Gelatinous Icosahedron

 The abstract nature of classic D&D combat doesn't lend itself well to calling discrete moves and maneuvers. A lot can happen in a 10-second combat round. Combatants trade feints and parries, with weapons, shields, and body parts. They grab and push and trip. They try to pull dirty tricks like dust in the eyes or stomping on toes. They stumble, maybe fall down, maybe get back up. They may get dazed or stunned momentarily, but shake it off in the same round. All of this is distilled down to an attack roll and possibly a damage roll, because it's assumed the ultimate objective is to hurt the opponent. The specifics of how you get to that point are descriptive only, and don't need to be mechanically codified. I'm not saying you absolutely can't or shouldn't add mechanics for called shots, parries, trips, throws, dirty tricks, and whatnot, but it all runs counter to the idea of abstraction, that the actions of a round ultimately boil down to how much damage is d...

 You thought I was gonna get all political, didn't you? But no, I just want to talk about Constitution in basic D&D, and how it's at least a little bit broken. Constitution, as written in B/X and BECMI D&D, has a much larger impact, for good or ill, than other ability scores. These editions use a modifier scale from -3 to +3. Most modifiers are applied to a d20 roll, meaning they can have, at most, an impact equal to 15% of the die's maximum. That makes a + or -3 modifier nothing to sneeze at, but it's not big enough to render a character either unplayable or insuperable.  Constitution, though, tacks that -3 to +3 modifier onto rolls of d4, d6, or d8. Despite the huge disproportion, nobody ever complains about piling a +3 on top of a d4 at each level, even though it more than doubles the average hit points of such a character (2.5 base, 5.5 after +3 modifier) and it's not really a huge deal to have an exceptionally hale and hearty magic-user have more hit po...

 D&D needs experience points to truly and fully be a game in which player skill and choices matter. Rewarding skillful play and avoiding the subjectivity of DM fiat as much as possible make for a more rewarding gaming experience. But simply having an XP mechanic is not enough -- experience point awards must incentivize the right things to maximize the range of player choice and properly recognize its results. (What's "right" is a matter of debate, but DMs should at least be fully cognizant of what actions their XP systems encourage and discourage.) XP awards can be broken down into two broad categories: XP for accomplishments and XP for actions. The former is about broad objectives, with little or no regard for the strategies and methods used to accomplish it. XP for treasure is one prominent example. It doesn't matter whether the PC party gets loot by combat, by exploration and searching, by stealth, by negotiation and diplomacy, or by some combination of all. S...

 One of the things I dislike about some D&D settings, especially high-magic ones or "kitchen sink" ones, is the way magic is so ubiquitous as to be effectively a surrogate for technology. Sometimes it's semi-subtle, but often it's obviously, or even explicitly, an analog of some real world or sci-fi technology -- TV, radio, the internal combustion engine (oh-so-cleverly renamed "internal conjuration engine"), Star Trek transporters, and the like. If you've got the gold to spend, just hire some wizards, either to mass-produce magic items or to act as some sort of sorcerous butler/travel agent/housekeeper/personal chef/communications system. Another thing I dislike about some D&D games is how easy it is to bloat one's spell books with spells scribed from scrolls found as treasure, and how spells tend to be traded and shared freely between the party's spellcasters until everyone's books are essentially complete and homogenous. The obviou...

 A while back, I posted on the old blog about a system to assign dispositions to NPCs and adjust their reaction rolls. As so often happens, my original idea was more complex than it needed to be, and would have benefited a lot from paring down and streamlining. More recently, I was pondering how to differentiate monsters without using the traditional D&D alignment system, which is fraught with various issues and has fallen out of favor with some players and DMs, including myself. It occurred to me I could repurpose that old idea to fill the gap. The gist of it is that, instead of an alignment, each monster type, and if desired, NPCs, is assigned one of the following dispositions, which affects its reaction rolls in a particular way. Average : The creature has no strong tendencies, and makes an unmodified reaction roll.  Benign : Generally seeking to avoid conflict; agreeable or meek. +1 to reaction rolls. Antagonistic : Inclined toward anger or hostility. -1 to reaction r...

 There are two basic approaches I've identified to creating tabletop RPG characters, and these approaches inform the entire play style of a game or a group which focuses on either of them.  The approach that seems most popular these days is the one I call the "hot rodder." Character creation is not just something you do as a prerequisite for playing the game; in many ways, it IS the game. Ability score generation is heavily weighted to produce ideal or near-ideal arrays for your chosen class or type of character. Classes, if they exist at all, are bare-bones templates meant to be heavily customized with subclasses and lists of feats and skills, both at initial creation and at level-ups and between actual game sessions. An inexperienced player could easily wind up with an inferior character by choosing suboptimal skills and skill combinations. The primary challenge for the player is to build the perfect character so he can show off what it can do during the game, much like...

 Yes, I am the blogger formerly known as the proprietor of The Dragon's Flagon. For various reasons, I felt it was time for a fresh start. Welcome to the Gelatinous Icosahedron. It's like a gelatinous cube, but with more sides. It doesn't fit as neatly in a dungeon corridor, but it has the potential to crush you with a natural 20.  That's all for now. More to come.