"I Hit It With My Axe" Question

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

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.  Also, probably no one called him Rupert either.

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

CotMA Continues

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

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

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

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

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.