Scrounges, Knockers, Gleaners and the New Year

Tis the season for endings and beginnings. I've had my game stuff knocked out of whack by calamity and a new campaign so UI've fallen behind on my blogging here and over at bigdungeon.  I had hoped to get a lot of time in on BigDungeon on the thanksgiving weekend and we had a 4 day blackout for the holiday, followed by a chimney fire (which really came out as well as such a thing can) so that got offset and i ended up doing more reading on dungeon generation and my Parents got me the 5e DMG for Christmas (just like they got me the first one... uh 35 yrars ago???) and it made me like 5e a heck of a lot more than I did from reading the previews or freebie core PDFs but also sucked up more eof my blogging and getting something on BigDungeon done time. So content on BigDugnoen is bumped yet again into the nebulous future but something is coming, eventually (writing a megadungeon someone else may read or a megadungeon generator that can create quickly editable content is quite the chore).

I'm excited to be playing the new game not this Sunday but next one and that's drawn a lot of my creative energy. It's going to be fairytale land on the surface and fiend folio inspired chaos-hell in the underworld. Still debating specifc ruleset with myself and have 3 in the final run BFRGP, Swords and Wizardy Complete, and Seven Voyages of Zylarthen; funnily enough most of my campaign development work can be done generic enough I can easily get it to work with the game rules when I decide.

Here's some semi-gamebale contet, really mostly an idea for now. I've never really been satisfied with the random/wandering monster entries for "Adventuring Parties" in dungeons, it's just too broad and still leaves you with a ton of work to get rolling. So I figured: why not create a slightly more granaular set of classification of dungeon delvers to make it easier to wing and likely build a larger list for each of those classifications? Here the bones of that set up:

Dungeon Delver Categories.
Scrounges- scavenegrs and skulkers, either escaped prisoners turned dungeon looters or desperate peasants giving a dungeon delving a fling. Best armor is typically leather or shield, if by freak chance a scrounge has leather, shiled and a helmet it's going to be a mismatched and shoddy set of gear. Weapons will be reworked pieces looted from battlefields or more likely rustic tools turned to monster clobbering. These fellows generally lack the ability and durability to present much of threat to an organized foe and typically profit from the leavings of other adventurers. Levels 0 to 2. Armor-leather or none typically. weapons: shoddy and clumsy 1d6 weapons

Knockers- ever present dungeon looters, not the most competent delvers but they still haunt the place and are an annoyance to locals and other delvers. A lone knocker isn't much of a n issue but a number of them could be trouble to a small monster band or more experienced delvers. Level 1 to 4. Armor: up to Mail and Shield. Weapons: typically one hand 1d6 weapons.

Breakers- stereotypical door kicking, trap springing,  monster killing death squads.  Level 1-6. Armor: as much as possible.  Weapons: Typically 2 hand 1d8 heavy on melee.

Gleaners- competent looters that make use of stealth and guile as much as they do force so as to pilfer and transport as much loot out of the dungeon as they can possibly manage. Likely to have base camps or dungeon caches established to further their looting ways.
Levels 2-7. Armor: medium to heavy when applicable but with a focus on mobility.Weapons: good  with a balance of melee and ranged doing 1d6 or 1d8.

ShadowJack- renowned rogues of the deeps. Sources of rumor and specialists for particular tasks. Up and comers but not yet true forces in the megadungeon.
Levels: 3-8 armor: light ot medium but often magic. weapons: typical fine or exotic, maybe even magic typically 1d8.

Carver- empire builders trying to carve themselves an empire in the underworld or aid another in doing so. They will have hideouts, allies, and supplies somewhere in the dungeon. Levels 3-13. Armor: medium often magic.wepaons: veryfine and exotic, typically 1d8 for one handed and 1d10 for 2 handed weapons.

Grim- respected and feared enforcers and monster hunters (yeah I borrowed that name slightly but it works). Gloomy and stalwart dungeon champions. Typically only have one or two pieces of really valuable loot on hand, often a weapon or device of destruction. Levels: 5-13 Armor: heavy. Wepaons: 1d8 one handers and 1d12 two handers.

Wyrd- powerful oddballs of the deeps, you want to meet a strange bloke in a megadungeon it's going to be a Wyrd; Fungus collecting sage who moonlights as an oracle... that's a wyrd as well. Likely to have exotic and valuable gear.
Levels: 6-13 Armor: any, often magic. Weapon: Exotic typically 1d8 but may be heftier.

Stillworking up the distribution by level. Becasue of the random nature of them not totally sure how I'm going to balance 1d6 scrounges vs a ShadowJack but I come up with somehting.

 Definetly going to come up with a list of 100 to 25 of these guys in each category with their respective arms, armor and goodies. That's going to have to wait until sometime in the first few days of 2015. I envision using these entries as reoccurring NPCs when possible so eventually if all goes well characters will get a chance to know the names and habits of folks they kill for a few g.p.

Prettied up yesterday's table

Not a massive post here, the formatting on yesterday's table was driving me nuts so I fixed it.
If for some reason it crashes into something else on the page or can't be viewed on your browser please let me know.

What are the walls made of?

A 1d100 chart of wall material and some construction variants.

Roll 1d100 if you feel like going wild and crazy, 1d20 if you just want crusty stone and brick walls, 1d30 for mundane walls,or 1d60 if you want to go a little crazy.

Wall Material Table

Roll	Wall
1	Hewn Living Stone
2	Great Stone Blocks
3	Identical Cut Stones
4	Broad Cut Stones of Differing Height
5	Fishbone Pattern of Cut Stone
6	Fishbone pattern of selected stone
7	Irregular Stones
8	Stacked Rock
9	Cut Stone with irregular filling
10	Reinforced Masonry
11	Unworked Stone
12	Rock and Soil
13	Packed Earth
14	Cement
15	Brick, Running- alternating runners
16	Brick, Common- alternating runners stacked several deep with interval runs of headers.
17	Brick, Stacked- bricks stacked one atop the other with no concern place on arrangement
18	Brick, Cross- runners with alternated small cross patterns of header and runner.
19	Brick, Diagonal- pattern with runners and occasional header with large diamond stacked sections
20	Brick, Double Stretch- alternating stack with 2 runners and a header
21	Wattle and Daub
22	Wood-boards
23	Wood-timbers
24	Wood-lath
25	Wood-panels
26	Adobe
27	Paper
28	Salt, Hewn
29	Bone, Piled
30	Salt, Bricks
31	Metal, Iron
32	Metal, Copper
33	Metal, Brass
34	Metal, Bronze
35	Metal, Hepatizon
36	Metal, Orichalcum
37	Metal, Admantine
38	Bone, Conjured
39	Bone, Fossilpack
40	Crystal, Piled
41	Crystal, Conjured
42	Crystal, Blocks
43	Crystal, Cultured
44	Glass, Handblown
45	Glass, Stained-glass Panels
46	Glass, Perfect
47	Glass, Conjured
48	Coal
49	Brambles
50	Sea Coral
51	Cave Coral
52	Ossified Wood
53	Ossified Flesh
54	Opalized Wood
55	Opalized Flesh
56	Living Wood
57	Ice
58	Obsidian
59	Jelly
60	Fungus
61	Flesh, Living
62	Flesh, Rotting
63	Hide
64	Fur
65	Chitin
66	Webs
67	Cloth Hangings
68	Root Tangle
69	Insect Mass
70	Brain Tissue
71	Elastic Membrane
72	Flowstone Curtain
73	Packed Refuse and Debris
74	Blast Glass- from radioactive wasteland
75	Metal, Lead
76	Metal, Nickel
77	Metal, Cobalt
78	Metal, Uranium
79	Iron Pyrite
80	Cinnabar
81	Native Copper
82	Arsenic
83	Asbestos
84	Stacked Barrels
85	Sod Blocks
86	Quivering Phosphorescence
87	Melancholic Pile
88	Choleric Mass
89	Sanguine Scab
90	Phlegmatic Crust
91	Cloud
92	Flame
93	Magma
94	Water
96	Force
96	Radiance
97	Shadow
98	Tormented Souls
99	Gearpack- a seemingly impenetrable mass of moving gears
100	Reaching Hands

OSR, Retroclones.... what are they ?

A nice couple visited my wife and I yesterday with their two kids (each a year on each side of my youngest child so the kids entertained each other most of the time). We had fun chatting and the couple were both RPG gamers keen to start a new game and while they enjoyed games like 7-Seas they are both interested in playing D&D, anything before 3.5, 4th or 5th edition.  I started knocking about editions and games and mentioned Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy Role-playing ,and Seven Voyages of Zylarthen as possible options and they had no idea what I was talking about. I mentioned yeah they are "retro-clones" or oldschool games enabled by the SRD and OGL part of the whole OSR thing".  They commented "OSR? Retro-clones? What are they?".
My wife fetched a print copy of BFRPG and showed it to them while I talked, they were both interested but had no clue such things existed. Specific rule set choice and house rules are up to me as long as it is old-school D&D, and first game is scheduled for Jan 10th.

As I have mentioned before and elsewhere: There is a large number of RPG players out there that have no clue the OSR or Retroclones even exist and plenty of people willing to play D&D in general that have no clue at all about editions wars and the drama hardcore fanboys enjoy.

Having trouble finding players for your RPG campaigns? Talk about your games and they will come.

Sneaking, using the rules that are already there.

I've seen it for years people complaining about old-school dungeoncrawling becasue it lacks essential rules, one area of complaint is the lack of any universal rules for stealth/sneaking. What a lot of people have missed over the years is there is a mechanic built into the game that covers that ground already: The Surprise Check.

Surprise is covered in the combat rules and a lot of folks can't conceive of using it outside of combat but the purpose of surprising someone is to do something unnoticed before others are able to react. So want to sneak past some guards and resolve the situation with game mechanic, make a surprise check against the monster/NPCs if they are surprised you gain the advantage of surprise and if conditions merit no combat happening, there's no combat you have slipped past the guard.

What about thieves, are they being robbed of their skills? Nope, they retain all the abilities they ever did their abilities at hiding and moving silently are enhancements over what other characters can already do. When deployed along with the surprise/stealth roll the seemingly low chances of low level thieves are much improved without knocking the game out of whack.

What about monsters? Use the rules that are there a few monsters are noted as having increased ability surprise PCs or being difficult to surprise, these creatures are simply as perceptive and stealthy as application of the surprise rules would indicate.

There are a lot of rules in place that just need to be applied more often or to a wider range of situations where they fit well. 

Check out this post on using the reaction table in a wider range of applications if so interested.

Quick and Easy Deathspirals for Combat

Realism and combat in D&D and related old-school games is a crazy issue folks drag up now and again and the there is a host of conflicting motives in that realism, one way to have wounds have a realsitic effect is by employing a death spiral to your campaign combats. A death spiral simply put is a method of combat resolution that includes an immediate deterioration in combat capability caused by wounds inflicted. The death-spiral is useful for implementing a sensation of reality beyond the worry casued by lowering HP and it alters the play of grindy HP based combat as well but if there are lots of rules and subsystems involved it increases the time it takes to resolve combat at the table. the following are two simple methods for implementing a deathspiral into your old-school HP based combats.

Method I: Levels Matter
Each time a combatant suffers a wound with damage greater then their level they have suffered a wound. Each such wound suffered causes the combatant to suffer a -1 penalty to hit and damage.

Record the number of wounds suffered, nothing else. Bandaging within 10 minutes will remove 1 wound. Healing magics will remove 1 wound if total healing is over the recipients level. It's possible to continue to suffer the impacts of wounds even when at full HP with this recovery method, this reduces some of the yo-yo effect of healing magic in dungeoncrawls and makes suffering wounds enduring in some cases. I recommend after a week each full day of rest removes one wound (healing magic will get the job done quicker).

High hitdice monsters and high level PCs will only suffer wounds from special attacks or critical hits (if you use them). Fights against multiple opponents will quickly wear down a solo creture/NPC (not a bad thing strictly speaking).

Method II: The Fading Total
As a combatants HP total decreases they weaken. At each 50% reduction impose a -2 penalty to hit rolls and saves (So if a fighter has 20 HP and is reduced to 10 the fighter is -2 to hit and save, -4 at 5 and -8 at 2).

It's best to calculate the different thresholds for the reductions of -2.-4 and so on.  High HP combatants will not suffer much from wounds at first unless suffering from a few heavy hits so HP based combat is still going to be grindy for a while but as significant damage is suffered there will be a significant impact on offensive and defensive ability.

Any method that restores HP over the threshold reduces the penalty. when HP aren't very high the yo-yo effect of healing magic will be pretty notable.

Random Monsters

I had a few moments and wondered what I could whip up for an animation in 20 minutes with 3D art tools and here's what I managed:



http://youtu.be/oQ2Ik7Lihu8

It's also over on my art blog but I figured I could share it here as well.

I wonder what level dungeon is appropriate for a Tank-Rex and a Shark-Blimp?

Wizardawn are you gone or have you moved?

Over the past few days I'v enoticed a resource and great site I've enjoyed over the days is gone: Wizardawn  (over on the links ot the right). It had some decent generators for a host of RPGs needs.
Anyone know if the site has moved or is dead for good?