Strange as it may seem, this post seems to have developed some legs. It is the second-highest rated post on this blog, even though I wrote it only this Friday.
It probably surprises some readers that I do feel extremely positive about the game and the way people want to play it - without the infighting and squabbling over who gets how much treasure and who's character is most powerful. For all the carping that mires down the bulletin boards, I have grown to believe that the backbone of the community has little or nothing to do with the internet, the release of new editions or the WOTC. The community has always grown and sustained itself by word of mouth between friends.
Last week-end I had a new player, a late-twenties something fellow who came to help me fill up my wood supply (it always seems to run out mid-winter, no matter how much I get) and stayed to play. He's heard about my campaign for years and the word finally got under his skin. I'm happy to say he dove right in, began innovating almost immediately, became very expressive throughout the session and ended by saying that he had been legitimately 'scared' for his character's survival - though to be honest, from my perspective, he was in relatively little real danger. I was glad to learn I had made his skin crawl.
For every kid who stumbles across role-play online or at the store, then buys it to see what it is, I believe there are thousands who are introduced by we who have gone before. Most of us did not discover the game from the store shelf but from friends. Most of us can tell the story of how we sat down at the table for the first time and how we were 'baptized.' Some of those stories are bad, but even the worst have a soft, creamy centre of goodness in them, as we learned at the bare minimum that we secretly loved the game.
This speaks to whatever that first game was - what genre, what edition, what the spirit of the campaign was, what the other players believed and so on - being the 'default' for our experience in every other game and with every other group we'll ever meet. The longer we played in that first campaign, the more effect it has on us now - as we either try to scour it out of our consciousness or we embrace those first principles among the people we play with today.
It is why I could never comfortably embrace a later edition than the one I play. Hell, just consider that I had thousands of hours invested in AD&D before 2nd Edition was released; and many more by the time 3rd Edition came along. Of course I'm prejudiced. I've rebuilt the interior structure of my campaign continuously all this time to produce the effect that I want, to make new players feel their hair prickle as I describe the canyon where there are three caves, then the interiors of each, adding phrases and descriptions to produce an emotional response.
How is a new edition going to improve that? Is it going to give me a different way to describe a dry, deserted monastery, where the sun blazing into the canyon glistens upon the insects darting or drifting upwards from the canyon floor? Will a new edition help describe the stone-carved furniture or the rubble where the ceiling has given way from an earthquake decades ago, or the cold, fish-like smell emerging from this single dank hole where stairs lead down? Will it help if I have to toss aside millions of times I've rolled a single die to determine if a character is surprised in order to look up another die or system or method to determine if a character is surprised? Is that the sort of thing that really matters in the moment the character's torch flickers and goes out?
For someone who has come to the game last week, it does not matter what system I play. For the noob, any system will do because it will be the first system they know. Once they play that system, they'll grow comfortable with it and pursue it - and perhaps if they become engrossed in role-play, they'll seek out other games that will play with other systems.
If you've played for only a few years, changing a system is no big deal; it's no worse than changing your brand of smart phone or moving to another climate or culture. You adapt. You grow familiar with the change and you may even adopt it as your preferred change . . . but you'll always be able to go back and be comfortable where you started.
Should the day come when you start to run your own campaign - and you stick with it - you'll find yourself introducing new players to your preferred system. You'll be the DM they remember first playing with; yours will be the idiosyncracies they'll carry forward to other campaigns. It won't matter to them for some time what system you play - because for them, your system will be THE system. Like apprentices, they'll treat you as the master they will forever embrace or who they will someday have to overcome in order to grow.
It never has mattered that I play my system, even today. DMs are rare, that's true enough - so that probably has something to do with players putting aside their scruples if it means being able to play. But as hard as it has sometimes been to explain or win over readers about my game or my philosophy, it has been surprisingly easy to build campaigns my way. I start with two people, who talk about the world to their friends, who express a desire to play and so it goes.
I read posts all the time about people who are starting a new campaign with a new system or a new world that will behave in such and such a fashion, but I see very few forensic discussions of the old campaign and why it failed. Those that I do see blame the players, the system, the idea or the ever-annoying realities of time and space. An explanation will usually go, "The world wasn't good enough."
Very, very rarely does a DM say, "I wasn't good enough."
Let me pass along a secret. Imagine that every player at your table is playing the game for the first time. And you want to make a good impression. You want them to carry that first experience with them all their lives. You want that experience to be so positive that it rocks them to their core.
If you expect this to happen, you will have to be special. You will have to dig down into your bag of tricks and pull out something good. If you haven't got anything good, you will have to pull out whatever you have and polish it with all the imagination and intensity you can muster. You'll have to be at your best. You'll have to be in great form.
Every time you run.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
The Gap Beneath First Level
Yesterday's post provides the groundwork for solving two questions that have nagged at me since I began with AD&D - how does an non-player character upgrade from ordinary person to 'man-at-arms' and how does a man-at-arms upgrade to a 1st level fighter?
It's no wonder that later editions did their best to gut the structure put blithely in place back in '79. Let me recount for those of you who have long since forgotten how it used to be. These are all considered zero level:
It's no wonder that later editions did their best to gut the structure put blithely in place back in '79. Let me recount for those of you who have long since forgotten how it used to be. These are all considered zero level:
- Sedentary female, 1-3 hp. I assume this describes the average princess.
- Sedentary male, 1-4 hp.
- Active female, 1-4 hp. In other words, a woman who participates will take as much damage as a male that sits on his ass. Her attack die is at least one better.
- Active male, 2-5 hp.
- Laboring female, 2-5 hp. Says right on the page that a carpenter does not labour as hard as a farmer.
- Laboring male, 2-7 hp.
- Man-at-arms (regular soldier), 4-7 hp.
The man-at-arms reference is from p. 30; the rest from p. 88. The numbers given are supposed to fit into a system where monsters with hit die are neither 'zero-level' or 'levelled' . . . because that makes everything as clear as mud. Let me, however, make these additions:
- One hit die monster, 1-8 hp.
- Human bandit, 1-6 hp. (from the Monster Manual)
- First level mage/illusionist, 1-4 hp.
- First level thief/assassin, 1-6 hp,
- First level cleric/druid, 1-8 hp.
- First level fighter/paladin, 1-10 hp.
Those are the traditional numbers. If played exactly as written, 30% of first level fighters will have less hit points than a regular soldier. The average mage has less hp than an active male - mages aren't active? Do they think those spells are easy to cast? And what the fuck is that bandit number? A piece of flotsam that got ignored when the DMG was written (the MM was published two years earlier).
The numbers make no sense . . . yet I admit, I stuck with them for twenty-eight years. I am nothing if not stubborn. I stuck with them because most of the details could be glossed over, because I gave leveled characters the benefit of rolling in the upper half of their range, because I ignored the numbers of ordinary citizens and because I turned a blind eye to the mess, futzing with the numbers during the game in order to produce representations I could live with. I did it without thinking because I had begun doing it back in 1980, the way everyone did it because we had to. I didn't fix the mess until, with age, I began feeling that futzing around during play was wasting my time and annoying me.
I had to get rid of that zero-level bullshit. There is no such thing in my present world. Creatures, regardless of race of form, have hit dice, period. The number of hit points vary, so that a sprite can still have 1d4 hp while an orc has 1d8 hp, due to their mass, but their hit die remains the same. Additional hit points for levelled training is universal. I do not care if you're a kobald, a hobgoblin or a hill giant - if the creature is a 1st level thief, it adds 1d6 hp. It does not add more because you're bigger - training is training.
Up until recently, however, I was still stuck with this common citizen versus regular soldier problem. Increasing the number of hit points for the latter was easy; as I wrote yesterday, combat experience could logically increase an individual's overall hit points. But since it's never been explained how the training/experience/upgrade from Frick the Farmer to Frick the 1st level Fighter is accomplished, it's remained something glossed over and futzed with during my campaign.
This is something that matters to the players. They pick up a girl in an adventure, they decide they like her and they want her attributes. A sweet roll turns up and the party adopts her, deciding she should have a sword and some armor. She hasn't done any fighting before, but the die roll indicates she's game so she joins the party as a follower. She holds a torch in the dungeons, binds a few wounds, fetching bottles of holy water and flasks of oil from a backpack. A couple goblins corner her in a big fight and she manages to kill both of them, even though she's only got 5 hit points and a THACO of 21. Now the party really likes her. Her morale improves and she continues to be lucky. When the party speaks of Jonida, it is with great affection - and they want to know how Jonida can become 1st level.
Good question.
I consider it a very good thing that my online players (from the campaign that seems like it must be dead) browbeat me into sage training for fighters, thieves, assassins, monks and bards, because creating a knowledge study called 'Training' is an ingenious way to solve the problem. It frees the whole process from the eternal straight-jacket of character level (there are far too many aspects of the game that have been restrained by that one mechanic). An individual accumulates knowledge in teaching others to be soldiers, in turn to be fighters - without needing to a dazzlingly high level.
Moreover, the knowledge eliminates the need for another mechanic intended to keep it rare and difficult to obtain - the mechanic of money. 1,500 g.p. per level per week? Page 86 is easily the most inept, absurd, mean-spirited, clumsy page that has ever been included in a game manual. I cannot stress that enough. Consider Numbskull Gygax's system for punishing players that do not play their characters appropriately, by increasing the number of weeks of training a character must spend money on in order to improve to the next level:
"Clerics who refuse to help or heal or do not remain faithful to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in crucial situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, 'cautious' character who do not pull their own weight - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating."
I did not add the caps at the end - those are there to truly emphasize the disgust Gygax the Hardhead feels about mages who show bravery or thieves that fail to act like moneygrubbing worms, clerics who are not slaves to the party or fighters who cautiously consider the odds before acting as everyone's shield. Punish them! Punish those fuckers for not obeying the Default Principles of Petty Play!
Sigh. But I digress.
One last aside, though. I'd love a psychiatrist with experience at the game to take those megalomaniac I-will-tell-others-how-to-play-this-game paragraphs apart and put together an evaluation of the Great God EGG. What a miserable, mewling muck-fucker he must have been. But of course, I'm no Wayne or Garth who got to meet him, crying that I'm not worthy.
Where was I? Oh, yes, training.
I see training - particular combat training - as dirt cheap. Most soldiers are going to get it in the field of battle, in actual combat, being worthy of their salt by living. Many cultures, however, did exercise combatants, teaching them weapons, traditions, ideals, improving their morale for the confrontations they would face. Mercenaries and new conscripts were never front line soldiers because they would break early in battle. Better to build a dojo, a daily routine of practice and guidance mixed with meditation and festivity. The party can raise their charge Jonida from 5 hp to 7 hp, improve her morale further and ready her for becoming 1st level.
Which means that first level fighter cannot have 1-10 hp. No one would take the time to drill a conscript with 1 BU (see previous post) for weeks in order to improve that individual's hit points not-at-all! Then to give them more training or time or effort to see that they become a fighter of the first rank? Ridiculous.
I'm going to leave this post here. I'll be applying myself to fighter sage abilities as soon as I finish the druid - which looks like it will take another 3 weeks. I'm making good progress.
I'd like to know - is the problem considered at all in later editions, 3.5, 4e or 5e? I really don't have any idea. Do those editions even have zero-level or non-level characters?
Monday, January 12, 2015
BU to HP
Part I
I've been building a theory over the past few weeks about hit points. It is a sensitive subject, something people seem to get upset about. However, I find as I develop and expand my game design, as a mechanic hit points tend to be somewhat mercurial, making it difficult to express to my players, in terms they can understand, how hit points work and what is happening when hit points are increased.
This post hopes to build a framework for these things - but I warn the reader, I'm going to discuss an idea that the average DM doesn't care about, has not or cannot conceive of, falling clearly under the heading of 'not fun.' I'm going to take hit points apart in a manner more detailed than what most of you would ever consider. This post is also going to be too long . . . so feel free to tune out now.
The term 'hit points' is vague. I think it's far too familiar to for an initial deconstruction, so at the beginning of this post I'm going to avoid that reference. Instead, I'd like to discuss the pure biological/physical construction of the body using a different measurement, biological units (BU). These are meant to describe characteristics of origin, growth, reproduction and structure, relative to maintenance of the body and in no way affected by the skill of the body's user. How the body is used, therefore, is not inherent in the number of BU the body has - only the body's capacity for sustaining and surviving damage, however that damage may occur.
I propose that an average 150 lb. to 210 lb. human body in top condition - in the best of health, at the point where physical shape and fitness are at their peak - would have a set number of BU. Keep in mind that we are speaking of a body that has not trained, an activity that would suggest the acquisition of a skill. I am merely speaking of a full-grown body lacking ailments or physical disabilities, that has been properly nourished and kept in a state of readiness to perform mechanical work (as physics defines the term).
Let's establish that number as a total of 12 BU, understanding that this number would indicate a body at the height of its status, so that the removal of all the body's BU would mean death.
Just to be weird, however, suppose that instead of rating 'death' as occurring at 0 BU, we establish the bottom of the scale at -3 BU. Believe me, mathematics doesn't care where we start counting. We can therefore use the balance of BU on either side of the number zero as an easy way to keep account of what is happening to the body as BU is removed by damage. Thus the figure below indicates the spread of BU between -3 and 8:
Feel free to count the columns. As we move off the left end of the scale, death occurs (at -4 BU). Alternatively, it is impossible to move above the right end of the scale. It is not possible to be more alive than alive. Therefore, 8 BU is the maximum number of BU that a human of such-and-such a mass can possess. Remember, BU are not hit points!
The benefit of beginning the scale at -3 is how this allows us to divide vitality into three categories: a) illness, in which the body's BU is less than zero; b) vigorous, in which the body's BU is above zero; and c) sapped, or exhausted, in which the body's BU is equal to zero. Sapped does not indicate that the body is ailing, only that it has reached the point where the body is strained. Further effort is possible, but it would probably result in the body becoming ill.
Glancing at the left end of the scale, we can judge the medical state of the body in three levels: critical (-3), serious (-2) and subdued (-1). A critical condition, where 1 BU separates the body from death, could be described as intense weakness, an inability to rise, tend to one's self, drifting in and out of consciousness (more out than in) and probability of not being fully aware when awake. A serious condition could be described as moderate weakness, some mobility but requiring assistance and periods of lucidity separated by long periods of sleep (or fitful hours of sleep spread throughout the 24 hour day). Finally, a subdued condition would require plenty of bedrest and considerably reduced energy, but the ability to attend to one's self.
Looking at the vigorous end of the chart, it is presumed that, in all but the chronically ill, a healthy body will have a positive number of BUs. This does not mean that every body would be vital enough to possess 8 BUs above zero! The number of actual BUs possessed must depend upon the condition in which the body is kept, complimented by the condition the body possessed at birth. We can, if we like, extrapolate the 8 points of BU above zero as a composite of different elements that combine to form vitality.
I propose the following:
I've been building a theory over the past few weeks about hit points. It is a sensitive subject, something people seem to get upset about. However, I find as I develop and expand my game design, as a mechanic hit points tend to be somewhat mercurial, making it difficult to express to my players, in terms they can understand, how hit points work and what is happening when hit points are increased.
This post hopes to build a framework for these things - but I warn the reader, I'm going to discuss an idea that the average DM doesn't care about, has not or cannot conceive of, falling clearly under the heading of 'not fun.' I'm going to take hit points apart in a manner more detailed than what most of you would ever consider. This post is also going to be too long . . . so feel free to tune out now.
The term 'hit points' is vague. I think it's far too familiar to for an initial deconstruction, so at the beginning of this post I'm going to avoid that reference. Instead, I'd like to discuss the pure biological/physical construction of the body using a different measurement, biological units (BU). These are meant to describe characteristics of origin, growth, reproduction and structure, relative to maintenance of the body and in no way affected by the skill of the body's user. How the body is used, therefore, is not inherent in the number of BU the body has - only the body's capacity for sustaining and surviving damage, however that damage may occur.
I propose that an average 150 lb. to 210 lb. human body in top condition - in the best of health, at the point where physical shape and fitness are at their peak - would have a set number of BU. Keep in mind that we are speaking of a body that has not trained, an activity that would suggest the acquisition of a skill. I am merely speaking of a full-grown body lacking ailments or physical disabilities, that has been properly nourished and kept in a state of readiness to perform mechanical work (as physics defines the term).
Let's establish that number as a total of 12 BU, understanding that this number would indicate a body at the height of its status, so that the removal of all the body's BU would mean death.
Just to be weird, however, suppose that instead of rating 'death' as occurring at 0 BU, we establish the bottom of the scale at -3 BU. Believe me, mathematics doesn't care where we start counting. We can therefore use the balance of BU on either side of the number zero as an easy way to keep account of what is happening to the body as BU is removed by damage. Thus the figure below indicates the spread of BU between -3 and 8:
Feel free to count the columns. As we move off the left end of the scale, death occurs (at -4 BU). Alternatively, it is impossible to move above the right end of the scale. It is not possible to be more alive than alive. Therefore, 8 BU is the maximum number of BU that a human of such-and-such a mass can possess. Remember, BU are not hit points!
The benefit of beginning the scale at -3 is how this allows us to divide vitality into three categories: a) illness, in which the body's BU is less than zero; b) vigorous, in which the body's BU is above zero; and c) sapped, or exhausted, in which the body's BU is equal to zero. Sapped does not indicate that the body is ailing, only that it has reached the point where the body is strained. Further effort is possible, but it would probably result in the body becoming ill.
Glancing at the left end of the scale, we can judge the medical state of the body in three levels: critical (-3), serious (-2) and subdued (-1). A critical condition, where 1 BU separates the body from death, could be described as intense weakness, an inability to rise, tend to one's self, drifting in and out of consciousness (more out than in) and probability of not being fully aware when awake. A serious condition could be described as moderate weakness, some mobility but requiring assistance and periods of lucidity separated by long periods of sleep (or fitful hours of sleep spread throughout the 24 hour day). Finally, a subdued condition would require plenty of bedrest and considerably reduced energy, but the ability to attend to one's self.
Looking at the vigorous end of the chart, it is presumed that, in all but the chronically ill, a healthy body will have a positive number of BUs. This does not mean that every body would be vital enough to possess 8 BUs above zero! The number of actual BUs possessed must depend upon the condition in which the body is kept, complimented by the condition the body possessed at birth. We can, if we like, extrapolate the 8 points of BU above zero as a composite of different elements that combine to form vitality.
I propose the following:
- Activity, normal employment of the body's capacity for the expenditure of energy.
- Depreciation, devaluation of the body accumulated due to use
- Happiness, the positivity and mental attitude that encourages vigor
- Health, the soundness of the body, freeness from chronic disease or ailment
- Heredity, the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to offspring
- Initiative, a readiness and ability to initiate action
- Maturity, the degree of physical development increasing or decreasing towards/from peak
- Nourishment, food and sustenance consumed throughout the body's lifetime
Others may suggest additional possibilities; some may contend that one or all of them are inherent in the individual's abilities scores. I don't think that matters. I do not contend that BUs are measured contrary of constitution, intelligence, strength or dexterity - only that they are measured contrary to training or skill. The elements above do not depend for their existence upon training. This does not say that a given uneducated individual has a high level of happiness or initiative (those vital composite parts most suggestive of mind rather than body), only that there is some measurable existence of either prior to training. The same is true of the remaining six composite parts of vitality.
This is key. There is some measure of each, which combined produce the number of BUs a body (mind included) possesses above zero. The combination need not be the same from body to body - this body may be high in heredity, nourishment and maturity, while another may be high in happiness, health and activity. We might, to determine the balance, roll a d8 for each of the 8 elements, dividing the total by 8 to achieve an average. Alternately, we might suppose that certain composite parts of vitality were universally poor for an entire region - examples would include the degree of expected nourishment in certain parts of Africa, the depreciation of an entire country due to continuous war or enslavement, comparative initiative between regions of abundance and scarcity, etcetera. The resulting average number of BUs across a population might reasonably be expected to be less than, say, 4.5 (8 x d8 /8).
Part II
Very well, how might we derive a concept of hit points from the above framework of biological units?
Let us consider basic combat training, concentrating specifically upon improving the physical and mental acuity of the subject. Obviously, in choosing a candidate for training, we want someone with the greatest number of BUs possible. However, it is unlikely that any of the candidates we find will have a BU higher than 6.5 (without doing the math, the reader may take my word for it that rolling more than 52 on 8d8 is unlikely - though the reader is invited to try). Still, we know that through training, a relatively ordinary body between the ages of 16 and 24 can be improved - therefore we know that in those candidates, at least one 8th of the body's vitality can be created where it does not formerly exist.
The same can be said of the body's activity, certainly. Happiness and initiative can be redirected or enabled. Depreciation that has occurred in a young body can probably be overcome through expanding lung and heart capacity. Nourishment can be provided. Finally, both health and heredity can be chosen for - and if the choice proves inadequate, the candidate can be dumped mid-way through training or retained even if the final results are somewhat less than ideal.
This would mean that, at the end of basic training, we are improving each candidate's BU through rigorous training from an average of 4.5 to an average of somewhere between 6 and 8.
We can view the result to be "combat-trained" recruits - able to recognize what a weapon is and to hold it, but possessing no special ability in the use of a weapon or moving easily in armour. Take note that these recruits would also lack any sort of combat experience, at all. Their entire potential is based upon their physical capacity alone.
As active combatants in a D&D world, they would have - yes, you guessed it - 6 to 8 hit points. To this I am adding the supposition that these same combatants (indeed any person) would not die at zero hit points. This would be a first-time proposal for me. Yet the increased number of followers employed by my parties has made me consider the importance of allowing a negative/illness (comparative to severely damaged) buffer between exhaustion and death. I'll begin testing the proposal in months to come.
Given this system of BUs regulating the maximum number of hit points for combat-trained recruits, however, how does it happen that its possible to have hit point totals that are much higher? I'll just restate my point from earlier: 8 BU is the maximum number of BU that a human of such-and-such a mass can possess.
Before we get to that, compare the damage done by a weapon, say a dagger, against the number of BU that the body possesses (no, not the number of hit points - keep up). Let's say that the effectiveness of the dagger is based on chance, so that as I turn to attack you with the dagger, I may nick your arm, cut a deep slash across your belly, skid the dagger along your ribs or plunge the dagger directly into your chest. These different attacks might reduce your BU, comparatively, 1, 2, 3 or 4 points.
Imagine that any strike with the dagger that deprives a defender of half the defender's BU above zero causes a wound. I wrote some content about wounds in the link that describes what happens when 11 hp damage is done to a creature. Since we are talking BU and not hp, we can use the same rules to apply to this circumstance. A tough body with 6 BU above zero is struck with a dagger, causing 3 BU in damage. This may not be enough to immediately kill the defender, but the defender will lose 1 BU every following round (which in my system is 12 seconds). Reduced to 3 BU, we know that it will take 7 rounds for the defender to be reduced to -4 BU, or death. That is a total of 84 seconds, less than a minute and a half.
Observe very closely the last point in the link on wounding, which itself links to this page. The bleeding defender with 3 BU will be stunned every round until death occurs - unless this death is staved off by an ally or bystander.
This means that a dagger could kill an ordinary defender with as many as 8 BU - who would be stunned by the original hit and then stunned every round thereafter - even though the dagger can only cause 1d4 points of damage.
From this, it sounds like I'm saying that BU are equal to hit points. I'm not. I am saying that where no experience has been gained, BU and hit points are coincidentally equal in value.
So let's talk about experience.
Part III
According to wikipedia, Experience "is the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it." [bold face added by me]. It is from this that I argue an individual cannot be talked into an improved combat ability - this ability is gained through immersion and the development of a relationship with an enemy attempting to use a weapon to kill you. Skill is acquired through repetition and experimentation - holding the weapon, wearing the armor, growing comfortable, obtaining the necessary callouses and balance through endless physical practice and training.
Eventually, however, to level means more than growing comfortable with the mechanics of war - it means growing to the point where one is able to function when swimming in a maelstrom of intoxicating adrenaline and hormonal signals coming from a body made terrified and insane by the possibility of immediate death, the smell and taste of blood, pain and a ludicrous dopamine high that will result from success. In the end, mechanics will fail in the face of chemistry. The survivor in that chaos is not the one who can rationally piece together how to turn the sword of the enemy or physically endure the dagger's blow. The survivor is the one who does not get hit in a way that causes a critical wound.
Imagine, then, a character that has no combat training - let's say, a mage. Because we are speaking of a character who's power derives from mental development rather than the physical, we may assume the mage has an average of 4.5 BU. In my system, I account for this by calling it mass and assigning 1d8 hit points to the mage if he or she possesses the appropriate weight (I could write a couple of paragraphs about BU and its relationship to a mass greater than the average human described here, but let's leave that on the shelf and move forward).
On top of this, we already know that the mage has an additional 1d4 hit points. This, of course, is the original total number of hit points a mage is supposed to start with in traditional D&D, but in the end I've had to ditch this as a viable number of hit points. Granted, in the system I've developed, there is still a 1 in 32 chance that a mage without any constitution bonus will have only 5 hp, but c'est la vie. I'm digressing here.
Where do these additional hit points come from? Traditionally, we view them as added onto the existing mass, perhaps with the suggestion that the initial damage done to the character would be these extra 'skill-type' hit points, so that the body is only attacked when the character is reduced to 8 hit points or less . . . but I consider that argument invalid. I am here to propose another.
Suppose we imagine a mage, Erick, who rolls a 4 for his mass and a 3 for his d4 leveled hit points, making a total of 7. Since I use the rule where a leveled character doesn't die until -10 hp, this gives Erick a considerably wider range of hit points (17) than Erick's BU - which, because Erick has 4 BU above zero, is a total of 8 points stretching from -3 BU to 4. I sure hope the reader is keeping up.
Let's put up a new chart, comparing Erick's BU to Erick's hit points:
The theory is simply this: that as a player grows in experience, the damage done by the weapon, applied to the creature's BU, is lessened by the player's experience (and gained hit points). Where the creature's BU would be expended in an unleveled character after suffering only 4 damage, the same amount of damage caused against Erick only reduces Erick's BU by 2 points.
Were I to use the "half BUs causes a wound" proposal, either 3 or 4 damage would still wound Erick (in my game as it stands, it already stuns him) - but this is better than the 2 required if he had no training at all as a mage. Given another level, it would be unlikely that a dagger hit would wound him - thus reducing his chances of being killed by a dagger.
How? Because with experience, Erick has learned to shift and turn his body so that the 'dagger in the chest' result won't happen until Erick's overall BU has been spent (ie., reduced to his last hit points). It means that the 1d4 damage done by the dagger no longer has the four possible results described above, but something closer to "nicks arm," "grazes face," "produces furrow in shoulder" and "cuts deep into side." The importance of the d4 damage the dagger does is relative to the opponent the dagger is used against.
The same applies to the severity of injuries/ailments that accumulate on the left end of the scale. Experienced characters take better care of themselves, monitor themselves to a greater degree, make better use of their existing constitution and strength, endure pain more easily and are less likely to do something that stupid that would cause an injury to become worse. The untrained, ignorant body may have a constitution of 15, but that constitution in the hands of a character with three levels of experience is much better exploited.
(This does go against certain ideas I had about ability stats that were posted years ago on this blog, but better ideas will gradually replace weaker proposals).
If you have made it this far, you may be wondering why I should go to this length to detail a fairly simple notion. How has all this made an important difference to the substantial nature of hit points?
I believe that the theory builds an important construct between the nature of hit points and the nature of real injury, while satisfactorily keeping them apart. For example, it means that when resting to regain health, we should adjust the creature's BU and not the creature's actual hit points. When poison enters the body, the poison should attack the creature's BU. The same ideal can be applied to injuries that hit points cannot account for, such as broken arms or ribs, providing a structure for the healing of these things that is set apart from the creature's level or total hit points.
Having created the supposition, there are directions in which the game can be structured more rationally - while remaining simple to understand and immensely playable - where before the limited restrictions of hit points lost/hit points restored allowed for little development where elements of injury and being alive were concerned.
It is a change in thinking, not a change in the original game principles. Hit points (with the exception of my possibly increasing my wounding rules) remain unaltered by the change, so that no changes need to be made to all other aspects of the game already incorporating hit points. It is added structure without needing to tear everything down and start again. For me, this is the best sort of game redesign there is.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Mandragora
A transformation of the mandrake root into a minor golem, possessing humanoid like characteristics and a malevolent nature. While the mandragora, or root golem, can be controlled by its maker, it should be known that left alone or unwatched, and though small of size, the creature should be expected to wilfully cause trouble. For this reason, when not watched, it is often best to keep the mandragora contained or restrained in some fashion.
The mandragora is 15 inches tall (the size of a large mandrake root) and composed of hard, moist root material that cannot be harmed by elemental-based spells (though due to its size, strong forces will limit the creature's movement), notably fire or cold. Sustained fire, such as an oven, or super-heated rock will consume the creature, but if it is frozen in ice it will thaw unharmed.
It is formed from the mandrake root, which is itself dangerous to harvest. To bring the natural root alive, remove the roots and bury it outdoors in a hole covered with graveyard dirt to a depth of six inches. Thereafter the soil should be soaked with a quart of cow's milk in the dark of the night for 3-12 nights in succession, until it is seen that a part of the root has appeared above the level of the soil (typically an inch will be extended). At this point, the creator will need to pour into the soil a quart of spoiled or rancid liquid (of any extraction), then cast one of the following spells: animal friendship, charm person or mammal, commune with nature, hold animal, hold plant, speak with animals or speak with plants. Any of these will communicate with the new mandragora, who will then know its creator; the character should then extend an index finger towards the extended root, which will then grasp the finger, enabling the golem to be pulled out from the loose soil.
The mandragora cannot attack in melee or cause damage. It weighs 12 lbs. (much of it water weight infused in its root-body) and can move up to 15' per round (having 3 action points). It possesses short, stubby legs and arms that are each 3 inches in length; the arms possess five 4-inch long roots that can be used to loosely grasp things, so that the mandragora can be directed to fetch loose things or hide objects away (picking up any object up to a pound or dragging any object up to its own weight). It cannot untie straps or laces, cannot effectively rummage through a back pack or open doors, but its root fingers can be used to surprise or frighten opponents or animals, push objects off shelves, tip over objects taller than they are wide (up to its weight). It can throw objects it can carry only a few feet without much force, so that only very fragile objects falling on stone would break. It does not like things hung on its body and will rid itself of these things as soon as possible.
The mandragora, if it is able, will seek any opportunity to sneak away and become a pest to the party or others (particularly if the creator is asleep). If given the opportunity, the mandragora will cheerfully occupy itself with many of the above activities (particularly frightening animals and children or breaking things), dropping items into rivers or over the side of ships and boats, dragging logs out of a fire and leaving them next to sleeping persons, covering itself with mud and rubbing itself on clothes or food, making rustling noises in brush to bring others to investigate, knocking on doors and then running, etc. The creating character can encourage a mandragora to do these things to others by hurling the mandragora in a desired direction, where it is wished for mischief to be made (an enemy camp or habitation), speaking the words, "Give them grief, mandragora."
Because of its size and color, the mandragora will easily approach within a combat hex (5 feet) of a conscious, alert target without being seen. It will surprise normally (2 in 6) even in combat situations. If attacked, it is rated as AC 8 (AC 4 in darkness) and has only 1 hit point - but it is immune to bludgeoning weapons, swords and pointed weapons. An axe or bladed pole-arm, however, will kill it most efficiently.
The mandragora is 15 inches tall (the size of a large mandrake root) and composed of hard, moist root material that cannot be harmed by elemental-based spells (though due to its size, strong forces will limit the creature's movement), notably fire or cold. Sustained fire, such as an oven, or super-heated rock will consume the creature, but if it is frozen in ice it will thaw unharmed.
It is formed from the mandrake root, which is itself dangerous to harvest. To bring the natural root alive, remove the roots and bury it outdoors in a hole covered with graveyard dirt to a depth of six inches. Thereafter the soil should be soaked with a quart of cow's milk in the dark of the night for 3-12 nights in succession, until it is seen that a part of the root has appeared above the level of the soil (typically an inch will be extended). At this point, the creator will need to pour into the soil a quart of spoiled or rancid liquid (of any extraction), then cast one of the following spells: animal friendship, charm person or mammal, commune with nature, hold animal, hold plant, speak with animals or speak with plants. Any of these will communicate with the new mandragora, who will then know its creator; the character should then extend an index finger towards the extended root, which will then grasp the finger, enabling the golem to be pulled out from the loose soil.
The mandragora cannot attack in melee or cause damage. It weighs 12 lbs. (much of it water weight infused in its root-body) and can move up to 15' per round (having 3 action points). It possesses short, stubby legs and arms that are each 3 inches in length; the arms possess five 4-inch long roots that can be used to loosely grasp things, so that the mandragora can be directed to fetch loose things or hide objects away (picking up any object up to a pound or dragging any object up to its own weight). It cannot untie straps or laces, cannot effectively rummage through a back pack or open doors, but its root fingers can be used to surprise or frighten opponents or animals, push objects off shelves, tip over objects taller than they are wide (up to its weight). It can throw objects it can carry only a few feet without much force, so that only very fragile objects falling on stone would break. It does not like things hung on its body and will rid itself of these things as soon as possible.
The mandragora, if it is able, will seek any opportunity to sneak away and become a pest to the party or others (particularly if the creator is asleep). If given the opportunity, the mandragora will cheerfully occupy itself with many of the above activities (particularly frightening animals and children or breaking things), dropping items into rivers or over the side of ships and boats, dragging logs out of a fire and leaving them next to sleeping persons, covering itself with mud and rubbing itself on clothes or food, making rustling noises in brush to bring others to investigate, knocking on doors and then running, etc. The creating character can encourage a mandragora to do these things to others by hurling the mandragora in a desired direction, where it is wished for mischief to be made (an enemy camp or habitation), speaking the words, "Give them grief, mandragora."
Because of its size and color, the mandragora will easily approach within a combat hex (5 feet) of a conscious, alert target without being seen. It will surprise normally (2 in 6) even in combat situations. If attacked, it is rated as AC 8 (AC 4 in darkness) and has only 1 hit point - but it is immune to bludgeoning weapons, swords and pointed weapons. An axe or bladed pole-arm, however, will kill it most efficiently.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Rethinking the Golem
Changes sometimes have to be made.
Traditionally, there are two things necessary to create a golem: coin in the tens of thousands and a few spells. That is the entirety of the process. Details about what costs what are maddeningly vague.
Consider this description for the creation of an homonculous (the most detailed example I could find):
60 words. It is things like this that makes me appreciate the cold-stone hatred people feel for AD&D.
Just what the hell are 'fluids'? Why do I need to hire an alchemist? Does this include when I've passed 15th level as a mage? Are there leveled alchemists? Why is the local alchemist fine with my constructing a monster? Why does it have to be my pint of blood and not the alchemists? Is it because I'm casting the spell? What if I use a scroll? Shouldn't I need to pint of blood of the writer of the scroll? I can understand having to cast some sort of spell to prove the wizard is of a certain strength or power, but why those spells? Surely a wider range of spells will do.
It is this kind of half-assed design that teaches young DMs to rebuff questions with, "Because I said so." What other answer are you going to give?
I have never had a character make any serious effort towards the creation of a golem. I've had a few characters who chanced into a golem manual and considered it, but they've all come to the same conclusion: "Huge numbers of gold pieces for a creature that's guaranteed to go berserk? Um, no."
The math whiz who invented the golem berserk rule in the original Monster Manual probably thought this was very clever:
On the surface, this sounds like a very small chance. However, given the nature of random die rolls, the golem will probably go loony within 14 rounds (1% + 2% + 3% + 4% . . .). Get out your hundred sided and see how long you can go.
I did. I had 10 tries at it and these are the results: 13 rounds, 14 rounds, 10 rounds, 8 rounds, 22 rounds, 7 rounds, 12 rounds, 16 rounds, 6 rounds and 10 rounds.
The clay golem requires 50,000 g.p. to make (including the 30,000 g.p. vestments, which I presume are resuable). Even taking my best result, I am paying 2,272 g.p. per round of combat. For something that attacks once per round (though it has two hands) for 3-30 damage and some nice immunities. That is going to become an extra problem in short order. That price seems a little steep.
It's a double-edged sword, isn't it? We have to jack the price up to keep the creatures rare and we have to make them dangerous to use so that players will think twice. Yet with these rules a player would have to be an idiot to build a golem. As an enemy, it doesn't matter if I can hit the golem . . . all I need is 10 to 20 terrified low-level minions to keep the golem swinging - the survivors of which I'll pull back the moment the golem goes postal. Then the party can deal with the golem's instantly very inconvenient immunities.
I want to rethink the golem, which means rethinking the principles upon which the golem is based.
The golem's inescapable insanity is based upon a Kabbalist myth, invented to teach a lesson to students: don't fuck with nature, because nature will get you. The same myth has been employed ever since, from Frankenstein and 2001: A Space Odyssey to Skynet in the Terminator series, the creators of the Matrix and whatever recent version of I, Robot that is set to be released in 2015.
(that's always a sore spot with me, as Isaac Asimov's set of robot short stories is a total, well-conceived subversion of this agonized trope)
In reality, we know this trope is crap. We fuck with nature all the time and somehow nature never bites us in the ass. We manage to bite ourselves in the ass quite a lot (what with dumping into rivers and ignoring global warming and all that), but the results we're getting from our actions are measurable, logical results, not the principles of nature reasserting itself just because. There are no special contingency rules in nature that state, "If you try to do something that will make a lot of people feel squicky, the science will fail and the technology will run amuck, destroying everyone."
People used to make that argument against artificial hearts. Think about that. Artificial hearts were decried because they would turn ordinary people into monsters.
A rethink of golems must begin with the tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice (Goethe anticipated me by two hundred years plus). In the hands of the know-nothing apprentice, the ignorant, science is a dangerous, wild element that seems impossible to contain. When the wise sorcerer appears, however, the spell is easily broken.
Naturally, most choose to read the poem in terms of man-versus-god, pounding Goethe into the 16th century rather than the 18th. Man plays with nature and gets in trouble; God appears and bails him out. This is a rather ridiculous read for someone contemporary with Voltaire, Rousseau and Byron. Moreover, Goethe's version of the tale is based upon a pagan original, written by the satirist Lucian (think John Cleese after 50).
The lesson is changed from "do not fuck with nature" to "don't fuck with nature unless you know what you're doing." Problems begin when the ignorant get involved - not because we did something we shouldn't have been doing. The first is a limit in ability. The second is a limit in thinking.
That's why I want to toss out everything to do with golems based upon a strict reading of mythology. It makes a nice story for frightening children, but the guidelines are useless for game play. The golem must be viewed as a rational construct . . . not a doomed failure predestined to be possessed by a random spirit. The problem should not be in the construct itself, but in the maker.
Speaking of contemporaries of Byron, I wish people would actually read Frankenstein before discussing it. The failure isn't in the monster, it is in the creator, who is so pathetically weak about his own efforts that he mistreats and drives the monster away, rather than showing love for it. As the monster hides, it first has the opportunity to see what love and kindness are - then it has these things brutally denied to it. In hating the monster, it is made into a MONSTER, that then sets out to take its revenge upon Frankenstein and then the world. It isn't a monster because it is made of dead flesh. It is a monster because of how it is treated.
According to story, Mary Shelley wrote the book while living with her husband Percy and Byron, who were her audience when she first read the book aloud. But I digress.
The other change that I'm set to take in creating golems is to steal the ability away from mages and clerics. These classes already have enough choices and fundamentally I believe they're in the wrong camp where it comes to thinking golems.
Golems are made of earth, stone, metal, wood, bone, natural 'fluids' and so on. They are made of nature. It makes so much more sense to me that if a golem is going to live in harmony with nature, it must be created by a class that understands nature. That is why my golems are found in the sage abilities of druids.
Been thinking about this all week. Hopefully, writing this post has helped clear my head and I can start building rules about golems now. All I have written right now in the wiki is "Content to follow."
Traditionally, there are two things necessary to create a golem: coin in the tens of thousands and a few spells. That is the entirety of the process. Details about what costs what are maddeningly vague.
Consider this description for the creation of an homonculous (the most detailed example I could find):
"When an homonculous is desired, the magic-user must hire an alchemist, and the latter will require 1-4 weeks to create fluids for forming the creature. This will cost 1 pint of the magic-user's blood and 500-2000 gold pieces. The magic-user must then cast a mending spell, a mirror image and a wizard eye upon the fluid to form the homonculous."
60 words. It is things like this that makes me appreciate the cold-stone hatred people feel for AD&D.
Just what the hell are 'fluids'? Why do I need to hire an alchemist? Does this include when I've passed 15th level as a mage? Are there leveled alchemists? Why is the local alchemist fine with my constructing a monster? Why does it have to be my pint of blood and not the alchemists? Is it because I'm casting the spell? What if I use a scroll? Shouldn't I need to pint of blood of the writer of the scroll? I can understand having to cast some sort of spell to prove the wizard is of a certain strength or power, but why those spells? Surely a wider range of spells will do.
It is this kind of half-assed design that teaches young DMs to rebuff questions with, "Because I said so." What other answer are you going to give?
I have never had a character make any serious effort towards the creation of a golem. I've had a few characters who chanced into a golem manual and considered it, but they've all come to the same conclusion: "Huge numbers of gold pieces for a creature that's guaranteed to go berserk? Um, no."
The math whiz who invented the golem berserk rule in the original Monster Manual probably thought this was very clever:
"Once created, the clay golem is under the command of the cleric who created it. Each melee round the clay golem is in combat there is a 1% cumulative chance that it will be imbued with a chaotic evil spirit. If this happens, the clay golem will immediately pass from the control of the cleric and attacks [sic] any living thing . . ."
On the surface, this sounds like a very small chance. However, given the nature of random die rolls, the golem will probably go loony within 14 rounds (1% + 2% + 3% + 4% . . .). Get out your hundred sided and see how long you can go.
I did. I had 10 tries at it and these are the results: 13 rounds, 14 rounds, 10 rounds, 8 rounds, 22 rounds, 7 rounds, 12 rounds, 16 rounds, 6 rounds and 10 rounds.
The clay golem requires 50,000 g.p. to make (including the 30,000 g.p. vestments, which I presume are resuable). Even taking my best result, I am paying 2,272 g.p. per round of combat. For something that attacks once per round (though it has two hands) for 3-30 damage and some nice immunities. That is going to become an extra problem in short order. That price seems a little steep.
It's a double-edged sword, isn't it? We have to jack the price up to keep the creatures rare and we have to make them dangerous to use so that players will think twice. Yet with these rules a player would have to be an idiot to build a golem. As an enemy, it doesn't matter if I can hit the golem . . . all I need is 10 to 20 terrified low-level minions to keep the golem swinging - the survivors of which I'll pull back the moment the golem goes postal. Then the party can deal with the golem's instantly very inconvenient immunities.
I want to rethink the golem, which means rethinking the principles upon which the golem is based.
The golem's inescapable insanity is based upon a Kabbalist myth, invented to teach a lesson to students: don't fuck with nature, because nature will get you. The same myth has been employed ever since, from Frankenstein and 2001: A Space Odyssey to Skynet in the Terminator series, the creators of the Matrix and whatever recent version of I, Robot that is set to be released in 2015.
(that's always a sore spot with me, as Isaac Asimov's set of robot short stories is a total, well-conceived subversion of this agonized trope)
In reality, we know this trope is crap. We fuck with nature all the time and somehow nature never bites us in the ass. We manage to bite ourselves in the ass quite a lot (what with dumping into rivers and ignoring global warming and all that), but the results we're getting from our actions are measurable, logical results, not the principles of nature reasserting itself just because. There are no special contingency rules in nature that state, "If you try to do something that will make a lot of people feel squicky, the science will fail and the technology will run amuck, destroying everyone."
People used to make that argument against artificial hearts. Think about that. Artificial hearts were decried because they would turn ordinary people into monsters.
A rethink of golems must begin with the tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice (Goethe anticipated me by two hundred years plus). In the hands of the know-nothing apprentice, the ignorant, science is a dangerous, wild element that seems impossible to contain. When the wise sorcerer appears, however, the spell is easily broken.
Naturally, most choose to read the poem in terms of man-versus-god, pounding Goethe into the 16th century rather than the 18th. Man plays with nature and gets in trouble; God appears and bails him out. This is a rather ridiculous read for someone contemporary with Voltaire, Rousseau and Byron. Moreover, Goethe's version of the tale is based upon a pagan original, written by the satirist Lucian (think John Cleese after 50).
The lesson is changed from "do not fuck with nature" to "don't fuck with nature unless you know what you're doing." Problems begin when the ignorant get involved - not because we did something we shouldn't have been doing. The first is a limit in ability. The second is a limit in thinking.
That's why I want to toss out everything to do with golems based upon a strict reading of mythology. It makes a nice story for frightening children, but the guidelines are useless for game play. The golem must be viewed as a rational construct . . . not a doomed failure predestined to be possessed by a random spirit. The problem should not be in the construct itself, but in the maker.
Speaking of contemporaries of Byron, I wish people would actually read Frankenstein before discussing it. The failure isn't in the monster, it is in the creator, who is so pathetically weak about his own efforts that he mistreats and drives the monster away, rather than showing love for it. As the monster hides, it first has the opportunity to see what love and kindness are - then it has these things brutally denied to it. In hating the monster, it is made into a MONSTER, that then sets out to take its revenge upon Frankenstein and then the world. It isn't a monster because it is made of dead flesh. It is a monster because of how it is treated.
According to story, Mary Shelley wrote the book while living with her husband Percy and Byron, who were her audience when she first read the book aloud. But I digress.
The other change that I'm set to take in creating golems is to steal the ability away from mages and clerics. These classes already have enough choices and fundamentally I believe they're in the wrong camp where it comes to thinking golems.
Golems are made of earth, stone, metal, wood, bone, natural 'fluids' and so on. They are made of nature. It makes so much more sense to me that if a golem is going to live in harmony with nature, it must be created by a class that understands nature. That is why my golems are found in the sage abilities of druids.
Been thinking about this all week. Hopefully, writing this post has helped clear my head and I can start building rules about golems now. All I have written right now in the wiki is "Content to follow."
Friday, January 9, 2015
Shared Hope
Writing Tuesday's post about sports, I had intended to follow up with a rejoiner about what catches the player's mind when watching other players fight the monsters threatening the party . . . and comparing that with, say, a typical boardgame. It's been three days, but I'd like to pick up that thread now.
I feel like an idiot explaining what schadenfreude means, but there is a tradition in English writing that we must always assume that English speakers have no idea that foreign words exist in the world and that every foreign word must therefore be pedantically explained over and over. Thus, the insertion of this paragraph. Simply, it is pleasure derived from misfortune. Being one of the more masturbatory labels used in literary analysis, it will serve you well through all your life if you know it's meaning.
Most successful board games are fundamentally built on a principle of permissive schadenfreude. When playing Monopoly, your pleasure is in watching one of your opponents crash and burn while counting their money into your hand for landing on your Ventnor hotel. In RISK, your pleasure is in watching both your opponents slam fruitlessly against each other, spinning into the grave you will soon be digging for them. As you watch your opponents in the game roll the die, you're hoping they will fail . . . and when they do, landing on the square of death or tossing the twin eyes of misery, your feeling is meant to be positive. You are meant to obtain gratification from that.
This is very, very different from role-playing. At least, in the games you play, I hope that its different. If you are playing an RPG where the other players are hoping that you'll fuck the roll and the dragon kills you, then you have my sympathy for having to spend your evenings with a bunch of wretched prats.
There is something unconsciously amazing about playing a 'game' where your hope lies in the good fortune of your fellow players. I say "unconscious" because I'm willing to bet you've never considered the rest of the party in terms of your hope. The tension does not emerge from a desire to see your companion fail and die, but the anticipation that your companions will succeed, killing the ogre that has them cornered, so that they will be free to launch an attack against the ogre that has YOU cornered.
When you roll the die in a board game, the moment is something you share with no one. The others at the table have a stake in your roll, but it is a stake against you. The brilliance of the RPG is that when you roll the die, everyone at the table is with you - even the DM (again, I should hope), whose stake in the monsters' success doesn't begin to measure with the desire that the player should live.
I may play the game hard, giving the monster all their due in order to defeat the party, but I certainly don't want any member of the party to die. I don't want any one to be forced into an emotional disengagement with a character they've invested in and worked hard to improve. It is bound to happen now and then, but I don't want that. I, like the rest of the players, am happy when a player drops a natural 20 on a monster's head.
What a sad, sad table is must be when there are players who envy others who chance to roll better, who get the magic item at the end of the night, who can only see the game in terms of their personal wins or losses. How hard must it be to be a player who measures their experience against the experience of others, failing to recognize that every player's experience has grown together over time. How contemptible is it when a DM deliberately aids and benefits one player, building that player into a celebrity for others to have hard feelings for, begrudging the success one player achieves at the expense of others. What a loss to the game that is.
How much worse, when players dream of turning their weapons on other players, preferring a game of schadenfreude to a game of shared hope. That is the nature of some people, however. That is the nature of envy, where a feeling of discontent grows not only in one's personal belief in one's own failure, but the deep, malignant need to see others fail and die, even if that will ultimately mean the death of one's own character. I have no doubt there are players out there carrying secret grudges where they cheerfully anticipate a total party kill, because they are more than willing to sacrifice their tenth level thief if it means the paladin will die or the mage will lose that damned precious artifact . . . that they think should have gone to them.
We can make a good game if we try - but just as things in life are poisoned, so are games, by the same flaws in a person's character. This capacity of RPG's to deliver the benefit of another's success to ourselves, to take pleasure in others having a good day, depends upon our willingness to incorporate that joint experience in our own behaviour. If we will insist on seeing things only in how they benefit ourselves, we will ruin that experience as surely as we'll ruin our friendships, our places of work and eventually the ties we have with our families.
It isn't just about our experience, our toys, our wins and our loses. It is about everyone. The more you and your players embrace that principle, the more you'll begin to understand that everyone cheering at the table because of a roll that one person made is proof positive for why this is the best game ever invented.
That is why it is never going to die. That is why it will never be replaced by a computer. RPGs have the capacity to bring out the best in us.
I feel like an idiot explaining what schadenfreude means, but there is a tradition in English writing that we must always assume that English speakers have no idea that foreign words exist in the world and that every foreign word must therefore be pedantically explained over and over. Thus, the insertion of this paragraph. Simply, it is pleasure derived from misfortune. Being one of the more masturbatory labels used in literary analysis, it will serve you well through all your life if you know it's meaning.
Most successful board games are fundamentally built on a principle of permissive schadenfreude. When playing Monopoly, your pleasure is in watching one of your opponents crash and burn while counting their money into your hand for landing on your Ventnor hotel. In RISK, your pleasure is in watching both your opponents slam fruitlessly against each other, spinning into the grave you will soon be digging for them. As you watch your opponents in the game roll the die, you're hoping they will fail . . . and when they do, landing on the square of death or tossing the twin eyes of misery, your feeling is meant to be positive. You are meant to obtain gratification from that.
This is very, very different from role-playing. At least, in the games you play, I hope that its different. If you are playing an RPG where the other players are hoping that you'll fuck the roll and the dragon kills you, then you have my sympathy for having to spend your evenings with a bunch of wretched prats.
There is something unconsciously amazing about playing a 'game' where your hope lies in the good fortune of your fellow players. I say "unconscious" because I'm willing to bet you've never considered the rest of the party in terms of your hope. The tension does not emerge from a desire to see your companion fail and die, but the anticipation that your companions will succeed, killing the ogre that has them cornered, so that they will be free to launch an attack against the ogre that has YOU cornered.
When you roll the die in a board game, the moment is something you share with no one. The others at the table have a stake in your roll, but it is a stake against you. The brilliance of the RPG is that when you roll the die, everyone at the table is with you - even the DM (again, I should hope), whose stake in the monsters' success doesn't begin to measure with the desire that the player should live.
I may play the game hard, giving the monster all their due in order to defeat the party, but I certainly don't want any member of the party to die. I don't want any one to be forced into an emotional disengagement with a character they've invested in and worked hard to improve. It is bound to happen now and then, but I don't want that. I, like the rest of the players, am happy when a player drops a natural 20 on a monster's head.
What a sad, sad table is must be when there are players who envy others who chance to roll better, who get the magic item at the end of the night, who can only see the game in terms of their personal wins or losses. How hard must it be to be a player who measures their experience against the experience of others, failing to recognize that every player's experience has grown together over time. How contemptible is it when a DM deliberately aids and benefits one player, building that player into a celebrity for others to have hard feelings for, begrudging the success one player achieves at the expense of others. What a loss to the game that is.
How much worse, when players dream of turning their weapons on other players, preferring a game of schadenfreude to a game of shared hope. That is the nature of some people, however. That is the nature of envy, where a feeling of discontent grows not only in one's personal belief in one's own failure, but the deep, malignant need to see others fail and die, even if that will ultimately mean the death of one's own character. I have no doubt there are players out there carrying secret grudges where they cheerfully anticipate a total party kill, because they are more than willing to sacrifice their tenth level thief if it means the paladin will die or the mage will lose that damned precious artifact . . . that they think should have gone to them.
We can make a good game if we try - but just as things in life are poisoned, so are games, by the same flaws in a person's character. This capacity of RPG's to deliver the benefit of another's success to ourselves, to take pleasure in others having a good day, depends upon our willingness to incorporate that joint experience in our own behaviour. If we will insist on seeing things only in how they benefit ourselves, we will ruin that experience as surely as we'll ruin our friendships, our places of work and eventually the ties we have with our families.
It isn't just about our experience, our toys, our wins and our loses. It is about everyone. The more you and your players embrace that principle, the more you'll begin to understand that everyone cheering at the table because of a roll that one person made is proof positive for why this is the best game ever invented.
That is why it is never going to die. That is why it will never be replaced by a computer. RPGs have the capacity to bring out the best in us.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Gingerbread Boy
To create a living creature made of gingerbread, mix together 8 oz. flour, 8 oz. sugar, 4 oz. butter, 1 oz. yeast, 1 oz. salt, 1 oz. pepper and 1 oz. minced ginger root. While baking, the creator must cast one of the following spells upon the oven: detect magic, faerie fire, purify water, charm person, cause light wounds or the reverse of goodberry.
The result will be a small living boy weighing approximately 8 oz. or one half a pound - or, alternately, for metric sizes, 250 grams (throughout this post, metric weights will be slightly more than imperial weights). This boy will be correct proportionately and approximately 8 inches in height. In character the boy will be malicious when fed, ravenously dangerous when hungry.
On its first day of life, the boy's appetite will crave 1 lb. of living matter (or 500 grams), half of which must comprise flesh, bone, hair, fur or hide, even tanned hide. This will be gobbled quickly and the gingerbread boy's weight will increase by half the weight of the food, or 8 oz. (240 grams).
Each day thereafter the amount of food that the boy will require will double - 2 lbs., 4 lbs, 8 lbs. (500g, 1kg, 2kg, 4kg) and so on. Each day, the gingerbread boy's size will grow proportionally, increasing by half the amount of living material eaten. The boy will quite willingly eat anything that's alive, up to half its own weight - so that when the boy reaches 8 lbs. (4kg) it will be large enough to eat rats, at 16 lbs. (8kg) cats and at 32 lbs. (16kg) small dogs and so on. The boy will double in size until it is as large as 4,000 lbs. (2000kg), whereupon it will collapse from its own weight.
Feeding time must be the first hour after the sun rises; if the boy is not fed by the end of that hour, it will become infuriated, making noise and attempting to break free from whatever confinement it has been placed, squeezing through bars or easily climbing up the smoothest of walls, seeking food on its own. Once fed, it will become passive, though it will act out abusively towards others, causing animals in particular a point of damage each day if its creator is not there to watch it and sharply reprimand its behaviour (more or less continuously until the sunset). If the creature does not receive its food by sunset, it will die.
While the boy, when passive, will do what it's told by its creator, this will only last until the creator becomes small enough to eat (that is, when the creator's weight becomes less than half of the gingerbread boy). At that point, the boy will begin to do as it likes, which will mean randomly attacking anything or anyone within reach.
The boy will possess 1-8 hit points per 50 lbs. of weight, but will only attack as 1 hit DIE per 250 lbs. of weight. Thus, the boy will have 10d8 hp when it has reached 512 lbs, but will only attack as a 2 hit die monster.
It will do a maximum of 1 damage per 25 lb. of weight, divided between two attacks (the right hand will be the stronger). Thus, at 512 lb., the boy would do 1d10 damage with each fist. At 1,024 lbs., this would be 2d10 with each fist.
While still under control, the gingerbread boy will gleefully enter combat, attacking enemies of the creator (eating them if small enough and the boy is still hungry), so that the boy will be useful until it reaches a size too large to be controlled. A wise player will prepare in advance for when it is time for the gingerbread boy to be killed before it becomes dangerous.
If the boy senses that it is abandoned, it will 'know' the location of its creator and will seek to reunite if able. The boy will only prefer to eat its creator if no other creature is available - such as the creator's party, animals, enemies, children in particular, etc.
Keep in mind that creating the gingerbread boy and releasing it at some point in a town (for example) will be something that draws attention. The divination spell, cast by a 7th level cleric, can very easily determine the source of this sort of thing with two questions: who created the creature? and where is the creator now?
Food for Thought.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
A Sport?
Last week, New Years' Day, I ran a ten-hour session of my world, from noon until 10 at night. We would have liked to have gone longer, but as the next day was Friday, a work day, we were forced to cut it off.
Throughout the day, we took several breaks, including one for dinner. Along with that we did take a while to get started - we weren't hurrying. In all, I'd estimate that actual pay-attention game time was seven and a half hours. Which went by fast. Very fast.
What was actually accomplished? The party finished off their attack on a kobald village of 80 kobalds, 18 of which were 1st, 2nd or 3rd level (see this post). Afterwards, they gathered their treasure, paid out shares to their followers, inspected the kobald fortification to determine if it was viable for themselves, discovered it was not, discovered the well could be purified through magic, discovered that the fortification's clay-and-stone platform could be salvaged provided everything else could be built, updated their characters for levels gained and discussed what things they'd want to include in a fort they built from scratch.
Then we were done.
Imagine, if you will, watching a 450-minute film. For the first 375 minutes, a group of well armed soldiers and wizards hack their way through sixty odd combatants, with each moment of the battle being shown over and over again from every possible angle, both the party and the combatants - the camera showing the thief fighting the kobald, the camera cutting to the cleric fighting another kobald, then a shot of the druid concentrating, then a shot of the fighter fighting three kobalds, then a shot of the young girl who desperately wants to be a fighter (npc) fighting a kobald . . . and then all the same shots shown over again, only this time from the kobalds point of view, so that the kobald is trying to kill the young girl, then we see the kobald trying to kill the cleric, then we see two kobalds trying to shoot the druid and then . . .
And it goes on and on. For more than six continuous hours. In brutal detail.
Think of how you feel, watching the Avengers for the 9th or 10th time, watching that oh-so-exhausting 90-second bit where they talk about Coulson and his bloodsoaked cards. Why are 90 seconds so LONG during a movie and so meaningless during a role-playing game?
I'd like to pull out a well-known quote from an extremely annoying man, one of those men in the history of culture that succeeded in irking me to the point that when he died, my only thought was "finally." Roger Ebert:
I find myself turning this on its side and looking at it differently today. I've always viewed Ebert as wrong about this - as most people do - but I'm thinking just now that while he still is wrong, it may just be that he's right, too. Perhaps this is the reason why it is so damn hard to define role-playing as a 'game.' It is a fact that emotionally and chemically, it affects us like a sport. Time passes more rapidly than it does with a game. Time passes like it does with a sport - and not a sport like baseball. Time passes like football (european). Where play doesn't stop to make 'plays' - it only stops when something goes wrong or very right.
Ninety seconds is the time it takes to hear the DM say its time for you to take your action, decide on your action, roll the die, identify the result, communicate the result, listen as the DM contextualizes the result, react emotionally to the contextualization, express your emotion and shift your thinking to the next player's turn. Blip. Time gone. Within the moment of taking your turn, there's no time to self-analyze as there is in a film, where your boredom compels you to examine closely every thing that appears on the screen, particularly after seeing the film ten times.
This isn't possible at the speed that sports take place. Getting the ball, throwing the ball, stopping the other who has the ball - there's no time to analyze until the ball ceases to be in play - whereupon most of the initial analyzation is about what happened, not how you personally feel about it.
This makes me realize something about players, particularly those players who do not seem to enjoy the game as much as others. When I am playing football and pass the ball up the field, I don't take my eye off the ball. It doesn't matter that I've ceased to be part of the play - I am as concerned with what my team mates are doing with the ball as I am with my own actions. I remain immersed, through every second, because my stake in what's happening doesn't cease to matter when my immediate involvement ends.
Above, I used the phrase, ". . . and shift your thinking to the next player's turn." At the moment I wrote that, about ten minutes ago now, I realized I had nailed something down that has - until now - skirted out of my grasp. There are football players who kick the ball away to a teammate and then 'turn off.' They let themselves rest. They get interested in something off the field. They get caught with their guard down when the ball makes its way back. They're bad players.
Granted, I'm 50 years old now. If I played football, I know for a fact that my focus on the game would mostly involve not dying from a heart-attack. Still, I stand by the words above, because fat, aging, computer-bound chair-swiveling geeks make shitty, shitty football players. I haven't been good at football since I was 23.
Here we're talking about people who play a table game. Er, sport. Whatever. Players who finish their action and then . . . go away. To think about themselves until it is time to do something for them.
450 minutes of D&D must seem to stretch out into forever for these players. Every other person's turn must drag like the bloody trading card scene. Combat in particular, where everybody at the table gets a turn, must be the worst nightmare for these people, who need attention all the time.
I've never thought about that. See, I don't have any of these people playing at my table. Probably because I like combat. A lot. I like having my NPCs talk to everyone in the party, not just the one player making the most noise. I like setting up every player at the table with dilemmas and problems to solve, forcing every other player to give everyone their moment in the sun.
Players who only care about themselves - like gamers - jeez, I get creeped just thinking about it. Even in this first twenty minutes of this epiphany (which crept up on me unexpectedly), I'm realizing how much of the RPG-culture is based upon players who think they're playing a game . . . when it fact it's a sport.
Throughout the day, we took several breaks, including one for dinner. Along with that we did take a while to get started - we weren't hurrying. In all, I'd estimate that actual pay-attention game time was seven and a half hours. Which went by fast. Very fast.
What was actually accomplished? The party finished off their attack on a kobald village of 80 kobalds, 18 of which were 1st, 2nd or 3rd level (see this post). Afterwards, they gathered their treasure, paid out shares to their followers, inspected the kobald fortification to determine if it was viable for themselves, discovered it was not, discovered the well could be purified through magic, discovered that the fortification's clay-and-stone platform could be salvaged provided everything else could be built, updated their characters for levels gained and discussed what things they'd want to include in a fort they built from scratch.
Then we were done.
Imagine, if you will, watching a 450-minute film. For the first 375 minutes, a group of well armed soldiers and wizards hack their way through sixty odd combatants, with each moment of the battle being shown over and over again from every possible angle, both the party and the combatants - the camera showing the thief fighting the kobald, the camera cutting to the cleric fighting another kobald, then a shot of the druid concentrating, then a shot of the fighter fighting three kobalds, then a shot of the young girl who desperately wants to be a fighter (npc) fighting a kobald . . . and then all the same shots shown over again, only this time from the kobalds point of view, so that the kobald is trying to kill the young girl, then we see the kobald trying to kill the cleric, then we see two kobalds trying to shoot the druid and then . . .
And it goes on and on. For more than six continuous hours. In brutal detail.
Think of how you feel, watching the Avengers for the 9th or 10th time, watching that oh-so-exhausting 90-second bit where they talk about Coulson and his bloodsoaked cards. Why are 90 seconds so LONG during a movie and so meaningless during a role-playing game?
I'd like to pull out a well-known quote from an extremely annoying man, one of those men in the history of culture that succeeded in irking me to the point that when he died, my only thought was "finally." Roger Ebert:
"What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it. How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve point-and-shoot in many variations and plotlines, treasure or scavenger hunts, as in 'Myst,' and player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports."
I find myself turning this on its side and looking at it differently today. I've always viewed Ebert as wrong about this - as most people do - but I'm thinking just now that while he still is wrong, it may just be that he's right, too. Perhaps this is the reason why it is so damn hard to define role-playing as a 'game.' It is a fact that emotionally and chemically, it affects us like a sport. Time passes more rapidly than it does with a game. Time passes like it does with a sport - and not a sport like baseball. Time passes like football (european). Where play doesn't stop to make 'plays' - it only stops when something goes wrong or very right.
Ninety seconds is the time it takes to hear the DM say its time for you to take your action, decide on your action, roll the die, identify the result, communicate the result, listen as the DM contextualizes the result, react emotionally to the contextualization, express your emotion and shift your thinking to the next player's turn. Blip. Time gone. Within the moment of taking your turn, there's no time to self-analyze as there is in a film, where your boredom compels you to examine closely every thing that appears on the screen, particularly after seeing the film ten times.
This isn't possible at the speed that sports take place. Getting the ball, throwing the ball, stopping the other who has the ball - there's no time to analyze until the ball ceases to be in play - whereupon most of the initial analyzation is about what happened, not how you personally feel about it.
This makes me realize something about players, particularly those players who do not seem to enjoy the game as much as others. When I am playing football and pass the ball up the field, I don't take my eye off the ball. It doesn't matter that I've ceased to be part of the play - I am as concerned with what my team mates are doing with the ball as I am with my own actions. I remain immersed, through every second, because my stake in what's happening doesn't cease to matter when my immediate involvement ends.
Above, I used the phrase, ". . . and shift your thinking to the next player's turn." At the moment I wrote that, about ten minutes ago now, I realized I had nailed something down that has - until now - skirted out of my grasp. There are football players who kick the ball away to a teammate and then 'turn off.' They let themselves rest. They get interested in something off the field. They get caught with their guard down when the ball makes its way back. They're bad players.
Granted, I'm 50 years old now. If I played football, I know for a fact that my focus on the game would mostly involve not dying from a heart-attack. Still, I stand by the words above, because fat, aging, computer-bound chair-swiveling geeks make shitty, shitty football players. I haven't been good at football since I was 23.
Here we're talking about people who play a table game. Er, sport. Whatever. Players who finish their action and then . . . go away. To think about themselves until it is time to do something for them.
450 minutes of D&D must seem to stretch out into forever for these players. Every other person's turn must drag like the bloody trading card scene. Combat in particular, where everybody at the table gets a turn, must be the worst nightmare for these people, who need attention all the time.
I've never thought about that. See, I don't have any of these people playing at my table. Probably because I like combat. A lot. I like having my NPCs talk to everyone in the party, not just the one player making the most noise. I like setting up every player at the table with dilemmas and problems to solve, forcing every other player to give everyone their moment in the sun.
Players who only care about themselves - like gamers - jeez, I get creeped just thinking about it. Even in this first twenty minutes of this epiphany (which crept up on me unexpectedly), I'm realizing how much of the RPG-culture is based upon players who think they're playing a game . . . when it fact it's a sport.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Picking a Side
Well.
Truth be told, I deeply dislike Anita Sarkeesian. This is true of anyone who simply refuses to do the research - or who rides upon the half-comprehended scholarship of other people who refuse to do the research. There's nothing particularly special about Sarkeesian that wasn't present with McKinnon or Steinem back in the day - or a host of other similar pundits who let similar poorly conceived scholarship find its way to paper . . . and just for the record, I feel the same way about the poor (yet extremely popular) scholarship of Michel Foucault, John Ralston Saul or Marshall McLuhan. Adored by all, yet curiously without any useful work built upon their oh-so-brilliant theories.
I won't bother to argue that my dislike of Sarkeesian has nothing to do with being a woman. Who the fuck would ever believe me?
My position merely needs to be made before saying that I agree with this.
I do. The number of things is a bit repetitive, to stretch it out so that the magic number '25' can be achieved, but I didn't find a single thing in the video that I could state was untrue. I am not, have never been or ever expect to be attacked because I am male. There are a lot of negative comments still to be found on this blog, and quite a lot of opinions expressed about me elsewhere, but I'm quite sure none of them are attacking me because I am a male.
There are a few that argue that I'm 'less than a male,' but that sort of proves the point of the video, doesn't it? That the most hurtful thing that anyone can say about a man is that he isn't one, really. That he is woman-like.
Well, that's all I have to say.
Truth be told, I deeply dislike Anita Sarkeesian. This is true of anyone who simply refuses to do the research - or who rides upon the half-comprehended scholarship of other people who refuse to do the research. There's nothing particularly special about Sarkeesian that wasn't present with McKinnon or Steinem back in the day - or a host of other similar pundits who let similar poorly conceived scholarship find its way to paper . . . and just for the record, I feel the same way about the poor (yet extremely popular) scholarship of Michel Foucault, John Ralston Saul or Marshall McLuhan. Adored by all, yet curiously without any useful work built upon their oh-so-brilliant theories.
I won't bother to argue that my dislike of Sarkeesian has nothing to do with being a woman. Who the fuck would ever believe me?
My position merely needs to be made before saying that I agree with this.
I do. The number of things is a bit repetitive, to stretch it out so that the magic number '25' can be achieved, but I didn't find a single thing in the video that I could state was untrue. I am not, have never been or ever expect to be attacked because I am male. There are a lot of negative comments still to be found on this blog, and quite a lot of opinions expressed about me elsewhere, but I'm quite sure none of them are attacking me because I am a male.
There are a few that argue that I'm 'less than a male,' but that sort of proves the point of the video, doesn't it? That the most hurtful thing that anyone can say about a man is that he isn't one, really. That he is woman-like.
Well, that's all I have to say.
Clerical Amateur Sage Abilities
In accordance with the goal of this post, I am happy to say I've completed (more or less) the list of amateur skills that a cleric in my world has the potential to possess. These are gained according to the details on this page, which also lists the 18 possible studies that a cleric is able to pursue (directly or indirectly, according to my rules.
What follows is a complete list of amateur abilities, with links to the wiki:
There, that should keep the reader busy for a little while. Finally, I have one of these in the bag. Druid next (finishing off the work I did on the work blog).
What follows is a complete list of amateur abilities, with links to the wiki:
- Aid Rest: increases hit points restored from rest. (medicine)
- Beast Forms: allows recognition and identification of beasts, with some knowledge of the dangers they present. (beasts)
- Binding Wounds: improves skill at ending hit point damage caused by wounds. (medicine)
- Burial: the magical protection of a corpse, denying forces of evil to make use of the body in the grave. (ritual)
- Business Dealing: the ability to make sound business contracts that will safely benefit both parties. (law & policy)
- Celestial Navigation: identify location on the surface of the earth or measure any angle between two visible objects using a sextant. (astronomy & astrology)
- Choose Prognostication: allows insight in choosing the best divination method. (divination)
- Define Morality: gives the character perfect knowledge of whether a circumstance or action is right or wrong. (gods)
- Diagnose Ailment: identifies a disease or poison affecting the patient's health; does not provide treatment. (medicine)
- Essence: provides a general illustration of the known outer plane. (outer planes)
- Functionary: choose a position of responsibility within the known political entity. (politics)
- Heraldic Code: permits understanding of the code and rules within heraldry. (heraldry)
- History of Empire: presents an overview of great civilizations throughout the world and throughout history. (history)
- Identify Artifact: determines if a given object is or is not a magical artifact. (artifacts)
- Identify Manifestation: allows knowledge of encountered manifestations and their influence. (dweomercraft)
- Immersion: strengthens a character's belief, empowering them to pursue knowledge within their chosen faith. (ritual)
- Judge Belief: defines the piety of others. (gods)
- Know Deity: identify or recognize the presence of a given demi-god through imagery or influence. (demi-gods)
- Military Studies: presents a clear grasp of events surrounding wars in the past, as well as conveying some insight into enemy tactics. (history)
- Marriage: binds together two believers in the eyes of a religion, empowering them when in each other's company. (ritual)
- Patronage: enables the location of artists worthy of financial support and commissions. (religious art & music)
- Preach: the power to deliver a sermon, influencing an audience to adopt moral truth, right conduct and worthy leadership. (faith)
- Proselytize: the skill to speak with others and encourage them to adopt the cleric's faith. (faith)
- Recognize Heavens: ability to identify individual stars, constellations, planets and other phenomenon. (astronomy & astrology)
- Recognize Hero: allows recognition of great persons and celebrities. (heroes)
- Recognition of Signs I: permits recognition of heraldry, signs & sigils relating to monarchs, emperors, high ranking religious leaders and heroes. (heraldry)
- Religious History: provides some practical knowledge into the wax and wane of religions throughout history and insight into their strengths and weaknesses. (history)
- Ritual Slaughter: knowledge of the correct practice in slaughtering creatures for sacrifice and divination. (divination)
- Schmooze: make friends and allies, gain knowledge and provide for the exchange of agreed-upon favors. (politics)
- Seek Shrines: enables the location of shrines, graveyards, crypts, hallowed places and other holy locations. (religious design)
- Solicitor: sufficient knowledge of the legal system needed to give meaningful advice to others. (law & policy)
- Sphere of Influence: knowledge of a demi-god's form and extent of influence. (demi-gods)
- Standard Bearer: offers greater resolve to fellow combatants during battle. (heraldry)
- Studied Artifacts: a list of artifacts about which the character possesses knowledge. (artifacts)
- Studied Beasts: a list of unusual beasts about which the character possesses knowledge. (beasts)
- Studied Heroes: a list of heroes about whom the character possesses knowledge. (heroes)
- Telescope Making I: a discipline enabling the character to manufacture effective mounted telescopes. (astronomy & astrology)
- Theistic Design I: enables the player to identify and recognize elements of religious design. (religious design)
- Theistic Expression: enables the player to identify and recognize elements of religious art & music. (religious art & music)
- Transmogrification: provides an explanation elaborating on how living, become the dead, become residents of a known outer plane. (outer planes)
- Turn Undead: the ability of clerics to force back undead through knowledge and will. (dweomercraft)
There, that should keep the reader busy for a little while. Finally, I have one of these in the bag. Druid next (finishing off the work I did on the work blog).
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Building a Congregation
Frankly, there's so much material here that's new, I think the writing below is, well, below par. Still, I want to get this posted before running out for the afternoon because I'm forever seeking reflection and input. None of this is tried, having been invented in the last two days, but I feel the structure is better than any previous method I've used to calculate this problem which the original books did not bother with.
Having constructed a temple of sufficient size, the number of potential worshippers will depend upon the number of inhabitants surrounding location of the temple, the local infrastructure, the charisma of the cleric, dimensions of the temple and the amount of ornamentation that has been incorporated into the temple's design.
Begin with the group designation of the hex where the cleric has gained permission to build. This refers to the pre-existing infrastructure of the area. Hex groups six miles in diameter are rated in value from I to VIII (using Roman numerals), where I possesses the highest level of infrastructure and VIII possesses no infrastructure at all. Hex groups with designations of VIII have no inhabitants. Those with VI or VII have few inhabitants; those with I or II have many.
Note, however, that the cleric does not draw from the population of the entire 6-mile hex group. Each group is divided into seven 2-mile hexes - it is the inhabitants of this local 2-mile hex that is used to determine the cleric's potential congregation.
The cleric's charisma is expressed as a percentage multiplied by the infrastructure designation. The DM will be able to calculate the total number of inhabitants in the hex. Where the population is very high (densest levels will be more than 20,000 persons per 2-mile hex), there will be competition from other temples that will lower the cleric's draw. Each 1,000 population will reduce the cleric's charisma by 1 point.
Thus, a cleric with a 15 wisdom, building a temple in a hex group designated V would draw a base 75% of the inhabitants of the 2-mile diameter hex surrounding the temple. If, however, the total inhabitants numbered 3,000 persons, the cleric's charisma would be reduced to 12 and the calculated percentage reduced to 12 x 5 or 60%. If this number is reduced to zero, then the cleric's charisma and temple alone is not enough to draw worshippers in the area.
If it happens that the potential congregation is greater than 100% of the area's inhabitants, this will mean that additional worshippers are being drawn from other surrounding hexes, beyond the location of the temple.
Increasing the size of the temple can improve a cleric's charisma. Ornamentation will improve a cleric's charisma.
Where the temple itself is not be large enough to accommodate the whole potential congregation, clerics may rely upon a full congregation weekly. Where the reverse is true and the congregation is actually smaller than the temple, then efforts such as expanding the temple's size would be superfluous.
Note that the numbers above describes only the potential worshippers. To actually gain a congregation, a cleric must sacrifice 1 week in personal communication with the residents to build 10 weekly attendants. Thus, if a temple had a capacity of 200 worshippers, the cleric would need to spend 20 weeks total to bring that temple up to its full capacity weekly.
To retain a congregation, the cleric must deliver a service once per week. Each failure to appear will reduce the total congregation by 15% - whereupon more weeks of personal communication must be sacrificed winning these worshippers back. This pressure can only be relieved by obtaining a lesser cleric to jointly manage services - but this cleric too must also communicate with the locals, in effect building a parallel congregation using the same base temple, based upon that lesser cleric's charisma.
While the balance of weekly parishioners will offer tithes of 1 or 2 c.p. per week, or even none at all, the balance of wealthier worshippers will balance this so that the cleric may count on 2 s.p. per attending worshipper per week (a random die roll is suspended due to the potential of needing a hundred or more rolls). Moreover, if the cleric attends their temple for four weeks in succession, if the cleric succeeds in a charisma check then the cleric will receive a gift will be received of 20-80 g.p. Roll a d20 to determine the form: livestock (1-3), land (4-9), food for the poor (10-13), a contribution for expansion/ornamentation (cleric's decision) of the temple (14-15), a legacy in the form of coin (16), furniture (17), incense (18), a silversmithed object (19) or clothing (20).
If a cleric has gathered more than 100 worshippers and commits contractually to giving services no less than three times per month, the community/local lord will pay a stipend of 50 g.p. per month to the cleric. If the coin is accepted, the cleric will be asked occasionally to take actions which will pacify the local population (speaking out against violence, encouraging the peasants to know their place, feeding the poor, etc.).
If the temple exists in an area where the cleric's religion is part of the accepted social structure, the cleric will be asked to contribute 10% of the tithes received to superiors - this payment does not extend to gifts received nor the cleric's monthly stipend. If the cleric's religion is isolated from the community, this percentage of tithes need not be paid - but should the cleric wish to seek out the appropriate superiors and pay it anyway, there are benefits from this.
For example, a subordinate cleric may be requested from the religious establishment, to be assigned to the cleric's temple. This subordinate will act as a completely loyal follower, who will serve and defend the temple as able.
See Pogroms.
Forgive the writing, please.
Begin with the group designation of the hex where the cleric has gained permission to build. This refers to the pre-existing infrastructure of the area. Hex groups six miles in diameter are rated in value from I to VIII (using Roman numerals), where I possesses the highest level of infrastructure and VIII possesses no infrastructure at all. Hex groups with designations of VIII have no inhabitants. Those with VI or VII have few inhabitants; those with I or II have many.
Note, however, that the cleric does not draw from the population of the entire 6-mile hex group. Each group is divided into seven 2-mile hexes - it is the inhabitants of this local 2-mile hex that is used to determine the cleric's potential congregation.
The cleric's charisma is expressed as a percentage multiplied by the infrastructure designation. The DM will be able to calculate the total number of inhabitants in the hex. Where the population is very high (densest levels will be more than 20,000 persons per 2-mile hex), there will be competition from other temples that will lower the cleric's draw. Each 1,000 population will reduce the cleric's charisma by 1 point.
Thus, a cleric with a 15 wisdom, building a temple in a hex group designated V would draw a base 75% of the inhabitants of the 2-mile diameter hex surrounding the temple. If, however, the total inhabitants numbered 3,000 persons, the cleric's charisma would be reduced to 12 and the calculated percentage reduced to 12 x 5 or 60%. If this number is reduced to zero, then the cleric's charisma and temple alone is not enough to draw worshippers in the area.
If it happens that the potential congregation is greater than 100% of the area's inhabitants, this will mean that additional worshippers are being drawn from other surrounding hexes, beyond the location of the temple.
Increasing the size of the temple can improve a cleric's charisma. Ornamentation will improve a cleric's charisma.
Where the temple itself is not be large enough to accommodate the whole potential congregation, clerics may rely upon a full congregation weekly. Where the reverse is true and the congregation is actually smaller than the temple, then efforts such as expanding the temple's size would be superfluous.
Note that the numbers above describes only the potential worshippers. To actually gain a congregation, a cleric must sacrifice 1 week in personal communication with the residents to build 10 weekly attendants. Thus, if a temple had a capacity of 200 worshippers, the cleric would need to spend 20 weeks total to bring that temple up to its full capacity weekly.
To retain a congregation, the cleric must deliver a service once per week. Each failure to appear will reduce the total congregation by 15% - whereupon more weeks of personal communication must be sacrificed winning these worshippers back. This pressure can only be relieved by obtaining a lesser cleric to jointly manage services - but this cleric too must also communicate with the locals, in effect building a parallel congregation using the same base temple, based upon that lesser cleric's charisma.
While the balance of weekly parishioners will offer tithes of 1 or 2 c.p. per week, or even none at all, the balance of wealthier worshippers will balance this so that the cleric may count on 2 s.p. per attending worshipper per week (a random die roll is suspended due to the potential of needing a hundred or more rolls). Moreover, if the cleric attends their temple for four weeks in succession, if the cleric succeeds in a charisma check then the cleric will receive a gift will be received of 20-80 g.p. Roll a d20 to determine the form: livestock (1-3), land (4-9), food for the poor (10-13), a contribution for expansion/ornamentation (cleric's decision) of the temple (14-15), a legacy in the form of coin (16), furniture (17), incense (18), a silversmithed object (19) or clothing (20).
If a cleric has gathered more than 100 worshippers and commits contractually to giving services no less than three times per month, the community/local lord will pay a stipend of 50 g.p. per month to the cleric. If the coin is accepted, the cleric will be asked occasionally to take actions which will pacify the local population (speaking out against violence, encouraging the peasants to know their place, feeding the poor, etc.).
If the temple exists in an area where the cleric's religion is part of the accepted social structure, the cleric will be asked to contribute 10% of the tithes received to superiors - this payment does not extend to gifts received nor the cleric's monthly stipend. If the cleric's religion is isolated from the community, this percentage of tithes need not be paid - but should the cleric wish to seek out the appropriate superiors and pay it anyway, there are benefits from this.
For example, a subordinate cleric may be requested from the religious establishment, to be assigned to the cleric's temple. This subordinate will act as a completely loyal follower, who will serve and defend the temple as able.
See Pogroms.
Audio?
Market survey question. I'll keep it simple.
Is there a demand for a audio book of How to Run, read by a professional voice actor?
Yes, no, details please.
Is there a demand for a audio book of How to Run, read by a professional voice actor?
Yes, no, details please.
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