The sandbox problems and the DM skill level

Yesterday's cross-blog discussion with JB of B/X Blackrazor over his post on sandbox gripes went surprisingly civil [1], so I thought I'd continue the discussion with some points that he brought up in his comment. They're good ones but most importantly, they reflect that issues with sandboxes end up being DM and DM skill specific, not necessarily a reflection on sandboxes in general. I tried to be very careful in disupting the myth about sandboxes, not to bash on JB's DM skills.

See for me, I AGREE that sandboxes should be "living/breathing/moving" things...that's exactly WHY I say they're a crap-ton of work! Or as I said in my whole quote:
"It requires a crap-ton of energy on the DM’s part to keep the campaign world LIVING/BREATHING/EVOLVING/RESOLVING..."
See? The work (and I'm just as lazy as the rest of y'all if not moreso) comes from trying to make a "living world;" that and the "keeping a couple steps ahead" of my players...which I don't do.

JB, I think you're overestimating how much work is involved - it's not as much as you might think, or made it be in your previous games.

The living/breathing world is a combination of how I see the world and how the players see the world. In so many ways, the players themselves shape the coming adventures. And while this may involve writing a sentence or two in a notebook as compared to the work of:

Players were expected to play their character/role in whatever scenario (I hesitate to even call them “adventures”) that the DM devised. The DM was expected to come up with adventures.

 I'd be willing to bet it's about the same amount of time. In truth, the time I spend ends up being more reactive than proactive.

Here's an example - I had a dungeon full of ko-balds in an area held by ko-balds. The players wiped them out. A few weeks later, the players wanted to go back. I grabbed an encounter table and rolled up an owlbear and goblins. Since goblins are in the next forest over, and once the owlbear was killed by the freaked out players, the players wondered out loud if the goblins were going to move in. BOOM! There's my future story line "GOBLINS MOVE INTO FORMER KOBOLD BASE - WAR IMMENENT?" That added flavor and set up stuff for the future.

My point is that staying ahead of the players, for me, has been a combination of some prep (probably about the same time it takes to prep a module or grab the latest ScoobyDo adventure and rewrite it in fantasy format) and more of figuring out how the world reacts to the players. I listen to how the players see the world and it helps me to guide my hand. It's not always the truth - my players have come up with some crazy shit that just doesn't fit the bill, but that's OK. Heroes often get derailed on red herrings and I'll let them, they'll figure it out.

There's another quote I want to pull and this one is from Matt Finch's first adventure design book. I'm bastardizing it a bit, but it's the same jist: "Meaningful player decisions should have meaningful results." (Actually, his full quote is: "A good adventure should maximize meaningful player decisions." but you can see how I derived my interpretation.)

The players guide the sandbox a lot more than I let on because that's my job. I'm a con artist. I'm a scammer. I have this great sandbox with all the pieces, but in truth, the players do as much of the building as I do, through the things they do, or the things they don't do. I'm not some improv wizard, if I was, I'd be making money in comedy than being a boring IT manager. When my players make meaningful decisions, I want it have consequences, even if not right away, but it will in the future.

So what constitutes a meaningful decision? Well, that's one of those things that each DM and each player is going to differ on. For me, meaningful decisions involve - where are the players going? How do they interact with the elements of the destination (monsters, important objects)? What do their actions result in? What would be the reaction of all those involved who are not PCs?

Each adventure is not a meaningful decision kind of adventure in a world sense. Sometimes a "kick the door, grab the loot, kill 'em all" is exactly that. That doesn't mean that the weird sword someone grabbed from a kill/loot game now doesn't have meaningful results later on. It could. I planted a magic sword a long time ago and then in a place of Chaos, it shattered. Nobody has asked why, or what to do, or how to pursue it, so it remains open, but there's that potential. I'm not going to beat the players about the head with it, but at the same time, that thread is there. It's a line in my notebook.

This is a long winded way of saying that the two steps ahead thing and the Just In Time creation doesn't have to be about DM skill in crafting worlds - it can be just as simple as letting the players do what they do best and then letting the world react to that. And if you really need inspiration, grab that d12. 1-2, the world reacts badly, 3-5 the world is unhappy, but waiting, 5-7, the world is neutal, doesn't care, 8-10 the world is OK, but wants to see more, 11-12 it's the best outcome for the players' interest. Done. Next!

Whew. OK, JB continues...

And while I WANT my players to be independent and "go off doing their own things," I have a shit-hard time reconciling MULTIPLE players wanting to do DIFFERENT things at once...ESPECIALLY in a campaign world where the "maps" are static, even if the "world" is not.

Uhh, don't. Let them do it. It's not your job. You set the stage. They play in it. If  they want to go in different directions, LET THEM! They'll figure it out, or they won't. Either way, you've done your job and you'll do your job as impartial referee.

Here's yet another example.

I have two main themes in my world - Chaos (the Dark Ones) is on the rise and the Bestials (orcs, goblyns, ko-balds) are wanting to kick human ass. My third theme is "you need gold. Lots of gold. There's riches out there. Go get it." but it's not the main oppositional them.

The first two YEARS of my campaign have seen the players wander from goal to goal. First, they wanted to clear out the monastery. No, they wanted to raid the ancient dwarf mine/kobold outpost. Wait, no, they want to explore the woods and rescue New Hope. No, wait, let's dig through the Inn and find the rumored magic sword. No, wait, wait... there's a second level the dwarf mines. Let's loot it! No, I found a map to a gold mine out in the Plains of Irecia. Let's go there! No, no, we should find my god's holy site! No, the chaos is stronger in the monastery, we have to clear it!

You get the point. :) They've finally focused lately and it shows. They've decided the orcs are too powerful right now and they want to eliminate the nearer threat of the chaos under the monastery.

And that's OK. They wandered, they had a good time, they learned and their skills as players have improved. My skill as a DM has hopefully improved.

Please forgive the length of this post, but there's another aspect I want to explore from JB's reply:

I was writing how they don't work for ME (at least the last three or four I've tried), and how there may be another "primitive" way of playing that still has some merits.
I think it's cool that you guys all do the sandbox thing...I think you have a lot of good tips for a newbie sandboxer like myself. So long as my players get to develop their own characters over time...strange as it might sound (coming from me) that's what I prefer to see more than the development of a campaign "world."

When I read your post yesterday, my goal in the rebuttal was to address the underlying myths that get perpetuated,  you just happened to hit a crap ton of them. There's no way in hell I can judge you for being a good or bad DM unless I play in your game, so I tried to be real careful about not coming at you, but at the underlying themes.

I think all good or skilled DMs have that same approach - allowing the players to develop their characters. I know I do. I'm perfectly happy to let the players farm mustard, go genocidal on the countryside or even let Enonia burn while they set up their own new town. I've been happy to let them figure their world out for the last 28 months because it's been fun, we've all been learning and we all are getting invested in what we do. That's independent of how we construct the world we all play in.

I'd also like to say that there is no primitive way, no better way, no ONETWUEWAY of making a world tick. Sandbox is a tool, just like story telling is another tool. I've happily and liberally stolen as much shit as I can from all the blogs I read and all the games that I've watched or played in. Every DM has their thing that works and their thing that doesn't. I know that each game I walk away from, I feel like there's a dozen things I could do better. I could describe rooms/exits/layouts better. I could set better atmosphere. Hell, my fucking combat rounds sometimes are like keystone kops because I get so excited about fighting that Philotomy's sequence falls out my ass and I can't remember who is doing what. But I try to learn and improve my skills.

We keep coming back to that skill thing - and each style of play takes a skill but I think all these skills can be learned. It may not be easy, but it's worth the attempt, if you're interested. I have about zero interest in running a plot-driven campaign, but I will stick my toe in it now and then to see what I can learn from the experience. If you don't like sandboxes, think they're shit, cool... but I hope you learn something from learning about them. To me, that's no different than trying new video games to learn tricks, or trying a new sport to exercise a different part of the body. I'm a firm believer that if we don't push at the envelope, we don't grow, we don't find new areas to explore - and that at the end of the day is what drives me to do the things I do... to grow, to learn, to learn new things and express the crap in my head in new ways.

Well, if you read all the way through, you're a trooper and thanks for hanging in there.

[1] Not that JB isn't civil, but my experiences in the past haven't been so good on these in other areas, so this was nice that I could say "bullshit" and someone got what I was saying. :)

The sandbox myths - they continue and I stomp 'em

The A to Z thing has really taken a lot more of my creative time/energy than I thought, so I was wondering WTF I was going to write about today, and JB over at B/X Blackrazor has given me the perfect subject.

JB writes some good shit, but I have to disagree with him perpetuating the myths of sandbox play.

• Players often end up with a “huh, don’t know what to do” attitude (looking for clues or suggestions or direction from the DM)
• Some players DO have a strong idea of what they want to do, but it’s “off the grid” (i.e. something the DM hasn’t prepped), leading to them being forced to go for the direction offered by the DM
• PCs spend a lot of time combing through “tavern want ads” which is no more or less ridiculous than DQ’s “Adventurer’s Guild” (aped by many computer fatasy RPGs since).
• The players (and sometimes the DM!) get BORED with the world/setting long before they’ve exhausted all the adventure avenues the DM bothered to prep, thus leading to (what I see as) a waste of the DM’s time and energy.
• It requires a crap-ton of energy on the DM’s part to keep the campaign world living/breathing/evolving/resolving as the PCs podunk around the imaginary country-side.

I wrote about this two years ago (JESUS! Two years ago!?! Who the hell was I two years ago??) and even run local workshops on 2 hour sandbox campaign preps, but like birth certificate disputes, gas prices and bad pennies, this one comes up again and again. So let's once again dispel the myths and have some discussion about it.

Players often end up with a “huh, don’t know what to do” attitude (looking for clues or suggestions or direction from the DM)


I think it's a fallacy that sandboxes don't provide hooks or opportunities to adventurers. What sandboxes don't do is beat the players about the head with the chosen adventure of the month. If the players decide that the opposition is too tough, they know there are other opportunities, or they go looking for them. I think a sandbox doesn't hide, but it also doesn't force - they are just there. If players are too afraid to enter the bar, local Merchants Guild, talk to the local priest or lord ... well...

I can honestly say that in the 2 1/2 years in my sandbox, or in the solo game, I haven't seen the players have a "what do we do now" attitude because I present a living world. If you don't believe me, go look at the list of quests from both campaigns. It doesn't take a lot to do that either... just have a sheet of paper and when the players talk to NPCs or you drop a clue or announce what has happened between games, keep a note of it. Trust me, properly motivated (ie., poor) players will remember that 6 months ago, you mentioned that there was rumors of a gold mine beyond the ko-bald/goblyn infested forests.

This isn't rocket science, but it's also not requiring you build a rocket. Just leave hints and clues and let events transpire to guide you to how those clues/events build and develop.

Some players DO have a strong idea of what they want to do, but it’s “off the grid” (i.e. something the DM hasn’t prepped), leading to them being forced to go for the direction offered by the DM

That is exactly what I want! It's a fallacy that the DM has to "prep" for every player decision, in fact that's why sandboxes work! You put the pieces in place. You set the stage, but you also have broad concepts and brush strokes for those moments when the players do want to go "go off grid" and you have clear boundaries.

One aspect of my campaign that I do not hide is that I will not run in-town, in-kingdom adventures. I just don't do it. If the players wanted to pursue some sort of internal vendetta against the King, I would not run such an adventure. That's not my game, that's not my campaign and I'm really damn comfortable with that decision. If I'm a baseball player, why am I going to insist that the tennis players get up on a mound and throw tennis balls like baseballs to me? I'm not an in-town intrigue kinda DM. So my players know what to expect and they know the boundaries of my sandbox.

Within that, there's a whole world for them to explore and there's nothing "off-grid". If they want to ride 10 days to the Sithasten mountains, do I have 10 dungeons prepped? Nope, but I also give them and myself enough leeway that I *can* come up with something. My deal with the players to run a game is they tell me about 3 to 4 days prior what the mission is they want to do and who's coming. And I prep. If game day comes and we suddenly shift gears, I have no problem asking them for 15 minutes to figure out what is going to go on ... and I make some serious notes, grab some great tools and away we go - within the broad brushstrokes of my world and based on where the world has dynamically flowed since the first time I wrote those ideas down.

PCs spend a lot of time combing through “tavern want ads” which is no more or less ridiculous than DQ’s “Adventurer’s Guild” (aped by many computer fatasy RPGs since).


I also have to respectfully say "So the fuck what?" No more ridiculous than 99% of what we do anyway - wandering monsters, encounter tables, d30 tables, etc. If the players want to go to the Merchants Guild Job board, what do I care? 99% of those jobs are boring and the players are going to end up not caring. And if they do, then that's the world they want to play in. I'll run mustard farmers. It's not all that hard to drop hints and hooks to take the PCs away from "want ads." (see #1 above) and sometimes you go with a trope because it works. I can honestly say that the only time the PCs went to the Merchant's Guild Job board in Skalfier in my online game is because that's the mechanism I use to introduce players into how my world is structured AND that's my mechanism for dropping hooks or giving players a bit of income till they get the lay of the land. I don't force them to do so, but that's also not their primary mechanism for finding things to done once they get their feet wet.

The players (and sometimes the DM!) get BORED with the world/setting long before they’ve exhausted all the adventure avenues the DM bothered to prep, thus leading to (what I see as) a waste of the DM’s time and energy.


That's an interesting observation because I don't think that reflects sandboxes as much as it reflects the type of games/players/DMs involved in the campaign. I don't have bored players and if I do, they end up causing their own messes that get them quickly involved soon enough. It's also a fallacy that DMs have to prep every adventure that the players are going to participate in. I'm constantly a "just in time" preparer. I'm maybe 2 game sessions out, unless I'm using a module or third party adventurer. If the players run into something that I'm not ready for, I invoke the 15 minute rule or I'm not afraid to put up the "Under construction" sign.

If players are bored - ask why? Sandboxes are not static worlds - they shouldn't be. I set the pieces in place, but I also wind up the key and start the little toy soldiers staggering about. If the players get involved, the world reacts. If the players don't get involved, the world moves on. Broad brustrokes, remember? I don't have to "waste [my] time and energy" until the players are ready. When they are, I'll meet them there.

It requires a crap-ton of energy on the DM’s part to keep the campaign world living/breathing/evolving/resolving as the PCs podunk around the imaginary country-side.


Bullshit. Pure and simple. This is the single-most biggest fallacy I have seen to date and I don't know how it persists. OK, if you look at World of Greyhawk, First Fantasy Campaign, Conley's Majestic Wilderlands and so on, yes it looks like a crap ton of energy - THAT HAS BEEN BUILT UP OVER ONE/MANY DECADES!

I started Dark Ages with three dungeons of 1st level only. One was James M's monastery. Took me 10 minutes to adapt it. I added another module (which I can't reveal - yet) as the 2nd and beyond levels. As the players go through it, I spend maybe 10 to 15 minutes adjusting stuff prior to a game. Another dungeon was generated through Gozzy's online tool and I spent about an hour stocking it and tweaking it. As the players cleared it out, and I dynamically refilled it, that took maybe 15 minutes. And so on.

The area around Enonia, my PC's homebase - I took an hour or two. The map you're gonna see this afternoon as my "L" entry - all 29,000 odd hexes? I have about 10 filled with some sort of crap. And this is a 28 month ongoing campaign.  My wife's solo campaign has nothing but one page maps for each 30 mile hex.  As I need them. And it takes me maybe 15 minutes per map to generate it, figure out the general "feel" for the area and have it ready. I probably spend way more time painting the minis for her game than the actual writing.

I don't think my campaign takes me any more energy than the work I see going on with the story-based games, with the "gonzo-include-em-all" games. Over the years, yea, it's gonna build some layers and you're gonna see a lot of work, but it's no different than a Pendragon campaign, a Battletech/Mechwarrior campaign, a *gasp* White Wolf campaign and so on. The fact that sandboxes are some mythical high energy requirement type of deal is perpetuated only because someone went down that path because they bought the fallacy.

You can do this. No, really. You just have to get away from the one central myth that I hope to crush as mercilessly as I can... that you have to spend a ton of time and energy to provide a living/breathing space for your players to play in without having some sort of railroad or just abandoning the idea altogether.

If all else fails, I think you can build an awesome starting point by taking a gander at  Jeff Rients "RPG Stud God"'s latest awesome work - the twenty questions for a campaign. I don't think, after answering those questions and sticking to my Myth Buster suggestions, any DM that can run a game would have a boring sandbox, unless they really want to believe those myths. And if that's the case, well, I can't help ya then.

Gaming on the cheap: DIY Miniature Carriers

Back at GenCon 2009, I purchased a Battlefoam(tm) bag- a Battlefoam 216 pack. I've been pretty satisfied with the bag, I have two of their Imperial Guard trays and a 72 figure troop tray. With this bag, I get carrying capacity of 204 figures. More if I double up on the figures, which I do for my "mass troops" like the kobolds, goblins or bulk orcs. As I keep cranking out the miniatures with my painting push for this winter, I'm nearing full capacity, in fact I've ran out of the 1" x 2" spaces. I had purchased a second 216 pack, but I bought custom foam to make my own, and I've been using these for the minis that don't fit standard rectangles.

I've looked at their more expensive packs, I've looked at the Sabol Army Transports, but the idea of spending $75 to $150 for carrying around lead/plastic figures just isn't in the cards. Then I happened to see this post on DIY Foam Trays on the blog House of Paincakes. They've been doing a series of post "Gaming on a Budget" which I've enjoyed greatly. This all seems to have been inspired by an Oct 2010 blog post on DIY foam trays at a site called "War Builder."

This was all good, but I wanted some sort of a carrier - something that I could buy on the cheap, and it would work as good as the Battlefoam PACK or the Sabol. I examined a Sabol Army Transport that was for sale at Games Plus's semi-annual auction and to me, it looked no different than those soft sided cooler bags and lunch bags I've seen and used. Hmm...

(Pictures and info after the cut...)

No game tonight - but here's a free AD&D/OSRIC tool

... thanks to this miserable cold. I've had two this year already and I'm really ^@#$@#$%#@!!! done with the cold season, thankyouverymuch. I hate cancelling games, but as I told my players, if I can't give 100%, I won't waste my time or their's. Nor do I want to get anyone sick with this crap...

There is quite a bit of planning going on the campaign email list, much of it centering around coming up with a strike force to attack a slaver town. A couple of games ago, my players were exploring the plains between Enonia (their home base) and Irecia (the abandoned city that everyone wants to get back to) and they stumbled onto a hamlet that seemed to be occupied by orcs and goblins! They were about to mount an attack when a mysterious figure rose out of the ground in a gilly suit - it was the former mercenary Anya! She seems quite off her rocker now, but she's waging a one-crazy-woman campaign against the orcs, leaving heads on spikes all over the place. She let the players know how overmatched they were, as the force was at least 30 orcs/goblins but that they met at the location approximately every 30 days or so.

Now the effort is to raise a force to strike at the orcs and the players are discovering that things are expensive. It's not like hiring a two or three zero-level meatshields for a jaunt to the old dungeon, no, this requires planning, it requires expert hirelings and it requires gold. Lots of it.

One of my Dark Ages campaign players, Tyson, made a spreadsheet for figuring out how much a force would cost. I made a copy of it and updated it against the OSRIC/tables. It's AD&D compatible. It's a Google Spreadsheet (AD&D/OSRIC Army Calculator) and the only thing it lacks is a lookup dropdown list - if you want to use it, you're more than welcome. I'm not sure if you have to copy/paste to your own document or if you can save your own copy, but by all means, go for it! You will have to unhide the data to update for your own campaign prices, but it should be fairly straightforward. The prices are all in silver (as OSRIC listed silver for the wage) and the wages are on a monthly basis.

Here are the valid names to put in the cyan column header in order to populate the calculator. If you need to expand the number of calculated columns, don't insert a column, move stuff over. The columns under the grid are the data for calculating all those numbers.

Archer, Longbow; Archer, Mounted; Archer, Shortbow; Crossbowman; Footman, Heavy; Footman, Light; Footman, Hvy Mount; Footman, Light Mount; Horseman, Heavy; Horseman, Light; Horseman, Medium; Pikeman; Slinger

Sgt, Longbow; Sgt, Archer Mount; Sgt, Shortbow; Sgt, Crossbowman; Sgt, Hvy Foot; Sgt, Light Foot; Sgt, Hvy Foot Mount; Sgt, Light Foot Mount; Sgt, Hvy Horse; Sgt, Light Horse; Sgt, Med Horse; Sgt, Pikeman; Sgt, Slinger

(To create lieutenants or captains, simply replace Sgt w/ Lt or Capt)

Some assumptions - Sgts are first level, Lts are 2nd level, Captains are 5th level. Although it's not automatic, my metric is a Sgt for 5 to 10 men, a Lt for every 10 men, a Capt for every 20 men.

Enjoy!

Internetpeeps Power Activate!

(I have heard that phrase somewhere else...)

Anyway... I am looking for a generic CCG card creator - preferably online. I've tried Trading Card Maker.NET and it was too clunky for my purposes. The rest are geared specifically towards Yugio and other genres. I've tried using a MtG card creator for the desktop and it kinda works, but I'm not 100% happy with it.

Why?

With all the discussion on cards and people liking "having" things, it occurs to me that having someone's magic items (or items they suspect are magic) as "cards" might be an interesting possibility. I can put the legendary name on it, if they know it, or just a generic reminder. This also does something for me, I can have a master sheet of what's been handed out so that I'm not doing a character sheet inventory every so often. It could make it more engaging to them and gives them something tangible.

I just thought it'd be kinda neat and I didn't want to do something that looked too generic.

(Edited to update)
Paladin in comments pointed me here: http://carjackedseraphim.blogspot.com/2011/02/old-school-gamer-bling.html which points me to GoDeckYourself.com. I think this is simple enough even for this old guy. Thanks!

Ancient Vaults Spellbook Index

If you haven't been following or reading the blog Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets by the incomparable bat, you have been missing a cornucopia of unique, new, fresh ideas for original edition/retroclone D&D.

Not only does bat provide a new spell or magic item daily, he also provides an amazingly cool "backstory" featuring a cast of Rogues: Chalk (the ever suffering mage), Koram (about as close to Yeagar from Nodwick as you can get...), Gynbaro (a thief - 'nuff said) and Valence (the creepy Spider cleric - who's taught me how to play a Chaotic cleric). Pursued by Stork and Vistus, the Blue Mage, this band of outlaws rips through more spells and items than you can imagine, but the story never gets old. Bat releases all this material under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Sharealike license, open to all as long as he gets attribution.

I've started going to his site regularly using google "site" searches keyed on various similarities of his posts - this is because he doesn't tag or categorize his site! :) I don't mind one bit, I'd rather he use that creative force and keep on doing what he does, and I'll be the librarian.

So, for your ease of use, here are links to Google Searches of his site to present an "index" of sorts to bat's amazing collection of spells and magic items. I can't guarantee the searches will be 100% accurate, but they get the job done until Bat goes mad, publishes a book on all this stuff and makes off with at least my money.

Arcane Spells
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6
Level 7
Level 8
Level 9
Level 10

Divine Spells
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6 (none yet as of 11/27/09)
Level 7
Level 8 (none yet as of 11/27/09)
Level 9 (none yet as of 11/27/09)
Level 10 (none yet as of 11/27/09)

Magic Items

Announcing microMW

microMechWarrior is an adaptation of 1st edition Mechwarrior™ RPG, microlite20 and microlite20 modern. In 6 pages, it covers chargen, task resolution, combat, healing, equipment, advancement and conversions to use your characters within the Battletech™ boardgame. You can get the digest/booklet sized mMW.pdf here. (Update as of 10/9 - this link has changed as the file has been updated. Errata and skill/task resolution mechanic changes)

From the designer notes:

These rules are best used for quickly adding an RPG “rules-light” component to a Battletech game, for playing a convention game that combines RPG and the Battletech boardgame, or if you simply wish to have a quick alternative to the current Mechwarrior role-playing games. The idea is that these rules are simple and that the Game Referee will usually say “Yes” or “Roll dice” to most situations. Not all situations are covered by these rules; a certain amount of flexibility and Game Referee creativity needs to be employed.

To have the best “rules light” RPG/board game experience, my recommendation that you combine these “micro” rules with the Classic Battletech Introductory Rulebook and the Vehicle and Infantry Combat rules from the Classic Battletech Quick Start. No attempt has been made to include any of the other vehicle types, such as conventional aircraft, Aerotech or Starships. The GM should employ their best judgement and houserule as they see fit to make the characters work within the boardgame in a straightforward fashion. I’ve also left out a lot of things that are going to be campaign dependent, such as creating a unit, figuring out Battlemech assignments, dealing with salvage and a 101 more things – but these are all things that you as a GM would want to figure out either on your own or from existing source materials.

Now, having said all that, let me say that these rules ARE NOT FULLY PLAYTESTED! I've rolled up a few characters and run a couple of simulated combats, but I will be shaking these out over the next couple of months to prep for WinterWar. Your comments, suggestion and feedback will be immensely helpful and earn you some credits in the book. After looking at the size explosion of Mechwarrior RPG rulebooks, I wanted to go back to something simple and microlite-ish. So here you go. 6 pages of rules, 1 page of blah blah and one page with a paragraph of legalese.

Further legalese - Battletech and Mechwarrior are trademarks and copyrighted IP of Whizkids, FASA and Microsoft. This is a fan-derived set of houserules that I'm sharing for the general interest of others and to bring value to the Battletech game universe. In other words, I ain't makin' a dime on this and please don't sue the crap out of me.

Converting 3.0/3.5 DC checks to 1E/0E Xin6 rolls

I'm in the middle of converting a Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classic for a game as yet to be played, and I ran into this nice set of conversions of some DCCs to 1E.

One of the aspects of 3E that always proves challenging to convert (for me) is the Difficulty Class. I've been learning to wing it with Xin6 chances, per Rient's Rule #1. However, in looking at 3.0/3.5 resources, it seems like almost everything has a DC. Deciding how to adjudicate these can be frustrating because I can occasionally see the utility of making a check, but not the clarity of how to go from DC to something useful in 0E/1E. One of the conversion documents discusses this and included a nice d8 chart:

SRD Difficulty Class Examples	Corresponding 1E, Basic D&D, D8 Values, roll within the range to succeed. A natural roll of 1 is always a failure. A natural roll of 8 is always a success.
Very easy 0-4	no die roll.
Easy (5-9)	2-8
Average (10-14) -	3-8
Tough (15-19)	4-8
Challenging (20-24).	5-8
Formidable (25-29),	6-8
Heroic (30-39)	7-8
Nearly impossible (40),	8

Well, this is nice and all, but I roll with the d6, so I had to modify it for d6 usage. There is absolutely no real math in this aside from an eyeballing of the differences between a d6 and d8. I didn't want to put that much time into doing an exact statistical analysis, so if you want to and you have a good correction for me, I'll edit the post and make the change.

SRD Difficulty Class Examples	D6 – 1 always fails, 6 always succeeds.
Very easy 0-4	No roll.
Easy (5-9)	2-6 (5 in 6)
Average (10-14)	3-6 (4 in 6)
Tough (15-19) or Challenging (20-24)	4-6 (3 in 6)
Formidable (25-29) or Heroic (30-39)	5-6 (2 in 6)
Nearly impossible (40)	6 (1 in 6)

Apply +1 for favorable conditions/modifiers, -1 for unfavorable conditions/modifiers

Now admittedly, I'm liable to use this only if there's a question in my head. Nine times out of ten, if it's easy or average, I'm going to just say "Yes" and move on. I usually apply DCs only when things are tough, when there's a good chance of failure and an interesting result that could happen on failure. Having this chart in my back pocket, though, allows me to get through some of the conversions quicker and use the DC/dice to retain the feel when it makes sense. Perhaps you could find it useful as well.

Credit must go to the authors of the conversion document: H.J. Martin, Barrataria, G. B. MacKenzie and Rich Franks.

(And BTW, copying/pasting tables out of Word into Blogger and then trying to edit the table is a nightmare. Blogger needs a better table editing mechanism.)

Many twisty wilderness templates, all alike...

I had some great comments last night on the Wilderness Templates, all of which seemed to boil down to wanting choices:
- Landscape and portrait pages
- Judges Guild-style hex maps (ability to "zoom in/out" and the map is hex shaped itself)
- Numbered and non-numbered hex maps
- A hex map that could be slotted next to another both horizontally and vertically.

So the new versions of the One Page Wilderness Map Templates are now available with all those options. You get a whole lotta templates for the particular style and page layout you want.

There should be enough room on the landscape for you to still print and do a 3 hole punch and not lose anything.

I think I'm done with the templates for now -- I don't know what else I could do with them. I know I'm going to be using them for my Dark Ages campaign, I've already got two dungeons already mapped on them, and I'm starting on a third.

Let me know what you think.

Wilderness Maps Revisited

Brain: Weee! Someone just said "hey wouldn't it be cool if..."
Me: Wait a sec brain.
Brain: Whaaaaat? :innocently:
Me: Brain. Look, we have to talk. Everytime one of these gamers says 'wouldn't it be cool..', we just can't go doing stuff. We have Important Things to do and if we keep on doing all these distracting things, we're not going to have a job, much less be able to game and do all these other things we like.
Brain: But you'll be able to play with Photoshop finally... and it'll be COOOOOOL!
Me: ...
Brain: Pleaaaaazzzzzeeee? It'll only a take a minute...
-- 2 hours later --
Me: ...
Brain: Yea, but look how cool it is! You made a Judges Guild Style Hex Template that will more or less fit into your One Page Wilderness Key Template! Now you can make two types of templates and give everyone what they want! Weeeee!
Me: I'm so going to fire you and blog about this.

So here you go. Click the image to get the full version. I'll plug this into the Key Template later and rejigger the whole layout... if I can shut my brain up. It's talking about some cool dungeon to draw for my OSRIC group, but some PHP code needs to be tested...




(Brain: Weeee!)

One Page Wilderness Key Templates

Just as the One Page Dungeon Template was designed for quick and easy old school dungeon creation; the One Page Wilderness Key Template is designed for quick and easy old school outdoor hex map creation.

This was a bit more difficult to create in terms of information spaces. It was a balance between a lot of hexes and not much space, and a few hexes and more maps needed. I don't know if this will work, but if I'm doing hexmaps as ways of connecting many one page keys of dungeons, places and things, or other notes on towns, etc... then this works. Let me know what you think?

One page Dungeon keys and GIMP

Sham/Dave, Amityville Mike and I have been working on our one page dungeon templates all week. Sham has done some amazing stuff, and you really should shamelessly steal his dungeons, give him credit and torture your players for weeks. I'm impressed. (and if you're in my 1E/OSRIC campaign... be afraid. >:D )

One of the things Sham and I differ in is the "how" we're doing the dungeon maps themselves. Sham prints out his grid, draws his maps (I'm not sure if that's pencil, or ink, but his maps are wonderful), scans them in and places the scanned map into the template.

I've been drawing my maps using GIMP (open source Photoshop) and my trusty old school serial Wacom tablet. I started doing this last year. Alot of this is thanks to the ZombieNirvana set of RPG mapping videos and the fine RPG mappers at Cartographer's Forum.

Now I've been working on my 1E/OSRIC campaign materials, so I can't unfortunately share them yet (sidenote: Do you hold your stuff in reserve until it's been played?) but I did want to share the things I've been doing in GIMP and the resources I've used to create my dungeon maps in GIMP.

I was inspired by these three forum threads and highly recommend them as starting points:

How to create simple dungeon plans (thread has specific GIMP instructions, see post #12)

RobA's Using GIMP to create artistic regional maps

Creating an old school map in GIMP


These, as well as the aforementioned ZombieNirvana videos have really helped me to learn alot about mapping and using a program like GIMP. Although the ZN techniques are done in Photoshop, you can easily translate to GIMP (or see my posts on Cartographer's Forum where I fumbled my way through...)

To use the One Page Dungeon Key with GIMP, I do the following:

1. Draw my map in GIMP, using this template of the 30x30 squares grid map. This GIMP native file (XCF) is set to 5"x5", 300dpi, the grid is roughly 6 squares/inch (about the same as what we use on regular graph paper).

2. "Compress" the map by setting the colors to indexed. Menus: Image > Mode > Indexed - select/leave it on the "Generate Optimum Palette" option. This reduces the number of colors your image will "save", making your file smaller.

3. Export it as a PNG. Import the PNG into the One Page Key template in Open Office (or Word) and move it to fit the space for the grid. (You will need to remove the existing blank grid if it's still there.)

4. Key and go!

----
One of my goals in 2009 is to become a better artist. To that end, doing these maps is really motivating me to learn more drawing techniques. Using a tablet is hard, but I've been practicing and I've picked up some really cheap drawing supplies to learn it on paper. As well, I've picked up simple kids "how to draw" books. This sounds funny, but I have such a mental roadblock to drawing - I believe that I suck! Having these kids books is a safe way for me to feel like I can do it. The one I picked up yesterday is Draw 50 Monsters - there's a whole series of these wonderful books and I'm going to get a few more.

One Page Dungeon Level Templates

UPDATE (4/19/2009) - Sharpen your pencils, get out the graph paper and enter the One Page Dungeon Contest! A "metric ton" of awesome prizes awaits those who dare! Contest ends May 14th, 2009!

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Yesterday, Sham/Dave posted about his attempts to create a template for a "one page" dungeon level key. That was all prompted by a discussion on the Original D&D Forum about creating megadungeons.

As I said, one of my "McFly" weaknesses is someone saying "Gee, I wish a geek would do this...". It's how I created the microlite20 character generator and microlite20 NPC generator (which actually got me back into PHP and helped me to find a job in July, but that's a strange story for another day...) and it's how I was tempted (obsessed) to solve Sham's problem.

The hardest part actually was getting the 6 line/in, 30x30 grid from the Incompetech PDF (I used the Cornell template, based on Norman Harman's suggestion) into the OpenOffice document - I learned how to upgrade Ubuntu 8.10 to OpenOffice 3.0 in a roundabout way and got the PDF import extension. After that, it was pretty easy to use frames (text boxes) and line everything up.

The One Page Dungeon Level Templates can be downloaded here. This zip includes both Word and OpenOffice documents/templates.

(http://sites.google.com/site/chgowizsite/Home/OnePageDungeonLevelTemplates.zip?attredirects=0)

In honor of Sham's ideas, I'm releasing my own One Page Dungeon Level - The Wizard's Ruined Tower Level 1 - it's based loosely on an old 2E Fast Play module and one of the (I think) 3E Quick Start adventures. I can't remember quite where it came from. The map is hand-drawn in pencil. It's stat'ed for an OD&Dish type of game, so microlite74, OD&D, Holmes and Swords/Wizardry should work just fine with this. I used this to tweak the one page template.

Please, please... feel free to use this and give me feedback. One Page Dungeon Level Templates is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. If you publish, just please throw a link in to my blog, please.