little rules

More like A Game of Kicking Ass

So last night my old BattleTech boxed set caught my eye and I pulled out the rule book and flipped through it.  You won't find a lot of posts here on the ol' Gameblog about BTech, but it is probably my number 2 tabletop game in terms of sheer hours of play logged.  My junior high/high school attended Frontier Wars, the vaguely Traveller-themed Bloomington, Illinois convention (GDW's home town, after all), not long after a letter from George Lucas's lawyers prompted the name change from the original BattleDroids to the now famous BattleTech.  A few guys had the whole set up with miniatures and everything going.  We were hooked.  I bought two games that weekend, BattleTech and Call of Cthulhu.  Not a bad haul for a snot-nosed farmboy with no idea what he was doing.

Anyway, I started flipping through the rulebook because I always loved the probably untenable Post-Apocalypse in Space vibe of the early BattleTech fluff.  The further along the game got, the more space operatic it seems to go, and the less I dug any part of it except the big robots blowing the bejeezus out of each other.  The one-two punch of the Clan invasions and  new rules in the Solaris boxed set soured us on the game.  But before those came out we played the crap out of this game.  I'm talking weekend long games with 36 mechs a side, plus whatever shorter games we could fit in during the week.

Which is why I surprised that as I flipped through the amazingly familiar rulebook that my eyes fell on a rule I do not remember.  I've played and read a jillion games with a jillion rules, but the two rule sets I know best are Moldvay Basic D&D and this rulebook.  To find a rule that I have no memory of whatsoever just flabbergasted me.

BattleTech normally uses a 2d6 hit location system to see what part of the mech you blasted.  A roll of seven hits the torso.  If your shot comes in from the right, it's a hit to the Right Torso, from the left its a hit to the Left Torso, and from the center arc the hit lands in the Center Torso.  With me so far?  A roll of snake-eyes on the same chart indicates the same locations hit, except that after the location listing it says "(Critical)".  Critical Hits are the key to defeating a BattleMech.  The normal way you get them is by blowing away all the armor in a location so you can start scoring internal damage.  A roll of '2' on the hit location chart is the other way.

For the more common way of scoring crits (piercing the armor shell) you go to the Critical Hit Effects Table and roll another 2d6.  2-7 means no critical.  An 8 or 9 means you get one roll on the location based critical chart for your target Mech (more rolling, yay!).  A 10 or 11 gives you 2 rolls on the appropriate crit chart.  A roll of 12 either scores 3 hits, or if the location is a limb, the limb is blown clean off.  Sweet!  One legged mechs are hilariously bad at hopping around the BattleField-I mean battlefield.  And other mechs can pick

No, no, no.  That's a Crusader
from BattleTech.  You're clearly
mistaken.

up your lost limb and beat you with it using the club rules.  Fun times.

Anyway, prior to yesterday I would have bet cash money that a 2 on the hit location chart sends you to the same Critical Hit Effects Table, or as we usually called it, the Possible Critical Chart, to see if you inflicted 0, 1, 2, or 3 rolls on the appropriate Torso chart.  It doesn't.  A rule at the bottom of page 14 says you roll 2d6 as per normal.  A 2-7 is no effect again, but an 8 or higher destroys the location.  Note that destroying the Center Torso destroys the Mech.

The consequences of this rule is that 1 in 36 hits to the front or back of the mech runs an almost even chance (41 and change percent) of being killed with one shot.  That doesn't sound like a lot but when you fire more than 36 shots per game and play regularly for several years, that ought to add up to a nice little pile of dead BattleMechs.

I've got a point here beyond complaining that I'm owed more kills than I am credited with in BattleTech.  (So are my friends from those days, to be fair.)  With the exception of super-elegant games like S. John Ross's Risus: The Anything RPG, little rules like this can fly under the radar.   I run up against these all the time in various editions of D&D.  The crummy helmet rule in AD&D1, the 1 in 6 chance of dropping anything held if you are surprised in Holmes Basic, the chance for anyone to find a trap in Moldvay are three examples off the top of my head.  Forgetting any of them won't kill your game, but remembering them add a little spice to the game.  Moral of the story #1: reread your rulebook once in a while.  You might find something cool even in a game you've been familiar with for 3 decades.

The other thing going on here is the effect of the BattleTech reference sheet.  The back page of the rulebook is all the key charts of the game.  Early on my group made photocopies for easy reference.  If we ever knew the special rule for snake-eyes hit locations we probably forgot it because the chart sheet didn't mention it.  Meanwhile, the Possible Crit Chart is right on the same piece of paper.  Why wouldn't we use it?  Moral of the story #2: If you think a fiddly little rule is important, put it in your easy reference sheet or on your screen.  For example, whenever I run a new edition of D&D, I make sure I have the specifics of Sleep on my screen or otherwise handy.  I've never seen an official screen that has the rules for one spell on it, but my screen for my game needs it.

Dye-jobs and Doxies

There is no Volume II.

I honestly don't know how many times I've read the classic Judges Guild compilation Ready Ref Sheets.  If I recall correctly I bought my first copy (I own two) at a local convention back in the eighties.  Probably from the booth run by Castle Perilous of Carbondale, Illinois.  I've never been to their store, but for a very long time they were always my first stop at cons.  As Bubs likes to say, they got all types of crazy crap.  

"All types of crazy crap" does a pretty good job of describing the contents of the Ready Ref Sheets, now that I think about it.  Imagine if you took the 1st edition DMG, removed everything but the charts and sprinkled it with extra pixie dust and nonsense.  That's Ready Ref Sheets.  It's so jam-packed with random dice charts, slim but potent rules and useful charts that I discover or rediscover something upon every reread.

This time I found a gem in the section on Women (pages 5 and 6).  This part of the book is infamous for the small chart that allows one to calculate the bust, waist and hip measurements of female characters based upon their Charisma and Constitution scores.  But that's not what is intriguing me today.  Instead, I want to look at this chart:

Following this chart, nearly a quarter of all women in the City State of the Invincible overlord have fantastic hair colors, except for the 1% of them that are bald.  Note that, as written, neither race nor age modify this chart.  Furthermore, although Auburn is listed as a hair color, Red Sonja style full on redheads don't appear here.

The other column is even more amazing.  1% of the women in the City State are Newhon Ghouls/Carcosan Bone Women.  The asterisks indicate that furred women also have cat tales (evidence of cat girls in a D&D manual circa 1978!), feathery women have wings (are they functional or vestigial? the note doesn't say), and scaly women are "half mermaid."  Would that be one quarter fish, three-quarters woman?  If this chart is to be believed, the demographics of the Wilderlands is pretty wild before you even take monsters and demihumans into account.

The situation with Tress Tints gets even more interesting when you look at the modifiers.  One kind of woman you can encounter in the City State (via the gorgeous chart filling most of page 2) is "Daughter."  Few details are given, but the intent is clearly for the PCs to try to make some time with one of these gals and get in trouble with dad.  Daughter's are listed as taking a -30% penalty on the Tress Tints roll.  That means a Daughter can only have Sable, Auburn, Blonde or Brunette hair, with Brunette being the most like color by a large margin.  My read of this is that all the other listed colors are dye jobs.  The fathers of these Daughters won't allow them to wear their hair silver or lilac, so they all end up going out with their natural hair color.

Since Houris (i.e. prostitute) roll a +30% on this chart, I think the intention was that only women of dubious reputation or daring fashionistas dye their hair in the City State.  But here's the weirdest part: because a 00 is a result of Bald, any Tress Tint roll for a Houri of 70 or more will result in a bald sex worker.  

What the heck is going on in the City State that 3 out of ten prostitutes shaves their head?  Is this some kink that's popular with the local johns?  Is shaving your head part of the initiation ceremony to join the Courtesan Guild, which according to the random guild chart on page 3, is a real thing?  I don't know what the deal here is, but if your City State campaign does not include bald harlots then you are clearly doing it wrong.

Bubs says "Buy Ready Ref Sheets today!"

new Wyrminghall campaign, session 1

Wyrminghall before it fell into ruin

In the world of blind drunk adventurers, the one-eyed dwarf is a key member of the party.  Xorth the Insinuator, drow cleric (Zak Smith); Radomir the Rad, fighter (Eeri Oikarinen); and Sir Ward the Paladin (Reynaldo Madrinan) showed up to the dungeon totally blotto.  Initially, only the dwarf Otto One-Eye (Paul C.) is sober, but later the creep known as It Lives! (Robert Parker) joins the party.

The party had some difficulty gaining entrance to the hall, as Sir Ward accidentally pulled the massive front door down onto himself.  The noise of this nonsense drew the attention of some wandering killer platypi, one

the new face of terror

of whom tried to eat Sir Ward's face as he laid trapped under that damn door throughout the entire combat.  You know what I like about running FLAILSNAILS games?  Half the party pulled out guns and shot the platypi.  I had no idea that was going to happen.

Once inside the hall the players the menaces of weak floorboards, time slippages, mysterious purple mists, and a monstrous domestic dispute in the room next door.  The party came *super* close to a confrontation with the deadliest creature in the above ground portion of the dungeon with nary a clue that they were that near to their doom.  They recovered a single treasure: an elaborately carved ivory box containing a matching self-grooming appropriate for a dwarf lass, which was promptly sold off.

Sorta what they found under the pillow-monster's bed

Not too shabby for the opening session of a new campaign.

This may seem somewhat familiar...

Official Wyrminghall Background Info

Lo! You have heard the story of the Dragon-Knights of old, now hearken to the tale of kind King Ægidius founded the realm known as the Little Kingdom. The former alehouse bully achieved this feat by subduing the great dragon Locheed and claiming its great hoard of treasure. He was able to achieve this victory with the aid of a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range. The king imprisoned his pet dragon in a great pit and built over it a great feast-hall, which became known as Wyrminghall, owing to the great wyrm contained below it. From his mighty hall the king founded Order of the Wyrm, a small order consisting of His Majesty and his nine bravest vassals. Although he paid nominal tribute to Alfred the Great, the lord of Wyrminghall ruled the Little Kingdom free of outside interference. 

Despite the king's ineptitude as an administrator, the Little Kingdom flourished, owing in large part to the fear of neighboring kings. None dared make war against the realm, for fear that the last thing they saw would be a flash of green scales shimmering in the bright sunlight, followed by an enveloping gout of fire. Another factor in the success of the kingdom was the influence of Queen Matilda, wife of the Lord of Wyrminghall. More shrewd than her husband, she was also known as a witch. It was said that she first expanded the pits below Wyrminghall, adding a series of vaults to better protect the treasures of the realm and fiendish traps to guard the vaults as well as a series of dungeons and torture chambers for the benefit of local tax evaders. Some tunnels below the hall are said to be the result of the dragon attempting to burrow his way out of bondage to the king. Another tale suggests that some of the excavations originated from deep below the hall, made by the the undergnomes known as the smurfnibblins in an attempt to locate the gold and silver of the king. 

The first Lord of Wyrminghall enjoyed a long reign, as many as eighty winters by some accounts, before dying in bed of a bad sniffle. His wife ruled as regent for several years until their son returned home from fighting as a mercenary in France. The son of the original king and queen of Wyrminghall, George, ascended to the throne. Barely adequate as a warrior and terrible at everything else, the second Lord of Wyrminghall's reign was short and disastrous, with most of the Dragon-Knights dying in battle against marauders or seeking service with a more worthy liege. The second lord died without issue, leaving the tattered realm in the hands of his henchman Sir Suovetaurilius. Eventually the hall was abandoned completely. What remained of the Little Kingdom was absorbed into the Kingdom of Wessex. Much later, Wilchester the Mad, one of the founders of the Invisible School of Thaumaturgy at Christminster University, briefly took up residence in the now ruined hall. No one knows when the dragon left Wyrminghall to return to its native Wales, but all authorities agree the beast is long gone from the vicinity.