Hit Dice Quirks: 4+4 or 5?

In some old-school d20 rulesets, such as Labyrinth Lord or its source Basic D&D game, hit points added to a monster's hit dice are just a "bump" up to the next hit die, so a creature with 4+4 dice attacks as a 5 hit die creature. Others, such as Swords & Wizardry or 2nd Edition AD&D, base their attacks on straight hit dice, so a creature with 4+4 dice attacks as a 4 hit die creature. Lamentations/WFRP's core rulebook still doesn't say how monsters get attack bonuses ... Anyway, my game uses the S&W convention, easier to remember.

With this system, and d8 as your hit die, each plus of 4 1/2 ends up averaging out to another hit die, and a 9+9 HD creature has the exact same average number as an 11 HD creature (49.5); just a tighter spread (18 to 81 vs. to 8 to 88). But, the 11HD creature is better at attacking and saving throws.

What I wonder is how much monster design takes this feature into account. There's a certain inertia when it comes to messing around with the ogre's 4+1 or the troll's 6+6, arbitrary figures seared into a generation's brains from adolescence.  After a while, hit dice codes seemed to be put out there for sheer novelty value, jumping the wereshark in Monster Manual 2 with stuff like 13+39 (the arcanadaemon), 2+8 (the tri-flower frond) or 7 plus, um, 3d4 (the annis). Keep in mind that each +3 hp counts as an extra hit die when attacking, by 1st Edition AD&D rules. Math is hard!

Or is that seven, plus three, minus twelve? Or 10-19 HD?

Anyway, back to straight-up hit dice combat tables. Why shouldn't the hill giant - long on endurance, short on skill - fight with 6+10 instead of 8+1 hit dice? Is a S&W cockatrice with 5 HD really better at attacking than a near-equivalent werewolf with 4+4? What about more fragile creatures with ample skill and fortune, like sprites or bird-men - shouldn't they have minuses (4-2 hit dice)?

OK, I find that it's hard to mentally budge those iconic numbers for the classic monsters. But maybe it's a thought when we turn to designing new ones.

Birth of a Gamer: Amazon on a Train

Last weekend we took in a play and a couple of meals up in London with some fellow Americans, a visiting prof at our department and his social worker spouse. These folks are somewhat older than we are, close to retirement age, but only are around at my university in the spring and were about to head back stateside.

Because the spouse had expressed some interest in roleplaying in one of our earlier meetings, I'd surreptitiously bought some dice (six siders) in Covent Garden market. The train ride back out of London was the scene for her gaming initiation, and the four of us were lucky to have grabbed table seats. It takes one hour but the time fairly flew as I had her roll 3d6 in order - 13 strength, 5 charisma - creating a warrior. When I gave the chance for one descriptive word, she came up with "Amazon."

Our Amazon approached the gates of a walled town. For some reason, interacting with the guards, she spun a story that the chainmail and spear weren't hers, but she'd just found them - a story she would repeat later. In any event, her social awkwardness led to a less than friendly reaction roll, but they let her in for the usual toll.

Three streets led away from the gate. I was completely winging this, with only four dice and no written material at all. I came up with rough ideas of what each street would lead to, and gave her the choice. She took the left-hand path, leading to an industrial district, where she came upon a group of tannery workers getting their supper slops. The cook rolled a great reaction - 11 on 2d6, friendly even toward her terrible charisma - so I had him greet her warmly, offer the last of the slops and a job feeding the pigs out back. But she didn't know that ... and though she took the job up, it was with some fear and a little ribbing from the rest of us as to the decidedly non-heroic turn of our adventure.

The workmen left and the cook showed our Amazon to her quarters, in the butcher shop of this all-in-one hog processing operation. Feeling wary by now, she decided to sneak out in the fading light and see if anyone else was about. I had her run into some women who worked in a weaving and dyeing establishment, but their reaction was negative and they called their menfolk to give dire threats to the Amazon (hostile reaction, but not a strong morale result that would have led to a fight).

She went back to the butcher shop, where there was an ominous trapdoor. She had the idea to use her strength to try and open it, at which she succeeded (roll low, 3d6). There were claw marks on the inside of the door and a series of rungs going down. Her eventual security plan was to sleep atop the door, so that anything coming up would both be blocked and wake her.

Of course, the underground has to intrude into the first adventure, right? So in the middle of the night, she's awakened by a thumping and scratching on the trapdoor. She gets up and runs out of the butcher shop, round a corner, waits and listens. In the darkness, something is shambling and snuffling toward her ...

And then the train reached its stop and the session was over.

Thinking back to our earlier discussions about the different selves in a game, our friend showed excellent adventuring caution. She put herself into the dangerous situation with great conviction and intensity. But, she did very little immersion into the role of the Amazon. In a sense, the "Amazon" was herself -a modern woman in medieval times, thrust into a strange town with strange goings-on.

We hope to pick up again next year!

Ontogeny Recapitulates Monstrosity

Watch how this video montage of our embryonic development goes through all your favorite humanoids ... fish-people at 0:08 ... lizard-people at 0:18 ... then dog- and pig-faced people around 0:21 to 0:23.

Is it too much to imagine that a strange science or wizardry could create such full-grown monsters by arresting the morphological development of the embryo at any one of these stages while continuing its growth?

Or that - building on a teleological folk-conception of evolution where human form and intelligence are the obvious goal of the whole process - an even more devious procedure would prolong the gestation of animals to the point where they take on human morphology?

The monsters, they are us.

When and Why Are You Yourself?

It's a well-worked observation by now in RPG circles: people playing characters in a game can act as they personally would act, or as their characters would act. Different people can identify at different levels; different games can support different levels; people can have fun exploring the boundary between levels.

This is where a fairly arcane theory in psychology comes in. Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist best known for his book Descartes' Error, which influenced a whole generation of thinkers in psychology (myself included) to take emotion more seriously as a positive and functional force in thought. His 1999 book The Feeling of What Happens is less well known. There, he uses the neuroscience of the day to construct a three-layered model of consciousness and the self.

To simplify somewhat, the first two layers of self are reactive. The proto-self, based on the reptile brain, monitors our body boundaries and pretty much stops us from chewing our extremities. And the core self, based on the mammal brain, gives us emotions to deal with threats, thwarting and opportunities.

The third layer of self is the autobiographical self, and it is deeply tied in with the human capacity for self-reflection and language. It lets us plan for the future, look to the past, and construct a story about who we are and where we're going.

I put it to you that in a game, players are most eager and comfortable to:

• express their character when the autobiographical self is called on, and 
• express themselves when the core self is called on.

So, for example, character autobiographical self. When a player spins stories about their character's origin at a lull in the game, or starts talking about what they're going to do with all this wealth, that's appropriate and well received.

But not player autobiographical self. When a player spins stories about what happened to them in another game last year, or about this really great pizza place they went to last week, or goes on at length about this Savage Worlds campaign they're planning ... Well, some players do that, but it gets old fast. And a joke that gets older fast - hell, was born old - is when the NPC asks you "Who are you and where are you going?" and you break the frame thusly: "Well, I'm Josh Schmenge and after this game I'm going to drive home, eat a bowl of cereal, and go to bed."

And player core self.  This is when six wights come barreling down on the party's paladin and his player yells "Ohhhh shit!" That's not inappropriate, even thought the contrast between the Lord's knight and the cursing player is funny. In a way, the genuine emotion gives homage to the realness of the situation for the player. Likewise, we cut players some slack for rejoicing according to their native customs when they find the huge treasure horde or defeat those wights.

It's not just emotion. When danger looms, players often go into an analytic mode that calls out the rules and moves in a way the characters never would. Some DMs frown on this, but nobody can stop it completely. Also, it's not satisfying to the players if you force them to act 100% in-character at those times. They would feel like the play-acting was getting in the way of what really engages them - ensuring their beloved character's survival. Maybe this represents the speeded-up processing that high emotion facilitates?

But not character core self. Who do you have more tolerance for - a player who nearly gets your whole party killed because they're roleplaying an incompetent, impulsive fool, or the same situation where the player just is an incompetent, impulsive fool? Hm, yeah, thought so. D&D is still not a role-playing game ... when the adventure's at stake.

Journey To Saddleback II: Wake-Up Rules

The last encounter of the session was an encounter with another human group, who I'd decided beforehand to be a rival group of the goat nomads.

via Arena Astral, photobucket.com

This encounter came at night, as the party camped in the badlands outside Saheedra's spire. They were taking one-person watches, and had camped in a hollow, concealing their fire from passers-by. The henchman on watch was alerted by two sling bullets whizzing by; he quickly raised the alarm as the intruders closed to fight. Nobody had time to put any armor on, but as the enemy swarmed the tents, the party wizard cast her Sleep spell and most of them (plus one henchman) went down. One ran into the dwarf's axe, and the militant struck to subdue the last one. Deciding on mercy, the party disarmed the attackers, tied them together, and ran them off.

All well and good, but there were still a few loose ends after that encounter.

1. Should there be less of a chance for encounters due to preparations such as hiding the fire? Or more of a chance for lack of such preparations? I think the latter, so on the d20 roll for static encounters while camping, figure -3 in flat ground, -2 in hills/mountains, or -1 in forest if the party is making visible smoke by day or fire by night, unless they take pains to hide it.

2. Should shouts be enough to wake the party in one round? Watches and waking are not really well treated in any of the old-school material I know of (I'm sure Wilderness Survival Guide from AD&D covers this but I am not familiar with it). In retroactive continuity, we can say that the holy influence from the lammasu spire made people miraculously alert to the shouting. But normally, I would say that physical kicking or shaking will also definitely wake people up, and any other alarm will wake people up if they make a Mind save (Spells if you're using that system). An unusual alarm device will give anywhere from +2 to +4 on that save.

3. All this argues for more people on watch, so that one or two can handle waking duty while the rest defend against attack. My party, maybe working off procedures from other games, posted only one watch person and disallowed the spellcasters from taking watch because they need to get sleep to recover spells.

But realistically, nights are 12 hours long (my world is flat so there's no procession of the sun; on a round planet with axial seasons, things get more complicated) and you only need to sleep 8 hours. With this in mind, it's not just a good idea to have watches consist of 1/3 of the party strength, it's actually more realistic, because what else are people going to do for those 4 hours?

In fact, before electric lighting, it was culturally accepted to have a period of wakefulness in the middle of the night. So even taking middle watch is an acceptable way to fit 8 hours of wakefulness into 12 hours of night. Even if spellcasters do need that sleep to be uninterrupted if they are to regain spells, they can still take first or (preferably) last watch.

4. All the same, this makes night monsters much more dangerous; they effectively get a couple of rounds even if you're not surprised and then you have to fight them in your PJ's.

I'm curious how the rest of you handle this kind of situation, given that it's not well described in any of the core rulebooks I know.

Journey to Saddleback I: Three's Company

Result 20 on my one-page wilderness random encounter table says to "roll twice," raising the possibility that the party will stumble upon two groups of creatures hobnobbing or fighting.

Skirting wide away from rumors of a giant in the foothills, our Trossley adventurers came upon such a big 20. Further rolling revealed that some hill nomads and some ogres were in the mix. "You hear some shouting from behind that ridge ..."

As they advanced, I reflected that given the distances over open terrain, the fight could very well be over before the party closed to range. So I made it an ambush - groups of nomads were lying in wait behind three ridges that formed a box, and another couple of them had lured out some ogres.

How to run an outdoor fight? When the sling bullets and arrows started flying, the range was long enough that I marked out general positions with pawns on the hex mat, about 40' to a hex (in hindsight, 30' would have been handier for figuring out movement distances). Moving to melee and spell range, 5' hexes gave a focus on the action. The ogres randomly concentrated their efforts on the goat-hide-wearing hillmen, laying three or four of them low before being defeated. The hillmen thanked the party, divided the meager coins the ogres had been carrying, and all went their separate ways.

But the general question remains, how to handle those 20s, or in general stumbled-upon encounters of the kind that add spice to life?  Three factors come into it: whether the encounter is friendly or hostile; the power balance; and whether the encounter is in the future or past. For example, I could have had the party come upon the goatmen, and then have ogres crash in during negotiations ... or be attacked by ogres, and then saved at the last minute by a nomad charge.

So, this table is not necessarily for taking literally, but shows the possibilities and may help direct your thoughts when running a similar encounter.

Double Encounters (d6 for time)	Encounter roll between the two groups (2d6 with modifiers)
	Hostile (2-5)	Neutral (6-8) or friendly (9-12)
1-2: Before	Party encounters the side you rolled first; the other side will come on the scene in 1d8 rounds.	The side you rolled first is heading to a rendezvous with the other in 1d8 minutes.
3-4: During	They’re in the middle of a fight; for each figure on the weaker side and every second figure on the stronger, roll d6, 1 means dead and 2-3 means half hit points. When party shows up,  the side they’ll fight (if that’s obvious) or the weaker side (if that’s not) must test morale.	One group is meeting and trading (3) or on patrol (4) with the other if friendly; if neutral, it’s a standoff.
5-6: After	The two sides have already taken the casualties above. Party has come upon the fleeing and hiding weaker side (5) or the victorious stronger side, with 10% of the weaker side captive (6).	The side you rolled first is carrying trade goods (5) or loot (6) from their collaboration with the other. if not friendly, backing off from standoff. They are still in shouting distance.

Hat not included.

After the fight, the party made their way toward the now clearly visible landmark, the rock formation and spire shaped like a pointing finger (index finger) where they'd been told the lammasu Saheedra dwelt. I decided to make the occasion more solemn, and less like a White House press conference, by having each character ascend alone for an audience with the great and holy woman-beast, by request of her dwarf-child major-domo. "Alone" here was not taken literally - I hate secret information and separate rooms between the players - but allowing a platform for each player in turn gave just the right amount of slow-down to the session.

Many mysteries of the campaign were exposed in these audiences and more were hinted at. But there was one more encounter that evening, and it brings up a second mechanical DM issue, so it will get its own post.

Why I Give It Away

Some vague worries have been inhibiting my posting today, somewhat brought up by Courtney's post that is zinging around the blogosphere. I want to share with you my resolution of those worries, not to diminish anyone else's decisions, but to exorcise personal jimjams.

In the eight or so months since I have turned from a merely theoretical blogger to a practical DM blogger, the focus of my efforts in this hobby has radically changed. I have gone from trying to produce things someone will find useful, to trying to produce things I will find useful, in the face-to-face game that has come to be a high point of every week I run it.

The more I focus on this experience, the less I care about counting things like comments, followers, or page clicks on the blog. I don't mean that I utterly don't care, but given a choice between100 new blog followers in a flash and two additional players in the game ... no contest. And face it, if you're writing a blog you're pretty much guaranteed to be the kind of person who sees 75-90% of the stuff out there and goes "that's neat, but I've got my own way" ... Too many divas, not enough chorus.

Rather than seeing this as "work" I am doing to get paid, in cash, comments, internet thumbs up or what have you, it is vital that I see my output instead as by-products of play. Perhaps this is because I am doing paid work elsewhere in the gaming industry, as well as managing a professional career that is also all about producing creative work.

Pretty much all the things I have put up here for free have been works of near-compulsion to finish. I never once said to myself, "Oh god, another monster for Varlets & Vermin" or "Time to make the dooonuts and finish another one-page chart..."

But that doesn't mean that I don't have drudgework projects in the old-school vein. Remember color magic? As my players gain level, I'm going to have to come up with more detailed spell descriptions for higher and higher levels. If I ever publish that book, I'm highly likely to not have it be free.

The same goes for an idea that came to me this week - the encounter table that is more than an encounter table. That's too insanely fascinating to share just now without actually producing it, but also too much work to just crank out in a weekend. Or if I ever pack all the insights, techniques and play aids from my game into one bumper volume - let's call it "Desperate Deeds" - with crazy amounts of bonus material, yes, I'll be charging a nominal fee.

In other words, I'm only asking to be materially paid for not having fun. But as for the larger questions of gratitude, respect, acknowledgement, community, those are more difficult to answer. Some of it is ego, some of it is genuine. One way I try to give back, come to think of it, is my practice of the "play report plus" ... the session report with insight into GM techniques and decisions. It's there I can give credit where credit is due for things I use in the game.

Another way is to do more reviews of other people's work. I'm not sure if this is something that works for me, though. I have been sitting on a review for months now - dare I say that writing it has felt like work? Should we get paid to write reviews?

Perhaps the best "review" is actual use.

Paying the bla bla toll, here is a chart of the probabilities for one of my favorite dice rolls, 2d6 minimum.

1: 11/36 (about 1/3)
2: 9/36 (1/4)
3: 7/36 (about 1/5)
4: 5/36 (about 1/7)
5: 3/36 (1/12)
6: 1/36

Chance of 3 or higher: 4/9;  chance of 4 or higher: 1/4.