Interesting Buffs Are Visible Buffs

I've had enough experience now with the spell lists of D&D and with creating my own distillation and derivative to notice something. Prayer and Bless, spells that give mechanical bonuses to friends' die rolls, are boring. This is usually masked by the existence of more useful spells at their levels, so they are rarely memorized. But working them out for my own game,where B-list spells become useful due to the no-duplicate-spells rule ... yeah, there's still something tepid about mechanical bonuses.

Is it that spell-casters would rather strike with their own effects than throw buffs on friendly characters? Not really. Enlarge and Haste shimmer with awesomeness. In my own campaign, the lowly Shield spell conjures forth a short-range, moveable force shield that gives +5 AC,maximum 20, versus attacks from one direction. This has been most welcome.

No, the real problem is that bonus-giving spells are abstract, intangible, bloodless. They exist in the rules, not in the world that characters can see or interact with. Look at the difference between:

* A Bless spell that gives you +1 to die rolls for a given time .... and one that sets a guardian angel over you, who lets you re-roll one die affecting you at any time.

* A Strength spell that gives you +4 to the stat ...and a Strength spell that lets you bend iron like lead, lift half a ton overhead,  and wield a huge improvised weapon for d12+4 damage.

* A whammy that gives your sword a +2 enchantment ... or a mojo that makes it crackle with red fire for d6 extra damage, or glisten with arctic cold for+2 to hit and damage.

"Hey, but healing gives back abstract numbers - hit points -and it's highly desired!" That's true, but the exception proves the rule. Character types that do nothing but heal are derided as boring to play even if they're valuable to the party. Fortunately, the above examples give a formula to improve any boring effect:

Make it concrete. Make it material.

By creating a visible thing, rather than just tweaking a stat, you make it interesting. Let's apply it to boring, by-the-numbers healing.

* A healer who spins silk casts and bandages from her fingers like a laid-back Spider-Woman.
* A healer who blesses food to have healing properties, with the catch that there must be a different kind of food or drink in the feast for every 2 hp healed.
* A healer who needs to wash you in water for light wounds, a bath for critical wounds, and full Baptist immersion for the strongest effects.

* This dude from 3rd edition. He's great at regenerating limbs. If you're injured but not maimed, he'll grow you a new limb which you can use until the old one gets better, at which point it falls off.

One thing you'll notice about all these is that their presence in the material world starts sparking off ideas for creative uses, advantages and disadvantages, just like the Force Shield beyond giving an armor bonus can also be used to stop a door or carry a load. If something only affects the rules level, there is only one use for it. A big part of the old-school philosophy is letting things exist and work in analog simulation space: descriptive problem solving instead of (or at least in addition to) skill rolls. Making buffs (and magic item and monster effects) visible works with that.

D&D Next's Analog Writing

Strangely, the one thing that I like most about the D&D Next playtest materials was not the mechanics, the nods to Old School play values, or the Caves of Chaos. It's the style of the monster write-ups, the way they fit so well with my liking for analog detail.

D&D monster writeups started minimal in Original, and ramped up fast to the bloated style seen in 2nd edition, with every fact of ecology, tactics and social structure spelled out across two back-to-back pages of small print looseleaf. The AD&D Monster Manual got it just about right, with enough tidbits and hooks to make monsters interesting, but not enough to leave no room for invention or mystery. Strangely, the Field Folio had the right average of detail but the wrong spread, with some monsters underdone, and others developed to the point where playing against them would be a little railroaded module all to itself.

Still no "weird hooting" though.

It's not just nostalgia for the nods to AD&D - the tribe names, the green-gray skin of the gnolls and the red-rimmed eyes of the owlbear. Really, the descriptive text of the D&D Next monsters comes in at just the right level of detail. If there's information about the creature's diet, organization, treasure "drops" (like the owlbear's eggs), or natural history, it doesn't feel like it's been forced into an encyclopedia entry. Rather, the haphazard information reads more like an almanac or bestiary, the kind of knowledge a well-informed adventurer would be likely to pick up from late tavern nights on the borderlands. The one constant is good physical description and a short paragraph of likely actions when confronted.

The digital stuff - boss feats, six stats for everyone - is easily enough ignored, simplified or fudged in play, as the notes recommend. It did inspire me to come up with a very simple way to determine monster ability scores and saves, which I'll share next time.

There's less of a wealth of analog detail in the Caves of Chaos adventure, though the format is nice: a short establishing paragraph, and specific notes on lights, smells and sounds that might reach the players before they enter the area. That's OK, though; while the writing style in this example sets the tone for adventures under these rules, it's something that can be easily changed by individual writers.

As I figure out which of the distasteful parts can be dropped or modified, I'm coming to like the Next approach more and more.

When to Role, When to Rule and When to Roll

One point, left dangling from my recent series, I'd like to address: When should a DM use an analog mode of task resolution based on player descriptions of actions in role and your rulings on them, and when should he or she use a digital mode, rolling dice against set skills and difficulties?

There's a great benefit to seeing the physical environment of an adventure for what it is, rather than an abstract map dotted with "trap" and "secret" symbols. A lot of task resolutions then become simple. Is there a naked, unworked stone corridor? Then any tripwires or pressure plates or door seams will be evident to anyone with two good eyes, even in flickering torchlight, when proceeding forward at the glacial pace of dungeon exploration. I mean, try not noticing everything there is to notice while taking a minute or more to examine a 12' stretch of corridor, 1st Edition AD&D style.

What if the task is more difficult? Say there's a gossamer-thin tripwire spun by dark elves, or a seam of uncanny dwarven construction. Say there's a complicated bas-relief that could be hiding any number of buttons or holes, or a cracked floor with any number of outlines possible. For these, I would say that a long and close inspection would reveal the hidden feature. In player terms, they would have to give me a detailed description of what they are doing, and repeat that each time they are doing it.

Player attention, in other words, is a resource, drained by repetition and boredom. But forget what I said about trying to model this with limits on character attention. It's a player thing, not character. And player things, too, are analog.

If you want to reach the heights of immersion and intellectual challenge that come from an analog game, you have to trust your players to respect their time and enjoyment. You have to trust them not to abuse your system by giving long descriptions of detailed searches  at all times. If you're playing with dopey kids or grown-up asshats or hyper-task-focused fun-murderers, use a more rules- and dice-bound system - please!

You also have to resolve not to let them cheat their way into this resource, using crappy min-maxer crutches like the standing-order instruction sheet (see under "excel spreadsheet" anecdote there).This is just one of those times where you have to know what your group is like. Don't assume the worst right away. But don't think that the right system can substitute for mutual consent to have fun. Good players will fret about the possibility that an asshat could ruin the game, or even the possibility that they could be that asshat. But they won't actually do it.

Eventually, the environment will channel their attention. They'll zoom along a blank corridor or room in real time, because they know that any danger there will be spotted by their cautious in-game progress. They'll stop and check out mosaic floors, complex sculptures or patterns ... if they're wise. Your naturalistic, analog signaling of opportunities for complication will guide their attention. "Dwarven craftsmanship" or "illusionist's castle", of course, should spur them to new and temporary heights of paranoia.

Now, when do you roll? Yes, my game has a "notice detail" skill. And I use it for the same purpose as saving throws in James M's classic analysis. It gives players a digital chance when their analog skills don't quite meet the challenge. Even if you're running down a corridor, you might notice the tripwire that your slow advance would make obvious. Even if you're just standing next to a bookcase casting idle eyes on it, you might notice the odd jointwork that sends you looking for an opening device.

There's one caution, though: I haven't yet had players get up to the point where their skill in notice detail becomes near-automatic. In my system a rogue could get there by level 4, though at the cost of everything else roguely. With more even development they're likely to max out the Notice skill around level 8.

I'm not sure whether the greater chance of success at those heights is a just reward for sticking it through, or a blow to the fun in analog gaming. Perhaps the balancing factor is this: At higher levels, you're more likely to face complex, brain-challenging mechanisms and effects, so that the challenge is not whether you see them, but what you do once you see them.