Tag: dungeons-and-dragons

The Editioning: Week Three, OD&D

OD&D, The Woes of Sorrowfield, Session Two

Let me start by saying, if you’re one of my players, turn back now! Do not read! Danger! Danger!

The PCs gathered some hirelings. The town of East Barrens was not replete with adventuring types or even warriors, so I ruled that the only idiots available for hire were what OD&D refers to as “normal men.” This is a term from CHAINMAIL, I think, and means they are not fighters of any kind. Basically, they’re what later editions might call 0-level NPCs. Four of them showed up for duty. They did not all survive the session…

Hirelings are an interesting part of old D&D. You don’t really hear of a lot of 5e adventuring parties taking on a bunch of mercenaries as backup. But I remember playing AD&D particularly back in the olden days, the party would always want an extra NPC or two. They were often necessary to ensure survival. Playing OSR games like the Black Hack and Black Sword Hack, we have always employed hirelings for a variety of reasons in recent years too. Even in UVG, you probably won’t get very far without a crew of NPCs to keep your caravan running smoothly. UVG’s pretty old school in that respect. In the old games, they were pretty much just damage soaks, meat shields and extra carrying capacity. Even today, as a GM, I find I only role-play them when the players remember they exist as characters, which is not very often. In our Basic D&D game, the adventure we’re playing, Keep on the Borderlands, is designed for 6 to 9 players or something nuts like that, so we went all out of hirelings. Especially after my character got murdered by bandits in the first combat of the game. In oD&D and Basic, I think it’s easier to handle a larger number of characters, especially in combat. You don’t have to remember all those actions and complicated initiative order that you have in 5e and other more modern systems. Mostly, each character gets one actions/attack and they can move and that’s it. You roll initiative per side each round so you don’t have to keep the order in mind for a whole combat. This keeps it smooth. At least, that was our experience last week in both games.

The adventurers set off into the Barrenwood. They had to pass through it to find the source of the magical attacks the forest and the town had been coming under for weeks. It had not stopped raining and the road was a mucky morass. They trudged along the overgrown path into the dark, rotting woods and, before long encountered some trouble. A swarm of crystal infected arachnids had built a supernaturally strong web across the path in the dark, at just the height to trap unwary travellers. That’s what it did to our Fighting Man, Siward, who was leading the way. Abiss, the Halfling Thief set about cutting him free with her magical bronze sword while the others tried to scare off the spiders. Tadhg, the Cleric, made clever use of his lamp oil and torch, by blowing the oil out of his mouth at the flame to create a DIY breath weapon, incinerating a large part of the swarm and the webs as well, freeing Siward! They found some treasure on the ground below the webs, gold and some more magic items, a magic mace and a Staff of Striking.

I am running the Wilderness expedition as a hex-crawl. Here’s a picture of the hex map I drew in my “Pocket Dimension” from the Melsonian Arts Council. I bought a pack of ten of these a couple of years ago and I’m finally getting some use out of them.

A hex map in a hex-flower shape. It has letters from A to G along the top and numbers from 01 to 13 along the left hand side. There is a town in G-04 with a river flowing south and through it. a road goes from the town southeast and off the map. Another branches off into the forest that takes up the rest of the hex map. In the forest there is a lake B-05 and river winding south through the trees.
Barrenwood hexmap

Anyway, you can see the town in the north-east of the map and most of the rest of it is forest by design. I want the entire Wilderness portion of the adventure to take place in the Barrenwood. The area is not very large. I haven’t defined the exact size, but I’m thinking about an hour of travel per hex, with time added for encounters and rough terrain. Essentially, I ask the players to roll 2d6 on this encounter table each time they enter a new hex.

2Undead animals – crystalline growths – They won’t attack unless attacked. They make terrible noises while attempting to go on as if they were alive. Stats as Skeletons.
3Trapped merchant – stuck in a tree with strange crystalline chimeric creatures below. Stats as Zombies. Succesful attacks provoke a save vs Stone. Offers them 1000 GP to save him.
4Swarm of glowing crystalline spiders – trap! Treasure dropped amongst the webs – Staff of Striking, Mace +1, 560 GP, 300 SP, 500 CP. The spiders can do no damage but PCs will need to make saves vs Stone.
5Undead trees – crystalline branches. brittle and weak to fire – try to grab PCs. Treasure inside them – Total of 400 GP.
6Crystalline undead – one has a journal explaining how to find the entrance to the dungeon
7Pixies – frightened and angry – try to trick the pcs into swimming in the lake, diving for treasure
8Hermit’s shack – Breandan only drinks rain-water he collects himself in casks. Wagers the adventurers that they can’t kill the carnivorous crystal elk that he says has been stalking him. He will offer them an old silver amulet with a ruby in it (3000 GP.) Can also tell them the best way to reach the coast so they don’t have to roll on the encounter table anymore. Says he encountered another adventuring party returning from the tower ruins a while ago. Apparently they were frightened off by a horde of undead on the first subterranean level.
9Nothing but more sodden trees and undergrowth trying to trip them. Roll 1d6. On a 1, become lost. Roll 1d6 to determine the direction they go in.
10Crystalline briar patch. It takes up the whole hex. Will require ingenuity to traverse, or they can go around. If they brave the crystal thorns they will need to make one Save vs Stone per turn for six turns. They will find treasure, however. Roll on Type A table each turn.
11Roll on Wilderness Encounters tables in the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures page 18
12The rain stops and the sun comes out. Crystalline shards glisten upon every bough and underfoot. A lost Acolyte finds them. Grainne Bell, CL 1, AC5, HP3, THAC0 19, Turn Undead, Crystalline ear
Barrenwood Encounter Table.
I can’t figure out how to format this so it doesn’t look like crap on the blog. Sorry!

So far, this method has worked well and has been telling a story, which is what I wanted. I have struggled to stick exactly to the letter of the old OD&D books, mostly because so much is left to the referee in play. But there is also another point. The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures random encounter mechanic just didn’t work for me and the game I’m creating with the players at the table. There is a lot in the that book about castles in the wilderness, and a set number of hexes you can travel in a day and how far away you can be from a monster and still be surprised. There are no castles in the Barrenwood. It wouldn’t make sense in the context. Surprise will occur if no-one Hears Noise from the trees because it’s a forest and not open territory. And surely hexes can be any size one chooses? For all these reasons, I decided to go with my own hex-map + encounter table combo. It’s simple and effective.

The PCs escaped the spider webs with their loot and no casualties, although one of the NPCs got bit by a spider and failed her Save vs Stone so her index finger turned into crystal. She managed to keep it together enough to continue, though. They moved on into the next hex towards the river and they encountered a pair of mischievous pixies who flew around them laughing and invisible. The Magic user, Ilaina, used her own Ring of Invisibility and I ruled that she was able to to see the diminutive fairies in that state, because I thought it was a cool idea. She was able to identify what they were up against and get a good look at them (they had thought, perhaps, that these were talking crows that they’d heard tell of in the town.) This seemed to anger the pixies but they nonetheless agreed to show them the source of the magical bursts which had polluted the waters and damaged the town.

The mischievous pixies left the PCs on one side of the raging river that passed through the forest while they flew on and laughed at them from the opposite bank. Siward and one of the hirelings, Edmund, used their axes to chop down one of the more gargantuan stress on their side and I asked for an attack roll from Siward to hit the other side with it. I did this, mainly because there is not really a mechanic to test abilities and there are no skills at all, unless you mean thief skills. I briefly considered adopting the roll-under mechanic used in Basic D&D, but felt that I would rather use the mechanics as presented for this, as much as possible. I really am just picking and choosing which rules to employ here. So, with their makeshift bridge in place, the party clambered across to a an area relatively devoid of trees. Since they had entered a new hex, I asked for another encounter table roll. Sticking close to the riverside, Abbis was able to hear a rustling and cracking coming their way through the trees, giving the adventurers a heads-up to the emergence a moment later of a half-dozen undead trees! My idea for these monsters was basically, zombie treants, brittle and rotting and falling apart. I gave them the stats of a regular zombie from the Men & Monsters book, but made them extra susceptible to fire damage, not that that came up in the fight. It was a tough combat! Our thief was lucky that she had levelled up the previous session or she would have died when she got brained by a rotting tree limb and two of the NPCs, Edmund, who I had named for my dead Basic D&D PC, and Brianna of the crystal finger, went down. The party were victorious but it had been a costly battle. Luckily, the bole of one of the undead trees was filled with treasure!

That’s where we wrapped up the session. Everyone levelled up at the end of it, what with all the treasure I’d been throwing at them.

Conclusion

This week, more than the previous one, I have become aware exactly how difficult it is to stick to the idea of playing this game as it would have been in 1976. It’s really impossible. My gaming brain has been influenced for good or for ill by so many story-games, the OSR and even later editions of D&D that its essentially impossible not to feel their effects on what we’re doing.
But, then again, I’m sure there were as many ways of playing this game at the time, as there were groups playing it. You would have had you hard-core war-gamers that used it as fantasy set-dressing, your power gamers and min-maxers who wanted to do nothing but gain XP and influence, castles and followers and power and there were probably still others who played it as a fantasy romp with real role-playing elements and deep character backstories. So, I’m quitting my hand-wringing over it. As far as this Editioning challenge goes, it has to be secondary to the enjoyment of the players, including me. Otherwise, what’s the point?

The Editioning: Week One: OD&D

Highs and Lows

Oh boy, what a D&D week we had. The Editioning has well and truly begun! OK, technically, it began last week with OD&D character creation as I mentioned in the last post. As a note, you can find all the Editioning related posts here. Depending on when you read this post, there might be three others or, like, a dozen. I have no idea how long this experiment is going to go on for, tbh.

Anyway, We’ve had three sessions already! Isaac guided Tom and I through character creation and the first steps on our adventure in B/X D&D on Tuesday and Wednesday. And then I kicked off our OD&D adventure online with four members of Tables & Tales, which included the aforementioned Tom and Isaac.

Across the two games and the three sessions we have had victories and losses, death, and new life, fun and horror.

First up is my OD&D game, so let’s get into what it was like.

OD&D: The Woes of Sorrowfield

The first session of play for this game happened on Friday the 13th. In general, it was anything but unlucky for the PCs, who consist of Ilaina, the Elven Magic User, Abbis, the Halfling Thief, and the two humans, Tadhg, the Cleric of Brigantia and Siward, the lawful Fighting Man.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m not running a published adventure for OD&D. I had expected to run a classic adventure of the era for each edition, but the options were few and underwhelming. So, I decided to take the advice of the game and draw some maps. I started with a basic map of the dungeon and went from there. Although, I haven’t finished the dungeon yet. I realised I needed to be old school about the design: Town, Wilderness, Dungeon, in that order. You need a town for the PCs to resupply, hire hirelings, gather quests and hear rumours. The Wilderness is there to build them up before the dungeon and to add a little to the world, flavour, backstory, connections. And then the culmination should be the dungeon.

So, I went back and drew a map of the town, which the players had decided would be called East Barrens. You can see the map below.

The Town of East Barrens sits atop a defensible hill and is circular from above. Roads spread out in a star pattern from a grand oak in the centre. The Temple to Brigantia towers above the town in the north

We started the session with them arriving at the lower gate, in the south there, the only way through the town’s palisade. It was pissing rain and the guards were asking them for proof of a special invitation from the Bishop.

I told them, luckily, they had just such an invite from Bishop Cerys Williams of the town’s Temple to Brigantia. She had send messengers far and wide across the land of Sorrowfield to garner aid from adventuring types. And they had answered the call.

I instituted a flashback here. I asked the players how they thought their characters knew each other, making it a little easier on them by giving them the nearby city of Bailey as the venue for their meeting. Tadhg, a member of the same sect as Bishop Williams, suggested that the message was sent to him personally, since he had spent time in the town as a young priest, years before. But, knowing he would need more help, he went to the nearest tavern where adventurers gathered, and announced his intention to lend his aid to the town and that he was recruiting. Thus, did the other members of the party gather to him. Of course, they met in a tavern…

Flash forward again to East Barrens. In the town they made immediately for the Temple and the Bishop’s palace. Bishop Williams greeted them and asked them to investigate a series of terrifying bursts of magic that have come from the west, beyond the Barrenwood. Three of these bursts have been launched as though from some enormous catapult over the last three weeks. Two landed in the forest, but the third struck the town’s sturdy stone wall, reducing a section of it to melted, crystaline debris. At the promise of gold, the party agreed to help and then went to explore the town, including the damage to the wall.

Cleverly, Ilaina, the Magic User, decided to use her one spell, Detect Magic, on the wall and its rubble.

This is the text for the spell from the book, Men & Magic:

Detect Magic: A spell to determine if there has been some enchantment laid on a person, place or thing. It has a limited range and short duration. It is useful, for example, to discover if some item is magical, a door has been “held” or “wizard locked,” etc.

I found this, in D&D terms, almost refreshingly vague. This allowed me to describe what she discovered in broad but useful terms, i.e., it was powerful, transformative magic that she hadn’t seen before. And it was dangerous. I was gratified that the PCs were invested in investigation of the phenomena involved from the off! So much so, that, when the opportunity to cast Detect Magic arose again later that same session, and in the same day, I allowed her to do it, with the understanding that, if it were in a dungeon or wilderness setting, I wouldn’t allow it. It’s rough being a 1st level Magic User in these older D&Ds. What is obvious, also, is that far more of the available 1st level spells in OD&D are utility spells, rather than offensive of defensive, compared to later editions. This makes the Magic User much less useful in combat encounters in the early days. This, we discovered later in the session.

Ilaina warned the stone masons working to repair the wall that the debris could be dangerous to handle and they began to take precautions, with thanks.

As they made their rounds in the town, they discovered a couple of things. Another team of adventurers had set out a week ago to find the source of the magical blasts, but had not yet returned. This was of particular concern as that group was made up of locals, and the townsfolk were eager to get them home.

Before they could settle into the inn for the night the Bishop approached them again on the rain-soaked streets, with a request to investigate the cemetery by the temple. Reports had come to her of strange noises emanating from there and she was worried about grave-robbers. They readily agreed to check it out. When they got there, they opened the large gate and utilised an iron spike to wedge it open, leaving their vector of egress open, just in case. I admired the use of the iron spike by the players. It was old school as all get out. Then they entered to investigate. They heard the scraping and clacking of the skeletons before they saw them. But it was too late to do anything except roll initiative once they did…

Initiative in OD&D was nicked from Chainmail Miniature Wargaming rules. In fact, the whole combat system was, but thankfully Gary and Dave were kind enough to present an “alternative combat system” for those who didn’t have the patience for all that, in the Men & Magic book. I present it below:

The Alternative Combat System from Men & Magic: Armor Class Description 20-Sided Die Score to Hit by Level* Level 1–3 4–6 7–9 10–12 13–15 16&+ 2 Plate Armor & Shield 17 15 12 10 8 5 3 Plate Armor 16 14 11 9 7 4 4 Chain Mail & Shield 15 13 10 8 6 3 5 Chain Mail 14 12 9 7 5 2 6 Leather & Shield 13 11 8 6 4 1 7 Leather Armor 12 10 7 5 3 1 8 Shield Only 11 9 6 4 2 1 9 No Armor or Shield 10 8 5 3 1 1 *Fighting-Men: Magic-Users advance in steps based on five levels/group (1–5, 6–10, etc.), and Clerics in steps based on four levels/group (1–4, 5–8, etc.). Normal men equal 1st-level fighters. All attacks which score hits do 1–6 points damage unless otherwise noted. Ronan McNamee (Order #51119631) 20 ATTACK MATRIX II.: MONSTERS ATTACKING TARGET: Armor Class Description 20-Sided Die Score to Hit by Monster’s Dice # Dice Up to 1 1 + 1 2–3 3–4 4–6 6–8 9–10 11&+ 2 All as in Table 17 16 15 13 12 11 9 7 3 1. above... 16 15 14 12 11 10 8 6 4 15 14 13 11 10 9 7 5 5 14 13 12 10 9 8 6 4 6 13 12 11 9 8 7 5 3 7 12 11 10 8 7 6 4 2 8 11 10 9 7 6 5 3 1 9 10 9 8 6 5 4 2 0 All base scores to hit will be modified by magic armor and weaponry. Missile hits will be scored by using the above tables at long range and decreasing Armor Class by 1 at medium and 2 at short range.
The Alternative Combat System from Men & Magic

That’s it. If you have any questions about it, ask your referee (they weren’t using the term Dungeon Master at this stage of the hobby.) If they don’t know, shrug. Make something up.

So, back to initiative. Each side rolls a D6 and compares results. If the rolls are equal, everything happens at once. Otherwise, the side with the higher roll gets to go first. If that’s the players, they can make some decisions about who acts before whom and what actions they’re going to take.

Technically, this is how a combat round should progress:

Chainmail Turn Sequence 1: TURN SEQUENCE THE MOVE/COUNTER MOVE SYSTEM 1. Both opponent's roll a die; the side with the higher score has the choice of electing to move first (Move) or last (Counter-move). 2. The side that has first move moves its figures and makes any split-moves and missile fire, taking any pass-through fire possible at the same time. 3. The side that has last move now moves its figures and makes any split-moves and missile fire, taking any pass-through fire possible at the same time. 4. Artillery fire is taken. 5. Missile fire is taken. 6. Melees are resolved. 7. Steps 1 through 6 are repeated throughout the remainder of the game. Note:Missile fire from split-moving troops is considered to take effect immediately during the movement portion of the turn, and the same is true of passthrough fire. All other fire, both artillery and missile, is considered to simultaneously take effect just prior to melee resolution.
The Move/Counter Move System from Chainmail

Or, alternatively, like this:

Chainmail Turn Sequence 2: THE SIMULTANEOUS MOVEMENT SYSTEM 1 . Both sides write orders for each of their units (groups of figures of like type), including direction of movement and facing. 2. Both sides move their units according to their written orders, making onehalf of the move, checking for unordered melee contact due to opponent movement, and conducting split-moves and missile fire and taking any pass-through fire; then the balance of movement is completed as ordered. 3. Artillery fire is taken. 4. Missile fire is taken. 5. Melees are resolved. Note: Exact orders for each unit (group of figures of like type) must be given. Cavalry may be given the order to "Charge if Charged" (CIC), either in their own behalf or in support of any nearby friendly unit. Such CIC movement begins at the one-half move and is only half of a normal charge, i.e., a unit of medium horse CIC to support a unit of archers would move up to 12" during the second half of the turn.
The Simultaneous Movement System from Chainmail

As you might have guessed, dear reader, these are screenshots from the Chainmail rules I mentioned earlier. That’s what OD&D rules were based on, after all.

In practice, there was really no need for all that. The combat was short. These were half hit-die skeletons (I’m using the optional rules for monster hit dice from the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D, which allows you to use d8s for hit dice. Previously, they were d6s with various bonuses.) Besides, there was a cleric who could turn them on the roll of a 7 on 2d6, which he did. Here’s the rules for turning undead:

The Turn Undead Table from Men & Magic: Clerics versus Undead Monsters: Monster Type Acolyte Adept Village Priest Vicar Curate Bishop Lama Patriarch Skeleton 7 T T D D D D D Zombie 9 7 T T D D D D Ghoul 11 9 7 T T D D D Wight N 11 9 7 T T D D Wraith N N 11 9 7 T T D Mummy N N N 11 9 7 T T Spectre N N N N 11 9 7 T Vampire N N N N N 11 9 7 Numbers are the score to match or exceed in order to turn away, rolled with two six-sided dice. T = Monster turned away, up to two dice in number. D = Dispelled/dissolved, up to two dice in number. N = No Effect.
The Turn Undead Table for Clerics. this is all the rules for that ability.

Yep, it’s just a table again. You’ll notice there is nothing about distance or duration of the turning so we kept that vague. Basically they were turned for as long as it took the PCs to do another action each and make for the gates.

Before that, though, the thief succeeded in a Hide in Shadows roll to go for a backstab. In OD&D, low level thieves’ chances to do anything with their skills are practically non-existent, so the success felt immense, as did the 8(!) damage from the backstab, utterly destroying one skelly! In OD&D, backstabbing gives the thief a +1 to hit and doubles the damage. Huge for a first level character. I would imagine it is much less satisfying at higher levels, as I don’t believe there is any way to increase those bonuses as they level up.

From Greyhawk. The tables for thief abilites and how they improve across levels. Also included is that table showing how demihumans benefit: Thief Open Locks*/ Remove Traps* Pickpocket* or Move Silently*/ Hide in Shadows* Hear Noise Apprentice 15%/10% 20%/10% 1–2 Footpad 20%/15% 25%/15% 1–2 Robber** 25%/20% 30%/20% 1–3 Burglar 35%/30% 35%/25% 1–3 Cutpurse 40%/35% 45%/35% 1–3 Sharper 45%/40% 55%/45% 1–3 Pilferer 55%/50% 60%/50% 1–4 Master Pilferer 65%/60% 65%/55% 1–4 Thief*** 75%/70% 75%/65% 1–4 Master Thief 85%/80% 85%/75% 1–4 Master Thief, 11th Level 95%/90% 95%/85% 1–5 Master Thief, 12th Level 100%/95% 100%/90% 1–5 Master Thief, 13th Level 100%/100% 100%/95% 1–6 Master Thief, 14th Level 100%/100% 100%/100% 1–6 Bonuses to Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings as Thieves: Type Open Locks Remove Traps Pick- Pocket Move Silently Hide in Shadows Hear Noise Dwarf 5% 15% - 5% 5% - Elf - - 5% 10% 15% - Halfling 10% 5% 5% 10% 10% + 1
The thief abilities.

Our Magic User helped by providing light, in the form of a lantern they borrowed from the front gates. I gave the PCs a +1 to hit for this.

Meanwhile the Fighting Man guarded the Magic User. But once the skeletons had been turned, the fight was effectively over. This is when I gave them the opportunity to use Detect Magic again. This time it was on the fountain, which was overflowing into the disturbed graves. The water was filled with the same magical crystal shards as they had seen at the damaged wall, leading them to believe the magic was what raised these skeletons. So they asked me if they could destroy the fountain, make it stop working. The thief failed a Detect Traps roll, which I allowed as a way to understand the workings of the fountain. The Fighting Man, however, was able to destroy it. Now, if this was a later edition, that would have been a Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll for the fighter, but since no such ability existed in OD&D, I was forced to go with the next best thing… Open Doors. As this is a feat of strength described under the Strength stat in the Greyhawk supplement, it seemed like the best thing to use, honestly. It’s a D6 roll, and Siward needed a 1 or a 2 to succeed. He rolled a 2! He used a rope to bring down he fountain and bent the pipe inside until it stopped flowing.

The Strength table from Greyhawk: Strength Hit Probability Damage Weight Allowed* Open Doors 3–4 –2 –1 –100 1 5–6 –1 NORMAL –50 1 7–9 NORMAL NORMAL NORMAL 1–2 10–12 NORMAL NORMAL +50 1–2 13–15 +1 NORMAL +100 1–2 16 +1 +1 +150 1–3 17 +2 +2 +300 1–4 18** +2 +3 +500 1–5 *this is an addition or subtraction to/from the normal carried without encumbrance **fighters with a strength score of 18 are entitled to make an additional roll with percentile dice in order to determine if their exceptional strength is highly extraordinary, consulting the table below: Dice Score Hit Probability Damage Weight Allowed Open Door*** 01–50 +2 +3 +500 1–5 51–75 +3 +3 +600 1–5 76–90 +3 +4 +700 1–6 (1) 91–99 +3 +5 +900 1–6 (1–2) 00 +4 +6 +1,200 1–6 (1–3) ***the numbers in parentheses represent the chance of a fighter with that particular score of opening wizard locked or magically held portals.
The Strength Table from Greyhawk. You’ll notice this table includes the percentile addition for fighters with 18 strength. They abandoned this for B/X D&D and then brought it back for AD&D.

Then they looted the opened graves and went back to the cemetery gate. They used some more iron spikes to keep it shut and called on the Bishop to go and destroy the undead with her far more powerful turn undead abilities. She rewarded them and then they went for a few well deserved pints in the inn where they informed a grateful populace that the water from the fountain and probably the wells in the town, which all came from the same underground river, was probably polluted. They immediately started gathering the plentiful rainwater and filled our heroes with drinks and rumours.

Now, I provided the PCs with plentiful loot from those opened graves. Thousands of silver and gold pieces, gems and magical items. It might seem like a lot, considering it was their first encounter, but gold = XP in this game. At one XP per gold piece, two of their number were able to level up at the end of the session. The thief and the cleric have to attain much lower numbers of XP to level up than the fighting man and the magic user. Since I knew I wanted this game to only last about six sessions and it would be a single adventure, I wanted to make sure they got the chance to level up. So I suspended the usual rule that they can’t gain levels until the end of an adventure, instead allowing it at the end of sessions. I may even allow it whenever they rest to account for the disparity in levelling rates.

Conclusion

I’ll have to come back for another post on the B/X D&D game, dear reader. I didn’t expect this one to go so long! But, please come back for it. We’re playing the absolute classic, The Keep on the Borderlands!

The cover of B2, The Keep on the Borderlands. A purple cover with the name of the module and a colour illustraiton in the middle: a piched battle on the road between adventurers and monsters.
By Scanned by DM2ortiz, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=505624

As for the first session of OD&D; we had a brilliant time. As a note, we were playing online using Zoom and Roll20. Unsurprisingly, Roll20 does not have an OD&D character sheet option, so the player’s just used their own hard copies. We really just used the VTT for the maps. And, although I had a map of the cemetery drawn, we didn’t even place tokens on it. It ended up all theatre of the mind, which was just fine by me. There is no doubt that the game presents some challenges and relies on the referee to make a lot of rulings or to use the rules in unexpected ways, but that was actually part of its charm, I found.

Looking forward to the next session in two weeks.

The Editioning: How to OD&D

The Editioning Begins

The first session for our Tables & Tales OD&D game is set for next Friday. I think it’s just going to be a session 0 to introduce the game to the players and have them create characters. Part of the reason for this is the way I’m approaching it. It’s going to take a little longer to complete my preparations than I thought it might. Today, I’m taking you on the start of that prep journey with me. Click this link to check out all the posts on the Editioning, our challenge to play all the major editions of D&D in the next twelve months or so.

Step 1: the Map

I have made an important decision, dear reader. I’m not going to run a published adventure for OD&D in the Editioning. For one thing, there are precious few of them. For another, they are not very attractive. I considered running the adventure contained in the Blackmoor supplement, the Temple of the Frog. But then I listened to this review of it on the Between two Cairns podcast and I decided against it (yes, I know they were reviewing the 1986 version made for the D&D Expert Set, but I’m assuming a sufficient similarity that will allow me to make assumptions about the older version.)

Instead, I thought to myself, I thought, “you should just do what the OD&D core books assume you’re going to do, create your own dungeon, your own wilderness, your own NPCs and monsters and treasures. That’s the real OD&D experience, you idiot!” I then apologised to myself for calling me an idiot and got out some graph paper and a pencil, because Gary and Dave told me to start with a map.

Dungeons & Dragons, Book III, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures by Gary Gaygax and Dave Arneson starts with a section entitled, “The Underworld.” Here’s the first page of that:

Sample side elevation of a dungeon from the Underworld section of OD&D volume III
Sample side elevation of a dungeon from the Underworld section of OD&D volume III

OK, I don’t have a lot of time, and am only willing to expend a moderate amount of effort but I have a decent imagination. So, hopefully that’ll see me through. One advantage I have here is that I know I only want this game to last about six sessions, so I doubt I need to make anything very large.

Since I’m starting with this map, I’m hoping it will inspire me to come up with a theme for the adventure/dungeon. Let’s see.

If you are one of my players, TURN BACK NOW! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Levelling

My dungeon - six levels including the ruined tower on the surface and the sea cave at the bottom with the flyig saucer crashed in it.
My dungeon – six levels including the ruined tower on the surface and the sea cave at the bottom with the flyig saucer crashed in it.

I’ve started by planning out six and a half levels of dungeon. My pen did provide some inspiration immediately by drawing the whole side elevation with a cliffside on the left. I hadn’t meant to do this, but a slight mistake led to it and then, it just felt right. I placed the ruined lower floor of a tower on the surface, near the cliff’s edge and drew a shaft dropping from the floor down to a subterranean level. That level also has an entrance on a ledge poking out from the cliffside.

At the book’s urging, I decided to mix up the methods by which an adventurer might move between each of the levels. The bare shaft between levels one and two gives way to a simple stairway between two and three. From three to four and from three to five there are lifts and you can only safely traverse the gap between levels four and five if you can fly. From level five, you can get to level six by the use of a rocky slide or a teleportation pad. You might also get to level six by descending from the ledge at level 2 above, although you would need a lot of rope and a swimming proficiency badge. I like this! It seems fun and means the players won’t always know what to be on the look out for when they decide it’s time to descend.

For the craic, level six is a submarine cavern, inside which is a crashed flying saucer. Well, looks like a theme is definitely coming together, although, it hasn’t fully crystallised yet.

Level One

The ruins of the tower currently play host to a group of Dwarven mercenaries in need of shelter. There are four rooms, including the Dwarves’ camp. One room contains nothing of interest but a handle to the trapdoor that leads down to Level Two. Another has a riddling raven who keeps its hoard of shinies here. If they answer a riddle, they’ll get a prize but if they attack the bird, they’re getting cursed. The last room has the trapdoor to the next level and a Gray Ooze resting on top of it.

I’m having immense fun with this so far. I’m doing it all by hand; drawing the maps in a notebook and writing out descriptions on the opposite pages. I normally do session prep on my computer and I haven’t built a dungeon from scratch in maybe eight or nine years. It’s a real breath of fresh air!

Level Two

My thinking behind this level is that it is there to dissuade potential dungeon delvers. It will present wave after wave of undead, who will regularly appear, as if from nowhere, in the room adjacent to the one the adventurers emerge into from the level above, trying to force them back. The undead are not real. Rather, they are like characters generated by the holodeck in Star Trek. If the PCs explore other ares of the level, they will probably find the hidden control room which will allow them to turn off the hardlight illusion generator. Then they’ll be able to get through to the stairway leading to the next level down.

I am quite excited about this idea, especially as there is an alternative to fighting the undead or figuring out the illusion generator. They can escape to the ledge on the cliffside from this level, although the only option is to descend into the sea from there…

Levelled Out

A crude line drawing of a dragon with a bird flying at its face
Dragon

That’s as far as I have gotten so far. I need to knuckle down and expand on what I’ve done so far. So I’m going to leave this post here for now. I’ll keep you posted on my progress in a few days.

The Editioning: From OD&D to 5E 2024

Bloggies Inspiration

I have read a lot of TTRPG blogs in the last few weeks, dear reader. I imagine the chances are good that you have too, if you’ve been following the Bloggies awards over on Explorer’s Design. There have been so many wonderful reads, I really did find it hard to choose between many of them. What a I liked most of all were the posts that expressed their enthusiasm for the hobby in one way or another. You can feel it shine from a d66 table of carefully curated results as much as you can from the effusive prose of some bloggers. And there were blogs about every aspect of this weird pastime from story-telling to initiative methods and everything in between. So often, what I found is that writers went back to the source material for inspiration, those historical tomes that defined the RPG scene and continue to play an outsized part in it, whether we like it or not. Most of these we were OSR bloggers with a keen interest in the original D&D from 1974. But you would occasionally see other editions get a shout out. On top of this, I get a newsletter from the Shop on the Borderlands that tempts me weekly with a lot of old dragon game shit I don’t need… Unless, what if I did need it?

The Editioning

Now, I have some to lots of experience with most of the editions of the game, and I already have a bookshelf full of D&D, mostly AD&D 2nd Ed and 5E, but also several 4E books, a smattering of 3rd Ed and a couple of 1st Edition tomes. So, I figured, if I undertook a challenge to play a full adventure in every edition of D&D during the next twelve months, I wouldn’t need to supplement my collection too much to make it possible.

So, that’s where we are now. The Editioning is coming to pass. The plan is to play every edition of the D&D game, in order (although there may be some overlap) in our gaming community, Tables and Tales, between now and February next year. Isaac has agreed to take up DM duties for several editions. I will run OD&D, AD&D 2nd Ed, 3rd Edition and 3.5 and Isaac has said he would like to run B/X D&D, Ad&D 1st Edition and 4E. Someone else in the community might run 5E 2014 and 2024, but if not, I’ll probably do those too.

Pre-loved

The covers of the AD&D 1st Edition Dungoen Master's Guide and the D&D 3.5 E DMG.
Just arrived!

I’m trying to source second-hand copies of the main rule books of each edition where possible. It seems more like a real history project when you have relics, primary sources, legendary tomes. It’s part of the adventure. I like to think about others using the books to play their own campaigns twenty, thirty, forty years ago. It puts me in touch with my own teenaged self and allows me to tap into the enthusiasm I had for the game back in the day. Also, its just cool to have them.

The covers of the DMGs from AD&D 1st Ed, 2nd Ed, 3.5E, 4E and 5E 2014 and 2024
The covers of the DMGs from AD&D 1st Ed, 2nd Ed, 3.5E, 4E and 5E 2014 and 2024
The covers of the Player's Handbooks for Ad&D 1st Ed, 2nd Ed, 4E, and 5E 2014 and 2024. I am missing a representative from either 3 or 3.5.
The covers of the Player’s Handbooks for Ad&D 1st Ed, 2nd Ed, 4E, and 5E 2014 and 2024. I am missing a representative from either 3 or 3.5.

I’ve been surprised to find that you can get most of them for prices that I don’t consider extortionate, either on Shop on the Borderland or Ebay. I started shopping for them last week and a couple of DMGs showed up on Friday, AD&D 1st Edition and D&D 3.5E. They’re in good condition considering how much I paid for them. But before we get to those editions, we need to take a look at OD&D and D&D Basic/Expert.

The Educationing

The cover of the original D&D book, Men & Magic. It is an off-white/brown colour. It has an illustration in black and white of a warrior on a rampant horse. Its from the Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons book.
From the Making of the Original Dungeon’s & Dragons Book.
OD&D Volume 2, Monsters & Treasure. There is a guy astride a horse with a sword and a crown on the cover.
From the Making of the Original Dungeon’s & Dragons Book.
OD&D Volume 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Its a got a line drawing of a hydra on the cover.
From the Making of the Original Dungeon’s & Dragons Book.

This undertaking has taken me to school. I had to figure out which editions were really distinct enough to deserve to be a part of it. I started by looking up the full list of editions here. I found this useful table:

A table nicked from the Wikipedia entry for Editions of Dungeons and Dragons. it shows all the versions from OD&D to 5E 2024.
From Wikipedia

You can see that it clearly shows the parallel evolution of Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I remember, as a young DM being quite dismissive of the non-Advanced version of the game. I had cut my teeth on the Basic Set but felt as though I had graduated past it to AD&D after a year or two. Never-the-less, I did play it in the nineties. A friend DMed it for us using the Rules Cyclopedia and the Hollow World campaign setting. Looking back at it now, I wish I had had more of an interest in it. Above any other version of the game, except, perhaps OD&D, it seems to have had the greatest influence on the modern OSR. Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose.

I have seen the terms B/X and BECMI and Blueholme and The Red Box and whatnot, for a long time. But this was the first time I bothered my arse to figure out the differences between them. This despite having actually played the using the Basic Set myself. I did not know that the confusing “abbreviation,” B/X referred to the first two boxed sets of the D&D rules, Basic and Expert, which allowed play from level 1 to level 14. I also had not known that the initialism, BECMI, referred to the full set of five rule-books, Basic, Expert (why is Expert shortened to ‘X’ in B/X but ‘E’ in BECMI? Make it make sense!) Companion, Master and Immortal. BECMI supported advancement all the way from 1st level to 36th!

Anyway, I made the executive decision to collapse all these versions into one, and just refer to it as B/X, since the main difference seems to be the extension of level caps with each successive book and we will not be playing long enough for that to be an issue. Nonetheless I have ordered both the Basic Set rule book and the Rules Cyclopedia, just to make sure we have all our bases covered.

Whither Adventure?

The cover of the Making of the Original Dungeons and Dragons. It has a red cover with a big gold ampersand on it.
The cover of the Making of the Original Dungeons and Dragons.

There are still a few decisions to make. And there is a lot of work to do to prepare.

I have a relatively easy task to begin with, and that’s the reading of the OD&D books. I picked up the PDFs of these from Drivethru for a song. I do have them in a a slightly unwieldy printed form in “The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons” book that a friend kindly gifted me at Christmas, so I am happy not to need to empty my bank account to purchase a vintage copy of those books. I’ve quickly realised that I would also need the Greyhawk supplement since, otherwise, I would need to use the Chainmail medieval miniature war-game to run combat, and that was a bridge too far for me. The Greyhawk supplement included the first iteration of the D&D combat system that we might recognise today.

On top of that, we have to decide on what adventure modules to run for each edition. I would like to use vintage adventures that were made for the particular edition that we’ll be playing. For B/X, AD&D etc. there are tonnes of options, which means we’ll have to narrow them down somehow. But for OD&D, we have a very different problem. Adventure design appears to have been mainly the domain of the DM. The main books give you rules and tables, monsters, treasures etc, but mainly they encourage the DM to create their own stuff. Which is great! But it leaves me with the question, is that what I should do? Since that’s the intention? Or, should I use the one adventure I could find in any of the OD&D supplements, Blackmoor? The adventure is “The Temple of the Frog,” and I haven’t finished reading it yet. But it does strike me as the sort of scenario that could be quite lethal unless the PCs turn up with an army of hirelings. If that’s what’s intended, maybe that’s just what we should go for.

Conclusion

I don’t yet know which way I’ll go with that decision, dear reader. I would welcome feedback from anyone with more experience of OD&D or the Temple of the Frog than me.

In general, this challenge has got me quite excited about playing D&D for the first time in quite a while. I wrote a few posts about maybe getting back into playing AD&D back in 2024, specifically I wanted to play Dark Sun. The experience of even making a character put me off it. But I now think that, with other players involved, it could be not only of historical interest, but it could be really fun! I know some of our players in Tables & Tales really like a bit of crunch, while others love the OSR principles of rulings above rules that OD&D might bring.

One thing you can be assured of, dear reader, is that I’ll be taking you with me along the way. I hope to have some interesting things to write about reading, prepping and playing these games, so stick around!

The Lost City Review

Disclaimer: I have only read this adventure. It’s unusual enough for me to review something that I haven’t actually played but I thought it was worth doing anyway.

Quests from the Infinite Staircase

I don’t know at what point WOTC decided that every D&D book they released had to be titled Noun from the Adjective Noun or some derivative thereof but they got deep into it there for quite a while. Anyway, today I’m looking at the first adventure presented in their anthology for D&D 5e, Quests from the Infinite Staircase. This book uses an unlikely framing device known as the Infinite Staircase, along which you can find portals to all sorts of adventuresome and slightly retro locales. It’s a sort of extraplanar locus inhabited by a genie who will send you and your pals to any of these spots for whatever reason. It’s a bit like the Radiant Citadel, which they made up as an extraplanar locus to allow you to easily travel to a bunch of disparate regions on, presumably, different worlds for that other anthology, Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. Come to think of it, it’s a bit like that other famous extraplanar locus, the City of Doors, Sigil, which has been in existence in the D&D universe for decades. So why do they keep inventing new loci? Do you even really need this conceit to join this collection of otherwise standalone adventures together?

The alternate cover of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. it depicts the crystaline citadel floating in a pastel cloudscape
The alternate cover of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel
The cover of the boxed set of Planescape for AD&D 2e. It depicts a great gate leading into the towering streets of Sigil.
The cover of the boxed set of Planescape for AD&D 2e.
Swirling clouds surround the inifinite staircase as a some adventurers climb it.
The inifinite staircase

The Lost City

The opening illustration and first page of the Lost City. The illustration depicts a number of people wearing different masks and a ghost.
The opening illustration and first page of the Lost City.

Disclaimer: I have only read this adventure. It’s unusual enough for me to review something that I haven’t actually played but I thought it was worth doing anyway.

I’ll keep this relatively spoiler free but there may be a few points you’d rather not know in advance if you’re interested in being a player in the Lost City.

This adventure, along with all the adventures collected in this book, is an updated version of a classic one from D&D’s history. The original Lost City was published in 1982 and was written by Tom Moldvay as an introductory adventure for the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. I confess, I have not read the original so I won’t be comparing the two here.

This is the first adventure in the collection. It’s meant for 1st level characters. It’s a dungeon crawl in the very classic sense with up to six levels to it and a factional element that is close to the heart of the module.

Background

The lost desert city of Cynidicea was once a prosperous and powerful place. but they delved too greedily and too deep when building a ziggurat to honour their deceased monarchs. Oops. This was the downfall of the city of course. As an answer to this, the people split into four disparate sects. None of them got along but one was definitely worse than the others. The worst of these sects led the people underground to rebuild in the darkness beneath the ziggurat as the desert reclaimed their city above.

Getting There

At the start; how to get your PCs here from the Infinite Staircase, where to locate it on three D&D worlds and a couple of adventure hooks to get them to go. The hooks are fine. Get hired by an anthropological expedition or get separated from your desert caravan. If you wanted to incorporate this into an ongoing campaign, I feel like you could do better yourself.

Advancement

There is a handy section that spells out for you at which points you should let the PCs level up if you’re using milestone levelling. By the end of the adventure, your characters should hit level 4.

About the Original

About the original - this tells us about the original adventure module from 1982
About the Original

There is a nice little sidebar here and in every adventure in the book, which tells you about the original. It gives you some info on the edition it was meant for, a few details on how it was supposed to be used and the credits. I like that here, they tell you that The Lost City was meant to be used to teach new DMs how to run and design a dungeon, allowing them to come up with the lower levels of the dungeon themselves.

People and Factions

Animal masks
Animal masks
Gorm mask
Gorm mask
Usamigaras mask
Usamigaras mask
Madarua mask
Madarua mask

The Cynidiceans all wear masks, usually some sort of animal mask, and they generally don the shabby left-overs of their once glorious past. Also, sometimes, they act like the animal depicted on the mask. Fun!

As I noted above, the factions are often at the heart of the adventure. They are detailed here. Each of them worships a different god, with their own portfolio, of course. Thematically, they are each quite distinct and have a look all their own, exemplified by a particular type of mask that they wear and a tattoo that they sport.

The paragraph or so that each faction gets here leans heavily on the ways they will pursue their goals, which are, unsurprisingly, influenced by the type of god they follow. We are told they all want to preside over the rebuilding of their city in their own way. They all want the same thing but they will not co-operate. This leaves me wanting a bit more, maybe some aim that’s a bit more immediate would help.

Random Encounters

Roll a d6 for every hour spent in the Ziggurat. If you get a 1, it’s encounter time. There’s a d12 table with a preponderance of cultists and other Cynidiceans, which makes sense, and an owlbear, which doesn’t (did I mention it was in a desert?)

The Ziggurat

The PCs have to enter from the top and work their way down. They’ll be sealed in once they enter, like a common hobbit and his eight fellows in a mine. The goal of the entire adventure is basically to survive long enough to find another way out. This might change during the delve, of course, once you meet the factions. But probably not.

I want to point out a cool thing right at the entrance where they can use ladders to either climb down into tier 2 of the ziggurat or up into the hollow interior of a set of statues on the roof of it. They can use levers that allow them to move the statues’ limbs and there’s a speaking tube. I like the idea of this but there is no practical use for this feature. They are not likely to encounter anyone outside on the top of the Ziggurat to impress with this display and it’s not going to do them any good once they’re on the inside so it seems a bit pointless?

Anyway, as I stated above, there are up to six levels to the Ziggurat. To be fair, the first level is just a single room right at the top, and hardly counts. But, as you would expect from a ziggurat, each level gets bigger as you go down. Even level 1 (or tier 1 as it’s called) has a pretty gnarly trap right from the get go. At worst, though, it will result in all of the PCs being rendered unconscious. If this happens, they’ll be taken by the first of the factions, the Guardians of Gorm, who will question them and try to recruit them. There are moments like this for each of the factions, partly because the place is positively riddled with traps and partly because the adventure does not want them to miss out on meeting each of the factions. It also wants them to join one or maybe more than one of them. this will, of course, complicate things for them if and when they try to interact with any of the others.

A magic joining ritual for one of the factions. Five masked individuals gather around an altar, gesturing elaborately.
A magic joining ritual for one of the factions.

Once they meet the leader of a faction, the PCs will generally be judged in some way, and, if they are judged worthy, will be given the option to join the sect. If they do, they’ll get some advice and some kind of reward for it. But, if they refuse, there’s not much of a downside, to be honest. They won’t get to use the factions quarters to rest and they won’t get the aforementioned rewards but that’s it. And the other thing is, you would expect the faction leader to ask something of the new recruits. Maybe an attack on one of the rival factions or a quest to retrieve a sacred relic from the levels beneath, but no, nothing like that. You join and then you go about your business, pretty much. Seems like a missed opportunity.

All of the faction stuff happens on levels two and three of the dungeon. That’s where they will encounter all the sect leaders and probably learn a few things about the levels below that might help them out a bit.

Tier 4 has a bunch of undead encounters. This is where the royals were buried along with members of their court. There is a good variety of undead featured here and a nice through-line of a story involving the king, the queen and a handmaiden. There are zombies, skeletons, a ghost, a banshee and a wight, as well as a mummy (which seems an unusually unbalanced encounter for 5e.) With any luck, the PCs will be able to see the entirety of the story of the royals through. If they don’t, there isn’t much else in the dungeon to satisfy them and it will lead to a bit of an anticlimax.

Tier 5 has a fun encounter with a possessed robe, the main entrance/exit of the ziggurat and a grab-bag of traps and encounters of varying levels of fascination and challenge including a drunk owlbear. As I mentioned above, the main goal of the PCs was probably to find a way out of this crazy dungeon and this is where they will find it. There is a great big door behind which the sands have conveniently shifted to unblock it. There is literally nothing here to prevent them from doing opening it and escaping.

However, there is possibly a plainly visible trapdoor in one corner that leads down to the next level. This, I think is the level that, if you were a DM back in 1982, you would have had the opportunity to create yourself. As it is, WOTC have decided to relieve of that particular creative opportunity/burden and do it for you.

A mosaic depicting the construction of the ziggurat, the rise of the demon lord and the submission of its followers.
Story mosaic

Level 6, also referred to as the Expanded Ziggurat, is an unfinished tier that has been occupied by the demonic force that brought about the ruin of Cynidicea so long ago. I quite like this level, it’s thematically foul with lots of bile and slime and the like. As well as the demon itself, there are lots of its loyal servants, a black pudding and a gibbering mouther to encounter. There is warning at the start of the section that this tier is much more difficult than the others and is meant for higher level characters. The fact is, if the party of 4th level PCs makes it to the demon, they’re not going to survive. Its got a challenge rating of 17 and a set of legendary resistances and actions. I do have to ask why. I am thinking now of the excellent Sailors on the Starless Sea DCC adventure. The 20 or so level-0 peasants who enter that dungeon probably didn’t expect to come across some elder evil at the end of it, but there is was beneath that chaos keep, awakening from an ageless slumber. They killed it. It was statted out so that it could be killed by these peasants. And it gave them such a sense of achievement and heroism to do it! So why can’t the Lost City do that with the big bad at the bottom of the ziggurat?

By way of some sort of explanation, perhaps the idea is to make a much longer campaign of this situation with the factions and the demon lord and the Underground City which is presented very briefly at the end of the adventure. The demon would then be the ultimate BBEG of the piece and the PCs might have had many adventures rated to it and its cultists along the way to gaining the sorts of levels that might allow them to face it. The problems for me are that the factions were not compelling enough in the adventure to start with, the information on the city that you do get is too sparse to be of much use and there is every chance the PCs fucked off home when they found the exit back on tier 5 anyway.

Conclusion

I actually think that, with a bit of work on the factions, the NPCs and some editing for theme, I would enjoy running this dungeon-crawl. As it stands, the factions are underutilised, some of the encounters make no thematic sense and the NPCs are quite one-dimensional. It also feels like it needs more of an ending. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are some fun traps and challenging combat encounters, which is nice in a dungeon.

One of my main reservations is its size. It’s quite long, with over 60 keyed locations in the dungeon. I would worry about maintaining interest in a dungeon crawl of that length. I would imagine it would run for quite a few sessions.

Although it is obviously presented for 5e it could be very easily translated for use with any OSR ruleset, DCC or Dungeon World. I found myself thinking about how to convert it for Trophy as I read through it too.

Throwback Wednesday: Beginnings

Instead of a new post, please enjoy this one from last August. It deals with beginnings and how to manage them in RPGs. Its got some advice I must take into account as I embark on my recently decided upon campaign of Blades in the Dark.

A Short Rest

Once again, dear reader, I find myself a little under the weather. Maybe I just overindulged at the weekend, maybe I have been working too hard, maybe it’s the current wave of ‘rona. Whatever it is, I feel like I’ve been struck by a nasty disease and I failed my resistance check/saving throw etc. etc. So, I’m taking a break today.

Instead of a new post, please enjoy this one from last August. It deals with beginnings and how to manage them in RPGs. Its got some advice I must take into account as I embark on my recently decided upon campaign of Blades in the Dark.

Beginnings

See you with a new post soon!

First Anniversary Blogpost: Crying at the Table

Each one of these moments brought tears to my eyes and became a part of the scene itself.

HBD TDP

That’s Happy Birth Day The Dice Pool, in case you’re wondering. Today is the dice pool dot com’s first birthday and I have invited a few friends over to jump in. It’s a pool party and a pot luck. So today, I have something a little different. For the first time ever, I have invited a guest author to the blog. Next week, I’ll have another. I’m hoping this will become a more regular occurrence as the blog grows and changes.

I’ll introduce the guest blogger in a moment but I just wanted to first take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported this blog in the last year. A few of you have been here since day one and some of you are more recent readers; either way, I appreciate you. If you have only ever read a few words or if you somehow have the patience to peruse every post, you’re a scholar and a gentlebeing, in my book. I am still doing this for me, mainly. If that weren’t the case, I would have packed it in about eleven months ago. I find that, sometimes, when I’m writing for the blog, it focuses my thoughts about certain subjects like in my last post about the Quantum NPC. I refine my opinions while I type, like I did while writing my review of After the Mind the World Again. Doing this has been a challenge but in a good way. Still, it’s nice to feel the love sometimes too.

Now on to today’s special guest blogpost. Tom of the Media Goblin’s Hoard is a great friend and has been a stalwart of my gaming table for the last six years or so. They jumped at the chance to write a special anniversary blogpost for the dice pool dot com and they have chosen a wonderful subject for it, weaving an emotional narrative through retellings of some very memorable gaming moments. I also want to draw your attention to the artwork in this post, all of which was created by the talented and amazing members of our little RPG community, Tables and Tales.

Crying at the Table

by Tom Ball

Every week I will sit around the table with a group of friends, bring out the snacks and drinks, and live out some of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard. It’s in sharing and creating these stories that I feel a most genuine and strong connection with the others around the table, and it grows with each game played. Playing TTRPGs, I feel, has elevated my bond with my friends in a way I previously would not have known. It sounds cheesy but in the moments we play I feel myself step away from my own life and inhabit the life of my characters. Their ambitions, their bonds, their goal on the horizon and their friends and foes, all become real. For an evening we all step out of our lives into the stories of a shared adventure. Like all good things, it eventually comes to an end for the night and we step back into ourselves, the same as before except now with another shared experience together.

There’s a common phrase repeated by players in TTRPGs “never split the party” because we’re all stronger together. Our characters won’t make it to the end without each other no matter what background they come from, what they have done in their past, or even who they are as a person. In the end, they will rely on those closest to them in order to achieve the impossible. I feel this is a good analogy for life itself, I wouldn’t be where I am now without those closest to me and every week I get to see those I hold dear do the most incredible and creative feats.

Throughout the many stories told, there have been cheers of joy where what was thought to be an impossible feat becomes reality, and moments of tension so strong it’s impossible to cut through. Hidden between these are the instances of tender and emotional impacts that shake me to the core and have brought me to tears on multiple occasions. I am quite an emotional person as it is, and in the moments where the story shifts I look around and see everyone else, eyes glistening like a quiet lake on a star-filled night moments before the waters fall over the edge of the eyelid in a wave. We are all there riding that surf together. I’d like to mention below some of these highlights where I have been brought to tears and felt my bond with my friends grow ever stronger still.

A High Elf and his Humans

A High Elf Vermissian Knight, masked, sword by his side. Face unmasked in the top left corner.
Art by Isaac Wilcox @lostpathpublishing

Deep underneath the towering city of Spire is The Heart and an Aelfir, Crowns-Under-Heaven, suited in armour of scavenged trains, steaming and pumping to keep him alive. He was obsessed with the hopes of bringing back the ancient Vermissian transport network and he teamed up with two humans to complete this task. Though he loathed it, it seemed these two were just as close to the brink of insanity as he was. Perhaps they would make handy tools or servants, at least?

The Seeker, an esoteric man who spoke of prophecy in between mad ramblings. Once dead, now back alive dancing between purgatory and the mortal world, his own death now a forever companion, both of them cursed with an intoxicating song sung by The Heart itself beckoning him ever closer.

Riley Rollins, an eccentric person whose pursuit of arcane majesty and wanderlust for the winding deep corridors and depths of The Heart could take them and their companions to the very end, witness the impossible and entangle them with a Queen from another world…

The trio’s companionship was rocky, Crowns-Under-Heaven would expect the other two to act a lot like cannon fodder. Seeker would often vanish into The Gray, abandoning the group. On top of that, Riley had a connection to the Drowned Queen, an ancient and ferocious being hellbent on flooding the depths claiming The Heart as her own domain, becoming ever stronger. The team had a lot of growing to do together.

When the finale came around Riley went to face the Drowned Queen and Seeker went with Crowns-Under-Heaven to reactivate the network. However, he came face to face with his obsession and the truth. The Vermissian Network was doomed to die and fall into ancient myth. In a long forgotten city where the Heart lay just a cave away Crowns was gifted with the Heartseed for his travels, the last source of energy for the doomed network system. This source of wild and limitless power was able to power his armour and by extension himself to a status beyond living. His adventures underground and with his companions had changed his old steam powered heart. He would become an unstoppable force within the cities and tunnels below. travelling the winding depths saving those on the brink of Death and becoming a figure of myth and legend. He looked to his human companion and said his heartfelt goodbyes. Knowing this would be the last time that Crowns-Under-Heaven would lay eyes on his friends.

A Goblin and a Minotaur fall in love

A goblin with big hair and a minotaur seated on a loveseat in a tent under the stars.
Art by @auttieshi (Instagram)

In the early days of her adventures, Vidris Pipp, a bombastic and spontaneous little Goblin, locked eyes for the first time with Birch Burley, a quiet, reserved and dignified Minotaur, and she knew she had fallen in love. The problem? Birch was the daughter of the leader of their town, Undercroft. Worse still, Vidris and her friends discovered that that self-same leader, Bryne Burley, had secrets to hide. He quickly became an adversary in their lives. The hope of a happily ever after between the two was far off. However, after a chance encounter of Vidris falling through the manor’s chimney and landing in Birch’s bedroom, they were able to have a one on one and quickly became close. It did not take long for the Minotaur to find that she shared the same feelings for the Goblin.

From there Birch became a part-time member of the party and ally to the group. However, their love for each other was to be kept secret. Vidris’ mother and grandfather already plotted to revolt against the leader alongside other citizens and Bryne was, at this time, not best pleased with Vidris’ meddling in his town and livelihood.

Months later dangerous secrets, far beyond the leader’s knowledge, of ancient cities were revealed far beneath the town of Undercroft. Birch was there side by side with Vidris as the party delved deep underground to face an ancient wizard that brought death to the world millennia ago. Meanwhile, the town of Undercroft and their new found allies in the peoples of the world around them prepared to face the encroaching wizard’s army of automatons.

Believing this could have been the last time Birch and Vidris might see their parents alive, they approached their parents, hand in hand and revealed their love for each other. Their parents accepted and acknowledged their love. Bryne gave Vidris his blessing and Vidris’s mother and Grandfather buried the hatchet with their leader and pulled them both in for a hug that felt to last a lifetime.

A family brought together

A femme tielfling in her two forms, one blue and aquatic, one red and demonic.
Art by @cheriyuki (Instagram)

Yulla Odasdottir nearly met her death at an incredibly young age when her father and mother wished to escape the forever storm that circled the island of Erlendheim. Believing the storm would destroy the island one day, they fled and were never seen again. Yulla, however, was saved by a mysterious entity from the deep dark depths of the ocean and sent back to the shores of Erlendheim, alongside the wreckage of her family’s boat. Her skin forever changed by this eldritch touch. What was once a rich scarlet topped with little black horns now shone blue, her face glistening with aquamarine scales and a large dorsal fin protruding from her head.

She was accepted by a fisherman and his wife who came across the wreckage and then raised Yulla as their own. Yulla grew up knowing she was not blood bound to her human parents. Her adventure would take place years later and through a series of extraordinary events the party would hear of a portal that lay on the seabed floor. This portal would be able to lead the party to Sigil, the city of doors, where the answers to their mysteries at the time would unravel further.

Once there, Yulla happened to hear the names of her parents. They were alive and were high up in a faction called The Believers of the Source. After a long search she was finally able to lay eyes on them, donned in the robes of The Source. There was a shocked moment of silence and they all slowly stepped forward, all of them in disbelief. Before the family embraced and wept.

Each one of these moments brought tears to my eyes and became a part of the scene itself. If I was crying real tears then my characters certainly were too. I like to think I put my whole heart into my characters and I wear that on my sleeve. I get lost in these stories and love every moment. It’s both a testament to the DMs who bring to life the world and to the players I’m with who build the most believable and real characters. I love being brought to tears by a game and I love sharing that moment with my friends.

I’m so thankful for those I get to share these adventures with.

The Quantum NPC

This works even better through the medium of TTRPGs than TV to be honest, because your imagination simply works around them, never focusing on their details.

Star Trek

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek the Next Generation lately. I hadn’t seen it in many years, although I watched the whole thing as it came out in the eighties and nineties. I have obviously been watching it with different eyes this time around. I have noticed things in it that I don’t think I could have seen before. I wonder, for instance, about Mr Data. Would he have been such a sympathetic character today, as an AI in humanoid form? I think about how many of the episodes had no action, how many were just talking heads and techno-babble and whether Sci-fi TV shows today could get away with that. I ponder the special effects and make-up and marvel at how well they stand up 35 years later. But I have also been looking at these episodes with TTRPGs in mind. Now, of course, Star Trek has been made into a number of role playing games. I have never played any of them and this post isn’t about them. This post is about the crew of the Enterprise. Not Picard and Riker and Troi and Worf, but the ones who you see occasionally pass the bridge crew on one of the ship’s many lushly carpeted corridors, the ones having their own conversations in the background in Ten Forward, even the ones who so consistently took the con after Wesley Crusher left. They would get names sometimes and every so often, they’d even get lines! There are a couple of those that are recurring characters, such as Ensign McKnight and Robin Lefler. The most iconic of these, Chief O’Brien, went on to enjoy a major role in two Star Trek shows. But when he first appeared on the Enterprise, he was an unnamed bridge officer. Total NPC. He only became someone when the show creators decided he had to be someone.

The Quantum NPC

So this is what I have started doing for crews in my Spelljammer campaign. I think it would work in any game where you have a lot of NPCs that hang around in close proximity to the PCs all the time. So it works particularly well for ship crews.

In the main campaign, the party lost their original crew in the best possible circumstances. The crew, a bunch of spirits who had lost their memories and were not initially aware they were dead at all, finally fulfilled their goals and were able to shuffle off to whichever outer plane would have them. So, the PCs were forced to hire a whole new crew to take care of rigging and swabbing and whatnot. Now, I did not want to spend an entire session where they press-ganged or interviewed eight or nine NPCs that I would then have to name, outline and give voices to. That kind of thing can be fun but I don’t want to spend two full hours at it. Instead I told them that they picked up eight new competent crew members and that we would come up with their characters as and when they were needed.

So this is how that works, you imagine the scene where the PCs are on deck, in the foreground talking about something like how to defeat the weird root creatures that have invaded the ship from some eldritch, otherworldly space. In the background, just like in Star Trek, you have a few crewmembers, maybe they are even in uniform, but they are ill-defined and unremarkable. This works even better through the medium of TTRPGs than TV to be honest, because your imagination simply works around them, never focusing on their details. But then! They need one of the NPCs to be good at something, a specialist, an expert. Or maybe they just need a buddy, someone to talk to, or someone to listen. That’s when the players get to stretch those imagination muscles!

Pulling the NPC Out of Their Quantum State

The NPC existed in theory but not in practice. They were always there as a number, but not as a person, not as a character. Until the players make them up. The GM asks a player who this NPC is, what their name is, their ancestry, their job, what their personality is like. The players generally end up working together to do this but I usually start by asking the player who decided they wanted one of the quantum NPCs to become real for some reason. I ask that particular player the type of character they want in this situation with the understanding that, once they have been defined, they will forever be part of the crew, taking up one of those eight spots. It’s just like Blades in the Dark items. You know how many slots you have to fill when your PC is out on a Score but you don’t define the items until you need them in the narrative. Once you have said you have “A Blade or Two,” though, those blades are filling one of those slots. Same-same but different.

In this manner we got these three NPCs:

Deckhand Dewey – kobold, he/him, spry and wiry and can fit in little places.

Cook – Barry Keoghan (this is the consequence of allowing the players to name NPCs) – orc, he/him, big guy with big arms, beer belly, loves food and loves cooking. His chef hat does not fit very well. Apron always slightly dirty. Has a space rat companion.

Mr Cannon – Halfling he/him – weapon-master.

As you can see some of them got more detailed description than others. Barry Keoghan was described thoroughly partly because of who I asked to describe him and partly because of the moment I asked for his description, i.e. a quiet moment aboard ship where they had some time to talk about provisions and joke about silly Disney movie references. Meanwhile, Mr Cannon was created in the literal heat of battle. But that was ok, because the idea was always to flesh these NPCs out as time went on. We did, for instance, in subsequent sessions, discover that Mr Cannon had a wife waiting for him at home and that Barry Keoghan had some sort of tragic love-affair in his past.

I think, in future I will bring Between the Skies to bear on the Quantum NPCs as they are being birthed by the players, giving them desires, bonuses, hindrances, quirks and all the rest. Time allowing, of course.

The Quantum NPC method has the added advantage of endearing the newly created NPCs to the players from the off. They are, after all, fully their own creations. From the players’ point of view, I believe it was also quite devastating when both Mr Cannon and Deckhand Dewey got breath weaponed into oblivion by a lunar dragon along with the rest of the NPC crew (apart for Barry Keoghan who was in the galley at the time of the attack.) Unforgettable.

Dad-quest

Dad-quest is getting under way tomorrow night. Our resident Giff Fighter-Paladin, Azimuth is rounding up a crew of misfits (the other players with their new characters that I discussed here) and a few more Quantum NPCs and spelljamming out to the Amos Expanse to find his Dad. Can’t wait to see what new crew-members the players come up with this time!

Corkers

I’m off to Cork for the weekend so I won’t have time to come up with anything new today. Instead I thought I would share a couple of posts from last year. I wrote these at a time when I was first experimenting with some homespun rules and borrowed mechanics for our D&D 5E campaign.

This first post is preparatory to introducing a Blades in the Dark style engagement roll to our Spelljammer game.

Forged in the Dungeon

And this one is an update about how it went!

Forged in the Dungeon, Part 2

I’ll be back next week with some new posts. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these re-posts!

Revenge of the Giff

I’m considering an option that harks back to Dark Sun. In 2nd Edition Dark Sun, a player started, not with just one PC, but a whole stable of them, called a character tree.

Mid-season finale

The crew of the Cadabra were going home. After weeks of adventure across Scatterspace and all over the Rock of Bral, they have arrived back at First Home, the asteroid/inn/shipyard that was their first stop after leaving their world behind in the first place. They could justifiably expect a warm welcome since they freed the shipyard from a Neogi infestation last time. But they weren’t expecting to be confronted with a crew of kobolds from their home island to be there. Kobolds who probably thought the PCs had murdered their queen. They also weren’t expecting to find Becky Fullpockets’ personal spelljamming vessel there. They had been struggling against the machinations of the technomagical billionaire ever since they fled their planet. It looked like they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, with no escape!

No better place to end part of a season than on a cliffhanger. And that’s what we did right there. We have been on a break from our Spelljammer campaign for a couple of months now. It’s given me a break from 5E and allowed us to play some other great games in the meantime. But now, it’s time to come back, sort of.

Spin Off

A few months (IRL months, that is) before the crew of the Cadabra reached First Home for the second time, they said goodbye to one of their number. Giff Fighter-Paladin, Azimuth, who had to be rescued from two ship-wrecks in quick succession might have been labelled a Jonah by many crews, but the Cadabra was different. They welcomed him on board with open arms and he adventured with them for a while. But, eventually, he was always going to go back to look for the father who went missing from the first of those two ship-wrecks. Now, while his erstwhile comrades are heading back to their homeworld, Azimuth is armed with a little knowledge about the stretch of Wildspace Papa might be found in and a ship stolen from Becky Fullpockets. He’s preparing an expedition of his own to go find his real dad… Not that gnome who pretended to be his dad during that short period where he’d lost his memory (long story, dear reader.)

The rest of the players are coming back too, but they’ll be playing new characters for this spin-off. Azimuth needs a crew for his ship, after all. We are getting together tomorrow night for a session-0 type thing. I think everyone is looking forward to trying some different classes/backgrounds/species compared to the ones they have been playing for over two years in the main campaign. Although, Azimuth’s player, David, doesn’t get a new character, he does get to pursue his PC’s main drive and its a great welcome back to the group for him.

As for me; I’m looking forward to yet another shake-up in this game. I’m planning to use the progress-based travel rules that I mentioned in my Prep Part 2 post last week. And, as well as that, I have something very special up my sleeve for the meat of the adventure, which I can’t reveal here and now (my players read this blog sometimes.) I’m definitely going to write about it after the fact, though.

Change of Cast?

The introduction of new PCs into the campaign, even though its a spin-off, raises the question of what happens once Azimuth joins back up with the main crew again. I’m considering an option that harks back to Dark Sun. In 2nd Edition Dark Sun, a player started, not with just one PC, but a whole stable of them, called a character tree. I believe you were supposed to begin with four characters. This was to help counter the lethality of the setting, giving a player back-ups in the inevitable event of a PC death. This made a lot of sense, especially considering the amount of time it took to create characters. Go check out my Dark Sun character Creation series to witness exactly how long that took.

So, my thinking is that, once this spin-off is done, if they want, the players will be able to swap PCs in or out as they like. This should have the double benefit of providing the players with a bit of variety and allowing them to almost fully crew their ship with their own characters, rather than just NPCs. I’m currently thinking through how I’ll handle character advancement if I do allow this. In Dark Sun, if I remember correctly, the PC only gained experience when they were actually played. No vicarious levelling. I think this makes a lot of sense, but it might be more difficult to adjudicate with milestone levelling.

What do you think of these ideas, dear reader? Have you ever run a spin-off campaign like this? Would you be happy for your players to switch between active PCs like I’ve described?