We are reading the original DMG - the ultimate DM book! - but from a B/X and OSR point-of-view.
In part III we will tackle:
ALIGNMENT 23
— ALIGNMENT LANGUAGE 24
— CHANGING ALIGNMENT 25
MONEY 25
— PLAYER CHARACTER STARTING MONEY 25
— PLAYER CHARACTER EXPENSES 25
— VALUE AND REPUTED PROPERTIES OF GEMS AND JEWELRY 25
— NOTE REGARDING THE MAGICAL PROPERTIES OF GEMS, HERBS, et al 27
ARMOR, ARMOR CLASS, & WEAPONS 27
— TYPES OF ARMOR AND ENCUMBRANCE 27
— DEXTERITY ARMOR CLASS BONUS 28
— WEAPON TYPES, “TO HIT” ADJUSTMENT NOTE 28
HIRELINGS 28
— STANDARD HIRELINGS 28
— EXPERT HIRELINGS 29
HENCHMEN 34
— LOYALTY OF HENCHMEN & HIRELINGS, OBEDIENCE, AND MORALE 36
ALIGNMENT
This part describes what the various alignments mean. It contains a simple explanation; law/chaos are groups vs. individuals, and good/evil is respect for human rights versus might makes right. Neutrality means balance. It doesn't really put an end to the discussion (I'm not even sure that this it's possible), and it is not perfectly faithful to Anderson nor Moorcock, but it's a good start.
It adds a few notes on planes and their alignments, and stresses the importance of keeping tracks of PC's actions and change their alignment accordingly. "It is of utmost importance to keep rigid control of alignment behavior with respect to such characters as serve deities who will accept only certain alignments".
Next, we have a section on alignment language that aims to avoid player abuse, once again, and one more section describing the penalties for changing alignment.
Makes me wonder - if alignment is so prone to player abuse, maybe we should try some other approach?
I am not a big fan of alignment, nor do I think this solves most questions (such as nepotism, euthanizing evil creatures, unjust laws, individual rights against the group, etc.) - see " additional reading" for my take on alignments.
This is still better and clearer than most modern takes.
MONEY
The section on money starts by saying "the amount of funds which each player begins with is kept low to prevent the game from becoming too easy". I think I'm seeing a trend here. Then, we have player character expenses ("not less than 100 gold pieces per level of experience per month") - possibly for the same reason. You must consider the maintenance of henchmen, strongholds, taxes and tithes. I'm not sure I'm particularly interested in running a game about accounting, and I certainly dislike dealing with taxes.
Next, we have a whole page on gems - their size, color, value, quality, and so on. It also describes their magical properties, and adds some fantastical examples ("Star Ruby: translucent ruby with white “star” center") that I didn't know (but they actually exist!). I find this extremely flavorful and interesting. It is by no means essential to your games, but very cool. This is top-tier "random table" stuff.
ARMOR, ARMOR CLASS & WEAPONS
A detailed account of various types of armor and shields, and some notes on Dexterity as it relates to AC. Can basically be used as written for B/X, if you care for this much detail. There's also an important note about a subject we've been discussing lately:
WEAPON TYPES, “TO HIT” ADJUSTMENT NOTE
If you allow weapon type adjustments in your campaign please be certain to remember that these adjustments are for weapons versus specific types of armor, not necessarily against actual armor class. In most cases, monsters not wearing armor will not have any weapon type adjustment allowed, as monster armor class in such cases pertains to the size, shape, agility, speed, and/or magical nature of the creature. Not excluded from this, for example, would be an iron golem. However, monsters with horny or bony armor might be classed as plate mail if you so decide, but do so on a case-by-case basis. Naturally, monsters wearing armor will be subject to weapon type “to hit” adjustment.
HIRELINGS
The cost and description of various types of hirelings, including experts (alchemists, armorers, spies, and, of course, gem-cutters). The most interesting part here, in my opinion, is the list of troops and their organization. For example:
Captain: A captain is nothing more than a capable leader, a fighter of 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th level (according to the d10 score, 1-4 = 5th, 5-7 = 6th, 8-9 =7th, 0 = 8th) but NOT capable of working upwards. A captain can command as many scores of troops as he or she has levels, i.e., 4th level enables command of 80 men, 5th level enables command of 100 men, etc. In addition, the level of the captain dictates the number of lieutenants which can be controlled. This is exclusive of serjeants and any auxiliary types such as servants, cooks, etc. The monthly cost of a captain is 100 gold pieces per level.
This makes high-level fighters a lot more interesting in mass combat - and they get a clearer place in society. Even tough these are not PC fighters ("NOT capable of working upwards"), they both indicate the potential capabilities of fighters and also sketch how an old school "warlord" class could look like (my version is a lot simpler, but not as focused on mass combat).
Likewise, the book contains a very detailed (two pages long!) description of another expert, the sage. Again, extremely interesting and could perfectly be a class of its own. It would be a fine addition to B/X and AD&D games. As most things you'll find is this book, it is unnecessarily complex, but full of inspiration.
HENCHMEN
Henchmen are individual adventurers, not merely laborers, employees or experts. They have PC classes, go to dungeons with the PCs and get a share of treasure, so they get more attention/detail. This section describes their classes, levels, races, costs, and hiring process. Their personality traits are described in other part of the book (PERSONAE OF NONPLAYER CHARACTERS). The organization is still strange, but at least we know where to look.
This section finishes with an entire page of modifiers to henchmen loyalty, obedience and morale. Each individual entry is interesting - I specially like the idea, for example, that while most creatures prefer to follow lieges of similar alignment, chaotic creatures make bad leaders and followers in general. However, keeping track of all these things looks like a nightmare. I prefer the much simpler 2d6 checks of B/X. Anyway, here is a good summary:
What have we learned today?
Once again - "lots of cool tables, but everything seems a bit unnecessarily complex, sometimes redundant". We have gems that we can use as written if you want that kind of detail, various troops for mass combat games, and two potential new classes waiting for a B/X adaptation: the commander and the sage.
Coming next... TIME! SPELLS! (prepare yourself: part IV is my favorite part of the DMG so far!)
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Additional reading (on alignment):
Pages 23-28
ReplyDeleteAlignment - character behavior is supposed to be tied to alignment. It feels like B/X doesn't emphasize the tie to behavior as much, but maybe that's not true. I like the idea of alignment as flavor and maybe as part of a faction type high level play, but during regular adventuring it feels strange.
Allignment continued - Gygax refers to the Character Alignment Graph and the Known Planes of Existence. Time to break out the PHB. The visual matching up of the outer planes and the alignment graph is nice and clever - never noticed that before.
Alignment enforcement - I've heard people discuss the alignment enforcement as a sort of balancing mechanism for certain classes like the paladin which is typically considered very strong, but requires some specific behaviors that - in theory - make the class not just "a fighter but better". I like this idea but, I think the DM using alignment as a stick is maybe not the best method to encourage specific roleplay. Probably a pretty interesting piece of innovation though in 1979. Strong characters that have burdensome obligations to balance them is still a very compelling idea.
Allignment language - I buy the idea of cross-species, cross-culture languages, but then the restrictions described are so tight that it's not clear when they can actually be used. Can a party, of mixed alignment, use the Lawful Evil tongue to negotiate with Lawful Evil Orcs? Is that considered "public"? Gygax clarifies: "Alignment language is used to establish credentials only after initial communications have been established by other means" seems to indicate no. To me it seems that alignment language should exist to facilitate communication with monsters, but it seems too restricted. I'm not sure what Gygax wants alignment almost to be used for.
Changing Alignment - Again, threatening loss of a level is maybe not the best way to encourage specific character roleplay. Curious about the reference to "Day to day acquisition of cleric spells". Alignment change caused by curses and such is interesting, basically level drain. It seems like the option to regain drained levels and such on returning to original alignment would create a disconnect between the player's desires (bring character back to full power) and their character's (continue to exist in newly aligned form)
Money - One of my biggest gripes with OSE is the lack of systems to extract money from the player characters. M-U's can spend a bunch of money on spell research, but actually the B/X text is pretty clear that they expect your M-U will learn spells on leveling "off screen" via mentor for free, so even that's dubious.
Player character expenses:
- general: 100 GP per level, per month
- maintenance of henchman: 100 GP per level, per month (henchman level, I assume) plus treasure shares.
- maintenance of stronghold: 1% of total cost of stronghold per month
- other: taxation, levies, religious organization contribution
DM is encouraged not to "give rise to excess funds on hand in the campaign" all good advice to port directly into your B/X campaign, where an overabundance of coin is even more common due to no XP for magic items. 1% per month for a stronghold is actually pretty reasonable I'd think. Allegedly, modern homeowners should budget 1% per year for home repair - which doesn't include stronghold considerations like food, staff, consumables, etc. For all the shade that gets thrown at Gygax mentioning "taxes" this section seems pretty solid to me.
"Strong characters that have burdensome obligations to balance them is still a very compelling idea."
DeleteAgree in theory, but in practice this is hard to enforce, as it usually puts more burden into the GM.
Money - it is nice to have costs associated with stuff. Might be too much notekeeping, but makes sense when you have real state.
Pt 2
ReplyDeleteGems - odd place place for this system, I'd think it would be somewhere in the treasure section (page 120). That said, I'm in love with this section. In particular, the "increase or decrease of worth beyond base value" table, which allows for some very high value gems. High value, portable treasure is really necessary to allow higher level characters to actually loot something worth a significant chunk of XP that they can carry. The most valuable treasure type is AD&D 1e is type H with an avg of 77k, while the most valuable treasure type in B/X is also type H at 61k. I bet, on average, a much higher percentage of the AD&D type H wealth is concentrated in the gems, and potentially carried away without a huge logistics effort (wagons, carts , porters, etc). Also the gem descriptions are great too - very useable set of tables.
Jewelry - similar to gems, MUCH higher average values compared to B/X.
Reputed magical properties of gems - very fun, good inspirational material. Curious where Gygax got the inspiration for these particular effects. Good GM inspiration for describing magical things.
Rare commodities - more good stuff. Bunch of units of measure I'm not familiar with (scruple, gill).
Armor and encumbrance - I'm not sure exactly how encumbrance works in AD&D, probably need to check the PHB. Also, I'm pretty sure "plate mail" nor "ring mail" nor "studded leather" are historical armor types that were used. Not that it really matters for the game. Does the Weapons vs Armor system account for all these armor types individually?
Helmets - I'm *pretty sure* this rule can be stripped out. Little too much detail imo
Shields - large shield bonus vs missiles is actually kind of nice, I wouldn't mind that. I don't *love* trying to keep track of different AC's vs different attacks, but usually the players will be keeping track here, so the system can be offloaded from the DM mostly.
Dexterity armor class bonus - specifically omits the restrictions to Dex bonus for heavier armor that later editions added. Like the helmet section, gygax references attacks from the side or rear. I'm not totally sold that player facing can or should be tracked most of the time. Feels like a wargame unit facing holdover to me.
Weapon types, "to hit" adjustment note - does the MM call out what types of armor the monsters typically wear (in conjunction with their AC?). Curious how often it's clear just what kind of Armor a monster has.
"odd place place for this system" - we will be seeing a lot of that! ;)
Delete"Does the Weapons vs Armor system account for all these armor types individually?" Nope! It is something I mentioned din other post; the WvA system seems to assume certain ACs require a shield, for example which is not true.
" does the MM call out what types of armor the monsters typically wear (in conjunction with their AC?)". No - judge "on a case-by-case basis".
Weapons vs Armor - that's what I saw spot checking the MM.
DeleteAnthony Huso mentioned that he uses WvA only to adjust only player attacks here: https://www.thebluebard.com/post/combat-part-iii-weapon-speed-factor-sucks-and-other-myths
which makes sense as a way to not overload the DM. I think he's ignoring the note about only applying WvA to actual armor, and applying it to specific AC's, which seems much easier to keep track of.
Good post. But I agree - I don't think WvA is intended to be used against all monsters.
DeleteI might be going a little overkill on these comments, ha. Alignment feels like it's a very interesting idea but doesn't mesh well with the incentives and risks of the game. Does your character forgo killing monsters and looting treasure in order to adhere to their alignment? Do they risk getting themselves permanently killed? The game structures do not reward this kind of behavior.
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of the Moorcockian cosmic struggle where low level adventurers become movers and shakers in the eternal battle between law and chaos BUT I don't know how that actually works as a game. Some sort of transition to faction play and warning perhaps.
*faction play and wargaming
Delete"I might be going a little overkill on these comments" - Definitely not, your comments are very useful and I enjoy the discussion!
DeleteI might have one or more things to say on Moorcockian alignment in the future.
Basically, for many people (except Elric etc.), deities rarely appear, which allows people who worship Chaos deities to join a party of neutral or even lawful folks - provided no one is a zealot, fanatic, etc.
Yeah I'm on board for that.
DeleteAlignment works pretty decently as a basic NPC faction structure and world building tool, so I like having it around. But strongly tying PC behavior to Alignment isn't something I've seen done well.
Definitely. Mixing factions with behavior creates a huge confusion.
Deletehttps://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/03/on-alignment-part-i-alignment-origins.html
Yeah very good take there. Law, Chaos and Neutral are solidly flavorful fantasy wargame factions, and alignment languages makes some sense as troop coordination consideration.
DeletePart 3
ReplyDeletePages 28- 37
Standard Hirelings - as usual with most old school d&d, the economics are pretty wonky. Charging a character 1 sp for anything only really matters when characters are brand new and broke. Decent list though - good to have to give the DM an idea for estimating costs
Expert Hirelings - one thing I find interesting about many of the expert Hirelings that I really like - none of them have shops set up for you to go to. You can go find an Alchemist, but in order to acquire their services, you need to be a 7th level M-U, find them, pay them up front, set them up with a shop and pay them monthly. The B/X wages are in monthly numbers, but it doesn't get in to what that employment looks like.
Expert Hirelings continued - there's an interesting note pertaining to armorers, engineer-architects, jewler-gemcutter and weapon makers about adding 10% of the cost of the item to their monthly costs. Not sure I really understand the model here and how it interacts with PHB prices for things. How much does it cost in total to employ an armorer to make a suit of plate armor? 100 GP / month + 400 gp for the plate + 40 gp extra? Or are you not paying for the direct cost in this employment model?
Another thing that doesn't show up (from B/X) - the rule about gaining a class if a level 0 type survives an adventure. Makes sense given the way the systems are set up.
ReplyDelete