Rogue Games Tabbloid -- June 7, 2009 Edition

7 June, 2009

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Grognard’s Grimoire: S&W; Ranger

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JUN 07, 2009 05:01A.M. Here’s my first stab at a ranger class for use in my Dwimmermount campaign. It’s based both on the original class by Joe Fischer from The Strategic Review, as well as the ideas I outlined in my recent post about

BHB

the ranger. As you will notice, I eliminated the ranger’s spellcasting ability, which I felt was both out of place and too paltry to contribute much flavor to the class anyway. The result is something that’s a bit more like a “wilderness paladin” and whose abilities are very solidly grounded in the outdoors. I don’t think the class would hold much appeal in a dungeon-centric campaign, but I do think it’d be very useful in one with lots of wilderness adventuring.

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The material in the quote box below is hereby designated Open Game Content via the Open Game License. 0 The Ranger The ranger is a uniquely human vocation, one that attracts hardy individuals who venture into the wilderness in order to learn its ways so as to better defend civilization against its depredations. Rangers are thus paragons of Law who exist outside the human society they have sworn themselves to guard. Rangers belong to a loose fellowship of like-minded individuals, although they generally operate alone or in the company of woodland beings who share their desire to rid the wild places of the earth of evil. Although puissant fighters in their own right, rangers are most effective outdoors and many of their abilities do not function within urban or dungeon environments.

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+0

16

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Prime Attribute: Strength 13+ (5% experience) Hit Dice: 1d6+2/level (Gains 3 hp/level after 9th).

2,500

Armor/Shield Permitted: Any Weapons Permitted: Any

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Ranger Advancement Level

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7 June, 2009

+1

6

15

+3

3

12

5,000

6

4

35,000

+2

7

14

+4

4

11

10,000

7

5

70,000

+2

8

13

+4

5

10

20,000

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7 June, 2009

140,000

Ranger Class Abilities Associates: No more than two rangers may ever operate together at any given time.

9 Code of Conduct: A ranger must be of Lawful (Good) alignment and loses all class abilities if he ever willingly commits a Chaotic (Evil) act, becoming an ordinary fighter forever after.

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Favored Enemies: When fighting evil humanoids, rangers gain a damage bonus equal to their level. What creatures qualify as “evil humanoids” is up to each referee to determine in his campaign.

9

Natural Remedies: Each day a ranger with access to beneficial plants can heal a total number of hit points of

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damage equal to his ranger level x2. Special Followers: Rangers may not hire henchmen nor do they establish strongholds as do other fighting men. Instead, at 9th level, a ranger gains 2D6 special followers who loyally serve him until either they or the ranger dies. These followers are typically individuals of any intelligent race that shares the ranger’s vocation to protect civilization, but may also include extraordinary woodland being of Lawful (Good) alignment. The nature of these special followers is left to the referee’s discretion.

275,000

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+6 Toughness: Because of their experience in braving the hardships of the wilderness, rangers begin with two Hit Dice at 1st level. That is, they roll 2D6+4 to determine their starting hit points.

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Tracking: Outdoors, a ranger can attempt to track the path of any creature on a roll of 1-18 on 1D20. This basic chance decreases by 2 for each day that passes after the tracks are made. Indoors, a ranger can attempt to track the path of any creature he has observed no more than 6 turns previously. The chance of successfully doing so varies with the actions of the creature being tracked, as follows:

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500,000

• Creature went down normal passage: 1-13 10+3

• Creature went through a normal door: 1-11 • Creature went through a trap door: 1-10

+6

• Creature went up/down a chimney: 1-6 • Creature went through a secret door: 1-6

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Wary: A ranger can only be surprised on a roll of 1 on 1D6. Wealth: Rangers may own no more than they can carry. Any

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7 June, 2009

additional goods or wealth they acquire must be given away to a worthy cause. Wilderness Warrior: When operating in the wilderness, rangers surprise their opponents on a roll of 1-3 on 1D6.

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Maybe I Was Lucky JUN 06, 2009 04:43P.M.

Lots of people have asked me how I handle ability checks in my Dwimmermount campaign, so I figured I’d make a short post about it. In

I was reminded, based on a comment made by Delta to an earlier post, that my introduction to the hobby was different than that of many gamers, particularly younger ones. I am not an autodidact gamer. I didn’t just pick up Holmes in the Fall of 1979 and start playing with my friends. Or rather, I did, but the story didn’t end there. Instead, my friend’s older brother and father soon stepped in to set us straight and teach us the “right” way to play Dungeons & Dragons. Through them, the local hobby stores, and games days at public libraries, I was initiated

brief, I don’t use ability checks in my game. That is, I have no formal system whereby I allow a player to roll dice based on his ability scores to determine if he succeeds at some action not covered explicitly by the rules.

into the wider gaming culture that had sprung up before I entered it. I am by no means a first generation gamer, but I had firsthand experience with guys who were. I gamed with them, learned from them, and acquired a lot of their quirks and prejudices.

The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, from a historical perspective, I never used ability checks back in the day. I don’t recall AD&D, Holmes, or Moldvay Basic — the three rules sets that had the most influence over me back in the day — allowing for such a thing, though it’s possible there’s some reference to them I somehow overlooked all these years. Regardless, I simply never made use of the concept. Secondly, my attitude nowadays is that any action not covered by the rules is one that falls within the bounds of referee adjudication. If one of my players wants his character to try something for which there are no rules, I make a decision, often in consultation with the player, about its likelihood for success. If there’s a significant random factor in whether said action succeeds or fails, I’ll roll some dice to see what happens. In my Dwimmermount game, I’ve sometimes used the saving throw mechanic as a way to gauge an individual character’s “luck,” but most of my rolls are purely ad hoc.

From what I’ve gathered, my experiences were unusual. A great many more people entered the hobby by teaching themselves and their friends to play after reading Moldvay or Mentzer. They never had the experience of being tutored by older brothers, fathers, or weird old wargamers who hung out in the back room of the Compleat Strategist. They never had any direct experience of “the hobby” beyond their immediate circle of friends with whom they got together to game.

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Ability Checks JUN 06, 2009 10:16P.M.

I also get the sense that my experiences were unusual in another way, one that may explain why I feel such a powerful lack of connection to the way RPGs have evolved over the years. It’s increasingly my contention that the breakdown in the “social contract” between referees and players is why roleplaying games have become so much more codified and structured than they used to be. Collectively, gamers — and game designers — have had a lot of bad experiences with bad and/or jerky referees, leading to the perceived need for the rules to “protect” players from such experiences and to ensure greater “evenness” in play.

So far, this “system” has worked very well for me and I’ve seen no need to introduce a formal ability check or universal mechanic to the game. Before I began, I thought I might need one and contemplated several different ways I might introduce one, but, when push came to shove in play, I ignored them all and just used common sense and (maybe) a dice roll. Nothing more has really been necessary. As I noted in my earlier post of today, having a high degree of trust with my players is a huge asset. If my players didn’t trust me, I might try to “objectify” the process a bit more in order to give the illusion that such matters were out of my hands as the referee, but that’s not my preferred approach and it’s certainly not the approach that I feel is most consonant with the philosophy behind OD&D.

The difficulty for me is that I honestly never had a bad referee back in those days. Certainly, some referees were better than others, but none stand out as mind-searingly bad. None of them abused us or treated us whimsically. Even my friend’s older brother, who delighted in throwing us up against difficult challenges, was never really out to get us so much as to prove that he was cleverer and more devious than we were — and he often was. Yet, he could be “beaten.” We occasionally outsmarted him and he played fairly. He didn’t fudge the dice in his favor or conjure up ridiculous wandering monster encounters just to show us who was boss. There was always an understanding between us that he’d play by the rules as we all understood them and that, while he’d never cut us any slack, neither would he deprive us of any victories we’d earned through our ingenuity (or just dumb luck).

I’m curious: does anyone know when ability checks first get introduced into any version of Dungeons & Dragons? My guess is that it happens in Mentzer, but I may well be mistaken.

By and large, that was my experience of old school refereeing. People like

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7 June, 2009

to talk a lot about “killer DMs,” but my recollection was that guys who got their jollies by creating deathtrap dungeons and weren’t fair in their adjudication of the rules didn’t tend to keep players for very long. That style of gaming was never fun and, back in the day, there were enough referees out there that no one had to put up with jerks like that. The impression I keep getting, though, is that my experiences on this score were out of the ordinary. Most everyone seems to have all manner of stories about killer DMs who ruined their enjoyment of the game and whose arbitrariness sent them running headlong into the safety of more heavily codified rules systems. At least, that’s my perception of things; I can’t speak to the truth of it, since, as I’ve said, my own experiences in the old days were very different. There was always a tacit acceptance that referee and player were adversaries (to a degree anyway), but they were honorable adversaries and a cornerstone of honor was playing fairly. Referees lived or died by their reputations of being honorable. That was what I was taught by the earlier generation and it’s a lesson that’s stuck with me all these years. I guess I should be very grateful to them, because, from the sounds of it, many gamers weren’t nearly as lucky as I.

This issue contains posts from between Jun 06, 2009 07:04a.m. and Jun 07, 2009 03:04a.m.. Visit the Rogues on the Web: http://www.rogue-games.net

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