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.

Campaign News August 3

We had three new players join in July, and there are two more who've expressed interest in joining as well. It seems like a good time for a refinement to the definition of how this group plays AD&D and why we play it that way. I'll start with my favorite quotation from the Dungeon Masters Guide, from the afterword in Gary's all caps emphasis:

BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE.

Paraphrased: rules first, setting next, players and referees last.

Why Rules First?

1. Rules generate the campaign setting in which the characters operate. 

The random encounter tables, for example, tell us if, when, and what the characters run into crossing a wilderness. The encumbrance and movement rules tell us how long it takes the characters to cross that wilderness, and terrain tells us how frequently there's a chance they might run into something, and what sorts of things they might run into.

The random encounter tables tell us all, referees included, what's actually in the world. They enable and require referee creativity, not stifle it. The referee is forced to make pieces he or she didn't expect to hold, fit together and conform to the rules and established precedent.

The rules allow the referee to be just as surprised as the players by what happens next. This allows all the participants explore the setting together instead of being led through places and events that the referee has already thoroughly explored. 

2. Rules ensure fairness.

When everyone is following the rules to the best of their ability, the referee is just another participant in the game, with no more power than anyone else at the table. 

Following the rules means that the referee can't simply decide that the characters will or will not win a fight. It means that players can evaluate the risk-reward tradeoff consistently. This allows players to improve their skill at the game, which improves their enjoyment of it. It means that the players' choices matter. It means that the referee is unable to manipulate the circumstances. It means that players can look for ways exploit the rules to their advantage and not worry that the referee will override them.

We all keep getting better at the game as we keep playing the same game as defined by those constant rules. 

3. Rules deepen immersion in the world.

Time in the game world matters. The characters' upkeep expense, resource consumption, and hireling wages are all applying time pressure on the players to execute efficient plans, and adjust intelligently when those plans are thwarted by the dice.

Risks are real and calculable. All of the work and time put into one's characters is at risk in the session, and it could all be lost.

Learning more about the rules and the setting provides advantage, both cooperative and competitive. 

How players use their characters' downtime between sessions builds more campaign setting and creates more disparity between who knows what.

Because the world persists between sessions, it becomes more solid and real.

The rules give structure to the activity, making it a game and not merely playing pretend. 

Campaign News July 16

Despite being sailing season and money-making season and visiting-family season, the campaign has been cooking right along. In the Saturday session this month we had three new players join the game and make a strong push into the middle of the characters pack right out of the gate (not sure if I'm mixing metaphors there, but I'm too enthusiastic to care). I may be jumping the gun (third metaphor, second, I don't know) to announce it this early, but I think the Thursday session in July will see a player on hiatus returning to the campaign as well, and maybe, just maybe, even another new player!

Quite some time ago the campaign took on a certain life of its own. As more players join that life becomes more complex and vibrant. Counter intuitively, perhaps, this reduces cognitive load on the referees. Yes, we have more we have to pay attention to, but less we have less we have to drive. It becomes more and more the game that the players are making and less and less the game that the referees are creating. Already, the rules and the players create the bulk of the game, with we referees just kicking in a little here and there. I see a day soon when, as a referee, the game will move so quickly I would have difficulty adding any value. That is the goal.

Sorry for another brief update with no "tip & tricks," but really, nobody needs my tips anymore and you all know more tricks than I do!

Campaign News July 6

Despite the lack of posted news, it's been a busy month for the campaign. On 7 June Amy B held a character creation session with me and she plans to enter that character into the game this upcoming Saturday. Also planning to join on Saturday are new players Monica T and possibly Scott B!

Sterling refereed a session for Shay McFarland and Finnan Fitzpatrick on 9 June, and Barry refereed Rory Connellan and Cal Dabolg on 18 June.

Including the Saturday mentioned above, we have three sessions scheduled for July.

As always, please invite new players to join, please ask your referees (Barry & Sterling) to run games between scheduled sessions, and please consider becoming a referee! 

Campaign News June 5

More game world is coming! (That's the Erin you know on the left...)

Campaign News May 29

In many months of writing the Campaign News, and a few reference pages for our game, I have focused almost exclusively on the game play procedures and the mechanics of the game. AD&D, and tabletop role-playing games in general, differ from other games like chess, tennis, Risk, poker, and others, in that an important part of the game exists at least partially outside the body of rules. Even in those board games whose design includes a very strong “theme,” the mechanics of the game are not just primary, they override any thematic considerations, not the other way around—one doesn’t modify the rules of the game on the fly to better model the theme of the game! Yet, with TTRPGs there is often a temptation, and in some cases explicit encouragement in the rules, to override or ignore rules for the sake of the game’s theme, the players’ enjoyment, or even the referee’s preference for how the game should play and end. Ignoring or overriding rules, however, changes the activity from being a game to being something else, maybe a pastime, make-believe, or collaborative story-telling, but definitely not a game.

In order to keep AD&D from degenerating into a mere board game, the fiction of the game must somehow be accommodated, but without violating the rules of the game, lest it instead devolve into mere make-believe.

In the Afterword of the Dungeon Masters Guide, Gygax writes a philosophic summary of how the game was intended to be played from the designer’s point of view: “BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE.”

I take the game as a whole to be the body of rules, and the visible intent behind them. Throughout the rules there are gaps, and it is explicitly stated that referees and players are expected to fill these gaps according to the needs of their game. These rules focus primarily on the mechanics of the “playing board” and “pieces,” the procedures participants must follow in order to play the game as it was written. These procedures describe in detail combat resolution, dungeon and wilderness navigation, and character advancement and impediments. They describe engines for generating the game board (dungeons and wilderness areas) as instructive examples that can be used either literally to create the game board, or as guidelines for how referees should create their own game boards.

The campaign consists of the “game board,” the players’ pieces, and all the pieces on the board that the players do not control. Appendixes A and B of the DMG illustrate game board design for dungeons and wilderness areas, respectively. Appendix C illustrates placement of the non-player pieces on the board. Together, these provide some theme for the game, but not the whole fiction. It is left to the referee to figure that out for him- or herself, from only some vague suggestions and a reading list of inspirational literature.

To a large extent, the open-endedness of the game’s design serves to accommodate the fiction. This allows players to take actions that aren’t itemized in the rules as the legal moves of the game, and yet they are “legal moves.” Using an iron spike pounded into the crack of the archway to hold up a portcullis, for example, is something a character might do, effectively modifying the game board, yet is not an explicitly described rule of the game. A sensible referee would allow this move under many conditions, and not under some others, perhaps if the portcullis is unusually heavy or the walls slick from slime, for example. Once established, it’s a rule the players can count on, at least under the same circumstances under which it worked previously. The referee and players both use information about the setting to figure out options and the chances of those options working as intended.

There remains much more scope for the fiction of the game than only the rules themselves and the players’ decisions produce. I’d like to explore with you how to create engines to generate fiction that adds depth to the game while remaining within the “game as a whole,” and excluding any bias either in favor or opposed to the players. Let’s please discuss this https://discord.gg/ebtDvfphX.

Campaign News May 5

For the first time since the Leader Board came online more than a year ago, the "high score" character has changed. Calvis Mulroney has been unseated from the top position by Finnan Fitzpatrick. Now, technically, Finnan is 13 days into the future from Calvis, so it's possible, from the characters' timeline perspective, that Finnan never surpassed Calvis. From our perspective as players, however, it has irrevocably already come to pass.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

If you took a look at the Leader Board, you probably already noticed that the characters' location and date is now displayed there. The header of the table also indicates the real world date at which those times and places were true. This gives players an easy way to be sure of their characters' current dates. If it was 13 May 1480 for your character on 2 May 2026, then today, 5 May 2026, your character is on 16 May 1480 unless you played that character in-session after 2 May 2026.

[As a side note, you may notice that I am now following Strunk and White's Elements of Style guidelines for date formatting. I strongly believe the world would be a happier place if we all memorized and followed the rules in that little, 85-page book!]

SCHEDULE

With the onset of baseball season, we no longer have anyone defaulting to Saturday play. We also have no players currently defaulting to the Wednesday, online games. As such, the only games that are automatically played right now are the second Tuesday of the month, and the Thursday of the week following that Tuesday game. Our default players for both of those games are Andy O, Barry F, Cole W, and Sterling B.

If you won't be able to join one of your "default" session dates, or would like to join a session you don't normally attend, please let the refs know ASAP.

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.

TIPS & TRICKS

Character Progression – Part II

Overview

Characters in the game go through a number of stages in their development, and the path they follow will vary, of course by player choice, but also by class. Each of these steps is a sort of "quantum leap" in capability.

Characters hit their middle levels at 4th or 5th level, depending on their class. For example, the fighter’s ability to command troops takes a significant leap from 3rd to 4th, when this increases from 30 men and 3 sergeants to 80 men and 8 sergeants plus 4 lieutenants each of whom could command as many as another 30 men and 3 sergeants. Thus the 4th level fighter could control a force 200 men and 24 officers! On the other hand, a 4th level magic-user isn’t much more powerful than a 3rd level, but at 5th level his newly gained access to spells like fireball, haste, and dispel magic changes the game for him.

Getting Out of the Dungeon

Although dungeon-delving can still offer challenges for mid-level characters, the rewards are proportionally lower for them than when they were low-level characters. As all characters advance in level, the amount of experience points required to advance in level increases geometrically, but the treasure found in deeper levels increases only linearly. The increased number of gems and jewelry that might be found do improve the likelihood of an unusually valuable treasure being found, but the more reliable treasure option (which is still quite chancy) is hunting creatures in their lairs where treasure hoards described by the treasure type table can be found. The dungeon regulates encounters for characters, keeping them in an expected difficulty range and usually providing those challenges in small enough doses that players can pull their characters out of harm’s way when their endurance wanes.

Mid-level characters have more endurance and are able to take more direct control of the challenges they face by employing their improved abilities instead of relying on the structure of the dungeon. Frontal assault with a large force, infiltration by stealth or deception, and magically bypassing defenses are tools that mid-level characters can employ as they see fit in their pursuit of treasure. For players, there is an increased cognitive load in order to plan such things. Players also need to proactively seek out opportunities their characters can exploit. It is possible for players of mid-level characters to simply engage in a “hex crawl” sort of activity, using the wilderness like a dungeon to simply see what’s there. They may in this way happen across a lair, but it is apt to take much more game world time than a “dungeon crawl.” There are only so many encounter checks in a day, and only so much likelihood of such encounters being a lair. Another consideration is that wilderness encounters are not regulated in challenge level like dungeon encounters. The party may find themselves in over their heads quickly, or wasting time on encounters not worth their time.

The Mid-Level Game

Characters generally are well-served by acquiring henchmen early in the middle game. Part of a henchman’s loyalty rating is based on length of service. They are expensive, in that their upkeep (100 gold per level per month) must be paid by the character employing them, and they expect half-shares and occasional magic item gifts, not just “hazard pay.” They are far more durable than mercenaries, however, and can advance in level. Usually only 1st level characters are attracted as henchmen, so gaining their service earlier, rather than later, means that they are more apt to be into the mid-levels themselves by the time their employer reaches “name level.” They can be sent off on independent missions as well.

The middle game is a time of transition for the character, balancing “commando” sorts of operations with a team of other players’ characters and independent activities which in some cases work against some of the interests of the character’s comrades. It’s a time when the player needs to develop a fairly deep familiarity with the specifics of the game setting. The skillful player will be looking forward to the next phase of play when his or her character is building a domain, focusing on finding the character’s physical and political place in the world. In the third part, I’ll share more of my thoughts on that phase of play which may further illuminate the preparatory steps.

Frankly, it is the mid-level play which separates the serious and casual players most clearly. Success in the middle phase will come incredibly slowly to the passive or casual player without a great deal of luck. For the serious player, it will be a longer slog than the lower levels are likely to have been, but also, for this player, that pace allows the development of a deeper connection between the player’s character and the setting itself. It allows the player time to acquaint him or herself with the setting sufficiently to enter the third phase of play as well, if he or she hasn’t yet advanced a character so far.

Because the somewhat generic experience of the dungeon which dominates low level play is a much smaller part of mid-level play, there’s no specific prescription for character success. Player skill is a greater factor and it must be applied more broadly.

Conclusion

In my experience the AD&D mid-level game is much like the middle game of chess. In chess, the middle game is where I’m most apt to fail. I have a pretty good understanding of openings, specific ones as well as general types and approaches. The end game in chess becomes fairly mechanical, but the middle game is where the widest branching of possibilities exist. This is true in AD&D as well.
One has greater freedom of taking the game in any direction between 5th and 8th level than at any other point in the game (with caveats I hope to elaborate upon some day).

The only keys I can see to winning in the early game are giving careful attention to the game world, perhaps checking one’s lower level ambitiousness, and thinking proactively, both cooperatively and independently. 

Campaign News April 17

The circumstances of the campaign and conduct of the last session present a good opportunity for me to show examples of a couple of key concepts to how we play our game.

TIMEKEEPING

I've written a couple of explanations of our 1:1 time-keeping method in the campaign news in the past. It seems like everyone gets it, but I thought it might be useful to see what it looks like from the referees' perspective:

 

Time in the game world can run faster or slower than real world time during a game session. For example, it might take 20 minutes or more to play through a combat that lasts only 4 minutes in game time. Likewise, it might take less than 5 minutes of real time to play through two day's travel. Typically, a session will cover 2 to 12 days of game world time during the 4 or 5 hours we play it.

When characters are played in a session they advance their own timeline to however far game play took them. The character(s) furthest into the future create "slack time" for the characters not played. This is time that those characters are entitled to use however they like--we don't want one character to rob another of time since it is an expensive and useful resource.

Orders for downtime activities need to be issued proactively. For example, a player cannot say on game date July 25, 1480 that his character has spent the past week in level training even if the character had been otherwise idle during that time. Such orders start for a character on the game date the they are given, and so this character will be occupied in that training starting on July 25 and done on August 1. Characters with slack time may use that right away, but if not, they become unavailable for session play until that date is reached.

In the last session, played this past Tuesday, April 14th, the session ended on game date July 22, 1480. That was 3 days ago and you can see above that two of the characters that were played in that session are now at July 25, 1480, 3 days later in the game and in the real world. The other character played in that session, Shay McFarland, is executing post-session activities that take a week to complete. Because Shay's activities are happening between sessions and he has no slack time available, he is in "time jail" working on those activities until game date July 29, 1480.

Barry could still play Shay in a session before July 29, 1480 / April 21, 2026, however the other players would need to agree to advancing their characters' time, losing whatever time they have between their characters' current date and July 29, and incurring whatever upkeep expenses and health checks are required during that period.

TACTICAL INFINITY, BY-THE-BOOK PLAY, AND THE IRON SPIKE

One of the most interesting and attractive features of AD&D, and TTRPGs generally, is that "anything" is possible, that players enjoy "tactical infinity." For example, the game rules mention a piece of equipment, the iron spike, which costs 1 copper and weighs 1 pound. Using a spike to anchor a piece of rope is mentioned as a possible use for the spike and it is described as one of the main tools used in dungeon expeditions. There are no other rules and few other mentions of the iron spike in the rule books.

In our last session, a player wedged an iron spike into the wall to hold up a portcullis to allow passage through a portal which otherwise would require a successful bend bars/lift gates roll to pass through. The referee had to decide if such a use was 1) permitted by the rules, 2) in the spirit of the rules body as a whole, and 3) sensible in the game world which generally obeys the natural laws of the real world. As referee in this session, it seemed pretty clear to me that this use of the iron spike met all three criteria easily. In doing so, I have committed us all to coming to an agreement for or against that ruling that will be predictably repeated regardless which of us is the referee in the session.

Ideally, we would codify and record all of these little rulings, but there are so many, so small and so specific, that this isn't always practical. As players and referees both, good sportsmanship dictates that we should all be helping each other to remember and follow all of the rules and rulings. Our aim is a clear, understandable system we can all follow, but also one which can be extended and modified as we learn more about the game during play.

Campaign News April 9

My apologies for the long gap between the last news and this. A lot has happened over the past 5 weeks!

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

A look at the Leader Board will show significant character progression, but there is even more progress than is visible: two of the 2nd level characters are about to make 3rd level and one of the 1st levels is on the verge of 2nd level.

Where & When:

 

SCHEDULE

There is more than a month between the future-most and furthest-past characters and they are in the same physical location. This is likely to necessitate a reckoning with some combination of "time jail" and "fast-forwarding" to avoid time paradoxes. The Tuesday players will drive how this is reconciled prior to the next session, April 14. Anyone with slack should be prepared to lose that game world time, and issuing downtime orders to use it productively before it's lost is highly recommended!

TIPS & TRICKS

All characters training for 3rd level, and many training for a level or two above that are very likely to find themselves in the position of having enough XP to train for the next level, but not enough gold to pay for the training. This is because characters typically earn 1 XP for each 1 gold of treasure recovered, but the amount of gold required to train is equal or greater than the number of XP required for that training eligibility. The chart below highlights the levels, by class, where the training gold is equal to or greater than the incremental XP requirements for the next level.

This situation is aggravated by the fact that once a character has acquired sufficient XP to train for the next he cannot earn any more XP until he has trained to that next level. Besides the typical activities which gain a character treasure and XP, there are two options for paying for training: performing a service for the tutor or taking out a loan. The rules provided for both of these possibilities are quite thin.

 

"The tutor might possibly accept some combination of gold and service" is all we get from the rules. Rules which rely on the referee's judgement as heavily as this are useless for a playable game. They reduce game play to unstructured make-believe. I don't have a solution to this, but I'm inclined toward "service" taking the form of months of service in exchange for a predetermined reduction in training costs, like 1 month per 500 gold reduction per level of the trainee, which would put the character in "time jail" for the period without the possibility of fast-forwarding the character's clock. A minimum of 500 gold per level might be additionally required. In any case, this is something for us to decide as a group, not just one referee's ruling. Let's discuss it in Discord!

 

Loan rules are only slightly more developed than the "service" rules, however the like-minded players and referees at Demon Idol have interpreted and extended the book's scanty rule in a way that I suggest we adopt wholesale.

 

This game is as much yours as mine, however, and I'd like to debate these ideas with you and discuss any other suggestions and thoughts you have.

Campaign News March 11

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

Yesterday's session was the first one of the campaign that was run by a referee other than me. I was a player last night! As mentioned in the last issue of the Campaign News, Barry took a turn in the referee chair and he did a really terrific job.

Having more than one referee in the game opens up some very exciting possibilities. There are complications of course too, but these are worth facing for what additional referees add to the game. Everyone in the game is welcome to take a turn as referee either in a scheduled time slot, or an ad hoc one. I hope that everyone tries it at least once! I'll be happy to do whatever I can to assist or make that easier for you.

Where & When: 

 

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled session is a week from tomorrow, March 19.

Campaign News February 13

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

I am very pleased to share that after a 6-month+ hiatus, Cole has rejoined the game. In last night's session his character Finnan surged from 4th place to 2nd place on the Leader Board as well as shifting his own place on the Player board from 4th to 3rd by a narrow margin.

Counter-balancing Cole's return, Adam joined Liam on temporary hiatus. These players and their characters will remain on the leader board until 185 days have passed without joining a session, although their characters will still be in the record.

Competing with the good news of Cole's return is the additional good news that Barry plans to try out refereeing in Erin! (The astute may have noticed my name at the bottom of the Player Leader Board for the last couple of weeks.) There is no specific plan yet for when that will happen, but Barry has been reading up on the rules and otherwise preparing to referee a session. I am very much looking forward to getting a character in the game!

Everyone in the game is invited and encouraged to take a go at refereeing. Not only does it give me a chance to play too, but also it helps make players even better at playing the game. 

SCHEDULE

Regrettably, I have had to cancel this month's scheduled Saturday session on Feb 21. Please remember, though, that I will run unscheduled sessions on request, my own schedule permitting. If you were hoping to play that session, but you have other days on which you could play when no game is scheduled, please reach out to me and any of the players to try to arrange an unscheduled session.

Instead of requesting an RSVP from every player for every session, we've switched to a "default attendance" sort of plan. Under this new scheme, the players have registered with me their "default" attendance days. A few days before each session I'll send out a reminder and a response is required only from players attending a session outside their default days, and those not attending when they would normally default to attending it.  Over the next month or two, please let me know how well or poorly this new RSVP and reminder scheme works for you, and any adjustments you'd like to see in it.

TIPS & TRICKS

Character Progression - Part I

Overview 

Characters in the game go through a number of stages in their development, and the path they follow will vary, of course by player choice, but also by class. Skillful play requires thinking about one's character's current situation, as well as where the player would like the character to go, development-wise, and where it is best suited to go in that regard.

Low level characters, up through at least 3rd level typically, start with the "classic" dungeon delve. The dungeon environment has some controls on it which keep the dangers within a predictable range. The range may extend above what the characters are capable of dealing with, but only by so much, and generally recognizably. The dungeon can be returned to throughout the characters' careers, but other pursuits which are more practical for middle and upper level characters, generally offer greater reward to risk and/or time ratios.

Mid-level characters, that is a minimum of 4th level, and more commonly 5th through about 8th level, have better options available to them. First they have more exposure to the campaign world, so they are apt to have contacts, allies, and enemies whom they've accumulated amongst NPCs and other players' characters. They have a greater understanding of the game world's dynamics, politics, and economics as well, so they can participate in more meaningful ways than what the dungeon offers. At this level, characters often have the capability to take on larger numbers of better organized enemies, smashing monster lairs where the treasure is likely to be much higher per hit die of defeated enemy than in the dungeon. At this level, mages have spells around the use of which operations can be centered. Fighters can command substantial military forces, just a 4th level fighter, for example, could command as many as 200 soldiers and 28 officers. Clerics can offer perfect protection against death by infection or disease, cure blindness, and remove magical curses at 5th level, and by 9th level, bring their dead comrades back to life.

High-level characters, particularly those whose classes offer "name level" capability for dominion, may begin playing an entirely different game from what most players think of as "D&D." Clerics, Fighters, and Rangers at 9th level, and Wizards and Illusionists at 11th level, may build strongholds, clear territory, collect taxes, and grow a domain. Their game becomes political, economic, and military on a grander scale than other characters' games. Druids, assassins, and monks have their own end games which focus on internecine struggles within their institutions. Thieves at this level focus on building institutions and while their exploits may rival those of the domain builders, but they operate within the domain of another. The paladin never attracts followers (except an intelligent horse), never exercises dominion, and is stuck forever in an extended mid-level game.

Beginning Strategy  

For first level characters, the options are very limited. Characters need to band together, probably pooling their gold, in order to meet what I would call the "minimum adventuring requirements." That is, a party numbering at least 6, and ideally 9 members, at least 3 of whom have a class level. The remainder can be heavy infantry mercenaries (0-level men-at-arms) equipped with at least padded armor, helmet, wooden shield, spear, and hand ax. That equipment will cost 17 gold per man, and for a 1-month agreement, plus 1 day of hazard pay to accompany the party into the dungeon for their first expedition, brings that cost to a minimum 21 gold per man. In order to afford 3 to 6 such helpers, the party will need to minimize their costs, buying limited armor (studded leather at best) and probably no bows or crossbows. The party and the mercenaries need provisions for the expedition,  sacks for the treasure recovered, and torches to see what they're doing.

A party's first dungeon delve is a make-or-break event. If the characters don't come out of it with enough gold to upgrade their arms & armor, and that of their mercenaries, and to round out the group to at least 9 members, then they may as well not come out at all. It's possible to go on after bad luck, a few bad rolls early, but unless they carried out enough treasure to go back for a second expedition with at least a slightly improved or larger force, they're done and might as well fall on their swords. Players in this situation should almost certainly throw their character away and try again with a fresh, new one.

The Low-Level Game 

If the new character survives a successful first delve and hauls away enough treasure to upgrade his equipment and/or his support, he or she needs to maintain momentum. Monthly upkeep costs work against the character throughout his or her career, but as these costs increase linearly, the character's capability increases geometrically, and the monthly upkeep will become less important. At the lower levels though, through 3rd or so, upkeep is an important consideration. Similar to upkeep, the monthly disease and parasite checks can slow down and even kill a character. The best defense against this is to play frequently so that the character has plenty of gold, and to find allies, either NPCs or other players, who can cure diseases and earn sufficient favor that they would be willing to come to the characters aid if stricken. Doing a favor for the church or even a mid-level druid can earn promises in return which end up saving a character from random death outside the session.

Every return from the dungeon should be followed by an examination of what can be done to make the character more effective and efficient at treasure extraction. The best armor that can be afforded should be purchased for the characters and the party's employees as soon as it can be afforded. Horses will get the party to and from the dungeon site more quickly, reducing the number of chances for dangerous wilderness encounters to occur. More mercenaries to guard the animals left outside the dungeon can be hired. A base of operations near the dungeon can be bought or built. A cleared dungeon itself, can become a base of operations, and if it's near resources and can be accessed by vehicle, it can become an early source of income.

Placing a lower level PC in the service of an NPC as a henchman offers a way to protect against the drain of monthly upkeep. For players managing multiple characters especially, this helps with the reality that the character might not be played for several sessions at a time. This arrangement offers a couple of other advantages. For one, the NPC employer will have an agenda and will ask services of the PC, services that are likely to gain the PC experience and wealth in some measure, and save the player the work of deciding what to do next. Second, it connects the character more deeply to the details of the settings. The player may develop allies among the NPC's allies or employees, discover situations in the game world that can be exploited for gain, and learn less obvious truths about local politics, for example.

Conclusion

After each session, think about what the character has just gained and how that could be used to increase the character's gain in the next session. Constant, measured ambition is the key to winning in the early game.

Next time I'll share a brief take on the mid-level game.

 

Campaign News January 31

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

Although there are now four potential new players who have expressed interest in joining, none of them played in January. Nor was there any participation in the online session. In fact, only one of the four sessions scheduled for the month was attended, and that by only two players. This was not the surge of participation I predicted in mid-December last year, but I remain optimistic that it will pick up shortly.

I made use of the lull to play a group of characters about 650 years in the past in fictional Wessex. Doing so has been not just enjoyable, but good practice for competitive play and an opportunity for me to refine my refereeing tools and techniques. I may write up how that has played out so far. 

As advertised, all the characters were synchronized to the "global clock" two days ago. Today every character in the game is at April 9, 1480. Of those eleven extant characters, only one executed productive downtime orders with its slack time.

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled session is Tuesday, February 3rd. As a reminder, the full schedule for the year is laid out graphically for your convenience. Please RSVP for each session a week in advance if possible. Besides being helpful to me, this gives you the chance to make plans with the other players in the session without using session time on such decision-making and even sorting out any equipment purchases, mercenary hiring, and so on ahead of the session. That leaves more time in the session for gold and XP acquisition!

TIPS & TRICKS

Disease and Infestation 

As it happens, a player asked about disease a couple of days ago, and a character happened to be affected by a parasitic infestation with the check that was due today.

Last July I touched briefly on the game's disease and parasitic infestation rules. Recall that every month, every PC in the game needs to make rolls to check for these health mishaps. I make these rolls in the players' private Discord channels so you can see your characters' rolls there. The odds are normally quite low that anything will befall the character, and in the cases when it does, this is typically that the character is simply unable to go off adventuring or the like for a period of time while the affliction runs its course and the character recovers.

If the character is not meeting his or her upkeep requirements for the month when this check occurs however, the chances of a mishaps increase, and the consequences are more likely to be fatal.

If a character is not meeting upkeep requirements, he or she is "sleeping rough," and will add the "filth" and "improperly cooked meat" modifiers. This increases the likelihood of contracting a disease by 1% and of infestation by 3%. Even with these modifiers, the chances are quite low, however a number of these afflictions, if even moderately severe, can leave the character "totally disabled" for a week or more. For the "un-housed" character, that means death.

In the 21 game months that this game has been running, with a total of 27 characters, there have been four occasions of a character suffering from disease or infestation. In the first case, the character was not meeting his upkeep and knowingly exposed himself to communicable diseases. He became completely disabled for 3 weeks and permanently lost 3 points each of strength and constitution. [Today that character would have died, but I had not yet clearly stated that rule to the players, so being "totally disabled" while sleeping rough was not fatal.]

The second and third cases happened in the same month and location as each other, oddly enough. One of the characters was mildly afflicted and couldn't perform strenuous activity for a week. The other one died from stomach parasites. Both of these characters were meeting their upkeep requirements and had no penalties, just bad luck.

The fourth case happened today. This time to a character "sleeping rough." Although the respiratory infestation caused no permanent damage, the character is totally disabled for a week, and will have another week of no strenuous activity and recovery. This is the last character not making monthly upkeep to survive being totally disabled.

I imagine that many players would wonder why these rules are in the game and why they should be followed. Aside from the pat answer that not following the rules equates to not playing the game, I can see very interesting implications from these rules.

Having a chance of your character dying for really no good reason, merely the passage of game time, creates pressure on the player to preserve the character. The first way to do this is to meet the character's upkeep requirements. That upkeep costs 100 gold per level per month. A character that is being actively played should have no problem keeping up with that monetary demand. The gold only becomes a problem if the character is allowed to languish in inactivity too long. The second way to preserve one's character, is to take direct precautions. Any disease or infestation contracted naturally from these check can be cured by a 5th level cleric or a 3rd level druid. Hire one. Or do a favor for the local church in exchange for a guarantee of care. At the very least, hire a house servant to take care of the character should he or she fall ill. Any character that has survived a single, moderately successful dungeon delve ought to be able to afford a house and a couple of servants, probably a guard or two.

Playing actively and planning ahead are the bulwarks against losing a character to random disease.

 

Campaign News January 13

Getting the Most from Downtime

Characters all have a great deal more time on their hands than that which is played out during game sessions. Skillful players will use this time to their characters' advantage. 

Character Agency 

One key to understanding how downtime works and how to use it to your characters’ advantage is consciously considering the level of “character agency” the character has in different circumstances. That is to say, how much direct control you are exerting over your character as its player versus how much control is handed over to the character itself (via the management of your impartial referee). For simplicity, I’ve described four levels of agency here, but it is of course a continuum, not four discrete settings.

1. Immediate: This low level of character agency is typical in actual session play. The referee makes only minimal assumptions about the character’s actions, relying on the player to respond, moment-by-moment, to the circumstances of the setting.
2. Managed: This level of character agency is often applied in session play as well, when time is accelerated for cross-country travel, resting periods, and so on. The player doesn’t describe actions for every moment of play, but rather has indicated what the character will do and a stop condition, such as “my character returns to town.” At this level of agency the referee will not present every minor detail of the setting that might be noticed by the character to the player. Instead the referee only mentions those circumstances which might reasonably cause the player to consider the character changing his plan, or otherwise demand attention, such as a possibly hostile encounter.
3. Removed: Outside a session, a player may provide a general disposition or high-level course of action for a character to pursue such as performing duties in an organization to which he belongs or traveling from one town to another between sessions. At this level of agency, the character is trusted to handle the details of whatever happens without player intervention until the end of the character instructions are reached--unless something extraordinary happens in the setting that could influence the player’s decision. The referee will report the consequences after the fact, possibly even conducting combat on the character’s behalf.
4. Autopilot: In this rarely employed level of character agency, the player instructs the referee to fully manage the character’s actions and choices. The player might describe instructions for the character to a very specific level or only a very general one. The player might also indicate conditions under which the character should exit “autopilot” mode. While in the mode, the character might encounter any number of situations which require decision-making that unless the player has specified how to be handled, are decided by the referee.

In normal session play, we switch, largely unconsciously, between the “immediate” and “managed” modes of game play. In downtime, the “removed” mode is typical, but “autopilot” is a useful option in some circumstances.

Downtime Options 

Idling: When a player has not provided any instructions for their character outside the session, the referee will assume that the character is “idling.” That is, the character accomplishes nothing, remains where he or she is (hopefully within the relative safety of civilization), and incurs the normal upkeep expenses. The character is very likely to stay alive, but will not advance in any way. 

Training: Most of the players in this campaign have, at some point, taken advantage of downtime to improve their characters or accomplish objectives using a "removed" or "autopilot" level of character agency. Doing so requires having an objective in mind. Learning to read and write has been a downtime objective for a couple of characters in this campaign, for example. Training for the next level is another good example.

Working: It's possible for a character to make part or all of his or her upkeep costs in a job. Job pay can even exceed those costs for characters who have developed sufficiently valuable skills such as those needed to be a spy, a sage, an alchemist, an engineer, and a few others as described in the DMG. This option can work in downtime at any level of character agency. Some of the options do carry risks, however. Many jobs aren't well-suited to a character sporadically disappearing on adventures and later reappearing either.

Research & Information Gathering: Another good use of downtime which requires little in the way of specific goals or instructions, is information gathering, or researching a specific topic. This might be conducted at any level of character agency, but would typically be a removed sort of activity. Most likely, the player would want to know the results once the character knows them, and possibly issue new orders for subsequent downtime based on those. 

Characters have the same tactical infinity in downtime that they do in session play. How that is used is limited only by the player's acquired knowledge of the setting, ability to think ahead, and willingness to investment time in the game outside of sessions. That investment can be quite low and still produce valuable results..

Operationalizing Downtime

Outside the game session time passes for characters at the same rate as real world time, so three days after the last session in which you played a character, three days have passed for that character. In the game sessions, however, time is sped up and slowed down as desired or needed for game play. Most often, an evening's session of 3 or 4 hours will cover several days, maybe even weeks, of character time. This means that characters in the session have moved further into the future than characters who were not in the session. That creates opportunities.

Whichever character(s) have been played the furthest into the future set the "global game clock." That date advances one day in the game world each day in the real world. Characters that were not played in the most recent session will be further in the past, and the gap between their date and the "global game" date is what I call their "slack days." Slack days can be used in downtime instantaneously. In this manner, a character that is behind another might use downtime to travel a couple of days to where that character is without the global clock also moving forward a couple of days.

To gain the most advantage from downtime, consider how much time you as a player have to dedicate to managing it between sessions.

• A fairly small investment is sufficient to set a character on a specific objective with a high level of character agency such as learning a skill or finding out information.
• If you have sufficient time to manage your character in more detail between sessions, it's possible to accomplish more without knowing ahead of time all of what it is you'd like to accomplish with the character. As their initial steps are completed and reported by the referee, you can issue new instructions.
• A player can also take the approach of trying to accomplish a more ambitious goal without managing it so closely by setting the character off with agency closer to "autopilot," having the referee manage the character's actions.

I will generally err on the side of providing less character agency rather than more, if it's unclear whether the circumstances encountered in downtime trigger player intervention based on the player's instructions. A player wishing to send a character deep into its own agency will need to be quite explicit about that intention.

Conclusion

Use your character's time wisely and it will get more done, provide you with more information about the setting and the game, and advance more quickly. I am always happy to help players who are unsure how to use their characters' time figure that out!