OSR Project #3 - Vision

The new year is upon us, and I have decided to give myself a bit of a break. Sword & Scoundrel is chugging along nicely, but writing the GM section has been a headache. Thus, I long to unwind with more pleasant game design tasks.

I started the OSR Project series of posts in October 2017. I sidelined it not long thereafter to force myself to concentrate on S&S work, but I never gave up on the idea. After a good year or so of stewing on the thing, I know exactly what I want to do with it. That brings us to this post: my vision for the OSR Project.

I'm fascinated by the early days of the hobby. OD&D and the way people ran it. The original role of Chainmail in the game. The more I dig into things written in this era, the more I can make sense of later eccentricities of the D&D canon. Things that seemed broken and bizarre in later D&D makes perfect sense when you find the roots of it. Even more bizarre is that certain flaws of the later game only crept in after it abandoned elements from the original game.

I want to write a game that is equal parts alternate history and experimental archeology. I want to write a game with the following ideas at its core:

• The Alternate Combat System was never adopted. While it was still listed in the LBBs as an option, no one bothered with it. Instead, chainmail remained the core of the D&D combat system and evolved with it over time
• Tolkien never became the dominant influence. While somewhere out there people still enjoy their hobbits and dwarves, that's not what D&D was about. D&D stuck to its roots in mythology, folklore, and the path trod by sandaled feet of early pulp Sword & Sorcery fiction
• The game went through similar transitions as the actual game. WotC eventually buys the game, 3.X happens. 4e happens. People go back to figure out what was lost. The OSR is born.

The game I want to write is what comes out of the OSR in this alternate time line. I'll try to keep you up to date.

OSR Project #2: The Danger of Skills

There's an argument floating around that will claim that skills expand what your character is capable of by letting you invest in a bunch of different things, rather than being confined to an archetype like a class. I'm here going to have to argue that the opposite is true.

Skills by definition impose limitations on what your character is capable of.

When OD&D was released, there were only three classes - Fighting Man, Cleric, and Magic User. All of these characters were assumed to be dungeon-delving adventurers and have all the skills and abilities appropriate of such. Later, Greyhawk was released as the first D&D supplement and it added Thief as a class. Suddenly, the dynamic of the game changed.

The thief is essentially a class based around having skills. Climb walls, hide in shadows, move silently, pick locks, disarm/detect traps, etc. The Thief as originally written is Dungeoneer: The Class. This creates a lot of weirdness compared to how the game was played before. If you listen to Arneson talk about his early D&D experiences, everyone acted like a thief before the thief showed up. Everyone was sneaking around, picking locks, hiding and setting up ambushes, disarming traps, etc. The creation of the thief changed the way the distribution of abilities was perceived. Because the thief has a mechanical means of doing these things on their sheet, suddenly those things became the domain of the thief. Worse, because the thief had a mechanical ruleset for doing these tasks, it gave the implication that because no one else had access to these mechanics the thief was the only one who could do it. (There is a very interesting argument to be made that the nature and wording of the thief's abilities was supposed to imply a slightly supernatural character to them, thus everyone could sneak but a thief could literally disappear in a shadow. I actually prefer that interpretation, but it is outside of what I want to discuss here.)

When there is no mechanic for a thing, it's in the common domain. Anyone can attempt it by navigating the fiction. When you introduce a mechanic for a thing, you codify it and ultimately limit it in some way. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's an inherent side-effect of having a mechanic for it.

Now to make this less esoteric, consider for a moment Aragorn as a Ranger. In OD&D or AD&D, I can stand on the wall at Helm's Deep and make an impassioned speech because there is no Oration or Speechcraft skill. I can get up there, do my thing and feel pretty damned heroic about it because of course I can do it. I'm a big deal adventurer. The GM might nod and approve. The GM might even let me roll something to see if it has a mechanical impact on the fight. Who knows.. But it's entirely within my wheelhouse. Because there is no mechanic for it, it's up for grabs.

Now pretend we're playing 3.5e instead. Now there's a Diplomacy skill (or whatever it's called in 3.5) that exists for trying to influence NPCs. The existence of this skill means that in order for my character to be good at the thing governed by the skill, I need to invest mechanical resources into making them do so (in this case, skill points). What was something that I might have done and could have done because I thought it was cool and might have made a memorable scene becomes an area of the game I can no longer meaningfully interact with unless I spec out my character specifically to do so. I have to buy back the thing I could have done before, had the skill not existed.

Worse, because there is now a mechanic attached, if I do give an impassioned speech at the walls of Helm's Deep, the GM might make me roll for it anyway and because I don't have the skill I've introduced a risk. I might botch the roll and the GM penalizes the troops for my good intention. The GM might decide that I get up there and somehow drop my speghetti because a lot of games are written with the assumption that a bad roll means the character fucked up.

Where before this was a fun and optional thing that at worst would have been neat to play and at best might have given me some kind of fun bonus from a GM trying to encourage such things, I now have to weigh the risks of even attempting a thing that the game says I'm mechanically bad at because I don't have skill points invested in it. At best, I look unheroic and dumb, at worst, I might accidentally penalize my troops for having tried.

In the 3.5 ranger's case this is even more punitive because I've spent all of my skill points buying the abilities that previous editions gave me just for being part of my class.. And we'll not even talk about how different classes in 3.5 don't have access to certain skills and thus you have to invest even more character resources if you want to do something like be a fighter who also knows how to talk to people.

If you want an even more banal example.. There is no AD&D, B/x, or OD&D character who can't ride a horse. And yet, in 3.0/3.5/pf, Ride is a skill. You can technically ride without it, but if you want to do anything with the horse or avoid any perils of said horse, you now need to drop points in ride.

Making something a skill inherently walls the thing off from the open domain of play. If there's no cooking skill and you want to cook something, you are generally assumed to be able to do it because it's beneath what the game cares to simulate. The moment you create a cooking skill, you are mechanically a shitty cook until you invest resources in being able to do something you otherwise would have been able to do for free.

OSR Project #1: Deconstructing Ability Scores

I've gotten my freelance work done for the day, I've gotten some Scoundrel work done for the day. Now I'm allowed to write about OSR stuff. That's how this works, right?

I've been kicking around the D&D six-scores setup for a while now. While they are a fairly well-rounded way to measure a character, they've always struck me as a bit odd for an OSR game. Ironic, I know.

In OSR (for the duration of this post, being shorthand for "TSR-era D&D editions and the games that directly mimic them"), the overwhelming majority of things in the game have no ability scores whatsoever.  Looking through the monster manuals very few, if any, entries bother listing ability scores. Most will give a broad category for intelligence so that the GM knows how to play them. Every so often a rare monsters of impressive strength will have a strength score listed in their description just in case it comes up. Even monsters comparable to PCs (Elves, Dwarves, Humans) have no ability scores RAW, even when those NPCs are given character levels.

What this means is that ability scores are mechanically a player-facing mechanism. RAW, they are unique to player characters. NPCs only have them if the GM decides to detail one out for whatever reason. Immediately this makes any real concerns about ability scores as a kind of simulation moot. Instead, they seem to exist only as a source of player character bonuses. This becomes even more apparent when you look into OD&D, where attributes played a very small roll overall compared to modern games. Dexterity would get you a bonus on missile fire, Constitution increased your HP, and Charisma played heavily into retainers/followers/hirelings... but the main function of Strength, Intelligence, or Wisdom's seemed to be as prime requisites. Later editions add further bonuses and modifiers to different ability scores, but they ultimately remain PC-specific bonuses.

If ability scores are less "defining the simulationist parameters of your character in the world" (because again, NPCs don't have them, RAW) and more "bonuses PCs are eligible for" then it changes how we have to interact with them. The question becomes: in what ways do we want characters to be defined that interact with the mechanics of the game?

 Let's examine the traditional six and what they do strictly from the mechanical bonuses they (usually) provide.

Strength: to-hit bonus in melee, damage bonus in melee, ability to bend or break things.
Dexterity: to-hit bonus for ranged weapons, bonus to AC,  bonus to initiative
Constitution: bonus HP, sometimes resurrection chance.
Intelligence: ability to speak, languages, sometimes bonus spells.
Wisdom: magic-based saving throws, sometimes bonus spells.
Charisma: reaction adjustment, maximum retainers, morale of retainers

I already knew that I didn't want modifiers for to-hit or AC, so a whole lot of what Strength and Dexterity do immediately goes out the window. Intelligence and Wisdom also ring kind of hollow, for me but for different reasons.

Intelligence has always struck me as at-odds with the premise of OSR, at least in regards to the play style in which I am interested. It's incredibly difficult to play a character who is smarter than you are, as so much of intelligence is in the ability to make decisions and collate information. You as a player are only as intelligent as you are. You can get around this to some degree if the game has significant skill-like mechanics your Intelligence score can influence, but an OSR game typically doesn't and "roll to see if your character figures it out" goes against the player-skill principles that I want to pursue.

The opposite arrangement tends to be no better. When you give an intelligent player a dumb character, they wind up being a comic relief most of the time (which may or may not be good, depending on the tone you want in the game) but they also tend to wind up being far more clever than their intelligence should suggest because in most scenarios players want to succeed. For an OSR game that is supposed to be challenge or objective-based, trying to get players to make decisions that they know are going to be more likely to fail is putting the player at cross-purposes with the game's reward mechanism.

The mechanical weight of Intelligence is unimpressive as well. Bonus languages are okay, but aren't particularly interesting and I'm not at all interested in modeling your ability to speak properly. I've heard quite Lenny impressions already, thank you. Meanwhile, Wisdom basically only exists as a saving throw adjustment which is also kind of lame.

Given that I want a game that is more explicitly about player skill, I'm thinking that the best move here is to merge Intelligence and Wisdom. Wisdom will remain as an ability score and take on the linguistic functions, as well as any kind of knowing or noticing-stuff roles it might have otherwise had. Most of the functions of Intelligence are better left as player discretion. It's up to you how smart your character is and you ultimately display that intelligence through the choices you as a player make for your character.

The other major impulse I have is to merge Strength and Constitution. There's an argument to be made that lifting capability and endurance are not intrinsically related (the power lifter vs the distance runner) but in a game where we've already decided that most things don't have ability scores at all, this level of simulation isn't strictly necessary. Further, if we strip Strength of its combat bonuses (as I planned to do for dexterity as well), then the ability is left somewhat anemic on its own.

Suddenly, we're down to four ability scores:

Brawn: Physical fitness, strength, endurance, vitality. Plays a roll in carrying stuff, improves HP, bends bars, unsticks doors.
Dexterity: Agility and fine motor control. Increases initiative, is probably useful for mobility stuff.
Wisdom: Knowledge, willpower, judgement. Bonus languages. Interacts with magic in fun ways (saves, spells, etc).
Charisma: Leadership and bearing. Reaction adjustment, maximum retainers, morale of retainers

For what I want to do, I think that's perfect. As an aside, if someone was interested in a 3e style "three saves" setup, it winds up corresponding perfectly. As an added bonus, fewer ability scores make it much harder to have a dump-stat. Dexterity is mechanically the weakest of these options, but I've got some ideas on how it can come into play more as well. 

Until part 2.

What I Want in an OSR Game

OSR appeals to me in specific ways for specific reasons. Because I'm already doing character-focused story-game stuff with other games I'm playing (or writing!), I don't need OSR to be my end-all-be-all general purpose tool. Here the attraction is in what makes OSR different.

Objective, Challenged-Based Gaming

Most of the games I love actively embrace failure. Burning Wheel, Apocalypse, and yes, Sword & Scoundrel — all of these games are designed in such a way that failure is not only expected, it's inherently part of what drives the story forward. You are not playing these games to accomplish things so much as to see what happens.

OSR is pretty well the opposite of this. In the majority of games in this family, you have two sources of XP: defeating enemies and recovering treasure. Both of these are objective-based reward mechanisms. If you want to advance, you have to succeed. You have to overcome challenges in order to get the rewards both in and out of character.

Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a tragic, twisting narrative. Other times, I want to be challenged. I want my players to be challenged and to be rewarded for beating those challenges.

Encounter-Based High Adventure

As a corollary to the above, most of the games I'm into are intensely character-focused and built around exploring who that character is and what they are about. It's a lot of fun but it can also be emotionally exhausting. I'm not always up for it as a player or a GM. Sometimes you want to be playing Game of Thrones where it's all character-focused drama built around their individual goals and passions. Other times, you want to play Conan or Indiana Jones, where the protagonist is less a focus and more an excuse for us to go on cool adventures and see weird shit. OSR is definitely in the latter camp.

This shift in focus also gives you an entirely different kind of creative outlet. Prepping for a character-focused game is all about finding ways to reincorporate aspects of those characters into the game. In an OSR game, the GM's creative efforts are almost the opposite -- outwardly focusing on creating interesting scenarios, locations, creatures and other encounters. You have a ton of freedom to do random interesting things.

Random Stuff and the Impartial Adjudicator

The more story and character-oriented the game is, the more deliberate you want to be with events. OSR tends to be all about the random. Aside from giving you all kinds of neat weird play artifacts (mutation tables, weather tables, random encounters..), the more randomized the elements become the more objective you can be as a GM. When I'm playing B/x, my job isn't to actively challenge the players or find ways to highlight their character. My job is to prepare a situation for them to explore and then impartially interpret the results of the dice as they do so, adjudicating any fictional elements as impartially as I can. Whether they succeed or fail, the amount of XP they earn, all of that is between them and the dice gods. I am simply the messenger.

Player Skill and Fictional Engagement

One of the major draws to OSR for many people is the way these games allow direct engagement with the fiction. In many cases, you can bypass challenges through role-playing alone, whether this is negotiating your way through a social encounter or narrating your way through disarming a trap or solving a puzzle. In a way, resorting to dice can almost be seen as a fail-state, as it means you have to instead fall back on your mechanical abilities -- and in the process, you're putting yourself at risk.

This approach is supported fairly well by OSR play.The lack of skills in most of these games means that players have to look elsewhere for solutions to their problems. Risk management is the primary player-skill to master in the game, so any time you can overcome a challenge through fictional positioning you're better off than you would have been letting the dice decide your fate. This works well in conjunction with the earlier point about challenge-based gaming. I love the kind of creative problem-solving that the gaps in OSR rules foster.

Adventure as Expedition

In nearly any other game I play, equipment and supplies are basically hand-waived. Tracking time, speed, and distance are all just irrelevant trivialities that interfere with the story you're trying to tell. In OSR, they can be a crucial part of the logistics of exploration. Early D&D editions were big on treating dungeon-delving as an expedition. Players would have to carefully balance their supplies to ensure they had enough goods to make a journey, but the more stuff you brought the slower you move, the less you could bring back and the more easily you can be overrun. You could bring hirelings with you to help you fight or haul, but the more people you bring the more supplies you need and the more attention you'll attract. And of course, time is also against you, because the more stuff you bring the slower you go the more time it takes the more supplies you go through, the more likely something will eat you.

In any other game time, speed, and inventory are unnecessary simulation and best ignored. In OSR, they can be an important expression of player-skill through risk management. I also personally love the Lewis & Clark or Oregon Trail vibe that you get once the players have started an adventuring company, set out into the wilds, their packs laden with junk and a dozen hirelings at their side. It's a unique experience and one that's nigh-impossible to manage in most systems.

I could keep going on. The rules-light nature of most of these games, the flexibility in hacking, etc., but the purpose of this post was specifically to talk about what I wanted in an OSR game that wasn't what I was already getting in my other games. In turn, as I kick around design ideas, these highlight the areas I really want to lean into and focus on.

The Struggle.

OSR & TROS

In terms of role-playing preferences, I've always been in kind of a weird position. There's always been a weird undercurrent of animosity between the different camps of the role-playing community. Within the indie/nar/forge/story-game crowd there are certain elements that have a tendency to look down on D&D in any form as an unsophisticated and unsatisfying experience. This sentiment is often extended to the OSR movement, which can be seen as a nostalgia-fueled leap backwards in gaming. In turn, the certain elements of the OSR crowd have a tendency to look at the story-games people as elitist hipsters trying to pass off their game experiences off as high art.

This isn't universally true of all parties on each side — how often is anything universally true of a group of broad group of people? — but I've gotten in debates with people on both sides about the legitimacy of the other as a valid game choice. This brings me back to the first sentence: I've always been in a weird position between the two communities, with one foot on each side. I enjoy both kinds of games quite a bit, as they offer very different experiences that appeal to me for different reasons. The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've realized they have in common.

Intentional, Focused Design

The hallmark of both movements was a dissatisfaction with some element of the hobby that was so widespread as to spark the creation of new games meant to answer a specific question. For the forge/nar/story-games movement, it was largely a dissatisfaction with games on the market in terms of creating the kind of stories that people wanted to tell. For OSR, it was largely a reaction to the introduction of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons that made a whole lot of people realize that the current official version of the game was no longer giving them the kind of experience they wanted to have. In both cases, this dissatisfaction lead to intense critique, analysis, and eventually the cultivation of a body of design philosophy.

DIY and the Indie Explosion

In both cases, fierce forum debates quickly became blog posts and ultimately an explosion of games designed to embody various elements of the design philosophy. The primary focus on both ends was on a specific way in which the game was meant to be played in order to deliver a very particular kind of experience. Both scenes have flourishing online communities where people are constantly churning out games and hacks and other content. Both scenes are to this day dominated by independent publishers, many of whom have turned their passions into a legitimate business. 

As I chewed on this subject, I realized that if I went a bit deeper I could actually draw far more parallels in my own journey through this. My gateway drug into the narrative scene was a now largely forgotten game called The Riddle of Steel. It was a formative game for me, in that it not only introduced me to a whole new way of playing, but ultimately changed how I played everything after that. The parallels between TROS and the OSR are striking, even beyond their amusingly similar abbreviation.

Red-Handed Pulp

The Riddle of Steel is a reference to the classic Conan the Barbarian movie, from 1982. Both TROS and the OSR ultimately take their origin from early pulp Sword & Sorcery as filtered through popular culture. Amusingly, both also then sort of obscure the human-centric and exotic pulp quality to do a Tolkienesq medieval fantasy with elves and dwarves.

Modular Mechanics

Like the overwhelming majority of OSR games, TROS had no single unifying mechanic. Instead, it had a handful of different self-contained systems the game leaned on for different situations. Much like with OSR games, this both told you rather explicitly the arenas in which the game wanted to focus but it also gave you a ton of room to add, remove, and tinker with the guts of the things. Almost as soon as the game was out, people began to customize and hack it to suit their campaigns much in the same way as even today people hack their OSR system of choice to customize it for whatever they are doing.

Gameable Gaps

Many OSR enthusiasts will argue that the lack of rules for certain situations is a feature, rather than a bug. TROS benefits from a similar gap in its rules set. While it features a rudimentary skill system, it was obvious that combat and sorcery were what the game was really interested in. Everything else was a simple test and you moved on. It gave the GM quite a bit of leeway and in practice I found playing TROS to have a lot in common with my memories of playing AD&D: you basically ignored the book most of the time until someone got in a fight or cast a spell, with the thief-type character usually being the one to do nearly all of the task-resolution kind of rolls.

Player Choices, Player Skill

Much like the OSR, TROS was not a game you could by any means just "roll play" your way through. TROS has one of the highest player-skill curves of any game I've played. You, the player, have to become very good at both engaging with the system to get XP (Spiritual Attributes, in this case) but the combat and magic mechanics require a huge amount of system mastery to play. What's awesome about this, though, is that the system mastery here means "picking strategies and making interesting choices in play" rather than something like 3.pf where system mastery means "knowing how to build your character in order to get the most amount of bonuses."

This, more than anything, is probably why I was so attracted to TROS back when.  The idea that you would win because of your choices rather than having the highest numbers or the biggest sword or whatever was enthralling. It gave me a taste for something that I've been chasing ever since.

Player-Driven Play

This may not be true for all of the OSR, but it is generally true for the parts of it I enjoy. I love sandboxes, huge, sprawling dungeons, and anything that lets the players have a significant say in the strategies and engagements they will attempt. Even if you've all agreed to the premise "we're going dungeon-delving" the gold-for-xp nature of so much OSR tends to mean that players are in charge of their own advancement. The OSR assumptions of balance mean that the players have to pick and choose their battles and are making decisions that ultimately puts their success and failure in their own hands. Contrast this with later D&D (or other games) where you are often a participant in a pre-written story and are rewarded for hitting milestones within that story.

TROS did this in a way that no other game I'd encountered had, with the PC's Spiritual Attributes making them masters of their own destiny in a massively compelling way.  The two camps take massively different approaches, but both games ultimately empower the players to make decisions that matter and let them drive the game onward in a compelling way. 

In hindsight, it's not surprising to me at all why Sword & Scoundrel inherited as much TROS DNA as it did or why we retained what we did after all of these revisions. By the same token, it's not surprising that I'm gravitating towards OSR even as I work on the former. In a lot of ways, they are the answer to the same kinds of desires taken in two different directions.

Coming home to the OSR

A couple different things have happened in the last while to turn my attention back to the OSR world. First off, I've started playing in B/x game with the fine folks from OSR General. It started as a 4chan group and it's slowly migrated to discord as well. It's always weird to join a campaign in the middle of play, but I'm enjoying it so far. After spending so much time dealing with heavy character-driven narrative bullshit, it's incredibly refreshing to do some old-fashioned Gygaxian fantasy. Negotiating with kobolds and watching your compatriots get hopelessly murdered by obvious traps.

A more pressing concern is that at least for now, the design work for scoundrel is done. With the exception of the occasional tweak or adjustment, it has been done for a while now. Instead, I'm stuck with the writing.

The endless, endless writing.

I don't actually mind the writing, mind you. Sometimes it's more difficult than others — as you might expect, writing for a living and then trying to then also moonlight for Grand Heresy — but I don't mind doing it. The problem is that this does nothing for the part of my brain that enjoys game design, which is what started all this mess in the first place. Naturally, my thoughts begin to drift elsewhere.

I've already started having these conversations with a couple people. I figure I might as well refine and catalog them here and just maybe, by the time Scoundrel is off my plate, I'll have the beginnings of another game right on its tail.

Ruminations of the Rune Priestess

A buddy of mine is planning a viking-themed hex crawl using Lamentations of the Flame Princess. He wanted some help on fluffing out the classes, so I obliged. The rough draft of classes to follow:

Ruminations of the Rune Priestess

Myrkr, by TheFoxAndTheRaven

Ability Scores generated per normal. Classes are as follows:

Thegn: The warrior class. Maps to fighter in every way.

Goethi: Seers and spiritual advisors. Maps to cleric. Shuffle the spell list around to make it more of a divination/will of the gods type character.

Seidermenn/Volva: Sorcerers that are distrusted by society at large. Volva at least have the respect of being wise-women, but as sorcery is seen as women's magic, Seidermenn are doubly stigmatized. Maps to Magic User.

Carl: low-born men who haven't the martial training of the warrior class, but make themselves useful in other ways. Maps to Specialist.

Berserker: warrior-shaman that follow bear totems and work themselves up into a frenzy before battle. Maps to dwarves as a class, but loses Architecture. Instead, they get a bonus to AB and Damage when they work themselves into a rage. This bonus starts at +3 at level 1, and increases by 1 at levels 4, 7, and 11. Working themselves into a state of berserk takes a full round and can last for a number of rounds equal to Constitution mod+level.

Wolf-Skins: Warrior-shaman that follow a wolf totem. Maps to halfling, but they lose the size restriction and gain access to the same combat options as a fighter.

Blooded: Men who can trace their ancestry back to the Alfar or other land spirits. Maps to elf, save that they use Charisma as a casting stat instead of Intelligence and cannot make use of spell research. Their powers are innate. Like Seidermenn or Volva, if their status is known they will suffer a stigma.

Changes to Equipment
The cost of items are unchanged. Plate armor does not exist. Chain and leather only, though adding a helmet is worth +1AC and costs 25SP. Horses do not wear barding in this period. Lances, Polearms, Mancatchers, Rapiers and crossbows as listed in the standard equipment list are unavailable. There are no ships larger (or more expensive) than a Cog. Otherwise, use common sense for equipment availability.

I'll dabble with the spell list later, but this is enough to get us started.

The Lifespans of Elves

One of the more disagreed upon rules that crop up in a lot of old-school OSR/TSR games is based around demihuman level limits. Some of these arguments are from a game balance perspective (which is its own can of worms), but I find the more odious justification is based around the lifespan of the demihumans in question.

The argument goes something like this:

"Elves and dwarves live so much longer than humans that they would have to gain XP slower and hit a cap. If they advanced at the same rate as humans, then the setting will be dominated by elves and dwarves of god-like power. After all, if humans can hit level 14 in their meager lifetimes, what could an elf do with a couple hundred years to blow adventuring?"

It's one of those arguments that makes a good deal of sense at first blush, but for a number of reasons I've never put much stock in it.

The first is that NPCs are not PCs. Older versions of the game don't bother to treat NPCs with the same kind of care and logistics that we treat PCs with in the first place. OD&D claims that for every 50 elves encounered in a group, one of these will have "above normal" capabilities. Normal being "something other than a 1HD creature." It then asks you to roll some dice to determine its magic and fighting levels. According to the AD&D monster manual "For every 20 elves in a band, there will be one with above average fighting ability (2nd, or 3rd level). For every 40 elves encountered, there will be one with this fighting ability plus a 1st or 2nd level magic-user ability." The important takeaway here is that the majority of elves you bump into aren't adventurers in the same way that the majority of humans you bump into aren't adventurers. PCs are level 1 characters in a level 0 world.

The second is that prior to AD&D2e, the main source of experience for characters was gold. This has some very important implications. The first and most obvious being that you don't get XP just for living a very long time. Even elves have to go out there and schlep their dainty arses through the same mud and blood and bog that the rest of us adventuring folk have to and put themselves in just as much danger for every experience point earned.

The second and more profound implication is that assumption that the reason for adventuring is to get rich. You are out there to acquire treasure. The game is explicitly about going out into the unknown in search of gold. A funny thing happens over time, however. The richer you are, the harder it is to justify schleping your ass into some gods-forsaken cave where something is certainly bound to try to eat you. You already have more gold than you could possibly spend. This is actually built into the endgame of D&D as well. There is an assumption in early editions that you'd eventually start to settle down in a region, build a stronghold, acquire followers, and begin to play on a more regional level rather than a personal one. Your actions play out on a broader stage. At this point, it takes a lot more gold to convince you that it's worth putting your life in danger and hoards of that size are few and far between. You reach a natural equilibrium at a certain point and eventually retire from adventuring to manage other things.

The TL;DR of this is that it's easy to ignore the "elven lifespan" problem simply by arguing that even with their longer lifespan there is no reason to assume that their adventuring careers would be any longer than any other races. After all, what is the likelihood of Bill Gates coming out of retirement to work a hotdog stand any time soon? 

The Adept: Revisited (A Class for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and other Old School Fantasy Games)

A while back I propose an adept class that was ripped off from inspired by force-users from the star wars canon. I've been tinkering with an update, so I figured I'd just repost the whole thing. 

The Adept

Nazgul by Martawadman

XP and Saves as Magic-User, d6 HP per level. Same combat options as Fighters, Dwarves, and Elves. Must choose to be either Chaotic OR Lawful.

Where others search outwardly for answers, the adept looks within. Through secret rituals, rigorous discipline, mind-altering drugs and intense medication, they walk the wyrding way giving them preternatural abilities and influence on those around them.

The Wyrding Way:
Adepts can channel the wyrd and use it to add an extra die to any ability, save, attack, or damage roll they must make, or can be rolled and added to their AC for a single combat round (from the beginning of their turn to the beginning of their next turn). At first level, this begins as a d4 and goes up by one die-size every four levels. d6 at 4, d8 at 8, d10 at 12, d12 at 16. This can be used on any roll as often as the adept wishes, but every time a 1 appears on either die rolled, their Wyrd goes down one die size. If it is reduced to less than a d4, their will is depleted and they can summon it no further until they've had time to rest and perform the proper meditations (treat the same as a magic-user regaining their spells).

Reaching Out:
No power is without temptation.Though different sects and philosophies will argue as to where originates the wyrd, they can all agree on one thing - it is a power that comes from beyond the adept. The mind is a but a focusing lens, the body an empty vessel. Particularly ambitious (or foolhardy) adepts can attempt to drink deeply of the wyrd -- and at their own peril. On any single roll, the adept may attempt to roll equal to or under their Wisdom on a d20. On a success, they increase their Wyrd die for any checks made that round, including giving them a d4 even after they have spent their powers. If their die is already at d12, the die becomes a d20. However, doing this is not without terrible price. If the Wisdom roll fails roll the die they would have received. The number on the face is temporarily subtracted from their Constitution. If this would adjust their HP, remove any lost hit points from their current HP first. If either their HP would be reduced to zero, or their Constitution would be reduced to zero, the character is slain. If the character survives, their constitution will recover at a rate of one point per day but cannot be restored any other means (including magical).

Simple Bards for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Or Other Old School Fantasy Games)

The bard is an interesting character concept. On the one hand, it's got a definite style and flair of its own. On the other, there's a number of nagging issues that make it a poor fit for a game with classes centered around the Big Four (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief).

• Main draw is that it does a little bit of everything, which isn't quite as bad for the magic-user and fighter, but sucks for the thief - especially since "skill guy" is the specialist's shtick in LotFP. 
• Magical Music as a class feature is either something you either love, or despise.
• As I wrote once before, creating a class whose abilities are social in nature is weird in a game without strict social mechanics. 

So what can we do?  After some thinking, the first decision I made was to remove the idea of bard as a class entirely. Instead, we add another skill to the specialist's repertoire, making it another possibility to mix and match with rather than a separate class that has significant overlap with specialists anyway.

Inspire: through impassioned speeches, battle music, or a booming voice of command, you can affect the hearts and minds of those around you. On a success, you can add the number rolled as a modifier on a reaction roll. On a failure, you roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 and drop the highest die.

If used in battle, you can use your action to play music, orate, or command in order to aid your allies. The number rolled can be applied to one of the following, at your discretion: attack rolls, damage, armor class, saving throws, or morale checks. This will apply to all intelligent allies within earshot capable of understanding your message. If a roll of 6 would result in a failure, roll a second d6. If the second roll is also a 6, it forces all allied NPCs to make an immediate morale check. 

Alternatively, you can choose to try to demoralize your opponents instead, applying the number rolled as a negative modifier to your opponent's attack rolls, damage, armor class, saving throws, or morale checks. This will apply to all intelligent enemies within earshot capable of understanding the message. If a roll of 6 would result in a failure, roll a second d6. If the second roll is also a d6, your attempt has the opposite effect instead giving a +d3 attack bonus to any enemy that would have been affected.

Either effect consumes the character's whole action and remains in affect until the character's next action. If the character is attacked, silenced, or otherwise prevented from communicating with their intended audience, the effects cease immediately.

Not only does that make "bard" a potential variant of the specialist without adding an additional class, but with the lateral advancement rules, it could also be a nice way to work on a fighter character who is a warlord/commander type. More traditional bards can also attempt to either multi-class with a magic-user to gain spells, or make use of the arcana skill to represent their dabbling.

What's Stealing all the Corpses From the Graveyard (a random table for Old School Fantasy Games)

1d10

1. A furious widow swore her adulterous husband would never rest in peace. A botched curse keeps the dead awake. They aren't being stolen, they are wandering the countryside in search of some grave that will grant them sleep.
2. A sentient swarm of tunneling black beetles has devoured the corpses, one by one, consuming bones and all. A recent bout of plague has given them plenty of fresh meat to feed upon... and they've developed a taste for it.
3. An adventuring party has tracked down the burial place of a famous bandit who late in life decided to go straight. Rumor has it that the only clue to the whereabouts of his equally famous treasure was buried with him, but they aren't sure in which grave he was buried.
4. The land is a meeting point between two dimensions. Any creature, man or animal, living or dead, that spends two consecutive nights in the graveyard wakes up Elsewhere. Until recently, graves were not left open long enough for anyone to notice.
5. Kharus, the servant of death, has made a terrible mistake and crossed over someone whose time had not come. Unfortunately, he can't remember who it was.
6. The bodies are being stolen and sold to masked men who are members of a secret society. The grave keeper takes their money, even believing they are part of some dark cult practicing vile necromancy. In actuality, they are a society of debutantes, aristocrats, and rich provocateurs. The stolen corpses are for a transgressive art display on the futility of reverence.
7. The grave digger is syphilitic, the condition having gone to his brain. He's gone slowly mad, stealing the corpses and stripping them of their flesh. What's left of the remains are beneath his cellar, the bones splintered and tied together into morbid trophies and decorations. When he's alone at night he sings to them. Sometimes, they sing back.
8. An unseelie fey is playing a trick on the local townsfolk. They steal one corpse each night and whisk it off and add it to their own, private, mock court. If caught, the fey will be haughty and indignant and play the whole thing off as a bit of mischief, but in reality it is deeply lonely. The fey has been exiled from the unseelie court. The stolen corpses are both an attempt to build a court of their own so they feel more at home, and to get someone from the village to notice them without actually having to make themselves known. It will return the corpses and stop disturbing the dead if the players manage to befriend it. 
9. A kind, elderly man in the village is secretly an alchemist. He has been stealing the corpses and using them in research, creating tonics from the bones. He's searching for a cure for his daughter, who is overcome with a mysterious disease that resists both normal and magical cures. However, through experimentation he's worked out that the more fresh the remains, the more effective the potions. Unfortunately, the graveyard does not have the fresh corpses he needs. Yet.
10. The graveyard has become a feeding ground for a troll that dwells in a nearby cave. Through some strange mutation or curse, it is in constant pain that is nearly crippling in sunlight. Unusually clever, for a troll, it has discovered that for whatever reason consuming bones helps to alleviate its pain. It won't hazard to bother the nearby village so long as there are corpses to consume, but when they run out...

Multi-Classing for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and other Old School Fantasy Games

Continuing the last post's theme of giving more character options within the framework of LotFP specifically, today we'll be talking about multi-classing rules.

I have suggested before an idea for hybrid classes that worked reasonably well, but they still wound up in many ways being too inflexible for what I wanted them to do. They still make for a nice base upon which to build custom classes, but today we're doing something different.

Multi-Classing for LotFP

Creating a multi-classed character is relatively simple. Any two classes can mix, with the following exceptions

• Classes with opposite alignment requirements (you can't as a character have multiple alignments)
• Racial classes cannot mix with other racial classes (No multi-classed Halfling/Dwarfs)
• Spell-casting classes cannot mix (no multi-classed magic-user/clerics, magic-user/elves, or cleric/elves)

After two classes are chosen, you can figure out the combined features as follows:

• The character gets all of the class-features of both classes (advancing AB, combat options, skills, spell slots, or other special abilities).
• The XP for each level is the combined total of both classes. (A Fighter/Magic-User would cost (2,000+2,250) 4,250xp to get to level 2.
• The HD and Saving Throws are the worst of the two classes. Add up the first level saving throws and choose the set with the worst (read: highest total, as lower is better). If they are equal the player may choose which set they would prefer but may not switch at any time.

Multi-Classing After Character Creation.

Characters can optionally choose a second class after character creation, but the road is a difficult one. The character's advancement in their main class is frozen, but advancement continues using their current XP track until the other class has caught up. Each time they would have leveled up their primary class, they instead level up their secondary class and then drop back down to the bare minimum amount of XP required to be the current level in their current class.

A level 6 fighter has a minimum of 36,000xp and needs 64,000xp to get to level 7. They decide to multi-class into specialist. Each time they would hit 64,000xp, they gain 1 level of specialist and are dropped back down to 36,000xp until they are level 6 in both fighter and specialist, at which point they continue advancing as a normal multi-classed character.   

The character gains all the benefits of the secondary class as a normal multi-classed character as described above. HD are determined by the lesser class each level. If the primary class has the smaller HD (a Specialist who is now multi-classing into Fighter), they can re-roll their HP each level and take the new result if higher, but may not add additional dice until that class advances. If the HD of the secondary class is the lower, then they may roll the secondary classes's HD as they gain it, but will not increase their HP until the secondary class's roll is better than their primary.

Our level 6 fighter has a statistically low 30HP, normally rolling 1d8 per level. Each time they gain a level of specialist, they may roll their specialist's HD (1d6 per level), but won't increase their HP at all until the roll on the specialist's HD is greater than 30 (after Con mods).

Saves are determined in a similar fashion. If the primary class has worse saves than the secondary, then saves are simply frozen until the character continues advancing as normal. If the secondary class has worse saves, then the character's saves don't improve until the secondary class's saves are better than their current saves, at which point the new saves are recorded. 

Multi-classing a character is a big deal, mechanically and requires significant sacrifice. This is even more pronounced if the shift comes later in a character's career. Between multi-classing and lateral advancement, however, I now feel fairly confident that I can create more or less whatever I could want inside of the LotFP framework without having to push for a classless style system as is sort of popular at the moment.

Why I don't Fudge Rolls

Echoing a post I made in a thread the other day, I figured it would be worth it to clean up and post here.

The initial question was a good one:
DMs, do you fudge dice rolls? Why or why not?

It can be very tempting to save players from themselves, but in the long run I think it hurts the overall dynamic of the game. I read once that a good GM should be a like a coach on a sports team. They are there to help advise, encourage, support, and cheer for the players as best they can, but it's still up to them to play the game.

OSR can be brutal in a lot of ways. One of the tropes people tend to attribute to OSR play in particular is the high lethality. For some people, the Fantasy Vietnam thing is actually part of the draw. Even when you're not intentionally aiming for that style, things happen. Old-school play has a lot of save-vs-terrible things moments. The level 1 "wandering encounters" table for B/x has a whole bunch of results that could easily TPK a group. Because OSR has so much randomness and so much of it can be absolute murder, it's very important that the players and the GM are on the same page. The GM should be seen as an impartial arbiter of these results, rather than the cause of them. You need the culture at the table to be "that's just what the dice said."

Once you start fudging dice and the players know that this is a precedent, the GM is now culpable for every result the dice show. At best, whenever something bad happens to a player's character, they know you could have prevented it. When a character dies, it's because you let them die. "But we fudged the roll last time!"

More insidious than this though can be the rolls they don't see at all. The villainous NPC making a difficult or important saving throw, or landing a critical blow in combat can be seen as you cheating to save your BBEG. A bad wandering encounter result or similar random-chart-result situation could simply be seen as you trying to screw the players. Even if you know you aren't trying to, and the players know you aren't trying to, it can still look terrible.

For me at least, it's way better for it to be firmly established that the dice have the final say and that I'm not going to fudge things one way or another. I do this for the same reason I want a GM looking when I roll ability scores for a character. Sometimes crazy results occur, and I don't want someone going "yeah, I'm sure you totally rolled two 18s."

Up until now, I've spoken almost exclusively about OSR style games, but I think the same principle applies in more story-oriented games as well. You want the results to appear impartial.The counter is often something along the lines of "I don't want a single bad roll to derail the story," but fortunately story-based games make this even easier than OSR games do. If it's not something you're willing to risk the PCs failing don't ask them to make a roll. Narrative games are pretty great that way. 

Lateral Advancement for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Other Old School Fantasy Games

One of the strengths of OSR games is how simple the advancement scheme tends to be. No worrying about builds or feats or whatever. You just gain your xp, roll your Hit Dice, and go. The B/x style class scheme tends to help this quite a bit. They are nice and broad, defining your character by your skill set rather than forcing specific fluff to make its way into your character. Your Fighter could be a wandering mercenary, an archer, a tribal barbarian, or a chivalrous knight depending on how you want to picture them.

The big four (Fighter, Magic User, Cleric, and Thief) do an excellent job both of providing broad umbrellas to build characters under and providing some niche protection. As I've written before, though, there are certain character concepts that just don't fit comfortably under any of the above. How do you handle a Ranger who can actually fight? How would you build Conan under such a system? Or Elric?

This brings me to my idea for Lateral Advancement for LotFP. OSR already works with the understanding that not everyone advances at the same rate. More powerful classes already cost more XP to advance, and in AD&D multi-classing was literally just "take both classes, divide XP between them." The premise "choose to advance slower in exchange for more power" is baked in from the start. I think there was a kernel of something useful in there, and I've expanded it here.

Lateral Advancement

Any time a character would gain a level they can choose instead to purchase a lateral advancement, burning the XP they would have used to gain said level in exchange for one of the following non-standard benefits.

• Increase an Ability Score: the character may increase any one ability score by 1 point if they can explain how their character improved it. No score can ever be improved in this fashion by more than 2 (read: a character who rolled 15 strength can only purchase two increases bringing it to 17), but may be purchased separately for each of the character's ability scores as desired. 
• Increase a Skill: the character may add a single pip to any one skill if they can explain how they learned it. Obviously, this is useless for Specialists. 
• Increase Attack Bonus: the character may increase their base attack bonus by 1. Obviously, this is useless for Fighters.
• Improve a Save: the character may improve any one category of saving throw by 1. This may be purchased up to twice for any single save, but may be purchased separately for each save as desired. Obviously, less useful for demi-humans.
• Learn a new class ability: In my home campaigns, I often design rituals and other special abilities that can be gained through play but not necessarily earned automatically as a class ability. If the Fighter got inducted into a berzerkergang cult, this would be his way to buy the ability.   

Characters who purchase a lateral advancement are immediately set back to the minimum amount of XP required to have reached their previous level.

 In LotFP, a Fighter gains level 4 at 8,000xp and 5 at 16,000xp. Upon gaining 16,000xp the Fighter could choose to take a lateral advancement and would then be back at 8,000xp again having burnt the remaining as the cost of advancement. 

I rather like the above as a setup. It allows characters to dip their toes into different fields without being in any danger of overshadowing anyone else's niche as well as giving the DM a way to let characters earn special abilities they want without just handing them out willy-nilly. You want your Fighter to be a Paladin? Do good deeds for the church  and in the course of it, I'll give you the ability to learn some paladiny abilities. Now I can do that without being unfair to the other fighter who is perfectly happy just smacking things with a sword. It's also perfect for when you have a character who just wants a skill to fit a concept (survival comes up a lot with fighters who want to be barbarians or rangers) without having to do some kind of multi-classing setup or hacking together an entirely new concept. Want to be a Witch-Hunting Specialist? Increase your Save vs. Magic a couple times to keep an edge on your prey.

If you're wondering why there's no "purchase magic" to go along with the options for skills and attack bonuses, it's because I'm already using Ten Foot Polemic's Arcana Skill.

Would you use it? Tell me what you think.

A Side Project

Just a little note on here. If I didn't have enough irons in fires, I got involved in a bit of a side project. Troll Gods is an OSR fan 'zine designed to be a grab-bag of goodies for GMs and the curious, meant to either serve as inspiration or to be drag-and-dropped into games as you see fit. The thing is free, and it's open to anyone who wants to contribute.

This first issue features:

• Trick Doors
• A randomized side-quest full of tables
• A Class for LotFP
• A dungeon room with botanical puzzles
• And bestiary entries with subplots of the ape, acquatic, and troll variety. 

The next issue already has some material submitted for it, which I'll dig into before too long. I have some material planned to add myself.

If you're into the OSR scene, give it a look. If you like what you see, toss us some feedback or share it around.

Dying Stylishly (A Shoutout)

A while back I posted some advice to someone on one of the 4chan OSR threads that crop up about starting to get traction for the game they wrote. Among other advice, I mentioned the usefulness of a blog and some minor insights I've gathered from developing 'Bastards. I've now come across the blog developed, and would heartily recommend checking it out.

Dying Stylishly is the dev blog of Emmy Allen, whose most recent project is the OSR-based Wolf-packs and the Winter Snow, a prehistoric Weird role-playing game that could be most easily described a a heavily modified LotFP wrapped around an ice-age setting. It's some very cool work and has a handful of tricks up its sleeve. Definitely worth taking a look into. If I can get the gaming time in, I may well do a review on it later. It's currently available as a Pay-What-You-Want option at DriveThruRPG, which includes absolutely free as an option so you have no excuse not to check it out. The blog itself is only a couple weeks old now, but has maintained a post per day so far. The content covers a whole mess of gaming topics, from LotFP to Vampire the Masquerade, but also hits on Wolf-Pack topics and updates. I look forward to seeing where she goes with it.

Go check it out and send some love from a scoundrel.

Random Starting Equipment for B/x (or Other Old School Fantasy Games)

Unnecessary Background (Feel free to skip to the good stuff)

I'm going to be doing a weekly OSR actual play series on youtube/twitch through roll20. Roll20 has some great features for automating certain things, and we wound up throwing together character generation macros so you can roll up 3 sets of stats at once and pick your poison. In that spirit, I decided to make a random starting gear table for it as well, so players can dive right in without going shopping if they like. The following works on our current (ever so slightly tweaked) B/x rules. You can also download it as a handy reference pdf.

Random Starting Gear for..

Clerics (3d6)

3	club, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, d6 GP
4	club, shield, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, wooden holy symbol, d6 GP
5	mace, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, 5 GP
6	quarter-staff, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 12 iron spikes, wooden holy symbol, 3 stakes & mallet, steel mirror, 2d6 GP
7	chain armor, war hammer, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, 2 small sacks, 2d6 GP
8	chain armor, shield, mace, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, wooden holy symbol, 2 small sacks, 2d6 GP
9	chain armor, shield, war hammer, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, 2 small sacks, 3 stakes & mallet, steel mirror, 2d6 GP
10	plate armor, shield, mace, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, wooden holy symbol, 2d6 GP
11	plate armor, shield, war hammer, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, small sack, d6 GP
12	plate armor, quarter-staff, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, silver holy symbol, d6 GP
13	club, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wolfsbane, holy water, wooden holy symbol, scroll, 2d6 GP
14	plate armor, shield, mace, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, silver holy symbol, 2d6 GP
15	leather armor, mace, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, random divine scroll, 2 flasks oil, 1 GP
16	plate armor, shield, war hammer, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, silver holy symbol, 3 stakes & mallet, steel mirror, 12 GP
17	chain armor, war hammer, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, wooden holy symbol, divine scroll, 10 GP
18	plate armor, shield, mace, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, silver holy symbol, vial holy water, 12 iron spikes, 3 stakes & mallet, small sack, healing potion, 10 GP

Fighters

3	polearm, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
4	club, dagger, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
5	leather armor, mace, shield, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
6	leather armor, battle axe, hand axe, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
7	chain armor, spear, shield, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
8	chain armor, shield, sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
9	chain armor, sword, light crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
10	plate armor, shield, sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
11	plate armor, two-handed sword, 3 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 flasks oil, 2d6 GP
12	plate armor, shield, sword, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
13	plate armor, warhammer, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, small sack, 2d6 GP
14	plate armor, shield, sword, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
15	plate armor, polearm, shield, short sword, dagger, light crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 5 flasks oil, 3d6 GP
16	plate armor, two-handed sword, short sword, dagger, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, 3d6 GP
17	plate armor, polearm, dagger, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 2 silver tipped arrows, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
18	plate armor, shield, sword, 2 daggers, light crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 4 silver tipped quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP

Magic Users (3d6)

3	dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
4	staff, 2 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 2 flasks oil, 50' rope, 2d6 GP
5	dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
6	staff, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, vial of holy water, 2d6 GP
7	2 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole 5 flasks of oil, silver mirror, belladona, 2d6 GP
8	staff, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 vials holy water, d6 GP
9	3 daggers, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, vial of holy water, 5d6 GP
10	dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 vials holy water, 6d6 GP
11	dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6*10 GP
12	staff, dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2d6*10 GP
13	dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, arcane scroll, 10' pole, 4 GP
14	2 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, arcane scroll, 50' rope, 2d6 GP
15	dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, arcane scroll, 10' pole, d6 GP
16	staff, dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, arcane scroll, 50' rope, 4d6 GP
17	silver dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, arcane scroll, 10' pole, 5d6 GP
18	staff, silver dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, arcane scroll, 50' rope, 2d6*10 GP

Thieves(3d6)

3	club, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
4	club, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, d6 GP
5	club, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2d6 GP
6	sword, dagger, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
7	cudgel, light crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 small sacks, 2d6 GP
8	sword, light crossbow, case of 30 quarrels, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 1 bag caltrops, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
9	sword, 2 daggers, 35 short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
10	sword, dagger, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 bag caltrops, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, d6*10 GP
11	sword, crossbow, case of 30 quarrels, 2 silver tipped quarrels, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2d6 GP
12	sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 6d6 GP
13	sword, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 bag caltrops, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2d6*10 GP
14	sword, dagger, crossbow, case of 30 quarrels, 6 silver tipped quarrels, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 4d6 GP
15	sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 silver tipped arrows, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 1 bag caltrops, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 6d6 GP
16	sword, 4 daggers, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, 2d6*10 GP
17	sword, 3 daggers, crossbow, case of 30 quarrels, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 1 bag caltrops, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, small sack 2d6*10 GP
18	sword, 1 silver dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 8 silver tipped arrows, leather armor, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 2 small sacks, 10' pole, 6d6 GP

Dwarves (3d6)

3	leather armor, battleaxe, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
4	leather armor, handaxe, shield, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
5	chain armor, warhammer, shield, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
6	chain armor, battle axe, hand axe, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
7	chain armor, hand axe, shield, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
8	chain armor, battleaxe, shield, hand axe, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
9	plate armor, polearm, hand axe, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
10	plate armor, shield, handaxe, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
11	plate armor, battleaxe, warhammer, shield, 3 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 flasks oil, 2d6 GP
12	plate armor, shield, handaxe, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
13	plate armor, battleaxe, dagger, 35 crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, small sack, 2d6 GP
14	plate armor, shield, warhammer, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
15	plate armor, helmet, 2 battle axes, dagger, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 5 flasks oil, 3d6 GP
16	plate armor, two-handed sword, dagger, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, 3d6 GP
17	plate armor, polearm, handaxe, dagger, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 2 silver tipped quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
18	plate armor, shield, warhammer, 2 daggers, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 4 silver tipped quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP

Elves (3d6)

3	leather armor, sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
4	leather armor, spear, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
5	leather armor, spear, shield, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
6	leather armor, shield, short sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
7	chain armor, spear, shield, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
8	chain armor, shield, sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
9	chain armor, spear, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
10	plate armor, shield, sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
11	plate armor, two-handed sword, short sword, 3 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 flasks oil, 2d6 GP
12	plate armor, shield, sword, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
13	plate armor, sword, dagger, 35 short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, small sack, 2d6 GP
14	plate armor, shield, sword, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, dagger, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
15	plate armor, shield, sword, dagger, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 5 flasks oil, 3d6 GP
16	plate armor, two-handed sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, arcane scroll, 3d6 GP
17	plate armor, spear, dagger, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 2 silver tipped arrows, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
18	plate armor, shield, sword, 2 daggers, long bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 4 silver tipped quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, arcane scroll, 2d6 GP

Halfings (3d6)

3	club, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
4	club, leather armor, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
5	leather armor, mace, shield, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, d6 GP
6	leather armor, hand axe, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP
7	chain armor, short sword, shield, dagger, sling, pouch with 20 sling bullets, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
8	chain armor, shield, short sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
9	chain armor, short sword, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
10	chain armor, shield, short sword, dagger, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
11	chain armor, short sword, 3 daggers, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 2 flasks oil, 2d6 GP
12	plate armor, shield, short sword, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
13	plate armor, short sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, small sack, 2d6 GP
14	plate armor, shield, short sword, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 bag caltrops,1 week iron rations, 10' pole, d6 GP
15	plate armor, shield, short sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 6 torches, backpack, waterskin, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 5 flasks oil, 3d6 GP
16	plate armor, short sword, dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 bag caltrops,1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2 small sacks, 3d6 GP
17	plate armor, shield, short sword, silver dagger, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows, 2 silver tipped arrows, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 50' rope, 3d6 GP
18	plate armor, shield, short sword, 2 daggers, crossbow, case with 30 quarrels, 4 silver tipped quarrels, backpack, waterskin, lantern, 4 flasks oil, 1 week iron rations, 10' pole, 2d6 GP

Credit for the original idea goes to Brendan S. I've since seeded some extra nonsense in my version across the board, both making it a better fit for B/x and flavoring it a little (dwarves tend to have more dwarfy weapons, elves have more elfy weapons). I have no doubt that my results will not be as mathematically elegant, but they will serve my purposes.