October 15, 2025 • 13 mins
Today we look at the Oriental Adventures rule that lets you grant a one-time bonus when the player demonstrates knowledge or performs a skill. I cover how to use it fairly, what to cap, and a real table story where a player’s stunt earned a surprise attack.
#TSR #Adnd #OSR
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:17):
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Masters AD and D
Universe Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well.
It is Wednesday and today is another day.
First, theevildm.com is my website. askthedm@theevildm.com
is my e-mail address. You can support me by going to
(00:37):
patreon.com theevildm where you can get some write ups for
various things for basic fantasyor whatever idea I'm doing.
And sometimes there's going to be notes from my DM journal
which I try to type in every dayand put a little tidbits of
games and stuff like that in there.
I'm more active on the weeks that I'm actually having a game
(00:58):
that I'm running as opposed to not.
I will generally write more in there then, but you know, you
get to see what is in there and my thoughts about what I wrote
inside Patreon. Anyway, today's topic is going
to be talking about a little rule that I found in the
Oriental Adventures book on page52, and it reminded me of a
(01:21):
story one time where I actually did something similar to this.
And I don't even remember reading this paragraph of the
book because I'm always Adm about thinking about outside the
box type of thing. Story comes first, the book
comes second. I don't really give a crap what
the book itself says. If something makes sense to me
(01:42):
at the time that'll help the table out or the table out
meeting the players or the storyout, I will just push it forward
and worry about it later becausethere's nothing more annoying
than sitting there waiting for people to look for a stupid
rule. And that's just me.
Now, there's people out there that like enjoy looking at rules
and, you know, getting the correct way to play based on the
(02:05):
book and what it says. And that's absolutely fine and
perfectly great for your table. If that's what you and your
players want to do, then by all means you do that.
Other than, you know, whatever else you want to do.
For me, it doesn't work. And my group is perfectly fine
with that. They're OK with a ruling and
then going back later on and discussing it.
(02:26):
If anybody has objections or, you know, has a major, you know,
pin stuck in their craw, whatever the hell they call it,
and we discuss it and then we make decisions going forward on
those things. A lot of times you'll hear on
the actual plays that I do, I'llsay, is that fair?
I'll, I'll make a decision. I'll say, what do you think
guys? Is that fair?
We want to go with this for now.And they'll say, yeah, that's
(02:48):
kind of how I handle things. When you listen to the actual
plays, you'll see I'll make decisions like that a lot.
But on page 52 we had the optional peace proficiency
bonuses. It's kind of interesting.
I don't remember reading this atall, but if Adm desires, he can
award a one time bonus to character proficiency in a
peaceful skill base on the actions of the player, not the
(03:12):
character. If the player can provide an
example of the skill, such as a piece of Chinese or Japanese
poetry that fits the situation, the DM can choose to award a
bonus of plus one. If the player can actually
perform the skill, like write a haiku or whatever, the DM can
allow a bonus of +2. This is strictly an optional
(03:34):
rule. DMS and players who wish to use
this must find their own information about the styles and
the forms of various people. Peaceful arts used in the
Orient. And now you have to imagine when
this came out in 86, five, whatever.
I think it was 85, I believe this came out.
We really had no Internet. We had no, I can just go to
(03:57):
Google and figure it out. We had BB s s, multi board
services, dial up services. I think we had a little bit of
AOL, yeah. And we had CompuServe and
Prodigy, things like that along with the BB s s that we
connected to locally. But there was no connected
Internet universe as of really. And maybe no, I'm trying to
(04:22):
think not. I don't remember it actually
being connected to a wider scalelike it is today.
So you for you to research styles and forms of various
peaceful arts used in the Orient, you would have to go to
your local library and look thatstuff up.
Or maybe a textbook from school if you had one like that, or
(04:45):
encyclopedia or whatever. If you had those in your house,
a lot of people had those encyclopedias in their house.
Remember those? Some of you older folks out
there? Yeah, you probably do.
But yeah, you wouldn't just liftup your phone and be like, OK,
here's a haiku or, you know, whatever.
No, you would have to actually go and do it.
Now, if you were playing the game and you wanted to do this,
(05:08):
you would actually have to have come prepared.
Now, your character is such and such, and maybe you guys are
really heavily into an Oriental campaign, Oriental Adventures
campaign. So maybe you decide that since
the DM is using this rule because you read it in the book,
you prepared a little, you went to the library, you did some
research, you grabbed a couple photocopies from the photocopy
(05:31):
machine and you had it ready. When your character's turn came
up, the situation came up that you used a certain skill and you
wanted to get that bonus becauseyou know they're your DM is
using this rule. So you read your haiku, or you
read your poetry, or you read whatever piece of thing you
have, or maybe you display some art, or maybe you went back then
(05:57):
in the 80s, it was famous for doing this.
You went back, you went to the flea market and you bought
Chinese stars. I mean, that was the thing that
kids did. He was always a bragging thing.
Oh, I wouldn't have got this one.
Let's see, how many sharp pointscan you buy on it?
How many odd shapes could you find?
So maybe you went to the flea market and bought one of those
stars and decided to hold it in your pocket and not stab
(06:20):
yourself because they didn't come with anything else except
just you just bought the stars itself.
They didn't actually fly right or do anything right, but they
were sharp. You held it in your pocket until
the right moment and then, you know, you showed it to the DM to
get a bonus. And it's not peaceful, but it is
part of the quote UN quote culture of the time.
(06:42):
And all the ninja movies were popular.
So having one of those things around was fine.
I mean, I remember people comingto, you know, Oriental Game
adventures and they were dressedlike ninjas because their
character was a hidden ninja. We weren't supposed to know
because you couldn't play a flatout ninja.
You had to be a, you know, a hidden ninja In Oriental
Adventures. There was no such thing as just
(07:02):
being a flat out straight up ninja unless you had that type
of campaign, which we never did play like that was always.
You took it as a secondary classhiding under something else.
Yeah. But again, it reminded me of a
story of when I was playing in Connecticut and we had this
(07:24):
group and one of the players wanted to.
And it's not this is not peaceful, but this kind of is in
the same realm of thinking outside the box, the player
action affecting the character action.
The player wanted to climb up the ladder, roll into the room
via the Hatch of the ladder, stand up and stab 2 guards that
(07:48):
were on duty with his back turn.So he wanted a surprise attack.
And I and I was saying I was, I don't think you could really do
that all in one smooth action because they were across the
room. I mean, you could roll into the
room and possibly And he's like,no, no, I could do it, I can do
it. So I'm like, OK, I said you can
(08:09):
do it personally. He's like, yeah, I said, all
right, you could demonstrate this to me in we went into the
living room of my friend's houseand she was like, she was fine
with it. I was like, if you could
demonstrate this me, I'll stand where where the guards
approximately are. And I want you to do your move
from rolling into the room and standing up and kidding, you
could do it. I will award you the hit.
(08:32):
And I said, I'll, I'll even giveyou a natural 20 on the hit.
And he went, OK, OK, OK. So he grabbed, he grabbed 2
pencils to be represent his two daggers that he was going to
use. And he got on a chair.
He just sat on one of the livingroom chairs and he used it to
(08:53):
roll himself because I, I had, what I had done was the Hatch
where they climbed up was a little bit elevated because
that's where I was wondering howyou would do it from the ladder.
So he used the chair and he, he got up, he rolled into the room.
Well he rolled in the room towards me then he stood up and
(09:17):
did a double stab action move atme and where the other guard
would be standing to get the surprise.
Now he actually did it like legit did it.
Rolled a good amount of feet from that one little roll.
Now I'm not surprised because the the guy was part of the
Coast Guard Academy at the time when I was in Connecticut.
He was a Coastie, so, or they say puddle jumpers.
(09:41):
He was in good shape, so he probably easily could do things
like that. But I, you know what?
I wanted to see it. Everybody else wanted to see it.
He was a very animated guy. So we said what the hell, we did
it. He did it.
He got his 20, everybody cheered, the game moved on.
(10:01):
And are those just examples of, you know, if you could do it as
a player, why not grant them a bonus inside the game?
So this is just an interesting rule that came up when I saw it,
and it's not something that a lot of people really talk about.
And I don't really see too many DMS when it comes to playing the
(10:22):
game, award players bonuses based on what they do as a
player as opposed to in character.
It's always in character, describe what you do or animate
what you do, and you get a bonus.
But I don't know when the will give a bonus based on, you know,
rolling in a room or, you know, reciting poetry or something
(10:44):
like that. It it's just an interesting idea
that Gary gave for us to do. And I mean, there's, there's no
quick way of really doing it. You can just basically declare
what you want to do in plain language and see what it looks
like to the DM. It could, I could see it kind
(11:05):
of. I can also see this rule kind of
making or causing a lot of arguments in the group when it
comes to if it qualifies or not because everybody has their own
opinion. Now, the DM always has the final
say when it comes to these type of things.
It's an optional rule. He doesn't have to use it
whatsoever. It says it right there, but it
(11:27):
does give the DM the option to use something outside of the
box. Now I think what you should do
when it comes to this situation with this outside character or
outside player affecting your character, is that you should
say that you can do it, but the DM has the final say.
(11:47):
And if he says no, it's just no.There should be no arguing.
There should be no but but but but if you really feel that you
need that extra boost or whatever opinion, you can always
ask your group. I like to ask my group just to
(12:08):
be sure that everybody's always happy.
I don't want anybody being miserable during the game.
So and my players generally are fair when it comes to making
decisions. They'll make a decision and
they've said no in situations where they feel it doesn't sound
sensible, even if it went against them.
So I know my players are actually solid as far as making
(12:31):
fair decisions when in regards to the game itself.
Maybe your group is like that too.
I'm, I'm sure quite a few peopleare like that, especially more
mature groups when it comes to those things.
Kids, probably not so much. I don't know, maybe I've been a
long time since I've played withkids or been a kid.
So yeah, tell me what you think in the comments about this.
(12:55):
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this rule or outside rulings
as far as player actions affecting the actual character
itself and how you handle it in your group.
The Evil dm.com is my website, askthedm@theevildm.com is my
e-mail address and you can go topatreon.com/the Evil DM to get
(13:16):
your rewards if you want to throw a few bucks to help
support me and my endeavours andall the podcasts that I do for
the Evil Dungeon Master Universe.
Yes, that's right, Evil Dungeon Master Universe coming right at
you. Get a head out.
Keep it original, keep it all school tonight.
God bless it.
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Masters AD and D
Universe Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well.
It is Wednesday and today is another day.
First, theevildm.com is my website. askthedm@theevildm.com
is my e-mail address. You can support me by going to
(00:37):
patreon.com theevildm where you can get some write ups for
various things for basic fantasyor whatever idea I'm doing.
And sometimes there's going to be notes from my DM journal
which I try to type in every dayand put a little tidbits of
games and stuff like that in there.
I'm more active on the weeks that I'm actually having a game
(00:58):
that I'm running as opposed to not.
I will generally write more in there then, but you know, you
get to see what is in there and my thoughts about what I wrote
inside Patreon. Anyway, today's topic is going
to be talking about a little rule that I found in the
Oriental Adventures book on page52, and it reminded me of a
(01:21):
story one time where I actually did something similar to this.
And I don't even remember reading this paragraph of the
book because I'm always Adm about thinking about outside the
box type of thing. Story comes first, the book
comes second. I don't really give a crap what
the book itself says. If something makes sense to me
(01:42):
at the time that'll help the table out or the table out
meeting the players or the storyout, I will just push it forward
and worry about it later becausethere's nothing more annoying
than sitting there waiting for people to look for a stupid
rule. And that's just me.
Now, there's people out there that like enjoy looking at rules
and, you know, getting the correct way to play based on the
(02:05):
book and what it says. And that's absolutely fine and
perfectly great for your table. If that's what you and your
players want to do, then by all means you do that.
Other than, you know, whatever else you want to do.
For me, it doesn't work. And my group is perfectly fine
with that. They're OK with a ruling and
then going back later on and discussing it.
(02:26):
If anybody has objections or, you know, has a major, you know,
pin stuck in their craw, whatever the hell they call it,
and we discuss it and then we make decisions going forward on
those things. A lot of times you'll hear on
the actual plays that I do, I'llsay, is that fair?
I'll, I'll make a decision. I'll say, what do you think
guys? Is that fair?
We want to go with this for now.And they'll say, yeah, that's
(02:48):
kind of how I handle things. When you listen to the actual
plays, you'll see I'll make decisions like that a lot.
But on page 52 we had the optional peace proficiency
bonuses. It's kind of interesting.
I don't remember reading this atall, but if Adm desires, he can
award a one time bonus to character proficiency in a
peaceful skill base on the actions of the player, not the
(03:12):
character. If the player can provide an
example of the skill, such as a piece of Chinese or Japanese
poetry that fits the situation, the DM can choose to award a
bonus of plus one. If the player can actually
perform the skill, like write a haiku or whatever, the DM can
allow a bonus of +2. This is strictly an optional
(03:34):
rule. DMS and players who wish to use
this must find their own information about the styles and
the forms of various people. Peaceful arts used in the
Orient. And now you have to imagine when
this came out in 86, five, whatever.
I think it was 85, I believe this came out.
We really had no Internet. We had no, I can just go to
(03:57):
Google and figure it out. We had BB s s, multi board
services, dial up services. I think we had a little bit of
AOL, yeah. And we had CompuServe and
Prodigy, things like that along with the BB s s that we
connected to locally. But there was no connected
Internet universe as of really. And maybe no, I'm trying to
(04:22):
think not. I don't remember it actually
being connected to a wider scalelike it is today.
So you for you to research styles and forms of various
peaceful arts used in the Orient, you would have to go to
your local library and look thatstuff up.
Or maybe a textbook from school if you had one like that, or
(04:45):
encyclopedia or whatever. If you had those in your house,
a lot of people had those encyclopedias in their house.
Remember those? Some of you older folks out
there? Yeah, you probably do.
But yeah, you wouldn't just liftup your phone and be like, OK,
here's a haiku or, you know, whatever.
No, you would have to actually go and do it.
Now, if you were playing the game and you wanted to do this,
(05:08):
you would actually have to have come prepared.
Now, your character is such and such, and maybe you guys are
really heavily into an Oriental campaign, Oriental Adventures
campaign. So maybe you decide that since
the DM is using this rule because you read it in the book,
you prepared a little, you went to the library, you did some
research, you grabbed a couple photocopies from the photocopy
(05:31):
machine and you had it ready. When your character's turn came
up, the situation came up that you used a certain skill and you
wanted to get that bonus becauseyou know they're your DM is
using this rule. So you read your haiku, or you
read your poetry, or you read whatever piece of thing you
have, or maybe you display some art, or maybe you went back then
(05:57):
in the 80s, it was famous for doing this.
You went back, you went to the flea market and you bought
Chinese stars. I mean, that was the thing that
kids did. He was always a bragging thing.
Oh, I wouldn't have got this one.
Let's see, how many sharp pointscan you buy on it?
How many odd shapes could you find?
So maybe you went to the flea market and bought one of those
stars and decided to hold it in your pocket and not stab
(06:20):
yourself because they didn't come with anything else except
just you just bought the stars itself.
They didn't actually fly right or do anything right, but they
were sharp. You held it in your pocket until
the right moment and then, you know, you showed it to the DM to
get a bonus. And it's not peaceful, but it is
part of the quote UN quote culture of the time.
(06:42):
And all the ninja movies were popular.
So having one of those things around was fine.
I mean, I remember people comingto, you know, Oriental Game
adventures and they were dressedlike ninjas because their
character was a hidden ninja. We weren't supposed to know
because you couldn't play a flatout ninja.
You had to be a, you know, a hidden ninja In Oriental
Adventures. There was no such thing as just
(07:02):
being a flat out straight up ninja unless you had that type
of campaign, which we never did play like that was always.
You took it as a secondary classhiding under something else.
Yeah. But again, it reminded me of a
story of when I was playing in Connecticut and we had this
(07:24):
group and one of the players wanted to.
And it's not this is not peaceful, but this kind of is in
the same realm of thinking outside the box, the player
action affecting the character action.
The player wanted to climb up the ladder, roll into the room
via the Hatch of the ladder, stand up and stab 2 guards that
(07:48):
were on duty with his back turn.So he wanted a surprise attack.
And I and I was saying I was, I don't think you could really do
that all in one smooth action because they were across the
room. I mean, you could roll into the
room and possibly And he's like,no, no, I could do it, I can do
it. So I'm like, OK, I said you can
(08:09):
do it personally. He's like, yeah, I said, all
right, you could demonstrate this to me in we went into the
living room of my friend's houseand she was like, she was fine
with it. I was like, if you could
demonstrate this me, I'll stand where where the guards
approximately are. And I want you to do your move
from rolling into the room and standing up and kidding, you
could do it. I will award you the hit.
(08:32):
And I said, I'll, I'll even giveyou a natural 20 on the hit.
And he went, OK, OK, OK. So he grabbed, he grabbed 2
pencils to be represent his two daggers that he was going to
use. And he got on a chair.
He just sat on one of the livingroom chairs and he used it to
(08:53):
roll himself because I, I had, what I had done was the Hatch
where they climbed up was a little bit elevated because
that's where I was wondering howyou would do it from the ladder.
So he used the chair and he, he got up, he rolled into the room.
Well he rolled in the room towards me then he stood up and
(09:17):
did a double stab action move atme and where the other guard
would be standing to get the surprise.
Now he actually did it like legit did it.
Rolled a good amount of feet from that one little roll.
Now I'm not surprised because the the guy was part of the
Coast Guard Academy at the time when I was in Connecticut.
He was a Coastie, so, or they say puddle jumpers.
(09:41):
He was in good shape, so he probably easily could do things
like that. But I, you know what?
I wanted to see it. Everybody else wanted to see it.
He was a very animated guy. So we said what the hell, we did
it. He did it.
He got his 20, everybody cheered, the game moved on.
(10:01):
And are those just examples of, you know, if you could do it as
a player, why not grant them a bonus inside the game?
So this is just an interesting rule that came up when I saw it,
and it's not something that a lot of people really talk about.
And I don't really see too many DMS when it comes to playing the
(10:22):
game, award players bonuses based on what they do as a
player as opposed to in character.
It's always in character, describe what you do or animate
what you do, and you get a bonus.
But I don't know when the will give a bonus based on, you know,
rolling in a room or, you know, reciting poetry or something
(10:44):
like that. It it's just an interesting idea
that Gary gave for us to do. And I mean, there's, there's no
quick way of really doing it. You can just basically declare
what you want to do in plain language and see what it looks
like to the DM. It could, I could see it kind
(11:05):
of. I can also see this rule kind of
making or causing a lot of arguments in the group when it
comes to if it qualifies or not because everybody has their own
opinion. Now, the DM always has the final
say when it comes to these type of things.
It's an optional rule. He doesn't have to use it
whatsoever. It says it right there, but it
(11:27):
does give the DM the option to use something outside of the
box. Now I think what you should do
when it comes to this situation with this outside character or
outside player affecting your character, is that you should
say that you can do it, but the DM has the final say.
(11:47):
And if he says no, it's just no.There should be no arguing.
There should be no but but but but if you really feel that you
need that extra boost or whatever opinion, you can always
ask your group. I like to ask my group just to
(12:08):
be sure that everybody's always happy.
I don't want anybody being miserable during the game.
So and my players generally are fair when it comes to making
decisions. They'll make a decision and
they've said no in situations where they feel it doesn't sound
sensible, even if it went against them.
So I know my players are actually solid as far as making
(12:31):
fair decisions when in regards to the game itself.
Maybe your group is like that too.
I'm, I'm sure quite a few peopleare like that, especially more
mature groups when it comes to those things.
Kids, probably not so much. I don't know, maybe I've been a
long time since I've played withkids or been a kid.
So yeah, tell me what you think in the comments about this.
(12:55):
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this rule or outside rulings
as far as player actions affecting the actual character
itself and how you handle it in your group.
The Evil dm.com is my website, askthedm@theevildm.com is my
e-mail address and you can go topatreon.com/the Evil DM to get
(13:16):
your rewards if you want to throw a few bucks to help
support me and my endeavours andall the podcasts that I do for
the Evil Dungeon Master Universe.
Yes, that's right, Evil Dungeon Master Universe coming right at
you. Get a head out.
Keep it original, keep it all school tonight.
God bless it.
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