Campaign News December 28

There are no updates on characters, players, or schedule since the last news posted on the 17th, so it's just Tip & Tricks today.

TIPS & TRICKS

All we have to decide is what to do with the time we are given. - Gandalf

How to Not Waste Downtime

Characters have limited lifespans. Although their "natural" longevity could be as high as 139 years or as low as 62, it's most commonly it's 92 to 97 years. With 1:1 time, who cares what we do with their time between sessions? The character, which is likely in his or her teens or 20s at the start of play, will outlive the player anyway, right? Well, not likely.

Besides the fact that characters are subject to far more deadly violence than we players are, using magic and sustaining attacks from the supernatural creatures in the game can unnaturally age the characters. They are checking monthly against the (albeit fairly unlikely) chance of random death by disease or infection too. In any case, what our characters accomplish in their fictional lifetimes isn't so much the question as what we, as their players, accomplish with them as our game pieces.

A week or two of time passes in both the real world and the game world between each session. Each session our characters miss adds "slack" to their game clocks as the other characters who did play in the session advance the "global clock." If your characters don't use that time, they lose it. They can only use it if their players give orders for the use of their time to the referee in advance of that time passing. As such, as soon as you have ended a session with your character you should be issuing down time orders for what they're doing next. Every day you wait deciding, or getting around to it, they lose to inaction.

One source of resistance in players against issuing down time orders seems to be uncertainty about what they can do, and what would be valuable for them to do. As in session play, your character is operating with "tactical infinity" to take any action. The actions are only limited by the rules of the game and the integrity of the fictional world which, in most physical, social, economic, and other respects generally resembles our own real world. To that is added magic and monsters and the supernatural, creating a great latitude of possibilities. This wide ranging freedom of action often leads, ironically, to less action being taken.

Here are some suggestions to help players cut through the unlimited possibilities to reach some of the most practically useful choices early in their careers.

• Learn to read & write.
  The culture of the Erin1478 setting is not pervasively literate. Player characters cannot read and write unless they have acquired literacy as part of their class training (clerics, magic-users, and illusionists) or their family background skills (most commonly mercantile). The practical benefits of literacy, even in the fictional AD&D world, are legion. As characters progress in levels, social standing, and political power, illiteracy will increasing become a serious handicap. Acquiring literacy can be accomplished in as little as two months, and the rules are built in a way that attempts to simulate the reality of acquiring the ability while permitting the character to interlace that activity with session play, provided the player pays attention to the rules constraints.
• Gather information.
  Most general information such as the existence of nearby dungeons, the general political situation, recent regional news, and so on, is automatically acquired with a week's worth of effort. No skill or charisma checks required. Specialized information: what is monster XYZ's weakness, where can this rare item / plant / animal be found, or are there any higher level NPCs of a particular class around here, can likewise be found with a little more time or with specific actions such as hiring a sage.
• Plan your next expedition.
  This is the number one best thing you can do as a skillful player. Talk with other players about the next session and get the legwork for it done. Hiring mercenaries, upgrading equipment, figuring out what more information needs to be researched and researching it in downtime uses your between session days instead of your in-session days. It also means that more of the actual session time is available for taking actions that acquire gold and experience.
• Sort out your character's domestic situation.
  A few character classes are required to limit themselves to the wealth that they can carry and that is a significant handicap. If your character is so limited, or has to donate some part of his wealth, sort this out outside the session. Convert coins to gems. Buy a mount. Find a good cause to support. Whatever it is your class requires. If you're not so limited, find a place to stash your stuff. Hire people to guard it and make sure they're loyal. Carrying pounds and pounds of treasure into the dungeon or wilderness makes no sense.
• Find a patron.
  For lower level characters, hiring on as a henchman can be helpful in a number of ways. Most obviously, the money. Henchmen are paid 100 gold per level per month (their upkeep costs) plus gifts and treasure shares. A patron can also give the player who is unsure what he or she wants to do with his character some direction. Perhaps the character will be a loyal minion, then trusted lieutenant, and maybe even heir to their patron. Maybe the player will learn that he or she has been playing for the wrong team. In any case, treasure and experience flows to the character from this relationship. The player who researches possible patrons in downtime will more likely end up with a compatible match and a satisfactory mission in session.

Anyone who feels unsure about how to couch their down time orders, or in what order to do things, or isn't feeling clear and confident about the concept, should just reach out to the referee. I will be very happy to help however I can!

 

Campaign News December 17

Thanks Andy for a profitable and interesting one-on-one session last night. It also generated a shit-ton of homework for me so that's fantastic! Seriously, I love D&D homework. When the players don't generate it for me, I make up assignments for myself. I'm especially excited for 2 of the 4 assignments I got last night.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

I sent out a snapshot of everyone's characters' statuses as I like to do periodically. Andy agreed to let me use his for an explanation about reading these.

Player stats indicates how many days it has been since the player last joined a session and the percentage of sessions he or she has attended since first joining. Each of the player's characters have a rating of 1 to 4 which represents the number of weeks of training needed for the next level. This was discussed in June, although not submitting any downtime orders, no longer has a negative impact on a character's rating. The "days behind" column just shows how far in the past each character is relative the character(s) furthest along the timeline. It happens that Calvis is one of the characters at the forefront, so I should point out that this figure is relative to the "globally" most advanced characters, rather than just the player's most advanced character(s). The rest of the columns seem self-explanatory to me, but please don't hesitate ask me about any of these, or anything else about the game any time.

There are a couple of other columns that I track and haven't included, notably the maximum age column. It doesn't come up in play much, especially at lower levels, but every character has an expiration date (unknown to the player) somewhere between age 62 and 139 (for humans), though most commonly between 86 and 119. The primary reason this matters is that some undead drain years of life and some powerful spells cost casters years of life. This unnatural aging counts against the character's longevity limit.

One reason I wanted to highlight this today is to discuss how "1:1 time" is operationalized in our game. As is often the case, Andy pushed the limits of my previous thoughts on this, so I have more clarity on how this works to share with you all.

SCHEDULE

Last night was the last game of 2025 and so I feel compelled to write a brief wrap-up/summary of the year.

• We played 23 sessions with an average of 2.7 players.
• Tuesdays and Thursdays both averaged 2.8 players with 9 sessions falling on each of those days of the week, and the 5 Saturday sessions averaged 2.2 players each.
• We began the year with 4 active players, ended with 6, and peaked with 8. We had 9 different players in game at some point over the year, and there are 4 people who have indicated their intention to join in 2026.
• There were 9 player characters killed in action.
• There are 11 player characters currently active. 
• The highest level character is 5th. There are 4 characters at 2nd level and 2 of these are on the verge of 3rd. The remaining 6 characters are all 1st level.

TIPS & TRICKS

While I've discussed the principle of how our "1:1 time-keeping" works, there are some quirks to operationalizing this that have become apparent. The basic premise is that between game sessions, time from the characters' perspective flows at the same rate as time from the players' perspective. During sessions, time might speed up or slow down as makes sense for handling the character's actions in the game world. Cross country travel taking a couple of days of game time can often be resolved in a matter of minutes, for example. When that happens, the characters' "clocks" are advanced the two days even though we are still on the same day in the real world. If we end a game session, as Andy and I did last night, with a character clock at February 14, 1480 on Dec 16, 2025, then on Dec 17, the character's clock ticks forward to February 15, 1480.

Character Clock Holds: An exception to the character's clock advancing with the calendar has occurred a couple of times so far. In both instances, the players gave me orders that I needed time to resolve in excess of the time passing. In both cases, I held the characters' clocks to the date at which those characters would have had the information that I was providing them so that they didn't lose game days on account of my processing time. Once I provide the results, character time begins ticking again, but they haven't lost any game time due to my dawdling.

Character Orders Must Be Proactive: Another quirk which arose recently was when a player who had not issued any downtime orders for a character that hadn't been played in some time wanted to designate how the character's time had been spent. This retroactive sort of play is fairly common in modern games. I've certainly done it as both player and referee in the past. At those times, when it has been agreed that there would not have been a "game fiction" impact for those actions to have been taken earlier, this was acceptable. It runs against the intent of 1:1 time-keeping, however. If a character is already at such and so date, it is not possible to issue back-dated orders. The player has already missed the opportunity to execute those orders in the past, and must execute them in the future if he or she wants them done.

If the player was allowed to designate what the orders for the last 4 weeks would have been at the end of that period, the character is getting the fruits of that effort without paying any price--the game time has already passed, after all. Instead, if the player is issuing the orders proactively, he or she is "paying" for the results by rendering the character unavailable for use. It's an opportunity cost that can only be paid in advance to be meaningful.

Limits to Downtime Orders: Another quirk that has only become apparent to me through experimentation with using this style of game time-keeping, is just how far to allow out of session action to run. If session play can advance a character's game clock, and game time between sessions runs at 1:1 with real time, does that mean that downtime orders take as many real world days as game days?

Imagine that Andy has a character currently at game date January 30, 1480 in Castlenoe. Barry has a character in Killarney at February 12. There is a session schedule tomorrow in which these two players would like to run both these characters in Killarney. If downtime orders only execute at 1:1 time, then even though it would only be February 2 by the time Andy's character made the journey from Castlenoe to Killarney, 10 days earlier than Barry's character's current date, Andy wouldn't be able to do that unless downtime orders could be executed faster. They can.

Downtime orders can advance the character's clock until hitting the clock of the most advanced character. So they can't advance the global game clock, but they can catch the character up to it. That is the limit on downtime orders. The "days behind" indicates how much slack each character has available to exceed 1:1 time on his or her orders.

Further Thoughts: Remembering when characters were where while they are not all synchronized to the same clock is a little bit of a cognitive load on this referee. For the moment I seem to be keeping my shit together, but I foresee a day when I will fuck it up. Probably badly. It's possible that I will need to force clock synchronizations at some point, so keep in mind your "days behind slack" in case I call upon everyone to use or lose that time at some point in the future!

Campaign News December 5

Thanks to John and Barry for an excellent session last night! 

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

With Josh's departure, and average session participation dropping from 3.2 in the first half of 2025 to 2.1 in the second half, we are at a bit of a low point participation-wise. However, with three new players who've expressed interest in joining, and the addition of online sessions to the game, I'm hopeful that this will surge in January.

The characters have been generally coalescing in Killarney and two have set up their bases of operations here for the time being.

I have not updated the list of The Fallen in some time, because, happily, it has been 93 days since the last PC fatality and 186 days since the last TPK. Despite this, the XP haul in the last couple of sessions has been the highest of the year, so clearly player skill at risk management has been improving.

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled session is Tuesday, December 16. This tends to be a busy time of year for people and I have low confidence that anyone will be available to play. I already have regrets from all but three players, however, I will run a session with even only one player.

Please also remember that I will run unscheduled sessions on request for one or more players, in person or online, as my schedule permits.

Thanks very much for your input on next year's calendar! I will put that out ASAP.

TIPS & TRICKS

I'm planning on an analysis of how each class might be played in the style of game we're playing here. I also have a couple of ideas for "how to referee" tips, as I'd really like to pass that duty around once in a while at least, and an analysis of territory development as detailed in the DMG. If you have requests for other topics, or a preference of which of these I post next, please let me know! For today, I'll start with the fighter. With three characters of that class in the game, it is our group's most popular.

The Fighter

This class is described in the Players Handbook in about 400 words spread over less than half a page. Perhaps some of the tightest writing in the rule books. It does, however, leave what is arguably the class's most distinguishing and valuable feature unspoken: the fighter's ability to command.

That's a tight definition! It's also incomplete. Gygax had some ideas about how to play this game that are problematic. I am all for following the rules of the game and I'd argue that if one does not follow the rules, one is no longer playing the game. If we decide in chess that it doesn't make sense for the king to only move one square while the queen may move as far as she likes, and we change that rule, we're no longer playing chess. As long as we codify that rule and always follow it, we're still playing a game, even if it's not chess. If we instead judge on a case-by-case basis how the king may move without codifying it in an immutable way, then we are not only not playing chess, we're not playing a game.

Slight tangent here, but where I'm going is that there are also words in the rule books which are not rules, and cannot be rules, and still allow us to play a game. Chief among those is Gygax's admonition in the preface:

As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death. Peeping players there will undoubtedly be, but they are simply lessening their own enjoyment of the game by taking away some of the sense of wonder that otherwise arises from a game which has rules hidden from participants. It is in your interests, and in theirs, to discourage possession of this book by players. If any of your participants do read herein, it is suggested that you assess them a heavy fee for consulting "sages" and other sources of information not normally attainable by the inhabitants of your milieu. If they express knowledge which could only be garnered by consulting these pages, a magic item or two can be taken as payment - insufficient, but perhaps it will tend to discourage such actions. 

Bullshit. I would never play more than one game at a table run by such an ass as this. Hiding rules from players only to spring them after they needed to be known is asinine. It is as much not playing a game as ignoring or changing the rules capriciously during play would be.

With my interest in transparent and stable rules thus established, I'll move on to the hidden ability of the fighter. It is implicit in the rules surrounding mercenaries as well as the description of the organization of human forces in the Monster Manual.

Fighters' Command Ability

Fighters of 1st through 3rd levels may command up to 10 soldiers per level. For fighters of 2nd and 3rd level, in addition to the one 1st level fighter who must act as a sergeant for every 10 soldiers in the force, the fighter may command one 1st level fighter for special duties. For example, a 3rd level fighter may command 30 troops six 1st level fighters, three of whom must be embedded in the 30 troops for proper command and control, and three additional who might take special duties or detach a number of troops for some purpose.

 

For 4th through 8th level fighters, the ability allows for command of 20 troops per level, one lieutenant per level, and all of the sergeants required for that number of troops and the additional troops and sergeants permitted by the reporting lieutenants' command ability.

A mere 4th level player character fighter could command 80 troops and 8 sergeants directly, as well as 4 lieutenants who could each command 30 soldiers and 3 sergeants directly and 3 additional sergeants who could command 10 soldiers each. Such a character could field a force of 320 0-level soldiers, 32 first level fighter sergeants, and 4 third level fighter lieutenants: 356 soldiers and officers in total.

At 9th level the fighter commands captains who command lieutenants below them. At this level, the fighter could command 6,542 soldiers and officers (if I didn't mess up my math)!

At the Table

The first level fighter can command as many as 10 soldiers without the expense of an officer. Provided the fighter and his or her allies can scrape together the gold to outfit them and offer hazard pay, a gang of mercenaries greatly improves the survivability and efficacy of a beginning party delving the dungeon.

Men-at-arms will only accompany characters encountered on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level of the dungeon.

That little army isn't accompanying the higher level fighter into the dungeon, so the fighter also needs allies and henchmen to go on delving expeditions to fund that force.

The 4th level fighter is already able to stand against typical humanoid tribes in the area or pillage smaller human settlements as a raider. Serving a higher level character as a henchman is another profitable choice at this level.

The fighter's army is the means by which he or she exerts power. Maintaining an army requires securing streams of ever increasing income. The fighter must raid more lairs, delve more dungeons, and sack more castles and cities. The fighter might find some passive forms of income to reduce the amount of active fighting required, but it takes a lot of serfs at 7 silver a month to fund an army over 6,000 strong!

Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals study logistics. -- Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC

The fighter’s success depends greatly on recruiting, retaining, equipping, and feeding an army in the field. Charisma is far more important for the higher level fighter than the lower level one. Even at the lower levels, with at least a little money, charisma may be more important than strength, dexterity, or constitution to the fighter.

... perhaps a war between players will be going on (with battles actually fought out on the tabletop with minature [sic] figures) one night, while on the next, characters of these two contending players are helping each other to survive somewhere in a wilderness.

It is meant for the fighter to wage war against man and monster alike, taking treasure and territory. And with territory, preserving the populace!