Dungeon Delving

The ecology of the Magic Missile spell

2010-09-17T22:38:00.000+10:00

Greyhawk:

"This is a conjured missile equivalent to a magic arrow, and it does full damage (2-7 points) to any creature it strikes." This new spell initially allowed an implied save vs. spells by default. It also implies that the missile unerringly hits because the save would determine if the magic was successful.

Alternatively, some DM's made the mage "roll to hit" as if with a bow and +1 arrow (to the spell's range of 150'), thereby ditching the saving throw versus spells because the spell only conjured the arrow which was then used as a normal ranged attack dealing 1d6+1 damage.

In either case, the spell was an excellent offensive weapon against wraiths, werewolves and other monsters that could only be hit by magic weapons. If both resolution systems were allowed, the mage would have to guess if his target was more resistant to spells or more hard to hit (AC) before he chose which method to employ.

Every 5 levels beyond 1st the mage gets an additional missile/attack. Not bad for a first level spell.

Moldvay Basic:

Took a faster, but more powerful option, by not allowing a saving throw by default, AND allowing automatic hit against "visible" targets. The damage, range and missiles/level remained the same.

AD&D:

Again, like basic D&D, no save and auto hit. This canonised the behaviour of magic missile for D&D as a huge number of players discovered the game during the AD&D years.

The damage was reduced to 1d4+1 but the number of missiles was increased by one for every 2 levels beyond 1st. Why? Maybe just to be different enough from OD&D to call it his own work? In any case the spell is limited by a 10' x 10' area of effect (when multiple missiles are employed) and has a range of 60' + 10'/level.

D&D3.5:

Pretty much the same as AD&D, except the number of missiles is limited to 5 (at 9th level). Here we see typical 3.5 spell "scaling" to keep it conforming to some kind of accepted power level for 1st level spells. Although 1d4+1 is very 'nerfed' in the D&D3.5 game where melee PCs deal insane amounts of damage, and EVERYBODY has more hit points in general due to inflation.

Area of effect is broadened to up to 5 targets, no two of which can be more than 15' apart. Range is slightly better at 100' + 10'/level.

Conclusion:

Yes I really like the OD&D version the best, although I can appreciate how the 3.5 version came about to stop mages using this first level spell as a crutch.

The ecology of the Sleep spell

2010-09-16T17:36:00.002+10:00

In my previous posting I promised to have a look at some iconic D&D spells and how they have changed over the various editions. Today we take a look at the 1st level M-U Sleep spell....

OD&D

Number of creatures affected = 2d8 x 1HD, 2d6 x 2HD, 1d6 x 3HD, and but 1 x 4HD.

Note that the effects for mixed groups of creatures, such as a squad of 12 Orcs with 2 Ogre leaders, it implies that you would incapacitate 2-12 of the Orcs and one of the Ogres. However all creatures would be allowed a saving throw vs. spells.

Or, you could make saving throws for ALL creatures, and upto the specified number of failed save creatures would be affected. Say the dice rolled poorly and only 3 x 1HD creatures were affected: then the 12 orcs would all make saves and the first 3 failed saves would be put to sleep. This is a more powerful version than simply selecting 3 Orcs to make their saving throws. Gygax must have decided all this dice rolling was too cumbersome, as he revised this spell in the Greyhawk Supplement.

Range 240',seems a lot by today's standards, but it was only 24" on the playing surface using the ground scale of the time. Duration undefined; implies indefinite 'magical' sleep (Sleeping Beauty) or maybe natural sleep for several hours.

Overall, a VERY powerful spell for the humble 1st level magic-user. The balancing factor is that the spell system only allows him to employ the spell once per day. Why the 4HD limit? Obviously, it was recognised as a potential game breaker. Since the heroic characters in Chainmail had the equivalent of 4HD, Wizards had 8HD(!), and most of the humanoid monsters had less than 4HD, I'm guessing that is why the limit was set there.

Greyhawk:

Sleep no longer allows a saving throw. Certainly speeds up resolving the effects of the spell. Unfortunately breaks the fundamental concept of a universal saving throw versus spells. I'm sure players would not have liked sleep cast at them at the first three levels without getting a saving throw? Also points out that Undead are not affected by this spell. Many years later, this was later consolidated into a ruling for all mind affecting spells against mindless or alien beings.

Moldvay Basic:

This version makes a fundamental change to saves versus spells. Now saves are only allowed if the spell description says so. This may seem a subtle change, but is quite profound. The idea of a universal save vs. spells, or "spell resistance", was ditched. Gygax re-introduced spell resistance as a separate mechanism to save vs. spells in his AD&D edition, but it was used for magically powerful creatures.

Now a total 2d8 or an average of 9HD of creatures are affected with a limit of 1 4HD creature affected. In mixed groups the lowest HD creatures are affected first. So with our previous example, the mage would need a result of perfect 16 on 2d8 to affect one of the Ogres since the first 12 HD will be absorbed by the Orc troops going to sleep. This is roughly half the power of the original spell, where you could have put to sleep an average 20 HD worth of creatures when the opportunity arose.

Note also that the concept of slaying helpless sleeping victims with a single strike of an edged weapon (regardless of hit points) is described here. Coup-de-Grace anyone? Also the victims can now be awakened by a slap or blow, and a duration of 4d4 turns (40-160 minutes) is specified. Another limitation which stops the spell being used as a magical coma or hibernation. Range remains same as OD&D.

AD&D:

Range limited to 30' + 10'/level. Duration severely limited to 5 rounds/level. Area of effect limited to 15' radius.

Number of creatures affected = 4d4 x 1HD, 2d4 x 2HD, 1d4 x 3HD, 1d2 x 4 HD, and d2-1 x 4+1 to 4+4 HD. Similar system to OD&D, but with no save allowed.

The new area of effect rule limits the power of the spell in its tactical employment rather than its quantitative mind affecting power.

D&D3.5:

Range 100' + 10'/level (22"+ on battle mat - not bad!). Duration still limited to 1min or 10 rounds/level. Area of effect further limited to 10' radius. Just how many bad guys can fit into a 10' radius burst on the battle mat? You are lucky to jam a dozen figures into this area of effect, and more likely to get half that many in a real encounter.

But the real changes to this spell are that you only affect a TOTAL of 4HD of creatures, and also they are allowed a saving throw. Now I like the principle of allowing saving throws against spells - just ask any PC who has had a spell cast at them. However, the HD limitation clearly was introduced to 'nerf' the spell to bring into balance with other 1st level spells.

Conclusion:

The original sleep spell like the other mind control spells, was a wonderful and powerful enchantment that had practical use on the battle field and good potential for story. Magic resistance via the saving throw was a good moderating mechanic to stop game breaking abuse of the spell. As the game has developed and focus has moved to encounter balance and character power balance, the power of the spell has been eroded and then metamagic feat mechanisms brought in to allow up-scaling the spell for more powerful mages.

Personally, I like the simplicity and scary power of the original spell. Sure a first level mage would be quite vulnerable with d4 hit points, a dagger, and no armour; but you'd better lookout if he had memorised the sleep spell! If you were put to sleep you could be slain, or worse: trapped in enchanted slumber. The story opportunities are tantalisingly open ended.

Spell 'power' levels

2010-09-15T23:09:00.000+10:00

Last night's D&D3.5 game threw up an interesting situation where one of my players complained of a 2nd level spell being overpowered (apparently OP is the lingo!). My bad guy acolyte employed a spell called Heat Metal, directly at the heroic spiked-chain weilding PC -  keep in mind here, that the party is now at 6th level.

The Will save DC was 10 + 2 (spell level) + 2(acolyte WIS15) = 14. The PC mage could easily make this but the meat head fighter failed his save.   So I ruled that the fighter's armour and weapons were getting very hot and the player looked up the spell and quickly calculated he would take a total of 8d4 damage over 7 rounds,

   "No problem, I got 40+ hit points! I'll keep wailing on the bad guys with my spiked chain."

"But your weapon is becoming too hot! You will have to drop it.", I replied.

At this the player protested, "That would be way too OP, if a second level spell could make me drop my weapon!". In the end I agreed to let him take the burn damage and continue like nothing had really happened - but it left a lingering disatisfaction in my mind. The player was definitely not willing to roleplay if it was to his tactical disadvantage and he well knew that the hit point damage was inconsequential to the tactical situation at hand.

The incident has prompted me to look up spells in the original editions. The results are surprising; in a game where later editions are rampant with power inflation, contrarily, some of the spells were severely cut-back or 'nerfed' in power. So much has subtley changed over the years, that I will be commencing a series of posts looking at all the 'classic' D&D spells and how they have come to be their current form in 3.5. A more learned commentator could then examine the evolution to the latest edition with its separation of powers and rituals ( but that's not me!).

Before diving into specific spells, its worth describing the evolution of saving throws against magic. The original 3 little booklets (OD&D) were quite vague and skimped on explanation of the rules. Although not explicitly stated, the rules indicated that ALL spells were allowed a saving throw, especially if the spell was considered an attack. The later Holmes edition was more explicit in supporting this idea, but the very first supplement to D&D - Greyhawk, introduced the concept of certain spells not allowing a saving throw. And from there we get the situation in AD&D and later versions, where each spell has an entry indicating whether a save is applicable and what kind of save.

Some other apects of spells that didn't appear until later in D&D, are; components, spell resistance, and spell classification types and labels. All were additional parameters to allow more complex magic interaction rules within the game as it developed. The age of the simple universal "save vs spells" mechanic was over...

Ritual Magic

2010-07-20T21:07:00.000+10:00

http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/2010/07/house-rule-ritual-spell-casting.html

This post at Beyond the Black Gate is so good I am thieving it!!
I like how elegantly simple it is. I like how it feels so familiar to all of us who have played with "spontaneous" casting of spell slots for Magic-Users. But most of all I like how it merges concepts from the latest 4th edtion incarnation of the game and makes rituals a trade-off against regular spells.

5 stars.

Magic Item Charges - too much book keeping?

2010-07-20T20:46:00.003+10:00

D&D has traditionally used the concept of charges for limiting the number of times a magic item may be used. A wand might have 2d10 charges when found and once all the charges are expended it "fizzles", becoming as mundane as a stick.

For dramatic effect the DM might want to keep track of charges secretly - behind the screen. However, the burden of book-keeping meant that DMs normally found it easier to disclose charges upon correct divination spells or research being performed. The latest episode 22 of the Roll for Initiative podcast investigates the issue in detail. Listening to the case for player tracking of charges, got me thinking that I didn't like how this leads to a very sci-fi style of play, with magic items being used as a manner of super tech weapon by the players. I prefer to keep the mystery in magic items, and therefore provide an alternative system for limiting magic items;

Book-keeping needs to minimised to keep the story exciting. Instead of tracking charges, just make magic devices more "brittle" or even "fickle". If a device is used on a target and the target makes their saving throw, then the device is "stressed" and must make a counter save or be destroyed - i.e. turned to dust, smoke, ash or otherwise becomes inert as appropriate.

How to implement the counter save is up to the DM as the situation demands. Say you use a wand on a powerful fey enemy and they make their save; then this would demand a difficult counter save to avert destruction of the wand. Most times however, the save should be very easy, until the DM feels the item has seen its purpose fulfilled and decides the item has served its purpose in the grander scale of the story. This solves another related problem of credibly removing magic items from the story, when DMs are finding it difficult to challenge the players anymore. Just simply ramp up the required saving throw as time (or play sessions) move on.

Alice and the Vorpal Sword

2010-07-18T16:59:00.000+10:00

I have just seen the latest "Alice in Wonderland" movie, starring Jonny Depp as the mad hatter. What a wonderful screen adaptation. We owe much to the high standards set by Peter Jackson with his Lord of the Rings movies - the fight scene with the Jabberwockie was truely awesome. I particularly liked how the Dragon (oops, I mean Jabberwocky) recognised the sword as an old adversery and talked to it. Was this alignment language in action? Whatever it was, it was very cool.

The Vorpal Sword. It would have to be every fighting man's ultimate desire, second only to Stormbringer or should I say, Blackrazor? Named magic items are the way to go.

Natural 20 and 1 on a roll

2010-07-18T09:07:00.001+10:00

An interesting house rule we have added to our 3.5 game is the chance of fumbles or more popularly known as, 'the epic fail'.

On the roll of a '1' on the d20, something bad happens. In combat this usually means you drop your weapon (1d3-1 squares away). But may mean you spoil an adjacent ally's attack or even trip and fall prone (if the situation seems right).

For skill checks, it changes the fundamental game in that it is no longer possible to automatically succeed in a skill check when asked to make one by the DM. More than ever, it is important that the DM not ask for skill checks for mundane situations. My players really got into this system for epic fails on skill checks, often proposing excellent outcomes that we all found very entertaining. An example was where the rogue was listening through a curtain wall hanging and rolled the dread '1'. Everyone just burst out laughing and looked at each other - "he's just fallen through the drapes!".

As a counter balance to epic fails, I now allow natural '20's to be auto-confirmed criticals. It feels epic, and also speeds up play as a bonus effect.

Missile fire in 3rd Edition

2010-07-16T19:36:00.002+10:00

One thing we have noticed in this later version of the D&D game, is that missile ranged attack is much less deadly than melee attack. Our 5th level heroes are capable of delivering massive additional melee damage through the likes of; power attack (two handed) for say +4, +3 or +4 str bonus, maybe +3d6 sneak attack. Add in the extra attacks for such things as cleave and attacks of opportunity, and it becomes clear melee damage far outweighs ranged missile damage.

The classic situation of the party being surprised by a band of gnoll archers, was no contest at all for our party. The heroes simply closed the distance to the archers with a full round double movement, absorbing the single round of missile attacks easily. The following round the archers found themselves within melee and were devastated by AoO as they tried to change over to melee weapons.

Thinking about the relative ineffectual nature of arrows and bolts, I proposed that being hit by an arrow should be more traumatic than 1d8. Being hit by a missile weapon will require a character to make a successful Fort Save (say DC10 to DC20 for long through short range) otherwise you are effectively 'stunned' for the round and lose your next action. Epic failure may even make you fall prone due to being hit, even though you are far from dead - realistically like a modern firearm attack.

Using this new house rule should give the archers a fighting chance of surviving more than one round and makes missile weapons an attractive tactical alternative to melee weapons.

Update: Purging the Caves of Chaos

2010-03-28T09:28:00.003+11:00

Can you believe that these two combat encounters took us about 4 hours to finish?

The first encounter was an ambush by the Kobolds sitting in the massive tree towering over their lair entrance: the second was a simply 18 dire rats nesting in Kobold rubbish.

I will distil some thoughts on the 3.5 system as we go...

Gridless combat for v3.5

2010-03-19T14:25:00.004+11:00

Do you ever find the grid based combat of 3.5 to be rather chess-like? Do you ever find the grid physically limits your ability to setup the figures how you want them to be?

Well why do we use the grid anyway? It appears the grid was introduced into the rules proper in v3.5 - the original v3.0 rules uses circular threatened areas. The idea of defining threatened squares and movement defined in squares was probably to make the game simpler and thereby make combats run quicker. Unfortunately it also makes it feel more abstract and more importantly, artificial. Now what I am proposing, is keep the grid or battle mat for scale reference, but let the movement, combat and line of sight rules operate in a manner not confined by the grid. Anyone who has played miniatures tabletop games such as Warhammer or WH40K would have no problems doing this.

The golden rule for gridless combat is that the circular base of your figure defines your face/width and your reach is measured from the edge of your base. You no longer 'step' discreet squares when you move; but instead 'slide' inches across the table. If your base can't squeeze through an area (such as an enemy figure or other obstacle) then you can't move through that area. This also applies to 5' slides (formerly known as 5' steps) - simple.

For ranged attacks cover is determined by line of sight (LoS) from your figure's head to the whole target figure (or target's base for most situations).

For melee attacks cover is granted by obstacles AND figures that encroach the zone between your base and your target's base. Note that if you are in base to base contact with your target it is nearly impossible for the target to have cover.

Threatened areas are usually 5' zone around the base of your figure. To make a melee attack you must target a figure whose base encroaches your reach zone. Just being able to reach the very edge of a target's base is not enough; you must be able to reach into the opponents base.

OPTIONAL - Movement calculations without tape measures.

Some people find the war-game approach of measuring moves with flexible tape measures too fiddly. If you want to use this gridless system but use the grid to calculate movement - I offer the following;

At the start of your move pick the grid intersection, grid line or grid space; that is closest to the centre of your figure's base. Now step the correct number of units of movement (as per the standard 3.5 grid movement rules) whist using the intersection, line or space as your reference unit.

Keep in mind that although you are using the standard grid-based movement costs, you can still only move where your base can fit - remember the golden rule; 'slide' not 'step'!

Mapping Methodology Update - A party of lazy mappers

2010-03-17T21:15:00.002+11:00

Time for an update on how well GM Glenno is handling his 3.5 group in the classic B2-Keep on the Borderlands module.

Ok, last night's gaming session was not the best session we have ever had. My players are basically not into mapping for the sake of exploring. They are not into cooperative story telling; they want action and lots more action, with the aim of leveling up to get more cool feats and spells. Once they entered into the conventional dungeon corridors they get lazy and forget to take notes or make maps, relying upon group consensus to recall where they have been and which way leads where.

Sometimes, their meta-gaming really disheartens me. They lost their bearings due to inadequate mapping techniques, then tried to say "We exit the way we came in, retracing our steps. We have Dwarven stone cunning you know!". Now there may be situations where this is acceptable, but in my crude old school view of dungeon delving - part of the game is players must think for themselves. It was blatantly obvious, that the players were lost and now were claiming that the characters would not possibly become lost! I know it sounds antagonistic, but I just kept repeating myself, "So which way are you taking next?". This placed them firmly back into the role-play situation at hand and made them responsible for their actions.

However, there may be adventures where getting lost can be determined via dice rolls (such as the ultra modern Skill Challenge style encounters in 4ed and SW saga ed) but there would be no need for detailed maps as the whole adventure is abstracted to cinematic scenes. I personally think skill challenges and old-school dungeon crawling are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

And this brings me to another gripe with my players, or more rightly the 3ed system. My players want to find opponents and kill/defeat them; because thats what the system requires you to do to level up. I believe they see mapping as a non-essential secondary activity. However in old-school D&D the primary goal was to find treasure, because that produced way more xp than killing monsters. Treasure is often very well hidden and this is where maps and the art of mapping, was a much bigger part of the game I grew up with.

Ranged versus Melee Cover in 3.5

2010-03-17T14:02:00.010+11:00

Today's post is in the style of an in-depth rules clarification.

Its these kind of situations that have me and the players accusing each other of "cheating" (tic), followed by frantic diving into the rulebooks or impassioned pleas such as "Come on - You've got to be joking! How could your guy realistically be doing that?".

Here is an example that comes up; a couple of chain fighters (F1 and F2) against a crossbow wielding bad guy using the tunnel entry for +4 cover bonus to AC.

F1 is using his chain as a reach weapon so must use the rules for determining ranged cover. Note that the crossbowman gets a clear shot at F1 or F2, AND DOES NOT provoke AoO from either, due to being behind cover.
Note also the method for determining cover for melee is different to ranged attacks; all corners of F2 must have unobstructed LoS to the opponent.

I am giving serious thought to house-ruling that ALL line of sight calculations are made from the CENTRE of your figure's base (ie. both ranged and melee attacks). In this case the fighters also get a cover bonus to AC against ranged attacks from the crossbowman. It is more intuitive because you can look at the figures on the table and determine what would be their line of sight - their head is usually in the centre of the base!

Now for the bowman to use the cover while still being able to get unobstructed LoS to the fighters, we would have to move the figure out of the tunnel a little bit. This would work well if figures did not have to sit neatly within squares on the battle grid; let's say we allowed figures to be centered on edges and intersections as well as the conventional interior squares of the grid.

This has got me started on another post about ditching the grid (or at least; sort of making things a bit more flexible). Stay tuned folks...

Can you take 20 on searches?

2010-03-17T13:00:00.005+11:00

It depends….

· For a Rogue on point duty;

Not a good idea. Why? – well the blurb on take 20 says that the result (say you had +11 giving you a result of 31) assumes that you would fail many times before achieving the maximum roll. So if there is a bad thing that could potentially happen due to failing the skill check, you can’t take 20. Seeing that you are searching for traps you wouldn’t take 20 because that would be sure-fire way of stumbling into any hidden traps you come across.

Well can you take 10 instead? Not recommended because take 10 is more for safety-net checks, such as swimming or climbing rope, where you really don’t want to risk failing but there is no benefit in rolling the perfect 20. In the case of searching for traps, the DCs are usually higher than you can achieve with a take 10.

Should the DM make a hidden roll or the player make an open roll?

· For the rest of the party ‘clearing’ an area after the point-man;

Yes, take your time and take 20 because the traps have obviously been cleared by the point-main so there is no disaster in failure before success. This saves real-time as there is no point in retries, and the DM doesn’t need to make hidden rolls.

Mapping Methodology Update

2010-03-06T11:58:00.005+11:00

I now have a 'player map' for the surrounds of the Keep. I have given this to the players and said this is what they can see from the lookout towers at the keep. Note that I have brushed out all the numbered encounters that are marked on the original.

Its interesting that my players know they are somewhere in the northern half of this map (see my previous railroading story), but one guy said to me as soon as he laid eyes upon this map, "We've GOT to check out those woods to the Southeast!". This map would have had them exporing lots of wilderness before they eventually stumbled across the Caves of Chaos.

Digging around Dragonsfoot forums I came across a discussion very much related to this;

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=40666&start=0

Mapping Outdoors: The dilemma continues...

2010-03-04T21:03:00.003+11:00

Here is the second twisty little cave complex in the Caves of Chaos. Luckily the rest of the lairs are much easier to map, being much more traditional 10' corridor style dungeons.

So do I just give this to the players once they have travelled say 90' (ie. a 10 minute turn of movement)? Ooops...This is 3.5 so the party can cover this distance in less than a minute, as movement is handled by rounds only!

Mapping Outdoors: What's the best way?

2010-03-03T21:09:00.007+11:00

I have worked the original module B2-Keep on the Borderlands, into my group's D&D3.5 game. The party are trying to find the lair of a White Dragon, which is ravaging the lands and cities held by their patron, Lord Leofric. The location of the lair is believed to be known by the remnants of the tribe of Goblins that were driven from the Sunless Citadel. Our adventurers had subdued the wyrmling and sold it to Mersiole the Opulent, hence incurring the wrath of the Dragon leading to the razing of Laysouth town in a devastating night attack.

So the party have been sent to Leofric's border keep overlooking the vast wilderness known as the Whispering Woods which run up to the looming Frost Giant Mountains. My problem is that I had to railroad them to the site of the Caves of Chaos instead of letting them explore and discover them in due course - because of two motivations;

A) The pacing of the game had come to a crawl with all the dealings with the forces stationed at the keep.

B) I didn't have a satisfactory 'starting map' for the players to commence mapping. The problem is the module provides an excellent regional map but it has too much information that can't be seen by the players. However, the players shouldn't start with a blank piece of graph paper either. From the keep a fair bit of countryside can be observed in all directions, and I couldn't be bothered spending the serious time investment to create a map of 'what you see from the keep lookout'.

Anyway, the railroading was very convenient and believable because the party had made an ally with a powerful NPC, Fildra the Nymph of the Whispering Woods; and she set them upon a magic illusory path that took them to the ravine wherin was found the cave entrances.

But this also presented another problem of how do I give the players a decent starting map of the valley so that any further subteranian mapping all connects properly with the network of entrances in the valley? Again the module has a beautiful map that reveals way too much to be shown to the players.

Obviously map-crawling 10' at a time is acceptable in the network of tunnels and rooms we know as dungeons, but this kind of mapping is not viable on the surface as there is too much area to cover and would kill the pacing of the adventure. My immediate workaround was to do a crude trace of the module map using a sheet of blank graph paper, but the paper was a little too thick to get a very good tracing.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Gary Gygax ran this adventure with his group. I'm wondering if he just described the valley in general terms like "You see seven entrances along the sides of this ravine; four are at perhaps 25' from the bottom of the valley and the rest are further up at around 50'. Three on the southern side, 1 on the westen side and 3 on the northern side." If he did this, then did he expect to players to figure out which entrances connected to which tunnels from their own careful underground mapping? Or did he carry out turn based movement and mapping on the surface as well - but allow for infinitely greater range of sight? Or did he have a 'starting map' of the surface that the players could use as a baseline?

With the wonderful age of desktop publishing and image editing, I can now give the players little pieces of the Caves of Chaos such as those horribly hard to map minator cave mazes. I just wish the modules had done more of this same approach. I can recall module X1 did have a players starting map showing everything that would reasonably be seen without further exploration...

More Jack Vance goodness!

2010-03-01T13:40:00.003+11:00

Today we look at more inspiration from the first chapter of the novel The Eyes of the Overworld.

Places;

Azenomei on the river Xzan
Old Kakod
White Alster

People;

Cugel - Trader, thief and wayfarer.
Fianosther - Trader and magician?
Iucounu the laughing magician - A truely twisted and ruthless magician.
Dibareas Maior - Legendary mage understudy to the Great Phandaal.
Unda-Hrada the demon from La-Er - During the Cutz wars, around the 18th eon, this demon came from his demon world/plane bearing the 414 eyes.

Spells;

Forlorn Encystment - Want to be trapped in a pore of the Earth's crust forty miles below the surface?
Thasdrubal's Laganetic Transfer - A conjured demon flys you to far away places.

D&D Trivia: Why do Trolls have 6+3 HD ?

2010-02-28T14:47:00.005+11:00

Ever wondered why certain monsters had X number of hit dice? And in the case of the troll why 6+3 ? Where did this come from?

Well the best place to start looking is in the roots of D&D - Chainmail. There is a combination entry on Trolls & Ogres which describes Ogres as the Nordic Tolkienesque sub-giant Trolls and True Trolls as the nasty rubbery brutes in Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (a good novel in itself, but I digress!). Here we see a clue in that standard Trolls (ie Ogres) fight as six heavy foot figures. That is, they require six successful hits to be slain on the battlefield.

The original D&D pretty much translated hits to "hit dice", so that the Hero that fought as four foot figures now was a 4th level fighter with 4HD. Likewise, we can see the troll got 6HD, but but why +3 to the Troll's total hit points? I can only guess that the +3 was to give recognition of the heavy foot fighting ability as opposed to a standard light foot combat strength. It is also interesting to note that the Troll gets his new regeneration ability of 3 hit points per round in the first D&D rules.

By the time AD&D came, our Troll had 6+6 HD (using d8 instead of d6), and yet later still in D&D3 the Troll is still almost recognisable with 6d8+36 hit points! (The +36 comes from 6 hit dice of +6 due to consitution 23 - same as a PC gets con bonus to hit dice). Well that +36 is equivalent to an additional 8 HD on top of the original 6 HD beast of 1st edition, but the regeneration ability did not inflate to the same proportions, staying at 5 points per round.

So there we have it! The troll's colourful history of approximately 6 HD of death and destruction...

Tales of the Dying Earth

2010-02-27T15:17:00.006+11:00

I have just finished Jack Vance's first novel, The Dying Earth. The wonderful podcast Roll For Initiative, finally inspired me to dive into the reputed source of the "Vancian" magic system that Gary Gygax was inspired to use in D&D.

Firstly let me say; I should have read this years ago! This is such wonderfully crafted writings and such a teasingly inspirational world setting. Imagine if you will, our own Earth so far in the future that the Sun is fading to a red giant. A thousand ages and civilisations have waxed and waned and disappeared to dust. The people and places described are so far removed, from what we recognise today, that the tales are nothing short of high fantasy. Tantalising hints are made to lost knowledge and ancient artifacts of societies long extinct that could be recognisable to us as high technology or science fiction. The whole setting is best summed up as "alien".

Like many pulp fiction novels (written in the 1940s), the chapters can stand alone as individual short stories all set in a consistent background setting. So there is no over-arching grand story or conclusion to the novel, which leaves you wanting to know more about this strange world and its eldritch people.

For lovers of D&D, the novel totally reinforces the concept of mages impressing arcane spells upon their minds through intense study and meditation. From the very opening scenes of the novel the stereotype of the D&D mage is born;

"The tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time."

Here we can see the classic verbal component to spell casting and the concept of the mages preparing spells in their minds to be consumed by the act of casting them. The stories show how the various wizards use their spells creatively to overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. In fact it appears that anyone who is any position of power is a wizard of some description. A wizards power is purely his access to arcane knowledge which is acquired through "collecting" spells from other long dead sorcerers as hinted at, in the following paragraph;

"...only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually by strategem and negotiation, was securing the others."

Other references to ancient lore describe a legendary sorcerer, Phandaal, who had personally formulated a hundred spells himself. And yet other references talk of times past, when a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses and sorceries had been known to mankind. Here is a list of some of the awesome spells used in this novel;

Excellent Prismatic Spray
Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth
Spell of the Slow Hour
Call to the Violent Cloud
Phandaal's Gyrator
Felojun's Second Hypnotic Spell
Charm of Untiring Nourishment
Omnipotent Sphere
Spell of Strength

Again consider this is written twenty years before D&D... The flora and fauna of this fading Earth screams to me, "Gamma World!". Sentient plants that can kill a man, pixie-like Twk-men, alternate planes of existence - all that weird science fiction goodness.

In summary, this novel is a classic; not for its story but for its immensely enigmatic setting and for the prototype it sets for the wizard in D&D. I certainly found the book truely inspirational and include some names of people and places to get your creative teeth into (I have already used Maziriam as the owner of an ancient tower my D&D3.5 players have explored and inhabited);

Places;

Embelyon - Another plane/place of existence?
Manrenron Mountains
Land of the Falling Wall
Scaun River and the Valley of Graven Tombs
Almery deserts
Modavna moor
Thamber meadow
Derna river
Kaiin, the white walled city.
Ariventa
Grand Motholam Empire/Kingdom/Nation?
Ascolais
Ide of Kauchique
Ampridatvir
Fer Aquilas - A mountain range north of Ascolais, passable by Omona Gap.
Saponce
Old Thorsingal - Ancient city, long gone.

Named Creatures;

Deodands
Pelgrane
Gids
Twk-men
Koolbaw the Walking Serpent.

Previous other civilisations;

Sherit Empire
Golwan Andra
The Forty Kades
Knowledgable Pharials - departed for the stars.
Clambs - departed for the stars
Merioneth - desparted Earth.
Grey Sorcerers - departed Earth.

Notable People

Penelume - Uber wizard. May not be looked upon?
T'sais - Phsycho girl flawed creation of Pendelume.
T'sain - Sane version of T'sais, created by Turjan under Pendelume's guidance.
Turjan - Wizard.
Mazirian - Wizard, chasing T'sain is slain by whip-like flora after using up all his spells.
Etarr
Javanne
Liane the Wayfarer - Slain by T'sais' intelligent magic sword when he attempts to mollest her in her quest to find beauty and love. He is also slain (again!), by Chun the Unavoidable, when he tries to hide in a portable hole type magic item.
Prince Kandive of Kaiin - Wizard and ruler of a city.
Ulan Dhor - Nephew to Kandive and novice mage. Travels to Ampridatvir in search of the secret arcane knowledge of Rogol Domendonfors.
Azvan the Astronomer
Sankaferrin
Chun the Unavoidable - A demon? who wears a robe of eyeballs threaded with silk. These belong to his victims!
Lith - Witch fromerly of Ariventa. Her destiny appears to be tied to Chun the Unavoidable.
Rogol Domendonfors - Uber ancient wizard. Quite insane.
Arch-Necromancer Phandaal - Most uber wizard of ancient times and most demonically corrupted.
Pontecilla the Pious - Ruler of Grand Motholam. Destroyed/banished Phandaal and effectively outlawed sorcery in ancient times.
Blikdak - A demon.
Kerlin - The curator of the Museum of Man.

Session 2: Ascending Zenopus' tower and a run in with green slime

2010-02-26T16:26:00.003+11:00

Having despatched with the giant snake on the stairwell, our heroes climb the spiral staircase to the second level of the tower. They come across a wizard's study; the owner having been hacked down in session 1. The study features a table covered in arcane documents and scrolls, and a large cage containing an ape.

Mitch is cautious enough to not open the cage - D&D is does not suffer rash or foolish behaviour. Looking out the narrow arrow slits the party can see the ruins surrounding the tower below. Carefully searching the table, one of the PCs finds a wand of petrification. This module implicates that the wand is used as a (melee/ranged?) weapon with an attack roll to be made. I decided to run the wand in a later mode of operation - ie. line of sight with target getting a save vs wand. This is interesting because the magic missile in Holmes also implies a ranged attack is made by the spellcaster. Very different to the auto-hit line-of-sight magic missile we all know from later B/X and AD&D.

Anyway, Mitch picks up the wand and cool as cucumbers says, "I'll use it on the Ape.". I tell him nothing happens and explain that it will need an activation word. He searches all the documentation on the table again, and I rule that he found the keyword to be "Rockius". Cheesey - you may be thinking? Oh well, that's improvisation for you. Mitch points the wand at the ape and says, "Rockius!". A flash eminates but the ape makes his save, so I tell Mitch the ape dodged the wand's ray. He commands the wand again and this time the ape is stoned - I tick off two charges from my notes and explain that the wand has an unknown number of charges left before it won't work anymore.

Plundering the scrolls as loot (note to DM: How much to hire a specialist sage or mage to read the scrolls?), our heroes become bored with the wizard's study and head back down stairs. Meanwhile I have been marking off turns and we make the 3 hour mark; upon which I roll a successfull wandering monster check. I refer to the Moldvay basic wm tables and roll 4 green slimes!?

Ok this room has already been visited (remember the giant snake?), so apparently these slimes moved on in while Mitch was upstairs looting the study. Looking at the write-up for green slimes it seems they are more of a trap than a combat encounter, but I press on anyway. Mitch tries to hit one with his magic sword, to which I declare that his sword disintegrates to acid damage. He was not impressed and says, "I thought it was a magic sword!". The appeal was so convincing that I backed down and said his sword was ok but it was obvious this slime was going to destroy any metal objects that it touched.

Next, the wand of petrification was used on one of the slimes. I was in a quandry; save vs wands or save vs turn to stone? I went with the latter as the wand save implies some kind of reflex save which a slime would not get.

Realising that using the wand was using up valuable charges, Mitch then tried throwing burning torches at the next slime. The burning damage was taking several rounds to kill a slime and meanwhile the remaining slimes were slowly advancing...

It always is very satisfying to see players come up with brilliant strategies in desparate times. Mitch decided that the party would exit via the south door. He then used the wand to petrify the wooden door to stone to stop the advance of the nasty slimes - Awesome!!!

Stay tuned for the next episode...

RetroRoleplaying: The Blog: Reasons Magic-Users Did Not Dominate Play in Early Editions of D&D

2010-02-13T07:39:00.001+11:00

RetroRoleplaying: The Blog: Reasons Magic-Users Did Not Dominate Play in Early Editions of D&D

Ok, the last point saying MUs can cast multiple spells per round if they have multiple attacks is incorrect. But the rest of the article does carry a very good argument.

The comments posted by the readers also hi-lighted the power creep from 1st to 3.5 editions, which I think is an unfortunate effect of a publisher "sales pitching" to the power gamer within all of us.

One of the design goals of 3rd edition was to remove - the often critisised - limitations on classes. Spellcasters can wear armour but there is a chance of spell failure. Spellcasters can cast spells in melee, but provoke opportunity attacks. Spells aren't always lost if a spellcaster is hit in combat. These and many more changes, "awesomed up" the classes. Powercreep up another notch or ten!

Another reply caught my eye, regarding the "15-minute work day". Basically parties that stop and rest to regain spells at every possible opportunity. My group tries to do this and I think its a common thing since players will always want to feel secure in that they have enough spells and healing to be able to handle upcoming encounters.

It is taxing on me as a DM because I can make life difficult with wandering monsters and sleep deprevation etc, but on the other hand I want to keep the pacing of the game on track and not drive the party into a vicious circle of spell deprival. As a DM, I feel damned if I do or don't penalise the players for resting up to regain spells. What I want is for them to struggle on without spells once they have used them all, but the rules allow them to rest-up, and we all (playing a game) want to push on and not get bogged down with boring details like hole-ing up in the dungeon for 8 hours after a 15 minute set of encounters.

Well folks, this is one aspect of 4ed which I will admit that I like what they have done. At-will, encounter, and daily frequency spells are the way to go my friends.

Session 1 - First expedition into the tower ruins

2010-02-07T21:53:00.004+11:00

Fight with 8 goblins - Failed morale saves the day for our heroes.
Ok 6 PCs versus 8 goblins was looking a little scary for the first decent fight scene of this session. I was nervous about a TPK in the first fight. The party charged on in and started hacking away. Luckily on the first casualty for the goblins they failed their morale check and ran away through the southern door. The party pursued but failed to force the door, so lost a round of movement to the goblins - causing them to give up and have a closer look around the goblin barracks they had just cleared (hooray!)

A sleeping mage and the first return trip to town with a chest full of loot.
Checking the chests of loot out, the mage discovers the concept of traps. He triggers a sleep gas trap on one of the chests and is out for the count. Mitch wasn't too worried about this development and was busy calculating how to carry 2,000 copper coins around when a sack only holds a couple of hundred coins. He was quick to come up with the idea of dragging this one chest back to town and returning to re-plunder these ruins. Fortunately the mage woke up from his enchanted slumber on the trip back to town!

Turning Undead - confused kids! What happened Dad?
Back to the ruins, and our heroes discover the room with the heavily cob-webbed recesses that hide 4 undead skeletons. The fighter casually is clearing the webs to see - what's in here? - when the skeletons strike. The horror factor was pretty cool, and I had to prompt the kids that their cleric could turn away undead. The youngest, Jamie, was totally confused. The eldest was not much better off, asking lots of questions about "the gods" and "how exactly does that happen?". I think they thought it was a god visiting to banish the skeletons, but in the end they accepted it as their roll was good and the skeletons fled south.

Fight with the giant snake on the spiral staircase.
What do you do when you are confronted by a giant snake as big as a man? Ask "Is it standing up? - No? Ok we go and kill it." And so with ignorant bliss our heroes take on this snake - that could have been poisonous; but wasn't - and took a hit or two before pulverizing it.

stay tuned for more antics next post...

Session 1 - Fight with Theodore and the enigma of the amazingly life-like stone statues

2010-02-07T21:44:00.008+11:00

Room F: The players stumbled into the evil 4th level Thaumaturgist, named Theodore (on the spot) and his charmed pirate fighting man....

The fighter was targeted by a charm spell but made his saving throw....close call!
Question of firing a sling at a target meleed by your friends? Ran with cover modifier of -4.

They actually suprised Theodore (rolled a 2) because they forced the door on their first attempt and stumbled right on in to the well lit room.

Looting the corpse of the poor pirate, they take the magic sword and the jewelled belt and scabard worth about 1,000gp !

Mitch asks, "But how much could we get for the sword?". Interesting question...

Session1 - Gaming Update with the Kids.

2010-02-06T11:11:00.006+11:00

Session 1 - Setup and then the players enter the ruins.

Yesterday, I finally sat down and ran a basic D&D game with my three kids. It is something that I have been wanting to do for about a year now, but for many varied reasons, never got around to. My two boys are ages 10 and 5 (nearly 6); my daughter is 8. The eldest - Mitchell, has been exposed to role-playing games, through watching me and some friends from work play a regular game of d&d3.5. He has also played a few games of Wrhammer 40K battles with me over the last year. Being a fan of the LOTR films, he understands the fantasy worlds that d&d is set in. My daughter on the other hand, was playing just so she wasn't left out - and soon was distracted, drawing doodles instead of becoming 'immersed' in the game. The youngest, Jamie, was keen to play and was already playing with the miniature figures like action toys. Although he was too young to have really hany idea what dice to roll or any mechanical concepts, he was a willing participator and always had a say in making decisions on which way to explore or any other options I threw at them as part of the interactive story. He also enjoyed the physical rolling of the dice and reading the results back to me.

I had decided to run the sample adventure from the Eric Holmes edition of the D&D rules (blue book), set in the ruins of the tower of Zenopus. I really like the background story as there are several aspects to these ruins; there is an underground complex of tunnels and cellars perhaps leading to the underground ruins of a legendary ancient city upon which the current city is built; there is a sea cliff and the possibility of a pirate lair; there is an adjoining graveyard with crypts and opportuniy for nasty horrors associated with such places; and lastly there is the enigma of what happened to the wizard Zenopus that caused the destruction of the tower.

Although I was using the adventure from Holmes edition, I had decided to use the Tom Moldvay basic edition (red book) of the rules, since the mechanics were much more refined in this edition - with the turns and rounds procedures detailed to the point that it almost reads like a board game. The main reason I wanted to use B/X D&D as the game system, was that for me - of all the old school editions of D&D - it has the sweet balance of refinement and simplicity while staying true to original D&D roots. Things I like about B/X D&D:

Variable weapon damage (Greyhawk)

Different HD type for each class (Greyhawk)

Universal attribute bonus system (tidied up from the hodge-podge of all the supplements)

Simple spell system (true to original)

Simple race as class, No psionics (true to original)

Mitchell and I had already rolled up the characters while on holidays several weeks beforehand. We had six characters covering nearly all the classes available; fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief, dwarf and elf. I suppose the next one we should make is a halfling. The rolls were using 4D6 discarding the lowest die, and rolls were freely allocated to attributes to best suit the desired class. I don't think I've ever known anyone who followed the strict roll 3d6 for each attribute in turn - I think you would have to roll a whole bunch of characters and ditch the undesirables if you were to use that method. Oh, and the other standard cheaty thing I allow is maximum hitpoints for first level PCs. Its just too annoying to have a new PC die the first time they are hit.

The other 'house rule' that I adopted was the ascending armour class system and 'base attack bonus' from 3rd edition. This system is much more intuitive than calculating THAC0 and doesn't need constant looking up 'to hit' matrices during combat. I can say to the kids, "This monster has AC[13]. You need 13 to hit. Roll and add +1 for your strength!". I came across this in the Swords & Wizardry clone system. I like how all ACs can be converted on the fly to ascending [AC] by subtracting from 19, and all attack bonuses for monsters are simply their hit dice, while all the party have +0 to hit because they are only first level.

The character sheets were assigned to miniature figures by the kids and each player was in charge of two minis (and sheets) with Dad and Mitch doing the necessary reading of data off sheets as needed during the adventure. Starting off the game with the quick introducion, I was wondering how the kids would handle mapping. I knew I would have to do the mapping for them so I got a big A3 piece of 5mm grid paper and started drawing in what they could see. Using torches at a scale of 1 square is 10 feet, I revealed the dungeon upto 3 squares ahead of the square they were in. I placed a dot for their location at the end of each turn of 60 feet of movement which also helped me with time keeping and rolling for wandering monsters.

It was all very board-gamey but it worked well for me and the kids when visualising where they had progressed in their explorations. The interesting thing is that I didnt really draw out a room in full scale on the battlemap for use with the figures at any stage - as the combats were fairly simple affairs of closing to engage, fighting, and sometimes fleeing or pursuing. This was a big change from my 3.5 games where EVERY encounter is drawn at combat grid scale and tactical movement ensues. The combats were very quick affairs and it felt very strange to roll for initiative everyround after playing 3.5 for so long.

The most interesting and problematic points of the game came from the kids reactions to certain things that just amazed me. To go into this we will recap their fantastic adventure in the next article....

The ONLY game mechanic!

2010-01-29T13:55:00.003+11:00

Ok let's qualify that! The only game mechanic needed besides combat.

“There’s always a chance.” Pg B60 – Describes a simple system of rolling against ability scores to see if you can perform a difficult task.

If you don’t like rolling low to succeed, you can alternatively try this;

roll a d20 + your attribute >= 20 is success.

This in a fashion, follows my favourite B/X D&D alternative to the THAC0 method;

roll a d20 + attr bonuses + level bonus + target AC >= 20 is a hit.

The case for prime requisites - or Giving reason for ingenious mages and wise clerics.

2010-01-28T15:16:00.005+11:00

It's a funny thing how my tastes in D&D change after all these years. I remember thinking (re B/X D&D) that the weird little experience bonuses for prime requisites were superfluous and not a true reflection of the player's ability. It was obviously a ploy to get players to put the stats where they belong; archetypical mages should be intelligent and clerics should be wise. Without the prime requisite xp bonus, players would be tempted to put their lowest numbers in INT and WIS and save their good numbers for the likes of DEX and CON which gave tangible in-game benefits.

I'm sure there were many B/X magic-users runnning around with DEX 18(+3), CON 16(+2) and a lowly INT 8. So what if he can't have extra languages - he's a combat mage!

It appeared that I was not alone in this line of thinking. AD&D started to address this also by giving in-game bonuses for high numbers in each of the abilities, to remove any imbalance. Unfortunately Gygax, tended to throw together many different systems for the different attributes; clerics got extra spells yet magic-users had a crazy min-max range of spells known. I believe this is because AD&D is a conglomerate of all the character ability additions made through the original 4 supplements.

The 3rd edition finally unified the whole system but by this stage the power level inflation had got out of control. By 3rd edition even characters with average attributes of 12 get a +1 bonus, while the 18 rolls get you a +4. I think B/X D&D got the best "sweetspot" of bonuses considering the bell curve distribution of 3d6, and was the first edition to have unified bonuses regardless of class.


Attr B/X 3ed
9   0  -1
10  0   0
11  0   0
12  0  +1
13 +1  +1
14 +1  +2
15 +1  +2
16 +2  +3
17 +2  +3
18 +3  +4

Looking back, I think B/X D&D got it right. Its a fairly unified attribute bonus system with not too much inflation like 3rd edition once it added in the skill system bonuses and feat bonuses.

Reading the original D&D rules (without supplements), it was clear that STR, INT, WIS were purely there to describe the attributes of the 3 classes; fighting man, magic-user and cleric respectively. There was no mechanical game bonus for high attributes except for the xp bonus. That is, the rules confirmed that the wisest clerics would be expected to progress quickly to the highest ranks.

Referees were obviously expected to consider these 3 prime attribute values when ruling on the players chances of success during role-play. In fact the remaining non-prime attributes of CON, DEX and CHR had more solidly defined in-game mechanics. CON was clearly defined in terms of bonus hit points and chances of surviving paralyzation or petrification. DEX was used to determine who got to act first in combat rounds (another post will come on this later!). Finally, CHR defined the maximum number of unusual hirelings (adventurer types as opposed to lowly normal men-at-arms) in addition to the influence/reaction aspect in role-play.

The supplements are where the many different attribute bonuses crept in. And they were mostly very class specific. I used to like that about AD&D, but now I prefer the unified classless system of bonuses of B/X D&D. The problem of the unified system is stopping the power-gamer from maxing STR, when it is not always appropriate to the class; and this is the beauty of the prime xp bonus system. Sure you can build the combat mage as detailed previously, but he will not progress as quickly as the mage who puts his maximum attribute in the class prime requisite.

2 options are recommended for B/X;

To make the xp bonuses consistent with the other bonuses, use the formula xp bonus = generic attrib bonus x 5%. (9-12 = nil, 13-15 = +5%, 16-17 = +10%, 18 = +15%). Or if you feel the carot needs to be bigger try steps of 10% rather than 5%.

Instead of keeping track of bonus xp, just reduce the target xp to reach the next level by the same percentage. Then you can divide and hand out xp without any extra recordkeeping. This system actually is very slightly faster advancement than the straight bonus system.

DnD Trivia - Phantasmal Force

2010-01-27T16:30:00.002+11:00

I always wondered why the name Phantasmal Force for the magic-user's illusion spell. It wasn't until I read Chainmail, that it all made sense; the spell literally created an illusionary fighting force or unit on the field of battle.

Skills vs Role-playing

2010-01-25T11:19:00.003+11:00

Palladium Fantasy RPG - D&D derivative, published 1983;

"Many systems have provisions for such skills as street sense, diplomacy, bribery, gambling, haggling, and so on. While these skills do seem appropriate I feel that their inclusion eliminates the players' freedom to role play...

...skills like those mentioned above will rely on his rolled statistics ("Oh, he has to believe my character because his diplomacy skill is 80%")."
- Kevin Siembieda

Is this another defining feature of old school gaming? No personal interaction skills, just combat and occupational/professional skills or abilities. If this is so, then classic Traveller was an interesting case, with the pioneering of streetwise and bribery as character skills.

I think the difference with Traveller, was that the personal interaction skills gave bonuses to rolls on a simple game mechanic for bypassing the bereaucracy or finding information and making desired contacts - all good for expediating the pace of the story. Notably, there was no skill for bluffing or sensing motives - this kind of thing was still strictly in the domain of the players, not yet the dice.

True retro - B5!

2010-01-23T14:02:00.003+11:00

Enough heavy posts! When my Traveller little black books started coming apart, I moved them to a little black A5 2 ring folder. Years later I discovered A5 clear plastic sleeve sheet protectors, and better folders with D-rings and cover sleeves - to print your own covers, of course! When I printed my pdf of the Original D&D it naturally HAD to be printed in A5 for the authentic feel to the book at the game table.

Naturally, I tried the same thing with the retro-clone Swords & Wizardry, and I am very happy with it. I have found that the font size gets a little small in the A5 format, so I also have a copy in A4 spiral bound format as well (the S&W white box edition is shown in A4). This D.I.Y. bookmaking starts simple like this, then the next thing you know, you are trying your hand at perfect binding and stitching on hardcovers!

Now to get those original D&D supplements put into a supplemental A5 folder...

Role-Playing: Realism vs Game Logic; Spell Points. Vanity Press and Rip-offs

2010-01-22T17:27:00.010+11:00

I have just finished reading an article by Gary Gygax in The Dragon #16 (June 1978) of the same title. It leaves you with the feeling that he was in damage control mode at this point. The original D&D game was tremendously popular but the consequence was that there were many variations of the game played by different groups, and some of these were becoming potential competitors to TSR sales.

The fan-zines (or "Amateur Press") were attacking some aspects of D&D and proposing variant systems of which some, Gygax strongly disapproved of. Namely point-based magic systems and removing weapon/armour restrictions from classes.

To quote his main argument,

"Why can't magic-users employ swords? And for that matter, why not allow fighters to use wands and similar magical devices? On the surface this seems a small concession, but in actuallity it would spoil the game! Each character role has been designed with care in order to provide varied and unique approaches to solving problems which confront the players. If characters are not kept distinct, they will soon merge into one super-character." - Gygax

WOW! Didn't 3rd edition throw that out the window....Thats another blog entry for another day. I want to quote another couple of lines further on this article,

"Similarly, multi-classed character types such as elves and dwarves are limited in most class progressions in order to assure game balance [equal fun/participation for all players - GM] . That this can be justified by [in-]game logic, pointing out that humankind triumphs and rules other life forms in most if not all myths and mythos is a pleasant superfluity." - Gygax

So here Gygax lays his cards on the table and says, hey the restrictions are just there to make the game fair for all players. It's the responsibility of the DM to implement and justify it in their campaign settings. An example is presented in a following article in the same issue titled Why Magic Users & Clerics cannot use swords. It proposes an in-game curse that causes damage and robs daily spell slots when players do break class restrictions. Only one of the many ways to handle this. I preferred the old in-game story about mages not having time to become trained in the martial arts (sword fighting etc) and clerics take sacred vows not to spill the blood of men lest they are shunned by their gods. Fantasy literature mentioned the dark ages superstition that cold iron warded against spells and hexes of the fey.

The problem for Gygax was that many groups had already decided to change things. In the very same issue of this magazine one can find a full-page advertisement for Runequest from which the following quote is taken;

"Previous FRP games simply did not have the details which Dragon Pass required. CHAOSIUM proudly presents a REALISTIC SET OF FANTASY RULES...
...this system is the first to adequately pave the way to handle spirits and deities. No Artificial Character Classes!! Mages can wear armor and use blades. Clerics are reorganized as magicians as well, and not separated." - Chaosium

So the battle for player character customisation had begun, and Gygax was sticking to his original class system, though he was frantically rewriting the new AD&D at this time. It seems eventually Gygax yielded to this immense pressure, and partially conceeded some customisation through the concept of multi-classing and dual-classing in his new AD&D revision when it was released.

In this enlightened old school renaissance age, we can look back at how 3rd edition yielded completely to the power-gamer desire to have complete flexibility in character customisation. At long last the mage could wield a sword and wear armour. The move was a double-edged sword as Gygax predicted. The 3rd edition game saw super-characters that were optimally built from a cherry picked set of features of multiple classes, with the resulting blurring of roles for various players within a group.

Alignment and alignment languages

2010-01-21T12:11:00.006+11:00

This is one area where I dislike where Gary Gygax directed the game rules. In Chainmail the alignment system was there to guide you on what creatures would be found fighting together on the same side - after all it was a war game! The opposing sides were Law and Chaos, which was a common theme in swords & sorcery literature.

Law and Chaos represented a cosmic or primal struggle, which may have come across from previous science fiction literature. And we're talking about the natural law and ordering of the cosmos versus alien entropy and void, not medieval cops and robbers. Authors like Moorcock and Anderson wrote about this conflict, which transcended man's morality of good and evil. For instance, Elves were an ancient race aligned with magic and chaos in Anderson's novels, and the Chainmail rules reflected this.

Unfortunately, Gary Gygax introduced morality into the alignment system, so that you were now on the side of good or evil. Fair enough - but I don't like this second subtle change: He retained law and chaos, and subtly changed the original alignments from allegiance to behaviour. So instead of being aligned with the forces of chaos, you were now "chaotic" in behaviour. Sorry to Gary, but I think this was a big mistake. It has created so much angst where there was none before. He added classes that had alignment restrictions, which meant behaviour limitations, and people's interpretation of behaviours is a governed by their values and philosophy, so causes all sorts of disagreement between players and DM's. AD&D evangelists, Vince and Jayson, covered this in their excellent podcast Roll For Initiative, when they discussed the 9 combinations of alignments and the problems in tracking tendencies.

Although I don't like Gygax's 9 alignment system, I think some classes and magical devices should still have simple alignments, but the sides should be defined by the campaign. That is, are we talking about a world where there is a struggle between good and evil, or an amoral struggle between chaos and law? Also, if I had written AD&D, I would have changed all reference to "chaotic" to "of chaos", and "lawful" to "of law". For example a chaotic sword should have been a "sword+1 of chaos"; a lawful Paladin should have been a "Paladin of law". (laughs)

The latest 4th edition of the game also recognises the problem and has dropped a few of the problem alignments. Luckily, Basic D&D kept the original law and chaos alignment system. However being a later game, Basic D&D still adopted this behavioral way of describing alignment as lawful, neutral or chaotic. Furthermore the basic rulebook wastes a whole page (out of a 64 page booklet) on this largely unnecessary part of the game!

I remember that I always thought the way alignment languages were described, as secret hand signals etc, was preposterous - even in a fantasy world. On the other hand, I can recall reading The Hobbit where the little bird talks to Bilbo at Smaugs mountain, and I thought that was cool. Was the sparrow talking in common tongue? Can all animals? Was it a telepathic illusory magical effect? Would an evil bad guy troll have been able to eves-drop on such a conversation? Alignment language is one way to explain such things. The cool thing is that the DM can start to make such rulings and the players can think of cool ways to use such devices in game.

Personally, I can't recall any instances of alignment language being used in a game. We must have ignored them back in the day.

Munchkin

2010-01-20T11:06:00.005+11:00

I Played Munchkin ( Ok, it was actually Munchkin Cthulhu!) last night with a friend from my regular 3.5 group. His partner and my son joined in, and we had a good laugh. Obviously, a clever parody of the whole D&D rpg.

What is "munchkinism"? A munchkin is generally a term used for a child or junior person. In D&D it was the style of play known as power gaming, put down as "juvenile behaviour" by those who did not like that sort of thing. Steve Jackson Games took it an extra step and accused dungeon crawling of being juvenile in the GURPS rulebook. My guess is that by the 90s the whole gaming hobby had a gutful of dungeons, and was looking for something new - say...World of Darkness.

But let's face it- we all have a little kid inside of us who enjoys collecting lots of goodies to get the maximum combat effectiveness - fight on! Munchkin unashamably brings this out - and that makes it fun. Looking back at the history of D&D, its funny to see how D&D 3.0 and 3.5 progressively turned up the "munchkinism" of D&D, despite games such as Munchkin and GURPS openly mocking this style of play.

Drop the Thief class but what about Clerics?

2010-01-19T15:36:00.003+11:00

I really like the retro clone, Swords & Wizardry. In a way it's not a true clone because it doesn't doggedly replicate an earlier edition, like say perhaps Labyrinth Lord does, but instead presents a cleaner more organised presentation of the original rules, picking out all the good bits and culling or revising the not so good bits.

The very nature of the original 70's version of the game leads to this sort of approach because it was amended and revised through several supplements. There was no official way to play the game or claims of material being canon. Basically the original version was a framework from which everyone was expected to house rule.

Swords & Wizardry dropped the Thief class which, when I thought about it, makes sense. The Thief was introduced in the Greyhawk supplement as a specialist class to deal with traps and locks but in doing so, took away some of the action from all the other classes. Up until the Thief class was introduced, who do you think was sneaking around checking for traps, listening at doors and trying to climb down pits or over walls? All the players of course - regardless of whether they were a fighting type or magic user. The pulp fantasy literature is full of sword wielding fighters living by their wits as thieves (see Robert E Howard or Fritz Lieber).

Now having seen that nothing is sacred when re-imagining D&D, I would like to visit the "core" class that I think is not really necessary for a swords & sorcery style adventure - the Cleric class. This class was introduced in the original D&D but did not exist in the Chainmail game, where there were essentially just heroes (swords) and wizards (sorcery). The class was a specialist in dealing with the undead, and was empowered by the gods with spells for healing and protection.

I always had trouble reconciling the many interpretations of what a cleric is. The level names associated the class with the common clergy or priesthood, yet they could cast spells! And they could be armed to the teeth like templar knights of the crusades, where magic users could not wear armour. The class drew heavily on archetypes from medieval Christian times such as Poul Anerson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. Or maybe special paladins or knights with fantasy spells as well. In Basic D&D you could roll an encounter with a group of acolytes lead by a 4th level priest - all AC2. Why would the clergy be wondering around in platemail rather than priesthood robes? Obviously not your mundane priesthood pilgrims, but warriors prepared for battle. Is that the role of clergy men or fighting men?

Tunnels & Trolls dealt with the problem very easily - no cleric class but instead give the divine style spells to the magic using Wizards, and replace the cleric vs. undead mechanic with a simple spell called Oh Go Away! Whereas Palladium Fantasy did have clergy, but not as spell casters as such. It gave them a supernatural ability to perform miracles or laying of hands a number of times a day. I like that approach to the class much better.

And so I ask, although the cleric has become an iconic part of D&D, is the D&D Cleric class really necessary for swords & sorcery fantasy gaming?

Andre Norton's Witch World

2010-01-18T20:46:00.000+11:00

Following my personal goal to read more of the classic pulp fantasy given in the "Inspirational Reading" lists of the DMG and Moldvay D&D Basic, I picked up an omnibus of the first 3 novels in Andre Norton's Witch World series.

By coincidence I was listening to the awesome Roll For Initiative old school podcast, when they reviewed a book called Quag Keep by the same Author - I think they even made the same mistake as me in assuming Andre was a male writer.

What perplexed me though, was their dismissal of Norton as "not one of the great fantasy writers". I have finished the first novel - Witch World, and I can say her writing style is as grand and authentically archaic as Tolkien, even if the plot and scope of the story was more a cross-over from science fiction. While perhaps less epic than the tale of Middle Earth, her story is just as adventerous and satisfying to read, and her main characters are more richly detailed.

Anyway, it appears Andre Norton did a lot of collabrative work with other authors, and it appears that Quag Keep may have been co-written with someone from TSR? Now I'm going to have to find this book and read it, because I'm guessing this may be why it doesn't rate as high as what I feel about Witch World.

That reminds me - Another definitive thing I like in old school versions of D&D, is that they had an inspirational sources list. For me, it represents explicit licence for the GM to modify the game to suit his/her fantasy world.

The original D&D and Chainmail

2010-01-17T23:25:00.000+11:00

Every fan of D&D owes it to themselves to read the original 3 little booklets that were the very first Dungeons & Dragons game. Many gamers of my generation came into the hobby in the 80s starting out with AD&D and B/X D&D which were ubiquitously available through game shops, book stores and even large department stores. While there were references in these works to the original version of the game, in Australia in particular, the original game was out of production and hard to find. Thanks to the modern age of the internet and PDF electronic copies of books, anyone can now get a copy of these rules and importantly, the Chainmail miniatures rulebook that D&D was evolved from.

For me, reading these original rulebooks was a revelation. I had always puzzled over the differences between AD&D and the B/X version of the game. Reading the original game and then also the Chainmail miniatures wargame rulebook, filled in all the missing development history, which allowed me to make more sense of all the seemingly quirky and illogical bits. It was an epiphany to learn how the D&D levels were derived from essentially 2 levels of heroic fighters (greater than normal men) and 4 levels of wizards in the Chainmail rules. That is, there were certain individual figures, among the armies these being heroes, superheroes, seers, magicians, warlocks and wizards.

In Chainmail, wizards fought as 2 figures, heroes fought as the equivalent of 4 figures and superheroes were “one man armies” fighting as the equivalent of 8 figures (When you consider the game had a scale of 1 figure equals 20 fighting men, an individual superhero was a force to be reckoned with! ). D&D took the next step to allow characters to progress in finer granularity of fighting ability to the level of superhero and then on to lord.

D&D introduced Hit Dice to represent the fighting ability of figures so that a hero and superhero had 4 and 8 HD respectively. Successful attacks now delivered 1HD of damage, so that our hero fighting as 4 figures, got 4 attacks at 1 die damage, while having 4HD of hit points with which to sustain an average 4 dice of cumulative damage. This was a big change over chainmail where there was no concept of cumulative damage. A superhero needed to suffer the equivalent of 8 casualties in a single attack to be killed by normal human or demi-human troops (men, orcs, kobolds etc), but one successful hit from a fantastic monstrous creature (dragons, trolls, ents etc) would kill him.

D&D also provided the “Alternative Combat System” of the Level versus AC “To Hit” matrix that later went on to be the heart of the D&D system, replacing Chainmail altogether. This matrix was much simpler to use than the chainmail system and required only a single d20 roll, followed by a damage roll if successful.

And so now the heroic individuals were now fleshed out as “characters” with attribute scores that could make a difference in the game. A new class was added - the cleric, a healer and also bane of the undead. All this and lots of new spells and cool magic items, but there was more goodies to come, in the first supplemental rulebook (Greyhawk), when we would see the introduction of the thief class and many of the iconic monsters and spells we take for granted in AD&D.

As for the debate about the Tolkien influence on D&D ? Read the Chainmail entry for orcs and decide for yourself (laughs)…

A New Year's resolution - Introduction to my blog

2010-01-16T22:42:00.000+11:00

Hello and welcome to "Dungeon Delving", a blog covering my trials, research, musings and discoveries or perhaps I should say, re-discoveries about this quirky little interest of mine known as role playing games. To be more specific, I mean paper and pencil role-playing games, not computer RPGs. I guess here I am showing my age, for some readers may have grown up with computer based RPGs and know much more about the likes of World of Warcraft than I will ever know.

My introduction to D&D was in 1981, at the age of 12, where a school friend was playing in a game run by his older brother. He had brought his character sheet to school and was describing this awesome sounding game. I remember pouring over the esoteric penciled in stats such as “% Bend Bars/Lift Gates” and the equipment carried. My imagination had been completely captivated. Although I had no idea how to play this game the concept was so new, yet intuitively simple – I was hooked. After all, I had read The Lord of the Rings and the concept of a story where you choose your own adventure was already around in kids books at that time.
I can recall running my first game that very night with my brother and sister, using a couple of small toy metal figurines of Vikings. I can’t recall what “rules” I had made up (probably very freeform!), but I distinctly remember setting up a cardboard grid of some corridors and various sized rooms, and the entry corridor had a pit trap which the first person in the marching order fell into. Another vivid recollection from this very first game is of my brother deciding his character would be “Monkey” from the BBC TV series about Buddhist/Hindu mythology. As Monkey he could pluck his magic staff from his ear and make it grow to full size so as to summon his flying cloud to cross further pits and chasms! Many kids at school were getting into the D&D as the craze of the 1980s was going into full swing. Movies such as E.T. and segments on Simon Townsend’s Wonderworld were exposing D&D to the Australian public, and already D&D had a reputation as a game that geeks played.

Many kids played the “Red Box” (Moldvay) D&D Basic game ($20 for the boxed set including dice and module B2 – Keep on the Borderlands, or $10 for the rulebook alone). Some luckier kids managed to collect the Advanced D&D hardcover books (at $20 for the PHB, $20 for the Monster Manual and $25 for the DMG – serious money for a teenager in the ‘80s!). Strangely, many groups played a mix of Basic and Advanced D&D – having started on the red box then “graduating” to AD&D. I played with one group who played the module series Against the Giants with nothing more than the DMG. My first rules I bought was not D&D but another simpler (and cheaper !) game called Tunnels & Trolls (5th Edition) by Ken St. Andre. I loaned the book to a friend who turned out to be very creative. He thrived on the rules-light system and hosted a regular game that we all had a great deal of fun trying to survive his complex of devious traps and deadly monsters.

It wasn’t long after T&T that I bought my brother the Moldvay Basic Rulebook for his birthday. On reading this classic 64 page gem, I was blown away by how much more D&D provided over T&T. I found the detail in the monsters and the magic items truly inspirational –it made me want to stock a dungeon and run a game! The only area I thought was maybe better in the T&T rules was the spells – they had grown dear to me (Take That You Fiend!). I felt that in naming this blog I should acknowledge the formative role T&T played in my fantasy gaming; Delving was a term often used in that game.

Anyway, I was so impressed by D&D that it wasn’t long before I had my own copy of Basic and also the blue Expert Rules (edited by Cook), however I think I got the original Deluxe Traveller boxed set for my birthday before I saved up to buy D&D. Oddly enough, I don’t recall anyone else playing the expert rules version of D&D in those days. Literally everyone I knew was playing AD&D. And I knew quite a few players in those days because I had taken a part-time job in a small games shop called “Games & Things”, and got to talking to many of the customers.

Those years from around 1982 through 1986, were happy RPG days. There was always a game on somewhere, either through friends of friends or through the enthusiasts coming through the shop looking for the latest module or Dragon Magazine. There seemed to be such a varied community and people were always open to new players in those days. I was usually one of the youngest players at the table, but always managed to find a ride with a car load of players (driven by some crazy P-plater), or catch a train to some suburb of Sydney I had never been to before. However, after this period my involvement in RPGing came to an abrupt halt. I think going on to tertiary studies and leaving the job at the game shop caused me to lose touch with my broader gaming contacts. The truth is probably that my immediate friends and I, had moved on to more grown-up pursuits and we believed that we had outgrown D&D.

And so although my love of D&D had taken a back seat in my life, I still had the fascination burning deep within as I discovered in the early ‘90s when I came across a set of 2nd Edition Books in a second hand bookshop. Luckily I was able to retrieve all my original stuff still in storage at my parents’ house. But even though I picked up the odd second hand book during the 90s, it wasn’t until 2007 that I decided to take the plunge and get back into role-playing. Now living on the south coast, there were no local gaming groups or even game shops to speak of. I decided to travel to Sydney for game conventions on some of the long weekend holidays. Through these I got into D&D 3.5, but no sooner had I started playing 3rd edition when 4th edition came out.

The year 2008, for me, marks a low point in RPGs. The passing of the great pioneers, Gary Gygax ,Dave Arneson and Tom Moldvay. Also the release of an edition of D&D that I just cannot love like the older editions – it plain and simply leaves me feeling cold and empty. The small bright light burning in the darkness of this time, is a group of people, an appreciation, and an aspiration known as the Old School Renaissance. It is this renaissance that I would like this blog to contribute at a grass roots, home grown level. I intend make the game my own, the way D&D was originally conceived.