Traverse Fantasy

( Previous Post ) I’m going to invoke the death of the author here before anyone else does (never mind). It’s easy to talk and argue about intent when discussing texts, especially when the question is whether a text contains contradictory perspectives or priorities. At least we don’t know what either author thought on the topic, so we can’t take that as a faulty basis. Anyway, when I refer to authorial priority, I want to determine if the passages attributed to either author have different notions of play or its telos —or perhaps, if we didn’t know which passage could be attributed to which author, if such differences in the text would still be manifest in predictable ways. Any reference to intent per se here is a heuristic for the text’s own significance (in the Lacanian sense, of a meaning generated rather than given). Hypothesis I: Differing Priorities Now that I’ve cast this protection spell against bullshit lit-crit pedantry, I can submit my hypothesis that OD&D alternat...

I did the oopsie of assuming that a controversial, or at least non-consensus, position was actually a non-controversial consensus. From “ Inaugurating the Icon0clasm Ball ”: Not only was OD&D interpreted (i.e., read or played) in various contradictory ways by contemporary readers, but its two authors encode contradictory visions of this game within its source text. Did you catch that? In other words, “Gary and Dave had different priorities collaborating on Dungeons & Dragons , and this is apparent from the text as received.” I promised myself I wouldn’t do any more exegesis of this fucking thing, but that’s a big-ass claim. Is it true? Back when I was working on FMC , I was interested in the development of the OD&D text which consisted of a back-and-forth between its two authors. I’m indebted to Dan Boggs’ Hidden in Shadows blog which I read and internalized years ago, and the timeline below is from his original 2012 post on Beyond This Point Be Dragons : In 1972, ...

The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. “The truth will not run away from us” – this remark by Gottfried Keller denotes the exact place where historical materialism breaks through historicism’s picture of history. For it is an irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant in it. Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History It's August, so submissions for The Icon0clasm Ball for  Fantastic Medieval Campaigns  have opened! I'm genuinely excited to see what y'all come up with, because the discursive universe of  OD&D  needs something new (and, dare I say, it deserves a better reception than as the germ of brand-name  Dungeons & Dragons  or of old-school revisionism). I've made steady progress on my major project for this, and I'm hopefully (hopefully!)...

Hi all! Hosting The Icon0clastic Ball on Itch. This is a jam for Fantastic Medieval Campaigns , a free version of the original role-playing game, published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Although it functions on one hand as a “retroclone”, what distinguishes it from other versions is its unwillingness to compromise the confusing and fractal nature of the text, as well as its willingness to criticize that text and its authors. This culminates in a project to situate the original role-playing game within its socio-historical context, to illuminate the perspectives of its original authors and also reveal the extent to which the text is distorted by our own perspectives. It is neither traditional nor old-school nor war-game, and yet here we all are merely grasping the legs of this elephant. As for this ball, the category is ICON0CLASM . Most readers and players of the original role-playing game, even in the form of FMC , attempt to envision and emulate the game as it was originally played. Res...

Wasn't happy with my last conversion because CR is not a pure measure of longevity like HD. It accounts for AC as well. Since then, though, I've come up with an actual measure for OD&D that counts both HD and AC! So we can do some mad science now. I mapped CR values to virtual HD values (virtual HP / 3.5), and found a really tight function for CR ≥ 1 and VHD ≥ 3. CR = 0.5 × VHD – 0.5 VHD = 2 × CR + 1 Let's put this funky function to the test. Below is a table converting monsters from 5e to OD&D and vice versa. Keep in mind that dragons of different ages do not truly have different HD values; instead, they have different hit points per HD. This turns out so that a red dragon with "10 HD" can have the equivalent of from 3 to 17 HD (which is really from 9.5 to 56.6 VHD with an AC of 2; ibid. ). For the purposes of this, I'm interpreting a wyrmling as a "very young" dragon and an ancient dragon as an "old" but not "very old...

There's a specific concept that constantly shows up in my game-prep but, by virtue of being just slightly out of the way, has never actually come to fruition: a luper colony being picked off by an imposter, and a group of dryads (tree-nymphs) irritated over the years at being the werewolves' scratching-posts. The original premise was that the party is employed to deliver new furniture to the luper colony because they keep destroying what they have. The initial complication, before the party comes upon the more dire situation in the colony, is that they can't use any pack animals because the werewolves will helplessly and regrettably eat them. This is my attempt to finally flesh out this scenario once and for all! My immediate inspiration is my experience playing Nova (a.k.a. Idle Cartulary)'s adventures Bridewell and Hiss , especially for their mix of social intrigue and exploration. This one I expect to be much less complex, but hopefully good fun for o...

The rat post was fun ! For my next trick, I will reveal the secret "challenge rating" system inside OD&D . Virtual Hit Points First, let me explain in greater detail some ground I covered in the last post. Hit dice are not the final word on monster longevity because they do not account for the likelihood that they will get hit by an attack. This means we can get a more accurate picture by calculating a figure's "virtual hit points": how much longer they last in combat as a result of their armor class. I did this years ago , but have a more accurate function now because of a simulation I ran. The results are as accurate for 4 hit points as they are for 35 hit points. AC Avg. HP Adj. 9 [10] 100% 8 [11] 111% 7 [12] 125% 6 [13] 142% 5 [14] 168% 4 [15] 198% 3 [16] 251% 2 [17] 334% As an example, an unarmored character with 10 hit points doesn't get anything extra, but if they were wearing plate armor it would be as i...

There have been 194 copies of Fantastic Medieval Campaigns printed on Lulu at cost! First, I wanted to thank all y'all for being so supportive and encouraging on this project. I hope everyone who has a copy enjoys it and finds it interesting and/or useful! :) Here's the breakdown for each available version: B&W Hardcover: 5% Color Hardcover: 57% B&W Softcover: 13% Color Softcover: 25% And here's the breakdown for each 'variable': 18% are black & white, 82% are color. 62% are hardcover, 38% are softcover. Going off of this, I think I'd like to "simplify" the offerings. Maybe just offer the color hardcover and the black & white softcover. Part of me also wants to turn the black & white version into a simple 'core' version with the 3 main chapters and Appendix A, to keep the price down and give it its own niche. This will be in addition to separate-volume booklets that I'm still working on (or maybe I'll just do the ha...

Haters will say you can’t 0e-post and 5e-post at the same time. I’ve talked before about the relationship between Outdoor Survival and the original Dungeons & Dragons as written, namely that D&D only says to borrow the other’s game board rather than any of its rules to simulate surviving the wild. This is why I was surprised when my friend Vodka Gobalsky told me that he uses Outdoor Survival more or less wholecloth with OD&D , and considers it as essential as Chainmail to facilitate a cohesive and satisfying game loop. Here’s the problem: Outdoor Survival is kind of insane. Just look that card. Three different tracks for thirst, hunger, and life levels—the latter of which I asked Vodka about, like, “Do you substitute life levels for hit points or a proportion of hit points?” To which he said he didn’t because we both know that doesn’t make sense, but more importantly because hit points are an abstraction of combat. As it were, this makes life levels the hit points...

JWMillwright left this really cool comment on my previous post about fighters : I’ve more or less adopted these rules but allow Fighters to use this bonus as one of the following; to-hit bonus, a damage bonus, or make an extra attack with no bonus. And only now something just clicked: it should be really simple to introduce the same framework as simple skirmishes if you just allow fighters to split their bonus between multiple attacks (if their bonus is +2 or greater). So I've removed the rule that fighters attack until they miss, and replaced it with fighters being able to split or combine their attack bonus into multiple small attacks or one big attack. Monsters can now also do the same thing. This increases the continuity between FMC Basic and FMC proper, so it really feels like a simplified version of how I run the latter. You could give experts +1 prowess every second level and mages every third level, but that feels more appropriate for how I run FMC proper where hi...

Niosis and I were talking about the expert class in FMC Basic , as well as the one that appears in Lamentations of the Flame Princess or the more general (yet specific, lol) thief class. Here's kind of my take: they are the structural analogue of clerics from the 74 game, being able to use magic weapons or cast spells, and also being able to improve at combat or magic in their own particular way. Something more interesting: if fighters specialize at the combat subsystem and mages specialize at the magic subsystem, then I think of experts as specializing in the worker-placement subsystem . This is something thieves sort of accomplish, as I've talked about before , but by having their own weird mismatch of dice rolls executed separately (and on an individual basis) from the existing worker placement game. Finally, I think that experts could also just as well be the classless class in FMC Basic . Like I said, they can use the items associated with fighters and mages, but just do...

Someone shared with me Chaos Reigns , a hack of OD&D combat. It’s not to my own taste (check it out still!), but it got me thinking about something I wish it had done: consolidate attack and damage rolls. Since everything is d6, why not! My thought was: roll 2d6 ≤ AC , and the damage is the highest of the two dice. For example, if a target has an AC of 7 and you roll a 2 + 5, then you hit and deal 5 damage. This is how the numbers break down, for AC values from 8 to 3. ‘DPA’ stands for damage-per-attack, and ‘DPH’ stands for damage-per-hit. Armor Class To-Hit DPA DPH 8 72% 3.5 4.3 7 58% 2.9 4.0 6 41% 1.9 3.4 5 28% 1.2 2.9 4 17% 0.6 2.2 3 8% 0.2 1.7 Given that table, I think values from 7 to 4 are the best range, and they could easily correspond to the typical four armor types (none, leather, chain, plate); alternatively, treat 7 to 5 as light/medium/heavy and subtract 1 for a shield. I like the numbers better than the Kubular meth...

Occasionally, I check Reddit to see if I missed anything interested in this sphere of things. Not usually, but today—yeah! Reddit user Kubular reported a misunderstanding of typical D&D combat from one of their friends, and took it as a possible new direction for one-roll combat. Here’s the link , and here’s the important bit: I rolled a 16 to hit and they had an AC of 13. I rolled a 5 for damage, but she was still looking at the 16 and was like “wait, why is it 5? Shouldn’t it be 3?” I was confused for a moment, but then I realized (a) she hadn’t seen my damage roll, and (b) I hadn’t explained how combat works and this was her first exposure to any RPG. So she saw the 16, understood armor class as representative of her armor, then just assumed that you would subtract the AC from the attack roll to get damage. Math Comparison That’s interesting! How does it compare to other methods? Let’s take for example: Original: Attempt an attack as per Chainmail , and take 1d6 damage ...

You're a regular 1d figure. How many tries does it take to defeat another figure like you? Maybe 1 if you can land a hit, or 2 if you account for your chance to do that. Nope, 3.0 tries, on the dot. Then it takes 2.6 tries if you have 1d–1 hit die, and 2.3 tries if you have ½d hit die. That's pretty bad. And that's just for a 50% chance to hit. Upping this by 20% gives 2.2, 1.9, and 1.7. Not helping. Think about it this way, too: to find the chance of one-shotting a figure, multiply the attacker's to-hit chance by the chance they will deplete the target's hit points. For a 1d figure at a 50% to-hit, that's a 25% chance. Add +2.5% per extra 5% to-hit. Not good. This is why I've said before that fighters need some sort of cleave or sweep or multi-attack to be "useful", as well as an increase in damage over time, but as they stand the numbers by themselves are quite bad, and bonuses to damage can be hard to scale without getting out of hand . Here...

Behold my woes: LBB or FMC : Lots of dice-rolling. AD&D: Stupid and bad; multi-attack hell. B/X or OSE : Plain boring. Boooooo. DCC: No multi-attacks. D&D4: Too many choices. D&D5 : The worst of AD&D, DCC, and D&D4. FMC Skirmishes : Hard to explain; relies on an alternate system; constant factor overwhelms random factor. FMC Basic : Having a damage floor is kinda awkward. What to do? Earlier I said that I like fighters adding their level to attack and damage rolls, in combination with some way for them to make multiple attacks per turn. That way, mid-level fighters are guaranteed to throw any regular figure they hit off the board, and can do so potentially multiple times per turn. I want fighter to be short for auto-fighter. The problem is that these effects have to be bound with respect to targets' hit points and bonuses from magic weapons, without becoming overwhelming. I don't really know what a solution looks like except for overhauling the who...

What brought this on was that I just published FMC Basic on Itch, and wanted to reflect on how the way I play OD&D has changed over the last few months. For a while, my skirmish rules were it (of which you can find the 'final' version in FMC proper ) because they felt like a direct translation between the mass warfare of Chainmail and the so-called 'alternate combat system' in OD&D . FMC Basic by Traverse Fantasy The gist is that any number # of ~1 HD figures can combine their attacks into one like a # HD figure; for example, 4 orcs can combine their forces and attack like a 4 HD figure. This relies upon a # HD figure adding # to attack and damage, so our 4 orcs fighting like Voltron add +4 to attack and damage. I fell out of love with this subsystem because although it condensed multiple figures into one unit, the rules themselves felt more arbitrary like they were still holding onto awkward D&D conventions. I don't like adding the same number ...

Suppose my bite-sized dungeon ( now on Itch ) as a basis, that we have 2 static groups of monsters and 2 treasure hoards (one being guarded, the other being hidden or trapped). How do we fill those abstract boxes? Let's also suppose the OD&D monster experience formula with a twist: 100 experience per hit die, plus +50% for medium armor, +100% for heavy armor, and +50% for having special powers. This is more reliable than just using hit dice by itself, since a monster's armor class greatly impacts its difficulty. Now, let's say a level- x site should have an experience value equal to 1,000 times  x . For example, a level-1 site should have about 1,000 experience. This value is the budget for monsters and treasure (in separate pools) onsite. 1,000 experience can correspond to: 13 hoblins (HD 1/2, medium armor). 7 porcs (HD 1, medium armor). 1,000 g.p. worth of value (or whatever coin you use). Excluding wandering monsters, the site contains a total of 2,000 experience ...