The Year Ahead & Chance of Success in Unlucky 13

Happy 2022, everyone!

I took the last month off from blogging for the holidays, but now it’s time to get back to it. Two short topics this week, because blog posts about the blog itself are too meta for my tastes.

The Year Ahead

In 2022, I foresee the following posts:

• The long-promised Traveller-style character creation rules for OD&D. James helped me playtest this during the past month, and I’m happy with the results. It still needs some fleshing out, but is almost done. That will be a LONG post.
• Finishing up the the history of the Astral Web.
• A post about using alchemy instead of magic in the U13 version of the Crowfield setting.
• Hopefully some play reports!
• A new U13 damage system.
• A post of using emergent character creation in U13.
• An update to the look of the blog. Probably something more minimalistic.

Where the blog goes after that? I’m not too sure. I don’t have any plans to give up on it, but there’s no destination in mind. But that makes sense for a Vagabond.

Chance of Success in Unlucky 13

I like charts. I thought it would be nice to be able to show how bonus and penalty dice affect a character’s chance for success in U13. (Click the chart to to see in full size).

Looking at the chart, it confirms my belief that 1 bonus (or penalty) die is all that’s needed most of the time. While adding more dice moves the probabilities way I want them to, I think the system loses some simplicity if you’re rolling 5 dice and have to pick out the two highest (or lowest).

The chart also reminds me of the success distribution chart that TSR used in its Conan Role-Playing Game from the mid-1980s. That pleases me to no end, because I very much wanted Crowfield to have a Conan-like feel (vs the Tolkien-esque feel of most fantasy games). And this die mechanic is much simpler than TSR's!