Towards an Abstract D&D Language
To start, a transcript of a chatroom conversation with my friend Nova:
Nova: i think the challenge is that you’d need to pick some kind of compatibility points or define a language that fits over multiple ones. So either “we all base it off B/X which honestly feels a concession to OSE i don’t want to give, or perhaps a language where you can refer generically to stats that works through 3/4/6 stat games, that works across all saving throws, that works across A/D AC
Marcia: honestly, i see even stats as being non-essential to playing many things (and by defining them, we might be imposing them however generic they are)---which oddly enough might be a point in favor of the highly specific saving throws, except not imposed via system but "handle this situation however is appropriate in your house rules". e.g., a save versus poison could be a constitution save, a fortitude save, or a straight-up save versus poison save; it's less important how it is implemented than that the character is poisoned but has a chance of survival
Going off of this, here are commonalities between D&D-esque OSR games, and also strategies to interface between different systems along those lines. The former kind of exists already in a more specific and developed form as SADFAG, but the below is more general and meant to interface between different implementations of the same principles.
Abstract D&D
- There are methods of handling or adjudicating the likelihood of characters surviving danger or executing tasks.
- The strength of monsters is measured in multiples of regular, average persons; e.g., a red dragon is 10 persons strong. Common values may be approximated using binary multipliers in the range of {½, 1, 2, 4, 8}.
- The force of an attack is also measured in terms of what would kill the average person; e.g., the average attack kills a regular person (or just slightly less effective than that).
- There are four basic degrees of armor: none, leather (light), chain (medium), and plate (heavy). They often are on a scale from 0 to 6 relative to a base value (e.g., in classic D&D, no armor has a score of 9 and plate armor has a score of 3), but that might be getting more specific than is really necessary. Something implicit in O/BD&D monsters is that they don’t even have an armor class of “none”, so the three other degrees might be all that’s needed.
- There is an exploration procedure, on the order of approximately 10-minute turns in 6-turn cycles.
- There is a travel procedure for long distances.
- There is a skirmish one-to-one combat procedure.
Interface Strategies
- Do not assume what saving throws or ability checks a system supports, if any. Oddly enough, the specific save categories in classic D&D are a good model for how a system-neutral adventure might handle threats with likelihoods; like I said in the above conversation, there are actually many different ways to implement a "saving throw against being poisoned", and what's less important is the specific implementation than the situation and its set of potential outcomes. This was also my intention in writing TURN, that all actions have a vague 50-50 likelihood of success because the exact nature and implementation of that resolution is up to the table.
- The basic monster scheme above works well, but we also do well to touch base with common monsters. See Prismatic Wasteland on this, as well as Nova's scheme in her Trophy house rules. Common general categories might be, in order of strength: goblin, person, bear, dragon. This may be more or less effective than counting how many persons strong they are. What is more useful: "As strong as ten persons with defense like plate armor", or "As strong as a dragon"? Probably depends on the context!
This is very interesting. I gather the idea is to establish a general language for describing portable/ interchangeable game elements, including e.g. adventures?
ReplyDeleteI think your first (resolution mechanism) and probably your last dot point (skirmish combat system) might be members of an Abstract RPG from which Abstract D&D is derived.
A few thoughts:
By specifying the usual timescale, it looks like you're privileging the description of 'exploration procedure' over that given for 'long distance travel' and 'skirmish combat system'. The latter two could be refined as something like: 'There is a turn-based travel and exploration procedure, on the timescale of hours or days per turn', and 'There is a turn-based skirmish combat procedure, on a timescale of up to one minute per turn.' I stress turn-based because this strikes me as a commonality between the three procedures, to which there are possible alternatives which D&D-likes don't generally use.
But it seems to me that timescale is less important than the kind of activity modelled. There is a 'skirmish combat' procedure, there is generally a 'dungeon' exploration procedure, there is sometimes a 'wilderness' exploration and travel procedure. Where present they are almost always turn-based.
I question whether the 'dungeon' and 'wilderness' procedures are always present. The 'wilderness' procedure is frequently dropped in modern designs. I suppose there is nothing to prevent a particular implementation having 'GM Fiat' as the contents for those procedures. Much depends on exactly which existing and possible games you want to encompass.
It's noticeable to me that you haven't included any dot points addressing movement attributes, spell use, or town/ downtime/ offscreen/ between-adventures activity.
It might also be worth noting that the general resolution mechanics at the first dot point can be defined independently from the core mechanics used to resolve attacks used in e.g. the skirmish combat procedure. I.e. in the context of the skirmish combat procedure, the general resolution mechanics are typically overwritten by special rules for resolving attacks, which refer to the target's armour type. Perhaps I'm trying to say something like: 'There are methods of handling or adjudicating the likelihood of characters surviving danger or executing tasks not covered by the rules for handling attacks in the skirmish combat system'. But now I'm unsure of the helpfulness of that idea.
Anyway, very interesting. It points me toward another attempt at defining 'vanilla' D&D.
The absence of any information about class and level is also interesting. I know that many recent games mess with these concepts. But level must be nearly universal, and your language surely needs a way to pass references to classes to be generally useful?
For some of the early D&Ds a typical attack does more damage than a 1/2 HD normal human.
hi kenco, thank you for your thoughts + you're totally right about the intended application! let me respond to your individual points:
Delete- you're right that the overworld exploration feels deemphasized, though i feel like specifying two timescales feels confusing (which is why i didn't originally, since whether travel occurs in "watches" or in "days" depends on the ruleset). i wonder if rather than specifying a timescale, one can specify a scale of distance, e.g. exploration occurs on the scale of 15-24 miles per day?
- same for skirmish combat! i really like the "up to one minute" verbiage, since that encompasses very well how "small" the combat is. oddly enough, though, the reason why i didn't include "turn-based" is because one could very well run D&D combat using simultaneous order---though, "turn-based" could refer to just the pace of the game rather than to participants taking non-simultaneous turns.
- i think of movement, spells, and downtime as all varying wildly between systems, usually outside the scope of an adventure. movement is especially weird, i feel like, since D&D treats it as an attribute of one's encumbrance while later systems try to attach it to an individual character statistic.
- totally get what you mean! it should be implied that the functions used during skirmish combat may not necessarily be the same ones used to resolve difficult tasks or avoiding danger, though i think that saying that the latter two exist to cover non-combat tasks sort of privileges combat as the central activity, and also is not necessarily reflective of how those rolls are used. in OD&D, for example, the saves are actually integrated as part of combat, and the task rolls are a distinct subsystem for dungeon-crawling while than trying to cover non-combat gaps.
- class and level are good considerations! of course, like you say, many recent games do mess with those concepts. i do feel like levels on the single-digit scale (from 1 to 10, or even starting at 0) are common enough, but not necessarily universal. the functions of classes as well has often been wrapped up into universal character functions, to where it's hard to speak of e.g. magic as being necessarily a class function.
- by regular person, i mean in the chainmail sense as 1 HD (i.e., less "regular person" than "baseline figure")! not that all attacks deal 1 HD of damage, but that they can basically be scaled to that.
thank you again for your great feedback! :)
Hi Marcia. I'm interested by what you're trying to do here (although I think there are some significant challenges involved given the diversity of games one might try to encompass under the 'D&D' umbrella).
DeleteWhile I think turn duration is a better scaling method, an indication of ground scale might be practical for 'wilderness' scale activities. The relevant quantity is the distance moved in a typical 'wilderness exploration turn'. Unfortunately this depends on the duration of a typical 'wilderness exploration turn', the terrain crossed and the movement method. So you still have to deal with the hours versus watches versus days challenge that occurs when using time scale, as well as foot slogging through swamps versus 'aerial adventure' via dragon back. Allowing for watches (4 hours?) as well as days you might give a range like 'turns long enough to encompass overland travel of 3-36 miles' or 'each turn enabling ground movement of a few miles to few tens of miles'.
Another way to look at it is that the wilderness turn is long enough to travel between points separated by many times normal real-time social or tactical interaction distance. I.e. Beyond the possibility of a useful line of sight.
I see what you mean about the ambiguity of 'turn-based'. I used it because the play at each scale is carried out in a series of variously named 'days/watches', 'turns' or 'rounds' of standardised in-game duration. In board gaming the general term for a recurring cycle of play like that is 'turn'. The turn sequence then specifies the details of whatever simultaneous, sequential, phased, staggered etc. activities make up each turn. It's a feature specific to D&D that each turn of the skirmish combat game is (at least, post OD&D) called a 'round'. However, I understand that recent editions have adopted 'player turn' for a player's opportunity to take certain decisions during each 'round'.
In theory all of the resolution mechanisms are already captured in your first dot point, and there is no need to talk about attack resolution separately.
I understand what you mean about saves being integrated within combat in early D&D, and that methods for resolving e.g. a search for secret panels is included in the first dot point. That is why I referred to the rules for resolving 'attacks', rather than 'combat').
Specifically, the attack roll interacts with the armour categories and (typically) the HD scale you highlighted in other dot points. Perhaps the interaction between these elements - armour, HD and attack resolution - is worth noting somewhere.
By including specific references to armour, HD and damage you have already placed greater weight on the combat mechanics (specifically related to the attack roll) than you have on other elements of the game. I think this is inevitable given the structure of most versions of D&D.