2 Workers 2 Placement

This (sub?)system is in response to Marcia B's worker placement manifesto, which I endorse. It inspired me in a specific way that I realized probably can't be communicated effectively in a couple of sentences so here it is as a whole post.

I have some additional thoughts about how to flesh out this mechanical skeleton (specifically, to use it to replace the overloaded die in the enchantingly fractal structure of Brendan S.'s Hazard System) but in the interest of actually getting a post out there I think this is good enough. Drawing the rest of the owl is left as an exercise to the reader.

structure of play

The GM describes a situation, and the players ask questions and decide what their characters are going to do. The GM identifies what tasks are being attempted, what their goals are and communicates what the risks are for each. The players make a final decision of which characters are on which task.

For each task, dice are rolled and its outcome settled. The GM describes the new situation and the cycle resumes.

before rolling

Find out the number of (six-sided) dice based on the number of people on a task: 1 die for an individual, 2 dice for 2-3 people, 3 dice for 4-6 people, 4 dice for 7-10, and so on. People with experience count as double their number and specialists count triple.

If task uses some scarce resource, there is a risk of using it up. At the GM's discretion, the players may declare that they are using up a scarce resource before rolling to roll one extra die.

after rolling

Once rolled, the players must assign individual dice to goals and risks: each roll of 5-6 achieves a goal or removes a risk and each roll of 3-4 advances a goal or avoids/delays a risk. If no die of 3+ can be assigned to it, whatever the risk threatens happens and whatever opportunity there was for the goal is lost.

Perceptive readers will note that this is more or less the dice mechanic from GHOST/echo, which I have previously riffed/elaborated upon.

Unless the GM says otherwise, no risk may be delayed more than twice, but advancing the same goal three times achieves it.

complications

To increase the difficulty of a given goal, divide that goal into multiple steps which are each treated as their own goals. The opportunity to work on a later step should not be lost as long as an early step is being advanced.

Similarly, risks can be heightened by splitting them into multiple risks; a simple way to do this would be to treat the same consequence for each participant as a separate risk.

an agricultural procedure

Everyone must eat. Settled peoples get the majority of their sustenance from crops they grow.

Twelve bushels of grain and pulse (supplemented by animal products and foraged or garden vegetables) sustains a working or pregnant adult for a year. Ten bushels sustains a child or idler.

On up to two fewer bushels per year, or without supplemental foods, one must make a DC 15 roll or lose a random month of work to illness. For every six points the roll fails by, another month is lost.  

a small parcel of wizardries

It's long been a contention of mine that D&D has too many spells. One responsible factor is that there is a need for every school of magic to have a meaningful choice of spells at every level, of which there are probably too many.

Abandoning that pattern, I set myself some constraints. First, there would be five orders of magic. Second, each order would contain fewer spells than the one before it. Third, the first order should have a number of spells it is easy to roll on a random table for.

One 5th-level spell being a natural minimum, I settled on thirty-five spells in total, eleven of which (entries on a 2d6 table) would be first level. To achieve this compression, I also used up-casting for more powerful effects and the splitting out of certain effects into feats or properties of items only.

whither 3e's skills?

As the title may suggest, this is a weird companion piece to my earlier examination of the origins of the skill system in D&D 2000. Instead of looking backwards, I am now looking forward from D&D 2000 to how three iterations on it would attempt to lump and categorize the let's say 50ish individual skills they inherit from it and what I can possibly learn from them.

Ready? Too bad.

gun rules

No one asked for this, but here we are.

stop me if you've heard this before

Sometimes, the Ref may ask for a roll of the dice. The most common type of roll is a d20 roll.
The \gm sets a difficulty class (DC) and whoever is making the choice rolls the die and adds a modifier. If the total is at least equal to the DC, the actor gets what they want. Otherwise, they may fail or need to pay some price to succeed.

If a roll is a contest between two characters, the DC is equal 9+ the total modifier of the target. Otherwise, see below for guidelines on setting DCs.

What is this?

Basically I'm pretty set on a lot of the specific mechanics for my 3e-derived game. Here I'm trying to stretch myself and present only the stuff that's not about character creation, on account of that being the section of the ruleset I have a tendency to work too hard on without drawing the rest of the owl.

The form of what follows, presenting DCs by task rather than by skill (haven't included a skill list in here, but it will be much less granular than these categories) follows the first D&D Next playtest packet. The actual numbers are largely based on a d20ification of this analysis of the hidden d6 skill system of OSE/BX.

hexcuse me

 ...for the title of this post.

Anyway, I'm looking at a lot of hexes to stock and the best hex stocking procedure I have found so far is probably Luke Gearing's Hexfill one, although I also like a lot about Welsh Piper's Hex-based Campaign Design. But, I'm also constitutionally incapable of using something unmodified, so here's my spin on it.

My priorities are to have a procedure that takes into account the geography of the area being keyed, and also produces a more settled map than the procedures linked above.

Begin with a map of atlas (18mi) hexes subdivided into travel (6mi) hexes with terrain and roads marked.

For each travel hex, determine its difficulty (= hours of travel): open country (3), hills or woods (4), wooded hills (5), broken country (6). A road reduces difficulty by 1. Then, roll 1d6:

• If the roll is a 1, there's something weird (see below). 
• If the roll more than 1 and less than the difficulty of the hex, it's empty.
• Roll a d20. If it is less than the d6 roll, there is a ruin of some prior settlement or structure.
  
• If the roll is at least equal to the difficulty of the hex, it contains: (2) a city, (3) a town, (4) 3d2 villages, (5) 2d2 villages, (6) a camp, fastness or inn.
• Camps and inns are abandoned 2-in-6, fastnesses 1-in-6
  

If something weird is indicated, roll 2d6 for its nature. If a Power is indicated, roll 2d6 again for that:

Roll	Nature	Power
2	Old Ones yet dwells here	Nothing remains
3	Holds a vivid memory of the distant past	No more than a hum or a few sparks
4	A student of Power dwells here	Red (energy, heat and strength)
5	Strong medicines may be found here	Orange (industry and motion)
6	A place of attractive Power	Yellow (communication, illusion)
7	Works of the Old Ones, purposes now unknown	Green (growth and healing)
8	A place of repulsive Power	Blue (air and water)
9	Intelligible lore of the Old Ones	Indigo (protection, force)
10	Roll twice	Violet (domination, transformation)
11	Roll twice	Forces poisonous to draw upon
12	Roll twice	A malign intelligence possesses the seeker

Replace 'Old Ones' with whatever fantastical civilization dwelt here before the current peoples if you like.

Now, for each atlas hex, count 1 for every village, 2 for every town and 4 for every city. If a roll of 2d6 plus the number of weird hexes is greater than this sum, a monster lairs somewhere within it.

ADEPT: a modest proposal

Are you reinventing RuneQuest or Traveller this time? You fool. You rube. You absolute buffoon. I am reinventing HârnMaster.

xkcd: Standards

Listen. Everyone hates the six-score array. It sucks, and the history of non-D&D RPGs is practically a history of variants of the array and its uses. There are plenty of theoretical issues to raise with the standard six. However, here are three problems only the worst pedant would have with it:

• The canonical order of the abilities is not alphabetical.
• Two abilities share an initial letter.
• There is no mnemonic device for the abilities.

I propose to solve these (and really, only these) problems with the ADEPT array:

3eish: combat

Blogger ate a draft of this post and I'm not pleased about it. I realize I've posted ideas along these lines before, but here are the versions I like the best now.

Artist: Simon Gocal

Action

Surprised figures do not move or act during the first round that they join combat. Otherwise, the adventurers and their enemies move and act in alternate phases:

1. Enemies move
2. Adventurers move & act
3. Enemies act
4. Attacks are resolved
   

A figure's movement ends if they enter the reach of a foe that can act. If they start within its reach, their movement is limited to one inch.

A figure's movement depends on the load they are carrying. A burdened figure may move twice their Size (in inches, scale TBD), one in heavy kit may move three times their Size and one in light kit may move four times their Size. If a burdened figure moves more than their Size, on an unburdened one twice their Size, they may not act.

A figure may drop what they are holding, or drop into a kneel (-1 Size) or to the ground (-2 Size) freely. Instead of movement, a figure may:

• Concentrate on magic
  
• Draw or stow an item
• Open or close a door
  
• Stand from a kneel
• Take aim

Or similar things; otherwise, these are all actions. Standing from the ground allows only one inch of movement and no other actions.

Attacking

An attacker states their aim, for example, draw out, disarm, push back, restrain, seize, throw or wound. Then, they make their roll and add +1 for every 4HP they currently have. Subtract 4 if they are fighting in an awkward or unfamiliar manner. Then apply situational modifiers:

• In hand-to-hand, apply the attacker's Strength modifier. Add +2 if the target was attacked by another this round.
• Fighting at reach, apply the attacker's Dexterity modifier. Add +2 if the target entered the attacker's reach this round.
• Shooting at range, apply the attacker's Intelligence modifier. Add +2 if the target has not moved this round.

Attacks at range are resolved first, followed by attacks at reach in descending order of reach and finally by hand-to-hand attacks.

An attack succeeds if the modified roll is at least equal to the target's defense. This has two components. A figure's dodge is 3 plus their Wisdom modifier. A figure's protection is 3, plus one for every layers of armor, source of cover or increment of the target's Size (in inches) between the attacker and target.

• When taking cover or other defensive action, defense is dodge + three times protection.
• Otherwise, when able to act, defense is dodge + two times protection.
• Otherwise, defense is two times protection.

If the attack is successful, the attacker rolls damage based on their own Size. 

Example	Size	Die Type
cat	0	d2
fairy, monkey	1	d2
dog, elf	2	d4
deer, man	3	d6
horse, thark	4	d8
ogre, rhinoceros	5	d10
elephant, giant	6	d12
dragon	7	d20

The target may choose to either lose that many HP (if they have that many) or accept the aim of the attack.

Odd attack rolls fail against targets that are concealed from their attackers. If the target is totally concealed, the attacker must have some way of discerning their exact position before attempting an attack in the first place.

Wounding

When a figure is wounded, the severity of the wound depends on how much the damage exceeds their current HP. For these purposes, subtract 2 from the damage of bare fists or feet. A wounded figure makes a saving throw, adding their Constitution modifier.

Excess	Wound	DC	Success	Failure
2 or less	Light	12	Fine	Unconscious
3 to 5	Serious	15	Unconscious	Dying
6 or more	Critical	18	Dying	Dead

A dying character will die if their wound is not treated within a few minutes. An unconscious character may make another save within a few minutes to come to, otherwise they remain out for a few hours.

3eish: what's a level

Theoryposting, maybe I'll get to the point of concrete details by the end of this post, maybe I won't.

Artist: Tennis Cramer

So, my goal of 3eish is to make something that feels like 3e to me, while also keeping it light enough to hold the whole thing in mind and play fast and easy. Can't get rid of levels without it starting to feel like something else entirely so it's worth asking: what's a level. In 3e there are a couple clear answers:

• One HD.
• 1, 3/4 or 1/2 a point of BAB
• 8, 6, 4, 2 + Int skill points
• 1/2 or 1/3 a point of each saving throw
• 1/4 of an one-point improvement to an ability score (1/8 of a one-point improvement to its modifier)
• 1/3 of a feat and some class features
• various scaling on spells you cast

There are some rationalizations that suggest themselves, like making attack bonus or saving throws a part of the skill system, but I've been down most of those design roads at this point and most of them wind up reinventing RuneQuest. So instead I'm going to reinvent True20; a level is a feat and one HD and everything else falls out of that.

Let's nail that down somewhat:

• As in the base rules, the benchmark for a boring feat is that it applies +2 on two different kinds of rolls. 
• Boring feats (that only add bonuses to rolls) are now called skills and can be taken multiple times. This replace the skill list and save progressions; if a character does not have any skills that apply to a saving roll, they use 1/3 their level as a bonus.
• Obviously not all feats are boring ones. The ones that grant more interesting abilities can generally only be taken once.
• Each feat specifies an amount of HP (2, 3 or 4) gained when you take it. If you're proficient with it, add +1 to an attack roll for every 4HP you currently have. If you're not proficient, apply a -3 penalty.
• Abilities for combat add 4HP.
• Skills and miscellaneous abilities add 3HP.
• Magic abilities adds 2HP.

You may notice there's no real purpose left for classes. That's probably for the best, let's lose them. Carve out their interesting bits into feats and leave the rest.

One-feat character creation is probably too bare to be fun. Instead we'll have two-feat character creation (truly, I have a dizzying intellect). There's a special set of feats called backgrounds, and you pick two of them to start. Your starting HP is 4 if both of them have experience with violence, 3 if one does and 2 otherwise.

The 3e PHB had 7 races and 11 classes, so for parity with its 77 combinations a pool of backgrounds would need...a pool of 14 backgrounds (14 choose 2 is 91, fourteen more combinations for a pool with three fewer elements). Now that's of course not the full range of customization of a 1st level 3e character but it's close enough for my purposes.