Tag Archives: Tables

RPGs

What is the OSR?

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Three little letters seem to cause such a fuss. Here is a list that I will add to as my brain spits out new words and phrases to fit the acronym. When I get enough for a table or two, I will post a new article. (Be afraid, be very afraid.)

I invite others to submit their O.S.R. words, please submit them in the comments, in three word groups in order as seen in my examples below. NOTE: It doesn’t have to relate to RPGs, or at least not in an obvious way.

Obstinate Stinky Referees

Old Senile Roleplayers

One Shot Roleplaying

One Save Rule/Roll

Only Singing Roleplaying

Odiferous Slimy Raconteurs

Ornery Statistics Regulators (My personal favorite so far.)

Original System Resolutely

Obtuse System Rules

Obtuse Seething Revolutionary

Obverse Signage Regulations

Onomatopoeia Serving Rhetoric

Oranges Simmering Resolutely

Obtuse Seething Ridiculousness (A recent Kickstarter comes to mind, in addition to many other efforts to define three letters.)

Overpaid Senior Regulators

Ostracons Scoured Regularly

Ostrogoths Serving Romans

Ovulating Soothsayers Ruminating

Oscillating Sonorous Regurgitation

Ossified Spider Riders

Order Shiny Rings

Orthodontists Skewering Rodents

Overt Slimy Renters

Oysters Salaciously Rotated

Ossuaries Shattered Regretfully

RPGs

How Many Hours of Daylight?

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Recently in play, the question came up of when does it get dark?

I had to make up something.

It happened to be early summer in the game, so I could use the approximate times from this time of year.

However, time progresses quickly in the game, so it is now mid-Autumn, so there is less daylight. When the players are running around outside, the amount of light tends to be important. Rather than make something up on the fly and it be radically inconsistent with past rulings, I built a chart for use at the game table.

I have put together a sunrise/sunset and hours of daylight for each day on my game calendar – Calendar And Random Generation.

I use twelve months with twenty-eight days for simplicity of generating random date. This is a game, so it does no have to have total verisimilitude with reality, just enough to make sense.

Google is your friend for esoteric information, but I wanted a chart I could print out for the game table and have ready without having to have my tablet or laptop available.

I picked a location that was in a temperate zone analogous to the current area in use in my campaign. I looked for sunrise and sunset times for Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes and Winter and Summer Solstices. I then determined how many days were between each and the difference in times between each and determined the number of seconds sunrise and sunset was earlier or later depending on the season. In reality, there is not exactly 59 seconds earlier sunrise each day, but again, this isn’t reality.

Of course, closer to the poles have more light certain times of year. I don’t know the formula but each degree of latitude N/S is approximately 69 miles for an Earth-sized planet. You can add or subtract minutes to the rise and set times based on the formula. I am sure Google has it. Based on Sturgis, MI and Kansas City, MO being about 2.7 degrees apart, the Spring Equinox sunrise time in Kansas City, MO is about 24 minutes earlier than Sturgis, MI. Sunset the same day is thus also earlier in KC. It is close enough to a 24 minute difference on the Autumnal Equinox and the Solstices, that one can extrapolate about an 8 minute difference for every 69 miles north or south. If you want to get fancier with your own calculations that’s cool. If you want a table for a world that is messier and more like reality, that’s your choice. I made the choice to spend as little time on this as possible at the table.

I have shared a PDF of my efforts – Sunrise & Sunset Times.

RPGs

Calendar And Random Generation

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Having a calendar that suits itself to easy generation of random dates by a die roll is something that I find very useful.

This idea dates back 20 years or so to my brother Robert’s campaign.

12 months with 28 days, for a year of 336 days. There are four seven day weeks in each month. It is easy and simple. Roll 1d12 for the month and 3d10-2 for the day of the month. Use it to determine the data a character was born. It is useful for determining when aging effects kick in and when to celebrate birthdays, if that is a custom in the game.

This simple system can determine any random date with a quick roll of 4 dice. One always knows what day of the 7 day week a given date falls. The months of the seasons fall with the first day of each season as the first day of the first month of that season. Spring is used as the first day of the year.

I even built an HTML page with the names of the months and days of the week Robert uses for his calendar. I printed one up all nice and fancy and give it to him, and he tells me that there is a festival between the last day of winter and the first day of spring. I pointed out to him that the method we had used for over 15 years never let anyone be born during the festival, or any random events happen then. He laughed and just let it slide.

I like the simplicity of twelve months of twenty-eight days. So what if years are shorter? It is a game.

To get a year closer to that of Earth, one can do 13 months of 28 days and get 364 days. One then needs to make a d13, or come up with a balanced way to roll for 13 possibilities. I’m sure someone is better at this and can just think of it and get the answer. If you do, let me know.

Another option that is close to the Earth year, is twelve 30 day months, for a year of 360 days. The months don’t line up , but the year comes out. For generating a day in a 30 day month use a d30 or a d6 to generate the tens to add to a d10. For example, 1-2 = add 0, 3-4 = add ten, 5-6 = add 20 to the number rolled on the d10.

If you have to have 365 days, then you need a way to roll or account for any festival days between months, or at the end of the year so that those days can have an event.

One can determine any random date in a year for incidents, war, battle, invasions, natural disasters, weather, etc. This can be used for the past as well as the current year or the future.

One thing I like from Oriental Adventures besides some of the weapons and spells are the yearly and monthly event tables. They give ideas for building one’s own tables.

Once you have such tables, you need to decide what date something happens. Then just determine what time of day something happens, if it is important for the exact time. I recommend staying with 24 hours days, unless you want to do a lot of table building, etc. You can roll a D6 for AM/PM and a d12 for the hour. Or roll a d6 and divide 24 by the result to get 4 hour increments, or a d8 for 3 hour increments, etc.

If you want to get down to the minute, roll a d12 to get within ten minutes and roll to determine if it is plus or minus 1 to 5 minutes from that point. Repeat for the exact second. This would be handy for a ritual that must begin or end at the right moment of an eclipse and determine when the hero have to act to stop the bad guy, assuming the bad guy is the one doing the ritual.

I found this article on making a grid like that of graph paper using Excel. I have not tried it with Libre Office or Open Office yet. I used it to build a blank calendar that I can name and number and note events and mark off days elapsed. I have 6 months in a column with room to the right of each month for some notes. If more room is needed, I could do 6 months on one side and 6 on the other.

If you use training to go up a level, players can fly through weeks and months, so planning out what happens in advance can make it interesting if they have to break training to deal with an emergency.

I’m old school in that computers were expensive when I was young and I’m used to paper. I work in the computer industry and find them very useful for gathering and storing data, but they become a hindrance to use during play. I do have a tablet with my PDFs of manuals I purchased through DriveThruRPG, if I need to find something fast and do a search. When I play online, I use it to hold my character sheet since I only have one viable monitor on my home computer.

I am sure that one could build a program or script to generate several millenniums of weather and events in a few minutes, but it takes a lot of the DM’s tweaking and tuning out of it. One does not need to generate every scrap of anything that could ever happen or has happened in the past.

What do you use for your calendar and random date generation?

RPGs

Rule of 9’s

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Way back when I was a volunteer firefighter/EMT.

During EMT training we learned about the “Rule of 9’s” that is used for estimating the percentage of body area that is burned. For an adult, the head is 9% each arm is 9%, the front of the torso is 18% and that back 18%, each leg is 18% and finally, the groin is 1%. One of my classmates said, “Nuh-uh! That’s 100%!!”.

I have wondered what utility this could be for use in RPG’s. It could be used for surface area hit by burning oil, acid, dragon breath, etc. However, would it be useful in to hit tables? I don’t want a totally realistic combat system, that would take forever for a single one on one fight.

I can see it used for a critical hits/fumbles table. I am not a math whiz and the best at designing such things, but it is an idea I wanted to write down for future exploration, and to get the idea out there in case someone else might be interested.

RPGs

ENCOUNTER TABLES Aren’t Just For Monsters

This is an idea I am putting up so I can flesh it out. Many other RPG bloggers have said the same thing. Variations on the numbers of goblins, orcs, kobolds, ogres, etc. and their appearance and weapons only go so far to be interesting and avoid a slog.

Now throwing monsters into an odd situation, like a group of orcs with some stuck in quicksand, or kobolds climbing up or down a sheer cliff, can add some interesting spice to an encounter. Do the orcs help their comrades, do they stay and fight, or run away? Why are the kobolds climbing a sheer cliff? Did they find a cave with treasure, or are they fleeing something big and bad?

Encounter Tables don’t have to be just monsters. They can be natural phenomena, landscape features, special locations, etc.

If not an encounter table or tables, these things need to be kept in mind for wilderness, dungeon/underground, and town adventures.

Phenomena/Things/Locations

Pits/Traps/Deadfalls -> Monster or Fen or Special

Quicksand/Muck & Mire/etc.

Crevasse/Cliff/Landslide/Avalanche

Tangle of Vines/Dense Foliage

Patrols/Special/etc.

RPGs

Megadungeons Gone Wild

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Megadungeons are something that interest me. As a player I may have played in a megadungeon, but did not know it.

I have read lot of articles and gather lots of notes.

As I think about my own campaign, that I touched on yesterday, and its ten great ancient cities with teleport chambers, I realize that the sewers and tunnels and caverns under each one is its own megadungeon, but each is connected to the other by the teleport chambers. The chambers have a mechanism to specify which destination, so players could end up on the far end of the empire, or on one of the islands they settled across the sea.

Obviously, I don’t want or need to map out all of this that would never be played, but the various megadungeon tables on different sites to help populate them would come in handy if players managed to jump from one ancient city to another.

I think that general areas of the city would be a natural for certain kinds of buildings, structures, events, and encounters. For example, the cemetery/necropolis would have plenty of undead from the time of chaos when the empire collapsed and troops were needed quickly to deal with the dead and defend the city. The nice people fled and the bad guys have set up shop. There would be a near limitless supply of skeletons and zombies. A high magic society would tend to have magical constructs like golems and homonculi. Perhaps trapped demons or elementals. Magic mouths to give directions around the city.

There would be places where treasure in the form of coins might be more likely, and treasure in the form of ancient weapons and other items that might not be magical, but a sage might pay for them. A collector of ancient relics might like a statue or a tapestry. There is more to treasure than just coin and magic.

If there were a zoological garden, would there be small groups of wild animals about the city? A pride or two of lions that fed off the goblins and orcs running around. Other types of creatures attracted by the niche they could fill in such a place.

Whether a city or dungeon, thinking in terms of areas and what was there originally and what is there now will help group what adventurers might find or encounter there.

An ancient cistern overgrown with vines would be a 30 foot or deeper pit, a deadly fall, unless it still held water, then it could still be a deadly fall. Ancient barrows of the early kings could be infested with wights, or other grave loving creatures. Different parts of an abandoned city could be controlled by different factions. Pirates could use the docks to trade goods to orcs or evil humans in the employ of a wizard seeking some powerful device he read about in an ancient tome. Intelligent monsters might control another area, perhaps a dragon of an appropriate size has claimed the ancient treasury. There could be turf wars by the various factions trying to control the city. There could be a big bad trying to consolidate his power and is working to sway other factions to his will and destroy those who don’t come along. Players getting in the midst of such a turf war could be in for a wild ride.

Lots of ideas present themselves, palace, barracks, temples and shrines, colleges of magic, palaces of nobles and the rich, merchants of all kinds, the old bazaar, docks, an abandoned thieve’s guild tower, homes of the populace.

Would each city be built on a similar plan, or would each be unique?

I like to think or areas or pigeon holes for parts of large areas, like a city. All you really need for a map is the rough distance from one “quarter” or section of the city and how long it will take. I just borrow maps for cities online for my use. Of course, to publish my own, if that were every to happen, would take new maps and a LOT more detail for others to be able to use it. There is a HUGE difference between enough notes for a DM to run a session, and enough description for someone new to the campaign to run it. For making your own cities or megadungeons, you just need enough information to keep play moving. You may even have to have some tables for quick random generation of buildings, their condition, and contents.

There needs to be something to break up the sameness. As I wrote this, I recalled a scenario when I GM’d Gamma World and the players found a high rise hotel and in every room were skeletons of people in sexual positions as they obviously were going to do it one last time before the end of the world. Ah the mind of an adolescent teenage boy. After a while I ran out of scenarios for number of people and positions. It was all on the fly. I did not do enough preparation to have more variety. The other guys laughed at what I came up with, so we had fun, but it had an aura of sameness to it. A list of some sort for  100 houses, 100 merchant shops, etc. like many other lists of 100 other bloggers have come up with can go a long way. If you have the spare coin to buy a PDF of a city, you can save Googling for lists, or making up your own.

I would suggest making a list of the different types of things you expect to find in a city, wells, cisterns, fountains, houses, shrines, temples, tombs, etc. and make a list of 100 of them. Use a spreadsheet like Open Office or Libre Office Calc and have a column for a present day, in-use item/building/object and a second column for what it is like in a ruined city or town. You can make your lists as detailed as you need to make it useful for working down the list or picking at random. For a more complex choice and variety, you could have columns for different descriptors to use when applying to the object or building. Obviously, more substantial buildings like temples, palaces, forts, and wizard towers would need more preparation, especially if there is anything there to find or find you. Again, there are lots of maps and free modules describing these very things.

Building your own lists has the power of giving it your own flavor. You don’t have to come up with everything from scratch, you can mix and match ideas and lists from others you find online or in your rulebooks. There is a lot you can do if you are a cash-strapped teen or an adult with other things you need your money for, like bills and trying to save for retirement. Or if you have a few dollars to spend there are a lot of good resources available on DriveThru RPG or RPGNow in the $5 or less range. The D30 DM Companion and the D30 Sandbox Companion are two great resources for the time strapped DM and give lots of ideas for how to organize one’s own tables.

I really appreciate all the other DMs and players who share all their ideas online and so much of it is free. Thank you all, fellow gamers!

RPGs

City Districts Posted on G+ World Building Community

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I posted this comment and question about names for districts/quarters in towns and cities on the G+ World Building Community.

I am working on ideas for different districts/quarters for towns and cities in a fantasy (D&D) setting.

I have come up with a few from memory and my own ideas:
– Temple quarter
– Wizard quarter
– Royal & Noble quarter
– Government/Bureaucracy quarter
– Merchant’s quarter
– Non-human quarter (for areas where they don’t just mingle right in)
– Rich/Poor
– Docks/Wharves/Shipyards
– Thieve’s quarter

I then turned to Google, and Jerusalem and it’s four quarters, based on religion, tends to predominate the results. I found that old cities often had 3 to 5 quarters, Paris has 18 districts. Usually, there is the old town/city which may or may not be a citadel/acropolis/medina.

So a lot of them also have government quarters, lower/upper town, old town/city, and royal quarter.

I am curious what sorts of Districts/Areas/Quarters/Divisions of town and cities do you have/use?

I have one large ancient abandoned city that I am working on ideas to help with dealing with the players running around it. I have a general idea of what is where, and then am adding my own ideas to some city tables I have found on various blogs to generate some things ahead of time, but also to have on hand for on the fly generation as needed.

It is tricky to avoid every other house/building being the same without some options to help mix it up.

NOTE: I see developing large ancient cities whether active or ruins as related to megadungeons, and it may just be the above ground level of a megadungeon.

RPGs

My idea for a Monster Island

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I have an idea to combine the giant crustaceans and insects of Mysterious Island, with dinosaurs. I did not realize that Mysterious Island was based on a Jules Verne story. I have read some of his writings, but not all. I have a large backlog of them on my Kindle. That is the nice thing about stuff going out of copyright. Also the combination of creatures on Kong Island in the King Kong movies. (Note to self: Stat out Kong.)

I have a few ways I am thinking of handling this. Either one big island that has the giant insects and crustaceans and Pleistocene creatures and another area with dinosaurs, or two islands one with the dinosaurs and another close by with the rest.

Another might be an island with all giant insects, with the Thri-Keen at the top.

Definitely cavemen & Neanderthals with sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths would be cool.

An island could also be defined as an area with high mountains and no viable passes, or separated by a huge surrounding desert, center of the earth type scenarios, pocket dimensions, etc.

My idea it to design something that I would find fun and challenging to play.

I went through the Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, and Fiend Folio and collected a list of all the dinosaurs, giant animals, insects, etc. That is a long set of lists!

I am sure someone has done all or parts of these ideas. As I did not buy or play in most of the classic modules, I don’t know if TSR or other companies did something.

With the size of the dinosaurs, it would take a large land area to support viable sized groups of each. Random encounter tables would be quite long.

The thing with this is a party would have to use their brains and avoid trouble. Finding and allying themselves with primitive humans who know the best hiding spots and refuges and what parts of the island to avoid.

The challenge could be complicated by needing something the primitive humans prize or worship and are reluctant to part with it. If the party just takes it, they are all on their own. If they do things to gain the trust of the primitives, they might be able to borrow it or if a great enough service just keep it. All kinds of different ideas there.

Throw in some giants here and there and other humanoids and regular monsters to spice it up. Maybe the giants have always been there, but the humanoids and other monsters have washed up on shore, or they are after the same thing the party seeks.

Or the party could just be shipwrecked there in a storm, teleported there by a teleport trap in a dungeon and have to figure out how to get home. Is there another teleporter back? Can they figure out how to just travel home? Do they have a wizard with teleport?

I have too many ideas. I want to use them all, but always leave them wanting more. I know I have the more. I just want to use it all! Am I the only one fighting the temptation to use it all?

RPGs

Directions

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Directions, as in “Which way did he go?”There are a few things to keep in mind when determining a random direction.

  1. Land, Sea, Air, Space, Alternate Dimensions/Realities/Planes?
    1. Two dimensional, Three Dimensional, or Four Dimensional?
  2. Simplicity verses complexity.

Roleplaying is not about making perfect game analogues to anticipate every possible piece of reality one would need to cover to have the most “complete” ruleset. It is about enough of a mutually agreed framework that allows the gameplay to proceed with minimal interruptions.

A simple, two-dimensional example we are all familiar with is the map or boardgame. The points on the compass give the basics of what is meant by direction. The most simple example are the four points of the compass, if one is facing an outdoor scenario, with modifications for cliffs or other features that make certain options difficult to follow. The complexity can be increased for the number of directions in a geometric progression. 1d4 for N,S,E,W; 1d8 for the four basic directions, plus the four “diagonal”positions on the compass, i.e. NW,SE, etc; and finally, 3d6-1 for the 16 points. Beyond this it takes 32 options, or 64 and complexity soon becomes cumbersome. This simple example leaves out determining if someone climbed a tree, or hid in the pond. Add a desired modification of up, down, and sideways to add complexity if ideas for continuing the story are evading your current stint as GM.

Two-Dimensional Tables:

4 points (N,S,E,W)

1d4DIRECTION
1North
2South
3East
4West

8 points (N, NE, etc.)

1d8DIRECTION
1N
2NW
3NE
4S
5SW
6SE
7W
8E

16 Points (N, NE, NNE, etc.)

3d6-2Direction
….….

While reviewing hex paper, it became clear that with 6 points and 6 sides a d12 could be put to use.

12 Points – Using points and sides of a hex.

1d12Direction
1First side of hex
2First point of hex to the right of the first side
3-12Continue with each of the remaining sides and points.

Complicaton

1d3Direction
1Up
2Down
3Sideways*

Sideways (NPC or creature or object being sought has encountered a complication.)

1d6Direction
1External Intervention
2Location Variable
3Backtrack
4-6Roll Twice,
or add more options, etc.

For example, if an NPC thief is fleeing the party into the woods, and he encounters an Ogre, does he live, die, etc? How does this change the direction?

For internal directions, such as a building, dungeon or town, the directions will be more limited to the available terrain. A dungeon with a straight corridor for 100 feet and no secret doors in that space only has forward and back without mining tools or powerful magic, or a complication.

Three dimensional movement is encountered most often with sea, air or space encounters. Three axes of movement are involved and quickly complicate things.

One could roll on one of the two dimensional tables for the direction and use a second die or roll for z-axis modifier for up/down. There is some discussion on this in the AD&D DMG. p?

Adding in another layer of complexity, like time is simple simply determine past/present or add in parallel dimension/plane. This level of complexity would only be found in a fantasy setting where play involved powerful enough players involved in dimension travel. While some use of this might happen if the party can’t easily follow, like Donjon from a “Deck of Many Things.”

The K.I.S.S. principle will go far, just pick the number of points that make sense and fit the circumstances to keep play moving. This is only useful if a pre-planned contingency is part of the GM’s plans, say if the party encounters an individual in a maze of twisty passages with multiple routes of travel, plan the route ahead of time, or save work and devise a fast method to plan the route, since players have a knack for avoiding the cool scenario you want to see played out.

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