Rolling ability scores

James Maliszewski made a post about ability score generation. These days, I favor the 3d6-in-order method. You could give players the option of using an inverted bell curve to satisfy their inner min-maxer without out resorting to any sort of point-buys or dice swapping:

Dice Roll (3d6)	Ability Score	Probability
3	11	0.5%
4	12	1.4%
5	13	2.8%
6	14	4.6%
7	15	6.9%
8	16	9.7%
9	17	11.6%
10	18	12.5%
11	3	12.5%
12	4	11.6%
13	5	9.7%
14	6	6.9%
15	7	4.6%
16	8	2.8%
17	9	1.4%
18	10	0.5%

Two word NPC's

Telecanter solicited two word NPC's, so here's my list:

1. charitable poacher
2. professional bather
3. narcoleptic tollkeeper
4. cannibal crofter
5. lovelorn bugbear
6. muscular lacemaker
7. gossipy limner
8. daydreaming veterinarian
9. myopic watchman
10. cutpurse sawbones
11. prophetic maidservant
12. thrill-seeking copyist
13. crippled stevedore
14. obsessive-compulsive oil merchant
15. palsied gemcutter
16. pyromaniacal lampwright
17. careless butcher
18. deaf sperviter
19. sweaty phrenologist
20. prosaic dreamreader
21. be-gilled oarsman
22. impatient tallyman
23. meticulous surveyor
24. prudish midwife
25. cursed barber
26. wereboar swineherd
27. troubled wellsinker
28. decorous fence
29. excitable philosophe
30. delusional publican

Trading on design

In a reply to my post from yesterday, Scott of Huge Ruined Pile (who himself recently penned something of an apologia for nostalgia) predicted a move to "more modern-looking" OSR products. There's good design and bad design. Good design is aesthetically appealing and functional. In the case of game covers, the function is to communicate the nature of the content. What is the game about? Is it the sort of thing I would like? Here are a couple of current Swords & Wizardry products: The design of both these products effectively communicates what they're about. They're fantasy adventure games, with an old-school flavor. I also find them aesthetically pleasing per se, apart from the nostalgia factor. The boxed set has a clean, balanced design which does its job even when considered in isolation from the 1974 box. Granted, most of the people buying these products are familiar with the earlier works they reference. But that's true of any package design. You sell an unfamiliar product by creating associations in the minds of consumers. Leaving aside whether they are good or bad design (relative to the S&W covers or on their own), what associations do these "modern" Frog God Games covers evoke? These covers capitalize on a design aesthetic that was popularized around 2001 with the boom of 3e products. No doubt the designs create the desired associations in their audience. My concern is that—however much we would like to see Swords & Wizardry realize the volume of sales 3e publishers saw—the design aesthetic of the Frog God Games products would less effectively communicate the appeal of S&W than the existing Mullen cover. If you think the Swords & Wizardry packaging is derivative (I don't—it's nostalgic but not derivative), is it better to jump from one derivative design to another derivative design of slightly more recent vintage? I don't ask that rhetorically. (In case you haven't seen it, the art for the new Swords & Wizardry cover is shown in my last post.)

Hmph: Frog God Swords & Wizardry

It's a good thing if an old-school game can get broader distribution with a new publisher. On the other hand, the Frog God press release seems a little tone deaf:

"We won't sell you hand drawn maps and clip art laid out by amateurs and posted up on Lulu.com as a cheap book that you look at and discard."

And speaking of tone, I've always felt that Peter Mullen's art strikes just the right note for any old-school gaming material. Frog God Game's new S&W cover—not so much: I mean, it's nice and all, but to me the new cover art says "d20-era Call of Cthulhu" not OD&D. UPDATE: Mythmere (Matthew J. Finch) comments on the "by amateurs and posted up on Lulu.com" statement.

Superstitious dungeoneers

There's a good post on Dungeons and Digressions about superstitious dungeoneers, which I'm linking to here so that I'll remember to use it later. These are my favorites: 8. A torch that touches the ground means someone will be injured or killed soon. 9. A bell heard underground is, well, not good. 10. At least one coin should always be left behind when treasure is recovered. 11. If you see a bat you should change your weapon. 22. If someone’s head gets chopped off near you, you should kick it far away lest you suffer the same fate. 25. Knock three times on a shield after discussing someone’s death. (I'm also a fan of the index card posts.)

B/X Companion initial impressions

The mailman delivered my B/X Companion a few minutes ago. The cover art by Brian DeClercq is beautiful. It has a nice old-school feel without being a slavish imitation of Erol Otus's B/X covers. The book is 64 pages in length, not counting the table of contents and index printed on the inside cover, and formatted in two columns. It's 8.5" x 11" saddle stitched, so it's slightly taller than the B/X books. The book covers levels 15-36. Of course, demi-human advancement is capped below those level, but the book includes material useful for all classes, such as information on domain rulership. As one might expect, the greatest number of pages are occupied by new spells, monsters, and magic items. There's also rules for siege combat, a new Bard class, and adventuring on other planes. I'll post more about the B/X Companion again after I've spent a couple of weeks with it, but the my initial impression is that it's a good buy. I'll leave you with this example to wet your appetite:

"Craft Device: this is the thief's ability to construct elaborate traps of mechanical nature. Cost and time to construct will need to be decided by the DM (similar to construction of magical devices). Thieves use these devices to protect their hideouts, though they may build them for others at a price. Failing the craft roll by more than 10% means the device was not constructed correctly, and all the time, money, and components are wasted. Failing the roll by 10% or less indicated the thief successfully created the device, but is himself the first victim of the device as he sets off the trap!"

Abilities for general task resolution (2/2)

Yesterday, I wrote about a mechanic I found in the Ready Ref Sheets for resolving extraordinary character actions. If, instead of using the uniform distribution of a d100, you use bell curve probabilities by adding d6's, you can tune the odds without resorting to +/- bonuses. Higher ability scores are relatively more helpful with this method, and you can use the mechanic to resolve both ordinary and extraordinary actions.

	9	12	15	18
2d6	83.3%	100%	100%	100%
3d6	37.5%	74.1%	95.4%	100%
4d6	9.7%	33.6%	66.4%	90.3%
5d6	1.6%	9.8%	30.5%	60%
6d6	0.18%	2%	9.7%	27.9%
7d6	0.01%	0.3%	2.2%	9.4%
8d6	0%	0.03%	0.38%	2.4%

A fighter with a 15 strength want to roll back a large boulder. The referee decides that it's a quite difficult task, so the player must roll under his strength using 6d6. However, if the character spends a turn digging dirt from under one side of the boulder, the referee can let him roll 5d6 for his next attempt.