Thursday, October 23, 2008

My Current Campaign Activities

For my weekly game, I have an old dwarven shrine to detail and flesh out and present on Sunday. Straightforward.

For the secondary campaign... with the OD&D rules hack... well... that's turned into a ridiculous project. Here's where I am with it:

Character creation and definition is done. Seven classes: Fighting Man, Magic-User, Cleric, Dwarf, Hobbit, Elf, and Gnome. 3d6, down the line, with original box ability score bonuses (ha!).

The demi-human classes have little bits to make them... different: The Dwarf is from Dragon #3, with my adding in that they can not use magic items at all, and I'm wondering whether I am going to make them completely immune to magic at all as well. This would mean healing spells and potions don't work either, so it's not just an easy choice to avoid fireballs. The Hobbit is basically the Thief class from Greyhawk with some flavor added. The Elf is the Druid class (so they get a different spell list than mages), with elfy flavor, with the added restriction that they absolutely may not touch iron or steel, and take damage if they do. The Gnome is the illusionist class, and able to cast spells if wearing magic armor.

Money will use a silver standard. Beginning money is 3d6x10 sp. But... the prices remain in gold pieces as they are. Beginning adventurers will be running around with spears and leather armor, hoping to win enough loot to buy such a grand weapon as a sword, and then the impossible dream of a horse and a suit of plate mail armor... All of the treasure tables have been shifted so what used to be sp are now cp, gp are now sp, pp are now gp, and the old electrum and copper columns went bye-bye. Gems and jewelry retain their gp value though.

XP will be awarded as the original box set states. It's a little bit more bookkeeping, but nothing too big. I like the idea that a 5th level guy can adventure with a 2nd level guy and the 5th level guy, even with an equal split of gross XP, nets far less than the 2nd level guy. This will be for monsters only though... gold will still be on a 1=1 basis to prevent "No, no, when we ran I only dropped the orc loot, not the minotaur loot!" arguments. OD&D experience point bonuses for prime requisites (gnome = CHA, hobbit = DEX, dwarf = CON, elf = SOL).

Combat will be the Man-to-Man system in Chainmail, initiative determined by weapon speeds and all. To handle combat with monsters, I'm adding a few armor types to the table and a few monster attack types, with easy conversion notes (1 - 3HD monsters with claw attacks use Claw 1, 4-7HD use Claw 2, 8+ use Claw 3, for example). I need to get away from the "Alternate Combat System" altogether with this campaign. All HD and damage dice are d6.

Most of the actual rules (not like OD&D gives many... :P) will come from Mentzer and Labyrinth Lord, depending on what I find easier.

The spell lists are directly from the AD&D Players Handbook (not enough choice and detail in the OD&D books), with lots of editing made (thank god for pdf cut and pasting). Gone are all mentions of segments and components and damage is all converted to d6s. Clerics have absolutely no direct offense spells now (and Blade Barrier becomes the Barrier spell from the Mentzer versions). I nearly just used the Mentzer version of the spells, but with a piss-poor Druid (Elf in my campaign) spell list and nothing for Illusionists (Gnomes), it would look crappy to take half the spells from one source and half from another. Oh, and everyone must keep spell books. Or "prayer books" in the cleric's case.

Magic items will be a mix of Mentzer (weapons and armor from the Expert and Companion rules, for sure!) and AD&D (miscellaneous items!), edited to conform to the above rules changes. All random tables changed to bell-curve probabilities so things like potions and scrolls will really show up a lot more.

Mentzer monsters for the most part (they seem easier to convert for my purposes, and boy do I love the Morale stat being right there), and then a modified version of my Creature Generator (to take into account the different way I'm handling monster attacks and armor in this campaign) for anything wild...

It's been a most edifying journey these past few weeks of flipping between AD&D and OD&D and Mentzer and Basic Fantasy RPG and OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord and Chainmail to put together my ultimate little D&D of my own. Comments and suggestions please.

7 comments:

  1. XP will be awarded as the original box set states. It's a little bit more bookkeeping, but nothing too big. I like the idea that a 5th level guy can adventure with a 2nd level guy and the 5th level guy, even with an equal split of gross XP, nets far less than the 2nd level guy

    How does that work? I don't know which boxed set you are referring to, but it sounds like there's some sort of weighted ratio to XP awards? I don't remember that from my bygone days, but old age probably removed that little bit.

    I like the fact that things are more expensive, with the shift to sp. VERY nice touch.

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  2. >>How does that work? I don't know which boxed set you are referring to, but it sounds like there's some sort of weighted ratio to XP awards?

    From the OD&D rules.

    "Gains in experience points will be relative; thus an 8th level Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experience."

    1 HD = 100XP basically, capping out at 1000XP maximum. People using this system report faster leveling early on.

    Example... An Orc is worth 100XP to a first level character in this system, but only 34xp maximum under the Greyhawk rules.

    Under original rules (I hope I'm doing this right... well, someone correct me if this is a misinterpretation, so I can decide whether or not my way is better than the book!)... a 5th level fighting man and a 1st level fighting man encounter an orc and kill him. 100XP / 2 = 50XP each. The first level fighty guy will get the full 50 because his level and the monster's level is the same. The 5th level guy will only get 1/5th the xp for the exact same thing because of the level difference... so just 10xp for him. Not worth his time to hang around "easy" areas and kill orcs.

    Under the Greyhawk system (and the regular AD&D system, although I don't know that the values are precisely the same), assuming that orc had 8 hit points, each character gets 17xp.

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  3. I think it sounds like you have a perfect game there! (I'd love to play, but geography makes that impossible.)

    I'd like to see the lists of spells you're using (just the names and levels would be good), because I'm not sure what you have. But overall, I think you've got quite the thing there!

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  4. This sounds rather exciting. Please keep us posted on how it turns out.

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  5. Sounds like an excellent framework you've got there. I'd certainly play it and I wouldn't hesitate to run it either.

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  6. I was NEVER a fan of calculating XP; imagine that, from a guy with a bachelors degree in mathematics!

    Part of the fun of role playing games is that players can develop or customize their characters throughout the course of adventuring. As they face and overcome challenges, PCs gain experience and knowledge, which allows them to fulfill the role demanded of them. In game terms, this equates to increases in the character’s level and ability scores. At the end of each game session, each character is a single experience throw (roll a dice dude).

    The type of dice rolled by the character is dependent on the quality of the his/her role-playing. After each game session (which generally lasts 2 to 5 hours) the players and DM take a vote by writing down (by secret ballot, the DM will serve as final arbitrator in case of a tie.) the name of the player whose role-playing is most consistent with his/her character’s class alignment and race, as well as the universal virtues of courage, integrity, and cohesion. (Even evil creatures expect their ‘friends’ to be loyal and dependable.)

    The character who receives the most votes rolls 1d2N ; the character who receives the next most votes rolls 1dN+2. All remaining characters roll 1dN for their experience throw. Add the character’s primary ability modifier (13- 15 = +1, 16-17 = +2, & 18 = +3) to the die roll, a natural ‘1’ always fails. If the die result is greater than Current Level, then the character advances one level; otherwise, the character adds +1 to an ability (Table below).

    N is a number selected by the DM; either 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 10 which is equal to or less than the level for which the adventure, dungeon crawl or game session is designed.

    Conciliation table
    D6 roll Increase

    1. STR (or INT iff mage)
    2. DEX (or WIS iff cleric)
    3. CON (or CHA iff gnome)
    4. INT (or STR iff fghtr)
    5. WIS (or DEX iff hobbit)
    6. CHA (or CON iff dwarf)


    Iff = if and only if

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  7. >>most consistent with his/her character’s class alignment and race, as well as the universal virtues of courage, integrity, and cohesion.

    As a referee, I like having a concrete standard to judge advancement. "Most consistent with class and race" are absolutely anathema concepts to me... ditto "courage, integrity, and cohesion." It's not my job as referee to tell players how their characters should act. Saying, "I think you roleplayed poorly, so you get less experience this time," is very much overstepping bounds as a referee. (I despise the 1E official training rules for this reason)

    I like an "objective" method for determining experience, so how they play their characters is irrelevant and simply according to their own wishes. I just add up the final tally.

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