Solokind Negotiation

This one's about using Otherkind Dice in old-school solo play.

My love for Meguey & Vincent Baker's index card dice system is no secret. Recently, I've been gearing up to do some solo dungeon/hex crawling. It seems like a fun way to pass an hour or two, and if it ends up resonating with me I'd like to join the ranks of people running sandbox campaigns for their friends that they also play solo in between sessions. 

As I prepare for my descent into The Incandescent Grottoes, I took stock of what I need. There are many fine products for one-player games—GM oracles, spark decks, etc. I'm using a procedure-heavy game and published material, so I don't really need help with content generation. The one thing that puzzled me was how I was going to treat with the dungeon denizens I encounter. 

I looked around for ways other people have handled this situation. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I didn't find much of anything. I'm sure there are brilliant solutions out there, just out of reach of my search-engine skills. So I had to think of how I'd do it. And naturally, I thought of Otherkind Dice. 

Negotiation
When you negotiate with an NPC, use the following three index cards. Roll 3d6 and assign one die to each card. Add your reaction roll modifier (Charisma) to one of the results. If a negative reaction roll modifier would give you a result of zero, treat it as a 1.

What do they want?
6: Help achieving a small goal.
4-5: Something material and common.
3: Help achieving a large goal.
1-2: Something material and rare.

What will they give in return?
6: More than you're asking for.
3-5: Exactly what you're asking for.
1-2: Less than you're asking for.

How will this affect your reputation with them?
6: A great increase in reputation.
3-5: A modest increase in reputation.
1-2: No increase in reputation.

I think Otherkind Dice are a powerful tool for the solo roleplayer. I imagine a solo game only using them could work quite well. I can't wait to continue my solo journey and find other hurdles to overcome with a few index cards and some six-sided dice. 

Wrestling with a White Whale

This one's about grappling.

Has any ttrpg done grappling well? I'm sure some have, just as I'm sure every edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game that includes grappling rules is not among them. Rise Up Comus said as much yesterday on Bluesky, and it got me thinking... how would I do it?

That question opened up a majestic can of worms (sorry, I'm so sorry). What do I want from grappling rules? Well, I want them to be fast. But not too fast, one-and-done is anticlimactic. Dice rolls should be involved, however. In contested rolls! That way my players and I can narrate the back-and-forth as each side struggles for the upper hand. And it should be simple, something I could explain in about 30 seconds. 

Here it is in much more, "these are game mechanics" language. 

A Grappling Contest

These rules use a dice chain (d4>d6>d8>d10>d12>d20). 

When one character attempts to grapple another, a contest is started between them. Each contestant starts with a grappling die, which is a d8 by default. The die is incremented one step for each advantage a contestant has, such as a difference in size, abundance of limbs, etc.

The contest is a series of rolls using the grapple dice. Any to-hit melee bonus or penalty from a contestant's Strength score is applied to the roll. Each time one side loses, their grapple die decrements one step. When a contestant no longer has a die to roll, they have lost and are grappled. 

Well, there you have it. I haven't tested this, besides grabbing some dice at my kitchen table. It seemed fun to me, I could imagine the back-and-forth action that I want out grappling mechanics. Will it be fun for my players? Only time will tell. 

Smoke & Mirrors

This one's about suspension of disbelief, or rather when I fail at it.

Torches in old-school roleplaying games are magic items masquerading as mundane ones. With some exceptions, every torch lasts a set amount of time—usually an hour. Dungeons are often pitch-black and filled with beings adapted to seeing in such places. Yet the light of a torch doesn't attract the subterranean denizens as the delvers explore, illuminating halls and rooms as they go*. Neither does the smell of smoke, apparently.

The smoke! Don't get me started on the smoke. You're telling me dungeon crawlers light a fuel-soaked cloth attached to a stick to explore confined underground spaces? While moving maybe 120' every ten minutes? At worst, it sounds like a great way to speedrun suffocation. At best, it's going to be very difficult to see your surroundings. Because of all the freaking smoke. 

As I mentioned and you likely already know, torches are made from wood. Preferably resinous so the handle of your fire-stick doesn't burn as well. Then you need a cloth—burlap or something similar—soaked in a fuel (e.g. pitch, lard, oil), and fastened to the stick with something that doesn't easily burn, like wire. Maybe the fuel is a pitch or animal byproduct that doesn't produce smoke. Maybe it's common in the fantasy world the game takes place in. But from where I'm sitting it sounds supernatural.

So torches are magical. Or some parts of them are, because what other explanation is there? 

What does the availability of torches imply about the game world? About the labor of said world? How many people are involved in the production of the material components of a torch? And who puts them all together? Is there an infinite supply of them at every town and village? I suppose they may be a popular method of indoor lighting if they're the smokeless variety we see in tv and movies. Or do they only work that way out in the dangerous depths few dare to tread? Are adventurers really few and far between, or does the existence of an ample supply of torches imply a bustling industry of ne'er-do-wells? 

Look, I get it. Everything about torches are an abstraction, one of many found in these games. We could use candles or rushlights, but they're variants with the same problems on a smaller scale. Besides, we're not playing medieval life simulators. Torches exist for resource management, in the light they provide and the inventory space they take up.  But unlike nearly every other abstraction common throughout old school games, this one leaves me with more questions than answers.

So I can't think about torches. But I also can't stop thinking about torches. They aren't really a problem that needs to be solved, yet I still want to solve it. Thankfully, Dan Phipps and I did so a few months ago on Bluesky. You're welcome.

*The referee could, of course, have torch-use be the reason behind random encounters when they happen. But that isn't explicit in most games' procedures. And in a game like Shadowdark, it's actually less likely you'll encounter a wandering monster if you have a light source.

x-in-6 Roll to Retain Spells for OSE, et al.

This one is an untested idea.

What if the spell slot tables for casters in OSE and other such games was instead their x-in-6 chance of retaining spells of that level after casting it? 

Okay, surely this has been done before, right? But if anyone's talked about it online, I could not find it. If you know of anywhere this already exists, feel free to let me know in the comments. If you've tried it yourself, by all means share your experiences!

Anyway, I will likely give this a go the next time I run a game in the B/X family. Vancian magic is probably my players' least favorite part of games that use it, and I'd like to see the fun they'll have casting every spell they know at least once, maybe more, a day. Would this get messy in high-level play? Probably, but we've never reached high level before wandering over to another game. I'll cross that bridge if we come to it.  

Also, I much prefer roll to retain vs roll to cast. My tables have played roll to cast games a bunch over the years, and none of us particularly enjoy that aspect. I've taken to houseruling roll to retain into any such game we play. Null results won't stop me from playing something, but the less there are the better if you ask me.

P.S. Yes I know in Old School Essentials that would mean a 14th level Cleric would be able to cast infinite level 1 spells. That sounds really cool to me. 

x-in-6 Fighter Maneuvers for OSE

This one does what it says on the tin.

Damage and a maneuver? In this economy?! Well, yes. Inspired by the d6 thief skills in Carcass Crawler #1 by Necrotic Gnome, the house rules used in the 3d6 Down the Line Actual Play, and of course Mighty Deed of Arms from Dungeon Crawl Classics. I used it when I ran Old School Essentials earlier this year. Here's what it looks like.

Prowess
If a Fighter succeeds at an attack, in addition to dealing damage they can attempt one maneuver. The maneuver has to make sense; you couldn’t, for example, trip a flying opponent or a Gelatinous Cube.  
Push: Push the opponent 5 feet.
Trip: Knock the opponent prone.
Disarm: Strip the opponent of their weapon.
Intimidate: Force a morale check, as long as the opponent has not already passed two of them.
Ensnare: Prevent the opponent’s movement next turn.
Taunt: The opponent gets -2 to attacking anyone but the Fighter.

Each maneuver starts at a 1-in-6 chance. At 1st level, a Fighter has 6 expertise points to allocate.Every odd-numbered level thereafter, a Fighter gains 3 points to allocate.

 

Now, you may be asking yourself why. For many, the OSE (or B/X) Fighter is perfect as-is. If that's the case for you and your table, that's wonderful. However, mine is not convinced by the, "but they get magic swords!" argument. Especially when you consider the Fighting-Men in OD&D got all that and a bag of chips*. Besides, I love house-ruling and hacking the games I play with my friends. We have specific tastes, myself most of all, and our enjoyment takes precedent over a dogmatic adherence to the written word.

Others may be asking why as in, "why not just use Mighty Deed of Arms from DCC?" Some of my players struggle to come up with things when given something so open-ended. The structure of having six maneuvers to choose from emboldened their creativity. And the others pushed the boundaries of those limits, as they always do in any similar situation.

In other words, it worked for us. If you think it'd work for you and yours, try it out and let me know how it goes.

*Literally always being better at fighting than the other two classes, including multiple attacks much sooner if you used Chainmail.

 

Speedrunning Combat

This one's about using Otherkind Dice in old-school play.

There are two things I love. The first is the aforementioned Otherkind Dice by Meguey & Vincent Baker, without whom this post wouldn't exist*. I think about those dice a lot, maybe once a week. My game design drafts are full of possible ways to use them. 

My second love is combat in old-school roleplaying games. It's dangerous, but it rewards planning, creative item use, etc. Also, compared to modern fantasy games, it's fast. Still, there are things that slow it down, like turns/phases/actions, to-hit rolls, hit points, etc. Some games out there even do away with some of these things to speed it up. I love that, too.

But what if there was something that kept what I like about old-school combat, but was even faster? Like, really fast? What if OSR stood for Otherkind School Revolution? Maybe it would look like this:

Combat
When two forces clash and it is obvious who would win, they do. The GM will say what the consequences for the losing side are.

Otherwise, grab 3d6 and consider the following:
-Do the player characters have tactical advantages (high ground, surprise, superior numbers, etc)?
-Are the player characters using items to bolster their chances (molotovs, caltrops, oil, an optimal weapon, etc)?
-Are the player characters using magic to tip the odds in their favor?

Add a d6 for each advantage, item, or magic the characters employ. Then, answer the same questions for the opposite side. Take away d6 as appropriate.

The players then roll the remaining d6 and assign results to the following tables/index cards:

Characters
Were the player characters injured?
0: They were all killed or captured, at the GM's discretion.
1-2: One of them was killed or captured at the GM's discretion. determine randomly if no one volunteers. The rest were injured.
3-4: Half of them were injured, one gravely so. Determine randomly if no one volunteers.
5: One of them was injured.
6: Miraculously, none of them were.

Resources
Were any of the items or spells they used lost or broken?
0: Yes, all of them.
1-3: Yes, half of them. Determine randomly if no one volunteers.
4-5: Yes, one of them. Determine randomly if no one volunteers.
6: Somehow, not a single one.

Enemies
How did their opponents fair?
0: Completely unscathed.
1-2: They suffered minor injuries.
3-4: Half of them were injured, one gravely so.
5: Half of them dead, captured, or fled—players' choice.
6: Completely routed. they are all dead, captured, or fled—players' choice.

Now, how would I hack this into a pre-existing game like B/X? Perhaps I'd add a d6 for each THAC0 score improvement. Multiple d6 if Turn Undead was used against low-HD opponents, that could probably work. I'd probably just start playing with it and come up with solutions as they arose.

But I'm more interested in what a new game that uses this combat would look like. Would it use Otherkind Dice for everything? I'm of two minds about that. Games that have a single resolution mechanic are usually easier to pick up and play. Grab some d6s and the relevant index cards and you're set. That sounds fun! On the other hand, Otherkind works best when there's at least three result cards in play whenever a roll is called for. It could be a challenge to make a game that includes everything I want to leave to chance while also only rolling when the situation is complicated enough to warrant three result cards. 

And then there's the ritual of it all. This is hardly new territory, but resolution mechanics are rituals we enact while playing make-believe. And even if we can resolve everything in a game by flipping a coin or rolling a d20 and adding a number, there is something fascinating to me about the various parts of a game using different rituals to find out what happens next. 

Anyway, I'm excited to continue tinkering on an old-school game that speedruns combat. I'm sure I will come up with enough of something to play with my friends. I already have a near-complete draft of overland travel on a hex map that uses Otherkind Dice. Maybe you'll see that in a future post. 

*I originally posted about this on Bluesky. I was encouraged by Amanda P to blog about it, so credit to them for this entry as well.

Three Notes Make a Chord

This one's about NPCs.

I've been using published materials in the games I run for about two years. Dungeons, modules, hex/point crawls, pamphlet adventures—you get the idea. Before then, everything was home-made. For decades. So this has been a new experience, and an incredibly fun one.

But I can't help feel something is missing. Granted, this is often intentional. The majority of these games I've sat behind the screen for could be categorized with one or more three letter abbreviation ending in SR. The games, and the things people make for them, leave a lot of blank canvas on purpose. My overactive imagination loves that. 

Many of those blanks, I can fill in at the table. The one piece of the canvas I like to work on beforehand is NPCs. Sometimes you'll crack open a module and they'll just be a stat-block, maybe a defining characteristic or a single facet of their personality. They are hardly ever fleshed out in a way that facilitates speaking extemporaneously as them while portraying an actual person as complicated as you or me. 

In other words, they tend to be one note. Which can be okay—good, even. After all, a guard checking the PCs' weapons at the gate doesn't necessarily need to be a complicated character. But what about when I want a level of depth that one note doesn't provide? 

I make a chord. Which is to say, add two notes. What are those notes? Whatever is missing that will help me improvise dialogue as a dynamic character. This isn't about creating memorable characters, that's for the players to decide. If anything, it's a tool for an improv scene. 

There are two things I want in my three note chords. One is a mannerism. What sets them apart from another NPC I've played, what sets them apart from myself just speaking to my friends? The other thing is drives. Plural, as in two of them. Two desires, whether material or cerebral, that cannot be achieved simultaneously. Dual north stars that will inform how I act and what I say that I can toggle between.

Since this is an exercise in practicality, here's an example of an NPC I played:

Hiwa: She/her. Late 20s, brown skin, short black hair, dressed in fine Belarran clothes, always drinking wine. Drives: To sabotage House Zabala, to defy her aunt. 

This was at a noble's dinner party, hence the ever-present wineglass. There's my mannerism. I mimed holding it, I paused to drink from it, it was great. Then there's the conflicting drives. Her aunt was the head of a powerful guild, a noble-by-way-of-wealth, and House Zabala was the guild's greatest rival. So I get why she wanted to sabotage House Zabala, but I don't know why she wanted to defy her aunt. Maybe she resented the position she was put in, maybe she had a thing with a Zabalan noble. Whatever her internal conflict was didn't matter when it came to roleplaying as her. The important thing was I had two modes I could flip between. Every time the players spoke with her, even mid-conversation, she could feel the obligatory tug of duty or inversely decide she was a young woman there to party. 

She got quite drunk as the night wore on. Her plays at political maneuvering became sloppy and obvious, and rebelling against her aunt took precedent. By the end of the party, she was shielding her eyes against any light and complaining about every loud noise that rattled around her throbbing skull. Well and truly wine-drunk in the worst way. Would I have come up with all of that on the spot without a chord for her? Maybe, but probably not.

Naturally the session revolved around a murder mystery that the players solved quite brilliantly. But that's not the point of this story. There were 10 NPCs between the noble partygoers and their harried workstaff. The players interacted with all of them, could tell them all apart (even if they didn't always remember their names), and never quite knew what to expect when I opened my mouth because they couldn't peg these people as one-dimensional. 

It was our most memorable session of that campaign, one we all still look back on fondly. And for me, it wasn't just fun. It was easy, because I found a tool that works for me. 

I think about NPC chords every time I see one with a single note. I can't say I've been great at fleshing out characters in the supplemental material I've been using in recent years, but that's going to change. I'm about to start a Shadowdark campaign in The Gloaming from Cursed Scroll vol 1. So if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go make some chords.