Conflicting Assumptions while Gaming

My sporadic playing in a 3.5 game has been interesting; it's been the first time I've spent anything more than a one-shot on the players' side of the "screen" since I started refereeing, so it's been interesting to see someone else referee after having worked on my own referee skills.

One thing I've noticed is that players and referees can have very different assumptions. This has gotten me into (in-game) trouble twice so far.

In the first instance, we had killed some kind of demonic or otherworldly being that had infiltrated the temple of Pelor or something (I wasn't there for that session) and were in a town where lots of weird stuff was apparently happening. One of the players was playing some sort of "chosen by Pelor" character. We wanted information about what weird stuff was going on. We are playing in a setting where you can buy just about anything, including magic items, on the 3.5 lists and where most un-leveled NPCs own a magic item or two. This is not a low-magic setting.

So, I suggested that we take the corpse of the thing we had killed out into the town square and burn it in public, announcing that we had killed it, it had been infiltrating the temple of Pelor, we thought more weird stuff was happening and we needed information. I thought a theatrical demon-burning and an announcement to be on-guard and that we needed information would result in 1) the town being on guard about weird stuff going down, 2) probably some information from NPCs that had seen something and 3) our show of righteous strength in the service of Pelor would win the support and respect of the townfolk

Instead, we had an irrational mob form that apparently got so confused that it got angry and our characters almost got arrested for inciting the mob. Confusing. Frustrating, even.

In the second instance, all the characters except for mine failed their Fortitude checks against spiked stew and so my Wizard was the only character awake to fight some bandits. I had some great spells prepared, but the referee insisted that I couldn't use most of them because we were fighting in pitch darkness and I apparently needed to see my target before I could cast spells on him.

Now, on the one hand, that makes some sense. On the other, I don't think I've ever heard that discussed before, either in rules or in conversations, on or off-line (granted, I've read very little of the 3.5 rules). I'd just assumed that spells that didn't make you roll for a ranged touch attack or whatever didn't need to be aimed, at least not by sight. I ended up losing the fight because the ref and I had different assumptions and most of my spells didn't work (I didn't have any way to make light. I know, I know…)

Have you ever encountered issues with different assumptions about the setting or about some rules question that isn't addressed in the rules (at least as far as you know)? Of course you have. This is the OSR! OK, seriously, how would you have ruled? How have you dealt with other situations like this?

Personally, I'm drawn to Jeff Rients' quote in the left column. And I think there's a responsibility on the part of the referee to explain as much of the setting assumptions as possible to the players. In the first situation, he heard me talk about the results I expected, knowing that my expectations were unrealistic in the setting, something my character would probably have known. I wish he'd informed me that my expectations actually wouldn't have been shared by my character, that my expectations wouldn't in fact be met. I've seen writing on meaningful choices in gaming, where players should be making choices where they can at least predict a range of likely consequences for their choices. I'm feeling too tired to put that more eloquently right now.

The second instance… that's a bit more dicey for me, and I can't deny that I'm biased because I was involved in both of these situations and had a stake in them.

Thoughts?

Diversions

I've had a lot less mental energy for various reasons lately. I've been keeping up with the OSR blogosphere (as much as that's possible, considering how many great blogs keep popping up) but haven't been on Google+ much at all. Keep up the good work.

What free energy I've had for creating I've been putting toward magic and magical politics as well as trying to figure out a more cohesive setting. Nothing's quite ready for posting yet. Soon, hopefully.

Two things that might interest my readers, though.

The Battle for Wesnoth: Considering the OSR's love of, or at least respect for, wargaming, I'm surprised that I haven't seen this mentioned before. Wesnoth is a very high-quality, FREE, turn-based fantasy computer wargame with some role-playing elements mixed in (units can level by gaining XP and every unit is aligned to Law, Neutrality or Chaos, for example).

Trigun: Japanese animation doesn't seem to get a lot of attention in the OSR, but Trigun may merit being the exception just because it seems to fit the post-apocalyptic gonzo science-fantasy of Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha/Mutant Future better than any other TV show I'm familiar with. I've been re-watching it for the first time since I got involved in the OSR and I'm struck by how inspirational it could be for a referee. It's got mutant plants, lost technology (which will often try to kill you), mutants, irresponsible genetic meddling, isolated settlements, a post-apocalyptic back-story… anyway, I think it's worth checking out.

The Anatomy of a Trick

I've been struggling for a while with how to understand and come up with tricks. A lot of that, I think, has to do with how open-ended they are. Courtney's Tricks, Empty Rooms and Basic Trap Design defines tricks as EVERYTHING in a dungeon that isn't an empty room, monster, trap or treasure.

Reading through Appendix H: Tricks in the DMG last night, though, something clicked and I think I have a better grasp of tricks now. As I type this out, it feels like I'm stating the obvious, but if I couldn't figure this out 24 hours ago chances are good that this could be helpful to at least one reader. Obviously, this is a new way of thinking for me so it probably has some holes. Criticism and examples that aren't included in this theorizing are welcome.

Tricks fall into two broad categories:

1. Tricks that are merely an empty room, monster, trap or treasure masquerading as a different one of those options; for example, an animated statue coated in yellow mold waiting for adventurers to come into range. It's a nasty monster masquerading as golden treasure.

2. Tricks that aren't masquerading, that aren't, when boiled down, really just an empty room, monster, trap or treasure. They may include those, but they aren't just that.

These "type two" tricks follow this formula:

1. There is an item. This could be an architectural feature, like an arch or doorway, a fixture, like an altar, fountain or pedestal, or a "free-floating" item, like a ball or futuristic alien device just lying on the floor of a room.

2. There are one or more ways to interact with this item. Personally, I think that it is more fun the more ways there are to interact with the item; one important facet of items with multiple ways to interact with them is that some of the ways to interact with them may be less obvious than others. Examples of ways to interact with items include touching and throwing, talking, casting spells or projectiles at or through them, offering something to them, attacking them and "messing" with toggles, switches, levers and buttons on them. Interacting with the item in multiple ways in a particular order may count as a separate way to interact with the item.

3. There is then a deciding factor that will connect the method of interaction with the result. This deciding factor might be the particular way the item was interacted with, a roll on a die or some mixture of both. For the simplest of tricks, this is just whether the trick is interacted with or not.

4. Finally, there are the results. These might be bad, good or not obviously one or the other. Complex tricks with lots of results (some good, some bad, some hard to nail down) are possible (and fun!) but the simplest tricks have just one result. Here are some categories of results; if you can think of others, please comment about them:

• Changes to Characters: Whether attribute scores, sex, facial hair or size, something changes.
• Access/Transport: Characters may or may not get a choice about this access or transport. Examples include teleportation, trap doors, chutes, slides and plain old secret/locked doors opening.
• Treasure: The characters are rewarded with treasure.
• Monsters: The characters are faced with an encounter.
• Trap: The characters are faced with harm.
• Resources: The characters get something that helps them attain some other goal, whether killing monsters and getting treasure or a plot or exploration-related goal, from information like a clue or treasure map to physical tools like keys or mirrors, to consumables like torches, food or even wishes.
• Changes to the Trick: Interacting with the trick changes it; it may disappear or stop working, become another item, such as treasure, or new ways to interact with it may become possible.

So, what do you think? Is this all so incredibly obvious that it wasn't worth posting? Am I missing something? Is this helpful? Would random tables for each of these components, organized in this specific way, be a helpful addition to the trick resources out there? What other trick resources have you found helpful?

Gaming Really Does Kill Blogging

Hi everyone. I'm still here.

I've just been spending most of my gaming time writing up my megadungeon, running it and playing in a 3.5 game with some friends.

The 3.5 game has been… eh. I enjoy playing with my friends, and I can't deny that it's pretty cool to be able to cast "Chain Charm Monster" or to shock the DM with my Old School tactics, but… I really, really don't like the complexity or how long it's taken me to create my character. And we just took something like three hours to kill a dragon.

BUT, my DM decided, at my strong suggestion, to adopt the Arduin critical hit and fumble tables! So I'm looking forward to that unexpectedly killing a PC or ending a boss-fight in one round, even if the criticals and fumbles have to be confirmed. I love those tables so much.

Some Clerical Reputation Mechanics

I recently decided to include Clerics in my game (currently that's not the case) and, as part of figuring out how I want to do this, posted a question about creating pantheons on Google+ and got some good responses and also a few links to Alex Shroeder's blog where he outlines how he's been running deities and Clerics in his games. I found his post about reputation especially interesting. I've reworked it a little bit and present it below. Along with tracking the alignment of my players, I'm hoping to expand this system and to use it not only for Cleric PCs' religious standing but for all PCs' standings with different factions or NPCs.

Feedback appreciated.
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Clerics begin play with a reputation rating of 1 with their deity. At the end of each session in which a Cleric has performed an act on the following table, the Cleric’s player rolls the die that corresponds to the most significant act of the Cleric that day; if the rolled result is higher than the Cleric’s current reputation score, the Cleric’s reputation score increases by one.

d4: Fulfilled intermediate tenet of faith or service related to single believer
d6: Fulfilled major tenet of faith, service related to single local congregation or saved life or body of single believer
d8: Related to single order or sect, saved lives or bodies of single local congregation
d10: Related to whole religion or a servant of the god, saved lives or bodies of entire order or sect
d12: Related to the god, saved the lives or bodies of whole religion

Losing reputation is easier and more drastic than gaining reputation. At the end of a session in which a Cleric has blatantly violated a tenet of the Cleric’s faith or done an active disservice related to the Cleric's faith, the Cleric’s player rolls the die that corresponds to the act of the highest magnitude of the Cleric’s that day. The number rolled on the die is subtracted from the Cleric’s reputation score; in this way, negative reputations are possible. 

If the Cleric has performed both reputable and disreputable acts within a single session, increase the disreputable die size by two and compare the two dice; subtract the smaller die’s sides from the larger die’s sides and roll a die with the number of sides that results, applying the result towards or against the reputation in correspondence to whether the larger die was reputable or disreputable.

For example, Kolath the Cleric of Zeus, within a single session, stole some gold from a member of the congregation of the local temple of Zeus and also helped the rest of the party fend off an army of goblins intent on killing the entire local town. The theft from the fellow follower of Zeus corresponds to the d4 and saving the town, which includes the local congregation of Zeus, corresponds to the d8. Adding two to the four sides of the d4 and subtracting the resulting six from eight leaves a d2 for Kolath's player to roll to see whether Kolath's reputation rises with Zeus or not. Unless Kolath's reputation with Zeus is already lower than 2, Zeus is so non-plussed with Kolath's theft that even saving an entire congregation is not enough to impress Zeus.

Reputation with one's deity is important because Third through Seventh Level Cleric Spells are granted to Clerics by higher powers. In order for spells of a certain level to be granted to a Cleric, the Cleric must both be of sufficient level to have spell slots of that level (like the "normal," as-written Cleric in most systems) and must have a reputation rating with the higher power of at least the same level as the spell.

A Blessed Incarnation Commemoration to You

Hail the Heav'n-born Prince of Peace!

Hail the Son of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings

Ris'n with healing in His wings

Mild He lays His glory by

Born that man no more may die

Born to raise the sons of earth

Born to give them second birth

Hark! The herald angels sing

"Glory to the newborn King!"

[T]he Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. -Matthew 20:28 (NASB)

Print Friendly

We've had a lot of great bloggers join the OSR blogosphere since Jeff Rients gave this sage advice on his blog last year, so I think it's a good idea to pass this around again. If you're a blogger, this button is a great thing to add to the bottom of each blog post; it lets readers print your post off or turn it into a PDF. I don't know how many great blog posts I've saved this way, and how many other great blog posts I've been frustrated to find I'd have to copy into a Word or Text document or lose track of. Please, give the OSR blogosphere a great Christmas present and make the stuff that you're already posting easily save-able for the rest of us. Thanks!

Shield of Wonder

The actual downloading method is lame (I really wish they were one document) and it's written for 3.5 and 4 (though that's not a huge deal in actual practice), but THIS is what I call a magic item.

The DMG, Section by Section, Part 20: Spell Explanations – Illusionists

Short post today, just wrapping up Illusionist spells, which in turn wraps up this section on magic in the DMG.

Phantasmal Killer
This is, as I understand it, an incredibly nasty spell. One way to escape it, however, is to go unconscious, "somehow." If I'm ever playing and my PC's buddy is being attacked by one of these, you can bet I'll be knocking my buddy over the head to save him.

Detect Magic
I was really interested to see Gary refer the reader to the Cleric, rather than the Magic-User, version of this spell for commentary. Comparing the Cleric and Magic-User versions of this spell, it seems that the Cleric version only can detect the strength of a magic aura while the Magic-User version includes a chance to detect the particular type of magic involved. By giving Illusionists the Cleric version of the spell, Gary is giving them the weaker, less effective version.

Finally, in a note that seems to cover all spells, Gary points out that, "the reverse of any spell must be separately memorized, and that each requires special components." I've never liked the idea of having to choose between "normal" or reversed versions of spells during spell memorization, but I certainly can understand why Gary would rule this way.

The DMG, Section by Section, Part 19: Spell Explanations – Magic-Users

Comprehend Languages
I found it interesting that this can be reversed and cast on a scroll to make it unreadable, though casting the unreversed version of this spell twice on such a scroll will make it readable again.

Enlarge
Apparently Gary's players tried to kill opponents by enlarging them inside their armor, but Gary says that their armor will either come loose (if secured with buckles and straps) or be ruined (in the case of chain mail) rather than kill an enlarged subject of this spell; even clothes are assumed to "split away during growth." I would have thought that Gary would have just had what a subject of this spell was wearing grow with the subject, but leave it to Gary to surprise me, right?

Tenser's Floating Disc
I don't know why Gary's such a kill-joy with this particular spell. First he stipulates clearly that no Magic-User can begin play knowing this spell or Nystul's Magic Aura, and then he bans Magic-Users from riding the Disc. Lame. (Though I think Gary's reasoning for banning these two spells may have been to allow players to choose a spell on a result of 10 on the beginning spell tables. Still.)

Unseen Servant
This is the spell my players have played around with the most, stretching the limits of how much they can communicate with an inanimate force (being able to command it clearly means that some amount of communication is possible, I've ruled). Gary stipulates that this force has no shape and therefore cannot be clothed.

Web
I hadn't ever realized that this spell requires at least two anchor points or the web will collapse in on and get tangled up with itself. I hadn't ever really thought about that, but it makes good sense.

Wizard Lock
I also hadn't realized that casters could freely pass through their own Wizard Locks. This has interesting possibilities if you want to take magic in the direction of different flavors of the same spells. (Brendan, I'm thinking of you here.)

Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer
I hadn't realized that this was in 1e as well as 2e. It came up in a previous discussion on this blog. (I prefer any one of my solutions, for the record, though the existence of this spell does settle what Gary thought about the issue.)

Wall of Force
This spell's commentary is interesting because Gary discusses two specific ways to defeat it, much the same way that prismatic spheres in AD&D and prismatic walls in Arduin are handled. These magical barriers that require specific, sometimes (especially with Arduin) non-sensical, unrelated magical keys fascinate me and seem under-utilized in the D&D I read about and play.