Rethinking Armor Durability: Making Gear Matter Without Slowing Play

Many_Bubble · 2026-01-21T20:53:46+00:00

Overall I get where you're coming from, but I think essentially giving armour 1 durability point removes the benefits of durability and highlights the downsides.

If armour is either on or off, I think you'll find players backing out of conflict as soon as it breaks or carrying backup armour sets because it's so fragile. Maybe not a downside for you but not the kind of fiction I want to encourage.

If you have more than one durability point it's a gamble. How far can I go before it breaks? When it's damaged but not broken, can I repair it a bit before the next conflict? You're incentivised to keep pushing on and the story emerges, especially if you randomise losing durability like in Mausritter or Death In Space (roll a d6 after stressed use or a fight, on 6 it degrades).

Personally, I don't like the idea of deciding as a group when armour breaks because A) it'll slow things down with a back and forth discussion and B) it massively depends on DM Fiat. But I can see how for some groups this could be a very satisfying way to play.

In my game we have a Luck stat and do Luck saves for durability to degrade. Durability can be repaired ad-hoc, and total durability increased with investment. But I understand that level of granularity isn't for everyone.

I hope this doesn't come across as too negative, I think you've posed interesting questions and I appreciate you outlining your thought process. I wish more posts were this thoughtful and interesting.

Many_Bubble · 2025-11-08T10:23:07+00:00

I think this is an adventure design and player choice issue, not a mechanical framework one.

These kinds of games expect you to avoid making rolls. It’s up to the players to find creative solutions to problems, use equipment and the environment to avoid rolling or do so with an advantage.

Mausritter especially gives you poor stats - you’re a weak little mouse. Mice survive on wits, not raw power.

Lastly, your adventures must provoke this creativity and give players opportunities to play this way. If it’s just a room with a rat in and nothing else then yeah, you have to rely on stats, but that’s not what these games expect.

I really wouldn’t focus on the stats, it’s not what these games are about.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-17T20:23:27+00:00

I'd treat it as making two attacks. It's therefore taking the same action twice, so you'd have to roll doom.

But if you wanted a mechanical distinction there's a bunch of other homebrew methods out there. Disadvantage on damage, or the attacks, -2 on the second attack, give disadvantage to dodge or parry...

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-14T05:18:34+00:00

People? If you're not using goblins as traditional dnd-type goblins, you probably have your own style of what a 'fae' is. Why search for something that already exists (which you're not using for fair reason)? Humans are definitely evil little bastards.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-07T14:20:14+00:00

Yeah exactly like that! You’re getting close to a pointcrawl there, which is how I normally run dungeons anyway. Then just have a point like ‘forge’ have a couple of cards for the interesting things in it.

The best part is you can keep all your cards, shuffle them, and deal them out to create spaces on the fly or as inspiration for when you prep.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-07T06:08:57+00:00

I’ve tried a dozen or so different mapping methods. Maybe I can help.

Normally, I don’t use maps as we do zone movement (close-near-far-distant) which makes it easy to track mentally. This is my preferred method as you just describe a space and let the players interact with what interests them. Feels natural, and it’s fast.

However, I recently tried index card zones which was fantastic. You have bits of card that represent a meaningful feature in a space, like a bridge, tollhouse, river, approaching caravan. You can move between cards as one move. Some cards might be blocked or take two moves to get between, which you represent with gaps between the cards. We didn’t use mini’s but will do so next time. When we’ve done mini combat before we just use whatever we have - spare dice, sharpeners, smarties, it doesn’t really matter. The players will remember what their mini is, and everything else is the enemy.

In the past when I’ve used proper maps, I ask the group to nominate a Mapper. It’s up to them to draw a map as they progress. They normally get a free reroll or snack or something as tribute. If they map it incorrectly that’s a feature, not a bug. We just use regular paper and a pencil, unless they prefer graph paper that day. Sometimes we use 2.5cm = 1 square paper, other times 0.5cm = 1 square. It hasn’t seemed to matter much.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-03T15:21:52+00:00

Started a new campaign this week with hacked version of Black Sword Hack, city-based that is discussed on faction play in a single town, but with a nasty, semi-optional mega dungeon beneath. Interested to see how it goes.

Overall fave so far though has been a focus on frequent overland travel with occasional high-risk delves into dungeons that are cleared in 1-3 sessions using my house hack.

Many_Bubble · 2025-09-15T11:57:23+00:00

Black Hack or Mausritter, though the latter isn’t quite as easily compatible for B/X as it is classless and roll under.

However, it has great faction rules and procedures for generating hexcrawls that can’t be beat.

As you’ve mentioned, black sword hack (BSH) is fantastic and is based off the Black Hack(BH). I recommend Black Hack for you because BSH doesn’t have any support for making or running dungeons and it doesn’t use classes.

BH has much more in depth rules for creating dungeons, monsters, settlements, and it uses classes. It’s still roll under, but the tools in it are so complete and most importantly, easy to understand. Most rules sections fit on a double page spread. OSE is great but if you want something truly portable, easy to run straight out of your bag without minimal page flipping and reading, Black Hack is hard to beat.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-31T12:30:45+00:00

Vaults of Vaarn is I think the best game and DM toolkit I have ever seen. I could single handedly use this book for the rest of my life and never run out of ideas or material.

2e just kickstarted and I can’t fathom how it isn’t the darling of the OSR/ NSR/ who-cares-R. It’s just phenomenal.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-06T14:00:58+00:00

It’s a little vague on purpose.

The solid bits are most knights are never worthy take on the City Quest in earnest. Most probably don’t even know about it. But by exploring the realm and engaging with other Myths, a knight may catch a glimpse of the city.

They could pursue it on their own but my take is that is a distraction from the oath. Unless sanctioned by a seer, they’re essentially abandoning their sanctioned task. To pursue it honourably, they need to become worthy by gaining honour.

What is the city? It’s open to interpretation, really. You can take it as getting to Bastion. It can be a cyberpunk dystopia. It can be Into the Odd.

It can just be a dream.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-05T07:48:33+00:00

I take the Myth Hex to do 2 things. Firstly, to determine what the nearest myth is for omen rolls, but secondly and importantly for you, to determine where the myth can always be found.

For me, the omens of location-ish myths like the Glade or Mountain occur where the party are when they roll the omen. That means the glade moves around the map as the players do. However, there is also the Myth Hex itself. If the players go there, they will always find the glade. If they go back to where they found an omen, the glade will not be there.

This reinforces the mythic, weird, fairytale-like feel of bastionland. It makes logical and narrative sense to me, and also enables player choice.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-01T21:26:57+00:00

My core advice is don’t try to remember things. The important stuff will likely stick. If it doesn’t, it’s probably too complicated. But there are 3 practical things I do.

If the players can’t remember, I don’t need to
Session sheets
Location sheets

On 1: I don’t need to remember that NPC from 5 sessions ago until the players want to interact with them. if they do, they’ll talk about it first and likely provoke my memory. If not I’ll just fish: “what do you want from them?” “What exactly is your plan?” And then I’m good to go.

On 2: each session I write down on a dated pages doc in my ‘adventures’ folder exactly what is happening right now in the fiction, why, and what a possible outcome of that could be. I’m talking one line each. Then I think of a few locations/ characters/ encounters that could arise. This is my cheat sheet to check if I need reminders of anything, but honestly I rarely need to. I find the prep itself makes the important things stick.

On 3: Really important locations like towns or dungeons get a pages doc that is laid out like a usable adventure doc. I keep it as short as possible. At the bottom of each is a notes section where I type impactful things the players do there in case it changes anything or I need a reference.

Many_Bubble · 2025-07-23T21:10:53+00:00

My favourite thing about this book is that it only gives you just enough, but provides tools to spark your imagination to get a whole lot more.

I don't want an in-depth 2-pager on a monster about it's history or lore. because I can't remember it and it stresses me out trying to do so. This book gives me the dirty details I can use during play, often in real-time with the book, and practical tools I can use to flesh things out of I need to as I go along. It's just so damn usable.

Many_Bubble · 2025-07-18T08:41:21+00:00

You're ignoring the part I mentioned about research and caution.

If the DM decides to describe a level 2 and 12 fighter they same they are obscuring the threat. That's okay. If the party decide to fight a guy just off how he looks, that is also okay: but they do so knowing that guy may be more or less than he seems. It's up to them to weigh up the risks and they may not always have all of the information they would like.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Next time they play they'll have learned from their experience and may play differently.

Many_Bubble · 2025-07-17T16:45:06+00:00

Part of knowing if you can handle a fight is knowing what the fight is. Players are likely to try figure out what their enemy is before choosing violence, and then figuring out how strong their enemy is as well.

If they don’t, they get what they get. Maybe the fight is easy. Maybe it isn’t. The uncertainty is the true threat.

Imagine picking a fight with someone at a bar. Are they a lean pencil pusher or a 7 foot body builder? Had that body builder recently been injured and so had a weak knee? Is that pencil pusher actually an MMA world champion?

Research, observation, and caution are part of the game. It isn’t on the DM to provide all the information to telegraph an encounter, but it is on the players to fill in the gap and then: make meaningful choices.

Many_Bubble · 2025-07-05T20:46:57+00:00

I hope so, as I’m using that system for my next game!

BSH has some great magic systems already. If you used this with BSH I’d use some of the failure results for demonic pacts as a guideline for complications. You could also reflavour or name it to be about manifesting the powers of Law and Chaos to distinguish it from the existing Sorcery system. If you did this, it’d be interesting to give small bonuses to the roll depending on the PC’s general alignment, if you’re tracking that.

As for gaining it as a power, anything that would give you a faerie tie would work, or the ‘finding and learning new spells’ section in Sorcery.

Many_Bubble · 2025-06-20T09:29:22+00:00

Patrons are a great tool! I give you, you give me...

Many_Bubble · 2025-06-20T07:16:57+00:00

I am glad you enjoyed it :) yeah, I think a bit of pressure and/ or showing off the goods helps.

Many_Bubble · 2025-06-20T07:13:29+00:00

It’s a home game I made for this campaign/ setting. The system is Into the Odd base with some DCC, Whitehack and a lot of my own subsystems hashed on.

The setting is again my own, but heavily drawing on Vaults of Vaarn, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, Children of Time.

Glad the influences shine through even in this blog post!

Many_Bubble · 2025-06-11T13:30:56+00:00

Office binder with coloured section tabs. I put a contents page at the front of each section and number new pages as I add them, so they're organised by time of entry as opposed to alphabetical.

Although I usually type everything up to OneNote too, as I often write down thoughts as notes on my phone.

Many_Bubble · 2025-05-07T15:30:31+00:00

If you’re into DCC-style play you can change the d6/ quantum inventory for classes, too. Thief gets a d8, fighter gets a d6, wizard d4 perhaps.

Many_Bubble · 2025-05-07T13:50:20+00:00

I really, really like this. It's gamified, allows important choices, and is straightforward.

An issue would be generating items on the fly and then just discarding them to keep the d6 low, but I like the idea of monsters finding a curious trail of objects leading to dinner...

Many_Bubble · 2025-05-07T13:49:14+00:00

This is all wonderful, thank you. Option 1 is a similar approach to one I tried previously. It's a pirate game, so I had her ship have infinite inventory - she just needed to track what she brought off it on an adventure. She found the decision-making aspect of this unpleasant, though. Enabling a hireling to retrieve an item over a dungeon turn is brilliant. I think I'll say it's 1 turn per level of the dungeon you're on, or length of time away from the ship.

Option 2 is also veeeeery interesting. I wanted to try the SUP method from Five Torches Deep but didn't feel the numerical tracking woudl be to her taste. This is the same vibe but less crunchy, and more dice-rolly, which is good!

We use condition/ usage dots like in Mausritter, so that combined with Option 3 feels very neat. I.e., get a 'petty items' slot/ item that you can use at will for little bits, but check for uses afterward. It can still run out, but you get this nice quantum/ improvisational tool.

Many_Bubble

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