What Do You Mean, 'What Is It For?'?!

  Ah, the internet, where you can argue over all sorts of things. The most recent internet argument I got into was with someone explaining that monsters with a no-save level drain are badwrong and there is no reason to have them other than,

  "...imbecilic blind worship of the past..."

  Uh-huh.
  Of course, I had already pointed out some reason for having such monsters in your game, to wit;

• Instilling terror in the players
• Driving quests for spells, etc. to get Restoration
• To 'throttle' level progression without nerfing XP/raising the bar or railroading players

  Now, I guess I might have just tossed in a link to a past article of mine, but there is that to say and more, so here we go.

What Do You Mean, 'What Is It For?'?!

  Ah, the internet, where you can argue over all sorts of things. The most recent internet argument I got into was with someone explaining that monsters with a no-save level drain are badwrong and there is no reason to have them other than,

  "...imbecilic blind worship of the past..."

  Uh-huh.
  Of course, I had already pointed out some reason for having such monsters in your game, to wit;

• Instilling terror in the players
• Driving quests for spells, etc. to get Restoration
• To 'throttle' level progression without nerfing XP/raising the bar or railroading players

  Now, I guess I might have just tossed in a link to a past article of mine, but there is that to say and more, so here we go.

It's the Little Things

  Gamemasters like to work on campaigns; we polish them, we add details, we add histories, we do research. From thousands of years of history outlines to detailed NPCs we all like to make our campaigns not just unique but memorable.
  I've seen guys make:
  -Incredibly detailed pantheons of gods with unique spells, dress, rituals, etc. for each one
  -Unearthly worlds like one where it was set on hundreds of tiny moons in a vast cloud of air and people used flying boats to travel
  -Unique systems of magic that required effort and roleplaying to work

  Great stuff! Very creative, very memorable. I have a lot of things like unique days for the names of the week that are still recognizable [Sunday, Moonday, Twoday, Threeday, Fourday, Fiveday, Starday], unique constellations, etc. And the players do like them, especially when they are dropped into play aids

  "This journal entry is from the 2nd Starday in Midsummer of last year"

and such.

  But I do find that, to my chagrin, even the effort behind my unique systems of weights and measures, the unique languages, the detailed calendars, the festivals, the monsters, the NPCs the most return for the least effort appears to be - mundane plants and animals.
  Here's an example from my Seaward (AD&D 1e) campaign.

  Along the southwest border of the Kingdom of Seaward lies an area called the Briars. The Briars cover the foothills of the southern mountains in addition the the very rough, rocky terrain large areas are choked with briars and brambles. The region is home to some plant and animal life either rare or absent anywhere else including the briar wolf, the briar deer, the brush cat, the hill tortoise, and the hyrax (or the 1/2 normal hit dice deer, the jackal, the lynx, the tortoise, and the groundhog). Plants include scrub pine, juniper, the evergreen oak, the lemonade bush, and the strawberry tree.

  Now, when I wrote up the area and its encounter charts I thought the weasels, giant rats, mountain lions, and kobolds would be the memorable parts.
  Nope.
  The players all remember (and talk about) the lemonade bushes, the strawberry trees, the brush cats, and the evergreen oaks.

  I chalk it up to the effect Heinlein so famously described many years ago about how little things set tone. You can describe mile-long starships all you want but 'the door irised open' really drives home how different things really are..

  So - work on the little things, the odd little bits like green house cats and such. It seems to be memorable.

A Hot Meal and a Cup of Tea

  When I DM and when I play I am often surprised by the simple little things: player treat horses like bicycles; they never ask about the weather, and they treat fire as nothing but a light source.

  I already talked about the weather a bit and I plan to write about horses, so let's talk about fire.

  We'll start by talking about encumbrance.
  No matter where you fall on the matter of encumbrance (and I am a hard-ass stickler that will slow you down, give you penalties, and expects you to track every 1/10th of a pound) on a long journey it will be very hard to bring enough food and essentially impossible to bring enough water since the minimum a person needs is 10 lbs of water a day. So we must assume that adventurers are getting water from somewhere (streams, springs, and wells above ground. And you have water sources in your dungeons, right?) and that these sources aren't always (maybe never) pure water.
  Have I mentioned my disease and parasite rules?
  In Real Life over 3 million people die each year from water-borne diseases. Even crystal-clear water from an alpine creek can cause lethal diarrhea. Now, there are a few ways of avoiding this ranging from adding 1 part red wine to 3 parts water (which does an amazing job purifying drinking water, thus why the ancients did it) to drinking only beer to Purify Food and Drink to being a paladin.
  But one of the most direct and best is - boiling the water, which also kills parasites.
  There are other impacts, too. A series of studies in America and the UK show that office workers are more mentally alert and observant if they have a hot beverage (tea or coffee) in the morning. World military forces have been aware of the positive impacts on morale of plentiful hot beverages, as well, and I have very rarely seen a canteen, chow hall, etc. that didn't have hot tea or coffee available 24 hours a day.

  Another thing to think about is, well, the temperature. In the modern world where we go from heated home to heated car to heated office it is easy to forget that it gets cold. Imagine being dressed in chain mail on horseback in a biting wind and cold drizzle for 8 hours on a late Autumn day. Or sleeping in the open on the ground in early Spring. The Wilderness Survival Guide had some great ideas about dealing with cold weather (or hot weather, for that matter) but I often just do something simple - at a certain point travelling in the cold without adequate shelter and heat is force marching. Eventually just being out in the elements is force marching, too, even if you aren't moving.
  Dungeons are pretty chilly, I suspect. Remember, it tends to be cool underground and is often damp. According to my friends who are into caving and online caving guides one of the biggest dangers of caving, if not the biggest, is hypothermia. I assume that this is probably a problem in any deep underground place, even a worked dungeon. So PCs are going to need to warm up and/or dry off routinely.

  Last is food. I have certainly lost track of the parties that blithely announce that they will supplement their rations by 'hunting along the way' when in the wilderness. If they are very far from civilization they will also state they are having a 'cold camp' without a fire. I then ask them how they are preparing the food they hunted....
  I did mention my disease and parasite rules, right?

  Rick's disease and parasite rules are included in his supplement Far Realms, available in print and as a PDF. Far Realms also includes new hirelings, such as the healer, new PC classes, like the barbarian, and more than 30 pages of new spells. Suitable for any old-school campaign, please consider buying Far Realms today!

  Anyway, while cooking your food does greatly reduce your chances of dying horribly from disease or parasite hot meals are important to alertness and morale, too. British and American forces in combat reveal that eliminating a hot breakfast has twice the negative impact on soldier morale than doubling the amount of time they are in active combat zones. That's right, soldiers are twice as upset over no bacon and toast than they are about getting shot at more often! Just giving soldiers the ability to heat field rations has a notable positive effect on morale and performance.

  So all this long rambling is to support my actual point.

  Characters in fantasy RPGs should worry about being able to start and maintain a fire.

  So why aren't coal and charcoal seen more often on equipment lists and in character inventories?

  Yes, I am starting another 'stop thinking like a modern person and think like a medieval person' rant, why do you ask?

  People have been making charcoal for thousands of years, so far back we aren't sure when it started. But since charcoal is critical to metalwork, I have always assumed it is readily available in virtually any fantasy campaign.
  Now, actual charcoal looks very little like those briquettes for your grill. Lump charcoal looks like what it is - chunks of charred wood. from finger to fist size. Lump charcoal can range from low quality stuff that has a strong smell and a fair amount of smoke when it burns to expensive types that have virtually no odor and very little smoke when burning.
  In any case, lighting charcoal is relatively simple - flint & steel with a good tinderbox should do it as log as the charcoal is dry. Lump charcoal gets to temperature quickly and burns hotter than briquettes and the more expensive types leave less ash behind. A handful of lump charcoal will burn long enough to bring a gallon of water to a boil and maintain a boil for a full minute; a double handful is enough for 2 gallons and a meal for four-5 people.

  Coal can be more expensive or hard to find than charcoal and its quality varies from lignite to anthracite. Bituminous, which is the type usually used by smiths, is fairly easy to light (easier than charcoal), doesn't burn as hot as charcoal, and makes more smoke and ash than good charcoal. But it will light and burn when wet (although it smokes more) and the same volume of coal burns longer than charcoal. Anthracite burns with much less smoke and ash than bituminous and burns a long time but can be difficult to light. A lrge lump of bituminous coal can boil 2 gallons of water and a double handful can boil 4 plus cook a meal for 4-5 people.

  I should also mention peat - a sort of 'pre-coal' from bogs and mires, when properly dried peat can burn for a long time and produce a nice amount of heat. It has a distinctive smell and a fair amount of smoke, though.

  In each of these cases, charcoal, coal, and even peat, you get more heat for the same space/weight than wood. Also, since most wood needs to cure and dry for a while to make a good fire (and it might be wet, besides) these are great ideas outdoors as well as underground.

  Field cooking equipment is very old. Romans had all sorts of things to make army cooking in the field better and by Medieval times field cooking gear was fairly well developed with small portable iron fireboxes (about the size of a helmet), fire stands, griddles, field cauldrons (again, about like a helmet), and such. Wooden and earthenware mugs we also pretty common back then.
  The small iron fireboxes typically had a lid and such so that the airflow (and thus temperature) of the fire could be controlled. This lets them double as a heater for tents and small areas and for a small amount of fuel to last a long time. In my opinion, each party should have at least one iron fire box, a field cauldron, a small griddle, a fire stand, and some charcoal or coal.

  Which brings us to another point; air. No matter how little smoke is made, fires consume oxygen. Even in AD&D you should make sure there is enough fresh air to safely make a fire.

  No, this post is not a description of camping gear and a safety statement.
  Well, not just those things, at least.

  I concern myself with these details for a number of reasons.
  First, I want verisimilitude in my campaign - I track water usage, encumbrance, weather, etc. because it makes the world I built more internally consistent, which makes the rest of my job easier.
  Second, in my experience it allows the players a better chance to immerse themselves into their characters and the world and gives many opportunities for roleplaying - little bits like who is good at building a fire and who can't cook are fun and add a ton of depth, all on the cheap.
  Third, it is another way to weigh down characters while vacuuming money out of their belt pouches.

  Fourth, it has implications that can be plot hooks.
  For example, where does the coal come from? In Real Life the easily accessible coal was gathered very early. Are there coal mines? Where? You need coal and charcoal to make things like, oh, iron, so - do the dwarves mine it/make it? If they don't they have to get it from somewhere!
  Charcoal can have a huge impact on a region. Interesting fact - no forest in Finland is more than 300 years old. Why?
  They cut down all the trees for charcoal over the course of about 250 years!
  Mainly to get wood tar, but it was the charcoal process and it really, really changed Finland for a century+. In my Seaward campaign colliers slip into the forests between civilized lands and the orcish city-states to make charcoal to sell. Very, very risky, but very profitable. The gnomes of Gladdenstone make a lot of money mining anthracite and selling it to the dwarves. The barbarians of Eiru have to collect peat from the edges of the haunted Moorlands to heat their homes in the harsh winters of their island nation.

  So think about it. Maybe have a henchman demand more pay or have a hireling quit suddenly because there is never a pot of tea at dawn, or have the party suffer a -1 to hit from fatigue after 3 days of near-hypothermia in a dungeon's depths. Gnomes increasing prices for coal might push the dwarves to the brink of war and orcish raids in Autumn could lead to suffering as the poor run out of charcoal to heat their homes in deep Winter.

  Or just imagine going 3 days with no tea, coffee, or hot food yourself and build an adventure from that. Mine would have lots of murder and naps.

Experience Points - Yeah, I am going there

  The release of 5e has also released the discussion of experience points, leveling, classes, etc. You know, the only things we talk about more than alignment.
  BTW, the nine alignment system is great.
  But the discussion is seemingly focused on experience points. More specifically that in 5e you go through low levels fast. My published comment on this on my first read-through was,

  "You either FLY through low levels or crawl through higher levels"

  And it seems I wasn't alone.
  I think one of the interesting arguments about the level progression is that the designers of 5e wanted to give players time to make it to high level. Yeah, I'll bet that people getting to high levels is much more common with these rules! I suspect that designers and such as well as a lot of bloggers think most people don't get past about 10th level because of time constraints.
  Of course, I disagree. I think the fact is most people prefer to play low- to mid- level PCs and those that don't can just hand out experience and play Forgotten Realms-style.

  But also lurking about out there is the age-old 'hey, I kinda' get experience points for killing foes, but why do we get experience points for money and magic items, anyway? What about X.P. for skills, and being clever, and those sorts of things?'
  The answer is - plenty of game do! Rolemaster springs to mind as a system where all sorts of things associated with skills can earn you experience points. Since you can take the various elements of Rolemaster (Arms Law, Spell Law, etc.) and 'plug them into' AD&D why don't you just do that?
  [Note: then you'll be playing Rolemaster, not AD&D]

  Let's spend a minute talking about alternate experience points systems or, more precisely, one alternate system in particular and how it affected campaign and play.
 
  For a number of years I have used an alternate experience point system for my AD&D 2e S&P campaign that is based upon one used by Lew Pulsipher. The mechanics of it are, well, Byzantine;
  First, determine the average level of the party. Multi-class and dual-class characters add 1/2 the value of their secondary classes (.5 rounds down) together.
      Example: The party consists of: Jerczy (7th level fighter), Annirara (6th/5th fighter/magic-user), Urisone (8th level thief), Brother Reynaud (7th level cleric), Lorlimar (7th level magic-user), and Omac the Ready (5th/5th/6th fighter/magic-user/thief). The average level of the party is [(7+8+8+7+7+10)/6=7.8, round to 8] 8th level (Annirara counts as 7th level and Omac counts as 10th).
  Then you determine which individual class present in the party requires the most experience points to advance from the party's average level to the next level.
      Example: In this case the classes in the party are cleric, fighter, magic-user, and thief. The party's average level is 8th meaning the amount of experience needed is;
  Cleric: 30,000 XP
  Fighter:125,000 XP
  Magic-user: 45,000 XP
  Thief: 50,000 XP
  The fighter requires the most experience to advance from 8th to 9th level so the 'XP Target' is 125,000.
  Now we get to the really fun part! I determined that advancing from one level to the next should take the square of the average level of the party with a minimum of 4 adventures and a maximum of 50. Why? we will get to that later! So in this case;
      Example: The party has an average level of 8, the square of which is 64. This means that it should take the average party of 8th level an average of 64 adventures to progress to 9th level. I call this number the 'Base Progress Number'.
  Now that we have that we simply divide the XP Target by the Base Progress Number
    (125,000/64)
  This gives us what I call the 'Base XP Award' - in this particular example, that number is 1,953.
  Then I determine my (admittedly subjective) evaluation of both the difficulty of the adventure and the performance of the team as a whole. The adventures are rated from Very Difficult ( I expect the party to need to retreat and recuperate at least twice to overcome this threat) to Very Easy (they might barely notice that it was a serious threat) and the group performance is rated from Excellent (innovative use of resources, great planning, top-notch roleplaying) to terrible (missed obvious clues, blundered into ambush after ambush, played out of character, etc.).
They both have a number rating:
  Adventure Difficulty    Group Performance
  Very Difficult: = 1.5       Excellent = 1.5
  Difficult = 1.2                Good = 1.2
  Average = 1                  Average = 1
  Easy = .8                       Bad = .8
  Very Easy = .5              Terrible = .5
  At the end of the adventure I multiply the Adventure Difficulty by the Group Performance to get the Award Modifier.

  [brief aside - yes, I really do all this after each adventure]

  Let's say the party faced a Difficult adventure (a large number of foes, for example) but they were clever and had a cool plan so they pulled it off without needing to regroup, doing Good. That is
  (1.2 x 1.2 = 1.44)
  So the Award Modifier is 1.44.
  Almost done!
  Now we take the Base XP Award and multiply it by the Award Modifier to get the XP Award;
  (1,953 x 1.44 = 2,812)
  So each character receives 2,812 XP for the adventure!

  Does that seem complicated to you? Let's just say I have very clear memories of spending 4 hours on a Sunday adding up each and every monster in the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl that had been killed by the party , every copper of treasure they had hauled off, and all of the magic items pulled out or used and calculating the xp all by hand because my parents' calculator was broken. "Just doing some math" sounded like a great idea!

  But there was a serious problem. When my 2e party reached about 5th level the players were disgruntled - eventually this led to them confronting me over the paucity of treasure and (especially) magic items in the campaign. Sure, they all had great NPC contacts! yes, they had wonderful roleplaying opportunities! The magic items they did have were unique, interesting, and woven into the tapestry of the campaign, absolutely! But they still very few magic items and were on the edge of penury.The player of the mage told me he had wanted a henchman for 3 levels but couldn't afford one!

  This confrontation led me to realize that I had been neglecting to put what the players wanted into the campaign. Yes, the adventuring was fun; yes, the NPCs were fun; yes, the roleplaying was fun.
  But heroes get rewards! The players did not feel that they were getting to enjoy the spoils of success.

  But what does this mean? I mean, what are experience points really for and about? Yes, I know we like to talk about experience reflecting some sort of learning and development by the player characters. Sure. Fine. That concept is baked into the name we use (experience points) for the idea.
  But that is merely a justification.
  In my opinion experience points serve a three-fold purpose:
  One, they are a key element in motivating players to actually play
  Two, they are a key element in rewarding players who actually play
  Three, they are a key element in controlling the tone and pace of play.
  Let me explain what I mean.

  Motivating players: Yes, there are plenty of players who like to play RPGs for all sorts of reasons. But have you ever played a game you can't win? How about a game where nothing interesting happens? We tend not to play them too long, do we? Even in "pure" storytelling games imagine a game where NPCs never change or develop and the changes and development in your PCs have no effect on the campaign - not very satisfying. All RPGs have in them, somewhere, a reflection of the desire of the players to change, grow, and progress via their characters. Some players want to progress mainly through a character narrative, others through the accumulation of (in game) power or wealth, others through skill development, etc.
  But within the paradigm of D&D and related games the primary method of character advancement is via experience points. This is one of the reasons the three pillars of Gary's experience points are beating monsters, looting vaults, and getting magic items - these reflect defeating evil, getting rich, and acquiring cool stuff. While that certainly is every motive behind players, it sure does cover most of them! This also means that the primary method of motivating players is also through experience points.

  Rewarding Players: I started covering this, above. Since character advancement is the ultimate goal of RPGs getting to advance is the primary reward of RPGs. Now, for one player it might be gaining an artifact, for another establishing a stronghold, for a third overthrowing the demon overlord that enslaved his realm, in the end the mechanic within the game the reflects this in anything approaching a concrete way is experience points.

  Controlling Tone and Pace: As I have mentioned many times before, I believe the 'most fun' range of levels for AD&D 1e and 2e is 3rd to 7th; with the custom experience point system I detailed in excruciating detail above it will take a party an average of 8 adventures to get to 3rd level then 9 more just to get to 4th, 16 more to get to 5th, etc. All told it should take an average party doing average in average adventures 135 adventures to go from beginning at 3rd level to making 8th level. My 2e campaign met about 48 times a year so it took us about 3 years of heavy play to go from level 1 to level 8.
  This obviously reflects my desired pace! I am able to tightly control the pace of level advancement while literally not caring what the official XP value of any monster is other than to eyeball if it is too weak or too powerful for the party.
  The great thing, too, is let's say suddenly the group could only meet every other month, 6 times a year. Do I really want it to take us more than 23 years to get from 'wet behind the ears' to 'I can almost establish a stronghold'? Well, I could easily cut the Base Progress Number in half (or more) and radically speed up level advancement. By increasing the difficulty of adventures the party cold also get better modifiers, also accelerating advancement.

  But there was a serious problem with that experience point system as I ran it, wasn't there? In the end the cost of me radically changing the method of advancing meant that the players were not happy. AD&D is based upon certain assumptions and some of those are that a fair amount of money and magic items pour through the hands of player characters. The players had trouble getting their characters to 'fit' into those assumptions when I wasn't allowing for them.
  But another, more serious, problem was more hidden. It is that in the end character advancement was based solely upon my personal opinion of how fast they should advance. I determined the 'adventure difficulty'; I determined the performance level. If the party killed 20 more kobolds this time than last but I thought they weren't very clever about it? No change in experience points between the two adventures! The party killed 20 less kobolds the time after that but I thought the plan was really clever? No change in experience points between the three adventures!
  My players are clever; they knew, at lest unconsciously, that I was more in charge of their characters' advancement than they were.
  Remember how important character advancement is to players? Well, not having that advancement taken w\away from them is pretty important.

  The same players from my 2 e campaign are in my 1e campaign. In 1e I use the original XP methods from the DMG. The party is much happier with advancement in that system. They can't articulate why, but I know it is because the rewards are for defeating foes and accumulating wealth and for gaining wondrous items and because now experience point awards are impartial and consistent.

  Yes, it is very easy to modify experience point awards and system. It always has been! Just please, keep in mind the impact it is going to have on your game.