Shudder Mountains Starting Equipment Values

As a followup to my earlier post compiling prices for DCC RPG starting trade goods, here is a similar list for the custom occupations list provided by the Sour Spring Hollow adventure in The Chained Coffin, an adventure and campaign setting for DCC RPG. The book details the Shudder Mountains, a region inspired by the Appalachian Mountains as portrayed in the Silver John stories by Manly Wade Wellman. Many of the occupations are the same as in the core DCC RPG rulebook, but some have been removed and a few new ones added, to better fit the Appalachian setting. There were a few new trade goods on this list, so I've done the same research as described in the previous post, and here is a list of the items that do not have values given by the core rulebook.

All of the same notes and caveats from the previous post also apply here.

Item	Cost in gp	Notes
Awl	2
Barrel	2
Black grimoire	40	100 pages of parchment
Bundle of wood	5 cp	enough firewood for 1 day
Chisel	2
Clay jug	6 sp
Clay, 1 lb.	2 cp
Cleaver	8 sp
Cow hide	4 sp
Deer pelt	3 sp
Fiddle	20
Fine stone, 10 lbs.	1	granite or marble
Flour, 1 lb.	2 cp
Flute	5
Hen	2 cp
Herbs, 1 lb.	5 cp
Herding dog	17
Iron, 10 lbs.	5 sp
Parchment and quill pen	15 sp, 2 cp	5 sheets of parchment and one quill
Pick	6
Pitchfork	1
Pushcart	8
Quill	2 cp
Rag doll	5 cp
Shoehorn	2 sp
Shovel	2
Side of pork	1	approx. 30 lbs.
Sifting basket	3 sp
Steel helmet	20	treat as Full-face helmet in Crawl #2
Steel tongs	2
Waterproof sack	2 sp
Wood, 10 lbs.	5 cp	approx. two 3' long 2x4s

 

Values for DCC RPG Occupation Trade Goods

New characters in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG have a randomly determined occupation, which in turn gives them a starting weapon and some sort of "trade good" appropriate to their occupation. The DCC RPG rulebook suggests that these trade goods might be useful in the dungeon but might also be traded or sold. However, despite calling these items "trade goods", the book neglects to place a monetary value on them! What's the judge to do when a player asks if they can sell the side of beef or 3 square yards of fabric they've been lugging around?

After having the question arise in several games and having to come up with an ad hoc estimate, I decided to go through the occupations list and derive values for each of the starting weapons and trade goods that didn't already have prices. These values come from a variety of sources from the old school D&D constellation, tweaked as seemed appropriate for the DCC economy. These sources included (in roughly this order of priority): 

• Crawl! #2, a DCC RPG fanzine issue that includes an expanded equipment list, with prices in line with the DCC economy
• The AD&D 2e Player's Handbook, which is highly recommended for what is probably the most comprehensive equipment list suitable for any kind of old school fantasy setting
• The D&D 3.5e Player's Handbook, for a few items that other sources did not cover
• The Dolmenwood Player's Book, the Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player Tome, and Carcass Crawler #3. I frequently find the prices deriving from the "Basic D&D" lineage to be extremely inflated (always specified in gold pieces and probably a relic of the "XP for gold" mechanic), but I borrowed a few prices that seemed reasonable from these sources.
• Grain Into Gold. This is an outstanding effort to create a plausible medieval fantasy economy, and I used it as a "sanity check" on values, or borrowed values outright when no other source covered an item.

One source I didn't use directly was the original AD&D Players Handbook. Although it has a decent-sized equipment list, one has to be careful because in 1e, a gold piece was equal to 20 silver pieces, as opposed to the 10 sp we have been used to since 2e. Thus, we either have to assume that 1e copper and silver pieces are worth half as much as "modern" equivalents, or assume that copper and silver are the same but the gold piece is worth twice as much. I found it easier to just lean on other sources instead.

A brief note about the "DCC economy": Obviously, we are not trying to accurately simulate a medieval economy here. That is a fool's errand (especially when our understanding of the actual historical medieval economy is fragmentary at best!), and our players probably don't care that much. But it is nice to have things feel at least plausible and within an order of magnitude, shall we say. In judging or setting prices, I attempted to keep things in line with the equipment prices already given in the DCC RPG rulebook, keeping in mind that everything in this world is made by hand, etc.

I use basic living expenses as a rule of thumb. A pint of weak, homebrewed ale, being the medieval equivalent of bottled water, is worth about a copper piece or two. The DCC rulebook says that a day of rations (i.e., hard tack and jerky) costs 5 cp. A simple meal at a tavern would be a few silver pieces. A night at an inn ranges from a silver piece for a spot on the floor of the common room to a couple of gold pieces for the nicest lodgings a town has to offer. Very roughly, I view a copper piece as equivalent to one US dollar (circa 2025), making a silver piece equal to $10, and a gold piece to $100. This won't always reflect modern prices for the same items, but should get you close enough to "How many days of lunches is this worth?" to keep things plausible. I find it a useful calibration when determining how much treasure to place as well.

One last note: If you allow your new Level 0 PCs to trade or sell their starting equipment, I would recommend giving them no more than half the listed values in exchange. How much would you pay for an unrefrigerated slab of beef of dubious provenance from a desperate looking man who is quitting his job as a butcher to become an "adventurer"?

So without further ado, here are my suggested values for all of the weapons and trade goods on the DCC occupation table that do not already have prices listed in the rulebook. You'll note immediately that some occupations provide much more valuable heirlooms than others. Such are the vagaries of luck! I've arranged them alphabetically, as they are written in the DCC RPG rulebook. I hope you find this table useful, and please feel free to comment if you have questions or suggestions.

Item	Cost in gp	Notes
Awl	2
Badger pelt	7 cp
Barrel	2
Begging bowl	4 cp	clay bowl
Black grimoire	40	100 pages of parchment
Book	40	100 pages of parchment
Bundle of wood	5 cp	enough firewood for 1 day
Cheese dip	1 sp
Chicken meat, 5 lbs.	15 cp
Chisel	2
Clay, 1 lb.	2 cp
Cleaver	8 sp
Cow	10
Crowbar	2
Crutches	1 sp
Cudgel	3
Deer pelt	3 sp
Dice	5 cp
Duck	3 cp
Fabric, 3 yards	12 sp
Falcon	20	untrained
Fine dirt, 1 lb.	2 cp
Fine stone, 10 lbs.	1	granite or marble
Fine suit of clothes	10
Fine suits, 3 sets	30
Fine tools	25	treat as thieves' tools
Flour, 1 lb.	2 cp
Fruit	5 sp	1 bushel
Glass beads	1	bag of 20 beads/marbles
Gloves, 4 pairs	4
Goat	1
Goose	5 cp
Hen	2 cp
Herbs, 1 lb.	5 cp
Herding dog	17
Hex doll	5 cp
Iron helmet	10	treat as Standard helmet in Crawl #2
Jar of honey	15 cp	8 oz jar
Knife	5 sp
Linen, 1 yard	5 sp
Locket	2
Mithril, 1 oz.	30	Tolkien said mithril was worth "ten times its weight in gold"
Net	1
Parchment and quill pen	15 sp, 2 cp	5 sheets of parchment and one quill
Parchment, 10 sheets	3
Pick	6
Pitchfork	1
Pushcart	8
Quality cloak	8 sp
Quill	2 cp
Rag doll	5 cp
Razor	5 sp
Sack of night soil	5 cp
Sailcloth, 2 yards	4 sp
Scissors	1
Sheep	2
Shoehorn	2 sp
Shovel	2
Side of beef	5	approx. 100 lbs
Silk clothes	20
Small chest	1
Sow	3
Spyglass	25
Steel helmet	20	treat as Full-face helmet in Crawl #2
Steel tongs	2
Steel vial	1
Stick	0
Stinky cheese	2 sp	1 lb
Strange-looking rock	0
Tarot deck	8
Trowel	1
Ukulele	25
Waterproof sack	2 sp
Wood, 10 lbs.	5 cp	approx. two 3' long 2x4s
Wooden crate	1

House Rule: Firing Into Melee

Basic/Expert D&D doesn't have anything to say about firing into melee. A lot of editions level rather punitive penalties against this (AD&D had you randomly determine your target before rolling to hit!) with the result being that people generally don't even attempt to use missile weapons in a close combat.

I don't care for that for a variety of reasons. First, B/X is lethal enough as is and the PCs could use the extra help of a back line of archers. Second, I'd rather give the players in the back ranks something to do while the front rank fights hand-to-hand. Third, I've never heard of any version of D&D allowing for the melee weapon equivalent of "friendly fire". Why subject archers to a significant risk of hitting their friends when the guys in front can wave their swords around wildly and never worry about hitting the wrong person?

So what I do is apply a -2 penalty to the missile attack roll for every ally between the attacker and their target. This could be modified if the target is significantly bigger or smaller than the allies in the way. My assumption is that if the attacker can't get a clear shot because of allies in the way, they will simply hold their fire. I allow for the possibility of friendly fire only if the attacker rolls a natural 1. If that happens, I randomly determine which ally was targeted instead and then have the attacker roll another attack against the ally's armor class.

This never came up in play until session 21, when Ylil's player rolled a natural 1 for his sling attack. Of the three allies between him and his target, I randomly rolled that Brother Jedidiah was the unfortunate accidental victim. Ylil's player rolled very high on the second attack roll, and the end result was that Brother Jedidiah took a sling stone right in the back of the head at close range and expired on the spot.

It's a tough job, adventuring...

Scribing Scrolls, Holmes-style

In session 9, Tyrriel and Wilhelm both used Sleep scrolls that they had made several sessions earlier. I use the rules regarding scrolls from the Basic D&D rulebook edited by Dr. J. Eric Holmes (the edition that preceded Tom Moldvay's edition that we are using in this campaign).

In most editions of D&D and AD&D, you have to wait until you are 9th level to create any kind of magical item. Dr. Holmes allowed magic-users to create scrolls of spells that they know any at level, at a cost of 100 gp and one week of game time per spell level. This is unique among D&D editions, and is definitely not by-the-book for the edition we are using, but has become a fairly common house rule among modern "old school" campaigns. I generalize the rule to allow any spellcaster, including elves and clerics, to create scrolls.

The one important proviso that I add is that scrolls created this way are "personal scrolls" and cannot be used by anyone else. They are a sort of shorthand mnemonic for a spellcaster's own innate magical powers, and will not function for another caster, nor can they be used to assist in spell research. This prevents PC or NPC casters from selling cheap scrolls on the open market and making it too easy to get access to new spells.

I really like this rule, as it gives 1st level magic-users and elves a little bit more to do, and a way to spend some of the money they have been accumulating as they climb towards 2nd level. So far it hasn't unbalanced the game (anymore than the "insta-win" Sleep spell already does, at least).

The Order of the d30

I've mentioned my "big green d30" house rule a few times. I should probably explain it in full for readers who aren't my players. I blithely stole this house rule from Jeff Rients (though he did authorize people to do so). It is as follows:

Once per session each player may opt to roll the Dungeon Master’s big green d30 in lieu of whatever die or dice the situation normally calls for. The choice to roll the big green d30 must be made before any roll. The d30 cannot be rolled for generating character statistics or hit points.

The players have taken advantage of this rule in a number of interesting situations. My games tend to spend much more time on exploration and role playing than on combat and other dice rolling, so not every player ends up choosing to roll the d30 every game, but so far it has been used to:

• win initiative (very important when trying to get the Sleep spell off before the baddies get to attack)
• make a save-or-die saving throw vs. poison
• avoid being surprised
• attempt to pick a lock, on the reasoning that it's easier to roll between 1 and 15 on a d30 than on percentile dice

The last use was particularly interesting to me, since I hadn't originally expected anyone to use the d30 when they were hoping to roll low!

I like this house rule a lot, and the players definitely seem to enjoy it. It gives everyone an opportunity (but not a guarantee) to do something extra heroic each game, and adds a bit of strategy over when it's worth using your d30 roll. I don't feel it unbalances the game much; the game is plenty dangerous for the characters and I don't mind giving them a bit of extra luck. And that's all it is, after all - the element of chance and risk is still there.

By the way, technically the DM does count as a player and is allowed one throw of the d30 per game. I haven't used it yet, since it seems kind of unsporting on my part to stack the die rolls in the monsters' favor, but I might do someday if I had a villain or NPC that I really wanted to live to fight another day or whatnot.

Retainers in the Idalium Campaign

A few bloggers have been talking about the use of retainers (aka henchmen) in their games. I think Erik Tenkar kicked off the discussion with this post. I've been revising the rules for retainers in my campaign, so it's an timely discussion.

We are using retainers extensively in this campaign. I see many benefits to them, some of which are somewhat specific to our circumstances and others more universal.

This was my first time running a B/X campaign and I believe the first time my players have played under these rules. One of my goals was to play a more or less by-the-book game, with hit points rolled randomly and PCs dead at 0 points. I want dangerous situations in the game to be a tense, thrilling experience with real consequences on the line. In order to make such a game more palatable to all of us, it had to be essential that a player who loses his or her PC is not thrown out of the game for even a minute. Losing your PC might be all part of the game, but being forced to sit out and watch while the others have fun should not be. Retainers give the players a secondary character that they can immediately switch over to in the event their PC buys the farm. In addition, the larger party size allowed by retainers helps greatly in overall survivability. There is definitely safety in numbers in old school D&D.

The flip side of that is that as a DM I don't feel quite so bad about killing off an NPC retainer as I do a PC. So retainers also allow you to stage dramatic ambushes, use nasty save or die attacks, etc., without being completely obnoxious. It's quite thrilling to start off an encounter with an arrow from the darkness into someone's throat, but if that someone is a PC it usually gets you a lot of dirty looks from around the table.

So at our first session, I had each player roll up two characters, choosing one to be their PC and the other to be their initial retainer. I try to keep a clear distinction between the PCs and their NPC retainers. Players can generally run the retainers as secondary characters, but I maintain a veto power through morale checks, etc.

One other positive effect using retainers has had is that by having more characters in the game, it contributes a lot of interesting role-playing elements. Retainers may leave the party and return later, or show up elsewhere in the campaign, perhaps even as members of a rival NPC party! They are good fuel for the ongoing picaresque story produced by a D&D campaign.

Here's a summary of the rules I use for retainers in my game:

• Retainers are quickly rolled up (3d6 in order), usually by me though it could be by a player. The player recruiting the retainer may specify what class they are looking for. I roll 3d6 x 10 for starting gold and quickly jot down the starting equipment that the retainer arrives with, but anything after that is at the PC's expense.
• Per B/X rules, retainers receive a full share of XP, but actually record only half of the total received, to represent the fact that they are merely employees for hire and not making the tough decisions themselves. This keeps them at roughly a level behind the PCs, given the geometric progression of the XP charts.
• Retainers receive a half share of treasure. This money essentially vanishes from the game (spent by the retainer, sent home to family, etc.). The PC is expected to pay for any expenses or equipment they wish their retainer to use.
• Retainers have a morale score, determined by their employing PC's charisma score. Morale is checked whenever the retainer is asked to do something "above and beyond the call of duty".
• Morale is also checked between every game session. If the retainer passes their morale check, they stay with the party. If they fail, they go away for 1d4 weeks of game time to either carouse and spend their new-found wealth or take a break from the hazards of adventuring life. After this period is up, the player may attempt to rehire them if desired. Edit: I've since changed this to have the retainer leave for as many weeks as they failed their morale check by, instead of a 1d4 die roll. This way, a worse (and more rare) failure results in a longer absence.
• For the above check, the retainer's morale is temporarily modified as follows:
• +2: The adventure was a very lucrative success, with no party casualties
• +1: The adventure was not very successful, but there were no casualties
• +0: The adventure was lucrative, but at a cost of PC or retainer lives
• -1: The adventure went poorly, with little treasure found and lives lost
• -2: The adventure was a near TPK disaster

I'm still tweaking the above modifiers to get a satisfying rate of retainer attrition. I want them to stick around long enough so they can become interesting characters in their own right and we're not rolling up new retainers every single session, but I also want them to come and go often enough so that they are clearly viewed as independent characters and the players don't get too attached to them as a "second PC".

If a player loses their PC during a session, they may immediately promote their retainer to be their new PC, and the retainer will receive full shares of XP and treasure at the end of that session.

As I said, I started the campaign with every PC having a retainer because I wanted to make it as painless as possible to get comfortable with a gaming style where there is a very real chance that you will lose characters regularly. Beyond that, though, as a DM I don't particularly encourage the players to use retainers or not. It is a tradeoff they need to decide for themselves: are the extra resources of a retainer worth cutting the XP and treasure another way or not? I like tradeoffs and dilemmas in D&D; to me, that's a large part of what the game is about. So far, the players have chosen to maintain the "one PC and one retainer" arrangement that we started with, and I think using retainers has contributed a lot to the feel of the game.