Making Camp: Part 2

Following on from yesterday's post, more optional camping procedures. (I'm skipping ahead a bit here, past the phase of setting up camp, to the rules for resting.)

Rest
The campsite set and any evening camaraderie complete, the party settle down to sleep. Each PC must make a rest check -- a CON (bushcraft, survival) check -- modified by the various factors listed below, to discover whether a good night's rest was achieved.

Resting Modifiers
For every extra hour spent searching for a campsite: -1
Sleeping in unsuitable site: -4
Location modifier: Varies
Bedroll: +2
Participating in a watch shift (up to two hours): -2
Cold (autumn or spring): -2
Extreme cold (winter): -4
Campfire (if cold): +2
Wet (including snow): -2
Disturbing sounds (howling wind, thunder, or babbling spirits, for example): -1
Soothing sounds (a waterfall or bubbling stream, for example): +1
Sleeping in light armour: -4
Sleeping in medium armour: -10
Sleeping in heavy armour: Automatic failure
Good cheer: +2
Discord (arguing, grudges, etc): -1
Hearty fare: +2
Meagre rations (includes dried trail rations): -1
No supper: -2
Awakening during the night (per occurrence, not including watch shifts): -1
Encounter during the night: -3
Sickness or poison: -2
Wounded or fatigued (less than half hit points): -1
Elf (requires less rest): +4
Halfling (lazy): -2

(Character personality traits such as "sensitive disposition" or "can sleep through anything" are generally indicated by the CON score but the referee may apply additional modifiers if deemed appropriate.)

Failure of the rest check has the following effects:

• Cannot memorise spells. (The lenient referee may allow the character to attempt to memorise spells, with a save versus magic, per spell, indicating success at memorisation.)
• -1 penalty to all attacks, saves, and ability checks. This is not cumulative over multiple nights without rest, but lasts until a decent night's sleep can be had.
• Hit point recovery halved.

Sleeping in the Daytime
A party may choose to travel at night and sleep during the day. This incurs a -3 penalty to rest, unless the characters are accustomed to this routine (have been following it for at least a fortnight).

Making Camp: Part 3

Continuing from my previous posts on the topic of camping in the woods, here are some guidelines for what happens once the party have located a site in which to set camp.

Setting Camp
Characters may engage in various different activities to help with setting up a campsite. The following are typical.

Gathering wood: It is always possible to find wood with little suitability to building a fire (damp, rotting, frozen, etc). Finding decent wood is more difficult and depends especially on the weather. A WIS (bushcraft, survival) check is required, modified by the prevalent moisture conditions. Driving rain, for example, may incur a -4 penalty, while a spell of hot weather may grant a +4 bonus. Each character who goes gathering wood can collect enough to keep the campfire burning for 1d5 hours.

Fetching water: Is assumed to be successful, in a damp forest environment. The referee may optionally declare a 1 in 10 chance of the party discovering a source of strange waters (roll on that table).

Foraging, hunting, or fishing at dusk: These activities may be undertaken as normal during the hours while the camp is being set. The chance of finding anything is reduced by two thirds (due to the limited time available and the gathering darkness). A -1 rest penalty also applies.

Fire building: Given a means of producing flame (e.g. a tinderbox) and a stash of wood (either gathered from the forest by other characters, as described above, or carried in packs), the party may attempt to build a fire. An INT (fire-building, bushcraft, survival) check is required. If only ill-suited wood is available, the roll is penalised by -4. The referee may apply additional modifiers based on the prevalent environmental conditions (an additional -4 penalty is suggested, for example, in snow or heavy rain). If the check is successful, a campfire is started and may be kept burning for as long as there is wood available to feed it.

Resting: A character who lends no help to setting camp gains a +1 rest bonus.

Camp Activities
Once the campsite is established, more restful activities may be undertaken before the party beds down for the night.

Cooking: Given a fire, cooking utensils, and ingredients, someone may attempt to cook a meal. A successful WIS (cooking) check indicates that a palatable dish is produced, granting a rest bonus to those who eat it. A failed cooking check indicates that the meal is edible but distasteful. Very low rolls may, if the referee wishes, denote a ruined meal (burned, spilled, etc) that is utterly inedible. Modifiers may apply to the check based on the quality and variety of the ingredients available.

Camaraderie: Time spent around the fireside with one's companions may, given the correct conditions, lift the spirits and induce restful sleep. A character may attempt to entertain his comrades with music, song, storytelling, jokes, and so forth. This entails a CHA (entertainer) check. Success indicates that good cheer has been inspired in the party, whereas failure may fall flat or even, in the case of very poor rolls, lead to ridicule, argument, and discord.

Planning: The party may use the evening hours to discuss plans for the future. Generally this requires no checks and has no effect on resting, though if arguments occur, the referee may stipulate a rest penalty due to discord.

Making Camp: Part 1

Some procedures for camping in the wilderness.

Finding a Campsite
The first step in camping for the night is to find a suitable location. Depending on the terrain being traversed, this may not be trivial. Searching for a site takes one hour. This is assumed to be a part of the evening phase, when the party is beginning to settle down to rest.

First, the referee should make a density roll (a percentile roll against the density rating of the hex being travelled through). Failure indicates that the terrain does not yield any location suitable for characters to lay. A site with space to crouch or lean, where it may be marginally possible to sleep, can always be found. This entails a -4 comfort modifier (see rest, below).

Secondly, the party must make a WIS (bushcraft, survival) check to determine the number of different locations which present themselves. The character with the highest chance of success should make the roll on behalf of the group. Success indicates that two locations have been discovered; the party may choose between them. Failure indicates that only a single suitable location can be found; the party must either camp in this place or start searching anew.

If the party is unsuccessful or unsatisfied with their attempt to find a campsite, they may repeat the procedure, entailing another hour of searching. Each repeat attempt incurs a cumulative -1 comfort modifier, when the party eventually get to sleep, due to the extra time spent exploring.

Forest Campsites
Each terrain type requires its own table for camping locations. As an example, here is a table suitable for use in forested areas.

1. Dry, sandy ditch. Party must sleep in a line.
2. Mossy glade. Soft ground grants +1 to comfort but dampness incurs a -1 penalty to fire building.
3. Clearing beside a pathway. Increased chance of encounters.
4. Pleasant glade. Spoor of a random monster is present. Increased chance of encounters. (If an encounter occurs, it is 50% likely to be with the creature indicated.)
5. Flat, stony area beside a stream.
6. Clearing criss-crossed with gnarly roots. -1 comfort modifier.
7. Beautiful glade with a single large tree in the middle. (33% chance of the tree having some noteworthy feature; roll on the table of strange trees.)
8. Cosy, fern-filled depression. +1 comfort.
9. Sandy outlook atop a cliff. Encounter distance is doubled.
10. Small glade crossed by many small paths. Chance of encounters increased.
11. Mushroom-riddled glade. Roll on the fungi table to determine their qualities.
12. Verdant dell hidden between large rocks. Chance of encounters reduced.
13. Muddy banks of a pool. -1 comfort due to dampness. There is a 1 in 4 chance of the pool possessing special qualities (roll on the table of strange waters).
14. Among a cluster of fallen trees. -1 comfort due to the inconvenient trunks.

15. Cramped glade, only sufficient space for 1d4+2 humans.

16. Narrow ledge beside a deep gorge. -1 comfort due to fear of rolling off the edge while sleeping.

Post-Amble: Skill Checks
The text above uses a broad notation for skill checks which can be adapted to several different game systems as follows.

Basic: For games without any kind of skill or proficiency system (e.g. old-school Basic D&D and clones), all checks are resolved with an ability check on 1d20. A result of equal or lower than the ability score indicates success. The roll may be modified (-4 to +4) by the character's background. The referee should judge, from the player's description, whether the background experience (or lack of!) warrants a modifier to the check.

Advanced: For games with a roll-under proficiency system (AD&D 1st or 2nd edition, if the optional rules are used), the player should make a proficiency check with the most applicable proficiency or use the rules for making non-proficient checks if no suitable proficiency exists.

LotFP: Replace ability checks with skill rolls as appropriate. If no matching skill exists, fall back on the Basic system described above.

5e: Make an ability check as normal, adding a bonus from any applicable proficiencies. Assume a difficulty of 10.

Part 2 here.

Overland Movement: A Small Useful Table

I've recently started running a wilderness exploration based sandbox campaign (the Dreamlands). It's actually the first time I've been dealing with overland travel as a regular part of a campaign since I was a kid and didn't care about such things as movement rates and terrain types.

Nowadays I do care about such things, and have found myself fumbling around in the Labyrinth Lord rule book, trying to work out how many miles per day a party can travel through various types of terrain. It's not that complicated, I know, but somehow it's non-trivial enough that I have to spend time each session recalculating it. So I thought I'd try to come up with an easier system. All I've done is pre-calculated all the fractions and formatted it all into a table (see above) so that only a single look-up is required. Simply cross-reference the party's movement rate (i.e. the movement rate of the slowest character in the group) with the terrain they're travelling through, and you get the number of miles they can move in one day. The percentage chance of getting lost is also listed, for convenience.

I hope someone else finds it helpful too!

Is Writing for D&D the Ultimate in Short Story Writing?

The new campaign I've just started running (the Dreamlands campaign) is taking the form of a hex-crawl. So I have a hex map with loads of dungeons placed on it, and a list of descriptions of interesting things in some (eventually all, I hope!) of the hexes.

As I was writing a hex description last night, it occurred to me that writing for D&D is perhaps the perfect occupation for someone who loves to create sketches of scenes, locations, characters, stories; but who has no desire to flesh them out into a traditional "literature" form as full or short stories. I am such a person.

Thinking about it some more, this principle can be seen in many aspects of D&D writing: hex descriptions, dungeon room descriptions, new monsters, new spells, magic items, etc. All these things (at least in OSR circles) take the form of a sketch, with many details deliberately left vague and intriguing -- to be fleshed out during play, as needed.

Not being versed in any theories of literature, cultural studies or suchlike, these thoughts don't really lead me anywhere in particular. But I found it to be an interesting observation.

Here's the hex description which inspired these thoughts:

Players in the Dreamlands campaign, you might want to stop reading at this point!

Valley of hands -- giant stone hands lying in the forest. At the top of the valley, an ancient stair leads up to a hill where stand the remnants of a stone tower. The tower is completely overgrown, but a magically sealed trapdoor leads down to a cellar. In the cellar is: a large chest full of purple/green rugs & silks (600gp), shelves full of books -- how to animate the stone hands of the valley for one night, plus the spells command construct and inhabit figurine. A fey warlock "Malthus" trapped in a cube of green ice. He is chaotic and treacherous, hates Queen Malithandria. A PC can trade his or her soul with Malthus in return for fey powers.

Wilderness encounter tables

Another thing I've got planned, with this work on collating monster lists, is to create some classic D&D style random wilderness encounter tables for Savage Worlds. There are encounter tables in Advanced Dungeons & Savages, but they only include the creatures from Savage Beasts, nothing from the Fantasy Companion, so I thought it'd be a useful and fun project to make some encounter tables using the combined monster list!

I had vague memories of there being a kind of "standard method" for making wilderness encounter tables, which I thought was in the D&D Expert set. It turns out that what I was thinking of was actually in the AD&D 2nd edition DMG. The 2-20 table. Creatures are assigned a place on the table based on their frequency in the terrain type.

2 - Very rare
3 - Very rare
4 - Rare to very rare
5 - Rare
6 - Uncommon
7 - Uncommon
8 - Uncommon
9 - Common
10 - Common
11 - Common
12 - Common
13 - Common
14 - Uncommon
15 - Uncommon
16 - Uncommon
17 - Rare
18 - Rare to very rare
19 - Very rare
20 - Very rare or unique

I also just came across some very nice ideas about including other types of encounters, which would be more campaign specific, but sounds marvellous. It ties in nicely with the classic 1d6 "dungeon room contents" table from D&D Basic, which goes something like:

1 - 2 - Monster
3 - 4 - Empty
5 - Trap
6 - Special

I love that table, and I also love the idea of a wilderness equivalent of it!