I've decided to go a different route with the time structure of the new campaign, and this is going to be important to the players because I will be *starting* the campaign on August 9th with the players having had a complete month worth of in-game "Off-Table Time" to get them accustomed to using the concept. While it might sound complicated, I'm just going to codify stuff we're already doing...to be as fair as possible.
When a gaming session is occurring, the players are said to be on "table time," which is pretty obvious-we're playing, etc.
When the session ends, the characters are either paused or in "off-table time" which may be used for traveling (with limitations) or accomplishing things at home (or in another safe place.)
Things that may be done in off-table time include research, conversations and plans between characters, shopping (with limitations), restocking, creating items/spells/special attacks (again, with limitations), leveling up, fixing the fence at your dad's farm, healing from normal damage, recovering from exhaustion effects, etc. Things done in off-table time accumulate very little experience points per hour, or none at all. (People creating things and spells will get more experience, but have less opportunity to do so.)
Off-table time will be given in the form of "maximums" between "events" (ie: 'There is a maximum of seven days of off-table time between now and next session') and if you intend to do anything off-table, you have to contact the DM at least 24 hours before the next session. There will be no piling on of 'oh, I already did this' at the start of sessions. It makes the DM go crazy. There is no guarantee that the off-table time will be as long as the maximum, so if you want to do many things, you will have to tell me the order they happen in.
If you need to contact the DM in a hurry, you know my phone number, my twitter and where I live. If you just want to put something on paper, and you want me to get to it eventually, you can send it to thane@fenlock.org or contact your liege-lord on twitter at @ThaneFour
I will be using these as catch-alls for campaign related questions and stuff. In addition, the office of the thane will provide a "the current time is" tweet on a semi-regular basis.
Remember, unless something changes, character selection is 6pm this Friday. If you aren't here, you might not get who you want (although there are more characters than players.) Sometime between now and Friday, if the fates allow it, I will post a bit about how the batch character creator worked, and why I chose to go that route.
Showing posts with label UADnD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UADnD. Show all posts
Monday, July 15, 2013
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Manipulating the starting age chart for xp elapsed in out of game time. (campaign note)
This breaks down into the formula I gave at the end of the session:
[(Number of years in the gap in campaign) ÷ (+per level from chart)]=Number of levels gained in the adventurer's life actively adventuring outside of game time.
So, an elf after 20 years would be 20/5 or 4 levels. Humans and half-orcs, the shortest lived races, get an assumed 1 level a year.
Note that you can't add extra xp from making items and scrolls and such to this, because that's included in stuff you'd make, but if you are going to make such a thing, it's assumed the one you have is going to be your best possible work, especially when you have 20 years to do it.
Before you get too hooked on those possible 20 experience levels, note that this XP includes any items you've acquired (not made) and you may want to bank some of that experience.
To get the xp amount that those levels correspond to, take the xp amount for the start of the new level you'd be if you took it all as xp, and subtract amount of xp you had before the gap in play.
So, if your new number is 150,000 and your previous # was 50,000, you'd have 100,000xp.
From that XP, you can bank up to half, or spend as much of it as you want on magic items, using the xp value in the DMG, or turn it into gold, at the rate of 10gp per xp.
[If your character was one of the ones who followed Rothbert and Darinna into Hell, you also got 100,000xp from that]
I have updated the experience charts in the core rules to show levels up to and exceeding 30. Note that these numbers aren't precisely the same as the ones in the high level campaigns supplements. If you don't have this, check your inbox.
Remember, higher levels bring higher responsibilities. You may want to choose to take a lower level and stay out of politics.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Proficiency of the Week: Nested Proficiencies/More than one way to skin a cat/ Non-XP rewards
Question: What the heck are nested proficiencies?
Answer: I used the term nested proficiencies in a discussion and I should've known I'd get this question. It is shorthand for proficiencies which sneak into your character's background when you get other proficiencies, and which can either be added to the sheet or just assumed to be there by the DM. If you're using a program to generate your proficiency (or skill) list, these would just seem to magically appear.
An example would be the Engineering Proficiency, which automatically grants Maths.
There are four ways to handle nested proficiency conflicts:
The first way is to completely ignore them. I'm completely okay with this, because it's not something that's going to make a difference the vast majority of the time. If your character is solving a complex mathematical puzzle, I might ask what skills you're using to help, and Maths, Numerancy, Engineering, etc., would all be valid choices. This is part of the "More than one way to skin a cat." thing.
The second way, which I tend to use, is the idea that slots are SPENT when you get a proficiency, and can't come back. Therefore, if you have Maths, and take Engineering, you have Maths and Engineering on your sheet, and if you take Engineering, you can have Maths and Engineering on your sheet (and I would like it if you indicated you got maths free.)
The third way, which I DO NOT ALLOW in my own game, is slot rearranging. That is, your character spent a slot on Maths, then took Engineering, and therefore you now have an extra slot because Maths is now "Free."
The fourth way, which I only sometimes allow in my own game, is proficiency enhancing. In the example above, I might allow a +1 to the skill of Maths, or transmute your Maths into Higher Maths. I'm more likely to give this as a non-XP reward.
I'm going to try to predict two more questions, and answer them here:
Question: What is the More than One Way to Skin a Cat thing?
One of the recurring themes coming out of the group discussing DnDNext is the idea that perception needs to be its own stat. If we're going to replace using (for example) skills to discover a secret door, then just replace it all the way. One of the things I brought in was how I tend to resolve stuff in a room, which is to roll a handful of dice for the entire party, with the dice representing each character's best chance of spotting things, and then only being specific if they all or mostly fail.
For example, entering a room with a magical secret door, I rolled 2d6, 2d20 and percentiles. The party had two characters with a default elven chance of finding secret doors, two characters using skills to look for secret doors (one based on his incredible knowledge of masonry, one with his incredible knowledge of magic traps) and one follower of a god of luck who had a chance to just see anything automatically. If most of the scores succeed, I describe the door as barely hidden from the party. If only one succeeds, I tell that player the rest of the characters don't seem to see it. If they all fail, I roll any additional rolls before moving further ahead (for example, the elf is also a rogue, using find traps, so even if she failed the d6, she might make that roll.) [I roll this handful even when there are no secret doors, by the way, the party never knows why I am rolling.] The Ogre Magi fighter in the group has no chance of finding them at all, usually.
Either we're all using different ways to look for secret doors (for example) or we all have an innate ability to find such things. I can get behind either one. I can't get behind this innate ability being based on one, two, or even three stats. The more I play, the more I lean toward perception as its own stat.
Question: What are non-XP rewards?
At the conclusion of an adventure, the DM tends to give experience points. If the party is doing something for a king, powerful figure or a god, it is typical for that figure to give the party a boon. Non-XP rewards are doing this without the NPC.
I also use experience banking, which is when a player can put some of his experience into a bank, which can be spent (out of combat/game time) to work with other aspects of your character. Typical bank spending is to get a terrible ability score up to 'average,' to get an average score up to above average (which is more expensive) improving a proficiency or gaining extra ones, creating a unique ability for your character,etc.
Non-XP rewards can be a form of experience banking. If, for example, a mage is spending every waking moment asking the high-class knight in the party about his adventures, the DM might want to give the mage and the knight some extra experience in the hopes that they'd bank it, or the DM might decide that after weeks of learning, the mage has picked up the proficiency "etiquette" (or maybe bonus points in it) and the knight has picked up storytelling.
Non-XP rewards I have given have included free proficiencies, a special attack, extra renown for a bard, followers, friends in high places and a level of training in a different class. Usually the non-XP reward is at a 'discount.' (For example, a proficiency costs 3000xp on the banking chart, but I once gave everyone in the party 5000xp and one character a choice of 5000xp or 4000xp and a free proficiency in a skill his character was using constantly.) I've also allowed class combinations not typically allowed as a result of this.
The logic behind it is that if a character is really focused on something, he's getting better at it faster than 'normal.' So a mage who always casts the same two spells might become the expert in those two spells. The DM can, for example, start to add abilities to that spell (the Diviner who always cast "arcane bolt," for example, started to regularly get a flash of information about the target when it hit, creating a signature spell form of arcane bolt that had Divination benefits, the BOOM mage who **always** cast wall of iron started being able to make much more complex walls of iron because he knew the spell backwards and forwards) or the DM might even say "you know, you do Magic Missile so much, I'm going to say you've memorized it permanently, and can cast it once a day for free. More than that and you're going to have to lose first level spell slots to do it, though."
These sorts of non-XP rewards can create complex characters that aren't cookie cutters of each other. It can make it hard to move a character from DM to DM, but if you're staying in the same campaign, it's very useful.
Sometimes, these non-XP rewards become so common they end up game constants. In my own world, several paladins in a row kept gaining the ability to give off visible holy light in their goodness. After a few years, it became default that paladins could do this sparkle as an ability, and we added it to the host of the paladin's skills. (It is enough light to see by, but not enough to do damage, unless the 'holy aura' would do damage normally.)
It does require, IMO, a bit more finesse as a DM to pull off this. I sort of consider giving XP to be the default, easy way to reward a party, allowing XP banking to be the slightly harder variation and XP+Banking+non-XP rewards to be the most difficult.
Non-XP rewards can be very important to clerics. I basically assume a cleric being extra clericy is going to get a reward from the top.
Answer: I used the term nested proficiencies in a discussion and I should've known I'd get this question. It is shorthand for proficiencies which sneak into your character's background when you get other proficiencies, and which can either be added to the sheet or just assumed to be there by the DM. If you're using a program to generate your proficiency (or skill) list, these would just seem to magically appear.
An example would be the Engineering Proficiency, which automatically grants Maths.
There are four ways to handle nested proficiency conflicts:
The first way is to completely ignore them. I'm completely okay with this, because it's not something that's going to make a difference the vast majority of the time. If your character is solving a complex mathematical puzzle, I might ask what skills you're using to help, and Maths, Numerancy, Engineering, etc., would all be valid choices. This is part of the "More than one way to skin a cat." thing.
The second way, which I tend to use, is the idea that slots are SPENT when you get a proficiency, and can't come back. Therefore, if you have Maths, and take Engineering, you have Maths and Engineering on your sheet, and if you take Engineering, you can have Maths and Engineering on your sheet (and I would like it if you indicated you got maths free.)
The third way, which I DO NOT ALLOW in my own game, is slot rearranging. That is, your character spent a slot on Maths, then took Engineering, and therefore you now have an extra slot because Maths is now "Free."
The fourth way, which I only sometimes allow in my own game, is proficiency enhancing. In the example above, I might allow a +1 to the skill of Maths, or transmute your Maths into Higher Maths. I'm more likely to give this as a non-XP reward.
I'm going to try to predict two more questions, and answer them here:
Question: What is the More than One Way to Skin a Cat thing?
One of the recurring themes coming out of the group discussing DnDNext is the idea that perception needs to be its own stat. If we're going to replace using (for example) skills to discover a secret door, then just replace it all the way. One of the things I brought in was how I tend to resolve stuff in a room, which is to roll a handful of dice for the entire party, with the dice representing each character's best chance of spotting things, and then only being specific if they all or mostly fail.
For example, entering a room with a magical secret door, I rolled 2d6, 2d20 and percentiles. The party had two characters with a default elven chance of finding secret doors, two characters using skills to look for secret doors (one based on his incredible knowledge of masonry, one with his incredible knowledge of magic traps) and one follower of a god of luck who had a chance to just see anything automatically. If most of the scores succeed, I describe the door as barely hidden from the party. If only one succeeds, I tell that player the rest of the characters don't seem to see it. If they all fail, I roll any additional rolls before moving further ahead (for example, the elf is also a rogue, using find traps, so even if she failed the d6, she might make that roll.) [I roll this handful even when there are no secret doors, by the way, the party never knows why I am rolling.] The Ogre Magi fighter in the group has no chance of finding them at all, usually.
Either we're all using different ways to look for secret doors (for example) or we all have an innate ability to find such things. I can get behind either one. I can't get behind this innate ability being based on one, two, or even three stats. The more I play, the more I lean toward perception as its own stat.
Question: What are non-XP rewards?
At the conclusion of an adventure, the DM tends to give experience points. If the party is doing something for a king, powerful figure or a god, it is typical for that figure to give the party a boon. Non-XP rewards are doing this without the NPC.
I also use experience banking, which is when a player can put some of his experience into a bank, which can be spent (out of combat/game time) to work with other aspects of your character. Typical bank spending is to get a terrible ability score up to 'average,' to get an average score up to above average (which is more expensive) improving a proficiency or gaining extra ones, creating a unique ability for your character,etc.
Non-XP rewards can be a form of experience banking. If, for example, a mage is spending every waking moment asking the high-class knight in the party about his adventures, the DM might want to give the mage and the knight some extra experience in the hopes that they'd bank it, or the DM might decide that after weeks of learning, the mage has picked up the proficiency "etiquette" (or maybe bonus points in it) and the knight has picked up storytelling.
Non-XP rewards I have given have included free proficiencies, a special attack, extra renown for a bard, followers, friends in high places and a level of training in a different class. Usually the non-XP reward is at a 'discount.' (For example, a proficiency costs 3000xp on the banking chart, but I once gave everyone in the party 5000xp and one character a choice of 5000xp or 4000xp and a free proficiency in a skill his character was using constantly.) I've also allowed class combinations not typically allowed as a result of this.
The logic behind it is that if a character is really focused on something, he's getting better at it faster than 'normal.' So a mage who always casts the same two spells might become the expert in those two spells. The DM can, for example, start to add abilities to that spell (the Diviner who always cast "arcane bolt," for example, started to regularly get a flash of information about the target when it hit, creating a signature spell form of arcane bolt that had Divination benefits, the BOOM mage who **always** cast wall of iron started being able to make much more complex walls of iron because he knew the spell backwards and forwards) or the DM might even say "you know, you do Magic Missile so much, I'm going to say you've memorized it permanently, and can cast it once a day for free. More than that and you're going to have to lose first level spell slots to do it, though."
These sorts of non-XP rewards can create complex characters that aren't cookie cutters of each other. It can make it hard to move a character from DM to DM, but if you're staying in the same campaign, it's very useful.
Sometimes, these non-XP rewards become so common they end up game constants. In my own world, several paladins in a row kept gaining the ability to give off visible holy light in their goodness. After a few years, it became default that paladins could do this sparkle as an ability, and we added it to the host of the paladin's skills. (It is enough light to see by, but not enough to do damage, unless the 'holy aura' would do damage normally.)
It does require, IMO, a bit more finesse as a DM to pull off this. I sort of consider giving XP to be the default, easy way to reward a party, allowing XP banking to be the slightly harder variation and XP+Banking+non-XP rewards to be the most difficult.
Non-XP rewards can be very important to clerics. I basically assume a cleric being extra clericy is going to get a reward from the top.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Proficiency of the Week: Bowyer, Fletcher, and Bowyer/Fletcher
Question: The AD&D Player's Handbook has Bowyer/Fletcher as a single warrior proficiency that takes one slot, but uAD&D Core Rules recommends Bowyer and Fletcher as two separate proficiencies under general. Which is right, and why?
Answer: They are both right. A player who is a warrior can take Bowyer/Fletcher for one slot. A player who doesn't have access to the warrior proficiency skills tree would have to spend two slots for that. Several people pointed out that it was completely reasonable for a non-warrior to be making arrows for private use, and have great skill at it, and to that end we said you could take either bowyer or fletcher for one slot. This gives the warrior an opportunity for a tiny bonus, and removes a penalty in other situations. This is sort of like the Clockwork and Engineering Bundle.
Answer: They are both right. A player who is a warrior can take Bowyer/Fletcher for one slot. A player who doesn't have access to the warrior proficiency skills tree would have to spend two slots for that. Several people pointed out that it was completely reasonable for a non-warrior to be making arrows for private use, and have great skill at it, and to that end we said you could take either bowyer or fletcher for one slot. This gives the warrior an opportunity for a tiny bonus, and removes a penalty in other situations. This is sort of like the Clockwork and Engineering Bundle.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
What is UADandD?
For the past ten years, Phoe and I, and a number of various players, have worked with a formal+house rules edition of AD&D, based on the AD&D Core Rules, namely the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, game settings and "complete" series of class-based guides.
The term "Ultimate" is not used in its definition as the "best" but instead refers to the concept of ultimate as complete, and therefore not subject to having new "player races" or new "rules concepts" thrust upon the players. (Although AD&D has ways to construct by-group rules for each.) New spells, new monsters and new worlds are possible, but at no time do brand new rules come out and destroy or change the rules we are working with, although occasionally spells are changed (nerfed) as they are found to be over powered, or, more rarely, underpowered....if you understand the core rules, you never need to relearn a new system although someone (often me) will occasionally have to rule when there are two published sets of rules that conflict.
The canonical material we use is any official AD&D (and to a lesser extent, Original or Basic D&D) product published before the 2000 switch over to "3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons." This includes both original AD&D and second edition AD&D because they are, in fact, the same game, with only differences in the optional rules (such as psionics) and a few cosmetic differences more important to the DM than to the player (combat charts to THAC0, board inches to yards, weight from gp to lbs, value of coins from 200-20-1 to 100-10-1-0.1 .)
Part of this is disgust at abandoning the game we loved. You can pick up almost any book from 1977 to 2000 and insert it into the existing strata and have it work...3rd edition and parts forward cannot be swapped in this manner...even with "editions" that came only a few years later. You can think of it in similar ways to how operating systems work...you can open a program for an early version of windows in a later version of windows, sometimes with a little bit of fussing, and there is legacy support for many programs. WOTC killed Dungeons and Dragons by killing legacy support...there were two earlier Dungeons and Dragons 'operating systems,' (similar in many ways to MS-DOS and Windows, including being able to use pre-3e Dungeons and Dragons inside AD&D if you knew how to work it) and the WOTC 'operating system' didn't ever run this legacy software.
There was an AD&D emulator, to continue the metaphor, in the d20 system, but one of the things that irritated people like me was the fact that the d20 system allowed the players to use legacy materials without ever needing to reprint them. Some of our friends worked damn hard to write modules and materials, and by sitting on the materials, and providing no legacy support, WOTC has essentially gotten the essence of the intellectual property of their authors without actually having to pay any of those authors for their actual intellectual property.
AD&D then, is an abandoned game, a table top version of abandonware, and if WOTC actually gave two shits about the game instead of just making money they'd either make the books available (in POD, for example) and cut the authors a percentage (which would still be profitable) or they'd release the copyright on all the material that they own (as works for hire) and allow the authors to have name recognition, if not new money. (Actually, releasing the works as copy-lefted, and freeing the AD&D name altogether could also be profitable if they just did reprints of core materials-monsters, spell collections and rules.)
If you have any doubt about the demand for these materials, and the fact that they would be purchased if reprinted, look at the number of uploads and downloads of AD&D materials on any illegal or semi-legal download site. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have scanned almost every book in the AD&D cannon and made them available. Note I'm just providing that link as an example, I'm not suggesting that anyone, especially my players, download such materials illegally...even if they don't have their own player's handbooks, which can also be purchased used on websites like amazon.com.
So UAD&D is all of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons- spell lists, psionic powers and monsters compiled from all of the published materials and sorted by database or similar techniques so that a DM can have unique worlds and unique creations where players are involved in the world-building experience. It is a full and complete system, where you can't go off of the game board and need a new book to know what's going on. It's a one-book for each player system- players need a player's handbook, and only a DM need blow extra money on having one of everything else.
The term "Ultimate" is not used in its definition as the "best" but instead refers to the concept of ultimate as complete, and therefore not subject to having new "player races" or new "rules concepts" thrust upon the players. (Although AD&D has ways to construct by-group rules for each.) New spells, new monsters and new worlds are possible, but at no time do brand new rules come out and destroy or change the rules we are working with, although occasionally spells are changed (nerfed) as they are found to be over powered, or, more rarely, underpowered....if you understand the core rules, you never need to relearn a new system although someone (often me) will occasionally have to rule when there are two published sets of rules that conflict.
The canonical material we use is any official AD&D (and to a lesser extent, Original or Basic D&D) product published before the 2000 switch over to "3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons." This includes both original AD&D and second edition AD&D because they are, in fact, the same game, with only differences in the optional rules (such as psionics) and a few cosmetic differences more important to the DM than to the player (combat charts to THAC0, board inches to yards, weight from gp to lbs, value of coins from 200-20-1 to 100-10-1-0.1 .)
Part of this is disgust at abandoning the game we loved. You can pick up almost any book from 1977 to 2000 and insert it into the existing strata and have it work...3rd edition and parts forward cannot be swapped in this manner...even with "editions" that came only a few years later. You can think of it in similar ways to how operating systems work...you can open a program for an early version of windows in a later version of windows, sometimes with a little bit of fussing, and there is legacy support for many programs. WOTC killed Dungeons and Dragons by killing legacy support...there were two earlier Dungeons and Dragons 'operating systems,' (similar in many ways to MS-DOS and Windows, including being able to use pre-3e Dungeons and Dragons inside AD&D if you knew how to work it) and the WOTC 'operating system' didn't ever run this legacy software.
There was an AD&D emulator, to continue the metaphor, in the d20 system, but one of the things that irritated people like me was the fact that the d20 system allowed the players to use legacy materials without ever needing to reprint them. Some of our friends worked damn hard to write modules and materials, and by sitting on the materials, and providing no legacy support, WOTC has essentially gotten the essence of the intellectual property of their authors without actually having to pay any of those authors for their actual intellectual property.
AD&D then, is an abandoned game, a table top version of abandonware, and if WOTC actually gave two shits about the game instead of just making money they'd either make the books available (in POD, for example) and cut the authors a percentage (which would still be profitable) or they'd release the copyright on all the material that they own (as works for hire) and allow the authors to have name recognition, if not new money. (Actually, releasing the works as copy-lefted, and freeing the AD&D name altogether could also be profitable if they just did reprints of core materials-monsters, spell collections and rules.)
If you have any doubt about the demand for these materials, and the fact that they would be purchased if reprinted, look at the number of uploads and downloads of AD&D materials on any illegal or semi-legal download site. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have scanned almost every book in the AD&D cannon and made them available. Note I'm just providing that link as an example, I'm not suggesting that anyone, especially my players, download such materials illegally...even if they don't have their own player's handbooks, which can also be purchased used on websites like amazon.com.
So UAD&D is all of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons- spell lists, psionic powers and monsters compiled from all of the published materials and sorted by database or similar techniques so that a DM can have unique worlds and unique creations where players are involved in the world-building experience. It is a full and complete system, where you can't go off of the game board and need a new book to know what's going on. It's a one-book for each player system- players need a player's handbook, and only a DM need blow extra money on having one of everything else.
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