Magical Thinking

I'm going to kick this off with a discussion of magic in fantasy role-playing, and in D&D-type games in particular.

I've never been fully satisfied with the way magic is handled in D&D. Gygax and Arneson clearly modeled the magic use system in the game on the fiction of Jack Vance. Magic users have to memorize spells once a day, and once used the spell is gone until it's re-memorized. Clerics use the same mechanics, but with prayer instead of study.

In one ear and out the other, I guess.

Magic also gets absurdly powerful at higher levels. Sure, mages are weak when they're at lower level, but above level 15 or so, magic user characters are virtually unbeatable. Once they gain a Wish spell in their top slot, they are effectively godlike. There are several threads on internet discussion boards where gamers have tried to optimize a non-magic-using character class to beat a high-level caster. The general consensus is that it can't be done.

And if the hard-core munchkins say that, you'd better believe it.

Other than avoidance via saving throw, there also isn't any sort of mechanic to allow for the failure of a spell. I've read a lot of fantasy stories involving magic, and many of the more entertaining ones contain cautionary tales of what happens when a powerful spell doesn't turn out right. Would your 20th level Wizard be so casual about throwing around Power Word: Kill spells if there was a chance the thing could backfire? I think not.

So, on one hand, we have a spell use and regeneration system that doesn't really make any kind of sense at all, memorialized with annoying and arbitrary game mechanics. Having memorized something directly applicable to your core profession and using it on a regular basis, are you likely to FORGET it any time soon? Me neither.

On the other hand, you have a source of power that has few if any weaknesses or downsides (the studying requirement is more of an annoyance than a real limitation). I know I'm generalizing this, but the broader point is hard to refute. At higher levels, non-casters should at least have a sporting chance of taking on a spell-caster and making a good account of themselves. Otherwise, the mages would quickly own or control everything in the world. (In some campaigns I've played in, this is actually part of the background for the adventuring, but it gets old fast since there's very little anyone who's a non-caster or congenitally magic-immune can do about it).

I also object to this magic system on aesthetic grounds. It's inelegant and monotonic. But maybe that's just me.

The one virtue it does have is simplicity, and that counts for a lot...maybe more than anything. If I'm going to suggest messing with it, any modification I make has to maintain a base level of simplicity, logic, and ease that is roughly comparable to the core rules. I also want to make sure that any changes don't turn this into an entirely new game. The goal is here is refinement, not a total re-write. The bathwater has got to go, but we like the baby just fine.

I also want to make sure than any modifications to the magic system reinforce other positive aspects of the game. Two of the greatest features of the Oe/1e D&D-style rules are flexibility of play and an emphasis on conserving resources. Anything that you can imagine is possible if you can articulate it to the DM, and there aren't any save points or unlimited ammo buffs.

One fictional take on magic use that has always appealed to me can be found in Larry Niven's Magic Goes Away stories. For those who haven't read them, they take place in a pre-historic earth-analog where magic is powered by a non-renewable resource called Mana. Magic uses up mana, and once the mana's gone, it never comes back. As the character Warlock says on realizing the implications of irrevocably depleting magical resources, "The swordsmen, the damned stupid swordsmen, will win after all." Aside from providing a clear balancing mechanism for a fantasy game, it's also a sobering analogy for oil dependence. No surprise that Niven wrote many of these stories in the 1970s. Imagine a Peak Mana scenario for a game campaign and you've got a rough approximation of Niven's fantasy milieu.

I'm not the only one who's speculated that a mana-based magical system would be a much more satisfying fit for D&D, but the obstacles to implementing such a thing are large.

First off, magic dependent on an expendable resource requires an accounting system. Accounting systems are notorious sources of complexity, which is what we're trying to avoid.

Second, if magic is powered by some kind of resource, wouldn't it make sense that having access to a lot of that resource could make a spell really, really powerful? Of course it would. Spell use in the core rules is limited by level and availability of spell slots. We don't want first level mages who find a way to tap into a large mana pool to start casting unlimited numbers of Wish spells. Nor do we want to regularly see high-level mages cast infinite Magic Missiles.

Third, there has to be some sort of way to interface mana rules with the existing spell-casting rules. Otherwise, we wind up having to write a whole new game system from scratch.

Fourth, and this is a bit less intangible, Vancian magic is a fundamental part of the flavor of D&D. If we get too far away from that, we're not really playing a D&D-style game anymore, and might as well be doing something else.

But there is a compelling logic to having magic use powered by some sort of expendable resource (the core rules use memory and time...we're just looking at a more logical and interesting alternative here), and it adds the potential for some very interesting diversity of effects if we can figure the mechanics out.

Before tackling the specifics of this line of thinking in detail and discussing my proposed solution, there is one more caveat I want to put on the table: Whatever I come up with for a resource-based magical system to modify the core rules, it must not substantially reduce or increase basic character spell-casting abilities. The mechanics of how spell casting works may change a lot (bringing in diversity and balance), but the net effect for how many and what kind of spells a mage or cleric may cast should not substantially change.

Therefore, some analysis is in order. The first thing to do is to find some way to quantify the status quo before fiddling with it.

Introduction to House Rules

I'm late to the game here, in a manner of speaking.

Seems like lately there's been a bit of a renaissance in Old School fantasy gaming taking place on the net. A quick search turns up excellent old-school sites such as Grognardia, Dragonsfoot, and a host of others. There are several open rule sets now available for download which capture the flexibility, spirit, and ease of play of the original edition (Oe) Dungeons & Dragons game, with additional information (similar to First Edition Advanced D&D) that allows the inclusion of more advanced rules and play without getting mired in volumes of tables, tedious calculation, or barracks lawyerism by min-maxing munchkins gaming some obscure prestige class and race bonus.

My two favorite rulesets so far are Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC. If you're an old school gamer, or interested in why table-top role-playing games used to be so popular (or why these old grognards wax so nostalgic about them), you ought to check 'em out.

I played my first Dungeons & Dragons game in 1980. I was twelve years old and had just started junior high school. A group of older kids had set up an after-school gaming group, and one of my friends talked me into joining in on a game session.

I was the twelfth person at the table that afternoon (how many gaming groups can claim even a third that number today?). I had no idea what was going on and hadn't read any of the game rules. My friend helped me roll up a character: a cleric because the group needed a backup healer and my stat rolls just happened to have a 17 for the wisdom stat. I was allowed to start out at Level 2 since the party had already been gaming for a couple of weeks and all had advanced past Level 1.

I named my cleric "Grey Hawk" because I'd been reading a bunch of Jack London novels and thought it sounded cool with a shamanistic flavor. I didn't understand the snickers around the table when I announced Grey Hawk the Cleric's addition to the adventuring party. Later, after I realized how grandiose and silly that sounded to D&D players, we could all laugh about it together.

Low level healers rank just above cannon fodder, so they stuck me at the back of the marching order instead of the front. They gave me some graph paper and told me to record where we'd been. Then they kind of ignored me for a while. I didn't care. I was fascinated by the whole thing: especially the crystalline polyhedral dice sparkling like giant precious gems and the miniature painted character figures strewn around the table. I recorded my maps in great detail (presaging my future career as a design architect, perhaps?), watched, and listened as our group began exploring a dark barrow tomb full of deadly traps and undead monsters.

Our Dungeon Master (DM) was a 9th grader and gaming veteran who colorfully described each new part of the tomb as we explored, full of excitement, adventure, and suspense. He had a fold-out screen with tables of numbers on it, but rarely consulted them unless something really complicated was going on. Mostly, the rule books stayed closed as we carefully made our way down fictional tunnels seen only in our minds and mapped out in pencil with notes on scraps of graph paper.

Typical of D&D players at the time, we played AD&D in the style of the original edition D&D: more about the DM's rulings than the rules - light on technicalities, heavy on imagination, fast, and flexible. If you could describe an action to the DM and it didn't directly violate any of the restrictions given by your character's class, abilities, or surroundings, the DM would make a ruling on it and maybe calculate a rough probability or effect then roll some dice to see if it worked. This encouraged a free-wheeling style of play that was never boring and encouraged creative thinking in a social context.

A couple of hours after I started that first adventure, narrowly avoiding gruesome death in spike-filled pits and fighting our way through zombies, skeletons, and ghouls, we wrapped it up for the day. I'd been having a great time and didn't want to stop. After using up my clerical healing spells (both of them) early on, I'd been "demoted" to cannon fodder, which gave me a much more active role in the game. My friend clued me in on "turning undead" and I began cutting a swath through the legions of zombies with my holy symbol and morningstar.

The next day, I talked my parents into taking me to the local game store to buy the AD&D Player's Handbook and some dice. Thus began my career as a gamer geek.

I played many different RPGs* over the next few years, but always gravitated back to that peculiar hybrid of Oe and 1e Dungeons & Dragons so common back in the early 1980s. Other rule sets and later editions of D&D became so complex and rule-bound that they stopped being fun. Also, I got older and pre-occupied with adult concerns. I played my last session of any role-playing game in 1989, as a Dungeon Master myself, then packed up the books and dice while I pursued my life.

To look at me now, you would likely never guess that I was such an avid gamer in my youth. Like Stephen Colbert, I don't fit the stereotype, but then few of us ever really did. 25 years later, members of my gaming group are now successful and established. Several of us are senior executives in mainstream industries and a few started successful companies. We all got married and had families. One is a politician (his secret is safe with me). I think it's fair to say that nobody who knows any of us now would ever describe us as "geeks."

I've still got the books and the dice, though.

And this got me thinking: whatever happened to all those table-top role-players? I can't be the only one who fondly remembers all those hours spent imagining spectacular adventures with friends. I did a quick web search and discovered I'm in good company.

I started reading the open rule sets and adventure models posted on the web. It got the wheels back in long-unused corners of my head turning again, thinking about magic and monsters and adventure. I know so much more now than I knew then. I don't have anybody to play these games with anymore (except maybe my own children, who are far more interested in the tangible, visually immediate world of video games...almost all of which are direct descendants of my table-top games of yore). But I still read rule books and think about the games for my own personal interest and satisfaction. As a professional creative person, I have the skills, insight, and techniques to re-create that original gaming experience and make it BETTER.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the definition of a "hobby."

Hence this blog. Although I have nobody to play with, and don't really have the time to spend playing games anyway, my brain is still full of this stuff.

Back in the day, the original rules of Dungeons & Dragons were so open and free-form that every gaming group and DM had a set of "House Rules" to clarify things that came from their experiences playing. That's where this blog title originates, and that's what I'm going to record my thoughts about. I encourage you to join me in sharing your own thoughts and observations.

---

* I still have a full set of original GDW Traveller rule books and a complete in-the-box original Chaosium Ringworld RPG set. Never found anyone who understood the Ringworld rules well enough to play them. It's an enormously complex and ambitious game system packed into a deceptively small package, but the books are a fun read for Niven fans. The running joke about Traveller is: it's a lot of fun to play, provided you're an expert in Excel or Mathematica and have a PhD in astrophysics. I was an early adopter of the Champions super-hero game system, and was therefore able to make the jump to GURPS with ease later on, developing a complete GURPS sci-fi campaign milieu based around Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium series of books.