Wargames at U.S. Naval College

Over at the OD&D Discussion forums, rustic313 shared some excellent photos from a visit, inspecting some of the wealth of information on use of wargames for training and preparing officers, from the 1880's, through WWI and WWII, to the present day. Amazing stuff. Check it out and consider visiting if you're near to RI.

http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/13356/naval-college-museum-wargaming-exhibits

https://usnwc.edu/NWC-Museum

OED NPC Generator

I uploaded a batch of new code updates to the Arena repository on GitHub (see link below).

First and foremost, there's a new application there, NPC Generator, to conveniently create OED-compatible NPCs that are complete and playable at the table. This includes all the basic races and characters classes, multiclassing for elves, simple magic items, OED feats, spells memorized, names, suggested personalities keyed off alignment, etc. Unlike the other applications, these creations use a random heuristic without simulating the NPC's entire adventuring career (which is currently not feasible for thieves & wizards; maybe someday). As usual, it's an old-school program for old-school gaming; local desktop based-only, with a very minimalist command-line interface. (Java compiler required.)

Secondly, I overhauled the Marshal program (which generates complete listing for bands of Men in the wilderness, including fighter leaders that are generated by simulating their entire adventuring career) to have more streamlined and useful output. Previously, it would print very long reams of lower-level officers in detail; really, a lot more than could reasonably useful in-game. Now it prints only the top 4 leaders (think: captain, lieutenant, two sergeants), which (a) seems more obviously useful, (b) fits much more conveniently on a digest page, and (c) better simulates historical listings (e.g., Civil War company-level rosters).

Meanwhile, the Arena and MonsterMetrics applications work the same. In particular, MonsterMetrics has gone through regression testing so as to confirm that monster EHD (Equivalent Hit Dice) recommendations are the same as they were before.

As always, this code is released with the open-source GPL v. 2 license, so feel free to download, copy, share, edit, fork, use as the basis for a web program, etc., etc. Of course, there's always more work that can be done. But this has streamlined a lot of my game prep, so hope it might helps some of yours, too.

Arena on GitHub

(P.S.: OMG these kinds of programs would be so much simpler if it weren't for multiclassing!)

OED Update (v. 1.05)

The last time I posted a new version of the OED House Rules was over a year ago (in September, 2017). Since then I've had the distinct pleasure of getting to run a regular campaign with a great group of cunning players here in New York City. Of course, as players "bang" against the rules in real time, some adjustments have been made. In fact: I've gotten pretty liberal about letting the cosmos jitter in supernatural ways between sessions, and thereby try out new rules on a regular basis, sometimes just for a single evening. Nonetheless, it seems like our favored ruleset tends to get more stable over time, so the New Years seemed like a good time to publicly update it.

Below are some of the more interesting (I think) rules edits in this version, 1.05. Of course, there may be other more minor edits to be found if you look really closely; and I'm always updating the endnotes with more comprehensive historical references, justifications, and side-comments for why we've chosen to do things this way.

Player's Rules

• Highlight that humans get unlimited level advancement.
• Dwarf/elf detection keyed to stone/wood materials.
• Allow 3 retries for thief & wizard skills. 
• Make spears specialty attack from 2nd rank.
• Make ranged attack modifier −1 per 10 feet.
• Adding a new class costs 1,000 XP.

Judge's Rules

• Added guidelines on advertising for hirelings, expected pay, etc.
• Light rules made a bit more generous based on recent research. 
• Insanity Cards recommended for sanity mechanic (link). 
• Rapelling/rope break rule made only in case of sudden jolt.
• Wandering monster checks increased to every 15 minutes.
• Critical hits possibly only for those above 1 HD.
• Poison: Death in 1-6 rounds (so curatives can help).
• Healing: Simplified to level + Con bonus per week of rest.
• XP Awards: Explicit note to use EHD from OED monster database.

Get version 1.05 on the OED Games website.

Enjoy, and hope you have a happy New Year!

P.S.: Have you been watching the conversations on the Wandering DMs YouTube Channel? This past weekend Paul and I debated the utility of the Thief class in old-school D&D. We plan to be back Sunday Jan-13 and regular alternate Sundays after that (1 PM EST).

D&D Alignments Defined by Desire Paths

• Lawful: Will never use a desire path.
• Neutral: Will use a pre-existing desire path.
• Chaotic: Will start a new desire path.

Desire path (Wikipedia).

Livestream Sunday

Don't forget, Paul and I plan to have a new "Wandering DMs" livestream scheduled on YouTube this Sunday Dec-23 at 1 PM EST. Feel free to chime in with a comment during the discussion and also subscribe to the channel -- if we hit 100 subscribers it unlocks extra tools for us to manage and offer to any followers, which sounds nifty. See you then!

Wandering DMs on YouTube

Edit: Due to a technical issue, we should be streaming later this evening, we expect around 5:30 PM.

Gygaxian Magic-User Spell Usage

Question: In what proportion do Gygaxian magic-users tend to prepare spells of different use-cases, such as offensive, defensive, or miscellaneous types?

This may be of interest in loading out wizard-types in the same sensibility as the original game designer. Obviously it doesn't make sense for wizards to sit around without any martial spells at all, nor would it make for an interesting game. On the other hand, there seems a need for wizards to have some spells usable for things like information-gathering and research, since presumably they are engaged in that most days in their lair, not combat.

"So, then, does a threatened cleric cast a know alignment spell upon an aggressor? Or a hold person? Obviously, the latter choice is far more logical in 99% of the cases..." (AD&D DMG, p. 105)

Methods: What I've done below is scan through the main Gygaxian adventure line -- the T-G-D module series -- and make a tally of all the spells explicitly prepared by the magic-users there. This includes predominantly humans and Drow, as well as tournament PCs given in the 1981 publications. The coding to O-D-M (offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous categories) has attempted to follow the example in AD&D DMG p. 39 for wizard 1st-level spellbooks. Notably, in the "defensive" category we include any type of barrier or travel spell (per DMG p. 39: hold portal, jump, spider climb, feather fall). The "miscellaneous" category is predominantly information-gathering spells (e.g.: comprehend languages, detect magic, identify, message, etc.), as well as some other types.

(ODS spreadsheet here.)

Conclusions: We found 18 magic-user types in this search. Broadly speaking, looking at the total percentages in the lower-right of the table, we can say that offensive-defensive-miscellaneous spells appear in a ratio of about 3:2:1 (suitable for d6 rolls). Initially I expected a higher proportion of the miscellaneous type at the lower levels, but this is not borne out: e.g., percentages for offensive spells by level run 62-42-59-62-45-60%, with no consistent pattern. Follow-up questions could be to detect patterns in load-out in terms of relative highest level per caster, or for bias compared to overall proportions in the rulebook spell roster, but these seem unlikely to be productive.

One thing I did look at was the few cases where spell books are specified for these magic-users, beyond just the spells they have memorized (N = 4; Burne, Falrinth, Deggum, and Senshock). In these cases, the proportions seem flipped for the additional spells: roughly in proportion 1:2:3. The number of added spells in one's book varies between about 100% and 200%, with an average close to 150% (somewhat higher than I might have initially guessed).

It should be pointed out that my list only includes spell levels 1-6, because (a) I'm mostly interested in the context of use for an OD&D game, and (b) only one caster in the series above has spell levels 7-9 (namely the lich Asberdies lurking in D1). Another observation is that the total number of detailed magic-users is itself smaller than I might have expected; to a large degree, Gygax's go-to spellcasting bad guys are predominantly evil clerics. (e.g., temple in B2, Lareth in T1, commander in T2, female Drow leaders in GDQ, etc., etc.). This is somewhat interesting in contrast with the near-nonexistence of spellcasting priest-types in the pulp literature (which I've written about on this blog too many times to count).

Image courtesy of Craiyon.

Paul & Dan's Old-School Livestream, Ep. 1

I got together with my good friend Paul (of Paul's Gameblog) for a project we've been kicking around for a few years now; an online, live-streaming conversation about old-school gaming, and the various always-interesting ways in which we agree and differ on philosophies, rules, strategies, and so forth.

We decided to dive in head-first here and get something online as an experiment this weekend; I'm sure we'll be testing and adjusting things like pace, visuals, lighting, audio levels, name of the series, etc., as time goes on -- but I always enjoy conversing with Paul, and if you're a reader here, then I think you will, too.

This first episode tries to wrestle with the foundational question, "What is Old-School Gaming?". Our current plan is to be live on YouTube every other Sunday at 1 PM EST (next episode Dec-23). Feel free to chime in here, or there, if you have suggestions for improvements or topics you'd like to see us hash out. I'm pretty excited about this!