Microlite and the OSR

I've spent as much time as I can muster to go through the latest Microlite stuff. By latest, I don't mean to imply that most of it is actually recent; much of it is over a decade old already. But latest in the sense that it postdates the original Microlite and the Purest Essence Microlite. "Greywulf", or Robin Stacey, made the first Microlite game as a super rules-lite, stripped down take on the 3.5 SRD. Stacey eventually sold or gave or something the rights, such as they were, to Randall S. Stukey, who runs the Microlite site and maintains the system, such as it is, and its archive.

Of course, a lot of other people have made m20 games over time, including myself, but Randall himself seems to be the main guy, and he's made tons of variants. Of course, also, a lot of his variants overlap with only a few minor differences between them; many of them have literally the same text, as much as possible. Stukey is especially interested in the use of m20 to emulate old school games, and he's the author of the Microlite74 family, the closely related Microlite75, and Microlite78 and Microlite81. 74 is an OD&D emulator of sorts, with some of his own house rules from when those games were current, I suppose, whereas 75 is also OD&D, but more faithful to the OD&D than to the 3.5 SRD base from which the game varied in the first place. 78 adds in a bunch of AD&D material, and 81 is more closely based on B/X. He also created a Microlite2020, which updates the game to a more 5e SRD-like base, but then there's also a Microlite2020 Old School version. He also has a few other variants; a sword & sorcery one (with some dubious commentary on the genre, but it's still a fascinating study), a couple that are for a specific setting or two that he's used, and even one that uses 3d6 instead of a d20. There's another 5e SRD based Microlite20 "Fifth Adamantium Edition" that someone else made that has a 5e-like layout.

It's been fun poking around in these games and seeing how they're different from each other, although honestly they aren't all that different. Some of the house rules that Stukey seems to like a lot are kind of controversial in an OSR environment, no doubt, especially his implementation of what are essentially 3e era Wound/Vitality points, with a different name. He's got a Sanity system, very rules lite, although I think I like mine just a little bit better. He also uses the OSR fetish of removing even the regular skills, although he does have a (admittedly fairly clever) check that replaces it. If the whole point of skill checks is that they replace long-form discussion with a roll, then just about any other system; ability check, etc. has the same problem, and there's no reason not to have skills. He also seems to normally add back one of the ability scores; rather than Microlite's normal three, Strength, Dexterity and Mind, he has Strength, Dexterity, Mind and Charisma. Or maybe he renamed Mind back to Intelligence—can't remember offhand. Honestly, although I did that by inertia when I first started messing around with m20, I don't really see the point of cutting the ability scores from six to three. It doesn't really make the game any more or less clunky to have the six ability scores that everyone is pretty much already used to seeing. I also increased the skills to six, and although I think that's a good change, one of the reasons I did it was so that with six abilities and six skills, the character sheet just looked better. Dark Fantasy X, with the same six abilities as D&D, and an increase from 4-5 (depending on the version of m20 that you used) to 6 skills is still fabulously rules lite; it doesn't actually add any complexity to speak of to have those back in. In fact, because they are all so familiar, it may be faster and easier to have more but familiar abilities rather than fewer, but you have to convert in your mind what the D&D abilities are in m20 terms. MIND as a conglomeration of INT, WIS and CHA and STR having to do double duty for both STR and CON from D&D was actually more difficult for me than just having them all. And my slightly expanded skill list of Athletics, Bushcraft, Communication, Knowledge, Stealth and Tinker seems like the right amount and the right list. They're all sufficiently broad to get lots of use, and sufficiently different from each other to not really have any overlap.

Of course, with these changes to my game, I don't really consider it an m20 game anymore either. It's at least as similar to some other hybrid OSR/modern game like ShadowDark or Knave 2e as it is to the original m20 game. But it's funny how insignificant, really, the difference really is between them. 

Anyway, I've made a few changes to my Dark Fantasy X game file; mostly by adding a more detailed weapon and armor list as an alternate rule. I may trawl through the spell and monster lists to see if there's anything else that I want to add, but probably not. I think a lot of the monsters that I don't already have, or at least have close analogs to, are too D&Dish to really fit well into the Dark Fantasy X setting. 

And when I finally get around to doing Elemental Fantasy X, I may use a slightly more D&D-like magic system anyway. We'll see. But probably not the more D&Dish monster list. I quite like the monster list as it is. Because Elemental Fantasy X is a hybrid of sorts between my Eberron Remixed and Heroes of Might & Magic III, I might find that there are some monsters I want to add from the latter in particular, or possibly modify from my existing list to more closely resemble their HOMM3 variants.

Why do I use X in all of of my recent homebrews anyway? Actually, I created an alternate (which later became my main) YouTube account a couple of years ago, originally to post SWTOR playthrough videos on. I wanted something that sounded like old space opera, but had a tongue in cheek pop culture reference or something like that, and for whatever reason, I imagined a spaceman who was kind of like the mysterious and cool Racer X from the old Speed Racer re-runs that I used to watch when I was a kid in the mid to late 70s. Spacer X became that name. Because I also had a kind of mysterious conspiracy theory X-files like vibe to the settings I was working on at the time it double fit. I decided to call my game Space Opera X, my username was Spacer X, my fantasy game Dark Fantasy X, and later, my not-dark fantasy Elemental Fantasy X, because by that time having an X at the end was kind of the brand.

... I guess that story isn't really all that interesting now that I've typed it out. Oh, well. And sadly, I've occasionally had people assume that I'm an Elon Musk fan because of Spacer X, which isn't really true at all. Sigh.

Finally, I've got a few more updates to a few more Hero Forge models, so here they are. 

Germund de Bosque, an infamous bounty hunter

Bahram Khanwar, an iconic "anti-PC" surtur. Of course, I named him back when they were still called the djinn and had a more middle eastern background rather than an Icelandic one. I might want to consider renaming him.

I have a folder in my Hero Forge characters called "Prospects" where I have either cool minis that I got out of the library, or ones that I just made without having a specific idea in mind for them. This guy was a library model, but I modified him somewhat. The original also predates the face customizer, so I had to implement that if I wanted to touch anything on the face at all.

Originally Drylanders weren't specifically Cossack and Slavic like, but now that they are, some "historical" models, like this Kievan Rus' guy, are good analogs for Drylanders.

Heroism Points

Dark Fantasy X v 2.1.3

That's the latest version of my game rules, although I should point out that most of the actual rules have been more or less unchanged for... I dunno,  Since May of 2013, it looks like. Oh, sure, sure... there's been plenty of changes since then. But not as many as you'd think, and one thing that hasn't changed much at all is the Heroism Points. Which I've been using metal fantasy (actually pirate) coins that I ordered from Amazon to represent. Replacing the cheaper plastic coins that I bought at the Halloween store years before that.

It's always fun to see what I thought was a cool idea that I've used get picked up, even if someone else stumbled upon it independently. Not that I came up with the idea; My own use of Heroism points is an expansion on the Action Points idea from Eberron, Monte Cooks old Arcana Unearthed/Diamond Throne stuff, and then a few changes all my own (like the session-specific nature of the resource, which is why you hand out coins instead of marking them on your character sheet.)

Bob World Builder has come up with almost the exact same system, and then he added even more to it; the idea of combining coins across the party to get a Big Coin is actually a pretty cool idea.

I also, because I use my Heroism points as a counter to the "grimdark" nature of my game and lacking of clerical healing, have other uses for Heroism points too; I actually suspect that if I play more, I'd clearly see players saving at least one to convert death into a near death, or use them for healing surges. Because I already allow stunts to give you advantage, there's a little less need of them there.

Game mechanics update

As alluded to as an offhand epilogue to my last post, but I'm considering some updates to the Dark Fantasy X ruleset. Although these updates won't actually change the way the game plays too much, they'd change it from a structural standpoint into a game that technically isn't m20 anymore. Here's what I'm considering:

• Instead of the three m20 attributes of Strength, Dexterity and Mind, I'd expand the list to the full "D&D" list of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma (which I think is the 3e order, not the original order. But frankly, I don't care.) This will make the game a bit more compatible with other "D&D-like" products, and just make it more familiar. Ultimately, checks will still be the same; you'll just have a few more attributes to choose from when coming up with what kind of check to make. To be honest with you, I'm not quite sure why m20 wanted to eliminate half of the attributes anyway. It's not like the number of attributes going from six to three affects the complexity of the game at the table, or anything like that. Skills and checks would remain unchanged. I think the familiarity of the six traditional attributes is worth more than the elegance of having three. Plus, although I can sort of see justifying the folding in of Con into Str, I think all three of the mental/psychological/presence, etc. attributes being folded down to one makes it too broad to be very definitive.
• I'm strongly considering going classless, and creating a small list of class features that can be taken a la carte. Although the term comes with some baggage, I'll probably call them feats, and you'd take them at various points as you level up (but not every level). The existing class features will probably have to be rejiggered a bit to make this work without being really wonky. Spells may be considered part of this too, or they may be part of equipment; i.e., you find a spell you can learn it. There would be a limited number of feat slots; at most one per level. Considering that classes are meant to be very customizable, this isn't as radical a change as it seems.
• I think my spells focused a little too much on being "flavorful" rather than easy to use at the table. I'm strongly considering adopting spells from Knave or some-such and just grafting them in in place of what I have currently. In fact, although I have the first edition of that game, I just backed the Kickstarter for the second edition, which should ship in June. These are drier spells, but that's OK—I've long been suspecting that my Lovecraftian renaming of the spells was more cumbersome and was a bug, not a feature. 
• Speaking of both spells and Knave, I'm thinking of adopting an item slot limit, and having spells be in the item slots, as mentioned above. I'm not normally a fan of item slots, and I didn't like how it was initially described to me in Knave, but I think that if I pull "class features" out of items and treat them as a different kind of character feature, that it'll actually work quite well.
• The monster list will be revised somewhat too; I'm going to replace HD with Levels, for instance, otherwise simplify checks for monsters a bit. 

Anyway, these are things that I'm thinking about and haven't completely decided on. It would be kind of ironic if I came around to—basically playing an OSR game of D&D after all, in many ways, without the stuff that I never liked about D&D, with custom races, and... well, the OSR isn't the same as the actual old games. The better OSR games took elements from how old games worked, and fixed rules that were confusing or dumb, like THAC0, for instance, or gave them a twist. It wasn't necessarily a modern twist, but it was a twist that benefited from decades of game experience, at least. If Dark Fantasy X ends up becoming a hybrid of what it is now with a few elements, including spells, grafted on from Knave or some other OSR game, that would be interesting, but OK.

Frankly, my disconnect with the OSR is less about the rules—especially as OSR games that aren't explicitly clones of old D&D have proliferated more recently—and more about what you're expected to actually do and how the game is to be run. I've talked about it before, but it's probably worth redoing and updating my "why not the OSR" manifesto, where I castigate the concept of dungeons and pixel-bitching exploration and offer an alternative just-so story to the Hickman Revolution than the just-so story that the OSR offers. Not to mention how poorly—despite stated intentions and the claims of its disciples—D&D resembles the very literature that it claims to emulate and mimic. But I'll save all that for another day.

And just so this isn't a wall of text, here's a new Hero Forge character for the Dark Fantasy X setting that I don't think I've posted before, as well as a couple of ratlings that I got from someone else who shared the link to his Hero Forge models.

Dark Fantasy X 1.3.1

A few days ago, I showed my "professionally" printed version of the rules, and talked about my disappointment in how it turned out. I decided that I want to revise the document from landscape to portrait and print it out (on a printer, not sent to some crappy Chinese printing service) and just put it in a report cover with a sliding bar like you can buy for a couple of bucks at Wal-mart or Staples or whatever. While I was at it, I might as well revise a few things in the rules anyway. I did this over the first couple of days of the holiday, but I also made some small revisions since doing so, bumping me from version 1.2, which was printed, to 1.3.1. However, I'm not going to upload or print the documents just yet, because I put a 2023 copyright on them. Plus, just in case I decide to make another minor update before going official. But let's talk briefly about what I did that was new or changed.

First, I changed the Hardcore Mode to Nightmare Mode. This is a minor cosmetic change, but since Hardcore Mode is the name of an actual product that modifies 5e, I thought a more generic Nightmare Mode, which sounds like the highest difficulty setting on any number of video games, would work better.

I'm actually not quite sure why I included this option at all. No doubt, I got caught up in listening to podcasts from OSR-adjacent people, like Professor Dungeon Master, or some of the others of his ilk, and thought it would be fun to include an option for the truly hardcore version of the rules that feels more like B/X or even OD&D. On the other hand, it's not like I actually have any interest at all in playing with that option. What can I say? I guess even I'm not immune to getting swept up in zeitgeists, even when it's not really my jam. That said, now that the options exist, I don't see any reason in removing them, even if I'll never use them. 

Secondly, I included a new bunch of little sections of alternate rules. These are neither more nor less difficult; they're just different, and in some cases, I might even almost prefer them to my original rules, so they have much more currency with me as the designer and owner of the game—I could totally see using these rules. Let's go through them a little, shall we?

• For people who are anxious about rolling stats, I included a default array. Given that there's only three stats in m20 games, I went with -1, +1 and +3. Not a bad option, actually. I don't know what the odds are of rolling that or better, but I'd propose that the default array is probably on the high side of average.

• The class customization was officially turned into a alternative rule rather than a default one.

• Swashbuckling armor class alternative was introduced; for this rule, your starting gold is reduced, and you don't really have armor or shields on the equipment list. Rather, you apply your To Hit Melee score as a bonus to 10 to calculate your armor class. This is arguably better than the armor version, in terms of what the AC score is, and how it progresses, but game balance isn't going to be thrown off because of it, because the game isn't balanced to a razor's edge anyway; it's pretty forgiving, as any game based on rulings instead of tight rules is inevitably going to be.

• Three different new alternate initiative systems are spelled out. The default initiative is similar to initiative in OD&D and B/X; each side rolls a d6 for it each round. I've also introduced the concept of having no initiative at all, of the 3e and 5e style initiative, and simply doing initiative by DEX score. To be honest, I'm kind of indifferent to all but the 3e and 5e style initiative. Even though I've used that extensively over the last two decades, I think it's too complicated and takes too long, and I no longer prefer it to simpler alternatives. But in situations where I have a really small group of only 1-3 players, it would probably still work fine.

• An entirely new spellcasting resolution system is described, in which you make a spellcasting check (Magic To Hit roll vs a DC of 10 + (2 x spell level)). In this alternative system, there's no hit point damage representing the spell tiring you out or draining your energy; you can cast them much more often and frequently. There's also no sanity check unless the spell fails (in the default system, the sanity check is separate from the spellcasting phase, and even successfully cast spells could have a sanity cost to the spellcaster.) However, critical failures (natural 1) on this check are significantly more dramatic, including a sanity check at disadvantage, and the spell will either 1) backfire on the caster, and his party if it's an area effect, 2) bring extradimensional monsters in to attack the spellcaster and anyone who attempts to defend him, or 3) a totally different spell will go off (maybe even one the spellcaster doesn't know) and may well effect a different target. It's up to the GM to make sure that this is just as inconvenient an option as the first two. In other words, spellcasting becomes less costly when it works fine, but it also becomes like a game of Russian Roulette every time a spell is cast, and the spellcaster himself (or his party) will self-regulate the use of magic to real emergencies, because of the inherent risk. A natural 1 may not seem like that bad of a risk, but it will happen, on average, once every twenty spells cast. That's quite a bit, and because the results are so much worse than in the default rules, spellcasters are highly incentivized to be cautious in the use of their magic.

• The extended minion concept discussed a few posts ago was edited and introduced as a regular alternative rule in the Monsters and Other Foes section. Now, any combat can be simplified by changing hit points to hits by dividing hit points by 10, rounding, and manually adjusting as needed one or two in either direction. All critical hits and any damage rolls that are in in the top two digits of the damage range count as double hits. This is explicitly spelled out as a shortcut to make combats easier and faster to run, however, not as a full-time replacement system. I also believe, although I didn't really say this, that when using this shortcut, it's a good idea to just do it as the GM as a shortcut and not necessarily tell your PCs when you're using it or when you're not. They don't need to see the sausage being made, and in theory, it only makes it easier on the GM without actually having any noticeable impact on the actual combat.

Thirdly, I made a few minor updates to a number of monster entries. I also added some brief text highlighting how difficult and scary many of the monsters would be even to relatively high level PCs, and suggested that they be used more as module-capping set pieces rather than run of the mill foes, for the most part. By this I mean the actual monsters in the list, of course. An entry like HUMAN, BANDIT wouldn't count as a monster for purposes of this discussion. In fact, I specifically recommended using a lot more human (and demihuman) and wild animal foes for most combats. 

I also generated a bunch of AI artwork files to use as cover art. Most of them weren't really good enough to qualify, but I got about half a dozen that are decent and barring me spending real money to commission some real art, they'll do the trick. 

This is the one I used, but the next one is a close second.

Stefan Clevenger

I'm going to take just a moment to cross-post the so-far only iconic character sheet that I've made. When I made this character, I thought his hp total was a bit low, so I actually updated the Dark Fantasy X from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 and updated a few minor things, including how to do post level 1 hit points. So, the original post is a few hp lower than this version, but yeah. I might yet update 1.1.2 to 1.2 if I decide I want to reevaluate the hp of the monsters.

Borrowing from new editions

I say frequently that I'm not old school, but I am old fashioned. By this I mean that while I don't really like the rules of old D&D, most of the aspects of how the game as played that I hold were formed during the Holmes BD&D, Moldvay/Cook B/X or earliest AD&D eras of the game, when I played as a young chap. But that's a little bit vague and maybe ephemeral. While many aspects of my game would be familiar to the OSR (even if the rules are quite different in many ways) they'd probably be extremely confused by my lack of dungeons and focus on mysteries, intrigue, skulduggery and horror. In many ways, my game would feel more like a Call of Cthulhu game in a fantasy setting, or maybe a spin-off of some kind of the old WFRP game moreso than a D&D game at all. (I do, however, claim those as old school. WFRP was written specifically for a British market in the 80s where Call of Cthulhu was more influential in many ways than D&D was.) To quote from an earlier post of my own:

I'd been familiar with the expression, said by a guy online years ago, but which I thought was very clever, that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was the game where you started off thinking that you were playing Dungeons & Dragons, but before very long, you discovered that you were actually playing Call of Cthulhu. 

As some of the discussion in the Enemy in Shadows Companion says, this is actually more literally true than I ever imagined. When Bryan Ansell, the original owner of Games Workshop when it was still a scrappy independent little company, tasked some of his folks to write WFRP, his mandate was to write a Cthulhu adventure for Warhammer. Davis himself notes that at the time (1986 or so) the state of British roleplaying in particular had moved out of the dungeon; Call of Cthulhu was very popular in the British market, and had done a ton for encouraging investigation and NPC interaction. The Thieves' World product was also very successful at the time. It's little surprising then that on reading the first volume (before I read that in the commentary for the companion) that I thought that the adventure felt very little like a D&D adventure and quite a bit like a Cthulhu campaign, although set in a High Middle Ages setting rather than a 1920s or modern setting, and with a lot of tools to encourage people who weren't used to this paradigm to explore almost sandboxy elements too. The closest thing to a dungeon is some sewer exploration, but you just go in looking for clues, not to "clear them" of monsters, or find treasure or secret doors, or traps, or whatever. 

That said, there are plenty of good ideas in more modern versions of D&D, and I've specifically implemented many of them. The rules of Dark Fantasy X are based on m20, which is a somewhat radical restructuring and stripping down of the d20 (3e) rules. I've included a beefed up Heroism Points, which works better than Action Points, but are basically the same idea, and they can also be used as Healing Surges, a 4e mechanic. This is in part because I've eschewed the typical D&D healer/cleric "archetype" as non-archetypal anyway, and have instead decided on trying to make the recovery system feel like an action movie.

While I haven't specifically called out minions as an option in the text of Dark Fantasy X or any of the X-family games (or the games that led up to them, for that matter) I definitely consider the 4e minion concept as fair game to be used. There's really nothing to it; they're anything that you would have the PCs fight normally, but they go down with one hit; i.e., they only have one functional hit point. Because of this, you can throw a great deal more of them at the characters than you otherwise might, and it creates a very different dynamic. But it's such a simple concept that it hardly needs to be repeated.

While I understand (sometimes) the appeal of 5e, at least relative to 4e, I have had very little interest in that edition, in part due to the often ugly art direction; although that was hardly new to this edition, the aggressive diversity quotas is obnoxious beyond reason in 5e compared even to 3e or 4e. Mostly, though, in the words of Mr. Darcy (which are ironically quoted in the noble background as a personality trait), my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever, and my good opinion of WotC was teetering before the end of the 3e era, and was lost shortly thereafter. I decided that I don't need D&D at all anymore, and I have little interest in playing it when I have Dark Fantasy X that I could be playing instead, which meets my personal quirks and tastes much better. I seriously doubt that WotC could possibly lure me back unless they did something so dramatic that they turned off the majority of their current audiance to do so. That said, I know people who have many of the books, and I've (somewhat in spite of myself) flipped through and even read some of them, and I've specifically looked up rules that I decided I might like to adapt.

Notably, the X-family of games has adapted advantage/disadvantage as a core rule to "swashbuckle" up any action scenes and encourage players and GMs alike to use the task resolution system to do things more interesting than "I hit it with my sword." By describing in natural language something that your character would like to do to gain some kind of tactical advantage or just to do something cool and entertaining, you can make a check to see if you gain advantage. What an elegant and quite honestly brilliant rule.

I have not read the players handbook all the way through, but on a whim, I decided to borrow a copy again and have a look at the backgrounds. I also looked at the background in the Curse of Strahd as well as the backgrounds in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Normally I'm not a fan of very much character backstory, in part because it can inadvertently enable and encourage My Precious Character Syndrome™, which I quite cordially dislike. However, these are quick and dirty points that take little effort to understand and implement, and hardly make for overly twee emotional attachment to your character. That said, there's an art to implementing them in a game for which they weren't really designed.

(It's hardly a unique idea, of course. I mean, Traveller was having you role up character backgrounds as part of character generation way back in ye olden days, and I toyed with some space opera backgrounds for Ad Astra, that became Space Opera X, several years ago. I prefer them to not include mechanical perks, however, and be focused on roleplaying opportunities. If the player can't immediately use them to bring the character to life right out of the gate, then they aren't very useful, and a +something to some skill check or whatever isn't very useful to roleplaying.)

One of my favorites of these systems was included with the OSR space opera game White Star, which gave many if not most characters a specific ally and a nemesis, both of which are gold for GMs and should be tons of fun for players too. I might whip up an ally and nemesis table just for the heck of it that applies to the Dark Fantasy X setting specifically.

Backgrounds, as described in the PHB5e, have a number of elements. Not all of them are relevant if you want to port backgrounds into Dark Fantasy X, which I would not only approve of, but actively encourage.

• Proficiencies. This is a mechanic specific to 5e, and is not relevant to Dark Fantasy X, except as a suggestion on how you might want to attempt to build your character.
• Languages. This is unique to D&D. Dark Fantasy X actually doesn't have any languages built in, or rather, they are inherent to the setting, but not spelled out in the rules. Hmm... Maybe I should add a small section for them. But if I don't, that's OK. Regardless, my languages will be unique to the setting, and will have little bearing on whatever D&D languages are in use in the backgrounds as written.
• Equipment. You don't get equipment for free in Dark Fantasy X, but most of the equipment I've seen in the backgrounds that I've read is of nominal value and almost any starting character could buy everything listed therein with his spare change. You may want to, to roleplay out your background.
• Favorite xyz. Not every background has one of these, but this would be like the Charlatan's favorite scheme, or the Criminal's criminal specialty. I wouldn't roll on the table; I'd handpick one, and occasionally more than one, as a roleplaying hook.
• Feature. This is a roleplaying element rather than a mechanical one, and while they're a little D&D specific, they can be tailored to Dark Fantasy X with very little trouble, unless they're for a very specific D&D element, like heathen religious cults and whatnot.
• Personality trait. I wouldn't roll on this table. I'd pick from it, and I'd maybe pick even two or three of them.
• Ideal. I'm not a huge fan of what they've included here, but it's harmless enough. Look them over and decide if they actually offer you anything helpful. If so, feel free to use one, if not, ignore this category.
• Bond. These are pretty good, but you may have to read the list and extrapolate one from there to get exactly what you want. To be fair, the rules for backgrounds already tell you to do that. It's just a roleplaying hook. Go for it.
• Flaw. I love a good flaw or two in a character, to give the player a simple hook to sink his roleplaying teeth into right away, and as a springboard for potential future adventure. Feel free to pick as many as you like.

Dark Fantasy X Rules Document

Dark Heritage 2 update needed

I'm on version 2.7, but I looked at my copy and actually read through much of it just recently. I found a number of errors, some of them minor, but others of them a bit more substantial. The source of this is mostly changes to the rules themselves that I've made over time, but forgot to go change everything that was impacted by them; for example the MND damage for reading blasphemous tomes and learning spells was based on a 3-18 MND score instead of the -3 to 4 MND score. In other words, when I got rid of hte extraneous 3d6 step and turned the modifiers into the score, I didn't make all of the cascading changes that I had needed to. I found a number of other minor errors, typos, and a few formatting issues, so I'll be updating the document to 2.8 once I've finished.

I know this is a moot point, since this document is really only here for my own sake, and I doubt anyone else reads it. But if for some reason you do use it, then hold off and wait for the updated, patched version in the next day or so.

EDIT: Done. Go check out the new document in the Games tab to your hearts' content now.

Fallen Sons systems and baselines

In light of my dredging up the wreck of the abortive FALLEN SONS project and trying to make it seaworthy, I've got some very early baseline thoughts to focus on. The first major question I need to address is which of two high level models that I want to use. For lack of a better term, I'm calling them the Thundarr model and the Warhammer model. These aren't meant to be exact, more like elevator pitch type comparisons.

The Thundarr model is a post apocalyptic world of super science and magic. If you're not familiar with the early 80s post-apoc sword & sorcery cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian, you should be. Because it was the early 80s, the animation is somewhat cheap, the stories are somewhat cheesy, and the violence is toned down to an almost insulting level. But once you can get past the idea that that was an element of 80s cartoons that you simply aren't going to be able to get away from and can look past it, then Thundarr the Barbarian has a lot to offer. In old school sword & sorcery style, the villains are the sorcerers, and by sorcerers, I usually mean a weird combination of transhuman super science and bizarre magic. Sorcerers can be more or less stereotypical dark lord types, or they can be brains in a jar with robotic arms that shoot lasers. The setting is clearly post apocalyptic America, because it makes a point of always showing broken and derelict recognizable places, like Ellis Island, Las Vegas, NASA headquarters and more. There is no functioning society; small tribal villages of poor Americans who are downtrodden and oppressed by either the armies of the sorcerers, or other monstrous incursions that have taken over in the wake of the apocalypse are the damsels in distress. Thundarr himself is a kind of stock pseudo-Conan barbarian with a lightsaber, and his sidekicks are a vaguely lion-like Chewbacca analog, and a sassy sorceress who turned her back on her evil "father" and followed Thundarr because he's a good dude and pretty sexy, and she'd rather be on his side than that of evil. She's kind of like a less demanding and entitled Princess Aura, who is deliberately made to be much more likable and sympathetic.

I like the Thundarr model because it's somewhat fresh and different (despite it's age and vintage generally) and few properties have been like it over the years. That said, fresh and different is often indistinguishable from weird and different, i.e., people won't like it, including once the novelty wears off, even me. Of course, when I say the Thundarr model, I don't mean that too literally, but rather that I'm positing a post apocalyptic grimdark(ish) setting that feels like the apocalypse happened in a world much like ours. People will often look weird and Mad Max-like, and the remnants of higher technology will play a key role in the setting here and there.

On the other hand, I don't like the Thundarr model because I also fear that in having to focus on the post apocalyptic stuff, that I may end up diluting to some extent the high concept of a world over-run by daemons. It's kind of its own high concept that's similar—at least in some respects—but different in others. Even as the developer (me) I'll get often distracted by things that are not related in the least to the high concept of FALLEN SONS as its initially defined. Of course, as initially defined, if you want to be technical, includes this option, as it was initially defined as a world pretty much exactly like ours.

The Warhammer concept isn't meant to imply that it's too similar to the Warhammer setting (either the original or the bizarre Age of Sigmar reboot, merely that it would be a vaguely similar grimdark(ish) standard European Medievalist fantasy world overrun by daemons. I doubt that I'd have anything even as friendly and cozy (not that this really qualifies for those adjectives) as the Empire; rather, the Empire would be a distant memory as a polity that failed under the daemonic incursion. The "points of light" flavor would be seriously ramped up, to where the points of light are tiny islands under siege, in a sense, against the darkness without. Daemonic kingdoms or demesnes, or whatever you will want to call them aren't necessarily overtly and simplistically hostile, although they are insidiously hostile at all times. Much as Azzagrat/Zelatar, or various places in Hell or the City of Brass were—well, friendly is the wrong word, but at least possible for regular people to wander around trading, using and having activity in—these daemonic kingdoms can be visited, although various dangers are always lurking under the surface. 

I like this because it's familiar and in fact even classic without feeling retreaded or cookie cutter vanilla. The high concept makes it different from most fantasy, including the default D&D or LotR or Conan the Barbarian models. It's neither extruded fantasy product nor thud and blunder, so to speak, because it has at least some bit of a twist on them. It's easy to pick up and play without having to overthink much about the setting, which puts the focus squarely on the high concept, because everything else fades into the background.

On the other hand, I don't like it, because it just feels like it's going to be very similar to what DH5 already is, except with more daemons. I already kind of have a dark fantasy vibe to my fantasy settings in general. Is it sufficiently different from what I'm already doing that it's worth spending the time making what amounts to small tweaks and whatnot to my existing projects? Or, on the other hand, is there something about it that I can make really stand out to make it truly feel different?

That's the major decision that I'm noodling first and foremost, and the answer to it determines some of my other questions that follow, like which of my three m20 systems is the best baseline to build on; the space opera one, or the Fantasy Hack "fake" D&D one, or the DH5 custom one? Not that I expect any feedback from the peanut gallery, but if any comes in, I'll welcome it, and in the meantime I'll continue to weigh this in my own mind until I'm ready to decide and move forward.

Re-open Fallen Sons

Check out the other (and only) post on this tag, and you'll see what I meant by FALLEN SONS; a setting noodling idea that I started, and then promptly abandoned and forgot about. The Stars Were Right (or Wrong.) The End of the World happened. Instead of being overtly Lovecraftian and weird pseudo-science fictiony, though, it's more like The Abyss from D&D specifically spilled out on to the world. Daemon Lords rule demesnes on the Earth, and normal, mortal people struggle to mostly stay out of their sight as much as possible. This makes it similar in some ways to my ODD D&D project, with daemonic instead of reptilian antagonists being the main thing going on.

There's a few things I need to do to make this start to become a reality. First, I need to decide on tech level. My original post proposed that this takes place in the future, and even in a post-apocalyptic Dark Ages feel, it doesn't seem likely that firearms and rare high technology wouldn't still exist. This would feel more like a demonic Thundarr the Barbarian or Gamma World. I'd probably use my m20 Ad Astra ruleset as a base, and then make houserules and changes to that first. It would involve many more cultural callbacks and recognizably modern elements, or even futuristic elements here and there.

The other option is a more typical swords & sorcery yet much more grimdark fantasy setting; like a Warhammer World, but without even the relatively bright spot of the Empire to stand as a bulwark for humanity. If I do this, then my m20 Dark Heritage is a more appropriate baseline ruleset.

And then, regardless of which system I use as a baseline, I need to go through my monster list, prune some options and come up with some new ones. 

And then, regardless of which system I use as a baseline, I need to start on some worldbuilding. I think most of this stuff would be more or less the same regardless of which paradigm I pick, although some of the finer details will obviously differ.

Eberron Remixed is DONE

Just an announcement; my Eberron Remixed project is DONE! I've done everything that I hoped to do with the project. Well, with one exception; come up with specific adventures in the Remixed version of the setting and run them. But otherwise, the thing is finished, and I don't anticipate making any additional updates to the Eberron Remixed tag. Unless I do run a game there. Honestly, a lot would have to change to get me to that point; I've got my own settings to run first, and that'll keep me going indefinitely. I think I'll officially stick a fork in this project.

I also actually recently re-read my Isles of Terror tag, where I went through the Serpent's Skull adventure path, and discussed how I would adapt it, or more accurately, borrow elements from it. I'm considering picking another adventure path and doing that again.I've done two now; ISLES OF TERROR adapts the Serpent's Skull and CULT OF UNDEATH adapts The Carrion Crown. The obvious choice here for me to do next is Strange Aeons, but I might go on and do even more. Probably the one that I'd be most likely to want to adapt after that are Age of Ashes, War for the Crown, Council of Thieves, Tyrant's Grasp, and maybe The Crimson Throne. That's plenty to keep me busy, but assuming I do all six of those, I'll look and see if I care to do any more. Because I suspect, although I haven't actually read it yet, that Strange Aeons has way too many dungeoncrawls imbedded in it, I'll give that one the tag DUNGEON YOG-SOTHOTHERY and proceed with that one first. 

Leveling in my m20 games

I came across some of my older posts and saw where I'd made an offhand comment about leveling up near the beginning of a game about once ever 4-5 sessions, and having that slow down, and that an ideal, full 10-level game could have about 100 sessions. I whipped up a quick chart showing what level I'd expect the PCs to be at at every session. Realistically, of course, I probably wouldn't be this rigid, but setting it out like this would make it much less likely that I'd get carried away and start doing things too fast, or forget about it and do it too slow. It also could serve as a baseline to use to put off-set with the main chart if I have a new character join at 1st level. Although typically, I usually have new characters join at the same level as the rest of the group when I've done it in the past.

UPDATE: That's a ridiculous ridiculous way to lay this out. Let me summarize it more easily. The numbered bullet point would be the level of the characters in the session.

1. Sessions 1-4
2. Sessions 5-11
3. Sessions 12-19
4. Sessions 20-31
5. Sessions 32-43
6. Sessions 44-55
7. Sessions 56-67
8. Sessions 68-79
9. Sessions 80-91
10. Sessions 92-100
11. No more play. Game is over.

History of m20

I was poking around a bit while waiting for roadside assistance to come unlock my daughter's car so the keys could get picked up out of the passenger seat (long story and not very interesting; don't ask) yesterday, and re-read some of my older blog posts.  I thought one was ripe for some updating, which explained my history (at the time) of using m20.  Let me start with the ordered list that I originally had and then add some new line items at the bottom.

1. I'd been running around house-ruling d20 Modern and D&D 3.5 to be used with my DARK•HERITAGE setting for years.  I'd also played with other systems, but never really settled on anything.  Until...
2. In early 2013 I belatedly discovered the Microlite system (amazingly, by then it had already been around for almost 7 years!)
3. In May of 2013, I created my own adaptation of m20 for use with DARK•HERITAGE.  I also took the two existing Star Wars iterations of m20, combined them into a single one, and added my own elements.  I think this was a great adaptation of the m20 rules to an existing setting that works well with the premise of an old-fashioned game like m20 anyway.  Even if it's just me saying so.
4. These systems underwent periodic revision and fixing of minor elements for some time.  Most of these changes were minor, but they didn't really completely settle down until 2015, at which point both the Star Wars m20 and DARK•HERITAGE m20 were considered complete.
5. Also in 2015, I was confronted with the possibility of needing to pick up where our group had left off; in a campaign that was faltering.  We ended up doing something else (Call of Cthulhu—a campaign that also ended up faltering, as it happens.)  I decided to start the CULT OF UNDEATH project; a thorough pruning and adaptation of Paizo's Carrion Crown adventure path.  For whatever reason, I decided to adapt m20 to do this.  This was the genesis of the m20 CULT OF UNDEATH game; I basically took the DARK•HERITAGE game and replaced the DARK•HERITAGE races with some that more closely resemble standard D&D.  I could, of course, simply have used an existing m20 D&D version, including the original 2006 m20, or maybe the Purest Essence.  But, for whatever reason, I wanted to do my own thing.  
6. In June of 2016, I decided to expand the CULT OF UNDEATH system into a full-blown "My D&D"—i.e., my own take on what I think the D&D system should look like to best emulate my ideal game of it.  This became, of course, FANTASY HACK.
7. By this time, The Force Awakens is already out and of course it's disappointing, although not nearly as much so as The Last Jedi was going to be.  About a quarter into 2016, I started to think that my STAR WARS REVISITED was played out.  I was very happy with the system, but less happy than I hoped to be with the setting, because it was irrevocably tied to an IP that I was more and more unhappy with.  Although this predates CULT OF UNDEATH, I did some early exploration of what it would mean to turn STAR WARS REMIXED into AD ASTRA in April of 2016, that really wasn't a full blown initiative yet, and it wasn't until March of 2017 that I really released AD ASTRA as its own stand-alone game; although by this time, with a setting that was off to a good start.
8. Almost a year ago, I had really started getting excited about developing the CULT OF UNDEATH setting more (under the draft name of TIMISCHBURG), but as I was doing so, I found I was turning repeatedly to ideas that were in DARK•HERITAGE; many of which had actually been cribbed from some other setting I'd developed before being put into DARK•HERITAGE itself.  When it became clear that the two settings were converging, I decided to make it official and bump Dark•Heritage from it's current version 4 to DH5; still a substantially similar setting in many respects, but with a substantially altered geography and more a focus on Medieval familiar pseudo-British nations rather than the pseudo-Renaissance Spanish nations that were more the protagonist race of DH4.
9. With substantial updates to both settings, I had a look at all three rulesets and harmonized and updated all of them a small amount.  This led to other ideas, and the updates were slightly more thorough than I had originally expected.  This especially applied to the two fantasy games.  I added a small section to enable FANTASY HACK in particular to serve as a fantasy Western, mostly because I'd gotten into Red Dead Redemption 2, but also because I'd had the idea of doing so a couple of years ago anyway.  It was just a small add-on appendix anyway.
10. Other than that update, though, I don't really have any additional plans for FANTASY HACK, and DARK•HERITAGE in its current format is basically the same game, except optimized for the setting (all that really means is that the monster lists differ slightly as do the player races spotlighted.  FANTASY HACK therefore is officially a "dead" although still obviously quite playable game, and the DH5 specific version of the rules is really my preferred fantasy game.  I might yet dust off FANTASY HACK sometime for a D&D game, and I've got a few random elements floating around (EBERRON REMIXED, for instance) that could be added to it, but I'd actually prefer not to and as of right now, I'm not planning to.  I have therefore two real games; DARK•HERITAGE which is fantasy and AD ASTRA which is space opera, along with their attendant settings.  Although both are 100% usable as is, I do intend to continue setting development for both; especially DARK•HERITAGE, which after the major structural change is actually less developed now than the space opera, although over the next year or so that will probably change.
11. For the heck of it, here's a picture of spaghetti western era Clint Eastwood interpreted as a fantasy character.  I could see him in the Hill Country as a fairly typical PC.  Sweet.  Onward with more development!

Anyway, stepping back, here's a copy and paste of Microlite's own description of what it is.

What is Microlite20? 

Do you remember when the gaming table was full of pizza and soda, not rulebooks, miniatures and dungeon tiles? Do you yearn for a role-playing game that doesn’t require weight training to carry all the books? Do you want to be able to hold all the rules in your head - or in your back pocket? And do you still want to use all those lovely monsters, adventures and game worlds too? So do we!! 

--  Greywulf 

Microlite20 is a minimalist role-playing game designed to be usable with the majority of the OGL/d20 supplements, rules and adventures with little or no advance preparation. The basic rules for character generation, combat, magic and level advancement take up a single sheet of paper, meaning it is perfect for introducing role-playing to new players, gaming oneshot adventures or tailoring into your own game system. 

History of Microlite20  

Microlite20 was designed by Robin V. Stacey (aka Greywulf) in 2006. The purpose of the rules were to strip the OGL/D20 system down to its bare minimum so that the world’s most popular fantasy system could be played quickly and without thousands of pages of rules, but still be usable with all the adventures, campaign settings, and supplements that had been published for the 3.x edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG. 

Amazing, one page of basic rules (coupled with the Fantasy SRD for spells and monsters) really did allow for fast-playing games with just about every adventure and supplement published for the 3.x edition. 

Microlite20 was an immediate hit with players who liked the 3.x edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG but did not like the complex and time-consuming (both to GM for and to play out combats) beast it had become. Microlite20 was a rules-light way to play that brought fun back to many game tables. 

The Microlite20 rules were entirely open game content. Only the names “Microlite20” and “Robin V. Stacey” were listed as product identity. Having the entire system open game content sparked a flurry of gamer creativity. Simple variant rules and basic expansions came first – for example, lists of limited spells and monsters so Microlite20 could be played without lugging the huge SRD around. However, customized rule sets and complete games based on Microlite20 soon followed.

As an interesting aside, I've been looking over the big Microlite Compendium, and although there are tons of alternate and variant m20 games included, almost none of them bothered to include anything whatsoever to explain what they are, what they're doing differently, or why you should look at them instead of just basic Microlite20.  Even the ones that included an Introduction just copied and pasted the introductory text to Microlite20.  Sigh. 

m20 Terror Birds

I have to believe that everyone loves a good terror bird; extinct apex predators native to South America, and the only apex predator that moved into North America during the Great Faunal Interchange (on the other hand, various dogs and cats, including sabertooths, migrated the other direction.  And various herbivores, including ground sloths and more migrated north too).  The largest species would have been as much as 10 feet tall, weighed 400 to 500 lbs, and been speedy, deadly, hawk-beaked killers that would have had an almost dinosaurian aspect, especially now that we know most dinosaurian predator lineages (and in fact maybe the entire dinosaur clade) had feathered representatives.

Now, neither Fantasy Hack nor Dark•Heritage 2.1 has terror birds, but this is another great example to show how quick and easy it is to make modifications to monster stats.  My first thought was that I'd simply reskin some existing stats of some existing creature and call it a terror bird, and that can still be done, if desired.  My second thought was to modify the Dinosaur, Raptor stats to make them slightly unique.  So first, the raptor stats:

DINOSAUR, RAPTOR: AC: 15 HD: 4d8 (20 hp) AT: bite +4 (2d6), 2 claws +4 (2d8), STR: +5, DEX: +3, MND: -4
Smaller, cursorial hunting dinosaurs, that often group into packs for more efficient (and dangerous) hunting strategies.

Smaller being relative to carnosaurs, which are big predators like T. rex or Allosaurus.  Still up to relatively large-sized animals; comparable in many respects to a bear in terms of damage, AC, HP, etc.  (Bears have a bit more hit points, but that seems reasonable, given that they are sturdy animals that are well-known for their ability to shrug off shots from anything other than extremely high powered, high caliber weapons.)  The raptor stats obviously represent a bigger animal like Dakotaraptor or Utahraptor, not a smaller one like Troodon or Velociraptor.

Compared to a raptor, the terror bird has a much more powerful head and bite, but lacks the toe-claw attack which is the signature raptor hunting strategy.  Rather, the claws would probably be blunt and hoof-like, for running across the grasslands of South America, West Texas or Florida, where the fossils have been found.  It could no doubt deliver a nasty kick, but it doesn't have sharp claws.  I think lowering the claw damage, renaming it kick damage, and upping the bite damage is appropriate to make a more terror bird-like stat-line.  Keep the relatively high STR and DEX scores, and the very low MND score; that seems appropriate for a bird, which would probably look and behave much more like a raptor dinosaur than any kind of mammal anyway.

TERROR BIRD: AC: 15 HD: 4d8 (20 hp) AT: bite +4 (3d6), 2 kicks +4 (d8 each), STR: +5, DEX: +3, MND: -4
Apex predators of the prehistoric grasslands, these fast-moving, hard-biting birds are taller than a man, and very dangerous.

It seems to me that the major missing thing I need, especially as I migrate into having Western Hack, is some kind of speed.  If I have lots of mounted chases and whatnot, then all monsters should have a speed score too; otherwise, how do you compare running a Chase with a PC mounted on a horse (and for that matter, how do you distinguish between different breeds of horses, if desired) without having some kind of speed stat?  It would only come into play during chases, I think, but you can't have meaningful chases without it either.  Just using DEX as a substitute for speed is, I think, not optimal from any perspective other than keeping rules bloat from happening.

Another discussion on Bounded Accuracy

Another discussion on one of my favorite topics; or rather, one of my favorite ideas from 5e.  Not that I spent a lot of time investigating exactly how it was implemented, but the concept is, I think, the first time that the the developers tried specifically to excise one of the main problems that I've always had with D&D of literally every edition ever.  Although to be fair, it only got worse as editions went up up through 4e.  For 3e and even moreso for 4e, the designers recognized the problem but rather than try to eliminate it, they embraced it and designed around it, deciding for reasons of "sacred cowedness" or something that it just wouldn't be D&D without it.  That lead to the debacle that is higher level 3e and 4e play.  There's a reason why hardly anyone plays at that level, and why for the most part it's seen as fundamentally broken, or at least highly undesirable.  Arguably in the case of 4e it's not broken so much as it's just stupid.

E6 was the solution to fix it in 3e, but that wasn't nearly as elegant a solution as the bounded accuracy model of 5e, because it essentially made large swaths of the Monster Manual unusable.  Even a continuously improving E6 character who's been around for a long time kind of tapers off and tops out at an effective CR of about 10 or so.  So, the really high CR monsters, like say a CR 20 balor or old red dragon are just not really usable at all, because an effective character level 10 party can't expect to ever really defeat them.

Which maybe isn't terrible, because it encourages players to do something to deal with them other than just charge in to standard combat.  But at the same time, it's not really the intention of anyone to design monsters that aren't really going to be usable to most players, so E6 had a rather steep cost, I think, associated with it.

With 5e, a system designed around the idea of bounded accuracy from the very beginning, on the other hand, we get a system that just works a lot better.  Sadly, however, it means that you need to start over.  So, let's have a quick discussion about it, and then let's have a quick discussion about how well Fantasy Hack and my other m20 offerings meet the design requirements that 5e spelled out.  I'm using the text here to define bounded accuracy.  If you follow that link, be sure and expand the box to see the original developer's text (from an article on Wizards' website that now is unavailable.)

And because I'm using that link, let me address some of the text there first; specifically the "What Bounded Accuracy Is Not bullet points.

BA has nothing to do with checks of any sort. The limits imposed upon ability modifiers thanks to BA alters the standard DC range, but this is an unintended side-effect.

Uh... no, that's not true.  Did the guy writing this not even read the text right above this point from the developer's own pen?  It may be a side effect, but it's not unintended.  This is a key component of bounded accuracy, and was discussed at length in the developer's notes.  Any system which doesn't address skills, saves, and other checks in addition to attack rolls is not a full bounded accuracy system.

BA has nothing to do with saves of any sort. Because saves are just a keyworded check variant in 5e, they are affected in exactly the same way.

No.  See my comments directly above.

BA has nothing to do with damage. It incidentally has implications for how damage winds up being delivered, because the same modifiers apply, and because it alters the hit frequency for attacks.

Again, it's not incidental.  It's integral.  Granted, the impact is less dramatic than it is for attack and AC comparisons.

BA is not about reducing the power of character level. Level is still king. It does increase how long a lower-level character or lower-CR monster will last against a character of a given level.

Yes, I suppose, but that's relative.  Level is "still king" in a relative sense, but character power by level is lower than it was in, say, 3e at the same level.  However, since the world doesn't "level up with you" as it rather dubiously does in 3e and even more overtly in 4e, that doesn't matter, because the whole concept of how powerful leveling is supposed to be and what kinds of threats you are expected to deal with and how is rejiggered in a bounded accuracy system.  Depending on how charitably you want to treat this statement, it's pedantically correct, but context makes it actually incorrect from the point of view of a player, or the whole thing is irrelevant.  In other words, in a strictly traditional sense, you can still face the same gamut of threats at the same levels in 5e under a bounded accuracy paradigm as you could during a non-bounded accuracy paradigm, but you also moved completely out of being threatened by things that were threatening to you at lower levels without bounded accuracy, which fundamentally changed the genre of the game from one of fantasy adventurers to one of fantasy superheroes.  Bounded accuracy, among other things, maintains the genre through the entire spectrum of levels.

BA is not about increasing the difficulty of lower CR enemies. Rather, it allows lower CR enemies to still produce some degree of actual threat- no matter how little- against a PC of any level, and the same for a PC against a high CR monster.

This is mostly true.  But it's not just enemies and CRs, it's also checks and DCs.

BA is not intended to alter the overall difficulty or risk of the game. Ultimately, how difficult the game is depends entirely on what the DM decides to throw at the players. BA just makes that job a lot easier, by giving them a wider range of options for how to achieve a given threat level.

Yes, and that's a great thing.  But after describing the things that the writer of the wiki entry (often incorrectly) believes that bounded accuracy is not, as well as a historical digression to discuss the nature of the problem that bounded accuracy is getting rid of, he lists four things that it is, and I think this is spot on.  So, let's discuss how bounded accuracy works in 5e and compare it to the situation in Fantasy Hack to see how well I meet the expectations of bounded accuracy.  If I'm a little off, will I want to make minor modifications to Fantasy Hack and it's derivatives?  Possibly.  Let me "talk" through this as I make this post.

First, they deserted the magic item economy. This was an effect generated by developers assuming players would have magic items providing a minimum bonus at given levels and preemptively building those bonuses into monster ACs to compete. It made magic items worthless, because players could only use them for a short time before being forced to upgrade, and also made magic items mandatory because you couldn't function without them. It forced DMs to plant a regular progression of magic gear as rewards during play, regardless how shoehorned-in it became. The magic item economy was the main driving force behind the treadmill. Instead, monsters would be built on the assumption that players do not have any magic items.

I disliked the magic item economy for aesthetic reasons that have little to do with the mechanical implications, but the fact that the magic item economy fundamentally forced us into the so-called "treadmill" means that it absolutely had to go.  Keep in mind that in Fantasy Hack, as in older versions of D&D, there is no CR, so I'm not trying to calibrate level vs CR the way 3e, 4e and 5e have done.

Now, also keep in mind that this doesn't mean that there may not be threats out there that require magic items to deal with.  But having a panoply of magic items just to do the day to day is strictly forbidden as a concept.  Fantasy Hack already does this; in fact, I only added magic items in as an afterthought in Appendix I anyway.

Second, they sat down and decided that the total flat bonus a player could receive on a check could not exceed the value of one whole die. (Anything more than that, and you just have an eternal arbitrary arms race of increasing values; the "treadmill" of the past editions) In other words, +20 is the theoretical desired limit of all combined bonuses to an attack roll. There is some debate, but it appears as though, by core rules only, the highest check result possible is 47, a bonus of +27, and it requires a lot of fiddly build options which the developers probably hadn't anticipated, plus a good circumstantial situation, and is not applicable to attack rolls. In other words: they did a good job of staying in that limit. Generally, nobody will ever be able to roll higher than 31 for an attack, check, or save.

I didn't specifically plan for this, and I only achieve it, I believe, because I halved the number of levels.  Let's see for the sake of argument, how high my bonuses for To Hit can get with a character in Fantasy Hack?

If I create an orc fighter with maximum STR, he'll have +6 for his ability score, but an additional +3 can be added as he goes through the level progression to make for a total of +9 (!).  He also gets +1 as a Fighter bonus, which increases to +3.  He gets up to +10 as a bonus for his level at the top of the progression.  And if you customized the Fighter class to give you the Outdoorsman's weapon bonus, but applied to whatever weapon you use, you'd have an additional +1.  And let's say, just for the sake of argument, that he's also got a +3 weapon, which is the maximum bonus allowed by the magic item rules.

That gives him a to hit bonus that is higher than 20; 26 to be specific.  Now, granted, that's a character designed around one thing: getting the maximum to hit bonus.  It also requires a +3 magic item, and there's no guarantee that such a thing even exists in the Timischburg or DH5 settings anyway.

I think I squeak in under the definition, although not entirely by design.  I'm actually a little bit surprised how high you can get that bonus if you really trick your character out to get it, but then again, even if you don't, your 10th level human fighter is going to be; what, probably only about +5 less than that, especially if magic items aren't readily available.  Just about any fighter-style class will be.  And even non-fighter style classes will be probably over +10 at 10th level, unless they have a really weak STR score.

Third, they divided how that maximum bonus would be proportioned between standardized sources. In general, these sources are the only sources of bonuses to an attack, check, or save. The sources are: ability score modifier, (maximum of +5, attainable even from first level) proficiency bonus, (minimum of +2, maximum of +6, grows slowly with level) and magic gear bonus, (max of +3, but it's unlikely you'll ever even see +1). This gives, under optimal conditions, without feature intervention, a maximum roll result of 34 with magic.

Yeah, I blow that away, I'm afraid.  Theoretically there could be conditions that give situational bonuses already on top of my 10th level orc fighter, but ignoring those, I've got a maximum roll of 46 based on my calculations above, and heck; the average roll is still 37 at 10th level with that build.  If I'd use the optional wose race, I've be even a point higher.

I think I may have been too generous in allowing bonuses to stack without really seeing how far they could be pushed to potentially break the bounded accuracy paradigm.  Which, granted, I didn't specifically attempt to create a bounded accuracy system by the strict definitions of the 5e design team, but I did want to do so at a looser high level approach.

Fourth, they made sure that PC ACs could not exceed 21, and monster ACs do not exceed 31. (See how that 31 lines up perfectly with the maximum possible roll result without magic? Notice that the maximum PC AC is 10 less than the maximum monster AC, a full half-die lower.)

If I wanted to maximize AC, with the races I currently have, I could get a maximum ability bonus to AC from DEX of +8 (I could increase that maybe a point or two with a custom race). +5 for level bonus, +6 from armor, an additional +3 for magic armor, and +2 for a shield.  Total AC would be 10 +8+5+6+3+2, or 33.  That might have another point or two of wiggle room, but again—that's higher than I really envisioned.

I think that my problem was that even with only 10 levels instead of 20, I didn't really give a lot of thought to the concept of playing all the way to 10th level.

Sigh.  I'll probably have to do some work to keep those bonuses a bit flatter.  The highest AC any of my monsters has, Cthulhu, is only 35, and the players can theoretically hit that range if they really trick out their character specifically to do so.  My top ranges, compared to my most powerful monsters, are too high.  And too many foes would literally be unable to ever hit the characters at all.

I had thought that I had higher armor values impose a penalty on how much DEX bonus you could apply, but I guess I decided that that was too fiddly to work with and did away with it.  But even then, it gets out of control.  I actually think a big part of my problem is that ability scores can get too high.  I should probably put caps on those too.

Notice that most of this doesn't actually put limits on players. It actually puts limits on the developers when designing content the players can use. The standardization of player attack bonuses allows them to anticipate the bonus range any character can put out at a given level, regardless of class. This allows them to design monsters which have ACs which alter the probability of a hit based on PC level. Rather than probability being rapidly pushed to 0% or 100%, the monster becomes viable for use against a much wider range of PCs. By having limits to player AC that are not tied to level, they can change the hit rate for monsters by adjusting only their attack bonuses. Because the two things are no longer tied together, it is now possible to have monsters that always hit and always get hit, always hit but rarely get hit, rarely hit but always get hit, or rarely hit or get hit, as well as anything within those four extremes. Finally, the whole point of all of this was to make lesser enemies still useful in larger numbers at higher levels, and powerful enemies still survivable at lower levels. (Survivable is not the same as defeat-able. TPKs still happen.) That means you no longer need to have special tier-balanced versions of each monsters, or special minion monsters, you can just use a higher CR monster to present extra challenges, or throw a whole bunch of lower CR monsters to make up a total CR equal to one big monster.

This is what I need to actually spend a little bit of time on proper math to get accomplished for my m20 games.

The simplest way to address the higher To Hit and AC class scores are to do the following two things:

• Cap ability score bonuses.  You can only ever get a maximum of +4 plus your racial bonus to your ability score, which you can get at 1st level.  Either eliminate the ability score increases as you level up, or say that if you're already at your max ability score in one ability, you have to apply it to another.  If you somehow have maxed ability scores in all abilities, you are not only one lucky bastard with your ability score rolls, but you lose your ability to increase them when you level up.  It's hardly like you need it.
• For your AC, you can take either your DEX bonus or your Armor and shield bonuses, but not both.  Wearing armor makes you unable to dodge blows as effectively, and the whole point of armor anyway is to block blows that you can't get out of the way of.  This isn't simulationist realistic, but it does reduce the maximum AC that a player character can get, if tricked out, by about 8 (technically a little bit more if you consider the possibility of magical armor.)  That's still a little bit higher than the 5e bounded accuracy ideal, but it's now within a couple points of that ideal, and I did so with an elegant solution.

If I felt like more was still needed, I could halve the rates at which skill and To hit bonuses apply to characters; instead of adding your level, you add half your level rounded down.  I probably won't do this, but that would be the next step.  AC progression is already halved, but I'd make it apply only ever third level instead of every other level, and it would also reduce the maximum by a few more points.  It's not perfect; low level opponents like a goblin or human commoner still can't hit PCs past a certain level because they can't get an attack roll higher than a 21 or 20 respectively, but that only becomes an issue at very high levels (in the m20 scheme of things, where 10 is the cap.)  Any solution that addresses that needs to do so in a way that's elegant enough to not be fiddly and annoying; it may not be worth addressing at that point.  Either that or eliminate the 10 baseline, or change it to a lower number.  I'll have to think on how feasible that option may or may not be.

UPDATE: I have actually gone ahead and made both of those changes to the files, although not to the web versions of the rules.  They can be seen below, as Google docs:

• Fantasy Hack v1.5.3
• Dark•Heritage 2.1

UPDATE AGAIN: I've rethought the AC problem.  Rather than making you pick Armor Bonus or DEX bonus, how about we just get rid of the level based AC progression altogether?  Although I actually like the level-based AC progression in many ways, it was specifically implemented in the d20 games from which I borrowed it as an alternative solution to the magic item economy to keep your AC progressing as it needs to.  Therefore, my solution is becoming a new problem in the absence of the problem that it was originally designed to solve.  How ridiculous is it that I've still got it in there?  Sigh.  Now I've got to modify the documents again.  I also stuck a max DEX bonus on when wearing armor, which is a relatively simple solution, and already familiar from most D&D games anyway.

And eventually update the web pages and the blog post pages that have the rules on them too.  Work, work, work.  Maybe, to be honest with you, I should just get rid of the blog post and web page versions of the rules entirely and just refer to the PDF as the correct version of the rules that should be referenced.

Anyway, with these changes, my orc fighter would have a max To Hit of 23, but realistically 20 or 21 because I'm not in the habit of giving out +3 swords.  My super hard to hit halfling (or anyone else, for that matter) can't seem to get his AC over 19 without magical armor no matter what he does.

I think that solves my bounded accuracy problems.

For that matter, although I didn't discuss it, it keeps my skill and save checks down too; with a max bonus of +4 plus racial bonus (effective max +3) and level check, it never gets above 17 without some kind of magical or circumstantial bonus either.  This means that no matter your experience level, a 15 DC is difficult for novices but not experts, and a 30 DC is always fairly difficult for even the most advanced expert known to mankind; a 35 DC is an effective cap on difficulty for most intents and purposes.