Hits and hazards

Probably since the first player character was crushed by a troll in one strike, RPGs have acknowledged the need for a buffer between the player characters and instant, arbitrary death. And this has lead to confusion and debate, not to mention plentiful variants, from Hits to Stamina to Wounds to Wound Levels and Consequences. And whether we choose to use ever-growing piles of Hit Points by Hit Dice per Level, or Hits by Location, or a stable pool of Hit Points closer to the average of Strength and Constitution, it’s hard to be sure exactly what these HP are.

Are they are rating of how much physical damage the body has taken? Or do they include abstractions such as physical harm, fatigue, luck, shock, or even the character’s will to survive? In most cases, as Tracy Hickman has pointed out, these Hit Point systems are really a pacing mechanism, showing the dramatic gap between the start of combat and the point where one side or the other is defeated.

So for lighter systems, tinkering or for solo play, I use what I call Resilience or Resource (Res). Each character has perhaps 2-3 points each, and a significant strike costs a point. When the character has no more Resilience, then the consequences of damage are severe, depending on context (they’re wounded, struck down, knocked out, etc.). This provides the interval between a single hit and a character expiring, with dangerous consequences down the line.

Hazard Points

What if we reversed the flow of hits and replaced them with Hazards? Here, instead of handing out damage, the GM assigns Hazard Points, which represent how much danger or trouble the character is in. This is also abstract, but it’s based on the situation and the risk the player is taking, not their personal reserve of luck or vitality.

A Hazard Point could be:

• A minor wound or blow, that throws the character off-balance
• Fatigue, as the character weathers a series of strikes
• Position, as the character is outnumbered or driven into corner
• Exposure, as the character risks enemy fire to maneuver

Or any other feature of the situation that raises the stakes.

Character would have a suitable maximum number of hazard points they could take, around 3 for a gritty engagement, before their luck runs out and they face real, proportional consequences: a wound, a stunning strike, a disabling injury.

How characters deal with Hazard Points also depends on the context. Fatigue can be taken off by resting in safety. Minor wounds would take time to heal. Perhaps a character under fire can take shelter. Or armor can absorb a hit. In these cases, the Hazard Point is erased.

To represent Hazards, the GM could use a pool of chips of some kind, which are handed to the player and handed back as the situation is resolved.

This resolution system is still abstract, but the focus is on risk and danger, not PC qualities, and the Hazard tokens that track upwards as danger looms are a nice way to manage tension in the moment.

Reality check

Realism, in an RPG, is mostly a mirage. Even if the dice could do more than broadly approximate probabilities in the real-world, most players – and GMs – would not want to subject their characters, for example, to the actual risks of death and injury in a medieval battle.

Some groups aim for genre emulation – heroic fantasy, anime, pulp, horror, and so on – as a touchstone. But genre is a literary and narrative construct, and so it can lead you to try and meet the expectations of the story rather than find the story by playing the world.

In the fictional worlds of the games I play, I aim for _verisimilitude_, the appearance or sense of being real, which comes through consistent and believable details that emerge from real-world experience and expectations. Verisimilitude creates the impression that things are plausible without trying to accurately simulate the precise parameters and probabilities of any given event, like a sword-swing or a hike on an icy mountain path.

So in pursuit of verisilimilitude, it's a good thing to check your expectations against the real world. Over the years, I've gone into dungeons (like the catacombs of Paris), castles, towers, and recently the bunker forts of the Atlantic Wall, and each time I'm reminded of some useful, and grounding, facts that we can apply to our fantasy adventuring sites.

Passages, chambers

Passages in fortifications tend to be narrow – and cold. In your dunqeon designs, the corridor space is often less than 5 feet across, and ceilings are low. 

In game terms, there's often no room to swing a blade. Slashing sword attacks and similar strikes will be at a severe disadvantage. Dungeons favor thrusting weapons.

And in a chamber, the roof is rarely flat. It's likely a vault or an arch. Even so, there's often not a lot of headspace, and you're unlikely to be able to manage a down strike, or shoot an arrow or thrown spear very far without hitting the ceiling.

In game, missile attacks are limited to close range.

And stairs

Towers are great settings, but stairs, especially circular stairs tend to be extremely steep and narrow. Climbing is tiring, and the risk of putting a foot wrong on the narrow steps is considerable if you're under pressure: attacked or in a hurry. 

In game, climbing stairs under pressure should require a dexterity or fatigue check. And defenders have an advantage striking down. Consider also how missiles and objects thrown down stairs can create serious hazards!

Darkness and light sources

The actual underground is absolutely dark. Without light, players are effectively blind, and almost blind a very short distance from the entrance.

In actual pre-modern contexts, lights such as lanterns, candles, lamps, rushlights, and torches, only effectively illuminate a few paces in advance, or a small chamber. And if they're knocked out of your hand, they're likely to go out instrantly.

On the other hand, even a dim light is visible to observers from a long way away – effectively in line of sight.

This means that the most effective scout will move forward in the dark towards an unknown light source, rather like Bilbo Baggins sneaking up on the trolls' bonfire.

Used well, the effects of undeground darkness and low light can help create a tense, engaging situation for players, and keep them on edge as they explore unknown spaces. But many games, including current editions of D&D, forestall these options by making many character backgrounds adept at seeing in the dark, or with magical or other options for lighting available throughout the dungeon complex. If you like your encounters to effectively play out in well-lit arenas, so be it. But to add back some of the danger and uncertainty of low-light conditions, consider restricting those "night vision" abilities to situations where there is at least minimal incidental light, or applying other restrictions (for instance, low-light vision is greyscale only).

And while we're at it, lamp oil is not the basis for some kind of medieval Molotov cocktail. Fire, on the other hand, is potentially a great hazard in structures built with wood, with many wall-hangings and flammable materials.

That Year in the D&D20

So for about a year, the Tinkerage has been playing various editions, mainly the 5th, of the game with the ampersand in the title. This has been a surprise to everyone, since I've mostly steered clear of that system, having started in skill-based system like Traveller, and strongly preferring Basic Roleplaying and tinkering with various rules-light system options, such as Fighting Fantasy.

But there you go. When friends want a visiting GM – no DM – to help get started, why turn down a chance to try the system?

Here are some observations and non-binding recommendations.

5e is great for beginners

I didn't expect this, but for a first game session or three, 5e is great for beginners. New players with new characters feel capable, but with low hit points they're also vulnerable. Low-level threats are interesting, but usually go down after 1–2 hits, enough to pose a threat but not overwhelm. Players have a few custom options, but they're much more likely to be inventive and try fun strategies.

It's also interesting how many D&D rules seem designed to remove inconvenience or difficult choices. When I pointed out the finesse weapon rules, the dextrous halfling suddenly gained another level of damage with melee weapons.

Leveling up works, until it doesn't

Gaining levels is fun, and characters feel incrementally stronger and more capable, giving you scope to introduce more substantial threats – at least at low levels. But there are rocks ahead. Even within a few levels, there are more options, more special abilities, more feats to accommodate, and the complexity and number of considerations rises rapidly. Our campaign reached Level 4 – milestone leveling, not by experience points accountatncy – after just over a year of intermittent, mostly monthly play. I doubt the game is as easy to run after Level 6.

Rules? What rules?

For a year, I DM-ed mostly without a rulebook. I picked up the basics of how to run the game because I read the free, online Basic Rules, not to mention any one of the dozens of excellent retro-clones online.
D&D Beyond is a terrible app, but it's got most of what you need for 5e with the Basic Rules. The full online SRD has the rest. The players needed the Player Handbook, because they need all the trinkets and bolt-on abilities that come with leveling up (see above). If you have experience as a DM for any system, you can mostly create rulings to carry you through (Ability checks, screening rolls an a d6 or d20).

And there are many rules that you can dispense with or adjust. Too many characters can see in the dark. Short rests are extra HP on tap and encourage stilted adventuring (fight, rest – fight, rest). You can work without a lot of them.

Speaking of which, monster stat blocks are ridiculously long and detailed. I used a flat 1-2 line format (and you can find almost any D&D monster online with a simple search).

For instance:
GOBLINS
In+2*, Spd 30, HP 9, AC 15 Treated Hide, Spears +4 (1d6+2 pierce); light x-bow +4 (1d6+2 pierce)
*modifier to initiative roll

HOBGOBLINS
In +1, Spd 30, HP 15, AC 18 chain+shield; Longsword +5 (1d8+3)
+2d6 damage if striking in battle-line (martial advantage)

Use your own stuff

While there's nothing wrong with leaning on source books, the implied setting of the D&D rules is a veritable mishmash, a trope salad. Use your root and branch campaign ideas, and develop your own setting. Your player will appreciate a world to discover, not a tour.

Early sketch of the campaign setting. A city, mysterious woods, strange lands

Furthermore, if players have read through or skimmed the Monster Manual there's a fair chance that most enemies will also seem familiar, and they'll start anticipating your moves and tactics. With a healthy disregard for "encounter balance" and "challenge ranks", find chances to throw your own custom encounters or variants at the adventurers.

And speaking of "encounter balance", it's no bad thing to consider how a party can be overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) as you develop your scenario, but true balanced encounters are a mirage. Provide strategic balance by allowing characters to withdraw if the opposition is too powerful, or press on with advantages they acquire though adventuring or the environment. Gives them battlegrounds where they can push a foe into a pit, control who runs across a narrow bridge, or chase down an assassin on a city-wall.

Move on from 5e

When you reach level 6 or thereabouts, consider moving on from 5e and its accelerating options and complexity. As GM, you'll face much more work for comparatively little increase in fun. Once you're familiar with the common language of D&D systems – classes, ability scores, hit points, armor class, saves – there are many alternative systems that retain the familiar D&D frameworks but also the excitement and simplicity of lower-level play.

• White Hack: excellent flexibility and scope for player input. Can accommodate many professions and magic system/styles. Simple mechanical core; for example, combat damage only uses d6.
• Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures: evokes traditional fantasy in the best way, and perfect for beginners and younger players. The core rules combine elements of older editions of D&D, including saving throws, with elements of 5e, but there's a solid, flexible game there. There are only three core classes, Warrior, Rogue, and Mage, but the free-form skill system and open list of spells mean it's easy to customize for professions. A ranger can be simply a warrior with tracking and outdoor survivals skills.

And finally, don't be afraid of "breaking" a finely balanced system with a few simple house-rules, especially if they ease the burden of managing combat and other intensive interactions. Rolling for initiative felt like fun the first few times, but it hampers a smooth transition to combat, and the more and varied the enemies, the more likely you are to lose track of turn order. I went to a tried and tested method of counting down by DEX score, and never noticed a problem.

Root and Branch: generating your campaign

 When you start a campaign, solo or with a group, the best advice is always to start small. Unless you're following a published sequence, the most satisfying turn of play is to begin with one locality and watch the inciting incident grow into its own world.

But even starting small, it might be hard to come up with concrete details on the plain canvas, or it's tempting to try and visualize the campaign end game, and then back-engineer details to the very beginning.

This method gives you a starting point and leads, but is also open-ended, so the campaign grows as you unfold it. I've used it to launch solo campaigns and group campaigns, and it's always astonishing how soon you can find yourself in a fully-realized setting with a rich set of options, when all you started with was a punch-up in a tavern.

1. Set the entry point

Specify the point where your adventure begins. This could be the first step into the dungeon, or a mountain pass, or a rough tavern, or the starport, or something broader, like the western marches or a border city. The tone, theme, and style of the starting point are up to you: this is the world you want to enter, but you're only concerned with where to start, not what comes next.

2. Generate branching paths

This step takes inspiration from solo roleplaying. Using whatever semantic generators you have at hand – and why not Play ALL the Books – create 3–4 possible options. These are not whole scenarios, but possibilities, rumors, adventure hooks. Assign them to points just beyond the starting point.

For example, imagining a campaign of into the wilds treasure hunting, with a fantasy element, we started at the edge of the old empire and generated these random prompts:

• Plain, village; closed, suspicious 
• Rough, farm; urgent hunt (beast)
• Hills, hamlet; innocents, omens
• Plains, hall; ruins, wolves

Of course, if you need stronger narrative hooks, you can flesh out preliminary ideas so:

• A crypt said to contain a weird black sword
• A village threatened by wolves and bandits
• An abandoned wizard's tower infested by goblins
• Imperial spies are searching for an unusual schematic
• A strange group of cultists, threatening residents of a peaceful hamlet

3. Follow a path

Now, either choosing yourself, randomly, or following your player’s decisions, begin to play out one of the potential scenarios, expanding on and developing the simple prompt with encounters and locations, as you would.

As you go, keep thinking how the other paths not yet taken might link to and reinforce the situation that emerges. Are those bandits lurking in the woods somehow connected to the goblins crawling over the ruined tower, and in that case, what are they really looking for? Who do they serve?

In the case of the first example, the randomly generated hamlet (innocents, omens) was under threat from a strange cult, following omens and clues linked to a prophecy and a lost ceremonial blade. It turned out that the place they would seek the blade next was the ruined hall where wolves were prowling, a day’s march across the plains.

4. Shadows and omens

By now, you probably start to see how the situation suggested new branches and possibilities. They can generate new options and points to move to, or begin generating connections between the existing points. Develop the next scenario that follows organically from the first. 

But to create something that is more than just action and reaction, you can begin sketching out the points and movements that hover just beyond the horizon of the current play. In Dungeon World, these looming possibilities are called “fronts”. In Against the Darkmaster, there are wonderful generators for establishing the identity of the “Darkmaster” the players will eventually confront. I think of these as threats or shadow states, that are established but not yet explicit, just at the horizon of the next branching path. 

In the example I started above, it turns out that a dark god of the old empire, a patron of greed and destructive consumption, was rising again in the near-forgotten ruins.

It might take a while to get there – that’s the campaign.