OSRPGtalk

Words from a grognard

Category: Subsystem Design (Page 1 of 3)

Design: Magicking II

October 8, 2026 / / 0 Comments

With the basics of working spells laid out, we can flesh out more of the system to provide a stronger flavor. One of the ways I’m doing that is to vary how well the caster knows the spell being used, with familiarity having an effect on use.

Spell expertise

There are three levels of expertise when it comes to casting spells: researched spells, known spells, and mastered spells.

Researched spells are those spells the caster is working on, yet to finish. The caster has the research materials and has begun working out the magical patterns involved, so has a basic idea of how to form the spell. That said, the spell isn’t in final form and is unreliable and unpredictable. It likely requires extra time to cast and the caster has to check for miscasting it. A miscast brings fatigue and pyschic damage and the spell may have its effects twisted.

Known spells are those that have the final form worked out and the caster has a bit of familiarity with casting it. The spell still requires some extra time to work and has a slight chance of miscast. It’s full functional, just needs polish and practice.

Mastered spells are those that are well-rehearsed and readily cast. These are the spells that simply operate as described, with reliable results and no real chance of miscasting. The caster has used it enough times that they don’t have to spend much time thinking about how they’re doing it, just go about doing it.

Learning Spells

PCs begin with a mastered spell or two, plus a known spell. I expect developing spells to be a major part of playing a caster, so gaining additional spells is a game loop included during time spent in town. Magicians rarely find any materials that offer a spell in detail, mostly they get notes and have to work from what they already know and work out how to apply the information found in those notes to create a spell they can use. Even a spell found on a scroll doesn’t provide all of the information needed to master it, though it does help speed the process of developing a spell the caster can use.

So the wizard takes the information they’ve assembled and starts working out which magical structures and techniques are likely to work best for them when working magic that achieves the same ends. The vocabulary used, the meter of the lines, structure of the verse, what gestures are needed, what material components, and so on.

I expect PC casters will always have new spells in development, as finding spell descriptions complete with full instructions should be quite rare. The caster’s mentor can set up the PC with a couple of spells that are mastered at play start, and likely a few more that are known. Some materials to use when researching new spells is also believable, with letters of introduction or recommendation to assist in the new wizard gaining access to more materials.

Off-Camera Play

October 8, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Another concept I want to support when PCs are in Town is that of off-camera play. Gygax mentions it basically in passing in the DMG, when he speaks of the importance of keeping time. He spoke of time passing when a PC traveled to see an oracle, how many days the character would be unavailable for inclusion in adventures when other PCs wanted to go slog around a dungeon. The whole bit was simply to focus on the PC being unavailable, and with the assumed approach to adventuring at the time being one game day equaling one real world day, and keeping track of what days a PC was available was important in continuity. I walked away from reading that, however, with a sense that off-camera play is a thing and wondering how I could use it at my table.

I can’t say that I worked out any solid procedures for it. It rarely came up in play, actually, and certainly not in any way that involved closely tracking travel time or the like, just a general break in adventuring for a couple of weeks until that PC returned. Aside from an assassination attempt, there was never a formal process for even determining how well the trip went (a D20 roll, perhaps). I find now that I really want a formal process for off-camera activities as a part of Town play.

This has a few predicates. First, the activity the PC is engaged in is a solo endeavour; querying an oracle isn’t a team event. Next, what travel is involved isn’t through the wild and wooly Wilderness where adventure hangs from tree limbs and drops on passersby, so traveling with an adventuring party isn’t an expected part of it. I also reckon that the effects of the off-camera play shouldn’t be of primary importance in any group concerns.

The procedure for off-camera activity needs to be able to gauge the time spent in pursuing it as part of managing Town activities as a whole, plus offer choices to the player as the activity is pursued that affect the off-camera activity, other Town activity, or both. The Town cycle is a major part of the game experience I want, so shoring up the supports for it is important.

What’s Suitable for Off-Camera?

The obvious answers are those already found in the DMG, I reckon. If the PC decides to travel through settled lands to query an oracle or personally handle a business dealing or the like, then it can be done off-camera. The actual business or political negotiations can be expressly played by the GM & player without the rest of the group around, of course, though a diced resolution process can serve just as well (leaving live play to full group situations).

Tasks such as an assassination attempt (if one has assassin PCs in one’s game) also fit with off-camera play. If a PC class has diagetic tasks associated with it that don’t fit well in group play, then those tasks are set out as off-camera. A thief casing wealthy estates in a nearby city is an activity best suited to off-camera. Forays involving burglary there may be best suited to off-camera play.

Any time a PC has an individual test or ritual to perform, then playing off-camera is likely the better approach. A monk has to travel to a far site and pass through a gauntlet of tests there to be able to advance in the monkish order, well, that’s a good thing to do off-camera.

[A thought just popped into my head: for those who like character arcs, off-camera play may be a way to include that sort of thing in an old school campaign where individual stories aren’t a focus.]

I guess the question now involves deciding how involved the off-camera procedures should be? Much the same as the on-camera procedures? Flattened a bit to reduce handling time for the GM? Really simple abstractions?

Design: Social Renown & Reputation

October 7, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Many systems have rendered the idea of character reputation in mechanics, for better or worse…well, most of them for worse, IMO. I was leery of even considering whether I wanted to work reputation rules into my projects because of that. Consider it, I did, however, and I think I’m going to go ahead and put such a subsystem in the projects and see if it survives playtesting.

To place it in context within the projects, I’m approaching social interactions with PCs beginning interactions with NPCs possessed of a neutral or slightly worse reputation out the gate. Their reputation then improves or degrades based on interactions. PCs can have a general reputation based on hearsay and then reputations with individual NPCs based on substantial interactions.

The core of the interaction subsystem is based on the Reaction Table of D&D, though extended in each direction to move hostile reactions and enthusiastically friendly reactions outside the range the dice roll. The reputation table that results from using this base has movement in either direction possible in steps, and it would be rare indeed for any such movement to be more than but a step or two in either direction. PCs will have to do serious work to increase the regard in which they’re held (and behave egregiously bad to tank their reputations).

As the title of this post indicates, I’m also breaking renown and reputation apart in play. I figure the PCs can gain reknown far easier than a better reputation, meaning more people have heard of the PCs for their activities than have had significant interactions to judge them.

That split means that the PCs are likely to be contacted by new potential patrons based solely on their renown, without any reference to reputation. The PCs will thus be held in neutral regard again and again when recruited for some task — getting in the good graces of their new supporters will take much more effort.

Having some measure of renown will increase the PCs’ visibility and lead to more networking opportunities. Developing a positive reputation with influential NPCs will also increase network effects, with positive reputations leading to personal recommendations.

That networking increases access to authorities, nobility (if the setting includes such), mayors, wealthy people … well, pretty much anybody. Now, being well known doesn’t mean all interested parties hold the PCs in any great regard, so just being known isn’t going to result in better treatment, necessarily. It also means the PCs will be noticed by bad guys, for better or worse.

It will prove easier to find sources of information, which I think should be an important part of campaign play. The PCs will need buyers for ancient treasures and sellers of specialized goods, which reknown and reputation can assist with. As I already plan for the liquidation of treasures to involve finding specialized buys and intermediary agents and such, having access to more of each can be seen as essential.

The Base Reaction Table

<= 0 Attack

1 Extremely hostile (will escalate quickly)

2 – 3 hostile

4 – 5 suspicious

6 – 8 guarded

9 -10 calm

11-12 interested

13 pleasant

14+ amicable

PCs will be held in regard in the 6 – 8 range from the outset, with NPCs defaulting to being guarded when interacting. This applies to both immediate interactions and the reputations that result from continued interactions. It is only through play that their reknown grows and reputations improve.

Design: Training

September 29, 2026 / / 0 Comments

PCs training as part of level advancement has been around since the beginning. It’s also strained at credulity for me since I began play. Not that I find it unreasonable that characters should have to spend time practicing to improve and gain consistency, certainly not. The way in which that gets mimicked in the rules has never really gelled with me.

Let’s look at AD&D training:

Note: OD&D has nothing about training among its sections covering experience levels. As monks and druids got added to the system, their descriptions called for fights with higher level monks or druids to advance to specific levels and that was it.

The first statement in the DMG about gaining experience levels is one that I’ve taken to heart, though put into practice in non-obvious ways. To wit — and the emphasis is in the original — UPWARD PROGRESS IS NEVER AUTOMATIC. Simply accumulating xp isn’t enough for advancement in level. I think that’s something that got lost from discussion and play long ago and that loss is for the worse. I suspect losing track of that notion is what led us into the wilderness of not having solid training rules.

Gygax then speaks about the GM rating the overall performance of the play of the character in regard to class function and alignment. He ties this rating directly to the number of weeks required for training to gain a level. The notion of evaluating PC play via adherence to stereotypical PC behavior — was the fighter boldly leading, was the thief sneakily stealing, etc. — doesn’t sit well with me as it disallows the nuances of character and variety of personality among members of the same class. The notion of time necessary for training, however, seems obvious to me. The trick is figuring out how to figure out how much time is necessary. (Keep in mind that time spent training is time the PC is unavailable for adventuring.) He goes into whether tutelage by an NPC is necessary, also, based on that GM evaluation.

The costs of training seem to be tied more to draining PCs of wealth than reflective of any diagetic issues. That’s perfectly fine as a game mechanism, though I reckon there are better ways to deal with excess liquid assets and the costs Gygax lists strain the simulation aspect of play. Paying for training tutors and/or assistants is fine. Paying a noble’s ransom for such is a bit much.

He also notes that training is to undertaken as a solid block of study, uninterrupted by adventuring or anything else, lest the benefits of the training be lost and the PC have to begin training anew after the interruption. A bit harsh, though it certainly fits with the general style of play that centered on forays into dungeons as part of ad hoc groups of PCs, so the temptation to interrupt training time to join an effort to map out a bit more of the fourth dungeon level would have been strong. Force the player to choose which is more important — being involved in the mapping foray or training to increase in level.

The Concepts Taken From It

What I’m taking from this and using as a basic for the projects I’m working on:

• Leveling up is not an automatic event. It requires training.

• Training is an explicit activity to be undertaken in an environment designed for it.

• Training involves other people, whether instructors or assistants, and costs associate with that.

• Training requires a commitment of time devoted to it.

For a bit of background, I can speak to the ways I’ve dealt with xp and leveling over the years. In the beginning, of course, I toed the line on RAW, diligently adhering to what I’d read in the DMG. Then, over time, I’d dropped xp for monsters and just used xp for gold. Then played a bit flipping that script (I don’t advise that <shudder>). Then I toyed with awarding xp based on the number of encounters played through (whether fights or avoidance or negotiation or whatever). What I ended up using for a long while, as did another GM or two in our group of players, simply dropping large amounts of xp whenever it seemed to be a good time to give the PCs a bit of a boost.

That last approach has long been my preference. One of the reasons I played around with different xp award systems has to do with diagetic advancement rates. That a PC fighter could advance from 1st level veteran to 8th level superhero in a matter of a few game months just didn’t sit well with me (and still doesn’t). So, what I’m working on now is laying out guidelines to advancement that work with my preference for diagetic believability and showing progress in advancement due to what players choose to do.

To that end, I’m looking at training being a regular activity for PCs. That is, any time they aren’t out saving the dragon from the princess, they’re living their lives in town and part of that is spending time training. This also makes the idea of upkeep costs a bit more applicable, as paying for training assistants and supplies is required for effectiveness. A fighter needs opponents to wallop with wooden swords, a wizard needs a scribe to copy borrowed texts for reference, and so on — whether household staff or not, those people cost money.

It’s also a two-pronged approach, in that the PCs have to actually get out and adventure to advance smoothly. I think of Ars Magicka and it’s seasons, with Magi being required to adventure for a season before retreating into their drafty towers to study and craft new spells. That cycle of venturing forth followed by a return home with new lessons to learn makes for a fine basic loop for me. Among all the activities to do while at home, training should be a regular thing.

Design: Magicking I

September 23, 2026 / / 0 Comments

This is a subsystem that’s been percolating for ages, repeatedly rising and sinking in the morass in my head. Now that I’ve been putting it together for specific systems, more aspects bubble up.

Channeling

The fundamental element of this approach to working magic is the idea that casters have to channel mana to do their thing. Lots of folks have offered up mana point/magic point systems over the years though I’ve never seen one that measured the channeling instead of setting up pools of mana. I stepped away from thinking of mana as a resource that the caster accumulated and just as surrounding energy that the caster draws on, so the focus lands on how much the caster can draw and control at a time. That’s made a significant difference.

Another key step involved stepping away from channeling a set rate of mana to a random rate. This was tied in with finding a way to vary how long it should take to cast a spell, as I want to avoid a feel of magic-as-technology with set, reliable working times. I landed on rolling dice to measure the channeling as much as to provide variable timing as anything else — one has to channel so many pips of mana to cast a spell, and that can take more or less time as determined by the roll of the dice. That randomness works out diagetically as the caster having to work to summon and channel the mana and such an endeavor being a bit different each time.

Focusing on channeling, I reckon, makes how much a caster can channel an important factor. Then, just like with purely physical exertion, how much the caster can channel before fatigue throws a wrench in the gears also becomes important. Those factors become easy to measure and regulate using the dice — how much can be channeled is set by how many dice can be cast per turn, and how much can be channeled before fatigue sets in limited by how many dice per day.

I’m starting with the idea that a caster can channel only a single die at a time. The default is one per round, though that could certainly mean one per phase where casting is considered, if more than once per round. Even if more than one die can be cast during a round, a limit on the number per round makes sense, still. The limit on how many dice can be cast during a day of activity is also readily modeled by limiting how many dice the caster has capacity for. The number of dice available at any time helps limit magic work to keep it limited in play.

With that established, it becomes apparent that the exertion model also can support PCs pushing themselves to channel mana beyond their working capacity. As runners can force themselves to continue on after hitting the wall of fatigue and eventually stumble across the finish line of a race, magicians can push themselves and work magic beyond when they should. The part to work out is how much extra they can push, how long it takes, and what the price they pay will be. I can see wizards literally knocking themselves out by way of overexertion channeling mana — keep casting until they pass out.

The amount of mana required to cast a spell is arbitrary, of course, and can be set to reflect the desired feel of the game world and play therein. I first started playing around with the channeling dice using spells from AD&D, just dropping the channeling system in to replace the Vancian slots. I landed at requiring 5 points channeled per spell level to cast.

For an individual spell of 1st level, that 5 points of mana channeled means that rolling one channeling die means the spell is powered and completed one-third of the time. I played around with requiring 4 points of mana channeled, which meant half the time a single die was sufficient. That coin flip of success worked well, on the face of it.

If I use 4 pips/spell lvl, then the odds for finishing casting using one die per spell level begin at 50% and fall for every spell level thereafter. That’s not necessarily bad, it just didn’t end up feeling the best to me. Using 5 pips per spell level, made working magic decidedly more demanding, in comparison, and immediately drove me to consider how many dice the caster would have available. With the 4-pip cost, I was looking at a single channeling die per spell level the caster was expected to be able to cast in a day. With the 5-pip cost, I had to consider how adding extra channeling dice capacity would affect casting.

Adding extra dice to the channeling capacity made a major difference. With the caster having more than one die per spell level to throw at the casting, the odds improved to make the casting more reliable. Adding extra dice to the wizard’s capacity then led to being able to perhaps cast an extra spell, if the rolls go well. It adds another choice for the player to make when marshalling resources. At this point, I’m playing around using the caster’s level plus one for the number of channeling dice available.

A first-level MU in AD&D has a single spell slot. Replacing that slot with two channeling dice means that MU could potentially cast two 1st-lvl spells instead of just the one. Even with two channeling dice, however, casting the spell isn’t a given. That’s a variance that I can get behind, as it reinforces the idea that working magic is a challenging affair and doesn’t always go as expected.

That also made me consider that idea of exertion in real terms. So, the MU spent both channeling dice on casting a sleep spell and still hasn’t managed to do so. Well, that’s when pushing the effort to gain another die for channeling has to happen, so the player rolls another die to finish the casting (likely, though still not a given) and then accumulates fatigue. That fatigue affects PC activity in general and isn’t limited to just magical working, as it causes checks for capacity and the wizard could pass out, though is more likely to end up stunned and suffer penalties to all checks for a phase or two.

As mentioned earlier and should be obvious after having read about the process so far, the use of the dice determines casting times. No longer is a 1st-lvl spell finished in the same number of segments every time it’s cast. Nope. It’s finished when the mana has all been channeled, however long that takes. So, with a low roll on the first channeling die, the spell isn’t finished in that first bit of measured time. It may be finished on the next or the one after that. This also ties to the pushed effort, as pushing to add a die can be done immediately at great cost or in another bit of time following the normal rolling at lesser cost. Again, the player can choose how to use that resource and how important finishing a spell is. I like that a great deal.

Channeling dice recover with rest, much the same as hp. I reckon allowing for one die to recover after eight hours of no magic use is something to consider; playtesting can speak to how that affects play. In general, though, I expect a full night’s rest to recover the whole of the channeling capacity, though that, too, warrants playtesting.

This is the foundation of the channeling system I’m using for magic works. There are more facets to it that will appear in later posts, of course.

Design: Action

September 21, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Action is an important part of most fantasy RPGs, with “fantasy adventure game” being an accurate description alongside “role playing game.” Many players automatically turn their thoughts to the combat rules a system offers and perhaps later consider rules governing perilous climbs, balancing on ledges, chases, pursuits, swinging on ropes over yawning chasms, and so forth. Imaginary fights claim the most exciting territory for many players.

Action rules help determine: what’s important to the system and what players can expect to happen frequently; how the players can expect PCs and foes to interact; how dangerous adventuring can be for PCs

Action rules require abstraction of elements due to game demands. This is a key element of crafting action rules and fitting them into the system with the other parts. How abstract, how granular, what choices are available to players?

When crafting an action system, ordering the action is the primary challenge. Ordering provides the structure that everything else is built on.

First, we look at the abstraction. What level of detail are we looking at? How do we best support the level of detail we want?

The granularity of time keeping has to support that detail. If we want granules fine enough that finding and disarming a trap requires eight specific steps/decisions, then a round of a minute might not fit best with that.

The traditional structure is built on rounds of some length and the action that takes place is generally assumed to fit within the time of one round. Whether a ten second round or one minute round, the action has to fit, for the most part. The abstraction assumes a process of multiple small steps when disarming a trap or skewering a rat or deciphering glyphs.

One criticism of this is that not every action a character is allowed reasonably fills a round — there are actions that strain credulity when stretched out that long a time. Others are multi-round affairs with but one decision to be made at the outset and everything thereafter is but a countdown.

How we order action involves putting one action ahead of another and we have to decide on how to go about doing that. Do we look at the nature of the action? The expertise of the character acting? Determine it randomly? Base it on the size of the creature (a giant’s arm is so long it effectively telegraphs swings well in advance)?

Then, do we place the actions in phases to regulate adjudication order? Magic work comes before missile fire (or vice versa) so spells get loosed prior to arrows thudding home in the wizard?

In the projects I have underway, I’m working on three different action systems. One uses five phases during a round to help highlight differences between weapons and skill levels and action types. A second system uses three phases to break down ordering. And the last uses beats wherein a player doesn’t know in advance if the character can finish a chosen action in that time frame or not. If you guessed the first two systems have quite similar goals for action abstraction and the third takes a significantly different approach, you’re correct.

Quick looks:

Five phase system: Swift; Quick; Tempered; Deliberate; and Slow (and Last) phases.

Three phase system: Early phase; Main phase; Late phase.

Beats system: everything in each beat is simultaneous; a PC may be able to make a quick attack or move a normal attack or move, start a lengthy attack with stunting that won’t finish for another beat or two; Action Dice determine what’s available in a given beat.

As the title mentions, I’m looking at these as action systems and not simply combat systems. They’re being crafted to cover melee, ranged weapons (including artillery — giants gonna throw boulders, ya know), magical dueling, aerial fighting, underwater skirmishing, chases and pursuits, scurrying along ropes, clinging to rock faces, and any other sort of action I figure could make an appearance in games on a regular basis. I’m looking to make them suitable for use with skirmishes and to work alongside mass battle rules as needed.

Design: More On Travel

September 21, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Earlier thoughts can be found here: https://osrpgtalk.net/design-travel-navigation/

I’ve been pondering the choices players should be making for travel and trying to whittle the number of key decisions down to few enough to not clutter up play. While doing all that thinkery, I’ve come to realize that a detailed understanding of what, exactly, the travel is supposed to provide for in the game is key to deciding what choices players should face.

OD&D relied on a boardgame for a wilderness map, a game about survival, and that focus on survival carried over into the D&D mythos. Gotta make certain the party has enough food and water for travel and then more for when entering the dungeon. Light sources then get added to the list of resources to be managed (though light doesn’t seem to ever get mentioned during wilderness travel — no overcast nights or deep fog or other circumstances requiring light sources?)

So I had to ask myself what choices I really want to have at the heart of my travel rules. In most environments, water is reasonably abundant to where PCs should have no trouble refilling skins when needed; that’s not a resource in need of management. The management of food, when it comes down to it, is a resource that requires but management of time, with hunting and gathering being available choices. Navigation can be an issue, though I don’t see wholesale getting lost and wandering far off course for long periods as reasonable, and certainly not something I want to include; I think navigation issues are better seen as triggering more opportunities for discovery and adventure and slowing progress to the destination.

I think fatigue is far more important a consideration during travel than any of those factors. Choices about speed of travel, how long to travel during a day, and how well the night’s camp allows for recovery from the day’s travel — those are important considerations in the experience I want to offer in my systems. That also gets affected by finding distractions along the way, time sinks that provide more interaction and challenge at the expense of miles traveled and conservation of stamina. That requires choices about how to manage time on part of the players; that’s what I want at the heart of my travel rules.

The Types of Travel

I’ve also taken to looking at movement in the wilderness as having three different modes: travel along roads and clearly marked trails; travel following landmarks relying on animal trails and dead reckoning; and actual intentional exploration of unknown areas. Journeys, excursions, and treks into the wilderness. I think the nature of each warrants different procedures for each. This means that pointcrawl and pathcrawl and hexcrawl procedures will appear.

I recently stumbled across the notion that PCs should be able to find shortcuts here and there in the wilds, reflecting them finding game trails and the like that help cut off a bit of time/distance when traveling. I love that! It fits nicely with my penchant for variable travel distances and with failed navigation meaning only a delay before the party gets back on track. The travel procedures can slow the party or speed the party along. Woot!

The Weird Environs

I think it worth a look at the environs the PCs move through, too, as those can — should — have an effect on movement rates and encounters. Incursions by other worlds on the main setting world can appear in all sorts of places, and the Fantastic Wild should be rife with the odd and unusual. I’m still pondering and playing with the existence of such incursions being obvious or not to the travelers. The incursions I’m thinking of are pre-planned sites on a campaign map, either, just randomly

The lands of Fae can intrude on the mortal world, with the most obvious places for that to happen coinciding with hills or hedgerows and the like. Hints that something is amiss can include faint music, distant chatter of small voices, or odd glimmers of light. The sudden appearance of fae creatures or beings would be a dead giveaway, though the fae could certainly have stepped through to the mundane world without the party having stepped through in the other direction.

Haunted forests or groves or the like can also waylay traveling parties. A slight darkening, mists rising unexpectedly, the appearance of distant features that PCs can swear weren’t there just moment before, all of those can provide clues that the party has stepped into a different realm.

The Elder Lands are akin to Faery, and the two can overlap a great deal, as the boundary between them is even more porous than that between them and the mundane world. Where the trees and plants in Faery tend to be a bit…brighter…, the trees of the Greenwood grow larger, with darker foliage. The beings found in the Elder Lands also tend to be larger, whether animal people or monstrous creatures.

All of these affect travel times, with the major factor being how quickly the travelers realize they are, indeed, Elsewhere and figure out how to get back to the mundane world. The distance traveled Elsewhere has to be traversed again, with perhaps some variation that could shorten or extend the distance. Having passed into and out of another world can also taint the travelers so they encounter more beings from the other side that slow them, even when back on the mundane side of things.

Design: Social Interaction Basics

September 21, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Social interaction is one of the facets of play that has long been somewhat contentious. There are those who maintain that all social interaction should be left up to the people at the table and completely free of any mechanical consideration. There are those who recognize that player capabilities vary greatly and without mechanics, it would be impossible for a socially inept player to pull off a charismatic character. And there are all of the people who wish for something that doesn’t mechanize the whole interaction yet want the rules to provide *something* to help sort it out.

I’m in that last group. I want there to be rules providing structure and resolution while allowing the interaction at the table to guide it to that resolution. I recognize that the players and the characters are *not* identical in capabilities of any sort, so the way in which we don’t make players pick up weapons and physically act out fights should also be reflected in not expecting players to physically play out social interactions. Let the players be players and the characters be separate entities that the players aren’t expected to imitate perfectly.

The best of the systems I’ve seen that address social interactions in play involve using the venerable Reaction Table from early D&D. That makes a good deal of sense, as the Reaction Table is all about PCs interacting with others and what type of reaction they receive while doing so. I can see using that table as the basis of a social interaction system while understanding that it needs a lot of tweaking to offer greater nuance in adjudicating situations in play. The possibility of a hostile reaction resulting in a physical attack when a PC hails a merchant group along the road should be much slighter than the basic Table results would indicate, for example, prima facie.

I expect a base line level of regard the NPC has for the PC. Then PC actions can adjust the reactions of the NPC for better or worse, leading to success — the NPC acquiescing to the PC’s wishes — or failure — usually, the NPC simply walking away from the discussion. That general approach, I think, allows for a lot of nuance in execution and lots of ways to hand additional processes on it to add to the flavor.

This approach also supports all manner of player expression of PC action equally, that is, there’s no inherent preference for third person statements of action, first person statements, or improv theater expressions. This rests on the assumption that interactions are structured by procedure that inputs discrete information for a time unit and generates output for that, with limited time units available during the interaction. A player acting out a PC soliloquy can stretch on as long as the GM allows and it still involves one discrete turn in play, the same as the next player stating their PC statement in a couple of short sentences.

As with many activities, I’m also a fan of the uncertainly regarding the time required or time available to the PCs. That uncertainty drives a basic sense of urgency, as players understand they don’t necessarily have as much time as they want to sweet talk the mayor into helping them and they can’t be sure how much time they actually have to do so. Poor reactions can shorten an interaction session. The length of the session can be subject to randomization from the outset, too, which can be limiting.

I just recently spent some time chasing the rabbits of Reknown and Reputation down their respective holes, and those certainly have bearing on resolving social interactions. They also have bearing on what interactions happen in the first place, too, so should probably get their own post or posts.

Design: Sneaking

September 21, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Sneaking around a hostile stronghold is a situation that seems to arise with some regularity in the fantasy adventures I’ve experienced. It could be caves with unfriendly humanoids living therein, a hostile noble’s estate manor, alleyways in a border city, or amongst the winding switchbacks and boulders on a mountainside.

One of the weaknesses of the classic Thief character class in D&D has been that the class was designed for the character to operate in solo. Yeah, in games about groups of characters acting in concert, thief characters were designed to do their thing all by themselves. Everybody else can take a break and play some poker or something among themselves while Sneaky McThiefy does their thing. This isn’t a horrible arrangement when it comes to picking locks or checking for traps, though any time infiltrating a stronghold comes up, things can get kludgy.

It’s possible, certainly, for the players to plan infiltrations with the non-thief PCs causing distractions and getting into position for obvious intrusions on the site to mix things things up. Playing out the split narrative between solo sneak and the rest of the party can prove tricky, though. I reckon part of the solution is to simply include the non-thieves in more of the sneaky stuff.

It’s always been the case, as many have claimed, that all PCs can sneak around to some extent; the chance to surprise foes rests on that assumption, despite it never being stated. All PCs have some ability to dart from one hiding place to another, climb over walls, and hide behind furnishings and in dark corners. The difference, as I see it, lies in how well they can do it when compared to the professional sneaks.

All PCs can move quietly. The difference lies on how quickly they can do so and how close they can be to guards without noise giving their presence away. Where a thief can pass within several feet of a watchman without notice, the rest of the party may only be able to pass without tipping the watch off at a distance much further away.

All PCs can hide in places that provide cover and shadow. The difference lies in how much cover and how deep the shadows necessary to allow for it to be effective. I offered up a take on AD&D thief skills some time ago that touched on this, so I’ll see if I can find that again and link to it. (Note: it’s a bit lengthy.) For those who enjoy that classic approach on thief skills, I figure that look at the skills will provide material to consider adding to play.

That take on the classic theif skills speaks to the points mentioned above about thieves being qualitatively better at sneaking around. Thieves can move more quickly and quietly and get closer to guards without being noticed. They can hide better and requires less cover and shadow to do so to avoid notice.

I suspect that there’s a need to describe how amateur sneaks — the other PCs — can sneak around to help integrate the whole party better in plans to infiltrate a stronghold in a way that doesn’t spend most of play time resolving the actions of the solo thief character. So many people seem to have assumed that because thieves have skills explicitly described that other types of PC can’t also do the same activities, which is nonsense. The difference is akin to that between somebody who plays pick up basketball in a gym and the pros who make a living at it; they all play basketball, the pros are simply much better at it. In the same fashion that Hrothgar, the Mighty, is better at fighting than Nimbleshanks, the Quiet, Nimbleshanks is much better at sneaking than Hrothgar.

Laying out some explicit processes for sneaking in general should be included in the rules, certainly. GM materials discussing how to present the situations to include more sneaky activity by other classes also seems helpful. I’m thinking the process offered that walks through infiltration actions should explicitly support actions by all PCs, instead of focusing on what the thief does will carry the rest of the load.

Design: Surprise, Redux

August 1, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I’ve already given some thoughts on the topic that can be found here:

Design: Surprise

I just recently got back to those rules with an eye collecting all the principles behind them for a master file to refer to when writing the rules for all three of my projects. I also want to get them finished and released soon, so they’re out of my head and in the wild where other people can freely use and abuse them and provide me with feedback.

One change I can report immediately is that I’ve dropped the use of “phase” when referring to surprise, and now think in terms of “beats.” I think it works better to think of that time passing in that fashion by removing the association with discrete measures of time. This first occured to me when working on the GG project and needing a good way to describe the progression of action in that project.

I’ve reorganized the Surprise rules to better focus them on “how to.” Peeling away the layer of description that provided the whys and wherefores has been slow, although I think it absolutely necessary. I have a pronounced tendency to explain the reasoning behind rules instead of offering “just the facts” and it’s something that I have to work hard to stymie.

The reorganization also helped clarify what I want surprise rules to do. The encounter system should shuffle some basic information about an encounter to the surprise sub-system — and this is key — to first check to see if a surprise situation is possible and/or desirable for the encounter. That’s something that I find missing from the traditional surprise rules, where the sub-system is assumed to be part of every encounter. It explains all those encounters in play where the parties are too far apart for it to make a difference.

The traditional rules also ignore differences in sensory abilities between the two, leaving that entirely, without guidance, to GMs. I’ve had players act surprised (!) when their PCs couldn’t surprise creatures that were able to smell the PCs well before the two groups got close enough for the PCs to notice the other. They’d never considered scent to be a factor because they’d never read it in the rules.

The first thing I’ve designed my surprise rules sub-system to do, then, is to determine whether surprise can even be a significant factor in an encounter. I’m not going to bother checking for surprise if it isn’t. Are the groups close enough to actually engage in some fashion when one notices the other (or they each notice the other)? That depends on sensory abilities and limits provided by terrain and weather and such, first, and then considerations of engagement and interaction based on the proximity, next. If the parties can’t launch missiles or spells and can’t close to bash each others’ heads, then surprise just isn’t something I care to add to the situation.

I’ve also wondered why the traditional rules want the encounter system to provide one distance for an encounter and then change that distance if one or the other is surprised. I want the encounter system to determine the distance based on sensory limits, then the surprise system can determine if surprise adds anything to the encounter based on that distance. When the nothing burger of both sides being surprised is tossed in at distances where no real engagement is possible anyway…well, that’s nonsense I want to step away from.

So the surprise rules should first check to make certain surprise is possible and would have a significant effect on an encounter. After that, then the details of surprise checks appear, with modifiers to the checks, how many beats of surprise result, and anything that could affect the number of beats for individuals.

I also think the lack of what surprise entails in terms of limitations on actions, for both the surprised and unsurprised, is a failing of the traditional rules. Does being surprised affect saving throws? A PC surprised by a dragon and getting toasted isn’t as likely to save as an unsurprised PC, I reckon, and this sort of thing is unaddressed in the traditional rules (thus relegated entirely to table rulings by default, as with so many other things). I want to provide some guidelines for what being surprised entails in more detail.

Same for being unsurprised and taking actions. What are the limits on movement — charging, sneaking, fleeing? How are attacks limited — in number and/or targeting? Casting spells, using items, loading missile weapons…how are the unsurprised beings limited? Expressly laying out some general rules helps GMs make rulings in the edge cases.

That rough draft is obviously obsolete now. I can say that the 2D6 check is still good. All other parts may have been revamped, though, as I’ve picked through it all and put it through its paces. I’ll offer the roll results again, for those who don’t want to click through to the other post.

* Roll of 2 or 3: surprised for three beats

* Roll of 4: surprised for two beats

* Roll of 5: surprised for one beat

* Roll of 6+: not surprised

« Older posts

© 2026 OSRPGtalk

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑