Initiative as a Token
A long time ago, in a country far away I wrote a silly game about space Vikings. It has a mechanic that let you give the initiative away to the opposition in exchange for bonus dice. It’s not a bad idea, and I wonder why I’ve never thought of using something along those lines since then.
I like the idea of initiative as something you can take away from opponents, depending on how the flow of the fight goes. Fights can’t always be as elegant as the duel in Princess Bride but I think we can do better than just rolling a die.
All I have is a kernel of an idea that I’ll test in my next games (CY_borg or CRACK! not sure which will happen first). But here it is, directly from my brainmeat:
- Initiative is a physical token on the table. Use something cool looking.
- The side who initiates the attack starts with the initiative. Or roll if not sure.
- On their initiative, the players or the monsters/NPC act in the order they chose.
- Initiative can be lost:
- On a very bad roll or fumble
- As a payment to improve the result of a roll
- In exchange for better odds at a roll
- Initiative can be seized:
- With a very good or critical roll
- By succeeding at a specific action
- By not acting on your turn
You’d have to be very narrative focused to make this work. I don’t think it’d work in a grid-based, action economy environment like Pathfinder of the Ampersand Brand. But if you’re playing loosey-goosey, heroic games, you can easily make the iniative a stake of your fight scenes.
I’ll think of some examples when my brain isn’t as foggy as it is today (why else do you think I’m blogging on a Friday afternoon?)
#dungeon23 February, weeks 1 and 2
This is an adventure location for #CY_borg. I’m thinking characters coming from Stasis Island will end up in one of the last rooms. I’ll update this with some background info soon (or not).
February map part one 
February map part two
Undermonetized Wizard GIF (please steal)
I’m not sure what video game deathcult this wizard was from, but now that I’ve played with him he’s joined the Wizards of the Coast.
undermonetized wizard
Bruce Sterling interviews Lovecraft in 1983
Just stumbled upon this in a print collection of The Cheap Truth I exhumed from my shelves.
Cheap Truth #3 p. 2
Had I known in 1983 that some people called HPL a racist, I’d have read him in a different light.
Dear Wizards of the Coast,
After forty years, I have come to realise I am no longer a Dungeons & Dragons fan.
I am done supporting D&D with my money, and I am done promoting your property with my work. I will stop publishing games under the OGL. My DnDbeyond account is slated for deletion. I will not see the movie or the TV show, or buy that Warduke action figure if it ever comes out (and that one really, really stings). Oh, and I will stop saying “Dungeons & Dragons” to get new people to play a fantasy game with me.
Why did I come to such a heartbreaking decision? Well, let me tell you a story. At the top of the wizards’ tower, there were once people who cared for the game. The good wizards had saved Dungeons & Dragons from the abyss, and for over twenty years they rebuilt its reputation. They cared so much that they wanted to protect D&D from the future. Did they know the reign of the wizards would end? Did they foresee that some day, a band of greedy mind flayers would take over? It doesn’t matter. The Illithids of Monetisation are here now and with their tentacles they will squeeze every copper from everyone who still thinks playing D&D is cool.
And this is what saddens me the most. Wizards of the Coast had achieved the impossible: they had made Dungeons & Dragons cool. Let that sink in for a round or two.
D&D certainly wasn’t cool when I started playing. In 1983, I got the Moldvay & Cook basic box and was hooked within hours of cracking it open. I played AD&D 1st and 2nd editions for so, so many hundreds of hours in college, making lifelong friends in the process. I learned more around game tables than I did in class, and got a job at a games publishing company. When 3rd Edition came out, we had no idea how successful OGL products would end up being, but we jumped at the chance of making our own campaign world for Dungeons & Dragons. 20 odd years later, I keep getting asked if there will be an updated edition.
Until very recently, my answer was always: “Why not, if we can get some of the original writers?” 5E is a great incarnation of D&D and I’ve played a lot of it. I met my girlfriend at a 5E table. Our characters were married before we got together. To be honest, I was more of a D&D fan a month ago than I was when I was eleven. But the other day, when someone asked me about a new version of our 3rd Edition campaign world, I said: “Over my dead body!”
I am done with Hasbro D&D. And it’s not just me: countless hardcore players are leaving the squidship they thought was the good wizards’ tower. They’re on their way to explore the infinite realms of roleplaying games, never to return.
So, go ahead inventing the Online Tabletop Roleplaying Game — I guess that’s what we’ll end up calling your ‘recurrent microspending’, fully monetised D&D. We’ll be outside your walled garden, actually talking to each other. Because you may own the ampersand, but you don’t own the dragons or the dungeons. These are ours. The creativity, the wonder, the laughter, the junk food and the nat 20s.
Our D&D isn’t the Ampersand Brand. It’s all the amazing games nerds like me have been making since 1971. No amount of PR mind blasting will ever change that.
Creatures & Commoners, Barely/Explained
edit 11-2-23: This game is now a complete, laid out, and properly illustrated little boo called CRACK!. Grab it for free along with a ton of mini-supplements over at the Merry Mushmen’s website.
This game is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence (CC BY 2.0) The rules are incomplete by design (and also it’s almost 1am). Make up whatever you need, possibly looking at old editions of the Ampersand Brand and the games they inspired. 
Delve into dungeons, run from dragons
In this game, you play a character adventuring in a world prepared and portrayed by the Referendary (ref). They set up a situation and you act on it as if you were there. The ref tells you what happens based on their prep, their knowledge of the world, and possibly a roll of the dice.
You are a commoner
Whether you were born dirt poor or lost it all, you are now what people generously call an adventurer: someone desperate enough to look for treasure in deadly, creature infested places. First roll three regular dice (we call them d6s) and add them to determine your scores in:
- STRonkness: your raw muscular power
- braINTellect: your education and mental ability
- WISE-itude: your intuition and force of will
- DEXtrousability: your speed, agility, and manual precision
- CONstamina: your physical endurance and resistance
- CHAttyness: your presence and leadership
These scores should give you an initial idea of what your character is good at, and help you decide if you want to be a:
- CLERK of the Gods: good at calligraphy and fighting, able to cast evil out and perform miracles
- DWARF: a sturdy bearded dude from fantasy and myth
- ELF: pointy eared and good at magic as well as fighting
- FIGHTING-PERSON: weapons and armour and lack of regard for your physical wellbeing
- Ħ𝕠βⓑ𝕚ţ: sort of like a gnome farmer, jolly and of solid appetite, surprisingly sneaky
- MAGICKER: casting spells in robes and a pointy hat
- THIEVERY CONSULTANT, locksmith, burglar, etc. Decent at illicit activities, bad at everything else
HP (health peak): a score that represents your lifeblood, luck, and general ability to survive. Being wounded reduces your HP (we call that taking damage) and a zero HP you’re dead. You roll a die for your HP depending on your job (d8 for dwarfs and fighting-persons; d6 for clerks, elfs, and sʇᴉqqoɥ; d4 for magickers and thievery consultants)
So, rules
SPELLS: Magickers start with one spell. Make up a name that sounds cool. It is inscribed on your spellbook. Find more spells to expand your spellbook. You can only cast as many spells per day as you have levels, and if you have more in your spellbooks, you must decide which ones you memorise every morning. It’s a whole mess; if I were you I’d try and get the ref to use a simpler rule.
MIRACLES: Clerks of the gods can ask for a miracle a number of times per day equal to their level minus one. So zero times at first level. Tough. If the miracle seems reasonable enough, it happens.
DOING SHIT: When the ref doesn’t know what happens next, they will ask you to roll a die. You can use twenty-sided dice (d20s) because they’re fun to roll. A good way to know if an action is succesful is to try and roll under one of your six scores.
KILLING SHIT: This can be as detailed as you and your friends decide. We recommend you just roll under STR for melee attacks and DEX for ranged attacks. Succesful rolls mean your opponent loses d6 HP, while failures mean you’re probably the one getting damaged.
OPTIONAL KILLING RULES: You can also use an Arbitrary Calculation (AC) number to represent how hard characters and creatures are to hit. AC would be based on armour worn (say 12 for leather to 16 for full plate) with modifiers for very high or very low DEX. Restrict who can wear the heaviest armour tho. If you need to decide who acts first, have both sides roll a d6 or something. Different weapons can also have different damage dice. A pocket knife is d4 and an oversized sword is d10, you get the idea.
EXPLORING DANGEROUS PLACES should entail some rolls to avoid getting lost, determine if you run into wandering critters, if someone is suprised, and what everybody’s disposition is when you bump into each other. Having an idea of how much ground you cover while exploring and how fast you can run away is also a good idea. Maybe tie that to how much shit your carry? You should also keep track of your basic consumables such as torches and food. No one likes to go hungry or have to grope their way out of a haunted tomb once their last torch is used up.
CREATURES is what we call everything and everyone you are bound to encounter in your explorations. They also have HP, weapons, and special abilities. If the ref doesn’t know how a creature would react to meeting you, they will roll 2d6 - hope for a high result. All creatures can see perfectly in the dark. Don’t ask.
FLUNKIES are very useful if you can afford them. From a link kid to carry your lantern to a whole unit of mercenary crossbowmen, they may save your life. Just make sure you treat them fairly and pay on time or they’ll go work for the orcs.
GETTING BETTER AT IT requires you accumulate Expiatory Pasta (XP), mostly by recovering treasure from the unknown and putting it to a good use. With a sufficient number of XP, your reach the next level and Get Better At It. Notably, you get to roll your HP die again and add the result to your health peak.
January Rooms
edit 11-2-23: I’ve stopped using the Rocketbook following a minor spill incident and switched to a real paper notebook. I’ll post scans or photos of January soon.
I’ll update this post as I go, eventually with transcribed notes. Current rooms list:
- The Thermidor
- Abandoned guard post
- Lantern gate
- Beaching tunnel
desc1
January Map
edit 11-2-23: I’ve stopped using the Rocketbook following a minor spill incident and switched to a real paper notebook. I’ll post scans or photos of January soon.
I’ll update this post as I go. So far, the January dungeon doesn’t have a name. It’s an island in a sword and sorcery setting, à la *Black Sword Hack. #dungeon23
island
Let’s do this, #dungeon23!
My plan was to not plan anything. I wanted to wait until this morning to just draw a square room and improvise its contents. But I still have the flu and got some ideas in the last couple days. I only committed the map outline to paper like an hour to the new year so let’s call this close enough.
The next few days will test my low friction procedures for low energy brains, at least!
Attaching the scans of my first pages in their original state. As you can see, the Frixion felt pens are comfy to write with but they’re not really compatible with Rocketbook. I’ll repost as I redo them. Speaking of, I won’t post every day with my progress or lack thereof. I’ll have the room descriptions, the map and key, and the factions/NPCs in their own single posts that I’ll edit regularly (and postdate if it gets too messy).
edit 11-2-23: Removing the barely legible scans from below. I’ve stopped using the Rocketbook following a minor spill incident and switched to a real paper notebook. I’ll post scans or photos of January soon.
#dungeon23 Should be a Metacampaign
I wasn’t there in the 70s, but from what I read, original D&D was a game of dungeons. Big dungeons. What we now call megadungeons. At the time, no one was really thinking about settings or game worlds. People would bring their character who’d been exploring someone’s dungeon to another DM’s table when the opportunity presented itself. Not everyone was ready for the huge effort designing and constantly updated a dungeon represented.
Fast forward to 2013 or so, on Google Plus, some OSR afficionados deciced to take advantage of the critical mass of creators present, along with the ease of document sharing, videoconferencing, and other tools the Google ecosystem offered to launch a permanent convention - I’d call it a metacampaign - called FLAILSNAILS (I’ll refer your tothis post by Jeff Rients if you want to know the details and what the acronym stands for).
People would play for a couple of hours, their characters jumping from world to world with little focus on believability. Rules differences were handwaved, and people just played. That’s another thing I missed but I did experiment with the format circa 2016 - I even did a series of actual play videos with some other designers to help bring the OSR word to French gamers. And I still have a folder of FLAISNAILS ready characters in my gDrive who would love nothing more than dungeon delving again.
As I’m struggling with a bad case of the flu and thinking about the huge impact Sean’s #dungeon23 idea is making, it’s just hitting me. Why don’t we run our dungeons, hexcrawls, space stations, and cities online, whenever there’s enough players to do so? This might just be fever-induced, enthusiastic dreams, but I’m putting it out there.
The word is getting out, far and wide, and I’m expecting things to get organised with websites and ressource lists. So let’s talk about it once we all have a few rooms to explore?
edit 11-2-23: the first game of this ilk I’m aware of is happening this Monday. We’re using the hashtag #meta23 on Mastodon.