Continuing with our Basic Fantasy pregenerated characters let's roll some stats.

ST: 13 IQ: 9 WS: 11 DX: 14 CN: 8 CH: 10

I think we having the makings of a thief here. I was considering asking my GM if I could use point swapping to get his DX up to 15 in order to get the higher experience bonus for a prime requisite of 15 or higher, but double checking the core rules, Basic Fantasy, has no increase in experience for high prime requisites.

Just another reminder that the various clones/neo-clones/simulacra of TSR D&D, especially early ones, have minor deviations due to designer taste and an effort not to get sued.

I still asked myself to swap points in order to max out the dexterity bonus for missile weapons. At the 2:1 rate suggested and the limit on lowering to 9 I got the following values.

ST: 9 IQ: 9 WS: 11 DX: 16 CN: 8 CH: 10

I want the pre-gens to have humans of each class and pairs of demi-humans, one fighter and other iconic class, except the elves who will both be fighter-magic-user combinations like in Holmes. Let's make this fine gentleman not a thief but a respectable halfling burglar. Halflings in Basic Fantasy must have a dexterity of 9 as must thieves. We're covered. Regardless of class they cannot roll hit dice larger than d6 but classic thieves are a d4 hit dice class. To that we take a -1 due to constitution of eight. I lucked out and got a 4 for 3 HP.

HP: 3

Just gold and equipment is left. I'm already sick of this after three days. The templates that are standard in Adventurer Conqueror King Imperial Imprint are looking better with each character. Of course, after saying that I get my best roll yet, 13 for 130gp.

Thieves cannot wear armor heavier than leather or shields. Halflings need two hands for medium weapons anyway making shields a poor choice.

Our thief will wear leather armor. He'll use some of the gold saved on metal armor and a shield to be well equipped weapon wise. A longsword, a silver dagger, and a shortbow with 20 arrows plus a couple of silver arrows sound like a strong load out. All of that plus a quiver for the arrows will set him back 89gp leaving him 41gp for other gear.

Thief's tools, excuse me, burglar's tools, set our character back 25gp leaving 16gp for other gear. Let's trust we won't face lycanthropes right out of the gate and give up the silver dagger for  three normal one (but we'll keep the arrows) which move our net gold up to 35gp.

Now we can get a backpack, a regular lantern, six flasks of oil, a week of rations, a waterskin, a map case, and a tinderbox for 29gp. That leaves him 5gp to find lodging while looking for adventure.

He can't afford paper, quill, and ink yet but our young halfling, raised on stories of his uncle's adventures years before his birth were full of treasure maps found so he's got a map case already. For those wondering about the lantern, in BFRGP halflings do not have any form of dark vision.

Now our young bounder needs a name. Among halflings Tobold means daring which seems appropriate.

And with that Tobold the Burglar arrives in our border fort and meets a rather brash woman named Maria looking for companions on an expedition to the ruins of a fort destroyed in the Were Wars.

For the heck of it I ran a description of him through NightCafe a few times. Typical AI graphics screwed up the idea of drawing the bow and I left in the metal gauntlet. I don't do this enough to be good at prompting,  but I think this gets the idea.

Maria, Priestess of Hera

The next few characters will be for Basic Fantasy. I am running a one shot on Saturday the tenth and need some pregens.

Reading the character creation rules reminded me of a thought I've had about Basic Fantasy. The basic it is looking back to is not B/X or BECMI. It is Holmes. It lacks race as class and in general feels much closer to restating Holmes via 3.0 than the later versions.

Like Holmes and the later basics it is 3d6 in order. Let's look at my initial roles.

ST: 13 IQ:11 WS: 14 DX: 13 CN: 6 CH:10

That's a pretty respectable character except for that constitution score. Under Game Master Information the game offers three options for GMs to allow players to rearrange scores plus a fourth for hopeless characters (those with a value below 9 in the first four abilities rendering them ineligible for all four of the core classes).

Consulting with the gamemaster he decided to allow me option 2, swap one pair. Now my abilities look like

ST: 13 IQ: 11 WS: 14 DX: 10 CN: 13 CH: 6

And I have a cleric who was clearly sent adventuring instead of tending a flock due to his inability to deal with parishioners.

One interesting note is this is our first game built on the classic D&D chassis to use a standard abilities bonus and penalty chart, using the one we know from B/X and BECMI. Our cleric's bonuses add up to +2 with only one negative and three positive. Not bad for 3d6.

We get 1d6 for hit points, giving us a lucky 6.

I'm a bit worried about gold, but I roll a 10 for 100gp, thirty more than Alfred got back on the first.

Starting with armor we'll start with chain and shield for 67 gp and 33 remaining. She'll carry a mace and a sling along with 10 sling bullets for 7gp, leaving 26. Sling stones are free but the bullets do 1d4 instead of 1d3 for 1sp. Our cleric figures a little extra oomph is worth a gold piece.

Next I'll grab a belt pouch (for the sling bullets) and a backpack for 5gp and 21 remaining.

And then I realize a holy symbol is 25gp. We'll drop to leather armor, gaining 40 gp and dropping our AC to 14. After grabbing that expensive holy symbol we're still left with 36 gold.

A lantern, five flasks of oil, and a tinderbox eat up 16gp. A week's dry rations and a waterskin round out the equipment she carries into our border fort costing 11gp leaving her with 9gp.

We just need a deity and a name. I think a rather stern and humorous priestess must belong to Hera. Looking at Greek women's names I see Maria means "Sea of Bitterness" which sounds perfect.

I need to print out character sheets and scan them in. I'll add a link to her sheet when I do.

I Didn't Start with Just Holmes

In yesterday's post I noted I started with Dr. Eric Holmes blue book of D&D. That is true but it's not the entire truth.

I got my copy of the good physician's work with Christmas money in 1977 while I was in the fifth grade. It was the first Christmas with basic D&D and the boxed set sold out before Christmas so I had to settle for just the rulebook. To give you an idea of how early this was the boxed set didn't include B1 like it later would but the first set of Dungeon Geomorphs and the level 1-3 Monster and Treasure Assortment.

So, I started by getting just the blue book and a set of dice, right?

Nope, because dice sets sold out that Christmas as well. Remember, this is early enough that for many stores, the Toys by Roy in Beaumont, TX included, had only TSR as a dice source. The next run of the boxed set had a coupon for dice as they weren't available yet.

What was in stock complete with a set of polyhedrals was the first edition of Gamma World which I blew the rest of my Christmas money on, just to get the dice.

So, since we started a character a day with my first RPG let's follow up with my other first RPG and create a character for first edition Gamma World.

Like pretty much any TSR product from the era we start off with creating character attributes. Despite coming out the same year as Holmes it is not a 3d6 in order game. Gamma World was 4d6 take the three highest from the very first edition. My understanding is while Holmes references AD&D but wasn't modified from OD&D to be inline with the changes Gamma World was always published with compatibility with AD&D in mind and this is one of the touches that indicate the truth of that.

What is different from either version of D&D then in print or in the works were the attributes. In order Gamma World has Mental Strength (MS), Intelligence (IQ), Dexterity (DX), Charisma (CH), Constitution (CN), and Physical Strength (PS). Let's see what fortune gives my new character.

MS 15, IQ 15, DX 12, CH 8, CN 15, PS 12

There are some interesting contrasts with Alfred from yesterday. Alfred, rolled on 3d6, has a maximum attribute of 16, a minimum of 6, and an average of 11.2. Today we have a maximum of 15, a minimum of 8, and an average of 12.8. The big cause of the higher average on the tighter spread is three 15s compared to one 15 and one 16.

A big deal is one of the 15s is in constitution. In Gamma World there are no levels per se and no classes. Instead, there is a list of experience point levels where you get to roll a d10 for an advancement. The advancements are +1 to one of the six attributes, to hit in physical combat, or to damage in physical combat. The first has each attribute assigned to one number while the later two are assigned to 7-8 and 9-10 respectively.

Notice what isn't on the list for leveling up (while level numbers are never cited the chart basically sets levels). That's right, hit point increases. It is on there is a roundabout way at 2, the +1 to constitution. In Gamma World first edition you roll 1d6 for each point of constitution for your hit points.

So our new character starts with 15d6 hit points. I roll 66 HP. This would be above average for a name level AD&D fighter a constitution of 15 or less and just 1.5 HP before that same fighter with a constitution of 16.

That's good because there are energy weapons out there.

Gamma World doesn't have classes but it does have races: Pure Strain Human, Humanoid, and Mutated Animal. Pure strain humans have no mutations, good or bad, but much of the equipment of the Ancients will only work for them. Humanoids are mutated humans who lack the ability to work gene coded tech but have mutations. I think mutated animals are self-explanatory.

I'm going to take the humanoid option. You roll d4 for physical and mental mutations. I got a 3 and a 1. Then two methods of determining mutations are give, random percentile rolls or pick from the tables. The downside of selecting is if you roll a 3 or 4 for a type the referee gets to assign an additional negative mutation of that type.

I'll trust to fortune. She did alright by me on constitution.

For physical mutations I get 60, 16, and 30. The first is photosynthetic skin allowing me to make my own food and heal four times if I have sun exposure but I suffer extra damage from heat and cold and have a halved move in darkness. Second I got gas generation - musk. This gives me a 10m range gas attack  whose exact type is open ended. I'm going with irritating gas. Finally, I get heightened strength. This means in physical combat I do +3d6 damage.

That latter kind of puts those 15d6 hit points in perspective.

My one mental mutation role is 69 for multiple damage, which is a defect. This causes me to suffer double damage not because I am more vulnerable but because my mind tricks me into thinking all attacks are twice as bad as they are.

Gamma World has no starting equipment generation. Looking at example provided, scenarios in Dragon, and the later published ones, your referee assigns it.

So, all we need is a name for this many generations later descendent of Alfred. How about we apply some known historical pronunciation shifts. Applying the High German consonant shift turns Alfred to Alfret. The Great Vowel Shift in English would have affected neither vowel in Alfret. We can kind of replicate the Inland North American accent by moving to Olfreat (not really, but good enough for old school roleplaying.

So I present the Olfreat the fragile human plant ready to be sent by his village elders into the wastes for his youthful trials.

As Always, I'll Start with Holmes

It is time once again for the character a day challenge for January. Last time I tried at my now moribund general blog but it seems more appropriate here. Since that is where I started with the hobby I will begin with a character for Dr. Holmes's basic Dungeons & Dragons. 

Holmes, being based on OD&D is a 3d6 in order system. Our initial rolls, in the ability order in Holmes are Strenght-15, Intelligence-11, Wisdom-6, Constitution-10, Dexterity-9, Charisma-16. The dice want me to have a fighting man given my strength of 15 is just enough to qualify for a ten percent experience bonus. Holmes does allow trading of ability score points to raise prime attributes but the only one I could lower is intelligence to 9 to get a strength of 16. Given the limited bonuses of Holmes there is no benefit to doing so. I'll stick with my initial roles. 

The next question is do I wish to be a human, dwarf, or halfling. I could also be an elf which is a combination fighting man and magic user. Let's just stick with humans for now. 

The next step in Holmes is hit points. Fighting men in post-Greyhawk OD&D use a d8 for hit points. I roll a 7 and with no constitution bonus or penalty will begin in the top 25% of first level fighting men with 7 HP. 

Finally, I roll 3d6 for gold pieces and get an 8 for 80 gold. I can afford plate mail armor as it is 50gp leaving me 30gp. I need a weapon and a shield. Choosing a hand axe and a round shield costs another 13gp leaving me with 17gp. A leather backpack and a week of standard rations eat up 10gp leaving me 7gp to find a meal or two and a couple of nights at an inn.

I do have two more decisions left, a name and an alignment. For a name let's go with Alfred, a good Anglo-Saxon name, perfect for an axe and shield fighter.

Recently on Twitter I had a thread on alignment about mapping Palladium alignments to D&D. Stepping a bit outside of Holmes I see Alfred as a good guy but not a paragon. We'll go with Chaotic Good for someone who will help the good and do good for them but not so tied to rules as to think he owes even evil individuals. 

I think Alfred's family was betrayed by orcs under a banner of peace, killing his father and brothers and destroying their family lands. From this he learned the lesson that honor and trust for good but only for other good individuals.

After destruction of his family he has wandered, fighting as a mercenary here and there, until rumors of treasures under the ruins of the tower of a dead wizard named Zenopus. Following those rumors to Portown he signs on as a caravan guard and arrives in the city with 2gp and a week of food left in his pack. Now he needs to find companions to hunt for Zenopus's treasure.

In fine 1970s form, I present Alfred on an index card.

An Unperson Cannot Hide You (with Joesdky Tax)

Well, I run to the rock just to hide my face
And the rocks cried out, no hiding place
There’s no hiding place down here

It seems MeToo came to the OSR earlier this year. Zak Sabbath, of Playing D&D With Porn Stars fame was outed as a serial abuser. The outing, by his former partner, is chock-full of abusive goodness up to, and including, grooming of new victims and forcing one victim to sign a defense of Zak. It is ugly stuff.

I will not claim I knew it was true all along. I swallowed the defenses of Zak, especially the letter I referenced above. I will claim I’m not surprised. Zak was an asshole online. People can be asses behind a keyboard and different in person. However, it is a good bet they aren’t. Still, I thought Zak was an ass at worst. I had given up discussing things online with him years ago, but still followed his work because I thought he did creative and interesting things with Old School D&D.

I am at least a month behind the times discussing this. I originally posted this at my personal and writing blog because gaming is not the real point. I decided to cross post it because it is OSR related in part. I have also included Joesky Tax.

When popular artists have committed unspeakable crimes, there is confusion on what to do. Do we buy new works from them? Do publishers still hire them? I doubt Zak will publish again in the RPG world. Do we keep reading their works? Do we keep the items we have? Each is an interesting questions. but not the subject now. I want to look at something tangential.

Do we hide our prior associations with the artist?

Zak appeared as a consultant in the credits to the fifth edition of D&D. New printings will have no consultants credited. Many people in the OSR have scrubbed links not just to his blog on blog rolls, but individual links in their own posts using his ideas. While the former is much closer, in my mind, to the prior publishing question the latter is an attempt to hide.

This attempt to hide isn’t unique to RPGs. In the past few weeks an episode of The Simpsons featuring just the voice of Michael Jackson has been removed from circulation after Leaving Neverland appeared. Grandest of all has been the declaration Penn State won no football games for 13 years . Penn State won 112 including two Big Ten titles. The declaration was a punishment for the child sexual abuse by one of the assistant coaches and the athletic department’s cover up of the abuse.

The claim is these actions are a punishment for abuse. That, however, does not wash. Wizards of the Coast paid Zak for his consulting, archives on the Internet will show discussions of it, and thousands, if not tens of thousands, of books still have the credits. Michael Jackson was paid for his time. Even if the producers could claw the money back, he is now beyond our ability to punish. The Penn State team has already won the games and received the donations and other income they generated.

We may punish people whose degree of guilt in these matters is an open question. Did the players who actually played football in Penn State’s national championship year have anything to do with the abuse? I doubt any did and will state without reservation at least one player did not. Those players’ achievement have been memory holed as thoroughly as any adverse fact in Airstrip One. It is possible there was someone who worked on the “Stark Raving Dad” episode of The Simpsons who has no other credit on the show. The producers’ actions hide the work of such a person.

Ff we are not punishing the perpetrators and punishing the innocent, why do it? Why do we unperson Zak or Michael or Jerry Sandusky?

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion. - Proverbs 28:1

We do it to hide. We do it to hide the fact we didn’t see the warning signs. We do it to hide the fact we believed the defense. We do because we are afraid we let a football championship or a fantastic pop song or, in the case at hand, a cool set of rules on how to play D&D become more valuable than making sure others are treated with decency.

These fears are unreasonable are most people. We knew Zak from his blog, his video show, and arguing with him online. Knowing he was an acerbic SOB in blog comments is a long way from suspecting the defenses against accusations of abuse were coerced. The lack of suspicion is part of why we fell for the excuses and defenses. It is part of why we feel guilty now. We cannot imagine doing it ourselves. As a result we have a hard time imagining someone else, especially someone whose work we value, doing it.

Still the guilt is real. We think we should have known. We think we should have seen it as clearly as the gamers who called Sydney police when MrDeadMoth assaulted his wife while livestreaming.

I have not sought anyplace I linked to Zak or discussed his ideas. The fact is I thought they were good ideas. I will not be happy when people ask, “Why do you link to that abuser?”. Deleting them now will not change my making them in the past. Even if other do not know I made the links, I will know.

We try to hide, but as the rock cried out, there is no hiding place. We celebrated his ideas even as we excused his being an ass. However, that is all we knew. That is all we are complicit in. Quoting or publishing Zak in the future is a choice we can make. Quoting him in the past is a choice we made. We cannot, and should not, hide from it.

---

Joesky Tax:

The Divining Screen: This artifact is embedded in the monastery of a holy order. On the wall furthest from the door in the library is a large (3'x4') glass plate mounted to the wall. Before it are two pillars of marble with the hilts of swords, fashioned from steel and wrapped in gold and silver wire, mounted on them. When both hilts are grasped, if the patron deity of the order has a purpose for the individual grasping the hilts its critical point will be revealed to that person as a short, silent series of images in the screen. No one else can see it. Repeated viewing may show changed or different scenes as the world changes the ability, or desirability, of the image.

The purpose revealed need not be a good one. For those hateful to the patron deity the image may be of coming divine retribution or a just end.

Back with 17 Answers

I'm back and what better way to celebrate than to give you an idea on what I think OSR means via OSR Guide for the Perplexed

1. One article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me:

Taking a Bite Out of the Dungeon.

If there is something that dominated DIY D&D from the first fanzines through the late 80s it was new classes. Matt at Land of Nod is a class factory, but this one to me shows the wild inventiveness of the OSR the best. Still, the Gourmand has a better reason than many to enter the dungeon. He's just hungry.

2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark:

How I Want to Hear About Your Setting

Zak gives the best explanation of what the old writer's advice "show, don't tell" means in terms of writing game material.

3. Best OSR module/supplement:

Slumbering Ursine Dunes

Speaking of laying out your setting by showing, not telling, Slubmering Ursine Dunes is a great model. It also brings in one of my favorite ideas from the article "Believe It or Not, Fantasy Has Reality" from Dragon #40.

4. My favorite house rule (by someone else):

Party Like It's 999

Carousing is a great rule to explain how gold pieces become experience. Plus, if things go back it makes it a lot easier for the DM to come up with next week's adventure.

5. How I found out about the OSR:

I had been making sure to read James Edward Raggi IV since his series on Big Purple about runing AD&D. Later, I wanted to reference his writing about how to find players, based on the game, and found them on his blog. Through it I found other early OSR blogs. His post Media Influences inspired the first post on this blog.

6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy:

Random Class Advancement System

I don't use it and probably won't any time soon. However, it is full of ideas and does the best thing the OSR does: it makes you think about this game into which you invest so much time and energy.

7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers:

I would have said G+ of late, but that is ending. I am hoping that between the end of G+ and problems with Facebook and other gated internet communities that the OSR blogs will restart (as I'm looking to do) and grown.

8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games:

I am not active many places outside my table, but I'm on a few Facebook groups, a couple of MeWe groups, and a couple of Discord servers.

9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough:

That memoir is a model for story emerging from RPG play, especially for old school play styles.

10. My favorite non-OSR RPG:

This is hard for two reasons. First, what is the OSR? Is Runequest an OSR game? Traveller? Rolemaster? (my answers are 'maybe', 'hell yes', and 'I think so, but I'm probably in the minority'). Second, I like a lot of games.

In terms of having consumed the most cycles with trying to play it I'm going to say Mage, but I will cheat a little and not say if I mean the Ascension or the Awakening

11. Why I like OSR stuff:

Because it reconnects me with what got me into this hobby in the first place. I don't consider that nostalgia, but more a touchstone. It is similar to why I re-read certain books on a regular basis.

12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:

The Flailsnails Conventions bring back a type of play I remember from the 70s that seems to have died off.

The Forty Questions: Jeff's Twenty Questions and Brenden's rules follow-up.

13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be:

For a variety of reasons I'm going to say Matt's Land of Nod. It has some of the more creative energy and has sustained it for longer than most of us. It also is not as well known as it should be.

14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is:

Clockwork Skeletons

15. I'm currently running/playing:

Type IV D&D based on Greyhawk Grognard's ideas about the G/D series with Drow replaced with The Hadal.

As no plan survives contact with the players it has gone way off the rails, but the goblin tribe of which the party is honorary members does supply all the chicken wings and sauce used in taverns in a dwarven city.

16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because:

I can figure it out. It isn't that hard people.

17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice:

The place where (for me) it all started:

Monday Pointers 2012-10-22

D4: Xylbocx Starcult
This is some of the best Hawkwind style science fantasy gonzo for D&D I've read in a while.

D6: Short Forms of Place Names in the UK
Sure, there is lots of naming stuff out there, but I like this summary of forms.

D8: Anachronisms
Not only anachronisms but creative ones at that. They are, however, not medieval for the most part. Regardless, I think they represent a classic trope of D&D.

D10: Spears of the Dawn
I'm sure most of my readers have seen it already, but I was a way for a couple of months. Finally, we're getting a Kevin Crawford fantasy game using the Stars Without Numbers take on B/X, something I'd been toying with doing anyway. The best part is he's putting it into the public domain if I read correctly.

D12: Real fighters use bows
Meanwhile RPGPundit is showing off the cover for a game also in the queue for me. If I could change one thing about the above it would be India over Africa for the setting. I've toyed with using India as source before but the richness of it is just daunting.

Monday Pointers August, 6th Edition

D4: Dungeons at Sea
Many dungeons use an abandoned fort as a theme. This list should provide some inspiration.

Inspirational Art: Luis Royo

This painting is by Luis Royo and was used as the cover for A Yoke of Magic by Robert Vardeman (which I'm currently reading).

A few quick descriptions from the novel of the riders and their mounts:

The three riders reined in and held their snorting mounts just beyond the ring of pale light cast by Lejena's campfire. Their horses pawed the earth, searing the ground wherever they touched; their hooves were afire.

As she neared, the foremost of the demon riders grasped a longsword forged from crystalline flame. It blazed brilliantly as it slid form a dark scabbard, tiny tongues of fire leaping and dancing along its entire length.

In the light of those hell-fired swords, Davin saw the heavy cowls pulled forward about their heads. No matter which way they turned, their faces - if they had any - remained cloaked in shadow. But the hands gripping those flaming blades were skeletal!

Between the images and the description all I can think is light-sabre wielding Nazgûl.

Random Campaign Idea in Pictures

So, lately I've been listening to this:

Which lead to me reading, for the first time, this:

While thinking about running:

Yet at the same time I'd like to run:

Where this:

Has always been associated with:

And I'm really excited to get this soon:

Now, post holocaust after the Martians is nothing new. The Aftermath rules suggest it and a later return of the Martians was the ruin for one of their playtest games (even including the human hunters of men the artillery man envisions). Still, the idea of a devastating Martian war where humanity, but not civilization, is saved by monsters and magicians could be fun.

Base on The World After and this, among others, it's clear I've internalized the D&D is the apocalypse trope. It's also clear that I prefer it not be nuclear war and have a strong bent on the Devil did it (the multiple images above, for those who don't recognize them, are from Prince of Darkness).