Image from Wikipedia

JB over at Blackrazor has been writing (one, two, three, four, five) about the phases of D&D (dungeon delving, wilderness exploration, and domain endgame) and how the traditional D&D incentive structure works well for the first, okay for the second, and not so well at all for the third. I more or less agree with his overall analysis. New incentives need to be discovered for domain play, and not just collecting taxes (because that is boring).

As idle thought experiments, here are two variations on the traditional phase-based D&D game. In the first variation, you tell the story backwards. You already have a lord or wizard with a stronghold and followers, and the game is to figure out how they got there. Unlike standard D&D, final death can’t be a danger because you already know that your character makes it to name level. Also unlike standard D&D, the game would end when you reach first level or 0 XP, rather than potentially going on indefinitely.

Would there be a way to make D&D played backwards interesting? I’m not sure, maybe 1d3 adventures per level, with each “death” leading to some sort of complication that would draw out the particular adventure. So getting from name level back to the beginning with the fewest complications would be the achievement. I feel like there is some connection here to the idea of planning out build options up to high levels like is sometimes done in 3E and 4E.

Now for the second variation. What if players started out with a stronghold? Either one per player or collectively. I feel like this would probably feel very different from D&D, despite the fact that all the rules would be identical for things like classes and spells. I’m not sure exactly why this would be the case, except perhaps that in the standard dungeon to wilderness to domain play (assuming a relatively deadly and impartial referee), everything is earned, whereas in this proposed structure you get everything for free. Also, people would not be as attached to their individual characters and thus perhaps not care as much about their advancement.

I imagine such a game progressing by first setting a basic stage (surroundings, stronghold capabilities, followers) and then advancing domain turns (probably one month per turn) to see what happens, based on some series of event tables. Scope could be zoomed in or out as necessary, so for wilderness expeditions, the players would zoom down to the perspective of questing knights and their squires (or magic-users with warders seeking rare spell components).

What would the overall motivation be to keep playing? Perhaps, like Dwarf Fortress, to see how many domain turns you can keep the whole thing going before being overwhelmed by an orc invasion or releasing some nameless menace from a long-sealed tomb? Individual characters need not gain levels (knights could just be level 4 fighters, for example) but I could see gaining powerful magic items still functioning as a reward of sorts. Does this just turn into a war game? Perhaps, but I’m not sure; especially if there are not opposing player-controlled sides.

Beginning complexity would also be higher than traditional D&D (and thus character/domain generation requirements would be heavier), but since there would be multiple characters (a lord, knights, spies, dungeoneers), lethality would not be problematic like it is in heavy chargen systems that make you put all your eggs in one basket. Such a basket is easily sent to the grave with a bad save versus poison roll.

Part of the tension here might be that when playing D&D, people want (or at least expect) to play an individual, whereas the domain level game is really less about individuals and more about collectives. This is why the incentives at the individual level don’t seem to make as much sense. Thus, maybe Game of Thrones style intrigue from the beginning just doesn’t work as well in a game, or at least not in the compulsively obsessive way D&D does.

Vincent Baker’s entry in the LotFP grand adventure campaign (The Seclusium of Orphone) looks really interesting to me. In essence, it is a random wizard tower generator (something I have been thinking of putting together myself, actually) along with an example tower and scenario. In addition, it is intended to be a tribute to Jack Vance.

I knew that Vincent Baker had written Dogs in the Vineyard, but what I didn’t know before today was that he has also written In a Wicked Age and Apocalypse World. Wouldn’t you like to see this creativity chained to a simple traditional fantasy game like Lamentations? I certainly would.

But I’ve already contributed to the adventure campaign. I dallied to begin with, because there were so many options, and also because it was not clear where my contribution would do the most good. I narrowed my options down to $100 towards one project or $30 towards three different projects. As the front runner (Broodmother Sky Fortress) was still unfunded as of this morning (though it was getting close), I finally decided that that would be the best place to put my resources.

So what’s the deal with that stack of books in the picture above? I have a number of RPG books that I don’t use very much, but are in great condition, either like-new or lightly used. Some of them are duplicates, some of them are just books that I don’t see myself using much in the future for whatever reason. For example, I now have 2.66 copies if the AD&D core set, and an extra copy of the excellent Weird Adventures by Trey Causey. I’m not a collector, so I don’t see any value in keeping some of these books when they could be getting some use. If you contribute $100 towards Broodmother Sky Fortress (until it funds) or The Seclusium of Orphone (until it funds), I’ll give you one of these books, and pay for shipping too. First come, first served. Note that not all books in the list are in the picture, and there is no attempt at a parity of value. Also note that I will only send you the free book if the campaign in question reaches the target, as you will get your money back from IndieGoGo if it doesn’t.

• B1-9 adventure collection (there is a small bend in the spine) (reserved for AB)
• Hardcover Fight On! compilation of issues 1 through 4
• Second Edition Player’s Handbook
• Second Edition Monstrous Manual
• AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (orange spine) (reserved for AV)
• AD&D Players Handbook (orange spine) (reserved for JW)
• AD&D Monster Manual (orange spine) (reserved for olajostein)
• Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets
• Weird Adventures hardcover (reserved for JA)
• Microscope paperback (reserved for JS)
• D&D Fourth Edition DMG 2
• D&D Fourth Edition Open Grave (the 4E undead book)

I know that for the cost of shipping these I could contribute more to the campaigns myself, but if even a few people take me up on this offer, it will help more to get other people to contribute. I figure that if some people are still on the fence or unsure which project to back, this might help.

The fine print: Raggi has nothing to do with this, it’s all me. So if I screw something up, you can’t blame him. If you have any questions about a specific item, please ask. I’ll ship to anywhere in North America or Europe, but if you live somewhere else, please check with me first. I don’t want to be stuck paying $50 to ship a hardcover to Mongolia or something. Also, the deal is only good for people who help out with these projects during this final stretch, not those that have already contributed. Sorry about that, but fairness is not my aim here.

If you could only keep ten of your printed RPG books, which would you pick? I asked this question a while back on Google Plus, and got some interesting answers (I also learned about some awesome books, like the Warhammer Realms of Chaos volumes; thanks Zak!). Then recently this TSR versus OSR thread came up on ODD74. I do not generally enjoy false choice hypotheticals, but it did make me recall this exercise, which is sort of an empirical version of the same idea.

I’m going with the following arbitrary conventions, because restrictions are fun. First, it has to be something I actually own and a physical book. Second, the decision has to be based on content not rarity or value (though content can incorporate things like nostalgia value and artwork).

The original list that I posted to G+ was the following: AD&D DMG, the 3 OD&D booklets, LotFP Referee book, S1-4 Realms of Horror, The Guide Book to Taladas, D&D Rules Cyclopedia, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Tome of Adventure Design. I have changed a few items, but it has remained largely the same.

Also, I know many people think very highly of the core Wilderlands books, and some of them probably deserve placement. I only have them in badly-scanned RPGNow PDFs though, and so I haven’t really spent much time with them. So they are disqualified both for technical reasons (not books) and for practical reasons (I really haven’t used them much).

So how do the TSR and OSR camps fare?

• 4 early TSR (original D&D and the DMG)
• 1 Judges Guild (Ready Ref Sheets)
• 3 OSR (LotFP Grindhouse, TOAD, Carcosa)
• 1 more recent non-OSR (Vampire)
• 1 alternate take on fantasy from the 80s (Warhammer)

Also, when I was doing this, I couldn’t actually keep it to only ten, so I included some runners-up also. The runners-up are about evenly divided between “original” material and OSR material.

I, II, III: Dungeons & Dragons. Suggestive rather than prescriptive. By the time we get to AD&D, we can already see all the tendencies of modern games in proto form. Here, things are still wide open. And the systems are really elegant, if you can get past the bad organization. Concise though, so still faster to learn than most bigger games.

IV: Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Gygax’s magnum opus. I believe this volume needs no introduction. I don’t even particularly like AD&D as a complete system, and this still would take a place near the top.

V: Ready Ref Sheets. This is sort of the Judges Guild DMG, but almost all tables. City encounters by social level, poison tables, offensive locution rules (social combat!), tables for ruins, verdict and punishment tables. A really great resource.

VI: Tome of Adventure Design. Random tables for just about everything, and lots of philosophy about how to use them. Another random monster generator. More tools for dungeon generation. There is not really anything else of this scope and quality available, even considering everything published to date.

VII: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Another direction fantasy gaming could have gone. A great diversity of character options that manages to avoid choice paralysis and does not reward system mastery. Not afraid of dark atmosphere. Chaos metaphysics. Also, John Blanche (example 1, example 2, example 3).

VIII: LotFP Grindhouse Edition Referee Book. Probably the best thematic book on refereeing. Fits my “suspense movie” style perfectly. If we’re counting boxed sets as single items, of course the entire Grindhouse Edition would go here, but this is the standout booklet from that set for me. There is a free no-art PDF of the Rules & Magic book.

IX: Vampire: The Dark Ages. What is a Storyteller book doing in the top 10? I have enough D&D mechanics in my head that I don’t really need anything to play, so what I want in books is primarily inspiration. This book is beautiful, and has excellent atmosphere. I would probably still use D&D type mechanics. Dark ages Transylvanian dungeon crawls.

X: Carcosa. Unapologetic dark imagery, one of the best examples of a sandbox, random cthuloid monster generator, random robot generator, random tech artifact generator. This is how it’s done. It’s only missing a sample town. Perhaps the most attractive bound RPG book I own, too. Rich Longmore art.

Runner-up I: Empire of the Petal Throne. Honestly, this should almost certainly be higher on this list. It isn’t only because I don’t yet feel knowledgeable enough about EPT to have much intelligent to say about it. I am more interested in EPT because of its system, not the setting, which I gather is odd.

Runners-up II, III: B/X D&D. In many respects, these two books make up my favorite iteration of the game. So why aren’t they in the top ten? Well, the 3 LBBs are already there, it’s hard to justify both, and the LBBs have more (though in less detail). For example, there is no stronghold resident generator in B/X. If B/X was one book, it might replace Vampire in the top ten.

Runner-up IV: Monster Manual. If Monsters & Treasure from the original box didn’t also have treasure, the Monster Manual would probably win. It has all the important iconic monsters, though I still sort of prefer the open ended nature of the OD&D box monster write-ups.

Runner-up V: Fiend Folio. More weird fantasy and less mythology than the Monster Manual. An excellent example of what might live in an alternate cosmology setting. Russ Nicholson art. Elemental princes of evil. Githyanki and drow. Grell. Killmoulis. Slaad. Man, maybe this should be in the top ten. The encounter tables in the back are also almost a complete setting.

Runner-up VI: Mutant Future. I’ve never seen the original Gamma World, but I gather Mutant Future is more compatible with D&D, which is how I would want to use a post-apocalyptic game anyways. I like MF more than Metamorphosis Alpha. One of the real strengths of the OSR is the off-genre offerings.

Runner-up VII: The Guide Book to Taladas. From The Time of the Dragon setting (and see here). One of my favorite settings; more original and less sprawling than most TSR settings without being batshit crazy like Dark Sun (which I also like). And illustrated by Stephen Fabian (linked pictures are just to give you a sense of his style; they are not from this book).

Runner-up VIII: Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. The style and attitude of this volume are just amazing, and there are lots of rules ideas that could easily be poached, like the dice chain and variable attack bonuses. So what that half of the content is spell tables. Erol Otus art. Pete Mullen art. I’m usually not a fan of such physically cumbersome books, but DCC caries it.

Runner-up IX: Realms of Crawling Chaos. This is a great supplement, very tightly written. A bit too much overlap with Carcosa to have both in the top ten, but very worth picking up, especially for the Reading Eldritch Tomes and Random Artifacts appendices. The psionics section is also good. Most of this book is reusable as open game content, too.

Runner-up X: D&D Rules Cyclopedia. With both OD&D and B/X in the running, there is no way that I could include the Rules Cyclopedia too, but it still deserves a mention for the breadth of material that it covers, even if pretty much all of the interior art is bland. The hex maps are great too, but but the book lacks guidelines on hexcrawl play.

Runner-up XI: B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. I feel an example of town, wilderness, and dungeon all together would be good to have (though the wilderness in B2 is not really fleshed out). Perhaps this should be higher; I’m not sure. B2 also has lots of good referee advice that probably should have been in the core rulebooks.

So, encumbrance. This is a solved problem, right? We have encumbrance by stone, the much-lauded LotFP encumbrance system, and several others. All these are great, and are certainly an improvement over counting coin weights or pounds.

I used the LotFP system successfully for my 4E hack game. It worked well, though there was some back and forth about how many daggers or torches counted as “an item” (we settled on 5). And, as elegant as the system is, it still requires some adding, and cross-referencing (even if all the info is on the character sheet). Math is for suckers. I think I can do it simpler and still maintain both verisimilitude and the resource management trade-offs.

Thinking more about it, there are really only a few questions I care about regarding encumbrance.

1. Attack penalty?
2. Skill penalty?
3. Movement rates (exploration/combat/escape)?

I am going to focus mostly on the movement in this post, because the attack and skill penalties are going to be more system-bound. In OD&D, which I’ve been focusing on recently, combat has few enough modifiers that encumbrance penalties don’t seem to make much sense (strength does not affect to-hit or damage rolls, and dexterity does not affect armor class). Thieves will take some sort of penalty to their skills when wearing more than leather, but I’ll decide that later.

In my experience, three levels of resolution are usually enough to model interesting phenomena without getting caught up in minutia. So I’ll go with that here too. Light, medium, and heavy encumbrance. This also fits the effects described in Moldvay (120′, 90′, 60′, 30′ movement rates) and is implied in OD&D (see Men & Magic page 15; light, heavy, and armored foot move at 12″, 9″, and 6″, respectively). LotFP used the B/X effects while changing the coin math to slot math.

Here is the proposal.

• nothing OR backpack OR leather armor =  no encumbrance (120’/40′)
• backpack + leather OR chain =  light encumbrance (90’/30′)
• backpack + chain OR plate =  medium encumbrance (60’/20′)
• backpack + plate =  heavy encumbrance (30’/10′)
• bulky item + any of the above = heavy encumbrance (30’/10′)

That’s it. Rather than counting items and keeping them under some cap, it turns into a simplified location-based system. Would it reasonably fit in your backpack? Is it a quick access item hanging off of a belt or bandolier? Is it in your hand? Those are the options. I left the 30’/10′ category there out of deference to Moldvay, but to be honest it seems a bit silly; I think I might make the bottom three categories all 60’/20′ (or maybe 30’/20′ to represent adrenaline).

This also means that we can encode this information by where we write the equipment on the character sheet without really requiring anything else. For example, have a carried items zone, a quick access zone, and a backpack zone (an example character sheet is included at the bottom of this post). This will also make it really obvious what is where as opposed to just measuring quantity (which is what the LotFP method does).

If you’re carrying some treasure, and it can reasonably fit in your backpack (say, some gems, a few hundred coins, and bowl), it all still just counts as a backpack. Once you start needing extra sacks or containers, things are either in your hands (see carried items below) or are bulky items such as treasure chests or small statues. Hirelings should be very useful here, and the backpack also becomes the unit of hireling carrying capacity.  Handing off or dropping your pack can help, and that seems reasonable to me. Note also that I am using backpack in a general sense here; if your character instead has a series of pouches or a satchel, that will just change (slightly) what is considered a sane amount of contents.

As mentioned above, in addition to items in a backpack, there are also the items that you are carrying and quick access items.

Carried. Most PCs probably have a few different modes regarding what they are holding. For example, torch mode and longbow mode. Writing those modes down will avoid any confusion later.

• Primary configuration. Example (“exploration”): lantern and shield.
• Secondary configuration. Example (“danger”): sword and shield.
• Tertiary configuration. Example (“ranged”): light crossbow.

Players can record as many configurations as they like, though I imagine 2 or 3 should be enough for most characters. It takes a round to switch between configurations, unless the items you are switching to are “quick access” (see below), and you don’t mind dropping what you are carrying, in which case the switch is free (e.g., dropping a torch and drawing a sword).

Quick access. These are objects that are explicitly arranged for access during battle. Things like belted scabbards, slung quivers, boot daggers, and bandoliers all are in this category. More than 3 or 4 such items requires explanation. Even a relatively heavy quick access item (like a two-handed sword in a scabbard on a character’s back) will not be cumbersome, so these items don’t count for encumbrance at all (though as always, common sense should apply in specific situations).

Backpack or pouches. Obviously, backpacks can hold more and do it more efficiently. Also, items stored in backpacks are not accessible during combat, at least not without spending several rounds (I would do this by situation, but something like 1d3 + 1 would be reasonable).

Bulky items. These would include things like a rolled up carpet, a treasure chest, or a chair. Even if it’s not that heavy, carrying a single bulky item consumes both hands and immediately drops your character to the worst encumbrance category. In general, a character can only carry one bulky item in standard exploration mode, though in special cases, or for short periods, exceptions might be made (like a strong character hefting several stacked chests while walking across a single room). The first thing I imagine anyone would do when confronted with danger is to get rid of any bulky items (either by handing them off to a hireling, or dropping them).

A character sheet using this encumbrance system

From the looks of it, the best thing about this system is that it makes interaction with the movement rates really simple, without requiring any math at all. If you drop your backpack, you go one category faster. Getting rid of your quick access or carried items isn’t going to help unless you are carrying something bulky. I could imagine using this system in a FLAILSNAILS pickup game without even needing to explain it to the players (what are you carrying? what is on your belt? can the rest of your stuff really all fit in your backpack?) which is certainly not true of encumbrance by stone or the LotFP system.

The main simplification comes from the fact that an almost empty backpack is mechanically equivalent to a stuffed backpack. Situational rulings can correct such outliers easily though. And really, what adventurer doesn’t carry too much stuff?

There has been some discussion on the blogs recently regarding the value and practicality of preparation. Check out Roger, in The Mediocrity of Improvisation; Noisms, in Verfremdungseffekt; Courtney, in On the Preparation; and the RPG Site thread which prompted the Monsters & Manuals post. Roger makes the most direct claim for the value of preparation (which I think is indisputable):

In short, while improvised content can be wildly fun and creative, it usually also tends toward a middle ground of risk and reward. … As sole authority, there is a strong pull toward the middle ground – to mitigate challenges, to clip rewards. The lurking spectre in the background is that of the juvenile, “mad god” style of DMing, where party-killing traps and mind-numbing treasures are handed out, “just because.” Avoiding this spectre, you veer towards the safe and average.

If you are deciding what PCs encounter “just in time” (without rolling on a table, as populating an encounter table is a form of preparation), there is almost no way to be impartial. Your choice of kobold or dragon is largely a choice about whether you want the party to live or die. All of the linked articles above make valuable points, but don’t mention (at least explicitly) what I consider to be the main reason that preparation is necessary, and the main benefit to be gained thereby.

Much of the discussion around sandbox play revolves around the idea of making player choice meaningful (as opposed to railroading where you will tell your story no matter what the players decide, or using quantum ogres). For this kind of play to be fair, PCs must have a way to learn about the threat levels of their possible choices. Players cannot make an informed and meaningful choice if you decide what is present after they have already made choices.

Or, in more concrete terms, you can put Mordor on the map, which gives players a chance to learn about the danger through rumors or other clues, or you can improvise them walking into Mordor. Following Roger, this will either be bland (because you don’t want to kill them) or unfair (because they were not given a chance to assess the risk and prepare, or go somewhere else).

This very specific kind of virtue is not dependent upon the quantity of preparation. You can put in a lot of time into Tolkien-style world building and still not obtain the primary virtue available from preparation, which is threat level communication. For example, a very simple hex map along with four encounter tables (one for each compas direction) and a few lairs are enough for you to be able to impartially dole out info about risk levels if your players are curious.

If you put a little more work into it (maybe some history and upcoming events, to bring the temporal dimension in), your players can make even more sophisticated choices (do they want to attempt the mountain pass before the snows, or take this other lucrative job first?). If PCs still kick in doors without listening first (or take analogous actions in other environments), then what happens is on them, as long as the info was available for them to find in the first place.

Courtesy of Jean Paul Gaultier. Number three and four are my personal favorites. All images found here (probably not safe for your workplace, though it depends on where you work). I suppose they could also be queens or noblewomen.