the earthwife and the termagant

Continuing to muck about with my GLOG/echo, I wrote two classes that tie in with the fair and fell ancestries. Gaining lots as an earthwife represents growing closer to the elemental world to the exclusiong of the civilized one, while gaining lots as a termagant represents gaining magical power at the cost of your social graces.

Both are three-level classes, and both have decreasing-dice mechanics inspired by The Oblidisideryptch's excellent druid. The termagant's abilities were lifted from Rise Up Comus's Dwarf class.

• Earthwife (fair ancestral class)
  1. You cannot tolerate anything of base metal upon your person, but can speak heart-to-heart with any living thing. Plants and animals will attempt to do as you bid, though not contrarily to their natures. This roll has no goals; the dangers are not reaching what you cannot touch with your limbs, not reaching more than you could bear on your shoulders and not conveying more than flashes of raw sense information.
  2. You cannot tolerate spun fibers upon your person, but may speak heart-to-heart with earth and stone, which tell you what they know of old or bestir and rearrange themselves for you. When you speak with living things you may disregard one danger.
  3. You cannot use common nouns; though you may use or give proper nouns to specific things, you must otherwise describe whatever you refer to obliquely. You may speak heart-to-heart with bodies of water to learn nearly anything you wish to know or ask them to bar your enemies or save your friends. When you speak to earth and stone you may disregard one danger, and when you speak to living things you may disregard two.
• Termagant (fell ancestral class)
  1. You gain two useful magic items chosen by the Referee. When slighted or wronged at all, you roll for the goals of not complaining, not demanding recompense and not holding a grudge. Keep a list of every grudge and strike names from the list only if they suffer a greater loss.
  2. Once in your life, you may withdraw from worldly affairs for a time and emerge with a powerful magic item you wrought. Work with the Referee to determine the nature of this item. When slighted or wronged, you may only roll for two goals.
  3. Magic, friendly or malign, can no longer affect you. If any of your hair is cut or dressed, you lose this protection until it grows knotted and tangled again. When slighted or wronged, you may only roll for one goal.

unified levels

In my opinion, one of the more interesting things D&D 3e did was treat monster HD/type somewhat like the classes for player characters. Understandably, this was closest to the surface when discussing the possibility of adventuring as a monster. Level adjustment meant that a monstrous character was treated as one or more levels higher than their class level for the purpose of how much experience they needed to reach the next level.

When Savage Species was written, that concept got significantly expanded by the inclusion of monster classes. One could start your career as a stripped-down version of a monster on par (in theory) with other level 1 characters, and gradually gain their more powerful and iconic abilities. However, this still needed a separate class for each monster type and it didn't expose the mechanical guts of how monsters and characters ticked.

What follows is an attempt to do unify monster and character building by giving each an "ordinary track" that governs more mundane advancement, here Nerve (aka Hit) Dice, and optional multi-classing into "extraordinary tracks" that grant special abilities.

hazarding a tale

rule

Whenever a rogue is in dire enough straights, they can hazard a tale appropriate to their current peril. You may not hazard the same tale that someone else has already proved for themselves. After naming your tale, throw two dice:

• A throw of 2,7 or 12 proves the tale is true. It becomes a permanent part of your character (retroactively if necessary) and they escape the peril.
• A throw of 3 or 11 calls out your character for a liar and they'll just have to deal with the situation like everyone else.
• Otherwise, the tale remains to be proven; record the throw next to the tale. The peril remains

While a tale remains to be proven, the Referee can occasionally put it to the test by rolling again; the tale is proven when the original throw is thrown again, but a throw of 7 before then calls it out for a lie.

why?

I have a great love for the way the Far Traveler and the Zouave inject a checkered past into a character. If I could find a fault with those classes it's that I'd like to have that sort of thing continue throughout their adventuring career. I wrote the mechanic for specifically roguish characters (it's what I'd use for the core mechanic of a rogue class), but in a more generally picaresque game it may make sense to have it open to all characters.

A list of example tall tales follows. It's not meant to be exhaustive, players are certainly welcome to make up new tales, but this should do to prime the pump and all these options would I think be interesting at the table:

what have i got in my pockets

I wrote this little generator for objects that a modern commuter or person in the street. It's based on a d100 table by d4 Caltrops. This generates everything but money and the item list skews towards the pre-portable-electronics era.

Target 20 "Modern"

 This is by way of a companion post to my earlier post about "Target 20" Modern, since I've been chewing over some thinks about TTRPGs set in the "modern" era. The most direct way I can put the problem that's been eating at me is thus:

Now, one can probably argue the point that fantasy settings don't have capitalism; they certainly have much larger and more universal cash economies than were present in the historical periods they tend to be based on. However the players' characters are not generally expected to work for wages and pay rents. In a modern setting it would be extremely strange if the players' characters did not do these things.

d20 Modern's method of dealing with this problem was...not to? The d20 system's abstract mechanic of Wealth checks has very little to do with the actual mechanics of wage work and paying bills. WotC either didn't give the question much thought or they thought that representing capitalism with more fidelity would take away from the cinematic mood of the game. So, in cinematic fashion, our actual economic system is more or less not represented.

The same can be said for modern or universal games like GURPS that, in an effort not to bog down play with fiduciary details or require players to take up double-entry accounting, abstract everything away to fixed lifestyle costs that are deducted from your income.

I felt that a financial mechanic could make the game feel more grounded in the modern day. So, I've endeavored to create a mechanic to use wages and rents to mark the passage of in-game time, somewhat after the fashion of what is described in this excellent blog post, but with an emphasis on finances instead of noteworthy events. What follows is an economics system with only the bookkeeping elements (and those greatly simplified); you won't find any price lists for consumer goods and services.

a matrix of interconnected rooms

 In the essay "Figures, Doors and Passages," Robin Evans contrasts the Classical and Renaissance approach to dividing rooms into spaces with the Modern (post-19th century) ideas about the same. As the main example of the former, he discusses the Villa Madama:

The first difference he points out from modern plans is that:

...the rooms have more than one door - some have two doors, many have three, others four - a feature which, since the early years of the nineteenth century, has been regarded as a fault in domestic buildings of whatever kind or size. Why? the answer was given at great length by Robert Kerr. In a characteristic warning he reminded readers of The Gentleman's House (1864) of the wretched inconvenience of thoroughfare rooms, which made domesticity and retirement unobtainable. The favored alternative was the terminal room, with only one strategically placed door into the rest of the house.

Yet exactly the opposite advice had been furnished by the Italian theorists who, following ancient precedent, thought that more doors in a room were preferable to fewer. Alberti, for instance, after drawing attention to the great variety and number of doors in Roman buildings, said, 'It is is also convenient to place the doors in such a Manner that they may lead to as many parts of the edifice as possible.' This was specifically recommended for public buildings, but applied also to domestic arrangements. It generally meant that there was a door wherever there was an adjoining room, making the house a matrix of discrete but thoroughly interconnected chambers. Raphael's plan [of the Villa Madama] exemplifies this, though it was in fact no more than ordinary practice at the time.

In modern design, enclosed spaces are distinguished between access spaces to be moved through but not occupied (elevators, passages, stairs) and those that are meant to be occupied but not moved through (rooms). However in earlier eras, even buildings large enough to be subdivided into many rooms (it is worth remembering that most buildings would contain few rooms; even a king might have no more than a hall, a private chamber for his family and a kitchen in his castle) would generally favor what Evans calls the "matrix of interconnected rooms."

This contrasts markedly with the kind of dungeon plan perhaps best exemplified by Castle Geryhawk, in which mostly-empty passages serve isolated terminal rooms to be stocked with various monsters or treasures:

The Greyhawk map is quite interesting because it demonstrates an extremely modern layout sensibility in an ostensibly medieval complex. The language Evans applies to William Morris's plan for the Red House at Bexley Heath applies perhaps more directly this dungeon than the house itself:

Yet his commitment to past practice only went so far. The morality of craft and beauty might transform the procedures of building and the appearance of the finished work, but medievalism did not percolat into the plan, which was categorically Victorian and utterly unlike anything built in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Indeed the Red House illustrates the principles laid down by the bourgeois Robert Kerr better than Kerr's own plans: rooms never interconnect, never have more than one door and circulation is unified and distinct.

That may have been said to Morris's shame, but I don't mean it to shame the Castle or its designer. If anything, its plan is less typical of modern dungeons than the kind of dungeon plan perhaps best exemplified by (my beloved) Nethack, wherein corridors lead from specific rooms to specific other rooms, rather than forming a network of circulation for the whole level:

However, I think embracing the matrix of interconnected rooms is a useful tool to keep in mind when designing dungeons or other structures because it naturally introduces a high degree of interconnectivity and makes chance encounters with the inhabitants of the dungeon likely throughout, not simply in their designated areas or when they take to wandering the halls. Here are a last few thoughts in the form of suggestions when drawing a dungeon plan:

• When possible, place rooms that connect next to one another without an adjoining corridor.
• Don't put an isolated room at the end of a corridor unless there's a particular reason for it to be separated from the others.
• If many rooms lie on a single passage, consider making it a courtyard or loggia (above ground) or an atrium or other vertical space, perhaps with access to other levels (if below).

GLOG/echo

This is a GLOGhack, I guess, or the first part of one. The original GLOG is from Arnold K but it seems that the real GLOG is the GLOG you had inside you all along.

The most gloggy feature of this is the class structure, since rather than more traditional dice mechanics, this uses the an only slightly modiefied version of ghost/echo. I drew from a lot of GLOG classes from different bloggers, but particularly from Finders Keepers for the backgrounds and Vain the Sword for a couple of the classes.

Dice

Before rolling dice, identify dangers, edges and goals. Roll one die for each and assign one roll to each danger and one to each goal (discarding any left overs):

Roll	Danger	Goal
1-2	Comes true.	Failed, opportunity may be lost.
3-4	Mixed, danger remains.	Mixed, opportunity remains.
5-6	Avoided.	Achieved.

Nothing extremely good or bad should happen on a mixed result, but it may make those outcomes more likely; mixed results should maintain or increase tension, not resolve it.

Roll dice in the following situations and pick the appropriate goals (including ones not listed) and use the given danger (in addition to others the situation may call for).

• Act under pressure. Goals: complete a task, get out of harm's way, rescue someone in peril. Danger: you suffer harm.
• Sneak. Goals: move without being noticed, plant an item, remove and item, defeat a lock. Danger: you are caught in the act.
• Close combat. Goals: cut down a foe, dodge past a foe. Danger: you suffer harm.
• Fire missiles. Goals: stop a foe short, cover an ally, destroy something. Dangers: you cause unwanted harm or get unwanted attention.
• Suffer harm. Goals: shake it off, fight through the pain, impress with your toughness. Danger: you are incapacitated.
• Make an impression. Goals: they believe your story, they remember you later, they answer your question, they agree to a bargain. Danger: they distrust or dismiss you.

Characters

Characters are defined by lots ("templates" if you prefer). You set out with four lots: the Adventurer rank, two backgrounds, and the first of a class of your choice. 

de modulii magicii

This is a thinky post and modest proposal about modularity in TTRPG design.

Since modularity can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, I'll be specific. I am not talking (at least not directly) about the role that discrete packages play in character customization; I am talking about the more general organizational principle of giving a unique name to a particular rule and referring to it at need elsewhere in the text.

When a rulebook describes a number of statuses that can affect a character's combat options: blinded, dazed, deafened, prone, surprised, stunned and so on, and then elsewhere gives players and enemies the option to blind, daze, deafen, knock prone, surprise and stun one another, that's an example of modularity. Modularity is a strategy for sacrificing some amount of clarity (the consequences of stunning a foe may not be explained in the same place in the text as the source of the condition) for to make the rules more consistent (all abilities that stun foes achieve the same effect) and concise (it is not necessary to quote a modular rule everywhere it is referenced). The cost in clarity can be offset by choosing descriptive names for the modular rules so that readers' expectations about what applies to stunned characters map well onto what the actual rules provide for those situations.

A place where modularity is particularly useful is in magical effects. By nature, magical affects are at least somewhat contrary to the readers' expectations and, if precise boundaries of the effect are needed, a lot of text may be the result. Delta has a whole series of posts analyzing the rules texts of spells from Chainmail through 3E; it's evident at a glance that spells have accumulated more and more text as time goes on and the attempt is made to nail down exactly what such and such a piece of magic can do.

Whether you like detailed spells descriptions or vague ones, is not practical to quote the full text of a spell description every time it is referenced. As such, the rules are full of effects defined in reference to specific spells. An unscientific survey of a pretty orthodox old school magic item list had 10-40% (depending on category) of magic item listings specifically referencing a spell effect. Excluding scrolls (which are mostly spell scrolls), potions are next most likely to reference spell effects, followed by wands, miscellaneous items and finally rings. Monster abilities in early editions and their imitators seem much less likely to reference spell effects; however 3/3.5E can't get enough of monster abilities directly referencing spell effects, between traditional spellcasting, spell-like abilities and the very confusing situation of "supernatural" (and sometimes "extraordinary") abilities that duplicate spell effects without certain features of spells such as the possibility to be interrupted or dispelled.

Honestly, I think 3/3.5E is pushing in the right design direction there, even if they did it in the messiest possible way. Nevertheless, I'd wager few people have the system mastery to accurately tell you off hand the differences between a spell, spell-like ability, supernatural ability and an extraordinary ability. And even fewer would be able to accurately guess the effects of an unfamiliar spell from its name. In 4E, the designers pulled hard in the opposite direction by removing the modularity from spells (and prayers and maneuvers and psionic powers) entirely: all abilities got siloed to the class or monster type that granted them where they are described in full. In particular, this means that while the information is conveniently organized for the DM running the encounter, the economics of space and how many unique abilities a DM can actually keep in mind while running the encounter suddenly place pretty hard limits on how intricate monsters can be.

Rather than continue talking about the historical vicissitudes of spell modularity, I will instead make a modest proposal:

Modest Proposal

Keep magical causes and magical effects separate:

• A magical effect (wonder) should be listed under a descriptive name and any limitations that are not obvious spelled out (for example, that the wonder of move earth can shift loose earth and its vegetation, but not stone).
• A magical cause could be a spell that can be learned, a consumable preparation, an artifact or a natural ability of a magical creature. The description of a cause should name the wonder should spell out any important limitations on its use (costs, concentration, durations, number of targets, ranges, time to activate and so forth).

Different ways of working the same wonder can be made to feel very different if, for example, different costs are demanded from a holy person and a necromancer to bring about the same healing of a broken body. The details of the wonder equip a ref to rule on its applications and edge cases, while the details of the causes are able to be more diegetic and flavorful without sacrificing modularity for that.

A book of wonders could be used by a referee both as an at-the-table reference for whatever magic is in play but also as a source for describing new wizarding traditions (by selecting a set of wonders and describing that tradition's means of causing each), artifacts or creatures. If the rules texts were sufficiently concise, a deck of cards bearing wonder descriptions could be physically handed out to players when they become able to use them.

alignments and way of life

Characters have to come from peoples, and those peoples have ways of life. Where is home for your people, and how do they see themselves?

• The boats or carts you travel from place to place, plying your trades and peddling your wares. Alignment: civil.
• Grand cities rising from the plain or shore. Alignment: civil.
• Ancient holds cut into the deep earth. Alignment: goodwright.
• Rough warrens in the clefts of hillsides. Alignment: goodwright.
• Sound houses of timber or stone. Alignment: civil.
• Beneath the open sky. Alignment: free.
• Under canopy of thick woods. Alignment: moonfolk.

Alignment describes how a people sees themselves and how they divide up the rest of the world. Some see themselves as worldly and do not share the alignment of their folk. Even those who share an alignment do not necessarily like each other or agree about where one another fit into the order of things.

Civil

A civilized fellow knows that without the nameless gods of heaven to teach mortals the arts of civilization, we would be naked heathens all. Elders who still name the gods of the earth may know no better, but the barbarian who call on demons from behind the sky and beneath the sea. A heaven-fearing fellow knows a 'worldly' one for what they really are: a scoffer not to be trusted.

Civil folk all see the peoples of cities and houses as civil (though they may war with one another just the same), woods-dwellers as elders and nomads under the open sky as barbarians. However, they differ on a few points:

• Boat and cart-folk have a dread of the barbarians of the deep earth but call the herders and traders of the hillsides elders.
• City people consider the half-settled lives of boats and carts or hillsides to be fit only for scoffers, but consider deep earth-delvers old-fashioned elders.
• Dwellers in stout houses see travelers by boat and cart and miners in deep earth both as elders, and raiders from the hillsides as barbarians.

Free

Freedom is especially treasured by those who live under the open sky, viewing the labors of settled peoples as a kind of thralldom. They honor their beloved dead and all the spirits of the air and earth that touch their lives, chanting their names and deeds for later generations. The 'worldly' fellow who scorns these gods is a lonesome one, a tiny fellow adrift without ancestor to guide their feet or shelter them from the cruel winds.

Those of cities, the deep earth and houses are seen as thralls, while those who range in boats and carts, from the hillsides, or in the deep woods are seen as half-thralls. A free neck does not bend to the yoke of a thrall, and a warrior certainly does not fear one.

Goodwright

Goodwrights have learned the secrets of craft from the earth itself. They celebrate the good earth with the work of skilled hands. Though a goodwright will take spoil from war, they detest nothing as much as a thief. And what is a 'worldly' creature who pays no mind to their mother earth but a thief of her gifts?

All outsiders are seen with a measure of suspicion, but wrights of the deep earth and of the hillsides revile one another as thieves nearly without exception. Hillside wrights will treat with most other outsiders, but those of the deep earth consider the folk of boats and carts or the woods as thieves as bad as hated hill-wrights.

Moonfolk

The day is for the sun, the night for the stars, but the moon wanders through day and night in its turnings. Moonfolk chase the balance of the moon, honoring the earth in all its seasons. Moonfolk cultivate the woods around them with a gardener's care and live from the game and fruits thereof.

The enemies of the moonfolk are the nightfolk who harry them from the deep earth and open sky, while city and house dwellers are dayfolk and useful allies against the nightfolk when they can be roused to it. Those of boats and carts or hillsides or 'worldly' folks who think themselves wiser than everyone are smallfolk and not worth serious consideration.

Worldly

The worldly are not many, and they are called lonesome, scoffer, smallfolk, thief or worse where they go. Nevertheless, a worldly fellow hates to suffer fools and sees no reason to give up the better parts of life to distant gods. They can't abide the small-mindedness of boat and cart travelers, the cruelty and hypocrisy of the cities, the incurious provincialism of the deep earth, the baseless boasting of hillside folk, the credulous superstition of house holders and open sky nomads both or the sanctimonious mysticism of the woods.