Gritty Realism: Adventuring in Weeks, Not Days

Because apparently this is a 5E blog now, I'm going to talk about the Gritty Realism variant rule suggested in the DMG on page 267. But wait! Don't go! You know me better than that. Of course I'll find a way to make it relevant to you and your rules-lite artpunk post apocalyptic furry heartbreaker as well, since I know you don't play D&D 5E.

So there's a type of adventure scenario I like to call a "Die Hard plot." It's not a good name, but it's what I always think of. In the movie Die Hard, the whole ordeal takes place within a single evening. The movie almost happens in real time! It's a really jam-packed day. See also:

1. The Warriors
2. The Avengers (well, like 90% of it)
3. Night of the Living Dead
4. Clue
5. Dredd
6. The Goonies
7. Escape From New York
8. 24 (the TV show)

...and plenty of others. Now of course, lots of movies take place entirely within 1 day. But these ones here are specifically all movies that are a great model for D&D ADVENTURE! Sure, My Dinner With Andre takes place in one day, but that's because it's just a dinner conversation. These movies are set within a single day in spite of how much crazy shit happens within them.

Every movie on that list is great (and 24 is okay I guess), and you should steal from them occasionally. But the main appeal of Gritty Realism is that it affirms a simple truth: you can't run an entire campaign of just Die Hard plots. Or rather, I think you probably shouldn't.

I'd like to talk about this at length and help us all to appreciate this better.

Brave Design Notes 6: Settlements

Go to the master post

Brave is a hack of Ben Milton's Knave, an old-school adventure game toolkit without classes and a lot more emphasis on equipment. The earliest changes I made were miscellaneous tweaks and houserules I added as I would run Knave, but at this point I've bolted on several advanced play procedures. While Knave is optimized for a DIY "rulings over rules" style of play, I still felt it was valuable to write down many of those rulings that I've made over the years and codify them. One of the best parts of the original Knave were the designer's notes, but I've taken them out because I needed to make room for new stuff and I assume that anyone playing my game would already be familiar with the original version anyway. Instead, you get my blog.

These notes are written for version 1.9, which you can find on the sidebar of this blog or by clicking here. These rules also make use of a resource called a "settlement info sheet," which you can find here, along with the player copy template here and the version adapted for villages here.

Brave Design Notes 5: Dungeons

Go to the master post

Art credit: Tony DiTerlizzi

Brave is a hack of Ben Milton's Knave, an old-school adventure game toolkit without classes and a lot more emphasis on equipment. The earliest changes I made were miscellaneous tweaks and houserules I added as I would run Knave, but at this point I've bolted on several advanced play procedures. While Knave is optimized for a DIY "rulings over rules" style of play, I still felt it was valuable to write down many of those rulings that I've made over the years and codify them. One of the best parts of the original Knave were the designer's notes, but I've taken them out because I needed to make room for new stuff and I assume that anyone playing my game would already be familiar with the original version anyway. Instead, you get my blog.

These notes are written for version 1.9, which you can find on the sidebar of this blog or by clicking here. These rules also make use of a resource called a "dungeon control panel," which you can find here.

Brave Design Notes 4: Cohorts

Go to the master post

Brave is a hack of Ben Milton's Knave, an old-school adventure game toolkit without classes and a lot more emphasis on equipment. The earliest changes I made were miscellaneous tweaks and houserules I added as I would run Knave, but at this point I've bolted on several advanced play procedures. While Knave is optimized for a DIY "rulings over rules" style of play, I still felt it was valuable to write down many of those rulings that I've made over the years and codify them. One of the best parts of the original Knave were the designer's notes, but I've taken them out because I needed to make room for new stuff and I assume that anyone playing my game would already be familiar with the original version anyway. Instead, you get my blog.

These notes are written for version 1.9, which you can find on the sidebar of this blog or by clicking here.

Brave Design Notes 3: Alignment and Combat

Go to the master post

Art credit: William O'Connor

Brave is a hack of Ben Milton's Knave, an old-school adventure game toolkit without classes and a lot more emphasis on equipment. The earliest changes I made were miscellaneous tweaks and houserules I added as I would run Knave, but at this point I've bolted on several advanced play procedures. While Knave is optimized for a DIY "rulings over rules" style of play, I still felt it was valuable to write down many of those rulings that I've made over the years and codify them. One of the best parts of the original Knave were the designer's notes, but I've taken them out because I needed to make room for new stuff and I assume that anyone playing my game would already be familiar with the original version anyway. Instead, you get my blog.

These notes are written for version 1.9, which you can find on the sidebar of this blog or by clicking here.

Brave Design Notes 2: Items and Shopping

Go to the master post

Brave is a hack of Ben Milton's Knave, an old-school adventure game toolkit without classes and a lot more emphasis on equipment. The earliest changes I made were miscellaneous tweaks and houserules I added as I would run Knave, but at this point I've bolted on several advanced play procedures. While Knave is optimized for a DIY "rulings over rules" style of play, I still felt it was valuable to write down many of those rulings that I've made over the years and codify them. One of the best parts of the original Knave were the designer's notes, but I've taken them out because I needed to make room for new stuff and I assume that anyone playing my game would already be familiar with the original version anyway. Instead, you get my blog.

These notes are written for version 1.9, which you can find on the sidebar of this blog or by clicking here.

Brave Design Notes 1: Various Rules

Go to the master post

Art credit: Hal Foster

Brave is a hack of Ben Milton's Knave, an old-school adventure game toolkit without classes and a lot more emphasis on equipment. The earliest changes I made were miscellaneous tweaks and houserules I added as I would run Knave, but at this point I've bolted on several advanced play procedures. While Knave is optimized for a DIY "rulings over rules" style of play, I still felt it was valuable to write down many of those rulings that I've made over the years and codify them. One of the best parts of the original Knave were the designer's notes, but I've taken them out because I needed to make room for new stuff and I assume that anyone playing my game would already be familiar with the original version anyway. Instead, you get my blog.

These notes are written for version 1.9, which you can find on the sidebar of this blog or by clicking here. It may also be valuable to see the character sheet, which you can find two copies of here.

Brave 1.9: Tales of Sword and Sorcery

Click here to view version 1.9 of my RPG Brave. Here is the accompanying character sheet (it actually has 2 sheets on it since they're small), here is the dungeon control panel, here is the settlement sheet, here is the player version, and here is the village sheet. The total document is 19 pages including the cover art, which I recommend you print out (put the intro+table of contents on the inside front cover, facing the page that says "The Basics" as the header). This game uses the free fonts Garamond, Hamlet Tertia 18, and Black Castle MF. The cover illustration was done by me.

If you'd like the Word document to edit directly, you can find that here. You'll want to download those free fonts or else the formatting will be completely annihilated.

I have periodically updated the link on the side of this blog whenever several changes/additions accumulate, but I'm making a whole post about it this time because 1) this is the biggest single update to the game so far, and 2) it is (hopefully) the second-to-last update before the final version of the first core rulebook.

Why am I not waiting to post until the final update? Why isn't the title of this post "Brave 2.0: Electric Boogaloo"? At the end of this post, you'll see what content I haven't finished yet and I think you'll understand why that's going to take me a good amount of time. So no, my game isn't finished yet to my satisfaction, but it's finished enough to be a full game (more full than most old-school RPGs, even) and I just wanted to finally put it out there.

The rules probably speak for themselves just fine, but if you're interested in designer's notes then strap in. This whole week I'll be posting articles of design notes on each topic in the game, each pretty in-depth on my thinking and the intent behind each rule. Here's a list of what those posts will be covering, updated with links as they come out.

1. Various Rules (mostly stuff you find in the "Rules for Adventure" pages)
2. Items and Shopping
3. Alignment + Combat (they're both short)
4. Cohorts (sort of the "mass combat" rules)
5. Dungeons
6. Settlements

The rest of this post will explain the miscellaneous minor tweaks I made to Knave and then a list of the topics that are missing from this draft of the game (but are coming soon!).

Unity vs Division

I've been sitting on this idea for a couple years now but I've only ever had an abstract conception of it. Now I have some concrete systems to apply it to. Sorta. This will build off of my previous post as well as various things I've talked about here and there throughout the blog.

It starts with the idea of "campaign qualities." See, most people have an idea of what handful of qualities they'd like to see characterize their campaign as a whole. "I want to play a game that makes me feel like a Greek demigod." "I want to play a game with serious acting and drama and consequences." "I want to play a low-magic game that's heavy on survival." That sort of thing. Some games are built entirely around achieving one playstyle. Other games are a bit more flexible, and can be played in different ways. Most of the time, people recommend you achieve your intended feel by way of smart Level Design, so that the rules don't need to be changed from what people are used to. "You play the horror genre in an RPG by making scary scenarios!" But sometimes all it takes is a tweak here or there to the rules and systems of Game Design to have major consequences. A very popular houserule for 5E D&D is the "gritty realism" variant described in the DMG (along with some tweaks people have suggested) in order to achieve a more slow-burn, resource-management focused game than the vanilla version. And apparently it works great!

One dichotomy I think has a great deal of potency is a concept I call "Unity or Division." Each of these has a broad definition that can affect a wide range of factors in gameplay, from economics to exploration to politics and more. They can be thought of as a template that you apply to an entire country, modifying the details of many rule systems to give it a distinct identity of gameplay. 

Let's jump in.

Brave Class Hack Beta (again)

Picture is also a link to content

One of my most popular posts was the first Brave Class Hack, where I shared with the world my weird class system as well as the Knave, Warrior, Thief, and Cleric classes. I've made a lot of changes since then, including the addition of 3 more classes, so I figured it would be a fine time to update the world.

For anyone reading this who doesn't know, Brave is my personal hack of Ben Milton's Knave, which you can find the latest draft of linked on the sidebar of this blog as well as right here. If that link ever dies, it's because I forgot to return to this blog post to replace it. But the sidebar one should always be up to date.

Here is a link to the latest copy of the Brave: Enchiridion of Fates and Fortunes with some designer notes included. I also thought I might provide a preview below on each of the classes currently included, if you read below:

An Incomplete History of Mazes in RPGs

Mazes and labyrinths are a staple of fantasy fiction, so it makes sense that you might want to see one in D&D. In many ways, the Greek Labyrinth was the original dungeon, so it seems like a perfect fit, right? Except that it's notoriously tricky to run a maze in D&D without it sucking, and there's no standardized solution. So in this article, I'm going to review a list of instances I've found in various gaming products where a unique attempt was made and then explain their method. If you've never personally encountered this problem before, it may not be obvious what's so difficult about it. But I bet that once you start seeing some of the following examples, you'll begin to understand.

This will ultimately lead to, at some point in the future, a set of rules I've made based on what I've learned. I'll include those in my RPG Brave when it's released, but whenever I make a first draft I'll probably post it on my blog as a standalone procedure. If you find any other unique takes on mazes in RPGs I'd love to read them, but this isn't meant to be exhaustive.

Organization and Presenting Content When Making an RPG

Art credit: Trina Schart Hyman

The original Knave ruleset is a 7 page document. The current "latest draft" of Brave on the sidebar of this blog is 10 pages. I already know the final version will be expanding at least a little bit more. Part of the wonderful thing about Knave is how short it is. Players used to 300+ page rulebooks are shown those measly 7 pages and are amazed by how quickly they'll be able to jump into the system. So, obviously, I'd like to replicate that virtue.

But I have more content to add in. While many gamers prefer "rulings over rules" and don't want the game to tell them how to do every single last tiny activity imaginable, the implication is that they'd rather come up with their own rules for those activities. Maybe on the fly, but their own rules nonetheless. These same people often advocate making sure to use your on-the-spot ruling consistently from then on if possible, meaning that it would best be codified somewhere. Well, while I have shared Brave with the world with the intention of other people using it, it is fundamentally a collection of my houserules for my table. If I played something like 1st Edition AD&D and rejected their rules for an activity, then the substitute I come up with would go in Brave, because Brave is "the rules DwizKhalifa uses in his campaign." I've made a special effort to make the whole thing as modular and hackable as possible, just as most other DIY games do. Just like any good OSR game, nothing will break if you substitute my HP system or my magic rules or how I run wilderness stuff. But on the other hand, I know I'm not the only one tired of buying "incomplete rulesets" because creators are just a little too dedicated to the DIY ethic. In my mind, my own rules wouldn't be worth putting out to the world unless they were comprehensive enough to cover all of my needs. So, yes, it's worth including, say, the rules I use for sailing.

So we have a problem. I want the "core rules" to remain simple and easy to offer up to a player (like how 1st edition AD&D had the Basic counterpart, or how 5E D&D offers free Basic Rules online). But I also want to add more content, and when that sort of content is adopted for your campaign and you find yourself commonly using it, you'll wish it were included in the core rules. I play 5E D&D and ever since Xanathar's Guide to Everything was released, my group has been using the expanded rules and guidelines for toolsets. They're great! But we constantly find ourselves wishing that stuff had just been in the Player's Handbook rather than looking it up in the "miscellaneous other shit we're adding into the game" chapter in a supplement book. I'm sure if 5.5 Edition ever came out, they would relocate that stuff to the PHB. The only reason it wasn't there all along was because those rules didn't exist in 2014.

So how do I package all my content? I have a few ideas, so strap in.

Outline of Brave's Magic System

God I fucking hate magic systems.

Seriously, is there anything that epitomizes pure nerdiness more than designing magic systems? Part of me feels like I seriously wouldn't mind playing fantasy dungeoncrawl RPGs with absolutely no magic for eternity.

But I also love wizards, dammit.

Okay, I assure that what follows will not be lame and cliched. No "elemental spheres of magic + soul + positive + negative + whatever other stupid word" diagrams. I don't want to pick on anyone specifically because worldbuilding is very personal to people and it can be difficult to open up and share. But just go on reddit.com/r/worldbuilding and search "magic system" and you'll see plenty of examples of the kind of diagram I'm talking about. I will not abide such rampant nerdiness.

The logic of my system that follows is mostly a response to issues with the conventional D&D magic system and inspiration from Necropraxis's Wonders & Wickedness and Marvels & Malisons. The basic goal is to open up possibilities and begin allowing for far more, zanier ideas about what can constitute a "school" of magic.

Decent Rules to Make Languages Fun

First, here's some supplemental reading you may find insightful. All of it is from other RPG bloggers tackling the same subject as me:

1. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2020/04/dungeoncrawling-languages.html 
2. https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2016/03/on-language.html
3. https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2008/11/languages-or-why-we-shouldnt-be-able-to.html
4. https://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2020/05/soft-ass-d.html (he covers language as a specific part of the post and I think his take is neat)
5. https://thelastdaydawned.blogspot.com/2016/11/making-languages-make-sense.html
6. http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38698/roleplaying-games/untested-fantasy-lorem-ipsum
7. https://www.paperspencils.com/making-languages-relevant/

The RPG Mausritter, about playing as tiny mice in a fantasy world, has some really cool language rules that I don't think can easily work for most other settings:

As a general rule of thumb, the more closely related two creatures are, the more likely they are able to be able to understand each other. Use the creature’s taxonomy to make a ruling. Magical or highly intelligent creatures may break these rules. • Same species (mouse): Can easily communicate. • Same family (rodent): Can speak and communicate, with some difficulty and difference of custom. • Same class (mammal): Make a WIL save to see if communication is possible. • Otherwise: Can’t directly communicate.

So yeah, all those thoughts are very neat. I'll throw in my two cents.

The lost art of the "Stable-of-Characters"

The infamous "Enigma of Greyhawk" is, I think, a metaphor
for all of OD&D. Because this game is batshit.

Look, I really love OD&D. It's so fascinating to me. I could gush constantly about all the weird shit I've found in it and the stuff I've learned about early D&D from it. But the Alexandrian already did that pretty dang well, so I won't cover that ground myself. If you want even more goodies, here is a good link-o'-links to get started (Philotomy's Musings are especially valuable). I do want to share this one thing, though. It's something that I slowly figured out from noticing weird stuff in the rules, and then I dug up some primary source evidence for. But even just the tale of its discovery, I think, demonstrates well the wonder of old RPG archaeology. And why I think it's one of the most important abandoned old-school avenues that needs to be explored further.

BRAVE Character Sheets

Finally got around to this part, since I always treat it as an afterthought. So here's the deal. In Brave, there are two character sheets. The first (link to it here) is for new characters up to level 3. As you can see, it's small enough that you can fit two on one sheet of paper. Anything that doesn't have a designated place on this sheet but that you need to write down, go ahead and jot it on the back.

Then, once you reach level 4, you've proven yourself a cut above the rest and have probably outgrown that old sheet. You have a decent chance of maybe not dying young, so it's worth it to actually have a full sheet. That's where this second (link to it here) sheet comes in.  I figured that, even though I'm adding a lot onto Knave, the majority of characters are still gunna be pretty disposable and won't need a full sheet.

I'll need to playtest these as well but they look promising. And anything on there that you might not yet recognize (the speeds, languages, whatever) are gunna be in the next draft of Brave so don't worry.

-Dwiz

Fifth Edition Downtime

I'm running a new 5E campaign in quarantine, and I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. But I'm also finally reading Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers and I'm pleasantly surprised. It's very tempting to go all in and use. Demesne/domain level play is something I've always really wanted to try but I've never had the chance. I've never played more than a session or two of the oldest D&D editions (back when demesne play was just an assumption of the game) and even then, only as a low-level murderhobo. I've read some of the rules for getting castles and whatnot from BECMI and I'm not crazy about the old system. But the idea is really cool to me.

Actually, just doing a lot more downtime play is something I want a good experience trying. I think in my mind, it is one of the biggest elements that makes me really think of a game as a "campaign" rather than a bunch of one-shots strung together. I do, after all, basically just play a bunch of mostly-unrelated miniseries of dungeoncrawls and mysteries. I've never fleshed out a sandbox world that my players have the freedom to invest in easily. One of the things that makes downtime play really sing is a well-realized world full of potential. I tend to design isolated scenarios, but for a player to feel inspired to delve into the world and start moving mountains and making their impact feel real, they need a place that's got some jen-yu-wiiine verisimilitude.

This has been one of my design goals for Brave, and so far it's going fantastic. But I even want to try it for 5E as well. Like, I might even be able to trick my players into liking the Forgotten Realms if they get really invested. So read on for some bizarre ideas about how I might achieve this.

Potent Potables

Here's a small one you can steal. It's going in the next draft of Brave but works great as a standalone homebrew. This is inspired by something Patrick Stuart once spitballed in (I believe) an interview I saw/read at some point. I've worked out the kinks and then fleshed it out further.

Potent Potables 

Characters can get intoxicated to temporarily adjust their stats. A character drinking alcohol loses an amount of WIS and gains HP equal to Xd6 - CON, where X is the number of drinks they have. If they reach 0 WIS, they become poisoned and have disadvantage on all checks. Every point of negative WIS incurred also gains one level of exhaustion. Characters sober up at a rate of 1 hour per WIS point regained/bonus HP lost. If sobering up reduces your HP below 0, you pass out and gain exhaustion.

Example: You drink 3 bottles of ale and have a +2 CON bonus. You roll 3d6 and get 1, 5, and 6. 1+5+6-2 = 10. You gain 10 HP and subtract 10 from your WIS.
These mechanics can apply to other potables as well! While “pure” potions and poisons exist, many consumable items instead have a tradeoff. Different items that affect the same stats will stack. Potables with this tradeoff are usually listed with the notation of “stat gained/stat lost” with their ratio.

Example: Alcohol is listed as: HP+1/WIS-1. This means that for every temporary hit point gained, a point of Wisdom is lost.

But wait! There's more!

Talking Statues: The Ultimate Quest Dealer

Statue of Saint Tarscel. Click the pic for details.

This is one of the best ideas I've ever had and you should all steal it immediately.

Have you ever heard of the talking statues of Rome? I'd known about them for awhile, thought they were neat, maybe some potential worth exploring for worldbuilding purposes. Tucked it away in the back of my mind. Now, I've finally found a use for them.

Rumors are a classic thing to include in D&D. More so in the old school, but it's an ever-popular tradition. Lots of adventure modules come with them. But I've always found them tricky to integrate, myself. That's not the sort of things my players usually go for, and I'd hate to force-feed them stuff like that. But I'm working on a cool sandbox campaign, and suddenly having a system for "quest hooks up for grabs!" is really convenient.

And especially because we're all playing online now and I'd like the PCs to have an idea of their next adventure during the week between sessions ("downtime" in a sense), having a passive way to distribute this info, and consumed at their own pace, is the ideal.

So my city has a bunch of talking statues that my players can always look at. They update regularly, and the player characters can even post stuff themselves. There are 6 statues, each with a different theme, so there's a ton of variety. They have fantastic potential for worldbuilding, as the statues themselves and their theme embody a specific deity in my setting. In addition, not every post is tied to a quest. Lots of it's just flavor. A decent amount of it came about as a consequence of something the PCs did. That top-right post on my boi Tarscel up there? About vacated farms? Yeah, that all happened during our last session, and the PCs' next planned move was to start looting.

Want to know how to set this up in your game? I'll give instructions on how I did it, below. Adapt it however you need to fit your table's setup. I'll also show off my own statues a bit more if you want some inspiration.

Infatuation as a Condition

No, this is not the same as the Charmed condition. I'll explain, just hear me out.

Love usually doesn't find its way into TTRPGs, for obvious reasons. Some people try to tackle it, usually they fail. The systems most open to it are ones that already impose mechanics on lots of personality and communication related things anyway, like a lot of story games. It's pretty common in Pendragon to make a flirting check or to roll on a cuckoldry table or have to make a saving throw to not be too heartbroken or whatever.

But people like agency over their character's brain and are less inclined to allow "character skill, not player skill" into that part of your stats. That is more true in OSR games than probably anywhere else and lots of people in that scene will shriek at the mere suggestion that you mechanically enforce a specific mental state on a PC. It is a common paradigm that you cannot tell a player how their character feels about something, and I've frequently heard people bring this up as a reason you can't roleplay a true Arthurian story with all the romance bits. BUT...