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I’ve been working on a sector generator for Traveller using Microsoft Excel. I think I’ve got it worked out.
This is just the dice rolling, not the mapping. I’ll do that using Hexographer and a modified form of the system used in the classic Spinward Marches map.
The formulas are per the revised versions of the Little Black Books, except that Hydrographics is [2D-7+Atmosphere] instead of [2D-7+Size]. The latter seems to be errata, though I believe that some versions continue to use it.
I believe the formulas to be correct, but I’ll have to do some more checking. For instance, one world (sector hex 1217) came up with a Tech Level of ‘H’. Not sure if that’s correct or the result of an error on my part in one of the formulas in the spreadsheet.
The letter (A-P) before the first hex ID is the subsector. ‘N’, ‘S’, and ‘G’ indicate naval bases, scout bases, and gas giants, respectively. The hex ID before the trade classifications is the hex on the sector map.
Each refresh regenerates t entire sector and takes less than one second. Here is a sample:
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Tags: Traveller
If anyone out there plays Magic: The Gathering, I recommend checking out the Forge game at CCG HQ. It’s a great system with a bunch of very dedicated developers and a large body of motivated testers (players). It’s very much a system in development, but there are new beta builds out every few weeks and I’ve been quite impressed with the effort and the results.
They currently have 9855 cards available in the game. The very active community finds bugs and problems (there are plenty) and they are usually addressed very quickly. The number of new cards, bug fixes, and new features rolled out every few weeks with each new build is impressive.
The latest beta build came out today. I haven’t actually played it for quite a while, but I’ll be downloading the latest and giving it a try over the weekend.
Tags: card games, computer
A few months back, I wrote about our plan to use Method K for ability score generation in our AD&D game. Method K was a roll 3d6 in order, swap any two system with a seventh “bonus” roll which could be swapped into the mix if desired. The idea was to keep the 3d6 range of scores and the randomness of in-order rolling, while also giving the player a small amount of control by allowing score swapping; the seventh roll also gave an extra chance for a high score or a way to avoid a really low score. But at the time I commented:
One thing with our current method is that anything besides base cleric, fighter, magic-user, or thief is VERY uncommon. That’s not a problem in my mind, but I suspect that players may be frustrated with the fact that almost no one will ever get to be rangers, druids, etc. We’ll see how it goes.
How it went was “this isn’t what we want,” and it wasn’t just the players who ended up frustrated with it; I also came to the conclusion that the method wasn’t a good fit for how we wanted our game to play. So Method K is out.
Our new plan is allow players a choice of Method I (4d6 (drop lowest) six times, arrange as desired) or Method II (3d6 twelve times, keep six scores, arrange as desired). The scores are a little higher but still not “superhero” high, and the full control over arrangement means that, if they roll well enough, players can choose whichever class they want. Though I still believe that there’s a lot to be said for the forced creativity that results from trying to make the most of a PC you wouldn’t necessarily have chosen, player satisfaction improved when we made the change and now we’ll actually see some PCs besides the four basic classes. This is AD&D, after all.
Anyway, back when we were discussing this, I made a spreadsheet to simulate 10,000 sets of scores by each of the two methods. As one would figure, Method I results in more high or low scores than Method II at the cost of a lower overall average. I came across the spreadsheet and thought I’d post it.
Here is a screenshot of the top of the spreadsheet:
DMG Method I vs. Method II
Click for better look
Each line is a set of ability scores arranged high to low. 17s and 18s are green, 15s and 16s are yellow, and scores below 10 are red. The red numbers near the top of each column are the averages for that column, so the average fourth-highest roll on Method I is 11.8 while the average fourth-highest roll on Method II is 12.2. At the right are total counts of how many times each score was rolled and a graph comparing the two methods.
The graph tells the story, so here’s a better look at it:
DMG Method I vs. Method II
Click for better look
There’s probably nothing here that surprises anyone, but it’s nice to see so clearly how the curve of the two methods compare.
Personally, I’d probably go for Method II every time. But I can see how gambling for a better chance at some top-end scores at the risk of a bad score or two and a lower overall average would appeal to some, especially if a base class is the goal anyway. Selling out in hopes of a 17 or 18 in a prime requisite might be worth it.
Tags: AD&D
Unlike the rest of the oldschool gaming blogosphere, I haven’t watched the trailer for The Hobbit yet.
I must say that I’m surprisingly ambivalent about the whole thing. I think that, with a few exceptions, the Lord of the Rings films were excellent. Certainly far better than longtime fans had any right to expect. But I’m not really all that hyped about these upcoming movies.
No doubt, I’ll go see them. And I also figure that I’ll probably like them. But my excitement meter isn’t running real high at this point.
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Recently, Grognardia noted a Dragon Magazine article by Frank Mentzer about the then-new 1983 Basic D&D set.
James writes
The very first thing Mentzer mentions in his criticism of previous editions is that “you had to find someone to show you how to play.” He notes that, in fact, learning from others who had figured out how to play on their own was the norm previously. That’s because the game had “a devoted following, people who taught newcomers the ways of roleplaying.”
Mentzer put a lot of effort into making the 1983 Basic D&D set one that newcomers could use to teach themselves how to play. With lots of examples, a guided play-along, and easy-to-understand writing, I have no doubt that many readers were able to work out basic play without too much trouble.
This form of writing, while excellent for the neophyte and younger players, was quite off-putting for many of those who already grasped the fundamentals of paper and pencil roleplaying and is a big reason that I prefer the 1981 B/X version of the game over the 1983 BECM edition. Though I haven’t looked closely, I understand that the Rules Compendium version of the game does away with most of the hand holding and sticks to the actual rules, which makes that edition’s popularity with longtime players unsurprising.
In my own homebrew game, I completely dispensed with examples and learning guides. I wrote it for our own use and for others who might join our game, so I wasn’t concerned with whether or not some random person who read the rules could learn to play on their own. This is the extent of the “learning to play” section in the beta version of our game:
Learning to Play is easiest when playing with others who already know how. Teaching yourself the game from the rule book is possible, especially if you’re already familiar with most of the concepts from other similar games. But nothing beats playing a few sessions with those who already know the system.
That’s it, and I think that it should do the trick. There is a quick intro to the game which touches on the whole “what is an RPG” issue, but it’s quite brief:
Wizards & Warriors is a fantasy role playing game (RPG). When playing Wizards & Warriors (W&W), players control characters adventuring in an imaginary world controlled and moderated by the Game Master.
The point is to have fun while imagining fantastic realms filled with danger, mystery, and adventure. It’s basically a session of “let’s pretend” with a framework of guidelines to help determine the course of events.
Unlike board games or computer games, the options are virtually infinite, limited only by the imaginations of those playing.
Clearly, I didn’t put much effort into teaching. My idea was that if someone reads that much, flips through the book, and thinks it looks like it might be fun, the next step is to sit down at the table and join a game. You can learn far more in a one hour session than you can in a week of reading rules and looking at tables.
My own experience has a little of both. My first game was Traveller, and I pretty much taught myself. Though the three little black books are pretty sparse when it comes to how-to, I had Deluxe Traveller which included Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller and also had the freebie Understanding Traveller booklet. Both of these were great resources for a kid who didn’t really know what he was getting into but sure thought it looked fun.
I managed to struggle through quite a few sessions of Traveller with my younger brother and with some friends from school, but it was tough going even with the extra help from Book 0. Still, we had fun and I look back quite fondly on some of those sessions where a lot of crazy stuff went down.
Then a neighbor came home from his freshman year at college for winter break, and he brought with him a hardback book with a big orange idol on the front, a few weird-shaped dice, and a box of little lead figures. He’d been introduced to AD&D at school a few months earlier. We rolled up PCs and headed off to investigate the Tower of the Undead, something the neighbor just winged as he went.
We spent an afternoon of playing AD&D, and about the only time I looked at the Players Handbook was to buy equipment and pick my cleric’s spells. We didn’t have a DMG or a Monster Manual at all; the neighbor just did the best he could as we played.
And after a couple of hours of that I learned almost everything I needed to know about roleplaying. Almost everything else since that afternoon has just been details. And many of those are not only unimportant, they’re counterproductive. I’ve spent years trying to unlearn so many of them.
Learn from someone who’s played before if at all possible. If you play, teach someone new as often as you can. Sit them down, give them some dice and a piece of paper for a character sheet, and just play. As far as I’m concerned, players should be able to have fun without ever bothering to look in a rule book for anything more than equipment lists, spell descriptions, and experience point requirements.
Teaching yourself from a rule book should be the last-ditch, no-other-options-available method of learning.
World’s largest gold coin unveiled in Australia
Dragon hoards with 2 gold coins? Just not as much fun.
The giant coin weighs more than one tonne and is worth A$53.5 million (£35.1m).
It bears the image of The Queen on one side and a leaping kangaroo on the other…
The massive coin weighs some 2,231lb and is 99.99 per cent pure gold. It is 31 inches wide and is more than 4.7 inches thick.
More info at The $54 million gold coin that will smelt your face off
I have long been of the “100 coins to the pound” crowd, though I’ve reverted to the 10gp=1# rule for our AD&D games.
So as our AD&D game gets going, I’ve decided that I would like to have an electronic and searchable version of the rules available for use as needed. Now, I won’t try to pretend that I’ve never done an internet search to find less-than-legal versions of the books, but I’ve not been at all impressed with the quality. Even worse, from what I’ve gathered, the crappy PDFs I’ve dismissed as, well, crappy PDFs are, in fact, the PDFs that were offered for sale by Wizards. If I’d paid money for those, I would have been less than thrilled.
Anyway, I’ve been grabbing a few copies of the 1e AD&D books off of eBay, and I’ve now got a total of four playable Players Handbooks. One of the sellers I bought from had another chewed-up copy which I scored for next-to-nothing, so I nabbed that as well and immediately chopped the cover and lopped off the binding. The pages are in good shape and I’m now involved with scanning it in for my own use.
At some point I’ll be doing the same with cheap copies of the MM and DMG.
I cringed at cutting up one of the finite number of PHBs left, but the cover was totally shot and this will come in quite handy. It was an eighth printing.
Tags: AD&D
Here’s another AD&D rule that I came across in the section on doors that I don’t ever remember using:
Regardless of how a door opens, it is usual that its weight and condition require that force be used to swiftly operate it. This is represented by the roll of d6 for each person involved in pushing, pulling, lifting, sliding, or whatever. A roll of 1 or 2 typically indicates success, anything above indicates the door still remains unopened. (Cf. PLAYERS HANDBOOK, Character Abilities, Strength.) Very heavy doors might reduce chances by half. Locked doors might only open if two or even three simultaneous 1′s are rolled. (DMG, page 97)
Note the bolded sentence. I’m positive that I would not have allowed a locked door to opened. Broken down, but not opened. The wording of this and the description of Open Doors under Strength in the PHB seems to refer to opening (“operating”) doors, though I know some people (and maybe the rules of some editions) indicate that the result may be a broken open door.
I’m sure I read this many times back in the day, as I read the book cover to cover several times and often just opened up to a random page and started reading. But I don’t specifically remember it.
Did/does anyone play that rolling a couple 1s on Open Doors checks opens a locked door?
Tags: AD&D
