I play make believe

ILLUSION MAGIC I have struggled with how illusionist magic operates. I had an illusionist is a previous campaign, but they didn't test the boundaries of the magic system. I have another illusionist in my current campaign and decided that I needed to put pen to paper, especially as they may be acquiring a nearly fully charged wand of illusions! Incidentally, both of these illusionists were NPCs who were taken over by players after their characters died. The first was Grastic Hammerclay. The second was a gnome from my Absorbing Eye adventure. This explanation will probably make it into my ADVANCER Rules. Illusion vs. phantasm All forms of illusion magic includes a sensory aspect, called an illusion , and a mental element, called a phantasm . The phantasm affects every intelligent creature who senses the illusion. At a minimum, the phantasm makes the illusion seem real, fleshing it out and filling in gaps. More powerful phantasms can cause damage, physical effects such as blindness, d

AD&D initiative is not well-explained. It tries to add realism by dividing the 1-minute round into 6-second segments.  One purported intent was to penalize spellcasters, especially priests (clerics and druids) and high-level magicians (mages and illusionist), whose spells take a half-round or more to cast and thus may be interupted even if the spellcaster wins initiative. Theoretically, it also allows the GM to adjudicate the relative timing of different actions that require time to complete. I say "theoretically" because the rules in AD&D are not clear about how to actually accomplish this.  The draft ADVANCE rules are set out below. Here is a quick summary: - High roll wins initiative.  - "Immediate attacks" of the winning side occur on segment 1. - The higher initiative die indicates when "immediate attacks" of the losing side occur (following DMG, p. 65). - The lower initiative die acts as a penalty for certain actions, specifically:      - for

DMG grappling, in brief  Most of the grappling and overbearing systems presented in early D&D (namely, those found in Strategic Review Vol. 1, No. 2 and Unearthed Arcana) use a conventional attack roll, while the AD&D DMG (pp. 72-73) infamously uses a separate system using percentile dice. To make sense of the DMG system in my own mind, I converted the grappling system to a more conventional looking system with an attack roll vs AC. The DMG system actually has two percentile rolls, first a "Base Score to Grapple" roll (which I have converted to an attack roll vs AC) and second a "Hold Determination" roll (which is similar to the damage roll). Interestingly, the DMG system differs fundamentally from a normal attack roll in many ways: - armour worsens, rather than improves, the AC of the defender (ie, it increases the Base Score to Grapple) - the AC of the defender is not affected by having a shield or having any sort of magical armour or protection - there is

"The Absorbing Eye" I submitted an adventure called " The Absorbing Eye " to the 2024 One-Page Dungeon Contest. One of 112 entries.  The bones of the adventure were developed using the random dungeon generator in the 1e DMG and certain random tables from Shadowdark, so I have Mr. Gygax and Ms. Dionne to thank. This is my first time submitting anything for publication in any form, so I obsessed a bit about it, wordsmithing, deciding what to cut, what to add. Please read (link above), enjoy and let me know what you think. Playtest I got to run the adventure this past weekend, using 5e, with my two kids, a friend and the friend's dad (who plays in my regular S&W game).  There is a "goal" to the adventure, in the sense of a main treasure to find, but it could take several sessions. My hope was the faction would play make it interesting even in a one-shot, irrespective of the outcome.  In play, I was particularly impressed with a creative use of  thunde

Good RPG podcasts! For my money, there are two really top-notch RPG podcasts: Fear of a Black Dragon Ken & Robin Talk about Stuff What makes these podcasts stand out? Two things:  They divide the podcast into segments. The structure gives variety through the show and keeps it from devolving into an hour or more of rambling, which I find happens with most podcasts. The hosts have deep knowledge about a variety of subjects. I find Ken (Ken & Robin Talk about Stuff) and Tom (Fear of a Black Dragon) endlessly interesting. Honourable mentions: Bastionland Podcast. I love listening to interviews, and Chris is a great interview host. He also gives structure to his podcasts.  Grognard Files. This might have made the top-notch list if I had more of an interest in the full array of genres they cover. Fun to listen to these guys.  Classic Adventuring Game Podcast. A panel discussion format with a very impressive panel. These guys know what they are talking about.  Roleplay Rescue. One pe

Here are the draft ADVANCER Rules for saving throws to accompany the saving throw tables presented in the previous post. They are intended to create categories of saving throws which are both more clearly defined and more clearly separated from one another. Using this system will require ignoring module-specific (and spell description-specific) rules regarding which saving throw to apply. I don't see that as a bad thing, as the modules and spell descriptions (especially the modules) are not at all consistent in this regard. * * * Use of saving throws Saving throws are dice rolls to determine whether a character or creature avoids a peril. Other than poison, acid, and optionally traps, only magical perils are given saving throws.  A saving throw is rolled on a d20 with a roll equal to or greater than the target number being considered a success. The target numbers depends on the category of peril, class and rank of the character as given on the tables below.  A successful save indic

As I mentioned in the first post on XP tables, in ADVANCER, I simplified character advancement, while trying to keep some of the idiosyncracies of AD&D.  The general areas in advancement are: character rank (aka level)  attack bonuses  saving throws Here are the principles that I had laid down initially when considering attack bonuses and saving throws. (Remember that ADVANCER uses ascending AC.) As you will see, not all of them made into the final results. Attack bonus and saving throw bonus increases by 2 every three levels (4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th) Base attack bonus +0. Base saving throw is 16. Priestly and roguish classes get normal attack bonuses. (Cleric, Druid, Monk, Thief, Assassin)  Martial classes start wtih +2 attack bonus at 1st level. (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger) Arcane classes do not get any attack bonus until 7th level. (Mage, Illusionist) Attack bonues In the end, I decided that there was not need for tables. Simply: Martial classes and monsters get +1 attack bonus