what makes your decisions meaningful?

December 17th, 2012

Part of the fun of gaming is measuring yourself against challenges and seeing where you stand. In any game except, like, Pachinko, your wins and losses have to do with the choices you made.

Here are some speculations about what “meaningful choices” might mean to different people in D&D, and how it informs people’s choice of edition.

What makes your character-building choices meaningful? By “character-building” I mean choices about class, race, feats, powers, and maybe equipment: character-sheet stuff. Little variations in character power are best measured by pitting the characters against a standardized challenge. Therefore, versions of D&D with lots of character-building options (like 3e and 4e) are best served by having the characters frequently face opponents similar in power to the PCs. That maximizes the chance that small character-building adjustments will mean the difference between failure and success. And indeed, the 3e and 4e rules do expect that opponents will frequently be the right CR or level.

What makes your strategic choices meaningful? By “strategic” I mean high-level decisions made after seeing the opposition. Fight, run, or parley? Hoard resources or go nova with spells? These decisions are most meaningful when the PCs face challenges that can’t always be handled by the same strategy. If every encounter can be handled with a fight, there’s never a reason to run. Therefore, strategic choices are most meaningful when the characters frequently face opponents of varying power relative to the PCs (and the PCs can tell who’s too powerful to fight). Strategic choices are very important in OD&D, where there aren’t a lot of character-building choices, and randomly-encountered monsters have widely varying strengths (especially in the wilderness). Furthermore, in OD&D, there are a limited number of enemy types. You can’t make informed strategic decisions when you’re presented with a constant stream of enemies of unknown capabilities.

What makes your roleplaying choices meaningful? By “roleplaying” I mean making decisons based on your character’s goals, personality, backstory, and relationships with NPCs. These choices are meaningful when the PCs are able to influence the game’s story. If a conversation scene might legitimately make an important NPC a friend or enemy; if the adventure can take an unexpected turn because a PC decides to honor an obligation; if skipping an entire dungeon won’t make the DM mad, then role-playing decisions are meaningful. This happens in games where the characters frequently face NPCs. Apart from skill checks, there aren’t a lot of rules in D&D to handle this sort of thing. During a tense negotiation, a carefully-nuanced speech doesn’t give a mechanical benefit: it relies on the DM’s social sense, gained not from rules mastery but from the DM’s actual experience talking to humans. Roleplaying choices don’t have much to do with rules design and more to do with adventure design. Roleplaying choices can be more important in sandboxy adventures than in linear adventures, like Dragonlance and some of the less flexible adventure-path campaigns.

I’m going to take it as axiomatic that all three types of decision-making are worthwhile (they’re all fun for someone). Every edition of D&D presents character-building, strategic, and roleplaying choices. However, if you’re primarily interested in one of these, that might steer you towards (and away from) a specific system or adventure type.

If you love character-building the most, you should probably play 3e or 4e, and it probably explains why you don’t like the randomness of early D&D.

If you love high-level strategic decisions made during play, you should play early D&D editions or retroclones. You probably don’t like the balanced encounters of later editions.

If you love roleplaying, you can play any edition you want, but you hate DM railroading. Few adventure modules are flexible enough to handle this style well. Your best bet is to find a DM with good improv skills.

I think what’s most interesting about this analysis is how it shows the coherence of various D&D editions. Editions with a lot of character options should provide carefully balanced encounters (and 3e and 4e do). Editions without many character options should provide opponents of random but known strength (and early editions do).

What’s also interesting is what doesn’t cohere according to my analysis: 2e, post-Skills and Powers, has detailed character-building options but doesn’t, I think, have anything like a Challenge Rating system to test yourself against. Lamentations of the Flame Princess concentrates on strategic play, but presents unique monsters of unknown capacities so that you have difficulty making informed decisions.

Posted in game design, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

prices for dungeonbuilding

December 14th, 2012

On the last possible day you could order Random Dungeons before Christmas, here are a couple of excerpts:

For mad wizard PCs who want to construct their own Castle Greyhawk, here are dungeon-construction prices from Tavis and the rest of the Adventurer Conqueror King people:

And here is part of the castle map from my adventure, “The Treasure of Castle Redrill”:

I hesitate to figure out how much Redrill Castle and its dungeons would cost to build according to the price guidelines. It would definitely take a couple of adventures to fund it.

It would be kind of fun to start dungeon-building immediately at level 1: When you find a cache of 100 GP guarded by a fire beetle, immediately go home and start working on the tiny dungeon in your celler. 100 GP, that’s enough for a two-foot-long dungeon corridor! Or two stone doors! Or, best yet, spikes for your 10×10 pit (sold separately)!

Posted in RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

Last minute Christmas gift: the Random Dungeons kickstarter book!

December 11th, 2012

If you’d like the real-book version of every printable reward from my Random Dungeon kickstarter, you can get Random Dungeons, a 180-page book containing every reward made for every backing level, for $19.95. Until December 14, you can use the coupon code FELICITAS to get 20% off the price (for a price of around $16) and it should arrive before Christmas if you order, like, today.

It contains

  • the art from the Random Dungeon and Random Monster posters
  • the sticker art by Rich Burlew and other artists
  • the final Dungeon Robber rules
  • Paul’s DM Notebook, a 64-page book on its own
  • the All-Star DM notebook, containing new adventures and game tools by Mike Mornard, Mike Shea, Tavis Allison, James Maliszewski, Jared von Hindman, and myself.

    My adventure is none other than the dungeon crawl that we’re doing in the Mearls sidebar. Watch out for spoilers!

    Buy it here!

    • Posted in advice/tools, fluff/inspiration, legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | No Comments »

    combined weapons

    December 10th, 2012

    As a DM, I want to throw in cool magic weapons that people can actually use. On the other hand, I don’t want a formalized 4e-style wishlist. The big selection of D&D weapons actually makes my life difficult. If I want to include a magic sword, do I need to pay attention to who in the party uses a short sword, longsword, bastard sword, and greatsword?

    As I was designing an adventure recently, I thought, “maybe I’ll describe this magic sword as an extra-long longsword, so it can be used as either a longsword or a greatsword, player’s choice.” (beat) “Hey, that’s what a bastard sword is supposed to be!”

    The 1e bastard sword is kind of like that. It comes with a note: “Treat as a long sword if used one-handed.” Used two-handed, though, it’s its own thing. In later editions, the bastard sword is all over the map: for instance, in 3e, it has one set of stats one-handed or two-handed, but it requires a feat to use it one-handed.

    As a DM, here’s how I wish the bastard sword worked: “The wielder can treat it either like a longsword or greatsword.”

    What if this combination-weapon approach were expanded?

    For one thing, the fifty polearms in D&D are basically different combinations and permutations of spears, axes, picks, hammers, and hooks. The very existence of the glaive, the glaive-guisarme, and the guisarme imply that there’s a use for a “combination-weapon” category.

    Here are some weapons that could be turned into combination things:

    Battleaxe: A battleaxe can be used either as a hand axe or a greataxe.
    Bastard sword: A bastard sword can be used as either a longsword or a greatsword.
    Glaive: A glaive can be used as either a greatsword or a spear.
    Halberd: A halberd can be used as either a spear, battleaxe, or hook.
    Morning Star: A morning star can be used either as a flail or a mace.
    Rapier: A rapier can be used either as a shortsword or as a longsword.
    Spiked Chain: A spiked chain can be used either as a whip or as bondage gear.

    By reducing the number of unique weapons, you’re taking away the need to come up with a million slightly-different dice expressions to justify each weapon. You’re also replacing various solutions for “weapon groups”, where special rules are needed to give people proficiency with a large number of similar weapons. With my rule, a guy with longsword specialization can always use whatever rapier, longsword, or bastard sword he picks up (although only as a longsword).

    Side note: You know what I’ve under-appreciated about 4e? How few weapons there are. 33 weapons in the 4e Players Handbook, as opposed to 50 in the 1e PHB, 63 in the 2e PHB, and 72 in the 3e PHB.

    Posted in game design, RPG Hub | 8 Comments »

    just try to do business with the elves

    December 6th, 2012

    If you don’t have any D&D-themed winter-holiday cards yet, time is running out! Get Laura’s card set, which includes these elven-holiday-celebrating elves.

    On the subject of elven holidays, here’s a chart you can roll on when you need to get the elves to trade with you, or join your fellowship, or honor their promise to send you troops.

    Roll d4:
    1-2: The elves are celebrating an important elven holiday today. Come back tomorrow.
    3: The elves are preparing for an important elven holiday tomorrow. Come back the day after tomorrow.
    4: The elves are so ready for business right now. What’s this about? Let’s do this!

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

    combat, exploration, interaction, logistics

    December 3rd, 2012

    The D&D Next designers say that the “three pillars” of D&D are combat, exploration, and interaction.

    In Playing At the World, Jon Peterson seems to have independently developed three very similar play modes: combat, exploration, and logistics. “Another key ingredient in Dungeons & Dragons is dramatic pacing, achieved by transitioning between three different game modes: a mode of exploration, a mode of combat and a mode of logistics. Time flows differently in each of these modes.”

    Comparing the D&D Next developers’ and Jon Peterson’s analyses is comparing apples and oranges, so it’s strange that the fruit look so similar. The D&D next pillars are, I think, intended to remind the developers that each character should have something to do in different scenes of the game. Peterson is analyzing the flow of game time in a session, which varies between turns, rounds, and days.

    Now that we know that it’s a bad idea, let’s try merging the two models.

    In Peterson’s model, combat has a game speed that might be significantly slower than real time (depending on whether your rounds are a minute or six seconds long). Even if each round takes a minute of game time, you’re unlikely to get through all the PCs and monsters in that much real time. Exploration is faster than real time, but the scale varies: “we go north for 120 feet” and “we go north for 10 miles” might take the same amount of real time. Logistics is even more variable: shopping for new plate mail and spending a month healing up might both take, say, thirty seconds each.

    Interaction (i. e. conversation, mostly with NPCs) is unique in D&D modes in that it takes roughly the same amount of time in real and game time. There might be variations: a player might consult his notes to remember his character’s wife’s name, and a DM might pause to roll reaction dice, but in general, during interaction, the player and the character are doing roughly the same thing. It doesn’t hurt to throw an interaction mode into a discussion of pacing: I’ve definitely run sessions where the pace suffered from too much or too little interaction.

    Logistics is interesting because I’ve never heard it mentioned as a positive part of a game. If it’s mentioned, it’s as something to be gotten through as quickly as possible. Still, it’s always been a big part of D&D. Gaining levels, or researching spells, or replacing spent arrows, or collecting tax income takes up table (or between-session) time. Peterson convincingly argues that “by rationing the modes carefully a referee guides the players through satisfying cycles of tension, catharsis and banality that mimic the ebb and flow of powerful events.”

    The logistics portion of D&D can be fun in itself. Sometimes you want to be fighting a monster, and sometimes you want to be updating your character sheet. The Adventurer Conqueror King fief-management rules are fun because they embrace logistics as something to be relished.

    How would a “logistics pillar” inform D&D Next development? It seems a little strange to say that each class should have its fair share of bookkeeping, but maybe there’s some truth to that. The wizard class comes with plenty of bookkeeping, with its ever-increasing spell menu to be tweaked each day, along with the most complex spell- and item-creation rules in the game. In 1e, a fighter eventually gets a castle to manage. In 3e, a fighter gets a feat to choose every two levels. Maybe it needs a little more logistics in Next.

    Posted in game design, news, RPG Hub | 10 Comments »

    confirming crits

    November 30th, 2012

    One of the first D&D houserules I encountered was the “crit to kill” rule: if you roll a natural 20 on an attack, roll another d20. On a second 20, the guy dies.

    In Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World, I found a reference to a 1975 ancestor of that houserule, published in 1975 by Gary Switzer, the guy who wrote the first version of the Thief class. Peterson says, “On each melee swing, the attacker rolls an additional d20, which if it scores a ‘0’ (bearing in mind that early d20s had two 0’s), results in a critical. It is the main attack die which determines whether this is a critical hit or a trip—if the attack roll succeeds, then a hit has occurred, otherwise it is a trip.”

    That extra die roll never made it into D&D canon, but 3e introduced the idea of “confirming crits:” rolling to see if your natural 20 was really a crit or not. (I think it introduced it. As I’ve mentioned before, my weakness is 2nd edition rules.)

    I don’t like any of these rules very much in actual play, but not for game balance reasons. Sure, an insta-kill on 1 in 400 attacks adds wackiness and mitigates against PC survivability, and confirming crits only helps in bizarre corner cases where goblins crit on 100% of hits against dragons. The reason I don’t like them, though, is because they add anticlimax rolls.

    In the “crit to kill” variant: You crit! Roll another d20. On a 1-19: Oh well, at least I got a crit. With the confirming a crit rule: I rolled a 20, but failed on the confirmation roll! Oh well, my crit didn’t happen.

    4e’s solution was to have a crit always do max damage, and then throw some extra damage dice into the mix. That was not a bad solution: the extra dice always felt like bonus damage, even if you rolled poorly.

    I COULD imagine bringing back the “crit to kill” rule in a modified form.

    Recently, I’ve experimented with rolling d20s (and even d100s!) for special-effect damage. It’s fun! In my proposed variant, when you roll a crit, you don’t double or max your damage; you throw in a d20 along with all your other damage dice. If that die rolls a 20, you insta-kill. Otherwise, it just adds its damage to your hit (an average of 10 extra damage).

    If the 1-in-400 chance of an insta-kill is too silly for you, you could instead make it an exploding d20 roll: on a crit-die roll of 20, you add 20 damage and roll again. Against all but high-level opponents, it will come to the same thing. However, this tweak gives 20th-level fighters some protection against 400 goblin archers.

    Tags: ,
    Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

    d&d it up for christmas

    November 28th, 2012

    My Renaissance Man sister Laura is an artist, published author, D&D player, blog of holding commenter, gadabout, and the creator of the prancing elf for my kickstarter stickers. She’s making something you probably need this winter: D&D-themed Christmas cards, available in halfling, orc, dwarf, and elf. All the profits will be going to globalgiving.org, so the cards are like the bonus rewards you get for making a charitable donation.

    Obviously you need at least one set, for your D&D group. The question is, is this the year you send D&D cards to everyone, even your grandma?

    Posted in news, RPG Hub | No Comments »

    5e skills suggestion

    November 26th, 2012

    In my Mearls D&D game in the sidebar, I’ve been ignoring skills: when someone calls for a Bluff check, I simply make a Charisma check. Since I started playtesting 5e, this has become my favorite way to run a D&D game: the +1 to +4 attribute bonus lends enough weight to a roll without an additional skill bonus.

    However, if people want a skill system, you have to have skill bonuses.

    4e gave you a +5 bonus for being trained in a skill. +5! If you gave first-level characters +5 swords, that would make a mockery of the combat system. Similarly, a +5 bonus to skills makes a mockery of the skill system.

    5e’s skill bonus is +3, which is much more palatable. Still, I’d reduce it another step.

    Here are the basic details about the current version of the 5e skill system:
    1) +3 for being trained in a skill
    2) If you get training in the same skill from two different sources, you choose a different skill. Thus, if a rogue gets Stealth from his class and his background, he gets Stealth and a random skill of his choice.
    3) Every even level, you get +1 to a trained skill of your choice.

    Here’s my proposed tweak:

    1) +2 for being trained in a skill
    2) If you get trained in a skill which you already possess, your bonus goes up one point. Thus, a rogue who gets Stealth from his class and background has a +3 Stealth bonus instead of +2.
    3) Every even level, you can train a new skill of your choice. That means you can either train a new skill, at +2, or enjoy the fruits of point 2) and increase a skill’s bonus by one point.
    4) What the heck, let’s say you can spend your skill point to learn a new language. (How does a language compare to +1 in your favorite skill? Not sure.)

    It’s a tiny tweak, but it deflates runaway skill bonuses a tiny bit; allows a mechanism for learning new skills and languages; and provides for a synergy bonus for a focused class/background.

    Tags:
    Posted in RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

    when inches are inches

    November 21st, 2012

    OD&D follows the Chainmail convention of using “inches” as a measure meaning 10 feet (in a dungeon) or 10 yards (outside). This isn’t explained up front: in Book 1, Men and Magic, measurements are just given in inches and you have to deal with it. I like to imagine the sad sap who didn’t have Chainmail and was figuring things out as he read. “Lightly-armored troops can travel 12 inches every ten minutes? Huh. Seems a little slow, but OK.” “The Light spell casts light in a 3 inch diameter? Wow. If it was radius, that would at least be something.”

    The actual inches-to-distance conversions are somewhere in book 3. Underground movement is on page 8, in the Move/Turn in the Underworld section: “In the underworld all distances are in feet, so wherever distances are given convert them to tens of feet.” Outside movement is defined (inside parentheses) on page 17, under “Sighting Monsters”: “Players will see monsters at from 40-240 yards (inches convert to tens of yards for the wilderness) unless the monster has surprised the characters involved.”

    The poor first-time OD&D reader won’t be skipping around to find this information either, because the Introduction admonishes the reader that volume 3 is presented last “in order to allow the reader to gain the perspective necessary – the understanding of the previous two booklets. Read through the entire work in the order presented before you attempt to play.”

    My absolute favorite measurement-related section is the descriptions of the Wall of Stone and Wall of Iron spells (in Book 1, long before the meanings of “inch” are given), where inches (meaning tens of feet) interacts with feet (meaning feet), and also with inches meaning inches:

    Wall of Stone: The creation of a stone wall two feet thick with a maximum length and height equalling 10 square inches. The wall will last until dispelled, broken down or battered through as a regular stone wall. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 6″.

    Wall of Iron:: Like a Wall of Stone, but the thickness of the wall is three inches and its maximum area 5 square inches. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 6″.

    “Huh. Wall of Iron produces 15 cubic inches of iron? Well, since my light footman moves a foot every 10 minutes, I guess it’s useful. How high do you think he can jump?”

    Tags:
    Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

    « Older Entries
    Newer Entries »