Gah - Hero Forge

It's so hard to find a game.

Here's a piece of art so this post isn't completely empty! It's an image of my character Yaspar I generated with the website Hero Forge, where they make custom minis.

I didn't buy any custom minis. This is no endorsement of the product. I have no idea whether it's any good or not.

(Magic Item) Requiem For the Lost

Requiem for the Lost is a backsword with a blade some 16 inches long.  It makes a fine primary weapon for a hobbit or a bandit.  A grandee could carry it hidden under a cloak to be sure but it would not do for him to carry it openly; only the common sorts of people would bear a long knife instead of a proper sword - magic or not.

Requiem is forged from a blade of bluish steel and has a handle of finely-scrimshawed frost giant bone. When found it's scabbard will appear to be in disrepair and its blade dulled but it will radiate of Divination magic.

It was forged by the mad wizard Igfaris some hundred or more years ago for his manservant, Bob Button, who was a burglar and fighting man in his own right.  Igfaris had a fixation on the color blue and a hatred of frost giants.  You would understand if you heard the tale of Sromir's Banquet. 

Count Sromir the frost giant held a banquet to mark the betrothal of his 19th daughter Blarym to the Frost Giant king Krozar, thereby insuring his own place in the royal family. But during the party, Lady Blarym broke the heart of the King Krozar and ran away! 

Sromir, quite drunk and stupid with rage, threw a tantrum the likes of which has not been seen before or since. He threw himself backward upon the floor and so spilled his giant-sized chalice of red wine upon Igfaris!  But it grew far worse.  Sromir was so drunk and so inhospitable that he slammed his giant fists down repeatedly upon the frozen outdoor ballroom floor, sending the party guests up into the air, where they flew in all directions out to several leagues distant, landing in deep snow banks where each would be safe, but quite unable to climb out on his own! To add insult to injury, he rent his codpiece and loosed his bladder in an historic torrent, the odor of which still taints the Yellow Mountain to this very day.

Igfaris returned to his tower and enchanted a blade fit for Bob to exact revenge upon Sromir and to locate the blundering dandies so scattered to the Wilderlands.  But on his way upon his mission, Bob disappeared in the hills somewhere between Longcircle and Talk'o'th'Hill and Requiem disappeared with him.

Game Stats

Short Sword +1, +2 versus Giant-types. 1d6 base damage.  (Gains +2 to hit Giant-types if your weapons do not normally do so.)

Alignment: Neutral

Int: 7  Ego: 1 (never dominates wielder)

Telepathic communication with Wielder.  

Motivation: to kill Giant-types.

Special Abilities:

Level 1: Minor power.  The owner speaks the name of one lost person and places Requiem on the ground.  In one Turn, it will spin so that its blade points the way to the lost person so named.

Level 3: Hold Portal 3/day

Level 5: Knock Spell 1/day

Level 7: Hold Monster, works only against Giant-types, 1/day

Giant-types are the several kinds of giants including ettin, cyclopes, the titans, ogres, ogre magi and trolls. You may decide to alter or add to this list.

Death and Dying

Dying at -10 hits in AD&D was never satisfying to me.  Too soft.  Nor is being unconscious at 0 Hits but dead at -1. Too arbitrary, even with effects that only bring a character to exactly 0 Hits. So what to do?

In Mythical Journeys' Player's Guide, it suggests that unconsciousness should last from 0 Hits to a negative number equal to character level.  Lower than that, the character is dead.  The character, at -1 or lower Hits, loses one Hit per Round (1 minute) until dead, or until aided by another character with bandages or healing magic.  This gives the good guys plenty of time to clean up a battle and get their compatriot to his feet if that PC or NPC is of sufficiently high level.

5th Edition has introduced the concept of the Death Save, which I love conceptually.  When you're at negative Hits, you roll a special save.  If you fail it three times (or twice with one roll being a 1), then you die.  Otherwise, you lose a hit point each round until you are at negative your starting number. So you have at least two rounds, and usually many many more, before you're well and truly dead.

Great concept.  But how do we old school it?

Death Saves in Old School D&D 

Characters at 0 or fewer Hit Points are unconscious, hovering on death's door. A character with negative Hit Points between 1 and the number equal to his level must Save versus Death each Round. Failing three of these saves means he is dead. Taking damage while unconscious applies a penalty to the roll equal to the amount of Hit Point damage sustained during the last round. 

However, any ability which increases the character's current Hits means he does not need to attempt any more rolls. His condition is stabilized and he will subsequently gain Hits through natural means as normal. 

If the player rolls a natural unmodified 20 on any of these special Saves, the character immediately awakens with 1 Hit Point and may act normally.

What do you think?

The Wolves of Freya

They are some sort of lay bodyguards or elite warriors in the service of the Lawful goddess Freya in Steve's D&D setting.  Yaspar One-Eye, the Nine-Fingered Wolf of Freya will be coming back like this if we can work it out, Steve and I.

Castle Caldwell Explorers Session IV

18 August 2017 6:30 - 9:30 PM EDT

The DM was Steve.

When we last left our murderhobos, Gruffled the plucky halfling thief was down to zero hit points. Yaspar, bother of Vuvier, had poofed away in a treasure room right before the eyes of his charge, Thane the magic user.

I'm skipping over some fighting and stuff from the last session because I didn't find it to make for compelling recapitulation. But there were some hogoblins and a gelatinous cube and some thouls expertly RPed by DM Steve.

The rest of the PCs to my astonishment poked around in the place where Yaspar had simply disappeared, and then decided to follow him!  We all found ourselves teleported into a room full of sarcophagi - and no exits!  It was a simple and deadly stone tomb!

So with little other option, we started pushing the tops of the sarcophagi and to our delight, many of them held rich treasures in coins of various kinds!  But to our dismay, we could not get them out again because, remember, no door.

So we kept opening them until to our horror a Wight popped out of one and stole two levels! One from Yaspar (making him a Level 0) and one from our magic user Thane, who then lost his second-level spell Web, which could have helped.  He also took Yaspar down to -2 hit points and started to munch on him.  So our cleric, Raven, having failed four turn undead checks, doused the restless dead with oil and threw a torch!  But the oil had gotten on Yaspar as well, and the two of them burned like so much crispy bacon in a frying pan.

Raven then cast healing spells on Yaspar to get him up to 0 hits and on his feet, but he was fried, he'd lost a finger, and half his face was eaten off.  It was awful!  His brother Vuvier threw his wolf-pelt over his injured brother and Yaspar thanked the gods for his "good" luck.

In the process of opening the rest of the sarcophagi (remember, we are still looking for an escape route), there was another Wight!!  We had almost been TPKed from the last one so Yaspar stood and threw his mysterious, magical necklace at the thing.  I didn't really know what it was but I guessed right: it exploded into the most deadly 6d6 Fire Ball ever seen (27 Hit Points).  The Wight and cleric Raven were immediately disintegrated, and everyone else besides Yaspar and Gruffled (both at this point outside the radius) were between -1 and -10 hits.

OH NO!!  TOTAL PARTY KILL!?!?

First, Yaspar grabbed the two potions of Climbing on his brother's dying body and mixed them together.  He fed them to Thane, our last magical character in hopes Thane could help.  It turns out, the postions mixed to make... a double strength potion of Climbing.  We had a corpse that could stick to walls!

Then the two little guys struggled together to push open sarcophagi.  With some great fortune, they found three potions of Healing and two other potions.  One into Thane, which was a potion of healing.  He was up to 0 Hits.  The second into Vuvier, also a potion of healing!  Up to 0 Hits!  Then the FIFTH into Ronin!   But working blind they fed Ronin the Fighting Corpse a potion of Levitation (floating dead guy) and a potion of Humanoid Control (mind-controlling floating dead guy) and finally a potion of healing *GREAT FORTUNE* WOOO!  TPK avoided big time.

So we had five characters with 0 hits between them and minus two levels.  We had the burnt corpse of a cleric.  We had loads of treasure but no way to get back to daylight.  And we were very low on rations - just two days' left.  The Fire Ball had cooked most of our water and killed the six-legged frog, Jane.

We did however find the special magic item we were sent to get - an evil book.  A book, in fact, that zapped Vuvier back into a coma!  

After some fadiddling with the doodly-doo, we figured out how to get out.  I don't want to tell you more because it would spoil the tricks and traps in that one awful room.  As it turns out we found out how to get back in and out safely and without anyone noticing us later, so we did all get very rich.

So when Yaspar went into that room, he intended to come out RICH, marry a pretty girl, have lots of babies, and start a gnome town.  When he left he was a hideous bacon-like husk in a wolf pelt without any levels.  He decided to dedicate his life to Raven's church and order in her honor.  When the high priestess (they're all girl priests) of Freya came, we paid her to Resurrect Raven, awaken Vuvier and Restore Thane's lost level.  Then we awarded XP to everyone but Raven and Yaspar, and they all leveled up.

You see, Raven decided to retire from adventuring, having been cooked to death.  She escorted 0-Level Yaspar back to their temple to begin his training as a priestess of Freya!  They'd never had a boy or a gnome priest before, but they're gonna give it a shot.

Gruffled decided to take it easy for a while.  He may decide to come back to adventure with us some day.  He's not retired but he's going to take his money and have a good time.

Lord Clifton was a jerk.  First he promised we could keep what we took out of the dungeon, and then he demanded his share.  So we hid our money from him, bid him good day and fare thee well, and began to scheme about raising an army and taking his castle away to use as our own when we got high enough level!

Levels Awarded:  

Human Fighting-Man Ronin (Ethan): Level 4

Gnome Thief Vuvier (Julie): Level 3

Halfling Thief Gruffled (Nate): Level 3

Human Magic-User Thane (previously an NPC but now a PC played by Julie): stayed at 3

Yaspar (Scott): Lost a level, 0-Level Normal Gnome, training to become a Lawful 1st level Cleric of Freya a Fighting Man of Freya, since gnomes can't be Clerics.

Raven (Simone):  Died, Resurrected, lost a level. Lawful 1st Level Cleric of Freya.

Next time, two or three new PCs will be joining us.  Nate wants to play a Dwarf Fighting Man.  AJ will be joining as a player and we don't know who she will play.  Simone did not want to be a Cleric anymore (hence the retirement of Raven to NPC status) and she might also play a fighter. 

The People In Your World Have Never Read the Monster Manual

(L to R): Man, Child, Hobgoblin, some Pixie, and Lou Ferrigno (Artist)

Did you know this?  It has never occurred to me before. The people in your world have NO IDEA what 99% of monsters are because they never owned a copy of your Monster Manual and they don't have the Internet (probably)!

In fact, there are Men in your world who would see a gnome, and call it a dwarf.  And certainly there are elves who couldn't tell a Hobbit from a child, hairy feet or no.  So don't get me started on what, for instance, a Bullette is or Wyvern might be.  

Now how is this gameable?  The answer is, never describe a monster or even a race of common type NPC people by their names. Always describe them by the way they look, sound and smell.  If you want to, you can even conflate one creature with another.  A commoner might describe a purple worm, a wyvern, a giant snake and even some demons as "a dragon."  They can't tell you! In actual folklore, a giant, a troll, a titan, an ettin, an ogre, and so forth really all describe different kinds of the same creature, so there's even some real world precedent. If you're talking to any character who doesn't speak common, then even commonplace words become a problem.  If they see a dragon, they might have a completely alien word for it that you have never heard, and then it's up to the two of you to figure out whether you're actually both talking about a dragon or something else entirely!

Players are very good at absorbing information. Weaponized Asperger's is definitely A Thing in our hobby and you know it.  Using metagame knowledge is almost inevitable, no matter how hard we try to block it out. So do your very best to confound their desire to know EXACTLY what they are fighting when they meet a monster which their characters have never seen before!  It will make fights seem more dramatic, dangerous and exciting.  And rumors & conversations about the odd men and monsters enpeopling the Realm will seem more exotic as well.

Magic-Users and Weapon Selection

I was talking with the fellows over at ODD74 about the reason that in OD&D, Magic-Users (heck, I'm just going to call them wizards because that's what I call them) only get the dagger and the quarterstaff.  If you look at regular normal men, which are first level guys in OD&D because they hadn't invented 0-level guys yet, if you look at them, they can use any weapon and use them just as well as a fighting-man.  So why would a wizard go backwards in his weapons training, if a weak old lady or a child can use a normal sword?

Cool crossbow, but not an argument.

"Oh, Scott, that's stupid, they don't study swords and long bows, that's why."  Okay so what about the other NPCs in the milieu who are not similarly so punished?  It seems arbitrary and capricious and like a weenie move for certain adventurous men to be denied the use of weapons that everyone else in the world gets for free.  In the case of the cleric, he forgoes using edged and piercing weapons, which is a different thing.  It's not that he cannot use them, but that he will not use them.  Or perhaps he would in dire circumstances? Anyway.

I kept that rule, by the way, for the finished manuscript of Mythical Journeys.  Now 0-level Men and others can use every weapon, but training as a wizard retards weapons use for a reason similar to that of clerics.  And here is the reason.

In the implied setting of Mythical Journeys, it takes about two years to really learn and understand magic and what you need to know to be an adventuring Magic-User.  But regardless of the time it takes to actually learn magic, wizards will take on only those students who will submit to years of indentured servitude.  It might be five years before a wizard's apprentice even touches a spell book, because he's too busy proving his dedication and will to power.  Even so, giving up these years of life for the power of arcane magic is usually a good bargain for the apprentice.  

So the apprentice has spent seven or more years under the tutelage of his master.  He's been laboring and probably learning to read and write, and to fight with a dagger and a staff - and that's it.  Any skill he had previously in warfare would retard considerably under these circumstances.  Furthermore, part of the culture of being a wizard is that one only uses a dagger or a staff, and that's it.  Other weapons are for lesser intellects.

One of the setting elements that I have come up with but is not implied is that while arcane magic among men is very much a master-and-apprentice affair, there are two broad traditions in teaching magic.  I have not named them, but they are informal clubs where wizards can recognize their colleagues who have completed similar training.  One kind of wizard wears white robes and carries as his credentials a specially-inscribed white quarterstaff wizard-marked by his master certifying he is who he says he is.  The other kind of wizard wears blue robes and carries as his credentials a specially-inscribed dagger with a blue velvet-wrapped handle, likewise wizard marked by his master certifying he is who he says he is.  Each kind of wizard trains in the other's favored weapon because both weapons are the weapons of a proper wizard, and can use them both interchangeably in actual combat.

This kind of sounds like the towers of high sorcery or whatever from Dragonlance (did I say that right? I never read the books) but I wasn't thinking of that when I thought this up.  Maybe instead of robes they can wear circlets or signet rings or a gold chain of office or something like that.  What do you think?  Maybe their choice of weapon is enough.

100th Post!

100th post! Yay for Old School D&D! My daughter Julie, aka GizmoGamer, has gifted me this wonderful work of art to mark the occasion. You can see more of her work here on DeviantArt. She's a social media darling and regularly posts video game videos to YouTube and does drawing live streams there too. If you would like me to feature one of your art objects on the blog here, you should drop me a line!

Celebration Goblin by Julianna Anderson

If you are counting, this doesn't seem to be the 100th post.  But that's because I lost a lot of posts from before when I accidentally deleted my old blog in September of 2017.

Undead Fighting Tactics for Laypeople

Undead are such a threat to PCs level by level that they became one of the focuses of one of our core classes, the Cleric. And rightly so. They are completely silent when approaching. They are quite likely to attack and are never friendly by default.  They cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. And they never stop, ever, until one side or the other is dead.

But what if your group doesn't have a Cleric?  And what about the poor common folk who might never meet a real Cleric in their grimy, drudging lives?  How do you, and they, deal with the Undead without the silver bullets a Cleric carries with him every day?

Undead Warlord by ArtDeepMind

Holding Undead At-Bay

Any Lawful layman of any of the common races may attempt to hold undead at-bay with a cross (or their holy symbol) or a silvered mirror.  By presenting the dread object forcefully and earnestly toward the undead, the layman may make a Turn Undead check with his caster level equal to half his character level, rounded up. This means normal men will have a caster level of 0, but adventurous types will have at least some nonnegative caster level. This special ability affects up to 9 HD of undead and triggers Combat Round time. A Neutral layman may attempt this too, if he is an earnest devotee to a Lawful god.

Effects: The undead will shrink back. They will not depart, but they will not be able to touch or attack the presenter or anyone who he shields. The presenter may not take any action other than to continue to present the dread object and to move 1/3 their speed each Round. The effect is broken if either party is attacked or otherwise takes hit point damage.  This makes it useful for lay people to buy their own holy symbol and identify themselves as earnest supplicants of some Lawful god.

Using A Holy Relic

A Holy Relic is an especial blessed or accursed object such as the finger bone of a martyr or a splinter from the club of a saint of some religion. Pilgrims often purchase these relics from the destinations of their pilgrimages. A Lawful lay person can use his Relic in an attempt to Turn Undead. If successful, the restless dead are dissolved away rather than being turned. A Chaotic layman can use his cursed Relic to Beckon Undead to his service for one Turn or one combat. A Neutral layman can use either one kind or the other depending upon his religion. Such Turning and Beckoning attempts are made as a 5th Level Cleric. After a Relic is used, roll 1d6. On a 6, it crumbles into dust. Relics cost 250 GP, are not widely available for sale, and they only work for a person of the correct religion.

Mundane Tactics

• Corporeal undead are all damaged by fire, except for Skeletons who don't have any flesh. Nagzúl also fear fire. If you can't bring a cleric, then bring oil and holy water!
• Ditches and man-traps require labor, but are good ways to keep walking undead away. Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls and Shadows should be too dumb to defeat these barriers.  Thouls might be able to bypass them, and smarter undead certainly can.
• Skeletons of course require bludgeoning weapons.  Piercing weapons deal no damage and slashing weapons deal half hits. Fire doesn't damage them but it does turn them a toasty brown.
• Zombies are destroyed by 1 lb or more of salt. Salt also kills slimes, oozes and jellies when applied in amounts of 1 lb to 1 HD or fraction. Burning oil works against Zombies.
• Feed raw meat to Ghouls and then burn them with oil.
• Shadows dislike limelight, it burns them like fire for 1d6 hits per round.
• Wraiths and Nagzúl will not approach within 5' of an open flame. The Nagzúl especially are harmed only by fire, magic and magic weapons.
• Mummies dissolve in two Rounds in an excess of water.  Wearing heavy perfumes, such as dousing your clothing in rosewater or lavender, will make you invisible to a mummy.
• Vampires have their own well-known rules of course. But to ward oneself against their blood sucking attack specifically, coat your exposed skin with a tincture made from the black bile of a magical beast or dire predator.  This tincture is also good against stirges.
• Liches love ancient and forbidden knowledge. They may spare your life for a spell or other arcane morsel, just as they might have done in life.  Many of them hate the taste and smell of fresh mint sprigs, but some will overcome this to attack you anyway.

Celebrating Uniform Fighting-Men

Mechanically identical.

The further back in the history of the game we go, the more uniform the Fighting-Men become. Without feats, without weapon specialization and no weapon proficiencies, there is very little difference between one man and another. Especially when you go back to ODD74 and Holmes, where each weapon does 1-6 damage and stat bonuses are minimal.  Not incidentally, the same objection can be made about Clerics as well. (It is less true for Magic-Uses because by memorizing different spells, they can play very differently from one another.)

The mechanical differences between two fighting men from ODD74 and several OSR offerings are: level, hit dice, hit points (both level-dependent) and character stats. But we already know stats are minimally important most of the time. So mechanically, two Fighters of the same level are just about identical.

The first large point of differentiation you have control over is gear. You can make sure your man has everything he will need, and nothing he doesn't. You can have him buy great armor and a shield: and a hat and a rope and a pole and a lantern a long bow and so forth and so forth. OR, you can have him buy leather armor and a pole arm, and count on stealth, foot speed and reach. To a lesser extent, you have the ability to bargain with the other players for magic items, but what items there are to bargain over is up to the Ref. Even though magic items can make a huge difference, you have much less control over what you get.

All of this however is preamble when we get to the single biggest factor that differentiates one figure from another: the player. Not the character sheet, not feats, powers, or magic items; the player.  In chess, no one complains about two knights being identical; you just use them the best you can. Even with the minimal mechanical differences between fantasy medieval knights, you get to do the same thing! Similarity breeds familiarity. You can translate what you learn with one fighting man to the next fighting man figure you play. You don't have to start from scratch every time.  Therefore, uniform Fighting-Men is a feature, not a bug, of the early games.

Just as dungeons are endlessly iterative, so are fighting men. So are clerics and so are magic users. I'm in my 34th year of playing D&D and I'm drawn to simpler and simpler versions, even though they are not what I started with.  The reason I think is because the more you strip away the system's crunch, the more that player skill, at the table, in real time matters. That's what "playing the game" means: one player (the Ref) poses problems in the form of a mysterious and dangerous setting, and the several players work together to think through problems posed and then risk their pieces to conquer the setting.  That's another way of stating the bargain implicit in D&D: risk life and limb in exchange for fame and fortune!

Game Report - Castle Caldwell Explorers Session III

6 August 2017 6:45 - 9:30

The DM was Steve.  We played at my house tonight and he and his family brought a TON of stuff. He was really prepared!  My wife AJ was there and everyone got along great and had a great time.

The players were

• Ethan, Steve's 13 year old Son.  He played Ronin, a Fighting-Man.  Level 1.
• Simone, Steve's wife.  She played Raven, a level 2 female half-elf Cleric of Men
• my daughter Julie, just 13, who ran Vuvier, the Lvl 1 Thief who loves poison.
• my son Nate, just turned 15, with Gruffled the Halfling Thief, Level 1.
• and me, I ran Vuvier's twin brother Yaspar, the Fighting-Man with 2 Hits.  
• A mysterious 3rd level Magic-User, Thrace, also played by Nathaniel.

There is a SUPER LOT to tell about this adventure even though we didn't get through a lot of crawling.  I will tell you the first part and we can get back to the second part later.

We spent a few days making camp outside the castle while we rested and while Lord Clifton summoned a magic user who would cast a Knock spell on the magic door that confounded us. When the magic user arrived, he had his own colorful adventuring party.

He sent his apprentice, Thrace, in with us.  Nate played Thrace as a DMPC and did a good job of it.

The elderly red-robed magic user who was there to Knock wanted a specific piece of treasure. Something dangerous, accursed and unique. He wouldn't cast the spell without our promise. Our guys say no, it's ours if you want us to clear out the castle. That was the deal: we clear it out and make it safe, and we keep what we find.  That was a non-starter for Lord Clifton and Red Robes. So Yaspar, being Lawful Neutral, spoke to the old wizard one on one and gave his word that he would return the treasure to him if he knew what it was. No, not good enough. The wizard countered by saying he needed to Geas Yaspar, and to send his apprentice along to retrieve the mysterious dread object.

Now it was Yaspar's turn to balk. He told our party what had happened and we agreed to hunt for a different wizard to Knock for us.

So Steve the DM thinks fast and one of the NPCs tells us we can't find a Wizard within 500 leagues who knows the spell.  So... we're kind of stuck.

We have rivalry pressure from this other adventuring party.  They have a wizard who is higher level - he can cast geas, which means he's what? 9th?  And the DM told us we don't have another option. We're out of chips to play.

So Yaspar agrees to turn over the treasure for their picking pleasure and undergoes the Geas. While insulting to him, it is irrelevant because he was going to keep his word anyway.

Gnome Fighter by Christopher Burdett

Yaspar gave his special hand axe to his brother, Vuvier, for safe keeping.  He accepts the Geas.  The wizard gives him a magic ring and a magic necklace.  Then he collects a normal hand axe and they head into the dungeon...

The Joy of Character Death

One of the most interesting times in the life of a player character is the occasion of his death. Think of the stories you can tell!  After all, there are three distinct activities that go into playing. There is prep time; there is table time; and then there is the indeterminate period after a good adventure that lives forever in the retelling.

So that's the first and most important point: a character death makes for a great story!

The central bargain of D&D is to risk your man's life in exchange for riches; to cheat Fate. Everything else is knuckleballs and sliders.  But the four-seam fastball of D&D is: life and limb versus fame and fortune. If you want to focus on something else, play a different kind of game in a different genre (totally cool by the way.) If character death isn't lurking behind the next door, then you're missing a lot of the tension and therefore fun of D.  And if the threat is realistic and credible, then people (and specifically PCs) are going to die.

So that's the second point: credible danger leads to incredible thrills.

Finally, if men are dropping left and right, if you are losing henchmen and even teammates almost every session, then it follows that making it to mid-levels is a good accomplishment!  If you go into a low-lethality campaign, you can plan to be level 10-12-14 someday. You just have to show up. But in a high-lethality campaign, actually becoming a Hero (level 4) is a great accomplishment! You might even decide to retire you man as a successful former adventurer somewhere in that range, hanging his Axe +2 over the mantle of his beautiful county house.

So that's the third point: higher lethality makes earning accomplishments bigger.

So revel in character death. The final chapter of you man's life will be his finest hour.

P.S. - this is a fantasy world. Death doesn't have to be the end of the story...!

In Praise of Killing the PCs

So, Referee.  You've got a group of player-characters, and you want to know what to do.

Kill the player-characters.

Total Party Kill by JD Webster

Kill them often. Kill them with gusto. Delight in their demise!  Crush them with huge slabs, dash them against sheer cliffs, cook them with dragon breath, dump them in a pit of cold water and watch their plate mail drown them! Sic giant weasels on them. Pummel them with Hill Giant boulders. Pull them under with waves of kobolds. Frag them with Magic Missiles.

Just, for Gary's sake, be fair about it! Always give the players clues that something dangerous may lurk nearby. "Bang! You're dead!" is bad because then nobody is playing, you are just taking their character sheet. The way I say it at my table is, "I don't kill you. The dice kill you." It's the way I tell them that they're going to die and it's going to be preventable.  It's not always, or even usually the dice - the player so are quite capable of blundering their way into danger themselves!

Tomorrow, I'll talk about what this looks like from the other side of the Ref's screen.

The Most Unfortunate 3

So now we've covered the six intrinsic stats that every character gets when he starts play: Strength through Charisma.  But don't you remember there is a seventh roll of 3d6 that every character gets that can quickly determine life or death when you start him on his mythical journey?  The answer, of course, is starting gold!

What's the whole reason we go into the dungeon in the first place?  MONEY! MONEY to buy better gear, to hire men at arms, bribe a mayor or town watch, to carouse and meet a lady, and ultimately to buy a castle and take over the world!

You have to have money to buy your armor and so forth.  With a paltry 30 GPs (a roll of 3 x 10 GP), you're going to be stuck with crummy options for armor and weapons.

The Hauler by Stefan Poag

Option #1: Cooperate with (scam) your friends into pooling your resources and use some of their money to buy what you need!

Option #2: Visit the town loan shark and take out a loan (at 100% per week interest) to buy the sweet plate mail and pack mule you wanted to begin with.

Option #3: Play the plucky Peasant Hero with leather armor, a sling, and quarterstaff!  It's practically free.

Option #4: Play the Wizard, because then all you need is a bath robe and the book your master gave you.  And then make sure to take the best magic items every time.

In any case, the 3 in Starting Money might be the most telling and informative 3 of all.  You really have to think hard to imagine why he's completely broke and how he got to be that way.  On the other hand, nobody has a stronger motivation to get down into the dungeon and haul out some loot!

What are some other solutions to The Most Unfortunate 3?

So You Rolled a 3: Charisma

A pitiful and smelly Aghar family.  
Their Charisma may surprise you!

Charisma.  The Big Cheese in old-school games.  Nothing is more important than Charisma.  Let me tell you why.

Charisma determines how many loyal assistants your character has.  Do you need a squire? You want a Yolus or a Gabby?  A Dr. Watson?  Would you like to be able to call on Gentle Ben? Gosh, Doc Savage could call on like ten different NPCs, all experts in their discipline. Loyal sidekicks are great to have, and Charisma tells you how many you can have. 

Then there are hired hands. Are you hiring out a cadre of bodyguards and attendants to help you and your party on their way?  Charisma determines how loyal those hapless sods are, and how often you will have to worry about them running away or stabbing you in the face.  

Finally, Charisma will help parley with monsters and enemies - a higher Charisma score means less fighting, and less fighting means less dying.  All in all, Charisma is the "god" stat of old-school play.

In the old-school game, characters start out as an adventuring party.  They are mostly cooperative because each of them is a squishy weakling.  After all, they don't have to outrun the owlbear; they only have to outrun the fighter in full plate mail! As they level, they will acquire both hirelings and loyal assistants.  Each man is like a miniature party in and of himself, and the group will be able to accomplish more, both together and individually.   Finally each man who has lived to Name level (around 9th) will build himself a castle and clear the land, starting his own barony. Then it's on, brother. Every man for himself! War and peace, civil and otherwise. Even then, to the degree that politics and intrigue enter the campaign, Charisma and reaction checks are going to be very important.

So now we know what Charisma does do.  But let me talk about what low Charisma doesn't do.

• Low Charisma  doesn't make you stutter.  It doesn't make you a mush-mouth. You can have a low Charisma and also be able to speak properly, even speak well.
• Low Charisma doesn't mean you are ugly.  You can be quite pleasant to look at and still have a low Charisma.
• Low Charisma doesn't mean you are smelly or have bad breath or wheeze or snore.  It doesn't mean that people don't want to be around you!

All a low Charisma score says is that you are not an inspiring leader and you are not very persuasive! Even a celebrity or politician can get by with a low Charisma!

So out of all the six character stats, Charisma is the most elusive.  It is slippery - you can't necessarily point to some quality of a character and attribute to that low Charisma.  It's just one of those things that you know it when you see it - and you might only "see" it on the character sheet.

So You Rolled A 3: Constitution

What does it mean to have a Constitution score of 3 in old the school game?

Mechanically, it means you get one fewer Hit Point (or worse) per level, but always at least one.  And more often than you would like, it's gonna be one!  So you're going to have to spend your career playing turtle a lot.  In fact, you're almost assuredly destined to play the Magic User, because none of the classes who engage in melee will live very long with so few Hit Points.

Qualitatively, it means you get sick a lot!  You never feel well.  You complain a lot because you hurt a lot.  If someone is going to catch a disease in the party, you can bet it's going to be you!  Save or Die poisons and diseases are particularly deadly to you.  You're not going to survive being turned into a newt - you won't be getting better!

But why would you have a CON of 3?  Most people with a low CON score would have died already. Maybe you got the Pox or the Plague or the Rattle, but you were one of the "lucky" ones to survive. Maybe you are a drug addict or smoker - that would be fun to roleplay even if it's no good in real life.

What do you think a CON 3 could mean?

So You Rolled A 3: Dexterity

I frankly have little insightful to say.  I'm going to have to lean on your to think up something cool about having a Dexterity of 3.  For many of the same reasons that Strength could be a 3, so could Dexterity:  Overweight, athletically unpracticed, feeble, clumsy, and blind or nearly-blind.

But it could also be due to Parkinson's Disease or Syndrome, or ALS, or polio.  Some muscular-skeletal-nervous system disorder that is nonlethal, and for some reason you man was able to live through childhood despite his disability.  While most people in that situation would be lame beggars, your man has decided to seek his fortune in some way.  Because of his penalty with missile weapons and a worse AC, he will be at a disadvantage. But because the penalties are small he will not be at a huge disadvantage like he would be in a new school game.

Can you think of other reasons why your man might have a Dex of 3?