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- Attack rolls are made with 1d20 + class level bonuses + equipment bonus against 10 + Dexterity modifier + equipment bonus.
- The four saving throws are Physical, Mental, Evasion, and Magic.
- Attack bonuses and saving throws increase linear with levels.
- No prime requisite ability requirements and no XP modifiers for high or low scores.
- Fighter, thief, mystic (cleric), sorcerer (mage), scout (halfling), warlock (elf), shaman, and scoundrel as character classes.
- No mechanical impact from character background or origin.
- Thief and scout skills use 2d6.
- Spells are prepared with spell slots, but casting is limited by spells per day.
- Encumbrance is based on number of items carried, with encumbrance limits deriving from the Strength score.
- Heavy loads increase the number of rest turns in dungeons instead of slowing movement speed.
- Dungeon exploration are structured around exploring one area per turn, instead of progressing a distance in feet.
- Weapons and armor are not restricted by class.
- Spellcasting and thief skills are limited by encumbrance instead of armor type.
- Different rules for ships.
- A strictly 6-mile hex based travel system that always results in distances in 6-mile increments.
Do they really need to name it the “ORC” license?
So Paizo and Kobold Press are at the head of an initiative to create a new open license for shared RPG mechanics that completely bypassed WotC and aims to establish a common standard for second and third tier publishers as well as everyday GM’s for releasing their own material as open content. Great idea, I am absolutely for it.
But they decided to give it a name that shortens to ORC. Like OGL and OSR. I get it, it’s a bit of a pun. Cute.
And I get how this might have seemed like a great choice when things were going very fast and there was a race to establish facts on the ground and take charge of the conversation. But do we really want “ORC” to be the banner under which small content creators unite?
I know this isn’t the kind of subject that my assumed typical readers care about (but still have a really strong opinion on), but orcs are pretty much the main poster boys for controversies about uncritical use of stereotypes in fantasy in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I’m not too bothered by people who still want to make orcs work in their own creations, or who just use them now as big green humans. Their choice, I’m not going to fight it. But expecting that this is a label that everyone who is interested in this kind of licensing arrangement should unite under does feel like a major misstep. Nobody would expect the greater RPG world to rally behind the motto of “Love the Craft!” or something like that.
I feel like I’m having a pretty moderate position on this topic, but I still feel very uncomfortable with the thought of maybe releasing something as an ORC license product. I got some OSE material in the work that I’d love to share as a proper release, but if future OSE releases would have to be under an Orc license, I actually might rather not to.
I really think this should be addressed before the first actual game material is released under that license. Name it something else. Anything else! Just don’t name it after the most controversial and divisive topic in recent RPG history.
This is so stupid
I think this weeks mass hysteria about WotC revoking the perpetual Open Game License and closing down half of the RPG industry with that move is probably the dumbest thing I’ve seen happening in the 24 years that I’ve been following RPG news and discussions.
People even admit that they are “just repeating what I’ve heard” and that all the current panic is based on is an unsourced “leak”.
Update: More sources are coming out with claims that make it seem increasingly unlikely that it was all a hoax. But I don’t redact my original assessment; I amend it:
This is even way dumber than I thought.
Hit point increases in B/X
I somewhere saw people discussing the question whether the thief in B/X would be better having a d6 for hit dice instead of a d4, and one point that was brought up against that is that the thief gains new levels very quickly and as such has more Hit Dice than other characters with comparable XP, and that this would even things out already.
I’ve long felt that the speed of thieves gaining new levels has been greatly overstated, and so I went to check how the average hit points over time for the different classes actually look like.
As can be seen here, a thief’s average hit points do get very close to those of a cleric on reaching 4th and 5th level, but the cleric almost immediately surges ahead again.
And after those initial first levels, the gap between thieves and clerics only widens until 10th level when the cleric continues to gain only 1 hp each time compared to the thief’s 2 hp. Now a 6 hit point gap on average towards the end of the B/X progression is not that big, but at these small numbers that’s still +20% for the cleric. And a +50% for the fighter, compared to the thief.
Does that make thieves too fragile at higher levels? I don’t know, I’ve not enough experience at play at those levels. But I think this also shows that the thief’s faster level advancement rate does not negate the difference in Hit Die size to the cleric at all.
Random hit point ranges
A few years ago I read something about the value of always rolling for the hit points of creatures and NPCs that the players get to fight and not always taking the average by default. I really like the idea of using different hit points to give individual opponents a bit of a personalized description even though otherwise they have completely identical stats with the same AC, saving throws, hit chance, and damage on a hit. In a fight against some random orcs or bandits, it can be a neat and convenient inspiration to have those with 7 hp look much larger and more menacing and approach the fight different from their otherwise identical buddies with only 2 hp.
But sometimes, you might want to know what actual hit points numbers might be realistically expected for a given number of d8s. So I made this little table. The math magic behind calculating 2 standard deviations for normal distributions isn’t really important here. What this table shows is the range of hit points into which 96% of all random rolls will fall. There is only a 2% chance that a randomly rolled number will be lower than the shown range, and a 2% chance that a number will be greater. It will still happen occasionally, but even then most likely only by 1 or 2 points, and for the purposes of encounters in an RPG, I consider the odds negligible. You can just assume that pretty much all randomly rolled hit points on a d8 will fall into the shown ranges.
| Hit Dice | hit points |
|---|---|
| 1 HD | 1-8 |
| 2 HD | 3-15 |
| 3 HD | 6-21 |
| 4 HD | 9-27 |
| 5 HD | 12-33 |
| 6 HD | 16-38 |
| 7 HD | 19-44 |
| 8 HD | 23-49 |
| 9 HD | 27-54 |
| 10 HD | 31-60 |
| 11 HD | 34-65 |
| 12 HD | 38-70 |
| 13 HD | 42-75 |
| 14 HD | 46-80 |
| 15 HD | 50-85 |
| 16 HD | 54-90 |
| 17 HD | 58-95 |
| 18 HD | 62-100 |
| 19 HD | 65-105 |
| 20 HD | 70-111 |
Planes for the Ice Ages and some History
I’ve been thinking more about my ideas for a Pleistocene inspired setting and how I can combine it with the general outline I’ve already drawn out for my new mystical wilderness world. And I really like where things are going.
The world consists of three primary realms. The natural world of Earth, Water, and Air sits at the center as the home of humanoids, animals, and various nature spirits. It’s the realm of the elements from which druids draw their magical powers.
Above the natural world exists the celestial realm. It’s the world of stars and moons, home to strange and elusive beings that are pure spirits with no physical substance, and the source of the magical powers wielded by mystics (clerics).
Beneath the natural world is the underworld. It’s the realm of demons and infernal fire. The infernal fire is found in the essence of demons and volcanoes. Sorcerers and warlocks gain some of their magical power from the infernal fire, but also draw on the energies of the celestial sphere.
In addition to the three main realms, there are also the forces of elemental fire and elemental cold. They are the driving forces of the seasons but also the cycle of the ages. The elemental fire is manifested in the sun, while elemental cold seems to come from both everywhere and nowhere. Nobody really knows for sure if fire and cold are equal but opposite forces, or if cold is simply the natural state of the world that will reassert itself whenever the warming influence of the sun is waning. But some people believe that there is a counterpart of the sun beneath the eternal ice of the north pole.
Ancient myths shared by most temples and cults tell that for most of the existence of the world, all the lands were covered in ice and snow, cast in eternal darkness without the warming light of the sun. But like the changing of the seasons, there is a cycle of the ages, and after hundreds of thousands of years, the sun will reappear and the world awaken from its long sleep. Glaciers melt and forests grow back, and new animal life returns to the world. But eventually, these ages of the sun will end, and the world return to its natural state of lifeless cold and darkness.
The oldest tales of known history begin with the end of the last Great Frost. This world became inhabited by the fey, giants, and serpentmen who made its wild forests and plains their home for many thousands of years. However, their world ended with the beginning of the Long Winter some 10,000 years ago. The Long Winter was not a true Great Frost that would end all life on the surface of the world, but the sun became dim and the great glaciers in the far north began to grow and expand south, covering much of the known world under their ice. During the Long Winter, the fey went to slumber in burrows under the earth. The giants survived in small nomadic clans roaming the cold tundra at the feet of the glaciers. And the serpmentmen fled far to the south where the warmth of the sun allowed for forests to survive. During this time, even the gods went to sleep, with only the celestial goddesses of moonlight and darkness watching over the frozen world.
The Long Winter lasted for 6,000 years until spring finally returned to the known world and the great glaciers began to melt. Plants and animals returned to the warming lands, but this time they were also accompanied by people. As they explored these new lands, they came upon old ruins of the elder races and discovered in them the secrets of magic. These first sorcerers became the first mortal kings, establishing both the Western and the Eastern Kingdoms, which became the centers of the newly rising civilizations. Not all barbarians were happy with the rule of kings, and many clans continued traveling further north into the expanding forests to evade their reach. With the Western Kingdoms and the Eastern Kingdoms regularly fighting among themselves, with each other, or against the ancient Serpentmen Kingdoms that have survived in the South, there are always people looking to the wilderness in the North to seek a new life among the barbarian clans. A vast land promising freedom and adventure.