Variable Rate of Advancement

Something OD&D did that doesn't fly with most groups today was variable rates of advancement. It did this in two ways: not only did different classes use different advancement tables, but characters earned experience at varying rates depending mostly on their "Prime Requisite".

Don't even get me started on the limits for demihumans.

In modern games, it quickly becomes unbalanced if players aren't all on the same level. Furthermore, balance is held on a pedestal. To be fair, in some cases that lack of balance is a legitimate problem. I've played in a campaign where one player character constantly far outshone the rest and it kind of sucked for everyone else. I think it's very much worth noting though: that party was all of the same level and it still happened.

Despite the title, the table continues with other bonuses not related to advancement.

The Prime Requisite system appears to me to be oft misunderstood. Modern players see this as restricting certain classes to only the players who rolled high enough ability scores. When combined with the way scores were rolled randomly and no choice was given to adjust them, it feels like someone is locked out of playing, for instance, a Fighting-Man if their Strength roll wasn't very high. This couldn't be further from the truth. It's perfectly viable in OD&D to play away from a character's natural aptitudes and simply be one level behind the party most of the time.

Dial it back there Gary, you're not helping my point.

A point is made here that a player does not need to choose the "optimal" choice if it does not suit the character they want to play. This is a tricky thing. People are natural optimizers, so it feels bad to throw away a potential 10% experience bonus permanently. And the 20% penalty? Well that just feels awful in comparison. There's one more thing to take into account here though.

Because of experience gains varying depending on the character's level, a party operating together will cluster toward a similar level. Higher-level characters will slow down in advancement while the lower end of the party shoots upward rapidly to meet them. What mathematically looks like (and more importantly, intuitively feels like) a permanent penalty is, in reality, a stipulation that your character will sit slightly behind their expected level for a short time before catching up with the party. That actually isn't so bad (though it still feels bad).

We can do something interesting with this concept. Let's look at pros and cons of this system and create a new mechanic, trying to squeeze out the pros while mitigating the cons.

∗ ∗ ∗

The upside of this system is that is encourages players to work with what they've got. Those of us who enjoy DCC's funnel system will agree that this is the best way to play. You don't choose what position you are born into, and the fun is making something great out of it.

This goes hand in hand with reduced player agency, as it punishes players for choosing to play against those randomly decided characteristics. Major player decisions, such as a character's entire class, can feel forced.

How am I going to mitigate this? Aside from just making the bonuses smaller and more granular, I'm going to make them a player option. Here's how the concept works: The player rolls their random features. Ability scores are an easy example; let's use the traditional 3d6 down the line. The player then decides whether they want to stick with those characteristics. They may swap ability scores around, but for each one that remains unchanged they get an additive +2% bonus to all XP gains.

You can take it a further than this. Other randomly chosen attributes (such as occupation or birth augur in DCC) can be kept random for an additive +2%, with the option to choose one instead for no bonus. Race and class can be determined randomly, for a much more significant +5% bonus each - all players should roll randomly and then decide whether they want to take that race/class with the bonus, or choose any other. Some players will be lucky and get what they wanted and the bonus. That's fine.

If you are doing this in DCC however, you might need to start using more granular numbers for XP - otherwise those 1-4 points per encounter are going to start requiring decimals.

Odd Goblin, a GLoG hack, does this but with one-time flat experience gains. That's where I got the idea - sort of combining that with OD&D's Prime Requisite bonuses. It is my hope that implementing a system like this will provide both the reward for rolling with what you get given, but also allow for full player agency as there are no explicit penalties for playing against your rolls and only minor bonuses for taking the random option.

I realize this is essentially the opposite of my previously posted progression mechanic, but as always I like a lot of game mechanics and different things have their place at different tables.

Different Combat Systems for Different Combats

Lately I've been on a bit of an OD&D kick, reading the original booklets that grew into the many games we have today and finding quite a lot of unexpected inspiration. Something that especially intrigued me (and actually the thing that made me decide to dig further) is its inclusion of not just one combat system but four combat systems. It has, with no exaggeration, made me rethink the way I structure combat.

Perhaps "inclusion" isn't the right word when they are literally not included and instead were part of another product you were expected to own. But the core game does tell you you're supposed to use them. Despite poring over the ancient texts for hours on end, I still have no idea how those original games were really played. Even in the middle of writing this and going over the source material, I realized I'd made a critical error in my understanding of how to use the systems in OD&D itself. Nonetheless, the idea still works: handle different types of combat differently.

∗ ∗ ∗

The Four Combat Systems in OD&D

Chainmail's primary system is that of mass combat. It's a game of simulating armies versus armies. It runs at a scale where a single figure represents 20 men. This is not the size of your typical RPG party, so you surely mustn't be expected to use this as-is in your typical "three-to-five dudes versus as many goblins" encounter. However, it might be useful where higher-level characters can mow down hordes of 1HD enemies. It gets complicated when you throw high level creatures into the mix - more on that later.

The Man-to-Man system provides additional rules for scaling combat down such that individual figures represent individual men and can act like a person instead of an army. This appears to be the standard mode for combat.

The Fantasy combat system provides a single table for resolving an attack between two fantastic figures, for instance a hero versus a dragon, or a wraith versus an elemental. This is pretty simple and bolts on to mass combat pretty easily, with the rest of the fantasy supplement detailing special abilities of fantastic creatures. It is weird, though, that a treant and a roc are chosen as two of only nine creatures on these tables - I suppose preempting players' desire to reenact Lord of the Rings was more important than providing some more generally applicable categories. I suppose that actually makes sense as an addition to Chainmail combat, rather than the smaller scale players-versus-monsters games that came from it. A majority of the space taken up is monster-versus-monster, although players were expected to have monstrous companions.

The Alternative Combat System is essentially what became the modern "roll a d20 against an AC" mechanic. What's interesting here is that this is literally the only thing provided, so OD&D still assumes you are using Chainmail for every other rule. Movement can be extrapolated, but crucial things like turn order and how missiles work are left entirely unmentioned. Hell, it's not even entirely clear which of the above systems this is supposed to be an alternative to - man-to-man or fantasy - or whether it's meant to entirely replace something, be used in conjunction with the others, or be used for specific situations.

Maybe we weren't meant to just play one of these. Most people seem to realize that standard combat and mass combat should be handled in different ways, but there are perhaps more suitable methods for handling other situations as well. The jury is still out on exactly when and why to use which parts of which systems.

∗ ∗ ∗

Five Systems in Harmony

Here are not three, not four, but five systems for different kinds of combats. They can all easily coexist within the same game. They need not necessarily be hugely different in mechanics (they're largely based on the same core) but they each provide a way of framing a certain scale of combat. Let's begin with the core and then we'll get to the interesting stuff.

Tactical Combat is the bog-standard combat in your game. If you're reading this, you already know it. It's Man-to-man Combat in Chainmail, it's the one where your party of 3-6 individuals face off against a similar number of similarly-powered individuals. It's the one you either play with minis on a map or just hand-wave spatial reasoning entirely. The important thing is it lets each character play a part and gives an opportunity for players to fight smart.

Mass Combat is another one you probably know, though these days you're a little less likely to actually play it out. According to some grognards out there, it's not something RPG players ever really did much of, because everyone just preferred to keep adventuring instead. It's still an important thing to have, and Errant does something very interesting with it: combines it with your standard combat, alternating turns between the players as a strike force and the larger combat happening around them. This is brilliantly cinematic and I will come back to the idea later.

Fantastic Combat is the boss battle, a showdown with a single powerful foe. You might think it's crazy to reduce that down to one single attack roll, and you'd be right. Think more cinematically. The arrow that brings down the dragon, climbing the colossus and driving your sword into its neck, the bomb into the maw of the worm - these are the final moments of a tense, one-sided battle where the underdog defies all odds. This is where I want to use Fantastic Combat. Much like the 1HP dragon, the players need to figure out how to fight the thing first, then they get their single roll to hit.

It's not so hard once you get up there. Don't screw it up.

Quick Combat is one I didn't mention before. It's actually something that's fairly well-hidden within OD&D, although it isn't a system of its own. It is rather a consequence of the Fighting-Man being able to hit multiple 1HD figures at higher levels. A party including several high-level fighters could practically mow down a small army in a single turn. This doesn't exactly translate well to the turn-by-turn, individual-focused nature of modern Tactical Combat. I want to be able to have high-level players hack-and-slashing through low-level dungeons if they so choose, rather than rolling initiative around every bend. Something like Ominosity's single roll combat is perfect for this. The players could choose to play tactically and probably take no damage from these fights, but a quick and dirty option for blasting through dozens of mobs is available.

And finally, Duels bring the scale right down. This is more man-to-man than Man-to-man Combat. It's time to shine the spotlight on exactly how much this guy wants this other guy dead, and he wants to do it himself. I made a DCC minigame for this based around Cavegirl's system. This combines perfectly with the Errant treatment of mass combat, where the bandit chieftain decides to throw down with the party's warrior in the middle of a whole-party tactical combat: alternate turns between the big picture battle and the one-on-one duel.

I'll Run It One Day - [blog100] pt. 9, q. 82

This post is part of a series where I put forth a challenge for bloggers to answer all 100 questions on this table by d4 Caltrops. This week I rolled an 82.

∗ ∗ ∗

82. What Idea or Concept are you "Saving" for a Future Game/Campaign?

It's common advice to use your ideas now rather than saving them for later. Here's the problem: I have more ideas than time to play. I think many of us do. I can't use them all, some things are going to have to wait. Some will be saved for later and some will be saved for never. It's just how it is.

Furthermore, not all things fit into the campaign I'm currently running. This blog is 90% about DCC because that's the campaign I actually do run, but there are a lot of other games I want to run too. Here are three campaigns I want to run that don't gel with my current campaign world, each one totally different.

Guild of Dragonologists (5e)

That's right, a 5e game. I'm not a big 5e fan and I've made that no secret, but it's good at one thing: being the current standard for high-fantasy. You want to run a world that has every fantastical thing you can think of splattered everywhere you can look? 5e can handle it perfectly. I'm talking about wizard high-school shit. Nary a human to be found in the nearest tavern and nobody bats an eye at people casting spells and flying past on broomsticks.

The original concept came from a joke among friends that rarely in D&D do we ever go into dungeons, let alone encounter dragons. I thought I'd lean right into that and make it all about dragons from the very first level. Enter, The Guild of Dragonologists.

The Guild is, as it says right in the name, dedicated to the study of dragons, which in 5e are very categorized and classified. They're territorial and the chromatics are at odds with the metallics. The Guild began early on as cartographers, mapping the territories of the dragons. They found that if one overlays a map of chromatic territories on a map of metallic territories, the lands of 4 chromatic and 4 metallic dragons converge at a single point. This is where the Guildhall was built, with immediate access to 8 common varieties to study, and plenty of chromatic/metallic crossover to observe.

The players play as new recruits who've joined the Guild as Hunters - think Monster Hunter style, where the Hunters are sent on missions to "control the population" for conservation efforts or whatever. You're not there to eradicate dragonkind, just keep them in check and protect the Guild. There's also some mystery going on with the convergence of territories and probably the Platinum Dragon.

As It Was Written (OD&D with Chainmail)

I've been diving into the Little Brown Books recently and I'm finding myself fascinated. There is so much in here that appears bizarre and arcane from a modern perspective but actually makes a lot of sense when you consider what they were doing and what they were trying to do. I've found myself wanting to give OD&D a go on its own terms, right down as close to RAW as I can do.

Those of you who are familiar with the original edition know that this isn't exactly a straightforward task - I've found myself comparing and rewriting parts of the various books to organize it in a way that works better for me. There are rewrites out there, but none of them do it my way while simultaneously remaining purely vanilla (which, to be fair, is a big ask).

What's become even more fascinating to me is the implied setting of OD&D. Reading through the encounter tables alone I noticed that the world it expects you to play in is absolute bizarre - by standards both modern and contemporary. It is a pseudo-Arthurian post-civilization frontier centered upon a megadungeon that defies the laws of physics simply to spite the adventurers who are propping up the economy around it. This frontier is horribly infested with lycanthropes (for some reason) and peppered with lost-world swamps and alien deserts (the little green man kind of alien - seriously!).

On top of that, the use of Chainmail's multiple combat systems (rather than the "alternate" that became the default) to resolve different kinds of battles with varying tactical depth is very cool and a topic I'll be revisiting.

I don't know what it was like to play in Gygax's games but it sure as hell sounds like a blast to try and recreate it from his writings. What'll be hard is stopping myself from houseruling!

Paleolithic Campaign (DCC Homebrew)

And we're back to DCC - kind of. This one is a Dinosaur Crawl Classics inspired stone-age campaign featuring low tech, less magic, and prehistoric monsters. Thieves, Wizards and Clerics won't be present, at least in the same form - magic will be the domain of an animist Shaman class with ancestral patrons. Hunters might take a combined warrior-thief role for a third class. All classes will get wilderness skills, hailing from tribal communities that live off the land.

The tricky part here is figuring out any kind of long-term story. This is one setting where I don't want to have advanced tech showing up from aliens or ancient civilizations. From a stone age perspective, even a castle is advanced. Dungeons will probably be lairs rather than old human structures (a perfect excuse to use another thing I've been saving - a humanoid ant race in an ant-mound dungeon). I can only take a campaign so far with a big bad being a particularly disruptive T-Rex.

A possible theme to wrestle with in this campaign is the discovery of agriculture, with a nearby developing civilization threatening to permanently disrupt the PCs' way of life. But again, I can only take that arc so far before it simply runs its course and there is no more story left to tell. I'd still like to give this setting a go for a short campaign run at least.

∗ ∗ ∗

Here is where I'll link your blog if you join me on this 100-post journey through 100 questions.