Earning Rewards

The common implementation of character advancement, or "leveling up," in most tabletop RPGs drove me to start hacking my RPG experience in the first place. Specifically, the idea of character optimization and "builds." Chris McDowall articulates the idea of how "external engagement" can interfere with the enjoyment of the game more eloquently than I would in his blog Bastionland.

The old school D&D chassis - something like B/X - looks boring on the surface to the modern player. They will wonder where they can find all of their cool abilities. They don't exist in the rules because they depend on the fiction that arises during play. Characters will earn them during play by acquiring magic items, making deals with extraplanar beings, or stealing from a powerful wizard.

However, the old school rule sets could be more explicit in this expectation. My hacked rules leverage the fact that players anticipate leveling up. The modern gamer knows that leveling up is a good thing; that they'll get cool stuff. But, it generalizes the specifics of the advancement process. 

It doesn't distinguish between classes. A character can become anything they want depending on how they adventure and where they spend their money. It doesn't give the player a list of abilities, skills, or feats to choose from. There aren't rules for multiclassing or tables that spell out when you get this and that cool thing.

I embrace the act of discovery as the core feature of my games. Players know they're going to level up, but they don't know exactly how. I hope that curiosity will drive them in a way that realizing a character build would not: by incentivizing them while simultaneously drawing them into the fiction.

A wizard who has leveled up one too many times (art by Erol Otus)

Here are my current rules for character advancement:

1 - Your character must complete an adventure: steal from a tomb. Fight a monster. Discover a secret. Solve a mystery.

2 - When your character returns to town, they choose how they will share the tale of their exploits: carousing. An exclusive party. A lecture at the wizard school. A confession to the priest.

3 - Choose how much to spend during your retelling, and how you'll spend it: pints for the whole bar. Colorful decorations for the party. An offering to the church. 

4 - Once they tell their tales, they make a CHA check. Spending more grants them advantage. Spending little imposes disadvantage. Good results yield some sort of minor boon. Average results uncover a rumor. Bad results cause a complication.

5 - Regardless of the result of the check, when they wake up the next day, characters roll additional HP and gain Hit Dice.

But wait ... "what about my abilities?" you cry. They're earned. In my hack, I list a lot of the best ideas that I've had or seen in the past to inspire the referee. But, the exact specifications of the reward should depend on what happened during the previous adventure.

For example, last week my players advanced to Level 2. During their Level 1 adventure, one of them miscast a spell and ended up promising babies to a demon prince. So, during his downtime in town, a minor fiend offered its services as a familiar, stating that it did so because the spellcaster performed a great service for his demon lord.

The players discover their abilities during play, and those abilities arise out of the fiction. So far, I like where this approach is taking my game.

Casting Spells

Last night I kicked off a mini-campaign that will employ a simplified, hacked, and house-ruled magic system. The action only saw one spell cast, but it was memorable. The caster completely botched it and suffered a nasty spell complication.

But the complication was the icing on the top. The real fun came with the uncertainty inherent in the magic system and casting mechanics, which revolve around a d20 roll-to-cast instead of relying on spell points or spell slots. The spell being cast wasn't written in the rules and so it had a real air of mystery and sorcery. I couldn't be happier with the system's first test.

A sorcerer who has suffered from numerous spell catastrophes (art by Russ Nicholson)

Spellcasting works like this:

• Spellcasters specialize in certain types of spells: schools, circles, domains, whatever. They are proficient in casting those spells. They can cast other spells, but not as well.

• During every full rest (a rest spent in a safe haven), a caster can memorize a number of spells equal to their level.

• When they wish to cast a spell, they roll a d20 and add their INT bonus (and caster level / 2 if it's from their favored school), trying to exceed 10 plus the level of the spell.

• If they succeed, they cast the spell and remember the steps to cast it again.
• If they fail, they still cast the spell, but forget how to cast it again.
• A natural 1 results in bad news: everything goes bottoms up. The casting fails miserably and the caster suffers a catastrophe.

• If the spell requires an attack or contested roll, use the result of the d20 roll as the attack roll.

That's pretty much it. I'm using the magnificently zany supplement Wonder & Wickedness as the source of my sorcery schools, spell catastrophes, and several spells. The casting system itself draws inspiration from Dungeon Crawl Classics and Index Card RPG, for those of you interested in my influences.

One tweak I may consider once the players become more familiar: a less binary set of results for the casting check, based on my d20 reaction table. Something like:

< 2 Catastrophe! The spell fails, it's lost from memory, and the caster suffers a magical mishap.

2 - 6 Casting fizzles ... the spell fails and it's lost from memory.

7 - Target Lost focus ... the spell actuates but it's lost from memory.

> Target Textbook casting. The spell actuates and the caster can recall the incantation to cast it again.

Natural 1s always count as a catastrophe result, regardless of modifiers.

Discovering New Worlds

On vacation in New England and inspired by the wonderfully creative blog Signs in the Wilderness, I created a set of random tables for rolling up a segment of New World coastline.

Roll a d12 and then a d6 as many times as you want (probably 3-5) to generate the location of a colony on distant shores.

A ship spotting a randomly generated coast

1 The sea lies to the …

1 South

2 Southeast

3 Southwest

4 West

5 East

6 Roll again

2 Just offshore you’ll find ...

1 A single large island

2 A long cape

3 Dangerous small rocky islands

4 A deep, cold ocean trench

5 A stretch of tidal flats

6 Barrier islands

3 The coastline is dominated by …

1 Numerous inlets and rocky bays

2 Coastal cliffs

3 A large river delta

4 Tidal lowlands

5 Long sandy beaches

6 Protected harbors

4 The lands along the coast are …

1 Heavily forested

2 Mountainous or rocky

3 Disease-ridden and swampy

4 Dotted with rolling hills

5 Modified by civilization

6 Marked by signs of a disaster

5 Most of the population lives ...

1 As subsistence farmers

2 In the remnants of a lost colony

3 In a powerful metropolis

4 As nomadic hunter-gatherers

5 In hiding from dangers in the wilderness

6 Among ruins of an ancient civilization

6 The dominant culture of the area is made of …

1 Friendly colonists

2 Friendly natives

3 Opportunistic traders or missionaries

4 A diverse mix of indigenous folk and colonists

5 Colonial rivals

6 Hostile natives

7 This land is named for …

1 Magic phenomena

2 An indiginous settlement

3 The dominant water feature

4 The major flora or fauna of the area

5 The dominant terrain

6 A historical or religious figure

8 The climate tends to be …

1 Cool but sunny

2 Hot and humid

3 Temperate

4 Rainy or cloudy

5 Dry with a wet season

6 Harsh and unforgiving

9 The best source of freshwater is …

1 A navigable river

2 A series of freshwater lakes

3 Cold natural springs

4 A large lake

5 Runoff streams

6 Rain

10 Food comes from …

1 Plentiful wild game

2 The sea

3 Local fruit or nut trees

4 Indigenous cultivation

5 Invasive crops from the Old Lands

6 Further inland

11 The people are experiencing …

1 An armed conflict

2 Mysterious disappearances

3 Famine or drought

4 Gluttony and moral decay

5 Social revolution

6 Lasting prosperity

12 The people most recently fought …

1 Each other or former allies

2 A nearby indigenous settlement during raids

3 A colonial expeditionary force

4 A large band of native settlements

5 A magically summoned army

6 Boredom. Peace reigns.

Chainmail Difficulty

I have continued to let my thoughts on ability check / saving throw difficulty simmer since my previous post. I've thought all of my thoughts on the subject, for now at least. Here is my take:

• Unify saves and checks around the 6 ability scores.
• Use standard target numbers. I don't mean they never change, but a default value always exists.
• Use the to hit value of chain mail armor as your default target number. For me, that's 15. Why 15?
• The cool answer: because original D&D descended from the game Chainmail, so it felt fated to be.
• The real answer: because that is the first number at which you receive favorable results in my d20 reaction roll table.
• Add a standard bonus equal to level/2 to proficient checks and attacks as well as all saves.
• Treat checks more as reaction rolls than pass / fail. 15+ gets you an unequivocal success, but 7-14 might get you varying degrees of partial success or complication.
• Saves are more black and white, pass / fail. Something bad is about to happen to you, either you avoid it or you don't.
• Always add the standard bonus to saves. Their ability bonuses will differentiate different PCs, but treat them all as proficient at reacting to danger.

A die showing a number you'll never see when you need it

And, that's that. This system results in about the same chances of success as old school saving throws without requiring a reference table, differentiates PCs slightly based on their starting ability bonuses, and stays fairly familiar to the modern gamer.

Unifying Level-Based Bonuses

I've put a lot more thought into the topic of my previous post on setting difficulty. I'm not so sure that the best answer for my table is to lower the starting difficulty.

Instead, I should keep the difficulty higher, but make it increasingly easier to accomplish tasks and feats in which you're trained. The great game Knave accomplishes this by allowing three ability score increases every level, but this approach rubs me the wrong way:

• You roll to increase your scores. This randomness makes the score increases feel detached from the fictional experience that drove the increase.

• You increase your attributes. You can go from the least nimble human adventurer to the most nimble just by gaining experience. Again, it creates a disconnect when I try to envision the fictional character. How did my innate attributes change so much?

• You tend to pick which ability scores to roll based on mechanical benefits. For instance, increasing your Constitution is a priority because it increases how much you can carry (very important in a classless, inventory-driven system!).

Here, 5th Edition might offer a possible solution: a proficiency bonus. Keep your initial attribute scores the same, but grant an increasing bonus for any action in which you're proficient: swinging a sword for a fighter, casting a spell for a mage, picking a pocket for a thief.

An adventurer with proficient feet (art from AD&D rulebook)

Set your proficiency bonus at half of your character level, rounded up. This keeps you roughly in line with old school attack bonuses and saving throws.

At least until 9th Level. After that I stopped mathing because I don't need to waste effort on something that'll never get used!

For Every Action ...

Basic Fantasy RPG does a good job translating many old-school mechanics into a standardized d20 system that modern role-players tend to find more intuitive. Yet, there are some rolls it keeps as 2d6 like reaction and morale.

A fisherman who rolled well when meeting giant frogs (art by Matt Ray)

However, adding standardized ability bonuses to a 2d6 reaction roll weights the impact of the ability too heavily. Old-school games tend to cap the impact of Charisma on a reaction roll at +2. BFRPG maxes out at +3. 5th Edition takes you to +4 and possibly beyond.

I like reaction rolls but my current games use the 5th Edition rules at their core, so I took Knave's reaction roll table and pasted it on a d20 scale so that PCs could apply their Charisma bonus.

d20 Roll	% Chance	Outcome	% Chance	2d6 Roll
1	5%	Hostile	3%	2
2 - 6	25%	Unfriendly	25%	3 - 5
7 - 14	40%	Unsure	44%	6 - 8
15 - 19	25%	Talkative	25%	9 - 11
20	5%	Helpful	3%	12

Setting Difficulty

Every scene in a game of Index Card RPG has a built-in target number (known as the difficulty class in 5th Edition). The rule book suggests 10-12 as the baseline difficulty (it's a d20 roll over system), but the mechanic has the referee increasing or decreasing the difficulty as the environment changes. 

I like how this system makes the number you have to beat obvious, but also allows for situational differences. ICRPG even has some monsters that increase the target when they appear, which signifies how terrible that monster is to behold. It's a cool concept.

ICRPG's treatment of difficulty differs greatly from other systems I've experimented with lately. Namely, systems inspired by "old school" role-playing. 

Many of these systems start 1st Level characters out with something like a 30% chance to succeed at any given check. And, in some of them, the percentages don't get that much better even if your character manages to level up a few times.

I get it. These systems mean to encourage players to not make rolls. Find some creative way to overcome an obstacle so that you don't have to risk a dice roll. And I do appreciate that approach.

As a player, though, I also like to see my efforts rewarded with improved chances - rolling with advantage, getting a bonus, or decreasing my risk. Those mechanical elements help me to see that my creativity made a difference. Then, I get to roll the dice, the physical act of which is a stand in for my character taking their action.

Role players preparing to kill their characters (art by Simo Gomez)

Some players want to roll the dice. When my players play a game designed to discourage dice rolls, they're paralyzed. They want to do something so that they can roll dice but they rightly fear doing so will just end poorly.

If you find this happening, start the difficulty at 50% for the average ability score.

So, in d20 systems where the average ability score equals 10 with a modifier of +0, this means rolling over a 10 (so, in 5th Edition terms, a DC of 11).

Then, toss in a little ICRPG if desired. When you descend into the unknown depths, full of darkness and tentacles, maybe you have to beat a 12. Maybe a certain monster cranks that up to 13. I also saw an ICRPG house rule once that an additional lit torch reduces the target number by 1, which is a fun incentive to light more than one.