DMG: Like a Needle in a Haystack...

Have you ever tried to find a specific rule in the Dungeon Master's Guide in the middle of play when lives depended on it? It's nearly impossible! I spent almost 20 minutes DURING PLAY last weekend trying to find the exact distance one can withraw/fall back from melee. In the end I defaulted to the distance listed in 2nd edition (1/3 movement rate) since I could not find the rule anywhere! This is SOOOO frustrating to me.


However, now that I've encountered this problem again, it's time to re-read the DMG. That's right, the whole damn thing, cover to cover! This time, however, I'm taking notes and saving the notes on my computer so that when this happens again I can at least have a decent index to use to find the information I need. The index in the DMG is a god-awful mess of useless information! Half the terms used in the DMG aren't even listed and most of the info printed in the Player's Handbook doesn't match the rules in the DMG!

Looks like I have my reading list set for the next couple of months at least.

Reminiscing: Old Greyhawk Adventures

I remember a time when AD&D was all I wanted to do - all day, every day. When I woke up, found my friends, and we just played all day into the late hours of the evening with only meal breaks and occasional exercise at the beach or the playground. Granted that was like 30 years ago, but it still has stayed with me all these years.

Those were great times. We knew only a smattering of the rules in the AD&D books and still managed to play the game. My first "campaign" I ran involved a generic adventure in the town of Woodwych in Greyhawk. There, a wizard had become leader of the town and was trying to enslave the populace. The heroes, Nicholas Lornallow (fighter) and Chong-Hing (a monk) were later joined by Dread Delgath (a thief), and Kendrick Magnus (cleric of Odin). It was just some friends sitting around a table and playing characters we had just rolled up. Little did I realize that this early taste of being a DM would change my views of the game forever.

I remember these heroes involving themselves with a winged-folk magic-user shoppe owner, a devil-worshipping cleric whom Nicholas took to bed, tracking her down and later running from said devil-worshipping cleric, and assisting elves in he Celadon Forest rid themselves of nasty creatures from the Fiend Folio that had invaded their tree-homes. During their many adventures they found some awesome magic items - a medallion of teleportation, a ring that could conjure light on command, a defender sword, and some others that I don't remember. We actually played these characters in a linear campaign for a while until we went back to the published adventures and new characters in the late 1980s. The last thing we did in Greyhawk was blow up the planet in a great cataclysm between the demons and devils. Basically, we were stepping on each other's toes as DMs, switching back and forth and using the same place names in different ways. So, if we couldn't share it, we destroyed it.

It was a great afternoon and seemed really weird. In sort of a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" scenario, Greyhawk ceased to exist and everyone's characters were blown through portals into new worlds. One was the Forgotten Realms (run by Steve), the other Primordia (run by Nick), and I made up the proto-Thuin which would later be renamed Sturmgard. College beckoned and we turned to other gaming, namely other campaigns in my case and other activities for the other two DMs.

I spent the last few weeks of summer before college reading the DMG from cover to cover, trying to make sense of the combat rules. It was then that I learned a 2nd edition would soon be released. Finally, we would be in on the ground floor of D&D! All the work I had done on Harn and Thuin would have to be re-done in this new edition. I decided to abandon Harn because the feel of that campaign was more suited to wargaming or historical re-enactment than fantasy role-playing. I focused all my attention on Thuin and came up with sort of a dark sword & sorcery wilderness packed with perils. I was trying to recreate the dark and gritty D&D of my youth. But the new rules that came out for 2nd edition would not allow it. All the "political correctness" irked me. Gone were the terms I had come to know. The combat system was better, but less stream-lined. It was easier to adlib though and I did that liberally after a while.

We had an awesome time playing D&D in college. All the campaigns were exciting, mainly because it was more than just the three of us playing. By finding all these other people to play with, the experience was heightened from fun to thrilling. We would talk about D&D all night in the dorms, formulate plans for overcoming obstacles in the game, and discussing plans of how our own campaigns would work with the new rules.

When I came home from college I was adrift without a D&D campaign. Sure, I was able to rejoin one of the side campaigns I played in, but I was really hoping to DM again. Shortly after joining up with the "Sunday Dorks" from work, I found my calling - permanent DM for a 2nd edition Greyhawk campaign paying homage to Gygax's vision. We had some awesome moments and made memories that I will be able to take to my grave, knowing that we had created something special. I later revisited Thuin and had a long-running Thursday night game that splintered apart after losing one of the key players to marriage. Although there have been starts and stops with these campaigns in the past 30 years, I still keep trying to recapture the fascination and wonder I had playing AD&D at Steve's house all those wonderful summers ago.

In an attempt to do so I hijacked the players from another campaign and in 2000 we started running the Known World with AD&D rules (mostly by the books with written house rules). It was very fun in the beginning and we played religiously every weekend for a good long while. But then real life began to intrude. One friend suffered a stroke. He was the inspiration for the adventures and he could no longer understand what was being said. It took a long time for him to recover enough to play again. The other players have aged and now it becomes more difficult to get together. Medical problems, children, work problems - all have affected the campaign.

I am trying to get myself back to the happy times of summertime AD&D. All this planning and organizing just to schedule time to have fun really sucks. I just want to have a week of nothing to do or worry about and simply play - like we did when we were kids....

Super-Detailing Adventures

I was busy working on my next AD&D adventure last weekend when I came to some sort of epiphany. I've been DMing now for almost 3/4 of my lifetime and it never fails that no matter how much information I place into the module, I still end up having to make "on the fly" descriptions of rooms and NPCs that have the opposite effect to what I anticipate. If I have only an empty room, that's the place where all the searching occurs. If I place an interesting room chock full of stuff, people walk in and then leave without so much as a glance. If the NPC is not named, it's meant to be nothing more than window dressing. My named NPCs rarely if ever survive 3 rounds of an encounter. Those NPCs with important information are ignored, while those who are mere pawns with no information are grilled for hours. No matter what I plan, my players always do the opposite.

So I'm contemplating a "super-detailed" adventure based on the original Greyhawk module T1: The Village of Hommlet. What I mean by this is taking the original description and expanding upon it to the degree that no matter what is asked I will have the information in front of me. This may require up to a page of fine print text per encounter area and possibly two to three pages for additional histories, descriptions, and diagrams for areas not covered in the original module. For instance, detailing the reticulated patterns on the snake in the moathouse may allow the players to come to the conclusion that the snake is not poisonous, but rather a constrictor (should that information be pertinent, say for a druid character able to identify animals). I could describe the chipping plaster and the mortared stone of the corridor walls. Sketches of the rooms and buildings on 1"-square graph paper would allow the players to better visualize the space they have to work with, along with ceiling heights, floor conditions (rubble, dust, dirt, cobwebs, dead bodies, etc.), and positions of the monsters when first encountered. Most of the combatants in the moathouse are static - they don't move around much. However, according to the wandering monster table one could encounter creatures from the various keyed areas on the map and their positions should be noted.

Can this be done for EVERY adventure? Surely not. But careful planning of the base town (in this case, Hommlet) with sufficient details and explanations (including motives, names, and physical descriptions or personality quirks) could allow the setting to come fully alive for the players. Players will often come to erroneous conclusions or make strange leaps of logic based off minimal information and mental "filling in the gaps." If given enough information they might be able to more easily come to the proper conclusions or even be better fooled by those trying to conceal their motives.

Super-detailing takes some time, to be sure. However, the DM is the sensory input for the players. Without a detailed description the players are basically deaf and blind in their world, being assaulted without reason by their environment, and reacting with brute force against any obstacle regardless of level of threat. More information might allow them to become diplomatic, cautious, and reactive in positive ways that will promote good gaming practices and hopefully allow better choices to be made. Of course, this assumes that the DM has a full grasp of the material and the wherewithal to complete such a project. It requires a good grasp of using visual aids and a talent for explaining "hard-to-explain" features of some modules. Of course, the players may not even care that the air smells of urine and rat feces before they attack the giant rats in the corner, but at least you can have the information at hand if, say, the torches get blown out and the party suddenly has to fumble around in the dark. By playing up the atmosphere, I believe that the D&D experience can be positively exciting if not mind-blowing! The trick is to explain to the fullest without going overboard. All five senses should be detailed if possible. Obviously taste would not necessarily be used in a  dungeon setting, but one never knows when one will find a storehouse of food and taste-testing may come into play (soured wine, dry biscuits, bubbling stew, etc). Sight would by necessity be the first and most important sense to cater to, with smell and sounds being next. Textures and vibrations are important for the sense of touch. How efficiently these senses can be processed would require some "super-detailing" of the characters as well. Detailed records of what is being worn and where would come into play. Usually unimportant details, like the the thief wearing fingerless gloves, would then become important in describing the prickly surface of a splintering chest, or the minute protrusion in the wall that activates the secret door. The DM must also answer the basic questions of any description: who, what, where, when, why, and how.