Gamer ADD: Toward and Old School version of 5e Part 2

One of the things that drives me batty about 5e has nothing to do with either the system or the mechanics. I really despise the presentation and layout. Awhile ago, I did an experiment to see if I could to a “Player’s Guide” for my Lost Colonies campaign world for 5e. It was a nightmare. Trying to figure out what a class can do at any given level is a chore that can result in looking up several different references in different parts of the rulebook. The process was so headache-inducing that I gave up trying.

When my Gamer ADD-addled brain started thinking about treading down the 5e road again, I did not want the published core books (or any other books) involved. Dealing with just the SRD (while still too complicated in its presentation) makes things easier to deal with.

Thus, when thinking about an Old School Hack of 5e, I want the presentation to be simple and easy to digest. One easy editorial decision that will make that process easier is to limit the number of levels covered in the game. 0e covers Fighters and Clerics up to 10th level and Magic-users to 16th. I have been playing this game since 1979 and I have only seen two characters make it to 9th level. I played one (a bard in 3.5 that retired at 9th level) and the other was a PC in my Lost Colonies Campaign (LL). Thus, from a practice experience POV, having a game only cover levels 1-10 seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Of course, my experience is almost exclusively with xp being awarded according to older rule-sets where xp is not only harder to come by, but 1xp=1gp is the primary means of gaining xp (and in some cases it’s Arneson’s 1xp=1gp spent). Thus, in order to make levels 1-10 feel like a complete game, the xp needed for each level is going to need a slight overhaul.

In 0e an 11th level Magic-user needs 300,000xp. Conveniently, if one were to use that number for the xp needed to get to 10th level, halving that for each level (effectively doubling the xp needed for each level) the xp needed to get to 2nd ends up being 1000. This number is half as much as what is needed in older editions of the game (thus, making leveling faster/easier for the modern gamer context) but is much higher than the 300 needed in 5e as written (which helps placate my own old school proclivities).

Given this info, here is a rough draft of the kind of layout I have in mind for this project:

Yes. That is ONE page for everything needed to play a fighter from 1st-10th level.

Note that there are a couple of changes from the SRD for the fighter:

• The Proficiency Bonus progresses slightly faster. I did this to make Fighters better at fighting in the long-term than Clerics and Magic-users.
• I replaced the 7th level Martial Archetype power “Remarkable Athlete” with the mechanics of the 7th level Barbarian ability “Feral Instinct” — advantage on initiative. I did this to keep the fighter class more focused on fighting prowess.
• I replaced the Martial Archetype power at 10th level with an Extra Attack (which would be granted normally at 11th level). Again, I did this to keep the focus of the class on fighting prowess.

Towards an Arnesonian XP System Without the Gold

Anyone familiar with my musings on how to run a campaign is well aware of my long love-affair with Arneson’s rule of 1 gp of treasure spent = 1 xp. It is genius and it is the mechanical engine that makes a sandbox-style game purr. Handing over agency to a group of players is one of the true pleasures I have as a Referee because it guarantees an experience that I cannot get by writing short stories, novellas or novels: utter surprise. I had no idea stirge meat was a delicacy in the Lost Colonies until my players decided to ask a friendly monster NPC to cook one up. To this day, this fact and all of the various consequences that are derived from this fact are some of my favorite features of the Lost Colonies campaign world.

There is, however, one glaring weakness in Dave Arneson’s xp house rule: it assumes a gold-based economy in a post-apocalyptic world where treasure hunting is an inexpensive but lucrative (if dangerous) endeavor. It won’t work in the Third Imperium. Whereas there is a lost, ancient civilization, the locations of these ruins are often tightly controlled secrets or in places that are cost prohibitive to get to. In addition, the stuff that can be found is generally cultural and/or scientific, not monetary.

One of the reasons B/X is the one RPG I would choose if I could only ever play one RPG for the rest of my life is because it best expresses (and allows for) the madness of a sandbox campaign and players armed with the near-complete agency Arneson’s xp rule grants. One of the reasons I don’t regularly Referee games like Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Champions is that these genres and systems lend themselves much less easily to the sandbox campaign (not that they can’t).

The discussion that followed my most recent rant about 5e and xp got me thinking about how it might be possible to marry the madness of Arneson’s xp rule and a sandbox campaign to another genres where Arneson’s assumptions about the world do not or cannot exist.

At the root of this whole issue is player agency. The way in which Arneson’s rule empowers players to advance exactly how they want to is a marvel to behold. The surprise factor and the world-building and world-altering factors are huge. Therefore, here is a stab in the dark at a framework upon which to build an experience system that could potentially give me the same kind of satisfaction in other games and genres that I get from Arneson + B/X:

There are six different methods of earning experience:

1. Party Campaign Goal: This is a task the players set for themselves as a group. The expected time necessary to complete this task should be around the 2-5 session mark. For example: The party decides that it wants to figure out where the Tomb of Horrors is located. This would have a value of 2(x) for each character where x is an arbitrary number used consistently throughout this thought experiment.
2. Player Campaign Goal: This is a task that the player sets for their character alone. Again, this is something they should expect to take 2-5 game sessions to complete. For example: The ranger decides that he wants to take out 20 orcs, while the Magic-user wants to visit the Great Library in the Capital City. Again, this would have a value of 2(x).
3. Party Mission Goal: Similar to the Party Campaign Goal, but is something the party wants to accomplish over the course of a single session. For example: The party wants to get to the Village of Sages in order to find out the most likely place to find a map associated with the Tomb of Horrors. This would have a value of (x) for each character.
4. Player Mission Goal: Similar to the Player Campaign Goal, but is something the player wants to accomplish over the course of a single session. For example: The Cleric wants to cast three utility spells that actually help the party. This would have a value of (x).
5. Secret Player Goal: This is something to help me notch up the surprise factor for both players and referee. All of the above goals are assumed to be public knowledge so that everyone has a chance to negotiate with the other players to maximize their ability to gain experience. At the beginning of each session, the player’s also write down a goal their character has for the session that no one else is privy to, including the Referee. At the end of the session, these goals are revealed to the table and experience is granted for those who pull it off. This would have a value of (x).
6. Referee Discretion/Secret Goal: This is also an attempt to up the surprise factor. The Referee could hand out (x) experience to players who showed exceptional bravery/cleverness/role-playing etc. and/or at the start of the session, the Referee could secretly write down a goal they hope the party accomplishes over the course of that session. This, too, would be worth (x) experience.

I think this would allow enough flexibility to just about any genre to pull off a sandbox campaign as well as offer enough structure to allow players to feel empowered on how their characters advance through the system and the campaign.

Meditating on 5e (Basic Rules) Part 2

PLEASE NOTE:Currently, all of my meditations on 5e are going be about the Basic Rules as a stand-alone product outside the context of the rest of 5e. I am doing this for a couple reasons:

1. My only access to 5e is the Basic Rules, because I cannot afford to invest anything other than free in my gaming for the foreseeable future.
2. As this community has demonstrated from its outset, there is value in examining a rule-set on its own. We have examined 0e, Holmes, B/X, 1e etc. and found a number of wonderful, unexpected treasures buried inside those rule sets. We’ve also found a number of things we’d rather not use.

Yesterday, I got several comments that deserve a response. Due to the wide breadth of these comments, I am going to do an entire blog post.

Firstly, my biggest beef with 5eBR is that as a stand-alone product, it is unusable. There is no treasure table. There is no advice in the DMs section on awarding XP, except a table in the Building Combat Encounters section. That means, as is, combat is the only way to earn XP. Certainly, I can hack away and use treasure and XP tables from another edition, but I really didn’t want to have to do that in order to play. Even though limited to 1st-3rd levels, both Holmes’ and Moldvay’s Basic Editions are playable without using any other outside material.

Secondly, there is enough in 5eBR that I do want to play it in some incarnation. There are two things, specifically, I will definitely be trying out regardless of edition I play in the future:

• Advantage/Disadvantage — this is such an elegant mechanic that so simply deals with a huge swath of situations where a ±1 to ±4 just never felt right.
• Backgrounds — anything that can enrich the story of a 1st level character with randomized goodness, a couple of non-combat areas of expertise, NPC contacts and some equipment that one might not otherwise bother buying is right up my alley.

Thirdly, while I do understand and accept that there are other useful models for granting XP, reading 5eBR reminded me how awesome Arneson’s 1 XP = 1 gp spent really is. As anyone who has read this blog long enough knows, one of the things I value most in my RPGs is freedom. While combat-only is a legitimate choice for awarding XP, it does so at the cost of player freedom and, at least in context of how much a goblin is worth and how fast the XP progression is in 5eBR, my own ability to suspend my disbelief.

Player freedom goes out the window, because the only way a mage can become second level is to go out and fight things. IF Arneson’s XP model is used, that very same mage has a huge variety of choices as to how to get to second level. The mage could go and find a goblin army to kill, but a more interesting choice is to make off with the army’s supply caravan or to run off with the treasure hoard of the evil mage paying the goblin army.

To boot, the 1 XP = 1 gp formula puts the development of the character directly in the hands of players. How a player spends that money in order to become second level defines who that character is even more than class mechanics. That same mage could spend money by bar hopping across your favorite FRPG city or by buying access to a private collection of scrolls. Each choice says far more about the character than his/her spell book does.

I have also found that when players are having to find ways to dump thousands of gold pieces, the easiest way to do so is to invest in and build stuff. Players suddenly have far more of a vested interest in the health and safety of a community/locale when this kind of spending happens. Thus, external threats become much more personal and adventures have higher stakes.

Fourthly, while professional armies were a new thing during the Hundred Years War, the largest expense of the Crown was equipment not wages. And if, as is the tradition in FRPGs like D&D, one relies on literary source material, according to Shakespeare, Henry V had a close personal friend hung for stealing from the conquered French. Thus, the actual amount of cash an average commoner would get from a 6-month contract wouldn’t likely be enough to be able to advance to second level. Which goes to show that this scenario is a lot easier to justify using older editions than trying to justify how anyone, let alone an officer, in an army could only be 1st level using 5eBR.

Finally, when it comes to game mechanics, I don’t buy into systems that treat PCs differently than the rest of the world. Suspension of disbelief plays a large part in this, because such a mechanic is antithetical to the world view of my faith. Christ gave eternal life to all of humanity when He went to the cross and rose from the dead. The crux of our life is what we do with that gift. Practically, it means that anyone can do great things. If a game does not allow Joe Nobody to defeat Mr. Big Bad Guy with a good plan and good luck, then my suspension of disbelief is out the window, because I know the stories of thousands of Joe Nobodies who did do great and wondrous things.

Meditating on 5e (Basic Rules)

PLEASE NOTE: As of now, all my musings on 5e are going to be about the Basic Rules (which I will refer to as 5eBR from now on). When one has a child in the hospital for the better part of a year, one’s gaming budget is Free. I have no ability anytime in the near future to actually purchase any of the core rulebooks. I may never do so.

I really want to like 5eBR. I really do. It is a really good hack of D&D and there are several interesting ideas that I will be hacking into my own hacked version of D&D. Unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to like 5eBR as is. It all comes down to a theatrical concept called suspension of disbelief.

When putting on a theatrical production, it is critical that the world presented have some kind of internal logic so that when presented with things such as the Battle of Agincourt from Shakespeare’s Henry V— something that could never happen within the confines of a theatre stage — the audience can easily immerse themselves in that world. They suspend their disbelief that the battle can’t occur on stage.

RPGs operate in a similar fashion. Everyone who plays D&D, for example, should know that the world presented defies all kinds of economic, physical and social logic. However, the rules do such a good job of representing a fantasy world in the abstract that we have successfully suspended our disbelief for decades.

Upon reflection, the moment I knew I didn’t like 3.5 was the moment my suspension of disbelief was shattered. Our party stumbled upon a machine that was built/controlled by the bad guys. It was a giant clock work of gears. We wanted to literally throw a wrench into the works; however, we did not have a rogue and the gear system was the equivalent of a DC25 trap. No matter what our party did, no matter how logical, no matter that it would work in the real world no one in our party could stop those gears from turning. I could no longer immerse myself in the world and I found, rather, that I was just seeing how illogical and silly it all was.

When the DM section of 5eBR was released, I decided to “play” the game the only way I could: stock a dungeon and see how it compared to the editions I like to play. I quickly realized that I couldn’t. There are no treasure tables. I then realized why WotC would be so lazy as to not include any: all XP comes from combat. Treasure is largely irrelevant.

This seriously challenges my ability to suspend disbelief: in order to become a better mage, cleric or thief you have to go kill stuff. The world presented isn’t a world where adventurers explore ruins from lost civilizations. Rather, it is a murder world where prowess in combat is everything. I suppose if you wanted to run a campaign inspired by Glen Cook’s The Black Company this would be okay, but this certainly isn’t the game I played as a kid.

What really threw my suspension of disbelief out the window was the combination of XP progression and the amount of XP given per kill. I have no real issue with fast XP progressions, especially in context of not having the kind of time necessary to take a character from 1st to 9th level (something I never did using older rule sets). Personally, this really never bothered me because my favorite “tier” of play is 1st-3rd; however, I could see how shortening the XP progression could be a very good thing.

Having said that, the world 5eBR presents completely breaks down when considering the amount of XP given per combat kill. A measly little goblin is worth 50 XP, a bandit 25 XP and a commoner 10 XP. At 300 XP to get to 2nd level, it would take 6 goblins, 12 bandits or 30 commoners to advance. This defies logic, because those kinds of numbers should be achievable through basic training — especially in a murder world where even scholarly mages need to kill things to be a better mage.

This is rendered even less logical when one realizes that Soldier is one of the backgrounds available to 1st level characters. A professional soldier in a world where combat is a constant should be plowing through the equivalent of 6 goblins almost every day during training, let alone if one actually participated in some kind of military campaign. Add to that the idea a 1st level character could be an officer and the 5eBR world just spirals off into the ridiculous.

I suppose that if the average age of a 5eBR 1st level character were, say, eight I might be able to accept all of the above, but I don’t really get off on imaging a character as an eight year old kid who is forced to murder things in order to get by.

For me, this all highlights the genius of Arneson’s 1 XP = 1 gp spent. Regardless of the world in which such a scheme exists, the main impetus for characters to advance from 1st to 2nd level is getting enough cash to invest in themselves — whether through better equipment, better henchman, tithing to a church, a down payment on a house, etc. Thus, each character can become a renaissance man (woman) in their own unique way and believably face down tougher and tougher monsters and win.

It also becomes believable that an army of commoners will still be commoners after a series of battles. When treasure spent is the main way one gets to 2nd level (because otherwise someone would have to kill 100+ goblins), war is no longer the main way a bunch of normal joes can become high-powered adventurers. Only folks willing to explore ruins, lost civilizations and dungeons to bring back treasure get to do that.

Saintly Saturday: St. Apollonia the Virginmartyr

Today is the Feast of the Virginmartyr Apollonia. She was an elderly deaconess of Alexandria whose martyrdom is described in an extant letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria. According to the letter, the persecution of Emperor Decius (A.D. 249-251) began a full year earlier in Alexandria than the rest of the empire and St. Apollonia was one of its victims.

The letter describes a “prophet of evil” who stirs up the masses against the Christians. Mobs backed by the government started to assault the homes of known Christians. St. Apollonia was pulled from her home, beaten about the face until her teeth were knocked out and drug outside the city to a fire the mob had built. They threatened to throw her in should she not worship the idols. She asked for a moment to pray. Understanding that she would be raped before she was killed, she took her chance to preserve her virginity and lept into the flames where she was consumed.

Due to the nature of her torture, she is sometimes depicted with a golden tooth around her neck or holding a pincer with a tooth.

There are several accounts of virginmartyrs who throw themselves to their own death rather than risk being raped. One might legitimately ask why these women aren’t damned for committing suicide instead of being celebrated as saints.

Suicide is the deliberate destruction of God’s gift of life as an act of spite. It is the ultimate act of turning away from God and a denial of God and His Kingdom. In contrast, these women are already dead — their fate is sealed. Rather than taking their life in spite of God, they not only offer themselves up as sacrifice, but also their virginity. Only in these extreme circumstances is such an act deemed acceptable.

Due to the fact that this whole episode sounds strange to the modern ear, I suppose this invites a discussion about what is valuable. Traditional D&D places value upon treasure and the death of monsters by equating both with experience points, with treasure being more valuable than the death of a monster.

This, of course, rewards certain kinds of behavior. Others have spoken about how this dynamic changes in other iterations of the game where treasure is less valuable than killing monsters or even setting off traps. Thus, I am not as interested in going over the same ground, but rather interested in how things besides the traditional D&D values might shape the assumed culture of a game. For example:

• Artifacts from an ancient civilization — this cleaves close enough to traditional D&D to co-exist; however, it emphasizes the post-apocalyptic culture of D&D and is likely to place the assumed culture in some distant future rather than a medieval analog.
• Freed Slaves — this, intriguingly, does not limit a culture to any sort of time frame. Rather, it assumes a far more politically developed reality. Traditional D&D takes place on the edge of the Wilderness. A campaign which values the freedom of slaves would take place on the edge of a twisted version of Civilization. This type of campaign would also emphasize the problem of extraction as part of the adventure — how do you get what is valuable out of the adventure area?
• New Species — this assumes a culture that values exploration and a context where it is expected that strange new lands (or planets) are going to have an alien ecosphere. This also emphasizes the problem of extraction — how does one treat/prove the new discovery?

I mention these in context of the discussion about the dungeon-as-adventure. I love the Mythic Underground understanding of the dungeon and (as a player) it is my favorite way to play the game; however, I understand that there are many people who actually find that sort of thing boring. Wilderness and city adventures hold much more allure; however, in my experience what is valuable in the dungeon (treasure) makes for a far more morally ambiguous gaming experience outside the dungeon— especially in context of a city. Placing value on things other than treasure could possibly make for a far more interesting campaign in these cases.

It would be interesting to experiment with a campaign structure that placed different values on different things according to the level of a character. We see a nascent version of this with the notion that higher level characters get less experience for killing monsters lower than their own HD. What if there where a three-tier system of values where levels 1-3 get experience for different things than levels 4-6 and yet different things than 7+?

***

The Teeth of the Virginmartyr

These rare items appear as human teeth made out of gold. While valuable for the gold from which they are made, they also radiate of magic. Should one wear a tooth on a necklace, the bearer would feel warm and comfortable regardless of the actual temperature and can get restful sleep regardless of the situation. Should one replace their own tooth with the magical tooth, the bearer would also gain the effects of a permanent Resist Fire spell.

Lost Colonies Session 42

This session started out with a decision by fiat on my part. No one was particularly interested in fighting 2,000+ ghouls, especially since Dn. Goram's player was unable to be with us. I ruled that with the head start the players could get on the oncoming ghoul horde and with the party including one cleric able to turn ghouls automatically and one the could turn on a 3 or more, the party could escape. They boarded the elven sky galley and raced back to the Summer Court.

Assuming that the Winter King had an answer for dealing with the ghoul horde bearing down on the elflands (since he was responsible for creating it in the first place), the party rushed off to the underwater city in order to deliver the Obsidian Hand to the Winter King. They began to question the wisdom of their actions when the Winter King immediately chopped off his own hand in order to replace it with the one the party provided him.

The Winter King's transformation was a painful one, but once complete he seemed to believe that his affliction could no longer affect elven kind — because he claimed no longer to be an elf. He then explained that he needed to inform the elves that he was no longer the Winter King. When informed of the ghoul horde, he quietly acknowledged his part in its creation and vowed to help stop it.

Completely uninterested in getting embroiled in elf politics or in a battle with the ghouls, the party decided to stay underwater and go treasure hunting. So, the rest of the evening was spent doing an unusual dungeon crawl with everything underwater. And the party found treasure. Lots of it.

Two observations:

1. Phantasmal Force, when used correctly, can be devastating. The party ran into a magic using fishman and his guards. He created the illusion of a gigantic eel that attacked the party. It "killed" Swibish and his dwarven henchman before the party even thought about disbelieving.
2. I use a house rule on XP for gold attributed to Arneson — I only award the XP once the gold has been spent. When characters come across large treasure troves like this one, it creates an interesting dynamic — how are they going to spend so much money? One answer that my party has come up with is to use the treasure as capital to invest in building projects. Ahkmed has started to build a home. Pawnshee has started a cheese factory and Hamlen had built and staffed a tavern. I have encouraged this because it invests the players in the game world itself, which is then transformed by their economic ventures. These projects only go so far, however. As we wrapped up the evening's fun, the party remembered that they had a map showing where the cloud giant kingdom was. They ended by deciding that they were going to go there and see if the giants had some exotic items that they could purchase for some serious cash. Arneson's house rule has resulted in an adventure I never would have come up with on my own.