Stats and chance

I realize that many manuals would be published over the years unpacking just how to handle those non-combat situations that a PC can encounter.  How far can you jump?  How well do you tie that rope?  How well can you buckle that belt?  And on and on.

When I first came back to the game in the early 00s, the prospect of a fully developed non-combat skill system was appealing.  All too often, when I had played D&D in the past, everything eventually became a 10% chance.  Jumping across a 10' wide pit? 10% chance.  Jumping across a flaming gorge between flying arrows in order to grasp a dangling vine?  10% chance.  Trying to tie your shoelaces?  10% chance.  It became ridiculous, and it was just as easy to forgo a roll of the dice and just say 'you do it.' 

Problem is, the game then becomes nothing more than a mutual story telling time of assured success until the only random moments - combat - occur.  So there needed to be something.  Like so many things with the 3rd Editions, what appeared to be a solution became its own problem.  Endless possible combinations of skills and modifiers made a single leap across a chasm into an evening of calculations.  And if you cut corners?  Well, back to the 10%.  Or just Take 10, and you're back at guaranteed success.  So what to do?

Over at Monsters and Manuals, a discussion about how to play out those non-combat moments of play. The preference seems to be reducing things to a d6.  That might work.  I prefer a 10 sided die. But only sometimes.  Occasionally percentage dice.  But as often as not, I try to work in player stats.  After all, those stats should be more than just one use numbers.  They are what makes the character. 

Sure, they can be used for role playing.  My son had a fighter who had a 4 intelligence, and we had quite a bit of fun watching him unpack why he had that.  He didn't have to be stupid, it was determined.  He was just unlearned.  A simple man with common sense (he had a higher wisdom score).  That's one use beyond the standard game benefits.

But why not have those stats mean something when it comes to jumping that chasm?  Or leaping to grab those vines?  If time permits, I might even turn to a survival guide or an article I just read.  But I might have the player roll against the pertinent stat.  There might be two rolls.  Or I might combine two stats and divide, adn make that the score to beat.  In any event, that helps the players be conscientious of their own strengths and weaknesses.

After all, if I were chasing someone across the roofs of a cityscape, and suddenly they jumped over a wide alley, I'd stop.  I know I'm not that strong or fit anymore.  Nor am I that nimble.  Likewise my players - my family - have learned what strengths they have and they use them, or don't use them as the case may be.

Again, I don't adhere religiously to any form, and can mix things up at a moment's notice.  But to not use the stats for determining success?  That leaves a huge hunk of what those numbers mean out of the equation.  And beyond just imagining what the PC looked like to begin with, it also becomes a chance to role play on the spot based on tangible figures, and that's one of the best parts of the game. 

Brevity is the soul of wit

And sometimes the magic behind the written word.  Long does not mean better.  Whether some of the later Harry Potter books, or Peter Jackson's bloated Tolkien films, the fact that more is better is clearly not always the case.  By the 2nd Edition of D&D, descriptions were long and embellished if nothing else.  Entire supplements existed in which barely a paragraph or two seemed able to be used in a practical game setting, and sometimes the flavor text was overblown and, quite frankly, too much. 

That didn't just happen in the 2nd Ed world, and the 3rd Ed. showed that too little could often be just that: too little.  Some of the descriptions in the 3rd and later editions had all the heart and soul of a set of stereo instructions.  Finding that middle ground of just enough and yet not too much isn't easy.  

Nonetheless, it can be done.  And IMHO, it is done in all of the D&D canon, if not the entire world of roleplaying, in few places better than on page 21 of the original Monster Manual.

I've already stated my first round of praise of that book.  There are many reasons, and eventually I'll get there.  And while many complained that the monster texts don't have enough description and too many stats, for me some of the best descriptions written in the game are between those covers.  And the best?  Within that fan favorite section of Devils. 

The entire portion of the book dealing with Devils is atmospheric to say the least.  The artwork evokes the medieval Gothic, with the Horned Devil picture on pg. 22 looking as if it was lifted out of a medieval stone carving or illuminated manuscript.  The section's opening summary text also does well, as do several of the descriptions beneath the individual devils.

But its the one under the Lord of the Flies that is the best, and showed what could have been more common throughout the years, rather than too often the exception.  First the picture itself:

Note it is not a square border, but an arched border, again evoking the idea of a rounded window, in a castle or perhaps lonely monastery.  Medieval.  Then the picture itself.  One of the most original concept pieces of any outer plane creature; certainly one of the most original devil portraits.  And then underneath, specifically the first paragraph, you have this: 

"The sixth and seventh planes of Hell, Malbolge and Maladomini respectively, are ruled by Baalzebul, "Lord of the Flies" ("lies"?)  He is an arch-devil of great power, second only to Asmodeus.  Malbolge is a black stone plane, filled with stinking vapors, smokes, fire pits, and huge cave and caverns.  Maladomini is simliar, but there will be found the moated castles of the malebranche and the great fortress of Baalzebul."

Call me simple or call me sentimental, but there is some power in that terse, crisp and brief description.  Especially of the two planes.  Black stone plane.  Stinking vapors.  Smokes.  Fire pits.  Huge caves and caverns.  A classic picture of Hell.  And then the seventh: similar, but there will be found the 'moated castles' of the malebranche, and the 'great fortress of Baalzebul.'  

Playing off Dante by using the Latin names only helps, and adds to the quick word paints; the feeling is one of spectacular foreboding, of legendary place, of locations known to the heart and soul of the world's inhabitants.  Note that the castles are 'moated', and they are the castles of the malebranche (which, if reading the book for the first time front to back, the reader would not have encountered yet). Why are they moated? Are they the only home of the Malebranche? The imagination takes over.  And like any writer or artist knows, the audience's imagination is always better than the author/painter. 

I'm not saying there was never good descriptive texts elsewhere in the whole of the RPG universe. Of course not.  I've not read but a small portion of all that's been printed, and I've seen some very wonderful cases of painting those mental pictures necessary to breath life into the hobby.  But word for word, I've not found any that pack so many punches, bring to mind so many images, and set such a wonderful stage of real, and historically inspired, supernatural belief.  If there ever was a Hell, this was the result of an eyewitness.  And in a game based upon using the imagination, there is no greater purpose than that for a text.  

My blog

Oh my blog.  What's it for?  Again, to jot down thoughts as I work through a hobby and a pastime that I've never been particularly close to.  I'm not a professional writer.  Dave's my name, and banking's my game.  But when my boys became particularly enamored with all things fantasy - having grown up in the heyday of Jackson's LoTR and Pottermania - I decided to step in and share their memories.  Especially since we've always been a close family who lives by the adage 'the family that plays together, stays together.'

Not that it's always been that way.  On an intellectual level, it was history, not fantasy, that was my first love.  It still is.  First as a child with WWII, largely due to the number of close relatives who served in the war.  I then went through a phase in which I discovered ancient Greek and Roman history and mythology.  That was really where my earliest interest in mythology was born.  By middle school, I was becoming a revolutionary.  Perhaps it's because I always loved autumn, and the Revolutionary War was studied during that time, but I soon found myself gobbling up anything from Colonial America to Napoleonic Europe.

It wasn't until high school, 11th Grade in fact, that I began to show interest in Medieval history.  This interest was spurred on by the number of classmates I had who were, at the time, immersing themselves in this new fad called Dungeons and Dragons.  It was also the result of our 11th Grade English teacher (what we now call Language Arts), and a segment on Beowulf.  I can still see her standing in front of the class, reading a description of the world out of which Beowulf emerged.  The cold, the dark, the small bands of people huddling in their great houses against the outer nighttime - it somehow caught my imagination.  Of course it didn't hurt that she also had a reputation for inviting various male students to her house way out in the country.  But that's another story.  There was enough combining to get my interest in medieval history jump started, and fuse it with at least an underlying interest in fantasy.

This was also during the Great Fantasy Renaissance that began in 1977 with the release of Star Wars, and continued until about the mid-1980s.  That fall semester of my 11th grade year, when I sat listening to the unpacking of Grendel's world (including a rousing account from John Gardner's Grendel), was still part of that period, though arguably toward the waning days of the Fantasy Renaissance.  Return of the Jedi had just come out it's true.  But the Excaliburs and the Conan the Barbarians were giving way to a growing number of Terms of Endearment and Wargames themed movies.

Nonetheless, by that time I had already dipped my first toe in the bubbling stew that was fantasy roleplaying.  I always had a soft spot for movie monsters and mythology.  And now I was being turned on to the particularly beautiful and brutal period of history that has been my primary focus for all the years since.  So when my boys came to me and asked ol'Dad to roll up his sleeves and have a go at the old 20-sided, I had enough interest, just enough experience, and plenty of curiosity to make a go of it.  And that's what this is for.  To sift my ideas out, have a place to put them down, and who knows? Maybe someone with infinitely more knowledge and experience in the hobby will come by and give me an insight or two I've not thought of.  Till then, here's hoping.

I'm back

That was crazy.  But good thing it happened before the blog got started.  Some fine tuning to do.  Just basic life things.  But I'm back.  Will look into things now down the road.  Then start working on getting the blog up and really running.  TTFN.

On Alignments Continued

And now the alignment that most matches the modern understanding of doing good.  It certainly would have been popular among the hippies of the 60s and 70s.  That is, the Chaotic Good.  As I mentioned in my last Alignment post, the Neutrals are always difficult, and it's tough to see where one ends and the opposite extreme begins. 

But Chaotic Good is how many today operate by virtue of living today.  Many heroes and defenders of the good operate within this ethos.  It is, in so many ways, consequentialism lived out.  But not entirely.  By virtue of good, it would balk at doing actual evil that good may come of it.  The answer to Caiaphas's famous question would be a resounding 'No!' 

Nonetheless, on the other hand, the idea that those rascally rules and procedures of this button down, conformist society have just got to go plays large.  Rules were made to be broken.  It's not 'if it feels good, it is good.'  Nor is it 'no rules, just right.'  But it lives with an almost ingrained disdain for law and order.  Sure laws must exist.  Rules must happen.  But only up until the common good is in any way infringed upon.  At that point, the rule or law is the first thing to go.

Again, it's not for evil.  Evil will not be done.  That's not to say harsh measures may not happen, and some may argue whether such grave decisions as the one that led to the vaporization of Hiroshima falls here or elsewhere.  Certainly it may ask the question of moral relativity.  In this regard, Chaotic Good is not the easiest alignment.  At what time does one kill the prisoners and still remain good?  Even if it's for the greater good and the prisoners are evil?  In fact, in many ways, hearkening back to those peace loving hippies, many of that ilk would resist such things as the death penalty and even all war, no matter what the cost.

So it's a little tougher than at first glance.  Still, on the whole, and for game purposes, it's the alignment for the free spirit, the person who lives within a rules-set only out of necessity, but will gladly break any law, lie, steal, or do anything short of evil for the greater good, particularly the good of the individual.  And at times, the CG will see the good of the individual as supreme to, if not entirely incompatible with, the good of the common law.

Some examples:

There can be no more famous, or better, example of CG in modern fiction than Harry Potter.  Was there ever a rule that kid didn't break?  He and his compatriots lie, steal, break rules, violate standards.  We won't even get into Dumbledore's turn around from wise sage to Machiavellian plotter.  The whole series is a testament to the modern notion that authority is almost always suspect, and when it comes to being good, there just aren't many rules when you're doing it for the individual good.

Batman of course, especially in the Nolan manifestation, is almost borderline Chaotic Neutral, but that his goals are for the greater good.  He operates outside of the laws he tries to protect.  And that's important.  Robin Hood is mentioned here again because while I speculated he would loyally follow a good leader (and Scott's Robin makes that seem more likely), most portryals show him while he fights the evils of Prince John.  To that end, he rebels against the rules on a daily basis.  But they are evil laws and rules, and there's the trick.  Yes, Robin might well be CG all the way, even when the leader is good and the laws are good.  We only see him when the laws are ministered by forces of darkness. 

Unlike Batman, he seems content to operate within the structure as long as the structure is good.  The structure is good in Gotham.  Murder and stealing and breaking and entering are wrong  And there are good cops enforcing that.  Nonetheless, Batman chooses to operate outside of those laws for the greater good.  Robin?  It's hard to say, and a case could be made either way.  But in any event, none of these folks are lawful in the least, and with the possible exception of Robin, who may simply put the good above all things, they are willing to go against laws, rules and standards as a first resort.  The classic Chaotic Good.

First edition oddities

One of the interesting discoveries I've made is the rather grassroots nature of the early Dungeons and Dragons editions.  I've never had long term access to the original rules.  My experience is in the 1st edition.  And what an experience it is!  I much prefer the style, the production, the overall 'feel' of those rules to the more clean and synthetic 3rd and later editions.  Nonetheless, I admit there are some quirks, some ideas that were never developed, other ideas that come and go.  In some ways, that adds to the whole organic nature of the game.  It was not the product of paid think tanks and bean counters.  It was, in many ways, a labor of love.  And like all things associated with that emotion, it both soars and, at times, crashes.

For instance.  In the DMG, in the magic items catalogue, a Necklace of Prayer Beads makes it 25% more likely that your petition for spells will be successful.  25% more likely than what?  Would someone please tell me where else in the first edition rules that there is a chart or matrix unpacking the percentage chance of higher level Cleric spells being heard?  I'll get to what I've done with that rule somewhere down the road.  But for now, it stands next to such things as Orcus's wand and its impact on Saints, and other such anomalies.  They appear, they're mentioned, and then they fade. 

I'm not counting articles in Dragon or Dungeon by the way.  A rule shouldn't refer to the possibility of a future article in a periodical to which most players will never subscribe.  It ought to be in a rulebook somewhere.  Perhaps I've just not found the references.  But I have a feeling these, like others, were ideas that came out at the moment during which the books were being written, only to be dropped as the game and its players moved into different directions.  Such appears to be the context out of which the original rules were published.

Undead in Dungeons and Dragons

It's not easy to invoke fear among players of a pencil and paper game.  Especially for a generation raised on the time honored 'save/reload' style of video game play.  Death is cheap.  At best, an inconvenience.  How does one make death something you truly fear?  Well, you make it more than just 'roll up a new character'.  You hit them where it hurts.  And it hurts in few other ways more than having to recalculate and reduce all of your abilities, only to start from scratch a level or two lower than you were a moment earlier.

Such is the wonder of the Level Draining abilities of certain undead.  One thing I remind my boys when we play: In the end, it's a game.  In the early days, many rules were implemented for the sake of game play.  Fans and devotees would ascribe meaning and insight to various game mechanics over the decades.  I personally have my own image of what Level Draining is and why it causes one to lose abilities and learned skills.  But in the end, it was there as a game mechanic to give the lords of the netherworld a bit more umph. 

And that it does.  This is keenly felt when setting the early versions in juxtaposition to the later 3 and 3.5 editions of D&D.  Like many things, those editions seemed to strip the game from its historical and literary roots, and replace everything with a +2 bonus to this or that die roll.  Even the much feared Level Drain was given a few safety nets.  One could still experience it, but you had chances.  There were opportunities to go toe to toe with a Wight or a Wraith and still come out more or less unscathed.

But not in 1st Edition.  Back then, one hit, one measly little slap, and you just lost an entire level, perhaps weeks or months of game play.  Against the more terrifying foes like Spectres or Vampires, you lose a whopping 2 Levels!  Ouch.  But that's good.

For the undead should terrify.  With some skill, a game session can be creepy, perhaps even scary.  We ran one a few autumns ago, right around Halloween, and it couldn't have been better suited to give a few chills.  I'll unpack that particular jaunt through haunted manors and graveyard mausoleums someday.  On the whole, however, instilling fear isn't easy.  Some healthy reluctance to send a 1st level party against a colossal Red Dragon may be there, but actual fear of something worse than hit point loss, or even character death, is needed for those special cases.

And undead is a special case. Let's face it, we'd all love to see a ghost.  A real live ghost.  And yet it would terrify us just the same.  Even the thought of it terrifies.  All of materialist atheism hangs on a gossamer thread of one verifiable encounter with a supernatural element.  That is the power of meeting the afterlife, the netherworld.  And so when the PCs meet such creatures of the hereafter, the encounter should come with a greater price than 'lose 5 hit points.'  There should be something more.

Ghosts and mummies have their own special attacks, and ghouls and ghasts as good as always.  But it's those level draining undead.  Two or three game minutes with a Vampire, and your 10th level fighter may be back to square one, or at least level four.  And that hurts.  Sure there are magical ways around this.  But as anyone who follows the unpacking of my blog will realize, magic doesn't fall about in my campaign world like apples from a tree.  To obtain such a prize as 'Restoration' will require an epic quest in its own right.  And therein lies the fun of the old versions. 

3.5 almost discouraged such trauma, and made playing safe. I know why they did it.  I understand the marketing and sales aspects.  Yet it stole from the impact.  It reduced the stark terror that encountering such a creature should invoke.  So here's to the Level Draining undead of the early D&D editions.  They scared the pants off the first party I ever played in all those years ago.  They still do quite a job of instilling fear today, as it should be.