An Overly Long (and Probably Overzealous) Thank-You Note to the Players in Our Game

This article is going to be very stream-of-consciousness and disorganized… I have tried to write it four times now, always starting over at the beginning each time. No matter the new angles I take, it seems as if the things I want to say are too big for words to wrap around. I have settled for my best attempt to attach words together to encompass this idea, like a bunch of paperclips linked into a chain around a very big tree. Maybe, by looking at these paperclips, you can get some idea of what the tree was like.

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Almost exactly a year ago, I asked a group of players to help me play-test and design my own tabletop fantasy RPG.

Another group of players might have said, “No,” or asked, “Why don’t we just play one of the many good games that already exist?”

The group of players I asked said, “Yeah, sure.” And I am thankful to them for that.

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I don’t remember how I initially got the idea to write my own rules system.

I was playing Pathfinder and D&D 5e concurrently, back then. And I remember wanting to make house-rules to each one. And perhaps that’s where the idea came from, when I was house-ruling so much that I thought it would just be easier to start from the ground up.

I was wrong, of course. Starting from the ground up was not easier. But I thought it would be, at the time.

Regardless of where it came from, the idea happened. And once it took root and sprouted, I could not stop it. It became a compulsion. It didn’t matter if anyone liked the game. It didn’t matter if anyone ever played the game, even myself. I could finish it and put it on the shelf and never use it. What mattered is that it was made. I had to make it, because it had to be made.

Perhaps you can identify with this? I doubt it’s just peculiar to me. But sometimes there’s an idea in your head and you have to make it real because you can’t keep it inside your head. You have to take it out of yourself and put it into the world, like pulling off a leech – only if the leech was attached to your brain or your heart or your soul. When this idea to make a game happened, it became a brain-heart-soul leech that I had to pull off.

And my players allowed me to do that.

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I am not a perfect referee. Many times, I don’t even think of myself as a good referee. My mind is hopelessly single-track. I struggle doing something even as simple as writing and speaking at the same time. That poses a major problem as referee, where you have to keep many plates spinning on top of plates on top of plates.

I also have problems being people. It’s what other referees might call being “in-character” or “role-playing,” which is an issue for a role-playing game.

People have never made sense to me. I don’t even make sense to myself. And trying to anticipate what people do in the real life is hard enough, because people don’t make sense. It’s even harder when you have to imagine unreal people in your head facing unprecedented scenarios in a fantasy world.

Our present campaign raised both of those challenges to the fore. I myself had trouble with how often we revised the rules (even though I'm the one who wrote them), and the open "sandbox" nature of the game challenged me to engage with our game in ways I never did while running adventure paths or modules.

But the players put up with those shortcomings and showed up on Monday nights for a year, anyway. The players gave me their patience, trust, and time for the past year as I repeatedly changed rules to make inscrutable improvements.

And they did so while remaining highly invested in our game world, as we explored it.

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When the Angry GM wrote his article on the eight kinds of fun in games, I always assumed I was a challenge-seeker, or a discovery seeker. As a result of this experiment, I have learned that I am a fanatical expression-seeker.

And I think that is why I feel so drawn to the role of referee, although I’m not always very good at it. As a player, you express yourself in the game world through your character and their actions.

As the referee, then entire world – its characters, locations, events – everything about it – become tools of expression. It’s like painting with a palette of infinite colors, because you can make up colors.

And perhaps the reason I feel so drawn to refereeing games is because I have so much trouble otherwise expressing myself. I’ve never been good at the normal things normal people use to express themselves. But if you give me the chance to write an interactive fantasy adventure… that is a language I can speak.

When my players gave me permission to write my own rules system, they gave me a whole new spectrum of colors to use. Like infrared or ultraviolet light, I could change the things invisible in the game world: the rules.

The rules tell you the most basic laws about how the game-world works. The rules set up the fundamental structure and order of the game. The rules tell you what the game is about.

As a referee, rules are the edges of the sandbox. Every rules system is a different sandbox, of a different size and shape. Sometimes you can spill sand over the edge of the sandbox, making it slightly bigger. Or take sand from one sandbox and put it into another. But if you do that too much, then you’re not even playing in the sandbox anymore. You’re just making a mess.

And my players gave me license to step outside of the sandbox. “Get a real shovel and start digging in the dirt,” they said. And I am thankful to them for that.

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I’ve settled on a rules system I am happy with. The rules are one of the many kinds of games I want to play. The rules I made certainly won’t be for everyone, and they’re not really for anyone. Others might want to play it, but will want to change it in certain ways. 

And that’s fine. I expect that. Every table – heck, every campaign – needs different rules.

But this past year has been one of discovery. I read so much. I learned about the diversity of existing game systems, I learned about the history of certain rules and why they are the way they are.

I also learned that my favorite part about being the referee is giving the players a difficult decision and watching the players work through it. They sometimes did so in-character, other times as themselves, but they always engaged with it and always managed to surprise me with their solutions.

Some of my favorite examples from this campaign include:

·         What do you do when a gingerbread man full of razor blades tries to crawl down your friend’s throat?

·         What do you do when an attacorn asks you to leave one of your party members behind at his cabin as a sacrifice?

·         What do you do when you accidentally destroy the skull of a disassembled wizard you want to reassemble?

·         How do you wake up a dragon sleeping under a lake?

·         What do you do when a group of mysterious cultists is creating a superweapon you need, but they try to charm the dragon you woke up?

·         What do you do when the villain sends you an invitation to his feast?

·         What do you do when you learn the villain has burned down your hometown, after sending you an invitation to his feast?

And perhaps that’s what I’m most thankful for: the sheer joy and entertainment I’ve gotten from this process of both playing an open sandbox campaign and designing a rules system alongside it. I'm most thankful for the happiness that comes from playing a great game with a group of great players.

So, if you're one of those players: thanks.

The Most Basic Fantasy Tabletop RPG? Probably Not, But It's What I Came Up With

It’s about time that I finally posted the homebrew rules I mentioned.

These rules are meant for parties of 3-5 adventurers and a referee. I use these for solo games I play with my partner, however, by combining these rules with those for solo adventurers from “Black Streams Solo Heroes.”

This isn’t the full ruleset I developed with the Dolmenwood campaign my online crew played. That game is about four times as long. This is an ultra-light version I adapted from that homebrew ruleset, sort of like a “demo.” It bears some similarities to the full thing (which I will post later), but really this version is meant as a game for one-shots, short adventures, and first time-players.

This game owes significant debt to the following games, and I am thankful to their creators:

• Maze Rats
• In Darkest Warrens
• The GLOG
• Mouseritter

A quick overview of the rules:

·         Everything is d6’s.

·         Player characters have four Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Will, and Charisma. Modifiers for these Abilities range from -2 to +4, though a character will never start with a stat higher than +2.

·         Character class comes from a single template chosen at character creation, which does not change. Other elements of character generation (ex. equipment, personality) are supposed to be quick, to let you start the game as soon as possible.

·         Magic system is from the GLOG: casters choose [dice] to spend when casting a spell, and the spell’s effect depends on the [dice] invested and [sum] of the dice when rolled. Mishaps and dooms occur on doubles and triples, respectively.

·         HP and damage are meant to be fully compatible with B/X and AD&D, as well as products compatible with those (ex. Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, or Basic Fantasy RPG). Rules for monster conversion are included.

And a couple of disclaimers, as well:

·         You need a bestiary (and probably a separate treasure generator) to run this game. I would recommend the ones from Basic Fantasy RPG or Old School Essentials, as they already have ascending Armor Class. You could use a bestiary from a system with descending AC by simply converting it to ascending, however. Just subtract descending AC from 19 or 20, depending on how mean you want to be.

·         The math is not a perfect reflection of the d20 systems this ruleset emulates. For example, I know the chance of getting 12 with 2d6 is not the same as getting 20 on 1d20, so the conversion chart listed saying AC 20 becomes Defense Rating 12 is not mathematically perfect. I know 1d6+3 is not the same as 1d12. However, it is “close enough” for my tastes. The goal here is to achieve a “feel” of old-school gaming, not the mathematical probabilities of it… if replicating the mathematical probabilities of B/X or AD&D is your jam, you might be happier with something else.

·         The Death and Dismemberment table is forgiving. A player character will probably only die if they make poor decisions and roll poorly.

·         Character progression is short and limited. Player choice in character progression comes from which Abilities to increase and when, though a lot of character advancement should be in-fiction. For example, magic-users should learn new spells through research and exploration. Characters are meant to retire around level 6 or 7… again, this is meant for short adventures. Using the XP guidelines provided, characters will be ready to retire after 15 - 30 sessions, depending on how successful they are and how generous the referee is.

And now, for the rules. If you enjoy them, please let me know.

Note that this is a heavily-modified version of the character sheet from Maze Rats... if you like it, credit goes to Ben Milton.

Identifying Magic Items in Old-School Fantasy RPGs

Imagine you are refereeing a session of your fantasy tabletop RPG of choice. At the table, one of your players says the following:

·         “I try to figure out what the magic item does.”

·         “I search the room for traps.”

·         “Does this room have any secret doors?”

How do you respond to that statement from a player? Do you ask for more details about what their character does? Do you ask for a dice roll? Maybe you do neither, assume they are successful, and provide them with all the information you have?

Put a pin in that. 

Let's look at another scenario.

Rewind.

Imagine that, before your player ever said one of those above things, you simply provided them with the information outright. That would look like:

·         “Upon searching the paladin’s corpse, you find he was wearing a suit of +2 plate armor.”

·         “You walk down the hall. You notice there’s a pressure plate on the floor and a slot in the wall for a blade to slide out. It’s a trap!”

·         “Upon entering this room, you see a section of brick on the east wall looks different from the surrounding brick. It is likely a false wall.”

You may balk at reading some of the above statements, but are those statements not what the “Passive Perception” skill of 5e encourages (perhaps excluding the one about magic armor)? Perhaps also the “taking 10” on Perception checks in Pathfinder?

Passive Perception gives a numerical value by which to judge whether characters have access to information about the game world. Passive Perception also assumes the character is aware and searching, even if the player does not directly state so.

If a player character’s Passive Perception is higher than the DC to notice a trap or secret door, wouldn’t you tell them information that indicates the trap or secret door – even if the player did not directly state they were searching for such?

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I started thinking about the above issue when thinking about a seemingly unrelated topic: how to handle magic item identification in the games I run. I promise the above issue is related to the problem of magic item identification, and I promise to explain that connection at the end of this article. However, before moving on to talk about the solution I settled on, let’s imagine another problem.

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Let’s “switch gears” and instead think about a gap between player skill/knowledge and character skill/knowledge. Let’s imagine two scenarios:

·         A first-time player has a character who is a magic-user; their character’s background involves the study of magic items at the local Arcane Community College.

·         A veteran player and former referee plays a character who is a barbarian from Backwatersville; their character actively avoids magic due to superstition, but the player has read descriptions of all the magic items in the rulebook.

Now, let’s imagine those two players come across the same magic item, the Silky Slippers of Spryly Springing.

In the first scenario (the newbie player with the magic-user character), the player would not recognize the Slippers, but there’s a significant chance the character would. How do you adjudicate that situation, when the character probably knows more about something than the person playing them?

Conversely, in the second scenario (the veteran player with the ignorant character), the player might recognize Slippers, but the character likely wouldn’t. Would you expect that player to “play dumb?” Stay silent? Even if you rule the character can’t take actions that assume knowledge of the magic item, how would you react if the player shared their knowledge of the magic item out-of-character with other players at the table? What if one of those other players was the newbie with the magic-user character?

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I posed the situations above because I think they speak to the fundamental issues at stake when it comes to rules for magic item identification in fantasy tabletop RPGs. Those issues are:

·         Access to information – when do you provide information to players, how, and why?

·         Action adjudication: When a player’s character tries to obtain information in the game world / a player asks you a question, how do you adjudicate their action / answer their question, and why?

·         Player knowledge v. character knowledge – how do you handle a situation where a character has access to more information than the player? How do you handle a situation where a player has more access to information than their character?

I don’t think there is a right solution to the problems or questions above. The “right” solution depends on the kind of game you want to run. When it comes to handling the identification of magic items, I think there’s three factors to consider when answering the above questions:

• The nature of magic items within your game’s campaign setting
• The core engagements you want to provide with your game
• The rules system you use to adjudicate player character actions

Speaking to the first point, it makes more sense for identifying magic items to be difficult in a campaign setting where magic items are rare and unique. Conversely, in a relatively high-magic setting (such as Golarion for Pathfinder), it makes little sense to have player characters not recognize a potion of healing when they find one. Therefore, the more common magic items are in your campaign’s setting, the easier magic item identification should be.

Secondly, the way characters identify magic items should depend on the core engagements you want your game to provide. If you want your game to be about kicking down doors, kicking tail, and chewing bubble gum, puzzle-solving by investigating magic items gets in the way. In that kind of game, simply telling players the magic items they find when they come across them makes sense. For players looking for abnegation in their game, having a magic item you can’t figure out and use is no fun. Similarly, a high-fantasy game about epic adventures and heroic quests to save the world wouldn’t suit a “mini-game” of futzing about to identify magic items.

Identifying magic items through puzzle-solving and experimentation best suits a game about solving new, unprecedented problems with creative solutions – not murder-hobo-ing or high-fantasy-epic-questing.

The third point, about how the identification of magic items depends on the rules system you use, is perhaps the most mutable. I think every tabletop RPG recognizes the right of the people playing them to alter the rules to their tastes. So, you reserve the right to change the rules to suit the first two points (your campaign setting and the core engagements you want to provide).

However, what the rules say about identifying magic items is important to consider. For example, if running D&D 5e rules-as-written, it’s hard to offer engagement involving the “discovery of magic items through experimentation” when a player character has access to the identify spell as a ritual.

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All of that being said, here are the rules I plan to use for my table. Our game is a fantasy role-playing game based off early D&D. Therefore, the setting is relatively low-magic, magic items tend to be rare and unique, and the game is about solving unprecedented problems in unique and creative ways.

·         Upon touching a magic item with bare skin, most people can tell most items are magical. There are some exceptions to this rule; for example, some magic items could have their magic purposefully concealed. However, most of the time touching a magic item elicits a sensation “butterflies in the stomach,” “hair standing on end,” or “pins-and-needles.”

·         Character action and player problem-solving trump dice rolls. If a character does something that would reveal the properties of a magic item, they do so – no dice rolls necessary. However, they must specifically describe what they do (ex. while wearing the slippers, they jump up and down or run a short distance). Saying “I experiment with the magic item” or “I try to figure out what the magic item does” is not enough.

·         Discerning the nature of magic items without player specificity requires 1. character expertise and 2. a dice roll. Specifically, identifying magic items without experimentation requires a character to know the identify spell, which operates with the following rules (note that these are based off the GLOG magic system, and therefore uses magic dice invested in a spell).

Identify: Once each round for [sum] rounds, you may make an Intelligence Check with a Target Number of (18 minus [dice]) to learn one fact per success about a magical enchantment affecting a touched creature or object. For the duration, you must use the object according to its function (ex. wear apparel or wield weapons). The referee makes these checks in secret; a roll of 1 on the d20 reveals a false piece of information about the enchantment(s), as determined by the referee.

And, for good measure, here’s a GLOG-based version of detect magic:

Detect Magic: For [dice] x 20 minutes, you see a magical glow around enchanted creatures and objects within [sum] x 15ft. The more powerful the enchantment, the stronger the glow.

Lastly, player characters can also pay NPCs to identify magic items for them. Their access to this option depends on the availability of magic-using NPCs and the cost of their services, which player characters must be able to afford with payment either in coin or in kind.

This system addresses the first problem because it describes how to react when a player tells you they want to "experiment to identify a magic item." If their character does not have expertise in identifying magic items, the player needs to be more specific.

This system also addresses the second problem because it describes how a player can circumvent their own lack of expertise when playing a character who knows more than they do. Even if a player can't deduce the qualities of a magic item (or doesn't want to spend the time to do so), they can circumvent their own lack of expertise through magic or services from non-player characters.

Of course, the issues of traps and secret doors are separate, but related, issues likely worth another entire article. So is the issue of how to handle a player with more knowledge in their own head than their character has - something that's been hotly debated since the conception of tabletop RPGs. Again, it's a related challenge worth more words than I can devote here.

But there you have it… a rather consistent system I plan on using for future games of the old-school rules hack I’ve made (whose rules will get around to posting / explaining, at some point). In the meantime, I hope you find this system helpful, or at least interesting.

Gems & Jewelry Roll Tables

I thought I’d share a resource I’ve been working on for a while. I’ve made some random roll tables to generate gems and jewelry for on OSR-style medieval fantasy game.

To me, variety truly is the spice of life. And I draw real interest from the game with detailed, evocative descriptions of things that spark my imagination - not verbose purple-prose descriptions, mind you. I’m just talking about descriptions that make the gems or jewelry you found seem like a real object, rather than just a condensed form of money.

All three of my retroclones of choice – Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, and the Basic Fantasy RPG – provide little help in this regard. Beyond the value of the gems or jewelry, they give minimal description.

Wanting an OSR-compatible table with more detail, my first instinct was to look online. I found Noblecrumpet’s Dorkvision Blog, which has some great gem and jewelry tables on it (part of which served as inspiration for my own).

However, Noblecrumpet’s tables were so rich and detailed that I couldn’t use them at the table. They took me so long to use that I could never do so in front of players; generating gems and jewelry was prep work. As wonderful as Noblecrumpet’s tables were, I wanted the option to randomly generate treasure during the game – and sometimes even let them do the rolling. As such, I needed tables to generate gems and jewelry that were relatively quick-to-use, but still gave interesting results.

As a solution to this problem, I took inspiration from an unlikely source: Stars Without Number. In my GM binder, I have several one-page tables from Stars Without Number that allow quick generation of NPC’s. Using this table, you roll a handful of dice (a d4, a d6, a d8, a d10, a d12, and a d20). Each dice corresponds to a specific attribute of the NPC.

Therefore, you simply grab all the dice you have laying around, roll them once, match them with some numbers, and voila! You have an NPC.

What if you could do the same thing with gems, or jewelry?

The answer to that question is below. You will find one table for gems, and one table for jewels. Each requires you to roll each type of polyhedral dice only once, meaning you do not need to re-roll dice to generate any gem or jewel.

Each table should generate gems and jewels relatively compatible with the tables provided in Labyrinth Lord for gems and jewels.

In Labyrinth Lord, gems range in value from 10 - 1,000 coins, while jewelry ranges in value from 1d4x10 coins (minimum of 10) to 3d6x100 coins (maximum of 1800). I struggled to figure out a way to make the math work out exactly right without requiring multiple rolls, but I consider these tables to be “close enough” for my tastes. Again, I’m open to suggestions.

Each of these tables should also be condensed enough to fit on one side of a sheet of paper, or perhaps even smaller (a half sheet). This intentionally facilitates ease-of-use and to allow you to use them quickly at the table, as needed.

Anyway, that’s enough talking about the tables – here they are. If you find them helpful or useful, please let me know.

For example, I rolled 1d4 = 4, 1d6 = 5,
1d12 = 3, 1d10 = 3, and 1d20 = 17.

This means my gem is an expertly-cut jet the size of a sesame seed and shaped like a star. It is cloudy and worth 300 coins. 

A second roll is 1d4 = 3, 1d6 = 2, 1d12 = 11, 1d10 = 10, and 1d20 = 16.

This means the second gem is a cut emerald the size of a sunflower seed and shaped like a pentagon. It is prismatic and worth 4,000 coins.

Now, onto the jewelry roll table.

For example, I rolled 1d4 = 4, 1d6 = 4, 1d8 = 3, 1d10 = 7, 1d12 = 8,  and 1d20 = 6. This piece of jewelry is a silver figurine of average quality. It is realistic, has a religious motif, and is worth 1100 coins.

The next roll was 1d= 3, 1d6 = 6, 1d8 = 4, 1d10 = 2, 1d12 = 1, and 1d20 = 9. This piece of jewelry is a gold eating utensil of average quality. It is gaudy, has a serpentine style, and is worth 1300 coins.