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. 

How to Read the AD&D Rules Part XV: A Surprising rule about Encounter Distance

Remember this old gimmick where, in a fit of hubris, I tried to clarify and paraphrase the AD&D rules into a more concise text? Remember how badly I failed? 

It was pretty laughable, yes, but it also helped me understand rules that I never knew that I didn't know. Unknown unknowns, if you will. Most egregiously, I completely misunderstood the whole surprise segments thing. You can read the whole dreaded affair if you like. Or not, my feelings won't be hurt. (sniff)

In classic D-Chux fashion, I'm dragging this old pony out of the glue factory to abuse it some more, because I started reading the DMG again and, a few pages on from the surprise rules, I encountered the rules on Encounter Distance. Read on if you dare, my fellow dice chuckers...[pardon the horror show antics, this post was supposed to go up before Halloween but I overslept]

Distance

As in, how far apart two parties are when they come into contact. You might think this would be obvious based on the terrain, lighting, where the DM planned for the monsters to pop up in the dungeon, etc, but the DMG leads off the discussion with this sentence:

"When encounters occur, the distance between concerned parties will be 5"-10" (d6+4) subject to the following modifying factors..."

The author then lists off the following six factors: 

1. Line of sight, 
2. Noise, 
3. Actual Area, 
4. Planned or unplanned appearance, 
5. Surprise, and 
6. Light. 

Which is to say, use your head and figure out where first contact is most reasonably going to occur.  And because even a novice dungeon-master will be able to determine where contact will occur without even thinking to consult with the rules, this entire section has never been read by anyone.

And since no one ever read this section, no one uncovered this tidbit:

"Surprise can only be a factor in close encounter situations. If either or both parties are surprised, the distance must be either 1" to 3" or it must be less as determined by the actual area modifier." DMG, some page.

Or, as a loquaciousness-deprived person might put it: 

Parties must be within 30' of each other in order for surprise to occur.

Seems like a pretty important piece of information, right? But, even though Gygax just finished writing 12 paragraphs of befuddling text about surprise, he decided to obfuscate even further this crucial piece of information by placing it in a separate, and entirely superfluous, section of the book. 

"The Telling Blow" or, How to read the AD&D rules Part VI: Combat, Surprise

Since no one wants to read a spell by spell re-cap of AD&D, I'm skipping ahead to the meat of the matter: Combat. We're now looking at the DMG folks, page 61. Huge chunks of text in full-justified paragraphs; I have as much difficulty wading through this stuff now as I did when I was 11. 

Paragraphs 1, 3, and 4 all go on about the 1 minute melee round; as long as you understand that melee rounds in AD&D are 1 minute long then you need not read them. And paragraph 2 starts out: "As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage..." so you can stop reading there if you don't need to hear that sermon again. Just like that we're at the bottom of the page where we find the first step for encounter and combat:

Surprise

1. Determine surprise: each party rolls a d6, if either or both parties roll a 1 or 2 then the party that rolls lowest is surprised. 
   

So, surprise dice are rolled and:

Party A: 6

Party B: 3

Neither party is surprised. 

 

Party A: 1

Party B: 3

Party A is surprised 

 

That seems simple enough, right? Too simple for a game called Advanced D&D so Gygax wrote 12 freaking paragraphs of obfuscation on the matter, ensuring that all but the most tenacious of rules lawyers would look elsewhere--like Basic D&D--for a simpler rule or ignore surprise rules altogether. 

Now, I can condense Gary's Compleat and Comprehensive Treatise on Inflicting Surprise on One or More Parties During an Encounter in the Strategic Fantastical Roleplaying Game of Advanced Dungeons, and/or Dragons to a couple of paragraphs for you [Edit: No I can't.], but even that will be painful to read so for those not wanting to waste another moment of their lives on this topic, rest assured that most folks just gave the surprisers 1 free round of action while the surprisee's stood/sat/lay their in stunned silence.

Diehards Only

Have we got rid of all the lightweights? Good, let's dig in:

Like I said, each party rolls a d6 for surprise. If one or both parties roll either a 1 or a 2, then the party that rolls higher is supposed to subtract the low-roller's dice roll from their own, the result is how many segments of free action they have before the surprised party can react, segments being 1/10th of a round which, as Gary has just spent 3 very lengthy paragraphs explaining, are 1 minute long.  [A segment is 6 seconds long, equal to a round in modern D&D, so you 5e kids are finally in your comfort zone]. It looks something like this:

 

Party A: 5

Party B: 1

Party B: is surprised for 5-1= 4 segments.

 

The surprisers, in this case Party A, have 4 segments to act. During each segment of surprise they can move 1/10th of their full movement rate, avoid, parley, and, yes, melee attack the crap out of your ass as if each segment was an entire round! As Gary puts it, because the surprisees are inert, the surprisers can get in "telling blows" in just a 6 second window. This gets back to all the dancing around and feinting and what have you that goes on in a 1 minute melee round.

We're not done yet though because each surprised individual modifies its time in the surprise zone based on their Dexterity. Remember attack/reaction adjustment? Attack is clear, add that to your to hit roll when attacking with missile weapons. This is where the reaction half of he equation comes in: if your party is surprised, each individual adds its dex adj. to the surprise roll for determining how long they are surprised. As an example:

Only 2 members of party B (above) have exceptional dexterities: 

Quisling the Quickling, Dex 17, +2 rx.

Schlomo the Slow-mo, Dex 4, -2 rx adj.  

• Note: because of Schlomo's egregiously low Dex, we know that he is a cleric. We can surmise from his name that he is likely a rabbi.
• Further note: it is unlikely in the extreme that anyone would willingly put a 4 on Dex because that would also give you a |3| AC penalty,* i.e., Schlomo's chainmail and shield would give him an AC of 7 instead of the typical 4. That's bad, new schoolers.
  

*When you're digging around for the "absolute value" symbol you truly appreciate what a pain in the ass descending AC is.

Quisling adds 2 to the surprise roll, which was 1, so: 1+2=3, less than 5 so he is still surprised, but only for 2 segments. And, true to his name, he uses the segments gained to sell out the rest of his compatriots before they can become un-surprised.

Schlomo on the other hand subtracts 2 from the surprise roll; he is surprised for 6 segments and is the last to understand the treachery of his erstwhile colleague.  

Missile Fire During Surprise

In the PHB discussion of surprise Uncle Gareth informs us that 

"Physical attacks during surprise are also possible on a 1 segment basis, whether the form is by weapon, projectile, or method intrinsic to the creature." 

which sure seems to imply that you can launch missiles at a rate of 1 per segment. However, by the time he wrote the DMG he must've realized that just because you can get in more telling blows when your opponent is in a state of stunned surprise doesn't mean you can crank a heavy crossbow 20 times faster.

Instead, the DMG informs us that during surprise you can launch missiles at 3 times the normal rate. Sadly, rate of fire for missiles is given in rounds not segments, so we're going to have to do some math. There are 10 segments in a round and 10 isn't divisible by 3 so the math is not going to be pretty. Stop making up excuses and get on with it DChucks:

You can launch 2 arrows from your composite short bow per round so in a surprise situation you can fire 3x2 = 6 per 10 segments which simplifies to 3 per 5, or 1 every 1.666 segments or, basically, 1 arrow every other segment. Now do the same for the rest...

If Gary didn't hate us so much he would have just made a handy table like this:

How much damage would a heavy crossbow

have to do before you would consider using one?

Did I cover everything? I'm not sure, so next time I'll run a sample surprise encounter to see how this all works in action.

Eldritch Role-Playing System: Where Defense Pools Matter

Until I wandered into my local gaming store the other day (Gary's Games in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle) I had never heard of Eldritch Role-Playing System (ERP) by Dan Cross and Randall Petras.  This surprises me somewhat because it was published by Goodman Games, a company I've been aware of for a while, at a time, 2008, when I was starting to pay attention to current RPGs.  But, alas, no one I'm aware of--admittedly, a very small crowd--has made any mention of it.  So what compelled me to buy it?  Mostly it was the price; at $19.99, it was cheaper than virtually every other gaming implement of similar size and quality.

What follows is more of an overview than a review; the difference being,  in my mind, that there won't be a lot of delving into game themes or a reflection on why the system supports one type of gaming or another; I'm just not smart enough to pull that stuff off very well.  Plus, I haven't played it.  This is just a summary of a few of the more predominant game devices and overall content.  Now let's have at it.


First Impressions:

It's a slender (96 pp.), softcover volume with cover art supplied by cut-rate rpg illustrator Peter Bradley.  In fact, combined with its mottled beige border, the artwork could easily give inattentive bookstore browsers the impression that they are holding a Castles & Crusades supplement.  I'm not a huge fan of Bradley's work, at least not in the context of the fantasy rpg genre.  His illustrations have a removed, contemplative quality better suited, I think, to a classic comics version of Wuthering Heights or some other brooding psycho-drama.  Even the wyverns tearing at the knight's armor on the C&C PHB give the impression that they have something else weighing heavily on their minds.  [Note: On the ERP cover, is that bard off to the side the Scottish James Hetfield?]

The interior art is provided by Eric Bergeron. My impression of his work is that he found a really awesome set of well-endowed action figures--BBW fans need to check out the bikini-clad ogress on page 63--photographed them against some cool backgrounds, and slapped a few Photoshop filters on 'em.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're looking for clean, bold, line drawings a la Trampier, you won't find 'em here. But this game makes no pretense at Olde Schoolatry, and Bergeron's art does an adequate job of brightening up the pages. 

To demonstrate ERP's New Schooledness, there's a character sheet in the back* that's 7 (seven!) freakin' pages long--I get the sense that despite the brevity of this tome, this is not going to be a "rules lite" game.  I see some terms that beg to be acronymized ("Active Defense Pool"), some acronyms that need some explaining ("MRV"), and 4 different kinds of experience points: Victory Pts, Role Playing Pts, Excess Pts, and Character points.  Other things gleaned from the character sheet: there are lots of skills listed--can you say skillz based system?--and there are no attributes in the Old School sense--no Str, Int, Wis, etc. [but then if you can find me a game besides D&D and its progeny that uses the Wisdom attribute/ability, I will buy you a steak dinner**].

* I also tend to read rulebooks (and magazines) from back to front. 
** Does not include travel or housing expenses. 

The index does not even fill 2 pages.  For an rpg, I think this is a bit too slight too get the job done; we'll see.

Thankfully, there is none of that tedious background/border art crap on every page that virtually every game book finds mandatory to include nowadays.  How much cheaper would these $40 rule books be if they weren't wasting so much ink on a halftone background print of a dragon's hoard plus a border etching of buxom mermaids on every g*ddamn friggin' page?  Probably only negligibly cheaper, I suppose; but in my cantankerous old guy opinion, they just add noise to the page and I refuse to spend money on such over-wrought texts.


The Basics:

You've got the standard menagerie of AD&D character races, nothing new about them.  There are 3 major "occupations"--Fighter, Rogue, and Arcanist--each occupation offering several sub-categories (11 fighter subclasses include your paladin et al. but also samurai, mystic warrior, and Calvary [sic]*) that represent a different bundle o' skills.  That's where you'll find clerics and druids, as 2 of the optional sub categories of arcanist.  Each occupation is discerned by its "basic abilities," "specializations," and "masteries" which are generally more and more refined skill sets.  For instance, Gladiators have Melee as a basic ability, Exotic Weapons as a specialization and Net as a mastery.  This linked set of abilities is, I believe, called an ability tree, and would allow the character the chance to roll 3 dice when using his net in melee.  I could be wrong about this though. 

* This is the third time in recent weeks that I've seen the word Calvary used instead of cavalry.  Just to see if they're at least consistent in their (mis)usage I checked the index: no mention of either one.  Or Golgotha.

There are no fixed attributes but, rather, all your attributes and skills are lumped into the same Universal Gaming Mechanism.   Basically, you start out with "average" abilities in everything from agility to animal husbandry with some adjustments depending on your race.  You use character points to buy-up a few abilities to better than average: "respectable," "good," "great,"  and "superb" are the superlatives of choice.  As you improve you get to roll bigger dice, starting with d4 at average  until you reach d12 at superb, which is the pinnacle of human mastery.  These dice are thrown against whatever dice the GM deems significant to determine whether you achieve success.  So if you have, say, "good" stealth ability and you're trying to be stealthy in an "easy" situation, you roll a d6 against the GM's d4.  A "moderate task" gets 2d4 and "difficult" gets 2d6 etc., until your d6 seems pretty puny.  

Character Generation As I mentioned earlier, it's a point-buy system where you pay for your race and some advanced abilities.  Unlike a lot of games, there is no price break for buying a human--they have advantages for which you must pay as well.  The process is broken into 5 steps:

1. Choose race, advantages & disadvantages, 
2. Choose abilities & occupational path;  
3. Calculate defense pools; 
4. Determine character concept, and 
5. Pick equipment.  

Pretty straight forward stuff, except number 3 definitely caught me off guard.  Is it really that vital that your "defense pools"--whatever they may be--need to be calculated before you develop your character concept?  Especially considering that over at the Goodman Games website, the tag line for their ERP line of products reads "Character concept is king!"  According to this outline, a more apt rank of nobility might be "Viscount" or "Marquise."  Seriously, if you've waited until after you've already chosen your race, abilities, and occupational path to determine your character concept then what was guiding all those decisions?  Your Passive Defense Pools?  Sheesh.

It's also not immediately obvious how one is supposed to "buy" one's occupational path and requisite abilities, specialties and masteries--you won't learn how to do this until you read the next chapter.  Fortunately, there's a narrative of a sample character creation session provided in sidebar format that offers enough guidance to allow a crafty reader to hack his way through the wilderness.  This appears to be the major flaw of this book, however: again and again the  information needed to do what is being discussed has not been covered in the text, forcing the reader to flip ahead to find a useful example or table or flow chart (yes, they use flow charts) to provide edification.  And despite the prevalence of these tables and flow charts, I have yet to find a piece of text that references them.  [If Goodman Games is looking for a technical editor--and they should be if this book is at all indicative--I could definitely set them up--TR]

Combat is all about mitigating threat points with your defense pools.  What the eph does that mean, you ask?  Good question.  Basically, you roll a bunch of dice--the number and size of which are dependent on your level of mastery of whatever applicable combat abilities you possess--to determine your "Threat Points."  Don't call it "damage" or the authors will come to your house and inflict massive Potential Harm* on your ass--which the defending character then "mitigates" by throwing around his own action points and dice rolls: evading pts, parrying pts, armor pts, talking pts, needle pts, whatever.  I believe "hit points" are also mentioned in here somewhere, but they don't mean what you think.  Unmitigated threat points are deducted from the defender's "toughness" score.

* Yes, this is another term used by the authors.  Good luck discerning its significance.

I think I've aptly demonstrated that this is not a 0 to 60 in 30 minutes kind of game--even for seasoned gamers.  Again, I don't believe this to be an inherently unappealing aspect of the game, but it is definitely something to consider if you have impatient players to contend with.

Magic there are 4 sources of power: mystic (normal wizardry), supernatural (summoners; clerics also live here), primordial (druids and elementalists), and psychogenic (psionics).  You use spell points to cast spells, you're better at casting those within your specialty than others, they do stuff.  At this point I'm still suffering from fatigue from the combat section, give me a few minutes to rest my medulla oblongata...

The spell descriptions are provided in the appendix section titled "Sample Spells" which leads me to believe that players and/or GMs are largely expected/encouraged to devise their own magicalations.  Spell descriptions get a 6 item "stat" block that offers you such scintillating info as the source, school, effect, manifestation, range and aspect--all given in analog form; no numbers.  The text underneath is often even more terse; Heal spell reads thusly: "This spell mends wounds."  There are virtually no references to dice rolls or numbers of any sort for that matter; things like range and area of effect are covered by a universal formula involving your ability with the spell ("average," "respectable," what have you) and some multiplier, while the effect of your spells is gauged using the "Master Effects list," which is presumably located somewhere in the Magic section.  Back to the index: none of the following terms are anywhere to be found: master effects list, magic, effect, list.  I hate to say I told you so...  After some digging around in the magic chapter I find that there is, in fact, a list under the heading "Major Effects Descriptions" (pg. 44) that I believe is the intended target of this reference.  That comment I made about a technical editor becomes more and more pertinent, eh?

Misc.  Experience is based on earning Victory Points--by surviving dangerous situations--and Role-playing Points--doled out for playing to your character concept.  Accumulate enough of both types of points and you raise level, which grants you more character points to spend on improving your character.  Nothing outlandish here, right?

There's also a campaign setting in the appendices, though "campaign concept" is really a better term for it.  There's no map or descriptions of geo-political entities or other things one might expect in a campaign setting.  Rather, what they describe is a world where 2 types of lands exist: settled an unsettled.  Settled lands are those where normal laws of science are followed; grass is green, if you open your bathroom door you will find your bathroom, that sort of stuff.  Unsettled lands, however, are some sort of dreamy alterna-reality where the environs are defined by some concept or emotion and proximity is not based on physical distance but rather conceptual propinquity.  For instance, an unsettled land whose theme is love might be rosy, warm, and comforting--though love can also be tumultuous, I suppose.  Traveling from this land of love, one might pass through the lands of cute, friendly, cordial and various other shades of affection before reaching the land of hate.  Once you get to Hateland you'll likely find a bunker full of Nazis next to an Al Quaeda camp which is directly adjacent to Westboro Baptist Church. An interesting concept, but it belies the rather conservative character race selection.  I would think a game with such a trippy setting would allow for a more customizable character race development system, which only leads me to believe that the authors didn't really have such a setting in mind when they crafted the rules.

Closing remarks (wherein I might give my opinion on something):

Overall, I'm pretty intrigued by this game.  I like the rolling-my-bag-o'-dice-against-yours approach to conflict resolution, though I could see that it would take some practice to become fluent in the numerous branches of the "ability trees" and their influence on various actions.  And I like the notion of the 3 realms of adventuring abilities: combat, stealth & magic. I'm always hoping that some OSR retro-cloner will make a game that removes clerics as a class in favor of a system like this, even though this would immediately disqualify such an entry as an Aulde Skewle game.  I'm also a fan of bringing a character to the table that you have invested some sort of concept into, and I think point buying systems generally facilitate this kind of character conceptualization in a way that random generation does not.  ERP also has the advantage that, unlike GURPS and similar point-buy systems, one is not forced to buy a bunch of quantified disadvantages in order to avoid complete mediocrity.  That said, the act of making up a new character without any element of randomness has been scientifically proven to be less fun (1); so there's that to consider.


From the author's afterword: "this game is not 'rules light.' [agreed--TR] Such is not the aim of our design.  Rather... ERP seeks to be Rules Transparent."  Despite this load of gobbledy-gookery, I commend the game-smiths for putting together a system that seems workable, original,* and intriguing.  They could definitely have used some help making the rules more reader-friendly but, overall, I think they're onto something.  That said, will I ever convince anyone to spend their precious few gaming hours on this?  Magic 8-ball says: "Outlook not so good."**


* More knowledgeable gamers will likely be able to trace ERP's antecedents better than I.  Bear in mind that I did spend ~20 years frozen in a glacier.
**Things I just found out: the magic 8 ball has a 20 sider in it. 20-siders are called icosahedrons.

(1) Unfrozen Caveman Dice-chucker, 2010. Building characters on a budget: Analysis of character generation processes of the "Olde" and "Nieuw" schools.  An as-yet un-posted blog dissertation