A to Z Blogging Challenge: D is for Dice

There is one thing all table-top D&D players have in common: dice.  It doesn't matter what edition of the game is being played, everyone needs and uses dice.

Dice come in all sizes, flavors, and colors, and for each different die there is a different approach taken to dice by the gamers that use them.  There are gamers who don't care about their dice and use whichever ones are tossed their way at the start of the game.  There are gamers who are hypersensitive about their entirely matching collection.  There are gamers who expect everyone to ooh and aah over their Crystal Caste Dwarven Stones dice as they are laid out on the table.

The same goes for dice bags.  I've seen gamers toss all their dice in metal lunchboxes.  I've seen hand-made dice bags, chain mail dice bags, renaissance fair pouches used as dice bags, Crown Royal bottle bags, Tupperware containers, the list goes on and on.  A buddy of mine has a pair of "lucky" d20s; he swears by them, stating that one consistently rolls low and the other consistently rolls high.  He keeps those in a miniature Tupperware container, inside a miniature pouch, inside his regular dice bag.

My dice are pictured above.  They're Chessex speckled dice which I purchased more years ago than I care to count.  They're elementally-themed: air, earth, fire, and water, with a single d20 from the para-elemental plane of lava, heh.  I keep them all in a Yellow Sign dice bag purchased from Chaosium some time ago.  When playing I tend to use the fire set, although I always roll to hit with the lava d20.  They work well for me and I like them.  I'm sure they'd work well for others as well... but I'll be damned if I'm going to let some other gamer lay their grubby hands on MY dice.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: C is for Character Creation

From Men & Magic, page 10: "Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role."

Because I started playing D&D with the Moldvay Basic Set and came to original D&D much later, I never really acknowledged that sentence until it was highlighted on one of the blogs I follow.  At first I was shocked and almost appalled to think that someone else would be rolling MY character's abilities.  But as I pondered it a bit more, I realized that it's a great way to generate memorable characters.

Imagine being handed a character sheet with an 8 STR and a 13 WIS, and being told that it would make a good Cleric.  You could make the character a Cleric or, if you're willing to take a possible XP hit, you could decide to play a Fighting-man; remember, there are no minimum ability requirements for any of the classes in 3LBB OD&D.

The question of why your character is a Fighting-man when he'd be better off as a Cleric is something that could be answered in play as the game progresses.  Perhaps he was slated to join the clergy but was mistreated by a priest and ran away.  Perhaps he actually joined the church but got caught up in a scandal and was defrocked.  There are so many good "bits" which can come out of such an unorthodox class selection, all of which will stick in your head when you think back upon the character...

...assuming he isn't killed in his first foray into the dungeon.  Heh.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: B is for Basic Set

I began playing D&D with the Moldvay-edited, Otus-decorated Basic Set pictured at right when I was but an elementary school lad.  I remember watching a group of kids playing D&D during lunch hour at school and I knew I wanted my own copy of the game.  With apologies to Despicable Me, I do believe I told my parents that D&D was "...so cool I'm gonna die!"

So, the D&D Basic Set showed up under the Christmas tree that December.

I remember the absolute awe I felt when I opened the box and flipped through the rulebook.  I remember being blown away by the map of the Caves of Chaos in B2: The Keep on the Borderland.  And I remember the confusion of a kid trying to figure out this game when his only exposure to it had been silently watching a group of other kids play from a few feet away, heh.

My biggest confusion was with hit dice and hit points.  For the longest time I believed them to be one and the same, and I couldn't figure out why my friend's 1st level fighter was so easily dispatching the monsters in the Caves of Chaos... Eventually I figured out the correct relationship between HD and HP and my dungeons suddenly became much more of a challenge.

Finally my buddy got his own copy of the Basic Set and I was able to roll some characters of my own.  Because it was just the two of us, we each ran two characters.  I was Blackpawn the thief and Glana Brano the magic-user.  For some reason Glana Brano stuck with me, and he's made many an NPC appearance in games I've run.  He's become the Gandalf or Elminster of my RPG worlds.

So yeah.  The Basic Set.  That's where it all started for me.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: A is for Ability Checks

So I'm coming a bit late to this party, but I've decided to go ahead and throw my hat into the A to Z Blogging Challenge ring.  It's all going to be RPG themed and is starting today with "A" for "Ability Checks".

My one and only issue with OD&D and old-school style play is that once your character's abilities are rolled, your modifiers tallied, and your experience point bonus calculated, the ability scores themselves tend to fade away.  Following the tenets of old-school play, you then go about adventuring via describing your characters actions so that the DM can interpret and adjudicate the results based on... well, largely DM fiat.  If your character has a completely average Dexterity, for instance, and you describe his or her actions well, it's completely up to the DM to determine if you fail or not.  Certainly, there's a level of trust which exists between player and DM that should stop a DM from acting out of spite (or favoritism), but there's nothing mechanically which stops him from doing so.

Take this example, for instance, by the fictitious player of Dorgo, the Fighter, who has a 9 Dexterity: "I push the end of my 10' pole along the dungeon floor ahead of me.  If it gets hung up on a crack I'll stop and pour a wee bit of water into the crack to see if it's a pit trap.  If it is a pit trap, I'll spring the trap by poking the pit's cover hard with the end of my pole.  Then, once it's sprung, I'll sneak around the pit by hugging the wall and inching along the very small ledge of the pit."

That's a great example and I know that as DM I'd be tempted to have Dorgo skate by the pit trap unscathed just based on that description alone.  But, c'mon, the dude's got a 9 Dexterity, and he's going to crawl along a maybe 3" ledge, hugging the wall, without falling in?  I think I have a higher than average Dexterity (not much higher than average, mind you) and I don't know if I could pull that off.

Tossing in an ability check at that point, however, increases the drama and excitement of the scene as everybody holds their breath and watches the d20 roll across the table in the hopes that it's going to roll less than Dorgo's Dexterity so he can pull off inching around the pit trap.  And if - after such a great description - he misses his Dexterity check and falls into the trap, give him a Saving Throw or another Dexterity check to see if he can grab the ledge as he falls and save himself.  Ability checks are not about punishing the character or minimizing descriptive play, they're about supporting descriptive play and adding a touch of mechanical drama and excitement to them.