Review: 52 Pages & Tower of the Stargazer

Tower of the Stargazer is as great an introductory adventure as everyone says it is. I did go easy on the party (there should have been two deaths) but I'll justify it as a one-off with family, so there's less pressure to use the sheer brutality of the first trap to set the tone of adventure gaming in general. I also really let the players go easy on the ghost, letting my partner's stage-magician brother win with a card trick, mostly because it's the one part of the module I actively dislike. I understand why Raggi put it there, but, damnit, if I sign up to play a game I want to play that game. Running it again, I'd probably just have it be a "ghost barrier" they have to knock out by turning, holy water, magic weapons, or some other ritual. I guess riddles also work. Also, there were a few ambiguities with room descriptions and maps, most importantly being Calcidius' position - the map puts his containment circle very close to the staircase, but the room description says he's in the center, which is probably more accurate, as I went by the map position and found myself momentarily trying to figure out what his reaction would be to the party breaking open the door and then falling back down the stairs in a heap. Finally, I like the delicate risk-reward balance the module has. Failing to get the treasure stash is by no means a failure, as a pretty average 1-2 session haul can be pilfered elsewhere, and the lack of wandering monsters pairs nicely with the deadliness of most of the triggered traps - there are a dozen ways to die, but you can spend a good amount of time contemplating them.

The 52 Pages rules worked very nicely, and I didn't have any trouble integrating them with the Tower. Some adjustment would have been required for Calcidius, as the rules don't approach modeling a magic user of his level, and the magic system is distinct enough from the D&D baseline that I can see myself having to rework any NPC magic users that appear in future modules beforehand. I've put together a PDF compilation of all of Roger's Color Magic posts to help with that, but of course his system has evolved since then. The players didn't really use their knowledge rolls much, although I did pre-roll a lot of their characters which gave them less time to inhabit the world before making their selections. In the future, I think the way character creation is highly integrated with the game rules would be very helpful for quickly getting new players on their feet.

I will definitely be using 52 Pages rules for my next campaign (and hope that the Next 52 will be ready by the time characters start to breach 3rd level!). I'll be running ASE, and although my main group will start out with the suggested ASE intro scenario, I'll probably post a Tower of the Stargazer reskin I'm working on in case I need to do an alternative starting module.

Saving Throws

I've been dissatisfied with saving throws as normally presented for a while now, primarily because their progression curve is just so confusingly uneven - in LotFP, for example, they generally jump up by two every three levels, but sometimes it's three, and sometime's it's five. Secondly, the periodization - if saves are another method of making characters more survivable the more player time is invested in them, I'd prefer them to scale up in tandem with that time investment, rather than at every third level.

I also really liked Gus L.'s idea of decreasing Death Saves. It's a crutch that helps out starting characters but automatically falls away as they (and the player) gets more experience, it telegraphs the idea that you can't expect to be saved from the consequences of your mistakes as you keep playing, and finally, it works pretty well as an implied aging mechanic. 

So, thinking about it further, I decided to go with a four-save system - Body, Reflex, Mind, and Luck. The first three is the basic three-save system. Body protects you from poison and exhaustion. Reflex protects you from triggering traps. Mind is rolled against magical effects, both live and device-based. Luck is your "Save vs. Death."

Here's the basic progression:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19
Body	17	16	15	14	13	12	11		10		9		8		7		6		5
Reflex	14		13		12		11			10			9			8			7
Mind	15			14			13		12		11		10		9		8		7
Luck	8			9			10		11		12		13		14		15		16

In the same vein of a decreasing Luck score, I wanted each save to behave differently. All of them slow down after level 7, in keeping with the general idea of higher levels providing diminishing returns. (Originally I tried slowing down after level 10, but the progressions I used lined up better at level 7, with all four saves lining up for levels 7, 13, and 19.) 

Therefore, the Body save starts high and rapidly increases - +1 every level, followed by +1 every other level - reflecting your character starting a bit doughy but quickly becoming much tougher, in time to protect against the more powerful poisonous monsters they're likely to face at higher levels. 

Reflex starts high, but only gets +1 every other level, followed by +1 every third level. This way, you start out comparatively well-protected against traps, but it doesn't increase as quickly as the dangers you face - you'll be forced to rely more on your own wits and attention to your surroundings than the saving throw. 

Mind saves take the opposite tack - starting fairly high, but getting a +1 only every two levels at first, then increasing to +1 every other level. I wanted this to reflect the relative rarity of magic-using enemies in the early levels, but with an accelerating scale of improvement as they become harder for players to simply avoid. It also makes in-game sense to me, with the characters gaining better abilities to fight magical effects as they are brought in more direct contact with them.

Luck takes the same scale as Mind, but decreases. -1 every third level, then -1 every other level. 

With a basic progression figured out, I whipped up four specific save progressions:

	Lucky						Physical
Level	1	7	13	19		Level	1	7	13	19
Body	16	10	7	4		Body	14	8	5	2
Reflex	12	9	7	5		Reflex	13	10	8	6
Mind	14	12	9	6		Mind	16	14	11	8
Luck	6	8	11	14		Luck	8	10	13	16
	Divine					Arcane
Level	1	7	13	19		Level	1	7	13	19
Body	17	11	8	5		Body	15	9	6	3
Reflex	10	7	5	3		Reflex	15	13	11	9
Mind	15	13	10	7		Mind	12	10	7	4
Luck	9	11	14	17		Luck	10	12	15	18

Divine, of course, can be used for clerics, paladins, etc. Arcane gets applied to magic-users and illusionist types. Physical for fighter types. "Lucky" for thieves and halfling types. I'm working on a seven-class system for Veil, which applies the Lucky progression to the Pioneer (a frontier-styled Specialist), the Arcane to the Magus and the Illusionist, the Divine to Assassins and Clerics (due to Assassins being based on the original religious Hashishin order) and Physical to Fighters and Barbarians. 

The Caatinga, a One Page Dungeon

This is a one-page setting/adventure I wrote up for Brendan's Halloween contest. It's based on Backlands, the contemporary account of a bloody revolt in the Brazilian badlands at the close of the 19th century.

I wanted to capture the book's (fundamentally racist, of course) Lamarckian sense of moral & evolution, with the evils of the environment considered to directly cause the evils of the backlander revolutionaries. I also wanted to capture the Caatinga region's incredible ecological adaptations, since it's characterized by quite dramatic seasonal variations. The environment consistently defeated the Brazilian army, and here it's intended to do the same to the hapless adventuring party.

Finally, I've found it interesting that a lot of research into the motivations & risk factors for people joining weird cults has actually found that, ironically, more intelligent people are likelier to fall prey to some weird fringe society. So, the Caatinga reflects that.

Click the picture download it. Have fun!

Review: Zzarchov Kowalski's Scenic Dunnsmouth (PDF)

Scenic Dunnsmouth is great. Get it.

A bit more detail:

Dunnsmouth is a delightfully creepy swamp hamlet, which is randomly generated using some dice, a deck of cards, and a piece of paper. Therefore, you're effectively getting thousands of possible towns for your buck, most of which revolve around a mutant Spider Cult, and all of which will include: the reality-warping Time Cube, a Roma witch, a cannibal serial killer with a thing for bear traps and rock falls, and backwoods incest, rivalries, murder, and sin. It has an amazingly pulpy, '40s Radio Horror Adventure feel, and a lot of possibilities. The scenario is geared for a 3rd or 4th level party, or maybe a bit higher.

Organization

The module starts off with a description of Dunsmouth, three different ways you might draw a party into the swamp, the two major elements of the module, and a description of how to generate the town. It's all easy reading, and town generation is very straightforward - I generated three towns in 50 minutes, and if I was about to run it it would probably take about that long to generate a single town, print out all the NPCs that appeared, and be ready to go. The whole thing really boils down to three or four major steps - roll the dice, draw the cards, figure out which NPCs are present and where, and tidy up. But Zzarchov splits it up into fourteen crystal clear mini-steps, which is very helpful, and prevents you from having to flip back and forth across scores of pages to figure everything out.

The next part discusses the most important locations in town. Some of these are guaranteed to appear, though their status (and sanity) depends on how the dice came out. There are also two "kickers," each of which have a 50% chance of being a special location - so Dunnsmouth could play host to one or two elves (one of which is, to my mind at least, one of the top 3 most horrifying NPC's in the book), or perhaps an old fortification, or possibly some light industry.

After this comes the largest part of the book. Dunnsmouth is inhabited by up to four families, one for each suit in the deck of cards, with each card representing one household. So this book nets you 52 households, with multiple NPC's in each one, only 10-12 of which will actually appear in the game. The presence or absence of certain individuals and the relative strength of each family can provide a lot of fuel for blood feuds and drama, even if the Spider Cult doesn't make an appearance.

Finally, we have an appendix and index of sorts, with references for some of the items and spider-mutants that might be found, and a helpful step-by-step example of town generation.

Strengths

I think my favorite part of the module is how the way each location is changed by the NPCs inhabiting it, or how each household's behavior & characteristics are altered by the spider mutation, gives you much better insights into their psychology than a simple description does. Ivanovik and Magda are potentially located at any one of the ten special locations, and in addition to that, have several possible homesteads they might build if not. Reading about how they (and the Original Spider) set up and fortify each location, reacting to its unique characteristics, more than makes up for the scant direct information we're given  about who they are. The infection does the same for the rest of the NPCs - simmering resentments and hidden attractions are brought to the fore by the spider gene's quest to reproduce and dominate. It's showing, not telling.

I also liked (as I mentioned before) the replayability and variety built into the module. You could keep running it, with a different setup each time, or you could mine out its stockpile of NPCs and use them to spice up other, less distinctive villages. There are a few "joke" NPCs in the book (used if you fail to completely clean the deck), which you could always throw in by choice if you wanted to move from horror to Bizarro. (Although the Black Joker, Jesse McLaud, didn't strike me as that bizarre, and I left him in the deck). I think this aspect, makes this the perfect module for a new DM to run - it's like training wheels, but still puts you through the paces of personalizing a scenario and forces you to think through it beforehand, rather than blindly assuming it's all ready to go.

Finally, the art by Jez Gordon is amazing. It evokes a delightful, pulpy-horror feel and really helps conjure the darkness and fear that's found in Dunnsmouth. The character portraits in particular are very well-done, in most cases conveying just as much information as the character descriptions themselves. They also make great icons for player maps (as I've done below) so you can show them who lives in town without immediately giving away any information about family allegiances or ranks.

Weaknesses

Since this is my first review, I should state that I'm not always looking for the same thing out of every module, so of course everything's going to be pretty subjective. My main critique is that, for all the characters this module has, I felt like only a handful of them actually had character. Almost all of them are pretty cartoonish backwoods stereotypes of one type or another. I don't think this will come up in the course of running the actual module, because you'll only have a dozen households and it's clearly intended to be a bunch of cartoonish backwoods stereotypes - but after the thirtieth straight page, it got exhausting. Few of them are actually compelling enough to draw a party into their struggles and feuds, Spider Cult or no. Because of this, I don't think Dunnsmouth lives up to its promise of "moral peril." Maybe it's just my Utilitarian ethics, but there's really no character sympathetic enough, or interesting enough, to give me much pause. The module wants you to be forced to decide, what am I willing to do to save these people? But I'm stuck on whether I want to save any of them at all, aside from a generic "well these people have children!" element.

Suggestions/Recommendations

The full text of the actual Time Cube Treatise is available online. I just love that this turned up in an RPG somewhere. Needless to say, my Dunnsmouth will have 96-hour days.

Always offer your players the chance to purchase Dunnsmouth's debt at the start of the module. It's my favorite, by far, of the three "leads" - it gets your party right up in the villager's faces, and I'm pretty sure most versions won't actually be able to scrape up the cash.

Though there's a certain romance to the idea of rolling the dice and rolling with the result, I think it's worth generating two towns, and picking whichever one seems more interesting at a glance. That way, you can take the second town, remove duplicate characters and generally align it with the "Expanding Dunnsmouth" section at the back, and add a bit of heft to the module if you need to.

Duncasters? A secret shame? A defunct cult with a mountain headquarters? Zzarchov's practically yelling at you to put Death Frost Doom in the mountains next to the swamp.

Maybe you don't tell players about the Time Cube. Maybe you just draw concentric circles around it on the player map, mark down the slowdown ratios, and let them figure out the distortion themselves.

Town Sampler

So I whipped up player and referee maps for each of the towns I rolled, just to show a bit of the variety you can get from the module.

Scenic Dunnsmouths

The Tools of Others

Like most people, I use a ton of other people's ideas and tools to make my games run better, or just to get a bit of inspiration. So, here are a few tools and compilations I've made recently to facilitate my use of other people's tools.

First up, since it's currently trending, is +Arnold K.'s Career Paths character generation. If you haven't seen it, look at it - it's a cool hack of regular 3d6-based attribute generation that creates a bit of vague history, and it's a lot more elegant than some of the crazy Excel-formula-based versions I've seen, and a lot less involved than Beyond the Wall's analogous approach.



Click me!

What I did was make a bunch of cards to make the Statistically Anal method of generating your character's adolescence significantly less anal. Instead of rolling a d15, you just cut this out, place the cards face down, and everyone picks one. I used a bunch of Telecanter's silhouettes on the reverse side to add a bit of Rorschach-ish psychology to card selection. A few questions are edited a bit here and there so they could all come out the same size.

I didn't do the Careers section mostly to save time and to leave starting PC's with a bit more blank space. So, instead of rolling 1d6 for each stat during Adolescence, I'll have players roll 2d6.



Right here.

Next is the Peddlers of the Deep Dark table from Aeons and Auguries. Basically, it's a pretty cool (if die-roll-intensive) underground trade caravan generator. Unfortunately, bits and pieces of it are scattered all over JD Jarvis' blog, so I put it all in one place.

I included all of the Peddlers info, the Dungeoneer's Cache generator, and information on all of the unique items in both tables - that includes the Magic Ropes, Candles, and Footwear posts. Plus a bit of organizational tweaking.


Finally, Justin Alexander's Node-based Design has been pretty much the guide for running my campaigns, and the Three Clue Rule a great tool for coming up with plots on the fly, in a way that the players can meaningfully interact with. But, as I've mentioned before, I'm a visual thinker, and outline's just don't do it for me - so I set up two on-the-fly node sheets, for the Layer Cake and Loop models. Each node has its clues listed, with a bit of space to describe the node, and each of the clues leading to the other nodes.


You know the drill. The Layer Cake one is here.

Reaction-Roll Stealth

So far, the skill-based stealth system I've been using has been difficult to run without a battlemat, while the default "X on 1d6 to surprise" system still strikes me as pithy and undramatic (except in the simple case of encounters). But the reaction roll, which I've been using extensively through On the Non-Player Character, fits the bill perfectly - instead of binary success/failure, you get piling bonuses which slowly push you towards success or failure. Additionally, this is consistent with the current systemic division I'm contemplating - using d20s for the combat system, 2d6 for noncombat rolls, and dice pools for anything to do with magic. The following stealth system is mostly inspired by On the Non-Player character, and a bit from this Google+ discussion.

Stealth actions are resolved in segments of one minute, rolling 2d6 (plus Dex mod) each time. Bonuses are persistent, and cumulative. Consult the following table:

	Sneak	Backstab
2	Found or -4	You're surprised!
3 - 5	-2	No surprise
6 - 8	0	You surprise!
9 - 11	+2	Ranged backstab!
12	+4 or Hidden	Melee backstab!

Sneaking is used for any actions you take while undetected. The following bonuses apply:

No movement or other actions (hiding): +4
Combining two actions (moving twice, moving while tracking, etc.) -4 per action
Trickster/thief/etc. +level
Distance: +1 per 100' from nearest sentry/enemy, -1 per 10' closer than 100'
Terrain/weather/etc.: +2 or -2 depending on conditions

Found means that stealth ends (for you) and you're detected. Start encounter as normal - stealth can no longer be used. You can, of course, try to hide again - you can roll on the Sneak table instead of taking another action each round, with cumulative bonuses. Stealth starts again once you get Hidden.

Backstabbing is what you roll when you're trying to end stealth and initiate combat. On a 2, you totally bungle it, and your opponent gets to act against you in the surprise round, while on a 6 or higher, you surprise them, getting a free round. On a 9 or higher, you've spent enough time observing and positioning yourself to get a sweet sniper shot on an opponent, gaining a +4 to hit. On a 12, you're close enough to do it with a melee weapon, and can precisely target weak points or chinks in your opponent's armor - you get a +4 bonus to hit, and deal double damage.

Backstab bonuses:
Multiple actions (opening a door and then backstabbing, for example): -4 per action
Trickster/thief/etc.: +level
Distance: -1 per 100' from target, +1 per 10' closer than 100'
Terrain/weather/etc.: +2 or -2 depending on conditions

Augmenting Age

Character age is at once an actually pretty important attribute and also one that gets pretty half-assed. Who doesn't usually glance at the field and pick a random number between twenty and thirty? 

Obviously, nobody thinks about the choice because the choice isn't made to matter very much, except in the extreme long-term of avoiding the aging penalties you receive at 50. For this reason, there's no mechanical sense in choosing any age other than the minimum the GM lets you get away with. But I don't think it's worth figuring out some sort of life events table that scales with your age and you have to make an excel spreadsheet just to calculate.

So, money. How about one extra copper at character generation for each of your first twenty years? And, one silver piece for each year after, till you're 50, then you get 1 GP per year. Age becomes a little bit of a Faustian bargain - more immediate power right now, during character generation, in return for bringing dementia and incontinence just a little bit closer. 

Is it balanced? Using my 1:10:40 GP:SP:CP standard, a 55 year old character would effectively get 85+3d6x10 silvers at character generation. Probably not enough to balance out the chance of losing five points of attributes. But maybe enough to merit some thought about it.

Calibrating This Shit

As Charles Taylor says, realism in the game provides a vital frame of reference for the player to be able to predict the effects of their actions, and, more importantly, put the unrealistic elements in their proper context. I'd rather have a few rules, tightly webbed and absolutely realistic, than a whole lot of quasi-fantastical and independent systems.
Finally, I have an hour and a half commute every morning, so I have little else to do but sit on the bus and consider the internal consistency of my system. So I calibrate shit.

Walking

Let's start with walking. In a combat round of six seconds, the average character can take four actions. Walking 5 feet is one action. Walking is, of course, something every player will be familiar with, so it had better work the way we expect it to.

So, you'll walk 20' in six seconds, or 200' per minute. This gets you to 5,280', a full mile, in 26.4 minutes - or about 2.3 miles per hour. This is a tad on the slow end - average human walking speed is 3 mph - but it comports with marching speed, which is a bit over 2 miles per hour over varied terrain. It's a nice, leisurely stroll - or an aware, steady advance. Realistic.

My marching speeds for unencumbered/encumbered/overencumbered people are currently 4/2/1 miles per hour, respectively - putting combat walking in the "encumbered" category. To be fair, 2 miles per hour versus 2.3 miles per hour adds up to a loss of about two and a half miles over the course of a day - but cross-country marching isn't a completely continuous slog. Internally consistent.

Running and Sprinting

Time to take it up a notch. The average human can run at 5-8 miles per hour, and sprint at around twelve to fourteen. Originally, I had running take 1d4 actions for 25' of movement, but that put "running" speed at a measly 4.5 miles per hour. I'll have to balance running speeds (1d4 actions), sprinting speeds (2d4 take lowest), and top speed (which is when every roll comes up 1).

Before we begin, I'd like to mention the rationale for a roll-to-sprint system: The uncertainty it introduces really allows me to run chases and pursuits using the combat system, pretty much unchanged, and I think it does a good job of reflecting the importance of reflexes, momentum, balance, and footing in short-distance running.

The average "run" will use up 2.5 actions, which allows for 16 runs per minute. At 40' per run, we get 640' run per minute, netting you a mile in eight minutes, fifteen seconds. This gets you 7.27 miles per hour - close to the upper average! Ideally I'd want it a bit closer to the 6 MPH mark, but it's not really a big deal.

The average of 2d4, take lowest, is 1.875 (about a 25% action cost reduction). That's 21 and 1/3 "sprints" per minute, or a 33% speed increase, for 9.7 MPH. Admittedly, this isn't a huge leap ahead of running speed, but you'll be getting top speed 80% of the time, rather than 25% of the time, which is a big advantage over short distances - exactly the balance I'd want to have.

Top speed means that you get four moves of 40', or 160' a round, 1600' per minute. That's a 3.3 minute mile! You're running at 18 miles an hour, mate. Of course, to run even a third of a mile at top speed, you'll need to roll 1 on 1d4 at least 40 times. The percentage chance of that happening on a normal run has twenty-five zeroes in it. Even while sprinting, with an 80% chance of reaching top speed each sprint, you only have a 0.0001% of getting any significant distance out of it. Which, of course, is how it should be.

The Fast Runner

You get bonus actions based on your Dexterity modifier in my system, which means a maximum of 7 actions per Round, or 75% faster movement. I'm not so concerned about the effects that a negative DEX modifier will have - crippled characters are going to be crippled, after all - but obviously we don't want a few extra points of DEX turning your character into some kind of freakish superhuman.

Which, luckily, it doesn't seem to. Walking speed, with 7 actions, is 4.03 MPH. Running speed is 12.7 MPH. Sprinting is 16.7 MPH. Pretty much all of this is in line with what I'd expect. Walking speed does tend to imply a significantly faster marching speed, but remember that long-distance marching is more an issue of endurance than speed,

Finally, the Fast Runner's top speed clocks at 31.5 MPH - faster than Usain Bolt, though not by much. This is actually a lot less realistic - modern sprinters have access to technology and training techniques that allow them to greatly increase fast-twitch muscle mass, and can thus attain significantly faster speeds than any pre-industrial sprinter. Of course, I'd rather err on the side of letting lucky player characters outstrip Usain Bolt for a few rounds, so I'll accept this quirk of the system.

Endurance

I account for fatigue and exhaustion by folding it into an encumbrance-by-stone system. Both fatigue and exhaustion are treated as a "phantom" stone of carried weight, which you can only rid yourself of by resting for a Turn or sleeping for two hours, respectively. Regular encumbrance is at 5 stones, with the max at 10 stones.

Walking (and even running) have no associated endurance or fatigue penalties, since I want each to be as simple and straightforward as possible. Over long distances, each fits easily into normal march rules, and long-distance running is easily accounted for as forced marching, which I handle by allowing the players to move into a faster march speed level than their encumbrance would normally allow, by quadrupling the rate of exhaustion.

I require sprinters to pass a STR check every sprint, or else lose any defensive bonuses and get reduced to AC6. Fumbling is possible (1 in 20 chance normally, goes up to 4 in 20 when overencumbered), which in my system usually just adds a stone of fatigue. The character can expect 21.33 sprints per minute, and 6 minutes, 11.25 seconds per mile, gaining 1.07 stones of fatigue each minute.

However, by the end of the third minute, she'll have 3 stones of fatigue and will move from "unencumbered" to "encumbered," fumbling 2 out of 10 times. (From here on out I'm going to let my precision slide a bit.) During the fourth minute of sprinting, she'll gain two stones of fatigue, making her "overencumbered" for the fifth minute. At the end of the fifth minute, she'll have gained four more stones of fatigue (fumbling 4 in 20 times!) putting her at 9 stones. This means that, fifteen seconds into the final stretch, she'll need to roll Might saves every Round to even continue sprinting - otherwise she'll be forced to the ground, resting for at least an hour and a half in order to return to zero fatigue, never having even reached the mile mark.

Someone with 18 CON (which puts base encumbrance to 8 stone) would be able to do it - she could sprint for four minutes before becoming encumbered, and would only gain her eighth stone in the sixth minute - finishing the mile on time. with enough wind for two more minutes of continuous sprinting.

I don't know that this is absolutely realistic, but there's definitely a reason why sprint races cap off at 400 meters! Anyway, a good long-distance sprint in this system would be a half-mile in about three minutes, which would require a half hour of resting to get back to tip-top shape. That sounds good enough for me.

Running a Marathon

Marathons are 26 miles, and the world records are all a few minutes under two hours - which comports with the Fast Runner's running speed of 12.7 MPH. Of course, these are extraordinary cases - marathons are better handled with marching speeds.

Most competent marathon runners aim to run a four-hour marathon, and 2% of them breach three hours. Unencumbered marching speed is 4 MPH, which is a six-and-a-half hour marathon - clearly, we have to kick it up a notch. A 6 MPH forced march - at 1 stone of exhaustion per hour - gets you across the finish line in 4 hours, 20 minutes, and an 8 MPH double-time (1 stone per turn) will be 3 hours, 15 minutes, at 7 stones. Good enough - it provides enough of a baseline to estimate exhaustion and times if someone wants to actually race in a marathon, it's easy to remember (+2 MPH when forced-marching), and it's consistent, with 6 MPH being just under running speed and 8 MPH just over.

Fighting
You can fumble in combat! Surprise surprise! You'll be rolling 10 attacks per minute, with a 1 in 20 chance of fumbling - giving you a stone of fatigue every two minutes. At six minutes, on average, you'll cross into "encumbered" territory, averaging one new stone per minute. At eight minutes, you'll be "overencumbered" and gain, on average, a stone of fatigue every 30 seconds. You'll start to collapse from exhaustion after 10 minutes, 30 seconds of continuous fighting - 105 rounds. Not having done fencing or medieval reenactment (only paintball), I couldn't tell you exactly how accurate it is, but it's on a similar scale to sprinting, and is easy to remember, and easily accommodates the effects of excess weight on your combat endurance. The idea that, after six minutes of continuous fighting, you're really starting to push your limits makes intuitive sense to me.

Sneaking
Sneaking is the skill used to move without drawing attention to yourself, and I record it in feet per minute - this being how fast you can move before making a ruckus. As a Level 1 Trickster, you get 20' per minute, going up by 20' each time you level up and decide to improve Sneaking.
20' per minute is two feet per round, or four inches per Action - the slowest flat crawl. (Although, since it's notated as a per-minute speed, it also accounts for quick dashes between cover). By Level 10, however, said Trickster can Sneak at 200' per minute, which means their normal walking is completely silent. And at level 20, she'll Sneak at 400' per minute, or about 4.6 MPH - a brisk jog!

Since you can double-time with a DEX check, you can effectively attempt to Sneak at normal speed by level 5, while a 20th-level Trickster can basically Sprint silently, with up to 800' per minute/9.2 MPH Sneaking, which is obviously pretty fantastical. This meshes perfectly with my intended level scaling, where 10th level is intended to comport with the best that heroes could have accomplished in the real world, and all the levels beyond that representing states of increasing mystical perfection. Since double-timing a skill like this adds 1d4 guaranteed stones of fatigue, it remains a poor substitute for normal sprinting when simply looking at speed.

Swimming
Base swim speed is 30' per minute, or 3' per round, increasing in those same increments. This starts you at about 0.3 MPH, whereas the fastest swimmers can reach 5-6 MPH - which, of course, comports exactly with the swim skill in my system. A 10th level Trickster fully trained in Swimming moves at 3 MPH in the water, and at 20th level she'll reach 6 MPH.

Sprinting, of course, doubles these speeds - a 10th level swimmer can sprint at similar speeds to Michael Phelps, while the 20th level will actually be a bit faster in the water than she is on land.

Climbing
I'm the least familiar with climbing techniques, so I'll use some speed climbing records as a reference point. The 2007 record (since broken) on El Capitan, a 2900 foot climb, took about 165 minutes - about 17 feet per minute on average, though the climbers were reported to do most of the climb at 20 feet per minute. Half Dome, at 2,000 feet, has been done in 82 minutes - nearly 25 feet per minute. However, the tree climbing world record is about 50' in 13.65 seconds, or a bit over 250' per minute, and the Climb skill is intended to cover both of those bases.

Of course, tree climbs are clearly sprints, moving at double time, while thousand-foot plus climbs include numerous rest breaks. We can bridge much of the gap by working backwards from my system's "skill sprint" mechanic - cutting a 250' per minute sprint in half to get a "normalized" climb speed of 125' per minute. As for the rock climbing records, we can probably assign CON scores of 18 to the climbers, which gives them the ability to simply 'take' 4 stone of fatigue before things start getting dangerous. Climbing adds 1 stone per minute, and resting removes 1 every 10 minutes. So for every 4 minutes of continuous climbing, you'd need 40 minutes of continuous resting to return to zero.

Let's apply this to the El Capitan climb. 4 minutes 'on,' then 40 off, is 44 minutes. The second stretch puts us at 88 minutes total, 8 minutes active climbing. Third, 12 minutes climbing and 132 total. A half-stretch, 14 minutes climbing and 154 total, and a quarter stretch gives us 165 total minutes, with 15 minutes of continuous climbing, at 193' per minute. As this is a world record climb, we can assume a fair amount of sprinting, as well as simply accepting extra weight, and modern climbing technology to boot. I'll call it a normal climbing speed of 100' per minute, at Level 10 - or 10' per minute, at level 1.

The "catching" mechanic (you get a chance to catch yourself while falling every 10' up to your Climbing skill distance) is definitely less realistic, as even an experienced professional climber would not be able to simply "catch a ledge" after a 50 foot fall, but it does keep things interesting and allow for additional granularity when failing to climb something.

Conclusions
Since I use an action-point system, I realize I have a level of granularity below most people's systems. However, most of this translates well, I think - see this summary of my per-Round movement speeds:
Walking: 20'
Running: 64' (or just simplify to 60')
Sprinting: 85'
Top Speed: 160'
Climbing: 1' per level
Sneaking: 2' per level
Swimming: 3' per level

Addictions of the Flame Princess

I really like LotFP's presentation of diseases, as it provides a simple statblock that easily differentiates between diseases, but makes it easy to handle them on the fly. Since drugs tend to be extraordinarily popular among my players (for some reason they are considerably less excited by diseases) I decided to try to apply the same approach for drugs. (EDIT: I just remembered that I got the threefold addiction model from Telecanter's Receding Rules. That blog's awesome.) I universalized the rules for dependency and withdrawal, which admittedly makes some drugs considerably more dangerous than their real-life models, but that's why you Just Say No.

The saves are specific to my homebrew - Might maps to Fortitude, or to Poison, while Will maps to Paralyzation.

Drugs are basically poisons with enough positive effects that some people want to ingest them. Like poisons, drugs take 2d6 rounds, modified by CON, to take effect. Drugs have two effects: Dose and Overdose. Dose effects are cumulative – but each time you take an extra Dose, you have to throw a Might save or suffer an Overdose. Dose effects last for the listed Duration, but Overdose effects are permanent. Recovery is how long you must abstain from the drug in order to try and quit it – at the end of each recovery period, you may reduce your addiction level by passing a Will save.

Additionally, each time you take a drug, you must pass a Might save or start becoming addicted to the drug, The first failure makes you Habituated, forcing you to take that drug once a week or suffer withdrawal. The second failure is Addiction, and you have to take the drug once a day. The third failure is Dependency, where withdrawal kicks in an hour after the drug wears off - though on the plus side, you can’t get any worse.

During withdrawal, you require double the normal amount of food and water, and must sleep 12 hours per night. If Addicted or Dependent, you also wake up each morning with a random ability score reduced – by -1 if Addicted, by half if Dependent. Also, since drugs are BAD, no drug-related Might saves can increase your Might score.

ALCOHOL (1)
Duration: 1 hour
Dose: +½ CHA & CON, -½  DEX
Overdose: Lose memory, -1 WIS & CON
Recovery: 2 months

PIPEWEED (5)
Duration: 2 hours
Dose: +½ WIS, -½ Wile
Overdose: -1 INT, -1 CHA
Recovery: 1 month

OPIUM (15)
Duration: 2 hours
Dose: +1d6 HP, 1 stone exhaustion
Overdose: Suffocation
Recovery: 2 months

PEYOTE (30)
Duration: 6 hours
Dose: Hallucinations, +1 INT
Overdose: -1 Might & Will
Recovery: 1 week

SOMA (7)
Duration: 1 day
Dose: +1 DEX, - ½ CHA
Overdose: double water needs
Recovery: 2 weeks

KHAT (2)
Duration: 2 hours
Dose: +1 CHA, constipation
Overdose: -1 CON, diminished sex drive
Recovery: 1 week

Other drugs may be discovered in the game world or can be modeled as combinations of the above – for example, Bhang (15) is soma and pipeweed, Mezcal (30) is alcohol and peyote, and Absinthe (10) is alcohol and pipeweed.

The parenthetical to the right of each drug’s name is its cost in coins. Spending each type of coin obtains different quality drugs – ‘vanilla,’ average quality versions are priced in silvers, and high-purity drugs must be bought with gold, while spending coppers will net you ‘street-grade’ versions. High-purity versions apply a +2 bonus to save vs. overdose, but a -2 penalty when saving vs. addiction. Street-grade drugs aren’t always what they’re claimed to be – roll on the following table.

Street Drugs (1d6)
1	Snake oil – it’s worthless!
2	What did they put in this thing? Might save vs. immediate overdose!
3	Recycled – drug works fine, but its infected with a random disease (ignore if alcoholic)
4	Something similar – acts as normal, but doesn’t count as a dose for addiction or withdrawal
5	Not quite right – hung over with -1 to a random ability score
6	The real deal! No ill effects.

 

Gravity, and Disaster Gameplay



Gravity is, in the words of Zak S, good and shit. It's an amazing disaster movie, that squeezes everything out of its setting. The dangers are so confoundingly simple, (the principles of momentum, and the clockwork orbits of the debris field, for example) and so much more dangerous because of it. Alfonso Cuaron's signature long takes (probably eased by the fact that 90% of the film is insanely photorealistic CGI) draw you directly into the action. The subtext is also hauntingly profound - the characters are utterly powerless, despite commanding what is arguably mankind's most powerful tools, and the images of disintegrating space hardware, and a drifting, derelict Space Shuttle were especially evocative. And it was excellent to see a female lead who really succeeds on her own terms. Also, everything from here on out will be SPOILERS if you haven't seen the film.

So of course we want to figure out how to put this stuff in the game.

Obviously not directly (though I do sometimes run Eclipse Phase) but thematically. Disasters, and the struggle to survive them, crops up a ton in fiction, and can be just as exciting (or more, in Gravity's case) than combat. Arguably, some forms of combat (like battling a titan) have more in common with surviving a disaster than swinging a sword. Of more immediate interest, to me, is the possibility of inflicting monsoons and tsunamis on hapless river travelers in Qelong.

So what do we do?

Surviving a disaster, as opposed to just weathering it, is a complex process dependent on both physical and intellectual skills, as well as the more esoteric quality of grit. Disasters are differentiated from simply difficult conditions by the fact that they represent an existential threat to the character, rather than simply some difficulty or penalty. In this way, they are like combat - if nothing is done, the ork will kill you, just like that oncoming avalanche will.

Luckily, ability scores already suggest a system for handling disaster. Wisdom and Intelligence speak to a character's ability to accurately perceive a situation, and plan or improvise from there, respectively. Strength and Dexterity speak to a character's capacity for manipulating objects. Constitution represents the physical endurance needed to withstand trauma. I have always interpreted Charisma to be much more about self-control and emotional intentionality than physical beauty, and under this interpretation is easily read as a character's mental endurance.

The basic mechanic would be "endurance" style checks, which isn't my idea, but rather something I picked up from somewhere I can't remember along the blogosphere. The idea is, each round that your character faces a hazard, you roll 1d6. You do that the next round, too, if you're still facing the hazard, adding it to the total of all the previous rounds, and so on and so forth. So if I have STR 10, and I'm holding up a portcullis from closing, I can do that for as long as my total is under 10 - and if I roll a 1, a 6, and a 4, I drop it at the end of the third round.

Much hay can also be made of the amount you end up exceeding your ability score by (though, not every roll requires this). The third roll in that example put the total 1 higher than my STR score - so that could mean, either 1 HP of damage as the portcullis slams down on me, or perhaps 1 round of being stunned for the same reason. Reset the counter whenever this happens.

The "endurance" mechanic is really well suited to disaster gameplay because it emphasizes the idea that a disaster is about managing hazards, rather than avoiding them - your characters WILL take damage or lose other things, and it's just a question of how much they lose.

So, using a Gravity example, Dr. Stone has to roll a d6 every round she's clambering outside of a space station, and once the total exceeds her STR score, she has to rest for a number of rounds equal to the difference. Every time she navigates between orbital points, she rolls a d6 - once that total exceeds her INT, she's spent too much time calculating, or she's moved too slowly, and now the debris field hits. Running out of oxygen? Dr. Stone can stave off panic as long as her endurance total is below her CHA. Once she's out of luck there, she starts a new endurance track, this time rolling against CON - and once she exceeds it, she passes out for a number of rounds equal to the difference.

For a more D&D-style example, we can use a party sailing along the Qelong river during a storm. The steersman will navigate into a rock or other minor obstacle each time he fails an endurance roll against WIS - and the difference counts as damage to the ship. The fighter can keep bailing water until she fails an endurance roll vs STR, and then must rest out the difference. The thief can lash down loose cargo until she runs out of DEX - and each failure means something else has been swept into the waters.. And each time a deckhand goes overboard, everyone adds to their CHA counter - failure means you're paralyzed by grief or despair. The system is pretty versatile - maybe you're channeling magic to close an alien demon gate, which requires rolls against WIS - and each time you fail, something breaks free and the rest of the party has to go deal with it.

Basically, the party survives for as long as they can manage the little losses that are bound to happen. Plan poorly, and these small failures add up and eventually the party is left without the tools and strength to face down the next challenge - plan well, and emerge scarred but unbowed.

Ley Magic

Why do wizards lair in isolated valleys or remote mountains? Why do they build homes so far from the industrial towns where bookbinders, tanners, inkmakers and the other skilled artisans upon which they depend can be found? Why don't the royal courts keep hordes of low-level magicians running around at all times, armies of them ready to jump up at their call? And why are the lairs of wizards so impenetrable, filled with arcane traps and strange mazes, yet a military fortress restricted to the age-old use of portcullises and blind corners? Why, moreover, do the orcs not come pouring over the hilltops, forcing timid village-people to undertake the works of industry of which they are incapable? Why are we not ruled by dragons, or subjugated by cloud giants, greater than us in both strength of body and strength of mind?

In a phrase, it is because of ley lines.

Magic, like water and light, is not intrinsic to every part of the world. It flows, in great ethereal rivers, pooling in some places and running dry in others. Like flame, it can burst up suddenly in new places, and like sandstone, great weights of it can compress and push unmovingly into the soil. And, like water and light, it changes the nature of the land that it permeates. Long ago, when life was new, mana had its own subtle pull on the forms that it took. Some men grew to be larger and hungrier. Some dogs learned how to swim through magic the way other dogs learned how to swim through the seas. Most learned nothing, for they lived in areas where mana flowed too fast to take root, or was too scarce. A rarer few gorged themselves on it, and drank some of the wells dry.

Now, these magical creatures require ley energies in the same way they require air and food. A satyr could no more live in town than a hawk could roost beneath the oceans. As mundane humans began to learn the arts of society and technology, they also learned that neither art was much use against a frog that could breathe fire, or a wolf whose teeth pierced the very soul. Like the satyr and the hawk, humanity found its niche.

Of course, every artist has dreams, and seeks constantly to improve upon her works. It was only a matter of time before humanity learned to drink magic for itself, or systematically bind it and then burn it off in massive rituals. The former have come to be called, variously, mystics, wizards, mages, warlocks, witches, and druids. The latter, of course, is 'worship,' and it allowed humanity to clear out new, safe regions where it could build farms and cities, unmolested by arcane beasts.

Spellcasting

The mystic may bind one mana die (a d6) to herself per level. Spells are without level, and may be cast by throwing any number of available mana die and scoring higher than a 5. The "level" of the spell is determined by the number if dice thrown, and the spell takes two actions to prepare per die thrown, plus one more action to release. (In other systems, consider each die to take half a round to prepare, so a sixth level spell requires three rounds to cast.)

Each die that comes up equal to or lower than the number of dice thrown is lost. Each duplicated roll causes one point of lethal damage, as the expulsion of mystical energy stresses and damages the mystic's body. (So, a double would cause 2HP damage, triples 3HP, two doubles 4HP, etc.) None of these conditions affect the actual casting of the spell.

Additionally, any casting rolls of 15 or higher lubricate the flow of energy, allowing the mystic to instantly prepare another spell at any power level. Rolls of 30 or more actually attract energy to the spell's location, replenishing one spent mana die. Every multiple of 30 after that replenishes an additional mana die.

Limits to Spellcasting

Replenishing lost mana dice requires sleeping within a strong ley line or ley circle. A full eight hours of sleep replenishes 1d6 lost mana dice (apply WIS modifier). Stronger wells may replenish 1d8 or 1d10, while weaker ones might only return 1d4. These places are uncommon and likely to be guarded by jealous mages, or homes to dangerous magical creatures - the specifics, of course, will greatly determine the availability and power of magic in your campaign. Rarer, weaker, and more dangerous ley circles will restrict the mystic's power, and more common or stronger ones will commensurately increase it. 

A mystic can retain 1 spell per point of intelligence she has. Moreover, the retention of a spell necessitates the presence of some form of mana reserve - the mystic must have one mana dice per retained spell, or lose 1 HP per day, per excess spell. 

Learning a new spell - even one previously known - is an expensive and time-consuming process, requiring access ley energy the expenditure of 2d10x100 GP and 4d6 consecutive weeks of research and practice. If interrupted, the procedure must be started from scratch. Before rolling, a mystic can choose to rush the process, or work with more rudimentary materials - one can halve the total of one roll, at the cost of doubling the other.