Guest Post at Troll and Flame

Over at the Troll and Flame blog, I wrote a guest post in return for the Gaming Aids post Norm wrote for me:

The Necromould

Norm is an avid gamer, an obsessive tinkerer, and a true patron of the tabletop arts. Be sure to check out the rest of his blog, which features a ton of gaming goodness.

Twingol's Tales: Aurora Campaign Chronicle #2

Year of the Bounding Lamb, 5th Waning, Day 4 – The Escaped Rout Pt. II.

Ah, there is nothing like the aroma of a cool Spring morning! The crisp air invigorates the body, and the sounds of the songbirds clear away the shadows and cobwebs from a burdened soul! I have always relished greeting the sun as he first peers over the horizon, though it appears that several of my compatriots find more comfort in the embrace of their bedrolls. The only two who are awake, besides myself, are Sir Ravenmantle and Lady Proudfinger. She kneels in prayer, arms raised in supplication towards her God. She spends far more time praising her God and interceding for others than I would think necessary; certainly more than any other novitiate I've known. It seems to work for her, though, and her demeanor can be like a soothing balm after a hard day. Sir Ravenmantle certainly appreciates it. He's supposed to be keeping the final watch of the night for the whole camp, but I suspect were we to fall under attack, his priority would be to protect the holy woman. It's natural, I suppose; I believe they were traveling together before they fell in with the doomed militia.

Hmmm... I should probably be memorizing spells, but my mind is still awhirl with the events of the previous day. So While my friends slumber, I'm glad to take this opportunity resume my account of the yesterday's madness, in hopes that doing so will give rest to my troubled thoughts.

When HP are not physical damage

Everyone's been there. Your fighter is going toe-to-toe with an orc/ogre/owlbear/whatever. You hack him for 10 HP, he rakes you for 12, you chop at him for 7, he bites you for 3, and on and on. You trade blows back and forth until that magic moment when your hero goes from 1 HP to 0 (or fewer, depending on edition) HP. Last round he was fighting in top physical condition, now he's wormfood.

This rather jarring transition has always bothered me. If HP represents physical integrity or health, then the loss of HP would seem to suggest strongly a concurrent loss of physical capacity of some sort. But that's never the case. Even with systems that use the "death due to massive damage" rule, if you make your save, the character suffers no ill effects. This is unsatisfying to both sides of my brain. The left hemisphere recoils at the idea of a warrior who accumulates vague, unsourced bloodstains on his armor, all the while slashing with gusto, until he just croaks cartoon-style. It's nonsensical. The right hemisphere pipes up that's also booooring.

The problem is that if you get rid of HP, and you go to a more realistic injury system, you're going to be rolling up new characters every other encounter. Not just due to PC death; even relatively minor injuries would realistically sideline an adventurer for days or weeks. It can be fun to play with that level of lethality, and it works well in games such as Call of Cthulhu. In our group's most recent session, an apparition of an elder god clawed at one of our investigators, raking him for 10 of his 12 HP. The guy was able to get off a wild gunshot, but was then down for the count. He survived, but was in the hospital for most of the rest of the game. But usually, particularly for more pulp fantasy games like D&D, I prefer to have more of a chance to know and develop my characters. So we need some kind of buffer between Full Health and Out of Commission.

I've recently been playing Labyrinth Lord using versions of a "Death and Dismemberment" house rule. Other, slightly tweaked variants are here and here. This house rule envisions HP as an abstraction for some combination of stamina, defensive ability, determination, luck etc. When this collective store is exhausted, the character is at 0 HP, and must roll on the table to see what the consequences are:

2d6	RESULTS
2 or lower	Instant Death (decapitated or similar death from CtB).
3	Fatal Wound (gutted, stabbed through lung, broken back, and the like) die in 1d20 x 10 minutes. A Wish or similar effect would heal wound. Knocked Out until death unless Save vs Death is made.
4-5	Severed Limb use hit location die, if head rolled and no helmet then as '2', if body rolled and no armor then as '3', otherwise will bleed out and die in 1d6 rounds. Magical healing (magic used for this will not restore lost hp), a tourniquet, or cauterization with fire will allow a Save vs Death with bonus equal to lvl of spell cast, if any. Success means character requires 3d4 weeks of healing. Knocked Out until death unless Save vs Death is made.
6-7	Broken Bone use hit location die. 3d4 weeks to heal. Knocked Out 1d20 rounds unless Save vs Death is made.  If head bone was broke and no helmet and failed save then knocked out, "in coma", until healed instead.
8-9	Knocked Out for 1d12 rounds if wearing a helm. If no helmet then as Broken Head Bone.
10-11	Stunned for 1d4 rounds and lose helm if wearing helm. Knocked Out for 1d12 rounds if not wearing helm.
12+	"Now I'm Mad" a surge of adrenaline returns 1d4 hit points per hit die. At the end of the combat, the adrenaline drains away, hit points are reduced to zero, and the PC faints for 2d6 rounds. If you roll this more than once in a single combat consider yourself a Berserker under the effects of a potion of super-heroism.

Each time character at 0 HP takes "damage", he must roll again on the table. This is the best way I've seen to model the fact that until someone takes actual physical damage, they are more or less at full capacity. But once they are injured, things get bad in a hurry, as each further injury brings a chance of disaster.


If you haven't tried gaming this way before, I'd highly recommend it.

The old made new again: TARGA and Labyrinth Lord

This week is International Traditional Gaming Week, and in observation, the Austin D&D Meetup group featured a one-shot of the B2 Caves of Chaos module. Our system of choice: Labyrinth Lord, a "retro-clone" of the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set.

Our group was made up of mostly of old-school players, several of whom had fond memories of B2 from their dusty gaming past, but we also had a couple of players, including myself, who broke into the hobby w/ the later editions. So for me, the anticipation was two-fold: 1st, that I was going to get to play an edition I'd never touched before, and one that has drawn rave reviews from the "Old School Renaissance" (OSR) community. 2nd, in playing B2 itself, I felt almost like I would be undergoing something of a Rite of Passage for gamers, the kind of a shared experience that unites a community of like-minded folk, and gives them a basis for communication.

This was in addition to my typical eagerness for any chance to game. So what did this new-school player think of old-school play? Read on, fellow traveler...