It’s not sandbox vs. railroad, really. New terminology for the middle ground.

While I think the terms Railroad and Sandbox are descriptive, they are awfully value-laden. They’re also the extremes: frequently a campaign with a strict story will have divergent paths and relevant choices, and a campaign with few demands on the player to follow the story will still have overarching plot and boundaries.

I suggest the following for campaigns more aligned toward the middle rather than an extreme on the player-choice axis, but still leaning toward one side or the other.

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A Managed Play campaign is one where there is a significant predestined plot but players can make choices along the way that can affect the outcome. The DM probably writes an appendix to each adventure with plans for when players end up doing A, B, C, or D. There are several endgames, possibly with a point value from completed adventures or just eyeballing the result of the adventures up to that point. Or maybe it’s not that strictly pre-written, and the DM wants a result to happen for a major event, but the status of small events are entirely up in the air.

Managed Play is like a Disney amusement park. Everyone who comes thinks they can wander as they choose and experience the park however they want. But the park’s designers know how to build to regulate traffic flow and attract attention. You probably end up riding almost everything once and then grabbing dinner.

In a Managed Play campaign you draw all the dots (adventures, scenes, locations, whatever) and then connect them to form the plot. You flesh out the connected dots, but the ones outside the path you either don’t bother describing or give just a brief outline – because nobody will end up there.

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A Distributed Play campaign changes things up by not connecting the dots ahead of time. The DM prepares a campaign without knowing what the players will do. His job is not to direct them to certain dots, but to make the dots known to the players so they can decide what to do. They may choose dots poorly (the adventure was to difficult for their level, or too easy and boring, or required some relic to complete that they don’t have yet). But the choice is theirs, and they may experience satisfaction at knowing their successes and failures are their responsibility.

A Distributed Play campaign can be played several times by different groups (or even the same group!) with dramatically different “story” results. This isn’t really possible with a Managed Play campaign. The players will be able to say “this is what we did during the Locust Wars” rather than “we did the Locust Wars campaign and ended up siding with A instead of B”.

Because it might not be obvious, it’s called Distributed Play because the adventures in the campaign are distributed around the map / timeline instead of just pre-planned, and also because the burden of decision-making for the story is distributed to the players more than in Managed Play.

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This is just how I see the middle ground for the railroad vs. sandbox axis. I’m sure you all can come up with different possibilities. Personally, I suspect pure railroad or pure sandbox games are pretty uncommon, and most hover somewhere around these two. Also, the terminology is intentionally bland. If you can think of spicy terminology that’s not unduly positive or negative, you did my job better than I did. Or you could just use two positive terms, or two negative terms, but people will end up using the positive term for the one they like and the negative for the one they don’t.

Land grants from the king to his soldiers

Something just popped into my head and it might be useful to someone.

You know how if you hit level 9 or whatever you can establish a stronghold, right? We assume you’re under the aegis of some king, because otherwise anybody can just go out and establish a tree fort or whatever in the empty howling wilderness.

Second, and here I’m mostly drawing on a vague understanding of how the Vikings handled it when they conquered England and how the Romans handled it in general (so it might be horribly off-base): if you serve the king as a soldier, eventually he grants you citizenship (if you need it) and a plot of land. A regular old soldier would go to war and come back to a cottage or something. But big heroes / warlords / generals would come back and get control over a big area, maybe even become the new king / emperor / topbigman.

Using 9th level Baron controlling a keep and village plus surrounding countryside and 1st level as a Veteran with a cottage, here’s what I came up with.

1st: Cottage and small plot. You can retire and feed your family plus pay your taxes and sell a little surplus. You get a vote.
3rd: Larger farm with a house, requiring lots of your children or else hired hands to manage fully.
5th: Townhouse or large farm as above, plus some special right – maybe you hold a license to be a miller, or a village mayor. You’re one of the dozen important people in the village.
7th: Townhouse and large farm, plus an exceptional right – a guild head, tax collector, command of a few hundred soldiers, or some office at court. You’re the most important person in the village, or one of the dozen important ones in a town.
9th: Right to build a keep and maintain a village, plus a townhouse, plus some great office like warden of a forest, command of a thousand soldiers.
12th: As 9th but you might get a special office like ambassador, general, or admiral.
15th: As 12th but also supervision over a dozen Lords (9th) as a Duke-equivalent, and you’re counted as not much less important than a Prince – one of the dozen important people in the kingdom.
20th: Just go out and crush some jeweled thrones under your sandaled feet, because you’re only less important than the king because he’s the king. If you found or conquer a neighboring kingdom, maybe your old king would like to style himself an emperor – or maybe you’ll beat him to it.

I haven’t read ACKS but maybe this is how they handle it? I think it makes sense for the first generation after conquest, but the Emperor’s kid is probably gonna be a snotnosed little 1st level punk. At least, unless there is continual warfare, the 20th level king’s kid will end up being 12th or something, and his kid will be 6th, and his 1st (if not degrading faster). This assumes the king refuses to let his kid be a worthless shit and forces him into combat training.

Cheap Magic Items

Generally in D&D you get normal equipment, then the first magic item is like “OMG this thing is worth how many thousand gold?!” It’s always cool to get magic items, even at first level, but they’re so powerful! And if you get a +1 Sword by 2nd level, and a +2 Sword by 4th, you’re quickly going to run out of swords to get. I like stretching out the growing collection of magic items a little. One way to handle it is to just put the lowest-power magic items in and hope for the best. But some item types don’t have low-value examples (such as rings, weapons).

Let’s use 1E AD&D as the example. It works because it actually has magic items values, unlike 2E’s DMG, a paucity they quickly realized was a terrible idea and fixed in the Magic Item Encyclopedias. Another reason is that 3E, the other system for which I would have input, has valuation tables for magic items but they’re easy to break and they’re really more of a set of guidelines.

1: Use existing magic items, possibly with few charges.
Here is where you get to make a potion, a few magic arrows, or a Wand of Magic Missiles (5 charges) a worthwhile treasure.

2: Permanent items can have charges.
Found this in a Dragon article. Maybe take a +1 Sword that has 30 charges, and each charge gives you 1 turn (10 rounds) of magic. Otherwise it gives no bonuses. Generally making a +1 Sword that only works 1 day per week or 1 hour per day will cause players to waste time waiting for their stuff to pop back up. But if it’s a finite resource like charges, they gain nothing by waiting.

3: New weak magic items.
Think about stuff that doesn’t have as big of an impact as a 1st level spell or +1 Sword. But who can come up with enough of these things?

Here ya go, this should get you started.

Ring
Detect Disturbance: Keep the ring in a container for 1 week. Thereafter the ring will vibrate if the container is touched, moved, picked open, etc. or if magic affects it. Resets to new container if kept in it 1 wk.

Detect Spellcaster: Throbs if you point it toward a spellcaster, monster with spell-like abilities, or someone who has the potential for magic within 60′. But the target also notices you! Requires line-of-sight and is blocked by a wall or even a curtain. WIll detect invisibles if they qualify, but won’t give distance – only direction. Takes 1 round to check a cmopass direction (of eight).

Protection from Charms: Ring has six little gems, and if you would get charmed by spell or spell-like ability one of the gems shatters instead. Even affects higher-level charms like domination, geas, etc. but it’s up to you if it works against psionics or mutations (I’d say no).

Gambler’s Telekinesis: Low-range low-power TK ability, not enough to use in combat or untie your ropes but enough to subtly alter a die roll. Only works for times when your PC is rolling dice in the game, not for you rolling dice in Kristy’s basement. Lets you change the die facing one place from where it will fall. Experienced gamblers may notice that something funny is going on and a Detect Magic will reveal your deceit.

Rod / Staff / Wand
Magic Detection: One charge determines whether or not the touched item is magical, because the rod glows if it is.

Beeping: Wand will beep or glow on silent command by the person who has carried it the most in the past week. It’s great for “detecting evil” and the like.

Ugly Stick: When you hit someone it makes them really ugly for one hour per CHA point, using 1 charge.

Shutup: Whomp on someone and he can’t talk (or cast spells with verbal component, or use magic items with a command word) for 1d6+1 rounds. Takes 1 charge.

Misc Magic
Hood of Veiled Sight: Can’t see while you wear it except basic outlines. You can’t tell friend from foe unless their shapes are extremely different (such as your human buddies vs. some sprites or a basilisk) (in 3E terms, call it “Medium Humanoid” vs. “Large Magical Beast” if you wanna get technical). Immune to gaze attacks, but you do not reflect them as a mirror would.

Liquid Mirror: If it breaks, the pieces melt and reform in the frame in 1 hour. Separated pieces evaporate and the frame heals the gap. If broken over a creature it takes 1 HP damage and has -1 to all rolls for 7 days.

Gas Bag: On command it sucks up a 10′ cube of nearby gasses (which might be just air) and seals shut. If commanded again it exhales the 10′ cube of gas. It can knock things over like a Gust of Wind in its 10′ cube area. Corrosive gasses don’t affect it. It can’t hold anything denser than gasses. What it holds will come out at the same temperature it went in. With practice, you can control the exhalation to sustain a person underwater for 1 hour.

Skeleton Bone: It can turn into a Skeleton monster on command, and turns back again if it’s killed. It can be transformed 1/day. But if it takes 10 HP or more damage at once there is a 1 in 6 chance the bone shatters.

Busker’s Case: Case for an instrument; will change shape to fit any instrument you try to put in it as long as such an instrument usually gets a case (no pianos). If set out while you play for tips on the street, you get +10% money. If some mishap would damage an instrument carried in the case it affects the case instead. Three such mishaps destroy the case’s magic.

Armor
Water Barrier: Prevents water from seeping in or sweat from evaporating out. Won’t let you breathe underwater unless you supply air somehow.

Heat Barrier: Your body heat won’t go out and the armor won’t overheat from outside. Armor has minor effect in making you warmer if it’s cold or cooler if it’s hot (as in Wilderness Survival Guide, but a minor change, such as -/+ 20 degrees toward comfort). Mainly it makes you invisible to Infravision.

Oily: It’s hard to grapple you (-4 to hit or something) but if struck by fire you burn for an extra 1d3 HP for 1d3 rounds. Then you need to pour 1 flask of oil on to re-oil it. You can’t get oil out of it. If struck by a rusting attack while oiled, it de-oils instead.

Reflected Brilliance: If there is a light source that touches you (as in, it’s bright radius, such as the 20′ for a torch or whatever) then you also glow in all directions for 10′. You cast no shadow, even if the light isn’t bright enough to activate the armor.

Shield
Protection From Magic Missiles: MM against you have a 1 in 6 chance to hit the shield and bounce away harmlessly. These bounced MMs become mopey little light motes that you could capture if you cared; they eat aphids and crumbs.

Floating Disc Shield: Can carry stuff like a Floating Disc spell as a 1st level M-U. It has all these coin-shaped depressions in the front and it requires 10 GP to fuel one hour of operation. The coins get consumed by the shield but you can pry them back out if you haven’t activated it yet.

Campfire Shield: On command the front surface heats up and small flames come out. In combat if you shield-bash you deal +1 fire damage. But every turn you carry it lit you take 1 HP because it’s so hot, and it takes 3 rounds to heat up or cool off. Mainly it’s a nice guaranteed campfire (you can always light it, you don’t need fuel, it won’t blow out).

Sled: Enlarges into a one-man + cargo sled (with all the normal harness) on command, though to go cross-country you’ll need dogs or something to pull it. The enlarging / shrinking won’t cause damage but can scoot small objects out of the way.

Sword
Sword-Friend: When it hits a swordsman (or a swordsman hits you) the two swords bind together and fall to the floor. They come apart again in 1 turn. Until then neither can be used in combat. Usable 1/day.

Sacrificial Sword: When you kill something there is a (HD %) chance that you get an immediate 1st level spell effect on you or a nearby target. You can’t save it up. The effect is based on the religion of the sword, and you might get to pick from a couple choices. Only works if the thing you killed wasn’t a worshipper of the sword’s religion. Each time it happens you have a 1 in 10 chance of switching religions (and possibly alignments) as you begin to see the truth.

Sword of Courage: Followers of your party or men in your unit gain +1 Morale (and/or Save vs. Fear). DM decides whether it works for full party members (PC or NPC) or wielder. You get +1 or +5% to recruiting new hirelings.

Willow-Sword: Very flexible, bends to get that hit when it would otherwise miss. If you miss by 3 or less, the sword hits anyway for just 1 HP of damage.

Misc Weapon
Axe of Wood-Chopping: +1 vs. wood. Succeed at Open Door 2/day vs. wooden enclosures.

Bitespear: Wounds caused by it look like they came from whatever animal you choose (has to be something you have experience with). The wounds still look / feel just as serious, so if you choose hornets it’ll be a whole lot of hornet stings per stab. Spear makes a medium-volume sound like the animal when you attack.

Digger-Dagger: +1 vs. earth and stone creatures. Acts as a full-size shovel for digging purposes.

Hammer of the Heavy Drop: After you attack it takes 2 rounds to recover from the swing. If you drop the hammer and pick it up, or someone else does, it still can’t attack faster than once per three rounds. It deals triple normal hammer damage. If used to Open Doors you get three chances in one swing. It’s throw distance is 10′ maximum.

Iron Spike Hammer: When it hits it drives in an iron spike automatically. It holds 20 spikes, and you refill it by inserting the spikes into the little hole on the hammer’s face. It causes +1 damage (and all damage is piercing type) if a spike is driven in, or normal hammer damage if there are none. You can’t fire the spikes as missiles. If a rope or chain is threaded through the hole also, it will be attached to the spike when it’s driven in. You can use wooden stakes instead, but these have a special effect on Vampires only if the DM allows (he should read his description of vampires’ weaknesses carefully, and consider how he handles “called shots” already). Special spikes could be made, but must be durable (not ceramic or glass) or else they shatter with no effect.

Liquid Tool: Can change form so the head is shaped like an axe, pick, shovel, hammer, blade, skillet, saw, drill, or crowbar. It’s always Medium-sized. The haft is nonmagical and can be replaced. If the head chips or breaks you can press iron scraps into the break and it will heal over. It automatically sharpens / straightens when it changes shape.

Muleskinner’s Whip: Unskilled user counts as a skilled drover / teamster. Skilled user gets extra 10% distance per day OR ignores one animal / wagon mishap. Wielder tends to swear more often.

Player Maps Will Look Pretty Bad

I like having a good map of whatever thing I’m DMing, and describing to the players what they see, and if they want to map it then they can.

There are problems: what about players who feel the need to map every alcove with precision? What if it’s hard to describe a complex room?

There are things that could be problems or benefits: what if the players screw up their map and get confused? What if nobody wants to map and they keep getting lost?

And there are benefits: will they be more connected to the game world? Will they feel mystery at not seeing the whole map? Will they feel accomplishment at mapping on their own? Will the player map as a shared-creation artifact be a cool thing?

I like to consider the game-ability of any place I map. Is this going to just be a pain in the butt to describe? Maybe I simpify it. Or maybe I think of ways to describe it in terms of structural shapes instead of map squares.

What’s important to me is to implant what the thing looks like to players. It’s fine if the specifics aren’t quite right. When you get into a fight you draw stuff out quickly on the grid mat or arrange your building blocks or whatever, and that has to be a good map.

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Not showing the map to the players means I can make my DM map quickly and it doesn’t need to look nice. I can mark all kinds of DM information on it that they shouldn’t see. It can be a map that’s maximally useful to me and drawn quickly.

The players have to make their own map based on what I describe. It doesn’t need to match my map. It just needs to give the players perspective and show the relationships of different features. If the player map shows that the players have to head south to get to the pass, that’s cool. If they arrive a day early and the distance was not what they expected, that’s fine.

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Some blogger recently mentioned using tracing paper or a light table to make edited copies of a DM map for players, maintaining accuracy but leaving out the grid, secrets, and DM notes – and probably mapping only a small section. I like this, but its utility is limited to times when you want to give an accurate map. I’d rather scrawl something on unlined paper that’s kinda like the dungeon outline.

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I like making a poor quality DM map and adding notes. I can make a good game-able map in a very short time. All I need is room size, hallway length, and I’m good. For wilderness maps it’s easy to just draw stuff, and I think drawing on ungridded paper is more common for wilderness than dungeon maps. Maybe it’s because there’s more wiggle room: it’s ok for your wilderness map to be off by 1/4″ but not your dungeon map, because the former adds an hour of travel but the latter changes spell range and area of effect.

You might not appreciate fast mapping but if your party heads off to a dungeon you haven’t detailed beyond a line in your notes that says “abandoned dwarf mine – center hole – spiral walk down – side passages connect – plants in bottom and level below has lava” you’ll be glad you can whip it up while the players are settling in and picking their spells.

Curves vs. Linear Rolls

TL;DR: You can just do d6 x 5 instead of 5d6 for damage and get the same kind of game results, but you have to do it that way for both damage and HP for it to work well. See last two paragraphs for ideas about linear HP if that matters to you.

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Anybody who has access to a 1E AD&D DMG and hasn’t checked out the part in the front where it talks about probability tables, please do so now. If you don’t have the book, or if that section never made sense, check out Anydice, which does a good job of explaining visually how any combination of dice gives a pattern of results on average.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately, and I don’t understand why I never thought about it before.

1: M-Us cast spells that require lots of dice to roll. Stars Without Number has weapons that deal 5d12 etc.
2: You might have that many dice to roll at once, but you might have to roll over and over and sum as you go.
3: It takes a while and it’s boring except when you get a really high or low result.
4: You generally get an average result because of the curve of the roll probability table.
5: As you add more dice, the result becomes more predictably average.
Conclusion: This doesn’t work as well as it should.

We can try to fix this problem by addressing any of these five points. There are probably more but I didn’t think of them.

Mainly, let’s talk about shifting the roll from “sum many dice” to “one die times multiplier”.

For example, instead of rolling 5d12, which generally gives us something near 32 (and almost always 18-47) we can roll d12 x 5, which is equally likely to give us 5-60 in 5-digit increments. The min, max, and avg are the same.

This is faster and easier, more accurate, requires fewer dice, and changes the kind of result. The first few are simply advantages, but the last is a sticky point because some people might like the curve instead of the linear 5-60 result.

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Let’s assume Gygax knew about these methods (since he did write about it) and intentionally used XdY throughout his game instead of dY*Z. Let’s look at a 5th level M-U from 1E AD&D.

He gets a single Fireball, his best damage-dealing spell, which does 5d6 and the victim(s) save for half damage. The average damage is (take one die’s maximum, halve it, add 0.5, multiply by the number of dice) 17.5. More important is what I’ll call a “reasonable range” which I threw in above with the 5d12. It’s the range where 95% of the results will come out. The RR of 5d6 is 10-25.

But let’s look at this from the perspective of a monster of various Hit Dice, using d8 per HD, using the RR of their average HP rolls:

1 HD: 1-8
2 HD: 3-15
3 HD: 6-21
4 HD: 10-26
5 HD: 13-32

Again, remember this is the range that you could generally expect to have happen: a higher or lower result is possible but highly unlikely, effectively half the chance of a natural 1 or 20 on d20.

What we see is that, even if the 1 HD monster saves, he will definitely die. The 2-4 HD monster will generally die unless he saves. But the 5 HD monster will generally survive even if he fails his save.

The saving throw for these monsters is 20% chance for 1-2 HD, 25% for 3-4 HD, 35% for 5-6 HD. If it saves, it takes half damage.

So imagine a 5d6 Fireball hitting a group of 100 (tightly-packed) monsters. Here are how many remain after the blast and saves are rolled:

1 HD: None
2 HD: 20
3-4 HD: 25
5 HD: All 100

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Now let’s look at a d6x5 Fireball against creatures with d8xHD HP.

We have a problem. Our old “exclude the 5% outliers” doesn’t work so well because we eliminated those outliers. Let’s just use the straight result pattern possible. This means the Fireball is 5-30 and the monsters’ HPs are as follows:

1 HD: 1-8
2 HD: 2-16
3 HD: 3-24
4 HD: 4-32
5 HD: 5-40

Here it looks like the Fireball is still generally going to fry the 1 HD regardless of save. The 2-4 HD need to save to survive. The 5 HD will probably make it even if the save is failed.

The saving throw chances and results are the same as above.

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And of course, remember that the average damage and HP are the same between the two methods, so laying out the numbers and running a comparison of XdY vs. dY*Z using avg is pointless.

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Obviously it’s not going to be exactly the same game. When you gain a level, for example, you can’t just roll your hit die and add to your total. That’s going to result in a curved graph for your HP; that is, you are unlikely to get all 1s or all 6s if your hit die is d6. Instead, you will need to roll HP all over again at each level, simply d6 x Level if your HP are d6s.

This may result in grumblecakes from a player who went from L1 (and rolled 6×1=6 HP) to L2 (and rolled 1×2=2 HP). You could let the player take the better of the two HP totals, but that will skew toward higher HP. It’s not a game balance problem if you also give the same benefit to monsters, but it will result in longer fights since damage is relatively lower than HP and will make damage effects less valuable compared to save-or-X effects. That’s not something you’d be worried about if you usually give max HP at 1st level or let people reroll 1s for HP.

1st level M-U is actually pretty awesome

This blogger posted about how weak 1st level M-Us are and how most would probably stay in academia until 5th level or so, which he calls a journeyman status.

First, on the combat abilities of an M-U. I don’t know what game system each of you are looking at, but what I find is that many numbers were taken from earlier editions of D&D even though the assumptions behind those numbers changed. Delta talks about this related to archery.

In 1E AD&D a 1st level Fighter (who is a “Veteran” which is a person not only well trained but experienced on a campaign) has a to-hit number of 20, the same as everyone else. It only starts getting better at higher levels. His saving throws are terrible compared to all other classes. I’m using the Fighter as a comparison because Normal Men act as 0-level Fighters.

So take this Normal Man. If he’s sedentary he’ll have d4 HP and -2 to hit, if he’s a laborer d6+1 and normal 0-level fighting. From that we can see the M-U isn’t weaker than a sedentary human; in fact he has the same HP as any sedentary man and a better attack chance than even a miner or woodcutter.

Furthermore this M-U has the ability to cast one spell per day from a short list that incudes:

Charm Person: mind-slavery
Sleep: drop 2d4 first-level enemies with no save
Magic Missile: auto-hit with an arrow’s damage, good chance to kill a normal man
Comprehend Languages: read any language and equivalent to 100% Read Languages skill as Thief
Armor: invisible, silent, weightless Scale Mail

These are all pretty miraculous, and worth using weapons that do -1 damage and having -3 HP on average compared to a Fighter.

There’s the question of why anybody would go out and adventure at 1st level? Because you need experience and money. I’ll give a few examples:

In 1E AD&D, you have to get XP by killing monsters and seizing treasure. You don’t get XP for sitting around in town. Also, you need such large amounts of money to train that even if you killed pigeons all day you still couldn’t train.

In 2E AD&D, it’s possible to get XP by performing class functions, but only in a useful way. You can’t go out into the woods and cast Magic Missile at a tree to get XP. The DM needs to exercise some common sense in preventing abuse. The DM might decide that someone in town casting Cure Light on farmers’ injuries counts as useful. Another DM might say you need to be on some adventure in danger, do something useful to furthering the adventure, and succeed (which is my criteria). Even if your DM’s rulings allow townie spellcaster advancement, where does their money come from? The supply of low-level spellcasting is going to be pretty high with the local adventurer Wizards traipsing through every week, so either fees will be low or demand is not enough to support many townie wizards. Training costs in 2E is an optional rule. Again, let’s say the DM is generous and requires no training cost or time. What about getting new spells? Wizards don’t get new ones for free; specialist wizards get one per level. With little money you can’t afford new spells, even if NPCs are pretty open about selling theirs.

To create new spells you need an expensive library and pay high fees, and even then you might fail. Someone can just waltz into the dungeon and pick up a scroll or maybe even a spellbook and come out with the equivalent of months or years of research and tens of thousands of GP in research costs. It’s not worth it to research spells unless you can’t find them “in the wild”. Because a 1st level M-U can research spells, I would call him a PhD in Magic. He’s already gone through the equivalent of a decade of college or private tutoring. Wouldn’t it take another decade to hit level 2? Who has that kind of time?

(Right. Elves.)

Similarly, XP advancement, even if possible in town, is faster in a dungeon. You could walk out of a dungeon after your first expedition, rest a couple days, go back in, and come out ready to train for level 2. The guy in town might not have had a customer yet.

Yes of course you could die. That’s the tradeoff. That’s why adventurers are all the crazy kind of folk who are willing to take big risks for a big payoff. Maybe your M-U has a feud going with another young academic wizard, and in order to best him you have to learn faster: by experiencing magic use in strange situations and against different monsters, and getting cool magic items. As long as he survives the ordeal, the adventuring M-U will definitely, absolutely outpace the academic.

I say that for two reasons. 1: it’s supported by the rules in 1E, 2E, 3E even assuming the most generous possible DM interpretation, short of very generous house-rules. 2: it supports the existing assumptions of the game. If it were possible to sit around in town and get more XP and treasure then literally nobody would go into the dungeon. We would be playing Papers & Paychecks.

If you want a game where NPCs sit in their ivory towers until they’re at least 5th level, you need to come up with a reason why PCs won’t do the same thing. Here’s how I envision the exchange:

DM: Ok guys you all have 1st level PCs, let’s hit the adventure!
Players: Uh, we’re ging to stay in town until we’re 5th.
DM: How will you pay for this education?
Players: However the NPCs do it.
DM: But you’re edgy, risky people!
Players: My character sheet says Lawful Neutral with cowardly, bookish tendencies.
DM: But the quest! You’ll run out of time!
Players: There’ll be some other quest in a few years when we graduate. It’s not like we’re the only ones who can save the world.
DM: (reading DMing advice) Ok I’ll level with you guys. Why don’t you want to go on the adventure?
Players: We like the adventure. We just want to take a good opportunity. It’s like anything: you can use a +1 sword or a normal one, which do you pick? You take the better opportunity. Why adventure at 1st level?
DM: Fine the town is burning down and you need to escape. Also there are no other towns and all the universities are full and there are no more grants and there’s a double standard for prices of goods and services between NPCs and PCs.
Players: Choo choo! *all circling the table completely twice in a conga-line*

Or avoid the rigmarole and say high level town NPCs used to be adventurers and now are at least semi-retired.

This crops up in almost every game I’m in, player or DM. Some player tries to do something that will bring some advantage because he’s acting like an NPC: being an armorer, making magic items, casting spells in town, picking pockets in town. The player says “oh, this NPC makes this much money, I’d be happy with a tenth of that!” But the DM brings him down to earth and explains that you need a storefront, you need a reputation, clientele, business connections, etc. Most importantly you need to spend so much time running the operation that you can’t go adventuring. So do you want to retire this character in town and roll up a new one?

Not to say that players shouldn’t do stuff outside the adventure. But the player’s goal is usually to get a big payoff with no risk or effort. If the player just wants to have a bookbinding shop, I’m fine with saying he gets some percentage of return on his investment every month. I’d go so far as to make a little table with investment risk levels, with riskier investments having a higher return rate but a higher chance of ruination. Hire an NPC goober to run the place and pay him his wages, and you’re good. What I don’t want is a player setting up a bookbinding shop and churning out spellbooks, expecting to sell as many as he can make, and get such a cashflow that he has to come up with a RP reason to leave town again.

Item Destruction on Failed Save, Or, Equipment Durability II

This one’s about when a Fireball hits and you fail your save so your stuff has to save or get destroyed. I wrote about this here too, differently. I like what I say here better though.

Read somewhere on the Wizards site (Proud Nails article) about how the guy doesn’t like how the 3E rule for equipment damage is hidden and the index is bad. He offhandedly talks about how he doesn’t like going down the list of stuff a player has and saving for each thing, referencing the table.

There’s a table in 1E like that for item saves, and I think there’s one in the 2E DMG. The point is, your stuff may need to save vs. various attacks when the DM says it needs to, including anytime you fail a save vs. something like Fireball or Cone of Cold. It’s usually a pain in the butt, and hard on the player since he’s losing his magical gizmos, which is probably why in 3E they changed to “only on a natural 1″ instead of on any failure.

Well here’s a way around saving for every dang thing: if your stuff would need to save, instead the DM rolls d6-3 and the player has to pick that many big-ticket items to destroy.

A big-ticket item in this case could be a Fighter’s non-magical platemail he’s wearing, or a potion, or a sack of coins, or a 1,000 GP gem. The player has to choose from among the best stuff he owns. He can’t pick his 50′ hemp rope, torch, and clothes unless he didn’t have ANY big ticket items!

As a general rule, the item needs to be worth at least 1,000 GP. If it’s a single magic dagger worth less than that, it’s fine. But you would lose a whole quiver of arrows, for example. A coin with Continual Light cast on it is, in most campaigns, worth only slightly more than the coin itself (although in 3E it costs 25 GP to cast the spell, so it’s worth that anyway).

It’s okay if the player doesn’t choose his best stuff. What matters is that he chooses legitimate stuff. Here’s an example of a player who understands how this works (Assume 1/2E, so the potions are worth 400-600 each):

Leather Armor +2, Spear +1, Shield +1, Potion of Healing, Potion of Levitation, Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, 500 GP Garnet, 1000 GP Emerald, Backpack of Adventuring Gear.

The DM rolls d6-3, result 5-3=2. Player says, “hey DM, can I lose my whole pack of gear for one item?” and the DM will probably glance at his gear and think, well that’s all his food and tools and he’s in the wilderness, sure let’s say yes.” and the player picks the 500 GP garnet as the second item. If the DM had said no on the backpack of gear, the player probably would have picked the garnet and the emerald. The levitation potion is worth less than that emerald, but could really come in handy on the adventure.

At no point would anybody expect him to pick the girdle, which is by far his best item, or his arms and armor. But what if he gets blasted a second time? Some hard choices. And interesting choices are what I like about D&D.

If it were a 1st level PC, with nonmagical Spear, Shield, Leather, Adventuring Gear, Sack of Coins, I think any of those would be valid choices. If he had Plate instead of Leather I’d still let him lose his Spear before his armor, since the values are within the same scale as each other. Remember, it’s fine if someone chooses to lose a Dagger +1 instead of a Crystal Ball.

Some points about this system:

1: It puts the choice in the hands of the player. He doesn’t groan that the acid pool ate away his magic boots. He chose to lose the boots because he wanted to keep something else more.
2: It’s a lot faster since the DM can tell the player to pick X items to lose and move on with the combat or answer another player’s question or whatever. It doesn’t require looking up any rules: just remember the d6-3.
3: The number of items is combined with a chance of occurence. That is, there’s a 50% chance that no items are lost, and 1 in 6 chance for each of 1, 2, or 3 items. If that still seems harsh, you can modify the die down for less-damaging effects like Cold or Crushing Blow. You could also be a nice DM and say “since it was a fall I’ll let you break your lantern for one of your picks if you like” and the player can take you up on it – totally an ad hoc thing. Of course, if the lantern breaks you’re without ilght and covered in lamp oil … Furthermore in my experience, even people with a lot of stuff will tend to lose 0-2 items to a round of item saves, so the chance and the amount seem reasonable.
4: Players who don’t understand or intentionally try to scam the system (the bag-of-rat-pelts from the older post) should hand the character sheet to the DM and he will pick the items to be destroyed. This gives the player an idea of what the DM would do if he were playing, so the DM should pick the cheapest legitimate item choices rather than the PC’s best items. Mechanically it’s the same as having the player choose (and this is a case where the DM needs to favor the player rather than be impartial since he’s acting on the player’s behalf) but I think most players will prefer to choose their own misery. If a player really doesn’t want to choose, he can ask the DM to choose or have another player do it. It doesn’t really matter.
5: There’s a good reason to carry backup weapons, potions, generally just to keep magic items instead of selling them (I know, some people just sell all the stuff they won’t use tomorrow). It also encourages carrying those items instead of stowing them safely at the home base.
6: What happens when the guy carrying some party treasure decides to sacrifice the nice magic sword the party just found instead of burning up his own equipment? Again, interesting choices with important results.

Players choose their difficulty level in D&D

This idea sprang out of an observation that I can’t find anymore to link to it. In any game where you can make character choices, if some choices are better than others, you can choose how difficult the game will be for you by making weak choices or powerful ones.

For example, in Thief you can choose to go around stabbing people or knocking them out, and harder difficulty levels in the game give more required objectives and you lose if you kill anyone. But there’s an unofficial difficulty type called “ghosting” by the player community. This means sneaking and not alerting any guards or creatures (some people figure spiders don’t count as people since nobody’s going to understand some giant spider saying a guy snuck in) while still getting all the treasure. People just come to work the next day and find everyone gone. The game isn’t built to recognize this as an achievement, so it’s just a fun thing for players who can already win on the Hard setting.

Take D&D. The DM sets the difficulty of any adventure by the monsters, traps, tricks, etc. that he puts in. Players approaching the dungeon can reduce that difficulty by researching the dungeon and questioning folks, but generally two groups of PCs will face the same dungeon. That’s just how dungeons are written these days. But that doesn’t have to be how it is: DMs can include plenty of opportunities for making the dungeon easier or harder based on player actions.

Besides player actions, though, you have all kinds of choices that happen before the game even starts. Some classes are more or less powerful, some races have cool abilities while others are dopey, you can choose worthwhile or stupid proficiencies / feats / skills, and equipment choices matter a lot too. Take these two Fighter PCs who each have 100 GP to spend on stuff after misc equipment and food:

Fighter A: (AC 4, Damage d8 1/rd) Chainmail, Shield, Longsword.
Fighter B: (AC 7, Damage d6 1/rd) Leather, Shield, Spear, 4 War Dogs (2+2 HD, AC 7, Damage 2d4 1/rd).

Fighter B made some great equipment choices. While he’s not as tough individually, he has four dogs which each are about equal to two 1st level Fighters. They’re also pretty expendable.

Fighter A is choosing to play normal D&D. Fighter B is playing on Easy Mode.

You could argue that choosing optimal strategies is part of player skill and as such we should strive to achieve that. But in reality, after playing the most powerful character types, you start to get bored and you want to play something else. You also start to realize that the game is fun when there’s a good challenge (a Goldilocks spot) and if you are a really good player you need to handicap yourself to get that good level of challenge.

This assumes the DM sets the challenge based on level not on player performance. In a game with an adaptive DM, you should play as well as you can because the DM will give you a good challenge regardless of your choices. The reward for winning against challenges beyond your level is additional XP and treasure from the tougher opposition.

If I wanted to play a tough 2E D&D PC I’d do something like a Wood Elf Fighter + double weapon specialization in longsword + Myrmidon kit with free specialization in longbow + bowyer/fletcher so I can make a Strength bow. Or a Deep Gnome Thief who will level up really fast and pick up excellent AC and MR unarmored and put all his proficiencies into martial arts from the Ninja Handbook or Punching specialization from the Fighter’s Handbook. That’s not getting into all the crazy stuff you can do in a hybrid 1E/2E game with racial restrictions dropped.

But while that PC would be a good damage dealer or resist damage well, it’s not interesting at all. Sometimes you just want to play a Bard or a regular old Human Illusionist.

There’s also the matter of alignment. In my experience, unless the DM adds in cool stuff for people playing Good characters, being Good means you lose out on profitable opportunities that a Chaotic Neutral would jump at. If that’s the case, playing a Good character adds an ethical burden which is more difficult (and fun) to play. People talk about Paladins falling from Lawful Good because they did something wrong. An alignment restriction really is a restriction.

If the whole party ramps down their power levels the next game, it also forces the players to be more attentive regarding challenges they decide to attack or flee from. This crops up most commonly when a party member is absent and people say things like “we don’t have our big fighter” or “we won’t have Fireball” or “no Cleric, gotta be careful”.

How important are the Tolkien races?

If I offer Human, Elf, Dwarf, and Hobbit as PC race options, it sounds like I’m basically running Lord of the Rings. If we switch it to *wink nudge* Halfling instead of Hobbit we’re suddenly in D&D territory. This is where a lot of players seem comfortable and if you have weird races it feels more like someone’s Star Wars fanfic and people get less interested. But DMs are supposed to develop their own campaign settings, right? Different character options should be part of that.

You could remove the standard Tolkien races and replace them with other options, or just add new options without removing the old. Some players may find one or the other more palatable, but completely changing up the setting by removing the old ones feels more effective in setting design.

I’ve come across some problems though. If you give new races abilities that break old challenges, you need to make up new challenges otherwise the game becomes Easy Mode D&D. For example, in Morrowind, you can play an Argonian (lizardman) who can breathe water. That removes the challenge of swimming through underwater caves and diving shipwrecks. You could similarly create a winged race but that eliminates the challenge of scaling walls, crossing pits, and navigating overland. Morrowind is a single-player game, so in multi-player D&D everyone can pick a different race and the group as a whole can evade multiple challenges.

In general that’s a good thing. The PCs are a team of specialists, so if the Dwarf is good at finding traps and secret doors and the Elf is stealthy, they’re more effective working together than apart.

Besides the game design issue, you need to get past the Star Wars Cantina style that appears when you have 100 races to choose from and everyone’s a Half-Halfling Doublehobbit Dung Elf Dragonkin Mummywrapped Salvaged Clone Skunkghost. Because of their template system 3E and 4E D&D are particularly bad about this, but Cantina play appears using 2E’s Humanoids Handbook, Planescape, or Spelljammer. It actually exists with any of the “Complete” handbooks but you can’t really tell if someone is a Mountain Dwarf or a Sundered Dwarf so who cares? The player just says “I’m a Dwarf” and records the bonuses on his character sheet.

Tekumel manages to give some interesting options in a narrow range. I don’t know about bug-men though. If the creature isn’t a mammal its thought processes are going to be a bit weird for people to understand. And if it’s a bug that thinks like a mammal, it’s just a palette-swapped Elf or whatever.

I don’t know if my players could get past the non-Tolkien flavor for their PCs. They can deal with weird NPCs, sure. Maybe travel to another place where the NPCs are different but the standard PC choices apply because they brew out of a colony / embassy / Chinatown sorta thing.

Equipment Durability

I’ve seen some people blogging about it so here’s my take on equipment damage and repair: I wouldn’t do it normally, but if I really wanted to I’d make it as simple as possible.

If the equipment is in a situation where it took a lot of stress, roll 2d6. On 2 it’s destroyed, on 3-4 it’s damaged. If the whole PC took a lot of stress, pick 1d6 things off his sheet that would be most vulnerable to the hit. In general, if the PC originally saved, nothing gets damaged.
Damaged equipment gets a D next to it, and if damaged again it’s destroyed.

Examples:

PC has the following: chainmail, shield, spear, belt, tunic, elven cloak, sandals, backpack, lantern, 50′ rope, dungeon map, potion of healing.

PC gets blasted by a red dragon’s breath. He fails his save so I make him roll for his stuff. He rolls 5 on the d6, so he has to roll for 5 things. Perusing his sheet, I rattle off the shield, tunic, map, rope, cloak. I picked the shield figuring it would take the brunt of the attack, and the rest because they’re the most vulnerable to fire. There’s a good mix of throwaway stuff (tunic), utility (rope, map), and important (elven cloak).

PC falls down a pit. No save for falls, so he just rolls his d6 and gets 3. I pick the most fragile stuff, so lantern, spear, potion of healing. Again, a good mix of stuff.

PC gets slobbered on by an ooze that dissolves organic material. The ooze’s attack roll is the initial roll that caused all this, analogous to a PC save against dragon breath. He rolls d6 for number of items, gets 6. Belt, tunic, elven cloak, sandals, backpack, spear. If his spear gets destroyed I’ll say he still has a usable dagger from the spearhead.

There’s a lot of ambiguity and DM fiat here, which is why the DM needs to be impartial and pick an appropriate array of stuff. Generally only number rolls of 2+ items should include something worthwhile, otherwise it’s RP (you lost your last pair of pants!). Likewise, just because a player loads up on 300 rat pelts in a sack doesn’t mean the DM should call out those as damaged items, or possibly could count the whole sack as one item. Because there’s an arbiter you shouldn’t have stupid results. A DM could easily tell the PC to roll for his best magic items every single time. This system won’t work for either the “rat-pelt” player or the “I’m gonna get your holy avenger” DM.

Finally, only really big hits should cause item degradation. If the PC wedges his sword into the pit trap doors to pry them open, go ahead and roll the 2d6 on it for damage. If the lich dies and drops the vial holding the PC’s soul you might wanna roll for that vial. It’s all subjective. I personally would do it only for something at the level of a Fireball, dragon, 50′ fall, giant mashing you with max damage two-handed hammer, etc.

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Oh, magic items. Fire items won’t be affected by fire, electric by lightning, etc. That means if you have a Potion of Fire Resistance it won’t boil off in a Fireball. If the magic item is a permanent sturdy type like +1 Armor or something, then it can be damaged 3 times before being destroyed on the 4th. Or roll 3d6 and it’s destroyed on 3, damaged on 4-5. In general, magic textiles, papers, wood, glass, crystal, etc. won’t be any more durable than a normal item.

Repairs should take some time and maybe 1 GP (100 GP for magic items). Whatever.