A new method for BD&D skills

I have spent a few posts explaining why I dislike the "modern" D&D method of rolling 1d20 + mods for skills. Basically, I think it doesn't work; take a look at that post if you disagree, and I would be happy to hear you out.

 Some "old school" inspired methods are obviously better in some regards - 1d6+mods, 2d6+mods, 3d6 roll under, 1d20 roll under, etc. The problem is, you must introduce a new mechanic, DCs, roll low, modifiers, etc. Not a big issue - I prefer adding new mechanics than using some alleged "unified" system that doesn't work for me - but, of course, I like multipurpose mechanics and would rather use an existing one if I can.

There are some good candidates already - the 2d6 reaction table, the thief's 1d6 and d100 skills, etc. Using 1d6 with modifiers (1-2 for hard tasks, 1-4 for easy tasks, etc), or Xd6 roll under (3d6 for ordinary tasks, 4d6 for hard tasks, etc), is also a good idea.

But now I want to propose something else: using ability scores modifiers as the DCs/TNs (Difficulty Class, Target Number, etc).

As you know, Basic D&D uses something similar to this for abilities:

	Score	Modifier	Description
	3	-3	Abysmal
	4-5	-2	Terrible
	6-8	-1	Poor
	9-12	0	Average
	13-15	+1	Fair
	16-17	+2	Good
	18	+3	Great

The system I propose uses the modifiers above as DCs.

For example, a "great" feat of strength would have DC 3. A simple, "average" task will be DC 0. If your ability modifier is equal or greater than the DC, you will usually succeed.

To meet the DC, you rely on two things simultaneously:

a) Your ability modifier;

b) A 3d6 roll that generates another modifier (from -3 to +3) in the same way you ability does.

The sum of a) + b) must be equal or greater to the DC for you to succeed.

It's basically Dice + Modifiers versus DC, with a twist: the dice will generate a result between -3 and +3 instead of 3 to 18.

For example:

To succeed in a DC 2 STR test, you roll 3d6, which in turn generate a modifier from -3 to +3, according to the table above. If you roll 14, for example, you get a +1 modifier. Add that to your STR modifier, and if the total is equal or greater than 2, you succeeded. In that example, you would need a STR of 14 or more to succeed.

As a general rule, if the DC is greater than your ability modifier, you will usually fail, because you are relying on the dice to generate a positive modifier (which only happens about 25% of the time).

Another example: the GM says that picking this lock is DC 4 (a very hard task, indeed). You have a DEX of 17, and thus a +2 modifier already. When you roll 3d6, you need to get an extra +2 to reach DC 4; thus, you need to roll rolling 16 or more. If you had no DEX modifier, the task would be impossible, because the maximum bonus you can get from the dice is +3.

I've added some adjectives (inspired by Fate RPG), but the cool thing is that you don't have too. If you have been playing basic D&D for a while, you already have your own understanding of what "STR 17" means.

With that knowledge, you can just say "it would usually take someone with STR 17 to take down this door". Well, since STR 17 has a +2 modifier (as you probably memorized already), you know the DC is 2.

Keep in mind that the dice will give you no bonus/penalty about 50% of the time, and you will succeed in a DC equal to you mod about 75% of the time. So the STR 17 girl will knock down the STR 17 door three times out of four.

That door has no chance.

Add fiddly bits to taste.

- If you have some kind of advantage, skill, tool, etc, just add +1 to the final modifier (not to the roll). This is not too dissimilar to advantage in 5E or NWP in 2E.

- Use a +1/+2+3 bonus for novice/skilled/expert. So an expert in stealth can ordinarily sneak around as if he had DEX 18, even if his DEX is only 12.

Take all this into account when calculating the modifier needed: if you need not only an expert doctor, but the most talented doctor around, you probably need a +5 or +6 to succeed.

Of course, if you roll better than needed, you use the difference to your next roll, get some kind of advantage, etc. It works both ways.

Mathematically, this works way better than most alternatives mentioned above, specially for conflicts. The STR 18 will seldom get defeated by the STR 10 guy, but the STR 16 guy has a fair shot (in direct conflicts, I would give ties to the strongest, by the way). 

It is also quite easy; the total modifier will often be equal to you unmodified modifier (pardon the pun), and you'll never need to add big numbers. In fact, the DCs will seldom be greater than 3 or 4, etc.

Interpreting the results is near automatic: rolling 14 means and above average performance, and rolling a 3 an abysmal one. When writing adventures, abbreviations come naturally: you can describe a door with "great" resistance, or mention an DEX 16 check, for example.

There are many other methods you could use, but this avoids some of the pitfalls of the first that come to mind (requiring fate dice, harder math, further tables, further subsystems, dice interpretation, etc).

The main strength of this system is familiarity (and the bell curve, if you mind this kind of stuff); if you don't think this is important, you could just ditch abilities completely, keep the mods and roll 1d6, for example.

There is some caveats, though. This doesn't take level into account (if you're not using "skill slots" or similar, you might add a fraction of your level to the roll, not the modifier, so that only the highest level thieves could fool someone smarter than themselves, for example), nor the difference between STR 13 and STR 15, for example. Still, better than most solutions I have seem.

So, what do you think? Do you know a better way to do skills in BD&D? Have you heard this idea mentioned years ago? Do you think it doesn't work at all? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Coming up... (what would you like too read next?)
- An adaptation of this system for 5E.
- Use this exact same table for everything: reaction rolls, retainers, morale, weather, turning undead, etc.
- Could this affect combat somehow? (Hint: the answer is yes)
- Something else entirely.

Easy monster creation for BD&D

Continuing my series on simple fighters and wizards, I will skip clerics and thieves for now and go directly to simple monsters. I'm starting to think my ideal version of D&D would be somewhere between the simplicity of B/X and the (limited) complexity of BECMI, with some stuff from other editions (specially 0E and 5E) thrown in; this posts are made with Moldvay and Mentzer in mind.

One thing I like about modern editions of D&D is that there are often clear instructions for monster creation. I am not saying that they are necessarily good (or bad, or inaccurate, or incredibly complicated), but they can be very helpful. There is no clear guidelines for old school D&D, and even reverse engineering is difficult, since monsters with the same HD can often have completely different ACs, attacks, damage, etc. If anyone has successfully created an exact formula to find out damage and AC from HD, I would be very happy to hear it; my own attempts have been fruitless.

To create monsters in old school D&D, you must either develop an instinct and guess the appropriate stats, or come up with your own guidelines. Here are mine.

The reason I created this is basically to use a different way of running monsters while I'm GMing, which will have to wait for the next post, since it's based on the damage-per-HD idea explained below.

If you want to skip all the explanations, just skip to the table at the end.

The reasoning behind the table is based on three things:

- The D&D design principles or patterns that I outlined here. For example, the fact that HP and BAB increases more dramatically and more often than AC or damage in almost all editions of D&D.

- This quote by Gary Gygax:

I say that as barbarians get d12 for HPs, then clearly extrapolation of the same principle must apply to large and vigorous creatures. This mitigates the potential increase in PC prowess. As a matter of fact, adult critters were assigned 7-12 HPs per HD in my AD&D campaign--have been given the same in what I have designed for the C&C game system. Also, with increase in damage due to Strength, all large and powerful monsters, including ogres and giants, gain a damage bonus equal to their number of HD.

Admittedly, this is not in the UA work, but it logically follows, and would have been included in the revised edition of AD&D that I was planning.

Actually I planned to go through the monsters' roster and re-assign HD types--d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12. While doing that in regards to the HPs of each type, the monsters' chance to hit based on number of HD would not be affected.

- This bit from Jens D.'s blog, based on the Rules Cyclopedia. The guidelines in the RC aren't for monster creation, but for making bigger versions of existing monsters. Still, they are great for starting material. You choose a modifier from -3 (much smaller) to +3 (much larger) and then:

• Hit points: Add the modifier as points per Hit Die.*
• Attack rolls: Add the modifier to the roll.
• Damage: Add the modifier per die of damage.*
• Saves: Subtract the modifier from the roll.
• Armor: Subtract the modifier from the AC.

* There should always be a minimum of 1 point per die. 

Here is how I would calculate a monster's traits from HD:

- Hit points: 4 per HD. I can say its midway between the LBBs and Basic (after all, I use d6s for damage but multiple attacks for fighters), but to be honest it is just easier to calculate. You can always roll d8s or d6s, of course.

- Attack rolls: traditionally, monsters are even better at fighting than fighters; +1 to attack per HD is simple and powerful enough. I offer some alternatives below.

- Damage: 1d6+HD, a very simple method based on the Gygax quote above. It keeps the traditional pattern of "one attack can be deadly at low levels, not so much at high levels". I figure most people wouldn't appreciate a monster that does "1d6+17 damage", so I used d6s in the table below, since I'm using only d6s for damage.

- Saves: since each edition and retroclone has different saves, you can go with the traditional "saves as a level X fighter", where X is equal to HD. 

- AC: here is where I wouldn't use the RC guidelines for bigger monsters, since it would mess with the pattern of "at high levels you hit more often but take more hits to defeat an enemy". Adding half HD as a bonus to AC is good enough that you can have a 19 HD monster and still hit it with your level 19 wizard without using exception-based rules, negative AC, etc. Of course, your huge Red Dragon might need more than 20 HD using this system if you want it to be near immune from normal weapons.

You can keep things such as "extra damage per die" or "extra HP per HD (or just "bigger HD") as special powers. You can use them without changing the amount HD, as RC suggests, and without changing attack bonus, as Gygax suggests. Think about it: big monsters would be tougher and hit harder, but would be no harder to hit nor would they hit more often.

(And if you want rules for breath weapons, multiple attacks, spells, monsters made of iron, and so on, just stay tuned).

You might have noticed that this might make monsters way tougher than adventures of similar level, specially if they have lots of HD. This is intentional (also, quite common in BD&D); a level 20 fighter has an army, and she should use it when fighting a 20 HD dragon. Also, high level adventures have magic weapons, spells, etc; if you're not using those, you might want to limit monster BAB, use the Fighter progression, or use 3/4 instead of the Fighter's 2/3, for example. My example below uses diminishing returns after 20 HD (to be honest, I would go out of my way to use +1 per HD, the fighter's progression, or any simple formula, but then again you don't need a table for that).

So, without further ado, here is the table. For intermediary values (HD 1+1, for example), use the next line when calculating BAB and damage, but not AC (HD 1+1 has +2 attack bonus and causes 1d+2 damage, for example, but 9 AC and 5 HP), to keep with the idea that this kinds of creatures punch above their weight class. 

	HD	Average HP	Damage		Descending AC	Ascending AC	Attack Bonus
	1 – 1	3	1d6		9	10	-
	1	4	1d6	+1	9	10	+1
	2	8	1d6	+2	8	11	+2
	3	12	2d6		8	11	+3
	4	16	2d6	+1	7	12	+4
	5	20	2d6	+2	7	12	+5
	6	24	2d6	+3	6	13	+6
	7	28	3d6		6	13	+7
	8	32	3d6	+1	5	14	+8
	9	36	3d6	+2	5	14	+9
	10	40	4d6		4	15	+10
	11	44	4d6	+1	4	15	+11
	12	48	4d6	+2	3	16	+12
	13	52	4d6	+3	3	16	+13
	14	56	5d6		2	17	+14
	15	60	5d6	+1	2	17	+15
	16	64	5d6	+2	1	18	+16
	17	68	6d6		1	18	+17
	18	72	6d6	+1	0	19	+18
	19	76	6d6	+2	0	19	+19
	20	80	6d6	+3	-1	20	+20
	21	84	7d6		-1	20	+21
	22	88	7d6	+1	-2	21	+21
	23	92	7d6	+2	-2	21	+22
	24	96	8d6		-3	22	+22
	25	100	8d6	+1	-3	22	+23
	26	104	8d6	+2	-4	23	+23
	27	108	8d6	+3	-4	23	+24
	28	112	9d6		-5	24	+24
	29	116	9d6	+1	-5	24	+25
	30	120	9d6	+2	-6	25	+25
	31	124	10d6		-6	25	+26
	32	128	10d6	+1	-7	26	+26
	33	132	10d6	+2	-7	26	+27
	34	136	10d6	+3	-8	27	+27
	35	140	11d6		-8	27	+28
	36	144	11d6	+1	-9	28	+28

What's the point? I really like to have simple formulas instead of lists and charts for spells, skills, BAB and saving throws. Same thing with monsters - it is nice to know where to start when you want to create a monster on the fly.

Welcome to the Negaworld - A review of Black Sun Deathcrawl

You are the cursed - remnants of life in a universe of decay. 
Cannibalistic parasites, you suck a meager existence from the corpse of a long-dead reality.
Once you had nations, races, goals.
Now you are one, united at last in the unending struggle for survival in a reality that abhors you.
Once you had love and happiness and light
Now there is only the crawl
- Black Sun Deathcrawl

Black Sun Deathcrawl is a setting for DCC RPG, written by James MacGeorge. You can get it here. It is also probably the most bleak, depressing, and desperate setting ever written in the OSR, maybe for RPGs in general.

And it's awesome.

In BSD, you play The Cursed - the last survivors of a dying (dead?) world. The Black Sun ascended and basically killed everything. The only (temporary) respite can be found by digging deep into the ground, but the unholy light of this sun will creep in there too after a while, along with the unrelenting monsters. As The Cursed dig, they unknowingly weaken the structure of the planet. bringing the end closer.

There is no hope, no purpose, no end game. The only way out for the characters is losing all hope and committing suicide - even death is temporary and only makes you worse.

There is no dark humor to soften the blow, too. The tone is dead serious. The art (basically Gustave Dore's illustrations for Dante's Inferno) and layout (with big, black letter and ominous sentences) really manage to reinforce the themes.

Although the setting is very reminiscent of Dark Souls in many aspects (the dialogue with the avatar of a dead god could have been pulled from any of the games), while other remind me of The Isle of the Torturers or other somber tales by Clark Ashton Smith, the hopeless tone is more like The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, mentioned in the books appendix, or The Day After, The Dying of the Light, etc.

Amazingly, the author has succeeded in creating an actual short adventure in this bleak setting. It is very railroady, as it should be, because characters have little options in this world. While the characters are digging for their lives, they find an underground dwarven city yet untouched by the Black Sun. The curse follows the characters and [SPOILERS] eventually destroys everything [/SPOILERS].

Sounds fun, right?

To be honest, I am not sure I would ever play or run an adventure in such setting with my regular group, but I enjoyed reading it. This is what I would call "RPG poetry" in its finest form. Not something most people would actually use as written, but it might be mined for ideas and certainly makes you stuck to your seat. Or make you reevaluate your life if you're in a somber mood (no, just kidding... but it is quite depressing).

The choice of DCC (or any other "old school" minded game) is perfect for this game. Using some "modern" or custom engine to move "hope tokens", "character arcs" or something similar would detract from the experience and make the point harder to see. Destroying familiar things such as hit points and character classes is way more hurtful. The tweaks to the system - hope instead of luck, the player-vs-player method of hurting other characters to survive, etc - also enhance the experience.

We have seem plenty of cool negadungeons (basically, dungeons with no treasure, experience, or anything positive for the characters) already, most written for Lamentations of the Flame Princess really. BSD is the first Negaworld I have seen in RPGs. It's depressing, it's pointless, it's well-written and it's the most creative thing I have read in RPGs in a while.

In summary: go read it. You will not regret it.

Or maybe you will. But only because it might ruin your mood.

Mad Sun, Part I - Inspirations

I am a fan of post-apocalyptic settings, specially Dark Sun. Watching Mad Max: Fury Road made me want to revisit it, so I made a list with 50 things I would like to find in a fantasy desert wasteland. Since then, I have been meaning to expand on it.

So, here is the idea: creating my own scorched fantasy wasteland, mixing Dark Sun with different doses of its influences and some of my own favorites. I am leaning towards a more sci-fi version of the setting, but without guns, laser, automobiles or space ships. When I am finished, I might put everything together into a short PDF so you can use it as you will (with some notes on adapting it to old school games and 5e, with alternate classes, rules, etc, if there is enough interest).

This post is about the stuff I'll use for inspiration; I listed things that might have influenced Dark Sun itself to some degree to a couple of new things that I think would fit well. This is not a literary analysis of Dark Sun, but a list of cool things that might be useful for my fantasy post-apocalyptic campaign. If you like this list, you might like the rest of the series. Here we go.

Source.

1. Dark Sun and Mad Max are the main reasons I'm writing this. Always been a fan of both, and Fury Road, of course, was one of the best action flicks in recent memory, with lots of gameable material - warlords, preservers, warboys, etc. Most Dark Sun books are still available to buy in PDF, and you can always turn to the Dark Sun Wiki for easy access to information.

2. Tékumel by M. A. R. Barker is, in many ways, Dark Sun "avant la lettre". Empire of the Petal Throne was published, in 1975, in the same year as Greyhawk and Blackmoor, using non-european mythologies to create an unique and very detailed setting. Hot weather, iron scarcity, strange beasts and bizarre races were played using D&D rules decades before anyone ever heard of a Thri-kreen. The best introduction to Tékumel, according to a recent post by James Maliszewski on G+, is Empire of the Petal Throne, available here.

Source.

3. The Zothique Cycle, or anything else by Clark Ashton Smith is an important influence in early D&D and pivotal to the "Dying Earth" sub-genre in which Dark Sun takes place. Necromancers and their undead legions, cultists and evil gods, all wither under a dying sun. You can find the whole series online here. A great summary of each short story can be found here. Other than Zothique, you can find inspiration in tales such as The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, which reads like a D&D adventure, and The Abominations of Yondo, which takes place in a desert full of bizarre monsters and starts like this:

The sand of the desert of Yondo is not as the sand of other deserts; for Yondo lies nearest of all to the world's rim; and strange winds, blowing from a pit no astronomer may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the gray dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns. The dark, orblike mountains which rise from its wrinkled and pitted plain are not all its own, for some are fallen asteroids half-buried in that abysmal sand. Things have crept in from nether space, whose incursion is forbid by the gods of all proper and well-ordered lands; but there are no such gods in Yondo, where live the hoary genii of stars abolished and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells.

4. Frank Herbert's Dune is another favorite. With noble families vying for power, political intrigue, psychic abilities, teleportation and giant Sandworms instead of dragons, I think one could use even more inspiration from Herbert to create something that would be at the same time more novel and more palatable to audiences accustomed to Game of Thrones and House of Cards.

Source.

5. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom is another obvious inspiration. Taking place in the red deserts of Mars, with six-limbed monsters that have been already been included in some version of D&D or other (such as the white apes and banths) and humanoid "races" that would feel at home in Dark Sun or Carcosa (see below), Burroughs' stories of planetary romance make a great fit for D&D adventures, specially the more "epic" ones, with idealistic heroes saving damsels in distress. While the notion of damsels in distress is antiquated, there is plenty of awesome in Burroughs that you can use. See this snippet from wikipedia, for example:

Upon reaching 1,000 years of age almost all Martians undertake a pilgrimage on the River Iss, expecting to find a valley of mystical paradise; what they find is in fact a deathtrap, populated by ferocious creatures and overseen by a race of cruel, cannibal priests known as Therns, who perpetuate the Martian religion through a network of spies across the planet.

His works are in the public domain in the U.S. and can be found here.

Source.

6. Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa deserves mention as a recent effort to create an interesting D&D wasteland, using Lovecraftian horrors instead of aliens or dragons, which is a great idea. Magic is evil, civilizations is ruled by "village states", races are separated by color (although with less interesting detail than Barsoom), and there are ruins of old, maleficent civilizations all around. Zak S has suggested using it a template for a new Dark Sun here. Although he doesn't sound like a fan of the original box setting in this post, the idea makes sense.

7. Brom is, of course, the quintessential Dark Sun artist, who created much of the look and feel of the setting, but you can look for inspiration in other artists, too. Here is a couple of ideas.
Richard Corben's comic book DEN is mentioned as an influence to Dark Sun by Steve Winter, according to Wikipedia - it looks somewhat like Barsoom with lots of nudity. Besides doing an adaptation of The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, Corben apparently created the first graphic novel, Bloodstar, a Robert E. Howard adaptation that depicts the heroes fighting lovecraftian monsters in a post-apocalyptic land.
I am a fan of Moebius desert landscapes and weird vistas myself, and Moebius drawings for Dune can inspire a different vision from the more familiar one from David Lynch.

Source.

8. The Fallout videogame series is too good to pass. Although the retofuturistic vibe has little to do with Dark Sun, the series has lots of useful ideas that could easily be adapted to such setting - most of them related to radiation, mutation, factions and hidden vaults, besides using a sandbox structure that is ideal to my favorite style of play.

9. Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. Since they have been mentioned a few times already, I feel they deserve an entry. Lovecraft you can use for monsters and gods, and Howard for the Sword&Sorcery vibe. As you know, Conan is often fighting monsters from the Cthulhu Mythos.

10. And, why not, Tatooine, from Star Wars. That's what people have been talking about these days, right? Sarlaacs, sand raiders, banthas, shady taverns and powerful hermits with mind-controlling powers would all fit the bill.