Legacy of Lethality: 2018 LL Campaign Stats

As I've discussed in the past, I run a pretty lethal Labyrinth Lord campaign for my home group. Here are the full campaign stats to date, accurate as of December, 2018.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tPStVCDxrZ21xlr4mfHTd_M5N_hn-_Ov

These stats are for the campaign that started in December of 2011, played roughly every other week. In 2018, we had our lowest number of sessions, in large part due to focus on final playtesting of Star Crawl. However, I did get to mark an item off my gaming bucket list: last year, we completed the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, capping off our run through the entire AD&D super-campaign series. With the same group (and a few characters surviving throughout), we went through the complete Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4), then into the Slavers series A1-4), Against the Giants (G1-3), and the Descent into the Depths (D1-2, Q1). Sure, it took 6 years, but I think that's a hell of an accomplishment. Major thanks to the players who made it possible: Mike, Allen, Dave, Brad, Josef, Aaron, John, Christopher, and Dan. Thanks guys, you're awesome.

Legacy of Lethality: 2017 Stats

As referenced in an earlier post, I have kept detailed notes from the beginning of my current Labyrinth Lord campaign. Below are the statistics I've gathered from 6 years of play.

LL Stats Dec 2011-Dec 2017

Sessions Played: 125

Total PCs Played: 117

Total PCs Deaths: 115

Kills Per Session: 1.01

Mortality Rate: 98.3%

This first graph shows the number of LL sessions we've played each year, along with the number of kills. 2017 was a relatively thin year for us (my off-week DCC game has been getting a lot of traction & often took over LL weeks).  But even when considering this, there were very few kills. 2017 was our first year under 0.8 kills per session- we only averaged one kill every 5th session. I'm ashamed of myself...

Putting the Kills per Session onto a graph against the Average Party Level shows the most obvious explanation: the characters are simply tougher. Since the end of 2015, the average level has been above 4. This number even includes "apprentice" 1st level characters the party keeps in tow. Remove them from the calculation and the average jumps to 7.23.

I also track every character played (and killed) in the campaign, including their class & race.

Note that a number of characters have been raised (and sometimes killed again), allowing for mortality rates above 100%.

 

Survivability is a stat started tracking in 2013. It is obtained by subtracting the percentage of total kills for this race (or class) from the total percentage of characters played of this race (or class). Now that I've been tracking this stat for four full years, some trends are starting to appear, particularly in Race.

Survivability Trends

We're playing with Labyrinth Lord rules, but outside of a few adventures I've written, they're all 1st edition AD&D and Basic adventures.

Folio Character Sheets

The character sheet I currently use for Labyrinth Lord evolved from one simple desire: the ability to easily take away a character's equipment. The PC is taken prisoner & stripped of goods; a tournament is entered, where only special gear can be used; a character dies & their stuff is passed on. Plenty of times over the years, I've wished I could just pull off that part of the sheet. So, I made my Folio Sheet.

The outside page contains character basics- Stats, AC, Saves, & HP on the front; languages & skills on the back. The inside contains space for notes, character sketch, and a place to draw scars & distinguishing marks. Loose sheets for equipment & spells are held inside. 

Print double-sided (flip on short edge). Printing the whole thing will yield 1 character folio, 2 equipment inserts, and 2 spell inserts.

Labyrinth Lord Folio Character Sheet 

GM Screens

For my GM screen, I use the Savage Worlds customizable screen, primarily because I like to make my own panels. They're pricey, but I've gotten almost 10 years out of mine, so I guess $30 isn't that bad? Just be sure to keep packing tape on hand for when the seams split.

I've made custom panels for the three games I most often run (Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Marvel Super Heroes). The links below are for these three sets of panels. The pages are in the order I put them in the screen (starting from left-most on the GM side, to right-most on the player side). For LL & Marvel, the center player side panel will be art based on the adventure. For the DCC screen, it's all art on the players' side.

Labyrinth Lord GM Screen Panels

DCC Judges Screen Panels
Marvel Super Heroes Judges Screen Panels

Critical Hit Table

Critical hits are great. I love the idea that any character, no matter how great or small, can deal tremendous damage with a lucky blow. Every player has stories about "that one crit"- folks I played with 20 years ago still remember Three, the kobold who felled a stone giant with a natural 20 using a Javelin of Lightning. Even when behind the screen, I love the players getting that big crit at the right time.

Do any experienced DMs not have house rules for critical hits? Unless you're playing something like DCC, with a deep and robust crit system, I think it's a must. 

Here's how I handle them in my Labyrinth Lord campaign. On a natural 20, the number of damage dice is doubled (so a sword that normally does 1d8 damage does 2d8 on a natural 20: note that bonuses from strength/magic are not doubled). The player rolls a second d20 on my homebrew table to determine location. Each location has some special effects, such as further penalties which will persist until the critical hit is healed. Most locations can be severed and some can cause instant death. In these cases, the attacking player rolls d100. If the result is equal to or under the total amount of damage inflicted by the hit, sever or death results. 

*Full disclosure: as I’ve gotten older and my taste in play has grown steadily simpler, I’ve used less and less of the options on this table. Nowadays? We just roll the 20 to find location & make the % check for sever/death. I kill enough characters without adding hit penalties from a crit to the thumb. That being said, I’ve had a blast in the past with these extra flavorful crit results. It’s up to you what you use- never a wrong way to play.  

I’ve modified this table from one my high school GM created. It's evolved quite a bit over the years, but I still keep his name on it in honor of George’s original creation. I present to you, the Wakulik Critical Hit Table. 

Legacy of Lethality

When we started our current  Labyrinth Lord campaign, I decided to keep details on every character, adventure, and death. The "Annual Report" of all these stats has become a popular feature with my players. I'm currently compiling the stats for the end of 2017, but thought I'd share here a few tidbits from last year.

A few notes about the campaign for background:

• This campaign started in December of 2011 and we play every other week (alternating with other games).
• We're using the Advanced Labyrinth Lord rules, with all options in place (including increased hit dice and multi-classing). So we have the "Dwarf" class and "Dwarf" race as options.
• All characters are rolled using 3d6 in order and start at 1st level. I allow Hit Point rolls of 1 to be rerolled.
• Characters are dead at 0 hit points No negatives hit points or bleeding out rules. You hit 0, you die. 
• Most of our adventures are pre-written TSR Basic and AD&D modules (they're currently in the Vault of the Drow).

Stats as of Dec. 2016

Sessions Played: 111

Total PCs Played: 112

Total PCs Deaths: 112

Kills Per Session: 1.01
Mortality Rate: 100%

Now, at a glance, you'll be thinking "holy hell, this guy's a killer GM". Well, yes and no. Yes, I don't hold anything back- when the players finish an encounter, they know they've earned it.  But typically, every player has 2 characters going and every time they lose party members, they're quick to replace them with new 1st level characters. Most of the deaths are from those newbies. There is a core group of PCs currently in the 7th level range that have survived for a very long time (only a couple vets died during the Giants series). When one of them dies, the party will typically go out of their way finding a way to bring them back (they've developed a very good relationship with the Paladin Lords of Verbobonc...). 

Most Survivable Race/Class Combo: Human Thief

Least Survivable Race/Class Combo: Multi-Class Halfling

I'll talk a lot more about survivability when I post the updated 2017 stats, but a few comments on last year's numbers. Humans have consistently been among the most survivable races, due in no small part to their pervasiveness (48% of the total characters are humans). Thieves have been seeing a resurgence of survivability due to a couple tenacious characters- prior to 2014, they were one of the least resilient classes. Halflings have been on an inverse path: once one of the most survivable races, the last few years have been very hard on them. And multi-class characters have never had much luck. 

I'll post the 2017 stats in the next few weeks (after I get a chance to present to the Fiend Club, of course).