Hungry is the Dark: Reaction Draws as Alarm Dice

I was going to bed last night when my friend Dadstep sent me the coolest idea, why not do opposed overloaded reaction rolls with cards, instead?  He calls it the overloaded reaction draw, it's wonderful, go read about it now, I will wait.  

Okay you back?  Because I want to share some card ideas arising from that fun conversation and his genius blogpost.  And if you don't think cards are cool in RPGs, I include a neat dice alternative at the very end, scroll down.

Cards are neat--suits are basically d13s, and you can convert them to d12s by removing the Kings.  Ace low, Queen high (Dadstep prefers the d13--which I think is neat and am going to playtest. An Oracle in the middle?!).  

But with a 12-card-per-suit system, Dadstep saw that, when you draw two cards from a shuffled deck and compare their color and rank (number), you have the exact same 2d12 Love-Anger reaction roll odds!  Here's his system in a nutshell:

A) Draw two red cards, that's good.  High is Love, Low is Anger. 

B) Draw one red and one black, Red is Love, Black is Anger.

C) Draw two black cards, that's bad.  High is Anger, Low is Love.

Easy peasy!  But that simple system opens up three cool variations on the opposed reaction 'roll': Hitting, Hands, and a Dungeon Deck.

Hitting

In my original post, I suggested players get a +3 to the Love and/or Anger roll if they do a good job negotiating, moving the monster's reaction over a bit.  With cards, to give players a reward for good negotiation, you could instead deal a third card to pick two from, like Monster Texas Hold 'Em.  So if we have 9 Anger (Black) and 7 Love (Black), then PCs parley and GM deals 4 Red, the players can pick 7 Anger (Black) and 4 Love (Red), a bit better.  This *might* be too generous on occasion, but it sounds fun to play!

Hands

You could deal out a hand of five reaction cards to the players at the start of the session, and then let them replace a drawn reaction card via good negotiation (with one of their cards). If they run out, deal them more, shuffle their discards in. Let them discard at will, but their hand size is permanently reduced. Best use for a 12 Anger is to make an annoying Friend run away? Anyway, fun mini-game!

Dungeon Deck

Alarm dice (Prismatic Wasteland) and Tension Pools (Angry GM) are ways to add to your risk the longer you dally in the dungeon (and especially if you make noise). The dungeon grows more dangerous as you go in, alerting and disturbing the inhabitants.  Can we do that with cards instead of dice?  Sure thing!

Enter the Dungeon Deck. Every time the PCs meet a monster with violence or let them flee in Fear, take the black cards from that reaction draw and add them back randomly to the reaction draw deck (discard the drawn red cards, insert drawn black cards, cut the deck).  The players will see this, and when a card shows up again to cause a monster to react with Anger, they will not be pleased.  The deck grows darker over time--the sense of menace visibly grows.  

For fun, you could pull reaction draws from the deck and never shuffle, so players can see they have limited goodwill that is being expended (a real Iconoclasts vibe).  Or every time the players successfully rest (or depart the dungeon), you could shuffle the deck, putting the red cards back in. Like with the Alarm Die, dungeon diving becomes a push-your-luck experience.  

Personally, I plan to playtest a d13 Dungeon Deck ASAP with my weekly 5e group.  I fully expect them to lose their cool as those clubs and spades return to say hi in future sessions...

Exciting week, as I am near to finalizing Shadowfeats, my first RPG publication with 130 Feats and 135 Quirks for Shadowdark character customization.   If you want to be notified when it is live on DriveThruRPG, please send an email to thorn at dreamshrike dot com, subject 'Notify Me'.  

ps--

Do you need more fun card play ideas?  Check out this midnight cardstorm from Rise Up Comus.

pps--

If you love dice and want Dungeon Dice instead of a Dungeon Deck, try this: Add +1 to the Anger roll for every encounter they choose to solve with violence (if they could have negotiated and chose not to), and -1 to the Love roll for every fleeing monster. Reset on rests. The word gets around: the Monsters run out of places to hide from the party pretty quick, and put their backs against the wall!  

Overloading the reaction roll

Reaction rolls are my favorite part of OSR/NSR play.  But they have been around forever, in largely unchanged form, since the early days of DnD.  That got me thinking: can we improve on the 2d6 reaction roll?  Recently I breezily proposed twin 2d12 as an alternative, and after revision of that concept and playtesting, I am permanently switching to an overloaded opposed reaction roll.

What's a 2d6 reaction roll?

When players encounter an enemy, roll 2d6 and sum them to determine their reaction, following this table:

If you want to read more, OSR Simulacrum did a really nice overview of their history and other fine minds have weighed in their usage and importance, including Goblin Punch, Eucatastrophic, and Murkdice. While some DnD editions have used d100 or d20 tables, the use of 2d6 makes for a nice bell curve of simple possibilities, where neutral reactions are the most likely, and immediate violence (or outright friendship) is rare. 

I use (or hack reaction rolls into) in every game I run, including DnD 5e (more on that at the end), because they are fundamental in making the world feel alive. Reaction rolls allow players to conceive of the world, not as a big battlefield, but one full of dangerous and fascinating creatures to cajole, bribe, negotiate with, intimidate, run from, and occasionally fight (when there is no other option).  

Building a better mousetrap

The 2d6 reaction roll is simple and hard to improve on.  But it has two weaknesses.  First, the minor: it requires addition and memorizing specific number ranges and/or having a printed table to hand.  Second, it has big broad categories with vague guidance, so the GM is not overly informed from the basic roll on what to do with the enemy.  Is an 8 neutral?  Look it up, then ask, WWTMD (What Would The Monster Do?).  In this, the reaction roll is much like the encounter die, and would also benefit from overloading--more detailed guidance. 

One response has been to develop monster-specific reaction tables, detailing what each monster will do with a positive/negative/neutral roll.  Called Miens in Troika, I love them but they are extra work for GMs--you need to make one for every monster (or monster type), and then have to look them up.  Something more general would help.  

To address these issues, consider this simple rule change: replacing the 2d6 with an overloaded 2d12 reaction roll.   

The idea: two opposed d12 rolls

We get more numbers from a d12 than a d6, and that's information and nuance we GMs can use.  Plus, the 2d12 oppose each other, much like the Duality dice in Daggerheart, modeling the Flight-Fight-Freeze-Friend response we all have when startled.  

But the fun part of 2d12 is this: the reactions, and the odds of those reactions, closely mimic the original 2d6 reaction roll.  They are just more nuanced and overloaded.  Want to know when a kobold is cautiously interested?  Afraid and about to flee?  Confused?  The dice tell you. 

How it works

Roll a Love d12 and an Anger d12 (different colors) and compare the values.  High values on the Love die mean Empathy and Curiosity, low values mean Indifference. High values on the Anger die mean Anger, Agitation, and Discomfort, and low values mean Calm.

If Love is greater than Anger by 4 or more, a positive reaction.  If Anger is greater than Love by 4 or more, a negative reaction.  Otherwise, the monster has a neutral reaction, affected by the relative balance of Love and Anger.  

When Love and Anger tie, the monster's reaction depends on their dice value.  Tied values near 1 are indifferent and calm, but at higher tied values of Love and Anger (>6), monsters are likely to react fearfully.  

That's the main idea in a nutshell.  See this graph:

Some stunning illustration here, huh? The green shades represent dice roll combinations that are negative reactions, the red shades are positive, white and yellow are neutral--yellow represents fear.  The labeled blue-dashed boxes represent extreme, rare reactions at high and low levels of Love and Anger. 

Love is better described as an Empathy-Curiosity roll (the Monster's attitude towards others), and Anger as an Anger-Agitation-Discomfort roll (the Monster's internal state, affected by its attitude and whether it is thriving or struggling).  So if Love wins, its Empathy towards you outweighs its Agitation and/or Discomfort.  If Anger wins, its internal Anger, Agitation, and/or Discomfort (hunger, for animals) outweighs its Curiosity towards you.  

In this roll, anytime values of Love and Anger are both above 6, it indicates increasing fear (yellow in the graph above, and the adjacent semi-fearful responses). Monsters are reacting with a mixture of strong Curiosity (noticing you), deep Agitation or Discomfort (uneasy), clear Empathy (understanding your capabilities), and passionate Anger (hating your presence).  

Like the Moldvay 2d6 reaction roll, immediate attacks and immediate friendship are rare--each occurring 2.78% (1/36) of the time, in both methods.  If you roll a 11 or 12 for Anger and a 1 or 2 for Love, the monster attacks.  If you roll a 11 or 12 for Love and a 1 or 2 for Anger, you have a friend.  

Also like the original 2d6 roll, the overloaded 2d12 has positive and negative reactions less often (25% of the time), and neutral reactions more often (50%).  Although that differs slightly from the original 2d6 odds (28% positive/negative and 44% neutral), the continuous nature of the overloaded roll means the odds are fluid.  If we say Anger that is 3 greater than Love leads to a tense, borderline negative situation, negative and near-negative reactions happen 31% of the time.

Unlike the original 2d6 reaction roll, this overloaded 2d12 reaction roll tells you clearly when monsters are likely to ignore the party, or to flee or avoid them. If you roll a 1 or 2 on both dice, the monster either doesn't care about their presence or is asleep.  If you roll an 11 or 12 on both dice, it will likely flee or react unpredictably, in turmoil and fear.  

Interpreting the Balance of Love and Anger

It all depends how much Empathy/Curiosity a monster is feeling towards others, and how much internal Anger/Agitation/Discomfort.  Here's my graphical interpretation of different possible states we encounter with the dice, extrapolating from the values of each die and these simple rules:

A) A positive/negative reaction results from a large difference (>3) between Love and Anger.  Otherwise the reaction is neutral and affected by both Love and Anger, with the bigger die more important.

B) Corner values (1, 2, 11, 12) lead to extreme reactions.

C) Ties between Love and Anger at low values are indifferent to cautious.  At high die values, with both Love and Anger >6, reactions (and especially ties) are increasingly tinged by Fear.  

I broke each d12 down into four ranges (1-3 low, 4-6 medium, 7-9 high, 10-12 extreme) and labeled each with a corresponding likely reaction.  These are not fixed categories, but suggested zones in a gradient of responses. 

In actual play, the reaction is a quick judgment call from the GM, based on the relative dice values--you don't need to reference the chart. 

Example 1: Anger 9 and Love 6--Anger is high, Curiosity is medium.  A neutral reaction, barely (difference <4).  The monster definitely doesn't like the party, but wants to know about them. That means they definitely don't trust them, falling just short of hostility.  Gollum meeting Bilbo.  

Example 2: Love 8 and Anger 4--Empathy is medium-high, Agitation is low-medium.  A positive reaction (difference >4, Love high).  They are interested in interacting peacefully with the party and learning more, but feel a bit uneasy.  I interpret that as somewhat guarded interest.  Beorn on the arrival of the 13 dwarves. 

Example 3: Love 11 and Anger 9--Empathy is extreme, Agitation is high.  A neutral reaction (difference <4). They are being very careful around the party, spooked by sudden movements, highly uneasy and afraid--but interested in interacting peacefully since they well understand their strength and could like the PCs.  I interpret that as fearful respect.  Gollum and Frodo in the marshes, before the turn.

Going further: modifying the overloaded reactions

You can modify the reaction rolls for different creatures by just adding or subtracting from each die after rolling, according to that creature's nature.  If you go over 12 or under 1, stop there.

• fraidy cat kobolds +3 Love, +3 Anger
• The Predator(TM) -3 Love, +6 Anger
• Friendly Allies +3 Love, -3 Anger
• Stolid neutrals -3 Love, -3 Anger
• Nervous friends +3 Love
• Hungry owlbear +3 Anger

Any reaction roll is just that, a first reaction.  It's a place to start negotiations from.  So if your PCs want to engage with the monster, I suggest they can change reactions by at most one step on each axis (+/- 3).  

You can use their actions to judge which axis is affected by their efforts. Do they bribe the monster with food, or flatter them? +3 to Love.  Do they speak slowly and softly to it, or trick it into thinking they are allies? -3 to Anger.  Calming a monster affects Anger, charming it affects Love.  

Sometimes it won't be clear, so it affects both Love and Anger (really GOOD food, accompanied by soft music; an accidental insult, paired with a bribe). But no gains should be cost-free and risk-free: time, money, food, the risk of offense, and so on.  I don't use formal negotiation rules, but they are worth internalizing.  

Some final notes (EXPANDED)

If you clicked on the Murkdice link above, you saw a 2d6 table that looks a bit like the table above.  Hilarious--I first saw it today, after working on this idea for weeks. Couple issues I see.  First, rolling 2d6 on each axis makes the corners extremely unlikely (e.g., 2 and 2, an immediate fight: odds of 1/1296)--most monsters will walk by you.  Second, I don't quite understand how the axes relate to the conditions listed: I do not want to print this out and have to look at it every time I roll.  But parallel evolution indeed--someone in the comments even suggested using 2d12 instead!  

If you want to run this system in 5e, I would start with some background reading on how to use reaction rolls in play (great advice here).  Next, I don't allow a character to add their Persuasion bonus to the initial reaction roll (it messes up the odds).  Instead, start with the initial reaction roll, and let them respond to what the monster does.  If they attempt placation or negotiation (or taunting), set a DC based on their actions and words, and a successful check (Persuasion, Intimidation, etc.) moves the Love or Anger 3 in the desired direction, just like I described in the previous section.  Or, you could, you know, just a make a fair ruling based on what they do.  If they feed the owlbear the last of their rations, let them have it!

If you want to run this system in pure B/X, just double the PC Charisma bonus added to the reaction roll (2d6 to 2d12 makes good math).  To directly emulate B/X rules (to within a few % points), apply the CHA bonus to the Love roll AND subtract that CHA bonus from the Anger roll.  And because several have asked: You can try running this system with opposed exploded 2d6, but the odds for ties are inflated and there's a lot less nuance and information as a result.  

Compared to a 2d6 roll, I feel the overloaded 2d12 reaction roll is an upgrade: more informative and intuitive to use, a touch easier, and super fun.  And if you try it out, you will use more d12, which we all know has many benefits. Please comment to let me know what you think of it!

First edit: Thanks to a great discussion with u/Current_Channel_6344 on Reddit, I renamed the Hate axis above to Anger, because while I was thinking of Hate as an internal feeling, it's more properly an external response like Love.  If a Monster is struggling or in desperation or hunger, it will experience anger, agitation, and discomfort.  If it is thriving, it will be calm.  

Second edit: You can do this all with cards!  There's a banging set of ideas about how to do that over at my colleague Dadstep's blog.  Dead simple, but so many possibilities.  I am so going to blog about this next...

Sequel 1: Hungry is the Dark: Reaction Draws as Alarm Dice

On sustaining creativity: lessons from my War of Art

Due to new medication, I'm battling insomnia this week.  So today I want to talk about health, and to share how I sustain my creativity.  This post is inspired in part by this great post on GM burnout, which led me to find this helpful thread, as well.  

I canceled my weekly game to rest and am avoiding driving, but blogging I *think* I can do. We will see. 

Before I get started, you might be asking, what creativity are you talking about Velocitree, what do you know about it?  Well yeah I have a new blog and run weekly games, and a couple small RPG publications in the oven, but I also have a secret day job where for 18 years I have been regularly writing different things, mostly articles, on often-depressing topics.  I work alongside other creators in that field, and we often talk about how we keep going.  So, putting humility aside for a moment, I have experience with maintaining creative output over decades, of burn-out, and life challenges.  

A follow-up: please forgive me for writing an advice post. I am no paragon to be imitated, but this bone-deep exhaustion I feel makes me want to help people right now. If anything I say here works for you, I will be content.  

The War of Art: How I fight

I don't have a lot to say regarding creativity.  What I want to talk about is how I, personally, stay creative in the long-term.  So this is not:

• general advice on GMing (I have only been at it a couple of years)
• about blogging (1.5 months!).  
• on the creative process itself (I am still learning!)  Go read this stuff:
• Character archetypes and NPC templates
• Crafting dungeons and adventures
• Writing a lot, writing a novel in 3 days
• Being creative (plus, blobbins!) and solving writer's block

What i want to talk about today is how I keep going as a creator.  It really boils down to several overlapping habits, for me picked up at different times, to different degrees. Each habit helps with a problem I face as a creator.  In no particular order, the problems, and my solutions so far.  

1) Creating things is emotional: 

I make something new because I love it (either the creating, the created object, or both).  I identify with it, it excites me.  And if you are like me, we clearly see my creation is not perfect.  It has flaws.  Other people see those flaws and come up with more.  The mistakes I made, they make me sad.  Or life gets in the way, pulls me away from projects, out of the headspace or time I need to finish them.  I accumulate projects that never see the light because they are flawed, I lost enthusiasm for them, or both. 

Past failures can weigh me down, make me think that past is prologue, and why bother trying again?  I have been to that world, seen the sights, could write a travelogue.

What works for me, to pull me out of that space, is a few choices that I try to make every day.  

Radical Optimism.  The world is on fire.  Species are going extinct everywhere. Rabid narcissists stoke fear and hate, and the center sometimes seems like it will not hold.  And yet Jane Goodall, seeing a world full of loss, maintained her optimism as a choice.  

Choosing to fight for the world I want, the creations I want to share, instead of listening to the dark and giving up--that's how I try to hold radical optimism.  It keeps me going.

Self-forgiveness.  I tell myself that humans can't learn if they don't make mistakes, and one day I will believe it.  Self-criticism silences writers: I keep reminding myself that that asshole, my inner critic, wants to protect me from sadness.  Those past failures?  Fuel for the future: ideas to mine, lessons learned.  

All this is easy, flippant, to write.  But every fresh disappointment means I do the work all over again in my head.  It's getting easier, slowly.  And if I never produce another thing?  I am still worthy of love, just as a baby is: I don't have to be productive all the time.  

I will never be big-time, or ever achieve all of my dreams.  So be it.  It's all right to be small-time (or 'little-bitty', like this great country song), because I am creating what I can, how I can.  To get my voice out, I just have to kick a little, to do the work, and I am not alone in that (best lyric: "It's too soon for accolades, and too late to quit").  It is what most artists, most creators, do.  

Four things have helped me forgive myself, accept criticism, and keep pushing:

    -Meditation, particularly the 1000s of free meditations from Insight Timer.   

    -Music that grounds me, like the good older country and new americana stuff that helps me see that all people struggle, you are not defined by your worst day, and the broken road you are on will bring you to good places.  

    -Surrounding myself with good people (friends, the family I created lucked into, supportive colleagues).  These people keep me positive, keep me seeing that I am worthy to create.  I just have to meet them halfway.  

    -Getting diagnosed.  As someone who just didn't realize how neuro-divergent I am until late in life, a lot of the failings I have felt great shame over are perfectly normal for how my brain works, shared experiences with thousands like me.  That is most freeing.

It wasn't easy for me to see or accept (also normal), but self-diagnosis is easy now, and got me started.  I have been creative in spite of my difficulties, which when you think about it, describes everyone who ever made anything.  I just see now that my brain means I can't do it like everyone else: I gotta find my own way to Rome, and can stop worrying about not taking theirs.

Finding Community.  Every few months, I get together with friends who do I what I do, and we share what matters to us.  Every few weeks, I have lunch with a friend in my field and we complain if we want to, or gush, or just listen.  Every week, I play creative games with my friends and family and chat with my neighbors about life.  Every day, I hop on supportive Discord and web forums to talk with nice people about this ridiculous RPG hobby.  

Unlike my family, who are always here for me and give me the strength to reach out, each of those different communities is one I sought out in the last decade. Before that, I often struggled alone.  They are all places I want to sustain, as they allow me to realize that I can share, in disappointment or stress or joy, and they broaden my field of view.  To create, I surround myself with creative friends, and learn.

I got a good piece of advice recently, on one of those Discord servers--give up on social media for debate.  Reddit isn't consistently curious or courteous; ENWorld is.  Any place folks feel anonymous serves up bad behavior on the regular.  

I gravitate to in-person and online communities with regulars, sustained by good will and mutual respect. RPG conventions are great for making new, like-minded friends. Just like Coming to America said: "You can't go to no bar to find a nice woman. You've got to go to nice places, quiet places, like the library and church."--except for fellowship, not a wife.

2) Creating things is exhausting: 

Everyone gets tired; making stuff is hard work.  When I am excited about something, my mind whirs and I forget to take breaks.  Or when I commit to something (on deadline, or to a colleague), I am crap at planning and then finish in a blur of overtime.  People approach me with ideas, and it's so hard saying no to good, fun things, even when I need to so I can yes to great things later on.  Too many projects pull me too many directions, chopping my time up and making me feel like I am making no progress.   I move at the speed of a growing tree.  And inevitably, as I try to kick my line of work soccer balls down the field and also be a good dad, self-care takes a back seat.  

So, yeah, it's hard.  Here are the things that work for me, to hack through this jungle and get a creative work out. 

Prepare the field.  Everything I make grows from a time and place when I am healthy enough to create.  To do that, I have to prioritize good self-care habits, like rest, meditation, nutrition, and exercise.  Rest is hardest for me, followed by exercise, and sometimes, like this week, good rest is out of my hands.  It's frustrating, but the habits I am building yield at least some quality time each week.  

Not every creative needs health and rest to make amazing works--a survey of the daily routines of hundreds of famous creatives is illuminating.  There's no one way to create--drunk or sober, up all night or in bed before dark, standing or sitting.  But the vast majority of productive artists have consistent creative habits--doing art at the same times, and often. And self-care is what I need to be consistent.

No thoughtless escaping.  With the various pulls in my life, between work, home, and hobbies, I am a champ at escaping into a screen when things get stressful.  That has started to ease, as I have finally tamed my video game hobby by restricting it to small-screen games that don't take much time, like Carcassone.  Being addicted to video games was not something I realized about myself, until some bad news caused me to disappear into Baldur's Gate 2 for ten days straight.  I also read addictively at times (half the night, on a weeknight), but I am making progress there too.  Repeat after me: "We don't start new books after 10 pm, and we don't feed the Mogwai after midnight."  

I still allow myself to escape, but in the directions I choose--towards writing, crafting games, drawing, gardening, and board games.  Choosing an escape purposefully, and limiting the time I spend escaping, is incredibly empowering.  This blog is one-such escape, made possible by deleting Shattered Pixel Dungeon, the best OSR game on iOS (until they finally port Caves of Qud).  Making space for blogging was literally the effort of a decade, with so many setbacks (and great video games) along the way.  

Varying it up.  I thrive on variety, as you may have gathered. Right now I have 250+ tabs open on my tablet, and another 100+ in two browsers on my computer.  The only way I make progress on a creative project to work on it exclusively, but that quickly becomes boring, and work slows.  My sweet spot, it turns out, is to to work on two creative projects in one day, in DIFFERENT fields. If they are the same field (my work projects), I feel like they compete for my mental focus.  But if one is a hobby project, and the other for work, I am happy to write for an hour or two for fun in the early morning, and then transition to work writing before lunch.  It gets my mind flowing, and puts a smile on my face.  

And then, when I am done working and have fed the kids, I consume creative works. I eat articles and books and blogs, drink audiobooks while playing the short video game du jour, chug videos and movies, and devour other people's games, for both rules and art.  This absorbing time both relaxes and inspires me--mixing things up from disparate origins is my favorite way to be creative, mulch for the soul.

Feeling burn-out.  After a creative disappointment, or a big deadline, or just because every week I have players to create for, I get burned out.  I linked to articles at the start of this essay about GM burnout, and I found myself nodding along and taking notes.  I don't have an easy solution here.  

But what I do now when I get burned out, is to slow down as soon as I can, and not pretend anymore that I can push through it.  I stop working on hard projects.  I don't reply to nonessential emails.  I watch comfort shows, read some sword and sorcery or sci-fi series, go on hikes in the woods, do different things, and rest.  Best way out of a rut is to turn the wheels, if you can't be pulled out.  

3)  Creating things is daunting: 

Blank pages, and unfinished projects, are all too easy to look away from.  At some level, all creation is about having enough faith in yourself to believe, that if you keep going, you will finish something worthwhile.  I read the War of Art a while ago, and while I don't think Resistance (procrastination, fear, self-doubt) is a metaphysical force, it certainly is a psychological one for me.  

I avoid starting.  I avoid finishing (more often).  I see flaws all too clearly, and have spent years perfecting projects when I would have been better served getting those ideas out there, learning from feedback and playtesting, and then done something better.  I think I worry folks will think less of me if they catch the weaknesses I see, and so I anticipate their feedback and respond to it. It's emotional shadow-boxing, and if taken to an extreme of perfectionism, paralyzing.  To avoid being stuck, to push myself out of my comfort zone of navel-gazing, I do one thing.

Contemplate death, then work backwards.  If you want a good explanation of how I put this solution into practice, I do recommend the War of Art as a book.  I follow it as best I can, and try to write every day I can, for at least a half hour.  But the one thing for me that unlocked that habit, that made it possible for me to read the War of Art and then, after a couple of years, implement daily writing in my own life?  I kept asking myself what mattered.  Often.  Over several years.  And then, I went to Mexico on a work trip two years ago, and it all became clear.

Having faith in myself is hard; having faith that I will die is easy.  What do I want to get done creatively before then?  Write a fantasy novel?  Yes.  Make a mark on my field of work?  Yes.  Publish a few role-playing game ideas and a creative new game system?  Yes.  Why do these things matter, why are they good uses of my time?  They will bring me great joy and make this world a tiny fraction brighter.    

When Tyler Durden holds a gun to that mini-mart clerk's head and tells him to drop everything and pursue his passion or die, that's inspiring, but it's not a realistic road map.  To create new things, I need to make space in my life by choosing which habits and urgent commitments must be done now.  I now do that by thinking what I want to do by the time I die, and working backwards to daily commitments of time.  Every day I write, I want to be writing a tiny bit of my tombstone and obituary, if you will.  The big end-of-life goals have to come first, be present every day, or I will not make them happen.

Because one day, I hope that my family and friends will gather around my tombstone, and tell our stories: about how much i loved them, the creative work of my life, and the fun we had togther.  In Mexico, on Day of the Dead, I walked a crowded cemetery and quietly cried, watching a family remember grave-side, watching people dance to a brass band on the path through the graves, then go back to remembering, tending flowers.

Every country should celebrate Day of the Dead: Mexicans have discovered that sharing memories about our lost loved ones is the only form of life after death that matters. But facing mortality is numbing at best, and mixing joyful celebration with sadness makes that easier.  That's their special wisdom, and why I was crying in the cemetery: it's just beautiful.  So yeah, that's how I write: I face death, plan backwards to now, and then do fun, creative things each day to make it easier.  Creation is always a matter of life or death, and joy when we clear the sill of the world.  

___

Thanks for reading.  Sorry if I got a little earnest there, but if you read this far, hopefully you know I am with you in this fight.  You got this.

Bow to the d12: Two more random ways to glory

Joel over at the Silverarm wrote a funny, yet serious, post advocating for greater use of Her Dodecajesty, the d12. In the spirit of having more d12s around our lives (and Joel has good ideas there), I present to you two additional ways to ROLL MORE D12.

In your typical 2d6 random encounter table*, the top and bottom entries are rare events with <3% probability.  That's where we serious GMs hide all the good shit, the dragons and wizards we WANT to play with but are too afraid to blow up our campaigns with.  

*Unlike talented designers named Beau who claim that rolling on GM-facing random tables has little benefit, I would argue that pre-game or behind-screen rolling on random tables is fun for the GM! We are a player too, and we aren't stuck with a bad roll. But rolling makes us consider possibilities we may not have otherwise thought of, and gets our brains making unexpected stories...

Joel rightly points out that the d12 is a sacred, beautifully-rolling shape that doesn't get enough love.  Plus, we should not do so much math, obsess over realistic play, and save the fun things for a rainy day that never comes.  Life is short, so bring on those dragons, and to quote Joel, "Rolling a d12 makes you smarter, luckier, a better lover."  What's not to like?  

So, without further ado:

Way #1: Queen d12 marries Prince d4 to bring peace to the Kingdom

Do you want BOTH a random table with a flat middle AND extra room on the top and bottom for some rarer darlings to brighten your day? Check out this graceful distribution:

See? This d12+d4 distribution is gorgeous for interesting random encounter tables: roll a d12, then a d4, and add them (or if you hate math and/or are tipsy, just count down the table from your d12 roll). Other people may add bigger dice for a similar effect, but a d4 limits the total options and mathiness and makes me smile, so d4 it is at my table.

A typical d12+d4 random encounter table has possibilities! It's flat from 5-13, and below and above that we can put the very rare stuff that we wish we encountered more often. 2-4 and 14-16 actually add up to 12.5%, so we encounter dragons and wizards MORE often. But that might get a little hairy, so we can use those probability shoulders to include a range of escalation--see below:

2--An angry dragon attacks (the unlikely possibility we GMs were afraid of)

3--Dragon encounter, non-combat (a good reaction roll, a shake down, etc.)

4--Dragon sign (you see marks of its passing)

5 through 13--Ten common and rare encounters, as we want.

14--Wizard magical effects (changing the world in their wake)

15--Wizard, genial (caught them on a tolerant day)

16--Wizard, angry (you have meddled in their affairs...)

The world is wondrous with a d12+d4 encounter table. You are likely to see and talk to dragons and wizards often, but get killed by them rarely...as long as you are properly respectful!

On to:

Way #2: Twin d12s, Love and Hate, create intuitive Reaction Rolls

One d12 twin is black as night, filled with all the dark instincts and desires of a dangerous world. The other d12 twin is red as sunset, filled with love and warmth and understanding.

When you encounter a monster and don't know how it will react (and you may or may not be too tired/drunk to remember the standard 2d6 reaction table), remember the 2d12 twins, black Hate and red Love. Why roll 2d6 for a reaction roll, when you can roll 2d12?

Immediate Attack: You rollled 11/12 Hate and 1/2 Love.

Enthusiastic Friendship: You rolled 1/2 Hate and 11/12 Love.

The statistically wise among you no doubt noted that the odds are the same as the 2d6 roll: what is different about the 2d12?

Because we can do the rest on vibes.  If Love far exceeds Hate, the enemy doesn't attack right away.  If Hate far outweighs Love, it is hostile.  If they are equal or near-equal (they are within two of each other 37.5% of the time), it is uncertain, open to negotiation, or confused.  

Because you get more information in one roll. Love and Hate can be near each other for a variety of values, right? How big those values are tells us how active, agitated, and conflicted our enemy is.  Roll two 1s?  It's sleeping or zoned out.  Roll two 12s?  It's locked on and practically vibrating with indecision as it wrestles with whether to talk to or eat the party.  

Because you can easily lean on the scale. In a dangerous environment, Hate is more powerful than Love, but in a civilized one, the reverse is true. Examples: You could require a 1 on Love and 12 on Hate for Attacks in a peaceful, civilized place, lowering the chance from 2.78% to 0.69%. In a dungeon, a 12 on Love and 1 on Hate could be required for enthusiastic friendship, with the other friendship-number rolls resulting in guarded courtesy. In a large-scale battle between armies, near-ties are meaningless as soldiers make snap decisions--Love 7, Hate 8? Soldiers attack. A powerful spell altering minds, or your party being charming? Add bonuses to Love and/or Hate rolls. And so on...

The d12 is there for you to roll with. Take it up, and achieve ultimate power!!

ALL HAIL King d12

Nimbler: Reviewing Nimble 2e, part 2

This is a continuation of a review.  In part 1, I described what I like about Nimble 2e.  In this Part 2, I outline some things this homebrewer would fix, and give my overall take.

The thorns:

And now we come to the part of this review where (if anyone reads it), I may get some angry notes from Nimble 2e fans.  For there are things about this system that are not quite my favorite flavor of ice cream, that prick at me.  Four of these 'thorns', I think I can prune with some armchair homebrew.  The others are style choices that just aren't my cuppa joe, like strawberry ice cream, and I encourage you to ignore my take if you don't agree. 

Four things I would prune:

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1)  Defend and armor don't seem real to me.  You can Defend once per turn, at any time, as a reaction.  Defending applies your Armor and Dex to the incoming attack, reducing its damage.  But here's the thing--Armor now doesn't exist for the rest of your turn, like Schrodinger's cat-mail. Even if you are wearing plate armor, you can only use it to reduce damage against ONE attack.  First goblin tries to stab ya?  He fails.  That next goblin, and the next one?  They line up, it's Sunday dinner and you are the full-damage turkey.  

You might be thinking, "This is real, defending against more than one enemy is hard!"  And if this doesn't jar you out of the fantasy, awesome.  But it does for me.  Historically, armor was handy in melee, great scrums of people thwacking on all sides with axes and spears.  Armor should help protect your back at all times, even when you are not actively defending or parrying.  

This also leads to unrealistic situations.  Example: Pally is level 3 with +2 dex, and wearing a chain shirt and iron shield (15 armor). Bobbi the goblin is attacking with a scimitar (1d6+2) and gets one attack.  If Pally Defends each turn, Bobbi would have to explode twice to even damage Pally—odds at 3%.  But add one just more gobbo, and suddenly Pally is getting damaged each turn. Huh?

When I posted this puzzler on the Nimble Discord, folks characterized a goblin as an angry child with a big knife, dangerous only in numbers. But this is unsatisfying ex post facto reasoning--the game mechanics are glaringly unrealistic in this edge case. No more so than HP I suppose, but I am of the camp that believes any angry idiot with a sword is dangerous to a swordsman, even by accident. In DnD 5e, with Pally's AC at 16 and Bobbi at +4 to hit, Bobbi has a 45% chance to damage Pally. And if Bobbi crits, Pally is in trouble. This is more real to me.

So, I want two things from Nimble 2e here. I want armor to matter for every attack, and I want Bobbi to be able to damage Pally, dammit. So here's how I would homebrew Nimble 2e to make armor feel real to me:

A) Against every attack, Armor has passive defense (2 light, 3 medium, 4 heavy). This is not added to your Defend roll, but subtracted from other hits you receive.

B) Let's make Monster Criticals more similar to PC criticals--they still can't bypass initial armor from Defend (unless they exceed it), but let's say that the exploding dice damage portion bypasses armor.

So if Bobbi crits, Pally's Defend reaction stops the first 1d6+2, but Bobbi's second exploding 1d6 can damage Pally through his medium armor. He now has a 15% chance of damaging Pally a little, and a 3% chance of decent damage. Good! He's still going to lose, but it's a realistic fight.

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2) Square-counting movement and kiting.  Grids are useful to me in big combats for approximation, but I don't like playing on a strict grid. Nimble 2e is focused on grid play, with all distances in numbers of squares.  However, it does have conversion rules for range bands (Close/Near/Far) in the GM guide.  Good so far. 

Unfortunately, with the three-action economy, Nimble 2e also has a kiting problem.  Move in your full move, attack, back away full move.  If the monster moves less than you, it will never be able to attack you in melee--only PCs have opportunity attacks.  Here's some simple homebrew to stop kiting in its tracks:

A) Using a grid: Once you have entered melee range, getting out is difficult terrain because you have to face your opponent.  In other words, leaving melee range, you can only move half of your number of spaces, backing up or sidling sideways, on guard.  This is how I ditch opportunity attacks in 5e.  

B) Using range bands: When you approach to attack, you move from Near to Close (1 Move).  Leaving, the same in reverse (1 Move).  But when you leave Close, it ceases to exist as a range band for your opponent.  The opposing fighter can then advance across Near to Close in one move to catch you up, in 1 move.   

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3) Assess has three serious issues.  As an action, Assess allows you to make a skill check (DC 12) and then either ask the GM a question, -1 on incoming attack rolls against you, or +1 to your attack die on one attack.  But it is rarely the optimal choice, the '5e Grapple' of Nimble 2e.  

First, if you want information, then it's a useful action, but it runs the risk of pulling people out of the fiction.  Middle of the fight, GM is describing the ghoul's slavering jaws and screams, player Assesses, 'How much HP does that ghoul have left?"  Instant balloon puncture of the ambiance.  

Second, if you want to receive less damage, awesome, do Assess.  But what happens if you fail your Assess skill check?  Nothing.  Crickets.  For a game that prioritizes having something interesting happen every turn, this is an odd design choice.  Why isn't there a fall back 'something helpful' that happens if you fail your Assess check?  

Third, if you want to do more damage, using Assess to +1 on one attack is only slight better than attacking again.  Let's compare attacking with daggers (1d4) three times to Assessing, then attacking twice.

Attack x3: First attack average is ~3 damage.  Second attack misses 44% of the time, so ~1.6.  Third attack misses 58% of the time, so ~1.  Total of 5.6 damage on average, and your chances of critting are 25%, 6.25% and 1.5%.

Assess/Attack x2:  If you pass the Assess check, first attack can't miss, so average is ~3.28 damage.  Second attack (d4) misses 44% of the time, so ~1.6 damage. Total of 4.9 +1 (Assess) =5.9 damage, with critting at 25% and 6.25%.  

In short, Assess leaves you with slightly more damage on average, and you can't miss.  But if you fail the Assess check***, you just do less damage.   That means on average, you will do less damage with Assess. 

***Let's say you have a 35% chance of failing your Assess check (+4 on the skill check).  

So I want Assess to avoid pulling people out of the story, to have a fallback benefit if the skill check fails, and to be consistently worth it from a damage perspective. Here's my Nimble 2e homebrew for that: 

A)  To avoid gamist questions, have a table rule that all Assess questions have to be from the perspective of the characters, not players.

B) When you Assess, you can make a skill check to lower damage or ask a question.  But if you fail that check, or just want to increase damage, you can do that without a roll.  

C)  If you Assess to increase damage, you actually raise the size the damage die, and you crit on either the original or new max value. For example, from 1d4 to 1d6, you crit on 4 or 6.  Your chances of a crit now go up when you Assess (from 25% to 33%).****

****The math holds up with bigger die sizes. 1d6 to 1d8, crit on 6/8, 17 to 25% crit.  1d8 to 1d10, crit 8/10, 12 to 20%.  1d10 to 1d12, crit on 10/12, 8 to 17%. Interestingly, if you Assess, the high-end crit damage of a 1d4 (now 1d6) weapon is higher than that of a 1d10, but with lower average damage and a 1:6 chance to miss instead of 1:10. And you can dual wield daggers, giving you advantage on your 1d6 roll and damage output which beats a 1d12 weapon in some ways.

These homebrew tweaks turn Assess into a reliable tool for high single-strike damage for small weapon wielders. As an added bonus, smaller weapons, once arguably worse, now have the potential for greater damage at the cost of greater miss chance. That's a fun rules change!

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4) A graft: we need stunts! and Hindered rolls!  If there is one criticism of Nimble 2e combat actions, it is that they are a fixed menu of options, with less room for creativity than some might like.  If there is another, it's that Advantage and Disadvantage have huge, swingy impacts on outcomes (especially on the smaller-than-d20 damage dice).  They are a big stick, and sometimes you want a twig.  So let's bring in Stunts and Edges/Hindrances.

Graft #1: Stunts are tricks PCs do in combat that make life harder for enemies, but that often don't do additional damage by themselves.  See Fighter Mighty Deeds in Dungeon Crawl Classics (easily implemented in 5e), Gambits in Mythic Bastionland, Exploits in Tales of Argosa, and Battlemaster manuevers in 5e (but for everyone).  It's freeform combat, and it makes fighters fun, but I like to make stunts possible for everyone (fighting classes just being better at it).  

But how to implement a stunt mechanic in Nimble 2e?  First option, we can use a cousin of these simple rules from the Old Skull Blog:

A1) If a player crits, they can choose to do a combat maneuver (swing down onto an enemy, disarm them, knock them down, push them off a cliff, etc.).  The affected enemy can choose to either take the additional crit damage, or be subject to the maneuver.  The GM just makes a reasonable call for the enemy each time.  

Alternatively, we can make enemies save to avoid being subject to the maneuver against their will:

A2) If a player crits, they can choose to do a combat maneuver (swing down onto an enemy, disarm them, knock them down, push them off a cliff, etc.) if they forego their critical damage.  The affected enemy must make a skill check to avoid being subject to the maneuver, with the DC equal to 5+critical damage.  

If you want to get fancy about it, you could give non-magical classes option A2, and magical classes option A1.  

And once we graft stunts into Nimble 2e, it's easy to adjudicate their impact.  The normal consequences of a stunt could simply be to impose disadvantage on the enemy's rolls next turn, or anything approved by the player and GM.  If you want to try to push that goblin off the edge of the cliff, roll for it!

Graft #2:  When you Assess to increase damage, the Core Rules call it "Increase the Primary Die Roll against a target by 1."  Boy that's a mouthful.  Given that we supercharged using Assess for damage above, let's give going up a die size a better name: an Edge.  

Numerically, gaining an Edge is a less impactful benefit than gaining Advantage: in our homebrew, going up a die size raises mean damage by 1 and crit chance by 8%. So you could gain an Edge using Assess, or, like advantage, the GM could grant an Edge from good positioning, using a special dragon-killing arrow, etc.  If you got two Edges, well, go up the die chain, and count multiple possible crit values (my dagger (1d4) with two Edges rolls a 1d8 and crits on a 4/6/8.  Not bad!  One possible dice chain:

1d3 - 1d4 - 1d6 - 1d8 - 1d10 - 1d12 - 2d6 - 2d8 - 1d20 - 2d10

What goes up, though, can also go down. Disadvantage is a pretty big whack in Nimble. With a dagger with 1 disadvantage, your odds of missing rise to 44%. If you want to have a smaller negative impact, give the PC a Hindrance.

B) A Hindrance is the opposite of an Edge, you go down a die size. If you crit, you must roll a second crit to confirm it, otherwise you do not explode the damage.

With a Hindrance you do 1 less damage on average, with a greater miss chance. And the odds of critting with a Hindered shortsword blow (d6->d4) are 6.25% (1 in 16), worse than the 16.7% of a normal shortsword but better than a shortsword with disadvantage (2.8%).

Things that are not my flavor of ice cream:

These takes are (even more) my personal taste, so I will keep this shortish.  The Hero book is gorgeous and inspiring, and lays out some creative, interesting, and fun classes.  As might be expected, they include traditional 5e class equivalents, but there are novel takes on class tropes, coupled with very fun mechanics.  And yet, the Hero Book is my least favorite book of the three.

Why?  The classes are 5e levels of intricate, very combat focused (there are very few utility spells and out-of-combat powers), and in a couple cases class powers strike me as a bit disassociated/video-gamey (e.g., Taunt: for aggro).  But given that this ruleset is trying to woo 5e and PF2e fans, none of that is a surprise.  

I suppose my initial dislike for the Nimble 2e classes stems from two sources.  First, Nimble 2e nicely boils down the 5e design into four small pages per class, and this distillation made me realize I don't personally like complex, power-crafting 5e-style classes any more.  I guess I now want simplicity, coupled with lots of customization options and creative, flexible spells.  Honestly, I thank Nimble 2e for the epiphany!  

Second, the Nimble 2e classes are relatively rigid and set.  There are only two subclasses each, by design.  The spell list is small (for now) and you can change up your powers regularly in-game, which means each time I make a Shadowdancer for example, I will use the same pool of powers.  

Now, it's absolutely impossible for a single creator to anticipate all the different class visions character crafters want to fill--what they should do is make it EASY for anyone to play in their playground.  For example, the GLOG has 100s of class templates because it's a snap to make one.  And I salute Nimble 2e's efforts in this direction, with a wonderfully direct and comprehensive free Creator's Kit that outlines class design principles.  While I still think Nimble 2e's overall complexity around character powers makes class creation daunting (check out the length of the character-leveling table in the kit), it is clear they are trying to meet homebrewers more than half-way.

To add another personal preference, Nimble 2e has inherited 5e's Red Queen leveling, in that all numbers must go up every level (more math!) so that PCs can keep up with ever harder monsters.  Level-appropriate encounters are much easier to calculate in this system, but still a must.  I honestly wonder if this game might be just as much fun to play for me if I skip leveling up heroes and monsters in terms of their stats and HP.   

To round out my list, the game needs new material, sold not as individual classes or monsters, but in big, reasonably priced collections.  I hear a Kickstarter is coming later in 2026, and to paraphrase a fellow restaurant critic, "I am not quite in love with this food: serve me more of it please." 

So, do I want to play it?

100%, I want to both play and GM Nimble 2e this year.  But I think I will run it as a one shot unless my table revolts and refuses to go back to 5e.  Personally, the inner Frankenstein in me wants to bolt the Nimble 2e combat system onto something with simpler (or no) classes, like Knave or Shadowdark or Mork Borg.  

But if you find yourself nodding along with me at the critiques in this last part, and don't plan to make an excursion to Nimble-land with me this year, let me close by saying that the Game Master Guide is a good return on your money, even if you never plan to play Nimble 2e: great advice, great ideas, and concise as a blade.  I would put it up there with the Mothership Warden Operation Manual as a great beginning GM guide, for any fantasy system.  

I wasn't paid for this review by anyone, and if you don't like it, please write an article on your RPG blog about why I am wrong (don't have an RPG blog?  Start one!).  Or comment below, if you must.  Thanks for reading!