Encountering Difficulties?

I've read many discussions on how lots of low level opponents compare to a single high level opponent. For example recently at Roles, Rules & Rolls, in Overkill and Monster Experience Roger discusses eight 1HD monsters compared to a single 8HD monster and says they are much easier to kill - he calls it overkill.

"a group in control of tactics is going to have a much easier time dealing with 8 x 1 HD orcs than 1 x 8 HD giant, for any number of game mechanical reasons."

In contrast at Hack & Slash, Courtney Campbell complains that in D&D5e

"An encounter with 12 CR 1/2 Kobolds is more threatening than an adult dragon."

So how does the number of monsters and PCs affect the difficulty of the encounter?

Let us imagine 1 monster versus one PC and that it takes the PC three rounds on average to kill the monster. Then, on average, the monster gets in about 2.5 attacks before it is killed.

What about 3 monsters versus one PC? It takes nine rounds to kill all the monsters on average, but initially there are 3 attacking you until you kill one, then 2, then 1. So on average each round you would imagine you get hit 3, 3, 2.5, 2, 2, 1.5, 1, 1, 0.5 times, or 16.5 in total; about 6.6 times as many times as one monster would (roughly a triangular number progression).

When I ran a combat simulation it actually came out slightly higher than this – the strength was increased by the square of the numbers. I previously measured strength of opponents via a combat simulation to be how many of them you could kill on average (facing one after another) before they kill you. When you repeat this with multiple opponents at a time, the number you can kill is roughly divided by the number of opponents.

So the effect of changing numbers in a combat is to alter the difficulty of the combat by the square of this ratio: halving the number of PCs makes it twice as hard, treble the number of monsters and you make it nine times as hard, double the number on both sides and the difficulty remains the same.

We have previously seen that an 8HD monster is about 25 times as powerful as a one HD monster, this is the same as meeting twenty five 1HD monsters one after another. But this rule shows that the group of eight 1HD monsters as a single group is 36 times as powerful as a single 1HD opponent. Hence eight 1HD monsters in a single group is a more serious challenge than the single 8HD monster - the opposite of what you might expect!

Similarly the 12 kobolds in reality may be poorly armed and armoured, and you may be able to use an area attack such as fireball, and there are odd rules about multiple attacks specifically against 1HD opponents, but they certainly have the potential to be lethal against a lone high level fighter.

This corroborates with my experience - single high level foes are surprisingly easy to kill when they are outnumbered, there is a lot of truth in the adage “safety in numbers”. To make a challenge from a high level monster you need to give them something more than just better chance to hit and more hit points.

So how can we design our game / scenario / monster to mitigate against these issues - stopping single high level monsters from being a push over, and keeping hordes of low level monsters a challenge, and giving appropriate XP for both types?

Monster Tactics
As Roger points out, tactics can change the difficulty of a combat markedly. We don't want our mass of low HD monsters to be a push over, a meaningless slog fest, or easy XP. Monsters are not mindless zombies (unless, of course, they are mindless zombies!) - if it is obvious that they are individually outclassed but have greater numbers they should not allow themselves to be bottlenecked. If on the attack, they should look to ambush or sneak around behind and surround the PCs. If on the defensive they should retreat until they have bottlenecked the PCs.
Similarly, single monsters should bottleneck opponents, it's especially good for them to block the exit! If in danger of being surrounded, they should retreat so their back is to the wall.

Appropriate XP
In White Box D&D XP was linear with HD (100XP per HD) leading to the "too much XP for low level monsters" problem discussed above. In Greyhawk this was replaced with the familiar roughly exponential system, but this means that in Greyhawk you get 65 times as much XP for the 8HD monster, which is over generous (or, rather, the XP for 1HD is stingy). Killing a single high level monster gives you  inordinate amounts of XP, so should probably be reduced down to only 25 times as much (in line with how hard they are). Here is a suggested revised XP table:

Level	White Box XP	Greyhawk XP	Revised XP
1	100	10	25
2	200	20	50
3	300	35	100
4	400	75	175
5	500	175	250
6	600	275	350
7	700	450	450
8	800	650	600
9	900	750	750
10	1000	900	900

This is a balancing act. In Explore I've reduced the amount of fighting required to progress significantly, hence there is a real danger of massive improvement from a single encounter, so I reduce the XP even further (to only 12 times as much XP).

Extra lethality
Instead of making the monster harder to kill or harder to hit, make the attacks more lethal.
In D&D you find that Giants (for example) get extra dice damage, which makes them tougher, but most of all that makes them capable of killing you, and a single blow becomes potentially fatal. For example, if a party of PCs meets a large number of Orcs or a single Giant, the Orcs may do more damage in a combat, but they're liable to spread that around as a few injuries which are easily healed, whereas the giant may take out one of the party with a single hit.
Poison or paralysation or other nasty attacks (level drain anyone?) also make the lone monster “feel” tougher as the consequences of being hit.

Individual Initiative
My experience with side based initiative is that if you win initiative against a single foe you can often wipe it out without it making a single attack, which is a massive anti-climax. So I’d recommend individual initiative in such situations, even if you don’t use my initiative system the rest of the time.

Henchmen
Give the monster henchmen who soak up the PCs: E.g. this Giant has a bunch of annoying Orc lackeys who engage the PCs in combat and stop them all attacking the Giant at once.

Engaged In Combat
Note that henchmen work best if you insist on people being engaged in combat with an opponent – if someone attacks you, you have to engage them in combat else they get a rear attack bonus, and you can only attack someone you’re engaged in combat with. In general this also helps stop people all ganging up against a single opponent.

Area Attacks for Monsters
Dragons get their toughness from their area attack. A bunch of kobolds attacking a Dragon would be wiped out. Area attacks stop people emasculating your nasty monster purely by virtue of numbers. I'd either restrict such monsters to always be on their own, or to disallow multiple area attacks of the same type against an opponent in a round  - e.g. if two dragons breathe on you in the same round then you only save against one.

No Area Attacks for PCs
On the other hand, Area Attacks for PCs are very problematic - they turn low level monsters into easy XP, and they can wipe out all the henchmen - which is one reason why I've removed mass spell attacks from Explore. Fireball comes from Chainmail where it makes sense, but it's massively overpowered in D&D. Gygax nerfed it in OD&D firstly so that you have feet indoors versus yards outdoor (which is random), and secondly so that it blows back and kills the PCs, which is not the sort of game I like to play - in fact I think this sort of nerfing is always a bad idea (magic user armour restrictions and super low hit points, demihumans level limits).
You can't really remove Fireball from D&D though and still call it D&D...

Multiple Attacks

Give the monster multiple attacks against different opponents.
E.g. allow a giant to attack up to three man-sized opponents so long as they’re not behind him (one swing at several opponents) – one attack roll for each of them. A Dragon could do the same with its tail and attack everyone behind it. Using engagement rules again, this advantage only comes into play when the giants are outnumbered.

Squaring the Cube

Doubt Sets In
In Sizing Things Up, I presented a method for working out the weight of a creature when you modify its size. The reason behind wanting such a system is that I like things to be consistent, and to work out a rule once that can then be applied everywhere, instead of having to make lots of little decisions.

Based upon what I read about the inaccuracies of BMI, I made weight go up with the 2.5^th power of the height of a creature. That is, if you make the height 4 times as much, the weight goes up 4^2.5 = 32 times. This seemed to give realistic values, so I didn't worry about it any further.

The other day on Semper Initiativus Unum, Wayne blogged about the weight of Giant Spiders, and he invoked the Square-cube Law. to say that it goes up with the 3rd power. That is, if you make the spider 4 times the leg span, the weight goes up 4³ = 64 times. This would indeed hold if the spider kept the same proportions, but does it? (Everyone seems to think so). Or does it only go up by the 2.5^th power? Do different families of animals have different rules, or is it the same power for all families? This got me thinking hard about the veracity of my rule...

There is a lot on the internet about Allometry studies, and all the ones I saw proved the cube rule - except - they all had something else in common. They all dealt with a specific species of animal, not a family of animals. That is you might find that a particular species of fish obeys the cube law, but there is no data about fish in general. The variations within a species are often purely due to age or environmental factors or sex. What we're interested in is extrapolating from a small animal to a large one in the same family and then applying the same rule to a giant one, so these findings are not necessarily applicable.

Finding Some Data
Spiders seemed like the obvious place to start. Unfortunately, although the leg span of spiders is fairly easy to find, their weights are elusive. People don't bother to weigh small spiders! On wikipedia I could find the Black Widow Spider (1.5'', 1 gram) and the Goliath birdeater (11'', 6oz). It is 170 times heavier. My rule predicts that as it is 8 times bigger, it would be 8^2.5 = 181 times heavier, whereas the cube rule suggests 8³ = 512. Hence the 2.5 power rule seems good in this case, but this limited data hardly constitutes as proof!

Looking further I discovered a paper on the web about flying bird wingspan versus weight, and it gives a graph with a 2.42 power rule:

(It's actually got the axes reversed in the paper). The outlier (top left) is the Black Throated Loon.

This is hopeful, so I thought I should try a few different families of animals.

There's a whole load of data on snakes, which I imported:

So that's a 2.61 power rule based upon length. The outlier (at the top) is the Burmese Python. A lot of other snakes are far thicker than you'd expect, until you see that they are snakes like the Boa Constrictor.

For horses and ponies I went for an ideal weight chart based upon the height of the animal's back, (which looks to be about proportional to the overall height) plus zebras and donkeys from Wikipedia:

That's a 2.55 power rule based upon height.

So what about cats? I found data from wikipedia for Wildcat, Jaguar, Bengal Tiger, Leopard, Asiatic Lion and Feral Cat. Not a great sample size but anyway:

There's a 2.63 power rule. Now for this one I had a choice of minimum and maximum height and weight, so I choose the maximum given for each species, and also I has the data for both the length and height - the length has a 2.33 power rule, whereas I've given the height, in keeping with the horses.

For whales I used wikipedia again for Hector's dolphin, Dwarf Sperm Whale, Pilot Whale, Killer Whale, Beaked Whale, Sperm Whale, Blue Whale:

That's a very nice match for a 2.64 power rule.

For deer I used Wikipedia and the Scottish Forestry commission for Southern Pudu, Northern Pudu, Moose, Elk, Roe Deer, Fallow Deer, and Red Deer (scottish):

Which is a 2.72 power rule.

I also tried collecting data for snails, but had the same problem as spiders for getting reasonable weights. I got three values and a power rule of 2.83, but I spent more time stumbling across disturbing experiments about the force to crush a snail shell, or their weight loss when left to dessicate in hot air... 

Crocodiles looked promising, and I got five values and a power rule of 2.31, but it seems rather tricky to measure the length and weight of a crocodile accurately for some reason. I can't imagine why. The weights and lengths are often estimates from a distance!

Crabs seem to be all different shapes so their weights are all over the place; and I thought I'd have the same problem with fish, so I didn't try with those. If you could find a family of similar shapes you could try the rule, but you're in danger of being selective with your choices just to get the rule to work. Hence you can only really choose families where there's size variation but they all look similar.

I had no luck for scorpions, or for centipedes, both for the same reason as spiders.

The last family I successfully got data for was the Tortoise/Turtle family. The Leatherback Sea Turtle, Alligator Snapping Turtle, Giant Tortoise, Speckled Padloper Tortoise, Marginated Tortoise, and Red Footed Tortoise:

Which is a 2.78 power rule.

So the power rules I've found are 2.42, 2.61, 2.55, 2.63, 2.64, 2.72, 2.78. The average of this is 2.62.

So for the length/height of a family of creatures of similar shape, the 2.5 power rule seems a pretty good approximation - far closer than a cube rule, and close enough for my purposes. So we're on pretty solid ground to use this  rule for the weight of a giant version of any animal. There can be big variety of forms in a family of animals - so for a giant boa constrictor choose a boa constrictor as a starting point. With dinosaurs for example there are three basic shapes of dinosaur - 2 legged, 4 legged, and 4 legged with a long neck - so you'd have three starting archetypes for deriving all the weights.

Squaring This Observation With "The Accepted Wisdom"
So what explanation can there be for why this rule seems to hold so widely instead of the cube rule? I know my data's not great, but the results are certainly very consistent.

That the cube rule holds for deriving the weight of giant animals seems to be accepted wisdom. It's the rule everyone seems to use, and it's even used for disproving the possibility of giant animals. Elephants are used as an example of how big creatures have to become stocky and stumpy to cope with their great weight and they have to have big ears to cope with their low surface area to volume ratio, whilst Giraffes are studiously ignored.

The 2.6 power rule simply says that as you get bigger, you become thinner or elongated. Take a look at photos of a Blue Whale compared to a dolphin, or the body of a cat compared to the body of a lion. It seems clear that, precisely because of the Square-Cube law, your shape has to change to maintain a reasonable surface area. That is, as animals get bigger they don't size up according to the cube rule, precisely because of the Square-Cube law!

So does any of this matter? Perhaps not, but it was fun looking up all these different animals, and now I know that some centipedes look really mean. I'm going to have to show the players a photo next time they meet a giant centipede!

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!