Plumpton: A Compromise Setting

I’ve had symptomatic Covid this past week. It was (thankfully!) a mild case, but it did suck all the energy from me. As a result, this post is a little later than usual. Sorry about that.

As I’ve said before, I like a human-based campaign. Instead of high fantasy, I want set my games in a sword & sorcery or sword & sandal setting. What’s the difference? In the words of Wikepedia:

the consensus characterizes it [sword & sorcery] with a bias toward fast-paced, action-rich tales set in a quasi-mythical or fantastical framework. Unlike high fantasy, the stakes in sword and sorcery tend to be personal, the danger confined to the moment of telling.

In other words, the adventurer’s aren’t trying to save the word—they’re trying to save themselves! This matches nicely with the low level character play that I enjoy. Furthermore:

Many sword and sorcery tales have turned into lengthy series of adventures. Their lower stakes and less-than world-threatening dangers make this more plausible than a repetition of the perils of epic fantasy.

In other words, it doesn’t make sense to have to save the world from a new danger every week.

James Disagrees

Needless to say, James disagrees. He’s a big fan of high fantasy. He wants his elves, dwarfs, and halflings. He want his character to encounter evil orcs, goblins, kobolds, etc.

Amongst other things, I think he likes the moral clarity of knowing that his character can kill a band of goblins and not feel guilty about it.

My Compromise: Plumton

Humans come from the great continent. It doesn’t need too much backstory, because it’s gone. Maybe it sank. Or maybe huge volcanic eruptions made it unlivable. Or maybe winter came, and covered it all in ice making it uninhabitable. Maybe it was all of the above.

In any case the humans built a flotilla. It wasn’t an organized flotilla under the direction of a great leader, but the desperate grab of whatever would float but disorganized bands of survivors. Think of every zombie apocalypse show you’ve seen.

The ships set out in every direction. We have no idea what happened to most of them, but many landed on the eastern shores of a new continent. One such group set up the settlement of Plumton, named after some wild¹ plum trees that were found growing near the landing spot.

Humans were the only intelligent race living on the great continent. They were completely unaware that any others existed. But in this new world, they find the classic races of high fantasy. They first encounter the elves.

The thing is, the elves don’t want the humans there. The elves (correctly) see the humans as parasitic invaders that will drain the land of resources that the elves desperately need. The elves are familiar with this, as they’ve been fighting off the invasion of goblins from the west.

Politics in this world are volatile. War and alliance shifts with the wind. Humans might be allied with the elves against the goblins this month, but next month orcs and men might be raiding an elven grove.

Epilog

That’s it. Just a simple idea. It gives James the non-humans he wants in the world, but it gives me the human-centric stories I want to tell. The reflection of real history is intentional. The humans are the British (who were masters of pitting different local groups against each other until only the British could dominate). “Plumton” is from the origins of the word “Plymouth.” Making the human’s plight a desperate fight for survival rather than seeking economic gain is my attempt to alleviate the moral issues of colonialism.

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1. Technically this is impossible, as plums are a human cultivation, but this is fantasy.↩

Crowfield Magic System Changes

A couple of years agao I posting about Crowfield’s magic system. I’ve made a couple of changes:

Spell Failure

In the original post I said that if the player fails the spell check then “The spell does not take effect, and the character cannot cast any more spells until they get a full night of rest.”

The new version is “The spell does not take effect, and the caster takes 1d6 damage.”

Wait! You mean I can die from casting a spell?

No. Not directly, at least. A failed spell check will never bring you below 1 hit point. If you take more damage than that, the excess is ignored and you fall unconscious. If you happened to be standing on a narrow ledge over a pool of molten lava when you fall unconscious you’ll probably die, but that’s the lava killing you.

How do I regain consciousness?

Starting the round after your spell failure, you can attempt a Constitution save in order to regain consciousness. If you don’t make it that round, you can try again each round thereafter. You can act normally the round after you make the saving throw.

Why did you make this change?

Three reasons: (1) It adds more drama. (2) It makes spell casting a more tactical choice. (3) It de-nerfs higher level spell casters where a single failure made them useless for the rest of the day.

Learn New Spells

In addition to the in-game costs listed in that post, each spell costs 1 XP per spell level.

Epilogue

That’s it for this week. What do you think of the changes? I tried to make it not too deadly!

Bonus Post: Cipher Solved

Last Tuesday I posted a cipher. I had realized that it was vulnerable to letter frequency analysis, but there were a couple of “tricks” in there that I was hoping would slow down anyone trying to solve it.

It didn’t slow Buzz down. Late Saturday night I got a message from him:

…I found chapter 31 and 32 of Treasure Island!

I did this by working with pairs of letters, finding the highest frequencies, mapping those pairs into an a-z grid. The number that I mapped stayed within certain rows and columns and I saw enough of a pattern. Without filling in the rest I ran the encoded text against the grid I had, using underscores for the rest. That resulted in:
_ji_m__s_aid_s_ilv_erw_he__nw_e__wer__ea_l__o_nei_f_is_a__v__e__d…

With the underscores removed and the proper spaces added, that reads:

jim said silver when we were alone if i saved…

How It Works

• Case doesn’t matter. That was just thrown in to add “noise.”
• Each letter in the original text is represented by two letters in the cipher.  The first letter of the letter pair indicates what to do with the second letter:
• If the pair begins with A through F (inclusive) that letter pair is ignored.
• If the pair begins with G through M the second letter is shifted backwards by two letters if the first letter is G, four letters if the first letter is H, six letters for I, etc. Examples:
  • GE = C
  • GF = D
  • HE = A
  • HF = B
• If the pair begins with N through T the second letter is shifted forward by two letters if the first letter is N, four letters if the first letter is O, six letters for P,etc. Examples:
  • NT = V
  • OT = X
• If the pair begins with U through Z that letter pair is ignored.

Buzz made this chart, but he missed the T’s.

What’s Next?

I might make another cipher. Buzz doesn’t have time to crack it, but I enjoy making them.

Oh, and I owe Buzz a beer or something.

Attribute Generation for Lucky 7

As you know, I like to use modifiers as attribute scores. You also know that I’m trying to simplify Unlucky 13 to become Lucky 7. I ran into a problem.

The Problem

Crowfield’s attribute modifiers were based on those of D&D in the mid-1980’s. As a refresher:

Attribute Score	Modifier
18	+3
16–17	+2
13–15	+1
9–12	±0
6–8	-1
4–5	-2
3	-3

When you roll a d20, a +3 modifier shifts the chance of success by 15%.

In U13, a +3 gives a 20.8% advantage—the equivalent of +4 on a d20. That was a little bit of a drift, but I was willing to live with it.

L7 uses 1d12. Because of that a +3 is a 25% shift—exactly the same as a +5 for a d20 roll. That’s too much drift for my taste. It’s time to reign it in.

The Fix

On a 1d12, a +2 is a 16.6% shift—close to a d20’s +3 (a 15% shift). So our +3 to -3 range now becomes +2 to -2.

Generating Scores from +2 to -2

You could simply do it the same way I was doing the U13 attribute rolls, but using 2 dice instead of 3, though I’m not sure how the curve would look. Instead I’m proposing a different approach, aimed at players like James because James is a munchkin.

In this context, that term comes from a hilarious 1985 USENET post about different player types. In it we have these gems:

Favorite Melee Weapon:
Real Men use Broadswords/Bastard Swords/Pole Axes
Real Role-Players use Rapiers and Main-Gauches
Loonies use Stage Knives
Munchkins use whatever gives the most plusses

Favorite Missile Weapon:
Real Men shoot Long Bows/Composite Bows
Real Role-Players shoot Crossbows
Loonies shoot Twinkie Bazookas
Munchkins shoot whatever gives the most plusses

Favorite Alignment:
Real Men are Lawful Good
Real Role-Players don’t use alignment
Loonies are Amoral Silly
Munchkins are whatever gives the most plusses

Favorite God:
Real Men worship Humakt/Orlanth
Real Role-Players worship Issaries/Lhankor Mhy
Loonies worship Hare Krishna
Munchkins worship whoever gives the most plusses

Okay—I’m exaggerating just to tease James a little. He is not really a munchkin. He likes to engage NPCs in dialog. He likes to have a backstory for his character. He likes to find the adventure’s plot. But he does have munchkin tendencies when creating a character. Specifically he hates having a low attribute score. Dice-generated scores annoy him unless the mechanic is skewed to prevent low scores. His favorite is 2d6+6—this gives an average score of 13 for a +1 bonus per attribute! Very munchkiny.

So to make him happy, but not make me cry, I’ve decided that PC’s will have an “overall” +1 bonus.

Method #1: Quick

This method is the fastest of the bunch, but has the least player input. It also has the least character diversity. Using this method you will likely end up with two good (+1) attributes and one bad (-1) one. There’s a slightly less chance of getting either one very good (+2) score and one bad one. There’s a very small (2.8%) chance that you’ll get one good score and no bad ones.

Because it’s so quick, it’s particularly good for making characters when a new player shows up unexpectedly, or to replace a PC that was killed or captured.

This method uses this attribute table:

Roll	Attribute
1	Strength
2	Intelligence
3	Wisdom
4	Constitution
5	Dexterity
6	Charisma

Step 1: All attributes start at 0.

Step 2: Roll 1d6 and refer to the table above. Add 1 to the corresponding attribute.

Step 3: Same as step 2. Note: You could just combine this with the previous step by rolling two dice at that step instead of one.

Step 4: Roll 1d6 and refer to the table above. Subtract 1 from the corresponding attribute.

That’s it!

Method 2: Balanced Rolls

This method has more player input than the previous one, but it slower. It’s good for new characters that are generated away from the table if you want them to have some randomness.

To avoid repeating myself, this method uses a 2d6 attribute roll:

1. Roll 2d6.
2. A die of “1” has an effective value of “-1”
3. A die of “6” has an effective value of “+1”
4. All other rolls have an effective value of “0”
5. Sum the dice’s effective values for a value between -2 and +2

Step 1: Make a 2d6 attribute roll.

Step 2: Select which attribute to assign that roll to. Note: Once an attribute has a score assigned, it is “locked” and can not be changed until step 6.

Step 3: Select another attribute and assign it the “inverse result.” The inverse result of -1 is +1, the inverse result of +2 is -2, etc. The inverse of 0 is 0. Alternate rule: If you roll +2 your GM might allow you to assign -1 to two attributes instead of -2 to one attribute. The same applies to a roll of -2, or course.

Step 4: If four or fewer attributes have been assigned, go to step 1.

Step 5: If exactly five attributes have been assigned, assign a 0 to the final attribute. Note: This will only occur if you used the alternate rule in Step 3.

Step 6: Once all 6 attributes have been assigned, select one attribute and add one to it’s value. Note: You can not raise an attribute above +2.

Method 3: Point Buy

This method has the most player agency. Depending on the player involved it might be super quick, or it might take an eternity of agonizing decision making. Some players using this have the habit of making the same character every time.

Step 1: For each of the six attributes, assign any value between -2 and +2. The sum of all six attributes can not exceed +1.

Step 2: There is no step 2!

Epilogue

That’s it for this week.

Which method do you like the best? I think they all have their uses, depending what you’re trying to achieve.

Next week will probably be a modification to Crowfield’s spell casting rules.