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Erik Jensen launched his Lumberlands 'zine Kickstarter just shy of two weeks ago. In case you've never heard of it, here's the elevator pitch in Jensen's own words.
"A micro-setting featuring lumberjacks vs sasquatches, for classic and light tabletop RPGs." And if for some reason you needed any more selling than "big, bearded lumberjacks swinging their axes at bloodthirsty skunk-apes," there's also a hidden city of intelligent squirrels. The Lumberlands is a part of Jensen's larger Wampus Country setting, which he blogs about here. Jensen describes it as D&D seen through the lens of North American folklore, a blending of of Tall Tales, fairy tales, and old tales of the wilderness from the 1700s to the early 1900s. When he calls it a different flavor of adventure, I'm inclined to agree. There's nothing else like Jensen's Wampus Country out there, folks. This is exactly the kind of creativity that the indie OSR excels at. 
The project is fully funded as of this writing, but there's still plenty of time to make a pledge and secure a copy. $5 or more gets you the PDF. $10 or more gets you the physical copy and the PDF together.
You can click on the image above to go to the Kickstarter page. I've already got mine. Now excuse me while I go and blast Jackyl while impatiently waiting for the delivery date.
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 One of my old martial arts instructors—a man specializing in knife fighting—used to have what he called the "5-Minute Knife Fighting Lesson." It's a useful thought experiment, but one that needs a little explaining. Basically, the instructor took an imaginary student. The imaginary student had no prior knowledge of martial arts, no fighting experience, and a minimal amount of athletic ability. In this scenario, the student approaches the instructor in a panic, saying he has to be in a knife fight in 5 minutes. He can't avoid it. What does the instructor teach him? What tool does he give the student in 5 minutes that gives him the best chance to succeed? He settled on a simple defensive move, one that forced the enemy to come to the student. He showed the student how to stand, how to hold the knife, and how to retreat. "Just cut anything that comes in reach, and keep cutting." That instructor's thought experiment is something I've circled back to more than once over the years. It's an incredibly useful way to identify crucial parts of a complex system, and put them at the forefront in a practical way. Not to say that the entire system needs to be thrown out. You can—and often should—still practice the larger and more complex system. Especially when it comes to something as deadly serious as martial arts. But it does give you a good idea of which principles are most important, and which things you should be focusing on as you hone and perfect the larger system. Anyway, I'm rambling a bit, and I still want to tie this point to the subject of today's post:  A discussion thread popped up in my Twitter feed yesterday. In it, the self-styled "Evil High Priestess" of the OSR cavegirl talked about how Alignment-as-written is is poorly fleshed out, usually leads to bad experiences, and most DMs cut it entirely. You can read her entire thread by following this link. You can also just read the following screen caps of my buddy Cirsova's posts. They copy cavegirl's posts word-for-word, but they add photos of oiled-up bodybuilders and vintage Charles Atlas ads to the bottom of each one:       Admittedly, the Cirsova posts are a bit of a piss-take. Mostly because our mutual buddy Meffrius—who was unfairly dog-piled not too long ago over his "#EliteLevel powergaming" schitck—said the same thing about Alignments as cosmic factions months ago. Incidentally, you should follow Meffridus on Twitter. You should also buy Cirsova. But I digress. Cavegirl is right, of course. Alignment should be a form of cosmic faction play. In fact, with Gary Gygax's inclusion of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion books on Appendix N, it's difficult to see how it was ever intended otherwise. Anderson, in particular, gives a fantastic "5-Minute Knife Fight" version of Alignment-as-cosmic faction play. The following excerpt comes from Chapter 3 of Three Hearts Three Lions.
But the fact is, not many of the responses below cavegirl's post indicate people are familiar with the reading material. As John McGlynn, co-host of Geek Gab points out, the concept of Alignment-as-personality-test is at least as old as Moldovay, making the Appendix N interpretation the exception rather than the rule.   Which honestly has me thinking. Not too many people have read Appendix N as deeply as Jeffro Johnson or Joseph Goodman. I'm a dabbler compared to those two, and there are plenty in the OSR scene who have read much deeper than me. But I'd assumed more—if not most—people in the OSR were at least passingly familiar with the more famous works on Appendix N. At least the ones responsible for the quirkiest bits of D&D's ruleset. For a long while, I'd been thinking about what I'd put on an "Abridged Appendix N," the three or four books I'd hand someone who wanted to give their D&D game an entirely different feel than the standard "D&D brand" setting and flavor. I'm still mulling that one over, because I think it will skew heavily to science fantasy. But I think after reading cavegirl's post, I have what I'd call my "5-Minute Knife Fight" version of Appendix N: pre-supposing a brand new player—one who has no prior knowledge or experience of D&D, fantasy, or roleplaying games—what three books would I give him to teach him about D&D's underlying concepts to help him understand and run a game quickly?
Again, this is by no means exhaustive. I'd still urge people who are interested in D&D to read the other authors on Appendix N, or the other works by these authors. Lovecraft and Howard spring readily to mind, as to Burroughs and Brackett. Plus there's the rest of Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series, the rest of Vance's work, and the rest of Anderson's. Any or all of them would be worth reading on their own merits, and any of them would undoubtedly enrich and inspire your game. So would countless other fantasy writers. But in terms of my old instructor's "5 Minute Knife Fight" concept, those three titles are probably the three most crucial books on Appendix N. Those books are the "standing, holding the knife, and retreating," of the world implied by D&D's basic ruleset. Read those three books, and you have a basic grasp on Vancian Magic, Alignment, Thieves' Guilds, how humans and Demi-humans do (or don't) get along, magic items and artifacts, certain monsters, how to run a series of connected adventures (via Anderson and Leiber's examples), the politics of a big city, wilderness and sea travel, and some example ruins/NPCs you can liberally steal from. As an added bonus, most modern fantasy fans haven't read them, so they'll think you're being original. It's also important to note that each of these books clocks in at around a hundred fifty pages or so. All together, they equal approximately one Harry Potter book. I'm a naturally slow reader. But I'd guess most people can probably read all three in about a week and a half of their spare time. Add to that the time needed to figure out the chosen ruleset—not long, if you picked a 0e or B/X retro clone—and you're probably looking at about two weeks from complete novice to Dungeon Master. So, there you have it. D&D's very own "5-Minute Knife Fighting Lesson." Take it, build a foundation, and keep the crucial parts in mind as you hone and perfect your game. Apologies for the lack of updates, folks. I had a lot going on over the last two months, mostly between VA appointments, paperwork, and associated crap. The silver lining is that things are finally starting to look a bit untangled, for the first time in years. That said, lack of blogging about my Fantasy Effing Vietnam project doesn't mean I haven't been working on it. Fact is, I've been trying to donate every spare scrap of time to it that I can. In my last post on the subject, I mentioned I'd been re-thinking the skills and resolution system. Specifically, I was planning to give every PC some limited access to the thieves' skills. It was partly for flavor reasons, and partly out of a desire for a unified skill mechanic. Specifically, I wanted the exact same resolution roll to apply to everyone sneaking through the bush. But after a few play tests—and some fascinating OSR readings over the holidays—I think I'm going to walk that back a bit. I'll get into the reasons below. But first, I want to introduce the newest addition to the game: Sapper Dwarves. THE TUNNEL RATS You wake up screaming again. It's a good ten seconds before you recognize the cool, vaulted brick ceiling, the soft candle glow, and the pungent smell of burning herbs. You're in the keep's infirmary. Just where you've been for almost two weeks. You only have vague memories of how you survived the goblin ambush. You just remember running through the woods, your arm and your thigh burning. You remember both Bregan and Kruppa, laying in the kill zone like sacks of meat. They say an Elf patrol picked you up. According to the report, you were half-delirious form the poison in your veins, wandering alone through the forest, babbling like a madman. They never found any trace of Bregan or Kruppa. You're still groggy when a troop of hard-eyed dwarves bursts into the infirmary. None of them pay any attention to the Sisters of Mercy trying to block their way. They shove through the nuns as roughly as if they're pushing through a shield wall. "There he is," one of them says, pointing at you. The dwarves make a bee line, quickly surrounding your bed, all eyes boring into you. The leader produces a rough-sketched piece of parchment covered in long, intersecting lines. You don't read Dwarven rune-script—not even a little—so it's a moment before you recognize some of the terrain features. It's a map. One tracing a system of tunnels and warrens that would put an ant-hill to shame. Gods... is this the goblin tunnel network? How could anyone hope to fight and clear such a thing? The Dwarven leader jabs a finger at the parchment. "That goblin ambush. Where was it?" You trace a rough circle around the area. "It was somewhere around here, between—" The Dwarf cuts you off. "We already know the area. Where was it exactly?" Exactly? You concentrate hard. You try to remember the configuration of the land, looking at the map for a corresponding pattern. "Here," you say at last. "Right here between these hillocks." The Dwarf smiles. It's an evil looking sight. He turns to his companions. There's some excited chatter among them. "It's near Ogre's Fist. We could insert there, turn north, and start pouring oil down the the side passages." "Whole area under those hillocks is unstable. Might be able to bring the entire thing down on 'em if we undermine the right junctions." "What if we borrowed one of the Magic Users? Fill the whole thing with that flaming gas spell they've got. Burn the hill and the stinking tunnels." It's then that you see the tattoo on the Dwarf leader's wrist. Bregan had one like it. Could they be kinsmen? "We move by night," the leader says. "Hit the tunnel during the day when these green bastards are sleeping. Then we go in quiet, and we do it by hand." As he says it, his hand drifts to the brace of knives hanging across his chest. The Dwarves leave without another word spoken. The Sisters of Mercy mutter prayers. You lay back, thinking. The Dwarves have adapted to this new way of war, perhaps better than any other race on the side of Law. They move more silently than the Elves. They deliver knife thrusts in the dark, and they slip away before the alarm is raised. They have an uncanny knack for spotting the goblin traps, and dismantling them with surgical precision. That's not the surprising part. The surprising part is to a man, they seem unnaturally pleased by this. Almost as if they'd been born to this way of fighting, and their millennia of using shield walls, spears, and axes was nothing but a small diversion. You relax into your pillow, strangely at ease. There will be blood beneath the earth come morning. And for once, you don't think it will be from the side of Law. ROLE PROTECTION One thing I've been considering more heavily since last update is role protection: how do the various classes distinguish themselves from one another, and how do I ensure that each class has a defined niche in the game? This is something old-school D&D unquestionably did better than new editions. The Fighter was the fighter, and anyone else who tried to step in and fill the heavy combat role would get a mud-hole stomped in their guts. Likewise with Magic-Users, Thieves, and Clerics. Early D&D handled role protection more-or-less organically, with each class being tied to a basic archetype. Characters were either the Strong Guy, the Sneaky Guy, the Magic Guy, or the Holy Guy. The Elf was the only real exception, being something of an "in-between" character in both B/X and OD&D. That said, there were still some hiccups in earlier editions' handling of role protection. In B/X and its clones, the Dwarf and the Halfling were basically short Fighters with infravision and a handful of special abilities. Their good saving throws made them better at surviving, but neither one really filled a true "in-between" role, like the Elf. In any event, later editions didn't pay much attention to the idea of role protection at all. Giving players shiny new options meant including multi-class rules, or creating more "cross-archetype" classes like the Ranger and the Eldritch Knight. The more of them that popped up, the less specialized the basic classes felt. That gradual drift away from the basic, archetype-based classes is one of the things that ended up changing the overall feel of the game. So much so that I'm honestly starting to think of role protection as a "silent feature" of the OSR. But is it more important than simple, unified mechanics? PLAY TESTS As I mentioned in my last update, I'd been toying with giving each of the classes limited access to certain Thieves' skills. I did give it a shot, running about half a dozen sessions with three separate groups in Keep on the Borderlands. And two things became readily apparent:
Admittedly, number two was something I should have seen coming. With Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, and Find Traps all being things the DM rolls in secret and adjudicates the result of, most of the players never even saw their abilities in action. All they ever saw was the results of a missed roll turning into an ambush, or a successful one turning into a chance to get the drop on a sentry. In other words, all I really did was create more bookkeeping for myself behind the screen, with absolutely none of the flavor results finding their way to the PCs.  So while I did gain a unified mechanic in terms of skill rolls, the trade-off wasn't really worth it. Bottom line, "Thieves skills for everybody" is a feature I'm axing. Which, unfortunately, brings me right back to the problem described in that last post: how do I adjudicate Thieves and non-Thieves attempting the same action, like sneaking up on a guard? I eventually found a pretty good answer in Philotomy's Musings, a collection of OD&D interpretations, thoughts, house-rules, compiled by Jason Cone. It's a justifiably famous document in OSR circles, if only for the "dungeon as mythic underworld" section. But the entire thing is very much worth a read. Cone's take on the Thief's Move Silently ability is that it represents a skill far above and beyond normal stealth. A successful roll means the Thief truly moves without making a sound, moving with an almost supernatural silence. A fighter wanting sneak up on a sentry, on the other hand, is just using "normal" stealth. In the latter case, the DM rolls a 1d6. On a 1 or a 2, the attempt is successful, as in the standard surprise rules. As for how Cone squares this with the Thief's Move Silently ability, his solution is simple and elegant: if the Thief fails his percentile roll to Move Silently, the DM rolls a "normal" stealth roll on a 1d6. In other words, the Thief gets two chances to sneak up: one with his class ability, and one with the same mechanic everyone else is using. I like this solution. For one thing, it doesn't break the game by asking me to resolve the same action two different ways. Everyone gets the same mechanic. The Thief just gets an extra attempt with his different one. But much more importantly, it protects the Thief's unique role in the party. So where does that leave the others? ROLE PROTECTION REDUX: BALANCING THE GAME As I mentioned back in my "MASH Clerics and the Walking Wounded" post, I've removed Clerics and healing magic as player options. Instead every PC starts with the large pool of HP. While this is a necessary change for the "progressive exhaustion and battle fatigue" theme I'm going for, it does have the unintended consequence of taking away one of the Fighter's main advantages: HP. Yes, it is still possible for a Fighter to start with more HP than most other classes. But that's not enough to make the Fighter feel like a clearly defined role. At least not at lower levels. One way I'm going "give back" to the Fighter is by implementing class-based damage. A Fighter with a dagger should be more deadly than a wizard with a staff. Another thing I'm adopting is the old rule about how strength bonuses for melee combat only apply to Fighters. Add those to the Fighter's ability to hit weaker enemies once per level each combat round, his ability to use any weapons or armor, and an improved THAC0 table, and the Fighter suddenly starts to differentiate himself again. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the spell casters. Since I already removed the Cleric, what I have left is the Magic User and the new, Illusionist-inspired Fae class. Since there isn't much of a way to differentiate them with abilities, I decided the best way to do it would be with their spells. I took great pains to ensure each class had a completely unique spell list, with no crossover between them. In addition to all the "classic" illusions, the Fae gets exclusive access to the "mind-f*ckery" spells, like Charm Person and Invisibility. The Magic-User, on the other hand, still gets the damage and mobility spells, like Fireball, Magic Missile, and Levitate. In purely military terms, if the Magic User fills an artillery and logistics role, the Fae is psyops and counterintelligence. Which brings us to the Thief and the Dwarf. Getting back to my other design principle of "rules imply setting," I decided to do away with the human Thief altogether, and re-conceptualize the Dwarf to keep the Fighter's role unique. I decided the best thing to do was make the Dwarf class adhere to the Thief-archetype, imagining them as the war effort's Tunnel Rats, Combat Engineers, and Sappers. To that end, I'm probably going to do away with some of the standard Thief skills, like Pick Pockets and Pick Locks. I'm probably going to replace them with something like "Underground Navigation," and "Jury-Rig," to reflect their focus on warfare over theft. For the Elf class, I decided to keep the principle of an "in-between" character. I kept the Fighting and spell-casting abilities mostly intact, but decided to stop the Elf's access to spells stronger than 3rd Level. The Magic User, on the other hand, has access to 4th and 5th Level spells. I also decided to grant the Elf—and only the Elf—some limited access to the Thieves' stealth skills, like Move Silently and Hide in Shadows. But where the Dwarf will continually get better at them, the Elf only gets his base score, with no chance of improvement. This puts the Elf squarely in the center of the three archetypes I have left: he's part Strong Guy, part Magic Guy, and part Sneaky Guy. As for Halflings, I struck them from the game entirely, replacing them with the above-mentioned Fae. The end result is a list of character classes slightly smaller than in B/X, but with more overall attention paid to how their roles complement and play off of one another. This, I'd argue, is real game balance, and something the earlier editions did amazingly well. It's not about making sure each class has equal access to powers and abilities. It's about making sure each class—and by extension, each player—has a niche to fill that none of the others can. Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Next post, I plan to talk about the last two big changes I've made to the game: The Critical Hit chart, and the re-vamped Magic System. Until then, stay quiet out there. And keep low. The goblins are getting better with those damned crossbows. As I mentioned a few months back, I've been running an OSR-hacked Curse of Strahd game with my regular D&D group. And this past weekend, I realized I'm probably DMing the most creative bunch of murderhobos to ever set torch and pitchfork to the gods-forsaken land of Barovia. I also realized they just might be the villains. For those of you unfamiliar with the adventure and its basic set-up, Curse of Strahd is a 5e remake of the classic AD&D module, I6: Ravenloft. The adventure finds the PCs trapped in the mist-shrouded valley of Barovia, which is ruled by the vampire count Strahd von Zarovich. Strahd will only allow the PCs to escape if they surrender his intended bride, an innocent peasant girl named Tatyana. Unless the PCs find a way to defeat Strahd, while simultaneously keeping Tatyana from falling into his clutches, they'll be trapped in Barovia forever. This set-up was pretty railroad-y by 1e standards, but the mix of Gothic horror tropes with high adventure struck a chord with players. Ravenloft was one of the most popular D&D adventures of its era, and has seen some form of remake or reinvention for every subsequent edition of the game, including a full campaign setting in 2e.  Anyway, the details are a bit convoluted to go into here, but the bottom line is that in this run-through, Strahd's intended bride Tatyana ended up dead. Normally, this is bad news for the PC's. But rather than just try to conceal this fact as long as possible, and launch a surprise assault on the castle—which is what I expected—my merry band of murderhobos decided they now had a unique weapon in their hands. So they proceeded to hatch the most twisted "get Strahd" plan I've seen in all my years of DMing the Ravenloft setting:
The next evening, they loaded the Zombie Tatyana up into a carriage and rode for the castle. When they arrived in the courtyard, Strahd came out to greet them. He was dressed in finery himself, and flanked by skeleton warriors in polished dress armor. The PCs dismounted, and gave a speech humbly apologizing for being so unreasonable before. The also expressed their hopes that Strahd would honor his earlier promise to help them escape the valley, in exchange for Tatyana. Strahd replied that he is an honorable man, and would keep his agreements. He also invited the PCs to stay for the wedding: "I always prepare an excellent feast." With that, the PC's opened the carriage. The Zombie Tatyana walked towards Strahd. As soon as she got within range, the Magic Mouth spell went off, causing her to whisper her line. Strahd gathered her in his arms. Then the PCs sprung one of the most beautiful and sadistic traps I've ever seen.
It's important to note that the PCs were 100% aware that this wouldn't kill Strahd. In fact, they knew damned well that he'd be strong enough to break out of this. The entire goal was psychological warfare. They wanted to horrify him with the sight his beloved's corpse erupting with vines, vomiting holy water, and then exploding in a bloody mess. Like I said. These guys might just be the villains, all things considered...  Anyway, the PCs pressed the momentary advantage they got from exploding the innocent village girl's corpse all over the vampire. As the skeleton warriors moved to attack, the spell casters immobilized them. The Cleric used the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind to completely immobilize Strahd, so the warriors could move in and begin pummeling the bejeezus out of him. The "battle" was so one-sided it wasn't even funny. They finished him off by forcing a Bag of Holding full of Holy Water down his throat. I didn't even bother to roll for damage. I described the vampire's body beginning to bubble, boil, and burn... Honestly, watching them plan and execute such a crazy curb-stomp of a battle was so damn satisfying, I almost felt bad that I was about to pull the rug out from under them. That said, I also started running Ravenloft games back in the 90's. And I know damned well that the one thing that makes Strahd a memorable villain is that he's not an idiot. As the PC's were watching the vampire's face melt, I had one of them notice the illusion spell fail, revealing that the "Strahd" they'd just killed was a decoy: a lesser vampire spawn he put in place so he could quietly observe them from a distance. From above, the PC's heard an amplified voice boom over the courtyard: "I was going to be honorable. But you allowed my bride to die. Worse, you desecrated her. For that crime, you will all pay." A fireball then dropped into the center of the PCs formation. It delivered massive damage all around, thanks to a bunch of blown saving throws. Behind them, the gates of the castle slammed shut. And above them, the amplified voice issued a final, cold proclamation: "None of you will leave this place alive." We ended the session right there, with the PC's trapped and without any ideas where to go from here. This is D&D storytelling in a nutshell, folks. These crazy, unplanned moments that the players—and the DM—will still be discussing years from now. This is where the real magic of the game has always been: in watching the players come up with some crazy, over-the-top scheme, and try their damndest to execute it. Real D&D storytelling has nothing to do with the DM, his campaign notes or (Gygax help us) "plot arcs." It can only happen organically. It's also entirely player driven. The DM can't force it, and the more he tries, the more he gets in the way. If you truly want to create great stories in your D&D games, the only thing you need to do as a DM is put great obstacles in the players' way. Let them use their own ingenuity. Because when they come up with a plan, you get to do the best part. You get to sit back and watch. The DM isn't the story's architect in a D&D game. If anything, he's the set designer. But if he does a good enough job, he also gets to be the front row audience. That's worth its weight in gold, folks. Before I get into this week's rules changes, I want to talk about a planned scheduling shake-up, and call attention to a cool thing that arrived in the mail. First, the cool thing: Personally, I find that 70's rock and retro-70's rock inspires most of my D&D writing. Something about the aesthetic just gets me in the right headspace. Black Sabbath. Rainbow. The Sword. The Wizards. But as I've been writing this blog series, I've mostly been rocking out to Gygax. If you're unfamiliar with them, try to imagine a hard rock band that combines the music of Thin Lizzy with lyrics directly inspired by Old School D&D. I've been a die hard fan since their first release, 2015's Critical Hits. If you're a metalhead or a rocker of any kind, I highly recommend checking out their Bandcamp page. Anyway, Gygax released what is undoubtedly the coolest bit of band swag in the history of band swag—a limited edition Gygax Guild d20.  Needless to say, I've already used this bad boy to launch a massive goblin assault, one that slaughtered an unwary wizard PC and sent the surviving party members running for their lives. Which leads me to the scheduling shake-up: As I mentioned a few weeks back, I've been at work on an Appendix N inspired science fantasy series, one that envisions what D&D fiction might have looked like if it followed the wilder literary roots of the game, rather than filling in the map of TSR and WotC's pre-fab fantasy worlds. And while I still plan on writing that, the fact is my recent thought experiments on what Fantasy Effing Vietnam would look like have gotten a bit more attention. To the point that I've gotten several messages in public and in private expressing interest in a published print version. Rule number one in this writing gig, folks. Never disappoint your audience. Especially when they're actively asking you for something. So, yes. A published print version of these rules is now in the works. To that end, I've been running some live play tests with two separate groups. Once that's done and all the obvious bugs are worked out, I've got two other groups tentatively lined up as my beta testers. If all goes well, I'm hoping to have these rules pretty well ironed out in the next few weeks. Then it's going to be a matter of formatting, getting some art, and making it available on DriveThruRPG. Hopefully, that won't take too long. In the meantime, I plan to keep these blog posts coming. They're a helpful way to "think out loud" about what I'm doing, as well as offer some insight into the ideas behind the rules choices I'm making. As I said way back in part one of this series, there is a guiding principle behind this project. Fact is, I don't believe D&D's ruleset was ever intended as an all-purpose, generic fantasy adventure simulator. Each edition has been geared towards a specific, implied setting, and every subsequent edition and rules modification has made different assumptions about the world it aims to simulate. And as we'll see in this week's post, "Fantasy Effing Vietnam" makes some very specific assumptions about the nature of combat. You Better Run Through The Jungle You've been watching the way Kruppa the Thief walks, the way he rolls his feet slowly from the outside to the inside with each step. The way he smoothly transitions his weight from one leg to the other. The way he seems to feel each twig and before he steps on it, and adjusts his foot to the left or right. You do your best to imitate him when on patrol, and you're starting to get good. Even Bregan the Dwarf grudgingly commented on it. At this rate, you just might survive. The forest stands around you, silent as always. Kruppa leads the way, sliding from shadow to shadow like a ghost. Bregan brings up the rear. You're in the middle, eyes and ears alert for the tell-tale signs of a goblin ambush: freshly disturbed earth, out-of-place bird calls, and bits of animal carcasses strung in the trees. The sun glints off something in the undergrowth, and you freeze in place, heart racing. Metal or glass. Has to be. You flash a hand signal to Bregan, halting him in place. It's several tense seconds before Kruppa looks back and sees you, catches the hand signal, and halts as well. Several seconds in which you're waiting for hell on earth to explode from the underbrush. Now that you have both Kruppa and Bregan paying attention, you point in the direction of the strange glint. As they're watching, the sun catches it again. Kruppa waves you all forward, angling the patrol to move in a wide circle around the strange glint. You'll check it out—could be an enemy observer, could be the remains of those missing settlers from a few weeks back. But you'll approach indirectly. It's almost a half hour before you approach the small depression where you spotted the flash. Slow, careful movement, with plenty of doubling back, double-and-triple checking for signs of ambush. At last, you arrive. It's the settlers, all right. Three families, all splayed out in the underbrush. Throats cut, valuables stolen. All except the silver mirror. The silver mirror is carefully strung up in the trees, to catch the sunlight just so... "Shit!" Kruppa says. Then the hillocks to the north and south are alive with activity. All at once, crossbow bolts are cutting through the underbrush. You feel the sting as one slices your upper arm, and another as it buries itself in the meat of your thigh.  Art by Aaron Foster You hug the dirt, knowing damn well running is impossible. You glance to Kruppa, wondering what the plan is. And you realize he won't be telling you. Not anytime soon. A goblin crossbow bolt buried itself in his throat. He's gasping for air around the barbed tip, drowning in bright red blood. Off to your left, Bregan swears, shouting that he's hit. It's poison. He needs antidote. Somewhere above you, a crossbow bolt shatters the silver mirror. It Takes a Thief to Muck Up a Perfectly Simple System One thing I've never liked about the Thief class is that it has a different resolution mechanic for what should be a common task. For example, Climbing a sheer surface is something every PC is going to attempt at some point. But in giving the Thief a unique die roll to determine it—a percentile—the rules basically force the DM to tell any non-Thief players they either can't make the attempt, or force them to come up with a different roll for the same action. Neither option really works for me. For what it's worth, BECMI goes with the second option, which is definitely the lesser of two evils. On page 85 of the Rules Cyclopedia, under Other Character Skills, the Stealth Skill allows any PC to learn something similar to the Thief's Move Silently ability, with the caveat that it has to be terrain specific for each skill slot spent. The way Skills work in BECMI is that they're rolled on a d20 against the relevant attribute. But unlike an attack roll, a LOW result is preferred here, and a 1 is always considered a success. For Stealth, the relevant attribute is Dexterity. So let's say I have a group of four first level adventurers. Fakk the Fighter took Forest Stealth as a Skill. Takk the Thief didn't, relying instead on his class ability. Wakk the Wizard and Dakk the Dwarf didn't take it either, because they had other things to focus on. Now say they all want to sneak up on some goblins. As it's written in BECMI, I have to roll a percentile for Takk, a d20 against DEX for Fakk, and just make something up for the others. With inconsistent shit like this popping up in play, it's easy to see why some old grognards swear the game started going downhill the second the Thief class was introduced way back in the Greyhawk supplement. That said, house-ruled fixes for this issue have been around as long as the class itself, and some of the newer retro-clones have done an admirable job of fixing this particular hiccup.  As an example, I once again have to point to Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Raggi's decision to standardize all skill checks into a few broad categories—each of them resolved with a roll of a single d6—was a simple, elegant move. Furthermore, the customizable Specialist class is one of that system's best innovations, as I've previously written here. Honestly, my biggest gripe with it is that I don't think the d6 "pips" offer enough customization or variation in the dice rolls. That's where Ruinations: Post-Apocalyptic Roleplaying by Brent Ault comes in. Currently available for free in an unfinished state on Google Drive, Ruinations began life as a post apocalyptic re-skin of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, with some of Ault's own unique tweaks and rules changes. It's a fantastic game in its own right, and absolutely worth your time if you're a fan of the apocalyptic genre. One of the coolest design choices Ault made was to keep Raggi's standardized skill categories, but to convert them over to a percentile based system. So instead of all characters beginning with a 1 in 6 chance to succeed in each category, like in LotFP, Ault made it so every character begins with a 20% chance. Then, rather than individual "pips" or points on a d6 to spend at each level, the Adept Class—Ault's version of the Specialist—gets 30 percentile points. The end result is an even more customizable class than Raggi's Specialist. But more importantly, it still uses the same skill resolution roll as all the other classes for common tasks like climbing, tinkering, and stealth. Which brings me to the larger point behind this week's rules change. Remember up above, where I said every change and tweak should say something about the setting? One of the things any "Fantasy Effing Vietnam" setting absolutely needs to simulate is the style of fighting common to Vietnam and mid-20th century warfare. That means a heavy focus on stealth, ambush, and counter-ambush tactics. To that end, one of the base assumptions I'm going to make every time my players "leave the wire" is that they're all doing their level best to Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, and Hear Noises. Meaning every single PC gets access to those three Thief skills, at a minimum. Now, of course the Thieves, the home-brewed Fairy class, and the Elves will be better at it. I'm giving racial bonuses to the Elves and the Fairies, and I'm running the Thieves like Ault's Adepts, with a pool of discretionary points for the player to spend as he sees fit.  Every patrol to and from the Keep should be a tense cat and mouse game, as the PCs watch out for goblin ambushes, senses alert for any sound or sign that the enemy is near. Meanwhile, they're trying to move like ghosts through the underbrush, staying to the darkest shadows they can find. Every snapped twig or dropped water skin should cause their little hearts to race, wondering if they've just given themselves away.
On the other side of things, the exact same mechanic is used for the goblins. Instead of a simple roll for random encounters, I'm rolling opposed percentiles every time groups of goblins and PCs are near each other on the map. Chance to Hear Noise vs chance to Move Silently. If one PC is scouting ahead, it's the same thing: Hide in Shadows and Move Silently vs. Hear Noise. Basically, instead of a standard "roll for surprise" I'm rolling to see if the PC's successfully sneak up on the goblins, or if the goblins successfully ambush the PCs. To further keep with the Vietnam, "ambush versus counter-ambush" feel, I've also been sticking with group initiative as outlined in OD&D/Whitebox. I've been finding it's especially useful when the PCs are moving as a group. My method so far has been to roll for ambush, with the winning side getting initiative. They act in order of Missile Fire > Spells > Movement > Melee, with all actions receiving a +4 surprise bonus. Then the losing side goes in the same action order of Missile Fire > Spells > Movement > Melee, with all actions receiving a —4 surprise penalty. Bonuses and penalties vanish at the top of next round, and combat continues to proceed in order until resolved. So far, it's been quick, brutal, and bloody. I've got some more stuff coming up soon, with Critical Hits, long-term injuries, and magic. Plus some thoughts on running the goblin side of things. Stay tuned. And stay quiet out there. The goblins can hear better than you. |
AboutI'm an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer based out of North Carolina. This is where I scream into the digital void. I like cookies. Archives
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