Colour Pie Subclasses

Idraluna* added flavours to OD&D Magic-Users using the five colour system from Magic: The Gathering to group spells into schools. The colour pie is an incredibly elegant thing and it maps very well to OD&D magic because you can map the colors to just about anything. It helps that spells are exactly what it was designed for in the first place, but it uses broad philosophies rather than strict definitions, so it's very widely applicable.

*The chain of inspiration goes deeper if you follow the links in that blog, but it's the post that directly inspired this.

Almost the colour pie, but it's actually just a coloured pie graph that happened to be CC licensed.

Not only did Idraluna apply the colours to spells, but to the Magic-Users themselves. They have to wear colour-coded robes and can only cast their colour's spells. Each colour was also given one innate power, effectively making five subclasses of Magic-User.

This works pretty well with my philosophies around class design. There's options, but it's still pretty broad. The colours of Magic-User can roughly map to modern understandings of Clerics, Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers and Druids, but there's plenty of wiggle room in there to be your own character instead of the prescribed stereotype.

I liked this so much I wanted to create similar subclass systems for other classes. I began with Fighting-Men. I workshopped a selection of four or five fighting disciplines that functioned similarly. The core class remains the same, but the fighting discipline modifies it in some broad flavourful way while having a set of tools available that has some crossover with other subclasses (spells for casters, weapons for fighters). I came up with Military, Religious, Martial Art, Barbarian, and Competitive archetypes I wanted to cover, but it still just didn't feel right. The closest I got to something I liked was a trio, with trained fighters (soldiers, knights, gladiators), ascetic fighters (monks, paladins, barbarians) and those who fight dirty (rogues, brawlers, swashbucklers). That almost maps to alignments, which I think is neat, but it still wasn't quite where I wanted it to be.

At some point it suddenly struck me that I'd been missing the obvious: just use the exact same subclasses as Magic-Users. This can apply to the Fighter and the Expert (Thief/Specialist).

The subclasses for all classes are White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green.

Fighters

Here are some Fighter subclasses I threw together. They are quick and untested and I opted for evenly spread passive bonuses to encourage certain styles rather than active abilities - partly because I feel like an active ability defines the character too narrowly (again, I like classes with wiggle room). Note that these are designed for something like Chainmail, where +1 is fairly significant (and simultaneous turns are relevant to a handful). In other systems, granting advantage might be more appropriate.

White Fighters are knights, soldiers, paladins. They fight as part of a collective, for order. 

• +1 to melee when fighting as part of a formation or close group.
• +1 to missile fire when firing as part of a volley.
• -1 to melee when caught alone.

Blue Fighters are commanders, duelists, weapon masters. They are well-studied experts in fighting.

• +1 to melee for one turn after successfully dodging or parrying.
• +1 to missile fire at long range.
• -1 to melee for one turn after taking a hit.

Black Fighters are rogues, brawlers, ruffians. They fight to win and will do whatever it takes to survive.

• +1 to underhanded moves in combat and while catching the opponent off guard (flanking, attacking while stunned etc).
• +1 to missile fire while unseen.
• -1 to melee when you don't have an escape route.

Red Fighters are berserkers, renegades, dervishes. They fight uninhibited, striking with passion (or reckless abandon, depending on your perspective).

• +1 to melee when fighting in light armor (or none).
• +1 to missile fire when close enough to the target to be at risk of a charge.
• -1 to melee when your opponent moved toward you this turn and you did not move toward them.

Green Fighters are barbarians, rangers, hunters. They fight with their instincts, knowing their capability as a predator.

• +1 to melee versus creatures significantly larger than you.
• +1 to missile fire versus creatures that are flying or climbing.
• -1 to melee when outnumbered.

Experts

This is a bit of a tricky one because I'm gearing it toward an Expert class that could have any set of skills like the one I did for DCC. That's why it's the Expert, not the Thief. In contrast to Fighters where I didn't feel it was appropriate to solidify one archetype as the colour's title, the titles here are still broad enough to encompass any Expert skillset.

It's also assuming 7-in-6 odds. Again, other systems will need their "+1" to be something else.

White Experts are Initiates, part of a cooperative guild or some other organization or community. As skilled cooperators, they are granted a +1 when their skill check directly enables someone else's action or protects them.

Blue Experts are Students, often formally trained and in the pursuit of knowledge. As academics, they perform best when they have time to study. Performing one extra dungeon turn of observation, research, or prep before making their skill check grants a +1.

Black Experts are Professionals, doing what they are best at for personal gain. Their skill checks are granted a +1 when their actions put someone else at risk, or someone else takes the heat.

Red Experts are Mavericks, maybe not doing things the conventional way, but certainly doing it with aplomb. Skill checks get a +1 under pressure, immediate danger, or during combat.

Green Experts are Improvisers, working with what they are given. They get a +1 to all skill checks for which they need to improvise.

Dwarves are more interested in gold

"... the player must make an offer to tempt the desired character type into his service. As a rule of thumb, a minimum offer of 100 Gold Pieces would be required to tempt a human into service, dwarves are more interested in gold, Magic-Users and elves desire magical items, and Clerics want some assurance of having a place of worship in which to house themselves."

- Men & Magic, p. 12

This line from Volume 1 of the original little brown books stands out to me. "Dwarves are more interested in gold."

Apparently the common consensus is that this means dwarves want more gold than other races to be hired. This makes sense, as dwarves have advantages that make them extra useful as a hireling.

On the other hand, my first reading of this was that dwarves would be more pleased with gold than other races. If you were to offer 100gp to a human and to a dwarf, the dwarf would be more interested. Which is to say, you could actually get away with paying them less.

Just one of many cases in OD&D where the conversational, example-driven text leads to massive ambiguity about what the actual rule is supposed to be, though one I hadn't seen anyone talk about specifically. In this case, complete opposite interpretations can both adhere to the text, "rules as written".

Discovering Spells in OD&D's Empty Spaces

Salty Goo's GLoG magic gives each spell a combination of two words which make up the essence of the spell. Kind of like these spells but backwards, where the spell comes first and the words come later. The important thing is, you can use these words to mix and match and create new spells.

I thought that was an awesome mechanic, so I defined a bunch of spell words for all the spells in OD&D (plus Turn Undead, so it can be treated as a spell), because that's the game I'm currently fixated on. I iterated on this a few times to reduce the overall number of words - you'll see why underneath the complete word list below.

Some spell words.

The Spells and their Words

1. Animate Dead - animate + dead
2. Anti-Magic Shell - nullify + magic
3. Bless - divine + enhance
4. Cause Disease - create + disease
5. Cause Light Wounds - create + harm
6. Cause Serious Wounds - create + harm
7. Charm Monster - charm + monster
8. Charm Person - charm + person
9. Clairaudience - distant + sound
10. Clairvoyance - distant + sight
11. Cloudkill - cloud + death
12. Commune - divine + speak
13. Confusion - impair + knowledge
14. Conjure Elemental - conjure + elemental
15. Contact Higher Plane - divine + speak
16. Continual Dark - everlasting + dark
17. Continual Light - everlasting + light
18. Control Weather - control + weather
19. Create Food - create + food
20. Create Water - create + water
21. Cure Disease - heal + disease
22. Cure Light Wounds - heal + harm
23. Cure Serious Wounds - heal + harm
24. Curse - divine + impair
25. Dark - create + dark
26. Death Spell - creature + death
27. Detect Evil - detect + evil
28. Detect Good - detect + good
29. Detect Invisible - detect + invisible
30. Detect Magic - detect + magic
31. Dimension Door - dimension + door
32. Disintegrate - make + dust
33. Dispell Evil - dispel + evil
34. Dispell Good - dispel + good
35. Dispell Magic - dispel + magic
36. ESP - sense + thought
37. Feeblemind - impair + mind
38. Find Traps - detect + trap
39. Finger of Death - make + dead
40. Fire Ball - projectile + fire
41. Fly - air + move
42. Geas - quest + death
43. Growth/Animal - animal + grow
44. Growth/Plant - plant + grow
45. Hallucinatory Terrain - illusion + area
46. Haste Spell - enhance + speed
47. Hold Monster - hold + monster
48. Hold Person - hold + person
49. Hold Portal - ward + door
50. Infravision - enhance + sight
51. Insect Plague - insect + plague
52. Invisibility - person + invisible
53. Invisibility, 10' r. - invisible + area
54. Invisible Stalker - invisible + person
55. Knock - open + door
56. Levitate - levitate + self
57. Light - create + light
58. Lightning Bolt - projectile + lightning
59. Locate Object - detect + object
60. Lower Water - reduce + water
61. Magic Jar - soul + container
62. Massmorph - morph + area
63. Move Earth - move + earth
64. Neutralize Poison - nullify + poison
65. Part Water - part + water
66. Pass-Wall - part + wall
67. Phantasmal Forces - illusion + force
68. Polymorph Others - morph + person
69. Polymorph Self - morph + self
70. Projected Image - illusion + sight
71. Protection/Evil - repel + evil*
72. Protection/Evil, 10' r. - good + area*
73. Protection/Good - repel + good*
74. Protection/Good, 10'r. - evil + area*
75. Protection/Normal Missiles - repel + projectile
76. Purify Food & Water - purify + food
77. Putrefy Food & Water - taint + food
78. Quest - quest + curse
79. Raise Dead - heal + dead
80. Read Languages - read + language
81. Read Magic - read + magic
82. Reincarnation - new + body
83. Remove Curse - nullify + curse
84. Sleep - creature + sleep
85. Slow Spell - impair + speed
86. Speak with Animals - speak + animal
87. Speak with plants - speak + plant
88. Stone-Flesh - stone + flesh
89. Telekenesis - distant + force
90. Teleport - distant + location
91. Transmute Rock-Mud - stone + mud
92. Turn sticks to snakes - stick + snake
93. Turn undead - repel + undead
94. Wall of Fire - wall + fire
95. Wall of Ice - wall + ice
96. Wall of Iron - wall + iron
97. Wall of Stone - wall + stone
98. Water Breathing - water + breathe
99. Wizard Eye - sight + move
100. Wizard Lock - close + lock

*Protection from evil/good and its AoE equivalents are given entirely different words. This does two things: solidifies their status as distinct spells rather than two power levels of the same spell, and also gives Clerics/Anticlerics access to the words for both good and evil. Of course, the way they use those words is restricted by their faith.

The Word List

The colored emojis by the words denote which classes have access to that word through their listed spells - 🔵Wizards, ⚪Clerics and ⚫Anticlerics. Word restrictions could be because they are forbidden, kept secret, impossible for their kind of magic, taboo, undiscovered, or simply not practiced by that particular tradition.

1. Air 🔵
2. Animal 🔵⚪⚫
3. Animate 🔵
4. Area 🔵⚪⚫
5. Body 🔵
6. Breathe 🔵
7. Charm 🔵
8. Close 🔵
9. Cloud 🔵
10. Conjure 🔵
11. Container 🔵
12. Control 🔵
13. Create 🔵⚪⚫
14. Creature 🔵
15. Curse 🔵⚪⚫
16. Dark⚫
17. Dead 🔵⚪⚫
18. Death 🔵
19. Detect 🔵⚪⚫
20. Dimension 🔵
21. Distant 🔵
22. Disease ⚪⚫
23. Dispel 🔵⚪⚫
24. Divine 🔵⚪⚫
25. Door 🔵
26. Dust 🔵
27. Earth 🔵
28. Elemental 🔵
29. Enhance 🔵⚪
30. Everlasting 🔵⚪⚫
31. Evil 🔵⚪⚫
32. Fire 🔵
33. Flesh 🔵
34. Food ⚪⚫
35. Force 🔵
36. Good 🔵⚪⚫
37. Grow 🔵
38. Harm⚪⚫
39. Heal ⚪
40. Hold 🔵⚪⚫
41. Ice 🔵
42. Illusion 🔵
43. Impair 🔵
44. Insect ⚪⚫
45. Invisible 🔵
46. Iron 🔵
47. Knowledge 🔵
48. Language 🔵
49. Levitate 🔵
50. Light 🔵⚪
51. Lightning 🔵
52. Location 🔵
53. Lock 🔵
54. Magic 🔵⚪⚫
55. Make 🔵⚫
56. Mind 🔵
57. Monster 🔵
58. Morph 🔵
59. Move 🔵
60. Mud 🔵
61. New 🔵
62. Nullify 🔵⚪⚫
63. Object 🔵⚪⚫
64. Open 🔵
65. Part 🔵
66. Person 🔵⚪
67. Plague ⚪⚫
68. Plant 🔵⚪
69. Poison ⚪⚫
70. Projectile 🔵
71. Purify ⚪
72. Quest 🔵⚪⚫
73. Read 🔵
74. Reduce 🔵
75. Repel 🔵⚪⚫
76. Self 🔵
77. Sense 🔵
78. Soul 🔵
79. Sound 🔵
80. Sight 🔵
81. Sleep 🔵
82. Snake⚪⚫
83. Speak 🔵⚪⚫
84. Speed 🔵
85. Stick ⚪⚫
86. Stone 🔵
87. Taint⚫
88. Trap ⚪⚫
89. Thought 🔵
90. Undead ⚪
91. Wall 🔵
92. Ward 🔵
93. Water 🔵⚪⚫
94. Weather 🔵

But why?

So that's 94 words to make up all the spells in OD&D. Ignoring the handful of duplicates (multiple spells are allowed to use the same combination of words) this creates a "wordspace" of 8742 combinations of words - or at the very minimum, 4465 if you don't consider "fire + projectile" and "projectile + fire" to be different.

And yet the wizards and clerics of the world have only discovered 100 spells. There are between 4365 and 8642 completely unused spells worth of wordspace in the magical continuum. And that's assuming they've discovered all the words, and that new ones couldn't mutate.

• 🔵Wizards have a vast library, but they are not able to cast any spells with Dark, Disease, Food, Harm, Heal, Insect, Plague, Poison, Purify, Snake, Stick, Taint, Trap, or Undead.
• ⚪Clerics are much more restricted, having access to only 34 words, but several of those words are inaccessible to Wizards. They exclusively have access to the Heal and Purify words, and also Undead which they use for their Turn Undead ability.
• ⚫Anticlerics mostly have the same words as Clerics, minus Enhance, Heal, Purify, and (bizarrely) Undead. They have access to Make, which Clerics don't, through the Finger of Death. They have exclusive access to the Dark and Taint words, making them the class which can literally bring darkness and corruption to the world.

With those restrictions in mind, let's do like this guy and discover some theoretical magic. I'll kick this off with some random rolls.

food + stick: An excellent first roll. This Cleric/Anticleric word combination produces the fearsome spell Conjure Banana.

door + dark: A Wizard would need to steal an Anticleric's spell (or vice versa) for this combo to be possible, as sharing spells between disciplines is almost universally forbidden. These words could create Veil Portal, which completely blocks perception through a doorway.

disease + purify: A Cleric spell, Proliferate Cure, which converts a disease into an infectious antidote.

food + dead: A Cleric (subject to faith) or Anticleric spell, Corpse to Food. Does what it says on the tin. Perhaps it could alternatively create a spell for humanely slaughtering livestock, though that seems less useful from an adventuring point of view.

plague + sleep: Another spell that requires input from both classes, Plaguesleep has a delayed effect which puts a target to sleep and spreads like a disease to those who touch the target (for instance, attempting to wake them up). Anyone it spreads to becomes drowsy takes a few minutes to fall asleep and can spread the effect to anyone else. Each generation of infection past the second gets a cumulative +1 to the saving throw (becoming easier to resist the further it spreads).

Not all combinations of words produce a useful or interesting spell, but that's fine. In-game, this won't be done by simply choosing random words as I did above. Finding the interesting ones is what players are for.

How to use this in-game

When PCs do spell research, have them only be able to create effects which can be combined from words they know through other spells. Discovering a whole other new word requires either researching the word itself or stealing a spell from another caster acquiring a spell with that word through legitimate means. This is technically a nerf, but it adds depth and a whole new layer of game to the process of spell research. It might help some players to have spell creation be more defined too, rather than just telling them they can make whatever they please. Limitation breeds creativity, after all. I know I wouldn't have ever written "Conjure Banana" without being prompted by the words.

OZ ORC 2 - My first RPG convention experience

I, along with about 60 others, attended a local old school gaming convention on Saturday: OZ ORC, the Australian Oldschool Roleplay Convention. It's the convention's second year and my first. It was a lot of fun, I met a lot of cool people, connected with the local scene in a way I hadn't previously, and of course, I played some games. I found myself on the younger end of the demographic, playing alongside those who experienced AD&D in the decade before I was born. I felt a nostalgia for a tradition I wasn't there to build as I saw the way others game align with the way I want to game.

Here's what I played. It's an odd selection and in a way I'm glad I was a little late to the signups because of how it turned out.

Game 1: Mork Ratta

A Mork Borg hack of the GM's creation in which we formed a party of rats and entered a sewer that was randomly generated as we explored it. The game was one that the GM had put together as something to play in between campaigns or when the full crew didn't show up. We even played on the same map as previous players (complete with random doodles), choosing a new point to explore from.

Highlights were most of the party getting stuck in a cockroach trap because of a statistically improbable amount of natural 1s, and one of the PCs dying because they drank what turned out to be hair dye.

Intermission: Sorcery TCG

What? This isn't an RPG. Well, it certainly has the old school vibes, and it was at the convention (sort of).

During the first intermission I spotted what I thought was a friendly game of Magic: The Gathering. On closer inspection it turned out to be Sorcery: Contested Realm. A few months ago I had been looking for the Gothic precon decks so I could give the game a go, too no avail. I asked to sit in and spectate, to which one of the players offered their seat so I could try the game myself instead. It turns out this fellow runs learn-to-play events for the game so he was eager to get me involved.

He described the game briefly as Magic meets chess. By the end of the game I was surprised to learn how true that description is. Your cards move around on a 5x4 grid and your player’s avatar is a unit on the board. Coupled with the way the game ends (after hitting zero you don't die - but you can die next round by taking any damage to your avatar) you end up with a card game that sets up a board game which decides the winner.

It was fun. I like the current, slower pace of the game and I hope it has plans to retain that and fight the power creep long term. He gave me a small booster pack and an invitation to some future events. I wish I had the time and funds.

Game 2: Goat Quest 2

This was run by Konsumterra of Elfmaids and Octopi, who posted about it here. It was another animal-based homebrew hack, described as "probably more like Castles & Crusades than anything else." We played as ancestors of the goats who were the PCs last year - some of those players returned for this year! We were blessed with sentience and tasked with protecting the village from the forces of Chaos, all without the villagers finding out.

We were told about the legend of the Anti-Goat and let loose on the town. Our first port of call was to go to a hamlet that was burned down by our ancestors for being cultists. We burned it down again, because there were cultists again.

The Holy Goat, the cleric stand-in, had the very creative ability of "Turn Shapeshifter". I'm going to have to steal that idea for a spell or something. It was very cool and saw multiple uses. It had the ability to not just drive them back, but alternately to force them to change forms!

Highlights of the game for me were being KO'd by an old lady after spectacularly jumping into her window and missing two attacks, and a Chaotic Evil woman warning us to watch out for her son. Her son is pictured above. Yes, he was the snake.

Game 3: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen (DCC funnel)

This was my first time being on the other end of a DCC game. My last several posts give away the fact that I've been on a major OD&D kick. I haven't been able to get the DCC table together for a good while so that campaign has stalled. This definitely reaffirmed my love for DCC.

Since this one was a module I don't want to spoil anything here. If you've played in this one, you likely know more or less what our game looked like. It's a good module and if you're umming and ahhing about getting it, it's a great opener into an urban game. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Signing off

A good time was had by all. I'll be back for next year. Hell, maybe I can work up the courage to put myself down for running something. Now that would be an experience.

Classes As My Balls

I was pondering as I often do about classes in RPGs - or was I self-analyzing my tendency to like contradictory game mechanics? maybe both - when I had a bit of an epiphany.

I've often argued that you "don't need" certain classes in your elf games. Barbarians are just a type of warrior, all casters might as well be wizards, etc. On the total flip side, I'm as much entrapped by the goblin-fueled black hole as so many others in the RPG blogosphere, where there are hundreds of classes ranging from 30 different kinds of "Fighter" (by my count) all the way to person whose dog is a ghost and brings them money.

Liz over at Magnolia Keep has two great blog posts (about combat and player skill respectively) deconstructing the reasons why different groups call the same thing different things for different purposes, and why the way we tend to categorize them is mostly wrong. I happened across these posts at around the same time I had these ponderings, and it fit the format, so here we are. Here is my own take on As My Balls.

Let's talk about what classes are, and why they are actually several different things.

Classes as Classification (Type 1)

This is the one I have argued in favor of in the past. The classic Warrior, Mage, Thief trichotomy is so ingrained into the zeitgeist of RPGs both tabletop and computer that I think it's fair to argue that almost all other classes are subsets or combinations of the three. There is a whole (ironically, classless) TTRPG by almost exactly that name. The original RPG had only fighters, mages, and clerics that were explicitly somewhere between the other two (thieves weren't until Greyhawk, despite their status as an RPG icon).

When using classes like this, the reason they were called "classes" to begin with is clear. They are broad classifications of types of characters. Stepping further back in time, the wargames that RPGs grew from had "classes" of troops, but one Light Foot and another Light Foot weren't the same. I don't think the basic classes were ever meant to be "the" options for characters, but rather the real characterization was to develop within the broader classification.

This is classes in their most literal sense and I like it for the narrative and thematic freedom it grants through its lack of mechanical specificity. Important mechanics are based on a broad category and the rest is worked out in person through play. The monk, archer, pirate, and dwarf in the party are of course different, but the class they all belong to only tells you that they do big hits and don't do magic.

The caster, martial and half-caster groupings essentially function as this kind of class in 5e, if you stopped there.

Classes as Archetypes (Type 2)

Give someone a fighter and it isn't long before they ask for a paladin. It only took a year from the birth of the hobby (from OD&D to Greyhawk) for this to happen in an official capacity. Granted, adding new classes was an obvious move to make and in part its status as a subclass was an attempt at giving Fighting-Men something exciting, but the point stands. With only three or four broad options, people just wanted more.

By now, a culture had begun to develop around these classes. There was some idea of what a Cleric or a Fighting-Man was like. In turn, there would have been players who wanted to play something a bit different, and for some a logical leap was to create a new class. To be fair, it's what Volume 1: Men & Magic tells you to do. A player can play as virtually anything, even a dragon, as long as the referee determines the progression.

For some, spreading out within the bounds of the broader "Magic-User" class either does not come naturally or does not feel as appealing as having a true mechanical differentiation. A Wizard, a Warlock, and a Sorcerer might be the same to me, but to other players this distinction really matters. (Sidebar: I actually think the level titles of OD&D lessened the freedom players felt here, because Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer and even Necromancer were defined game terms that were only differentiated by level). Take this a few steps further and you get to recent editions of D&D, which provide about ten-ish classes for players to build a character within. These are more specific than "does magic, hits things, or has skills" but still fairly general archetypes.

Everyone knows what the Bard is supposed to be. The class comes with not only mechanical expectations but roleplaying ones too. There is a whole default personality to fall back on if necessary - and I really don't mean this as a dig against modern D&D. If D&D's good at anything, that thing is being the standard, and this approach to classes makes it pretty easy for all players to get something they want out of it without expecting a specific kind of effort in return. With most bases mostly covered, players are free to put their effort where they want to.

This middling number of classes is enough to create a "best of" of well-known fantasy character archetypes while not being expansive enough to induce high levels of analysis paralysis.

Classes as Options (Type 3)

Multiclassing in 5e comes close to bridging the gap to this next one, but I'd argue that it doesn't quite cross it because the classes are still designed with clear and separate individual identities and multiclassing is sort of an afterthought. 5.5e even more so, with the sweeping structural changes to classes making multiclassing less mechanically appealing. Pathfinder on the other hand very much seems to expect multiclassing and has more specific classes in greater numbers.

This is also where you are likely to stop seeing race-as-class entirely. Games that favor options for the players will prefer having races as another option to combine with your class rather than the defining characteristic of your character.

A great example of classes as options is Shadow of the Demon Lord, whose classes are in essence a menu of options to choose from when you level up. Games like Dragonbane or other Basic Roleplaying-based games also fit into this, being "classless" but with your profession and combination of skill selections primarily making up your character identity where your class normally would.

This is for the players who want to have lots of mechanical choices at their fingertips. When I say mechanical choices, I mean the ones that are written into the rulebook rather than presented by the GM. It's not necessarily just for powergamers, though this type of classes does create the kind of game most conducive to powergaming. Even many classless games, which I once thought of as the cureall to powergaming, lend themselves to optimization for those who don't specifically choose to play suboptimally. Having options kind of just does that.

This approach to classes is great for those who value the progression of their character being written into the game for them to strategize their way into rather than abilities being handed out at the GM's judgement. I will grumpily admit there is merit to that, despite my own preferences for diegetic progression.

Classes as Specific Fantasies (Type 4)

When all of these seem like reasonable classes, you are in Type 4.

The complete opposite end of the spectrum from Classification is when you are no longer grouping characters into classes, but creating bespoke classes for character concepts. This is what GLoG classes do. You come up with what you want to do and a class can be made for that. And that character fantasy can just as well be Conan or Aragorn as it can be a werewolf unionist or the classic "weird little guy".

In Type 4, the more classes available to the players the better, and these games are usually designed such that creating a class is quick and easy, maybe even doable in ten minutes before the start of your first session.

Classes as Nonexistent (Type 0)

The philosophy of classless systems counterintuitively shares a lot with the countless-classes philosophy of the extreme end of Type 4. Both of these kinds of systems want the players to have game mechanics ready to go for exactly the character they want to play. While I was writing the section for Specific Fantasies classes, I remembered an interview with someone from Chaosium (I apologize for not remembering the actual source!) where they discussed having played a game with a player whose character was a dolphin in a mechsuit.

That is GLoGgy as hell.

Follow the arrows as classes get more specific.

And I think this hits the crux of why I am drawn to the seemingly contradictory ends of the spectrum. Type 1 and Type 4 aren't actually so far apart when what you want is something that allows the player to do what they want to do without too much bloat. I consider classes a useful and intuitive player-facing tool for this, which explains why I love the two ends of the spectrum and have a soft-spot for classless systems. I consider an excess of mechanical options to be bloated, gameable, and come with a lot of baggage, which explains why I don't Types 2 and 3. But those are just, like, my opinions, man.

DCC across the 2 Axes of Abstraction

Murkdice wrote about what games are about based on what they have rules for and what they don't have rules for. It's an interesting ludological article, though I'm somewhat skeptical of the suggestion that anyone seriously claims 5e isn't about combat specifically because most of its rules are for combat, though. There were some cool four-sector charts in there so I wanted to do one for DCC, and in the process I had a few thoughts of my own about what the axes of abstraction actually tell us.

Go check out the original article. There's more charts!

It's a bit more cluttered than Murkdice's examples but the point of that post wasn't to deep dive into any one game, it was to demonstrate an overall point about what games tell us they are about.

When you illustrate the point like this, it becomes clear that the things the game is about are the things it expects to become complex. This is true across the entire coded-free spectrum. DCC goes to great lengths to tell you about all the things it wants you to do but doesn't have specific rules for, so it's really a perfect demonstration of this.

DCC is about unpredictable magic because it has a lot of rules and charts to follow (making it complex), and DCC is about Questing For It because it leaves the quest-and-reward process open and free (making it complex). You can entirely throw away the axis of codedness and find that the number of rules a game has about a particular thing actually has no correlation to what the game is about.

It turns out a game is actually about what you spend time focusing on while you play it.

A d6 Skill System: 7-in-6 odds

This is a skill system based on old school x-in-6 checks which allows for effectively endless scaling. Obviously, 7-in-6 odds doesn't make much sense, but you're here reading this now so I owe you an explanation. It'll make sense soon.

This is intended for the sort of skills a Thief uses. Climb Sheer Surfaces sort of things - abilities that can't necessarily be attempted by everyone, or if they can, the skilled character gets an extra chance to do it beyond the normal level. I listed several more examples under the Specialist.

The original Thief skills table, a la Greyhawk (1975).

The basic idea here is to have a skill rating be a number from 1 to 6 that represents your odds of success. There are two problems* with this. The first is that 6-in-6 makes failure impossible, and the second is that 83.3% is hugely different from 100% so to stop it there feels like there is a lot more room for progression.

*Whether or not these are problems is subjective.

The twist is to not cap progression, but to soft-cap it instead. Rolling a 6 is always a failure, so with a skill of 6 you still only have 5-in-6 odds, but your leftover 1 rolls over to another die, so you need to fail 5-in-6 then 1-in-6 to truly fail. Thus, at a skill rating of 7, 2 points roll over. At skill 8, 3 points roll over, and so on. By skill rating 11, you hit 6 on your second die and carry the 1 again.

So that's how we do "7-in-6". 5-in-6, carry 2.

Skill Level	d6 Odds	Percentile Equiv.
1	1 in 6	17%
2	2 in 6	33%
3	3 in 6	50%
4	4 in 6	67%
5	5 in 6	83%
6	5 in 6 + 1 in 6	86%
7	5 in 6 + 2 in 6	89%
8	5 in 6 + 3 in 6	92%
9	5 in 6 + 4 in 6	94%
10	5 in 6 + 5 in 6	97%
11	5 in 6 + 5 in 6 + 1 in 6	98%

This works out neatly because, in essence, every 5th skill rating you get one extra attempt and the probabilities become more granular. Though it's absolutely worth noting here that a 5-in-6 is already high-level (equivalent in probability to a Master Thief!), so getting multiple roll-overs is ultra-high-level. Over 10, we're talking about less-than-halves of a percent. It scales infinitely but never hits 100%, though a skill rating of 25 means you need to roll a Yahtzee with all sixes in order to fail (that's 1 in 7,776).

Another really cool thing about this is that it maintains the existence of suspenseful moments at higher levels. A 5-in-6 doesn't feel suspenseful because you know you'll probably win. If anything, it falls flat when you fail an expected success. On the flip side, in this system, if you fail your first roll you now feel suspense on the second roll because this time it feels like you really can fail. In fact, for the first few levels above 5, the odds are really high that you're going to fail the second roll, but you might just scrape through - that brings back some of the suspense from early levels (albeit less frequently, which makes it more memorable when it happens).

Notably, skill rating 14 is the point where your failure rate is approximately 1% (actually 1-in-108). Each 5th skill point is a notable breakpoint where your failure rate halves between levels.

The elephant in the room here is that I haven't defined the actual progression rate for the skills. Oddly, I don't think this actually matters as much, but using the table above you can very easily convert odds up to 98% to their nearest equivalent. For my own games, I'm yet to nail down the exact progression I want.

Hexes with Depth: Overcomplicating the hexcrawl

Today's post is about something I tried that didn't work. It was a cool idea in theory, but it didn't produce the results I wanted.

My basic idea was this: add a second dimension to hexcrawl terrain types. Rather than simply having plains, hills, forest, deserts, swamps and mountains you now have differing intensities of each. Forests become sparse forests, medium forests and dense forests.

I was hoping this would provide a bunch of extra descriptive variety while traversing the hexmap without adding any real noodly details to keep track of. One end of the scale is the most featureless, least difficult to traverse version of a terrain type and the other end of the scale is busy, intense, and difficult. You have three times as many types of hex but still only have to think about the same number of types of hex you were already using.

The problem ended up being that there were three times as many types of hex.

You see, I like a hexcrawl where the players can get lost. If you aren't actually exploring, aren't figuring things out on the fly then there isn't really much point in doing a hexcrawl. Being lost is a part of the experience that I want to create. Traversal itself being a challenge and the possibility of ending up somewhere totally unexpected are awesome and fun.

With a lot of different types of hex, it became too easy to pinpoint one's exact location on the map simply based on the visible surroundings. There was no being lost in the woods, because there are some sparse woods this way and some dense woods this way. There's now only one hex anywhere in the vicinity you could reasonably be in. It became completely trivial, which made the whole process feel like a waste of time.

I ended up throwing the whole idea out in favour of fairly bland hexes with spread-out points of interest to navigate between.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is somewhere between "keep it simple" and "make sure you playtest". If you don't, it's easy to get lost.

Which die is the most honest?

There's a great Goblin Punch article about core resolution mechanics and the pros and cons of each. If you're even the slightest bit interested in RPG mechanics or game design I'd recommend giving it a read, but the general idea can be gleaned from the table at the bottom directly comparing a bunch of core mechanics qualitatively. I won't copy-paste it here, just go look.

What I want to talk about today is one specific aspect of this: transparency. Which die do people understand the odds of most accurately? Which one acts the most like people think it does?

Arnold lists the d100 roll-under mechanic as "perfect" visibility and the d20 roll-under mechanic as "high" visibility. I'm going to make the admittedly weird argument that the d20 in its 5% steps is actually clearer to the average player than the d100.

People do not intuit probability well at all. 65% doesn't feel very high despite the fact that you have almost double the chance of succeeding than you do of failing. Yet somehow, a coin flip feels like pretty good odds to most people. I mean, it's mathematically fair isn't it? Well, until you do flip it and it doesn't go your way. Or you've already flipped once and lost - surely it'll come up your way this time.

Famously, the video game XCOM tried to remedy this by having the displayed hit percentages lie (in a good way!) to the players, telling you that you have a 95% chance to hit but then applying a bunch of modifiers which give you a much greater true chance of hitting. Basically, they wanted people not to feel like the game was cheating them, so they made it cheat in their favour instead. The result? There were still memes about always missing at 95%. The odds are better than what's displayed and people still feel like the game is cheating them.

Human comprehension of probabilities is atrocious.

Finally getting to the point:

Let's map this to the initial examples: 65% and a coin-flip, but in the roll-under d20 system.

• To succeed you need to roll below 10.
• To succeed you need to roll below 13.

How do those statements feel? I don't know if I am an outlier or in the majority here, but the discrete steps of the d20 seem more intuitively comprehensible compared to the mathematical honesty of the d100. I have even seen convincing arguments from some real grognards that the "x-in-d6" of yore is clearer again, and I find it hard to disagree. Who knows, six might actually be a sweet spot between granularity and comprehension, even though it seems backwards that 16.67% steps would be intuitive.

The Ten Foot Pole Store

Read this post as if it's a goofy merchant character trying to sell you something. Prices are given in ten-foot-pole-equivalents.

Ten-foot poles:

Ten-foot pole - 1 - it's a pole, about ten feet long. Cumbersome but useful.

Decempeda - 1.5 - it's a pole, exactly ten feet long. Perfect for precise measuring, still cumbersome.

Jointed ten-foot pole - 2 - Unscrews at three points so it can fit in a pack or something. Can be separated into four 2.5 foot poles. Takes a minute or so to set up and pack up. If you buy multiple you can construct a longer pole with the parts! But the ends only have one joint, so you only get 5 extra feet per additional pole.

Folding ten-foot pole - 2 - Folds up in a zig-zaggy pattern with joints that lock. Quicker to fold and unfold than the standard jointed model, but can't be separated into four 2.5 foot poles.

Telescoping ten-foot pole - 4 - Very quick and easy to extend, but a bit flimsy. You can swing it to open it and you will look very cool.

Elastic ten-foot pole - 10 - Can be bent all the way round so that it touches end-to-end and still spring back into shape. Could be considered a minor magic item, as the material it is made of is fantastical in nature.

Other ten-foot products:

Ten-foot ladder - 1.5 - Two ten-foot poles connected by a bunch of rungs. Probably useless, to be honest.

Ten-foot rope - 2 - An amazing pole that can twist and bend in any direction!

Ten-foot chain - 20 - Like the ten-foot rope but metal!

Ten feet - 1 - From rabbits. Very lucky. Enough to share.

Magical ten-foot items:

He probably doesn't have all of these on hand - maybe the ones he doesn't have are legends he is seeking.

Staff of Ten-Footness - 100 - Once per day, a successful DC 15 spell check makes anything shorter than ten feet expand to ten feet long. Now I know what you're thinking, and I will not be liable for any damages!

Immoveable ten-foot pole - 250 - The infamous immoveable rod but ten feet long. Very dangerous.

Sun's Pole - 3000 - Extends and contracts at the will of the holder, but is very heavy. Has seemingly no upper limit on length.

Hitting a hydra

This is a mechanic for determining which head of a hydra gets hit. I swear this is simpler than it looks. If the logic doesn't immediately make sense from the chart, read on rather than scratching your head over it.

Heads	Dice rolled
1	-
2	-
3	2d2-1
4	1d2+1d3-1
5	2d3-1
6	1d3+1d4-1
7	2d4-1
8	1d4+1d5-1
9	2d5-1

In some games (e.g. DCC) you are already tracking the HP of each head of a hydra. In some (e.g. 5e) you are not, instead tracking only a, HP total and the number of heads. If you're already keeping track, this isn't a ton of extra overhead.

If a player chooses to strike at the hydra without aiming, roll the listed dice to determine which head is hit. The dice are simply a pair of dice whose maximums add up to the number of heads, plus one. For instance, 9 heads, plus 1 is 10, half of that is 5 so you roll two d5s. The reason you need to subtract 1 is because you can't roll a 1 on two dice, so you end up with as many possibilities as heads.

If there is only 1 head to hit there's obviously no need to roll, and if there's only 2 then just let the player hit whichever one they want. I considered a 3-in-4 roll to hit the desired head but it's getting too complex at that point.

Optional extension: Aiming

If the player aims for a specific head, treat that head as the "center" roll: the most likely roll on the pair of dice (the smaller die total plus one (yes, with different die sizes there will be two equal results, that won't matter)). Lower numbers go down the line, higher numbers go up the line, and the ends wrap around (aiming for the first head and rolling low can hit the last head).

This lets players be strategic if certain heads have certain abilities, rather than the center ones probably dying first. It also allows for players to try to kill the heads all at the same time.

Alternate version

Roll the two dice together. The leftmost die represents left, the rightmost die represents right. Literally just use where they land on the table relative to you. The difference between the two dice determines how many heads the player misses by, and which one is highest determines the direction.

This version came from a hexcrawl "lost" mechanic where two dice determined how far left or right travelers drifted.

Platonic ideal potions

Alchemists of old used to work with materials. They tried to turn iron into gold and find cures for ailments. These are still valid pursuits, of course, though medicine these days is left to the apothecaries and creating valuables from trash tends to require more magical capability than most are willing to sell their soul for.

Modern alchemy focuses instead on the abstract. Rather than distilling and modifying things, the art has moved on to distilling capital "T" Things. The ideas and concepts of our world rather than mere substances that exist within it. Ask a carpenter if you want a chair. Ask an alchemist if you want the very essence of chairness.

What's in this health potion? Why, health, of course.

A potion is the purified, liquified, and conveniently bottled essence of a concept. Drinking a strength potion simply makes the imbiber become more like the concept of "strength". A love potion makes a person love, and a health potion makes a person healthy. It is that simple. It's not always necessary to drink the potion - a bottle smashed open to quickly coat a substance can have the desired effect. This is a much more practical use for a potion of burning than drinking it. Trust me.

Potions of water breathing are often actually potions of fish. It is imperative not to screw up the dosage on that one.

It is even possible to brew a death potion - a substance which will kill, but will not show any signs of poisoning or any discernible cause of death. The drinker simply becomes dead. Equally possible and significantly more horrifying (or hilarious, depending on your perspective) are the results of drinking a potion of chairness.

The very same mechanism that allows potions to work is also what makes them so dangerous. Typically, ideals will come from a variety of ingredients and must be carefully distilled. Any number of other ontological contaminants can distort the effects, giving the appearance of chaotic unreliability. In reality, the reason your luck potion accidentally melted the person who drank it was because water is a primary ingredient, and wateriness was the concept that ended up being distilled. Honestly, it was an amateur mistake to even attempt to distill luck.

You can use a list of random concepts such as the one I threw together for freeform magic to come up with endless ideas for potions.

The Make Potion spell (DCC RPG p. 223) is one method of distilling concepts into liquid, though as with all magic, many of those casters of the spell do not understand what it is truly doing.

Making Immortals more DCC-ish

I've written before about my fascination with Immortals from early editions of D&D and a little of my own vision of them. While there is a lot I do enjoy about them, there's also a lot of room to improve. Here are some things about the original versions of Immortals that don't quite fit the DCC vibe, and how I might use some of DCC's design principles for Immortals in my own games and worlds.

All Immortals are the same

When one becomes an Immortal, they gain a bunch of the same powers as the other Immortals all at once and their old life becomes suddenly irrelevant (besides, apparently, the Immortal's personality and some fond memories). Immortals are not all identical, of course, but there is a core set of abilities that they all just have. These abilities are largely unrelated to each other besides being the kinds of things you expect godly figures to be able to do.

What if each ability critical to being an immortal had to be gained independently, and thus not all Immortals have all powers? The first step is, obviously, immortality itself. Bringing yourself to a state in which your death is no longer a guarantee. From there, all the other powers are just a matter of time - after all, you have endless years to achieve them. Characters could undertake multiple quests to gain the powers of divine spellcasting (truly creating their own spells, rather than borrowing them as Clerics and Wizards), various forms including ethereality and mortal avatars, teleportation, planar creation and dominion, and resistance to magical effects. Each and every one of these powers that is simply granted upon ascension could be an entire story of its own. Quest for it.

To be fair, it makes sense for Immortals to be so similar because there is only...

One road to Immortality

You might argue that there are multiple listed paths, but in the end they all amounted to finding an Immortal sponsor and doing some grand test or display of power to get your sponsor to grant you the gift of Immortality. This implies that you could draw a family tree of all Immortals, from the first of all time right down to the player characters. This set of powers is a gift that has been passed down.

This is way too straightforward and structured.

Being granted immortality by a higher being should be but one possible path toward immortality, let alone capital "I" Immortality. Perhaps it's the appropriate path for a Cleric to follow, the ultimate reward from their deity for acting as their Chosen, but here are some alternate ways to become immortal:

• Lichdom. Sure, this isn't complete immortality, but "immortality, unless..." is more fun anyway. Have players attempt to pull shenanigans like Voldemorting themselves into 7 phylacteries or dropping their phylactery into a black hole to make it inaccessible.
• Reincarnation. Give your soul some way to move bodies after your death and you even get fun new forms every lifetime.
• Discovering or creating the Philosopher's Stone.
• Regenerative immortality. Develop some magic, tech, or mutation which allows you to recover from any injury, given enough time and energy.
• Rewrite the annals of time such that your death is no longer destined, or that your existence is a universal constant.
• Pledge your soul to multiple afterlives and they'll use their power to keep you alive so they can avoid going to cosmic court over custody. This will piss your patrons off for sure.
• De-age yourself every couple decades. Magically, medically, whatever.

Some of these are even almost possible using spells in the core rules.

Immortals totally aren't Gods

To any peasant, even the weakest of Immortals would seem like a god. The original version of Immortals simply doesn't bring up the elephant in the room with this one. Gods presumably exist, as Clerics regularly receive divine intervention. In fact, Clerics will serve Immortals, so the reasonable conclusion seems to be that Immortals are in fact gods. But BECMI simply doesn't bring up gods at all, and the particular lack of any mention of particular aspects of religion appears to be a result of the backlash received by D&D during the Satanic Panic. Can't blame the publishers for not wanting to pour fuel on the fire there.

In DCC, it's not entirely clear what deities are exactly. Among the suggested Clerical deities in DCC RPG are proper gods, a demigod, an Old One, a demon prince and a demon lord. From this I would suppose that a deity in DCC is any being powerful enough to grant a Cleric their power. Any one of those creatures are likely immortal and thus classify as an Immortal.

It's not so much that they are gods necessarily, but they may as well be because who even knows what a god is anyway?

Immortality follows a clear and structured hierarchy

I'm not sure whether it turned out this way for the sake of game mechanics or whether the authors fell into the design traps many of us do while world-building - that old human obsession with labelling things and putting them neatly into a box. Whatever the reason, the Immortals set goes well out of its way to tell you exactly how many Immortals there are at which levels. To reach those levels, you specifically have to compete with and usurp existing Immortals.

A lot of mystery and variety is removed by this structured approach. On top of that, it bakes a lot of cosmic world-building into the mechanics of the game, leaving little (if any) room for the Judge and players to do their own thing. I have my own ideas about what the cosmos looks like with Immortals in it but it's very freeform and would likely be different in a different campaign world. BECMI gives you one version of the cosmos to play with, and it's not a very mysterious one. There's little to explore, which is odd given that exploring the secrets of the universe is supposed to be what Immortals do. I guess the authors thought that meant there needed to be answers.

How this all ties together

If we these things about Immortals, we end up with something that looks a little more appropriate for a DCC campaign. The advice given in the core book includes keeping things mysterious and unknown, having variety, and achieving great power through questing. That's all totally possible at the cosmic hero tier of play too.

I guess the next step is to create that tier of play.

Using Story Cubes as an Oracle

It was my birthday recently and my wife gifted me a bunch of Story Cubes. Specifically, four sets of them: Classic, Actions, Voyages, and Fantasia.

A version of this concept for those who do not own these dice exists here.

Left to right: Fantasia, Voyages, Actions

Four sets gives me 36 dice in four colors, for a total of 216 possible random pictograms if I draw dice from a bag. Very nice. My immediate thought was that this is effectively a d666 table (see below), but there's more than that. Let's look at what we can do with these.

Spark tables based on the dice

I wrote down what each face of each die looks like to me. Some are a little subjective and there's definitely word-association to be done with the visuals, which makes using the real dice far more effective at providing inspiration. But in lieu of owning the dice, you can use this as a spark table. Some of these are modern and don't necessarily suit all genres, but for a spark table I genuinely don't think that matters. If you roll "airplane" in a fantasy medieval setting, surely that still gives you some idea you can work with!

Result 266 was the rightmost pictogram in the above photo - I found this one particularly hard to interpret. Let me know if you know what that's actually supposed to be.

Classic	1	2	3	4	5	6
11	walking cane	mobile phone	weighing scales	expressionless mask	diagonal arrow	lightning bolt
12	ID card	rainbow	stone tower	pyramid	open eye	tree
13	planet	flashlight	apple	friendly face	modern tower	airplane
14	keyhole	comedy and tragedy	parachuter	striped fish	chaos symbol	sunflower
15	open book	bee	bridge over water	abacus	crescent moon	magician's wand
16	question mark	fountain	key	sad face	shooting star	teepee
21	sheep	padlock	learner plate	magnet	footprint	fire
22	house	speech bubble	sleeping face	light bulb	arrow (weapon)	clock
23	open hand	a six-sided die	magnifying glass	scarab	menacing shadow	turtle

Actions	1	2	3	4	5	6
24	push	falling object	press button	steal	set alight	think
25	listen to music	enter door	hide	falling person	play with dolls	hit ball
26	sore thumb	read book	surprise	gift	turn	touch (blindfolded)
31	climb tree	thumbs up	counting	kick ball	catch butterfly	eat lunch
32	drying laundry	reach high	point	knock	build wall	awaken to alarm
33	bounce	cough	walk	carry	light weights	lead the way
34	dance	break/snap	dig hole	shout/call	fight	fill hole
35	jump down	scissors cut paper	drop ball	cry	knock down vase	drawing
36	fork in road	ask question	hang from bars	throw ball up	rocket collision	laughter

Voyages	1	2	3	4	5	6
41	torii gate	dino skull	coin bag	tunnel entrance	waves	beans
42	backpack	monkey	goblet	cactus	sunrise/sunset	gauge/meter
43	skull and crossbones	six pointed star/sun	spotted mushroom	submarine	raincloud	gears
44	cauldron	spectacles	camera	pointing/accusatory	pill	elephant
45	rice bowl	stairway down	bandit	horned helmet	pouring flask	bacterium
46	exotic city	jewel pendant	octopus	crab	miniature person	mirror
51	circus tent	angry	cracking egg	opening chest (facing away)	road to mountains	puzzle piece
52	"ping"	crown	treasure map	snake	whip	ray gun
53	crow	scared	musical note	telescope	ladder	axe

Fantasia	1	2	3	4	5	6
54	frog	flute	bindle	slinky cat	shadowy imp	old crone
55	Zeus smiting	summit temple	sailship	minotaur	giant brute	last stand atop high ground
56	maze	harp	trojan horse	hypnotized/entranced	sly/convincing/hiding dagger	Icarus flying too close
61	monk	princess with sword	market stall	jester cap	pig on a spit	quill and inkwell
62	trident	opening jewelry box (facing away)	Charon the ferryman	Medusa	hermes' winged boots	high throne
63	wolf howling at moon	robed figure	birdcage	Gnome miner	path into forest	baby basket
64	bow and quiver	tankard of ale	crusader helmet	cart of hay	morningstar	longhouse
65	dragon	troll/ogre	shackled prisoner	castle gate	potion	wizard
66	tiara	hand mirror	path to hilltop tower	figure inside swirl	fairy	well

Yes/No Oracle

Draw three story dice from the bag and roll them. If the pictogram is something that would be beneficial to the situation or question, count one "yes". If it is not beneficial or is negative, count one "no". Majority rules.

You can get "yes, and" results if all three are positive rather than just a majority. If you use five dice, you can create a sliding scale including "no, and", "no, but" and "yes, but". Three positives or negatives is a softer yes or no, while a unanimous result is stronger.

You could theoretically play an entire storygame using this and only this. Do the heroes beat the army of orcs? Abacus, lightbulb, morningstar... It looks like superior intellect, strength and a brilliant strategic idea bring the heroes a decisive victory!

Character Generation

In games based around tags, traits, or aspects drawing a few dice and rolling them is all you need to generate a character. In any other game, you could use this to come up with the character concept and then use the usual generation methods to get there.

Four elements

You can also associate the four colors with the four elements and use that as your oracle, an idea that I got from the solo RPG Diedream. The colors of the sets I own are grey, blue, green and pink, which map closely enough to air, water, earth and fire. The tables above are colored as such, but you might as well roll a d4 if you're doing it that way. Sometimes these broader categories might be all you need, or they might color your interpretation of the images.

Blog Graveyard vol X: Appendix M

I was inspired by this post to write my own entry to the Blog Graveyard.

The subject of today's eulogy is Appendix M, whose last sighting was the 28th of January, 2020. Appendix M was started by bygrinstow as a way to get back into drawing by publicizing their practice. Art being a worthwhile endeavour on its own, this had the very respectable side effect of providing us all with a ton of creative creatures to steal for our own purposes. Thanks from the future, bygrinstow.

Bygrinstow, by the way, also brought us the brilliant Monster Extractor series, which has inspired me before.

What does Appendix M offer us? Monsters! More than you can swing your sword at! You could choose an article at random from this blog and be almost guaranteed to land on a post containing a monster you'll want to throw at your players. If you didn't, it's because you happened to land on one of the few posts that doesn't contain a monster.

Testing this theory myself, I got the Dirt Diver, the House Beetle, the Forgotten Soldier, and Nearly People. Surely one of those names makes you want to go check it out for yourself. In amongst these original creations are well-trodden monsters such as Kobolds, Mermaids, and rival adventuring parties, but these sit between the more unusual beasts like whatever a "SCARLSNIPE" is, and gelatinous shapes that aren't cubes.

The absolute highlight for me personally is DRYAD, TRUE, which helped me to ease my players (and myself, as a new Judge) from module content to homebrew sandbox-style content by being the subject of the hook at the end of Portal Under the Stars. According to Appendix M, the dryad is like the forest's immune system. She comes into existence to protect it from evil, and attacks intruders with the remembered mental anguish of victims of evil. The sister monster to this is the DRYAD, FALSE - something the locals might think is a dryad but truly is just a monster.

If it's not monsters you're looking for though, there is a handful of other content such as the MURDER HOBO class - a class that manages to capture the flavour of the murderhobo concept while actually being something I'd potentially allow at my table. It might even be fun to run a whole party of these guys as a chaotic one-shot or campaign.

Whether you're looking for stats for a monster so you don't have to do them yourself, an interesting twist on a known monster, or something entirely new and bizarre to throw at your players, it's worth casting Consult Spirit to commune with this dead blog and retrieve some of its wisdom.

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.