DMG Sample Dungeon Part 1: Background

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

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--DM: Ok, roll for intitiative... you win, roll to hit. 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

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 because 2e adopted Thac0 full on--or so I gather--that this gains any significance at all.  If 2nd edition AD&D had gone with 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!

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?

Today only $10.00

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

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 moron 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!  Stupid slow-ass frogs.

I've given Bob and Dan a free hand in tactical deployment of the NPC party members--though as DM I retain 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 his evil intentions are showing through?--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

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. [Editor's Note: When this post was written in 2011, ISIS stood for International Secret Intelligence Service, the name of the independent espionage agency Archer works for in his eponymous series. The similarly named radical Islamic State militarists didn't abscond with the acronym until they branched into Syria in 2013.]