Alembics & Alchemists

I've been doing some more of my hysterical tinkering with the AD&D rules (treating 2e as an extensive revision of 1e, which is basically what it is in practice). A sticking point comes up with me where the wizard classes are concerned; there's some desire to have a third one, besides mages and illusionists. One of my favorite ideas I've been chewing over is the alchemist.

Assassins & Advanced D&D

So, I finally got a small group together to discuss the potential game to be played. I had decided beforehand that I would not be able to run Dungeon Crawl Classics due to lacking some of the necessary dice, and not being familiar enough with the rules. Though I am proud of my mutated Basic Fantasy rules, they're currently not complete enough to compile, and (being on a wiki) would require the use of my laptop - which is both very slow, and very slowly falling apart. Another game I've considered running - original D&D - can be very closely emulated with White Box, and the supplemental classes ported over from Swords & Wizardry Complete.

This left the group with two choices: White Box (using a new setting), or AD&D 2nd Edition (using my primary fantasy setting). Surprisingly, they chose the latter, and I helped them create their characters. Now that a lot of the participants are either off of school or finished with it, we're going to try to have a session every week.

One of the optional rules that they voted on using was the Nonweapon Proficiencies system. Something that I had suspected, but wasn't completely clear on until now, is that the assassin is indeed a slightly superfluous class in the 2nd Edition rules. If one creates a thief, takes the Disguise NWP, and has either a high Strength (for melee damage) or a high Dexterity (for two-weapon fighting and ranged attacks), the result is basically an assassin who just can't use shields. Not to worry, though; while we will be using NWPs, I'll be operating under the old-school assumption that characters are generally competent.

I had planned on adding both the assassin and the monk at a later point, but the former seems unnecessary now. For the latter, I'll probably just use the version from AD&D 1st Edition, rather than the (massively overpowered) Scarlet Brotherhood iteration. I still consider the monk a priest class for game purposes, though, so they'll use d8s.

About that new setting... I'll save it for a future post. For now, all that I'll say is that DCC was an influence on it in some ways, but not others.

Old is Gnew

Following on from my previous post about gnomes and dwarves, further work has led to further thought. As I am wont to do, I was meticulously combing through the original Dungeons & Dragons booklets (including the Supplements), for the purposes of assembling the text therein into a single thick Men & Magic volume. The idea was to make something a bit like Mothshade's "Men & Magic Compilation", except in print-friendly digest format and using the original words almost exclusively. Doing so led me to discover rules details I hadn't noticed before, including this little tidbit from page 5 of Supplement I: Greyhawk.

Dwarves are about four feet tall, stocky of build, weigh 150 pounds, shoulders very broad, their skin a ruddy tan, brown or gray, and are of various types (hill, mountain, or burrowers) (such as gnomes).

There it is, in Olde Gygaxian - a statement that gnomes are just a type of dwarves. Gygax would change his mind later with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and future authors would continue to have gnomes as a separate but similar species. But in Duemerus? This is my setting, and my game, so I can do whatever the heck I want. And I want to have gnomes just be dwarves again.

Thief Skills in AD&D (1st and 2nd Edition)

So, given my renewed interest in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, I've been looking at other sources for rules. My current document of house rules is pretty short at this point - and to be honest, I'd like it to stay that way for as long as possible, especially considering that I still haven't assembled a group of committed players. I might even temporarily remove the helmet rules, at least until I can learn whether the majority of my players would enjoy that level of granularity (and especially since I'm not using encumbrance yet).

But where rules sources are concerned, my primary pool is the variety of "official" 2e products (like the Player's Option books), as well as Justen Brown's excellent 2e retroclone, For Gold & Glory. I'm also drawing a lot from the first edition of AD&D, which has some useful bits that were removed in 2e for no good reason that I can think of. A big example is the random encounter tables; while I can see why they might be culled a bit in view of the trend towards story-gaming in the 1990s, removing them entirely is just asinine. In the past, I've used the encounter tables from B/X, with good results.

Druid vs. Druid

This post is mainly being written to get my thoughts organized into a form that others - specifically, my players - can access without me having to speak to them one at a time. Since I may be soliciting comments from them, I'm turning on comment moderation for the time being, so as to prevent any personal details escaping into cyberspace.

Now then: I've been entering and adjusting the rules for my primary campaign, set in the Kingdom of Duemerus. The base ruleset is Basic Fantasy, but I've made a handful of adjustments already. I'm adding a few additional classes, solely for the purpose of grandfathering in (or rather, grandmothering, since both of the characters are female) some existing characters.

A major reason for using Basic Fantasy is that it has a large number of free supplements that I can use either as-is, or as inspiration for my own rules. Not all of these supplements are great; the supplement on Bardic Characters has numerous versions of the class which are all too fiddly - especially disappointing considering that one of these grandmothered characters will be a bard. Fortunately, I found something much closer to my preferences in the Jester class, which is a perfectly functional bard with just a little re-skinning and tweaking. The other character is a druid.

The Default BFRPG Druid

The Basic Fantasy supplement on druids is pretty good, giving them the same spell progression as clerics (i.e., no spells at 1st level), but with an Animal Affinity power instead of Turn Undead; it also has Assume Animal Form as a normal spell. I won't get too deeply into further details; if you're interested, you can download the supplement on this page. I like this interpretation of the druid, and I would have just used it as-is if not for the conditions that led me to develop...

The Hybrid Druid

This is based on the BFRPG druid, but with a change: I replaced the Animal Affinity ability with a variable, not-always-successful version of Assume Animal Form. Here, the Hit Dice of the animal is still cross-referenced with the druid's level to determine a target number on 1d20; but instead of calming or befriending an animal, the roll is to assume that animal's shape. Since I may be making some serious changes to the class, the version of the hybrid druid as it stands now can be found at this archive page.

I'm kind of proud of this one, but I'm not sure whether to use it going forward. The reason I made modifications to allow druids to "wild shape" even at 1st level was to accommodate a player - and longtime friend - who enjoys having early wildshape access in D&D 5th Edition. But said player (and I say this with no disrespect or judgement) would prefer to just have unlimited access to wildshape outside of combat; this player, I've figured out, prefers storytelling activities to roleplaying games. Which is fine; the former can be a lot of fun, but generally D&D is more suited to use as a game, due to its pages upon pages of... you know, rules.

If I don't use the BFRPG druid (I might still use it) or the hybrid druid (I probably won't use it), then my third option is...

The Eldritch Wizardry Druid

The druid as introduced (to players) in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry for original D&D is very similar to how it would become in AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition. Unlike clerics, oD&D druids have spell access much sooner, as well as some cool non-spell abilities as they increase in level, but at the cost of slower advancement and some equipment restrictions (no metal armor). At 2nd level, they can identify plants, animals, and pure water, as well as passing through undergrowth without a movement penalty; at 5th level, they can start learning additional languages; and at 6th level, they gain their shape change ability.

Not sure if the person on the right is a druid, but this picture comes from the
section on druid spells. (Originally from Eldritch Wizardry)

I quite like this one; the only changes I would make would be to smooth out the spell and XP progression. I've thought about shifting the awarding of spell-like abilities as well, and I might remove some entirely so as not to create too much of an advantage over standard clerics.

* * * *

So, to anyone reading this (especially if you might be playing in this campaign): what do you think? Would you prefer the default BFRPG druid, or the druid as presented in Eldritch Wizardry?

Custom Mini: Roywyn Raulnor

In my previous post, I said that my DM bought us custom minis; they finally arrived last week, so here's mine!

Daggers, short arrows, and Fire Bolts - it's all the same to Roywyn.

This character's a gnome gnamed Roywyn Raulnor; her friends call her "Pock", allegedly. (I chose the name because I figured it would be too hard for everyone to pronounce, but they just call her Roywyn.) Since the DM is running D&D 5th Edition, she's a rogue with the "Arcane Trickster" archetype, but if I ran her in AD&D 1e or 2e - one can dream, I suppose - she would be a multi-classed illusionist/thief.

A brief comment on the new dark grey plastic that HeroForge is using: it's great. The detail is at least as sharp as a lot of Reaper's "Bones" miniatures (if not better), and so far it seems durable; nothing has broken off or crumbled as others have said happened with the older high-detail material. I should be getting an order of Bones minis in the mail shortly, and I may do a quick comparison of them then.

Trimming the Fat II: The Trimmening

Here's the promised followup to my previous post. Last time, I pruned a few extraneous classes, and hung question marks over many more; today, I'll be looking at the typical selection of character races. As with the last post, to qualify here, the race in question must have appeared in the core rules of at least two "editions" of D&D.

Dwarves and Halflings

(First playable appearance: Men & Magic, 1974)

Dwarves have long been a staple of D&D, due to their ubiquity in Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories - major party members in The Hobbit, less so (at least directly) in The Lord of the Rings. These roles have been reversed in the latter, where four of the central characters are hobbits. These two races have often been grouped into similar categories; in original D&D (pre-Supplements), they are both restricted to the fighter class, while AD&D (both 1e and 2e) allow them to be thieves in addition. (1e is unusual in that halflings cannot be clerics, but halfling NPCs are allowed to be druids!)

The reason that I group these two together is as follows: I feel that having both as distinct species is a bit redundant. Short people, sometimes with long beards (including female dwarves, at least according to Gygax), who can't usually be wizards? In my campaign, I've long considered merging the two into a single species, with the subraces having different characteristics; perhaps it's the "Tallfellow" or "Stout" dwarves who are longer in leg and beard.

Elves

(First playable appearance: Men & Magic, 1974)

Elves are pretty much essential components of any high-fantasy game. They look and act similarly enough to humans that the two can conceivably adventure together, but are just different enough that a Referee with any creativity can put vast oceans between the two species just under the surface. (This is another reason that the Vulcans on Star Trek tend to pop up as major characters; in fact, one can easily draw parallels between the two). And if these are different species, not just different ethnicities of humans, then it makes sense that they would have some classes that are harder (or flat-out impossible) for them to pursue. An acquaintance pointed out that, logically, they should also be able to do things that humans can't do, and this is why I think multi-classing (with a few limits) is a good way to differentiate demihumans from humans.

Gnomes

(First playable appearance: Players Handbook, 1978)

Oh jeez... If dwarves and halflings as separate species seems superfluous to me, gnomes are about as useful as a third thumb. Rarely do I see anyone play them; in fact, I've only encountered two gnome player characters in any fantasy RPG I've run or played (one of which is my own PC, Roywyn Raulnor). Considering Tolkien's influence, it seems fairly obvious that their origin lies in Tom Bombadil, but it doesn't really seem necessary to have yet another species of short height and long beards.

"I gnow thee gnot, old man."
(model from Battle for Middle-Earth II)

The main point of interest is that, in AD&D (both editions), gnomes are the only demihuman race that can be illusionists; I concede that my own gnome PC, if ported over to AD&D from her current home of 5e, would be a multi-classed illusionist/thief. But I say just let the combined dwarf/halfling species be illusionists, and free up the gname of "gnome" for fey creatures more resembling those seen on American lawns.

Half-elves

(First playable appearance: Supplement I: Greyhawk, 1975)

Half-elves do technically appear in The Lord of the Rings. Elrond is called "Half-elven", although his parentage has little actual impact on his mortality or the way he is viewed by others (at least from what I read - I read all of The Fellowship of the Ring, but couldn't get through more than about a quarter of The Two Towers). He chose to identify with his elven ancestors, and so he's considered an elf.

If a player character wants to be a "half-elf", that's fine by me, but they have to choose whether that means they will identify as an elf or a human; there's no real reason for such a strong level of incomplete dominance that they're considered a separate race. I get the feeling that the desire for half-elves is largely based on min-maxing, as half-elves get more classes to choose from than elves, but still have some special abilities. In that cast, why not just let elves have more classes, and drop the mechanical differences of half-elves?

Half-orcs

(First playable appearance: Players Handbook, 1978)

Same here as for half-elves. If a Referee wants to let players be a potentially "monstrous" species, just remove the status of full orcs as mindless, faceless evil minions, and let players be orcs. The games in the Elder Scrolls series, starting with Morrowind, did this with great success; orcs are integrated into society for the most part, and their fierce reputation serves them well as soldiers.

Dragonborn and Tieflings

(First playable appearance: Player's Handbook, 2008)

I'm inclined to just say "no". Tieflings have a bit more history, appearing initially in the Planescape setting for AD&D 2e, but dragonborn have no excuse aside from Wizards of the Coast trying to cash in on the humanoid races popular in World of Warcraft. If someone wants to play a dragon-like character, there were already half-dragons for over ten years by the time 4e came out! Also, as Preston Selby pointed out here:

"I just think there's a sort of breakdown in the game when a player can say their character is a half-dragon with a horny lizard-head and a breath weapon, and there is an expectation that the character can walk into a town and an inn with the humans and the halflings and everyone will act like this is totally normal. At that point, the game has seriously damaged its potential for weirdness and wonderment."

At that point, discrimination by non-fire-breathing humans and dwarves isn't necessarily based on irrational, prejudicial fears (although there's probably an element of that); it's a very rational fear that the dragonborn might sneeze too hard and burn down your house!

I realize that this gets into the same thorny area as X-Men (as much of a prick as he was, Senator Kelly was right when he referred to powerful mutant teenagers as "weapons in our schools"). This is why fantasy and sci-fi can only use metaphors for racial and religious discrimination up to a point.

Ack, back on topic: I don't think dragonborn should be a "standard" species in the kind of games I like to run. As always, these are just my opinion, not some kind of holy pronouncement.

The Tally

Playable: Dwarves (including Gnomes and Halflings), Elves, Humans, possibly Orcs

Trimming the Fat

I've been thinking a lot about the necessity of certain classes in D&D (and similar games). Fighters, mages, and thieves are pretty much essential in terms of both tone and gameplay. Clerics might not always fit tonally, but they're almost always a necessity for gameplay purposes (as the party needs to not die too quickly). Having these four as the "core" classes - a tack taken by virtually every iteration of D&D calling itself the "Basic Set" - gives a good range of options for players. The subclasses of these, however, are less clear-cut in their necessity.

Note that I'll only be talking about those classes that have been central options available in multiple editions. The class has to have been in the Player's Handbook or equivalent, and have appeared in more than one edition in such a capacity (so no cavaliers or gunslingers).

Warriors

Barbarians are completely unnecessary, and the RPG archetype is ridiculous; even Conan the Cimmerian, one of the most famous "barbarians" of fantasy literature and film, wore armor when it was appropriate. In my opinion, there's no need to have them as a distinct class from fighters.

Paladins are basically fighter/clerics, with the weapon selection of a fighter and some of the spell and turning ability of the cleric. Tonally, they might as well just be clerics, so in my view they aren't needed as a separate class.

Rangers' tracking ability and (in some editions) proficiency with two-weapon fighting are nice extra abilities, but not essential in a primarily dungeon-focused game. They might not be needed as a separate class from fighters.

Priests

Druids are a tough case, as besides their extra powers (like shape change), they sometimes have a very different set of spells from their parent class; in oD&D and AD&D 1e, they don't even get cure light wounds until second or third level! The issue is that having both clerics and druids can lead to some tonal mismatches. I might elaborate on this in a different post, but the jury's out on the necessity of druids.

Rogues

Assassins are in a similar boat as rangers, as they're basically normal thieves with some extra abilities. Assassination is largely redundant considering thieves can already backstab, but their disguise ability has so much potential; admittedly, it could just as easily be assigned to regular thieves instead (shades of Lupin the 3rd?). Since they're also of little extra use outside of cities, I'll call this one a draw.

Bards, on the other hand, are excellent to have in one type of game: one with a small number of players. In a group of six, it's easy to have at least one player character to fill each basic role, with some doubling-up as needed or desired. This is harder to do in a group of three or four, and while the bard is certainly no substitute for a fighter or a spellcaster (except in AD&D 1e, but that's a whole other kettle of fish), they can certainly pull their weight in a pinch. The problem comes when bards are designed to be equal or superior fighters, thieves, or spellcasters compared to actual, single-classed fighters, thieves, and spellcasters; 5th edition has this problem in a big way. I'll chalk this one up as a maybe due to their utility for some groups.

Wizards

Illusionists, if their spell lists are different enough from standard mages, can have interesting possibilities. I'm not a big fan of them in AD&D 2e due to the fact that mages can access every spell, with illusionists' (and other specialists') only advantage being more spell slots and easier learning. What are not different enough are...

Sorcerers. This step-headed redchild is so bafflingly similar to its parent class that both sorcerers and wizards share exactly the same spell list in D&D 3.5; even in 5th edition, their selection of cantrips is identical. If you prefer the sorcerer's more cleric-like method of casting spells, that's fine. But the presence of both sorcerers and normal wizards in the same setting destroys any reason to play the latter, and also destroys the entire rationale for wizards being somewhat rare and secretive.

The Monk (or Mystic)

Monks are... an odd case. AD&D treated them as the fifth core class, and with good reason: their means of attack, defense, and other abilities can't be easily slotted under the warrior, priest, rogue, or wizard groups (although some editions, including oD&D, consider them a cleric sub-class for attack and hit dice purposes). Even in BECMI, the rechristened mystic was added as the only other human class available at first level (the druid, as well as the name-level fighter trifecta of paladin/knight/avenger, being more akin to WOTC's prestige classes). Tonally, they might not fit certain settings in their default form, but I would argue for their inclusion.

The Final Count-up

Assassin - Maybe
Barbarian - No
Bard - Maybe
Cleric - Yes
Druid - Maybe

Fighter - Yes
Illusionist - Maybe
Mage - Yes
Monk - Yes
Paladin - No
Ranger - Maybe
Sorcerer - No
Thief - Yes

(Reminder: this is all my personal opinion. Feel free to disagree, but please do so civilly.)

Yet Another Post About Helmets

"A helmet is usually thought to be very heavy, but when one is attacking a castle or something similar, and arrows, bullets, large rocks, great pieces of wood, and the like are coming down, it will not seem the least bit so."
- from the 11th chapter of Hagakure

Helmets have been around since the literal beginning of D&D as a commercially available product, but their actual use in play has never been straightforward. I won't go into detail on the rules for helmets tucked away in an obscure paragraph of the 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide, but instead I'll focus on the edition in which I've logged the most designing time (refereeing time is a close tie with B/X): AD&D 2nd Edition.

The Player's Handbook for 2e has two types of helmet listed: the basinet and the great helm. Their use or employment is never described, even though the designers thought that the people actually reading the rules would need an explanation of what a magnifying glass does. As much as I want to keep things in the core books whenever possible (to cut down on the strain on my back, if for no other reason), the solution is found in supplements.

The Complete Fighter's Handbook (PHBR1) gives several types of helmets, but doesn't provide specific rules as to what helms should be used with what armor. I realize that such is a task I could undertake myself, but there's little point in doing so if someone else has already done it. In Player's Option: Combat and Tactics, there are more specific rules for different helmets, along with corresponding Armor Class values.

In my current house rules, I use helmets a little bit differently (though still heavily inspired by both of those books), so I'll provide the pertinent rules below.

Fuzzy's Helmet Rules for AD&D 2nd Edition

AC 8-7 (padded, leather, studded leather, ring mail): Leather helm
AC 6 (brigandine, scale mail, hide): Cap
AC 5 (chain mail): Mail coif
AC 4 (splint mail, banded mail, bronze plate): Open-faced helm
AC 3-2 (plate mail, field plate): Closed-face helm
AC 1 (full plate): Great helm

A helmet can be worn with different armor (i.e., wearing a great helm with bronze plate), although in some cases this will look off-putting to observers, though not usually resulting in any penalty to interaction. A mail coif can be worn underneath a great helm; this does not provide a bonus to protection, but still allows some protection for the head if the great helm must be removed.

The main function of helmets is to prevent called shots being made to the head. If the head is unarmored, it has AC 10, and a successful called shot will deal the maximum possible damage for that weapon (so a long sword against a Medium opponent would deal 8 points of damage, plus Strength bonus if applicable).

Unofficial Rule (need to test this out in play first): A natural 20 on a called shot to the head will result in the target being instantly reduced to 0 hit points, thereby falling unconscious and "hovering on death's door".

Reheated Leftovers

My previous post on the lack of creativity in the modern "hobby" reminded me of a quote from Ed Wood:

"So, uh, you made the movie, and now you wanna make it again?"

The urge to remake old stuff for each new edition is funny to me. We've had versions of The Temple of Elemental Evil for AD&D (the original version), 2e (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil), 3e/3.5 (in both module and computer game formats), 4e (twice!), the D&D Adventure System boardgame (which is based on 4e's mechanics), and 5e.

The only place where such retreading is this common is in the movie industry, although I have to say that (for the most part) things have slowed down a bit since the heady days of the 1920s through the 1940s, when a movie might be remade several times within the same decade.

I'll just leave this here...

Combat Rounds

I'll give you my thesis up front: One-minute combat rounds - at least where melee combat is concerned - are ridiculous.

How do I know this? Well, I've been irregularly sparring with one of my friends for a few months now, using various wooden and polypropylene practice weapons. As time goes on, and we acquire more and more Martial implements, the level of physical strain being placed on our bodies increases. My friend lives out in the middle of nowhere, has two horses and a stable of standard poodles, and works as a furrier; the result is someone who is more accustomed to physical labor and exertion than a Dungeon Master with a liberal arts degree. Despite this, even recreational sparring with arming swords and hand-held bucklers (and hopefully other weapons in the future - check out my list of budget-priced practice arms, if you're interested) is a massive effort; I can't imagine doing so in full maille or plate armor, on a hot day, after a mile-long march.

After one especially intense list, I estimated the total duration of that match-up: two minutes. In AD&D terms, two combat rounds. Ridiculous.

Granted, neither of us are in the kind of shape required of a medieval (or present-day) mercenary soldier, let alone a knight trained from birth. But I'd estimate that I am at least in good shape as the average 0-level human, or an especially kapable kobold. Let's measure two minutes out in combat rounds, by edition of D&D.

• Basic/Expert D&D: One round is ten seconds, so two minutes translates to twelve rounds. Not too shabby in game terms, as this would be a tough and grueling fight for low-level characters.
• D&D 3rd Edition (and onwards): One round is six seconds, so two minutes translates to twenty rounds. I could buy this, if the pumped-up nature of d20 System heroes is taken into account.
• AD&D 1st or 2nd Edition: One round is one minute, so two minutes translates to... two rounds. One set of attack rolls on each side, except for fighters with weapon specialization or those using ranged weapons.

See the problem? Even if a combat round has more than one "attack" being made in it - as Gygax argued in AD&D - how fun would it be to require a full turn or more spent resting every two rounds?

Being the literal stubborn bastard that I am, I set out to fix this. The simplest solution seemed to be to change the rounds to ten seconds long. This keeps the idea of segments intact (even if they're never mentioned by name in 2e, they're still there), only reducing them to 1 second and thereby removing the need for a specialized term; 1 round = 10 seconds, 1 turn = 10 minutes. It also allows everyone to continue using a low d10 roll for initiative. But a big problem immediately comes up: rate of fire.

In AD&D, certain ranged weapons can make multiple attacks per round. Additional melee attacks (for fighters of sufficiently high level, or those with weapon specialization) are no problem, since they start off pretty low at 3 attacks for every 2 rounds. But weapons like the bow (2 attacks per round) or the dart (4 attacks per round for specialists) start getting a bit out of hand. I saw only two solutions to the suspension of disbelief that would snap like a guitar's high E string if the ROF was left intact: limit all weapons to the number of attacks granted to melee weapons - thus still allowing for specialists to shoot faster - or just limit everything to 1 attack per round, the way they are in B/X.

But then the thought occurred to me: if I'm going to change the whole combat system to be like B/X, why not just run B/X? This ties in with my previous post on my issues with excessive house-ruling. In the case of AD&D, it's even worse, because I want the Player's Handbook to still be a useful reference for players in as many cases as possible. The more I change about the fundamental mechanics of the game, the more of that book (that somebody paid good money for - I wanted to eventually give several of my players their own copies) becomes dead weight, useless to anyone who delves into my campaign.

The poor correspondence of one-minute combat rounds to the realities of melee battle (more irritating than the continued classification of maille as being lighter in weight than field plate armor - one of the few areas in which I grudgingly concede that 5th edition did something right) is one of the reasons I might convert my campaign over to B/X or Basic Fantasy. From Basic it came, and to Basic it may yet return.

"Break Out Your Wallet and Buy About 30 Games"

This snippet is originally from a comment I was going to make on this post by Alexis; I excised it because it started to get a bit long for a comment. Still, it perfectly sums up my feelings towards the current "market".

Even worse, there's this almost universal fixation on the current, inaccurately-numbered "edition" over virtually anything else; I keep telling my sympathetic friends that what the hobby really needs is gamers who can sit still for five minutes without chasing after the nearest shiny object. These same players, rather than using things that are quite visible within the books they already own (and that see little use as is - gnomes, anyone?) feel compelled to buy the latest expensive hardcover that is literally a repackaging of something that came out 20 or 30 years ago.

A lot to unpack here. Recently, the tabletop club at the university of which I am an alumnus was all abuzz about the live stream of Wizards of the Coast's presentations at some industry convention or other. Much excitement about this stuff that brought back some character or other from 2nd Edition.

Me? I realized several years ago that it's not necessary to keep buying things for a game in order to continue playing it. At least, that's how a game should be designed. From what I understand, this is still largely true with 5th Edition; after buying the Player's Handbook, and then the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual if you're a DM, you're good to go. (The original intent was to have this also be true of the free Basic Rules PDFs, but evidently those are less useful to DMs than they should be.)

And yet, the other club people were SO FREAKING EXCITED that they might get an official gunslinger class. As I've repeatedly stated to several friends, why is there a need for a separate gunslinger class? If the DM is one to include firearms in their campaign (for the record, I'm not), then why not just have the gunslinger be a ranger and have the character buy a gun? Or, in 2e, even a plain old fighter - who could take advantage of weapon specialization to have a further bonus to hit with their gunshots?

Even worse than this was one 5e game I played in where, apparently, fighters didn't exist... but gunslingers did. Because a cast piece of steel with moving mechanical parts and explosive powder is more common than a stick. (I really need to write a full post on this yahoo's game soon.)

One GM whose Pathfinder game I played in for a while was in the habit of bringing their rulebooks with them in a milk crate. And apparently Paizo has rewritten part of the dictionary and included it in one of those tomes, since the very definition of "core" has apparently changed in Pathfinder. Core classes are not just the ones included in the Core Rulebook, no ma'am; core classes also include the ones from the Advanced Class Guide, Advanced Player's Guide, Occult Adventures, et cetera. It baffles me that anyone would voluntarily subject themselves - and worse, their players - to this level of rules bloat.

If the original D&D rules were released today, they would be seen as mysteriously backwards. Not only with how primitive some of the mechanics are, or the poor art, or the laughable lack of organization. I can imagine a modern "conspicuous consumer" type gamer looking at it:

"You mean that's it? Just three booklets in a box, and you don't have to buy anything else? How are you supposed to keep your players' interest, if you're not constantly adding new shiny books and buying more elaborate dice?"

Someone else would then step in and try to explain the value of, you know, running a game that people actually want to keep coming back to because they're having fun, but without a literal sales pitch hawking TSR's reheated leftovers, the CC gamer would quickly lose interest.

There is enough stuff here already. There are more RPGs on the market, past and present, than any one person or group would ever be able to play. I read an interview with Bob Dylan where he said something similar about music, and I tend to agree. RPGs are an even more special case; a huge portion of the product is pre-written modules and settings, which back in the old days were not as widely used. Instead, the DM would actually write their own material.

Now, the simple fact of a DM creating their own campaign from scratch - rather than just reading boxed text out of a hardcover book with boring artwork* - is bizarre to people like those that make up my gaming club. They refer to such strangeness as "homebrew". They spent over one hundred dollars on tools allowing them to make their own games, and rather than do so, they continue to pay other people $50 at a time to make the games for them. And not just once or twice, so they can see how such a thing might be done; they have to invent a label to "other" those weirdos who actually sit down, pay attention, and put in the necessary work to make something of their own.

It's depressing, really.

*The artwork for most of the 5e books is not bad from a technical perspective, but it's so boring. Curse of Strahd and Tales from the Yawning Portal both just have a person sitting or standing there, Dungeonology (yeah, not technically a rulebook, but a lot of people in the club have bought it) shows a picture of a monster that most characters will not meet until much later in the game, and all of the core books except for the Monster Manual fail to give an impression of what actually happens in the game. Compare them to the original Players Handbook (or even the Rules Cyclopedia) and you'll see what I mean.

AD&D 1e PHB Available on Print-on-Demand

Well, it looks like the AD&D (1st edition) Players Handbook is now officially back in print. I believe the DMG and MM are also available in this fashion.

It's currently on sale, so if you want a high-quality PDF along with the book, I'd grab it soon.

I'm sorely tempted to pick one of these up, as I don't yet own the PHB. If I do, I'll write up a post about it, comparing the physical quality to my genuinely premium-reprinted DMG.

Happy gaming!

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.)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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