Commentary: Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks Houserules

So while I just did a write-up for my houserules in an potentially upcoming campaign, I figured it might be a good idea to do some commentary on a recently released product from Frog God Games, since a chunk of it has to do with houserules!

So as the result of some kickstarters and FGG's ongoing work for the Pathfinder RPG and Swords & Wizardry they release Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks.  I must say Bill Webb's illustration on the front cover is a little scary! :)

Bill is a great guy, I've met him a number of times now thanks to PaizoCon.  He has done a lot of great work as head of FGG and supporting old school gaming in a mainstream sort of way.  The book of dirty tricks includes tons of tips (and tricks obviously) for running a RPG in the 'old way'.  There are tons of devious things a DM/referee could use to spice up some dungeon crawls.  The little booklet is valuable for all of this alone.  What I want to write about today are Bill's houserules that he has graciously included in the booklet.  I don't want to 'review' it because I feel like it's a little too subjective.  I want this to instead be commentary on the houserules and talk about why I like some ideas vs others and why someone might want to use them.  I've broken down the commentary by section.  Anyway, enjoy. :)
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Experience Points

Bill goes the typical route I think most OSR players are familiar.  It's not just a matter of killing monsters, you ideally want the treasure more than anything.  Any arguments about gold = xp aside, this is pretty standard.  What Bill does that not everyone does is make it so XP is gained by spending gold.  There is a sort of common sense to it I suppose.  I think it matters on the type of campaign.  In Bill's games I assume the characters are always going dungeon-crawling.  What's the use of 100k in gold but to spend on frivolously?  Other types of campaigns however, may have the players wish to use it on building a stronghold or otherwise.  That sort of thing isn't ruled out in Bill's explanation but the focus seems to spend it on "wine, women, and song".  Bill is pretty stingy on monster XP though.  Killing even strong monsters results in paltry XP.  Even the base values for S&W are pretty low to begin with, so we're really only comparing pennies to nickels in the view of the huge XP requirements for leveling.  It takes the old school mentality of "takes forever to level" a little bit more heavily.  I'm not sure if this is a good thing but it's certainly a valid style.

Attributes and Bonuses

This section isn't terribly surprising if you are familiar with the Whitebox version of Swords & Wizardry.  In fact, a lot of Bill's houserules seems derived from the Whitebox rules, which really means it's derived from the original three booklets of OD&D.  It is nice though, keeping the bonuses restricted to a +1 or -1.  It does take the 'fun' out of getting lucky with an 18 in strength, but overall S&W favors player skill over character ability, so it's not a big deal.  I'm already used to S&W Complete so I don't see myself using this, unless I was going strictly Whitebox S&W anyway.  I suppose I just prefer degrees of 'better'.

Table Dice Rolls

This one is short and sweet.  Do you roll in front of the players or not?  It's a tough one.  I surely admire the practice.  It makes things more transparent, and the DM certainly feels more like a 'referee' in this case.  Bill points out its more often that a DM 'cheat's in favor of a player than otherwise.  I agree completely.  I've don't this more often than I'd like to admit.  I don't like ruining fun with player death, but that is a very new school mentality to get over.  I saw do this if you can be brave enough and the players understand this.  There is no safety net, play carefully.

Damage Rolls and the Value of Magic Weapons

Here is another OD&D(Whitebox)-ism.  Using d6 for all weapon damage.  I do like it, though I don't use it myself.  My players are too used to the varied weapon dice to change.  I agree, 6 damage is enough to kill someone.  The only real issue I have is that a dagger isn't nearly as dangerous a weapon to say, a dragon or storm giant, as a sword would be.  That isn't reflected well.  I have a feeling my thought process is similar to what spawned the weapon vs size table from (I think it was) AD&D and the first instance of varied weapon dice.  Still, if I were running Whitebox Bill's specific listings in this section would be apt.  I do like giving magic weapon bonuses to attack rolls AND damage.  I thought it was always this way, so go figure that.  I don't use double damage on criticals in S&W either, so I'm with Bill on that one.  

Hit Points vs Rolls to Hit

Bill is right to say this one gets the most controversy.  I gotta say I'm still wrapping my head around it.  I disagree that getting more hit points and better attack bonuses is "double-dipping".  Double-dipping what?  If we think leveling up means a character is more resilient, can't that also mean they are better at fighting?  I can see the merit in this though.  Having static attack bonuses that don't increase except through magic gives another level of 'grit' to the game and levels the playing field a bit.  It does favor thieves' backstab as Bill says but I feel it stifles the Fighter a bit by only giving a very marginal fighting advantage.  "It's still tough to bust through plate armor even with 70 hp", except that some monsters' attacks may be better than others.  A dragon claw is surely more dangerous than a mace.  A dragon is much more likely to pierce through that armor than the mace right?  I've tried a few mock-battles, but I don't think I've done enough to see how much it impacts the game.  Bill does allude to it making fights a little longer.  I suppose if you were righting something with a -1 AC (meaning an 18 or better for a fighter) you only ever have a 15% chance to hit it each round and you are still whittling away at a large amount of HP assuming you are only doing on average 8 points of damage.  I'd be afraid of the quick back-and-forth swing-and-miss rounds just to resolve combat.  Anyway, I may need to test it more, but I don't figure I'll adopt this in my game unless for a special occasion.  

Travel and Getting Lost

Pretty straight forward stuff.  Similar to any other 'traveling' rules you may find in another RPG book.  I suppose if you didn't already have a favorite you could use this just fine.

Food and Water

Pretty straight forward stuff here too.  I don't know how much it is needed if you follow existing rules (and ration weights).  It does seem a little more strict on keeping track, which would be useful in making the game more realistic.  I'd just be afraid of slowing the game down.  I think I'll tentatively use it in my next campaign... we'll see.

Surprise, Initiative and Melee Order, and Spellcasting in Combat

Nothing really new here that isn't already described in S&W rules.  Might be interesting for a Pathfinder group.

Hit points, Death and Dying.

First level max HP, kind of a no-brainer for practicality's sake.  No one wants a fighter with 1HP.  Bill seems pretty generous with raise dead possibilities which may or may not match your campaign assumptions.  His way of dealing with when a character dies with negative HP makes sense.  I may use it but it seems everyone has their own little variation.  I sometimes prefer that a character dies when he has negative HP equal to his CON score or half of it.  Character with 18 CON dies at -18 for instance, or -9.

Doing Things Rather than Rolling Dice

This final topic is huge and I support it 100%.  I think most OSR games support this.  It a damn shame games like Pathfinder/3.5/4E threw this out the window.  I do like that Bill describes how in the 70s he let thieves into his game by letting the thief automatically detect there was a trap, but they still had to describe dealing with it.  I may include that in my game, and leave the disarm trap skill check to be for things a player can't help.  The player may say they are using a thieves' tool to do something inside of a mechanism but to be sure they don't accidentally hit something (like the game Operation) we need a skill check roll.  I do enjoy the tables Bill has provided, showing a great number of door mechanisms to use for secret doors and the like.   Will definitely be making use of this.

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Overall, like most houserules people talk about, it comes down to taste.  Some of what Bill does is great and I want to incorporate.  Other stuff just bounces off the backboard.  It's always good to check out other folks' houserules though.  It can often spark your own ideas on how to do things.  Again, the houserules are just a part of what is in the book of Dirty Tricks.  There is plenty of useful advice and resources included that I'll probably keep my copy close at hand while running TESC. 

TESC Houserules

So it's been a little over a month since my last post.  Real life happens I guess.  Had some life stuff to deal with.  My girlfriend's father passed away unexpectedly, went to a friend's wedding, work things.  I have been able to think a little bit more about my proposed The Episodic Sandbox Campaign.

One thing for sure is that TESC is going to have some houserules.  And nearly everyone is going to be inspired by or lifted from Adventurer Conqueror King.  I just love that rules system.  A lot of modern 'enlightened' rules are in there and I took the best ones to be imported into Swords & Wizardry.  I didn't choose them because they facilitated TESC any better, but because they are just neat ways to make S&W a little more interesting.

Anyone familiar with ACKS will recognize these but here they are:

• Fighters do additional bonus damage based on level, that stacks with strength bonuses.  This is taken from the ACKS fighter table.
• Fighter (and ONLY fighters) get cleaving.  This is again per ACKS, but comes down to killing an enemy means an extra free attack, going up to the fighter's level.  The fighter may take 5 foot steps between attacks up to their movement rate unused in their turn. 

I make those changes to give fighters a buff.  They need it.  They can become truly awesome killing machines this way.  I didn't want to give it to any other class like ACKS does because Paladins, Assassins, Rangers, etc. all have other good stuff going for them.  Monster are not getting cleave, as they usually get multiple attacks anyway.

• Thieves use the skill chart taken from ACKS instead of S&W Complete.
• Assassins similarly use the skill chart taken from ACKS but now get move silently, hide in shadows, and backstab at the same level as Thieves instead of two levels behind.  To be more clear, Assassins ONLY get move silently, hide in shadows, and backstab from the Thief class.  Other skills are not included.  They do retain their expertise in poisons.  

I want this because rolling a d20 for skills is easier than the different scales in S&W.  I also buffed Assassin skills because in S&W behind 2 levels behind never sat well with me.  They don't get the other skill monkey abilities, but stay good at what they are supposed to be good at.

• Clerics and Magic-Users now have repertoires, as per ACKS.  Quick summary is that a spellcaster can cast any spell in their repertoire up to their spells per day.  They don't need to memorize each spell for the day.  They can choose like a sorcerer would in 3rd edition of D&D.  A Cleric has all spells in his repertoire the DM decides (default spell list).  A magic-user's repertoire is equal to his spells per day plus extra based on high intelligence.  A spellbook can contain many more spells than a repertoire can have, but if a spellcaster wants to put in a new spell, money and time is required.   

Vancian magic is sort of funky.  Always has been.  ACKS found a good compromise, so I'm using repertoires to make spellcasters less OCD about spell selection.  I absolutely love ACKS's flavor explanation about why a spellcaster can only have so many spells in his repertoire.  I recommend reading it!

• On character generation, instead of wealth and initial spell selection, the class templates from the ACKS Player Companion will be used.

This one may or may not work out.  It's still fundamentally rolling 3d6 for wealth, but it's taking away the options of the player in favor of a more flavor-driven gear-set.  I think they are neat so we'll see how it goes.

•  Mortal wounds and tampering with mortality charts from ACKS to be used

Another one of those 'neat' things from ACKS.  When you are brought to 0 hit points or incapacitated in combat the mortal wounds chart is consulted to determine how bad you really got it.  Lots of cool results here.  Tampering with mortality is the result of raise dead and resurrection spells.  Also fun stuff.

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Now I think that may be it.  The campaign isn't near happening so I can change this if I need.  It's very much a "peanut butter in my chocolate" set up, but ACKS does so many things right.   You might say, "why not just use ACKS?"  Well, trying to have my players learn yet another system would be annoying I'm sure.  They have the PDF or print version of S&W so giving them some houserules is a lot easier than having them buy new rulebooks and relearn some things based on the mechanics of ACKS.  I don't need the proficiency system or any other frills.  I'm just taking what I think is the best of the best and grafting it onto my S&W.

Anyway, if any of my players read this, I'll have a single page handout with all the applicable rules for you.  Should be good stuff. :)

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Post #1 - Alternate Rules: Ascending Saving Throws

Today is Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day!  Well, at least on the East Coast it is.  I'm still waiting here on the West coast BUT I figured I'd get my first blog post for the day posted.  I plan on making another post later today after work.  So stay tuned.

For more blogs that are involved in the event, see Erik Tenkar's Blog!

Oh, and excuse the black text on a dark background for the tables below.  Formatting isn't fun at times.

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Some of the fun of old school gaming is the ability to house rule things or use alternative methods of resolving player actions.  Swords & Wizardry combined this idea with a more modern idea of ascending armor class to create an alternative method for combat resolution that helps those used to more modern gaming rules.  The basic idea behind it is that whether you are using descending or ascending armor class, the goal is to roll a dice (add or subtract modifiers) and hope to meet a required threshold.  In the same way Matthew Finch created the ascending AC conversion method, I give you the ascending saving throw.

In Swords & Wizardry there is a single saving throw used by players for their characters when they are avoiding some catastrophe.  As a character levels up and gains more power and experience, the number needed to be rolled by the player when making a saving throw decreases.  In effect, the target dice roll becomes easier to reach.  When a target is made to be more difficult (or easier) it is suggested that a negative or positive modifier be applied to the roll.  An example would be 'the snake venom requires a saving throw with a -2 penalty'.  For the gamer, this means what they roll is decreased by two.

To create an ascending system, we have to create a baseline.  At first level, the player character classes have saving throw progressions as follows:   

Level	Cleric	Fighter	Magic-user	Thief
1	15	14	15	15
2	14	13	14	14
3	13	12	13	13
4	12	11	12	12
5	11	10	11	11
6	10	9	10	10
7	9	8	9	9
8	8	7	8	8
9	7	6	7	7
10	6	5	6	6
11	5	4	5	5
12	4	4	5	5
13	4	4	5	5

The baseline seems to be 15.  The exception is the Fighter with 14.  We can simulate the difficulty class of a saving throw by setting 15 to instead be a +0 bonus to saves.  With this, the Fighter's saving throw bonus is +1.  As the characters level up, their saving throw bonuses slowly increase.  They will retain their class bonus features like the Fighter's +2 bonus against poison.  With the introduction of DC's to Swords & Wizardry, it will let you standardize saving throw events.  Rather than incur a -2 penalty against a certain venom, the venom's DC would instead be 17.  This assumes a standard DC of 15 for most situations.  What we've done is keep the target threshold for the dice the same, but changed how improvements are tracked. 

The new saving throw progressions are as follows:

Level	Cleric	Fighter	Magic-user	Thief
1	+0	+1	+0	+0
2	+1	+2	+1	+1
3	+2	+3	+2	+2
4	+3	+4	+3	+3
5	+4	+5	+4	+4
6	+5	+6	+5	+5
7	+6	+7	+6	+6
8	+7	+8	+7	+7
9	+8	+9	+8	+8
10	+9	+10	+9	+9
11	+10	+11	+10	+10
12	+11	+11	+10	+10
13	+11	+11	+10	+10

 

This alternative rules variant is recommended to gamers used to modern role-playing  game systems or for those wanting a simpler way of creating saving throw challenges.  Enjoy!