Bartertown

 I'm working up notes for a play-by-post Gamma World game. The home town will be fairly primitive, just having barely reached Tech Level II (early Bronze Age) but there are some definite Tech II and even a Tech III (Medieval) settlement nearby. Plus a market in the Tech III settlement run by Restorationists where artifacts can be bought and sold...the only catch being that the Tech III society is ruled over by the Knights of Genetic Purity. There is a trade town nearby as well, which takes domars (cash in Gamma Terra), but the home town will be only barter based. Junk from ruins will be a prime means of acquiring things, but time and effort also play a part. A day's food? How about you give me that shiny doo-dad you picked up in the ruins. Want a new spear? Plow my field for me.

I plan to have notes for important NPCs of what they have, what they need, what they want in trade. But for less important NPCs, or when the PCs want something I haven't considered, I made a Barter Table. Figured I might as well share it with you guys. Never know when this might come in handy. It could work for D&D or other games, too, really. Just replace junk with something relevant to the campaign.

Barter Table

	NPC Wants (roll 1d6):
Players Want:	1	2	3	4	5	6
Food (1 meal)	1 junk	1d3 junk	1d2 labor	1 service	1d3 goods	nothing
Water (days)	1 junk	1 labor	1 goods	clothes	nothing	nothing
Labor (1 hour)	1d3 junk	1 labor	1 creature	1 meal	1d4 water	nothing
Service (1 hour)	1d6 junk	1 bauble	1d3 meals	1d2 labor	1d3 goods	nothing
Clothes	1 junk	1d4 junk	1d2 labor	1d3 goods	nothing	nothing
Lodging	1d4+1 junk	1d6 labor	1d4 service	1 creature	1d3 meals	nothing
Goods (Tech I)	1d4 junk	2d4 junk	1d6 meals	1d10 labor	1d2 goods	nothing
Goods (Tech II)	2d6 junk	3d6 junk	2d4 meals	2d6 labor	2d6 goods	no trade
Goods (Tech III)	2d10 junk	3d12 junk	2d10 meals	2d8 labor	4d6 goods	no trade
Weapon (Tech I)	1d10 junk	2d6 labor	2d6 service	4d4 goods	1d8 meals	nothing
Weapon (Tech II)	3d4 junk	3d6 labor	4d4 service	1d3 creatures	3d8 goods	no trade
Small Creature	1d8 junk	1d6 meals	1d6 water	1 creature	2d4 goods	nothing
Medium Creature	2d8 junk	1d4 labor	1d4 service	2d6 goods	4d6 goods	no trade
Large Creature	3d8 junk	2d6 labor	2d4 service	1d6 creatures	4d10 goods	no trade

Junk: On average, 1 curiosity = 20 junk/5 baubles; 1 bauble = 4 junk; 

Labor/Service in hours; labor = physical work, service = mental work

Goods: 1 Tech III item = 10 Tech I items or 3 Tech II items. 1 Tech II item = 1d3 Tech I items

Nothing: free if NPC is friendly, will not trade if hostile; No Trade: will not part with item

RIP Scott Hall

 Scott Hall, also known as Razor Ramon, passed away at 63 from complications following hip surgery. 

Yet another pro-wrestling legend from my youth that left us way too early. 

In my college days, some friends somehow managed to get front row seats to a WWF event, and when one decided he didn't want to go, I snatched up that ticket. The headline match was Macho Man Randy Savage (I was a huge fan at the time) vs Razor Ramon. Macho Man gave me a high five as he went around the ring before the match. But Ramon won. 

Later, after I graduated, my Evansville group would play D&D in the evenings until WCW came on, and we'd watch Hall and Kevin Nash, the Outsiders, and later with Hollywood Hulk Hogan as the NWO. We loved to hate those guys. They were excellent heels. 

Rest in Peace, Mr. Hall. You provided me and so many others with a lot of great entertainment over the years.

Archetypes on my Mind

Character classes perform several functions in D&D. First of all, they provide some information to the players about what the game is about, and what sorts of characters fit in the milieu of the game. The archetypes of characters, in other words. Secondly, they provide game mechanical distinctions and roles for each player to engage in within the game world. They show players that there are trade-offs to be made in the game, as to be good at one thing necessitates being poor in some other area. Third, they facilitate easy (in theory anyway) character creation, as players don't need to micromanage every skill and ability of their PCs. This is a result of the first and second functions, but certain systems that load on carte blanche skill/feat/ability choices on top of a class system may not function this way in practice.

Game design, if we're working in that class-based paradigm, requires an understanding of these functions in order to make the game interesting mechanically as well as thematically interesting. 

In a game of near-future dystopian adventure, classes like Mercenary, Hacker, Driver, Smuggler, Criminal, and Mechanic might make sense. Adventures would likely include fights, computer problems, lots of crime, escapes, and equipment/vehicle repair. They're the archetypes (well, some of them) of the genre. And while there are other archetypes in the fiction we might use as inspiration, something like a tattoo artist or rave DJ doesn't really provide much to work within the likely game mechanics of the system (assuming it's adventure based, rather than social role play based). Your mercenary may well be a rave DJ by night, but that's just extra color, not necessarily something that needs its own character class. 

And no, I'm not about to try and steal JB's thunder by releasing a cyberpunk game while he's taking a break for Lent. Just using that as an example of potential classes in a non-medieval fantasy type game. 

And so, we get to D&D. It has some archetypes from source fiction, of course, but also some that have just sort of become D&Disms over the years. 

OD&D's LBBs had Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User as its archetypes. Well, also the Elf (Fighter and/or Magic-User), Dwarf (Fighter plus dungeoneering skills) and Halfling (Fighter plus a bit of wilderness skill).

But then supplements and later editions added in more archetypes. Thieves and Paladins, Druids and Assassins, Monks, Rangers, Bards, Psionic dudes, Illusionists, Barbarians, Cavaliers, Acrobats, Samurai, Shukenja, Sohei, Kensei, Ninja, Wu Jen, Knights of Solamnia, another simpler Bard, specialist Priests and Mages, Sorcerers, Warlords, Warlocks, Artificers, and on and on and on!

And of course, multiclassing and dual classing rules allow for mixes of the archetypes. 

Most of you know all this already, but I wanted to get it down because what follows stems from this. 

What exactly are the appropriate archetypes for a game to feel like D&D? Is it the bare minimum from OD&D of Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User? Is it those three plus the Thief? Is it Fighter/Thief/Magic-User as a few people have suggested? Just Fighters and Magic-Users, all the rest is fluff?

Or do we need a bit more to get the D&D feel? This is where I wonder what classes are in D&D simply because they're expected to be in D&D. Paladins and Rangers and Druids, for example. Obviously, we can have D&D without them. I grew up mostly playing BECMI, which only allowed druids and paladins/avengers once characters got to 9th level (if you played by the book), and the closest thing to a ranger was the Halfling class with its bonus to ranged attacks and 1-9/d10 ability to hide in the wilderness. 

There's something about the AD&D class set-ups, whether it's 1E with the Assassin and Illusionist, or 2E with its simple Bard class, that just feels right to me, even though most of my early years I played without. And of course for younger players who started with WotC editions, a game without Barbarians and Sorcerers as standard might feel a bit strange. Does the "savage warrior" archetype need to be there, either for fidelity to the source material (i.e. Conan), or because it fulfills a needed game mechanical slot (combat plus wilderness skill)? Or is "savage" just something descriptive to tack on to the Fighter, like a Mercenary rave DJ in my cyberpunk example above?

So, I'd like to run a little informal poll here. In the comments, please tell me: 

1. What are the bare minimum archetypes needed for D&D in your opinion?

2. What are the archetypes that give you the "D&D feel" and should be included beyond the bare minimum, if any? 

3. What archetypes, if any, break that "D&D feel" for you?

Into the Odd Reaction

 I got to play some Into the Odd last night. Justin pitched the game -- space hobos with massive debt are sent to an alien megastructure to recover lost artifacts. The game was ItO based, but heavily influenced by Numenera and some other stuff, Justin said. 

The system is very similar to The Black Hack, but has some differences that seem, on first play-through, to be improvements (although how much are house rules by Justin, I'm not sure). There are only 3 stats, rolled with 3d6. Hit points are just 1d6 (but once 0 you take damage from abilities). Most checks are rolled on a d20, roll stat or lower, similar to TBH. But there is also a luck die mechanic, a d6 roll high check (maybe that's Justin's house rule?). Also, in combat, you don't roll to hit or to defend as in TBH, you just roll damage (armor soaks some damage). I much prefer this combat system, as deadly as it is, over the constant rolling of TBH. I've mentioned before that I'm not one of those players who plays just to get to roll the dice a lot. ItO is definitely a step up from TBH in my mind. 

Also, I don't think there's a usage die baked into the system, but Justin ended up defaulting to that for our "class" abilities, since the rules didn't really mention things like how many eyeball darts Denis' cybernetics addict character got and so on. 

Oh, and for deciding on character type, there was a 3x3 chart of character types. One axis was your highest ability score (STR, DEX, CHA), the other was your hit point total (1-2, 3-4, 5-6).  I had equal STR and CHA (10) as my high scores, so got to choose between the AI Parasite (an AI using a dead body as a vehicle) and the Holo-Wraith (a living hologram). I went with the holo-wraith, which was again fairly poorly defined. Justin ruled that I was basically a walking hologram with my own force field generator similar to the Doctor in Star Trek Voyager. 

The session was fun, and fast moving whenever the mechanics were called up. Combats were a mix of "just shoot everything as fast as we can" and "we'd better figure out something clever before we die" type battles. Most of the session was done exploring, which didn't really require that many Ability checks. It was definitely worth trying out again. Probably not a system I'd ever run myself, but worth playing if Justin keeps running it.