Silver Weapons

Silver weapons are a pretty good staple of myth and fantasy. Silver bullets disposing of witches and werewolves date to at least the 1700's. A silver dagger narrowly saves the day against a necromancer when all other weapons have failed for Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser in their origin story by Fritz Leiber, "Ill Met In Lankhmar" (here illustrated by artist Mike Mignola):

This may hurt a bit.

Now, I was somewhat surprised to realize what a relative dearth of silver weapons there are in classic D&D. To wit:

• OD&D (1973): The basic equipment table in Vol-1 includes a "silver tipped arrow" for 5 gp, and nothing else; obviously this looks like Gygax's medieval analog to the silver bullet. A few of the monsters in Vol-2 require at least silver weapons to hit; for wights and wraiths this is phrased as "silver-tipped arrows will score normal damage", which may look like a weirdly specific restriction, unless you realize that's the only such weapon in the preceding equipment list. But lycanthropes refer to "silver weapons" in the more general phrasing.
• Holmes Basic D&D (1977): The equipment list is effectively identical to OD&D; the "silver tipped arrow" is included and no other type. The restrictions for wights, wraiths, and lycanthropes use identical language as in OD&D.
• AD&D 1E (1978): No change here: the silver arrow is included in the expanded equipment list, and it's still the only such weapon. Both wights and wraiths have had their vulnerability text changed to the more general term "silver weapons", even though only the one type exists in the equipment list. Some other lower-planes types have also been added that require at least silver to hit (ghosts, imps, night hags, and greater devils).
• Moldvay Basic D&D (1981): This is the first ruleset that has more than the single silver arrow; Moldvay adds the "silver dagger" for 30 gp (a la Leiber above). This finally gives an option to characters in melee combat; note what a bad scene it would be in prior rules for a silver-required creature to close to hand-to-hand range when the only silver weapon available  is the arrow.
• AD&D 2E (1989): Not only is the list of silver weapons not further expanded at this time, but they're actually entirely removed from the equipment list as far as I can tell. Absolutely no appearances of the phrase "silver weapon" (or "arrow", or "dagger") appear in my copy of the 2E PHB. Yet those wights, wraiths, lycanthropes, etc., in the Monstrous Manual still have the same silver-minimum requirement to hit them. The DMG has a section on "Silver Weapons", but in standard 2E style, this is entirely a rumination of optional limitations the DM could put on any such weapons (need entire blade of pure silver, broken with regular use); no prices or accessibility rules are given. Good luck, you princes of role-play, you characters of 2E!
• D&D 3E (2000): Expanding the list for the first time in two decades, the PHB has a section on "Special and Superior Items" which includes the "arrow, bolts, or bullet, silvered", as well as the "dagger, silvered". The monster defenses have been jostled around a bit; lycanthropes have "damage resistance 15", bypassed by silver or magic weapons (i.e., normal weapons are not totally impotent, but have their damage reduced by 15 points), whereas wights and wraiths have had the defense removed entirely (although wraiths now require at least magic to hit, as they have become fully "incorporealized" at this time). 
• D&D 3.5 (2003): The status of silver weapons gets even further shuffled around in this revision to 3rd Edition. Specifically, other weapon materials come into play for some monsters (like adamantine and cold iron), and now any weapon may be constructed out of silver or any of the other special materials. In addition, magic weapons no longer serve to trump those resistances. 

In my Book of War game, the silver-weapon restriction is a big reason why I've avoided adding monsters such as wights, wraiths, and lycanthropes (even if they are a staple in mass battles seen in Tolkien, say). Obviously, it requires the addition of silver weapons or else these unit types would automatically massacre normal men without recourse. And we basically need to price the lycanthropes (or whatever) such that they are sure to lose against men pre-armed with silver weapons (so as to balance against the fact that they automatically win if they face off against men without such weapons). But even if we price silver weapons at a minimum 1 of gold per figure, it then turns out that those men will be so under-powered as to generally lose against any other normal type (the Book of War prices are that sensitively balanced). So in playtests, if we include these options, the entire Book of War system immediately collapses into a game of rock-paper-scissors: the only relevant choice is whether one selects (1) lycanthropes, or (2) men with silver weapons, or (3) men without silver weapons -- and the game is effectively determined as soon as the players reveal what units they have brought to the table.

Personally, I do like the appearance of silver arrows as a witty stand-in for silver bullets; and the silver dagger gives an option to those in melee combat against the forces of darkness (e.g., otherwise our friends Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser would have had a very short career indeed!). But allowing larger types like swords and battle axes in 3rd Edition seems like lazy, mindlessly-abstracted, "we no longer care about the concrete details of our world" game design. That is: in reality a large weapon made of soft silver would instantly bend and break. And I kind of think that real-world detail of being reduced to a less powerful weapon adds commendably to the sense of desperation in fights against these kinds of supernatural monsters.

What do you allow for silver weapons in your games? Is it arrows-only as in OD&D and AD&D? Do you permit daggers like Moldvay (and Leiber) did? Or is it anything-goes like in 3rd Edition and later?


Edit: Several have commentators have pointed out that while early editions have no silver daggers in the starting equipment lists, there are numerous instances of them given as possible treasures. Zenopus Archives notes there is a silver-dagger in the Holmes Basic Sample Dungeon, and also Gygax's Caves of Chaos (B2). Marathon Recaps & Professor Oats note that a silver-dagger is included in the original robe of useful items from Dragon #26, and so reprinted with that inclusion in 1E AD&D DMG Appendix P. Excellent finds!

XP: The Big Switch, Pt. 3

One final observation on the difference between the monster XP award system between Original Vol-1 (linear in HD) and Revised Sup-I (parabolic in HD up to name level). Let's run our updated Arena simulator program under both these XP award systems. Parameters in use here are: 10,000 fighters, 200 cycles of one-on-one man-vs-monster combat, expected treasure awards being added, no special abilities simulated (so: somewhat safer for the men), -2 modifier given to the random monster level die.

Here's the resulting fighter population with the Revised (Sup-I) XP system:

And here's the population generated under the Original (Vol-1) system:

So this reiterates the expected finding that the Original (linear) XP system is much more generous to low-level characters (by a factor of fully ×10 XP value), and so we get somewhat more lower-level characters successfully leveling up, or in other words, the curve for advancing levels is noticeably more gentle.

Interpolating the curve at lower levels for the Revised system gives an advancement function of about y = k e^(-1.4x) (where x is the level, k the 0-level men-at-arms population, and y the population at any other level), or approximately dividing by 4 at each sequential level. In contrast, the Original system generates a simpler advancement function of close to y = k e^(-x), or approximately dividing by 3 at each sequential level.

Moreover, looking at the Original XP system, compare several possibilities for a modifier to the "Monster Determination and Level of Monster Matrix" (Vol-3, p. 10), versus the prescribed higher-level leader proportions from encounters with Men (Vol-2, p. 5):

We see that a modifier of -2 to the random-monster die roll in the Arena gives the best match (least sum-squared difference) to the leadership proportions given in Vol-2 (whereas previously under the Revised XP system we saw that a modifiers of -3 or even -4 from book was necessary). So in other words: Taken as a whole, the Original XP awards are closer to presenting an overall rational system of demographics in D&D.

I suppose the most important consideration is: How fast do you want your PCs leveling up, in terms of number of encounters faced? (And this was in fact used as the starting axiom for the 3E XP system, for example.) If you use the Original linear system, you will have PCs advancing through the lower levels somewhat more rapidly than many of us are accustomed to in D&D. In the period when Gygax was running pickup games in his basement every night of the week, perhaps he legitimately felt the need to slow down advancement, so that people weren't gaining multiple levels within a week of play. But for those of us who now play somewhat less frequently, perhaps the original system from Vol-1 -- which is actually a better representation of the real "value" of a monster, and also a more generally coherent demographic system, and also a lot simpler -- is still the more encouraging one.


Get the updated Java source code to the Arena program (v. 106) here.

XP: The Big Switch, Pt. 2

In the last blog we looked at the two different systems for awarding XP for defeated monsters in D&D: (1) in the the original white box set, Vol-1, a simple linear progression of 100 XP for HD, and (2) in the revised Supplement-I (and later editions), a much-depressed parabolic progression up to about 9 HD, and then effectively the same linear 100 XP per HD for levels after that. So which is really better?

Now, one of my major game-design principles is that finding the right in-game value or "price"for different unit types is very hard. And by very hard I mean: (1) A table or formula of added components for this purpose is certain to be insufficient for this job (c.f. Traveller spaceship construction, War Machine unit values, D&D 3E magic items, etc.); the only way to properly gauge the interaction of all the different moving parts is through actual playtesting, each unit as a coherent individual piece. And (2) This correct playtest-balancing is by far the hardest part of game design, like, a whole order of magnitude more work than all the rest of the design put together.

So given that, I'd like to use my extensive playtests for Book of War as a resource, since over the years I've lost track of how many hundreds of millions, or billions, of computer-simulated combats I've run for each unit type; that is, I'm pretty confident about the relative "cost" values for each unit there. And even if you don't trust that (although you could verify with the simulator program here), note that the cost values generated eerily match those found in the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement, or original D&D Vol-3 Men-At-Arms costs, so you could just reference Gygax there if you prefer.

The original XP table for D&D only considers Hit Dice, but of course other factors can make a monster much weaker or more powerful. Greater movement, armor class, attacks, and damage can enormously change the value of a type. That's even before we consider "special abilities" like flying, poison, paralysis, turn-to-stone, fire breath, regeneration, etc. Even just having a ranged attack will at least double the value of a piece (e.g., see Vol-3 Men-At-Arms), because that effectively gives many more attacks on the table. Let's reduce our sample space by only looking at units from BOW that are foot, melee-only units with the identical armor value of 5 (same as AC 5, chain mail). Here's what that part of the BOW database looks like:

And let's chart the Hit Dice versus the Cost values:

That's an interesting chart, because there's a very clear outlier: Trolls, the very example given in Vol-1 which allows us to extrapolate any kind of XP awards in the first place. (Again I'll point out that both my Book of War game and Gygax's Chainmail Fantasy agree that Trolls should have a cost of about 70 [75 in Chainmail], with Hill Giants at the lower cost of 50, etc.) If we remove the Troll outliers, then the rest of the chart is basically a linear progression, as shown below:

So this says that for those simple medium-foot units, you could approximate the proper cost in BOW by just taking the hit dice and multiplying by 6 or 7 in each case, and this would account for over 98% of the variation from the mean for those types.

In other words: The value of raw Hit Dice is really linear -- it's not geometric or parabolic or higher-powered in any way. I find this unsurprising for a few reasons: (1) Taking higher-HD creatures generally reduces the number of attacks on a per-HD basis (10 orcs get 10 attacks, but a 10-HD giant only gets one attack; in most cases I'd prefer the former when attacking). (2) We also know that higher individual hit dice are effectively devalued in hits taken, because it presents a simpler "packing problem" to the attacker in applying damage (see here). Now, that two-fold devaluation for higher hit dice is somewhat offset by higher to-hit chances; but you also need some other assumed improvements in movement, damage, and minor special abilities (e.g., throwing rocks) just to maintain parity on a per-HD basis (i.e., to maintain even a linear price increase).

So that argues for the original Vol-1 XP system (linear) over the Sup-I alternative (parabolic). However: What the Vol-1 system was certainly blind to was the need to account for special abilities in some way -- with a canonical case in the very Troll that Vol-1 used for its example; it certainly needs to be worth more than 700 XP no matter how you slice or re-slice it (they are very dangerous in practice). Of course, as we saw in the last post, the Sup-I "special ability" awards were pretty close to the base awards themselves; you don't really need a new table for that, as even in Vol-1 you could broadly just "double" (or: add a like amount to the base XP) the award for a powerful special ability like regeneration, and, for example, give out 1,400 XP for defeating a Troll. (That's just about the proportional difference we see between Troll and Giant costs in the table above.) And it would be justified to likewise give this same doubling adjustment for other statistical improvements like high armor class, ranged attacks (at least for numerous low-HD creatures), etc., etc.

Thus, it seems that the Vol-1 linear system really presents the best true "value" per Hit Die (with appropriate special ability adjustments, as for Trolls). But here are a few possible counterarguments to this theory: One is that in Original D&D's fairly small monster list, high-HD creatures almost uniformly had more deadly special abilities (spells, petrification, breath weapon, swallowing whole, etc.); so perhaps that was accounted for in the system in the first place, and only needed to be disentangled when a greater variety of monsters appeared later on (although I think that's disproven by the relative value of Giants and Trolls in Chainmail, which gets flip-flopped in Vol-1 XP in the absence of any such modifier).

A second counterargument is that the Sup-I adjustment (parabolic through level 9, then linear) may be intended to reflect the progression in the class XP tables: geometric through about Name Level, and then a constant addition for higher levels. This is a somewhat stronger counterargument. Let's look at the relative "number of monsters defeated to gain a level":

The Vol-1 system presents a sliding scale: A single 1st-level fighter in this system must defeat about 20 1st-level monsters to level up (ignoring treasure considerations); and this number slowly increases up to around 100 after name level. But the Sup-I system is more consistent in this sense: At almost every level the fighter needs to kill about 100 monsters to level up (ignoring the anomalous 200 monster requirement at 1st level).

But on the other hand: The depressed Sup-I monster XP implies that about 95% of earned XP will be from treasure at 1st level, sliding to some 70% at level 21+ (link). By my calculations, the original Vol-1 XP system has a more constant proportion in that regard, with around 65-80% XP coming from treasure across any level; and in that way, monster XP is still the smaller part, but not totally negligible, as in the later system.

So the relative merits seem to boil down to this:

• Original Vol-1 XP System: This linear system is easier to use, requiring no table. It better reflects the actual added "value" per raw monster hit die (although manual additions are needed for "special abilities"). It supports a convenient linear conversion to unit values shown in Chainmail Fantasy, Men-At-Arms costs, Book of War costs, etc. It allows lower-level characters to level up after defeating a fairly reasonable 10 or 20 monsters (instead of hundreds in the Sup-I system, excluding treasure). And it has a more even and constant monster/treasure XP split, in a ratio of about 1:3 across all levels.


• Revised Sup-I XP System: This piecewise-parabolic system better reflects the class XP tables, and so generates a nearly constant number of monsters needed to gain the next level in each case (although this number is very high, approximately 100 monsters per level; or in other words, monster XP is nearly negligible compared to treasure XP). And it's compatible and familiar to players of any later edition of D&D.

At the moment, to my eye, it appears that the original, simple Vol-1 system has more qualities in its favor. What do you think?

XP: The Big Switch, Pt. 1

Experience awards from monsters saw a big switch between Original D&D (Vol-1) and the first Supplement (Sup-I, Greyhawk). In short, original Vol-1 implied a simple linear award of 100 xp per monster Hit Die, while Sup-I changed this to a geometric-like award, increasing cumulatively per Hit Die -- and this was the system maintained in later editions like AD&D, Holmes and Moldvay Basic D&D, etc.

Let's consider the details. The very first volume of Original D&D is famously cryptic, to say the least, about XP awards. This is what it says:

As characters meet monsters in mortal combat and defeat them, and when they obtain various forms of treasure (money, gems, jewelry, magical items, etc.), they gain "experience". This adds to their experience point total, gradually moving them upwards through the levels. Gains in experience points will be relative; thus an 8th level Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experience. Let us assume he gains 7,000 Gold Pieces by defeating a troll (which is a 7th level monster, as it has over 6 hit dice). Had the monster been only a 5th level one experience would be awarded on a 5/8 basis as already stated, but as the monster guarding the treasure was a 7th level one experience would be awarded on a 7/8 basis thus; 7,000 G.P. + 700 for killing the troll = 7,700 divided by 8 = 962.5 x 7 = 6,037.5. Experience points are never awarded above a 1 for 1 basis, so even if a character defeats a higher level monster he will not receive experience points above the total of treasure combined with the monster's kill value. It is also recommended that no more experience points be awarded for any single adventure than will suffice to move the character upwards one level.

So the truth is, OD&D fails to give an explicit rule for XP, and the best we could do is make an interpretation of this one example of defeating a troll and taking its treasure. It appears that 1 GP of treasure is worth 1 XP (and of course this is familiar from all later editions). And it also appears that 1 HD of defeated monster is worth 100 XP (as per this troll whose 6+3 Hit Dice are assessed as being "7th level", i.e., 700 XP). Of course, even this brief passage manages to be self-contradictory: initially it says that the warlock on the 5th dungeon level should have XP scaled by 5/8; but then this is overruled a few sentences later, where defeating a creature of the 7th monster level scales XP by 7/8.

But then in Supplement-I, Gygax makes the great XP overhaul. He archly writes:

Guidelines for Awarding Experience Points for Monster Slaying: (Addition)
The awarding of experience points is often a matter of discussion, for the referee must make subjective judgments. Rather than the (ridiculous) 100 points per level for slain monsters, use the table below, dividing experience equally among all characters in the party involved. (Sup-I, p. 12)

Below I've recreated that table and a chart to visualize the new awards. Here I've converted Hit Dice such as "2+1" to a decimal fraction of 2.3 (granted original d6-based hit dice, a 1-pip adjustment is worth 1/3.5 ≈ 0.286 or about 0.3 of a full hit die). In the chart, base value XP are in blue, and added points for special abilities in orange:

This visualization clarifies something that's otherwise easy to miss. There's two separate sections to the Sup-I table that should be treated distinctly (what we'd call a "piecewise function" mathematically): the low-HD section up to about 9 HD, where there is a notable curve to the chart; and the high-HD section after that, where it's pretty obvious  that the progression becomes more like a straight line. Part of the reason that's easy to misinterpret is that the XP table apparently keeps adding larger numbers in the later rows, but since these rows span multiple Hit Dice, it actually works out being basically a constant addition per Hit Die (i.e., linear).

A few side notes: In D&D, this is the same arithmetic illusion as in the Saving Throw tables that make people think that Magic-Users are better at saves vs. spells than Fighters, for example, when on a level-for-level basis they're actually not. And mathematically, this serves as a good case study that one should visualize one's data first before blindly running statistical procedures on it (like regressions or correlations) -- something which I must admit due to time constraints I don't completely enforce in the statistics classes that I myself teach. 

Having noted the switch between the two parts of the XP table, let's make a best-fit model for each section:

We see from the "Low HD" chart that the increasing numbers that Gygax selected there are essentially parabolic; that is, a formula that looks like y = kx² accounts for better than 99% of the variation from the mean. The other thing we see is that the "Additional Points for Special Abilities" is, relatively speaking, not very far off from the "Base Value" of XP. Massaging the numbers above a bit, as we are fond of doing here, you could roughly compute the base value of XP as y = 10x² (where x is the number of hit dice), and the special ability award as about y = 9x² (or, to simplify matters completely, just add a like value as per the base XP award).

On the other hand, we note that in the "High HD" chart, a straight linear regression does indeed account for more than 99% of the variation from the mean in the base award, and over 96% of the variation from the mean for the special ability award. Again simplifying the numbers from the true regression, we could approximate the base XP award as about y = 120x − 400, and the special ability award as about y = 100x − 400.

Or, to make a significant observation that would provide an even greater simplification -- The numbers in the "High HD" part of the table are very nearly a simple 100 XP per Hit Die (e.g., 9 HD gives 900 XP, 11 HD gives 1100 XP, 20 HD gives 2000 XP, etc.). Exactly the same as the original Vol-1 rule! 

So we might interpret this observation as saying: The altered XP rules in OD&D Sup-I (and hence throughout later rulesets, like the entire B/X and AD&D lines) really only change things for lower-level monsters and PCs, i.e., those up to about 9 HD, greatly depressing the monster XP awards there -- while leaving awards at higher levels very nearly the same. Then the question we might ask is: Which approach is really better? More next time.

• Part 2
• Part 3

More Sprechenhaltestelle

In the last post, many of us were scratching our collective heads over the very cryptic identifiers, roles, and connections of the many NPC's in Merele Rasmussen's original Top Secret mini-setting, Sprechenhaltestelle.

To help untangle this puzzle, I spent some time this weekend making a master roster of all the personnel in the setting, cross-indexed by described role and location day and night (as well as gender and nationality, as noted for their highest language score).

One thing this really highlights is how the module is designed as a mystery for the reader. Most of the street-level locations and personnel appear generally innocent, or with at most some arch foreshadowing; whereas when they appear in the below-street level section key, their dark secrets are revealed. In many cases, particularly for members of Amontillado Alley this runs on some pun on their above-ground role (the printer is a counterfeiter, the butcher a surgeon, the gypsy palm reader a seller of surveillance gear, the cobbler who helps you walk properly procures motor vehicles, etc.). Also, the numerical area codes for this area are usually synchronized from above-to-below ground (I never noticed that before).

The personnel codes are clearly not completely uniform in their usage. Here's the best pattern-making that I could make with them:

Groups in Sprechenhaltestelle

• A: Amontillado Alley personnel and assistants (mostly)
• B: Busboy, barber, beautician, butcher (mostly)
• C: No recognizable pattern?
• D: Detention (mostly)
• G: Guards at warehouses
• S: Surface personnel (some associated with AA)
• U: Underground personnel (at Pair-A-Dice)
• W: Waitresses (mostly)
• X, Y, Z: Civilians not associated with spycraft (leave town at night, no contacts or code phrases)

Individuals in Sprechenhaltestelle

• L1: Launderer
• R1: Waiter (?)
• WS1: Wine steward
• HC: Hotel cook
• HD: Hotel dishwasher
• HSO: Hotel switchboard operator
• NSO: Nighttime switchboard operator
• WCS: Wood carving sailor, a.k.a. wino, crazed in sewer. 

Below,  you'll find links to the complete roster that I compiled. Not everything got filled; there are a number of NPC's for whom I could find no description of their role at all in the key (notably: C2, C3, C15, S2, S4, and S120). A few others didn't specify where they spend their nights (S1, HD), and many didn't specify a particular gender. Another thing that could be added here (if I was going to run the adventure) would be random names based on their observed nationality (again, inferred from their best language score; see Top Secret rulebook p. 6, all-caps section: native fluency must be scored highest).

Can you fill in the missing roles for those mystery personnel (perhaps by doing some detective work with the contacts list)? Can you see any pattern for the "C" personnel that I'm missing?

• Sprechenhaltestelle Personnel Roster (ODS file)
• Sprechenhaltestelle Personnel Roster (PDF file)

Top Secret and Sprechenhaltestelle

Back in the day, TSR's espionage game Top Secret was, I think the second RPG I ever got after D&D. Mostly this was just due to its release date as I became aware of RPGs, and possibly the modern setting. I was a complete blank slate about the spy/espionage genre, and frankly I think I played/admin'd the game very, very badly indeed. At some point I boxed it up and it's probably the most rarely-looked-at game that I own.

Well, about a month ago the Hulu online TV service got rights to play most of the original James Bond movies, and during lunch breaks I started to watch them, for the first time ever, in the original chronology. I'd say it's delightfully loopy. The young Sean Connery is truly a pleasure just to watch move around a room. And the gestures in these movies echo throughout all later action and superhero movies and comics, so I feel a lot more learned about all those references now. And of course I was prompted to open up Top Secret again and view it through more informed eyes about the genre expectations. (One thing about the old games: they assumed that you had intimate knowledge of the outside genre, and in many cases gave pretty naked mechanics for these things they assumed you could recognize by name.)

One thing that's attractive is the dictum: "Unlike many role-playing games, TOP SECRET games are best with a smaller number of players... the simple, straightforward missions are ideally suited to a minimum of players; the Admin, of course, and perhaps one or two agents." (p. 4). Particularly so that I've been doing a lot of solo play at the request of my partner Isabelle lately; and this is again something that was very bent, in the opposite direction, when I played the game as a teenager with my D&D buddies. So then I opened up the sample adventure module (really a mini-campaign setting), Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle by game creator Merle Rasmussen, for more guidance on how to design an espionage RPG mission.

A few things: The map of the small European city is very clean and attractive, even while giving a very dense amount of content and places to explore. The format is the same as D&D Module B1: In Search of the Unknown -- locations are described with dressing, and then space is given to add extra unique characters and treasures from a list at the back of the module. The first four pages of introductory advice are in fact mostly copied from the B1 text and lightly altered for the modern-day espionage setting (it even talks about "order of march", etc.). The group size is somewhat larger than the core rules indicate; party size is likely four or more characters (bolstered by NPCs if needed).

I count almost 120 characters pre-stocked in the setting. Somewhat awkwardly, none are given names (which seems a bit against type; in the 007 films among the most important highlights is revealing the outrageous names of the characters, with the single best-known catchphrase of course being "Bond, James Bond"; but this could be due to space limitations in the publication). Characters each have a "Personnel Code"which keys to a big table at the back of the module with ability scores, skills, languages, contacts, secrets, and weapons.

The thing that mystified me is that the Personnel Codes have a prefix which is clearly non-random, but is not given any clear definition in the module itself. For example: there are characters A1 to A11; B1 to B6; C1-23, then C143, C144, C210, CC; D1-4; G1-7; L1 and R1; S1-21, followed by S72, S120, S0, and SS14; U01 to U15; W1 to W3 and WS1; X1 to X9; Y1 and Y2; HC, HD, HS0, NS0, WCS, Z1, and Z2. These NPCs are scattered throughout the setting, and don't not appear together in any recognizable way; for example, the Hotel includes characters C4, C5, C18, C143, C144, HS0, HC, HD, S2, S3, and NS0. I flipped through the book more than once trying to find an explanation for these seemingly-important prefixes.

Fortunately, I was able to get in touch with the creator, Merle Rasmussen, on Facebook, and he most graciously answered my question about it. He wrote:

Thanks for the question. I had to go find a 35 year old copy of OPERATION: SPRECHENHALTESTELLE. For A, B, and S, I cannot remember any underlying meaning to the Personnel Code Prefixes. CC refers to Cafe Cook which may have been added after the C codes were assigned. WCS refers to Homicidal Wino, but the underlying meaning escapes me. Although I cannot find UU, I am guessing the U stands for "Underground." B seems to stand for "Busboy, Barber, Beautician, and Butcher" G seems to stand for "Guard." Someone with more time may be able to figure out a pattern. Sorry to be so obtuse.

Of course, I don't that's obtuse at all, in fact very helpful (and quite beyond what some would do to  actually look up the reference in a work they published 35 years ago). This at least indicates that the prefixes are mostly job categories, and not necessarily, say, faction alliances or something like that.

And this does given us a Rosetta Stone to start decoding those Personnel Codes. Looking at the Hotel area, for example (area 1. in the adventure), the hotel staff seem to mostly have the "H" prefix, while others must be guests -- HS0 is the hotel switchboard operator, HC the hotel cook, HD the hotel dishwasher, NS0 the nighttime switchboard operator, C5 the front-desk clerk. In the outdoor Cafe (area 3) -- CC is the cafe cook, W1 and W2 are waitresses, while C7 and R1 are waiters, B1 a busboy, and WS1 a wine steward. On the other hand, there's a sniper on a rooftop with personnel code of B6 (definitely not a busboy). So there are some suggestive patterns, but it's not totally consistent.

Is there any other decryption that you can accomplish on the Sprechenhaltestelle Personnel Codes?

Edit: More here.

Mark Fickett Rolls Lots of Dice

Mark Fickett got really serious about checking dice experimentally for fairness. He constructed a mechanism that automaticallyy a die every 4½ seconds and ran that on different dice, around 8000 times each, until he could analyze all the different dice from major manufacturers. There are charts, videos, statistics, and construction details.

One interesting finding that Mark makes for this experiment, regarding number of rolls per die, is: "This leads me to a heuristic of 100 rolls per side (800 for a d8, 2000 for a d20). It is of course a subjective heuristic." This broadly lines up with my own prior recommendation from looking at power curves for chi-square tests on these dice: "For a d6, I wouldn't want to use any less than n = 100 as a minimum (and ideally something like n = 500 if you're serious about it). For a d20, n = 500 would be a useful minimum (and at least several thousand to find reasonably small variations)."

Mark Fickett Art: Dice Roller