I am curious what you think of these rules for making Dungeons and Dragons campaigns feel darker and far more real and gritty. I would love your thoughts.
Thanks
XD
Experience Points
Using experience points for character advancement, rather than milestones, adds a layer of challenge for players in levelling their characters and acquiring improved abilities. This approach heightens the significance of levelling up, enhancing the players' experience. It's worth noting, however, that experience points aren't solely acquired through combat; engaging in combat encounters without adequate preparation and supplies poses significant risks.
The Level Cap and Ability Scores
Character level is capped at level 10 instead of level 20. Upon reaching level 10, characters no longer advance via character level. Instead, for every 5000 XP earned, players can choose to either increase one ability score of their choice by +2 or acquire 1 feat.
All ability scores are capped at 18, with none exceeding this limit.
Multi-classing:Multi-classing is not permitted.
Encumbrance
Variant encumbrance and carrying capacity rules are implemented. Additionally, all coin weight contributes to encumbrance.
Taking a Rest
Short rests span 4 hours and are limited to one per long rest. During a short rest, characters may only engage in light activities and may not expend more than half their hit dice rounded down.
Long rests last 24 hours.To gain the benefit of a long rest, characters must sleep for at least 8 consecutive hours, during which they must remove all armour, weapons, shields, and backpacks.Failure to do so results in 1 level of exhaustion.Characters may spend the remaining 16 hours engaged in light activity.
Light Activity:Light activities may consist of one or more of the following activities — reading, conversing, eating, or standing watch for up to 2 hours.
Consuming Food and Drink
Characters must consume food and drink at least once every 24-hour period. Failure to do so results in the accumulation of hunger points. Every 3 hunger points gained results in 1 level of exhaustion.
Hunger points can be reduced by 1 per long rest through food consumption.
Field Rations:Rations have a shelf life of 7 days. Spoiled rations, if consumed, require a DC 15 Constitution saving throw to avoid poisoning. Characters can attempt to remove the poisoned condition with a Constitution saving throw once per long rest. The DC increases by 5 for each subsequent day spoiled rations are consumed.
Exhaustion
Levels of exhaustion cannot be reduced as long as the character’s hunger points are above zero.
The Cost of Living
Characters must pay a cost of living levy as determined by their lifestyle.
Lifestyle:Lifestyle is chosen at character creation and will have a direct effect on how the character and the world interacts with each other. For example — a wealthy lifestyle might help you make contacts with the rich and powerful, though you run the risk of attracting thieves. Likewise, living frugally might help you avoid criminals, but you are you will find making powerful connections more challenging.A player may improve their characters lifestyle once every 30 days, provided they can afford the new levy.Failure to pay your lifestyle levy for more than 7 days will result in a fine.Failure to pay your lifestyle levy and, or any fines for more than 30 days will result in imprisonment until debt is paid, and the loss of 1 lifestyle level — for example, going from modest to poor.Losing a lifestyle level will make it harder to maintain existing connections or relationships with NPCs and their moods towards you will decrease by 1 level.
NPC Moods:
Friendly
Neutral
Hostile
All NPCs start at Neutral.Their level will increase if you roll 10 or more higher than the DC, and decrease if you roll 10 or more lower than the DC on a social skill check while interacting with that NPC during a social interaction.Characters gain advantage when rolling a social skill check to interact with a friendly NPC and disadvantage for a hostile one.
Madness and Sanity
The madness and sanity system will be implemented with the following modifications:
When a character's sanity score reaches zero, they acquire one indefinite and incurable madness from the indefinite madness table. This madness cannot be suppressed by calm emotions or removed by lesser or greater restoration, revivify or any other resurrection spells, even if the characters sanity score is restored.
So, what do you all think?
I am looking forward to reading all your thoughts and suggestions for improvements. I will be listening to all your thoughts, suggestions and opinions, taking them into account and updating these rules accordingly, before typing them up properly into a document that I will share with you all.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
None of these rules make it feel darker or more gritty. Mostly they just feel like a bunch of added rules that were put in to add more bookkeeping without adding anything fun. Also, even in Medieval times, people knew how to preserve food so that it would last a lot longer than a week before it started to spoil.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
None of these rules make it feel darker or more gritty. Mostly they just feel like a bunch of added rules that were put in to add more bookkeeping without adding anything fun. Also, even in Medieval times, people knew how to preserve food so that it would last a lot longer than a week before it started to spoil.
What would you suggest for making the game feel darker and more gritty, and the world more dangerous?
I’d love to hear what suggestions you’d make.
to explain some of my choices though:
Regarding the limited shelf life of rations. Where it’s true that they could be preserved, you have to take into account that these rations are being carried around on the road, in various weathers, exposed to various elements, insects etc., and all sorts of other things. Also, my idea with this was that I wanted players to have to spend money on rations and actually spend time cooking and eating them each day, and that carrying enough food around for an active adventuring party would likely be heavy. Essentially they can’t just go off exploring and be fine. They have to make a plan for their survival — how many days they think they’re going to be out adventuring etc., and then purchasing the supplies they will need.
But not just field rations. They need to eat and drink every day — even during any downtime. So they have to spend money doing that one way or another
Combat is also a big issue, because the longer they are out adventuring, the more likely it is they’re going to get into combat. But combat is dangerous. Where the players are capped at level 10 the CR of encounters remains the same with no changes to the CR of any creatures, or their stat blocks/abilities etc. So combat is always dangerous, and even low level creatures pose a threat.
It’s also harder for them to rest and recover. They need to take 24 hours for a long rest instead of just 8. They can’t just sleep for the night, they need to set up a proper camp and keep themselves safe from any passing dangers. They need to take 4 hours for a short rest instead it just 1. They can’t just barricade themselves in a room in the dungeon and quickly recover — it’s an investment of time that’s giving the NPCs time to regroup and summon reinforcements, set traps etc.
So while the players characters are recovering, so are the NPCs.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
EDIT: This turned into a bit of a novel. Bottom line up front: I recommend not using XP counting, Hunger Points, or NPC Moods at all. The level cap is fine but will significantly favor martials over casters. I would modify food spoilage to be less chance-based. I recommend modifying the Upkeep system to be simpler and tied to a tangible thing like housing. I don't like Madness, but if you do, it's probably fine. I would look into a Lingering Injury system and the Speed Factor initiative variant in the DMG.
Open spoiler tag for reasoning.
Honestly I think "dark and gritty" is hard to pin down, so I'm gonna focus more on your stated aims in your second post rather than on the general concept. I broadly agree with 6thLyranGuard's assessment: these rules add a lot of recordkeeping that may not contribute much to the feel of the game. I do think there's some good ideas in here worth polishing, though. Let's start with the things I think you can discard.
Players' capacity for tedium will vary, but personally I will never be so spreadsheet-pilled that I think tracking XP is exciting. Levelling up, as a whole, is a concession we make to the game-ness of RPGs; it will never feel "realistic" no matter how you do it. If you want to push players to balance the risks of getting in fights vs the rewards, there's better levers than XP, especially if you're using a hunger system. Allowing your players to harvest useful materials and food from certain types of creatures will be much more immediately rewarding than grinding XP.
The level cap you have envisioned also won't make things feel more realistic in my opinion; a 10th level monk can still run 80 feet up a vertical surface and glide harmlessly to the ground, for example. But it will rebalance the game in favor of certain classes over others. Casters will be capped at 5th level spells, while martials, especially Fighters, will have effectively their full kit. Martials also benefit more on average from ASIs and Feats, so your ongoing progression system will widen this disparity. If that's the goal, great. No further notes.
I'd ditch Hunger Points entirely. I think they're an unnecessary record-keeping requirement at best and an inescapable death spiral at worst. If you want to include hunger mechanics, I'd just stick to the ones outlined in the PHB (see Food and Water under The Environment in the Adventuring chapter), maybe adding the caveat that a character cannot benefit from a short or long rest in a given day unless they eat at least half rations during that time.
I'd also either ditch or modify food spoilage. I do think you're overestimating how quickly marching rations spoil, but I'm less interested in that and more interested in what the system is doing in your game. Effectively what it's going to do as written now is limit all expeditions into the wilderness to 7 days or less, because getting poisoned and needing 24 hours to _maybe_ recover is game-ending for many classes. If that's the goal, great. But I'd still axe the compounding poison DC in favor of a fixed DC 20, and I'd have players auto-recover from food Poisoning after a long rest with water instead of remaking the save. A low CON character could literally be poisoned forever if they ate two-day expired food the way you have it written.
Upkeep also kinda sucks, which is why most campaigns don't use it. If you really want to have a recurring cost over your players' heads, I'd simplify the lifestyle system two ways; first, make the upkeep a full-party responsibility instead of an individual choice. Otherwise you end up with one character as the designated Face who has to deal with upkeep, while the rest of the party lives in squalor and leeches off the Face's social connections (this is how every game of Shadowrun I've ever played shakes out). Second, simplify upkeep into three levels separated by a tangible condition, like the rent on your guildhouse. You're either in good standing, behind on payments, or evicted. Much more straightforward than having 7 lifestyle ranks with unclear distinctions between them.
Axe the NPC moods system. I, too, wish that D&D had better social interaction mechanics, but it doesn't and a half-baked system is worse than no system. Stick to vibes-based NPC dispositions so you have less to track and are less likely to box yourself in roleplay-wise.
I don't like "Madness" as a game mechanic outside of Call of Cthulhu (where it's basically the same as death). I don't really have any other comments on this one; implementation wise it's probably fine, I just personally don't like it.
I think you might also want to look into a good Lingering Injury system if your goal is a brutal, scary world; there's loads of options out there in homebrew land, you can probably find one that fits what you're doing. Additionally, I would look at using one of the alternative Initiative systems detailed in the DMG. Speed Factor is a huge pain in the butt to use, but it does accomplish the stated goal of making combat less predictable, and therefore scarier. Look it over and see what you think.
1) DEATH. Characters have to die and not get raised. Death is permanent.
2) You are technically running guilds sending lesser guild members out, while 'you' sit home safe. That is, when your character 'dies', you get a very similar new one. Have 3 characters ready at any time. Each the same level with slight differences (spells, weapons, gear, feats). Make it easy to bring new characters in. Perhaps minions that level up when the main guy dies?
3) Betrayal. Every time a character dies, roll 1d10. If it comes up 1, your new 'ally' is a traitor. Roleplay him well. Enjoy. DM rolls secretly and tells you, but does not do so if he knows their is already a traitor in the group.
4) Throw in permanent injury. Go down to 0hp but survive? Free bonus feat as a reward, but you also get a permanent injury - your choice of things like -2 to a stat, -5 ft all speeds, lose a proficiency/expertise, etc.
Thank you all for such wonderfully detailed replies. I will go away and take into account everything you have all said, and see if I can make my house rules for a dark and gritty campaign, where danger lies around every corner and adventuring -- or life in general -- isn't all that safe, better than they currently are.
Thanks
XD
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
The proposal simply incentivizes players to go out to the nearest dungeon, do one fight then return to town to sleep over and over again until they have reached a high enough level that they can do two fights in a day then return to the town, etc.. etc...
XP Leveling - any combat even if you just chew through some mooks that get instantly replaced by the bad guys, or disarm some traps that they set up again still earns you experience so allows your character to progress even if long-term you have achieved nothing.
Resting being more difficult - incentivizes going back to town to rest in a completely safe location rather than continuing the adventure.
Food rations spoiling / requiring to eat food - incentivizes going back to town to rest when they can buy fresh food.
Lifestyle & NPC moods - incentivizes not engaging with NPCs and instead just going combat to combat to farm XP.
Encumbrance - combined with the other rules that essentially amount to "spend more coin" again incentivizes short adventuring days as the party will want to haul back & sell as much stuff as possible but with a low carry limit they can't carry all that much so will maybe get to the first loot chest then turn around to go back to town to store/sell their treasure.
Meanwhile, you have only addressed some of the things (Multiclassing and Tier3&4 play) that make 5e a ridiculously easy game:
Tiny Hut & similar spells - You can make rests required to be as long as you like, but if the party has someone who can cast Tiny Hut as a ritual they can just sit there in their safe bubble for as long as is required for them to get a long rest.
Goodberry & Create Food & Water - You can make all the rules you like about rations, but if one person in the party can cast Goodberry then everyone is eating for free everyday anyway.
Healing Word & Revivify - Going down to 0hp is not an issue so long as someone has a 1st level spell slot and Healing Word at the ready, likewise Death is just an inconvenience if you've got someone with Revivify.
"Gritty" in 5e only exists from level 1-4, once you hit level 5 the game is not gritty anymore, and it isn't supposed to be. There are four intentionally distinct tiers of play:
Tier 1 (Level 1-4): Realistic & Scary - monsters can kill with just a little bit of luck and the dice can determine whether any combat ends up as a TPK, ordinary wilderness is dark, cold, and dangerous, the only way to get around is walking or by renting/purchasing mounts and there is only a thin wall of fabric between you and the things that lurk in the darkness. You stay close to or within inhabited areas sheltering with your fellows from the dangerous of the wilds.
Tier 2 (Level 5-10): Heroic - you have mastered the wilderness and mere survival is no longer a challenge, you are ready to delve into dungeons, explore ruins, and battle monsters. However, travel is still a challenge and you have to be ready for anything as you journey into the more remote and dangerous locations far from civilization.
Tier 3(Level 11-16): Champions - you can travel the world with ease, and are among the most powerful people on this plane. You're facing off against existential threats to civilization and exploring other planes of existance.
Tier 4 (Level 17+): Superheroes - you're immortal, masters of the universe rivalling on the gods themselves.
Hunger Points as proposed isn't how hunger works IRL. Being hungry is a measure of how long it's been since you've eaten, not how much you need to eat.
Obviously a starving person will be different, but if a person goes a day without eating they won't need to consume 4,000 calories the next day to "catch up".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
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Hi everyone,
I am curious what you think of these rules for making Dungeons and Dragons campaigns feel darker and far more real and gritty. I would love your thoughts.
Thanks
XD
So, what do you all think?
I am looking forward to reading all your thoughts and suggestions for improvements. I will be listening to all your thoughts, suggestions and opinions, taking them into account and updating these rules accordingly, before typing them up properly into a document that I will share with you all.
XD
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
None of these rules make it feel darker or more gritty. Mostly they just feel like a bunch of added rules that were put in to add more bookkeeping without adding anything fun. Also, even in Medieval times, people knew how to preserve food so that it would last a lot longer than a week before it started to spoil.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
What would you suggest for making the game feel darker and more gritty, and the world more dangerous?
I’d love to hear what suggestions you’d make.
to explain some of my choices though:
Regarding the limited shelf life of rations. Where it’s true that they could be preserved, you have to take into account that these rations are being carried around on the road, in various weathers, exposed to various elements, insects etc., and all sorts of other things. Also, my idea with this was that I wanted players to have to spend money on rations and actually spend time cooking and eating them each day, and that carrying enough food around for an active adventuring party would likely be heavy. Essentially they can’t just go off exploring and be fine. They have to make a plan for their survival — how many days they think they’re going to be out adventuring etc., and then purchasing the supplies they will need.
But not just field rations. They need to eat and drink every day — even during any downtime. So they have to spend money doing that one way or another
Combat is also a big issue, because the longer they are out adventuring, the more likely it is they’re going to get into combat. But combat is dangerous. Where the players are capped at level 10 the CR of encounters remains the same with no changes to the CR of any creatures, or their stat blocks/abilities etc. So combat is always dangerous, and even low level creatures pose a threat.
It’s also harder for them to rest and recover. They need to take 24 hours for a long rest instead of just 8. They can’t just sleep for the night, they need to set up a proper camp and keep themselves safe from any passing dangers. They need to take 4 hours for a short rest instead it just 1. They can’t just barricade themselves in a room in the dungeon and quickly recover — it’s an investment of time that’s giving the NPCs time to regroup and summon reinforcements, set traps etc.
So while the players characters are recovering, so are the NPCs.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
EDIT: This turned into a bit of a novel. Bottom line up front: I recommend not using XP counting, Hunger Points, or NPC Moods at all. The level cap is fine but will significantly favor martials over casters. I would modify food spoilage to be less chance-based. I recommend modifying the Upkeep system to be simpler and tied to a tangible thing like housing. I don't like Madness, but if you do, it's probably fine. I would look into a Lingering Injury system and the Speed Factor initiative variant in the DMG.
Open spoiler tag for reasoning.
Honestly I think "dark and gritty" is hard to pin down, so I'm gonna focus more on your stated aims in your second post rather than on the general concept. I broadly agree with 6thLyranGuard's assessment: these rules add a lot of recordkeeping that may not contribute much to the feel of the game. I do think there's some good ideas in here worth polishing, though. Let's start with the things I think you can discard.
Players' capacity for tedium will vary, but personally I will never be so spreadsheet-pilled that I think tracking XP is exciting. Levelling up, as a whole, is a concession we make to the game-ness of RPGs; it will never feel "realistic" no matter how you do it. If you want to push players to balance the risks of getting in fights vs the rewards, there's better levers than XP, especially if you're using a hunger system. Allowing your players to harvest useful materials and food from certain types of creatures will be much more immediately rewarding than grinding XP.
The level cap you have envisioned also won't make things feel more realistic in my opinion; a 10th level monk can still run 80 feet up a vertical surface and glide harmlessly to the ground, for example. But it will rebalance the game in favor of certain classes over others. Casters will be capped at 5th level spells, while martials, especially Fighters, will have effectively their full kit. Martials also benefit more on average from ASIs and Feats, so your ongoing progression system will widen this disparity. If that's the goal, great. No further notes.
I'd ditch Hunger Points entirely. I think they're an unnecessary record-keeping requirement at best and an inescapable death spiral at worst. If you want to include hunger mechanics, I'd just stick to the ones outlined in the PHB (see Food and Water under The Environment in the Adventuring chapter), maybe adding the caveat that a character cannot benefit from a short or long rest in a given day unless they eat at least half rations during that time.
I'd also either ditch or modify food spoilage. I do think you're overestimating how quickly marching rations spoil, but I'm less interested in that and more interested in what the system is doing in your game. Effectively what it's going to do as written now is limit all expeditions into the wilderness to 7 days or less, because getting poisoned and needing 24 hours to _maybe_ recover is game-ending for many classes. If that's the goal, great. But I'd still axe the compounding poison DC in favor of a fixed DC 20, and I'd have players auto-recover from food Poisoning after a long rest with water instead of remaking the save. A low CON character could literally be poisoned forever if they ate two-day expired food the way you have it written.
Upkeep also kinda sucks, which is why most campaigns don't use it. If you really want to have a recurring cost over your players' heads, I'd simplify the lifestyle system two ways; first, make the upkeep a full-party responsibility instead of an individual choice. Otherwise you end up with one character as the designated Face who has to deal with upkeep, while the rest of the party lives in squalor and leeches off the Face's social connections (this is how every game of Shadowrun I've ever played shakes out). Second, simplify upkeep into three levels separated by a tangible condition, like the rent on your guildhouse. You're either in good standing, behind on payments, or evicted. Much more straightforward than having 7 lifestyle ranks with unclear distinctions between them.
Axe the NPC moods system. I, too, wish that D&D had better social interaction mechanics, but it doesn't and a half-baked system is worse than no system. Stick to vibes-based NPC dispositions so you have less to track and are less likely to box yourself in roleplay-wise.
I don't like "Madness" as a game mechanic outside of Call of Cthulhu (where it's basically the same as death). I don't really have any other comments on this one; implementation wise it's probably fine, I just personally don't like it.
I think you might also want to look into a good Lingering Injury system if your goal is a brutal, scary world; there's loads of options out there in homebrew land, you can probably find one that fits what you're doing. Additionally, I would look at using one of the alternative Initiative systems detailed in the DMG. Speed Factor is a huge pain in the butt to use, but it does accomplish the stated goal of making combat less predictable, and therefore scarier. Look it over and see what you think.
Darker and more real and gritty.
1) DEATH. Characters have to die and not get raised. Death is permanent.
2) You are technically running guilds sending lesser guild members out, while 'you' sit home safe. That is, when your character 'dies', you get a very similar new one. Have 3 characters ready at any time. Each the same level with slight differences (spells, weapons, gear, feats). Make it easy to bring new characters in. Perhaps minions that level up when the main guy dies?
3) Betrayal. Every time a character dies, roll 1d10. If it comes up 1, your new 'ally' is a traitor. Roleplay him well. Enjoy. DM rolls secretly and tells you, but does not do so if he knows their is already a traitor in the group.
4) Throw in permanent injury. Go down to 0hp but survive? Free bonus feat as a reward, but you also get a permanent injury - your choice of things like -2 to a stat, -5 ft all speeds, lose a proficiency/expertise, etc.
Thank you all for such wonderfully detailed replies. I will go away and take into account everything you have all said, and see if I can make my house rules for a dark and gritty campaign, where danger lies around every corner and adventuring -- or life in general -- isn't all that safe, better than they currently are.
Thanks
XD
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
The proposal simply incentivizes players to go out to the nearest dungeon, do one fight then return to town to sleep over and over again until they have reached a high enough level that they can do two fights in a day then return to the town, etc.. etc...
XP Leveling - any combat even if you just chew through some mooks that get instantly replaced by the bad guys, or disarm some traps that they set up again still earns you experience so allows your character to progress even if long-term you have achieved nothing.
Resting being more difficult - incentivizes going back to town to rest in a completely safe location rather than continuing the adventure.
Food rations spoiling / requiring to eat food - incentivizes going back to town to rest when they can buy fresh food.
Lifestyle & NPC moods - incentivizes not engaging with NPCs and instead just going combat to combat to farm XP.
Encumbrance - combined with the other rules that essentially amount to "spend more coin" again incentivizes short adventuring days as the party will want to haul back & sell as much stuff as possible but with a low carry limit they can't carry all that much so will maybe get to the first loot chest then turn around to go back to town to store/sell their treasure.
Meanwhile, you have only addressed some of the things (Multiclassing and Tier3&4 play) that make 5e a ridiculously easy game:
"Gritty" in 5e only exists from level 1-4, once you hit level 5 the game is not gritty anymore, and it isn't supposed to be. There are four intentionally distinct tiers of play:
Tier 1 (Level 1-4): Realistic & Scary - monsters can kill with just a little bit of luck and the dice can determine whether any combat ends up as a TPK, ordinary wilderness is dark, cold, and dangerous, the only way to get around is walking or by renting/purchasing mounts and there is only a thin wall of fabric between you and the things that lurk in the darkness. You stay close to or within inhabited areas sheltering with your fellows from the dangerous of the wilds.
Tier 2 (Level 5-10): Heroic - you have mastered the wilderness and mere survival is no longer a challenge, you are ready to delve into dungeons, explore ruins, and battle monsters. However, travel is still a challenge and you have to be ready for anything as you journey into the more remote and dangerous locations far from civilization.
Tier 3 (Level 11-16): Champions - you can travel the world with ease, and are among the most powerful people on this plane. You're facing off against existential threats to civilization and exploring other planes of existance.
Tier 4 (Level 17+): Superheroes - you're immortal, masters of the universe rivalling on the gods themselves.
Hunger Points as proposed isn't how hunger works IRL. Being hungry is a measure of how long it's been since you've eaten, not how much you need to eat.
Obviously a starving person will be different, but if a person goes a day without eating they won't need to consume 4,000 calories the next day to "catch up".
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?