Traskar's Emporium of Exotic Delights

A couple of years ago my players ventured into The Vault of the Drow. Disguised as Drow they entered the city of Erelhei-Cinlu and looked for a place to stay. I wanted something that said decadence and immorality...

Enter Traskar's Emporium of Exotic Delights, brought to life with a menu:

One great thing about doing something like this is aiming at your target audience - I have a teenage daughter who had a pet hamster, and one of the players was a halfling. The monsters to eat were all ones they had met, and we'd already established that in the underworld Giant's Cheese was considered a delicacy.

To roll, or not to roll, that is the question: Part 3

Continued from Part 2.

An analysis of why I might be wanting to roll some dice...

11. Random effects

If you want a random side-effect for drinking a potion, using a wand, or perhaps spell-failure, then have fun creating a random table!

12. World Events

Anything from weather to an infestation of rats. Anything goes! Again, most systems are based on tables.

13. World Creation

Anything goes - random tables for populating rooms, geomorphs for dungeon layout, random characteristics for a demon. Use other people’s stuff for inspiration, and (this is important here) don't feel compelled to obey the dice here, this is only for inspiration.

14. Mass Battles

Two armies are battling, possibly the characters are involved, maybe one of the armies is controlled by the characters. Your players are typically roleplayers, not wargamers, so you want a lightweight system to resolve the battle. Importantly the resolution of the battle should be with rules compatible with the rules for your normal combats. Delta's Book of War is a good example for D&D.

15. Quick Resolution

For example, resolve a combat with only a few rolls, or a battle. Most widely useful for determining events that affect the players but the players aren't directly involved, such as a combat between two other parties without having to play out the whole scene. I should work on a system for this as the other day my players observed a battle between a Giant Spider and a bunch of Lizardmen which I didn't play out but just ruled that the spider won, but it was afterwards argued the Lizardmen would clearly have won if the battle had been played out, and I think they were right.

16. Character Creation
Traditionally character creation had random attributes, some systems added a larger random element (e.g. the entire character creation mini game for Traveller), and some drifted towards removing it entirely. The advantage of a random system is it avoids "cookie-cutter" characters. The possible disadvantages are that it *can* massively restrict your choices, and it *can* make very uneven parties of characters where one clearly outshines the others or falls behind the others. I tried to steer a path between the two extremes - a little randomness to add variety.

So in summary...
There are a *lot* more situations where you might want to roll dice than I thought initially; I wonder whether proponents of diceless systems eschew dice in *all* these situations. I had thought of restricting my attention to resolving tests of character skill, but I realised with listening at doors that I'd been lumping it in with character skill and I wanted to avoid any other miscategorising.

The outcome of this for me for Explore is:

- I've split skills into different categories depending upon how swingy I want the results to be. For example language skills have no roll associated with them, they just state how well you can speak that language.

- You don't roll for listening at doors, you roll to see what the monster's doing.

- Perception rolls have been relegated to a lesser role.

- Surprise is mostly determined by situation, not be a dice roll.

In particular, I'm surprised to conclude that for me systems *shouldn't* have a universal resolution mechanic, and that "let it roll" or "only roll when it's important" don't address the core issues.

If you're looking for random inspiration, how about The Dungeon Dozen, The Dungeon Alphabet, or the geomorphs at Dyson's Dodecahedron.

In future I'll give a resolution mechanic for skills like climbing, and a skill points system where attributes make it easier to learn rather than giving a bonus on rolls (e.g. for languages).

A Special Forces Zebra parachuting in behind the lines.

To roll, or not to roll, that is the question: Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

An analysis of why I might be wanting to roll some dice...

6. Character is seeing how their body performs, without any external interference whatsoever.

Yes, #120 is me!

The canonical example is running – as a runner I know that all races are really against yourself, it is how you perform on the day. I also know that the variation between my time on a good day and on a bad day is very small in comparison to the overall time. A 5% slowdown is awful, and 10% would be an abysmal performance. There might be more variation in the distances and heights you can jump, but it is a similar situation, as is the amount of weight you can lift. These are all skills where your ability should be “you can run *this* fast, you can jump *this* far and *this* high, and lift *this* much”. For these skills as the Referee you should choose realistic values for obstacles in the game world, whilst incorporating an element of chance. For example you might note that to roll the boulder takes 100+d% lbs force (depending upon how smooth it is). When a character decides to push it, you roll and find it’s 183lbs, you can then see if the character can move it or not. By rolling for it when the situation arises, and not beforehand, you've introduced tension and uncertainty. Until the player decides to roll it, you don’t know any more than the players whether it’s possible. The cat remains both alive and dead until the box is opened.

7. Perception

Rolling dice should play a minor role for perception. Players should be able to find out most information by role-playing the interaction with their environment. You tell people the important things they notice, with enough information that they know what to ask about. For example, you might give them a brief description of the contents of a room, which contains several pieces of furniture including a bedside table; that's probably enough unless there's something that would stand out, like an Orc stood on the table! It is then up to them to ask about the table, in reply you say it’s got a vase on it, they ask about the vase and you say it's got runes on it. Don't bother overloading the players with too much info, let them discover it for themselves. This enables the investigation to be player lead, and less of a one-way Referee info dump on the players.

If they are about to leave the room you might mention there was a vase on the table (as in, you nearly missed that), but you wouldn't say that there was a liquid in the vase unless someone said they looked. As a shortcut they might simply say they search the room, which obviously would include looking at the vase and I'd ask who's examining the vase and tell them what they see.

If they have made efforts to search, and at the end there is something they missed, I’ll give them a perception roll to notice something. For example, a crack in the plaster, or a slight breeze from the west wall, or that they haven’t looked behind the tapestry. That is, I'll give them a clue to the presence of the secret door, not just tell them there is one. Since this is a pure-luck second chance for them to get information which they could have elicited themselves, I’ll make this perception check a saving throw against intuition.

This is where my pre-rolled cards for saving throws comes in handy  - draw a card for every room and they never know which times it was important, whether it was perception or a spell save or a save versus poison, all without adding any overhead to the game for those dummy checks.

In a dungeon crawl we assume that a party moving around the dungeon would be constantly vigilant; they would glance round corners before proceeding carefully. However, they are unlikely to be actively searching for secret doors, hence the perception roll also applies here - you would give them a saving throw to spot signs as they pass. Spotting a sign just when walking past should be harder, so I'd give +3 on any roll that's as a result of an actual search.

8. Surprise

More skeletons. I don't think Sam liked them as he pulled them apart when they died...

Surprise - we’re back to combat again!

Traditionally every encounter started with a roll for surprise, but this is a bit random (pun intended). You should only get a surprise round if you make an ambush. To make an ambush you must launch an attack before your opponents know you are there. For example, if you enter a room unannounced you should be able to surprise the inhabitants, but if they know you're there then instead they should get the advantage and win initiative. So the question becomes, how might you spot an ambush before it occurs, which sometimes might be a perception roll (to spot someone hiding behind that pillar).  It's often a bit arbitrary, so for the “bursting into a room unannounced” scenario I add some uncertainty by the players rolling a d6 to see how well they do, and if anyone can beat that roll then they simply lose initiative rather than getting no attack.

9. Character performs some skill they have learnt how to do, and can perform to a consistent standard.

I never said a high standard.

For example, language skills. People are usually “basic” (know a few words, basic concepts but lots of misunderstandings and lots of blank looks), “intermediate” (with effort can generally make oneself understood, can understand someone who is cooperative, lots of halting and repeating), “conversational” (can have conversations with people) or “fluent” (conversations are flowing, but accent and odd usage clear), or finally “native” (indistinguishable from native speaker). It makes little sense in an RPG world for someone to have expertise in excess of that. I’ll take this as a model for a wide swathe of skills: languages, music, acting. In these you generally do not roll dice – your skill level determines what you can do – and I won’t bother with rules for dice rolls until an issue demanding one comes up in play. Hence attributes (aptitude) should contribute mostly not to improve your chances of performing a task, but instead to make learning quicker. I’ll cover the solution for Explore in a separate post.

10. Games of chance

If there are dice being rolled or cards being drawn in the game, then play it out for real. If it’s supposed to be character not player skill, or an evening of gambling is incidental then the resolution method depends upon the skill versus luck nature of the game in question.

Conclusion in Part 3...

To roll, or not to roll, that is the question

Spurred on by a recent thread on the subject I've been trying to decide how dice should be used in a couple of situations and to resolve this I decided to take a step back and consider all the situations where dice might be used, what I'm trying to achieve, and thus to decide what sort of dice rolls are appropriate. Putting this down has helped clarify things in my mind, and in the process my thoughts on this have evolved – any observations or disagreements are welcome.

1. Dynamic physical contests between opposing parties (hitting things!)

The skeleton archers were hiding behind the pillars...

This is the primary situation where dice are used. It provides tension & uncertainty but at the same time impartiality. What are the characteristics we require for the dice? Now combatants should never become completely flawless; it may become more and more tricky for someone to hit you with a sword, but it should never become impossible. Similarly, hitting progressively smaller and smaller targets with an arrow eventually becomes a purely random affair, but the chance of hitting the target never goes to zero. Hence although one party in a combat may be hopelessly outclassed, they should always have a chance of hitting (however small). In Explore I chose the open2d10 system, a wide open-ended bell curve with an exponential drop-off, so you can always succeed, but the chance falls away exponentially.

2. A disaster has befallen the character - do they survive by pure luck?

Here I'm lumping in the consequences of being hit with saving throws, I think both are similar situations. There may be mitigating factors, such as a strong constitution helps you survive a poisoning. The system used in Explore when you've hit someone is the same as that used to see if you hit, which is a wide open ended bell curve (to ensure that no-one is invulnerable). It seems reasonable to apply this same mechanism to *all* saving throws.

In the case of an attack, the attacker makes the roll, but for a save versus poison it is the subject of the poison who makes the roll. If rolling high is always good, then with a minimum roll of 2 we have to decide if 2 is always failure or not. For poisons is seems more plausible that you could be immune to an attack (this giant is immune to that poison), so I’ll not have 2 as an auto-failure. The bonus for a saving throw is a stat (e.g. CON) plus level. It seems fair to make saves versus spells to be the same system, i.e. the defender makes the roll.

3. Who strikes first? (Initiative)

I use initiative purely to mix things up a bit, and speed is of the essence in resolving combats, hence when resolving combat I split it into separate groups, resolve them one at a time, and use the quick and simple d6 for each combatant with no bonuses. See http://explorebeneathandbeyond.blogspot.com/2015/04/roll-for-initiative.html.

4. Determining the behaviour of NPCs and monsters

Moving away from combat, the next situation where dice are appropriate is to make the game feel like a living breathing world. Here are several common situations, which are variations on a theme, all requiring ad-hoc solutions.

A. Wandering Monsters.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

A dungeon or any other adventuring locale should feel like it has an existence separate from the characters. The inhabitants have lives of their own, and often move about. These movements are often time-critical and should be independent of the actions of the characters – the guard shouldn’t step out of the room the moment the players walk past the door purely because that’s what’s written down (though he may well do so in response to noise the characters are making). Since the behaviour in question is unpredictable, dice are a simple solution for determining this behaviour.

B. Listening at doors.
We’re not rolling to see if the character hears something, we’re rolling to see if there’s a noise to hear. If there’s a Giant’s banquet on the other side of the door, I think they’ll hear it just walking past! If it’s a guardroom, the guards may all be sat around looking bored, or in the middle of an argument. It’s more interesting for the Referee if he doesn’t know in advance how a situation will play out, it’s better if he knows they *may* be playing a game or they may not be. That’s what the roll’s for. If more than one player listens at the door, this doesn’t alter the outcome. What might matter is how attentive the character is at listening, and how much they can discern the difference between the noise behind *this* door compared to the row coming from the door opposite. In this case it would probably be sufficient to infer from the roll what perception check would be needed.

C. NPC and Monster Decisions (e.g. morale).Does the monster turn and flee? In many cases this should be obvious from the situation, but often it’s an arbitrary decision. The ref feels that it might flee- so he says “you’ve just killed their leader, on a roll of 1-3 they run away” and rolls the dice. Similarly, lots of times it might be clear which of their attackers a Monster or NPC targets “they attack you, because you wounded them” or “they attack the Elf as they hate Elves”, but if it’s an arbitrary decision, just roll. Dice here help the Referee make impartial decisions, especially when the Referee knows things the monster doesn’t.

D. NPC Knowledge.When they speak to the inn keeper, does he know anything useful? Anything specific about X? Anything rumoured to be going down? Some referees know beforehand what each person knows, some use a random result from a list of rumours.

5. Character attempting a complex multi-step task to solve a static multi-faceted problem.

After I took this photo, my Dad asked me if I thought I could climb it!

Examples of this are the character attempts to track something, climb something, or to pick a lock. You cannot role play through the resolution of this – sometimes the character will succeed, sometimes fail, depending upon the specific details of the task and the character’s strengths and weaknesses. If the task is simple compared to the character’s ability you would expect them to always succeed. Conversely, if the task is far beyond the character’s ability you would expect it to be impossible for them to succeed.

These two factors give some meaning, some sense of progress, to a character’s abilities; just like the warrior can now slay an Ogre, and the wizard can now cast that cool spell, there should be a feeling that you can now track the wolf when you previously couldn't. You want it not to be too narrow a gap between auto-success tasks and auto-fail tasks – if it is always “no roll” then everything is in effect predetermined by the referee. On the other hand, the random element should not be so large that novices regularly outperform experts. The random element here needs to be a reasonably narrow bell curve, and not open ended, so not the same resolution method used in combat. I’ll talk about the solution for Explore in an upcoming post.

Continued in Part 2.

A Puzzle and a Code

Last weekend the players found a dead messenger. On his body they found some mysterious symbols on a strange device: two wooden disks attached together so that the middle one turns...

I devised this as a simple puzzle for my youngest, but in practice the off-centre centre of rotation and the extra marks meant it took a few minutes to get it oriented correctly...

THE LETTER IS IN A BOX UNDERNEATH

The box took a bit of searching to find...

It's great sometimes when the players find something, to simply hand it to them and see what they do. One of them's bound to pick it up before they realise they should cast Detect Curse on it! Shaking the box revealed it contained something, but what?

A letter sealed (rather badly I'm afraid) with a Z (as per the Z in the middle of the puzzle wheel, which they had already noted). Quickly opening the letter they found...

Obviously mirrored writing, but my daughter impressed me by simply holding it up to the light to read. I don't think that trick is going to work for an LCD screen, so here it is again:

Evidently Zanquibar was the wizard they had located earlier, holding a pair of doors shut, both the doors and the wizard turned to iron. Below was the puzzle with the key to setting him free:

I promise you the solution is simple, though it kept the players happy for an hour. I gave them a hint at one point not because they needed it but as a little encouragement.

If you try and solve it you will see how it keeps your interest whilst you search in vain for the answer, it isn't a case of staring at it for an hour - you keep on finding things which might be the answer... but aren't... but which help you to the solution without you realising it.

(Note: it helps if you print this out to solve it)

Monsters have levels too

In D&D there are rules for how many men should there be of each level in a large group of men. Delta’s has observed that the

number and levels for leaders of groups of men in the OD&D campaign (in several different places) is surprisingly close to a simple divide-by-2 at each level

This seems like quite good system for any game, so how about an easy method to work out for a group of men, how many there are at each level?

One week later in Tenkar's Tavern, Eric mentioned "creatures with levels" and Nate McD commented

I have always liked the idea of ditching fixed HD for monsters, and adjusting their HD as appropriate... if there are 10 HD humans, why can't there be 10 HD orcs, goblins, or kobolds?

It's an idea I've considered before, and it's simple enough to give creatures levels - in D&D you add one HD per level, and in Explore you just give +1 attack, +1 parry, +1 Incap. But I don't want to have a group of fifth level orcs, I want a group of orcs with a fifth level leader, and what level you has always seemed a bit arbitrary.

So how about combing the two?

Calculating Levels for a Group of Monsters or Men

Whenever you meet a group of men or monsters, calculate the number at each level as follows: half the total (rounded up) are level one. Take the remainder, half of these (rounded up) are level two, etc.

An Example
A group of 35 bandits:

35 = 18 + 17 = 18 + 9 + 8 = 18 + 9 + 4 + 4 = 18 + 9 + 4 + 2 + 2 = 18 + 9 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 1.

You'd actually calculate this by repeatedly striking out the remainder and replacing it with a sum, and as soon as you get to a power of 2 you know the rest of the sequence thus:

35 = 18 + 17

Then you cross out the 17 to get:

35 = 18 + 17 9 + 8

Then you cross out the 8 and write in the remainder to get:

35 = 18 + 17 9 + 8 4 + 2 + 1 + 1

So 35 orcs, 18 first, 9 second, 4 third, 2 fourth, 1 fifth, 1 sixth.

Second Example

A group of 97 orcs:

97 =  49 + 48 24 + 24 12 + 12 6 + 6 3 + 3 2 + 1

So 49 first, 24 second, 12 third, 6 fourth, 3 fifth, 2 sixth, 1 seventh.

Observations

You always ends up with only one individual of the highest level, a single leader.

A leader of level n always has a group smaller than 2ⁿ. (rather than this being the average number). For example, you have a fifth level leader for groups sized 16-31.

The total strength of the party ends up being about 50% stronger than if they were all first level, so you might need to reduce the number in the group by one third.

I tried a random system, but it was time consuming and you get a wide variation in the highest level (roll d6 for all people. 1-3 means first level, discard these dice. Roll again to see who is second level. Repeat).

I didn't feel a need to persevere looking for a better random system - you can just jiggle them around a bit to make them more varied.

This seems appropriate for humanoids, but what about other creatures? What about a pack of Wolves? Giant Rats? Giant Hornets? I'm going to try it out!

Matching Points in Spacetime

What's in a name?The “Beneath” in the name of this blog (and my game) is meant to indicate not just the literal “beneath the surface” of a dungeon, but also meaning intrigue and puzzle solving. Similarly the “Beyond” means literally to travel beyond locked doors or chasms, or to other planes, but also meaning beyond the stars, or beyond human powers, or that there is no limit in RPGs. The name is purposely chosen to work for Fantasy, Space Opera, Mystery, Horror, or Super Heroes.

ExploreSciFi 

It’s looking more and more likely that my homebrew Explore will support SciFi as a first class citizen alongside Fantasy. This isn't surprising, since after all the skill system originates in house rules for our Star Frontiers campaign. Hence yesterday's in-game description of how interstellar travel might work in ExploreSciFi (quite influenced by Star Frontiers – but not Knight Hawks) along with a scientific explanation of how this doesn't violate the laws of Relativity. (Truly - it doesn't). Then on the way into work this morning the mathematician in me pondered about the canonical nature of the CMB, why is it the 'unique distinguished exemplar'?

A Recap

To recap, yesterday I was saying that every observer has a concept of what is happening “now” across the universe, and this is applicable to all physical phenomena. This is different for another observer with a different relative velocity; for example the two observers will disagree about whether two events, one occurring next to each observer, are simultaneous or not. The difference is greater the larger the separation between the observers, and the larger the difference between their velocities. This is how come accelerating to faster than the speed of light causes time travel paradoxes.

Secondly I discussed the concept of the “age of the universe”, which measured from any planet in the universe will give almost identical answers, since with only a small velocity change you can match the CMB. A universal time can thus be given to any event in space & time, it is the time since the universe began at the point where the event occurred, measured relative to the CMB. If you jump instantaneously from one point in space to another, appearing at the same universal time as you left, then you can never travel backwards in time, so no paradox.

Why the CMB? 

So, to return to today's question - what is uniquely special about the CMB? Why can I only jump from here to there at the same point in universal time? Why not some other reference frame?

Let's rephrase that: why can I only jump from here to there at the point where the age of the universe is the same?

With this rephrasing it's clear – when space is bent to join A to B, the point in time you must arrive is the moment when the expansion of the universe at B is the same as it was at A when you left. That is, you can only bend space to join “matching points” in space-time.

That not only seems eminently sensible, it looks like it is the only possible answer, and I've no idea why that didn't occur to me before!

Footnote: let’s not forget that relativity is based upon the concept that there is no universal reference frame, and we still have that rule for all physical phenomena except instantaneous interstellar travel. You still cannot accelerate to faster than the speed of light as that would cause time travel paradoxes.

The Law of Instantaneous Interstellar Travel

The Mayflower and Kapetyn-b

In the mid 23^rd century, mankind discovered a new fundamental law of physics: The Law of Instantaneous Interstellar Travel. This led to a flurry of activity, leading to the development of Interstellar Spaceship Travel a mere 27 years later. Every school child knows the story of the first instantaneous interstellar mission, the rescue mission to Kapteyn-b.

150 years to the day after the robot colony had been founded on Kapteyn-b, the first instantaneous interstellar mission carrying the second group of human colonists arrived and re-occupied the ruined settlement. In one of the most celebrated stories of human endeavour, they successfully reactivated the robotic shuttle and Captain Iain M. Banks piloted it into orbit and docked with the inactive Mayflower, overrode the glitching flight computer which had kept it stuck in orbit for 98 years, and successfully performed a manual landing. The original colonists had been asleep for 127 years, nearly 100 years longer than originally planned. "One cool move by me, one giant leap for sentient beings" the Caption famously tweeted.

The Law of Instantaneous Interstellar Travel

An object can instantaneously jump between one point in space and any other point in space, so long as its velocity relative to the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) is within 1/adm km/s, where m is the mass of the object, d is the distance between the two points, and a is the Asimov constant. The power required to initiate the jump is given by cd²m GW, where c is the Clarke constant.

Practial Issues for the Interstellar Traveller

Unfortunately, as all modern space tourists know, “Instantaneous Intersteller Travel” is not quite so instantaneous in practice!Firstly you have to accelerate to be almost stationary relative to the CMB, which on Earth is approx. 360 km/s; this means you have to accelerate at 1G in the direction of Leo for approximately 10 hours.Further, since the power required is proportional to the distance squared, interstellar travel is performed as a series of short jumps, with one hour's recalibration between each jump, hence it takes around 1 day to travel each light year.Finally, you have to decelerate at the further end.Hence the total journey time is roughly 1 day + 1 day / light year.Fortunately the direction of approach and departure from any given planet are in opposite directions and are the same for all destinations, hence collisions between accelerating/decelerating spaceships is not a risk.

Isn't FTL Travel Impossible?

Everyone knows that Relativity says that FTL (faster than light) travel would lead to travelling backwards in time, which is impossible, hence faster than light travel isn't possible.

That is true.

However, instantaneous travel might be possible...

Let us consider the paradox:

The FTL Paradox

Imagine that you take off from the earth in a spaceship and fly away from earth at high velocity. Relativity says that your perception of time passing on the earth is altered. Time now appears to run slower on the earth. After two hours of flight, only one hour appears to have passed on earth. Thus if you could travel instantaneously back to the earth, you would arrive one hour after you left. But similarly back on the earth, time on your spaceship appears to be running slower, and only half an hour appears to have passed on the spaceship, so if you now instantaneously travel back to the spaceship, you would arrive only half an hour after it had left the earth. That is, you would have arrived before you left.

The Age of The Universe

This paradox reveals that the concept of “now” is not a constant across the universe – it depends upon your reference frame. If you can travel instantaneously in one reference frame, and then again in a different frame, you could then travel backwards through time.

Thus we have seen that the age of the earth, in fact the age of the Universe, depends upon the observer. It should depend upon which galaxy you’re observing the universe from. So how can scientists talk of measuring the age of the Universe?

Cosmic Microwave Background 

The universe is expanding, hence all of the galaxies in the universe are accelerating away from all of the other galaxies due to the expansion of the universe. What is very surprising is that almost all of the relative velocity of all of the other galaxies in the universe compared to us is due to the expansion of the universe.

The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background radiation), the “thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang”, provides a universal frame of reference throughout the universe: it is expanding, but relative to it every galaxy in the universe is almost stationary. If we measure the CMB we find that we are moving relative to it at approx. 360 km/s, or only 0.1% of the speed of light. Hence the age of the universe is the same, no matter which galaxy or star system you measure it from.

To quote NASA:

The largest reference frame we know about is that of the cosmic background radiation itself...the fireball light left over from the Big Bang. It samples a scale of the universe over 15 billion light years in radius. If you have no 'peculiar' speed relative to this frame, your galaxy is exactly partaking of the expansion of the universe with no additional local speed added to it. The NASA Cosmic Background Explorer confirmed many previous measurements of the motion of our earth's speed and found that it has a peculiar speed of 360 +/- 20 kilometers/sec in the direction of the constellations Leo and Crater.

CMB as a Univeral Frame of Reference

Now imagine that this cosmic microwave background radiation is the single canonical universal frame of reference for the universe, and that “now” throughout the universe means “now” as perceived by an observer in this particular frame of reference.

In this system, instantaneous interstellar travel between the spaceship and the earth takes you from “now” on the Spaceship to “now” on the earth, and vice-versa, where “now” is measured by the CMB. Since this earth is moving slowly enough against the CMB to ignore relativistic effects, the traveller was two hours on the spaceship before they jump, which to observers on the earth didn't occur until 4 hours after the ship left, so they find themselves back on earth four hours after they left. They jump back to the spaceship and find themselves back at the same moment they left.

There is no paradox*.

Bending The Laws Of Relativity

But haven't we just broken the Laws of Relativity?

The general principle of relativity states

All systems of reference are equivalent with respect to the formulation of the fundamental laws of physics.

The principle has to be bent to say:

All systems of reference are equivalent with respect to the formulation of the fundamental laws of physics except for the Law of Instantaneous Interstellar Travel.

The principle can be bend this much and not break.

In one of the largest ironies in human history, this precise scenario was first discussed in the 21st century by Science Fiction aficionados, but was mistaken for the ravings of nay-saying flat earthers, and dismissed out of hand.

*Note that this only works for instantaneous travel – FTL travel still leads to a paradox!

Lego, Grids, and Smugglers

I've never had the desire to paint miniatures, and unpainted ones seemed very unattractive, so I never really used them until the mid 90s when I bought some old painted miniatures from a friend. When we started playing in late 2009 I dug them out as a way of it being clear to the children what was going on, which worked well - especially as I had a lot of Orc miniatures which doubled for every villainous humanoid tribe in the Caves of Chaos.

I soon ran out of appropriate miniatures, and even when I had one I'd waste a minute finding it, so we switched to using miniatures for PCs, tokens for monsters. This was originally out of necessity (an Orc miniature is NOT an appropriate substitute for a T-Rex!) but was soon embraced whole heartedly. The party was attacked the other night by a horde of giant Hornets, and I felt no shame or regret at not having 20+ giant hornet miniatures!

I went through the obligatory phase of trying out grid based combat and discovered like countless hordes before me how it transformed the game overnight from "What does your character do now?" to "Your turn to move your character." I knew what problem it was trying to solve, as I had experienced the problem, but that was not the solution! The realisation that the grid could be used purely for drawing on a freehand map, and miniatures used purely for communicating who was where, was a revelation that made me feel quite sheepish.

Our homegrown battlemat has gone through various incarnations, all involving transpaseal - those rolls of plastic you get from WHSmiths (or your local equivalent) on squared backing paper. I went through several of these, with varying size grids, until I realised you can see the squares through the plastic already. I now have two large sections attached together which cover the whole table, and a black dot every three squares to mark 10'.

When we played Star Frontiers we had no SciFi miniatures, so we used counters until someone co-opted the Lego.

The party prepares to exit their Explorer

The next campaign was Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP, and we have loads of them in Lego so that was a no-brainer.

So anyway, here's some shots of Mazak, Elanor, Osran, Khazem and Flairin recently storming the Smugglers' Ship. For this session we knew the plan, and we have loads of Pirates*, so we had to use them:

The party approach the ship in a boat, having created a distraction on the other side. The smuggler in the lookout hasn't noticed anything.

The battle is underway, one smuggler down already. Mazak is still in the boat, Khazem has summoned a monster, Osran is standing on the hatch to stop it from opening, Cap'n Hardask has come out of his cabin, and his Monkey is sat on top of the cabin. The d6 show the wounded people - ignore the other dice, they were an idea for tracking bonuses I dropped from the system! You can see why soon after this I went for colour coded dice for tracking wounds (red for PCs, green for monsters). The lookout is climbing down.

Cap'n Hardask is down, and one of the smugglers (the lookout!) is trying to make good his escape in the boat. All the PCs are wounded except Flairin, and Elanor is incapacitated and wounded 10.

The smugglers are all rounded up, Osran is healing Elanor, Khazem is looting the dead, and Flairin is making friends with the Monkey! The lookout is now one of the prisoners, so you can see he has surrendered and climbed back on board :-)

*I should actually clarify that they were Smugglers not Pirates as this was an important plot point when they got convicted of Piracy and the players ended up having to clear their names!

Character Sheet Origami

Are character sheets taking up too much space at your table?

Do they get in the way?

Don't let your game be ruled by A4!

Reclaim space for Miniatures! Drinks! Snacks! Props!

Leverage the power of Origami today!!!

A couple of years ago halfway through a gaming session I had a flash of inspiration - I could do character sheets on a sheet of A4 folded in half. For those of you not familiar with the ancient art of Origami, here is an illustrative example of folding a sheet of paper in half to make a 4 page A5 booklet:

I know this is groundbreaking stuff and may be taking you outside your comfort zone, but I hope you're managing to follow this.

With this system, you can put say put stats and skills on the front, combat information on the back, equipment and notes inside.

Unfortunately as is often the way with great leaps forward in the progress of mankind, I discover I am not the first to make this discovery. Or the second. Not even the tenth.

Here is a fifth edition D&D character sheet. Then there is the eight page Pathfinder / 3.5 character sheet (I think there's a clue that your game's too complicated!). Some people have done A5 old school D&D character sheets, but Delving Deeper has gone one step further with sideways A5 character sheets. That's bold!

In story game world they have gone one step further to the ultimate - tri fold character sheets. "this is almost as important as "character sheet" was when someone thought of it" (possibly they're overselling it).

But my favourite for sheer off-the-wall wacky ideas has to be the character sheet as an envelope for storing things in!

Mapping During Play

A perennial problem is how to map for players. I've tried out various methods over the years: describing the dungeon whilst a player tries to draw the convoluted description and everyone else sits round looking bored...

"The door opens into a room which is 40' by 60'. You enter halfway along the west wall. There is an door in the north wall, about 10' from the eastern end, and a corridor in the middle of the south wall. Oh, and there's 5 orcs in there."

I've tried cutting out map sections which get handed out and stuck together...

"You enter a room which looks like this... hang on... it's here somewhere...oops no, not that one - that's room 7. Ah, it's fallen out."

I've tried filling notepads with map sections which I then hand to players to copy out...

"Right, that's rooms 1-15 drawn. I never knew that two hours could go so quickly. Now all I need to do is draw all the corridor sections. I don't have time to do the eastern half, so they'd better not find the eastern entrance." 

I've tried the "character's wouldn't have the skills or time or instruments to map" method - that was a quick way to suck the fun out of a session!

How about drawing the map on a computer and revealing it to the players one room at a time - technology can solve every problem... until the players go off piste and you have to improvise an encounter.

So in the end I decided I wanted:

• the physical process of mapping should not detract from the game
• should not have to spend hours of my life prepping sessions
• be able to improvise new maps on the fly
• have the same system for dungeons, towns, and wilderness
• have the same system for purchased modules and home-grown adventures
• have the same system for floor plans, side-elevation maps, and isometric maps

And finally, but far from the least important

• If the map is cool then the player's map should be cool

One day I bought some thin paper you could overlay over a map and trace through it. As we adventured I would pick up their map, put it over mine, draw on whatever extra was needed whilst describing what they saw and put it back down. One minor but important detail is that I keep the paper the same way up as my map, that is for them the map is the other way up, else I find it really confusing!

I have never looked back!

Here are some examples from our Star Frontiers campaign.

First a spacestation map, and the player's traced map:

DM's Map

Partial Tracing for Players

Here is an isometric map of a compound:

Welcome

Welcome to the start of my new blog.

I intend to use this blog to share rules / ideas / suggestions for pen & paper role playing games. These can be used on their own applied to other games, but taken together they form the game which I currently DM. I've tentatively called it "Explore" or "Explore: Beneath and Beyond", but we generally talk of playing "Castle Blood" as that Castle (or the dungeons beneath it) have been the main focus of the adventures!