Why the party needs Read Languages

 Read languages is one of those spells that really depends on dungeon and setting design to be useful. If there aren't any messages to be read, nobody will bother to memorize it, let alone cast it, but it's the sort of spell that can really let the party magic-user shine beyond (or without) simply being a trump card in combat situations, as well as add tremendous depth to a campaign. 

Real-world archaeologists and treasure-hunters (not to mention spies, merchants, minstrels, travelers, historians, and other scholarly sorts) throughout the ages would probably have sold their own grandmothers into slavery for such a versatile translation tool. Dead languages, foreign tongues, heiroglyphs, pictograms, and codes and ciphers are all fertile targets for a humble 1st-level mage with a read languages spell at his disposal. If you use sci-fi elements in your D&D game, throw in alien and computer languages, too. 

Unfortunately, few published adventures or settings give such things a second thought, or even a first, which is frankly a damn shame. It's up to you, as DM, to see that your setting (whether consisting of published material or homebrew or some combination) is stocked with these elements.  Here are some possibilities for a typical fantasy RPG world.

Signs, inscriptions, plaques, graffiti, books, scrolls, tapestries, slates or tablets, coins, weapons and armor, etchings, murals, maps, labels, and other items may bear messages in unfamiliar languages. 

They could have been placed by the original builders or occupants of the dungeon, carried in by monsters as incidental treasure or clutter, or brought in or written by previous explorers. 

Information conveyed could be names or functions of rooms, instructions to operate dungeon machinery, directions, warnings, historical records, legends, prophecies, prayers, rituals, manifests of goods, epitaphs, dedications, curses (the non-magical kind,) bawdy jokes, riddles, mottos and slogans, wills, last words, exploration notes, property deeds, genealogies, ransom demands, personal communications, monograms, recipes, plans and blueprints ...

While a few can be useless or just for laughs, most should be either helpful or informative, so as not to discourage players from reading them.

Of course, not all of these things have to be written in ancient or foreign tongues. It's good to be consistent, though: if the glyphs in one room of the dungeon are in ancient Tharbanic, other features built around the same time should be too. Missives recorded in newer tongues represent different ages and circumstances, lending some verisimilitude to the setting and at the same time mixing things up a bit for the players. 

As a final note, it may be desirable to nerf the thief's standard read languages ability to affect only coded messages and the like, rather than all unfamiliar languages; otherwise, once the party has a 4th-level thief, the magic-user spell again becomes largely superfluous. 

Every player, every turn

 Something I've struggled with at my game tables in the past, and something that's happened at every table at which I've been seated as a player, too, is the time-keeping muddle in "exploration mode." It happens something like this: 

The characters move and enter a new area, where the DM describes what they see. One player immediately wants to do something, and then immediately wants to follow up on that something. Say, there's a pile of trash in the room. Player checks the pile, and DM announces there's a chest hidden in the mess. Player wants to check for traps, then open the chest, and so on. During this time, the other players are left twiddling their thumbs, until the entire sequence is resolved to the first player's satisfaction. Then another player (or maybe even the same one!) wants to check out some other feature of the area, and a similar sequence ensues. Often the most experienced or most assertive player(s) dominate(s) the decision-making, and thus the action. 

So, how many turns did the party take in that room? Which actions happened concurrently, and which sequentially? And, just as importantly, did the less assertive players get a chance to join the game, or did they end up as mere spectators while the take-charge ones (maybe unintentionally) hogged all the action? 

One solution to the problem is to go strictly turn-by-turn, with players announcing their intentions at the start of each turn. You can let the group confer for a few minutes to decide what everyone's doing, and then make the announcements, either each player speaking for his/her character, or a caller relaying everything to the DM. Another method is to let each player announce without the group conference, going clockwise around the table, and each turn rotating the first move one spot clockwise, so everyone gets chances to go first. This may be a good approach to get shy or passive players involved.

Every player should choose something to do every turn, even if it's something seemingly trivial like watching other characters do their things.

If a player chooses to do something passive, like keep watch at a doorway or observe another character opening a chest, that character should get a chance to react in the same turn if something changes. If you roll a wandering monster, the door sentry will notice it first, perhaps with a reduced or no chance to be surprised. If the characters opening the chest trigger a trap, the one watching can rush forth to aid them with healing spells or potions or some such. 

This makes exploration mode a lot more structured, interestingly not unlike combat. I sometimes wonder if that lax attitude toward exploration is one of the factors that caused the game to shift over time to a much more combat-oriented format. After all, in combat, every player gets a chance to do something each round, whether or not they're willing or able to get a word in edgewise in a group that includes more outspoken players. Why shouldn't the same hold true in other parts of the game?

New dwarf class

 I love dwarves and halflings, but I'm not a big fan of demihuman characters taking up the same adventuring classes as humans. I would like them to have a little more variety, though. I worked up a couple of new classes that, to me, fit the feel of these non-human folk for my Goblins & Greatswords rules, so I thought I'd adapt them for old school D&D too. Here's a uniquely dwarven class for B/X, Labyrinth Lord, or whatever other old school game graces your table.

Prospector

Dwarves are not, as a general rule, given to larceny, so there are no proper thieves among them. Dwarf adventurers who seek riches by their wits instead of force of arms are known as prospectors. 

RESTRICTIONS: Prospectors use six-sided dice (d6) to roll their  hit points, until 9th level, and gain +2 hit points per level thereafter until reaching their maximum of level 12. The Prime Requisite for prospectors is Wisdom, and they earn a bonus of +5% to earned experience points for a score of 13-15, and +10% for 16-18. Like standard dwarves, a prospector must have a Constitution score of 9 or higher.

A prospector may use any small or medium-sized melee weapon, favoring those that can double as tools such as axes, hammers, and picks (treat as axes in combat,) as well as crossbows and slings. They do not wear metal armor, due to it interfering with their special senses (see below,) but may wear leather armor. They cannot use shields.

They advance on the same XP progression as fighters, but use the cleric/thief attack matrices and make saving throws as a standard dwarf.

 SPECIAL ABILITIES: Prospectors have the thief abilities Open Locks, Find/Remove Traps, and Hear Noise as a thief of equal level. They also have the detection abilities of a standard dwarf, and the same chances to detect hollow spaces in stone within 10' and underground sources of water and fresh air, if any are within 120'. A prospector can sense the presence of precious metals and gems within 10' per level of experience by facing in the desired direction and concentrating for a full turn. A prospector can automatically judge the purity of precious metals simply by touching them for one round, and thus cannot be fooled by fakes, no matter how convincing.

Random resolution

 We all know a lot of good reasons to roll dice in D&D -- impartiality, inspiration, injecting the unexpected into a game. What I'm looking at in this post is when it's appropriate to use random rolls to resolve character actions in-game, whether as a formal game design choice or as an ad hoc ruling during play.

The first qualification: Assuming success and failure are both realistic possibilities, does failing at this action have interesting consequences? If not, there's no point in dragging things out. Just say "yes," maybe apply a cost in terms of time or party resources, and move on.

The second qualification is more complicated: Is it possible to fail without touching the dice, i.e. by a player's mistake or oversight?

Failure is an inherent risk of relying on player skill. A player can misjudge a risk, overlook a detail, or fail to realize the significance of a cue or clue. This happens all the time even (especially!) in games with no random elements at all, else nobody could ever win or lose a game of chess or checkers. 

In D&D, players can fail to find a secret door by not choosing to search where it is, or by failing to interact with features the DM describes in the right way to trigger it. Players can fail to detect a trap if they misinterpret or decide not to investigate the scorch marks, dried blood, or pulverized stone you describe in front of a door. Players can fail to acquire information by choosing to attack first and ask questions later, or by shrugging at that shelf full of moldy books in that out-of-the-way dungeon chamber. Players can botch a social encounter by not heeding cues, by acting unnecessarily belligerent, or many various other ways. Handled well by the DM, none of these situations need random determination, let alone character skill, to resolve them.

Picking a lock is another matter. There's no clear point at which player skill could fail. It's not normally something that is hidden, so the player isn't going to botch finding the lock. It's not a case in which most players could describe in detail how their character picks the lock, beyond the very obvious ("I insert the lockpick in the lock and poke around, keeping my hand very steady.") Unless you want lock-picking to be an automatic success (which pretty much negates the point of locks,) it's a very good candidate for a random resolution mechanic, perhaps modified by a character skill dedicated to that very task. 

Bottom line: If a possible failure state exists in player actions alone, it's usually more fun not to diminish the players' agency by bringing dice into the equation. If there's not a baked-in window for failure, and failure would drive interesting choices in play,  a random mechanic may be appropriate. 

Player skill vs. character skill

 A lot has been written on the subject of player skill vs. character skill, by minds more steeped in RPG theory than mine, but nonetheless I had some thoughts, and I'm going to write them down.

Player skill in tabletop RPGs is simply the ability of making good decisions within the context of a game*. ("Good" in the case of D&D-like games encompasses facilitating such outcomes as character survival, the acquisition of loot, discovery of interesting features, accomplishing party goals, and of course a fun time at the game table.) Perhaps I should say good, meaningful decisions. There must be enough information available to make the decision more than a mere coin toss (or worse, an obvious case of "one right answer," and the decision must produce some outcome different from other possible courses of action. It's easy to see that an emphasis on player skill is inseparable from an emphasis on player agency. Without agency, player skill never really comes into play.

*Naturally, other types of games test other areas of player skill, e.g. hand-eye coordination, agility, speed, etc. But we're not playing darts or Super Mario Bros., so these aren't of much interest here.

I would define character skill as any feature of a character that takes direct control away from the player. Character skill is usually (but not necessarily always) tied to randomized results, and represented by modifiers to (or modifications of) certain types of random rolls, e.g. a fighter's THAC0 or attack bonus, a thief's Open Lock percentage, or a cleric's Turn Undead ability. 

Note that, for purposes of this discussion, I am not considering character abilities which are completely under the control of the player to be "character skills," as such. Though a knock spell is certainly a skill possessed by a character, it is wholly the player's decision which determines how effectively it is used. 

It's often noted that old school play emphasizes player skill over character skill, but the truth is a little more nuanced than that. Clearly, character skill has a place in old school games, often a very important one. The relatively simple combat rules in many old school rule sets, for instance, rely heavily on character skill. 

To me, the maxim "player skill over character skill" really means the subordination of character skill to player skill. The decision to use a character skill in the first place belongs to the player; in essence, the player makes a strategic decision and then delegates its implementation to the character. The player says, "I attack the orc," and the particulars of when to thrust, when to slash, how high to feint and parry, are left to the character's fictional expertise to handle, subsumed in a couple of dice rolls and modifiers. The DM doesn't say, "Roll for X" until the player announces, "I try to do X." In this way, character skill is simply a tool in the player skill toolbox: it informs the player's management of risk. 

(The only exception to this principle I can think of is saving throws, which are usually called for by the DM when player skill has already failed.)

Another aspect of "player skill over character skill" is that character skill should never replace the need for player skill, and as a corollary, should not override or reverse the results of player skill. For instance, social skills (persuasion, negotiation, intimidation, or *ugh* seduction) should not make it unnecessary for the players to actually role-play dealings with monsters and NPCs, nor should they be allowed to overturn natural results of role-playing. If a player, in-character says something an NPC would find highly insulting or threatening, the NPC should react accordingly, regardless of how high the persuasion roll is, and if the player offers a gift or bribe the NPC would find very attractive, it's inappropriate to have it rejected because of a failed persuasion check. If a player declares her character searches the right place in an appropriate way, the character should find what's there to be found, not overruled by a bad dice roll.

Character skill should not be a crutch for players who don't want to actively interact with the game environment, nor for DMs who can't be bothered to create details (either during prep or in the middle of a game) to properly inform player choices. It's easy (and lazy) to say, "Roll a search check!" when a player announces he wants to search the area. It's harder, but more fulfilling, to say, "You see a large wooden desk with many drawers, books piled on top, and beside it a pile of moldy rags. What do you do?" It's easy and lazy to say, "Roll a persuasion check!" when a PC wants something from an NPC; it's harder and more fulfilling to give this NPC motivations and desires and have the players figure out how to press the right buttons to get what they want from him.