Planning Session 7.1 - Keys and Oops

We left the party in the Chapel, in the middle of a massive brawl in Castle Amber. 

This post is kind of spoiler-heavy, so you might want to stop reading here. I am going to tell you what happens to the party in the future. I am already 3 sessions ahead of the Chapel, although you can't know that. 

While this is a solo playthrough, "solo" is not 100% accurate. I often point this out within individual posts. 

First, I have been using AI to assist me in tracking the whereabouts of the party when it splits up. This helps me track time and locations. I don't use AI for grammar checking because it gets excited about dashes, dash-em, commas, and semicolons. AI cannot assess sentence complexity very well and will suggest these bits of punctuation far too often. It will also battle with my built-in Chrome spellchecker, which is crazy. It also cheats if asked to roll dice or "randomly" select an option. We'll see that happen again shortly. 

Second, I often ask my children to throw dice and select character actions. They don't really want to sit and play, but occasionally they help me with this series by helping roll through large combats or throwing plot twists at me. 

I also use my copy of OSR Solo, an old-school oracle book for solo play to generate ideas, which I guess is a third modifier in this less-than-solo adventure. 

Let's get to the second big oops of this series. Pizzalla, Solvo, and Thomas have all died. Alexei has been turned insubstantial. Alexei's items are just as insubstantial as he is. But Solvo's backpack contained a bag of holding, and were both were transferred to another character's bag of holding in a second backpack. Technically speaking, I lost track of those supplies, and the party did, too. 

After the Battle of the Chapel, the party will discover their mistake and Parker and Warren will be properly provisioned as fighters, complete with bows and arrows, plus some other kit. 

Next item. I should have tracked the keys. I had forgotten that the party needed 3 keys. Here are their locations as of now: 

3. Study (In Gabby's possession.)
18. Fountain of Death (The Rakshasa took it)
27. Consultation Room (We are almost there)
52. Bobbing for a Key 

The module does suggest reducing the number of keys depending on how the party is doing. Essentially, I have hard-coded a reduction of one key by allowing the Rakshasa to take one from the fountain. I figured they would either die and the party would loot the key from the corpses, or the Rakshasa would make it to the gate and the party would find one key already there. 

First, I asked AI if the Rakshasa should enter Averoigne. I asked it to ignore mechanics, the module, and just give me a yes-or-no answer. It said yes and backed it up with all kinds of mechanics and hallucinated details about the module, Clark Ashton Smith's writings, and D&D in general. 

Sigh. AI, you kind of suck. 

I was going to roll a die and consult my copy of OSR Solo but then decided that Rakshasa in Averoigne would be fun. No random die rolls, no AI. It's fun. I am doing it. 

Why? Because I want to introduce a new NPC to Averoigne, a person named Madeline. She is a chef. She was created using my very own ruleset for NPCs called Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners.

However, this set of rules isn't the one that has been downloaded hundreds of times. 

No, this is a complete rewrite specifically meant for Old School Essentials and I will use their Open Game Content license. I hope to have this done by Christmas, and it will be my first non-PWYW title. I will not take the old edition down. It will continue to be PWYW. 

I plan on 2, maybe 3 booklets in this new edition. The first is the rules, and the second booklet will be a helper PDF and zip file so that others can build content off of it. I have to comply with their OGL, and I plan on being as helpful as possible to other creators. I haven't decided if a 3rd booklet is necessary. 

In order to assist with this project, I have created an OSE character generator. Critical to this project is the ability to generate characters using average dice, which this generator does. I AM using AI to create this generator, BUT as a crutch for the coding skills I have lost. As time goes on, I am recovering my coding skills and my reliance on AI is dropping. 

I hope you stick with me in these year-end endeavors and stay for what is to come in 2027. In the next post, we will see how the party fares in the Chapel and possibly beyond. 

My D&D vs. Your D&D

I've mentioned several times that I came to gaming at a young age. My parents dragged me to conventions and encouraged my interest for as long as I remember. I came into D&D so young that I can hardly remember a time where it wasn't there.  My first set was the Chainmail rules followed by the 1981 set.  I always loved the art in this pair of books and it was always my goto version. 

D&D Basic Set Rulebook (B/X ed.) (Basic) D&D Basic Set Rulebook (B/X ed.) (Basic)

D&D Expert Set Rulebook (B/X ed.) (Basic) D&D Expert Set Rulebook (B/X ed.) (Basic)

As I dragged my friends on the adventure they picked up sets, too. But theirs were different. They got the 1983 version.

That started an arms race. I had to pick that edition also.  

D&D Basic Set - Player's Manual (BECMI ed.) (Basic) D&D Basic Set - Player's Manual (BECMI ed.) (Basic)

D&D Basic Set - DM's Rulebook (BECMI ed.) (Basic) D&D Basic Set - DM's Rulebook (BECMI ed.) (Basic)

Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set Rulebook (BECMI ed.) (Basic) D&D Basic Set - DM's Rulebook (BECMI ed.) (Basic)

The big improvement in my mind was the two book set. That way the players had a reference and the DM had a reference. I was never a fan of the three column layout and the artwork was softer, grey scale instead of black and white line art. That style really didn't grow on me until Dragonlance came out. 

I wasn't the only one looking at an arms race. I recall stopping with the BECMI Expert Set. It seems like the series had no end in sight. In 1984, the Companion boxed set came out followed a year later by the Master set and by 1986, we had Immortals. 

Although I never purchased the last three sets in the series, I did receive them as re-gifts from friends who accidentally purchased them. In each case, it seems they believed they were getting a further refinement of the basic rules or expert rules, not a different expansion on play. I was not terribly impressed by them and never actually attempted to play them. The first two, Basic and Expert were completely sufficient for my tastes. At least my taste for b/x, I played AD&D more often than not. 

It wasn't until 1991 when the Rules Cyclopedia came out that I went back to b/x. While limited, RC was ahead of it's time. More than a decade before 3.x, it had many of the features of D&D 3.x as it introduced skills. This was something I built into my AD&D e1 campaign with my codification of skill bases for NPCs and PCs alike. In fact, what became Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners was just a series of notes and rules of thumb for nearly 3 decades. 

This is a lot longer than I meant it to be. Let's wrap it up. All of my computers have been roasted, so I've lost everything. But not really. What I intend to do is rewrite 4 of five of my offerings. I had been planning an update prior to all the changes I have experienced. Now I have good reason to get moving. There is no other path than forward. 

Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners Update

Updated an image or two.

I have uploaded a new version of Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners which includes more than 50 character professions. The update addresses some issues with the text, many typos and some minor changes to mechanics.

Now included with the download is a very old school character sheet. The sheet is two sided has 8 blocks for character information. The first four blocks are the familiar entries and the back page contains 4 blank lined blocks for notes.


The attribute block has a handy way of recording unavergaed die rolls in each corners of each stat.

Additionally, the sheet is plain black and white to allow for sketches and coloring right on the page. My suggestion is to attack these white spaces with a highlighter so you can quickly determine which character is which.

If you have already download this item, simply check your email for the update or log into RPG Now or DriveThru RPG and click the library tab to get the update.

Thank you again for downloading my book.

Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - Update - We are live!

Update we are live!

I've been a gamer since the Fall of '77. Rules sets change, but I keep coming back to D&D. It was my first experience as role play and it made huge impression on me.

In the past 4 decades, I have come to a realization that players don't need much NPC help. I still always include a NPC as a guide, or an extra information resource but when I ask my players who the best NPC was, they always point to the character I thought was a background character. The cook who spotted the enemy approaching, the herald who cracks meta humor, the stableboy who worships them. Never the ranger I put there to absorb arrows and tie up combatants.

Well, in light of that revelation, I started making 3x5 cards of every NPC. Except, they really didn't fit as a classic NPC character. No stats, no spells, no combat abilities. When my players demanded that these folks support them in the field, I started making up stats for NPCs, willy-nilly.

Not uber stats, just average guys and gals who came along for the ride. Tiny details for people who gossip about the characters as they make their way. I decided that maybe some of these people were not NPCs at all but fully blown characters in their own right but with decidedly different points of view from the PCs. I decided that these types of characters were commoners. Not lords, not adventures, but just citizens.

One of my favorite characters was a scullion named Delia. She was taken by a first level fighter who frequented the local inn and slowly made a move on him. While everyone else understood that she had eyes for the fighter, he didn't get "it". However, if there was danger, he was the first to ask about her. If he had a need for something, she was always there. So obviously, she was important. After 3 years, the campaign ended in a wedding.

But there was no "scullion" class of character. How to represent her caused me to sketch out some guidelines for all of my commoners so they could fit the character mold.

I would like to share that guide with you. I am launching "Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners" on DriveThruRPG.

The pamphlet is 24 pages, lists over 50 professions, how to evolve a zero level commoner into a full blown PC, how commoners interact with those above them, etc.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.