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.

I like cleric domains. I think they’re a simple, direct way of differentiating clerics of different faiths from each other.

But here’s the thing: When you’re trying to strip the spell list back to its basics, domain spell lists seriously muck things up by significantly increasing the number of spells you need to include.

If you look at the Cleric and Arcanist spell lists on pages 99-101 of the Black Book Beta, you’ll see the ideal spell list I’d like to include. (This list has been heavily influenced by the earliest versions of the game; essentially stripping things back to an essential selection.) But if I include all the spells from the domain lists (on pages 101-104), those spells will be added to the Cleric and Arcanist spell lists. (And, in some cases, this will require even more spells to be added. For example, it doesn’t make much sense to include summon monster IX for the Chaos domain and not include the other summon monster spells.)

So here are some options I’m considering:

First, eliminate domains entirely. This simplifies character creation for clerics, but also prevents clerics from being easily customized to different gods.

Second, keep domains but eliminate domain spells. (In other words, clerics would get the domain powers from their selected domains, but there wouldn’t be any domain spell lists.)

Either option presents another question: Do I simply eliminate domain spell slots? Or do I simply fold those slots into the cleric’s daily spells? (In other words, do 4+1 spells per day become 4 spells per day or 5 spells per day?)

Or am I completely off-base here and should just go ahead and bloat the Grimoire up to accommodate the domains?

(Alternatively, if I just strip domains down to domain powers, I’d probably have room to include a wider range of domains.)

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I still can’t decide if it bugs me or not that alignment takes up something like 1/5th of the chapter on character creation (simply due to the bulk of information being conveyed). It was originally meant to be relegated to a sidebar, but it actually proved too large for that and ended up getting all of page 11 to itself.

Of course, that’s partly because the information on alignment needs to be entirely contained in Chapter 1, whereas the rest of Chapter 1 references players out to the more detailed descriptions of ability scores, classes, races, and the like found elsewhere in the rulebook.

A couple of other options I entertained:

(1) Removing alignment entirely. I would have left “good” and “evil” descriptors in for spells and extraplanar creatures, but the basic concept of PCs having an “alignment” would have been gone. Ultimately, I decided this was too radical a departure.

(2) Just describing the two axes of alignment — good vs. evil; law vs. chaos — in general terms and not discussing each combination in detail. (This might have included an old school, x-y axis chart of alignments.) A remnant of this remains in the sidebar on page 11, but what I discovered was that new players weren’t grokking the system. They were asking a lot of clarifying questions, and that’s usually an indication that the rulebook isn’t doing its job.

What do you think?

The Legends & Labyrinths 8-Bit Funding project has come to an end! And it’s been a huge success! To celebrate, my primary gaming group baked me a cake:

What happens next?

Sometime in the next 24-48 hours, I should be receiving a spreadsheet from 8-Bit Funding. Once I have that in hand, I’ll be able to organize it and start contacting funders to make the arrangements necessary for their perks. So, at some point in the next week, everyone should be receiving their copies of the Black Book Beta (ideally sooner rather than later).

If you’re a funder, keep an eye on the Updates page at 8-Bit Funding. That’s where I’ll be posting any kind of “house management” stuff regarding perk fulfillment (rather than cluttering up the Alexandrian).

Once that’s done, I’ll be able to continue the process of commissioning art, proofreading, and continued playtesting that will eventually culminate in the release of the final rulebook. My goal is for this to happen as quickly as possible, with the time table being largely dictated by when the artists can complete their work.

Here at the Alexandrian I’ll be continuing to post Black Book Beta Responses. Now that people have copies of the rulebooks in their hands, I’ll probably also be rolling out some Home Testing Kits. (Let me know in the comments if little test scenarios and endurance testing sounds interesting to you.) There will also, of course, be non-L&L content coming down the pike.

The adventure is just beginning!

THANK YOU!

P.S. We didn’t hit $4,000. But I’ve decided to go ahead and unlock the $4,000 landmark bonuses anyway. You guys have been great!