Rediscovering Original D&D

It's been  a while since I've put any thoughts on this blog. Guess I've just been tired as hell and bored with what I've been doing for the past few years. This past weekend I happened to pick up my Original White Box D&D copies and remembered that I was in the process of making Word docs out of them. So I fired up the computer and began scanning and editing, reading all the rules again in the process.

It's amazing how simple and elegant the original game truly was. Three classes (Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric), four races (Man, Dwarf, Elf, and Hobbit), and a slew of very familiar monsters. The obvious outgrowth from miniature gaming is evident in the lack of combat mechanics (it was assumed that everyone already owned the Chainmail miniatures rules). The spells were also very sketchy in their descriptions, assuming that everyone knew certain aspects of the game already from using the Chainmail rulebook. What I find very interesting is the lack of power inherent in the game. AD&D dragons may seem like pushovers to us now, but to an Original D&D gamer they were death machines. No one got more than one attack per round, hit points were limited, AC adjustments were few, and combat was very quick and deadly despite using one die for all damage (with some modifiers of course).

What really got me were all the rules that never really translated into AD&D, like most of the information in the back of the Underworld & Wilderness Rules booklet (Part 3). Several pages devoted to aerial combat, naval battles, and some campaign development were very enlightening. It was obvious that D&D was meant purely as gloss on a miniatures combat scenario. This explains the reason why all the original adventures were dungeons - simply a combat scenario in another form. Instead of placing armies on an open field and randomly determining the outcome, the party took the place of the armies storming the dungeons as the battlefield with the hordes of monsters as opponents. This explains the "Number Appearing" entries for humanoids (typically in the hundreds) and the enormous party sizes back in the day (filled out with henchmen, hirelings, etc.). It wasn't until much later that such large parties were pared down to a more conventional 4-to-6-player size. The scale inch rules also make more sense when seen from a wargamers point of view since terrain was often depicted at large scale and minis represented whole units of the army (at a 20:1 ratio or thereabouts). Moving large parties through a dungeon would have been like moving working class people along a subway tunnel during rush hour - the difference being the armor and gear carried. When visualized in that way it is more conceivable that parties could never hope to surprise monsters unless they had advance scouts and/or magical scrying to determine what lay ahead. In this way, the Thief was added to the mix of characters to allow for a more discreet method of entering a dungeon, using tactics instead of bullrushing through the place and hoping you survived, and to prevent deaths due to traps and poison needles set to take out the unwary.

I also learned that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was created as a tournament version of the game. Basic/Expert D&D is much more in line with what D&D began, using the basic four classes (Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief) and four races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling). However, Basic diverged by combining demi-human races with their usual classes (Dwarf = Dwarf Fighter, Elf = Elven Fighter/Magic-User, and Halfling = Halfling Fighter). So Thief and Cleric were never an option in Basic for anyone but a Human! It would be interesting to break race from class in Basic and make it more like the way Original D&D had it. If only I had kept the Basic game I got for Christmas back in 1980! But without a lot of players my own age (like maybe 2 others were interested and one was my 4 year old brother) it made more sense to buy the DUNGEON! Boardgame. Oh well, I would probably have stuck with Basic D&D longer had I learned to play at an earlier age with people who understood what the game was really about. I really prefer the Moldvay Basic D&D set.

So it seems that AD&D, what I prefer to play now, actually began as more of a Basic D&D game with tons of little rules thrown in to keep everyone playing the same version of the game for tournament rulings. I can understand that. But at the same time it opened other cans of worms and made the game overly complicated. I was able to condense the OD&D rules down to 3 booklets of 15-20 pages each, together comprising a Player's Handbook (Men & Magic), a Monster Manual (Monsters & Treasure) and a Dungeon Master's Guide (Underworld & Wilderness) in under 60 pages of rules! Comparing AD&D and OD&D, one can see that there were 1/3 the number of classes, 1/2 the number of races, much more simplified spells and numbers thereof, and easier and faster combat resolution. It is also interesting to see how everything was based on the number "6". There were six levels of spells for each class, supposed to be six or so dungeon levels for a typical adventure, there were six levels of monsters, and every weapon/attack did a d6 damage (with d6 hit points for each class, with modifiers). Now I know why the DUNGEON!(TM) game was set up the way it was with six levels, character types of Elf, Wizard, Hero, and Superhero (actual level terms for some characters), and the monster selections (including Witches, Evil Superheroes, and various humanoids). What I find very interesting is the lack of level reference in the rules. You were a Wizard or a Necromancer, not a 9th or 8th level Magic-User. Same for the Fighting Man - you would refer yourself as a Swashbuckler, Hero, Myrmidon, Champion, or Lord. There also seemed to be a greater emphasis on the end-game levels when you were able to construct a castle since this is the time where you would be entering the wilderness to conquer the surrounding territory and make it your own (before Name Level one would be gaining fortune in the multi-level dungeon).

I did come across something interesting last night in Underworld & Wilderness. Curiously, I found a reference to a "Thoul" on one of the encounter charts and I have no idea where it was detailed. My original thought was that they meant Troll, but had Ghoul there and only partially edited the entry. It then made print and was made into a monster years later in the Moldvay Basic set. Either that or it was a typo (the "T" is above the "G" on most keyboards) and since the book was written apparently by typewriter that would explain things better than making a new creature that was part Troll, part Ghoul, and looked like a Hobgoblin..... Some people just can never admit they made a mistake (sigh).

It would be interesting to give this ruleset a run given the premises of little character background information, a multi-level dungeon very close to a nearby town, and the reward of title and land once the character has achieved the appropriate level, then moving into the campaign world using all the knowledge gained from clues and history in the dungeons (perhaps old books provide information on the campaign world, and sages can fill in the gaps). I think this is more in line with the way Greyhawk came to be, more of a mishmash of information provided over time that was reworked and rewritten into a campaign world. Also keep in mind that the campaign maps used during Gygax's campaign were NOT the ones produced for the Greyhawk Folio or Boxed Set; this was done because Greyhawk was a campaign in progress and Gary Gygax would not provide information so openly to his players! So all the years I spent trying to reconcile the descriptions in modules, books, and first hand accounts with the published books was for naught. None of the information provided on Greyhawk in any of those sources is the original, now lost forever with the death of E. Gary Gygax. So sad, but what a legacy!

Ryan Dunn R.I.P.

I don't know why I even care, but when I heard that Ryan Dunn, one of the stars of MTV's "Jackass" was killed yesterday morning in a fiery car crash I was upset. At first I thought it was a prank (a very bad taste prank, but then this is Jackass) but as the day wore on I realized it wasn't. I've followed these guys through all three movies and the whole series of Jackass. The reality flavor of the show tempered the stupidity. Dunn was one of the more level-headed guys - he knew what they were doing was dangerous and stupid and yet he still participated.

Just because he acted like a Jackass in front of the camera doesn't mean he was in real life - if one can even have a real life spent in front of a camera.... His death saddened me, but not for me. No, I was imagining the impact on his lifelong friend Brandon "BAM" Margera and his parents. They must all be devastated, especially given the manner of death (likely to be a closed casket funeral if they are planning one). Ryan is the first of the Jackass crew to meet an untimely end, and not likely to be the last. It's all fun and games until someone loses a playmate...

I really wonder who his passenger was - no one has even mentioned the person's name yet. I hope this wasn't a tragic DWI accident, but the reality of this all was that Dunn had tweeted a pic of himself and some others drinking mere hours before the accident.

My only hope is that the others wise up. This event is likely to change things for them. The reality of death always stifles that giddiness of stupidity they seemed to always portray. Of all the cast members I identified with Ryan Dunn the most and felt for him as he suffered through the indignities. May he rest in peace. To Bam I say only this: Reconsider the important things in your life, go home and hug your wife and parents and tell them you love them dearly then reflect on the time you had with a good friend. Console those he left behind and then pick yourself up and become a better person for the experience.

When Old School Is Not Enough

I've been having problems lately with the 1st edition AD&D spell selections. In theory the spells work fine, but in practice they are hard to justify as written and tend to slow the game down with details that really should not be a concern. I've been having such a hard time with the wording on some of the spells that I'm seriously considering using the spell descriptions from a later version of the game to replace the Player's Handbook versions! But the question that remains is "which version has the proper spell descriptions?"

Each version of the game seemed to either limit the power of a spell or make it so easy to use that the players started using the spell for uses it was never meant to accomplish. Different versions of the game focus on different aspects of the spells as well. However I find that 2nd edition AD&D was very close in spell notation to 1st edition and could be used wholecloth as a replacement. Many of the spells that were poorly worded in 1st edition were better explained in 2nd edition. However, the level of the spells are somewhat altered as are the descriptions. Some are altered to fit the 2nd edition combat paradigm.

Third edition D&D is a completely different animal. Some of the spell descriptions make no sense when applied to a 1st edition game. 3rd edition adds in level 0 spells (cantrips/orisons) which do not exist in 1st edition and some 1st level spells were demoted to 0-level in this edition. Other spells provide power to the players that I wish to be withheld (i.e. the spell Detect Secret Doors....lazy bastards need to find them for themselves).

I know there were even more drastic changes in 4th edition - changing cast times to reflect that style of combat. Some spells were also made into daily powers, a drastic step away from original D&D. This version of the magic system is not even D&D anymore so I don't think it applies.

This leaves me back at the 2nd edition version of the spells. As written they are the closest in feeling and context to the 1st edition style of gaming. I will have to run this by the players and put it to a vote, but I think they would rather have a more cohesive assemblage of spells to use than what we have in the Player's Handbook and Unearthed Arcana. I'm sure I could incorporate any of the spells that are missing from the 2nd edition lists that the players really want to retain. However I'm certain that using the newer versions of chant, produce fire, color spray, and identify will bring happiness to the party as a whole.

Campaign Worlds

Looking back over my almost 30 years in gaming I've been trying to find the perfect gaming campaign world in which to run adventures. I've tried all the major D&D realms in print, or at least the fantasy ones. They all seem to be different when you read the material, but in execution all players seem to lump them into one. Sure they may have different deities and locations, cultures and customs, but in the end an elf in the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, or Greyhawk feels much the same. The fact that the base races exist in every fantasy realm ever created for D&D seems a bit odd to me.

Lately I've been trying to streamline the D&D experience and taking a hint from other games and sources as well. What if there were only four player races to choose from? Human, Elf, Dwarf, and some small race (be it halfling or gnome) seem to be all that's really needed. The added complication of half-breed "races" seems a bit unnecessary. There are enough sub-races listed for elves and dwarves, and since the point of adventure gaming is to play "heroes", allowing the evil races into the game as playable choices seems contradictory. In fact, the inclusion of the Assassin class in the game seems to encourage bad play. However, once offered it's hard to undo.

Some campaign worlds did limit the types of races and classes that were available, and yet some expanded upon them to a ridiculous degree. Harn, for example, made humans the most common and one could only play a demi-human if you were lucky enough to roll one on a random race table in the beginning of the campaign. Of course, many people simply ignored the roll (and the table) and made whatever they desired. The Forgotten Realms encouraged the use of all races and classes in the core rules and added a plethora of others into the mix, seemingly at random. Dragonlance had weird versions of the base races (techno-gnomes and kender), but the others were more or less the same with different names. Greyhawk was custom made for all the base class and race choices so that campaign was easiest to use. The Known World campaign was based off the Basic and Expert rules so there were limited choices for race and class there (later expanded to include some of the Companion rules classes and races). Darksun and Ravenloft were much later but also used the same basic races with some additions and cosmetic changes. Planescape tried to expand on the races and classes a bit too much and showed what can happen when everyone has every option open without limit.

Later editions of D&D removed all the race and class limits. They introduced so many options that a DM had to more or less construct a world of mish-mashed pieces at the whim of his players. I've played generic campaign worlds before - they can work if everyone accepts the generic feel of the campaign. Those who try to become more specific in their choices kill it for everyone else though. For example, my "family D&D" campaign I run for a group of related friends - we chose to run the adventures from DUNGEON magazine in level order. I cobbled together a 3rd edition campaign from a group of beginning adventures and adlibbed a lot of the material in between. The characters were mostly generic - a halfling rogue, a gnome bard, an elven druid, and an elven wizard - so no campaign specific material needed to be used. All the options in the Player's Handbook were freely open to them. We later converted to D&D 3.5 and continued the game, although the feel changed when adopting the new options in the later core rules. Choices the players made led to nailing the campaign to the Greyhawk Setting. Although this setting is generic enough to use there are some instances where campaign-specific material began intruding.

My own homebrew campaign world suffers from the race and class mix of the Core Rules. In order to accommodate some of the players I had to allow certain races and classes into the world and then explain why and how they came to be there, sometimes retro-fitting things into the campaign. I needed to develop a campaign world where all the choices were available with none of the baggage of the older material. I'm beginning to think that simply choosing a campaign and working within its bounds is the way to go - but choosing the right campaign world for your group is the key.

Gaming Reward Systems

I've been trying to puzzle out why people keep coming back to role-playing games time and time again. There is a huge investment in time and thought placed into each session and most of the time these end in dismal failure - either no one enjoys the scenario or through the roll of the dice something bad happens. So what rewards keep everyone coming back?

In World of Warcraft there is a feeling of accomplishment. You can track your advancement with a number of stats, much like those who follow sports. There are experience points which reward you with levels, gold which rewards you with better gear, achievement points for bragging rights, numerical standings in player-vs-player modes, and a host of other numbers for the player to track and compare with others. Many video games have a similar model in place.

However, tabletop RPGs are more esoteric in their rewards. Most cannot measure success by magic items since these are placed not at random but purposefully by the gamemaster. One could use wealth as a measure of success, but more often than not treasure is not accumulated in a steady fashion and can be spent for other rewards. Experience points and level are a good measure of success in earlier editions since it was truly an accomplishment to get your initial character from 1st level to 9th level without dying! But what about the emotional investment in your character? I've seen reckless abandon and paranoid seclusion in the same game. Placing a cherished character in danger time after time will likely end with the character being hopelessly unrecoverable or changed beyond the scope of the original concept. Why do people risk this? Why can't others seem to risk this?

In order for a game to be successful I feel you need some element of danger, some seemingly impossible task that the players can overcome by dint of intellect, willpower, or simply stubborn refusal to quit. If the game is too easy then it becomes a chore; too hard and no one will even bother trying. There is a fine middle line where you have to make the task seem daunting but solvable given the proper resources.

My current AD&D campaign seems to be in disarray. I've played the "3E adventure" card on them, now I need to follow through. 3E adventures are quite linear but meandering, seem to have a plotline that exists despite the characters, and if you aren't careful the players will try to solve every little mystery within as quickly as possible despite the fact that the adventure is meant to sustain the mystery over many levels. I don't know how to keep them interested in what's going on long enough that they won't forget all the nuances of the backstory. They seem to be more of an immediate gratification crowd - you know, if I do what you want now I will be rewarded now. I like to think of this as the "puppy reward." You do the trick, you get the treat. But 1st edition AD&D advancement is much slower and this raises the question of rewards. If you don't advance, you can't finish a plotline each night, and you can't see why you keep doing this week after week, then why do it at all? Seems to me that the only way I can keep their attention for longer than 10 minutes is to have endless combat sessions. Puzzles and thought problems are ok, but they can be very frustrating as well. And traps meant to divert or delay are the worst, since players hate to be railroaded.

I guess that the game itself can be seen as a reward but all participants have to work at making it so, just like any other endeavor.

How I Learned to Decipher High Gygaxian

I started to learn the D&D game with Moldvay Basic back in 1983. We quickly mashed the AD&D books into the mix, using whatever rules we learned from D&D to apply to AD&D gaming. No one understood that they were two completely different animals under the same name. In 1986 I purchased Temple of Elemental Evil and wanted to run a campaign from start to finish using the rules as printed. So started my quest to decipher that oft-maligned, mysterious Dungeon Master's Guide.

On the surface it seems that all the rules a DM could want or need are in that tome. Being the last of the published "core" books for AD&D (the first two being Monster Manual and Player's Handbook) it included a monster summary list, all the magic items in the game, and a few spell explanations to iron out wrinkles encountered from the Player's Handbook (although it missed a lot of problems, like the chant spell or color spray). I sat down with the book for several weeks that summer to try and make it all cohesive and easier to explain to my friends who either were too busy to read it cover to cover or did not have a copy themselves and were always going to be players anyways.

The first few sections contained rather boring details about character creation and probability curves, diseases, aging, death, and class ability descriptions from the DM's point of view. I waded through gems and jewelry listings, spell explanations, and travel procedures including getting lost in the wilderness. Then came the bread and butter chapter! The holy grail of D&D gaming, running encounters and COMBAT! I was about five pages into the section when I realized that nothing was really explained. There were a lot of terms thrown at you and a lot of modifiers for situations which we typically avoided (being consummate players), but there were no examples of combat broken down bit by bit. Even the example combats provided made little sense since they only gave some details, but not all. At one point I encountered an inconsistency that simply blew my mind - the initiative system. It made no sense at all. It was as if someone drank heavily and spewed nonsense all over the page. There was no mathematical consistency or sense to what was being said at all. Later in the section I found other glaring inconsistencies. Who had written this section? Surely it wasn't the same person who so elegantly wrote the G-series of modules, the sections in the back of the Player's Handbook filled with such witty prose and sparkling gems of information. What had happened to the editor of the book? Did they die mid-edit only to be replaced by some gremlin?? What the heck was going on? In the end we continued to chug through Temple of Elemental Evil using the primordial D&D knowledge we developed using the Basic D&D books and that worked just fine with the AD&D classes, races, spells, and magic items. If anything based on initiative ever reared its head we simply ignored the reference.

Many years later (2000) I started a new campaign in AD&D and I wanted to do it all "by the book." My players had suffered through a homebrewed, house-ruled campaign for several years prior to this so I wanted to teach them the glory of AD&D and what it could offer. Again I was at a loss to explain the combat system. Try as I might I could not rectify it. I turned to the internet for help and found Dragonsfoot.com. I read through several threads and learned that Gary Gygax did NOT write everything in the DMG!!! Apparently it was edited by the Blumes. Now it was starting to make sense. I later learned that E.G.G. didn't even USE the rules printed in the book. What the heck? I learned that all my mathematical twisting and repurposing of terms was just useless. In the end I adopted the system that many of the others were using with some minor hold-outs that DID make sense to me.

In the end I learned that the parts of the DMG I did love were penned by Gygax himself, but the tidbits that did not make any sense may have been additions to the system from other sources. I now am happy with what we use, but it seems that the DMG is hopelessly broken - at least the combat section. If you happen to read anything else by Gygax you will see what I mean. The Role-Playing Mastery book he wrote was spot on and his theory craft on gaming was second to none. So what if AD&D seems clunky and difficult to read. To me you gain more from re-reading a few pages every once in a while than reading once and plowing forward. Each and every time I pick up that book I find a new tidbit that I never knew about before or had forgotten. And as I have proven in the past, you can use Moldvay D&D combat rules with AD&D and it still works just fine.

Lazy Weekend

This past weekend I spent most of my time in pajama bottoms and t-shirts. I wanted to go outside and do some weeding. I wanted to clean the house. I wanted to finish peeling the wallpaper off the dining room walls. I wanted to re-read the Greyhawk Wars synopsis that's been on my desk. I wanted to go to the bank and Target to do some shopping. So what did I do? Nothing but World of Warcraft all weekend long.

It's sad to say that I'm completely addicted to this game. It gives me satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment in my otherwise ho-hum, completely inane life. It's my sole reason for existence right now. I not only played all weekend, I also had fun doing it and actually got things done in the game. Blizzard has been slowly tweaking the game until it does exactly what I need it to do.

We ran with Trueheart characters on Friday night and actually had fun. I played Allakazam most of the time and got enough rep to actually get to Revered in a couple of factions. Then we switched over to the Northrend toons and I was able to level Clink to 80 pretty quickly. Once Moonwing and Epipheni got to 80 we returned to Stormwind and all got our professions to the max for Northrend so we can start in the Cataclysm areas. This will be my second Leatherworker in these new zones. We were online until around 3:30 am.

Saturday I spent on the Horde characters in the morning and finally got Juju into Outlands. In fact I spent a long time there and made him like 6 levels in one afternoon. I then had to quick get ready to go out for Tom's birthday, but I continued playing when I got home on Saturday night (really late). I think it was close to 4 am when I finally quit - and it was hard to give it up.

Sunday I intended to spend all day doing chores and tidying the place up, but true to form I woke up late and stumbled to the computer. Started off playing some toon and then spent all day playing Allakazam. It was Children's Week so I decided to knock off those quests early. Once that was done I started on some mining and rep with Tol Barad. Bergham joined in and we teamed with Proudmother of Wisdom and Valor. We knocked those quests down quick! I was on a roll and decided to re-vamp the guild bank again. When Bergham logged out I noticed that the Troll quests were active for Stranglethorn, so I started those. It was aggravating since there were so many others doing the same quests. I spent over an hour flying around looking for the end of the quests when Bergham told me to go back to the place I left earlier. Sure enough the questgiver re-appeared and I was able to end the run with the quest for Heroic Zul-Gurub. I then went mining to finish Engineering and got so very far (only 7 points away from max now). But I wasn't done. Even after the others logged out for the night I went to work deconstructing the guild bank. Earlier in the day I had sent money from my other toons to Allakazam in order to purchase the 7th bank tab for 10,000 gold. Once that was done Bergham and I donated some additional money to keep the amounts up, then Bruce had Gwynllian donate some later in the evening.

The guild bank was reorganized with the items split into levels and expansions. There is also a guild and rep tab and a guild leaders tab filled with new mats for the trusted advisors only. I was placing new mats in the old tabs and one of the members was using the guild bank as his own craft supply depot. I don't mind if people use the mats we've stored there, but depleting all the mats to level your craft and then not ever replacing any of the mats is just wrong. To add insult to injury this player always uses the mats up then throws the junk he just made back into the tab, filling the bank up with things that no one else can use or don't sell in the auction house. No matter how many times I've talked to this person about this in the past he continued to do it, then taking items he could not possibly use to give to his other toons who aren't even in the guild! In order to put a stop to this the new tab is only open to those of Trusted Advisor rank or higher. This gives access to only six active members (myself included).

I wanted to be able to store mats for cooking, tailoring, jewelcrafting, blacksmithing, and general volatiles. Hopefully the others will follow suit.

So I went to sleep at 1:30 am last night and I'm working on very little sleep. The good news of Osama Bin Laden being killed last night just topped off the great weekend! It's Monday but it doesn't hurt as much as it has in past weeks. I needed that lazy weekend!

Mystara: Next Step

The party finally completed The Whispering Cairn in my 1st Edition AD&D campaign. They completed it in a completely unexpected way, taking the obstacles placed in their way as a challenge of larger proportion than it was. In essence, they destroyed the only link to the rest of the adventure - a haunt who was supposed to help them enter the true tomb door. However, they wasted the last charge of the Harkness of Seker to discorporate the haunt and were able to knock the door open with a single spell. Now I had assumed that the magic-user was out of that spell for the day, and things were going well until they decided to dimension door beyond a trap. It was highly unlikely that they would follow the plan as written anyway, even if I had used a younger ghost to lure them in.

One of the players even said that this was a failing of the module - a choke point if you will. I tend to agree with him, but the module WAS designed for 1st level characters and I assumed that it was configurable for a higher-level party. If I had used the ghost I would have killed them. They appropriately used the items they had in their possession and I can't fault them one bit. This adventure was a cakewalk for them, except for a lot of wasted time spent trying to come up with elaborate plans to come through at 100% health. They did spend a lot of resources keeping the level 1 henchmen from dying - part and parcel of me making them have personalities and having the players roll them up and develop them for play. Instead of being spent as a resource, the henchmen became members of the party in a true sense.

So where do I go from here? Well the rest of the adventure is pretty much shot. I was going to lead them to the underground cultists in the nearby mine but I don't know if that is appropriate. Perhaps I should just send them off to the Malpheggi Swamp and do the Encounter at Blackwall Keep adventure next. They need more resources to train and spend on their fortress home anyway. I know they are going to want to head back home with their swag anyway. I can plant new seeds in the coming weeks and see if they decide to bite. One of the magic items I want them to have is a helm of comprehending languages and reading magic. If I can somehow plant a seed leading them to the place where one can be found I'm certain they would go for it.

New Blog, Again

I got tired of posting to my older blog and wanted a change, so I deleted the old and started a new one. Hopefully I will remember to post to this one more often! So if you're looking for Sturmgard Rant it is gone and forgotten.