Wilderness map

Seeing as copies of Outdoor Survival are in short supply these days, I spent a big chunk of today drawing a wilderness hex map for my forthcoming retro-clone, Torch & Sword. I'll probably refine it a little for the final rulebook, but feel free to take a look at this one page map PDF: The map is © Paul Gorman, and licensed under both the OGL 1a and the Creative Commons Attribution License—take your pick.

Treasure type averages

Although I haven't posted much lately, work on my retro-clone continues. Today I started looking at treasure types. Here's how I got the averages in the table below. Take the gold in treasure type E as an example. Page 22 of Monsters & Treasure lists it as "1-8: 25%". So, I assumed that the average roll would be 4, giving 4000 GP. Those gold pieces would only be found 25% of the time, so that 4000 GP is reduced to 1000 GP. I did the same for copper and silver, and added them to the GP value.

Upkeep costs

James Maliszewski posted about OD&D support and upkeep costs. I had been wondering about the frequency of payments myself, and assumed that upkeep was paid on a recurring basis. As migellito says in the comments to James' post, paying upkeep costs at the time XP is awarded is the most parsimonious interpretation, and therefore the most appealing to me. That works to simply bookkeeping for food, lodging, maintenance, etc. If, on the other hand, the referee wants to use upkeep costs as a stick to drive characters toward play focused on establishing and maintaining baronies, upkeep fees should be assessed more frequently, perhaps on a weekly or monthly basis.

A misreading of Law and Chaos

It seems that the OD&D alignment system is based largely on Three Hearts and Three Lions, which I'm about half way through reading at the moment.

I had been thinking (wrongly, it turns out) that the Law and Chaos dichotomy might be linked to the game's wargaming roots. I could imagine that Law and Chaos might not be nebulous, cosmic forces, but opposed factions of a particular struggle in a particular time and place.

For example, in the milieu of the American Civil War, the Lawful faction would be the Union, and the Chaotic faction would be the Confederacy. States which did not declare for one side or the other, such as Kentucky prior to Polk's invasion of Columbus, would be Neutral. It would work the same for the French Revolution, War of the Roses, or Hatfield–McCoy feud. In wargaming terms, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality would be generic categories used to describe a conflict. Neutral factions could become Lawful or Chaotic by declaring an allegiance, and in victory the Chaotic faction would become de facto Lawful by gaining power.

Bringing that to D&D would mean PC's taking sides (or remaining neutral) in the dominant conflict of their time and place. Such a view of alignment strips it of metaphysical trappings, and ties PC's to their campaign world.

Relatives

On page 13 of Men & Magic, it says:

"The referee may allow players to designate one relative of his character to inherit his possessions if for any reason the participnt unexpectedly disappears, or with or without "death" being positively established, for a period of one game month, let us say. [...] If the character returns, he takes possession of his estate once more (referee's option as to willingness of the relative to give it up) but must pay an additional 10% tax in order to regain his own. Optionally the relative may be allowed to stay on as a non-player character in the service of the player-character. Loyalty of the relative in such a circumstance would be at a penalty of from 0 to -6, and he would possibly intrigue to regain control. Characters without a relative will lose all their possession should they disappear and not return before whatever period is designated as establishing death."

Willing possession to a new, related character became a familiar part of later D&D as a way to give a player's new character a little boost after his old one died, but the "unexpectedly disappears" bit strikes me a strange. The soap operatic return of a character believed dead is even odder. I suspect that the intention with this rule has more to do with the disappearance of a player that the disappearance of a character.

 When you have, as Men & Magic says, up to fifty(!) players rotating in and out of a campaign, it's inevitable that a few of those people will drop out of the game, and that they may or may not eventually return. What happens to their character? What happens to the juicy and important treasure maps in that character's possession? Declare the character dead, and give all his stuff to a new character controlled by a player who can show up for a game once in a while. If the truant player later returns to the campaign, then you have the possibility of intrigue between the characters.

I wonder how this would work in practice. When declaring a relative, would the player prearrange matters with another player in the event he missed a few games, or would the DM accumulate a collection of relative NPC's he could dole out to any player whose character died? (This is one of those things where it's difficult for me to gauge whether this interpretation was already obvious to everyone except me, or if I'm just completely misreading it.)

Outdoor Survival

Underworld & Wilderness Adventures recommends using the board from Avalon Hill's 1972 board game Outdoor Survival for a wilderness map. Here's the Boardgame Geek page for Outdoor Survival, which includes pictures of the game. The playing board is marked by a hexagonal grid, sized 34 x 43 hexes. The map includes various terrain types, such as woods, desert, mountains, and swamps. Nine buildings and twenty-four catch-basins dot the map. U&WA says to use the buildings as towns, and the catch-basins as castles. Some of those castles would be ruins, others not. This seems to be the assumed starting area for a campaign. Hexes are assumed to be five miles across. A man on foot can cross three hexes per day, depending upon terrain type. A "light" horse (40gp) can cross 10 hexes a day. So, a party might reasonably be able to cross the map from corner to corner in about a week. That seems like a manageable starting point. Have you used the Outdoor Survival map for a campaign?

What do hit points represent?

Talysman posted a meditation on hit points on Sunday.

I've always understood hit points to abstract not merely bodily intactness, but also stamina, luck, concentration, and so forth.

On page 18, Men & Magic defines hit points as "the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death. Whether sustaining accumulative hits will otherwise affect a character is left to the discretion of the referee." The description for Cure Light Wounds says the spell "will remove hits from a wounded character[....] A die is rolled, one pip added, and the resultant total subtracted from the hits points the character has taken." That would seem to establish a very narrow definition of hit points indicating a capacity to survive wounds, and not a measure of stamina, luck, etc.

However, a few other passages in the LBB's hint that hit points may sometimes reflect more than wounds. The description for wights says they "drain away life energy levels when they score a hit in melee, one level per hit. Thus, a hit removes both the hit die and the corresponding energy to fight, i.e. a 9th level fighter would drop to 8th level." The wight description is interesting for two reasons. First, it could be read in conjunction with the Cure Light Wounds description ("will remove hits") to mean that Cure will "remove hits" inflicted by the wights, and therefore restore the drained level* caused by those hits. Second, the wight description links "hits" with "energy to fight".

Hit dice dictate the number of creatures affected by Sleep. Sleep does not wound the targets, so that too indicates hit points/dice measure something in addition to the capacity to survive wounds.

Perhaps the most direct reading is that hit points correspond directly to the capacity to sustain wounds, but it's possible to understand some passages to mean that hit points/dice sometimes represent other concepts. I tend to favor the latter reading. Practically speaking, an experienced combatant may to some extent be able to mitigate wounds (maneuver to take a bruise to the shoulder instead of a slash to the ribs), but they'll certainly be better conditioned both mentally and physically to the rigors of battle in terms of stress, fatigue, and concentration.

* Although page 35 of Underworld & Wilderness Adventures says "energy levels can only be regained by fresh experience, but common wounds can be healed with the passage of time".

Why all weapons do d6 damage

Spot on.

In defense of coin-weight encumbrance

The OD&D method of using coins as a unit of measurement for encumbrance is not intuitive for players. A player has reasonable references for what 10 pounds feels like—like a 12-pack of soda cans—but the weight of 50 or 100 coins is less familiar. But D&D is all about choices. A henchman died while finding the treasure? You really should return his body for proper burial. But the body weighs 1750 coins—1750 coins you could otherwise carry out of the dungeon. That plate mail doesn't just slow your movement, it's 750 coins you won't bring out of the dungeon. (It looks like an OD&D coin conveniently weights about a tenth of a pound—four times the weight of a U.S. half-dollar coin.)

OD&D attack matrix

Looking at the attack matrix for men on page 19 of Men & Magic, I'm wondering what happens at high levels. The column header "16 & +" seems to indicate that fighting-men never get better than that (e.g.—hitting AC 2 on a roll of 5 or better). Given that fighting men progress in attack ability every three levels and top-out at level 16, what about the other classes? Clerics advance in attack ability every four levels, and magic-users every five levels. Will a magic-user eventually (at level 26) be able to hit AC 2 with a roll of 5 (i.e.—catching-up with the combat abilities of fighting-men, but ten levels later)? Or, does improvement of their combat ability end at level 16, hitting AC 2 with a roll of 10? It looks to me like combat ability for all classes stops improving at level 16; to hit AC 2 fighting men top-out at a roll of 5, while both clerics and magic-users top-out at a roll of 10 to hit AC 2. Do you agree? Or could Men & Magic mean that magic users and clerics are eventually able to hit AC 2 with a roll of 5? EDIT: I initially missed the bit that says "...and at 13th level the Patriarch would get 8 + 2 and fight as a Superhero - the next change in Fighting Capacity coming at 17th level." So... it seems that attacks will continue to get better beyond level 16, yes?

What armor restrictions?

I've been studying the LBB's lately, which has caused considerable lengthening of my D&D things-I-thought-I-knew list. One of those things is the prohibition against magic-users wearing armor. This seems to be the only passage in Men & Magic on the matter:

The whole plethora of enchanted items lies at the magic-users [sic] beck and call, save the arms and armor of the fighters (see, however, Elves); Magic-Users may arm themselves with daggers only.

To my eyes, this is only talking about magical armor. It's possible that there's a later passage in the LBB's that explicitly bans mundane armor for magic-users, but based on this I think they should be able to suit-up in full plate. Even the daggers-only clause is joined by a semi-colon to the clause about enchanted items, so it may imply "with enchanted daggers only." That could mean that they can use all mundane weapons but no magical weapons except for daggers. If the referee was feeling perverse, he could even interpret it to mean that magic-users can't wield any mundane or magic weapons except for enchanted daggers. I assume that the accepted doctrine against armored magic-users is rooted in how things worked at Gary's gaming table, but I haven't found much discussion on the usual forums about what a literal reading of the text would mean. Your thoughts?

Magic Pools

Dungeons are are often damp places. It's common for pools of water to collect in low-lying areas of dungeon levels. Rarely, pools have unusual magical characteristics. The following table is adapted from the first issue of The Strategic Review:

Magical Pool Properties (PC's must wade into or drink from pool)

1	One time only, turns gold to platinum
2	One time only, turns gold to lead
3	One time only, permanently modify ability 1 Add 1d3 points to strength 2 Subtract 1d3 points from strength 3 Add 1d3 points to intelligence 4 Subtract 1d3 points from intelligence 5 Add 1d3 points to wisdom 6 Subtract 1d3 points from wisdom 7 Add 1d3 points to dexterity 8 Subtract 1d3 points from dexterity 9 Add 1d3 points to constitution 10 Subtract 1d3 points from constitution 11 Add 1d3 points to charisma 12 Subtract 1d3 points from charisma
4	The pool speaks, and offers to grant one wish to each of the characters. The pool has an alignment: 1-2 lawful, 2-3 neutral, 4-6 chaotic. Characters who make a wish but are not of the same alignment as the pool suffer 2d6 damage. The wishes of characters of the same alignment as the pool are granted, but do not take effect for 2d12 hours.
5	Characters entering the pool are transported to the surface.
6	Characters entering the pool are transported one level down in the dungeon.

Angry Villager Rule

I came across this Angry Villager Rule in The Underword & Wilderness Adventures:

Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgivable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line. Within the realm of angry villagers are thieves from the 'thieves' quarter'..."

What a great urbane adventure module could be made from the material in Fritz Lang's M! (Don't read the last two paragraphs of that linked essay if you haven't seen M yet. And you should see it.)