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 has the lucky number that keeps coming up.

Have you ever heard someone explain to a new player that the great thing about RPGs is that you can do anything you want? Have you ever thought about what that really means, and if it’s actually true? How do you create a space where everyone can share their imaginative choices, where everyone’s imaginations live in the same space? We’re going to look at the limits of player agency in today’s episode.

You may have heard there early D&D had the role of a Caller, the person that coordinates all of the actions of the rest of the PCs and presents the “final answer” for what the party is doing to the DM. But where can you find more about that role and what it does? Well, not in the original edition of the D&D Rules, in any of the brown box white booklets. Also not in the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide. Does that mean that OD&D and AD&D 1e didn’t expect you to have a caller? Oh, no, they did, they just didn’t tell you what it was. Both sources include the concept in their examples of play (although the DMG calls it the lead character instead of the caller). Its one of those rules from the tabletop wargaming hobby that you should just know if you were playing D&D. But wait, you’re old like me and remember the caller was definitely defined somewhere, and yes, it was. In the BX Basic Set, the caller is defined as the player whose job it is to listen to all of the other players, clarify what the party wants to do, and present it to the DM. Hard to believe players these days are so soft that they need you to explain rules instead of just imply them from examples. What’s gaming coming to. 

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 convinced us that if we get high enough level, we’ll start attracting followers

Sometimes your worried that any wrong move will get your character killed. Sometimes you feel like you’re so powerful, only the big bad is going to be a challenge. But there’s a magical spot in the middle, where you feel challenged, but also badass. We’re going to look at why those middle levels of D&D feel like the sweet spot, and maybe if we look hard enough, we can figure out how to bring some of that tier 2 magic to either side of that sweet spot.

In earlier editions of D&D, by the time you reached 9th to 11th level, it was time for you to build some kind of house for yourself, attract some followers, and sink a whole lot of gold into your stronghold, maybe collecting taxes from the locals. You know, like fabled heroes of old. But the AD&D 2e sourcebook Skills & Powers introduced something that changed this paradigm. When you were custom building the features you wanted for your class, you had the option of gaining extra points by giving up your ability to build a fortress and attract followers. That means Skills & Powers is one of the earliest examples of an RPG letting you give up something you didn’t care about to get more abilities than you would other wise have. If you’re not willing to give up being a landlord to bump your hit die up to a d12, I don’t know if you were ever really, truly and adventurer. 

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 grants us XP for doing the show.

When should your players level up their characters? Beyond gold and magic items, advancing a character can be the greatest reward in fantasy gaming. Traditionally that meant tracking and awarding XP, but increasingly, RPGs, including D&D, are embracing the concept of tracking advancement in other ways. Is there still a place for XP, and why might it still be a good system for your table? We’ll explore that in today’s episode.

You may have heard of the “XP for gold” rule, but D&D co-creator Dave Arneson had a more radical idea: adventurers should only gain XP for gold they spent. After his early exit from TSR, he formalized this concept in his Judge’s Guild supplement, The First Fantasy Campaign.

The catch? You didn’t just get XP for spending gold—you had to categorize it. His system divided expenditures into seven specific groups: Wine, Women, Song, Wealth, Fame, Religion, and Hobby. (Way to gatekeep woman and LGBTQIA+ gamers there, Dave) Your final XP total depended on two incredibly dense charts that interact in a way that’s about as easy to figure out as the three seashells in Demolition Man.

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, we’re still processing our game notes

It’s natural for a GM to wonder if what they presented in the last game session is what their players wanted. Did that section that you spent hours outlining provide the response you were hoping? Is the secret mastermind going to be rewarding for the PCs to uncover? What if I asked for too many ability checks? What if I forgot to ask for the ability checks that one player just put all of their effort into increasing? In today’s episode, we’re going to look at gathering feedback and putting that feedback into action in our games.

In 1976, Lost Caverns of Tsojconth was used as a tournament module at Wintercon V, and wasn’t revised and distributed for sale until 1982, when it came out as S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Some of the long term D&D elements that showed up in the tournament module were Iggwilv, Graz’zt, and intelligent weapons. The mass market version in 1982 went on to include three more demon lords, the Demonomicon of Iggwilv, the Prison of Xagyg, and all of those summoning and imprisoning spells that eventually showed up in AD&D’s Unearthed Arcana. As part of the marketing for the 2024 anthology Quests from the Infinite Staircase, WotC released a condensed version of Tsojcanth called Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth which included tournament rules. So you can run this for your players, and tell everyone that doesn’t win that they need to get gud. That will go over well.

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 can still be unpredictable.

We all know the fantasy archetypes that spring from fantasy RPGs. The naïve but steadfast paladin, the stoic ranger who relates better to animals than people, the arrogant wizard that looks down on anyone less intelligent than they are. But we also know people that intentionally play against those archetypes. The hard drinking hedonistic paladin of the goddess of love, the ranger that has friends in every tavern in every city along the Sword Coast, the wizard that loves teaching and explaining new things to others. Today we’re going to look at playing against type, why you may want to do it, and how sometimes it can be very similar to playing a rigid archetype. 

While there are a lot of people who have argued otherwise, D&D has had rules to facilitate roleplaying almost from the beginning. Alignment is the first step along that path, but it created moral absolutes that were often wielded against players instead of supporting their character decisions. The 2nd edition Ravenloft Boxed Set introduced the Dark Gifts, temptations that would slowly turn PCs into the same Darklords whose evil they were resisting, but although these provided some benefits, they were, like alignment, mainly a tool of negative reinforcement. Player’s Option: Skills and Powers introduced one of the worst things you can do in any RPG, giving PCs more starting abilities for taking a flaw, where the real game was picking a flaw that would never affect you significantly. D&D 5e introduced Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, that involved positive reinforcement! You get something extra for roleplaying . . . just . . . not if you already have inspiration. And they’re not framed as “yes/no” questions, so deciding if you get inspiration can turn into a debate or at least a prolonged discussion in the middle of a session. So close.

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license

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 still isn’t on its last breath.

Only two things in life are certain. Death and Taxes. Or in D&D, Death Saves and Upkeep rules. In this episode, we’re going to look at character death. How should you handle it? Can you run a game without it? How does it affect the stakes of your game? What does it mean to have a meaningful death in the game? We’re going to teeter on the boundary between life and death today in this episode of THAC0 w/ Advantage.

In OD&D, at zero hit points meant death. But people developed an affection for words on a character sheet. It wasn’t long before an alternative developed. In the AD&D 1e DMG, negative hit points were introduced as an optional rule. You didn’t die until you reached -10 hit points, losing one hit point per round until healed or stabilized. Regardless of magical healing, you were out of commission for a week afterward. AD&D 2e changed this recovery time to 24 hours, but you also lost all of your prepared spells. D&D 3e introduced the disabled state if you landed on exactly 0 hit points. You could lie there and do nothing, or start bleeding out after taking an action. But if you want to see the precursor to D&D 5e’s Death Saves, you need to look at the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the collected BECMI era rules, which introduced the idea that if you dropped to 0 hit points, you could make a save versus Death. If you made the save, you had 10 minutes of additional life, as long as you didn’t take any more damage. But if you failed, the next thing your character would hear is dialogue in all caps. DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license

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 a spawn point for new players.

On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about zero level humans. But in this case, we me people that haven’t played D&D before. We’ve talked about new players before, but what about specific techniques? How do you introduce concepts in bit sized chunks that will go down easy? We’re going to talk about setting up your D&D sessions with new players by looking at video game tutorials in today’s episode.

There are many famous villains in D&D. Acererak, Lolth, Tiamat, Orcus, Strahd, Lareth the Beautiful, Verminard, Lord Soth, Manshoon, the Xanathar. But for a generation of D&D players, one of the worst villains is Bargle. The BECMI Red Box Basic set taught players the rules by running them through a “choose your own adventure” style scenario which ended in a confrontation with a magic item stealing wizard named Bargle. Bargle’s greatest crime, however, is fridging the NPC that has been your friend all through the intro adventure. There is no way to save Alex . . . I mean . . . Aleena the Cleric, you just have to figure out if you can make Major Force . . . er . . . I mean Bargle, pay.

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license