Design Notes: Character Classes

One of the biggest departures that Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old makes from the standard OSR rule set, is how I've chosen to handle character classes.  Like the original D&D rules, DD & CO has just three broad architypes: Warrior, Sorcerer, and Thief.  While the original game used Fighter, Magic User, and Cleric, I've opted not to include the cleric class, because it is strictly an artefact of D&D that has no precedent in the sword & sorcery genre upon which my game is based.

I know that the thief class continues to be controversial within the OSR community.  The critics argue that the thief shouldn't be a class because anyone can steal, and having a character class dedicated to this profession neuters the ability of other classes to steal.  I've always found this argument unconvincing because, by the same rationale, any character can fight so why have a warrior or fighter class devoted to combat?  Obviously, having a warrior class doesn't mean that other characters can't fight, it just means that warriors are better at it than everyone else, and it's a good choice of class for players who like to engage in a lot of combat.  Likewise, the inclusion of a thief class doesn't limit other classes from stealing, thief class characters just do it better than everyone else.

These broad archetypes, Warrior, Sorcerer, and Thief function exactly as they would in any other OSR game: each class gains new hit dice each level, and its THAC0 improves at its level increases.  Where DD & CO characters differ from other OSR games is that the player has the ability to customize their character with the application of character templates.

Templates can be applied to any of the three archetypes to create a new character type with additional customized abilities.  A number of sample templates are described in the rules: Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Priest, Ranger, Witch Hunter, etc.  Each template includes a number of skills and abilities which are added to the abilities of the base archetype, and become class abilities for that character.  The template has an experience modifier based on the number and potency of the skills and abilities, and this modifier is applied to the experience of the base class to determine how many experience points the character will require to level up going forward.  A template can be applied at any time during the character's career, not just during character creation.  Let's say a 3rd level warrior falls into the company of the legendary Wardens of the Northern Marches, and wishes to join their ranks and add a ranger template to his character.  He gains the skills and abilities granted by that template, which have an experience modifier of +200 XP.  Normally a 3rd level warrior would require 8,000 XP to gain 4th level (the class needs 2,000 XP to go from 1st to 2nd level, and that amount doubles with each level thereafter).  The +200 XP is added to the base experience amount of 2,000, so the character will now need 8,800 to gain 4th level.

Furthermore, templates are not usually restricted to a particular base archetype, so a Warrior, Sorcerer, or Thief could take the same template, although the abilities might vary to better suit the base class.  Take the Bard template for example.  A warrior character might become a battle skald, uttering war cries and chants to boost morale in battle.  A thief taking the bard template might be a typical roguish minstrel, whereas a sorcerer could become a spell-singer of Celtic tradition.  In each case the template may need to be modified slightly to suit the desires of the player.

So templates exist as an open-ended system for the player to collaborate with the game master to create any type of character they might wish to play.  There is no need to be restricted to the sample templates described in the rules.  Guidelines are given for how to apply XP modifiers to skills and abilities, which makes creating custom templates easy.  Game masters can use this system to create templates specifically for their campaign world.

Design Notes: Attributes

 I want to spend some time discussing the design choices I made for Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old, which owing to considerations of space, I wasn't able to do in the actual rule book.

The first way in which I've diverged from the standard OSR-style game mechanic is with the attributes, which in DD & CO are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Knowledge, Acuity, and Charisma.  I've discarded Intelligence and Wisdom in favour of Knowledge and Acuity, and I'd like to explain why I decided to do so.

I've been involved in this hobby for fourty-three years now, and I've played a lot of different games.  Nearly all of them use Intelligence, or something like it, as an attribute.  Because of its ubiquity I never questioned its use, but at the same time I never really felt comfortable with it, and while designing DD & CO I finally took the time to evaluate the attributes and how I feel about them.

First and foremost, attributes are what define a character: who they are, how they act, and how a player will role-play them.  Every character attribute must contribute to our understanding of the character, and its personality, or it becomes useless. It is here that Intelligence fails the test as a useful attribute.

Firstly, what is Intelligence?  What does it mean to be intelligent?  There are different types of intelligence.  Here's the Wikipedia entry defining human intelligence, but this covers a lot of different facets, and I, like most people, rate highly in some respects, but poorly in others.  If I was creating myself as a player character how would I rate my Intelligence?  I honestly don't know.  This ambiguity makes Intelligence fairly worthless as a personality trait for a character.

Secondly, how does one go about role-playing Intelligence?  How does an average player, like myself go about playing a character with a genius level Intelligence score?  You are limited as a player to your own mental capabilities.  I guess you can do it if you use Intelligence solely to make dice roll checks, which, I admit, is the way that most modern role-playing games handle attribute scores, but this isn't role-playing.  Even harder is for a smart player to play a character with a low Intelligence score.  The whole point of old-school role-playing games is to challenge the players, and if you tell a player that their character couldn't have come up with the clever idea that the player just proposed, because the character is too stupid to have though of it, then you're defeating the entire purpose of the game, as well as creating a frustrating experience for the player.

Wisdom isn't much better.  It is also an ambiguous trait that I recall debating often with friends back in high school during our frequent discussions of how to get a handle on D&D.  The best way I've ever seen Intelligence and Wisdom differentiated is the statement that someone may be intelligent enough to know that smoking will kill them, but lack the wisdom to quit.  But, again, this isn't very useful, and I have never once in over four decades of playing seen Wisdom actually come into play in a game except  as a Prime Requisite for certain classes.  It serves no purpose in role playing a character, so it's out too.

In Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old I have replaced Intelligence and Wisdom with Knowledge and Acuity.  Knowledge is fairly straightforward: it is a measure of a character's education, and their ability to memorize and retain facts.  I use this as the Prime Requisite of the Sorcerer class and also to determine how much lore a character might know, and how much information to give them.

Acuity is the keenness of a character's senses and quickness of thought.  A character with high Acuity experiences very little delay between thought and action, and would receive a bonus to Initiative and Surprise checks.  This means that a character with very high Acuity is rarely or never surprised, and is the character who should be making the group initiative rolls, using his quick thinking to shout out orders to the rest of the party.  This corresponds quite nicely with personality types, as one of the traits of extroverts is assertiveness and quick thinking, and such characters are excellent candidates as group leaders in crisis situations.  Introverts, on the other hand tend to react slowly to changing situations, but are capable of intense and prolonged concentration, and deep thinking.

Personally, I'm an introvert, and I would judge myself to have a high Knowledge score, but a low Acuity score, as I'm prone to daydreaming, so my awareness of my surroundings is not as high as it could be, and I lack the ability to make decisions quickly.  I'm the sort of person who needs to analyze all the facts before reaching a decision, and I tend to spend a lot of time researching even relatively simple online purchases, for example.  Just last week I bought a tree pruner, but before I did I read multiple reviews of each model, and carefully compared all the product information before reaching my decision.  My extroverted sister, on the other hand, would simply have bought the first one that caught her eye, then moved on to other things.

So in game terms a high Acuity character will make an excellent team leader and combat commander, whereas you'd probably rather have the slow-thinking high Knowledge character actually planning the expeditions.  Knowledge and Acuity give us a much better handle on how to play our characters, and what their personalities might be like.

As far as Intelligence goes, I consider it far better to assume that a character is exactly as smart as the person playing it, which in the end makes for a much more satisfying role-playing experience.

Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old

 

Way back in 2010 I began working on a set of house-rules for my Swords & Wizardry whitebox campaign, and over the years they evolved, slowly metamorphosing from a set of house-rules into a unique game.  The final product, Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old, is now finally finished and is now available as a pay-what-you-want PDF on DriveThru RPG.

My goal with this game was to create a pulp sword & sorcery rpg, that represented the tropes of the genre while remaining faithful to the spirit of old-school games.  This product description sums it up:

Dive into fantasy role-playing 1970's style! Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old is a pulp sword & sorcery role-playing game in the old school tradition with simple, elegant rules that fade into the background and let you focus on what's really important: exploring ancient dungeons, recovering fantastic treasures, then squandering it all in a night of ribald revelry. Break out the miniatures and the Crown Royal dice bags, crank up the Led Zeppelin, and get ready for a night of adventure torn from the pages of Weird Tales, with characters bursting from a Frank Frazetta painting.

This project has been a labour of love that has taken many years.  It was quite a time-consuming undertaking to do all the writing and artwork myself, and the project went on hiatus during the years I was dealing with cancer, which sapped my enthusiasm.  Also, when I first started this project, as far as I am aware, there were no other OSR games devoted specifically to pulp sword & sorcery, but since that time several have been published, so I wasn't sure that it was worthwhile to carry on, and the hiatus nearly became permanent.  Last year, however, I became determined to finish the game I always wanted to play, and think in the end Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old offers a unique take on sword & sorcery role playing, and I'm very proud of the result.

If you're interested, you can check the game out for free by following this link: Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old, or by clicking the banner on the sidebar, which will take you to my publisher account at DriveThru RPG.  I also have a character record PDF available, and in a day or so I'll be adding quick reference sheets, in which all the important tables are compiled.  You can print these out and store them in a binder for easy reference, or insert them into any 8.5 x 11" universal game master screen.

The game has only been live on DriveThru for a couple of days, so I was very surprised to find that a review has already been posted to YouTube.  Check out this great review by RPG Freebies, which neatly summarizes the game.