Ashcan Rule: XP for Coal

I am hard at work on the Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl, and it is inevitable that some rules just don’t make the final cut. However, it seems like a waste to just toss it into the dustbin of history, never again to see the light of day! So I thought I’d share the rule, along with a bit of design commentary. I plan on doing a larger piece of design commentary on the Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl once that is all done, but for now, you will have to content yourself with this not-ready-for-primetime morsel of a rule.

XP for Coal

For use in any game that involves repeated delves into mines to extract the natural resources of the land, you may use this rule as an alternative to XP for Gold: Instead, players gain 1 XP per lump of coal brought back to the surface.

Why Didn’t It Make the Cut?

Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl is about hobo-adventurers traveling through a land of plenty where work has been outlawed. A mechanic that incentivizes work (going underground to collect coal) countervails that theme. While coal-mining is an oft-used trope in a lot of the folk music from which I draw inspiration, it typically carries either an outright negative or at least bittersweet connotation. For instance, in Dark as a Dungeon, the speaker warns the young fellers against mining coal, an inherently corrupting activity. I was going to just quote a line from it, but, since it is a quick ditty, it would be a shame not to quote in full:

Come and listen, young fellers, so young and so fine
And seek not your fortune in the dark dreary mines
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul
‘Til the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal

Where it’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mines

There’s many a man who I’ve known in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend with his dope or a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mines

Well I hope when I’m gone and the ages shall roll
My body will blacken and turn into coal
Then I’ll look from the door of my heavenly home
And pity the miner that’s digging my bones

If I were to use coal in the Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl, it would be as a temptation that turns greedy miners into lumbering coal golems. But since the only mines in the hexcrawl involve marshmallow, not fossil fuels, this just isn’t the place for it (but coal golems sound dope).

How Can It Be Used?

This rule is perfect for a Minecraft-style adventure of getting lost in mine shafts in search of mineral riches. Minecraft is a truly wonderful game and it would require way more tweaking than this to turn a D&Dalike game into something resembling Minecraft. Marcia (@chiquitafajita_ on Twitter, with a blog of the same name) posted some helpful rules for mining and torches and is continuing to stew on the best way to bring Minecraft to the gaming table. More is needed (smelting ore, punching trees, dying blocks of wool), but this is a solid enough start! Please go absolutely buck-wild if this idea compels you thus.