Campaign News September 20

TIPS & TRICKS

Dungeon Treasures 

In the past I've written about the calculus of the dungeon. Beating the dungeon is the key to getting past the lower levels of character development, and recovering treasure is the key to beating the dungeon. So how do we do it?

First, what treasure is in the dungeon and why? The placement of treasure, and any guardians of it, is the prerogative of the referee. In our game, however, that decision is based purely on what the rules give us and not our own wishes that the characters succeed, or that the players have fun, or that the game is memorable and dramatic, or any other consideration. We follow these rules strictly because we are more interested in playing the game that these rules present than in telling or hearing a story of our own design, and to maintain fairness because our referees are also players in this game. Following those rules, the placement of treasure in the dungeon is guided by 1) tables indicating whether or not a particular room has treasure, and 2) if so, of what that treasure consists.

 

I was interested in finding out what this meant in practice, and as I wrote in the brief article linked above, that works out to about 272 gold assuming average results for gems and jewelry, without exploring the exceptional cases. It is, however, the exceptional cases that make gambling the dungeon attractive, if not technically worth the risks. The exceptional cases are in gems and jewelry, and by extension, maps.

With top level rolls, the average gem is worth 275 gold, so the average gems treasure roll, 688. That does not include rolls beyond the base value which can push a gem's value as low as 1 silver or as high as 1 million gold. One gem in 2.4 billion gems is worth that maximum value. An unguarded, first level dungeon hoard could contain 4 of them. The odds are minuscule, 1 in 1.92E11, but not zero. Jewelry contains a similar "exploding" value up to 640 thousand gold.

By how much do these cases, and the lesser exceptional cases, skew the value of dungeon treasure on average. And, maybe more importantly, what are the chances of scoring a high yield treasure?

To find out, I rolled on these tables half a million times. Here's what I learned from that. First, in that many iterations I didn't find a 4 million gold hoard, or even a 1 million, but I did roll 4 hoards with a half a million gold gem, 1 with a 350k gem, and 9 with quarter million gold gems in them. All of the 128 rolls over 100k gold (unguarded first level treasures, remember) were gems rolls.

Including these exceptional cases (by simulation rather than calculation) increased the average hoard from 272 to 334 gold. Not enormous, or probably even very significant. If a highly skilled and efficient party managed to exploit 24 rooms in a session, that's about a 790 gold difference, 3,460 vs. 4,250 total haul. That doesn't change the basic calculus. It radically changes the gamble, however.

To have a 50/50 chance of finding a 10k+ gold treasure in the first level of a dungeon, a party needs to find 281 treasure hoards. There are 2 hoards when treasure is guarded by monsters and 1 when it's not. Delving to the second level drastically reduces the number of treasures which need to be found to reach the 50% chance that at least one of them is worth at least 10k to only 59 rolls. The diminishing returns of the dungeon kick in quickly, and at the 3rd level deep, 48 treasure rolls must still be found to yield the same 50% chance at least one was worth more than 10k gold.

For the interested, here's my analysis:

  

The conclusion is very simple. As a low level character, find as many treasure hoards as you can with the least amount of risk. Skip the well-defended double hoards, at least at first, and get down to the second level if possible.

If you don't make at least enough on your 1st level character's first delve to fully replenish your losses and upgrade your character's arms and armor throw him away and try fresh next time.

The further one advances one's character, the more worthwhile it is to hold on to it even after a failed expedition, but if you can only try again from a weaker position than the last you might have a gambling problem. 

Campaign News September 9

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

We have no changes to the player roster since the last newsletter, but I have dropped the "1478" from the web site name, making it simply "Erin" since we're all now into Dec 1480 and Jan 1481.

I'd like to give you all the heads up that I will be seeking a vote on rules in the next month or two. We've agreed to play AD&D "by-the-book" in this group, but "the book" doesn't cover all of the situations we have run into during play in an unambiguous way. As a result, there have been a number of rules extensions and interpretations that the referees have been following to cover these. It is essential to our style of play that we all agree on those rules, hence the upcoming vote.

Some of you may feel unqualified to vote, or unsure about the rules interpretations. Most of these have already been brought up in Discord, though feedback has been fairly limited. Nevertheless, discussion and debate is more than welcomed. It's criticism and debate that will help us refine these rules into a game we all want to play. In the next newsletter or two or three, I'll present the rules that are up for confirmation, rejection, or refinement.

SCHEDULE

Our next scheduled game is a Thursday, 17 Sep. I'm soliciting feedback for next year's schedule. If there are particular days of the month that don't work for you, or others that would be more convenient, please let me know. The Wednesday, online session for example, has been dropped from the 2027 calendar since it was never used in 2026, but I have feedback from one player requesting it be included. This is the kind of feedback I'd like to have.

 

TIPS & TRICKS

The Flow of Time in Erin

YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.

        - Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide (TSR Games, 1979) p. 37.

One of the central rule constructs in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is time-keeping. Pages 37 - 38 of the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) summarizes most of the rules concerning time, although like the rest of the rules in this game, many parts of the rules are scattered throughout the books. The author apparently expected readers to read the entirety of the rule books with perfect retention. In all capital letters, as Gygax does in these books for emphasis, he wrote the strident admonishment quoted above.

During play sessions, time is tracked in days, hours, turns (10-minute chunks), rounds (1-minute chunks), or segments (6-second chunks), depending on the activity in which the characters are engaged. For example, time spent in the relative safety of a settlement resting, information gathering, shopping, hiring, and so on is typically tracked by days. Hit points are recovered by healing on a per day, or per week, basis, so counting the segments would make no sense. For some quick activity in a settlement, such as stopping briefly to change horses, time might be counted in hours as it is part of an overland journey which is tracked by the hour. Hourly tracking of such travel is usually necessary, because the terrain through which the characters travel may vary and the type of terrain, as well as its degree of civilization, affect whether or not a random encounter might occur during each period throughout the travel day, and what that encounter could be. Time in the dungeon is tracked in turns, and in rounds during combat, occasionally segment tracking comes into play in special circumstances such as surprise and spellcasting in the midst of combat.

While carefully tracked, time in the session is also elastic. Mere moments might be spent resolving the results of days or weeks of character time in the game world, or half an hour resolving a few minutes of a complex combat. Such elasticity is normal and expected during a session.

Most D&D tables pay at least lip service to in-session time-keeping as described above, some more strictly than others, perhaps. At our table, the referees track time in the session as carefully and correctly as they are able, understanding that sometimes mistakes are made. Players should always correct the referee when he or she makes any sort of error, time-keeping included.

Outside of the game session, time flows for characters at the same rate as real world time, tracked in days. Although many tables ignore this rule, it is explicit in the rules of our game. Though somewhat buried in an example, the rules state, “it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening.” For this reason, it is imperative that players get their characters to some place of relative safety, or articulate some plan for self-preservation, before adjourning a session of play. A character left in the dungeon at the end of a session with a couple hours of lamp oil, a few days rations, and no orders to somehow exit or hole up, is unlikely to be alive when the next session is played if that is a week or two later.

In our game there are several players, and even more characters, and they aren’t all played in the same sessions. Because of that, and coupled with the elasticity of time within sessions, characters end up being in different times. The rules are clear that characters who have extra time, called “slack time” in our game, because other characters have gotten ahead of them, are permitted to accelerate their time, or “fast-forward” as we call it. A player may choose to fast-forward a character in order to catch up with another with whom the player would like to play his or her character in a session for example. Likewise, a character tied up with level training, or healing, or some other time-consuming activity might fast-forward through it, provided that character has sufficient “slack time” to do so. It is only characters being played in session who have the benefit of truly elastic time and may therefor advance the time “horizon” for the campaign. The DMG suggests that there is a limit to how far that horizon might be advanced, but leaves it to the referee to quantify: “Being aware of time differences between groups of player characters will enable you to prevent the BIG problems. You will know when the adventuring of one such group has gone far enough ahead in game time to call a halt.” At some point the referees in our game will need to decide on a standard for this, and input from all of the participants is invited to inform that decision.

Gygax articulates the reasons for such time-keeping quite well:

The time lines of various player characters will diverge, meet, and diverge again over the course of game years. This makes for interesting campaigns and helps form the history of the milieu.

You may ask why time is so important if it causes such difficulties with record-keeping, dictates who can or can not go adventuring during a game session, and disperses player characters to the four winds by its strictures. Well, as initially pointed out, it is a necessary penalty imposed upon characters for certain activities. Beyond that, it also gives players yet another interesting set of choices and consequences. The latter tends to bring more true-to-life quality to the game, as some characters will use precious time to the utmost advantage, some will treat it lightly, and some will be constantly wasting it to their complete detriment. Time is yet another facet which helps to separate the superior players from the lesser ones. If time-keeping is a must from a penalty standpoint, it is also an interesting addition from the standpoint of running a campaign.

Beyond the general case of time-keeping articulated above, there are exceptions. When the referees take time to process orders, as they sometimes do, characters must not pay a penalty in lost time for that. In cases where this happens, the characters' time is advanced only as the processing of their orders catches up with those orders' time requirements. The burden on referees is to ensure that orders processing is completed in a timely enough fashion that characters are caught up to their time line far enough ahead of sessions that their players have a reasonable opportunity to issue orders for the rest of the time they have between the completion of their characters' orders and the start of the characters' next session.

As complicated as it is, this does all get easier to keep in one's head with practice!

 

 

 

Campaign New August 31

I'm returning to the old newsletter format today.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

Summer has been surprisingly eventful in terms of player activity despite that half of the scheduled sessions have not been played by anyone, and a couple of the usually more active players have suffered reduced availability. I'm very happy to report that Amy B, Monica R, and Scott B have joined us, Josh L has created a character in anticipation of re-joining us, and Alex W plans to join us as soon as he is able. Sadly, John S has decided to retire from the game.

The time gap between the least and most advanced characters' timelines has narrowed to 45 days after peaking at 80 days. The geographic gap has widened however, with characters as far flung as Waterford, Castlenoe, and the Mountains of Mis.

In a fascinating turn of events, the last session saw the first overt player-versus-player actions of the game, one character picking the pockets and leaving for dead her comrades in the dungeon after a near total-party-kill.

I've previously asserted that while AD&D is ultimately a competitive game, skillful play at the lower levels is cooperative. The last session may be the exception that proves the rule. I'll withhold further analysis and discussion for the time-being, but this may be a very interesting and informative case study to improve our understanding of early competitive play in AD&D.

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled game is Tuesday, 8 Sep.

Please remember that you are invited and encouraged to bring new players to the table with you any time. You are likewise invited and encouraged to request impromptu or ad hoc games at any time. I will always have characters on hand for use and adoption by any player. Barry has indicated that he may be available for ad hoc sessions on some Wednesdays, so reach out to him if a Wednesday night game might work for you. Also let me know, because if I'm available, I'll be interested in playing, or possibly refereeing if Barry can't.

TIPS & TRICKS

The Role of Simulation

Perhaps the defining characteristic dividing games like AD&D from games like chess and tennis is "tactical infinity," the allowance within the game to take actions not explicitly described by the rules. I touched on this last April using the iron spike as an example. The only rules around the iron spike are that it costs 1 copper and weighs 1 pound. There are no other rules and just one suggestion about what a character or monster might do with it, and that is to anchor a piece of rope. In our game, characters have successfully used an iron spike to hold a portcullis up and a door closed.

How can players imagine innovative things to do with spells and equipment, and how referees decide how such innovation should be handled? A lot of modern gaming writing will recommend things like "the rule of cool" as the best way to handle situations that the rules don't cover. Those games have different objectives than ours. In our game, on the spot rulings that a referee needs to make for situations not covered by the rules are governed by two principles: 1) consistency with the existing rules of the game, and 2) consistency with our understanding of how the world works. That second principle is essentially simulation: imitating in the game what could happen in the real world. We do that instead of making a ruling that "creates epic moments" as one modern game writer put it, because we are interested in fairness and predictability rather than story.

The reason fairness is important to our game, and not so important to modern expressions of the game, is that our game is competitive and our referees are also players. There are characters in our game who have played at times with me as their referee and with Barry as their referee and there has been zero difference in what rules were used and how they were applied. Likewise, I have played characters that Barry has refereed, and Barry has played characters that I have refereed. Eventually those characters may be rivals for lands and resources and it's important that neither of us has had any unfair advantage.

The reason that predictability is important to our game is that it allows players to innovate actions. Not every action is on the table, for example, a player suggesting his or her thief climbs up the backside of a giant in the middle of combat to gain a backstab bonus. While arguably "cool" and "dramatic," it is also unreasonable once one carefully pictures the maneuvers involved. In this case, it also violates the rules as the giant would certainly be aware of the character climbing his back if such a thing made any physical sense. Players are constrained by a "reasonableness" that comes from a shared understanding of how things work. It is at least as much a burden on the players as on the referee to think this through, lest they waste their valuable session time asking if their character can shove the elephant into the pit, or some such nonsense. On the other side of that coin, practical innovations, such as carrying a potted plant into the dungeon in order to use some plant-affecting spell in a place in which plants aren't normally found is perfectly possible.