More fun with Saving Throws

Hopefully this post will finally get this out of my system and I can move on other things like hirelings and dungeons and traps and whatnot.
 
Why isn't it more common to change the names of the categories to hew more closely to whatever genre or mood the DM and players are going for?
For example, say you are playing some brutal, dark and weird DnD, then the Saving Throws could be:
Poison and Plague   (for tests of endurance and ability to withstand physical ailments)
Sudden Death   (for situations like dragon breath, or any situation where survival means getting out of the way quick)
Mortal Terror   (fear, undead, tests of willpower)

and
Cosmic Doom   (used when the players are up against magic, magic devices, or things they don't understand)

or simply Plague, Death, Terror, Doom.

These are essentially the current DnD Saves: Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower plus one.

(After I wrote this I decided to google "mutant future saving throws" because I figured it would have interesting variations on saving throw categories, and I found this.   Clearly I'm on to something here - If it works in the post-apocalypse it must be good.)

I'm surprised Mr. Raggi didn't do something like this with LotFP.  But maybe you don't want to deal with each class having it's own chart (I don't).  So let's make it simpler, but still add some flavor that Fort/Ref/Will does not.

How about a Mental Save, a Physical Save and a Social Save?
At first level and every other level after each character gets +2 to a primary Save or +1 to a secondary.
Spellcaster's primary is mental and Fighter's primary is Physical.  The save is made if the PC rolls over a difficulty set by the DM just like in 3e & 4e.

Ok, maybe that works but let's make it not so boring.  Say you're playing in a Fey infused, Northern Euorpean-esque setting:

Mental:  Save vs. Faeries Glamour
Physical: Save vs. Jaws of Winter
Social: Save vs. King's Law

Or how about an Arabian Nights inspired setting:

Mental:  Save vs. Djinn
Physical: Save vs. Scorpion
Social: Save vs. Caste

But what if we like fort/ref/will? And we don't like the idea of a social save.  Fine. Keep the new school saves but call them:

Save vs. Slow Death   (fort)

Save vs. Quick Death   (ref)

Save vs. Brain Death   (will)

 or
Save vs. Endless Enemy
Save vs. Lightning Strike
Save vs. Invisible Hand

Whatever, now I'm just dressing up the DnD barbie in different clothes.  Let's get back to using Saving Throws to change something about the game, make it feel slightly different to emphasize a certain genre or flavor:

Say in your game wizards are bad-asses and all the other classes are their hirelings.  Maybe you'd do saves like this:

Save vs. Magic
Save vs. SpikePitLawAgeTrick

Its roll-over on a D20.  Magic-Users start with 14 in both, and both go down by one each level till 11th level.  All other classes start with 16 in both, Save vs. Magic never goes down and Save vs. SPLAT goes down one each level till 9th level.

Or say you want Elves to be all Tolkienesque and otherworldly in an annoyingly superior sort of way: They have one Save for all occasions and it starts at 2. (roll-over on D20)  It goes up by one every time they fail, and when they fail the save they don't actually die or necessarily suffer the effect they were saving against.  They might get hurt or inconvenienced, but they won't die.  When they're Save gets to 20 they're out of the game, they end that adventure/session and go get on a boat to the undying lands.

Ok.  I'll be done for now, but clearly fun can be had with saving throws even if your not making them up as you go along like I described in my last post.

People's Republic of Saving Throws II

Brendan's unrelenting tinkering is inspiring.  because of a recent post, he's got me thinking again about the Peoples Republic of Saving Throws and how to improve it. As a kid I almost never bothered to write down saving throws on my character sheet.  and we rarely looked up tables in game, so like a lot of gamers, we instead often defaulted to save vs. ability score.  But now, I like the idea of saving throws, I like how they improve with level and I especially like the old school saving throws with their evocative names... "save vs interesting way that your character might die in this game."  fort/ref/will is boring in comparison.  But I still don't want to have to write all that extra stuff down on my character sheet (that's valuable real estate that would be better used writing down all the cool loot I get or drawing a sweet character illustration) especially when the character might die in 5 minutes.

So.... Here's what I'm thinking:

All saves are made by rolling 15 or above on a D20.
When a save need to be rolled the DM presents these choices:

 1.Acquire a new Save based on the current situation, write it down on your character sheet and get a bonus to your roll.  The save is always written as save vs. ______.  It is a save against a particular kind of hazard, attack, or situation.
or
2. Make a saving throw with no bonuses.
or
3. Use a Save that you already have on your character sheet if it applies.

The bonus, if you have a Save written down, works like this:

Level	Bonus
1	+4
2	+4
3	+4
4	+4
5	+5
6	+6
7	+7
8	+8
9	+9
10	+10
11	+10
12	+10
etc.

Each player can have a maximum of 5 types of Saves.  They can't be swapped, removed or changed.  Only one type of save may be gained per adventure.  Existing Saves that PCs have acquired may be used in similar situations in the same way that the by-the-book saving throws in the original game could be (or kinda had to be) for example, if a character is being attacked by entangling vines he might make a save vs. paralysis because the vines are attempting to restrict his movement.  Using this system, players could ask the DM if an existing Save that their character has could be used in other situations (that's what option 3 is above)  For example, a character who is struck by a trap that releases a cloud of poison gas acquires "save vs. poison" and makes the save.  Later, while staying at the castle of the Duke of Badlandia, and with the DM's approval the PC attempts to out drink the Duke and rolls to save vs. poison to do so.

Here's what I like about this:  I'm into the style of play where a character's story is built in game, and having the name of the save tailored to the situations that the character has survived is a nifty way to embed that character's personal story into the mechanics of the game.

So one character might have:
Save vs. Pit Traps 
Save vs. Mind Control
Save vs. Fire

and another character might have:
Save vs. Slime
Save vs. Invisibility
Save vs. Zombi Disease

This would be a good mechanic to use if you like building a character as you go and if your comfortable with the possibility of a little negotiation between the DM and Players.

This would be a bad mechanic to use if you prefer to have things clearly laid out in advance, and are less fond of making up character traits in game and justifying why they might or might not apply in a certain situation.

Now is the best time to be a gamer ever

A while back there was a thing floating around about the ten gaming books you'd most like to have if you could only have ten.  I recently did some gaming/camping (my favorite kind of camping involves gaming and my favorite kind of gaming involves camping) so I got to actually make this decision.  I didn't need ten.  We brought:

Moldvay/Cook B/X.

tucked into  Moldvay Basic was this.  It came in handy.

That's two.

We also brought:

Raggi's Random Esoteric Creature Generator.

The 1e DMG, but mostly because since we were camping I thought it might be useful to have something hard to write on.

We brought this:

Everything in this I either made or found on the internet! Here's a breakdown of the indispensable dungeon master tools in here:

Pages 1 & 2:
megadungeon missions

random swords and sorcery name generator 

movement, encumbrance, light & vision, reaction roll chart, foraging & hunting, xp

Pages 3 & 4:
the Ravaged Ruins charts from Wilderlands of High Fantasy (worth three bucks for these two pages alone)


Pages 5 & 6:

MegaDungeon Area Name Generator

MegaDungeon - Doors

Page 7 & 8:
the Dismal Depths Trap Tables

random rooms and d100 things in a pit from here

 Pages 9 & 10:

MegaDungeon: Random Trap Disarming Table

Pages e11 & 12:

Trick effects and "big ol' list of tricks from C

Pages 13 & 14:

Wilderness and dungeon wandering monster tables 

Pages 15 & 16:

Creepy combat commentary and "what are the monsters doing" from Telecanter

and a list of Shakesperian insults, just in case!

pages 17 & 18:

od&d castle inhabitants, my Treasure Map Generator, and Redbeard's Faction Connection Diagram  

Pages 19 & 20

My treasure hoards, looting and random magic item charts.

pages 21 & 22:

Talysman's 20 sided quickie tables 

 We also had my Arcane Stress and Spell Mutations (which got used by the DM, there were no M-U PCs. There was an Elf, but he got taken out by a black pudding before he got to cast any spells) and my critical injury table. 

 

I buy gaming books, adventures etc. but I sure don't need to.

Vault of the Romulons

Not too long ago I bought this:

Mine looks just like this, but more beat up.  It's not written all over like a lot of these old modules are though.  I've never been big on published adventures at all, but lately I''ve been wanting to try them out more, the classics like this one as well as newer ones.  It is great to have more Gygaxian prose on my shelf, and reading through it I REALLY want to use it.  So, I'm thinking of using it in the Space Mutant DnD campaign.

The thing is, I don't like the Drow at all.  But I've come up with a great solution:

In Space Mutant DnD the elves seem to be all gone, but they used to be major players a long time ago and really they were a space faring race that crash-landed on the planet and they looked like this:

They called themselves the "Volk."

The Volk, if the players ever find any maybe by reviving them from a cryonic chamber or something, will use Eladrin stats but have "nerve pinch" as an encounter power and a chance to have some psi powers instead of their teleport power.

Anyway, in this situation who are the Drow? that is who are the Anti-Elves?

The "Romulons" of course!

I'm thinking of calling the city in Vault of the Drow Romulopolis instead of Erelhei-Cinlu.  maybe the Romulons call it one but everybody else calls it another.  Or maybe Romulopolis was built on the bones of Erelhei-Cinlu... There will be much amok there for the players to run in, I shall use Vornheim.  On the way there there's a good chance they'll run into some of Peddlers of the Deep Dark. (I'll have to add tribbles to one of those tables of goods they carry)  I bet the Romulons and the Sleestaks have all kinds of high-stakes backstabby trade shenanagans going on between them too.

I can't find in the module right now exactly what the drow's spider silk cloaks do, maybe that's in one of the earlier modules?  But I would make each cloak have woven into it a "cloaking device"  which makes it so that only other people with a Romu-cloak can see you.

Ahhhhh! and the big canyon where the Kuo-toa are supposed to be is gonna be called "The Neutral Zone"

Ok, I better stop now.

Maybe if we can fund Broodmother Sky Fortress then I can have the players go back in time and run around with kaiju inspired giants that they will already know are being used by the Romulons (because they're from the future), but then the Romulons will send a Robo-Romulon back in time after them....

Sleestak Reproduction and the Grand Adventure Campaign

We ran our first game of Space Mutant DnD.  There was one more player, so in addition to the characters I listed in the last post, there was a Chaotic Good Sleestak Cleric.  Because I made Slestaks have free hirelings the party of five was actually a party of nine.

The new player, for reasons I don't think i can even begin to speculate on, drew six boobs on her character in the little "character portait" box.  This lead to a brief discusion of speculation on the anatomy and reproductive physiology and rituals between the two Sleestak players as they hashed out their respective and seemingly conflicting views on the subject.  I freaking love D&D.

The characters were in town preparing for an expedition to the bleak forest to raid the Tomb of the Elf King when the sky opened up and this fell out and landed over the next hill:

They investigated, snuck into the Star City and rescued the Lazer Dwarves from their subjugation under the evil Psi-Witches.  along the way they met the little guy in the top picture (They could talk to him because one of the players spoke Space Imp.  We  rolled a D6 and it said so)  When they where victorious the Lazer Dwarves gave them a tank.

If we keep playing it'll turn into a hex crawl via tank.  At least until they find one of these:

Also, I really really really really really hope that Jeff Rients and Vincent Baker and everybody else in the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Grand Adventure Campaign get to make awesome adventures for us to play.   These guys will each make an awesome adventure, but the fact that they are both (especially Baker) are planning something that can be used again and again is brilliant.  A kit to make random wizard towers inspired by Jack Vance, full of moving parts for PCs to mess with and back story and where did the wizard go... are you kidding?  Why is The Seclusium of Orphone not way past it's goal already?

Space Mutant DnD

I wrote up Jeff's 20 Questions and gave them to the players to introduce the campaign since I'm aiming for something other than vanilla DnD, something I'm calling:

 "SPACE MUTANT DnD"

SETTING:

Characters begin in Foulcrest, a dwarven factory town on bluffs overlooking mud flats At the top of an inland sea/lake.  Sleesport is on a peninsula at the south end of the lake with access to a larger sea.  Across the lake from Foulcrest is the ruined city of Xenos.  The Elf King's Tomb is in the bleak forest: a place even the elves don't go.

Character Races:
Sleestak, Dwarf, Human,  Kobold.  More playable races can be unlocked in game.

Character Classes:
all PHB classes.  Maybe more may be unlocked in game.

TWENTY QUESTIONS:

1.    What is the deal with my cleric's religion?
You're Cleric most likely worships the Lord of Light, the Lazer God.  He lives in the City of Angels and looks like this:

There are also rumors of cults of Warlocks in Xenos.

2.    Where can we go to buy standard equipment?
 Foulcrest for most things or Sleesport for larger sea-going ships or weirder items.

3.    Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?
 Pay the dwarves of Foulcrest extra and they can do it.  They are quite industrious.

4.    Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?
 Well there used to be the elves...  Maybe the Shroud of Xenos? Who knows really.

5.    Who is the greatest warrior in the land?
 The chief of the Dwarves of Foulcrest is pretty tough, otherwise maybe one of the barbarians.

6.    Who is the richest person in the land?
 One of the Dwarf or Sleestak merchant houses who run Foulcrest and Sleesport.

7.    Where can we go to get some magical healing?
 The Temple of the Lord of Light in Foulcrest.

8.    Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?
 The Clerics of the Lord of Light in Foulcrest might have to direct you to one of their monasteries in the Blade Mountains.  You can hire a Runner to guide you.

9.    Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?
 Nope.  Wizards are lonely weirdos.  They may find items or spells on their adventures.

10.    Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?
 Maybe Sleesport.

11.    Where can I hire mercenaries?
 Foulcrest is full of disgruntled workers (mostly human and dwarf) in the dwarven mills.  Offer them two weeks pay and they'll follow you, offer them 2 months pay and they'll follow you anywhere. 

12.    Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?
 Well, it's bad news to get on the wrong side of the law in any town.  The Sleestaks are known to be especially nasty.  They run Sleesport like bug-eyed, lizard-clawed Bugsy Siegels.

13.    Which way to the nearest tavern?
 Plenty in Foulcrest and more in Sleesport.

14.    What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?
Funny you should ask...

15.    Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?
Maybe later.

16.    How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?
Some say the Lord of Light has contests to determine a champion who is granted special boons, but these are usually quests, not gladiatorial fights.

17.    Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?
Yep: The Sleestak Mafia.  The Dwarven Counter-Sleestak Insurgency.  The Cults of Xenos. Just to name a few.

18.    What is there to eat around here?
Deep fried dinosaur.  Giant Strawberries.  Dwarven Ale.  Sleestaks are vegetarians for the most part, though some say they prize certain mammals as delicacies.

19.    Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?
There's the Crown of the Elf King...

20.    Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?
Some say there is a secret court of alien vampires in Xenos.  And there is a Chimera to the north.

digging in again

So I haven't written anything on this blog in forever. I've moved, moved again and gotten a new job.  It's been a busy few months, but that's boring stuff that doesn't have anything to do with gaming so lets change the subject.  I haven't been gaming at all, but I have done some further noodling over a 4e hack and the players have made characters, we are ready to game!

The party is:
a Dwarf Cleric, Neutral Good
a Sleestak Thief, Chaotic Good
a Dwarf Ranger, Chaotic Neutral
a Kobold Wizard, Lawful Good


I haven't been gaming, but I have found some sweet old comics drawn by a fellow named Alcatena. They're called Moving Fortress and Subterra, the pics below are mostly from Subterra.

 
These comics are juicy game inspiring gold- an alien oriental alternate D&D-esque world.  They make me want to play Talislanta.  It is so bad ass that all that Talislanta stuff is online for free and legal. 

Also, I picked up Carcosa from my friendly local gaming store.    This idea has likely already been tossed out into the internet, but can you imagine how great it would have been if Carcosa had been published with a one page dungeon for each hex?