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.

I have these DVDs of the original He-Man cartoons that I’ve been meaning to watch. They were a big influence on me when I was young, and probably helped get me interested in fantasy. I figure blogging about them a little might help urge me on. Also, before going any further, check out Robert Parker’s essay on Masters of the Universe (this is required reading). Why might this be of interest to you, even if you have no He-Man nostalgia? I’ll just quote a bit from Robert’s post:

I’m talking about intergalactic vampire warlords invading your sword & sorcery world and installing Satanic Lich-Kings in a bid for colonial rule. Pterodactyl riders with laser guns in a dogfight with UFOs piloted by serpent men. Cleaving through hordes of cyborg beast-men as we leap from asteroid to asteroid towards that leering organic castle in space.

That’s why.

I’m not sure if this will become a semi-regular feature or not; I suppose it depends on how much I feel like I am getting out of watching the show and if watching it leads to interesting gaming ideas. I’m starting with MU004 because it was the first episode on the first disc. All the other episodes seem to be in order, so I think this one might have aired first or something like that.

A glimpse at the world map

I’m not going to try to put together a coherent plot summary or anything like that here; instead, I think I’ll just range about arbitrarily, like a crazy Eternian tour guide. What’s the diamond ray of disappearance? It’s probably more interesting to leave it to your imagination. The plots are nothing to write home about, as you might expect, but the setting ideas, ambiance, and some of the character ideas are pretty fantastic. Check out that world map above. One can almost identify the ghost of the Americas, but then there is that narrow continent that extends into the “Pacific” and that is covered by volcanoes or something in the middle. You probably don’t want to hexcrawl over there until you have some levels under your belt.

A stronghold

Above we can see a sample of Eternian architecture, a stronghold perched on a bluish stone outcropping. Pleasingly ambiguous, this fortress or town could easily be science fiction or cyclopean fantasy.

Another strangely subdued vista

And again, zoomed out. If you haven’t already looked at the Monster Brains post linked to in Robert’s post, it is definitely worth your time. The amazing thing about those paintings is that they actually look like the toys if you are familiar with them, but don’t look like toys otherwise.

Note the colors: Dr. Seuss by way of H. P. Lovecraft?

Giant purple spires of rock, swept slightly to the side as if blown by wind. Plains of dark green vegetation, thick like a woman’s hair, waving slightly in the breeze like seaweed underwater.

This is where the good guys get their powers

Here is Castle Grayskull, the home of The Sorceress and the source of He-Man’s power. Perhaps He-Man is a somewhat naive warlock, being used as a vessel to defend the lands of civilization? Magic item power sword idea: every time the transformation is invoked, a saving throw must be rolled to avoid rolling on a mutation table.

Purple swamps

Color is such a powerful aesthetically unifying tool, but something that is often not consciously brought into tabletop RPG play, other than for use as an occasional descriptor (“the man with the red cloak”). I wonder how effective it would be to take a cinematographer’s approach to setting design and consciously attempt to apply different combinations of colors to various settings or setting areas? Jack over at TOTGAD likes to apply “taste, sound, image” to each of his area descriptions (example: What Ulverland is Like). Why not add a few colors, too? The putrescent swamp: pale green, dark purple, dark blue, and gray.

Evil cotton candy vegetation

Grenadier Miniatures 2004 – Hirelings

There are two types of adventuring hirelings, combatant and noncombatant. Useful animals can also be purchased. You may roll on the STARTING RETAINER table once during PC creation. Consider the retainer to be paid up for one delve. The retainer comes with the basic equipment noted, but you may want to purchase additional gear for them. Below are also prices if you want to continue their employment (derived from Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox, since OD&D does not give guidance).

roll

RETAINER PRICES

• Combatant (5 GP): bodyguard or mercenary
• Noncombatant (2 GP): torchbearer, porter, squire, shieldbearer, servant
• Trained animal (20 GP): war dog or mule

Prices are per delve, other than the animals, which are owned outright. A delve is generally understood to be a single expedition, usually no longer than a few days, but occasionally as long as a week. Expeditions longer than a week require more payment. It is expected that the job ends (and wage must be renewed) once the party returns to town or civilization. Retainers expect that their meals will be provided.

Morale and loyalty will be handled as per Men & Magic. Animals have a loyalty rating just like hirelings (this is a house-rule), but their loyalty will increase after every expedition during which they are treated well. Unlike the monster-dogs of AD&D, war dogs here are 1 hit die creatures. Dogs don’t show up in OD&D, so I’ve just given them the same price as mules.

Bodyguards will attempt to defend their employer, while mercenaries will generally be more offensive. Torchbearers, porters, and servants will stay out of combat and in general will only fight if cornered (if threatened, they will run). Squires will stay near employers during combat and provide replacement weapons or reloading, though they may flee if the danger becomes too great. Note that squires may also be used by classes other than fighters (consider tome-holders and scroll-bearers). Shieldbearers usually carry a large shield that requires two hands to use, and will grant a small AC bonus to their employer where appropriate (just remember that a trusty shield on your own arm cannot fail a morale check or be slain).

It is also possible to find more specialized hirelings (such as: sage, bard, chronicler, alchemist, assassin, spy, standard-bearer, messenger), but they will be much more expensive and often will refuse to accompany adventurers into danger.

All hirelings are 0 level humans with one hit die. Do not bother rolling ability scores unless your PC dies and you need to promote the hireling to full player character status. If this happens, you may also choose an adventuring class when you return to civilization.

Thanks to all those on G+ that provided useful suggestions when I brought up this topic.

Delve! First Issue Cover

I just picked up a copy of the new zine Delve! (the PDF version) by the OSR artist Johnathan Bingham. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Bingham’s work, he has done the cover of the OSRIC module The People of the Pit (shown below), the cover of the recent Lands of Ara Compendium, and many other things (here is a pretty good collection from his blog). He plans on selling a print version too sometime soon, but the PDF includes pages formatted to easily print yourself (in addition to the standard formatting; see more about this below).

The form factor is digest-sized, which is very nice for tablet reading. The zine itself is about 40 pages of content. In actuality, the entire contents of the issue is a module, which includes a number of new spells, magic items, and monsters (easily usable stand-alone as well). The vibe is what I would consider Lamentations-style Weird Fantasy. Quick take-away: as a PDF module, this is a fantastic steal for $5. Recommended. I have a few suggestions, but most of them apply to published modules in general and should not be read as overly critical of Delve! in particular. Now to the details.

The module features the lair of a diabolical disease wizard (Calmos Vectos Mori), and introduces a new school of magic called pathognomancy. The writing style is very dense, and paragraphs sometimes stretch almost over entire pages. This would be a hard module to run without making referee notes prior to play. This writing style reminds me of AD&D 1E modules, and that is probably intended, as the system given is OSRIC (though it should work just fine with any of the major retro-clones).

Cover also by Mr. Bingham

Some event hooks are provided, but the meat of the adventure is a 12 room site. From a read-through, it looks pretty challenging; I would guess around 5th level AD&D (though that will obviously vary based on party and magic items possessed). There are several good disease oriented effects tables, a laboratory full of dangerous things for inquisitive PCs to play with, and a table of evocative extraplanar locations (though a 3d3 table is just silly; it should be a d20 or d30 table).

All the new monsters and magic items are illustrated, though the spells are not. The contagion guards remind me of Bioshock (that’s a good thing). The layout is uniformly nice, though the AD&D spell format and lack of spell illustrations leads to lots of unused white space on the spell pages. I must admit, I don’t understand the appeal of the AD&D template formats. Why not use a more compact format similar to a monster stat line? For example, which would you prefer? AD&D:

Bloat
Arcane Pathognomancy
Level: Magic User 2
Range: 40 ft
Duration: 6 rounds
Area of Effect: One Person
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 4 Segments
SavingThrow: None

Or stat line:

Bloat, MU2 spell, 40 ft, 6 rounds, one person, VSM, 4 segments, no save.

Would anyone familiar with AD&D or OSRIC not understand the stat line version? And it uses an order of magnitude less space. Oh, all the spells, monsters, and treasures are open game content, which is appreciated.

I think all modules, but especially ones written so densely, would benefit from play aids in addition to (but not replacing) the prose. One possibility is the one page dungeon, another is Courtney’s set design outline format.

Tacked on to the end is the print format

I mentioned above that the digital version of the zine includes two formats; standard digest and printable. This is a nice touch, and makes it possible for people without a duplex printer (like me) to produce a hardcopy. I would like to see other publishers go the same route, though it is slightly disconcerting to have both formats in a single PDF rather than a zip file containing multiple PDFs.

Bingham is also one of the authors participating in the current LotFP adventure campaign; his offering is Strange and Sinister Shores. The precis is interesting, and if the first issue of Delve! is anything to go by, S&SS will be quite good (if it is produced). One of the downsides to making all the projects compete against each other during the same month is that the slightly less known have been overshadowed by those authors with more established followings. Almost half-way into the campaign, I think it’s pretty clear that this was a bad decision. The offerings should have been done sequentially (perhaps one per month), so that community enthusiasm could focus on one at a time.