Delvers in Dàrkmesa - Campaign Rules 2.0

First post in over a year, and it is an updated version of the ruleset I posted as my magnum opus in February of 2019.

I can't say precisely what drives me to forever re-write these rules, though part of it is certainly a lack of play. This is a problem I hope to amend soon, if only virtually. Given that my play group has spread itself over much of the state now, that would appear to be our only viable option even without Covid-19 running amok.

Despite the dearth of play, I have, in the past year and change, had ample time to contemplate what makes a robust and flexible ruleset. I have not been posting my ideas here, mostly for lack of time or motivation, but I also find some guiding priciple in what Stephen King has said on several occassions about writing notebooks and journals, "They're a great way to immortalize bad ideas."

Now that these ideas have stewed for a while, I feel imbued with just enough confidence to put them on here.

Some of the things you may find interesting in these new rules:

• No ability modifiers. I want treasure that provides bonuses to be the most important modifier.
• Two "defenses" cover everything: Armor Class, and 4th Edition-style "save-on-10+" d20 rolls.
• The most available healing has a kind of "cap" mediated by a 4th Edition-style "bloodied" status.
• Four classes available, one per "pillar" of fantasy dungeoneering: Outlanders (wilderness travel), Sages (literacy and healing), Thieves (getting into places you aren't supposed to be), and Warriors (killin' sh*t). No race-classes so that the rules don't require changes if elves, dwarves, or halflings aren't featured in your game.
• The rules don't include a rigid magic system. Rather, they provide examples of how to make magic self-limiting. GM discretion is paramount. Sages can be the de facto "magic user" if that is a player's aim.
• Monsters have very simple stats, and are not meant to be "balanced" for groups of any particular level or size. Like spells and magic, example monsters are provided in a wandering monster table.
• 1d6 weapon damage. 1 damage for unarmed strikes or hits with torches. 2d6 (or 2) for critical hits.

Forward: Delvers of Dàrkmesa

The Delvers of Dàrkmesa campaign rules represent the culmination of my ten years exploring the theory and spirit of tabletop roleplaying games in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons.

This project began in 2008 in the wake of D&D 4th Edition. But that inflection point needs some context.

I had been playing D&D since 2003, when a new friend gave me a copy of the 3rd Edition D&D Player's Handbook, having recently upgraded to 3.5 himself. I read every word in that handbook one thousand times over. I was running games of 3.5 for my friends soon after, and quickly settled into a nice groove: each campaign I tried to run would last three to four sessions, only to spiral out of control due to my lack of experience.

In my heart, I usually blamed the players for how things would fall apart. I had played the epic campaigns through in my head, and tried to run them all to that end. Didn't they know that Tolkien-level excitement and wonder awaited them, if they could just go along with the story? They never seemed to march to the tune, despite their best efforts. Luckily, we were young, and all still in school in our home town. Starting a new game every month was never an issue. I had a million tired fantasy tropes that I yearned to emulate at the table, and a good handful of friends more than willing to indulge me.

I never admitted that I blamed them, and that was good, because it was my fault and I didn't know it. I didn't know that the stories I liked to read and write were not the ones I liked to play in or run. I couldn't see that my campaigns as conceived were little more than setting and stage direction. It was truly the bliss (or perhaps, frustration) of ignorance.

You see, the friend that introduced me to D&D was the first person I ever met who played. That made me the second person I ever knew who played. Each of my other friends who I invited to play then became the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. We were making it up as we went. Sure, we were using the rules. But the rules don't tell you how to play. Not really. And back then, it was faster to walk to the library and check-out a Dragonlance novel than to look up anything online. How other people played was a complete mystery to all of us.

Around 2007, the older cousin of a friend of mine came to town. His name was (is) Nick, and besides being a math genius, he was also an avid player of 2nd edition D&D. Once he found out his little cousin and co were all playing D&D on the weekends, he offered to run a (3.5 converted) game of Ravenloft for seven or eight of us.

That was good D&D. I played a monk, which was a terrible class in 3.5. But the D&D was good, so I had fun.

Then we went back to playing our own games (which I ran), and they sucked again. I would often pine away in my memory for the details of that game, searching for its secret sauce.

In 2008, 4th edition D&D is released, and for the first time, the veil of design is peeled back for me. The deliberate ways that the game was laid out and organized, the brutal crackdown on the numbers, the every inch regulated and standardized.

D&D it was not. My friends all lamented the something that was lost in translation. I maintained always that I loved 4th edition, but found it rather hard to express precisely why in the language of fun. In my eyes, 4th edition was designed to a very specific end: tactical combat play. In that, it succeeded. It was designed to be learned quickly. Again, it succeeded there. It was designed to look modern and aesthetically consistent. A+ again. It was the right product, but for the wrong market.

So my theory crafting and homebrewing began. "There must be a way," I thought, "to bring the principles of design from 4th edition into 3.5 such that we can play a superior hybrid game."

It should be said: 3.5 was universally regarded as broken by 2008. How broken exactly was up for debate, but the sheer lack of direction for the design of the game and its splat books was becoming a malignant issue. There was too much game, and no central idea to measure each component's worth and validity against. One of the primary draws to a new game from the player's perspective was the chance to try out new classes and options. But from the other side of the table, every new feature was a chance to break the game.

Notebook after notebook did I fill with my Frankenstein D&D hacks. If I recall correctly, the first things I ever scribbled house rules about were skills and feats. Did we really need over 36 skills? And who knows how many hundred feats? Do those options really enrich play, or do they just tickle the fancy of min/maxers?

By 2009, my family had DSL and I had my own laptop for school. So I decided to start Googling these questions and delving for answers in the dark halls of the interweb.

What I discovered was called the Old School Renaissance. It had begun around 2006 or 2007, as best I can tell, with some bloggers connecting on various forums and posts. They shared ideas from their history with the game, which stretched back to its very beginnings, and even before. They knew the old rulesets weren't perfect, and offered their solutions to the age-old problems. There was debate and proselytism among great grognard philosophers, and countless quiet members of the community, like me, just trying to absorb it all.

These champions of the old school tore my fragile conceptions about D&D apart, like the Twelve prophets of the Hebrew Bible chastising Israel. What was this game I had been playing all these years? Where had it come from, and what great pillars of its history had been lost to its many transmutations? Had we taken the wisdom of its forefathers for granted? Nowhere else have I seen such thoughtful effort by people to justify their ideas about a hobby and its function. While everyone else spent three years learning Pathfinder, I was mesmerized by the mysteries of OSR games.

If this era (c. 2006-2011) was indeed the Old School "Renaissance," then what happened in 2012 was the Old School "Industrial Revolution." In January, Wizards of the Coast announced that the short-lived 4th edition would soon be replaced by a new D&D, "D&D Next." In May, they began a massive open playtest of the rules they were working on.

The forums that existed on the old WotC website containing all of the playtest feedback and discussion were truly a treasure of knowledge and design theory. I was well into my obsession with writing a better ruleset by 2012, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the chance to explore those million musings before they were archived later that year.

For two years, there seemed to be no word of the next D&D, but my mind never stopped swirling around the problems the OSR had illuminated. As I got further into college, time for playing the game became scarce, but my interest in thinking about it only grew. The homebrews I made became smaller and simpler. There were fewer and fewer rules each time I would revise or start again. I was getting better at the design, but deep down I still didn't understand what I wanted. I was designing for better design's sake, but not for the sake of better play. Indeed, most of my homebrews never saw the light of day. The ones I did test largely felt like playing any other ruleset.

It doesn't matter much what font you write the stage directions in, turns out.

In 2014, D&D 5 came out, and my friends loved it. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread, fixing all the problems with 3.5, but still holding onto that something that 4 had abandoned.

But when I looked at it, I was disappointed. Sure, advantage/disadvantage is a great mechanic. And yeah, the monk is way better now. And oh hey, they are consciously keeping the official splat books and feats and skills and classes under control. All good things, no doubt, for those of us content with the quality of play we had achieved throughout the years. But D&D 5 didn't do what I desperately wanted it to do.

It didn't show me how to design toward something. D&D 5 is the everyman's game. It's a story game, it's a tactical combat game, it's epic high fantasy, it's gritty low fantasy. It's everything, and nothing. At the table, it feels just like 3.5 did when my friends and I couldn't yet afford the extra books.

Fast-forward another year, and Critical Role is D&D's technological revolution. D&D is sexy now, and it rivals the best TV shows for hours of content and number of dedicated fans. Like all instances of celebrity art, Critical Role is at first inspiring, and then soul crushing. Inspiring because it shows you what tabletop RPGs can deliver, and soul crushing because I am not friends with a cadre of professional voice actors who want nothing more than to practice their acting around my narrative, with some combat thrown in to spice things up. It isn't just an unattainable ideal, it may actually be an un-approachable ideal depending on the friends you have.

A cursory scan of D&D subreddits these days will show you the Critical Role heartbreak phenomenon writ large. DMs are afraid to let their players fail. They're afraid to change the plans they have for their narrative in response to what the players do. They hand their players stage directions, and instead of amazing voice actors and improv artists, it turns out their players are just regular people. The story-based D&D facade all comes crashing down when you try to fit it into the real context that the game has in our lives. A weekly hobby for a handful of non-writers and non-actors with shifting schedules and more important things to remember than the evil motivations of the Demon Vicar of Nowheresville in your tabletop soap opera guest-starring the player characters.

But even a few years into playing and DMing 5e, I still maintained that top-down DM fiat narrative was a viable play strategy. And it wasn't until a little later, when one of my close friends ran a short-lived game in which I played, that the final trigger for my OSR metamorphosis would occur.

The setup was this: the party (which had several new members) were asked to convene at an inn to receive a quest from an NPC. We did, and the NPC told us how to get to a mythic dungeon full of (literally) civilizations worth of treasure. If we do it, the NPC gets to keep whatever scrolls and spellbooks we find in the loot. My guy is a fighter, so that is fine with me.

The party leaves for the dungeon, which is in the center of a crazy necrotic swamp that has emerged around it because the dungeon is the fossilized remains of an ancient dragon god (cool) which is causing the land to transform as it decays (super cool). When we arrive, there is a crew of evil dudes camping around the dungeon entrance, which we battle and defeat in a fight (sweet). Then, upon entering the dungeon, we find out that all of the treasure has already been looted and thrown through a portal into the plane of Limbo (...what?).

Now, from my friend's perspective, he was offering the potential for a sweet adventure on a rarely-explored plane of existence. And had that been the hook for the adventure from the beginning, I would have been more than excited.

But from my perspective, my character's motivation to adventure had been flushed down the drain. That might not be so bad (hey, things don't always turn out the way your character wants), but my poor dwarf was also trapped by the swamp. I tried to make a choice about what adventure my character would pursue, and then when that was turned on its head, I was denied a second choice. Not only was the original intent of the adventure no longer an option, but if my character jumped through that portal, there was literally no way for me to control whether I could turn back. No way for me to make an actual choice.

I was outraged after the fact, and it surprised me! This was no different than a hundred other times that one of my friends or I had weaved a D&D web around our players to get them to do what we wanted. The difference this time was how obvious it was to me given the mindset that I was in. I didn't blame my friend, I blamed our collective understanding of the game.

The swamp was not an obstacle to the treasure, because the treasure wasn't there anymore. The swamp was an obstacle to beginning the adventure, or any other adventure for that matter, if the party had changed its mind. The dungeon was the single source of player-DM agreement ahead of time, and it was thrown out. The foundational structure of the game, that there was a treasure to be had if some obstacles were overcome, was abandoned for the sake of an unsure reward (the treasure was in Limbo, after all) after an indeterminate amount of time and obstacles.

The contract of the game was broken, I was mad, and that was the answer I had always been looking for. What was the contract that my games should make between the DM and the players? Whatever that contract, design the game toward it.

D&D 5 makes no contracts. All forms of play are equally valid, and therefore there can be no measure of what games succeed or fail except on the scale of fun. This makes DMing, and DM prep especially, a nightmare of guesswork no matter how many books or tips or tools you have. What type of game will be fulfilling? What type of game will last? How do I get the players to ask about my availability to play rather than trying to chase them?

Well what if, given the wealth of OSR knowledge that I had absorbed, I made the contract of my campaign specific in the way that is time tested:

In this campaign, the player characters will explore a megadungeon for treasure. They will frequently return to the outlying town or towns to restock and rest, and may occasionally pursue non-dungeon adventures when the desire strikes them. New players and characters can come in or be swapped in at any point while the party is in town. No individual player needs to attend every session because no individual character needs to be on any given delve.

I, the DM, promise to prepare for that. The players promise to bring characters that will eagerly pursue that cadence of play. It doesn't create any unspoken requirements to attend every session for the sake of keeping in the loop of the plot. It doesn't mislead players as to what they will be doing. And most importantly, it takes a hard line on the boundaries of the play area, but within that play area, there is real choice with real consequence. No Quantum Ogre, no DM fiat.

And so, if I designed a ruleset around that contract, and DMed the game around that contract, I would be able to actually improve the game from session to session because I and the players would be pursuing the same goal. Which finally brings me to Delvers of Dàrkmesa.

Once I landed on the idea of the megadungeon as a distillation of the time-tested campaign promise, I thought about making my own take on Dwimmermount (if only for the supremely euphonic nature of the name), but decided instead to go completely homebrew. That's how Dàrkmesa came to be. I was struck by the double meaning of mesa (a huge rock formation that could easily fit a megadungeon inside, as well as the Spanish/Latin root for table), and what would a dungeon be without darkness? The Delvers part is just to drive the point home. Both in the sense that the characters will be primarily engaged in exploring a dungeon, and in the sense that the game is about them and about their exploration, not some arbitrary story I have concocted.

The rules and classes and example spells to include all fell into place now that I had a gameplay goal in mind other than "have fun." Many of the strangest parts of old school games that I could never understand before started to make sense and became incredibly attractive aspects of the experience for me.

Of course the game should be deadly, because that is a large part of what creates drama in a campaign with no forced plot. Of course random encounters were necessary, to keep the players and the DM honest as they all pursued the campaign goal: random chance is what keeps a non-narrative game alive. Of course two hundred pig-faced orcs appearing in a dungeon cavern is a good encounter, because it forces the players to bring to the table what makes them good players, not well-statted characters. And finally, of course the dungeon is the primordial soup from which all good games emerge, because it is the most apt compromise between what the DM needs to do, and what the players need to do. It creates strict boundaries that allow the DM to prepare more of the right thing, but when done right it forces no specific action on the players other than to engage. They want the treasure, and however they get it is by definition a fine way to play. That's why we all play this game, to get the treasure that exists hidden in the forgotten halls of our collective imagination and good company. So why hide the ball? Why not be clear about how agency works in the game right from the beginning? Why not embrace the canvas that was originally conceived for the game, and was so important that it became the first word in its name?

Luckily, it only took me ten years of searching to figure that out. Now I have the rest of my time to play.

D&D Classes without Math: Magic-user

Source

Wizard, Magic-user, arcanist, etc. It is a staple of D&D, and perhaps the single most interesting class, based solely on their capabilities. Spells are essentially the only common thread (mechanically speaking) through all the iterations of D&D, and wizards are the undisputed masters of spells.

But what does that mean when you take out the math?

Well, that question has perplexed me for months. This post was supposed to go out with the rest of the "without Math" posts. Clearly, it did not...

Because I can't really say what a math-less magic-user would look like. It has a kind of backwards quality about it that the other classes do not. Every fighter can do the same things, as far as the game is concerned. The details about how they do it, i.e. what weapons they use, how much armor they wear, whether they focus on Dexterity or Strength...none of it really matters. They are still a fighter because they do fighter stuff. Hit things with weapons, absorb some damage, protect the less combative party members, run into the danger.

But...what is magic-user stuff? Fireball? Magic missile? Scribe Scroll? Reading magic? There is an argument to be made that, yes, that is magic-user stuff. If you can do those things, you are a wizard. But not every magic-user ever learns magic missile or fireball, or how to scribe scrolls, or even how to read magic. As more and more spells are printed, and the boundaries of what magic can and cannot do (and how easily it can or cannot do it) has expanded, we have found that very specific types of casters are now viable. Casters that don't use spellbooks. Casters that even change the very idea of how mortals can access magic.

Also, "fireball" and "protecting the squishy guys" are not the same level of abstraction. "Fireball" would be better described as "AoE damage." "Magic Missile" is best described as "unavoidable magic damage that's cheap." Of the four core classes, none but the magic-user can do those things. But is an illusionist, who knows no damaging spells at all, a magic-user then?

Must we abstract further and higher? Maybe the magic-user is the class that makes sweeping changes to the environment the party is in, either clearing obstructions or creating them. This definition would then include things like knock and illusory terrain, which are yet more staples of the D&D wizard. Looking over the wizard spell list from 3.5, I think this definition is rather complete. But it is so general that it could take any in-game form whatsoever. Wizard, sorcerer, illusionist, evoker, swordmage, abjurer, warlock...even divine casters could fit within this definition comfortably.

And yet, this definition leaves us with nothing but "casts spell" as the 'math-less' portion of a magic-user. Essentially, we're back where we started.

We don't want to have to write up all these different classes, because we would never be done. If we want to be able to write up a coherent set of rules for all magic-users (math-free, of course), we have two options:

1. Make it wizards only. If you can cast arcane spells without a spellbook, it's because you are a monster or demon or dragon and not a PC. Humanoid races have only one way to learn and use magic, and that's spells and spellbooks. If you take D&D as written, remove every non-wizard arcane casting class, you have this system. There is still a lot of room here. Every type of wizard specialist is available. Spell selection is wide open and creates meaningful differences between all wizards.

OR

2. Make it up as it becomes relevant. Have no written rules in your system for spells and magic. Instead, make magic entirely an in-game discovery and learning process. If you want to have the PCs fight a dark mage, write up the basics of how that guy knows/can use magic. This could be any micro-system of your choosing. The most obvious is a spellbook with a finite number of spells. What system you use to prevent characters from casting these spells endlessly each day is up to you. Then, if the PCs decide to investigate this dude's magic (presumably after turning him into a fresh corpse), they can pursue it, and you'll know exactly how it works and how powerful it is.

Fantasy Archetypes as Chronology, and the Expanding Magician

There is some great blog literature about the cleric as a misfit in the fantasy world, and I suggest that you all read it if you get the chance. A good place to start is Delta's discussions of the cleric and how it bothered him throughout the years (scroll down to the bottom of the post).

This excommunication of the cleric would then leave us with three archetypes: the warrior, the scoundrel, and the magician. Three is a nice number. It lends itself well to overthinking and false analogies. The following may or may not be one of those.

Warrior, Scoundrel, Magician = Present, Future, and Past

The warrior is living for the glory, the thrill, the power. But the warrior's glory does not come after the fight, it comes during the fight, as he (or she) is flaying the dragon, beheading the minotaur, or stabbing the orc general. His strength and potency comes from what he can do right now. A general without an army to command right now is not really a general.

Warriors are typically depicted as men, in the real world, and even in fantasy. There are a host of stereotypes that explain this, but perhaps one of the least examined is the correlation between the male brain and mental focus: paying attention deeply to one thing is emphasized, but planning ahead and multi-tasking are underutilized.

I would argue that the warrior archetype is inherently uninterested in planning ahead and multi-tasking. It doesn't mean a warrior can't plan, or multi-task. But there is something about the warrior culture and warrior mindset that implies addressing problems as they arise with whatever strengths and strategies become available in real time.

In game terms, this means the warrior excels after combat starts. Once each combatant must begin making decisions and acting on them, the warrior is most in control. This means being reactionary. But very effectively so. "He does A, so I respond with B. She does C, so I respond with D." That kind of cause-effect reality means warriors are inherently focused on the present in order to be effective.


The Scoundrel, on the other hand, is most effective when they can predict what challenges lay before them. This can be boiled down to the mind-numbing mundanity of "I search for traps," but it also exists at all the other levels of interesting play. Cat burglars and art thieves stake out their targets to better predict what they will be up against. They set up road-side robberies as chests of gold are being transported from the royal coffers.

Even combat oriented scoundrels are focused on setting up a future opportunity to strike for maximum effect.

Scoundrels are the ones that walk away with the gold, avoid consequences, disappear into anonymity, etc. That doesn't happen on the fly, it happens because these archetypical characters are constantly planning. "If he does X, I will do Y. But, if he does W, I will do Z." A scoundrel's mind must always be playing with possible future worlds, and planning not just the next move, but the next three moves like a chess grandmaster.


The magician exists in the past. A magician's influence depends on what archaic secrets of the old world they can master, and what incredible shifts of reality they have accomplished. The magician is potent not based on how they can react to what their enemies are doing, nor how well they have planned to deal with their opponents' strategy. A magician is powerful based solely on what they are independently capable of. If you can incinerate a man at the flick of a wand, the most important part of your development as a magician was not the moment of incineration, nor the plan you concocted to find and incinerate that person. It was the moment you figured out how to incinerate someone. The sheer unpredictability of your powers is, in itself, dangerous.

"I have amassed this power," the magician says. "Try and stop me if you wish."

This makes the magician sound like an evil archetype. And it sure as hell works for evil characters. But it can also be a force for good. Unless you live in a world that has entirely collapsed to evil, then evil must have been defeated or staunched in some way before, but you can only find out what those methods were by looking to the past.
_____________________________________________________________

This tripartite comparison creates its own rock-paper-scissors relationship as well. Warrior is reaction, magician is unpredictability, and scoundrel is prediction. The warrior beats the magician, because the only way to beat something that's unpredictable is to react efficiently and effectively at a moment's notice. The magician beats the scoundrel, because if the scoundrel cannot predict their opponent's capabilities, their advantage is lost. And lastly, the scoundrel beats the warrior, because it is trivial to predict something that works on a basic cause-effect, action-reaction formula, and it is therefore easy to counter.
_____________________________________________________________

Yet another insight from this comparison is what it has to say about the magician and "game balance." I'm not talking about balance in the sense of "the magician shouldn't deal more damage than the warrior" or "shouldn't roll higher stealth checks than the scoundrel." Rather, I'm talking about giving your players and their characters roughly equal time to shine in any given game. Warriors are best at reacting to sudden events, and scoundrels are best at planning how to circumvent the better part of the challenges they can predict. The magician should be pure, raw magical effect.

But if you let the magician prepare too accordingly for the challenges they will face, then it begins to overshadow the scoundrel. Who needs to sneak around the frost giants and set their fortress on fire if the magician has a dozen fire spells prepared?

By the same token, if you allow spells to become too utilitarian, and give the magician too many of them, then they start to overshadow the warrior. Oh, the demon has summoned two fire beasts? Well, my wall of iron will keep them at bay. Now the demon is trying to disintegrate my wall? I cast arcane transference and absorb his spell, then use the spell slot I gain from that to cast sonic boom against the crystal golems, which is an auto-critical.

See what I mean? Old school magicians, with their tiny spell lists and laughable number of spells per day were like a shotgun: effective when used for its intended purpose, somewhat effective if used for a well-thought-out improvised purpose, and disastrous if used for anything else. Sure, you can shoot an enemy with a shotgun, and you can even blow open a locked door with a shotgun, but you can't put out a house fire with a shotgun, and you can't create an anti-venom with a shot gun. During those times, other characters get to shine.

But the trend in magicians has been to transform them into a Swiss-army knife/multi-tool/Skeleton key archetype, where they can steal the spotlight entirely, so long as they do their research and prepare the right spells. Not only is this unfair to the players who want to make characters that aren't magicians, but it also is opposite the original feel of the magician. Archaic and arcane secrets aren't a dime a dozen. In the LOTR movies, Gandalf was away for over a year doing research and hunting gollum just to learn about the history and tell-tale signs of the One Ring.

In the books, that quest takes him exactly seventeen years. I don't think that much time should be necessary to discover some arcane secrets, but you get the drift.

Expanding Attacks

So, not long ago, I posted about how we don't need attack rolls.

And it's still true. We don't need attack rolls to play D&D, or any other version of a tabletop RPG. Attack rolls often just slow down the inevitable. The number of sides on that d20 often lead to many misses that are not due to the enemy's skill or evasiveness, but due to plain crappy luck.

Take that luck partially out by rolling only damage, and you have a combat scenario where at least something happens every turn. Maybe just a scratch, but at least a character getting scratched by a near miss is WAY more interesting than a character getting plain ol' missed.

However, you can also play with attack rolls, and still have great combat. The difference comes from how you conceptualize and abstract what an "attack roll" means in your game, and what you encourage and expect from your players during a fight.

For my money, having a high bonus to attacking should translate into a high bonus for grappling, tripping, punching, kicking, disarming, bull rushing, and so on and so forth. The players are adventurers, after all. They are not walking into that dungeon with a bow and arrow, and knowing that if they lose it they are useless. (Or at least, they shouldn't be, and if your system makes it so they are useless without their weapon of choice, your system sucks. Sorry, but it's true.)

So first things first, you've got to get rid of all this combat maneuver/ grapple check/ special attack action nonsense. Combat is combat, whether you have a sword in your hand, or a banana. If your character has the cojones (or whatever the female equivalent should be, which unfortunately seems not to exist) to call him- or herself an adventurer, then they better be able to handle themselves in a fight. Streetfight, magic-fight, sword-fight, tentacle-monster fight, whatever. No need to micromanage your character's specific ability is in every facet of battle.

Now don't get me wrong, if you want your character to have a bonus to a particular fighting style, that is super awesome. But outside of that, isn't it just easier if we assume that a fighter is equally good at all kids of fighting until they become really good at one or two they prefer? Why bother making all these calculations about particular choices in combat? Just use the same bonus for everything! Make everything a regular attack roll.

Mounted archery roll? Ha! I scoff at thee!

You want to hit your opponent with your sword? Make an attack roll.
You want to tackle your opponent to the ground? Make an attack roll.
You want to grab your opponent and fling them over the castle wall? Attack roll, baby!
You want to shoot your arrow into an opponent's knee and knock them prone? Aaaaaaattack roll!
You want to feint one way and cause one of the enemies currently flanking you to accidentally hit the other guy current flanking you? That's an easy one, just roll me an attack roll!

And here is the great thing: not only can all of these rolls just be regular attack rolls, but all of these rolls can also be rolled against regular ol' Armor Class.

Consider: that base of 10 that every character gets for an AC in most d20 games, what is it? I'll tell you: it is the assumed ability of any combatant to avoid bodily harm during a fight. Everybody gets it. A straight 45% boost in your ability to not get stabbed. Then, most games also add some kind of evasive bonus from a high Dexterity. That is rather self-explanatory. Only once both of those things are said and done is armor factored in. Armor isn't even that big a part of your Armor Class. Most of your AC is simply your finely tuned sense of when to get the hell out of the way.

So yeah, the guy in plate armor is more likely to avoid a bullrush than a guy in leather armor. Does that make perfect sense? No. But is it totally baseless when it comes to the assumptions of your game? Absolutely not! It's harder to knock someone in armor down, because they are heavier and not as easily unbalanced with pressure to their soft parts and such. Armored opponents are not as easy to disarm, since their hands are frequently protected with something. Armored opponents are harder to grab and fling because armor doesn't bunch up nicely in your hand and give you good leverage over someone like a regular shirt does.

I mean, whatever logic I throw out there, someone will be able to find counter-logic that makes this system of doing things seem unreasonable. But hey, at least my unreasonable system makes combat go fast, and isn't as hard to learn.

Good luck doing that in a more complex system...

And as a last note: for the final example I gave above about feinting and causing friendly fire on two flanking enemies, I would rule that as such: the bad-ass bravo PC who wants to try such a technique would make an attack roll that must meet or exceed the Armor Class of both the combatants he is involving in the attempt. This may change nothing about his chances to succeed, or it may significantly reduce them, but seeing as he is involving two opponents in his little escapade instead of the usual one, I think that is more than fair.

Minimalism in Pen & Paper RPG Design

Three days ago there was a great post about Super Simplified Swords & Wizardry, and minimalist, focused RPG design over at The Rusty Battle Axe.  It is a great post, and you should go read it. But be warned, because it is picking up a lot of equally excellent discussion from other blogs, like The Clash of Spear on Shield, Bat in the Attic, Gothridge Manor, and most recently the counter opinion (also excellent) on Tales of the Rambling Bumblers.

Here is the bulleted list of purposes being thrown around and responded to for this kind of minimalist take on an RPG:

• Focus play on exploration, rather than tactical combat.
• Focus the players to find different and creative solutions to challenges poised by having such limited options. [For those who haven't yet read the other posts, these limited options would include: approximately 2 classes (warrior-type, and thief-type), scroll-only magic use, etc.]
• Highlight the sense of danger and weirdness with regard to the dungeon. [The above-ground world is entirely mundane.]
• Magic items become highly prized. [Because they are super rare.]

With one exception, I think all of these goals are very worthwhile and, indeed, universally desired whether we are talking minimalist games or super-crunchy games. No one wants banal dungeons or boring magic items. Everyone wants some creativity involved in their game, though what tools are the focus of that creativity (e.g. game mechanics, or setting descriptions) is a matter of opinion.

I have a qualm with the first bullet point, because I feel it implies "all combat" within the phrase "tactical combat," and misses an opportunity to differentiate combat that is part of exploration, and combat that is simply there to meet some kind of quota. The best way to understand this is by reading this fantastic post about Bad Trap Syndrome over at Ars Ludi. Essentially everything stated in that post can be equated to your combats as well. Are the monsters in that dungeon room just floating HP and Spell taxes, or do they serve a purpose in the world at large, and in the story, that your players will discover by interacting with them, violently or otherwise?

That being said, I certainly believe that if a 4 page mini-RPG spends 3 pages describing rules for combat and 1/2 a page on exploration, it may give players the wrong idea. And even though their understanding of the game may change on the second and third and fourth session, you still have to get them to sit down and play after that first one. For a counterpoint to this, see here.

Now let's talk about the ways one could implement low magic and minimal class choices.

Minimal Classes:

• Open-ended features. Yeah, +1 to attacks and damage is great for your warrior-type, but it is also entirely non-influential when it comes to that player's decisions in combat. Try something like: +1 to any roll related to tripping, grappling, disarming, or otherwise doing a maneuver in melee combat. This isn't a big bonus, but it has the potential to be a wide bonus, which is what players really want as far as entertainment is concerned. A +1 to attack is just as exciting as a +4 to attack, because even though the +4 is a deeper mechanic, it has the same width, which leads to stereotype characters and choices. Perhaps the thief gets one or two free rerolls during the day, which could equate to a sort of rogue's luck in or out of combat. I like the idea of giving warrior-types flat bonuses, and giving the rogue-types luck-based abilities.
• You gotta have the right tools. This is along the same exact lines as the scrolls-only magic system. Thieves might be better at picking locks, but they still can't do squat without their lock-picking tools. And your warrior might not be great at lock-picking, but if he's just picked up a set of picks and jimmies, let him have a go. This can also apply to weapons. Make everything 1d6 damage, but give 2-handed weapons a +1 to attack rolls, since they are made for maximum destruction.
• Encumbrance is important. If you don't have spells or daily features to make use of, you are removing a classic form of strategy from the game. Adventurers need supplies, but they also can't be bogged down too much. There is a very important balance mini-game that will take place as the party finds treasure and such. I suggest an item slot system based on strength, and an additional option of carrying a backpack to increase that number of slots. Perhaps backpacks can't be worn with heavy armor? Yet another way of asking the players to make interesting choices about their characters. Also, this creates the distinct possibility of a party leaving treasure somewhere, only to come back and get it later, which is an adventure that writes itself.

Low Magic:

• Get rid of +1, 2, 3, 4, etc. magic. So this is more of an opinion, but I think what really sucks all the coolness out of a magic item is knowing that there is a different item out there that serves the same purpose, but with a higher bonus. If you want your magic items to be unique and rare and interesting to your characters, don't give them mechanical bonuses at all. Give them special abilities that cannot be replicated with any other mechanic or ability in the game/game-world.
• Healing once a day. I'm all for no healing potions or healing spells. But I'm also for a sort of once per day second wind feature that can be used whenever the player chooses to regain 1/2 their character's HP. The purpose of this is two fold: it makes combat more dangerous, because there is an easily quantifiable amount of HP your character will have all day, and that is it. Also, it allows the GM a pretty solid way of gauging when an encounter will be taken head-on by the players, and when it will be circumvented. Think about it, healing exists in these games so that players can continue adventuring during the same day. When you give them full HP coming into each encounter, you give them license to treat each encounter the same. I say, your PCs should be exposed to potential combat at all different levels of HP. It isn't until the players know that their primary strategy of kicking-ass and taking-names is going to fail that they will seriously consider a different one.
• Make your monsters cooler and weirder. In a world with fireballs going off every encounter, a group of goblins to fight is fine and dandy. However, in a world where magic is rare and probably less combat oriented, you need a lot more than goblins to give your adventure that epic feel. Terrain features were already mentioned in a previous response, and I second that wholeheartedly. But you also need to give your monsters a scary air of unpredictability. And for god sake take out the lame filler monsters. If the world above your dungeons is mundane, you can still have cults murdering people or bandits attacking caravans. So don't put little green people who have the same M.O. in your dungeons. 

And that's me done.