Tactics in Adventure Gaming

Virtual tabletops have caused something
of a renaissance in tactical
adventure game play, if only
because miniatures and terrain are
expensive and computer graphics
are less so.

 

 I'm not sure where I was going with this, but maybe someone will get some value out of it.

Adventure gaming has always had an uneven relationship with tactical play. The earlier D&D variations tended to make combat largely abstract, but this was done from the perspective that the Referee (aka Dungeon Master, Game Master, or whatever) would have a solid grasp on how combat should flow so that they could rule meaningfully on how players' actions should play out. Other games, notably including Melee and Wizard, ultimately adding non-combat-related activities as The Fantasy Trip, but also D&D-descended games like RuneQuest, laid out a tactical wargame for play and built the rest of the adventure game around it. Many would go on to imply that the wargame's actual board-play could be foregone in favor of imagining matters, and the details of matters like regulating movement were generally of varying strictness anyway, with games like RuneQuest just saying that characters would move "3 meters" or whatever and leaving the actual implementation of that to the Referee, while Melee or Champions relied on detailed hex grids to place characters in specific positions relative to each other and objects in the scenario space.

Most adventure games built these tactical wargames around the character as a basic unit. This resulted in tactical games where the unit of space was generally on that scale, so that a hex might represent one or two yards or meters, sufficient to contain about one character, or sometimes a few of them. A two-meter or two-yard hex might also contain a horse, and so that was a frequent choice. Some game designers might concentrate more completely on the human scale, resulting in some games such as GURPS or CORPS setting the scale at 1 yard or meter per hex space, or even in the case of Swordbearer at 1 "pace" of 30 inches/2 ½ feet for its tactical movement regulation. For some games, though, a tactical unit might as frequently be something other than a human being-scaled object, or even larger than a horse. Car Wars for example, while not initially intended as an adventure game, was centered on vehicular movement and combat, while also allowing for "pedestrian" combatants on the field. Since a typical automobile is in the range of 5 yards long, the game centered its maps on a scale of 1 inch on the map representing 15 feet, making a quarter-inch into 3.75 scale feet, which is close enough to human scale. A couple of years later, GDW came out with an adventure game modeling military operations in the then-near-future, after a "limited" nuclear exchange in the future war of Twilight 2000, requiring it to be similarly built from the ground up to handle vehicles. Shortly after, the company would revise its flagship adventure game, Traveller, to incorporate ideas that had developed in the intervening decade, from a different modeling of weapon characteristics that had initially seen use in the tactical boardgame Azhanti High Lightning (a development of the earlier Snapshot, intended to cover the claustrophobic tactical situations of close combat aboard spacecraft, something not well handled with the "range band" system of combat in the classic Traveller game) and then been expanded in the miniatures wargame Striker. Perhaps intending to encourage more military SF in the Rebellion scenario, MegaTraveller was also built from the ground up to handle vehicle operations, mainly by changing the earlier game's 25m "range bands" into 15m squares, which also allowed the game's combat system to be easily scaled down to 1.5m squares to match the grids of deck plans for spacecraft that had been drawn up for the earlier Snapshot and Azhanti High Lightning games, or scaled up by orders of magnitude to handle other situations like mass combat units. Some of the alternate scales, notably naval warfare and space combat, were inconsistently handled for various good or bad reasons.

Other GDW games would go on to use this variable scale in order to handle resolution as well. Space 1889 alternately used large hexes of 200 yards to handle aerial vehicles like sky galleons, taken directly from the vehicle combat games Sky Galleons of Mars and Ironclads and Ether Flyers and more abstractly handled character movement in feet per turn, regulated by the Referee much as RuneQuest had done in its first few editions, or on close quarters maps with square grids. 2300AD, originally and somewhat confusingly (as it had no relation to Traveller) called Traveller 2300, also incorporated vehicles. Then, the so-called "House System" was developed for a new edition of Twilight 2000, among other reasons to revise the timeline and scenario to incorporate the rapid changes that had occurred in the late '80s and early '90s in regard to the Cold War between the US and the then-collapsing USSR that were so important to the game's setting. That system used a variable scale of 2m individual squares and (initially) 8m larger scale squares, followed by a change to 10m larger squares in a later refinement of the rules. Before the rules were refined, they were adapted to a few other settings: the Cadillacs & Dinosaurs comic book series (and soon also an animated series) and a cyberpunk/horror crossover called Dark Conspiracy. The former did quite well, but as a licensed property was somewhat limited in scope and potential. DC, unfortunately, was badly marketed (for instance, it took quite some time before I even really knew what it was, and the advertising made it seem like a Shadowrun knockoff more than its own game in part by using the same artists as SR). The refined rules, using a d20 to resolve success instead of the earlier d10 system, were then unveiled in an adaptation of the system to the Third Imperium setting of Traveller, though that interstellar polity was entirely (and, in retrospect, inexplicably given the previously existing fan base) swept away in the New Era. This was followed by a new revision of Twilight 2000 that included the newly revised rules, known as v.2.2.

As far as I know, that was the end of the heyday of games that deliberately incorporated human-scale and vehicular scale, if they used a tactical boardgame at all. GURPS and its imitator CORPS (and CORPS was a simplification and development of the earlier system that BTRC used in its games TimeLord, SpaceTime, and WarpWorld, which was similarly inspired by GURPS; another BTRC game, Macho Women With Guns, was another GURPS-inspired system, though more in that case as a parody - the company has since gotten its GURPS-worship out of its system, as their current house system, EABA, bears hardly any resemblance to the SJG game) were built for man-to-man combat and never easily handled even mounted combat due to the awkward scale. Later editions of D&D were similarly focused on human-scale in the tactical combat system at the heart of those games, though some effort was put in to handle such things as giants. Interestingly, they tend toward the same 5 foot (almost exactly 1.5m) spaces of games like Snaphot and MegaTraveller. But many games just dumped any tactical matters into the hands of the Referee, usually without even providing guidelines on how combat should flow, much less how to handle tactical considerations. Some games just turned matters into "story" issues, usually with "talking stick" mechanics like the "raise" system of Dogs in the Vineyard, foregoing tactics as a consideration at all.

It has become somewhat fashionable among "old school" gamers to disdain tactical combat boardgames in favor of more purely "theater of the mind", Referee-heavy combat resolution. While I do see a place for that sort of thing, I think that combat boardgames are also of value. It depends on the context, as Matt Easton might say. Tactical play, while not the only method or matter of interest in adventure games, keeps things from degenerating into resembling "JRPG" computer games, with alternating lines of combatants exchanging attacks and spells.

Some Possibly Unpopular Opinions Regarding Gaming-related Issues

1.  I will never attend a convention in Indiana. The people of that state have chosen to enact policies that make everyday existence dangerous for some people. There are some other states that this applies to, but Indiana is notably relevant in this at this time. I'm sure the populace of Indiana has their collective reasons for doing so, but whatever those might be don't change the hazard the state poses to some people.
2.  I don't play games to "tell stories". That's what writing is for. I might tell stories based on things that happen during a game, but that's a different matter. It was a severe mistake to reduce adventure games to writing workshop exercises, resulting in some "games" that are little more than glorified, sometimes overly complicated procedures for passing around a metaphorical Talking Stick.
3.  Playing wargames no more means that a gamer likes or glorifies war than playing Monopoly means that a gamer wants to be a slumlord or similar parasite.
4.  Adventure games work best when they don't assume an inherent "heroism" and invest characters with superpowers as if powers are the same thing as heroism. Heroism is, or should be, a quality of the player, not their playing piece. This opinion is, of course, complicated by the existence of adventure games centered around superpowered genre conventions like superheroes or shōnen battle anime, but I should hope that the basic point is clear to anyone who isn't being lazily contrarian. Such games should put players on a more or less equal footing with their opposition and allow the players to shine or fall on their own merits. Which is not to fetishize an unnatural "balance", as overcoming adversity should be part of the process, not merely testing tactical acumen. It's a fine line to walk for the person designing the scenario.
5. Speaking of that last, and a conclusion I keep coming to, "adventure game" is a better term for the sort of game I most like to play than alternatives like "roleplaying game" or "storytelling game", both of which latter terms have led to misguided design, at least from the perspective of adventure gaming. Are they now three separate but related hobbies? Maybe. Certainly the more extreme games, like Capes, Once Upon A Time, or Tales of the Arabian Nights no longer much resemble the classic adventure games that caused the first gaming explosion (the second was trading card games, the third computer games).
6. Not really an opinion, but a thought occasioned by that last: maybe I should write a taxonomy of sorts of games, to cover sports, parlor games, board games, dice and card games, wargames, adventure games, and so on. Basically, I would want to list out the various sorts of games that I see and try to capture the characteristics that seem subtly different but create entirely different experiences, especially between the categories of adventure games, roleplaying (or perhaps "role-immersion") games, and storytelling games that often get conflated as if they were all the same. It would be complicated by the fact that some games take elements of different types of games and combine them (like chess boxing and other kinds of combative chess variants or Dread) for various effects. And of course the perception that some are the same type even when they aren't creates issues as well. Ugh, it would be an involved project, for sure.
7. Complex games shouldn't have the stigma they are given. Most aren't really all that complex in the first place (Aftermath! really doesn't deserve the reputation it has, to pick a notable example), but even the ones that are create a distinct, unique, and sometimes enjoyable atmosphere of play. Mostly, people seem to object not so much to complexity but to elements and mechanics they find uninteresting for one reason or another. Those mechanics, though, are generally included to present an aspect of play that the designer wanted to emphasize. An example of a specific, common mechanic might be encumbrance, which was included to present a logistics challenge in many early adventure games, but is discarded as "too complicated" by some who don't understand the value of that kind of challenge. Similarly, people who aren't interested in weapons might chafe at measuring fine differences between various weapons that weapon enthusiasts might enjoy. "Who cares about a 3cm difference in length?" the dilettante might complain, "That's too much to keep track of." Meanwhile, the enthusiast enjoys weighing one tradeoff against another, even at the expense of "complexity". So, it isn't complexity that is the issue, it's what elements are you interested or not interested in weighing the relative merits of, and things like speed of play and ease of memorization are parts of that equation.
8. Somewhat related, can people please stop dismissing calls for "realism" by resorting to claims of "fantasy"? Yes, there are no dragons or fireball spells, but some people are looking to engage with those things as if they were real rather than treat them as merely story elements that fill plot and story purposes (or game elements chosen to fill out a mechanical matrix of game procedure options). While "verisimilitude" is perhaps more precise a term, it's pretty obvious that people looking for "realism" mean that, so why force the more cumbersome word on the discussions?

 Maybe more later.

Checking In

I apologize for being quiet for several months, and for not continuing my look at expanded Domain Play in AD&D. I do want to say that I'm still around, though I almost wasn't as I had a stroke in mid-January from which I'm still recovering. Mainly, it's meant that I've lost, hopefully only temporarily, the use of my left hand, which makes typing somewhat slower. Otherwise, there seem to be few or no major ill effects. We did learn that I've had some heart damage consistent with a heart attack sometime in the last five years, but I have no idea when exactly that might have happened.

 

For now, here are some things that could be of interest:

Over on Dice and Discourse, we have a post on using isekai tropes with GURPS Banestorm. That's a nifty idea that could use characters based on the players, original characters, or ones based on the players but with anime-style superpowers or even just bonus powers like Magery 3. Of course, not all anime uses high-powered characters (see, for instance, the excellent Ascendance of a Bookworm for an isekai example, though to be fair that one does eventually grant the main character some extra magic power).

Speaking of GURPS, Dungeon Fantastic had a quick discussion of why characters can't just target Vitals without knowing where they are. Personally, I think that's probably something that should be applied more generally: make a Physiology roll, at default if necessary, to target Vitals. It's not like a character can see where the kidneys or whatever are.

Enraged Eggplant has been adapting ideas from ACKS, especially the recent Imperial Imprint second edition (see, the initials make a Roman numeral "2", because Macris thinks he's more clever than he is; being fair, though, he's a good game designer, whatever his other shortcomings might or might not be) to GURPS. For my money, the most useful so far is adapting the Market Class rules, but there are other good ones if you look around over his posts since January. Market Class is an idea that should have been in GURPS City Stats, if they'd have thought of it.

I hope that you are doing well. Take care of yourself.

TSR/WotC Returns To The World Of Oerth

First of all, I don't yet have a copy of the new Dungeon Master's Guide for the updated 5E D&D. I'm poor and will have to wait until it can be fit into my budget. So, all of this is relying on the reports of others, first impressions, reviews, and so on.

The big changes have already been noted, being mostly some name changes that appeared on the map that was released to the public a few months back. The Scarlet Brotherhood's peninsula was renamed Shar, various tribal and "barbarian" peoples were given their proper endonyms to replace the exonyms that had previously appeared on the map, and sadly due to legal issues in the real world, the land of Blackmoor was renamed "Arn". Specifically, the Plains of the Paynims were renamed Plains of the Ulakandar (that should be "Uli", as Ulakand is a caravan town in the region rather than an ethnonym), Tiger Nomads are now Chakyik and Wolf Nomads are Wegwiur, the Rovers of the Barrens, while still called that in the text, are listed on the map as the Hunting Lands (which is correct as the name of the territory). The Frost, Snow, and Ice Barbarians are given their local names of Fruzti, Schnai, and Cruski. For some reason, though, the North Province of the Great Kingdom has been renamed to the cumbersome, ugly, and out-of-place "Aerdiaak", which doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose. I will certainly be altering that name at my own table for what the locals sometimes call it, and most people will call it the North Province when they need to differentiate it from the rest of the Great Kingdom.

In addition to renaming the peninsula on which the Scarlet Brotherhood stands, which as I've said in various places seems like a good thing to me, they've also chosen to rename the organization as the "Scarlet Order", which just doesn't roll off the tongue properly. In general, I'm not doing that, though of course as always it's nice to have alternatives available so that some NPCs might say that instead. Sorry, but ideologically racist, slaveholding supremacists sometimes might also be patriarchal in their terminology, and I see no reason to change that.

When discussing the Pomarj, it seems that the new writers are choosing to de-emphasize the fact that the peninsula is overrun by humanoid tribes and emphasize that they are acting as bandits and brigands. I'm mostly okay with that, though I do think that it's important to pay attention to the history and fallout of the Hateful Wars that led to the situation there. My general impression of the Pomarj at this point is rather like the Paul Verhoeven movie, Flesh + Blood, with bands of armed brigands and bandits, both human and humanoid, swarming the region and fighting each other over booty, slaves, and strongholds.

The writers have included three main lines of conflict that a given game could include: the rise of Iuz the Evil being the most notable, but also an entirely new conflict of the "chromatic" dragons (red, white, blue, green, black) being stirred to conflict by Tiamat from her home in the Nine Hells, where she is currently trapped. I forget which of the original conflicts is the third they've included, but it could be anything, such as the Drow and the Giants, the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Slave Lords, or the decline of the Great Kingdom under demonic influence among others. [Edit several hours later:] I see that the third conflict is Elemental Evil, which to me is already closely tied to Iuz, Zuggtmoy, and the Drow/Giants plot. I think that they would have been much better off treating the Scarlet Brotherhood, Slave Lords, and Wastri as the third conflict. Oh, well, missed opportunities are not unusual for the modern WotC/TSR/Hasbro conglomerate.

Most importantly, from my perspective, the new material adds notes on the cultural differences of different regions of the Flanaess, giving overviews of the way things are done in the West, East, North, and so on. That is what I want from a product like this, as to me the information contained in the Folio and Gold Box editions of The World of Greyhawk is most important and supersedes other sources, but new information helps to continue to flesh out the setting. I don't much care to see non-Oerthian types like "Aasimar" incorporated into the setting, as is done in the case of at least one leader, and would much rather they'd left that information alone. Changing a Viscount to a Viscountess here or there, as is done in Verbobonc, is a reasonable change, but I think that such things can be kept as they are or changed with no real repercussions to the setting so it should have been left up to the DM. This is especially true since the setting is supposedly included as an example of shaping D&D to fit a specific setting.

In the end, it seems like a reasonably worthwhile product even if it does do some things that seem only to make Oerth more like Toril rather than letting it flow with its own character. I'd strongly recommend getting at least a PDF of the Gold Box or Folio editions, or better still both, as a guidestone to the original shape of the setting, allowing the DM to adopt any changes knowingly and mindfully.

The Geist

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

All right, no more apologizing. Sometimes it'll just take me a while between articles here. That's just the way things go sometimes.

Anyway, in the previous entry, I talked about fine tuning your AD&D (or other) game for your specific setting. I thought I might provide a part of an example, since I have it handy, and also it's appropriate to the season. In my setting, I wanted the spirits of the dead to be less Evil. Sometimes, they're your ancestors! They do have a problem with the living, but not one where they feel the need to destroy all living things. So, the Ghost entry in the Monster Manual isn't very helpful, and most of the other undead spirits of the dead weren't what I was looking for either. However, there is the entry on the Kuei in the 1E Oriental Adventures book. OA was, in fact, a large part of shaping my ideas on fine tuning a setting, and its approach to the dead with an unfinished task fit my ideas on the restless dead very well. So, with some rewriting, here is the Geist, a replacement for the Ghost in my setting:

Geist (Lesser Spirit)

FREQUENCY: Rare
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: -4
MOVE: 18”
HIT DICE: 3 to 6
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-6, 1-8, 1-10, or 1-12
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Possession
SPECIAL DEFENSES: See Below
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 10%
INTELLIGENCE: Average to Very
ALIGNMENT: See Below
SIZE: M
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
    Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
LEVEL/XP VALUE:
    3 HD: IV/180 + 3/hp
    4 HD: V/275 + 4/hp
    5 HD: V/405 + 5/hp
    6 HD: V/725 + 6/hp

A geist is a spectral entity, representing the soul of a deceased individual who has taken on a ghostly form. This transformation may result from the person passing away without proper burial rites, leaving behind unfulfilled life goals, or being murdered and not avenged. Visually, the geist retains the appearance it had in life, seemingly tangible but intangible to touch, as it cannot interact physically with the material world. Although they are not affected unduly by sunlight, geists tend to be more active during nighttime hours. Their alignment varies, depending on the nature of the task they must fulfill.

The geist's abilities vary based on its hit dice. These abilities are as follows:

    Hit Dice    Weapon Needed to Hit    Damage    
    3 HD                            +1                           1-6    
    4 HD                            +2                           1-8    
    5 HD                            +3                           1-10    
    6 HD                            +4                           1-12    


Other abilities of the geist include the following:

    • The capacity to shift into an ethereal state at will.
    • The power to take control of a living person, akin to the possession spell, which it can exercise up to three times daily.
    • Immunity to ESP, as well as resistance to charm, enchantment, illusion, and water-based spells.
    • They are impervious to psionic attacks.
    • They have an immunity to standard fire and cold damage, with only half damage taken from their magical counterparts.

In encounters, a geist typically seeks to possess a host. Successful possession results in the geist's form vanishing as it assumes control of the host's body to fulfill its unresolved earthly duties. These tasks might include seeking retribution, honoring a pledge, or performing sacred rituals for its release. A geist can maintain possession for extended periods if required by its mission, as illustrated by tales of geists completing lifelong vows through their hosts. Possession can only be ended through the host's demise, the completion of the geist's task, or through exorcism or a similar spell. Once freed, the host regains their faculties, oblivious to the events that occurred during the possession.

EDIT: It seems I forgot to include the data on the Possess spell. In OA, it's a 5th level Shukenja spell. The relevant factors are that it allows the user to possess, and so completely control, a creature of fewer hit dice, but the creature gets a saving throw vs. magic to resist. The possessed creature will not remember its time under possession. The possessor cannot use any class features of the target. If you prefer, you can substitute the Magic Jar spell, just as the Monster Manual ghost does, adjusting factors accordingly.

Fine-Tuning AD&D 1st Edition for Different Settings

First of all, let me apologize for having been so quiet. It's been a hard year and gaming has taken a secondary priority for me. Hopefully, I can concentrate on it more going forward. Secondly, I do want to get back to the series examining the "endgame" in AD&D, but that will have to wait.

Right now, I want to discuss something that not many people pay attention to, which is how AD&D can be adapted to different settings. If a setting is just a "Dungeons & Dragons" setting, then this isn't really as necessary. There are many similarities between Oerth (World of Greyhawk) and Toril (Forgotten Realms), as well as Mystara (the Known World of the Dungeons & Dragons line), and only a few small differences. Any number of other settings are similar in tone as well. But there are some settings which have a very different feel to them. Krynn (Dragonlance) is not much like the aforementioned settings, nor are Athas (Dark Sun), Aebrynis (Birthright), or, at least in general, the Crystal Spheres of Spelljammer. Looking to other companies' products, the lizardfolk-inhabited continents of Torsh in Judges' Guild's Portals of Torsh are specifically engineered to be like a dinosaur-filled Lost World, while the other worlds of the "Portals" line (Portals of Irontooth and Portals of Twilight) have their own distinct themes, tones, and feels. But enough of examples. We're here to examine what a DM has to do to create a specific tone and feeling for their setting. It's worth noting that games like GURPS are explicitly built around taking these steps, so a lot of these ideas come from there. One of GURPS's worst weaknesses is that it doesn't provide much of a place to start from like AD&D does. Everything has to be built by the Referee from scratch.

First of all, the DM is well-advised to go through and adjust the creatures in the Monster Manual, and perhaps the Fiend Folio, Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore/Manual of the Planes, and Monster Manual II. A great deal of the tone of the setting comes from the sorts of entities that the players' characters might encounter. First of all, ruthlessly eradicate any entry that doesn't fit the setting. If the setting doesn't support having a variety of humanoids, eliminate the ones that don't fit. Perhaps the only humanoids around are Goblins, or maybe the whole line of Goblinoids—Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, and perhaps Kobolds—are present, but not Orcs or Gnolls. Or perhaps Gnolls and Flinds are present but not any of the others. Similarly, evaluate the demihumans—maybe there are Dwarves and Gnomes, and both are called "Elves" by the people of your setting, but there are no Elves as AD&D specifies them. Maybe you have another demihuman lineage in your setting, such as the Uldra found in Dragon magazine issue 119 or the Winged Folk of issue 51. Do you have Giants? Titans? Psionic monsters like Mind Flayers? Significantly, too, you will want to consider the various types of Men that can be found roaming your setting, and particularly the makeup of groups that might be encountered.

Next, once you've culled the creatures that don't fit the setting, find the ones that are different. Perhaps your Ghosts aren't uniformly Evil, and maybe their magical attacks aren't involved with aging. Perhaps you prefer to reskin the undead spirits found in the monster section of Oriental Adventures so that Evil ghosts use the description of the Gaki. What if you want Vampires in your setting to be more like those in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, or the ones in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga for whatever reason. Those will require a rewrite in such cases. You will have to do these things for every entry in the monster catalogs, adding in your new entries and adjusting the old ones.

Once you've gone through that step, it's time to create new random encounter tables. I suggest using the ones in the DMG as a model, at least for the wilderness encounter tables, then adding additional tables specific to various regions of your setting, similar to the ones in the World of Greyhawk "gold box", that act to replace the checks for Patrols found on page 182 of the DMG. As for random castles, that's really up to the DM to include or not, depending on how detailed their maps for the region are. Personally, I prefer to have more control over settled defenses like that, but am perfectly fine with random encounters dictating the movements of nomadic or other rootless groups like Pilgrims. This may be the most work-intensive step involved, but it's an important one as it will dictate the frequency of various encounters. If your setting has more or fewer Fae-type creatures in an area, for example, then the players' characters should encounter them more or less often in any given encounter. A setting where most of the dangerous encounters are with bears and moose will have a different feel to one where Ankhegs suddenly burst out of the ground and Griffons regularly stoop on the party's horses.

Once the creatures of the setting are tuned to fit, it's time to work through the options the players will have. Perhaps your setting has only two types of player characters: Fighting Men and Magic Users, or maybe there will be a third sort of character who specializes in non-combative activities similar to Thieves. Or maybe there's a wide variety of character classes in your setting, such as versions of the Warlock, Sorcerer, or the Sha'ir from the Al-Qadim setting of the AD&D 2nd Edition supplements (as an aside, Jeremy Reaban has a bunch of character classes written up for AD&D, OD&D, and the D&D line over at DriveThru, all priced as "Pay What You Want" at this time, including a couple of reworkings of the Thief intended to fix problems he perceives in the class; if you hunt through the "character class" label on this blog you'll find a few others that I've designed or adapted from other sources as well, though also some dead ends of thinking toward an OSR-style SF game and some general discussion of the idea). At this point, you'll also want to be thinking about whether or not there are Psionic powers in your game, though you could also have thought of that while curating your creature lists. Other powers, such as the powers of the "Dreamer" semiclass found in Dragon magazine issue 132 or the Bloodlines found in the Birthright setting, might also come up for consideration. Perhaps you want to adapt the Kai monks and the Magnakai from the Lone Wolf series of solo adventure books. Whether you use Nonweapon Proficiencies found in Oriental Adventures and the Survival Guides or Secondary Skills from the DMG page 12, or perhaps a different system such as the one described in Savage Swords of Athanor (more discussion and resources can be found at this abandoned blog) will also have an effect on how your setting will feel, though a more subtle one perhaps.

Next, consider changing elements like Alignment. Perhaps you want to replace a generic "Law" with specific regions, governments, or individuals to whom loyalty might be owed. Maybe your definition of "Evil" and "Good" is different than the default assumption of treating Life as sacred or not. This can also have direct impact on the setting, such as a different cosmological structure than the "Wheel" cosmology laid out in the PH, DDG, and Manual of the Planes. Maybe you'll simply redefine "Evil" and "Good", for the purposes of spells, as whether or not something comes from the Invisible World or from the Perceptible World. Maybe your cosmological structure is derived from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, or from the Aeonology of Simonianism, or even something more abstruse like the Books of Jeu and the Pistis Sophia, among many other similar schemes found around the world. Does your setting have Nine Worlds like those found in the branches of Yggdrasil? Maybe mysterious Otherworlds are found across the sea, like the magical islands found in Irish literature.

Another area to consider is the available technologies. If your setting is Bronze Age, it will have different types of armor than a High Medieval setting, while some settings will have gunpowder and others will have airships floating along trade routes across the world. At this point you should also decide on your system or systems of coinage, whether you want to redefine the weights of various weapons to be more accurate to history, and perhaps if you want to adjust the various other attributes applied to weapons such as damage, weapon vs. armor type adjustments, and so on, or indeed whether to eliminate some of the more fiddly bits.

Anyway, this should give you some suggestions of places to look to make your setting different than all of the others to be found out there.

Lucky 13!

Today, we celebrate 13 years of this blog. That seems impossible, since I only just started this blog yesterday, I'm sure. Well, no, checking my archive shows that I was working without a gaming group, something that is again the case due to personal conflicts with a couple of the members of my last regular group (and I volunteered to step aside to prevent any dramatics from happening), though I have also played in a couple of short-term games since leaving that group.

Since 2011, I have honed my gaming focus somewhat, moving away from my "gaming ADD" habits and narrowing my gaming to a few games that really do interest me. I'm old enough that I've tried most everything and now am fairly sure of what I like and don't like so I don't need to search around anymore. It's still a fairly broad range, from D&D-style games to Traveller-style, RuneQuest-style, and GURPS. There are also a few other specific games that remain of interest, such as Fantasy Wargaming, and Barbarians of Lemuria. I'm pretty willing to play any of those, as well as a few others like Pendragon, Lace & Steel, Chivalry & Sorcery, CORPS, EABA, Cyberpunk (Red or 2020, heck even 2013), and some others, but I'd probably only run AD&D (1st edition with some house rules), Swords & Wizardry: White Box (with extensive house rules), White Star (Galaxy Edition, probably), The Hero's Journey (2nd edition), MegaTraveller, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, GURPS (4th edition), or Fantasy Wargaming anymore, and I've got AD&D, Fantasy Wargaming, or GURPS games more or less ready to go. Maybe I'd run Majus, Stars Without Number, or Worlds Without Number if someone pushed the issue, certainly I'd play them. And that's where I stand with gaming today.

[Obscure Games] DragonQuest

There were quite a few attempts to break the near-monopoly that D&D held on the early fantasy adventure gaming industry. A couple have withstood the ravages of time and have editions even to the present—here I'm mostly thinking of RuneQuest, The Fantasy Trip, and Tunnels & Trolls, but there are probably a few others. Many more lie by the wayside, though, and deserve to be examined for what they can tell us about their design and the interests of their designers.

DragonQuest was an entry from wargaming company SPI. Ironically, TSR would eventually buy out SPI and spend a short time publishing both games in competition with each other. Obviously, DragonQuest never presented a real challenge to the dominance of D&D, but it's a strange circumstance that it should have shared catalog space with the 800-lb. gorilla, however briefly.

The most immediately apparent difference in style between D&D and DQ lies in an artifact of SPI's design philosophy. In their search for exacting specificity in rules presentation, developed so that wargamers would always be operating from the same interpretation of rules with as little ambiguity as possible, SPI had adopted the "case system" for laying out the rules of the game. In this system, a main rule category would get a high-level denomination, say "1.". Then, specific subcategories would get their own denominative level, such as "1.1", and those could be broken into further levels, as for instance "1.1.A.". DQ mostly stuck to just two levels, with a few exceptions, with 87 numbered rules cases in the basic game book, most divided into multiple sub-cases. The book is also divided into 9 broader sections numbered with Roman numerals, but those did not break up the basic run of 87 numbered rules. Even the sample adventure, "The Camp of Alla-Akabar", uses this structure, with 17 numbered sections divided among 9 sections designated with Roman numerals. This layout philosophy makes the game easier for some people to learn, while obscuring the game for others. In the end, I'd say that it tends to make the game seem more closed to outsiders.

Characters in DQ are designed by a point system, but the number of points is random. A roll on a table gives between 81 and 99 attribute points to the player to divide among the 9 attributes, with results of lower amounts of total points giving higher maximum attribute ratings. So, a result of 81 points would allow the character to have attributes rated as high as 25, while the other extreme of 99 total attribute points would limit any one attribute to being no higher than 19. The average result is 90 attribute points, with no attribute higher than 22. Players then select the sex/gender of the character, with female characters losing 2 points of Physical Strength, but gaining them back as a point each to Dexterity and Fatigue ratings. A quick dice roll determines the handedness of the character, then the player gets to attempt to make the character a nonhuman if desired. A character can always be a human, so if that is selected, it is the case and things move on. Otherwise, the player can attempt up to three different "race" types with a percentage chance of successfully having a character of that type. The options are: dwarf, elf, giant, halfling, orc, or shape-changer. The percent chances for the nonhumans are fairly low, so there is a 30% chance of being an elf if that is desired, 6% of being a giant, down to 4% for being a shape-changer. Then, if the character is successfully a nonhuman type, they receive a multiplier for experience points, changing the number needed to buy various skills. Elves require 1.2 times as many XP, while orcs are allowed to buy skills for only 0.9 times the normal cost. Giants and shape-changers need to make another roll to find out which exact sort they are: giants can be of fire, frost, cloud, or stone varieties, while shape-changers can change form into a wolf, tiger, bear, or boar. I imagine that some GMs are likely to just allow players to select their character's "race" and leave the experience point multiple as the balancing factor that limits the desire to play a character of that type. After that, determine the character's astrological aspect, their family status, and starting money and experience. Like the attributes, more money means less starting experience and vice versa. After spending those and choosing elements like name and so on, the character is ready to play.

Combat is nominally a board game, with turns of 5 game seconds (called "pulses") and hexes of 5 scale feet regulating movement and position. It is derived from a melee skirmish game SPI had published called Arena of Death. The whole combat system takes up a bit less than 17 pages and has no surprises. It's well-designed, but brings no real innovations to the table.

Magic is a major portion of the game, and the designers even forgot to give any benefit to characters for choosing not to learn magic. This is remedied by a suggestion in Dragon magazine issue 86 in an article titled "The Warrior Alternative". As written, a player selects one of 12 magical "colleges" for their character to specialize in, or a couple more that were presented in an unpublished product that can be found out in the wild these days, which determines which spells the character can learn. Spells are cast by spending fatigue points and taking a minute outside of combat or one pulse when in combat. Why the difference in times? Because! You will get no further explanation. One college, the College of Greater Summonings, allows the character to call up a variety of demons. The demons are given names taken from the various spirit catalogues of the medieval and early modern periods, such as Gaap, Vassago, or Balam, though I don't think they owe much more than that to those real-world magical books.

As noted previously, skills are acquired by spending experience points, and can be raised in level by spending more experience points. The list in the rules includes: Spoken and Written Languages, Alchemist, Assassin, Astrologer, Beast Master, Courtesan, Healer, Mechanician, Merchant, Military Scientist, Navigator, Ranger, Spy/Thief, and Troubador in addition to various weapon skills, magic skills, Stealth, and Horsemanship. The more expansive a skill is, the more it will cost at each Rank. Skills are rated, generally, from Rank 0 to Rank 10 and can cost anywhere from 25 (e.g. Dagger) to 1000 (e.g. Healer) experience points for Rank 0. In addition, experience points can be spent to increase attribute ratings. Ranks are used to figure out the percent chance of success for an action using the skill.

In general, it's a solid game. The main complaint I'd have is that I can't see the point. It doesn't do anything particularly innovative, other than providing a very structured presentation of the rules. That said, its presentation can be a very useful matter, and certain elements like spending fatigue for spells cast and the tactical game are certainly solid ones. But it doesn't seem to have much that isn't already found elsewhere, such as The Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, or even Chivalry & Sorcery. Plus, of course, there were numerous later games that did everything it did but better, such as GURPS, Fantasy Wargaming, or such modern games as Worlds Without Number. Still, it's not bad, just insufficiently ambitious, both for its own era and for posterity.

[The Domain Game] part 4: Raising Armies

This is the 1 2 3 4th part of this ongoing series, and it is time to discuss the wargamer's favorite part: how to get an army to send against your foes.

In AD&D, the subject is treated in the simplest way possible—just hire mercenaries, mostly. There are a few other options available, such as loyal followers or recruiting tribal bands, demihumans, or humanoids, but none are as generally useful as the mercenary option, and tribal bands and even demihumans are only treated cursorily. But the thing is, in history there were several options available, some used in some cultures and not others, and others that were almost universal. For this post, it's time to get out "Armies from the Ground Up", found in Dragon magazine issue 125.

The most universal method of raising an army is to put out a call to the people to send their sons out to die fight for their noble leader. In some places, this might be an explicitly guaranteed right for the nobility to call upon, while in others it might be a cultural prerogative, and in still others the noble sovereign might have to convince the people that it is in their best interest to bleed serve on the battlefield. "Armies from the Ground Up" chooses to call these the "fyrd", choosing a term used by the Anglo-Saxons before the Norman Conquest. The fyrd consists of about 30% of the population, or every male of reasonably sound body aged from 18 to 45 years old. The article provides the option to expand this fighting force by increasing the age of the fyrd by one or more years down and three or more up, so from 17-48, 16-51, and so on all the way to the maximum of every reasonably sound male from ages 13 to 60. Each unit of increase bumps up the potential size of the fyrd by 2% of the total population, so a maximum of 40%. The article makes the categories rigid, so that for every one year down the high end must be increased by three years and the total size of the fyrd increases by 2% for each such increase, but the DM might consider being more flexible and increase it by 1% for each year down and perhaps ⅓% for each year up. Or something like that, it's just an idea running through my head as I type this. The DM might also work out some factor to cover conscripting female population as well, but there should also be some kind of penalty for all of these, such as reducing the overall effectiveness of the fyrd when recruiting younger and older population, reducing the overall happiness of the population and showing that by reduced morale or loyalty numbers for the population, and so on, especially if the battle for which these citizens are being called up doesn't go well. Anyway, this is the ideal, potential size of the peasant army. In the event only a certain percentage will show up in time to march out, which "Armies from the Ground Up" figures by rolling 5d6, adding 55, modifying the number by a few factors such as tax rate, the leader's general domestic and foreign policies, and such and then using that as a percentage of the potential army. So, the base size of the army will be 72% or 73% of the potential army on average and ranging from 60% to 85%, with various modifiers bringing the final total from 45% to 100%. Keep in mind, though, that by default these are untrained peasants carrying what amount to slightly modified farming tools. It might be possible for the players to issue their peasants more dedicated weapons to use in these times, but that can get pretty expensive, especially if they are given armor.

Another sort of non-mercenary soldier discussed in the article that might be available is the militia. This is a group of people given time off from working in the fields or whatever and provided with basic military training and equipment. As before, the "Armies from the Ground Up" article provides some details on setting up a militia and the effects of calling them up for military service.

The third sort of troops that might be available in a domain are what the article we're referencing calls the yeomanry. This starts to verge on feudalism, so it might be limited to regions using that sort of organizational model. Yeomanry are relatively wealthy population who have been given special privileges such as lower taxes, the right to own and carry weapons and armor, and so on in exchange for the responsibility of providing their own weapons, armor, and training and responding to calls to arms. They also might bring along a few companions such as their sons (or daughters), apprentices, and similar members of their extended household, providing those with equipment and training as well. This is slightly risky, as it creates a portion of the population who are capable of rising against the lord if things go poorly, but they can usually be pacified by providing many nice benefits and entertainments. That's mostly up to the DM to work out based on how the players choose to approach the matter, and is one of those places where Charisma again proves that it had better not be the dump stat. It's also worth noting that citizen-soldiers of this sort are how Athens and other Greek city-states organized their armies.

There are other possibilities, not laid out in the "Armies from the Ground Up" article, such as the Roman practice of conscription, but for the most part these comprise the majority of troops that aren't mercenaries or similar professional armies. It might be worth a DM's time to work out how many population would want to join a volunteer standing army that is treated like mercenaries in terms of how much they are paid, or for simplicity just stick to the methods of hiring mercenaries that AD&D already provides. Certainly, the article from Dragon magazine issue 109, "Fighters for a Price", can expand the mercenary tables in ways that the DM will find very helpful.

Since mercenaries can also include marines, or troops accustomed to sailing and fighting on or from ships, it's also worth it for the DM to familiarize themself with the ship rules and perhaps consider using expanded rules such as the article "High Seas" and possibly its follow-up "The Oriental Sea" found in Dragon magazine issues 116 and 130, respectively. One advantage to those articles is that they include specifications for a ship's cargo capacity, something that the DMG unfortunately neglected, but which is important for both using ships for mercantile trade and determining the number of troops they can transport.

Anyway, this is as far as I planned out in advance for this series, though I hope to continue it anyway. I will try to think of subjects that need to be covered, or you can suggest things you would like some treatment of. I also want to work out a more systematized procedure for handling domain level events and so forth, but I'm still thinking about the details of that (for the most part, it would just be a formalized description of what's already in these articles). I might also discuss the implications of the entries in the Monster Manual and similar sources for settings, along with suggestions on how to vary them to more accurately reflect a particular setting. Would a post that provided an overview of some of the other articles I referenced ("In a Cavern, In a Canyon", "A Capital Idea", "The Thief Who Came in from the Cold", or whatever) be worthwhile, or is it just easier to point you to those articles (and do you need to be told where to look on the internet to find PDF copies of old Dragon magazines)? Do you want a similar summary for the Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief domain-game articles mentioned? Let me know!

[The Domain Game] part 3: Keeping Player Interest

"The Anointing of Solomon" by Cornelis De Vos

Now the players have a domain and they are being kept busy by the random encounters that lead to classic adventures like "find the lycanthrope", "protect the farms", and others that monsters and the like exist to enable. But that isn't everything that can happen.

 Oriental Adventures had its share of problems, from unbalanced character classes (an issue it shared with Unearthed Arcana, but that's a matter for another time) to a vaguely racist orientalism (though that was probably less of an issue than some make it out to be, it was and is still an issue). But, those matters aside, it presented a couple of truly great elements and one of those was the tables for yearly and monthly events. (Another was the fairy-tale atmosphere that it tended to bring to play, including some truly innovative creatures like the Ikiryo. Someday, I might like to completely redesign the fairy creatures from the Monster Manual such as the brownie, leprechaun, sprite, pixie, and so on in the same sort of style. It would be a big undertaking, though, and they do already have some of that going on, so I dunno.)

The basic concept was that the DM would roll on the yearly event table at the start of each year to sort of establish a tone for the coming 12 months. This would result in any of a number of major events, from the death or assassination of a lord in the region to the appearance of a new religious movement all the way to a rebellion or war. The specific time of year would be fixed by a roll of a d12 to figure out the month, and perhaps a d30 to figure out the exact day of the month if relevant. Then, depending on the exact type of yearly event, there would be monthly rolls on a set of monthly event tables. These would be generally related to the tone set by the yearly event, so that in a year with a natural disaster as the dominating event, the players are more likely to see hauntings, bandits, or minor natural disasters, while in a year of assassination, incursion, political plots, rebellion, or war there are likely to be incursions, battles, and troop movements. And then there's a column for "other" events, which are any event other than the sort listed in those first two columns, and tend to lead to more normal sorts of events like births, marriages, injustices, or the appearance of a Maiden of Virtue who sets off a competition among the unmarried lords to woo her for her virtuous character, the prestige marriage to such a person brings, and such. Those things are tuned specifically to the sort of cultural model implied by even the title of that book, but they should prove inspirational for setting up similar tables for your own setting.

We also have help in this regard, because the article from Dragon magazine issue 125 that we have already referenced a couple of times, "Meanwhile, Back at the Fief…", brings a more generic-fantasy oriented table of annual events. In this method, the DM will roll for 1d4-2 (to a minimum of zero, of course) events for the upcoming year, placing them by rolls of d12 and d30 as before. The article was short, though, and had no room to present monthly events in the same manner, but it shouldn't be hard to come up with a set of tables for those for your own setting, or to expand the fairly brief tables in the Dragon magazine article. It's worth noting, too, that the events related to natural disasters in the article rely on the suggestions in an earlier article, "The Role of Nature", found in issue 108, but due to some editing or layout errors they are somewhat confusingly described in "Meanwhile…" so it is probably best to have a copy of the earlier article available as well.

In addition, in Dragon magazine issue 145, in an article titled "Holding Down the Fort", there is a table for weekly event checks for a castle or other stronghold, with a 50/50 chance each week of rolling on the table presented. This gives a mix of good, bad, and ambiguous events such as rotten or excellent food stores, magical or non-magical duels, the appearance or leaving of various figures, and so on. These might be just minor color, or they might be the start of an adventure of their own. The DM might roll a d7, or d8 re-rolling 8s, to determine which day of the week the event occurs on.

Finally, there is the matter of DM-incited adventures. This includes, but is far from limited to, the sorts of intrigues that occur around the neighboring lords maneuvering for advantage and to take over the resources available to the players, the appearance of heroic or legendary figures with their own agendas, the really large sorts of incursions such as those inspired by the Mongol invasions of Europe in the 13th century or European crusaders invading the Middle East, and so on. That is, the sorts of things that are not really applicable to random event tables for generating them, the sorts of things that mark turning points in history or that are so omnipresent and tied to the personalities of non-player characters that they need to be specifically guided by the DM's discretion. Further, this category can include all sorts of "side quests", as it were, small-scale adventures unrelated to the larger forces in motion in your setting. There are plenty of examples to be found in sources like Dungeon magazine (though as Bryce points out repeatedly, many of those are really terrible design). I'd also recommend Pendragon for many useful examples in this regard.

Updating my thinking on the last entry, I wanted to point out that there are disadvantages to underground lairs of the sort that Rogahn and Zelligar built. In addition to the enormous expense such a massive excavation requires, a big one is that while a castle serves as a present and visual reminder to the people that someone is looking out for their safety, that does not apply nearly as much to a hole in a cliff side. It seems that the doughty adventurers who set up Quasqueton were going to fix this by building a tower to mark their territory, but they never completed it. Perhaps your players might, should they claim the place for themselves. They should certainly keep that issue in mind if they instead excavate an underground lair of their own design.

[The Domain Game] part 2: Setting Up a Domain

Reconstruction of an early stage of Kidwelly Castle

 Now that you've convinced your players that having a base of operations is a good idea, they have to actually get one. While there are certain benefits that accrue to characters of a certain level upon acquiring such a base, it is not necessary that they are at that level before they can try. They can simply buy a building, of course, or pay to have one built, but other options exist. They might take over an existing castle or fort by replacing its current owners through proper application of force, which was mentioned in the comments to the previous post in this series. This is probably the most attractive option, especially if the players want to have an unusual and difficult to construct base of operations such as Quasqueton, the underground fortress built and then abandoned for unknown reasons by Rogahn the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown, presented in B1 In Search of the Unknown. But players of a certain bent—I am certainly of this mind—will want to create their castle or whatever entirely from scratch. It's a similar sort of joy to that of playing a tower defense game, watching the defenses you designed operate to repel attackers, as well as being much like designing imaginary home floor plans. You can put in a library of the sort you would like to see, secret passages, and other objects of your home-owning fantasies.

Either way, the base of operations is going to cost the players money, and getting them to spend money is always a good thing. See page 25 of the DMG for the cost of maintenance, but the upshot is that it will cost 1% of the cost of the stronghold each month to keep it from starting to decay. There's no exact method listed for adjudicating what happens if that amount isn't paid, but any DM/GM is perfectly capable of introducing leaking roofs, cracks in the walls, and other home maintenance inconveniences based on their assessment of how much the players are underpaying. But how much did the place cost, since you need to know that to assess the maintenance cost? It's really a simple matter to just add up the elements, as listed in the DMG, again, this time on pages 106-108. It's perhaps a little more effort to figure out how many person-days of mining it took for excavated strongholds like Quasqueton in order to price how much the tunnels cost, but the information is there to do it. As an aside, if you can get them to do it, stone giants make the best miners, but dwarfs are not far behind and are much more hireable for the purpose.

While this is fine for the purposes of having a place to stash their stuff, players at lower levels will lack an important legal right: the right to tax the population. This only comes, for Fighters and Clerics, at 9th level, or 12th level for Magic-Users. Thieves don't worry about legalities, of course, but nobody takes a Thief seriously as head of a Thieves' Guild until they reach 10th level. This makes getting that maintenance cost much easier, though of course lower level characters can always go off adventuring to find treasure to pay for their home bases.

There are some other options, such as setting up a business (Dragon magazine issue 113 "A Capital Idea") or a mine (Dragon magazine issue 152 "In a Cavern, in a Canyon…"), or finding a similar business opportunity. Thieves can always set up a protection racket, run numbers, traffic in illegal items, or whatever, as long as they have the blessing of the local Thieves' Guild and pay their dues. Yay, sandbox play!

In any case, the players will be acquiring money and spending it. This is part of the reason that I usually suggest that the DM award XP for money spent (on most things; training is an example of a cost where I'd not award XP for the monetary outlay) rather than money acquired, and to go ahead and give players XP regardless of the source of the money. This encourages the players to, potentially at least, do more than just rob tombs all day erryday, and leads to more social roleplaying than murderhoboing.

Now, when they do get to the point of being able to legally tax their citizenry, that can end up being potentially very lucrative. A Fighter, in the Players Handbook, is able to get 7 silver pieces per month per inhabitant, on average. The article "Armies from the Ground Up" in Dragon magazine issue 125 offers guidelines on allowing the ruler to vary this rate from 5 silver pieces to 9 silver pieces, with rewards and consequences for the variations. If that particular system doesn't appeal to you, there's a similar but different system for setting different tax rates in "Meanwhile, Back at the Fief…", found in the same issue. But at the basic rate, with a modest population of only 10,000 scattered across the fairly large domain that AD&D assumes (for Fighters, a region ranging from 40 to 100 miles across, which is bigger than Luxembourg or Rhode Island; a 40 mile diameter circle is over 1250 square miles, compared to the roughly 1000 square miles of each of those two examples), gives 70,000 silver pieces per month. That is 3500 gold pieces per month, kids, or 42,000 gold pieces per year. It may take some time to build up to that level of population, of course, if the new domain is being carved out of the howling wilderness, but an active campaign of inviting settlers and accepting the wandering bands that show up will have the population getting up there.

The suggestion in the DMG (pages 93-94) is to start with campaign hexes of 30 miles across, divide them up into 1 mile hexes, then divide those up into hexes of around 200 yards across in the direct region of the place the players intend to build their fortress. These hex sheets, Trevor's Hex Grids, will come in handy for these suggestions, including a large hex divided into 30 hexes across, as well as a hex divided into 10 hexes across (a 1 mile hex divided into 10 across will have 176-yard smaller hexes, close enough to the DMG recommendation of ~200 yards). There's also a large hex divided into 24 across, in case you prefer a 24-mile campaign hex, or for that matter one that is 12 miles across such as I've seen used in one case for a hex map of North America. The players will then spend some time exploring and clearing these hexes of monstrous denizens, using the normal wilderness adventuring rules, to make them safe for the settlers to come. After clearing them, the players should set up patrols of mercenary or loyal soldiers to keep them cleared of intruders. At this time, the encounter checks are modified so that the whole domain experiences one check per day to see if some encounter has appeared on the perimeter, and another check per week to see if a monster or group has shown up in the interior of the domain.

If those encounters are with friendly types, such as "men", "elves", or the like, it is possible that they will settle down and join the growing population of the domain. If a monster or other hostile, then the players will need to deal with them as appropriate. A lycanthrope, for example, might require figuring out who, exactly, is transforming and ravaging the people, while an ankheg needs to be tracked down and destroyed before it tears up too many farms. But does the lycanthrope really need to be destroyed? Maybe it can be recruited to aid the players' growing army, if they're willing to take on that risk. A wandering tribe of orcs or goblinoids might be defeated in open battle and run out of the domain, or they might be induced to settle down and ally themselves with the players. How will they react to being forced to pay taxes or to being called up for military service (see pages 105-106 of the DMG for one set of guidelines)? How will their proximity affect the human population of the region? And so on. So-called "wandering" encounters should be seen by the DM/GM as scenario, or at least scenario idea, generators. These adventuring possibilities, alone, will keep the players busy, but there's still more that can happen.

[The Domain Game] part 1: Getting Players to Buy Into the Idea

 

Amberley Castle and environs, from here

 

 

I want to set down an outline of how to play the Domain Game, which is to say that stage of the game in which the players have taken their characters and started to advance them into movers and shakers among your setting's powerful members. Rubbing shoulders with kings and princes, or at least barons and counts, they move beyond simply robbing tombs and ruins and into intrigue and similar opportunities to roleplay without constantly fighting. The characters have acquired enough wealth and material goods that it is physically difficult for them to move around, but also difficult to keep enterprising thieves from finding and taking it for themselves. I also want to discuss how to encourage the players to move into this phase of play instead of just becoming more efficient murderhobos. Now, that's a lot to take on, and frankly I haven't had any opportunity to test these ideas out in actual play so a lot of it will just be theoretical musings about a framework for this sort of campaign play, but it has to start somewhere, so I'll start it there. Obviously, there are some DMs/GMs who aren't interested in this sort of play, and so this series of posts won't be for them.

I want to minimize looking to outside sources or complicated procedures, too, so a lot of this will just be summarizing the Domain Game as it was presented in the Dungeon Masters Guide from 1979 and related materials. For this approach, the DM (or GM/Referee adapting these ideas to another game) will need at least the following: the aforementioned DMG, the Players Handbook, the Monster Manual, Oriental Adventures, and Dragon Magazine issues 108 ("The Role of Nature") and 125 ("Meanwhile, Back at the Fief…", "Armies from the Ground Up"). Optionally, any of the following can expand on the experience, depending on your setting and the characters looking to start playing the game of power: the Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II, other monster collections, and Dragon Magazine issues 80 ("Who Lives in that Castle?"), 94 ("An Army Travels on its Stomach"), 99 ("Tables and Tables of Troops"), 109 ("Fighters for a Price"), 113 ("A Capital Idea"), 115 ("Lords of the Night", "A Den of Thieves"), 123 ("Mystic College"), 127 ("Fighting for Keeps"), 142 ("Made-to-Order Clerical Orders"), 145 ("Holding Down the Fort", other articles in this issue may also prove useful), 152 ("In a Cavern, in a Canyon…"), 165 ("Anchors & Arrows"), 184 ("Courts & Courtiers"), and 231 ("The Thief Who Came in from the Cold", "The Spying Game") may all be of interest for the articles listed in relation to the Domain Game. I especially recommend issue 115 to expand on Thieves' Guilds, 123 to give Magic-Users more options than just a tower, 142 to flesh out a Cleric's holdings a bit, and 231 to give a look at Thieves as an intelligence service instead of or in addition to organized crime.

As an aside, I'd suggest giving XP to characters for spending money rather than acquiring it. Perhaps also use the special class bonuses to XP found in the 2E DMG for inspiration. The relevance of this will be more apparent in a later entry.

All of that preliminary finished, let's get into the meat of the matter. First off, we want to encourage our players to build a castle or whatever, to set up a domain and a home base. The first step toward that is going to be to get rid of some of the things we have done in the past as a convenience for us as the DM, or at least make them more inconvenient for the players' characters. Most importantly, there shouldn't be any banks, or rather they shouldn't be invisible. Characters collect money, but carting it around shouldn't be easy (it is 10 or 50 or however many coins per pound), and leaving it somewhere should make it vulnerable. Obviously, they can't just leave it in the inn, especially if the amount is considerably more than the innkeeper normally makes in a year. If there is some kind of a bank vault, it should be expensive in order to cover the costs of protecting large amounts of coin. If the bank charged 1% of the value each month, that's probably pretty cheap, actually. Going up to 4% per month (48% per year!) is maybe too expensive. I imagine that the average relatively secure bank vault would charge around 2% per month, 24% per year, in advance. Banks that charge a discounted rate would see correspondingly more heists, as they can't afford proper security, and there's no such thing as financial insurance. And if the client left the money there without paying for storing it, it can be legally confiscated by the bank.

Okay, now either the players are spending money like there's no tomorrow or they're existing in a state where their money, beyond what they can carry, is at risk. Time to start hinting that maybe they should consider finding a safe place to store it. Like a house with a locked treasury room and guards or something. A big stone house with walls and gates to keep out unwanted thieves. And wouldn't a home base be nice to operate from? It's a good place to rest up and heal from injuries, research new spells, and all that jazz. After all, healing up in that inn is nice, but remember when that assassin broke in so easily and it was all your characters could do to defeat her? Hey, there's a small mansion in the rich quarter of the city up for sale and it's in your price range. Those mercenaries are still hanging around the tavern looking for work, too, and you do need someone to guard the place.

And so on. The point is that players play murderhobos because being a murderhobo is easy. Make it hard and they'll start acting like they live in the setting, not like they're just passing through.

There was a small rule in City-State of the Invincible Overlord that I think got overlooked all too often. It seems that there was a monopoly, in the City-State, on moneychanging. This meant that those who weren't moneychangers weren't allowed to make change between types of coin. If something cost a silver piece and all your character had was gold, you either went without or handed over the whole gold piece for a measly silver piece worth of whatever. Trying to get change would make the merchant angry that the character would try to get them to break the law like that. Things work a lot more smoothly when you're getting supplies for a castle than when you're having to deal with nuisance laws like that which make life a bit more expensive. Remember, the game is rigged against the small guy because the small guy is small. You don't become big until you have an army. And an army needs a castle to stay at. It might be cheap to sleep in the park, but the park is where sneak thieves pilfer everything that isn't nailed down. Let the Magic-User contemplate that when looking at their spellbook, and consider where they'd be without it.

The solution, your players should come to understand, is to have a base of operations. And a base of operations, they should be taught, requires money to maintain, hired personnel to keep running, and at a certain point soldiers. Mercenary soldiers. Adventurers should be spending money, and they should be needing a solid infrastructure to keep that money safe until they need to spend it, and then they should need to spend it to keep it safe, and so on. But it becomes a little bit cheaper per gold piece to protect it the more gold pieces they have.

Then they'll need a steady source of money to maintain their castles, and that's to be found in the domain. 7 silver pieces per month per person in the domain, on average, the Players Handbook tells us, at least for Fighters. As we will see, that's just the beginning and we can make things more interesting by giving players decisions to make, but for now we've laid out a plan of attack to get the players interested in the idea. Just keep pushing it, though we don't have to be overbearing about it. "Wouldn't it have been nice to have a place to put your money that those thieves couldn't have just climbed into the inn window while you were off at the dungeon? What plan do you want to make for this money you've just carted out from the eighth level of Castle Braufenlurg? You're going to bury it by the third tree in the Hidden Meadow? How are you going to be sure nobody sees you digging?" Just keep pointing out the consequences of their intentions.

Eventually, they'll see that the best plan for a rich person in a world where law is the prerogative of the powerful is to have the power to hold onto their money, and the best source of power is an army. Even if you eventually have to send an army after them to teach them that lesson. A 10th level Fighter might be able to kill as many as 10 Normal Men in a melee round, but when there are 600 or 1000 Normal Men knocking on the door, that's still just a drop in the bucket. Having some Normal Men of their own to guard their flanks and rear might come in handy. How do they get 600 or 1000 Normal Men to even up the odds? That's something we'll get to in an upcoming post.

Mass Combat in AD&D 1st Edition, a New Approach

I've been thinking about "domain-level" play in AD&D 1E lately, going through old Dragon magazine articles on the topic and picking out the best ideas. For those interested in that broader topic, I'd suggest that two issues are especially relevant to that matter: 125 and 108 (the latter because one of the articles in 125 made use of ideas found in "The Role of Nature", an article in that issue, but poor editing scrambled them somewhat). Issue 125 has articles titled "Meanwhile, Back at the Fief" and "Armies from the Ground Up" that cover some of the most important concepts relevant to domain-level play. However, that digression is not what this article is about. Mostly, this article is me thinking through an idea and playing with it to see if it's useful.

Here, I want to consider how to use AD&D to play out mass combat without going far outside of the rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide. I realize that sounds like a tall order, but bear with me.

A couple of attempts have been made over the years to make mass combat wargames for AD&D, most notably Battlesystem. In its first edition, the author created a somewhat abstracted method of discovering how many general "hit dice" of damage a unit, stand, or figure dealt in a combat turn. The second edition abstracted things further, reducing a set of attacks to a roll on one of the various polyhedral dice. Those are very convenient, but aren't mathematically stringent. This is, of course, not really a concern for most players and DMs, but other options do exist.

Recently, Daniel Collins of Delta's D&D Hotspot used large-scale simulations of the sort only possible in the modern computing era to develop a set of miniatures rules called Original Edition Delta: Book of War. This is mathematically stringent (Collins is a college lecturer in mathematics in real life), but is mostly set up for Delta's particular house rules of original D&D. On the other hand, it bears some resemblance to 2nd edition Battlesystem, for those who like that game, and those house rules are sufficiently similar to other D&D editions as to be close enough for most purposes.

That said, I wanted to just find a way to get through all of the hundreds of rolls required in a large-scale AD&D combat as quickly as possible. That led me to an article published in Dragon magazine issue 113 titled "One Roll, to Go". This article used statistics and probability to reduce 5, 10, or 20 rolls of a d20 to one simple percent roll, with the roll on the d% cross-referenced to a binomial table to determine how many of the rolls would be successful. Using this table with an average result for damage (count each d4 of damage as 2.5 points, each d6 as 3.5, each d8 as 4.5, and so on), as well as for hit points for each member of a unit (a "normal man", with 1d6+1 hit points but a minimum of 4, the normal amount for a soldier would have 5.5 hit points, for example, since that is equivalent to 1d4+3). The main issue is working out how many soldiers can attack at any given time, and spreading those attacks out across a unit randomly as per the DMG.

My suggestion would be to use the figure scales from Battlesystem 1st edition, where a unit with so many hit dice per individual is at a 10:1 scale, with more hit dice being at 5:1, 2:1, or individual figures depending on the exact hit dice amount. The front rank of such figures would be the ones able to attack, with ranks further back being able to bring longer weapons to bear. So, a 10:1 figure might bring 5 individuals to bear in melee, or all 10 if the second rank is equipped with spears (for example), a 5:1 would bring 2.5 (I'd allow it to round up, but just counting 5 individuals for every two figures is easy enough, too), while 2:1 and 1:1 figures would allow all of the individuals so represented to attack normally when in contact with the enemy.

There's a lot still to work out, of course. As melees go on, the ranks of each unit start to interpenetrate in melee circumstances, for example, maybe bringing one more rank to bear each melee round until reaching the back rank of one or the other unit. But beyond that, morale rules already exist in AD&D, so that is handled. I'm well aware that this system would not be as quick-playing as those more abstracted and streamlined systems, but my intention isn't to make it into that, only to offer an option for just using AD&D with minimal additions. I also fully realize that most people won't want to use this method. But it's something to consider, anyway (chances are, I'd just use Battlesystem, 1st edition, myself; it doesn't beef up individual heroes in the same way 2nd edition does, and the results are close enough to AD&D results to keep me happy).

Perhaps this method is best used for mid-scale battles, where there are maybe 50-100 goblins fighting the PCs and their retinue of henchmen and maybe a couple dozen mercenary soldiers or whatever. That is, battles that are barely worth breaking out Battlesystem or Book of War for. After all, 5 or 10 figures of goblins on the battlefield might not be worth the time, but on the other hand that many are very unwieldy when every one has to be rolled for individually.

Fifty Years of Adventure Gaming

Though the exact date isn't known, it was in late January 1974 that Gary Gygax and friends put copies of the original woodgrain boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons out for sale. Jon Peterson of Playing at the World has proposed that the last Sunday of January makes a suitable date to celebrate. So today, 28 January 2024, marks 50 years since the release of the first adventure (or "roleplaying" if you prefer) game, sparking a revolution that irrevocably changed the course of the culture, and of other cultures around the world as well.

Surprisingly, perhaps, certainly dismayingly, the official website maintained by Wizards of the Coast, the current caretakers of the brand, has had no mention of the event even though they have planned to take some advantage of it by releasing a new edition, or at least a new revision, later in the year. Sadly, given the events of the last year, this seems to be par for the course for an impersonal corporation that no longer has any noticeable concern for the game beyond how it can benefit its shareholders' bottom lines. Since I am writing this in advance, perhaps they have put some mention there, and if so I apologize for that portion of this statement in which I say that they have not. The rest of it stands, though, as they have done only little to redress their mismanagement of the brand over the last year and earlier.

Magical Powers for a Low-Powered GURPS Campaign

I've been working on a GURPS Fantasy campaign set in a world of my own creation. One of the characteristics of the setting is that magic is very low-key, subtle, and like in this world many people don't believe it is real. Spirits are very important to this magic system, and I am eagerly awaiting Template Toolkit: Spirits to add to it.

Books needed beyond Basic Set:

• GURPS Fantasy-Tech 1: The Edge of Reality
• GURPS Horror
• GURPS Low-Tech Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings
• GURPS Powers
• GURPS Power-Ups 1: Imbuements
• GURPS Thaumatology
• GURPS Thaumatology: Urban Magics

(Thamatology and Thaumatology: Urban Magics might not be included in the final campaign setup, while Fantasy might be considered more or less useful for aspects unrelated to this magic system.)

Astrology and Esoteric Medicine from GURPS Fantasy-Tech 1: The Edge of Reality.

Alchemy in this system should just be Chemistry/TL with Disciplines of Faith and possibly Erotic Art (per Technicians of the Sacred), plus an appropriate Philosophy type.

Sacred Architecture from GURPS Thaumatology: Urban Magics. Allow the results to be in regard to areas of activity, especially but not limited to the magic-related Skills listed below, rather than Spells particularly (since Spells as such do not exist in the setting). This is something I am going back and forth on, and it may or may not appear in the final campaign.

Technicians of the Sacred from GURPS Low-Tech Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings; may use Hypnotism Skill to induce a deep trance in someone else instead of relying on the trance candidate's Meditation Skill. See especially the expanded uses of the Dreaming Skill here; the GM should be generous in allowing a deep trance to have the effects of a Dreaming success.

Abilities (All other than Autotrance, Blessed, the Empathy variations, Higher Purpose, Illuminated, or Imbuement should take Magic -10%)

• Animal Empathy [5], May take Specialized (var.) or Remote (+50%)
• Autotrance [1]
• Blessed (if more than one type, each Blessing after the first costs 1 point less, as all include Licensed Exorcist)
• Blessed (Armor of Faith) [12]
• Blessed (Divine Guidance) [10]/Very Blessed (Divine Guidance) [20]
• Blessed (Heroic Feats: ST, DX, or HT) [10 for ST or HT, 15 for DX] (DX only increases DX-based Skills and DX rolls, not Basic Speed or other characteristics)
• Licensed Exorcist [1]
• True Faith [15], May take Chosen (+0%) or Turning (+65%)
• Channeling [10], May take Aware (+50%) or Preparation Required (var.)
• Danger Sense [15]
• Daredevil [15]
• Detect (Spirits) [10], (Magic) [10], or (Magicians) [10], May take Vague (-50%), Precise (+100%), or Analyzing (+100%)
• Spirits: Any entity with a Spirit Template.
• Magic: Any use of these listed Abilities other than Autotrance, Blessed, Higher Purpose, Illuminated, or Imbuement, or of Spirit Abilities that seem appropriate.
• Magicians: Any entity with any of these listed Abilities other than Autotrance, Blessed, Higher Purpose, Illuminated, or Imbuement and without a Spirit Template.
• Empathy/Sensitive [15] or [5], May take Remote (+50%)
• Higher Purpose [5]
• Illuminated [15]
• Imbuement 1 (Ghostly Weapon only -80%) [2]
• Intuition [15], May take Inspired (+100%)
• Luck/Extraordinary Luck/Ridiculous Luck [15/30/60], May take Wishing (+100%), Active (-40%), Aspected (-20%), or Defensive (-20%)
• Medium [10], May take Manifestation (+100%), Universal (+50%), Visual (+50%), or Preparation Required (var.)
• Oracle [15], May take Inspired (+100%)
• Plant Empathy [5], May take Specialized (var.) or Remote (+50%)
• Psychometry (Hypersensory -50%) [10]
• Racial Memory [15] or [40], May take Immersive (+50%)
• Serendipity [15/lvl], May take Wishing (+0% or +100%)
• Special Rapport [5], May take One-Way (+20%) or Transferable (var.)
• Spirit Empathy [10]
• Visualization [10], May take Blessing (+0% or +100%) or Cursing (+100%)
• Wild Talent [20/lvl], May take Retention (+25%), Emergencies Only (-30%), or Focused (-20%)

Skills associated with magic

• Autohypnosis¹ Will/H (Meditation-4)
• Body Language Per/A (Detect Lies-4 or Psychology-4)
• Detect Lies Per/H (Per-6, Body Language-4, or Psychology-4)
• Dreaming² Will/H (Will-6)
• Esoteric Medicine Per/H (Per-6)
• Exorcism³ Will/H (Will-6, Religious Ritual-3, Ritual Magic-3, or Theology-3)
• Fortune-Telling IQ/A (IQ-5, Fast-Talk-3, or Occultism-3)
• Ghostly Weapon IQ/VH (Prerequisite: Imbuement 1; None)
• Hidden Lore IQ/A (None)
• Hypnotism IQ/H (None)
• Meditation Will/H (Will-6 or Autohypnosis-4)
• Meteorology/TL (Weather Sense) IQ/A (IQ-5)
• Naturalist IQ/H (IQ-6 or Biology-3)
• Observation Per/A (Per-5 or Shadowing-5)
• Occultism IQ/A (IQ-5 or Ritual Magic (any)-4)
• Pharmacy/TL (Herbal) IQ/H (Prerequisite: Naturalist; IQ-6, Biology-5, or Naturalist-5)
• Philosophy IQ/H (IQ-6)
• Poisons/TL IQ/H (IQ-6, Chemistry-5, Pharmacy-3, or Physician-3)
• Psychology IQ/H (IQ-6 or Sociology-4)
• Religious Ritual IQ/H (Ritual Magic (same)-6 or Theology (same)-4)
• Ritual Magic⁴ IQ/VH (Occultism-6 or Religious Ritual (same)-6)
• Symbol Drawing⁵ IQ/H (Occultism-6 or Ritual Magic (same)-4)
• Theology IQ/H (IQ-6 or Religious Ritual (same)-4)

Note that a few of these skills have had their defaults adjusted slightly.

¹May be used to initiate an attempt at using the Dreaming Skill without going to sleep.

²May be used to communicate with Spirits, requiring Dreaming and IQ or Fortune Telling (Dreaming) rolls as normal to interpret the Spirit's intended meaning, and Dreaming rolls to impart a message to the Spirit. May also be used to visit a collective Dreamland as per GURPS Horror, p. 114. Make Dreaming and IQ or Fortune Telling (Dreaming) rolls as normal to interpret any communications via the Dreamland. Does this require both Dreamers to be asleep at the same time, or is the message held waiting until the second Dreamer sleeps? Up to the GM. Perhaps the first Dreamer must leave a message with a Spirit of Dreams who then awaits the second Dreamer, possibly impersonating the first Dreamer. Certainly, two-way real-time communication requires both Dreamers to be Dreaming at the same time and making successful Dreaming rolls.

³May be used as an Influence Skill with Spirits even without Spirit Empathy, treat as Intimidation. Affected by Holy status (Blessed (Any), Licensed Exorcist Perk, or True Faith) as usual.

⁴May be used in place of an IQ roll for any use of Channeling, Detect, Intuition, Medium, Oracle, Psychometry, Racial Memory, or Visualization. Requires 1 minute preparation time. May take Extra Time or Haste (p. 346).

⁵May be used to assist Autohypnosis, Dreaming, Exorcism, Hypnotism, Meditation, or Ritual Magic. May not be used to benefit raw IQ rolls or rolls from default. Requires 5 minutes preparation time. May take Extra Time or Haste (p. 346).

The GM may choose to allow modifiers from GURPS Thaumatology for Correspondences, significant times, sacrifices, and so on to apply to uses of Ritual Magic. These may be subject to the particular sort of Ritual Magic Skill involved.

Spirit Templates, generally, start with one of the Spirit Meta-Traits found in GURPS Horror, though other Spirit-related Meta-Traits may also be useful, such as those in GURPS Fantasy or the Basic Set.

Spirits should have Visualization (Blessing +0% or +100%) or Visualization (Cursing +100%), usually costing FP, if they can affect the world at all. Very rarely they may also have Telekinesis, almost never greater than ST 1, but occasionally as high as ST 3 or even more. Spirit Telekinesis should always cost FP to use. Most Spirits will only be able to observe the world and communicate with those characters with appropriate Advantages or Skills. All Spirit Templates should have Walk on Air if they don't have Flight. Possession is not uncommon, but not universal, among Spirits, and they should have Permeation (Flesh) to stay in contact with a target that does not have Channeling.

Spirits might occasionally have Afflictions, Innate Attacks, and so on, but these should always cost FP to use. They shouldn't have abilities like Mind Control or Mind Reading, outside of Possession. Perhaps a Spirit that is Possessing a target could have Mind Control (Suggestion only) that they can only use on the Possessed target. Again, this should cost FP to use.

Note that a group of Spirits with Telekinesis can combine their Basic Lifts to lift heavier objects.

Many magicians in the setting will have "stage magic" skills like Escape, Filch, Performance, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, and so on in order to be able to put on a show for clients.