Visual Dungeon Challenge

Okay, friends, for my 999th post I'm throwing down my glove and offering a challenge to each and every one of you:

Make a one page dungeon that uses only images and visual devices.  No words.  No abbreviations.

This is intended to be given to another DM, not a personal bookkeeping system.  Because of that it can allow for some customization by the other DM.  You can use numbers, roman numerals, or your own invented symbols if you can convey what they mean to someone.

Post your attempt to your blog, link in the comments below, or email me, just share your map with us somehow.

This is not a contest.  You win if you make a damn attempt.  There is no time limit.  You can keep making these.  I think this should be an interesting exercise for any DM, because it will force you to look very closely at what exactly you require to run a dungeon, and how that may or not be different from what other DMs require.

Here is my first attempt:

I tried to indicate elevation with shades of gray and curved steps.  Each step is 10' and the darker it gets the deeper you are.  So, for example, the central area has a 90' drop to the right.  I think numbers might work better but didn't want them confused with room numbers.

I used a number to distinguish similar icons, so you can distinguish the potions, for example.  This will only work for very small dungeons or bare ones.  So I might need to come up with symbols for spells to put beside a scroll or for potion affects beside each potion, etc.  Though, that sounds very challenging.  Rather than use the same technique for the coins symbol, I could just put a number for the amount of coins in the hoard right next to it on the map.  Of course that would assume it was a hoard of one coin type or get very cluttered quickly.  A lot of problems.  But this is all okay, it's why I'm doing this: seeing what the limits are, seeing what is possible.

Now, I'm kind of cheating by telling you all that.  But maybe a sentence or two of explanation is okay-- something you might put in an image caption or email to a fellow DM.  Like "Roman numerals are NPC level" or "Greek letters are for traps."  And certainly we want to hear your thoughts behind your design decisions.  You just can't make something that requires a long explanation to be functional.

Good luck.

Into the Dwarven Outpost II

I was lucky enough to be invited camping with my friend's friends. This is the third time, but I'm still getting to know them.  While they read and there is some college experience among them I would consider them more doers-- drinking, physical fun, pop-culture consuming-- than folks that enjoy sitting around navel gazing like myself.

I would never imagine them to have played D&D (and turned out to be right. They don't really even have any video games experience).  In fact, like most of the population, I would expect them to mock D&D players (which they did when it was brought up).   I was surprised when they knew what LARPing was, but then was less so when it was followed by "lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt."  So, LARPing was the easiest niche of our hobby to know because it is easiest to mock as a YouTube video.

Because of all this I would never have suggested playing D&D while camping with them.  They had plenty to do, with hiking, fishing, swimming, and eating good food.  But my friend Jeff who invited me shook things up a bit.

He's played with me before and knew I had a dungeon with me (the one he died in on the trip up).  So he suggested to them that we play sometime during the trip.  I was also inspired by the way he printed up lyrics for sing-a-longs around the camp fire even though he's still learning to play guitar.  If he was willing to get up there and perform in front of everyone why shouldn't I?

Several days of camping passed.  Fishing and hiking was done.  We cooled of in a small pool with a waterfall, drank, and sang songs.  On the last night we ended up in a situation where there was nothing to do but wait for a tri-tip to cook and the idea came up that we play.  So we did.  And it was a great success I think.  Here's what happened:

When I asked who wanted to play I was very surprised when Jeff's 66 year-old dad said yes.  He's a stoic, no-nonsense kind of guy.  I think he said yes because when I asked his girlfriend right before him she had enthusiastically said yes.

Later, when I was trying to establish classes he said he wanted to be King Kong.  I hesitated a bit and said "King Kong won't fit where you're going, do you want to be a gorilla?"  He said "yes."  "Do you speak? Are you a talking gorilla?"  He said "yes."  She wanted to be The Green Mosquito.  I wasn't sure if she meant like a fairy or a tiny super hero but I asked her if she could fly. "Yes."  Ok.

There were seven players in all.  My buddy Jeff, his father and father's girlfriend, another male-female couple and two ten year olds, one female one male.

I knew that, because six were brand new to the whole concept of D&D, and we were basically playing in the dirt that I would have to keep things simple and get them moving as quickly as possible.  I hadn't brought any character sheets, but was able to bum one of the song lyric pages.  I folded that into 9 parts and tore it apart.  I wrote a space for "Name," the six stat abbreviations, "life," and "armor" on these before handing them out.  I didn't have enough writing utensils (In the future I should get a handful of those Ikea sized pencils).

I only had three six-siders and the cardboard bottom from a case of water bottles to roll in, so bless Jeff Rients for giving me the tool of party-style stat-rolling.  Although, since I didn't have a lot of dice (or even a table) I just let them put the stat wherever they wanted rather than randomizing as he suggested.  The first few rolls were good, a 15, a 14.  A lot of folks ended up with high strength and dex because they didn't really understand what stats were for and put the first rolls in the first stats.  But not all of them, the Green Mosquito put her 15 in intelligence.  The last few rolls were not great, a 6 and 5 if I remember correctly.

I told everyone to put a +1 next to stats with 13 or higher and -1 next to 8 or lower.  This was very confusing to all.  They thought it was a math equation that was altering their stat ("You mean I add one to my strength?")  Next time I'll just say "put a plus sign/put a minus sign."

Class choices were my regular Fighter, Wizard, Cleric.  I almost eliminated Cleric to keep things simpler, but was afraid of cutting the game down so much it didn't resemble itself anymore.

The Green Mosquito chose MU as well as the 10 year old girl.  The young couple both chose clerics, Pandora and Parsifal.  Somewhere around here Pandora's player seriously asked "Wait, if you don't know what you are going to be until you roll, how do you know what kind of costume to wear?"  To my exasperated "Arrgh, we don't wear costumes!"

The rest of the folks played fighters.  I thought the crew was big enough to not mess with hirelings.  As much as I was tempted to try out my new simple mental powers sub-system, folks were having enough trouble taking everything in as it was.  I didn't even want to mess with equipment and armor.  I just told everyone but the MUs that they had chainmail and shields and what to write next to "armor."  (Yeah, chainmail was probably too much.  I could have made it leather, but it was a snap decision and since I was denying them choices in choosing equipment I erred on the side of their safety)  No messing with equipment.  I just told the MUs what spells to write down.  I gave the clerics the little booklet with miracles and told them they could ask for anything but these were some ideas.  I didn't even mention weapons until the first combat, because this was all taking long enough.  They kept asking me things like: "Are we all on the same team?" "What are you playing?"  "How do we win?"  I tried to answer these as briskly as possible (don't die, find the treasure) because I wanted to get rolling.

I will say that I didn't expend as much energy as I normally would trying to make sure the two younger players got spotlight and understood everything.  They both had some comprehension issues, I didn't realize until much later that the girl was having language issues- English not being her first language.  I think now that she didn't know what "cast," "spell," and maybe even "wizard" meant.  I didn't know that then.  I was also thinking that these 10 year olds will have years to try D&D again, but these older, D&D mocking folks, I had to win them over.

The final crew:
Old Long Johnson - F (played by Jeff, the only one with experience)
.com - F (*inside joke)
Big Black - talking gorilla F
Parsifal - DP
Pandora - DP
The Green Mosquito - fairy? MU
Opal - MU

I asked the party for a marching order and explained that those with higher life should probably be up front.  Also a good rear guard.  They entered the dungeon.  I had seen that the nearly identical barracks rooms were confusing to Jeff when we played on the way up, so I gave each a unique carved mural theme this time: mountains, forest, mountain lake, foothills.

They pretty much followed door priority, choosing open hallways over doors.  The second room held Sol's corpse and two little naked gopher things eating on it.  Those won initiative and both preceded to miss.  The Green Mosquito was quick to want to cast sleep.  I told her she could, but reminded her it was like a shotgun shell, she only had one.  She held off and the two toughies in the front rank, Old Long Johnson and Pandora, engaged.  They both hit.  Then I asked "What weapon do you see yourself having?"  Battle axe for OLJ, though I reminded him it couldn't be two-handed if he wanted to use his shield, and machete for Pandora (yeah, not a blunt, sue me, I was trying to make it fast and exciting).  I described back to them how they sliced the little buggers in half.  Everyone seemed engaged and happy about that.

We broke there for tri-tip.  I'm guessing all of character creation and play up though that first combat took close to 30 minutes.  I was pleasantly surprised when after dinner people were eager to get back into the game and see what would happen.  I think the natural curiosity of exploration is an easy one to take advantage of.

They didn't really investigate the brass mech suit.  They continued on until they opened the door that held two ratipedes devouring Sol's dead hireling.  The creatures got initiative, attacked, and both missed again!  This time the front two pcs missed, though, and two other players got to cut these things in two, Parsifal and .com getting their first ever rpg kills.

At this point OLJ with his 5 intelligence suggested they search the body, because Jeff knew she had the magic ring on her.  I know some DM's might be a stickler about preventing this kind of meta-game information use, but I think it is kind of amusing watching the player try to come up with some in-game justification for why we should do this thing all of a sudden.  Also, I am sympathetic with players because there really isn't any way for them to purge that meta knowledge.  They found the ring but no one tried it on.

Oh, also something I forgot from Jeff's run through of the dungeon.  When he, and also Pandora in this excursion, encountered the ring's inscription he asked if he could read it.  I asked him, and Pandora now, "Is Latin a language you want to know?"  And they both thought about it and said something to the effect "yeah, as a priest I would probably know that."  This would mean more if we had a continued campaign, but I liked handling languages that way.

The party found a storage room and decided to get some tools.  It was interesting to see these total neophytes limiting their own encumbrance; "You're strong you can carry a pick. I'll carry a shovel."

After some confusion about which way to go the party had some excitement at finding a secret door, only to realize it led into a room they'd already seen.  They ended up heading down a hallway with a stench like wet dog.  They encountered a long piece of scat with what looked like a fingerbone in it (this and the smell was me trying to warn them that they were getting closer to something dangerous-- the troll).  Pandora decides to taste the crap.  I loved it, here was someone who'd mocked D&D and yet instinctively got the fun of goofily interacting with stuff in the world.  Going along with my desire to tap in to player experiences and memories I asked her "What is something that tastes really nasty to you?"  She eventually said, "cottage cheese."  I said "Ok, it tastes like cottage cheese . . . and there's a human toe nail in it." hehehe.

By this time it was getting late and I knew the encounter with the troll was going to end our session one way or another.  I didn't imagine they could take it out, but hoped someone might be able to flee and survive.  On encountering the troll, the party managed to get initiative.  Both clerics asked for miracles to command the creature, first "Stop", then "Go,"  Neither miracle was answered.  Opal tried casting Sleep on it, nothing happened.  OLJ tried to hit and missed.  Next the gorilla attempted to grapple and succeeded.  Hmm, I thought, maybe they will manage somehow to survive this.  The Green Mosquito cast Charm Person.  And here I'll probably be stripped of my DM certification.  I hesitated, is a troll a person?  In my world I consider them able to speak.  They are smart enough to be cunning and are humanoid in shape  (hey, the 1e version works on lizardmen, troglodytes, and hobgoblins!).  I decided to let the spell work on it, but warned her that it had a chance to shake it off.  The troll failed its save.  It became friendly toward the Green Mosquito.  She asked it to lead them to the treasure and they would feed it.

So, the troll, did just that, hugging the walls past pit traps, going through secret doors, heading straight to the old Dwarven treasure chamber.  The whole time I was trying to creep them out with improvised dialogue, and acting like each secret door was a dead end.  Finally at the chamber, they found nothing but a pile of cinders.  A little discouraged, they started to dig through it to find beautiful, glistening diamonds. 

When requested, the troll led the party back to the entrance room.  Pandora finally searched a pile of trash in that first room to find a warm, pink potion ("It's Pepto-Bismol") and drank it.  She was shrunk to 6".  Finally Big Black tried the ring, but nothing seemed to happen.  Pandora but it around her neck to the same effect.  The party left the dungeon.  Everyone lived.

There were some comments about how it was easy.  I tried to explain to them how lucky they had been; that the troll could have killed them all.

Pandora's player was really intrigued about what I had written down and what I was improvising (I had so little in front of me).  The younger players were fascinated by the map and my little encounter book with silhouettes.  I heard Parsifal's player say "That's not how I'd imagined D&D to be at all," and several folks say "I'd play that again."  Cool Deal.

I think I like playing with first time players more than anything.  I like introducing them to how fun and easy this game can be, especially when they have negative preconceptions.

Simple Mental Powers

Some caveats:

• Read this post from me to see where I'm coming from.  Today's post concerns inherited mental powers.
• If you're looking for something more conservative in how it clarifies and reorganizes D&D's Psionics system check out Mr. Campbell's work here.
• This is a portion of an unfinished system.  The other parts I'm working on are a tree-based power selection for learned mental powers and a flavorful but simple means to resolve mental combats.
• I loathe bookkeeping and calculations and have sacrificed options and power potency to avoid it as much as possible.
• This is a draft that I haven't tried in play yet.  Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Okay, so here, in 4 steps and 2 pages, is a way to offer your players some new toys/tools.  It is much more likely that players will have powers than in the older systems (someone with one exceptional stat has a 1 in 3 chance), but I figure what's the point in having a cool subsystem if no one gets to use it (do you know how many times I rolled for psionics in 1e and failed?!).

I've tried to limit the powers so that even if a whole party gets them they won't be flinging dragons around and flying about like Glitterboys.

I wasn't sure whether the player-empowering choice of abilities or the fun of randomness was the best approach so I tried to have my cake and eat it too.  Players can sacrifice choice for additional power.  This also offers a way to mitigate really crappy power rank rolls.

I tried organizing the powers by how much of an affect they can make in play, and making those most powerful less common, but this order could be easily changed-- moving Hypnosis up, for example.

Of course, you could tinker with everything here-- like making the units of weight 100s of coins rather than stones-- I think the main innovation I'm trying, is to avoid power point tracking by using the more granular session, game day, hour divisions inspired by 4e's encounter powers.

The briefness of the power descriptions will require some thought from each DM, but I'm hoping this is just enough to make a system while stepping out of the way to let you decide how things run in your game.

Update: Whoops, I made a copy paste error, I originally intended the telekinesis power to allow for moving 1 stone per power rank, which is 1/10 the power listed in the first pdf I posted.  So, if you saw that someone with TK could move half-ton boulders and thought what is he talking about "I tried to limit powers," umm, that's why.

Of course you can make it whatever scale you want but I would suggest something that is easy to remember for your players.

Cleric Petitions Again

Here's a pro-tip for you rules system designers, try explaining your rule to a drunk.  Last Friday, one of my players decided he wanted to try a cleric to mix up the fighter brigade.  He'd been imbibing before I even arrived.  And I had to explain my cleric petition rules about five times.  Now, I'm not saying all rules should be so simple that buzzed folks understand them, but the multiple attempts at explaining how my petition rules work certainly forced me to think of them holistically and from every angle.   I've never really been satisfied with them anyway.  The difficulty is that I've wanted to incorporate diminishing returns for asking for miracles over and over and for asking for miracles of more and more power.  I've found it hard to be simple and work with both axes.  Here's another attempt:

I'll give a cleric 3 glass beads and this little chart. They can put their bead anywhere they want but only three times. Any miracles of an order below their level will work 70% of the time.  I think I'll give them 3 more beads at 4th and then again at 8th level. I also give permanent miraculous powers to these holy people at those levels (think halos, healing touch that works 100% but limited times per day etc.)  This is weaker than a traditional cleric, but maybe not too much.  An 8th level cleric in S&W Core has 10 spells, and my cleric will only have 9 and then no guarantee they will work.  But then, my clerics could choose to use 4 6th level spells at 70% where the S&W cleric can't even cast that level spell at all.  So I guess what I'm trying to do is inject power and uncertainty; if the entities you're petitioning listen, a cleric in my world can do powerful things, but you can never be so prideful to expect things to happen for you.

Visual Spell Transcription Rule

I want to make how spell transcription works in my world clear enough that players start making decisions and goals based on that knowledge.  What do you think of this:

I might add a little text under it.  The quill and the vial mean that it requires blood and feathers from a creature of HD equivalent to the spell level, per Talysman's awesome idea (in the comments).  I might say to my players: "more and more powerful creatures," because they don't know what "hit die" are.

One thing I want to add but don't know how to rule on is for creating an entirely new spell.  I don't know what it should cost.  I don't want players to have to wait for 7th level either, a S&W style campaign will be near its endgame by then, no?  Besides one of the coolest things about D&D were all those named spells. I want my players to create some spells.

But, do they need access to a library?  Access to a tower (but that would, again, be endgame, no?)?

Update: 1) I'm confusing my systems, S&W goes to twentieth, oe is the one capping out around 10th.  Odd that some of my conceptions of the game I want to play are sliding more and more toward some of the original aspects of those rules.

2) I'm thinking it should be cheaper to put a spell into a book than the other way, to encourage players looking for more, but I'm not sure.

Update 2: How's this for a second draft (I changed everything to sp because of my game's silver standard):

Visual Experience Chart II

I went back and only listed experience point values on the scale that corresponded with actual class levels.  I also expanded the lowest section by 10-20% to spread the second level out a bit and changed the colors of the lines pointing to the silhouettes.  Nothing too exciting for this new post.

With my last post as a proof of concept you should be able to do it yourself with your ruleset of choice.  The key is to make the scale non-linear (and have some good archetypal silhouettes).  I started with a bit of logarithmic graph paper, but you might even distort it more to fit your needs.

At Paul's awesome suggestion, I tried fitting a thief on the chart using my Choose-Your-Own Rogue numbers (in the sidebar).  But their second and third levels are so close together there is no way I could fit a silhouette of the same scale in there.  Maybe a halfling, but the numbers wouldn't fit between the cleric and fighter's either.  It's a shame, because it would have had a playful quality to it the way I remember the 1e MM did for some of the page headings (pixie?).  Oh, well, no one in my campaign has a rogue yet anyway.  As a bonus, here's a thiefly silhouette:

Visual Experience Chart

To start playing the game, you really don't need to know how many xp a fighter will need to get to 10th or, heaven forbid, 20th level.  What you will need is an easy way to let players know as they are approaching the first few levels.  And maybe an easy way to compare level progression across classes.  How about this:

It uses the progression from Swords & Wizardry Whitebox.  Unfortunately, I don't have permission to use the TSR wizard, consider this a draft mockup. 

Visual Weapon Chart

I mentioned here that I liked the simple, visual way the Lone Wolf books presented the weapons available to your character.  Here is my attempt at that.  Wish I had better images for some of the weapons.  Don't know if I'll have time to make a missile weapon one before the session tonight.

Get the pdf here.  Now I can just put this in front of players when they need to pick a weapon.  Blunts are together.  The three longest require two hands: pretty easy to explain I think.  Okay, I got to get to work.

Receding Rules - House Rules Selection

I've been blogging more than a year now but it seemed weird to celebrate that anniversary because I'd disappeared for three or four months when work got rough last winter; it wasn't a full year.  This is my 365th post.  And I realize that some of those posts were pretty trivial, but I figure it can still symbolically stand for me sticking this blogging business out.

To celebrate I wanted to share what I consider some of the coolest house rules I've encountered in that time.

Keep in mind, my blog has always been about simplicity, minimalism, doing more with less, and, really, how all those things might help bring new players and DMs into our hobby.  So, there are no charts, no lists of contextual bonuses, nothing you couldn't explain to a new player across a noisy game table.

Thanks to everyone for the fun ride so far and here is the pdf.

Update: Ahh, sorry.  Apparently I had a pdf splicing issue.  I'm working on a fix.  Until then here is the intro and here are the other 3 pages.

Update 2: Fixed due to the help of ze Bulette, scholar and gentleman.

A Provocative Satement & a Magic Item

Any rule or section of a rule system that requires an acronym is probably too complicated. (I'm thinking THAC0, AOO, etc)

And, now, following the Joeskythedungeonbrawler’s rule an item:

Anan's Veil


A chunk of cloudy-grey crystal, as long as it is held the veil obscures the presence of the holder; no one will notice or remember their presence. Unfortunately, it also obscures the world to the holder; everything is a swirling grey, all sense of direction and memory of landmarks is lost. Only those most driven by vengeance or passion have dared try the Veil as a tool.

The Price of Complexity

James Maliszewski recently posted about how one of the reasons he switched from Swords & Wizardry to Labyrinth Lord + supplements is his dissatisfaction with the way S&W handles saving throws.

Let me just present this scenario: You have a 12 year old nephew learning to DM. His friends are playing and their party comes upon a hostile party of npcs. The player mage casts charm person on the npcs. What is the npc's save?

Assuming everyone's human, for Swords & Wizardry you have one question to answer: is the targeted npc a non-wizard (15 to save) or a wizard (15 +2).

I did that from memory. Do you remember the Labyrinth Lord saves? Here's a refresher:

So, for the 3 core classes, you have three answers and different answers still, if the charm person is coming from a wand.

You want to play that way because it seems more verisimilitudinous to you, cool. But don't kid yourself that you aren't paying a price in simplicity and playability. With Labyrinth Lord I guarantee your nephew is going to have to stop play and check the book. Hell, I would.

I know this sounds awfully like me saying James is "doing it wrong." If James want to play that way fine, but he's more than just a DM he's got hundreds of people following his blog. It's frightening to me that we have this opportunity for a fresh look at D&D with these retroclones and the main tendency seems to be to figure out how to slap all the old cruft back on them.

It's frightening, because if everyone starts playing it that way, that will be my only choice of campaign to play in (the way my only campaign to be a player in now is 4e, because that's the dominant form of play).

So, do you really need to turn S&W and LL into AD&D? Why not use Osric? Or, why not just play AD&D?

Simple Ammunition Tracking

Using poker chips as a means of tracking isn't a new idea. Lord Kilgore blogged about it here. But I don't know that I've heard anyone talking about using them to track ammo on an encounter basis.

Arrows, sling bullets, and darts are an important part of the resource management aspect of adventure gaming. But you don't want to get bogged down keeping tallies of everything. And you certainly don't want to end up rolling saving throws for every arrow to see if a player can recover it after use.

Here's an easy solution. Like many of them for adventure gaming it involves abstraction. Give the player five poker chips and have them give you one after every encounter. When they're out of chips they're out of ammo.

You can adjust the number of chip up a little, but keep in mind an archer can get 2 arrows off a round and if you have multiple round encounters they may be using quite a few arrows. So, I think it is a fair trade off for the ease of use in play.

You might do something similar with spell components if you want to be a stickler with magic-users.

Streamlined Swords & Wizardry II

I met with my ex-girlfriend for some tea last night and tried to explain D&D to her. I've tried explaining it to my father recently. They both gave me friendly, supportive looks, nodding their heads as if I was telling them that aliens were teaching me the violin.

I suppose many people these days will have encountered video games and to explain roleplaying you could say it's like a game with no limits, but these people I'm talking about have no conception of video games either. (This is why I value the OSR community, you sort of know what I'm about)

I meet tomorrow with 3 players who don't know what a roleplaying game is. Because of that I've been trying to distill down only what I need to get them going, but without just throwing them in the game. I shared some of my thinking behind it here and my progress to that end here.

So, to be clear, this isn't me re-writing the rules because I'm dissatisfied with the writing or the organization in Swords & Wizardry book-- I actually think they are pretty well done. And I'm not trying to make a Quick Start-- Chgowiz has done great work on one already. Think of this as more like player handouts, things an experienced DM can pass out to inexperienced players to help while explaining the rules and especially move them through the process of character creation. If you can find uses for them other than that I would be thrilled, but that's the aim I have in mind.

So, here I have the explanation of the six abilities and how to roll them. I made some house rule tweaks in here that might make them less universally useful, but I added some text to the three "mental" stats that I think could have been helpful to have in the Core rules.

• Streamlined Ability Scores Handout
  

After that players will most likely want to see the classes. Here is the list of

• Streamlined Classes Handout
  

I had to make some decisions about what to cut and what not (standing toe-to-toe with a dragon probably isn't the best image to put in a newbie's head). I wanted this on one page so I tried to keep what was essential about each class, what distinguishes the archetypes. For example, I don't think you need to know how many experience points it takes to get a cleric to 20th when you're first choosing a character, so the charts are right out. If you'ld like to use this handout, there is room for one more class of your choice on the page: thief, druid, or a dragon borne homewrecker, whatever suits your fancy. Also if you'd like the editable open office files just let me know.

What I like about these streamlined resources is that when they are trying to decide on their class a player may want to see the spells a wizard can cast or what weapons are available, BOOM-- you've got those on separate, single pages right there.

I decided not to put a NPC/Hireling generator on the backburner; I'm still digesting all the wonderful ones I've found on your blogs and trying to decide what I think is essential. I'm also thinking that maybe the best way for these newbies to realize the value of hirelings is to have a little taste of old school adventuring without them.

As for the adventure, I still don't have a map, arrrrgh. How's that for procrastinating? But I have the location in my mind and could probably run it from that if I had to. It is an abandoned convent. The convent has seen several waves of occupiers: the original Sisters of Penitence, humanoids, bandits, and now a nice big hill of giant ants. I'm going to put several hermit cottages on adjacent hillsides and multiple methods of ingress for the players to have to choose fromm. Oh, and also there's going to be a bantling in a well . . . buwhaahahaha!

Start of Play

I have been working on recruiting players for a campaign. Several of these have no experience with roleplaying whatever. When I asked one if he'd ever played roleplaying games he said "You mean like "Settlers of Catan?"

Because of this, and probably because I'm nervous and obsessing the details to try to compensate, I have been putting much effort into what I'll actually show new players when we start. (On writing this, it seems very teacherly-- preparing for class-- which I suppose is fitting, since I've done that and super prepare because I'm nervous).

I've mentioned before how I worked on a streamlined equipment list you can get here. But even that seemed more than a beginner needs to know, and could be streamlined. So, the result of my post on starting equipment is this much slimmer document.

This assumes players will pack up and head out and already takes into account encumbrance. What I realized was there is still the choice of weapons for my players. So I looked at the weapon list in Swords & Wizardry core. As clean as it is, I don't like the way weapons are listed. Why are arrows always listed separately? You can only use them with a bow. Also, no need to list lance, as my starting characters will be heading underground.

Another thing I was doing by looking closely over the list, was getting a feel for the parts of this sweet vehicle. More and more with Swords & Wizardry it feels like the briefness of some rule sections and the open invitation to customize has lead me to take it apart and put it back together exactly how I like. This seems different than just pasting on a homebrew bandage, this is like a review and revision and I really like it. The system is sparse enough where it is still possible!

So, for example, I notice the weapon, warhammer. Why would anyone pick this weapon? It does the same damage as a light mace, but is heavier. Why would I ever pick it over a light mace? I think there must be a rule of game design that says if the only way something will be used in your system is if players roleplay a disadvantage to their characters, you need to go back to the drawing board.

So, I cut warhammer and added flail, which I think can be distinguished by an ability to ignore an opponent's shield. I think it adds some period flavor, with a reason to use it without being to crunchy.

I also rearranged the listing of the weapons more by family. Except the top are all blunts. If the player asks which are blunts it's very easy to say: "The first four."

I like what I ended up with, but, backing up I realized that after rolling stats there is a decision of what class to take. For me that decision would be partially determined by the differences between the classes. And if you told me "These guys can cast spells", I'd be thinking "what kind?" So, I fit first level Magic-user spells on one page. I think the only difference here from core is I left out read magic, which I don't plan to use (reading and understanding a spell are two different things. In my campaign anyone can learn to read the arcane languages spells are written in, and even get the gist of what they do, but that doesn't mean they can cast them).

I've included second level spells on both, so a player will have an idea of what this class can do, but for Clerics I'm also planning to allow first level characters a small chance to successfully petition for higher level spells. Thus the need to really let them see the second level spells.

I hope to gather these documents into a pdf to ease players into Swords & Wizardry. So far I have:

• Starting Equipment
• Weapons
  
• Magic-user spells
• Divine spells
  

What else will I need?

• I'm still deciding on thieves, if I'll have them, and if so, what form they'll take.
• I'm trying to decide how much, if any, I need to say about my campaign world. Maybe just a paragraph to set the flavor.
• I'm thinking of excerpting the class explanation from Swords & Wizardry (cut the charts).
• Maybe a brief note on mapping (keep it simple, like a flow chart)

But, I know from experience that what will help me revise this Ease into play-pack is, well, getting the opportunity to ease into play. So, here's crossing my fingers and off to make some more scheduling phone calls to those potential players.

Update 6/20/09: I added a missing link to my streamlined weapons list mentioned in the text.