Why B/X Is My Favorite #14

I am going to skip a couple of the numbered reasons why I love B/X because I have covered them on more than a few occasions in other posts:
12. It is unapologetically gameist in nature - doors in dungeons are stuck closed. You need to roll to force them open. Why? Because the rulebook says so and it is fun.
13. The importance of retainers.

So I am going to jump to:

14. The combat sequence

From page B24:

A. Each side rolls initiative (1d6).

B. The side that wins initiative acts first (if simultaneous all actions are performed by each side at the same time):
1. Morale checks, if needed.
2. Movement per round, meleed opponents may only move defensively (spell casters may not move and cast spells).
3. Missile fire combat:
a. choose targets
b. roll 1d20 to hit; adjust result by Dexterity adjustment, range, cover, and magic
c. DM rolls damage
4. Magic spells (roll saving throws as needed: 1d20).
5. Melee or hand-to-hand combat:
a. choose (or be attacked by) opponents
b. roll 1d20 to hit, adjust result by Strength adjustment and magic weapons
c. DM rolls damage; adjust result by Strength adjustment and magic weapons

C. The side with the next highest initiative acts second, and so on using the order given above, until all sides have completed melee.

D. The DM handles any surrenders, retreats, etc. as the occur.

Now a couple of interesting things about this:

1. It is very "wargamey" as one would expect given its pedigree.

2. It reflects a simple system that fits extremely well with the abstract nature of B/X combat. As JB over on his bog (B/X Blackrazor) succinctly says: "The initiative roll simply determines whose damage gets applied first...not necessarily who swings first."

3. With the movement phase coming at the beginning of the sequence it allows the combat participants to try to get the right resources into the right position.

4. It says in both the missile combat and melee combat phases, "DM rolls damage". This one is kinda neat but I would presume that 99.9% of DMs (including myself) let the players roll damage. Why would the rules say that the DM should roll the damage? I would assume that using today's vocabulary it is to keep metagame thinking out of the action. DMs should instead keep the numbers hidden and describe and roleplay the damage instead.

5. When engaged in melee it only allows for Defensive Movement (Fighting Withdrawals and Retreats). This has two effects: first it is a very simple way of keeping track of "attacks of opportunity" and it makes for an interesting decision process for managing resources (in this case hit points). When is it the right time to start withdrawing? When are the bonuses for your opponent to hit you outweighed by your need to escape?

Why do I like the B/X combat sequence? Because it is simple and fast but allows options for the aspects that are most important to B/X - the marshaling of resources.

Dark Sun / Castles & Crusades Part 2

The background for a second session of the now poorly named Dark Sun one shot:

With the Veiled Alliance still in hiding and part of Nicodemus' troops now under their orders, our unlikely heroes spent the last year wandering the desert, hunting and raiding villages like any other slave tribe. The tribe's scouts have brought word of an unlikely caravan traveling through the desert nearby - a supply caravan belonging to Sorcerer-King Kalak whose destination is unknown. The tribe has set up an ambush to take the caravan. Why is it out in the desert? What does it carry?

These are my goals/wish list for a second session of Castles & Crusades / Dark Sun:
1. Make use of the Slave army that now follows the party.
2. Have a mix of scene framing and dungeon exploration. But a bigger focus on dungeon exploration than in the last session.
3. More goofy minis!

Northern Marches Session

I sat down with three players last night for a session of Northern Marches. It was the first time I had pulled out my Northern Marches binder in about 6 weeks. Of three players, one (K-Slacker) is an old-school gamer in very much the same mold as myself. Players two and three were the previously mentioned Former Northern Marches Players. That is right - they actually came back!

The session itself was fairly basic but it was in its basic-ness that showed me that my previous conversations with them had an impact. The first couple of hours were spent talking to a local sage, tracking down the "Old-Timer" that loved to spin stories of his exploits when deep in his cups, talking to off-duty guardsmen about the goblin menace, and seeking out tougher retainers than the drunk misfits they had hired up to this point.

After that, they stole a small rowboat to head across the river as the ferry service has stopped due to lack of demand and the threat of goblins on the other side of the river. They then proceeded to explore the wooded mountains of the far side trying to scout for these goblins. They smartly avoided a couple of encounters with giant animals and quickly dispatched a lone Ogre. The session ended after they overcame an encamped hobgoblin patrol. My favorite part was when one of the players said, "wouldn't it be cool if they had a damsel to rescue?"

Well guess what - I made sure there was a damsel. She turned out to be a cleric. One of the most basic DMing skills there is.

It was actually a fairly mundane session. It had been a few weeks since we played last and I wasn't sure what they wanted to do so I treated it as if it were the first session. It worked well as it gave them a chance to try out their new "old school" skills. I had alot of fun!

As an aside, Konrad the Fighter is the only PC to remain from the first Northern Marches session. He is K-Slacker's character and is a foppish, vain fighter who the other players love to see get wet, dirty and otherwise covered in filth.

The Recipe for Gold

Jeff posted an interesting idea about a formula to put together a new campaign.

Here is my concoction:

1) Start with any ol' D&D-esque ruleset
Since B/X is my favorite let's start with it.

2) Add some supplementary rules material. You're primarily looking for new Gygaxian building blocks (classes, races, spells, monsters, magic items, etc) to drop into the game. In this recipe you want exactly two different sources for this stuff, one of which is easy to put into your game...
I have been reading Mutant Future again while thinking about a potential Thundarr-esque one shot so even though Jeff mentions it in his post I will stick with it as well.

...For the other one choose something that might be a little harder to fit into your system of choice without some work.
The other game I have been reading lately has been Barbarians of Lemuria so let's choose that.

3) Now you need some fluff to hang all this stuff on. Pick exactly three sources of campaign inspiration. Two of these sources should be recognizable as fantasy material...

First, The Secret of Sinharat by Leigh Brackett.
From Paizo's website:

Enter Eric John Stark, adventurer, rebel, wildman. Raised on the sun-soaked, savage world of Mercury, Stark lives among the people of the civilized solar system, but his veneer of calm masks a warrior’s spirit. In the murderous Martian Drylands the greatest criminals in the galaxy hatch a conspiracy of red revolution. Stark’s involvement leads to the forgotten ruins of the Martian Low Canals, an unlikely romance, and a secret so potent it could shake the Red Planet to its core.

Second, The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans.
From Amazon:

Ethshar and the Northern Empire have been at war for hundreds of years. Hardly anyone alive remembers why, or over what. The tempest, turmoil, and war are endless, and the killing more endless still. The war has become not just a way of life, but an institution; no one dares to dream that it could end.
Not even Valder of Kardoret, Ethshartic Scout, trapped behind enemy lines.
A MISENCHANTED SWORD
But now everything has changed: at a moment of great need, a hermit wizard crafted Valder a magic sword called Wirikidor — a blade at once cursed and enchanted, a misenchanted blade that makes him unbeatable.

Your third fluff is meant to be the wild card. Pick something way out in la-la land for this one.
Way out in la-la land, eh? How about... the 1978 pilot episode of Battlestar Galactica.

So for rules we have:
B/X D&D
Mutant Future
Barbarians of Lemuria

And for fluff we have:
The Secret of Sinharat
The Misenchanted Sword
and Battlestar Galactica.

Take rules light D&D with wizard/warrior elves, dinosaurs and dragons, add a dash of physical and mental mutations and missile silos. Mix with traits and flaws and evil druids that worship the 20 dark gods of the void.

Put it all on top of a dying mars with a war going on for so long that no one remembers why they are fighting and add in cylons... its gotta have cylons.

Just in case...

I am sure that nearly everyone that comes to my tiny corner of the blogoverse already reads Grognardia but just in case, James recently made a post about resource management and the importance - that's right importance - of the 15 minute adventure day. This one gets a hearty cheer from me.

Why B/X Is My Favorite #11

11. It takes about 5 minutes to make a character.

This is more than B/X being a rules-lite system. It also goes hand-in-hand with how fragile characters are. Mortality rates of B/X characters are high so it is important to have a system that quickly generates new characters.

Even with a very quick character generation process I still remember a handful of my early characters and their stories and exploits. Gundar the dwarf who vowed vengeance on the goblins who resided in the Caves of Chaos, Fingolfin the elf who met with a certain hermit and many others.

It isn't a long complicated character generation process or long elaborate character backstories that make these characters stand out but instead what they did after I quickly rolled them up.

The Colour of Money

Looking back at B/X and OD&D and reading 3.5 and 4E the role of treasure has changed over the years. I believe that the change really came about in 2E when the Experience Point system was changed away from the simple and straight forward GP=XP system.

Arranging the uses for treasure in a spectrum from "old-school" to "new-school" I get something that looks like:

Experience Points
|
Stronghold
|
Hirelings
|
Information
|
Better Equipment
|
Spell Research
|
Magic Item Creation
|
Purchasing Magic Items


Not to say that magic item creation is not present in B/X (see page X51) or OD&D (see page 6&7 or Men & Magic) but (at least in my games) the focus has been skewed more towards the uses higher on the spectrum.

One interesting thing that Barbarians of Lemuria has done is make the spending of treasure mandatory. All treasure must be spent before Advancement Points (XP) are awarded. The player gets to describe how the money is spent and the GM is encouraged to use this to develop hooks for future adventures.