Back in the Ring

Well, it has been a while since my last post. This semester was rough on both me and most of my players, to the extent that I didn't get to run anything for over a month, but I just finished the comeback session of my AD&D campaign. Despite all of us being a little rusty with the rules and mechanics, and one of the four players that showed up having to leave before the session proper, we all had fun. I even have that endorphin rush that accompanies my best runnings; while I wouldn't count this one among my best, it was pretty good considering all of the factors that were arrayed against it. (Plus, the pizza this time was excellent... and one of my most regular players recently started working at the nearest pizza joint.)

This campaign in particular was one I've been itching to get back on its feet. According to the notes of one player, the last time we played it was in June. 😧

However, I used the intervening time to do some work on the rules. My goal throughout was to streamline and organize the rules as much as possible, while still leaving the majority of the content in the Player's Handbook valid rules-wise. Some of the changes I've made include:

• Simplifying the equipment lists a great deal. I used the equipment tables from the Rules Cyclopedia (and some from the Cook & Marsh Expert Rulebook) as a baseline, only adding extra items where absolutely necessary. I removed a lot of extraneous weapons from the "standard" list (the bloated ones from the PHB can still be used, if a player insists), as well as removing a lot of armor; there is now only one armor type for every AC value (from 8 to 0).
• Organizing the spell lists by class. Clerics (and paladins), druids (and rangers), and illusionists all use the spell tables from the AD&D1 Players Handbook, while mages (and bards) use the spell tables from the Expert Rulebook; this does mean that they do not have a finalized list beyond 6th level yet, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
• Adding the assassin and monk from The Scarlet Brotherhood as core classes, while removing all specialist wizards except the illusionist. This leaves a total of 11 classes - three for every group except wizards. I'm considering adding another wizard class to balance it out, but I'm not sure yet.
• Adding Comeliness as the seventh ability score; it's rolled like any other score, but will increase or decrease when Charisma does. It basically functions as described in AD&D1's Unearthed Arcana.

I also tried out the method of awarding experience by damage, detailed by Alexis Smolensk here; it worked well for my fighter and thief characters when the party fought a displacer beast, but the druid (who only got in one hit) came up short. I'm considering combining this with the optional rules for class-specific experience awards in the AD&D2 DMG, to allow some additional reward for difficult non-combat tasks.

Finally, I stayed up until 3:00am last night (Friday) creating a custom character sheet, incorporating all of my house rules. Both my players and I were very pleased by the results; I'll try and post it sometime soon after I add a page for henchmen and animal companions (the current sheet fits everything else on two pages).

Hopefully, getting to run will give me some inspiration for additional posts. I'll be traveling out of town closer to Yule/Christmas, but until then I'll try and whip something up.

(P. S. I used For Gold & Glory as my rules reference, and my PHB and the one owned by one of my players was used by them. For the most part, it worked; I'll definitely be using it instead of my stack of 2e core books going forward, at least for running at the table.)

Running the Funnel in B/X

So, this past Friday, I ran "The Funnel" for my B group. The original plan was that we would continue the D&D 5th Edition game that is the usual bi-weekly event of the group, but the DM overslept. Brief mention was made of running Call of Cthulu, but since I had all of my B/X stuff with me, I proposed running The Funnel. After some explanation, the players agreed, and I gave them the 3" x 2.5" index cards on which I had written the 0-level characters. There were seven players, for a total of 21 characters. I put them into a deadly dungeon in the Arcadian Isles (the setting for my regular B/X game), and let them loose.

They loved it.

True, some of the characters died. One especially unlucky player lost all three of his starting characters, so I gave him a fourth (the maximum number, so he'd better be extra careful with this one). Another player - his older brother, in fact - played one of his characters as an impulsive, gung-ho type (very much like one of B.'s characters, in fact), and the other two as more cautious; the reckless Bailey died gloriously, and the players kept talking about him for the rest of the session. Still a third player was making a map of his own using a paint program on his phone.

There were only two points of concern. One: the need for a map. I figured that having a mapper might slow down a group who usually doesn't even use miniatures, but since the aforementioned player was already making a pretty good map without the aid of grid lines, I think having at least one mapper would be a good idea. (In general, my players have enjoyed mapping far more than I expected for a bunch of young'uns - or at least, haven't hated it as much as I feared.)

The other concern was the order of actions. In a group of four to eight player characters, it's not extremely important who goes in what order on the same side... but with twenty-one characters in play, it gets a little chaotic. Next time, I'll probably just go clockwise around the table.

Fun was had by all, and hopefully I'll get to finish the adventure soon. It was also a morale booster, since the last two meet-ups with my A group kind of fizzled. The cool thing about B/X is that it has all the rules for The Funnel hidden inside the saving throw and combat tables, and the monster section (look under "Normal Man"). It's sessions like this that remind me why I persist in being a referee despite the difficulties and frustrations that crop up every so often.

Character Creation vs. Character Building

This is mostly a response to this post on The Word of Stelios, and is expanded from the comment I made there. Read his post first if you haven't already, and then come back here. I'll wait.

First Stelios, then Cirsova, and now me; it proves the point concisely, though.

I'll just come out and say it: I really, really don't like point-buy systems. They make character creation drag, they repel newcomers to the hobby, and they take the focus away from immersion and place it on min-maxing. Even in the simplest, most rules-lite games, so much time can be spent agonizing over where to put those last few points. It's one thing to have points able to be allocated to skills, if the game uses a skill system - heck, even AD&D 2nd Edition uses such a system for its rogue skills. But when the basic attributes of a character are determined by shuffling little numbers around, I call foul.

Let's use my current favorite game, Basic/Expert D&D (Moldvay/Cook & Marsh) as an example. To create a character, roll 3d6 in order. Then choose a class. Then roll for hit points based on that class (that is, if you don't just give maximum HP at 1st level like I do). Then roll 3d6 one more time for starting gold, and use that to buy equipment. Then write down Armor Class based on armor and Dexterity. Total time for an experienced player: 15 minutes or less.

The basic, essential attributes of a character - everything he or she has innately, before equipment, spells, and special abilities are factored in - can easily fit on half of a 3" x 5" index card. In preparation for a Dungeon Crawl Classics-style "Funnel" for B/X, I rolled up twenty-six 0-level characters - "Normal Humans", in B/X parlance - gave them first names, and figured out their Armor Class and Hit Points. All of this fit comfortably on an index card that had been cut in half to make two narrower ones.

"But what about equipment?" Write it on the back; it's a plain white surface.
"But what about saving throws and attack rolls?" Well, I can easily look up Normal Human (or, to use the exact wording in the table, "Normal Man" - although I tried for an even balance of masculine, feminine, and neuter names) on the Saving Throws table, and I know already that all of these characters have a THAC0 of 20.

True, there technically is a way of adjusting ability scores by lowering one to raise another - but as far as I can recall in my gonzo B/X campaign so far (the third session of which wrapped up this past Thursday), no one has actually done it. The curve for ability modifiers means that most adjustments wouldn't have a big effect; one of my players could have raised her cleric's Wisdom to 18, but she decided not to since it would only have affected saving throws, and wouldn't have raised her XP bonus at all (those cap at 16).

Now, I have a player who prefers point-buy to generate ability scores; part of this is due to his terrible luck with the dice when rolling up characters (something I've witnessed firsthand), but part of it is due to his desire to have as much control over the character as possible. I'm starting to think that this player suffers from acute Special Snowflake Syndrome, as the three characters he's had in my games are as follows: a Kitsune merchant, a Dhampir, and a giant(ess). You'll notice that none of those are even remotely core in any role-playing system outside of maybe The World of Synnibarr. In the first two cases, I had to scrape something together from homebrew sources; in the latter, I've had to combine information from The Complete Book of Humanoids with some references to the more obscure implied rules from the PHB and Monstrous Manual. This player insisted that his character had to be about 16 or 17 feet tall, but the largest giant-kin in the CBOH is the Firbolg, who stands about 10' 6". Fortunately, I was able to fudge this because the much taller Hill Giant has the same maximum Strength as the Firbolg (19).

This player is certainly not a bad person or even an annoying player while actually in session; he and I get along quite well otherwise. It just frustrates me that he seems unable to stick with the stuff already in the book. Isn't it enough to be able to play one of four to seven races, and choose from four to nine (or eleven) classes? Apparently not.

I think part of this is a result of said player having begun with D&D 3.5... which leads me to my next bugbear: feats.

I can't stand feats. They take too long to choose from, they're so vague that the player has to either write out a summary of the feat on their character sheet or resign themselves to the fate of having to crack open the rulebook every time they attack or get attacked, and there are some feats that are just plain better than others - a beginner's trap. (I have the same problem with the inflated spell lists in AD&D, but that's a whole other rant.) They're just another reason for me never to run D&D 3e or 3.5, or Pathfinder ever again.

At first, I thought that D&D 5th Edition had improved by making feats optional. But as I examined the process of character creation more thoroughly (and "built" a few characters of varying level myself), I realized something: no matter what optional rules are dropped, feats are still there, hiding under a different name. You might know them as "backgrounds" and "archetypes". Short phrases that have little to no meaning in and of themselves, serving only as shorthand for little packaged abilities or "skill bundles", chosen at character creation? Them there's feats.

Of course, feats are far from the only thing about 3rd Edition and 3.5 that would be a cause for Special Snowflake Syndrome; the mania for prestige classes and supplement bloat (the latter, naturally, also a problem with AD&D2, and even oD&D if you think about it) probably had something to do with it, along with the inclusion of a point-buy system into the core. Making a new character for any standard d20 System game - be it D&D, Star Wars Saga Edition, or something else - takes way too freaking long. Even worse is having to make a character, and then level it up to whatever number the DM has arbitrarily decided as the starting point. I joined an in-progress campaign where everyone was 8th level - and I do mean everyone. Not content with the evened-out XP table that is the same regardless of class, this particular DM (also a good person, and a fun guy to game with) did away with XP entirely, and just levels people up as the "story" moves along.

So anyway, I needed an 8th-level character. My first thought was to make a wizard, but I quickly realized that that was a bad idea; the class features gave me a big enough headache to incapacitate a hippo. Even making a fighter - a fighter, by the Nine! - required choosing a Martial Archetype, and following along with all the fancy feats that came with leveling up. This is probably why I like older versions of D&D more; in B/X and (core, no splatbooks) AD&D2, a fighter is a fighter. Sure, there's weapon specialization in AD&D2, but for the most part one fighter starts out the same as another. The uniqueness of each comes out in play. Delmar the Mighty is famed for his killing of the Dragon of Grindly Grunn, while Ulysses is a very smooth talker.

Likewise with wizards (or magic-users or mages). In either edition I typically run, you have one spell, four hit points, and no armor. You'd better play smart. I find that this is still somewhat the case in 5e (my 3rd-level wizard character got injured in a fight), but much less so thanks to infinite cantrips. (Of course, that's a whole other rant.)

I'm not really sure how to end this post; I've been working on it for two days off and on. Anyhow, thoughts? Has there ever been a system that, in your view, was so fun to play that it didn't matter how long it took to make characters?

For Gold & Glory: First Impressions

My copy of For Gold & Glory just arrived in the mail today! It arrived much sooner than expected, which is fortunate since I'm planning to get my AD&D game back on its feet in the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to having a single-book rules reference to use in-game, and I'll likely post a more in-depth review of it once I've actually gotten to use it as such.

For now though, I can comment on its physical quality. I opted for color hardcover, and even then the price was just over $25.00 USD (including shipping). It uses matte paper, which doesn't show off the art as well as glossy (and some of the art - mostly drawn from Renaissance and later paintings, as far as I can tell - is very good), but it looks like it'll take pencil much better. Since I'm using this as a reference guide, and it's not a vintage or rare item, I will try to overcome my compunctions and make some notes of my own! It's also quite easy to read, being in my absolute favorite format: serif font, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-10 pt, two-column layout.

More to come! (...at some point)

(Unrelated note: I'm so glad for the new, larger mailbox that was decided on after the previous one fell over in a storm. The whole book fit in it easily!)

House Rule: Cloud Giant (B/X Class)

(Okay, here's something I whipped up in about half an hour. Some background: One of my players is willing to rejoin my AD&D2 campaign if he can play a giant character. Due to size, abilities, and its presence in The Complete Book of Humanoids, the best candidate for 2e is the Firbolg. However, I've been thinking of possibly, maybe converting that campaign back to B/X, so I put together this write-up based on the Expert Rulebook and the method of giant PCs from the aforementioned 2e splatbook.)

CLOUD GIANTS
                                             Hit
Level    Title                          Dice               Experience   
1          Giant Veteran            1d8 + 12        0
2          Giant Warrior            2d8 + 12        2,500
3          Giant Swordmaster    3d8 + 12        5,000
4          Giant Hero                 4d8 + 12       10,000
5          Giant Swashbuckler   5d8 + 12        20,000
6          Giant Myrmidon        6d8 + 12        40,000
7          Giant Champion        7d8 + 12        80,000
8          Giant Superhero        8d8 + 12        150,000

These fierce giants have white or gray skin and hair, and stand 20' tall. The prime requisite for cloud giants is Strength. A Strength score of 13 or greater will give the cloud giant a bonus on earned experience points.

RESTRICTIONS: Cloud giants use eight-sided dice (d8) to determine their hit points, but they gain a bonus of 12 hit points at 1st level. They may advance to a maximum of 8th level of experience. They may not wear armor, and may only use human-scaled weapons that are designed for two-handed use (such as battle axes, two-handed swords, and pole arms), which they wield with one hand due to their great size. A cloud giant character must have both a minimum Strength and Constitution of 9.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: Cloud giants use the same saving throws as dwarves and halflings. They have a natural Armor Class of 4; due to their great size, this cannot be improved by Dexterity bonuses (although Dexterity penalties may apply). When using standard weapons, cloud giants deal two dice of damage (roll the weapon's typical damage die twice, and add the results). In addition to the use of human weapons, cloud giants' might is such that they can hurl large boulders up to 200' for 3d6 damage.

Any time a cloud giant character has enough money, he or she may construct a castle. These are typically built in the sides of mountains or (with the assistance of powerful magic) atop masses of clouds. The guards will be 3-18 (3d6) giant hawks in the clouds or mountains, or 6-36 (6d6) dire wolves in the mountains.

The Mithgar Dilemma

Okay, some background. In my campaign setting (hereafter referred to as "Duemerus", after the kingdom in which it primarily takes place), there are three main ethnicities or tribes of orcs, each with its own traditional society. Lately, the orcish communities tend to mingle more and more with the non-orcish ones - especially since distinct "human", "elven", and "dwarven" cultures (plus countless others) are slowly merging into a general "humanoid" society. For the people who grew up in the United States, this is kind of like how people from different states might have different cultural values and norms in their own homes and neighborhoods, but can still relate to people from other states without too much trouble. The narrower "Texan" or "Pennsylvanian" identity is only part of the broader "American" identity, and the latter can easily take over when necessary; this is especially true when said people are further united by a common language, currency, infrastructure (such as the highway system), etc.

Anyway, the three main "tribes" are the Vrothgar (mostly Lawful), the Grullgar (mostly Neutral), and the Mithgar (mostly Chaotic). Members of the "tribes" are identifiable by some physical variations, even if they are not active members of the tribe from which they are genetically descended; these distinctions are less visible among those who grew up entirely in the broader "Duemeran" cultural context, and all but intangible among cross-breeds (typically individuals with one human and one orcish parent). Vrothgar society is highly regimented, based heavily on honor and bravery; Grullgar society is less honor-focused, more like the usual informal hierarchies that tend to arise in human and demihuman bandit groups; and Mithgar "society" as such does not exist, for reasons I'll get into shortly.

When I was sketching out the campaign, I quickly decided that I didn't want to have any entire race that is evil. The big reason for that is the racist overtones that would carry, especially if said race is partly or wholly based on a real-world culture, but a second reason is that I don't like stereotypes in general, and more can be gained from being optimistic about human (humanoid?) nature than from being pessimistic. If the goblins always attack, the party just kills them; if the goblins are willing to trade, barter, or even just talk about things the party wants to know, then interesting in-game relationships between different groups can form. (My last AD&D session involved a friendly kobold who was happy to share the abundant food and drink he had found in the pantry, and one of my players remarked afterwards, "That was cute.")

So, why would the Mithgar tend to be more Chaotic in their behavior (Chaotic Neutral, not necessarily Evil)? I thought of a solution: they sometimes practice cannibalism. This does not, in and of itself, mean that a person, race, or culture is evil in my game; after all, the lizardfolk eat their dead, but they're still mostly Neutral in almost every edition of the game. Rather, the Mithgar tendency to consume the entire body - including the brain and cerebrospinal fluid - means that the resultant prion diseases are fairly common. This makes it rather difficult for them to form an organized society, especially since some of the nastier conditions have a chance of being passed on genetically, even before the standard vectors and mother-to-unborn-child infection are taken into account.

I was thinking that this was a way to have a reason for the standard "orcs are evil", while allowing a condition whereby some orcs (actually, the majority of them) could turn out NOT evil. But then the thorny question of nature vs. nurture comes up. Assume that psychologists, sociologists, etc. somehow made their way to Duemerus, and decided that intervention was necessary in order to ensure higher quality of life for Mithgar children. Is their Chaotic tendency a function of their genetic heritage - in which case they would have some inborn negative traits - or of their environment? And if it's the latter, wouldn't an especially presumptuous and egotistical person postulate that the Mithgar culture should be dissolved, and the children raised by "acceptable" adoptive parents?

Most readers will begin to see some major problems with either "solution", in that these types of arguments have been part of real-world concepts like eugenics and ethnic cleansing. And these supposedly "scientific" concepts have done a lot of damage to both individual people and entire cultures; some of these attempts at genocide were, sadly, successful. It's fucked up, and I realize that I've introduced a thorny issue into my game without a good solution. Either the Mithgar's genes are evil, or their culture is. The former is a slippery slope leading to the fantasy equivalent of white supremacist thinking, and the latter, while not impossible or even confined to racial lines (just look at how toxic "gamer culture" can be), brings up the issue of cultural homogenizing that the "assimilated" people (in real life or in Duemerus) would certainly object to - and would be completely justified in doing so.

This is already a campaign where I've introduced such controversial topics as cannibalism, and where I might end up introducing pregnancy and its related controversies in the future (depending on how a similar situation is resolved in a Godbound game I'm playing in... remind me to post about that some time). I realize that it's important to discuss topics like racism and cultural appropriation, but is it right to spark such discussion within the game universe itself? More importantly, will it lead down a road that the players don't want to follow?

A Belated Gygax Day

I completely forgot to write a post about Gygax's birthday yesterday, but I thought this might tickle one or more fancies.

My friends and I have been trying to start up an actual RPG club at our university. It's finally getting through the approval process, and several officers have been chosen, so in the group chat two days ago I mentioned off-hand, "Too bad we couldn't time it [the founding] for Gygax's birthday or something." The president of the club then told me that the next day was, in fact, Gygax's birthday.

Everyone was stunned, and I chuckled to myself. "Synchronicity at work, people." :D

Games I Will Never Run

Here's a short list of games that I will never DM/GM, for any number of reasons.

AD&D 1st Edition - Confusingly organized, even more so than 2e. I do like the tone of 1e much more, though, so there's a slight possibility that I might run it with a heavy dose of house rules to remove some of the dumber things (like alignment languages, material components, and the massive mess that is the unarmed combat system). I recently met someone who loves DMing it, though, so I wouldn't mind being on board as a player.
 
GURPS (any edition) - I tried to figure out the 4th edition "GURPS Lite" document. I still haven't. I'm not a big fan of point-buy systems in general, and this one is just way too fiddly for my tastes. I would probably not play this one either.
 
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - I love this book (not surprising, since I loved the movie), and the Tri-Stat system is a bit less complex than GURPS in terms of point-buy. I'd imagine that in play it's pretty fast and simple, but the problem is that I have zero ideas for a modern-day crime game. I certainly wouldn't mind playing it, if someone else had ideas.

The World of Darkness - The system isn't too bad, and my brief experience playing Mage: The Awakening would help me get a handle on things, but I only have one story idea. I'd hate to make everyone make human characters for a mini-campaign, but if players would be up for it, I might be convinced. I wouldn't mind playing, either.

Star Wars (any post-WEG version) - I don't know nearly enough about the universe to make for a satisfying game for the players. My entire experience with the franchise is the movies, some of the video games, and a couple of kiddie novels I read as a youngling. I obviously wouldn't mind playing, considering I already have and had a blast.

Pathfinder (the full edition) - Nope. Way, way too much crunch. Wouldn't mind playing, but I will never upgrade to the non-Beginner Box edition as a GM.

You might notice that D&D 4th Edition isn't there. To be honest, if I had the time or the desire, I wouldn't mind DMing 4e, but I doubt that most of my players would want to put themselves through that. HackMaster 4e is also not there, because as much as I would want to run it (and endure all of the rules arguing and struggles thereof), it's based on the AD&D engine that two of my players hate so much, and few others would want to struggle with the rules.

When Players and the DM Disagree

So, in the two months since I announced my hiatus from blogging, I thought I would pop back in and explain a little bit about what's been going on.

One of my longtime friends - who was, in fact, a member of my very first RPG group - recently moved back to town, transferring to the same university that the rest of my "Thursday group" attends (except for L., who had to drop out of school due to personal concerns). She has finally been able to make her druid character, and among the other things going on in the AD&D2 campaign, she decided that her 6' 2" half-elf druid will be getting married to B.'s 2' 6" halfling fighter. This gave me a lot of food for thought, as I had to do some figuring out as to how the different races, and society overall in the campaign setting, would react to not only a gay marriage, but an inter-species one.

Unfortunately, not all is well in AD&D Land. Besides the two players who now live out of town, and can only rarely jump in over Skype, I have had two players drop out of this campaign due to dissatisfaction with the rules system being used. One of them pretty much refuses to play anything other than D&D 5th Edition; the other feels that a game is useless without a d20 System-esque skill system, and also gets really attached to his characters. As a cherry on top of this disappointment sundae, one player who doesn't mind 2e (after all, he started with oD&D and then went to 4e, so he's pretty flexible) is in a predicament where his character is, if not definitely dead, then almost certainly dead and requiring a hell of an explanation as to why the character is alive.

The solution? Well, the possibly-dead character can be the source of an interesting plot development I've been turning over in my head, but the two players who've left won't come back unless they're happy with the rules. Neither of them want to play B/X, since it lacks both rangers and separated race/class. I don't want to run D&D5 for a few reasons: first, I'm not nearly familiar enough with it to run it; and second, the magic level is way, way too high to mesh well with a campaign that started off in B/X. I've already told of my incredulity at how overpowered magic missile is in 5e, and I started to realize that the reason for wizards quickly overpowering fighters in 3e and later editions is because of the removal of class-specific XP levels.

That being said, I wouldn't mind running a higher-magic game. We recently had a "Drunk D&D" session for B.'s birthday, that involved me running them through the introductory scenario in the Pathfinder Beginner Box. The BB is a good system, fairly restrained, and I certainly wouldn't mind running it... except that it would mean putting my "Continent" campaign - the one I've spent the better part of a year working on - on the shelf.

As for dissatisfaction with the underlying rules system... I've brought up Basic Fantasy to my group, and they like the idea even though they haven't yet seen it in action. They like the ascending Armor Class, separated race and class, and large number of supplementary material available; I like the low power level, light rules, and free availability of everything needed to play (or at cost, in the case of printed materials).

As much as this seems like the best solution, I still wish I could get those two players to stick with 2e. Not the least because I've put a lot of time and money into the system (I bought B. a copy of the PHB for her birthday, and am awaiting a premium reprint of the same that I ordered from my FLGS). But I was watching one of Spoony's older Counter Monkey videos, and he said something that struck a chord with me. Much like me, 2e is his favorite rules system... but he realizes that it isn't necessarily the best system. I find myself agreeing, but I still want to at least bring the current story arc to a close before converting.

And when I do so, I might hand the reins over to B. for a while... and she might decide to just use what she knows, and run us through something using AD&D2.

Well, a DM can dream.

My A to Z Reflection post

Just thought I'd share the reason that I won't be returning for next year's Challenge (this is copy-pasted from the survey I took):

"I found the daily schedule draining creatively, with finals going on at the same time as the latter half of the challenge; it also felt stifling to have to stick to a prescribed theme (even a self-prescribed one), and as a result several of my posts were far shorter and of much lower quality than I would have wanted them to be."

My few semi-regular readers will undoubtedly have noticed that I've been mostly quiet since finishing the Challenge, and this is why. The key word to take away from this is burnout - I'm feeling burnt out, and I honestly don't have the enthusiasm to write up any of my (relatively few) gaming stories or ideas... not even the marathon seven-hour AD&D2 session I ran is getting me excited enough to write another real post.

I enjoy blogging in general, and I'm actually thinking about starting up a blog about one of my other hobbies - music. But yeah, both in the blogosphere and in my real-world social life, I'll be taking a break from blogging. In the second area, I'm going to try to wrap up the current "story arc" of my D&D game in order to (hopefully) hand the reins to one of my very left-brain players, who I feel would do an excellent job of rules mastery and internally consistent world design even if said Schrödinger's DM would make a few mistakes - hey, we all do on our first attempt.

So... hiatus, I suppose?

Z is for Zombies

I've mentioned zombies before, but I wanted to bring up something that has always been a sticking point for me: the use of the word "zombie" in a fantasy game. I've never been a huge fan of it, to the point that not a single one of my NPCs has ever uttered the word. With the way that pop culture of the last ten years or so has been swarming with the things - both figuratively and literally - I find that it's much too easy to ruin the immersive nature of the game by reference to a common term. (Incidentally, I also have this problem with Ktulu* after Steve Jackson Games started the wave of plush toys... even though Cthulu Dice is one of my favorite quick-play party games.)

Before I started playing tabletop RPGs, I ran into this issue. I got around it then by following the lead of the original Night of the Living Dead, and referring to shambling, reanimated corpses as "ghouls". I'm still a fan of this idea, as it's just vague enough that there's no precise definition. A "ghoul" might be a carnivorous corpse, or a roaming undead necrovore. The only issue is that a "ghoul" in D&D terms refers to a very specific type of monster, that is often semi-intelligent and not usually created to serve a necromancer or "evil" cleric.

I've already demonstrated to my players the lethality of even a relatively small group of zombies, although some of them feel that that specific scenario was unfair; but that's a story for another time. Perhaps there's a good way to keep them scary...

* Yes, I spelled it the way Metallica spelled it. No, there isn't a particular reason. I just like footnotes.

Y is for Years

I'm not talking about the years that a particular person or group can spend enjoying the hobby. Instead, I want to talk about the significance of years in game time.

When describing a game world's history, it's easy to get carried away and have changes occur so slowly that there's essentially a case of medieval stasis. The Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster happened in 300 AGC (After the Grand Conjunction); the Fruit of the House of Gusher was stolen in 350 AGC; and the Murloc Invasion began in 425 AGC, which brings us to the current campaign.

And in all that time, people are still using steel longswords, maille armor, and yew bows.

To be honest, I'm somewhat guilty of this myself, which is why I've worked on establishing a rough technology timeline for my setting. The "Old Era" (which would be when my OD&D campaign is set) has bronze as the main weapons technology, and the ballista is a relatively new invention. The "Middle Era" (where my AD&D2 campaign is currently set) has portable crossbows, though they are relatively rare. The "Late Era" (rules system to be determined) would have non-magical gunpowder just being invented.

It's always important to keep in mind, though, that sweeping changes can happen in under a decade.

X is for eXpert

As much as I enjoyed reading about B/X, and as much time as I'd spent reading the Moldvay Basic Rulebook, I had never actually read through the Cook/Marsh Expert Rulebook until about six months ago. I caved and bought the PDF, and printed it out.

Every good thing you've ever heard about it is true.

The curve from 1st to 14th level is pretty good, and doesn't do as big a disservice to demihumans as the 1-36 spread does in the larger BECMI rules. The endgame is solid, as players have the ability to build castles and strongholds, sail the seas, and explore in a satisfying way; the wilderness encounter tables are better organized than the ones from OD&D, but aren't as cluttered or unintentionally hilarious as the ones from AD&D1. I'm actually going to start using them for my AD&D2 campaign, as 2e basically has none.

Plus, the art is cool. I particularly like the illustration in the character advancement tables with the human fighter talking to the two halflings. It simultaneously conveys the physical scale of the two species, the fighting capability of most halfling adventurers, the condescending attitude the taller races have towards halflings (in many settings, but not all), and the halflings' impatience with this attitude.

"Gettin' real sick of your shit, Marlowe."

I have yet to sit down and read through the entire rulebook (as I have done with the 2e Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master Guide, as well as the Moldvay Basic Rulebook), but I certainly hope to do so soon. The Expert Rules are just cool all around, and I still kind of want to run B/X in its natural form.

W is for Wizards of the Coast

(Apologies in advance for getting this post out late. I'll be posting the "X" post later today, so don't worry that I've started shirking my bloggerly responsibilities.)

Some people - past and present - seem to have heralded it as the end of an era when TSR was bought out by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. It's true that AD&D 2nd Edition would soon be on its way out, and the 3rd Edition would make some changes that not everyone liked, but it's not hard to realize that these changes were almost entirely evolutionary.

Grid combat? Six-second rounds? Attacks of opportunity? Those all originated (in official AD&D products, at least) in the Player's Option supplemental rulebooks, specifically Combat and Tactics. The Option books came out in 1995 - at the same time as the revision of AD&D2, and two years before the buyout.

I love this cover; it should have been the cover
to the revised PHB, since it shows actual combat
instead of just busting down a door!

Besides, Wizards of the Coast did keep AD&D alive for several years. They released a booklet allowing for the conversion of AD&D characters to the new 3rd Edition rules (which was slightly iffy, but a nice gesture). They released a number of supplemental books, such as The Scarlet Brotherhood (meant for Greyhawk, but could be used for any setting) which updated and revised the Assassin and Monk classes for the new rules. And, they released an adventure module (The Apocalypse Stone) which allowed DMs to end their 2nd Edition campaigns in a blaze of worlds-ending glory.

Alexis of The Tao of D&D, in his most recent podcast, suggested that the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie would never have happened if TSR had still been around as an actual company. I feel that he's both right and wrong on this point. On the one hand, the particular movie that was made is not very good, and it does a poor job of conveying what a good D&D campaign is like (although I just ran the Fast Play Game based on the movie last night, and I succeeded in introducing a complete neophyte to the hobby with great interest). On the other hand, the movie that might have been made in the 1980s - with Gygax's direct involvement - would have been far, far worse, as I read in this article from The Escapist.

True, WotC is responsible for the debacle that is 4th Edition... but that particular cluster of failure is more the fault of Hasbro, who pushed WotC to make a new version of the game (and probably forced them to make it as MMOG-like as possible) after buying them out in turn. WotC is certainly trying to do right by those who have remained loyal to the D&D "brand", and lure people back who jumped ship for Pathfinder (or even earlier cases). The premium reprints are no longer in print to my knowledge, but they can still easily be found relatively cheaply online.*

I salute you, Wizards. You done good.

* Except for the boxed set of OD&D, which (typical of collector's items) has skyrocketed to twice the list price. If I wasn't willing to pay $149.99 USD for a set, who the hell thinks I'll pay $280?

V is for Variant Rules

My two favorite editions of D&D (that I've actually gotten to run; OD&D might take precedence if I ever find someone willing to play it) are Moldvay Basic/Cook & Marsh Expert (B/X), and AD&D 2nd Edition. These two iterations of the game share some common features. Both are fairly tightly written; both focus on core classes while still giving a few additional options for more non-conformist players; and both have a good deal of rules clearly marked as optional.

At the same time, there is a distinction in my mind between optional rules, tournament rules, and variant rules. The first can be completely excluded from the game without having too many adverse effects (unless the DM or players prefer to use said rules). The second, mostly a feature of AD&D2, set out rules that are used in place of the "optional rule" to allow for greater consistency at events and organized play. An example of this would be the two different sets of rules for encumbrance (in the PHB) and aerial combat (in the DMG); in the latter case, the "tournament rule" is the standard abstraction of passes and movement classes, while the "optional rule" requires the use of miniature figures or markers - to my recollection, the only AD&D2 rule to explicitly require them.

The third category consists of a different way of doing an integral rule. For instance, initiative is an essential part of combat; no matter what system is used for it, a system is necessary. Both B/X and AD&D2 have simple group initiative as the default rule; individual initiative, while marked as optional, is more of a variant rule because it replaces an existing system with a different way of doing the same thing. (AD&D2 also has a mix between these, referred to as "group initiative" - as opposed to "standard initiative" - that still divides battles into sides, but uses a small table of modifiers for which every member of a side must qualify.)

Likewise, weapon damage (in B/X, at least) can be handled in one of two ways. The standard rule is to simply use 1d6 for all character attacks; although it isn't explicitly stated, one assumes that monster attacks would function similarly, as they indeed did in OD&D. The table of variable weapon damage is a variant rule; damage is still calculated and implemented as normal, but the die rolled is different.

To anyone reading this post: what are some of your favorite (or least favorite) variant and optional rules in D&D or similar games?

U is for Unearthed Arcana

Oh jeez... I'm about to get into a topic that has diehard AD&D1 gamers on opposite sides of a ditch, trying to throw things to hit the people on the other side and possibly knock them into said ditch.

I haven't read through the original Unearthed Arcana cover to cover, although I've occasionally thought about picking it up if it's cheap next time I'm in Austin. There is a huge volume of material included within it, though, so I'll just give some bullet points.

• The addition of the "Comeliness" ability score seems more than a little silly to me. I get that Charisma isn't completely based on physical attractiveness, but adding a seventh score that seems more like a subset of another one isn't a good idea. And history seems to have agreed with me, as no other iteration of the game includes Comeliness as a factor.
  (EDIT 2016-08-18: Having finally gotten the HackMaster 4th Edition rules, I see that they do in fact use the Comeliness score. Since a big part of that game is needlessly complicated rules and parodying the complexity and obtuseness of much of classic D&D, I think that my point still stands. Heck, even AD&D2's Skills & Powers book didn't use Comeliness as one of the two sub-scores for Charisma.)
• The barbarian class as written here is possibly an even worse party member than the assassin. An assassin could certainly, by the (Players Hand-)book, be played as extreme Lawful Evil, working with the party to further their own goals and realizing that the magic-user and the fighters are helping to watch their back when things get ugly. Not so for the UA barbarian; the rules flat-out state that barbarians will seek to destroy magic items whenever they are found. True, the barbarian was reworked as a more cooperative class for 3e and onward, and the AD&D2 barbarian "kit" isn't too bad, but the way it's presented here makes my brain hurt just thinking of the things that could go wrong.
• The thief-acrobat is interesting, although it seems like it could have been named a little bit better. I'd imagine that this awkward naming convention was responsible for the stereotype of RPGs having really long and convoluted class names (although B/X is not exempt from this; an 8th-level elf has the title of "Superhero-Necromancer").
• The cavalier is cool for those who want a game more focused on wilderness exploration, or a low-fantasy one modeled more heavily on medieval Europe. The rules for 0-level play are also good, presaging Dungeon Crawl Classics' "funnel" mechanic. Unfortunately, a lot of players were angered by the changing of the paladin (who is also modified for UA) to a subclass of the cavalier, rather than the fighter. This is extremely odd to modern ears, or those familiar with AD&D2; the arrangement of warrior/wizard/priest/rogue makes sense, so why add a fifth "group" that could easily be subsumed under the warrior group? This class also returned as a warrior "kit" in The Complete Fighter's Handbook for AD&D2, proving my point for me.
• Cantrips are a nice addition, to the point that I've considered adding them to my AD&D2 campaign. On the other hand, I like the default 2nd Edition idea of cantrip: an improvisational minor magic effect, that might add some wonder back into the arcane instead of making a spell "just another sort of laser pistol" (a quote from the book Authentic Thaumaturgy by Isaac Bonewits).

Finally, I am so dissatisfied with the problem of ability score inflation - a major problem running throughout this book in particular - that I am seriously considering switching my AD&D2 game to using 3d6 arranged to taste. It's actually the perfect time to do so; two of my players kept their old B/X scores rather than roll new ones, one of them just made an exceptionally average character, and the other one (or two, depending on whether the other player decides to join as a regular player) has yet to replace the character that was killed in the last session. I'll poll them this week and see.

T is for Tables (the physical kind)

As should be obvious to many longtime gamers, the table one uses to play can literally make or break a session. Too long and skinny, and no one has room for their sheets, notes, or miniatures (if they're used), not to mention drinks; too round, and the "space" of each participant gets squashed; too few chairs, and there's no room to put books, food, or other elements of the DM's toolkit.

The surface of the table is also a major factor; excessively soft wood is poorly suited for writing, as are tables with rough surfaces - the typical plastic fold-out table is a prime offender in the latter case. The stability and weight of the playing surface are also crucial, since a poorly timed lean might send the dungeon sliding to its demise on the linoleum. (Depending on how messy your players are, carpet may or may not be the best option for flooring.)

For a while, I thought about making a custom pool table like the one Cole had made in PvP. As nice as that would be (plus, it could be used as a pool table!) I realize that it's not economical at this point. My next idea originally came from the one and only John Eric Holmes, who wrote in his article "Confessions of a Dungeon Master" that he used a table covered in chalkboard paint, to spatially map out encounters. And my friend has a chalkboard table, so wouldn't that be perfect?

The only issue is that chalk creates dust - a lot of it. So, I'm thinking a whiteboard table would be the best option, since we could then use wet or dry erase markers on it; I might put some crosses to draw out squares, or even an offset "SquareHex" arrangement of crosses based on the one that Fitz made.

This is sort of a moot point at the moment, since I don't have the room yet; but once I move into an actual house with my partner, there'll certainly be a spot picked out for a table and chairs.

S is for Steampunk

Last evening, I played my first session of Iron Kingdoms. I like the system, even if chargen is a bit confusing. It appears to have been synchronicity at work; I have never heard of Iron Kingdoms until this point, but not only did I recently finish a small steampunk RPG for one of my friends, it uses an almost identical spread of attributes to Physique, Agility, and Intelligence. Nor is this subconscious inspiration; we first started working on this game at least three years ago, when the only functioning RPG I had ever played or read was Pathfinder. The big difference is that my game is much less fantasy-based, with only humans.

The campaign is set in a universe from a video game, which is essentially the typical high-fantasy setting with some interesting changes. My character is an orcish woman, which led to some unfortunate circumstances at the start; the story began with Gnora in a cage, having tomatoes thrown at her! But this did give me the chance to role-play, and to work on my feminine orc voice; the GM was so impressed that he gave me an extra experience point at the end of the session.

As I started writing this post, it occurred to me that Pathfinder borders on steampunk, depending on which supplemental books are being used. If used sparingly, firearms aren't too big of a clash with the typical "dungeonpunk" motif of most newer iterations of fantasy RPGs. Since my setting is still mostly European in nature, I won't be introducing any gunpowder for some time... but it might appear in the future.

R is for Role-Playing

In my previous post, I talked about the tightness and value of B/X from a purely gamist point of view, and how its rules setup makes some elements of setting design a bit difficult when considered from the perspective of realism (or at least, verisimilitude). The biggest element of this is race-as-class, which has some odd implications in terms of the "monster" lists; there are no 0-level dwarves, elves, or halflings (as there are "Normal Men"), so should the DM and/or players assume that every elf they meet - from the mighty Lord-Wizard (or Lady-Maga) to the humble giant-mushroom gardener - can use any weapon, wear any armor, and cast a 1st-level arcane spell?

JB of B/X Blackrazor has talked about how this idea tends to restrict play to focus on characters as archetypes rather than special snowflakes. This can certainly be a good thing, depending on the kind of campaign one is running, but I've been trying to nudge my players out of their usual goofy, jokey idea of the game into one where they can become emotionally invested - where things like wonder can genuinely happen, even in a world where humans can shoot magic homing arrows out of their fingertips.

I was reading through the recent posts on Playing D&D With Porn Stars (NSFW in places, obviously) when I came across this article, submitted by a different author for a contest. The first mini-article talks about how all fantasy elves since Tolkien (and even more so since D&D) are essentially the same; when one imagines an elf, one usually imagines Legolas; older viewers might (gods help you) think of Crow from Hawk the Slayer. But is that what one is aiming for?

I've spent the past few weeks working, as school permits, on some more detailed ethnic breakdowns for my campaign world. Before the Kingdom took over a third of the Continent, there were at least five very different cultures of humans; some of them still survive in rural areas, but for the most part they have been absorbed into one cosmopolitan whole (much like the way that there's not much difference between Southerners, New Englanders, Midwesterners, and Pacific Northwesterners when you look at the larger cities). Polar humans are still functionally human, and have the same set of capabilities as Steppe or Occidental humans, but there are subtle cultural distinctions that separate them in relatively minor ways.

I've also been doing this for the other sentient races. Orcs are no longer monolithic; I have a tribe of extreme Lawful orcs (somewhat based on the samurai), a tribe of basically Neutral ones (who mostly want to be left alone, or at least to be rewarded for their time and labor), and a tribe of extremely Chaotic ones (who are inherently evil, but it's not genetic - they've developed neurological disorders from their habit of cannibalism). Slowly, I've been doing the same thing for dwarves, elves, gnomes, goblins, halflings, hobgoblins, etc.

The challenge now is to convey this information to my players without forcing them to slog through the 25 AES Census and History of the Kingdom. My next set of adventures should help, if I have a chance to run them.

Q is for... um...

...okay, I have to admit I don't have anything for Q. Instead, I'll just launch into some freewheeling thoughts regarding classic D&D that have been rushing through my mind of late.

AD&D2 is a good system. There are a few things I don't like about it, and a few subsystems that are a bit too complex for my tastes, but on the whole it's flexible enough that the rules tend to get out of the way when they're not needed. Plus, I know it better now than almost any other system, and it's what I moved my current group to, so I'm sticking with it.

B/X is also a good system. It's very tightly designed, simple in a lot of places but spelled out where it counts. The only thing I don't like about it is race-as-class. Yes, I realize that the focus on archetypes can be interesting, but when trying to design a believable world, it ends up looking a little silly. For a pure "game", this would be my go-to rules set.

OD&D has been almost beckoning to me of late. Ever since I printed out Greyharp's Single Volume Edition and had it spiral-bound, I've realized that its nature as a framework is actually perfect for my own campaign. There are a few rules I can easily change, but I actually like the idea of designing a world to fit the rules. Plus, the blood-simple mechanics and lack of later developments (such as item/class/spell bloat) make it a perfect edition to run a human-centric campaign set a century or two before my AD&D2 campaign. (This also gives me an excuse to have hobbits by their real names!)

Those are my thoughts for now.

P is for Players

For a role-playing game, they're pretty damn important, aren't they? Some games are designed to be run with no GM - I assume the players form the tabletop equivalent of an anarcho-syndicalist commune - but players are always a must.

With D&D, the more the merrier. Particularly in "old-school" (i.e., before Wizards of the Coast) iterations of the game, having more party members means having more muscle, more bodies to soak up damage, and most importantly (from a gamer's standpoint, at least) a good buffer in case one or two players isn't able to make it. I often end up with only two or three players; in the latter case, it's usually okay, but in the former case I have to concede to reality and break out a board game or something. (Of course, there was that one time where only one player showed up...)

Even a single player might be okay, depending on the system being run. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a perfect example; the authors acknowledge in their introduction that adults are usually busy, so the game is set up for one GM and one player. My issue is that I have zero ideas for modern-day crime plotlines. (I also take exception to the idea that character death should never happen unless it's important to the story.) Hell, even for The World of Darkness, the most I can come up with is a one-shot.

My apologies if the last few posts (and possibly the next few as well) are a little disjointed and/or short. Writing two term papers in two days, and a third coming up, have left my brain a little bit tired. I will still be doing my best to stick to my commitment for the month.

O is for Otyugh

Me and the otyugh go back a ways. The very first D&D adventure I ran - the Fast Play Game based on the Dungeons & Dragons movie from 2000 - had an otyugh as its final boss, although my players never got there.

When I was running B/X, I was stunned to realize that there was never an "official" otyugh write-up for non-Advanced D&D (at least not in the core B/X or BECMI books, or the Rules Cyclopedia). To find one, I ended up going through The Basic Fantasy Field Guide, and converting the one there to use the old-fashioned armor class.

Then, when game time came, I realized that I had left it at home. So, I just winged it; I decided that it was THAC0 18, and had six Hit Dice. The players fought it, and won. As far as I know, none of them were ever aware that I was just making it up off the top of my head. Honestly, that's one of my prouder moments as a DM.

Getting back to the monster itself, I like that I could hypothetically stick one in a dungeon as an explanation for the lack of toilets. This is, in fact, what I did for the abandoned manse the party cleared out to use as a home base; the entire house has one chamber pot, but the otyugh in the basement served as more than enough waste disposal.

N is for Necromancer

When I was busy re-tooling my AD&D2 campaign, one thing I decided to do was incorporate level titles for every class. Most of these could simply be carried over from AD&D1 or OD&D, but there were a few that didn't ever have official titles. Chief among these were the specialist wizards (the illusionist notwithstanding), and I decided to start with the easiest and most archetypal: the Necromancer.

These level titles are designed for the B/X standard of "Name Level = 9th Level", but aside from that they can be used with any game. If you use them in a product of your own, please contact me beforehand and I'll probably be happy to let you use them with credit given. (Points to anyone who can name the inspirations for at least four of these!)

The Necromancer (Wizard Class)

1. Awaker
2. Graverobber
3. Skulldugger
4. Boneman (Bonewoman)
5. Mortifier
6. Plagueherald
7. Soultaker
8. Fleshreaper
9. Necromancer

M is for Magicians, Magic-users, and Mages

The different names for the same class across editions are slightly amusing to me. Since the focus of this challenge is "classic" D&D, I won't be naming the name they changed to when TSR was bought out. It's interesting that a lot of OSR bloggers seem to hold a great deal of nostalgia for the "magic-user" moniker, as opposed to the equally clear but shorter and more concise "mage".

Sorry this post is so short, but I'm trying to get it out before 12:00 so as not to miss a day. Work and play have left me dry, but I'm doing my best to stick to my promise (it's 11:58 local time as I write this)!

L is for Lords (and Ladies)

In all editions of D&D up to and including the Rules Cyclopedia (which came out two years after the introduction of AD&D 2nd Edition), characters of the fighter class who reach the 9th experience level gain the title of "Lord" (or "Lady" for female characters). This is true even for AD&D2 and the RC, which both dropped individual level titles; elves in the RC rules attain the title of "Lord Wizard" or "Lady Maga" at name level, while dwarves simply add the "Dwarven" modifier before the standard title. Since halflings in the RC are, like all non-Advanced editions from B/X onward, are limited to 8th level, they gain the title of "Sheriff" at this point.

Besides sounding cool - albeit not matching up with the class-specific titles of other roles, such as "Wizard" for magic-users or "Master Thief" for guess who - the attaining of the rank of Lord or Lady also has some interesting implications for the setting. If one assumes that the title and experience level are directly linked, then only the greatest fighting-men and -women in the land can become Lords and Ladies; likewise, anyone with such a title must be one hell of a fighter.

I've had an idea for applying this in my campaign. In a world where these particular noble titles are granted based on merit and deeds, rather than simple inheritance, conflicts between nobles might be resolved with single combat instead of sending armies to clash while their masters watch from afar. The ever-excluded-from-the-rules joust might be one such way of settling disputes.

Plus, if someone is able to take a true Lord or Lady hostage, they had better have a small army at their disposal... or be a particularly crafty Wizard, with a capital "W".

K is for Killing the Entire Party

I promised to talk about my recent TPK, so here goes.

The party members that were able to make it to the most recent session were Alakar, a half-elven bard; Elia, a human bard (the only one of 2nd level, rather than 1st); and Thebabicus, a human cleric. Notably missing from that list are both of the group's regular fighters (Adira and Ulreth). The three present adventurers were informed that the prison in the military fort town of Ironside had been sealed off under mysterious circumstances. Since Elia had family there, they decided to set off and see what was what.

When they arrived, they eventually found out that the prison had been locked down due to a mysterious illness that spread from some of the prisoners to the guards, and quickly infected pretty much the entire prison. Unfortunately, one of the people trapped inside while he was still alive was Lieutenant Ralston, the man responsible for freeing the original three party members (ironically, none of whom were present now) from said prison to search for a bandit leader. The acting head of the town, Sergeant Obrist, devised a plan to get the party in by dropping a trebuchet stone on the prison's roof... but since the Lieutenant was the only person who had the key to the prison's main gate, the only way to get back out would be to find him. In addition, there was a secret password - known only to the Lieutenant - to stop the archers posted in the towers from shooting at the party if they managed to emerge.

So far, so good; I had a scenario, a set of restrictions, and best of all: a very cool visual aid. I had recently bought the Pathfinder Flip-Mat "Bigger Basic", which fortunately allowed me to fit the entire prison on one side. And since the mysterious disease was actually turning the prisoners and guards into zombies, I had brought Twilight Creations' "Bag O' Zombies" to represent the reanimated population of an entire prison.

My particular bag actually came with 101 zombies in it
(I counted them), but I'm not complaining at all.

The party quickly settled on a system for taking out the zombies intelligently; Thebabicus, on a successful Turn Undead roll, forced small groups of zombies into cells, where they could be picked off (they referred to this as "The Process", and I only gave them half XP for it since we just skipped to the end of each such combat). The only issue was that he needed to roll a 13 or higher on 1d20 for each attempt, and luck was not on his side that session; a large portion of the Undead remained Un-Turned.

They also attempted to bottleneck the zombies and form a triangle to surround them, a tactic which served them well in the past when facing off against bandits through narrow doorways (especially when they cleared out a dilapidated manse to use as a home base). Unfortunately, they forgot one thing: the zombies would not be pressed back to regroup or retreat. This meant that the zombies just pressed against the player characters until the former had all been slain. I left the figures tipped over on the mat, showing how many they had killed, and I certainly had plenty enough to do that throughout the entire prison.

Sadly, this tactical error led to their death. They encountered a group of six zombies, and decided to fall back to an already emptied cell; their error was in choosing one of the smaller cells, with no room to maneuver. The zombies came through, and Thebabicus was not able to turn them. Both he and Alakar were slain in short order, while Elia managed to kill two more of the shamblers before being overwhelmed herself. Even more unfortunate was that, even with the relatively small amount killed (16 or 17), the party would have earned enough experience for Thebabicus to increase in level.

A number of bloggers have been writing recently about the importance of ensuring that player actions affect the game world. In this case, their failure to make it deeper into the "Prison of the Dead" (as I called the adventure) and exorcise the even more terrifying force therein means one thing: Ironside has fallen. The few people who realized this have left in the ensuing days, before the town was overtaken utterly by the corruption.

The person playing Thebabicus was sufficiently annoyed with the loss of his character that he left immediately, and Alakar's player followed suit; Elia's player, however, stayed behind to make a new character. This time, she created a fighter (perhaps mindful of the necessities of that class) who is Elia's older sister. We had already determined that Elia was the middle child in a typical military family, so some of her possessions are going to be passed on to the new character. And both of the other fighters are still alive, so it isn't as though a total reboot is necessary.

I've had a total party kill in the past, but this one occurred to a group of long-time members of the campaign. Hopefully the two other players whose characters were killed come back. Either way, I'm glad that I allowed this to happen; I didn't fudge any dice rolls, and due to the dire circumstances it wasn't really possible to fudge the story (to have them rescued, etc.) without taking a sledgehammer to the integrity of the game. Here's hoping they fare better on their next quest.

J is for Jean Wells

I'd like to take a brief post to acknowledge the contributions made in the early years of the hobby by one Jean Wells. She was one of the earliest female employees at TSR, in an era where the industry was still almost totally male-dominated (one of the reasons that the class titles and level names in OD&D are all masculine). In addition to her editing contributions for such modules as White Plume Mountain and Tom Moldvay's Basic Rulebook, she was also an artist who contributed images to the original Monster Manual.

The product she's most known for, however, is the infamous Palace of the Silver Princess, which was recalled and redesigned (rewritten almost completely by Tom Moldvay) for reasons that vary from account to account. After this, she was sadly not able to get any of her design ideas off the ground, and left.

The original version with the orange cover.

Wells died in 2012, but her contributions to D&D remain with us. Fortunately, she was also willing to grant several interviews before her passing: a multi-part text interview with James Maliszewski on his blog Grognardia, and a voice interview for the Save or Die! podcast. The world of roleplaying is a little richer for her having been a part of it, even for so brief a period.

(Note: The orange cover version of Palace of the Silver Princess was available to download at the Wizards of the Coast website a while back, but it seems that WotC has now prevented the Internet Archive from accessing their old pages. You can probably find it without too much trouble; the green cover version is available at DM's Guild.)

I is for International Editions

Voici l'ouvrage indispensable pour le Maître de Donjon de AD&D. Vous y trouvrez toutes les informations dont vous avez besoin pour créer et gérer de passionnantes aventures d'épées et de sorcellerie. Vous y apprendez tout ce que vous devez savoir sur les sorts, sur des centaines d'objets et de trésors magiques, sur les combats, les voyages et les points e'expérience, et bien d'autres choses encore. Cet ouvrage à la présentation nouvelle est votre guide pour l'univers fantastique de AD&D!

That, my friends, is the blurb on the back cover of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Guide du Maître - the French version of the Dungeon Master Guide! I got it as an Easter present from my parents, and I figure it might help me brush up on my French in time for next semester's Intermediate French class.

A few things about the book itself. First, it's much nicer than my TSR/Wizards of the Coast English copy. It's printed on much thicker paper; I'm not sure whether this is just due to being printed in Europe, or if WotC cheaped out on the later AD&D2 printings. Second, the price on the back is written in francs (213,00 F); it's cool to have a tangible reminder that the switch to the Euro is pretty recent from a historical perspective - even the history of roleplaying games. Third, the game is called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; I've seen pictures of French copies of the various Basic rulebooks titled Donjons & Dragons, but I guess they decided to just keep the brand name intact here.

Aside from those differences, it's almost exactly identical to my English copy (the 1995 revision, although my English copies were made post-WotC acquisition of TSR). I'll try to upload some pictures soon, but it might be a while since my laptop (with the built-in SD card reader) is currently out of commission.

H is for Helmets

Helmets have always been kind of an oddball item in classic D&D. As the numbers for Armor Class are fairly large, there isn't much room for fine division. The usual categories are: unarmored (AC 9 in D&D, AC 10 in AD&D), shield only, leather, leather & shield, mail, mail & shield, plate, plate & shield. AD&D's additional armor categories complicate this a bit, but I've always found the number of choices in the core rules - at least, in 2nd Edition - to be a bit excessive; most of my players stick to the ones they know. I have a feeling that the addition of studded leather, etc. was done to give thieves a slightly more advantageous option than simple leather armor, especially considering their fairly low hit points.

But helmets? Well, they're listed in the armor section of the AD&D2 Player's Handbook, with a price, but they don't seem to provide any benefit in the core rules themselves. I know that The Complete Fighter's Handbook has rules for piecemeal armor (including factoring in helmets); since many people consider 2nd Edition to be "king of splatbooks", it's possible that the designers left helmets there to make for a smoother addition with the PHBR series (the reddish-brown books). One of my players found a bronze helmet in a small treasure hoard, and wears it mostly because she likes it, even though it provides little to no benefit to AC.

There are a few notes, however, that suggest helmets as an assumed part of the metal armors; the notes for rogue skills in the PHB say that the thief must remove their gloves to Pick Pockets or Open Locks, and must remove their helmet to Hear Noise. It might just be one of the tendencies toward granular, literal-minded rules carried over from 1st Edition. After all, characters are expected to choose and spend money on their clothes, shoes, and sheaths for their weapons!

G is for Greyhawk

Supplement I  for original D&D, not the campaign setting (I find it hard to use pre-published settings). A lot of things I love come from there, as well as a lot of things I don't like one bit.

I have a love-hate relationship with variable weapon damage. Yes, it provides a reason to use different shapes of dice. Yes, it gives fighters a clear advantage in that only they can use the most damaging weapons (in B/X, those are the pole arm and the two-handed sword). But using different dice for different weapons - or even for the same weapon, used against different opponents - slows down the game, and is confusing for brand-new players. Particularly the variety whose idea of an RPG is Final Fantasy XIII. Except for the encounter tables, OD&D can really be played with just several d6's and two (old-school, 0-9 twice) d20's. This is just another instance where the commercial circumstances, i.e., not wanting to sort out the extra polyhedrals from the boxed sets, led to something that sticks with us to this day.

Exceptional Strength is one of those things that I love in principle, but in practice is a little weird. Whereas the curve for Strength modifiers for "to hit" and damage rolls in B/X (and, by extension, BECMI) is a straight -3 to +3, the versions of the game that use percentile Strength rolls (OD&D and both iterations of AD&D) have two different curves, neither of which amount to +3 without the character being a spectacularly ripped fighter, ranger, or paladin. Plus, TSR's official AD&D2 character sheet uses tiny boxes for the ability scores, so one would have to use the old calendar technique of diagonally splitting the Strength box to write a percentile score.

The thief class is necessary in OD&D for anyone who isn't an obsessive fan of Myst or Portal. It's also necessary for anyone who, like Delta, decides that the cleric class may not be a good fit depending on its implementation. At least three basic types of characters are needed so that a player doesn't feel hemmed in; even Tunnels & Trolls used three basic classes. (Granted, one of them was really a hybrid of the other two, but it's still nice to have a little bit of choice.) In the amorality of D&D's early years, I imagine that most referees would have allowed the thief to steal from their own party members... if they could get away with it, and live.

Paladins are, well, a mixed bag. I think they're necessary to provide a warrior class that is neither directly going to conflict with other players (the barbarian from Unearthed Arcana comes to mind...) nor extremely limited in their actual special abilities (like the original ranger). Their role in the setting needs to be determined, though; considering the unlikelihood of rolling a 17 Charisma on 3d6 in order, the referee should have plenty of time to think about that.

F is for Freedom

I've always wanted to run a sandbox game. Initially, the reason I didn't take that tack with my current AD&D group is a bit complicated. At first, I lacked a concise set of rules for adventuring in the wilderness. The 2nd Edition Dungeon Master Guide is of absolutely no help in that regard; where the original DMG has diagrams and page after page of random encounter tables, the second iteration of that book basically says "Do it yourself - good luck!"

To a certain extent, this problem has been fixed. I've printed out the two pages from the Cook/Marsh Expert Rulebook that deal with this (the instructions, directional diagram, and encounter tables all fit on both sides of a single sheet of paper!) and I can easily have it in front of me while gaming. The other issue is more complicated: my players aren't familiar with sandboxes.

I admit that part of this second reason is my fault; one of my players (and, by the summer, two of them) was part of my original group that started with the Pathfinder Beginner Box. I was younger then, and made liberal use of subtle railroading and fudged die rolls in the belief that it improved the game. And each time we add an additional player or two to the current group, I try to start off with a simple dungeon-crawling adventure, to allow the new player(s) to get a feel for how everyone plays; many of these crawls are drawn from my use of the random dungeon stocking described in the Moldvay Basic Rulebook. This wouldn't be a big issue, except that there seems to be a new player - or three - every other session.

More than that, though, the majority of my players have (like myself) been raised on video games. A cornerstone of our gaming experiences are the RPGs made by Bethesda - not only Oblivion and Skyrim, but also the post-Infinity Engine Fallout installments. These not only have fetch quests, but actual compass markers directing players to the next objective... even within a few feet. The games literally lead you around by the nose, and the built-in fast-traveling means that exploration is reduced to an optional element by the later stages of the story.

Were we a little bit older, we might have cut our teeth on Morrowind, which barely even had an organized quest log; one of the things I quickly grew to love about the third installment of the Elder Scrolls series is the freedom to do stuff however one sees fit. Morrowind has a much greater degree of freedom than any other Elder Scrolls or Fallout game since. Want to kill the leader of the Fighters Guild? If you're tough enough, do it. Want to break into Vivec's chamber (lock level: 100)? If you've got the skills and the tools, try it. Want to hop around the island like Ang Lee's totally comic-accurate Hulk, or teleport out of a tough fight? If you have enough money, Magicka, and Mysticism skill, you can make it happen. I personally experienced more inadvertent sequence breaks in Morrowind than I did in Metroid: Zero Mission.

And I loved every second of it. The game wasn't holding my hand or keeping me on a leash. It wasn't so much a story as it was a world. True, this world was full of behavior that could be easily exploited (Ghorak Manor comes to mind), but then so is the real world (I like to think of retail returns as my own little form of "save scumming", to borrow a term from roguelikes).

I have the resources now to run a serviceable hex-crawl in my AD&D campaign. Hopefully I can convince my group to interact with the world in a more granular way.

E is for Evil

I've never been happy with the idea of "good" and "evil" as cosmic, opposing forces, either in fiction or in the real world. As one might surmise from my previous post on alignment, there are a lot of nuances to both ideas. I much prefer the "Law" vs. "Chaos" dichotomy present in B/X, although I disagree with the idea that Law is usually good and Chaos is usually evil. It's strange to see a greater degree of moral ambiguity in a version of the game ostensibly targeted towards children.

If I have to use alignment for my PCs, when I run B/X I always just assume that Law is Lawful Neutral, Chaos is Chaotic Neutral, and Neutrality is True Neutral.

My distaste for the good/evil polar framework is another reason I tend to keep the deities of my campaign mostly hands-off in their actions (if they even exist there, from a metaphysical standpoint). After all, if the gods can be conclusively proven to exist, and one is good and the other is evil, who in their right mind would follow the evil one? Clerics do have miraculous powers, yes, but the wonder-workers aren't only found in the "good" camp. (This is kind of the opposite version of the argument used by militant atheists - that no person of any religion actually derives any benefit from their beliefs, so religious belief should be abolished entirely.)

Speaking of following certain gods, I dislike the idea that an Immortal has to have mortal worshipers in order to continue to exist. This would preclude the idea of a long-dead god being worshiped by a small but growing cult.

Sorry if this post is a little disjointed; hopefully tomorrow's will be a little bit better.

D is for Dragons

Shorter post today; an interesting little side note from my film-watching escapades. In the film Dragonslayer (not a great movie, but definitely worth watching for fantasy gamers), the sorcerer Ulrich says this upon his first meeting with the band of travelers from the kingdom of Urland:

In fact, if it weren't for sorcerers, there wouldn't be any dragons.

I've actually taken some time to think about how this would play out in my own campaign. Any interested readers should do the same.

"If he's ready to lay a dragon in its grave, he's nothing to fear from me."

C is for Clerics

I've been debating with myself regarding the thorny issue of clerics. Not whether they should have a spell at 1st level (I think they shouldn't, but at least it gives me an excuse to throw very tough challenges at the party), but whether they should be in my game at all. I wonder if they fit thematically, and whether their role in society is properly thought out.

The thing that got me thinking about that in the first place was coming across Delta's D&D Hotspot. In the sidebar giving a quick list of his "Original Edition Delta" house rules, there are two simple words under Classes: "Clerics removed."

I wondered why, and clicked on the link where he explained his rationale. And I found that I can't disagree with a single one of his points. My setting doesn't have the gods (or Immortals, in non-Advanced parlance) just popping in every week for tea - as seems to happen in, say, Forgotten Realms. So far, the only major miracle to occur in my campaign aside from the usual Turnings and cure spells occurred when my cleric, Thebabicus Roswald, encountered an altar covered in axe marks and blood, with a stirge feeding on the latter.

After the stirge was dealt with, he asked me if he could use the vial of holy water he had to perform a rite to cleanse the altar. I hadn't thought about it beforehand, but I decided that this was certainly in character, and he was giving up a potential in-game advantage (the chance of using the holy water as a grenade against later skeletons and/or zombies) to do something that he felt obligated to do. He poured the water over the altar and said a short prayer, and the altar began to steam as if splashed with acid. When the steam cleared, the blood was gone, along with the axe marks; any evidence of evil had been washed away.

The looks on my players' faces made me so happy. They were genuinely surprised and impressed. Obviously, they knew that magic existed in the campaign world, but to see it employed in a way that wasn't as predictable or dramatic as they were used to was new to them. This moment of peace had a greater effect on them than the largest horde of monsters, the tallest tower, or the most monstrous villain. Would that I could make this happen every session.

Since moving to AD&D 2nd Edition, I've considered toning down the presence of magic. Until recently, we didn't have a single arcane caster (although the bard now has the ability to cast spells, she hasn't found any to use yet), and the cleric wouldn't have had any spells to begin with under B/X. It would be fairly easy to simply remove spells, but keep spell-like abilities such as turning undead; it would also mean that the only person able to cure with a touch would be a paladin, making magical healing rare indeed. Some method of buying potions of cure light wounds could certainly be done.

Hmm... I'll have to think about some of this stuff.

B is for Beholders (and Basic)

It's interesting to me that the beholder - a classic D&D monster, present almost since the beginning (introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk along with the Thief class) - isn't in B/X D&D at all. It didn't even appear in BECMI until the Companion Set. I'd imagine that, had the original promised Companion Rules been released, the beholder would have appeared there.

Still not as poorly illustrated as in Greyhawk...
or the original Monster Manual, for that matter.

It also appeared in the Rules Cyclopedia, albeit with a nicer illustration.

Why does everyone complain about the art in the Rules
Cyclopedia? I think this is actually pretty menacing.

Somewhat off-topic, I recently bought the AD&D game Eye of the Beholder on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Being a huge fan of AD&D 2nd Edition, I love the wide selection of rules-accurate class and race combinations, including multi-classing for demihumans. Unfortunately, the game is almost unplayable without the SNES Mouse accessory. Thankfully, this game is worlds better than the Eye of the Beholder game I got a while back for the Game Boy Advance (GBA); that one was awful in ways that are too numerous to describe on a tabletop gaming blog.

A is for Alignment

(Thanks to Stelios for pointing out that I need a theme for the month. Okay, the theme is... Classic D&D! :D )

Law, Neutrality, and Chaos represent a character's ultimate goals. A Lawful character seeks to create and/or solidify order in a given group or society. A Chaotic character seeks to dissolve any existing order, and prevent further order from forming. A Neutral character either seeks a balance between the two, or doesn't care too strongly one way or the other.

Good, Neutrality, and Evil represent a character's reason for seeking their goals. A Good character wants to give life, liberty, and happiness to as many creatures as possible, and is altruistic. An Evil character wants to deprive creatures of the same, and might be described as power-seeking. A Neutral character wants what's best for themselves, and might include others in their goals or not.

Lawful Good: Order for the sake of security and fairness. The Paragon.
Lawful Evil: Order for the sake of personal power and control. The Machiavel.
Lawful Neutral: Order for order's sake. The Bureaucrat.

Neutral Good: Balance (or status-quo) for the sake of tranquility and contentment. The Peacekeeper.
Neutral Evil: Balance (or status-quo) for the sake of maintaining personal power and control. The Tyrant.
True Neutral: Balance (or status-quo) for its own sake, or for some mystic reason. The Independent (or The Druid).

Chaotic Good: Disorder for the sake of liberty and happiness. The Dionysian.
Chaotic Evil: Disorder for the sake of personal power. The Destroyer.
Chaotic Neutral: Disorder for disorder's sake. The Wildcard.

Some examples from fiction:

• Randall Flagg in The Stand is a good example of Lawful Evil. He establishes a draconian regime that militarizes against Mother Abigail's "Boulder Free Zone" (based on the events in the miniseries, I'd call them Neutral Good for the most part). His methods are extreme, but they get results, and he's able to attract a large group of people that would probably be Lawful Neutral under a more benevolent leader.
• By contrast, Flagg in The Eyes of the Dragon is Chaotic Evil. He is explicitly stated as seeking to cause chaos and bloodshed, somehow feeding off of it. Note that his methods are not necessarily crazed or random, as many tend to think of Chaotic Evil; he plans methodically, playing a long game in the hope of creating utter, violent anarchy when his machinations come to a head.
• The priests of the Temple of Syrinx (from Rush's suite 2112) might be Neutral Evil; they do want to maintain their power, and head up a hierarchy to do so, but they don't really need to create further order as they already control everything. Their destruction of the guitar seems to be motivated more by spite than by a desire to maintain the hierarchy; otherwise, their behavior might occupy a grey area between Lawful Neutral and Neutral Evil.
• The Vogons from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are extreme Lawful Neutral. Few of them seem to enjoy causing death and destruction, but they aren't bothered by it so long as it's done according to the proper procedures. Their destruction of the Earth is amoral, yes, but not malicious; Jeltz mutters "...apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all." This seems to imply that they would have happily left the humans alone if they had bothered to get down to the planning office and register a formal complaint; the hierarchy is paramount. (Side note: I wonder how strongly the Modrons were influenced by the Vogons...)

Blogging A to Z Challenge

I will be participating in the Blogging From A to Z Challenge for April of this year! For more information, click on the badge in my sidebar.

Druids in Basic D&D (and the AD&D bard)

They suck.

Okay, they aren't much different from other contemporary versions of the druid in terms of how they play, but the process of getting there is freaking terrible. On the surface, the idea of having a sub-class of the cleric as a kind of "prestige class" would seem to work. After all, just as a magic-user might conceivably go from studying all of magic broadly to studying a single "school" in great detail (although I haven't seen a version of D&D that allows this, except for 3.5 and 5th edition where all wizards choose a specialization), the cosmology of Mystara might allow a cleric to switch from worshiping a larger pantheon to honoring a single Immortal from that pantheon.

Unfortunately, this logic doesn't hold up when the new focus of worship has little or nothing to do with the old one. Druids' entire nature - the thing that makes them more than just (in AD&D 2 terms) another mythos priest - is that they worship the unified force of the natural world, instead of personifying it the way that the standard cleric worships a God or Goddess of Time, of Magic, of Death, et cetera. In real-world terms, this shift would be like a Roman Catholic priest who is credited with reviving interest in the Church (thanks to his* reputation as a miracle worker) deciding, after twenty years, to convert to a pantheistic Neopagan religion.

Even worse than the complete hash this makes of Mystara's already unusual cosmology is the fact that the BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia druid is locked to clerics who have already attained name level (9th or higher, in this case). I have yet to have a party in any RPG I've run reach 3rd level, let alone 9th. Hell, I saw getting one of my AD&D players' character to 2nd level as cause for celebration. It's the same problem I have with the bard class as presented in AD&D's first edition; in a day and age where a twelve-year-old video game still has at least twice the number of players as even the newest (5e) or most popular (probably 3.5e) edition of D&D, very few people will get to a high enough level that they'll be able to play this type of character. It's one thing to make a class exceptionally difficult to qualify for due to ability score requirements - it's quite another to make the player's character jump through a number of almost-literal hoops over who knows how many months or years to play their chosen class... assuming the character doesn't get killed in the process.

I would normally just shut up and use the druid as presented for OD&D in Eldritch Wizardry, but this is the very first presentation of the class - and it really, really shows. The distribution of powers is far from equally spaced out.

As for why I've decided to write about this? I'm thinking about adopting the Rules Cyclopedia as my preferred rules set for non-Advanced D&D (for a game I'm hoping to run over the summer), but this is one of the things about it that really annoys me. My ideal goal is to find a game that I can run completely without house rules, and so far B/X is the closest to that goal.

*Yes, "his". I'm not using it as a lazy, supposedly gender-neutral pronoun like the D&D books in the 90s; I'm simply following the real world in this example, as the Roman Catholic Church still refuses to allow women to become members of the clergy. Sad, but true.