a goat-herder, so she got a shepherd's crook. The 9-year-old was familiar with this item, so she explained it to my daughter. This brought me back to when I first started playing D&D, and I would pore over the equipment list... "What the hell are crampons? Sounds like tampons!" D&D really does teach us quite a bit, even if a lot of it is trivia.
I gave them their saving throw values, weapons, and armor, and off we went.
Wizard: wizard robes + magic staff
Thief: leather armor, short sword, dagger, bow & arrows, thief tools
I decided to use my Tegel Manor ripoff haunted house, since I had already run it several times, so it would require minimal brainpower on my part. Then I could have more to help them out. I also decided that since it was just a party of two, that they each hired two "helpers" to come along to the dangerous haunted house, in exchange for a share of the loot. The 9-year-old promptly chimed in, "I'm only going to pay them 5 gold and I'm going to keep the treasure we find." She's a natural! The deodand's helpers were named Bob & Joe, and my daughter named hers Jasmine and I don't remember the other. She wanted to make sure that I knew that it was Jasmine from the Conan cartoon, and not Jasmine from the Aladdin movie. Oh yeah, she wanted to name her other helper after the girl from the Pirates of Dark Water, but neither of us could remember her name, so we agreed to watch an episode in hopes of finding out after the game.
We didn't bother statting these guys. I just figured they have +0 attack bonus, d6 damage, 16 for all saves, and treat ability scores as 10 if it comes up. This is how I generally handle zero-level mooks.
Anyways, I present them with a description of the old, run-down manor with 3-foot tall weeds all over the place, and thick forest blocking out most of the sun's rays. I explained how the front door creaked open by itself once they got within 30 feet of it.
At this point, there was some debate, as one would tell me one thing, and the other would tell me something completely different. I explained how they needed to decide together what they were going to do and then tell me, since it was a bad idea for them to become separated in such a dangerous place. Really, I just didn't want to be running two separate adventures for a pair of kids that have yet to develop any attention spans worth mentioning. Immediately after this conversation, the 9-year-old says she is going in the door, and the 3-year-old says she wants to go around the back. I said, "okay", and I was just going to roll with it, when the 9-year-old changed her mind and decided to join sneaky Conan and try the back way.
There was indeed a back door, but it was locked. My daughter tells me, "I USE A KEY!" I explained to her how she had some lock picks, and they were like keys, but didn't always work. I made something up to have her roll, and she was successful! The door creaked open and I told them of the darkened hallway beyond. The wizard's player immediately tells me how she wants to have her magic staff illuminate the place. "Of course, yes, your magic staff can do that!" At almost the same time, my daughter tells me how she turns on her flashlight! That was just too awesome, so I was like, "Yes, you have a flashlight in your pack, so you get it out and turn it on!" Then my daughter tells me, "We leave our car outside", looks at me for a second like she's really confused, and thinking really hard, "Wait, daddy, do we have cars?" "No, sweety, you don't have cars, you guys walked there, but it wasn't too far. There are horses, like the kind Conan rides, but you guys didn't use any since the haunted house was so close anyways." I grinned to myself as I watched her grapple with the idea of a world without cars.
Then we had a brief sidebar, so my daughter could tell her cousin about the time she rode a black horse named Thunder on my mom's friend's farm, and how Conan has a black horse named Thunder in the cartoon, too. What can I say, the girl loves Conan!
So fast forward a bit, and the first room they went into had a kid's rocking chair, rocking by itself. There were some jacks, a doll, and a teddy bear on the floor. Periodically, the ghost of a little girl would appear in a random spot in the room, look at them, scream, and then disappear. 9-yr-old wizard decides to ready a magic blast from her staff for when it appears again. A few more on-the-spot decisions on my part, and I told her that her magic staff has basically an at-will 1d4 magic missile, but she would have to make a DEX check in order to get the thing off in time to hit the ghost. (Of course I used actual English while explaining this to her.) She failed her DEX check and blasted a scorch mark in the back wall. So, she decided to do what any good adventurer would do, and repeatedly blasted the wall until she blew a hole into it. The hole went right out to the back yard, but that wasn't where they wanted to go, so they tried another room.
Now this part is interesting. Before running the adventure, I had decided to "wall up" the stairs that went to the second floor and the basement, since those weren't fully fleshed out. I figured there was plenty of stuff on the ground floor, and why make myself think if I don't have to, right?
Well, it turns out, the next room they went into was free of dust but completely empty. The room itself started breathing, and the walls began to flex as the room began to take deeper and louder breaths. So naturally, the wizard starts blasting the west wall, until she blows it open. What's on the other side? The stairs going down of course!
So, they went down. I had the cave at the bottom keyed with "3d6 child zombies". I rolled an 18. Wow! I just described them as short zombies, since even my twisted self found child zombies to be somewhat repulsive. The wizard is getting ready for a fight, and I'm getting worried the adventure is about to end. Then my daughter says, "If I shine my flashlight at them, does it scare them?" "Of course it does!" I was so proud of her! Our deodand wizard followed up with a sleep spell, and then she and her cronies went about relieving the disabled zombies of their heads and limbs (note that I did not suggest this course of action!).
Back when we were creating the characters, I told my niece that Charm Person and Sleep were the best spells. I had to decide that Sleep would work against these undeads in order to not make a liar out of myself!
Of the 3 tunnels leading out of this chamber, they chose to go northwest. The next room, I don't really remember, but I think it was just a room full of bones that they weren't much interested in. they continued south.
The next room had a large pedestal in the center. In it was set a huge sword that glowed with a blue light, and a mannequin wearing an ornate amulet that also glowed. I described a faint humming noise that permeated the room. My daughter said she wanted to get the sword, so I asked, "You just run over and grab it?", leading her into the trap just as I would any player. "Yes," she says. So she took d6 damage from an electrical shock, but from her new position, she could she a lever on the wall in the back of the room.
I sort of struggled here. It was difficult for me to throw dangerous monsters and traps at them. I wanted them to have an awesome time. But I also wanted the challenges to be genuine. As difficult as it is sometimes, I think learning how to lose or not be successful is very important. Luckily for my sake, it wasn't a lesson I had to take part in teaching for this particular adventure.
At this point, I told them about the "magic healing water" that they had with them, using the same rules I normally use, but using water instead of wine. Kids that age shouldn't be drinking alcohol, you know. I explained that they each had a waterskin with two drinks worth of magical water that would heal them for 1d4 hit points. My daughter gives me a quizzical look... "THERE'S WATER IN THEIR SKIN!?!?" I did my best to explain what a water/wineskin was, but not sure she really got it. My niece knew what I was talking about at least.
So my niece had her wizard, in an extremely careful and brilliant fashion, flip the lever with her staff. This was extremely fortunate, because the lever did indeed deactivate the electrical trap on the items, but it also opened up a pit trap right beneath the lever's location (with spikes at the bottom, naturally). Since she used her staff, she was not subjected to the fall. We did high fives all around.
So my daughter got the magic two-handed sword (d24 attack die, +1d6 lightning damage), and my niece got the magical amulet, which allows a 1/day casting of a 6-die lightning bolt. There was also a drawer set in the pedestal, inside of which were some coins and gems rolled up from the LBBs, and I let them each roll for a miscellaneous magic item. The wizard got a bag of holding, and my daughter's half-giant thief got a flying broom! We all had a good chuckle about Conan, the half-giant thief with her flashlight and magical broomstick!
Good times were had by all. We added up experience, and they both had enough to advance to level 3.
We took some time to eat dinner, and played a game of My Precious Presents as well. Jim Ward gave me a copy last summer - quite a fun game, ironically more fun to play with a group of adults than kids. I asked if they enjoyed the game. My niece said, "It was pretty fun, but not as fun as DUNGEONS & DRAGONS!" A while later, they were asking me about dragons, and if they could go after one. I politely explained how dragons definitely have the best treasure, but they are very fierce, and people usually go on a lot of adventures before they become strong enough to challenge a dragon.
My explanation was met with a chorus of pleas, "PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE!"
Of course I agreed, even though I was quite tired at this point. I would tell you all about it, but I think this next adventure warrants it's own post!
To be continued....
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Stupid Dice Tricks - Thief Skills
The other day I was giving some thought to how I could make thief skills a tad more fun. Rolling percentages can be boring. Rolling a d20 is kind of boring. So I thought about rolling two dice - one to set the target number and the other to test for success/failure (hereafter referred to as the skill die).
The first application of this will be thief skills. The target die will always be a d6. The skill die begins life as a d3, and progresses from there according to the following:
d3 -> d4 -> d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d14 -> d16 -> d20 -> d24 -> d30
Success = skill die comes up equal or greater than the number showing on the target die
Failure = skill die comes up less than the number showing on the target die
Super-Fail = skill die does not exceed half the number on the target die
In the tradition of JimFirePrincess, all characters may attempt to use the thief skills, testing a d3 against the target number rolled on the d6, but only the thief may improve and use better dice. The thief gets 4 points at each level (including first), and each point may be spent to increase the die for a particular skill by one step in the dice progression listed above.
Here are the skills, which are more or less standard fare...
Acrobatics: Used for crazy stuff like walking a tightrope. Also used to move past enemies or escape from them without allowing them a parting shot.
Stealth: Move your speed while undetected by your enemies. This is used to move into position for a backstab.
Backstab: This skill is not rolled against the target die. Whatever die type you have for backstab is added to your normal damage die whenever you make a successful attack from behind against an enemy that is unaware of your presence. Thieves attack at +4, while other characters only get the normal +2 for attacking from behind.
Sleight of Hand: Used for picking pockets, cheating at card games, and so forth. If your test die doesn't get at least half the number on the target die, your attempt is noticed.
Locks & Traps: Used for picking locks, disarming mechanical traps, sabotaging equipment, etc. Requires thief tools.
Poison Use: Die type is rolled and added to the d20 roll when making a saving throw vs. poison while attempting to extract poisons/venoms from defeated monsters. Requires thief tools to get the extra die.
Spider Climb: Allows you to move your speed up or down sheer surfaces. Requires leather or lighter armor. Works great with your favorite falling rules!
Scroll Use: Allows the casting of magic-user scrolls, provided an actual magic-user of equal level would be able to memorize a spell of that level. Failure generally results in horrible mishaps.
For your convenience, I have listed the percentage odds of success for each of the die types against a random target number rolled on a d6 in order to help you determine if this system is one you might want to use, or what adjustments you might like to make. However, these percentages shouldn't be shared with players, as they run a high risk of having people game the system. If a player wants to do that, fine, but at least make them do the math themselves!
Skill level 0 [d3]: 33.3%
Skill level 1 [d4]: 41.7%
Skill level 2 [d6]: 58.3%
Skill level 3 [d8]: 68.8%
Skill level 4 [d10]: 75%
Skill level 5 [d12]: 79.2%
Skill level 6 [d14]: 82.1%
Skill level 7 [d16]: 84.4%
Skill level 8 [d20]: 87.5%
Skill level 9 [d24]: 89.6%
Skill level 10 [d30]: 91.7%
Other thoughts:
The first application of this will be thief skills. The target die will always be a d6. The skill die begins life as a d3, and progresses from there according to the following:
d3 -> d4 -> d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d14 -> d16 -> d20 -> d24 -> d30
Success = skill die comes up equal or greater than the number showing on the target die
Failure = skill die comes up less than the number showing on the target die
Super-Fail = skill die does not exceed half the number on the target die
In the tradition of JimFirePrincess, all characters may attempt to use the thief skills, testing a d3 against the target number rolled on the d6, but only the thief may improve and use better dice. The thief gets 4 points at each level (including first), and each point may be spent to increase the die for a particular skill by one step in the dice progression listed above.
Here are the skills, which are more or less standard fare...
Acrobatics: Used for crazy stuff like walking a tightrope. Also used to move past enemies or escape from them without allowing them a parting shot.
Stealth: Move your speed while undetected by your enemies. This is used to move into position for a backstab.
Backstab: This skill is not rolled against the target die. Whatever die type you have for backstab is added to your normal damage die whenever you make a successful attack from behind against an enemy that is unaware of your presence. Thieves attack at +4, while other characters only get the normal +2 for attacking from behind.
Sleight of Hand: Used for picking pockets, cheating at card games, and so forth. If your test die doesn't get at least half the number on the target die, your attempt is noticed.
Locks & Traps: Used for picking locks, disarming mechanical traps, sabotaging equipment, etc. Requires thief tools.
Poison Use: Die type is rolled and added to the d20 roll when making a saving throw vs. poison while attempting to extract poisons/venoms from defeated monsters. Requires thief tools to get the extra die.
Spider Climb: Allows you to move your speed up or down sheer surfaces. Requires leather or lighter armor. Works great with your favorite falling rules!
Scroll Use: Allows the casting of magic-user scrolls, provided an actual magic-user of equal level would be able to memorize a spell of that level. Failure generally results in horrible mishaps.
For your convenience, I have listed the percentage odds of success for each of the die types against a random target number rolled on a d6 in order to help you determine if this system is one you might want to use, or what adjustments you might like to make. However, these percentages shouldn't be shared with players, as they run a high risk of having people game the system. If a player wants to do that, fine, but at least make them do the math themselves!
Skill level 0 [d3]: 33.3%
Skill level 1 [d4]: 41.7%
Skill level 2 [d6]: 58.3%
Skill level 3 [d8]: 68.8%
Skill level 4 [d10]: 75%
Skill level 5 [d12]: 79.2%
Skill level 6 [d14]: 82.1%
Skill level 7 [d16]: 84.4%
Skill level 8 [d20]: 87.5%
Skill level 9 [d24]: 89.6%
Skill level 10 [d30]: 91.7%
Other thoughts:
- This is totally untested, but I hope to present it to the party thief next time we get together and have him try it out.
- I use the cleric tables from Men & Magic for thief experience/level progression, hit dice, saving throws, and fighting capability. If you use the tables from Greyhawk or Basic D&D, the thief will gain levels (and therefore skill points) at a slightly faster rate. Probably negligible, but there you have it.
- Other stuff I considered but didn't include either for simplicity's sake, or to keep the scope of this post narrow: starting thieves with a d4 in each skill, while all other PCs begin (and remain) at d3; upping the skill points to 4 per level; having abilities affect skills - for example, a DEX of 15+ could allow some skills to start one die higher; item-based skill improvements - e.g. masterwork thief tools could give a +1 or increase the die for Locks & Traps, etc.
EDIT: changed to give thieves 4 skill points per level, added acrobatics, and added rule that skill rank cannot exceed twice the thief's level.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Running Mildewy Editions at the FLGS
I've been running Original Dungeons & Dragons at my awesome local game store (Unique Gifts & Games) for a few months now. I was lucky enough to get some great advice from Jeff Rients a while back, and applied most of the things he suggested. I think the game has been a great success, so I just wanted to share a few things I did and how it's all worked out.
Of course, it goes without saying that this is purely anecdotal. This is just my experience, and is not to be treated as THE ONE WAY TO RULE THEM ALL.
Setting the Game Up, Scheduling, etc.
First, I figured out what days I could run a game consistently, and how often. Wife approval is important here. I told my wife up front, "Hey, I'd really like to run this game every other week. It's important that I am considered unavailable during these times, because yes, it's only a game, but it's also a number of busy people adjusting their schedules so they can play in it. Are you cool with that?"
It's also important to be realistic about your availability. If you schedule a weekly game, but end up not being able to make it every few weeks, that's bad for everyone involved. Choose a schedule you can consistently follow through with. You can have a successful game with flaky players. Not so much with a flaky DM.
Once I got that part squared away, I contacted the game store letting them know I wanted to try to start an OD&D game that would be every other week. I told them I could do Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays, included a proposed start date, and asked which was best for them. Turns out Mondays were pretty slow and had table space available, and they had no issues with me running a long out of print game. I hear some stores take issue with running games they don't sell, but I guess I just lucked out in this regard.
Once game dates, times, an so forth are set, you have to get players there.
Promoting the Game
The game store owner/personnel are key here, in that you have to depend on them in some regard, but you should be prepared to do all the heavy lifting. Here are a few of the things I did:
1. Make a nice flyer and bring it to the game store. Several copies are a good idea. Something colorful and eye-catching. Hang one on the bulletin board. Ask the game store to hand out the others to customers who they think might be interested and are also cool people.
2. Post about the game on blogs, facebook, forums, etc. Meetup.com has several local RPG groups, so those are a good idea to join and post to.
3. Mention it to people you know. Honestly, I'm kind of in-the-closet about my love of D&D. It's not something I wear on my sleeve. But I have mentioned my game to a select few co-workers and acquaintances who I thought might enjoy it.
4. Anything and everything else you can think of. If there are no players, there won't be a game!
Results: All of my game store players were the result of game store personnel promoting my game except for one cool guy that was local and learned about it through my blog. However, I still think it's important to go down all the avenues you can think of when it comes to recruiting.
Like Jeff said, bring a book or something with which you can keep yourself entertained in the event that no one shows up. If that happens, be persistent! There are people out there that want to play your game, but if you give up too soon, you may never meet them!
The First Session
I brought short player handouts with instructions for making 0-level characters (roll race, roll background profession, done!). I explained a bit about the game and my style of running it. I helped them get their characters together, gave them a very short synopsis of the setting, and gave them a few choices of places to go looking for adventures.
"We are playing Original Dungeons & Dragons from 1974. There aren't many rules. Feel free to try anything, and we will work out how to resolve success and failure. We aren't really here to have a serious, deep, and meaningful campaign. To me, it's mostly about hanging out with cool people, chucking dice around, and doing awesome stuff in the game."
"Basically you come from a generic Tolkienesque world, and you are in this newly discovered land full of ruins, treasure, strange peoples, and stuff you've never seen before. The main goal is to get treasure and stay alive."
"There are some caves over here (pointing to map) with weird monsters. There is a haunted house over here. Nobody knows whats over here. Theres a village over here with weird brown people, but most people that try to go there disappear. Someone said there's a ruined castle by the village, but no one is really sure."
I know that when I'm playing D&D, my eyes glaze over if the DM goes on and on with setting info that I don't care about. So I try to just give them the barest basics, and address anything else as it comes up in play. Try to get to the fun as quickly as possible!
Out-of-Print Rulebooks
Since we're playing OD&D, and getting a copy is stupidly expensive, I bring a few extra copies of Men & Magic that I printed up. The only thing it's really needed for is looking up spells. I typed up my own one-pagers for each class and the equipment list, but really the DM is the rulebook in this game. One nice side effect of players not having rulebooks is that rather than flipping through a book, the players just asks, "Can I..." That being said, if a player shows up regularly and shows interest in the rules, I'd be inclined to let them borrow one of mine to look over between sessions, and also tell them about some of the clones that are available.
Be careful about running a clone and asking the game store to stock a bunch of books on their shelf. There is a very real chance they might just end up collecting dust there, and you might not want to be the person responsible for that. If you run a clone it's probably safer to just have interested players order their books through the store if they want them. In my experience, a lot of players don't give a crap about the rules, they just want to play and be guided along as necessary by the DM. They don't sit around and pore over rulebooks outside of game time like a DM/D&D blogger might be apt to do.
Edit: Note that the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone from getting any of the excellent retro-clones available into their game stores. Just take into consideration that it can be easy to overestimate the demand for a game you might personally love. Maybe give it some thought before asking the game store to stock 10 copies of the game in question before you've even begun running your own game - that's all I'm saying.
Open Table Adventures
Since you have a rotating cast of characters, and usually a short amount of time to run a session, some concessions need to be made. You need to deliver fun, self-contained adventures.
I like to give the players lots of choices about what sort of adventures they'd like to have. I'm not hesitant to just flat out tell them, "that's the gonzo sci-fi dungeon, that's the haunted house, that's the traditional ruined castle dungeon, and blind exploration is available as well." The hope is that they can choose what they think is the most interesting, and we can get right on with the adventure. I think roleplaying interactions with innkeepers and locals can be quite fun at times, but it's not something you're going to find in my game store games unless the group decides they would like to spend the entire session doing that. There just isn't enough time in 3 hours to fit in that and a successful delve into a dungeon.
How I Roll
There are a few things I do at the table to help underscore the style of game I'm going for. I learned all of them from someone else more talented/smarter than myself, but they have served me well.
1. No Screen. We are all here to have fun together. To me, the screen is sort of adversarial, and a symbol that my notes, etc, are serious business. I haven't used a screen the entire time we've been playing, and I think it promotes the idea that I'm just another player that happens to also be running the game. I keep any tables and info I need at my fingertips in a little reference sheets-style booklet I made.
2. Keep the players rolling dice. This keeps them engaged. Aside from the normal stuff (attacking, damage, saves), I also have players roll wandering monster checks, damage their characters take, random treasure, monster crits/fumbles against them, etc. I rotate who is rolling initiative from round to round. Basically, unless there is a valid reason that it needs to be the DM rolling, I try to have the players roll. This also serves to minimize the player vs. DM adversarial aspect of the game. If a PC gets killed, I think it stings less if it was that PC's player that rolled the damage dice. At least it helps me to not feel bad about it!
3. I bring wads of d6s and roll monster hps at the table. It's a quick, easy way to track monster hp, and gives the players a bit of feedback about how things are going. They can tell the progress that is being made in a fight as I remove hit dice from the table. Most players can't see the actual numbers on the dice, but even if they can, so what? There's just kind of an unspoken gentleman's agreement that metagaming and trying to calculate your tactics based off exact hp numbers of individual monsters would be frowned upon. It's worked well so far.
4. Ask for player input. This is one I would like to do more often than I do, but I try to remember as much as I can. If a player asks to do something and it is not immediately apparent how to adjudicate it, ask another player how they would adjudicate! This is fun, helps keep players engaged, and gives players a chance to walk in the DMs shoes, if only for a moment. If one player asks for details about some dungeon feature you haven't defined, ask another player how they envision it.
5. Bring goodies. This is something I learned from Jim Ward. Bring goodies to the game! It is a nice gesture and helps promote the feeling that everyone is here to hang out and have a good time. I usually bring a few bags of kit kats, twizzlers, and the like. Perhaps you prefer more healthy fare. Nothing wrong with that either!
6. Roll a d6! I wrote about this on Google+ the other day, and it came about as the result of a discussion about fudge dice. Most simple questions in the game can be answered using this method. Does the equipment vendor have any pulleys available? Is there anything inside that dead monster's stomach? A result of 1-2 is a bad or negative result (example: poisonous viper living inside the intestines of that dead monster!). A result of 3-4 is neutral or indifferent. A result of 5-6 is a good or positive outcome (yes, he has 3 pulleys for sale, and cheap, too!).
7. Embrace randomness. I personally love randomness because it enables me to get a lot of the same type of enjoyment out of a game that the players do. I don't know what's going to happen any more than they do. To promote this, I build in a few minor extra rewards for players that make random rolls for certain things. For example, I give magic-users bonus XP if they randomly roll for their new spell when they gain a level. Dice can take the game in fun and unexpected directions. Let the players know why you think that is awesome.
8. The idea of balance is a mythical one. (This is more of a philisophical thing, and probably doesn't fit in this list, but I included it anyways.) There are two basic categories of things: cool stuff and dangerous stuff. The idea is that the players overcome the dangerous stuff and get cool stuff. We are told by a bajillion different people/sources that there must be careful balance maintained between the abilities of the PCs, the dangerousness of the dangerous stuff, and the coolness of the cool stuff. I reject the idea wholeheartedly. Not so much because I think it's wrong, but more due to the fact that it's a lot of time wasted on something I'm not very good at anyways. So I throw in lots of stuff that I think might be too dangerous and too cool, and let the players sort it out. You'd be amazed at what 6 players with their unused d30 rolls, a few wacky items, and a clever idea can accomplish! I've given out rings of 3 wishes, decks of many things, a lightsaber, an uzi, a few laser rifles, the sword of omen, etc. So what? That's all fun stuff, is it not? Most of these guys still have only 6 hp or whatever, so if they get too big for their britches, they will die. I used to have all sorts of concerns about "breaking" my game. One thing I've learned from playing Metamorphosis Alpha over the summer with Jim Ward is this: the only thing that can break my game is me worrying too much about breaking my game. (Note that this is not something he ever said explicitly, just my interpretation from playing in a MA mini-campaign, quite possibly totally misguided!)
9. Take a break. I always take a 5-10 minute break mid-session. The primary reason is that I'm a smoker, but it gives everyone a chance to stretch and has a nice side effect of getting the players browsing around the store. Hopefully they'll spend a few bucks!
10. Accessorize your game. Since you are playing an out of print game, it is a nice gesture to the game store if you can figure out a way to use some stuff the game store sells in your game. For example, you could integrate fudge dice into your game somehow if you have an idea for that. One thing I've done is have magic swords use different dice instead of having a +X modifier. So if you get a magic sword, you get to make your attack roll with a d24 instead of a d20. If you don't have a d24, you could just borrow mine or roll d20+2, but you want your own d24, don't you? What red-blooded gamer wouldn't? The d30 rule has made the purchase of d30's popular as well, if I'm not mistaken.
The Ongoing Game
At the beginning of each session, I let the players know about any other adventures that may have occurred in Outland (like in a G+ game or whatever). I think this helps create the feel of a living world, with goings-on outside of what the PCs are doing (with the benefit of having pretty much all the action still player-driven). I also consider one week to have passed between each adventure a particular PC has, and I allow them to start with full hp, and ask if there are any activities they would like to attempt during this downtime. For example, I've recently begun allowing magic-users to specialize in alchemy, so they can attempt to brew a potion or two - that sort of thing. If they wanted to study a book they found to see if they could get any useful information from it, I'd allow an INT roll, and so forth. There are a lot of things a PC can do with this time, and I leave it mostly up to the players to come up with ideas. Sometimes a player will come up with something really fun and you can create a simple little subsystem to handle success/failure, as I have done in the case of alchemy.
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment, but any comments or questions are welcome!
Of course, it goes without saying that this is purely anecdotal. This is just my experience, and is not to be treated as THE ONE WAY TO RULE THEM ALL.
Setting the Game Up, Scheduling, etc.
First, I figured out what days I could run a game consistently, and how often. Wife approval is important here. I told my wife up front, "Hey, I'd really like to run this game every other week. It's important that I am considered unavailable during these times, because yes, it's only a game, but it's also a number of busy people adjusting their schedules so they can play in it. Are you cool with that?"
It's also important to be realistic about your availability. If you schedule a weekly game, but end up not being able to make it every few weeks, that's bad for everyone involved. Choose a schedule you can consistently follow through with. You can have a successful game with flaky players. Not so much with a flaky DM.
Once I got that part squared away, I contacted the game store letting them know I wanted to try to start an OD&D game that would be every other week. I told them I could do Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays, included a proposed start date, and asked which was best for them. Turns out Mondays were pretty slow and had table space available, and they had no issues with me running a long out of print game. I hear some stores take issue with running games they don't sell, but I guess I just lucked out in this regard.
Once game dates, times, an so forth are set, you have to get players there.
Promoting the Game
The game store owner/personnel are key here, in that you have to depend on them in some regard, but you should be prepared to do all the heavy lifting. Here are a few of the things I did:
1. Make a nice flyer and bring it to the game store. Several copies are a good idea. Something colorful and eye-catching. Hang one on the bulletin board. Ask the game store to hand out the others to customers who they think might be interested and are also cool people.
2. Post about the game on blogs, facebook, forums, etc. Meetup.com has several local RPG groups, so those are a good idea to join and post to.
3. Mention it to people you know. Honestly, I'm kind of in-the-closet about my love of D&D. It's not something I wear on my sleeve. But I have mentioned my game to a select few co-workers and acquaintances who I thought might enjoy it.
4. Anything and everything else you can think of. If there are no players, there won't be a game!
Results: All of my game store players were the result of game store personnel promoting my game except for one cool guy that was local and learned about it through my blog. However, I still think it's important to go down all the avenues you can think of when it comes to recruiting.
Like Jeff said, bring a book or something with which you can keep yourself entertained in the event that no one shows up. If that happens, be persistent! There are people out there that want to play your game, but if you give up too soon, you may never meet them!
The First Session
I brought short player handouts with instructions for making 0-level characters (roll race, roll background profession, done!). I explained a bit about the game and my style of running it. I helped them get their characters together, gave them a very short synopsis of the setting, and gave them a few choices of places to go looking for adventures.
"We are playing Original Dungeons & Dragons from 1974. There aren't many rules. Feel free to try anything, and we will work out how to resolve success and failure. We aren't really here to have a serious, deep, and meaningful campaign. To me, it's mostly about hanging out with cool people, chucking dice around, and doing awesome stuff in the game."
"Basically you come from a generic Tolkienesque world, and you are in this newly discovered land full of ruins, treasure, strange peoples, and stuff you've never seen before. The main goal is to get treasure and stay alive."
"There are some caves over here (pointing to map) with weird monsters. There is a haunted house over here. Nobody knows whats over here. Theres a village over here with weird brown people, but most people that try to go there disappear. Someone said there's a ruined castle by the village, but no one is really sure."
I know that when I'm playing D&D, my eyes glaze over if the DM goes on and on with setting info that I don't care about. So I try to just give them the barest basics, and address anything else as it comes up in play. Try to get to the fun as quickly as possible!
Out-of-Print Rulebooks
Since we're playing OD&D, and getting a copy is stupidly expensive, I bring a few extra copies of Men & Magic that I printed up. The only thing it's really needed for is looking up spells. I typed up my own one-pagers for each class and the equipment list, but really the DM is the rulebook in this game. One nice side effect of players not having rulebooks is that rather than flipping through a book, the players just asks, "Can I..." That being said, if a player shows up regularly and shows interest in the rules, I'd be inclined to let them borrow one of mine to look over between sessions, and also tell them about some of the clones that are available.
Be careful about running a clone and asking the game store to stock a bunch of books on their shelf. There is a very real chance they might just end up collecting dust there, and you might not want to be the person responsible for that. If you run a clone it's probably safer to just have interested players order their books through the store if they want them. In my experience, a lot of players don't give a crap about the rules, they just want to play and be guided along as necessary by the DM. They don't sit around and pore over rulebooks outside of game time like a DM/D&D blogger might be apt to do.
Edit: Note that the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone from getting any of the excellent retro-clones available into their game stores. Just take into consideration that it can be easy to overestimate the demand for a game you might personally love. Maybe give it some thought before asking the game store to stock 10 copies of the game in question before you've even begun running your own game - that's all I'm saying.
Open Table Adventures
Since you have a rotating cast of characters, and usually a short amount of time to run a session, some concessions need to be made. You need to deliver fun, self-contained adventures.
I like to give the players lots of choices about what sort of adventures they'd like to have. I'm not hesitant to just flat out tell them, "that's the gonzo sci-fi dungeon, that's the haunted house, that's the traditional ruined castle dungeon, and blind exploration is available as well." The hope is that they can choose what they think is the most interesting, and we can get right on with the adventure. I think roleplaying interactions with innkeepers and locals can be quite fun at times, but it's not something you're going to find in my game store games unless the group decides they would like to spend the entire session doing that. There just isn't enough time in 3 hours to fit in that and a successful delve into a dungeon.
How I Roll
There are a few things I do at the table to help underscore the style of game I'm going for. I learned all of them from someone else more talented/smarter than myself, but they have served me well.
1. No Screen. We are all here to have fun together. To me, the screen is sort of adversarial, and a symbol that my notes, etc, are serious business. I haven't used a screen the entire time we've been playing, and I think it promotes the idea that I'm just another player that happens to also be running the game. I keep any tables and info I need at my fingertips in a little reference sheets-style booklet I made.
2. Keep the players rolling dice. This keeps them engaged. Aside from the normal stuff (attacking, damage, saves), I also have players roll wandering monster checks, damage their characters take, random treasure, monster crits/fumbles against them, etc. I rotate who is rolling initiative from round to round. Basically, unless there is a valid reason that it needs to be the DM rolling, I try to have the players roll. This also serves to minimize the player vs. DM adversarial aspect of the game. If a PC gets killed, I think it stings less if it was that PC's player that rolled the damage dice. At least it helps me to not feel bad about it!
3. I bring wads of d6s and roll monster hps at the table. It's a quick, easy way to track monster hp, and gives the players a bit of feedback about how things are going. They can tell the progress that is being made in a fight as I remove hit dice from the table. Most players can't see the actual numbers on the dice, but even if they can, so what? There's just kind of an unspoken gentleman's agreement that metagaming and trying to calculate your tactics based off exact hp numbers of individual monsters would be frowned upon. It's worked well so far.
4. Ask for player input. This is one I would like to do more often than I do, but I try to remember as much as I can. If a player asks to do something and it is not immediately apparent how to adjudicate it, ask another player how they would adjudicate! This is fun, helps keep players engaged, and gives players a chance to walk in the DMs shoes, if only for a moment. If one player asks for details about some dungeon feature you haven't defined, ask another player how they envision it.
5. Bring goodies. This is something I learned from Jim Ward. Bring goodies to the game! It is a nice gesture and helps promote the feeling that everyone is here to hang out and have a good time. I usually bring a few bags of kit kats, twizzlers, and the like. Perhaps you prefer more healthy fare. Nothing wrong with that either!
6. Roll a d6! I wrote about this on Google+ the other day, and it came about as the result of a discussion about fudge dice. Most simple questions in the game can be answered using this method. Does the equipment vendor have any pulleys available? Is there anything inside that dead monster's stomach? A result of 1-2 is a bad or negative result (example: poisonous viper living inside the intestines of that dead monster!). A result of 3-4 is neutral or indifferent. A result of 5-6 is a good or positive outcome (yes, he has 3 pulleys for sale, and cheap, too!).
7. Embrace randomness. I personally love randomness because it enables me to get a lot of the same type of enjoyment out of a game that the players do. I don't know what's going to happen any more than they do. To promote this, I build in a few minor extra rewards for players that make random rolls for certain things. For example, I give magic-users bonus XP if they randomly roll for their new spell when they gain a level. Dice can take the game in fun and unexpected directions. Let the players know why you think that is awesome.
8. The idea of balance is a mythical one. (This is more of a philisophical thing, and probably doesn't fit in this list, but I included it anyways.) There are two basic categories of things: cool stuff and dangerous stuff. The idea is that the players overcome the dangerous stuff and get cool stuff. We are told by a bajillion different people/sources that there must be careful balance maintained between the abilities of the PCs, the dangerousness of the dangerous stuff, and the coolness of the cool stuff. I reject the idea wholeheartedly. Not so much because I think it's wrong, but more due to the fact that it's a lot of time wasted on something I'm not very good at anyways. So I throw in lots of stuff that I think might be too dangerous and too cool, and let the players sort it out. You'd be amazed at what 6 players with their unused d30 rolls, a few wacky items, and a clever idea can accomplish! I've given out rings of 3 wishes, decks of many things, a lightsaber, an uzi, a few laser rifles, the sword of omen, etc. So what? That's all fun stuff, is it not? Most of these guys still have only 6 hp or whatever, so if they get too big for their britches, they will die. I used to have all sorts of concerns about "breaking" my game. One thing I've learned from playing Metamorphosis Alpha over the summer with Jim Ward is this: the only thing that can break my game is me worrying too much about breaking my game. (Note that this is not something he ever said explicitly, just my interpretation from playing in a MA mini-campaign, quite possibly totally misguided!)
9. Take a break. I always take a 5-10 minute break mid-session. The primary reason is that I'm a smoker, but it gives everyone a chance to stretch and has a nice side effect of getting the players browsing around the store. Hopefully they'll spend a few bucks!
10. Accessorize your game. Since you are playing an out of print game, it is a nice gesture to the game store if you can figure out a way to use some stuff the game store sells in your game. For example, you could integrate fudge dice into your game somehow if you have an idea for that. One thing I've done is have magic swords use different dice instead of having a +X modifier. So if you get a magic sword, you get to make your attack roll with a d24 instead of a d20. If you don't have a d24, you could just borrow mine or roll d20+2, but you want your own d24, don't you? What red-blooded gamer wouldn't? The d30 rule has made the purchase of d30's popular as well, if I'm not mistaken.
The Ongoing Game
At the beginning of each session, I let the players know about any other adventures that may have occurred in Outland (like in a G+ game or whatever). I think this helps create the feel of a living world, with goings-on outside of what the PCs are doing (with the benefit of having pretty much all the action still player-driven). I also consider one week to have passed between each adventure a particular PC has, and I allow them to start with full hp, and ask if there are any activities they would like to attempt during this downtime. For example, I've recently begun allowing magic-users to specialize in alchemy, so they can attempt to brew a potion or two - that sort of thing. If they wanted to study a book they found to see if they could get any useful information from it, I'd allow an INT roll, and so forth. There are a lot of things a PC can do with this time, and I leave it mostly up to the players to come up with ideas. Sometimes a player will come up with something really fun and you can create a simple little subsystem to handle success/failure, as I have done in the case of alchemy.
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment, but any comments or questions are welcome!
Friday, February 24, 2012
20 Questions: Outland Rules
Here are my answers to Mr. Untimately's questions, with regard to Outland.
1. Ability scores generation method?
3d6 in order. Reroll 1s. WIS is also used as LUCK.
2. How are death and dying handled?
When you drop to 0, you roll on the Death & Dismemberment table. There is no negative hp concept, but if you get totally wrecked, you might not get to roll on D&D.
3. What about raising the dead?
No such ability currently exists in Outland.
4. How are replacement PCs handled?
Switch to a henchman for remainder of session, if one is available. Otherwise get out your dice and a new character sheet.
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else?
Group initiative with a d6. Players go first on a tie, but the monsters still get their turn even if they were killed.
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?
Yes. If you get a natural 20 or 1, I will tell you what die to roll to see what happens.
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?
You get to look awesome. I had a rule where a helmet could turn a crit into a normal hit once per adventure, but everyone always forgets about it (including myself), so I'll probably just drop it.
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?
Yes. If you fire into melee, and do not score a hit, and the number showing on the die/dice is odd, you hit a random ally engaged with your intended target.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?
Running is advised from time to time.
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no?
Yes, but they just drain XP. You don't actually go down in levels.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?
Yes, but this is not super-common. I usually have poisons deal a certain amount of damage per failed save rather than insta-death.
12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked?
Each character can carry up to 20 normal-sized items and 1,000 coins. For the most part, this works on the honor system and players police themselves.
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time?
Leveling happens only at the end of an adventure, and only if the PC is in a safe place. New spells from Men & Magic may be gained automatically. Spells from other sources or custom spells must be researched.
14. What do I get experience for?
1 xp per 1 gp of treasure.
100 xp per 1 HD of monster defeated in combat or otherwise neutralized.
Bonus xp for randomly rolling for new spells.
Bonus xp for doing other hardcore things.
Bonus xp for entertaining the DM.
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination?
Description. I almost always provide hints when a trap might be present.
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?
Use of henchman and hirelings is encouraged. Each player is allowed up to 3 henchmen if their PC was created in Outland. Otherwise they get 1 for free. Henchmen are stupidly loyal and never need to check morale. Once all the henchmen have been used up, PCs must resort to hiring help. Hirelings have a morale based on their employer's CHA (as per B/X). This morale will be checked as circumstances dictate.
I may goof around with loyalty as described in the LBBs, but most likely not since there is a bookkeeping element to it.
17. How do I identify magic items?
Even though I started working out a system for this, I usually just tell the PCs what they got.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?
Magic items are never for sale from NPCs, but players may attempt to sell magic items they find to other players through an NPC shop, which will of course take a cut of the sale price.
19. Can I create magic items? When and how?
No rules for this yet. I'll work something out if a player ever actually asks for it.
20. What about splitting the party?
I won't tell you no, but caution is recommended.
1. Ability scores generation method?
3d6 in order. Reroll 1s. WIS is also used as LUCK.
2. How are death and dying handled?
When you drop to 0, you roll on the Death & Dismemberment table. There is no negative hp concept, but if you get totally wrecked, you might not get to roll on D&D.
3. What about raising the dead?
No such ability currently exists in Outland.
4. How are replacement PCs handled?
Switch to a henchman for remainder of session, if one is available. Otherwise get out your dice and a new character sheet.
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else?
Group initiative with a d6. Players go first on a tie, but the monsters still get their turn even if they were killed.
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?
Yes. If you get a natural 20 or 1, I will tell you what die to roll to see what happens.
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?
You get to look awesome. I had a rule where a helmet could turn a crit into a normal hit once per adventure, but everyone always forgets about it (including myself), so I'll probably just drop it.
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?
Yes. If you fire into melee, and do not score a hit, and the number showing on the die/dice is odd, you hit a random ally engaged with your intended target.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?
Running is advised from time to time.
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no?
Yes, but they just drain XP. You don't actually go down in levels.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?
Yes, but this is not super-common. I usually have poisons deal a certain amount of damage per failed save rather than insta-death.
12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked?
Each character can carry up to 20 normal-sized items and 1,000 coins. For the most part, this works on the honor system and players police themselves.
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time?
Leveling happens only at the end of an adventure, and only if the PC is in a safe place. New spells from Men & Magic may be gained automatically. Spells from other sources or custom spells must be researched.
14. What do I get experience for?
1 xp per 1 gp of treasure.
100 xp per 1 HD of monster defeated in combat or otherwise neutralized.
Bonus xp for randomly rolling for new spells.
Bonus xp for doing other hardcore things.
Bonus xp for entertaining the DM.
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination?
Description. I almost always provide hints when a trap might be present.
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?
Use of henchman and hirelings is encouraged. Each player is allowed up to 3 henchmen if their PC was created in Outland. Otherwise they get 1 for free. Henchmen are stupidly loyal and never need to check morale. Once all the henchmen have been used up, PCs must resort to hiring help. Hirelings have a morale based on their employer's CHA (as per B/X). This morale will be checked as circumstances dictate.
I may goof around with loyalty as described in the LBBs, but most likely not since there is a bookkeeping element to it.
17. How do I identify magic items?
Even though I started working out a system for this, I usually just tell the PCs what they got.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?
Magic items are never for sale from NPCs, but players may attempt to sell magic items they find to other players through an NPC shop, which will of course take a cut of the sale price.
19. Can I create magic items? When and how?
No rules for this yet. I'll work something out if a player ever actually asks for it.
20. What about splitting the party?
I won't tell you no, but caution is recommended.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Outland Session 6 (Google+)
This adventure took place on Monday, January 23rd, but I'm a slacker and am only posting about it now.
The group told me they wanted to adventure in the haunted Nagle Manor, but there were two no-shows, and the plan changed last minute, with the group heading out to the great, unexplored northwest!
Father Jack has a great recap here.
The group told me they wanted to adventure in the haunted Nagle Manor, but there were two no-shows, and the plan changed last minute, with the group heading out to the great, unexplored northwest!
Father Jack has a great recap here.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Warduke T-Shirt
Just thought I'd share this, since it's an awesome find and I imagine they will eventually be gone...
Paizo is selling Warduke t-shirts for just $10! They only have them in XL, but hopefully you didn't eat too much over the holidays and can fit into that. Not sure how much shipping is, but I had mine shipped with my monthly subscription.
Here is the link to the shirt:
Paizo Dungeon Warduke T-Shirt
Enjoy!
Paizo is selling Warduke t-shirts for just $10! They only have them in XL, but hopefully you didn't eat too much over the holidays and can fit into that. Not sure how much shipping is, but I had mine shipped with my monthly subscription.
Here is the link to the shirt:
Paizo Dungeon Warduke T-Shirt
Enjoy!
Friday, January 20, 2012
d100 Followers! (Valis, please stand up)
The other day, I hit 100 followers. While by no means huge, it's respectable given the very niche subject matter of this blog, and my casual approach to writing stuff on here. I just do it for fun when the mood strikes me.
In order to celebrate and say "thank you", I had my wife roll a d100, which came up 51, and pointed to "Valis" in the list of followers. So Valis, please stand up and claim your gift, which is a self-printed copy of Swords & Wizardry White Box (4 booklets). You know, the last one Brave Halfling did right before they decided to dump S&W about a year ago? It's very DIY, which is very en vogue at the moment, so you will become cooler just by possessing it.
Just email me your address, and I'll get it sent off. If it is not claimed by 11:59PM CST on Thursday, January 26th, I will choose another winner.
If I was super-rich, I'd send cool stuff to all you guys. Thanks to all of you who read this thing and contribute with comments, and here's to hoping for a long and prosperous future of many more nerdy discussions!
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Outland Session 5 (Unique Gifts & Games)
This past Monday, four intrepid adventurers decided to pay another visit to Nagle Manor. I got all of their real names written down, but of course I forgot to get their PC names. I'm a terrible record keeper. Anyways, there were 2 magic-users, a cleric, and a thief. I know that much. Each had a henchman in tow as well.
On the way to the manor, they were assaulted by a large poisonous spider which surprised them in the tall grasses. One of them was horribly bitten and died right there in the field - that is until the cleric remembered about his vial which still contained two drops of angel tears. Using a drop of the stuff, he was able to bring his companion back to life. The party took a detour, and were able to follow the spider's tracks back to it's lair where they found a half-dozen human-sized cocoon-thingies. They cut them open and found some odds and ends, you know, like dead bodies, in addition to a pair of Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Since there was no fighter, they now have one very strong thief.
Once they reached the manor, they decided to go in a less conspicuous entrance. Although they knew that the main floor had been more or less fully explored, they decided to go over it again anyways, in case some good treasure was missed. They made away with some valuable silverware and dishes, and one of them managed to get badly bitten by a man-faced rat (a.k.a. brown jenkins) that was hiding in one of the cabinets for reasons undetermined.
They figured out a way to rescue a previously lost 0-level nobody from the cursed mirror, but spent their final angel tear to make that happen. A bit more wandering around, narrowly avoiding death by animated flying butcher knives, and they concluded by managing to swipe a deck of cards off of a table before being chased off by some ghouls whose bowling match they so rudely interrupted.
So now there have been four separate excursions to the haunted Nagle Manor, and still no one has gone beyond the ground floor.
Not a very profitable adventure, but I think it was pretty damn fun.
On the way to the manor, they were assaulted by a large poisonous spider which surprised them in the tall grasses. One of them was horribly bitten and died right there in the field - that is until the cleric remembered about his vial which still contained two drops of angel tears. Using a drop of the stuff, he was able to bring his companion back to life. The party took a detour, and were able to follow the spider's tracks back to it's lair where they found a half-dozen human-sized cocoon-thingies. They cut them open and found some odds and ends, you know, like dead bodies, in addition to a pair of Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Since there was no fighter, they now have one very strong thief.
Once they reached the manor, they decided to go in a less conspicuous entrance. Although they knew that the main floor had been more or less fully explored, they decided to go over it again anyways, in case some good treasure was missed. They made away with some valuable silverware and dishes, and one of them managed to get badly bitten by a man-faced rat (a.k.a. brown jenkins) that was hiding in one of the cabinets for reasons undetermined.
They figured out a way to rescue a previously lost 0-level nobody from the cursed mirror, but spent their final angel tear to make that happen. A bit more wandering around, narrowly avoiding death by animated flying butcher knives, and they concluded by managing to swipe a deck of cards off of a table before being chased off by some ghouls whose bowling match they so rudely interrupted.
So now there have been four separate excursions to the haunted Nagle Manor, and still no one has gone beyond the ground floor.
Not a very profitable adventure, but I think it was pretty damn fun.
Zak's DM Questionnaire
ZakHitsItWithHisAxe posted this questionnaire here.
1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
Probably my trap which is detailed here. Honestly, I don't invent a whole lot. I much prefer to steal ideas from many sources and just mash them all together.
2. When was the last time you GMed?
Two days ago (Monday)
3. When was the last time you played?
A few weeks ago.
4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.
X2 - CastleAmber Cosby
5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?
Start hinting at the bad things that are going to happen to them if they don't make a decision quickly.
6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?
Twizzlers, peanut butter cups, cookies, pizza.
7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?
No, but it certainly is mentally exhausting. I'm usually pretty zombified after a session, especially if its a long one.
8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?
Trying to figure out how I could backstab as a pig.
9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?
I've had both happen. I used to try to make very self-important serious settings, but my players were always good at pooping all over those things and showing me the error of my ways (I was way too attached to my creations). Lately my stuff is more gonzo and built specifically for the purpose of having PCs poop on it, but I find a lot of times players can take it way more seriously than it's supposed to be taken - perhaps due to the deadliness.
10. What do you do with goblins?
Goblins are reserved for players to use as PCs, for the most part. Although I will happily use a goblin stat block and make them into something else for use as a monster. Evil garden gnomes are always fun.
11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?
Panthro's (of Thundercats fame) poison-spraying nunchucks placed as treasure.
12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?
My sister's PC saying, "I DON'T EAT BALLS!" It's a long story and I think you had to be there to appreciate it. Sorry!
13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?
Tunnels & Trolls. I've known of its existence for a long time, but lately a few things have been pointing me to it, like Fight On #13, and the fact that pro gamer Timeshadows has expressed she likes running it. I've only gotten about a dozen pages in, but it looks cool, and I'm interested in trying it out.
14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?
Erol Otus, without question.
I'm also very fond of the work of Stefan Poag and Miguel Santos.
15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?
I'd like to think so, but I'm not certain. They are genuinely afraid for their characters quite a bit.
16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)
A tie between watching the players agonize over what to do in Death Frost Doom and watching the players perform the murder play in The Sixfold Trial.
17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?
Gigantic table with a gigantic LCD TV laid down in the middle with huge library of sexy battlemaps. Here is an example of some cool ones. I've had this sort of setup on my wishlist for quite some time now, but it's hard to justify buying a better TV than we have in our living room to be used exclusively for miniatures battles.
There would also have to be big comfy chairs, ideally in a dark and comfortable finished basement, with an endless supply of Pepsi and Twizzlers nearby. Something about playing D&D in the basement just seems right.
18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?
Carcosa and TOON. Although maybe they aren't as disparate as they appear to be on the surface...
19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?
In a broad sense, I guess comedy and horror. I like my games to have both. Not necessarily at the same time, but both are very important elements of a good game to me.
20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
I like MacGyver types that come up with really creative solutions to problems using nothing more than a few household items. I also like players that take calculated risks. Super-cautious play can be quite boring to watch. Of course, the player has to also be cool about the bad shit that is inevitably going to happen to them as a result of their going off half-cocked. I want players that take action based on the situation at hand, with their decisions detached from game mechanics. Finally, I want players at my table that play their own characters and let other people play theirs.
21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?
Don't be a dick. I'm sure I'm not 100% successful at practicing this, but I try.
22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?
I wish there was a ruleset that I didn't feel like I had to tinker with. There are so many great games out there that are full of great ideas, but every last one has something I don't like in it. I don't know what the heck my problem is, but I am obsessed with tinkering with rules in search of the holy grail system that I never have to mess with again. This is completely absurd, because my tastes are constantly changing, and in play, the rules are so far in the background that it doesn't even matter, yet I continue to obsess about them outside of games.
Here is an example of my nit-pickery:
Also, all of those games up there have a lot of good qualities. Too many to list here.
23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?
I've never been able to verbally do justice to the RPG experience, so I generally keep it limited to, "It's awesome fun, you ought to try it!"
1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
Probably my trap which is detailed here. Honestly, I don't invent a whole lot. I much prefer to steal ideas from many sources and just mash them all together.
2. When was the last time you GMed?
Two days ago (Monday)
3. When was the last time you played?
A few weeks ago.
4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.
X2 - Castle
5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?
Start hinting at the bad things that are going to happen to them if they don't make a decision quickly.
6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?
Twizzlers, peanut butter cups, cookies, pizza.
7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?
No, but it certainly is mentally exhausting. I'm usually pretty zombified after a session, especially if its a long one.
8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?
Trying to figure out how I could backstab as a pig.
9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?
I've had both happen. I used to try to make very self-important serious settings, but my players were always good at pooping all over those things and showing me the error of my ways (I was way too attached to my creations). Lately my stuff is more gonzo and built specifically for the purpose of having PCs poop on it, but I find a lot of times players can take it way more seriously than it's supposed to be taken - perhaps due to the deadliness.
10. What do you do with goblins?
Goblins are reserved for players to use as PCs, for the most part. Although I will happily use a goblin stat block and make them into something else for use as a monster. Evil garden gnomes are always fun.
11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?
Panthro's (of Thundercats fame) poison-spraying nunchucks placed as treasure.
12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?
My sister's PC saying, "I DON'T EAT BALLS!" It's a long story and I think you had to be there to appreciate it. Sorry!
13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?
Tunnels & Trolls. I've known of its existence for a long time, but lately a few things have been pointing me to it, like Fight On #13, and the fact that pro gamer Timeshadows has expressed she likes running it. I've only gotten about a dozen pages in, but it looks cool, and I'm interested in trying it out.
14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?
Erol Otus, without question.
I'm also very fond of the work of Stefan Poag and Miguel Santos.
15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?
I'd like to think so, but I'm not certain. They are genuinely afraid for their characters quite a bit.
16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)
A tie between watching the players agonize over what to do in Death Frost Doom and watching the players perform the murder play in The Sixfold Trial.
17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?
Gigantic table with a gigantic LCD TV laid down in the middle with huge library of sexy battlemaps. Here is an example of some cool ones. I've had this sort of setup on my wishlist for quite some time now, but it's hard to justify buying a better TV than we have in our living room to be used exclusively for miniatures battles.
There would also have to be big comfy chairs, ideally in a dark and comfortable finished basement, with an endless supply of Pepsi and Twizzlers nearby. Something about playing D&D in the basement just seems right.
18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?
Carcosa and TOON. Although maybe they aren't as disparate as they appear to be on the surface...
19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?
In a broad sense, I guess comedy and horror. I like my games to have both. Not necessarily at the same time, but both are very important elements of a good game to me.
20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
I like MacGyver types that come up with really creative solutions to problems using nothing more than a few household items. I also like players that take calculated risks. Super-cautious play can be quite boring to watch. Of course, the player has to also be cool about the bad shit that is inevitably going to happen to them as a result of their going off half-cocked. I want players that take action based on the situation at hand, with their decisions detached from game mechanics. Finally, I want players at my table that play their own characters and let other people play theirs.
21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?
Don't be a dick. I'm sure I'm not 100% successful at practicing this, but I try.
22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?
I wish there was a ruleset that I didn't feel like I had to tinker with. There are so many great games out there that are full of great ideas, but every last one has something I don't like in it. I don't know what the heck my problem is, but I am obsessed with tinkering with rules in search of the holy grail system that I never have to mess with again. This is completely absurd, because my tastes are constantly changing, and in play, the rules are so far in the background that it doesn't even matter, yet I continue to obsess about them outside of games.
Here is an example of my nit-pickery:
- LotFP has unarmored AC = 12. Dude, it's supposed to be 10! Way to ruin an otherwise perfect game!
- Basic Fantasy RPG has the same issue, but uses 11.
- Labyrinth Lord uses funny XP numbers and did the reaction modifiers from Charisma backwards.
- DCC RPG uses Fort/Ref/Will saves. WTF?
- Sword & Wizardry was apparently made by someone with a similar affliction to my own, and it keeps getting changed all the time (in the case of White Box and Core). Plus, they are tied to Frog God, which seems to prefer making their products "limited" and "collectible" as opposed to "reasonably priced" and "available".
Also, all of those games up there have a lot of good qualities. Too many to list here.
23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?
I've never been able to verbally do justice to the RPG experience, so I generally keep it limited to, "It's awesome fun, you ought to try it!"
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Outland Session 4 (Google+)
- Doc Sampson the alchemist, Ozzy Sweetleaf the goblin glassblower/astrologer, John Plisskin the carpenter, and Hell Zelazny the tanner (run by the illustrious Kyrinn)
- Donnal McDonnal the fighter, and his buddy Stanislov (run by Jeff, the mad genius of gaming)
- Blixa the thief, and his man's best friend AbeLincolnVampireHunter (run by ZakHitsItWithHisAxe)
- Scarecrow Hooker the Tengu thief, and his dwarf helper Barkbeard Woodsack (run by my homie Steve)
Scarecrow Hooker, despite having half his face blown up by a radioactive lightning bug, managed to produce this map:
See Donnal's report here. He got 200 bonus XP for it!
How to Make Jeremy's D&D 5E
I've resisted doing this, but hey, they're being nice enough to ask what we want, so I'll tell them what I want.
If you're a regular reader here, and don't really care to read this, here's the truncated version: USE THE LABYRINTH LORD MODEL.
Step 1: A single core book (we'll call it Basic D&D, since that's what it should be modeled after) with everything you need to make the standard 4 character types and have adventures. You should be able to roll up characters in 5 minutes or less and get to playing. I would list everything out, but just look at Labyrinth Lord, it has all this. People should be able to buy this book, and have years of adventures with it and nothing else. It should cover levels 1-20 or at a minimum levels 1-10.
Step 2: Produce the books for hacking the core system. See Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion and Original Edition Characters books for excellent examples of how this is done. Additional books can be done for a Supers-style D&D, which is basically what 3E/Pathfinder is. These books would include character creation for SRD characters, feats, fort/ref/will saves, the crazy skill system, tactical miniatures combat rules, etc.
Step 3: Make an intro box for people that are new to the hobby. See the Pathfinder Beginner Box for an example of a good one. See James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess box set for an example of what great referee and tutorial books look like. Inside the box should be a coupon code for a discount on the core book.
Step 4: Monster books should ideally be universal. This one's going to be a challenge, but there are a few things you can do. There should be things that are able to be translated differently depending on how the game is being played. For example, just list hit dice, and we will know that if we are playing original style, then we use d6s, d8s for basic, and d10s for supers-style. Monsters are not PCs, and their stat blocks should be as lean as possible. Perhaps you have the core information, and then a few additional lines highlighted in a different color that are only applicable if you are playing supers-style, or whatever.
Step 5: Now you have the rules done, LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE! If you want to release additional rules supplements, fine, but always maintain the integrity of the core rules. D&D 4E was the only version of D&D where I've ever sold my core books. You invalidated them with a constant stream of errata. We played a 5-month long campaign and almost every session a player came to the table with one of his abilities changed from what it was the previous time we played. You are going to have situations where some players like to use the digital tools to make their characters, and some people are using the books. There should not be discrepancies between the two.
Also, I should be able to play any of my stack of old Basic and AD&D modules with some version of this game. I'd recommend cleaning them up and re-releasing them, at least in digital or print-on-demand form, since a lot of people seem to be clamoring for that, but I'm more concerned about the ability to easily play them, since I already have most of them.
At this point, you have the core rules done, and you will sell some books. Now your business model needs to change. You are not in the business of selling an endless stream of rulebooks. Ideally, the rules should be OGL, and there should be an awesome free SRD site for people to use (see d20pfsrd.com for an example). If you are not going to learn from your mistakes, and you are going to constantly fiddle with the rules so you can sell more rulebooks, you are going to piss people off. Get the rules out there, make them good, and give them away for free on an SRD site, sell them in book form, and sell them in PDF/eBook form (no DRM either!). Then you make money by selling stuff for people to play using those rules (adventures, settings, DM toolkits, etc.). You need to sell creative ideas, interesting and revolutionary new ways to have adventures. Just selling a million new PC build option books is lame. In my home gaming group, nobody buys a damn thing. I'm the DM and I'm the only person that buys stuff, so make stuff for me to use to help me run awesome games for my cheapskate players.
And another thing. Take a look at how you pay people who write adventures and change it. Paying by the word seems to produce some real shitty adventures. Give authors a cut of sales, so they have to actually write good adventures in order to get paid.
Let me tell you a story. When I was still playing 4E, I saw this book called Pathfinder at the game store. I had heard a few things about it on enworld and such, but I was never really a 3E player anyways, and the massive size of the book, it's weird name and weird art made me walk right by. A bit later on, after continuing to hear good things about it, I figured I should check it out, and I downloaded a less than legitimate copy of it. I was so impressed by it, that I am now a subscriber to 5 of their product lines, and have probably spent somewhere in the ballpark of $2,000 in the past 18 months on Paizo/Pathfinder stuff. This is what piracy can do for you. It can give people a reason to buy your stuff. I don't like to buy things blindly. I like to see, with my own eyes, that a product is good. If it is, I will happily fork out the cash for it, and my preferred purchase method is Print+PDF.
Every month, I get beautiful books in the mail from Paizo. Even though I hardly play Pathfinder anymore, their adventure paths are a great value. I get adventure ideas, new monsters, short fiction, and an article on the ecology of a monster or some stuff about a god or something. I can extract the images from the PDF copy and use the maps and pictures of monsters in my games. We have a great relationship. They tell me, "Because you are awesome and subscribe to our adventure path, we'll give you 15% off everything else we sell."
Their campaign setting is also something you should take a look at. They made a campaign setting as a place to play games in. It is not a gimmick to sell novels. It is a highly-usable gaming product, and they come right out and say that it should be hacked and bastardized in the grandest traditions of D&D.
Their novels are not grand epic tales that would turn into failed game sessions. The novels portray normal, crappy adventurers, like actual PCs. They are there to show examples of what kinds of things you could do with Golarion in an actual game.
Digital tools. I think you should have them and I think they should not suck. I think there should be a free component with basic character creation features and the ability to print character sheets that don't suck up $40 worth of ink to print one sheet. If you want to charge a subscription fee for more advanced features, I think that's fine, but they should be tools that enhance my experience and make my life easier. If the game is built in such a way that not having the tools makes me have a shitty experience, you will not have won this customer back.
Some people just want to play with pencil, paper, dice, and imaginations. These people are important to this thing you're trying to do here, so don't take it for granted that everyone's going to be down with needing a computer to make your game work.
So, this turned into way bigger of a wall of text than I set out to write. Sorry! But hey, at least it's all off my chest now. Carry on.
If you're a regular reader here, and don't really care to read this, here's the truncated version: USE THE LABYRINTH LORD MODEL.
Step 1: A single core book (we'll call it Basic D&D, since that's what it should be modeled after) with everything you need to make the standard 4 character types and have adventures. You should be able to roll up characters in 5 minutes or less and get to playing. I would list everything out, but just look at Labyrinth Lord, it has all this. People should be able to buy this book, and have years of adventures with it and nothing else. It should cover levels 1-20 or at a minimum levels 1-10.
Step 2: Produce the books for hacking the core system. See Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion and Original Edition Characters books for excellent examples of how this is done. Additional books can be done for a Supers-style D&D, which is basically what 3E/Pathfinder is. These books would include character creation for SRD characters, feats, fort/ref/will saves, the crazy skill system, tactical miniatures combat rules, etc.
Step 3: Make an intro box for people that are new to the hobby. See the Pathfinder Beginner Box for an example of a good one. See James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess box set for an example of what great referee and tutorial books look like. Inside the box should be a coupon code for a discount on the core book.
Step 4: Monster books should ideally be universal. This one's going to be a challenge, but there are a few things you can do. There should be things that are able to be translated differently depending on how the game is being played. For example, just list hit dice, and we will know that if we are playing original style, then we use d6s, d8s for basic, and d10s for supers-style. Monsters are not PCs, and their stat blocks should be as lean as possible. Perhaps you have the core information, and then a few additional lines highlighted in a different color that are only applicable if you are playing supers-style, or whatever.
Step 5: Now you have the rules done, LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE! If you want to release additional rules supplements, fine, but always maintain the integrity of the core rules. D&D 4E was the only version of D&D where I've ever sold my core books. You invalidated them with a constant stream of errata. We played a 5-month long campaign and almost every session a player came to the table with one of his abilities changed from what it was the previous time we played. You are going to have situations where some players like to use the digital tools to make their characters, and some people are using the books. There should not be discrepancies between the two.
Also, I should be able to play any of my stack of old Basic and AD&D modules with some version of this game. I'd recommend cleaning them up and re-releasing them, at least in digital or print-on-demand form, since a lot of people seem to be clamoring for that, but I'm more concerned about the ability to easily play them, since I already have most of them.
At this point, you have the core rules done, and you will sell some books. Now your business model needs to change. You are not in the business of selling an endless stream of rulebooks. Ideally, the rules should be OGL, and there should be an awesome free SRD site for people to use (see d20pfsrd.com for an example). If you are not going to learn from your mistakes, and you are going to constantly fiddle with the rules so you can sell more rulebooks, you are going to piss people off. Get the rules out there, make them good, and give them away for free on an SRD site, sell them in book form, and sell them in PDF/eBook form (no DRM either!). Then you make money by selling stuff for people to play using those rules (adventures, settings, DM toolkits, etc.). You need to sell creative ideas, interesting and revolutionary new ways to have adventures. Just selling a million new PC build option books is lame. In my home gaming group, nobody buys a damn thing. I'm the DM and I'm the only person that buys stuff, so make stuff for me to use to help me run awesome games for my cheapskate players.
And another thing. Take a look at how you pay people who write adventures and change it. Paying by the word seems to produce some real shitty adventures. Give authors a cut of sales, so they have to actually write good adventures in order to get paid.
Let me tell you a story. When I was still playing 4E, I saw this book called Pathfinder at the game store. I had heard a few things about it on enworld and such, but I was never really a 3E player anyways, and the massive size of the book, it's weird name and weird art made me walk right by. A bit later on, after continuing to hear good things about it, I figured I should check it out, and I downloaded a less than legitimate copy of it. I was so impressed by it, that I am now a subscriber to 5 of their product lines, and have probably spent somewhere in the ballpark of $2,000 in the past 18 months on Paizo/Pathfinder stuff. This is what piracy can do for you. It can give people a reason to buy your stuff. I don't like to buy things blindly. I like to see, with my own eyes, that a product is good. If it is, I will happily fork out the cash for it, and my preferred purchase method is Print+PDF.
Every month, I get beautiful books in the mail from Paizo. Even though I hardly play Pathfinder anymore, their adventure paths are a great value. I get adventure ideas, new monsters, short fiction, and an article on the ecology of a monster or some stuff about a god or something. I can extract the images from the PDF copy and use the maps and pictures of monsters in my games. We have a great relationship. They tell me, "Because you are awesome and subscribe to our adventure path, we'll give you 15% off everything else we sell."
Their campaign setting is also something you should take a look at. They made a campaign setting as a place to play games in. It is not a gimmick to sell novels. It is a highly-usable gaming product, and they come right out and say that it should be hacked and bastardized in the grandest traditions of D&D.
Their novels are not grand epic tales that would turn into failed game sessions. The novels portray normal, crappy adventurers, like actual PCs. They are there to show examples of what kinds of things you could do with Golarion in an actual game.
Digital tools. I think you should have them and I think they should not suck. I think there should be a free component with basic character creation features and the ability to print character sheets that don't suck up $40 worth of ink to print one sheet. If you want to charge a subscription fee for more advanced features, I think that's fine, but they should be tools that enhance my experience and make my life easier. If the game is built in such a way that not having the tools makes me have a shitty experience, you will not have won this customer back.
Some people just want to play with pencil, paper, dice, and imaginations. These people are important to this thing you're trying to do here, so don't take it for granted that everyone's going to be down with needing a computer to make your game work.
So, this turned into way bigger of a wall of text than I set out to write. Sorry! But hey, at least it's all off my chest now. Carry on.
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