What the fuck is a table?

I'm an utterly disorganized person. My ethereal form is a raucous tornado of collages, warping and changing and connecting in disproportionate amalgams. Scatterbrained doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm like a vulture-porcupine shedding worms in all directions, everywhere I go. If an assassin wanted to track me they'd only have to follow the inch-thick trail of bodily effluvient to my doorstep.


Tables are supposed to make a DM's life easier. You throw on a table for a random result to simulate the vagaries of life, or to stimulate creative juices in a way your mammalian brain wouldn't otherwise figure.

There's tables for everything. Everything is a table, from the scars on your face to the produce of a mushroom forest. The key of fun d&d experiences is randomness; even the DM should be surprised at what  comes out. That's what attracts me to the game to begin with--unlimited potential and endless modularity.

I never seem to have the table I want when I need it, or I can't find it amongst the pile of paper I keep my scraps in while the players are patiently staring at me for what's going to happen. Most of the time I just scribble down d12 regurgitated insults and roll a die on it, that's my table, usually the number of things on the table don't match the faces on the die. Spur of the moment. Let's try it now:

never critically fail a bushcrafting throw in my universe

Dangers of foraging in the fungal forest

1. white spore ball, oozes cyan pus when cut. Everything that gets its spores on it will grow more spore balls in d4+1 days.
2. evergrowing cornhats. straw yellow stalks w brown hates. Grows magnificently fast and tall. Tastes of blood and celery. Nourishing, but gives you horrible numbing premonitions when your body dumps adrenaline for d3 days.
3. Squat eyed maroon. Hums a geometric tune. Grows by water source. Very bouncy. Turns into slime on contact with water and begins to crawl away into a dark hole where it can sporulate. Hunks of it can be attached to wounds which will regenerate within hours. Afterwards, if the user dies, their body is taken over by the purple jelly and they run away.
4. beige skullpoppies. Shaped like yellow skulls growing out of the ground. Wizardsight gives them fleshy faces. Will talk to those touched by fey and know things that all other skullcaps in the forest see. Desire the contents of stomachs for nourishment. Eventually grows into a fullsized skeleton and begins searching for flesh.
5. Boulderbloat. Car or house sized boulder funguses, hard as rocks. Gnomes often carve their homes into them. Occassionally they grow legs and start walking around. They have a mutually beneficial relationship: Gnomes get a house and boulderbloats get wee little magical gardeners to dote on. Humans that spend too much time around boulderbloats grow spiraling glowing blue lines on their bodies and sprout antennas, eventually growing a boulderbloat out of their back and becoming one.
6. Carnagecage. Look like large ribcages filled with diseased intestines. Animals are driven to eat it. Ribcage snaps closed on anything that touches its soft inner jellies, which it digests & transforms into a budding spore stalk. The sporestalks of this fungus make a great tea which calms nerves & invigorates senses. Highly addictive
7. Pukebush. A throbbing bush-sized welt of ectoplasmic goop. Grows blue pustules that contain its spores. Contact with spores causes uncontrollable vomiting, with the possibility of vomiting forth one's intestines. If the pukebush is burned it releases a toxic smoke that enrages animals of the forest. At the core of a pukebush is a bezoar which is the main constituent of a trans-dimensional prophylactic
8. Virulant Beneficter. A human shaped mushroom, white and blue. Ingesting the virulant beneficter fills one with a sense of duty & higher purpose of the Lawful Good kind. Overwhelming desire to help those in need. Hallucinations last d20+4 hours after which ingester falls into a misanthropic stupor.

Probably a table like this will just be the names and I'll know what it does based on a flash on insight. I dunno where the insight comes from, but even just the act of writing a table sparks something.

The expressed purpose of a table is that you roll on it and interpret the result. But it's impossible to keep track of and organize a bazillion tables for every little thing, and it's silly to try. I think the real purpose of  a table is to act as a quantum cranial stimulant for moments of dire need. You're like "They rolled a crit. huh. oh yeah, that neat crit table I read once...I kind of remember a couple of result I'll throw a d6.......5? What is 5? So like, he smashes the dude's leg off with the warhammer and it goes flying and stabs another guy in the face with the broken bone okay."

I can't imagine someone actually pulling out a crit table and rolling on it to get a result. How do you keep track of all this stuff? Just make something up, something grotesque and brutal which changes the course of the fight in an unexpected way. You don't need a table for that, and the table won't give you enough information to actually go off of, you have to interpret it anyway, so just go with the fiction.

Continuing on the crit table thing, that's really what differentiates weapons in my games, since I use d6 for all damage. Axes lop off limbs, maces crush bones and armor, polearms hit first and run guys through, swords are quick, flashy and strike true, daggers are sleek and cruel, bows impale stomachs and hearts and  eye cavities. I'm more likely to give a guy wielding a sword a bonus attack on an excellent roll than a guy with an axe. I don't need a table for that, I just know it in my marrow.


Tables are better for world building. It's your day off, you chugged a bunch of coffee, you guess you can deal with the consequences of ignoring all your piling-up responsibilities for one more day while you spent 6 to 8 hours frantically kludging together a nonsense world nobody will ever see. Pile together a bunch of tables and go nuts.

but oops, I forgot to save the bookmarks for all those grade A high-falutin'  tables, or I can feel my energy waning at the thought of sifting through my megaplex of computerized folders, none of it organized, or I go searching and quickly get sidetracked into reading and dreaming about guild dogs for four hours and get nothing useful done. So, I'll just write my own fucking tables.

Vancian magic is a core aspect of d&d which I am unwilling to part with for this reason: The very act of being a DM is Vancian magic. You pull out all your tomes, all your weird books on Fortean history & bongo science & obscure mythology, all your graph papers and quill pens and crystals and Tibetan mantra spirals, all your nightmare journals and hallucinogenic teas and homemade musical instruments and you pack it all into your fucking brain. You sit there and you study this soup of gibberish it takes a borderline schizophrenic to comprehend and you pack it all into your skull until it's threatening to burst out through the seams. Then, during the game, you go and regurgitate it all and weave a world of mystery and magic.

Afterwards you forget all of it. You collapse exhausted. In order to do it next time, you have to do it all over again, and the more you do it, the better you get and the more stuff you can fit in there fore next time.

Tables are one small piece of the meta-fractal.

On ability scores, skills, and chances for success

Usually I just go with my gut, lay out the situation for the players, and tell them the chance of success. Most of the time this involves d6s. They have low ability mods like OD&D (>8 -1, 9-13 +0, 14-17 +1, 18 +2) so in extreme cases, when I really think their skill in a particular area will matter, I let them add their modifier to the roll. Not often though. Mostly I just glance at their character sheet and arbitrate "Oh, you've got 16 in Dex you could totally use your 10' pole to help you jump this gap" or "You're a halfling wearing platemail, you gotta try something else." If they demand a chance to roll for doing something stupid and impossible I'll let them throw for 1 in 6.

Risk/reward is the answer for coming up with rulings. Is there a risk? Is the risk interesting? Would it be MORE fun if they just succeeded? They've got the gear, they've got the time, they're competent explorers, there's no reason they can't just climb a short cliff in twenty minutes or so. If they're trying to climb gearless while goblins are shooting at them, that's when the dice come out. If they want to climb up an insane height I might throw in some complications along the way to spice up the "yeah you just do it". Players like to succeed, and accomplishing things inspires them to try new things. If you're forcing them to take a chance at failing basic adventuring tasks they're not going to feel empowered.

It doesn't need to be codified because every situation is different, and bean counting modifiers in the middle of a dangerous situation is the best way to kill momentum.

Thieves are the only ones that pick locks, but it takes time. In a pinch they can roll to see if they do it quickly. "You wanna pick that lock? It's kind of beat up and rusty, and a weird design you haven't seen. It could take a whole hour, are you willing to risk 3 wandering monster checks?" or "You hear lizardmen clanking around in the tunnels behind you, they're getting closer. Roll d6 and add your Dex, if you get 5 or better you succeed, if not they're gonna be right on top of you."

It all comes from the fiction. They want to sneak past a doorway guarded by two orcs. Orcs can see in the dark but they can't. They have to put out their torches and feel their way, under cover (maybe there's stalagmites or some shit to hide behind), to where they're trying to go. Or maybe they'll change their plan to involve a distraction. If they decide to sneak, along the way I'll throw dice, d6 d10 or d20 depending on my mood, but just as often 2d6 a la Dungeon World, and riff off of that. If they get a bad roll at the climax of the situation something bad will happen, like the Orcs hear a noise and come looking. Maybe they change tactics in the middle, or the thief Merges with Shadows and sneaks behind them, or the Wizard uses an illusion to turn himself into another Orc and come up with some goofy lie. Mostly, though, they just sit there and go "uhh uhhh uhhhhh..." until I decide they've had enough time to think and the orcs are here now because my players are idiots.

If they wanna sneak past unsuspecting people in a non-monsters situation, I'll just let them do it if they tell me how they do it. If they're trying to do something risky other than just being quiet and slowly moving through the underbrush, say they wanna open the witch's door and slink up her stairs while she's busy at her cauldron, I'll tell them "That's risky, the witch is pretty observant. Are you sure you don't want to try to climb up to the second floor window or something? Okay, well you already took off your platemail. It's 3 in 6 you'll get by and up the stairs quietly. Roll it." Why is it 3 in 6? Because 1 in 6 is too small, and 2 in 6 seems unlucky. A 50/50 shot feels just about right. No other reason.

Think about it, how easy is it to hide in any given room? Look around the room you're in right now. If someone was trying to kill you, and knew you were somewhere around, they would probably find you unless you had a great plan for how to get out of the situation. How boring is it to force them to fail at picking locks? Hell, I hate failed rolls "you miss" so much I usually use it as an excuse to throw in complications "You miss the fire beetle and also now it's next to you and has a good bead on the elf, elf you see him coming at you what are you doing?" If they're willing to spend the time doing some dumb shit just roll to see if monsters show up in the middle of it. That's all the punishment and partial results they need.

OSR games get weird sometimes

HYPERLITE D&D // TALES FROM MORDHEARSE

Roll d6, that's your HP.

1-2 Wizard
3 spell slots. Roll on this table x3. You can re-roll any spell each morning. <dice> is the amount of HP spent on the spell. <sum> is rolling that many dice and adding.
Wizards can Sense Magic on 3in6, getting a feel for the nature & source of magical energies.

Roll Twice for Starting Freakishness:
2. Extra spell
3. Stretchy limbs
4. Blood corrodes metal
5. Limited Read Thoughts on 2in6
6. Knows the general vicinity of lost things
7. Cat like you a lot, Bat nest in your hair, your fingernails grow really fast
8. You can transfer your HP to others
9. When you die your companions can pull an embryo out of your stomach and raise the child in 2d6 months into a clone of you
10. Pet snake lives in your throat. Has poison bite (one per session, victim rolls under HP or die), speaks in lies.
11.  Freakish crab claw/dragon head/tiger fangs/eye stalks/bat wings/octopus tentacles
12. Faerie companion. She can talk and fly. Sucking out her internal ichor saves the dying

3-4 Burglar
You can Hide in Shadows as long as you stay quiet. Enemies are surprised by you unless you roll a 1in6. Add current HP to surprise attacks.
You can Sense Danger on 3in6. DM tells you the feeling you get.
If a trap goes off on you Jam it Shut by rolling under your Current HP. You have that many turns before it goes off. If the success number is 6 trap is reset instead.

Roll 3 times for Starting Toolkit:
2. Grappling Hook/50' rope
3. 10' pole
4. Everglowing buglight
5. Bag of Caltrops
6. d6 sleeping gas bombs
7. Bag of Holding (extra 5 item slots)
8. Boomerang
9. Bow & 20 arrows, d6 are magic.
10. Glue/Grease/Acid
11. Survive Poison death, you're now immune to that poison
12. Talking Rat familiar

5-6 Warrior
Add your current HP to your damage roll. You start with a Shield (+1 armor, sunder to avoid attack) and Spear.

Your Warrior Code allows you to (roll once)
2.  Speak with the dead
3. Immunize fear
4. Command minor humanoids
5. Befriend gnomes
6. Ride wolves
7. Shrug off one death
8. Hurl knives with unerring accuracy
9. Fight two enemies at once
10. Restore d6 HP to anybody once per session
11. Hold Undead at bay
12. Bless a friend once a day (+1 rolls one hour)

Level Up every 100xLevel XP you collect.
Gain 1 max HP.

Monsters are worth HPx5 xp

Treasure is worth GP value (common: 10, uncommon: 50, rare: 100) 

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
Every character starts with a bundle of 3 torches OR 3 days worth of food.

 If you carry more items than your max HP you're Exhausted. All saves rolled are at half current HP rounded up.

Restore 1HP per 10 minutes rested. Roll encounter checks every 20 minutes of dungeon time. Attacks do d6 damage, minus Armor.

Monsters have 2d6 HP and some kind of special ability. Lesser monsters have 3HP but attack in hordes. Big ass monsters have 3d6 HP and +1 Armor.

Traps are puzzles. Roll under current HP to Save from Dire Effects.




YOUR QUEST: humanity is dying. You have been sent by your village to clear the Ancient Temple of Evil  and make a safe fortress to rebuild society. Things aren't what they seem.

Monsters only immediately attack on a 2in6, but they mistrust you and know about your quest.

Cugel Greymouse and the Forty-Two Thieves//MORDHEARSE

I'm never satisfied with anything. I have a need to constantly tinker with and change things in my rules. I can't just run a module or pre-made dungeon, I have to adapt the whole thing to fit my own sensibilities. I'm a little obsessive.

Tomes have been written about how thieves destroy agency by automatically doing adventurer stuff while the other PCs have to roleplay everything. What's the point of interacting with stuff if we can just have the thief it?

Here's my attempt at a non-agency destroying thief. You can read the Reddit thread that started this here.

MOUNTEBANK

Prime Requisite: Dexterity
XP growth as OD&D thieves, not the LotFP one. I want them to shoot up in level cos they're constantly getting maimed.
 
Weapon proficiency Thieves can dual-wield a dagger and a small weapon if they meet their Prime Requisite. This lets them roll two attacks and pick the best roll. Prime Thieves also get an additional +1 with missile weapons.

Lockpicking Thieves are the only class that can pick locks, as this requires special training. (The idea is that the adventurers are deadbeats who 'fell into' adventuring by accident or need, they didn't go out of their way to become adventurers, and thus only bring to the table skills relating to their past lives. Every class deals with situations differently; Fighters can smash locked doors better, Thaumaturges can cast Knock, Thieves pick locks)

Backstab They deal double damage when they backstab like everybody else but they also add their level to the to-hit and damage roll. Damage dice explode by adding another die on a 6 as always. (Combat is quick and deadly. Misses usually result in a change in fictional positioning and Hits are usually effective. Fumbles and Crits exponentially so.)

Thieves can only wear Leather armor, but they can use bucklers*, daggers, staves, short spears, bows, crossbows, daggers, shortswords, cudgels, and handaxes.

HD as Magic User. (Thieves are squishy and opportunistic fighters)
Saves as Hobbit. (Thieves have good saves because they're the trap finders. This lets them relatively fearlessly explore dangerous situations)

Listen at Doors successful on 2in6. Thieves get better details on what they're hearing than other classes.

Sense Danger/Secret Doors
On a 2in6 Thieves, Elves, and Dwarves use their attuned senses to detect strange things, such as secret doors, hidden traps, enemies lurking in the darkness, or scrying attempts. This is only the whisper of a detection "You feel something odd/ominous" about the thing they're examining. Only happens if its successful and there's something to be found.


Trap Jamming
This is the big change. Shout out to ktrey at d4 caltrops for the idea to the Clerical Turning mechanic here.

Thieves can't disarm traps any better than anybody else, that has to be done within the fiction by interaction & trial and error. They do, however, get a saving throw to Jam sprung traps for a few moments or temporarily sabotage them. When a Thief jams a trap their only options are to sit there and keep holding it while the rest of the party tries to figure it out quickly, or take the effect. Each turn the thief is holding the trap they have to remake the save to see if they can successfully keep it Jammed.

The trap jamming chart is the same as the Turn Undead chart for clerics. Roll 2d6

Trap HD	L1	L2	L3	L4	L5	L6	L7	L8
1	7	J	J	D	D	D	D	D
2	9	7	J	J	D	D	D	D
3	11	9	7	J	J	D	D	D
4		11	9	7	J	J	D	D
5			11	9	7	J	J	D
6				11	9	7	J	J
7					11	9	7	J
8						11	9	7

Trap HD = Dungeon Level, or maybe just some random dice, or maybe you have an idea how complicated the guts of this trap are.
D=Temporarily Disabled. The trap is considered "disabled" for an unknown period of time. Whether the trap "goes off" after this time, or simply resets awaiting for reactivation is up to the DM. DM adjudicates here.
J=Trap is 'Jammed' the thief has their fingers/specialist tools jammed inside the release mechanism of the trap or whatever, they're somehow holding it back from going off, and they're slipping. The other players have to figure out a way to stop or disable the trap or it's gonna go off. The thief is basically fucked and about to die. HELP SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING. Make a new roll every "round". Maybe its every few minutes, maybe its every full 10 minute round, maybe its every d4 or d8 or d12 minutes according to Thief level. I kind of like the idea of the thief holding a screwdriver in a wall panel, holding a falling block back, while the party frantically searches nearby rooms for a large iron bar.

Disappear into Shadows Thieves can merge with shadows and sneak around as long as they aren't encumbered. They move as if invisible, but only within shadowy areas, if they move into a lighted area they are no longer "invisible" and have to sneak like normal (adjudicated). A crafty thief can "freeze" and blend into their surroundings on a successful save. They can also sneak out of sight and "vanish" during combat to maneuver into a good position for backstabs.

Keen Eye Killjoy Thieves can spent a turn studying an enemy's movements while out of sight. During this time they continue making sneak checks as normal. Each turn they get a +1 to-hit on their backstab in addition to their regular bonus. This only works with ranged attacks.

Climb Impossible Walls Thieves can climb impossible surfaces a la Taurus from the Conan story "Tower of the Elephant". To do this they have to be naked, perhaps with only a dagger belted to their waste and some rope.

Read Scrolls at 6th level because it's fuckin cool and adds to the 'dabble at everything, suck at everything' deal they got goin on. 1in6 they fuck up the spell for every level over 2. Also considered just letting them have a single spell slot at 8th, cos Cugel managed to force a couple spells in his brain that one time.

I think it's important to leave a lot of room for adjudication here. Fuck percentile rolls. Thieves can do things that other classes can't, but they still have to roleplay it and haggle with the DM on their rolls. I don't want thieves to just get a free pass on shit because they're thieves. They're the disposable human can-openers, the failsafe, the decoy.

I'm probably/definitely gonna edit this shit and update it as I have more ideas. I'm gonna be running an open table campaign at a local bar starting next week and I wanna make sure I got all my funky OD&D homebrew shit in a row before then. In a rush now to get the ideas out.

Something all this is missing is improvement by level. I think any ole DM can handle throwing level bonuses into the mix. God forbid we tell the players what their chances/risks are before they start throwing dice. Just improve the odds by a third level for stuff on a d6 or full level on a d20.


*Bucklers: small shields that allow you the use of your free hand. They are light and small and thus don't increase your AC. They are useless against missiles. Bucklers can splintered to avoid one attack.

Player Death Scenes are why I play D&D

this post brought to you by the letter "I"

So my descriptions could use a little bit of work. I have trouble finding the balance between just enough information and not too much. The place I don't have to hold back is character deaths.

Players get attached to their characters. How could they not? I started out my DMing career struggling with guilt. Now I take sick satisfaction at their crestfallen looks as their dude is smashed into a fine paste. Don't get me wrong, I want the players to succeed, and I revel in their glory when they do. At the same time I don't pull punches and I reinforce the fact that their lives are fragile, and the only thing keeping them alive is proper planning.

I have a habit of switching into the third-person as they die. Thus I'm addressing what the survivors see happen. Typically the player stops listening about halfway through and stares glumly at their character sheet while the rest of the party leans in. It's a good time.

Here's a collection of death descriptions, pulled from memory, from the last few player deaths. Enjoy.

First character death ever, from the first trapped coffin in Tomb of the Serpent King.

"You open the coffin and the mold around the lid releases a burst of yellow gas...the spores pour into your lungs. Lettuce chokes and takes a step back, her fingernails clawing her at her throat, her eyes bulging like yellow grapes. She slumps to the ground, blood seeping from her lips and ears and finally lays motionless."

The fighter charged a goblin with her spear and critically fumbled. The goblin followed up with an attack from behind and critically hit. I tend to have players roll initiative at the beginning of the fight, then let things unfold as the fiction dictates. If it seems like the tide is turning in a weird way, or there's a regrouping effort we re-roll initiative.

"You charge at the frogman with your spear lowered. The cretin drops its spear and throws itself to the ground at the last second as your momentum takes you sailing over it....Now behind Pannelia, the cretin jumps to its feet and hurls itself onto her back. It snatches a crude bone knife from its belt and rakes it across her throat, tendon and flesh rip and snap, blood spraying from the open wound. Pannelia collapses to the floor gurgling, her helpless eyes glazing over."

Fighter with 1 max hp attacks a psychic tentacle brain with blade arms.

"Your axe sails past it as the creature lurches to the side, blaring a series of honks on its tube-like projections. Its bladed tentacle shoots forth, piercing Buzzuraz through the chest. He screams pitifully, bleached fingers tugging uselessly at the tentacle as he's lifted into the air. Soundlessly, the tentacle creature retracts the blade, dropping him to the ground. He squirms and riggles, gasping for the air before falling motionless. <you cannot defy us> you feel the creature's cheerful voice penetrate your skull <we don't want to hurt you, please just stop and listen to what we have to say>"

The party's caravan is attacked by giant moniter lizards in the plains. Hilarity and a chain of fumbles and crits ensue.

"You cleave the first monitor lizard's head clean from its neck and the creature begins thrashing and squirming on the ground, flinging blood and hissing. As you turn another monitor appears next to you, its mouth agape. Its needle-rimmed jaw closes over Uglat's face and drags him to the ground, shaking him back and forth like a rag doll.. After several painful moments his body disconnects from the head and crashes across the ground. The monitor's mouth splits into a wide grin as it crushes his skull in its mouth, blood and brain fluid seeping through the cracks."

Player smashed in a falling block trap.

"Insidia turns with a look of surprise on her face as the block begins to fall. She reaches her hand out and is crushed instantly, her body folding in half, her scream cut short by the thundering WHUMP. Her arm is sheared cleanly at the elbow and goes sailing overhead. There is neither blood nor sound in the aftermath."
(To show just how merciless my players can be one of them sharpened Insidia's arm stump into a point and used it to pick a lock later on. Also they gleefully start digging through the victim's equipment before their body is even cold and before that player has even had a chance to roll the Strength score for their next guy.)

Player activates a floor spear trap.

"There's a clank of machinery from inside the wall and a spear shoots out underneath Lamnar. In a flash it pierces through her groin and explodes out the top of her head, she's lifted a foot and a half off the ground. Her eyes search the room for some meaning in this, but there is no meaning, then her limbs begin to flail and shake and she stops moving."

Happy Halloween.

Interacting with the fiction

"Another example of how annoying I can be in information control is lighting conditions. I don't usually give very useful room descriptions before the players egg me on by stating out loud how their characters move forward, closer to the object of interest, raising their lanters up high. I don't know, but I imagine that most GMs would probably be pretty straightforward about giving the room description when a door is opened, but with me the players have to be pretty explicit about their positioning and use of light and/or other observational tools to get more than vague shapes and darkness out of me. I find that all this heightens the clarity the group has on the fictional positioning: we get less of "oh my character wasn't in the room, he's in the next tunnel" when we keep the communication cycles of GM narration -> PC positioning -> GM narration short." http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/14363/

Probably the best advice I've seen for how to narrate descriptions. I worry that my description style swings between too minimalistic and sparse to unnecessarily verbose. I find it difficult to push my players to seek more information. Often times they just sit there after I describe a room, waiting for something else. After a few beats of silence I'll start rolling for random encounters or describing something worrisome and that usually kicks them into action.

Maybe it's my players. Probably its me. Its important to leave voids in the knowledge you give, but hints that there's more. My players tend to form their exploration in terms of questions "is there anything around the corner?" instead of actions "i peek around the corner". This is annoying and tends to prompt me to say "you can't tell just by standing there. You'll have to get closer and look"

How do you get the players involved with the fiction? One thing I've found that helps is killing them. The first time somebody gets unexpectedly dissolved in a pit of acid they realize that 10 foot poles aren't just for show. When goblins start shooting arrows at you from the darkness it becomes tangible. When only one of them is carrying a torch and they get the torch knocked out of their hands and suddenly everybody is blind while a horde of skeletons close in on them and everybody's rolling Dex checks to try and find their flint & steels they realize they should all be carrying lights.

But there's a balance to be found. Too dangerous and they become scared of everything, run from any little spook, and spend all their time pixelbitching with sticks & rocks. Too soft and they start getting cocky.