Sadly I couldn't find the boxed set to make all of this "complete" for whoever thinks that Hollow World is something they'd like to take a look at. In any case, let me know if you want these six items, European destination preferred as before.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Basement Delving: Hollow Pursuits
I have absolutely no idea why I ever started buying Hollow World stuff. It may have been the tentative Blackmoor connection I guess, but in the end DA1 to DA4 are a lot more appropriate for that. In any case, I found these lying around:
Sadly I couldn't find the boxed set to make all of this "complete" for whoever thinks that Hollow World is something they'd like to take a look at. In any case, let me know if you want these six items, European destination preferred as before.
Sadly I couldn't find the boxed set to make all of this "complete" for whoever thinks that Hollow World is something they'd like to take a look at. In any case, let me know if you want these six items, European destination preferred as before.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Basement Delving: French Connection
I don't have much to say about these except maybe for wondering about the color change for B2: Does pink really sell worse than light blue in France?
Did they have a orange version as well? Probably not. I wish I had X2 in French, that would be even more appropriate. But I guess B3 is not too bad either. Inside look:
Here's that blue B2:
And the look inside:
I have to say that the original B2 artwork is clearly higher on the awesome scale for me than these Holloway renditions. Anyone in dire need of french modules? I cannot really find a good use for these so if you're in Europe these can be yours for the price of shipping.
Did they have a orange version as well? Probably not. I wish I had X2 in French, that would be even more appropriate. But I guess B3 is not too bad either. Inside look:
Here's that blue B2:
And the look inside:
I have to say that the original B2 artwork is clearly higher on the awesome scale for me than these Holloway renditions. Anyone in dire need of french modules? I cannot really find a good use for these so if you're in Europe these can be yours for the price of shipping.
Basement Delving: The Japanese Borderlands
I am in Germany for the holidays and I ended up "delving" in my basement to see what "treasures" are down there. Here's a first round of interesting finds in terms of D&D stuff. Let's start with the Japanese version of B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.
First of all I have absolutely no idea why the heck I have this, but hey, I guess in a way there's really no need to know. My dwarven delver wouldn't care too much about the "why" of a bunch of rubies he finds either! As you can see it has the "classic" cover unlike many of the other translations of the module. It's kinda fun to take a peek inside, so here you go:
Note the glossy inside cover, I have never seen another version of B2 that was made like that. Also note that the colors are still pretty crisp, I think the scanned version available from WotC these days actually looks more faded. Classic Roslof drawing is classic.
Yep, translated reference tables too. Presumably even the Japanese version has the same stuff? Sadly I cannot tell. And to get an impression of the module proper:
I've always loved that drawing of the insane hermit, just pure awesome. If someone who reads Japanese finds this I'd be most interested in hearing how the descriptions translate back into English, i.e. whether there was any re-writing compared to the original to make things more culturally appropriate? Finally, the back cover:
And now that I've exploited this thing for my blog, I think I'll just give it away to someone who actually speaks/reads Japanese. Any takers? Bonus points if you're in Europe so the shipping charges don't kill me.
First of all I have absolutely no idea why the heck I have this, but hey, I guess in a way there's really no need to know. My dwarven delver wouldn't care too much about the "why" of a bunch of rubies he finds either! As you can see it has the "classic" cover unlike many of the other translations of the module. It's kinda fun to take a peek inside, so here you go:
Note the glossy inside cover, I have never seen another version of B2 that was made like that. Also note that the colors are still pretty crisp, I think the scanned version available from WotC these days actually looks more faded. Classic Roslof drawing is classic.
Yep, translated reference tables too. Presumably even the Japanese version has the same stuff? Sadly I cannot tell. And to get an impression of the module proper:
I've always loved that drawing of the insane hermit, just pure awesome. If someone who reads Japanese finds this I'd be most interested in hearing how the descriptions translate back into English, i.e. whether there was any re-writing compared to the original to make things more culturally appropriate? Finally, the back cover:
And now that I've exploited this thing for my blog, I think I'll just give it away to someone who actually speaks/reads Japanese. Any takers? Bonus points if you're in Europe so the shipping charges don't kill me.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Hit Dice for Archetypal Multiclassing
I've discussed the ins and outs of multiclassing and dualclassing before on this blog, and I'd like to go back to that topic for a quick update.
I have recently spent more time considering the wonderful Archetypal Multiclassing idea that Pat Bellavance put together for Castles & Crusades. (Brendan calls it class-and-a-half which is highly appropriate as well.)
Unlike the bastardized 3rd edition approach that I advocated in my earlier post, I very much like the effect that (a) your 5th-level fighter/wizard is very different from my 5th-level wizard/fighter and (b) the choice of a certain class combination is permanent and not constantly fudge-able.
However, there is one aspect of the original proposal where the choice of primary and secondary class doesn't make a difference: hit points. (What? You're surprised that I would have a complaint about hit points? :-)
If fighters have d10 hit dice and wizards have d4 hit dice, then both fighter/wizards and wizard/fighters have d6 hit dice. For one thing this clearly leans toward the lower hit-die class, wizard in this case. But more importantly it destroys the idea that fighter/wizards are better fighters than wizard/fighters. (Sorry, that last sentence is just horrible in terms of structure. But it's correct in terms of content so I'll leave it.)
For our particular example there's an easy way to fix this: Give wizards/fighters d6 hit dice but give fighter/wizards d8 hit dice instead. Here's what it works out to in comparison (for a "level 9" character):
Of course the problem now is that there are no suitable dice for all possible primary/secondary class combinations. What, for example, should be the difference between a fighter/cleric and a cleric/fighter? There's only one possible die between a d8 and a d10, namely a d9. And even if we had such a beast, it would still create the same hit-point distributions for both combination classes.
I played with a lot of options for this, everything from "always roll the larger HD" to "roll both HD, pick the larger (smaller) result if your primary HD is smaller (larger) than your secondary HD" and so on. Sadly none of them worked out the way I wanted them to. (Remember that the goal is for fighter, fighter/wizard, wizard/fighter, and wizard to all have distinct and sensible hit point distributions.) I was almost ready to give up when one last and simple option occurred to me:
That's it. Now let me immediately say that this rule is far from perfect. But it's the best darn thing I could come up with, everything else seemed to be a lot more broken. Here's what it works out to (for a "level 9" character again):
We get a clear distinction between single-classed characters and multi-classed characters. Compared to the "different die" solution above, the weaker primary class gains more from multi-classing (and of course the stronger primary class also loses more). The "problem" is that the difference between fighter/wizard and wizard/fighter while present is not as pronounced as I would have liked. (I much prefer the first approach in that regard, sad that it cannot be saved.)
For reference, an AD&D-style version of multiclassing would sit between the two distributions generated by this approach, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Anyone have a better approach?
I have recently spent more time considering the wonderful Archetypal Multiclassing idea that Pat Bellavance put together for Castles & Crusades. (Brendan calls it class-and-a-half which is highly appropriate as well.)
Unlike the bastardized 3rd edition approach that I advocated in my earlier post, I very much like the effect that (a) your 5th-level fighter/wizard is very different from my 5th-level wizard/fighter and (b) the choice of a certain class combination is permanent and not constantly fudge-able.
However, there is one aspect of the original proposal where the choice of primary and secondary class doesn't make a difference: hit points. (What? You're surprised that I would have a complaint about hit points? :-)
If fighters have d10 hit dice and wizards have d4 hit dice, then both fighter/wizards and wizard/fighters have d6 hit dice. For one thing this clearly leans toward the lower hit-die class, wizard in this case. But more importantly it destroys the idea that fighter/wizards are better fighters than wizard/fighters. (Sorry, that last sentence is just horrible in terms of structure. But it's correct in terms of content so I'll leave it.)
For our particular example there's an easy way to fix this: Give wizards/fighters d6 hit dice but give fighter/wizards d8 hit dice instead. Here's what it works out to in comparison (for a "level 9" character):
Of course the problem now is that there are no suitable dice for all possible primary/secondary class combinations. What, for example, should be the difference between a fighter/cleric and a cleric/fighter? There's only one possible die between a d8 and a d10, namely a d9. And even if we had such a beast, it would still create the same hit-point distributions for both combination classes.
I played with a lot of options for this, everything from "always roll the larger HD" to "roll both HD, pick the larger (smaller) result if your primary HD is smaller (larger) than your secondary HD" and so on. Sadly none of them worked out the way I wanted them to. (Remember that the goal is for fighter, fighter/wizard, wizard/fighter, and wizard to all have distinct and sensible hit point distributions.) I was almost ready to give up when one last and simple option occurred to me:
"If only your primary level increases, roll your primary HD; if both your primary and secondary levels increase, roll your secondary HD."
That's it. Now let me immediately say that this rule is far from perfect. But it's the best darn thing I could come up with, everything else seemed to be a lot more broken. Here's what it works out to (for a "level 9" character again):
We get a clear distinction between single-classed characters and multi-classed characters. Compared to the "different die" solution above, the weaker primary class gains more from multi-classing (and of course the stronger primary class also loses more). The "problem" is that the difference between fighter/wizard and wizard/fighter while present is not as pronounced as I would have liked. (I much prefer the first approach in that regard, sad that it cannot be saved.)
For reference, an AD&D-style version of multiclassing would sit between the two distributions generated by this approach, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Anyone have a better approach?
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Civilization, Wilderness, and Population Density
I don't really have much to say on the topic of population density in fantasy worlds, but I did recently run into a number of posts on the topic that got me thinking about the relationship between civilization and wilderness in fantasy campaigns again, specifically about the attractiveness of a "Points of Light" setting.
When I think "fantasy world" my brain conjures up images of small villages where peasants work the surrounding fields. In an "established" country, those small villages are fairly numerous (never more than, say, 3-5 miles apart, see the Bavarian example above) and they tend to lie close to roads or rivers leading to bigger towns and cities. There is constant trade and commerce, tolls are collected by local rulers, monsters are generally not too close to civilization unless there's something driving them there, etc.
In a "Points of Light" setting things are vastly different. Small unfortified villages are virtually non-existent because they would be overrun too easily by the hordes of monsters roaming almost everywhere. Instead people cluster into either well-fortified "homesteads" or "castles" and come out to "work the fields" only under guard, or into bigger fortified "towns" that encompass those fields in their defensive perimeter. These settlements are fairly rare, usually 30-40 miles apart, much like the Russian example above. Trade between the settlements is a dangerous undertaking requiring lots of guards, therefore the settlements are much more self-sufficient.
There are many more things differentiating my "default" world from this "Points of Light" world, things like roads and who built them, things like countries or indeed a working feudal system. But I'll have to shelve those for another post. Suffice it to say that I find myself very much attracted to the "Points of Light" idea these days and much less to the "pastoral settled farm lands" version of a fantasy world I grew up with. I guess that means that my fantasy campaign is about to turn into a medieval version of Gamma World?
When I think "fantasy world" my brain conjures up images of small villages where peasants work the surrounding fields. In an "established" country, those small villages are fairly numerous (never more than, say, 3-5 miles apart, see the Bavarian example above) and they tend to lie close to roads or rivers leading to bigger towns and cities. There is constant trade and commerce, tolls are collected by local rulers, monsters are generally not too close to civilization unless there's something driving them there, etc.
In a "Points of Light" setting things are vastly different. Small unfortified villages are virtually non-existent because they would be overrun too easily by the hordes of monsters roaming almost everywhere. Instead people cluster into either well-fortified "homesteads" or "castles" and come out to "work the fields" only under guard, or into bigger fortified "towns" that encompass those fields in their defensive perimeter. These settlements are fairly rare, usually 30-40 miles apart, much like the Russian example above. Trade between the settlements is a dangerous undertaking requiring lots of guards, therefore the settlements are much more self-sufficient.
There are many more things differentiating my "default" world from this "Points of Light" world, things like roads and who built them, things like countries or indeed a working feudal system. But I'll have to shelve those for another post. Suffice it to say that I find myself very much attracted to the "Points of Light" idea these days and much less to the "pastoral settled farm lands" version of a fantasy world I grew up with. I guess that means that my fantasy campaign is about to turn into a medieval version of Gamma World?
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Ternary Operator in Go
A long time ago someone asked how to do the ternary operator in Go. In C or Java you can write
max = a > b ? a : b;
to select the larger of the two. In Go you have to write an if instruction instead:
if a > b {
max = a
} else {
max = b
}
The following is probably my most horrible (public) programming suggestion ever, certainly not worthy of my ambitions as a teacher of clear programming style:
max = map[bool]int{true: a, false: b}[a > b]
But at least it won the "This is beautiful abuse. Simultaneously I feel respect and disgust." and the "That is awesomely disgusting." prices back then. Of course someone else pointed out that it should really be
max = map[bool]int{true: func()(int){return a}, false: func()(int){return b}}[a > b]()
instead, but I didn't think that's worth the effort since we're already evaluating both for the condition. They were, however, correct to mention it.
Why post this? No big reason, I've just been doing more Go hacking again recently and was reminded of this incident. Also my suggestion to include all of this in the FAQ was eventually turned down by the Go folks (probably a good thing in retrospect) but I wanted to leave a record of it behind on the web in any case. :-)
max = a > b ? a : b;
to select the larger of the two. In Go you have to write an if instruction instead:
if a > b {
max = a
} else {
max = b
}
The following is probably my most horrible (public) programming suggestion ever, certainly not worthy of my ambitions as a teacher of clear programming style:
max = map[bool]int{true: a, false: b}[a > b]
But at least it won the "This is beautiful abuse. Simultaneously I feel respect and disgust." and the "That is awesomely disgusting." prices back then. Of course someone else pointed out that it should really be
max = map[bool]int{true: func()(int){return a}, false: func()(int){return b}}[a > b]()
instead, but I didn't think that's worth the effort since we're already evaluating both for the condition. They were, however, correct to mention it.
Why post this? No big reason, I've just been doing more Go hacking again recently and was reminded of this incident. Also my suggestion to include all of this in the FAQ was eventually turned down by the Go folks (probably a good thing in retrospect) but I wanted to leave a record of it behind on the web in any case. :-)
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Skills: The d6 in B/X
I faintly remember someone else doing this before, going through B/X and enumerating all the d6 "skill rolls" in that wonderful revision of D&D. But what the heck, can't hurt for me to do it as well, so here we go:
I left out d6 rolls that are not usually thought of as "skills", for example the "springing a trap" roll, random encounters, surprise/initiative/pursuit, stocking dungeons, etc. Did I miss another player-facing "skill" use of the d6? Please let me know if I did, I hope this will be the definite post on the subject in the years to come. :-)
- Hear Noise (pages B8, B21, X6): Anyone has a 1 in 6 chance, demi-humans have a 2 in 6 chance, thieves start at 2 in 6 and improve to 5 in 6 by level 11.
- Expert Miner (page B9): Dwarves detect slanting passages, traps, shifting walls, and new construction with a 2 in 6 chance.
- Secret Doors (pages B9, B21): Anyone has a 1 in 6 chance to find a secret door, elves have a 2 in 6 chance.
- Hiding (page B10): Halflings have a 2 in 6 chance of staying undetected in dungeons.
- Opening Doors (page B21): Anyone has a 2 in 6 chance of opening a stuck door, strength modifier applies.
- Finding Traps (pages B9, B22): Anyone has 1 in 6 chance to find a (non-magical) trap, dwarves have a 2 in 6 chance.
- Lighting Fires (page X10): Anyone has a 2 in 6 chance of lighting a torch/fire with a tinderbox in one round.
- Foraging/Hunting (page X51): There is a 1 in 6 chance of finding enough food (or encountering a suitable animal to kill) per day.
I left out d6 rolls that are not usually thought of as "skills", for example the "springing a trap" roll, random encounters, surprise/initiative/pursuit, stocking dungeons, etc. Did I miss another player-facing "skill" use of the d6? Please let me know if I did, I hope this will be the definite post on the subject in the years to come. :-)
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Hyborian Summer Post Mortem
So I spent quite some time this summer working on a collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. I can't really say why I did this, my only excuse is that I wanted to read them and that the plain text or HTML versions I could find were not to my liking. So here's the current (incomplete!) draft:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5_s0vx_BCaGTGtmTFdHemVXeU0/edit?usp=sharing
I am really only pushing this out now because the semester is about to start and I won't have much time to work on it until December. If you find problems in the meantime, please feel free to check out the project site here (use the issue tracker):
https://bitbucket.org/phf/hyborian-tales
I am happy to accept pull requests as long as they are easy to merge. What I was working on when I had to stop was getting more of the old art integrated. I also wanted to go back to the original Weird Tales printings of these stories to make sure I have all the blurb that other transcribers may have missed. Alas I couldn't find PDFs of all those Weird Tales issues.
If you are sitting on these magazines and can produce high-quality scans of the articles/artwork I am missing, I'd be very grateful. For example the first illustration in the Red Nails story is just a small JPG which doesn't look good at all printed (the other two are bigger PNGs and they look alright, at least to my aging eyeballs).
Any volunteers?
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5_s0vx_BCaGTGtmTFdHemVXeU0/edit?usp=sharing
I am really only pushing this out now because the semester is about to start and I won't have much time to work on it until December. If you find problems in the meantime, please feel free to check out the project site here (use the issue tracker):
https://bitbucket.org/phf/hyborian-tales
I am happy to accept pull requests as long as they are easy to merge. What I was working on when I had to stop was getting more of the old art integrated. I also wanted to go back to the original Weird Tales printings of these stories to make sure I have all the blurb that other transcribers may have missed. Alas I couldn't find PDFs of all those Weird Tales issues.
If you are sitting on these magazines and can produce high-quality scans of the articles/artwork I am missing, I'd be very grateful. For example the first illustration in the Red Nails story is just a small JPG which doesn't look good at all printed (the other two are bigger PNGs and they look alright, at least to my aging eyeballs).
Any volunteers?
Monday, July 29, 2013
LaTeX PocketMod
A few weeks ago I wanted to produce a so-called "PocketMod" in LaTeX. The idea is to print 8 small pages of content onto one actual page of paper and then folding it as shown here to get a little booklet. I've since found several different ways of doing it, but here's what I came up with as a "pure LaTeX" solution.
First: Put your actual content into a content.tex file and use the geometry package to adjust the page size. I used this:
\usepackage[
paperwidth=2.75in,
paperheight=4.25in,
margin=0.1in,
includefoot,
footskip=0.2in,
]{geometry}
I prefer working at the actual size instead of shrinking larger pages down later only to find that the font is unreadable. Use pdflatex to generate the PDF for your tiny 8 pages worth of stuff.
Second: Use pdfpages and the following rotate.tex file to adjust the individual pages appropriately (some need to be upside-down, others need to remain unchanged):
\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=1,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=2,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=3,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=4,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=5,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=6,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=7,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=8,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\end{document}
Of course I should have used a macro to avoid repeating myself 8 times, but copy-paste won and I never refactored. Feel free to post a better version!
Third: Use pdfpages and the following booklet.tex file to put everything on a single letter-sized page in landscape:
\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages={5,4,3,2,6,7,8,1},frame=true,nup=2x4,landscape]{rotate.pdf}
\end{document}
I like having the thin frame around all the pages but if you want to get rid of it just remove that option. And you're done!
First: Put your actual content into a content.tex file and use the geometry package to adjust the page size. I used this:
\usepackage[
paperwidth=2.75in,
paperheight=4.25in,
margin=0.1in,
includefoot,
footskip=0.2in,
]{geometry}
I prefer working at the actual size instead of shrinking larger pages down later only to find that the font is unreadable. Use pdflatex to generate the PDF for your tiny 8 pages worth of stuff.
Second: Use pdfpages and the following rotate.tex file to adjust the individual pages appropriately (some need to be upside-down, others need to remain unchanged):
\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=1,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=2,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=3,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=4,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=5,angle=180,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=6,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=7,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=8,fitpaper=true]{content.pdf}
\end{document}
Of course I should have used a macro to avoid repeating myself 8 times, but copy-paste won and I never refactored. Feel free to post a better version!
Third: Use pdfpages and the following booklet.tex file to put everything on a single letter-sized page in landscape:
\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages={5,4,3,2,6,7,8,1},frame=true,nup=2x4,landscape]{rotate.pdf}
\end{document}
I like having the thin frame around all the pages but if you want to get rid of it just remove that option. And you're done!
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Thieves and Traps in B/X D&D
I noticed two curious things about thieves and traps in B/X D&D, neither of which I had actually fully grok-ed before:
Regarding the first point, note that neither the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D nor the Holmes edition have "Find Traps" as an option: they only list "Remove Traps" just like the expert set.
Regarding the second point, note that only one rule, either B10 or B22, makes sense. If we use B10 as the "correct" rule, than B22 must go away completely: Thieves only have 10% for "Find Traps" at first level and it would make thieves worse than everyone else at finding traps if B22 was also in play. If we use B22 as the "correct" rule, than B10 must go away completely: All characters get a chance to find traps, not only thieves.
I do have a theory about this, but that's really all it is: A theory. The 1981 basic and experts set seem to have been written/edited concurrently: Both list "January 1981" for their first printing and I've never heard that anyone had to "wait" for the expert set to be released (in other words, I am pretty sure they went on sale at the same time, not one after the other).
If that's true, and if they were primarily put together by the person given credit (so Tom Moldvay for the basic set and David Cook for the expert set), then it's also quite possible that each started working on "their" game independently using OD&D and Holmes as their sources. For some reason Moldvay (or Johnson or Mentzer, both of whom Moldvay thanks for "...their dedication in reorganizing and fine tuning this book.") eventually felt that thieves needed a "boost" to make them more important, and hence we get the rule on page B10. It wouldn't surprise me if that was a "last-minute" decision so neither the rule on page B22 nor the expert set was updated to be consistent with page B10.
As I said, it's just a theory. But it has enough explanatory power for me to "house-rule" that thieves in B/X do not in fact get the "Find Traps" ability at all. They get "Remove Traps" but the entire business of finding traps is handled with the "everybody has a shot" rule from B22. I think B/X is on the right track giving every character (regardless of class) a bunch of basic "dungeoneering" skills, and finding traps should definitely be included in that set.
Which leaves magical traps since they are explicitly ruled out on page B22. Personally I never liked the idea that thieves can do something that's clearly more in the domain of clerics or magic-users: spell-casters should be able to figure out magical traps, fighters and thieves shouldn't. True, in a fantasy world where many "worthwhile scores" are protected by magic, one could argue that thieves should develop such powers. However, it seems much more logical to say that they need to use "Wands of Trap Detection" to get this done. In fact, one could even use that to explain that high-level thieves get a "Use Magic Item" ability instead of a "Cast Spells from Scrolls" ability which again seems to encroach too much on clerics and magic-users.
And at least in my B/X game (I split up race and class) this makes the elusive elven magic-user/thieves and dwarven cleric/thieves that much more interesting.
- The basic rules list "Find or Remove Traps" as a "double ability" but the expert rules only have "Remove Traps" in the table.
- The basic rules state "(thieves) are the only characters who can ... find traps without using magic..." on page B10 but "any character has a 1 in 6 chance of finding a trap when searching for one ... Any dwarf has a 2 in 6 chance. (This does not apply to magical traps..." on page B22.
Regarding the first point, note that neither the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D nor the Holmes edition have "Find Traps" as an option: they only list "Remove Traps" just like the expert set.
Regarding the second point, note that only one rule, either B10 or B22, makes sense. If we use B10 as the "correct" rule, than B22 must go away completely: Thieves only have 10% for "Find Traps" at first level and it would make thieves worse than everyone else at finding traps if B22 was also in play. If we use B22 as the "correct" rule, than B10 must go away completely: All characters get a chance to find traps, not only thieves.
I do have a theory about this, but that's really all it is: A theory. The 1981 basic and experts set seem to have been written/edited concurrently: Both list "January 1981" for their first printing and I've never heard that anyone had to "wait" for the expert set to be released (in other words, I am pretty sure they went on sale at the same time, not one after the other).
If that's true, and if they were primarily put together by the person given credit (so Tom Moldvay for the basic set and David Cook for the expert set), then it's also quite possible that each started working on "their" game independently using OD&D and Holmes as their sources. For some reason Moldvay (or Johnson or Mentzer, both of whom Moldvay thanks for "...their dedication in reorganizing and fine tuning this book.") eventually felt that thieves needed a "boost" to make them more important, and hence we get the rule on page B10. It wouldn't surprise me if that was a "last-minute" decision so neither the rule on page B22 nor the expert set was updated to be consistent with page B10.
As I said, it's just a theory. But it has enough explanatory power for me to "house-rule" that thieves in B/X do not in fact get the "Find Traps" ability at all. They get "Remove Traps" but the entire business of finding traps is handled with the "everybody has a shot" rule from B22. I think B/X is on the right track giving every character (regardless of class) a bunch of basic "dungeoneering" skills, and finding traps should definitely be included in that set.
Which leaves magical traps since they are explicitly ruled out on page B22. Personally I never liked the idea that thieves can do something that's clearly more in the domain of clerics or magic-users: spell-casters should be able to figure out magical traps, fighters and thieves shouldn't. True, in a fantasy world where many "worthwhile scores" are protected by magic, one could argue that thieves should develop such powers. However, it seems much more logical to say that they need to use "Wands of Trap Detection" to get this done. In fact, one could even use that to explain that high-level thieves get a "Use Magic Item" ability instead of a "Cast Spells from Scrolls" ability which again seems to encroach too much on clerics and magic-users.
And at least in my B/X game (I split up race and class) this makes the elusive elven magic-user/thieves and dwarven cleric/thieves that much more interesting.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Hexographer meets Blackmarsh
I don't really have anything to say in my defense. Except maybe that I needed to waste excess brain cycles that I would otherwise have spent on harder exam questions for my students. So it's all for their benefit... :-)
Anyways, Rob Conley's Blackmarsh is very cool, and now I have it in funky Hexographer colors. Of course the conversion to "strict hexes" made things a little inaccurate, but maybe I'll find the time to refine a few sections in the future.
Anyways, Rob Conley's Blackmarsh is very cool, and now I have it in funky Hexographer colors. Of course the conversion to "strict hexes" made things a little inaccurate, but maybe I'll find the time to refine a few sections in the future.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Busy Teaching Summer Session
You may have noticed the number of posts dropping off significantly in the last two weeks. The reason is that I am teaching a summer session course and that's always a very intense experience for all involved, students as well as teachers.
Last year I was even busier because I wrote detailed lecture notes. This year I am busy because I am converting the lecture notes into a PDF document that will hopefully turn into something useful eventually. I still have a ways to go, for example I'll have to replace a lot of "ASCII-graphics" with real images sooner or later, but it's a surprisingly fun process.
The "manuscript" is at about 200 pages right now, but that's including a lot of "hacking discussions" that a "stuffy text book" would not really talk about. Of course the notes are also missing a lot that a "stuffy text book" would have, detailed proofs for example. It's a trade-off!
I hope that eventually all of this will turn into a fairly concise "primer on data structures," something a lot shorter than a "real" text book but approximately just as useful if it is supplemented with decent lectures.
In any case, I have three more weeks of summer session ahead of me and during that time I expect very few blog posts to actually come to fruition. After that I'll probably be in Germany for a week or two, so in the end I'll only have two more "productive blogging weeks" before the next semester starts. Oh well.
Last year I was even busier because I wrote detailed lecture notes. This year I am busy because I am converting the lecture notes into a PDF document that will hopefully turn into something useful eventually. I still have a ways to go, for example I'll have to replace a lot of "ASCII-graphics" with real images sooner or later, but it's a surprisingly fun process.
The "manuscript" is at about 200 pages right now, but that's including a lot of "hacking discussions" that a "stuffy text book" would not really talk about. Of course the notes are also missing a lot that a "stuffy text book" would have, detailed proofs for example. It's a trade-off!
I hope that eventually all of this will turn into a fairly concise "primer on data structures," something a lot shorter than a "real" text book but approximately just as useful if it is supplemented with decent lectures.
In any case, I have three more weeks of summer session ahead of me and during that time I expect very few blog posts to actually come to fruition. After that I'll probably be in Germany for a week or two, so in the end I'll only have two more "productive blogging weeks" before the next semester starts. Oh well.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Isle of Dread: Better Maps
I had promised to fix up my rough approximation of a Hexographer map for the classic X1: The Isle of Dread setting. So first here's a new image of the slightly improved version:
And here is the corresponding Hexographer file that you're of course free to use for whatever (see the license on my blog). I used the free version of Hexographer to make this map, but as far as I know that shouldn't make a difference.
I mostly decided to work on this because I needed a map I could mess with for my campaign and because I couldn't find one in Hexographer format. However, it turns out that Alan G had made a much better version of the map already, and he shared it as part of my G+ thread. Thank you so much Alan!
Personally I am still a bit torn between using mine or Alan's, but that's mostly a matter of map scale. Most people are probably better off just ignoring my version and using his instead.
And here is the corresponding Hexographer file that you're of course free to use for whatever (see the license on my blog). I used the free version of Hexographer to make this map, but as far as I know that shouldn't make a difference.
I mostly decided to work on this because I needed a map I could mess with for my campaign and because I couldn't find one in Hexographer format. However, it turns out that Alan G had made a much better version of the map already, and he shared it as part of my G+ thread. Thank you so much Alan!
Personally I am still a bit torn between using mine or Alan's, but that's mostly a matter of map scale. Most people are probably better off just ignoring my version and using his instead.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Isle of Dread: An Approximation
I spent a few hours putting together the following approximation of the classic X1: The Isle of Dread setting in Hexographer. I wonder if anyone has a better version? In Hexographer format that is? If not I'll try to fix the remaining bugs and I'll post the actual Hexographer file sometime tomorrow for others to reuse. But it's hard to believe that nobody else has done a version of this classic before...
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Attributes in D&D-variants
Almost all D&D-variants have been surprisingly stable when it comes to the attributes (also called "ability scores") that define a character. For about 40 years, we have used
There is an obvious breakdown into three predominantly physical attributes and three predominantly mental ones: Strength, Constitution and Dexterity are physical whereas Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma are mental. This is presumably the reason why (A)D&D 3e reordered the attributes S, D, C, I, W, X?
There is, however, another breakdown that I have not seen discussed before. It may be that I simply read the wrong things online, so if you can find an earlier reference for the following please let me know. (I actually felt incredibly dense when I first realized this about a year ago and I cannot quite believe that nobody else has pointed it out before.) Instead of grouping the attributes
Now I have to admit that I cannot think of a good way of using the breakdown for anything in game, so as far as I can tell it's just a curiosity. Does anyone see a way to make it matter?
- Strength (STR or S)
- Intelligence (INT or I)
- Wisdom (WIS or W)
- Constitution (CON or C)
- Dexterity (DEX or D)
- Charisma (CHA or X)
There is an obvious breakdown into three predominantly physical attributes and three predominantly mental ones: Strength, Constitution and Dexterity are physical whereas Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma are mental. This is presumably the reason why (A)D&D 3e reordered the attributes S, D, C, I, W, X?
There is, however, another breakdown that I have not seen discussed before. It may be that I simply read the wrong things online, so if you can find an earlier reference for the following please let me know. (I actually felt incredibly dense when I first realized this about a year ago and I cannot quite believe that nobody else has pointed it out before.) Instead of grouping the attributes
S, D, C (physical)let's group them thusly:
I, W, X (mental)
S, X (influence)I know. It's horribly obvious in retrospect, isn't it?
D, I (flexibilty)
C, W (stability)
Both Strength and Charisma measure the character's influence (impact?) on the external world: Strength focuses on physical influence (break down a door), Charisma focuses on mental influence (acquire and lead retainers).The only system I can recall that tries to group attributes orthogonal to mental/physical is Star Frontiers, it actually even affects (advanced) character creation there. But for what it's worth, I think this breakdown of the D&D attributes is actually nicer.
Both Dexterity and Intelligence measure the character's flexibility (adaptability? speed?) to external forces: Dexterity focuses on physical flexibility (evade attacks and react quickly), Intelligence focuses on mental flexibility (learn a language or spell).
Both Constitution and Wisdom measure the character's stability (resilience?) to external forces: Constitution focuses on physical stability (resist poison), Wisdom focuses on mental stability (resist charm).
Now I have to admit that I cannot think of a good way of using the breakdown for anything in game, so as far as I can tell it's just a curiosity. Does anyone see a way to make it matter?
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Race and class in my D&D game
I am pretty sure that this post will be a "downer" in this day and age of "egalitarian" fantasy role-playing games where anyone can be anything and excel at it. Consider yourself warned?
When it comes to D&D-type games I am quite fond of "conservative racial stereotypes" in the style of the original rules: Certain races are better (or worse) at doing certain things, period. Issues of "game balance" aside, the answer to the old "Which races can pick which classes?" question is one of the central player-facing rules that allows me to make clear statements about the world, statements the players will care about a lot more than when I rattle off 20 minutes of flavor text.
Instead of discussing this entirely in the abstract, let's start by looking at the table of race/class combinations for my world:
The very first statement I make is that there are only 4 races and 4 classes that can be played which establishes the "outer limits" of the world (from a player perspective). The next statement is that humans are good at everything: the Us mean that humans can advance to any level in all available classes. The remaining U entries state what the various demi-humans are good at: dwarven fighters, elven wizards, and halfling rogues are all on par with their human counterparts. In fact, given their greater life-spans, demi-humans actually have a chance of exceeding human capabilities in those particular classes (see below for how this plays out).
The remaining nine entries are where things usually get controversial: the 4s and 8s mean that the race in question is limited to level 4 or 8 in a given class, the dash means that the race cannot have characters of that class at all. These are the cases that (in my humble opinion) require justification, and it's those justifications that convey most of the flavor about who these races really are in this particular world.
Looking at my table you may already "get" the flavor I am going for to some extent, but just in case I also provide detailed justifications below. Before we get to that, however, I'd like to briefly summarize how my race/class table differs from various "official" versions of D&D:
Does my table seem too random for your taste? Personally I find OD&D and AD&D 1e even more random, especially since those rules give very little in terms of justification or explanation. So in an effort to rectify that let me try to run you through my thinking on a class-by-class basis:
Of course these are generalizations, but they are "true enough" in my world to be made into rules. I find that if I don't clearly state that "dwarven wizards" and the like simply don't exist, sooner or later a player will try to roll one up. And if I say at that point that they can't, much needless sadness results.
Note that I don't rule out the existence of "priests" as opposed to "clerics" for any race. It's just that "priests" (religious figures more akin to studious wizards than bloodthirsty fighters) are not a playable class in my world. At least not yet.
I should also mention that I really only play up to level 12 or so; in practice the "soft limit" for player characters is probably closer to 10. This means that while the level 4 limit is a significant restriction, the level 8 limit is much less of one. Combined with the fact that demi-humans can have two (or three in the case of elves) classes, this means that no race has a "hard limit" of any sort to their combined levels unless they pick unfortunate combinations. But even elven fighter/rogues and dwarven cleric/rogues can make it to 12 combined levels, so that's mostly a theoretical concern.
The limit to about 12 levels ties in with my preferred campaign style as well as my choice of level progression.
When it comes to D&D-type games I am quite fond of "conservative racial stereotypes" in the style of the original rules: Certain races are better (or worse) at doing certain things, period. Issues of "game balance" aside, the answer to the old "Which races can pick which classes?" question is one of the central player-facing rules that allows me to make clear statements about the world, statements the players will care about a lot more than when I rattle off 20 minutes of flavor text.
Instead of discussing this entirely in the abstract, let's start by looking at the table of race/class combinations for my world:
| Dwarf | Elf | Halfling | Human | |
| Cleric | 8 | - | - | U |
| Fighter | U | 4 | 4 | U |
| Rogue | 4 | 8 | U | U |
| Wizard | - | U | - | U |
The very first statement I make is that there are only 4 races and 4 classes that can be played which establishes the "outer limits" of the world (from a player perspective). The next statement is that humans are good at everything: the Us mean that humans can advance to any level in all available classes. The remaining U entries state what the various demi-humans are good at: dwarven fighters, elven wizards, and halfling rogues are all on par with their human counterparts. In fact, given their greater life-spans, demi-humans actually have a chance of exceeding human capabilities in those particular classes (see below for how this plays out).
The remaining nine entries are where things usually get controversial: the 4s and 8s mean that the race in question is limited to level 4 or 8 in a given class, the dash means that the race cannot have characters of that class at all. These are the cases that (in my humble opinion) require justification, and it's those justifications that convey most of the flavor about who these races really are in this particular world.
Looking at my table you may already "get" the flavor I am going for to some extent, but just in case I also provide detailed justifications below. Before we get to that, however, I'd like to briefly summarize how my race/class table differs from various "official" versions of D&D:
In comparison to (A)D&D 3e and its free-wheeling attitudes my table is blatantly restrictive. If you like "everything goes" just fine then you should definitely ignore this post.
In comparison to "classic" B/X or BECMI D&D my table is very flexible: Yes you can be an elven rogue or a dwarven cleric! But if you like "race classes" just fine you should probably also ignore this post.
The comparison to OD&D is more complex: Dwarven fighters are just as good as human fighters (instead of peaking at level 6 as in OD&D), elven wizards are just as good as human wizards (instead of peaking at level 8), but both dwarves and elves are restricted as rogues (thieves) and there are no elven clerics at all (which is more restrictive than OD&D on both counts). The elven and halfling fighters are unchanged.
The comparison to AD&D 1e is even more convoluted: Gary allows non-player clerics for dwarves and elves (but curiously not for halflings); I'd rather have a universal reason instead of treating PCs and NPCs differently. Gary stops dwarves, elves, and halflings at levels 9, 7, and 6 as fighters; he clearly gives a nod to dwarves being better at killing things, but his distinction is too muddled for my tastes. Gary does let elves advance to level 11 as wizards; as far as campaigns go, this is actually pretty close to my thinking (see below). Finally, Gary gives all races unlimited advancement as rogues, just like OD&D does; that I have a hard time with, particularly in the case of dwarves and their sausage fingers.
Does my table seem too random for your taste? Personally I find OD&D and AD&D 1e even more random, especially since those rules give very little in terms of justification or explanation. So in an effort to rectify that let me try to run you through my thinking on a class-by-class basis:
Clerics are essentially religious fanatics, an attitude that I see neither in elves (too "scientific" or "arcane" or "enlightened" as it were) nor halflings (too "laid-back" for sure, they'd at most be fanatics about food and wine). Dwarves and humans on the other hand can clearly be block-headed enough to spout religious dogma for a long time; dwarves just eventually calm down and start to realize that there's more to life than that. Humans on the other hand rarely develop far enough (not in terms of levels mind you, but in terms of overall enlightenment about the world and their place in it).
Fighters either kill things or organize others to do the same on a large scale. Every race has some potential for slaughter, but only dwarves and humans are dedicated and aggressive enough to perfect their techniques: Dwarves to defend their mountain homes (and the rest of the world) from the endless hordes of the underdark, humans almost invariably to accumulate wealth and power. Elves tend to ignore the petty squabbles of the short-lived races. They have plenty of time to "wait things out" in the relative safety of their ancient forests and most of them don't see the point of "playing soldier" and risking their (almost) immortal skin as it were. Halflings are neither fond of the discipline required nor the decided lack of comfort military ventures bring with them. In the end they also don't much care for a "fair" fight and would rather overwhelm those "ugly biggens" who want to steal their pipe weed with guerrilla tactics.
Rogues are fundamentally opportunists, they only differ regarding the kind of opportunity they prefer to exploit. Dwarves don't have much patience with this approach to life: You're either doing it right or you're doing it wrong, and if you're doing it right it's honorable and you don't have to sneak around. Elves do enjoy the mischievous aspects of life as a rogue, but they also eventually tire of the "inelegant" physical approach when magical techniques would simply guarantee success. Halflings however couldn't feel more at home with the idea of tricking others or overcoming a wide variety of obstacles with hairy toes and nimble fingers. It's pretty much the only thing exciting enough to keep them away from home during pie season.
Wizards are "academic technocrats" who unravel the mysteries of the multiverse in order to bend it to their will. Well, at least the human ones do, the elven ones look at it more as "communing with the multiverse" but it all works out to the same. Either way, studying musty tomes for hours on end (without snacks even!) doesn't sit well with halflings at all. Dwarves, while not necessarily turned off by the studying, prefer the simpler truths that tradition and religion provide over having to make up their own minds about what is what. For both halflings and dwarves their natural resistance to magic also gets in the way a bit.
Of course these are generalizations, but they are "true enough" in my world to be made into rules. I find that if I don't clearly state that "dwarven wizards" and the like simply don't exist, sooner or later a player will try to roll one up. And if I say at that point that they can't, much needless sadness results.
Note that I don't rule out the existence of "priests" as opposed to "clerics" for any race. It's just that "priests" (religious figures more akin to studious wizards than bloodthirsty fighters) are not a playable class in my world. At least not yet.
I should also mention that I really only play up to level 12 or so; in practice the "soft limit" for player characters is probably closer to 10. This means that while the level 4 limit is a significant restriction, the level 8 limit is much less of one. Combined with the fact that demi-humans can have two (or three in the case of elves) classes, this means that no race has a "hard limit" of any sort to their combined levels unless they pick unfortunate combinations. But even elven fighter/rogues and dwarven cleric/rogues can make it to 12 combined levels, so that's mostly a theoretical concern.
The limit to about 12 levels ties in with my preferred campaign style as well as my choice of level progression.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
What D&D Character?
According to this quiz (beware, takes rather long and some of the questions are extremely silly) I am a Chaotic Good Human Wizard (5th Level). Weird, but I guess at least I can cast Fireball?
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Das Schwarze Auge
Although I am pretty much a complete "D&D nut" these days, D&D actually wasn't the first table-top role-playing game I played. That dubious honor belongs to a German game called Das Schwarze Auge ("The Dark Eye") which was first published in 1984 and luckily I discovered it that same year.
(Digression: I guess I was "OSR before the OSR" because I never liked any of the later versions they came out with, I stuck to that 1984 release for as long as I could. Of course eventually everybody else I played with switched so I had to as well. But much to my credit I never actually bought any of those "modernized" versions, I just played them with my friends. I wish I had been just as strong when AD&D 2e came out.)
In any case, I always thought it would be interesting to share how that system worked with the rest of the OSR community, so I had planned to write a summary of the original 1984 rules in English. But I don't have to do that anymore because someone else already did, I just never knew about it until today!
I highly recommend that you read at least the sections on character creation and combat, those give a pretty good flavor; the magic section is fun too of course but less essential. The most fundamental differences to D&D are probably these:
(Digression: I guess I was "OSR before the OSR" because I never liked any of the later versions they came out with, I stuck to that 1984 release for as long as I could. Of course eventually everybody else I played with switched so I had to as well. But much to my credit I never actually bought any of those "modernized" versions, I just played them with my friends. I wish I had been just as strong when AD&D 2e came out.)
In any case, I always thought it would be interesting to share how that system worked with the rest of the OSR community, so I had planned to write a summary of the original 1984 rules in English. But I don't have to do that anymore because someone else already did, I just never knew about it until today!
I highly recommend that you read at least the sections on character creation and combat, those give a pretty good flavor; the magic section is fun too of course but less essential. The most fundamental differences to D&D are probably these:
- Ability scores start between 8 and 13; on gaining a level, a character can raise one of their ability scores by 1 up to a maximum of 20; ability scores are used for "skills" by rolling under with a d20; "courage" is actually an ability score (so player characters will sometimes run away even if their player doesn't want them to).
- Combat has no "static defenses" so both combatants roll: the attacker rolls to hit (d20 under their "attack" value), the defender rolls to parry (d20 under their "parry" value); a successful parry can result in one or both weapons breaking; armor reduces damage unless the attack was a critical hit; critical hits or missile weapons cannot be parried.
- Magic uses a "spell point" system with some effects depending on how many "spell points" the caster has left; the player has to actually recite the proper words by heart, no cheating; there are no saving throws, but the caster may have to overcome the target's "monster level" with a custom roll depending on the spell.
Friday, June 21, 2013
A Tiny Sandbox: Populated Starting Area
I've been working on the starting area for my sandbox campaign some more. Although I said I wouldn't, I did end up changing a few things about the geography. For example I introduced a small-ish marsh/swamp area to partially sink a certain semi-ruined temple into. I also added a bunch of streams/brooks/rivers (and one new lake!) to make it all sort-of work. Here's how things look right now:
The red outline marks hex 05.05 on the 5 miles/hex regional map I posted earlier. I have not gotten around to updating the larger-scale maps yet, but this is close enough for now. Here's some flavor text for the "populated" hexes (from west to east). Note that I have no had time to edit all of this for consistency yet.
I'd appreciate any feedback you may have about what I've thrown together here. In particular:
 |
| Sandbox campaign starting area at 1 mile/hex. |
The red outline marks hex 05.05 on the 5 miles/hex regional map I posted earlier. I have not gotten around to updating the larger-scale maps yet, but this is close enough for now. Here's some flavor text for the "populated" hexes (from west to east). Note that I have no had time to edit all of this for consistency yet.
02.13 Hold of The Chaos Cult: A small group of Xinlurgash cultists have established a hideout in this abandoned dwarven delve. They were sent by their main temple (off the area map to the west) to investigate the ruins in hex 10.16 but have not made a lot of progress toward that goal yet. They did, however, successfully recruit several small bands of humanoids (kobolds, orcs, ogres) who for one reason or another decided not to work with the Broken Fang hobgoblins in hex 26.21; their most prized recruits so far are a minotaur and an owl bear.Note that there are other adventuring sites, quite a few in fact, ranging from small burial mounds to forgotten cellars and the like. I am considering adding a little bit of an "underdark" dimension as well, just in case the players decide to roam deep instead of wide.
04.10 The Sunken City: This mist-covered lake hides an ancient sunken city under its otherwise calm surface. The topmost spires of three towers peek out in the center of the lake but cannot be seen from a distance due to the ever-billowing mist. The towers are made out of a strange bluish-green stone not native to the area.
06.03 Village of Tirn (Krak'Vaza, Citadel of Iron): A mining village of about 450 inhabitants with a sizable dwarven population of about 60. Tirn is built around an old dwarven citadel that has changed hands (between dwarves and various humanoid tribes) many times over the centuries. It was last reconquered by the dwarves around 120 years ago. About 80 years ago the dwarves invited human settlers to join them to make up for their dwindling numbers. The village is now ruled by a council of three dwarves and three humans with a mayor that alternates between dwarves and humans every 10 years. The current mayor is Mart Morren, an experienced human miner of about 50 years; Mart will step down in three years. Despite its relatively small size, Tirn has an actual stone wall.
06.24 Hidden Village of Nath'Valin (Lake of Whispers): A small semi-fortified tree-house village of about 80 high elves guards this entrance to the Vi'Valin (Forest of Whispers) which extends to the south. The elves keep close tabs on the Broken Fang hobgoblins in hex 26.21. They occasionally skirmish with the humanoids, but as long as their attention is focused on the human settlers to the north, the elves are not going to take any major action.
10.16 Temple of the Froghemoth: An ancient temple of unknown origin is slowly sinking deeper into this blighted swamp as the centuries drag on. Statues and bas reliefs of strange reptilians cover the crumbling structures that hide a strange conglomeration of lizardmen, yuan-ti, kuo-toa, and worse.
11.08 Caves of Uncertainty: This network of natural caves is rumored to lead far into the depths of the earth. A small group of about 20 bandits is currently using the surface caves as a hideout. They arrived only recently from the north and have not yet attacked any of the merchants in the area.
15.09 Village of Sern: A village of about 500 (mostly human) souls, Sern sits on both banks of the river Url. The village sprung up roughly 40 years ago at the site of an ancient (but perfectly intact!) stone bridge of dwarven construction (complete with small gate-houses on either side which are now used to collect tolls). Sern has two major temples, one to Mielikki (goddess of forests, hunters, and woodsmen) on the south shore and one to Demeter (goddess of agriculture, fishermen, and fertility) on the north shore. There is also a small shrine dedicated to a variety of other deities, mostly frequented by merchants and other travelers. Sern hosts a weekly market where both homesteaders from the surrounding area as well as craftsmen from Sern sell their products; merchants from Sern in turn regularly attend the monthly market in the town of Marken to the north (not on the area map).
16.11 Stones of Sorrow: A mysterious circle of 19 ancient standing stones (each about 12 feet high, 5 feet wide, and 2 feet deep) looms on the highest peak amidst these strangely desolate hills. Travelers have reported frightening wailing sounds emanating from the stones. Some believe that memories of an ancient cult or civilization mourn their own passing here on every full moon.
19.17 Ruins of Parm: Before being overrun by the Broken Fang hobgoblins and their minions last year, Parm used to be a small village of about 150 hunters and woodsmen. Many who survived the attack have volunteered their services to Baron Tembar and Sternbow Keep on the condition that Parm will be taken back this year. The ruins are currently home to about 30 goblin raiders who are still occasionally digging up some useful loot. A small band of 5 human hunters who are too impatient to wait for Baron Tembar's plans to take shape is waging a guerrilla war on the goblins, albeit not very successfully.
20.09 Tower of Brinsaro: The wizard Foranius Brinsaro and his wife Emiliane Sirramor (both human) reside here together with a handful of apprentices and servants. Rumor has it that the tower appeared out of nowhere about 20 winters ago, something the decidedly foreign-looking bluish-green stone it is made out of lends further credence to. A few of the surrounding homesteaders have agreed to supply the wizard with essential goods in return for his protection. Foranius is on generally good terms with the area's population, although his search for new apprentices every four years or so is something few families want to volunteer their youngsters for. Foranius has also helped baron Tembar with the fortifications of Sternbow Keep, a debt the baron repays by stationing four guards from the keep here on a monthly rotation.
22.13 Sternbow Keep: Baron Rinald Tembar has ruled this area for the last 15 years. His father, baron Orland Tembar, came south to carve his barony out of the surrounding wilderness about 35 years ago. The keep is small but well-fortified with both high walls and a sizable moot. The baron's garrison numbers about 60 men-at-arms with 3 sergeants and an experienced captain to lead them. Sternbow Keep is surrounded by a small village of about 60 farmers, hunters, and woodsmen, 30 of which are ready to serve as a militia. About 15 refugees from Parm are temporarily camped here as well; so far they refuse to join the village proper because they want to liberate Parm from its goblin invaders this year. The temple of Tyr located in the keep encouraged the refugees in this endeavour.
26.21 Fort Morr'Runk (Broken Fang): Hobgoblins of the Broken Fang tribe have been rallying the surrounding goblin clans under their banner for several years now. Last year they destroyed the village of Parm, dealing a painful blow to human settlers from the north. Fort Morr'Runk consists of three concentric palisades around a hill with a small stone keep of unknown origin that serves as their headquarters. There are about 500 goblins from various tribes as well as 150 hobgoblins who maintain order by savage discipline. A cult of hobgoblin shamans of Maglubiyet are behind all this, having received omens and visions from their god to lead a holy war against the lesser races.
28.23 Prison of Ilmor'Karanth (Hell of Stone): The old Varmerian Empire decided to dump many of its "undesirables" into this gargantuan prison complex at its eastern-most border. When the empire crumbled to dust hundreds of years ago the prison was simply abandoned. Many strange and dangerous creatures have moved in since, both from above and from below.
29.07 Village of Mirm: A small village of about 50 farmers and horse-traders, Mirm was founded about 25 years ago by Imen Mirm, a female knight who was able to befriend the centaurs who still roam this region. Imen built a small manor keep but had no ambition to rule and swore fealty to baron Tembar instead. Imen breeds excellent war horses and trains those she considers worthy in the art of equestrian combat. Her philosophy of "honoring your horse as you would your brother" strikes many as strange, but the results she achieves are unquestioned and enlightened knights travel far and wide to learn from her.
I'd appreciate any feedback you may have about what I've thrown together here. In particular:
- Did I go over the top with all the water in the map? Recall that the scale is 1 mile/hex, so pretty small. I consider many of the streams I added "brooks" and the like, not "real" rivers.
- Should I exchange hexes 15.09 and 22.13, the village of Sern and Sternbow Keep? After I got done I realized that the old baron would probably have built his keep at the border of the forest instead of inside.
- Should I add another village in hex 16.02 or hex 27.01 for example? The latter would allow me to add a fishing village, what with the lake right there.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
A Tiny Sandbox: Final Area Geography
The journey I started a few days ago may finally be getting to the point where I can actually populate the sandbox. Who knew that I'd be so picky about my geography? In any case, this will be a longer post because I'll include some of the "development steps" I went through to end up with the final area map. You may want to look at this post to "get your bearings" as it were.
I initially went with the tiny "one big hex and partial neighbors" sub-hex template because I wanted to build a tiny sandbox. Makes sense of course, but then I realized that I prefer a "wider" low-level area so that my players can start exploring and making their own decisions about where to go right away. I guess the more common approach, the one with "Gygaxian heritage" if you will, is to simply tell them that until their characters have leveled up enough, they must go back and forth between town and the one and only dungeon that's close enough so the trip won't kill them. (How that will prepare anyone, players or characters, for the wider hex crawls later on I do not know.) That meant that I needed a larger area-scale map at 1 mile per hex, covering a larger section of the regional map. Here's the comparison between what the initial area map covered and what the new area map covers:
There's obviously quite a bit more territory now: Instead of roughly four 5-mile hexes we now cover roughly 28! This is exactly what the regional template is made for. I copied an empty regional template and I started by filling in the region-scale type of each hex as the "center hex" in my new area map. Then I copied over the area previously covered by the sub-hex map and marked it with a red boundary (because I didn't want to make changes to those areas anymore). Finally I started filling in the missing pieces according to the campaign design guidelines. Here's an early state of the area map:
In an effort to once again test how well the campaign design guidelines do in practice, I stuck to the simplest possible interpretation: Fill each whole hex with 9 primary, 6 secondary, and 3 tertiary sub-hexes depending on the overall terrain type on the larger-scale map. After a while I ended up with an area map where only the partial large-scale hexes were missing:
At this point I made a post about what I perceived as the problems with following the campaign design guidelines in too simple-minded a manner and we'll get to my modifications in a moment, but first here's the completed simple-minded area map:
To address the problems I had identified I first concentrated on the heavy forests in the south and worked in the new terrain type I had outlined earlier. Going through this wasn't very hard, and I ended up with this area map:
That certainly looks a lot better than having "plains" and "hills" show up in the middle of what is ostensibly "heavy" forest. Next I went through all the large-scale hexes one more time and rolled for "wildcards," terrain features that are not common but still possible given the terrain for a large-scale hex. I only got four "hits" here, and for three of them I decided to make them "water" because the map otherwise looks rather dry; for one I picked "mountain" and in the middle of a "heavy forest" hex no less. I envision this as the site for one of the last "low-level adventures" the players might have before setting out into the wider world. So here's the map with wildcards:
Of course I could simply have placed more wildcards, but once again I wanted to stick with the campaign design guidelines mostly as written. As for the perceived "dryness" of the map: I'll eventually add brooks and streams and rivers and the like, so things should work out okay. After these two improvements I spent about an hour looking over the geography and "reshuffling" hexes so they make a little more sense overall. I'd like to emphasize the "reshuffling" part: I stuck with the recommended breakdown into primary, secondary, and tertiary terrain types, so turning a "plain" hex into a "hill" required that I turn another "hill" hex into a "plain," at least for interior hexes. Borderline hexes are considered fair game for just about anything anyway, so I didn't have to "trade" those. Of course I am no expert, but this is my final take on the area map after my "careful" reshuffling:
I made one additional change: Notice the "water" hex in the top left? I added that after checking the regional map again, just north of that hex is where the "big lake" starts and I wanted to remind myself of that. It's a borderline hex so it doesn't count against the balance of hexes anyway, which makes the "rules as written" fanatic in me happy.
Phew! I swear I am done with the geography now! Three posts later than initially expected, but heck, it was worth it. I have to congratulate (and thank!) The Welsh Piper for a great approach to the geography of a sandbox, and I highly recommend his approach even if you start off differently, for example with a donjon world map.
I will now switch to rivers, roads, settlements, ruins, dungeons, random encounter tables and the like. Maybe I even get to run a few games in this sandbox soon! Wishful thinking? I hope not...
I initially went with the tiny "one big hex and partial neighbors" sub-hex template because I wanted to build a tiny sandbox. Makes sense of course, but then I realized that I prefer a "wider" low-level area so that my players can start exploring and making their own decisions about where to go right away. I guess the more common approach, the one with "Gygaxian heritage" if you will, is to simply tell them that until their characters have leveled up enough, they must go back and forth between town and the one and only dungeon that's close enough so the trip won't kill them. (How that will prepare anyone, players or characters, for the wider hex crawls later on I do not know.) That meant that I needed a larger area-scale map at 1 mile per hex, covering a larger section of the regional map. Here's the comparison between what the initial area map covered and what the new area map covers:
 |
| Coverage of old (left) and new (right) area map. |
There's obviously quite a bit more territory now: Instead of roughly four 5-mile hexes we now cover roughly 28! This is exactly what the regional template is made for. I copied an empty regional template and I started by filling in the region-scale type of each hex as the "center hex" in my new area map. Then I copied over the area previously covered by the sub-hex map and marked it with a red boundary (because I didn't want to make changes to those areas anymore). Finally I started filling in the missing pieces according to the campaign design guidelines. Here's an early state of the area map:
 |
| An early state of the new area map. |
In an effort to once again test how well the campaign design guidelines do in practice, I stuck to the simplest possible interpretation: Fill each whole hex with 9 primary, 6 secondary, and 3 tertiary sub-hexes depending on the overall terrain type on the larger-scale map. After a while I ended up with an area map where only the partial large-scale hexes were missing:
 |
| All complete large-scale hexes refined. |
At this point I made a post about what I perceived as the problems with following the campaign design guidelines in too simple-minded a manner and we'll get to my modifications in a moment, but first here's the completed simple-minded area map:
 |
| All large-scale hexes refined, simple-minded. |
To address the problems I had identified I first concentrated on the heavy forests in the south and worked in the new terrain type I had outlined earlier. Going through this wasn't very hard, and I ended up with this area map:
 |
| Improvement: The new "heavy forest" terrain type. |
That certainly looks a lot better than having "plains" and "hills" show up in the middle of what is ostensibly "heavy" forest. Next I went through all the large-scale hexes one more time and rolled for "wildcards," terrain features that are not common but still possible given the terrain for a large-scale hex. I only got four "hits" here, and for three of them I decided to make them "water" because the map otherwise looks rather dry; for one I picked "mountain" and in the middle of a "heavy forest" hex no less. I envision this as the site for one of the last "low-level adventures" the players might have before setting out into the wider world. So here's the map with wildcards:
 |
| Improvement: Three "water" and one "mountain" wildcards. |
Of course I could simply have placed more wildcards, but once again I wanted to stick with the campaign design guidelines mostly as written. As for the perceived "dryness" of the map: I'll eventually add brooks and streams and rivers and the like, so things should work out okay. After these two improvements I spent about an hour looking over the geography and "reshuffling" hexes so they make a little more sense overall. I'd like to emphasize the "reshuffling" part: I stuck with the recommended breakdown into primary, secondary, and tertiary terrain types, so turning a "plain" hex into a "hill" required that I turn another "hill" hex into a "plain," at least for interior hexes. Borderline hexes are considered fair game for just about anything anyway, so I didn't have to "trade" those. Of course I am no expert, but this is my final take on the area map after my "careful" reshuffling:
 |
| Improvement: Reshuffling hexes overall. |
I made one additional change: Notice the "water" hex in the top left? I added that after checking the regional map again, just north of that hex is where the "big lake" starts and I wanted to remind myself of that. It's a borderline hex so it doesn't count against the balance of hexes anyway, which makes the "rules as written" fanatic in me happy.
Phew! I swear I am done with the geography now! Three posts later than initially expected, but heck, it was worth it. I have to congratulate (and thank!) The Welsh Piper for a great approach to the geography of a sandbox, and I highly recommend his approach even if you start off differently, for example with a donjon world map.
I will now switch to rivers, roads, settlements, ruins, dungeons, random encounter tables and the like. Maybe I even get to run a few games in this sandbox soon! Wishful thinking? I hope not...
Monday, June 17, 2013
A Tiny Sandbox: Expanded Area Map
As a last (geographical!) step in my quest to put together a tiny sandbox I wanted to expand the 1 mile/hex area-scale map to allow my players to trek a little further even in their initial low-level ventures. This also allows me to put the low-level adventuring sites a little further apart instead of crowding them all into a roughly 10-by-10-hex area. Here's the result so far:
I don't know about you, but I find the terrain generated by just using the "primary, secondary, tertiary" categories from The Welsh Piper's campaign design tutorial a little too homogeneous. Also, in the southern portion of the map, I don't like how heavily forested hexes still include plains, that doesn't seem appropriate.
So my plan is to first "spice things up" a bit by also using the "wildcard" categories. In a "forest" hex, for example, we currently only get "forest, plains, hills" sub-hexes because those are the "primary, secondary, tertiary" categories. With "wildcards" included there will also be the occasional "water, swamp, mountain" sub-hex. That should help.
Second I'll change the current "forest" category to "light forest" and introduce a "heavy forest" category in which we have "heavy forest, light forest, forested hills" instead of "light forest, plains, hills" as before. The "wildcards" for "heavy forest" will be "water, swamp, forested mountain" of course. That should make those "heavy forest" hexes just a tad bit more spooky. Or so I hope. Stay tuned!
 |
| Expanded 1 mile/hex area map, original dimensions in red. |
I don't know about you, but I find the terrain generated by just using the "primary, secondary, tertiary" categories from The Welsh Piper's campaign design tutorial a little too homogeneous. Also, in the southern portion of the map, I don't like how heavily forested hexes still include plains, that doesn't seem appropriate.
So my plan is to first "spice things up" a bit by also using the "wildcard" categories. In a "forest" hex, for example, we currently only get "forest, plains, hills" sub-hexes because those are the "primary, secondary, tertiary" categories. With "wildcards" included there will also be the occasional "water, swamp, mountain" sub-hex. That should help.
Second I'll change the current "forest" category to "light forest" and introduce a "heavy forest" category in which we have "heavy forest, light forest, forested hills" instead of "light forest, plains, hills" as before. The "wildcards" for "heavy forest" will be "water, swamp, forested mountain" of course. That should make those "heavy forest" hexes just a tad bit more spooky. Or so I hope. Stay tuned!
A Tiny Sandbox: Revised Geography
I couldn't help myself, I needed to know (desperately!) what the "wider world" around my regional sandbox map looks like. So once again armed with the free version of Hexographer and The Welsh Piper's excellent campaign design tutorial I "zoomed out" into an atlas-scale map where each numbered hex is 25 miles. Here's the result:
So from left to right we have an atlas map at 25 miles per hex, a regional map around atlas hex 05.05 at 5 miles per hex, and an area map around region hex 05.05 at 1 mile per hex. Pretty neat.
If you compare this regional map to the one I posted yesterday you'll see that by expanding to atlas-scale I was able to "fix" a few things regarding the terrain. For example the upper-left corner now properly reflects "more water" to the north. I also changed the distribution of "light" and "heavy" forest in the south to fit. On the area map I moved the mountains fully inside the hills instead of having them run up against the plains. All improvements in my book.
Yes, I still have to populate the sandbox. But now I am a lot happier with the overall amount of geographical information available, so hopefully I won't be tempted to redo the geography again. At least not anytime soon.
 |
| The sandbox at 25 miles/hex, 5 miles/hex, and 1 mile/hex. |
So from left to right we have an atlas map at 25 miles per hex, a regional map around atlas hex 05.05 at 5 miles per hex, and an area map around region hex 05.05 at 1 mile per hex. Pretty neat.
If you compare this regional map to the one I posted yesterday you'll see that by expanding to atlas-scale I was able to "fix" a few things regarding the terrain. For example the upper-left corner now properly reflects "more water" to the north. I also changed the distribution of "light" and "heavy" forest in the south to fit. On the area map I moved the mountains fully inside the hills instead of having them run up against the plains. All improvements in my book.
Yes, I still have to populate the sandbox. But now I am a lot happier with the overall amount of geographical information available, so hopefully I won't be tempted to redo the geography again. At least not anytime soon.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
A Tiny Sandbox: Geography
I've been meaning to run a sandbox campaign for a while now and tonight I sat down for a little while with the free version of Hexographer and The Welsh Piper's campaign design tutorial. Here's what I have to show for about two hours of thoroughly enjoyable work:
On the left we have a scale of 5 miles per numbered hex, on the right we have a scale of 1 mile per numbered hex. The red tint on the left shows what I zoomed in on to get the right, so the big central hex on the right map is hex 05.05 from the left map.
Did I end up with a particularly cool map? No. Is it good enough for a trial-balloon sandbox? I am pretty sure it is!
Note that I tried to follow the tutorial to the letter (yes I actually rolled dice for the left map), so I guess this also shows that Erin's method produces fairly decent outcomes. (Of course his method is not an exact algorithm, you do have to tweak things here and there to make it work.)
Next I'll have to populate the maps. Erin has another tutorial for that, but as far as I can tell his method will produce too few adventuring sites for my taste. So I'll probably just populate manually, or maybe by stealing ideas from other sandboxes I have access to. We'll see.
On the left we have a scale of 5 miles per numbered hex, on the right we have a scale of 1 mile per numbered hex. The red tint on the left shows what I zoomed in on to get the right, so the big central hex on the right map is hex 05.05 from the left map.
Did I end up with a particularly cool map? No. Is it good enough for a trial-balloon sandbox? I am pretty sure it is!
Note that I tried to follow the tutorial to the letter (yes I actually rolled dice for the left map), so I guess this also shows that Erin's method produces fairly decent outcomes. (Of course his method is not an exact algorithm, you do have to tweak things here and there to make it work.)
Next I'll have to populate the maps. Erin has another tutorial for that, but as far as I can tell his method will produce too few adventuring sites for my taste. So I'll probably just populate manually, or maybe by stealing ideas from other sandboxes I have access to. We'll see.
d20 versus 3d6
Alright, so say you want to design a mechanic similar to "3rd edition" D&D where you have to "beat" a target number set by the referee to succeed at a certain task. If you have a d20 handy, you get something like this:
Sound good? Pretty good! And you are probably all more than familiar with it anyway... Now what if instead of a d20 all you have is a d6? The only way to stay in roughly the same range for target numbers is to use 3d6 since that'll cover 3 to 18. If you go that route, here is (roughly) what you get:
Sound good? What? Oh you're still thinking about it! Well, it's good as far as the numbers go, they are pretty close to the actual chances of beating these targets. What you're probably trying to figure out is if there's a method to this madness. There is indeed, but we don't really need to go there. What should be perfectly obvious is that this is very different from the "adding +1 to the roll means adding +5% to your chance of success" simplicity of using a d20.
Also note how the chances for success and failure are really "scrunched together" at the ends with 3d6. If we call anything >90% "virtually certain" and anything <10% "virtually impossible" then we have 7 numbers for the former (1-7) and 7 numbers for the latter (15-21) leaving only 7 numbers (8-14) for everything in between. (Of course we could simply "lose" 1, 2, 20, and 21 since they do not represent distinct chances of success anyway.)
Inside the 8-14 range we have of course 11 which regardless of d20 or 3d6 stands for a "50/50" chance of success. Between 11 and 12 (or 10) we lose (gain) 12.5%; between 11 and 13 (or 9) we lose (gain) 24.1%; between 11 and 14 (or 8) we lose (gain) 33.8%; and that exhausts the "in between" range. What's curious about this is that rolling d8 or d12 over a suitably adjusted range of target numbers actually gives rather similar percentages. Here's the d8 for example (I'll leave the d12 as homework):
Here's a rough graphical comparison (go by the percentage chances when you compare 3d6 to d8, not by the range of numbers covered):
Do I have a point with all this? I do indeed: Rolling 3d6 against a target number in the 1-21 range is silly! Why?
Now I hear some of you say "But I like rolling 3d6, it feels so cool!" and of course I cannot help you with that: Taste can neither be legislated nor rationally understood. So keep on rolling 3d6 despite knowing better, it's your game!
| Target | Success? |
|---|---|
| 1 | 100% |
| 2 | 95% |
| 3 | 90% |
| 4 | 85% |
| 5 | 80% |
| 6 | 75% |
| 7 | 70% |
| 8 | 65% |
| 9 | 60% |
| 10 | 55% |
| 11 | 50% |
| 12 | 45% |
| 13 | 40% |
| 14 | 35% |
| 15 | 30% |
| 16 | 25% |
| 17 | 20% |
| 18 | 15% |
| 19 | 10% |
| 20 | 5% |
| 21 | 0% |
Sound good? Pretty good! And you are probably all more than familiar with it anyway... Now what if instead of a d20 all you have is a d6? The only way to stay in roughly the same range for target numbers is to use 3d6 since that'll cover 3 to 18. If you go that route, here is (roughly) what you get:
| Target | Success? |
|---|---|
| 1 | 100% |
| 2 | 100% |
| 3 | 100% |
| 4 | 99.5% |
| 5 | 98.2% |
| 6 | 95.4% |
| 7 | 90.7% |
| 8 | 83.8% |
| 9 | 74.1% |
| 10 | 62.5% |
| 11 | 50% |
| 12 | 37.5% |
| 13 | 25.9% |
| 14 | 16.2% |
| 15 | 9.3% |
| 16 | 4.6% |
| 17 | 1.9% |
| 18 | 0.5% |
| 19 | 0% |
| 20 | 0% |
| 21 | 0% |
Sound good? What? Oh you're still thinking about it! Well, it's good as far as the numbers go, they are pretty close to the actual chances of beating these targets. What you're probably trying to figure out is if there's a method to this madness. There is indeed, but we don't really need to go there. What should be perfectly obvious is that this is very different from the "adding +1 to the roll means adding +5% to your chance of success" simplicity of using a d20.
Also note how the chances for success and failure are really "scrunched together" at the ends with 3d6. If we call anything >90% "virtually certain" and anything <10% "virtually impossible" then we have 7 numbers for the former (1-7) and 7 numbers for the latter (15-21) leaving only 7 numbers (8-14) for everything in between. (Of course we could simply "lose" 1, 2, 20, and 21 since they do not represent distinct chances of success anyway.)
Inside the 8-14 range we have of course 11 which regardless of d20 or 3d6 stands for a "50/50" chance of success. Between 11 and 12 (or 10) we lose (gain) 12.5%; between 11 and 13 (or 9) we lose (gain) 24.1%; between 11 and 14 (or 8) we lose (gain) 33.8%; and that exhausts the "in between" range. What's curious about this is that rolling d8 or d12 over a suitably adjusted range of target numbers actually gives rather similar percentages. Here's the d8 for example (I'll leave the d12 as homework):
| Target | Success? |
|---|---|
| 1 | 100% |
| 2 | 87.5% |
| 3 | 75% |
| 4 | 62.5% |
| 5 | 50% |
| 6 | 37.5% |
| 7 | 25% |
| 8 | 12.5% |
| 9 | 0% |
Here's a rough graphical comparison (go by the percentage chances when you compare 3d6 to d8, not by the range of numbers covered):
Do I have a point with all this? I do indeed: Rolling 3d6 against a target number in the 1-21 range is silly! Why?
- You're messing up a perfectly fine and intuitive linear progression that allows players to judge the impact of a bonus or penalty in a straightforward way.
- You're not getting anything more interesting out of your 3d6 roll that you couldn't get out of a suitably adjusted d8 or d12 roll, and those would in turn again be more transparent in terms of bonuses and penalties.
- You're making people roll a bunch of dice where one would suffice, thus endangering the miniatures on my table and making us get up to pick dice off the floor more often.
Now I hear some of you say "But I like rolling 3d6, it feels so cool!" and of course I cannot help you with that: Taste can neither be legislated nor rationally understood. So keep on rolling 3d6 despite knowing better, it's your game!
Friday, June 14, 2013
Mage Guild: Wizardly Resources for OSRIC
Rick Stump of Harbinger Games was nice enough to send me a review copy of his Mage Guild: Wizardly Resources for OSRIC supplement. The product is billed as "45 pages packed with NPCs, spells, magic items, plot hooks, monsters, and campaign ideas" and those things are certainly all in there.
After a brief introduction as to the purpose of the supplement we jump right into the description of The Mage Guild. Notice that it says The Mage Guild and not A Mage Guild! Indeed this first chapter describes the (relatively recent!) founding of a particular mage guild by several adventuring companions and its subsequent growth into a bigger, somewhat federated organization with quite a few ambitions. The overall working of the guild is described next, as are details about the guild's bylaws and charter.
The concept of The Mage Guild is very much modeled on the medieval guild system for other trades, providing for a certain amount of "realism" as it were. One concept that's curiously absent is apprenticeship, something I would have liked to see addressed (but see below). The focus of The Mage Guild as described feels a little more like a "professional association" similar to the IEEE for example. This is neither good nor bad, it's just different from what I would have expected.
Next we're on to Mage Houses, a more "natural" organization of magic-users based on the relationship between "master" and "apprentice." This is once again not just a general description of what a Mage House is. Instead specific details about specific houses from the implied campaign setting are described. We learn, for example, that House Barr has members that are also trained as engineers and specialize in relieving sieges. Short descriptions of 17 different houses are included. The section ends with details about the names of magic-users (a big deal in the implied setting) and a discussion of "true names" and their effect on spells.
One of the problems I have is that the interests of The Mage Guild and the various Mage Houses are in conflict. Certain houses are described as having access to "unique spells" but since all magic-users have to disclose their spells when joining The Mage Guild, that knowledge cannot remain private. I am not sure if this conflict is intentional or not. If it is then it should be addressed "head on" in the supplement and a description of the kinds of problems it leads to should be added, ideally with a few historical anecdotes about how things played out.
The next 12 pages cover a number of non-player characters, most importantly the current leaders of The Mage Guild. Each is described in quite a bit of detail covering not only game statistics but also character background, appearance and personality, typical combat strategies, and notes about role-playing the character.
I found the descriptions of these characters enjoyable and there are a few neat surprises (and plot hooks) for players potentially encountering them. I am almost certain that many of these were originally player characters, which is probably why they are rather well fleshed-out. However, after all the fuss about Mage Names and how important they are, only one of the characters is actually given with his "proper" name thereby also revealing his Mage House. All the other characters are given less appropriate (in this case anyway) fantasy names. But what's worse is that, without those names, we never find out which Mage Houses they belong to (except for one more character where the house is explicitly described).
Now we get to the spells, always a favorite of mine. There are a number of Magic Missile variants, one of which is particularly cool (so I won't spoil it here). There are also variants of Find Familiar, something I cannot recall having seen before. And we get a powerful spell that applies the earlier discussion of true names in an interesting way.
I did enjoy these spells, although I have to admit that one magic-user's obsession with variants of Magic Missile seems a little over the top. However each of those variants has a nice flavor, so your mileage may vary. The spell combining "Spider Climb" and "Jump" seemed very cool at first, but then I realized that it's at the same level as "Fly" and I found myself wondering why anyone would leap from wall to wall instead of just trying to fly. However, once again, I like the flavor of this new spell much better than the relative blandness of "Fly". (Also maybe "Fly" should have been level 4 instead of level 3, but now I am messing with Gary and I really shouldn't.)
The section on magical items is very short, only one page. Sadly these are mostly variants of existing items and except for the "Weapons of Adroitness" they are not terribly flavorful. But at least they serve as a good reminder that variant items are something each DM should consider adding to their campaigns, just to keep players guessing a little.
Next we get two special creatures, both designed to go with the new variants of Find Familiar presented earlier. Arcane Servants are for good magic-users what familiars such as quasits are for evil magic-users. Elemental Spirits are "familiar-sized" elementals.
I like both of these ideas for familiars. The first "balances" the perceived advantages that evil magic-users can get out of Find Familiar, what with quasits granting their 25% magic resistance as long as they are within a mile of the wizard. The second is very flavorful (the gem form restriction is great!) and finally gives magic-users who consider themselves "elementalists" of one sort or another an appropriate familiar. Well done I say.
Finally we get one page of advice about how The Mage Guild can fit into a campaign and one page of adventure hooks. (Sadly the appendix detailing the Guild House and the sample map for Chapter Houses are not included in the version I received for this review.)
The advice given is solid, although I wish the idea of players running their own guilds would have been taken up as well, maybe from an "end game" type of angle: Fighters build baronies, clerics build churches, thieves build thieves' guilds, and magic-users, instead of just sitting in a tower somewhere, try to influence the world by setting up their own version of a mage guild. I had assumed something like that was part of the supplement, alas it is not. (However, you can conceivably "re-engineer" it from the examples given.) The adventure hooks are not exactly fascinating but certainly solid and focus on getting player characters exposed to The Mage Guild so they can start interacting with it.
Now before I summarize regarding content and value I have to get one more thing off my chest: I found the layout and design of Mage Guild severely lacking. True, the PDF clearly states that this is the "no frills" version of the supplement, but on the other hand it's quite unclear where one would obtain the "all frills included" version. I know I have ridiculously high standards when it comes to typography and presentation, but I am actually quite happy with the relatively plain style that supplements like Sine Nomine's The Crimson Pandect use. Sadly the current version of Mage Guild looks more like the author used "Print to PDF" on an HTML file. Luckily improving the layout and design should not take a lot of effort and I hope the author will release an updated version soon.
Overall I enjoyed this supplement although as I indicated above my expectations were maybe a little higher. What I like most is that this material obviously comes from an actual campaign, it wasn't put together by a game designer approaching things from an abstract angle. In terms of content I enjoyed the non-player characters and the spells (including the unique creatures) most, something I didn't quite expect. The details on the guild and the houses are nice but since they are so specific to the implied setting I cannot see myself reusing them as is. If the supplement had provided a framework for the creation of mage guilds, and maybe some tables for putting them together semi-randomly, that would have helped me more in my own campaign.
Mage Guild is currently priced at $4.00 for 45 pages. For $9.99 you can get products like The Crimson Pandect or Dyson Logos' recently released Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts. Those products clock in at 131 and 157 pages respectively, and they run circles around Mage Guild in terms of layout and design. Neither of these supplements set out to address the question of how wizards organize themselves, something certainly worthy of exploration. The Crimson Pandect offers some ideas in this direction and it provides tables to randomly determine how "Dark Cabals" and "Wizard Academies" are set up. However it doesn't provide a worked example of a mage guild.
If you are primarily looking for a general supplement on magic-users (classes, spells, etc.) then you shouldn't pick up Mage Guild but one of the competitors I mentioned. If you are looking for a home-grown, worked example of a guild however, then Mage Guild could fit the bill, especially if the author updates it to bring it closer to his competitor's offerings in terms of production values (or alternatively lowers the price).
Edit: Rick Stump has lowered the price for Mage Guild to $2.00 and also told me that he's working on revisions. Whether these revisions will go into this or a related product is not 100% clear, but he's happy to credit people who buy an updated version the price they paid for this one. Way to go! :-)
After a brief introduction as to the purpose of the supplement we jump right into the description of The Mage Guild. Notice that it says The Mage Guild and not A Mage Guild! Indeed this first chapter describes the (relatively recent!) founding of a particular mage guild by several adventuring companions and its subsequent growth into a bigger, somewhat federated organization with quite a few ambitions. The overall working of the guild is described next, as are details about the guild's bylaws and charter.
The concept of The Mage Guild is very much modeled on the medieval guild system for other trades, providing for a certain amount of "realism" as it were. One concept that's curiously absent is apprenticeship, something I would have liked to see addressed (but see below). The focus of The Mage Guild as described feels a little more like a "professional association" similar to the IEEE for example. This is neither good nor bad, it's just different from what I would have expected.
Next we're on to Mage Houses, a more "natural" organization of magic-users based on the relationship between "master" and "apprentice." This is once again not just a general description of what a Mage House is. Instead specific details about specific houses from the implied campaign setting are described. We learn, for example, that House Barr has members that are also trained as engineers and specialize in relieving sieges. Short descriptions of 17 different houses are included. The section ends with details about the names of magic-users (a big deal in the implied setting) and a discussion of "true names" and their effect on spells.
One of the problems I have is that the interests of The Mage Guild and the various Mage Houses are in conflict. Certain houses are described as having access to "unique spells" but since all magic-users have to disclose their spells when joining The Mage Guild, that knowledge cannot remain private. I am not sure if this conflict is intentional or not. If it is then it should be addressed "head on" in the supplement and a description of the kinds of problems it leads to should be added, ideally with a few historical anecdotes about how things played out.
The next 12 pages cover a number of non-player characters, most importantly the current leaders of The Mage Guild. Each is described in quite a bit of detail covering not only game statistics but also character background, appearance and personality, typical combat strategies, and notes about role-playing the character.
I found the descriptions of these characters enjoyable and there are a few neat surprises (and plot hooks) for players potentially encountering them. I am almost certain that many of these were originally player characters, which is probably why they are rather well fleshed-out. However, after all the fuss about Mage Names and how important they are, only one of the characters is actually given with his "proper" name thereby also revealing his Mage House. All the other characters are given less appropriate (in this case anyway) fantasy names. But what's worse is that, without those names, we never find out which Mage Houses they belong to (except for one more character where the house is explicitly described).
Now we get to the spells, always a favorite of mine. There are a number of Magic Missile variants, one of which is particularly cool (so I won't spoil it here). There are also variants of Find Familiar, something I cannot recall having seen before. And we get a powerful spell that applies the earlier discussion of true names in an interesting way.
I did enjoy these spells, although I have to admit that one magic-user's obsession with variants of Magic Missile seems a little over the top. However each of those variants has a nice flavor, so your mileage may vary. The spell combining "Spider Climb" and "Jump" seemed very cool at first, but then I realized that it's at the same level as "Fly" and I found myself wondering why anyone would leap from wall to wall instead of just trying to fly. However, once again, I like the flavor of this new spell much better than the relative blandness of "Fly". (Also maybe "Fly" should have been level 4 instead of level 3, but now I am messing with Gary and I really shouldn't.)
The section on magical items is very short, only one page. Sadly these are mostly variants of existing items and except for the "Weapons of Adroitness" they are not terribly flavorful. But at least they serve as a good reminder that variant items are something each DM should consider adding to their campaigns, just to keep players guessing a little.
Next we get two special creatures, both designed to go with the new variants of Find Familiar presented earlier. Arcane Servants are for good magic-users what familiars such as quasits are for evil magic-users. Elemental Spirits are "familiar-sized" elementals.
I like both of these ideas for familiars. The first "balances" the perceived advantages that evil magic-users can get out of Find Familiar, what with quasits granting their 25% magic resistance as long as they are within a mile of the wizard. The second is very flavorful (the gem form restriction is great!) and finally gives magic-users who consider themselves "elementalists" of one sort or another an appropriate familiar. Well done I say.
Finally we get one page of advice about how The Mage Guild can fit into a campaign and one page of adventure hooks. (Sadly the appendix detailing the Guild House and the sample map for Chapter Houses are not included in the version I received for this review.)
The advice given is solid, although I wish the idea of players running their own guilds would have been taken up as well, maybe from an "end game" type of angle: Fighters build baronies, clerics build churches, thieves build thieves' guilds, and magic-users, instead of just sitting in a tower somewhere, try to influence the world by setting up their own version of a mage guild. I had assumed something like that was part of the supplement, alas it is not. (However, you can conceivably "re-engineer" it from the examples given.) The adventure hooks are not exactly fascinating but certainly solid and focus on getting player characters exposed to The Mage Guild so they can start interacting with it.
Now before I summarize regarding content and value I have to get one more thing off my chest: I found the layout and design of Mage Guild severely lacking. True, the PDF clearly states that this is the "no frills" version of the supplement, but on the other hand it's quite unclear where one would obtain the "all frills included" version. I know I have ridiculously high standards when it comes to typography and presentation, but I am actually quite happy with the relatively plain style that supplements like Sine Nomine's The Crimson Pandect use. Sadly the current version of Mage Guild looks more like the author used "Print to PDF" on an HTML file. Luckily improving the layout and design should not take a lot of effort and I hope the author will release an updated version soon.
Overall I enjoyed this supplement although as I indicated above my expectations were maybe a little higher. What I like most is that this material obviously comes from an actual campaign, it wasn't put together by a game designer approaching things from an abstract angle. In terms of content I enjoyed the non-player characters and the spells (including the unique creatures) most, something I didn't quite expect. The details on the guild and the houses are nice but since they are so specific to the implied setting I cannot see myself reusing them as is. If the supplement had provided a framework for the creation of mage guilds, and maybe some tables for putting them together semi-randomly, that would have helped me more in my own campaign.
Mage Guild is currently priced at $4.00 for 45 pages. For $9.99 you can get products like The Crimson Pandect or Dyson Logos' recently released Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts. Those products clock in at 131 and 157 pages respectively, and they run circles around Mage Guild in terms of layout and design. Neither of these supplements set out to address the question of how wizards organize themselves, something certainly worthy of exploration. The Crimson Pandect offers some ideas in this direction and it provides tables to randomly determine how "Dark Cabals" and "Wizard Academies" are set up. However it doesn't provide a worked example of a mage guild.
If you are primarily looking for a general supplement on magic-users (classes, spells, etc.) then you shouldn't pick up Mage Guild but one of the competitors I mentioned. If you are looking for a home-grown, worked example of a guild however, then Mage Guild could fit the bill, especially if the author updates it to bring it closer to his competitor's offerings in terms of production values (or alternatively lowers the price).
Edit: Rick Stump has lowered the price for Mage Guild to $2.00 and also told me that he's working on revisions. Whether these revisions will go into this or a related product is not 100% clear, but he's happy to credit people who buy an updated version the price they paid for this one. Way to go! :-)
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