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 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.