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D&D Subforum / Pen & Paper RPG Discussion Thread

Fourier

Posted this in the tabletop forum, but it was suggested some here might be interested:

Anybody interested in an online play-by-post game of some tabletop RPG. I've been finding Roll20 difficult to schedule as most players are in different time zones and so would prefer an Irish crowd.

No experience required and it'd be relaxed enough in pace.

Games I'd be interested in running:

1st Edition D&D, but with one of the modern adventures (award winning ones published in the last few years).

Cyberpunk 2020 Blade Runner-ish, also going to be made into a game by the lads who made the Witcher games

Rippers Resurrected High action Victorian horror, like a lighter Penny Dreadful

All of these have very cheap pdf options.

EDIT: Another possibility is Vampire: The Masquerade.

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Fourier

Modifier table:
Below I'll be talking about how your Stats (e.g. Strength, Constitution) affect roles. This is based on the following table:

3 => -3
4-5 => -2
6-8 => -1
9-12 => 0
13-15 => +1
16-17 => +2
18 => +3

So a value of 17 in a stat adds 2 to rolls related to that stat.

I'll call this the modifier table.

Health:
At the start of the game your total health depends on your class, e.g. Fighter starts with 4, Thief with 2. Every level we add this number again, e.g. Level 2 Fighter has health 8, Level 2 Thief has health 4.
Your Constitution affects this based on the modifier table

So a Level 1 Fighter of Constitution 16 has health 6 (basic 4 + 2 from Constitution).

This happens every level, so a level 2 Fighter with Constitution 16 has health 12, because he gets a 4 again from the level up and he gets the Constitution bonus again.

For monsters, they have a stat called Hit Die, which is the number of d8 (eight sided dice) I roll to determine their health, e.g. a Medusa (p.87) has 4 hit die. So she could have any health from 4 to 32 when you encounter her, depending on what I roll.

Combat:
Combat is fairly simple in 1st Edition. p.52-54 of the pdf above if you want more detail. "Monster" just means anybody/thing you fight.

Order is:
1. Initiative, i.e. see who goes in what order. This is not as detailed as later editions, it's which side goes first, not which individual. So either the players or the monsters.
2. Movement
3. Ranged attacks, e.g. bows or thrown spears
4. Cast Spells
5. Hand to Hand
6. (2-5) repeated for the other side

To cast spells you just say you're casting them, fairly simple.

Ranged and Hand-to-Hand attacks work the same. You've to make a roll to hit and then roll to see the amount of damage. I'll talk about these rolls now.

Hitting:
Everybody in the game as a stat called AC, armour class, which represents a combination of how hard you are to hit due to your agility and your armour, i.e. it's what it takes to actually hurt you. The higher AC the easier you are to hit (opposite of later editions). Basic AC is 9. Armour and high dexterity reduce it. For example Banded mail (p.15) gives you an AC of 4. A dexterity of 16 will reduce it by 2, so Banded Mail and Dex 16 would give you AC 2.

To hit somebody you have to roll equal to or higher than a number that depends on AC and level (for player characters) or AC and what are called Hit Dice for monsters.

Now here is the odd part of the rules. The number you need to reach is given in the tables on p.60 in the rules above. There's one table for monsters to hit you (top) and one for you to hit monsters (bottom). As you can see, the one to hit you is based on your AC and level, for monsters it's their AC and hit die number.
So if you look at that table, to hit a Thief of level 7 and AC 2 you need to role 15 or better.
At low levels the number is 20 minus your AC.

I wouldn't bother too much with the tables, as this will basically be managed by me. Especially for you to hit a monster (second table on p.60), I'll just quote the number. You can always check the table to see if I'm right.

When you roll the dice, you add a stat modifier. It depends on your Strength for melee and Dexterity for ranged attacks, e.g. bows.

A basic example. Greg the thief with Dexterity 17 goes to hit a Vampire with a bow. A Vampire has AC 2 and 7 Hit Dice. So from the table on p.60 he needs to make an 11. Greg rolls a 10. Not enough, but because his Dex is 17, he gets +2 to the roll, from the modifier table, hence his roll is 12, which is enough. The Vampire takes an arrow.

Damage:
If you do hit, then you roll the damage, which depends on your weapon and your strength (mostly the weapon). So for example a battle axe (p.15) does 1d8 of damage (one eight sided dice). High and low strengths add or subtract from this.

Strength modifies damage based on the modifier table.

Let's say you're strength 16 and hit with the battle axe. You roll the 1d8, get 5. You then add 2 due to your strength modifier, so the damage is 7. This is directly subtracted off the target's health.

Dying:
In basic First Edition, if you hit 0 hit points you die. Later add-on books gave the rule that in certain circumstances I'll call for a death check and if you pass you can "hold on" at 0 hit points for a few rounds. I'll be using this in certain situations, otherwise everybody will die too easily from past experience.

Next: D&D 1st Edition's weird setting

Fourier

Lord TSC wrote: »

Gonna tag this topic. I don't know if you guys have a full party but I've always wanted to play DnD and never had people to play with. If there's slots, I'd love to join, but if there's not, I'll happily spectate and sign up for the next one, or an alternative one. I've actually always wondered if it would be possible to play this way so am interested to see how it goes.

There's a slot. The adventures I have in mind can take 3-8 players.

Lord TSC

Ok, awesome, sign me up then

I just finished Stranger Things and love Achievement Hunter and Funhaus's DnD campaign videos so am happy to give it a try on here

Necro

At low pace and patience for a newbie... Sign me up too

Fourier

Great. Cast now is:

Necrominus
Lord TSC
Banjo (Fighter)
Mollyb60 (Thief)
OldGoat
The Soup King (Halfling)
Digital Solitude (Cleric)

We actually have as many players as classes so we could have one each (missing Magic-User, Dwarf and Elf). However pick what you want, doesn't matter if we have two of one of them.

Character Death:
As I mentioned 1st edition is quite lethal, so there is a good chance your character will die. "Back in the day" there were several ways of dealing with this. My preference is to get you playing again as quick as possible. Hence if your character dies, I won't be going the route of having you wait till we get back to town to meet your new character in the tavern. I'm going to go with two options:

Your new character turns up in the dungeon. e.g. he came to the dungeon the day before and got trapped in a vampire's crypt and hey look poor old Greg's armour fits him perfectly.
Or if you hire retainers (I'll get to them in detail later) who are specialists you pick up in town, they pick up their employers gear realising it's time to get that dungeon treasure themselves.

Some find this not as realistic as the "wait until the next tavern" approach, e.g. why would a guy you employed commit his life to finding the treasure/what are the odds of finding another adventurer. However to my mind D&D is not a game with a serious tone (unlike let's say Vampire: The Masquerade), I mean the monsters include a T Rex (p.100) and an Owl Bear (p.91). I'd just prefer to get you playing again. And the threat of dying drives most of the game, so I don't want to remove it.
Also, I mean the retainers did agree to go into the dungeon, they must be kind of brave.

The biggest problem of course, is the loss of levels. However if you take a Cleric at level 6, to get him to level 7 takes 25,000 XP. However that's also the amount needed to go from Level 1 to Level 6. So if I send the party off to a dungeon that gets you that much XP and you die, but your new character survives to the end, they'll get 25,000. So at the end they'll be back at their old level, just one behind the rest of the party and in the next adventure they'll probably catch up. So at max you're one level behind at the end of an adventure. The XP system is designed like this on purpose. This also means dying at Level 1 is grand (nothing to lose), so you can get use to the lethality and being careful at this level.

As for your equipment, armour and weapons, well it'll be on the body of your old character, so you just need to pick it up. (Although it might have gotten caught up in a spider's web etc just for a bit of a challenge).

How does this sound to all of you?

Note: Given the above danger in 1st edition you tend not to go as deep into the character's backstory as in later editions.

Lord TSC

I'll go magic user then

Necro

Ok. I've decided.

Lord TSC

I'm reading about magic users and apparently the main advice i see is to always find someone to hide behind. :P

Necro

Lord TSC wrote:

I'm reading about magic users and apparently the main advice i see is to always find someone to hide behind.

The dwarf Bandylegs McGillicuddy shall protect his wizard friend, rest assured.

robyntmorton

I look forward to someone tossing the dwarf, whether he likes it or not.

Necro

Question and I'm going to sound like a total newbie here but i know it says Pen and Paper RPG but is there anything to stop me from keeping my records on a Google docs / sheets document?

I have two young kids and paper tends to get used for 'pretty pictures' if ya catch my drift so would prefer to store anything I need on the PC which is the forbidden zone of the house (for now at least)

Fourier

Oh sure of course no worries, google docs is no problem.

Just to get started on the characters, you have 63 points to put into your six attributes. No attribute can be lower than 3 points or higher than 18 points. An example:

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 10
Constitution: 14
Intelligence: 13
Wisdom: 8
Charisma: 9

In the pdf of the rules p.6-7 will tell you exactly what each rank in the attributes will give you:
Rules

Also each of your classes has a prime requisite. For example Lord TSC's magic user has prime requisite Intelligence (p.12). What this means is that if his intelligence is high, he gets bonus XP. See p.7 for the full details, but Intelligence 13 would give him +5% XP every time he earns some. However Intelligence 4 would give him -10%.

Your prime requisite is also the stat your class tends to use the most. So it's a good idea for it to be high.

Digital Solitude

How's Con as a dump stat in 1E?

Fourier

For others, a dump stat is an unimportant stat whose value can be lowered to get others higher. An example would be some sort of "beauty/appearance" stat in many RPGs, which only has a story effect, but no mechanical effect that makes a major difference to the game.

Digital Solitude wrote: »

How's Con as a dump stat in 1E?

My own intuition is the Con is something you don't want too low due to the lethality of first edition. The negative modifiers to health from low CON can make a big difference in first edition fights.

Similarly Charisma, as you'll see on p.7 affects how loyal people you hire, called hirelings, are and how many you can hire. This is more important in first edition than later ones, because again, it being lethal, your hirelings often have expertise that helps you avoid something like a trap. So unlike 3.5 Charisma isn't really a dump stat.

Overall there isn't a true dump stat (I checked this with a friend who's a designer of 1st Ed. adventures) because the game is mechanically simple and the attributes have separate useful focuses.

Fourier

Sorry for the flurry of posts, I'm just getting this stuff down, it's not intended to rush anyone. Nor is it required, just a bit of background if you enjoy these things.

D&D setting:
The original D&D, 0th edition, wasn't possible to play without a seperate game called Chainmail for the combat rules and a board game called Outdoor Survival whose board (picture below) was used as a map of the world:

Original 1974 rules wrote:

Off-hand adventures in the wilderness are made on
the OUTDOOR SURVIVAL playing board

Outdoor survival is actually about a lost boy scout, but for D&D the map was reinterpretered.
The bushes became mystic woods inhabited by werewolves, gorgons and minotaurs
Villages became medieval cities
Dry areas become vast deserts inhabited by T-Rexes
The little marshes become vast swamps with sea monsters, zombies and dragon turtles
Hills become mountains with cockatrices, basilisks, wyverns, balrogs, chimerae and hydras

The Game Master then just placed "wierd fantasy" (i.e. closer to Lovecraft/Stephen King than Tolkien) locations on this map, like the tomb of an ancient god, that the players had to raid for treasure, because their local lord told them to or some other reason. These locations are the dungeons.

When 1st edition* was released later this board game and chainmail were not required, rather it came with a new map of the world and the world was given a name, Mystara. However "in game" when you're playing there is no real difference. You're still wandering a wilderness with T-Rex deserts and Lovecraftian dungeons, it was just given a new geography.

Hence you'll recieve a quest to go to a dungeon to retrieve something (e.g. a god's hand rumoured to be a powerful weapon), starting in a city or town. You'll wander through the deserts, forests, etc having encounters and mini-adventures before getting to the dungeon proper. This area between the dungeons and towns, the wilderness, can either be taken straight from one of the maps (e.g. Outdoor Survival or the map that came with 1st Ed) or procedurally generated by me via dice rolls. If you'd have a preference, let me know.

Note: As you can see this world is quite vague. It's not like the fully fleshed out Tolkienesque worlds with histories that later D&D uses.

Dungeons:
Dungeons come in three flavours: Normal, Nega, Mega.

Normal dungeons are of reasonable size (six floors) and quite dangerous. Negadungeons are lethal, possibly everybody would be killed multiple times and if played wrong you wouldn't even earn anything. Megadungeons are massive (hundreds of levels), but are no harder than normal dungeons. I'll be starting with normal ones.

*Technically there were two first editions, an advanced one for tournaments and a basic one for the average player. We'll be playing the basic one, like the lads in Stranger Things.

Fourier

Just to let you know, we'll be starting in a city called Stanheim, in a tavern. We'll deal with how you get your first mission and then "go shopping" for your armour, potions and other gear.

Lord TSC

Can we start looking to create characters then?

Or would you rather we wait till we're more set up?

Fourier

Oh sorry! Yes create away, I'm finished with the set up.:)

Digital Solitude

Are there sheets like 5e or is it just numbers n a page?

I haven't looked at the rules yet so apologies if its there

When are we looking to start?

Lord TSC

Is AD&D and D&D the same thing at Ed 1?

Wanna print myself a character sheet off, but everyone I find is for AD&D

there's also loads of stat generators for AD&D Ed1 as well.

Fourier

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Are there sheets like 5e or is it just numbers n a page?

I haven't looked at the rules yet so apologies if its there

No worries about not reading the rules, it's a large document and learn-by-play is how most of us do it.

Here is the character sheet:
Character Sheet

There's also one on p.135 of the rules, in a slightly different format.

However, it is pretty much just numbers on a page, there is far less mechanical detail to your character than in 5E.

When are we looking to start?

So the idea would be for everybody to come up with their basic attributes and we'd start pretty quickly after that. Every other number on the sheet is determined by class and level, so I'll send them to you all by PM. I'll just PM the mods about multiple threads, as the typical thing would be to have a single thread with everybody's character sheets in it and another thread for the adventure and we'd close off this initial thread.

Fourier

The character sheets mention saving throws. These are rolls to avoid certain lethal situations, e.g. the poison saving throw is to resist poison.

p. 55 of the rules gives a complete list of what you have to roll in a saving throw for each situation for a character of your class.

Your wisdom affects your magic saving throw (by the typical modifiers), which is to resist spells. However no other saving throws are affected by your stats.

Fourier

Lord TSC wrote: »

Wanna print myself a character sheet off, but everyone I find is for AD&D

there's also loads of stat generators for AD&D Ed1 as well.

I've linked the character sheet in the response to Digital Solitude above.

Here's a character generator for our game:
Char Gen

Is AD&D and D&D the same thing at Ed 1?

Just to answer this, apologies if it is too much detail, I'm a bit of a bore on this!:)

OD&D is the rules released in 1974 dependent on you owning Chainmail and Outdoor survival. It had four supplements.

Later they decided to re-release D&D to make it independent of both these games, to standardise it (The original rules were so vague games in Chicago were totally different from those in LA and so people had trouble joining different groups) and to roll the supplements into one book.

This standardised edition is 1st Edition AD&D.

However, they thought AD&D would be too complex for beginners and so they made D&D (also called Basic D&D). However Basic D&D was made by a totally different guy (Tom Moldvay) and ended up with quite different rules to AD&D. Basic D&D ended up being way more popular and it's what most people in the 80s actually played, maybe stealing the odd thing from the AD&D books.

When people say 1st Edition they can mean either AD&D or Basic D&D, but usually it means Basic D&D.

What we are using is Labyrinth Lord, a free clone of Basic D&D.

Necro

Hoping to get a quiet morning at work today and I'll get to work on the above, looking forward to this starting actually!

Mollyb60

Wow Four you have so much knowledge! Wanna join our adventuring group? :P

This stuff is amazing, I'm excited to get started. I've a boss free day tomorrow so hopefully I can work on my character today and tomorrow and get ready to go.

Necro

Mollyb60 wrote: »

Wow Four you have so much knowledge! Wanna join our adventuring group? :P

This stuff is amazing, I'm excited to get started. I've a boss free day tomorrow so hopefully I can work on my character today and tomorrow and get ready to go.

Work on the what now?? :pac::pac::pac:

I was playing around with the character generator sheet there for a little while this morning. It's all very exciting

OldGoat

Looks like the party need an elf. I'll elf up.

Mollyb60

Necrominus wrote: »

Work on the what now?? :pac::pac::pac:

I was playing around with the character generator sheet there for a little while this morning. It's all very exciting

I can't get into any of the webpages that Four is linking us to at work at all. So I think I'm gonna try divvy up the points manually. Ie: work on my character. :P

Necro

Mollyb60 wrote:

I can't get into any of the webpages that Four is linking us to at work at all. So I think I'm gonna try divvy up the points manually. Ie: work on my character.

I've had same problem actually apart from the character sheet. Think I'm happy enough with what that decided for me though... I think. :pac:

Been many years since I played D&D so it's all fairly new to me

Mollyb60

Necrominus wrote: »

I've had same problem actually apart from the character sheet. Think I'm happy enough with what that decided for me though... I think. :pac:

Been many years since I played D&D so it's all fairly new to me

My group are DIY RPG'ers (I'm currently trying to work out a system based on Pokémon for us to play) so it's been years since I used the D&D system. I've forgotten everything so it's basically back to square 1 for me too.