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Dungeon Robber rules ready to download

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Here are the beta rules for Dungeon Robber, the solo board game played on the Random Dungeon Generator poster. (If you don’t have a poster, buy one now!)

I’d describe Dungeon Robber as the next evolution of D&D. It’s important because it has an open playtest, and tons of optional “modules” for changing the game experience. Wow! Download it now!

DOWNLOAD DUNGEON ROBBER

Play it! Test it! Send feedback to me, paul, at blog of holding!

Play Yourself

One of my favorite of the optional Dungeon Robber rules is “Play Yourself” mode, where you stat yourself up by answering a series of highly scientific questions (do you have all your wisdom teeth? Then you have high Wisdom!) and, unprepared as you are, enter the dungeon. I like it because it speaks to one of the central D&D fantasies.

What would you do if you – you yourself – found yourself at the dark entrance of a D&D dungeon?

Smart money’s on turning around and going home. But if I were feeling bold, I might take a sword from the skeletal hand of a dead guardian (not that I know how to use a sword), light a torch, and creep into the quiet labyrinth. I wouldn’t be looking to explore the whole thing. I’d just be looking to see if I could find a souvenir: a nice statue, or a few gold coins. Guys, gold is selling at $1600 per ounce now. That means a single gold piece is worth about $600 (or $3000 if it’s one of those big 1e ten-to-a-pound coins). Even the faded tapestries that D&D parties routinely ignore are probably worth something, or at least would look nice in my Brooklyn apartment.

With every room I entered, I’d be pressing my luck, because I, Paul, am no match for even a level 1 monster. The first time I saw a kobold’s whisker, I’d flee – and hope I remembered the way out.

Of course, this isn’t how D&D does dungeoncrawls. D&D takes all of the scary trappings of a haunted house – monsters, vampires, traps – and lets you and your well-armed friends punch them in the face. It’s like you’re a squad from a World War II movie that wandered into a horror film.

Dungeon Robber is a fear-drenched, cowardly, haunted house, press-your-luck dungeoncrawl. It uses lightly-abstracted D&D rules, with more emphasis on the OD&D fleeing rules than on combat. In an RPG, the level of rule detail lets you know what you should be doing. In OD&D, there’s a lot of rules about fleeing: your chances for losing pursuit by turning corners, passing through doors, and dropping food are specified. In Dungeon Robber, I tried to preserve those rules.

Dungeon Robber is a board game, so you can win or lose. You win if you retire alive and rich. If you retire richer than someone else, you’re more of a winner than they are. But really, if you survive your plunge into the dungeon, however brief, you’ve won.

Let me know about your experiences playing Dungeon Robber! Did you emerge with a handful of silver pieces? Were you killed by a rat? Did you retire with enough money to buy a kingdom?

DOWNLOAD DUNGEON ROBBER

Posted in legacy D&D, other systems, RPG Hub | 9 Comments »

D&D is old-school, Chainmail is new-school

Monday, July 9th, 2012

This entry is part 3 of 18 in the series New Schooler Reads OD&D

OD&D? Pah! The REAL Fantasy game is Chainmail. And it is way ahead of its time. Here’s why.

As a new-school D&D player, there’s a lot of D&D history I’ve missed. Editing Cheers Gary, gaming with Mike Mornard, and illustrating the AD&D Dungeon Generator have helped, but there’s a lot in D&D that I still don’t understand. I’m going back to the OD&D texts to see whether they can help my new-school game. Right now, I’m reading Chainmail.

Chainmail has Dice Pools. When you attack some Light Foot with your Medium Horse, you roll 2d6 per horseman, and you get a success (kill) on a 5 or a 6. The dice pool mechanic wouldn’t be seen again until Shadowrun in ’89.

Chainmail has ascending Armor Class. Sort of. Chainmail man-to-man combat is run by crossindexing things on matrixes. On the melee table, there are headings for the different types of armor (No Armor through Plate Mail and Shield). On the Missile Fire table, the armor types are replaced with ascending numbers: 1 for No Armor, 2 for Leather, up to 8 for Plate Armor and Shield.

Chainmail has at-will spells. There are no spellpoints or rules for Vancian casting in Chainmail. A wizard can throw a fireball once a turn, if he likes.

Chainmail has rules for counterspells – and they’re simple: when an enemy wizard casts a spell, roll a target number on 2d6 to counter it. D&D 3e had counterspell rules that no one ever used because they involved readying an action. I don’t think any other edition has counterspells as part of the core rules.

Chainmail has rules for spell failure. A weak wizard (a seer) can try to cast a difficult spell – they just have a chance of failure. This was taken out of D&D, and generations of fans have tried to houserule it back in.

Tags:oldschool
Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

stories from Mike Mornard’s game table

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

This entry is part 11 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

In my OD&D campaign DMed by Mike Mornard, I’m sort of the Chief Inquisitor – the guy who’s most likely to bog down the game with questions about Gary Gygax’s and Dave Arneson’s games.

Usually I try to organize such reminiscences into coherent articles, like “this is the one about player skill” or “this is the one about henchmen”. Sometimes pieces don’t fit into a narrative. So: this is the one with a list of random stories.

Monster PCs: Could you play monsters in OD&D? Sure! Mike played an 8th level balrog at one point. Mike related a story of a roleplaying session in which the party had to distract a wizard. Mike’s balrog came to the door wearing an asbestos press hat, claiming to be from the Balrog Times. He made fire flash from his thumb to simulate camera flashes. He not only distracted the fame-hungry wizard but got a guided tour of his mansion. Mike finished the story with the a refrain common to participants in an immersive role-playing session: “and we didn’t roll dice once.”

Setting your Friends on Fire: Our (well, mostly Tavis’s) frequent misadventures with flaming oil prompted this story: Once in Greyhawk, Mike and the gang were fighting mummies. Mike and another player planned to coordinate their actions: one would throw oil on the mummy, and the other would torch him. Before their turns came up, Mike was jostled. A bad die roll later, and Mike spilled his oil on Ernie. A moment later, the other player was jostled, and he accidentally hit an oil-soaked Ernie with his torch. (I’d like to know: what were the mechanics behind this? Natural 1s?)

Undead level drain: A lot of people hate the fact that undead permanently drain levels: in fact, that’s been removed from D&D’s recent editions. Mike told us that, at first, undead level drain was impermanent. Unless you died of level drain, you’d regain your levels through healing. During playtesting, Gary decided that undead were insufficiently frightening, and made the level drain permanent.

In fact, Gary and the others were surprised when so many people hated the undead level drain. People didn’t like that it made you a level behind the rest of your party. In Gary’s game, because of the Greyhawk campaign’s intense schedule and huge player base, that was not as big a deal as it was for most gaming groups. In Greyhawk, players and characters were always leaving and joining the party, a different mix in every session, and they’d typically be anywhere from 3 to 5 levels apart.

If a 5th level party had some level 1 characters in it, they’d stop on level 1, find some goblins, and let the level 1 characters fight them. Once they’d faced some danger – earning their XP – the group would go down to level 3, and the level 1 characters would stand on the inside of the party holding torches. They’d get to share the XP from the mission because they’d faced some combat earlier. Mike doesn’t know how this practice evolved: it was already in place when he joined the game.

Fast-leveling PCS: Since you got XP from money, the Greyhawk players would fast-level characters by giving them all the loot from the adventure. When Mike suggested we give all the loot to the first-level cleric to level him to 2, it blew my mind.

Although this is possible under the XP rules, I’ve never seen this practiced, or suggested, in 1e games. In Greyhawk, they did this all the time.

Subsystems: When D&D was being invented, people didn’t mind the fact that every piece of the game had its own subsystem. As Mike says, “We liked rolling dice.” They also didn’t mind consulting charts. Charts and unique subsystems were respected pieces of wargaming tradition. Some of the D&D mechanics, in fact, are direct evolutions from war games.

The use of 1d6 for a morale roll was used in some 60s war games. The problem was that such a roll was very granular, and made for a steep curve. Gary switched to 2d6 to allow for finer gradations.

Gary’s experimentations with multiple dice to produce bell curves are, in many ways, central to D&D. He must have been extra frustrated one day when he saw that Mornard and someone else were playing a game where one was using 2d6 and one was using 1d12 for morale. Gary just shook his head (and presumably gave a lecture on probability).

Character death: As a new-school player, one of the speed bumps I hit when trying to understand OD&D was the attitude towards character death. Perhaps because the Greyhawk players were coming from war games, they didn’t mind the occasional arbitrary death, even if it was inflicted by another player.

Mike told a story of a wizard played by Ernie Gygax. Mike doesn’t know the character’s name because people usually called the character “Ernie’s Wizard”. He found a powerful magic item, possibly called “the Orb of Cleric” (not an item I’ve heard of, but maybe Mike can clarify). Tom Champeny’s character was a cleric and wanted it. He offered to buy it, gave Ernie presents, etc. Finally, out in the wilderness one day, he cast Finger of Death on Ernie and took it. No one got upset: 13-year-old Ernie was like, “oh well, guess i should have given it to you.” (Ernie’s Wizard’s henchmen got him resurrected.)

Nevertheless, screwing each other over was only a sometimes activity. In Greyhawk, players tended towards neutrality. If your high-level character died, they’d usually get you resurrected. In Blackmoor, on the other hand, your body would be looted before it hit the ground.

What do hit points represent? Over the years, there have been a lot of ex post facto justifications for hit points, some by Gygax himself. In the end, as Mike says, “hit points are something to make combat go the way Gary wanted.” That’s a good thing to remember next time you find yourself tempted to jump in an internet argument about the subject.

Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 5 Comments »

art by gygax and arneson

Monday, June 25th, 2012

This entry is part 10 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

(Today I’m talking about the art of OD&D, so this post is NSFW inasmuch as you think the OD&D art is NSFW.)

During a D&D game with Mike Mornard, we got to talking about the art in the original Little Brown Books and the Greyhawk supplement.

Greg Bell is listed as one of the illustrators in the original books. You can recognize Greg Bell pics by the blocky outlines.

It seems that Greg copied the compositions of a lot of his pieces from comics of the time: for instance, I bet this picture started its life as a Conan the Barbarian splash page.

But hey – Greg was a teenager drawing pictures for a friend’s semi-amateur zine. I don’t think we need to hold him to super high standards here.

Mike Mornard says that, at the time, he hated Greg Bell’s pictures and asked Gary why he was using so many of the illustrations. “Because Greg works for $2 a picture,” said Gary.

Mike disliked the Bell artwork so much that he went off and recruited an artist who, he believed, could do better: David Sutherland. Mike met David at a Society for Creative Anachronism meeting, saw his drawings, and told him to get in touch with Gary Gygax.

Sutherland’s art, of course, became a staple of early TSR work. He drew the adventurers that inspired my dungeon map poster. He also drew a lot of naked ladies. Here are two David Sutherland succubi.

Mornard told us that the body of one of these original succubi was copied from a Playboy centerfold. If I were truly dedicated to D&D history, I would no doubt look through early 70s centerfolds to find the original. I will leave that research project up for grabs.

Speaking of nudity, there were a lot of naked-lady monsters in Oe and 1e. They’re often recalled fondly (and only barely creepily) by guys I know who played D&D as kids. A lot of these pieces are by Darlene. Here’s Darlene’s succubus, this time in a sort of Baroque odalisque pose instead of a Playboy pose:

Mike Mornard mentioned that another of the naked-lady pieces from the original book was by a female artist, and that it arrived unsolicited in the mail:

It’s interesting that more than half of the nude women of OD&D are by female artists. I have no conclusions I can draw from this, except that it seems that the indie geek scene of the 70s is different from the one I’m familiar with.

Another artist whose OD&D work has always fascinated me is Keenan Powell:

Keenan Powell’s amateur, almost outsider-art pictures set the tone, for me, for the OD&D aesthetic. The whole book gives the feeling of being illustrated by gamers who draw pictures, not by artists who play games.

Is Keenan Powell (who’s also a female artist, apparently) the same person who drew the Beautiful Witch and Amazon? I can’t read the signature on the witch illustration.

While we were on the subject of OD&D art, I asked Mike something which had puzzled me for a long time. “Who drew that stone head in the Greyhawk book? And what was that about?”

“I think that was by Gary,” said Mike. And he didn’t know what it was about: it wasn’t one of the things he encountered on his trips through the Greyhawk dungeon. As far as Mike knew, the Enigmatic Stone Head might have been something that Rob Kuntz discovered on one of his solo dungeon escavations.

Furthermore, Mike told us, the Carrion Crawler picture from Greyhawk was by Dave Arneson.

Without hearing it from Mike, I would never have known that these pictures, by the inventors of the game, weren’t by the same hand. I might have attributed them to Keenan Powell. I find it somehow touching that these guys, out of their exubrance and their love of the game (and maybe in an effort to save $2) were inspired to draw and share these pictures.

I’m not a professional artist. When I draw a picture and put it up on the Internet, I sometimes feel like it’s an act of hubris. Maybe it is, but it’s also an act of faith that the world will cut me a break and accept what I can offer. I think that all of these OD&D artists need to be approached on those terms.

Tags:oldschool
Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 16 Comments »

dungeons and dowels

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

This entry is part 1 of 18 in the series New Schooler Reads OD&D

I guess Gary Gygax must have had a bunch of spare dowels in his house, because there are some great dowel-based rules in the Chainmail booklet.

The first rule is for determining the efficacy of cannon fire.

The length of a firing dowel will correspond to the maximum range of the cannon which it represents. Each is colored alternately white and black to represent the flight and bounces of a cannon ball. BEFORE PLACING THE DOWEL THE PLAYER FIRING MUST STATE WHETHER HE IS FIRING SHORT (white) OR LONG (black) AT THE TARGET. All figures that are touched by the named color on the dowell are eliminated.

This is a beautiful, elegant rule. I love the way it simulates the random bouncing of high- and low-ranged cannonballs, both on the same dowel, each using the other’s negative space. It’s like the yin and yang of shooting pretend people.

I Photoshopped this dowel image based on the measurements in the book for a cannon with a range of 36″.

Dowel Rule 2 is in the Fantasy Supplement:

If any number of figures are airborne at one time, it becomes difficult to maintain a side record of their height and course. It is recommended that a number of 36″ dowels be set firmly into 2″ x 4″ bases, and flying figures be secured at the proper height in the dowel by use of a rubber band.

Recording flying creatures’ positions is a bit of a problem in D&D. We’ve used stacks of dice, notes on scraps of paper, and, most frequently, ignoring positioning altogether. I’m not going to rush out and buy dowels, but I recognize that perhaps I SHOULD.

Tags:oldschool
Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

a new schooler reads Chainmail

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

This entry is part 2 of 18 in the series New Schooler Reads OD&D

I decided to start with the original fantasy roleplaying game: Chainmail!

I’m not a war-gamer, so I expected to get bogged down in pages of elliptical rules that only made sense to other wargamers. I have to say, it was much more readable than I thought!

For the most part, Chain Mail uses a simple system, and most of the rules seem like rulings – fairly logical rulings – on corner cases, mostly involving how awesome awesome Swiss and Landsknechte pikemen are.

Double all penalties for poorly trained troops, and half for Swiss/Landsknechte and horse.
…
Only Swiss and Landsknechte pikemen can form a hedgehog. If ten or more of these troops are in a square-type formation, pikes or pole arms facing outwards in all four directions, a “hedgehog” has been constituted.
…
Swiss/Landsknechte Pike Charge: Because of the reputation and ferocity of these troops, an enemy charged by Swiss or Landsknechte pikemen (other than like troops) must roll two dice and consult the Loss Table, just as if they had suffered excess casualties.
…
Swiss and Landsknechte armed with pikes or pole arms facing the enemy automatically stand any charges.
…
Swiss/Landsknechte attacking in close formation ( 5 x 2 figures minimum) fight as Armored Foot, with extra die for weapons. For every two men so attacking as additional “mass shock” die is added.

At the Battle of Marignano, Swiss pikemen actually fought Landsknecht mercenaries. Because it was impossible for either side to lose, THE BATTLE IS STILL GOING ON.

There are a handful of charts in the back, but the basic melee mechanic seems to be to to convert your soldiers into a d6 dice pool, roll all the dice, and score kills for every success. 6 is always a success, and for better troop types, 5’s and 4’s can be a success as well. It’s all very… White Wolf.

The 45-page book manages to find room for rules for sieges, and … jousting! Not to mention the 13-page Fantasy Supplement that kicked off this whole D&D thing.

There are a few rules that make me scared to play. For instance:

FATIGUE
Continued activity brings on weariness:
1. Moving 5 consecutive turns.
2. Moving 2 consecutive turns, charging, then meleeing.
3. Moving 1 turn, charging, then meleeing 2 rounds.
4. Meleeing three rounds.

(Except of course that Swiss/Landsknechte can go twice as long in every category before getting fatigued. OF COURSE they can.)

When I read these fatigue rules, I realized how much recordkeeping is involved in this game. Every turn, you have to write down every unit’s move – even if you’re not using the optional “written orders” rule variation. Not only that, you have to look back through your notes to see if each of your units have rested in the past 5 turns, etc. I’d think this would slow the pace way down. How are you going to get through Waterloo in one day at this rate?

There’s also a bunch of stuff you have to reevaluate at the half-move (after the unit has moved half its movement rate). Melee and archery can take place at the half-move and at the end of the move. I wondered why every unit’s movement rate wasn’t just cut in half and one turn cut into two. I’m sure there’s a reason, though.

I’m kind of surprised to say this, but I would… play… Chainmail. I’m just throwing that out there, guys. Any beardos in New York with a sand table?

Tags:oldschool
Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 9 Comments »

the badass skeletons of the Fiend Folio

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

The 1e Fiend Folio spent years in the doghouse. As a kid, I wrote off the Folio as a collection of gimmick and useless monsters – including the adherer, flail snail, carbuncle, and flumph – topped off with an unnecessarily large helping of badass skeletons.

Lately, there’s been a bit of a reclamation project, with various game designers and bloggers returning the the Folio for inspiration. I’ll do the same today. I’m leaving the flumph for someone else, though; as part of the May of the Dead carnival, I’ll be rating, in alphabetical order, the Fiend Folio’s many, many badass skeletons.

Apparition

Non-Badass Appearance: As badass skeletons go, the Apparition is pretty conservative. He’s only half-heartedly swathed in mummy bindings, and no sinister fires burn in his eyesockets. Only the Russ Nicholson art saves him from mediocrity.

Badass Mechanics: The Apparition has 8 HD and 0 AC, and, like many of the Fiend Folio critters, it has unique insta-death mechanics. If you roll over your Intelligence AND Constitution on 3d6, you “suffer a massive heart seizure and die instantly.” I like this monster because if you’re sufficiently smart, you’re totally immune to its powers. Stay in school, kids!

Badass Rating: 1 Skeletor

Coffer Corpse

At 2 HD, the Coffer Corpse is one of the few low-level badass skeletons.

Badass Description: The Coffer Corpse is “found in stranded funeral barges”, so keep that in mind when you are planning an adventure on a stranded funeral barge.

Badass Mechanics: The Coffer Corpse doesn’t cause you to save or die. He just grabs you by the throat and, like Bryan Adams, never lets go (until you kill him, which shouldn’t take too long as he has an average of 9 HP.)*

Badass glowing eyes: Check.

Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

*I mean until you kill the coffer corpse. But Bryan Adams also has 9 HP.

Crypt Thing

The Crypt Thing just sits in his crypt all day (% in lair: 100%) and uses his special mechanics to puzzle wayward adventurers.

Badass Mechanics: The Crypt Thing teleports each saving-throw-failing party member 100-1000 feet in a random direction, and lies to the rest of the party, claiming that the teleported creatures have been disintegrated.

Badass Motivation: Although they are neutral, “their aim appears to be solely that of obtaining pleasure by creating confusion and dissent.” I guess it’s the kind of neutral that is slightly chaotic and slightly evil. For a skeleton with glowing eyes, though, it’s practically Lawful Good.

Badass Appearance: This guy looks a lot like Skeletor, so full marks for that.

Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

Death Knight

Badass Story: The Death Knight is a lich created by Demogorgon from a fallen human paladin. Every word of this sentence drips with Metal!

Badass Hit Points: The Death Knight has 9 HD, but he’s so awesome that they’re TEN SIDED DICE. I guess because they’re from paladin class levels.

Badass Stats: The Death Knight has high stats even by paladin standard, which is saying a lot. He has 18/00 Strength and his Intelligence is Average-Genius. He also speaks 3-6 bonus languages!

Badass Mechanics: The Death Knight has more kickass powers than you can shake a femur at. Highlights include 75% magic resistance that, 11% of the time, reflects spells at their caster; power word kill; a 20-dice fireball; and a gate spell.

Badass Steed: The Death Knight rides a nightmare. That’s the gold standard for villainy. If you’re a bad guy and you have to ride a regular horse, you might as well hang it up.

Badass Rating: 5 Skeletors

Eye of Fear and Flame

Badass Life Goal: “It constantly stalks the underworld seeking lawful or lawful/neutral parties or individuals. It will command an individual, or member of a party, to perform evil deeds.”

Badass Mechanics: One eye fires a 12-die fireball every three rounds. The other acts like a fear wand every round. That’s a lot of magic that it’s slinging around. That’s what you get if you don’t perform evil deeds.

Badass Glowing Eyes: Yes, and they are gems worth 1,000-2,000 GP each.

Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

Gambado

Non-badass Description: “Supported on its thin (but very strong) neck is a skull – usually of an animal but sometimes of primitive man.” A primitive man? Like a soccer hooligan? How can you tell that from the skull? Or is it, like, a hominid? Anyway, the gambado’s body is like a cylindrical spring. It hops.

The gambado better be, like, a South American legend or something, otherwise this is pretty lame. (consults dictionary dot com) No, “Gambado” is just an old fashioned word for a hop. The gambado hides in a thin little hole and gambadoes out at people. STUPID.

Badass rating: 0 Skeletors

Huecuva

The Huecuva is a 2-HD monster, “similar in appearance to a robed skeleton”. It has two gimmicks: it is able to polymorph self three times a day, and its touch infects the victim with acute cardiovascular-renal disease. I kid you not. Mechanics based on the Diseases chart in the DMG!

This one IS based on a South American legend. A point for that.

No points for the mummy wrappings. It looks like the Huecuva saw the illustration for the Apparition and thought to itself, “I can get more wrappings than that guy.” There is such a thing as TOO many wrappings, Huecuva. You look like a kitten that got into the yarn: there’s a thing called self-control. Don’t give me that look.

Badass Rating: 1 Skeletor

Necrophidius

Badass Name: Necrophidius. Great name. “Drown in your tears of terror, for I am Necrophidius the Malificent!” “Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States: Necrophidius!” “Necrophidius, bring the car around front.” Necrophidius.

Badass Mechanics: The necrophidius is another hopping snake skull-head like the Gambado, but at least it can execute the Dance of Death (treat as hypnotism).

Badass Construction: You can make your own necrophidius! The ingredients include “the complete articulated skeleton of a giant snake (poisonous or constrictor) and the skull of a cold-blooded murderer killed in the last 24 hours.” The good thing about this is, after you kill the murderer in order to make your snake, YOU are a cold-blooded murderer, so your skull can be used to make a second necrophidius!

Badass Glowing Eyes: Yup.

Badass Rating: 4 Skeletors

Revenant

Badass Backstory: “Under exceptional circumstances, those who have died a violent death may return from beyond the grave to wreak vengeance on their killer – as a revenant.” Revenants do all sorts of creepy stuff to their killer: “lock its claw-like hands around its victim’s throat,” “stare into his killer’s eyes” causing the killer to be “paralysed with terror”, and track the killer “wherever he may be.”

Badass Indestructibility “Weapons – normal and magical alike – do not affect the creature.” If it is somehow dismembered anyway, its limbs continue to act. It regenerates 3 HP per round. It is immune to acid. I see why the description talks about the revenant tracking its victim – this is a guy you want to run away from.

Badass Entry Requirements: In order to become a revenant, you need Wis or Int greater than 16, Con 18, and total characteristics totaling to 90 or more (wow! 15 average! Although it’s not quite as difficult if you use the Comeliness stat.) Even so, you only have a 5% chance of coming back. Why are we getting all this info about how hard it is to become a revenant? It seems to imply that PCs will want to become revenants.

Badass Glowing Eyes: “Its eyes – sunken in the face – are at times dull and heavy-lidded but, particularly when nearing its intended victim, they will blaze up with unnatural intensity.”

Badass Rating: 4 Skeletors

Skeleton Warrior

As Death Knights are the lich versions of paladins, skeleton warriors are lich versions of high-level fighters. What’s up with thieves? No one wants to make lich versions of thieves.

Badass Jewelry: A skeleton warrior’s soul is trapped in a golden circlet. If you put on the circlet, you may control the skeleton. While you’re not in control, it tries to kill you. There’s lots of text about how exactly this works.

Badass Intelligence: Skeleton Warriors have Exceptional intelligence, and are neutral (tending towards evil). If you wore the circlet, could you force the skeleton warrior to work as a college professor, even if you didn’t have a high enough intelligence to do it yourself? I bet Skeleton Warriors are tough graders and they love to fail you. “This will not be sufficient, Mr. Necrophidius. I said five pages, and this is four and a half.”

Badass Rating: 2 Skeletors

Son of Kyuss

Badass Dad: Kyuss was an evil high priest who invented a new form of undead. Living the dream, Kyuss.

Badass Mechanics: Sons of Kyuss radiate cause fear, regenerate like trolls, and their mighty punches inflict leprosy. More diseases from page 12 of the DMG!

Badass Gross Worms: Sons of Kyuss have “fat green worms” crawling out of all of their skull orifices. “One worm per melee round will jump from a son’s head to an adjacent character”, potentially turning the character into a son of Kyuss in 1-4 melee rounds.

Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

Eleven skeleton monsters is probably too much for a monster manual supplement! But, as my wife notes, it is almost enough for a calendar. How awesome would that be? I wonder if Russ Nicholson has all of the original art?

Posted in fluff/inspiration, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 27 Comments »

What the 2e PR can tell us about 5e

Monday, May 14th, 2012

When I got that giant box of D&D stuff in the mail, one of the first things I did (after reading the original owner’s game notebook and the In Search of The Unknown module) was settle down with a random Dragon issue I’d never read before: Issue #121, from 1987.

There’s a hilarious article by David “Zeb” Cook, trying to allay people’s fears about the coming Second Edition. It’s hilarious because, as an avid consumer of Fifth Edition previews, I find it so familiar.

Really, I do want to avoid having to do a Third Edition - at least having to repeat what I’m going through on Second Edition! The only way to do this is to build a set of core rules that can accommodate the inevitable changes and additions that will come. Just as the First Edition was not perfect, I know that new and better ideas will surface after Second Edition is done.

Our current plan is that we haven’t got a plan. We are still looking at a lot of different ideas. Currently, all of them revolve around building a core set of rules that can be used by all players. One thought is that there would be two hardbound rule books — the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Masters Handbook (note the title change). These would present the core rules for the game, what everyone needs to know.

This sounds a lot like the marketing for D&D Next: the base 5e game will be very modular. We’ll have core rules, and a bunch of room to add optional rules. That way, we can avoid having to do a sixth edition.

(Also, what happened to the proposed name change to Dungeon Master’s Handbook? Was there public outcry against it?)

The article goes on to describe the “core” and “optional” rules in ways almost identical to the descriptions of the current new edition, except with the addition of a middle “tournament” rules tier:

TSR’s attitude about official rules has changed. You know and I know that people create variants and house rules for use with the AD&D game. Trying to demand that they play only the official rules is pointless. Thats why we’re planning on marking rules in the core set as “Standard,” “Tournament,” and “Optional.” Standard rules are the absolute minimum you need to play something that is passably identifiable as the AD&D game – the races, character classes, attack rolls, etc. Tournament rules add the rules that will be normally used in any TSR-sponsored tournament. After all, in a tournament, you should be reasonably certain that you will be playing the same game as your neighbor, a useful thing to ensure fairness at a convention! Best of all, for all you tinkerers out there, the Optional rules allow you to make the game yours, filling your game with as much richness and detail as you want – weapon-based armor-class modifiers, create-your-own character classes, spell-casting times, proficiencies, casting components, and more. Optional rules are just that; if you don’t like ’em, you don’t use ’em.

Compare that to this Rule of Three article from 2012:

We want to put as many tools as possible in the hands of DMs and their players so they can tailor the game to their preferences. Part of this process involves providing a number of what you’ve heard us refer to as “rules modules”—that is, packages of optional or alternative rules that we have designed, developed, and playtested that help create a certain game play experience, either for a single player or the entire game table.

The second half of that process is one that should also make it easier for homemade rules modules: creating a streamlined base to the game that rules modules can be added to easily. With a clean, lean, and dependable core to the game, we hope to be able to communicate to players and Dungeon Masters what the basics of the game are, and then provide advice for designing your own material to work with that.

It actually seems like the spirit of the fifth-edition revision has more in common with the second edition than I realized.

I don’t know if we can make any predictions about 5e based on the optional and tournament rules of 2e, but, for fun, I flipped open my new Second Edition PHB and found the items in the Table of Contents listed as Optional and Tournament:

Proficiencies (Optional)
Encumbrance (optional rule)
Basic Encumbrance (Tournament rule)
Specific Encumbrance (Optional Rule)
Encumbrance and Mounts (Tournament Rule)
Spell Components (Optional Rule)
Weapon Type vs Attack Modifiers (Optional Rule)
Group Initiative (Optional Rule)
Individual Initiative (Optional Rule)
Weapon Speed and Initiative (Optional Rule)
Parrying (Optional Rule)
Jogging and Running (Optional Rule)

What do you think? Will 5e’s “clean, lean and dependable core” be leaner and meaner than 2e’s “absolute minimum you need to play something that is passably identifiable as the AD&D game” (which core, presumably, included every rule except the ones mentioned above)?

There were a couple of other quotes in the article that I found interesting, not in relation to D&D Next, but to 2e’s eventual replacement, Third Edition:

Now, 100% compatibility is just not possible. There are things that must be fixed. There are inevitable improvements and new ideas. These things are going to prevent Second Edition from being 100% compatible. Just what percent compatibility we wind up with, I can’t say. Indeed, the need to keep things compatible results in us not making some changes that would only confuse the issue. Take the armor class numbering system. To many players, it does not make sense that the worst armor classes have higher numbers, and it would seem simple to change it. However, reversing the order of the armor class numbers would invalidate every AD&D game campaign and product in existence. For compatibility’s sake, it is better to make no change, since this change is not worth the trouble it will cause.

Ascending AC was something that was done in the bolder rules changes of 3e. It’s interesting that they were already thinking about it in 1987.

and

Ultimately, there will be people out there who will be playing Version 1.0, Version 1.5, Version 2.0, and probably even Version 2.3 of the AD&D game. Perhaps we should figure out some type of numbering system like that used on computer programs!

It would take this prediction 16 years to come true, with the publication of D&D 3.5.

Posted in game design, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 12 Comments »

in search of the unknown

Friday, May 4th, 2012

This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

I’ve heard a lot of references to the 1981 module “In Search of the Unknown:” it came with the first edition of Basic D&D, and a lot of people have fond memories of it. I’ve never read it. When I got a heavy box of D&D books in the mail, it was the first module I grabbed.

I’ve been on a search of my own lately, exploring the D&D I missed before I entered the hobby. As a kid, I played in bizarre junior high versions of Red Box Basic and AD&D, and as an adult I’ve mostly played third and fourth edition. It’s been fun playing OD&D: I’m slowly getting a handle on a different style of D&D than one I’ve ever played.

I was delighted to find Mike Carr’s lengthy “how to play D&D” essay at the beginning of the module. It’s pretty similar to advice in the OD&D and Dungeon Master’s Guide books, but since I’ve never read it before, it’s fresh. I have two other fresh experiences with which to compare the advice: my OD&D games with Mike Mornard and my extremely close study of Gary Gygax’s Random Dungeon Generation tables from the Dungeon Master’s Guide. There are a lot of parallels to draw here.

mapping

Here’s what Mike Carr says about the dungeon in In Search of the Unknown:

The dungeon is designed to be instructive for new players. Most of it should be relatively easy to map, although there are difficult sections – especially on the lower level where irregular rock caverns and passageways will provide a real challenge.

I didn’t realize until Mike Mornard spelled it out for us that mapping was intended to be one of the big challenges of D&D. The labyrinth is as dangerous as the minotaur. In Search of the Unknown is explicitly teaching mapping skills. The assumption is that more advanced modules will be bigger mapping challenges.

It is quite possible that adventurers (especially if wounded or reduced in number) may want to pull out of the stronghold and prepare for a return visit when refreshed or reinforced. If this is done, they must work their way to an exit.

When we play in Mike Mornard’s D&D game, he makes us use our maps. We can’t say “We leave the dungeon.” Every time, we have to specify our twists and turns back to the entrance. This still feels foreign to me. I think I’ve quoted Baf of The Stack before: a game is about what you spend your time doing. OD&D is a game about mapping. Exploration takes more game time than combat. Coming from 3e and 4e, I feel like I’ve been playing a different game.

I love the 1e Player’s Handbook illustration of the troll re-winding the twine trailed by the fighter. (I referenced it in my poster.) Mornard related this story: Once in Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor game, some guys decided to leave string behind them instead of mapping. Eventually, the rope jerked out of their hands and started unrolling, and then they heard a slurping, like someone eating spaghetti. Mapping is a necessary skill: don’t try cheat your way out of it.

caution

One player in the group should be designated as the leader, or “caller” for the party… once the caller (or any player) speaks and indicates an action is being taken, it is begun – even if the player quickly changes his or her mind (especially if the player realizes he or she has made a mistake or error in judgment).

Before playing in Mike Mornard’s game, my eye would have skipped over this classic bit of old-school advice as irrelevant to me. Now I’ve seen it in action:

DM: There are passages north and west.
US: We go south.
DM: Bump… bump… you bump into the wall.

More ridiculously, I recently had my thief start down the magic staircase into the chamber of Necross the Mad, even though I knew that the stairway hadn’t been summoned yet. A merciful DM would have reminded me of that fact – what adventurer would step off a ledge? – but Mike Mornard took me at my word, and I fell. Mike only gave me one point of damage, where perhaps Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson would have assigned more.

Mike says that his game is pretty close to the Gary and Dave game in rules and in content, but where their influences ran more to swords and sorcery, Mike brings more Warner Brothers to the table. There is a lot of laughing in Mike’s game, where Gary and Dave’s were grimmer. But in all three games – and in Mike Carr’s game as well – you need to listen to the DM, and visualize what you hear – and think. As Mike Carr’s introduction says elsewhere, “Careless adventurers will pay the penalty for a lack of caution – only one of the many lessons to be learned within the dungeon!”

time

Every third turn of adventuring, the DM should take a die roll for the possible appearance of wandering monsters at the indicated chances (which are normally 1 in 6)… Some occurrences (such as noise and commotion caused by adventurers) may necessitate additional checks… Wasted time is also a factor which should be noted, as players may waste time arguing or needlessly discussing unimportant matters or by simply blundering around aimlessly. … You set the tempo of the game and are responsible for keeping it moving. If players are unusually slow… allow additional chances for wandering monsters to appear.

This passage will feel very familiar to the players in Mike Mornard’s game. We’ve all grown to fear the d6, which comes rolling out at us whenever we’re “needlessly discussing unimportant matters or simply blundering around aimlessly” – which is often. Wandering monsters disappeared from 4e (and from many 3e games) because they slowed down the game pointlessly. What Mike Carr is suggesting here, and what we’ve learned from Mike Mornard, is that wandering monster checks are actually a way to preserve pacing. Once you’re in the dungeon, you can’t afford to get bogged down in bickering over minutiae. How I wish that work meetings came with wandering monster checks.

mysterious containers

The dungeon includes a good assortment of typical features which players can learn to expect, including… mysterious containers with a variety of contents for examination.

The typical D&D treasure announcement isn’t “You find 1000 GP in a chest:” it’s “You find an old wooden chest. What do you do?” Containers are important. The Appendix A random generator has three separate tables for rolling up characteristics of treasure containers. Here are a couple of the ones I’ve encountered in OD&D:

Contact poison on trap: One of the cardinal OD&D rules is “check the chest for traps.” As the party thief, I make sure to incant this formula. I think that the Greyhawk supplement has rules for finding traps, and I imagine that my odds of success are quite low, but in the last game, Mike told me, without requiring a roll, that the lock was covered with a brownish paste. Good enough warning for me to wear gloves. This transforms a 50/50 chance at arbitrary death into a game element that rewards a methodical, cautious play-style: quite in keeping with the mysterious OD&D “player skill.”

We considered taking the chest with us so we could brush it against opponents, but Mike’s beatific expression – that of a DM who’s thought of flaws in PCs’ plans – warned us to leave it where it was.

Invisible chests: Invisible chests are are oddly common in dungeons made with the Appendix A random generator – and hard to illustrate. They always seemed to me oddly pointless. Why include a treasure you can’t possibly find?

In our case, we passed the invisible chest on the way into a room, but tripped over it on the way out. I can imagine it working like OD&D’s 3 in 6 chance to fall in a pit: there are rewards, as well as dangers, you might never know you passed.

Our invisible chest contained 1000 or so gold, but we were all struck by the advantages of owning our own invisible chest. My character in particular, who frequently leaves his bandit hirelings unsupervised at home, has every need of a way to hide his treasure.

There’s probably a lot more of interest in In Search of the Unknown, but I’ll leave the rest unread – just in case I can get someone to run it for me. After all (says Mike Carr,) “this element of the unknown and the resultant exploration in search of the unknown treasures (with hostile monsters and unexpected dangers to outwit and overcome) is precisely what a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure is all about.”

Tags:oldschool
Posted in legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | 16 Comments »

Scans of some kid’s D&D notebook from 1989

Monday, April 30th, 2012

As I mentioned, I recently came into a windfall: 45 pounds of D&D stuff that comprise some kid’s D&D collection from the 80s. From the Dragon magazines, it looks like he subscribed from about ’83 to ’89, and he stopped playing around the time Second Edition came out.

I was excited to get the books and magazines, but the first thing I opened was the spiral notebook, on the cover of which were scratched the letters “D+D”.

It’s a peculiar, and brief, notebook. I might need a little help prizing out its secrets.

It starts very strong, with an awesome map of a land called ARCAUEN:

There are so many kickass names here, including, but not limited to, Drosifer Tower… Doricus… Isles of Clakoron… Drafek…Okioxion… Mount Flinkorst… Garroten… Dracorius Hill… Blueis Lake… Bay of Bengal… Straight of the Dragon. It’s like an episode of He-Man, in the best possible way. My favorites have to be Bay of Bengal – yeah, it is an awesome name for a bay, even if it is real! and Straight of the Dragon. Straight of the Dragon isn’t even a strait – it’s a peninsula. Spotmarkedx suggested that the world of Arcauen is two dimensions, which you can traverse with the right spell: an island, in which the Straight is a peninsula, and a landlocked sea, in which the Straight is – well, still not a strait, actually. Maybe some sort of bay. Anyway, a good idea.

Other locations of note: Black Ledge, which protects Drosifer Tower, the home of (I suspect) the greatest evildoer of the campaign, and Plathister Tower, where good wizards weave great magics using the poetry of Sylvia Plath. That’s just a guess.

The other interesting thing about this map is the scale: it’s not a continent, as I first thought, but a pretty small island. It’s maybe 30 miles across – approximately the same size as Mauritius. There are a lot of great locations packed together pretty tightly here.

On the next page, we have an Encounter Table!
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