Donjon Second Edition?

[Chris Peterson]

As a new fan of Donjon, I'm wondering if there are any plans for a "Donjon Second Edition"? Three years since its release, perhaps Donjon could use a "refresh" to catch up with popular house rules? I've studied The Forge's forums and collected many of the questions, suggestions, and house rules of Donjon players. With that feedback, here are some suggestions for Donjon Second Edition. Some are more controversial than others. And I must sheepishly admit most of my gaming experience is with D&D (Basic and 3.5E), so I might overvalue the marketing value of using D&D terminology to reduce Donjon's barrier to entry for new players.  <:)

chris


DICE:
- The Law of Successes 2.0: 1 success = 1 fact AND 1 die. This seems to be a house rule that many people use and it seems to streamline play.
- But bonus dice must be used for the player's very next action. This is an attempt to simplify players' "bookkeeping" of lingering bonus dice and force them to use the extra bonus dice they would receive from the Law of Successes 2.0.
- Replace the concept of Donjon Level with [average] Party Level (or just redefine Donjon Level as Party Level). This lets adventures more easily scale to different party levels.
- During a combat, tied dice count as successes. Outside of combat, tied dice count as failures. Some people felt they had "too many" successes outside of combat and didn't know how to spend so many facts when they weren't in combat. Maybe this just requires more experience and imagination. :)


COMBAT:
- When rolling Initiative, add your Adroitness or Discernment score, whichever is LOWER! This is supposed to encourage both fighters and magic-users to balance their ability scores. Plus, some people think Discernment is too "uber" because it has so much narrative power.
- When rolling Initiative, players ignore their ties among their own Initiative dice, so a player cannot take multiple actions per flurry turn. This is an attempt to speed up flurries and reduce the likelihood of total flurry dominance by characters with tons of initiative dice.
- To speed up combat and reduce damage whiffs, eliminate the second roll for damage. Roll attacks as normal and, if successful, damage points = (successes + Virility + Weapon DR) - (defender's Wherewithal + Armor DR).
- A successful hit always does at least 1 Hit Die of damage (to prevent damage whiffs).
- Characters recover 1 Hit Die after each encounter and 1 Skill Die after each dungeon level (or scene or chapter?).
- For damage from ranged weapons, add Cerebrality (Discernment is overused) instead of Virility. Thrown and melee weapon damage would still use Virility. An intelligent range attacker uses his smarts to know where his opponent is vulnerable. Plus, this is an attempt to encourage fighters, who might sacrifice their Cerebrality, to balance their ability scores.
- Consider fixing smashing's inverted difficulty. Weak opponents can smash more easily than strong opponents.
- In town, use the level of Hospitality purchased as the Donjon Level vs would-be thieves. Fancy accomodations are less likely to be burgled.


MAGIC:
- Increase default magic difficulty to Medium (3 dice).
- When rolling to release a gathered spell, do not include Cerebrality dice.
- When looting for potions, roll vs FW remaining (instead of FW lost). This makes potions more effective as characters near death (and for low-level characters).


CHARACTERS:
- Clarify the difference between main abilities/skills and sub-abillties, perhaps by giving more examples or even a table that would show how some popular abilities could be made main or sub (such as "Dodge" vs "Dodge Arrows"?
- Maybe require (or just suggest) characters have at least 1 narrative skill and 1 defensive skill.
- Consider renaming "Permanent Possessions/Armor/Weapon" to "Prized Possessions/Armor/Weapon". It sounds a little more fanciful and explains why the character would lug the same item along on many adventures.
- Consider renaming "Attributes" to "Abilities" (like D&D).
- Consider renaming "Flesh Wounds" to Hit Points" (like D&D).
- Consider renaming "Abilities" to "Skills" (like D&D). Many people already seem to do this.
- Consider renaming "smashing" to "coup de grace" (like D&D, plus it's just a cool word).
- And, finally, please bring back Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Please!  <:)
- That said, I love the names "Save vs Illusion and Confusion" and "Save vs Poison, Paralization, and Transmogrification"! These names are old-school and much cooler than D&D's Will and Fortitude saving throws! btw, why is there no Reflex saving throw? Not that I think it is necessary.

[Christopher Weeks]

Have you seen this?

[Chris Peterson]

Thanks for the linke to that thread. So I guess I could create my own Donjon Second Edition, but having something like that come from the game's creator just seems more proper. :)

Under which Creative Commons license is Donjon licensed? Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5? Is use of the name "Donjon" (with proper attribution) included in the Creative Commons license?


thanks,
chris

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Thanks for the linke to that thread. So I guess I could create my own Donjon Second Edition, but having something like that come from the game's creator just seems more proper. :)

Under which Creative Commons license is Donjon licensed? Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5? Is use of the name "Donjon" (with proper attribution) included in the Creative Commons license?

Yes, the name is included in the license.

[xjermx]

So, drawing also from info on the anvilwerks forum, I wonder if anyone has had a chance to really test some of this stuff out and find out what works and what doesnt and what could use some tweaking?

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Using "evens rule" instead of using 20s.

Initiative is handled by rolling Level plus either Adroitness or Discernment, whichever is lower.  I'm then using the bidding system.  Number of actions you get are determined by number of successes (evens) on your roll, with every getting a minimum of 1 action.

First question I have is this:  Should you roll Initiative and get the number of actions equal to the number of even numbered dice you get,  or should you simply get your initiative directly as the number of actions you get.  In original d20 Donjon, your initiative is pretty much equal to the number of actions you get, but in the evens system, it is not.

Any thoughts?

[Larry L.]

You fool! Buckets-o-d20s resolution is the best part of the game! In fact, I think I would scrap pretty much everything, except the dice mechanic and the "narrate your successes" part.

Really, I don't get why people think the dice mechanic is difficult. It's like the Sorcerer dice mechanic, turned all the way to awesome. I think it is WAY time consuming to enumerate even and odd dice. Counting dice greater than or equal to X.

Also, I perceive Simulationist drifting in progress. Quit doing math and get to the dice throwing, already!

(rawr!)

[rafial]

There are still bucket's o-dice.

I don't think the dice mechanic is difficult, I just didn't think it was doing quite what it needed to.

In the raw sorcerer mechanic, there is not much mechanically reward for adding a couple bonus dice to your roll.  In Donjon, I think there needs to be.  Even/Odd rolling ramps up the curve, so having even a few more dice than your opponent is signficant.  It allows clever chains of actions to be more consistantly rewarding.

Too often in Donjon I have seen a player do a bunch of clever rollovers of successes to build up a big dice pool, and then whiff on the final result.

Regarding the original question.  My idea was bidding with success to get actions, and then when you are out of successes you are out of actions.  So you'd get at most a number of actions equal to the successes you roll.  Original Donjon was already handing out far to many actions in a flurry to be entertaining.

[Thomas D]

I looked over the evens rule and think that it'd be just as slow as looking through a table full of d20s to find who rolled the most successes.  Instead, I'm thinking of using d6s (with pips).  Roll and discard everything but fives and sixes (or fours, fives, and sixes).  At least for me, I can easily identify pip formations on d6s a lot easier than trying to find all the evens on d10s or d20s.  Each five and six is considered a hit, net hits are equal to successes, like in the evens rule.

[rafial]

That should work fine.  The only appeal of the evens rule was that you could roll what ever dice you had lying around handy, regardless of sides.

[Sonja]

Arg, I can't see any of Clinton's replies on http://www.anvilwerks.com/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=4

[Sonja]

OK I fixed it by creating an account there, logging in, and then setting "Text-only mode" to ON.