Yearly Archives: 2012

20 Quick Questions: Rules

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Jeff Rients has a great list of 20 quick questions to add campaign details in ways that are likely to affect actual play. I was thinking, based on this other post by Jeff about treating all editions of D&D as a toolbox and this post by JB over at B/X Blackrazor about creating his own version of D&D, that it would be useful to have a list of rules that often change from campaign to campaign.

Here are 20 rules clarifications that are likely to be needed anyways at some point.

  1. Ability scores generation method?
  2. How are death and dying handled?
  3. What about raising the dead?
  4. How are replacement PCs handled?
  5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else?
  6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?
  7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?
  8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?
  9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?
  10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no?
  11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?
  12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked?
  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?
  14. What do I get experience for?
  15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination?
  16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?
  17. How do I identify magic items?
  18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?
  19. Can I create magic items? When and how?
  20. What about splitting the party?

If you decide this stuff early, you are less likely to have misunderstandings and more likely to all be on the same page.

Edit: index of some responses here.

On Elf Height

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From Robert Kirk’s glossary in The Secret Commonwealth, written in the seventeenth century (page 76 of the NYRB edition):

Elves: A tribe of the fairies that use not to exceed an ell in stature.

So how tall is an ell? According to this helpful page of conversions:

1 ell = 114.3 cm = 45 inches = 3.75 feet = 5 spans

It’s interesting to see this meaning actually encoded in the name, despite the fact that the tall Norse elf (the álfar) has become dominant via the works of Tolkien.

Also related, over at Strange Magic: Monster Makeover: Elves (though I prefer my faeries to have more sinister and less German peasant).

AD&D Monster Manual page 40

ACKS Setting Part 3: Isle of the Dead

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Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead

Conspectus: Resting on warm but brooding seas, the Idle of the Dead is a palimpsest of ruins. Many different civilizations have in the past settled on the Isle. The wilderness is haunted by the hidden realms of Faerie, visible only to those with the second sight. The Isle is scattered with abandoned colonies, restless dead, ghost towns, and the cast-off outposts of past inhuman visitors. The fragile but tenacious settlements of recent colonists cling to the coasts and ply the shallow seas. Spirits and wizard kings have set themselves up as petty gods demanding worship and tribute.

The primary visual inspiration is obviously Böcklin’s piece above, but I’ll post more images in the future. I don’t want to clutter this post up too much. Here is information about some of the past inhabitants.

The Monument Builders. Their works are crude but of immense scale. No one knows anything else about them.

The Old Empire. This was a civilization of tremendous advancement. They built wonders of engineering including bridges, aqueducts, soaring towers, and cities beneath the ground. Little is known about the society of the Old Empire. In fact, it is unknown whether it even was an empire. It is assumed to have been an empire due to the vast extent and uniformity of obviously related ruins. It is so old that nothing is known of its history or rulers, and few artifacts other than the architecture itself has survived. Many Old Empire structures have been repurposed by later settlers.

The Visitors. These ruins are obviously not of human origin and sometimes contain strange devices. Sages differ on whether the remnants of the Visitors came before or after the Old Empire.

The Hundred Kingdoms. The beginning of written history as far as most scholars are concerned. For the most part, the kingdoms did not extend to the Isle, though there are ruins of small outposts, perhaps the homes of heretics or outcasts. Other islands, and of course the mainland to the east, are the primary sources of Hundred Kingdoms ruins. The religion of the Kingdoms held that past the western seas lay the land of the dead. Some believe this is the origin of the name Isle of the Dead.

The Great Empire. The Great Empire arose on the mainland to the east when the Hundred Kingdoms were unified.

The First Expedition. During the zenith of the Great Empire, armies and settlers were sent in all the directions of the compass to explore and subdue. This was the first of two waves of colonization, and was a direct political extension of the metropole. Not much is known about these earlier colonies because after several generations contact was lost. The legend is that they rebelled against the homeland and so were cursed by the gods. That was 500 years ago.

The Second Expedition. Founded approximately two hundred years ago, the Second Expedition followed in the disastrous footsteps of the First. Unlike the First Expedition, the Second was led by adventurers and frontierspeople. At this time, the Great Empire was in a more inward-looking mood. When the settlers arrived, all they found were ruins and ghost towns. Initially, the colonies flourished, and spread around the edges of the Isle. Trade and commerce with the homeland was strong, but over time fewer and fewer ships returned until there was no contact. It has been two generations since the last successful voyages, and many assume the Great Empire has either suffered some disaster or disintegrated once more into feuding kingdoms.

The point of this detail is not to have an extensive history, but to allow me to differentiate between different types of ruins, and to create meaningful connections between them. I am trying to avoid engaging in world building for its own sake, so if something doesn’t add to the experience of the game as game, I don’t want to spend (much) time on it. I’m trying to build from the bottom up as much as possible, but I find I still need some level of thematic framework before I can begin creating domains and points of interest on the map.

As I have been detailing this setting, many things have surprised me. For example, the degree of Mediterranean influence. I wasn’t really planning that to begin with. And the influence of the sea. I guess I will need to become more familiar with nautical rules.

ACKS Setting Part 2: Zoom

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Before I can proceed further with my Adventurer Conqueror King System setting, I need some actual geography. Note that I’m a “learns best by teaching” kind of guy, so don’t take any of this as gospel. This is just a record of what ended up working for me. I would love to hear about different methods that work for other people.

I was playing around with generating random terrain with Hexographer, and one of the areas that stuck with me was this island:

So I decided to use this fragment as a portion of my 24 mile per hex “campaign level” map and my first region. It’s 8 by 8, so that’s one sixteenth of the entire campaign map. I have some ideas about the surrounding area, but I’m not going to worry about it at this point. The fact that this is an island helps somewhat also; it is unlikely that the PCs will accidentally wander too far afield near the beginning of the campaign (Trollsmyth took a similar approach in his hex mapping series). It also means that PCs can either begin as natives or as victims of a shipwreck.

I really like this particular map because it has two major sections with a nice small choke point in the middle. I’m envisioning those connective lowlands as the center of civilization on this island with deep, forested wild mountains to the east and more wild interior to the west past the barrier of the rocky mountains. Flipping the assumptions of Keep on the Borderlands, I think the mountains will contain chaotic border forts (like the gates of Mordor, but smaller scale) protecting the western interior from the settled lowlands. In addition, other lawful settlements will be scattered around the edges of the island, much like the way settlements hugged the shore of Ancient Greece. Communication between the lawfuls will be by short range sea vessels, but more on that in later posts.

To proceed, I need to zoom in on that map and translate it to 6 mile hexes. The Welsh Piper has some wonderful hex templates that can be used with Hexographer, but unfortunately they assume 25 mile and 5 mile hexes (thus 5 subhexes per superhex), which is not compatible with the dimensions I am using. So this is what I did to make sure that the maps line up at different scales.

I started by marking the center of the 24 mile hexes using an arbitrary hex icon that will go away at the end. I chose volcano hexes because they stick out. All hex centers should be equidistant and separated by three hexes in any direction. To see why I placed the centers where I did, check out this picture from my previous post.

Then, I grew the terrain type outward one level:

After that, I filled in the rest of the hexes that would be entirely contained in any of the 24 mile hexes. The remaining gaps between them are liminal hexes that could go either way:

Contiguous terrain of the same type is then connected and the 24 mile hex center markers are removed:

Finally (for this post, at least) we have the “filled in” terrain, with the beginnings of some local variation:

This is still far from complete geographically. You can see that I started to add some details, such as small variations in terrain type at the 6 mile resolution. I don’t plan on creating all the variations prior to play, even just within this single regional map, but as I start to place locations such as domains and dungeons, I’m sure more terrain variation will creep in. My personal rule of thumb is that the majority of subhexes should share the terrain type of the superhex (for example, if the 24 mile hex is forest, at least 7 or 8 of the contained 6 mile hexes should also be forest). Exploring this geography also finally led me to a setting name, which I will reveal in the next post.

ACKS Setting Part 1: Intro

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Grognardling recently wrote about some problems he was having making maps following the guidelines in Adventurer Conqueror King System. Here are the recommendations (ACKS, page 229):

A standard sheet of hex graph paper, 30 hexes wide and 40 hexes long, covers an area 1,200 hexes total. When creating the recommended two maps, one sheet of hex paper should be used with 24-mile hexes for the campaign map, while a second sheet should be used with 6-mile hexes for the regional map.

This sounds good, and 6 miles is a good scale for regional maps, but 30 by 40 doesn’t “zoom” well. That is, a small section of the 24 mile scale map can’t be conveniently represented by another 30 x 40 map at the 6 mile scale. The confusion is compounded by the fact that Autarch makes example hex maps available at three different resolutions, and it is unclear how these fit with the guidelines in the book (other than to show the proper way of fitting four 6 mile hexes into one 24 mile hex). Also, the example map dimensions are not 30 by 40.

I would suggest using 32 by 32 rather than 30 by 40, as that has a number of pleasant mathematical properties (this should not be surprising, as all of the numbers turn into powers of 2). A 32 by 32 hex map at the 24 mile scale divides evenly into 4 by 4 (16 total) sub-maps which can each be represented as a 32 by 32 hex map at the 6 mile scale. Thus, it is obvious how to create zoomed-in maps with added detail for any particular region. 30 by 40 yields 1200 hexes, while 32 by 32 yields 1024 hexes; the two are thus approximately the same area (certainly close enough for tabletop RPG purposes).

Example 32 by 32 campaign map at 24 mile per hex scale:

Example 32 by 32 region map at 6 mile per hex scale (large sharpie hexes correspond to individual small hexes on the campaign map above):

I was going to wait and post my thoughts on the ACKS setting guidelines all at once, but I found that it was taking me a while, so I’m going to do it in parts instead so that I can maintain momentum.

Fighting Magic-User

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The fighting magic-user is my human variant of the B/X elf class. A fighting magic-user divides attention between martial and arcane pursuits, hence the slower (elf) level progression.

Level remains limited to 10. If you want to be able to prepare the most powerful spells (sixth level), you must play a dedicated magic-user. “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). Fighting magic-users may still cast sixth level spells from scrolls.

Fighting magic-users lack the following elf abilities:

  • Infravision
  • Increased chance to discover secret doors
  • Immunity to ghoul paralysis
The fighting magic-user is, however, able to wear any mundane metal armor, unlike faerie creatures (such as elves), which are pained by iron and steel.
Unlike the standard magic-user, the fighting magic-user has no chance of spell failure when wearing armor.

Against Armor Restrictions

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In my B/X house rules, any class can wear any kind of armor.

There are, of course, trade-offs though.

Encumbrance is the primary penalty from wearing armor, and this applies to all classes. I use the LotFP encumbrance rules, modified slightly to allow characters with exceptional strength to carry more. Fighters are, practically speaking, likely to have higher strength than other classes, so this also in effect makes them less likely to be penalized for wearing armor (though clearly this will vary on an individual basis). To maximize mobility, a prudent fighter will not carry much other than armor and primary weapons. Squires or porters can be hired to carry extra weapons and other equipment.

Wearing any kind of armor interferes with the delicate gestures required for a magic-user’s spell casting. The following chance of spell failure applies: leather 1 in 6, chain 2 in 6, plate 3 in 6. If a prepared spell fails, it is not lost, but the round is wasted. The same goes for casting from a scroll; the scroll is not consumed.

Armor heavier than leather also interferes with the following thief skills: move silently, hide in shadows, climb walls, and legerdemain. Wearing heavier armor introduces a chance of failure: chain 1 in 6, plate 2 in 6.

Elves (or their human class variants, fighting magic-users) are not subject to spell failure when wearing armor. Faerie creatures such as elves are, however, not able to use mundane metal armor (such as armor of iron or steel) because close proximity of metal pains them greatly. They may use specially forged faerie-metal armor, which can only be procured in faerie realms. Elf armor tends to degrade if it spends too much time outside of elf lands, however. Dwarves are known for crafting durable faerie armor, but their prices tend to be steep and not just in terms of money. Dwarf-made armor is thus highly prized by elves that must journey in the sunlit realms.

The Varieties of Fatal Experience

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Being various and sundry interpretations of hit points & death.

By dying in the following examples I mean losing one HP per round.

Rules that allow dying characters generally provide some way to stabilize the dying character, either by performing an action or using a skill. Healing magic will also generally stabilize a dying character.

  1. Classic. Dead at 0 HP. Monsters and PCs are treated the same. Anyone can be knocked unconscious by bringing them to 0 HP with nonlethal damage. See below for the exact OD&D wording, which, as usual, is open-ended and ambiguous.
  2. AD&D. Dead at -10 HP. Unconscious at 0 HP and dying (DMG page 82). Monsters are dead at 0 HP and so are treated differently than PCs. 2E defaults to dead at 0 HP but provides an optional rule (which everyone I knew used) Hovering on Death’s Door (2E DMG page 75) which was basically the same as the original AD&D rules. [2012 06 16 edit: 1E AD&D is actually a bit more complicated; if you go from above 0 to -4, for example, death is immediate. See this comment for more discussion.]
  3. 3E. Disabled at 0. Unconscious and dying below 0. Dead at -10. Instant death if 50 or more damage is taken at once and a DC 15 fortitude save is failed (source: D20 SRD on death). Dead if constitution is reduced to 0 through drain or by taking constitution damage (source: D20 SRD on ability damage). Pathfinder is similar, but characters are dead at negative HP equal to their constitution score rather than at -10 HP (Pathfinder Core page 189).
  4. 4E. Dead at negative ½ max HP or 3 failed death saves. Incapacitated at 0 HP. A death save is required every round if a PC has 0 or fewer HP. Note saving throws in Fourth Edition are unrelated to either level or ability scores: there is always a 55% chance of success. Monsters are dead at 0 HP. 4E PHB page 295.
  5. Castles & Crusades. Unconscious at 0. Harder to heal between -1 and -6, but not dying. Dying at -7 to -9. Dead at -10. Feels like AD&D, but more fiddly. C&C PHB page 134.
  6. Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (free downloadable Rules & Magic book, page 35):

    When a character (or creature) suffers damage, the amount of damage is deducted from the character’s current hit points. When hit points reach 0, the character becomes unable to take any action, and in most cases falls completely unconscious. The character becomes mortally wounded at -3 hit points and will die in d10 minutes. No healing, magical or otherwise, can prevent death at this point. Death is instantaneous at -4hp.

    This is surprisingly fiddly; before double-checking the text, I assumed LotFP was just dead at 0.

  7. Crypts & Things. When HP is gone, characters start taking constitution damage. Any constitution damage requires a save or the character falls unconscious. I don’t have a copy of this, so I am relying on the review over at Tenkar’s Tavern.
  8. ACKS. 0 HP requires a roll on the wounds table which may lead to anything from unconsciousness to injury or death (ACKS page 104). There are many potential modifiers to this roll, so the system looks somewhat fiddly, though I haven’t seen it used in play.
  9. DCC RPG. Dying at negative HP, dead at negative HP equal to character level (corollary: 0 level characters are dead at 0 HP). Any character that falls to negative HP but survives loses a point of stamina permanently. DCC RPG Open Beta Page 78.
  10. Robert Fisher: Classic D&D injury table. When a PC is brought to 0 HP, they must roll on the 2d6 injury table. Results include no effect, severed limbs, and instant death. Most monsters are dead at 0 HP, but important NPCs might get to roll on the table. See also Trollsmyth’s variant.
  11. Ramblings of a Great Khan: Save or die at 0 HP. When a character is reduced to zero HP, they may make a saving throw versus death ray (or whatever category is closest in the game you are playing). On failure, the character is slain. On success, they live but are knocked unconscious. There is a similar idea in this comment: the save is done after combat rather than immediately.
  12. Jeff’s Gameblog: One Last Breath:

    Any time a PC runs out of hit points that character is allowed a saving throw versus Death if they haven’t already failed a saving throw to get 0hp. If the roll is made the character is at 1 hit point. At the Labyrinth Lord’s discretion they may also be stunned, unconscious, comatose, feverish, nauseous, mangled, bleeding, or otherwise in a world of hurt. If the saving roll fails, see the rules for replacement PCs below.

  13. Silver Blade Adventures: Wounded at 0 HP:

    A house rule used in the World of Silver Blade is that characters brought to zero hit points or below are wounded and out of the fight, suffering ongoing penalties until the injury is healed, regardless of hit point recovery.

    This is similar to Robert Fisher’s injury table, but a wound at 0 HP is assured.

I don’t generally use wound tables, because the idea of mutilation freaks me out. I don’t need that level of detail in my games. I’m not categorically opposed, however. The simplicity of Robert Fisher’s injury table, for example, is very attractive.
The exact OD&D wording (Men & Magic, page 18) is as follows:

[HP is] the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death. Whether sustaining accumulative hits will otherwise affect a character is left to the discretion of the referee.

My current 4E hack game is using the AD&D rules (unconscious and dying at 0, dead at -10). If I were to start a classic D&D game right now, I would either use dead at 0, Robert Fisher’s injury table, or allow a saving throw to be knocked unconscious rather than die outright. I would probably avoid any option that required bookkeeping.

Other relevant reading:

Anyone know of other interesting death & dying house rules floating around?

Magical Research Mishaps

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A little while back, Evan over at In Places Deep noted that carousing did not seem to be appropriate for all classes and suggested some alternatives. In particular, magic research for magic-users, with potential mishaps. I went a bit crazy in his comment section because I absolutely love this idea. Some of the potential side effects on Evan’s table (and Jeff’s original, too) are a bit too dire for my game, however. Lose all personal possessions? My players would kill me. So these side effects are a bit tamer.

It seems like the idea of spending money on magical research for experience has a precedent. The Dragon #10 (1977, Orgies, Inc., by Jon Pickens) offers the following categories of expenditure to gain experience:

  1. Sacrifices. All Classes.
  2. Philanthropy. Lawfuls only.
  3. Research. Magic Users and Alchemists.
  4. Clan Hoards. Dwarves and other Clannish Folk (probably Neutrals).
  5. Orgies. Fighting Men (excluding Rangers and Paladins), Bards, Thieves, and all Chaotics (excluding Monks).

Unlike Jeff’s carousing rules though, all of these options are risk free. It might be interesting to create a modern hierarchy of such methods using Jeff’s save/mishap mechanic. (Incidentally, I like the characterization there of Neutrals as Clannish Folk, i.e. those who would just like the world to leave them alone and do not care to concern themselves with any cosmic struggles.)

    Thanks to Aaron for recently blogging about that Orgies, Inc. article and thus bringing it to my attention.

    Anyways, on to the magical mishaps. Rules follow Jeff’s carousing, adjusted for type of save.

    Magic-users may spend d6 x 100 gp to earn that many XP. Then save versus Spells or roll on the Magical Research Mishaps table below. If you roll more money than you have on hand you now owe the difference to some sort of criminal (perhaps demonic) unless another PC can cover your expenses.

    1. Minor explosion: eyebrows burned off, frizzy scientist fro. Local wizards may begin to think you are incompetent.
    2. Rupture in the space-time continuum: small (1d6 inches) hole in the fabric of reality opens. Consider as a bottomless hole.
    3. You summoned it, but you can’t figure out how to unsummon it. It follows you around and does things at inconvenient times. Roll 1d4; it is: 1 – thumb-sized demon, 2 – two-headed rodent, 3 – small flying squid that swims through the air, 4 – floating bubble that follows you around and reforms if popped.
    4. That growth spell didn’t go the way you thought. Size as halfling for next 2d6 days. Clothes and armor no longer fit.
    5. That other growth spell didn’t go the way you thought. One of your companion’s mounts is now half sized, maybe permanently. Determine which randomly. (Random local livestock if party has no mounts.)
    6. Determine randomly one spell you can prepare. This spell must now always be prepared if you prepare any spells at all. You just can’t get that tune out of your head. Referee may rule on some way to undo this.
    7. Grow a useless tail 1d4 feet long.
    8. Vampiric synthesis gone awry: you no longer have a reflection.
    9. Experiment with the plane of shadow, to which your own shadow escapes.
    10. Overcome by the transience of life through metaphysical research. You new weep whenever you witness death. Further, the tears are blood.
    11. Super soldier serum of unknown potency. Re-roll strength.
    12. That love philtre didn’t go quite the way you expected. You now smell like catnip for (d6) 1-3: canines, 4-6: felines. This may make you unutterably delicious to monstrous versions of these creatures as well.
    13. Grow a small pair of demon wings. Much too small to do anything useful with.
    14. You manage to banish the demon you summoned successfully, but somehow its image was burned into your flesh. You now have a strange, moving tatoo. Roll for location: 1 face, 2 chest, 3 back, 4 left arm, 5 right arm, 6 rear, 7 left lef, 8 right leg. Maybe it can see what you can see.
    15. Beauty potion. Re-roll charisma.
    16. Grow horns. 1 – curled goat horns, 2 – antlers, 3 – pointy devil horns.
    17. Grow younger or older 1d4 years (odd younger, even older).
    18. Gain a reputation as an expert in an esoteric subject that totally bores you. You now must spend 1d4 days giving seminars in towns you visit that have magic-users or gain a reputation for being rude, standoffish, and secretive.
    19. You look into the abyss, and it looks back. A duke of hell or other powerful demon is now aware of you.
    20. Experiment with magicoluminescence gone awry. One area of your body now radiates a pale, eldritch light. Roll for location: 1 face, 2 chest, 3 back, 4 left arm, 5 right arm, 6 rear, 7 left lef, 8 right leg. Impossible to surprise others unless that part is covered completely. Permanent unless dispelled.
    Credit to James for #19, and many of the other comments on Evan’s post for inspiration.

      DCC Beta Rules

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      The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Beta Rules are can be downloaded for free. I just saw this link over at Beyond the Pale Gate, but the scratchings on the PDF seems to indicate that it is from June 2011, so you very well might already have seen it. If you haven’t, you are in for a treat.

      Even if you don’t have time to read the PDF right away (I certainly don’t), download it anyways just to skim through and look at the art. The many full-page Peter Mullen pieces are worth it alone. Not to mention the works by many other artists, including an excellent Erol Otus picture on page 44. The comics sprinkled throughout are also a nice touch.