Adventuring Complications Condensed

A few people commented on my last post, and one of them, Skerples, mentioned that it could be condensed. And it's true, it totally could be condensed for ease of reference. But OSR is a niche within a niche so I'm going to try to explain my reasoning whenever I can in order to make my blog as approachable as possible.

That said, long paragraphs aren't convenient for reference purposes. For pure readability, I can take a cue from Sean McCoy from his work on Mothership. In a fascinating thread about the layout process, he laid it out like this:

The rule is: can this prose be bullet points? Can the bullet points be a table? Can the table be a diagram? Can the diagram be map? Can the map be an illustration?

Mothership is a great looking game and this is good advice. So I'll apply it to Adventuring Complications. One thing that probably bears mentioning about this whole mechanic is that this is strictly for situations where the DM doesn't deem the task impossible or trivial. It only applies when they have both a chance of success and a meaningful chance of failure.

For any risky (not impossible, not trivial) task for which being prepared can render a complication easy, rate it on scale from 1-3 (moderate, challenging, extraordinary?) and compare it to the resources the players can bring to bear. If they have sufficient kit, they pass unhindered. If they lack kit, assess consequences.

Complication	Kit Required			Consequences
Extreme Heat	Water	Protections from the sun	Avoid exertion	Gain 1 fatigue per missing kit per day. Each time you gain fatigue this way, make a saving throw or halve current and maximum hit points until the fatigue is recovered.
Extreme Cold	Dry winter clothing	Sturdy Shelter	Hot food	As above
Pick Locks	A turn of careful work	Training	Special tools	Roll under dexterity to unlock else jam
				Lock jammed
				Lock jammed loudly
Disarm Traps	A turn of careful work	Training	Special tools	Roll under dexterity to disarm else click
				Roll under dexterity for click
				Save or suffer trap
Climb Wall	Inspection of the whole route	Climbing gear	Adequate time	Roll under constitution in order to scale/pass the current obstacle. Succeed or fail, take 1 fatigue for each bit of missing kit. If a PC's fatigue causes them to exceed their limit, take damage as if falling 10' per missing kit.
Swim	Free of bulky attire	Hands are empty	Training or practice	As above
Bend Bars Lift Gates	Assistance from person or tool	Assistance from person	Assistance from person	Roll under strength in order to lift/bend the current obstacle. Succeed or fail, take 1 fatigue for each bit of missing kit. If a PC's fatigue causes them to exceed their limit, take damage as if falling 10' per missing kit.
Disguise	Study target's mannerisms	Wear appropriate attire	Conceal face	Require successively more difficult reaction checks to maintain the disguise.

This isn't a universal resolution mechanic and I wouldn't use if for such a thing. I laid out the types of obstacles for which I would use this in the last post but it's worthwhile to look at a few cases where I wouldn't use it to illustrate why.

When I wouldn't use Complications:

When randomness is important

I don't want sneaking to be deterministic. The tension of being discovered / not knowing works better as a gamble. But it still should involve player choices. Heavy equipment and animals are more commonly found among established PC groups so lower level parties will tend to be more adept at stealth. "Large groups" is purposefully vague as a handful of orcs will tend to be louder than a mob of halflings.

Move Stealthily / Hear Noise

Roll 1d6. On a roll of 1 (or 1-2 for perceptive monsters, Elves, and Thieves), the other party is detected. This works for both PCs sneaking by monsters and monsters sneaking up on PCs. For each of the following that is true, add +1 to the chance-in-six:

• Anyone in the sneaking party is wearing heavy armor.
• Any large or noisy animals are present among the sneaking party.
• The sneaking party is a large group.

Jeff Easley's cover for the 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide

When it's already a failstate with consequences

Un-sticking a door happens when either no one has the capability to unlock it or you've jammed it through failure at picking it. It can also happen when it's been spiked on the other side. Since it already represents failure of a sort it should default to a gimme in order to not punish twice for bad rolling. It's always loud; you bring a thief when you want to do things quietly.

Unjam a Door

Roll under strength. Roll a noise check, which is an overloaded encounter die that ignores non-monster results. It cannot be done quietly.

When it is an essential function of a class

What fighters do is fight. All the ways of complicating fight mechanics: shoves, trips, disarms, etc., should be available to every fighter and they should be better than everyone else at them. Ability scores differ between characters and I don't want strong wizards outshining average fighters. But they shouldn't be limited to fighters. There's no reason that other classes shouldn't be able to attempt them, which limits the utility of something like DCC's Mighty Deeds Die. This means that they should all be tied to attack bonus, the one trait where fighters are king.

Combat Maneuvers

Any time you want to do something clever in combat in addition to attack, roll two attack dice. If both hit, your maneuver succeeds in addition to damage. If both miss, an ironic reversal occurs that puts you at a disadvantage. If only one succeeds, the target picks whether to suffer the maneuver or the damage.

When both the actions and consequences are both binary

This works by extracting nuance from preparation or consequence and expressly creating a way to succeed with sufficient foresight (previously "taking 20"). If the action is purely an action or lack of action, and the consequence only a result or lack of result, it lacks the requisite degree of gray to make game-able.

Hiding

Place something solid between yourself and the enemy. You're hidden. If you want to move, look above at Move Stealthily. If the enemy saw you before the concealment, they might still guess where you are. If there is nothing to hide you, you are spotted. Magic or special gear might provide ways to "wear" concealment.

When it can be covered without an additions

Large traps, or "room traps" are more than capable of being described, of handing out clues, of leaving evidence of their existence. They are obstacles more than they are foes. They can be deadly, but like a speedbump, they exist more to slow down and punish insufficient cleverness or patience than to evidence dangerous opposition. Give the player clues it exists and let them describe how they deal with it.