Defending Your Territory

One of the chief ways animals communicate with and defend their territory or belongings against other animals is through scent marking. This involves rubbing objects or creatures with scent glands, urination, defecation, and other methods of leaving one’s distinct smell on the target. Every species language includes scent as a component, and no one learning another species’ language can truly understand it without knowing that species’ repertoire of scent messages. 

When an object or area becomes contested between two or more animals, a scent battle can ensue. Scent battles are a sort of non-lethal conflict by proxy, but follow different rules, since the parties are usually not both present at the same time. One party marks a target with her scent, then the other character comes along later and tries to overwhelm the previous scent. This can go on for days, sometimes months, without the two characters ever actually meeting. This does not imply, however, that scent battles are unwinnable, or fought by attrition. Victory can be achieved depending on the difference in Hit Dice/Total Levels between the two animals involved. 

Table 4.4 Scent Battle Resolution Matrix shows one way to resolve the conflict. It is based on the original fantasy game cleric’s ability to “turn the undead.” A player consults the column on the left, “PC Level,” to find her own current Total Levels. She then cross-references it with her opponent’s Hit Dice or Total Levels to the right. The number shown is the modifier to her core dice roll when trying to win a scent battle against that opponent; that is, the number she adds to her roll. A * indicates victory without rolling. The opposing character will simply give up the fight and move on to other prospects. 

NPCs who fail three consecutive Scent Battles will also give up and move on to another area. 

Note that this is the only modifier applied to your core dice roll during a Scent Battle, unless you have the Guardian niche.  Guardians can add their niche die roll result to a Scent Battle check.

                                        Opponent's Hit Dice/Total Levels

              

PC Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1	+7	+3	+1	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
2	+9	+5	+2	+0	No	No	No	No	No	No
3	+11	+7	+3	+1	No	No	No	No	No	No
4	+13	+9	+5	+2	+0	No	No	No	No	No
5	+15	+11	+7	+3	+1	No	No	No	No	No
6	+17	+13	+9	+5	+2	+0	No	No	No	No
7	+18	+15	+11	+7	+3	+1	No	No	No	No
8	*	+17	+13	+9	+5	+2	+0	No	No	No
9	*	+18	+15	+11	+7	+3	+1	No	No	No
10	*	*	+17	+13	+9	+5	+2	+0	No	No

The Perpetual Dilemma Of Falling Damage

Most of the writing I'm doing for the game right now focuses on specific situations that may arise over the course of a campaign: i.e., chases, disease, encumbrance, etc.  All of it will be considered optional rules, offered for the BM as suggestions.

In that vein, I've decided to bring back the falling damage rules as they were apparently meant to be: with a geometric progression of damage dice, rather than a linear one.  Here's the text for the section on "Climbing & Falling": 

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Climbing sheer surfaces requires a Tough Trickster lore check. “Sheer surface” is defined as any surface without clear hand-holds or other protrusions.  Some species receive bonuses to their climb checks, detailed in their species description, and of course any character with levels in Trickster lore will have a great advantage here.

Any creature who flies under her own power and suffers an attack while airborne that inflicts 50 percent or more of her total maximum HP should make a Challenging Trauma save, or fall to the ground.

There are two ways a BM can model the physical consequences of falling.  One method should be chosen and used consistently.

Characters and creatures suffer compounded damage from falling, 1d5 [1d6] for each 10 feet.  In other words, falling 10 feet inflicts 1d5 [1d6] damage, while falling 20 feet inflicts 1d5 [1d6] + 2d5 [2d6], falling 30 feet inflicts 1d5 [1d6] + 2d5 [2d6] + 3d5 [3d6], and so on.  This geometric progression continues to a maximum of 21d5 [21d6], which represents terminal velocity.

Alternately, the BM can choose a particular height as a threshold, and rule that any character who falls that distance or greater and hits the ground needs to make a Trauma save or be instantly killed. A successful save means she suffers 1d5 [1d6] damage per 10 ft. fallen (in a linear progression), to a maximum of 20d5 [20d6] for falls of 200 ft. or more.

This second method can assign Threat Levels to the Trauma save based on every 10 feet fallen, like so:

Table 4.2:  Falling Distance and Trauma Save Threat Levels 

Distance Fallen                                 Threat Level 

10 ft.                                                   Easy 

20 ft.                                                   Average 

30 ft.                                                   Tough 

40 ft.                                                   Challenging 

50 ft.                                                   Formidable 

60 ft.                                                   Heroic 

70 ft. +                                                Epic

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Falling damage is a difficult thing to model in an RPG, because the real-life situation seems so arbitrary.  Sometimes, people die simply while tripping over a curb and landing the wrong way, while someone else survives a fall from thousands of feet after their parachute doesn't open.

Still, the consequences of falling in the real world are terrifying for most people to contemplate, and the same should be true of characters in a fantasy world.  So these suggested rules are meant to address that.  Sure, they're arbitrary, but then, aren't all rules?

Some rules revisions & housekeeping

Here's a link (which I'll also share on the Quick Start page) to some revised rules that came about as a result of my alpha-test run of Great & Small.  I have a feeling that most of these will be in the final draft of the game.

The big changes are:

1) Hit Dice are now tied directly to Size rating.  Species determines 0-level starting hit points; adding a niche at character creation takes you to 1st level and gives an additional HD roll to add to this total.  Each time you level up afterwards, you gain a new HD of the appropriate type and re-roll all your hp using the new pool of HD, and only change hp total if the new result is greater than the old.

2) Initiative now uses a Move (MV) score determined by your species. I'll be going through the Featured Creatures to revise them, but in the meantime, MV scores can be converted from the old system by dividing the combat movement rate (the number in parentheses) by 5.  This number is added to a 1d10 roll during combat to derive your initiative. Runner characters add their niche die result as a further bonus to this roll.  This will eliminate the system using Speed ratings for declared actions.

3) I've diversified the saving throws so that each core niche now has its own unique save bonus.  The new categories are Blast (Runner), Charm (Storyteller), Deception (Seer), Device (Scout), Fear (Warrior), Paralysis (Trickster), Poison (Herbalist), and Trauma (Healer).  Discerning readers should be able to tell which old-school save category each of these was derived from.

Next week, I will be diving headlong into arranging, re-writing, and compiling the final draft of the full product, including systems for Scent Battles over territory (based on turning undead mechanics!) and hazards of the wilderness, a re-working of OSR treasure rules to accommodate Resources and spandrels, and hopefully expanding the Herbalism list.  Also, creating more tables, including randomized scenario generation ideas.

Meantime, on the blog, I'll continue statting up Featured Creatures -- which will also all be in the final product -- adding 5e-compatible material, more sample PCs of various levels, more setting details for the three campaign schemes, and reviews of some of the inspirational reading.

Thanks to all my readers for the support and encouragement.  This project really feels like it is starting to take on a life of its own.

On Bandits, Berserkers, & Banished Ability Scores

I've made many changes to B/X DNA to create Great & Small -- some more gimmicky than others -- but probably the biggest and most radical has been the elimination of ability scores for PCs.

I didn't make this change lightly, and it happened gradually, as I struggled with the Herculean task of defining ability score adjustments for animals ranging from mouse-sized to whale-sized.  What the heck would the Str adjustment for, say, an elephant be, vs. the Dex or Con adjustment compared to the human baseline assumed by the B/X rules?  How about those aforementioned mice, or whales, or horses? What about a damned T. rex or a griffin? The vast variety of animals (mythical and real) meant it was going to be a long, hard slog, and the prospect of tackling it nearly made me abandon this project altogether.

No class

The root of the problem was that pesky human baseline assumption.  The OSR game rules assume that all characters are going to be obligate bipedal humanoids, with all the anatomy and musculature that entails.  And that's a problem when writing a game about the rest of the animal kingdom because, frankly, us obligate bipedal humanoids are a bunch of mutant freaks compared to even our nearest kinfolk, the apes and monkeys.  The capabilities granted to us by that mutant anatomy are, in many ways, a great restriction on character versatility (how many longpaws can fly at 1st level like a bat, an owl, or a raven can?).  A game designed around us couldn't handle the majority of the world's population very well.  Or so it seemed.

Let's face it: most animals aren't tool-using bipedal humanoids, but they can do a lot of amazing things naturally that longpaws would have to use magic to achieve.  If I wanted to make this game work, I needed to shift the focus off of the freakish mutants who've been hogging the game table all these years and ask myself: what would the B/X game look like if it didn't assume all characters were freakish mutants who walk on their hind legs and use their front paws mostly to play with sticks and rocks?

I started, at first, just focusing on defining and/or expanding what particular types of animals could do within the rules, based on their "monster" entry in some old-school or OSR source, and leaving the great dragon of ability score adjustments for later slaying.  This was, originally, just a tactic to get my butt writing something for the game.

But it turned out that focusing on bestiary stat blocks was the key to the whole project, because monsters (including animals) run just fine without ability scores of any sort.  That point didn't really gel in my mind, though, until I came upon the "monster" entries for freakish obligate bipedal mutants like the Bandit, Berserker, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, or the generic Men.

None of them have ability scores in the bestiaries, either, even if there is a character class listed for them.

And that little detail got me noticing something else, something I'd always been aware of but never really thought much about:  ability scores don't really do anything during actual play.

Sure, they are used at character creation to cross-reference a bunch of derived stats on their associated tables, stats that help define character capabilities and powers.  But the numbers themselves -- say, 12 Str or 9 Cha -- just sat there, taking up space on character sheets that could have been more efficiently used for character portraits, or lists of phat l00t, or whatever.

It's true that successive iterations and editions of the game tried to make the ability scores in themselves useful during game play, leading to varying levels of added complexity. But in the original, they were, functionally, pretty much just place-holders for other things.

Things that were either already accounted for in the stat blocks for non-humanoid creatures, or simply not relevant to their existence in the first place.

And the fact that even the assumed baseline humans of the game could also be designed, through bestiary entries, to run just fine without ability scores solidified my decision:  Great & Small would be a grand experiment in seeing whether the world's first roleplaying game and its descendants could run smoothly using "monster" stat blocks alone.

In a way, this is just doubling down on the B/X "race-as-class" concept that originally defined dwarfs, elves, and halflings.  In G&S, a character's hit points by level, AC, attack types & damage, and base move rates are defined by their species -- that is, their "race" -- rather than by a separate character class.

I turned the character class concept into "lores," collections of dedicated skills and knowledges that any character could earn levels in. Declaring one of these lores as a "niche" at character creation grants access to special abilities that non-specialists can't get, makes the character better at that lore than non-specialists, and gives bonuses to particular types of saving throw, so class and race have still been somewhat decoupled in the game.

But these niches and lores don't, for the most part, define a character's level-based improvements to combat abilities the way character class did for human PCs in most editions of the original game.  They're more like templates attached to a bestiary stat block, to give individual animal PCs a bit of variety.  Nonetheless, most members of a given species will be very similar in their overall capabilities, and these species capabilities improve with experience and levels the way an elf's or a halfling's would in B/X.

In case you're wondering:  yes, I am going to have the freakish bipedal mutants -- men, dwarfs, elves, and halflings -- defined and played without ability scores, too.  The longpaws will be bestiary stat blocks + a niche "template," just like all the other animals in the game.

Because despite their pretensions to the contrary, longpaws are just animals, too.

Scout Niche Errata & Update

I've never been entirely happy with the Scout niche I designed.  So, I'm revising it.

The following Scout Niche Ability description replaces the one in the Quick Start Characters document.  I will upload a new version of that document in the next few days.

Niche Ability: When you select Scout as your niche, you become a consummate explorer and investigator, and a master of interpreting scent messages left by other animals.   

Your mastery of scent marks allows you to glean details about the animal(s) who left them behind, even if they are not members of your species.  With an Average Scout lore check, you can easily identify the name of an individual of your species who left the scent behind, as well as their stated intent.  A Tough lore check allows you to identify another species by her lingering scent, and ascertain how long ago she left the scent mark behind.  A Challenging lore check gives you a general, one-word idea about this other-species individual's message (i.e., "mine," "help," "returning," etc.).  With a Formidable lore check, you can translate the individual's name, approximate age, and Size.  And a Heroic result tells you exactly what the scent message says in detail, allowing you to translate it precisely to others.

In addition to all other bonuses (including Scout level and Scout niche die results), you add +2 to all lore checks when attempting to detect traps, find hidden objects, follow a trail, identify subjects by use of your senses , or spring traps. 

Finally, you begin the game knowing how to communicate with other species better than your comrades: in addition to your species language, you know an additional 1d5 (+ Scout niche die result) languages of other species in your habitat.

Revised Herbalism rules now available!

After too long a delay, I've finally got a Quick Start compatible version of the Herbalism rules ready for download.  You can get them on the Quick Start page, or just download them right here.

I can't thank you all enough for you patience.  After some delays induced by real life, I'm ready to pick up the pace on this project again.

These rules contain a number of herbal concoctions, most of which are converted from B/X spells.  A few are B/X monster abilities, or species traits from one of the Featured Creatures already highlighted on this blog.

In the future, I'll be posting more herbal concoctions, in addition to further Featured Creatures.

Sneak peek: New Herbalism rules

The initial Quick Start rules for Herbalism were a more or less straight conversion from the original Bunnies & Burrows game, including keeping the names of the herbs intact.  This created potential copyright infringement issues, and it was an amateur mistake on my part to put them out there.  But in my defense, I am an amateur...

That said, I removed the document from circulation as soon as someone pointed this problem out to me.  And since then, I've been working on some newer rules that keep the spirit of the concept intact while making their execution more OGL-compliant.

Here's a sneak peek at what I've been working on.  I hope to have a full version of these rules back in Quick Start circulation in about a month.  Keep in mind that these are all preliminary, and subject to substantial change before the final Quick Start version gets released.
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Herbalism is divided into five broad schools: astringents, boosters, enchantments, poisons, and psychoactives.

Astringents are herbs that treat wounds and otherwise aid in alleviating pain and suffering.  They will mostly mimic minor clerical healing effects, but never be as good as the Healer's abilities.

Boosters provide recipients with bonuses to lore checks, or grant them temporary abilities that mimic Species Traits from other animal types.

Enchantments are "love weeds," that make targets more susceptible to suggestion, or alter their default Attitude rating in some way, or otherwise affect their state of mind (as opposed to their perceptions).  They will generally mimic the effects of spells like sleep, charm person, etc., but with fixed durations, limited targets, and so on.

Poisons are self-explanatory; they are herbal concoctions that inflict damage, or even death, on recipients.

If only there was a way to weaponize this technology...

Pscyhoactives mess with the recipients' perceptions of reality.  They will mimic the effects of illusion magic, but only be perceptible to the subjects receiving them.

Herbal concoctions have a Difficulty Rating, like most other tasks in the game.  Concoctions are rated from Average to Formidable, based on the Threat Level of saving throws against them. Any character with levels in Herbalist lore can learn and concoct Average herbs (though not necessarily automatically knowing any), but only niche Herbalists can make more difficult ones.

Niche Herbalists begin the game with access to two "schools" of Herbalism, and know the recipes for all of the Average herbs in those schools.  Alternately, they can choose to specialize in one of the schools, which grants them access the Tough-rated recipes from that school, as well, at the cost of starting without knowledge from any other school.

In addition to recipes known, niche Herbalists begin play with 2d5 prepared doses of Average difficulty concoctions of their choice, gifted to them by their mentor, whether they know the recipes for those concoctions or not.

As they gain levels, niche Herbalists improve their skill at their chosen schools.  At 3rd level, niche Herbalists can learn and concoct Tough recipes from their chosen schools; at 6th level, they can learn and concoct Challenging recipes; and at 9th level, they can learn and concoct Formidable recipes.

Specialists improve faster than generalists in their specialized school, gaining access to Challenging recipes at 5th level, and Formidable recipes at 8th level.  However, their progression in and access to other schools is limited, as noted below.

Niche Herbalists gain access to new schools as they go up in level.  At 3rd, 6th, and 9th levels, they gain access to one new school each, at Average level.  Each time they gain access to a new school, their knowledge in the previous schools goes up one rating.

For instance, if a niche Herbalist begins play with access to Poisons and Psychoactives, she knows the Average recipes for those schools at 0-level.  When she reaches 3rd Herbalist level, her knowledge of these schools improves to Tough, and she gains access to one new school... say, Astringents ... at Average rating.  Then, at 6th Herbalist level, her knowledge of Poisons and Pscyhoactives improves to Challenging, her knowledge of Astringents improves to Tough, and she gains access to a fourth school... in this case, Boosters ... at an Average rating of knowledge.  This pattern repeats in a similar way at 9th Herbalist level, by which time she should have access to all five schools of Herbalism.

Specialists gain access to new schools at the same rate, but can only access four total schools before 10th level.

Most of the rest of the rules I wrote -- about delivery types (Contact, Ingested, or Inhaled), dosage-to-Size ratio, etc -- will be largely the same, but all of the herbs listed will be new, either invented by me or derived from some OGL source.

The concept of poisonweed, originally adapted from B&B, is gone.

Here are some sample herbs.

Brown Mold Spore (Formidable Poison)
Delvery Method: Inhalation
One dose of this herb contains enough brown mold spore to affect all targets within a 5 ft. radius once it is burst open, including the Herbalist herself if she  has not thrown the dose beyond that range. All creatures within the area of effect must succeed at a save vs. blast effects or suffer 2d7 hp of cold damage as their body heat is drained away.  The following round, a save vs. death effects must be made, or the affected creatures continue losing 1d7 hp per round until they "freeze" to death.  A successful second save ends the effect.

Dazzleberry (Challenging Psychoactive)
Delivery Method: Ingestion
Mimics the 4th level magic-user spell confusion, but only affects one Medium Size target per dose.  The effects last for 2 hours (120 turns).

Hawkeye (Average Booster)
Delivery Method: Ingestion
This herb grants the imbiber the Ultravision species trait for one hour.

Snoozeweed (Average Enchantment)
Delivery Method: Ingestion
This herb mimics the 1st-level magic-user spell sleep, except that it only affects one Medium Size target per dose.  The target sleeps for one hour (60 turns).

Yellow Mold Spore (Challenging Poison)
Delivery Method: Inhalation
A single dose of yellow mold spore contains enough of the herb to affect all targets within a 10 ft. radius, once it is burst open (this includes the Herbalist herself, if she has not thrown the dose beyond that  range).  Anyone caught within the yellow mold spore cloud must make a save vs. death effects, or choke to death within 2d3 rounds.