The Heavy Spotlight, or: Go-Around-The-Table Considered Harmful

An under-sung problem with D&D is, unfortunately, what people often see as the core of RP itself: "It’s your turn, what do you do?"

Specifically though, in combat. In combat there’s often not that much interesting for someone to do. Just hold the line and swing yr sword bro. And yet we ask the question all the same. Well, not so much people who run some kind of phased combat.

A lotta people have never experienced phased combat as per pre-3E D&D rules. Generally it goes like: you declare actions (sometimes individually), you roll side initiative, then per side actions get resolved by type: eg spells, missiles, movement, then melee. A key optimization is eg all missile attacks can be rolled at once. This is fast, and nice for example when your character has 5 hirelings.

There's various ways to do it, but my goal is not to break down phased combat. What they share is something stunning to consider: that it’s never your turn, not by default.

The more I think about it, and the more I look at my experiences, going around the table, processing turns board game style, giving each player a full turn boardgame style, seems like a huge problem, even an avalanche of problems:

• It kills narrative flow over and over.
• It encourages silly individualist thinking. People feel the huge spotlight coming towards them and it becomes everything. It encourages people to do goofy maneuvers and try to win the day with one weird trick every time. OTOH it is unwelcome to players who don't want the spotlight every time.
• People can’t remember group situation and have to be reminded of it
• Players become bad at taking coordinated actions, requires lots of talking, which people forget and fuckup.
• Rules basically prevent maneuvers eg the party can’t advance/charge as group. However note that monsters can, because they all go at once. DMs monsters have perfect coordination communication and timing.
• Turns for pets, familiars, hirelings etc are now more heavyweight discouraging their use.
• It presents a design surface. Designers want to give players cool impactful feeling choices and mechanisms to do on every turn. Pull lever for fun!
• Now your system is getting bloated. Now each player’s turn requires more system knowledge reducing accessibility.
• DM turns are now slower and more demanding and require more prep.
• Combat overall is more heavyweight so now so you feel combats should count; you can’t have a quick fight; the idea of random encounters becomes ridiculous to you.
• Now PC turns are slower which exacerbates all the problems above — the spotlight is slower and heavier! — plus adds a hundred more problems and basically devours the game.
• And yet also now players can somehow do less. Just pull the lever just turn the crank. No you can’t do anything else. Sim is gone, it's a dirty word. The endpoint here is something like the slow, slow all-encompassing videogame crunch straightjacket of like PF2E.

I'm not saying never have a spotlight in combat. Just that D&D is better w/o going around the table, "what do you do?", full spotlight, every goddamn round, for every goddamn attack. Process combats quickly and get back to whatever else your game was supposedly about -- or at least, be able to do that. Let players learn to pay attention and interrupt when they have a decision, or throw the spotlight on them only at those times.

Phased combat is not perfect. It has jank. At first it is a little alien to people who have been trained to just wait their turn. It does not encourage, or spell out how to resolve, individual actions. But: combat goes fast. It's never your turn; it's our turn. I prefer it.

Some people don't mind all the problems I've listed above. To them, those are features not bugs. They love their silly stupid bumbling superheroes. They love everything enveloped in crunch. They wanna play a slow video game. They want DMs prepping 3 hours for the dramatic set piece combat du jour. They wanna play fantasy Battletech. That’s fine, for them. I like Battletech too. But it's not what I want from D&D.

It's strange to me that this is not discussed much, even in the OSR. It’s not seen as an important area of old rules, it’s seen as more like personal style that doesn’t matter. I’ve seen a 0E lover, who worships old rules down to the smallest footnote, completely disregard the very core of how 0E, BX, and 1E say to do combat, who has never even tried it, who in ignorance condemns it -- just because go-around-the-table is what they know. It is the rhythm of their DMing or it's just the way their group plays. There's a possibility of player habituation, too.

And like... me too. Go-around-the-table is how I learned to play. The first game of D&D I ever played in 5th grade in ~1983 was go-around-the-table, even outside of combat! But, I played other things too, and got exposed to other games and other ways of doing things.

It's kind of shocking and distressing to me how no one is talking about this. Maybe I've missed the discussions. Maybe there are no discussions because I'm simply wrong.  Maybe it's no big deal. But I don't think so.

I think it's worth thinking about. The control of the spotlight is one of the most important things in a TTRPG, it is foundational to the experience.

And you may be really used to running go-around-the-table, and your players may be really experienced with helping it move efficiently. But that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to do things.

Tékumel Board Games: Svá

(This is a port of the real life board game Mur to Tékumel)

Svá, meaning "heirs" is a two-player game of court intrigue from Bednalljan times. It is played on a circular board with eight spokes and three rungs. There is a central spot, but the spokes leading to it are deleted and often the spot is occupied by art. The outer rung is often stylized differently, sometimes as a river, sometimes as a wall. There are 15 identical light pieces (the "sons") and 15 identical dark pieces (the "daughters"), and one slightly larger piece in a bright color, called the Old Man.

Setup

The board is cleared. One player takes the sons, the other takes the daughters. The Old Man is placed on the center spot. The sons player goes first.

Victory

Victory is achieved by trapping the Old Man, or trapping three total enemy pieces.

Play

Players go back and forth taking turns. On a player's turn they may take one of the following actions:

1. Place a piece on an empty intersection

Simple as.

2. Move a piece.

Pieces belonging to one player that are connected adjacently have a rank that is equal to the size of a group. Thus a piece by itself is a "rank 1" while each of four connected pieces is "rank 4". The Old Man is considered to be rank 4.

The player picks one piece, and moves it an exact number of spaces equal to its rank, in a straight line, "bouncing" off the outer wall back inwards if necessary, to an empty space, or a space occupied by a piece of an equal or lower rank.

If the space is occupied, the piece already there is "bumped" to the nearest unoccupied spot along the same line of travel (again, possibly bouncing off the outer wall).

It is not allowed to move a piece into a spot where it would be trapped (see below), unless that would trap the Old Man or an opponent's piece.

3. Surrender a trapped piece.

A piece is trapped if all its adjacent pieces are occupied by the other player's pieces. Thus the Old Man cannot be part of a trap.

If, at the start of your turn, any rank 1 piece is trapped -- all adjacent spaces taken up by pieces of the opposing player -- then you must remove it, as your turn. Removed pieces can be re-placed on the board.

Only rank 1, unconnected pieces, can be trapped.

Edge Cases

If a player does not have a move, or does a move that does not change the board state, they must remove one of their pieces as their turn, instead.

If a player is faced with a board that is identical (a repeat) from up to four turns ago, they must remove their piece as their turn, instead.

Match Play

It is common to play a continuous set of games. After a game is won, the board is only partially reset: all extraneous trapped pieces are removed (without counting as further scores), and the Old Man is moved back to the center. First move alternates between the two players.

Purpose and Mystery in the Dungeon

I think DMs are often amused by the things that players seize on to try to make sense of things. Some little off-hand detail looms large in the players' minds. Maybe it's just a single word, maybe it's a hint from the DM that got misread. The DM chuckles to themselves. Silly players!

Conventional wisdom is to quietly absorb these suppositions and, behind the curtain, perhaps make them real.  One could argue whether this constitutes a Quantum Ogre or whatever. I'm not interested in that.  I think there's something else important going on here.

I think this indicates a hunger in the players, a desperate yearning, for things to make sense and be interesting.

Some people realize this desire but they chalk it up to some natural reflex to see patterns in things. Perhaps some smart person will demonstrate that they know the word apophenia, and then this useless knowledge will close the matter.  But to me that's not the end of the matter, and so I'm going to all-caps shout what I think is the lesson of this:

PLAYERS YEARN FOR SENSE/LOGIC/SIGNIFICANCE, AND YOUR GAME IS NOT GIVING IT TO THEM.

Right now a lot of thinking about making a dungeon logical or rational tends to drift towards "Gygaxian naturalism". Is there enough for the owlbears to eat?  Can the hydra actually fit through these hallways?  This is all back-justifying.  It is answering HOW is it like this, when I am talking about WHY is it like this.

And hot on the heels of "WHY?" is: "SO WHAT?"  Players want the answers to be actionable to them.  Where is the hook for them? What can they do with it?

Why is the hydra here? Is this its normal hunting ground, or has it fled from somewhere else? Why did it need to flee the other place?  What does it mean that there's a hydra in the area?  What effects does this have -- what SIGNS of these things will there be, that the players encounter, to give mystery and texture to the players experience?  Why was that weird hunter guy in town?

I want to yell at myself some more:

THE COMPANION OF PURPOSE IS MYSTERY

When something is set up with purpose, but the players don't know the purpose, that is a mystery.  Mystery is not just about "whomst did what to whomst where?" logic puzzles. It's about "Why is this happening? Why was this done? Why was it done this way?"  Again we need the WHY, because it's the WHY that drives the WHERE WHEN HOW.

Most dungeons are necessarily bags of rather random things, and players are struggling to make sense of them, but there is no sense to make.

I'm not saying that everything needs a reason. In fact, there should be randomness and whimsy and silliness. What I'm saying is that most dungeons are lacking the element of mystery and purposefulness, and players are hungering for it.

But it is hard to do.  It's hard!!!

Against the One-Level Dungeon

Ironically it is the small dungeon, the one-level lairs, that are the biggest culprits here.  A mega-dungeon is old, random, it partakes of the mythic underworld, it can have factions (who bring their own purpose and mystery).  A one-level dungeon is not like that. It has immediate questions of why it is like this, what's going on here. The one-level lair cries out for purpose. It can have mystery in itself, but it is ultimately something to be consumed and thrown away.

These small dungeons cry out for integration into bigger mysteries, but that is exactly what a published one-level dungeon you get from someone else can't provide.

Arnesonian Mazes

Building on my previous post about Making Mazes Fun...

The Maze is the space between dungeon rooms. Yeah that's right it's a liminal space -- fuck you. It is a place that random encounters can arise from, and where fleeing monsters can melt back into. When you huddle in a room and something shuffles by the door, it is from the Maze, because that corridor can lead anywhere, it doesn't just link up a couple rooms. The Maze is the wilderness of the dungeon, it is the "outside" of the inside.

Arneson's Blackmoor had the Maze:

Here corridors are king. With so many stairwells, who knows where the Maze might lead. Sometimes they extend out beyond the confines of the rest of the dungeon:

These hallways must be navigated from intersection to intersection, often times only advancing a few feet before the next intersection. This becomes a tangle, even a "tanglefuck". I imagine here there is some difficulty repeating routes, and indeed finding a room in the first place is not guaranteed. The Maze is a haystack and the rooms are needles. A lot of that difficulty of these mazes are due to the language; descriptions of intersections coming so dense, with so many loops. Even the short dead ends act as distraction and landmark.

It is not like the usual hedge maze we might imagine, with long twisty hallways that mostly dead-end. The Arnesonian corridor tangles are full of decision points, densely packed. They're a flood of them, an assault of information and decisions.

On the lower levels of Blackmoor the Maze seems to become all-important, until the special chambers disappear into strange nubs, little closets so small that Mr. Alexandrian wondered if they were just placeholders or teleporters to large rooms.

To me, all this is good.

Is it boring to play? I don't know.

But I suspect that even the players who are not mapping will feel the Maze. I think they will become afraid of getting lost. I think they will mark up the dungeon with chalk. I think they will know not to split up. I think they will definitely feel that they have extended their necks into an unsafe space that it might not be so easy to return from.

(update)

To be honest I'm not sure how you WOULD do a maze-like thing -- on a standard sheet of paper with a vaguely standard number of dungeon rooms -- in a way other than highly interconnecting corridors. It might even be necessary to use 8 directions.

How to roll a 7+ on 1d6

TONKS, by apocrypha_now, is an adorable little minis game which uses minis-standard D6 rolls, where you need to roll a 4+ or 5+ or 6+ a lot of the time to hit various things. This is a very common system for wargames, where you often want to roll several troops at once. The numbers are low, the math is easy, the die is common.

However...

With this kind of system, what do you do when the target number goes above 6, or below 2?

A sensible solution on D6 is to assume that if you need a 7+ or worse, you can never hit, where as a 1+ or better always hits.

(Note that this is not a common D20 rule, which is to say that a 20 always hits and a 1 always misses, no matter what the actual TN.)

In TONKS target numbers can get up into 7+ or higher ranges pretty easily and it doesn't make sense to say these auto-miss. In fact from watching a tiny AP of it probably all the TNs could come down by one. (Heck, because TONKS is a single unit kind of game it could probably have a 2D6 hit roll like CAR WARS; single D6 rolls make the most sense for masses of minis. OTOH there is a lot to be said for a flat distribution without too many buckets. But that's a different topic.)

TONKS resolves this in a very cute / clever way! If you need higher than a 6+, you roll 2D6, and succeed if you roll EXACTLY the target number. This scales nicely from 6/36 down to 1/36 at 12+.  There's the silght issue that a 6+ is just as easy to hit as a 7+, but I'm okay with that.

But is it possible to do better? With something that would work for minis figures where you need to do multiple at once?

Another Cute Idea...

So what about a true open-ended solution?  I'm sure this has been thought of before, even by myself, but I think it's worth writing down.

If you roll a 6, add 5 to the sum and reroll, and repeat on 6's only. (Smooth explosion.)

If you roll a 1, subtract 5 from the sum and reroll, and repeat on 1's only. (Smooth implosion!)

It's pretty easy to add and subtract 5 so you can do it on the side. For example if the target number you need is a 9, that's 5+4, therefore: you need to roll a six then a four.

So there you have it, a D6 system that can handle an infinite range of target numbers, in a symmetrical, strictly monotonic way.

Making Mazes Fun & The Case for Long Corridors

This is written after the Mazes in D&D episode of the Wandering DMs.

There's a lot of maze haters out there! I'm not interested in them.

The question I'm interested in is: what would make mazes fun? How could they be used in design of megadungeons? I have been thinking about this awhile and I have a couple ideas rolling around:

1. Riddles or Partial Maps

This can be as simple as a partial map, but what might be interesting are instructions givine a route through the maze.  Players could find a scrap of paper with a route like, "BLUE ROOM, From Gorgo's Face R L R S R RR R Y S L".  This could be a series of turns, but WHAT is Gorgo's Face?  Is it one of the big faces painted on the wall in room 12?  Is it the statue in room 23?  Is this something a rumor roll can reveal: Gorgo is the nickname for the bull statue in room 14?  And what about the directions themselves? R and L make easy sense, and S is probably straight (or is it stairs?), but what is "RR"? The second right? And what could 'Y' mean?

And what if the directions are backwards? The players know the Blue Room and want to get to Gorgo's Head. How easy is that to figure out?

What if the dungeon has changed since the directions were written, a new hole knocked in a wall?

This is in a sense the DM injecting things that might come about from having a shared world.  Have your other groups and factions deal with the maze, take actions on it, and have lore about it.

In other words, treat the maze as a location that you flesh out and breath life into, that's not just a harassment zone.  Give the players a head start with the layout of the maze to make exploration of it more purposeful, more directed, and less pointless exploration.

Somewhat counterintuitively, my other solution idea is to make the hallways more boring.

2. Twisty Passages w/ Room Anchors, aka Drunken Circuit Diagrams

This is an idea that I got from Empire of the Petal Throne, and a glance at a photograph of MAR Barker's underworld map (which was quite large). It is not exactly what I saw on that map, but it has made me think of it.

First to talk about other designs you may have seen out there.

There's the standard Gygaxian mapper-hostile design with some tricky areas of hard-to-describe things like angled hallways, curved passages, slopes -- along with a fairly dense layout because the map is trying to fit on a single piece of paper. The complexity and density make these a nuisance for the DMs to describe and there's often not much purpose to it.

There is another kind of layout, the well-Jaquayed dungeon, which is more of a grid really; you can generally get from place to place. By contrast there's the Unjaquayed-but-not-linear dungeon (think Stonehell L1) which is more like a maze of rooms.

Ok, stop imagining those and let's imagine something else.

Imagine large rooms, but the space between them is almost filled with mazey passages that have relatively few branches or intersections outside of rooms. To get from Room 1 to Room 2 you don't just open a door and go down a thirty-foot hallway to another door: you enter a hallway that goes 60', turns right, goes 90', take the left tee 100', and there's the door.

Most importantly, the corridors are long, and snakey, but there are few decision points and locally simple geometry that gets complex on a larger scale.

Something like this conceptually:

Lots of long twisting passages: possibly minor level changes will be useful to do crossings. Crucially, I think, a "northern" exit will not necessarily take you generally north. You need the map! Or landmarks.  There should probably be more corridor intersections so there is usually one decision in the hallway between rooms.

This is something like the mazes from Zork or other old text adventure games, but here the passages are real and not mysterious.

I think it's also very important to go very light on tricks and traps. A little should go a long way.

POSSIBLE BENEFITS

You might think I'm only making things worse by adding more corridors. But long boring hallways are a feature! These hallways can be described and mapped by players very quickly. You can cruise quickly to the next decision point. Your non-mapping players will not have time to get bored.

However game time will pass. Torches might go out. Wandering monsters might appear. This is good! The corridors are a place where things happen now. Combat in corridors is fast and pretty simple; tactics are boiled down to the essence and this is where old D&D shines IMHO.  Also in a corridor the DM does not have to work as hard to mesh wandering monster encounters into the action of whatever silly stuff players are doing inside a room. Simple geometry is good!

A large space of between-room filler corridors also creates a more believable kind of "buffer zone" where, believably, monsters can emerge from and disappear to. In other dungeons there can be feelings of "Really, where did he run to?" and "Where do these monsters come from, we've cleared all the rooms over there??" The labyrinthine hallways of the dungeon I'm describing can never be fully clean.

Another contrast is it makes rooms more special by contrast. Rooms are destinations, landmarks, decision points, and can be more standalone things. As a designer, you can get by with fewer dull rooms, because the hallways will carry some of that dead space, and not require as much DM effort to fill with some interesting but essentially pointless little bit of dressing.

DRAWBACKS

This map might require a smaller grid size, and/or multiple pieces of paper.

It's not that easy to draw dungeons this way, avoiding trivial loops. A little while in dungeonscrawl gets me something like this (adding in some "complexes"):

The dungeon might seem extremely unnatural. But we're talking about a megadungeon here, not "old single-level basement of the watch tower that's now a bandit lair" design. I think for the EPT Jakallan underworld it's even more reasonable, when it's understood what's being represented here is centuries of a city being built on top of itself, and not anything that was a functional whole at any time.

Maybe players will miss DM's trying to describe a T-intersection where one of the corners is a diagonal bevel and there's a door ten feet south of what would be directly ahead, and the north hallways ends after 20 feet in a door on the east side and the south hallway bends SE be a like, 15' wide corridor after 30 feet with a door on the west wall 10' before the bend??? I don't think they will..

Black Hack, Early Thoughts

I've played a couple sessions of Black Hack (2E) now. That's not many at all, but I think I can say some things, tentatively.

0. A minor formatting boo-boo that they did a global search on game terms like "Turn" so you get sentences like, "Your character Turns into a mouse." For a second there I thought there was some kind of transformation subsystem.

1. Rolling strictly under is weird, but not as annoying as I feared. I still don't like it.

2. Usage dice are still a bit annoying.

(2a) If I have Ud4 arrows and I acquire another stack of Ud6 arrows, can I combine them?  The question can be answered, but it's silly. And the result is, now I'm still managing a number but it's weird and vague.

(2b) It's not clear when usage rolls happen. If I have Ud8 rations, is that days, sessions? Per meal? If I used arrows, I have to remember *after combat* to do a usage roll, which seems more annoying than simple tracking where I mark off an arrow right at the time I use it.

(2c) I think it removes some interesting resource management. "I'm trying to conserve arrows" is interesting when you have 5 arrows left. It's less interesting when the choice is, "Am I going to fire 0 arrows, or as many as I please this combat (in fact I should shoot a whole bunch to get the most out of my usage roll)?"

3. Rolling for prices for basic items is cute but is annoying if you want to buy like 3 different things; and is thus immediately annoying in character creation where four different players are trying to buy four overlapping sets of things. I think I'd rather be hit by random money loss and gain; "make a save vs fees & taxes".

4. Armor dice hasn't really come up (I think some players have forgotten to use it; maybe including me? lol), but the totally different meaning of the usage die and the wording for 'breaking' are confusing.

5. "Ritual casting", where you cast a spell out of combat for free, is very tempting at level 1, but the chance of failure is high and the mutations are pretty severe and permanent. While it IS interesting and fun that the cleric had one arm turn into a claw -- Crab cleric!!! -- it's kinda dumb that it happened just because she was trying to cast light spell.

(5a) Basic spellcasting is not the correct place for an influx of gonzo. An after-combat CLW top-up is not a dramatic moment.

(5b) So essentially casters SHOULDN'T be ritual casting unless it's important, which reduces them to old-school style. But Black Hack presents as a modern game, and if you give players a lever they will assume it should be pulled. Plus, they probably come from 5E...

(5c) The root problem is lowbie casters have too few spells, and if you're slaughtering sacred cows to make a cleaner modern game, that cow should go early into the abattoir.  Commit to the bit! Give casters a usage die for casts, or individual spells.  Or: only have powerful spells.

6. Continue to love/hate slot based inventory. My personal feelings aside, it is probably better suited for more types of players. Where slot-based inventory starts to have problems (eg when you're thinking about mounts and carts and tapestries and needing to carry dead/wounded companions) is where most players will check out anyway and maybe the DM should just wave their arms and adjudicate it quickly.

These can be hard calls, though, and the DM is going to face situations where it's tough to offer tradeoffs because (pre-5E) D&D has no fatigue mechanisms. There should probably be like a "Mishap Roll", which is like a 1-in-6 chance of something a little bad happening, so the DM can say, "Sure you can do it but there will be a mishap roll" to handle stuff like forced marches, overloading carts, etc.

7. Ability checks are the devil. I mostly have the usual trad player instincts of like, all ability checks, all the time.  But I have seen the light from old school ways, which is primarily this: ability checks are not interesting because pass/failure is often not interesting.  If a player is trying to do something that makes the situation more cool and fun, an ability check is an interruption in the flow and just reducing the possibility of things getting more cool and fun.

(7a) A corollary is that minor obstacles are not fun. Even moderate obstacles are no fun. If the players need to get down a deep well, then the DM should be part of their planning a little bit, letting them know things that won't work, or possible risks. If shimmying 7 people down 200' of rope isn't going to work, the DM should let the players know and let them come up with a better method. Obstacles are about establishing the players' procedure for passing them. Does the procedure rely on usable resources? Is it going to have to change if the players want to bring back big treasures or dead comrades?

A pass/fail check is a FAILURE STATE of a plan. It is not the thing that the plan is building up to, with good planning getting a +2 on the roll.

Like don't think of obstacles as random little events from a video game, or a board game with an event deck. In simulationist D&D, they should be little puzzles to solve.

Let players solve the puzzle. Then, their progress will feel earned.

Perhaps the complementary skill is, if the players go ahead with a bad solution, finding a way to punish them for it without a TPK. Sometimes I think you let them succeed but screw them from some other angle.

(7b) In addition, ability checks leads to fumble/crit discussions, which I think are overall bad. They are a big part of Casual Silly Keystone Cops kind of D&D. But most of the time it's better to advance the action and avoid the kind of phantom competency/incompetency that comes from dice.

All of this is not exactly particular to Black Hack, though its centralizing of ability checks does encourage it.  The DM I had for this game did fall into the ability check trap a little bit, but she realized it quickly. But it's something I have seen in TONS of games, and something I have fallen into problems with myself.

(7c) TBH the horses are so fully out of the barn on ability checks that I still think the real solution is a more deterministic, less random roll system. The more it's telling players "you can do that automatically" or "you can't do that", the more it's staying out of the way or firmly saying "think of something else", and that's better.

52 Pages Treasure

 I love Roger G-S 's 52 Pages a lot, and I often point to its treasure table as something glorious and mad:

This looks baffling but it's pretty easy. Roll 2D10+Level. Look immediately right for the monetary value. Then roll D6 & D8 to get the type of treasure and move it down so it's on the same row of the first 2D10+Lvl roll. And then, if initial roll was black, repeat.

It's a little tricky to calculate because of the reroll. A Monte Carlo approach would probably be best. A quick and ugly program later..

Level 1 Average: ~1640 sp
Level 2 Average: ~2290 sp
Level 3 Average: ~2890 sp
Level 4 Average: ~3610 sp
Level 5 Average: ~4200 sp

(I'm not sure why it's mostly about 600+ per level but then 720 from 3 to 4.)

But in any case, these averages are pretty high to start with, but don't increase by that much, which is probably not desirable for a mega-dungeon kind of campaign where the party has pretty free choice over what kind of depth they want to go to.

 

The BX/OSE Treasure Problem

So now that I'm trying to make a dungeon more methodically for #dungeon23, the question arises. How much treasure to put in it?

Note that my focus here, since I'm designing for #dungeon23 and this is January, is the first level of a dungeon and how it must bootstrap a campaign by being fairly generous with treasure. I'm also assuming BX (OSE).

I'll start with three data points from experience:

1. Level 1 Stonehell grind is a miserable experience. I think that the dungeon does not actually work if you have a PC death rate in line with the supposed OSR theme. After ~8 sessions in Stonehell, where I believe the DM actually upped the treasure amounts somewhat, I projected it would still take ~16 more sessions to level my dwarf. If this is the game -- if you're supposed to survive 24 sessions with a level 1 character to earn level 2 -- that's just not viable.
   
2. In BX/OSE games with satisfactory level advancement speed, characters end up with too much money, with extremely little to spend it on.
   
3. In the strictly-by-the-book 1E game I'm playing, it's very intrusive how 1E tries to claw back low-level wealth with training costs. The system is punishing and not exactly fun, and I don't think it can even work unless you give all the players superb ratings all the time. It's also not fun to be hounded by debt, interest payments, and cost of living. This is supposed to be an adventure game. And on top of all that it's a bit ludicrous how our PCs are dumping thousands and thousands of gp into this little town, paying 2 gp to hire a soldier for a day, but like 4,500gp to pay a trainer for a week -- better to have less wealth to start with, then gain so much of it. To say nothing of Gygax's other encouragements to nickel and dime PCs.
   

So those are the problems: Through lower levels, there needs to be more experience points than people know to give out, but there needs to be less PC wealth, and giving lots of money then taking it all away through huge fees is annoying.

And let's stipulate I'm interested in true OSR games and don't want to add xp from other sources like exploration or milestones or personal goal achievement. 

What's to be done?  Carousing rules are a common, simple change. Are they necessary? Are more drastic measures required?

Investigation 1:

A few months ago, Spriggan's Den crunched some numbers on B/X treasure and investigated the BX recommended rate of 75% of treasure coming from experience points by looking at how many monsters you fight. Over 18 rooms, it works out to 8 encounters and 5 treasures. If we say the average encounter is 3.5 orcs, worth 35 xp, then on the level there's 280 monster xp and 840 treasure xp.

So, 1120 xp on the entire level. With a five-person party, that's 224 xp to be gained. Assuming you cleaned the whole thing out, you'd need to actually do ~9 levels like -- 161 rooms! -- to level up your fighter.  At six rooms per session, that's 27 sessions to level up, assuming you milked every single experience point from the level (a big assumption).

Most people probably expect 3-10 sessions required to get from level 2, so the OSE base rate of treasure gain is three to ten times too slow.

A more typical OSR dungeon level would be about twice as large -- 36 rooms, 16 encounters, 10 treasures. If this has 35 xp per encounter, that's 560, and we need 9440 treasure to make up for the deficit, so 944 gp per treasure. That's a lot of treasure to be handing out to the PCs.

Investigation 2:

Way back in 2014, Delta investigated BX's 75% rule. The ugly truth is that no version of early D&D gives clear, reasonable rules for random stocking of dungeons when it comes to treasure amounts. One option is to ignore monster treasure types entirely and just use the "unguarded" room treasure for all tables. Delta explores this for OD&D but not for BX. In this he discovers that a level of about 50 rooms ~~~kinda~~~ gives an appropriate amount of total experience for the level.

Let's look at BX!  BX is a lot like 0E, but it is a little skint with gold pieces at low levels, and its gems and jewelry don't escalate in value. Here are its average treasure yields, and how fast it will level up our five-fighter party.

So if you're expecting to level up your party off vanilla OSE treasures, it's going to be a long campaign. (Though of course you'll be getting xp from monsters as well.)

Using a 50-room dungeon to compare to the 0E values from Delta's post:

Given that OD&D gave ~roughly~ acceptable numbers, this shows an estimate of how much BX/OSE treasure needs to be magnified.

And for most levels, it's pretty close to 2!  So carousing (in its full, unrestricted form) is actually a fairly good way to make BX roughly equivalent, but it isn't enough at first level.

Thus a rule of thumb could be: have carousing, but in addition, double the treasure on dungeon level 1.

That may be enough to get on with.

Tékumel Board Games: Ssansh

(Turncoats is a game by Matilda Simonsson. This is an imaginary adaptation of how the game might exist on Tékumel.)

Ssansh comes from the eastern lands. Some sages say it traces back to the Mihalli, but this is not known. The version below is the one known in Jakálla.

Ssansh is played on a board consisting of several discs. These often have a hole in them so they can be bundled up with a string. Traditionally the discs marked white and black below are often the lids for the whole set and are rimmed and bowl-like. They are called the King (black) and the Weather (white). They have special rules and are not "spaces" like the other discs. The red, green, and blue discs are normal spaces but are painted or are different materials. The discs are always arranged like so:

Along with the discs, there is a bag of 63 figurines: 21 each of each material matching red, green, and blue. The figurines are usually chlén beasts and are quite detailed in finer sets.

To set up the game, 2 figurines are placed on each colored space that match their colors, then the neutral (gray above) spaces are given two randomly drawn figurines each. Finally, each player (up to five may play) takes 8 figurines from the bag; these are kept hidden from other players, often in leather cups.

On a player's turn, they may Parley, which involves drawing a figurine from the bag into their hand; then the player takes any figurine from their hand, shows it to other players, and puts it back in the bag. The other option is to Act by placing a figurine from hand onto any disc.

• If the disc is a normal space (i.e. not the King or Weather), the player's turn is done.
• If disc is the King, the player may then pick a space, and for each same-color figurine in that space, they may remove a different-color figurine from that space to the bag.
• If disc is the Weather, the player may transfer any number of same-color figurines from one space to an adjacent space. 

Note again that the King and Weather are not "spaces".

The game ends when all players Parley in a row.

To determine the victor, it is first important to determine which color has dominance over each disc. This is simply the color with the most figurines on the disc. In spaces, ties are broken first by which color has dominance on the King, and further ties are broken by the Weather. If that does not break the tie, or if the disc was empty, there is no dominance on the disc by the involved colors.

The color that has dominance over the most spaces (not discs) is the "winning color", and the other two are "losing colors". The winning player is the one who has the most figurines of the winning color left in their hand, with ties being broken by who has the fewest losing color figurines, and ties there broken by whose turn was longest ago.

Tékumel Board Games: Dashigáikh

 (Tak is a tile-playing board game designed by James Ernest and Patrick Rothfuss.)

The game of Dashigáikh is a Yán Koryáni game, though it originates in northwestern Tsoliyanú. It was popular among work gangs of Sakbé roads and spread out from there, but became especially popular in Yán Kór. For many years it was disdained by or unknown to high society in the other four empires, but it has grown in popularity among the higher clans. It is most popular in Ghatón, where it is played almost to the exclusion of any other kind of game, and the average level of skill at the game is highest there.

The game is played on a 5x5 grid with pieces of two colors. Each player has 21 flat pieces of their color, and one special (usually pyramidal) piece called the "overseer". The flat pieces are thick and have at least one edge flattened so that they can be stood up as a "standing" piece. The game begins with no pieces on the board, and no pieces ever leave the board. Players give each other one of their pieces to make the first placements.

(Larger and smaller grid sizes are played, with the number of flat pieces per player being roughly the number of squares, with 0 overseers on 4x4 or smaller, and 2 overseers on 7x7 or larger.)

(photo from BGG by @Hovien)

A first player is determined. To begin the game, each player in turn places one of their opponent's pieces in empty squares, and then normal play begins.

In their turn a player can make one of two moves:

• Place a piece from off the board on an empty space. This can be the overseer, a flat piece played flat, or a flat piece played standing.
• Move a stack of pieces, so long as a piece of your color is on top. (A single piece is a stack of one).

A stack move consists of picking up your piece and up to 4 pieces under it, then moving it in orthogonal steps. At each step, at least 1 piece off the bottom of the stack must be left behind. A stack move may not move onto an overseer. A stack move may not move onto any standing stone, except when the step is being made by your overseer, alone with no pieces under it, in which case it flattens the standing stone to flat (and finishes its turn since that must have been the end of the stack move.)

Any type of piece can make a stack move; a standing stone, a flat stone, or your overseer -- as long as it is your piece on top, it can initiate a stack move.

The game is won by making a "road" connecting any two opposite sides of the board with an orthogonal path of your pieces (on top of stacks). The road must be made up of your overseer or flat pieces, not standing pieces. Technically you can only win by road when it is the beginning or end of your turn: if you create a winning road during part of a stack move but cover it up later in the move, it does not count; or, if you finish a stack move having created winning roads for both players, you win because it is the end of your turn.

If the board is full of pieces, or a player runs out of pieces in their reserve, the game ends and the winner is the person with the most flat stones of their color on top of stacks.

Tékumel Board Games: Battle of Eighteen Heroes

(LotR:The Confrontation is a board game designed by Reiner Knizia, Eric Lang, and Christian Peterson. This is an imaginary adaptation of the game is it might appear in Tékumel.)

This game is often called Hrilghálu after the fortress at the center of the so-called Battle of Eighteen Heroes, where Princess Nraiuné escaped the siege laid by General Balangéte in 1804. The game arose out of a simple (now lost) simpler game. It is mostly played in the military of the western empires, and is formally part of officer training in Mu'ugalavyá and Tsoliyánu.  In the siege depicted by the game, the Princess Nraiuné did escape and ascended to the Petal Throne as "The Iridescent Goddess" five years later

The game is played on a 5x5 board, skewed 45 degrees so that it looks like a diamond to both players. The diagonal line of 4 squares across the middle is marked differently and called the Thicket. In addition the home squares are marked as well; the Nraiuné (bottom player) one is the Tower, the Balangéte player's one is the Sákbe. Each other row of diagonal squares is named as well; from the Tower to the Sakbé it goes: Tower, Yard, Wall, Thicket, Enclosure, Camp, Sakbé.

There is an asymmetry that is often unmarked on the map. The red square on the Thicket row is called the Bridge, and the pink Camp row square is (confusingly) just called the Camp.

The number of dots in the diagram shows how many pieces may exist within the square, it's "capacity". Sometimes theses are literal peg-holes in the board but are often unmarked.

Normally pieces may only move forward in one of the two orthogonal directions, and may not move into or through a space that is already at full capacity. There are several exceptions. Some pieces may move diagonally sideways or orthogonally backwards. The Nraiuné player's pieces may move diagonally rightwards in the Enclosure as if it was a forward move. Nraiuné pieces may also move diagonally forward from the center square of the Wall to the center square of the Enclosure which is called a Sortie Move.

Each player has nine pieces, which are made to hide information to the other player. Sometimes these are well-made chlén hide tiles that are put face-down and look identical. Often they are shells covering pieces, and players may move pieces between shells in the same space to keep information scrambled.

In addition each player has 9 stones; 5 white ones with painted pips 1-5, a blue, a black, and a yellow. For the ninth stone the Nraiuné player has a red stone, while the Balangéte player has sixth white stone with 6 pips. These have understood meanings below.

Setup & Play

Each player arranges their pieces, with 4 in the home square, and the other 5 out in the five spaces of their half of the board, one per space. No piece may start on the Thicket.

The Balangéte player goes first.

On a player's turn he simply moves a piece to an orthogonally forward space, or reveals their piece if that piece can do something special. Of course note that the Sortie Move and the rightward move in the enclosure count as forward moves for the Nraiuné player.

If a piece tries to enter an occupied space that becomes an attack. The attacker picks a defending piece (essentially at random) to attack first, and must keep attacking defending pieces until it is defeated or all defending pieces are defeated and the attacking piece can advance into the space.

To do an attack, both attacker and defender are revealed. The Nrauiné player's piece executes its skill first, then the Balangéte's player piece may execute its skill. The strength of the pieces is compared.

Then each player takes up their unused stones, picks one secretly and holds it out in their hand. Both are revealed. The Balangéte player's stone is resolved first, then the Nraiuné player's. Used stones are set aside a depression on the board, visible to all. When all stones are used they all are returned to "unusued" status. Note that stones player will always be in sync; if one player plays a stone the other must, even in cases where it can have no effect.

Final strengths of the two pieces are compared. If there is a tie both lose. The loser is removed from the board. If needed, the process continues until the attack is resolved.

Play then passes to the next player.

Note that under no circumstances may a piece either move diagonally sideways in the Thicket, or enter or pass through a space that is at capacity with friendly pieces.

Winning

If a player cannot legally move a piece on their turn, they lose.

The Nraiuné player wins if they can get the Nrauiné piece to be able to move into the Sakbé space (they do not have to defeat any enemies already there). The Balangéte player wins by either defeating the Nrauiné piece, OR by having three of his pieces within the Tower.

Pieces and Stones

The Nraiuné pieces, their strengths, and skills:

• Nraiuné (1). After being revealed as a defender, she can retreat diagonally.
• Bodyguard (2). If in the same space as Nrauiné this piece has strength 5, and also may switch to defend instead of Nrauiné if she is attacked.
• Pe Choi Emissary (1). When attacking, before stones are played, this piece may retreat a backwards orthogonal move.
• Old Hero (2). Instantly defeats the Young Hero in battle before stones are played.
• Great General (5). When this piece battling, the Nraiuné player picks her stone fully after the Balangéte player.
• The Vriddi (4). May move to any orthogonally or diagonally adjacent space to make an attack.
• Priest of Thumis (3). Instantly defeats the Assassin in battle.
• Priest of Hnálla (3). Instantly defeats the Priest of Sarkú in battle.
• The Betrayed (0). Instantly defeats any opponent in battle, but is eliminated. (Not quite any opponent, q.v. the Traitor).
  

The Balangéte pieces, their strengths, and skills:

• The Shén (5). If on the Bridge (the red space on the Thicket) when a Nraiuné piece attempts a Sortie Move, may be revealed to instantly defeat that piece; this does not count as a battle.
• The Prince (5). After defeating a piece in battle, if not in the Camp, this piece returns to the Camp immediately. If the space is full or has hostile pieces in it, the Prince is defeated.
• The Young Hero (5). May move diagonally sideways to attack,.
• Assassin (3). May move to any space to attack, if the target is a Nraiuné piece alone in a space. This is not a directional move so technically may seem to contradict the rule about never moving sideways in the Thicket.
• The Priest of Vimúhla (3). May move any number of spaces forward so long as it culminates in an attack.
• Balangéte (4). When this is in battle and stones are to be chosen, the Balangéte player may decide that no stones are to be played at all.
• The Priest of Sarkú (3). As the attacker, on its first attack only, it will instantly defeat the piece it faces (if applicable, after their skill of course).
• The Traitor (2). Negates the skill of the other piece in battle. Note that this is a special exception and goes before the Nraiuné piece, and Nraiuné will not automatically escape, the Betrayed will not instantly defeat, the Great General must choose stones normally, etc.
• The N'Lüss. (9). When this is in battle, the Balangéte player's stone has no effect (but one still must be chosen and played).

The Nraiuné player's stones:

• White 1-5: Have their given value added to the piece's strength.
• Blue: The player immediately puts this stone in the 'used' area and replaces it with a different 'used' stone for the battle.
• Black: Retreat orthogonally backwards, if possible under normal movement restrictions.
  
• Yellow: Other player's white stones have no value this battle.
• Red: Sacrifice. Both pieces are defeated if the battle is still going on.
  

The Balangéte player's stones: 

• White 1-6: Add their given value to the piece's strength.
• Blue: Same as Nairuné players blue. Note that if both players pick blue, the Balangéte player must replace their blue stone first.
• Black: Retreat diagonally sideways, if possible under normal movement restrictions.
• Yellow: Other player's non-white stones have no effect in this battle.
  

Tékumel Board Games: Monyalmó of Sa’á Allaqí

(Onitama is a game designed by Shimpei Sato; this is an adaptation of it to the world of Tèkumel.)

Monyalmó is a popular game in Sa’á Allaqí and the lands north around Salarvyá. It originates from Lake Parunál and is still popular around there. It is a mark of intelligence there to be able to play the game without needing the 'wind' pieces (below), and the phrase, "to play only with names", denoting someone who is alert and competent, refers to the game this way.

It is played on a board with 5x5 grid of peg holes for the pieces. The center holes on the two players' home rows are specially marked and are called houses.

 

Each player has 5 pegs of two types: 4 boats and 1 barge. These are arranged on the player's back row with the elder in the middle, in that player's house.

The game also uses 16 other marked stones, the 'winds'. Each bears a different symbol that represents how they allow a piece to move, and is known by a different name (not presented here). At the beginning of the game 5 winds are chosen at random and the remaining 11 are put away. Each player gets 2 winds and the fifth is put in the middle. When playing without the wind stones, the challenging player picks two winds to start with the challengee, and then the challengee accepts by picking two winds for the challenger and a middle wind.

On a player's turn they pick one of their 2 winds. They then move one of their pieces according to that wind. These moves are also capturing moves, and any piece may capture any opponent piece.

The used wind is then swapped with the center wind. Thus, any wind played will end up in the opponent's hand.

The game is won by capturing the opponent's barge, or by moving one's own barge into the opponent's house.

Tékumel Board Games: Qál and Milúkhi of Livyánu

(Tumbleweed is a two-player strategy game by Michal Zapala. Yavalath is a two-player strategy designed by Cameron Browne.)

This Livyáni board is used for a few different games, two of which are given here. The board is a hexagonal arrangement of circular spaces, arranged in a larger hexagon. The whole hexagon may be eight to eleven spaces on a side and is used for the game Qál. The inner hexagon five spaces on a side is used for Milúkhi. The center space is usually highlighted in some way. In both cases two boxes of ~100 pieces are included, usually white and red, made of discs that can be stacked easily.

Qál

To start, the younger player sets a red piece and a white piece down on separate circles, and the other player picks which color they want to be. White goes first.

On a turn, a player picks a space on the board. The space must be 'seen' by another one of the player's pieces, in an unobstructed straight line. The player puts down a stack of pieces with height equal to how many different player stacks can see the chosen space. (So, up to a maximum height of 6.)  The player may target a space occupied by an opponent's stack only if the play would build a higher stack, and the enemy pieces are replaced in this case.

The central space is assumed to have a stack of height 2 of neutral-colored pieces.

A player may choose to pass instead of play.

The game ends when both players pass or there are no more meaningful moves to make (ie moves into spaces that are not safe from capture). The winner is the player with the greater number of controlled spaces.

Milúkhi

Milúkhi is seen as a lighter game than Qál. It uses the inner 5-sided hex of spaces in the board. The center space is not special.

In Milúkhi each player takes turn placing a piece on an empty space. If four pieces are connected in a line, that player wins. If only three spaces are connected in a line, that player loses.

Tékumel Board Games: Dhéluss of Salarvyá

(Dameo is a checkers variant by Aleh Tapalnitski.)

Dhéluss is a two-player game of Salarvyá whose name means "Fleets". It is similar in some ways to Terran checkers. It is known all throughout the Five Empires, but especially in Salarvyá where most of the best players are from, and there is a sophisticated culture of competitive play.

It is played on a board with an eight-by-eight grid of intersections, typically printed on blue or green fabric and stretched over wood. Each player has 18 pieces. As in Terran checkers, two regular pieces (galleys) may be stacked to represent a promoted piece (a flagship).

 

A galley's regular move is always forward, diagonally or straight ahead, to an empty adjacent space. If they start adjacent to a friendly piece or line of friendly galleys (not flagships) in that direction, they may hop directly to the end if there is a free space. 

Galleys capture orthogonally only, but in any direction, in simple hops over adjacent enemy pieces.

Flagships move any number of empy spaces in any direction. Like galleys, they capture orthogonally only, but they may do so via a long jump, which consists of moving any number of any spaces up to the piece, hopping over it to capture it, and then continuing to move any number of spaces desired afterwards -- all in the same direction.

All captures are mandatory, and in addition, the longest possible capture must be made. Pieces are not removed until the chain of captures are over and no piece may be hopped over twice during a capture.

Tekumel Board Games: Changakárnikh of Tsoliyánu

(Magical Athlete is a roll-and-move board game designed by Takashi Ishida. This is an adaptation of the game to the world of Tékumel.)

Changakárnikh is a race game played by from 3 to 6 players. It is popular as a casual game in many clanhouses, but in the gambling houses of the big cities it is serious endeavor, always played with 4 players, and with scheduled play times and a vigorous side-betting world, similar to other race game gambling. Entry fees can be quite high and so most players are sponsored.

The game is said to represent the progress of sages towards a holy mountain, but it is also interpreted as a game representing the striving of political parties. In many rich clan houses one can probably find an old set of this game with pieces carved in caricature of political figures long forgotten.

The game uses a board of 30 spaces, five across and six tall. The bottom row of 5 spaces are often numbered 1-5 in small numerals. The upper 5x5 area of the path is often a pattern, usually meant to highlight the center piece and corners.

The board is understood as a spiral track going along the bottom row (called the village), then entering the 5x5 space (the mountain) and spiraling in towards the central space, called the threshold.

In the most stable Jakálla version of the game there are 25 unique pieces, each with special rules. Regional variations are common, however; more than one traveler has been surprised to discover that the local rules use different pieces.

The game also employs a single six-sided die and score markers. There is usually an officiant too; even in street games a trustworthy person will be found. In clan houses the role is often given to children.

Play

A first player and player order is determined. This is usually done by dicing.

The game has two phases, a draft called the parade where players assemble a team of 5 pieces, and then the races themselves.

In the parade, starting with the first player, a piece is added to the '4' spot of the board. If there is a piece there, it is bumped down to the '3', etc. If a piece is bumped off the '1' spot, the player must take it and play passes on and another piece is drawn. Otherwise, the player has the option to 'buy' any of the pieces onto his team, paying the price of the space the piece is on. When a player has their full team they are out of the draft.

This process leaves five pieces undrafted; they are moved off the board and out of play.

The pieces are bought with "shares", each player receiving 8. Sometimes this is the buy-in money itself. Unused shares are lost or still contributed to the pot anyway; it is seen as skillful to spend exactly one's shares.

Then play proceeds in a series of 5 races, where each race is between a single piece from the team of each player. In each race the first-place winner of the previous race goes last.

At the start of each race, payers pick a piece to compete in the race and hold it out, hidden in their clasped hands, and all simultaneously reveal them. Then play goes around. In normal play, the player simply rolls the die and moves their piece that number of spaces. On a player's first turn, the piece enters play on the number space of their order entering the race (eg the 3rd player to go receives, in effect, a 2-space handicap).

Pieces move around the track. When a piece would move one space past the threshold, it finishes the race and is moved out of play (and can have no more effect on play). Play goes on until first and second place finishers have been determined. First place receives 2/3/4/5/6 points depending on which race is being run, and second place receives two fewer points than first place.

Races are repeated until the players have raced all their pieces.

At the end of the final race the pot is usually split with first place scorer getting one half, second place getting one third, and third place getting one sixth.

The Pieces

This is the Jakálla set of pieces. Those marked with (f) are considered 'female' which matters for one of the pieces.

1. The Assassin. After the parade but before play, this piece may name any piece. That piece is removed from play and replaced with a different dead piece.
2. The Elder. After being revealed as the chosen piece to play, the Elder may be swapped with another piece from the player's team.
3. The Matron (f). After the reveal (and the Elder's play, if any), the player of the Matron secretly names another piece in the race as their ward. This can be written down or whispered into the officiant's ear. If that named piece comes in first place the Matron automatically comes in second place.
4. The Aridáni (f). Instead of rolling to move this piece can simply move ahead 5 spaces.
5. The Consort (f). Whenever a die is rolled 6, this piece moves forward a space.
6. The Hundred-Times Blessed Princess (f). Advances 1 space whenever another player uses their special ability. This is said to be limited to 100 times in a game, which only matters for infinite loops.
   
7. The Glorious Princess (f). At start of turn, all pieces are moved one space towards this piece simultaneously. Only those entering the space of the socialite herself count as 'landing on' other pieces.
8. The Ambitious Princess (f). Any piece that lands with her or she lands on, she may make them rest their next turn.
9. The Widow (f). When another character overtakes her (moves from a space behind her to a space ahead of her in one turn) she can cause them to rest their next turn. She must move back 1 space after.
   
10. The Matchmaker. Whenever a female piece lands on a non-female piece, this piece advances 5 spaces.
11. The Ahoggyá. This piece can never share a space with another piece. If that would happen, the other pieces are placed back one space and assumed to never have landed on the Ahoggyá at all.
    
12. The Boisterous Prince. The movement dice of other players are reduced by 1, to a minimum of 1, as if that was the natural roll. This power is assumed to be used unless the player declares otherwise just before another's movement roll.
    
13. The Ill-Omened Prince. May cancel another pieces power at any time as it is used, but that piece may move ahead one space. May not be used on the Ahoggyá or the Glorious Princess. 
14. The Pé Chói. When it moves it may skip over spaces containing other pieces.
15. The Adviser. When another player rolls a 1 on a movement roll, their piece does not move, and the Adviser moves 1 space instead.
16. The Spiteful Prince. After it moves, for each piece overtaken during the move (i.e. moved from behind to ahead) this piece may send them back 1 space.
17. The Philosopher. When it lands or or is landed on, this piece may demand an argument from another piece. The players both roll a die; high roll wins and ties go to the philosopher. The winning piece advances 2 spaces. No special powers 'see' the roll off dice.
18. The Kind-Hearted Prince. May advance the last place piece(s) ahead 2 spaces. If this is done, this piece moves ahead one space.
19. The Scheming Prince. Instead of rolling to move, the player may roll a die, move another piece back that many space, then advance this piece one space.
20. The Governor. Instead of rolling to move, may move to the square of any piece, then move that piece to this piece's previous square.
21. The Healthy Prince. May reroll the movement die but must take the second roll. No other piece 'sees' the first roll.
22. The Late-Born Prince. When it enters place, another player is named, and one of their score points is taken and transferred to this player.
23. The Companion. When sharing space with another piece, before that other piece rolls to move, the player may declare they are moving with that piece. Then when the other piece moves this piece moves along with them (or right after them, for purposes of who finishes first.)
24. The Lover. At the start of this piece's turn, it may move any other piece to its space.
25. The General. When this piece's player rolls a 1 or 2 on a movement roll, this piece may move 4 spaces instead.
    

Tékumel Board Games: Míliyal of Mu'ugalavyá

(This is an adaptation of Shōbu, a two-player abstract strategy board game designed by Manolis Vranas and Jamie Sajdak.)

This game with simple rules but deep strategy is popular among priests throughout the Five Empires, but is generally popular in the west. It is commonly popular in Mu'ugalavyá but it originated in Livyánu. In Tsoliyánu it is called Míliyal, or Stones.

The board is made of of four sub-boards, each a 4x4 grid, called a palace. Each player has 16 stones of their color; to set up, they put 4 in each palace, along the row closest to them.

This is the board set up with red player at the bottom and the black player at the top. The two palaces closer to the player are called their home palaces. Customarily red moves first.

Players move two of their stones in their turn. The first move is called the court move. The player picks a stone of theirs on one of their home palaces and moves it 1 or 2 spaces in any single direction, orthogonal or diagonal. It may not bump or hop over any other stones, nor leave the palace.

Then the player does a corresponding hard move. The player picks another of their stones in an orthogonally adjacent palace. (So: their other home palace, or the opponent's closer home palace.) The stone must move the same direction and number of spaces. This move may push a single opponent's stone, but it is invalid and cannot be made if it would push two of the opponent's stones, push one of the player's own stones, or leave the palace.  Stones that are pushed out of the palace are removed from the game.

If a valid hard move cannot be found for a court move, then the court move is invalid too and must be redone.

A player wins when they remove all the opponent's stones from any palace, or if their opponent cannot make any valid court moves.

The Game of Kévuk

 

Background: Kévuk is a game within a game -- a dice invented by MAR Barker within his world of Tékumel. The game is detailed in "The Game of Kévuk" (DTRP link).

The game uses two asymmetric dice:

Die A: Blue 1, White 2, Silver 3, Yellow 4, Black 5, God A
Die B: Black 1, Yellow 2, Silver 3, White 4, Blue 5, God B

Blue vs. Black, and White vs. Yellow, are pairs of opposing colors. Non-oppositional colors are "neutral" to each other. Silver is special -- not neutral, not a color.

A thrower (/kevúmokoi/) is determined. The thrower picks a god and a color. Other players then around the table pick a god and a color.

Then the thrower makes a bet. Barker's writeup say a standardized bet is common, I will just call that one chip. Other players may then make a bet or pass.

There is also a treasury or kitty (/kumesukán/). Throwers may win money from this, or, apparently, directly from other players.

The thrower then throws, and the pair of dice are interpreted relative to the thrower's choice of god and color, yielding a result.  These are coded with, "Own God (OG)", "Enemy God (EG)", "Own Color (OC)", "Enemy Color (EC)", "Neutral Color (NC)", and "3" for Silver 3s.

For example, if the thrower picked "God A, Yellow", and the dice came up (Black 1, Yellow 4) that is read as: "Own Color, Neutral Color" or OC-NC. The corresponding result is: the higher numbered color wins the difference times the bet, from the lower number. In this case, the yellow number is 3 higher, and it's the thrower's color, so the thrower would win 3 chips from each backer of black.

Problems With the Game, or My Misunderstandings

1. It's not clear where the bet money goes. Almost all results seem to win a multiple of the bet from other players so it does not seem like money put up or set aside.
   

2. Wherever it goes, in most gambling, it is expected that when one "bets" or "wagers" an amount of money, then the most one can lose in one play is exactly that amount of money. In Kévuk, however you can win or lose multiples of a bet (the thrower's bet, it seems). If you are the thrower, you can lose up to 5 times your bet per opposing colored player which is quite wild. As the non-thrower, you can lose 5 times the amount of the thrower's bet, which is also wild if they can bet anything they want.

3. It's not clear where the kitty comes from. Maybe it's where the bets go, which makes it more of a running pot. It can't be the house, because players may dice for what's left in it at the end of the game. (Also because: throwers are favored against the kitty! "OG-EG" wins 5 chips from the kitty, while "3-3" loses only 3 chips to the kitty.)

4. It's not clear how non-throwers' bets matter, especially with non-standard bets. If I am not the thrower and payouts scale only by what the thrower bets, why should I want to bet anything.
   

5. It's not totally clear that the results are only processed one time per throw, relative to the thrower. That seems the only sane way to go, but it's not clear. If you as thrower pick "God A, Yellow" and I pick "God A, White", then you roll (God A, Yellow 2), for you that's OG-OC, and you win 5 chips from me. For me, that would be OG-EC and I would win N=2 chips back from you? Surely not. And with more players at the table this would be onerous, especially since order of operations would matter -- in the previous example, if I had 1 chip to my name, would you win 1 from me (all I had), then I win 2 from you? Or would I need to scribble out an IOU for two chips? (Actually this may not be so bad; experienced players may get so good at "solving" this web of debts that inexperienced players would be utterly baffled.. But no surely not.)
   

6. If results are only taken relative to the thrower's call, then there's no point in other players picking a god.

7. It's not clear if players who pass on a bet are out of the game. It would seem not, but being able to "fold" in light of a thrower's high bet seems like a good option. Not that non-thrower bets seem to matter.
   

8. OG-EG ("Own god, Enemy god") says it wins "all bets from other players", which seems to be taking their betted chips, though other results will win chip(s) directly "from" other players. This "OG-EG" result also wins from the kitty which perhaps indicates bets don't go in the kitty?

9. The OC-EC ("Own Color, Enemy Color") result says that the higher numbered color earns the difference, but OC-EC will always be doubles, so the difference will always be zero.

10. OC-3 ("Own Color, 3") says it wins N x Bet from kitty, but what is N?
    

11. If you back the thrower's color (and only the thrower's result is processed), this is a pretty tepid choice, and you will only win or lose money on two rolls out of 36 possibilities.
    

12. Making my best guesses, I analyzed how things would go for backing either god with black. Assuming a 4 player game where each player backs a different color, after 36 turns expected chip total changes are:
    
    (God A, Black) : Black -6, Yellow +3, White +1, Blue +4, Kitty -2.
    (God B, Black) : Black -6, Yellow -1, White +5, Blue +4, Kitty -2.
    
    The yellow/white asymmetry is because white is "strong" against God A: the thrower wins 2 in (OG-NC) against white but loses 4 in (EG-NC). Blue comes out ahead compared to Black because (EC-NC) is pure loss for the thrower.
    

Conclusion

Assuming that only the thrower's result is processed, the game can probably work as a casual game if played with a pretty big pile of chips. Ignore the whole idea of the "bet", just work multiples of 1 chip and understand that much of your stash is always in play. Maybe seed the kitty with some money like "Free Parking" in Monopoly.

Analysis of black's odds suggests if you're trying to win you should just always oppose the thrower's color -- and don't be the thrower.

If you change the EC-NC rule so that the higher pays the lower (and the thrower is not involved) then the thrower's losses disappear and they end up expected +2 over 36 plays. It's good to be the thrower, which fits to letting the highest ranked person go first and passing the throw with (3-3) feeling like a calamity.

This would bring the opposite color into parity with the thrower's color, and it makes the neutral colors closer and in balance -- either +2 or -2 depending on the thrower's god. A savvy player might know "against black God A take white" but that's more complex than just always picking the opposing color and still closer to an even game. To remove even this, the thrower could announce their color, but select their god secretly (by holding the corresponding die closed in their hand). Then after other players pick their colors, the thrower reveals their choice of god. This would be fair on average but allow for experienced players to try to guess which god the thrower has chosen and shift to the advantageous neutral color.

If the kitty is the house, they expect to be down 2 over 36 throws, but this could be recouped any number of ways. The simplest would be a fee to sit at the table, but gambling houses would probably say their Kévuk was free to play but recover the losses in some other way.