The ‘reaction roll’ is something I’ve always struggled with in OSR games. Putting aside that I come from a more story based, new-school ‘the DM can just decide whatever they want’ philosophy, what it really comes down to is that the table sucks.
Various reaction tables from OD&D, OSE, AD&D 1e, 2e, and 5e 2024.
As I put the final text into layout for Castle Gygar, I’m thinking a lot about how I want to see monster statblocks formatted (and the ridiculous amount of space standard OSE statblocks still take up). One bit has been sticking out to me, the Morale check. Even as I run my play-by-post OSE game, I forget to check it, which means it essentially doesn’t get used. How can we make this number more useful?
Maybe we should roll it into the reaction rolls. The reaction roll tables are annoying because so much of the table either doesn’t matter or is unclear. Neutral, unsteady reactions don’t really interest me or give me anything to riff on as a DM in many cases. I find it works best if the monster is simply hostile or friendly. A ‘friendly’ monster doesn’t even need to immediately be all buddy-buddy with the party–maybe this is what they mean by neutral, but it never feels that way to me.
The easiest thing to do is simply say that a positive reaction roll is any that exceeds the Morale score. You meet a new monster or group of monsters, you check morale. You can even adjust this for Charisma. It’s almost brilliant enough to work?
It might break down with certain big ass boss monster NPCs who you also want to be friendly. For example a Red Dragon’s got 10 morale, so you need to hit 10-12+ to get it to even talk to you. But again, there’s always the adjustment, and of course the DM Fiat. Remember: the dice exist to resolve ambiguity, not infer reality.
I’m gonna try it out. Worst thing that happens is it sucks!
