Last month in his “Legends & Lore” column, Mike Mearls discussed a skill system he and Monte Cook had schemed up in which DCs would be replaced with a descriptive tier of difficulties: Novice/Journeyman/Expert/Master/Grandmaster/Impossible. I wasn’t a fan of this system because it mostly obfuscated simpler mechanics and added complexity without actually giving much (if anything) back.

When Monte Cook revisited the topic this week, however, it made me realize they might be onto something — although I don’t think they’ve quite realized it yet. (Cook’s proposal is still over-baking mechanical complexity without actually accomplishing anything more than the current system.)

But if they can completely jettison the concept of skill ranks, I think they might have a winner.

(1) Set the target number for all tasks to 15. (Or whatever number makes sense; I haven’t actually run any math on this.)

(2) Define each task as Skilled/Expert/Master and give it a level. (For example, a Level 10 Expert task.)

(3) If you meet the minimum requirements for the task, you automatically succeed. (If you’re a Level 10 Expert, you succeed at any Skilled or Expert task of Level 10 or lower automatically without making a check.)

(4) If you’re missing one of the requirements, you have to make an ability check. This check is modified by the difference in level between you and the task. You also gain a +5 or -5 modifier for each difference in skill level.

For example, if you’re a 10th-level Skilled Typographer and you’re attempting a Level 8 Expert typography task, you would make a Intelligence check with a -3 modifier (+2 for being two levels higher than the task; -5 for being Skilled instead of an Expert in the skill).

Similarly, if you’re a 6th-level character who doesn’t have the Decipher Script skill and you’re attempting to decrypt a Level 10 Master code, you would make an Intelligence check with a -19 penalty (-4 for being four levels lower than the task; -15 for being three skill levels lower than Master).

What’s the point? The point is that you’ve eliminated a Page 42 table look-up for skill DCs. And you’ve automated the equivalent of the Take 10 mechanic so that it doesn’t require any calculation at all.

You’ve also effectively eliminated skill checks entirely and focused things back onto ability checks as a core mechanic. This is mostly a sleight of hand, but it can provide one meaningful advantage: You can casually re-key a skill to a different ability score without needing to recalculate a skill bonus (since the check is just an ability check). (One thing I’ve always loved about dice pool systems is the ease with which you could do this, but it’s always been too much of a pain in the ass for D20. It’s not really meaningful for most skills, of course, but it can really crank up the versatility of a system.)

One potential problem with this system is that there’s no clear way to do opposed checks in a completely satisfactory fashion. But you can resolve this by setting which skill sets the task and which skill resolves the task. (For example, if Stealth sets the task then a character’s skill level sets the difficulty of the Perception task. A 10th-level character with an Expert ranking in Stealth, for example, requires a Level 10 Expert Perception task.) Or, alternatively, by always using player-faced mechanics. (If a PC is sneaking past an NPC, the NPC’s Perception skill sets the difficulty of the Stealth task. If the PC is trying to spot an NPC, the NPC’s Stealth skill sets the difficulty of the Perception task.)

Another potential problem is that you have done a pretty good job of obfuscating probabilities. If I’m a 10th-level expert, what’s the difference between a Level 12 Skilled task and a Level 7 Master task? You can work out the math, but it’s not as self-evident as pure numbers would be. On the other hand, in terms of actual play, is that significant?

Bartosz Kielar has translated my essay “D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations” into Polish. You can check it out here.

I don’t have anything particularly witty to say on this occasion. But I’m still at the “tickled pink that somebody translated something I wrote” stage of life, so I thought I’d share.

An open table is not the only way to play a roleplaying game, but over the past year and a half I’ve become increasingly convinced of two things:

First, the move away from the open  table as the default mode of gameplay in RPGs has played a huge role in RPGs becoming an increasingly niche hobby: Without an open table, RPGs are more difficult to GM (reducing the total number of tables) and it’s more difficult to invite new players to try out the game (reducing the influx of new players). The latter problem is further exacerbated by the fact that GMs running closed tables are able to support fewer total players in their campaigns, which further depresses the number of players that can be supported with the current population of GMs. (And since most GMs start as players, the reduction in the total number of players means fewer people becoming GMs… Rinse. Wash. Repeat.)

Second, if you love playing RPGs then you owe it to yourself to have an open table in your back pocket: When playing an RPG is as easy as playing a board game or a card game, you’ll be able to play a lot more.  Plus, in my experience, your open table (and the large network of players you’ll be able to recruit using it) will give your closed tables a lot more stability and endurance (because it provides a recruiting pool for your closed games).

And if you’re going to have an open table in your back pocket, then you need to breathe life into your wandering monsters.

PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION

As I discussed in “(Re-)Running the Megadungeon“, one of the most important elements in running an open table is minimizing the GM’s prep work by maximizing the utility of your core content: If you need to spend 2-3 hours (or more) prepping fresh content for every session, then the game isn’t as easily accessible. Instead, you want to be able to refresh the same material so that it can be used over and over again without becoming repetitive or boring.

And in an effective open table, you’ll employ these techniques at every level of the game: You’ll use wandering monster tables during actual play to simulate an active, living complex; controlling the pace of the adventure and extend its useful life cycle. You’ll restock sections of your megadungeon between sessions so that players can revisit familiar terrain with new faces. You’ll intermittently restock lairs and ruins in your hexcrawl to keep them an active part of play.

The secret to all this, of course, is procedural content generation. And the great thing about it is that you’re not just “recycling material” (although that’s the most utilitarian aspect at work here). You’re specifically recycling material by keeping the world in motion: Not only does your campaign become more sustainable, it also becomes deeper and more interesting.

The term “procedural content generation” comes from the computer gaming industry: There it refers to the programmatic creation of content. For example, instead of having a human designer create the floorplans for every building in the game, the designers can instead program certain “rules” for how building floorplans are designed and then allow the program to spontaneously generate that content.

I’m using the term here in pretty much the same sense: Rather than hand-picking the contents of a treasure horde, for example, you can generate the treasure by rolling on random tables. Random encounters are another obvious example. I find these kinds of “stocking systems” most useful, but there are lots of examples: The Avernus Remix includes a procedural method for generating simple building floorplans. “Factions in the Dungeon” describes how to generate strife between your NPCs using B2 Keep on the Borderlands as a case study. And so forth.

(The tools that are most useful will depend on both your personal style and the particular scenario you’re working with.)

In computer games there are two major problems with using procedurally generated content: First, it can create logical inconsistencies. Some of these logic problems can actually render a game unplayable. (For example, if the location of a key is randomly generated behind a door that you can only open if you have the key.)

Second, it can be boring and bland. There’s a reason why we don’t use randomized madlibs to write novels, after all. Procedurally generated content is often shallow and can easily become repetitive (particularly once the player begins to recognize the underlying procedures being used).

MAKING IT WORK

In the computer games industry, overcoming these problems usually involves drastically increasing the complexity of the methods being used to perform the procedural generation. This, obviously, isn’t a viable solution for tabletop gaming (where we generally don’t have computers to do the heavy-lifting when it comes to complex or multi-step calculations).

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter.

The great thing about procedural content generation in tabletop play is that it doesn’t need to actually generate something creative or interesting: It just needs to provide the improv seed for the GM to riff off of.

To take a simple example: If you roll up 3d6 orcs and you simply default to “3d6 orcs attack”, then your game is going to become boring and bland. Roll up 3d6 orcs and decide that:

• They’re Orcus-worshippers who have all flayed the skin off their right hands, leaving a motile skeleton that’s capable of delivering an energy drain attack 1/day.
• They’re religious zealots who have been converted to the worship of Apollo and preach about the “glorious scourge of sunlight” to fellow travelers.
• 3 of the orcs are being attacked and brutalized by the others; they’ll beg the PCs for help.
• They’re mercenaries who are looking for a good paycheck. Are the PCs hiring?

And you’ve got the fodder for a good encounter.

CONTEXTUALIZING

Simply saying “Be Creative!” is all well and good, but it doesn’t give a lot of actual guidance. Recently, however, I’ve been dissecting exactly what it is I’m doing during that moment of creative genesis in which I interpret a piece of procedurally generated content and I’ve come to the conclusion that it all boils down to one core concept:

Contextualize the content.

By which I mean that you simply need to either (a) place the encounter within the context of the game world or (b) create a context that will become part of the game world.

Let’s take the specific example of a wandering monster. When you roll up a wandering monster, ask yourself four questions:

(1) What makes them unique?
(2) Where are they coming from?
(3) What are they doing?
(4) What’s their reaction to the PCs?

I’m not asking you to write an essay or anything. In fact, the answers don’t even need to be complete sentences. But asking those questions will get your creative juices flowing; and providing some quick answers will let you make the resulting encounter specific and interesting (instead of generic and boring).

Of course, if you’re still stumped you could always take a peek at What Are Those Wandering Monsters Up To? and What Are the Goblins Up To?, which are both designed to give the creative centers of your brain a little more prodding in order to break you out of the rut of “the monster is there to fight the PCs”.

(And, of course, OD&D includes a reaction table for NPCs so you can randomly generate the answer to #4, too.)

Which, of course, brings us back to the title of this piece: You shouldn’t look at a wandering monster table as a cast list of automatons. If you breathe a little life into them, they’ll pay back your creativity a hundredfold at the game table.

I just had one of those moments when you realize that not everyone has noticed the same thing you have.

Tip for speeding up combat resolution in 3rd Edition: Once you’ve identified the AC you’re trying to hit, figure out what number you need to roll on the d20 in order to hit it. Now you don’t need to do math every time you roll: You just look at the die and instantly know whether you hit or not.

The more casual version of that is “lowest threshold”: Did you hit last time? Did you roll equal to or higher than that roll? Then you hit again. Did you roll lower? Then do the math (and, if you hit after doing the math, you’ve set a new lowest threshold).

This obviously doesn’t work if your attack bonuses or the target’s AC are shifting a lot. But 9 times out of 10, those numbers are consistent and the method works just fine.

Also: Roll your damage dice at the same time. If you hit, the damage is right there. If you didn’t, then you just ignore them.

Consider this: In 1974, create water was a 4th level spell and create food was a 5th level spell. That meant you wouldn’t have magical access to a water supply until you had a 6th level cleric in the group; and you wouldn’t have magical access to food until you had a 7th level cleric. (By 7th level you’re considered a major religious leader and at 8th level you’re assumed to be founding your own churches.)

This remained true in the Basic line of the game all the way through the Rules Cyclopedia in ’91. In the Advanced line of the game, however, things shifted. In the 1st Edition PHB create water became a 1st level spell.

What does this mean? Well, it means that B4 The Lost City was a viable scenario in the Basic game, but not in the Advanced game:

Days ago your group of adventurers joined a desert caravan. Halfway across the desert, a terrible sandstorm struck, separating your party from the rest of the caravan. When the storm died down you found that you were alone. The caravan was nowhere in sight. The desert was unrecognizable, as the dunes had been blown into new patterns. You were lost.

(…)

The second day after your water ran out, you stumbled upon a number of stone blocks sticking out of a sand dune. Investigation showed that the sand covered the remains of a tall stone wall. On the other side of the stone wall was a ruined city.

The whole concept of being driven into an ancient ruin because you’re short on water pretty much ceases to be an issue. This is even more true in 3E when the already devalued create water became a 0-level orison.

But like the wings of a butterfly, the subtle shift in this single spell actually has a profound impact on gameplay.

THE WIDER EFFECT

As my old school 1974 campaign moved towards hexcrawling, my players began figuring out how to equip their characters for wilderness exploration. The hexcrawling was based around a fairly basic system (which served as the test pilot for the wilderness exploration mechanics found in Legends & Labyrinths). It’s not a mass of complexity, but it does provide a basic model for:

1. Travel Time
2. Navigation
3. Discovery

Combined with the standard systems of encumbrance and a daily requirement of food and water, the result was a fairly plausible demand for supplies (particularly if they were heading into the jungle where potable water was difficult to come by).

What they quickly discovered was that, for any journey of appreciable length, they couldn’t physically carry the necessary supplies. So they needed horses.

But horses pose a problem if you need to go spelunking. So they needed hirelings to care for the horses.

And once you’ve got hirelings watching the horses, it doesn’t take much imagination to start hiring men-at-arms to come into the dungeon with you.

All these hirelings, of course, need their own supplies. Which means more horses. And eventually pack horses. (The latter, particularly, once they started hitting treasures that they couldn’t easily haul back in a single load.)

After some trial and error, each group found their own equilibrium. But, in general, adventuring parties grew. And as the parties grew, the need for larger, more elaborate, and more rewarding ventures grew.

The reality of this dynamic is actually more complex than this, of course. (For example, I also believe the fact that hirelings are given a prominent place as a major feature of your character in the original rulebooks plays a large role in making them a major feature in old school play. Take those same rules and put them somewhere else in the rulebook and that gameplay doesn’t get as much attention.) But the need for supplies was, in a very real sense, the camel’s nose in the tent: Take that need away, the need for horses disappears. The need for horses disappears, the hirelings disappear.

And I’d argue it can actually be taken one step further: Take low-level hirelings away and you take away mid-level fiefdoms because you haven’t developed the skills or style of play necessary to gradually transition into those fiefdoms. The entire original “end game” of the game disappears.

THE LARGER METAPHOR

The other thing about create water as a spell is that it’s a small example of a larger phenomenon in D&D which is often overlooked.

Specifically, it’s an ability which removes gameplay.

I’ve spoken with many game designers who consider this to be a huge mistake. It was certainly a motivating factor in the design of 4th Edition. A similar motivation gives you the game world scaling of Oblivion.

But I, personally, think it’s great: As you play D&D, the game shifts. At 10th level you aren’t playing the same game you were playing at 1st level.

If we consider this narrow slice of the game, D&D basically used to say: “Okay, you start out exploring a nearby dungeon for 2 or 3 levels. Then you start exploring the wilderness and you have to really focus on how to make those explorations a success — supplies, navigation aids, clear goals, etc. We’ll do that for 3-4 levels and then, ya know what? I’m bored with that. So we’ll keep doing the explorations, but we’re going to yank out all that logistical gameplay, replace it with some magical resources, and start shifting the focus of wilderness exploration to staking out fiefdoms and clearing the countryside. We’ll do that for 3-4 levels. By that time you’ve probably transitioned pretty thoroughly into realms management, so we’ll just give you this teleport spell and we can probably just phase that ‘trekking through the wilderness’ stuff out entirely.”

(Of course, it’s not really gone because the same players are running multiple PCs. So if they’re in the mood for some hexcrawling on Tuesday night, they’ll just bring out their lower level characters to play.)

You’ll find these kinds of abilities studded throughout the game. Their impact has been dulled somewhat over the years (and removed pretty much completely from 4th Edition), but this fundamental panoply of gameplay experiences continues to be a major strength of classic D&D.