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On Reader Mail, 3e to 5e Conversion

Happy post-Gencon Monday morning everyone. Congratulations to the strength of the independent press, with Contessa and A Red and Pleasant land winning multiple times! Also, congratulations to Jolly Blackburn and our community, for pulling together to turn the Knights of the Dinner Table Live Action Series Kickstarter into a success at Gencon! My heart soars.

However, gaming season is upon us, and it is time to get back to work (and play). We'll start light with some reader mail.

John writes:

I was referred to your blog today as possibly having a reference that would help convert 3.5 characters to 5e.  I perused your blog indices for the better part of 30 minutes, but I could not find what I was looking for.  I have a mothballed campaign that I would like to start up again, using 5e instead of 3.5, and I would like to keep the players' old characters but create 5e versions of them to move on.  Is there anything on your site that would provide a little guidance in this vein?
Barring that, then just one piece of advice:  the 3.5 characters are levels 5 and 6.  I am still absorbing the 5e PHB info, but my general impression at this point is that 1st level 5e characters are about as powerful as 3rd level v3.5 characters, and quick and dirty I was thinking I could basically just back everyone up about 2 levels and go from there, if there are not any more substantive conversion charts or discussions available.  What is your opinion on this idea? 

Excellent question! This is both very simple and very complicated.

My last 3rd edition character was a lazer warlock. They way he worked is, he took six levels in warlock, then switched over to hellfire warlock for the bonus damage, then would find/craft a lesser chasuble of fell power to boost his damage further, finally taking a splash into the Binder class for 2 levels so I could pick up a bond with Dahlver-Nar to make me immune to the Constitution drain from the hellfire blast.

I might have played some 3rd edition at some point. I can't say I miss it.

If your character's are like those above, full of dips into classes and prestige classes to create crazy builds, well then, I think your best bet is to allow your players to recreate their 5e classes using the new rules. If they were going for some kind of special effect or build, creating a subclass power (like the many classes available here on this blog) would be how I would implement that.

If, instead, however, they just made some characters to have fun and then go adventuring, then conversion should be pretty easy. I'd say that your comment about power levels isn't 100% correct. 1st level 5th edition characters start off about as weak as any other edition, but they rapidly rise in power and competence. I'd say 3rd level in 5th edition dungeons and dragons is about equivalent to 5th level 3rd edition players, or 1st level 4th edition characters.  There's another large leap in power around 5th level for characters in 5th edition, making them equivalent to much more difficult challenges.

So in your situation, I'd let players pick a class and then be third level!

Thanks for the question. Comments are always welcome, and you can feel free to ask your own questions, about anything—REALLY ANYTHING AT ALL— at my email, campbell atsymbol oook dot cz

Thanks!

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On Reader Mail, The Mystery of % in lair

Brian writes:

"I'm having trouble (maybe) wrapping my mind around AD&D (1e) Wandering Monsters and the percentage chance of finding a monster in it's 'Lair'. Are the Wandering Monsters only supposed to be monsters that have lairs within the dungeon? Is the '% in Lair' the chance that when a monster is encountered it is encountered in its lair, or is it the chance that after finding a monster's lair that the monster will be present (as opposed to wandering the dungeon or doing whatever else monsters do)?

It seems like there should be some correlation between the two, but I have so far been unable to find this correlation either explicitly stated or refuted."

Yeah, it's confusing.

Original procedures of play are what dictated the usefulness of this statistic. Simply put: when you have a random encounter in the wilderness, is the creature wandering or did you discover the creature at its lair. It probably doesn't take much valuable with it out and about; at home you'll find greater riches with a consummate increase in danger!

It's important to note that it is never a chance that a lair is found empty. Although it is possible to find an empty lair, it is never found using % in lair, because of the procedure used. First you roll to discover that you have an encounter, and since you always encounter a monster, you won't encounter an monster-less lair, randomly, per the procedure.

That's the short version. The work is shown below:

The text of the 1st edition Monster Manual states:

"% IN LAIR indicates the chance of encountering the monster in question where it domiciles and stores its treasure (if any). If a monster encountered is not in its lair it will not have any treasure unless it carries 'individual' treasure or some form of magic. Whether or not an encounter is occurring in the monster's lair might be totally unknown to the person or persons involved until after the outcome of the encounter is resolved."

This indicates that the encounter happens before the lair determination. This leaves us with a lot of questions. Does this affect the number of monsters? Is this related to just wilderness travel or also dungeon exploration?

Arneson goes into more detail in the Judge's Guild product, the First Fantasy Campaign.

The text indicates he might have been a little compulsive. He determined the contents of all the hexes ahead of time. Each hex had an average of two encounters, achieved by rolling a d6 and ignoring results of six. This indicates the numberof encounters in the hex. Then the types of encounters those are were indicated by random rolls on the wilderness tables.  If a monster came up more than once, it was a larger group. This indicated the type of encounters in the hex.

The % in lair was used as above. When an encounter is indicated, you roll to determine if you encounter the monsters wandering or in their lair. However, only part of the total group of monsters would be inside the lair at any given time, indicated by rolling 1d6x10%, and subtracting from 100. There's another system in place to determine where those other monsters are in relation to the lair.

The interesting thing about this is that the % in lair roll determines the players location within the hex, which seems somewhat strange, given the tendency of Arneson to over-prepare. Of course this resolves itself nicely, when the whole thing is taken as a procedure to describe an activity abstractly for the purposes of a game.

The relevant text from the FFC is quoted below:

"Outdoors in Blackmoor Travel from one perilous adventure to another in a neighboring Castle can result in a great deal of frustration of the players, or al least confusion, as the road is always populated by evil creatures. After all it is supposed to be some sort of civilization and it must have some form of communications, if for no other reason than to move all the treasure around from Castle to Castle. With a little work, the Outdoor adventures can be enjoyable, and the format of an overall campaign, can lead to the pacification of area over time.
To reflect the above. the Judge should grid off the map into Sectors, also called Hexes or Squares. Each of these hexes will contain some adventures which may range from a Monster holed up in a small cave to an abandoned Castle full of Orcs. A chart is provided for laying out the basics of the area and can be modified to suit the individual taste of the Judge and his eagerness to lay out all the needed work. Each square should contain in average of say, two encounters (assuming 10 miles by 10 miles), determined by rolling 1 six-sided dice (upon a roll of six would mean that there are no adventures in the square). This will determine how many encounters live in the area.
For each encounter, consult the Encounter Matrix for the type of creature that lives at each spot. Whenever there is an encounter in the area, in the future, il will be restricted to one of those already present (see advanced method for other results). If there are four encounters you roll a four-sided die to determine which of the four has been found, all other details having already been worked out. The normal chances of the creature being in it's lair are worked out as they normally are. So if Encounter six has a 30% chance of being found in it's lair, then that percentage is used and the number of Creatures encountered will then be any number up to the total number present in the hex. Again to avoid confusion, you may wish to take the maximum number of creatures that is(sic) listed on the Monster Matrix to representative of the population in the hex for each encounter, given a plus or minus 10% to keep the players on their toes.
For each time that the creatures are found in their lairs, there will be a chance that a portion of them are out in the countryside. To determine this number, assume that 40% of the population is always in the camp and that up to 60% (10 - 60%) are always outside of the camp. Roll a die again and see how many miles (1 - 6 miles) they are away from the camp. On a roll of six. the creatures outside of camp are in two equal sized groups and you would roll again to determine how many miles away they are.
Note: Whenever sixes appear again, divide that proportion of the creatures in half again and roll for their positions. In this way, In original group of creatures starting at, say, 50 strong could first divide into two groups of 25, then 12, then 6, etc.. . ." -First Fantasy Campaign

Note that this means a lot of important things. First, if you encounter a monster not in the lair, the ability of a character to track allows you to locate the lair, which in many cases would be unfindable. This is particularly true of single powerful creatures like medusa and other large predators that are small in number discovered entirely outside of their lair. After all, 10% of 3 manticores is 0 manticores. I've also commented before about the difficulty ofwilderness encounters. The method listed above allows one over time to clear out the dangers in a hex, though unsurprisingly he immediately begins describing a process to simulate population growth and monster migration to the hex after the above section.

But wait, there's more!

"TREASURE TYPE refers to the table which shows the parameters for various types of valuables which the monster in question might possess. If individual treasure is indicated, each individual monster of that type will carry, or possibly carry, the treasure shown. Otherwise, treasures are only found in the lairs of monsters, as explained above." - Monster Manual 1st edition

So in addition to only possibly finding the monster in the lair, there's only a possibility of treasure actually being in the lair. This is of course in conflict with Moldvay who redefines the procedure, removing the % in lair entirely and suggesting that treasure be given out proportionally to the monsters encountered, though this might be expected based on the basic rules focus on dungeon crawling.

Expert Dungeons & Dragons also has wilderness encounters, though no mention is made of how to randomly find lairs. There are several references to lairs and suggestions that the Dungeon Master should design several generic lairs ahead of time if one is encountered, but no random generation of lair encounters. It does note that as many as five times of the normal number of monsters show up in lairs, along with the advice that the Dungeon Master should tailor the encounter to their players. Of course this is in theme with the advice given to Dungeon Masters:

"'But I rolled it!' A common mistake most DMs make is to rely too much on random die rolls. An entire evening can be spoiled if an unplanned wilderness encounter on the way to the dungeon goes badly for the party. The DM must use good judgment in addition to random tables. Encounters should be scaled to the strength of the party and should be in harmony with the theme of the adventure." - Expert Rulebook, Page X59

The advice given in B/X (Basic/Expert) concisely communicates the volume of material written in the OSR about how to play, making it a larger part about why it's such a superior version of Dungeons & Dragons.

As to the difference between wandering and random monsters, I've written at it at length before. Essentially, random monsters are just that, random encounters with monsters, whereas wandering monsters are encounters with monsters that live nearby.

The relevant text is located here:

"Encounters: A 'monster' can be a kindly wizard or a crazed dwarf, a friendly brass dragon or a malicious manticore. Such are the possibilities of encounters in dungeon, wilderness, or town. Chance meetings are known as encounters with wandering monsters. Finding a creature where it has been placed by the referee is usually referred to as a set encounter.
 Wandering monsters can be totally random or pre-planned. A party wandering in the woods outdoors or on a deserted maze in the dungeon might run into nearly any sort of monster. If the woods were the home of a tribe of centaurs, or the dungeon level one constructed by a band of orcs, certain prescribed encounters would randomly occur, however. At prescribed intervals, your DM will generate a random number to find if any meeting with a wandering monster occurs. . . .
 Set encounters are meetings with monsters placed by your DM. All such encounters will be in, or near, the monster's (or monsters') lair; so, unlike encounters with wandering monsters, these incidents promise a fair chance for gain if the monster or monsters are successfully dealt with. A successful expedition usually is aimed at o particular monster or group of lairs discovered during previous excursions Note: a lair is wherever the monster dwells - even such places as a castle, guard house, temple or other construction." - Player's Handbook, 1st Edition, page 103

In conclusion, come up with a system that works for you, that puts the needs of the game and gameplay first, using the available resources as tools. In my personal experience, limiting the different types of encounters in an area to a bell curve from 2-6 to 2-8 will do the most to provide a strong character to an area. 

Brian, I apologize for the long delay in the reply, and hope this answers your question definitively, or lacking that, provides you enough information that you understand it better. I hope everyone found at least something new or of interest above. Thanks for writing in. Questions can be sent to campbell at oook dot cz.


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On Reader Mail, Random Generation

Mr. Cole writes:

I'm seeking some major input on a Convention game I plan on running next month. My goal is to run an old school crawl 100% randomly, complete with characters (we're using the LotFP generator on "Save vs Party Kill" website), traps, encounters by dungeon level, and treasure.
I'm hoping to find an effective way to just sit down, roll some dice, and move forward with minimal GM-Side table clutter, and likewise minimal page-flipping to get to the goods. 
So my questions! I'm right now picking and cutting individual pages from your "Tricks" and "Treasures" pdfs, to assemble a GM screen. My hope is to not have to use anything aside from that custom GM screen, a rules reference book, and a monster book. Maybe you know some useful shortcuts and tips from your experience with this subject?
Oh boy.

One of my former players (only former because he moved away from our face to face game by going to a state far to the north) had a fantasy of a complete random campaign generator that takes input and drills it down to whatever level of specificity you need to run a game*. I maintain the same opinion now that I did then.

On-the-fly random generation for a group doesn't work.

I'm saying that as a human being who has played solo Dungeons and Dragons with my wife using Ruins of the Undercity, an excellent book specifically designed to create a certain campaign style setting using random generation. It's fun to do solo, but not for a group of players.

Explicitly the tables in most of my books are designed for preparatory work. This is evidenced by their design. Zak S. of D&D with Porn Stars fame noted that you could take all the room entries and place them in a single d100 table, which makes it more useful for in media res use, because it reduces the dice rolls from two to one.

All hope is not lost!

Part of the problem with random generation is that, well, it's random, and ergo meaningless. This means, that for most players it's unengaging. Unintentionally, wizards of the coast proved this exact point in a video ad in an attempt to be funny.

The inability to obscure what's random (and therefore without meaning) and what's off the top of your head (and therefore not impartial) combines in the course of an entirely randomly generated session to remove agency from the players. 

This isn't true of localized randomness. A random magical item is exciting, as is a random encounter—because the tables themselves aren't random, but meaningful selections from a larger whole, when then adds a sense of discovery for all players (including the Dungeon Master) to the game.

That is the importance of randomness in combat, encounters, personalities and treasure in a game. It turns it from a boardgame, into a method to auger the actual reality of a foreign realm for entertainment. Who knows what will happen? Not even the Dungeon Master! That's a large part of the charm.

How to make In Media Res Random Generation useful

So what do you do?

Generating what's actually down a hallway and what's in each room is very time and attention consuming, removing your ability to play. There are several different pieces of advice and options that I can suggest.
  • Avoid using multi-roll tables. Have tables that are die drop, roll all the dice, or single roll tables for use during play.
    • If you've ever actually generated a "random dungeon" using 1e style generation, it's very time consuming, which is not fun for the players at the table. 
    • Part of what I mean by this is instead of using treasure and taking 14 rolls to generate an art object, try rolling on a table like 50 Interesting Pieces of Treasure, which in one roll, will give you something unique. 
  • If the point in randomness is for you to explore the environment at the same time as the players, you can use the most excellent resource Wizarddawn to randomly generate a hex and then randomly generate all the sites within the hex. (World Adventure, under Basic Dungeons and Dragons is what you are looking for)
  • Otherwise, you should spend your time creating meaningful random tables. What this means is not a table of what's behind that door, but a table of different dungeon modules with a theme that fits together and various options for how the players could interact with the modules as the explore the dungeon. 
    • Design the tables with an eye towards a meaningful unit. Hallway width and door type are not that. Complete descriptions of single rooms may be. A large part of how this plays out is kind of dependent on the real reason you want to try a complete random campaign. 
I hope some of the above suggestions address what you're looking for in randomness from games, and maybe make the convention experience a bit more fun. Feel free to talk with me on G+ about your ideas and let me know how the campaign game goes!

* He, of course, imagined a computer, but that type of randomness was already done, in Elderscrolls Daggerfall and Arena. It's massive, samey and in general, meaningless.

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On Reader Mail, Level Drain

Owen writes:

"So, I've been enjoying your Hack & Slash blog suggestions for HotDQ. 

I ran the beginning of Castle Naerytar the other evening and I liked your suggestion of using the Pale Eye cultists so much, the party ran smack into two of the level draining faceless white witch-things.

The foolish druid ignored them in favor of another opponent and was bitten twice. Bam. Two levels. I hadn't given much thought to how levels might or might not be restored.

What are your thoughts?"

Oh, this old chestnut again! A new edition and it rears its head up to bedevil new players. 

Level drain officially doesn't exist in 5th edition. This is the replacement: 

"The target's hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken, and the creature regains hit points equal to that amount. The reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0."
People don't like level drain. It isn't fair. It takes away something that took weeks (or longer) to earn.

That is the point!

You aren't supposed to like it. You aren't supposed to get rid of it with a long rest or a spell. You are supposed to stop and say "That creature is terrifying!" and really not like what it can do to you.

Of course, modern players and their ideas of what's "fair" and not wanting to have anything bad happen to them may create a situation where your milage may be fluctuating independently of my experience.

Being that this is 5th edition, I would have each hit drain 2d4x500 experience. I would not reduce the experience level (with death at 0 experience), I would just require them to earn back the experience before they could continue gaining experience. The reason for this is twofold.

  • First, very little actually happens when you gain a level in 5th edition. In general, unless it's a threshold level (5, 10, etc.) Your to hit bonus isn't going to change, your hit points are going to differ only slightly, and you'll lose a class feature or two. It is simultaneously difficult to track and not globally significant. (Yes, on a stat gain level, it might increase your chance to hit and strength checks and some such, but whatever the penalty is, isn't usually global, even if it is a little important for a subsystem like combat.)
    • In summation, the complexity far outweighs the benefit of tracking the reduction in level, unless that level is a threshold level, and even in that case it's better to be consistent.
  • They still lose the experience, putting them that much father from the next level. This is a painful enough consequence that it will make them seriously consider the strength of your opponent. 
That said, it is wonderful to hear about people using materials you create in the world! It's even nicer to hear from people who use them. For those of you enjoy my posts or who have used my materials in your games, you can thank the great team of patrons who made it possible! Without them, there would be no blog compendium, no Hoard of the Dragon Queen conversions, no blog posts at all since 2013! I would have needed to move on. 

Right now those Patrons are making an art-filled ecology book possible, as well as allowing me to donate to the cancer research foundation so they can find new ways to combat cancers, so that maybe other people in the future don't have to go through what my wife is going through.  

Thank you. It's an honor.


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On Reader Mail, Megadungeon Restocking

Sándor writes:
How do you guys handle areas already explored in your #megadungeons (or just large dungeons that take multiple sessions to go through)?
Do you pick up where you left of last time ("Okay, so you go through a bunch of rooms and corridors, and end up at that shrine of Orcus you slew those cultists. What do you do now?") or have the players navigate through each room again (even if the players just want to go on from that shrine)?
How about describing the environs and random encounters? Do you still describe everything visible and noticeable on concentrate on the new and unseen things? How do you incorporate random encounters ("Okay, so you go through a bunch of rooms and corridors... rolls some dice ... and, remember that magical smithy? As you go past the door leading there, half a dozen skeletal dwarves with unreasonably large axes rush out towards you.") - if at all? Also, traps that may be triggered again?
Hey, and thanks for asking.

I'll tell you how I handle it. Poorly.

Here is what I actually do in play. This is because I'm not running a megadungeon, I'm playtesting one, which makes a big difference.

  • The players start each week in town
  • The game ends when the leave the megadungeon (this means if they go back to town an hour after we start, that ends the game for the week.)
  • If they don't leave the megadungeon by the end of play, I roll on this horrible table. 
  • I do no restocking or refilling of explored areas. (If I were running (vs. playtesting) a megadungeon I would)
  • If there characters want to go somewhere and they have only been there once, I make them go there room by corridor by room. If they have made it there with no errors successfully twice, I essentially allow them to return with only wandering monster checks.
I think for a lot of Dungeon Masters there is an idea that there's a "proper way" to do this. Maybe after a game you sit down and simulate what happens to those empty spaces inside the dungeon. I think that a lot of people feel that if they aren't doing this, that they are doing it incorrectly. Those people are wrong of course. There isn't any incorrectly.

I don't think anything really has to be done. A lot of the work falls on the wandering monster tables. Going back down to level 3 and run into some orcs on the way? Guess who's making an incursion into level 2. This can be made even more entertaining for the players by perhaps coming up with a 12 entry weirdness table or spending the week thinking of one thing that might be different on their way down into the dungeon. 

And that quick and dirty way seems to be a common method a lot of Dungeon Masters used (based on the original private thread this discussion came up in.) Using a Barrowmaze style restocking method is quick (1-4 nothing, 5 monster, 6 monster and treasure) and a good way to handle quickly filling uncleared rooms. 

You should know, for Dungeon Masters running long term games—the reality is, most of the time we just decide something interesting has happened because we thought of something interesting or because we forgot to do any sort of restocking at all. 
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On Reader Mail, The Alien World

Garth writes:

"I'd like my players to encounter a truly alien continent--separated from the rest of the world by millions of years of evolution, and seeded by otherworldly creatures. The encounter becomes boilerplate. I want to do more than just re-skin goblins, hydras, etc. 

Any tips on making an environment feel completely alien, beyond avoiding classic creatures/architecture?"

Thanks for writing in Garth! If you have any questions or if your curious about my thoughts on anything, write into campbell at oook dot cz, or message me via my google+ profile.

This is a great question, but a complicated one. If this truly is a major theme of the game, then the answer can be quite complicated.

Starting Steps


Unless the default environment the players are from is very much like our earth or very much  like bog standard fantasy, then I would make the first several sessions about discovering what the normal environment is like, so that the changes you make are significant. If you go this route, then expectations set up during these first sessions should be subverted in lots of different ways. This can be as simple as describing or experiencing many of the local customs and creatures, and then being told a very inaccurate story about the place you are travelling to.

Creating Alien Environment


There are several factors to balance in creating an alien enviornment.

  • Subvert expectations: This is the most important part. Things are alien and different because they do not work or function the way we expect.
  • Obscure the Purpose: It is important to understand that today, right now, scientists are discovering things in forests that they have no idea what they are. And it's often only with a lot of research, luck, time (six months!), and investigation that we ever find out. 
  • Develop relationships and ecologies: Yes, some animals will have predator/prey relationships, but those aren't the only relationships that form. Symbiosis, animals that are necessary for mating, and bizarre inter-dependencies can all make whatever environment you are in feel alien. 
  • Generate unique traits: You are probably just resuing monster stats. Make sure that you generate unique lairs, spoors, tracks, and traces for each type of monster. 
  • Limit Monsters: Limit your monsters to less than six types in each different climate area. any more than that, and there's just too much information for the players to ever be able to unravel any of the mysteries. By limiting your monsters to four to six different kinds, you know your players will encounter them often enough to begin to understand their relationships.
  • Recall the Familiar: Even in a strange place, there will be things they will be able to understand. Having one of the monsters be "Like a cat or dog" or "hunting around like a bear" will provide both a common touchstone in the alien environment, and make the different things seem even more different. 

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On Reader Mail, The 1% Orc

Brian asks:

"What do intelligent (as in sapient) monsters do with their treasure? Where could they go to spend it, and if they don't plan on spending it then of what value is it for them to hoard it?

Is there a better way to build treasure hoards for these kinds of monsters that would seem more plausible than piles of gold and jewels or am I missing the point?"

Thanks for writing in Brian. Anyone who has a question, feel free to write me at valis at oook dot cz. I love getting mail and answering questions!

I've been entertained since I received this question!

If your monsters are wise, then they probably invest their money. I'm pretty sure the question is asking what sentient monsters do with their treasure though. 

If your monsters are intelligent in the same way humans, dwarves, and elves are, then they likely do the same thing with money that those races do -- they use it to hire labor, buy arms and food, and meet their needs. If they are a race with a culture that is intelligent, then they recognize that the money has power. If you're not particularly bright and you can't figure out a way to use the money (e.g. ogre), you would still horde it because your intelligence allows you to recognize that the money has power, even if you don't use it for anything. 

As an aside, I have spent years working with extremely low functioning people, with IQ's below 80 and GAF scores that required constant aid and supervision. Every single one has had a plan for getting wildly rich. "I'm going to move downstates and play basketball.", "I'm going to become a fameous rapper", or even "I'm going to wrestle in the WWE!". Every single one of them desired money as a primary motivator in their life. 

I really think what the question is asking about is what about intelligent creatures that are monstrous. Why would an umber hulk or an intelligent spider have money? I think that is an excellent space to inject the fantastic. Perhaps the umber hulk excretes the gold. Perhaps the spider breaks it down and uses it in the web. There are tons of fantastic and magical reasons why bizarre creatures might need or want traditional treasure hordes. 

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On Reader Mail, The Lying NPC

Ryan writes:
Image labeled for resue
"A situation arose where players found themselves in a game between two NPCs accusing each other of wrongdoing. A player asked, "What do I roll to see if one of them is lying?" I tried to further describe details about the NPC's actions so they could make a better decision. But ultimately I was wondering if I just should have identified the liar to them.
How do you handle this kind of a situation where NPCs lie to the PCs?"

First, thanks for writing in. This is a great question!

In a system like Pathfinder, resolving such a situation is based on character skill and a contested roll. Easy, but in my opinion, kind of uninteresting. You can, of course, hide the result of the roll from the player, but that goes against the idea of character empowerment that is a strong characteristic of the game. If you spend the points. . .. Also, pretty much every player will ask to sense motive, and that substantially improves the odds of success.

But what about B/X, or in Ryan's case ACKS? How to resolve the situation then?

Who's the Liar?

I would handle this like I would handle any question about future action the player character might take. I would remind the player of all the information that their character has access to. I would then talk to the player about likely consequences of choices, and then I would respond to their question with "You don't know."

Now this is assuming that the situation is ambiguous. Often the player characters have encounters and the encounter rolls end up with the opponent saying something that obviously isn't true. But since the players are receiving their information from me, and many of them are sort of in the job of hearing a lot of lies, much like police or famous actors, I just tell them "It's pretty clear he doesn't have access to a huge hoard of treasure." Adventurers are easily able to spot obvious lies.

However, if the situation is truly ambiguous, then after I make sure that the players have been explicitly told all the relevant information. Then, it's up to them to make a judgement call. That's the player skill part of the game. It's an opportunity for them to make a choice based on their interpretation of data that matters, and can be a high point of a game.

Ryan, I hope this gives you some confidence when handling situations like this in the future, and I welcome my readers to leave comments on perhaps how they might handle such a situation in a way that rewards player skill and supports player agency.

Have a reader mail question? Like to know how I'd handle a difficult or complex situation in game? Feel free to contact me on G+ at +Courtney Campbell or email campbell at oook dot cz
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On Reader Mail, Find Traps skill

A completely different Nick than yesterday writes: "Do you use a "Find Traps" skill for your thieves? Reading your materials I can't really tell. I know you favor description and discovery through interaction, so if you use it, how do you have it "interface" with that? I'm struggling with this bit myself."

How does find traps interface with player skill focused play?

This is actually a great question, and part of the answer has to do with infinite play and what you wish to spend your time doing the other part has to do with the purpose of a trap.

What is the purpose of a trap?


The purpose of a trap is to make decisions meaningful. If there is no risk from just walking around, opening chests, or exploring rooms, then those activities become flat and dull. If the only threat is monsters, then you've removed uncertainty from the game making it flatter and less interesting. Traps should make the play of the game more interesting.

How?

Traps should represent an unseen threat. Lurking in chests and doors, they are likely not visible. But in rooms and corridors, there should always be some sign of their placement. This sign should not always be obvious, but should be visible to an alert party. I've written a whole lot about how to present this.

What do we wish to spend our time doing? 


The other question becomes what do we want to actually be doing at the table? Do you want players to describe in detail how they are approaching and interacting with chests? The fact is, with any simple object like a door or chest, the ways of approaching and dealing with it are limited. It is possible to create an itemized list of activities to do when approaching a door. Depending on the type of campaign and your players this may or may not be an issue. It depends on what you want.

The secret you wish to know


So, do I use the find traps skill?

I've found that it is hard to remember to do things. My general approach, is that all room and corridor traps are openly visible, and players either handle them manually in the game or suffer the consequences, as my traps and agency series. Openly visible means that there is some descriptive clue given to their purpose. I hid wall scythe blades in jagged shadows. Bodies on the floor is an option for easy detection, a side effect of trap placement in the description is more difficult to discern from the detection. For doors and chests, if they ask, I will simply tell them if the door or chest is trapped.

They frequently don't ask.

It is apparently really really difficult to remember to do that. 

This works very well to put the focus squarely on player skill. I want to point out, that I only do this for searching for traps, not most activities, like packing, lighting torches, etc. Specifically, I don't assume players will hit in combat, a key pillar of play any more than I assume they are going to take the time to look for traps another key pillar of play. Standard D&D does not consider remembering to pack your sword as a pillar of play. There are games that do. Again, it depends on where you want to spend your time.

Most of the games I run at this point, don't even contain a search or find traps skill. The idea behind the original thief skills, was that they were semi-magical in nature. So in systems that do have a find traps skill, I generally run it as either a Danger Sense skill, or allow it to be rolled as an additional saving throw to avoid the effects of traps. The same with locks, in most campaigns - any normal lock can be opened by a thief*. It is puzzle locks, difficult vault locks, and other special tricks that Open Locks is expected to address.

*Numenhalla, my megadungeon campaign, is an exception. The focus is on dungeon exploration and locks and the environment are a large part of that. 

Hack & Slash

On Reader Mail, Bodies and Traps


Nadav Ben Dov writes

"I am wondering something about traps and tricks, following the Thursday Trick posts I really liked from your blog.

The posts, usually if not always, featured how to describe the traps' effect area as something visible the GM could describe as part of more and less cursory inspections.

But this begs the following from me: if the trap was good enough, it would leave corpses. If it wasn't there is a chance the corpses are found further inside or otherwise the place was cleaned already.

So I'm wondering: assuming such traps, is the appropriate conclusion that among the loot within are corpses of previous adventurers, if there is still loot to find?"
Short answer: Yes, usually.

Long answer: I am against the idea of rationality in dungeons.

People often misinterpret this statement to mean that 'funhouse' design is the only design. That is incorrect. What it really means is that for the purposes of actual gameplay, dungeons should make thematic sense, not literal sense.

There's this idea that every corner of every adventure should be exhaustively unearthed from 3.5. If that's the case, then you end up with this 'fridge logic' moment where you're like, "Wait, what the hell do the Owlbears drink, and how do the ogres ever make it past the Sphinx?"

But that's not what a dungeon is, see? A dungeon is what's past our realm of static steadfast sanity. It's on the other side, made of dreams, nightmares and horrors. You cross a threshold to enter and beyond, nothing remains the same.

But that doesn't mean it can't have resonance. Things can still have reasons for existing. They can still follow logic, twisted and dreamlike as though it may be. But the logic and the dungeon never ends. It can't be explored, fixed or finished.

So, really, worry less about it. Logically, there are many reasons for bodies to be gone. Monsters may come by to grab what the trap catches. Smarter monsters may loot them. The trap itself may dispose of the corpses to feed the giant entity that spawned them.

I ask myself, would a pile of bodies in this trap make it more interesting? Will it tempt the players to risk death to recover them? Will it provide some enhanced feeling of trepidation or terror?


Reader mail is a series supported by reader questions. If you think I'm full of crap, don't understand something I'm talking about, are simply curious about how I might handle a situation, or if you have any questions of your own you'd like answered, message me on Google Plus, or give me an e-mail at campbell at oook dot cz

On Reader Mail, The G+ Experience

Charles writes:

"I'm not much of a G+ user; can you recommend good resources to follow?"

This is a complicated question, and requires more than a simple comment in return.

Google Plus is a "Social Network". This is code for "A free service that is provided so that you can be exploited by a large multi-national corporation".

Since the avalanche is started, it is too late for the stones to vote.

There are many advantages to Google Plus. First, it is highly resistant to spammers, because it is an opt-in network. It's focused because circles allow you control who sees your post. The downside is, it is hard to wrap your brain around. It allows you to play tabletop role playing games online via hangouts.

A Google Plus hangout is 90% of what a face to face game is. The biggest difference are the issues with people talking over each other causing confusion. The integrated chat window goes a long way to addressing that issue. There are many factors that are superior to face to face gaming: music, sound effect, graphics, images, and map/layout tools are all trivially shared. It is a different, but equivalent experience to running games online.

Long story short: You can organize groups of people into "Circles" and each circle individually allows you to control A) which circle sees your writing and B) which posts you see!

A quick primer:

  • Anyone can see your public posts
  • You choose the list of people who can see what you write
  • You can 'notify' people by tagging them or selecting a box, which triggers a notification. This is somewhat invasive and may get you reported for spam, unless they have requested the notification. Individual users set whether they want notifications to just be a number, an e-mail, or a text message.
  • You choose which circles you can see in your 'all' stream and how much of them you see. You can read any one specific circle by simply selecting it
  • Communities are like message boards, and some are good places to expose yourself to G+ people you would like to follow. 
  • ADVICE: Do not post to multiple communities. Do not post articles with no discussion. Google plus isn't a 'marketing scheme', it's about interaction and communities. 


Who to follow:

  • If you're looking to play Old School D&D online, then the FLAILSNAILS community will allow you to role up and take a character between games. If you're looking for other kinds of games, then the G+ RPG Hangout community can put you in touch with, well, any game you want. On the front page, there's Sharknado, a mage game, Fate, Star Wars, the Judges Guild Dark Tower, and Bronze age D&D. Like, those are games you can play!
  • There are also lots of communities for specific varieties of D&D, from Labyrinth Lord to Ambitions & Avarice
  • I've written about several of the most creative people on G+ on my OSR New Wave interview series.
    • You might just pass that point by, but if I've interviewed them, then perhaps it might also be worth following them.
  • There are several notable individuals that will provide a good starting point for joining G+.
  • I chose people who post often about gaming, and are very moderate and unlikely to get into long intense discussions over issues tangentially related to gaming. These people play games and are positive and non-confrontational about gaming. +Zak Sabbath and +Jack Shear are fantastic people to follow on G+, but they are also likely to be confrontational! (Though, if you get the chance to play in a game with Zak, take it!)
  • Follow them, and then engage with their posts. Then, follow other people who follow them, and soon you'll have a great gaming circle of your own, along with regular players!
  • People who aren't actually interested in playing role playing games need not apply.
If you have any questions of your own you'd like answered, message me on Google Plus, or give me an e-mail at campbell at oook dot cz

On Reader Mail, Encounters

"I'm running a west marches style old school game. It's a hex crawl, and I've been trying to make a dynamic distribution of encounters that are highly dangerous, and encounters that are more matched to the players level (they tell me where they want to explore that week and I detail the area for them). 
I find myself creating one random monster & encounter table after another, and as I've done so I've been thinking a lot about how to determine what dangerous encounters should go where and how likely they are to be rolled from my tables when I'm designing (meaning encounters I'm creating for the adventure before the game).
So far I use about 60-70% matched and 40-30% that are much more dangerous. So far it has worked quite well.
So, my question: How do you go about monster generation for your worlds? Do you randomly generate your creatures/encounters with tables? Is there an equation you've made and follow? I'm interested to know what you think."

This is an ever evolving process.

If you wish an area to be thematic, reduce the total number of encounters. They total numbers of encounters are infrequent, and if you want them to be thematic, there must be few of them.

I highly suggest a 2d3 or 2d4 bell curve.

Use something like this and automatic contact with random encounters to give the flavor of an overland.

Encounters don't have to be with monsters, they can be events and things.

Encounters don't have to be hostile. I almost always preconstruct 'narratives' to my encounters. ("What's this? Has Hack & Slash lost his marbles?") Ha! No I haven't. What I mean is, you don't ever just meet 9 Gnolls. You meet Tark Rogkak who leads 8 Gnolls that are looking for their lost companion. Why is he lost? Well, they were looking for treasure. They found it, and their 'companion' absconded with it. (I wrote a little something to help you generate those types of encounters!)

At this point, the players can kill them like the same random encounter of 9 gnolls. If they don't, well, then, you have something else to go on. I have absolutely no preconceived ideas or goal to how the encounter should play out.

An entry should be reserved for 'wandering monsters' which is different then 'random encounters'. I discuss this point here.

These are the thoughts as I have them about encounter tables.

On Reader Mail, The Skill of the Roll

Ryan writes in,

"I do have another question though. In games without things like perception, players must skillfully decide what to spend their time investigating. This is all fine and well. However, when it comes to things like secret doors and traps why is there still a roll after the player has used both their skill and time to investigate something that ultimately is chance?"

Misunderstanding, perhaps?

This is completely understandable, if you move to classic D&D from a version with a search check. Why the very existence of this rule seems baffling!

Why is there a roll to find secret doors?

Here is the pedantic information: Old games centered around dungeons. These dungeons were vast, mostly empty, and had a very high percentage of secret doors. Often, the secret doors connected two areas that you could just walk to by going around to the outside of the room.

What was the point?

I have two answers for this: first, how secret doors were used classically; secondly, how I use them today.

Classic: Dungeons were mostly empty, filling most of a sheet of paper solid, having half a dozen or so 'special' rooms, and the contents mostly being defined as entries on a wandering monster table. Dungeons were not 'adventure sites', they were underground battlefields. In this situation you would search for secret doors for two reasons. One, to have access to mobility and control over the battlefield ("Oh shit, we flee from the trolls and run into this room and out the secret door to evade them."), and two to gain early access to other areas of the dungeon (i.e. "we've explored all we can here, but there's still probably something down in this corner, and we don't want to go through the hobgoblin camp to get there"). Secret doors also helped the Dungeon Master, by providing alternate routes for the movement of wandering monsters.

In this case, player skill wasn't used to find secret doors. It was a mechanical rule of the game that allowed the players to spend resources, to gain an advantage and solve problems in an indirect way. The resources being light, spell durations, and wandering monster risk. The skill was in decoding the map to understand where they were, and selectively using it in a way that minimized resource expenditure.

Classicly, you could use both choice and character skill to discover traps (sending victi henchmen forward, tapping with a pole, etc.) The thief's ability to detect traps was focused on things like doors, chests, or other areas where they were likely.

Modern: I create mechanisms via which secret doors are triggered. It is certainly possible for players to locate a secret door, and still not have or understand the means by which it opens. The areas, along with the secret door triggers, are designed to present a challenge for the players. Spending time looking for the secret door will just confirm that one is there, for the same cost paid in earlier games. The real challenge comes in trying to discover the trigger and how to open the door.

The person running the game must have no preconceived notion of what should or should not happen. The secret doors should always be optional (truly the entire everything in the game should be optional and player driven) and should never create a situation where nothing can continue until the passage forward is discovered. This allows the doors to have a specific solution in order to open them without it being pixel bitching.

Regarding traps, currently, if there is a trap in a room or corridor, there is always some sign of it given (if it would leave a sign, and it usually does.) As for doors and chests, if a player asks I just go ahead and tell them truthfully if it's trapped. They have to remember to ask though.

In conclusion  the secret door roll is a mechanical feature of games, much like the chances to bash down a door or the frequency of wandering monster checks. It is a game mechanism with a cost that can be activated by the players. The key feature is that it is one of the moving parts of a game, rather than a character ability, characterized by it never increasing and being tied to permanent, non-changeable, selections like race.

I think there's a large swath of games history where the issue of secret doors and traps is designed pretty incoherently. I think it works quite well in the original system, and am finding the modifications I've made to the way I run traps and secret doors working out fantastically now, but --

How it was supposed to work in 1986? Errrrr. . . 2001? Hmmm. . . .

Speaking in a generalization, those eras were characterized by searches being down to character skill. Lots of rolling, few costs for doing so. Designs were very linear, so secret doors either hid treasure or blocked the completion of the module. There were methods for addressing this (take 10, etc.) but were fairly uninteresting for the participants. At that point, the roll was the game, and the role of the player was minimized.

If you have any questions of your own you'd like answered, message me on Google Plus, or give me an e-mail at campbell at oook dot cz

On Reader Mail, Paladins

Chris writes:

"[Y]ou mentioned that you happen to love the Paladin class, and this being the first and only Paladin I've ever played with or as, I was wondering what, specifically, you loved about the paladin class, and if you have every played with or DMed for paladins that were perhaps changed up a bit from the way the rules portray them (such as how you've come up with ways to spruce up fighters, wizards, and clerics)."

Thanks for the question!

So, the root of this is that I am a terrible player. TERRIBLE. I am quickly bored, unconcerned what other people think about me, and love being the center of attention.

Clearly we can understand why I like running games, and not playing them.

Why do I like paladins?

Because good is dumb.

Seriously. What a great opportunity. I find that in addition to being able to make constant poor decisions based on absolute morality, I get to sit in judgement of everything the party says.

That said, although I am a poor player to be in a game, I always strive to not be disruptive to play, nor to intentionally frustrate the other players. Batman doesn't complain about Superman being a fascist, but then Superman isn't really ever a dick about it.

(Some notes: 1. Superman is dumb. This is a guy who gets into fistfights because he forgets he can fly and shoot lazers from his eyes. 2. Superman is a fascist, because he Superman is a radical authoritarian nationalist, it just so happens he's an american. Is he radical? He's an invulnerable alien from space that lives in the sun and punches people who don't believe in the American way. THAT SOUNDS TOTALLY RADICAL.)

Not every paladin is the same either, some are drunk, some are quiet, some are noble, but all are absolute and all are dumb. Why?

Because black and white thinking is a characteristic of unintelligent people.

Nothing, anywhere, has meaning. It's all just physical and chemical reactions. Meaning is applied by people. Because each individual has their own subjective experience of existence, it is impossible for any single event perceived by more than one person to be black or white, because every perception of that event is colored by the subjective experience of those watching it. There are shades of grey everywhere.

But righteous anger and a certainty of correctness are of great comfort. To shed that and draw clear lines is quite fun. And it leads to entertaining play!

It does not however lead to a long and quiet retirement.

As far as change-ups go, the fact that the paladin should be heavily modeled after whatever god he or she worships provides the only change I've ever used. The bevy of powers paladins have always received are just right for the type of person they are. So I always work with the Dungeon Master in advance about what type of Paladin this is going to be and go from there!

Feel free to write in with your questions! Remember to sign up for the Hack & Slash Insider, for special deals, articles and notifications of work. Or let me know on Google+ what you are interested in hearing about!

On Reader Mail, The Room Description

Ryan asks:

"3) How do you describe a room to players so they can map themselves and begin to exercise agency within a dungeon?"

Our final question from Ryan asks about describing rooms to players.

In my personal experience, having run dozens of campaigns over the last twenty-four years is that I have never ever read any piece of boxed text that wasn't ignored after the first sentence. This is my experience with hundreds of people. David Noonan and Jesse Dexter talk about that here.

Now because this is the internet, there are some contentious bastards out there who will say that boxed text is what they love. They sit back, close their eyes and it really allows them to imagine the room.

That dude is an a**hole.

Dungeons and Dragons is a social activity that involves the exploration of a fantastical space. Reading boxed text is neither social, nor exploratory, nor is listening to a lecture fantastical, even if it is about demons riding naked women to a lazer gun fight in space.

You may like boxed text. You may think it sets the 'tone' of the module or has descriptions that you would otherwise not think of. But without fail, if it is longer than two sentences, the vast majority of players will tune out. The only person who will actually be exposed to the atmosphere and tone is you, because no one else will ever hear it. The philosophical ideal of "This will provide a cool description" will be eliminated instantly when the players tune you out, because you are a dude who's job is not reading things dramatically, reading from a text you have never read before. 

I mean, unless you practiced reading aloud boxed text alone, in preparation.



When I prepare a room, I use set design to key the map so I have clearly in front of me all the immediately visible information. Then when presenting that, I focus my efforts on describing those things dramatically.

This has all the advantages of boxed text without any of the disadvantages. The items the player's can see are set apart from the items they cannot. It insures that no critical information is missed in the presentation. It presents things in a manner that is quick and easy to parse. When you present the items, you will be conversing with the players instead of reading to them.

The actual procedure involves finding out where everyone is standing and who has light sources and such. I interact with the players to determine the fictional positioning. This is negotiated*.

Then I glance down at my sheet and describe the size of the room ("This small room contains. . .") and  immediately visible objects. This usually takes only one sentence, keeping everyone engaged. As they explore ("I look at the. . .") I expand on each of the descriptions.

If there isn't anything crazy like a battle or someone pulling a lever happening, I will tell the mapper in short order the actual size of the room. Why do I do that? It is part of the assumption of the slow movement rates that they are making relatively accurate maps.

On a bad day, it consists of me listing quickly what's in a room. On a good day, it allows me to spend my time focused on presentation and maintaining interest in the conversational flow.



*Negotiated fictional positioning means that position isn't tracked closely and it isn't always clear where everyone is, so we negotiate as a group to determine the reality of where everyone is, from the stance of what is real, likely, or interesting, rather than everyone approaching it via, "what is best for me".
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