Math, Editions and New Players

During a session of your favorite rpg how much time is spent idle while one of the participants performs simple addition? Hemming and hawing their way through "fourteen plus three is seventeen.." "DM: You hit!" "...oh wait there that plus two so I got 19" "DM: You still hit roll the damage!"

I've got decent math skills, and I feel kind of bad saying this, but a lot of people do not perform calculations quickly, I blame our educational systems. It is grating waiting for someone hem and haw and fumble their way through simple addition.

In 3rd edition I came to ABSOLUTELY HATE Power Attack. It became a house rule in my game that you absolutely must have a workspace with the math for any variation of Power Attack you use made out beforehand. I can do it in my head no problem. Most people...um, it'll take a couple of seconds.

Those "couple of seconds" really add up. How much of your game should be spent performing math? Hey, I think math is awesome. And maybe if folks with weaker math skills can benefit from math-intensive rpgs than that is a good thing.

I call this "Processing Cycles," as in "Different players take different amounts of Processing Cycles to calculate their attack rolls," "Power Attack requires a lot of Processing Cycles," and "Since I inked my dice it takes way less processing cycles to read them!"

That's one of the reasons I love playing oldschool D&D. 95% of that crap is GONE. In AD&D you're probably not going to have any ability score modifiers!

That is one of the reasons I still cling to the Attack Matrices and descending AC. Less dang addition!

Regardless, I can still get down with the more mathematically advanced rpgs, math is pretty awesome after all. But I really wonder, assuming that your average person is probably not going to have the sharpest math skillset, how the heck the 3rd and 4th editions of Dungeons and Dragons would ever be considered a "Mass Market Product." Making a character is like doing your taxes!

There is absolutely no way that 3rd of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons could be considered a "game" as opposed to a "hobby" as opposed to Heroscape for example. I described learning how to play it as "halfways between becoming an accountant and a lawyer." It requires a significant intellectual investment to learn even the basics of play.

How reasonable is it to expect a "Joe six-pack off of the street," your mom or some young kid to be able to make a character and pick up the basics of the game in a short period of time using 3rd or 4th edition, nevermind doing all of that math on the fly.

With oldschool D&D it is, as long you communicate well, pretty dang easy to show a greenhorn how to make a character. And as long as they play a Fighting-Man and there's an experienced party to adventure with (and whom provide decent advice) they're going to pick up the basics and be rolling in no time at all!

"...And Quite A Few Complete Losers."

"... I wanted the kind of freaks you'd see in an actual campaign, so I generated a bunch of stats randomly by using the random number generator in the spreadsheet. This resulted in a couple kickass PCs, some decent ones, several mediocre characters and quite a few complete losers. This is completely acceptable to me, as every campaign that uses random chargen will show a similar distribution."

- Jeff Rient/Jeff's Gameblog

I use straight 3d6 in my Planet Algol campaign. Initially it was an experiment in "Gygaxian Archaeology," a luddite/radical traditionalist thought experiment. If it turned out to suck, we could go back to 4d6/your choice I thought.

It wasn't very long before many of the players and myself came to appreciate the results. Firstly, less math. With AD&D ability score modifiers and the bell curve of 3d6 generation, ability score modifiers are rare. With all the fumbling over math by the less numerically inclined in the previous 3.5 campaign, this was a breath of fresh air.

It also made characters with good ability score stand out. Being a tough guy in 3/4E is nothing special, neither is being a ninja-esque olympic acrobat. In my game, a character who has high strength and constitution, is a real tough guy straight out of the gate. The rest of the party and the players know this guy is "Extra Tough." He acquires a reputation in the party for his toughness.

You know how in classic ensemble action/caper flicks how the characters had their roles? "The Face," "The Brawler," "The Jewel Thief," "The Genius," etc. Although 3/4E explicitly had allowances to build your character to fit such a vision, ironically enough I find that using 3d6/straight down and a ruleset makes for more "Organic" and "Archetypical" examples of such cliche characters.

In a game where any character can be a strongman or a genius, it doesn't end up meaning that much. But when strongmen and geniuses are rare, than they become truly special.

As well, many in my group and I have come to absolutely love "Loser Characters." In Sean/Dudebird's AD&D Wilderlands game that the Planet Algol players and I game in, he allows 4d6/place them where you like method. When making a new character I decided to "walk my talk" and rolled my ability scores in the orthodox 3d6 method. He came out pretty average, aside from a low charisma and a dismal wisdom.

Enter "Jeryk the Unwise. " With an unpleasant, small lipless scowling mouth; eyes like a guilty ashtray; and the character traits of two of the most annoying people I've known. Within minutes of joining the group Jeryk began flapping his jaw about how he was an expert about this or that, usually due to an uncle. When the party came to a set of doors in some ancient ruins Jeryk proclaimed:

"I'm actually kind of a door expert. My uncle made doors, the fancy kind that rich men and nobles had. I spent a lot of time with him at his shop and helped him out. I actually would have become a master door crafter but I decided to be an adventurer instead." And than he started making a big show of using lamp oil to lubricate the rusty hinges and handle. The electricity trap on the door handle nearly killed him.

Loser characters are hilarious, usually the awesome players in my campaign play their ability-score deficient character to the freaking hilt! Jeryk's jackass antics had a couple of us helpless with laughter. With the lowered emphasis on ability score in AD&D, it really doesn't make it a huge handicap in most instances, and it seems like the characters with ability scores that are a genuine liability play smarter as a result and those characters tend to be survivors as well as having a lot of heart.

Player Characters - I find Survivors More Engaging Than Badasses

Superman is boring. He's too powerful, he may be a great symbol and I think it's a great concept but I just don't find superman engaging. Aside from convoluted corner cases he can accomplish almost anything sans risk.

I don't find Jedi engaging either. I'm not into superheros. My Conan is the vulnerable, human, literary one. I prefer the Ash of the first Evil Dead movie. I think Aliens kinda sucks compared to the Lovecraftian terror of Alien. I don't like it when a video or computer game is too easy, I prefer desperately conserving my ammunition while crawling behind cover a half mile away from the vastly superior enemy.

The Road Warrior. Indiana Jones. Snake Pliskin. James T. Kirk. Fors the "Star Mans Son." Hiero. Dirty Harry. Ripley. "Blondie" and "Tuco the Rat." These are the heroes I find engaging. They may have been high level characters, some even bad-asses, but they were human characters that often failed, often got hurt, and pretty much got to high level by using good tactics and consistently making the important saving throws. They were no Batman, Wolverine, Lobo, Lone Wolf or Rambo. They weren't perfect.

Perfection is boring in large doses.

I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction with plenty of adventure fiction. Most of this stuff was from the public and school libraries and generally it was old. They had a distinct smell. In many cases the artwork was almost alien in it's difference from the modern art I was used to. In most cases the protagonists of said fiction were "ordinary" people. Sure they may have been genius scientists or tough soldiers, but they were human, and they were frail in the way real people are. They could twist an ankle or break an arm. They plans could fail, catastrophically even. They often got lost deep in hostile wilderness without full kit. They got sick. They didn't want to get into a gunfight or even a two-on-one. They got beat up or overpowered and if they got shot they usually woke up in a hospital or tied to a chair in a basement.

That's what adventure meant to me as I grew up. That what I want when I play D&D.

I'm Going to Say Something Nice About Recent Editions of D&D

For the precision ballet of violence in computer games like X-COM, Fallout 1 & 2, and skilled Counterstrike play, as well as many action movies, 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons is an excellent rule set.

If you needed an RPG to simulate the long drawn out, up and down, back and forth showy battles of Professional Wrestling 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons would be a perfect fit.

Exploration and the death of the Hexmap

Dungeons & Dragons is a game of exploration. Or it was a game of exploration, before the railways began offering guided tours. It used to be that you would plunge into a howling wilderness, blindly crawling through the hexes in search of your goals. Nowadays you follow the trail of macguffins from setpiece to setpiece.

As an aside, I love it when I'm playing a computer/console RPG and I end up totally outflanking the plotline via an open world and my own curiosity. Kill the bad guy? I already iced the bastard when I found a sinister castle in the woods and slew him an account of his sinister vibes and possible treasure.

That's not going to happen in a "contemporary" adventure. You won't need to load up the pack mules with food, water and blank hex-parchments in order to find the Lost Temple of the Toad-Wizard, you just need to pass a skill challenge.

One of my favorites aspects of old adventure fiction is the "expedition" aspect. The equipment inventory in Journey to the Center of the Earth. The survival plans of a band of castaway shipwreck survivors. The battle with a hostile alien wilderness in The Walls of Eryx. The man versus mountain battle to the summit of Stardock.

It makes the Boy Scout in my blood howl for adventure. It makes me want to load a backpack with rope, rations, canteens, maps and tools and strike out into the forests seeking ruins.

Oldschool wilderness adventuring was a gamble. You hope you find something worthwhile before nature and wandering monsters takes too dear a toll. You seek out rumors, maps and guides if you're smart. But even then it's not a sure thing. You could always get hopelessly lost and stumble into the lair of an ancient red dragon.

And I'm fine with that, a reward is worthless without risk.

I was not happy when "the hobby" started ditching hexmaps. Sure "real maps" are prettier and "more realistic." But I don't need to be fucking around with a ruler and a map to calculate how far the party travels in a day.

Hexmaps are excellent. They abstract distance and terrain into manageable chunks without breaking the illusion. And they facilitate capital-A Adventure. Those hexes beg to be filled with ruins, lairs and general strangeness. They encourage the DM to place awesome eastern egss in random corners of the wilderness. They allow the party the freedom to do what they want instead of helping the DM with a story.

Another computer/console games aside, I can't play video games that aren't "open world." Bioshock is beautiful and fun, but I throw up in my mouth when confronted with the railroad. I'm a free man goddammit, I seek adventure on my own damn terms. And the open world makes me want to explore.

Hexmaps were thrown out by the industry in order to facilitate the "fantasy pornography" of artistic, beautiful maps. Maps that serve as a mere backdrop for the adventure instead of being a crucial part of adventure. Or even the adventure itself.

Hexmaps were thrown away as they were rendered useless by the setpiece railroads. Entitled heroes with a destiny to save the world shouldn't waste their time getting lost in the swamp and contacting malaria. Or die of dehydration in the desert.

Musings on Character Definition and Editions

Now that I'm DMing AD&D instead of the two most recent incarnations of the brand, I'm reveling in the simpler ruleset (yes, I know...). With the simpler character generation the players are able to churn out new characters in minutes. Memorable characters. Without feats, skills or build options. I've been handwaving languages ever since I erased the whiteboard. I don't even use weapon specialization...

And the characters have been distinctive and memorable, even the ones in the heap of dead 1st-levelers. Somehow the stench of their rotting corpses hasn't dissuaded my pool of players.

I'm not a proponent of capital-R Roleplaying, the game comes first. But the characters have personality and an engaging story sometime emerges. This may very well be due to the fact that the players in my game are well versed in the source literature, enthusiastic about the genres and themes I'm exploring in the game, tolerant of my radical traditionalist exploration of Dungeons & Dragons, creative and enthusiastic people, and quite coincidentally great roleplayers. And I don't prioritize roleplaying at all, aside from NPCs speaking in funny voices and acting like characters in Curb Your Enthusiasm or an Oscar Wilde play. I am truly lucky to have such a great band of bohemians at the table, and they may be the greatest group I could ever imagine (aside from Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E Howard (HPL doesn't get invited on account of being a sadsack; plus he'd make a fuss about the bong rips and atonal music), Oscar Wilde, Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Bod Bledsaw, MAR Barker, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Lin Carter).

Aside from the touchy-feely roleplay/story aspect, these memorable characters are also defined by their diverse equipment and tactics. A combination of using the weapon vs. armor type modifiers and weapon proficiency rules (no character class weapon restrictions however!) combined with strength and dexterity requirements for various weapons has helped with this as well as generally random treasure generation with no wish-lists or class/level appropriate "parcels." Buzz Brazelhatch is a great swordsmen simply because the Shunned One he killed was carrying a +3 two-handed sword and he rolled really well for hit points. Rodan the Scrounger is an excellent skirmisher by virtue of his completely random high dexterity score and that he sought out and acquired a random laser pistol. Gan-Ron the Silver Man NPC signed his death warrant due to having a low-intelligence and a magic sword. Sorcerers are cowardly lurkers due to their low hit points and vancian casting, and we're all fine with that (although the acquisition of technological weaponry could very well radically change that despite their -5? non-proficiency penalty with said arms until they finally get a proficiency at level 6? or 11?)).

The genre conventions are emerging as an artifact of the rules. Perhaps an indication of the modern/plastic influences upon that later editions? As much as I tried to run a gritty, pulp romp in 3.5 the system fought me tooth and nail (while chaining me to endless rule lookups). Although anime and videogame/Peter Jackson LOTR superheros are not my bag when the dice hit the table, if they are your thing than definitely the later editions are suitable for such play. Me, I'll be sticking with my musty yellow-spined DAW paperbacks.