Adventures in Dungeonland

It has been a while since I've posted. I have a lot going on but I would like to return to a regular posting schedule. As a head-clearing exercise, I would like to return to reviews, a process I enjoy. From the title, you know the module in question. 

Title: Dungeonland
Rule Set: AD&D 
Levels: 9-12
Year: 1983
Author: Gary Gygax
Publisher: TSR
Pages: 32 pages plus a map
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars

This is a classic module from 1983 by Gary Gygax. I recall two DMs running us through this module. One followed the note in the beginning to avoid Alice in Wonderland references while the other DM simply did exactly what he was told not to and introduced The White Rabbit as an NPC. 

It works both ways. I feel that back in the 80s, most people would have been familiar with either the Disney movie or the books but not both so it didn't instantly set off alarm bells. Back in 1983, you would have seen Alice in Wonderland in the theater or one of the smooshed-up, edited-down Disney TV shows. VHS wasn't even an option, as it didn't come out until '86. 

Gary Gygax mashes up the books by Caroll with the Disney film Alice in Wonderland to great effect. The module is short and by necessity, almost feels like a single-session series of events. Everyone I've played with has been drawn in and wants to see what comes next as quick as possible. I guess I could have called it "engrossing" and saved some words. 

Now, this module isn't for every player but I think it is well worth a run-through. You can play this one a lot of different ways, with a bunch of different party types. One thing of note is that you cannot play this in a single session. Were I run this again, I might do it as a "special event" having several sessions a week.  

The intro is quick and to the point, so a DM has very little to set up. The high-level play, 9-12 levels of experience is sort of a drag for a DM who really wants to play this module. But with a lot of prep, you can dumb it down to any level. 

The module has six sections, one of which is "a blink and you miss it" intro, with all of the others lasting for several pages. The artwork is excellent and holds up over time. But there is strangely a lot of it for a book of this time period. I am going to circle back and blame the creative art team for enjoying this book too much. 

This module has so many creative scenarios, odd monster matches, and atypical magic that it really instills a sense of wonder, a dream-like experience for the players. 

I have personally used this module 3 times, once with the exact same party that experienced it as low-level characters before reaching the 9-12 levels as suggested on the cover. The third time with some folks who experienced Dragonlance burnout.

Here is a spoiler, the module starts with falling into a dream-like world. I mention this because the experience of falling and dreaming happens to people quite often and it can become a vehicle for launching the module with zero preparation as in getting the party to you know, actually fall down a hole.  

The first time I ran this module with low-level characters, I merged it with a Fritz Leiber story called The Howling Tower to make it survivable. 

 

The characters found a shrine with a crystal moon on an altar. I dropped some not-so-subtle hints as to what was happening. The walls of the shrine had a club and spades motif while the crystal moon prominently featured the rabbit in the moon and various areas noted with diamonds and hearts. When the characters removed the crystal moon from the altar, they were sprayed with a contact poison which they all misinterpreted as a gas as I hoped. 

This was done to force the players to all fail their saving throws as planned. Some characters made the first save only to be forced into a second or third save by touching downed characters. It didn't take long for them all to fall into Dungeonland.

The events of the module were their final moments of death stretched out in a bizarre hallucination. Escape from Dungeonland meant survival in the real world. 

Once in Dungeonland, if a character was dropped to 3 hp or less they got another save vs. poison. If they succeeded, they vanished from Dungeonland and reawoke in the real world. They had 3 rounds to consume wine, water, and food which magically healed their delusional wounds. Feeding others in the real world also heal them, too. Perhaps they could cast a spell before sinking back into Dungeonland. 

I had planned what I thought were obvious outs in the real world, such as leaving the room, placing someone on the altar and out of the poison would prevent another save, not touching other players or the crystal moon, and so on. Cleaning things or wearing gloves would have worked too, but no one caught on to this aspect as they really wanted back into Dungeonland. 

This party's second go-around in Dungeonland was brought on by one player mentioning the adventure while holding the Crystal Moon they found. 

For my hard-luck Dragonlance players, I yanked them down the rabbit hole via a nasty cabal attack. Each section of the module was the result of an alter reality spell being cast on them. Rather than being a total screw-fest, the Dragonlance characters had abilities and magic not accounted for in Dungeonland and they prevailed handily. 

Additionally, at the end of each sequence, they physically fought the illusionist who cast the spell for that part of the module before being thrust back into Dungeonland by the next illusionist's reality warping. As a consequence, they gained treasures from the dead illusionist cabal which they could use in the world of Krynn to equally deadly effect. As a nod to my first party's run, they also obtained the Crystal Moon device, which is a crystal ball. That is amazingly useful in Krynn. 

This was a confidence builder for getting back into the Dragonlance story after a minor setback which the party took as total failure. Funny how players think. 

This is one of the most fun adventures I have ever played as a player and as a DM. I may take a stab at it using Old School Essentials. 

Tired Thoughts on Tired OGL

I love posts that start with the Chaos Star

The OGL has attained the maximum cultural entropy. Even my wife has a passing familiarity with OGL, which is impressive as she is a nurse and doesn't do "nerd stuff". She's still pretty hot that our children's collective initials are NPC. 

Anyway, I took on this new project to write a campaign setting. And then I busted my shoulder, leaving me to do everything with one hand tied behind my back... literally. Now that I have the immobilizer off, I can start moving and thinking again. 

Here is the long and short of my thoughts on the OGL. 

I have 6 products on DriveThruRPG: 

1. Kobold’s Folly Mini Setting
2. Compass Rose Inn Mini Setting
3. The Hex Pack
4. Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D
5. Zero to Hero: Uncommon Heroes
6. Character Sheet for AD&D

Three of these products have nothing to do with D&D, the OGL or SRD: Kobold’s Folly and Compass Rose Inn Mini Settings plus The Hex Pack. I can ignore these. 

The other three are directly tied to D&D. They are nothing without the original game. If push comes to they are either going to be withdrawn or go to "OGL version whatever". I have some decisions to make, I guess. The Swashbuckler Character class really needs to be burned to the ground and remade or dumped in the historical stupidity bin. I'm ok with either. I'd like to rework Zero to Hero into OSE, so I need to wait and see what Old Games Essentials does. The character sheet is a historical snapshot that assumes the use of a couple of books, I am not sure if it needs to be connected to the SDR or OGL because it is literally nothing but an image of a collection of words and numbers that are very context specific to a certain version of a D&D game.  

I have come to the conclusion that I need to abandon D&D and ignore three of my products linked to the SRD and OGL while reworking the other three into something that doesn't remotely touch the works of Wizards of the Coast. 

I have decided to come up with a completely new game system. One of my own devising. In the best case, I am the next WotC. The worst-case scenario is no one uses it. 

What I know now: 

• I have the basic idea of a game system. 
• Playtesting has started.
• It will be called "Zero to Hero", which I am 99.9% is not a copyrightable name. That's cool, I'll deal with it if I can. 
  EDIT - No, No, this is no longer correct. I think I will call it "The Hearts System". 
• My first book, "Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners" will be worked into this somehow. I don't know how. 
• I will press on with my new campaign setting and tool it to work with "Zero to Hero". 
  
• I need to come up with a better naming convention because if I find too many things referencing "Zero to Hero" I will have to change the name. 

So here we are. 

This is a cross-post with my Ko-Fi project. 

#CharacterCreationChallenge - Ruleset AD&D e1 - Regulus the F/MU/T

One of the more intractable problems for an AD&D e1 DM is the addition of a multiclassed character. They cause a variety of problems. First and foremost, it creates a capability challenge for the DM to work against. Having to plan for spells and abilities is hard enough, but when you have a Magic User and a multiclassed F/MU you might forget the party can do something twice. 

This problem could be its own post, so I'll rein it and move on to the commercial. I mean the character. Or both. 

I am using my own character sheet which you can download from DriveThruRPG for Regulus, the Fighter/Magic-User/Theif. This Regulus is one variation of the same basic character I used for a friend's campaign. I was the only person who didn't know we were in Narnia and died a zillion times. It got so bad that I stopped making up new names. 

Let's start at the top. This sheet has more than your typical slots for information. Its missing a phone number and a blood type, but that is ok. 

Not bad for a sheet designed by a committee. 

Moving over to the next part, we have class and level information which also has enough space for multiclass information: 

Next up is the attribute block. At the time we made this sheet, Unearthed Arcana was new and we wanted to use everything in it. Doug, the DM at the time wanted to use Comeliness for the big villain Jadis. It made perfect sense because that is 50% of how she works. 

Beyond this one time, it was a mostly ignored stat. It's too complicated and extraordinarily dangerous for Illusions and Bards to have. 

On the far left were armor class and hit points. 

There isn't too much to comment on here, except for the Armor condition box. We had this concept that your armor could stand up to about 10 fights without repair. If you didn't maintain your armor, it stopped working. It was basically the fighter equivalent of studying. Unearthed Arcana also had field plate which acted like bonus hit points that could be tracked here. 

The box for HP was dual-purpose. First, AE had a couple of spells that would act like hit points so tracking was necessary. 

Amusingly, what really happened was you'd burn a hole in the first box erasing and rewriting, so the second box extended the amount of time you could use the same character sheet. 

Ingenious, right? 

The middle of the page was dominated by the weapons chart. 

It had the weapons adjustments, but we never used it despite dedicating so much space to it. 

While we all loved AE's new character classes and abilities, somehow we forgot to at the Acrobat's abilities to the thieves' ability chart. 

Moving to the left again, we had the other Stats and abilities block. If you were non-human, this would be your favorite place. If you were human, you'd take notes here. 

See the weaponless combat table? 

Never used. Actually, we did use it once in a Shaolin temple setting and all of the characters died from open-handed Monk attacks. 

Silly system. 

Next up was the spell table. It was functional and handy, but we didn't have enough room for actual spell names. 

Honestly, we just wrote spells on index cards and called it a day. Reg only has 5 spells per day, but if you hop back up to the stat block he actually knows 6 per level.  

One odd thing that we did was allowed all magic user types to use the clerical bonus spells from Wisdom. It seemed to make sense. 

The other trick we used was magic users always knew Read Magic, Write and Detect Magic spells. If you lost your spell book, this knowledge was necessary to make a new one.  

On the second page, and we always had a second page because we used pin-feed printers, was the weapon proficiencies. We were also using the weapon specialization rules from AE. 

The second block was for non-weapon proficiencies. This was a block insisted on by me. Even way back then, I had an embryonic idea for a set of skills based on professions. What ultimately became my book Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners started with this tiny two-inch block. 

The book has 50 NPC classes and rules for PC to have secondary abilities. You can grab it on DriveThruRPG. 

Three-quarters of the second page was dedicated to encumbrance. 

Remember I mentioned that Bards and Multiclass heroes are the banes of a DM's existence? Bards and Multiclass characters have a tendency of dropping into the background because the other players have surpassed them in combat and magic abilities. When things go badly, they tend to pick over dead bodies. A fine inventory sheet can solve that. 

(Unless a sneaky person has 2 or 3 bags of holding...)

Now, I've said very little of Regulus himself, but if you look at this sheet, you can see a special level of trickery going on. In the backpack is a bag of holding. Next to the bag of holding, there is a quiver, a water and wineskin, rations, and a scroll case. 

With the quiver poking out the top, my character had virtually no reason to open his backpack at any time outside of camp. 

One of our DM's named Mark was driven buggy by characters toting around 3 pouches and a backpack plus a ton of junk in each hand. He said you could have a backpack OR a large pouch and two small pouches. So this is why so many slots appear on our sheets. 

For the numerically minded, we had a section for tabulation. Note that the items worn by Reg plus the items that were in the bag of holding don't count toward encumbrance. 

Personally, I always like the idea of a smallish pack and two hip-sized pouches. 

Anyway, I hope you liked the tour around my characters sheet. 

Remember, you can always click those links and download it for yourself. It is dated but I find it charming. 

A Vance A. Study in OSE NPCs

In the last post about OSE, Vance A. commented that the Old School Essentials had character generators, specifically for NPC, Travelers, and so on. He didn't know how the distribution went, so I took a shot to figure it out. 

Before I dive into that, I would like to take a moment to thank Vance and anyone else who took the time to comment. I find that comments and shares are far better than a random like or emoji that I get elsewhere. Comments let me in on the mind of the readers and they are a report of the reception of posts I share. I love the comments, thank you very much.  

The best tool seemed to be the Retainer Generator. I set it to 0 percent chance for normal humans and asked it to generate 10d10 characters at 1st and 10d10 3rd level characters. I will repurpose them for my upcoming campaign and other projects, so I didn't burn electrons for nothing. 

I used my NPC breakdown sheet as a tally sheet. 

01-02 Acrobat (5)

03-04 Assassin (7)

05-06 Duergar (4)

06-15   Dwarf (2)

16-25    Fighter (7)

26-30 Half-Elf (3)

31-32    Half-Orc (0)

33-38 Halfling (0)

   39   Knight (7)

40-50 Theif (8)

   51      Svirfneblin (4)

52-73    Magic-User (10)

73-74    Illusionist (4)

75-80    Barbian (3)

   81      Bard (18)

82-92      Cleric (6)

   93  Drow (0)

   94         Druid (10)

95-97 Elf (0)

   98   Gnome (1)

   99   Paladin (2) 00   Ranger (10)

And you know what I discovered? Random is random. 

I generated 111 characters and this is just not enough to detect anything but the most basic trends. Certain classes and races seem more popular than others. However, judging by the 18 Bards I rolled, I could just be ascribing a personal point of view to a small series of choices. 

It was an interesting experiment in Random.

While this generator was meant for retainers, the resulting characters seem just fine for PCs. I'll be using them for that and more. You can check out all of the OSE generators at this link. 

Divine Donative - Bartering for Lives

For some strange reason, in all of my years of playing D&D, not one of my players has expressed a wish for the reincarnation or resurrection of a dead character. Not even the player of the deceased character. In fact, on the few times, one character has wished another character back to life, the player of the risen character has expressed some remorse at returning to the land of the living. 

I think I know why. Very often player characters in my campaigns ascend to a beloved NPC state. In other words, they retire. The story hasn't ended for them, but the adventure has. 

One idea that I am trying with my next campaign is "Divine Donative", an offering to a church, temple, or another group that ensures resurrection or reincarnation should something befall the character. Many of the rules in D&D are geared toward such a transaction such as an oath of poverty which requires donations. There is even a list price for the casting of such spells, so why not pre-payment as insurance. 

Hit x amount and you get free services. It stands to reason that if the character or party is funneling huge sums of money into an organization, there should be an immediate benefit.  At low levels, it's a bed for the night or minor healing. Later, after pounds and pounds of silver have been diverted to the organization, another life. 

We don't know what happened.
We think he liked rabbits.

Now for the fun bit. Usually, characters die from player burnout. They get bored or goofy and do something stupid to get killed. This moment of death could be an opportunity for a side mission. Everyone rolls up new characters and campaigns to recover the body. It's a nice little break and offers a chance to be something different than normal.  

Then there is the possibility that they pre-paid for services they do not want. But it's a contract that must be fulfilled. 

Off the church leaders go to save one of their most beloved patrons, and upon their return to the land of the living, this guy doesn't want to leave the temple grounds. He wants to tend a garden rather than scalp orcs. 

And if push comes to shove, maybe he or she refuses to come back as a human. All of a sudden, the party picks up a wolf or dog or cat as some sort of guardian. While the players wouldn't control such a beast, having one makes them special. 

Over time, if the characters donate enough, a willing person could be given some sort of magical jar that could be opened in a time of great need for the ultimate healing right on the field of combat. Think, a Pheonix Down from Final Fantasy. 

While I wanted to try this idea for end-of-life situations, the concept really should appear more in my campaigns. If characters are in some sort of guild or association that they support, that support should be two ways. Especially if the character is on track to be an epic hero of many storied deeds. People should be jumping out of the woodwork to support them. Even lowly fighters may belong to some sort of veterans group which could prove a small benefit if support. 

My idea isn't to just fork stuff out to the players as much build continuity with the campaign world beyond what the players are directly experiencing. If the party has a Bard or a Magic User, they probably have associations that need answers, which the PC might have. This would create a series of barter situations that the characters could grant favors and call them in later. Rather than present the party with a list of spells and costs, I should have them intervene if they can so as to curry favor with some group or another... or they could pocket the cash. 

I really like the idea of swapping this for that instead of a list of prices and services. It may take a bit to flesh the whole idea out, so I'm sure I will revisit it as time goes on.  

PS: You can pick up a copy of Old School Essentials Characters, Magic, Monsters, and Treasures on DriveThruRPG. You can also try Wordlographer before you buy.  

Expanding the View - The Town of Manteva

I am continuing to work on this town, I think I have a name: Manteva. I am looking at some old maps of Italy and this one jumped out at me. Maybe it's misspelled, I don't know. 

We are looking at the southeastern edge of the town. I stopped the game in order to come up with some ideas for the flavor and layout of the town. I wasn't planning on a walled village, but it looks nice. 

Walls present some problems for generated maps. Computers are good at detecting collisions, but poor at the layout. Comparing this map to my last post, you'll notice some changes. First, there needs to be dead space around the walls, guard houses, and towers, otherwise, those bits don't work correctly. Providing cover to the enemy is bad, as is providing kindling for fire inside the walls. So, most of the trees have been pushed away from the structures. 

Stores, taverns, and inns should be near an entrance. Coopers and stables are good businesses to have near the gates. I like the Roman idea of bathhouses and outhouses, so this town has a couple. Furriers and smiths also appear near the gates. 

More interior to the town are market houses. These buildings have living space and shop space in the same structure. There is a public barn used for foodstuffs near the entrance. More than a few blocks contain public or private gardens. It looks like farmland, but really these would be a bit decorative and limited to herbs and small eatables like tomatoes. 

Since this is a fantasy town, the characters will find more than a couple of stationeries. Stationery shops sold books and paper. They were "stationary" because they didn't move on market day. The goods were too fragile. In addition to these types of establishments, there is also an Illuminator who would do the art for books. As a hidden feature, these shops are great for Clerics and Magic users. 

I've been labeling these so I can go back and populate each structure with a description. I can't wait to finish this town and move on to the next. 

PS: You can pick up a copy of Old School Essentials Characters, Magic, Monsters, and Treasures on DriveThruRPG. You can also try Wordlographer before you buy.  

Prepping A New Project

I have a handful of ideas in mind for new projects, hopefully, to offer on DriveThruRPG. This one requires a lot of stippling and some digital magic which means I need to start practicing now. The interesting thing about prepping is the samples I produce as the practice often don't look anything like the imagined project. 

For this item for example: 

Obviously, it is a spaceship in the theme of Star Smuggler. My project requires a fairly large map of a landscape so it is a conceptual mismatch. The other item I am working on could end up as framed art. Again, it doesn't remotely look like a map.  

But there is a method to the madness. I don't want to work on landscapes or maps while practicing so I don't burn out in the middle of a large project where I need to produce a large landscape map. 

As far as digital magic goes, I started this portion last year, before this new map idea came to mind. That was a simple test of my digital abilities, removing and then adding text to a series of extant images. 

These are the tiles for Star Smuggler. The original set came with a series of tiles that required flipping one tile upside down to create a planet. I flipped the images, removed all of the text, healed the background of that text, and added new text to replace the old text. They came out pretty nice, but once I was done, I noticed that my healing of the background image looked different than the original, so I had to repeat the process to get a complete set of matching tiles. 

A lot of people have created their own world tiles for Star Smuggler, but I have never seen anyone use the original art.  You can check out some nice ones on Board Game Geek in the link. These are very slick and modern looking as opposed to the 70s or 80s look of my copies. 

(I'm sorry, but due to the distro notices on this game, I can't share my files. Mr. Sustare didn't get paid for this game but has graciously allowed the above websites to produce digital versions of the game. It seems fair enough to me. If you know Mr. Sustare... maybe you can get us in touch so I can ask permission or give him the files to post. It's not really mine so they need a good warden.) 

So, what is this project? I have a B/X/AD&D campaign world that has 40ish years of history and I would like to see it in print. The first part of the project is the map of The Peninsula of Plenty. It is a vast area that does not lend itself to hex mapping. 

In this world, there are many strange things. For example, there are magical rail lines, newspapers, and consumer-grade magic items. I have reporters, treasure hunters, and historians of great renown populating the world. Magarven is the Peninsula's most outrageous self-promoter believing himself to be all three. Take a look at his Last Polyandrion, a map of a magical edifice of unknown meaning and purpose. 

I imagine that Magarven would very much like everyone to know what a smart and well-traveled Drow he is, so I would like to publish a series of books by him. This series will have an in-universe perspective and would contain 9 or more volumes. The collection is rules agnostic as it will be a traveller's handbook to the Peninsula. 

The reader would rapidly come to the conclusion that Magarven the Mad is not all there. As The World's Most Popular Drow, one who embraces both his heritage and fame, he will do or say anything to perpetuate being a hero when he is not. He is clearly not at fault when his human fans disappear, he has no idea where they went, and tales of sacrifices to Lolth are completely out of bounds. She was never a demon queen. How unfair to speak such untruths.   

The last part of this project would be to create a series of player's or DM's handbooks to account for noticeable differences between my campaign universe and the default B/X/AD&D setting. This would be a series that would stat out major parts of the world described by Magarven's Handbooks. 

I have rambled too much. But let me throw in one last plug. The notebook imaged above is available on RedBubble if you are into such things. There is a really good sale right now, so you can score one for less than 9 bucks. 

Hex Redux

I have less than 2 months to get ready for my next campaign. That is judging by the countdown to the upper right. I cannot wait for these OSE books to come in. I am kind of at the whim of shipping. 

Thankfully, I have a bunch of set pieces ready to go. My main issue is organization. I pulled my hex tiles from of a pair of giant cardboard boxes, set them up, and then packed them away in a handful of clear plastic totes. 

As you can see to the right, they weren't very organized. Some of the smaller parts don't lend themselves to orderly packing. I haven't solved that problem yet but I will get to that someday, hopefully soon. 

I moved an extra table to the middle of the room so we have enough space to use them. Now in this demonstration, I set up as many tiles as I wanted. It was overkill and I wouldn't actually do that for gameplay. 

I have a nice wooden table with two leaves in it. The leaves allow my players some elbow room. I will have to get more chairs and maybe a rolling storage bin to help clear the clutter. 

One of the nice things about this set of tiles is the quick set up. Each piece has a slot for a biscuit cut into the edge. When wargaming, this feature is a must. Pushing figures and rulers around invariably shifts the tiles. 

Roleplaying games, not so much. A 2x2 or 3x3 section can be set up rapidly, usually while I am talking. The rough look makes the players to visualize the scenario from a homely display, with flaws and gaps filled in with imagination. Sometimes, when the players ask about certain flaws, I will pick their brains for what it could mean. 

My intention in using this sort of setup is to facilitate play, not create a complete world or map. I use some odd bits and pieces to display data. Blue paper is water, green cotton balls are trees, rocks... well, are rocks. 

I use a cord to mark out roads and paths. I can use a different color of cord for the path the players intend to take. This makes the situation interactive as the party can all work together to create the best plan. As more features become evident, I drop colored pieces of paper with notes. I have some colored plastic bits to highlight areas of note. We have cups of colored beads and blocks so players can drop things on the play surface for their own purposes. 

And of course, I can add in figures. 

Check out these images from around the table. 

At the end of the day, pack up easy. Before I clear up, I make sure to photograph the set up for my notes. 

As you can see a ridiculous amount of tiles fit in one small area of my basement, always ready to go. 

Once I start this campaign, I will keep you guys in the loop. 

Nostalgia '87 - The Character Sheet

Back in the day, there was no concept of "editions" for D&D. There was D&D and AD&D. The differences between Advanced and the B/X books are very noticeable. There are whole websites dedicated to the differences between these products and it is a massive rabbit-hole universe. I won't be covering that here. 

I would like to talk about a product I made and put up on DriveThruRPG. 

My friends and I had a mishmash world, where D&D and AD&D were treated as the same thing. Plus we had Unearthed Arcana in our set of shared books. Yes, we all shared books among our group of players which could number as many as 14 people on a given night. 

It wasn't easy to combine all these dissimilar products but one of the aids we had was our own computerized character sheet that we could print at will. It was created on my Mac 512 in Mac Draw. 

It was excellent (click to order).

From the title panel, you can probably guess that we had a ton of multi-classed characters and a lot of wacky rules to combine everything from D&D, AD&D, and UA. We actually learned a lot from this process of creation. 

First, no one liked Cavilliers or Theif-Acrobats. We like to use a homebrew method of character attribute generation, 4d6 with the lowest die discarded and order as you see fit. Humans received a plus one to a single stat as desired. Half-elves received either human or elf attribute bonuses. 

We tried to implement weapon adjustments, but it was very cumbersome. We did like weapon proficiencies. 

As an oddity of all of our shared worlds, no one invoked raise dead or reincarnation spells, the only thing that was used was wish or alter reality spells. And infrequently at that. 

It was often enough to cause problems in unexpected places. Encumbrance was a problem as characters willed a bunch of stuff from one to another. So our rule was all items had to fit on the character sheet, despite the actual size. A full 1/3 of our character sheet was dedicated to just equipment. 

I cannot tell you how many times one of our DMs would have to deal with "my character reaches in his pocket and pull out a ring of X", only for that player to discover that the thief now knows exactly what he stole 3 sessions ago. 

Meta-bedlam... 

Anyway, a few years ago I found a copy of this sheet. I scanned and uploaded it to DriveThruRPG to share with others. It is one of my more popular items, probably because you can download it for free. If you really like it, you can actually pay for it. It is PWYW, but I suggest 99¢. 

In uploading this document, I realized there were flaws, such as missing all of the Theif-Acrobat skills. The layout could be improved and so on. I created a newer sheet that had some of the old-school style captured in the first. However, it is sharper and cleaner as it is a wholly digital product rather than a scan. It too comes with the original character sheet. 

Good things come in threes, so I created a third variation of a character sheet. One that no one asked for: The 20-page character sheet! It's actually a single sheet of paper folded into a flip book. I used them for a B2 campaign. My kids and their friends enjoyed them so much that they kept them. 

So if you like old school goodness, please give my 3 character sheets a try. 

Jousting Tourney - An Unusual Game

I am tearing through reviews this month, figured I take a break and talk about something else I enjoy. The first game book that I have extensive experience with was Chainmail. My dad was a huge fan of wargaming and back then it was all WRG. It's a 'tich hard to teach a 3 or 4-year-old the ins and outs of morale, light vs. heavy troops, average dice, army point systems, and the like. 

So on the weekends, Chainmail was our go-to game. My personal favorite section is the Jousting Table. If you don't have a lot of time, The Jousting Table is always there. It's a diceless system made up of a simple pair of tables and a shield schematic. Pick a position and target, compare and there are your results. 

Being my dad, we had 25 mm figures for every entrant in the Tourney. Even better, my dad cribbed lines from books and movies like Ivanhoe, The Lone Ranger, and an amazing number of Errol Flynn movies. The results were not simply "kill", "unseated", etcetera. It was a full-on color commentary on the action. More akin to hockey than jousting. 

Every once in a while, I like to throw a wildly different mechanic at my players. The more complex the rule system, the harder it is to integrate a completely new mechanic. I have simply written ruleset for sprinting, I call it the Movement Game. It is less than one page long, has a picture or two to help, and is largely based on AD&D's regular movement system. It is also remarkably non-lethal and covers a range of scenarios. The danger of it is players will try to invoke it when things go to hell in combat. It's relatively harmless when player-invoked. 

I probably came up with it while thinking about the Jousting Table from Chainmail. Instead of a table, every character has a figure or chit and can move an inch, one right after the other. Dirt simple. 

For my next session in November, I am brainstorming a mechanic called "Evil Eye". A character who has the center position on a gameboard can impose a status effect like "freeze", "fall" or "flee" on enemies. The central player can only affect a 30-degree arc of the playing area, so keeping enemies away is difficult because the players are surrounded. Exactly who is giving the orders really depends on the party, who realizes the center of the board is important, etc. So it could be the Super Amadeus Arch-Machiavellian... or the cook he hired. 

It's so much fun to bring something simple to the table. 

Thieves World Short Story Review - Sentences of Death By John Brunner

Title: Sentences of Death
Author: John Brunner
Year: 1978
Pages: 23
Rating: ★★★★

Ah, John Brunner. Between 1970 and 1975, Brummer penned 9 novels. Some of the finest works of SF.  In 1978, his short fiction work, Sentences of Death was the first short story of the first book in the Thieves World collection. And what an open piece it is. 

We meet Sanctuary's gritty streets and self-made fortunes through the eyes of scribe Melilot and his young protege Jarveena. Using forgery, blackmail, and mistranslation, Melilot fits right into Thieves World with his stable of scribes for hire. Through Melilot's exploits, the reader is introduced to what makes Sanctuary tick and what those ticks do to the people in the city, young, old, and in the middle. The children are the core of commerce in Sanctuary, much of which is exactly what one with think of trade in children. Jarveena is dragged right along with her master's plots. 

It's grim. 

Jarveena, Melilot's latest scribe has business and vengeance on the mind. A chance encounter pits her against the captain of the guard, Aye-Gophlan and his men who took everything from her. Jarveena craves vengeance and boy, does it work. As if having the criminal mastermind of Melilot at her back wasn't enough, she encounters the mage Enas Yorl who simply seals the deal for her.  

The story revolves around a magic scroll that none can read. This little monkey paw of a device winds a tortured path through the story, running from a street urchin scribe all the way to the Prince of the city. 

As per the typical fare for Thieves World, winning isn't always a good option as Jarveena and Enas Yorl discover. Sentences of Death is artfully crafted and while grim, is an excellent primer for Thieves World. 

In the review of these stories, I'd like to link them back to classic D&D. While scribes don't exactly fit as a class of D&D character, the function could be fulfilled by Magic-Users, Clerics, and of course, Thieves. Enas Yorl is accursed, which is an interesting take on a magic-user. Some of the other magic in the story hints at Dimension Door and Polymorph (large writ) while Aye-Gophlan's behavior and beliefs tend to model closely to poor characters just trying to get a leg up while being deluded as to their station in the story. 

"Passion is inversely proportional to information had."

The above quote is from Gregory Benford. And it's a truism for RPGs. While I build beautiful worlds in my notes, very little of that makes it through to the players. I might know precisely why a gang of whatevers are doing whatever they are doing, but the players are satisfied with the idea that they are merely jerks. 

It works. Players like to have that room to grow, and they can't grow if smothered with too much B.S. 

There is nothing better than the party discovering some sort of detail that just works for them, but there are many cases where they have no opportunity to gain such information without a data dump. Some things just go to the grave with the player's antagonists. It's fine. 

But sometimes, I like to give information. For example, I hope that every player knows how to use the to-hit tables and can calculate their own bonuses or minuses. It makes my game easier. In fact, I often have the players throw dice for even the monsters. It cuts down on paperwork, but sometimes it is an opportunity to give them a hint about something outside of combat. 

For example, if two equal-level fighters are side by side, shooting arrows at a target and both roll the same number, both should hit or miss the target. However, this is a good place to drop a hint about other stuff. Obviously, two great fighting men should know how good they are. For example, someone might have a cursed weapon or a magic weapon. The target may have some magical device that only applies under certain circumstances like once per round. Once the party is aware of some weirdness, they can start ruling stuff out by logic, just like the real world. 

It's probably magic. 

It saves on the "+1 magic sword" crap. 

There are times to hide some rolls, such as surprise or hiding in shadows. But even those rolls can give information. 

One of my favorite tricks is when the party is surprised, I'll drop a die out of sight and say, "You hear a noise." Surprise is a surprise, there is very little you can do to mitigate it due to the mechanics. However, it isn't very fun to be surprised. By making that announcement and letting the party act accordingly, I am cranking up the pressure AND pushing agency to the party. It creates an environment of anxiety while allowing for possible (slight) mitigation PLUS it allows the players to set a standard of expectation that can easily be read. 

For example, if a party thinks they are in an ambush situation, they may try to arrange themselves in such a way as to defend high-value players like Clerics and Magic-Users with meatshield Fighters and Rangers. On the other hand, if they never do this, you can set a different dynamic where those players are captured or incapacitated and the party is looking at a hostage situation rather than a TPK. It's up to the DM to receive the party's intentions or style and react accordingly. 

One of my favorite experiences was a Thief who decided to sneak up to the walls of a fortification for a little recon. The whole party seemed to support the idea. I rolled for his hide in the shadows and move silently attempts. Each time, I rolled amazingly well. No one saw or heard anything. They were such good rolls that I showed the player the results. Obviously, these should have been secret, but they were so perfect so I decided to show her. 

Then, disaster. The player of the Barbarian was having a little sidebar with another player when he suddenly realized stuff was happening and asked, "What's happening?" 

Once the party explained the plan, the Barbarian nodded sagely and bellowed, "Look out! I can see you!" 

Well of course you can see him. He isn't hiding from you, you twit. 

The sneaking Thief got this "Oh, shit" look on her face. I leaned over and showed her that the dice indicated she was still not visible to the people on the castle wall. 

To add to the merriment, I decided that the Barbarian's actions would be taken literally. The lookout on the wall answered: "Oh geez," and stepped back out of sight. 

"How about now?" asked the lookout. 

The party was gobsmacked. I gave them a few minutes to work out a plan. The Barbarian was drooling dumb and for once, his actual ability score matched the player's actions. The party adapted to the situation and everyone climbed the wall while the Barbarian offered unhelpful tips to the lookouts. No one intended this possibility, but damn it was fun. 

You can't hide everything all of the time, but you also can't data dump on the players too much. Even if it is mechanical in nature. Also, you shouldn't try too hard to hide certain bits of data. 

As a DM, you build a scenario, a story if you will, but you can't know how it will be received and interpreted. Information from the DM to the players is a fluid thing. You are effectively trying to merge the player's fictional actions with the player's visceral need for information. The DM needs to decide from the get-go what information is worth hiding and what is not.