Instant Death Encounters

I've long admired 1st Edition AD&D and the simplicity of the system to resolve many of the facets of role-playing in a pseudo-medieval fantasy world. One portion of the game I dislike immensely is the feeling of distress when a beloved character's life hangs on a single roll of a die regardless of ability or circumstance. I speak of the saving throw or instant death situations.

Some of the worst monsters in the game are those that can kill with a simple hit or glance. Green slimes, violet fungi, bodaks, etc can destroy a character regardless of how skilled the player or what level the character may be. Instant death attacks like poison, disintegration, and death rays get a saving throw, but if the dice are feeling capricious your character is pretty much dead on the spot.

Poison was a problem I fixed by making it damage over time, allowing a slow poison spell to actually work since you can't possibly cast it the same round the person is poisoned before they die. In order for this to work I had to take into account poison strength and onset times to determine the duration of the poison in the system and damage dealt with each "tick". Energy drain attacks can also be made less lethal by providing a character a saving throw vs. Death Ray against the attack.

However, there are some monsters that break all the rules. Green slime is particularly vile in that it transforms the victim into green slime, eliminating even the possibility of resurrection! Violet fungi rots flesh, destroying the limb that contacts the creature, although determination of the limb affected in a hit point system is unknown and not well described. The Monster Manual is full of assorted special abilities that are poorly defined and leave the characters dead more often than not.

I've heard that some of the modules where these creatures were first showcased may contain additional rules for dealing with their special attacks. I may need to do some research. For instance, I found this passage on Dragonsfoot today while doing random searches. I details the effects of a violet fungi attack a bit better than in the Monster Manual (still ambiguous, but more information than previously provided...).

"An unfortunate victim loses limbs to the rot at the rate of one per round; the torso rots last, and this causes immediate death. The loss of each limb causes the effective loss of 10% of the victim's total original hit points (rounded up), and this alone may slay an already-damaged victim. However, if a cure disease effect is applied within four full rounds of the hit, the victim's life may be saved. (A regenerate spell will re-grow any one limb and return the hit points for it at the same time.)" (The Temple of Elemental Evil, p.103)

Whether the above passage applies to a specific condition occurring in the dungeon or is the norm is not known. I'll be able to do more research into the older modules, but that means reading them all through....again!

RPG Rewards Rehash

A months ago I asked the question, "Why do people play these Role-Playing Games? What reward to they get from them?" I was hard pressed to get an answer. However, I think the main reason we play a game is to have fun. But fun is different things to different people. Some people like cooperating with other people to achieve a common goal. Others like to disrupt play and cause utter chaos. Some like to hog the spotlight and make themselves seem like gods. Some simply want the connection with other people that such games provide in a safe way without social consequence to themselves.

Curiously, there are some people who simply like things to occur in a pre-planned fashion and they spend more time planning the event than actually doing it. However, there is no 100% guarantee of success in a game that relies on dice for resolution. All the planning in the world cannot predict a roll of a 1 or 20 on an attack. Some people feel the need to cheat probability by substituting their own value for the actual roll. These people are sad and may need more therapy than a game can provide. Those of us who humbly accept failure in an RPG probably were good losers at boardgames and good sports when our team was defeated on the baseball diamond or football field. Sadly, most of the standard gamers that exist are or were "loners" or "exiles" from mainstream society, either by choice or due to lack of social coping mechanisms. Therefore the social interactions needed for mature RPG gaming were never established.

I've often wondered why people play RPGs. There is no real tangible reward. There is no real "winner" or "loser." In fact, the person running the game is essentially providing others with entertainment without really getting anything in return. I've seen many games crumble because one person was stuck with being the DM all the time and eventually real life crept in causing the DM to re-prioritize his or her time. As we have aged this has occurred numerous times due to lack of a job, birth of a child, death of a friend, a player falling to serious illness, etc.

RPGs are hobbies. They are not really games. One can play one-shot adventures on occasion, but these have a decided beginning and end and sometimes occur as infrequently as once a year. Games simply waste time and produce nothing. They are a measure of one's luck or skill. Hobbies are something that people enjoy doing as a means of passing time or releasing stress and usually result in a collection or some crafted item. A character can be seen as a collection of magic items lovingly crafted and developed with a persona all its own, with a story of his adventures being the crafted material. The loss of a collection for a hobbyist is a sad event - so too the death of a beloved character. Such sadness and feeling of loss cannot truly be felt in regular games that exist as mere abstractions. In fact, most games use pawns or markers to represent people participating in the game, thus further disassociating the player from the game. In an RPG the player develops the visual aspect of his or her character and develops a long history and backstory to bring his or her creation to life. Some people are better at this than others. Some need poking and prodding and some are naturals. Still, this piece of paper containing numbers and stats becomes a loved character with their own reactions and wants/needs that may be radically different from the players.

So why do people play these games? I still don't have an answer. They take a lot of time to prepare, take a long time to develop, and demand commitment from all involved to make it work. Yet, I've seen genius emerge in players with the social skills of a gnat, I've seen great role-playing ability grow into a sort of acting skill, and the glint in someone's eyes when they come to a sudden realization in game is just magic to behold. I've been a DM now for many years and I never get tired of the randomness and fun inherent in plumbing the depths of a dungeon and seeing how people react to new situations, situations that I wrote for them to experience. As a player I love solving seemingly daunting puzzles, exploring areas thought to be lost forever to time, and defeating encounter that I had no right surviving. Being a sedentary middle-aged man I live vicariously through my characters and the players that enjoy my games. For most I think it's merely enjoying a shared experience that makes the game most rewarding. Those that work towards this goal have more fun than those that cause problems at the table. And it's the perfection of a well-played game that I've been chasing all these years on both sides of the DM screen.

About Face: New Direction for Basic Campaign

I think I've been approaching all this from the wrong angle. I keep trying to take what I've made in one edition and re-make it in another, hoping that "this time" something will click and the whole will come together. Well, since I've alienated most of my gaming friends, I've had few people to work this out with. I think I need some fresh faces and new perspectives.

That being said, I'm looking to use the Basic D&D rules from 1980 in order to write a new campaign. True to form, though, I'm NOT making something whole-cloth but instead taking a concept I was working towards and making it the forefront of the adventure. And so we come to the Fortress of the Goblin King. The Goblin King has been an enigmatic figure in my Thuin campaign for a long time now. Ever since the beginning I wanted to use an NPC that "broke the rules" and was very difficult to eliminate. This figure wore demonic plate mail that concealed his identity, commanded legions of goblinoids from a mountain stronghold, and had command over powerful magic and potent enchanted creatures. In essence, I wanted him to be like a Sauron or Darth Vader figure - someone the party is never really meant to face directly but could be used to frighten the beejeezus out of them at appropriate moments. I think I got that reaction when I unveiled the Goblin King for the first time to the party when a teleport incident and a geas spell forced them to grab a lich's periapt from the depths of his abode. Luckily the party realized they were in over their heads when they appeared in the throne room and there sat the Goblin King surrounded by giant burning corpses, hefty bugbear guards, and leering gargoyles.

So the Goblin King makes my close villain in the campaign backdrop, someone to be dealt with in the long run but put off for many levels until Name Level is achieved. Once the party deals with the Goblin King's forces and eliminates him as a threat he can either escape to another place or continue to plague the characters in an undead form. Either way it makes for classic Sword & Sorcery goodness.

Gygax had his Castle Greyhawk dominated by the eccentric demi-god Zagyg, Kuntz had his Maure Castle dominated by the eccentric Suel Maure family, and Greenwood had Undermountain with its eccentric Halaster Greycloak. This will be MY version of the classic dungeon (and it's mostly mapped out already!). I just need to finish a few things on the conversion side and then present it to whomever will play.

Original D&D Explanations and Thoughts

After attempting to make an AD&D Primer, converting my original campaign to Basic D&D format, and transcribing the original Gygax modules into digital format, I've finally decided to head back to the original version of the game I love - the "Little Brown Box" version of Dungeons & Dragons by Gygax and Arneson.

A while ago I was converting all the original booklets to digital format (i.e. painstakingly editing from a bad .pdf file and typing in sections of text and tables that did not translate). I spent a few days reading and converting these rules and found them to be incomplete. In order to play the game it seemed that you needed the original miniatures rules published back in 1974 by Gygax and Perren named CHAINMAIL. I've never really liked miniatures warfare, not being so enamored with the complex military terms you needed to learn in order to understand what the hell was going on. Besides, my needs were in Man-to-Man combat, specifically Fantasy based, not military maneuvers of 20:1 ratio minis on some random outdoor map. These rules contained the information I needed somewhere between the covers, but it's been out of print for decades. Luckily I was able to buy a digital copy of one through Paizo before Wizards converted to 4th edition.

I spent a few days typing the info over since the tables didn't translate and apparently all the "a"s and "o"s looked the same to the computer due to the font used (can't tell you how weird it is to have to correct every word with an "a" and "o" in it, especially since most of those are valid words that spellcheck won't pick up). During my transcription I discovered that the DUNGEON! game borrowed heavily from this version of D&D in terms of how it was played. The combat tables are based not on level as in current D&D but on character type and armor worn. Since there were only 3 classes (Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric) a table was easy to determine using Fighting Man as the basis. The main entries were for Hero (level 4 or 4 men) and Superhero (level 8 or 8 men). All human combatants use the same two fighting types, modifying by level or down. For example, a 1st level Fighting Man (Veteran) attacks as a Hero -3, a 2nd level Fighting Man (Warrior) attacks as Hero -2, and so on all the way to 6th level Fighting Man (Hero +2) at which point it switches at 7th level to Superhero -1. Now the table used is very simplistic depending on who you are attacking and with what weapon. Interestingly, the damage for ALL hits is 1d6 regardless of whether you're using a dagger or a halberd - its the hit that makes the difference, not the damage of the weapon. A mortal strike, after all, is a mortal strike whether it be a blade to the gut or being cleaved in twain.

The numbers on the table are very close to those in the DUNGEON! game. In other words, 2d6 are rolled to attack instead of a d20. Therefore, a +1 or +2 bonus makes a big difference in the results of the roll. Therefore, all magic weapons were either of +1 or +2 value, Strength was not even considered for purposes of damage or to hit, and missile fire only applied a +/- 1 as a modifier for high or low Dexterity scores. Ability scores had little effect on combat. Number of combatants were more important in the great scheme of things.

In order to attack you had to work off one table or another as the Chainmail rules built on themselves, from standard combat with troop types, to Man-to-Man skirmishing at the individual scale, all the way to fantasy creatures and magic weapons/armor determination. Since creatures did not normally use weapons there was a table to be used for generic combat between creature types (Fantasy Combat Table or FCT). When fighting someone in armor you used the weapon vs. armor combat table. All very confusing. Gygax came up with a new combat table presumed to be used with a d20 (precursor to the Basic D&D combat rules). In Basic, all weapons did the same damage as well, unless you opted for the Variable Weapon Damage rules as introduced in the Greyhawk Supplement I rulebook. It's a shame that the simple D&D combat rules couldn't be made to work as well as hoped, but then the game had to evolve to cover more complicated situations. I wonder if it's possible to work within the strictures of the Original D&D game and use a more evolved version of the game. Likely much of the complexity would be removed and we'd all go back to a hack'n'slash fest - the core fun of the game in any case!

DM Theorycrafting

I've been working on my own private D&D v.5 over the past few years, mostly during downtime at work or when the mood hits me. I'm trying to reconcile the eloquence of the 1st edition simplicity with the hard and fast (and more consistent) rules of the D&D 3.x era. I like the idea of allowing humanoids character levels, having stats for some monsters, and basically making everything work in a similar way so that one does not have to memorize too many rule exceptions.

My first stab was at instant-kill game mechanics. No one likes them - players and DMs alike. The way in which they were handled in the past was simply "save or die." Later editions made them merely a momentary inconvenience. Spells like slow poison and neutralize poison become useless when the poison effect is immediate. So I decided to opt for a damage over time system for poisons, where there is a save modifier, an onset time, and a standard 1d6 damage per turn or round depending on the potency. Such poison typically will have an "Effective Duration" since the body seeks to somehow purge it and heal itself. However, this gives spells like slow poison and neutralize poison a chance to save someone.

Energy Drain taking levels away is a campaign killer. Imagine that your party paladin manages to finally struggle to 5th level then faces a wight. Due to an inability to hit the wight (or turn it), the paladin may be locked in combat for a number of rounds, each of which could result in a loss of level (and less chance to affect said undead creature). Since the loss has no saving throw and cannot be prevented in any way, this is sort of a game breaker. The solution? Make the loss a Constitution point instead. It has no effect on experience points, affects hit point totals and system shock/resurrection survival, and the number of times a character can be brought back from the dead. Even if the character somehow restores his Constitution to the previous value (through the cleric spell restoration), the number of times he or she can be brought back to life is forever affected and cannot be changed. This also works for vampires and makes more sense than a mere touch draining away 2 very difficult higher levels. Imagine a group of adventurers facing off against a vampire and his 2-3 vampire minions. They would be dead very quickly! With this fix, the play can proceed with minimal hassle and unless the party members have very low Constitution to begin with, the combat can come to a more equitable conclusion.

Ability scores for AD&D are a nightmare with the % strength for fighter types and the increased charts provided in the Unearthed Arcana and Deities and Demigods supplements. Monster stats were hinted at in the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual, but no concrete stats were provided. The very range of stats in the Player's Handbook seems to indicate that higher and lower scores are possible. I prefer the stat adjustments used in the Moldvay version of Basic D&D over those in the Player's Handbook. They seem to make more sense to the game. Any bonus from strength over +3 seems overkill to me, given the amount of damage a fighter can do with multiple attacks and magical bonuses. A more streamlined version of the stats must be implemented! For example, using the preferred stat arrangement and the expanded limits:

25     Supreme godlike stat
24     Greater godlike stat
23     Intermediate godlike stat
22     Lesser godlike stat
21     Demigodlike stat
20     Heroic Legend stat
19     Exceptional or heroic stat
18     Top of normal humanoid range (+3)
16-17 Superior range (+2)
13-15 Above normal range (+1)
9-12   Normal range of character mediocrity (+0)
6-8     Below average range (-1)
4-5    Very low range (-2)
3       Bottom of humanoid range (-3)
2       Creatures below humanoid stats
1       Least creatures' stat
0       Non-existent condition or stat

You can see that most of the creatures in D&D are measured on the human scale (hence the reason why demi-humans have their stats adjusted during character creation) and all other creatures in the multiverse must therefore ALSO exist in this range. Since size and HD determines damage ranges for most of the really large creatures in the game, no stats are needed to determine relative strengths, constitution, dexterity, etc. All creatures were given a nebulous intelligence stat, so that gives a basis for Intelligence (and Wisdom by inference). Charisma for creatures is a pretty useless stat, although suffice to say that leaders among animals and humanoids will have higher charisma (or strength, whichever is more desired by the species). This more linear representation of attributes make more sense than breaking out percentages between integer points, especially when done at the very high end of the range. What does this mean for some magic items that give monster stats to players? Well, I suppose that those Gauntlets of Ogre Power might just grant a 19 Strength for the wearer, since Ogres and Hill Giants seem to be of the same build (but the larger giants deal more damage and have larger HD of course). Giant Strengths can remain as they are since damage and Hit Dice determine how well these creatures fight better than adjusting for strength for each attack.

Perhaps instead of using Strength for carrying capacity and damage, we could adapt the formula from Villains & Vigilantes - Carrying Capacity = (Str/10)^3 + Con/10) x 1/2 weight. This translates into some number of pounds which indicates how much weight a person can lift and move with. Referring to a table listing various carrying capacities one can then arrive at a base amount of damage a person can do. Since a weapon is little more than a tool for transferring and amplifying natural strength, one needs only come up with a factor to multiply the natural damage of a weapon wielder. This way, whether you're dealing with a 40 lb kobold wielding a small axe or a massive frost giant wielding a similar axe, the axe multiplier stays the same and the base damage of the creature is always the same. Say that a creature has base damage of 1d4 (calculated from a chart and the formula) and is using a long sword with a multiplier of x2. The damage for the sword would become 2-8. No strength modifiers are needed since they are already taken into consideration in the formula. No size or weight considerations are needed either since the formula takes these into consideration. You can assume that a club is a club regardless of size and the damage simply comes from the wielder since the wielder must be strong enough to lift the weapon and use it properly. The only problems you run into are those creatures that can change size (spriggan, et. al.) or spells that change size (enlarge/reduce, polymorph, etc.). In this case the new carrying capacity must be recalculated.

I wonder if encumbrance can be somehow scaled to be more simplistic as well. As it is, movement in 1st edition and previous editions is poorly defined as to how it is used in combat. Later versions are very explicit and allow movement and attacks during the round, but the definition of the round has inflated and deflated over the years. It began as 6 seconds, was inflated to 60 seconds (1 minute), then reduced again to 6 seconds. The exploration turn has always been 10 minutes, but even then the pace is ridiculously slow, even given the rates for mapping and investigation. I'm not a fan of the 1st edition movement scales, but the 3.x version works for me. I don't like 3.x skills taking the limelight, but I think that the better defined rolls for surprise, hiding, sneaking, and listening are way better.

This conversion is on hold until such time as I can complete my other projects. I'm continuing to review the rules as written in search of a "better way" but it seems that no one will currently be able to release the perfect version of the D&D ruleset. It's curious to note that the Wizards of the Coast developers are approaching the game from the same angle. I doubt that we would agree on the particulars of what makes D&D such an iconic game. They have an agenda of selling games to the masses - my only agenda is to play in a system in which I feel comfortable and happy. Those two views are pretty much at odds, and have been since Gygax was ousted from TSR back in the day.

Basic or Original D&D Snafus

The conversion process continues apace, but with several breaks for what I like to call "reality checks." I'm stuck on which alignment system to use. Given the Basic three-alignment system does not seem to work logically in the system, I need to come up with some other method. At first I thought that simply changing from one axis (Lawful - Chaotic) to the other (Good - Evil) would solve the problem, but then adding in the sub-classes to the mix makes me realize that this is perhaps not enough. Moving to a 5-alignment system (LG, LE, N, CG, CE) also seems to not make much sense, although curiously this seemed to be the system the Monster Manual used. Ever wonder why there are so few monsters not of these five alignments? The nine-alignment system has been in place since 1st edition and has not changed since that time. This may be the method to use since it has seen the least amount of modification (although there are numerous people who have balked at the definitions of this system).

Curiously, I looked up Assassins last week and realized that they were originally conceived of as having a Neutral alignment, and were not necessarily allowable as player characters (required DM permission), although the same could be said of all the non-standard classes in OD&D. Given the rationale in the description I could see this as a possibility, however the game is entrenched in Good vs. Evil, black vs. white, and killing for profit is very much an evil thing in my book. Use of deadly poisons is also an arguably evil thing. I believe that the Assassin may have been the antithesis of the Paladin as originally conceived.

So let's look at the Paladin class. The only real requirements of being a paladin are a high Charisma (17 or 18 score) and having to be and remain Lawful in alignment (later Lawful Good). Since Lawful = Good in the old system, this is rather redundant and a poor requirement given that there are only 3 choices and one (Chaotic) is typically avoided for player characters. So all the characters in D&D are typically Lawful or Neutral. Having a requirement like this is ridiculous since you probably would select that alignment half the time anyway. Moving to the 5-alignment system, there is still only one additional choice, so the limiting requirement is not such a limitation after all. The Paladin gets a lot of useful abilities for these requirements. Now, the high Charisma is not so easy to downplay, but I can remember lots of paladins running around in our early campaigns, and I can guarantee that most of them were NOT rolled using 3d6 (or even 4d6).

Assuming that Paladins are used, LG would be the alignment restriction to keep. Using Druids limits them to Neutral in alignment. Assassins would be required to be the same alignment as thieves, but lean heavily towards Evil alignments. I would not keep an Assassin from being Neutral, but such a character would have to prove themselves to be more of a bounty hunter with a bring 'em back alive motto, or someone sent for religious or political reasons to take out only evil dictators or threats to civilization. Such a character could be considered Neutral, but never Good by any means. In fact, it's interesting to note that except for the use of poison, such a character is essentially a Paladin sent to take out what their superiors tell them to. The difference is that the assassin wants to be paid, but the paladin donates his loot to some other charitable organization and cannot retain large amounts of wealth. Given that D&D is all about the rewards (treasure especially), an Assassin makes more sense in a traditional dungeon than a paladin. This is probably the reason why the "novelist" approach to gaming came into being, to give those goody-two-shoes a reason to be in an adventuring party when they make much better mission-appointed temple agents and patriarch guards.

The Ranger class can either be considered to be Lawful (Good) in nature or Neutral if using the old system, although I tend to see them as more CG or NG in the 9-alignment system seeing as they are tutored by druids and elves. Their selfless nature, endangering themselves for the good of others, seems much more in line with a good alignment, but their not-so-direct methods of attacking from the shadows and using ranged weapons tends to keep them from a traditional and military (lawful) style of fighting, much like the elves. They make better scouts and agents than leaders. I could see rangers as being Neutral in the old system, but that seems counter-intuitive to me since the alignment requirement seems to dictate the actions of the Ranger. So I suppose that the Good alignment component remains.

In the end we get to the 1st edition paradigm for the classes, and as much as I hate to admit it, the 1st edition rules work better in so many ways. However, I am still a fan of the Basic version of combat. In my first games, we would mix the two systems together to make the whole thing work and it seemed like it did for a long time. It wasn't until I started trying to piece together the rules for combat from the Dungeon Master's Guide that all the confusion started. Is the added complexity good? It seems to be, but at some point adding more to the game takes away from the enjoyment as the later versions proved. You can only seem to have fun so long as you keep it as a game - the more of a hobby you make it the more involved you get and seek answers in-game to questions that never really can be resolved with the roll of a die.

I'm going to keep trying to resolve the differences, but I still feel like the evolution of the game into 1st edition and beyond is a natural course of such things and that in the end we should end up simply picking bits and pieces from each edition that work the best. Accepting limitations once everyone has been given all the options is very difficult unless the DM can somehow explain why choosing these things is not necessarily better. Some people just want to be the most powerful thing on two legs and will lord over everyone else to get it. Thankfully I am not one of those people and neither are the people I currently play with.

Sturmgard: Druid Class

I did a little research into the OD&D Druid presented in Eldritch Wizardry the other night. It seems that the Druid of AD&D resembles this version rather closely. The only difference is in the level structure. The abilities are relatively the same, including the shape change ability although it is not well-defined. I may have to look up the monster version of the druid in Greyhawk Supplement I. A Basic D&D version may look like this:

DRUID

Druids are a sub-class of cleric in that they are worshippers of all things natural. They are protectors of the wilderness and worship the sun, moon, and trees. Their magical powers are derived from this worship and include elemental spells as well as influence over plants and animals. In this way they are more of a combination of magic-user and cleric.

REQUIREMENTS: Druids have no special ability requirements, however they have Wisdom as their prime requisite and must be of Neutral alignment. If a druid ever changes alignment they lose all their druidic powers (abilities and spells) and can never again advance in level. A fallen druid can perform a quest to regain his or her former status but will not be able to gain experience until the quest is completed. Druids may not wear metal armor, can only use wooden shields, and have a list of allowed weapons including: scimitar, sickle, dagger, staff, sling, spear, and club. They may not use any proscribed weapon or lose their spell casting abilities for one day. Druids use mistletoe as a holy symbol and this plant must be specially picked and preserved for their use. Properly picked mistletoe makes all their spells work at full strength. Improperly picked or natural mistletoe can still work, but all saves against such spells are at +2 and/or range and duration is halved. They may use any magic items usable by clerics except those which are written (scrolls, books, etc.)

SPECIAL ABILITIES: Druids cast spells like a cleric, but they cast spells of a different sort taken from the druid spell list. Druid spells deal with nature (weather, plants, animals) and the elemental forces (fire, water, air, and earth). Druids have no influence over the undead. All druids are able to identify plants, animals, and pure water. At 3rd level they may walk through undergrowth without any movement penalty and without leaving a trail. At 7th level they gain the ability to shape-change into an animal form three times each day (once each of mammal, bird, or reptile). At 9th level they are immune to charm effects from fey folk (such as pixies, nixies, dryads, satyrs, etc.). Druids attack and save as clerics but gain +2 to saving throws against fire and lightning.

Druids have an organization based on wilderness regions. Each large wilderness area is presided by a Great Druid who is the supreme druidic ruler. This position comes with many responsibilities and may be challenged by any of the lesser Archdruids. Above 10th level, druids advance by trial combat with a druid of the next highest rank. These duels can be simply ritual or to the death, as decided by the combatants beforehand. Those who best their opponent become the next rank; those defeated drop a rank to the next lowest level.

Well, this seems to be all the details I can remember at the moment. The druid here is not well-defined since I'm not listing all the spells. Most of the spells from 1st edition are also found in the OD&D supplement, with key spells such as faerie fire, heat metal, produce flame, wall of fire, animal summoning, protection from lightning, insect plague, and firestorm among those that stand out as purely druidic in nature. Druids do have access to basic curative spells, but they can only reincarnate souls, not raise them from the dead. I suppose this class can function in the Sturmgard campaign in place of a Neutral Cleric (since I'll already have a cult of the Riddlemaster which is very Neutral in alignment). I have to make sure that animal friendship is one of those spells usable in the lower level since I want rangers to have access to that spell as well.

Sturmgard: Ranger Class

To my knowledge there was never a published ranger class until the 1st edition of AD&D. Sure, there were some attempts at a ranger class in Dragon, but they all seemed based on Aragorn from Tolkien. I wonder what such a ranger class would look like in Original D&D? Some thoughts below:

RANGER

A ranger is a human who follows the teachings of the elves and the druids, learning the wilderness stealth, woodcraft, and tracking abilities of the elves while paying homage to the beliefs of the Druids. Although they revere the teachings of the Neutral Druids, Rangers are of Good alignment and must remain so or else they are forever cast out from their order, unable to cast spells or increase in experience ever after. A difficult quest set by the druids is the only way to regain lost status, along with a reversion of alignment back to Good.

REQUIREMENTS: In order to become a ranger, a character must have a Strength and Constitution of no less than 13. Strength and Wisdom are the prerequisites of this class. If a ranger does not have a Wisdom of 9 or higher he or she may not cast Druid spells at higher levels. A ranger never gains bonus experience points from having high ability scores.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: A ranger is able to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows in outdoor settings as a Thief of the same level. This allows the ranger to attack with surprise or shoot from a distance unseen as a sniper in the woods. Unlike the backstab ability of Thieves, this only nets them a surprise round of attacks at +2 to hit. Furthermore, a ranger can track creatures moving through the wilderness with great skill. A ranger has a 3 in 6 chance at levels 1-7, 4 in 6 chance at levels 8-14, and 5 in 6 chance at level 15+. Success allows the ranger to follow tracks for one watch period (4 hours) without having to check again until weather conditions change or the creature tries to hide his or her trail. Rangers can do +1 damage to humanoids and giants per Hit Die they possess, up to Name Level (max +9 damage). This bonus applies to kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls, lizardmen, troglodytes, bugbears, ogres, trolls, and giants of all sorts. Finally, at 8th level the ranger gains the ability to cast a limited number of druid spells as a caster of half his actual level (an 8th level ranger can cast a druid spell as a 4th level druid). A ranger begins the game knowing the Elven language as well as the secret languages of Druids and his alignment tongue.

Rangers have a d8 Hit Die, can wear only leather armor or chain mail armor, and are limited to using any sword, spear, short bow, long bow, crossbow, hand axe, dagger, and club. Rangers may use shields. Their code and beliefs forbid them from using flaming oil or poison in combat.

I envision rangers as protectors of the forest, defenders of the Good creatures of the woods, and liaisons with the elves in the deep woods who accept rangers as trusted friends while they are more distant to humans in general. I see rangers as advance scouts in times of war, border guardians in times of peace, and would readily join any group seeking to eliminate some evil that threatens civilization or areas of Good demi-humans in the wilderness. Rangers should be able to come from any climate, from northern tundras to tropical rainforests.

A fallen ranger is essentially stuck at whatever level they attained before turning from Good and cannot cast Druid spells (although they retain all their former abilities). I can see such fallen rangers as outcasts attacking strangers in the woods and possibly seeking former associates to beg forgiveness or try and atone for their misdeeds. Altogether a very interesting facet of the class.

A Name Level Ranger (Ranger Lord) does not build a castle as a Fighter would, but may start a ranger conclave in the wilderness, a refuge for travelers in the wilds and a place to train new rangers. A Ranger Lord breaks from his own conclave (usually on good terms) and starts a new conclave, typically in a wild region that needs taming. Such new conclaves are meant to reduce the threat of Evil in a region so that travelers are kept safe. A ranger will thus clear a 5-mile hex of land as his own and patrol all the hexes adjacent to his conclave, usually near a road, river, or other stretch of land generally traveled by Good folk. A conclave is usually housed in a wooden lodge or adobe dwelling, possibly camouflaged, but definitely guarded by wild animals friendly to the ranger conclave.

Ranger Druid spells begin at 8th level and increase in number and power until the ranger reaches 16th level. The ranger selects his spells as a druid and is required to carry a holy symbol.

8th   - 1 first level
9th   - 2 first level
10th - 2 first level ,1 second level

11th - 3 first level, 2 second level
12th - 3 first level, 2 second level, 1 third level
13th - 4 first level, 3 second level, 2 third level
14th - 4 first level, 4 second level, 3 third level
15th - 4 first level, 4 second level, 4 third level

16th level + no more spells per day are gained, remains 4 first level, 4 second level, 4 third level

Conversion: Thuin to Sturmgard, Basic D&D Style

I've been trying to decide what to do with the couple of binders of material I made for my own campaign world Thuin. I think I've come up with the perfect solution! In order to occupy my month-time off from 1st edition I'll convert my world to a Basic (or Original) D&D setting. This really is a trivial task, although it also involved getting to work on revising the Dungeon Trial of the Riddlemaster. In fact, this gives me a chance to re-write all the history of the world and make changes to my original world concept.

I intend to keep the main maps I worked on so long ago, but change the names and personalities in the area. All adventures need a base town and Malbork was just a wee bit too isolated and small to serve that purpose. Moving the base town to Poznan makes more sense. The Sturmgard Forest region remains integral, but I have to rewrite the portion on magic being scarce and the paranoia of the Twilight Council. I think I can keep everything else pretty much the same. I want so desperately to eliminate Drow from my campaign. It was an addition I made to appease one player long ago and I regret the decision since it added something to the campaign that it really did not need.

That being said, I can tell already that this move is going to be somewhat limiting. Using the old rules brings back level limits, class limits, and fewer alignments (my one concession will be using alignments of Good, Neutral, and Evil instead of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic). I've never really understood why spells like Protection from Evil and Dispel Evil existed in a game dominated by Law and Chaos. Heck, I may even decide to use the 9-alignment system, and some of the classes from OD&D supplements (like the paladin, druid, and assassin). It seems to me that the game could be very fun, and even plausible on-line.

My 1st dungeon level is complete, as was the 2nd level (about 180 rooms between the two!), but by the time I got to the third level everything sort of went haywire. The players got bored of entering the place and I think it had a lot to do with the northern clime I placed it in. It took forever to get from Malbork to the dungeon, and even longer when the weather got bad. There was a great weather system in the Chainmail rules using 2d6 to figure out the weather conditions hourly, but I'm sure that can be changed to once every watch period (4 hours of time). I think I'll have the Sturmgard be a little warmer, possibly from geothermal activity and partly from elven magic influencing the clime from the central portion outward (so it will be colder at the edges of the Sturmgard). I'm thinking of really only mapping the Sturmgard region for now and only dealing with that as the world map - the other cultures will be described at the edges of civilization, but there's no need to explain the distant races until I make an adventure in that region. Perhaps I'll assemble a Gazetteer series starting with GAZ1: The Sturmgard. I want to keep such figures as the Goblin King (although he has to change to suit the system), the Riddlemaster, Count Simon Whittenborg (although there are no rangers unless I want to develop them for the system), and the Dwarves of Boldersted. The Dungeon becomes changed to the basic races - mites become kobolds, norkers revert to hobgoblins, the goblins and orcs remain the same, and the Clerics of Neutrality remain essentially unchanged. The grimlocks on the second level are changed to gnolls, and the gnolls/flind become troglodytes. I can keep the magic-user section and undead sections with a few changes. I really need to revamp the flow of the dungeon since the pre-determined route through the levels is no longer required. Originally the party was going to have to find keys, one per level, and then follow the clues that led them down to the next level. However, in order for this to work they would have to pretty much do it all in one shot - pretty much an impossibility given the size I made it.

My expanded version will feature more D&D creatures, multiple entrances to the dungeon, a druid cairn or stone circle marking the mound, more dungeon stairs and shafts to the surface to allow for fresh water and fresh air flow as well as a away for those pesky vermin to crawl into the place. I intend on keeping the access to the caves beneath Sturmgard, but changing the nature of the caves to more of a geothermal/volcanic nature. I want the surface forests to teem with wildlife of natural origin, humanoids, demi-humans, and other monsters. The mountains are to be the scary places of the campaign, filled with goblinoids, giants, and some dragons (just like in old-time Thuin), but these should be defeatable if played correctly. I want to keep the green dragon, although he'll be much less scary to a high-level group (unless I decided to increase his size per the Mentzer set).

AD&D Primer

Last night I started picking through the rulebooks of AD&D to try and form a "Basic"version to use as a teaching aid. So often, players get bogged down in specifics and miss the whole point of what the game is about. The game is about getting together with other people and assuming a role while having a fun adventure. The "fun" in AD&D is survival and winning through nearly impossible odds. The rewards are a sense of accomplishment, treasure for the player character, and increased power with continued character growth.

That said, AD&D, in its most basic form, is nearly identical to any other form of the game ever made. There are six abilities, several races and classes to choose from, spells for the divine and arcane spell casters, and equipment lists. Monsters are defeated, treasures are won, and experience points are awarded to increase in level and face tougher monsters to get better treasures, and so on. However, there are some nuances to the game that many are unfamiliar with. For example, clerics in AD&D could not be of True Neutral alignment. Thieves had to be Neutral or Evil (NG being the only allowed "good" alignment and very rarely). Using the base classes (Cleric, Fighter, Magic-user, and Thief) and the base races of the original game (dwarf, elf, halfling, and human), one can explain the game thoroughly and yet still eliminate some choices. Players can be overwhelmed by the pages of rules that need to be known. Reducing all that to a pamphlet assists in learning the key concepts. The snafu of level limits, sub-classes, and exotic race choices aside, AD&D holds up well to a limited scope.

I started last night with stripping all vestiges of the gnome, half-elf, and half-orc from the player section. I then stripped out all the sub-classes (druid, ranger, paladin, illusionist, assassin) as well as the Monk and the Bard. This leaves 4 races and 4 classes - the elegant system of Moldvay Basic. However, I kept the races and classes as separate choices, whereas Basic D&D combined the classes into the demi-human races (so all elves were fighter/magic-users....probable but not desirable). Keeping the nine alignments and making sure that all the details of the AD&D rulebooks remained intact in the descriptions was easy to do and still have the game function. The greatest strength of AD&D was its modularity! Speaking of Strength, I removed percentile strength for this primer version of the game since it is a concept that seems overly complicated. I placed a note stating that in the actual version of the game percentile strength exists and that its use should be avoided until after the players have enough experience with the rules.

I discovered something that I rarely regarded with respect to level limits. All the limits in the book assume an 18 in the prime requisite ability. One must reduce these by 1 for a 17, and by 2 for a 16 or less. Even so, the lowest level limit (4th level for halfling fighters) is still not within the range for a 1st through 3rd level primer. I discussed level limits only to allow players to know that once they start playing the game for real, their choice of character race in the beginning of the game would have an impact on their advancement beyond 3rd level. I decided to keep multi-classing for demi-humans as a concept in the primer since that must be determined at 1st level and is hard to reintegrate once the game progresses.

I also decided to keep the number of cleric spells the same, while pruning the 1st level magic-user spells down to 20 (from 30) and the 2nd level magic-user spells down to 20 (from 24). The ones removed have little impact on the game and are more of the confusing spells or ones without immediate benefit to the magic-user (i.e. affect normal fires, forget, jump, push, etc.). Although they are eliminated for the primer, they are within use for experienced players when they begin using the AD&D hardcovers. The rule here is easier integration into the system slowly. I would have eliminated more of the magic-user spells (down to 12 per level) but then I would be forced to eliminate iconic spells from the start. I prefer to demonstrate the diversity of spell selection, especially since the characters need to follow the rules for intelligence!

Equipment is going to be a challenge. I'm tempted to leave it all as is, but perhaps giving some explanation for some items that require it. For instance, when teaching some of my friends' kids they snickered about buying a 10' pole. Their first time in B2 they triggered a pit trap which I told them could have been detected  by the use of a 10' pole. If no one knows that secret doors are in the game, then no one looks for them. If the kids knew that pit traps could be detected with a pole, they would have carried one without thinking twice. Stuff like that will need to be explained to the neophyte players - stuff that was assumed to be known by veteran gamers in the late 1970s.

I don't know how much of the other stuff needs to be put into the primer. For instance, I don't think I need to include stats for all the 1st and 2nd level monsters in the game, just the ones likely to be encountered. Perhaps using or writing my own 1st level adventure is the way to do this justice. By placing in a little of everything into a short adventure I'm sure that it would serve to illustrate the basics of the game. I should also include some treasure, both mundane and magical. I don't think that any armor, shield, or weapon found in the primer should be above +1 value. Scrolls, potions, and minor wands would be the most common items, with a few iconic miscellaneous items. A few of the least magical rings would also be acceptable, but no staves or rods. Encounter charts for dungeons might be useful as well. The one section that I should stress is the combat chapter and the section on how to dungeon master - essentially copying the text from Dungeon Module B2 should suffice!

Despite the name of the game, dragons are too powerful for a neophyte party to face. Perhaps no more than a small black dragon or white dragon should be included to at least demonstrate what that type of monster is capable of. Again, limiting the choices in the primer is good, but in this case it may limit the DM's ability to create an adventure given the limits of environs for these dragon types. We shall see. I don't see myself including any creature beyond 4 hit dice into the monster section for the primer. This way the player characters can be surprised when the DM opens the Monster Manual for the first time! I'll have to set things up in the Dungeon Master's section in a way that allows the players to read the details without giving away too much. The Dungeon Master's Guide will be held secret from the players after all! A simplified "to hit" chart for all the classes and a neat little saving throw chart for the classes should suffice for levels 1-3. A simple to hit chart for monsters of ½ HD to 4+1 HD should be included. I think ogres will be the apex humanoid on the monster list for the primer.

The sample adventure should be short enough to hold everyone's attention, yet diverse enough to contain all the elements essential to understanding AD&D. Perhaps the 1st level of a dungeon with room for expansion by the DM if desired. The gatehouse idea from Basic was perfect, but too limited in scope. I intend to test play this adventure so that I can get an accurate "sample of play". Perhaps using my own Dungeon Trial of the Riddlemaster as the basis for the adventure would be the way to go here, although heavily modified. If that seems too long then perhaps one of the sample dungeons from later editions of the game or one featured in DUNGEON or Dragon Magazine would work. I have a soft spot for the older scenarios written in Dragon Magazine, but I would perhaps alter things slightly. Using  the Basic starting dungeon from the Mentzer boxed set might also work. I need to incorporate animals, undead, humanoids, mindless vermin, strange monsters and some traps, tricks, and secret areas. One needs to learn about marching order, light sources, character interaction, signs to look for traps and secret doors, mapping techniques, how to conduct battles fairly and quickly, etc. So much to teach and only a few pages to do it in.

D&D 5.0: That Didn't Take Long....

While checking out some YouTube videos yesterday I cam across one that essentially introduced the newest version of D&D - yes, that's right, ANOTHER, NEWER D&D than 4.0! The video is here.

Now I warn you, the video is an hour long. I sat through it all, including the Q&A session. It basically iterates exactly what my concerns and complaints were about the direction D&D was taking. Apparently the designers are well aware that the power in the game has shifted dramatically from the hands of the DM to the hands of the players since 1st edition. They finally realized that this is not optimal for game play (duh) and are starting to shift back to the middle-ground paradigm of 2nd edition.

Some very interesting questions were posed and the panelists danced around some of the questions, dodged others, but tried very diplomatically to address all the questions posed. These designers realize that they are there to provide a framework only, not tell you how to play the game. They create the tools that the players and DM use to enjoy the game. I'm glad they realize that. Really I am. However, one of the questions posed regarded re-buying all the books. Of course they did not answer it in the way anyone wanted them to, but they did address the fact that the constant re-vamping of the game had hurt it in the last 3 versions released (namely 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0). Essentially they want all players of D&D to be playing the new version. They want to make a core "kernel" of rules that apply to all games equally, then modularize the extensions that make certain game play possible and certain settings possible. So, if you liked the story-telling version of D&D (namely 2.0 and 2.5) playing in Forgotten Realms, then you use the rules for dramatic storytelling and the Forgotten Realms accessory which adds and subtracts from the kernel rules until you have what you want.

I think this may finally be the way to go with D&D. Making a completely neutral version of the rules separates all the aspects of the game into its base components and the DM picks and chooses what he or she wants to exist in his or her game. Collectors can still buy all the products and gamers can buy just what they want to play. It seems they are going to strip out all the tweaked rules from 3.0+ and leave the system streamlined, although feats and skills may still remain as a means of explaining how some rules work (i.e. climbing, swimming, perception, etc.) Some of the additions were pretty useful and made sense - not all were as elegant as a "simple" d20 roll that they promised. When it takes a page to describe how to even use the skill and all the modifiers and situations, then there is a problem with the system. I think that defining ahead of time how much detail a campaign will need is something of a watershed moment for the designers and they will have to determine how in-depth some things need to be.

I was NOT impressed in any way with version 4.0. I found the key elements of the game to be overwhelmed with a new way of doing things that, in my opinion, made it into another game entirely. I realize that MY favorite version of the game may never see print again (although they are releasing special editions of the core rules for 1st edition in July 2012), but the game should at least be recognizable as D&D so that if one of us "old timers" picks up a book we don't feel like we need a glossary to understand all them new-fangled rules.

New World Old Skool!

Since I've been trying to preserve my old 1st edition AD&D books by typing them into the computer, I've been getting the itch to create again. I know I have limited time and all but I actually miss creating new and unique campaign elements. The closest I came to an original setting was Thuin, but later decided to scrap it since the interest wasn't there anymore. I'm starting to get more of a Sword & Sorcery vibe from 1st edition so I might like to try my hand at making a mega-dungeon and little details about the surroundings to begin with. This worked well with Thuin in the beginning, but the characters developed more of a wilderness bent in later years. What I may want to do is more of a Castle Greyhawk setting where the dungeon is the main antagonist and the players simply exist to explore its depths and find the treasures and mysteries. Using only the AD&D books originally published to make the game seems to be the way to go - no Unearthed Arcana or Survival Guides necessary. All by-the-book rules (those that aren't broken) to run the combats and spells involved.

I was going to revamp Thuin but decided that the dungeon as written was too campaign specific and needed to be redone anyway. A fresh start may do me good.

Dungeon Module T1: Moathouse Monsters and Mayhem

Looking over the old modules for clues on how the game was played back in the day I stumbled over some very interesting stuff. While reviewing the monsters as written in the module there were a number of discrepancies between their stats as listed in the Monster Manual and the creature listing. The Upper Ruins were pretty much by-the-book, but once you got to the Dungeon Level it was seemingly a mash of old school references and what I can only refer to as "screw the player" mentality at work.

SPOILER ALERT (for all 3 of you who have never run or played this module....)




Room#1 of the dungeon is a stairway with green slime over it to discourage investigation of the lower ruins. The AC of the slimes is listed as 7, but in the Monster Manual it is AC 9. Seems a trivial complaint or perhaps a transcription error (many times people have sloppy handwriting and I can see a 9 being mistaken for a 7). In any case, this monster makes no sense since it has a Move 0" and "drops on unwary targets." So how the hell does a new patch develop on a ceiling to continue attacking this way?? Does it get moved there by other creatures? Does it have a reproductive system that violently splatters itself on walls and ceiling?

In Room #4 of the dungeon, there are 12 zombies, all perfectly presented as any other undead zombie in the Monster Manual, except for the fact that these zombies take only 1 hp of damage from any piercing weapons. It was written in so casually that it seemed as if ALL zombies are like this. No mention of where this decision or ruling came from. It does not exist in the Monster Manual. Could Gary Gygax have been working on ways of modifying the basic monsters? Was he somehow confusing them with skeletons which take half damage from piercing and slashing weapons? Are the zombies so dessicated that they are becoming skeletal?? No explanation is given.

In Room #7 the ogre Lubash is listed with 5+1 HD. Normal ogres are 4+1 HD. His bardiche does 2-8 + 5 points of damage. Ogres using weapons do only +2 damage per the Monster Manual. Leader ogres have much higher HD and hp and do up to +4 damage. So where do these modifications come from? One would think that a beginner adventure would have more info on why this creature differs from the norm, or at least a rationalization. Could Gary have forgotten ogre HD? Possible. Was he developing a better damage system for ogres based on size and strength? Perhaps. Did he mention why he changed it? No! In fact, this is a TPK waiting to happen. No party of 1st (or even 2nd) level characters stand a chance against an ogre capable of causing 7-13 points of damage with a swing. They would need to be very lucky with their rolls or gain surprise. Note that sleep is useless against his HD, perhaps a reason for making them so high.

Room #14 has a pack of 4 ghouls, much stronger than ordinary ghouls in that they cause 1-4/1-4/1-8 damage instead of normal ghoul damage of 1-3/1-3/1-6 per the Monster Manual. Now it does say that the "Master" keeps them well fed, but giving them MORE damage is just cruel to the party. Granted, a cleric has a chance of turning them at this level, but it is more likely for them to gain surprise and paralyze their targets before they can do so. If the ghouls have surprise, then the party is doomed since they can then strike any paralyzed members automatically for double damage! The only godsend of this monster description is that Gary finally saw fit to give us duration on the paralysis!! For the first time in any module I can remember, the paralysis is listed as 3-12 turns! Since most combats last only a few rounds, this is rarely an issue. Imagine though that the poor PC rolls a 12 for duration. That's 2 hours of paralysis in game time. If they were paralyzed at the beginning of the combat, that character is either dead when the party TPKs or useless for the next 12 turns of game time (a long time indeed). It's not likely that they have any means of removing the paralysis either.

Room #17 contains 15 guards. Let me reiterate that - 15 GUARDS!!! This breaks down to 12 normal men (0-level humans), 2 2nd-level fighter sergeants, and a 4th level fighter lieutenant. A normal party size is 6-8 characters of levels 1 (or 2 by this point). Most of a party at this level consists of henchmen of 1st level max. Most spell casters are out of spells. Unless the party decides to hit this place last after rest and recuperation (likely requiring several days to heal everyone to full) the temple force is likely to realize that the party is on to them and has learned too much already. Then again they are led by a wise cleric with an intelligence of 9 so who knows!

Room #18 contains the leader of this band of evil, Lareth the Beautiful, whom I suspect was originally a drow cleric converted to be a human. This cleric is a powerhouse! He has three stats at 18 (Strength, Wisdom, and Charisma), the best possible armor and weapons for his class, a nearly impossible to hit Armor Class of -1 (any character requires a 20 to hit), and a full complement of spells to use against the party. They are very unlikely to kill him if he is played correctly. His staff of striking can eliminate any target with a single swing while he is immune to "hold" spells due to his phylactery of action, and sleep will not affect him. Burning hands will likely not work if he has cast his resist fire spell, and neither will burning oil (another useful tactic used by old schoolers). Shocking grasp has a good chance of affecting him though as would some of the illusionist spells. He can take out a party of fully rested characters by himself, but add to this the 15 guards in the prior room (one of which is a 4th level fighter) and the tables are definitely turned. The party will NEVER gain surprise on them because there are 7 guards in the hallway BEFORE they even get this far! Tight quarters and defensive tactics ensures that Lareth will be triumphant. If anyone escapes he would assume that his agents could track them down and kill them before they reached Hommlet. If not he could also send word to the Temple to send reinforcements. The moathouse would likely be able to restock monsters faster than Furyondian troops could organize. If the Hommlet militia is called in, they may be able to overwhelm the men, but only if the secret exit is blocked. It's not likely that Lareth would go quietly but he is Chaotic Evil and would likely surrender to capture than die (given his high Wisdom). It might be better for him to leave the moathouse entirely, perhaps leaving deathtraps for future explorers (likes glyphs of warding at all the secret entrances). He could return later with a larger force of gnolls or bugbears from the Temple, or perhaps wait out any retaliation in a nearby shack or wilderness camp. The bogs around the moathouse are likely to be easy to hide in. If all else fails he can head to Nulb, but reporting failure to his superiors in the Temple would likely get him killed.

These are the only problems I can see with the module. It is otherwise a classic example of how to start a campaign and establish a base town. There are three factions (Good - St. Cuthbert, Neutral - Old Faith, and Evil - Temple forces) and many NPCs to interact with here. There does seem to be a lack of trainers for all the classes, but the major ones are represented (except for thieves). It is likely that training would occur in Verbobonc, necessitating a day trip away from Hommlet and at least a week of time otherwise in training. This is not likely to happen more than twice for each character, and likely but once for most of them during T1. Since the group is assumed to be mostly good or neutral in alignment, training in Verbobonc is possible for all (except assassins). Thieves, clerics, and druids would advance the fastest, followed by fighters. More characters = less XP per person = slower advancement.

It might be fun to run this adventure in reverse - have the party be a group of evil adventuring mercenaries based at the Temple of Elemental Evil and hired on to cause trouble in the region. They could make strikes against the forces of good and use Nulb as a base of operations. Perhaps they are needed to locate other former holdings of the Temple, clear them out, and recruit new forces to the mix. I could see encountering gnolls in the Gnarley and fighting them to prove supremacy and strength. Perhaps they hire bandits as henchmen and raid farms (most of the farmers in or near Hommlet have militia training and could be a match if they have enough fighting men). The end goal here would be an attack on Hommlet itself to gain control of the village and cripple all trade through the region. In order to do this the evil party would have to run interference to keep the major powers of good (Celene, Ostverk, Verbobonc, and Furyondy) from finding out until it was too late. This would include intercepting messengers, rooting out spies, and attacking strongholds of elves, gnomes, and humans nearby. Naturally many NPC parties would be engaged in combat as well. Turning on their leaders in the Temple might also be considered in a bid of power to gain control. Perhaps they ally themselves with one of the elemental temples vying for dominance. Or they could be manipulated into freeing the demon trapped within.

Greyhawk Pre 1980

I came into Dungeons & Dragons a little later than I would have liked. The sad truth of the matter is that I was born too late to actually be involved in the initial printing (I was 4 years old in 1974) and in the wrong place (most of the D&D stuff was in the midwest, I live on the east coast). By the time that AD&D came along I was still too young (8 years old), but well on my way of becoming more interested in that sort of gaming. I had loved Greek Mythology as a child and continued to love sci-fi and fantasy well into my early teens. My father taking me to see Conan the Barbarian (starring Arnold Schwartzenegger) really charged me up for sword and sorcery gaming. So, in 1980, when I had a slight taste of Basic D&D for all of 2 weeks before the game was returned and DUNGEON! purchased, I began my journey into RPGs. At the age of 13 I learned about RPGs and AD&D through a school club. I later joined a group of my own, a bunch of teenage boys bored and looking to have some summer fun. It was the summer of 1983 that introduced me to the World of Greyhawk Boxed set, and the love affair bloomed!

The maps were incredible, the setting so deep and filled with a multitude of possibilities, many of which were beyond my young and inexperienced mind to realize. Sure, we played the initial adventures in a Greyhawk that was only loosely considered to be part of that world (mostly in name only), but simply using the maps was magical to me.

It wasn't until college that I learned about D&D that existed BEFORE AD&D. I had no idea that anything was produced prior to the hardcovers. Learning about Greyhawk Supplement I and the Folio were something of an eye-opener. I had no idea how the game had evolved. What mysteries lay in this booklet? Not many, I can assure you...

The Greyhawk supplement was little more than "new" rules for the game, rules that later saw print in standard AD&D. There were no maps, no explanations of cultures or background, and no secrets to be revealed. It wasn't until I started re-reading the old modules that I realized that Greyhawk as Gary ran it was NOT the published version from the Folio and later sets. Gary's Greyhawk was wide open and little explained, only some information given as pertained to the adventure at hand. If you don't believe me, try reading the intro to T1: Village of Hommlet and try to rectify it with the wilderness map provided - it does not fit. Forum discussions with Gygax revealed that his Greyhawk was a version of North America with a few pieces enlarged or reduced. The Nyr Dyv IS Lake Superior - the shape is nearly identical. The Hellfurnace and Crystalmist Mountains are the Rocky Mountains. The Scarlet Brotherhood apparently resides in Florida, and the Great Kingdom was once the American Colonies with the Malachite Throne situated either in New York or Washington D.C.

Oh well, I may never get to experience the original Greyhawk, but knowing its origins, a new one can be re-created by using my map experiences.

Updating Keep on the Borderlands

I spent a better part of this weekend going over Dungeon Module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands in an effort to see how it could be brought forward and used as an introductory module for D&D 3.5. I was amazed how much of the advice given in the DM section is still relevant to modern gaming. Gygax's "writing voice" came through clearly in every paragraph.

The style of the module is similar to Gygax's own campaign - lots of different monsters in a small area existing in some sort of chaotic ecosystem without rhyme or reason, but close enough to civilization to be considered a threat. I've always assumed that evil congregates as the result of a summons, sort of a calling from some master planner or ultimate villain. Evil creatures would rather attack each other than cooperate, but if some "master" villain calls them together for a purpose, then they may fight but remain obedient to their master out of fear. Such was my assumption with the Caves of Chaos, but the details were never actually placed in the module itself.

I've read on other gaming blogs how people think that B2 is hokey and makes no logical sense. Well, you really do have to take a few things into consideration. First off is game mechanics. You simply can't have a game that relies on experience points and treasure for advancement and NOT have some dungeon-like adventure; gamist adventures work in the system, novelist approaches fail. If you go into the adventure with the idea that the dungeon accommodates the game mechanics, then its much more enjoyable. Secondly, over-thinking and rationalizing why things are the way they are detracts from the adventure and causes it to fail or blow up in one's face. I've seen people slam the module for the concepts - that's odd, because it was an instructional module on how to play the game, not some opus written to win awards or change the face of gaming. The fact that it DID revolutionize gaming is amazing! In essence, though, it was a one shot adventure, a throwaway used to show people how to play and DM the game, then make their own campaigns. In that way it was one of the best teaching tools ever made, and is still relevant today.

So now I'm looking at this adventure and I'd like to update it to D&D 3.5 stats. Doing so unmakes the very reasons why it was such a strong adventure in the first place. Simple, elegant, and quick to adjust on the fly, updating this module would require an added complexity that doesn't work well in instructional writing. The entire ruleset of D&D Basic was easily fit within a few pages of the rulebook. In most instances, you could add rules in as you went, so long as the basics were covered. In order to run an 3.5 game, one has to explain how the modifiers all work together, stat blocks become longer than a line of text, and detailed explanations of why things work in a certain way need to be explained. One cannot have a generic stat block when all the creatures are using different weapons (which affects what feats they have), or they use special gear which has a situational modifier, or when special attacks depend on size and HD categories. It was rather depressing to see that simply detailing the Keep itself was going to be a major hassle - and an unnecessary one according to D&D 3.5 rules. Other than a short paragraph and stat block for the Keep, all the details on buildings and treasure troves within the keep could be eliminated. The focus of the adventure, the Caves of Chaos, becomes the meat of the module. In essence, this is how it should have been, but then again it was an INSTRUCTIONAL module. It's easy to pick and choose details once you have the basics understood. A base town, in my opinion, should be not only a source of rumors and training, but also of adventures within the town walls and interactions in the ways that most novelist gamers would desire.

D&D 3.5 with its myriad of choices and preferences complicates the simplicity of B2 with unnecessary clutter. Perhaps running the adventure as simple B2: The Caves of Chaos would make it a more palatable experience. Also breaking up the adventure by eliminating some of the caves or spreading them out along the northern hills also makes more sense for an instructional adventure. I found from DMing novices that their attention span wavers after a few rooms. They also need closure. By separating the lower level caves and placing them near to each other but not on top of each other makes for an easier and neater game experience. Placing some evil idol in the Caves of the Unknown as a unifying force to gather nearby evil makes it seem like the whole is more cohesive. Perhaps some psionic entity is trapped within the idol (some interdimensional prison) and is summoning a force of evil to free it from its bounds. The clerics of chaos could be working to save their master (hence the tunnel leading out from their cave, probably towards the Caves of the Unknown). The evil emanations have twisted those in the region to evil, hence the reason why the lizardfolk in the fens are Neutral Evil in alignment. The old hermit (perhaps once a druid) is now driven mad as the unnatural entity corrupts his mind - or he could simply be a Neutral Evil druid wanting to be left alone. The fact that he has a mountain lion companion fortifies this assumption.

Some of the caves could include clues that link the whole together - missives from the cleric to the more intelligent tribes in the region, shamans and witchdoctors bearing fetishes with the idol's image, treasures from the ancient Caves of the Unknown paid to the humanoids by the cleric for their continued allegiances, etc. The entity would likely need to be Neutral Evil in alignment to account for all the various alignments congregating under one Evil being. Surely, the Lawful and Chaotic bands of evil humanoids would fight each other for top position (especially goblinoids vs. orcs), but outright tribal warfare would be kept to a minimum. The Keep obviously is strong enough to resist assault from the various humanoids, but a force of evil sweeping through may cause widespread destruction and the Borderlands are vast and unprotected except near the road. Keep forces sent to quell rebellion in one area would mean leaving the roads defenseless to other tribes. Perhaps a necessary artifact is in the hands of the Castellan of the Keep, some artifact necessary for the idol to be released or defeated (or both). Convincing the Castellan of the necessity of this action would require proof and thus the characters have a region to explore, follow clues, and investigate all the caves in the region! Failure may mean that evil forces will continue to arrive in the region until the clerics have enough force to overwhelm even the Keep's defenses.

Revisiting D&D 3.5

I was bored this weekend. I've pretty much had enough of playing computer games and I'm looking to get back to tabletop gaming. My AD&D group was a bust this weekend since they canceled at the last minute so I started seeing what their characters would look like in D&D 3.5. I had their stats from 3rd level on and it was simple to backtrack them to 1st level again. The hardest part of the whole process was determining what skills and feats they would have selected for their characters.

It turns out that the NPC fighter in the group was ultra kickass at 1st level. The druid was less than spectacular. A complete role reversal from 1st edition AD&D. The assassin and wizard were about spot on if not more powerful than their 1st edition versions. I've been using an assassin class developed from expanding the prestige class from the DMG out to 20 levels. The druid would have been much more powerful if he was developed by the player from 1st level since the choices he made were within the framework of the AD&D rules. Druids used to advance lightning fast, gaining 2nd level spells at 2nd level! He was the first of the characters to break into the upper levels since his XP chart was so fast. In our AD&D game the assassin died from hypothermia early on (4th level) and the others died or lost levels at least once. The druid had lost 2 levels to wraiths and still was on top of the level charts. It would be interesting to see how these characters developed in both worlds and to see how much different advancement would have been after 12 years of running the same ones like we have in AD&D.

The conversion has whetted my appetite for more D&D 3.5. I started looking at my old Greyhawk Campaign from the beginning and wondered how different it would have been if I had done all the adventures by hand instead of adapting previously made modules from 1st edition. The game as I remember it was very power-hungry and it seemed to be even worse of an arms-race than 2nd edition. My preference for low-fantasy campaigns aside, I think it was a monty-hauler's dream come true. My only sticking point was that spells were so categorized and regimented that they lost all the charm of the magic system. Wizards also got the shaft since the progression of spell defenses quickly out-paced the power of the spells. Most of the classic "no save" spells of the early days now received saving throws which were so easy to make that the spells became pretty much useless. If you could cast 6th level spells, then it was pointless to use any spell below 6th level in combat since the opponents were likely to save against them. This is such a switch from 1st edition where the higher the spell level, the more dangerous the spell was to cast, while the lower level spells were much more utilitarian even in combat.

My only pet peeve about the later editions was how long it took to develop the monsters for each encounter. Unfortunately that is a big turn-off for me, especially since I like to adlib my way through an adventure sometimes. My stint as a fairly permanent DM for 5 years straight only proved that D&D 3.5 was a railroading engine made to glorify the PCs, not challenge them. Still, some of the more interesting bits of the game made everything make more sense as a whole. I like the fact that ability scores mean so much more now. I also like the idea of customization through skills and feats, although I think they went overboard with all the options. I truly wish that they had converted the older modules and reprinted these classics instead of releasing reams of unnecessary splatbooks. It would have been helpful for them to make a monster-designer book where they take you through the process of crafting unique individual encounters by showing you the match behind the conversion. Analyzing various stat blocks from DUNGEON magazine made it painfully obvious that some of the module writers were just using some creatures/classes to get a bonus in a min/max encounter design specifically made to screw the characters who were unprepared or knew too much. In fact, it seemed that EVERY adventure showcased at least one completely bizarre chimeric creature tricked out to the Nth degree for no reason other than "they could."

I've since returned to the simpler 1st edition AD&D because I prefer the speed of play and the reduction of options. But I would love to play in a campaign for D&D 3.5 where the players are well-versed in the way the system works and have no expectations of how play should proceed. A clean slate campaign, if you will, is a dream that I can no longer hope for. I would have to mine my archive of previous Greyhawk scenarios for a workable campaign and most of the players I've had have already experienced the adventures I've made. I would have to go whole-cloth on a revised campaign and no one has the time for that to happen!

More Nostalgia: STAR FRONTIERS!

So I've been on this kick lately looking back at older role-playing games. There seems to be this magic point somewhere in the development of a game where too much makes the game unwieldy and too little makes it seem like there's something missing. Obviously D&D's switch point came with Advanced D&D. Star Frontiers, TSR's sci-fi RPG, had it's switch point with Zebulon's Guide to the Galaxy.

It seemed that the game started to "jump the shark" with the conversion of the rules to the Marvel Super-Heroes game mechanic, using a Universal Table with color results and "column shifts" for modifiers. It seemed to completely de-rail the simple percentage based mechanic of the earlier game. The addition of all the new armor types, weapons, and picky rules made the whole thing less satisfying than the original. I have the same problems with the upgrade to Knight Hawks. Sure this is an add-on to the game, but an important one that now allowed the players to pilot spaceships and engage in zero-G combat far above the planet surface - one of the draws of the Star Wars movies!

I've started going through the original rules for Star Frontiers, starting with the Basic Game and found those rules to be too simplistic. They gave little in the way of variation and seemed like more of a boardgame with freeform movement. The Expanded rules function as I remember, although back in the day we played like complete idiots trying to figure out sci-fi scenarios. Coming more from a Star Trek/Star Wars background, I had no true sci-fi knowledge which would have helped me greatly in coming up with scenarios. In the end I made my new campaign more like a Star Wars space opera than a true action scenario. It's hard to motivate people when they can buy weapons like laser pistols and steal what they need from others. In fact, most of our games ended up with the players being worse than the villains!

I'm still reviewing the rules and even looked into the newer d20 Modern/Future rulebooks. Just looking at the volume of rules one needs to know to run a car chase made me want to put these books away forever! If I can make the Star Frontiers rules work the way they should for what I need then that's good enough for me.

Moldvay Companion Rules: What Could Have Been

I've toyed with the idea of making a Moldvay/Cook version of the Companion Rules which were promised in the Expert Rulebook but never published. What would they contain? What other information could they possibly provide that was not in any other later edition?

My recent delving into the Original D&D box set has led me to believe that Moldvay/Cook D&D is simply the organized and cleaned up version of the original D&D rules. In fact, except for the Chainmail Rules references and alternate rules, the rulebooks read nearly identically! There is some difference with the demi-humans, but essentially it all works the same. I had no idea that class and race was so tied together in the older rules.

The other thing I noted was the pure simplicity and elegance that I've always admired in the Moldvay version actually began in the original D&D rules. There were no extra attacks, convoluted combat mechanics, or other nonsense that led to a huge tome of rules in later versions. I understand the need for clarification and structure, but the game loses something when every action has to be specified in rules, adjusted by a plethora of modifiers, and resolved using multiples rolls.

The Basic/Expert Rules had defined chapters which were kept the same for each - Chapter 3 in each book was for Spells, Chapter 6 for Monsters, etc. In keeping with this structure, a Companion Book should have the same format. But what should be added?

I've reviewed the OD&D lists of monsters and treasure and found that ALL of the items in the original rules were transferred into Basic/Expert. Only a few of the additional monsters and items from the Greyhawk Supplement made it into the rules, but the Thief class was most notable among these. It is interesting to note that although the Hobbit/Halfling class did not operate as a thief per se, they still got a stealth boost in the rules, as well as a level boost for all demi-human classes. A few of the level titles were altered or switched around in order to make all classes hit Name Level at 9th level. The general concept that one gains from this is that Humanoid HD max out at 9 HD for Medium humanoids, -1 HD for smaller humanoids (like halflings), and maybe +1 for Large humanoids (like ogres or gnolls). If one expands to 36 levels as suggested for the Companion Set, then you have to come up with challenges for characters for the next 22 levels. That's a lot of experience points with very little change in how the characters progress except maybe for spells available. Thief abilities are pretty nearly maxed out at 14th level! Fighters show no advancement, but might actually gain extra attacks at higher levels. What kind of creatures are expected to be encountered? Well, some of those questions were answered in the original D&D rules...

Monsters that were excluded from the Expert rules were those deemed too powerful for even Name level characters of some experience. These included the Lich, Ghost, Juggernaut, and Titans. Such creatures must be fearsome indeed if one should not face them at 14th level! Just how powerful they could be is unknown, but 20th level of magic-use is assumed for the lich, and the lich Asberdies in D1 should be considered the first appearance of such a creature in a D&D module (although the premise for his being there is sketchy at best). Most of the monsters in the Greyhawk Supplement and almost ALL the monsters in the Blackmoor supplement are NOT included in the Expert rules. Very few non-aquatic monsters were added in the Blackmoor rules, but Greyhawk added many of the iconic creatures we've all come to expect, like Beholders, Golems, and metallic dragons. All of these monsters are suitable for inclusion in the Companion Rules. The psionic creatures which seem to dominate the later rules should also be included: mind flayers, duergar, intellect devourers, etc.

A lot of spells were left out of the selections for Clerics and Magic-Users in the Basic/Expert version of the rules. Notably, clerics never get Dispel Magic, Magic-Users miss out on several spells that add some flavor and utility to the class, and no spell of 7th level or above is detailed for either class. Where does one get the inspiration for these spells? Go back to the source of course! I took all the spells listed in Men & Magic plus all the Greyhawk Supplement spells and compiled them into a master list. This expanded the 1st-6th level lists as well, but brought all the OD&D spells to Basic/Expert. Why these spells were omitted is unknown, but I read somewhere that Moldvay and Cook wanted to simply rewrite the original rules without the supplements.

As I've been re-reading the World of Greyhawk Boxed Set I noticed that the encounter charts included humanoids from the Fiend Folio published around the same time. Such creatures as norkers, ogrillons, and flinds were liberally added to the hosts of humanoids in the northern regions. Also added were oddball creatures such as quaggoths and qullans, the former being tied to the drow elves also detailed in that rulebook. So, looking back at the published modules from the early days one would need to also add in drow, kuo-toa, jermlaine, mind flayers (illithids), and svirfnebli to make all the Greyhawk creatures available.

Of the treasures, most of the lists are simply copied from one ruleset to the other. However, I noticed that the Greyhawk Supplement introduced the concept of "cursed items," those magic items that are detrimental or deadly to those assuming to be picking up a standard magic item. In fact, most of the omitted items were cursed! Many of the new items in the Greyhawk supplement deal with the new classes (Thieves and Paladins) which may or may not be involved in Companion rules. A Holy Sword +5 means nothing without a Paladin to wield it, and subclasses were not really involved in the early rulesets, only the expansions. However, since the Companion Rules are supposed to be supplemental materials to expand the campaign world, adding in a subclass to each of the main classes might not be a bad idea. But which ones?

Of the sub-classes, the Paladin was the first. introduced in the Greyhawk Supplement it was available for Fighters of 17 Charisma and of Lawful alignment. Later versions of this class added other stipulations or reworked it to only be available at Name Level and above. I don't know how I would work this class in. Rangers were an afterthought in a Dragon magazine article and don't really seem to be necessary in the Companion rules. Druids were added in Eldritch Wizardry but were seen as more of a cleric/magic-user hybrid. This class was originally listed as a new monster in the Greyhawk Supplement!. Assassins and monks were added in the Blackmoor Supplement, although they seemed to be made as more of a cultural nod to the Karate flicks and mafia movies of the time. Still these classes feature prominently in Greyhawk. The challenge is presenting these options to characters without changing the dynamics of play, game balance, or altering the simplicity of the rules. Also, when do you decide to stop adding things to the game? At what point is enough enough? What's the saturation mark? If adding all the stuff to resemble AD&D, why not just play AD&D?

I think it's better to focus on WHY D&D rules are superior. My analysis concludes that percentile Strength is unnecessary. No other ability score uses the mechanic. Making the range of 3-18 stand without exception is important, as is the standard ability adjustments. Keeping race as class is somewhat problematic, but when you explain that the best choice for each race is the class they assume anyway, then it makes more sense. The only exception to this is the Halfling - stuck at level 8 with fighting ability and no thieving skills. This is the only casualty in the argument and, as far as I'm concerned, has little impact on the game. The number of spells can use some expansion - as already stated I added in the spells from OD&D and Greyhawk Supplement. Adding in the extra magic items is fine, but limiting cursed items to a separate list that is rarely used seems much more fair to the players. Such items should not be routinely found - but they should exist for the DM to use in specific instances. Monster stats should remain easy and quick to use. Adding in the missing monsters from the supplements is fine, but no more than the number of monsters added in between the first two books.

The largest area of expansion should be planar adventures. Adding in creatures such as demons (Chaos), Faeries (Neutral), and angels (Law) might be the path to go. Since there is little difference in alignments in this version, having devils may be confusing since they are a lawful form of evil. Of course, mixing demons and devils into one category greatly increases the forces of Chaos. I've been toying with the idea of making the Ethereal Plane a land of spirits (i.e. Spirit Realm) since it is typically a haunt of the recently dead and some creatures can see into the "spirit plane" of the ethereal. Astral then becomes the only transitive plane and making it look like Outer Space seems more appropriate than a silvery wasteland. Deciding what other extraplanar creatures to include then becomes a matter of picking and choosing from various supplements.

This project can come to a meaningful conclusion and maybe even self-publication. I just need to weed out those concepts that make the game too complicated and add in just enough variety to keep the game challenging and exciting for 22 levels after the Expert set. Perhaps coming up with Legendary Classes (to symbolize the new classes) and other perks for higher-level characters is the way to go. After all, giving a +5 Holy Avenger to a low level paladin may unbalance any game, but allowing a new paladin to evolve at higher levels seems appropriate for using such a powerful weapon. Perhaps making these the "prestige" classes of Companion and setting the minimum requirement for 15th level and above seems the way to go.