Blog of Holding

one difference between low- and high-level play

March 25th, 2013

In D&D in its purest form, what is the difference in play experience between a low- and high-level character?

There are a lot of play-experience differences that I don’t think are essential. For instance, in most editions, high-level combat has a tendency towards each round taking longer, each character having way more options, and more HP-ignoring attacks being made. But I’d be happy without those characteristics.

What else is there? High-level characters are more important in the story of the world? They have to deal with less logistical inconveniences?

Here’s an interesting statement from the 2e Dungeon Master’s Guide, in the section devoted to timekeeping:

At low levels, characters tend to go on short adventures. A few hours in the dungeon followed by a speedy return is about all they can survive. Therefore, it is easy to have a week’s interval within adventures, since the time passed does not impact on the characters’ activities. As characters reach higher levels, however, their ambitions grow and their adventures become longer.

This is a kind of interesting distinction between low- and high-level characters. In most editions, as characters level, each fight takes up a smaller and smaller proportion of the characters’ total HP. Therefore, higher-level characters can make it farther and farther into the wilderness before they need to return to home base.

As a level-based playstyle distinction, I don’t hate it.

It doesn’t 100% work, of course. At any level, a difficult fight might wipe out your HP and spells. Furthermore, characters quickly become self-sufficient. Characters who can generally recover their HP and spells in the wilderness have an effectively infinite range. Still, from level 1 to around level 5, there’s a nice increase in adventure scope.

If you wanted rules that pushed this further, what could you do? You might allow each character consecutive “roughing-it” nights equal to their level before they face difficulties from exposure and exhaustion. Thus, a first-level fighter can spend one night in a spooky haunted house, and then he needs to return to town. A thirtieth-level paladin can spend a full month in the Nine Hells, fighting to exhaustion every day, before she needs to return to the Prime Material Plane.

Alternatively, you can let economics take care of PCs’ increasing range. Besides being tougher, high-level characters are richer, and can afford horses and ships. If you’re faster than anything on the random encounter table, you can travel with ease.

Posted in RPG Hub | 8 Comments »

jared, health, art

March 20th, 2013

Jared von Hindman, who’s a good guy, a good artist, and one of the talents behind my kickstarter, has been diagnosed with cancer. There isn’t an official help-Jared fund, like the terrific Help Ernie Gygax page (go there too!), but don’t worry, I’ve been thinking about how we can help.

For the kickstarter, I put up Jared’s amazing dungeon art on Zazzle (all profits to Jared). Now the deal is even better. It’s $50 for a set of 2 paintings (a map and an illustrated map key), of which Jared normally gets about half and Zazzle gets half. Instead of just getting the profits, Jared will now get 100% of what you spend. All this year, I’ll cover the Zazzle cut out of my own pocket, up to $5k. I’d love the total to get that high!

Here are 2 of the 10 paintings:

And the map key:

More…

Buy a couple of these, pick up a couple of the Ernie Gygax eBay items, and you can be pretty proud of yourself today.

Posted in fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

randomly generate aeons of warring empires

March 18th, 2013

In this post, I use Mediterranean history to create charts that randomly generate plausible history. If you want to skip the numbercrunching, here are the charts:

1: Each century, for each already-existing empire, roll 1d4:
1-3: It continues to be important.
4: It dissolves or becomes unimportant.

2: How many new empires arose this century? Roll 1d6.
1-2: 0
3: 1
4: 2
5-6: 1d4

What does a plausible fantasy history look like? In order to feel familiar, it should avoid the monolithic extremes of 30,000 years of barbarism of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and the 1000 generations of peace of Star Wars’ Old Republic. Better to stick to something more like Earth history: constantly changing borders as competing empires rise and fall. Not only does this feel more realistic, it lends itself better to D&D play. A big pool of fallen-empires-of-the-week provides diverse dungeons and treasure.

I decided that, to better determine what imperial histories look like, I’d count up a representative sample of Earth empires: How many exist side-by-side, and how often do they arise? From there, I could extrapolate random charts to generate my own game worlds. I limited myself to the Mediterranean from 500 BC to 1500 AD (after iron and before the New World). This is a manageable piece of the world. The Mediterranean is fairly easy to travel, so co-existing empires can interact. Furthermore, it provides the history many of us are familiar with.

Empires of the Mediterranean, 500 BC to 1500 AC

(A lot of data is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires. Specific dates are arguable, but I’m just trying to get a rough count here.)

How long do empires last?

It looks like empires have a half-life of a little more than 200 years: of the 27 Mediterranean empires, half (14) are dead after 200 years, 8 more after another 200, and 4 more after another 200. Only the Byzantine empire defies the odds for 1200 years. You’d be pretty close to accurate if you said that each empire has a 3 in 4 chance of surviving each century.

How often do empires start?

In the 21 century-marks I examine, 7 see the birth of 0 empires, 6 see 1, 5 see 2, 2 see 3, and one exciting century (1200) sees 4 empires arise. Here’s a d6 chart that models that pretty closely.
1-2: 0 new empires
3: 1
4: 2
5-6: 1d4

How big is each empire?

That’s extremely variable, even over the course of a single empire’s lifetime. Most empires reach their height around the middle. The Macedonian empire started small, conquered all of the Mediterranean overnight, and then shrunk again. The Bulgarian empire, on the other hand, is donut-shaped: it started at a decent size, disappeared briefly when it was conquered by the Byzantines, and then re-established itself. Therefore, I won’t make any dice charts for this one. Look at your campaign map and see what fits where. Generally, if an empire shares the world with many rivals, it’s probably smaller, and if it’s alone, it probably spans the known world.

The final empire-building model:

For every 100 years of ancient history, roll on the following tables.

1: Each century, for each already-existing empire, roll 1d4:
1-3: It continues to be important.
4: It dissolves or becomes unimportant.

2: How many new empires arose this century? Roll 1d6.
1-2: 0
3: 1
4: 2
5-6: 1d4

Differences between the Mediterranean and your campaign world: Monsters and magic!

Your campaign world is probably wilder than ancient and medieval Mediterranean, which should reduce the rise of empires. On the other hand, magic increases each country’s logistic and military might. People must compete for land with monsters, which reduces their imperial resources – but on the other hand, monsters can start their own empires. Let’s say that these opposing factors cancel out. Just make sure that a few of your empires are ruled by demi-humans, humanoids, or monsters. In my campaign world, I’d expect humans to be the major empire-builders. Obviously I have no real-world numbercrunching to do here, so I will just make up an extra, top-of-my-head d6 chart:

Who rules each new empire? Roll 1d6 for each new empire.
1-4: human
5: humanoid or demihuman (orc, elf, etc)
6: monster (vampire, lich, etc)

OR you can just play a game of Small World.

Edit: Gallowglas wrote a sweet random empire generator using these rules. I tried it a few times, and it works great, and I saw some interesting history unfold! Thanks!

Posted in advice/tools, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 16 Comments »

OD&D cursed items that are not that bad

March 15th, 2013

I issued a challenge to OSR readers to explain why unavoidably deadly cursed items were a good idea. But to be fair, not all cursed items from the Greyhawk expansion are equally bad.

Loadstone: A stone which appears to be a Luckstone until the owner is being pursued by hostile enemies/monsters. In the case of such pursuit the Loadstone slows his movement by 50%.

This doesn’t kill a player, it just adds a complication. I can see this leading to player death, but also I can see it leading to a hilarious panic along the way. By the way, these are way more common than Luckstones, their non-cursed counterpart.

Boots of Dancing: These boots appear to be any of the others listed before them, and they will continue to so function until their wearer is in a situation where an enemy is in pursuit with intent to kill or some similar situation. When this happens the boots cause the feet of the wearer to dance a jig, soft shoe, tap, and an occasional Shuffle off to Buffalo. Naturally, he is then unable to flee or otherwise escape.

Exactly the same gimmick as the Loadstone. I’m sure the “shuffle off to Buffalo” gag got a few chuckles in the 70s.

Horn of Bubbles: This device exactly resembles a Horn of Valhalla, but when it is sounded it will bring forth a cloud of bubbles which surround its holder, completely obscuring his vision for 4-12 turns.

The Horn of Bubbles is one of the few items that doesn’t either kill you outright or necessitate a Remove Curse. It just waits until you are in a situation dire enough for you to need the help of berserker warriors, and instead of aid, you get covered with comical soap. A++! Would sound horn again!

Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity: Although this item appears to be a Girdle of Giant Strength, as soon as it is worn it changes the sex of its wearer. It can be removed only with a Wish

Ah, the Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity, introducing hundreds of 70s teens to the ultimate horror: playing a female character!

OK, not all these cursed items are great. But at least they don’t arbitrarily kill you!

Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

sherlock holmes is a vampire

March 13th, 2013

Last night I dreamed that I was making a movie pitch: Sherlock Holmes as a vampire. I brainstormed evidence to support this thesis. Here’s what I came up with in the dream:

Travels around a lot at night, or in fogs

Deerstalker hat for maximum shade during the day

Has a 19 Strength (can bend iron bars)

Looks like a vampire

Amoral

Always looking for bloodstains

Scotland Yard inspectors don’t trust him

Pretty decent bulleted list for a dream. I’m sure pop culture has already generated this idea somewhere. I should add something that didn’t occur to me till I woke up: vampires (at least in 1e) have Exceptional Intelligence.

I should add that Sherlock Holmes canon does include a vampire story; a fall off Reichenbach Falls can’t kill him; and he’s still around in modern London, looking younger than ever.

using this in a game

Sherlock Holmes is sometimes presented as an ally of, rather than a member of, society. A vampire that aligned himself this way would be admirably suited to be a detective. Charm powers, plus the various disguise powers like fog and bat form, plus wolf form so he can be his own Toby the bloodhound, plus exceptional intelligence, equal a pretty implacable pursuer of evildoers. Naturally, there’s a Moriarty vampire somewhere in the city.

Maybe the PCs, not NPCs, are the detectives in your game. You might be interested in a Javert-vampire instead: an implacable chief of police that keeps the PCs and other lawbreakers in line. The city might have passed a law that allows him to feed on condemned criminals. There’s motivation to secure convictions!

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d&d is inspired by westerns

March 11th, 2013

In Men & Magic, Gary Gygax says that D&D is “strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.”

Re-reading Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars recently, I was struck with how explicitly it’s a Western. John Carter fights savages on dead sea bottoms, gropes through caverns looking for treasure, and fights weird monsters. And that’s all before he goes to Mars. The first episode of the novel is a shoot-em-up Arizona adventure which encapsulates all the rest of the book. Mars is Arizona writ large, with bigger and drier deserts, more savage natives, more accurate guns, faster horses, and more faithful dogs. In structure, the book is a lot like the Wizard of Oz movie: a reasonably plausible day, followed by a fantasy dream sequence version of the same events.

The second of Gygax’s sources, Howard’s Conan, is similar. Howard was a Texan who wrote Westerns along with his fantasy stories, cowboys-in-the-Middle East stories, and boxing stories. It’s frequently argued that Conan is a Western hero. His martial skills allow him to triumph over the lawless savages and over the decadent “civilized” folk of his wild land. That’s what cowboys do.

That’s two of Gygax’s Big Four. De Camp & Pratt and their characters are highly-educated scientists and historians, and Leiber and his heroes are urban goofballs. D&D is inspired by no one tradition. But if you scratch the surface, you’ll find that D&D is as much Boot Hill as it is Tolkein.

Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

OD&D cursed items that are horrible

March 8th, 2013

As a late-edition player, I’m finding a lot to like in OD&D, but there’s also a lot that mystifies me. The cursed items from the Greyhawk Supplement are solidly in the latter category. Finding some of these items is the narrative equivalent to the DM saying “You have a heart attack and die.”

Consider these items:

Horn of Collapsing: An instrument which seems to be a Horn of Blasting, but when it is winded it will cause the ceiling immediately above the user to collapse upon him, causing from 6-60 points of damage. If blown in the open it causes a rain of rocks to fall from the sky upon its user, and from 5-30 of such missiles will shower down, doing from 1-3 points damage each.

This one is not only a literal “rocks fall you die” item, it has annoying mechanics. If you’re inside, you take 6d10 damage. Hilarious. If you’re outside, though, the DM is supposed to roll 5d6, add that up, and then roll THAT NUMBER of d6 (an average of 18 dice), dividing each die total by two? Does that curve really vary meaningfully from, say, 6d10, which does about the same average damage?

Necklace of Strangulation: A device which is identical to a Necklace of Missiles, but when placed about the neck will strangle and kill its wearer in 2-5 turns, it requires a Limited Wish or Wish to remove it.

Oh, look, it’s not just an insta-death item because it can be reversed with Wish and Limited Wish! Well, guess what: so can any death. (In the description of the Wish spell: “Wishes that unfortunate adventures had never happened should be granted.”) Might as well just come out and say the necklace “immediately kills the wearer, no save.”

Poisonous Cloak: A cloak indistinguishable from others which are magical. When it is put on it immediately kills its wearer by poison. No saving throw is possible.

There you go. Honesty!

Scarab of Death: A scarab which appears to be any of the other types, but when it is held in the hand for a full turn, or when it is placed in a pack, a bag, or some other place near a person’s body it turns to a horrible burrowing monster which digs directly to the person’s heart and kills him.

DM: You find a magical scarab.
Player: I’m not using any magic items until I’m back in town, standing next to a cleric with Water Breathing, Neutralize Poison, Cure Disease, Remove Curse, Wish, and Limited Wish! Making sure not to touch it directly, I’ll wrap the scarab in several layers of cloth and throw it in my backpack.
DM: It turns into a horrible burrowing monster which digs directly to your heart and kills you. No save.
Player: …

There are many more cursed items; the schtick is that every type of magic item (scarab, horn, etc) has a cursed item, so you never know for sure if a magic item is going to kill you. In fact, sometimes the deadly version of the item is much more common than the helpful one. According to the random treasure tables, more than half of all bowls are Bowls of Watery Death. 75% of all carpets are of Smothering. Half of necklaces are Necklaces of Strangulation.

What recourse do the players have here? In Grayhawk, the Identify spell hadn’t been invented yet. I guess spellcasters could cast the 5th level spells Commune and Contact Higher Plane every time they found a magic item, but I’d think the gods would get sick of that. (Anyway, Contact Higher Plane has a good chance to drive the caster insane.) And Raise Dead is a 5th level spell anyway, so might as well just wait and cast that instead.

Why not skip cursed items, and just say this: “Whenever someone gets a new magic item, flip a coin. If it’s tails, they die! There’s nothing they can do to lower this risk!”

I get that death is common in OD&D. I get that sometimes the player dies through no fault of his or her own. But I don’t see how it’s fun for the DM to place an item, knowing that there’s a 100% chance it will kill a character. I just can’t get it out of my spoiled, 4e, everything-is-padded head that PC death should involve, at minimum, one of a) an attack roll, b) a saving throw, c) a bad decision, or d) a missed clue.

Here’s my challenge: Can anyone contribute an anecdote about a time they used one of these insta-death items, and it was fun?

Next week: OD&D cursed items that are not that bad!

Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 29 Comments »

Haven comic book

March 4th, 2013

Have I shared this? This is a tiny comic book I scrawled a couple of years ago right after I awoke from a weird, cinematic, sci-fi dream. It’s as close to the dream as possible: all the images are straight from the dream, as is, I think, the Mayor’s awesome dialogue on page 2. The dream featured voice-over narration, which I paraphrased as best I could in the narration boxes. As I drew more and more of the comic, and my memory grew more and more hazy, the paraphrasing gets more and more loose. And I forgot all of the events of the dream after page 2! Maybe I was interrupted by a visitor from Porlock.

I’ve used some pieces of this dream in my D&D world. The spiked towers of Setine are based on the walls of Haven. The spikes have also appeared as artillery in my home campaign. I also like the idea of rooks: mobile towers that float over a hostile, Night Land-like continent.

Sorry about the scan – I never bothered to ink it.

Transcript:

PAGE 1

[A busy dock.] Ships have always plied the sea, even when the roads were closed.

[Two men clasp hands. One has a mustache and sideburns, and the other has a beard and a trucker hat.] Food comes from the sea, trade comes from the sea, and bargains are struck on the piers.

[A few stragglers trail a levitating tower, topped by a glowing spike.] Some caravans and rooks travel the roads, but not many.

[A wall and spike-capped tower in the foreground; an ocean dotted with ships in the background.] Many people stay within the great walled cities by the coast – closed to the land but open to the sea. And the greatest of these cities is:

[Overhead shot of a giant city, ringed by an absurdly tall wall with spike-topped towers. In the center of the city, a single great tower opens like a flower.] …HAVEN

PAGE 2 [This is where I started to lose my way.]

[A mug shot of a smiling, mustached mayor.] Page 2 of “Haven” centers on the mayor of Haven.

[The mayor shaking hands with the trucker-hat guy.] He was seen on page 1, shaking hands with that guy with the hat.

[The mayor wheeling a crate.] He is a great mayor and always does manual labor at the docks and has a cheery word for everyone.
MAYOR: Hey Jonas!

[The mayor wincing in pain.] But he also has a sensitive stomach, and is never happy with the food his wife cooks him.

[The mayor railing at a woman with a bowl.] MAYOR: You know I don’t like fatty foods, they give me a stomach ache!

[The mayor continues to rail at the woman.] MAYOR: You know I can’t eat sugars, they make me grumpy!

What adventures lie in store for the mayor?

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6 magic inks

March 1st, 2013

The Lensman was rocked to the heels, but did not show it. Instead, he took the captain’s pen – his own, as far as Willoughby was concerned, could have been filled with vanishing ink – and wrote George Olmstead’s name in George Olmstead’s bold, flowing script.
-E. E. Smith, First Lensman

In 1950, when Doc Smith wrote the sci-fi novel First Lensman, disappearing ink was still reasonably hi-tech: it had been a major espionage tool as recently as World War II. Now it seems a little quaint and dated, which means it’s time for it to make the transition from SF to fantasy.

Not only is disappearing ink a good trick for a RPG character’s reportoire, ink itself seems like a fruitful avenue for new magic items, untapped by the standard D&D magic-item list.

Here are some ink bottles that might be available at the local apothecary. Each ink bottle can be used to write a dozen pages.

Disappearing ink: Twelve hours after you write with it, the writing disappears. Great for messages that must not fall into the wrong hands, and signing contracts that you don’t want to keep. It’s entirely alchemical so it doesn’t radiate magic.

Burning ink: Twelve hours after you write with it, the ink catches fire, burning the paper it’s on, along with anything flammable nearby, unless it’s caught. Even better for signing contracts you don’t want to keep. It radiates faint magic: a suspicious notary/wizard using Detect Magic will have to make an Intelligence Check to notice it.

Exploding ink: As soon as the ink is dry, any writing turns into Explosive Runes. Great for wizards on the go. The ink and the runes radiate strong magic.

Courtier’s ink: As you write, the words re-form behind your pen into elegant phrases and flowery compliments. Your handwriting is also slightly improved. Grants your letter a +3 to Charisma checks to anyone who is impressed by well-expressed sentiments. This is widely used at courts, and too expensive for the starving poets who covet it so very, very much.

Sewer Ink: The reverse of Courtier’s Ink turns any writing into a collection of shocking profanity, ill-turned phrases and deadly insults. It applies a -6 to Charisma checks. Unlike Courtier’s Ink, the writing does not re-form for twelve hours, and your handwriting is not altered. This ink is most often used for practical jokes and venomous plots.

Poison Ink: This oldie but goodie causes pages to slightly cling together so that readers must moisten their fingers to turn the pages. It’s also a deadly poison: twelve hours after a careless reader ingests the ink, he or she must make a saving throw or take 3d6 damage and be helpless for the next twelve hours. This saving throw is repeated every 12 hours until a successful save is made.

Characters may make a hard Wisdom or Intelligence check, or an easy History, Pulp Literature, Rare Poisons, Dastardly Plans, or other appropriate skill check to realize that the pages are poisoned.

Poison ink can also be used as a normal poison, on weapons or in food.

Tags: equipment, everybook
Posted in RPG Hub | 7 Comments »

healing poll

February 27th, 2013

Whenever HP or healing are brought up in D&D conversations, they tend to dominate the rest of the discussion, and no consensus is reached. I think the issue is confused because “healing” really means three different things:

per-round: How much healing should you get during a fight? Are you limited to a cure spell or two, or does everyone have second winds, potions, and wands of Cure Light Wounds?

per-hour: How much healing should you get between fights? Does the damage from the last fight significantly drain HP and healing resources, or is each battle a self-contained tactical challenge?

per-day: How much healing should you get overnight? If you’re really beat up, is it important to determine if you rest a day or rest a week to heal fully?

I’ll misuse my Mearls software to make a quick poll:

I’d love to know how you use each of these three elements in your game. Do you (or your DM) limit access to potions, or use easy fights to drain daily resources, or make the characters start a day of adventuring low on HP?

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