Art & Quintessence

 I don't normally blog about artwork specifically. Mostly because I am far from an expert in the matter. I can't draw, I never studied art history or composition, and I'm not a fan of brie (gallery joke). However, I do know when a piece says something to me.

Ah, Daredevil! The best of the MCU.

 

So I'd like to take a moment to share a picture I had bought a print of nearly ten years ago at Garycon and recently unearthed while sorting through some boxes of old comics and such. It's a limited print by Mark Allen who drew the map of Lesserton for our Faster Monkey product, Lesserton & Mor. 

Now, this is by no means a unique sort of scene in fantasy gaming art. We have a party of adventurers looting some dead orcs while trying to open a door. It's practically off the cover of the Players Handbook. What I want to focus on is how effectively this simple image captures the essence of old-school gaming for me.

First off, the setting. It's dark. I don't mean Zack Snyder dark, I mean it looks like the characters can hardly see. There are four points of light within the picture and the rest is shrouded in gloom. The first two are the lanterns, one on the floor and one held so the thief can work. The third is out of frame, just beyond the cleric who stands guard. Perhaps a light up ahead around the corner? The fourth is the eye of giant spider as it sneaks up on the dwarf. The rest of the scene is almost pitch black, with just enough details visible to let us fill in the rest. 

Next, the characters. I've already mentioned some of them, but the composition of the party is nigh-perfect for representing an old-school D&D group of adventurers. There is a Gandalf-esqe magic-user complete with staff and pointy hat. We have our hooded thief, working away at the lock, and a fighter type whom I like to imagine by his somewhat generic appearance to be a man at arms/hireling, fulfilling his role as a torchbearer. There is a stalwart templar-looking cleric with mace and mail, a dwarf with a hefty axe eyeballing the dead orcs (perhaps making sure none are still twitching), and an elven archer lifting a bauble from a corpse. There's a spill of coins on the floor as well.

Obviously, part of the picture's story is easy to see. The party had a fight with some orcs and was victorious. But why are two of the party guarding and why isn't the dwarf watching the stairs? The magic user is speaking, is he casting a spell or admonishing the thief to hurry? Perhaps the party is in a hurry to get through the door and the immediate threat would come from in front or to the right and that's why the dwarf is distracted. True to adventuring form, though, they aren't leaving without at least some of the loot.

Another viewer could be perfectly justified in reading the scene in an entirely different way, and that's fine. But like most art, that's a strength, not a weakness. When I look at this picture, I see a scene whose essence has played out thousands of times at various kitchen tables and conventions over the decades. So when I think about how to sum up the core ideas of classic D&D and fantasy gaming, I believe you could do much worse than to hold up this picture and say "This. This is worth a thousand words."

Moldvay Musings VI: Encumbrance

I always forget that encumbrance in BX is an optional rule. I use it so often in my games that it seems integral to the system to me. I can totally understand someone choosing to "hand wave" the whole thing though.

It seems that encumbrance is one of those mechanics that RPGs tend to struggle with. Despite the simplicity of the idea ("Carrying lots of stuff is hard!"), different games have tried all sorts of methods to represent this. More often than not, they come up short, either in playability, or realism, or both.

The B/X method –being one of the oldest– is fairly simple compared to some, and while far from perfect, does the job well enough, IMO.

Two of the most commonly cited "weaknesses" of the mechanic are:

• No Strength modifier for carrying capacity.
• 10 coins per pound is a harsh scale.

The first is easily house-ruled. I commonly allow a character's STR adjustment (to hit/damage) to alter the allowed weights by 100 cn per ±1. So, for example, an 18 STR can carry 700 cn without being slowed down, while a 3 STR character could only carry 100 cn before being encumbered. 

The idea that an individual coin weighs 1.6 oz. means you're talking some serious metal discs and a LOT of gold per piece. It's easy enough to explain away though; a relatively primitive society, lots of impurities in the alloy (a "gold piece" would probably be more like 10K than 18 or 24K), etc.

One tidbit I like in the system is the idea of armor slowing you down regardless of weight. The very fact you are in armor limits movement, etc. It tends to make PCs a bit slow. When you love resource management and wandering monsters as much as I do, though, that's a feature not a bug! To me, it's as much a part of the challenge as fighting monsters when players need to sweat running out of torches, or the extra time it takes to move through an area, because of all the stuff they are carrying or wearing. Watching them debate taking that one more sack of coins but leave their rations behind? Priceless!

Moldvay Musings IV

From the section on movement (B19):

"A base movement of 120' in ten minutes may seem slow, but it assumes that the players are mapping carefully, searching, and trying to be quiet. It also takes into account the generally 'dark and dingy' conditions of the dungeon in which characters are adventuring."

Consider a hallway with no windows and no lights, or perhaps a natural tunnel/cave. What if you could only see 30' in any direction by a flickering torch or oil lantern before darkness obscures everything? Now imagine that you have never been in this place before. You have no idea what lies ahead. Now imagine you are worried about booby traps, possible cave-ins, and monsters. You're testing the floor with every step to make sure it's safe to step on (possibly pressing with a long pole). Even the guys in plate armor are trying not to make too much noise as they clank along, keeping weapons at the ready. All the while someone in the group is trying to sketch a map with parchment and a quill to find your way back out again.

Are you really moving all that fast?

It's also small wonder that such a group –especially carrying loads of equipment, armor, weapons, and eventually (hopefully) treasure– would need to rest every hour or so, just to take a sip of water, a bite of dried meat, catch their breath, and sheathe that sword for a minute after holding it at the ready for so long. 

Now, once you've been up and down the entrance corridor a few times to and from base camp, it makes sense that you'd go a bit faster. Moldvay doesn't disappoint on this score:

"The DM may wish to allow characters to move faster when traveling through areas they are familiar with."

Overall, I find these rules elegant and quite "realistic" enough to emulate what I feel they were after; the experience of fortune-seekers exploring and searching through ancient subterranean ruins and lairs.

Moldvay Musings I

I was flipping through my old friend, the 1981 "Moldvay" Basic book, when I happened to stop at page 19, "Part 4: The Adventure." This is a fascinating chapter to me. There are so many little tidbits that encapsulate much of what I consider "old-school" play. 

One of the first sections is about party size, containing the passage:

"The best size for an adventuring party is 6-8 characters, enough to handle the challenges which will be faced, but not too many to become disorganized or to ruin the chances to surprise the monsters." 

This is large compared to most present-day groups, but it's also interesting because it implies the need for numbers in a dungeon (a concept reinforced later with the mention of hiring retainers). The other interesting implication in that sentence is that of stealth. Adventurers should be trying to sneak up on things sometimes, not necessarily barge right in. 

A dungeon should be a scary place, with darkness, monsters, and traps threatening to finish the characters off at any moment. Adventurers that want to prevail need to bring enough bodies to hold their own, as well as trying to gain any advantage they can while in the deep places of the world.