OSR Rogue Class: Part 1

Periodically, in my musings on D&D, I feel the need to create a new thief / rogue class, often mixing in elements of other rogue types such as assassins, acrobats, and bards. Well, the stars have aligned just right, and the following has been bouncing around in my head.

Rogue Class

Instead of a fixed set of skills advancing at a predetermined rate (like the standard thief class), the character has an expanding set of largely non-advancing skills. A 1st level rogue knows four of the skills below (player's choice). One more skill is learned at each level increase. From 5th level, the character may choose from the list of advanced skills (those marked with an asterisk). Learning an advanced skill requires that the rogue first learn the associated normal skill (e.g. move silently requires move quietly).

Pick pockets: requires a successful DEX check. The victim may save versus spells to notice the attempt.

Sleight of hand: used to surreptitiously manipulate items, perform tricks of legerdemain, delicately extract or swap out objects from pressure plates, etc. A DEX check is required for success.

Mimic voice: general accents can be mimicked with ease. To convincingly mimic an individual, you must listen to them speaking for at least ten minutes. If there is any uncertainty, listeners may make a saving throw versus spells to detect the ruse.

Move quietly: when lightly encumbered, you can sneak quietly. (Other characters may attempt to sneak, but without guaranteed success.) In an environment with no ambient noise to mask your movement, an attentive listener may notice you -- save versus wands.

Move silently *: when lightly encumbered, you can sneak absolutely silently.

Back stab: when attacking a humanoid victim who is unaware of your presence, you get a +4 bonus to attack with a dagger. If the attack succeeds, the precision of your strike inflicts extra damage: 1d4 + your level.

Sniper: works the same as back stab (above), but for fired missile weapons (bows, crossbows).

Garrote: when attacking a humanoid victim who is unaware of your presence, you can attempt to strangle them with a garrote or similar weapon. Make an attack roll. If the attack succeeds, you have the garrote in place, causing 1d4 damage. Each subsequent round, the victim suffers 1d4 damage and must save versus paralysis or fall unconscious (if you garrote an unconscious victim for one more round, they die). While conscious, the victim may fight back with their fists, small weapons, or by wrestling. All such attacks are at -2, but success indicates they've broken free of your garrote (in addition to normal damage, etc.).

Black jack: when attacking a humanoid victim who is unaware of your presence and who is not wearing a helmet, you can attempt to knock them out with a cosh, black jack, or similar implement. Make an attack roll. If it succeeds, the victim suffers 1d4 damage and must save versus paralysis. Failure indicates that they're knocked unconscious.

Tight rope walking: expert balance allows you to easily walk or dash across narrow beams. With a DEX check, you can walk across right ropes or beams of less than 6 inches width.

Blind fighting: training in the unusual art of fighting while blindfolded reduces the penalty to attacks against foes whom you cannot see. Instead of the usual -4 penalty, you only suffer -2 when making melee attacks.

Climb rock faces: when lightly encumbered, you can climb rough rock faces with a successful DEX check. You can climb easier surfaces without a check.

Climb rough walls *: your climbing skills are so advanced that you can scale sheer surfaces with only minimal handholds such as the cracks between stone blocks. This requires a DEX check. You can climb easier surfaces without a check.

Find hidden mechanisms: your chance of detecting secret doors or mechanical traps when searching is increased by 1 in 6. (Note that you may be able to find such mechanisms without a roll by describing to the referee exactly how you search.)

Pick locks: with decent lock picks and a turn of work, you can attempt to open locks without the appropriate key. A DEX roll is required. You may retry, if you fail.

Disable small mechanical traps: with a set of thieves' tools and a turn off work, you can attempt to bypass or disable small mechanical traps such as those found on locks. A DEX roll is required. If you fail, save versus wands to avoid setting the trap off. You may retry.

Decipher foreign text: with an INT check, you can figure out the gist of a text written in foreign languages which are related to a language you know.

Decipher obscure text *: as above, but applies to ancient or obscure languages, at the referee's discretion.

Read magic: you can decipher arcane inscriptions, including those on magic-user scrolls or in spell books. There is a 1 in 6 chance of your understanding being inaccurate. This skill does not allow you to cast spells.

Activate magic scrolls *: you can cast spells from magic-user scrolls with a 90% chance of success.

Detect magic: with a turn of concentration, you have a 2 in 6 chance of detecting the presence of magic in a 10' area or on a specific object. You may retry.

Hear noise: your chance of hearing noises when listening at doors is increased by 1 in 6.

Coming In Part 2

More skills...

Mimic behaviour

Hide

Hide in shadows *

Forgery

Disguise

Escape bonds

Identify common poisons
Identify rare poisons *
Lore

(...and anything else that comes to my mind in the meantime)

Alternative Use of Charisma: Allies & Enemies

A small house rule which I've been using in a slightly modified form in my recent Victorian horror campaign (which reached an unexpectedly explosive conclusion this week).

This rule works especially well for campaigns which are somewhat story-oriented (in that the PCs are involved in a fair amount of town based activity, and interaction with various NPCs and factions plays an important role), and campaigns where little or no use of the standard D&D henchmen rules occurs. Personally I've found that the henchmen rules are virtually never used in campaigns I run, so I thought it'd be good to come up with some alternative use of the Charisma stat (in addition to its role as a modifier to reaction rolls, of course).

Here's what I thought:

Using the standard B/X ability modifiers (3 = -3, 4-5 = -2, 6-8 = -1, 13-15 = +1, 16-17 = +2, 18 = +3), pluses in the Charisma stat mean that the character has a useful contact or ally, while minuses mean the character has an enemy.

Of course, the exact role these allies/enemies play in the campaign, and how much impact they have is up to the DM.

In the Victorian campaign we were just using the allies rule, which worked out really well. It occurred to me yesterday that the rule could be mirrored to give enemies to PCs with low CHA.

B/X vs Labyrinth Lord

Inspired by the release of the Basic/Expert rules at dndclassics.com, there's been a bit of discussion going around about "is this the death of Labyrinth Lord / the OSR?".

Well, I'm not about to launch into some philosophical post about the OSR movement. Suffice to say, I feel that the availability of another OSR style game (the original B/X in this case) will only increase the number of people playing old-school style games.

No, I wanted to point out a very beneficial point of Labyrinth Lord over B/X: organisation. It's an argument which is often brought up in relation to clones vs the original editions, but it's actually rather difficult to point that finger at B/X, which is, in my opinion, impeccably laid out, not to mention having a beautiful concision, which obviously aids its readability.

I only came to realise that Labyrinth Lord still has one up on B/X when I gleefully started chopping up the PDFs I'd bought from dndclassics.com. I wonder how many other people tried this too -- what most of us have never dared do with the real books? What I discovered is that, despite the urging to do so in the introduction of the Expert rule book, it's actually not easy to make a decent rearrangement / combination of the two rule books into a cohesive whole. What you end up with is something like this:

• Section 1: Basic
• Section 1: Expert
• Section 2: Basic
• Section 2: Expert

Which is sort of ok, but not really what one is looking for. So, in terms of having a unified rule book, Labyrinth Lord wins hands down.

I guess this is why the BECMI Rules Cyclopedia is so popular as well. I'm not really a fan of the CMI parts of BECMI, but I can definitely see the appeal of an all-in-one combined rule book.

Cook/Marsh D&D Expert Set Available as PDF!

I believe for the first time ever, the 1981 Cook/Marsh D&D Expert set is now for sale as a PDF at dndclassics.com! I already have the physical boxed set, but am very excited to get it as a PDF too.

What I'm especially looking forward to is making a compiled version of the Basic and Expert rules in one document, with the pages inter-mixed. This was what was suggested in the introduction to the Expert set, but I (and I'm sure many or most others) never had the heart to take a pair of scissors to our beloved D&D books! It'll be interesting to see how well it works as a combined book. All going well, I'll be printing out my own B/X player's book and DM's book :)

B/X PDFs!

I recently bought my first ever WotC-published D&D product... The Moldvay Basic rules (PDF).

Looks like the Expert rulebook is coming in a couple of weeks too!

This makes me happy.

I already have the old boxed sets, but it's nice to think I'll be able to print off copies of the PDFs for casual browsing / use at the table, and keep the vintage editions in good condition.

My Visual Map of D&D History

I had a chargen session last night with two players, one of whom has never played an RPG before. (Though he has played computer RPGs, which I found to be of great help, as he was already familiar with concepts such as class, level, hit points, and so on -- not something I'd ever considered before!)

I explained to the new player which game we're playing (Labyrinth Lord), and why it's a clone of another, older game. The conversation developed into a mini history of D&D and its various versions.

Afterwards I had the urge to make a diagram to show the game's history in a nicely understandable visual form. Here's what I came up with.

It's not completely comprehensive, no doubt lacking quite a few clones and sub-versions. Basically I just included stuff I know of. I think it's a fun diagram though :)

Premium AD&D vs D&D3.5 Books

Amazon just kindly informed me of the release of the Premium D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook.

First thing I noticed: that's quite cheap.

Second thing I noticed: hang on, the cover's the same as the original! They (in my mind somewhat controversially) reprinted the AD&D books with new covers, so I would have assumed the 3.5 re-releases would get the same treatment. But no -- they already sport the regulation fake leather tome effect, which is apparently now a requisite feature of all D&D books. Pah.

Edit: though, thanks to Brendan, I now realise that they actually are revamped covers. They're just not as radically reworked as the AD&D reprints were.

On the topic of D&D 3*, I had a funny turn some weeks back where I thought "maybe D&D 3 (not 3.5) has some old-school charm now", haha. After 5 minutes and reading my first class description I realised that this is a fallacy.

D&D Next: Something Great!

An interesting post from Mike Mearls over at the WotC site about magic items, and the first thing I've read about D&D Next which sounds 1. really awesome, and 2. actually a refreshing and original approach to something*.

I especially like the idea of the random table of background snippets about magical artefacts. Yes, a very cool idea!

Worth reading for anyone who's interested in what they're up to...

* and not a rules changes, simply a change of perspective and emphasis.

Edit: Just to be clear on this, I'm not saying I think I'll ever buy or play D&D "Next"... I just think their emphasis on making each magic item something unique is really cool.

A Return to the Savage World

After a year or more (I can't remember how long exactly) of only playing versions of old-school D&D, I played in a Savage Worlds game yesterday.

I had a SW period a while back, both running and playing in regular campaigns, and enjoyed it for a while, before the siren's call of old-school D&D lured me back to my roots. So it was very interesting to return to my once-regular gaming system, and to look at it with fresh eyes.

I guess I have a weird relationship with Savage Worlds now. On the one hand I basically really like the system. I find it clean and well designed, without being bland, complex enough for some nice character options, without the number crunching that comes with D&D 3, and it comes in a nice slim rulebook. I also really like the concept of a core system -- which can be expanded and tweaked for each campaign -- as opposed to generic / universal system -- which is supposed to cover everything out of the box.

However, playing the game again yesterday brought up two really major things I don't like about it:

1. The dice system. On paper I find the dice system in Savage Worlds really cool. Roll your trait die (a d4 to a d12) and a wild die (a d6). Take the highest then apply any situational modifiers. If you get 4 or more you succeed. Higher results in multiples of 4 (so a result of 8, 12, etc) are called "raises" and sometimes get you additional levels of success. All dice "explode", meaning that if you roll the highest number on the die then you roll again and add.

A nice system. The trouble I have with it is that it can take so bloody long to resolve a single action! There's lots of different die types involved, lots of adding, lots of re-rolling (which leads to more adding), lots of comparing (the wild die and the trait die can explode separately). This is, of course, especially problematic with players who are new to the system, but even for experienced Savage Worlders the fact is that it's just a slow and pretty fiddly resolution mechanic compared to what I'm now used to (to attack: roll a d20 and look up the result on a table*).

2. The use of miniatures. Of course the use of miniatures is theoretically optional in most roleplaying games, including Savage Worlds, but SW is one of the more mini-oriented games I've come across. There's a lot of talk of things like adjacent squares, blast radii (in squares), squares of movement rate, etc etc. It lends a skirmish / wargame feel to the game (which, if I remember correctly, is actually its origin). This is fine for certain sorts of game (I'd consider using Savage Worlds for an explicitly battle oriented game, for instance), but for general roleplaying I prefer to not use minis at all, and can't be bothered with all this counting out squares of movement, ranges, and so on.


The tagline of Savage Worlds is "Fast, Furious Fun!". I think this is very relative. Compared to basic (old-school) D&D, for example, it's not fast at all. Compared to more modern D&D 3 derived games, I guess it probably is fast. I'd say it's about the same as 1st edition AD&D played with individual initiative, segments, the full monty.

Once again I come away internally praising the glory of the sleek OD&D or B/X rules!

* I'm beginning to wonder whether a simple table lookup is actually faster than rolling a die and adding a modifier. You know, one of the main proposed benefits of the ascending AC system is that it doesn't require a table lookup. It does, however, replace that lookup with an addition or subtraction of the d20 result with the attack modifier. I'm not sure that's quicker.

D&D Previous & the "Core Mechanic"

Yeah, so as you may guess from the title of this post, I wasn't at all impressed by the D&D Next playtest rules. As I've seen some other people opining, it seems to be a kind of D&D 3 "lite". Which is fair enough if you like that kind of thing -- and actually I think they've done a good job so far of D&D 3 "lite", if that's their intention. I guess there's a big market for that kind of game.

Two things in particular grate for me though.

Firstly their insistence on giving monsters ability scores. This leads to a plethora of ludicrosities (such as having to decide how charismatic a beetle is), and apparently is only for the benefit of opposed rolls (sicK) and saving throws. The latter could obviously have easily been implemented using a different system (in fact I'd say that for monsters who ever needs more than a single save value, really?).

The second, and primary reaction I have to the playtest rules actually just reminds me what I dislike so much about all WotC incarnations of D&D: this idea of a "core mechanic". I find it hard to explain exactly why I find this so distasteful, but here are some reasons:

1. It makes the game bland. Imagine a game of monopoly where all rules subsystems (such as the auctions and the various types of cards) were replaced by a simple 2d6 roll... Charmless.
2. It leads to players having a knee-jerk instinct to start rolling d20s whenever their character does anything. Before the referee has even told them if it will "just work", is impossible or will require some kind of roll.
3. It makes some things which should be easy too hard, and makes some things which should be hard too easy. I'm no expert on mathematics or probability, but whenever I've played d20-based games (which D&D Next is, from what we've seen so far) I've gotten this annoying feeling of my character not being able to do anything successfully. The to hit roll in combat, which is where the whole d20 roll originates, is designed to be very random. Other things in life just aren't that random. Using one single die type for everything assumes that everything is equally random. I find it extremely unpleasant to play with such a system.
4. It leads to a kind of fallacy that rules simplicity == a core mechanic. (D&D 3.5 was undoubtedly the most complex and fiddly form of D&D so far, yet had a veneer of having been "optimised" and "rationalised".)

I mean, regarding D&D Next, I wasn't expecting anything different to be honest, and I wasn't expecting to like it (though totally open to being surprised).

I guess my point is that, though they've made this big deal about having modular rules systems which can be added and removed to taste (like the "feats" and "skills" systems), I find the core of the game (as far as we can see it now) inherently unpleasant.

It has definitely reinforced my love of TSR D&D though, which is a nice thing :)

Long live B/X, AD&D, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardy, LotFP Weird Fantasy, etc etc!

Charisma of the fire beetle

Sorry, I've not given it a chance yet at all, but: fire beetles have 7 CHA! Hahaha. Hilarious :D

(My first reaction on reading the D&D Next playtest.)

STOP THE PRESS! Giant centipedes have no CHA whatsoever! This gets wackier and wackier...

Fatigue based spellcasting in old-school D&D

As I recently mentioned, I've been running James Raggi's the Grinding Gear for a small group. I've been running the module as a one-shot, which means that I've not had to insert it into an existing campaign -- giving me free reign on the setting. Obviously, it being a one-shot, the setting isn't that important, and hasn't played a huge role, but the vague background I've imagined is a weird fantasy-esque, early modern setting, with no demi-human PCs, no divine magic, and much more limited arcane magic than one typically finds in D&D.

This slightly atypical setting, combined with the fact that it's a one-shot (well, a two-shot now) means that I've been able to play around with a few ideas for new rules. I've already talked about the introduction of mixed-class characters and firearms, so the remaining (and probably most experimental) house rule is my system for fatigue-based spellcasting.

Regular readers will know by now that my favourite D&D-related pastime (well, joint favourite with actually playing the game!) is messing around with new spells and rules for magic-users! Something of a hobby in itself ;)

I've been mulling over ideas for some time on how one could simply (i.e. without having to rewrite everything!) adapt the D&D Vancian spellcasting system to give it more of a low-magic, dangerous edge. From what I've seen of the magic system in Dungeon Crawl Classics, that's kind of the vibe he's going for, but of course that's a very involved rewrite of the magic rules and all the spells, so not what I had in mind.

At first I was contemplating some kind of spellcasting roll, with the possibility of nothing -- or varying degrees of bad / weird side-effect -- occurring if the roll fails. In the end, however, I came up with something far simpler, with a nod to Fighting Fantasy. It works as follows.

Fatigue Based Spellcasting

In the standard system of magic, as presented in traditional D&D, a magic-user's spells must be memorized in advance and vanish from his mind when cast. Thus a spell-caster's puissance is measured by the number of spells which he can fit into his memory at once.

Using this alternative system of spellcasting, a magic-user does not need to memorize spells. It is assumed that once a magic-user has mastered the formula of a spell, he is able to cast it at will, simply by performing the required gestures and incantations. However, as a counterbalance to this freedom, each spell which is cast drains the caster's reserves, leading to a creeping fatigue and listlessness.

This fatigue is simulated by a hit point cost for each spell cast, depending on its level. Thus, as a magic-user casts more spells, his ability to react in dangerous situations, and to avoid serious damage or death, is reduced.

Spell level        1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
Hit point cost   1     2     4    8      12   16   20   24   28

Hit points lost due to spell-casting are recovered in a slightly different way to normal. A magic-user's player should keep track of both his current hit point total, and the sum of points which were lost due to magic use. After a full night's rest, all hit points lost as a side-effect of spells cast are restored. On the other hand, hit points lost due to spell-casting cannot be restored by healing spells or magic items.

This system enables low level casters (especially those at 1st level) to cast more spells than in standard D&D, while higher level spells, due to their large drain in hit points, will be less frequently used.

Notes

1. The only problem I can imagine with this system, and a point which I'm rather unsure of, is that it makes a magic-user's maximum hit point total extremely important. A 1st level MU with one hit point would be unable to cast spells, for example, and a player who made consistently lucky rolls for hit points as his character advanced would be at a great advantage.
2. I've been using the standard spell progression chart to determine the number of spells a magic-user knows, rather than how many spells he can memorize. I've doubled the numbers on the chart, so a 5th level MU would know four 1st, four 2nd and two 3rd level spells. This nicely simplifies the question of how MUs learn new spells.
3. Likewise, I've allowed high INT to grant extra known spells, using the cleric chart for high WIS.
4. Using this system, a few spells might need re-levelling. For example, given that a 1st level magic-user could be able to cast three spells a day, sleep is probably too powerful for a 1st level spell. I'd move it to 2nd level.

Two firsts

I am about to perform two gaming related activities for the very first time this morning.

1. Run an adventure module which I bought rather than writing myself.

2. Run an adventure written by James Raggi.

Seriously, I've never run a pre-written module before, ever! (Actually, thinking about it, I seem to remember running the sample adventure in the Mentzer basic set... but apart from that.)

It's also going to be the first session of D&D (well, Labyrinth Lord) I've ever run where the PCs have firearms.

I shall post a report of how it went later...

5e -- why should I care?

Yes, the obligatory 5e post ;)

My reaction is: I have a kind of theoretical interest in what WotC might get up to with D&D 5e, but otherwise:

Why should I be interested in a new "version" of D&D?
I have the Labyrinth Lord books which I use to run my games.
I also have loads of AD&D books.
I also have all the important AD&D 2e books, for that matter.
If I really need it, the important bits of 3e (the SRD) are freely available online.
I also have free downloads of any number of other rule sets (S&W, OSRIC, LOTFP, etc) available.

Basically I have far more rule books than I will ever need, and the ability to house rule stuff together to cover bits I don't like or feel like modifying. So why should I be interested in a new "version" of D&D?

I just don't really get it... what do WotC want people to be interested in here? (And I'm not just talking about us OSR grognard types... same goes for people still playing 3rd edition, Pathfinder, 4th edition...)

I guess they're just relying on gamer ADD, the search for something new and perhaps "better".

Maybe there is a good reason why I should care about 5e, that I've not thought of yet. But for now, I'll stick with the plentiful gaming material I've already got... no reason to change.

As to what I would be interested in seeing WotC produce, well, personally nothing. I just don't tend to buy gaming materials apart from the rulebooks I use to run games. But I know lots of people like to buy campaign settings and adventures.

To be honest it surprises me that they think what people really want is another set of rules! Strange.

A comparison of old and new D&D

I was recently asked by the guy who's organising the con I'm running a game at if I'd like to write something about old-school RPGs for their blog. At first I wasn't sure what to write, as I'm not the great philosopher type, but then I thought I'd simply write about my own experiences with various editions of D&D, and the things I prefer about the older style. For the interest of readers of this blog, here's what I wrote!

(By the way, I just realised that this is probably my first ever "OSR philosophy" post on this blog! ;)

Back to the old-school!

A comparison of old and new D&D

As a long-time D&D player who has returned to playing a 30 years old version of the game, I thought it would be interesting to write a bit about my experiences with the venerable game, and why I'm now so much happier to be playing a very early incarnation of it.

A bit of background to my experiences with D&D: I started playing in the early 1980s, with the Basic / Expert sets. AD&D was also around at this time, and while I did buy a couple of the books I found them a bit overwhelming at that young age, and only got into AD&D when the second edition came out. I played "2e" a lot during my teens, and then gradually drifted away from roleplaying in my twenties.

When I returned to the hobby several years ago, D&D 4 was the big new thing. I duly tried it out, and also tried out the 3rd edition, and Pathfinder. The games I played were fun, sure, but somehow I found that none of these versions of the game really had that spark which the older editions had.

So here are a few thoughts on the differences I've found between the older and newer styles of D&D, and why my personal preference lies with the old. (I'm sure a lot of people prefer the newer style, and I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything here, just expressing my love of “the old ways”.)

The defining factor seems to be the terseness and sparsity of the older D&D rules, especially if you look at the original version of the game (OD&D) or the basic game which was released during the late 1970s to early 1980s. They don't cover very much, and rarely go into much depth. Later versions of the game progressively filled in these gaps (whether with the minutiae of AD&D, or the systemic rationalisation and "core mechanics" of D&D 3 / 4). However the early game solved the issue of "how to determine what happens in situation X" in a very different way: make something up on the spot! Need to know if a character can jump over a pit (there's no jumping skill)? – the DM has many options: just say yes, just say no way, roll vs DEX, give a 2 in 6 chance, etc. Completely dependant on the situation at hand.

There are many things about this system (or lack of system!), which create a play experience which I personally enjoy very much.

This is not a game of rules. The lack of specific rules and reliance on the DM to make improvised "rulings", rather than relying on pre-defined "rules", brings home an extremely important feature of old-school RPGs: the atmosphere of the game is far more immersive and mysterious if the players are thinking in terms of being their character, rather than in terms of what they're allowed to do by the rules. That's why in AD&D, for example, the players handbook only has rules for creating characters. All the other rules of the game are in the dungeon masters guide.

Improvisation. One of the things I enjoy most about the roleplaying hobby as a whole is the act of making stuff up on the spot with a group of people. It's much more fun than looking things up in books :)

Growing characters vs character builds. When the procedure for character creation is as simple as: 1. roll ability scores in order, 2. choose a class, 3. buy equipment, there's no room for the mechanical tweaking which has come to be known in later editions as "character builds" (which is, I believe, something of a game in itself!). This further brings home the fact that this game is not about rules and mechanics. Your character is differentiated from others by how you play him / her, and what experiences you go through with the character in the game, not by what numbers you have written on your character sheet. In effect you're growing or "building" your character as you play.

Less is more. Another effect of this lack of mechanically stated character options is that it actually in practice tends to give characters more options, flexibility and creativity. Characters are free to try things which, in more rules-strict editions of the game, they just wouldn't bother with, due to perhaps not having enough ranks in a certain skill, or not knowing a certain feat. As a result the game tends to feel a lot more open and free-form.

Saying yes. The lack of specific character abilities, in terms of “skills” or “feats”, has another, perhaps surprising, side-effect: it allows the DM to simply let characters do cool stuff, when appropriate. Can my wizard read the ancient magical script of the Zagdobar people? Of course he can! (As opposed to: well, let me see, how many ranks do you have in read languages?) Can my fighter do a spinning attack and try to hit the three temple guards surrounding him? He can try for sure! – make a DEX check, and if you succeed you can make an attack roll at -2 for each of them. (As opposed to: well, let me see, isn't there a feat for that?) This point can be especially relevant where success at a certain action is important for the progression of a story.

Saying no. Of course, the other side of the coin is that if a player hasn't got specific abilities written down, then the DM is equally likely to just say “no way”. Common sense generally prevails.

Making the game your own. When the "official rule book" is ambiguous and vague, DMs have a chance to interpret as necessary and as they see fit. This can give each campaign a unique flavour, as rules are interpreted in different ways.

Rules where necessary. The lack of specifics in the rule books allows the DM to expand them, if areas come up during play which are important enough to demand further rules. The end effect is that you're starting from a very rules-light system, and expanding it if needed, rather than trying to comprehend or cut down a very rules-heavy system. For example, the "official rules" for wizards creating magic items say little more than "it's up to the DM how much it costs, how long it takes, and what components or equipment are needed". If a particular group feels like this is too vague, then they can come up with something that suits their campaign. (Though I feel that this system is absolutely perfect as it is, as it allows the DM to suggest something completely tailored to the character in question.)

So that covers, in my experience, some of the big differences in style between older and newer editions of D&D. If anyone also finds this kind of style appealing, I'll be running a Labyrinth Lord game at BurgCon 20, come and join in!

Manic miner dungeon

Somewhere from the recesses of my mind came a vision of the classic ZX Spectrum game Manic Miner. I loved playing that as a kid, even though I never got that far (I think I never progressed past The Vat... ah the good old days before games allowed you to save your progress!). One thing that especially sticks in my mind now about the game is the brilliant titles of all the levels.

Thinking about it again, it just occurred to me that it'd be amazing to make a dungeon where each room was inspired by the name of one of the levels from Manic Miner! Some of them would be pretty sci-fi, but no one seems to mind a bit of sci-fi with their D&D these days ;). Here they are:

1. Central Cavern
2. The Cold Room
3. The Menagerie
4. Abandoned Uranium Workings
5. Eugene's Lair
6. Processing Plant
7. The Vat
8. Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast
9. Wacky Amoebatrons
10. The Endorian Forest
11. Attack of the Mutant Telephones
12. Return of the Alien Kong Beast
13. Ore Refinery
14. Skylab Landing Bay
15. The Bank
16. The Sixteenth Cavern
17. The Warehouse
18. Amoebatrons' Revenge
19. Solar Power Generator
20. The Final Barrier

Thoughts on thief skills and competency

I recently played a d20 based game (Call of Cthulhu, in fact), and found myself amused and frustrated by the fact that our 1st level characters, who were supposed to be experts in one field or another, did nothing but fail our skill checks for almost the whole session. My character was an 80 year old expert on the occult, and, due to unlucky skill rolls, I think I barely came up with a single piece of useful information about any of the occult mysteries we were confronted with! Given several thousand experience points (if level advancement still works that way in CoC d20, I don't know if it does...), and a careful allocation of skill points and selection of feats, I'm sure my character could gradually have worked his way up to being the expert which he conceptually was. But not at 1st level.

As a contrast, the other two game systems I've played recently are Savage Worlds and old-school D&D in the form of Labyrinth Lord. In Savage Worlds this phenomenon is not an issue at all. It's easy to create a beginning character who is very good at at least one useful thing. Meanwhile, in Labyrinth Lord / early D&D, the only character to have skills which require checks to be made is the thief. Characters of most classes can just do their thing -- fighters wear armour and wield weapons, magic-users cast spells, clerics heal wounds and turn undead. They may not have the most stupendous abilities at 1st level, but what they can do, they can do fairly reliably. Except the poor old thief, who can climb walls pretty well, but is really wiser to forget any of his other very cool abilities (like removing traps and moving silently) until he's at least 5th level.

And the mechanic for thief skills is exactly the system which was taken and used as one of the core elements of D&D 3rd edition -- skill checks -- leading up to my poor beleaguered occult 'expert'.

Alongside my recent re-experiencing of and reflections on the d20 system, I'd noticed that not a single player in my Labyrinth Lord campaign has expressed any interest in playing a thief. (Actually, one thief was rolled up, but he only had 1 hit point, so was sort of discarded.) I've always thought of thieves as a very cool class, but taking a look at their percentage chances of success at all the things they're supposed to be good at, I can understand their undesirability.

And then I read JB's post on auto-success thief skills. Brilliant stuff. As a player you totally want your character to be good at something, to be able to do something that no other character can do -- and all of the time! Not 14% of the time.

So, after a bit of reading around (including the Jovial Priest's very interesting take on the matter), here's what I'm thinking I'll offer to thief characters in my campaign. Not a rules change, but a simple re-interpretation of what the numbers mean and when the rolls are necessary.

Pick locks: Attempting to pick a lock takes 1 turn. If the roll fails, the thief is free to try again, spending another turn. However, time is often of the essence.

Find & remove traps: As per pick locks. The thief's find traps percentage can also be used to find secret doors, if it is better than the standard 1 in 6 chance.

Move silently: A thief can always move quietly. The % roll is only required when he needs to move completely without sound. Usually in the middle of a battle there is enough noise being made that this roll is not necessary to sneak up on an opponent who is unaware of the thief's presence.

Hide in shadows: Thieves are experts at hiding, and usually do not need to make a roll to hide from view, except in situations where shadows are the only concealment available. Even then, a thief can always successfully hide in sufficient shadow, given time to position himself (i.e. before the start of a battle). The % roll must be made in order to disappear into shadows in the middle of combat.

Climb walls: Thieves can climb normally without making a roll. The % roll must only be made when climbing up sheer surfaces such as walls or cliffs.

Pick pockets: No change.

Hear noise: No change.

Thoughts on schools of magic

As readers of this blog have no doubt noticed by now, I like lots of spells with my D&D :) One of my favourite supplemental books for D&D is the AD&D 2nd edition Wizard's Spell Compendium -- a four volume set containing all wizard spells ever published by TSR from 1975 to 1997. That's a lot of spells.

I'm also a big fan of specialist wizards, and the idea of splitting spells into various schools of magic, which is pretty much essential once you're dealing with many hundreds of spells. So in my Labyrinth Lord campaign I've currently got four types of magic-user which players can choose from: mage (using the default AEC spell list), illusionist (also straight out of the AEC -- though I intend to expand their repertoire up to include 8th and 9th level spells), elementalist (using a custom spell list), and necromancer (which is a class I've put a little bit of work into, but only developed spells of the 1st and 2nd levels so far).

The approach I've been taking to specialist wizards is that they study totally separate forms of magic. So a mage cannot learn a spell from the necromancer spell list, and vice versa. Of course some spells are shared (both mages and necromancers can learn the fear spell, for example), but the crossover is minimal. This is the way specialists worked in AD&D 1st edition, if we extrapolate from the single example of the illusionist vs the standard magic-user. AD&D 2nd edition, on the other hand, vastly expanded the number of specialists, adding the necromancer, enchanter, transmuter, diviner, invoker, abjurer and conjurer. The difference in that edition though is that specialists can actually cast spells from most other schools of magic, being only barred from casting one or two "opposition" schools. While I like the expanded array of specialist wizards, to my mind this somewhat watered them down, as they can, in the end, cast mostly the same spells.

So I decided to base my Labyrinth Lord specialists more on the original AD&D example of the magic-user and the illusionist having separate spell lists. However upon adding the elementalist and the necromancer to the mix, a problem became clear. The main way in which wizards can expand their repertoire of spells is by finding scrolls as treasure. In the basic LL rules, any wizard (or elf, in fact) can learn any spell from any scroll, subject to the normal level restrictions. With the AEC (or AD&D 1st edition) you have the addition of illusionist scrolls as treasure, which are of no use to magic-users, except perhaps as a commodity to sell. Now if I add two (or more) extra types of wizard, then it ends up in the situation where a wizard finding a scroll in a treasure hoard ends up standing very little chance of actually being able to understand and cast the spell contained. This is a shame, because this should be a very exciting moment for the wizard's player -- the chance of finding a new spell!

I have thus found myself musing on ways to alleviate this problem. Two solutions have I found:

1. To allow all types of magic-user to learn spells from other spell lists, at a cost. This will work like spell research. If a magic-user finds a scroll containing a spell which is in his spell list, he can learn it as normal. However if he finds a spell not in his spell list, but which he really wants to learn, he can undergo a process of research -- searching out books on the topic, discussing with other wizards, perhaps even undertaking training of some kind. This process lasts the normal duration of spell research (one week per spell level), but costs half the normal rate (500gp per spell level). At the end the magic-user has learned to cast the spell. In this way, it's possible for magic-users to still make use of any scrolls they may find, though some will be far easier to use than others.

I've also decided that, to keep some "niche protection" for each type of specialist magic-user, they are only able to memorize at most one spell per level castable which is not on their allowed spell list. This allows each type of wizard to learn a smattering of other types of magic, and to have a few tricks up his or her sleeve, while still remaining fundamentally tied to the style of magic he or she was originally trained in.

2. To avoid the situation of an ever-expanding selection of specialist wizards, with minor schools such as dimensionalism, diabolism, abjuration, divination, and so on all having their own slightly differing spell lists, I've been musing on allowing such obscure branches of magic to be learned at any point in a magic-user's career, as kind of "prestige classes" (to use the D&D 3rd edition terminology). I was impressed by Dyson Logos' recent posts on prestige classes for old-school D&D, and have thought of using something similar. So if a magic-user wants to explore the far-out intricacies of dimensional magic, for example, he has the option of putting in the required efforts (time, money and XP, plus perhaps special adventures to retrieve tomes or find teachers) in return for gaining the ability to learn some rare spells -- essentially adding to his list of castable spells.

In combination, these two modifications to the system of strictly separated schools of magic create what seems to me to be a really nice balance. A few major types of magic exist, each with their own specialists. Specialists concentrate mostly on their own school, but are able to learn a smattering of spells from other schools, making scrolls a useful treasure to all types of magic-user. There are also minor, rarer schools of magic which are studied by only a select few, but which can be explored by a dedicated wizard.

Preparing to play Labyrinth Lord!

So I'll be running Labyrinth Lord tomorrow, for the first time. Though, of course, it's not at all like running a game for the first time, as it's just like the D&D of my childhood! I spent yesterday evening drawing up a dungeon map and stocking it.

I drew the dungeon completely freestyle, on un-gridded paper, which I found had a remarkably freeing effect. In fact I was struck by what a pleasurable experience it is, to sketch out rooms and corridors with no preconceived idea of "what should go where", only a rough idea of how many rooms I wanted (about 25 in this case). I ended up, by mistake (due to low lighting), drawing the whole map in purple, but that only adds to its charm I think. And I even coloured in the "bits between the rooms" (for want of a more specific word!), which I never normally do with maps. A thoroughly enjoyable exercise, and one which revealed to me something of the creative / artistic nature of the process of dungeon design.

The stocking was equally fun. I had a few ideas for encounters or areas that I wanted to include, but the rest I trusted to the luck of the 1d6 room contents roll. One thing that particularly impressed me in the process of making an adventure for Labyrinth Lord was the ease of creating new monsters. I found it equally as easy to create a new creature as I did to look one up in the book, which led to several new beasts just in this small one-level (so far) dungeon. The time from imagining what the monster would look like and how it would behave to having its stats written down was not more than a minute or two, which I find very impressive - compare that to the same process in more modern RPGs (d20 system anyone?). Partly, of course, this was helped by a latent but intimate familiarity with the game from years of childhood play, but I found the combination of a simple basis for a monster (HD, AC, Save as, Attacks / damage) plus the freeform "and then make up whatever rules you like for its special abilities" works a whole lot better than in more rules-heavy games.

I just hope we have as much fun playing the dungeon as I did making it! I'm very much looking forward to playing the classic game again and seeing it with adult eyes.

Random dungeon stocking

I experienced the pleasure of the Basic D&D random dungeon room contents table last week, as I was stocking the cellars and tunnels that lie beneath the ruined manor at Ballan, which the PCs have just begun to explore. There are various permutations of this table in various versions of the game, but what I used was: 1 - 2 Empty, 3 - 4 Monster, 5 Trap, 6 Special. It's nice and simple, although I was concerned it'd produce far too many "Specials". And, as expected, it did. Out of maybe 20 rooms, 5 were rolled as Special. But this actually turned out absolutely fine - indeed I had a lot of fun thinking up all these dungeon weirdnesses. I mean, I didn't go overboard - it's only the 1st level of a not-particularly-supernatural dungeon, so we're not talking reverse gravity chambers or talking pools. But I found it a real pleasure to add that many unusual / interesting / slightly magical / mysterious features.

Overall I have to say I loved using the random room contents roll. It made the process of stocking both challenging and exciting, all in all far more engaging than the sometimes daunting situation of sitting there with a keyed map, no idea what's in which room, and an hour to go before the game starts! I'll definitely be thinking about using further random tables in dungeon stocking in the future.