S is for Showerthoughts: exploration driven, organic worldbuilding

 I am currently adapting the Rules Cyclopedia Domain game to my system and setting. While discussing the topic with one of my players I had a showerthought and I think its pretty important, at least to my game.

Some background information you need to know: My current campaign has lasted for 28 sessions, and even though we are currently on a summer induced hiatus, we will resume as soon as the fall semester starts. The “plot” for the game is thus: Players start at level 1, without equipment, because they are thrown into a prison pit in the northern kingdom of my continent. There they must struggle for survival. The prison pit is populated by gangs and connected to a dungeon complex full of treasure and deadly monsters. So far no one has found an exit. The Pit itself is quite deep (900ft) and there is a camp of militarized guards at the top, that controlls supplies in and treasure out. 

If we look at the ancient texts, they suggest starting with a (safe) village, a dungeon, and a few hexes of wilderness. And as the players grow on power and start to explore more than the starter dungeon, the gamemaster builds outwards and develops the milieu in reaction to the direction the players take. But and here is my issue, even if I have metaphorically dug a deeper dungeon (by adding more floors etc. ) I have not had the opportunity to develop the area around the starting location because they are confined in a PIT. The gradual unveiling of the surrounding area is missing, and that is a shame.

I hope they find a way out soon, so that the world can be explored in a more organic manner, instead of me just prepping material that does not matter right now. (like a gigantic world map or domain rules haha)

E is for "Equipping Characters"

One of the most time consuming activities that happens at my game table, is players choosing and upgrading their equipment. As part of the “plot” of the campaign, player characters get thrown into a prison camp without any gear, they only have the clothes on their backs. This worked well for a few sessions, as the first forays into the dungeon meant gradual gear upgrades.

The problem turned out to be, that new players joined the campaign and the party, after a large amount of funds and gear had been accumulated. So, after introducing the characters, we spent a good amount of time, gearing them, in the session. There are two factors that exacerbate the issue.

1. A good amount of my players are either entirely new to TTRPGs or at least new to the system we play, so they are unfamiliar with both the gear itself, and with the process of outfitting a character.

2. The list of weapons, armour and adventuring gear is quite long, and it is, al least in the 2e PHB, organised like crap.  You need to look at 2 separate pages for armour type and for AC, the weapons list is so extensive that could be called bloated, and the gear list is both missing essential items and too long at the same time.

I still feel justified, in keeping new characters “gearless,” mostly because a) fits the mood of the campaign and b) if I revert my decision now, I retroactively shaft all the characters that started with no gear before. As long as the party remains in the prison camp, they will start gearless. As soon as they escape and find a new home base/adventuring location, they can their new characters start with gear.

In the meantime, I will try to patchwork 2 solutions. One I have already implemented: I trimmed the gear list and created a neat armour and weapons table. I also cut down on the dumber of polearms and adjusted the list of weapons to better fit my setting. See the screenshots below.

This is my adventuring gear page (to be fair this is not really that trim, I could set the most important items on bold for better visibility):

 

This is my melee weapons page (ranged weapons are unchanged, polearms severly trimmed):

 

This is my armour page; I have converted it to ascending AC and sorted it by bonus and weight:

 

Another thing that might be useful, is some sort of starting equipment pack. Personally, I have taken inspirations from the “Ye Olde Fast Pack” section from the Barrowmaze Referee’s screen. See the screenshot  down below:

 

Let’s hope my solutions prove useful at the table. Thanks for reading!

Next article: “F is for finishing maps”

 

D is for Dungeoncrawling in 2e

 The 2e dungeon crawl procedures exist, but almost seem like an afterthought and without prior/outside knowledge I doubt, I would have succeeded in running a 28 session long campaign. As far as I understand it, the playstyle of AD&D 2e leans more into a trad campaign style and away from the grittier and more risqué elements contained in 1e, such as the existence of assassins or demons & devils. I have heard it said that this can be mostly laid at the feet of the satanic panic, and the resulting push from TSR to create a safer/more sanitized version with 2e.

The need for treasure creates an organic incentive to explore the dungeon and plunder it of its riches. Who but adrenalin junkies, weird wizards, or the necrophiliac, would enter the deadly domain of a dungeon, if there was not a substantial monetary reward? XP for retrieved nonmagical treasure is the raison d’tetre for a dungeon crawl.

It is a real shame that elements which should be cornerstones of the system, such as gold for XP, are reduced to (badly written) optional rules in the 2e DMG. It has to be mentioned at this point that the problem is not the fact that it is an optional rule, 2e is filled with those and the modularity of the system is a strength in my opinion. The problem is the accompanying advice we get from the 2e DM is not great. Let’s take a look.   

“As an option, the DM can award XP for the cash value of non-magical treasures. One XP can be given per gold piece found. However, overuse of this option can increase the tendency to give out too much treasure in the campaign” (Advanced Dungeon & Dragons 2^nd Edition, Dungeon Master Guide. Page 69)

Giving out too much treasure is not a concern of mine; I actually do not think it is possible. There are so many things the party spends money on, and even more thing they could spend money on. For example: A fighter needs 2000XP to  reach level 2. Let’s assume that at least 2/3rds come from treasure. As I am using the silver standard, this would translate to 1500 silver pieces. He needs 150 silver for his 1 week training to level 2. If he wants to take a new weapon proficiency at level 3, he needs to train between 2 weeks 1 month for it, which will cost 300-600 silver. Every day in the prison camp costs him 3 silver just for food, which amounts to 84 silver a month. Henchmen take a cut of the total treasure hoard and reduce the actual money in the players hands, Hirelings impose a cost of 3 silver per hireling per day. Plate mail starts at 600 silver pieces. Dungeon supplies, especially burning oil, are costly at 6 silver per flask.

I got endless ways to nickel and dime my players, “too much treasure” it never a concern and misses the point entirely. And we are not even out of the prison camp (the starting location of my current campaign) at this point, the need for raw cash will only increase if the party decides to explore the wilderness or sets up a permanent basecamp somewhere else. If the campaign lasts until domain play, the characters need hoards of cash to build their castles, wizard towers, thief’s guilds, or churches.

After getting the rant portion of this article out of the way, lets cover the substantial factors that need to be addresses to run second edition as a proper dungeon crawler.

Movement Speed: A dungeon turn is 10 minutes and has 10, 1 minute rounds. Per RAW 2e a character can move tens of feet per round during dungeon movement. This means that a human character that is not encumbered could move his base movement rate, in this case 12, in tens of feet per round, which would be 12x10= 120ft per round. This results in a movement of 1200ft per turn, which is enough to cover even my most expansive dungeon in just about 1 turn. To avoid this instance, I use something much closer to B/X, characters can move their current movement speed in tens of feet per turn in unexplored, unmapped territory. In mapped territory they can move up to three times faster.  This means that they can at most move 360ft per turn. It is usually much less, because the party moves as a group, and is limited by the member with the lowest movement speed. Halflings and heavily armoured fighters are the most likely cause of slow movement speed in my game.

Wandering Monsters: In second edition, it is suggested that one random encounter check is made every hour, with an encounter occurring as a result of 1 on a roll of 1d10. This is completely neutered compared to the frequency of a random encounter check every second turn, where an encounter happens on a 1 on a 1d6 roll. The 2e DMG does mention that the frequency should be increased in case the area is particularly dangerous or the players create excessive noise, but that does not change that the base frequency is insufficient.

Reaction rolls:  These rules are quite unwieldy in RAW second edition and I adapted the simpler B/X schema to be compatible with 2e stat-bonuses. I will talk more about this in a far off article: “M is for Morale”

Vision and Light: I have implemented both normal darkvision and a form of cat-like lowlight vision in my game. It is not the usual infravision, that is common in old-school games, but it works quite well. And the fact that demi-human races have one or the other depending on locations, is a cool bit of flavour on my mind. The exact mechanics are described below.

• Lowlight Vision: Enables a character to see in an environment that possesses ambient light (moon, star, candles  etc.) for 60ft as if it were daylight, as long as they do not stand in a directly lit area (for ex. the light radius of a torch, lantern, or light spell)
• Darkvision: Enables a character to see in total darkness for 60ft as if it were daylight.

All demi-human races (Dwarves, Elves, Half-elves, Half-orcs, and Halflings) possess both lowlight and darkvision. Dwarves and Half-orcs have darkvision underground and lowlight vision above ground. Elves, Half-elves, and Halflings have darkvision above ground and lowlight vision underground

I use the AD&D 1e durations for lanterns and torches in my game, this means lanterns burn for 4h/pint of oil and torches burn for 1 hour. For some reason, lanterns burned for 6h at some point in my game, and I have no idea where I got that duration from, the standard 2e values place them at 2 hours per pint.

 

I think that implementing these procedures into the skeleton of 2e, was the essential step that enabled me to run a successful dungeon crawl. I have had failed attempts before, most of them in fifth edition, and I had the feeling that the system itself did not support this playstyle at all. Second edition at least has the necessary parts, even if they are a bit mangled and need fixing.

Next article: “E is for Equipping your character”  

"B" is for Botanical remedies and poisons (aka Herbalism)

The herbalism non-weapon proficiency, found in the 2e PHB, is terse and to the point. You can read it in the following screenshot.

                                     

 There is a problem though. It suggests the existence of a system, in which a player can do all the listed things. But apart from the bonus to healing per day of bedrest, there are almost no mechanical guidelines or even examples of preparation, that players could use to create their own herbalistic concoctions. The question “Oh mighty Gamemaster, what can I, a player lost in the sauce, actually do with this proficiency” has been asked countless times over the 28 sessions the campaign underwent so far.

To remedy this situation, I wrote the following set of rules. It contains guidelines for the creation of new recipes, a few examples for common and useful remedies and poisons, rules for the gathering of ingredients and the crafting process as well as a list of herbs commonly found in my homebrew world.

Page one covers the basic system, as well as recipes for beneficial remedies:

Page two covers poisons as well as the common herbs I mentioned before: 

My group has used these rules for 15+ sessions and they work quite well, both as an asset to the party as well as a money-sink. For example: The herbal bandages get used frequently, anti-poison is always in demand as soon as someone gets bitten by a poisonous monster and some player created recipes have started to appear. Most notably is the following (somewhat juvenile) concoction by the parties Bard:

Faeces-Flasks: Basic, Batch of 3, CC 5 SP. Clay-flasks filled with distilled faeces and other caustic/stinking materials. Each flask needs about 1lbs of raw faeces to be distilled. When thrown they shatter and splash enemies in a 3ft radius. If affectable by foul stench, they need to succeed on a save vs poison or be off-balance (+2 to be hit) for 1d2 rounds.

Overall, I am quite happy with these rules. They fit nicely in the frequent and required downtime that results from wounded party members, and they help exchange the large amount of wealth the party pulls out of the dungeon, into something with high utility.

One criticism that could be levied is, that some aspects of these rules encroach on the realm of alchemy. For example, if a player character with an animal lore proficiency harvests a spider’s poison sack and wants to craft blade venom, I would allow that, even though it is not strictly “herbalism” anymore. But that is a trade-off I am quite comfortable with at the moment.

 

I hope you, the reader, enjoyed both the rules and the reading of this post.

Next article: “C” is for Campaign recaps and statistics. 

"A" is for Alignment

“I am chaotic neutral” the players say while stabbing the orphan and throwing Molotov’s at innocent goblins .

Even when I was gamemastering D&D 5e alignment, and its role was a thing that rubbed me the wrong way almost every time it came up in a session. It feels like a (roleplaying) prescription that most players do not really gel with overall. I mean there is a reason most of them end up choosing some flavour of “chaotic neutral”, the alignment equivalent to writing “I can do what I want” on a piece of paper.

Even in my chosen edition of D&D, which happens to be AD&D 2e with a heaping spoon of house rules (which we will explore in more detail in later articles), the nine point alignment chart, while more integrated into the games systems, felt off. It could be the fact that most players treat is as a guide for their characters personality.  Or that in the early stages of a dungeon-crawly game, alignment does not matter that much. Not getting stabbed by goblins, paralyzed and eaten by ghouls or falling into a pit trap filled with poison covered punji sticks (most likely dug by the goblins), seems to be the highest priority.

I want the alignment system in my game, to directly interface with both the implied arc of old-school dungeons and dragons (which would in my opinion be characterized as a progression from dungeon crawl to wilderness exploration to the domain-game) and with the factions of the settings major conflict: Law (represented by civilisation) vs Chaos (represented by the wilderness). I also want some sort of descriptive moral component (I have chosen good/evil). To enable my players to choose appropriate alignments for their characters, I provided the following document: 

Next planned article: "B" is for botanical remedies and poisons (aka Herbalism)