Xeveninti

4e powers are nice but...

2010-08-09T09:29:00.005-04:00

Before the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons was released, I was eager to make the change to the new system. I had heard much about how this set of rules was going to simplify things and make it easier and faster to play. For a while after it was released, I tried to love it. But ultimately I abandoned it and sold all my 4e books on eBay.

Nevertheless, I am impressed with the 4e combat system. It rigidly defines the sequence of the combat turn and all the various maneuvers one can make. It is the sum result of decades of house rules and subsequent official implementation of these house rules combined with a new system called "powers."

For my own future D&D campaigns, I am currently assembling a new set of house rules. These rules are a combination of various editions of D&D into a game that focuses on old school sandbox campaign play. Since all of the D&D rules ultimately center around combat, I am choosing to use most of the combat rules presented in 4e.

No doubt grognards will think I'm crazy. How can I have an old school D&D game without THAC0? And what about all those silly powers that homogenizes all of the character classes? Well, I think I can use THAC0 (or something essentially the same as THAC0) within a general 4e combat framework and still call it "old school." But that's a subject of another article.

The use of powers in 4e was a good innovation. It consolidates everything that a character can do in combat under one definition. A basic mêlée attack is a power. Clerics healing the wounded is a power. A fireball spell is a power. The finely polished game mechanic of powers in D&D is a tremendously effective tool when it comes to standardizing and simplifying the complex rule exceptions that built up over the decades since 1974. It's a wonderful hammer for building a better set of rules.

However...

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

— Abraham Maslow

The developers of 4e took the new concept of powers and got carried away with it. They applied it to everything. The result was fighters having a vast array of powers that are comical. All of the classes were reduced to a single, simplified mechanism that created well-defined niches which the developers felt that they had to fill in order to complete the game. The elimination of Vancian magic was a direct result of the overuse of powers in the game's structure. Playing a fighter at the table now seems indistinguishable from spell casters what with all the crazy-named powers such as "Indomitable Battle Strike" and "Strike of the Watchful Guard." Munchkinism has been institutionalized in 4e. The system-wide implementations of powers helped to seal the fate of 4e being essentially World of Warcraft for the tabletop.

The way that powers completely dominate the rules in 4e is not to my liking. Yet, at its core, 4e powers are good system. As I said, it consolidates spells, monster abilities, and combat maneuvers into one polished system. I think that powers make 4e an excellent game system. I just have trouble calling it Dungeons & Dragons.

So in my house rules, I'm using the basic framework of 4e combat and a fraction of the powers system from that edition. Vancian magic will remain but I will redefine all the spells in terms of powers. (And perhaps I'll use the 4e rules for "rituals" but I'm not sure at this point. Probably not.) Some of the 4e racial powers are interesting. Fighters and other martial classes will have few, if any powers at all.

Instead of using the mammoth damage rolls of 4e that contributed to the massive hit point inflation in that edition, I'll use the old damage rolls of 1e. Likewise, hit dice for all the classes and monsters.

OSRIC has a nice way of equating HD to class level so I'll use that for plugging monsters into the 4e-style combat system. Or will I use THAC0? The 4e system of calculating attack rolls is so simple that I might use that instead. More on that subject later.

Will my mutant bastard set of D&D rules be balanced? Of course not. D&D was never completely balanced. That's the nature of the various character classes. The trouble with 4e is that those rules are too balanced. Balanced to the point of making all the classes, in strictly mechanical game rule terms, exactly alike.

Holmes Basic Box Cover

2010-08-02T16:48:00.002-04:00

I scanned the box cover, including the sides, at 600 dpi. I cleaned it up, removed the text, and pieced together parts that were absent. Since the whereabouts of Sutherland's painting is unknown, this might be the closest we'll ever get to seeing what it originally looked like.

I will be using this image for the cover of my own set of D&D house rules that I will compile into one PDF document suitable for the iPad (or similar device). More on that project later.

I'm still around

2010-08-02T10:25:00.002-04:00

I quit gaming last year. I've been working on other things such as selling many personal possessions. For instance, I sold off most of my comic collection.

Relevant to gaming, I sold a two-foot-tall stack of D&D game rule books. I sold all of my 4e books. I sold all of my 3.5e books. I sold all of my 3e core rule books. I sold all of my Knights of the Dinner Table comic books.

I kept my D&D books and modules published before the year 2000.

Shutting down

2009-09-24T11:34:00.002-04:00

I am leaving the gaming community. Perhaps permanently. The reasons are personal. I was going to delete this blog but I decided to leave it online. Maybe gamers will garner some wisdom from what I have written.

Kindle DX rule book

2009-06-12T12:09:00.007-04:00

I returned home yesterday to find that I received my new Kindle DX from Amazon.com. I had been looking forward to getting my hands on a large-sized PDF reading device ever since I first heard about the Plastic Logic Reader. That particular brand won't be on the market for another year. Meanwhile, we have the Kindle DX.

The Kindle DX is not to be confused with the Kindle, which has a much smaller screen. The DX has a large screen that is suitable for double columns and charts.

The display technology is remarkable. It is not a bright LED screen that you can't read in sunlight. It's like a giant digital watch screen that needs an outside light to be read. Unfortunately, "turning pages" seems slow in comparison to doing the same thing with Adobe Reader on your computer. However, I imagine that this issue will be addressed in future versions of the Kindle.

It displays in greyscale only. But that's fine since most rule books are in black-and-white. The words are more important than the pretty pictures.

You can easily hook your DX up to a computer with a USB cable. Your computer treats it like a removable external hard drive. You can load it up with PDF files (4 GB capacity, I believe) and you're good to go. Switching out PDF files is a breeze.

This is the future of game rule books. PDF files are nice but it is awkward to use a desktop or laptop computer at the game table. This device is no larger than a typical hardback game rule book. As a matter of fact, it's thinner than many rule books. Best of all, you can load it with thousands of pages.

All game publishers should publish Kindle versions of their rule books. The caveat is that they must put more effort into it than just simply saving the rule book in PDF format. Anything less is unacceptable and defeats the purpose of putting it in electronic format. The document should be filled with links to particular pages on the table of contents. Not only that, the document should be filled with cross-reference links. Instead of having "(see Chapter 4, EQUIPMENT, for more information)," place an actual link to that page.

This new medium for text information is fantastic. But those who write material for it must do it in a manner that takes advantage of its power. Simply scanning book pages directly to PDF format would only result in a marginally useful document on a Kindle. But if rule books are assembled in PDF format with links, it makes all the difference in the world.

I only got my Kindle DX yesterday. In the next week I will experiment with creating cross-referenced PDF documents in Adobe InDesign CS4. This will eventually lead to development of my own house rule book for my current 0e/1e D&D game.

UPDATE:

I just found out that it is not possible to do anything useful with PDF files on the Kindle DX. Hyperlinking for cross-referencing is not possible. PDF table of contents doesn't work. It only reads the PDF and nothing more. This thing is USELESS to me. I will try to return it or sell it on eBay.

How I play in the sandbox (campaign)

2009-04-03T17:32:00.002-04:00

Today I got a PM through a gamer forum that I frequent. In it, a fellow gamer asked me about sandbox campaign game play. There has been much talk about sandbox campaigns on various old school blogs. But I'm not sure that has been a lot of explicit detail about exactly how these sandbox campaigns develop. I learn best by example. So I tried to to answer with examples from my current experiment with old school gaming, Blue Dancer. My PM reply turned into a very long message. And so to make it worth my while, I've edited a version for this blog.

My fellow gamer wrote:

I wanted to ask you something about "sandbox" style campaigns. Do you still have events going on in the background that may or may not influence the PC's? What about the PC's influencing those events?

Where I am going with this is that I too often run into the pitfalls of the story arc. It sounds great at first, but the PC's don't get that one clue they should have, or they don't kill the guy they should have, or maybe they killed somebody they SHOULDN'T have.

In answer to the question, I do not have events going on in the background that may or may not affect the PCs. At least, not at first. And maybe not the way one would expect. Instead, I have factions of monsters and NPCs that are set in place within the campaign world that are poised to react to the PCs if they are encountered. From there, stories might spontaneously generate themselves through the improvisation of both the PCs and the DM.

For example, I've started a 1e campaign with some folks I met through KnoxGamers. I have Castle Xeva, a tent pole mega-dungeon, outlined but I've only mapped out a couple of levels. At the beginning, I told the players that one of them acquired a map to a secret entrance. We had the obligatory tavern scene. They were expecting various adventure hooks but I gave them none. The way was paved to the entrance of the dungeon. I had random lists of various types of names that I could fish from to assign to NPCs. On the way to the dungeon, I rolled a random encounter in the woods. Goblins! They laid ambush. I was surprised that they took one goblin prisoner and questioned him. I had absolutely positively nothing prepared. I improvised. The goblin said he was part of a patrol sent out from the castle dungeon (where the party was going). While the PCs were arguing about whether or not to slay the goblin, a treant snatched the goblin and ran off into the woods. This gave me ideas about where the goblin came from, what the treant was up to, and what might happen in the future.

When they got to the castle's dungeon, I still hadn't filled all the rooms with details, monsters, and traps. I had noted some of the monsters near the entrance. When the players traveled beyond what I noted, I randomly picked out appropriately powerful monsters and improvised. Their tentative explorations have given me ideas about how to flesh out the dungeon further. The PCs have been discussing their theories about how the various monster factions within the dungeon are interacting based upon my sparse (and sometimes improvised) hints. Privately, I've been taking note and preparing for future adventures.

I've repeatedly explained to the PCs that I would not be easy on them. I would not look the other way at bad dice rolls. Thus they burst into a goblin training room without listening at the door and two of their characters went down. They rest barely managed to escape and regroup. Were the players upset? Absolutely not. They all had a good laugh and were ready to roll up new characters. But, since the players were taken prisoner and not permanently destroyed, I told them to hang on until the next session. You see, I had some vague ideas about how the PCs could find their way out of this mess.

In their previous encounter with goblins, one of the players asked if they bore a common symbol on their armor or shields. Perhaps this would indicated what tribe they were from or what organization they represented. That caught me off guard and so I said they did not wear any sort of symbol. But that gave me ideas for the future. When they encountered goblins in the dungeon, I said that they all had white symbols on their armor.

The following week, I introduced an NPC thief, a character I had used last year in this same campaign world but with a different group. With her help, the PCs escaped. The NPC thief promised that she could repay them by introducing the party to a powerful magic-user that she knew in the nearby capital city. (Yet another character I used in a previous campaign.)

When the PCs left the dungeon, they encountered an elf and a treant holding a tied-up goblin. The elf explained that he was a ranger from a nearby faerie city in the woods to the north-east (the name of which I randomly chose from a list right there at the table while we were playing). The treant, of course, was the one they had encountered before entering the dungeon. The elf explained that the goblin was not from the castle dungeon but was actually from a tribe that had occupied a nearby abandoned manor house somewhere to the west. This explained the goblin's lack of identifying symbol. The PCs decided to go check it out next time. This has somewhat eased up on my session prep because I plan to use an existing published module. That's why they called them modules, after all. So you could modularly insert them into any campaign world.

At the beginning of the campaign, all I had prepared were some spare dungeon notes and some general ideas about the surrounding wilderness. There were no adventure hooks other than the map to the secret dungeon entrance. Now that they are returning to town for the first time, they have at least three or four choices of where they could take their adventures. My main castle mega-dungeon is, of course, the central focus of my campaign and allows for endless adventure possibilities. But there are other places that they can now explore.

What matters is that the PCs are given an adventure that proceeds at an interesting pace. And at their own pace. What matters is that they have monsters to slay, traps to avoid, treasure to find, and NPCs with whom to interact. What matters is that each player can be given challenges appropriate to their PCs' classes. Their ultimate goal is to reach higher levels so that they may attract henchmen, build strongholds, create temples, start guilds, or whatever the players want to do. Each class has an endgame that is specified in the earliest editions of D&D but were abandoned in later editions. PCs need to be able to carve out their niche in the untamed chaotic wilderness between the "points of light" that are the waning remnants of lawful civilization. How they do it is up to them. It's up to the DM to provide realistic obstacles to whatever the players want to do. But a DM planning out every last level and room of a dungeon that the PCs might not completely explore is folly.

Along with rule books full of monsters to fight, spells to cast, treasure to loot, and magic items to wield, all of these parameters allow the DM to easily improvise a "story" right there on the spot as they are playing the game. Based on what happens in previous sessions, further story developments can be improvised. As more information about the game world is accumulated, the easier it is to improvise new story developments.

When I started my recent campaign, I had no idea that they would encounter some goblins in the woods. But this inspired the use of the module with the goblin-infested manor house that the PCs can explore. The treant encounter, which I had vaguely planned before the start of the campaign, inspired a possible future plot development and a "mission" that the PCs can complete. The elf encounter, which I had also vaguely planned before the start of the campaign, might allow potential allies for the PCs. The thief that helped their escape created a powerful connection in the nearby city. But I hadn't planned this connection at any time before the PCs were captured by the goblins. And the big bad guy? He/she/it is within the castle ruins and has yet to notice the PCs. I'm not even sure about the agenda of all the factions yet. Whatever it is, it's up to the players (and the DM) to figure it out. There is always a possibility that the players will figure out the bad guy's nefarious plot before the DM!

With sandbox campaigns, there is no railroading. The possibility of the PCs doing or saying the wrong thing is irrelevant. Excessive game world design is pointless. It's good to have some extremely general details worked out about what's nearby the first dungeon that the players explore. But there is no point in planning out agendas and rolling up NPCs until you know that the players are going to have anything to do with them in any significant way. Over time, NPCs flesh themselves out. Plots play themselves out in an improvisational manner. The so-called "plot" of the campaign could very well result in Total Party Kill. So be it! It is a game, after all. Adventure paths with story arcs are what I call "gaming entertainment" and are not actually games in the true sense of the word. The players can roll up new characters. And when they do, the DM already has the campaign world fleshed out even more than when the group first started out. It gets easier and the pace of the game moves faster than before because both the DM and the players are already familiar with the established stories of previous game sessions. I had already played a campaign with another group within this game world and so I have several characters that I can call upon as NPCs. Back when I still thought campaigns needed story arcs, I had even developed a rough outline of a world-shaking event for this campaign world. Will that story develop in this campaign? Only if it seems relevant to the actions of the PCs. I could care less if they pursue that plot hook.

My gamer friend also asked me:

Anyway, I was just wondering more about this free form stuff. Are you running anything like this during the 3 River Con? If so, I would be very interested in playing or, if you are already full, just observing.

As for running a sandbox campaign at 3 River Con, I don't think that will happen. The very nature of a sandbox campaign is that it's a multi-session thing that snowballs over time. Gygax and all the rest of the old schoolers carefully prepared adventures in advance for their convention games. These were known as tournaments and even had their own scoring system.

It's been theorized that Gygax's 1st edition AD&D was actually a formalized version of the original edition in order to be used for tournament play. (James M. over at Grognardia mentioned this but I can't find the specific post at the moment.) Many of the tournament games from way back when were eventually published as some of the famous modules that we know today. This probably encouraged gamers everywhere to emulate the style of carefully pre-planned modules and eventually encouraged the development of adventure paths with story arcs. I don't think there was ever a formal presentation or "how-to" guide for playing RPGs like they did back in the early days. Lately, folks like me have been re-examining what playing D&D is really all about. I've been wondering about this for the last couple of years. To my delight, I've found through the magic of the internet that there are many other people who are of a like mind. Thus, we seem to be having an "old school renaissance."

Fight On! in hardcover!

2009-03-29T08:40:00.002-04:00

Fans of old school D&D should invest in this limited-edition gem! It's a compilation of the first four issues of Fight On! magazine. I have all of them and I can tell you that it's just what the DM ordered. Lots of old school inspiration for the dedicated hobbyist gamer.

For now, I'm done with 4e

2009-03-27T14:40:00.005-04:00

I really wanted to embrace 4e and run with it. I loved the ideas presented at the 2007 GenCon announcement. I listened to the podcast discussions about the thought that went into the changes in the rules. I read articles about it and bought the preview books. I eagerly anticipated its release.

During the same period of time, between the beginning of 2007 when I ended my 3.5e campaign with Keep on the Borderlands and when I dissolved my local D&D MeetUp group in June, I was re-examining what playing D&D was really all about. Since that time, I've been paying attention to the so-called "old school renaissance" that has been developing relatively recently.

Up until recently, I even had a theory that it's possible to play 4e in an old school style. Much as I'd like to think otherwise, I don't think that this is really possible. Although one can stick to dungeon crawling in a sandbox setting, the 4e rule structure is so radically different that it's not practical.

I've seen several other blogs state their various criticisms of 4e. There's no need for me to restate all of them here. But I can mention a few.

4e revolves around combat. And the combat takes too long. The characters and monsters have too many hit points. The powers system is a cookie cutter for homoginized characters. Yes, it's nice that there is balance. But this forces all the characters to be defined by how well they do in combat. Sometimes less is better. I realized that this was the case when my game group played a first-level encounter with a dozen goblins. The combat took much less time than a similar encounter in 4e.

I think I am completely done with the idea of using skills in Dungeons & Dragons. All it does is complicate game play. And not only does it define what a character does, it also defines what the character can't do. Secondary professions are unimportant to hero-adventurers. Minor tasks that have been defined in terms of skill difficulty in later additions can be resolved more easily with rules presented in earlier editions. Or the DM can just improvise, which is what they usually did back in the day. And even with 3.5e or 4e, the DM ends of making up scads of house rules anyway. So what's the point in spending all that time with character sheets that are as complicated as tax forms? Basically, who cares? The point of the game is adventure, not statistics.

I don't like how actual role-playing at the game table has been replaced with skill challenges. I also have a similar criticism of 3.5e.

I don't like how 1st level 4e characters kick ass in essentially the same manner as 30th level characters. Sure, their powers are different. But in terms of game mechanics, it's all the same at any level but with different levels of damage.

The end game that was defined in early editions is gone. Instead of aspiring towards running a fiefdom, guild, or temple, 4e is a game of apotheosis. You start out as a abnormally powerful hero and then work your way up to godhood. Although the game mechanics have been relatively simplified in comparison to 3.5e, suping up character statistics has been institutionalized and is irrevocably essential. Whatever happened to henchmen? Loyalty checks? All down the tubes because the 4e game is all about the power and glory of the PC.

I suppose I could rant further. But I think you get the picture. I will play 4e, if given the opportunity. I'd like to see it succeed. Perhaps a 4.5e will be released that will restructure the rules. But I doubt it. It's the fundamental style of 4e that kind of turn me off.

Nevertheless, there are a few things about 4e that I like. The cosmology, for instance. I like some of the new monsters. The dragonborn and teiflings are nice ideas. But these and other nifty bells and whistles aren't enough to convince me to put in the effort towards running a 4e campaign.

Who knows? Maybe I'll change my opinion. But for now, I'm having much more fun playing it old school.

Blue Dancer session #6

2009-03-25T08:07:00.012-04:00

Yes, it's been a month since the last campaign update. There hasn't been much to report other than that the dungeon crawl has been proceeding at a slow to moderate pace. But the pace is picking up as we become more familiar with 1e rules and discuss the establishment of house rules. Nevertheless, I think we are succeeding in our attempt to return to the old school roots of D&D.

During the second session, the PCs entered the valley of the faerie and followed the overgrown road to Castle Xeva. On they way, they had an encounter with some goblins and a mysterious treant. In the third session, they reached the location of the castle. A high stone bridge spanned a crevice above a wide river next to a huge waterfall. On the other side, upon a tall rock formation, rests the castle. Cautiously, they crossed the bridge and find the secret trail up to the collapsed wall beneath a curtain tower that opens to a corner of the underground dungeon.

I did my best to describe this first room of the dungeon as safe place to set up a "base camp." This became more apparent when they discovered that much of the corridors and rooms immeadiately beyond this first room had only non-intelligent monsters. Some of the rooms seemed to be neglected, forgotten, or at least didn't see much traffic.

The first creatures they encountered were a bunch of giant centipedes inhabiting a forgotten latrine. After squishing these horrors, the players were confronted with a monster that challenged them. One of the PCs, Cedric the cleric of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, correctly guessed what was going on. The first clue was the unusual cleanliness of the corridor. The second was the floating skeleton coming down the corridor. Undead! And a weird, powerful undead. Not some run-of-the-mill skeleton warrior. This threw everyone else off. It took a while for them to figure out that it was just a gelatinous cube. The point is that I didn't just say, "A gelatinous cube is approaching." I tried to describe it in indirect terms and I successfully added some flavor and mystery. The PC playing Himo Liadon, the elven fighter, commented that he immensely enjoyed being challenged by an old school monster that he never thought much about. He was impressed by the fact that I had placed this monster in the dungeon and had it fulfilling its intended purpose: dungeon cleaning. I explained that I was trying to achieve what James Maliszewski termed as Gygaxian Naturalism. I'd like to have the dungeon monsters to have some sort of reason for their placement.

At the beginning of the fourth game session, the players slayed the gelatinous cube with flasks of burning oil. (Unfortunately, Cedric couldn't make it for this session.) The PCs cautiously explored further. After Milo Tosscobble, the thief, disarmed and unlocked a door trapped with a chopping blade, they found a cobweb-filled corridor and a dark figure shooting a hand crossbow at them! The elf goes down, the bolt tipped with sleep poison. The mysterious enemy disappears behind a door. Before the thief could unlock it, he was long gone. They try to follow his trail but they waste further time trying to sneak past a sleeping gryphon.

The fifth session was at a new location, in the basement of player running Hibob, the magic-user. Here there was more space and a larger table. And his huge collection of WotC plastic minatures was amazing. But me and my 1e monsters! The first monster I asked him to pull out didn't exist in 3rd edition. Unfortunately, two players were missing this time around, Cedric and Himo. Exploring another room, they found a pool of black water feeding tree roots hanging from the ceiling. Beyond the draped roots they encountered whipweeds that were a good challenge.

The sixth session, which took place last night, was the most exciting session we've had so far. But before we began, we went over some house rules. (I'll address these in a separate blog post.) All five of the players were present and we we all felt much more comfortable with the rules. After the PCs had their night's rest, I peppered their night with semi-random texture. During the first watch, Himo the elf spotted a dragon-like creature flying from the castle to the mountains to the east. Right before dawn, Royor, the half-orc fighter, spotted the gryphon flying off for its morning hunt. Milo, playing the perfect thief, wanted to go back and steal the eggs! But the others wanted to explore other dungeon rooms. Thus they burst into a goblin training room and a glorious battle ensued. Things were going badly for the goblins at first. But then then Milo went chasing after a goblin spear-chucker. This brought the attention of more goblin spear-chuckers and things went south for our heroes.

As I explained to my players during several previous sessions, I would not be going easy on them. I do not have any sort of long-term plot in the works for this campaign. I have no adventure path. There is just the players and the dungeon. If they die, they die. It's the nature of the old school game. Thus it came to pass that Royor and Hibob went down. Cedric made the rational decision to take Hibob's wand and make a hasty retreat with Himo. Milo, when he went after the goblin earlier, had become separated. But the thief managed to escape and, with succuessful climb rolls, managed to work his way around the cliffs and back to the dungeon entrance. I explained to Royor and Hibob that they awake in a dungeon cell guarded by golblins.

Gloom and doom! But we all had a good laugh. The adventure has taken a turn that no one expected, least of all myself. This has sparked yet more ideas about the future of the campaign. And everyone is very much looking forward to next week's session.

In memory of the Dungeon Master

2009-03-04T16:37:00.002-05:00

We'll always miss you, Gary.

The Blue Dancer campaign begins!

2009-02-25T08:26:00.009-05:00

Actually, it begins again. But this time, I'm focusing on a megadungeon.

In the last several months, I've been reading various old school blogs. One of the key elements that I think were lacking in all my previous campaign starts was a so-called tent pole megadungeon. I knew that Greyhawk and Blackmoor started with a large dungeon. But I suppose that I hadn't considered such dungeons essential until recently.

For the last several years, I had been tremendously interested in the imminent release of Castle Zagyg, Gary Gygax's legendary dungeon. In anticipation of it's release, I obtained a copy of WGR1 Ruins of Greyhawk and a copy of the Free City of Greyhawk boxed set. Impatient for the release of Castle Zagyg, I purchased the Yggsburg hardback and examined the region surrounding the castle dungeon. Finally, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works was released. As I examined the module, I wondered if I could do better? Now I'm trying to put that to the test.

I had never gamed with any of the players before. But our common interest was playing 1e (OSRIC) in the old school style. Our first session was mostly spent getting to know each other, rolling up characters, and re-familiarizing ourselves with the rules. Of primary importance to me was knowing what the players expected out of playing D&D. The real learning experience for me was the second session, which took place last night, when I could learn more about how the players wished to conducted the game.

This time around, I made very minimal world building notes before I started the first actual session of game play. Excessive world building can cause infant campaign death syndrome. The best way to prepare for a sandbox campaign is to make a map of the local country side, place a few monsters here and there, note some important NPCs, briefly detail the "home base" town of the adventure, and prepare the first dungeon.

But although I knew the essentials of starting a sandbox campaign, I spent almost no time working on anything other than the megadungeon itself and the map how to get there. Because of previous attempts at starting this campaign, I had already worked out some general details about the campaign world. With this group, I was starting it again at a new locale. I knew the name of the home base town, Walton, but I wrote up absolutely no detail about it other than the name of the tavern and who owned it. I knew that there was a chain of forts linked together, Hadrian's Wall-style, on the nearby frontier border but I drew up no floor plans or details of any NPCs. I knew that beyond the wall was a valley that was a part of the Feywild that was permanently affixed to the Prime Material Plane but I detailed nothing other than a random monster encounter table. And although I had focused most of my attention on Castle Xeva, the megadungeon sitting in the middle of this magical valley, I had only drawn up one or two complete levels and I had only sketchy notes about the inhabitants.

One might think I was horribly unprepared for DMing a new campaign. Especially in the last decade, it seemed standard practice to work out all of the details of a campaign world before it actually begins. But it seems to me that tremendous preparation yeilds little in the way of anticipated results. Unless you're trying to railroad the players. And my ability to anticipate the actions of players I had never gamed with before was nearly zero. So what was the point of rolling up stats for the captain of the town guard? The players might not interact with that NPC at all. What if the players make a bee-line to the megadungeon and purposefully skip any nifty side adventures? This time around, I really did not want to put any work into anything that had less than a good chance of being used.

So I prepared a list of randomly-generated names of people, places, and things. I typed up one-page briefings of the campaign world and the history of Castle Xeva for the players. The campaign details I gave them were very general and allowed for tremendous latitude. Before I start filling in details of this campaign world, I want to see how the PCs behave. Indeed, I learned much during the first session of game play.

Luckily, this crew of players turned out to be excellent, experienced gamers. All of them had played various editions of D&D before. Although few had actually played 1e, this wasn't a problem. To my delight, the players had plenty of ideas that gave me fodder for future encounters. They all knew the cliches of D&D adventures. It turns out that I could have thrown a few adventure hooks at them because they were expecting them. But since I was laying out a clear path straight to the megadungeon, I didn't put such distractions before them.

Perhaps players have been conditioned to expect plot hooks. I intentionally started with just one. This band of heroes are all friends for whatever reason they want to work out amongst themselves. The half-orc fighter and halfling thief won in a game of chance a map to a secret entrance to Castle Xeva. With the help of the cleric and magic-user, the party obtained official permission to travel beyond the wall. They were there in the town of Walton to equip for an expedition to this legendary dungeon. All PC inquires about local threats and kidnapped merchant daughters turned up nil.

Was this lack of side adventure hooks a mistake? Maybe. But I have every intention of providing new adventure hooks later on in the campaign. But not now. I tried my best to make this clear to the players. They seek gold, fame, and fortune. And gold. When/if they come back from the dungeon, they'll gain a bit of noteriety. But right now, they are just 1st level nobodies.

The first encounter was randomly generated. A group of four goblins were out on patrol on the trail leading to the castle. After the ambush and capture, the PCs questioned the goblins. Uh, oh! I didn't expect that. I figured that the PCs would probably just slay them and take their stuff. The players wanted information! So I made it up on the spot. The goblins, of course, were based in the castle. Their chief brought them there from the mountains to the north. And, along with other tribes of demi-humans, they work for a group of humans that seem to be calling the shots. But these lowly goblin chumps knew little else. While the PCs argued about what to do with the surviving golbin prisoner, an unnoticed treant standing behind them snatched up the golbin and ran off into the forest. Why did that happen? Did the treant rescue the goblin? Or was something else going on? Did I make up all of this on the spur of the moment? Some parts yes, some parts no. But I won't be specific because my players will more than likely read this blog. The point is that I had some general ideas about wilderness surrounding the megadungeon and I'm letting random events shape the course of things to come.

Not all of the encounters that happen in this campaign will be random. But it's been my experience that random events can precipitate new directions. This one little random encounter has set a chain of events into motion. Not only has it given me ideas, it has given my players some ideas as well. One player thought it might be good to take the goblin shortbow and arrows and use them to kill members of rival demi-human tribes within Castle Xeva in order to precipate fueds. Brilliant! I had no idea that they would think of something like this. Maybe it will work! Go for it!

Another interesting PC-inspired development was that our cleric decided that he was a follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Sure! Why not? I expected the player to pick from the defined set of deities from the rule books. I could have set up a big campaign story arc involving the scheming of gods that used their priests as pawns. Or maybe a world-shaking divine threat needed to be thwarted. All such long-term story planning would have been shot to hell because the cleric PC decided to take on a joke god. So I'll probably address the campaign gods in a more humorous manner for the time being. And lots of pasta jokes.

Our first session of game play ended with the goblin encounter. No doubt next week they will enter the dungeon proper. And already the plot thickens like a good tomato sauce.

I'm gaming again!

2009-02-18T09:48:00.002-05:00

Support your local gaming forum! That's how I got the chance to continue my D&D campaign. And this time I get to do it old school style! It just goes to show that with some patience and courage, you can eventually find a good gaming group. And with luck, this new group will endure for a good while.

I met some of the guys in my group through a tiny gaming convention sponsored by Knoxgamers.org, a gaming forum in Knoxville, TN. In 2007, I had used that forum to start a small gaming group. Once we played through a module, the group dissolved. After that, I was uncertain as to whether or not I'd ever find a game group in my area again. I tried MeetUp.com and the group I organized was successful at first but it eventually fell apart due to lack of regular attendance. But I always paid attention to the goings-on at KnoxGamers.org. And it appears it has finally paid off.

I think that the "old school renaissance" significantly contributed to the formation of this group. I noticed someone on the KnoxGamers forum expressed interest in playing 1e D&D. I posted in that thread, stating that I was interested, too. A few others chimed in and we discussed it off and on for the last couple of months. We finally got to meet each other face-to-face at the little convention that the forum organized. It turns out that some of us had been reading the same old school-oriented blogs. That was encouraging for everyone and it has resulted in my DM'ing an AD&D campaign for the first time in decades.

At first, there was talk of using the Swords & Wizardry rules. I was in favor of the idea. But after some review and discussion, a few of the players noted that those rules seemed too simple. I pointed out that S&W, like the original D&D rules from 1975, was designed to be extremely open-ended for house rules. However, we decided that any house ruling we would make would end up looking like AD&D anyway. I'm still curious about Labyrinth Lord, which is based on the Moldavy rules, and I've ordered a copy from Lulu. (I'm getting the hardcover with the alternate design.) But we decided that we will use OSRIC as a base and the original AD&D rule books as further reference.

I really wish that OSRIC was available in print. I would gladly pay for a relatively expensive hardcover book. PDF files are swell. But nothing beats having a rule book in hand.

DnDI Subscription Cancellation

2009-01-06T08:14:00.003-05:00

Dear Xeveninti,

Your Dungeons & Dragons Insider subscription has recently ended. This could be because your billing information failed to process successfully as an Auto-Renew or because your Manual Renew subscription lapsed. Either way, we wanted to invite you back.

To inquire about the status of your account you are welcome to contact Wizards of the Coast, Inc. at 425-226-6500 and a service agent will assist you with your questions. To contact us by email, please visit our Web site: http://wizards.custhelp.com.

Subscription Details:

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1 Month Dungeons and Drago 10/28/2008 12/28/2008 $7.95

Sincerely,
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When that "Dungeon Builder" and "Game Table" becomes something more than vaporware, I'll think about it. But there are too many freeware alternatives.

Magic is MAGIC

2009-01-02T08:31:00.006-05:00

For too long have I endured conventional D&D magic over-rationalized in terms of real-world physics. My attitude comes from years of gaming with a particular group that viewed wizards as too powerful. They even implemented a house rule that crippled wizards with an extra skill roll with every spell cast.

James over at Grognardia wrote an interesting post about the implementation of pulp fantasy styled magic in D&D. His idea, as I understand it, is to require a greater level of D&D spell component detail in order to make it resemble the magic as presented in pulp fantasy literature. I'm not so sure that is a good idea.

Magic is MAGIC. It doesn't make any rational sense. That is its nature. If magic is quantified, I believe it leads to game worlds such as Eberron where mechanical devices are powered by magical means. Yes, it is interesting to explore these ideas and it can make for fun gaming. But it departs from medieval fantasy and into the realm of science-fiction.

James is not at all suggesting that elemental-powered steam engines should be a part of the game. He is merely suggesting that magic could have a more "realistic" flair if it were rationalized in terms of increased spell component requirements. I don't think that is necessary. And I'm not convinced that such a change would give D&D any more of a "pulpier magic" feel to it. I say that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Take for example the bag of holding. Much theorizing about the nature of this ubiquitous device has been made over the years. Questions have been presented about whether it can hold material in terms of volume or mass. How sharp do objects have to be before it can accidentally rip it open? Can it hold water or do liquids seap through the material of the bag into some other extra-dimensional space? If sharp things can poke it, what's to stop leakage? If it's absolutely water-tight but can be pierced, what is the nature of the bag's lining? Even if an object weighs less than the bag's carrying capacity, can it be stuffed in the opening?

And then there is Hermione Granger's bag of holding. If you've read all of the Harry Potter books, you know what I'm talking about. If you've only seen the movies, let me explain. At a certain point in the saga of Harry Potter, he and his friends go camping. They carry with them a tent and all the other various types of camping gear. Harry and his friends are wizards that use spells and magical devices. They take with them a tent that is much larger on the inside than it is on the outside. It's like a tent with a permanent Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion spell. Inside the tent is a small apartment with beds and a kitchen. In order to pack up their camping gear and take it with them, Hermione fashioned a small purse into what D&D gamers will instantly recognize as a bag of holding. Her version has an enormous carrying capacity. And she is able to stuff a bulky tent, a large oil painting, people, and God knows what else into this tiny little purse.

If I was a player in my old group and tried to create a bag of holding just like Hermione's it wouldn't have been allowed. It would be able to carry far more than a bag that size would normally allow. It would be able to care sharp things! It would be able to carry things that were much bigger than the opening of the tiny little purse. And clearly it would be able to hold other extra-dimensional magic devices without ripping a hole in space-time. Perhaps my game group would have allowed such a relatively powerful device if it cost much more than a regular bag of holding. But even then there would be severe strictures because of the tendancy of that game group to over-rationalize the physics of magic.

Rationalizing magic is pointless. It is something that occurs in fantasy literature. Since it is something that can only exist in the imagination, it can do anything. Quantifying or rationalizing it leads to a maze of rule judgements that leads to splat books that players think they need in order to enjoy the game.

Thinking of new and interesting ways of implementing magic should be the reward of a powerful imagination. If the power of imagination is directed towards how magic should be limited, I think that is contrary to the goal of having fun. Leave the hard physics and rationalizations to the fighters and weapons based upon the realities of the medeval history of warfare. If you, as a player, can think of a brilliant way of escaping from a dragon's lair with a hilarious combination of rope trick, a bucket of whipped cream, and fan dance, then have at it! If the wizard at the table comes up with imaginative solutions to problems using spells in a way that's not defined in any rule book, give it a chance. Don't worry about it setting precedents. It's magic! Spells defined in the RAW is how magic works in tried-and-true ways. But who's to say it can't be improvised? Who's to say magic can't do this that or the other? The DM and the rules lawyer, that's who.

In my own games, I dispense with the accounting of spell components altogether. I just assume that wizards always carry around spell component materials and spend their spare time collecting them. I assume that they have to periodically buy a new spell component pouch between forrays into the dungeon.

Powerful spells with expensive and rare components can make for interesting quests. But having to constantly worry about them for the most mundane spells is, in my humble opinion, a waste of time and counter to the spirit of free imagination. It starts the gamer down a road from which it is difficult to return.

Electronic rule books OF THE FUTURE!

2008-12-12T11:00:00.006-05:00

I'm proud of my substantial collection of game rule books. But they do take up lots of space. And they can hurt my back when I haul a portion of them to and from game sessions. All of us know that sooner or later we'll be using those PADDs from out of Star Trek. Some of you might not know that the future is now!

Never mind Amazon.com's Kindle device. Although it is swell for reading novels, the screen is too small for use as a technical manual. If we want to consult tables and charts from a game rule book, we need to be able to see it clearly without a magnifying glass. I'm not knocking the Kindle. It's a good device. And it looks like it's selling well.

What would really be useful is a device similar to the Kindle that has a large screen and that you can load up with your own PDF files. I think the Plastic Logic Reader is what we gamers have been waiting for.

Just look at it! The device itself is the size of an 8.5"x11" pad of paper. The screen is about the same size as the content of a magazine page. And it's actually thinner than most hardbound rule books. Imagine this thing holding all of your core rule books and splat books from all editions of all of your games.

Well, to be honest, the Reader won't be able to hold that much information. And it's in black and white. But this is only the first model. It's only a matter of time before memory capacity is dramatically increased and the screen is replaced with a color one.

I think that this sort of device will change how pencil-and-paper role-playing games will be played. Not only can you keep copies of your game rules handy, you can keep character sheets, treasure lists, campaign journals, and so on. I imagine that this device could be used in tandem with a laptop computer, but not replace it. The Reader is useful for referencing documents. Not for running programs or entering data records. I've used a laptop as reader, but it's a little cumbersome. I'd rather read from something as light as a magazine and as easy to handle.

This reader is small, lightweight, and serves the specific purpose of reading documents. And it can make that stack of heavy rule books go away.

Ramblings about Pathfinder vs. 4E

2008-12-10T19:41:00.006-05:00

I haven't been posting in a while because of work. But I've been reading the RPG blogs every day. Today I noticed a link to a very interesting blog entry at Chad Perrin: SOB titled How Paizo Fixed D&D. Then I noticed a response to that blog entry at The Core Mechanic. So I've come out from under my rock to post some of my thoughts regarding this issue.

I am no longer enthusiastic about 3.5E. And I'm even less interested in 3P, as the Pathfinder system is being labeled. The set of D&D rules that accumulated since the publication of 3E back in 2000 became a bloated mess. D&D is an exception-based rule system and the amount of exceptions became monumental and sometimes contradictory. The amount of preparation on the part of the DM became too much. The game's complexity is a turn-off to newbies.

When I returned to gaming in 2005, it was with D&D 3.5E. But even though I had decades of experience with playing RPGs, I was constantly at a disadvantage because I didn't have the level of skill with the 3.5E rules as my fellow gamers at the table. The group I was with was very unforgiving and lacked patience for newbie gamers. I saw several newbies come and go from that group. Newbies who had the time to play but were either rejected because of their seeming "unwillingness to learn the rules" or either just plain lost interest. Right before I left that group, it was suggested to me that I should just play a fighter since it was the simplest character class.

Good grief! There shouldn't be this massive learning curve for RPGs!

When I started my own gaming group, I DM'd in the fashion that I thought would be friendlier and more accommodating to newbies. But there was still that barrier of rule complexity. One fellow who joined my group was a really great guy who knew the 3.5E rules very well. Even though I was the DM, I found myself deferring to his wisdom regarding rule mechanics. Since I wasn't running a store-bought 3.5E module, I had to write up monster and NPC stats for each game session. The amount of time I spent preparing materials was massively disproportionate to their amount of game-time use.

This is the part where I start raving about the virtues 4E, right? Well, maybe.

When 4E was announced, I was excited about it. The more I learned, the better I liked it. The folks at WotC seemed to be mirroring many of my opinions about the shortcomings of 3.5E. They rebuilt the entire game from the ground up. Monsters are much easier to create from scratch. The skills are simplified. The classes are now balanced in a very precise and consistent manner. I like how the system of PC powers, feats, and tiers easily guide development so that you can have butt-kicking fun at all levels. This is in contrast to 3.5E, where you eventually discover that you have to meticulously plan character development in advance through careful examination of Byzantine rules in God knows how many splat books in order to make manifest your perfect snowflake. Massive programs have been written by third parties to assist with 3.5E character creation. 4E character development isn't nearly as complicated.

4E has some drawbacks, though, in my opinion. I miss Vancian magic. Most of the rules for PCs only relate to combat. Many aspects of 4E, so I've been told, strongly resemble World of Warcraft and collectible card games. The game now seems entirely focused on the goal of elevating PCs to inevitable apotheosis.

Nevertheless, 4E is simpler than 3.5E. But its style is heavily influenced by the popularity of computer RPGs and I'm not sure I like that. Ever since 4E was published, I've been wondering what this role-playing game thing is really all about.

I'm an old-timer who started gaming when the hobby was becoming mainstream. Only a few years after I started gaming, the adventure path style was beginning to coalesce in the form of Dragonlance, as James over at Grognardia recently pointed out. Although pre-generated characters following a scripted story repelled me, I eventually found myself buying into the idea that all good RPG adventures had to have a story arc. I convinced myself that I couldn't be a good GM unless I was a good writer. I've come to realize that this idea was utter nonsense.

As I recounted in an earlier post, I learned about the term, "sandbox campaign." I was also turned on to various blogs and forums pertaining to the "old school" gaming style. Since then, I've decided that old school sandbox campaigning is my preferred way of playing any RPG.

Then there is Pathfinder. (Were you wondering when I was going to get to that? I was too.) It is the continuation of the 3.5E rule set and is ideal for people who are not interested in the drastic changes of 4E. Apparently, much work has gone into making it a fine product. But it is not for me.

One would think that an old-timer like myself would abbhor 4E in favor of 3.5E. Or perhaps it wouldn't be surprising if I called myself a grognard that would rather play OD&D or 1E. But I'm not too sure I will abandon years of gaming evolution and return to an earlier, simpler system. And Swords & Wizardry is just about as simple as it gets!

No, what concerns me the most about modern role-playing games is the idea of the adventure path versus sandbox campaigning. In my very humble opinion, I think this bifurcation of attitude towards playing RPGs is at the heart of many discussions dating back 30 years. I think that it's at the heart of the dissatisfaction of grognards towards modern rule sets. And I also think it's at the heart of the Pathfinder vs. 4E debate. But I'm not sure that many people realize it yet.

(Here's where I really go out on a limb and where I will probably start ducking rotten fruit flung at my head.)

The 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is fantastic for old school-style sandbox campaigns.

There. I said it. Call me completely insane. But I think it's true. I'll try to explain why.

I've decided that story arcs are a bad idea. The adventure path is gaming entertainment and not actually a game. Paizo's Pathfinder is the culmination of that gaming tradition. It's in the name of their game, for God's sake. They've published not modules but adventure paths.

The premise of 4E is the "points of light" concept. This is as it should be. When I started my own campaign last year, I wanted it to take place in a period of time similar to that of the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. That way there could be isolated settlements, perhaps a few warring kingdoms, and plenty of ancient ruins for dungeon crawling. I didn't want the campaign world to be too civilized like Greyhawk or other published settings. I wanted it to have as much wilderness as possible. After I dreamed up this campaign, I found out that this is exactly what was intended for 4E. In fact, the points of light premise inspired Goodman Games to publish a book detailing four sandbox campaigns in their Points of Light source book.

And then there is Mike Mearls himself who is running a sandbox campaign using the Wilderness Survival map, as suggested by Gary Gygax back in 1974. Hello? Did anyone else notice this? One of the lead developers of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is looking at the weird ways of old school gaming. Check out what he had to say about The Keep on the Borderlands. Even his blog is a play on that title.

4E is completely stripped down. Many have noticed that there is not much beyond combat rules in the core rule books. Is this a bad thing? Maybe. Or maybe it isn't. One of the virtues of old school gaming is the lack of rules. The DM and players of OD&D and AD&D were expected to make up rules on the spot if it was ever needed. Inventing house rules was part of the fun. Why is it impossible to take the rules presented in 4E and build upon it with house rules?

Another criticism of 4E is the lack of fluff in the Monster Manual. Well, there wasn't much more than crunch in the OD&D monster decriptions, either. Over the years, the lore regarding orcs and goblins became more and more detailed. Just take a look at the description of those monsters in the OD&D books and then look at how they ever so gradually expanded in 1E, 2E, and 3E. As of 3.5E, those creatures were fairly well defined in terms of fluff. In 4E, they are not. That's because it's now up to you. Again. As it was in OD&D.

So here I am, a quasi-grognard who thinks that 4E can be great for old school-style sandbox campaigns. The trouble is that almost all of the gamers playing 4E want video game-style "quests" handed to them on a silver platter so that the PCs can take part in the DM's scripted adventure path. And almost all of the gamers who want to play it old school want to do it using OD&D, AD&D, OSRIC, or Swords & Wizardry.

What's a weirdo misfit gamer like myself to do? Keep blogging, I guess.

Zagyg's gate to Barsoom

2008-12-01T08:39:00.005-05:00

In E. Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, I noticed that part of one of the room descriptions reads as follows:

If the CK desires, this cave can serve as a gateway to a SMALL RED PLANET (not unlike Mars), where a lesser gravity is in effect and where 4-armed green giants, blue men resembling plants, huge albino apes, and six-legged riding beasts dwell; the world by and large ruled by the green giants and various colors of humanoids. The Castle Keeper can either develop such a setting whole cloth, utilizing any and all appropriate fictional resources as inspiration (such as the novel John Carter of Mars by E.R. Burroughs) or wait until such a supplementary adventure to the Castle Zagyg pruduct line is released.

Did Gary loose his marbles in his final days when he wrote this? Absolutely not. In fact, it's entirely consistent. And very deliberate. Furthermore, the Peter Bradley cover illustration of the Mouths of Madness booklet included in Upper Works is a scene depicting the cave that connects to said gate to Barsoom.

James Maliszewski, in many of his recent blog entries over at Grognardia, has been discussing the various literary influences upon the work of Gygax. As James has pointed out, Gary was not influenced by Tolkien when he created his fantasy role-playing game. Instead, he was very much influenced by pulp fantasy writers such a Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, and many others. Edgar Rice Burroughs is also one of the authors that Gygax cited as inspiration in the appendex of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Many gamers assume that Tolkien's popularity in the 1960s and '70s was the impetus for D&D's invention. I confess that I made this assumption for a long time. Several years ago I discovered that this was not the case at all.

I've read Tolkien, of course. And I've read a few other fantasy novels. But not many of them. It's about time I took that dive into Gary's reading list. For me, it's long overdue.

Free plug for Fight On! #3

2008-11-22T12:49:00.003-05:00

Good news, everyone! The third issue of Fight On!, the fanzine dedicated to old school D&D, has been published. I first learned of this magazine several months ago via Grognardia. It's filled with essays, ideas, tables, monsters, and adventures that can spice up any fantasy campaign. Even if you don't play any of the older editions, there are plenty of cool things found within that can liven up even a 4e game.

Although I had embraced 4e D&D, I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to find a game group who will play it. Some of my friends are mildly interested in playing D&D but are not that keen on actually studying vast quantities of rule books. I may be returning to OD&D and dive into the old school revival that has been going on recently.

At the same time I purchased Fight On! #3, I also ordered from Lulu a copy of Swords & Wizardry. This game, which I have mentioned before, is kind of an updated version of OD&D. I look forward to reading it because I'm considering writing and publishing a dungeon or two.

Addendum: As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been posting very many blogs lately. As with any hobby, work gets in the way. I haven't had much time for D&D lately and so I haven't been able to devote much thought towards expressing myself in a blog. My current work project is nearing completion and I think I'll have more gaming time during the holidays.

Stop whining about GG and Castle Zagyg

2008-10-31T09:34:00.003-04:00

This whining about Gygax Games shifting gears with the publication of Gary Gygax's legacy is beginning to annoy me. It annoys me far more than the recent business decisions of that company.

Am I the only one who was wondering why it took so long to release Upper Works? That thing was supposed to be on store shelves years ago. YEARS AGO. I could only guess why. My best guess was that Gary's failing health delayed its completion. Or maybe it's because of something about the nature of Troll Lord Games? I don't know.

It's so easy for people to jump to the conclusion that the family of a deceased celebrity would exploit the deceased's estate to selfish ends. Such scheming might be likely if the family in question had nothing to do with the life of said celebrity. But, as far as I know, Gary's family was supportive of his work.

I think it is likely that the Gygax family is very protective of Gary's legacy. So much so that they have their own ideas of how his intellectual property should be handled. Call me crazy but I think it stands to reason that the surviving members Gary's family are the only ones to make that decision. Fans can cry and stamp their feet all they want. The reality is that they are the ones calling the shots and there isn't anything we can do to change this situation.

Does anyone remember the existence of hobbits in D&D? Gary wasn't interested in incorporating elements of The Lord of the Rings in his game. He was far more interested in the works of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber than that of J.R.R. Tolkien. But the folks that Gary gamed with demanded elves, orcs, and hobbits. So the first incarnation of D&D included those fantasy races. But the Tolkien estate took issue with this. Specifically, they objected to the use of hobbits, a fantasy race that was invented by Tolkien and was central to his stories. They did not object to the game itself. In fact, they did not pursue the issue further once the name of the D&D race was changed to "halfling." And eventually there was published a role-playing game based on Middle-earth. (I would be interested in reading the precise legal details of this conflict someday.)

Did this make the Tolkien family money-grubbing ogres? No, it didn't. Did they ruin the legacy of one of the greatest authors of the 20th century? No, they did not. They realized the importance of his work. They protected it. They were very cautious about handling their inherited intellectual property. Ralph Bakshi's movie aside, it was a very long time before that family allowed the production of a movie based on The Lord of the Rings. Tremendous care was taken with Tolkien's remaining notes and letters about Middle-earth. Books pertaining to his invented mythology were published slowly. They did not "sell out" or exploit his epic work in an unreasonable manner.

There isn't any doubt that Gary Gygax was the godfather of all role-playing games. It can be argued that Arneson and others were indispensable to the precipitation of the genre but that's the subject of another discussion. The fact remains that Gygax and his Castle Greyhawk mega-dungeon was one of the primary testbeds of Dungeons & Dragons. The dungeon beneath Castle Greyhawk was the axis about which the entire Greyhawk campaign revolved. Many of Gary's famous modules set the example for others. But his most famous dungeon, for whatever reason, remained unpublished for all of these years. Make no doubt about it. The dungeons of Castle Greyhawk was his epic work.

I won't get into the history of Gary's relationship with TSR and other companies. When he planned to finally publish his epic mega-dungeon, he had to change the name to Castle Zagyg for legal reasons. Historically, Gary's Castle Greyhawk was just a dungeon and nothing more. No surface ruins, no local environments, nothing. So when he decided to publish it, he rightly thought it important to properly place it within a sandbox campaign setting. Putting it in WotC's Greyhawk campaign was out of the question. But he managed to work around it. This took time and delayed the publication of the actual dungeon itself.

Why did it take so long? As I said, we can only guess. Personally, I was annoyed with the never-ending delay of the release of Castle Zagyg. It stands to reason that the factors contributing to the delay of its publication were directly related to Gary himself, the people he collaborated with, and the game company publishing the product. Those factors and nothing else were the reasons for the seemingly never-ending delays. But Gary ran out of time and now he is with the Great Gamer in the Sky. The future publication of Castle Zagyg now has absolutely nothing to do with the factors that have heretofore delayed its release.

The bottom line is this. We haven't seen any part of Castle Zagyg produced by Gygax Games. We don't know how quickly it will be produced. We don't know anything about its quality or how closely it follows Gary's plan for the dungeon's final published form. It is not our place to second-guess the abilities of the Gygax family to handle Gary's legacy.

So settle down and just wait and see. For all we know, further publications of Castle Zagyg may be of astonishing quality and released very quickly. Or maybe not. The fact is that we have no reason to think it will be one way or another. We have no choice but to place our faith in Gygax Games and respect whatever decision they make. Because that's the way it's gonna be.

The adventure path is gaming entertainment

2008-10-21T08:41:00.005-04:00

I recently joined a D&D gaming group. In one of my message exchanges with the DM, I asked him if this was to be an adventure path or sandbox campaign. He explained that it would be a mixture of both. Curiously, he also explained that he was sometimes frustrated with his players because they seemed reluctant to interact with the world around them. And when NPCs react to their actions in a negative manner, they seem "shocked."

After writing a lengthy response to this recent message, I realized that it was too long. So I decided that a long-overdue blog post would be in order.

My new DM explained that his campaign is a mixture of both adventure path and sandbox. In my humble opinion, I would argue that it can't be a mixture of both. It must be one or the other. Either you have a story you wish the players to follow or you don't. If you have a story, it is not a sandbox campaign.

As for his occasional frustrations with his players, the problem (again, in my humble opinion) he is having is that he is giving the players the freedom of a sandbox campaign when he is actually running an adventure path. They are expecting the DM to provide the next "cut scene" (to use video game parlance) that presents to the players the next stage of their quest. They are depending on the DM to entertain them, to tell the story. They want the DM to have the king summon them to the throne room and present the quest. They want the DM to roll out the red carpet before them and present the goal of the next quest on a silver platter.

Dungeons & Dragons was not originally designed to play adventure paths. This mode of game play has evolved into being over the years because of our natural inclination to appreciate a good storyline. In my continually humble opinion, playing RPGs in this manner should not technically be called a "game." A better term would be "gaming entertainment." It is a perfectly valid form of game play. It is not "false" or somehow wrong.

Pro wrestling is not a sport but rightfully termed "sports entertainment." That is because there is a written storyline and the wrestling matches are generally choreographed. The opponents train and rehearse together beforehand. Back in the old days, pro wrestling was real. And wrestlers really did get hurt. Promoters realized that if their star wrestlers were getting hurt, they were not in the ring and therefore not attracting large crowds. So they decided to fix the matches. And, ultimately, they scripted them with the goal of entertaining the crowd and thereby making lots of money. This formula has worked for that industry for decades.

My new DM is definitely running an adventure path campaign. He has a story. He naturally wants to see it completed. He went to the trouble of planning it. He spent the time writing it. Perhaps he spent money on a module that he wishes to have the players see to completion. He might even envision how the big showdown with the bad guy is going to play out. He and his players have made an investment in this business of playing Dungeons & Dragons and they expect to see a return. The point is that they won't see the end of the DM's story if the PCs die. So the DM will be tempted to look the other way if there is a bad die roll. He will be tempted to create a deus ex machina in order to avoid the much-maligned Total Party Kill. That is the line that is crossed and that is where D&D ceases to be a game and becomes gaming entertainment.

In an earlier post, I extolled the virtues of sandbox campaigns and I declared that I would only play that type of campaign from now on. Well, I'm eating my own words! In the area of the country where I live, gaming groups are few and far between. After unsuccessfully attempting to restart my local MeetUp.com D&D group, I've been putting out feelers to join an existing group. This new DM seems like a nice guy and he's planning to run a campaign set in Greyhawk. If it is to be an adventure path, that is fine. I'll help the party see it to completion. But hopefully along the way my rogue will rise in power and take over the local underworld!

Swords & Wizardry

2008-10-16T08:41:00.003-04:00

The good folks at Mythmere Games have published Swords & Wizardry, a new version of the Dungeons & Dragons game as published in the early 1970s. It appears to be something in between the booklets of 0e and the Holmes' basic edition. As it states in the introduction, it is "an approximate re-creation of the Gary Gygax original fantasy role-playing game, created using the Open Game License." The PDF version is a FREE DOWNLOAD but you can also pay a few dollars for a printed copy.

I heard about this work via James Maliszewski over at Grognardia. Although I don't always agree with James' harsh criticism of 4e, I intensely enjoy his perspectives of "old school" fantasy RPGs. As a matter of fact, he was the editor of this S&W rule book.

I'm glad that someone has gone to the trouble of reinterpreting the 0e rules for modern gamers. Although I have PDFs of the original game, they were written for gamers who were already familiar with strategy war games and at a time when the term "role-playing game" was not yet coined. Even if you are not interested in actually playing S&W, it is sure to provide insight into the early days of D&D. It should also provide some guidance for conducting your own "old school" style of gaming. Maybe it will inspire the reader to simplify gameplay.

Who knows? Perhaps it will inspire me to take advantage of the OGL and publish my own S&W adventure module.

4e Monster: Aerial Servant

2008-10-08T08:51:00.002-04:00

This is my first monster that I've created for 4e. It is the first monster listed in the 1e Monster Manual and I've added it to my list of 1e Monster Manual monsters for 4e. You might notice that I've added Frequency, Environment, No. Appearing, % In Lair, and Treasure Type. This is because I'm putting together my own house rule Monster Manual with the intent of playing 4e D&D in the old school fashion.

For reference, I used the descriptions of the aerial servant from the 1e MM p. 6 and the 3.5e Tome of Horrors p. 9. If you are familiar with the AD&D aerial servant, you'll know that it can be summoned by a PC cleric. In 4e terms, this obviously requires some sort of ritual spell. Unfortunately, I have not defined such a ritual here.

AERIAL SERVANT

Frequency: Very rare
Environment: The Elemental Chaos
Number Appearing: 1
% In Lair: 0
Treasure Type: Nil

The aerial servant is a semi-intelligent form of an air elemental. It is typically encountered only due to summoning.

Aerial Servant Level 16 Solo Lurker
Medium elemental magical beast (air) XP 7000
-------------------------
Initiative +17 Senses Perception +8
HP 770; Bloodied 385
AC 32; Fortitude 29, Reflex 30, Will 25
Immune disease, poison, non-magical weapons; Vulnerable 10 thunder
Speed fly 12 (hover)
Action points: 2
-------------------------
M Airy Crush (standard; at-will)
+21 vs. AC; 2d8+7 damage, and the target is grabbed (until escape). The grabbed target takes 2d8+7 damage at the start of its turn while grabbed.
-------------------------
r Wind Blast (standard; recharge 4 5 6)
An aerial servant can release a blast of wind. Ranged 8/16; +21 vs. AC; 4d10+7.
-------------------------
Natural Invisibility
This ability is constant, allowing an aerial servant to remain invisible even when attacking. This ability is inherent. This ability does not function when an aerial servant is on the Astral Plane or Ethereal Plane, but instead grants the creature lightly obscured concealment.
-------------------------
Spellcaster Link
When summoned, an aerial servant creates a mental link between itself and the caster who summoned it. Should the aerial servant fail the mission it has been assigned, it returns to the caster and attacks him. The aerial servant can find the caster as long as they both are on the same plane of existence. If the caster leaves the plane, the link is temporarily broken. Once the caster returns or the aerial servant enters the plane the caster is on, the link is immediately reestablished and the aerial servant moves at full speed toward the caster's current location. Only when the aerial servant or caster is destroyed, is the link permanently broken.
-------------------------
Str: 23 (+14) Dex: 21 (+13) Wis: 10 (+8)
Con: 18 (+12) Int: 4 (+5) Cha: 11 (+8)

AERIAL SERVANT TACTICS

Aerial servants attack by using a shearing blast of wind as a weapon or by grabbing an opponent and crushing it within their powerful grasp. Aerial servants can only be killed on their native plane. If slain elsewhere, they simply dissolve into wisps of vapor and return to their home plane. An aerial servant's natural weapons are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

AERIAL SERVANT LORE

A character knows the following information with a successful check.

Arcana DC 10: Aerial servants are semi-intelligent creatures from the Elemental Chaoes that often roam the Astral Sea. They normally are only found on this world as a result of some sort of summoning ritual and commanded to perform some task, often being required to use their immense strength to carry objects or aid the summoner.

Arcana DC 15: Aerial servants can carry weights in excess of 400 pounds.

Arcana DC 20: If the aerial servant is frustrated from completion of its assigned mission it becomes insane, returns to the spellcaster which sent it forth.

[Disclaimer: I'm relatively new to making 4e monsters. Although I'm pretty sure I did a good job, I may have missed a few details. If you think there needs to be changes, let me know.]

1e Monster Manual monsters for 4e

2008-10-07T11:41:00.017-04:00

This is an index of all the monsters listed in the first edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual written by E. Gary Gygax and originally published in 1977. Each entry has either a link to home brewed statistics written for the fourth edition of D&D, a page number indicating where it can be found in the 4e MM, or page number references to information that can be found about the monster in various previous editions of the game.

Most of the monsters are from The Monster Project over at EN World. That effort has the goal of creating 4e stats for monsters that appeared in any of the previous editions of the D&D. My index focuses exclusively on the 1e Monster Manual. My index is not intended to supersede The Monster Project in any way. If you create your own 4e version of monsters from any of the previous editions, I highly encourage you to post it there.

As part of my ongoing blog, I will occasionally post my own 4e versions of 1e MM monsters. I will, of course, update this blog entry with a link to my own work.

I will try to continually update this blog entry. Click on this link and then create a bookmark for this blog entry so you can check for updates in the future.

Entries that are colored red and in bold face have yet to be defined in 4e terms.

If anyone knows of 4e statistics of any of the listed monsters, please let me know.

In this list, I use the following abreviations:

1e: First edition D&D rules. a.k.a. AD&D.
3.0e: Third edition D&D rules.
3.5e: The revised third edition D&D rules.
DaD: Deities and Demigods
DMG: Dungeon Master's Guide
ESH: Expanded Psionics Handbook
FC1: Fiendish Codex I
FC2: Fiendish Codex II
Frb: Frostburn
LoM: Lords of Madness
MoF: Monsters of Faerun
MotP: Manual of the Planes
MM: Monster Manual
Snd: Sandstorm
ToH: Tome of Horrors

A

Aerial Servant
Anhkeg
Ant, Giant
Ape, Gorilla
Ape, Carnivorous
Axe Beak

B

Baboon
Badger
Badger, Giant
Baluchitherium (1e MM p. 8)
Barracuda (1e MM p. 8)
Basilisk (4e MM p. 26)
Bear, Black
Bear, Brown
Bear, Cave (4e MM p. 29)
Beaver, Giant (1e MM p. 9)
Beetle, Giant, Bombardier (1e MM p. 9)
Beetle, Giant, Boring (1e MM p. 9)
Beetle, Giant, Fire (4e MM p. 30)
Beetle, Giant, Rhinoceros (1e MM p. 9)
Beetle, Giant, Stag (1e MM p. 9)
Beetle, Giant, Water (1e MM p. 9)
Beholder (4e MM p. 32)
Black Pudding (1e MM p. 10; 3.5e MM p. 201)
Blink Dog
Boar, Wild (1e MM p. 11; 3.5e MM p. 270)
Boar, Giant (4e MM p. 35)
Boar, Warthog (1e MM p. 11)
Brain Mole (1e MM p. 11)
Brownie (1e MM p. 11; 3.5e ToH p. 48)
Buffalo (1e MM p. 11)
Bugbear (4e MM p. 135)
Bulette (4e MM p. 38)
Bull (1e MM p. 12)

C

Camel, Wild (1e MM p. 13)
Carrion Crawler (4e MM p. 40)
Catoplepas (1e MM p. 13)
Cattle, Wild (1e MM p. 13)
Centaur (1e MM p. 14)
Centipede, Giant
Cerebral Parasite (1e MM p. 14)
Chimera (4e MM p. 41)
Cockatrice
Couatl (1e MM p. 15; 3.5e MM p. 37)
Crab, Giant
Crayfish, Giant (1e MM p. 15; 3.5e ToH p. 73)
Crocodile

D

Demon, Demogorogon (1e MM p. 16; 3.5e FC1 p. 61)
Demon, Juiblex (1e MM p. 17; 3.5e FC1 p. 66)
Demon, Manes (1e MM p. 17; 3.5e MM p. 45)
Demon, Orcus (4e MM p. 206)
Demon, Succubus (4 MM p. 67)
Demon, Type I (Vrock) (4e MM p. 58)
Demon, Type II (Hezrou) (4e MM p. 56)
Demon, Type III (Glabrezu) (4e MM p. 54)
Demon, Type IV (Nalfeshnee, etc.) (1e MM p. 19; 3.5e MM p. 45)
Demon, Type V (Marilith, etc.) (1e MM p. 19; 3.5e MM p. 44)
Demon, Type VI (Balor, etc.) (4e MM p. 52)
Demon, Yeenoghu (1e MM p. 19; 3.5e FC1 p. 78)
Devil, Asmodeus (1e MM p. 20; 3.5e FC2 p. 155)
Devil, Baalzebul (1e MM p. 21; 3.5e FC2 p. 151)
Devil, Barbed (1e MM p. 21; 3.5e MM p. 51 "Hamatula")
Devil, Bone (4e MM p. 62)
Devil, Dispater (1e MM p. 21; 3.5e FC2 p. 143)
Devil, Erinyes (1e MM p. 22; 3.5e MM p. 54)
Devil, Geryon (1e MM p. 22)
Devil, Horned (Malebranche) (4e MM p. 67)
Devil, Ice (4e MM p. 63)
Devil, Lemure (1e MM p. 23; 3.5e MM p. 57)
Devil, Pit Fiend (4e MM p. 65)
Dinosaur (list incomplete)
Displacer Beast (4e MM p. 70)
Djinni (1e MM p. 28; 3.5e MM p. 114)
Dog, War (1e MM p. 29)
Dog, Wild (1e MM p. 29; 3.5e MM p. 271)
Dolphin (1e MM p. 29)
Doppelganger (4e MM p. 71)
Dragon, Black (4e MM p. 75)
Dragon, Blue (4e MM p. 77)
Dragon, Brass (1e MM p. 31; 3.5e MM p. 79)
Dragon, Bronze (1e MM p. 32; 3.5e MM p. 80)
Dragon, Chromatic (Tiamat) (1e MM p. 32; 3.0 MotP p. 118; 3.0 DaD p. 93)
Dragon, Copper (1e MM p. 32; 3.5e MM p. 82)
Dragon, Gold (1e MM p. 32; 3.5e MM p. 84)
Dragon, Green (4e MM p. 79)
Dragon, Platinum (Bahamut) (1e MM p. 33; 3.0 MotP p. 133; 3.0 DaD p. 58)
Dragon, Red (4e MM p. 82)
Dragon, Silver (1e MM p. 34; 3.5e MM p. 86)
Dragon, White (4e MM p. 84)
Dragonne (1e MM p. 34; 3.5e MM p. 89)
Dragon Turtle
Dryad (4e MM p. 96)
Dwarf (4e MM p. 97)
Dwarf, Mountain (1e MM p. 36)

E

Eagle, Giant (1e MM p. 36; 3.5e MM p. 93)
Ear Seekers (1e MM p. 36)
Eel, Electric (1e MM p. 36)
Eel, Giant (1e MM p. 36)
Eel, Weed (1e MM p. 36)
Efreeti (4e MM p. 98)
Elemental, Air (1e MM p. 37; 3.5e MM p. 95)
Elemental, Earth (1e MM p. 38; 3.5e MM p. 98)
Elemental, Fire (1e MM p. 38; 3.5e MM p. 98)
Elemental, Water (1e MM p. 38; 3.5e MM p. 98)
Elephant, Asiatic (1e MM p. 38; 3.5e MM p. 272)
Elephant, African (1e MM p. 38; 3.5e MM p. 272)
Elf (4e MM p. 106)
Elf, Aquatic (1e MM p. 39; 3.5e MM p. 103)
Elf, Gray (1e MM p. 39; 3.5e MM p. 104)
Elf, Half- (1e MM p. 39; 3.5e MM p. 102)
Elf, Wood (1e MM p. 40; 3.5e MM p. 104)
Ettin (4e MM p. 108)
Eye, Floating (1e MM p. 40)
Eye of the Deep (1e MM p. 41)

F

Flightless Bird (1e MM p. 41)
Frog, Giant
Frog, Killer
Frog, Poisonous
Fungi, Violet

G

Gar, Giant
Gargoyle (4e MM p. 115)
Gas Spore (1e MM p. 42; 3.5e LoM p. 148)
Gelatinous Cube (4e MM p. 202)
Ghast (1e MM p. 43; 3.5e MM p. 119)
Ghost (4e MM p. 116)
Ghoul (4e MM p. 118)
Giant, Cloud (1e MM p. 44; 3.5e MM p. 120)
Giant, Fire (4e MM p. 123)
Giant, Frost (1e MM p. 44; 3.5e MM p. 122)
Giant, Hill (4e MM p. 121)
Giant, Stone (1e MM p. 45; 3.5e MM p. 124)
Giant, Storm (4e MM p. 124)
Gnoll (4e MM p. 132)
Gnome (4e MM p. 134)
Goat, Giant (1e MM p. 47)
Goblin (4e MM p. 135)
Golem, Clay (1e MM p. 47; 3.5e MM p. 134)
Golem, Flesh (4e MM p. 142)
Golem, Iron (1e MM p. 48; 3.5e MM p. 136)
Golem, Stone (4e MM p. 142)
Gorgon (1e MM p. 49; 3.5e MM p. 137)
Gray Ooze
Green Slime (1e MM p. 49; 3.5e DMG p. 76)
Griffon (4e MM p. 146)
Groaning Spirit (1e MM p. 50)

H

Halfling (4e MM p. 152)
Halfling, Hairfeet (1e MM p. 50)
Halfling, Stout (4e MM p. 152)
Halfling, Tallfellow (1e MM p. 50; 3.5e MM p. 149)
Harpy (4e MM p. 154)
Hell Hound (4e MM p. 160)
Herd Animal (1e MM p. 51)
Hippocampus (1e MM p. 51)
Hippogriff (4e MM p. 146)
Hippopotamus (1e MM p. 52)
Hobgoblin (4e MM p. 138)
Homunculous (4e MM p. 156)
Horse, Draft (1e MM p. 53)
Horse, Heavy (4e MM p. 159)
Horse, Light (1e MM p. 53; 3.5e MM p. 273)
Horse, Medium (1e MM p. 53)
Horse, Pony (1e MM p. 53)
Horse, Wild (1e MM p. 53)
Hydra (4e MM p. 164)
Hyena (1e MM p. 54; 3.5e MM p. 274)
Hyena, Giant (1e MM p. 54; 3.5e MM p. 150)

I

Imp (4e MM p. 63)
Intellect Devourer (1e MM p. 54; 3.5e ESH p. 202)
Invisible Stalker
Irish Deer (1e MM p. 55)
Ixitxachitl

J

Jackal (1e MM p. 56)
Jackalwere
Jaguar (1e MM p. 56)

K

Ki-rin (1e MM p. 57; 3e MM p. 170)
Kobold (4e MM p. 167)

L

Lamia (1e MM p. 59; 3.5e MM p. 165)
Lammasu (1e MM p. 59; 3.5e MM p. 165)
Lamprey, Normal (1e MM p.59)
Lamprey, Giant (1e MM p.59)
Larva (1e MM p. 59; 3.5e FC1 p. 108)
Leech, Giant (1e MM p. 60; 3.5e ToH p. 255)
Leopard (1e MM p. 60; 3.5e MM p. 274)
Leprechaun (1e MM p. 60; 3.5e ToH p. 256)
Leucrotta
Lich (4e MM p. 176)
Lion (1e MM p. 61; 3.5e MM p. 274)
Lion, Mountain (1e MM p. 61)
Lion, Spotted (1e MM p. 61)
Lizard, Fire (1e MM p. 61)
Lizard, Giant
Lizard, Minotaur (1e MM p. 61)
Lizard, Subterranean (1e MM p. 61)
Lizard Man (4e MM p. 178)
Locathah (1e MM p. 62; 3.5e MM p. 169)
Lurker Above (1e MM p. 62; 3.5e MM p. 38)
Lycanthrope, Werebear (1e MM p. 63; 3.5e MM p. 171)
Lycanthrope, Wereboar (1e MM p. 63; 3.5e MM p. 170)
Lycanthrope, Wererat (4e MM p. 180)
Lycanthrope, Weretiger (1e MM p. 63; 3.5e MM p. 172)
Lycanthrope, Werewolf (4e MM p. 181)
Lynx, Giant (1e MM p. 64)

M

Mammoth (1e MM p. 65; 3.5e MM p. 272)
Manticore (4e MM p. 184)
Masher (1e MM p. 65)
Mastadon (1e MM p. 65; 3.5e MM p. 272)
Medusa (4e MM p. 186)
Men, Bandit (4e MM p. 162)
Men, Berserker (4e MM p. 163)
Men, Buccaneer (1e MM p. 67)
Men, Brigand (1e MM p. 67)
Men, Caveman (1e MM p. 67; 3.5e Frb p. 145 "Neanderthal")
Men, Dervish (1e MM p. 68)
Men, Merchant (1e MM p. 69)
Men, Nomad (1e MM p. 68)
Men, Pilgrim (1e MM p. 69)
Men, Tribesman (1e MM p. 68)
Merman (1e MM p. 70)
Mimic
Mind Flayer (4e MM p. 188)
Minotaur (4e MM p. 190)
Mold, Brown (1e MM p. 71; 3.5e DMG p. 76)
Mold, Yellow (1e MM p. 71; 3.5e DMG p. 76)
Morkoth
Mule (1e MM p. 72; 3.5e MM p. 276)
Mummy (4e MM p. 192)

N

Naga, Guardian (4e MM p. 194)
Naga, Spirit (1e MM p. 72; 3.5e MM p. 192)
Naga, Water (1e MM p. 72; 3.5e MM p. 193)
Neo-otyugh (1e MM p. 73)
Night Hag (4e MM p. 151)
Nightmare (4e MM p. 196)
Nixie (1e MM p. 74; 3.5e MM p. 235)
Nymph (1e MM p. 74; 3.5e MM p. 197)

O

Ochre Jelly (4e MM p. 202)
Octopus, Giant
Ogre (4e MM p. 198)
Ogre Mage (4e MM p. 201)
Orc (4e MM p. 203)
Otter, Giant (1e MM p. 77)
Otyugh (4e MM p. 211)
Owl, Giant (1e MM p. 77; 3.5e MM p. 205)
Owlbear (4e MM p. 212)

P

Pegasus (1e MM p. 78; 3.5e MM p. 206)
Peryton
Piercer (1e MM p. 78; 3.5e ToH p. 420)
Pike, Giant
Pixie (1e MM p. 79; 3.5e MM p. 235)
Porcupine, Giant (1e MM p. 79)
Portuguese Man-O-War, Giant
Pseudo-Dragon (4e MM p. 91)
Purple Worm (4e MM p. 214)

Q

Quasit (1e MM p. 80; 3.5e MM p. 46)

R

Rakshasa (4e MM p. 216)
Ram, Giant (1e MM p. 81)
Rat, Giant (4e MM p. 219)
Ray, Manta (1e MM p. 81; 3.5e MM p. 275)
Ray, Pungi (1e MM p. 81)
Ray, Sting (1e MM p. 81)
Remorhaz (1e MM p. 82; 3.5e MM p. 214)
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros, Wooly
Roc (1e MM p. 82; 3.5e MM p. 215)
Roper (1e MM p. 83; 3.5e MM p. 215)
Rot Grub (1e MM p. 83; 3.5e MM p. 421)
Rust Monster

S

Sahaugin (1e MM p. 84; 3.5e MM p. 217)
Salamander (1e MM p. 85; 3.5e MM p. 218)
Satyr (1e MM p. 85; 3.5e MM p. 219)
Scorpion, Giant
Sea Hag (1e MM p. 86; 3.5e MM p. 144)
Sea Horse, Giant (1e MM p. 86)
Sea Lion (1e MM p. 86)
Shadow
Shambling Mound (4e MM p. 232)
Shark
Shark, Giant (1e MM p. 87; 3.5e MM p. 279)
Shedu (1e MM p. 87; 3.5e FF p. 153)
Shrieker (1e MM p. 87; 3.5e MM p. 112)
Skeleton (4e MM p. 234)
Skunk, Giant (1e MM p. 88)
Slithering Tracker (1e MM p. 88)
Slug, Giant
Snake, Giant, Amphisbaena (1e MM p. 88)
Snake, Giant, Constrictor (1e MM p. 88; 3.5e MM p. 280)
Snake, Giant, Poisonous (1e MM p. 88; 3.5e MM p. 281)
Snake, Giant, Sea (1e MM p. 88)
Snake, Giant, Spitting (1e MM p. 88)
Specter (4e MM p. 244)
Sphinx, Andro- (1e MM p. 89; 3.5e MM p. 232)
Sphinx, Crio- (1e MM p. 89; 3.5e MM p. 233)
Sphinx, Gyno- (1e MM p. 89; 3.5e MM p. 233)
Sphinx, Hieraco- (1e MM p. 89; 3.5e MM p. 234)
Spider, Giant (1e MM p. 90; 3.5e MM p. 288)
Spider, Huge
Spider, Large
Spider, Phase
Spider, Giant Water (1e MM p. 90)
Sprite (1e MM p. 92; 3.5e MM p. 235)
Squid, Giant (1e MM p. 92; 3.5e MM p. 281)
Stag (1e MM p. 92)
Stag, Giant (1e MM p. 92)
Stirge (4e MM p. 248)
Strangle Weed (1e MM p. 93; 3.5e MM p. 334)
Su-Monster
Sylph (1e MM p. 93; 3.0e MM2 p. 192)

T

Thought Eater (1e MM p. 94; 3.5e EPH p. 211)
Tick, Giant
Tiger
Tiger, Sabre-Tooth
Titan (1e MM p. 94; 3.5e MM p. 242)
Titanothere (1e MM p. 95)
Toad, Giant (1e MM p. 95)
Toad, Ice (1e MM p. 95)
Toad, Poisonous (1e MM p. 95)
Trapper (1e MM p. 95; 3.5e ToH p. 346)
Treant (4e MM p. 251)
Triton (1e MM p. 96; 3.5e MM p. 245)
Troglodyte (4e MM p. 252)
Troll (4e MM p. 254)
Turtle, Giant Sea (1e MM p. 97)
Turtle, Giant Snapping

U

Umber Hulk (1e MM p. 98; 3.5e MM p. 248)
Unicorn (4e MM p. 257)

V

Vampire (4e MM p. 258)

W

Wasp, Giant
Water Weird
Weasel, Giant
Whale (1e MM p. 100; 3.5e MM p. 282)
Wight (4e MM p. 262)
Will-O-(The)-Wisp
Wind Walker (1e MM p. 101; 3.5e ToH p. 365)
Wolf (4e MM p. 264)
Wolf, Dire (Worg) (4e MM p. 265)
Wolf, Winter (1e MM p. 101; 3.5e MM p. 256)
Wolverine (1e MM p. 101; 3.5e MM p. 283)
Wolverine, Giant (1e MM p. 101)
Wraith (4e MM p. 266)
Wyvern (4e MM p. 268)

X

Xorn

Y

Yeti

Z

Zombie (4e MM p. 274)

Version History

2008-10-08
Corrected errors: Blue Dragon, Green Dragon, Flesh Golem, Stone Golem, Homunculus, Guardian Naga, and Shambling Mound now listed as being present in the 4e MM.
Added link: Huge Spider (Thanks, Gregor LeBlaque!).

2008-10-07
Created original list.

My book of 4e stats of 1e monsters

2008-10-07T11:04:00.004-04:00

Well, it's not a book that I'll personally publish. It's my own house rule book. In my last entry, I complained about the lack of 1e monsters in the 4e Monster Manual. Since a 4e Tome of Horrors is not going to be published anytime soon, I seem to have little alternative.

Several gamers on the internet have created many 4e monsters. But the pace of production is slow, at best. And there seems to be only a few places that have focused on compiling monsters for 4e. The first place I found is the Monsters section of ENWiki over at ENworld. Another place I found 4e monsters is at the WotC forum thread, 4e Monster Compendium. If there are other places, please let me know.

So what am I going to do? Well, as I said, I'm putting together my own house rule monster book. To this end, I've made up a list of all the monsters in the 1e Monster Manual and I'm systematically finding any 4e versions of those monsters on the internet. I've been able to find several of them. But many more have yet to be made. So I'll try to make a few of my own.

In the 4e Dungeon Master's Guide, there are rules given for creation of original monsters. Thankfully, this system is less ambiguous than any of the previous editions. New monsters can have its combat statistics clearly defined from the outset and further details can be ironed out by looking at similar examples in the 4e Monster Manual. Defining the powers is the tricky part. But it's far from impossible.

I will create a single entry on this blog that I will bookmark and periodically update. It will contain a list of all the monsters in the 1e Monster Manual. Each entry will link to known home brewed 4e stats for each monster. Some of them will link to monsters that I create myself. Others on the internet can bookmark this blog entry and link to it. This will be an experiment and I don't know how well this will work out. If it doesn't work out, it's no big deal. Ultimately, I might have to move the list to a proper web page on my own web site.

WANTED: 4e Tome of Horrors

2008-10-06T17:05:00.002-04:00

The one thing keeping me from running pre-4e modules with 4e rules is a severe lack of updated monsters. Every time I think I want to plan a game with an old module, I'm always blocked by this obstacle. Bullshitting the rest of any given module is no problem. But if I want to use specific monsters, I need to have them prepared ahead of time. And 4e does a really good job with its new method of handling monsters. But I can't run Castle Zagyg in 4e without many of the old monsters from the 1e MM.

I don't pretend to understand the liscensing controversies surrounding third-party 4e products. I don't care. Wizards of the Coast, whatever the problem is, fix it.

Oh, and gimme my DDi stuff. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

/rant

4e Morale Check: A DM utility power

2008-10-02T10:23:00.006-04:00

A Dungeon Master utility power? Why not?

Even though I've decided to use 4e from now on, I'm keenly interested in applying 1e concepts and traditions to the modern rule set. To that end, I've been composing my own 4e house rules.

One set of rules that I feel are neglected by 3.5e and 4e are the ones pertaining to morale checks. The morale check was an important part of D&D before 3e. In 3e, this fight-or-flight rule is essentially eliminated. Instead it is incorporated into 3e's system of attack bonuses. In 3.5e and 4e, whether or not monsters or NPCs flee while in the midst of battle is entirely up to the DM.

At first, I thought that adding morale checks to a set of 4e house rules might be a simple matter of just using the rules provided in the 1e DMG. But upon closer examination, I realized that these rules seemed archaic in the context of 4e. For example, it uses a percentage dice roll. Well, why not simply use a d20 and divide the bonuses by 20? Then I got to thinking that rules pertaining to morale could be somehow created for 4e D&D in manner that is consistent with the rest of the rules.

How can combat morale rules be created that are consistent with 4e? As detractors have observed, all of 4e D&D seems to revolve entirely around the axis of combat. Everything is defined in terms of character powers and abilities. But morale rules, something that has everything to do with combat, is strangely absent. The 4e DMG is mostly fluff and advice with scant rules pertaining to rigid conduct of the game. This was done with the purpose of simplification. Perhaps this is good because it has produced a much more unified system of rules. Perhaps this is bad because the game seems to only focus on combat.

In 4e terms, what is a morale check? In 1e and 2e, it was a roll made by the DM during combat at appropriate predefined occasions. It is never a roll made by the players. Well, I thought, perhaps a morale check could be something akin to cause fear, the 1st level cleric attack power? Fear is certainly a factor. But a morale check is not something that is rolled by a player so it can't be a character power. If it's a roll made by the DM, what does he roll against? A "moral score?" In 2e, all monsters had a moral score included with each monster description. Adding a new statistic to every single monster in 4e seemed to be counter to the spirit of the streamlined rules of 4e. Furthermore, modifying the combat system with a subset of rules handling morale checks seemed counter-productive. There has to be some way of safely inserting an optional morale check rule without "breaking" the game.

Then it hit me. Why not define morale checks in 4e as a "DM utility power?" Powers are, by definition, optional. The DM would not have to use it at all. And if the ability used in the "attack" is simply a placeholder, then the only concern would be bonuses.

So this morning I whipped up some 4e Morale Check rules:

MORALE

The morale check is a utility power used by the DM against monsters or NPCs. It is never used against PCs. It can be used to check the morale of individuals or groups of individuals. In the case of groups, use the average Will score of that group.

The morale check DM utility power does not use a character ability for its "attack." Instead, the DM's Morale "ability" has a "score" of 10 and therefore has no "ability modifier." The DM merely rolls a d20, adds any relevant bonuses, and compares the result with the target's Will.

Morale Check DM Utility
You determine whether or not an NPC or monster withdraws from combat.
-------------------------
At-Will * Fear
Immediate Reaction Personal
Trigger: Surprise, facing an obviously superior force, ally is slain by magic, 25% of group has fallen, 50% of group has fallen, companion slain after more that 50% of group has fallen, group leader deserts or is slain, fighting foe that cannot be harmed due to magical protections, ordered to attempt a heroically dangerous task, offered temptation (bribe, chance to steal, etc.), told to act as rear guard, directed to use up an encounter power, directed to use up a daily power, directed to use charge from a personal powerful magic item, given chance to surrender, or completely surrounded.
Prerequisite: You must be the DM.
Requirement: You must be a grognard. ;)
-------------------------
Target: One creature or group of creatures with averaged Will.
Attack: Morale vs Will
-------------------------
Hit: If the attack roll succeeds, the target will fall back but keep fighting (save ends). If the attack roll succeeds by 3, the target will disengage and/or retreat (save ends). If the attack roll succeeds by 6, the target will flee in panic (save ends). If the attack roll succeeds by 10, the target surrenders.

Morale Bonus

Listed below are conditions and situations that can affect morale check bonuses.

Target abandoned by friends: +6
Target bloodied: +6
Target is chaotic: +1
Target is fighting hated enemy: -4
Target is lawful: -1
Target is surprised: +2
Target's group is fighting wizards or magic-using foes: -2
Target is level 5 to 10: -1
Target is level 11 to 15: -2
Target is level 16 or more: -3
Target is defending home: -3
Target has cover: -1
Target's leader is of different alignment: +1
Target's most powerful ally killed: +4
Target is PC ally NPC that has been favored: -2
Target is PC ally NPC that has been poorly treated: +4
None of target's enemies have been slain: +2
Target's group is outnumbered by 3 or more to 1: +4
Target's group outnumbers opponents by 3 or more to 1: -2
Target is unable to affect opponent: +8
Target group has magic-using creature: -2

Perhaps the wording of the trigger entry could be simplified. And perhaps the list of morale bonuses could be simplified, eliminated, or somehow incorporated into the power's description entry. I'm open to suggestions.

One interesting side effect of applying the 4e mold to this 1e concept is the idea of essentially treating the effects of a morale check as a saving throw. I like how 4e simplified saving throws and treats them just like an AC defense score. If a morale check power is applied in this manner, fleeing creatures might make a saving throw and return to battle.

The idea of a DM utility power could be a practical solution to re-introducing old school game concepts to 4e. I haven't tried this in actual game play. But my intuition tells me that it might work just fine. If this concept of a DM utility power is viable, I have a feeling that this might open up tremendous possibilities.

As described at the beginning of the fourth edition Player's Handbook, Dungeons & Dragons is an exception-based set of rules. From my perspective as an amateur programmer, it also appears to be modular in the sense that you start with a core library of functions and then build upon it. Unlike previous editions of D&D, 4e seems to be more conducive to this mindset. DM utility powers could open up an entirely new "library" of "functions" that are waiting to be written.

I never understood ear seekers until now

2008-09-28T09:20:00.005-04:00

It's a minor thing, really. But I think it reveals a great deal about my gaps in D&D lore.

Ever since I read the entry for ear seekers in the 1st edition Monster Manual, I had never understood how they were employed in the game of Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax described them as small insects that live in wood and need warm places to lay eggs. That's all.

Well, how does that work? How do they "attack?" Do they wait around in the rafters and then drop on the heads of unwary adventurers? Do they crawl into the ears of sleeping adventurers camped out in the woods?

I never understood why ear seekers were in the D&D rules at all. The presence of dragons in the Monster Manual needed no explanation. Orcs and halflings might require some knowledge of the writings of Tolkien. Perhaps the existence of otyughs needed explanation as a component of self-contained dungeon ecology. But ear seekers? What the heck?

It wasn't until I read something recently that I finally understood. (I think it was in Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works or maybe in the Hackmaster rulebook. Or maybe it was someone's recent blog? I'm not sure.) Ear seekers are meant to be the bane of people who listen at doors. It's as simple as that.

For the last 30 years I had no clue. This says a lot about me. For starters, I feel I never got my fair share of dungeon crawling experience and I've always been itching to do much more than the scant amount I got to play in my youth. I also think it says much about the fact that the old school style of playing D&D might become a forgotten art.

I miss the old spells

2008-09-26T08:07:00.003-04:00

I'm a fan of 4e D&D but there are many aspects of the older editions that I miss. One of them is the handling of magic spells. There are still some aspects to the new spell rules that strongly resemble the Vancian magic system. These are the daily powers specific to wizards. Although I agree that making certain spells available at-will is useful, the structure of the 4e rules makes the invention of new spells a little difficult. Or does it?

As soon as I heard about the new fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, I declared that I was going to buy it as soon as it was published and use it from then on. I tried to learn as much as possible beforehand. I bought the preview books and listened to the podcasts made by Wizards of the Coast. I understood the wisdom of the drastic restructuring of the rules. There needed to be a balance to all the character classes. They achieved that. But the result is a radically different game. I'm still getting used to it.

The wizard is my favorite player-character class. It has always been my favorite since my early days of gaming. I loved pouring over the vast variety of spells given in the various rule books. Over the years, new spells were invented. However, inventing new spells seemed arbitrary. Much like new monsters, new spells were created by comparing the effects to previously published spells. This philosophy has changed with 4e.

A new aspect to D&D in 4e are ritual spells. This appears to be the catch-all for the spells that can't be rationally incorporated into the structure of character powers. But if you want to create new ritual spells for 4e you have to compare them to the ones given in the ritual spell list.

But what about creating new spell powers? Would that throw the game out of balance?

I'm not sure I like being married to spell powers. To me, it seems that a wizard should be able to switch out at-will, encounter, and daily powers as he or she desires. Perhaps a fair set of house rules could address this?

Time will tell. And I have a feeling that a future splat book may greatly expand upon the handling of 4e spell powers.

You've got to make the time

2008-09-21T10:00:00.003-04:00

The number one killer of a gaming group is schedule conflicts. All too often role-playing games are relegated to the bottom of the list of life priorities. But if you really love to play your favorite game, you have to learn to make the time. Or else you will never get to play anymore.

Work is the usual cause of schedule conflict. That is understandable. Work hours always takes precedence. Unless you have a job with flexible hours or a very understanding boss, there is little you can do except try to convince your group to move game sessions to a different time or day.

Family is the second most common cause of scheduling problem. This is sometimes unavoidable. Especially if you have kids. Having no kids myself, I can provide little advice in this regard. If you are a single parent with an infant, I imagine that gaming is almost out of the question unless you are the one hosting the game nights. If you are a parent with a spouse with children who are out of diapers, it seems to me that some sort of arrangement can be worked out. As children become older, it stands to reason that accommodating your favorite hobby might become easier.

Young people sometimes have problems scheduling games because of a boyfriend or girlfriend who is either uninterested in gaming or thinks it's a waste of time. If your significant other has never gamed before, you could try to get them interested and bring them along to a game session. This usually never works out but it's worth a try. It's very rare that a previously uninterested boyfriend or girlfriend will suddenly take an interest in tabletop strategy role-playing games. Even worse, you might have a romantic interest that is actively trying to prevent you from gaming because it's time that's not spent on her. This latter variety should be dumped. Your partner should respect your interests as much as you respect theirs. But this is a subject for Dear Abby.

Very young gamers can sometimes come into conflict with parents about gaming. Sometimes it's just a matter of doing your homework or getting good grades to earn the right to game. Then there are those parents who still believe the myths from the 1980s about D&D being somehow unwholesome. Even worse, there may be parents who are extremely oppressive. The only thing you can do is put up with their rules until you are an adult.

The bottom line is that it's your hobby. It's your passion. Engaging in your favorite pastime makes you happy. You look forward to the sessions every week and you feel satisfied when they conclude. Along with work, family, and romance, gaming is an important part of your life. If you want to play your favorite game, you have to make the time. You have to make it clear to everyone around you that this is an activity that you love and you should not be somehow ashamed of it.

Look at what others people do. They seem to be able to devote large quantities of time to other activities. An unreasonably high percentage of people in my country spend a half a dozen or more hours each week devoted to just watching some sport on television. Some people play football or soccer with their friends once a week. Or maybe they're members of a bowling or softball league. Personally, I find the time, money, and real estate usage dedicated to golf to be a complete mystery to me. All sorts of people engage in a variety of pastimes. You, as a gamer, like to engage in one of those pastimes. It's what you are. It's what you do.

In my humble opinion, one of the problems that face the gaming community is a lack of unified structure or organization. I have never been a member of the RPGA but perhaps I should investigate that further. I am trying to use MeetUp.com to organize some sort of gaming group at my local Civic Center. I know there are RPG tournaments conducted at conventions. Why not outside of conventions?

Anyway, I have found that once you establish gaming as something important in your life and you make a point of devoting a regular time slot to your favorite hobby, the people around you in your life will eventually accomodate it. You might be surprised when your wife says to you one day, "I was going to invite the Smiths over for dinner on Tuesday but then I remembered that Tuesday is your game night."

It can happen. But you have to make the time.

Strongholds

2008-09-19T12:18:00.003-04:00

This is one aspect of D&D that I've never fully experienced. I have long dreamed about it ever since I got my 1e DMG back in the early '80s. But none of the campaigns I played endured long enough to warrant the building of a stronghold for my characters. The adventures I played always seemed to have been one-shot affairs. We would prepare characters and dive into a published dungeon.

As I mentioned earlier, I never became involved with an ongoing campaign until around 2005. For the first time, the players I was gaming with were actually developing their own fiefdom. But as I explained, I never had much say in that group and I eventually left it.

I'm wondering if building a stronghold for PCs is a dead art. Is it all about adventure paths? Judging from the resurgent interest in old school sandbox gaming, it might make a comeback.

To this end, I want to draw attention to a relatively recent splat book, Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. I believe that it was published before the advent of 3.5e. However, I think that it can be perfectly useful for any edition, including 4e. It's similar to some of the rules presented in Gygax's 1e DMG but with much more detail.

But then the next question is how do you conduct seige warfare in D&D? What about large-scale battles? I wonder...

Why no hirelings or henchmen?

2008-09-17T12:03:00.005-04:00

Even though I played D&D in the early days of its popularity, I never took full advantage of the rules pertaining to hirelings and henchmen. Although I confess ignorance of 2e D&D, the Charisma attribute has no relevance to the recruiting of henchmen in 3.5e or 4e.

James over at Grognardia blogged about an old set of hireling miniatures. In the comments, I confessed that I never used henchmen or hirelings. Most people in the comments also confessed that they never really used them either. Why not?

When I returned to D&D after 2000 and actually started playing again in 2005, I felt that they were sorely missed. Without hirelings, who is going to watch the camp outside the dungeon and help carry your loot? Without henchmen, how else does one start a fiefdom?

I saw Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf last year. It's a great inspiration for D&D adventure. I pictured the hero as a high-level fighter with a large group of henchmen. I lament the fact that such an arrangement is no longer a part of the rule mechanics of D&D. Any henchmen or hirelings are now adjudicated by the DM and do not have anything to do with on Charisma scores. There are no guidelines.

Even though Gary Gygax provided some rules in the DMG for hirelings and henchmen, how they are found by the PCs is left up to the DM. Like much of early D&D rules, knowledge of medieval culture is assumed to be already known by the players. Rules governing such NPCs was largely open-ended.

In my opinion, hirelings and henchmen should be an integral part of old school campaigns. If there were some sort of splat book dedicated to the subject, common usage might increase.

Is there any rules about them Hackmaster? Other game systems? Splat books I don't know about?

How about some tables indicating the chance of finding a particular type of hireling or henchman in a different types of towns and cities? Check once per day, perhaps. Just a thought I'd throw out there.

Jeff posted some nice box art. Take a look!

How I discovered sandbox campaigning

2008-09-12T08:14:00.007-04:00

When I got back into playing D&D in 2005 after a long haitus, I wanted to dungeon crawl. I had started reading Knights of the Dinner Table comic book and it made me nostalgic for the game session of my youth in the 1980s. So I was happy to join up with a group that had started delving into a couple of the famous modules by Necromancer Games, Tomb of Abysthor and Rappan Athuk. Although I ended up leaving that group for various reasons, I did appreciate the manner in which they approached their campaign. Even though they were using 3.5e rules, they were playing D&D the old school way. And it seems that this year a term for this mode of play has developed among various D&D bloggers: the sandbox campaign.

Back in the 1980s, I usually played modules as one-shot adventures. I don't recall playing a character through more than one module. However, I was fascinated by Darlene's map of Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk. It is a hex map. There are specific rules in the 1e DMG for hex mapping campaign worlds. But I had never actually played a campaign with that attitude towards personal player freedom.

I'll never forget an occasion in the late '80s when I attended a party at an older gamer's house. I was in my teens and had played D&D for several years. This guy was in his forties. In one of his rooms he had a very large hand-drawn campaign hex map up on the wall. I asked him about it and to my surprise he told me that it was an old D&D campaign that he and some others had played many years before. Presumably during the '70s when the original D&D rules were published. Ever since then, I had wondered what it would be like to play such a campaign.

Last year, when I wanted to start up my own D&D group, I wanted to do just that. I wanted to run a campaign world of my own design. It was explained to my players that I was going to start them off with an old published module and that their adventures would lead them elsewhere. I also tried to emphasize that they were free to do what they liked. I studied 3.5e rules and prepared encounters. I developed a quasi-Cthulhu story arc that I knew my players would appreciate. It seemed that the so-called adventure path style of gaming was the latest evolution of RPG.

The adventure path is a term that I think was coined by the writers of Dungeon magazine for their series of published adventures. Over the years, I had taken for granted that RPGs were all about story. An improvisational story in which the players helped to construct. Although the players created their own tone and style, there was always required an overall story arc that was provided by the game master. One of the initial reason why I ditched D&D back in the '90s was because of what I perceived to be a limitation of style. RPGs, I thought, were more than hack-and-slash. Stories were important!

Thus I concocted a campaign with a story arc. And I found that I hated it. I realized that no matter how much I dressed it up, this adventure path method of play was nothing more than railroading. With the 3.5 rules, I spent too much time preparing encounters. Since there is no way of predicting which way the players would go, I had to put a great deal of preparation for contingencies. And those contingencies had to have the primary goal of keeping the players on the adventure path's track. To me, it felt dirty and dishonest. Like I was rigging the game. What was the point? Where was the challenge?

This was my epiphany. I subconciously realized that adventure paths dictated avoiding the dreaded Total Party Kill. This was no longer a challenging game for the palyers. Sure, the adventure path is entertaining. But if a DM spends time and money preparing a complicated story arc, he will naturally have the tendency to spare the PCs in order to complete that story. The players will always be victorious. Where's the challenge in that?

When I started my D&D Meetup group, I stated from the outset that I wanted to run a do-it-yourself campaign. I would provide various adventure hooks or knowledge of such-and-such nearby dungeon. But I wouldn't tell them what to do.

As I explained elsewhere, the Meetup group didn't work out for various reasons. Scheduling was the main problem for each individual player. One of the most loyal attendies listened carefully to what I was looking for in a campaign. I lamented that I was unable to keep a weekly campaign going if people were not going to show up regularly. I wanted the players to be able to explore and do what they want, to build strongholds, to create wizardy schools, to build great temples, to start thieves guilds. I wanted to make dungeons and adventures available to the players but not require them to follow a specific story path. I said I wanted to run a game like the ones that they had in the old days.

That loyal player recommended that I read a couple of blogs about something that's been termed, "sandbox campaign."

Yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And I've decided that this is the only way I'm ever going to play an RPG from now on.

(For further reading on sandbox campaigns, I recommend Alex Schroeder's post on the subject and its related links.

Improvisation: D&D is not a video game

2008-09-10T09:34:00.007-04:00

There have been several occasions when I have tried to introduce D&D to newbies. Since all of them are familiar with board games where you take turns and move around game pieces, they would invariably look at D&D from that frame of reference. "Taking turns" is a concept that comes naturally. But in RPGs, the taking of turns only occurs during combat. The other parts of game play that involve traveling between dungeon and town seem ridiculous and unnecessary. To them, nothing happens that seems of consequence. There is no earned XP, no treasure gained, nothing that seems directly related to rules stated in the books. When I declare to the newbie players that a "wandering monster" has appeared before them on the road, it seems to them that I'm being arbitrary. It doesn't fit into their idea of a confined arena that is carefully defined by a map printed on a board sitting on a table top whereupon game pieces are pushed around.

Or maybe the newbie has played medieval fantasy RPGs on the computer. He is very familiar with the idea of exploring underground labyrinths, fighting monsters, and looting treasure. He is well aware that more powerful weapons, armor, and magic items await them once they have gained enough gold. But when it comes to the improvisational aspects of character interaction, he is almost always confronted with a barrier: actual role-playing.

I experienced the latter type of newbie the other night. He's a smart guy and has played plenty of computer RPGs. I have not.

The last computer RPG that I played was probably Wizardry on an Apple II sometime in the early 1980s. Or maybe the Farscape computer game counts as an RPG? I enjoyed that. There was that time that I gave one of the Final Fantasy games a try. I don't remember which one it was but I do remember getting bored and selling it to someone else. I made a concious effort to avoid Everquest because I knew from the tales told about it that there was a danger of becoming addicted. At the time, I was hooked on playing first-person shooters and I was afraid I'd waste even more time on a MMORPG. I've never played Morrowind, although it has been repeatedly recommended to me. Do the recent Grand Theft Auto games count as RPGs? Because I really enjoy playing games from that series. Conspicuously, I've never played World of Warcraft.

The prime reason that I've never been very interested in computerized role-playing games is that you don't actually play a role. Yes, you can create characters that you gradually enhance over time. No doubt pre-programmed NPCs react to you based on your class, race, and your choice of responses. But the player is not tasked with actually taking on the role of the character and engaging in improvisation.

I am not an actor. But I was raised by one. My mother was an actor and a theater director. Although I did not end up becoming an actor myself, I did become involved with local community theater. I tried a little bit of stage acting but it just wasn't my cup of tea. Along the way, I took part in acting classes of one sort or another. One of the exercises that actors practice is improvisation. Sometimes this skill is necessary during a stage performance when another actor forgets a line, someone misses an entrance, or perhaps because of a technical malfunction backstage.

Improvisation is vital for playing a role-playing game. It's the only way that a story can be built or advanced. Otherwise, it becomes the much-maligned hack-and-slash variety of dungeon crawling. Monsters appear, players kill, loot, buy gear, rinse, repeat. Dullsville. That's fine if you just want to play a tactical war game. That's what D&D really is at its heart. But the game evolved beyond its strategy war game roots. Role-playing is what makes it distinct.

You don't have to be a skilled actor to play a role-playing game. As a player, it's your option to actually speak what your character is saying in the imaginary game world. Or you can merely describe what your character is speaking. Sometimes the DM might just require the players to roll the dice to see if they succeed at some sort of social skill such as "Fast-talk" or "Diplomacy." Skill rolls rely upon a PC's known skill score. Social skill rolls can be used as a crutch for players who may not be inclined to resolve in-game social interactions.

But even social skill dice rolls are useless if the player does not engage with NPCs at all. That was the situation I faced the other night.

One of my players is an experienced computer RPG gamer. He is very familiar with fantasy adventure scenarios and what constitutes them. But he is used to having the computer program provide him with "quests." All interactions with NPCs are pre-programmed and have limited variability. This guy has never had a successful experience with pencil-and-paper RPGs.

I was running my group through a Dungeon Crawl Classic module that was published by Goodman Games. It took place in a building located within a city. The dungeon was beneath the building. The game was proceeding normally. But when they encountered a group of NPCs in one room, the game came to a dead stop. He wouldn't talk to the NPCs. He was clearly expecting a fight like with all the other monster encounters. The player was confused and just looked at me as if I was about to reveal to him what he should obviously do next. Nothing. Dead silence. No interaction. Eventually, the player made feeble attempts to brush past these NPCs. But I wasn't going to let him do that. This made him think that these NPCs were somehow related to the main subject of the adventure. I imagine that he was used to that sort of thing in his computer games. But these NPCs had nothing to do with the adventure and were merely placed in this module to open up role-playing, generate possible future story hooks, and/or create new allies or enemies. But the player just sat there, having no idea what to do. I finally realized that this was going absolutely nowhere and so I just made the NPCs ignore the players and go back to drinking and playing cards.

Another big problem I had with this player was a puzzle that the group had to solve. It was an entrance to the next level of the dungeon. In order to open the portal, words had to be spoken in a particular language. The required language was not obscure. It's just that none of the players could speak it. It was just like that scene in Lord of the Rings where all Gandalf had to do to enter Moria was speak "friend" in elvish. So there my players were, in this dungeon, and none of them knew the language required to open the magical portal. They knew it was some particular language, but they had no idea which one.

They had absolutely no idea what to do next. The computer RPGer could not conceive of the idea that, because no one in the group could speak dwarven, the solution to the puzzle was not within the dungeon. He tried searching through all the rooms that they had previously explored. Reading all the books that they found. Nothing helped.

Other DMs might have done something to help the characters along. Perhaps I could have said that they finally find a piece of paper in a desk drawer that describes exactly how to open the portal. But that doesn't challenge the player. I recently vowed that I would not allow my players to get off easy just so they could advance. No, they would actually have to solve the puzzle and I wouldn't allow them to just "make a skill roll."

Nothing was coming to them. I realized that as far as my computer RPGer friend was concerned, this dungeon represented the entire reality of the PC. The most I felt I could do was give him this very general clue. The player eventually suggested the idea, "Well, I guess I could find someone in the city who might help. But I have no idea who." I awarded him bonus experience points and we ended the night's session.

I'm not sure that this campaign is going to get anywhere if the player is not willing to interact with non-player characters. If the dungeon doesn't have the obvious means to overcome obstacles laid before him, he doesn't seem to have the ability to improvise.

D&D is not a video game.

How do you play D&D?

2008-09-09T08:47:00.004-04:00

No, really! Exactly how do you play Dungeons & Dragons? On the face of it, that statement makes me sound like a rube. The fact of the matter is that I've played D&D and other RPGs since nearly the dawn of the genre's popularity.

Down through the years, I have noticed that D&D has been used to play in a variety of modes of fantasy fiction. As has been pointed out, it was originally rooted in pulp fantasy such as Conan the Barbarian and not necessarily epic fantasy like that of The Lord of the Rings. Yet many people these days seem to gear their campaigns towards adventure paths with epic plots. This trend has come to the point where the word "campaign" has become an archaic term.

In my humble opinion, I think part of the problem is that all of the scattered groups of people around the world who bought copies of the original D&D rules (Holmes, 1e, OD&D, whatever) did not know exactly how to play the game. What do I mean by this? I mean how exactly did Gygax and Arneson conduct the game? There is a wonderful example of game play in the 1e DMG along with an example dungeon. That example is only a few pages long. But I have never seen an example of an entire old school campaign from beginning to end.

I have many questions about how an old school campaign is conducted. For example, how does the DM begin presenting the players the campaign hex map? Do people playing old school style D&D even bother with complicated back stories for characters? Is it up to the DM or the players to recap the events of previous game sessions? Does the Dungeon Master keep the players' character record sheets to help offset inter-session cheating? How are hirelings and henchmen handled? There are many habits, traditions, and house rules of the original D&D gamers that I can only wonder about.

All I've ever read are vague suggestions about what to do during game play. Much like OD&D rules assumed that the players already had a working knowledge of strategic war games, all of the D&D rule books I've ever read have assumed that the player already has a working knowledge of role-playing games.

Chess has a definable beginning, middle, and end game. Monopoly has a rigidly defined procedure of rolling the dice and moving your game piece. Risk has a clearly defined goal of world domination. I have never seen D&D game play rigidly defined in terms other than "it's up to you." But over time we've seen trends develop. And here were are discussing the virtures of old school game play.

Well, what IS old school game play? How does it begin? Do PCs commonly establish fiefdoms at high levels? Does the DM reveal the campaign map to the players? We all know how we play the game. But every time each of us joins a new group of players, we learn an entirely new method of play.

You might scoff at my idea of presenting a highly detailed description of an entire old school campaign. Such an example of carefully documented campaign play might be thousands of pages long. Well, that's exactly what I would like to see. The closest that I've ever seen to anything like this is the Knights of the Dinner Table comic book.

I can only guess that the only way DMs and players can learn exactly how to play D&D is through first hand experience with an experienced group. But that experienced group had to learn how to play it from someone else. Is there an unbroken chain of masters and apprentices leading all the way back to Gary Gygax himself? I doubt it. It is more probable that a few brave individuals here and there picked up the rules and made the best guess about how to proceed. And from these scattered groups, styles developed on their own.

What we have today is a dominant style that is commonly called the adventure path. I bought into this attitude towards game play gradually over many years. But in the last year I have been closely re-examining what playing D&D is really all about. The best that I can determine is that what I'm looking for is the method that was used to play D&D shortly after it's invention. And that's what's commonly called "old school" D&D.

Well, exactly how do you play "old school D&D"? It's more than just using the sketchy set of rules from the original boxed edition. It's more than merely focusing on the rules used in 1e AD&D. It's a state of mind and a method of play. Rules are immaterial. I'm not going back to using older sets of rules. I've examined 4e D&D and I think they are solid. I'm certain that I can use 4e for playing an old school style "sandbox" campaign.

But how exactly are old school sandbox campaigns conducted?

I hope I can use this blog to help solve this mystery.

Oak Ridge D&D Meetup

2008-09-08T09:16:00.003-04:00

At the beginning of 2008, my new D&D game group had kind of fallen apart after the first adventure. We had many game sessions and we had a fun time completing the module, Keep on the Borderlands. But the stream of players who responded to the Knoxgamers forum post had quickly dried up.

There has to be people in this area who want to play D&D but haven't found a game group. It stands to reason that there must be people out there who are my age and are interested in playing some good, old-fashioned dungeon crawling. For whatever reason, they stopped gaming because of life commitments. I stopped because I went off to college and lost contact with the gamer friends of my adolescence. Others had no doubt stopped gaming because of marriage, family, or busy jobs. But despite these commitments, there had to be people out there who wanted to return to the hobby that they loved all those years ago.

At the beginning of April 2008, I discovered Meetup.com. It's a website that allows people to organize meetings for groups and clubs of all sorts. It's free to sign up. For a fee, you can run a web page that announces meetings, sends emails out to members, and even has a small forum. I decided to give it a shot.

To my surprise, people responded. The first meetings were at a local book store. Since there was clearly an interest, we needed a more permanent location. I decided that the Oak Ridge Civic Center would be a perfect, neutral place for strangers to meet and play games. People use it for playing basketball, volleyball, and pink-pong. Why not D&D?

The room we used was great. It was more than enough space. There were plenty of utility tables and chairs. One entire wall was a plate glass window with a view of the park. A giant dry erase board was a perfect place to keep track of initiative, hit points, and any other game notes.

Everyone was welcome. Young and old. There was no alcohol or drugs, of course, because it was at a community civic center. No smoking at the table but there was a smoking area outside. And there were snack machines right outside the game room door.

A couple of dozen gamers showed up. The trouble was that they didn't show up at the same time. Regular attendance was dismal. It wasn't for lack of enjoyment. I had started two or three campaigns with several groups of people. They all had a great time and they all said they were interested in returning for more. But for whatever reasons, there were always things that would come up in their lives that would take precedence. I had to keep to a rigid schedule because I was reserving a rented room in advance. I couldn't simply postpone game sessions for the next day.

We did, however, have our first experiences with the new fourth edition of D&D. The day it came out, I bought Keep on the Shadowfell. This module comes with an introductory set of rules. It was fun. But if people weren't going to consistently show up for further game sessions, we couldn't continue.

After a couple of weeks with only one loyal gamer showing up, I decided to call it quits. That was at the beginning of July. And now I'm not sure what to do next.

I have a few ideas. And I've found some like-minded people on the internet. I've been inspired to start this blog. And now that I've finished recapping my life's game experiences, I'd like to start talking about what playing D&D is really all about.

A history lesson

2008-09-05T12:21:00.001-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in the last couple of days. For now, I want to direct your attention to a very interesting interview with Frank Mentzer:

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/frank-mentzer-interviews.html

Frank recounts some of the early history of D&D. It's worth a look.

I did it my way

2008-09-03T09:18:00.003-04:00

Having been frustrated with the players I had been gaming with, I decided to quit that group. For a while, I wondered where I would go from there. I wound up receiving some unexpected support. Two of my friends had recently moved back to the city where I live.

One had actually tried to game with the group I had just left. But he was even more unhappy with that group and had less patience. He had left after only a few weeks.

The other guy had never played any sort of role-playing game at all. Although he knew the DM of my last gaming group, he was too intimidated to even begin playing with them.

My friends were basically newbies to playing D&D but they said that they'd be interested in playing the game if I was the Dungeon Master.

One person decided to be a fighter and the other a rogue. We needed more players, figuring that at least four would cover the basic roles of a typical D&D party of adventurers. Someone to be a cleric or a wizard. And, if needed, I could run a fourth member of the party to fill any missing role. So we enlisted a mutual friend as a third player. He needed some convincing. But he decided to be a cleric. And I decided to run a wizard.

To make things easy, I decided to take these newbie players through the classic D&D module, Keep on the Borderlands. In order to spice it up, I decided to combine that module with elements of its sequel, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. The original module from 1979 lacked character detail or any sort of plot. The sequel had what I needed on that front.

Unfortunately, the guy playing the cleric wasn't working out. He wasn't all that interested in the game, let alone opening up the rule book to learn the rules. I could have taken over the role of the cleric but I wasn't interested in running two DM-PCs. The one wizard I was running was already one DM-PC too many.

Eventually, I discovered Knoxgamers.org and its forum. I posted a big "want ad" in the appropriate sub-forum and waited for something to happen. To my surprise, I actually got some responses.

During the course of our playing through Keep on the Borderlands, we rotated through about three different new players.

The first one seemed unhappy with the fact that I wouldn't allow all the cleric spells from all the different splat books compiled in the Spell Compendium. He soon disappeared.

The second new player that responded to the want ad was an experienced DM and a very nice person. He was interested in trying out the Psion class and so I let him do so. It was a very interesting experience. Psions make for an interesting alternative spellcaster class. I even developed a Psi Guild for my campaign world that was incorperated into his character's backstory.

The second player invited a third player to be a cleric. Now that we had four real players, I could finally put my wizard DM-PC in the background of the party. But that didn't last very long because this third player took a new job and wasn't able to attend game sessions any longer.

We completed the module around the beginning of this year. And it was at this time that our golden psion player who had been such a tremendous asset to our gaming experience informed us that he would no longer be able to play with our group. He was starting a new semester at college and was already devoting time to his own group that he was DMing.

So that effectively ended the game group. I wasn't getting any more responses to the want ad I had posted at the forum. And I felt that I couldn't run a game group with just two players.

It is so frustrating to live in a part of the country where gamers are so few and far between. We live on the fringes of society. And D&D still has the stigma of being the purview of dorks and nerds. This prejudice is gradually changing since the advent of cultural phenomenas like World of Warcraft. But even the most popular online computer game in history has a similar stigma.

Anyway, I decided to take a new tack.

A bad gaming experience

2008-09-01T09:08:00.003-04:00

Prepare for a rant about a recent experience I had with a gaming group. I should preface it by stating that it was not my worst gaming experience ever. And the experience doesn't even compare to the legendary Worst Dungeon Master Ever. Despite what happened, there is still a chance that I might game with a few of them again. So I don't name any names. Except for you, Ray. You're an asshole. Fuck you.

Although I had copies of the rules and had read much of it, the best way to learn and remember the rules is by actually playing the game. And D&D 3.5 is not as easy as the version of D&D I played in the 1980s. The people in the gaming group I joined in 2005 knew the rules very well. Unfortunately, they had little patience. For example, they were always yelling at me for forgetting to declare that I was “casting defensively” when I’d start throwing spells in combat. It’s a rule that didn’t exist in the first edition and it didn’t make intuitive sense to me. Of course I would cast “defensively!” What else would I do in a combat situation? The rules for combat procedure are complicated in 3.5e and I wasn’t picking it up fast enough for some of the people in this group. It was tremendously frustrating. In their view, it was all my fault because I wasn’t “paying attention.” It's hard to concentrate on learning rules when you're in constant fear of being yelled at for the slightest mistake.

Another problem is that I barely knew what was going on in the campaign. At least they had a campaign hex map of the area within which our characters existed. But when it came to dungeon crawling, I had no idea what was going on at all. No one was mapping the dungeons we explored. Apparently, everyone had a map in their own heads and they never forgot what it looked like. There was no way for me to understand how far we had progressed, what passages were unexplored, where we were when we ended the previous week’s game session, or where we were planning to explore in the future.

At least the general goals of this campaign were fairly clear to me. The DM was using a few modules published by Necromancer Games. Although I wasn’t involved with the beginning of the campaign, I later figured out (long after I left the group) that they had started with The Wizard’s Amulet. From there, they played through The Crucible of Freya and took over the ruined keep that was featured in that module. As they delved the Stone Heart Mountain dungeon presented in The Tomb of Abysthor, they rebuilt their keep and used it as the start of a fiefdom. As they explored this dungeon, they also started going through the Rappan Athuk trilogy of modules. This turned into a great crusade against the evil cult of Orcus, the demon prince of the undead. The paladin in our group became the de facto leader and lord of our fief.

Although I generally knew the primary goals of the group, other aspects of the campaign took longer for me to comprehend. Most of the people in this group were fans of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels. These books are heavy with court intrigue and political battles between nobles. They drew considerable inspiration from those stories. And thus there was much political maneuvering between the governments of the city of Bard’s Gate and some other kingdom whose name escapes me.

I had no idea what my character, Blaize the half-elf wizard, should have care about. Sure, she joined in with their crusade and she was enthusiastic about slaying the evil priests of Orcus. But I felt that some of the other players never seemed to allow me to have any say about political maneuvering among the nobles. It seemed that taking notes was of no use. So I decided that the big goal of my wizard was to start a learning institution dedicated to magic, a la Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Sorcery. But this was virtually ignored by the DM and other players.

Another huge problem was that everything I suggested as a course of action was shouted down and criticized. Somehow every suggestion I would make was the worst possible thing to do because of this, that, or the other reason. Frustration does not even begin to describe what I felt about this.

One of the things that really bothered me was the house rule that nerfed spellcasters. The DM and the rest of them had decided (before I joined the group) that the wizard class was too powerful. Therefore they decided that whenever a wizard casts a spell, that character had to succeed at a Spellcraft skill check. Normally, the Spellcraft skill is only used to identify what another spell caster is casting. But the implementation of this new house rule established another hoop that my character had to jump through in order to use any spell. According to the original rules, opponents have a chance to make a saving throw against many types of spells that I cast. On top of that, some creatures are resistant to certain types of spells. This house rule added yet another layer to that. After succeeding at my Spellcraft check, there was still the possibility that my spells would fail. When I realized the situation, I bitterly complained. But I was yelled at for not remembering that I was told about this rule when I first joined the group. The trouble was that when I joined the group, I wasn’t familiar with all of the rules in the first place. I hadn’t even played 3.5e before, let alone mastered the rules! I didn’t realize how much my wizard had been crippled by this group decision that didn’t not involve my opinion at all.

It got to the point where the most enjoyment I had on game days was the 45 minute drive to the location of the game sessions. I would listen to my favorite podcasts or radio shows and enjoy the scenery while I drove. The only thing I enjoyed about the game sessions themselves was the combat encounters. I eventually became more familiar with 3.5e’s system of combat. And I got better with the preparation and use of my spells.

The only feeling of satisfaction that I got out of playing with that group was the ending of our campaign. We had all achieved 15th or 16th level. At the very end of the Rappan Athuk dungeon was a showdown with Orcus himself. Using a spell from out of a splat book, I cast a spell that prevented Orcus from summoning other demons to join in the fight. Despite the nerfed rules, I succeeded. Denied one of his primary tactics, the demon prince got the full brunt of our group’s attacks. And as chance would have it, I delt the killing blow.

There were other things that I disliked about this game group. But much of it is not important to recount here.

Having said all of this, I don’t have particularly bad feelings towards the DM of that campaign. The man really knows how to game. But unfortunately for everyone else, he knows the rules too well. He has absolutely no problem with learning and knowing D&D 3.5e or any other game rules. Despite what I’ve said, he’s actually a good DM. He keeps the game moving. He doesn’t buckle under the pressure of rules lawyers. He's rooted in the old school style of gaming but doesn't object to a good storyline. Almost to a fault, he doesn’t allow “metagaming.” He’s creative and knows how to wing it.

What it came down to is that I disagreed with their basic attitude towards the game. This experience introduced me to a term that seems to acutely manifest itself in D&D 3.5e. That term is known as “power gamer.” The primary focus of these players was using any rule available to maximize the power and effectiveness of their characters. For them, this is the entire point of the game. And since I wasn’t interested in making my character as powerful as possible and showing it off in the game, I could never win their respect.

If you don’t have the respect of the people you’re gaming with, there’s no point in playing with them at all. But I gamed with them for TWO YEARS because I simply had no one else to game with.

So I decided to start my own gaming group that I would DM myself.

My return to D&D

2008-08-29T12:40:00.002-04:00

As I explained in my last article, I was itching to play D&D again. But there were problems.

I purchased the rule books for the third edtion of D&D in 2000. I was mildly annoyed that Wizards of the Coast released a “version 3.5” of the game in 2003. But I bought the 3.5e rule books anyway. I never did completely understand the nature of the updates to the game rules. But I put my trust in the fact that the constructive feedback from hundreds of players neccesitated it.

The main problem that I had at the time was that I had no one to play with. I was in my early 30s. My adolescent gaming buddies had moved away. I had gone off to art school and focused on my career. I eventually moved back to my home town and reunited with a few old friends. But most of them didn’t game or had busy lives.

Shortly after D&D 3e was released, I picked up a boxed set of “basic” D&D rules that was designed as an introduction to the hobby. I managed to get a few games going but no regularly scheduled sessions.

In 2005, my chance to really play D&D once again came after a reuniting with an old gaming buddy. While I had gone on to different things in my own life, he had never stopped gaming. As a matter of fact, he has been involved with at least two gaming session each week for almost the last 20 years. When I met up with him again, he and his group had recently started a D&D 3.5e campaign. I mentioned that I was interested in playing again. He told me that there was no opening at his table. But a little later, someone dropped out of his group and I took over that player’s character.

At first it was fun. I liked the character that I was running. Although I would have liked to have created it myself, the character wasn’t too far off from what I would have created anyway. It was a female half-elf wizard named Blaize. Since she had an affinity for fire and fire-based spells, her name was appropriate.

I was happy to get back into dungeon crawling again.

But the fun didn’t last.

Why I started playing D&D again

2008-08-29T10:41:00.004-04:00

In 2000, Wizards of the Coast released the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. For me, it was completely unexpected. Unlike those who were keeping up with the role-playing game industry, I hadn’t prowled the internet for news about the latest products. I just didn’t care. Every once in a while I would visit Steve Jackson’s website and shop for GURPS source books. Not because I was actually playing RPGs anymore. It was partly because I wanted to study RPG rules with the intention of applying some of the concepts to computer video games.

I wasn’t interested at all in anything pertaining to D&D. I had heard no news about the third edition until I noticed the rule books sitting on the shelf at the book store. Just for the heck of it, I bought all three books. I was actually impressed with the new changes. But, alas, I had absolutely no one to play with. These books were merely an intellectual curiosity for me.

I was completely oblivious to the dire controversies surrounding the third edition of D&D that were being discussed on the internet. I would merely chuckle at the occasional person I would meet that complained about how the third edition had “ruined D&D forever.” I couldn’t really debate the issue because I had never actually played the new version of the game.

When I noticed that an introductory “basic” boxed set was for sale, I bought it with the intention of trying it out with some of my friends. The rules were presented in a simple manner with a series of short adventures. It would be a while before I met up with any interested players.

What really brought me back to the life of a pulp fantasy tabletop adventure gamer was not anyone I met, something I saw on TV, or something I read on the internet. It was actually a comic. A badly drawn comic book. This was unusual because really good art is what primarily attracts me to comic books. (I don’t like superhero comic books so don’t ask me about those. I like the kind of stuff you’d see in Heavy Metal Magazine.) One day, around the year 2002, I noticed a comic book titled, Knights of the Dinner Table.

Knights of the Dinner Table is a comic strip that started in 1990. Most of the stories take place at a dinning room table where a group of players are playing a fictional game that is obviously just like D&D. It’s just them, sitting around talking about what is happening in their game. For gamers, KotDT is hilarious and is packed with inside jokes that only gamers would understand. This strip rose to prominence in Dragon magazine and eventually became it’s own comic book. But it’s latest incarnation is actually more of a comic magazine because it contains just as many articles as it does comic strip material. And after almost 18 years, the quality of the artwork has not improved in the slightest. But illustration is not important in this case. It’s the story. With a smile on my face, I read the adventures of B.A. and his group of players humorously scheme and argue at the table.

I eventually started buying the comic book every month. And I also realized that I missed playing D&D. I had abandoned the game years ago. I realized that I longed for the days of hack-and-slash gaming. My heart melted with nostalgia. KotDT took me back to those days of slaying orcs and looting their gold. Kicking goblin ass! Falling into pit traps! Solving riddles and making maps. Torches burning out and getting eaten by a grue. With each new issue of the comic, I realized how much I missed those Saturday afternoons spent in the World of Greyhawk. I wanted to play D&D again. I wanted to dungeon crawl!

As I had mentioned in a previous article, I had all but given up on gaming because of the preparation and storytelling skills that were involved. I didn’t know it at the time, but KotDT was a turning point in my life.

White Dwarf #1

2008-08-28T14:00:00.002-04:00

While googling about on the internet, I came across this free PDF of White Dwarf #1. Published in 1977, it's an interesting insight into the early days of gaming.

Of particular interest to me is the article, D&D Campaigns, and this paragraph:

D&D Styles

D&D players can be divided into two groups, those who want to play the game as a game and those who want to play it as a fantasy novel, i .e . direct escapism through abandonment of oneself to the flow of play as opposed to the gamer's indirect escapism - the clearcut competition and mental exercise any good game offers . There are two subdivisions in each division . The game-players may emphasise player skill in players-vs-monsters (and sometimes vs other players) or they may prefer players-vs-puzzles (riddles, traps, mazes, etc.) to monster slaying . Of course no D&D campaign is purely one or the other. The escapists can be divided into those who prefer to be told a story by the referee, in effect, with themselves as protagonist, and those who like a silly, totally unbelievable game. In either case, there are two ways this can be accomplished. One is by innumerable dice rolls and situations which call for chance, especially magical decks of cards, buttons, levers, and so on - lottery D&D. The other is by manipulation of the situation by the referee, however he sees fit. In California, for example, this leads to referees who make up more than half of what happens, what is encountered and so on, as the game progresses rather than doing it beforehand. In either case the player is a passive receptor, with little control over what happens.

Interesting. I had always suspected that a division between two basic types of D&D game play manifested early on. It appears that the "escapist" route ultimately prevailed in popularity. Personally, I'm more in favor of the "game-player" variety. Or, as it is commonly called these days, an old school gamer.

At a later time, I'd like to write more about this subject.

When I stopped playing role-playing games

2008-08-27T10:42:00.005-04:00

In the 1990s, I went to art school and moved away from my old hometown gaming buddies. I still occasionally purchased new GURPS source books and never lost my fascination with game rules and creating campaign settings. But, unfortunately, I had no one to play with. Not for lack of gamers in the area. There were plenty at college. I just didn’t want to game with them. Most of all I was more focused on school and other life issues. Once in a while, I got together with old friends and played GURPS. I had no interest in playing D&D again. The only exception was a brief second edition D&D campaign that I DM’d for some friends “for old time’s sake.” It was sort of fun while it lasted. But it suffered from lack of a sufficient number of players.

By the end of the 1990s, my interest in role-playing games almost completely faded away. I had almost no one to game with anymore. Being a 30-year-old living in a Bible Belt red state meant that other gamers are very few and far between. No one at work played chess, let alone D&D.

One of the biggest obstacles was my attitude towards other gamers, in general. So many of the ones that I met were on the fringes of society. Many of the random people I would encounter at game shops or comic shops seemed to usually exemplify the worst kind of “otaku” or “fan boy.” I just did not want to associate with many of these creepy dudes who seemed to be failures in life. Right off the bat, I could usually discern some sort of psychological shortcoming.

What happened, I thought to myself, to all of the level-headed people who used to play role-playing games? All my brainy friends from my youth had done the right thing and moved to less conservative parts of the world. I was working at a corporate job that actively suppressed creativity. (See the movie Office Space.)

My gamer friends were reduced to a few that I had known since adolescence. We would try to play GURPS but the campaigns never lasted more than a few sessions. The GM would have some sort of plot in mind and the players couldn’t get into it very much. Worst of all, sometimes up to three game sessions were devoted to just generating and fleshing out our characters. We never played any modules or any other type of published adventures. We were all convinced that the best way was our own invented storyline.

In hindsight, I think it was the preoccupation with writing story plots that killed it for me. I just don’t think I’m a fantastic writer. I’m not very good at defining charcters with depth and motivation that would flawlessly fit in with what I thought the player-characters would do. How was I able to see into the future and know what the players would behave? How can I possibly plan all the contingencies of actions in order to further the story? At the time, I was convinced that what role-playing games were really all about was creative improvisational storytelling. And I’m not that great of a storyteller.

Also, the rules for playing GURPS had seemed to become so complicated. As any GURPS fan will tell you, the rules are actually very simple and can be summarized on one page. But GURPS players never rely on just the one page. Not only is the core rule book several hundred pages long, there are dozens of supplementary rule books that can be used. Generating a character can take a long, long time. And the nature of our established style of “storytelling” campaigns required an unreasonable amount of preparation.

The players in our group would ask our GM, "When are we going to start that GURPS campaign?" All too often the answer was, "I'm still working on it." And then once we started playing, we would never finish.

I just didn’t have time for gaming anymore. And most people my age didn’t have the time for it either.

But all was not lost.

Role-playing games are more than just D&D

2008-08-27T09:04:00.003-04:00

While in junior high school, I played TSR games with my friends on the weekends. AD&D, Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World, and Star Frontiers were played all day Saturdays and sometimes late into the night. When I entered high school, I met new gamer friends and we explored other games. One of our favorites, since it was during the Cold War, was the post-apocalyptic Twilight: 2000. D&D was always the mainstay.

One game that I always thought was fascinating was Traveller. I picked up a copy of the boxed set of three rule books in San Francisco while on a family trip to California. This was the first science-fiction role-playing game I had ever seen. Amazingly, I had never heard of it before. I read and re-read those rule for years. But I never, ever had anyone to play it with. No one else I knew had a copy of the rules. I had no frame of reference for conducting a game so I never felt comfortable running a session. But I did have fun with the random star system generator.

Systems of game rules have always been fascinating to me. I’ve never been the best strategist, as some of my friends will attest. But that never stopped me from tinkering with role-playing game concepts. While in high school, a burst of inspiration drove me to create an entirely new game system. Although I enjoyed various genre games, I thought it would be interesting to have one game that covered all the bases. Magic spells, melee combat, martial arts, gun battles, vehicle combat, spaceships, science-fiction gadgets, etc. all rolled into one set of rules. This game I titled Colony. The premise was that the player-characters were colonists of the far future that have set up homestead on a planet filled with swords and sorcery. My friends and I played several sessions of the game and they seemed to enjoy it. I printed up the rules on an Atari dot-matrix printer. And I might still have that rule book squirreled away someplace in storage.

But then I discovered GURPS, the Generic Universal Role-Playing System. With mixed feelings, I realized that this was the game I was trying to write. Simple and elegant with an infinitely open-ended set of rules, I was sold on Steve Jackson’s masterpiece. I thereafter scoffed at D&D and mocked what I thought was an archaic set of rules. Sure, I purchased all three of the core rulebooks of the second edition of D&D. But at that time I was never very interested in playing it. TSR's marketing of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance were of no interest to me at all. Me and my friends were all convinced that GURPS was the way to play.

And so the Generic Universal Role-Playing System was the only one I played for almost 10 years.

My first D&D adventure

2008-08-26T18:53:00.003-04:00

In 1981, I was given my first set of D&D rules for Christmas. It was the “Holmes edition” Basic Set. Some of my friends had the hardbound AD&D books and I eyed those tomes with envy.

I was invited to a friend’s house for my very first D&D game session. He was using his older brother’s AD&D books. And the adventure was something that my friend had created himself. What kind of characters did we have? 18th level, of course. None of that weak, low-level nonsense! It was ridiculous.

That experience electrified my imagination. Of all the RPG adventures that I had in my youth, that one was the one I remember the most vividly. It was short and involved only a handful of non-sequitor encounters. One involved a large sculpture of a hand that flattend someone in the party. Another took place in the room that was depicted on the cover of the Player’s Handbook. Hey, we were in 5th grade and we had fun. I enjoyed the experience so much that I asked my friend to write down the adventure and give me a copy of it along with the characters we used. I still have those papers someplace. As I recall, a few of the character sheets are missing. But I still have the adventure text. When I find them I’ll post it here.

After our game, I remember being told about a really weird dungeon involving computers and laser guns. It was Expedition to Barrier Peaks and I vowed I would eventually get a copy of that module.

When I went home later that afternoon, I remember telling my dad all about the adventures I had that day. He was working outside on a car or maybe a piece of wooden furniture. He listened to my little kid ramblings with only mild interest. And that was fine.

The following year, shortly before a long family road trip during summer vacation, my mother took me down to the local hobby shop one memorable day and bought me the three first edition AD&D rule books. For a little kid, I had a lot to read for the rest of the year.

D&D is not a board game

2008-08-26T10:27:00.002-04:00

My first experience with any sort of tabletop game was probably checkers. It’s an easy game for first-graders to learn. Perhaps in second or third grade, I was introduced to chess. Down through the years I played Monopoly, Clue, Stratego, and Battleship. But from there, I did not graduate directly to D&D like many of the fellow gamers my age.

I have two siblings in my family. My two older brothers are almost ten years older than me. They were into the strategic war games that became popular during the late 1960s and through the ‘70s. My older brothers and my father used to play a popular strategy war game called R ise and Decline of the Third Reich. I was a little kid and the rules were too complicated for me to completely understand. But they did let me play and helped me along with managing the game mechanics. They usually let me play Russia.

One of the minor problems with playing these strategy war games is the size of the map. Like most strategy war games of the time, it uses a cardboard fold-out hex map. This one is of the European theater during the second world war. It uses small cardboard chits to represent military units. And each hex is just large enough to place one of these square unit chits. The problem is with stacking. When big battles start lining up along fronts, the units begin stacking up into piles. It makes it difficult to know exactly which units are in what pile.

The men in my family were so enthusiastic about the game that they decided to design and draw up a larger version of the map that allowed four stacks of chits in each hex. This new map wasn’t drawn up on pieces of paper taped together. No, sir! After calculating the proper size, they purchased a large sheet of drywall for the game board. With a yardstick, they carefully drew the hex grid in ink, colored it in with watercolor paint, and labeled the cities with permanent markers. They even framed it with a varnished wooden frame they made themselves. The thing was massive. We placed it on an old ping-pong table in the basement. The games would sometimes last an entire week.

Our family still has this massive game board that we made in the 1980s. Unfortunately, we haven’t brought it out for game play in over 20 years. Recently we have been talking about playing it again on the computer over the internet. My brothers sometimes ask me if I could design an online version of the game. I’ve been toying with the idea ever since but that is a subject for another article.

As a Christmas present in 1981, I received from my parents the Dungeons & Dragons boxed "Basic Set". I described in my previous article how I was introduced to D&D by my friends and even went so far as to draw up my own dungeon without the help of any rules. I was so happy to get this game that I dove right into it. Flipping through the rule book, I discovered the cross section of the “Stone Mountain” dungeon complex on page 39 and the example dungeon on page 42. Squares! Graph paper! Skull-shaped mountains! Cool!

One of my older brothers, the one who was the most enthused about playing strategy war games, had heard about D&D but had never played it before. Shortly after I got the game, he picked up the blue rule book, sat down in a recliner chair and he declared, “I’m going to read this and learn this game.”

But he didn’t.

I think my brother realized that D&D was not a board game. Also, the rules of the game are completely open-ended by design. The game asks for improvisational role-playing and I don’t think he was all that interested in playing something like that.

So it was only I, the youngest of a family of strategy war gamers, that became a life-long D&D gamer. However, my mother was a theater director and she thought D&D was pretty neat. But that’s the subject of another article.

My First Dungeon

2008-08-25T09:18:00.000-04:00

I started gaming when I was about 10 years old in 1981. My brainy friends introduced me to a game that some of the older brainy kids were playing, Dungeons & Dragons. It took me a while to understand that it was different from other games.

At first, I treated it exactly like a board game. But it was one where you were expected to draw your own game board and fill it with monsters and treasure. Before I had ever actually played a real game session of D&D, I was drawing up my own dungeon. That piece of paper is long lost to the trash heap of time. I don’t think it had a theme. But I remember how simple it was. I didn’t draw it on graph paper because I didn’t yet understand that the game was usually played with miniatures and a 1-inch square graph. I didn’t even have a rule book and was just going on what my friends were telling me about the game. But it had goblins and minotaur creatures and a dragon. In each room, the monsters guarded a treasure chest filled with gold. And the dragon, of course, was sitting on a mountain of treasure. At least I had read The Hobbit and knew that much about dragons.

I remember taking this map home and showing it off to my parents. I received the usual, "That's nice, honey" and the usual reminder to do my homework. I tried playing the game with my mom or my dad and they didn't quite understand the point. To them, it probably just seemed like a maze game. But they saw that I was being creative and did not discourage me in any way.

As it turned out, my first dungeon map resembled some of the deep cavern levels of some popular D&D modules. I didn’t know squat about monster statistics or any of the game rules at all. What fascinated me was how the game resembled what I later learned to be a flow chart. The Dungeon Master explained to the players that they were in one cave and that they can choose to go out one of the exits. After the players made their choice of where to go, the DM described what happens when they go to the next cave. That freedom of choice based upon a pre-defined framework totally fascinated me.

It wasn’t as if I had only played Monopoly of Clue all of my life. I was familiar with strategic war games like Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. But I didn’t completely understand the improvisational qualities of D&D game play. I would soon learn.

In my next article, I’ll talk about the first D&D game rule book I ever owned and my first real game session.

Where to begin?

2008-08-24T22:23:00.001-04:00

Where to begin, indeed.

For the last year, I have developed a renewed interest in Dungeons & Dragons. This blog is an outlet for my ramblings about the subject of D&D and role-playing games in general. Of particular interest to me is a renewed interest in a sort of back-to-basics attitude that seems to be developing in the RPG community.

Perhaps this blog will be used to report the exploits of ongoing campaigns. Maybe I'll post an idea for monster stats or a new magic item. Or maybe I'll just rant about these crazy kids with their THAC0s and their cleave feats and their iPhones and their hula hoops...

In any case, I wanted my first blog post to be short and sweet. My original version of this post turned into a very long article. Too much all at once, I think. Over the next few days I'll refine it into a series of articles about my lifetime experiences with RPGs, how I lost interest, and how I regained it.

What is Xeveninti, you ask? He's the insane wizard that built the castle and meat grinder dungeon through which I will doom my players to horrible and sometimes hilarious deaths. My personal version of Zagyg. More about him later.

Good morning!