Hacking 2e: Halflings

The 2e Halfling is a smash-up of the Dwarf and Elf, pulling traits from both, with a few weird exceptions based on racial subtypes.

These subtypes represent the only instance in the PHB where a demihuman has different traits based on their ancestry within their race. This wasn’t a foreign concept by 1989 – Unearthed Arcana had provided unique subtype abilities years earlier – but it’s interesting for being the only place this occurs in the core book, and that only one of the three subtypes (Stout) gets any real benefit. This idea would be expanded later within the glut of 2e splatbooks, but it wouldn’t see primetime again until 5e.

The implementation in 2e is rather fiddly. It’s a die roll to determine if your Halfling has “any Stoutish blood”, which gets you either full or half infravision, and some limited underground data as per the Dwarven trait. Overall, the chances of getting this are a little better than a third, and the traits only make sense for this Dwarf-like type of Halfling. I’m in favor of scrapping the whole bit. As such, I’ll skip these as I break down the Halfling.

Hacking 2e: Gnomes

The Gnome is an odd addition. Prior to 1e AD&D, they only appear as a monster, but in 1978 they suddenly show up as playable. As far as I can tell, this occurred only because Gygax was tired of seeing the other demihumans all the time and he liked Gnomes. Fair enough. Based on this alone, they’ve remained in the PHB of every edition up to the present day (excluding 4e, because of course it was different).

Personally, I’m not a fan of the little buggers. They’re mechanically derivative, and (at least in base 2e) they are not the tinker/inventor-type weirdos which makes them so unique in other media. By the book, they’re just weaker Dwarves with limited magical ability. As such, this should be fairly short work (that pun just showed up, I had nothing to do with it).

Hacking 2e: Elves

The eponymous Elf of this so-called elfgame, these pointy-eared Tolkien refugees are a true classic. As before, we’ll skip the sociology and jump right in.

 

1. Infravision

Why Elves can see in the dark like Dwarves and Gnomes is beyond me. Certainly they should have better vision than Humans. However, seeing in complete darkness doesn’t really feel like it’s in their wheelhouse. 3e recognized this by changing it to “low-light vision”, which is strangely clinical, but I absolutely agree with its conversion of elf-vision into ‘they can see well in moonlight/starlight/low-light’. It fits the Elf well, and is mechanically simple: they have Darkvision, but only outside, or inside when there is any light source nearby. So, cats, basically.

Hacking 2e: Dwarves

The taciturn staple of the genre. I think we can skip the intro on where they live and how they dislike horses. We’ll also put the Allowed Classes and Ability Score Adjustments on the back-burner for this series. Alright, let’s get to it. 

 

1. Infravision

This will appear in every entry.

A character with infravision can see in darkness as clearly as they can in normal light, within 60 feet. It’s simple and overpowered, which is perfect for the mine-happy Dwarf; this is exactly who I’d expect would be able to see in a lightless dungeon. Whether this is appropriate for every demihuman is debatable.

Hacking 2e: Demihumans

Before we speak of how demihumans should function within this hack, let’s talk about race.

Art

For the 2e Primer, I used public domain art sourced from Old Book Illustrations. It served the aesthetic well and it was available at the right price. I’m certainly not the first one to go this route – the 2e retro-clone For Gold and Glory used it extensively.

Public domain art can look incongruous, with too many artists and too many styles, robbing the work of a personality. It also risks overuse, at least for the really good pieces; since releasing the 2e Primer, I’ve found some of its art in other books. On the other hand, the art is often evocative and much of it can be modified to form new illustrations.

When it comes to modifying the public domain, I don’t think anyone has done better than Johan Nohr. MÖRK BORG is a triumph of art and game design, being a work that is enjoyable to look at even if you’ll never play the game. Though you should play the game; it’s got legs. The only issue is that the book often places the art before the game, with some layout rendering the text inscrutable.

I’m a bigger fan of his work in the remastered version of Into the Odd. That book balances the art and text perfectly, ensuring that every word is readable black text on a white background, while offering full page and half page spreads of public domain collage that add flavor and mood to the game.

All that to say, I’ve been playing with something similar to his style. I’m not artist, and certainly I do not feel that what I’ve made approaches Nohr’s work. Still, I’m not bad with Photoshop (or my current tool, Affinity), and I like to tinker. So far, I’ve developed these:

I think they’re serviceable. I’m not even at the alpha stage of the hack, but this is the kind of art I’d throw into it. Anyway, I’ve been having fun with chopping up old public domain works and I didn’t have anything written for this week, so you get art.

Hacking 2e: Surprise

I touched on Surprise in a prior post, but it’s time to solidify it. Surprise is codified in every edition of the game, so it’s a must-have. However, it’s worth a look at how those other games (and later works) handled surprise, and how 2e stands apart from them.

Hacking 2e: Hirelings, Followers, and Henchmen – Part 2

Last week, I reworked these NPCs into a single category: Followers, with a subcategory of ‘Sworn Followers’. This week, I’ll work on experience and leveling rules, administration mechanics, and a final ruleset.

Hacking 2e: Hirelings, Followers, and Henchmen – Part 1

My players really like henchmen. I think all players do, even if it’s not coded into the game. The trope of the adopted goblin in the party exists because players love to make an NPC their own. The henchman is that concept on steroids. You’re telling the players “not only will this NPC tag along, they’re specifically your NPC, if you can keep them.” Once my group figured this out, they started trying to recruit everyone they met.

Before we really get into this, I want to share a very cool resource with you:

Meatshields! The Classic Fantasy Hireling & Henchman Generator

You gotta love a good generator. This one, obviously, makes people of the hench persuasion.

Anyway.

In 2e, these tag-along NPCs are broken into three groups: Hirelings, Followers, and Henchmen. Let’s look at each.

Tools for Planescape and Sigil

AD&D 2nd Edition heralded the Age of the Campaign Setting, and with it came an endless parade of unique ideas and overfilled splatbooks. That collection is a goldmine, a rich vein of pure imagination that can and should be pulled from the ground.

For me, the best of the lot is Planescape. It’s a wild setting with incredible locations, bizarre characters, and fantastic ideas. However, the act of getting these things to the table is a daunting task. There’s so much to remember, so many pockets of brilliant worldbuilding spread across so many sources, that it can become paralyzing. And that’s just for Sigil!

To mitigate that, I use tools. Here are some of the resources I have found invaluable for running the setting, along with one which I created myself.

Hacking 2e: Encumbrance and Weight – Part 2

Last time, I reworked the 2e weights and weight allowances into a slot-based system. The final step is to determine encumbrance penalties.

This is the entire reason we’re here. These penalties are the stick used to enforce the agonizing decisions inherent in encumbrance rules. Without them, there’s no reason to track anything at all, and that way lies 5e and players who occasionally look through their inventory to discover oddities from old adventures, like they’re rifling through their parents’ attic.

AD&D used ranges, or weight bands, to determine when penalties applied. Let’s start there.

Hacking 2e: Encumbrance and Weight – Part 1

Encumbrance is considered a pillar of old-school play, creating a natural limiter on what can be brought into – and out of – the dungeon. It creates a puzzle, wherein players agonize over what should be carried and what must be dropped, and opens the game to unique solutions such as hiring people or using beasts of burden. It makes magical items which subvert encumbrance into coveted treasures.

It’s also a huge pain and a taxing mental load. Especially in most editions of D&D, wherein you either need to add up large, abstracted coin weight or small, fractional pounds. This is the kind of ruleset for which people end up making spreadsheets. By the time you’re opening Excel to run a subsystem for a tabletop game, I’d argue you’ve left the Realm of Game and entered the Duchy of Simulator. This caused many tables to abstract encumbrance or ignore it altogether. As a result, the idea of tracking any of the character’s gear faded from modern D&D by 4th Edition. Notably ahead of its time, 2nd Edition made encumbrance optional.

If you want more detail on the history of encumbrance rules in D&D, check out these posts from Simulacrum: Exploring OSR Design and Welcome to the Deathtrap.

The OSR does its OSR thing when it comes to encumbrance: the mechanical approaches include points, slots, and grids, while unique sub-mechanics abound. Of these, I find slot-based encumbrance to be the most simple and adaptable for my modification of 2e, so I’ll follow the crowd here. As I noted in my post on Strength, that was the plan all along: the number of available slots can be the Strength score itself.

Now I have to execute it, which means establishing slot allotment, item slot values, and encumbrance penalties. For this first part, I’ll tackle the first two. 

Hacking 2e: Encounter Reactions

Prior to getting behind the wheel of 2nd Edition, my experience with implementing ‘reactions’ centered around the skill check. Diplomacy (and later Persuasion), was the centerpiece of NPC good will or antipathy. Generally, this almost never took the form of a ‘called check’ by the DM based on player actions, but was instead a player-requested check: “Can I roll Diplomacy to make this guy tell us where the MacGuffin is?” This playstyle is the exact thing that the OSR, in all its various iterations, has been scrambling away from for 20 years.

If you’ve played any modern version of D&D, you’ve seen that moment where the face character botches the Persuasion check and the player dutifully acts out the resulting buffoonery. Plenty of laughs have been had here, though it’s always bothered me that charismatic PC would randomly turn into a social moron every once in a while. Even if not taken to that extreme, the player-facing results leave little room for nuance in the roleplay: the failed check is a failed check, and the party is apt to focus on the die result and its repercussions, rather than the NPC in front of them.

Charisma has become king in social interactions; a party’s ability to win friends and influence people isn’t based on their actions or their reputation, but on the high score of whichever player didn’t dump Charisma. Obviously, Charisma should have a place in social matters, as that’s basically all it’s there for, but it shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of whether NPCs have a positive or negative reaction to your collection of murder hobos.

2nd Edition has been a breath of fresh air. First, it keeps the reaction of the NPCs and monsters behind the screen; the players need to assess the social situation on its own terms, based on information communicated by the DM. Second, the face character can’t just spam the Charisma button; players need to determine how they’re going to approach any particular group, and hope that their bonuses from Charisma, their reputation, and their choices will carry the day.

That’s all to say, I like Reaction rolls. It’s good stuff. To figure out how it’ll look in a 2e rework, let’s look at the rules.

2e DM Screen

My hunt for a good 2e DM screen has been somewhat unsatisfying. There’s the official screen which does the job, but the layout and arrangement of the tables leaves something to be desired (a criticism I extend to the books, generally). There are some fan creations online, but there’s always something about them that doesn’t quite meet my needs.

My 2e Primer’s Quick Reference has served me for many games, but it contains much information that I don’t immediately need during play, while also missing some tables that I’d like quick access to. Really, what I’d love is a DM screen that has the Primer’s information, but laid out in a condensed format, with related tables arranged near each other.

So I made one.

 

Actually, I made two: One in landscape orientation and another in portrait.

I tried to keep everything to four panels, but good lord this edition is lousy with tables. Instead, it’s five panels, but the final panel is completely monster-based and can be considered an optional loose reference sheet.

It’s been helpful in the handful of sessions in which I’ve used it, but I can’t call it battle-tested. If you find it of use in your games, or if you see errors to be corrected or additions to be made, please let me know!

2e DM Screen – Landscape

2e DM Screen – Portrait

Note: I’ve also updated the 2e Primer with additional corrections and amendments. Nothing major, just thought you should know I constantly update it to reflect any new information I find that helps illuminate the darker recesses of this edition.

[I've made some edits to the document based on feedback. Morale and surprise modifiers have been cleaned up. The Common Equipment table has been axed in favor of Turn Undead. I'll keep a version number on the document from here on, and will update based on feedback. Thanks Lord Torath and Downingman.]

Hacking 2e: Initiative and Modifiers

AD&D 2nd Edition’s default initiative rule is the tried and true side-initiative (which it calls Standard Initiative Procedure), meaning that one roll is made for each ‘side’ in a combat. Modifiers are applied only for circumstances where an effect applies to everyone on a side. This rule is easy, fast, and shared between all versions of Basic and AD&D. 2e adds two optional initiative mechanics: Individual Initiative, where each PC and monster gets its own initiative rolls and applies modifiers per participant, and Group Initiative, where side-initiative is used but modifiers are still applied per participant.

Weapon Speed is offered as an optional rule, though it’s used as a given in all the examples of Individual and Group initiative. Spellcasting speed is portrayed as apparently not optional, even though most of it wouldn’t function with the Standard method. Multiple Attacks get special rules that put the extra attacks after all the other attacks, while spells requiring a round or more to cast get shoved to the end of the round(s).

All in all, it’s a serviceable initiative system that sometimes doesn’t know which version it prefers that you use. However, if you want to use all the special modifiers available, it clunks a bit when you have to do this every round.