Here's an early example--Tyler asked for an iconoclastic lizardy NPC and Marcelo Paschoalin came up with this computer-generated beauty...
Again, if you want me to post up whatever you came up with, e-mail it to me.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Secret Arneson Gift Exchange Note
Just to remind everybody participating in the Secret Arneson Gift Exchange (about 50 people)--your presents are due in about a week-- Gary Gygax's birthday is July 27th.
Here's an early example--Tyler asked for an iconoclastic lizardy NPC and Marcelo Paschoalin came up with this computer-generated beauty...
Again, if you want me to post up whatever you came up with, e-mail it to me.
Here's an early example--Tyler asked for an iconoclastic lizardy NPC and Marcelo Paschoalin came up with this computer-generated beauty...
Again, if you want me to post up whatever you came up with, e-mail it to me.
Universal Mechanic
You can use this in almost any game. It's for when the task resolution system native to that game sucks or is confusing or doesn't cover a given situation. It's derived--in my mind--from the Warhammer 40k melee combat system but probably exists in other games, too. In fact, I'll be kinda shocked if I invented this. Anyway...
Rolling to do something the other person doesn't want you to do (grabbing something away from him/her or psionically zapping them, for example), or something otherwise competitive (picking up an object first) or even (if you wanna go crazy with it) an action against a static thing (trying to read a difficult book) is an opposed roll.
The die roll's based on the relevant stat. If, say, you're car-chasing someone, that'd be dex or agility or drive skill vs, the opponent's dex, agility or drive skill. If you're trying to hit a pedestrian that could be drive skill vs. dodge skill. If you're trying to charm a sentry that could be your charisma vs. the sentry's wisdom. With reading a book it could be the intelligence of the reader vs. the difficulty of the book (measured on a scale of 3-18 if it was D&D, just like intelligence.) As long as the two stats being paired are measured on the same scale (or can be mentally converted to the same scale), you're cool. If you have "fix computers" at 34% then the GM could say "Ok, on a scale of 1-100 how hard is this computer to fix?" and pick a number.
Contestants both roll dice. The die rolled should be whatever die's value is nearest to the higher contestants stat rounded up to the nearest die (i.e. if the higher stat's a 5, roll d6, if it's 70, roll d100, etc.)
Anyway, both sides roll a die and add their stat. High roll wins.
Example: Teddy and Cheswick are stalking each other through the jungles of Marsoopia. Who sees who first? Teddy's wisdom is 8, Cheswick's is 12. They both roll a d12 to see which one notices the subtle signs of their quarry first. Teddy rolls a 7, Cheswick rolls a 2. Teddy's at 7 + 8 =15, Cheswick's at 12 + 2 = 14. Teddy sees Cheswick first.
(Note: in a game where the ability scores represent vastly differing power levels--like a super-hero game--roll a die that equal to half the spread of the stat. i.e. If it's a 3-18 system and an 18 represents Thorlike strength, contestants roll a d10 instead of a d20. In Warhammer it's a 1-10 system with 10 representing greater demons and they use a d6. The idea being that the chances of the Hulk getting out arm-wrestled by Jimmy Olsen decrease if you use a smaller die.)
I notice this is considerably more fun than just having one person roll, and avoids having to decide which character is "active" and which is "passive" and crap like that. Who's active and who's passive when the medusa's trying to look at you while you're trying to get her to look at a mirror?
____
Notes on using this for combat:
Since most systems either have--like D&D--one roll that represents getting past both the target's nimbleness and armor combined or else have dodging cost an action for the dodger, you wouldn't normally want to use this for most combat since it'd throw off the whole system. It works real well for grappling, however.
____
Obviously there are some pain-in-ass exceptions here that make this mechanic harder to use in certain games: halving a % system means using a d50 which is kinda hard to come by, and sometimes you will end up with a stat vs. a stat on a different number scale. However, certain kinds of minds will be able to use a little creative multiplication and division to get past this stuff. Certain other kinds of minds will say how they're perfectly happy with all aspects of the system they're using so fuck off, which is fine, too.
Rolling to do something the other person doesn't want you to do (grabbing something away from him/her or psionically zapping them, for example), or something otherwise competitive (picking up an object first) or even (if you wanna go crazy with it) an action against a static thing (trying to read a difficult book) is an opposed roll.
The die roll's based on the relevant stat. If, say, you're car-chasing someone, that'd be dex or agility or drive skill vs, the opponent's dex, agility or drive skill. If you're trying to hit a pedestrian that could be drive skill vs. dodge skill. If you're trying to charm a sentry that could be your charisma vs. the sentry's wisdom. With reading a book it could be the intelligence of the reader vs. the difficulty of the book (measured on a scale of 3-18 if it was D&D, just like intelligence.) As long as the two stats being paired are measured on the same scale (or can be mentally converted to the same scale), you're cool. If you have "fix computers" at 34% then the GM could say "Ok, on a scale of 1-100 how hard is this computer to fix?" and pick a number.
Contestants both roll dice. The die rolled should be whatever die's value is nearest to the higher contestants stat rounded up to the nearest die (i.e. if the higher stat's a 5, roll d6, if it's 70, roll d100, etc.)
Anyway, both sides roll a die and add their stat. High roll wins.
Example: Teddy and Cheswick are stalking each other through the jungles of Marsoopia. Who sees who first? Teddy's wisdom is 8, Cheswick's is 12. They both roll a d12 to see which one notices the subtle signs of their quarry first. Teddy rolls a 7, Cheswick rolls a 2. Teddy's at 7 + 8 =15, Cheswick's at 12 + 2 = 14. Teddy sees Cheswick first.
(Note: in a game where the ability scores represent vastly differing power levels--like a super-hero game--roll a die that equal to half the spread of the stat. i.e. If it's a 3-18 system and an 18 represents Thorlike strength, contestants roll a d10 instead of a d20. In Warhammer it's a 1-10 system with 10 representing greater demons and they use a d6. The idea being that the chances of the Hulk getting out arm-wrestled by Jimmy Olsen decrease if you use a smaller die.)
I notice this is considerably more fun than just having one person roll, and avoids having to decide which character is "active" and which is "passive" and crap like that. Who's active and who's passive when the medusa's trying to look at you while you're trying to get her to look at a mirror?
____
Notes on using this for combat:
Since most systems either have--like D&D--one roll that represents getting past both the target's nimbleness and armor combined or else have dodging cost an action for the dodger, you wouldn't normally want to use this for most combat since it'd throw off the whole system. It works real well for grappling, however.
____
Obviously there are some pain-in-ass exceptions here that make this mechanic harder to use in certain games: halving a % system means using a d50 which is kinda hard to come by, and sometimes you will end up with a stat vs. a stat on a different number scale. However, certain kinds of minds will be able to use a little creative multiplication and division to get past this stuff. Certain other kinds of minds will say how they're perfectly happy with all aspects of the system they're using so fuck off, which is fine, too.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Stuff To Be Got In
Whenever I'm writing an adventure or dungeon, I have these vague and shifty ideas about what has to be in there and I realize after a while that it doesn't feel right unless I've filled in all of the "slots".
This isn't a list of everything that should be in an adventure, it's just an attempt to pin down the things I usually find myself feeling like I need to get in there last thing at night before I go "Ok, I can sleep now."
Rabbit hole: Something the PCs can do/discover/get interested in that will completely change what the whole session is about and force me to improvise everything.
Tactically complicated set-piece fight: An area to fight in where something fucks with normal combat considerations--teleporter, random moving magma pit, etc.
Some completely fucked weird element I am inordinately proud of. Note: PCs may not even notice how fucked it is--like the chick whose whole body was full of tiny spiders who the driders use as a living trap and whose head explodes when you come near her, covering you in spiders.
Some almost-as-fucked weird element which is designed specifically so the PCs can interact with it and therefore make the whole situation more weird in their own way if they choose to: Like a vial of water that makes a reflective puddle and that puddle is actually a portal to a mirror-universe full of exact duplicates of whoever's in this universe who want to kill their analogues a la a clone spell.
A new monster. I try to never use the same monster twice if I can unless there's some setting-reason it should be there, but even if I do, I always want some new beastie in there. At home, it's usually one I made up--less so on TV since it's fun (and novel) to get to use the miniatures Reaper sends and when the players go "What is it?" I get to go "It looks exactly like that."
Weird details to attach to every stock monster used. Manticores like poetry. Did you know that? They do. They will obey the best poet on the battlefield. On a 1 or a 2 they're ok with poetry that doesn't rhyme.
Outside-of-standard-game-rules 4th-wall breaking gimmick--i.e. a 3d visual aid that you can do something to or a concrete real-world puzzle to solve or cued-up sound effect or bizarre piece of terrain made from some obviously-not-made-as-DnD-terrain thing like a taxidermied animal.
Something screwy the bad guy can do to you besides just hurting you that makes the game weirder from then on.
This isn't a list of everything that should be in an adventure, it's just an attempt to pin down the things I usually find myself feeling like I need to get in there last thing at night before I go "Ok, I can sleep now."
Rabbit hole: Something the PCs can do/discover/get interested in that will completely change what the whole session is about and force me to improvise everything.
Tactically complicated set-piece fight: An area to fight in where something fucks with normal combat considerations--teleporter, random moving magma pit, etc.
Some completely fucked weird element I am inordinately proud of. Note: PCs may not even notice how fucked it is--like the chick whose whole body was full of tiny spiders who the driders use as a living trap and whose head explodes when you come near her, covering you in spiders.
Some almost-as-fucked weird element which is designed specifically so the PCs can interact with it and therefore make the whole situation more weird in their own way if they choose to: Like a vial of water that makes a reflective puddle and that puddle is actually a portal to a mirror-universe full of exact duplicates of whoever's in this universe who want to kill their analogues a la a clone spell.
A new monster. I try to never use the same monster twice if I can unless there's some setting-reason it should be there, but even if I do, I always want some new beastie in there. At home, it's usually one I made up--less so on TV since it's fun (and novel) to get to use the miniatures Reaper sends and when the players go "What is it?" I get to go "It looks exactly like that."
Weird details to attach to every stock monster used. Manticores like poetry. Did you know that? They do. They will obey the best poet on the battlefield. On a 1 or a 2 they're ok with poetry that doesn't rhyme.
Outside-of-standard-game-rules 4th-wall breaking gimmick--i.e. a 3d visual aid that you can do something to or a concrete real-world puzzle to solve or cued-up sound effect or bizarre piece of terrain made from some obviously-not-made-as-DnD-terrain thing like a taxidermied animal.
Something screwy the bad guy can do to you besides just hurting you that makes the game weirder from then on.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Why Won't You Play With Us?
Edit: Guide to this blog for the perplexed here.
Anyway:
Ok, I know that when anything about playing D&D comes up on this blog there will be somebody reading who goes "Oh yeah, we did that, too! Here's what happened, here's a link..."
So, a la James Mal I am going to ask the hive mind a question about the early days of the hobby and hope someone in the crowd has some insight.
_____
Preamble:
One of the things we do when we make the show is shoot footage where we ask the guest stars about their previous D&D experience.
And this is what we hear over and over and over:
"When I was a teenager, I knew guys who were playing and I always wanted to try it, but they wouldn't let me play."
So: what the fuck is up with that? How warped is American youth that there was not one healthy young lad willing to play D&D with a teenaged Stoya? Anyone? Anyone? What is going on out there in the Midwest?
Wherein I Blather On About A New Product
Why you shouldn't trust what I have to say about Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy:
-I helped edit some parts of this game, in exchange for James letting me use ideas from his adventures on our show (which was essential, since the campaign being filmed actually started--off-camera--with world-shaking events that came courtesy of his Death Frost Doom module. I literally could not have filmed what actually happens in our campaign without permission--though none of that stuff comes up til like episode 25 or so).
-Much much much more than that, I feel personal loyalty toward James because he's gotten my back once or twice without anybody asking him to during the interminable, inevitable "OSR-is-a-thing-with-a-name-and-is-on-the-internet-so-by-all-means-let's-argue-about-it" wars.
-It's the only retro-clone I've ever read carefully so I have very little to compare it to.
Why you should trust what I have to say about about Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy:
-I did have to edit a fuckload of the thing, and so I did indeed read it very carefully.
-Most of my job was to argue with James about it and poke holes in it and point out things he could change. He didn't change all the things I would've liked him to. (Yes, I tried to get him to use male and female pronouns.)
-Since my name's on it, if I say "Oh, it's great, everybody should just fucking buy it," then I look bad if it's crap.
What I Actually Have To Say About Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy:
First: it's a retro-clone.
It's like a game called D&D: Wizard, warrior, thief, cleric, and some races-as-classes, with some name changes here and there.
There are--aside from what's in the sample adventures provided--no monsters or wholly Raggi-invented magic items or spells. (Which is a bit of a drag, but, hey, there's other places to get that kind of thing.)
Is it the basic D&D retro-clone I would've written? Mostly, yeah. James has far more attachment than I do to a few eccentricities of the old games--like there are still saving throw categories that sound like a weird overlapping Borgesian Dewey Decimal system and magic-users are called "magic-users" rather than something a little less cranky like, say, "wizards"--but the vast majority of the game is about as crisp and clear and streamlined a version of basic D&D as it's possible to create.
Second and perhaps more interestingly, James presents a version of the ruleset which is ever-so-slightly- sharpened toward his particular interest: The Weird. The James Raggian Weird is defined roughly as: Stories where most things--including the PCs--are Normal and then they go out and find something Weird and that's trouble and the PCs have to be clever so it doesn't kill them. But then maybe it will kill them and that's fun, too.
James definitely views RPGs as a place to See The Weird rather than Be The Weird.
The major way he's done this is by radically sharpening and archetypalizing the classes (and races) so that they are only extraordinary in one way each: halflings have awesome saving throws--and that's their thing, thieves (called specialists) have a skill system (a nifty, simple, excellent, beautiful skill system that for all I know is cribbed from somewhere else but, if not, hats off to James) that nobody else does, and nobody gets better at fighting, ever, except fighters.
It moves the PCs away from being infinitely customizable fantastical selves and more toward being specific genre-story problem-solving tools. This is interesting. Some people will hate it. It definitely makes the game fit more into the way James wants to see it played. Nasty, brutish, possibly short, hopefully clever, like a true pulp Weird Tale: Here is Ed, Ed has one special thing about him. Ed met something terrible, he tried to use his special thing against it--maybe it worked. Maybe he died a gruesome death.
This isn't Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, or Fritz Leiber territory--where the fantastic is in the very soil and around every corner--this is Lovecraft territory. The characters do not get used to the fantastic--every collision with it unleashes total chaos.
So, who should buy this?
- People who buy every gaming product they can get their hands on (obviously).
- People who need a retro-clone and don't have one.
- People who are into James' specific kind of Weird Tale-Influenced Old School.
I don't know how many people that is--luckily for James, there is, however, another person who should buy this box set:
Newbies who would like to play D&D-type RPGs but who might find the old TSR books--or the retro-clones that purposefully try to look like them--inaccessible, will probably like LOTFP: WF.
The box set presents all the familiar D&D ideas in an extremely easy-to-understand-for-civilians way. There's a Red-Box-esque choose-your-own adventure type intro, there's a well-written, believable, kind of hilarious, extended "example of play"*, the DM's intro is clear, solid, extensive and readable (if slanted Raggiward), there are simple rules for everything important, and there are sections introducing the reader to other clones and versions of D&D. There's even dice.
This is the game I'd recommend to someone who knows nothing about D&D but saw "I Hit It With My Axe" and wants to learn to play, or the video game kid who played with you once when she visited on Christmas and had fun but lives in Lansing, Michigan so has to learn to DM all by herself.
If the OSR is ever going to introduce total virgins with no RPG friends to Old School role-playing, this is the direction it should be moving in.
Also, the pictures are really nice. No I didn't do any of them.
_______
*Since they're both written by Raggi, they're both brutal. The choose-your-own will probably kill you 3 times in a row and the "introductory example of play" may be the only one in history that ends in a TPK, but that's Raggi.
-I helped edit some parts of this game, in exchange for James letting me use ideas from his adventures on our show (which was essential, since the campaign being filmed actually started--off-camera--with world-shaking events that came courtesy of his Death Frost Doom module. I literally could not have filmed what actually happens in our campaign without permission--though none of that stuff comes up til like episode 25 or so).
-Much much much more than that, I feel personal loyalty toward James because he's gotten my back once or twice without anybody asking him to during the interminable, inevitable "OSR-is-a-thing-with-a-name-and-is-on-the-internet-so-by-all-means-let's-argue-about-it" wars.
-It's the only retro-clone I've ever read carefully so I have very little to compare it to.
Why you should trust what I have to say about about Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy:
-I did have to edit a fuckload of the thing, and so I did indeed read it very carefully.
-Most of my job was to argue with James about it and poke holes in it and point out things he could change. He didn't change all the things I would've liked him to. (Yes, I tried to get him to use male and female pronouns.)
-Since my name's on it, if I say "Oh, it's great, everybody should just fucking buy it," then I look bad if it's crap.
What I Actually Have To Say About Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy:
First: it's a retro-clone.
It's like a game called D&D: Wizard, warrior, thief, cleric, and some races-as-classes, with some name changes here and there.
There are--aside from what's in the sample adventures provided--no monsters or wholly Raggi-invented magic items or spells. (Which is a bit of a drag, but, hey, there's other places to get that kind of thing.)
Is it the basic D&D retro-clone I would've written? Mostly, yeah. James has far more attachment than I do to a few eccentricities of the old games--like there are still saving throw categories that sound like a weird overlapping Borgesian Dewey Decimal system and magic-users are called "magic-users" rather than something a little less cranky like, say, "wizards"--but the vast majority of the game is about as crisp and clear and streamlined a version of basic D&D as it's possible to create.
Second and perhaps more interestingly, James presents a version of the ruleset which is ever-so-slightly- sharpened toward his particular interest: The Weird. The James Raggian Weird is defined roughly as: Stories where most things--including the PCs--are Normal and then they go out and find something Weird and that's trouble and the PCs have to be clever so it doesn't kill them. But then maybe it will kill them and that's fun, too.
James definitely views RPGs as a place to See The Weird rather than Be The Weird.
The major way he's done this is by radically sharpening and archetypalizing the classes (and races) so that they are only extraordinary in one way each: halflings have awesome saving throws--and that's their thing, thieves (called specialists) have a skill system (a nifty, simple, excellent, beautiful skill system that for all I know is cribbed from somewhere else but, if not, hats off to James) that nobody else does, and nobody gets better at fighting, ever, except fighters.
It moves the PCs away from being infinitely customizable fantastical selves and more toward being specific genre-story problem-solving tools. This is interesting. Some people will hate it. It definitely makes the game fit more into the way James wants to see it played. Nasty, brutish, possibly short, hopefully clever, like a true pulp Weird Tale: Here is Ed, Ed has one special thing about him. Ed met something terrible, he tried to use his special thing against it--maybe it worked. Maybe he died a gruesome death.
This isn't Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, or Fritz Leiber territory--where the fantastic is in the very soil and around every corner--this is Lovecraft territory. The characters do not get used to the fantastic--every collision with it unleashes total chaos.
So, who should buy this?
- People who buy every gaming product they can get their hands on (obviously).
- People who need a retro-clone and don't have one.
- People who are into James' specific kind of Weird Tale-Influenced Old School.
I don't know how many people that is--luckily for James, there is, however, another person who should buy this box set:
Newbies who would like to play D&D-type RPGs but who might find the old TSR books--or the retro-clones that purposefully try to look like them--inaccessible, will probably like LOTFP: WF.
The box set presents all the familiar D&D ideas in an extremely easy-to-understand-for-civilians way. There's a Red-Box-esque choose-your-own adventure type intro, there's a well-written, believable, kind of hilarious, extended "example of play"*, the DM's intro is clear, solid, extensive and readable (if slanted Raggiward), there are simple rules for everything important, and there are sections introducing the reader to other clones and versions of D&D. There's even dice.
This is the game I'd recommend to someone who knows nothing about D&D but saw "I Hit It With My Axe" and wants to learn to play, or the video game kid who played with you once when she visited on Christmas and had fun but lives in Lansing, Michigan so has to learn to DM all by herself.
If the OSR is ever going to introduce total virgins with no RPG friends to Old School role-playing, this is the direction it should be moving in.
Also, the pictures are really nice. No I didn't do any of them.
_______
*Since they're both written by Raggi, they're both brutal. The choose-your-own will probably kill you 3 times in a row and the "introductory example of play" may be the only one in history that ends in a TPK, but that's Raggi.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Some Pictures
They are way more fun if you click on them--they get really big.
Those are Dungeon Life Bendy Dungeon Walls which are nice because they're light and fast but they still stay up. BTW--they don't actually bend, they're regular plastic--but the joints between them are wiggly so you can make curved walls. Also, they include freestanding doors, which I like because I can just be like "Ok, here's you, here's the door, here's the area of effect of the Gelatinous Kidney spell you just unwittingly unleashed."
I got them for free to use on TV, but, as not-strictly-necessary DnD toys go, they're pretty good. I use them every time I play at home, which is more than I can say for almost any other game stuff I ever got sent.
(That's Stoya.)
(She got turned into a wolf at one point.)
(DNDWP girls + any bridge = epic slaughter)
Those are Dungeon Life Bendy Dungeon Walls which are nice because they're light and fast but they still stay up. BTW--they don't actually bend, they're regular plastic--but the joints between them are wiggly so you can make curved walls. Also, they include freestanding doors, which I like because I can just be like "Ok, here's you, here's the door, here's the area of effect of the Gelatinous Kidney spell you just unwittingly unleashed."
I got them for free to use on TV, but, as not-strictly-necessary DnD toys go, they're pretty good. I use them every time I play at home, which is more than I can say for almost any other game stuff I ever got sent.
(That's Stoya.)
(She got turned into a wolf at one point.)
(DNDWP girls + any bridge = epic slaughter)
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Use It Or Lose It...Or, Rather, Don't Get It In The First Place
Chaosium's Basic-Role-Playing system--which powers Call of Cthulhu (and other games) is one of the most elegant game designs ever. Love it.
A nifty feature is the skill system--if you're not familiar, it works like this:
-Every time you use a skill, you mark it on your sheet.
-At the end of the adventure (or chapter, or whenever the DM says) you roll on all these skills that you've used lately (trying to fail, actually, but that's not important here).
-Rolling the right numbers means you get to add points to that skill.
___________
Anyway...
I feel like there's a way to combine the "Hey, use your brain, not your character sheet" ethos with a skill system in D&D by doing something similar to BRP, but more open-ended.
At the end of a session or whenever x.p. is given, a player can choose some ONE thing s/he did during the period x.p.'s being awarded for and spend experience points (I'm thinking about a fifth of what it'd take to get to the next level, but I'm not sold) to get better at it.
The details are still vague, but the outline I'm thinking is:
-The main idea would be to get better at things not associated with your class--i.e. if a warrior wants to get better at identifying unknown languages, f'rinstance.
-Combat skills are ok to advance, but I imagine the things would be stuff that normally you'd be at a minus to do. Like if you want to learn to fight with two weapons at once, you have to start out fighting with two weapons at once with a minus on both hands (the AD&D recommends -2 for one hand and -4 for the other, I believe, but I am too lazy to get up and check), then slowly buy your way out of the penalty, one adventure at a time.
-The skills could be goofy. Like if you sold a rust monster to someone that day you could get a bonus to selling monsters in the future.
-DM gets final call on what can be considered a skill. Duh.
-As usual, the player would have to keep track of all this stuff. If you have a bonus, it's up to you to remind the DM that you think it applies in a given situation. Players are usually ok with greater levels of complexity if: A) It comes after they've generated the character and B) It makes them more powerful.
-The main question is the cost, I suppose. I figure each PC in most versions of the game gets 2-5 new "things" per level (hit points, combat table bonus, save bonus, a special ability or two--or spells). Essentially the idea here is you're buying a "thing" not germane to your normal class advancement, so that's where I got the one-fifth figure. I think the only way to be sure is to try it and see if anybody bites.
A nifty feature is the skill system--if you're not familiar, it works like this:
-Every time you use a skill, you mark it on your sheet.
-At the end of the adventure (or chapter, or whenever the DM says) you roll on all these skills that you've used lately (trying to fail, actually, but that's not important here).
-Rolling the right numbers means you get to add points to that skill.
___________
Anyway...
I feel like there's a way to combine the "Hey, use your brain, not your character sheet" ethos with a skill system in D&D by doing something similar to BRP, but more open-ended.
At the end of a session or whenever x.p. is given, a player can choose some ONE thing s/he did during the period x.p.'s being awarded for and spend experience points (I'm thinking about a fifth of what it'd take to get to the next level, but I'm not sold) to get better at it.
The details are still vague, but the outline I'm thinking is:
-The main idea would be to get better at things not associated with your class--i.e. if a warrior wants to get better at identifying unknown languages, f'rinstance.
-Combat skills are ok to advance, but I imagine the things would be stuff that normally you'd be at a minus to do. Like if you want to learn to fight with two weapons at once, you have to start out fighting with two weapons at once with a minus on both hands (the AD&D recommends -2 for one hand and -4 for the other, I believe, but I am too lazy to get up and check), then slowly buy your way out of the penalty, one adventure at a time.
-The skills could be goofy. Like if you sold a rust monster to someone that day you could get a bonus to selling monsters in the future.
-DM gets final call on what can be considered a skill. Duh.
-As usual, the player would have to keep track of all this stuff. If you have a bonus, it's up to you to remind the DM that you think it applies in a given situation. Players are usually ok with greater levels of complexity if: A) It comes after they've generated the character and B) It makes them more powerful.
-The main question is the cost, I suppose. I figure each PC in most versions of the game gets 2-5 new "things" per level (hit points, combat table bonus, save bonus, a special ability or two--or spells). Essentially the idea here is you're buying a "thing" not germane to your normal class advancement, so that's where I got the one-fifth figure. I think the only way to be sure is to try it and see if anybody bites.
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