I'm getting ready to run an OD&D campaign. I wanted to run a houserule past you guys; this one bolts on a new subsystem

How many filth points would cannabalism would be?

18

>Would require some hacks on the HP system, but could be interesting!
Relatively strong fleshcutting attacks adding "open wound" tokens that get removed by magical healing or proper attention while resting?

Wouldn't long weapons like polearms also help avoid getting bloodied?

Though I'm tacking on subsystems, I'd like to avoid tacking on too many subsystems.

What I could do is something like the HP mechanic from Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa supplement.

You roll your hit dice at the beginning of combat. Whenever you take damage, subtract it from your highest hit die. When a hit die is reduced to 0, you lose the hit die until you've had time to heal.
In this way, lost hit dice would represent lasting wounds with potentially harmful effects.

That's a good point!
Getting hit by bloodspray then is something that will typically only occur if you get close up and start hacking and slashing with daggers, swords, and axes. Might give some bonuses to these weapons to account for the high cost of using them. Swords already have a higher likely to be magical when found as treasure (magic swords show up more often than any other weapon in OD&D's treasure tables) but I might add an extra thing in there too.

Maybe you can simplify bookkeeping by abstracting with a post-combat roll.
>After a battle, gain 1d6 Filth due to blood, gore, viscera, and all those wonderful things. This roll is at -1 if using a bludgeoning weapon and -2 if using long-reaching weapons such as spears. A polehammer that falls under both categories *does* give this roll a -3.

Micromanagement is always lots of fun for everyone involved. This is a good idea that definitely won't get tedious the second time it comes up.

Not everything needs a mechanic, especially one solely involving juggling numbers. This is not an issue that necessitates bogging the game down in mechanical adjudication rather than just bringing it up narratively when it seems particularly relevant.

>le blunt weapons don't cause open wounds

I wish this meme would die. You take a swing at somebody's head with a mace, that head is going to fucking implode like a watermelon and splash gore everywhere.

Sorry that some people like guidelines for when diseases become an issues rather than relying on GM fiat for "lol ur sick now b/c I say so."

It's not a guideline any more than HP is a guideline, it's an unnecessary micromanagement system. A guideline would be "characters in squalid conditions may be exposed to disease", then deciding what conditions that occur in your campaign qualify, just like with every other hazard. "Resting in the noxious tunnels is tough on your systems. Everyone roll CON." is all that is needed; making everyone balance their books after every move simply gets in the way of the real narrative and tactical choices.

As a hard system it's something that could potentially be appropriate for one adventure in which disease and filth are particularly in the foreground, but as a constant throughout a campaign, it's a system of fiddling with numbers that will inevitably become tedious to engage with.

>I loot the body!
>You find *roll* 12 copper, and up your Filth by one.
>Kay

WOW
SO HARD
ALL DAT AUTISTIC BOOKKEEPING

>I loot the body!
>Wait, no, I have the least Filth but my Con is lower. Bogdak, you loot.
>Dude, no, I use a sword. Gondolf should do it, he doesn't even fight.
>Yeah, except when I get ambushed, which is all the time.
>etcetera etcetera

It's a hard numerical system that simply does not need to exist. Either it's irrelevant and thus pointless, or it's something the players have to make micro-choices about, getting in the way of the actual game. What about this system is superior to simply saying "Characters bathe between adventures and when resting where possible. If they cannot or their conditions are particularly squalid, they may be exposed to disease."?

Again, this is OD&D, so there really isn't all that much book-keeping. Less so since I'd like to remove all casters in order to focus on the aspects of gameplay that I want to focus on.

Here's a list of things I want all the players to track:
>Filth
>HP
>Equipment and Encumbrance
>Henchmen and Morale

One player needs to track the party's map.
One player needs to track exploration time in 10 minute turns using a handy time-tracking sheet I'll be providing (player only has to bubble in dots to mark the passage of each 10 minute turn)
One player needs to act as 'caller' to coordinate the other players

That's all I'm asking players to track!

Players arguing over who loots the body? Oh no, that never happens in D&D!

It's the exact same thing that happens in other games, *especially* OSR-style dungeon crawls, but reversed and honestly in a way that seems more in-character. "Ew, that's nasty. Paul, you do it." "Fuck you, make Randy do it."

Well... and players should also track their XP, but that's still not that much!

Dexterity is about stretching and stuff.

If you lie on the ground, in your armor, in the cold, etc, you're going to get stiff and sore the next day, which will hamper your dexterity.

This enforces not sleeping in your goddamn armor, finding a comfortable bed, keeping warm, etc.

Arguing about who loots the body because of clashes between different playaers wanting different things in-character? Cool. Arguing because of fiddling disease points across the party? Significantly less so, and in fact gets in the way of the interesting kind of arguing that's based on personality rather than numbers.

It's not about tracking, it's about choices. The system presents a barrage of extremely minor choices to the players, none of which individually are particularly interesting or significant. It drowns out actually interesting choices, including those that would otherwise be presented simply by abstracting all of the micro-choices into a single larger "if you do this, you could save time / find treasure / whatever, but you'd risk disease" when it's strongly appropriate to the adventure - actually highlighting the significance far more.

>It drowns out actually interesting choices
You do realize that people aren't limited to making [x] number of choices a day, right? They can make both significant choices *and* spend two seconds deciding "I'm already disgusting from that fight with the otyugh, I'm willing to leave the three copper in the orc's manpurse alone."

A bit too simulationest for my liking but if your group is fine with it, go ahead

>less than one session into the first dungeon they contract AIDs

Sounds fun go for it.

>You know what I want in my DnD, which I play to escape reality for a bit?
>REALITY!
>Lets make it even more tedious by adding stats to things that don't require them to bog down gameplay
>Why am I playing again, these spreadsheets remind me of work
Nah

To add on this, unless your playing low-no magic, predetigitation makes this entire thing pointless as you clean everything for free in less than 5 minutes.

>OD&D
>Wasting a spell slot on prestidigitation
>laughingelfsluts.jpg

Again, OD&D. There is no prestidigitation.

Why the hell does everybody act like I'm bolting this on to 3.5?
I'm using the old LBB's as my chassis here. That's like 20 pages per book.

>You do realize that people aren't limited to making [x] number of choices a day, right?

No, actually. People have limited focus; sap their attention with a dozen pointless micro-decisions and they're less able to engage when it actually matters. I want a system that uses my players' focus productively on interesting, exciting choices that engage them with the world or their obstacles, and layers of micromanagement not only misspend focus on boring decisions, they actively reduce those interesting choices by breaking them down into many tiny, uninteresting ones.

Most people are retards user. You or I say *D&D and they automatically think we're talking about 3.5 or Pathfinder.

I was mistaken. Just checked my RC. No prestidigitation spell. Not even a cantrip spell, from which 3rd edition cantrips (and prestidigitation) came from.

Okay, so cleaning off in a bath house removes all Filth.
Drinking in a tavern restores all morale.
So then adventurers can remove all their stiffness by... going to the town massage parlour?
OP image aside, I'm actually not trying to be 'magical-realm' here; I'm just trying to give mechanical justifications for things adventurers would do.

Maybe, in addition to buying soap and wine adventurers can also buy salves or oils to help them with their Stiffness? I dunno. People might take that the wrong way.

I would honestly like to see a more comprehensive survival system, or at least play with a group that is cool with actually keep track of rations during a hexcrawl.

Oh Odnd, excuse me, yes ok magic won't help.

Still a pointless system that can be done without, I mean unless your autistic(going by the actual meaning) and need everything down in numbers instead of just letting the players know they are filthy sometimes.

Does OD&D even HAVE laughing elf sluts?

>Adventurers gain 1 Filth point whenever they perform an unclean act, such as looting or otherwise handling a dead body
I'd say only if the body is still fleshy (isn't so old it's become a skeleton), and only if it isn't freshly dead. It's not like a body has decomposed any significant amount between when you kill it and when you kill the other things in a room.

>Adventurers gain 1 Filth point whenever they are splashed with blood; this occurs when the adventurer slays an enemy in melee with an edged weapon
Blood doesn't spray that easily. Maybe just make it on a critical hit or critical kill with an edged weapon.

It's still a good point though. Players are going to ask about prestidigitation. Eh, why not go ahead and make that a first level spell though.
Or, rather, I can give Clerics an "Annoint" or "Baptism" spell!

You ever read the LBB's? They are super minimalistic. You need to sap attention in order for there to be a challenge.

Rules can reinforce a particular mood or theme (sanity in Call of Cthulhu, for example). Disease rules already exist in older editions of D&D, and they're often far worse than what you'll get from later editions. This is just a theme reinforcing rule that's a fairly light system.

I don't know if I'd use it myself, but Ravenloft had the Terror mechanic, and this isn't really anything "new" or "game stopping".

Yes, but they're either 0 level NPCs, or basically Fighter/Wizards. It's a class feature.

I love tracking rations in a hexcrawl!

I even put together actual packets of rations to show my players one time.

>Standard Rations
A few strips of jerky, dried fruit, and nuts

>Iron Rations
Hardtack baked a dozen times over

It should! I now require all flavors of laughing elf sluts including both delicious chocolate elves and your common vanilla elves. And the rare strawberry elves! Mmmm...

If someone/something has recently died in a violent way, searching through their pockets, rolling them over, stripping their armor, etc., is probably going to get all sorts of nastiness on the looter. I'm still in favor of rolling post-battle though.

I think we can do somethign better for DEX than stiffness. No clue what, though, as my creative juices are tapped.

>You need to sap attention in order for there to be a challenge.
I don't understand what you mean by this. Decisions sap attention, so make sure the decisions being made actually contribute something.

Minimalistic doesn't really come into it; most interesting decisions that players make are on some level narratively-driven. Reducing larger narrative choices into many small mechanical choices removes the significance of the decision and allows it to be hedged against all of the other tiny choices being made.

Well, a very good point as been made that there should be some penalty to sleeping in armour. That's always something that bothers me.

I think it might just be a matter of finding a good synonym for stiffness.

>a more comprehensive survival system
Wilderness Survival Guide.

Which, incidentally, has rules for what sleeping in armor does, as well as sleep deprivation.

I'll check it out, thanks!

Honestly, I feel that if you want to track something minute, you should look at something else besides hygeine. In a psuedo-medieval world, everyone is going to smell like shit anyways. Maybe if there is an important social encounter coming up, give them a flat bonus for scrubbing off beforehand. If you want your party to be enjoying the local Roman baths (I like anime bath scenes as much as the next person, they are always fun) then let them do so out of their own volition. If your group likes that stuff then they will naturally do it if you suggest it.

There's an important question that needs to be asked: does OP's party have female characters (or, alternatively, a reasonable number of straight women/gay men playing male characters)? If the point of a hot springs episode is fanservice, that's critical.

Well, social status and hygiene could potentially affect NPC reaction rolls, so 2 points of Filth could be a 1 point reduction to Charisma for the purposes or rolls, or could just be a 2:1 penalty to the raw roll itself (depends on where Filth caps out I guess).

For OD&D, or any OSR-era edition, I'd probably just fit the Filth score's scale to the reaction roll table, so I could use it as a straight modifier.

That would probably require points to be a little rarer than OP's thinking, though.

Either that, or they cap out pretty low, so a scale of maybe 1-4, or 1-5.

That's a solution that does make a lot of sense -- it's hard to see how you can get filthier past a certain point.

Maybe overflow Filth points provoke a disease check or something? Just a low percentage chance roll, nothing really likely to trigger on any given occasion, but...

The overflow might be a good idea, but it depends on what your disease rules are. Diseases are pretty basic in the RC (pg. 154) and doesn't list any specific diseases.

A percentage chance disease check might be a decent idea, especially if there was a table of potential diseases (so, say 5% for each Filth point over the maximum. Success indicates that a disease has been contracted, roll on the disease table, etc.).

What the Filth overflow might do is act as a penalty to the saving throw for diseases, but this might be too harsh (especially since the RC's default disease is 25% change to die in 1d6 days).

Looking at this a bit further, I might suggest the 1e DMG (mostly for the tables). There is, in fact, a disease table, and lists filth as a modifier for the disease check. There's a couple of conditions for when you should check, and the base chance is 2%. Filth in this case is a +1% modifier, and you could make the Filth overflow +1% per point.

It's a per week check (usually only made if certain conditions apply), but a particularly Filthy character might need to check more often (and they certainly would prompt at least the weekly check for themselves and the rest of the party).

I smacked my finger with one of my metal boppers while I was knapping some glass. Tore the skin on the side off and I'm pretty sure it tore some muscle or a nerve or something. The top half of my index finger is completely numb and it's been about two months since it happened.

Blunt weapons ain't no joke, mang.

>>Filth Points
Sleeping with Ryoko should grant a disease or two instantly.
but, Aieka is pure.

They lose 1 filth point each five turns in the rain.