Legal-sized deluxe character sheet for Labyrinth Lord (with ascending AC and three-saving-throw system)

Update: For those who'd like to tinker with this version, here's a link to the original Word 2011 (Mac) file and the fonts I used in creating it. Feel free to share anything cool you come up with!




I have a bunch of excess legal-sized (8.5" x 14") paper sitting around the house, so I thought it would be interesting to use it for oversized, deluxe character sheets.

(Note: these are for my homebrew Labyrinth Lord campaign, where we use ascending Armor Class and the three-saving-throws system, a la D&D 3.x)

There's a PDF version here.

Here are JPGs for each of the two pages (click to make bigger):

Hugging Goblins for Fun and Profit -or- How I Spent My Spring Break

This looks like a good place for a dungeon crawl, right?

Whilst escaping The Winter That Would Not Die in sunny Santa Clara, I had the opportunity to run a game (ok, half a game) of Labyrinth Lord for my wife, our friends Brian and Elizabeth, and their eight-year-old son, Nicholas.  One of the more brilliant ideas that I came up with was to base the NPCs and even the castle-to-be-stormed on Brian and Elizabeth's family and house.  Thus, the characters were asked to rescue Lord Brimor and Lady Elsbeth, and their children Sir Arturus, Sir Nikola, and Princess Eve.  Any resemblance to actual persons was not coincidental... and also unremarked-upon.  So, I'm not sure if no one got the connection or they just didn't find it amusing.  It's hard being an unappreciated genius sometimes.

Anyway, on with our story:

All I want is a hug, I promise!

Traveling through the forest one sunny spring day, the cleric Demosthenes (Brian), the elf Nerdanel (Cori), dwarf Eiko (Elizabeth), and thief Hrothgar (Nicholas) are surprised by a strangely-acting bear.

 The beast rushes out of the undergrowth and stands on its hind legs, blocking the path.  And yet it does not attack.  A moment's glance reveals that the bear has been wounded: a black and twisted goblin arrow protrudes from its side and several gashes drip blood.  The party and the bear stare at each other for a minute, then the bear waves a front paw as if to say "follow me!"  As the bear turns to run away, the cleric steps forward and casts a healing spell on it to show the PCs' good intentions.  The bear is visibly relieved and proceeds into the woods.

After a short walk, the path descends into a shallow river valley.  At the bottom of the ravine is a young woman in rich garb, also wounded and lying face-down and motionless on the riverbank.  The cleric uses his second healing spell and manages to bring her back around.  Once conscious, she explains that she is a noble from Ravensport and was visiting friends in a nearby castle when it was attacked by a dragon-riding sorceress and her cadre of goblins.  She and her husband tried to escape and find help, but she was severely wounded and he was turned into a bear.  She begs the PCs for help.  All of the party is in for the adventure except for Hrothgar, who proceeds to negotiate a handsome reward of 7,000gp plus any treasure found in the castle during the rescue.  Begrudgingly, the noblewoman agrees.

The noblewoman (Korin) has no skills to offer, so she remains hidden in the forest.  As a bear, however, her husband is more than a match for some goblins and thus agrees to accompany the party.  They sneak through the woods until they reach the clearing wherein Brimor and Elsabeth's castle rests.  There is a narrow bridge leading over the moat; a dozen goblins guard the front doors.

Rather than risk a full-on assault, Nerdanel and Eiko hatch a plan to start a smoky fire in the woods, perhaps drawing some of the goblins into the trees where they can be silently taken out.  Kindling is gathered and a flame sparked.  The party waits in breathless silence for the sound of goblin footsteps.
Instead, they hear the beating of massive wings.

You say WHY-VERN, and I say WI-VERN...

A 20' long winged shape swoops overhead, circling above the blaze.  Gasps of "It's a dragon!" and "Oh crap" echo from the characters' hiding places.  Demosthenes goads them into action, though:  "We're all at full strength. If we must face a dragon, this is the best chance we'll get."  Seeing his logic, the others jump from their hiding places and shout at the beast.  It roars and crashes through the forest canopy to devour them.

The melee is brief.  Though the party takes a few hits, injuries are minor.  Eiko, meanwhile, proves herself to be extremely deadly at close range.  Most of the PCs get a shot or two in at the wyvern (which is really what the "dragon" turns out to be), but Eiko lays into the beast with repeated critical hits from her (dwarf-sized) bastard sword.  In short order, the great, poison-tailed lizard is dead.  Eiko decides to take on the surname/title of Wyvernwacker.

Eiko (Elizabeth) also rubs it in and trash-talks Hrothgar (Nicholas, Elizabeth's 8 year-old son).  A few minutes of giggling and player-on-player wrestling occurs at the game table.  That doesn't happen much in my grown-up games... too bad, really.

The wyvern wasted, it's on to the castle itself!  The bad guys have blocked the bridge--the only way

My wife's solution to most problems in D&D.

across the moat--with a makeshift barricade of pilfered furniture, etc., so again playing it smart, Nerdanel tosses her fireball spell at the dozen goblins guarding the front door while the rest of the party works to clear the barrier.  Eleven of the twelve goblins wind up as charcoal stains on the front porch.  The last one, still on fire, squeaks and runs inside.

Crossing the bridge, the PCs also find that there are several statues on the front porch--all of men-at-arms in varying poses of fear and fight.  It doesn't take them long to figure out that these are actually the castle guards who've been turned to stone.  But by whom?  Or what?  Gulp.

At Hrothgar's suggestion, the castle doors are kicked in and the characters storm inside.  (Gotta love the YOLO style of young gamers.)  More goblins wait in the main hall, along with their pet troll.  More fighty-fighty.  Eiko again takes out the big bad with her Bastard Sword of Kill Everything.  She now names herself Eiko Trollcleaver-Wyvernwacker.  She's quite the modern dwarf woman, with that whole hyphenated-name thing and all.

There are many doors in the entry hall and the first one leads to a library room (location akin to Brian and Elizabeth's actual library... get it?  Anybody?  Sigh).  Anyway, there are no baddies here, but the north wall is completely filled with overstuffed bookshelves (many of which have been tossed on the floor as if someone were searching for something) and the south wall is full of... glass aquariums full of snakes?!  On a table in the middle of the room are dozens of obsidian rings with magical carvings on their surfaces.  Fitting the pieces together yet?  Yep, I borrowed +Zak Smith 's "Snakes Are Books" idea (link is SFW but site is sometimes NSFW).  Eventually, the characters figure it out too, with the help of Demosthenes' "Speak with Animals" spell and a talkative boa constrictor.  From their time in the library, Hrothgar learns how to garden from a garter snake and how to swim better from a blacksnake, Demosthenes becomes an expert in poisons from an asp, and Eiko learns the fine art of asphyxiation from said boa.  (Essentially, little snakes who can't hurt you give you knowledge; big snakes or particularly poisonous ones may give you knowledge but may also give you one of their abilities).

After letting it teach Eiko how to hug things to death, Demosthenes also charms the snake, adding yet another animal (remember that bear?  Yep, he's still here.) to the party.  Menagerie, ho!

Ok, but you're not gonna like it...

Next stop:  the Throne Room.  Hrothgar sneaks up to the doors and peeks inside.  Several more goblins and their three giant rats (mounts/guard animals?) are hanging out here.  Sneaky party that they are, the PCs send the snake inside to flush them all out.  The plan works.  Goblins and rats come racing out of the darkened chamber and are immediately set upon by our heroes.  A goblin and a rat are both hugged
into oblivion; the rest are slain in a more traditional way.  Searching the throne room, the PCs find a small chest beneath one of the thrones.  Hrothgar is sickened when the chest's poisoned-need trap accidentally goes off (bad disarm roll) but manages to pull through with only a temporary CON loss.  Since the lock proves unpickable, they hand the chest off to Eiko who uses her newly-found hugging powers to crush it open.  Inside is a small silver message tube containing a piece of parchment that reads...

Well, crap.  That scrap of paper seems to have either stayed in California or gotten lost on the flight home.  In any case, it's a word problem / riddle that nobody seemed to be able to translate.  At that point, we all set aside our dice and headed to Pizza My Heart for dinner.  And that's where we left off.

The pizza was awesome, by the way.

Labyrinth Lord Character Sheet w/ Base Attack Bonus and Positive Armor Class

Over the last couple of days, I've tinkered with creating a new Labyrinth Lord character sheet that makes use of my more "modern" house rules--namely, using Base Attack Bonus and Positive Armor Class a la Type III DeeAndDee.

Here's a link to the PDF sheet--help yourself to it and let me know if you find it useful.

It's also permanently embedded in the Tools section on the right-hand side of this blog.

Types IV, V, & Beyond... and Meh -or- I May Play D&D But I'm Not a Gamer

And you think Rockford Files is cool,
But there are some things that you would change if it were up to you.
So think about your masterpiece
And call to see if Paul can score some weed.
     -- "Battle of Who Could Care Less", Ben Folds Five


Do people still say/write "meh"?  Is that passe?

See, here's the thing:  I don't know the answer to the above question.  Not that I couldn't find out--I just don't care enough to go digging into it.  For me, "meh" works just fine as an expression of general apathy.

And it's for that same rationale that I'll probably only ever say this about Type V and the Nerd Wars that will surely accompany its release:

Yawn. I'm tired. Can we talk about something else?

I'm sure Type V--like Types I through IV before it--will have some good points.  I'm sure it will have bad or it's-just-not-for-me points as well.  Butchaknowwhat? I don't really care.  I'm not in the RPG "industry" (whatever that means these days) and I'm not even really a "gamer".  I like D&D and a couple of other RPGs and I even play them occasionally.  I write about them, too, because it's fun.  But I don't generally buy supplements or new editions, don't go to cons, don't hang out in hobby shops, and--unless they speak to me in a louder voice than this weekend's family events, date night, new movie, concert, or whatever--I probably won't even play That New Game that Arboreal Squid Publishing just released.

Like "meh," the games I have work just fine for me.  I've got nothing against the new stuff; I just don't have the time or energy (or sometimes the cash) to try it out.  In the last 10 years, I've bought exactly one new RPG--the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" game by Eden Studios.  And that was as much for my wife (massive Buffyholic) as for me.  I downloaded and tried out Risus and Supercrew* just out of curiosity in my everyone's-playing-Type-III-but-it-gives-me-a-headache and reading-too-much-Uncle-Bear phase in the early 2000s... and that's it.  Everything else on my game shelf was published between 1978 and 1995.  Not because I'm trying to be an intentional grognard--but because what I already have Just Works.

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* Also, Supercrew promised that I could draw in and color my superhero on the character sheet.  With crayons.  There isn't enough coloring in RPGS... or in adult life, for that matter.

Striking the Balance: Simplicity, Complexity, and Customization

I admit it, I'm a tinker.  No, not the makes-tin-cups-and-sells-them-from-wagons kind.  The messes-with-things-until-they-work-the-way-I-want-or-ooops-I-broke-it kind.

Cases in point:

• I love B/X/BECMI D&D and LL.  It's a simple system that plays fast and leaves a lot of open room for storytelling without being a "story game."  But, like most DMs, there are things I would have done differently if I'd been the one to devise the rules.  In the Evenoria games, for example, I'm using Base Attack Bonus and Positive Armor Class.  Why?  Because it just makes more sense intuitively and involves quick, in-the-head calculations rather than referring to charts and tables.  Initially, though, it required MORE work.  I had to look at to-hit-progressions for all of the classes and figure the BAB based on that, figure up the armor bonuses, and then assemble everything into tables that I must now remember to find and refer to at the game table.
• JB's 100 Reasons table rocks for figuring out cool ways to make a party "gel."  And it saves on brainpower.  But I almost forgot to use it because, again, it's just another piece of paper to have to keep on hand.
• Same thing for all of Zak's cool charts and tables from his blog and Vornheim, as well as Jeff's carousing rules.

Sometimes in mid-tinker, though, I wonder if I'm not making things harder or at least more involved than they ought to be.  Ostensibly, one of the main reasons I gave up on Type III D&D was that I didn't like complexity.  There were just too many systems, too many rules.  So for a long time, I either didn't play at all or ran games like Risus, FUDGE, or even the old West End Ghostbusters game.

But sooner or later, we all revisit our roots.  And in doing so, I finally figured out that "Basic" D&D had about the right level of complexity to keep both me and my players interested.  (Perhaps still a bit too much for the former and a bit too little for the latter--but that's what compromise is all about, no?)  Plus, you know, nostalgia.  I mean it comes IN A BOX! With DICE! In THE BOX!

And now what am I doing?  I'm adding more systems and tools.  Complexity.  Of course we're still about 20-30% as complex as Types I, II, or III*, but I wonder at times where customization ends and the slippery slope to byzantine rules lawyering begins.

How do YOU decide when or how something--even if it seems cool at the outset--is more trouble than it's worth?

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* I haven't played Type IV.  Don't even know anyone, personally, who plays it, so I can't really comment on it.  But, from the few glances I've had at the character sheets, it looks to be roughly as "involved" as Type III.

*Basic* D&D? Race as Class? You MUST be kidding... Nope, I'm not.

This post was inspired by two things:

1. Dubious looks and/or eye-rolling from players when I mention my preferred gaming system and
2. A recent re-reading of this post and this post from JB of the B/X Blackrazor OSR blog. 

JB has some very cool in-game rationales for why race-can-be-class and vice versa in B/X (and by extension BECMI) D&D.  To boil it down, he basically argues that the "human" classes (cleric, thief, fighter, magic user) are human archetypes (and European human archetypes at that!).  Demi-humans (dwarves, elves, halflings), on the other hand, are completely inhuman, alien species. Thus, the same kind of archetypes don't apply for them.  

To wit:

The only reason to “snub” the B/X-LL-BECMI “Race As Class” concept is because you consider the various species of D&D to be the equivalent of humans in rubber masks. Or real cultures thinly disguised in fantasy tropes. Or some other human equivalent. 

To me, keeping the races as separate, different, ALIEN actually increases the feeling of “fantasy” in the game. It makes humans AS A SPECIES really stand apart from the other species…their high levels, their variety of class/careers. It also makes humans more dangerous than other species.

Admittedly, while I think he raises a great point (especially the part about increasing the fantastic elements of the game), my rationale is probably a little closer to the "gamist" side of the spectrum.

See, I've been in this hobby a LONG time.  Not as long as others, but within a decade of "as long as possible."  When I rolled up my first B/X D&D character (a fighter whose name I can't remember), we were only a year or two into the first Reagan administration.  The DM, our babysitter, then ran my brother (a cleric, I think) and I through an adventure into a haunted tower where we had to rescue some relatives from goblin kidnappers.

In the few decades since that adventure, I've played a lot of different RPGs:  every version of D&D from BECMI to 3.5/Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu (a favorite), Buffy (another good one), Rifts (ugh, too much crunch), GURPS, Marvel (aka FASERIP), and more.  And you know what all of those hours of geeky dice-rolling have made me realize?  I like things simple.  For me, playing RPGs is as much about the social, hanging-with-smart-friends experience as the game itself.  More so, in fact.

I don't want to do spend an hour assigning skill points, doing more than single-digit math, or figuring out if my character really is 5% better at something than another character.  Boooring.  For me, anyway.  Your mileage may vary.

What I want to do is quickly sketch out a character (s/he's gonna change as the game progresses anyway... if s/he lives that long) and then start chasing monsters and having adventures.  If we get into a fight, I don't want it to turn into a three-hour game of Risk.  (Again, nothing wrong with Risk... if that's your thing).  I want it to be like a fight scene in a movie--fast, in-the-moment action that has as much of an emotional impact (ugh! didn't see that goblin with the spear coming so fast!) as a mental/tactical one.

Ok, fine, you say.  You like things fast-paced.  I get it.  And you hate math.  Well, duh.  You were an English major, after all.*  But basic D&D?  Isn't that the one where you can't be a halfling thief or an elf wizard?  Instead, you're just a halfling or just an elf?  And fighter, cleric, thief, and magic user** are combined race (human) and profession?  That's too simple.  And not realistic.***

True, I suppose.  But here's the thing: to me, it's mainly Just A Game.  Pretending to be a thimble, shoe, or iron in a game about real estate acquisition isn't terribly realistic, either.  But it's still fun because you're hanging with your pals and doing something together.  And for what Monopoly is, it works.  Same thing for D&D.  In the words of an immortal sage--it is what it is.


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* Yes I was. But I still put in way too many commas.

** Ok, a less-than-colorful class name.  I'll give you that.  What was wrong with "wizard", Mr. Gygax?

*** I know, right? The irony of discussing realism in a game with goblins, gelatinous cubes, and fire-breathing lizards is not lost on me.