THAC0 with Advantage

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D knows where our families live.

Sometimes it’s satisfying to present your players with an objective and watch them make their plans to achieve them. But once you start to get an idea about what makes your player characters tick, it may be time to throw them a curve ball once in a while, in the form of a moral quandary. Do you take the quick and easy path? Does the good of the many always outweigh the needs of the few? We’re going to look at adding moral quandaries to your games and how to make those meaningful and fun.

In the early days of the game, changing alignment was generally a bad thing, but changing alignment was especially bad for characters like Druids, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers, who would lose their class abilities if their alignment drifted out of the acceptable range for the class. 

But the Dragonlance Adventures hardcover in AD&D 1st edition decided to up the ante.

It introduced an alignment tracking chart, with 20 boxes, and 10 boxes labeled “Transition.” Any character in the “transition” area between alignments suffered a -1 penalty to hit, their armor class was one worse, and there was a 10% chance for spells to fail. As with most rules around alignment, there were some disconnects. 

Inside the hardcover it mentioned that most actions shifted alignment from 1 to 3 boxes, but the instructions on the tracking box said, well, maybe it’s 1 to 4 boxes. Whenever someone made it through that transition phase, you were instructed to put them in the middle of the alignment tracking chart for the new alignment, but no instructions ever told you to shift alignment to show someone was more dedicated to their alignment, so by the instructions included in the book, 10 boxes in each alignment area never got used, they just sat there taunting you about how you really could do better (or worse) couldn’t you?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, the last time we made a Survival check, we followed the tracks back to D&D.

Dungeons & Dragons has established the three tiers of the game as combat, roleplaying, and exploration, and while the definition of these three tiers is native to Dungeons & Dragons, it’s easy to see and apply the concepts to other fantasy RPGs. We’ve taken a look at roleplaying and combat, and now we’re going to dive into exploration. What does the exploration tier encompass, how much does it interact with the rules of the game, and what do we need to do to make exploration in the game meaningful. 

The Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide may be best known as the first source in AD&D 1e to introduce proficiencies to the game as a whole, instead of just being a rule tied to a specific setting. But in addition to that broad new subsystem, it also introduced expanded rules for falling, fatigue and exhaustion, hyperthermia, ventilation and air flow, the difficulty of starting up a new business, and how people will look at you funny when you’ve been literally buried in work for too long. All the good things to help you take your mind off real life long enough to realize you don’t want to live in a D&D setting.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is readying its action to cast hold person on us if we try to leave.

Sometimes no matter how much talking you do eventually you end up in a fight. It can be exciting to do big amounts of damage or to barely survive due to your low hit points, but sometimes the numbers game just isn’t as compelling as it could be. That’s why we’re looking at ways of making your D&D and other fantasy gaming combats more exciting and varied. 

In AD&D 1e,  Weapon Speed Factor represented how much effort it took to bring a weapon to bear in combat. It was the tie breaker in case both sides rolled the same number for initiative, but it also made life complicated for people that like heavy weapons or spellcasters. If you tied with someone and their weapon speed factor was five or more lower than yours, they not only got to attack, they got an additional attack, and another additional attack for every additional factor of five. So someone with a dagger could stab someone with a pike three times before the person with the pike got to act. If you were a spellcaster, you had to compare your side’s initiative plus the number of segments it took to cast the spell, against your opponent’s initiative and their speed factor, and if it was lower, they got to take a swing at you first, and if they hit, you lost your spell. Maybe concentration checks aren’t so bad after all.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D gives us permission to be social with people we don’t already know!

What are the rules for social interactions? We’re not talking about personal space and active listening skills, we’re talking about the rules in fantasy roleplaying games that govern our interactions with other characters. What are some best practices for those scenes where our characters keep their weapons sheathed and try to flex their soft skills? That’s what we’re looking at in today’s episode.

Comeliness was a short lived ability score that originally showed up in Unearthed Arcana in AD&D 1e. It was an ability score expressly for determining how attractive your character was. While the ability score was removed from AD&D 2e, it did show up in multiple places in AD&D 1e, including Dragon Magazine #110, where we learned that Elminster’s Comeliness was 12. Because of I10 Ravenloft 2: The House of Gryphon Hill, we know that Strahd has a Comeliness of 16. Comeliness also appeared in the World of Greyhawk boxed set from AD&D 1e, expressly so we could find out the Comeliness scores of the Quasi-Deities of that setting . . . but not any of the gods that appear later in the same book. I wonder how many points of damage you have to do to yourself with a hammer to raise your Comeliness score?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D won’t let us ascend to become Immortals yet.

It is in the nature of all things to end, but what does that mean for D&D and fantasy RPG campaigns? What does it take for the end of a campaign to feel meaningful, and how much effort do you have to invest to get that result? How far out do you plan for an ending, and what happens if you realize the end is nearer than you expected? We’ll look at the end of campaigns in our episode today.

Mac: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, your Constitution score was important for a number of reasons, 

Wolfman: Like how many beers you could pound to put that dwarf in his place

Mac: Wolfman, that’s not cool anymore. People should drink in moderation

Wolfman: Sure. Know your limit and all that. 

Mac: Good. And don’t forget it. As I Was saying, constitution was important but one of the most extreme reasons was to measure how likely someone was to survive being returned to life, and how many times they could be brought to life. 

Wolfman: Tick tock on the old constitution clock.

Mac: That good old clock of doom Wolfman. If you tried to return someone to life, there was a percentile chance that they stayed dead anyway. In addition to that, a given creature could only be returned to life a number of times equal to their original Constitution score. Even if your Constitution score was raised above its starting value, that original value was a hard limit. 

Wolfman: Boom and the lights go out forever. The grey walls a coming.

Mac: That means if you ever wanted to determine the original Constitution score of a character, you could kill them and return them to life until they didn’t come back, and you would either know their Constitution score, or they failed that Resurrection Survival Check.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D told us we’re high enough level to build a podcast and attract followers.

Sometimes the real treasure is the friends we made along the way. Other times, the real treasure is the treasure we found along the way. But some rewards sit in the middle between those two extremes. This episode we’re going to take a look at other ways to reward your players beyond standard treasure. Get ready to hand out those titles, supernatural gifts, followers, and brand new puppies.

In earlier editions of D&D, when your character reached a certain level, they could build a fortress and attract followers. Clerics would attract less powerful priests, wizards would attract apprentices, thieves got to open a branch of the thieves guild to run, and fighters . . . got to collect taxes. They also attracted followers, because if you’re going to extort . . . er . . . collect taxes from the locals, you need armed and armored tax collectors. While AD&D had random event table, this is another instance where BECMI actually had more playable rules that involved tracking a Confidence Level and rolling on the specific events for that confidence level, which specified what happened every new year, whenever there was a natural disaster, when a large unallied military force shows up, and if you cancel an expected holiday or celebration. Which means Alan Rickman has to make a Confidence Level check in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when he cancels Christmas.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D surrounds us and penetrate us, binding our fandom together.

If you’ve ever looked into how fiction is categorized, many times you’ll see sci-fi and fantasy as a meta-category. We know there are some huge differences between sci-fi stories and fantasy stories, but what about those stories that really do have one foot in both genre? And what does that kind of genre mash up mean for fantasy gaming? In this episode we’re going to look at space opera as fantasy, and how that fits into your fantasy gaming.

In 1976 TSR published Metamorphosis Alpha, a game about a colony ship carrying the remnants of Earth to a new home in the stars, but over the course of its mission, the inhabitants have formed a low-tech society that no longer realizes they are on a colony ship, with the core gameplay consisting of exploration and relearning how to use the high-tech tools of the past. We could talk about how the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide had conversions to this game so you could have your D&D characters wander the Starship Warden, or about how this was the inspiration for Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and the Gamma World RPG. But according to James M. Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha, without this game we may not have had a dedicated Monster Manual. Apparently after seeing the separate bestiary booklet for the game, Gary Gygax decided that AD&D needed a separate book to consolidate the monsters in the game all in one place.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D gives us puppy dog eyes from our bookshelves if we don’t pick it up and play it once in a while. 

In the past we’ve looked at the history of D&D and how it has interacted with diversity and representation, as well as why its important to be mindful of this topic. This time, we’re revisiting the topic, but from a slightly different angle. We want to talk about why its not just the right thing to do, its the smart thing to do when it comes to running a better game. We’re going to look at the benefits of good representation in your fantasy campaigns.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D gives us puppy dog eyes from our bookshelves if we don’t pick it up and play it once in a while. 

In the past we’ve looked at the history of D&D and how it has interacted with diversity and representation, as well as why its important to be mindful of this topic. This time, we’re revisiting the topic, but from a slightly different angle. We want to talk about why its not just the right thing to do, its the smart thing to do when it comes to running a better game. We’re going to look at the benefits of good representation in your fantasy campaigns.

The art of Dungeons & Dragons has been foundational to capturing the imagination of many of its fans, but the art of art direction hasn’t always been one of D&D strongpoints. In the Greyhawk setting, the Baklunish people were referred to as having golden-hued skin, and Chondathans in the Forgotten Realms, who make up a significant portion of the population of the Heartlands of the Forgotten Realms, are described as having olive skin. Early D&D described mountain dwarves as having deep brown skin, and the Turami people of the Vilhon Reach, a major trade hub of Faerun, are described as having dark skin and tight, curly hair. But if you look at the artwork of early D&D, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and adventuring humans were almost always fair skinned, with most people of color in artwork representing native people of exotic lands that the adventurers go to from their homes. This wasn’t a specific failure of the art department, it was a failure of the 80s and 90s to realize that your default artwork can’t assume that everyone in a fantasy setting has traditionally white features. D&D 3rd edition may have been a bit of a turning point. Regdar, the iconic fighter, was meant to be a person of color, but management wanted him to be unambiguously white. So the design team and the art department constantly conspired to make Regdar the character that was setting off traps, getting blown up, poisoned, and generally on the edge of death. 

THE Definitive Kirk/Spock Video

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the game always stocked in our pantry at home.

Whether its at a convention, when you want a change of pace from your regular campaign, or you want to introduce new players to a fantasy RPG, compelling one shots can be an important tool for you to have at your disposal. We’re revisiting the topic of one shot games, put them in context of the history of RPGs, and give you some tools for making them work for you at your table.

The Tomb of Horrors may be one of the most talked about adventures in the history of D&D, but what sometimes gets lost in the discussion is that it was originally created as a one-shot. There has been a lot of focus on how Gary Gygax designed it to humble players that were a little too proud of their characters, but even in that capacity, it was never meant to be inserted into a regular campaign. When the adventure was first run at the first Origins in 1978, it was run as a competitive event with many disposable pregenerated characters. The lethality and “unfairness” of the adventure weren’t hidden, they were features. But Gygax still designed it like he was Riddler heckling Batman while death traps are trying to cut his head off.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D changes over time when we’re not looking.

When your NPCs has personalities and goals, it can make your world feel more dynamic. But what happens when that NPC depth remains static over a campaign that spans years? How can we advance our NPCs so that they’re not just two-dimensional, but they actually travel through the fourth dimension. Today on the show we’re going to look at how and why to change your campaign NPCs over time. 

Random tables for determining the traits of NPCs go all the way back to the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide. The “Facts Tables” included details like Alignment, Possessions, Appearance, Sanity, General Tendencies, Personality, Interests, Collections, and Random Languages. You could have a neutral NPC with average wealth who is mature, neurotic, malevolent, friendly, and altruistic, collects books and scrolls, and speaks the language of stone giants. The DMG doesn’t say you need to use every table, just that you should have at least three general traits, and the DM is told to reroll any contradictory results. But is it REALLY contradictory to be malevolently friendly and altruistic? Was passive aggressiveness invented yet in the 1970s?