RETRO-POST: Dungeon Crawlers as an urban tribe

 I am closing an old blog I used to have, as I finally found the password. I just felt that all entries on it were obsolete and is like a pruning: cut the old branches to strengthen the green ones. But this one entry, I liked it a lot and wanted to preserve it here. I copied and pasted it as it was published on october 28th, 2017. Images were there in the original, too.

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Something I had on my mind for a while; I'll try to put it into words in case I can make something with it later.

The game/story centers around school kids on a modern town; and how they come in contact with the guild of dungeon crawlers: a mysterious gang of kids that speak about spooky, awesome underworld. Their stories are actually true. They've heard about a dungeon hiding somewhere. Just take any One Page Dungeon and put it on one of this:

(1. right under your school - 2. On a nearby forest, where the whole school is going next week on a trip - 3. Beyond your weird grandma's cellar - 4. On one of your uncles car junk lot. - 5. On the town's supposedly abandoned mansion - 6. Under a lost bridge, behind the industrial part of town)

Not all dungeons have to be under earth; every spooky or abandoned place is likely to have dungeon-like propierties: that's why they're abandoned or unconsciously avoided by normals. Also, some portals to dungeons might open in common places if one finds out how

You get your class at the start; just like that: fighter (though you depend on a specific kind of weapon depending on your background, because kids aren't usually trained on swordmanship), specialist (that kid that knows a lot about a certain thing, you can produce things from your bag that are related to your specialty) or mage (if you're a wizard, you'll probably discover it the first time you get in a dungeon). Use the rules of any dungeon game you normally use, but for the sake of tone, getting to 0 hp means that kids are unconscious and might need to be rescued.

Magic exists, but it only works in dungeons. When attempted on the surface, it acts dulled at best; and is easily dismissed by non-dungeoneers as tricks or sleight of hand. This happens to magic objects and, to a lesser degree, to any kind of treasure you recover from there. When a monster manages to escape from a dungeon, it's powers get subtler and must rely more on invisibility/stealth/cunning.

Normal people treats dungeon crawlers like they did with Goth Kids, Bronies, Emos, etc IRL: they mock them and despise their stories; attributing them to imagination. They're outcasts among kids, while the fashion trends awkwardly tries to appeal to them making artists and clothes about dungeons that miss entirely the point of what dungeons are about.

PC party getting back to the underworld after recovering HP

The underworld raw power of dungeons prevents cellphones and cameras from working, and jams most electronical devices. This prevents you from taking a selfie with a wight to prove your adventures to your friends. The most complex devices might even get hostile towards their wielders (your spotify list is suddently filled with hate messages from your loved ones; a GPS will lead you to the nearest chasm. Lanterns are usually OK, but you can never be sure if they're going to treacherously shut down right as you get into the troll's lair)

Dungeon subculture spreads mainly through drawings (mistaken by kid's edgy art), logs (mistaken as fanfic), grimoires (mistaken as new age books) and chansons de geste about their expeditions (mistaken for incredibly deep metaphors for teenage angst). Due to the inevitable impossibility of talking about dungeon experiences with normal people, there is a strong sense of comraderie between dungeoneers; though of course there are dicks who try to prevent new people from getting into it ("this kids only delve because they want to be cool, we old school delvers have been delving all the summer break and we know what dungeoning it's about"), tricksters ("treasure inspector, may I see your treasure?") and phonies ("Have you been to dungeon X?" yeah. "Dungeon Y?" yeah. "Dungeon Z?" yeah. "I've actually made up the last two" y- y- yeahhhhh of course I knew that)

* Beware: Deep speech ahead! *

Dungeons may appear anywhere; and they do not have any kind of supernatural cover up or anything (In fact, most of them might want to be noticed in order to grow). The only thing that prevents common people from knowing the magical reality is their very own drive to deny everything that clashes with their confort zone. The very zealotry of modern science (understood as denying weird options rather than acknowledging the unknown in order to investigate it) and the importance given to what society thinks we must instead of embracing the mystery of life is what keeps normal surfacers from the twisted horrors and treasures of the underworld. The importance of seeing the truth for oneself is a good theme to be enforced here.

Should a mountaineer discover the tomb of an atlantean king; the headlights on the news would be "Mountaineer goes crazy, pics from the madhouse on page 49" and handwave the whole tomb location automatically, is not like anyone is going to double check it; except dungeon delving kids who know where to read between the lines. No matter how many half-assed proofs you'll present or how good you are convincing people: No one will ever ever believe that dungeons exist unless they either see something strange with their own eyes (and cannot succesfully deny it using a weak pseudoscientific explanation) or really, really want to see a dungeon for some reason.

(If you're using a system that tracks sanity, maybe you need to be under a certain threshold to be operative on a dungeon)

there are those who have trouble adapting to a normal world after they've found the hobby

unexpected twists:

1 - you find out your mother never left you; she was in fact a fairy unable to escape the dungeon, but left you on the surface world to be raised as a human by your father.
2 - you're arranged in matrimony with a merfolk king of the underground sea. He'll whisper love letters to you through any kind of sink you visit.
3 - That mysterious fire that burnt the sawmill that year? a giant fire salamander. That earthquake? a troll
4 - proofs that one or many from this shirt are false.
5 - Goblins kidnap you or somebody you love in order to force you to become their king.
6 - An evil force wants to destroy the whole town in order to expand the dungeon into the surface.

example adventure hook

breaking from OSR

With one of the fighters reaching level 5, Our Trow Fortress campaign has reached the end of the season. Yes, we made it as in tv shows, so I could take a rest and another player could start GMing his Shadowrun campaign. Which means that I am playing again, as opposed to running games! So fucking liberating!

I am playing an elf samurai who is missing all combat rolls for now. After a month of play and our first serious loot, I got myself big breast implants with LED nipples (im playing as a sort of transgender guy) and I roleplay as the classic gay elf from elf parodies. Pic related, its him, the crossed eye is a bionic eye we all have. Not sure if its really on the starting package by the book or is a gift of our GM.

I find interesting the contrast on how much I stress over the "fairness" and "efficiency" of a given system or mechanic when I am a GM, and how little I care as a player. Honestly I am just thrilled just to interact with things but I dont know yet how combat really works (I pretend to, but really i am trusting that whatever the GM says is ok)

On the other hand, I think I am not running (BX) D&D anymore soon, nor my d6-based clone. But I am instead making my own fantasy game, out of that framebox. I think that me and my players must grow outside it. There are many reasons for this, and I will only cite some; leaving my upcoming posts to hint the directions I am pointing towards.

- XP for gold and monsters stopped making sense when the players decided to embark on altruistic missions from an NPC they pledged loyalty to. I could understand them and the game was actually better because of this decision, but sometimes I had to artificially create XP to compensate their efforts. See my last entry to see how I plan to do it, more or less (though I have refined it by now, more on this soon)

- Tracking things like food and water by units doesn't bring anything productive to the game, and I want to move away from the resource management chores. I am sure that I will find a good abstraction to portray the fact that you need food and water to survive. On the opposite side, I am a little dissapointed on how D&D abstracts many survival checks in the wilderness, that for me are very important to focus on, such as getting lost, hunting, foraging, etc. I'd rather make the scope of the game smaller, so a 30 mile travel lasted one session or three, but I feel its important to feel the texture of the forest, the road, the sea, and without forgetting that cities should feel places to explore and not just inventory refillements. 

- Theoretically, the procedural generation of D&D makes an open world, but in practice players search for the videogamey path: grind level 1 monsters and level 1 loot, then gradually increase in dungeon levels maintaining an expected point of risk reward. This might be broken sometimes by chance, yes; but I don't want to run a fantasy game like this anymore. Though I still want "leveling up" and monsters of all sizes, I want the approach to the game to be different, very far from the "grinding" cycle. I think I want to emphasize how it feels to actually live on a magical medieval land. I don't know. I'm still exploring my own wants on this, but hints of them are scattered through this blog since it's beginning.

But this is not to say that I dislike the game or thing is bad. Not at all, and it isn't. Actually, what i want is to take everything I love from D&D and try to apply to my new chimera, that is nothing like it.

[osr] shields shall be activated

Have the summer end rains already blessed your part of the world? I can feel them approaching in timid peeks; barely passing through the ranks of their mortal enemy, the ch3m7rails. Welcome to your comfy mood blog where we sometimes post and discuss rpg houserulings. 

I was working on a chart tonight. In my d6 pool d&d there is one rule that proved to be very cool: the shield roll. Shields basically do not add to your AC, but instead block an attack 1/3 of the time (roll a 5+ on a d6)

This means they mean much more protection than the small +1 (5%) they add to AC in B/X. But the increase is not good on itself: its a matter of taste. The good part is that it's relative importance increases as you wear less armor: the percentage of blows stopped increases as you are easier to hit. 

For example, a PC in plate armor can be hit on a 6 (17% chance), so the shield drops the chance by a third (by about 6%). The same PC in light armor is hit on a 5 or a 6 (33% chance) so the shield drops the chance by 11%. At AC four (no armor) and three (no armor and yet a level 1 fighter) the shield will be useful in 17% and 22% of the attacks received, respectivelly.

I made a chart that ports the system to B/X like this: Instead of adding a +1 to your AC, the shield can be activated once you have been hit (before damage). Roll a d20 when you do it: your AC becomes that number against that specific attack.
These are the chances against a monster with no attack bonus. Took a little time to calculate the percentages manually with the Windows Calculator, then I translated it to AC:

As you can see, the relative protection of the shield increases greatly, from their simple +1 ac on the original; being much greater in the lighter armors, but never too big as to make them useless. A fighter in leather and shield has 16 AC! just as if he wore plate. However, a one in plate and shield is just 18 AC, just one pip over his original equivalent, which I like because it mimics how plate armor got diminishing returns from the shield in real life.

Against monsters with actual attack bonuses (which is the norm) this shield boost diminishes gradually, but still getting on a median an extra AC point (around +2) at chainmail levels, with marginal benefits the greater the armor and the greater the monsters, but not reaching total zero. This way, the decision on wether or not to use one is always present.

YMMV about if the increased AC is a good thing or not. To compensate for it, I'd limit the shield activations to one per turn, which will only be relevant against monsters with multiple attacks or against multiple enemies.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT #1: (afterthoughts the next morning)

One more iteration on the concept of Activated Shields. A much simpler method than the previous entry, in which the shield d20 roll replaced the current AC. 

The rule is:

Shields don't provide any passive AC bonus. Instead, they block a succesful hit on a roll of 6 on a d6 (before damage is rolled). This makes their relative AC be better or worse depending on the armor worn (as they are going to "work" more on lower ACs), according to this table.

 

AC (ascending)	% to be hit at +0 bonus	1/6 blocked by the shield	+ ac equivalent (+1 in d&d)
2	95	15'8	3'17
3	90	15	3
4	85	14'1	2'87
5	80	13'3	2'66
6	75	12'5	2'5
7	70	11'6	2'33
8	65	10'8	2'17
9	60	10	2
Unarmored (10)	55	9'16	1'83
11	50	8'3	1'66
Leather armor (12)	45	7'5	1'50
13	40	6'6	1'33
Chainmail (14)	35	5'8	1'17
15	30	5	1
Plate Armor (16)	25	4'1	0'83
17	20	3'3	0'66
18	15	2'5	0'5
19	10	1'7	0'33

 As you see, this makes shields be a liiiitle better on leather and chainmail, not enough to make a big difference, but its a little treat to those fighting man who don't get plate as soon as they can. I want to open the possibility of using less armor in order to open more encumbrance. Not sure if this little boost would be enough.

Below this lines, you can see the same table but for a shield roll that prvented hits 1/3 of the time (5 or 6 on a d6)

AC (ascending)	% to be hit at +0 bonus	2/6 blocked by the shield	+ ac equivalent (+1 in d&d)
2	95	31'6	6'33
3	90	30	6
4	85	28'2	5'66
5	80	26'6	5'33
6	75	25	5
7	70	23'2	4'66
8	65	21'6	4'33
9	60	20	4
Unarmored (10)	55	18'33	3'66
11	50	16'6	3'33
Leather armor (12)	45	15	3
13	40	13'3	2'66
Chainmail (14)	35	11'6	2'33
15	30	10	2
Plate Armor (16)	25	8'3	1'66
17	20	6'6	1'33
18	15	5	1
19	10	2'5	0'66

As you can see, the relative AC of a shield is greatly improved from the original. It is remarkable that with this rule, they can a priori block natural 20s.

The point in which shields will really shine with this rule is when fighting monsters with high attack bonuses. A fighter in plate armor and a shield, for example, when fighting a red dragon with +8 attack bonus, would defend with an equivalent AC of 9 (17 -8).

By this rules, the 16 AC plate would become an 8, and then get the bonus from the shield: +2'17 for the 1/6th version and +4'33 for the 1/3 version; making it a factual AC of 10'17 and 12'33 respectivelly.

Not sure if implement this or on how. I like that the increment in AC can make up for the fact that I want to drop the attribute scores (and with it, the Con bonuses) and it seems appropiate that the con bonuses are more important at higher levels, just as when the monsters attack bonuses are higher and raise the effectivity of the shield. So in a way, the 1/3 version of the shield might not be as OP as it looks in comparison.

On the other hand, there is something so easy on giving normal shields 1/6 of effectivity, and have magical shields (that would be +1 as per the original rules) to work at 1/3.

Non-fighters have also the choice of using shields at a reduced armor rate. Be it taking the 1/6 instead of the 1/3, or using them at disadvantage (roll 2d6, keep lowest). I'm a bit reticent to hard-coded restrictions, and though it may sound ridiculous, the game feels more "real" to me if that kind of things are just severely handicapped instead.

The great downside of the shield roll is that it, of course, adds another roll. On its defence, I'd say that it only comes up on a succesful enemy hit. Personally in my current "D6 D&D rules" I pair it with my variant of Homebrew Homunculus D&D without damage dice, and with the damage rolls gone, I don't find the shield rolls tedious at all.

[BX/OD&D] Towards a single save

 In my game of Trow Fortess, I don't use the five saves. I only use a d6 pool and two saving throw types (plus an special one at zero hp)

The types are the Easy (Death Ray, Poison and Paralyzation) and the Difficult (Spells including wands, Triggering Traps and Dragon Breath). Their chances by level are based on BX's Death Ray and Spells saves, respectivelly; and there is nothing in between (full spread of chances here)

I am thinking on trying OD&D at some point; but getting back to the classic 5-saving throw system and consulting charts is not appealing to me anymore (It's specially painful to check saves for monsters and having them referred to like "as fighter 4" instead of a fucking number). If you follow this blog, you know I usually take an effort to eliminate rules and charts that I feel are redundant, or just do not offer enough reasons in exchange for their cost.

So I started wondering if I could keep a single save number that scaled with level; and then, with advantage or disadvantage mechanics, cover my two save types mathematically faithfully. The answer is yes:

The two rows above are the fighter's saving throw progression for his best (death ray) and worst (spells) saves. These numbers are the same for OD&D and BX, saving me time because I had already done that calculations.

The third row is the Spells saving throw, rolled with advantage (2d20 keep best). As you can see, and without counting the unimportant normal man's saves, it follows the Death Ray saving chances with a maximum deviation of a 5% at level 10. This allows me with a clear conscience to use the spells save as the baseline single save, use it for the hard saves (spells, traps and dragon breath) then giving advantage for the easy saves (death ray, paralization, poison)

(PD: Lets ignore the fact that elf saves fuck this proportion completelly)

The fourth row is the opposite: disadvantage (2d20 keep worst) on the Death Ray numbers. The mathematical probabilites deviate from the original Spells' ones a little more, and the psychological act of rolling an easy save with disadvantage feels worse than rolling the hard one with advantage, so the previous method feels much better in both senses.

Hurt and Fatigued

No way there is this in B/X and never saw or used it!!! not the action of running, of course, but the concept of exhaustion and its effects. I find very cool that they are very intense, in contrast for the fact that they appear in such marginal cases: 30 rounds of combat running are A LOT. It could probably be written as "characters are exhausted after running for 1 turn", as 1 turn encompasses 60 rounds, and running is probably better modelled on "turn based time". If combat is taken place, it makes strange to have a pursuit ongoing.

Picture is from the OSE srd, which is an awesome tool to search for monster stats or any kind of Basic D&D information in the cellphone. Consulting B/X specifies that exhaustion prevents you from running further (which was kept ambiguous on the above bullet points) and that exhausted characters always deal at least 1 damage on a succesful hit.

I like the idea of worn out PCs that are not in conditions to fight. D&D uses hp as a measure of stamina, too, so they could have modeled fatigue through HP loss. But this way is more tangible, factually it introduces a status effect.

I was wondering if the same penalties could be applied to when monster or PCs are worn out by combat (and this is the purpose of this entry). Written in B/X format, the idea to be tested would be:

"Whenever a PC or Monster has his HP dropped to a number equal to its HD or less, he is badly wounded, and incurs in exhaustion effects"

This means that, stastically, fighters and dwarves would be wounded after taking more damage than elves or magic users (because their 1d8 HDs have more HP on them)

This also means, of course, that some monsters can be badly hurt before they are dead. I like this for many reasons:
- It makes for an organic place to call for a morale check, and different monsters allow for many different psychological approaches to being close to death/defeat (though making morale checks at 50% hp also makes sense, as to prevent this state)
- It serves as an alternate way to subdue dragons
- Its a way to reveal to the players that the monster is about to go down, without telling them the actual HP
- Maybe some monsters can have special attacks that only happens in this point
- Differentiates living monsters from undead or animated monsters, which have no point in having a "wounded" status.
- The higher HD a monster has, the higher the chance that becomes wounded at some moment during combat; which feels appropiate in genre.

Assuming healing at 1d3 hp per day rate, this means that high level PCs will be wounded more days than low level ones. This might be a little weird but narrativelly it makes sense as it is implied they sustained more damage to arrive to this situation. I imagine it sort of when Zoro or Goku are incapacitated after a great battle.

In my game, as I don't use hp (only HD) I must homebrew some proportions, remembering that fighters and monsters, with 1d8 hp per hd, will on a median be put in "wounded" status at 2/9ths of their health.

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EDIT: The whole concept is interesting to pair with the "Roll the Body" type saves; or save versus death at 0 hp. From AxianSpice:
 

"When you reach 0 hp, you drop down and you might be dead. You make a final Save versus Death when (if) someone checks on you. You pass it, you're back on your feet with 1 hp and still have a chance to make it back from the dungeon. This type of rule can be found, for example, in Dungeon Crawl Classics. If you're left there, you're dead, eaten by monsters or just bled out"

I like it in part because it gives back the survability that the debuffs take from characters. In part, also, because I like that with little effort it gives you the whole spectre of possible status without any extra bookkeeping:

Full power
Wounded
Unconscious
Unknown state
Dead

Underground Doctors (a monster)

 

"The ones in the left and the right are doctors. They are healing the one in the middle, who was sick and had blood. The doctors have put an eye on the wound and have healed it" said my three year old daughter explaining her work.

I can't help but wonder. How many fights has the doctor on the right been on to be so toppled with eyes? What is the mysterious ball that the left doctor is holding in his/her arms?

MAGENTA SLIMES A.K.A. UNDERGROUND DOCTORS (Slime, Neutral), stats as B/X

Armor class: 9
Hit Dice: 2* (for each 1 rolled when finding HP, the doctor gets an extra HD and an extra eye)
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 1 strike, 1d6
No Appearing: 1-6 (2-12). On a group of 6 or more, there will be a leader with 1+d6 eyes.
Save as Fighter 1
Morale: 8

These slimes are around 1 to 2 feet tall, but their constitution is sturdy: dense as solid mud. They do not have a mouth and are for the most part quite silent, but at the same time they are highly intelligent, able to roughly understand the PCs if they use gestures. They form small "clans" on caves, where they settle around a "cave of eyes": a location where their shaman has some kind of plantation where 1d6 (artificial?) eyes are sprout from the moist rock, and many more are in the process.

They are not violent but are territorial and may attack to keep invaders away from their lair, or just as part of their martial training. They will do hit and run attacks, covered by surprise, and then run away hoping their victims get the message and turn back. If things go bad, they trust their shaman to bring them back to health with their Eye Healing.

When the shaman puts one eye from his?/her? harvest into a fatal wound, it closes and the treated slime regains 1d6 hp instantly. One or two shamans, who carry a blue ball as if it was a symbol of their position, are always present on a lair (2 in 6 chance to be on a wandering monster group). The shaman will not attack at first, but wait and run away towards the cave and fetch some eyes if he sees that a fellow member has fallen. A PC that has been dropped to 0 hp or less can be treated with eye healing, but will only regain HP on a roll of 6; and the eye won't catch functionally into the body. Eyes will also lose their propierties if carried for more than one day.

The defining act of a shaman is developing the ability to plant eyes in stone. This is done through a (very slow) variation of the Stone to flesh / Stone to mud spells, applied to small portions of rock. This means that in case of need, they can de-petrify any being that has been turned to stone, though it will take a full day's work for a shaman, or half of it if aided ritually by the whole tribe. If attempted on a statue, it will just turn into mud.

This ability makes them relativelly unafraid of stone-turning monsters, to the point that they will try to capture cockatrices and use them as guards at strategic points, or even as a mount for the smaller slimes. Feeding the cockatrices will be a task itself, as the slimes do not need to hunt for themselves (they absorb minerals or something through osmotic exchange). But having to feed their pets might send the young slimes into bushcraft missions, to get mushrooms, carrion or loot the PCs rations.

 

I knew I had this cockatrice drawing somewhere! In my game, cockatrices are as large as a coyote. Is it hard to believe that a smaller bird can have 5 HD.

 

The blue ball also stores an alchemical compound able to cast an equivalent of "Resist fire" on an area once per day (Unharmed by non-magical heat or fire, gain a +2 bonus to saving throws versus fire-based magic or breath attacks: damage is reduced by 1 point per damage die rolled to a minimum of 1). This allows the tribe to colonize underground places otherwise blocked by magma, and gives them an edge when confronting nearby fire-based monsters.

Design notes: I wasn't sure if allowing PCs to be healed by eye therapy was a good idea, so I leaned for the middle path and made it a difficult chance. What I love about this fuckers is that they are level 2 monsters as an encounter, but together as a tribe can overcome many troubles present in their ecosystem: Magma, fire breath, petrifying attacks, gangs of goblinoids or other thugs, accessing high passages on the wings of a cockatrice, etc. Their defense is built around their intelligence, their drive to tame nature and teamwork as a society. They have reasons to be violent or friendly depending on the situation; and can be very useful some day if befriended.

Slot Machine Level Up

The new level up method I am testing right now in this new campaign (We had only one session for now, so there is no feedback yet). Found in my old notes, probably inspired by this post. I call it the slot machine level up.

 

Instead of having your classic charts (for example the fighter's one above) I cut the requirements approximately into a third, rounding down to compensate the fact that I don't use prime requirement reductions.

level 1: 0
level 2: 600
level 3: 1200
level 4: 2500
level 5: 5000
level 6: 10000
level 7: 20000
level 8: 40000
level 9: 80000
level 10: 120000
level 11: 160000
level 12: 200000
level 13: 240000
level 14: 280000

Once a PC goes back to town with XP enough to get a new level, they do a training roll: a 2 in 6 chance to level up. No matter if you fail or pass, your XP amount is set to 0 after the roll.
This, in my humble mathematical knowledge, gives PCs stastically the same advantage rate as in the original (1 in 3 chance, with one third of the XP), but has a handful of things I like:

- Making uneven advancement for different PCs, because I like when there are PCs of different levels on a party as it makes for interesting hierarchy dynamics.

- Random payoffs have an addictive component. The feeling of "maybe I could level up at the end of this session" is something I think is cool.

- The amount of XP you have to track is small as it restarts from zero every time you level up. This has not any advantage beyond the psychological sensation of not tracking a big amount of numbers, but psychological shit is important. We live on the mind after all.

art by Diego Sanches

Simultaneous Initiative

The other day I found this by reading my daily OSR stuff, and this paragraph offered me a new wonderful paradigm. I'll just cite:

OD&D has no such thing as Initiative and to my way of thinking it should never use it - EVER!

OD&D uses Parallel Actions; everyone does what they do in a round and then results are applied.

You engage the orc and you are both circling and looking for an opening… roll your attack, oh you hit it for 7!

The orc falls to its knees mortally wounded, in a last effort it swings at you missing and falls face down on the ground in front of you.

The orc got its attack in even though you killed it.

Oh Oh, sometimes things should not happen in a parallel order.

What you can do is apply reasonable results to any situation. Lets say our heroic fighter decides to attack a troop of orcs armed with pole arms. The pole arms should do about the same damage if they get a hit as our hero's sword. Yet our hero has decided to be The Man in this situation and is charging at pole weapons, this is not a good idea. He needs to clear those pole weapons before he gets his attack roll. Thus I would judge that the orcs get to roll their attacks before he gets past their pole weapons and can strike with his sword.

Legend of Shalice (pc-98)

With simultaneous initiative, the problem in my head was at first: "then who declares actions first?" But for some reason, I was enlightened this time: It doesn't matter. You can make it so combatants can re-declare actions based on what their opponent is doing, and then the opponent, add infinitum. Or just say that you can hold action indefinitelly, with some rounds ending with motionless combatants in both sides because they don't want to give an opening. But the truth is that you can probably run games during months before you have to resort to one of those.

Just a good point to remember: If PCs and NPCs power grows parallel to each other the game might keep balance, but with simultaneous initiative, the possibility of mutual kill increases depending on how easy is for both to hit. 

Ecology of Magic Items

twitter: @kaimatten

Where do all the magic items in the magic item tables come from? 

Well, the only way mentioned in BX is through clerics, magic users and elves at name level. Much is left for the GM to decide (how much time, gold and reagents does the item need to be completed) though as a guide, a scroll/potion/item that mimics a spell requires 500 gp and one week per spell level. For other items, there are no instructions: just some examples that can work as guidance:

All right. Now I ask myself: Do all of these items we found in the depths of a labyrinth come from a name-level caster's hand? 
In my view, I always imagined that +1 swords were the forgotten weapons of heroes, imbued with certain powers depending on the battles that their wielder's fought, and that +1 is an extra strength that the sword gained alongside its wielder, or maybe "from" him, as if a part of the warrior's soul had remained in the blade. I wanted to put this in game terms: not so much to add interesting gameplay, as to explore the naturalism of the game world through its most tangible part (procedures!)

Whenever a PC dies, roll 1d20 equal or under his/her level: on a hit, add a +1, a small effect or a bane (+bonus against a specific monster) to any part of your gear. Keep on rolling until you miss. Caster classes can give the object an effect equivalent to a spell of their appropiate level

There are times, though, in which characters don't die to create a magic item. But the moment in which they imbue their essence into an item (knowingly or not) is a moment in which they forfeit personal action in favor of another hero. For example, a warrior who retires and gives his armor to his son. Or a magic user who, for the sake of saving the kingdom, must expeditiously imbue a sword with powers to arm the parting chosen hero. These imbuements do not require significant time, but they require a scene in which they are gifted to their new wielders, alongside an oath, an advice or a farewell.

In this occassions, the creator of the magic item takes a step back from the action. Magic items are never created this way for oneself, but to invest power into another. I think that level drain works nicely for this purpose: too stupid to use for oneself (the level will always be better than the sword effect) and so costly that nobody will ever use it in practice, but will always be available in the theory to explain how a given item might have been created.

Whenever a PC wants to gift an item charged with power to another, add a +1, a small effect or a bane (+bonus against a specific monster) to it. Caster classes can give the object an effect equivalent to a spell of their appropiate level. Then, you lose a full level: your XP is set to the minimum required for the previous level you have at the moment (If you are at level 8 and have +2000 XP towards level 9, you lose the 2000XP and all the XP needed from level 7 towards level 8)

Other times, magical items are just mundane gifts, with powerful intentions behind, but made by people that have no levels whatsovever. This is the case for the amulets exchanged by lovers. These can work as one-use bonuses: one re-roll, or maybe turning a failed save of any type into a success. These are an equivalent of a person that might be far away, but cares for you. So, how are they done? And how to prevent PCs make gifts amongst themselves all the time? Well, there are some under-used mechanics in OSR that more or less represent bonds to other people. Let's work with that:

Whenever a PC wants to give an amulet to another character, specify when it will trigger. It will grant a re-roll or an automatic success once, or once per level of the user (not sure yet). It will only work in absence of the giver. The giver loses a hireling slot permanently (which in case of an NPC won't matter much, but a PC will think twice before losing any resource permanently, even if its a marginal one. Amulets shared amongst the party will be mostly useless as they dont work if the giver is present)

Of course, all of this variants do not rule out the original path to the creation of magic items. They are just alternative paths. However, the time+money+ingredients way can also cover another case: That one in which a blacksmith or another artisan wants to make a magical version of his usual work. This is how dwarves, despite not having any magical abilities, achieve to make their masterwork or magical items.

All of this rules are probably never to be used. They are irrelevant notes which do not add much to a session. But if something is present and ubiquitous in the world I at least need some mental guidelines to know how a PC can interact with it. These rules main point is to provide a better understanding of the game world logic.