Rogues Gallery: The Tragedy of Black Dougal

Two posts in two days: what kind of odds were the blogger bookies offering on this outcome? Maybe there's something to this whole A-to-Zed* challenge after all.

Anyway, for letter B of the Rogues Gallery Challenge I initially had my heart set on Bruno the Battler of Holmes's Basic Rules fame. But then I was reminded of the ol' Dungeon Masters Adventure Log with the sample characters in the back. There he is: Black Dougal, 7th level lawful neutral human ranger "slain by fire giant." We can surmise that the rest of the party exacted revenge since not only is there a fire giant listed under encounter #6 of the monster log but also in the treasure section we see that #6 yielded a rather massive haul. Well done party!

But why did I shunt aside poor Bruno the Battler--who, it should be noted, met a similar fate when he failed a save and died of spider venom--in favor of Black D.? Well what's interesting about Mr. Dougal is not his demise but rather its aftermath. Once the fire giant had fallen, most of the party followed Standard Adventurer's Protocol when confronted with the death of a compatriot: once a cost/benefit analysis of "raising" the lost ranger returned a negative result they began rifling through his belongings for magic items and other useful and/or valuable possessions. No sooner had the ritual scavenging begun than Sister Rebecca the party's cleric spoke up in her resolute, Lawful Neutral tones, insisting that Black D. be given a proper funeral in accordance with the warrior tradition to which he held. As this would entail burying him with his sword and armor, the others objected vociferously, noting that the armor was +2 scale mail and the sword was a +2 sword of dragon slaying. But she held firm and when the stalwart dwarven fighter Fred 9802 stood in support of her, the rest of the party acquiesced.

As Adventure Log enthusiasts will recall, Sister Rebecca became the second member of the party to fall in the course of the adventure; her end came at the hands (claws? fangs? acidic breath?) of a black dragon. The tragic irony of the situation is this: had the +2 dragon slaying sword been in the hands of one of the surviving party members when they met the dragon instead of gripped in the cold fingers of the deceased Dougal, Sister Rebecca might well have survived the encounter. 



Side note: the biggest shortfall of the Adventure Logs was that they provided just 12 lines per page for monsters and most of that space was taken up with useless "statblock" info like hit dice and special attacks that was presumably in the dungeon write-up and the DM need not waste time and space transcribing this info into the log. All that was needed in the log was the information necessary for tabulating XPs: monster type, quantity, and hit points. Likewise, there were only 10 slots for treasure. Those ratios are way off from the way we played back in the day.

Front note: The cover illustration clearly shows Fred 9802, Yolanda Mirabilis the MU, and maybe that's Morgan Ironwolf with the spear? confronting a gnoll in a very low-ceilinged dungeon. It should be noted that in encounter #5 the party offed 17 gnolls. 

* Foot Note: This is a nod to all the British TV I've been watching of late; primarily the cumbersomely named yet despicably funny 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.