DTRPG's Halloween sale is on!

The DTRPG Halloween sale is on!

Most of my own books are included!

I might get the Hyperborea DMG for myself... any other recommendations?

I will include more deals as I find them!

Some of my usual recommendations are included in the sale:

* Teratogenicon, my monster maker (check the previews!).

* Dark Fantasy Basic, my B/X neoclone.

* Silent Legions; 

* The Nameless Grimoire.

* HYPERBOREA - which I reviewed here - is also included.

(affiliate links)

Make your own D&D skill system!

The various D&D skill/ability systems vary in how much they rely on ability scores and level; some abilities (e.g., forage in B/X) are unrelated to both things.

We could discuss endlessly about which way is better. I like a mix of both. Should a 15th level fighter be equal or better at foraging or knocking down doors than a 1st-level fighter?

Well, you can decide for yourself. Here is how.

Give a rating, from 0 to 5, to assess how important you think ability scores are. Do the same for levels - the sum should be 5 most of the time. For example, if you think ability scores are much more important than levels, you can rate abilities 4 and levels 1.

Simply multiply your ability score and your level for the number you chose, sum it up, and you have your percentile of exceeding.

For example, if you have Strength 12, Level 5, your chance to knock down a door would be 53% (12x4+5x1).

Note that you could choose in a case-by-case basis, e.g.:

- Open doors is mostly strength, but pick locks requires more levels/skills.

- Picking locks could be Dexterity improved by only 1% per level for all classes except thieves, that get 5% per level. Same for forage and rangers.

- For tasks that are too easy or too difficult, just double or halve the percentages.

This requires some adjudicating and math, but it is overall a decent solution because:

- It is quite instinctive and easy to grasp.

- Every ability point and every level matters.

- Heroes get better at EVERYTHING, if only slightly.

- It replaces thieve's skills quite well and also gives a clear answer to "what if you're not a thief"?

- Adds no complexity to the character sheet.

I'm tempted to say each level gets you at least 2% better at (basically) everything, with each ability point giving you 3% as a starting rule.

(Even better, for some old school flavor, each score could be paired with a percentile; Figgen, pictured above, has Strength 13/55%, but we'd probably need to write down some skill percentages. Or just allow "trained" PCs to "flip" the dice, so they can count a 73 as a 37, for example, which gives the thief spectacular odds, or use some kind of "advantage" system, or just add 25% chance if trained, etc).

I'm also tempted to create a whole system out of this, with fighters improving their attacks 5% per level, plus percentile magic and saving throws... but I probably won't.

So, anyway, if you needed a new skill system (we have a few dozens, and we only needed one...), you've got it.

Additional reading:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/10/you-cant-solve-bx-skills-and-checks.html

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2024/10/skills-another-thing-that-old-d-got.html

Skills - another thing that old D&D got (mostly) right?

When I was still interested in contemporary D&D, I noticed that there are only a few skills that are not necessarily equivalent to ability scores. 

- Nature.

- Arcana.

- History.

- Medicine.

- Sleight of Hand.

- Perception? (mentioned here).

Forget Sleight of Hand for now; an agile PC picking pockets or opening locks is a strong archetype, despite the fact these are completely different skills in reality.

An indeed, in AD&D a thief with high Dex gets some bonuses to both picking pockets and locks.

Nature would include things like foraging, hunting, orienting, and tracking. In old school D&D, the first three are just X-in-chances, unrelated to ability scores (or class, level, etc.). AD&D adds tracking to rangers, but not much else.

Perception would include things like hear noise and finding traps. Modern D&D ties this to Wisdom, but there is no reason to think a wise cleric is more perceptive than a quick-thinking warrior or a sly thief.

The AD&D thief gets no Dex (or Wis) bonus to hear noise, but curiously gets a Dex bonus to find traps... A mistake, IMO.

Then there is Arcana and Medicine. These are not skills in B/X or AD&D - they are just things the mage and cleric are supposed to do (although using spells instead of skills).

Finally, there is no skill for lore - players discover that by themselves, not characters.

I don't have much of a conclusion here. Except that, maybe, some skills work nicely with ability scores, while others could simply IGNORE ability scores. 

In a modern game, having two types of skills would look strange - in contemporary D&D, for example, basically ALL d20 rolls include some ability score (attacks, saves, checks/skills). I'm not sure I'd do it myself. But it is something to consider, as it seems to work quite well in old-school D&D.

Martian Community Hexcrawl

As you might know, I've been a bit obsessed with Barsoom lately. 

While I haven't managed to write my own version of the setting so far, I've been invited to an interesting project, the Martian Community Hexcrawl. Here is part of the blurb:

This is a game jam for us to all to contribute hexes to an OSR-compatible hexcrawl  set on a science-fantasy, sword-and-planet style-”Mars”. After the game jam ends, a compilation of everyone’s work – with the caveat that I will edit it and may reject some submissions for not meeting the criteria – will go on sale. All accepted contributors will get 1 share of the 1st month’s sales profits for each 1 hex that they contribute. After that point, any further sales will go to me as the editor. Everyone retains the rights to do whatever they want – including republishing – with their own work, as well as rights to use the other contributor’s work IF AND ONLY IF they are doing so in the context of releasing their own version of the Martian Community Hexcrawl with at least 50% of the word count of their version being specific to their version. 

Anyone can participate, and there are already a few very cool hexes for you to check out.

It's been a while since I participated in community projects, but I really like the idea. I'll see if I can come up with something to add to this project... in any case, check it out and see if you can contribute too!

Three-dimensional growth and thieves

 As I've mentioned before, mages gets better in three "dimensions" as they level up.

- They get more spells.

- They get better spells.

- The spells they already have (e. g., magic missile) become more powerful.

To do something similar, the fighters need:

- Better attacks (i.e., bigger "to-hit" bonus).

- More attacks.

- The attacks get better (i.e., more damage per attack).

Not hard to do at all, especially if they get magic swords and other weapons.

(Although these things are not exactly the same - spells can attack and open doors and deceive and carry stuff, while attacks can only attack. OTOH spells are limited by spell slots while attacks are not, although the MU gets more slots as he levels).

But what about thieves? I guess they should get:

- More skills.

- Better skills.

- Improve the skills they already have.

This is a bit harder to do. 

The B/X thief gets better at their skills. They do get a couple of extra skills as they level up (reading languages and casting from scrolls - which don't get better), but these are rare (the MU gets new spells every level).

Giving thieves "skill points" like LotFP is helpful - now they can distribute them freely between "new skill" and "get better at skills you have" (well, to be precise, they don't really get new skills, since every skill starts with a 1-in-6 chance, but... it could be done if you add new skills to the game that you can only access through "points").

Still, while you get better chances of success, your successes are always the same. 

So, you get better chances of hiding or climbing - but you don't usually get to hide more people nor do you climb faster as you level up. You open locks more often, but not any faster, etc.

This is "fixed" in modern versions of D&D, but not B/X or AD&D.

One easy way to change that is adding "critical successes" of some kind for thieves' talents.

For example:

If you're using 1d100, "doubles" are now criticals. For example, if you can climb twice the distance or at twice the usual speed, and if you hide you can attack once and remain undetected.

Conversely, you could just add modifiers to these skills. "Attack and hide" imposes a -30% penalty, for example.

Even better, you could use some kind of synergy for thief skills, allowing some skills to affect others.

Single attack/damage roll (kubular), but divided in half

I think I discussed that idea at the time, but I didn't write down this exact implementation. Read that post before this one! This method has several advantages over the usual D&D method.

Here is the deal: no more damage rolls.

Just roll 1d20 plus modifiers and subtract AC, then divide by two: this is the total damage (minimum 1).

Modifiers include attack bonus and weapon rating (WR).

WR usually goes from -3 (unarmed) to +3 (heavy 2H-weapon).

A dagger has +0 WR; other weapon are easy to figure out (d6, d8 and d10 become +1, +2, +3).

Improvised weapons, gauntlets, etc, have a WR of -1 or -2.

Lets assume ascending unarmored AC 11 (like BFRPG).

A dagger hit deals an average of 3 damage against unarmored targets, a bit over the original (nice!).

A 2H-sword, OTOH, deals 3.77 damage on a hit, but hits more often than in the original BFRPG; the DPR (damage per round) is about 2.45, a bit HIGHER than the usual 2.25.

What about heavy armor? Say, Plate mail is AC 17 in BFRPG. 

To hurt someone in plate with bare hands, you need a natural 20 (realistically, you'd be more likely to hurt your hand... add some grappling rules to your game!).

A dagger will only deal 1.5 points of damage. 

A 2H sword deals an average of 2.5 damage (originally 4.5), but again the DPR is 0.8, not far form the original (0.9).

I'd definitely combine it with some "armor defeating" rules for maximum effect. E.g., cutting weapons deal 1 point of additional damage if they hit, maces get +2 to-hit against chain or heavier, axes are +1 against everybody, etc.

The sandbox railroad

Can a sandbox be a railroad?

Despite numerous definitions, sometimes I think of sandbox as "you can go anywhere in here" and railroads as "you can ONLY go this way".

But last week the PCs were exploring an unknown area of the hex map, looking for a ruined castle of legend. 

They were surrounded by forests, and had no exact clues about the location of the castle (only that it is "near the river" and a couple of clues they can find in the way), so they just wandered around a bit, looking for more information, "opening" new hexes.

(BTW, Hextml has this cool "fog of war" effect that can help you manage that).

They still haven't found the castle; I decided that it is big enough that they will see it if they cross the right hex.

So, you could say they are in a sandbox... they can go anywhere, but... until they find the castle, there is no difference. There is just more forest and rolling for random encounters.

This is not exactly a railroad, but the result is the same no matter the direction they go (again, until they find the castle).

Let me illustrate this:

Lets say the green area is a forest, brown is mountain, blue is sea.

In an hex map, if you're going from "B" to "A", you can try different ways - assuming you cannot simply draw a straight line because you don't know the EXACT location of B.

But it doesn't make a difference. It is all forest. Same speed, same chances of getting lost, same random encounters.

In fact, even if the PCs suddenly decide to go THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, to C, or if they get lost and wander into the mountains of the North, or travel South until they see the ocean... you STILL know exactly what is going to happen in the next week or so (if that's the distance from A to B).

Of course, this does not feel like a railroad if you have interesting, preexisting, features in EACH hex (which I don't).

Random features and random encounters, however, do not change the railroad "format" of this experience. If you roll to find out there is a cottage or an ogre in the new hex, it still doesn't matter if the PCs went North or South: the result would be the same.

Anyway, I don't think this is an actual railroad, because, while the PATH seems identical, the destination is different. The PCs haven't had their choices negated. Their choices are irrelevant for this week (they literally have a random encounter with an ogre whichever direction they go), but ultimately they'll arrive in a different destination.

But this is an interesting aspect to consider. There are SEVERAL dungeons scattered across my sandbox, and I'm always a bit worried that the PCs choose to go to a dungeon I'm not entirely familiar with (I cannot memorize all this stuff, TBH). 

I don't want to "force" them into a dungeon , but I'd really like to spend at least half an hour reading it before they enter.

The fact that I know exactly what happens on the way to the dungeon - NO MATTER WHICH WAY - might be an interesting tool to give me time to prepare. 

Maybe I could even roll/prepare half a dozen encounters beforehand (I'm currently using this) and know exactly what is coming in the next session - regardless of the direction the PCs take.