Campaign News November 19

Last night's session was successful on all counts. That the party covered significantly more ground, and took only one casualty, is clear evidence of player skill improvement.

This session also marks the start of individual character clocks not forcibly synchronized. All characters continue to experience 1 day in the game world to each day in the real world, however, the characters in last night's game are continuing forward from January 3, 1480 while those characters not present are still back at December 31, 1479 today.

I'm very interested in everyone's thoughts on time-keeping in the game. On the Discord server, in the #rules-discussion channel, I quoted a section of the DMG which leaves me with some confusion and ambiguity.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

Regrettably, Josh L has bowed out of the game for the time-being, bringing us down to 6 active players who are currently running 11 characters. Two new players anticipate joining us in upcoming sessions soon, however.

Please invite new players to join us any time. One of the features of playing this game in the 1970s style is that the larger the player pool, the more interesting the game becomes. Don't worry that the sessions will become too crowded, I'll cap attendance around 5 or 6 if it comes to that, and add more sessions to the calendar. 

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled session is at 13:00 on Nov 29 (the Saturday after Thanksgiving) at Footbridge Brewery. Please let me know if you expect to play that day and I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to discuss plans for your character with the other players playing that day in advance of the session. There are lots of "housekeeping" sorts of tasks that can be done outside the session to maximize your XP and treasure collecting time in the session.

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

With only a few scheduled sessions left this year, I'd like your input for next year's calendar. Please let me know your day of the week and time of the day preferences for the regular sessions ASAP.

TIPS & TRICKS

Rather than a new tips & tricks topis this time, here's an index all the previous topics, in the order in which they were posted. I hope you'll catch up on any you missed or would like to review.

• Quick Tips for Skillful Play 
• Monthly Upkeep 
• Dungeon Definition & Technique 
• Character Records 
• Ratings & Training Costs 
• Hirelings & Henchmen 
• Disease & Parasites
• Approaches to Playing AD&D 
• Downtime Orders 
• Ratings, Class, & Alignment 
• Calculus of the Dungeon 
• "Always On" Time-keeping 

I'd like to hear your comments, questions, and suggestions for new topics! 

Campaign News October 24

It's December 5, 1479 in our game world, and it's a clear, cold morning in our part of it: 34° F with 4% cloud cover and winds 7 knots out of the northwest. I mention this because today's "tips & tricks" is about the 1:1 time-keeping in our game.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

The characters are somewhat less widely scattered than they have been at other times.

• Killarney
• Eoin Sweeney (John S)
• Frang MacSiradh (Andy O)
• Granuille (Liam S) 
• Jonathan McSplaine (Adam M)
• Malcolm Reynolds (Barry F)
• Mallow
• Calvis Mulroney (Andy O)
• Shay McFarland (Barry F)
• Mont-Saint-Michel
• Tybolt Gueribout (Cole W)
• Tralee
• Nicole Connery (Andy O)
• wilderness
• Finnan Fitzpatrick (Cole W)

SCHEDULE

The October Saturday game at Footbridge which would normally be played tomorrow, Oct 25, has been canceled. Our next game will be on Tuesday, Nov 6, when it will be December 18, 1479. Please RSVP to let me know whether or not you plan to attend. As always, I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE those of you playing to discuss your plans and prepare for your expedition in advance of the session in order to make the most effective use of the session time.

TIPS & TRICKS

The "Always On" Game

One of the things about our 1:1 time-keeping game that I sometimes find tricky to keep in mind, is that the game is "always on." Any player could send instructions for any of his characters to the ref at any time. The clock ticks in the game world at the same rate as the clock in the real world, but the players and referee are not actively playing the game every minute of the day. So how is that handled?

There are two mechanisms operating to support this. As referee, I consider player instructions as being executed starting at the time the instructions were issued, regardless of when I read them. The execution of those instructions takes game world time as defined by the rules of the game, by the logic of the setting, and by the judgement of the referee (in that order of preference). It's possible players' orders meet resistance from the setting or conflict with another player's orders. Sometimes that will necessitate asking for input from the players. Ideally though, the orders contain instructions that anticipate the resistance or conflict. If the orders don't explicitly say how to deal with a problem the character encounters, and I'm unable to get a timely response from the player or players involved, I'll fall back on their character's agency. Whenever a player is drafting orders (I'm using "orders" and "instructions" interchangeably), including some description about the character's approach or attitude would be helpful for me to apply the character's agency more closely to how the player would have handled the character if present to do so.

Characters below 9th level are likely merely exchanging coin for gems, buying equipment, hiring mercenaries, hiring NPCs to train characters or cast spells for them, gathering information, and so on during downtime. It's pretty easy for the ref to manage those activities without troubling the players. Once characters are building castles, moving troops, building roads and ships, attacking weak neighbors, and so on, it may get a bit more complex, we may find ourselves with things we need to resolve jointly between sessions. I'm not really worried about managing it then, and I'm definitely not worried about managing it now.

Skillful players make the best use of their characters' time in the world both during and between sessions.

Campaign News October 14

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

I'll reiterate my request for you all to please invite new players to join the game any time. This style of play will not be for everyone, but anyone can try it out and our club-style format means players attending sporadically, or even only once, will not be disruptive to the on-going game. 

SCHEDULE

We're one week away from our next game. Please RSVP at your earliest convenience.

TIPS & TRICKS

The Calculus of the Dungeon

The Dungeon Masters Guide is quite prescriptive about the contents of dungeons. The individual referee can of course deviate from those instructions however desired, but in our game I stay close to the guidelines in order to provide predictability and consistency. One of the features of that predictability is that it's easy to estimate how much wealth and experience a character can hope to gain when delving the dungeon. Here's the break down according to the guidelines:

• 60% of the rooms in a dungeon will be empty of monsters, treasures, and traps
• 15% of the rooms will contain monsters guarding treasure worth an average of 600 gold per level
• 10% of the rooms will contain monsters without any treasure except their personal possessions
• 5% have unguarded treasure worth 272 gold per level on average
• 5% of the rooms have a trap, trick, or oddity
• 5% have stairs, a chute, a chimney, or a sloping passage

That creates a lot of empty ground to cover. Over a large sample set of rooms, the delvers should expect to find treasure worth about 104 gold per level per room. For a party containing 3 first level PCs, that means searching about 60 rooms before finding enough treasure for everyone to make second level.

I've adopted the ratios from the Basic rules in order to have a higher density:

• 28% of the rooms are completely empty
• 17% contain monsters with treasure
• 17% contain monsters without treasure
• 11% contain tricks or traps
• 9% contain stairs or a sloping passage
• 6% contain unguarded treasure
• 6% contain treasure guarded by tricks or traps
• 5% contain stairs/slope/etc. and treasure
• 2% contain an oddity and treasure 

That brings the treasure density up to about 145 gold per room, and the ground needing to be covered in order to get that same party to second level down to about 41 rooms. 

Delving deeper than the first level multiplies the size of the treasure, so that on the second level down guarded treasures average 1,200 gold and on the third level 1,800 gold. An unguarded treasure on the second level, at 544 gold on average, is almost as good as a guarded one on the first level. The threats do increase, too though.

The average hit dice of an op force in the first level of a dungeon is 6, but it could be as high as 15.75 (for something certainly hostile, and 18 if counting gnomes as a possible opposing force). At the second level down the average threat is 10 hit dice and the high as 26.25, while at the third level, 15.5 is average and 40 the max. The deeper level monsters tend to have more special attacks and defenses as well, so the hit dice alone isn't a perfect metric.

There might be any number of conclusions to draw from these statistics, however the one that jumps out to me is that guarded treasure will average a little over 100 gold per hit die of monster guarding it at any of the first three levels of the dungeon.