Unfrozen caveman dice-chucker

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 4: Cult of the Fiery Eye or Palimspest of Hommlet

2012-02-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

After much delay, (sorry, my dissertation committee asked for some additional graphics before I put it out for publication) I'm finally getting to the conclusion of my analysis of the Sample Dungeon of the Dungeon Masters Guide. Today we're speculating what to make of the unfinished portions of the dungeon based on the clues provided in the few room descriptions, background, and the wandering monster tables. Without further ado...

Sample dungeon site anaysis.

The author provided wandering monster encounters for the two distinct areas of the Dungeon, the Non-crypt Area and the Crypt Area which is only accessible through the secret door in room 3. Non-crypt area wandering monsters include bandits, goblins, giant rats, and fire beetles--the fire beetles emit a fiery red glow which illuminates a 10' radius; that's kinda' cool. Any running themes here? The only one that comes to mind is that they're all just looking for a quiet place to lay low, somewhere with a roof overhead where no one will ask any questions. So the non-crypt area is going to be filled with "volunteer" monsters; whatever manages to crawl, slither or hop down here from the swamp above. Giant snakes, lizards, ticks, maybe a pack of voracious giant frogs even. And lots of the rooms will just be empty old store rooms littered with moldy crap and the occasional fungus or slime.

Now let's see what the crypt area has going on in terms of wandering monsters: More rats, ghouls, skeletons, your standard crypt fare. One could expand on this a bit, but also there's an evil cleric with a couple of hobgoblins in tow from areas 35-37. An evil cult in league with humanoids; that's got potential. Let's say they're beholden to some demon lord and let's take Nunya's notion (from the comments section of Part 1 of this series) and say that the fire opal the monks were hiding was the prized jewel and symbol of power stolen from the temple of this demon lord and turned over to the monks for safe keeping. The enormous, smouldering opal represents the demon lord's baleful glare of fire. Indeed, reflecting the signficacne of this symbol of power, the hobgoblins have an emblem of a fiery eye painted on their shields while the cleric has the same stitched into his robes.

My eye!

So these cultists of the Fiery Eye have set up quarters here in the crypt area, perhaps because they're still looking for that damn fire opal. And since, as Zenopus points out, using the secret door to area 3 is not a very convenient means of egress--being 10 feet above ground--they use the stairs up at area 39 which leads, as Zenopus further suggests, to a long tunnel eventually daylighting at a narrow opening amidst rocks and thick briars and brambles over at the stand of brush and tamaracks beyond the monastery. The cult uses this tunnel for occasional sorties to pillage passing caravans for supplies, treasure, and prisoners which they use for either ransom, slaves, or food. So a few of the other rooms are occupied by their humanoid allies, some gnolls, bugbears, an ogre plus a few human or demi-human prisoners in his pantry. And perhaps they have contacts in the nearby village, other cult members who might feign to provide assistance to the PCs but whose real intent is to obfuscate and assassinate them...

Wait, what's that? This sounds exactly like the premise of Dungeon Module T1 The Village of Hommlet you say? Good! Now we can get to the real thesis of this post which is that the Sample Dungeon in the Dungeon Masters Guide was the original dungeon associated with Gary Gygax's Hommlet campaign back in the 1970s. For real.*

Monastery vs. Moathouse: One and the Same

Introduction
First, here's a little historical background for those unfamiliar or who've forgotten the details. In Gary Gygax's 1979 dungeon module T1 The Village of Hommlet, he included the following bit of background on the origin of the module:

"The area here was developed to smoothly integrate players with and without experience in the Greyhawk Campaign into a scenario related to the old timers only by relative proximity... and many of the NPCs in the module are the characters and henchmen developed through play... the situation and surroundings have been altered because of the actual experiences of these participants." (Gygax, Village of Hommlet, pg. 3)

Also in 1979, Gygax published the Dungeon Masters Guide which included an unfinished Sample Dungeon composed of a map of a single dungeon level underneath a ruined monastery, descriptions of 3 encounter areas, and some background info about the dungeon including a legend that there was an enormous fire opal of exorbitant value hidden within. I contend that the Sample Dungeon is the original dungeon that those "smoothly integrated players" of Hommlet went through. Check it out:

"After two miles of distance, the land begins to sink and become boggy... and tall marsh plants grow thickly where cattails and tamaracks do not... A side path, banked high to crossover the wetland to either side, juts north to the entrance of the ruined place."

"[A]fter about a two mile trek along a seldom used road, they come to the edge of a fen... with little to relieve the view save a few clumps of brush and tamarack sprouting here and there. A narrow causeway leads out to a low mound upon which stand the walls and buildings of the deserted mo*******. "

Pretty similar, right? A "side path banked high to crossover the wetland" sounds a lot like a "causeway" through a fen, no? And those ubiquitous tamaracks. If you haven't already reached for your DMG, the first one is the description for the approach to the Moathouse in T1, the second is from the Monastery in the Sample Dungeon.

Design concept
Each adventure is distinctly divided roughly in half between areas that are easily accessible from the obvious entrance to the edifice and areas that are accessible only if you find a secret door. Thus, an uninspired or very unlucky party could easily wander through half the dungeon and think their work was done. Also, between the accessible portion of the adventure--we'll call it the Outer Dungeon-- and the secret Inner Dungeon, there is a pronounced shift in the mood of the encounter milieu. In the Moathouse, it is the upper levels--those that are part of the moathouse proper, including the cellars directly directly beneath--that form the Outer Dungeons while in the Monastery it's the "non-crypt areas" on the north side of the map. In both cases, the Outer Dungeon is inhabited by whatever random outlaws and freeloaders moved into this subterranean tenement seeking shelter from the elements--bandits, giant lizards, goblins, fire beetles... it's your classic dungeon crawl. The Inner dungeon, however, is inhabited by those with a reason for being there; those who belong. In both cases there is a crypt area inhabited by the undead; both also are inhabited by an Evil Cult, the evil cleric and his hobber bodyguards in the monastery; in the Moathouse the cult includes Lareth and his gang of flaming stormtroopers, but also the various humanoids mercenaries--the ogre, gnolls, and bugbears--as well.

Clues to the Beyond
ButGygax was not willing to leave things purely to chance; in both adventures he supplies a hint that there is more to this place than a casual exploration might divulge. In the monastery, this clue comes in the form of the the map and key in the abbot's skeletal remains found in room 2. In the moathouse, this hint is the locked cache of food, weapons, and Flaming Eyeball sweatshirts in the storerooms (rooms 2 and 3, dungeon level). Also, to make it clear that this crap doesn't belong to the bandits above, he placed the green slime on the archway to the stairs up to their lair to indicate that they don't bother coming down here too often.

The Secret Door
In both the moathouse and the monastery the secret door to the hidden, Inner Dungeon is located in a room dedicated to death--the funerary room of the monastery where the passage from the world of the living was celebrated, and the torture room in the Moathouse where the same passage was celebrated in a much more pro-active fashion. Not only that, clues are left that should lead the observant PC to the location of said secret door--the wall sockets in the Sample Dungeon and the trail of blood to the pillar in T1. And on the other side of that secret door in T1 you will find the same 4 ghouls who ate the gnome in the Sample Dungeon.

First encounter
Monastery:

Room 1 contains a large Spider lurking on the ceiling over a "a central litter of husks, skin, bones, and its own castings" patiently awaiting its prey. In the heap can be found a treasure of 19 sp and a garnet worth 50 gp.

Moathouse:

Area 4 is likely to be the first encounter inside the moathouse (we can only assume that there was a gang of hungry frogs waiting in ambush along the causeway to the monastery) and it contains a huge spider lurking over "a scattering of husks and a few bones on the floor" and a small treasure trove of 38 sp, 71 cp and an ivory box worth 50 gp.

The descriptions are similar though not exact. "Husks" and "bones" are constant but the spider in the moathouse has been ratcheted up a notch and the treasure slightly increased: the silver has been exactly doubled and a few coppers have been thrown in for good measure, but the main treasure remains set at 50 gp in value, though its manifestation has altered from a garnet to an ivory box. On its own, this encounter doesn't carry much weight, but as the evidence mounts, the similarities are certainly worth noting.

Flaming Eye/Fire Opal

Flaming Eye meet Fire Opal

If you were a member of a cult whose emblem was a flaming eyeball, wouldn't the fire opal be the front runner as your candidate for sacred gemstone? Whether the cultists in The Monastery wore a flaming eye or not is impossible to say, but I think I made a pretty fair case back in paragraph 3 about how one might easily extrapolate such. What is more--and this is the key piece of information that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place--in T1, Lareth's prized possession and the single most valuable treasure in the entire Moathouse is a string of matched fire opals.

Even Scully should be coming around by now but the best is yet to come.

Hall of Zombies
Check out these two maps, and read the description below as it might apply to area 4 on the left map and area 10 on the right:

CORRIDOR LINED WITH CELLS: Anyone entering this area will be attacked by the monsters lurking in pairs in these cubicles: 12 ZOMBIES (H.P.: 15, 14, 13, 12, 3x10, 9, 8, 6, 5, 4)

If you had to choose one of these two as the map for this encounter wouldn't you choose area 10 on the right? It looks like a standard AD&D corridor--10' wide, leads to a room at the end--and it's lined with 3 cubicles on each side of the hall which provides exactly enough room for 6 pairs of zombies. Area 4 on the right doesn't really look all that corridor-like what with its 20'-wideness, pillars down the center, and lack of a portal at the end, plus it's only "lined" with cubicles on one side, and most importantly of all, it has only enough cubicles for 5 pairs of zombies! Do you need me to do the math or can we agree that it doesn't add up. The map of area 4 is, of course, from the Moathouse in T1 while area 10 is from the Sample Dungeon, yet the text came from T1; it's the description for area 4 of the dungeon level of the moathouse.** By now it has to be pretty clear that this description was originally written for area 10 of the sample dungeon of the DMG and transcribed word for word--including hit points for all 12 zombies though most people who ran T1 back in the day, lacking accommodations for the 6th pair, probably only threw 10 zombies at their players.***

And so forth
In light of this evidence, some things about T1 Village of Hommlet start to make a bit more sense. For instance, it always struck em as odd that Lareth--who has been going to great effort to throw off interest in his location by staging his caravan raids far away in disparate locations--would allow another gang of brigands to operate out of the same location. Possibly the Great Hope of Chaotic Evil isn't aware that they're there, but more likely they're the bandits from the areas 4 & 5 of the Monastery. Like the extra pair of zombies, they're a relic that doesn't quite fit into the New Order of Hommlet.

This might also explain why T1 was named the Village of Hommlet rather than the Moathouse of the Flaming Eye or somesuch. When EGG decided to modulize the endeavor, he wanted to showcase the village as a setting, but also needed some sort of adventure to go along with it. Including the entire monastery adventure would have been too large for a single module. Remember, the only other modules around at the time were the G and D series which were originally published as separate, emaciated adventures. By way of comparison, even the omnibus editions of those 2 series that came out in the very early 80s ran only ~32-48 pages.**** So he took the first level of the monastery dungeon, re-worked it as the moathouse in T1 and used the affair as an outpost of the greater dungeon, to be the Temple of Elemental Evil which has turned from a monastery sacked long ago by forces of evil to an evil temple sacked long ago by the good guys and moved upstream to the Nulb area.

So if you've ever wondered what the original "Hommlet" dungeon Gygax mntions in thte intro to T1 may have looked like before it was infiltrated with PCs, sullied by Lolth and/or Zuggtmoy, and afflicted with battles over at Emridy Meadows, the answer has been right in front of you all along. This humble, seemingly unfinished dungeon hidden under a monastery is actually a vestige of the campaign that spawned one of the great modules of the AD&D era. The dungeon from which The Moathouse, Lareth, the Cult of Elemental Evil and its affiliated Temple all sprang forth from this unassuming labyrinth on page 95 of the Dungeon Masters Guide. Sadly, this connection to the very roots of the game was one of the things we lost as Gygax's creative impact at TSR diminished.

*Well, as "for real" as you can get without confirmation from anyone who actually knows the score.

**In T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil the zombie/cubicle disparity was accounted for in this area (re-numbered as area 21) by hiding the two extra zombies--who presumably had just lost a game of musical chambers--behind one of the pillars in the corridor.

***Case in point: in the used copy of T1 I now own (acquired at a used book sale a few years ago), there are pencil markings recording the dwindling hit points and ultimate demise of the first 10 zombies while the last two zombies are unsullied by graphite. Perhaps the players suffered a TPK before they got to Wimpy and Gimpy, or, perhaps, lacking a sixth cell to release them from, the DM never let them into the action.

****This is based entirely on my recollection of how slender those modules were; I don't have the modules on hand and thus don't know the exact page count.

*******This wasn't intended to be a footnote, but it just so happens that monastery and moathouse have the same number of letters. I am unaware of Gygax's stance on numerology or alphabetology or whatever, but I'm going to write this one up as coincidence and nothing more.

Lookin' for some AD&D modules ter go with them shiny new books?

2012-02-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

... to go with your snazzy new AD&D rulebook reprints? Check this list out for some sweet deals.

Giants of Blackmoor: New York-Newark MSA after the Fall

2012-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Blackmoor in the 212

Tired of the prattling of Islanders fans, the good citizens of Queens took a saw and--holding on to the Throgs Neck for balance--lopped off the rest of Long Island at the Cross Island Pkwy. Meanwhile to the east, New Jersey sated its lust for Lady Liberty by lunging to the east and having its way with her and her little brother Ellis; kicking Staten Island to the side in the process. Whether Jerseyites wanted the lost souls of Long Island or not is open to debate, but Nassau County drifted across the Raritan Bay, latching onto Sandy Hook just in time to avoid falling off the continental shelf. The Hamptons remain unmoved off the map to the right and are still accessible from the City via Water-Jitney.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 3: Room 3 and the Portal of the Jerk

2012-02-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

"You come into the the northern portion of a 50' x 50' chamber. It is bare and empty. There are no exits apparent. It seems to be a dead end place." Gary Gygax, DMG p. 99

No exits are apparent. It seems to be a dead end place. If this isn't enough to make you search for secret doors, then maybe you're not playing the right game.

So you've just entered the nexus of the land of the living and the dead, wherein the deceased brethren of the monastery make their secret voyage to the under world. We know that the dead were lain in repose here on an elevated stage and, after some amount of time, they were taken through a secret door and lain to rest in a sarcophagus somewhere in a long, wide corridor in the crypt area to the south. It is telling that the entry to the netherworld is via a secret door rather than some grand, awe-inspiring edifice or even a modest tunnel. It is reinforcing an aura of mystery regarding the afterlife that most undoubtedly is of significance to their religious beliefs.

DM: "You might be in for a nasty surprise, so I'll let you roll a six sider for me to see your status."

This is the equivalent of Javier Bardem showing up at your house with a compressed air canister in his hand and asking you to flip a coin.

Ghouls? What ghouls?

For some reason which we will never understand, the Sample DM in the campaign narrative which accompanies the Sample Dungeon has chosen this moment to reveal that he is a complete dickhead. We learn that, on finding the secret door, "the gnome" of the party is immediately surprised and devoured by a party of 4 ghouls waiting behind the portal. Now look at the map of the crypt area beyond the door, there is not a labelled encounter within 120' of the secret door; obviously the author of the sample dungeon did not intend for there to be ghouls loitering there. Maybe they're wandering monsters--except that we the readers have always been informed when the Sample DM has rolled for wandering monsters in the past, yet no roll was made at this juncture. Further, the wandering monster table for the crypt area indicates "1-2 ghouls" might be encountered, not 4. We must conclude that the Sample DM ad libbed 4 ghouls waiting at the secret door to attack the party when they're in a very precarious situation--propped up in a human pyramid! Now tell me this guy is not a dick!

And more dickishness: the secret portal is described as being only 8-1/2' wide in the room description yet the DM tells the party that it's 10' wide! You might ask: "Uh, now who's being a dick, Dice-chucker?" Too-shay, my friend.

As all y'all who've ever held the DMG in your hands knows, room 3 is where the description of the sample dungeon--and the accompanying narrative--ended, the rest was up to the reader to fill in if they so chose. I might be one of the rare old schoolers who never did fill in that dungeon, mostly because drawing maps was my favorite part of making a dungeon back in the day. And, like the Sample Dungeon, the descriptive text of my dungeons usually trailed off by somewhere around room 3. Now I've come to the complete opposite end; I much prefer taking other author's maps and descriptions, over-analizing their words to find meanings that probably shouldn't be there, and layering my own interpretation on top of their work. So that is what we'll do in Part 4 of the Series: What Lies Beyond Room 3.

Thursday of the Castle Keeper: SIEGE this!

2012-02-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

Hey SIEGE engine! Looking for an easier way into the castle? Next time try the damn drawbridge!

Presenting the DRAWBRIDGE Universal Action Resolution System©:

Rather than rolling either a 12 or an 18 on d20 to determine success, using the DRAWBRIDGE Universal Action Resolution System© you need to roll an 11 or higher on d20.* This applies to virtually everything you want to attempt**--even combat! Since not all tasks are created equal, each action you attempt has a challenge level. But to keep in the drawbridge theme, we'll call it the Bascule--combat Bascules are commonly referred to by the acronym AC. Just like a real Bascule, which is the counterweight in the drawbridge, the Bascule in the DRAWBRIDGE Universal Action Resolution System© balances the difficulty of the task at hand with the likelihood of the character achieving success. Exceptionally easy tasks can be assigned a negative bascule.

How to use the DRAWBRIDGE Universal Action Resolution System©:

Add the Bascule (or opponents AC in combat) to 11; this is your target number. Roll this number or higher on a 20-sider to succeed.
Add ability bonuses/penalties, combat bonuses, and/or appropriate levels to die roll. If the total equals or exceeds 11 + Bascule/AC, you did it! Climb the wall/roll damage/take half damage/whatever. Roll less than 11 and you get to roll up a new character while the rest of your party is left to the task of parsing out your belongings.

Converting SIEGE Engine to the DRAWBRIDGE Universal Action Resolution System©:

Combat: Subtract 10 from AC, add AC to 11 -- this is your target number. Or, since AC in C&C is derived by adding all your armor bonuses to 10, you can just leave off adding 10 in the first place
Other: depending on the primeness of your attributes you will need to add either 1 (primed) or 7 (un-primed [ouch!]) to the appropriate Bascule.

Next week we'll discuss how to convert AD&D combat to the BARBICAN Combat Resolution System©, a subsidiary of DRAWBRIDGE, LLC and Dice-Chucker Productions.

*This represents a 50% chance of success for a normal--which is to say, not-cool--person. It is also the minimum requirement for a 0-level human to hit AC10 (no armor) in AD&D; i.e. it is the bedrock upon which all combat is built. Thac0 can suck itself raw.
**Assuming of course that the activity you are attempting has, in the Castle Keeper's sound opinion, a reasonable chance of failure. It is up to the Castle Keeper and, to some extent, the players to decide when to use the DRAWBRIDGE Universal Action Resolution System© and when to just role-play the situation instead.

3d6 Wheel of Fortune

2012-01-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

Here's a variation on the ol' 3d6 in Order character generation method:

Roll 'em up and keep 'em in order just like the old testament tells us, but you don't necessarily have to start the order at Strength. The first number can be placed on the ability of the player's choice (or randomly determined using a 6-sider), but the rest have to follow in the Uniform Ability Order used in your game. Think of the numbers as the fixed prizes around the Wheel fortune and the pointer indicating the starting point. For example, you're rolling up your 6 abilities and you get... [hold on, I'm reaching for my dice]:

11, 14, 8, 10, 13, 9

Unaltered AD&D-era ability order (S I W D C Ch--the preferred order here at the ol' Dice-Chucker Cave) dictates that your character would have a high-ish Int and Con, low wisdom, with the rest being middling. But say you really wanted a strongboy fighter type, you could shift the entire number set 1 to the left, giving him a 14 Str. But since this aint no pagan orgy free-for-all, the rest of the number set has to shift as well. The leading 11 now moves to the back of the line at Charisma and the rest take 1 step to the left. Your character now looks like this:

Dialin' up a character
S 14, I 8, W 10, D 13, C 9, Ch 11

Alternately, to choose starting point at random you could roll a 6 sider to determine where the first number goes, 1 = Str, 2 = Int, etc. (or whatever order you prefer). Using the previous example number set, the player rolls a d6 to determine the starting point... a 3: you would start your number set at the 3rd ability, in this case, wisdom. Using the same dice results in the same order, your character would look like this:

S 13, I 9, W 11, D 14, C 8, Ch 10

Indeed, if you're the kind of DM who pummels parity into your players with a giant hamhock, you could give all the players the same set of numbers and assign each of them--at your whim of course--a different starting point.

Thursday of the Castle Keeper: C&C--The Stealth-Game

2012-01-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

In the four years or so that I've owned the Castles &Crusades rule books I've come to the slow realization that there is a direct correlation between how favorably I view the game and the amount of time passed since I last opened the books. If it's been a while, the game seems to obtain a reassuringly pleasant glow of warmth, like the steady light from your +2 sword when you're last torch has just sputtered out. Sadly, whenever I sit down to write a post on C&C I crack open them books to do a little research and, even when the intent was to compose a hagiography of some element of this august game created by the Lords of the Troll, all that kindly warmth turns bilious in my craw and spews out on the screen in the form of yet another excoriating assault on the authors (and illustrator). So in order to make good my promise of last week to refrain from denigrating the Troll Lord's and their fine RPG, I'm leaving the books on the shelf today.

Which is convenient, cuz that's kinda' the point of today's post. When I play "D&D" nowadays, it's a bastardized form of my AD&D and C&C with some vestiges of the Swords & Wizardry game that my friend Bob and I started 2 years ago. But to watch us, you'd wonder where the hell the C&C comes in. I don't really use the SIEGE engine -- I've never gotten the hang of ability checks of any sort -- we use the descending AC format (though I secretly convert them to ascending in my head in order to determine to hit rolls, shhhh) and though some of the character classes I use are stripped down versions of their AD&D predecessors that more resemble C&C, the match is definitely not exact. Indeed, the desert fatigue-colored rulebooks are nowhere to be seen at our gaming table. So where the hell is C&C in all this mess?

The beauty of C&C, in my humble opinion, is that it aims to be an invisible game, by which I mean a game you can play without ever bothering to reference the rule books. Sure, by 1983 most people I played with were so familiar with the AD&D rules that we only cracked the Books on the odd occasion to select the type of prostitute we'd encountered or to find the duration of some esoteric druid spells. But that was after countless hours of poring over every page, digesting every nugget of knowledge, internalizing every table and list, and then countless more hours playing the game and implementing the rules we'd read--and incessantly arguing about them with our friends. C&C is best when you approach it in a very different manner. The rules, by comparison to AD&D, are pretty flimsy in that you can take a brief gander at them and decide if it's something worth building on or demolishing. If it's the latter, you strip it out and do something else. But if it's the former, then you take it to the shop and thrown it on the lathe for a while or slap a coat of paint it and some designer hinges until it fits your image of a cool game. It might not really look like C&C when you're done, but the inspiration is still there.

As a for instance, I hate looking at tables, so when my campaign switched over to AD&D for our run through Village of Hommlet, I really wanted a combat system that did not require me to turn to page 74 of the DMG. I vastly prefer doing simple math in my head to looking stuff up, so I sat down and figured out the mathematical formulas for all of the AD&D combat matrices by class. Anyone whose tried this knows that, other than fighters, they're fairly arbitrary, especially the monsters. I never realized before that a gnoll (2 HD) is as good a fighter as a freakin' 5th level paladin! So I turned to C&C for a simpler solution. But rather than cop their combat system, I went for the SIEGE Engine instead. Using 0-level humans versus AC 10 as the baseline, 11 became the target number to score a hit--replacing the "12/18 principal" of C&C. To this you add a challenge level--in this case more popularly know as "AC". Because I'm a crusty old bastard and we're playing AD&D, this means I actually have to subtract 10 from the Target AC to determine the "challenge level" but, like I said, I don't mind doing simple math in my head; I figure it probably helps stave off dementia. Anyway, in the end, I'm not really using a C&C rule anymore, but I can still feel its presence in the room when I'm playing.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 2: Down the Stairs

2012-01-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Continuing where we left off last week, today we'll be looking at rooms 1& 2 of the Sample Dungeon provided in the AD&DDungeon Masters Guide.

The Dungeon
Room 1. Spider webs including a largespider at 1A, some moldy sacks, a garnet in a goblin skull over in the corner (B); it all sets the toneof rot and refuse that permeates the place. That goblin mayhave been a member of the raiding army that took down theMonastery--or he could have wandered in at any time since. Howthe garnet got in his head is a curious mystery to consider. Also, please mind the yellow mold (25%).

One other thing of note is the oak door over at 1.C:Moaning can be heard behind it and, if opened, a gust of wind willextinguish all torches. Where did the wind come from? Sure, there's a subterranean stream running through the adjacentroom--typically a great venue for creating air movement in a cavern,except that the stream "fills entirely" the tunnel throughwhich it both enters and exits the room. Which is to say,there's no room for any air movement, much less wind forcible enoughto extinguish all torches.

Those brave enough to enter the dark, windy cavern willfind:

Room 2. WATER ROOM: Although the room is describedas holding only "8 rotting barrels" (over at location A) from the hoard of casksand barrels which were once stored there, several of the barrels inthe room "hold water" as they were "new and beingsoaked to make them tight" at the time of the downfall. Thismight give a sense of the passage of time to those familiar with thedecay rate of wooden barrels.

2.B: The limed-over skeleton of the Abbot lies at the bottom of the stream that passes through the chamber. His corpse hasundergone a "sea change," a reference, as the ensuing narrative example of play points out, to Shakespeare's Tempest:

Fullfathom five thy father lies:
Of hisbones are coral made:
Thoseare pearls that were his eyes:
Nothingof him that doth fade
Butdoth suffer a sea-change
Intosomething rich and strange.

Amidst the remains of the abbot the attentiveadventurer will find a scroll tube and a key. Acquiring these items isnot a sure thing as Characters who dislodge the scroll tube have tomake a successful "to hit" roll as if hitting AC 4 in orderto successfully grab the scroll before the current of the streamtakes it down stream beyond return. Is this a nascent action resolution system using "to hit" as a means of determiningsuccess at non-combat actions? Sort of a proto-SIEGE engine foryou C&C fans?

Inside the scroll tube is a map of theunderground portion of the monastery,but it is almost entirely smudged beyond use; showing only the twoareas that the PCs will already have seen by the time they find thismap along with an 80' section of hall in the "crypt area" to thesouth with "miniature sarcophagi" depicted in it. Not super helpful, but it will definitely aid parties in finding the crypt area which is accessible only via the elevated secret door in room 3. (Or the stairs at are 39).

The key in the abbots calcified hand allows the secret door in room 28 to open toward the "treasure room" (29) rather thanto the stairs (30) down to the caverns, which is, presumably,the default. Is this where the fabled fire opal can be found?

Of significance here is that the abbot's body is a) located whereit would easily be found if it were still encased in flesh, and b)still in possession of the ring and scroll case. Presumablyanyone who had reason to seek the Abbot out--such as would be thecase if the besiegers were either politically motivated or lookingfor the fire opal in his possession--would have searched every corpseto find him; either to make an example of him by trying him posthumously and impaling hiscorpse on a stake for all to see, or searching his carcass for the gemor some clue as to its whereabouts--like, say, a key or a map. That his body is lying in what would have been plain sight at thetime of the siege and yet retains these two possessions indicatesthat the marauders were probably neither aware of the fire opal norconcerned with the political significance the abbot's corpse. Rather, the raiders who took down the monastery were more likely foreigners looking for obvious treasure; much like the first Vikingswho raided the Monastery of St.Cuthbert* at Lindisfarne in 8th century Britain. Whoever thesedudes were, they were in it for a quick score; snatching gaudy, jewel-encrusted religious implements, potential slaves, and casks of wine and beer wouldhave been their prime interest. Rifling the pockets of an ascetic monk probably didn't rank too high on their to-do list.

*Yes, I did intentionally reference the real St. Cuthbert as a not-so-subtle nod to T1 Village of Hommlet and its sequel T2 Temple of Elemental Evil. This place is a religiousedifice sacked by an army years ago, now an unholy ground inhabitedby lowlifes, critters, and the undead; doesn't it maybe seem like it mighthave been an early version of the Temple of Elemental Evil? Sure, pretty much every dungeon had a background that sounded a lot like that back in the day, but considering that the DMG was published around the sametime as T1... maybe this is what T2 might have looked like before itspent the next 6 years simmering on the back burner.

Next up: Room 3 and the Wandering Monster Tables

Thursday of the Castle Keeper: Highs and Lows of C&C revisited

2012-01-19T23:45:00.000-08:00

Last year when I first wrote the article about hits and misses of Castles and Crusades, I had yet to actually play the game. At the time Dr. Rotwang over at Crossbows of Navarrone left a comment sagely pointing out that, like other versions of the-game-we-all-love-to-obsess-about, you just take what you like and ignore the rest. Since then, I have actually run a brief C&C campaign and found, of course, that Rotwang was right; virtually everything on that list was easily swept under the rug--polearms, Prime Attributes, Illusionists, what have you.

But two things I couldn't ignore and they, more than anything else, turned me from the game: the illustrations and the odiferous flavor text. You may say "Hey Caveman, just take the rules and play; who cares about the wall paper?" But the art and language of the rule books help to create a mental image of what the C&C universe looks and feels like. And thanks to Peter Bradley and the Chenault brothers (or whoever penned that mound of dross) I view C&C as a game that caters to preening, pantywaist heroes who consider the art of bombast to be the utmost achievement of mortal kind. Bradley's strike-a-pose heroes and look-at-my-ass-when-you're-talking-to-me heroines, combined with the ornate-yet-vacuous verbiage that dominates the core books (and the one module I own) lead one to believe that everyone in the Castle-verse is a narcissist more concerned about whether their armor makes them look fat than they are with taking out the bad guys and/or stealing their treasure. Heroes of this land rely not on tales of derring-do to impress nubile barmaids/men but rather they boast of hours logged on the elliptical trainer or loudly quote inflated SAT scores.

As an example, here's a fairly typical sentence; this one from the character class description for barbarians:

"From windy steppes to mountain tops, from deep jungles to arid plains, barbarians live in freedom--a part of their environment rather than a slave to it."

Sounds like it might have been written by Queen Latifah's character on 30 Rock; the congresswoman from Rhode Island who--mesmerized by the power of her own voice--unwittingly derails her speeches onto rousing yet entirely meaningless tangents.

Or check out the "Narrative of Combat" section of the C&C PHB (p. 119) where the author(s) actually encourage the proliferation of their cumbrous verbal stylings by urging potential Castle Keepers (DMs) to use unwieldy language when depicting combats for the players. Instead of this serviceable if stilted sentence:

"Three goblins who have swords and shields are sitting around a table drinking"

They advise aiming for something like this:

"Three humanoids are ranged around a table drinking from large wooden tankards; they're a foul-looking lot, with mottled skin, spindly limbs, toes, and fingers, with wide eyes and maws emitting a putrid breath; the creatures are armed for war with wickedly curved blades and iron rimmed shields."

Who gives a barf-scented air freshener if their shields are rimmed in iron? Indeed, avoiding run-on sentences such as that one is exactly why the word "goblin" was invented. Mind you, there's a time and place for descriptive extravagance; I just can't imagine a situation where an encounter with 3 goblins would call for this sort of verbosity. If you burn through the whole thesaurus on the run-of-the-mill what are you gonna' have left in the tank when the party runs into that squad of Amazon C'thulhu Stormtroopers down on the 8th level?

And from the next paragraph, the authors advise you to replace:

"The goblin swings at you. He hits for 3 points of damage"

with:

"The goblin twists about, bringing his sword across your shin. There you have no armor, and the notched blade cuts the cloth of your leggings effortlessly to score through ash and blood, biting to the bone for 3 hit points of damage."

Aside from revealing that the Castle Keeper owns stock in a Greave Manufacturing concern, should it really take 40 words to tell a player that they've suffered a minor leg wound? While I agree that a protracted melee can sound like a tedious game of Battleship if you don't make an effort to spice it up somehow, inventing new, ever more florid ways of saying "You take x points of damage" will not only bring mockery from your players but it will really sloooooooow the gaaaaaaaaaaame dowwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Aaaaaaaand once again I have set out to praise this game that I actually mostly kind of like--in theory--but instead ripped into it like a hungry gamer into a bag of Doritos. Sheesh. Next week I will convey one of the positive aspects of this game; I promise.

23 Questions

2012-01-19T10:05:00.000-08:00

I gather this was started by Zak over at Pornstars, but blogger won't let me open his website lately so I can't be sure. Anyone else having this problem?

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
Last time we played, I made up a rule that actually made one of my players decide to use one of them pole arms with his new character.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Just after Christmas.

3. When was the last time you played?

May or June 1997

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

It's a mega-crime adventure incorporating U1, L2, and Barnacus City in Peril et. al. with C'Thony Soprano as the ultimate kingpin.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Try to figure out ways to save my monsters from whatever the PCs are plotting.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Old days: Doughnuts and rootbeer. Now: Beer. Sometimes cheese.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

No, but I am not a very good GM.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Good question... good question.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

By the 3rd or 4th beer, seriousness has left the building.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Sell their souls to the lowest bidder.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

Crime syndicate based on The Sopranos; see 4 above.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

Heheheheh... you had to be there.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Hackmaster PHB: seeing what it had to offer to the Ranger class, but the first thing I saw was dolphin barding: How f*cking cool is that?

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

I prefer the ensemble artist approach to gaming illustrations; nothing sucks more than an entire game whose imagery is limited to the vision of a single artist. Unless the artist is Tramp. So the short answer is Tramp.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

Ha! Though there have been moments when I have been genuinely afraid of my players.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

When my friend Bob and I turned CotMA into an adventuring amusement park complete with park rangers and mumbling middle managers.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Sound proof room with adequate lighting and a view of the End of the Universe.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Castles & Crusades and Hackmaster 4th Ed.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

80s terrorist activity, Thundarr the Barbarian

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

I don't think I've ever played with someone I didn't already know as a friend. So the kind of player that I would most like: Someone whom I am familiar with.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

Back in '86 I ran a D&D adventure based on an actual terrorist bombing of a night club in Berlin.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

There are several that I wish did not exist, mostly the post-EGG Greyhawk products. SO I guess the RPG product I wish did exist would be something Gygax came up with about Greyhawk. Not so much Castle Greyhawk, more about the setting itself.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

There was this one guy, but then he joined my group and is no longer a non-gamer. But before he joined, conversations generally went like this:

Him: "What did you geeklords do on Saturday night?"

Me: "Rolled dice, banged your mama."

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 1: Background

2012-01-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

It should be no secret by now that I like to analyze the crap out of esoteric stuff that only a few members of our species care about (see The Restenford Project as further evidence), but that's kind of what the OSR blogosphere is all about, right? No, you say? My mistake.

Class, please turn to page 95 of your Dungeon Masters Guide.

Anyway, the latest object of my obsession is, if you haven't guessed already, the sample dungeon provided in "The Campaign" section of EGG's DMG beginning on page 94. As you're probably aware the sample dungeon included a map of a single "dungeon" level and a write up detailing the first few rooms along with a smattering of background information that indicates that the dungeon is beneath the ruins of an abandoned abbey.

To describe the sample dungeon as "unfinished" would be an understatement; on appearances, this thing was barely even started. But even in the tiny amount of material provided there is a wealth of detail that will help the obsessive DM to extrapolate an entire adventure out of this tiny fosselized finger bone of a dungeon. In today's edition, I intend to dig into the background information found primarily in the first three paragraphs of the "The First Dungeon Adventure" section on page 96.

Background:
Rumor has it that "something strange and terrible lurks in the abandoned monastery" located in a fen outside of town. The monastery was sacked sometime in the past and now lies in ruin, but we know not the identity or the incentive of either the monks who lived there or the marauders. Was the abbey a warren of heretics besieged by their own papal leader--a monastery gone wicked? Or were they the last true believers brought to ruin to erase the shame of the fallen majority? Or was it something entirely different?

There is another rumor circulating, though somewhat less well known--that there is treasure to be had as well:

"A huge fire opal which the abbot of the place is said to have hidden when the monastery was under siege... the fellow died, according to legend, before revealing it to anyone, so somewhere within the ruins lies a fortune."

Always good to know. But this could be more than just a potentially apocryphal tale to induce adventurers to explore the region; this could be evidence that avarice had overtaken the monks and they had deviated from their monastic cause.

Environs:
A "two mile trek along a seldom used road" brings the party to the edge of the fen. There is a causeway to a low mound on which lie the ruins of the monastery--sounds reminiscent of the approach to the moat house in T1. A few tamaracks grow sporadically on hillocks that barely rise above the mire of the swamp. There is also a "fairly dense cluster" of tamaracks and "brush" about "a half mile beyond the abandoned place" indicating another area of high ground nearby. There is no hint as to the significance of this "cluster" in the abbreviated text of the dungeon, but it seems unlikely that such a detail would have been included without some significance given to the matter. Perhaps it was once linked via underground tunnels to the monastery grounds? Just something to consider if you're re-creating this dungeon for your own use.

Also: It may be worth noting that tamaracks are unique among coniferous trees in that they lose their needles in the winter; an adaptation that makes them the most cold-hardy of trees. Which is to say we're probably talking about a boreal climate here. If you want to move this thing to a warmer clime you might want to change the trees to mangroves or cypress.

...
That's all for today but pack your gear folks cuz tomorrow--I use that term loosely--we'll be searching the ruins. Kind of feels like a real adventure, right?

References:
Gygax, G. Dungeon Masters Guide. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Games, 1979

Top Ten Things That Suck About AD&D

2012-01-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

Stirges: They really suck.

Since many of the things in Rients's poll last week didn't really irritate me too much--they were mostly things that were either inconsistent or overly cumbersome but easily ignored, or else inoffensive to me--famously, demi-human level limits--I wanted to get in a few jabs at my personal AD&D bugbears. So here's the Caveman's Top 10 things that suck about AD&D:

10. Grand Master of Flowers--Reason enough to retire your monk before he gets to 17th level.
9. Pole arms--I took 3 years of high school French in a futile effort to figure out why someone would ever bother to use a guisarme-voulge, bec de corbin, fauchard, or ranseur. Also, how long did it take everyone to realize that it wasn't kosher for your cleric to use a Lucerne Hammer?
8. Ring Mail--Five pounds heavier and twice the price of studded leather yet you got the same protection. At least padded armor and splint mail were slightly cheaper than their significantly less-cumbersome AC-mates.
7. Wisdom--"A composite term for the character's enlightenment, judgement, wile, willpower, and intuitiveness." Which is a very long winded way of saying "Dump stat."
6. Chance to Know each listed Spell--"I rolled an 87, crap! My 18 Int MU just isn't smart enough to figure out how to cast Mending."
5. One minute melee round--Player: I swing at the orc... got a 7. DM: You miss. He swings back and hits for... 2 points of damage. Well, we've still got 51 seconds to kill; wanna' order a pizza?
4. Illusionists can't cast evocations--No, I don't really care about this one. Curiously, it is true.
3. Ten coins to the pound--Are they made of unrefined ore?
2. The Character with Two Classes--Human's with ambitions to branch out beyond a single class were denied the normal multi-classing option. Rather, they had dual classing--multi-classing's scoliosis-riddled, imbecilic step-sibling. If your 9th level thief cum 1st level MU finds any traps in this dungeon he can forget collecting any experience.
1. Alignment Languages--Several people in the comments section of Rients's column mentioned this one as the pinnacle of sucktacticness/nadir of coolness and I have to agree. Where did this idea even come from?

Less Than THAC0

2012-01-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

Thac0 was a part of AD&D? Seriously? Because I played AD&D (1st ed.) for a long time and wasn't aware of it. Thanks to Cyclopeatron's research, I now know that Thac0 actually predates AD&D--or at least the DMG--but unless you were a computer nerd at UCLA in the late '70s, my guess is you probably didn't know why Thac0 was listed in statblocks for NPCs in the occasional module or what that unexplained column of numbers in Appendix E of the DMG labelled "To Hit A.C. 0" was all about.

Indeed, pointing to Appendix E as proof that Thac0 was a part of AD&D is like saying that "Less than Zero" was a Brad Pitt movie. Sure he was in it--according to Imdb he was an uncredited partygoer--but it's only on hindsight that this gains any significance at all. If 2nd edition AD&D had adopted ascending ACs and to hit bonuses more akin to Castles & Crusades, et. al., Thac0 would be as familiar to us today as all those other party-going extras who did not become Brad Pitt.

Thanks, but what's my Thac0?

Just as Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, and Robert Downey jr. were the headliners in the 1987 film of extreme LA youth decadence while Brad Pitt was an as yet unknown--except, perhaps, to a handful of "Growing Pains" devotees--the combat matrices on page 74-75 were the stars of the AD&D combat system. When Aggro the Axe and Gutboy Barrelhouse squared off in the sample combat narrative on page 71 of the DMG, they used the combat matrices on the following pages to determine the success of their attack rolls, not some goofy acronym. The continued absence of Thac0 rules in 1985's Unearthed Arcana is further indication that Thac0 was still not a significant part of AD&D, or had yet to be officially sanctioned by TSR anyway.

But obviously the Appendix E reference indicates that there was something going on with Thac0. But did anyone outside of a posse of computer science majors at UCLA and a few Lake Geneva insiders actually know what Thac0 was supposed to be used for? As a kid, I assumed that it was listed to give a measure of relative combat acumen--just as AC is a measure of defensive capacity--that could, in a pinch, be used to recreate the combat matrices. Why anyone would bother doing such a thing was beyond me since the matrices were readily available on every DM Screen that ever partitioned a gaming table.

But I could be totally wrong. My sample size is not large; maybe loads of people were using Thac0 back in the day, despite TSR's refusal to endorse it. Is there anyone out there that was into Thac0 before it went mainstream? And what was the first TSR publication that actually explained what Thac0 was all about?

I won D&D and it was Advanced!

2011-12-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

My name is Abed and I'll be your dungeon master.

I know, it's been around for almost a year now, but I just finally watched the AD&D episode of Community which, by the way, just happens to be the best show on broadcast TV at the moment. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, here's a teaser; you need a hulu membership to watch the whole episode--or get the DVDs of season 2. You can watch recent episodes on the NBC website for free. If you dig it as much as I do, you should write to your Congressman to make sure NBC doesn't ditch this show.

Woot woot: +5 t-shirt anyone?

2011-12-08T10:12:00.001-08:00

Today only $10.00

Feeding the Frogs: Phew, this smells like an adventure log

2011-12-01T16:15:00.000-08:00

At long last my gang of (2) gamers finally embarked on adventure in the good ol' Village of Hommlet. Bob--my original cohort from back when this blog started nearly 2 years ago--and I have been joined by Dan the Aussie, a long time "mate" of ours who decided to join the ranks of "tremendous nerds" (it's much more charming when said with an Australian accent) and give D&D a try.

In many ways Dan, a novice to the rpg scene, is the complete opposite of Bob. Whereas Bob is all about strategizing combats and unpuzzling traps, Dan loves the interactions of his character with the NPCs. Not surprising now that I recall Dan was no foreigner to the theater department in his college days.

Call to Arms
There are only 3 characters; Bob has Ponce the Paladin, Dan rolled up Jerry the Thief, and I am running Ahmad the Mage as an NPC; he'll be my PC should one of the other fellas DM a later adventure. Of course anyone familiar with T1 knows that three first level dickheads with d6 hit points are not going to make it far in the old moathouse, so the NPCs of Hommlet strongly encouraged the boys to recruit a few more hands before they go off to ~~meet certain death~~ find glory and adventure at the moathouse.

Through interaction with the denizens of the Buxome Wench Inn--actual roleplaying!--the fellas have enlisted the infamous Elmo--though I ditched his drunken retard act--and his poker buddy Furnok the Ferd, a 4th level thief/card sharp, as well as Spugnoir the Evoker, Zert the Warrior who is also an evil agent of the Temple, and Kobort the also-Warrior. They convinced dimwitted Kobort (Int 6) to ditch his unlikeable companion Turuko (Cha 5), who is now righteously pissed at the party and plotting his vengeance
. This took most of the evening, and I think even Bob enjoyed it.

Frog Food

With the posse assembled and armored up they made for the moathouse. Finally, the encounter I had been anxiously anticipating was upon us: the attack of the ravenous frogs! I was giddy with excitement about running this rematch with the badass, halfling-chomping amphibians; and I felt no pity for the unsuspecting players who thought the adventure would politely wait until they entered the castle to begin. Sadly--for me--the frogs failed to surprise the party and, indeed the party even won initiative! I've given Bob and Dan a free hand in tactical deployment of the NPC party members--though as DM Iretain veto power over any action that I deem inappropriate to their character--so they launched the gang into action. Two frogs were dead and two others injured before they managed to get their tongues out of their mouths; this was not going to be the massacre I was expecting. Indeed, between the 6 of them, the frogs inflicted a measly 7 points of damage before the party roasted up their legs for lunch. Their vicious reputation did not go completely unwarranted--5 of the 7 points of damage came at the fatal discomfort of Spugnoir the MU who only had 4 hit points. Why the fellas didn't bother protecting the magic users I don't know--although it was Zert the evil fighter who was in the best position to protect Spugnoir, maybe it was his evil influence?--but now they're out his 2 sleep spells and they have a lot of brigands to fight pretty soon.

Trivia

This party is unique in the entirety of my playing experience in that despite being a fairly large group--8 characters total--there is not a single non-human to be had.

There appears to be a paper shortage going on in the vicinity of my house. I managed to scrounge up a few palimpsestuous index cards on which the fellas were able to write up their characters, but I had to do all my DM-ly bookkeeping on the back of envelopes and publicity fliers that I dug out of the recycling bin. Indeed, I came blasphemously close to using the backside of my 4-year-old's fridge-mounted artwork.

Assassination Organization: Guild Archetypes

2011-11-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing it's the weather--the gloom and rain have chased the sun far, far away leaving the denizens of this fair burg wondering if we'll ever see it again--but I find my mind wandering back to assassins once again. Last year around this time I ran a series of posts on level titles of the assassin class in AD&D; this year I find myself watching loads of movies about assassins. The American, Red, Day of The Jackal to name a few, as well as a few spy type television series. If you like a gritty, "realistic"* look into the world of international intrigue, I highly recommend Sandbaggers, a British series that aired in the late 70s and very early 80s that follows the travails and intrigues of the administrators that run MI6--not just the field agents. On the lighthearted side there's Chuck and Archer.

*I have no clue if the events depicted in this show is any more realistic than, say, "Moonraker," but it sure feels more real.

Anyway, I've developed a few archetypes of assassinry that are helping me develop how I run the class in my game.

Zealot -- Zealots are driven to kill by their passionate belief in a cause and/or deep-seeded hatred of an enemy. They are usually considered terrorists by those who don't share their beliefs, but are thought of as freedom fighters and, often, martyrs by their allies. As their targets are always political, fanatics usually prefer to do their work with plenty of witnesses and are often not concerned with getting caught or killed in action. The original assassins were of this fold as were the various underground movements of WWII, the old IRA, Al Qaeda, etc.

Goon -- They do their dirty work to take out rivals, settle debts, silence witnesses, or defend the honor of the "family." Goons usually rely on the audacity of their actions and the malign reputation of their organizations for protection from the law. Although quite effective at what they do, assassination is usually only a sideline to their actual work which might include racketeering, drug trafficking, smuggling, prostitution, usury, gambling, etc. Think The Sopranos, The Wire, every gangster movie ever made.

Civil Servant -- Funded and trained by the Government of whatever nation they serve, they take out politically significant targets as a service to their country--knowing full well that they will be renounced by said country if they are caught. James Bond is the most obvious example but other worthy references include Sandbaggers, Red, and even Chuck.

Contract Killer -- Highly skilled and unaffiliated, they take professionalism very seriously; each job is a paycheck and nothing more. They usually have an equally professional network of suppliers and associates that provide materiel and discretion, and some might have an agent who filters clients and collects payments. They are often "retired" Civil Servants, see above. Sources include Day of the Jackal, The American, Le Samourai, Matador, etc.

Ninja -- Ninjas are probably the closest in organization to the AD&D assassins guilds. They're a sort of hybrid of the contract killer--in that they work solely for financial gain--and the civil servant--inasmuch as they work for a company whose primary mission is political espionage and assassination. Historically, it was considered ignoble for the Shoguns who ruled Japan to engage in espionage and assassination so they farmed this work out to private organizations that worked in absolute secrecy; they were the ninjas. They eventually went out of business when the government of Japan decided it might be better off handling its intelligence in house. Blackwater, ISIS, KAOS, and other organizations follow a similar mercenary model.

Seriously Cold Text Files

2011-11-14T16:16:00.001-08:00

If you're still out there, let us know that you're ok, man.

Scottsz's old blog as well as his new tumblr site have disappeared from the interwebz. Anyone know the story? Was he just a figment of my imagination? If you loved obsessing over old school TSR modules as much as I do, then you woulda' really dug his stuff.

Character Generation

2011-10-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

I really, really, really dig reading other folks' character generation ideas--though I despise the term "chargen" with such intensity that my keyboard melted when I typed it. In the spirit of sharing, I thought I'd put my own latest rules--they seem to change all the time so don't expect me to hold to these for very long--out here for those who fetishize this crap like I do. Without further ado, here are my Character Generation Rules for the hybrid AD&D/C&C/S&W/Hackmaster game I occasionally run:

Choose your character's race, gender, and class and give him or her a name. Yes, you're committed to this before you even touch the dice.
Roll 3d6 in order for Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha, and Gold.
So your thief has a 4 Dex? Your dwarf has a 5 Con? You are not entirely without recourse:if your character is human, you can swap your Gold result for any one of your other 6 abilities (attributes). Non-human character races may swap there Favored/Off Abilities if the favored ability is lower than the off ability. See below for more on this.
Multiply Gold by 10, this is your starting money in gold pieces.
Roll 1d6 for hit points. Yep, everyone starts with 1d6 hit points. Fighters (and their various subclasses) and dwarves (regardless of class) add 1, for a max of 7 HP before Con bonus. This is an obvious holdover from our S&W beginnings,though bringing it to our AD&D campaign was never actually discussed; we just rolled up our characters with six-siders and never thought anything of it. Also: everyone has a min. of 3 HP at 1st level except magic users and elves (regardless of class) who have a min of only 2 HP. Also, also: After 1st level, hit dice revert to the AD&D model, d10 for fighters, d4 for MUs, etc.
Go shopping using the AD&D PHB Equipment list, though I'll accept items from Hackmaster or C&C if they don't appear on the AD&D list. Paladins must purchase a sword and armor equal to scale mail or better. Cavaliers must meet this requirement and acquire a warhorse, lance, and shield. As a result, cavaliers will always start out in debt to some patron. As we haven't had any cavaliers yet, I haven't worked out how this would pan out. Thieves are not required to purchase a set of "picks and tools." I mean c'mon, 30 geepees for a set of effin' bobby pins?! What the hell are they made out of?

Some other pertinent modifications:

Wisdom
Wisdom = keenness of senses. It has no bearing on one's ability to commune with a deity, nor does it measure your willpower, guile, intuition, or judgment. It measures how oblivious you are to your surroundings and that is that. What, you ask, does keenness of senses have to do with the actual meaning of the word "wisdom"? I don't give a crap anymore. For my purposes, dwarves and orcs aren't particularly keen; elves are. While every class has reason to want be keen-sensed--less likely to be surprised, better at finding secret doors and the like--thieves and rangers in particular pride themselves on being keen. Clerics do not benefit any more from a high wisdom than anyone else.* Man, that's a load off my back. Shoulda' done that years ago.

*Actually, there are no clerics in our current party. And we don't miss them at all.

Favored/Off Abilities
In the spirit of perpetuating stereotypes, I am continuing the tradition of non-human ability preferences established long, long ago. But rather than a straight up +/-1 to certain preferred/lamented ability rolls as is generally the case in D&D-type games, prime/off abilities provide restrictions as to how demi-humans can ~~use the gold swap feature~~ swap abilities. ~~Basically: prime abilities can never, ever be lowered in a swap with your gold roll, while off abilities, conversely, cannot be raised.~~

So Melfrond the elf rolls an 8 for Str, a 15 for Con, and a 9 for Gold. Elves cannot raise their str or con with a gold swap, so he's stuck with the 8 str, but since his Con roll is higher than his gold, he could swap out the 15 Con, netting himself 60 extra gps to go shopping with. Now he has enough to get a long bow and some chainmail.

Optional rule that I just thought of but which seems much more direct: If a non-human character's favored ability is lower than his or her off-ability, then the two can be swapped. In the case of elves and orcs--who have 2 favored abilities--if both favored abilities are lower than one of the off abilities then the character dies of alopecia in 1d20 hours. Any characters who have spoken to the afflicted before he dies must make a saving throw or likewise meet a hairless end. EDIT 11/2/11: After some playtesting, the focus group showed a strong preference for this rule. Only humans can swap their gold with another ability if they so choose. When we made up our last batch of characters not only did we not have any non-human characters, but we also found that folks were more likely to trade a low gold roll for a higher ability score than a low ability roll for high gold except in cases where the gold role was very high--say 15 or higher. Also, the alopecia thing was just a joke. It's not really contagious.

Exp Bonus
We've done away with prime abilities; having a high strength is inherently advantageous to fighters, but it does not mean they are better at improving their fighter skills. Same goes for everyone else. Instead, Intelligence--in its aptitude aspect--affects experience bonus for all classes. Int bonus x 5 = % exp bonus/penalty. So a low Int character of any class is going to progress slower than his smarter brethren.

Half- Races

This might not sound very sensitive but just say no to mongrels! In my world, elves are not particularly fertile--the elfmaid estrous cycle is decades long and it's unlikely in the extreme that a human female would ever succumb to the effete charms of an elfgroom--and human-elf pairings are exceedingly rare; as such half-elves are so rare that they can be dealt with on a case by case basis. And half orcs are straight-up, full-on orcs.

Also:

Apparently it's Halloween today which means... discount pumpkins!!!

Abjure This: Spell categories revisited

2011-09-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

So the new guy in my group--who's also new to D&D (we're playing a mishmash of AD&D, Castles & Crusades and a bunch of houserules mostly poached from folks like you)--has been asking a lot of questions and poking a bit of fun at many of the oddities of the game that have, over the years, become invisible to me. One topic he's getting mileage out of is all those parenthetical spell categories that are listed next to spell names in the Players Handbook, 1978 ed. (PHB).

Having long ignored these spell categories, I actually went through the entire spell list for each class--clerics, druids, magic-users and illusionists--and counted each occurrence of the 10 or so spell types (cue soundtrack). Bear in mind that no explanation of the significance of these terms was given in the text of the PHB that I've found and, clearly, none is needed to play the game. But I had to create some sense out of this stuff, and what follows is a summary of my analysis. Any definitions or suggested re-categorizations provided are based on my own halfhearted research and should not be assumed to be sanctioned by any person or body affiliated with AD&D in any official capacity.

Alteration: These spells cause a change in something that already exists. Probably every spell could fall under the domain of alteration if you think too much about it. But there are couple of obvious types of alteration such as Polymorph spells and Transmute Rock to Mud, which alter a person or object's physical form. Then there are those Alterations that alter one's capacity to perform some action--Haste, Infravision, Fly, etc. But after that, alteration devolves into the kitchen sink category including spells that involve moving things--like Levitate and Teleport--altering by relocation?--and such oddballs as Rope Trick, Magic Mouth and many, many, many more. As if this scene weren't crowded enough, a bunch of spells that seem quite clearly to be evocations or conjurations are also lumped into the alteration group: Dancing Lights--which creates a fire or fire-like thing making it either a phantasm or an evocation--and Create Food and Water--it's not called Alter Food and Water, right?--are prime examples. As one might guess by the inclusiveness of this domain, this is by far the largest, representing 34% of all spells.
Conjuration/Summoning: These spells bring forth a being, object or force of some sort to do the bidding of the spell caster. Summoning brings forth a being that already exists somewhere else, has its own life, and may have its own ideas about what's going to happen next. Indeed, these ideas may be exactly why the being is summoned. Conjurations are created beings or forces that don't exist elsewhere until they are conjured. Though they are capable of performing certain basic actions, they tend not to have a mind of their own, instead requiring direction from the spellcaster in order to take action. Unseen Servant is a great example. Conjurations might also be programmable objects which then require some third party input in order to take effect; the various Glyphs and Magic Mouth would be categorized as conjurations of this sort. Spells which I believe are mislabeled as conjurations include Flame Arrow--neither flame nor arrows are actually conjured, rather, arrows touched by the spellcaster burst into flames--and Bless which gives your friends a to-hit bonus.
Evocation: Like conjurations, these spells call stuff into being. They differ from conjurations in that whatever is called forth generally gets told where to do its job and then does it without any further instruction. There are either of the point-and shoot type instantaneous effect spells, or things that, once evoked, are relatively inert such as the various Wall of- spells. The vast bulk of evocations are magic user spells and many of the classics fall into this category: fireball, lightning bolt, magic missile, web... Druids and Clerics have only 4 and 3 evocation spells available to them respectively while Illusionists have no evocation spells, though we'll dwell on this more a bit later.
Invocation: There is only one spell--Spiritual Hammer--in this category. It might have been an editorial oversight--the author may have decided to change the term to evocation since their meaning is nearly identical. But there is a small difference in that, according to Webster, an invocation often involves Holy assistance and, in support of that notion, the spell write-up for Spiritual Hammer specifically states that "by calling on his or her deity" the cleric creates a hammer-shaped head-bashing force. If you go with this, it could be argued that all clerical evocations could be classified as invocations. Likewise druidic evocations also invoke the assistance of whatever nature spirits those tree-hugging hippies worship. Most/all of these evocations could even be recast as invocations with little harm done.
Illusion/Phantasm: You make stuff that isn't really there seem like it is. Basically, you're evoking sensory experiences. The meat and butter--oops! it's bread and butter--of the illusionist class, 48% of spells available to illusionists are illusion/phantasms. Significantly, Illusionists have no evocation spells. I'm guessing this was by design to differentiate them from Magic users. I think, given the many spells that seem much closer, mechanically speaking, to evocations but have been labeled alterations, that the effort was a bit disingenuous. Such spells as Light and Darkness, I think, would be much more comfortable in the evocation camp than crammed into the crowded beer garden over at alterations. Most incriminatingly, Wall of Fog, a first level illusionist spell, is classified as an alteration even though all the other Wall of- spells castable by non-illusionists fall under the evocation banner. We need to accept that some of the spells available to Illusionists are evocations and get on with life.
Abjuration: The word is defined as a renunciation or recanting, and spells of this sort are generally those that provide protection from something or that exorcise or purge things. Dispel Magic and Protection from evil/good/insipid, etc. are abjurations as are some cure spells: Cure Blindness and Cure Disease, for instance: "Disease, I renounce thee!" I would be inclined to include spells which provide resistance to certain things as partial abjurations though they're generally considered alterations in the PHB.
Divination: These spells are all about divining knowledge which one's senses are otherwise not privy to. All detection, location, and augury spells fall in this category.
Enchantment/Charm: These are spells that screw with people's heads. Charm Person, Command, and Hold Person, but also Sleep, Feeblemind, and, inexplicably, Pass without Trace are of this sort.
Necromantic: Usually associated with speaking with or raising the dead and other ghoulish black magix, this category is broadened to include spells which cause any revivification or restoration of bodily health, such as cure light wounds and heal, but also spells such as slow poison and feign death. I've got no beef with lumping these spell into the same category, though it seems a little creepy to have your beneficial cure spells falling under the evil sounding realm of necromancy.
Possession: Again we have a one-spell category; Magic Jar is the sole occupant. It is an exceptional spell, you're not just taking control of someone else's being--which would be an enchantement--but your also stashing your own soul in a jar somewhere which seems vaguely necromantic; sort of like reincarnation. Still, it doesn't need its own category, so I'd put it in one or the other and move on.

So these are the 10 existing spell categories as classified in the PHB. As you've probably guessed, I'm not entirely satisfied with it. In particular, alterations are needlessly bloated covering a wide variety of spells that are not at al related. I propose 2 alteration subcategories:

Transmogrification: For a very long time I thought Calvin and Hobbes made this word up, but it's the perfect word to describe the Polymorph and Transmute type spells that alter the physical state or properties of an object or being.
Augmentation/Diminution: When I first started out on this line of inquiry, I was absolutely certain that this already was one of the spell category names and was shocked to find otherwise. It should have been. Was it in Unearthed Arcana maybe? Sadly, I no longer have my copy. Actually, this is the first time in 20 years I've missed that bloviated tome so I can't be too sad about it. Anyway, augmentations are performance enhancing spells, either improving ones capacity or granting one an ability to perform an action that is normally outside their realm. Haste, Fly, Write, and others would fall in this category. Alternatively, they can diminish performance as well, in the case of Slow and its ilk.

We also need a couple of new categories to cover those spells that involve moving people around instantaneously, screwing with time, and those that allow the spellcaster to exert control over some object or non-sentient force; enchantments for the inanimate, if you will. And create two new classifications:

Peregrinations: Yes, I hate the name as much as you do. Please, please, please find me a better one! These are spells that allow the spellcaster to transport him/herself and or others instantaneously from one place to a distant place ow which involves inter-planar traveling or other discontinuities in the space-time continuum. It also includes spells which allow the caster to move through things which normally preclude such ambulation; those weird plant-traveling druid spells. In the PHB, spells of this nature are generally considered alterations.
Agitations: Again, not a great name, I know. As mentioned, this spell group encompasses spells that garner control over forces or inanimate objects. Heat Metal, Trip, and Dig are all examples. I might be open to moving this whole group to enchantments since they do seem, essentially, to be enchantments that influence inanimate objects and non-sentient forces. Some of these already do fall in the enchantment category in the PHB.

Now I know you're thinking, "Wow, this entirely objective, practical, non-tedious post is going to radically alter not only the way I play, but also the way I live life for the rest of eternity! Thanks Dice-chucker." So let me just say, you're welcome.

Back to the Moathouse: Lareth was a Paladin!

2011-09-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the extensive comments section of The Underdark Gazette post re: T1 Village of Hommlet--you know, the one where Scottsz of Cold Text Files fame went to town on T1 and its morbidly obese half-brother, T1-4 Union of the Snake. Inspired as always by Scottsz's obssessively thorough scholarship, I dug out my ancient, rusty-stapled copy of T1 and gave it a gander. The following is based solely on The Village of Hommlet published in 1979, not the 1985 Temple of Elemental Evil, which I am not familiar with. Or at least I wasn't before I read Scottsz's diatribe.

Anyway, there I was reading along when there, on the final page, we get our first glimpse of Lareth. I gather that he went on to greater infamy in the expanded Temple module published in 1985, but in the original, he was basically the scout leader of an organized troop of thugs who live under the moathouse outside of town. A 5th level cleric with mostly bitchin' stats, Lareth is described variously as "the New Master," "The Beautiful," "well endowed" [yes, it says that] and "the dark hope of chaotic evil." Did I mention that his stats are pretty awesome? Have a look for yourself:

S: 18
I: 9
W: 18
D: 17
C: 16
Ch: 18

I got to thinking; Cleric shmeric, with such awesome stats this dude would make a great paladin. Check it out: He's got the royal flush at Str, Dex, and Con; any fighter's wet dream. And he's loaded with charisma, great for clerics trying to impress upon the devoted, but absolutely essential to Paladins. In fact an 18 just barely clears the bar; 17, as you'll recall was the minimum. Wisdom, of course, is essential to both clerics and paladins. The big outlier--Intelligence--is conspicuous not just for being so much lower than the rest of Lareth's inflated ability scores but for being exactly as low as it is: 9 just happens to be the minimum Intelligence for Paladins. Was it Gygax's intent to model Lareth after the paladin class? The evidence is scant at this point, but the seed was planted.

Now consider what Lareth is up to in the Hommlet vicinity: according to the text, he's recruiting "men and humanoid fighters to gather loot and restore the Temple to its former glory." So he's creating an army of mercenaries, not converting true believers. This sounds like a great job for an accomplished, charismatic--if not particularly bright--fighter; especially one who is as devoted to the cause as a paladin would be. A slightly dim cleric sent to live in a hole in the ground under a swamp alongside 20-odd unwashed bandits, however, does not sound like someone on the fast-track to the top of a temple hierarchy.

But here's the clincher: a sentence from the "Notes for the Dungeon Master" on page 3 where EGG explains that the module was developed to integrate new players into his existing Greyhawk campaign: "Many of the NPCs in the module are the characters and henchmen developed through play." Elmo, Otis, and who knows how many others are more than likely based on the characters created by players from EGG's home game. Could Lareth also be a legacy of that campaign?

Now let's go back and pick the scab that is Lareth's low-ish Intelligence again. If you were a player and were handed Lareth's ability scores and had the freedom to arrange them as you saw fit--as was prevalent in AD&D--wouldn't you choose to put the 9 on Intelligence too? Normally the 3 dump stats for fighter-types were intelligence, wisdom and charisma. Paladins of course have high pre-requisites in the Wisdom (13) and Charisma (17) categories, so they're out. The only places an AD&D paladin can stash such a low ability score is intelligence, dexterity or constitution. No one wants a slow-ish or feeble-ish paladin, but a dumb-ish one, big whoop. So you fore-go a few extra languages in favor of missile and AC adjustments and a decent hit point bonus; anyone would have done this in a heartbeat.

Now you're saying, "You said it yourself Caveman, Intelligence is useless in AD&D, so what's the big deal if Lareth is a lightweight in the brain-pan?" The big deal is that Int is useless to PCs. They get to decide how smart to play their character regardless of the number on their character sheet. As long as your PC isn't utterly feebleminded, no DM is ever going to say "Dude, your character isn't smart enough to come up with that plan." But Lareth is an NPC in a module, so his Int becomes a guideline for how the DM is going to run this guy. Also, NPCs are not limited by dice rolls; if the DM wants to give Lareth a 9 Intelligence, he can do it just as easily as he can give him a 15 or a 6 or a 12-5/8. So a 9 Int that, on a PC, would be slightly less prominent than a freckle on a werewolf's ass, stands out like a sore thumb on an NPC. Especially one such as Lareth, who has been described as "cunning."

Still not convinced? How about this: there are two light warhorses and a lance in the store room of Lareth's hideout. Whose lance is it? One of Lareth's men-at-arms, possibly. But these dudes are brigands not knights. So why, considering that there's no way a lance and warhorse are going to see any action in the cramped confines of the dungeon, would Gygax add such a throw-away item to the dungeon stores? Maybe because it's Lareth's lance from his paladin days, left here as a hint to his past and a sly nod to the players of his original game. EGG was quite prone to less subtle shout outs to his cronies, so why not?

Now look at Lareth in this light: he's a character statted-up like a PC paladin who's doing the job of a soldier to benefit a temple hierarchy and he has a warhorse and lance on hand. Alignment aside, this sounds like the definition of a paladin. Too bad this particular temple espouses evil-most-foul; no paladins allowed. But, in concocting T1, Gygax wants Lareth to retain not just bad-assedness as a tough guy but also his divine aspect as a servant to a greater force. So he turns Lareth into a cleric; clerics are 2nd only to fighters in combat competence and armaments and up the ante with spell power. Decked out in magic plate mail and a bitchin' staff of striking--one of the most potent melee weapons available to a cleric--Lareth is a pretty devastating opponent for a bunch of 1st level characters to handle head on. Even more so than a paladin might be.

Or, more interestingly, perhaps Lareth the True was corrupted to the dark side in that original campaign. Hear me out: we are informed that "Whomever harms Lareth had better not brag of it in the presence of one who will inform the Demoness Lolth!" 'Cuz a 10th level assassin will be sent to kill your ass! Isn't that a somewhat extreme reaction for a potent demon to the loss of a capricious mid-level cleric of tepid intellect? Does it sound more like the reaction of a demon who just lost something of personal value? Like maybe a buff, young, "well endowed" boy toy? Gygax seemed to pride himself on his openness to puerile themes in the game; is it not entirely conceivable that during that original campaign, on meeting the Demoness, Lareth succumbed to her feminine wiles, casting aside his vows in favor of the indulgent life of the darkside? And once there, he became a favorite plaything of the Demoness? I'm just sayin'...

Cthulhu News: The Whisperer in Darkness

2011-09-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

Then

Have all the recent historic and unprecedented Vermont floods been a publicity stunt for the recent Lovecraft flick?

EDIT: Oh man, that was supposed to say precedented. Grumble.

And now

More News from Restenford

2011-09-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

Ongoing updates from my Lendore dissertation.

Balrog Cthulhu: The Mountains of Madness in Middle Earth

2011-08-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'm still on a Tolkien jag. This Lovecraftian bit is from The Two Towers when Gandalf is explaining to Aragorn, et. al., what he did over Christmas Vacation:

"Thither I came at last to the uttermost foundations of stone. [the Balrog] was with me still. His fire was quenched but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake. We fought under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him till at last he fled into dark tunnels. They were not hewed by Durin's folk, Gimli son of Gloin. Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there but I will bring no report to darken the light of day."

Sure, JRR never mentions any tentacles, but c'mon!

Bilbo: Proto-thief

2011-07-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

Having recently re-read The Hobbit in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of my first traipse through Middle Earth I can't help but note the wealth of game-related goodies that this book has to offer novice role-players--such as I was back in '81. One obvious and much- discussed notion is Bilbo as the proto-type for the thief class. Sure, Cudgel, Gray Mouser, et al.'s fingerprints are all over the class, but I didn't read about their endeavors until much, much later; Bilbo was my first literary source for the thief.

Much of the arguing about Bilbo as thief has to do with what he actually did (flubbed the pocket picking, relied on a nifty ring, pissed off the dragon), but bear in mind that this was his first gig, he got by only because of ample shares of luck, cleverness, and hobbitly stealth. But what is more important to take away from the book is what the expectations of a thief, burglar, or expert treasure hunter were, not how well Bilbo lived up to them. Following are a few pertinent items from Chapter I "An Unexpected Party" and II "Roast Mutton" that helped my 11 year old brain figure out why a thief was someone you wanted to hang out with:

p. 33--Gandalf justifying why he has selected Bilbo for the party:

"[Entering through the front gate of the Lonely Mountain] would be no good... not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighborhood heroes are scarce or simply not to be found... That is why I settled on burglary--especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door."

Here Gandalf differentiates the basic focus of thievery--obstacles are circumvented by stealth--from warriors, who knock down obstacles to accomplish their goals.

Note: The titles "Warrior" and "Hero" refer to distinct grades of adventurer, a precursor to level titles. Also note that the statement presumes that the dwarves themselves are neither warriors nor heroes, leaving us wondering yet again what is their value to the venture.

p. 38--Thorin to Bilbo, still uncertain of the hobbit's qualifications as the party breaks up for the evening:

"Aren't you the burglar? And isn't sitting on the door-step your job, not to speak of getting inside the door? ...I like six eggs with my ham when starting on a journey; fried not poached, and mind you don't break 'em."

Here Thorin suggests that a burglar should be a capable secret door finder, lock picker, and short order cook.

p. 46--Bilbo, having snuck up on the trolls eating their mutton, ponders what he should do:

"A really first class and legendary burglar would at this point have picked the trolls' pockets... pinched the very mutton off the spits, purloined the beer, and walked off without their noticing him. Others more practical but with less professional pride would perhaps have stuck a dagger into each of them before they observed it."

From this we can gather that a professional burglar--in Middle Earth at any rate--was expected to provide expertise in sneaking about, pilfering things, and, when necessary, doling out the expeditious knife in the back.

It is also noteworthy that despite Bilbo's nefarious title he, in fact, was a pretty hono(u)rable little guy. He didn't steal from his friends* and certainly didn't practice his burglary in civilized environs; it was a skillset which was put to use only in the adventure setting. It was for this reason that I never felt any qualms about ignoring EGG's claim in the PHB that thieves must be either evil or neutral. Honorable thieves, as exemplified by Bilbo, could exist; they just knew when to keep it in their pants.

* Yes, he swiped the Arkenstone--or at least he hid the fact that he had found it--and then furtively delivered it to the men of Esgaroth, but Thorin was being dangerously unreasonable at the time and severely needed a boot to the head.

The Hobbit: Why all the dwarves?

2011-07-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

We all know the set up; Thorin and Co. enlist Bilbo as the lucky 14th member of their party. Plus, they wisely foresaw the value of a sneaky guy in procuring a treasure hoard. But why exactly were there so many dwarves?

In order of appearance, here is the roster of Dwarves and their primary contribution to the adventure:

Dwalin--The first dwarf to arrive at Bilbo's house, he is the first dwarf to arrive at Bilbo's house.
Balin--Dwalin's brother, he is the oldest and wisest of the dwarves. He is also their go to look-out man.
Kili and Fili--Twins, they are the youthful ones. They are good for doing any dirty work that required strong arms and sharp eyes--except being the lookout, which was old man Balin's job.
Dori--On his shoulders fell the responsibility of carrying Bilbo whenever the hobbit was unable to keep up with the pack or climb a tree or grab an eagle.
Nori--There is no evidence to support the existence of Nori.
Ori--Conspired to gain a double share of treasure by occasionally speaking in a funny voice and wearing a Nori mask.
Oin and Gloin--Cousins to Balin and Dwalin, they carried the tinderboxes.
Bifur--Kept Bofur company
Bofur--See Bifur
Bombur--Fat and weak-willed; he sleeps a lot, needs to be hoisted on occasion, and is manipulated into assisting Bilbo's plot to betray Thorin.
Thorin--Ostensibly the leader of the venture, in reality he always defers to Gandalf or, in the wizard's absence, relies on Bilbo to solve any problems that arise.

Mayhem & Moathouses: How to handle a bloodthirsty DM

2011-07-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

...and mayhem ensued.

James over at Underdark Gazette and a patch of peonies in my neighbors yard have inspired me to write up about good ol' Village of Hommlet. James, as you probably already know, posted a couple of times last week about everyone's favorite old school village adventure. And the peonies, well, the first time I played T1 it was 4th of July weekend 1982--yes, I remember this kind of crap--and my mom had just picked a bunch of peonies from the garden and put them in a vase on the dining room table which doubled as a gaming venue. To this day, when I catch the distinctive scent of peonies, I am reminded of the Village of Hommlet.

Smells like trouble!

Anyway, the DM at the helm--we'll call him Byron--was the most murderous referee in our gang; definitely aligned with Chaos, he liked to force the players out of their comfort zone. This outing would quickly prove to be no exception. Our very first encounter as we wandered into town was with an exceptionally belligerent Elmo who--though outnumbered 8 to 1, wearing no armor, and armed with only a dagger--picked a fight with our paladin. For those unfamiliar, Elmo, though posing as a moronic farmhand, was actually an enormous ~5th level ranger with some bitchin' magic armaments. Anyway, he killed the paladin with a single, massive blow from his (magic) dagger, so the rest of the party jumped him. We had 3 fighters and the cleric facing him while the MU blasted him with magic missiles and the halfling thief snuck around for a backstab. Even so it was touch and go for a few rounds, but thanks to some crappy rolls for Elmo, we took him down without anymore casualties on our side. However, by this time a bunch of villagers had taken up arms and were coming at us. We ran for it, eventually finding our way to the Inn of the Buxom Wench* where we commandeered the 2nd floor, barricaded the stairs and launched a fusillade of arrows at the militia, sending them scrambling for cover behind the wall surrounding the inn. Leading the militia was a revived Elmo who was clearly not quite as dead as we'd hoped.

*Not the real name of the place--though it's not far off--but it was the name we used at the time and it has stuck.

We were terrified that the entire town was as tough as Elmo though this did not stop us from "errantly" putting a few flaming arrows into neighboring houses. But good-natured Ostler Gundigoot talked everyone down and negotiated a cease fire. After a hearing with Rufus and Byrne, we floated a canned apology for all the death and destruction we'd wrought and promised to pay reparations to include fees for raising all the dead townsfolk and rebuilding the razed houses. Since we were cash-strapped 1st level n00bs, it was suggested that we go to the moathouse to secure the weregild. Much to our dismay, R&B insisted that a fully healed Elmo accompany us; partly as punishment for his part in inciting the fracas but mostly to make sure that we didn't lose our way.

At the moathouse I only remember a few encounters: the murderous frogs who killed the halfling thief and another less memorable character; the puncture-resistant zombies--they only took 1 point of damage form piercing weapons as I recall; and the final meetup with Lareth, who was kind enough to take out Elmo for us. For that we were very thankful. In fact, when I look back on T1, I still to this day think of Lareth not as a malignant servant of the forces of evil but as one of those respectable bad guys who, under different circumstances, might have been a valued ally. Meanwhile, our hatred for Elmo was so intense that we cheered when Lareth bashed his head in with his staff of striking; though we were equally glad that Elmo had, by then, relieved Lareth of the vast majority of his hit points. Not satisfied with his death, Elmo's corpse was defiled by the surviving party members and tossed into the swamp as frog food. Too add further insult, instead of returning his possessions to his grieving parents, they were parsed out amongst the party along with the rest of the treasure haul. But true to our word, we paid off our damages to the town and were feted as heroes of the realm before shuffling off to our next adventure.

At the time I remember being furious with Byron for coercing us into such a chaotic scenario in town, but also a little ashamed that I was taking such pleasure in terrorizing the villagers with flaming arrows. Byron loved this sort of mayhem and if the players went along with it, he would be happy and our mayhem-seeking would bring us prosperity and happiness. If, on the other hand, we had refused to fight Elmo and/or the villagers, instead relying on our faith in a just humanity, I'm certain that within 30 minutes we would have been rolling up new characters as the corpses of our PCs swung from the gallows. Instead, for the far more sinister crimes of mass murder, grand arson, and public mayhem, we were given a hefty but not insurmountable fine and sent off on an adventure. I don't think we were conscious of it at the time--though we would come to be aware of this tactic in later years--but we were totally playing in a manner to placate Byron and therefore protect our characters. And we had an incredibly fun outing to boot.

On hindsight, the whole thing turned out to be a pretty clever set up to get us to the moathouse that we otherwise knew nothing about and had no reason to visit--other than the usual "thar's gold in them hills" excuse. But more importantly, by "forcing" us into such a chaotic flurry of morally ambiguous action while simultaneously killing off the only lawful member of our party (the paladin), the behavior of that party was ever-after skewed toward chaos in a way that we could not have done intentionally. Or perhaps I'm giving the DM too much credit; he was, after all, only 13.

Grievously absent from the blogosphere: DQ Anyone?

2011-06-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

Does anyone blog about DragonQuest? I've been beefing up my blogroll with non-D&D bloggers lately to better reflect the range of my gaming interests and, after D&D, the game I've played most is SPI's DragonQuest. And although there are some misanthropic DQ boards and a load of pages dedicated to various people's adventure logs and house rules--like the unbelievably well done DragonQuest Frontiers--I can't seem to find anyone who, ya' know, just writes about DQ. Sure, there's Greivous Injury, but that place seems to suffer from technical difficulties a lot lately. Probably because they changed the spelling from the more appropriate--if technically incorrect--"grievious." It's an unwritten rule of the game that, when playing, grievous is to be pronounced "gree-vee-us."

For those not in the know, the Grievous Injury Table was probably the most iconic feature of the game. It was a table used to determine the effects of exceptional attacks on you and your opponents--a "critical hit" if you must. The unpleasant effects of the grievous assault on your being were delivered with text that often sounded as though it was swiped from a deck of Community Chest cards written for a truly morbid Monopoly game:

"Tsk Tsk. A wound of the solid viscera. Usually fatal."

"Your aorta is severed and you are quite dead. Rest assured your companions will do their best to console your widow(er)"

"A chest wound... your opponent's weapon is caught in your ribcage and has been wrenched from his grasp."

Anyway, if you never played, these were a few of the injuries you missed out on.

Appendix NF: Avoid the flumpf, get a Dictionary of Early English

2011-06-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Say you're making up monsters for your new dungeon but all your monster names tend to sound like you ripped them off from the Fiend Folio. Or maybe you're trying to infuse your campaign with atmosphere by creating your own "common" dialect which you will force your players to learn and use during play. Try dipping into the past for inspiration by incorporating long forgotten words from our own blessed language with the help of the Dictionary of Early English. Written by Joseph T. Shipley, and published by Littlefield, Adams & Co. in 1968--though numerous tomes of its ilk exist, this just happens to be the one I own--I highly recommend it to other word nerds.

Sure you can look up the roots of old words on the internet without owning a good ol' fashioned paper n' ink book; which is definitely handy when you're researching, say, the level title of your favorite character classes. But where texts like this beat out the internet and your kindle is in the serendipitous discoveries one unearths merely by flipping through the pages. Say you've got time to kill while you download the latest OSR retroclone from Bloated Houserules Publishing; you grab the ol' dictionary and flip it open to page 439. There's mordincancy, any old schooler is going to want to know if it has something to do with big creepy hands, right? Nope, it means biting or pungent. Then there's Rosencrantz's old buddy morgenstern; a spiked club, but, on hindsight, that seems obvious. Then comes morglay, from Welsh Mawr, great + cleddyf, sword--whence Claymore. And finally, moria; folly. With all due respect to the Professor, Sindarin for "Black Chasm" my ass!

Some other highlights:
Barbigerous--a most imposing beard
Gnomide--female gnome
lant--urine, another interesting tidbit: it was a common ingredient in ale; bear this in mind the next time your home-brewing buddy offers you a pint of his latest batch of double-lanted.
Paynim--the country or lands of the heathens; Greyhawk Enthusiasts will appreciate this one
Penster--a puny wielder of the pen. Hmmmm, I'm thinking of renaming my blog...

and best of all: 120 different -mancies show you how to divine the future!

Lendorology: Clergy of the Big Gamble

2011-06-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

At long last, there's a new post over at The Restenford Project for those inclined to read such things.

Int, Wis, Cha: Turn your head and cough

2011-06-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Jeff over at Jeff's Gameblog ran a post a while back about using different descriptors of the 6 basic attribute titles in order to take a fresh look at what these terms mean. I thought this was a pretty cool idea, and have sporadically wasted a lot of time thinking about the topic ever since.

While the 3 "physical" attributes--Str, Dex, Con--don't stand to gain very much from this experiment, the far more ambiguous "mental" abilities--Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma*--could definitely stand a new coat of paint. Or better yet, strip off the paint, then take off the siding, the vapor barrier, and insulation as well so that we can see what the hell kind of frame is holding these things up.

Anyway, after months of frittering, here are my descriptors for the 3 "mental" attributes:

Intelligence = Aptitude
Wisdom = Sense
Charisma = Cool

Aptitude: this is your characters ability to learn effectively, not necessarily his or her smarts. A low aptitude could mean you have a learning disability, but you might very well be the only person on earth smart enough to understand Quantum physics. A high Aptitude means that you are able to quickly glean the essentials of a field of study, but you might not be capable of taking the matter too deeply. You might, for instance, quickly learn new languages, but fail to understand the significance of the differing grammatical structurezzzzz...

Sense: this descriptor is copped directly from a comment from Talysman over at Nine And Thirty Kingdoms.** This has a lot to do with the way I'm redefining clerics in my current campaign: they're more like unaffiliated mystics than deity-bound priests. As such, wisdom measures ones ability to sense the presence of other things including but not limited to that ambush around the bend or the unusual book amidst all the pulp paperbacks on the shelf, but also the presence of water deep underground, the aura of the spy in the Duke's castle, and the spirits that inhabit the trees in your druid's favorite grove.

Cool: Not so much your ability to mimic the Fonz but, rather, Cool measures your capacity to maintain poise and bearing whether you're chatting up a hottie at the tavern, bluffing the Constable into releasing your comrades from custody, or trying to defuse a bomb with time running out.

* Yeah, I know, a lot of old schoolers use Charisma as a measure of physical appeal; fine, I got no beef with that.

** Though I don't believe that my conception of sense here falls in line with what he was describing. Oddly, his recent re-conception of the cleric archetype sounds sort of like what I was failing to get at in my re-conception of the Wisdom attribute as a measure of devotion and mental focus.

Vornheim: Adorable!

2011-06-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, I jumped on the ol' Pornstar Bandwagon and bought the Vornheim book. The Lapplander Econo Delivery Service got it to me just in time for my birthday, which was a nice surprise. I won't say too much about the contents of the book because so far I've only been monkeying around with the cover which acts as one of those clever devices that Zak S. seems to have pioneered wherein a DM can determine the attributes of NPCs, description of a locale, and the outcome of several different potential situations all in a single roll of a 4-sider.

But what impressed me the most about this book--and this is embarrassing for me to admit--is that it's so freaking cute! I was expecting a softcover 8.5x11" deal with removable cover and a map on the inside; you know, like old school modules. But no! This is one of those tiny, slender, little hardcover books that make you want to put it on the shelf between Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop and the complete set of Little golden Books you got (as a/for your) kid. Except that the book is all gothy black with Zak S.'s distinctive, grim, claustrophobic artwork all over the place. In fact, just looking at the annotated elevation of the "Typical tower" on page 34 for more than 5 minutes will cause neuroses in the average reader and even vertigo in exceptional cases. Excuse me, I have to go clear my head for a moment.

And there on the dust jacket, though I've seen the image a million times all over the internets, is that picture of Mandy Morbid--at least I assume that the pink mohawkish hair is Mandy's--standing knee-deep in snow and taking a whack at a peryton with her flail. But what I didn't notice until I held the book in my hands is that each of the points in the peryton's antlers has a candle burning in it--which immediately brings to mind the ol' Hand of Glory. I'm pretty sure that the peryton was taunting Mandy who clearly has first dibs on the term "Rack of Glory."

Greatest (number of) Hits: Popularity has never been more deceiving

2011-06-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

So I briefly placed the little "best of" widget on this here blog a moment ago, mostly to see which of my little rants gets the most internet action. I removed it for a few reasons; partly because the widget was cropping the first 2 letters of each post off, which looked really stupid, and partly because I really don't want to encourage people to visit some of these "most popular" posts, but mostly because it seemed a bit grandiose on my part to post the greatest hits for a site that sees as little action as this one. But then I couldn't let it die a quiet death so I wrote this up instead.

Game Review: Eldritch Role-Playing System by Goodman Games. Confession time: 90% of visitors to this post come by way of image searches which include the terms "Golgotha" or "Calvary." Nothing like the ol' bait n' switch.
Primordial D&D: Eric Holmes and the 11 year old's dungeon. I assume that folks are not noticing the apostrophe "s" and think they will be reading about an 11 year old dungeon which is interesting because... I have no idea.
Hello friendly Commenter(s, should others decide to speak up). That this one--my 2nd post ever--should be on this list at all boggles the mind. My 3rd most "popular" post was really a private message to Daddy Grognard--the only soul in the universe who knew that this blog even existed in the early days--explaining to him that I was unable to post a comment to my own post. Why didn't I just send him an email and spare myself the humiliation of a public confession of ineptitude? I don't know. But apparently people really dig it. Who knew?
Death Ray Enthusiasts Rejoice If you don't like death rays then you are probably a troglodytic Nazi pederast.
Megadungeon Design Review Committee Ah yes, the ol' Design Review Committee; I wonder what they've been up to lately?
Castles & Crusades: Highlights and Lowlights of an RPG This was supposed to be a precursor to my latest adventure log about our party that has now converted to C&C--sort of. We ditched the SIEGE engine and most of the other things that make C&C different from everything else out there, but the point is that no one likes reading adventure logs, least of all me, so why inflict more of same on the world?
The Undead Strike Back: Turning Clerics Quick and dirty, yet it still draws people in.
Greyhawk Realty: Looking to buy in the Flannaes A foray into the field of copywriting.
Castle of the Mad Archmage Session 2 Part I: Thar be orcs! Wow, folks do read adventure logs??
Sartorial Sorcery: Pointy Hats Explained So this only came out about a week ago and yet it's already #10 on the all time list? But then, at 10th place there's actually a 36 way tie with 2 hits each.

Sartorial Sorcery: Pointy Hats Explained

2011-05-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

I finally figured out why wizards wear those blue robes and pointy hats with the lucky charms pinned to them: the dorky duds serve as antennae for the mana that they require to cast their spells! Hear me out: Mana floats about us unseen much like the ether that fills outer space but it can only be harnessed for magical purposes by those who can concentrate it into a useful force. The best way to focus arcane energies is clearly to make them laugh at you. So theurgists and thaumauturgists alike don the most garish garb they can muster in an effort to incite the mirth of mana. An unfortunate side effect is the de facto celibacy such attire certainly causes.

It's the same reason MUs suck at combat and yet still won't wear armor; mana serves only those who humiliate themselves. What better way to humiliate yourself than to pursue a career where your life is constantly at risk yet the only thing between you and the dragon's maw is a silly robe and a wooden stick? "Hahahaha," says mana as the orcs rush your ridiculously resplendent conjurer, "ok, here's your magic missile." Mana sure has an evil wit.


Pointy ears and hat?! Double the laughs!

This also explains why elven multi-classed MUs get to cast spells whilst wearing armor: they've got those silly ears sticking out of their helmets! HAW HAW HAW! From there it's easy to extrapolate why half elves are weaker spell casters than either of their parent races*: their ears have been diminished in the crossbreeding, reducing commensurately their ability to elicit the mirth of mana.

Silliness applies to gnome illusionists as well: they've got those big-ass noses to make the mana smirk. The forces of magic, however, apparently have an aversion to the hirsute--who doesn't?--thus halflings with their hairy feet and the profusely bearded dwarves are unable to focus the eldritch powers at all.

*as per the PHB 1978, half elves can only achieve 8th level while full elves can achieve 11th and humans are unhindered in their advancement

Un-postworthy: B-sides and misses

2011-05-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

My publicist is constantly pestering me to make an effort to boost my presence in the Blogosphere, and one of the tactics that she keeps harping on is that I actually post stuff more often than once every month or two. Good idea, right? She's worth every penny. But where to find the material? I did some soul searching and didn;t find anything so I went to my good ol' bloglist and realized that--shit!--I've got like thirty unpublished posts just sitting there! Some dating dating all the way back to the first week I holed up in this here corner of the internet. I went down the list of titles to see if any of these might be worth another look and wrote up a brief synopsis of each. I didn't actually look at the posts; these are my best guesses.

Here's the list in reverse chronological order:

Dungeon of Liberty
The conflict of freedom of action in the confines of the "dungeon" adventuring milieu. Or something else.

I'm Beginning to See the Light
Why newer games suck.

Kill a Rat Scenario
A rant about rules quirks of AD&D

Original 6
An obvious hockey reference in a post dating from the beginning of the NHL season, but more likely an article about the 6 abilities in D&D.

Thac0 Again?
Wherein the Dicechucker goes off on yet another youngster who gets too close to his lawn.

Ramblin' 'bout Modules
Essay about the quirks of the L-series modules; the precursor to my Restenford Project site.

Thieves Assassins & Spies
Old Guard Accoutrements totally outdid me on this topic.

X2 Castle Amber
Essay about the non-CAS influences of said module.

Assassins revisited for the first time
Rant about the failings of the Assassin class as penned in AD&D; most likely the precursor to the Assassin level titles series from last fall.

Going to the Bullpen
The pros and cons of rotating DMs

SF: Getting drunk
Article on intoxicants in Star Frontiers. Ripped off wholesale from the Fronteirsman.

Modified Advanced Game Rules
Satirical bit about post-1e game rules.

Zet's Tiny People
An ode to Thundarr.

DMing As critique:
I plead the 5th.

Reverse Engineered Pre-Original Rules:
Satirical bit about the origins of D&D

Pre-Scorn AD&D:
Probably a rant wherein I say in a roundabout fashion that DragonLance can suck me.

"Cleric" is a Profession Too
It's true; look it up if you don't believe me.

Feral Hobbits:
I'm hoping there are illustrations with this one.

Greyhawk Architecture
Self explanatory. This one eventually became the Greyhawk Realty post.

Dice-chucker
Long-winded article about the name of this here blog. Eventually replaced with an entry in the Lexicon

Lendorology: What IS the Secret of Bone Hill?

2011-05-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

Anyone who can read a blog archive will realize that for the last several months I've been slacking off even by my own uninspired standards. Largely this has had to do with real world distractions like job and family but, at least initially, this also had to do with a side project that was draining off most of my game-related energies in the beginning of the year.

Where can I buy spandex in Restenford?

I had just received a real-live TSR produced copy of Lenard Lakofka's L1 The Secret of Bone Hill set on Lendore Isle. I won't pretend to be one of those old timers who believes that this is a classic of the golden age; taken as a straight up adventure module it's the equivalent of opening your lunch box at the school cafeteria and finding, yet again, a sandwich made of white bread and processed cheese food smeared with yellow mustard. However, a close reading raises a whole host of questions such as why is there a casino inside a near-impenetrable compound that is hidden deep in the woods? Why does the wizard have a lease on the Baron's tower? And who keeps the lawn mowed on top of Bone Hill? The lords of Lendore don't offer an explanation to these mysteries; some things, one must suppose, just are. These open ended oddities make it the single most fascinating read of any old school module.

So, using a pen and a spiral-bound notebook, I wrote a bunch of essays--warning: I was once a history major--about the mysteries of Lendore. Some of them (actually only 2 so far) have been transcribed to non-caveman format and can be read over at The Restenford Project if you're interested.

Appendix NF: Subterranean reading

2011-04-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

We've all heard more than enough about the famous Appendix N from the original DMG; if you haven't it's basically a bibliography compiled by Gary Gygax of the literature that inspired Dungeons & Dragons. But I've long wondered what some of the nonfiction titles might have been that egged EGG along in his effort to cobble together a fantastical subterranean medieval combat and treasure seeking role playing game. In my head I've been calling this list "Appendix NF"--pretty clever, eh?--and with my recent discovery of Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe by Sabine Baring-Gould, I've found a solid contender for my own D&D bibliography.

Published in 1911, the book describes in anecdotal form hundreds of different subterranean refuges and the often eccentric nature of the inhabitants. A century ago when the book was first published, several of these caves were still home to different segments of society--a rumored druidic cult in Loire France, vacationers in the Riviera, or a society of outcasts living in benign destitution, again in France. These and more are described in the awesomely titled chapter "Modern Troglodytes." Other game-boner inspiring chapter titles include "Cliff Castles," "Cave Oracles," "Robber Dens," and "Rock Sepulchres." The number of potential dungeon ideas is endless. If snippets like this one: "I visited old Edrie--the subterranean labyrinthic residence of King Og--on the east side of the Zanite hills" aren't enough to get your dungeon-making juices flowing then I doubt you're even reading this.

There are some illustrations in this book as well; old timey sketches by the author and occasional photographs--though not nearly enough of them to satisfy the visual demands of a 21st century gamer. But the antiquated, anglo-rific prose reeks of Lovecraft at times, such as when "A mass of cretaceous tufa has slipped bodily down to the foot of the crag." And at a century old, this book has probably been in the public domain since well before you were born, which explains why it is readily available from numerous print-on-demand outlets as well as for those downloady computer book thingies that non-cavemen read on the bus all the time. Hell, go over to Project Gutenberg and you'll be reading the thing for free in like 3 clicks of your mouse.

Assassination Resuscitation: The Old Man of the Mountain Returns!

2011-02-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry New Hampshire, your craggly old man is still absent from his mountaintop perch. I'm talking, of course, about the "old man" in northern Persia, Hassan i Sabbah, who popularized the secret society movement with his devoted throng of assassins in the 11th-12th century.

Owing to my recent obsession with the Assassin class from AD&D [see most of my posts from October - November of last year], anything with the word assassin in it tends to catch my eye lately. So when I was trawling the internet for cool downloads the other day, First Edition Dungeon Module I15: The Assassins of Abu-Dala by R.C. Pinnell smacked me across the oculars like an errant tether-ball. It's a desert-based assault on a mountain fortress described as having once been "home to the old man of the mountain; better known as the father of assassins." Nice! Also, there's a bit about the assassins ransacking caravans and slaughtering them to a man, which may or may not be a reference to the dastardly modus operandi of the Cult of Thuggi in India--whence the term "thug"--which was yet another secret society devoted to murder. Anyway, I dig anything with a cool historical reference that I'm even mildly knowledgeable about so I'm taking my gang of PCs through this one next.

First Anniversary Fortnight Fiesta

2011-01-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

We're just cleaning up the cave here at Dice-Chucker Central after the fortnight-long bacchanalia that marked the first anniversary of me clogging up the internet with my vapid, pixelated fumes. Thanks to all of you who came by to help celebrate. Mrs. Dice-Chucker was most impressed with all of your behavior and says that you can all come back anytime. And, though we appreciated the sentiment, despite the presence of vintage DM screens and my Robert Smith haircut, it was not an 80s theme party so whoever brought the Bartles & James and cocaine, we put them out on the back porch; feel free to claim them at any time. Thanks again to everyone who dropped by this site over the past year.

An actual photo from the event. That's me holding the flaming punch bowl.

Death Ray Enthusiasts Rejoice!

2011-01-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

If, like me, your enthusiasm for death rays knows no bounds, you will want to familiarize yourself with David H. Szondy's Tales of Future Past site which documents all manner of historic death rays. Sadly, during WWII death ray research was supplanted in favor of a device with a proven track record in mass destruction--atomic weapons--but not before crackpot scientists the world round tried their hand at the genre; most notably Mr. Nikola Tesla. And to think there was once a time when I thought Tesla was just a band.

Castles & Crusades: Highlights and Lowlights of an RPG

2011-01-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

This post was originally going to be titled "Things about C&C that irritate me" but that seemed like an overly negative post for a game that I don't actually hate, so I added a few of the things that aren't sucky down at the bottom. Which is to say that if the "Things about C&C that are kinda' cool" seem like an afterthought it's because they are.

Things about C&C that make me cringe:
Rogues--What exactly are rogue's tools? A feathered cap to be worn rakishly askew? A rolled up sock for augmenting your cod piece? C'mon guys, you brought back illusionists and Glaive-guisarmes but you couldn't find it in you to resuscitate thieves?
SIEGE engine--Why is SIEGE in all caps? Is it an acronym for something? An encrypted message? A cry for help?
Prime Attributes--There's already a mechanism in place for determining how well someone does at attribute-based tasks; it's called an attribute score.
Peter Bradley--The game is thoroughly saturated with Peter B's graphic stylings. Indeed, C&C rulebooks are a veritable monoculture of half tone heroes captured in spasm-inducing poses, tight trousers, and cumbersome footwear. In the Bradleyverse, the sun is a dying orb whose cold rays provide a meager warmth that is inadequate to sustain mirth of any sort. It is a realm where heroes seek out isolated locales to contemplate their unfortunate wardrobe choices and where experience point bonuses are granted for crafting poetry about how your mother failed to love you.
Alea Iacta Est--In their eagerness to portray themselves as a buncha' pretentious douchebags, the Troll Lords uncovered an exception to the maxim that anything that sounds cool in English sounds even cooler in Latin. Say "the die is cast" and "alea iacta est" out loud. One sounds like something a badass mo'fo might say on the brink of a showdown, but the other is merely a cumbersome mishmash of consonant-deficient syllables the utterance of which will inspire your enemies and friends alike to slap you down, wrench your underpants up to the nape of your neck, and take your lunch money.
Wisdom--It measures your ability to use good judgment, how acute your senses are, how well you resist confusion, spells, and gaze attacks, and it also "represents a spiritual connection to a deity." You can also stack the dirty dishes in it after dinner until such time as you feel like cleaning them.
Illusionists--Not really C&C's fault, but what's the advantage of a character class that's like a wizard, but has a more limited spell selection? At least the C&C version does not try to pass illusionist off as a prestige class by insisting that they have an excessively high dexterity score.
Overwrought flavor text--"From the maelstrom of war and conflict great warriors arise blah blah blah..." I can imagine the guy who narrates all the movie trailers recording the audiobooks version of the C&C PHB.
Excessive Polearms--Caught following too closely in the footsteps of AD&D, C&C offers us 15 unpronounceable and indiscernible pole-mounted weapons that completely fail to be of interest to anyone who isn't a medieval weaponry fascist.

Things about C&C that are kinda' cool:
Character Sheets--They're by Darlene!

Ascending AC--I have to admit, C&C was the first place I heard of such a thing--sort of--and I was not repulsed.
Cheap Books--Of course this loses its significance once you've bought them. In fact, when considering C&C vs. a game for which you had to shell out 40 bones per tome, you might play the pricey one more often just to get your money's worth.
k.d. lang--Tell me, is the bard on page 114 of the C&C PHB as well as on the cover of the Monsters & Treasure book not inspired by the sapphic songstress ca. 1995?
Hags--Have you seen these babes in the Monster & Treasure book? With the exception of the Night Hag--who sports the quintessential warts and cronish hideousness--they all look sort of like that waitress at Hooters that you and your friends stiffed on the tip that one night back in college.
The Bald Monk--I love that they picked a middle aged dude with male pattern baldness to be the spokes-model for monks.
Gnomes--I thought there was something kinda' cool about gnomes. Maybe not.

Holiday Reading

2011-01-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

Imagine Thomas Pynchon, working as a sports writer for the Daedalus Journal of Arts and Sciences, is covering a heavyweight bout between M.C. Escher and Jorge Luis Borges. After quaffing a few cervezas in honor of Borges--who won by KO in the 6th round, though Escher came back in the 11th and busted a chair over his head to force a decision--Pynchon gets lost on the grounds of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado and is never seen again. Much later, Jon Krakauer finds Pynchon's sprawling report in the restrooms of a long abandoned subway station. Krakauer submits it to his editor, Will Shortz, who personally sets the type and runs the presses. If you're still here then check out House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Assassination Culmination

2010-12-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

All right, I'm going to skip over levels 10-14 until such time as I can find a reason to chat about the terms Expert, Senior, Chief, Prime or Guildmaster as they apply to Assassinry. So hold on to your dice bags kiddies 'cuz we're going straight to the top: Grandfather of Assassins.

As was mentioned previously, the word assassins was first used to describe a fanatical cult in Persia from the middle ages. The founder of this cult was Hassan-i-Sabbah, who, by shacking up in his mountain castle, earned the title Sheik al Jebal which translates to "Prince of the mountain" or, the preferred term in this case, "Old Man of the Mountain."* This old man was the original Grandfather of Assassins; a single person who ruled over the entire order of death bringers. But unlike the D&D usage, though eh is responsible for numerous murders, he was not a professional killer and very likely he never killed anyone with his own hand. Rather, he was the dude with the charisma to charm you into devoting your life to the cause, and also the dude to tell you when the cause needed you to take action and whack some mo' fo' who'd talked trash about your cult.

* Alternatively, there are sources that say that it was the leader of the Syrian branch who was referred to as the Old Man of the Mountain.

This dude is also, allegedly, the grandfather of the mystic cult phenomenon; the Crusaders, and particularly the Knights Templar, took what they learned about the Order of Assassins back to Europe and thus was born the culty trappings we now associate with mystic groups still extant such as the Freemasons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, and the American Institute of Architects.

For those interested in further reading, there's a novel titled Alamut written by the Slovenian author Vladimir Bartol that is based on the cult of Assassins and the treachery of Hassan-i-Sabbah. Published in 1938, the book was translated into 18 languages and has achieved bestseller status in Spain and France, but it was not translated into English until 2004. A few pages into it and I wish they had taken a few more years to work on that translation. One gets the sense that the poor fellow approached the translation as if he were transcribing legal documents, not reconstructing linguistic subtleties to convey a narrative... or whatever. The result is repetitive use of simplistic sentence structures which make for very tedious reading. Despite its subject matter, it seems like it was written for children. Brush up on your Spanish or French--or, better yet, your Slovenian--if you really wanna read this one.

Seasons Greetings from the Mad Archmage

2010-12-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

As promised in my last post on the matter, I'm bringing you the latest holiday adventure news from The Castle of the Mad Archmage by Joseph Bloch, aka. Greyhawk Grognard. When we left off, our intrepid adventurers had, after slaughtering most of an orc outpost, formed an uneasy alliance with the surviving members in order to take on a hobgoblin posse on the 3rd level. Since my memory of the exact events has eroded considerably, this will be a succinct report.

Bob and I decided that having a mission--in this case, killing off hobgoblins to foster an alliance with orcs--was not what where we wanted to take this game. So we developed an exit strategy: the orcs drew up a rough map of the adjacent terrain, led the party down to the 3rd level, and... slunk away at the first sign of trouble. But not before they slipped a shiv into Quisling's ribs. Quisling, an orc that we charmed during our assault, survived the attack and was very thankful to the party for nursing him back to health and saving him once again--or so he believes--from the treachery of his own clan. He's such a sincere and trusting chap.

It was at this point that Godraviel, the elfmaid who had charmed Quisling in the first place, could handle the crushing guilt no longer and revealed to him the truth of the situation. That is, he was under a charm spell and that we had killed his former colleagues and lied to him in order to secure his assistance in defeating the rest of his clan. She told him that she was releasing him from the spell so that he could choose his own fate. Since he was not actually released from her spell--I decided that it is not actually within her power to do so--and since she was so sincere in her speech, the end result was to further Quisling's infatuation with the elfmaid. We rolled up his stats and made the orc a full fledged party member. Now we have to figure out the characteristics of the Orc character race in S&W...

In the end, we did honor our deal with the orcs by killing the 12 requisite hobgoblins, but it cost us dearly, as Brodsky the cleric was left for dead and Glebberd the Halfregnome and Polvo the dwarf--who, through their quick wits and upbeat personalities have overcome their diminutive stature and become the very heart and soul of the party--were nearly done for as well. On our way back to the surface, we ran into the Bandits again from our first encounter, and, pointing out that

we still didn't have anything worth stealing, and
we would be back later,

they agreed to let us pass, though they insisted, for inventory reasons, that Quisling must remain in the dungeon. A quick sleep spell to even the forces and some tough talk from Polvo about where they can shove their dungeon rules, and the bandits agreed to let us pass, though, in order to allow them to save face, we paid 10 GPs for Quisling's liberation, and agreed to leave still-heavily-wounded Sigurd in their custody to assure our return to the dungeon. Little do they know that everyone in our party hates Sigurd.

From here on out, I'm running the bandits not as opportunistic ruffians preying on honest adventurers but as legitimate dungeon bureaucrats in the employ of the Mad Archmage. Responsible for such things as dungeon inventory, revenue, and customer service, they can be counted on for dungeoneering assistance to adventurers--extra torches and the like, limited dungeon intell, or even a bunk to rest the wounded in--but who also require an accounting of monsters killed and traps sprung for re-stocking purposes; and exact a tariff for anything removed from the dungeon edifice.

Assassination Origination

2010-12-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

So the inspiration of this here string of posts on the AD&D Assassin class level titles is finally at hand; we've reached the eponymous 9th level: Assassin.

The word assassin is derived from the word Hashshashin, a term used in Syria--not the Lendore Isles as some would have you believe--to describe a fanatical sect of Islam called the Ismailis who were a small but troublesome religious/political force in the 11th-13th centuries. Lacking a powerful army and considered heretics by the Muslim establishment of the day, the Ismailis holed up in a few castles in an isolated valley in northern Persia and dissuaded their numerically superior enemies from invading by murdering key political figures. Though the cult was centered in the mountains of Persia, the term assassin is believed to have come about in reference to the Syrian branch of the group that the Crusaders came in contact with. Hashshashin means "outcast" or "rabble" but also was associated with users of the psychotropic herb hashish. And although most Assassin scholars believe that it is its meaning as a pejorative term for outcasts that originally inspired the application of the word, the western world has latched onto that hashish connection and had a blast with it ever since.

Anyway, the cult was formed by a man named Hassan-i-Sabbah, among other spellings, who took control of an impregnable castle known as Alamut, and gathered around himself a throng of devoted followers who were willing to obey his every command. They were trained in the fine arts of duplicity and sent out into the world to gain the trust of various persons of interest to the Assassins, usually folks with titles like Sultan, Vizier, or Imam. Once they'd inveigled their way into the homes of these dudes as household servants, body guards, or even trusted advisers, they lived a life of faithful service to them, never betraying their origins until such day that the signal came from Alamut, at which point they would cram a dagger through their erstwhile compadre's ribs. They often kept up their ruse for years or even decades and, depending on how things worked out, the signal might never come. Deep cover, my friends. Indeed, there is very early usage of the word assassin that implies not a hired killer but a person of unsurpassed devotion.

Once the devotee had done the deed, the assassin did not generally slink away into the night; no, getting caught was, more often than not, part of the job. By submitting to capture and execution, the assassins did more than just kill the leaders of their enemies; the combination of their skill at subterfuge and complete devotion wreaked havoc on their enemies psyches as well. A culture of paranoia spread like wildfire, and speaking out--much less taking military action--against the Assassins soon fell into disfavor.

Most of the useful information in this post is derived from the book The Assassins by Bernard Lewis, originally published in 1968 by Basic Books, Inc. New York. It's a somewhat scholarly tome describing the religious and political events of Islamic world during the time of the Assassins. Also, the wikipedia entry for Hashshashin is pretty informative.

Assassination Irritation: Twofer

2010-12-06T15:42:00.000-08:00

It's been more than 2 weeks now since my last entry on the assassin level titles, and--despite the fact that at least one person has confirmed interest in this topic, thank you--there's a good reason for the delay: cutthroat and executioner. Everyone knows what they mean, there's nothing particularly interesting about the etymology of these terms and, most importantly, every time I look for an intriguing cultural reference, I fall asleep at my keyboard.

But rather than avoid them forever--especially since I've already written up level 9--I'll lump them both down in one dose and move on with life.

Cutthroat: a race of sharp throated people. The men of this tribe were known to hone their throats to such fineness that they used them to shave. Or whiddle implements from wood. Also the name of an arts journal.

Executioner: one who wears a black hood but no shirt.

Actually, this one is mildly interesting because it really just meant someone who carries out some action, much like how "executor" is used today to describe the guy who carries out your will after you go off to Valhalla. In time it came to be primarily associated with executing a sentence of death on whatever poor sap/evil cutthroat whose head was to be relegated to the wicker basket.

On a related note, my first AD&D character was an elf named Elfrandel the Executor. In my defense, I pronounced it "ex-uh-cuter" instead of the more traditional "egg-zek-you-ter."

I only just now found out that Executor is also the name of those big space ships that those dudes who got choked by Darth Vader drove around in. And George Lucas was probably not 11 when he named them.

Assassination Constipation: Dynamite with a lazer beam

2010-11-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that no one gives a rat's ass, I continue to nibble away at the AD&D Assassin class level titles one by one, week by creeping, tiresome week. Now here we are at level 6: Killer. Up there with murderer in terms of originality, but it's got more juice to it. While a murderer can be any amateur who kills someone for any reason, a killer is someone who's practiced at it and perhaps even enjoys it. Indeed, "killer" has taken on the meaning of adroitness at some particular skill, a la "lady killer."

Also, it's the name of a live action role playing game by Steve Jackson.

Now, I could have have been really lazy and kept in the hockey theme and used Killer Carlson as my pop culture connection, but that seems kinda' trite. Instead, here's Freddy Mercury for ya:

Red Box of Snooze

2010-11-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

It was a cold, gloomy November day yesterday--perfect D&D weather--so I wandered over to my local nerd store to see what's brewing and what do I see but the red Basic D&D box staring at me. I'm savvy enough to know that this is not the same game I knew in the 80's, but rather the Wizards of Renton have come up with a new marketing scheme in hopes of recapturing a crowd of aging, former players who maybe don't care for the new D&D look, what with its anime-inspired heroes wielding clumsy-looking weapons. That sounds like me, right? So, yeah, I picked it up and looked it over, and, at the righteous price of $20, I seriously considered it.

But I didn't pull the trigger. While there were prominent non-gaming reasons for this--I was saving my shekels for mundane books of professional interest at a nearby bookstore--a big factor was that I'm a Holmeser, and by the time Frank Mentzer's "Red Box" set came out--or, as we called it at the time, 3rd Edition Basic--I was deeply enmeshed in AD&D and frowned on that juvenile--though admittedly slick looking--offering. As a result I only ever played the Mentzer version for short snippets at school with Johnny-come-lately friends who got the red box for Christmas. I certainly never deigned to familiarize myself with its subtleties--and haven't bothered to this day. Indeed, I was already an edition snob.

Beginning in 8th grade and stumbling along until 10th, I played in a long series of lunch-time micro-sessions usually using Mentzer rules. These games were attended largely by novices which only served to exacerbate our inability to get into a gaming flow before the 5th period bell signaled us back to reality. Our characters never developed beyond dice-wielding stat-golems, our dungeons just so many lines of carbon scratched on the backside of old math homework. We sought out other stat-golems of questionable malevolence to pulverize with our dice and did nothing with the treasure we gained as, again and again, we failed to bring a single adventure to any semblance of fruition. These sessions would go on for a few weeks or so before we lost interest. Then, weeks or months later, having forgotten how dismal the previous sessions had been, we'd start up again with a whole new set of characters and a thermos full of as-yet unvanquished hope to wash down our PBJs on Wonder bread.

It is telling that I have no memory of any of the dungeons I ran, characters that I played, or even a single in-game event that occurred during these sessions, though I can still recall in great detail characters and events from my home game that occurred in years previous. And it will likely come as no surprise that most of those friends who played during lunch didn't stick with the game for any length of time. And as I found out yesterday, I still to this day associate the Red Box with tedious D&D played by disinterested kids; worried more about the upcoming French vocab quiz than how to gain the treasure of the Many-headed-hydra. I wonder about those friends wherever they are now; should they happen upon the same red box will it inspire poignant memories of lost youth? Or thoughts of adolescent boredom and gaming malaise?

Assassination Apparition: Thug

2010-11-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

So we're up to Level 5: Thug. To research today's post, rather than read up on the cult of Thuggee that plagued travelers in India for centuries by infiltrating caravans and then, when the time was right, murdering them to a man and making off with their goods, I spent the better part of the afternoon watching hockey fights on Youtube. You just can't go wrong with Bob Probert, may his fists rest in peace. The consummate professional, he never looked back from a fight; once the last punch was thrown he just skated off and did his time. You definitely got the impression that the fighting was never personal, and this is important to consider if you're entering the assassin trade. It's a business; you take the job, you do the work, you move on. A detached sense of morality is crucial.

Two of the heavy weights:

If you are interested in the Thuggee cult, check out Pierce Brosnan in The Deceivers, or, if you're one o' them literary types, read the book of the same name--written by John Masters--upon which the film was based. I actually watched this movie a few years ago whilst on a Brosnan bender that included Matador--a great movie on the topic of assassins.

Assassination Amoritization: Murther most foul!

2010-11-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

"Congratulations my son, your latest accomplishment has merited advancement to the 4th level of assassinry," says the Guildmaster, "you are now--wait for it--a Murderer!"
"Murderer?! I paste the innards of the heir-apparent all over the Baron's private bed chamber and I get to be a character in an Agatha Christie novel? This guild is for douchebags. I'm outta' here!"

For further reading: Ray Bradbury's prescient--if non-assassin-based--short story of technology-induced sensory overload, "The Murderer." Nah, don't bother. I mean it's all right but nothing special.

I'll try again tomorrow with Thug; much more meat there.

Assassination Edification: What the eff is a "waghalter"?

2010-10-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

Waghalter: one likely to be hanged (obs.) As in they will wag (like a dogs tail) from a halter (noose). Kinda' grisly, eh?

Actually, the term "Wag"--which is still occasionally used to describe a prankster--is derived from waghalter. Extra grisly.

And on a cultural note: Ignatz Waghalter was a classical composer of the early-mid 20th century. He did not, as far as Wikipedia indicates, meet his end at the gallows. Though, being a Jew working in Berlin during the 1930s, he was forced to flee the country; he lived out his last years in NYC.

Assassination Fascination: Rutterkin?

2010-10-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Devoid of the context of D&D, I might have guessed that a rutterkin is either the object or the outcome of hillbilly love. It seems highly unlikely, however, that Gygax was inspired to name 2nd level assassins after a viewing of "Deliverance." Still, I suspect that rutterkin is derived from literature; probably some murderous antagonist by some Appendix N author. However, one of the few sources Google could dredge up that was not some demon from Latter Day D&D was this bit from Wikipedia: Rutterkin was the name of the cat/familiar that the witches of Belvoir used to kill the Earl of So-and-So in Merry old England back in the 16th or 17th century. While this is applicable in some regards--the cat was an agent of death--I'm still guessing EGG was not inspired by an ensorceled cat.

And while Webster was no help on this one--neither the online version nor my hefty New Universal Unabridged from 1979--The Free Dictionary came up with "an old crafty fox or beguiler." And that, I fear, might be it.

Also, there was an episode of an old, British Robin Hood series from the 80s (not the current British Robin Hood series) titled Rutterkin. And another aside: the star of this series was a young Jason Connery, the son of James Freakin' Bond!

Assassination Obuscation: Johnny Bravo

2010-10-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

Herein I shall, in serial fashion, scatter random thoughts on the level titles of the Lethalist class.

Assassin Level 1--Bravo.

As we all know, bravo is a somewhat pretentious synonym for "hooray!" and its ilk. Webster also reminds us that it means "hired killer; assassin; desperado." Perhaps because of the dual meaning of the word, bravo has connotations of showiness; a guy who goes out of his way to let his badassedness be known in order to enhance his image and, presumably, get more chicks. Sort of the anti-ninja.

A trip over to Wikipedia reveals that bravi was a term for the hired goons of the Dons of northern Italy during the 16th & 17th centuries. Said bravi are featured prominently in the 19th c. novel The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. One more for the reading list.

Side note: Thieves and assassins of 1st level are listed as "Apprentice (rogue)" and "Apprentice (bravo)." Probably this has to do with the guild system which both classes adhere to, but it stands in stark contrast to the paradoxical level title of 1st level fighters: "Veteran"

Hot Links: Get'cher hauberks here!

2010-10-07T22:45:00.000-07:00

Whilst researching construction materials for work the other day I came across this excellent website. Who knew you could get anodized aluminum chain mail? Light weight, good corrosion resistance; how could you go wrong? The site includes the all too important chain mail user's guide.

The Undead Strike Back: Turning Clerics

2010-09-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

Did anyone ever use this rule:

When a cleric meets an undead creature that is beyond his/her powers to turn/command, then the cleric must roll--on a d20--a number equal to or greater than the Hit Dice of the undead +1/level the cleric is deficient of being able to affect said undead species.

For example, a first level cleric encounters a vampire: HD 9 (I think) and unaffected by clerics less than 6th level,* 9 + (6-1) = 14. Therefore Archie the Acolyte needs to roll a 14 or higher or be turned/commanded by Count D. This Rule also applies to Ponce the Paladin.

Me neither.

* Crunchier AD&D folks might notice a discrepancy in these numbers from the AD&D standard--or they might not, I really can't say. If there is a discrepancy it's 'cuz I'm referencing the HackmasterPlayer's Handbook "Table 12K: Turning Undead" for the undead turning probabilities shown here because, well, the Hackmaster books are closer at hand. I mean c'mon--my friggin' AD&D PHB is all the way over there on that bookshelf.

Unified Field Theory of Wizdom

2010-09-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I discussed a slight cosmetic change to the wisdom attribute by altering the name to Wizdom; a step which strips it of off-target real world associations--sagacity, sound judgment, etc.--as well as shameful definitions from the gaming milieu--can anyone out there say "connection to a deity" or "strength of spirit" without developing a nervous twitch in their eyelid? Today I intend to take things a step further; I will refine the very structure of what has long been the sorriest attribute in order to shore it up and make it logically sound and significant to game play. Yes, I'm feeling full of myself; what of it? So, here are the parameters:

Wizdom must apply to the character, not the player;
Wizdom has to reasonably provide game mechanics that are useful to all character classes;
Wizdom must, using the same logic that makes the attribute useful to all classes, also provide a reasonable explanation for why it should be the prime requisite for cleric's; and
Wizdom, if possible, should encompass the various game mechanics commonly associated with the Wisdom attribute throughout the Olde Schoole gaming community.

You still with me? Good. Without further ado, I present to you...

Wizdom, n: a measure of a character's capacity to focus or devote fully his or her mental energies toward a task, vocation, cause, code of conduct, belief system, or divine/malign force or being.

As such, Wizdom defines a character's capacity for sustained, intense focus of his inner forces. In modern parlance, it would encompass one's internal motivation, passion, and drive; guts, mojo, and heart (in the wholehearted sense, not the magnanimous sense) would fall under the Wizdom umbrella. It's that stuff that gets you out of bed in the morning and compels you to [CLICHE ALERT] be the best that you can be, give it 110%, keep your eyes on the prize, yada yada. This is not to say that a highly wizdomed (wize) character will be an aggro-"Eye of the Tiger"-chanting d-bag; one could just as easily be a serene Buddhist monk on the road to enlightenment, a stoic warrior, or a sly burglar. And while this focus makes Wizdom useful to the success of any character class, which class would most obviously benefit from exceptional capacity for devotion? That's right, baby; a wize cleric will be much better equipped to impress his Deity that he is highly devoted to the cause and is willing and able to bring acclaim to Her name.

OK, how does this manifest itself in game terms, you ask? Let us count the ways:

Resist mind affecting magics: Intense devotion of the psyche gives wize characters a profound sense of self, making it harder for outside forces to corrupt said self. Thus, they are awarded a bonus to saving throws against enchantment/charm spells and any effort to possess the character in mind or body or otherwise cause aberrations to this sense of self.
Endure physical/mental suffering: Related to #1 above, the wize have advanced willpower and thus are better equipped to endure unpleasant physical forces such as torture, exhaustion, fear, etc. One's constitution or strength will determine the actual threshold of suffering; wiz determines how well they keep their spirit intact in the face of extreme suffering.
Perform under stress: Capacity of concentration and focus on achieving goals would also give Wize characters a bonus to perform tasks under duress. For example, Bart the Thief is trying to open a locked door to escape from a voracious gelatinous cube that is hurdling toward him at top speed. His Cool J determines that Bart will suffer a penalty for performing under such extreme circumstances. Were Bart gifted with a high wizdom score, the Cool J might allow him to apply his wizdom bonus to his dice roll. The wize would therefore be much more likely to be clutch performers while unwize characters would tend to be choke-artists.
Efficient learning: Those characters able to better focus on their work are driven to achieve success and will thus be more efficient and effective in their studies/practice of said skills than the dude with loads of natural talent but little personal drive. Think of the athletes who lack the speed or size to compete in their sport but manage, through sheer force of will, to excel while more naturally gifted athletes sometimes fall prey to off-court/field/ice distractions (drugs, crime, acting/singing/modelling careers) that ultimately detract from their on-court performance. This absolutely makes more sense than giving exceptionally strong fighters an experience advantage and you know it!
Extra spells for clerics: The Divine forces, in acknowledgment of your devotion, kick a few extra spells your way every morning.
Increased focus of the senses: I didn't really have this in mind when I started this essay, but for you late-edition types, it wouldn't take too much extrapolation to include perception in wizdom's horn o' plenty.

Implementing all six of these might, ultimately, be too much for one attribute to handle; Wizdom's stock value would skyrocket from dump-stat for non-clerics to everyone's 2nd favorite ability, possibly disrupting the established Attribute Hierarchy and causing a character generation crisis on par with the 6-sider shortage of 1981. DM discretion will, of course, dictate the full effects of Wizdom, but I hope that I've shown adequately that with one reasonably concrete definition Wizdom, or mental focus, could measure success in the numerous spheres of Wisdom without stooping to vagaries and non sequiturs, and that is all that I hoped to do.

Wisdom Revised Part 1: The Nose Job

2010-09-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

As almost none of you might recall, some time ago I went on a tirade about the poorly conceived wisdom attribute in D&D et. al. The definitions of wisdom in every version of D&D of which I am knowledgeable--which includes many of the recent "retro clones" but none of the post-Gygax era TSR/WoTC/Hasbro editions--do not, in my opinion, do an adequate job of defining an attribute that stands on solid ground compared with the other five abilities. So in this two part post, I propose a significant remodel of the ol' "Prime requisite of clerics" that I hope will turn the dilapidated shanty of wisdom into a structurally and functionally sound work of art; one that is useful to non-clerics and actually relevant to the relationship between the religiously inclined and the divine powers that bolster their existence.

Since none of us are pretending that the Wisdom attribute should be a measurement of a character's philosophic or scientific learning--that, Mr. Player, is your job--my first act in the wisdom re-design is to give us a little room to maneuver. Which is to say, I'd like to alter the terminology--just a bit, mind you; we old schoolers like some change, but it has to be bear enough semblance of the original to fit into our established structure. Since "wisdom" has distracting real world significance that does not jibe with game mechanics, I propose to you the fresh, 21st century term: Wizdom. Whaddaya' think?

To get to this newfangled yet familiar term, I took a cue from the food additives industry; just as "creme" and "chick'n" evoke an image of what we are eating but are removed in substance from the source material, wizdom provides pleasing familiarity with our gaming roots and acknowledgment of some sort of mental trait, but by merely swapping the "s" for a "z" we are freed from the baggage associated with the standard English word. Yet unlike cream manque or poultry's soy-based doppelganger, wizdom, I believe, shall improve upon the original; providing a more satisfying, grounded gaming attribute--concrete in scope yet delightful to the palate. Enjoy!

Greyhawk Realty: Looking to buy in the Flannaes

2010-08-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

I used to thrill at the sight of above-ground structures in D&D adventures, and only partly because of the claustrophobia I felt when we ventured under the earth to get our adventure on. The great beauty of those supraterranean dungeon locales was that they offered the greatest treasure of all--real estate! As soon as I was done clearing out the baddies, I was sending in teams of the most stylish architects, skilled contractors, and beguiling realtors in all of Oerth to transform these lairs of evil into pleasure palaces.

Bottomless was my desire for new real estate to develop, and though I turned many of my gaming colleagues home-brewed settings into garden estates and townhouses, I preferred the name-brand recognition provided by the official TSR-published adventures. Indeed some of the most posh addresses in the Flannaes are laid out in those classic modules. Here are just a few:

First off was the moathouse in T1 Village of Homlet. When I was done with it, it had become a lovely 7 bedroom, 5 bath cottage with a spacious ballroom and extensive wine cellar. I even drained the swamp--had to get rid of those murderous giant frogs somehow--and started a vineyard. I've also put an offer on Rufus and Byrne's little hilltop chateau closer to town. They've apparently grown bored with the rustic setting of Homlet and are thinking of moving to a more exciting and open-minded burg.

U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh: It took some work to overcome it's "haunted" reputation, but I finally tidied up the mansion on the bluff and sold it for a nice profit. The private beach access was a huge selling point. The smuggler's ship is available separately. Serious inquiries only.

UK3 The Gauntlet has the fabulous Keep of Alderweg, a rugged mountain getaway with stunning vistas and exquisite stonework. Ease of access makes it a great spot for a B&B during ski season.

B2 Keep on the Borderlands: A quaintly rustic tree house in a grove of stately oak trees close to both the eponymous Keep and the adventure-laden Caves of Chaos, the Mad Hermit's lair is perfectly located for a weekend retreat.

A3Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords Buy in the Pomarj?! Ridiculous, right? Actually, no other neighborhood on Oerth offers such a great investment opportunity. Centrally located, close to numerous shipping lanes, adjacent to the always-happening Wild Coast and speckled with bucolic hilltops, the Pomarj is a neighborhood on the brink of greatness. Though gentrification is already underway, a townhouse in Suderheim can still be had for a song. You won't have to wait long for this transitional neighborhood to give you a nice return. The amount of house you can get for your copper will make this a very enticing place to start a family.

X2 Castle Amber: Located in a parallel dimension, this eccentric chateau is far, far off the beaten path. Comprised of enormous, lavishly furnished chambers complete with an expansive indoor garden, it's definitely worth consideration if you're thinking about retirement or if you're needing a secluded getaway in which to lay low for a while. At this price, it won't be available for long!

But not all castles are equal, and several promising locales have failed to make an impact in the real estate market. A prime example: I could barely contain my excitement when I set out to exorcise the ghosts from C1 Ghost Tower of Inverness and convert the place to condos. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the tower itself was the ghost. Completely worthless as a development property.

L1-Secret of Bone Hill While Len Lakofka's quirky L-series modules are among my favorites, it's not for the fine architecture. The structures of Restenford are particularly lacking in charm. Have a look at the Baron's squat, cramped, little abode; the master bedroom suite is the same size as the servant's quarters--tiny!--and completely windowless. Look to Pelltar's rental tower* or the castle atop Bone Hill--a definite fixer-upper but with panoramic views of the surrounding countryside--for a better investment.

* Strangely, the lease terms of the tower are actually included in the module.

L2 Assassin's Knot The Lord Mayor's castle down the coast in Garrotten, though a vast improvement over L1's dreary domiciles, was still too cramped and utilitarian to inspire the hominess most buyers look for. Add to that the reputation of the aptly named town and this place was too tough of a sell to merit pursuing.

N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile Gods: Another of my favorite modules, but alas, I couldn't drum up any interest for the temple. If anyone wants it, you can buy it from the Town of Orlane for back taxes. Might be a good spot for a night club one day.

If anyone out there has their hands on a promising property in Greyhawk (pre-war structures only, thank you; there's just no market for those over-stylized newer properties) let me know if you're looking for an agent with experience selling in the area.

Castle of the Mad Archmage Session 2 Part I: Thar be orcs!

2010-07-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Carjacked Seraphim's (excellent blog name, by the way) recent foray into Joseph Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage (CotMA), I've decided to kickstart my own narrative of said dungeon.
It's hard to believe that I haven't gotten around to writing up the 2nd session but here it is mid-July, summer is almost here (in Seattle anyway), and I'm reporting on events that happened in January. Actually, knowing me, that isn't hard to believe at all.

For those who haven't read the earlier posts on this matter, my friend Bob and I are sort of tag-team DM-ing this thing, so, in many regards, we're playing D&D as a board game, and we often end up both simultaneously DM-ing and running the party. One of the odd results of this clusterf**k approach to dungeoneering is that, as often as not, we are working together against our own characters trying to figure out how the dungeon would react to this invasion by an adventuring party. But, since we haven't read ahead in the dungeon, we don't really know what's around the corner which makes such conspiring somewhat ineffectual.

Anyway, our 2nd session occurred about a week after the first session, which is to say, nearly 6 months ago. This time I came prepared; in addition to the S&W core rules PDF, I’m packin' the S&W Monster Compendium, AD&D Monster Manual (piñata dragon version) and the C&C Monsters & Treasures tome, and I’ve also downloaded the OSRIC and Labyrinth Lords rules. We’re still out of luck if we run into more olive slime or anything from the F[r]iend Folio, but we’ve definitely got a lot more ground covered this time out.

Unfortunately, you'll have to bear with my memory a bit as, sadly, my notes from this session are less than helpful; they read thusly:

“CotMA Session 2: ”

One thing that I do recall is that this is the session when the now infamous slope discussion arose, but since that’s been covered at length elsewhere, I’ll move on. Before embarking on session 2, we added two more humble adventurers to our number: Barkurp the Wise (a fighter with a 17 wisdom, though he’s only got a 6 intelligence),* and a magic user named Cleavebourne, who, thanks to his 13 strength, supplants Borrance, the other magic user, as the strongest member of the party.

*We used the fatalist approach to character generation: the character's name, race, and class are determined before we roll 3d6, keeping the results in the order rolled, for the 6 abilities. As a result, in addition to the aforementioned hellaciously wize fighting man, we have a dwarf with an 8 constitution but an 18 charisma, and 3 spell casters (an Elf and 2 MUs) whose intelligence range from as low as 10 all the way up to a high of 11. But, OD&D/S&W being what it is, these stats have almost no significant consequence on game play.

This time out, the courageous party selected a different entrance from the 3 options available to intrepid CotMA delvers. They stumbled down the stairs into a room occupied by a giant tick and... I have absolutely no recollection of this encounter. I do remember that they opened another closet full of (2) skeletons, though these were much less impressed by our cleric’s pious stance than in the previous effort. In fact, they showed some serious undead combat competence by hacking the crap out of our front line: Sigurd was once again knocked to 0 Hp--man, he's a lightweight--and Polvo the dwarf was gimping around with only 2 HP before the magic users finally stepped in and knocked the grins off those skeletal mugs. After so many years of AD&D in my system, it’s hard to grasp the combat effectiveness of low level OD&D magic users. At 1st level they use the same attack charts as fighters and get 1d6 HP—only slightly less well endowed than a fighter’s d6+1. Add to that the lack of combat bonuses for strength in OD&D and the only real advantage 1st level fighters have in combat is 1 additional hit point and their unrestricted choice of armor.

Anyway, a little while later our brave party was listening at a door when they heard orcs--a bunch of ‘em. We devised a plan wherein we would bust in and cast a sleep spell on these bozos before they could beat the crap out of us. With a little luck of the dice, we achieved surprise and put all the snouty suckers to sleep before they could even let out a peep. We dragged one of 'em out in the hall and cast Charm Person on him while the rest of the orcs were knifed in their sleep. The Charm seemed to work because he was rather endeared to Cleaveborn, the new magic user, or was it Goldraviel the elf?* Anyway, he informed us that the other door in the room lead to 2 more rooms inhabited by 6 more of his clan, a clan which also occupied several more rooms on a lower level of the dungeon. We fed him some BS story about how we had saved him from his colleagues who were traitors and had been about to kill him and steal the clan’s treasure blah blah blah; he agreed to help us deal with the other guys.

*Another consequence of our peculiar gaming method is that the characters are not really achieving a great deal of individuation; they really function as a communal entity most of the time.

Back in the orc room, we tipped over a large table and some cots near the wall opposite the unopened door to provide shelter for our archers Glebberd the halfthing, Polvo the dwarf, and Goeatyourveal the elf. Sadly, our best archer, Sigurd the near-dead ranger, was resting in an empty room down the hall. The rest of the party hid in the alcove in which the entry door was set, while the charmed Orc lay down amidst the corpses on the floor and sprung the trap by calling for help. A moment later the door flew open and 3 orcs burst into the room. If they were shocked to see the decimated ranks of their colleagues, they had no time to show it; a flurry of arrows pelted into them—the dice were on our side!—and 1 orc lay dead and the other two were injured before they even knew what hit them. The survivors turned to run and were cut down by another volley just as 3 more orcs entered the room, one of whom was unfortunate enough to catch an errant missile in the chest. He survived but with the rest of the Adventurers now surging out from the vestibule, capitulation was the only answer. He threw down his arms and fell to his knees even as his two unscathed colleagues turned and fled back to the room they had just left, slamming the door and locking it. Thanks for nothin’, chumps!

What followed was a drawn out stalemate between our party and the 2 orcs behind the door; one of whom, it turns out, was the leader of the group. Eventually, with the help of our charmed orc and some begrudging assistance from the captured dude, we brokered a peace. We would agree to help them fight some posse of hobgoblins that they are constantly sparring with and they would provide us with some CotMA intell. As a token of respect, we agreed to pay them a weregild of 12 hobber heads to offset the 8 orcs we killed; we argued them down from 4 for 1 to a mere 1-1/2 : 1. Silly orcs. Still, half of our party was opposed to dealing with the orcs at all and is awaiting the first opportunity to commit an act of treachery against them, a feeling that is no doubt shared by the orcs--except the charmed guy, whom we are now calling "Quisling."

As this is already overly long, and this seems as good a stopping place as any, I'll call it quits here for now. Look for Part 2 of Session 2 which, at this rate, should be out in time for the Christmas shopping season!

Seasons Greetings, everybody.

Random thoughts: Rollin' up characters

2010-07-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else do this: you see three 6-siders sitting somewhere and, in an idle moment, pick them up and roll them. If the result is high enough (for me, the threshold seems to be 16), you think "Hey, this could be the makings of a good character!" and roll the dice 5 more times, perhaps even writing down the results on the back of an envelope or an old receipt. I confess that I do this all the time;* after all, a good dice roll should not go to waste. That said, I can't imagine a circumstance wherein I would actually use these archived dice rolls for a character. I mean, I'm not about to sit down at a gaming table and reach into a hat stuffed with these odd scraps of paper and use the selected set of dice rolls for my new character; I'm gonna' roll the dice all over again!

* I have a set of 3 dice sitting by my computer with which my wife and I sometimes play an impromptu yahtzee-like game.

One of the outcomes of this habit is that my preferred D&D ability rolling method has changed from the old AD&D standby Best-3-of-4 to this technique: I roll 3 dice, if one (or more) turns up a "1", I re-roll it/them one time. If I get another 1 on the re-roll, I'm stuck with it. I like it because now 1s become a symbol of new hope, of a second chance. In fact, I was inspired to write this post when, moments ago, I rolled a 5 and two 1s, re-rolled the ones and--Bingo!--scored a pair of 6s. From a 7 to a 17 just like that! Whereas with the best of 4 method, I could have hoped for a 12 at best. Of course, with this method, you roll three 2s and you're stuck with a 6, whereas in the best of 4 method you have a 4 in 6 chance of upgrading at least a little bit. I don't know if a method like this has ever been endorsed by any version of The Game, but I find the added dice rolling to be very satisfying without introducing a munchkinriffic element.*

* For a really good munchkin system, Unearthed Arcana, I believe, introduced a method where you rolled your six abilities using an ascending number of dice for each roll starting at 3 dice and working up to 8 dice, taking the best 3 of each set. We called it the Steroid method back in the day.

The other thing I've started doing is adding up the total net bonuses of the "characters" I've made in this way. First you need a universal bonus set up to use. For a while I was switching between several universal bonus systems: the Old School +1 for abilities 15 or higher, and a standardized system based on AD&D. But I've settled on what I call the "Post Modern" system; you're probably familiar with it: 9-12 = 0, 13-15 = +1, 16-17 = +2, 18 = +3 with symmetrical penalties at the lower end of the spectrum. Castles & Crusades and, I think, Labyrinth Lord, use an identical arrangement. I add up the total bonus/penalty to get a nice, neat assessment of how good the "character" is, attribute-wise. What's been shocking to me is when I roll up a character that, in my AD&D trained eyes, looks like a total Fudd but ends up being a pretty decent dude in the final analysis. For instance, I rolled up one character with a 15, four 13s and a 12. Using the old AD&D bonuses, you'd immediately slap that 15 on your Dex or Con and take the AC bonus or an extra hit point, and then you'd have 5 meaningless scores to spread across the rest of your humdrum character. Using the Post Modern bonus system, this seeming Fudd scores a +5 total bonus, which I can say with confidence, after assessing at least a hundred "characters" in this fashion, is pretty excellent.

As an aside, the dice in the illustration* above are ephed up: or at least the one in the middle is. Everyone knows that the numbers on opposing faces of a 6-sider always add up to 7, and yet there you see the 3 and 4 sitting right next to each other. Amateurs.

*Thanks, by the way, to the Folks at the National Parks Service for providing this image in an item about the historic game "Farkle" which was apparently a popular dice game in the colonial era. I'm more familiar with it as a drinking game played by snooty grad students.

Brand X Roleplaying: Preferred Over the Leading Brand?

2010-06-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia on the origins of TSR:

"worried that other companies would be able to publish similar projects first, [Gygax and Kaye] convinced acquaintance Brian Blume to join TSR in 1974 as an equal one-third partner"

If it is indeed true--not just Wiki-true--that Gygax was worried about competitors beating him to the punch, does anyone know who these competitors might have been? To the best of my admittedly lacking knowledge of this part of history, Tunnels and Trolls was the next game out of the blocks but not only did it come out a year later, but it was clearly a response to D&D. I'd be very interested to know who these feared competitors were and how their Brand X game would have differed from the game we've all grown to love to argue about. Anyone got anything?

THAC0?

2010-06-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across some new schoolers at Penny Arcade comparing old school D&D to the version they play; they called it 4E or Double D or something. Hey, I'm just an unfrozen caveman, I don't understand these ascending armor classes or... well, that's pretty much all that I know about ND&D,* so I'll stop there. Seriously, it does not ruffle my feathers at all that there's a new version out there that's completely different from and incompatible with the game I played before the ice age claimed me back in the late 80s. Heck, I wanted to change that game too, can't blame TSR et. al. for doing the same thing and making money off of it. If the kids are havin' fun, then Game On!

*ND&D=New D&D, commonly denoted by a numerical "e rating," the higher the e-rating, the newer the D&D.

But there is one piece of information that I'd like to impart to the younger generations, and it's this: THAC0 and descending Armor Class are NOT synonymous.

Despite what this guy seems to think, if you mention THAC0 to stick-in-the-mud old schoolers like me who never graduated from the Gygax-authored tomes, there is no reason to expect them to know what you're talking about. Though the term Thac0 might have existed back in the day, it was not at all relevant to the game as it was played on the streets. The term came about, according to this research I poached from Philotomy, because of a curious column of data in the monster listings (Appendix E) of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide that was labeled "To Hit AC 0." However, there is no explanation of the significance of this this item and one is left to wonder why it was included with the other, more pertinent stats listed. Indeed, there's no reason I can see why they chose to spend 19 pages rehashing info that was already available in the Monster Manual when the only real value this table offers is looking up the XP value of that Shedu your players just blasted into a heap of fur and feathers (1,950 + 14/hp). No, when we old schoolers wanted to crush our foes we didn't call out our thac0s like a battle cry and have at it with our 20-siders; we turned to the combat tables on page 74-75 or eyeballed the DM's Screens that grew like stands of alder trees on gaming tables throughout the land. Then we walked 14 miles to school through a blizzard, uphill each way.

Seeing as Unearthed Arcana (1985) was the last new TSR-published D&D product I bought--though I played on for a couple more years in isolation from the machinations of Lake Geneva--I'm not entirely sure when thac0 grew to predominance. In fact, I wasn't aware that it had gained any traction until I read the Penny Arcade post referenced above. I'm guessing that it became prevalent in the 2nd Edition of The Game as a means to replace the combat tables as the go-to source for 20-sided slaughter in AD&D, a move in which I can definitely see some value. And presumably some game mechanics were changed somehow (I'm looking at you, repeating 20s) to make it more usable as a system. I'm not here to preach about the superiority of any one combat system over another--though, as much as I like the descending AC aesthetic, the ascending AC system sure makes life easier--but kids, get your facts straight.

Epilogue:
So, yeah, I lived most of my life without giving Thac0 any thought whatsoever until these meddling kids started confusing descending AC values with this eldritch acronym. But now that my dander is up, why did they make it Thac0 and not Thac10? AC 10 is the Absolute of descending ACs; like 0 degrees Kelvin, you could only go up from there. And since no one needed a 20 to hit AC 10, you didn't need to worry where you stood on the ledge of repeating 20s. It does rhyme with the name of a major college sports conference of the western U.S., but that will likely be changing soon anyway. [Let's just say that Wazzoo won't be sandwiched between 2 filler helmets down at the bottom for much longer. Though the Cougs are certainly likely to stay at the bottom.]

Some have argued about the zero providing balance whereas using 10 as the base seems arbitrary and provides opportunity for unlimited growth and, therefore, AC inflation. I can sort of see what they're getting at; but unless you're in a game where there is a likelihood of finding suits of +12 plate mail or +24 rings of protection, there are probably de facto limits to AC inflation already in place.

Go Beavers!

Referees vs. Dungeon Masters: Wherein the Caveman gets bent out of shape over a trifle

2010-06-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

As anyone who read my recent posts knows, I'm on a semantic binge lately. Following in that vein, I've become curious as to why some folks in the OSR prefer the term "referee" over "Dungeon Master," "Game Master," or some other "master"-ful title. The word referee is, in my mind, not adequate to describe the role of what the DM does. A referee, as anyone who has ever spent their lunch period playing intramural flag football or competed in a spelling bee knows is the disinterested (hopefully) 3rd party who makes sure the rules are adhered to by all sides of the contest.

In roleplaying games, the term would be accurate in games where 2 teams of players work against each other, such as, I believe, was common practice in the wargames from which D&D sprang. But the Dungeon Master in D&D et al. is so much more than just a referee, for the DM not only administers the rules of the game, but he/she also coaches the opposing team, designs the playing field, and decides when the rules need to be bent, broken, or entirely fabricated to meet the needs of the gaming session. I have yet to encounter a real world event where the referee enjoys this much responsibility.

So why are old schoolers eschewing the term DM (or similar) for the less holistic "referee"? History usually offers an explanation to these sorts of things, and this case will be no exception. A quick search of the original 1974 rulebooks (thank Blipdoolpoolp for searchable PDFs!) shows me that "referee" was indeed the preferred term for the person who runs the game. In fact, the term "Dungeonmaster"--yes, it was originally all one word--makes its first official rules appearance in EGG's introduction to the Blackmoor supplement published in 1975; though "referee" is still used exclusively in the body of this book. The Eldritch Wizardry supplement introduces the two word variant "Dungeon Master," as well as the acronym "DM," though the one word option and "referee" are still used interchangeably throughout the text.

I don't have a PDF of the Holmes book, but a cursory survey of the text reveals that "Dungeon Master" and "D.M." are predominant. And right there on the back cover of the Monster Manual, published in 1977, "[the Monster Manual] is an invaluable aid to players and dungeon masters alike!" (emphasis mine). I don't believe that it was solely an attempt to jazz-up the terminology that drove the founding fathers to invent a new term for the role, though this probably weighed in the decision. I believe that they came to realize that refereeing, ie. rules administration, was only one facet of the job and a grander term was needed to fully encompass everything expected of the DM nee referee. And, outside of S&M clubs, I can think of few places where the term "master" is more apt than in gaming.

Back to the present: Swords & Wizardry, retracing, as it does, the footprints of the original D&D rules, uses the term "referee." I will respect their attempts at historic reconstruction, even if I choose not to use the term when playing the game. OSRIC uses the generic GameMaster or GM; bland, yes, but entirely acceptable. Labyrinth Lords has crafted a new term: Labyrinth Lord! It's a bit cumbersome and the acronym form would need immediately to be followed by "Cool J," which is actually pretty excellent. Imagine this conversation:

Alex: Game night's coming up, anyone got a dungeon to run?
Barb: Not me, but Carl just bought FU2: Administration Building of Shame.
Alex: Hey Carl, you wanna "Cool J" that new module you bought?

As a bonus, if the folks over at Labyrinth Lords get LL Cool J as their official spokesperson, it might encourage gamers to lay off the Doritos and maybe do a few hundred sit ups every now and then.

But I suspect that anyone playing any of these retro clones already has a preferred job title and will keep using it no matter which game they're playing. I for one have always used the term "DM" whether I'm playing D&D, DragonQuest, or non-fantasy rpgs such as Gangbusters or Star Frontiers. It's just the name for the job, in my mind, and there's no sense trying to change it at this juncture. And for that reason, I obviously have to respect anyone who started playing the game with the original 1974 rules for sticking to their guns. But all you Holmesian+ players who, after decades of playing D&D, started using "referee" only when 3.5 or 4e drove you into the comforting arms of OD&D, well, you sort of sound like that guy in high school who got really into the Sex Pistols or The Clash and affected a phony British accent. Maybe for you it evokes some purity by returning to the roots of the game or maybe its generic-ness appeals to you. To me it smacks of disingenuous erudition; but that, I suppose, is my problem. Now I have to get off this difference engine and get some stuff done around the house.

PS. If you take any one thing away from this here blog--and I realize that this is asking a lot--please let it be the "Cool J" thing. Forget everything else I said.

Quit euhemerizing and get back to work.

2010-06-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

euhemerism: the doctrine that polytheistic mythology arose from the deification of dead heroes; the system of mythological interpretation which regards myths as based on real people and events.

euhemerize: to believe in or practice euhemerism

Just came across this word in the ol' dictionary; a huge plus of hard copy dictionaries over the online variety is the serendipitous vocab exercise one experiences by leafing through the pages. Anyway, I wanted to write it down in hopes of retaining the meaning in me noggin. Feel free to sprinkle it in your own conversation to spice things up a bit at the water cooler.

Wisdom for the wise: defining the ambiguous attribute

2010-06-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

"Wisdom: the faculty of making the best use of knowledge, experience, understanding, etc.; good judgment; sagacity."--Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Edition

In preparation for a future post on character generation systems from various vintage RPGs, I’ve been pondering ability/attribute scores a lot lately. Virtually every game I’ve reviewed (~12 of ‘em, all published before 1985) have some sort of corollary to the abilities as first presented in D&D. Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, although often under different names, are pretty much universal, and many others have a rating for a character’s smarts and personality, covering the same ground as Intelligence and Charisma. But Wisdom is an outlier; a term used by very few—if any—other games of the era, or any era since, I suspect. Even TSR’s own Gamma World—the game that most closely mimics the D&D ability format—keeps all five of the other abilities intact but wisdom is replaced with a new, more concrete sounding name: Mental Strength.

While other games often do include abilities such as intuition, perception, and willpower—much more specific and tangible terms to describe potential game mechanics—they leave good judgment and sagacity out of the picture; these must, I believe, remain the purview of the player, not the character. So why Wisdom? What's its significance not just to clerics, but to game mechanics in general? Which is to say, even if you can justify its usefulness to clerics, why should it be anything but a dump stat for the non-clerically inclined? I intend to look into the history of the wisdom ability and what it's become.

Going back to the earliest source, here’s what Gygax had to say about Wisdom in D&D Volume I: Men & Magic:

Wisdom is the prime requisite for Clerics… Wisdom rating will act much as does that for intelligence.

There you have it; no attempt to define the word or justify its singular importance to clerics other than to state that it is so. Admittedly, he made little effort to define the other abilities either, presumably relying on his audience to be smart enough to figure out what "strength" means. But unlike the other abilities, one gets the impression that this is exactly what Wisdom meant to the founding fathers: each class needed its own prime ability and wisdom was chosen, for lack of a better term, as the name of that ability for clerics.

Back in 1980-81, Holmes's blue book was my intro to D&D and it is, I think, telling that Eric Holmes, tasked with making the original D&D rules more palatable—or at least edible—to a younger crowd, expanded somewhat on the definitions of the other five abilities but did not lay a finger on wisdom:

Wisdom is the prime requisite for clerics.

This is exactly what wisdom meant to me throughout my playing days. I never made any attempt to apply any other significance to the term; certainly not from the real world definition. Not even after reading Gygax’s expanded definition in the AD&D Player’s Handbook:

Wisdom is a composite term for the character’s enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, and (to a certain extent) intuitiveness.

This definition is, in my opinion, too broad and vague to provide any traction for in-game functionality, although it does add willpower into the mix, which provides some potential relevance. But he's also thrown in a character’s "wile" which would seemingly make wisdom much more important to con men than to clerics.

The definition of wisdom, no doubt, has been amended further in the post-Gygaxian editions of D&D, but I am not aware of those definitions, so please pardon me for not discussing them here. But within the old school community, new game re-designers keep pumping out their own versions of TSR’s old properties—God bless them, everyone. Below is a sampling of wisdom definitions from the OSR movement:

From OSRIC:

A character’s wisdom score (“Wis”) indicates how “in tune” the character is with his or her surroundings. This translates not only to general awareness, but also to mystical attunement and the ability to understand peoples’ motives. It is, in many ways, a measure of the “sixth sense.” Wisdom is the most important attribute for clerics and druids.

Labyrinth Lords has this to say:

Wisdom (WIS) describes a character’s willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition. While Intelligence represents one’s ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one’s surroundings. Wisdom is the most important ability for clerics.

And Swords & Wizardry:

Wisdom determines a character’s insight, perception, and good judgment. Wisdom is the Prime Attribute for Clerics.

Perception, be it mystical or mundane, seems to be the common thread here, and I definitely think there's room for a perception ability in Old School style game rules. I don't think wisdom is the right name for that ability nor do I understand why it would be particularly pertinent to succeeding at clerical actions. OSRIC's 6th sense definition, I think, comes closest to an answer to the cleric problem, but only if some sort of 6th sense rules are included for non-clerics.

There is another option I’ve just become aware of: James Raggi’s forthcoming Lamentations of the Flame Princess provides the following definition:

Wisdom is the measure of a character’s connection to the greater universe, and the strength of the character’s spirit. Wisdom does not affect the character’s ability to make good decisions or judge situations or characters; it is the player’s own judgment which must be used in these situations.

He takes a similar tone regarding Intelligence and Charisma, laying down a strong separation of church and state between character supplied abilities and player supplied abilities. I heartily endorse such an approach. Still, I'd like to see how this definition applies to game action in a way that would make wisdom anything but a dump stat for non-clerics.

And from the not quite OSR movement, Castles and Crusades has this to say:

Wisdom reflects depth of personal experience, the ability to make well-considered decisions or judgments, [fair enough] and represents a spiritual connection to a deity. [huh?]

This non-sequitur brings to mind The Simpsons episode where the U.S. Senate is debating a bill to save Springfield from an impending meteor strike and someone at the last second adds a rider that will allow taxpayer funding of pornographic art. Needless to say, Springfield gets no federal aid to avert the cataclysm and the folks at Troll Lord Games, with this total cop-out of a definition, get no credit for clarifying the murky matter that is Wisdom. On top of that, the way the ability is used in C&C makes sense only if characters start out with fairly low wisdom, making gains as they acquire experience.

So, what do I propose as a solution? Well, the definition I've been mulling over in my head lately has wisdom leaning back toward willpower, or, As I think of it, Strength of will. While I don’t think Oxford or Webster will support me on this distinction, to me willpower is that which makes you refuse the easy, more tempting option—finishing a marathon, say, requires a lot of willpower. Strength of Will is more like committing yourself to a cause based not on mere stubbornness, ignorance of other options, or a “refuse to lose” mentality, but because you’ve considered the cause and the tenets upon which it is based very carefully and believe it to be worth the trouble to align yourself with it. A cause, in game terms could be a religion or the beliefs of a specific deity, but also a code of honor, one’s alignment, or even belief in the actions/words of a particular individual. Which isn’t to say that a high wisdomed character will blindly follow such a leader to the Kool Aid pitcher; should this leader-type betray the tenets upon which the faith was based, the highly wisdomed will most likely choose this time to opt out.

All told, this, too, is a pretty froofy definition and I’ve belabored it long enough. So what is one to do? Most likely, one would go on not giving a crap about such a silly semantic distinction and continue with the tried and true "Wisdom = the prime attribute of clerics," and I certainly have no beef with that approach. But it has struck me as peculiar that, in a community prone to debating things like this, I have seen no debate on the matter of defining Wisdom. Or maybe I'm just missing something.

Up to Eleven!

2010-06-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

Eleven followers! I never intended to surpass James Maliszewski--the egghead laureate of the OSR--and his excellent Grognardia blog in popularity but watch out Jimmy, here I come! Thanks to all of my devotees for opening yourself to public disgrace for being affiliated--even in such a tenuous, non-binding manner as the Google "Follow" function--with my halfhearted rantings.

PS. I asked Google if they would change the title from "Followers" to "Sycophants." They have not as yet responded. Probably Larry and Sergey are mulling it over as we speak.

Game Review: Eldritch Role-Playing System

2010-05-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

Until I wandered into my local gaming store the other day (Gary's Games in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle) I had never heard of Eldritch Role-Playing System (ERP) by Dan Cross and Randall Petras. This surprises me somewhat because it was published by Goodman Games, a company I've been aware of for a while, at a time, 2008, when I was starting to pay attention to current RPGs. But, alas, no one I'm aware of--admittedly, a very small crowd--has made any mention of it. So what compelled me to buy it? Mostly it was the price; at $19.99, it was cheaper than virtually every other gaming implement of similar size and quality.

What follows is more of an overview than a review; the difference being, in my mind, that there won't be a lot of delving into game themes or a reflection on why the system supports one type of gaming or another; I'm just not smart enough to pull that stuff off very well. Plus, I haven't played it. This is just a summary of a few of the more predominant game devices and overall content. Now let's have at it.

First Impressions:

It's a slender (96 pp.), softcover volume with cover art supplied by cut-rate rpg illustrator Peter Bradley. In fact, combined with its mottled beige border, the artwork could easily give inattentive bookstore browsers the impression that they are holding a Castles & Crusades supplement. I'm not a huge fan of Bradley's work, at least not in the context of the fantasy rpg genre. His illustrations have a removed, contemplative quality better suited, I think, to a classic comics version of Wuthering Heights or some other brooding psycho-drama. Even the wyverns tearing at the knight's armor on the C&C PHB give the impression that they have something else weighing heavily on their minds. [Note: On the ERP cover, is that bard off to the side the Scottish James Hetfield?]

The interior art is provided by Eric Bergeron. My impression of his work is that he found a really awesome set of well-endowed action figures--BBW fans need to check out the bikini-clad ogress on page 63--photographed them against some cool backgrounds, and slapped a few Photoshop filters on 'em. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're looking for clean, bold, line drawings a la Trampier, you won't find 'em here. But this game makes no pretense at Olde Schoolatry, and Bergeron's art does an adequate job of brightening up the pages.

To demonstrate ERP's New Schooledness, there's a character sheet in the back* that's 7 (seven!) freakin' pages long--I get the sense that despite the brevity of this tome, this is not going to be a "rules lite" game. I see some terms that beg to be acronymized ("Active Defense Pool"), some acronyms that need some explaining ("MRV"), and 4 different kinds of experience points: Victory Pts, Role Playing Pts, Excess Pts, and Character points. Other things gleaned from the character sheet: there are lots of skills listed--can you say skillz based system?--and there are no attributes in the Old School sense--no Str, Int, Wis, etc. [but then if you can find me a game besides D&D and its progeny that uses the Wisdom attribute/ability, I will buy you a steak dinner**].

* I also tend to read rulebooks (and magazines) from back to front.
** Does not include travel or housing expenses.

The index does not even fill 2 pages. For an rpg, I think this is a bit too slight too get the job done; we'll see.

Thankfully, there is none of that tedious background/border art crap on every page that virtually every game book finds mandatory to include nowadays. How much cheaper would these $40 rule books be if they weren't wasting so much ink on a halftone background print of a dragon's hoard plus a border etching of buxom mermaids on every g*ddamn friggin' page? Probably only negligibly cheaper, I suppose; but in my cantankerous old guy opinion, they just add noise to the page and I refuse to spend money on such over-wrought texts.

The Basics:

You've got the standard menagerie of AD&D character races, nothing new about them. There are 3 major "occupations"--Fighter, Rogue, and Arcanist--each occupation offering several sub-categories (11 fighter subclasses include your paladin et al. but also samurai, mystic warrior, and Calvary [sic]*) that represent a different bundle o' skills. That's where you'll find clerics and druids, as 2 of the optional sub categories of arcanist. Each occupation is discerned by its "basic abilities," "specializations," and "masteries" which are generally more and more refined skill sets. For instance, Gladiators have Melee as a basic ability, Exotic Weapons as a specialization and Net as a mastery. This linked set of abilities is, I believe, called an ability tree, and would allow the character the chance to roll 3 dice when using his net in melee. I could be wrong about this though.

* This is the third time in recent weeks that I've seen the word Calvary used instead of cavalry. Just to see if they're at least consistent in their (mis)usage I checked the index: no mention of either one. Or Golgotha.

There are no fixed attributes but, rather, all your attributes and skills are lumped into the same Universal Gaming Mechanism. Basically, you start out with "average" abilities in everything from agility to animal husbandry with some adjustments depending on your race. You use character points to buy-up a few abilities to better than average: "respectable," "good," "great," and "superb" are the superlatives of choice. As you improve you get to roll bigger dice, starting with d4 at average until you reach d12 at superb, which is the pinnacle of human mastery. These dice are thrown against whatever dice the GM deems significant to determine whether you achieve success. So if you have, say, "good" stealth ability and you're trying to be stealthy in an "easy" situation, you roll a d6 against the GM's d4. A "moderate task" gets 2d4 and "difficult" gets 2d6 etc., until your d6 seems pretty puny.

Character Generation As I mentioned earlier, it's a point-buy system where you pay for your race and some advanced abilities. Unlike a lot of games, there is no price break for buying a human--they have advantages for which you must pay as well. The process is broken into 5 steps:

Choose race, advantages & disadvantages,
Choose abilities & occupational path;
Calculate defense polls;
Determine character concept, and
Pick equipment.

Pretty straight forward stuff, except number 3 definitely caught me off guard. Is it really that vital that your "defense pools"--whatever they may be--need to be calculated before you develop your character concept? Especially considering that over at the Goodman Games website, the tag line for their ERP line of products reads "Character concept is king!" According to this outline, a more apt rank of nobility might be "Viscount" or "Marquise." Seriously, if you've waited until after you've already chosen your race, abilities, and occupational path to determine your character concept then what was guiding all those decisions? Your Passive Defense Pools? Sheesh.

It's also not immediately obvious how one is supposed to "buy" one's occupational path and requisite abilities, specialties and masteries--you won't learn how to do this until you read the next chapter. Fortunately, there's a narrative of a sample character creation session provided in sidebar format that offers enough guidance to allow a crafty reader to hack his way through the wilderness. This appears to be the major flaw of this book, however: again and again the information needed to do what is being discussed has not been covered in the text, forcing the reader to flip ahead to find a useful example or table or flow chart (yes, they use flow charts) to provide edification. And despite the prevalence of these tables and flow charts, I have yet to find a piece of text that references them. [If Goodman Games is looking for a technical editor--and they should be if this book is at all indicative--I could definitely set them up--TR]

Combat is all about mitigating threat points with your defense pools. What the eph does that mean, you ask? Good question. Basically, you roll a bunch of dice--the number and size of which are dependent on your level of mastery of whatever applicable combat abilities you possess--to determine your "Threat Points." Don't call it "damage" or the authors will come to your house and inflict massive Potential Harm* on your ass--which the defending character then "mitigates" by throwing around his own action points and dice rolls: evading pts, parrying pts, armor pts, talking pts, needle pts, whatever. I believe "hit points" are also mentioned in here somewhere, but they don't mean what you think. Unmitigated threat points are deducted from the defender's "toughness" score.

* Yes, this is another term used by the authors. Good luck discerning its significance.

I think I've aptly demonstrated that this is not a 0 to 60 in 30 minutes kind of game--even for seasoned gamers. Again, I don't believe this to be an inherently unappealing aspect of the game, but it is definitely something to consider if you have impatient players to contend with.

Magic there are 4 sources of power: mystic (normal wizardry), supernatural (summoners; clerics also live here), primordial (druids and elementalists), and psychogenic (psionics). You use spell points to cast spells, you're better at casting those within your specialty than others, they do stuff. At this point I'm still suffering from fatigue from the combat section, give me a few minutes to rest my medulla oblongata...

The spell descriptions are provided in the appendix section titled "Sample Spells" which leads me to believe that players and/or GMs are largely expected/encouraged to devise their own magicalations. Spell descriptions get a 6 item "stat" block that offers you such scintillating info as the source, school, effect, manifestation, range and aspect--all given in analog form; no numbers. The text underneath is often even more terse; Heal spell reads thusly: "This spell mends wounds." There are virtually no references to dice rolls or numbers of any sort for that matter; things like range and area of effect are covered by a universal formula involving your ability with the spell ("average," "respectable," what have you) and some multiplier, while the effect of your spells is gauged using the "Master Effects list," which is presumably located somewhere in the Magic section. Back to the index: none of the following terms are anywhere to be found: master effects list, magic, effect, list. I hate to say I told you so... After some digging around in the magic chapter I find that there is, in fact, a list under the heading "Major Effects Descriptions" (pg. 44) that I believe is the intended target of this reference. That comment I made about a technical editor becomes more and more pertinent, eh?

Misc. Experience is based on earning Victory Points--by surviving dangerous situations--and Role-playing Points--doled out for playing to your character concept. Accumulate enough of both types of points and you raise level, which grants you more character points to spend on improving your character. Nothing outlandish here, right?

There's also a campaign setting in the appendices, though "campaign concept" is really a better term for it. There's no map or descriptions of geo-political entities or other things one might expect in a campaign setting. Rather, what they describe is a world where 2 types of lands exist: settled an unsettled. Settled lands are those where normal laws of science are followed; grass is green, if you open your bathroom door you will find your bathroom, that sort of stuff. Unsettled lands, however, are some sort of dreamy alterna-reality where the environs are defined by some concept or emotion and proximity is not based on physical distance but rather conceptual propinquity. For instance, an unsettled land whose theme is love might be rosy, warm, and comforting--though love can also be tumultuous, I suppose. Traveling from this land of love, one might pass through the lands of cute, friendly, cordial and various other shades of affection before reaching the land of hate. Once you get to Hateland you'll likely find a bunker full of Nazis next to an Al Quaeda camp which is directly adjacent to Westboro Baptist Church. An interesting concept, but it belies the rather conservative character race selection. I would think a game with such a trippy setting would allow for a more customizable character race development system, which only leads me to believe that the authors didn't really have such a setting in mind when they crafted the rules.

Closing remarks (wherein I might give my opinion on something):

Overall, I'm pretty intrigued by this game. I like the rolling-my-bag-o'-dice-against-yours approach to conflict resolution, though I could see that it would take some practice to become fluent in the numerous branches of the "ability trees" and their influence on various actions. And I like the notion of the 3 realms of adventuring abilities: combat, stealth & magic. I'm always hoping that some OSR retro-cloner will make a game that removes clerics as a class in favor of a system like this, even though this would immediately disqualify such an entry as an Aulde Skewle game. I'm also a fan of bringing a character to the table that you have invested some sort of concept into, and I think point buying systems generally facilitate this kind of character conceptualization in a way that random generation does not. ERP also has the advantage that, unlike GURPS and similar point-buy systems, one is not forced to buy a bunch of quantified disadvantages in order to avoid complete mediocrity. That said, the act of making up a new character without any element of randomness has been scientifically proven to be less fun (1); so there's that to consider.

From the author's afterword: "this game is not 'rules light.' [agreed--TR] Such is not the aim of our design. Rather... ERP seeks to be Rules Transparent." Despite this load of gobbledy-gookery, I commend the game-smiths for putting together a system that seems workable, original,* and intriguing. They could definitely have used some help making the rules more reader-friendly but, overall, I think they're onto something. That said, will I ever convince anyone to spend their precious few gaming hours on this? Magic 8-ball says: "Outlook not so good."**

* More knowledgeable gamers will likely be able to trace ERP's antecedents better than I. Bear in mind that I did spend ~20 years frozen in a glacier.
**Things I just found out: the magic 8 ball has a 20 sider in it. 20-siders are called icosahedrons.

(1) Unfrozen Caveman Dice-chucker, 2010. Building characters on a budget: Analysis of character generation processes of the "Olde" and "Nieuw" schools. An as-yet un-posted blog dissertation

"I Hit It With My Axe" Question

2010-05-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

So, how many of you have used one (or more) of Zak's players for a--ahem--solo adventure?

Primordial D&D: Eric Holmes and the 11 year old’s dungeon

2010-05-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I heard the sad news of the passing of yet another figure of the Grand Old School, Sir J. Eric Holmes, OBE; known as Rupert to his friends.* He’s a strange figure to me because even though it was his “Blue book” rules that introduced me to the game in the early 80s, I was not aware of his existence until at least 25 years later. At the time that I started playing the game, authorship of game rules was not a matter of interest—just as I cared not who wrote the rules to Monopoly or Trouble. And since it was a short 2 or 3 months after learning the game through the “Blue Book” that my older sister’s boyfriend generously loaned me his AD&D rulebooks, by the time authorship did gain meaning for me, there was only one name that mattered and it ended with an “x.”

Our gang immediately shunned Holmes’s work for the more detailed, and (slightly) better illustrated world of AD&D. Even to this day I wonder why anyone would be interested in reviving any of the Basic editions of the game; they all seem so limiting and just plain boring to me. [This from someone who has been reveling in playing the even older, more limiting rules of OD&D of late, so yeah, I acknowledge the paradox and mean no offense to those who do enjoy the Basic/etc. versions of D&D.] Despite this inclination, the Blue book and, especially, the Tower of Zenopus (the sample dungeon included with the rules) formed, for me, the primordial soup from which all dungeons evolved, and elements from Zenopus would prevail for some time in my dungeoneering** before they eventually withered from the repertoire.

Anyway, the news of Holmes’s passing has had me reminiscing about those early, primordial dungeons; back before my gang started taking the rules too seriously and insisting that dungeons make sense and all that. Which is to say, before puberty struck. A few key dungeon elements keep coming to mind that were persistent in the adventures that my friends and I subjected each other to in the first year or so of our playing days, and while not all of them are directly poached from Tower of Zenopus, they are intrinsically linked, in my mind, to beginner’s D&D, no matter which version one actually played. Below are a few of these game elements.

Enchanted Sarcophagi: I had no idea what a sarcophagus was but after Zenopus came along, I immediately became an eleven year-old sarcophagus expert. Designing intricate boxes to contain the dead and imbuing said caskets with awesome and terrible powers to inflict/pass on to anyone brave/stupid enough to lie down in one. Of course, they were usually crammed with corpses—animate and otherwise— or moldering sacks but once they were emptied, climbing into them often offered some sort of reward. This could be based on our tendency as kids to play in the nearby cemetery—often climbing down into freshly dug graves—or , more likely, just daring each other to do so. I’m pretty sure I never got the nerve up.
Underground water body: Absolutely essential to a dungeon experience for those who cut their teeth on the Tower of Zenopus.
Giant crustaceans: I offer this as a sub-item because, well, something had to live in or near the underground water. And if it was just a giant pike then staying out of the water eliminated any threat. While I’m pretty sure that there were giant crabs in the river under Zenopus, the crustacean infestation in my early dungeons, I think, was also encouraged by my youthful fascination with, and dread of, the abundant crayfish that inhabited the rivers and streams I played in as a kid. Anyway, they were never giant lobsters in the dungeons. Lobsters are too closely associated with food and, even though they are vile, Cthulian looking critters in real life, the word “lobster” immediately conjures up images of hot, tender, white flesh doused with melted butter and eaten with a dainty, little fork.
Cloud city: the inspiration for this one is pretty obvious to anyone who has ever seen the original Monster Manual or DM’s Guide. That’s right, 2/3 of all core AD&D rule books had a cloud city prominently displayed on them. Probably about 2/3 of all dungeons I made in the 1st year of playing the game had a cloud city floating overhead and some means of getting your ass up there. I don’t have any clear recollection of what purpose these cloud cities served; they were just, ya’ know, cities on clouds. They were always ruled by Titans or cloud giants whose good will could not entirely be relied upon, not even for such things as return trips to the ground. What seems strange to me now is that despite their prominence on the covers of the core rulebooks, there is virtually no other reference to airborne urban centers anywhere else in the game; not in any modules or rules. Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.
Peaceful interlude: My early dungeons always had a room that served as an oasis from its dark and dangerous surroundings, usually inhabited by a wizened and kindly old man or elf. The room occupied some kind of intra-dimensional space, often aglow with warm light and equipped with a cozy breakfast nook overlooking a tumbling stream and a sun dappled glade of maple and beech trees—despite its presence 8 levels beneath the ruins of the Castle of Demonic Arcana or wherever. It was usually hidden by a secret door that only chaotic good characters (the preferred alignment of 11 year old boys everywhere) could locate. The wizened gent who haunted these chambers generally did not venture outside of his comfy parlor and offered no direct or material assistance in thwarting the evils of the dungeon; just a moment's respite from the harshness of the environs and, perhaps, a few cryptic words of advice or trivial tidbits of dungeon history. Generally, such a room could only be visited once. Players so gauche as to try to take untoward advantage of its hospitality would either be unable to locate the secret door or, should they locate it, find an empty, un-extraordinary chamber. I don’t recall an actual source within the game for such an encounter area—Tower of Zenopus did not, to my recollection, have one—so it might have been the likes of the Last Homely House or Tom Bombadil’s place or the other oases of safety that are prevalent in Tolkien’s work: Tolkien being, at the time, the only fantasy literature of which I was even aware.

* Mr. Holmes was not, to my knowledge, actually a knight; an oversight that I'm sure the queen will soon be addressing.

** I use the "-eering" suffix here not in the mountaineering sense--as in exploring dungeons-- but in the femineering sense

CotMA Continues

2010-05-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

It’s been an awfully long time now since I mentioned my ongoing foray into Joseph Bloch’s Castle of the Mad Archmage (CotMA); in fact, there’s a new version of said dungeon out now. My friend Bob and I started out sometime before the Olympics and though we played 2 sessions in rapid succession, we’ve only managed one session since. What follows is my vague recollections of these sessions—bolstered a bit by some notes I took in a rare show of foresight on my part.

Whence last we ventured, the party was picking on some skeletons in a closet... and only right now do I finally get the joke. Oy veh. Anyway, suffice it to say that our boys polished them off and continued their quest for dungeon dominance.

As we continued, we met up with a statue of an ape whose secret I shall not reveal here and some olive slime and its offspring. I assume this must be a Monster Manual II critter cuz I can’t find it in any of the sources I’ve checked (AD&D Monster Manual, OSRIC, S&W Monster Compendium, Laby Lords, Castles & Crusades) and it's far too sensible sounding to be a Fiend Folio creation. And since I don’t feel even slightly compelled to purchase the MMII--or the Fiend Folio for that matter--it shall remain a mystery to me until some beneficent Olde Schewle scholar provides a description in their freely downloaded bestiary.

Anyway, since our fearless party already blew off the troglodytes a few rooms back out of sheer ignorance (at the time of this session, we had only the S&W rules pdf on hand), we felt compelled to take action. We extrapolated a bit based on the info in the module and our knowledge of the more famous green slime and decided to torch the stuff and it’s offspring. More fudging was necessary a few rooms later when we were surprised by giant frogs. We surmised, given their hp totals, that they must have 3 or 4 hit dice and, based solely on ancient memories of the murderous frogs at the Moat House in T1 The Village of Hommlet, I gave them 1 attack for 1d6 plus, if they hit you, they grab you with their tongue and automatically do an additional 1d4 dmg/round thereafter.

This is a battle we barely survived intact. Because we were surprised, Borrance the MU took it for the team before he was able to cast the sleep spell that might have saved our asses. Sigurd the ranger, Glebberd the Halfling and Borrance all got knocked to 0 hp. Only with S&W’s optional wound-binding and Negative Hit Point rules did we manage to drag the entirety of our party back to the surface alive. First level clerics without Cure Light Wounds are not worth all the sanctimonious posturing.

Since it was now getting late in the real world, we decided to clear out of dodge rather than leave our party to sleep in the dungeons. On the way out we encountered our first wandering monster: a “Floating pearlescent bubble.” We had a moment of silence in memory of Patrick McGoohan and then loaded it full of arrows. Our first day of adventuring yielded us a massive total treasure haul of 15 silver pieces! Not too impressive, especially at the cost of 3 near-dead characters.

Fever Dreams and Gangbusters

2010-04-12T14:47:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend I had the unique pleasure of suffering from a pretty severe fever that had me strapped to the couch for most of the day, ignoring my wife and child as they went about the business of life. What I did instead was wallow in fever flashbacks to other great fevers I've had in the past. The most notable one was, without question, the Great Fever of Winter '84 of which many a bard has struck a tune in the ensuing years.

At the time, I was a freshman in high school, and a friend had left his copy of Gangbusters at my house so that my brother and I could read it and we could start playing. We had all gotten new rpgs for christmas that year--I got Star Fronteirs, my neighbor got Gamma World (which we found ridiculous), this friend was Gangbusters and someone else, I can't remember who, received Top Secret. Yes, all TSR products. The selection was pretty limited at the drugstore in our town that was also our sole source of comic books, video rentals, and after-school candy. Such is life in a northern town. Ah hey ma ma...

Anyway, I rember lying about reading the Gangbusters rule book whilst suffering this great fever and being most impressed with its combat system. Shotgun blasts and machine gun bursts were intriguing--and I credit these rules for finally distinguishing, for me, the difference between a rifle and a shotgun. We went on to play a lot of pitched shootouts, inevitably involving a car chase; G-men and gangsters alike firing away from the running boards of their Packards and Studebakers.

While the milieu failed to capture our imaginations--robbing banks and bootlegging served merely as an excuse to funnel our adolescent bloodlust--the combat seeemd fast, furious and fun. And for that reason, I pretty much cribbed it intact for my Red Dawn/Road Warrior inspired Post apocalypitic rpg that I developed later that summer.

Now, 26 years later, Gangbusters doesn't crop up much in old school discussions that I've seen, and I suspect that others quickly tired of the lack of fecundity of the gangbuster premise--if they paid it any heed at all--just as we did. But I'd love to find the old rules and see if the combat system was really as frenetic as it seems in my memory. Or maybe it's just the fever talking.

Chocolate Polyhedrons: Fudging Revisited

2010-04-06T23:32:00.001-07:00

Some time ago on a far more interesting blog than this one there was some discussion about DM's rolling in public vs. fudging the dice, and while I don't really give a shit either way, one of the things that came out of this was the difference between primary dice rolls--like combat--and secondary rolls--like random encounters. To summarize, it was generally accepted that, while fudging primary rolls is verboten unless small children are involved, a little secondary fudge probably makes sense from time to time. Though there were, of course, some who felt that even this sort of leniency is a sure sign of the impending apocalypse.

Anyway, all this discussion reminded me of a situation that arose once back in my Old Time gaming days. My brother's ridiculously over-powered 10th level Cavalier was "clearing the lands" for his new stronghold and I was the DM for the event. I was 15 at the time and my brother was 18, I believe. I was halfheartedly rolling random encounters straight out of the DM's Guide and watching as my brother's cavalier ploughed through the Monster Manual like a hungry gamer through a plate of nachos.

It was a tedious affair and I really just wanted it to end when I rolled an encounter with a 9th level fighter. You might think "this could be a good fight" but this was shortly before Unearthed Arcana came out so only Cavaliers (the Dragon mag version) had weapon specializations. For those unfamiliar, this was a he-youuuuuu-ja advantage that allowed the cavalier something like 16 attacks per round at +32 to hit and damage with 9 different weapons at once. I exaggerate, of course, but I do remember that if my bother's cavalier was limited to inflicting a mere 20 points of damage in a single round it was considered a victory for the other side. Thirty to forty pts of damage were more the norm.

Anyway, I decided that this dude was clearing these very same lands for his own stronghold and thus a fight to the death was in order. So I rolled up a character and did some serious "secondary" fudging to determine his abilities and magic items. The result was a guy with 110 h.p., a vorpal sword, a +5 suit of platemail of etherealness, and a +3 shield. Even with his ridiculous hit points and armaments I knew this guy wouldn't last more than 4 rounds against my brother's munchkin-ass cavalier.

Ultimately, I was right. A few rounds into it the fighter pulled the rip cord on his armor and vacated the material plane. But not before staining my fingers in a fresh batch of rich and chocolaty primary fudge: on his first attack the unnamed fighter rolled a natural friggin' 20 with his vorpal sword. By all rights, the cavalier had just been handed his head, literally.

Now, my brother and I did not fight often and we generally got along pretty well. But I knew that if I let the chips fall where the dice said they had, the cavalier was not the only one who would be carrying his head around in a basket. Even if he didn't actually assault me physically I would have had to endure a Gestapo-like interrogation that I just didn't have the will to sustain. He would have questioned every decision and dice roll that led up to his headless horseman, and I am not to this day a very good liar in the heat of battle, so I would have folded and admitted that the vorpal blade was a fudger. I would have had to press reset, roll a new sword, and start all over. Except this time there would be a big, stinky cloud of resentment fogging the air around us. So I pretended it was a 19 and rolled normal damage.

The Reaper Threshold, Part 2

2010-03-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

Just read this twist on the reaper threshold concept over at Jeff's Gameblog. It's from the original Chainmail rules, but its the same premise: just cuz you're out of hit points doesn't mean you're dead. This is a much more qualitative approach and I think I actually prefer it. Since I was applying my idea to Castles & Crusades rules, I might add the generic Constitution bonus to the roll instead of adding +1 for 1st level characters... except that that would make someone with an 18 constitution very hard to kill; you'd have to roll a 1 and then fail 3 saves vs. Death Ray.

Which raises another point: how come I haven't seen any Death Rays in the Old School gaming movement? C'mon guys!

WTF! D&D running commentary on the original rules

2010-03-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

Sadly, this bit over at somethingawful.com is as close as I have ever come to seeing the inside of the original D&D rules. I found it entertaining; others may be offended. But I think their final analysis of OD&D vs. 4thed is pretty cogent:

Steve: Gygax didn't have 50 writers and 100 artists and color printing. He just went out there and said, hey, here's how you subdue a dragon and sell it as a slave. Here's what a robot is doing in a fantasy game. Deal with it. I made it up, deal with it.

Zack: And now a committee has designed everything.

Steve: The stupid baby committee.

2nd Monday of the Month House Rules: Life Beyond Zero Hit Points or The Reaper Threshold

2010-03-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

Everyone’s got a theme day these days wherein they address a fixed topic on that day of the week/month/Mayan calendar, and since I’ve got a whole bucketful of home rules lying around and a semi-flaccid commitment to writing this here blog, I’m celebrating the 2^nd Monday of every month by writing one up. That said, this rule is one I just thought up over the weekend; it came to me in a flash of brilliance/stupidity—you be the judge.

Today’s homebrew suds-fest involves Constitution and negative hit points. If you use negative hit points in your AD&D-type game, read on. If you believe such is heresy, please disperse, there is nothing for you here.

At some point when I played AD&D back in the day (1980s) we decided that if your character was reduced to 0 or less hit points, s/he was out cold but still alive—though s/he would lose 1HP per round until they hit -10, at which point s/he was no mas. I can’t remember the source from which we derived this rule* but I think it might have come about because of Cavaliers somehow; it’s usually safe to blame game unbalancing rules on the cavalier. The -10 HP rule, sadly, relegated our super-cool “swansong” house rule to the dustbin. The swansong rule allowed characters reduced to 0 HPs (or slightly less, I don’t remember a hard and fast limit but at some point it was assumed that you were just too dead to do anything) to make one last-gasp action as long as it did not directly cause damage; you could warn your friends of something or fall in front of a spear that was about to perforate a colleague, that sort of thing.

*As the literate among you have already realized, the source was, of course, the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. (insert shame-faced emoticon)

In case I haven’t said so before, I am forever on a quest to make AD&D ability scores somehow more pertinent to game mechanics. Recently, I was looking over the ol’ Constitution table in the PHB and marveled at the System Shock stat; something that was never once ever used in my playing days, even on those rare occasions when someone managed to get themselves polymorphed or petrified or something. With this proposed house rule I hope to expand the scope of System Shock to include surviving a death blow. Here’s how it would work:

Polvo the Dwarf has 8 HP when he walks into an ambush. Punctured by 4 arrows, he takes 13 points of dmg and is reduced to -5 HP; not quite -10, so he is not yet permanently dead. Polvo’s player then rolls his system shock deal; if he passes, his character is still out cold and appears for all intents and purposes to be dead—no pulse can be felt—but is actually in stable condition, ie. not losing hit points.

Even while the brigands are picking over his presumed corpse, Polvo will actually begin to heal at a rate of 1 HP every [1d6] hour(s) for a period of up to a maximum of [Con + d12] hours or until he reaches 1 HP. At that point he regains consciousness and may crawl/slither to safety. If food and water is achievable, he may rest, eat and recuperate, recovering hit points at the normal rate for such activity.

If, however, he does not find food and water—and shelter if exposure is an issue—within [2 x CON + d12] hours of regaining consciousness he will lapse into a coma and begin to drop HPs at a rate of [1hp / 1d6] hours until he finally reaches -10 and is dead.

official 2nd monday of the month house rules Evaluation Form:

Stated Goal: Bring some minor relevancy to a rarely used statistic, provide “back from the dead” type occurrences a la Jason Voorhees, et al.

Convolution Factor scale of 1[simple] to 10 [Byzantine]: 7

Game Balance Issue(s): Makes folks with high constitution much harder to kill

Cool Outcome Potential: Favorite henchman who was presumed dead crawls into town 3 days later; merriment ensues

Lame Outcome Potential: extra bookkeeping and monitoring for DMs when applying this rule to “slain” monsters/NPCs; grumbling ensues

Avoid this rule: If you just want that sucker dead already

Final Analysis: Without even submitting this rule to playtesting I don’t think I would implement it in a game as is. After reviewing system shock scores in the PHB, characters w/ a Con of 13 or better are looking at 90+% success rate, even a 9 Con provides a 65% success rate. The “left for dead” survival effect that I’m looking for suddenly seems pretty commonplace. But then it’s pretty silly to think that a stat designed for one thing—determining if your body survived the shock of being turned into a pumpkin—can be so easily transferred to a different, more commonly occurring event. I still like the idea, but it needs a different means of determining success.

So: let’s try it out with another system: Castles & Crusades

To ‘port this rule to C&C, I’d use a Constitution check to replace the system shock roll. I’m thinking someone with an 18 should have ~45% chance of success or so. Let’s check it out: a C&C character w/ Con 18 would roll his Con check and add his +3 bonus: he'd need a 15 (30% successful) if his Constitution is not a prime ability, or a 9 (60%) if he is constitution primed--for an average of 45%! And I swear I did not figure this out before I laid out my target of 45% success rate.

But wait—I’m thinking as I type here—just to make things more dramatic and situationally driven, let's subtract the negative value of his current HP. To look back at Polvo’s dilemma above: he was reduced to -5 HP and so would subtract 5 from his ability check roll. Let’s say that Polvo is 1^st level with a 16 Con so he has a +2 bonus, +1 more for being first level, but -5 for his current HP total for a bonus/penalty of [2 + 1 – 5 =] -2. He’ll need a 20 (5%) if he is not Con-primed, 14 (35%) if he is. Most likely ol’ Polvo is on the slippery slope to the great beyond. I like these odds a lot better than the system shock idea.

Addendum: Reaper Threshold

Rather than a standard issue -10 HPs before you die, I'd prefer a value--which I've just decided to call the Reaper Threshold--that is somehow influenced by one's constitution. I think I’d set the negative hp barrier at -6, and then modify it by subtracting the character’s Con bonus or penalty:

Reaper Threshold = -6 - Cons bonus/penalty

Polvo would have [-6 – 2 =] -8 HP before the reaper takes hold. Someone with a 4 con would have a [-6 - -2 =] -4 HP Reaper Threshold. Now this is a rule I might actually bring to my game… If I were playing C&C. I’ll give the Troll Lords credit here, it’s a lot easier to mess with the system than with AD&D.

Thanks all, for allowing me to think out loud. If anyone has used such a rule or is inspired to use something similar in their game, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it turned out.

Naming the Blog: This is not a euphemism

2010-02-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

When I decided to open up shop here, I spent a fair amount of time considering a title for my site. I decided the best, cleverest, mildly-amusing-without-being-too-ridiculous name I could think of that wasn’t likely to already have been taken was Chaotic Nerd. The name has specific significance to me though possibly not for the reason you’re thinking—I do not pride myself on my lack of organization. When my older brother and I first started playing D&D as wee lads, we looked at the alignment chart in the Holmes edition and saw that elves and unicorns were chaotic good. Not knowing what “chaotic” meant, my brother proclaimed that, since these creatures were clearly the pinnacle of good, then chaotic good must mean really good; pure, unadulterated goodness. And therefore chaotic evil was unbridled evil, hindered by no order or conscience. Lawfulness—we did understand that one—somehow mitigated one’s goodness, evilness, or neutralness; the order of society acting as a restraint to true personal expression. As such, lawful characters were quite rare in our game.

Although—or, more accurately, because—I have long since figured out what chaotic means, I continue to (mis)use the term to mean "very"or "extremely" or "hella" if you must; as in “Man, that movie was chaotic stupid!” or “these brownies are chaotic delicious!” So, for its personal meaning and obvious gaming implications, I thought it would be a clever name for my blog; satisfying at least to me even if no one else cared.

Alas, some dude already took the name. And as far as I can tell—the blog is written entirely in Spanish—he doesn’t even have an alignment. I had to scurry for a backup name and settled on the Unfrozen Caveman thing—which I almost immediately regretted. Sure, there’s the Phil Hartman reference and the applicability to my personal gaming history—a lot of gaming evolution occurred in the years between ~1985 and ~2005 to which I remain almost completely oblivious. But dice-chucker? Sheesh, what was I thinking?

After reading some of the other clever and/or amusing names out there, I feel a bit humbled by the lackluster moniker I’ve saddled myself with. Below is a short list of names that I’ve come across that I find cleverly amusing; thanks for rubbing it in, guys.

Monsters and Manuals
sword +1
bite the bulette
I SEE LEAD PEOPLE
The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
Curmudgeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Digressions
A Rust Monster Ate My Sword...
"It's okay; Gary sent us."
There's a Bugbear in My Kitchen!
Sham's Grog 'n Blog
The Sandbox of Doom

Special notice:

Playing D&D with Porn Stars
This one was originally on the main list, above, until I realized that, rather than attempting humor, this dude is quite literally playing D&D with actual porn stars! Mazel tov! With this premise you’d think he might be a bit distracted but, as far as I can tell, he’s a serious gamer with some really cool insight.

Addendum:

Asshat Paladins Just came across this one and had to add it, I particularly like the subtitle and the dude's stated intent to never even address it.

New friends! Cool.

2010-02-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new followers Fantasy Cartographic, Talysman the Ur-Beatle and Grodog. Just when I was thinking that I might as well post my little ditties on the backside of my water heater for all the action this little blog was getting, along come these three fine folks--not to disregard Daddy G.--excuse me, Humber G.--and James for their early support, of course. Thanks for stopping in all of you!

Megadungeon Design Review Comittee

2010-01-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

As far as Old School gaming goes, my cohort Bob and I are strictly amateurs. But between the two of us, we're sitting on a pretty big gob of experience and training in construction design and planning. As such there was one incident during our recent foray into The Castle of the Mad Archmage that piqued our professional interests.

So we’re blundering through the dungeon in our distinctly ignorant fashion when we head down a long passage to the next level that’s labeled “slope 5°.”

Bob: What’s the elevation change between levels?

Me: I think it said 30'

[We do some math: 5° is equal to a 1:9 slope, which means there needs to be 270’ to get down to the next level. Feel free to check our work.]

Bob: Let’s see if this ramp is long enough ... [gleefully counting 10’ squares] ... Oh he’s got it made, well over 300’ here. Even accounting for the landings at the turn and the intersecting corridor.

And, satisfied that our dungeon creator is on top of his game, we move on.

About halfway down the slope there’s a numbered encounter.

Bob: What's that say?

Me: "slope in the corridor is too subtle to be detected under normal circumstances. Dwarves etc. have their normal chance to detect”

Bob: [chuckling] I guess that makes us dwarves.

To put things in perspective for any non-math nerds out there, a 5° slope equals a vertical change of ~1' (rise) for every 9' of horizontal (run). This is significantly steeper than the maximum allowable slope for an ADA (handicap access) ramp, which is 1:12. Without belaboring the point, a 5° slope is not at all subtle. A consultation with the Joe the Dungeonmaker—isn’t the internet grand?—assures me that it should read 5% slope not 5°. A 5% slope is a much more reasonable 1:20, but no biggie either way, Megadungeon rules apply; if it says it’s too subtle, then so be it. And besides, Bob and I are both looking at the dungeon plans anyway, the cat was already out of the bag.

But then, even if the corridor were perfectly level, the cat would have snuck out in its own surreptitious fashion. There’s something about long, unbroken corridors, you expect to come out of them in a place that is somehow different from the place you just left. Maybe they don't realize that they've left one level and arrived in another but they're expecting a change of one sort or another. Think about going to the zoo: you’re walking along a path with a bunch of savanna animals on either side, then you hit a stretch of path where there are no exhibits for a stretch. Then you find yourself in a new cluster of critters, chances are, these exhibits are somehow different from the savanna you just left. Maybe they’re monkeys--you’ve entered the jungle portion of the zoo. Or maybe the savanna predators are here, isolated from their prey in the previous exhibit. If it was just more gazelles and zebras, you would wonder how they’re different from the critters you left behind, and you might start to think that this zoo needs to diversify its collection.

Just walking that distance gives you time to exit one experience and prepare yourself for something new. It’s the concept behind labyrinths—as opposed to mazes—that the journey itself is transformational. And this works the same in table-top play as it does whether you’re walking through the zoo or traversing the pattern underneath Castle Amber. Even if your players have no idea that they have technically just entered a new dungeon level because they didn’t notice the elevation change, they already know that they left something behind. Walking the length of the passage has provided them a moment of cautious respite, and they’re prepared for something new.

That said, I wouldn’t advise a dungeon designer to redraw his map. Unless the sole purpose of your design subterfuge is to confound the player’s mapmaking efforts—it would be fun to watch the confusion unfold as their map starts bumping into itself in the Southwest quadrant—one needs to not only disguise the elevation change but also hide any other signs of transition as well. Say, if the entire first level, rooms and all, were juuuuuuust so ever slightly sloped—0.5°, 1:100, 1%, choose your labeling convention—toward the northwest,until the party opens a nondescript door off of an unassuming room and, unbeknownst to them—POW!—they’re facing a whole new wandering monster table!

Death to Timrod! All Hail Timrod! or Who's running the damn cleric this time?

2010-01-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

Timrod was the name of a character I ran during my hard core playing days as a youth. Actually, that doesn't do him justice; he was a serial character that I and others in my gaming group ran. He was the token cleric in our party when none of the players wanted to play one; a very common problem in our campaigns. The original Timrod was my henchman, and I named him in a direct and blatant attempt to annoy an itinerant player in our group whose name was Rodney. And, to further the insult, I played the ‘Rod—we always allowed the PCs to “run” their own henchmen—as a sycophant who was more dedicated to my PC than to his chosen deity.

Timrod was killed in action at 2nd or 3rd level, but at the time we had a rule that allowed all dying characters one last non-combat action before they went to the great beyond. Since Timrod still had a Cure Light Wounds spell handy, I figured why let that go to waste; I had him leap to my PCs side and with his dying breath, call upon his deity to heal me. The DM—my brother, who was generally supportive of my more ridiculous shenanigans—allowed it and it became one of those legendary moments of our group that is still discussed on those rare occasions when a few of us find ourselves in the same town for a few moments.

The idea of tormenting poor Rodney was such a hit that other players in the group started calling their cleric henchmen—the chore of henching the cleric was generally alternated between the players—by names derived from Timrod: Dimrod, Rimnod, Timroyd, Midrot, etc. I’m actually impressed that none of us stooped to naming him Nimrod; that would have been over the top. Though the original Timrod was a human, his successors were of any race and, at first anyway, they were all characterized by their adulation of certain PCs of the party. After several incarnations, however, the Timrods seemed to become more and more cynical and jaded. The worst was the above mentioned Midrot, a half-orc whose PC-employer declared was the reincarnation of the original Timrod and who therefore treated my PC with great antipathy. It mattered not that I was no longer running the same PC as Timrod the First’s employer.

Timrod was prevalent for a couple of years during jr. high and then the franchise died out when we started taking the game a bit more seriously in high school. Besides, the player whom Timrod was created to annoy had left the fold. So the ‘Rod had been dormant for almost 2 years when I decided to bring him back, but this time elevated to the role of PC. He was a half elven Cleric/MU and, like his predecessors, was somewhat lacking in self esteem; he had a low charisma and I drew a particularly unappealing character sketch of him. Actually, until I drew the sketch I had intended to run an elven fighter/magic user, but after finishing the drawing, I knew immediately that this dude was Timrod the Next. But Timrod needed to be a cleric; so a few abilities were re-arranged, “half’ was added to his race—as Per PHB, only NPC elves could be clerics—and voila!

Unlike his predecessors who often tended to be boisterously sycophantic or aggressively disgruntled, he was brooding and sullen (unusual for a character run by a 15 year old boy, no?), though kind and helpful to those he felt worthy of trust. He simultaneously revered and resented all full elven characters and magic users. He felt his role as cleric was a burden to him and was confounded by his own limitations as a MU—we played with the race-level limits for PCs as per the PHB. I decided that he was the child of a great human wizard whose legend cast a shadow on his life long after the parent's death. He sought out the career in the cloth to, hopefully, gain recognition and acceptance in the elven culture of his mother.

The party of which Timrod the Next was a member went defunct before completing a single adventure, but he continued on as a journeyman, cropping up in a campaign when someone of his skillset was required, drifting off again when his limitations made him less useful, or if I just got tired of playing him. He slowly amassed a large fortune and a hefty spellbook, and, though he could achieve name rank in neither of his chosen fields, he did build a large estate and became a prominent authority in whatever city he lived in—we generally based all of our PCs out of the Wild Coast, and I actually can’t remember which town Timrod settled in.

Because, I think, he was such a departure from the stable of rogue-ish fighters and good-natured thieves that were my main fare as a player, Timrod eventually became my iconic character. He was seen as moody and complex by other party members and they often went to some length to placate him. This, of course, was an extreme reversal of fortune for the Timrod franchise. Most telling, he was the only one of my characters that no one else ever played. While it was a common practice for us to alternate DMs within a single campaign, usually if the DM had a PC in a particular adventure, his character was passed off to one of the other players. But if I was running a dungeon and the players wanted T-rod to take part, I ran him as an NPC.

Although I stopped playing the game pretty much completely by the time I went off to college, I have one friend who kept on at it—and still plays regularly to this day. He says that he has used Timrod NPCs from time to time in both incarnations: Timrod the Peon, faithful cleric whose sole purpose is to bring succor to the more important characters of the party, and Timrod the Wise, an enigmatic figure who commands respect before dispensing sagely knowledge.