Victorian Horror with Labyrinth Lord

So, it beginneth! My long contemplated Victorian era supernatural horror campaign.

We had a group character creation session last night (I like those!), and now have an assortment of gentlemen and ladies with an interest in the occult and strange.

In the end I decided to go with a very simple rules / chargen system based on the core of Labyrinth Lord / basic D&D. The house rules were as follows:

• No classes or levels. PCs are all basically 1st level fighters (in terms of hit points and saving throws). Experience progression in the standard sense is not going to be an aspect of the campaign.
• Characters gain a number of areas of specialist education / academic knowledge based on their INT score.
• Characters have a number of useful contacts based on their CHA score.
• Every character also has four talents: things they're good at. These could be in the domains of sports, arts, crafts, culture, etc.
• An alternate damage system (to account for the lack of healing magic), where PCs have a pool of CON / 2 "wound points". Hit points then represent mostly fatigue, and can be recovered quickly, while wound points represent real damage and regenerate slowly.

We have the first game next week, so I'll report how it goes. I've never run a horror game, or a modern(ish) era game, so it'll be an interesting experiment!

D&D Previous & the "Core Mechanic"

Yeah, so as you may guess from the title of this post, I wasn't at all impressed by the D&D Next playtest rules. As I've seen some other people opining, it seems to be a kind of D&D 3 "lite". Which is fair enough if you like that kind of thing -- and actually I think they've done a good job so far of D&D 3 "lite", if that's their intention. I guess there's a big market for that kind of game.

Two things in particular grate for me though.

Firstly their insistence on giving monsters ability scores. This leads to a plethora of ludicrosities (such as having to decide how charismatic a beetle is), and apparently is only for the benefit of opposed rolls (sicK) and saving throws. The latter could obviously have easily been implemented using a different system (in fact I'd say that for monsters who ever needs more than a single save value, really?).

The second, and primary reaction I have to the playtest rules actually just reminds me what I dislike so much about all WotC incarnations of D&D: this idea of a "core mechanic". I find it hard to explain exactly why I find this so distasteful, but here are some reasons:

1. It makes the game bland. Imagine a game of monopoly where all rules subsystems (such as the auctions and the various types of cards) were replaced by a simple 2d6 roll... Charmless.
2. It leads to players having a knee-jerk instinct to start rolling d20s whenever their character does anything. Before the referee has even told them if it will "just work", is impossible or will require some kind of roll.
3. It makes some things which should be easy too hard, and makes some things which should be hard too easy. I'm no expert on mathematics or probability, but whenever I've played d20-based games (which D&D Next is, from what we've seen so far) I've gotten this annoying feeling of my character not being able to do anything successfully. The to hit roll in combat, which is where the whole d20 roll originates, is designed to be very random. Other things in life just aren't that random. Using one single die type for everything assumes that everything is equally random. I find it extremely unpleasant to play with such a system.
4. It leads to a kind of fallacy that rules simplicity == a core mechanic. (D&D 3.5 was undoubtedly the most complex and fiddly form of D&D so far, yet had a veneer of having been "optimised" and "rationalised".)

I mean, regarding D&D Next, I wasn't expecting anything different to be honest, and I wasn't expecting to like it (though totally open to being surprised).

I guess my point is that, though they've made this big deal about having modular rules systems which can be added and removed to taste (like the "feats" and "skills" systems), I find the core of the game (as far as we can see it now) inherently unpleasant.

It has definitely reinforced my love of TSR D&D though, which is a nice thing :)

Long live B/X, AD&D, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardy, LotFP Weird Fantasy, etc etc!

Charisma of the fire beetle

Sorry, I've not given it a chance yet at all, but: fire beetles have 7 CHA! Hahaha. Hilarious :D

(My first reaction on reading the D&D Next playtest.)

STOP THE PRESS! Giant centipedes have no CHA whatsoever! This gets wackier and wackier...

A simple attribute-based skills / "good at" system

I've been talking to the players in my group about possibly starting a new campaign (actually a series of mini-campaigns), and one option that's been discussed is a Victorian era Cthulhuesque campaign.

I was considering this some time back, and we even got so far as creating characters, but never got around to playing. One of the main factors in this was that I realised I'm not that keen on the Call of Cthulhu rules, and (moreover) that I just can't be bothered to learn and master some new rules set. It's just not something that interests me. One of the brilliant things about playing Labyrinth Lord for me is that I'm innately familiar with the rules.

So I've gotten to thinking about how I might run a Cthuluesque game using a foundation of Labyrinth Lord / basic D&D.

Unlike in D&D, in a modern(ish) horror setting the concept of "classes" of adventurer isn't important. What is important however is what characters know and can do -- hence the enormous skills list in CoC. I'm not a fan of skills systems, which was one of the main things which put me off CoC as a rules system, but I'd want some way of defining what each character is good at.

Here's what I'm thinking of.

For each attribute, the player can choose a number of things which the character is good at or has training in, relative to the score, as follows:

3 to 8: not good at anything, 9 to 12: good at one thing, 13 to 15: good at two things, 16 to 17: good at three things, 18: good at four things.

Each "good at" / skill should of course be in some way related to the attribute in question. The player would basically be free to choose whatever they wanted, without being restricted by a pre-defined list of skills. Some ideas would be:

STR: climbing, boxing, wrestling.
CON: running, can drink anyone under the table, rude health.
DEX: shooting, draftsmanship, card shark.
INT: history, languages, mathematics.
WIS: self-control, good judge of character, compassionate soul.
CHA: public speaking, "ladies' man", mesmerism.

How these areas of skill would actually be used in play would be open to the referee's judgement. One example might be that if characters were given a 1 in 6 chance of achieving a certain task, then characters who are "good at" that thing would get a bonus (probably based on the attribute in question).

Very flexible, very vague, but probably enough to run a game with! (At least for people like me who aren't bothered about having strictly defined rules for everything...)

Theorems & Thaumaturgy -- status update

This morning, after some weeks of procrastination, I finally sat down and went through the last sections of the book making all the modifications suggested by the proofreaders (thanks Alex & Jim!).

So, the book's now in Bob's capable hands for some editing.

Nothing great to report apart from that, but just wanted to keep people informed on the book's progress, and that it is still bubbling away in the background.

Once the editing is complete, the next step will be to finalise the book's layout. Beyond the home-spun documents I've produced in LibreOffice, layout isn't something I have much experience with, so if anyone reading this would be interested in helping out at that stage, any advice or aid would be greatly appreciated!

Also if anyone out there would be interested in submitting a few illustrations for the book, please get in touch -- the more the merrier!

I'll leave you with a piece of artwork from Kelvin Green :)

Fatigue based spellcasting in old-school D&D

As I recently mentioned, I've been running James Raggi's the Grinding Gear for a small group. I've been running the module as a one-shot, which means that I've not had to insert it into an existing campaign -- giving me free reign on the setting. Obviously, it being a one-shot, the setting isn't that important, and hasn't played a huge role, but the vague background I've imagined is a weird fantasy-esque, early modern setting, with no demi-human PCs, no divine magic, and much more limited arcane magic than one typically finds in D&D.

This slightly atypical setting, combined with the fact that it's a one-shot (well, a two-shot now) means that I've been able to play around with a few ideas for new rules. I've already talked about the introduction of mixed-class characters and firearms, so the remaining (and probably most experimental) house rule is my system for fatigue-based spellcasting.

Regular readers will know by now that my favourite D&D-related pastime (well, joint favourite with actually playing the game!) is messing around with new spells and rules for magic-users! Something of a hobby in itself ;)

I've been mulling over ideas for some time on how one could simply (i.e. without having to rewrite everything!) adapt the D&D Vancian spellcasting system to give it more of a low-magic, dangerous edge. From what I've seen of the magic system in Dungeon Crawl Classics, that's kind of the vibe he's going for, but of course that's a very involved rewrite of the magic rules and all the spells, so not what I had in mind.

At first I was contemplating some kind of spellcasting roll, with the possibility of nothing -- or varying degrees of bad / weird side-effect -- occurring if the roll fails. In the end, however, I came up with something far simpler, with a nod to Fighting Fantasy. It works as follows.

Fatigue Based Spellcasting

In the standard system of magic, as presented in traditional D&D, a magic-user's spells must be memorized in advance and vanish from his mind when cast. Thus a spell-caster's puissance is measured by the number of spells which he can fit into his memory at once.

Using this alternative system of spellcasting, a magic-user does not need to memorize spells. It is assumed that once a magic-user has mastered the formula of a spell, he is able to cast it at will, simply by performing the required gestures and incantations. However, as a counterbalance to this freedom, each spell which is cast drains the caster's reserves, leading to a creeping fatigue and listlessness.

This fatigue is simulated by a hit point cost for each spell cast, depending on its level. Thus, as a magic-user casts more spells, his ability to react in dangerous situations, and to avoid serious damage or death, is reduced.

Spell level        1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
Hit point cost   1     2     4    8      12   16   20   24   28

Hit points lost due to spell-casting are recovered in a slightly different way to normal. A magic-user's player should keep track of both his current hit point total, and the sum of points which were lost due to magic use. After a full night's rest, all hit points lost as a side-effect of spells cast are restored. On the other hand, hit points lost due to spell-casting cannot be restored by healing spells or magic items.

This system enables low level casters (especially those at 1st level) to cast more spells than in standard D&D, while higher level spells, due to their large drain in hit points, will be less frequently used.

Notes

1. The only problem I can imagine with this system, and a point which I'm rather unsure of, is that it makes a magic-user's maximum hit point total extremely important. A 1st level MU with one hit point would be unable to cast spells, for example, and a player who made consistently lucky rolls for hit points as his character advanced would be at a great advantage.
2. I've been using the standard spell progression chart to determine the number of spells a magic-user knows, rather than how many spells he can memorize. I've doubled the numbers on the chart, so a 5th level MU would know four 1st, four 2nd and two 3rd level spells. This nicely simplifies the question of how MUs learn new spells.
3. Likewise, I've allowed high INT to grant extra known spells, using the cleric chart for high WIS.
4. Using this system, a few spells might need re-levelling. For example, given that a 1st level magic-user could be able to cast three spells a day, sleep is probably too powerful for a 1st level spell. I'd move it to 2nd level.

Carcosa one-shot: Session report

Yves has risen to the occasion!

I can sort of feel a sporadic campaign of Carcosan killy-looty-humpy-party fun coming on!