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.

Campaign News October 5

This will be a brief one.

RULES INTERPRETATION UPDATE

I've had some thoughts on handling downtime orders to bring our game closer to the rules-as-written that I think could have some interesting in-game implications.

Up to this point, I've solicited your downtime orders for the period of time between sessions all at once, by a deadline. Downtime passes 1 day in game for 1 day in life. Our last downtime period ended on November 9, 1479 aka October 2, 2025. Our next game is October 21, 2025 or November 28, 1479. Twenty days in the game and in life. By the "batch" approach I've been using, I've been asking for orders to be submitted for the entire downtime period by some deadline a couple of days before the end of the period so that I can process those before the next session.

What I'd like to do instead is have no deadline. Rather than processing "in batch," I'll process orders as they would be executed. Today is 3 days after the last scheduled session when game date was November 9, 1479. Today, 3 days later, it's November 12, 1479. It won't be November 28, 1479 until our next scheduled session on October 21, 2025. Since I'm just telling you guys about this change today, I'll accept any orders you want to have started 3 days ago, but after today when you submit your orders will be when your character decides to do whatever it is his orders say.

I foresee a couple of advantages to this approach. From the referee perspective, it makes it much easier to handle cases where two characters submit interacting orders. For example, if two characters both try to convert coin to gems with the jeweler in Killarney, who has only so much stock, the player who submits the order first will find a wider selection available than the one who does so later (unless the jeweler gets new stock in the meantime, and he might because of a trade caravan passing through or another player cashing in gems to cover monthly upkeep). It also spreads my work out instead of requiring a lot of work at once a couple of days before the session.

From the player perspective, I think the cognitive load is a little lighter. First of all, it's advantageous to submit orders shortly after the session so as not to lose any game time, and the game-state will still be fresh mind for those who have just played. It also means that one player trying to collaborate with another and not getting a response can revise his strategy and not lose time waiting to see if there will be a response by the deadline.

It's only been 3 days, so you will not have lost much time if I don't get any November 9 - 12 orders from you today, but since this is a new rule it won't "kick in" until sunset this evening (recall that in 1479 Ireland the day ends and the next begins at sunset rather than midnight).

At sunset it will be the start of November 13, 1479 and the start of day-by-day 1:1 time.

Thanks guys!! As always, I'm very interested in any feedback you have. I'm happy to answer questions and debate different approaches as well. 

Campaign News October 3

I received feedback from a few of you about the ratings policy changes and the "roll low" method for resolving melee combat. With two in favor and one neutral, the ratings change is now in effect. I'll hold off on committing to the rolling method until we've used it in one more session, but that seems to make combat resolution move faster. The method is mathematically equivalent to the combat matrices in the rules, so this is really more of a play technique than a rules change.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

The Leader Board no longer shows player rankings because players no longer have a metric by which to be rated. Character ratings accrue only to the character, not to the player, now. Make no mistake however, this is still a competitive game.

SCHEDULE

For very good reasons, but still sadly, last night's game was cancelled half an hour before start time. We have a long gap now before our next game on Oct 21 and the following scheduled game is Nov 6. That leaves a lot of space for unscheduled games, which I am very happy to run at your requests, in groups or individually.

TIPS & TRICKS 

Although characters will no longer gain ratings of 4 for not submitting downtime orders, submitting them is still HIGHLY advisable. While it will no longer impact character level training costs, all of the opportunities for skilled play afforded by downtime orders are still lost if they are not submitted. Downtime orders, for lower level characters, should be focused on maximizing treasure and experience acquisition in the session(s) following the downtime period. Activities such as securing previously acquired wealth, upgrading character, henchmen, and hireling equipment, gathering information about lost treasure, researching monster vulnerabilities, and henchmen acquisition can all be accomplished in downtime thereby maximizing both the efficiency and the amount of session time available for gaining XP and gold.

Every character in the game now has a rating of 1.0. Going forward downtime orders and sessions in which the character participates will be rated according to the rules:

Consider the natural functions of each class of character. Consider also the professed alignment of each character. Briefly assess the performance of each character after an adventure. Did he or she perform basically in the character of his or her class? Were his or her actions in keeping with his or her professed alignment? Mentally classify the overall performance as: 

E - Excellent, few deviations from norm = 1
S - Superior, deviations minimal but noted = 2
F - Fair performance, more norm than deviations = 3
P - Poor showing with aberrant behavior = 4

Clerics who refuse to help and heal or do not remain faithful to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in crucial situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, "cautious" characters who do not pull their own weight - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating.

Please think carefully about your characters' alignments and (re-)read both the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide descriptions of alignment. Verify your understanding with the referee (outside of the play session). First level characters can change alignment anytime outside of the play session without penalty. Once a character has trained up to 2nd level or higher, the penalties for changing alignment are severe.

Previously, I had added service to the character's goals as part of the basis for his ratings. This is outside the scope of the rules as written, and so I will no longer do that. It remains a key of skillful play to identify and pursue goals for your characters, however that is between you and your character. I will no longer be rewarding or penalizing that outside the natural consequences of playing a character pointedly or aimlessly.