Campfire Mechanics

Darkest Dungeon has a really cool feature that I think is under-utilized in tabletop games: The Campfire Mechanic. If you've never played it, here's a quick rundown:

In Darkest Dungeon, you play as four heroes of varying class. You explore a dungeon in straight-passage sections. You encounter obstacles and opponents, both of which have varying effects on your health and sanity. You can bring items into the dungeon, and there's usually valuable goods there. You spend the money on better gear and more supplies for next time. If you lose all your sanity, your hero loses effectiveness- and if you do it again, your hero immediately dies. If you lose all your health, your hero immediately dies. Hero death is permanent and irreversible (without cheating).

On longer expeditions, you might be able to choose to rest. If you do, you are given X units of time. Each character has a couple of things they can do with these time units- characters can tend to each others' wounds, lead the group in a prayer, or perform occult rituals. You can't get some of these bonuses any other way, and a well-formed group will exit a resting state much stronger than it would have otherwise been.

On longer and more difficult expeditions, this resting phase is essential to completing the game's content. What a given character class can do at camp is an important consideration (although less so given the makeup of the game*), and I'd like to see that in a tabletop game.


*The balance of the game isn't perfect, and some characters happen to have both good campfire skills and battle abilities, and some don't have either.

Of course, part of the reason it works so well in Darkest Dungeon is that the game makes no pretense at any sort of real-life justification for its mechanics. Why don't you exit town with these buffs? Because you don't. You can't rest when you want to because the game only gives you a limited amount of firewood and there's no way to get more. In real life, of course, we can rest whenever we'd like.

And so it is in most  tabletop games. Finding time to rest is actually pretty easy- most games seem to proceed at a leisurely pace, and we all know about the "15 minute adventuring day". The only real way to avoid it is to either restrict access to time* or removing the limitation altogether.

In this situation, it's the difference between a class feature that lets you spend campfire time for a defensive bonus that lasts a couple of hours and a class feature that simply gives you and your party a static bonus all the time because you're assumed to be casting the ritual on any convenient downtime.

*Putting time pressures on the party- timed objectives, wandering monsters, cost of living, reinforcing patrols, that sort of thing.

I actually started writing a little system that included campfire mechanics using D&D terminology. In this little thing, a short rest was now 1 campfire move long, and a long rest being 2. You could also decide to go into "downtime," which would let you basically do as many campfire actions as you thought wise. This downtime ties into cost-of-living, which means that the players need to have some sort of income. This is probably adventuring loot.

Anyways, the general idea is that you can tend people's wounds if you need to, which is assumed to sort of be the D&D standard. If you're not doing that, then you might be doing something in the game world- standing watch, studying something

More on that later, probably. This post is almost as much of a brainstorming session as the original!

Mike Mearls, You Confuse Me

I really want to like the guy. He wrote Iron Heroes, which is one of my favorite reading materials just based on the fact that the guy wanted to take 3rd Edition D&D, where every character is assumed to have a base level of magic items to the point where everything they use and touch from spellbooks to longswords to arrows are swimming in magic, and then say "Nah, these guys don't need that." That's pretty bold, and it required some finangling to move 3e to a nearly no-magic world.

Needless to say, I loved it. It was really cool. The setting was interesting, the classes were both deep and broad, and the token system (while cumbersome seeming) promoted playing within your class, strategic decisions, and party interplay all in one, to varying degrees. 

But this article here confuses me. I understand the point he's making, but not the logic per se. According to the article (and the one from the next week, if you're interested, although they're only tangentially related to each other despite claims otherwise), D&D players have gotten a more sophisticated taste for gaming since the beginning of the hobby, and only increasing complexity can really satisfy a truly experienced gamer. The other argument present is that statistics that vary on choice are better than ones that are pre-defined.

And both of those arguments have merit, but they're not exactly true. What's true is to say that designers have a taste for increasing complexity, and that designers tire of pre-defined choices and dungeon tropes. Designers and players, while overlapping, are not the same. People in designer mode want for there to be lots of moving parts so they can really stretch their mental muscles and show off their creativity, and people in player mode want something to play. 

The Best Retroclones

Since my other post was extremely (excessively) negative and it didn't let me stretch my writing wings hardly at all, here's another post to tide you over, one with a little more positivity. Yes, it's time to write about the Best Retroclone.

It's a distinction with highly subjective statements that may or may not apply to you, my gentle, well-mannered, and undoubtedly attractive reader. You may howl in rage at my gross miscalculations, and scream in impotent rage at my idiocy. Bear with me, as my opinions are not without reasons.

4th Best Retroclone: Basic Fantasy

Basic Fantasy: Old-School, redesigned

I'm not a big fan of Basic Fantasy. It's an old-school game bolted onto the chassis of 3rd edition gaming, and it shows. It's better than 3rd edition, but it diverges in order to make efforts to "improve" the game and make it more "modern" while still having the spirit of old-school. The spirit is admirable, and it's a good effort, make no mistake. But there's something about it that just isn't for me. I wish I could articulate it. Maybe a greater mind than myself will be able to do so?

I suppose it might be the way that it takes the trappings of all editions and bundles them together which throws me off a bit. I may be in the minority, but there are distinct flavors of gaming between AD&D, oD&D, BECMI, and the like, and each flavor is delicious in its own right. But some things aren't meant to be mixed together?


3rd Best Retroclone: OSRIC

OSRIC, the AD&D retroclone

OSRIC almost got chosen as my favorite Retroclone. This is from a man who has played almost no AD&D, who is notorious for ignoring vast swaths of rules he doesn't like. But it was the first retroclone I discovered.

I can't remember how or why I discovered it, but I do remember why I liked it so much: It has half orcs, and assassins, and rangers. Half-Orcs are awesome; they have a mixture of sadness and raw power, a sort of sullen majesty. They're men of mixed descent, looked down on in most "civilized" society for faults which are not their own. They didn't ask to be born of the mixture of man and orc any more than other men asked to be born of two men, or of two dwarves. But still they are sneered at, mocked, and unwelcome. This sort of pathos appeals to me, and ensures that half-orcs get a spot at my gaming table where few other demihuman races do.

But as a game, OSRIC suffers from the same faults that AD&D does as a whole. It's a little clunkier, a little more obtuse. It has non-weapon proficiencies, secondary skills, sub-classes, and the like. Much like AD&D proper, it simply feels like it's been cobbled together from bits and peices.

Still, it's a good game. A very solid choice for anyone, though my heart lies elsewhere.

2nd Best Retroclone: Swords and Wizardry

Swords and Wizardry: A 0e D&D retroclone.

Swords and Wizardry is a fantastic game, and always draws me nearer and nearer to its clutch every time I read about it. It's simple, eloquent, and easy to modify, which is the whole point of old-school games.

You'll notice that the image is of the S&W Whitebox, rather than the S&W proper. That's because of the two, I prefer the Whitebox for its open-canvas feel. Both of the editions are spectacular, and are covered in evocative art, excellent writing, and clear statements. It has "optional rules" that have become standard features in other games, such as Strength increasing your damage scores, or Dexterity improving your Armor Class. It also features a single Saving Throw, which is nice and easy to remember, and still allows for plenty of customization (by, for example, allowing Dwarves a bonus against saving throws for poison). Swords and Wizardry is a beautiful, beautiful game, and the Knockspell magazine published by the same company is a great companion.

Best Retroclone: Labyrinth Lord

This writer's favorite retroclone.

If you didn't know I was going to say this, welcome to Lawful Indifferent. This is a blog about retroclones, old-school games, and wargaming.

Bad humor aside, this is my favorite retroclone. Not only does it emulate one of the most popular editions of old-school D&D, it does it well. Beautifully, I might add. It retains the race-as-class feature, multiple saving throws, and easy to digest and understand formatting. The layout is heavenly and the interior art is awesome.

I prefer the purple and black cover of the older edition, but I also supported getting the full-with-art interiors for free, so what do I know? Despite the new free to get edition not having any interior art, this version is still my favorite. It just plain plays well!

In addition, it has the extremely useful and very well received Advanced Edition Characters, or AEC that adds the Ranger, Druid, Assassin, and other classes into the game. It's like taking the best of AD&D and sticking it directly into basic D&D. Not to mention the Original Edition Characters, another "expansion" of the core rules that emulates the "Little Brown Books" of oD&D. I don't have much experience with them myself, but they seem to have gotten fairly high marks from those that have used it.

There's just something about Labyrinth Lord that really gets my creative juices flowing, and the spark in my belly fired. It makes me want to create endless campaigns and design stuff until my fingers wear grooves into my keyboard. You really need to try it if you haven't already.