Earning XP Through Community Investment

(Misleading Clickbait Title: Elevate Your D&D Campaign With Orgies, Inc.™!)

A few times on this blog I've fiddled with alternate XP systems for OSR-type games, usually in a very surface-level and indirect way that does little more than gesture at other people who already explored the concepts much more fully years before.

This time, I plan to do better with the idea.

What orgies have to do with my aspirations of doing better, I'll explain in a moment. But rest assured it's nowhere near as interesting or even eyebrow-raising as you're thinking.

Today's post concerns the 10th issue of Dragon magazine, from all the way back when they still spelled its name with a "The". Content Notice for people reading along with the archive.org copy above in SFW environments: there are elf-presenting nipples visible on page 5. I suggest covering the art with a nice, beige window or piece of construction paper depending on reading device, if necessary.

In this issue Jon Pickens debuted one of two alternate experience systems for D&D which would release that year, the other being Dave Arneson's in The First Fantasy Campaign. Unlike Arneson's rather dry title for a gameplay aid, Jon's article goes under a title that would not be out of place in today's world of clickbait, which is an impressive feat for 1977. Though, I guess advertising has always been preying on the same parts of the human psyche, just using different tools throughout the ages.

Orgies, Inc.

"Orgies, Inc." inverts the OD&D standard of experience points being awarded equal to the number of gold pieces in treasure looted from the dungeon and brought back to civilization. Instead, XP is awarded only when gold pieces are spent in a way that effectively removes them from the game without direct benefit to the players. So, coming home and blowing all that gold on a new stronghold or obtaining magic items wouldn't count toward leveling up. The article provides a list of possible income-burners, ranging from religious sacrifices whose entry ends midsentence, to philanthropy, to spell research- the last of which is cheating a little, since you actually can get material (magical) benefit out of that option.

The orgies do eventually appear, at the bottom of the list. The actual description is simultaneously tame and outlandish, glossing over the activity as "lusty indulgence in wine, women, and song" at a tavern which can somehow last as many days in a row as the participants have points of Constitution, costing up to 500gp per day. I know the PCs are meant to be larger-than-life pulp action figures in this kind of game, but when the system gives normal human beings a Con of 9-12 by default, it suddenly makes the world look way more like Oglaf than Conan.

There's also the issue of level scaling that butts up against that 500gp/day limit real quick. At low levels a weekend or a week of wild partying at most will be enough to level everyone up, but as the required XP amounts climb into the tens and hundreds of thousands of experience points per level, you're suddenly looking at weeks or months spent doing nothing but orgying or recuperating from said orgies. Which sounds exhausting at best and downright hellish at worst, if the DM doesn't provide multiple gold burners for the PCs to switch it up with.

If you'd like to know more about other attempts at "carousing" XP systems over the years that we won't be looking at, I recommend this post from Yore. Another Content Notice here, some of these early systems had gross and coercive implications about whom a PC could "wench" with.

Clan Hoards

I'm more interested in the 4th item on this list of gold sinks, however. The so-called Clan Hoard option allows characters who are dwarves or "other clannish folk" to gain XP by donating treasure to the heavily guarded public hoard owned and operated by their clan. No private individuals may make withdrawals from the hoard, and as the article puts it, the money is effectively taken out of the campaign.

This system interests me for a few reasons, not least of which being the implied lore of a public hoard operated by each dwarf clan. That terminology suggests a form of public ownership and public funding that the clan as a whole may dip into and benefit from, distinct from the private estates of wealthy clan members or a treasury owned by whatever hereditary ruler one might expect to be in a dwarf-hold in 1970s D&D.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it because I've been doing a lot of writing about working class dwarves over the past few months, but with that one line this option implies a very different society and political system than what was common in fantasy fiction at the time. And I think that's neat.

I also just like the mechanics of the system for the way they could transform a campaign and reorient it around a community. It isn't the only sort of donation a person can make under these rules- I did mention philanthropy earlier on. But philanthropy conjures a very specific mental image (for me at least) of detachment, both from the needy and from the underlying causes of need: rich folks getting a park named after them or preventing a bad harvest from getting worse, but stopping short of systemic change, and junk like that.

The clan hoard, meanwhile, keeps the PC(s) connected to their community. They have to return home (or at least meet representatives abroad) in order to turn their wealth over, which encourages them to establish their base of operations at home rather than off in some chunk of wilderness recently scoured of all inconvenient life and deeded in the fighter's name.

That creates opportunities and complications you might not get from a traditional dungeon or hex crawl. For one, you have a whole lot more NPCs you're likely to run into regularly, none of whom are necessarily beholden to the players as hirelings or serfs. Different families, groups, or factions within the community can bring different flavors and friction to social interaction. Events beyond the party's control can pop up at unexpected times. If they return from a long adventure only to find a natural disaster has struck or there's a dispute going on, more than just a monetary donation will be needed to resolve the community's problems (and unlock that sweet XP). Even the least personally-engaged PC has a stake in all of it to some degree, which keeps gameplay varied and fresh.

What to Throw Out

There are a few minor parts of Pickens' take on the system that I don't like. For one, the clan hoard necessarily being limited to clan-based societies limits its applicability in a (to me) unrealistic way. Lots of societies in real life can form intricate systems of social cohesion, cooperation, and resource management beginning from radically different starting points, that would nonetheless let them arrive at the same place for this kind of mechanic. It should be even more so for fantasy, I think.

Second and less nitpicky is the idea that the money is effectively removed from the campaign once it's donated. I think that's a lazy way to handle it, akin to the religious sacrifice mechanic where all the wealth basically goes up in a puff of smoke on the altar. It doesn't feel meaningful or impactful to the fiction.

What to Add Instead

I think even if the money is permanently taken out of the hands of the PC—which is totally fine—its impact should still be felt. The PCs should see evidence of what it's being used for and what goes on in the community as a consequence.

The most obvious way to do this to me is by reflecting each character in the way the community grows, since it's the mechanism by which those same characters grow more powerful. Take each PC's character class, background, or other defining features into account and consider how that might affect the place as they grow more prominent.

For example, the fighters might grow stronger because the money has been invested in community defense with a training ground, armory, and maybe some kind of citizen militia is set up. At low levels the fighters would be training alongside the other newbies, but at higher levels of experience—literal and narrative—they might be the ones doing the organizing instead. Similarly, a magic-user's need for specialized tools and a place for magical research might spur the creation of a larger archive or public library in town.

With this little change, the PCs are no longer leveling up and growing stronger through their mix of dumb luck and Main Character power, but through the opportunities provided for them by their community. It makes the game a more social RPG with a greater emphasis on reciprocal relationships, although the potential for exploitation in the form of dungeon delving in order to acquire the wealth in the first place does still exist.

Community XP

The simplest way to implement this system is by doing as Jon Pickens did, and have each character level up independently according to their own XP track once they've contributed enough of their personal wealth to the community. One might reasonably assume wealth and therefore XP is divided up evenly and/or equitably between PCs in the spirit of cooperation this whole thing is meant to foster, but there's always room for character competition or friction in a story about people like this.

If the table doesn't enjoy lopsided leveling tracks common to OSR games and the minimal impact it can have on moment-to-moment play, you can remove everyone's leveling track and instead give one big XP bar to the community as a whole. This can represent the amount of gold stored in/being utilized by its version of the public funds hoard from earlier on, standard of living for the average person, urban or economic development, or some other nebulous indicator of growth. Remember, money locked up in the personal fortunes or private properties of rich jackasses contributes nothing.

Alternatively, if you like the milestone leveling that seemed to get popular with the advent of D&D 5E (or at least I was ignorant of it up until then), throw out all the bars and XP and tie the milestones to various public works initiated by the community. This could take the form of funding building projects or the acquisition of certain skills or resources and the like.

More hands-on involvement from the PCs like labor hours or direct participation in planning/advising on the project could also count toward the goal, making it better for games with less of an emphasis on dungeon crawling. You could also probably assign a GP value to characters' workhours if you want to use that in combination with XP tracks; after all, is adventuring not already a form of wage labor?

Once a goal has been reached by whatever means with the indispensable aid of the PCs (not because they're better than everybody else but because the story kind of hinges on them), a level-up may be had.

Leveling Tables

Each level-up, a PC gains all the generic benefits: increased HP, attack ability, etc. This represents a mix of their own personal growth from adventuring, and what their community helped foster in them during downtime.

The player also rolls on the [Great Big Table of Community Upgrades]. This is a general table that everyone has access to regardless of class, background, etc. An upgrade is checked off after being rolled, and repeats are rerolled unless specifically noted in its entry. If XP curves are flattened so every character levels up at the same rate, or the table uses milestone leveling like the above, the whole party rolls at once.

The table can just be a regular old d100 or similarly large roll. Example:

Nergui advances to 2nd level and rolls on the table. They roll a 46, which means that greater investment in local food resources has given the community a Food Surplus. Rations and meals are always available for purchase in town, the population is healthier and well-fed, and rolls on the Complications table (more on that below) that result in famine might be cancelled out/ignored.

Later, Nergui advances to 4th level and rolls 46 again. This upgrades Food Surplus into Improved Nutrition, which improves the general quality of life for the people, gives the community as a whole a bonus on rolls to avoid plagues spread by malnutrition, and also gives the PCs a +1 to their next Hit Point roll.

Alternatively, the table could be much more narrow and use a smaller die such as d10 or d20, with higher results being better, but also gated in tiers by being far higher than the die size naturally allows one to roll. Only one roll is made per level for the whole party, but the party's total level is added to the roll. Example:

The party reaches 3rd level. Because there are 4 of them in the party, they add a +12 modifier to the community roll. This increases their roll of 10 to 22, kicking it up to the 20-25 tier. They roll 1d6 for the tier and get a 2, netting their community the Minor Magic Shop upgrade. This makes minor magical trinkets available for purchase in town. Or, if the table refuses to break the 'no buying magic items' taboo, each PC is gifted 1 (and only 1) minor magic item for all their help around town lately.

In addition to the Great Big Table, each character has their own Class/Background table that represents how their own personal contributions have affected the community. These should be smaller than the general table, but they can be full d20 or even d100 tables if you're feeling motivated/masochistic enough. Example:

Nemo the cleric advances to 5th level. They roll on the cleric table and get Local Devotees a second time. This represents the growing community of their coreligionists in the area, and allows Nemo to upgrade the little roadside shrine they had previously constructed into a modest temple/sanctuary/sacred grove/etc.

Opposite the table of Upgrades is the table of Community Complications. This table is rolled on whenever upgrades are rolled for, representing the unexpected incidents or setbacks that go hand-in-hand with the community growing and changing over time. They don't have to be straight-up penalties; the complication can instead be an encounter the party/PC is forced into, with consequences resulting from how well they handle it. Example:

The party advances in level and rolls 14 for complications. A climate-appropriate natural disaster strikes the community, forcing it and the party to devote considerable time to cleanup and repairs. This might strengthen bonds between survivors, or cleanup might uncover a hidden secret somewhere.

Characters could have their own personal complication tables, again dependent upon class, background, or anything else relevant to the campaign. Depressing!Example:

Outis the tiefling advances to 6th level and rolls the Not Welcome Here complication. Their growing fame and apparent acceptance within the community has drawn other tieflings to live in the area recently. Their more visible presence has riled up the local bigots, who only tolerated Outis as "one of the good ones" up to that point. Now an incident is about to occur, and needs intervention.

You could also put together some kind of cumulative group level complication table in the interest of maintaining pointless symmetry with the group upgrade table mentioned above- I know I'm certainly tempted to do that. But I'm unsure how high the stakes should be for something like that. Where does it top out? Plague? Invasion? A wizard tripping and spilling the entire contents of their forbidden tome collection out on the sidewalk? I'll leave you to decide that one.

I realize this still isn't an actual system, but I do hope that this offering of bigger- and crunchier-than-usual breadcrumbs might be useful in designing a community-oriented progression system of your own.

Adapting Moorcockian Cosmology to D&D

Years ago now I tried writing a post about alignment in D&D, Elden Ring, and Michael Moorcock. It quickly bloated into a messy constellation of ideas that only got even worse when I realized I didn't know who the hell Poul Anderson is, nor how much more important to the development of old D&D alignment (and the entirety of the paladin class) his book Three Hearts and Three Lions was.* So, I gave up on it.

More recently I found myself poring over Dragon Lords of Melniboné, the 3E Goldrush-era d20 port of the Stormbringer RPG by Chaosium. It's an odd duck that combines a few secondary systems from the original d100 game with the core d20 mechanic in a way that isn't terribly strange or broken, and from what little I know of the universe (being as poorly read as I am) it seems to strive to maintain lore-accuracy as well. Overall functional, I'd say.

It also inspired me to take another shot at the main point I'd wanted to make in that old draft:

I think using alignment inspired by the metaphysics from Moorcock's Eternal Champion series could make D&D more interesting- when one is forced into the unenviable position of having to use alignment at all, that is.

Why Do I Keep Saying "Moorcockian" Anyway?

To start, I should explain what I even mean by Moorcockian cosmology and metaphysics.

In the Eternal Champion series, the universe is a perpetual battleground between the metaphysical forces of Chaos and Law. Chaos is change, entropy, and random chance. Law is stability, stasis, and predictability. These are not personal beliefs or inclinations, but the rules that undergird the laws of physics such as they exist in this universe. Both are necessary for the multiverse as we know it to exist, but neither side cares about that; each force wants to defeat the other and reshape the cosmos in its own image. Chaos would render everything down into a roiling soup of ephemera constantly changing too quickly to really make anything, while Law would fix everything in perfect, crystalline singularity and stasis where nothing can grow or live.

The fine line between the two extremes is the only situation in which the wonders of existence can, well, exist. That is where the third metaphysical force, the Cosmic Balance, comes into play. Balance exists to keep the other two forces in check before they destroy everything with their perpetual clashing. Balance works to equalize Chaos and Law, and whenever there is a severe unbalance, it sends a new incarnation of the series' tragic protagonist, the Eternal Champion, to go sort it out.

If you've ever read the AD&D 2E writeup on alignments where a True Neutral druid is shown to help a local barony against some marauding gnolls, only to then side with the gnolls once they're on the backfoot, the Cosmic Balance is the initial idea that I believe Zeb Cook or someone on his development team took and then royally butchered and contorted into the above scenario.

I must stress that Balance is not neutrality in the interest of some unchanging status quo, nor is the Eternal Champion like the aforementioned pendulum druid, but that is a common way things are interpreted. I think that's due in part to how Elric's story, the most famous in the Eternal Champion series, depicts a world where Chaos is ascendant and thus it, the Chaos gods, and their servants are depicted in an almost comically super-villainous light, which makes the stodgy defenders of Law far more sympathetic, and Elric's eventual alliance with them can come across as vetting them as the official "good" side.

But as I've been rambling, neither Chaos nor Law are good or evil, and Balance is not morally neutral for being between the two. In fact, because Balance is so inextricably linked to life and all its boundless wonder and potential, it often comes across as both morally good and prosocial in Moorcock's writing; he's a lifelong anarchist after all. My favorite example of this is how Tanelorn, the city of Balance located simultaneously outside of and at the very center of the universe, sometimes reads less like a Sigil-esque no man's land and more like a chill commune where you can sort out your mental health, and true love can flourish outside the toxifying confines of violent society- unless of course you're Elric.

I say all of that to get to this next and most important part about using Moorcockian alignment in D&D: it's no longer about morality.

While the servants of some sides exhibit more behaviors of a certain morality than others at various points in the series, the cosmic forces themselves really don't care that much about an individual's personal ethics or lack thereof, so long as they further the cosmological goals of that force. As an example, Elric starts off as an absolute bastard despite being the incarnate champion of Balance, and only gradually turns into something more hero-adjacent as a side effect of fulfilling his role. Another dissonance is the weirdly bureaucratic and hierarchical Theocracy of Pan Tang, which operates an orderly and authoritarian war machine that efficiently mobilizes and depopulates entire continents... but it's all in service to Chaos, so Arioch & Chaos Co. don't mind one bit.

You can of course still present a side as better than the other for the purposes of a campaign, though. Throughout the Eternal Champion series both the subjectively positive and negative aspects of Chaos and Law are showcased as the wind switches direction. It can be a very 'one's terrorists are another's freedom fighters' sorta deal depending on POV. But there are no longer any morally objective tags of [Good] and [Evil] to consider.

This recontextualization of alignment around big, cosmic acts rather than the personal and individual is, I think, somewhat freeing for many types of characters and stories. Sincerely kind people and royal pricks can find themselves working toward the exact same metaphysical goals, a slight shift in morality doesn't put champions like paladins in danger of Falling, and the overwhelming majority of creatures in your D&D world would be (or at least start off being) neutral and uninvolved in the cosmic conflict, so you're free to have the same interpersonal moral complexity as in an alignment-free game.

Remember, minor acts shouldn't budge the PCs' place in the conflict much, so the low levels might also be heavily unaligned until the PCs grow powerful enough or (un)lucky enough to meaningfully tip the scales in some way with a regional shift in power or so. That leads to the cosmic forces taking an interest, which in turn leads to a gradual teasing-out of the universe war.

It also makes the OD&D convention of alignment languages make so much more sense in-universe. Moral outlook as the determining factor in whether or not you know a club's secret passwords is kind of silly; it being something taught to you after you consciously buy into the cosmic conflict as a way to communicate in code with other members of your metaphysical army is cool.

Reusing the 3-Point Alignment Axis

Speaking of OD&D, that would be the easiest edition in which to implement this alignment system, partly because it was only just recently divorced from something quite like it back when D&D released in the '70s. Keep the 3-point axis of Chaos and Law with Neutral in the middle, rename Neutral to Balance, and instead make "Neutral" the default alignment outside of the spectrum for beings totally uninvolved in the conflict, like Unaligned animals in 4E, or certain outsiders.

Speaking of 4E, the odd job they did flattening alignment into a linear track from LG down through Neutral straight to CE in that edition actually fits this whole scheme just as well; it's basically a 5-point axis.

PCs begin dead-center and then hold steady or drift one way or the other depending on their acts in the world. Anyone can choose to have a disposition one way or the other as backstory demands however, and certain classes like pact warlocks, clerics, and paladins should automatically begin a couple steps to one side as appropriate. Druids and their kind start and probably stay in the center, right where their normal counterparts do.

Just slap a meter on this bad boy and you're good to go.

How long to make the axis depends on how much you want to do with it and how granular things get. You could make it as simple as just 5 or so steps from Balance to one of the extremes, with 1 step representing the minimum level of devotion to a force that an underling can demonstrate, and 5 being a creature who has practically ascended to become one with the force so to speak.

One downside of this approach is that it kind of diminishes Balance and makes it seem more like Neutrality, since one cannot become anymore aligned with Balance through deeds than an ordinary creature starts off as when they're born. One solution to that is...

    Alternative Approach: Scoreboard

Ill-fittingly crisp numbers added for illustrative purposes.

Taking another cue from the Stormbringer books, instead of using an axis that you shimmy back and forth along, keep a scoreboard of how much stuff you've done aligned with each cosmic force.

These Allegiance Points or Elan as they're called in the d100 games are on a 0 to 100 scale. All three forces have an Elan scale, and a player keeps a running tally of all three on their character sheet. Everyone starts at 0 in all three unless a starting class or other factor changes that. Major acts like slaying demons or casting magic add or subtract from a PC's allegiance points in the appropriate power, but it's possible to accrue points in all three at once due to the complexities and inconsistencies of being people.

Without a sliding scale, your highest value represents the force you are most aligned with (and that's only if you accept it), but having a close second can indicate all manner of plot-driving possibilities like inner turmoil, deliberate playing-off of several factions, suspicion among the gods of 'your' side as to your true loyalties, or even that another faction is interested in poaching you.

In this system rather than beginning one or more steps toward one extreme, clerics and their ilk instead start with X amount of points in their chosen power, whereas everyone else starts with all 0s.

Whether or not your game uses allegiance points to fuel certain powerful effects or events like divine intervention or ultimate apotheosis in the Stormbringer books is your call, but it is an easy and fun way to transform D&D alignment into a gameplay resource rather than a potentially limiting guideline.

Salvaging the Holmes' Basic Alignment X

Has anyone ever read an explanation for this one?

Holmes' Basic with its weird 5-point alignment system of Lawful Good <=> Chaotic Evil and Chaotic Good <=> Lawful Evil with Neutral slapped in the middle of the two kinda-sorta-overlapping axes is harder to adapt to nonmoral concepts, but then again it was always kind of incongruous with the rest of D&D at the time. The axes don't exist independent of one another, so you can't have a creature dedicated to just Chaos or just Good; only Chaotic Good. I've found the matrix odd ever since I first learned about it through Blueholme; it lacks the simplicity of the 3-point linear axis and the depth of the 9-point graph without really adding anything of its own, unless I'm just completely missing the point.

Regardless of my feelings on it, you don't have to ditch the Holmes X. In fact it's very useful for illustrating my next big point: don't limit yourself to Moorcockian Chaos vs Law.

You can and should think up different sets of powers to align in an X or + shape, but maybe with the extremities corresponding to each power directly rather than to a corner between two of them. These could be two sets of opposing forces that are then neutral to each other, to explain the shape.

An example of this would be using the classic elements as the cosmic forces. Earth stands opposed to Air and Fire to Water (or Earth to Water and Fire to Air as the Elric book I was reading earlier did it). Actions in favor of one element necessarily pull you away from its opposite, but the other two don't particularly care (unless you're mucking about at such a high level you might upend the entire planet).

A character also has the option of gaining favor with one side of the remaining pair in such a system as well, or remaining neutral in that particular conflict. Thus a PC could wind up wholly dedicated to one force, or they could wind up in a corner between non-opposing sides like the original Holmes X.

9-Point Alignment Chart

The format that launched a million memes when I was in high school.

Now it's time for the big one. The 9-point box that most people imagine when they think of alignment in D&D. Obviously a single-axis cosmic battle won't do here, but you can easily use the default system's double axes replaced with two opposed pairs, similar to how we did the Holmes X a minute ago.

But I think there's a cooler way to implement this chart than that. And it only involves throwing it in the trash a little bit.

Most D&D CRPGs over the years have given the alignment axes numerical values, whether they're hidden or visible. I want to say the old Neverwinter Nights games use a -100 to 100 scale? This turns a character's alignment into a dot on a graph plot shaped like the above that moves around according to the morality of actions taken during play.

I want to take that concept, but round the edges off the box a little. In fact, make it a circle.

AD&D also brought us what would come to be known as the Great Wheel cosmology, in which a huge number of intersecting cosmic planes lead to the existence of the Prime Material where most of the living and adventuring and dying takes place in a given game. Of interest to me are the Outer Planes, which are the manifestations of different moral and ethical outlooks, home to gods, archdemons, angels, fiends, and all that sort of thing.

I like me some Planescape, and I know what I'm about to suggest sounds like a derangement of the basic conceit of the setting. But consider giving the Outer Planes the same treatment as Law vs Chaos and strip the objective morality dimension from them.

Every god and outsider can remain exactly as pleasant, nasty, or indifferent as they are in canon, and each plane can pursue the same interests abroad, so no need to cancel the Blood War or other turf wars and Prime Material influence/absorption plots. In-universe, people can still conceive of them and speak of them in the same language of moral extremes. But none of them are literal manifestations of good, evil, law, chaos, or neutrality anymore.

To reflect this change, mortals don't have any of the old 9 alignments. Like in the 3-point system the overwhelming majority of living creatures are or start off with a planar alignment of Neutral in the dead center of the alignment chart. Radiating out from that center is a map of all 16 Outer Planes with a circular grid of planar alignment steps between them and the center, which you could represent with your pick of the Prime Material, Outlands, the Spire & Sigil, or The Lady. Just be careful of that last one.

A major step toward aligning with one plane, its agents, and its motives moves you one box closer to that plane. A step toward one of its polar opposites (any of the 3 planes directly across the middle from it and its edges on the wheel) brings you back toward the center. A step toward a non-opposed plane rotates you one box over, while staying in your row. As in previous charts clerics, warlocks, paladins, and other people with overt connections to extraplanar forces begin play a few alignment steps closer to the plane to which they are connected.

Basically just slap a polar grid on top of this badder boy and you're even gooder to go.

Max steps toward a plane may represent a character becoming such a living embodiment of that plane that they transform in some way, like Stormbringer's apotheosis mechanic but far less powerful. Consider something along the lines of giving the character free [Outsider] traits, free teleportation to and from their chosen plane and the Prime Material, or other goodies. Also consider drawbacks, such as creatures, weapons, or magic aligned with an opposing plane being able to harm them more than usual. That allows you to continue to implement things like Protection from X spells, weapons that bypass certain Damage Reduction, and so on.

Other Ideas

There are plenty of other ways to implement a more Moorcockian style of alignment in a d20 game if the above seem a little too awkwardly-fitted or uninspired for you. There're 13th Age's Icons, Dungeon World's Bonds, and various similar boon/relationship type mechanics from other games. Knowing my luck, there's probably a game directly inspired by the concept that delivers on it perfectly, but I somehow overlooked it.

* Full Spoilers for those who don't care: 3H&3L is a 1961 novel about a Danish Resistance engineer in WW2 getting shot by Nazis while protecting Niels Bohr. At that point he's isekai'd into a medieval French parallel universe where folklore and Arthurian legend are real and a war between Law and Chaos is raging. He finds some knightly gear including a shield emblazoned with the titular heraldry, falls in love with a swan elf, befriends a funky little dwarf who's actually the earliest confirmed instance of a dwarf with a Scottish accent before the fantasy media of the '90s and 2000s, becomes the champion of Law, and eventually discovers he's an incarnation of one of Charlemagne's paladins. Also Morgan le Fay shows up to be villainously sultry a couple times. It's a trip.

Musings on a Dragonlance X Talislanta Magic System Crossover Nobody Asked For

Notice: What follows is a collection of ideas and guidelines rather than a fully realized homebrew system. It probably would have been faster and easier for me to just do that instead, but I just had to go and take a bird's eye view of the whole thing.

Dragonlance's Fifth Age, AKA the Age of Mortals, was a bit of a fanbase-breaker back when it was first introduced in the '90s. It was meant to usher in a new phase of the universe after the trilogy that was supposed to permanently cap the series off forever with no new additions instead got condensed into a single book (Dragons of Summer Flame) and hastily shoved out there. The backlash to the continuation and the direction of that continuation hit, and when they tried to roll those changes back to something closer to the status quo in order to appease the displeased part of the base, they ended up angering the other side of it. It was kind of messy.

One of the biggest changes to the universe (other than the gods "leaving") was the introduction of ambient magic in the forms of Wild/Primal Sorcery and its spiritual counterpart Mysticism, the latent magics of the planet itself that had been dormant ever since the days of the Greygem came and went. With the gods gone, it was allowed to resurface in the world and become usable by mortals who put their hearts and minds to it, without needing to rely upon faith in fickle gods or the practice of High Sorcery (which is just a different form of devotion to the moon gods at the end of the day). Why primal sorcery didn't return during the gods' long but voluntary absence after they dropped a meteor on Krynn, I'm not sure, but the end result is that a fundamentally different source of magic was introduced to the setting.

To put it simply, primal sorcery and mysticism act like arcane and divine magic in the loosest sense. Sorcery manipulates the physical forces and matter of the world and is divided up into disciplines that reflect that, like aeromancy and transmutation. Mysticism relies upon faith in oneself and sympathetically affects most things that are alive or possess some similar sort of essence, like through healing or necromancy.

Sorcery and mysticism effects don't behave like similar spells in normal systems of magic, though. There are no "spells" per se at all, save one's trademark effects and personal favorites. Each magic user spontaneously and creatively uses their magic in any way they can for the situation at hand, producing effects that are more narratively bounded than mechanically. It's kind of like how in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure everybody has one weird Stand ability that they use as creatively as possible in whatever situation they find themselves in, rather than just escalating in power level or picking up new tricks as the series goes along, like most shōnens do. On top of it all, when two or more sorcerers or mystics get together, they can freely blend and meld their magics together in order to make something new and even more powerful.

This is all pretty much anathema to a Vancian magic system based on spell slots, so despite my soft spot for it, the D&D 3E Age of Mortals campaign setting pretty uniformly fails to depict its ambient magic. The primal sorcerer was just a regular sorcerer, while the mystic was a stripped-down favored soul. Not bad classes by themselves, but big letdowns for the source material.

SAGA Magic

It wasn't always like that, though. Primal sorcery actually did get a lot of play in the Dragonlance: Fifth Age game for the SAGA System back in the day.

In contrast to the later d20 implementation, its lore and mechanics were integrated well and fleshed out, and coupled with the diceless card deck rules you played SAGA with, it was one of the more original magic systems ever printed by TSR. You come up with spells on the fly and determine how expensive they are to cast using an additive spell point system for stronger effects. Casting an instant healing spell for the maximum amount is going to be a lot more costly than casting a weak one that takes a half-hour, for example. There are sample spells provided in the books, but those are just to illustrate spell construction and provide players with models that they can then tweak to their specific needs.

But this was still the SAGA System, which means that all of 8 people ever played it, and the rest of the books in production got axed after Wizards of the Coast bought TSR out. So unless you want to painstakingly recreate a mechanic from a dead game that relies upon a peripheral card deck, ambient magic is just another one of those Dragonlance things you can't really do in-game that you can do in-story.

... Say, you know what else has a robust, freeform magic system where spell effects are determined by intent?

Talislanta Magic

Why hello there, new old friend!

I already went into it in my Talislanta retrospective of sorts, but depending on the edition you're looking at, magic works like this: there are a little more than a dozen magical disciplines called orders like shamanism, witchcraft, cartomancy, etc. Each order of magic is divided up into different "modes" that represent types of magical spells like attack, defend, heal, illusion, transform, etc. Each order has access to a few but usually not all modes, in keeping with the flavor of that order. Elemental magic, for example, doesn't have the heal mode because it's kind of difficult to treat wounds with a rock or a gust of air.

Magicians learn each order and mode combination individually, so they tend to have a limited repertoire that they must use creatively. Mechanically this is represented by the custom spell system where you can build your own effect by adding increasing difficulty modifiers to the spellcasting roll in exchange for better range, duration, numerical values, secondary effects, etc.

Aside from the mingling of two or more casters' abilities which is absent here, this is a pretty good approximation of how Dragonlance's ambient magic works. Wild sorcery and mysticism are already divided up into neat little schools and spheres respectively, so all one would need to do is assign a list of modes to each to start porting the system over to the d20 ruleset of one's choice. You could even use the 3E Gold Rush port of Talislanta for a few more ideas on how to implement it- just whatever you do, do not follow its example and tie spellcasting to a skill roll like in that edition. That way lies brokenness.

What follows are a few of my ideas on how to implement this mashup.

My Take on Schools/Spheres

The school and sphere lists can remain unchanged from SAGA, unless you feel that some of them are too narrow and would be best combined. Likewise, Modes from Talislanta can stay the same. They are as follows:

Wild Sorcery Schools: Aeromancy, Cryomancy, Divination, Electromancy, Enchantment, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy, Spectramancy, Summoning, Transmutation.

Mysticism Spheres: Animism, Alteration, Channeling, Healing, Meditation, Necromancy, Sensitivity, Spiritualism.

Magic Modes: Alter, Attack, Conjure, Defend, Heal, Illusion, Influence, Move, Reveal, Summon, Transform, Ward.

Next, match the most appropriate Modes with each School and Sphere according to their flavor text blurbs. Some are more obvious fits than others.

• Aeromancy: Can manipulate air to create anything from a breeze to a gale. Example spells include conjuring concealing fog, clouds of choking vapor, bubbles of air for underwater travel, or flying through the air. Very powerful aeromancers can even influence the weather.
• Modes: Attack, Defend, Move (chosen element)
• Cryomancy: Considered by some to be a hybrid of aeromancy and hydromancy. Can manifest great cold and conjure large quantities of ice. Examples include creating walls of ice, freezing rivers solid, and freezing enemies in place with frostbite.
• Modes: Attack, Defend, Move (chosen element)
• Divination: One of the most common schools of sorcery on Krynn, used to gain information about the world. Examples include detecting traps, seeing magical auras on objects, and divining the past or a potential future. Cannot be used to read the minds of others, because only mysticism directly affects living matter.
• Modes: Reveal (inanimate)
• Electromancy: The rather basic domain of good old fashioned lightning bolts, with a few extra ideas thrown in to make it less of a one-trick pony. Examples include producing static electricity to sting and annoy people, or using electricity to generate an aura of light for visibility.
• Modes: Attack, Illusion (light)
• Enchantment: A deceptively simple-sounding school that lets you do a wide range of beneficial things to objects. Examples include giving enhancement bonuses to weapons and armor, or enchanting a crystal on the end of one's staff to shed light, etc. Permanent enchantments are not possible with normal sorcery.
• Modes: Transform (inanimate, but you also gotta bend the rules a bunch for this one)
• Geomancy: Manipulation of the earth and everything that can be found within it. Examples include conjuring stone walls, creating quicksand, or controlling gems, crystals, and even alloys that have been worked by mortal hands like steel.
• Modes: Attack, Defend, Move (chosen element)
• Hydromancy: Power over water, although presumably not the water that makes up over 60% of most humanoid bodies by weight. Examples include pulling up drinkable water in a desert, creating favorable currents during a sea voyage, and otherwise manipulating water in its liquid state; ice and steam are more the purview of cryomancers and aeromancers, respectively.
• Modes: Attack, Defend, Move (chosen element)
• Pyromancy: Flame, dear flame. It's unclear if this controls only the chemical reaction of fire, or other forms of heat transfer as well. Examples include heating homes, damaging enemies, scaring away beasts, and creating elaborate fireworks shows.
• Modes: Attack, Move, Illusion (light)
• Spectramancy: The magic of light and how it can be perceived. Examples include making a basic light to see with as in electromancy and pyromancy, extinguishing light sources, changing the color of lights, as well as the more interesting implication of creating illusions of light and shadow. Tucked away in this school is the implied subschool of umbramancy, if you ask me.
• Modes: Illusion (light & shadow)
• Summoning: The art of folding space like a Dune navigator, used in such a way that it appears the sorcerer is teleporting people or objects from place to place or creating them from thin air. Can be combined with other schools to summon monsters from other planes, such as a summoner/pyromancer pulling fire elementals from the elemental plane of fire.
• Modes: Conjure (just pretend you're teleporting items from elsewhere), Move, Summon
• Transmutation: Alchemy in the classical sense of transmuting one form of matter into another. Examples include turning one type of metal into another (a la the classic lead to gold trick), or more radically turning one form of matter into a completely different state if the sorcerer has access to multiple schools. A transmuter/geomancer/aeromancer can turn that stone wall into a puff of fog, for example.
• Modes: Transform (inanimate)
• Animism: The sphere concerned with living things in the natural world. Examples include communicating with plants and animals, although not natural creatures with "magical powers"- the kinds of things later editions of D&D would term magical beasts, probably. It also doesn't affect creatures with a Reason score of 2 or more in SAGA, which I think you could map to the 3 or more Intelligence threshold for sapience in D&D.
• Modes: Influence (unintelligent creatures), Reveal (unintelligent creatures; thoughts, memories)
• Alteration: Shapeshifting, plain and simple. Examples include transforming oneself into an animal or monster like a wyvern, or disguising oneself as a different person. Particularly powerful alterers (alterationists?) can shapechange other people, whether willing or as a baleful polymorph kind of effect, and they can even assume the exact appearance of a specific individual.
• Modes: Transform (animate)
• Channeling: An incredibly specific sphere of personal physical ability score buffs. Examples include making oneself very strong, or as nimble as a cat, even beyond one's normal limits (if those rules are in use). Cannot be used to affect another person's physical abilities.
• Modes: Alter (physical)
• Healing: Another very simple sphere focused on curative arts. Examples include healing wounds and curing disease, though there is no mention of reattaching limbs or raising the dead because like in Talislanta, some things are explicitly beyond the abilities of ambient magic. Somewhat uniquely, the only sphere to have a mishap mechanic whereby the caster loses extra spell points or even suffer damage if a damage-healing spell goes awry. This doesn't affect curing diseases, poisons, etc. however.
• Modes: Heal (can't reverse)
• Meditation: The mental counterpart to channeling's physical buffs, allowing one to increase one's mental abilities. Notably, improving one's casting stat does not grant bonus spell points, similar to how temporary spellcasting stat increases don't affect bonus spells per day in 3E and later editions of D&D.
• Modes: Alter (mental)
• Mentalism: Telepathy by another name, and the "intelligent creature" counterpart to animism's connection to plants and animals. Examples include projecting one's thoughts into another person's mind, reading another's thoughts or memories, changing or erasing memories, inducing hallucinations, or controlling another's mind outright if the mentalist is extremely powerful (and unscrupulous).
• Modes: Influence (intelligent creatures), Reveal (intelligent creatures; thoughts, memories)
• Necromancy: The opposite to healing. Examples include wounding or outright killing enemies, draining their life, or reanimating corpses to become temporary undead. Mostly forbidden on Krynn, although ironically it's less capital-e Evil than most forms of necromancy in D&D because there's no involvement with evil deities or torturing a being's soul.
• Modes: Attack, Heal (only to reverse into Harm), Summon (corporeal undead)
• Sensitivity: Like the divination school of sorcery, but again focused on living things. Examples include sensing magical auras around creatures, determining if someone is under the influence of magic, reading their nature and demeanor, and feeling echoes of emotions well after the fact. Can't read thoughts like in mentalism, however.
• Modes: Reveal (emotions, character)
• Spiritualism: The spiritual counterpart to necromancy's physical death and decay, appropriately enough. Examples include communing with the dead, or calling spirits back from the dead to create temporary incorporeal undead like ghosts. Less scorned than necromancy, but arguably has the potential to be more harmful because of how it influences souls?
• Modes: Influence (spirits), Reveal, Summon (incorporeal undead)

Unlike in Talislanta where each discipline/mode combination has to be learned separately, here I've decided an ambient caster learns all spell modes when they acquire a school or sphere. They are not limited in the breadth of their magical ability, only the power of it. I think this is a fair change because unlike the disciplines of Talislanta, you just don't have that many modes per school here.

As I alluded to earlier, you can even mash a few of the more niche schools or spheres together if they feel too slight for someone to have to specialize in. For example, combine Channeling and Meditation into a single self-buffing 'Empowerment' sphere, or Animism and Mentalism into one 'Telepathy'. Likewise, maybe Electromancy could be folded into greater Aeromancy, or alternatively Pyromancy, since what is lightning but really fast sky fire?

From here you "only" have to figure out how the rest of spellcasting works, in the sense of how spell cost and spell difficulty are calculated. Just use Talislantan values if you're basing the system on that, or tweak them to be better suited to the math of your preferred D&D system. Caster level checks are a good starting point for that, if they exist. And speaking of spell cost...

My Take on Spell Power

One snag in this hackjob is that SAGA uses a spell point system, Talislanta lets you spam until you roll a bad mishap, D&D at large uses Vancian spell slots, and the Dragonlance books themselves do something completely different with regards to how much magic their casters can fire off in an arbitrary period of time. The first three are pretty self-explanatory, but the fourth might need some elaboration.

Keeping in mind that things and characters in Dragonlance are highly dependent upon the specific writer, what is often the case in the novels is that there is a physical component to spellcasters running low on magic juice. From clerics sweating and panting from the fervor of their prayers, to Raistlin up and keeling over like Elric before he got his clammy hands on Stormbringer, magic is a physically as well as metaphysically demanding practice in much of Dragonlance. From what I've read of the 5th Age (mostly Jean Rabe's goblin trilogy), that is true of primal sorcery and mysticism too.

That leads me to recommend a really weird thing as food for thought on the subject: this 3E rules variant of a rules variant that replaces spell slots with spell points, and then adds a spellcasting fatigue system on top of that.

Using the Vitalizing system, any caster who falls below 1/2 of their maximum spell points becomes Fatigued, and any who falls below 1/4th becomes Exhausted until they can rest to recover spell points as one would spell slots. But the reverse is also true; if a caster becomes Fatigued while at full spell points, they immediately drop to 1/2 until the Fatigued condition is removed. Likewise, someone who gets hit by Exhaustion plummets all the way down to 1/4th spell points until it's lifted.

You can probably add something similar to the spell point system found in the Player's Option: Spells & Magic supplement without too much fuss, if an AD&D version of the Age of the Mortals that never was is your goal.

If you go down some kind of spell points route (which I recommend for variable strength spells), this might be a cool thing to implement both for setting fidelity and to work (probably in vain) toward balancing casters somewhat. And speaking of casters as a discrete type of player character...

My Take on Classes

Talislanta and SAGA are classless, so in theory anybody can eventually pick up some magic if they have the ability for it. And I personally like that kind of system; it makes certain flexible characters in the stories far easier to realize than through most multiclassing (or gods forbid, dual classing) systems. Of course, classless is not a perfect fit if you're wanting to play an otherwise ordinary edition of D&D with more ambient magic-friendly rules plugged into it.

One way to go about this is to build full, homebrewed sorcerer and mystic classes. Which sounds a lot worse than it might be. Depending on the edition of D&D you're trying to use, that might be somewhat easy, or very convoluted.

Simplest might be to take the standard wizard and cleric chasses from AD&D or 3E, remove their default spellcasting, familiars, and/or domains and undead turning, and replace them with scaling school or sphere access as they level. Each might begin with 1 school/sphere plus extra for high casting stats, which would also influence bonus spell points. These would be Intelligence for sorcerers and Wisdom for mystics. I briefly considered Charisma for sorcerers like their 3E counterparts since there is some aspect of intuition or force of will that comes into play from my reading of things, but wild sorcery is also the kind of thing you can apparently teach in a traditional academic setting, if Palin Majere's Academy of Sorcery in Solace is anything to go by.

Additional schools/spheres may be acquired through leveling, perhaps with the aid of someone who already possesses that type of magic. How many schools/spheres should be attainable by max level depends on the kind of game you want to run, and the levels PCs are likely to reach; something tapping out at the midlevel range might best be suited for 3 or 4 schools/spheres max, but climbing up into the epic levels might justify near or total mastery of one's respective field of ambient magic.

... At this point out of a mix of brevity and spite I'm just going to call schools/spheres "scheres".

If you do create ambient spellcaster classes, might I recommend keeping the game limited to the decades when the gods were gone. Not because I like denying people the ability to play as the other classes, but because the added headache of managing all 4 types of spellcaster plus their various subclasses in a single shared setting feels like a little much to inflict on a DM.

If you're playing 3E or later editions, feats are another avenue for rewarding scheres. Maybe high-level knights, rangers, and other classes with partial spellcasting receive a free schere feat when they'd otherwise gain their first caster level. Or maybe it's keyed off of character level with certain other requirements so anybody can dabble in magic if they build toward it, preserving character class but divesting spellcasting from it.

I say 3E or later, but I'll be honest I don't know how to fit any of this into 4E, considering how different so many of its moving parts and powers in particular are. I'd love to see someone try and succeed, though.

Speaking of 4E, it might hold the secret to the other big, finnicky part of ambient magic...

The Question of Group Casting

Like most things, ambient magic is stronger when it's done cooperatively rather than alone. In SAGA this is presented through combined castings in which multiple practitioners of the same type of magic (i.e., no mixed parties of wild sorcerers and mystics) can pool their powers together to make a stronger effect that would normally be out of reach of any one of them. There are also coordinated castings, which are a bit more like a ritual involving non-casters who essentially use Aid Another on the main caster in order to assist them with their spell, which is generally easier and less ambitious than what you'd start a combined casting for.

The latter can be done fairly easily by just giving the caster a small bonus to their spellcasting check depending on the number of assistants, perhaps with a limit that scales with level. A novice sorcerer could only wrangle 1 or 2 ritual assistants at 1st level, but know how to effectively manage perhaps a dozen or more at high levels. Each participant offers them a +1 or some other small bonus to the roll.

The former has more possibilities. Maybe each additional caster involved in a combined casting increases the maximum level spell effect that one of them can cast, or everyone rolls a spellcasting check and the highest result is used, or they can divide an enormous spell point cost up amongst themselves evenly.

Or, you can take a page out of 4E's book and implement a system of elaborate Ritual magic that may or may not require appropriate schere access of all its participants. Unlike magic which is freeform, you might want to keep rituals limited to a specific list so the party can't absolutely rip the campaign in two- unless you want to make sure they have the tools to do just that.

In any of the above cases, I'd say required casting time is automatically longer or even the max time possible, to reflect the amount of time it takes to coordinate with others and set up a group casting/ritual. Unless you want a game in which spellcasters can completely break power scaling and use the rest of the party as nothing more than ambulatory batteries and buff bots, of course. Which, to be fair, is nothing foreign to D&D.

The Question of Armor

An incredibly specific thing I fixated on for about half the time I spent working on this post was the question of whether or not primal sorcerers should be allowed to wear armor. They're technically arcane spellcasters, but they have many differences from the robed wizard orders of the moons, not to mention the magic-users in many other D&D worlds. So it's not unreasonable that they might be able to wear armor, too. And this is true, to some extent, depending on which source you're reading.

Dragonlance 3E makes it clear that primal sorcerers are just regular old sorcerers, subject to all the same limitations. That means no armor proficiency to start, and Arcane Spell Failure % for any armor they do wear anyway. The SAGA system, meanwhile, is classless and ties many proficiencies to different ability codes. So as long as your sorcerer draws cards for a high enough Coordination and Physique, they can wear or wield pretty much anything in the game while casting magic (assuming they also got a high enough Intellect of course). Just to make sure that wasn't an oversight and there should be some kind of armor limitation, I trawled through dozens of sample NPCs until I found the Plainsman named Ironhawk, who is not only an accomplished ranger-type clad in leather armor, but also proficient in a school of sorcery (pyromancy) and a sphere of mysticism (animism).

Thank you, weirdly Rambo-looking indigenous dude.

The books, meanwhile...

Well, I haven't really read many of them, as my series on the Stone-Teller trilogy explains. But from a cursory glance over the (admittedly sparse) Dragonlance wiki, it feels to me like most wild sorcerers conform to the unarmored stereotype, but it isn't necessarily enforced in-universe. One big exception is the formerly Takhisian Knights of the Thorn, who often wear the same plate armor as their nonmagical knightly fellows. Ultimately it's up to you whether your game's sorcerers should be wearing more than a tunic or not, but I think they could get by with at least light/leather armor, or at least not suffer any outsized penalties for wearing it if they acquired proficiency through multiclassing or the like.

Mystics, on the other hand, are depicted as being able to wear many kinds of armor like their clerical counterparts across much Dragonlance media, though sometimes it stops at medium armor before they break out the full plate, as in 3E.

At least one question in all of this has a simple answer!

Half-Orc, Half-What?

My previous post converting half-orcs from AD&D to OD&D remound me of the weirdest piece of half-orc lore from the early editions: that there are many types of half-orcs, of which only a tiny fraction are ever seen, and even fewer made playable. According to the 1E Player's Handbook:

"Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds, most of the offspring of such being typically orcish. However, some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human. Complete details of orcs and cross-breeds will be found under the heading Orc in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, MONSTER MANUAL.

As it is assumed that player characters which are of half-orc race are within the superior 10%, they have certain advantages." 

- PHB,  17

Turning to the Monster Manual as directed:

"As orcs will breed with anything, there are any number of unsavory mongrels with orcish blood, particularly orc-goblins, orc-hobgoblins, and orc-humans. Orcs cannot cross-breed with elves. Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily, so such sorts are basically orcs although they can sometimes (10%) pass themselves off as true creatures of their other stock (goblins, hobgoblins, humans, etc.)." 

- MM, 76

Besides using the word mongrel to describe people, the bit of yikes that always stuck with me was the assumption that playable half-orcs belong to the "superior 10%" that was human enough to pass, and therefore acquire character class levels. The parallels to real life racism and the practice of passing are obvious, but at the same time I suspect this bit was most directly inspired by the nebulous and mysterious groups of half-orcs and goblin-men sneaking around Eriador before and during the War of the Ring in Lord of the Rings. Coincidentally, if you read those passages aloud back-to-back, you can actually hear Saruman the White's skull calipers clicking and clacking in the background as he brews up the perfect squint-eyed southerner to go spy on Bree.

This 10% assumption continued on into AD&D 2E with the Complete Book of Humanoids years later, which is extra weird because everybody and their flind-bar was getting buffs and class levels in that book, including full orcs. The tiers of hybridity only vanished in the Player's Option line where half-orcs were presented without pretext alongside half-elves and half-ogres, at the very end of AD&D's lifespan. But all of 30 people actually read those books farther than the wonky sub-ability scores, so I don't know how much of an impact they had.

I don't mean to imply these are the only half-orcish creatures anywhere in AD&D; only that they're the only playable ones. The ogrillons (orc/ogres), neo-orogs (orc/ogres again except created by Thayan wizards for Science™ this time), tanarukks (orc/demons), and boogins (orc/quaggoths) are all there in their various splatbooks doing their own NPC'y, usually but not exclusively villainous thing. Then there are the losels who are half-orc, half-baboon, and all about to be purged from my brain with a judicious application of bleach.

Anyway, I've decided to bring a few more horcs to the table, figuratively and literally. The traits below can be dropped into existing half-orc chasses, but they don't conform perfectly to any one edition; take them as inspiration for whatever Old or New School game you happen to find it useful for.

D20	Half-Orc, Half...
1	… Goblin. Lean, green, lanky, and janky. Hide as level-3 Thieves.
2	… Hobgoblin. Upright, stern, and imperious. +1 to Saves vs fear and Morale of Hirelings.
3	… Bugbear. Unnervingly quiet for their size, scruffy. Move Silently as level-3 Thieves.
4	… Ogre. Certifiably bigg with two 'g's. +1 to Strength for the purposes of Encumbrance, Open Doors, Bend Bars, etc.
5	… Troll. Only moderately warty. Recover twice as much HP through natural means (rest, a source of regeneration, etc.)
6	… Giant. Roll d6 for Hill, Stone, Fire, Frost, Storm, or Cloud. Throw and catch (25% chance) rocks as sling bullets.
7	… Gnoll. Shaggy and feliform. Keen sense of smell allows Tracking, base chance 50%.
8	… Kobold. Leathery, snaggly-toothed. Ugly-cute. Can compress into very small spaces.
9	… Koalinth. Sleek, scaly and fanged. Can hold breath for Con rounds.
10	… Cyclops. +2 to Reaction Rolls with religious orcs for being “Omens of Gruumsh”. Also surprisingly good at cheesemaking.
11	… Alaghi. Hirsute bordering on furry, may have little horns. Huge, meaty fists deal 1d6 damage.
12	… Minotaur. Definitely has little horns. 75% chance not to get lost underground or indoors.
13	… Satyr. Particularly bacchic. Goat legs give +25% movement when able to leap and bound.
14	… Grimlock. Bat ears and deeply recessed eyes. Sharp hearing gives -1 to Surprise.
15	… Norker. Rindy and toothy like a dried-out old walrus. Improve natural AC by 1.
16	… Gnome. Speak with Animals 1/day, but only with wolves, dire boars, and similar.
17	… Dwarf. Built like a green cylinder of bone, muscle, and attitude. +1 to Saves vs magic.
18	… Halfling. Sometimes mistaken for tusked goblins. +2 to Saves vs ingested poisons, and hungry enough to need it.
19	… Elf. A magical impossibility. Also, icky. Resistance and door detection as human/elves.
20	… Mongrelfolk. A visual and mechanical mishmash of 2 of the above, rerolling repeats.

Converting the Half-Orc to OD&D and then Overcomplicating it Again Anyway

The first three supplements for OD&D added a plethora of optional rules that would later be elaborated into AD&D 1E. Supplement I: Greyhawk was a testing ground for Gygax's ascendant crunchiness that offered a slew of character options including the thief class, multiclassing-without-calling-it-multiclassing, and the "alternate combat system" that finally, fully divorced D&D from Chainmail rules. Perhaps more surprisingly, Supplement II: Blackmoor was the same kind of thing for Arneson, what with the assassin and monk subclasses and hit location tables. Kinda goes against the grain of Arnesonian fantasy being rules-lite, but I already harped on that a bit in my Spirits & Spookiness interlude about the edition split. Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry added an early version of psionics, but we don't talk about that.

I'm more interested in a character option that the books didn't add between then and AD&D. And if possible (but probably not practical), I want to do a little backwards-compatibility to add it in.

We're talkin' half-orcs today!

Unlike their elvish counterparts, half-orcs did not debut in the Greyhawk supplement, and would not appear until the AD&D Player's Handbook released several years later (assuming there's no half-orc in a Chainmail book I'm unaware of, anyway). But the differences between AD&D and supplemented OD&D are not so large, and with a bit of work and an eye toward the """""balance""""" struck in OD&D, I think I can port them back.

To start off, we can skip a step entirely. Since OD&D doesn't use racial ability score modifiers, we don't have to futz with that at all.

Between Greyhawk and AD&D, racial level limits for all classes other than thief (which was the first class everything could level unlimitedly in) either stayed the same or increased very slightly with the addition of exceptional ability score benefits. The average seems to be +1 across the board. As an example OD&D elves can go as high as Fighter 4/5/6 and Magic-User 8/9, plus NPC-only Clerics 6; AD&D elves can rise to Fighter 5/6/7, Magic-User 9/10/11, and Cleric 7.

Working backwards from the AD&D half-orc with a -1 across the board, we would arrive at racial limits of Fighter 9, a truly abysmal Cleric 3, and Thief 6/7/8. I'll be ignoring the thief level limit in favor of making it unlimited like everyone else gets, since half-orcs lose out on their unlimited assassin progression thanks to that subclass being human-only in OD&D. Optionally, you could let half-orcs progress as assassins up to 6/7/8, or take the limits off it too. Or do something else entirely! Multiclass combinations from AD&D can stay pretty much unchanged, although I pity anyone trying to squeeze value out of that cleric level.

Next we look at racial abilities, where we have to get creative.

OD&D half-elves inherit their elven parent's ability to spot secret and hidden doors, but they don't gain the elf's combat abilities or infravision. This tells me that we can directly transfer some of the AD&D orc's traits onto the half-orc, but not all of them.

Well, I say "traits" but it's really only one notable thing from their Monster Manual entry: a 35% chance to notice construction underground and 25% chance to notice sloping passages, on account of old orcs being proficient miners before Gruumsh went the way of the Chaotic Evil berserker. We can slap those numbers onto the half-orc and round them off as a 2-in-6 and 1-in-4 chance, respectively. Orcs have infravision, but if we're being sticklers then half-orcs can't have any of that, since for some reason half-elves didn't receive it from their elven parents in OD&D, and in all likelihood the Great Value brand Peredhil would complain about unfair treatment if any other hybrids were so lucky.

Optionally, just go ahead and give half-orcs and half-elves infravision like their nonhuman parents. Or if that seems too strong, cut the values in half for 30' each.

Languages are super simple to deal with by comparison. Common, alignment (as much as those annoy me) and orcish for the defaults, plus goblin, hobgoblin, and ogre.

Finally, we turn to thief skill bonuses.

In OD&D and AD&D thieves get bonuses to certain skills depending on their species in the form of percentile increments of 5. Every thief in OD&D has 30 percentage points divided up among the various skills, except for halflings who receive a whopping 40 on top of a +1 to Hear Noises rolls. I'm unsure how to quantify the bonus to Hear Noises in terms of percentage points since I'm not sure if it means +1 to the skill's progression, I.E. you count as a thief 1 level higher than normal, or +1 is added to your current range of hearing, so 1-3 at 1st level and the skill is maxed out a few levels early at 1-6 at 11th level. I accept the former explanation that it's just a +1 to effective hearing level and so it would be equivalent to +5% on another skill, but that is my interpretation of ambiguous text- as so very much of early D&D is.

Halflings aside, we can take that standard 30 and use it as a budget for the most appropriate half-orc thief bonuses we want to cherry-pick from AD&D. The full list is as follows: Pick Pockets -5%, Open Locks +5%, Find/Remove Traps +5%, Move Silently 0%, Hide in Shadows 0%, Hear Noise +5%, Climb Walls +5%, Read Languages -10%.

We can ignore Climb Walls and Read Languages since the former scales (heh) with level, while the latter is just a flat 80% chance for all thieves regardless of background. I feel like we can also drop the -5% to Pick Pockets because no other thieves in OD&D get a penalty from species. That leaves us with Locks, Traps, and Hearing for a total of 15%, with 15% left to spend.

To figure out where to put those last few points I look at the distributions of the other species' bonuses:

Here we can see that there are no +10% values for Remove Traps, so I think it's a fine niche to fill by bumping the half-orc's bonus up by 5 points. Similarly, I will add +5% to both Move Silently and Hide in Shadows because there are literally no thieves with less than that, including half-

... Wait a second. Where are half-elves on this table? As a matter of fact, where're the humans for that line of "-"s across the board so we remember everything is being compared to a human baseline?

No, this isn't a bit, I actually did not realize that half-elves and humans were omitted until I was uploading a screenshot.

I guess that prompts an entirely different interpretation: half-elves share their human parents' versatile unremarkability in thievery when it comes to OD&D. And following the logic like I've been trying to do all post, that means half-orcs should do the same and have +0% to everything.

Well shoot. That's a slightly underwhelming conclusion to come to. Oh well. I'll still keep all the above in. Gotta show my work.

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To condense everything down into a single block of text that probably could've been a tweet instead:

Half-Orcs: Can advance to Fighter 9, Cleric 3, Thief U, Assassin 6/7/8 or U (optional); multiclass any 2. Detects underground construction 2-in-6, sloping passages 1-in-4. Infravision 30' (optional). Languages: Common, orcish, goblin, hobgoblin, ogre, alignment tongue.

And while we're here, I can't not share the OD&D orc art.
How'd we get pigmen from a frumpy dude with a cutlass?