The Original Standard

As promised last time, here are the elements I've identified that are common to the base rules of five out of six editions of the D&D game.

• Characters have six Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution and Charisma. How they are used differs, but their theoretical range is 3 to 18.
• Characters have levels, and monsters have hit dice, that determine their power.
• Characters and monsters have Hit Points, that increase with level or power, and which determine how much damage they can take before being taken out of combat. How those Hit Points are determined varies greatly.
• There are four basic classes, variously named, but most often called Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric and Thief. Two of the editions use race-as-class.
• Armor Class is a measure of defense. It either goes up from 10 or down from 10 (or 9); but it is usually immediately obvious that an AC over 10 uses the ascending system.
• Movement rate varies, but is easily scaled; a human's base move per round is 12 (120 feet) in earlier editions and 6 (30 feet) in 3rd edition on.
• Saving Throws exist to determine whether various dangers affect a being. They use d20 and are of several kinds, but what they are exactly varies.
• Combat uses d20 to determine hits and various dice to determine damage on a successful hit.
• As much as I love to use the silver standard, all base sets of D&D have used the gold piece (gp) as base currency.
• Technically, magic should be on this list. It shares a surprisingly great deal across all but 4th edition. Magic-Users and Clerics have different lists of spells, which are used by expending different spell level slots. Most of the spells from the original D&D have continued on through 3rd Edition. All the same, this is the area with the greatest flexibility, and it certainly would be tough to have to itemize a list of standard spell names. I'm still thinking out a solution for how Standard should refer to spells.

Does all this mean you should be playing a game with these rules? No, you can feel free to call Constitution Fortitude, use a different magic system, track specific injuries instead of hit points.

But when it comes to producing material for the many people who have taken to playing all kinds of variations on this game, this is the common language. A document produced using only these stats, and using system-free explanations for the rest, will speak to the greatest number of people. A rule set and its supporting documents will be more widely usable across variants of the game the more it builds on this "common language" property.

... So maybe "Original Standard Rules" sounds too much like I'm dictating the play of the game. Maybe just "Original Standard." You can be fully compatible so far as nothing in your game or module contradicts these concepts (for example, you don't split Dexterity into Agility and Finesse). You can be fully compliant so far as all the mechanics in your game use only these concepts.(for example, you don't refer to encumbrance or psionics rules using stats, names and numbers).

Some examples using Egg of the Gazolba next time.

OSR = Original Standard Rules

Wrong OSR, sadly - love the crab!

Let's make the reasonable assumption that an experienced DM running a version of D&D can run an adventure written for the One Page Dungeon contest, from which system-specific stats are purposefully banned. The more rules-light, the quicker to conjure up monster statblocks, improvise skill-like procedures, and do whatever else it takes.

Let's also assume that even the experienced DM would like some stats in the adventure, as long as that information fits the system they're using.

Let's further assume that there is such a variety of base, clone, and home-brewed systems being played that the best anyone can achieve is partial fit. What stats, at minimum, can an author provide that meet that fit for the most people?

I'm wary of ever achieving an opinion-based consensus. I mean, over on the right are 25 different blogs I follow. If you got all their authors in a room together you'd get 50 different opinions.

I'm more optimistic about an objective rule to build consensus. Look. We're all playing D&D here, with or without serial numbers filed off. There have been six major versions of D&D (Original+Supplements, AD&D, Basic, 2nd Ed. AD&D, 3rd Ed., 4th Ed.) Let's partially route around the quirks of the Zero and Latest Editions, and base our judgments on this rule: A game element is only Standard D&D if it appears in 5 out of 6 of these versions. 

Even 4th? Yes. Wizards may have taken a RotoRooter to the game mechanics but they have shrewdly preserved, in name, most of the elements that make up the game's persistent identity.

Next post I'll lay out what this means in more detail, because it's not without twists and oddities.

I have seen Chad Thorson's logo idea and Thomas Denmark's suggestions for its use. Let me propose a more specific rule for what I think Thomas was getting at.

OSR as a brand name for me makes most sense as:

• "Original" - because D&D is the original roleplaying game, without violating copyright, or being coy about the issue.
• "Standard" - if a supplement or adventure is mechanics-free except for the Standard elements of the game, it will automatically be compatible with all related systems. Any further details of the system the author is using should be explained, or handled by making a reference to a published product. Any further fine-tuning to fit the system the DM is using is the DM's responsibility.
• "Rules" - because that is really what we are doing at a minimal level that everyone can agree on. Not everyone is into a Renaissance, Revival, Revolution, Revanchism, Rearguard, Revelation, Raid, Regurgitation, Rap-battle, or Riot. 

More later, but let me know if this makes sense to you right now.

Spawn of Fashan Retro-Clone Project

Now that I've made you look ...

See, since back when I read Lawrence Schick's review in the April 1982 issue of Dragon (p. 76), which ended up explaining this ill-conceived RPG as a parody, I always assumed the review itself was an April Fool's joke on a nonexistent game.

But over the years, Dame Experience has since taught me that there's no satire like reality. Information about SoF is surprisingly light on the net, but it looks like it was a real game.

It's reviewed at length on RPG.net.

Older and wiser, the game's creator reflects on his 15 minutes of fame.

As I noted reviewing bad monsters, there's a difference between "flamboyantly awful" and "just awful." In hindsight, Spawn is just your garden variety, poorly edited, simulationist-preposterous attempt to improve D&D. What's sad is that the championship belt of "worst RPG ever" has since gone to systems that topped  bad design with worse social attitudes. The fate of such should be obscurity, not the notoriety they crave.

PS: Speaking of "just awful," have a gander at the carefully segregated official April Fool's content in that Dragon magazine issue. Um ,wow.

Keep That Rule Simple, Graphically

Well, I did up the rule from last post as a one page, semi-literate graphic that you can read from 5 feet away. This is a great exercise in cutting rules flab and bringing it closer to something that will work in a game, because after the rule survives the Procrustean treatment, you can either memorize it or quickly consult it.

In fact, the restaurant Heimlich-maneuver chart treatment is the new acid standard for rules I invent if they're to be used in actual play. Either I should be able make a graphic like this, or it involves rolling dice and looking that one dice roll up on a table. A lot of my rules in squidgy type have fallen by the wayside at the actual table.

Click to enlarge ... if you really need to.

One-Roll Breakage Rules

It may be a while before I post the Dungeon.ppt you've been awaiting - there's the small matter of my 100,000 word manuscript I have to format and put in the mail by Thursday. It's not for gaming - it's a psychological monograph on moral emotions -  but I did slip the phrase "malevolent and benign" into one of the chapters...

In the meantime, a solution to something that's been bugging me a while...

What do you do when you roll a critical hit and weapons clash in combat? Or a fumble says to test for weapon breakage? Or one of your players is trying to hack a door with an axe?

Do you:
1: Pause the game, haul out the 1st Edition DMG and consult the item saving throw table?
2: Pause the game, haul out the 3rd Edition or Pathfinder book and use the even more complicated material damage system?
3: Remember 3-5-7-9-11?

When a swung weapon (not a spear, arrow etc.) might damage an item, and the weapon is made of material harder or as hard as the item, roll damage for the attacking weapon. I'm assuming you're using standard variable damage where a dagger is d4, longsword d8 and so on. Does it break the defending item?

If it's 3 or greater, a fragile item like a wand or a flask breaks.
If it's 5 or greater, a wooden haft, club or other thin wooden item breaks.
If it's 7 or greater, a shield or other solid wooden item breaks.
If it's 9 or greater, a sword, dagger blade, iron haft or other thin metal item breaks.
If it's 11 or greater, a metal shield or other solid metal item breaks.

Magical items defending against breakage have +1 to this number for every +1 of magic bonus.

A non-weapon surface that an object hits (say, in a fumble), if it's as hard as or harder than the weapon's weakest material, does:

1d4 damage if wood, 1d6 if reinforced wood, 1d8 if stone, 1d10 if metal - in ascending order of hardness.

In such a fumble, an edged weapon that doesn't break or take any damage is still blunted and has -1 to hit until sharpened.

Hacking at a solid item like a door proceeds the same way, except no hit roll is needed. An axe or pick is the ideal tool; anything else that can be swung is -1 damage for this purpose. Each hacker gets one damage roll per round, and the minimum damage roll to score a "breakage" is 7 (solid wood).

An object will take 2 "breaks" to fully break through a 1' square area that is 1 inch thick. So, to take a typical door off its hinges will require 4 breaks, more if thicker; to open a locked chest will require 2 breaks. If in this process a natural 1 for damage is rolled, the weapon takes damage instead, as in a fumble (see above).

So - hack away!

Draft Dungeon.ppt Slide

So, here is what I am thinking of releasing. Click to see it at full resolution:

Naturally, this is a Powerpoint slide, so the released document will have each object as a separate thing you can copy and paste into your own documents. I'll also include a second slide with some tips on how to work with Powerpoint, which makes decent maps but has its quirks. The reason I use it is because:

• it came bundled with Windows; 
• AutoRealm kept having issues with line thickness and feature alignment and is no longer supported as far as I can tell;
• I work best with object-oriented stuff; like to revise and switch things around;
• and anything else is either tile-based or costs beaucoup money.

The graph paper is currently an overlay made of lines that conforms to the .5 cm grid I'm using, but I'm thinking of including a persistent, tiled graph paper fill pattern for objects instead.

Anything you'd like to see, or find useful, that I missed here?

What do we want in a map? 3: DM Attention Markers

An adventure map can approach a high level of detail, offering an aerial view of every bed, box, barrel and biscuit in every area. This is obviously important if you're playing 21st century D&D, with its need to regulate everything in every 5 foot square that could affect combat.

Old school module maps, though, impress with their sparse design. Apart from the keyed columns, statues, doors and stairs, and maybe some important features like pools or lava flows, the rooms of old TSR modules for the most part look empty. If it's really important to know where the chest or the painting is, you might get a letter or a symbol somewhere.

Was this just lack of artistic talent or patience? Maybe, but I also wonder if the stripped-down maps might be a security through obscurity practice. Just as the original TSR module endpage maps were printed in their memorable light blue to foil photocopying, perhaps they were also sparsely detailed to foil peeking players, or to protect against a Wikileaks-level structural failure of the DM screen. You can see where the door goes from room 26, but not what's in there; that secret is in the close-set pages of the adventure key.

I also don't think it's that important to have what's in the room drawn on the map, unless you can make it all artistic and right purty. Unless you've got the dungeon all on one page, you're going to want to open your notes up to room 26 anyway when the players break through the door. And working from the notes, you can improvise more definite locations for things if you need to, or follow simple instructions in the key like "Chest against North wall."

But what I do need to know, when I look at the map, is what's in each of the four areas that 26 connects to. If there's a loud water-driven mechanism behind the door in 27, I want to be able to describe its muffled clunkings to players who've just busted into 26. If there's a rancid smell down the 30' hall to 29, that too. And most importantly, I want to be aware if there's a monster in 25 or 28 who'll wake up and join the party if they start trying to hack through that chest with axes and sledgehammers.

Most importantly, I want to know all those things about neighboring rooms without having to write them obsessively into the key for every adjacent room.

And so ...

Color is optional, but I think helpful. Anyway, these are the kinds of thing I always forget about in the adjacent room until they're halfway done exploring it. Then I have to tell my Plato's cave spelunkers "Oh yeah, if you look through that archway it goes 20' and then there's a flickering red light and smell of roasting flesh."

Hope these will help me remember all that when they first crash in ...