Magical Affinity Draft

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Here is a reworked version of the magical disciplines system. This iteration is slightly more limited (there are only 12 disciplines) and they subsume the common cleric functions using a colors of magic system. Vitality magic risks causing aging (though I have some updated and streamlined mechanics for this inspired by Talysman that I will post separately).

The spell metaphysics and descriptive parts are heavily influenced by The Dying Earth, which should probably be obvious. This is part of something that is rapidly evolving (to both my dismay and delight) into a full-blown heartbreaker (that is still entirely compatible with the traditional game). Thus, there may be several references to other aspects of the system that are not explained herein. Apologies for that, but I suspect things should be pretty clear from context. Posting smaller parts as blog posts helps me make progress on the whole.

SPELLS

Worm-eaten books speak of hundreds, or even thousands, of spells in the past. In these degenerate times, only twelve spells remain. Each has been handed down through the ages, hand-prepared laboriously (for each individual must make their own copy to fully understand the mysteries). For example, though most sorcerers have knowledge of the dread tome of necromancy, actually procuring a copy can be far from easy. This is compounded by the fact that white magicians commonly destroy the books of black magic and vice versa. Spells are not mere manipulations of reality using arcane techniques. They are actually a type of hyperdimensional creature that exists sideways to reality. Preparing a spell involves binding such a creature, and imprisoning it inside the sorcerer’s consciousness. All effects within a single domain are actually manifestations of the same kind of bound creature. Generally, spells work against sorcerers, which is why “higher level” effects are harder to accomplish (and more dangerous). Forgetting a spell means the sorcerer has lost control of the creature in their head.

USING MAGIC

All characters have a rank in each discipline, ranging from 0 to 6, where 0 indicates no familiarity and 1 indicates basic competence. Magic-users may “safely” attempt effects of level equal to or less than their discipline rank. When casting a spell, a magic-user must make a saving throw. Upon success, the spell goes off and they may use spells from the discipline again in the same day. Upon failure (but not fumble) the spell still goes off, but the magic-user may use no spells from that discipline again until they have had a good night’s sleep and studied their magic books. If a fumble is rolled, the spell fails or backfires in some inconvenient (and probably dangerous) manner (use the spell fumble or corruption system of your choice). A roll of 1 is always a fumble.

Higher level effects may be attempted, but at greater risk. The same procedure is used as above, but the saving throw takes a penalty equal to the spell level, and the save must succeed for the spell to go off. A roll of 20 is always considered a success. Also, the fumble range is extended by the level of the spell. So, if a 4th level magic-user (max spell level: 2) is attempting to cast a 5th level spell, they roll their saving throw with a -5 penalty and the spell backfires on rolls of 1 through 6. This same procedure will obtain until the caster reaches 9th level, when the save penalty disappears and the fumble range drops to 1. In other words, the progression is not linear (though the base save versus spells does improve at 6th level and 11th level); this is intended. You don’t get it, and don’t get it, and then it finally clicks. Thus, magic-users may attempt any effect at any level, though doing something like conjuring an elemental at first level will almost certainly result in disaster.

AFFINITY

Magical affinity ranges from -6 (chaotic) to 6 (lawful). All characters begin at 0. Whenever a character casts a black magic or white magic spell, affinity shifts one step in the appropriate direction. For example, if a sorcerer casts charm person, which belongs to the domination discipline (black magic), affinity shifts one point negative. Affinity cannot be higher than 6 or lower than -6, so ignore any further shifts in either of those cases. Affinity serves as a penalty to casting spells from the opposite end of the spectrum. For example, a sorcerer with a magical affinity of -4 (chaotic) would take a penalty of 4 when casting white magic spells. In addition, black magic is forbidden in most civilized areas (“malfeasance”) and is punishable by branding and banishment (at the very least) or death by burning (more commonly).

Magical affinity encodes some aspects of what would be considered alignment in other games. It has nothing to do with morals or behavior, however; affinity only measures a character’s relationship with the cosmic forces of law and chaos. Characters with affinity scores of more than 3 in either direction may start to be affected by, for example, protection from evil. They may also manifest their affinity in other ways, including mutation or physical changes.

ADVANCEMENT

Characters that choose the path of SORCERY begin play with one spell book (determined randomly or by player choice). All other spells books must be discovered through play. It is possible for adventurers on other paths to gain competency in spells also, but it is twice as difficult. Sorcerers may learn no more than 1 plus their intelligence modifier disciplines, and other classes may only learn a number of disciplines equal to their intelligence modifier. No adventurer may advance more than one point on a single discipline per advancement period. (I’m still playing around with several other schemes for advancement limitation, including limiting the total spell ranks to the intelligence score, and providing “retraining” rules.)

DISCIPLINES

Discipline 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Turn Undead skeleton zombie ghoul wight wraith mummy
Vitality cure light wounds slow poison cure disease neutralize poison cure serious wounds raise dead
Warding prot. from evil prot. from evil 10′ radius dismissal banishment
Stasis hold portal web hold person hold monster
Shield shield
prot. from missiles minor globe of invulnerability avoidance anti-magic shell
Arcana read magic
dispel magic remove curse
Divination detect evil locate object clairvoyance wizard eye contact higher plane true seeing
Transmutation enlargement shatter polymorph rock to mud stone-flesh
Domination charm person forget bind familiar confusion feeblemind geas
Destruction magic missile acid bolt fireball flame strike disintegrate
Summoning
minor demon demon elemental invisible stalker
Necromancy
vampiric touch animate dead death spell

There are legends regarding spells that can manipulate gravity, or bend space (allowing travel over great distances with a single step). This magic has been lost. However, it may still reside in mouldering tombs or hidden deep in lost ruins.

This table is still a work in progress. You will notice that a few of the effects are new, and one or two have had their level adjusted. I am considering having the necromancy and turn undead spells more directly mirror each other (see also my necromancer draft from a while back). I really like the idea of maintaining the traditional spells (both by name and effect) in this system, so I don’t want to stray too far from that ideal. Or maybe I do. Who knows where the muse will take me.

I am aware that some of the terminology is less than ideal. On the one hand, I like using multiple words for magic-users (wizard, sorcerer, wonder worker, etc), but on the other hand, using fewer terms is likely to cause less confusion. I am leaning towards standardizing on sorcerer, as it also matches “the path of sorcery,” which is the analogue to the magic-user class in this system. Perhaps falling back to the more general magic-user in some cases, since it is possible (though harder) for other kinds of adventurers to use magic. Also, there is some problematic overloading of the word “spell.” Following Vance, I want to use that word for the entire discipline, but other fantasy games use the word spell for individual effects. Right now I am still inconsistent on this.

The magic books will get better names. The book of necromancy will probably be The Necronomicon, for example, if that term is now in the public domain.

Malfeasance as a term is from English law, but was borrowed in this context from The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss.

I’m extremely happy with the cosmic reinterpretation of alignment as affinity. The new term should help avoid arguments about ethics and moral philosophy. It also manages to apply only to those classes that are tampering with the cosmos (clerics and wizards).

Sturluson’s Dwarves

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Snorri Sturluson wrote The Prose Edda, a telling of Norse mythology. He lived from 1179 – 1241. Here is an excerpt about dwarves.

Next after this, the gods enthroned themselves in their seats and held judgment, and called to mind whence the dwarves had quickened in the mould and underneath in the earth, even as do maggots in flesh. The dwarves had first received shape and life in the flesh of Ymir, and were then maggots; but by decree of the gods had become conscious with the intelligence of men, and had human shape. And nevertheless they dwell in the earth and in stones. Modsognir was the first, and Durinn the second; so it says in Voluspa.

1916 Brodeur translation, 2006 Dover edition, pages 25 and 26.

Cantrips as encounter powers

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Some time ago, I bought a copy of the Pathfinder Beginner Box (reviewed here, here, and here). I still think about running it as a complete (E5-style) low power game, perhaps with a d20 supplement such as The Lost City of Barakus (that might be a fun G+ campaign). The one thing that I have decided that I absolutely must change is how at-will magical powers work. The same is true of the recent D&D Next playtest materials. The chassis is something I would enjoy playing, but I really dislike limitless powers, from both style and gameplay standpoints.

First, I would just remove cantrips that solve resource problems (such as light). Second, all other cantrips would require a short rest to prepare. Five minutes each, so two cantrips could be prepared per turn (important for things like torch duration and wandering monster checks). Diegetically, cantrips would be exactly the same thing as other vancian spells; they would just require less work to prepare. In game terms, they would function like Fourth Edition encounter powers. Thus, your PFBB wizard would get one free force missile (or whatever it’s called; I can’t be bothered to look it up right now) per combat.

I readily admit that this is not meaning first design, but it is “meaning based” design. And yes, this decreases the power of the magic-using classes. I don’t see that as a bad thing. In essence, there would be two kinds of vancian spells: the kind that require deep concentration and a fresh mind to prepare, and the minor cantrips that can be prepared given a few minutes.

Youth as a Resource

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Yesterday, The Dragon’s Flagon had a post about using hit points as spell points. One of the common (though not insurmountable) problems of a system like this is that it increases the utility of healing effects, which are already potent. In addition to allowing adventurers to take more punishment, healing would also allow magic-users to cast more spells. I call this the “mana battery” problem.

When thinking about this, the following idea came to me: what if each hit point of magical healing aged a character by one day? I have PCs recover one HP per day when tracking natural healing, though hit dice are re-rolled between adventures. Thus, there would be a symmetry between magical and natural healing. At one stroke, healing magic becomes problematic while still being available, a reason is given for why healing magic is not used frivolously, and magic gains a greater sense of enchantment. I am considering implementing this even in games that don’t use HP to power magic.

Also, this morning while reading John’s answers to my 20 rules questions, I came across this:

Level-draining monsters: yes or no?

No. Monsters that would normally drain levels instead age you.

This is much better, in my opinion, than ability score damage (the 3E method), which is both not very scary (because it recovers quickly) and a hassle (because you need to recalculate several other derived statistics). Aging is irrevocable without being catastrophic in most instances. And, you have adventurers returning from raiding barrows strangely aged, which fits the atmosphere of undead. 2E (and maybe AD&D, I’m not sure) sort of did this with the restoration spell which restores drained levels at the cost of aging. I might even use level drain and aging together if I was running a game using a proper traditional rule set (as opposed to the 4E hack I’ve been playing recently).

There are some other spells that traditionally age spell casters as well. Gate, for example, ages the caster five years, as does wish. I’m sure there are more.

The downside is that you need to track an extra number per character (effective age). This was sort of true before, but it has come up so infrequently in games that I have played in as to basically not be required.

Alexandrian Hex Crawling

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Justin Alexander has been putting out some posts on hexcrawls. Here are some links:

They assume the 3E skill system, but are still interesting reads. For comparison, see my old wilderness movement costs post (which is really just a slightly simplified version of the B/X wilderness movement system).

In particular, his concept of “watch” seems like higher temporal resolution than I need. What I have been doing is one encounter check per day (with a die roll to determine time of day). This is pretty much as specified by the original Expert rulebook. There are also rules for discovering fixed features through exploring hexes rather than moving through them (like searching a room for secret doors in a dungeon). It is also possible to notice some fixed features without searching form them.

Justin also left this provocative comment on one of the posts:

If you find yourself starting to worry about where the PCs are “in the hex”, you’re doing it wrong.

I need to think about that more. Should the hex be an atomic measure of wilderness space? It has a pleasing absolutism to it. It does remove the idea of zooming hex levels, but perhaps that is unnecessary complexity anyways.

Power Levels

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In a previous post, I praised the flattened power curve that 5E seems to be groping towards. Jack (of Jack’s Toolbox), left the following comment:

I like the vast spread of potential power levels in D&D 3.X. I don’t think that it’s a game that reasonably can or should be played straight from Level 1 to Level 20 or beyond, but the system gives you the option of playing wherever you want from gritty adventurers to wushu-style heroes to nigh-demigods. I don’t think that flattening that curve or ‘simplifying’ the system along that axis is going to be a benefit for people like me.
My own preference is towards more grounded play. As a DM, managing a low-power campaign is more tractable, and, as a player, a low-power campaign is more exciting (because the stakes are higher, the motivations more immediate, and the treasure is more special). I’ve never played in a satisfying high-level campaign. This is entirely a subjective preference, I readily admit.
That being said, I think Jack has a point regarding the potential of the 3E system (as elaborated in The Alexandrian post he links to). I suspect that the original authors did not have such a sophisticated intention, however, due to how challenges are scaled. In 3E, adventure design seems relatively constant (and is even more so in 4E); that is, the primary difference between a low-level and a high-level adventure is the cosmetic dressing (sewers in the beginning, planar travel at the end) and the tactical complexity of the combat (due to the increase in things like numbers of attacks and spell selection). I think it was designed to be played straight through from level 1 to level 20, and I also think this is the assumption of the vast majority of players.
However, assuming that supporting a vast spread of power levels is a good thing, doing it mechanically via difficulty levels doesn’t work very well, because it assumes a sameness to play, and I think that dooms any kind of lengthy campaign. It seems to me like much of the design of 3E and 4E involved embracing only a limited part of the full traditional D&D campaign arc, discarding the parts presumed to be not-fun, and extending the remaining part over the full level spectrum. In 3E we can see this in the generalized multiclassing, removal of level limits, and continuing accumulation of hit dice. In 4E we can see this in the extension of the 3E “sweet spot” (roughly levels 4 through 10) over the entire game experience.
I like the idea of bounded accuracy, but I think there is a danger that the designers will try to fit the entire game into another limited box using this principle. There is actually an impartiality to difficulty class systems (generalized with 3E) which could in theory work well with wide-open sandbox games, exactly because such DC systems are not centered around character stats. This is in contrast to systems like “roll under” stat checks, which, while more traditionally old school, are also more solipsistic (even if you keep the math the same). One crafts bonuses or penalties around character abilities when using a roll under system, rather than just describing the external entities.
Here’s Zak on campaign evolution (that is, how game play changes as a game progresses over multiple sessions). Along similar lines, there was a Save of Die interview with Frank Mentzer where immortal level play is discussed. To paraphrase Frank, the focus of the game shifts from how to defeat (or circumvent) the monsters to preventing collateral damage to mundanes (the mortals that the characters presumably care about). He compares immortal play to Superman stories; it is assumed that Superman can triumph “mechanically” over his foes in most direct confrontations, but he must protect those he cares about (and avoid being tricked into succumbing to his weaknesses).
We can also see this in the traditional domain game that comes when a D&D character builds a stronghold and begins to attract followers. This was always present in the B/X and BECMI systems, was present in AD&D (though somewhat obscured by the popularity of high-level tournament-style modules), and then embraced again by recent revival systems like ACKS, the very name of which embeds the expectations of the campaign arc (fist adventurers, then conquerors, ending as kings).

I don’t think that high power campaigns are inherently bad or unsatisfying (I have a copy of Nobilis on my shelf), but I do think they need to be different in some meaningful way from the first level character experience. It’s not enough to have a higher attack bonus, more spells, and +N equipment. RPGs have more potential than that.

Prometheus

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I saw Prometheus over the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. There have been many overly critical reviews going around, so perhaps this can function as a dissent. In addition to suspending your sense of disbelief (something necessary for engaging with any work of fiction), you must also be willing to accept a story which can support multiple interpretations, as not everything is spelled out. If you don’t like any kind of symbolism or theme in movies, this is not the movie for you. If you are irritated by characters that go to investigate dark hallways alone in horror movies, this is not the movie for you.

Some of the characters made bad (even stupid) decisions. Many reviews I have read latched onto these plot elements as flaws in the movie. However, people can be stupid, vain, greedy creatures who don’t necessarily think things through, even when they are spending trillion dollar space ship budgets (and this is when they don’t need to make split-second decisions). Consider Christopher Columbus spending Queen Isabella’s money (and all the other explorers that were not as successful). And speaking about some of the mercenaries, what kind of person rents their life to a megacorporation and risks death in a two-year suspended animation in order to make some money? Apparently, some people are only satisfied with stories about people who always make smart decisions (see The Alexandrian’s take, for example).

That being said, there were some problems with characterization in the movie. It was hard to feel sympathy for many of the characters, and some motivations were not terribly clear, especially for Charlize Theron’s corporate ice queen. Why was she there? What did she hope to get out of the mission? And, the captain’s final action. The motivation did not feel authentic to me for the captain, and it felt even less so for his subordinates, who, as far as I could tell from what came beforehand, were basically just hired technicians.

It is possible that Prometheus is one of the better cinematic adaptations of Lovecraft that has yet been produced, despite the fact that it is not directly based on any Lovecraft story. It is certainly more in the spirit of Lovecraft than either Alien or Aliens. I would also add that many of Lovecraft’s protagonists also make “stupid” decisions, and that this is part of the point. Humans tamper with an unknown and dangerous cosmos. To quote from Joe the Lawyer’s list of D&D rules broken by characters in this movie: “Never trust the unknown. Everything in the universe is fucking hostile.”

There are a few minor problems of pacing. I could have done without the entire section near the beginning depicting the android teaching himself about human culture while everyone else was in stasis on the ship. I feel like more mileage could have been gotten from the exploration of the alien ruins. And the writing was not spectacular, though I didn’t feel like it was bad enough to negatively affect the rest of the movie.

I can’t say for certain that the makers of Prometheus consciously meant to allude to Dungeons & Dragons, but there certainly seemed to be a number of references. For example (paraphrasing from memory here), near the beginning there is the following dialogue: “Before the adventure begins, Ms. Vickers would like to speak to you.” There is a “skull mountain” vista which looked like it was straight out of Holmes. I suppose these could just be coincidences. Also, the mapping robots. All I could think of here was that this is a DM with players who clearly don’t like mapping. Did I mention that the entire plot revolves around what is essentially an alien megadungeon?

In total, I think the visual power of this movie is enough to carry it for a viewer that appreciates such things. The score was good too, in an unobtrusive sort of way (I generally don’t like scores that call too much attention to themselves, with the exception of Kubrick, but then all bets are off with Kubrick anyways). And, if you play D&D-style adventure games about exploring dungeons, you will see a lot in Prometheus that is familiar, and probably get some ideas from it too (I certainly did).

Holmes cross section, just because

Evasion & Armor

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Here is a quick method for changing how armor works that has been floating around in my head. I don’t claim any originality for this system. It was inspired by Combat Musings over at The Jovial Priest and St. Innocent of Alaska over at Blood of Prokopius.

This assumes a B/X substrate. It would play well with damage by hit die rules, I think.

First, instead of AC there is an evasion score. This is 10 + dexterity mod. This is how hard it is for a character or monster to be hit. You would need to improvise the evasion score for monsters, but I think that should be easy. Sample: goblin, 12; pixie, 17; dragon, 10.

Second, armor provides a damage reduction die. Light (leather) armor is d4, medium (chain) armor is d6, and heavy (plate) armor is d8. If you are wearing armor and take physical damage, you roll your armor die and reduce damage by that much. This is similar to “soak” rules in other games, but I think this implementation integrates nicely with other traditional D&D rules. Monsters also require improv DR scores. Sample: wolf, d4; bear, d6; dragon 2d6.

That’s the core of the system. Here are a few optional rules for added detail.

  1. Armor damage. If you ever take a full damage blow (e.g., 4 points from a d4 attack or 6 points from a d6 attack), you roll damage reduction as normal, but mark down a point next to your armor. When N such points have been accumulated (e.g., 8 points for heavy armor), the armor is degraded one step (so degraded plate armor would reduce damage by d6 after one level of degradation). Armor can be repaired, probably at half cost.
  2. Weapon versus AC. Using a weapon that is “good against” a particular armor drops the damage reduction die by one step. So, plate armor would only block 1d6 damage from a military pick. Firearms could ignore armor entirely or drop the damage reduction die by one or two steps, depending on how much influence you would like gunpowder to have on your setting.
  3. Bulky armor. Armor reduces evasion by one point per class. For example, plate armor would reduce evasion by 3, leather by 1.
  4. Armor competency. The damage reduction die is limited by class hit die. So magic-users can wear plate armor, but they still only get d4 damage reduction, and all evasion and encumbrance penalties still apply. Maybe there is some method to gain proficiency with armor for classes other than fighters? That’s beyond the scope of this post, though.
I’ve worried before that this sort of system might make dexterity overly important, and I still think that is true. Another reason to use 3d6 in order to generate stats, as if we needed more.
From the armchair, this looks like a pretty slick system that would be fun to play and potentially feel more realistic to people who don’t like the “armor makes you hard to hit” paradigm.

Edit: damage reduction numbers for d6-centric OD&D using 2DTH: light (leather) 2d6 take lowest, medium (chain) 1d6, heavy (plate) 2d6 take highest. Evasion calculated using the B/X dexterity modifier, though it would not apply to anything else.

Wilderness Rumors

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One of the major draws of a sandbox campaign is that players get to choose their own paths. But in order to make informed choices, players need setting information. There are two major ways of communicating such information: 1) setting documentation and 2) learning about the setting through play. Option 1 is also known as the infodump; published setting canon belongs to this category. Unsurprisingly, I favor the second method, but it does sort of beg the question: if you need info to play intelligently, and you gain info only by playing, does that mean that you must play stupidly to begin with?

You could take a hybrid approach, which I suspect is actually the most popular in the wild. Something like: read this small infodump, and then learn the rest through play. And I’m certainly not against some amount of background info (though it does have the tendency to grow once unleashed). However, under the principle of restricting preparation to elements likely to affect the game directly, there is a traditional structure that can be used: the rumor table.

It seems to me like we already have an integrated rumor table without any extra work required: the stocked hexes. You just need an impartial way of deciding which areas you want rumors to be about, and (optionally) their truthfulness. I’m not sure that much actual utility is gained by seeding false rumors (as is usually done in old modules), but it is easy enough to roll for truth if you so desire (maybe 1 in 6 rumors are false or misleading). Here is the method I am considering.

Rumors (d6):

  • 1 – 3: current hex
  • 4 – 5: adjacent hex (roll again for direction)
  • 6: farther hex (roll again for direction and for distance)

Optionally, in the case that a 6 is rolled for both farther hex and distance, you can have the possibility of a rumor from even farther afield. Here is one way to do this. Roll a d6 to “confirm” the far-distance rumor, and then another d6 for the actual distance and add it to the previous distance. Continue this process as long as you roll 6s on distance rolls. Or stop at the edge of your stocked hexes.

When PCs enter a hex, roll for one rumor automatically, no matter what the characters do. This information may be conveyed in any way you like, via encounter, dream, whatever. These may be framed in whatever way works best for your particular group (some ideas include: leads, quests, and direct encounters). I imagine the appropriate number of leads will vary by group.

Additional rumors can be uncovered by PC action. Maybe roll d6 more times, and maybe adjust that result by charisma or intelligence as appropriate to the context. For example, if the PCs are in a tavern, charisma is probably more relevant, but library research might use intelligence.

Example uses of the rumor system:

  1. Rumor roll: 3. Select a rumor from the current hex.
  2. Rumor roll: 4. Adjacent hex. Roll for direction: 3 (southeast).
  3. Rumor roll: 6. Farther. Roll for direction: 2 (northeast). Roll for distance: 6. Roll for even farther: 6. Roll for additional distance: 3. So, the rumor should be taken from 9 hexes away to the northeast.
In a separate G+ conversation about encounter tables, a similar method (but for random encounters) was brought to my attention (I had seen that one page dungeon before, but didn’t notice the random encounter method). See here too. This seems like a nifty way of doing encounters too, and I’ll probably consider it more when I get to the post on random encounter tables.

Hex Stocking Interlude

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Aplus of People the with Monsters left a comment on one of my recent posts:

For another example of how one dude handles wilderness, I just make a short table (12 or 16 entries). The players tell me the direction they are heading (I do have terrain figured out beforehand, but nothing else) and I check each hex for a random encounter. Most of these encounters are lifted from Carcosa, so they have a lot of underlying depth in a sentence or two, and are also easily modified to suit near any campaign.

This is a really interesting approach. It lies somewhere between having nothing other than terrain and rolling wandering monsters and keying up hexes statically. In computer science terms, this method is somewhat like late binding. I see several advantages: one, less material is needed; two, the referee can be surprised along with the players; three, you end up building a setting through play gradually rather than all at once prior to the game (compare to the character build versus development through play game styles).

There are several things that I want in a hexcrawl that are not supported by the Aplus method though, assuming I am understanding it correctly. I would like the direction chosen by the players to matter regarding more than the terrain type. Assuming that there is only one list of encounters in play, it seems like you would have the same die roll no matter which direction was chosen. It’s not exactly the same thing as a quantum ogre, but it does seem to preclude information gathering beforehand.

Unless information gathering, in addition to actual travel, is grounds for determining hex contents. In other words, things start to exist only when you look at them, and researching rumors and travel are both ways of “looking at” hexes. That sounds promising, but I suspect it would fluster me at the table, so I still think I would prefer to precompile. Also, I’m really bad at taking notes during play, so I fear that I would end up losing much of the richness created at the table. (I really think good session note taking is one of the most valuable referee skills, and I’m terrible at it.)

There are two other little subsystems that I have been working on (for future posts) which also require having some hexes set down beforehand. The first is autogenerating rumor lists based on the contents of adjacent hexes. Yes, it’s about as simple as it sounds, but I added a few complications to decrease the predictability somewhat. The second is creating relationships between the contents of different hexes. For example, the wizard in the tower in hex A might be interested in capturing the creature in hex B or taking vengeance on the fighter is settlement C. I don’t really have a system for that yet, but I’m working on it.

All that being said, I like the Aplus method and think it is very practical, especially for people like me who probably tend to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I may try it the next time I want to get a game going with minimal prep. It did also make me step back from the systems that I had been working on and ask myself what I was gaining from the amount of work I was doing, which is useful to do periodically.