Category Archives: Tabletop Gaming

D&D 5E Monster Stat Blocks

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When comparing AD&D with D&D5E adventures, I noticed something missing from 5E adventures: inline monster stat blocks. Sometimes, a 5E adventure might have new monster stat blocks in the adventure appendix, but as far as inline stat blocks for monsters in an encounter, they are sadly absent.

It is true that not all AD&D adventures have these inline stat blocks. For example, inline stat blocks are mostly absent from the G1-3: Against the Giants series, except for unique NPCs, and unique characteristics of monsters such as hit points:

But inline monster stat blocks do see use in other AD&D adventures. Here is an example of an inline monster stat block from S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, one of my favorite AD&D adventures.

This stat block answers so many questions about this monster. What is its armor class? What is its movement speed? How many hit dice does it have? How many attacks does it perform? What does its breath weapon do? What are its immunities?

For me, stat blocks like this make running the adventure much easier, because they save me the trouble of looking up the monster in a separate book or online reference. The latter trouble is only compounded when an encounter has multiple different kinds of monsters.

Recently, I bought a very large 5E adventure. To my disappointment, it had no inline stat blocks. This had me thinking that if I were to publish more 5E adventures, I should also include inline stat blocks in them. But I had never seen such a thing in any published 5E adventure.

I searched for a condensed stat block format for 5E. But I was unable to find one. So I started working on one. I started with the first monster in the 5E Monster Manual: the aarakocra. Here is the MM entry:

I copied the relevant text and using some abbreviations:

Aarakocra. Medium humanoid, NG, AC 12, hp 13 (3d8), Spd 20 ft., fly 50 ft., Str 10 (+0), Dex 14 (+2), Con 10 (+0), Int 11 (+0), Wis 12 (+1), Cha 11 (+0); Skills: Perception +5; Senses: passive Perception 15; Languages: Auran; CR 1/4 (50 XP); Special: Dive attack, deal extra 3 (1d6) dmg w/ melee attack after flying at least 30 feet; Actions: Talon: melee weapon attack, +4 to hit, reach 5 ft, 1 target, 4 (1d4+2) slashing dmg; Javelin: melee or ranged weapon attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft or range 30/120 ft, 1 target, 5 (1d6+2) piercing dmg.

My first try was 545 characters long. This is far too long. Six lines of text. There is too much information to take in at a glance. And visually it is worse than the original stat block from the MM.

So I solicited help from Twitter (here), and after working through multiple iterations, we ended up with this:

Aarakocra. humanoid, M, NG, AC 12, hp 13 (3d8), Spd 20′, fly 50′, Dex +2, Wis +1; Perception +5; Lang: Auran; CR ¼ (50 XP); Dive attack, +1d6 (3) dmg w/ melee after flying ≥30′; Talon: melee, +4 to hit, 1d4+2 (4) S dmg; Javelin: melee or ranged (30′), +4 to hit, 1d6+2 (5) P dmg.

Three lines of text and a much more reasonable 277 characters. Short enough even to fit into a Twitter post!

Having stat blocks like this at my disposal would make me much more inclined to run a 5E adventure again, and when I publish another 5E adventure, I will be sure to include these condensed stat blocks.

Additionally, I am considering putting together an online reference for myself and others to use that would have condensed 5E monster stat blocks for use in our 5E adventures.

Atlantean Exodus: Calendar

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I’m turning my attention from player characters to the world of Atlantean Exodus. One thing the Atlanteans bring with them from Atlantis is their calendar. The calendar is based on the Egyptian sidereal-solar calendar found in the Book of Nut, an ancient Egyptian astronomical text.

A week consists of 10 days; these 10 days correspond to ~10 degrees of the night sky and the appearance of certain stars on the horizon.

A month consists of three weeks. These are not lunar months. The Egyptians did have lunar (and several other) calendars with regional variations, and celebrated certain festivals and religious ceremonies according to that calendar.

Twelve months make up a year, plus a 5 or 6 day intercalary period.

Thus, each year is 365 days (plus one day every four years). Historically, the Egyptians did not add an additional day added every four years, leading to gradual calendar misalignment and realignment every 1461 years. I’m treating the leap year days as forgotten knowledge that the Atlanteans still retained but lost over a period of thousands of years.

Each year is divided into seasons. The Egyptians used the Nile and its changes to demarcate the seasons, but in the case of the Atlanteans traversing the green Sahara, their seasons are divided into wet and dry seasons, plus a short season of storms at the end of the dry season.

At this time, some tribes of Africa have developed their own calendars, making the prediction of seasonal changes and thus early agriculture possible.

I really should post here more often…

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I can’t believe it has been over a year since I posted on this blog. Lately, I’ve been posting on X. Posts there coalesce then evaporate like smoke. Blogs are slightly more durable. It’s all just sand and fire, but sometimes leaves a lasting impression in the mind. And even this, too, only endures slightly longer.

Work continues on Atlantean Exodus. I’m on the third draft of the playtest material. The core of the game is the same. Some subsystems have been refined.

  • Levels have been eliminated in favor of more granular and organic advancement, including a character’s starting advances.
  • Fortune has been replaced by effort.
  • Make an effort by spending up to 3 vitality. Each vitality spent grants +1 advantage die (1d6).
    (The resolution mechanic is 3d6+modifiers, rolling over a threshold number. Advantage dice are rolled in addition to the 3d6, keeping the three best die results.)
  • The new effort system neatly ties into character advancement, ability masteries, exhaustion, injury, death, and other subsystems.
  • Spiritism and other wonders in general are now more powerful, but have new tradeoffs for this power.

And there are a number of other changes that still need testing.

Because of the scope of the game (multiple generations of characters traveling across the green Sahara) and limited time, I have started writing code to simulate characters and the caravan on their centuries-long journey. So far, I can generate rudimentary characters. The name generation is improving.

More coaxing sand and fire into shape is needed. I’m a little rusty, not having coded for such a long time.

Atlantean Exodus Update – What’s In a Name?

I have been working on character names to be used in the Atlantean Exodus RPG setting. For the duration of the playtest, I’ve been handwaving names. Now that most of the mechanics for the game are done, I’ve been turning my attention to this important detail.

Why are names important? In my opinion, naming a mesolithic hunter-gatherer “Bob” or their tribal leader “Grug” would be lazy, would do a disservice to their descendants, and would hurt immersion into the setting.

What is the setting about? To sum up:

“North Africa, 7000 B.C., when the Sahara was still green—a caravan of survivors, who fled the destruction of the once great civilization of Atlantis, travels east. Their aim: to cross the vast savanna to reach survivors on the other side of the continent, and there establish a New Atlantis. They face many dangers—wild beasts, restless spirits, and strange peoples. But the caravan’s sacred task drives them on, even if it takes generations. You, brave explorers, lead the way.”

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“Seek, above all, for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern man. Having found the game, play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depended on it.”
– The Master Game, Robert S. de Ropp

Perennial RPG: Scale and Spirits

Giant versus Human

Giant versus Human

A Problem of Scale

A new problem appeared during playtesting. During mid-tier play (4th-6th level in this system), player feedback was that adversaries they thought should have felt harder to fight were too easy, and I agreed.

To address this, I returned to the perennial principles the game is based on, in this particular case, scale.

The perennial idea transmitted by G.I. Gurdjieff is that we live in a universe of scale.

“…the lines of development of vibrations are divided into periods corresponding to the doubling or the halving of the number of vibrations in a given space of time.”

– In Search of the Miraculous

The example given in this passage relates to music, that each scale up or down is a doubling or halving of the vibration. The whole universe can be regarded this way, starting with the universe as a whole, down to the scale of galaxies, to the scale of solar systems, to the scale of planets, to the scale of our planet, to the scale of humans, to the scale of micro-organism, on and on, each a world unto itself on its own scale.

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Gurdjieff and Games: How D&D Has Changed

In Beelzebub’s Tales, in the chapter on Art, Gurdjieff wrote about an ancient form of art called “mysteries”, devised to transmit important knowledge to succeeding generations of initiates. This art, we are told, degenerated into what is now merely theater performed by actors, conveying mostly entertainment and little knowledge. 

In his Third Series, Gurdjieff wrote that ancient literature was written and read for the purpose of perfecting one’s reason, and this, we are told, also degenerated into mostly entertainment with little meaning transmitted to the reader.

There is a striking parallel to how Dungeons & Dragons began and how it is today. Recently there has been much heated discussion about what is changing and has changed in the hobby.

So what has changed since D&D made its appearance almost fifty years ago?

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Atlantean Exodus: Perennial RPG, Playtest Report 1

I have enough material to start playtesting what I’m calling Perennial RPG (the system) and Atlantean Exodus (the setting). Previously, I had run two sessions with a couple players using Cha’alt. Now we were going to use a system conversion of the Caves of Chaos from B1: The Keep on the Borderlands.

Setting Summary

To start the session, I summarized the setting for the players:

“Atlantis, the greatest continent in the world, has sunk beneath the waves. Forewarned of the impending catastrophe, you have escaped to a strange land with your lives and with the seeds of civilization, if you can keep them.”

I told the players that their characters belong to a remnant of Atlantis that survived and reached the shore of an unknown continent. This remnant has formed a caravan that is exploring the new land.

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