How to Read the AD&D Rules Part V: Title Redacted

Also: page 24 of the DMG.

For this part you'll need to go to your local government surplus store and procure a military grade Dark Black marker, regular black won't do; it has to be so dark that no light can escape it's pull. Now go to page 34 of the Players Handbook and, without reading them first, thoroughly blot out paragraphs 2 and 4--paragraph 3 is ok--under the Character Languages heading. I said don't read them! If you understand the language you are reading you will do this or align yourself with forces most foul.

Now, just to be safe, turn to page 29 and do the same to the first primary ability of assassins, it's right there on the bottom of the left column, just above the Minimum Fees for Assassination table. It continues on the top of the right column so make sure to get that bit too. You can leave the list of alignments there if you wish; it's fairly harmless on it's own. Done? Excellent. That's all for today. School's out, run along kiddies.

No idea why this is here.

How to Read the AD&D Rules Part IV: Weapons

We're looking at weapons today kiddies so open to page 37 of your textbooks. You'll notice two tables on this page: 

1. Weapon Proficiency Table:

This table lets you know the following:

• how many weapons you can be proficient with depending on your class, 
• how much worse you are at hitting things when attacking with a weapon in which you are not proficient, and 
• how long you have to wait to get a new weapon proficiency. 

Nowadays everyone is proficient in all the weapons all the time, but I actually like that folks weren't as effective with weapons that they'd never actually used before. 

and 2. Weight and Damage by Weapon Type:

This economical table gets it. Except for the Speed Factor business.

The second table tells you how much your weapon weighs. None of you are going to track your encumbrance, but at least you can meaningfully contemplate whether your footpersons mace is worth its weight in gold.

More importantly, this table tells you you're going to do 2-16 pts of damage to large creatures with your Bastard Sword. If you don't want your fighter to do 2d8 damage against ogres then close the book now, AD&D is not for you. 

Those of you who took a gander at the weapon price list on page 35 are probably wondering why you can't buy such weapons as the Chauves Souris, Ransom, Rhonca, Rhoncie, or Runka. Fear not gentle reader, this table assures us that those implements are all covered under "Ranseur."

Notice the ** next to the "spear" listing. These asterices indicate that 

"This weapon also does twice the damage indicated to any opponent when the weapon is set to receive their charge." 

When you consider that in AD&D anyone who travels more than 10' to engage in melee is, technically, charging, and that weapon length determines who strikes first in a charge situation, and spears are 5-13' long... the spear becomes a very intriguing weapon, no? Does that mean that spears were preferred among savvy gamers? Heck no! Why not? Well, since that thing about only moving 10' to engage in melee was roundly ignored, "charging" only came into play when you were on horseback and carrying a lance. 

On the next page we have another weapon table: Weapon Types, General Data, and "To Hit" Adjustments

"General Data" includes how long your weapon is and how much space you need to use it; information you can probably figure out how to use on your own, right? But then there's a column labelled "Speed Factor." Nowhere is this explained but that's ok because if you use this information while playing a game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons then you are, by definition, playing 2nd edition.

The table goes on to list combat adjustments based on the armor class of the opponent. Since the ACs listed only go from 2-10, it seems obvious that this is intended to simulate the relative effectiveness of certain weapons against specific armor types, e.g. a staff is not going to be very effective vs. a guy in platemail, and a -7 adjustment reflects that. What's less obvious is whether your staff is also -7 to hit a guy with Bracers of Defense AC 4 who has a 16 Dex (-2 AC adj.). You could--and should--ignore this business based on inadequate information and overly complicated rules but really you're going to ignore it regardless because in the heat of the moment you're not going to remember to apply these modifiers.  

At the bottom of the table is a separate section just for missile weapons. This section includes the already obsolete AC adjustments mentioned above but also throws in some very useful info such as Fire Rate and Range. Penalties for launching missiles beyond short range are only mentioned in an underhanded footnote:

"Armor Class Adjustment is based on the weapon or missile being discharged at short range. Adjust by -1 for medium ranges, -2 at all long ranges."

So underhanded is this note that I never noticed it before today, the 21st of January 2022! This note is noteworthy because these range modifiers were overruled by the combat matrices on page 74-75 of the DMG; under each table it is noted that missiles are -2 at medium range and -5 at long. So there was a brief period between the publication of the PHB in 1978 and the DMG a year later when archers were 15% more effective at hitting targets at long range.

Fire Rate seems pretty self explanatory and is even explained in a note under the table but the folks over at GGNoRe were confused by it and they're a pretty seasoned bunch, so I'm guessing that folks coming at this from later editions are not necessarily going to realize that each round you can fire your long bow twice, throw 3 darts, or launch half of a bolt from your heavy crossbow. Does this mean that no one ever used a heavy crossbow? Yes, that is precisely what it means.

Cheers!: Tavern Signs in Old School Modules

It's hard to believe that in twelve--12!!!--sporadic years in the blogging business, I've never done a piece on taverns. Well, that streak ends today. 

 

Sometimes you'd prefer they didn't know your name

I have always had a thing for taverns in D&D, so the next time you complain about what a cliche it is for an adventure to start out with an encounter in a tavern, I won't hear you because I'll already be quaffing a pint while listening to the minstrel noodling by the fire. 

I also have a thing for old timey modules--as you may have noticed by my extensive rants about Hommlet, Saltmarsh, Bone Hill, and, most recently, the Slaver series. So today I'm going to dig into the taverns and inns that provide hospitality in a few of these old settings.

But I'm going to look not at the the taverns themselves, but the signs hanging out front. These are the shingles that are intended to indicate the name of the place to the PCs as they wander into town. I went back through the classic AD&D modules (I define classic as published back when they still listed all the available D&D products on the back of modules, a practice which ended ~1983, I believe). Also some of these modules feature more than one ale house; I'm only addressing the ones I can remember.

For this analysis, I'm including the text from the module describing the sign, a likely interpretation of that sign, and any significant notes relating to the sign or its meaning from the module.

 

Inn of the Welcome Wench (T1 Village of 'omlet)

Sign Description: "The square wooden sign shows a buxom and smiling girl holding a flagon of beer."

Likely Name: Inn of the Buxom Wench

Significance: If you thought we were going to start with some other tavern, then this is probably your first time here and I offer my sincerest greetings to you. I've always called this place the Buxom Wench, but I was an adolescent when I first encountered it and I haven't really grown up in the ensuing decades. 

Inn of the Slumbering Serpent (N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God)

Sign Description: "A large, colorful sign pictures a red dragon with its head
resting contentedly on its paws. A plume of smoke rises
from the serpent's nose and its eyes are closed."

Likely Name: Sleeping Dragon

Significance: Given that the name of the adventure is "Against the Cult of the Reptile God"; if you wander into a town with an inn named the Slumbering Serpent, are you going to stay in it? No. But if you see a sign with a sleeping dragon on it? I think of dragons as scaly magical beasts not reptiles, so sure, I'd stay there. Aside: do dragons have "paws"?

Sign of the White Knight (A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords)

Sign Description: "Above the door is a painted chesspiece-
a White Knight" (see illustration)

Likely Name: Horse Head, White Horse, Chess Piece

Significance: When they enter Sunderholm the party is given a clue to "Seek out the Ivory Paladin." This establishment is the place that the clue is intended to indicate. While the horsehead on the sign is pretty obviously a chess piece, without the flavor text it's not all that certain that the players are going to see it and make the connection: white horse head = white knight = ivory paladin.Why didn't the clue just say "Go to the White Knight on the corner of Dave St. & North Arneson and ask for Gary"? Because it's a tournament dungeon Dice Chucker, that's why.

Inn of the Dying Minotaur (L1 Secret of Bone Hill)

Sign Description: The sign is not described in the text, but "Geilcuff, the innkeeper has a minotaur's head stuffed and hung up on the wall above the bar."

Likely Name: Bull's Head 

Significance: Everyone knows that a minotaur is a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull, so that "minotaur" head over the bar is probably just the head of a bull that Geilcuff bought from the slaughterhouse.

House of Abraham (L2 Assassins Knot)*

Sign Description:  "a large bright green shingle that reads, 'House of Abraham:
Food, Lodging and Ale.' In the center of the shingle is a picture
of a smiling man holding out a large tankard of ale."

Likely Name: Abe's Place

Significance: Lakofka cheated us here by assuming a high literacy rate in Assassinsburg.

Blood of the Vine (I6 Ravenloft)*

Sign Description: the sign "proclaims" this to be the "Blood ofn the Vine"

Likely Name: Well, Blood on the Vine, I guess

Significance: Literacy trumps good sign design once again, this one devoid entirely of illustration. But it is written into the module that some wag has vandalized the sign, scratching out the "f" in "of" and replacing it with an "n" to add to the macabre tone of Ravenloft.

*In addition to having signs with words on them instead of pictures, other TSR products were not listed on the back of these modules when first published. So maybe I can also use literate tavern signs as an indication of the end of the classic module era.