Ability Score Generation: Part 2 in a Series About Dominoes

Using dominoes for ability score generation works a lot like the previous rules. For this, since you are emulating 3d6, you can either use two sets of double 9s or just one set. If you use one set of double 9s, a friendly warning. It does have a different probability spread than classic 3d6. The probability percentages are below, using the value of 55 dominoes for a set of double 9s.

Value	Probability Fraction	Prob. %
0	1/55	1.8%
1	1/55	1.8%
2	2/55	3.6%
3	2/55	3.6%
4	3/55	5.4%
5	3/55	5.4%
6	4/55	7.2%
7	4/55	7.2%
8	5/55	9.0%
9	5/55	9.0%
10	5/55	9.0%
11	4/55	7.2%
12	4/55	7.2%
13	3/55	5.4%
14	3/55	5.4%
15	2/55	3.6%
16	2/55	3.6%
17	1/55	1.8%
18	1/55	1.8%

As you see, the average runs to about 8-10, or 9. This could mean that values will end up a bit lower than what you would find on simply rolling 3d6. With this method, the bell curve is shallower. So while the average stat dropped will be 1.5 lower than on 3d6, you have nearly 4x the chance of rolling an 18 (and conversely, a 1) than you do rolling 3d6. So keep this in mind. This method will produce average scores with a higher deviation to the extremes when using a single set of double 9s. Now remember that we'll have to remove the 0, 1, and 2 values to make the values right, so many of these percentages will increase. That means that in reality, we will be drawing from a boneyard of 51 dominoes. So drawing a 3 will actually be a 5.8% chance, compared to .46% on 3d6. That's a bit rough. So how do we balance out these probability issues?

Usage #2: Generating Ability Scores With 1 Set of Double 9s

For this method, put your double 9 set into a bag, removing the 0, 1, and 2 values. Mix everything up, then draw seven bones. Add the two numbers on each bone to reveal your stat. Write them down. 

Now, try and match up dominoes with like numbers. So if you draw a 4-3 and a 3-9, you can connect then via the 3. A bone can only connect to two other tiles (one for each number), unless it's a spinner, in which it can connect to four. Count how many tiles are connected. This is the value you can add to any of your stats. You can even split them between stats. If you can connect two groups of dominoes, then total the tiles and add them. Once you assign your number to your stats, drop the lowest and assign them how you desire.

Example: Mariah is making a Psychic for her Stars Without Number game. She draws seven bones, getting [4-3, 3-6, 5-7, 8-3, 4-2, 7-1, & 4-0], for values of [7, 9, 12, 11, 6, 8, 4]. Some rough scores. Mariah begins connecting the dominoes, able to connect the 2-4, 4-3, and 3-8 together as well as the 5-7 and 7-1 in a separate group. This gives a total of 5 tiles that are connected. Now she can split the 5 to any of her stats, or simply add it all to one. Mariah decides to add 4 to the 12 and 1 to the 11, then drops the 4. Her new stats are 7, 9, 16, 12, 6, and 8. A little better.

At the GM's option, a player can trade out a stat and draw a new one from the boneyard. Play can choose whichever one they want. This can help alleviate the more wonkiness of the stat distribution of double 9s.

So that's ability score generation for dominoes. While it's a bit more complicated than just rolling 3d6, there is a sort of fun moving around the dominoes and connecting them together. If you find fun in tactile stuff, this is definitely great. I find it takes the same amount of time as rolling 3d6. And, you can simply lay out all the values and write them down in one go, rather than rolling 3d6 six times and writing the values after each roll. Let me know what you think below. 

An Exercise in Improvisation, Procedural Generation, and Small Scale Adventuring

For a very long time, I've run games in the same setting. That is, a world that takes influence from aspects of the Early Modern Period, the Age of Sail, and Columbian Exchange in an island chain that is a pastiche of the Caribbean. There you see aspects of swashbuckling tales like The Three Musketeers and Pirates of the Caribbean, weird magic a la Clark and Howard, ancient aliens, gritty sword and sorcery, tales of endemic warfare, and Caribbean folklore, both Taino/Carib and Post Columbian. So you're likely to battle alongside hupia against vicious colonist militia men on the remains of an ancient alien space craft.

However, I've been really interested in trying a campaign where I control very little of the world itself. One that is as randomly created as humanly possible, from the hexmap to the landmarks and adventures that can be found. Doing this was to be an exercise in drawing inspiration from the random and interpreting results to be interesting for adventures, no matter how crazy it may combine. I want to improve my improvisation abilities and remain flexible against weird results, especially since it's a good preparation for dealing with the most random aspect of gaming; your players.

I also had a second goal for this. I've been playing a hell of a lot of Witcher 3 and in that game, you have all this adventure crammed into an area that could be smaller than a six-mile hex. So, I wanted to replicate that feeling of tons of adventure packed in almost 15,000 acres of land. I want each sub hex to have something there that was interesting. Whether it's tracks and spoor of a local creature, a lair of a demon, a city, ruins, landmark... anything that is interesting.

Doing this was interesting, as after a couple hours, I had enough adventures and a campaign that could easily last me weeks, if not months. The books I used were

• d30 Sandbox Companion: An amazing toolkit that I probably used the most when doing this. I also used the d30 Terrain Hex Generator a great deal.
• The Perilous Wilds: The second most used book. Even though it's Dungeon World, the Ask the Fates section was great for populating each of my sub hexes.
• Hex Map Pack: I used this for my hex map. I preferred the 6:1 ratio, but you can use less granular ones if you wish.
• Dodeca Series: Primarily the Weather generator, because I feel it's the most in-depth climate and weather rules out there. My game is meant to be a wilderness survival game, so weather is important. But everything else in this cheap book is really useful.
• The Disoriented Ranger's Random Narrative Generator: Along side the adventure generator in the d30SC, +Jens D. blog really helped to add some interesting twists and complications to different things going on.
• Dice Dungeon Generator: I used my dice dungeon generator whenever a dungeon or ruin rolled itself on my hex map.
• Vornheim: Despite being a wilderness adventure, I also have a city and ruins to be explored. And this book has always been a staple in my games.
• Adventure, Conqueror, King: I used this to stock my dungeons and for the economy. The world building aspect is really great too, but I didn't use that this time. Mostly it's because that's better for a top-down approach of campaign building and I was going from a bottom-up approach. If Lairs and Encounters ever come out, I'd love to use that.

My Approach

My only rules were to keep it as random as possible. Things like town names and NPC names and number were created by me.

1. I started with a single six-mile hex and had several one-mile hexes as the sub hexes. Counting the half and third hexes as separate hexes, this gave me over forty adventuring locations in a single six-mile hex. 
2. Using the d30 Hex Terrain Generator, I randomly rolled what the middle hex terrain would be, then rolled what each surrounding sub hex's terrain would be until I filled up the six-mile hex.
3. I used the d30 Natural Features and Phenomena table to fill up the sub hexes with crazy stuff.
4. I'd then roll a d3 to see how many special and interesting discoveries there were in a given hex. Then, using Perilous Wild's Discovery table, I rolled for each sub hex to see what would be there. I got a lot of threes so this took a bit. Next time I might skip the d3 roll.
5. For each result of a dungeon, I used my Dice Dungeon Generator to create them. For things like ruins or intact keeps, I used Vornheim's building generator.
6. I stocked the dungeons and ruins using ACKS, though I tweaked the table to have monsters that would fit a tropical setting. I also used this for treasure stocking.
7. I rolled for the weather for 14 days. I started the campaign on a New Moon and set up tides at 8A/2P/8P/2A for times. Whenever I roll weather, I always seem to get a tornado result. It's become a joke among my friends.
8. I then took a look at everything on the hex map and interpreted the results, making connections that seemed like they would work and filling in some results with monsters or NPCs that caught my eye. Also used the d30 NPC Maker to make a lot of NPCs for the area.
9. For each possible adventure, I used the Random Narrative Generator. For simple quests, I only rolled on it once or twice. For more in depth adventures, I rolled three to four times, and for longer campaigns, I rolled five times.
10. Made a random encounter table
11. Had a beer

The original terrain map after rolling

Above is the preliminary hex map. Big hex is 6 miles and the sub hexes are 1 mile. The letters are the terrain for the area. W is water, H is hill, F is forest, S is swamp, and P is plain. WZ stands for Wild Zone, which is a campaign specific hex that I talk about here and here. 

At this point, I had made all the connections and was essentially ready to run the campaign. I wrote down all of the adventure ideas that I had randomly rolled up and interpreted and I have to say, I was really excited for what was created. The biggest thing I like is that each 1 mile hex has at least three interesting hooks in there for adventures. Everything from treasure maps to tracks of a creature to dungeons to NPCs. And the best part is that despite the results looking quite disparate, the adventure narrative between things really work out. On paper, this looks fun and I can't wait to run this for a group. Once I get my scanner working, I'll have to post my notes up on everything.

I learned that there is a greater value to random rolls than I honestly first imagined, even with my love of random tables. I feel a bit more in the right headspace for the world because I've had to interpret everything instead of creating, though there was plenty of creating from the inspiration of the rolls. I think that my improvisation skills will benefit from this little exercise. Now I just need  a chance to run it.

My next post, I want to post up the final map and the notes I made for each area that I rolled up. With the move and packing, my time will be a bit limited on what I can post.

Another Stat Rolling Idea

So full disclosure, I'm not really a fan of rolling dice for character creation. Never was, even playing through 2nd and 3.x as a kid. I prefer point buy. With my recent foray into OSR gaming, I really gave it a try with ACKS and other systems, but ultimately, it's not my cop of tea. That's a post for another day. So I was brainstorming a way to combine point array and dice rolling. Kind of a compromise. This was actually done for a project I'm working on.

For the three stats, you have six numbers you can plug in. 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, and 6. Put those in any of the stats you have. Once all six numbers are in each of the six stats, you can then roll 3d6, drop the lowest and add the number. That's your stat now. So, if I have a 4 in STR, and I roll a 4, 2, and 5, then I'd replace the 2 with a 4 and have a STR 13.

For the rolling, you could do it a number of ways. You can have them roll it first, then assign it later. That tends to make more powerful characters. You could have them choose the stat, roll it, and keep it. You could also do something in between and let them switch two values. It's up to you. Doing practice rolls this seems to work pretty well. I tend to notice average characters with one or two really good stats, mostly average stats, and one bad stat.

Stat Rolling Idea

I recently purchased the Black Hack after seeing a lot about it. While I'm not as enamored by it as everyone else seems to be, there are some points I like. I thought the way it does usage dice is cool and reminds me of my weapon degradation rules. The way they do rolling stats is interesting, as it takes into account if someone rolls a very high stat (15+). Reading it, I was inspired to do something similar, but for rolling low rolls. 

Sorry about your damn luck!

Rolling Stats

Roll 3d6 down the line as normal. Like in the Black Hack, if you get a 15 or higher, your next roll is made on a 2d6+2. If you roll a 6 or below, your next roll is made on a 2d6+5, then as normal afterwards.

This method helps to make it less likely that a player will have multiple stats below 6 and really helps to give them a chance to get a greater stat to make up for the low stat. So if you roll a bad STR, you at least have the chance of getting maybe a higher DEX.

Why 2d6+5?

Looking at the probability curves of 3d6 and 2d6+2, you'll see that the average of 2d6+2 is 1.5 lower than the average of 3d6. It allows for the average to come out lower to make up for the fact that you rolled really high before. Furthermore, 2d6+2 completely cuts out any result of 15+, since you already rolled that before. I decided to apply these same principles for rolling a higher amount. 2d6+5 has an average roll of 12, which is 1.5 over the average of 3d6. It also completely removes the results of 6 and below, making it easier to land something higher than a 10. Overall, I think this does what the original rule does. It helps to make an interesting character with some clear strengths and weaknesses and normalizes the rolls a little bit. Both of these help to make a character that's not a superhuman powerhouse nor a chump.

Dice Dungeon Generator

So in an attempt to do more mechanical exercises for D&D, I made a quick and dirty dungeon generator. I've given it a couple of tries, ran through some, and am running my girlfriend through a solo ACKS adventure through one. After some much needed tweaks, here we are. It doesn't take very long to generate, even with larger rooms. You can make some pretty big sprawling dungeons with this. And like with all things, you aren't beholden to the rules. If you want a secret passage to bypass half of the dungeon, you should do it. Make that dungeon yours! This just lays out the barest of bones. So grab some d6s and a d10 and let's get ready to generate!

Dungeon Generator

First, you have to decide how many rooms you want in your dungeon. You can simply roll a dice (I rolled a d30 and got an 11), pick a number, or just do the steps below until you feel like you have enough rooms.

Draw your starting room. I draw everything like a flowchart, with rooms being circles and hallways being lines. Next you can roll how many rooms connect into your current room. For each room, roll for their location, what stands in the way of them, and which vertical level the other room is. You can pick which ones to roll and which ones to leave out. If you want everything on the same level, simply ignore the second table and for the third table, use a d8 instead of the d10. If you want something that uses only the cardinal directions, like a building, then for the third table, use a d4 instead of a d10.

1d6 # of Rooms Connected

1-3   One

4-5   Two

6      Three

1d6 Vertical Level of Next Room

1      Above Current Level

2-5  On Same Level

6      Below Current Level

1d10 Location of the Hallway

1      North

2      East

3      South

4      West

5      Northeast

6      Southeast

7      Southwest

8      Northwest

9      Straight Up

10    Straight Down

1d6 State of the Hallway

1      Open

2      Closed

3      Locked

4      Blocked

5      Trapped

6      Hidden

From here, you interpret the dungeon results. Sometimes you get weird results, but they often lead to cooler rooms. If you have a set amount of rooms and you ever roll more Rooms Connected than you have rooms, those hallways are simply dead ends. Getting a room on the same level as your current one but with an entrance going straight up/down means the room is simply bigger and has a second level.

And that's it. You can use several dungeon stocking and dressing generators from various D&D retroclones. I've been using the ACKS one and that seems to work out really well in the solo game I'm running. Some point this week, I want to post up some game reports of those games. Let me know if there are any additions or changes you'd make to this. I'll see if I can scan and post up an example of usage with this.