Classic Railroad Adventuring: How to Roll Dice on a Train

After many days in the wilderness, hounded relentlessly by the vociferous demons of Blogger OCD, I came across a railroad track and managed to hop on a passing freight train. I shared a boxcar with a couple of old school, Depression-era hobos; they showed me how to make a proper bindle and I took them through V. of Hommlet. I didn't actually bring a copy of the modge when I fled my home so I had to run it from memory; I'm pretty sure I got all the encounters right--which just means that I am a nutjob.

This all came about because the hobos--am I going to get in trouble for calling them that?--saw my collection of D&D books. One of the dudes apparently follows the BX Blackrazor blog because he mentioned JB's post on how he runs AD&D combat. He asked if I followed similar rules. I started to explain my house'd version but, eyeing my collection of hand-carved cedar dice, they asked if we could just play. 

Anyway, doing this forced me to codify my own AD&D combat rules which I now present to you, bored reader:

Surprise party

In a post a couple years back I famously, and rather embarrassingly, revealed my deep-seeded ignorance of the AD&D surprise rules. But you know what, up yers cuz' I like my version better. Each side rolls for surprise; if one side rolls a 1 or 2 (usual indicators of surprise) then subtract the die roll from the other side's die roll, this indicates how many segments they are surprised. A 0 result equals mutual surprise--nobody does anything for zero segments--a negative result indicates the other side is the only one experiencing surprise. Except I'm capping the surprise party at 3 segments like the table on page 103 of the PHB misleadingly hints, because otherwise there is the potential of up to 5 segments of surprise and that seems a bit extreme.  

Also, I'm eliminating the 30' surprise limit on the grounds that you could have a situation where a party enters a 40' x 40' goblin barracks and achieves surprise on all the goblins within 30' but the ones along the far wall are not surprised. You would be rolling initiative against folks who are 40 feet away while all the nearby schmucks stand like pawns on a chessboard. 

Initiative

Standard d6 for each side, no Dex bonus.

In case of a tie, whoever rolls higher on their melee attack roll (raw d20 before bonuses) gets in the first telling blow. If the d20 rolls are equal, then the strikes are truly simultaneous. This should only matter if one of the combatants lays down a death blow on the other.

Movement before melee

It always struck me as a tad preposterous that, in a one minute melee round, you could only move ten feet--not quite 3.5 strides for most humans--and still have enough time to engage in melee. Back in the day we house-ruled that you could move up to half of your move and still roll your 20-sider. It served us well as kids and I'm sticking with it as an old man.  

Multiple attacks

You've got three attacks per round? They all happen at the same time; before your opponent if you win initiative, after if you lose. I could make the effort to internalize the variables like other, more practiced DMs might, but I'm not interested enough to bother.

In the case of an initiative tie, those attack rolls which beat the opponent's hit first.  

Missile Fire Rate

Unlike multiple melee attacks, I do feel like missile fire rate is worth parsing out because you have to take time to reload. Generally, darts take at least three segs to reload and aim, arrows and daggers take four segments at a minimum; everything else goes off with the regular initiative roll. 

 

Exception: if you spent your last round, or part thereof, preparing to launch you can go during the first segment, or any segment thereafter. 

Giants hurling boulders 

AD&D rules say that Dex does not apply to hurled boulders. I'm going to commit some blasphemy here and say that Gygax got this exactly wrong. I don't care what kind of armor you're wearing, you get hit by a massive boulder, you're crushed. Your best chance of avoiding damage is to not get hit. Therefore, use only Dex and magic bonuses to determine AC from boulder attacks, e.g. Wismodolum the Gnome fighter/illusionist has a 16 Dex and +2 chain mail. Wismo gets to use the +2 bonus but not the chainmail armor value; so AC is 8, plus 2 more for dex = AC 6. Giants are also -4 to hit gnomes so that little bastard effectively has an AC of 2 vs Giant-tossed boulders. 

 

Anyway, we made it through the moathouse and the Lareth encounter before getting chased off the train somewhere near Tierra del Fuego. 

On the run

I've taken shelter for the night in a cave on the lee side of a mountain ridge. The wind and rain are howling outside, not even the Demons of Blogger OCD could make any progress in this weather. Or at least that's my hope.

This respite gives me a chance to take stock of my situation. Before I fled my home I managed to grab my pack and fill it with all the essentials for a nerd on the run: 

✔ Charger--hopefully I'll be able to find an outlet

✔ Bedroll--obvee 

✔ Utility knife--essential for carving dice from the heartwood of a fallen cedar tree

✔ AD&D DMG & PHB--I should be able to cobble together a decent AD&D campaign

✔ Halberd--a good pole arm is always handy in the wild

✔ Collected works of Graham Greene--been meaning to get to these for years, this could be my chance

Beyond that, I've got a can opener, the Marvel Superheroes box set, DCC Classics core rules, the Castles & Crusades books, 12 packets of Ramen noodles, Shadowdark, Mothership, GURPS, a sack of potatoes, Cyberpunk, ICRPG, Tooth brush, Mork Borg, a few dozen issues of Dragon magazine and a Car Wars battle mat. 

Lest you think me an entirely impractical traveler, I did also bring a book on cheese making. I've started making a wheel of parmesan.

I'm running out of juice on my phone I'll send an update once if I ever get back to civilization. 

Fuuuuuuu...

 

ck. I blew it. I had a crummy filler post mostly ready to go and everything. All I had to do was hit the ol' "publish" button at some point before midnight yesterday and I would have secured the new year against the dark forces that are now hunting me down. I can hear their baleful call in the distance. They're getting closer. I have to keep moving. 

I could have been sitting at home, enjoying the company of my family, my dog at my side, in front of the warm glow of the television. Instead, I'm on the run in this cold wintry landscape, pursued by demons intent on my demise. 

If only I'd managed that sixth post for the year 2025.

How to Play AD&D Part XVII: Hirelings--Sages

Something weird was going on in Gary's campaign that compelled him to write 20 paragraphs of rules for running sages in AD&D. 

First off we have tables for determining how much knowledge your local sage has. Briefly, each sage has a major field of knowledge, say Humanoids & Giantkind. Within this major field, a sage will have 2-4 Special categories--rolled on a random table of course. So your H&G major could have a specialization in the biology and languages of Humanoids and giants.   

We also learn that Sages require significant space: a useful sage must have living quarters, a library, workroom, and a study, each room to be at least 200 sf. So 800 sf at the minimum. Not terribly huge, but why must every sage have a separate study and library? And what the heck goes on in a history major's "workroom"? More importantly, why do we care? We just wanted to find out if it's true that orcs have forked penises, what do we care how big the sage's house is? Stick with me, Gary has a reason.

Next we learn about the characteristics of a sage: for instance sages roll 1d8 for their STR and add 7, which means their range is 8-15, which is actually stronger than the norm. Surprising given the sedentary nature of their labors.  They also have exceptionally high Int--makes sense--and Wis--makes less sense--but shit Con and Cha--also makes sense I suppose if we're going to generalize and stereotype, 70s style. 

They also have access to spells up to levels 3-6; not bad considering they are not actually members of a spell casting class. Gygax equates certain fields to certain class of spells--Nature studying sages would have druid spells, supernatural studies indicate MUs, and experts on the physical universe and/or deviant sex would have clerical spells. 

Also, sages have 8d4 hit points. Not bad.   

There are also rules for when PCs hire sages as employees--as opposed to just asking for a consultation. Remember those space requirements mentioned a few paragraphs ago? This is where they come into play: as an employer, you are now required to provide the sage with adequate space to ply its craft. 

This raises the question of who the heck was hiring sages as permanent employees? I honestly can't fathom a reason why anyone would want to do this. Well, it wasn't spell casters because only fighters, rangers, paladins, thieves, and assassins may hire a sage as an employee. Apparently the Brotherhood of Sages (an actual thing) won't allow them to take a permanent gig with a wizard. 

Further, sages will only accept permanent employment offers that are lifelong! You can't just hire a sage for a year or two or ten; once you hire a smarty-pants know-it-all sage, they're on your payroll until they kick off this mortal coil. How many sages with this arrangement end up getting murdered by their patron once they are no longer needed?

Consulting with a sage, however, is open to anyone, spell caster or not. However, Sage-work is a tiring business--sages require 1 day of relaxing and recuperating for every 3 days spent answering a question. And such employment cannot last more than a week or the sage will then be unable to answer any further questions for at least one month!  How the heck did these chumps get through grad school?

All this tells us that finding expert advice was such a valuable commodity in Old Man Gygax's campaigns back in the day that he felt the need to create elaborate rules for sages dispensing knowledge. But you know what else this tells us? It tells us that somebody in Lake Geneva was gaining such an undue advantage from these sage rules and Gygax had to shut that crap down!

 

Another Hommlet Podcast

A Hommcast? Anyway, the latest is from the folks over at Mighty Deeds, which is, I believe, a DCC actual play podcast. Season 3 of which sees our heroes venturing into Hommleton. They continue on to the Temple of Ephemeral Edicts, but they spend about 16 episodes in the village/moathouse.

Strangely, even though they're using DCC rules--published by Goodman Games--they seem to be using the 4e Version of Hommlet, not the Goodman Games reprint. Probably because they didn't want to take a out a second mortgage to get the Goodman Games tomes. But the DM--or whatever they're called in DCC--keeps dissing Uncle Gary's flavor text even though the text he is reading is often not from the original T1. 

Linked here:

Mighty Deeds: Hommlet podcast 

Happy St. Cuthbert's Day!

Today is the saint's day of the original cuddy, St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel! Although the real world Cuthbert seems not to have used a cudgel at all; in this photo of one of his many miracles, he is clearly armed with a sword. If you find yourself near Hommlet today, swing by for the festivities.

St. Cuddy invents the 2x4.

 

Let the players play! MWFs in old time modules

I have a longstanding beef with modules that have some rule written into them that forbids the players from learning important information or performing certain actions that they might otherwise reasonably have a chance of learning/doing. I call that a Module Writers Fiat (MWF). Did Sir Gary Gygaxalot ever include one in his modules? Not that I'm aware of, but here are some old timey modges that did incorporate MWFs:

A1--Slave Pits of the Undercity 

There is an MWF proclaiming that the PCs are not allowed to figure out how to operate the firewagon in the courtyard of the slaver temple. Killjoy.

A3--Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords

The informants in Suderheim that dole out cryptic clues for finding the entrance to the slaver lair will not provide any further assistance beyond repeating their single line of dialog, even though it would certainly help the cause if they would just say "Go to the White Knight Tavern on the Bowery at 4th Street and ask for Phebe."

L1--Secret of Bone Hill

Tales from the rumor table are
only known by NPCs of Level, so the regular townsfolk will have no information to provide even though many of the rumors on the list are pretty prosaic and seem like exactly the kind of gossip you might catch from chatting with the locals at the tavern. 

N1--Against the Cult of the Reptile God

The elves hired by the mayor are not allowed to help the PCs, instead insisting on working alone to stop the Cult. There's no way that two low-level elves are going to do jack squat against the cult on their own. It's not like two freakin' elves are going to tip the balance of power too far in the party's favor if that's the MW's concern--which it obviously wasn't since there is a 7th level MU in town who the PCs are expected to befriend if they want any chance of succeeding at this modge. 

X3--Curse of Xanathon  

This turkey has at least two MWFs. 1) Similar to A3 above, once they've dropped their cryptic clues, neither the dwarf nor the High Priest/Beggar will elaborate on their knowledge regarding the goings on at the Ducal Barracks, even though getting the PCs to investigate the barracks is absolutely essential to the continued play of the module. 2) PCs are not allowed to find the secret door to Xanathon's lab until after they return from the mountains with his soul in a jar. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there were three or four more MWFs to be found in this one.

U1--Super Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

PCs are not allowed to find out why the Persons of Lizardliness are on the smugglers ship at the end of the module, and for good reason: that knowledge would decrease sales of the sequel module!

Interestingly, the sequel in question--U2 Diabolical Danger at Dunwater--does not have an MWF preventing PCs from entering the Lizard Lair through the front door even though this could immediately upend the adventure. Presumably this is because you've already bought the modge; whether you actually play it or not is irrelevant. 

What U2 has instead is a practical design feature making the front entrance unlikely to be used: you have to swim to use it. No second level party is going to want to swim their way into a cave full of lizardmen. Or women. Practical Design Features (PDFs?) are always a better choice than MWFs.