Kitbashing D&D: Fantasy Vietnam and Final Death Saves

So against all odds, my regular D&D group will apparently be meeting up for a session this weekend. 

On an entirely unrelated note: at this time, I will not be answering any questions regarding my whereabouts during the recent Blood Moon. Nor will I discuss the fiendish and ululant cries heard from the ancient monoliths in the shunned circle by the Old Whatley farm. 

Jokes aside, adult life just has a way of making it difficult to keep up with a game sometimes. Responsibilities and obligations come up, couples travel, people get sick, and sometimes it all happens at once.

Bottom line, we haven't had the chance to sit around the table and throw some dice together in about four months, and I'm looking forward to it. We've been running through a heavily house-ruled version of Curse of Strahd, and we're within spitting distance of the endgame. 

That said, one side effect of all that down-time in between sessions is that I've been wondering what I'd do next time I had the chance to run a game. As much as I've been enjoying running Curse of Strahd, part of me just wants to dial it back to something simpler.

In particular, a couple comments on Twitter got me thinking about what my "perfect" D&D would look like:

As I mentioned in this post a couple of months back, I've always played the game by cobbling rules together from various editions. But I'm going to give Demilich Jim a big hat-tip here for borrowing the perfect term for it from the model-building community. 

Demilich Jim also wrote an awesome thread about a month ago, one that's well worth a read for anyone with plans to do some D&D kitbashing. The meat of Jim's argument is that the rules of the game imply a great deal about the setting, whether you're using a published setting or not. I made a similar point around the same time, when I argued the implied setting of the AD&D core rulebooks was inherently post apocalyptic.

So with Jon Mollison's "Fantasy Vietnam" as an implied setting, and the B/X ruleset a jumping off point, lets get bashing!


WELCOME TO HELL

My first assumption about a "Fantasy Vietnam" would be that it's just going to be stupidly lethal. 

I'm imagining groups of player characters gathered from their home villages by the local king, each selected on the basis of "general fitness for service to the forces of Law." 

While not inducted into the army per se, each adventurer would be given a signed warrant, authorizing them to use force against orcs, goblins, and other creatures of Chaos. Then they'd be gathered into groups of four or five, tossed into the back of a wagon, and unceremoniously trundled off to some far off keep on the borderlands, where the local authorities would proceed to treat them like FNG combat replacements. 

Of course, as the new guys, they'd be given the shittiest details and the worst assignments. The crusty old sergeant in charge of the local garrison would be some guy missing fingers, with one dead eye. He'd offer up only one bit of smirking advice to the new arrivals: the gobbos can see yer body heat down there in the dark. Best to slather up with grease paint before goin' down in the earth. Messes with their vision.

The only other thing he'd say before kicking the PCs out of his office would be that one pair of goblin ears per day buys a warm bed in the adventurers' barracks. Another pair of goblin ears gets them a hot meal at morning reveille. Any others they collect, he'll pay a three copper bounty for.   

Welcome to Hell. Don't worry. Most of you won't be staying long.

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​BUT D.I.D. HE DIE?

With the setting briefly sketched out, it's time to think about the rules I'd use to help bring it to life. I have a few in mind I'm planning to detail in the coming weeks, things like critical hit tables, trap result dice, and a setting-specific redesign of skills checks (and the Thief class).

Most of it is going to be geared towards making this setting much more lethal, or at least giving the damage results a little more flavor. But what I wanted to talk about today is one of the most important parts of a "fantasy Vietnam" campaign, or of any game dealing heavily with war and warriors: the all-important near miss.

To that end, I have a house rule I plan on using for this hypothetical game: the Divine Intervention Die, aka the Final Death Save.

​So... real talk for a minute. I'm a veteran. I served a few tours in Iraq. 

I generally don't spend a lot of time talking about my military experiences, unless I'm around other guys that were there to share them with me. It's nothing personal. It's just the way it is. What I've noticed about guys that have actually "been there" is that most of them tend not to talk about it. This is especially true of most of the Vietnam guys I've met.

But wars produce war stories, and a significant number of those stories are bullshit. Vietnam, in particular, seemed to turn stolen valor into a fucking cottage industry for a time. Iraq and Afghanistan would have been on track to follow suit, but social media and the internet have made it easier to call out fakers.

Anyway, a huge number of war stories—both real and bullshit—center around some last-minute, million-to-one escape from certain death. The aforementioned near miss. I'm sure you've all heard the old one about the soldier who got shot in the chest, but survived because the Bible he was carrying in his front pocket stopped the bullet. Or maybe you've heard that same story, but with a flask of whiskey in place of the Bible.

Personally, I believe both of them are one hundred percent true, and I believe they've both happened more than once. I've personally seen a man survive being shot because the bullet got caught in one of the grenades he was carrying in his web gear.

You see that kind of shit, folks, and you start believing anything is possible.

Bottom line, I wanted a mechanic to simulate those tiny, last minute turns of fate. After all, when everything else is gone—hit points, spells, and saving throws—what's left but sheer chance and divine intervention? 

In game, the mechanic is simple: When the PC is reduced to 0 HP, or when they've failed a death save, the player rolls a d20. They MUST roll a natural 20. No modifiers apply.

If a 20 is rolled, the character survives, and the DM narrates how, doing his best to make it something worthy of a good war story at the local tavern. 

If the result is anything else, the result is failure, and the character is dead. 

Of course you can use any d20. But for my own table, I picked up these 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired HAL d20.01s, from Gio Lasar Design. They cost me around $9.00, plus shipping. Honestly, I like the idea of a character's final fate resting on a die covered in mostly blank and meaningless faces.

Seems a perfect metaphor for Mollison's fantasy Vietnam.

Anyway, I'll have some more on this in the coming weeks. In the mean time, go out and draft a bunch of Fifth Edition players, crank "Fortunate Son" on the boombox, and force them to roll 3d6 in order. 

When they say they want to play an Tiefling Hexblade Sorcerer, tell them they only rolled good enough to play a Fighter or a Dwarf. And tell them they'd better decide quick. 

The goblins upriver are getting restless. And the next patrol is starting in an hour.   
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