Old D&D editions and clones - Ambition & Avarice

I remember when I first heard of Castles & Crusades, and how the creators talked about how it fused the best of older editions with new. I was never that convinced by C&C, but if any game has managed to fuse the best of old and new, that game is Ambition & Avarice.

The first thing I noticed when I opened this game is how good it looks. The layout it clean and readable and the illustrations opening each chapter is adorable. I mean, the illustration to Introduction is of a ruined structure, the proverbial hole in the ground you go to have adventures. It's where everything start, and the focus of it all, which is what the text say when it lays down the design goals. Everything in this game feels well thought out.

It's fun to see new classes, and new races. Some of them are what you would normally call evil or barbaric, and I like how this game never labels them as evil or NPC only.

Some innovations feels very good, like the saves as inherent to the race, while the classes is more about what you're trained to do. Having some things each class is good at, some things they can identify and some kind of companions are strokes of genius! This makes the class cover so much more, be flexible and the companions makes the game tie the murder hobos to the world. Very good new design, in a very old and traditional way. I also like the way the system of Dungeon Rolls gives you that kind of light weight "skill system" that LotfP has. Since there are lots of class based abilities and the races have lot of different qualities it feels like there so many interesting ways to make your character special, while it's still very easy to generate one and the archetypes you in a class based system are still present. It doesn't get much better than that. The author, Greg Christopher, even manages to sell me on a save system that aligns more with the traditional ones than my preferred 3rd ed. style saves.

What are my reactions to this game then? I guess you have noted that already. This is a game that is a joy to read, and thus it makes you want to play it. There are interesting innovations while keeping a lot of the stuff that is familiar. This is a honed game, and finely cut gem that has taken lots of stuff and really focused on player driven play, within the boundaries of old school gaming, but with lots of possibilities to play just the character you want.

There are a few things that really makes me want to run this game. One of them is the lack of a list of standard magic items. One of the things that so often make the fantastic mundane is the thoughtless reuse of the pieces of wonder Gary and Rob invented for the Greyhawk campaign. In this game both monsters and magic is allowed to be unique and fantastic again.

If more games were as well written as this one, we'd all be better off.

Save or Die - Randall said it well

I just read what Randall wrote on his blog on save or die effects. While I think sometimes there is a masochistic streak in some favouring the Old Ways, his solution and great arguments allow us all to have the cake and east it too.

My only problem with that post is I wish I had thought of it first! Cheap to only link and not write something yourself? Well, he said it best.

More musings on AD&D saving categories

Since Daniel Boggs mentioned that the Saving Throw categories are actually in one of the manuscripts Dave sent to Gary, and the fact that it actually contains a category for lasers (I hadn't realized what I saw, when reading "death ray"), I guess it's not unlikely that Dave Arneson invented the concept. Still, why did he do it like he did?

In OD&D, there is a "Death Ray", or possibly "Death, Ray" category, and a "Stone". Those are gone in AD&D, and also "Rod, Staff or Wand" have been harmonized into one, in contrast to OD&D where "Staves & Spells" and "All Wands" are different. Some of these I find puzzling.

In AD&D it feels like the categories could be described as "Physical Transformation", "Transformation again", "Magic Items", "Area Effects" and "The rest". While The first two are slightly overlapping, it at least makes more sense than OD&D.

I have a heard time figuring out how anyone could have been thinking when staves are one category and wands another. Even if these once were stat checks, it's now impossible to see which stat covered which one. In the comments I got the suggestion that when a PC encounter he should probably save vs "Rock Slide" or something to that effect, and it will be up to the DM to base it off a sensible number. I wonder if the categories are different things Dave had encountered in his Blackmoor campaign, and had noted down numbers for?

Considering Arneson and his friends had been playing wargames, I think about how saves are used in the rules I know. Often you roll morale for your troops in the same way as you roll a save in D&D or T&T, to avoid something bad happening. Also, cohesion and acceptance of orders is some mechanics I've seen. I see here at least a small suggestion the idea could have come from that background. Still no hint on if there are any system to the categories.

There are two things that bug me about all this. I would like to know what kind of thinking lies behind the original edition of D&D, and how the idea of rpg evolved. Lost knowledge is so sad. The other thing is my thirst for symmetry, rationalizing and shaving off rough edges on rules to make them run smoothly not only from familiarity. Both these annoy me in this case.

Having been reminded that T&T actually reinvented the idea of basing "saves" of the stats I'm inclined to put it back into D&D like I think of it. It can't really stop me from turn and poke those saves a bit more, though.

AD&D saves and ability checks

One of my commentators on yesterday's post mentioned something I find interesting, and suggests something about the relationship between abilities and saves that I had also been thinking on.

The first time I was DM for B/X, I instinctively asked for a d20 against a stat when a situation came up which I had no other mechanic for. The game I had been running before that had been D&D 3rd ed. and as far as I know, that mechanic is not specified there. Rolling against a stat seem to be a long standing way to resolve things like that, though.

In 3rd ed. the relationship between saves and stats are quite clear. You get a bonus on all saves from higher than usual stats and they have tidied up the zoo of saves into three general cases. If you compare this to how Call of Cthulhu, or other BRP games, handle it you can see that the Idea and Luck rolls etc. are all mapped to one stat each. In the new big Yellow Tome of BRP, I think they have expanded it to one such roll for each stat. Is this a way worth taking with D&D?

I like the idea of saves, but if you should have more than one, or not just a LUCK score, maybe it could be interesting to tie them to the stats. Inspired by the neat Target20 system, maybe you could roll a d20 trying to beat 20, and getting a bonus from the stat the DM decide or you talk him to accepting, getting a bonus according to whatever bonus scheme you like. Say, +1 per 2 above 13 or just +2 if above 15. You choose.

Looking at the different saves in AD&D I do find it slightly odd to Save versus Petrification when avoiding a rockslide, and I'd argue a bonus for high DEX any time. The system above sounds flexible enough to me.

Then I guess you could just say the DM asks for a Save vs. Rocks and invent some shit on the spot...

AD&D, using just the PHB

I have been thinking about games I want to run for a while now. Since I listen to Roll For Initiative podcast, which is all about AD&D, one candidate have been AD&D. For many, probably for many of my dear readers, it is a familiar game. Not so for me.

Way back when I started playing, one of my school mates talked about the games his older brother played. I had the opportunity to visit them, and got to browse the AD&D PHB, that game for "older guys". What I remember most clearly where the illustrations. I thought they looked like doodles made by ball point on a pad of paper while sitting chatting on the phone. Ugly game, not for me.

Later I started to buy some 2nd ed game books, since there were dozens of game worlds and some was actually pretty cool. I still abhorred the game, now for the rules.

So, since I now own two [sic!] copies of the PHB, I feel like I should give this game a chance. Having played B/X and S&W it feels a lot more familiar than it did way back then.

Everyone who have read the AD&D rules knows how much quirks they hide within those pages, and I intended to limit some of them. My first move was to decide that I'd play with the PHB, only!

All those old hands now shake their heads, since they know that there are no combat tables in the PHB. That I knew, but had forgotten. What I didn't knew, was that there are no saving throws in the PHB! All the rules on how to make a character, but not a word about saves!?

Since these rules are organized in a quite eccentric way, I might have missed the saves. Please tell me where they are in that case! But, how would the game work without saves?

When I had realized that they were missing, I suddenly thought that maybe it would be an interesting experiment to just disallow saves, since they are not in the PHB. Disallowing combat it more problematic, but AD&D without saves sounds like it could work.

What do you think?

Some ideas about stat checks, from Frank Menzter and me

I peeked in at Dragonsfoot today. Usually it's not of my hangouts, but I felt like seeing what was going on that end of the world. As some of you might now, some hobby Big Names have their own Q&A threads there. Not all of them are very lively, and some are just open house chatting and rambling. Anyway, I checked what Frank Mentzer had to say to the world, being a bit curios about that business plan of his. Nothing new seems to have happened on that, but he was answering questions and pontificating upon other matters. One thing he said was how they handles ability check in his game.

Since the games of yesteryear usually didn't have skill systems, you used some other mechanic when you wanted to do something not specifically covered by the rules. Rolling a d6 (grumbling grognard method), rolling a d20, rolling against a save of some kind or rolling against some stat. Those are the classics.

I grew up in BRP land, where there were skills aplenty. But, if for some reason no skill covered it, it was time to roll against a stat. There's a Resistance Table in the rules, used for e.g. arm wrestling (I promise, it's the first thing I've ever seen anyone use as an example, or used in actual play!) which can be used when pitting two basic stats against each other, so the idea to use roll against the stats are there. Frankly, the stats usually don't do that much in BRP (unless you count the Idea Roll and relatives, recently expanded in the big BRP tome), so sometimes you feel like using them.

There are some fairly interesting ways to roll a stat check. My favourite one is to roll a different amount of d6 depending on difficulty. Try to roll below 13 with 7d6!

Now, Frank didn't do stat checks. He had used "roll a d20, get above 12" as a standard, but also liked the idea of using saves. Personally I find the saves for AD&D to be so bizarre and non-intutive that I get a migraine just trying to remember what those crazy categories are! I think the unified saves in 3rd ed was a stroke of genius. Much have been written about saves and how they work or not. I think they are a mess in anything pre 3rd ed D&D. There, I said it. Anyway. Frank Mentzer didn't use stat checks.

Why did Mentzer think stat checks was a bad idea? Well, he actually had his reasons. However you twist and turn saves on their heads, they are a factor of a class based system. In D&D everyone have saves, and they are set before hand, equal for all. Rolling against a save is same for every 4th level Cleric, but the stats are individual and based on luck. Well, rolling dice is random, of course, but the way I understood Frank's reasoning, he felt the player should bring some skill to the table. Rolling against stats felt like to much randomness, since you would be better at saving if you was lucky when rolling your stats.

I'm not sure I buy that argument, but it's an interesting way of seeing it. Of course it's interesting to compare all of this to T&T, where everything you do will be a stat check. I do think Frank Mentzer have a point about randomness, but I still think it makes sense in T&T. Since there's nothing not based on stats, there will be a common base for everyone. Rolling enough dice will actually make the outcome drift toward the average. I find that kind of weird myself, but I know that the law of averages will make it even out. Also, I have seen by my own game table that smart players go further in T&T.

Choosing when to roll, and make it count when you're in a postion of strength is very important. That's one lesson I learnt from Advanced Squad Leader. If you take every opportunity to roll, bad things happen. Attack from strength, it's a proven maxim. How you roll them bones, that's another kettle of fish. Food for thought.

Free RPG Day Impressions - Dragon Warriors

I have seen Dragon Warriors mentioned, and it seemed to be one of those quirks of history, so I was surprised when I heard it would come back in print. I grabbed the freebie of DW and dived in.

The booklet contains rules for combat, generating characters for two classes, a short introduction to the world, a few monsters and s short adventure. Since it is a game from the past, you kind of expect it to be a old school system and it delivers. The characters have stats, and classes which give you starting values in certain basic skills. Having a value for Attack and one for Defend reminded me of the old Fighting Fantasy game books, also from the UK. Subtracting the targets Defence from your attack and roll a d20 to hit. Nice and simple. Different classes are inherently better at attacking or defending in combat. Also, you have some basic skills Stealth, Perception and Evasion. The classes then also have class based abilities, like Track or Berserk. It's classic old school weirdness that they haven't unified those two classes of Skills. All in all it looks easy enough to understand, and no more odd than some other classics. They have managed to include a roll to penetrate armor, but increase the amount of dice rolled, since damage is set by weapon. I kind of like that solution. I don't know if it works that way in the full game, but here I see an interesting opportunity to include weapon vs armor type effects in a fairly smooth way. Sadly we don't get any hints on how magic works, more than that there are a Magic Attack basic ability for some classes.

There is one thing which I found interesting in the system. Using the Evasion skill you can apparently dodge attacks, and other kind of calamities. There are no other system for saves, which for me is a big plus. They snap the suspenders of disbelief way to easy. Now, not only is this a understandable system for saves, but it uses 2d10 instead of d20. That could be considered a wart on the rest of the system, but note that this will give another kind of probability distribution than a flat d20 spread. I kind of like the implications of that.

The short intro to the world is intriguing. It looks a bit like a gritty, but fantastic, world somewhat inspired by our world. It is no Forgotten Realms kind of super magic to be sure. Maybe it feels a little bit too medieval for my taste. I can't stand Chivalry and Sorcery kind of medieval fantasy, for example.

Lastly, there's a short adventure. I have seen far worse, many times, so this little excursion to the land of Legend gave me warm and fuzzy feelings. It's nothing special, just a clear-out-a-location-from-monsters kind of adventure. But, it shows off the setting and system well.