Some RPG plans por 2020

I know, the best-laid plans of mice and men and yadda yadda. I didn't succeed in everything I wanted in 2019, but I wrote some RPG stuff that made me happy.

And 2020 is the year of the double critical, so I'll stay optimistic!

RPG-wise, what I want to do in 2020 is publish a few books. Some are already written, some are just vague ideas at this point, and some are in the middle.

ALL are related to the stuff I write in this blog, mostly because this is the stuff that is on my mind.

Here is what I've got so far.

Dark Fantasy series

I have two more books for my Dark Fantasy series: settings and magic items. 

I also wrote a book with 100 magic weapons for Dark Fantasy. I like the result. If people like it, I might make a few more (have a few ideas for armor and other magic items).

I am planning to have these three books out before the end of the third trimester.

I'm very, very tempted to write a Dark Fantasy Cyclopedia of sorts. That would include ALL the stuff I have plus a few things from the Teratogenicon (see below). And I want to revise and update a few things from Dark Fantasy Basic. If I do this, I think I'd like to have a print version to use at my table.

This might be lots of work, so maybe I'll leave it for last.

UPDATE [2020]: 100 magic weapons was made available in January. Dark Fantasy Magic Items and Dark Fantasy Settings are available since February.

Teratogenicon

The Teratogenicon is written. Now I've got some revising to do. The art (by Rick Troula) is not finished yet, but it is looking GREAT so far.

I think we might get this finished before July.

I really like this project, and I want it to be huge. However, I'm not sure if everyone feels like me about monsters. In short: that they should be more varied and interesting, and that this is more important than stat blocks.

Anyway, this is happening regardless. I really hope you like it. If lots of people want it, there might be a print version.

UPDATE [2020]: Teratogenicon is here! And it's beautiful!

Fifth Edition stuff

I have been thinking a lot about 5e lately. I feel I could create an easier, faster version of 5e without losing anything significant. I think I could reduce the relevant parts of 5e to about 100-200 pages. It looks like hard work, but I have the SRD to work with. I dunno. There are a few good books on the market that do that already.

My manual of arms book didn't get much traction, reviews, comments, etc. I'm unsure about making one for armor (and stunts, options, etc.).

There is no date for that so far.

UPDATE [2020]: nope. See here.

Setting stuff

I have a few settings in mind, but nothing is written. Well, some ideas were added to the Teratogenicon and Dark Fantasy Settings, but a have no "setting book" yet. 

I feel a bit silly about inventing names for places, races, people... I don't even USE published settings as written, I added stuff from multiple places, and my books are like that, more suggestions than hard rules, so not sure how useful it would be for other people.

Anyway, I am curious about creating a gonzo, post-apocalyptic setting from this and this. And maybe this and this. In short, my own version of Dark Sun.

There are other ideas too, maybe I'll test the waters a little before I dive in.

There is no date for that so far.

UPDATE [2020]: nope. See here.

Stay tuned!

Here is my idea if you want to keep track of this stuff. I'll update THIS post during the entire year, giving you links as these things come out. See how I wrote "UPDATE [2020]" under each topic? Yeah, I plan to use these blank spaces as soon as I can.

If I fail, well, feel free to call me out in the comments!

Also, I'm writing a second post about my "2020 RPG resolutions" in a couple of days, specifically to ask what would YOU like me to do. 

Do you want more blogging or more publishing? Do you want OSR, 5e, or both? Lots of arts, lots os writing, or both? Print or PDF? Let me know in the next post... Or, if you can't wait, let me know right here!

D&D sells you fish, but won't teach you to fish [Part I]

"Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime"... Or so the saying goes.

So, here is the thing. D&D (and pathfinder, etc.) is selling you fish. Classes, races, spells, etc.

Take the 5e PHB, for example. Tons of great stuff. You buy the game, make some choices, and you get a character, and you're ready to play. Not much effort needed. I really like this book.

Same for the Monster Manual. You get a big list of monsters. Find the monster you need, and you're ready to go.

Modules are basically the same thing. You buy more races, monsters, adventures, spells, etc. There is not much material on creating your classes, races, monsters, etc. These should be on the DMG.

And this is great - I love monster manuals, I love cool adventures, and I really like the 5e PHB. The DMG... is a bit disappointing, but we'll get there.

First, the problem with the PHB. While races, classes and feats are cool, there is an obvious point buy mechanic behind them. I ranted about it here. It goes more or less like this:

A feat will give you SIX POINTS.
An ability score increase costs 3.
A skill costs 2.
Expertise costs 4.
Languages, tools or fighting styles cost 1 [NOT the same as a skill!].
A couple of cantrips cost 1.
Saving throw proficiency costs 3 .
Etc.

I mentioned feats, but there is also a "hidden" point buy for races and class features. And that is the entire problem: they never tell you the numbers, making your job of creating races, classes and feats harder.

Of course you can "reverse engineer" this stuff, but it discourages you from creating your own stuff.

Worse, it sometimes seems to mislead the reader on these issues. For example, while skills are obviously better than tools - which is reflected on races, backgrounds, etc., - the "skilled" feat treats them as if they had equal value. Same with saving throws - some are obviously better than others, but the book never mentions it explicitly.

The DMG should fix it - but it doesn't.

While the first chapters of the book are pretty good (with some caveats) to great (see below), the parts about the rules do not explain how this "point buy" rules actually work, even though it hints at it. For example, it says "fire" resistance is more or less equivalent to "necrotic" and "radiant" resistance combined, without measuring it... and failing to mention it while discussing new spells!

The new spells part, BTW, is not that bad... just short and full of useless advice such as:

"If a spell is so good that a caster would want to use it all the time, it might be too powerful for its level."

Or guidelines that are so vague that they have no utility at all:

"A long duration or large area can make up for a lesser effect, depending on the spell."

How long? How large? How lesser? Which spells?

This vagueness is not necessary - you can extrapolate good guidelines from the sorcerer, for example. But, again, they seem to discourage you from creating your own stuff.

The DMG is also bad when messing with other rules. The rules on "damage severity by level" (page 249) treats 1st level PCs as if they had the same HP as 4th level PCs without discussing the issues, for example.  The automatic success rules (page 239) can create baffling effects - for example, a PC with Strength 19 might have 50% chance of battering down a door, while Strength 20 will give you an automatic success (shouldn't be there some middle ground there?). And so on.

Now look at this insightful advice on how to find if a task is easy, moderate or hard:

Then ask yourself, "Is this task's difficulty easy, moderate, or hard?"

It sounds like some kind of joke, but this is what the DMG actually say (without addressing that in most adventures there are a lot of DC 12 and DC 13 tasks).

The part about creating monsters is, well... good enough, I guess. Probably deserves a post of its own. Here is something to get you started.

The interesting thing is that the DMG is great when discussing other issues.

The NPC tables are awesome, and the magic items generation is just FANTASTIC. Even the tables on creating adventures is great. Same for settings (although occasionally a bit boring).

These do not only teach how to fish, but provide with hook and line to create your own stuff!

In fact, there is so much awesome stuff in the DMG that I almost feel bad for criticizing it.

But anyway - I feel there is this strange tendency towards avoiding teaching people how to fish, for fer of not being able to sell fish anymore. Which is silly, IMO. In reality, there will ALWAYS be more people willing to buy fish than to do the fishing themselves.

Sacrifice (D&D 5e) - are you WILLING to DIE?

Here is an idea I mentioned a few times, in improved form, and in one single post.

In short, it is this: if you want to fight to death, you can fight past 0 HP, but it is dangerous.

The table below is inspired by a similar one in Dark Fantasy Basic.

Here is how it goes: 

When you drop to 0 Hit Points (and are not killed outright, as per the usual rules), you do not necessarily fall unconscious.

Instead, you can choose to fight on if you're willing to fight to the death.

In theory, the player should consider his characters motivations, bonds, etc., but in practice its his choice (with some justification required).

If he choose to fall unconscious, that's all that happens for now.

If he choose to fight on, he immediately makes a death saving throw.

Death Saving Throws
Whenever you start Your Turn with 0 Hit Points, you must make a Special saving throw, called a death saving throw, to determine whether you creep closer to death or hang onto life. Unlike other Saving Throws, this one isn’t tied to any ability score. You are in the hands of fate now, aided only by Spells and features that improve your chances of succeeding on a saving throw.

Roll a d20: If the roll is 10 or higher, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. A success or failure has no effect by itself. On your third success, you become stable (see below). On your third failure, you die. The successes and failures don’t need to be consecutive; keep track of both until you collect three of a kind. The number of both is reset to zero when you regain any Hit Points or become stable.

Rolling 1 or 20: When you make a death saving throw and roll a 1 on The D20, roll on the table below. If you roll a 20 on The D20, you regain 1 hit point.

Death's door table:
1 - This counts as two failed death saving throws, instead of one.
2 - Gain one level of exhaustion.
3 - Permanent scar.
4 - Temporary disability.
5 - Permanent disability.
6 - Falls unconscious.
7, 8, 9... - etc... Immediate death should probably be on the table.

You get the idea.

Optional additions:

* While you have 0 HP, once per turn you can ignore one source of damage (up to 10% of your maximum HP), unless it is a critical hit (see this post). [another alternative would be getting temporary HP due to Adrenalin...]

* You do not recover from death saving throw failures until you take a short or long rest. This is meant to avoid abuse such as allowing the paladin to recover a single HP every turn to avoid death.

What's the point?

Letting PCs choose if they remain fighting after mortally wounded is dramatically appropriated... and just plain cool. Sacrifice suits dark fantasy even better than random death, IMO, and it is obviously more suited to epic fantasy too.

Notice they can still die if they choose unconsciousness, but it is a bit less likely. Unless the adversaries go out of their way to kill a fallen character, he might survive anything but a few bad die rolls or a total party kill. An unconscious characters can also be ransomed, etc.

It is cool for the players, too. They get to choose when to put their characters lives on the line. In practice, I've seem players get a bit more mindful of their battles, taking responsibility in their own hands.

The 10% HP rule (just a flesh wound)

It goes like this:

If an attack causes less than 10% of your HP in damage, it has no further detrimental effect on you (besides damage). No concentration checks, no death saving throws, etc. If damage stops spells in your game, damage that is lesser than 10% doesn't, and so on.

Something like massive damage in reverse, I guess (I dislike this rule in 3e, but 5e has an interesting variant in the DMG... that I find a bit unecessary).

The inspiration for my (probably unnecessary too) rule comes from an old game of Marvel Superheroes RPG (FASERIP).

If I remember correctly, I was playing as the Hulk... and, after taking massive damage from some super-villain, my PC got stabbed by a mook... and died!

I really hated that.

To be fair, I have no idea if this was because of the rules, of the game master, or just faulty memory (it was more than 25 years ago).

And, now that I think of it, it reminds me of Achilles... So, it might make sense in some contexts.

Source.

In 5e, it works as an anti-mook rule. This means your 15th-level fighter will not be executed by a kobold with a knife in a few seconds, just after being knocked out by a dragon. Also, the same kobold will not break your 15th-level wizard's concentration.

Again, this kind of grittiness has its uses, but doesn't quite fit the heroic fantasy tone of most official D&D stuff. Remember that the 15th-level fighter will probably survive a fall from any height!

In fact, if you want to make 5e less "bounded" and more "epic", i.e., the 15th-level fighter simply cannot be hurt by a single kobold, you might just ignore damage smaller than 10% altogether.

I have also considered a 50% HP rule as a complement... Say, if you WOULD take more than 100% of your HP in damage, the excess damage applies regardless of immunity.

So, in theory, the Tarrasque CAN hurt a werewolf with a bite, although it isn't easy.

AD&D had something like that IIRC. If you had enough HD, your attacks bypassed the usual "magic weapons" defense.

OTOH, some small creatures could be immune to fire, and swim in magma... So maybe this rule would only work for attacks?

I dunno. Maybe it is a case of rulings, not rules ("of course the Tarrasque killed the werewolf!"), or a matter of taste.

LESS BORING types of government

You read the DMG: a nation (or village etc.) can be governd by democracy, monarchy, theocracy, etc. Maybe even a magocracy, I guess. Or kleptocracy - a lot more realist, right?

This is good and all, but sometimes we need something more interesting.

Here are a a few options:

d20	Who governs?
1	The highest bidders
2	Magical curses and laws that enforce themselves
3	A secret society which cannot be mentioned
4	The church
5	An oracle
6	The winners (or losers) of the annual lottery
7	A powerful monster
8	A set of ancient written laws of unknown origin (which are barely understood)
9	A witches’ coven
10	A semi-mummified elder
11	A genetically-altered ethnic minority
12	The wielder of a sacred artifact
13	Whoever can survive the local deities’ ordeal
14	The family that sacrificed the greatest number of members
15	The mob rules
16	A conquering warlord (or local thugs)
17	The brain-damaged survivor of hard drugs
18	Blind counsellors, relying on lies
19	A dying monarch with no apparent heirs
20	None – govern yourself

A world in which everyone is under these types of government might strain your suspension of disbelief, but I assume you'll only use random tables when you're looking for new ideas.

I have often considering leaving two columns on my tables - one for "ordinary" stuff and the other for stuff like this. Not sure how useful that would be.



This is from my book Dark Fantasy Places, by the way.

Like the rest of my stuff, it is currently on sale until Monday due to DTRPG's Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale.

If you like this table, you'll find more stuff like this on my Dark Fantasy line.

Hope you enjoy it!

Moldvay's ORACLE (Basic D&D is the best, and it contains multitudes)

Here is another great post from Trollsmyth:

http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/2019/08/why-bx-is-best.html

The title, appropriately enough, is "Why BX is the Best!", but it talks about the Charm Person spell. Go read it, I'll wait.

Awesome, right?

Moldvay's Basic* might the best RPG ever written, indeed. Only 64-pages, and contains answers to questions that have been discussed for ages - before and after this book.

What modern D&D book (full of useless complexity and repetition) could do something similar with this page count?

I don't have a ton of examples to give you, and some might be from OD&D or other sources. But every time I read it, I learn something new.

Take open locks, for example:

Open Locks may only be tried once per lock. The thief may not "try again" on a difficult lock until he or she has gained another level of experience.

Compare this to the 5e DMG, page 237, which doesn't actually address picking locks (and suggests taking ten times longer to attempt any given task to automatically succeed... but with no mention of how long it takes to pick a lock, and using the "Fast Hands" thief feature as reference, one could assume that ANYONE can pick any lock in one minute - even with no proficiency - provided it is possible at all).

[BTW, want another option for 5e? If you fail, it means the lock cannot be picked by you or anyone less experienced than you. Someone more experienced can try but the DC is raised with every attempt. Or try this.]

Here are a few other things that come to mind right now:

- Moldvay's encumbrance system is better than it looks. It makes the choice between armor/gold/movement explicit, something that is lacking in modern versions. In 5e, encumbrance is either too lenient or too strict (depending on whether you use optional rules).

- Loyalty rules are succinct and precise:

LOYALTY: The loyalty of a retainer is a measure of the retainer's morale and willingness to take risks for the PC and not run away in the face of danger. A retainer's loyalty or morale is based on the charisma of the player character employer (see page B7). The loyalty of retainers should be checked whenever extraordinary danger is met during an adventure. Loyalty should also be checked after each adventure. The DM may wish to adjust a retainer's loyalty due to actions of the player character, such as if the PC pays the retainer more than agreed upon, or rescues the retainer from danger and vice versa.

- You get XP for defeating monsters (in addition to treasure). Does that mean you must defeat every monster? Not quite:

ADJUSTMENTS TO XP: The DM may treat an unusually "tough" situation or monster as one category better (use the next line down). Situations might also allow the DM to give partial experience if the characters learned from the encounter without actually defeating the monster. The DM may also award extra XP to characters who deserve them (fighting a dangerous monster alone, or saving the party with a great idea), and less XP to characters who did less than their fair share ("do-nothing" characters). The DM should consider the character's alignment and class carefully, and should remember that guarding the rear is an important role in any party

- What about this rule, that grant you more XP if your allies died in the process, but reduces total XP (I assume) if you take many NPCs with you:

DIVIDING XP: Treasure is divided by the party, but the DM handles all the XP awards. At the end of an adventure, the DM totals the XP from all treasures recovered plus all monsters defeated and then divides the total by the number of surviving characters (both player characters and NPCs) in the party. EXAMPLE: A party of 7 (5 player characters and 2 NPCs) goes on an adventure but only 6 come back alive. They killed monsters for a total of 800 XP and also collected 5800 gp in treasure, for a total of 6600 XP. Each character receives 1100 XP at the end of the adventure. (The DM may give each NPC 1/2 normal experience — 550 XP in this case — since the NPCs were "directed" and thus benefit less from the adventure.)

- Well, but what if a single weakling survives an expedition where true heroes have fallen? Does he suddenly become a demi-god? Nope:

MAXIMUM XP: A character should never be given enough XP in a single adventure to advance more than one level of experience. For example, if a beginning (0 XP) 1st level fighter earns 5000 XP (a rare and outstanding achievement), he or she should only be given 3999 XP, enough to place the character 1 XP short of 3rd level.

And, of course, there is this bit (a rule that Moldvay certainly didn't invent, but inspired many later versions):

"There's always a chance." The DM may want to base a character's chance of doing something on his or her ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and so forth). To perform a difficult task (such as climbing up a rope or thinking of a forgotten clue), the player should roll the ability score or less on ld20. The DM may give a bonus or penalty to the roll, depending on the difficulty of the action (-4 for a simple task to + 4 for a difficult one). A roll of 1 should always succeed, and a roll of 20 should always fail.

The whole "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art" section is great.... well, the entire book.

Moldvay's Basic is far from perfect, mind you. Mostly because it keeps things that I didn't like much in OD&D in the first place... For example, it seems that climbing a rope RAW is harder than climbing sheer walls for a thief... There are some things that are obscure, others are convoluted (I'm not a fan of all those tables, for example).

As you know, I wrote an entire book trying to improve D&D Basic.

But that's only because I really love it.

There is hardly any better material to start from.

EDIT: In addition, Moldvay mentions Clark Ashton Smith as an inspiration, unlike AD&D. I rest my case.

* By purchasing stuff through affiliate links you're helping to support this blog. 

Trip (D&D 5e melee weapons)

As you know, I have many issues with D&D 5e and how it treats melee weapons; I've discussed this many times in my blog, and I finally compiled a small document to put in DTRPG.

You can find my Manual of Arms here; if you like my posts about weapons, you'll certainly like this book.

Anyways, one thing I found is that by adding the trip propriety to the list, I can fix most of the issues I have with martial melee weapons:

Trip: This weapon can be used to trip a creature, knocking it prone. It uses the same rules as Shoving a Creature. However, you cannot use this weapon to push a creature away.

Add this to the flail, warpick and trident to make these weapons more useful; you can also add this to the whip and halberd to add flavor (you need to add something else to the glaive). 

Source.

There is an entire book to be written about grappling with weapons, of course. But this single propriety is small enough to fit in the existing rules (disarming, for example, is an optional rule, while "Shoving a Creature" is not) and to add some extra nuance, detail and balance to the current weapon list.

By the way, if you WANT to read a whole book on grappling, I'd recommend Dungeon Grappling* by Douglas Cole. There is a review here; might be worth mentioning that I wrote a page in one of Douglas' books (Dragon Heresy) but that was a while after I had posted the review. [Affiliate link - by using this, you're helping to support this blog!]