Binding Wounds

"He's almost dead!"  (i.e. a PC is somewhere between 0 and -something hit points)
"Quick, bind his wounds!"  (i.e. what you do when you have no cleric in the party)

One of the things I've done in Aldwyr has been to allow for "binding wounds" - this involves post-combat action to bind up physical wounds so that someone does not bleed to death.  I've done this several different ways in the past, including 1d4 and 1d3 hit points regained.  But for some time now, I've been using 1d4-1, giving a range from 0-3.  Binding wounds prevents a character below zero hit points from getting any worse, but it might not result in them regaining consciousness.  I understand that Swords & Wizardry White Box has a similar "Binding of Wounds" rule.  I used to think there was a rule in either OD&D or AD&D that was the original inspiration.  There apparently isn't such a rule, which only served to underscore my deepening unease about this practice.

D&D is supposed to be deadly.  Yet, rules such as "poisons do damage, rather than just kill" and "you can bind someone's wounds" and "zero hit points isn't dead, -9 or -10 is dead" make for a less deadly game.  Indeed, I wonder to what extent they subtly encourage players to get overly invested in their characters.  One could argue that there ought to be really deadly poisons, and really massive amounts of damage, just to counter-balance this trend.  But the "escalation of power" doesn't always make for a better game.

I'm still thinking about this.

Now It Can Be Told...

For just over a year, I've been running an OD&D game on a weekly basis.  We've moved from one game store to another, gone from just one player to a group of six to nine players, and their characters have advanced to nearly fifth level.  We've had several characters die, some in some very dramatic ways, others in more prosaic fashion, e.g. "oh, so that trap was poisoned?  I roll a 4.  Oops."  Magic items started off with a magic sword - now in a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with the halfling thief in the party.  Now there is another magic sword, a magic spear, a net of underwater something (no, they haven't figured it out), and one or two minor items.

The impetus for the campaign was simple: I wanted to play D&D, and I did not want to spend a lot of time on setting up a huge homebrewed setting, for fear that (a) the players wouldn't like it, and (b) it would become its own thing, rather than a backdrop for adventure.  I also wasn't sure just what I wanted to do with modifying the rules for D&D, since that seemed inevitable for me.  I decided on using Goblinoid Games dependable Labyrinth Lord; it seemed more easily amenable to modification than either Swords & Wizardry or BFRPG.

Taking a page from Ars Ludi's The West Marches campaign concept, I set things at the edge of a great-but-largely-offstage Grand Kingdom, in the modest frontier village of Kingsbridge.  Right nearby could be found the ruins of a wizard's tower, now long abandoned.  With that, I had the basics covered - dungeon and refuge of sorts.

In detailing Kingsbridge, I found myself liberally borrowing from a variety of sources.  The local tavern was Falgrave's - mentioned in The Dragon #8, "The Development of Towns in D&D" and I kept the Aryan-Transpacific pantheon from my earlier Southlands campaign.  The one place where I began adding in my own creativity was in the realm of NPCs:

• Sieglinde, the lieutenant in the Royal Army and commander of the local militia.  Sieglinde had a positive dislike for adventurers, but despite that ended up with a fondness for Kyle, the aforementioned hobbit thief.  (It was a series of really positive reaction rolls, and I went with it)
• Father Xylos, the local village priest.  Very elderly and somewhat frail, Father Xylos became something of a confidant of the party - usually as a result of having to patch a wounded player-character up.
• Evpraksia, the local soothsayer and alchemist.  Clever, secretive, and more than capable of driving a hard bargain.

Relatively shortly after they began delving deeper into Xylarthen's Tower, I realized that there was a need for more variety.  So I added The Ruined Monastery, roughly two days journey to the south from Kingsbridge.  This prompted me to put together a map of the local area; I added several features, including another town and several dungeons from back issues of White Dwarf.

At the end of a year of adventuring, I found that my bricolage approach towards campaign construction had worked fairly well.  What was missing was a "larger view" of the campaign, or so it seemed to me.  There wasn't much I could do to add to the campaign on a larger scale without breaking out of the purely local framework I had started with.  With that in mind, I decided to shift the party from this setting to something intentionally built on a larger scale: my new campaign, named Aldwyr.

More to follow....

Pluses and Minuses

Life's been something of a roller-coaster.  On the plus side:

• Madison Traditional Gaming has gotten rather successful.  We will be celebrating our one year anniversary in September, with a special Meetup.  There might even be door prizes!
• My Tuesday Night OD&D game is going well; I have six regular players and that seems to be about the right size.  The Big Switch to Aldwyr is planned for later in September.
• Work on the Tekumel Foundation continues apace, with some interesting projects in the works.
• And besides gaming, an offer of work at Madison College this fall.  Adjunct, but that's okay.

On the minus side, however:

• Could not afford to go to Gen Con.  Too many auto repairs and unforeseen living expenses.
• TARGA remains inactive.  Simply have not had time to focus on it, and with a lack of enthusiasm on the part of others, it's likely to stay as it is for now.
• Haven't had time to get to various creative projects, including but not limited to: The Wilderness Architect, Microlite Post-Apocalypse, Wanderer, a supplement for X-plorers, and an OD&D-kinda-sorta parallel for spies and modern adventure.
• Besides gaming, have had a very close friend in hospital for the past week, who needed my support.  Fortunately, he's getting out today.

 Think I'm busy.  Oh, right!  I have a blog, too! ;)

A Miscellany of Events

There have been a miscellany of events taking place, in-game and out-of-game, that are worth mentioning:

• My Tuesday night Original D&D group expanded ever-so-briefly after WisCon 34 to a total of EIGHT players: Gene, Dave, Nix, Noelle, Clint, Tristan, and a cameo appearance by my friends Chris and Penny who had come from the UK for the convention and had some time afterwards.  Chris had not played D&D in about 25 years, and Penny had never played at all.  But they did well enough, playing two first level fighters.  More to follow there.
• Albion, my Chivalry & Sorcery game set in late 12th Century England and Europe, has been on hiatus for awhile.  I hope to pick that back up soon.
• Plans continue to move forward on a reboot of the UW Dungeon Masters Association.  We'll see how that goes.
• The next Meetup of the Madison Traditional Gaming group is June 19th.  That should be LOTS of fun!

Busy?  No, not me.  Why do you ask? ;)

In Memoriam

I remember having dinner with Dave in Florida, a few years ago.  I was there for an academic conference, and he had taken me to a decent restaurant in Orlando.  We discussed various projects he was involved in, and reminisced about adventures with the Thursday Night Group.  He had mentioned just how much he enjoyed being at Full Sail, and regaled me with stories - some of which I had heard already - about the vagaries of teaching students about how to design games, and not just write computer code for pretty CGI.

It's been a year since he passed away.  Yes, I miss him - and Mike Ford, too, for that matter.

Starter Edition of Classic Traveller FREE

The Starter Edition of Classic Traveller is now available FREE.  Go get it and you will have Classic Traveller goodness to keep you adventuring for a long, long time.  One small amount of advice: there are three (3) downloads - the main rules, the charts, and the adventures.  You have to get them from the "My Account" section of either RPGNow or DriveThruRPG (with a tip o' the hat to Joseph Bloch for pointing this out).  I also spotted some additional material worth checking out:

• Guide to Classic Traveller
• Guide to Paranoia Press Traveller products
• Guide to FASA Traveller
• Guide to Gamelords Traveller
• ...or the whole thing as a bundle, with lots of info on other GDW products included.

If you aren't sure if this is really what you want, go read Jeff Rients' commentary about Starter Traveller - he's dead-on in his advice, and I agree with him whole-heartedly.

Traveller Tuesday: 1977 Edition Animal Encounters

Animals in any ecological system interact with each other, forming food chains, obeying instincts, defending territory, and generally living out their lives.  When men enter such an ecological system, they will encounter the animals of the system, prompting natural reactions, such as attack or flight....Although the precise nature of animals may change, and they may prove quite alien to ordinary experience, most will conform to the broad classifications given below.  A referee may choose to establish his own ecological system on a specific world, ignoring the encounter system outlined here.  This system, however, is intended to allow broad latitude in both animal types and attack/defense mechanisms, while remaining essentially logical and reasonable.

Worlds and Adventures, pg. 24

Traveller, 1977 Edition

What's unfortunate about the original Traveller Animal Encounters section was that we ignored it so thoroughly back in 1977.  This is incredibly unfortunate, since it is in this section that there were some amazing opportunities for world-building, all too often treated as "wandering monster" checks.  But that's not what the Animal Encounters section is about - it is actually a fairly streamlined system for devising creatures and developing their places in an ecology, without going into so much depth as to bog things down.

I do not recall in 1977 or 1978 any major attempt among Traveller players in the Twin Cities to come up with ecologies and creatures for their campaigns (I freely admit I might be misremembering).  We were so busy trying to replicate the Dorsai, or the Polesotechnic League, or some other space opera, that we simply didn't appreciate what was there in the rules.  And here is the crux of the problem: just how much imagination do most referees have, when they need to create difference ecologies, world after world after world?  Most of the referees I knew simply didn't get into this level of detail, and so we avoided it altogether.  Looking at them now, not only do I find myself wanting to engage in world-building, but to take some time and really work out some of the creatures that might be encountered once player-characters make landfall.

Possibly one of the most interesting aspects of the animal encounter generation system is how easily it could be adapted to generating aliens.  Humans are originally omnivorous brachiating hunter stock, roughly 60-75 kilos.  It would be fascinating as a creative exercise to generate the precursors of alien races and see what you come up with, especially if combined with the extended star system generation system from Book 6, Scouts.  What this illustrates is just how easy it is to add depth to the entire Traveller "mechanic" framework - this is true throughout the various sub-systems of the rules: character generation, ship design, star systems, etc.  But it also illustrates the enormity of the tasks involved in creating a truly in-depth universe.  The original admonition to generate a sub-sector and see what that gives you is almost precisely the same as admonitions in AD&D to start small when building your own world - a barony, with some nearby places of adventure, for example.

Next time is the last section of the 1977 Edition Traveller rules: Psionics.  After that, I intend to look at some of the early supplements and additional material, and how they changed the game.  What I am hoping to do is see what Traveller was like, pre-Third Imperium.  There was a tremendous opportunity available at the time to come up with multiple settings for the game, rather than the focus on that single campaign world, magnificent and yet flawed at the same time.  Judging by the TML debates about Aslan females wearing comfortable shoes while serving aboard pirate vessels that are tracking near-C rocks being flung at planets, there's been a tremendous amount of energy expended on the Third Imperium - and too much of it woolgathering.