Rules updates

Another rambling post; sorry.

Right now there are three revisions of rules sets going on that I’m paying attention to.

One is the ‘next’ edition of D&D, which is the most opaque of the three processes.  I hear bits and pieces about what the designers are going for, and see some polls on the WotC web site which are both uninformative and relatively uniformed — the questions tend to be very vague and the pool of respondents appears to be a tiny slice of D&D players (the ones who spend a lot of time online debating D&D).  Whatever D&D “Next” looks like, I’ll probably try it out but I don’t really need it, both because I have more than enough players and because I’m pretty happy running older versions, homebrews, and clones.

Another game undergoing a revision is DBA — De Bellis Antiquitatis, my go-to war game.  Truth be told, I probably haven’t played it at all since I began running D&D a couple of years ago.  Before that, I played DBA a few times a year, with a brief period when I played it a lot.  I only played in one convention tournament, and that was seven years ago.  So the rules will be the third edition, although DBA went through various minor tweaks — I think the official versions, with amendments offered by the author, would be: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2.  The revision process has been fairly open, with drafts of the rules offered for playtest, comments accepted, and lots of discussion.  In fact things took a fairly ugly turn in the last few months, with some rifts in the online community, at least, among those who like the 3.0 changes and those who’d rather just tweak 2.2 a bit.  Honestly I don’t find the changes to be all that radical, but partly because DBA is very popular as a tournament rule set, there is a lot of angst over what changes will be made.  Also, the changes will certainly include changes to army lists, which may make some existing DBA armies ‘out of date’ and require some changes for tournament play.  This does not really affect me, and I have my perfectly serviceable 2.2 rules.  I may buy 3.0 just to see what is changed, or may wait for the long-promised introductory version which is supposed to include some illustrations, more detailed explanations, and perhaps some modeling advice for new wargamers.

Lastly, a rule revision that is likely to affect me is not a game at all but the cataloging rules which libraries will most likely adopt in the coming year or so.  To some extent this revision of rules is of interest only to librarians, although I suspect they will impact library users and information seekers generally for a long time, whether or not they are aware of the changes.  The current Anglo-American cataloging rules (which were adopted more or less universally in the English-speaking world and very close in principle to most European cataloging conventions, as they are all tied to an international standard for bibliographic description known as ISBD) are perfectly serviceable, of course, but there are some concern that all that ‘metadata’ created by publishers, internet users, advertising firms, and so on could be more easily imported into library catalogs (and library data more easily ported to the metadata formats used outside libraries), and the new rules are purported to do be able to do this.  Having seen the current version of the new rules (called “RDA”) I am aghast at both how technical and  jargony they are on one hand, and how loose they are on the other.  This is one set of rules that I think it would be nice to keep standardized…we’re not talking about a game here!  Leave game rules open to options and house rules, fine.  But if you are creating a standard for a professionals to use for collaboration…well how about making them standards.  You know, in the sense that we all actually adhere to the same set of rules.  The chief author of the previous set of rules offers a hilarious and devastating critique of the new rules here, although this essay is a few years old and based on a more incomplete version of the new rules then being floated.  The unfortunate thing is that while input on various drafts has been solicited from the library community, some of the most important criticisms have been largely ignored so far (e.g. revising the rules will cost a lot at time when libraries are already very strapped; many new terms are introduced that confuse librarians and will be impenetrable to library users; the rules fail to actually address some of the ‘big’ concerns that led us to want to update the cataloging rules in the first place; academic (college & university) libraries have disproportionate influence because public librarians generally have much less time and support for engaging in the discussion; and much more…)

So these three rules revisions — two to games that I hold pretty dear and one to professional standards I work with every day — are very interesting to watch, although it’s rather distressing to me personally and professionally to watch the cataloging rules being revised, with limited input from those most affected.  It’s fascinating to see these three very different processes, as processes, too.

The DBA rules are being tested by a fair sized group of players, and largely incremental rather than wholesale revisions, and have been freely available for all to see at each iteration.

In contrast the D&D revision is hidden behind an NDA, although have still felt free to discuss what they think is, should be, or is not in it, and the design team has frequently editorialized on the process albeit without giving any clear examples nor disclosing any actual rules.

The RDA process has been open to the extent that sections were released for comments as they were completed, although at the time it was difficult to comment on incomplete rules, and many of the public comments seem to have fallen on deaf ears.  Following that there were extensive ‘tests’ of the still very incomplete rules, conducted at various libraries including the Library of Congress.  It is a little shocking that despite years of work on the rules, some of the most critical parts (e.g. subject analysis) have still not been released and much of what is there basically rephrases the old rules with slight emendations, many of which are rather dubious attempts to fix display issues by entering different data (e.g., not everyone knows what the English and Latin abbreviations in the old rules mean, but rather than asking for an interface that displays them spelled out, RDA eliminates abbreviation!).

The reception of each set of rules has been very polarizing too.  This really shouldn’t surprise me; some people hate change because it is change, and some people love change because it is change.  Apart from the purely emotional responses (aka nerdrage), each constituency can expect to be affected to some degree by whatever the changes are, and we all hate have changes thrust upon us without our input.

I think the D&D players are actually the least affected — we can just keep playing whatever we were before.  Of course the newer generation of players doesn’t realize this and there are cries of “betrayal!” by loyal 4e players and a great deal of angst about how their preferred verison will be ‘supported’ by WotC and which pre-packaged settings will continue to be ‘supported’ because obviously you can’t just make up your own stuff. o_O

The DBA players have tournaments so they are a little less free to ignore new editions. Depending on the particular tournaments, they may be asked to use the rules and/or army lists, which may involve some re-basing of minis (a legitimate concern).  Indeed one ‘rogue’ group who in past published a lucid and popular guide to understanding the very terse and brief rules of the game has stated their intent to publish their own amendments to the current version of the game, which has angered the author of DBA and created enough vitriol (between ‘loyalists’ who want to adopt the new edition and ‘rebels’ who want to keep playing 2.2 with a few amendments) that I’ve dropped out of even following the discussions.  As small and mature as the DBA community is, it has all the appearances of the sort of ‘edition war’ we saw in D&D over the last few years.

But obviously catalogers will be the least free to ignore RDA — in the US, as the Library of Congress goes, so goes the whole cataloging world for the most part.  A few attempts to delay or derail the RDA train have largely failed to stopped what I see as “a solution in search of a problem,” but life will go on.

So, interesting times.

No 15 minute adventuring days in Telengard

There’s been lots of discussion about the “15 minute adventuring day” around the blogs and forums lately — the situation that arises where the party leaves the adventure site/dungeon/etc. to rest and recuperate after every encounter, because they want to re-memorize spells, heal up, regain once-a-day abilities, etc.  It’s a problem because it disrupts the ‘momentum’ of an adventure, and kills some of the excitement and peril.  In fact the issue it has come up in discussions at our gaming table too!

The “edition warrior” answers to the problem tend to be either:

Old schooler: 15 minute adventuring days happen because the players don’t know how to conserve their resources, and you can solve it by preventing recuperation (wilderness adventures, remote dungeons you can’t just leave at will, etc.), or by learning to manage resources better (avoid fights, use better tactics, etc.).  In other words, the 15 minute adventuring day is something you work around with better DMing or better play.

New schooler: 15 minute adventuring days happen because the rules are poorly designed, and you avoid them by adding more resource-restoration between encounters (healing surges, non-Vancian magic that doesn’t require re-memorization, etc.).

Really, either your players suck or your rules suck? Please. Why can’t it be both?

Actually, I think there is some merit to both views — it is an interaction of player choices and rule design.  I don’t think you can blame players for taking advantage of any and all opportunities to recover as fully as possible from every fight.  Combat is war,* after all.  At the same time, you can tweak the rules a bit to make resource recovery a little less disruptive to the ‘adventuring day.’   My solution, which the players seem to be pretty happy with, has been to attack the problem on both fronts.  In the current Telengard campaign, a number of factors make it easier to maintain ‘adventuring momentum’ — some are rules tweaks (up to me) and some are player options (up to them).

• The d30 rule. This is a once-per session thing, so it does no good to rest up between encounters to get another d30.  Players still have to conserve their d30 (and some do so well, that they have not even used it yet!)
• The Adventurers’ Guild has negotiated free healing at the temple.  The players can decide to join the Guild, and pay a small “tax,” and get their HP restored at any time in town.  This actually reduces downtime because…
• The “dungeon” is the town.  Some actual dungeons are in the ruined quarter of town, and the ruined quarter itself is filled with dangerous humans and monsters.  The party is slowly ‘clearing’ this area and will eventually have to venture beyond the town, but they could easily spend their fragile low levels in town-based adventures that are fairly forgiving.
• Ritual magic.  The spell casters have access to their spells outside of combat and can heal up, use utilities like Detect Magic, etc.  There is still a lot of resource management, but not the kind that requires leaving the adventure to recover.  The ritual magic system is a little complicated so I’ll leave the bullet list to explain it.

Each spell-casting class has the option to spend one turn per spell level to cast a spell they know ‘ritually’.  This does not tap their memorized spells.  But it does consume resources: time, and one other resource, depending on the class.  Note that one turn is the usual interval for Wandering Monster rolls.  You can try ritual casting if you are in a fairly secure spot in the dungeon, but you are risking another encounter.  The other resource is class-dependent:

• Magic-Users: gold. M-Us need special chalk to draw magical diagrams for their rituals. It costs 10 GP for one ritual’s worth of chalk.  (I don’t bother with most other material components, except the ones that have rules-defined costs, like Find Familiar and Identify…100 GP each.)  Since they need to draw on the floor/ground, there are some restrictions on where an MU can ritually cast, although dungeons are usually fine.
• Clerics: gold and stealth. Clerics must burn 10 GP incense cones.  The smell may attract monsters, and being smoky there will be a limit to how many ritual castings you want to try in an enclosed space.
• Elves: stealth.  Elves who ritually cast must sing, recite epic poetry, or play an instrument.  Sure it’s free, but it may attract monsters.  Also this can only be done outdoors (somewhat reducing it’s usefulness, but hey elves can fight too).  Elves may also attract nuisance animals (birds, squirrels, racoons, coyotes, and other woodland creatures) with their singing, which will sing/chirp/howl along with the elf during the ritual and possibly attract predators, begin following the party, beg for food, etc.
• Druids: No-one has played a druid yet, but my vision is for druids to be likewise limited to outdoor ritual casting, and whereas elves can count any open area as outdoors the druid must actually be outside city limits.  This does not fit quite as well with ‘resource management’ idea but it will make the druids the king of wilderness casting.
• Paladins: They get spells at higher levels, and will possibly get ritual casting, but i have not decided how that will work.  I’d like to make them sacrifice something of their own (HP, memorized spells, daily abilities) but I’m not sure how to make that work.
• Illusionists: I’m not using illusionists currently, but I suppose they would need either an assistant and props or some consumable materials like the MU.

Also, ritual casting has risks.  Casters can safely memorize a few spells a day, and rituals basically exceed their normal limits. Rituals involve bargaining with supernatural forces, and possibly annoying them.  Every time a caster casts a ritual, he must roll a d20, adding his INT mod and level, and subtracting the spell level and also subtracting one for each spell ritually cast that day.  Spells of higher level can also be ritually attempted, but at double the penalty.

0 or less: disaster (probably one of these, depending on spell level)

1-5: burnout, no more ritual casting today

6-10: spell fails

11+: success.

I have not actually implemented the failure risk, but will be playtesting it in the future; it may change.

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*The ‘combat as war vs. combat as sport’ post has rightly been mentioned a lot lately as a good analysis.  Another really interesting thing about it is that if your read the comments, a LOT of people on ENWorld seem to read it, then comment that CaW or CaS is badwrongfun.  After the OP explained that they are two different ways approaching the game suited to different tastes. This is why I don’t read ENWorld.

Bogeys — finish my table

One of the really odd but somehow cool things Fantasy Wargaming had in the character generation process was ‘bogeys’ — a chart of characteristics that helped individualize characters with personality traits, advantages, and quirks.  The table was constructed so that when you roll a percentile, a 01-32 was nothing, and all the remaining odd numbers were bad traits/stigmas/disadvantages, and all the even numbers were beneficial/advantageous traits.

The problem with the original bogey table in my opinion was that there were an inordinate number of sexual traits — you might roll bisexual, homosexual, fetishes, etc.  I guess I’d just rather leave sex out of the game, or at least not encourage a player to make their character’s sexual preferences a defining trait for roleplaying.  So I mostly took them out.  There are also bogeys like heretic/atheist/Jewish/Muslim … which I can understand being a major thing in a medieval game but for fantasy, I’d rather avoid that kind of stuff too.

So my bogey table made a lot of changes, and I took GURPS’ advantages and disadvantages for more inspiration, and came up with this chart.

I think in hindsight, there are way too many “choice” results, and I should either use two d30 tables, or revert 1-32 to “Nothing”s.  Or add 30 more results.  That seems like the kind of thing that would make a good crowdsource/Gygaxian democracy project.  So hey — if you can think of some more traits that would fall in line with these, drop ‘em in the comments. Generally speaking, if there is any kind of mechanical effect, they should be a plus or minus one to certain rolls, nothing too major. I just copied the table from my document, which used two columns, so all the odd are first and then the evens.  I’ll fix it in the final version if I can get some more entries.  you’ll notice hald-elf and half-orc are bogeys, as I am using race-as-class and assume that half-humans just use human classes.

01-32: even, player’s choice; odd, DM’s choice

33. Ugliness, -1 Cha

35. One eye/one hand/no nose etc.

37. Poor sight. Can’t read or -1 to hit with missiles

39. Hard of hearing

41. Stammer

43. Limp, base move 25′ (15′ if dwarf)

45. Asthma/Allergy, -1 Con

47. Belligerent

49. Gullible, -1 Int

51. Insomnia

53. Hypochondria

55. Alcoholism/Addiction

57. Gluttony

59. Compulsive gambler, can’t refuse a bet

61. Spendthrift

63. Miserly

65. Depression

67. Paranoia

69. Distrustful

71. Kleptomania

73. Absent-minded, -1 Wis

75. Phobia (pick one)

77. Half-orc, -1 Cha

79. Hunchback, -1 Str

81. Superstition (pick one)

83. Sense of duty

85. Vow

87. Overconfidence

89. Fanatic

91. Cowardice

93. Overweight

95. Color blind

97. Albinism

99. Dwarfism/Giantism

 

34. Beautiful. +1 Cha

36. Presence of mind, +1 save vs. fear

38. Critical thinker, +1 Int

40. Gift of sleep, can sleep anywhere, +1 Con

42. Iron stomach, +1 save vs. poison

44. High pain threshold, +1 hp/HD

46. High alcohol tolerance

48. Keen eyesight, +1 to hit with missiles

50. Keen hearing

52. Keen smell

54. Animal empathy

56. Green thumb

58. Born swimmer (x 1.5 rate)

60. Born climber (x 1.5 rate)

62. Sense of location

64. Empathy

66. Good luck (reroll any die once/session)

68. Gift of tongues, +2 starting languages

70. Half-elf, +1 Cha

72. Hot blooded, -1/die damage from cold

74. Ambidextrous

76. Common sense (one Mulligan/session)

78. Artistic talent (choose 2 arts)

80. Double-jointed

82. Tremendous lung capacity

84. Honest face (people believe you)

86. Mechanical genius

88. Graceful, +1 Dex

90. Strong willed, +1 to Will saves

92. Alert, +1 Wis

94. Barrel chested, +1 Str

96. Lightning reflexes, +1 to Reflexes saves

98. Inconspicuous, +2 to stealth checks

00. Visions (1 in 6 chance of prophetic dreams)

 

 

Armor training

I was discussing house rules for D&D with my brother and mentioned that I liked the LotFP rule that essentially removes weapon and armor restrictions in favor of limiting certain activities (arcane spell casting, skill use) while encumbered.  He thought it better to keep existing weapon & restrictions by class because using certain weapons*, and wearing heavy armor, actually require some training.

I used ‘class based damage’ in my Telengard campaign before, and part of the thinking there is that more martial classes just use weapons more effectively. A fighter does d8 with a mace because he’s a fighter who has been trained for war; a thief does d6 with the mace because his training is mostly in stealth and skills. So Tom suggested class-based AC, such that fighters would derive the full benefit of mail or plate while other classes got only a smaller increase in AC from the same armor, again based on the class’ training.  So maybe leather/mail/playte add a base of +1/+2/+3 to ascending AC, so while fighters and clerics add another +2 or 3, thieves and mages add nothing.  This also boosts AC for unarmored fighters, which is nice if you’d like more swashbucklers and barbarians in you basic D&D.  I’m leaning towards just leaving the armor restrictions as they are (although I’m not convinced that this is functionally different from saying thief skills can only be used if encumbrance is medium or less, and arcane spells can only be used if encumbrance is light or none…a wizard will almost certainly be better off in no armor, casting spells, and a thief would pretty dumb to forgo using skills just so he can have heavier armor…which raises the question of why bother changing armor restrictions at all…)

The discussion also reminded me of one of Plato’s dialogues, the Laches, where, right at the beginning, the characters discuss whether it is a good idea to hire a teacher of hoplomachia — “fighting in armor” according to the translation I read in college.  The idea is rejected because the Spartans have the greatest warriors and do not study hoplomachia.  One participant (Nicias) even says that the hoplomachia teachers avoid Sparta as if it were ‘sacred ground’ — the Spartans apparently would not suffer such fools.**  I think the reality is, the Spartans did a lot of training in armor, just not the specific kind ‘hoplomachia‘ the character in the dialogue was peddling — which may have been something more like ‘fencing,’ i.e. a combat sport rather than a true martial art.  Apparently hoplomachia meant the actual warrior’s skills in Homeric times but by Plato’s time meant something like ‘swordplay’ or ‘fencing’.

I have read about medieval knights wearing their armor all the time until they were strong and agile enough to vault onto a horse, or scale a wall, or even do a cartwheel in it, and seen video of re-enactors at the Leeds museum do such things; Tom also related an anecdote about a Renaissance Fair acrobat who said he wore mail under his clothes until he could perform his routine in it, and it took him three years of practice to manage it.  So what we’re really talking about is learning to compensate for the encumbrance of armor.  I think there is a way to understand the existing limitations on armor as reflecting this same reality — thieves and magic-users just don’t wear armor because it interferes with their freedom of movement which they need to function in their primary roles.  The LotFP rules make this more explicit, but leave the option to wear some armor open, much as the Unearthed Arcana rules gave thieves some leeway to wear a few heavier armor types.

I guess I should note that the rules for Rolemaster were way ahead of me on this too, as wearing armor was a skill to be developed alongside everything else (in fact, a suite of skills for different armor types!).  I never questioned those rules back in the day, and they still make sense.

So the bottom line is I have come around to accept limitations on armor use.  I might keep it tied to encumbrance, or might leave open the possibility that characters could learn to wear heavy armor, and now that I think of it, maybe fighters (and clerics) should face smaller penalties for climbing and jumping in armor, since they are trained to bear it.

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Update (since writing this post up last week):

I asked about these issues on “AncMed,” the Society of Ancients’  yahoo group, and one member gave a very interesting response, based on his re-enactment experiences:

Hi Mike

Just based on my own 15th century replica experience it’s pretty easy to wear armour straight off, the issues are usually:

a) getting it on properly in the 1st place! This is very dependent on what sort of armour it is – so I’d anticipate a lorica would be pretty straight forward, but like even a simple back & breast-plate it is helpful to have an old hand or a mate around to tighten fastenings & ensure that the straps are not tangled. In many ways learning to fight in a close helmet is probably more of an adjustment – but again it depends upon what type of helmet it is. Similarly you need a lot of training to fight with a shield effectively – my guess is much more so than just wearing the armour.

b) My own experience is that ‘soft armours’ such as jacks etc. are dead easy to wear & fight in & mail shirts are similar. The issue with mail however is that it generally ‘hangs’ all it’s weight on the wearers shoulders, so it’s best belted to take the weight of the mail skirt on the hips. Or if it’s worn under a ‘hard’ armour — such as a breast plate — the mail is reduced and the mail sleeves & skirt are best sown onto a padded under garment (an arming doublet). Mail is hot to fight in & you will dehydrate quickly. Surprisingly the same is true of soft armours such as jacks — which to give any real degree of protection require to be quite thick. However, mail & most other metal armours also conduct the cold very quickly (which is not the case with soft armours) and so I’d imagine many deaths after battles caused by hypothermia adding to shock. Soft armours, unless greased or tarred will also get sodden with sweat & rain of course, which can make them a lot heavier even than mail!

c) more complex 15th century harness requires an established process or order to put on.  So it’s standard practice in full harness to put your leg & arm harness on first — it’s a sort of ‘inside-out’ process — nearest the body first: arming doublet, leg harness, arm harness, mail standard, upper breast plate, then fould & skirt and tassets, and finally shoulder plates, gorget, helmet and gauntlets. You will need at least 1 assistant — usually to click the sliding rivets on the back & breastplates into place (using a bear-hug technique) and also to tie on your shoulder plates and do the rear strap up on your bevor. For speed, you can leave off the leg harness & just drop the upper breast & back plates on over the arming doublet. Or, as we see in some 14th century illustrations you get mounted men-at-arms in just their arming doublets, with helmets, arm & leg harness, as this is the camp ‘dress-down’ state of a fully armoured man (a crab without his shell!).

As has been stated here previously the weight of a full harness is distributed over the whole body so unlike mail it’s not a huge burden initially, but once fatigued it’s a true burden — especially leg-harness.

Fighting in full harness is a truly learned skill (not one that I ever fully mastered!). It requires lots & lots of practice and training (both individually & in groups) so as not to injure yourself as well as your friends. Whilst (in my experience) it makes you feel truly invulnerable (9 feet tall) equally you can be exceptionally vulnerable, as you have restricted vision, a generally poor top-heavy point of balance (helmets & shoulder plates move your center of balance upwards quite considerably) and the fact that once in it it’s not really a quick process to get out of it.

Fighting in full harness is about using the whole body — yes you’ve got your sword, dagger, mace or pole-axe but equally you are wearing another +6olbs of hard & often deliberately sharp outer shell.  Elbow points are truly deadly (hence the common expression of “giving somebody the elbow”). In fact your elbows are deceptively dangerous weapons.  I remember a re-enactment of the Battle of St.Albans many years ago. We (The White Company Men-at-Arms) were engaged in a hand-to-hand melee in a series of mocked-up stage built houses and an opponent with a sword & buckler (in a metal breast plate thankfully) engaged me unexpectedly from my rear right side – just slightly inside of my visor slit line of vision. I was expecting my back to be covered, but my supporting bills were engaged with other assailants — all I saw was a flash of opposing livery colours (Staffords – red & black) & a raised sword. As I was also engaged with my pole-axe with another armoured enemy with a longsword to my front instinctively I jerked out with my right elbow with as much force as I could muster & the impact knocked my assailant off his feet & threw him out through a low window a full 2 or 3 yards, winding him badly. From my rear, I was extremely vulnerable as the backs of my thighs are unprotected and a sharp blade could easily slide up under my shoulder plates and into my shoulder.

Similarly, if you get hit by a pole-axe (the hammer or blade) on a sliding rivet in your shoulder plates, it will lock the whole arm and you end up looking like a bird with a broken wing as your arm is locked in the position it was in when the rivets were locked, again making you extremely vulnerable.

d) I don’t know about ancient Greek linen armours or greaves, but again I guess they’d become 2nd nature after a while.

Hope that helps, but we probably need to bear in mind that we (me) are nowhere near as fit or ‘hardy’ as those ancient or medieval soldiers – more used to physical graft and burden carrying than us ‘soft’ modern types!!!

Mark [Fry]

I asked for a little more information about the armor ‘locking up’ and Mark expanded on this, as well as adding some other interesting insights about armor use in the late middle ages:

The issue with armour ‘locking’ is the fact that much of the 15th century shoulder armour plates have sliding pins & rivets to allow the plates to travel freely over each other but at the same time keep any gaps to the minimum. So a denting blow on an area where the rivets would normally travel freely effectively locks those two plates together. It’s thought that is the real purpose around the hammer heads often found on one side of a poleaxe. Once the men-at-arms had his arm/shoulder restricted in this manner he was extremely vulnerable to the long sharp pointed spikes at either end of the poleaxe which were slid into gaps in the harness. Even a long sword, grasped 6″ or so back from the point to give it some rigidity is just as effective. Have you seen the DVD Reclaiming the Blade (it’s got John Howe in it from the Company of St. George amongst others)? Well worth getting if you can find a copy. 15th century sword fighting in harness was a matter of using all parts of the sword so the guard & pommel are equally lethal even against a chap in armour.

The idea that a man in good quality harness is like a beached turtle if felled is (as I’m sure you know) complete rubbish. We used to turn cart-wheels, make rolls, and easily get off & on horses unaided in good fitting full harness. In fact there was an incident when one of our number fell off the castle wall at Rockingham, in full harness, during a demonstration. With his arming jack underneath he just bounced down the grassy incline — after falling some 10 feet or more. Apart from a headache (probably hang-over induced) he had a few minor bruises, that was all. There used to be some pretty good footage of arming 15th century harness on the Company of St.George website — it’s worth trying to get access to this.

I developed a theory (whilst in the White Company) that there was no such thing as ‘billmen’. Nik Gaukroger & I have had endless debates about this previously.

My theory is that you had men-at-arms (of various status) and ‘soldiers’. The soldiers were mostly archers (Longbow armed) but would be very happy to pick up bills or similar pole-arms as & when required (such as guard duty etc.) for off-battlefield duties (as they appear in 15th century illustrations). The men-at-arms fought in distinctive units — more heavily (fully armoured) & therefore higher status or more experienced (hence the more comprehensive harness) guys at the front, with less well armed chaps at the back (so these are what modern re-enactors would call ‘billmen’) in sallets/kettles, brigandines or munition back & breastplates or jacks, maybe arm harness but probably not leg-harness. These guys’ ‘role’ was primarily to make sure that the guys in the full harness operated at maximum effect — so they watched their backs, defended them if they were knocked over & helped them up and generally stabbed or cut with their own pole-arms around the better protected & also fight their opposite numbers in the melees.

Similarly, I think that we’ve got our interpretation of later medieval hand-gunners all wrong. We see them primarily as skirmishers, when in reality all the illustrations of the period show them relatively heavily armoured and fighting in the front-ranks of mixed bill &/or pike or spear formations (there is a great 15th century Flemish illustration of this but I cannot remember the source at present). All of which makes great sense as I think that they probably operated a bit like ‘anti-tank’ weapons – as they were probably the best means of shooting down the very heavily armoured front-rank foot men-at-arms.

Anyway … all just an interesting theory

I should mention that anyone interested in ancient and medieval warfare, weapons, armor, and armies — especially if you are interested in wargames — should join AncMed and/or The Society of Ancients.  I’ve been lurking AncMed on and off for years and it’s been quite an education. Although you sometimes get some heated arguments, the level of sophistication and maturity (not to mention scholarship!) is usually very high.

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*He mentioned flails specifically, as opposed to a simpler, handier weapon like a short sword; I think he’s right about that.  Likewise pole-arms seem more complicated to wield than spears, and while you see depictions of peasant levies armed with spears, clubs, and simple pole-arms derived from agricultural tools, you don’t see them carrying great-swords, halberds, and so on.  So maybe the ‘simple’ versus ‘martial’ distinction in 3rd and 4th editions are a good idea.

**Nicias also mentions that one of the teachers of this art made a fool of himself with a weapon he invented that combined a spear and scythe.  Apparently when he tried to use it in a boarding action to cut another galley’s rigging, it got entangled and he was dragged the length of the ship.  So any early guisearme apparently failed to impress the Greeks.  It’s a very interesting anecdote, though, as a reminder that even the Greeks experimented with polearms.

Thieves

Here’s something that has been coming up pretty frequently in our gaming group: thieves are crappy at scouting in dungeons.  Well, human thieves…which are the only kind in B/X anyway.

In theory, the guy who can move silently, hide in shadows, find traps, and hear noise sounds like the guy you want to scout ahead in enemy/dangerous territory.

But he needs a light source.  And that’s a monster magnet.  So you’re better off sending the halfling, the dwarf, the elf … anyone who won’t be stumbling around blind and attracting all kinds of moth-monsters to his torch or lantern.

I suppose there is something gritty and challenging about furtively dashing through the darkness, occasionally opening the lantern hood to take a look-see, maybe wearing an eyepatch or something to save your feeble human nightvision…  so I should be OK with thieves needing to work around darkness issue, but honestly it hasn’t been fun to do that; not for me as DM, not for the players.

So the alternatives are:

• silly magical items that provide some limited form of nightvision/infravision/faint light (screw that…you need them most at the low levels before you can afford fancy equipment or have found much magic)
• using ‘Hear noise’ more explicitly as a substitute for seeing (no thanks to more pointless rolling though)
• giving thieves nightvision/infravision as a class ability (what?)

I’m actually thinking 2&3 make the perfect combination.  Thieves have acute senses, which can substitute for vision under the right circumstances.  The rule would be:

If a thief is at least 40′ away from distracting noise (allies in mail or plate armor, etc.), and at least 20′ away from distracting smells (dwarves, barbarians, unshod halflings, etc.), he operates as if he has torch light (up to 40′ visibility), using his other senses to compensate for the lack of real light.  He will not be able to discern colors unless some minimal, ambient light is available.  But he can notice movement or the presence of monsters, make out most details of a room, and even search for traps or secret doors, as if he could see.

This would allow a thief to sneak up ahead in the dark and poke around without automatically notifying every monster within 120 feet that outsiders are about.   But he is going to have to be alone, or with other thieves to pull it off.  Maybe he could string along a magic user, or another character in no armor or leather armor, but no knights or smelly rangers.  I like it because it gives thieves a very nice but mostly non-combat ability, and encourages them to go ahead and get into deep doodoo on their own, as Gary intended.

What class is this character?

B/X Blackrazor, and probably some other blogs I can’t recall, have had posts about statting up literary characters.  While I don’t think it’s all that important for a game to be able to ‘simulate’ a literary character, and pretty much never think that way when I’m reading a book, I do find it very interesting to think about how D&D and its offshoots might be able do it when their classes turn out to be something other than what you’d expect. 

So I really enjoyed seeing the arguments that Aragorn (who was obviously the inspiration for the AD&D ranger class, at least in 1e) would actually be a Cleric in B/X D&D (turns the undead, heals, fights well … only the weapons restrictions don’t match); that Gandalf would be a 2e bard (uses a sword a lot, casts relatively few spells, inspires others a lot), and that Conan is a high level thief  (uses any weapon, rarely dons armor, great at sneaking around). 

It’s nice that some literary characters very obviously fit D&D classes. The Grey Mouser is very clearly the inspiration for the AD&D thief.  It’s odd that his buddy Fafhrd does not really seem to match anything in OD&D that well. I guess he could be a fighter but he is most like the bard in Castles & Crusades (excellent fighter, wears little armor, some thief skills, lore skills), and certainly not like the bard in AD&D (no spells).  Maybe an AD&D barbarian would work, since he is superstitious and often called a “barbarian” in the stories. 

Severan in the Shadow of the executioner would appear to be an AD&D assassin (pretty good at killing people, and disguising himself, but not a great thief or fighter, and no magic) … I have not read any further into that series, but as the story progresses I understand he gets more mythic.

 

I think we’ve been using the term ‘rules mastery’ wrong

“Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry … To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.” -George Polya, mathematician (1887-1985)

I think rules ‘mastery’ as defined here sounds nothing like what I experienced playing with people who ‘mastered’ the d20/3.0/3.5 rules. YMMV.

(This quote was brought to my attention by the daily email from A word a day – a web site that sends you a vocabulary word every weekday, along with a quote from some notable philosopher, scientist, or writer (which is usually not related to the word).)

Out where the buses don’t run

Dylan Hartwell (“The digital orc”) has just released a modern horror module (link) that you should look at (unless you’re in my regular gaming group because I’d like to run this some time when we are short on players as a one-shot).

It includes maps and illustrations, and a bunch of cool tables you could use in any modern horror game.  But the thing that I especially love about it is that it includes his “optional system for ruling”  — an ultralite set of rules that anyone should be able to use, gamer or not.

Personally I think horror games ought to be mostly one-shot affairs.  The characters should be mostly ‘normal’ people and death should be easy.  The system presented in the module would work perfectly for that. You character is basically a single die (d6), and you roll it to accomplish tasks as needed, and if you are injured you are booted down to a d4, and if hurt again, adios amigo.  You could expand on this a little, maybe have a few dice for each PC, perhaps a physical, knowledge/mental, and perception (or insight/spirituality/psychic) die, and even throw in a d8 for the character’s strong suit.  Physical damage might reduce the physical die; insanity-inducing horrors might reduce the mental die…you can see where this is going, yes?

Anyway both because it is neat little scenario (which really is a sandbox locale…no railroading!) and because it has a super easy system you could use to draw anyone into a gaming session, I heartily recommend it.

Dylan also let me offer some suggestions, so I have an ‘editing’ credit on it.

The five DM thing progresses

Last week all five of the players who want to take turns as DM, and one of the other players met to begin hashing out how the thing will work (our 7th was on a vacation).

In the email leading up to the session, there was a bit of miscommunication, and although we seemed to be mostly on the same page at the end of the in-person discussion, we seem to have diverged again via email.  I am not sure if, in the email exchange, we’re being more honest (about what we think) or less charitable (in our interpretations of other peoples’ ideas).

Anyway we settled on using Castles & Crusades for the rules (after considering B/X, AD&D 1e and 2e, 3e/Pathfinder, “E6,” and even Old School Hack).  Some of us were pretty hard-line about keeping it simple, and I’ve have liked to try sticking to B/X, but there was quite a bit of enthusiasm for having characters with more mechanical differentiation. C&C serves both camps pretty well. There are lots of options regarding classes and races, including multiclassing and scads of optional classes, plus the primes/SIEGE system makes it pretty easy to customize PCs more.  A few people even hoped for skills and feats, etc. but that road leads to massive stat blocks.  If I have to come up with a dozen skills and feats (which an enemy NPC will probably hardly ever live long enough to use anyway) I’m not DMing.

We decided that we will adopt some measures to make PCs a little tougher (starting at 3rd level or so, and getting max or near max HP).  We also decided to introduce some sort of hero point/Fate point/Awesome point type rules, since most of the players liked the awesome points in OSH.  In addition, we decided to use some variation on a “death & dismemberment” table for when PCs hit zero HP or fail a save-or-die effect save, which to my way of thinking sort of offsets the extra HPs.  The fate points and death & dismemberment systems were delegated, as was revising the overly wonky C&C weapon & armor tables.  (In fact this part of the planning felt eerily like a professional business meeting, with me taking notes, John copying the main issues into bullet points on the battlemat, and then everything getting delegated.)

We’ll give each DM free rein to design an island about the size of the Great Britain, and add a sixth ‘neutral’ island for the base of operations/default kingdom.

The neutral island and other setting elements will be hashed out this week, I hope.  (Actually I would have preferred determining the setting first and then the rules but I was firmly outvoted on that issue.)  I guess you can start with either “end” of the snake — either choose a rule set and work out the implied setting, or choose a setting and select the most copacetic rules.

Putting the cart completely ahead of the horse, a couple of us (my self included) also started talking about what sort of PC we’d make.  Should be interesting.

After this planning session, I think we’ll probably resume Telengard until everyone is ready to move forward on the joint campaign.  Because dungeons are definitely my comfort zone as a DM, I think I might develop an island with lots of ruins from a bygone age.  So the ‘dungeons’ may be partly above-ground, and broken into more manageable pieces than a ‘megadungeon,’ but I think I’d still have enough constraint on where the things go to manage.  And if I want a gonzo megadungeon, there’s always Telengard.  In fact, if the five-DM campaign gets going for real I may take that break time to finally codify and type up the house rules and locations that are cluttering my binder, so I can have an actual rule book for the game (most likely pillaging the Labyrinth Lord text file as a skeleton).

Old School Hack … a blast

I heard that Old School Hack was kind of like B/X smashed together with 4e, and in fact it is much simpler than it sounds.  Since Tom had to miss the session (his mother-in-law is in the hospital! But she’s doing OK now), we kicked around alternatives and John volunteered to run Old School Hack.  It was a lot of fun — very light and we all laughed a lot.  That is oneENnie award winner I can agree with.*

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*Vornheim just an honorable mention for Best Accessory?  Seriously? Awards go to character building software and tile sets and just an honorable mention to a book that is unlike anything else that’s been done up to now? Eff you, Ennies.