The fourth part of the D&D Next goals series was just posted, covering the proposed “advanced” rules. Here are links to parts one, two, and three if you are interested (they are all worth reading). Overall, I have to say that I am quite impressed and intrigued, even regarding the advanced rules.

Previously, I had assumed that this would be the basic structure of 5E:

• Basic: similar to Moldvay, simple traditional classes
• Standard: more classes, feats, and other build options such as multi-classing
• Advanced: detailed tactical rules, miniatures, domain rules, etc

Amazing Flower Knight Kingdom Death mini

Last year I made some gaming resolutions. Let’s see how I did.

1. Make a big dungeon
   Success. The Vaults of Pahvelorn still have many unmapped and unkeyed areas, but there is a big chunk of the dungeon that is complete, and I have been running it for the past 3 or more months. There are some interesting (at least, I think so) mechanical tricks too, though many of them have not been encountered.
2. Basing and/or painting minis
   Outlook is not so good here. One of my previous players glued some of my Otherworld minis, but other than that I didn’t do anything. The good news is that I think I decided not to care. In the future, if I buy any more minis (I already have some coming from the Reaper Bones kickstarter), I’ll just buy ones that don’t require assembly. Not that I even use miniatures for anything, as pretty much all my gaming right now is over Google hangouts. Oh, and if you haven’t seen the amazing miniatures that are part of the Kingdom Death game, you should check them out (credit to Ian for posting about KD; note, mature content). I have been recently thinking again about how much miniatures can help with the shared conception of combat geometry though, even (especially?) without using formal grid rules.
3. Classic D&D
   Total success! Running OD&D, and playing in numerous (mostly Labyrinth Lord based) other games, especially the excellent Wampus Country, HMS Apollyon, Dungeon of Signs ASE, P&P OD&D, Dwimmermount at OSRCon, and several others.
4. Make some art
   Not so successful. I don’t think I got around to doing any art, unless you count the Pahvelorn maps. This is just not part of my routine, I guess.
5. Wilderness map with encounter tables and everything
   Reasonably successful. Not quite as systematic as I would like, but I have a functional wilderness outside of Pahvelorn.
6. Gaming purchases: limit to 1 per month
   Total, abject failure. I stopped counting, but I’m sure I bought more than one thing per month. The point here is not so much about saving money (though that is always nice), but rather not buying things that I don’t have time to dedicate sufficient attention to. During 2012, I was still in the process of (re)discovering tabletop RPGs, which is why I picked up so many gaming books. There is not really anything else I want now, so I imagine I’ll be better about this in 2013. I’m sure something good will come out now and then though.

I didn’t keep track comprehensively of what I read last year, so I’m sure this list is incomplete. But here is a partial list along with some quick thoughts about each. Here is a similar post for 2011.

• Roger Zelazny – Jack of Shadows
  Wonderful, tightly written, from the original Appendix N, highly recommended. More here.
• Margaret St. Clair – The Shadow People
  At least half of this book is really interesting, especially the depiction of the underworld and the creepy fairies. Flawed by overly earnest 60s politics. More here.
• Andre Norton – Quag Keep
  Maybe the first novel based on D&D. Really quite bad though. Don’t bother unless you are really interested in the history of pulp fiction and specifically how it intersects with D&D. More here.
• Robert Howard – Kull: Exile of Atlantis
  In some ways a proto-Conan. At least one of the stories even shares a plot with a Conan story. That said, Kull is more reflective, and the setting is more detached from standard medieval fantasy, being more like the mythic ancient world. Highly recommended. The illustrated Del Rey collections are also quite attractive. More here.
• Robert Howard – The People of the Black Circle (Conan)
  Conan novella. Probably needs no introduction. Exceedingly D&D in feel.
• H. P. Lovecraft – At the Mountains of Madness
  I first read this in high school when I didn’t really appreciate Lovecraft. Rereading it convinced me that dungeons need more penguins.
• Karl Edward Wagner – Darkness Weaves
  Engaging Lovecraftian dark fantasy. Quick read, flawed by bad dialogue. Great adventure ideas and setting though. Kane seems like too much of a power fantasy to me.
• Jack Vance – Showboat World
  Everything I’ve read by Vance has been excellent, and this is no exception. Lacks the poetic power and imagination of the Dying Earth stories (especially the later ones), but still wonderful. Vance is a master stylist.
• William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland
  Excellent, surreal, beautifully written. Maybe even a bit disturbing, in a sort of cosmically nihilistic way. More affecting than Lovecraft for me, definitely (though that may have something to do Lovecraft’s presence in pop culture now).
• Michael Moorcock – City of the Beast
  Barsoom knockoff without much else to recommend it. Despite being an Elric fan, I don’t really care for Moorcock’s writing. I read his work for the imaginative settings. Probably more worthwhile to spend your time on Burroughs or some of the other Eternal Champion Moorcock stories if you are in the mood for his brand of pulp fantasy. More here.
• Poul Anderson – Three Hearts and Three Lions
  A number of D&D tropes were pulled directly from this book, so it is worth reading for the historical impact alone if you are interested in that sort of thing. Additionally, it’s actually a pretty good read, though I prefer The Broken Sword. More here.
• Brandon Graham et al – Prophet: Remission
  I can’t really praise this highly enough, though I haven’t gotten around to writing a blog post about it yet. Surreal, futuristic, posthuman. One of, if not the, best comic book I have read (not that I am all that widely read in this area). Here is a taste.
• C. S. Friedman – The Coldfire Trilogy (Black Sun Rising, etc.)
  An old favorite. Science fantasy that manifests almost all the D&D tropes through a goth lens. Read it for the setting, not the plot. Feels like it would make a good anime. More here.
• Grant Morrison – Doom Patrol, volumes 1 – 3
  Some interesting ideas, but a bit slow and I didn’t care for the art (though it does gradually improve marginally). The philosophical ideas are also a bit too transparently referenced for me. Overall, my opinions on Doom Patrol are mixed. I have the next three sitting on my shelf. The Bisley covers are excellent.
• Neil Gaiman – The Books of Magic
  Gaiman’s vision of faerie land and small gods has always been appealing to me, so I enjoyed this, though it was nothing particularly special. His Sandman work and his novels are probably better.
• Grant Morrison – All-Star Superman 1
  Great art, very iconic. Reads like a collection of short stories (there is not much plot continuity). I wanted to read some Superman after hearing Frank Mentzer compare high level play to the dilemma Superman faces: not how to defeat his enemies, but how to prevent those he cares about from becoming collateral damage. I wrote about this idea and how it relates to power levels before also. Maybe one of these days I’ll learn how to enjoy high level play more.
• Elizabeth Moon – The Deed of Paksenarrion
  The story of a paladin and the most like AD&D of perhaps any novel I have read, including books explicitly set in D&D worlds. Recommended, though it is slow in places. Be aware that there are some relatively explicit torture scenes.
• Robert Howard – The Hour of the Dragon (Conan)
  The only novel-length Conan story Howard wrote. Of course it is good.
• Jodorowsky – The Metabarons
  Like an extended comic from Heavy Metal. Feels like all of the dialogue is shouted. Visually beautiful space opera setting. Also connected to The Incal, which is drawn by Moebius and waiting on my shelf for me. See also Weapons of the Metabarons which contains this sublime image (a collection of Weapons is coming soon, I gather).
• Tolkien – The Hobbit
  Worth a regular reread. I enjoyed many aspects of Jackson’s adaptation (the coming of Smaug in the prologue, the riddle scene), but overall the movie is a bit too grandiose for this modest story.

One of the concepts that I have found resonating with me from the 2d6 fantasy game is the idea of the experience die. The experience die is kind of like a hit die, except that you spend it to cancel damage when you get hit rather than roll it at the beginning to see how many hit points you get. In my first conception, an experience die could also be used as a sort of wild card fate point that you could add to any other roll (though note that the outcome of this use is not certain in the way that the use of a fate point is). For now I would just like to consider the idea of deferring hit dice.

What if we were to bolt this concept onto D&D? How would that work? Characters would have no hit points, they would just have hit dice. Every time a character took damage, they would spend some hit dice to cancel out that damage, continuing to spend the dice until either all the damage was cancelled or all the hit dice were exhausted. All hit dice being exhausted is much like being reduced to zero or less HP. The character would be automatically knocked unconscious at that point, and would need to roll a save versus death to test for survival.

This does make hit dice slightly less valuable in a mathematical sense, as “extra” HP per die (compared to a given hit) is wasted. For example, if a character is hit for 2 damage, experience dice must be spent to avoid rolling a saving throw. Assume the character is first level (and thus has only one experience die). If the player rolls a 2 or higher, all the damage is cancelled. If, say, a 5 is rolled though, the die is still fully spent, and the next hit taken will automatically cause either unconsciousness or death (depending on the saving throw result). Perhaps allowing experience dice to not be consumed if a six is rolled would be an interesting variant.

What do you think? Hate it or love it? I confess that I am rather taken with the idea, as it allows characters to benefit from advancement while maintaining the tension of taking damage right up to the point of final resolution (a character with six hit dice could potentially roll six ones and be mortally threatened by 1d6 damage, if the damage die came up 6).

Edit: how would healing work? Maybe by restoring spent hit dice. So cure light wounds would restore one hit die.

A villa in the Vaults of Pahvelorn

Evan has a post up about the level of detail used for megadungeon keys. This is something I’ve been playing with a lot recently as well.

This map should probably look rather familiar to my players, as it is the first villa within the cavernous area beyond the upper eastern door. The state of these rooms has moved on, and I think they have found all of the architectural features, so it should be relatively spoiler-free.

The vertical layout is probably not clear from the map. Rooms 2 and 3 are “standard” underground chambers, whereas rooms 6 through 14 make up a villa which is part of a buried city in a cavern. The floor of rooms 2 and 3 are at about the same level (a bit higher) as the roof of the villa. Area 15 is an alley. The “W” in room 3 is an open window looking down over the subterranen boulevard (20′ drop).

This was the original key.

Level image from Wikipedia

XP required by level:

1. 0
2. 1
3. 2
4. 4
5. 8
6. 16
7. etc

See this post on the LOZAS levelling system for part of the inspiration behind “the monster” as unit of measurement (though here the advancement is nonlinear).

Following is my contribution to Santicore 2012.

THE SANTICORE REQUEST:

A really playable write-up for a Were-man race that includes stats, rules on how and under what circumstances a player shifts to and from were-form with subsequent table if the Santicore deems it appropriate.

Image from here

There are those that walk among us, cursed by the moon. Some are demons incarnate, some consider their curse a gift, and some are worshipped as fickle gods. These were-creatures are infused with the savage essence of an animal (or perhaps that essence is there in all people, and is only awakened by the curse). Weres will always be a manifestation of the most feared local animal, whether this is a wolf, bear, tiger, crocodile, or something else. Sometimes they will be hunted like monsters.

The essence of a were-creature is savage power chained to loss of control. As weres grow more experienced their bestial strength becomes more powerful and they gain more control over when and how the beast will manifest.

In addition to class level, a were character should maintain a separate “were level” stat. For characters born with the curse, “were level” is identical to class level, though it tops out at six. Were level represents the degree of control over the beast inside, and also the power of the lunar curse. Characters that are cursed later in their career begin at were level 1 and gain a were level whenever they gain a class level. For example, if a character is cursed at level 3, that character will be were level 4 when they are class level 6. For the rest of this document, W should be read as were level. Tables of potential backgrounds and animal abilities are included below for inspirational purposes.

TABLE I: WERE-CREATURE BACKGROUND

1. Punishment for engaging in the sin of wrath
2. Drank from a pool reflecting moonlight polluted with the blood of three innocents
3. Sired by a parent that committed a great savagery
4. Possessed by an animal spirit
5. Created as a servitor to a now dead sorcerer
6. God of a savage tribe that was wiped out by something
7. Beast of the dark wood, awakened by love now lost
8. Birthed by the nightmare of a mad psychoactive child
9. Once a beast hunter, but was defeated by a demon and woke up cursed
10. Magical mishap: an apprentice magic-user tried to create a potion of bestial strength but the procedure backfired

TABLE II: WERE-ANIMALS

1. crocodile (+1 extra AC, viselike bite)
2. wolf (+1 to checks that benefit from smell)
3. bear (strength)
4. owl (flying, +1 to operating in darkness by low-light vision)
5. leopard (powerful leaps)
6. spider (save or take d6 extra poison damage)
7. hawk (flying, +1 to checks that benefit from sight)
8. lion (fearsome roar forces morale check)
9. bat (flying, +1 to operating in darkness by echolocation)
10. cheetah (+1 speed category)

Image from Wikipedia

Flying creature weres gain the ability to glide short distances at were-level 3 and fly awkwardly (half the speed of an unencumbered man) at were-level 6. If your totem animal is not on the above list, invent a special ability that makes sense.

Weres have the following abilities and drawbacks:

1. Savage transformation
2. The call of the moon
3. Preternatural defenses
4. Claws and teeth
5. Fighting for survival
6. Pure animality
7. Bestial empathy
8. Loss of control

Savage transformation. Weres may attempt to shift into beast form at will. This has a W in 6 chance of success (so a character of were level 2 has a 2 in 6 chance of successfully transforming). The beast form is a hybrid creature, which ranges from almost completely human at W = 1 to almost completely bestial at W = 6. When in beast form, the character may not retreat from combat. Once finished, the were may not transform again until the next moon rise. Clothing and equipment do not transform along with the were. Clothing or armor has a W in 6 chance of being destroyed by the transformation unless it is very loose. This does no damage to the were character, however.

The call of the moon. Every night with a full moon, the character will turn into beast form. If desired, this transformation can be resisted, with a W in 6 chace. They will hunt prey overnight in whatever way is most direct; this may include hunting innocent people (though not companions). Roll on TABLE III: COMPLICATIONS below for the outcome.

Preternatural defenses. When in beast form, the were gains an AC bonus equal to W and damage reduction against mundane weapons equal to W. Silver weapons bypass this defense (and do damage as normal).

Claws and teeth. In beast form, the were grows claws, fangs, or other natural weapons. A successful attack does d6 + W damage. On either a damage roll of 6 or a natural 20 attack roll, the attack is especially brutal and messy. Use critical hits as appropriate to your campaign, or if more abstraction is preferred, inflict a -2 penalty ongoing to all victim rolls until the victim recovers.

Fighting for survival. The beast does not give in easily. If reduced to 0 HP in human form, roll d6. On a roll of W or less, the character will automatically shift to beast form and gain W temporary HP.

Pure animality. At were level 6, the beast form may be a perfect simulacrum of the natural animal if desired, though it will be larger.

Bestial empathy. Reaction rolls with animals of the were type gain a bonus of +W. Reaction rolls with animals that are natural prey of the were type have a penalty of -W. This modifier applies in human form as well. For example, sheep will always likely be skittish around a were-wolf.

Loss of control. Any mind effect (charm, fear, etc) forces an immediate involuntary transformation. This may be resisted with a W in 6 chance.

For 6 in 6 chances, roll two dice. If both dice come up 6, the check is a failure.

TABLE III: COMPLICATIONS

1. Killed a person of importance, and there were witnesses
2. Killed a person of importance, no witnesses
3. 1d6 * 50 GP worth of livestock slain and/or devoured, with witnesses
4. 1d6 * 50 GP worth of livestock slain and/or devoured, no witnesses
5. Injured somehow, covered in blood, 1/2 move rate for following adventure
6. Imprisoned by mundane authorities, the victim lived
7. Trapped by a wizard, released under a geas
8. Transformation witnessed by a powerful or influential NPC
9. Transformation witnessed by an NPC of average import
10. Killed someone and is now haunted by the shade of the victim

Cropped image by Gus L. from here

I’ve recently been playing a fighter in an ASE game. He’s kind of a demobilized army ranger type crossed with a roman legionnaire. The game is great, run by Gus L. over at Dungeon of Signs. One thing very notable about the ASE setting is its “almost anything goes” approach to equipment, consistent with the general gonzo mood.

For example, pages 33 to 38 in ASE1 consist of a “Post-Apocalyptic Equipment” section which contains gems like:

• Lighter; 25 GP
• Gas mask; 1500 GP
• Large pistol; 750 GP; 1d6 damage; +1 to hit within 15′
• Shotgun, sawed off, 2 barrel; 4000 GP; 1d8/1d12 ; +3 to hit within 5′
• Grenade; 400 GP; 1d8 damage within 10′, 1d4 damage within 20′
• Laser rifle; 9000 GP; 1d8+2 light damage; +1 to hit within 300′
• Manifold long sword; 6000 GP; 1d8+2 damage; +2 to hit

Playing a fighter, I like the fact that I can look over these gear lists and see something to work towards. By the time I have managed to accumulate the 6000 GP for a manifold long sword, my character will probably be 4th or 5th level (assuming he lives that long). Being mostly technological, they don’t really impinge on the strangeness or wonder of enchanted items. This seems to be yet one more way that post apocalyptic settings work well with the nature of D&D. Adding a bit of technology means that magic items don’t have to fill the role of technology within the setting, while still giving non-magical characters something to look forward to.