One Thing I Like About Type 4 D&D...

I like how they formalize they idea that you can make a "to hit" roll against not just armor class but any ability score (since it's ascending AC, the scale's pretty close).

Combined with "to hit" numbers being expressed as bonuses (as in type III D&D) it means you can skip a lot of special mechanics for nonphysical attacks & it all goes smooth without having to invent a new rule for every kind of attack. (Not that I'm opposed to different rules for exotic attacks, but doing it this way as a general rule makes hacking and guessing a lot easier.)

Like ok, you want a mind blast? Your wisdom bonus is your plus to hit and the opponent's wisdom is the target number. Yay. Throwing a boulder? To hit vs. dex-as-target number.

If you can think of a reason this isn't a good idea (other than minor pixel-bitching about how the numbers line up) let me know.

I should shut up now, I gotta run a game tonight...

3MinuteDungeonGO!!!!

The 2MinuteDungeon was fun, and worked out well, so I'm refining the process here and giving us all a little more time to think.

I've also thrown together a slightly more suggestive dungeon with rooms in a more intuitive order--1 is the entrance, 2 is the next room, et cetera.



So:
-Get something to write with/on
-Click to enlarge the dungeon
-Set the clock for 3 minutes. (Thanks for that, TheCramp.)
-Try to write something down for all 16 rooms.

Speed tips: Don't number them til you're done. Don't spellcheck or capitalize 'til you're done.

Go!

If You Can Make a Better Dungeon in Under 2 Minutes, The Next One's Free

...which, come to think of it, so is this one...

I'm pleased to say the 2-minute dungeon contest produced an excellent dungeon. Everybody fucking wins.

I've patched the following one-shot room-by-room, using contestant entries for each room, authors of the relevant ideas are in parentheses...

Vornheim Home For the Treatment of Distracted Young Females



It's an all-girl mad house. This is the top floor. The prisoners have recently escaped. Of particular interest are a pair of insane witch sisters of Akira-like power. They are randomly altering fellow prisoners, guards & sections of reality.

Outside the asylum:

14. (Outside)
(Marc)A ginormous garden. The only way out is to get lost.
(Roger the GS) Hole in the ground. First an arm with a right hand comes out, 3HD, AC 7, hits for 2d4 damage. Then an arm with a left hand (same). Then a leg with a right foot (same, but hits at -2). Then a left foot. When you kill the arms and legs a head comes up, you just have to whale at its 4 HD AC7 until it's dead and then like a gumball machine 600 gp fly out of its dome.

3 Possible Entrances:

9.Completely wrecked from eldritch explosion. (Tom) Lords (9Ftr)(former guards, made mad) sparring for the hand of an amoeba (marc)--which is made of (Duglas) dirt & melted glass--resulting from said explosion. They've been cursed, and will become (wickedmurph) weretigers, but don't know it yet.

11. WC (Chris Lowrance), alchemical books about the machines in room 10, lots of rope, (wickedmurph) heads.

10. Bloody slime everywhere (wickedmurph), bloodstains (TrentB), flies (me), steampowered machinery (Chris Weller)(The Cramp) (this was alchemical and exploded, releasing the slime which causes wild-magic effects), green slime (IHaveTilFive), dried remains (Duglas), half a woman in a pool of slime (C'nor), Ladies sparring (Tom)(upper-class lunatics arguing over who caused the explosion and maimed their friend). This used to be a healing mineral steambath for the patients, one of the baths is intact but the water's been turned into a water-weird (with scalding abilities) by the explosion(Ben L). It will not be apparent unless someone enters the bath.

In the corner of this room...

13. Comfy chairs (Chris Lowrance)--if the entire party sits in one of them at once they will break through a weak spot in the floor and reach the rest of the asylum below (Chris Weller), the other one has the remains of what was once an inmate eating porridge (TrentB), his face is on the wall (wickedmurph).

Through a door there's...

15.(this used to be the rorschach test room) It's populated entirely by the method the players use to enter the room. The door has a key on a ribbon tied around the knob. If the players search for traps-- there is a trap in the room. If the players pick the locks-- there is a lurking monster in the room. If the players force the door, there is a brute force monster in the room. If the players use the key, there is a succubus in the room-- the monster may seduce with sex, power, knowledge, xp, whatever. (The sisters came in here and accidentally summoned the Axiomatic Dragon.)

At any rate, it will be furnished with: semen in an aquarium, swimming (me)(they are of various random species and one of them will fertilize any egg of any kind placed in the aquarium)(the resulting hybrid beast will grow to full maturity in 5 minutes), and the walls are lined with psychological textbooks, but now they are all blank (Chris Lowrance).

Going deeper into the madhouse from (10.) brings you to a large room. (TrentB)--This used to be a dining room. Table covered in blood. Two broken chairs. One untouched. The inmates have turned the left half into a...

7. (Marc)--Jousting arena. Everyone mounts pigs and weapons are odd-shaped snakes. (Chris L)--there are teeth all over the floor.

Amid this lunacy, and into the right half of the room, some inmates are (Chris w) bowling. Behind the pins there's...

8. (JDJArvis/Chris W)a horrible giant tapestry made of woven spider silk by one of the former residents (now a zombie) showing a treehouse in back yard. It's (Wickedmurph) a mimic. (It has 9HD however...) noticing the two matching snowflakes on the painting (this is Vornheim, there's always snow) will cause it to revert to an ordinary art object (me).

One of the jousting pigs sits here on a jeweled stand--he is a polymorphed king (marc) from a distant land.

Behind the painting is an area of nothingness. Anything touching it ceases to exist and the world forgets it ever existed (TheCramp).

Upon close inspection, the teams of inmates jousting here will be revealed to be simulacra reconstructed by the sisters out of guilt (they slew them in a rage, early on) using the nearest available materials--one team is made of vegetable matter (from the garden), one half is made from machinery (Duglas). (Sounds totally like a Star Trek plot.)

Beyond that, there's a hallway, radiating rooms...

2. This is where the sisters keep a series of brass gears controlling the Idol in the next room (3)(marc) the sisters have protected it with an insane pit trap (ben L) leading to a pit full of cats that explode when threatened (C'nor) and, (by way of warning) a dead dog(me). Also in the pit is a stoned flock of cockatrice, a trap tile unstones them (chris L).

3. Iron idol (Ben L) on a dais with a mouth carved into it (chris weller) surrounded by a mud pool with bits of women's clothing floating in it (marc), an otyugh lies beneath the mud (IHaveTilFive) and a stoned Basilisk, real, but actually stoned: bleary eyes, etc., gaze half-effective due to red eye, bobbing half-drowned in the mud (Chris L) and a victim of it, frozen mid-scream (TrentB).

(The other inmates were drowned in this mud to create the idol.)

The idol and the mouth will answer one question per person. The mouth always lies, the idol always tells the truth. The gears in room 2 work the idol. This used to be the sisters' cell. They built the idol to counteract the lies coming from the mouth (which drove them mad, so they say). They want to ask it where the 3rd sister has gone, but are currently occupied elsewhere.

5. Storage room. Inmates belongings: 500gp (Jarvis), d20 sp, laundry (TrentB)(an effective disguise but filled with bedbugs)(Wickedmurph)--a box full of living snakes (TheCramp), food (IHaveTilFive), 5 golden rings (Tom), and a caged cat that's the 3rd sister, polymorphed (Ben L). She's been here all along. Her return may sober her sisters, or maybe not...

6. Kitchen. Covered with rotten oats and fungus (TrentB) hospital kitchen and food-requirement records. Careful examination of them explains everything (IHaveTilFive). The floor's covered in redworms (Chris L) crawling into a hole which is actually a portable hole (TheCramp) the witches' familiar, an imp, cowers in the oven (wickedmurph).

4. Inmate's room. Recently used bedding, stained with a few drops of blood.(JDJarvis) An Axiomatic Dragon (C'nor) (8 inches long, curled claws, grey, lying in the middle of the bed) holds court here, feasting on a box of dead wolves (TheCramp). If the PCs do nothing, nothing happens. Every action by any PC while in this room results in an action of like duration by one of the dragon's courtiers. They are: a giant snake (Ben L), 4 harpies (Tom), a humanlike praying mantis that resembles a pretty woman with a hungry look (marc), two elf women that won't stop singing (can't?)(Chris L), and impossible rats (wickedmurph)(they can -only- do things rats can't).

The elf women are the mad sorceresses responsible for all this but they've cursed each other so they can't stop singing long enough to get anything done and they've accidentally summoned the Axiomatic Dragon, to whom they are now enslaved.

And in the closet is...

1. A statue of a basilisk and a flock of cockatrice locked in deadly combat. Not real.(Chris L)...In the middle of 50 dessicated heads. All the heads are from non-existent beings(Marc). Poison snakes slither through the scene (wickedmurph).

2MinuteDungeonContestGO!!!!!

15ThingsStockItContestEnds5:45pmEasternTomorrowYouAreOnly
AllowedToWorkForTwoMinutesIWon'tKnowIfYouCheatedBut
SantaWillClickToEnLargeGO!!!!!

______
hint: Type the key numbers after you stock the rooms. It'll save time.

Fast Tables & Slow Tables

Since I'm working on a book chock-full of random tables I've been thinking about which ones to include and why and blahhhhhhh...

Alright. Basically there are 3 kinds of tables:

1) Tables designed to use randomness to create dramatic tension (Slow Tables) These operate by purposefully going slower than the speed of thought. They give the roller less information than s/he needs to figure out all of what's going on. Roll initiative. Tension mounts. Roll to hit. Tension mounts. Roll damage. Tension mounts. Roll to see if you save vs, poison. Tension mounts... aaaaaand you took 3 points of damage and are paralyzed on account of the Toadweasel's poison dagger.

It took 4 rolls to figure that out & it was worth every second. (In theory.) You could, in fact, see the whole game as basically rolling on a series of tables that slow the story down and build tension. "Do you, Vrothgrontnar, want to take the Chalice of Especial Destiny across the Plain of Choogle to the Fire Queens of Northern Sucktania?" "Yes, yes I do." And you could just end it there. He did it. But instead, you roll on some tables and do some other things to slow the whole thing down and break it into parts with details.

If, instead of actually playing, you just did all the math on Vrothgrontnar's chances and built a d1000 chart and had him roll on it and then read off a result which included a rich, novel-length description of a whole adventure he just had: "Well, first you woke up and brushed your teeth, then you went and got some henchfolk, then...fire pits...gargoyle feast...three wicked sailors...Gates of Skrowwbe..."etc. could possibly provide exactly the same amount of information as the chronicle of the game. But it would have no dramatic tension as a game (and no place for choices, but that's another post).

Anyway, point is, in this case, the table--or, usually, "series of tables"--is used to provide small details which, in themselves, mean little, but which slowly accrete into a story.

2) Tables designed to use randomness to quickly choose between a very large number of plausible options so that the game can continue smoothly (Fast Tables) These operate by purposefully going faster than the speed of thought. They give the roller more information than s/he could have invented spontaneously at that speed or if not that, then at least they allow the roller to have options presented to them with a level of regularity matching reality, genre expectations, etc. that would require a lot of thought s/he couldn't have put in that fast (i.e. I don't roll up "Polar Bear" on the wilderness encounter chart because I couldn't have thought of a polar bear that fast, I do it because I trust the table to be balanced to provide me with polar bears about as often as I or the game designer think polar bears should turn up on the pitiless tundra of Harshlandica.)

These charts should provide the roller with the most information s/he could possibly assimilate at a glance and are mostly useful for things that the game feels should/could be randomized but aren't all that dramatic ("What's the layout of this building?") or for DMs in the middle of a game.

3) Tables designed to handle extremely large numbers of options during DM prep. An example of this would be the Random Magic Item tables from the DMG. The emphasis in these tables is, theoretically, providing a statistical balance of whatever element the DM's trying to roll up. These are the easiest to design since they don't have to weigh statistical accuracy or regularity or verisimilitude or whatever they're going for against anything else. People who use them are usually doing it because they like to and have free time on their hands.

Making them faster is possible, and occasionally desirable for a busy DM about to run something. When trying to design faster tables of this sort you can pretty much follow the same rules as Fast Tables above.

_____________

Ok, so a series of Slow Tables should provide a stream of details at a rate that keeps the tension high. A single Fast Table should provide a ton of information all at once so that situations can be nailed down quickly and everybody can move on to the fun stuff.

_____________

Designing a good series of Slow Tables usually means that each roll provides some concrete & identifiable detail about where the situation is going which means something to the PCs in terms of good or bad. "Initiative" can go well or poorly, "to hit" can go well or poorly & "damage" can go well or poorly, for instance. A Slow Table which just goes "Ok, roll to see who notices...ok, it's someone lower class...ok, roll again...ok, its someone in the service industry...ok, roll again...it's a charwoman!" is, most of the time, not going to increase tension, it's just slowing shit down. Might as well roll your random innocent bystander on a Fast Table.

Probably the classic example is the hit location table--the problem is not that it's a whole extra die to roll, the problem is working it into the "story" of the combat system tells in such a way that you don't hear "upper arm" and just go "Ok, and...?".

Whatever version of Rolemaster I just played handled that pretty well by folding hit location into a system of high, medium, & low crits, so you hear about what you hit and what that did at the same time.

In other words, don't design a Slow Table to slowly narrow down categories unless those categories mean something to the PCs in terms of what they're trying to accomplish.

_____________

Designing a good Fast Table means extracting the maximum information from each die roll. This usually means that you put tons of effort into creating unique results for the table when you're not playing so that all that creativity pops up instantly when you are playing. A d100 chart with 100 results and 1-2 line descriptions of each result is a typical good example, but there are other ways to do it.

For example: Factoring in even one of these other conditions in addition to what's on the die can allow you to parse between far more than 100 options on a single roll:

-what PC rolled the die (race, class, male, female)
-who rolled the die (player position-1 to the left of the DM, 2 to the left, 3 to the left, etc.)
-where the die lands
-color of the die
-size of the die
etc.

For example, you could stock a hexmap in a second by assigning different dice (different color, different size) to various monsters likely to show up in a certain biome. D20s would be the weakest monsters and d4s would be the toughest. Then just drop all the dice onto the map (behind the screen). Wherever a die lands, that many monsters of that type are there. Any dice that don't land on the map aren't there. When the PCs approach a hex, you can look it up.
_____________

Combat is usually a Slow Table thing. However, there are times a Fast Table could come in handy: mass combat, naturally, and in situations where the DM is rolling several enemies attacking simultaneously & the combat hasn't progressed to the point where PCs are scared that every time a die hits the table they might die.

Character generation is usually in the game-as-written as a Slow Table thing (with options between rolls) but there are lots of times when a player or DM would want it to get done as a Fast Table thing. Games can have both--a slow system for excited newbies & character builders, & a fast system for replacing dead PCs midgame and generating NPCs on the fly.

Here's one for D&D if you have lots of dice: assign each color of die an ability (dex, con, etc.) and roll them. If you're real lazy you can roll 6d20 and just re-roll or rationalize anything outside 3-18.

A common annoying thing in Slow Table character generation is later results which repeatedly void the results of previous rolls. Like I notice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that half your ability scores don't mean anything when you first roll them since you renovate them constantly at every stage of the process (you're a raccoon? +5 pp, -3 ps. What size are you? Oh, that's a +4 ps) so it's hard to get a sense of the PC taking shape in your mind. (In Paranoia they do this on purpose, but that game's really more like a bunch of Fast Tables stuck together in order to disorient the PCs.) I'd suggest that if you're designing a game where the physical form of the PC is wildly in doubt that you get most the powers and ability-altering weirdness in first so that when you do get the ability scores then they actually feel like you're deciding something.

Treasure is usually a Fast Table, but you could build Slow Tables for treasure (or just about anything) if you want to use the tables to narrate the process of finding the treasure. The trick is the table reveals things from the PC's point of view. Like: "We search the body"(roll, roll)"Ok, the 'What's does it have in its pockets? table' says a cursory pocket search reveals nothing. Do you want to roll on the 'What happens if I take off its clothes?' table?""Ok" (roll) "There's nothing but a dagger and a crude tattoo of a dancing hog under the clothes, but there appears to be an unnatural lump in the creature's throat, do you want to roll on the 'What's in it's throat?' table?'" etc.

Or: "It's...(roll roll)...shiny," "YAY!" "and...(roll roll) about 3 feet tall""YAY!""...and...(roll roll) it's a giant slug and it's alive!""Fuck.".

If you build Slow Tables you might end up spending a lot of time not using them. The best Slow Tables are specific to a certain narrow situation but also re-usable, which is a pretty tough bill to fill. Attaching them to a thing the PCs end up bringing around with them (like a car or a horse or a spell) is usually not a waste of effort.

Aaaaand...that's it for now.

Caveats

M. John Harrison is allowed to DM or play.

JRR Tolkien is allowed to play, but not DM, ever. Unless it's a module.

Fritz Leiber is allowed to play or DM, but he's not allowed to sit near any girl I'm sleeping with.

Michael Moorcock is allowed to play, but may only DM if he agrees not to re-use any NPCs.

China Mieville is allowed to DM but not play, and he can only DM if he doesn't do any of his own dialogue. He may write modules.

J.L. Borges is allowed to DM or play, but is reminded that monsters with infinite hit points are not allowed.

Patton Oswalt is allowed to DM or play.

Neil Gaiman is allowed to DM only if he can manage to get all the way through a session without having a monster tell you something that his therapist once told him. Which I'm guessing he's not. Plus see also Fritz Leiber, above.

Ozzy is allowed to play, but only if he agrees to DM at least once.

Thomas Pynchon is allowed to DM or play, but not tell jokes after the first drink.

The authors of the Elder & Younger Eddas are allowed to DM or play, but if they DM, they are only allowed a maximum of 30 NPCs at a time.

If Dorothy Parker is DMing, she will be held to a 2-drink maximum. If she's playing, she will be held to a 2-drink minimum.

All women are allowed to DM or play, except: Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton & Lady Gaga.

Joan Rivers must play, but is not allowed to DM unless Oscar Wilde helps.

James Cameron is not allowed to play, but may be allowed to DM if we get to kill him.

Walt Simonson from 1983 is allowed to play or DM, if he wants to play now, we'll talk.

Franz Kafka is allowed to play, and will be allowed to DM if everyone at the table has had at least one drink.

Oscar Wilde is allowed to DM or play. He must play if Jack Vance or Michael Moorcock are playing.

Anyone who is both involved in the field of animation & Japanese may play or DM, but may not include romantic subplots or philosophical quandaries.

If Franz Kafka DMs & Oscar Wilde plays then...ok my mind was just blown, moving on....

If David Foster Wallace plays, no rules-lawyering & if he DMs, he is reminded that no-one cares about his goddamn potion-miscibility chart.

The authors of the Bible are allowed to play or DM, but are reminded that alignment restrictions will be enforced.

HG Wells is allowed to DM but not play.

Edward Gorey is allowed to play, but is only allowed to DM one-shots.

Jack Vance is allowed to play or DM.

Force Me To Read Something

There's a lot of gameblogs. A lot of them are good. I don't have time to read all of them. That's good, I guess.

I will be away from this machine for a few days, enjoying non-elf-related activities.

Here's the thing for today: Recommend me a gameblog. Only 2 rules!:

1-Do NOT just post the web address. Link to a specific post that is like the best post on that blog & an example of how excellent it is.

2-Not yours. Get a friend to do it if you must.

Failure to comply with these directions will lead me to think of you as someone too stupid to follow 2 simple directions. That's not much of a threat, I know, but hey, it's the internet, it's this or have 300 pizzas delivered to your house & option 2 is just too much work.