Sham's Grog 'n Blog

Into the Hexes and Discoveries

2011-06-08T15:51:00.002-04:00

When designing a campaign in which everything revolves around a single dominant theme, in this case the underworld of the Bleak Beyond, it is important to have motivations for the players and their characters to work outside of the central theme from time to time.

For a dungeon-centric campaign such as mine, this work outside of the theme would of course involve the wilderness around the Bleak Beyond. In OD&D the term “wilderness” refers to everything on the surface, so in this case it includes the starting town of Tenborough Hold as well as the whole of the Unbidden Lands in which the campaign is set.

While making notes for the Unbidden Lands, I wondered “Why would the players decide to explore the Wilderness?” Aside from being sent on a wild goose chase by an NPC, or to seek out a healing herb for their stricken party-mate or some other Ref-induced quest into the wilderness, was there a motivation for the party to set out, “into the hexes”, of their own accord?

For the Unbidden Lands, there is such motivation. The notion is that through exploration the characters have the opportunity to unlock game features by making Discoveries. Visiting the Town of Skinny Creek enables trade with the Hobbits there, and access to Hobbit Cuisine. Finding the Elves of the Worn-Wood enables trade and gives access to enchanted Elf Wine and other unique wares. Locating the Dwarven hold at Pinching Gorge likewise allows access to special works of craftsmanship.

Farther out in the Unbidden Lands, characters can discover more game material. Traveling to the Shrouded Mere will permit Aelfar as player characters. The same for unlocking playable character races with the Dvergar at Scrag Rock, the Doende at Lonely Crag, the Irklings at Itching Wood, and even the Troldekin, although the latter are only unlocked by entering the Supreme Citadel of the Morkevagten in the dungeon itself. Each area of discovery holds more game material, including access to such things as new spells and even more race specific resources for the adventurers.

In the end, the players have a chance to realize greater opportunities and resources by taking the initiative and going into the hexes. Ultimately such travels will pay-off for future plunges into the Bleak Beyond. Refs will likewise have the chance to flesh out the Unbidden Lands further, allowing groups who wish to feel the sun on their faces some time breathing fresh air for a change.

All of these Discoveries will be defined and described in greater detail as the whole project moves forward. For now I must continue to concentrate on the How to Play portion and finish up the various d00 tables which fuel the inner workings of the Bleak Beyond.

~Sham

Oh Ornella!

2011-05-26T07:10:00.001-04:00

Leaving soon for a five day long trip and haven't updated in a bit. For your viewing pleasure here are some embedded Ornella Muti as Princess Aura scenes from the ill-fated 1980 Flash Gordon film. Enjoy and catch you in June.

~Sham

Experience by Plundering

2011-05-11T08:40:00.004-04:00

In my most recent post I touched on a number of unusual methods in which the dungeon itself figures into the rules of advancement for my latest project, the Bleak Beyond. I received plenty of thoughts and feedback on the Accomplishments portion of that post, but I am wondering how readers feel about the fact that I am considering expunging the tried and true notion of Experience Points in favor of the proposed Experience by Plundering approach:

Experience by Plundering

Experience and Accomplishments

2011-05-05T16:12:00.000-04:00

As the anchor of the campaign, around which everything revolves, the dungeons of the Bleak Beyond will factor into the very rules which govern game play. Along with the various tables and conventions specifically designed to power the game sessions, one will find a game unto itself in what I hope to be a rather brief How to Play section. Just the nuts and bolts of a game, one which can be adopted or ignored in favor of one's preferred edition.

The How to Play section of the Bleak Beyond is not intended to be a clone of D&D. It is more or less a generic system which will cover such things as Dice, Hits, Combat, Armor, Saves, Tasks and Character Advancement. The mechanics that run behind the scenes of the game. Tasks have been covered using the 5+ guide in the Art of Delving. The other terms are fairly self-explanatory. Combat is distilled to a table-less formula, which was covered here and here a few years back.

A bit of a departure from the old school? Not in my mind. I just find the method more logical and simpler to implement. The true major departure from the accepted rules is found in the guide for Character Advancement. Here's where we find the dungeon itself influencing the rules.

The Bleak Beyond does not use a hard and fast advancement via experience points system. Since nearly all of the players' efforts will involve dangerous plunges into the underworld, the only set-in-stone method for gaining levels is by successfully looting manually placed Treasure Troves. Not your run of the mill loot stashes but rather those specific riches which are mentioned in Vol. III with the suggestion to “thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures” before dicing for random distribution. Here's the core of the approach:

Experience by Plundering

Characters gain one experience level whenever they are a member of an expedition which makes off with a Treasure Trove, by successfully returning with it to town, providing the loot was plundered from a dungeon level which is of equal or greater value than the character's own current level.

Yep. No experience points whatsoever.

There are restrictions to the experience by plundering system, however. Normal advancement halts at the top level of each tier, levels 3, 6 and 9. In order to unlock the subsequent tiers which begin with levels 4, 7 and 10, the character will be required to meet certain criteria based on successful exploration of the Bleak Beyond.

The dungeon rewards characters who accomplish certain goals. For humankind there are currently 13 such accomplishments, along with one race accomplishment for each non-human class which lifts their standard maximum level and allows further progress. Players must track the number of each specific accomplishment, along with the reward gained, on the back of their character sheet for future reference and to prevent possible double-dipping.

Refs might of course allow alternate methods of advancement. It is certainly not a game world in which the only method of advancing as a character is by gaining Bleak Beyond experience. This is simply how one does so within this particular dungeon. Exploring the wilderness of the Unbidden Lands holds its own rewards, after all (which will be explained in an upcoming post).

I may or may not add to this list in the future, and since none of this is quite set in stone there is no accompanying PDF this time. Here's what I've got so far.

Accomplishments / Rewards

1.Etch name on the Big Block of So and So's Fate / Unlock 4th Character Level
2.Shake the hand of Skellington in the Writhing Sepulchre / Unlock 7th Character Level
3.Obtain a Morkevagten Writ of Passage from the Citadel / Unlock 10th Character Level
4.Bring a Fallen Knight to justice / +1 Primary or Random
5.Oust the Mayor of Awfulville / +1 Primary or Random
6.Earn a Key to the Swallowed City / +1 Primary or Random
7.Release a Trapped Soul from the Chapel of the Jilted Bride / +1d6 Hits
8.Smuggle an intact Ubernana to the surface / +1d6 Hits
9.Ring the Gilded Bell of the Excommunicated / +1 Primary or Random
10.Awaken the Sleeping She-Paladin / +1d6 Hits
11.Lay the Evil Dude to rest in his Domain / +1d6 Hits
12.Learn Sham's Secret from Sham himself / +1 Ability of Choice
13.Visit the Four Corners of Balmorphiact / +1 Ability of Choice

Non-human Accomplishments / Rewards

The following non-human accomplishments remove the standard class level maximum for each respective race. They do not however supersede the advancement accomplishments required as detailed in numbers 1-3 above.

Enter the Supreme Citadel of the Morkevagten through the front door / Unlock Dwarf 7th
Survive an arena match in the Swallowed City / Unlock Elf FM 5th
Learn a new spell in the Palace of Ceaseless Extravagance / Unlock Elf MU 9th
Taste Chuckhole Hooch straight from a still in Chuckhole Hollow / Unlock Hobbit 5th
Bring home the head of a Nisse / Unlock Aelfar FM 7th
Take a nap in the Dens of Undesired Dream / Unlock Aelfar MU 7th
Pull one of Vrimnas's levers and live to tell the tale / Unlock Doende 7th
Perform guard duty at the Shrine of the Sleeping She-Paladin / Unlock Dvergar 7th
Bring home a real live Crumblebumian / Unlock Irkling 7th
Tithe at the Church of the Excommunicated / Unlock Troldekin FM 7th
Become irradiated on the Level w/ No Name / Unlock Troldekin MU 7th

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

~Sham

The Art of Delving

2011-04-28T15:05:00.000-04:00

Here's another bit of Bleak Beyond material that might be of interest to some of my readers. It's basically a Delver-as-Subclass system. In a megadungeon campaign such as this, with no Thief class, the responsibilities of safely and carefully navigating the underworld are shared by all capable adventurers. Why not allow these intrepid spelunkers the chance to hone their skills the more often they use them?

A few disclaimers before I copy and paste: I still tend to not simply reduce these acts to straightforward dice rolls. The 5+ roll is a baseline suggestion, one which should be modified based upon how the characters are attempting them, the prevailing circumstances, and the difficulty of the particular endeavor. As a matter of fact, I am going to edit the new doc and add these notes! Be right back...

* * * * *

The Art of Delving

A general purpose d6 roll is used for determining success or failure when undertaking various mundane tasks in the game. Refs can adjust the target 5 as needed, increasing it to 6 or lowering it to 4 or less as the game demands.

Note: It is suggested that Refs avoid simply reducing these acts to straightforward dice rolls. Encourage player reasoning and input, and reward or penalize them accordingly. The 5+ roll is a baseline suggestion, one which should be modified depending upon how the characters are attempting them, the prevailing circumstances, and the difficulty of the particular endeavor.

The 5+ Rule:
Roll 1d6
1: Absolute Failure
2-4: Failure
5: Success
6: Success and roll again. With a result of 6 on the roll again, the character denotes one pip above the relevant task.

Improving with Experience: When six such pips are earned the character gains a permanent +1 on all 5+ checks with that particular task. No further bonuses may be gained in this manner for that particular task. See Master Delver, below.

Ability Score Adjustment: Characters with a 15 or higher in the relevant Ability Score add 1 on their 5+ roll. Those with a 6 or lower subtract 1.

Race Adjustment: Characters of varying race will either add 1 or subtract 1 on their 5+ roll.

Core Tasks: Tasks which any character may undertake during the game.
Disarm Trap: Apply STR or DEX, determined by type.
Eavesdrop: Humankind -1.
Find Secret Door: Elf and Aelfar +1.
Find Trap: Dwarf and Dvergar +1.
Open Door: Apply STR. Hobbit, Doende and Irkling -1.
Unlock: Apply DEX.
Sneak: Hobbit and Doende +1.

Bonus Tasks: Bonus Tasks can be raised as well with the accumulation of pips, but may not be selected as a Master Delver's specialty.
Sense Direction: Irkling only.
Sense Secret Door: Elf and Aelfar only.
Sense Trap: Dwarf and Dvergar only.

Master Delver: Once a character has gained a +1 bonus to the first six Core Tasks (all except Sneak) through the accumulation of pips, he or she can claim the title of Master Delver. At that time the player shall select one, and only one Core Task with which he or she shall receive a further bonus of 1 on all 5+ rolls in that endeavor. For example, it is possible for a Dwarf to become a Master Delver with a Find Trap specialty, gaining a bonus of +3 on all 5+ rolls for that task.

* * * * *

And there you have it. There's a PDF for dl in SHAM'S OD&D STUFF, or just copy, paste and edit for your own game. As with much of the Bleak Beyond material, some light editing will make it usable in any campaign.

~Sham

Lost Heroes

2011-04-22T10:24:00.003-04:00

If we operate under the assumption that the underworld, or specifically your campaign's megadungeon, has been attracting adventurers for a lengthy period of time, it is not a stretch of the imagination to realize that there are more than likely going to be a number of delvers assumed dead that are in fact trapped in limbo in the dark confines below.

In your standard campaign such a form of stasis could occur through your run of the mill flesh to stone attack. Characters with a CON of 13 or more will automatically survive such an ordeal, and are quite literally waiting for the right Magic User to come along and rescue them. In the Bleak Beyond other such means of imprisonment include being turned to glass, turned to a scarecrow, time-locked, frozen solid and gem-prisoned.

Any unfortunate character missing his save against such a threat must make a survival roll based on his or her CON score. Those succeeding are still often “lost to the underworld” even though they are not quite dead yet. Thus the Bleak Beyond includes a category of magic items called Lost Heroes. Perhaps the most potent of all magic items in my dungeon as of this writing since I have yet to flesh out any relics or artifacts, these Lost Heroes will pledge loyalty and serve their rescuers for a time and could even become player characters as the campaign unfolds.

Although you might not handle flesh to stone in the same fashion, the concept of Lost Heroes as magic items can still be used in your games by adding a few new features to your dungeon.

This is an example of the many Bleak Beyond tidbits I plan to assemble and include in the final megadungeon project. Along with the PDF's I've shared this year; Monster Business, Random Monster Tables, d6 Dungeon Rooms, 100 NPC Types and Dungeon Treasure Maps (I have a BB-centric version), these supplemental pieces will eventually work together to form the framework upon which the megadungeon will operate.

The d00 Stairways table was one I planned to rework and include, BUT I've come to the design decision that I will henceforth be treating stairways as rooms unto themselves, in other words each will be numbered and keyed. Duh. That's something I should have been doing all along. Something so obvious!

So while this particular document is Bleak Beyond material and written as such, you still might get some use or inspiration out of it. You will find it in the expanding SHAM'S OD&D STUFF section to the right.

Here's a copy and paste of the 24 known Lost Heroes in case you don't wanna down load the PDF.

Lost Heroes of the Bleak Beyond
Roll d24 if you want a random Lost Hero (d12+d6, odd on d6 add 0 to the d12, even on d6 add 12). Lost Heroes are never found on a dungeon level with a value less than their experience level.

1. Wigwaite FM 4, Male, L, S: 15, C: 16, Spear +1. Turned to Stone.
2. Dianedrio Elf FM 4, Male, L, S: 15, C: 13, Displacer Cloak. Morphed to Scarecrow.
3. Big Sal Hobbit 4, Male, S: 14, C: 15, Plate +1. Gem-Prisoned.
4. Cheburov Dvergar 4, Male, N, S: 17, C: 14, Sword +1. Turned to Stone.
5. Tillanaith FM 5, Female, N, S: 14, C: 13, Magic Bow. Time-Locked.
6. Hibu Dae MU 5, Male, N, I: 15, C: 14, Wand of Cold. Morphed to Scarecrow.
7. Janolare C 5, Female, L, W: 17, C: 13, Staff of Healing. Turned to Stone.
8. Thump LeBump Dwarf 5, Male, L, S: 13, C: 17, Axe +1. Turned to Stone.
9. Fendryal Aelfar MU 5, Male, N, I: 14, C: 13, Wand of Paralization. Time-Locked.
10. Glipnart Doende 5, Female, N, S: 14, C: 15, Ring of Protection. Turned to Glass.
11. Kippy Bitz Irkling 5, Male, N, W: 16, C: 14, Snake Staff. Gem-Prisoned.
12. Kimbobol Dwarf 6, Female, L, S: 16, C: 14, War Hammer +1. Gem-Prisoned.
13. Oxblatt Dwarf 6, Male, L, S: 14, C: 15, Ring of Protection. Time-Locked.
14. Kucharel Aelfar FM 6, Female, N, S: 16, C: 13, Spear +2. Frozen Solid.
15. Haxlo Dvergar 6, Male, N, S: 16, C: 17, Mace +2. Morphed to Scarecrow.
16. Rugmeister Doende 6, Male, N, S: 13, C: 16, Elven Cloak and Boots. Frozen Solid.
17. Qonklakoo Irkling 6, Female, N, W: 15, C: 16, Staff of Withering. Turned to Stone.
18. Wheelhouse Witt FM 7, Male, L, S: 13, C: 15, Sword +2. Frozen Solid.
19. Timarina MU 7, Female, L, I: 16, C: 13, Ring of Invisibility. Turned to Glass.
20. Sticky Nobs C 8, Male, L, W: 16, C: 14, Mace +2. Morphed to Scarecrow.
21. Binblaith Elf MU 8, Female, L, I: 14, C: 13, Wand of Fear. Turned to Glass.
22. Zinzaa FM 9, Female, L, S: 16, C: 14, War Hammer +2. Gem-Prisoned.
23. Legendary Ralph MU 10, Male, L, I: 17, C: 15, Staff of Power. Time-Locked.
24. Sister Tilda C 10, Female, L, W: 16, C: 15, Staff of Striking. Frozen Solid.

And with this post I have officially surpassed my 2010 total number of posts! I can't believe I have any followers at all with just 29 posts in the past 16 months. I love you guys, man.

~Sham

Dungeon Design and the Bleak Beyond

2011-04-20T11:36:00.001-04:00

Over the course of my three decades of dungeon design the only recurring theme has been one of change. From the crude earliest efforts to the modular string-of-adventures format to the so-called classic dungeon to that first megadungeon effort to the archival style to the one-page idea and on to the present day, my history of dungeon making is marked by sweeping changes based on a wide range of ideas, examples and inspirations. Each step along the way adds to the overall collected know-how. It has been an evolution of design and a labor of love.

The dungeon trend, this path I have followed and at times forged, shows that changes will continue, of this there is no doubt. One of the stumbling blocks for crafting that true megadungeon is this very trend of change. Knowing that by the time level 12 is finished it won't look, feel or play like level 1 is bothersome. Something about my sensibilities finds fault with this fact. The preference being of course a continuity of the vibe established with the very first levels of such a place.

Much of it can also be attributed to gamer ADD, of course. By the time the heavy lifting begins a new approach, thought or philosophy gnaws away at the dungeon's foundations and sends the project into limbo.

Finally emerging from the planning stage after nearly two years of contemplation is the latest example of these megadungeon heart breakers, the Bleak Beyond. Before the first map was even drawn numerous theories and notions had been conceived and scrapped. Ideas such as “Lairs & Stairs”, the “Sub/Hub” style, “Room Clusters”, “Inside-Out” design and so forth; far too much thought was invested in these methods which may never see the light of day. Besides, excessive time was wasted on my part in trying to reinvent the wheel.

Now that a design approach has been settled on there is actual progress being made. Albeit at a snail's pace. The building blocks are still being placed and the project continues to garner all of my gamer interest. What design approach is that you might ask? The Bleak Beyond borrows heavily from my archival style and one-page philosophy. The archival style saw maps becoming more convoluted with less wasted space per page and it also embraced the notion of recycling. No longer was this a dungeon in the modular format of fire and forget. The one-page philosophy is embraced now as well, minus the sometimes cramping templates. “Without the template it's no longer one-page, though!” Yes, but the philosophy established with the one-page is the key for me. It's a heady mix of word economy, random tables and the Empty Room Principle.

So the Bleak Beyond is moving slowly forward with my latest design style, one driven by random tables, a unique bestiary and treasury, unusual conventions and an archival spirit. The plans for the cornerstones are drawn up, and right now it is potentially a signature worthy endeavor. I say potentially because I have already pegged this as my new megadungeon heart breaker. In the end at the very least I can share some of my efforts here as I have been doing lately. Readers can borrow, steal and alter as was done with the one-page design notes or some of my other meanderings. Nevertheless, wish me luck.

In parting I'll share a list of the planned levels for the Bleak Beyond.

Standard Levels (36):

Katskradle
Beneath the Fetid Fens
Down the Mol-Min Hole
Altar of the Gloom-Pit
The Tangled Tunnels
Hap's Woebegone
Pits of Unspecified Doom
Hornswoggle Hall
So and So's Fate
Awfulville
The Grand Brood Nidus
Webwarrens
A City Swallowed
Sewers of a City Swallowed
Chuckhole Hollow
The Writhing Sepulchre
Chapel of the Jilted Bride
Dens of Undesired Dream
Incomparable Brainy-Dome
Frankenlabs Cooperative
The Vexations of Vrimnas
Church of the Excommunicated
Crumblebums
Illojical Werks
Supreme Citadel of the Morkevagten
The Irradiated Level w/ No Name
Shrine of the Sleeping She-Paladin
Vadghiragh
Evil Dude's Domain
Palace of Ceaseless Extravagance
Temple of Glob, God of Green Slime
Feefestung
Sham's Furnace
Balmorphiact
Akt-Elemdor, the Vault of Night
Echoes of Darkness

Secret Bonus Levels (16):

The Abyss of Nada
Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Bloody Vintner
Central Teleport Terminal
Cubbyholes of Regret
The Donjon Illustrious
Ill Angels ONLY
Inn of the Bawdy Monkey
Ixmorin's Ill-fated (Mini-Levels 1-5)
Snow Globe
Super-Chute Control Chambers
Thimbledowns

So, yeah. This could take forever. Baby steps.

~Sham

Monster Business

2011-04-13T18:02:00.000-04:00

Here's something that might stoke the creative fires. I designed it to spice up random fills. There's a PDF of it over on the right under SHAM'S OD&D STUFF.

Monster Business

A table for determining the activities and pursuits of your dungeon's monstrous population when the party opens the door to their room.

For Non-Intelligent types roll 1d20.
Roll 1d00 for the Smarter Fellas.

1.Bonkers! Wooo-Weee!
2.Chasing Fireflies for fun
3.Cornering Lunch and will be mad if it gets away
4.Dozing peacefully but half-awake
5.Eating Dinner and hates interruptions
6.Ensnared. Caught fast in a Trap
7.Fighting! One another or some other Monster(s)
8.Ill and in no mood to fight or chase
9.Laying in Wait for intruders
10.Near Death. Pretty low on Hits and knows it
11.Paralyzed by Fae Dust
12.Prowling as stealthily as possible
13.Ready to Pounce on overworlders
14.Recovering from severe mystery meat indigestion
15.Relieving oneself/themselves
16.Resting and not particularly vigilant
17.Snoring loudly
18.Starving and desperate for vittles
19.Unconscious. Out cold and helpless
20.Wounded and pissed off
21.Arguing loudly. Possibly with oneself
22.Boozing it up and somewhat buzzed
23.Bored to tears
24.Bound and gagged
25.Bug-Bitten. Swollen welts, itching, maddened
26.Building a teetering House of Bones
27.Bullying something much smaller for fun
28.Carving a warning into the door
29.Chiseling initials into the wall
30.Cleaning the place. It's a mess!
31.Cleaning Toes and filing nails
32.Competing in a Belching/Farting Contest
33.Concealing some valuables in a hiding place
34.Cooking Meal and creating a stench
35.Counting Coins of silver and gold
36.Crafting a make-shift thingamabob
37.Dancing with glee or in ritual
38.Day Dreaming about the glory days
39.Debating dungeon dweller concerns. Possibly alone
40.Deep in Thought and about to reach a conclusion
41.Delusional. Might think the PC's are pals
42.Digging for already looted booty
43.Drinking socially and looking stylish. Or just alone
44.Drunk as a skunk and barely able to stand
45.Escorting prisoners to the Boss
46.Fetching a geegaw for the Boss
47.Gambling with knuckle-bones for silver and gold
48.Gnawing Bones and quite peckish
49.Guarding something of great import for the Boss
50.Hammering on something stuck shut
51.Humming a cheerful tune
52.Impersonating the Boss
53.In Hiding and fearful of pursuers
54.Infested with Dungeon Rot
55.Interrogating some hapless captives
56.Laughing and carrying-on
57.Licking the wall and floor. It's kinda salty
58.Listening for trespassing delvers
59.Looking for Trouble and happy to find some
60.Lost and more than a little embarrassed about it
61.Making something special for the Boss
62.Making Cave Drawings that are somewhat saucy
63.Meditating and contemplating the why of it all
64.Merry Making in potentially lewd and crude fashion
65.Mocking a comrade caught in a trap. Might be dead
66.Picking Nose and that's all
67.Play Acting out the parts of silly overworlders
68.Playing a Game of Eye Gouge Ewe Gouge
69.Plotting the overthrow of the Boss's regime
70.Plucking Eye Brows for one another. Or alone
71.Practicing throwing weapons at almost dead target
72.Praying for a darker, damper future for all dwellers
73.Preparing for Battle and surprised it found them
74.Preparing Meal and making a bloody mess
75.Ransacking the place looking for keys
76.Reading Dwellers Digest. Or looking at the pictures
77.Removing Ear Wax with great care
78.Repairing a malfunctioning trap
79.Replacing a splintered door
80.Rescuing a pal from a pit
81.Rough Housing and making a ruckus
82.Scraping metal on stone and piercing ears
83.Searching for that certain something
84.Setting Trap and just asking to be pushed into it
85.Shaking Down some innocent dwellers for gold
86.Sharpening weapons and/or claws
87.Singing a doleful tune in unison or solo
88.Slimed and very upset. Trying to rinse it off
89.Straightening the old homestead up for visitors
90.Talking about dweller woes, quite possibly alone
91.Telling Tall Tales of delver decimation and defeat
92.Throwing rocks. It's beats Nose-Picking
93.Torturing for the heck of it. Maybe for the Boss
94.Tossing severed heads to one another or in the air
95.Trimming Nose Hairs is routine for the discerning
96.Waiting for some moron to open that door
97.Watching fungus grow
98.Weeping for no apparent reason
99.Whistling and making weird bug noises
100.Writing Graffiti slamming the Boss's reputation

~Sham

Prime Swap

2011-04-06T13:32:00.001-04:00

A house rule I am using now is the Prime Swap. Perhaps I can let Prodder and Scrunt explain this approach:

Prime Swap: After rolling (3d6 or 4d6-L) six times and recording the results In Order, the player can swap the character's Prime Ability with any other ability score. So FM can swap for STR, M-U can swap for INT, C can swap for WIS. Dwarves can choose STR or CON. Elves can choose STR or INT. Hobbits can choose STR or DEX. Option: Characters generated without the Prime Swap [start at 2nd level/start with maximum hits] insert your own bonus here.

This solution allows the player to generate the class he or she desires while maintaining most of the randomness realized with an In Order approach. I am not considering the optional point-buy system presented in OD&D because I adhere to the “for purposes of gaining experience only” caveat.

~Sham

Seven Observations and Equations

2011-04-05T22:03:00.003-04:00

Seven Observations and Equations presented for your dissection.

1. Game-play possibilities diminish when the term Dungeon Master is not synonymous with the term Referee.

2. The longer it takes a player to create a character the longer the player expects that character to survive.

3. Character survivability decreases as the amount of dice-rolling behind the screen increases.

4. The importance of character statistics corresponds to the amount of character generation variables.

5. The level of player meta-gaming increases or decreases at a rate equal to a game's level of complexity.

6. The more detailed the campaign world the less the characters will accomplish with each session.

7. The frequency of interruptions in play is proportionate to the significance of Alignment in a campaign.

~Sham

The A-Z Survival Challenge

2011-04-01T16:22:00.003-04:00

Announcing the A-Z Survival Challenge. The challenge is to skip all A-Z blog posts. It's only the first day but thus far I am doing well. Can you hold out for 26 days and avoid reading a single A-Z post?

Sign in under the comments and let us know when you slipped up and read an A-Z post. Survivors of this challenge will have their names posted here in recognition on May 1st. Or thereabouts.

~Sham

PS: This is not an Olaf Priol kinda thing. No offense to any of the fine bloggers who I appreciate that are doing the A-Z thing. Your challenge is to get me to read an A-Z post and thus fail my attempt at survival.

Restore to Factory Settings

2011-04-01T09:10:00.001-04:00

Isn't the reason we appreciate old-timey D&D due to the irresistible tool-kit nature of the darned hobby? Why not scrap everything you've bolted on to your games through the years and start over for a change? Expunge every house rule, borrowed rule or later-edition rule that might be ingrained in your current games. Disregard assumptions and disavow accepted theorems; solve problems on your own. This might sound illogical. Why ignore such hard-earned knowledge and know-how? To me the question is really “Why the Hell not?”.

Open your mind by beginning a new campaign with a clean slate. Dispense with the same old, same old. The idea is to reboot the way you currently play by using the Little Brown Books (or whichever particular rule set you prefer) as the only tools at your disposal. Even better use nothing more than Volume I, Men & Magic for your game. Indeed it can be difficult to complete such a mental shift, but the exercise may be both enlightening and gratifying. Some of you are doing this exact activity now, or have rebooted in the recent past. Through play and design you have likely explored new possibilities and realized much greater innovative potential.

The suggestion to restore to factory settings is in fact contrary to the very spirit of our OSR blogosphere and vast light-speed, information sharing network. It invites you to encapsulate yourself and not rely on the experiences of others, to segregate your creativity from outside influences. It's all about challenging yourself “How many brain cells am I willing to commit in order to make this pay-off?”. It might be high time for you to “Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out”. Did Sham just ask me to go away? No, not at all. You should definitely continue to visit this particular blog for more transcendent existentialism from time to time.

~Sham

Random Monster Determination

2011-03-23T14:10:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's post elicited a comment which inspired me to finally comb through my custom bestiary and make a proper OD&D style random Monster level determination procedure. Such a dice rolling convention is used not only for Wandering Monsters, but more importantly for randomly determined initial fills and restocking steps. In case you aren't familiar with the guide in Vol. III of the LBB, here's a scan of pages 10 and 11:

And here is a scan of the two-page custom guide I have fashioned for my new megadungeon. I suppose I am letting the cat out of the bag a bit early, but yes The Bleak Beyond, my current project, is a new megadungeon. It is the bastard child of the Dismal Depths and Ulin-Uthor, the Dim Expanse. Here's the custom version scanned:

The above guide uses my custom bestiary, itself an updated version of the Dismal Depths Bestiary. For those keeping track, there are 11 new entries and some name changes; specifically Moorlocks = Phlemoks, Boglings = Bogloids, Mole Men = Mol-Min, Sleestaks = Saristaks, Blue Gunky = Bloo-Goo, Alfar = Aelfar. There were some other minor edits as well.

The new Bleak Beyond Bestiary is now available for download, along with a printable copy of the above scanned Random Monster Determination file, both situated atop the mediafire links section to the right under SHAM'S OD&D STUFF.

In the near future there will be more information concerning the Bleak Beyond.

~Sham

Distribution of Monsters and Treasure

2011-03-22T11:11:00.002-04:00

In regard to filling in your dungeon maps, there is a useful suggestion in OD&D Vol. III The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 6 in the section Distribution of Monsters and Treasure, that reads:

"It is a good idea to thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures, with or without monsterous guardians, and then switch to a random determination for the balance of the level."

The guide then goes on to show a multi-step d6 rolling method for such random distribution. Long-time readers will remember I covered this with a distilled approach some time back. Well, if you missed it or want to download a file explaining the mechanics behind my d6 Dungeon Rooms table, it is now hosted at mediafire and linked to the right with my other files, this one titled "d6 Dungeon Rooms".

It's a small file so here's a copy and paste. Feel free to bend, fold and mutilate to your taste. The normal version adheres mathematically to the original odds from OD&D.

d6 Dungeon Rooms
Used for initial fills or restocking of dungeon rooms

1: Monster & Treasure
2: Monster
3-5: Empty
6: Looks Empty. Roll again, on a 1-4 there is hidden Treasure

This distilled table replicates the original distribution chances from OD&D vol. III, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures:

One-third of the rooms have a Monster, one-half of which have Treasure also.
Two-thirds of the rooms are Empty, one-sixth of which have hidden Treasure.

Or roughly:

16.67% of rooms have Monster & Treasure
16.67% of rooms have Monster
55.55% of rooms are Empty
11.11% of rooms have hidden Treasure

Feel free to Copy and Paste and further customize. As an example I altered the original to include Traps in my random dungeon distribution:

Sham's d6 Dungeon Rooms

1: Monster & Treasure
2: Monster
3-5: Empty
6: Looks Empty. Roll again, on a 1-4 there is hidden Treasure, on a 5-6 there is a Trap.

~Sham

ODD Bits 6

2011-03-15T08:44:00.001-04:00

ODD Bits is a web log series of trivia questions culled from the pages of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of original Dungeons & Dragons. If you care to play along, answer each ODD Bit question to the best of your knowledge without referring to the source material. Answers are provided in the comments section, so don't peek there until you've tried to answer all five questions.

Grade yourself based on the number of questions you answered correctly*:

5: Unbelievable, 4: Outstanding, 3: Well Done, 2: Not Bad, 1: Not Good,
0: Embarrassing

* - Sham is the referee here, so any rules interpretations taken are final, even if viewed through his warped lens.

ODD Bits 6

1. When surprised, a character has a __________ chance to drop a hand-held item. A. 1 in 6, B. 2 in 6, C. 1 in 4.

2. Characters must spend 1% of their experience points in gold for support and upkeep until they do what, short of dying?

3. True or False: Of all weapons, only swords, war hammers and axes can be found with a magic bonus of +3.

4. True or False: In Volume I, players are guided to decide what role they will play, “human or otherwise, fighter, cleric or magic-user.”

5. Wights, Wraiths, Spectres and Vampires all drain life levels with a hit in melee. Name a fifth monster capable of draining life levels.

Good Luck!

~Sham

Talking Quasqueton

2011-03-07T14:28:00.002-05:00

So I played D&D this past weekend for the first time in quite a little while. Recently I've been going through way too much sweating out the details and getting lost in the process with my new megadungeon campaign – to the point that I finally said screw it I just need to get this mofo started and see what happens. This has always been the best route in my experience, but I'm such a perfectionist that I often end up idling in neutral instead of simply flooring the damn thing and letting the wheels of gaming leave a patch of rubber down the middle of adventure avenue.

For many moons my default module for such impromptu starts was typically B2. The trusty Keep on the Borderlands has served me well for a few decades. There was one problem – I just wasn't feeling it this time. I couldn't get my B2 Jones on. So, I went to the old gaming closet and started to look for something else. I passed over X1 and T1 and B4 then happened upon my old pale green monochrome B1: In Search of the Unknown. In years past I never thought particularly highly of B1. Perhaps this is because in hindsight now I believe that it is in fact the module that came in my Holmes box, and not B2 as I may have misremembered. Much like my misconceptions of the Holmes edit, I think I must have similarly dismissed this quite excellent adventure module.

I decided therefore that it was high time to give In Search of the Unknown another look see. Lo and behold upon leafing through the pages I found the crude scribblings of a 12 year old; my own handwriting from '79 or so, from my earliest days of D&D. It looked like I wrote it with a blunt Venus Velvet No. 2 while riding in the back seat of my Dad's Volvo back in the day. Furthermore, it was clear I had completely disregarded the instructions from the module's author, Mike Carr.

Here are some of the entries I found, shared exactly as written 32 years ago:

2 Elves adventuring and will join Party. Grammar was not a strong suit then either.

Gloves of Bending (increases wearer's Bend Bars percent by 60%). This was placed as a foil for the Portcullis Trap above room XIII, and not an indication that I possessed the Players Handbook at the time (although the latter is certainly possible).

If Statue touched it will speak and say “Good Men, would you be so kind as to touch my eyes?” If eyes are touched, toucher must save vs spell or turn to dust. My sadistic ways were becoming evident even at 12 years old. Pity the poor toucher.

Scroll of Diminution under paper weight. Simple Potion to Scroll switcheroo. Sadistic I tell you.

An insane Dwarf is wielding a broken sword. OK. Just go with it I guess.

An Orc will challenge any one member. He is not ordinary, AC 2, HP 15, HD 4. If killed a +1 Sword will appear. Why the Orc is there and why he's willing to duel characters is a mystery, as is the magic sword.

15 Giant Ants guard 3 piles of eggs, they are friends of the bats. Each Ant has 5 GP. Apparently in this game Giant Ants were fairly intelligent and were capable of befriending bats...which also says something about the bats I suppose.

Giant Ant Chief AC 5, HP 20, HD 3. Wears +1 Chain-mail. 500 GP in chest. I can only deduce that the Giant Ants in my 12 year-old mind were more like intelligent bipedal Ant-men, capable of making friends, wearing armor and collecting riches.

Other Monsters included Green Slime, Wights, Giant Ticks, a Gargoyle and even more Giant Ants.

All of the entries I made, other than the obvious “Get-out-of-Jail-Free” Gloves of Bending, were indeed culled from the pages of the D&D Holmes edit. Apparently I had filled in this module during that short period of time in '79 before I had moved on to 1e AD&D.

Well, back to the present: I read the B1 room keys once through, did a random fill of the 56 rooms, changed the player back story and information to fit my needs, and ran B1 for possibly the second time ever. The group did not get particularly far into Quasqueton in this first session, but thus far the game is a success. In fact the first actual room the party entered, aside from the non-room entrance, was the infamous Room of Pools. I never would've guessed that would be the case, but there they were mystified by the pools and terrified of their contents. The party dispatched some Bogloids, Jackals and Thugs*, collected some loot, and headed back to the safety of Generic Town ™ at the end of the day.

After the session I took to reading the rest of the module. Mike Carr's guides and suggestions in particular drove me to write this post. I am going to give B1 some more thorough consideration and continue with thoughts on the module in the near future.

* - Some things never change. 30 years later I am still disregarding the author's instructions.

~Sham

100 NPC Personality Types

2011-03-06T21:18:00.001-05:00

Here's a copy and paste of a table I put together for on-the-fly random determination of NPC personality types/traits. Just short descriptions that might aid in making your run-of-the-mill townsfolk, NPCs or Hirelings/Henchmen a bit more unique. This could easily be doubled in size as the entries are really just scratching the surface.

One-Hundred NPC Personalities

On the spot random determination of NPC personalities/traits.

d00

01. Agoraphobic
02. Anarchist
03. Annoying SOB
04. Attention Whore
05. Authoritarian
06. Back Slapper
07. Bleeding Heart
08. Blind Follower
09. Born Again
10. Brainiac
11. Brown Noser
12. Buffoon
13. Busybody
14. Charlatan
15. Chill Dude
16. Classic A-hole
17. Conniver
18. Cool Character
19. Curmudgeon
20. Defeatist
21. Devil's Advocate
22. Disestablishmentarian
23. Do Nothing
24. Fancy Pants
25. Flower Child
26. Foppish Dandy
27. Freeloader
28. Go-getter
29. Goober
30. Good Guy
31. Good Samaritan
32. Gossip
33. Gourmand
34. Greenhorn
35. Happy Go Lucky
36. Health Nut
37. Heartthrob
38. Hedonist
39. Hillbilly
40. Hopeless Romantic
41. Hothead
42. Huckster
43. Jolly Fellow
44. Klutz
45. Know-it-All
46. Knucklehead
47. Loud Mouth
48. Machiavellian
49. Manic-Depressive
50. Manipulator
51. Masochist
52. Moocher
53. Namby Pamby
54. Neatnik
55. Nice Fella
56. Nosy Nelly
57. Nudnick
58. OCD
59. Old Fart
60. One of the Guys
61. Over Achiever
62. Over Reactor
63. Pain in the Rear
64. Penny-Pincher
65. Perma-Pissed
66. Pervert
67. Pessimist
68. Plain Old Slob
69. Pretty Boy
70. Rebel w/o a Clue
71. Sadist
72. Sarcastic Bastard
73. Scatter Brain
74. Schlemazel
75. Schlemiel
76. Schmendrik
77. Shlub
78. Show Off
79. Shrinking Violet
80. Shyster
81. Sneaky Tippler
82. Snot Nosed Punk
83. Social Climber
84. Sour Puss
85. Space Cadet
86. Standard Bully
87. Supreme Jerk
88. Tattletale
89. Teetotaler
90. Thespian
91. Town Drunk
92. Tree Hugger
93. Wallflower
94. Wisecracker
95. Womanizer
96. Workaholic
97. Xenophobe
98. Yellow Belly
99. Yes Man
00. Young Upstart

Sorry, not sure how to make columns in blogger. Nevertheless if you want to see it in 3-column format I have added a file linked under SHAM'S OD&D STUFF which you can download from mediafire called "100 NPC Types".

I also added the Spicing Up Stairways file from a few days ago for easy downloading, called "d00 Stairways".

Hope these are of use.

~Sham

ODD Bits 5

2011-03-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

Just when you thought it would never raise it's hideous head once more...ODD Bits is back!

ODD Bits is a web log series of trivia questions culled from the pages of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of original Dungeons & Dragons. If you care to play along, answer each ODD Bit question to the best of your knowledge without referring to the source material. Answers are provided in the comments section, so don't peek there until you've tried to answer all five questions.

Grade yourself based on the number of questions you answered correctly*:

5: Unbelievable, 4: Outstanding, 3: Well Done, 2: Not Bad, 1: Not Good,
0: Embarrassing

* - Sham is the referee here, so any rules interpretations taken are final, even if viewed through his warped lens.

ODD Bits 5

1. Which of the following monsters is always aligned with Chaos? A. Ogre, B. Minotaur, C. Gorgon.

2. There are but two entries on the “Character Alignment, Including Various Monsters and Creatures” table which may be of any of the three stances, name them.

3. Monsters in the Underworld are assumed to have infravision unless they are doing what?

4. True or False: A Knock spell breaks a Wizard Lock spell.

5. There are nine categories of Men in the Monster Descriptions section. Name the sole entry aligned with Law.

Good Luck!

~Sham

Buried Treasure!

2011-03-02T16:42:00.002-05:00

(First the old buried treasure) After several requests (well, a few anyway...is 2 a few?) for your viewing pleasure I have added links to my pdf's hosted at mediafire of those little buggers that got that whole OSR One-Page craze cooking a couple years back. Primitive in hindsight, The Dismal Depths original four-pack is now nothing more than an OSR historical footnote of sorts. After all, two years in the blogosphere is downright ancient at this point. Links are on the right under SHAM'S OD&D STUFF. Kudos to ChicagoWiz for crafting that template for me! I also added the old Dismal Depths Traps tables link. Use at your own risk.

(And the new buried treasure), There's another file added now, something new for your megadungeons titled Dungeon Treasure Maps.

What are Dungeon Treasure Maps? Let me explain. Some time back I rambled on about the possibilities of the Maps category of items included in the Treasure Types section of Vol. II. While these were intended more for wilderness adventure, the idea always tickled my fancy. I finally sat down and bashed out a system of similar maps for underworld adventures, called Dungeon Treasure Maps.

It includes some columns and tables so won't copy over well to blogger, but here are a few bits from the single-page file in case you are curious.

"Dungeon Treasure Maps are a special type of item. When the characters decipher such a map, through use of a Read Languages spell if needed, the Ref rolls on the appropriate tables and places the heretofore undiscovered secret location of the treasure trove. It is impossible to find this secret trove before the map in question is deciphered."

"How Trove is Hidden
d00
01-20: Buried: Need Picks and Shovels
21-36: Under Loose Stones: Need Pry-bars
37-50: Behind Wall: Need Sledge Hammer
51-64: Behind Locked Panel: Need Key or Lock-picker
65-73: Sealed Door: Need Hammer and Pry-bars
74-82: Sealed Door (G): Need Hammer and Pry-bars
83-91: Locked Stairwell: Need Key or Lock-picker
92-00: Locked Stairwell (G): Need Key or Lock-picker
(G): Guardians - typically Undead, Golems or other such Monsters able to lie dormant."

"Notes: Tracking down lost or buried treasure should be an exciting endeavor for the players and their characters. There's always a chance they will hit the proverbial mother-lode. Special preparations might be in order for recovering these troves, and keep in mind the noise created from all of the excavating is sure to attract the hungry and/or curious."

So there you have the buried treasure, something old and something new.

~Sham

Spicing Up Stairways

2011-02-28T19:48:00.003-05:00

It's been a while. Today is the unofficial blog birthday here at Ye Auld Grog and Blog so something needs to be posted today.

Here's a table I put together to allow you to add some tension to your next megadungeon sessions. Most games I've seen treat stairways as just so much dungeon-dressing. Use this to keep your players on their collective toes. Just don't use this for every single stairway unless you're a true sadist. Maybe a 2in6 chance but you be the judge.

Shrunk the text a bit to keep it all single line in blogger.

Spicing Up Stairways

01-03: Pit, All Pits (d6) 1-3: 10', 4,5: 20', 6: 30' in depth. These things never grow old.
04: Spiked Pit, roll 1d6 for extra damage. On a 6 roll again and add (result -1) to 6.
05: Poison-spiked Pit, as above then save or die. Someone really wants these intruders dead.
06: Flooded Pit, last time I checked armor still doesn't float. At all.
07: Crusher Pit, prepare to become dungeon graffiti.
08: Holding Pit, snaps shut and can't be opened normally. Somewhere a dinner bell rings.
09: Bottomless Pit, depth as above but use 6d6. Or more. How bottomless do you want it?
10: Double Pits, there's another pit waiting to be sprung. Maybe these things do grow old.
11-12: Sleep Gas, All Gas is invisible, slow-acting vapor. Canaries are immune to the stuff.
13-14: Poison Gas, shoulda rolled up a Canary.
15-16: Rotting Gas, lose one hit per hour until face falls off.
17-18: Delirium Gas, adventurers become acid-tripping hippies.
19-20: Maddening Gas, acute paranoia, violence, that bastard Hobbit is out to get you!
21-23: Darts, All Dart volleys cause 3d3 damage in a wide cone. Unarmored victims take +3.
24-25: Poison Darts, adding insult to injury since 1974.
26: Acid Darts, deals 4d3 instead. Armored victims start rolling item saves.
27: Capturing/Crushing Ceiling, adventurers become trapped and prepare for pain.
28: Capturing/Crushing Walls, as above but ever so slightly more forgiving. Or not.
29: Capturing/Crushing Ceiling w/ Spikes, a masterpiece of dungeon engineering.
30: Capturing/Crushing Walls w/ Spikes, are all the pointy things really necessary here?
31: Capturing/Flooding, there's a drain/fill valve hidden somewhere...right?
32: Capturing/Feeding, in 1d6 turns something big and hungry shows up. Or slithers in.
33-35: Alarm, the arrival of the party to the next level is loudly announced.
36-37: Flaming Oil, jets of slippery oil, ignited in a fireball, thick smoke, roasted intruders.
38: Spider-Blower, large fan sends clouds of upset black widows right at the poor delvers.
39: Snake-Ejector, with a click hidden panels open and drop one angry asp on each character.
40: Scorpion-Bomb, down the steps rolls a sphere with a lit fuse. Boom! Scorpion surprise!
41-43: Slide, All Slides incorporate steps that rotate into a slippery ramp. Quite ingenious.
44: Slide to Pit Below, if the buggers won't trip my trap I'll send them into it! Pick a Pit.
45: Slide and Hollywood Trap, yep – a boulder is rolling down the slide behind ya.
46: Slide to Monster, some enterprising young Monster has set up shop at the bottom.
47-48: Greased, tarnation! some fool done greased this stairway with pig-fat.
49-50: Chute, All Chutes deposit intruders deeper into the dungeon. 1d3+1 levels works.
51: Chute to Holding Cell, maybe something will come check soon. Maybe not.
52: Chute to Pool, for fun toss in piranhas or crocodiles.
53: Chute to Trap, usually a Capturing/Crushing room but there's a secret door. Possibly.
54: Chute to Monster, maybe it's sleeping. Either way the key to get out is around its neck.
55: Web-choked, annoying as all get out.
56: Smoke-filled, some wiseacre lit a bag of Monster-crap down there. It acts like Tear Gas.
57: Fungus-caked, the Clean-up Crew missed this. You might contract Dungeon-Rot here.
58: Bone-scattered, something's been tossing left-overs in here. Haunted by Undead? Yes!
59-60: Partially Caved-in, great care required. Possible collapse. A Dwarf would help.
61-62: Caved-in, pretty much just a dead end. Feel free to excavate it. Takes 200 man-hours.
63-64: Flooded, some moron filled this stairwell with water. A drain/fill valve is at the bottom.
65-67: False w/ Secret Door, to exit-less room. Fill as desired. Real steps hidden in stairwell.
68-70: Trapped w/ Secret Door, as above. Past the Secret Door is a trap and dead end. Hah!
71-72: Sentry, these blokes won't pursue, they will however defend the stairway to the end.
73-74: Toll, some way too powerful Monster extorts gold from delvers here.
75-76: Barricade, blocked by piles of Dungeon Junk. Is something besides junk in there?
77-78: Dead People, whatever killed them didn't bother to eat them. Just took their gear.
79: Lost Adventurer, the little blighter has lost his way. Might he be responsible for 77-78?
80: Madman, raving mad. The Monsters like to poke him with a stick. He collects iron spikes.
81: Portcullis, Well crud! There's a locked Portcullis blocking the way.
82: Locked Doors, heavy double-doors prevent passage. Something nearby has the key I bet.
83: Teleport to New Stairway, old tricks are often the best. No chance the dorks notice.
84: Teleport to Lonely Prison, an extremely accurately named location the Lonely Prison.
85: Teleport to Random Level, chances are 93.7% that it will be to a deeper level of course!
86-88: Random Monster from Level Below, just roll on a table.
89-91: Random Monster from Level Above, just pick from a table.
92-94: Ambushing Monster from Level Below, just pick from a fanzine.
95-97: Ambushing Monster from Level Above, just make something up already.
98-00: Clean-up Crew Member Cleaning, it's going to be upset you tracked dirt in here.

~Sham

ODD Bits 4

2010-08-21T08:56:00.003-04:00

ODD Bits is a web log series of trivia questions culled from the pages of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of original Dungeons & Dragons. If you care to play along, answer each ODD Bit question to the best of your knowledge without referring to the source material. Answers are provided in the comments section, so don't peek there until you've tried to answer all five questions.

Grade yourself based on the number of questions you answered correctly*:

5: Unbelievable, 4: Outstanding, 3: Well Done, 2: Not Bad, 1: Not Good,
0: Embarrassing

* - Sham is the referee here, so any rules interpretations taken are final, even if viewed through his warped lens.

ODD Bits 4

1. How many days of complete rest are required for a character to heal six points of damage?

2. Name the four monsters capable of turning a victim to stone.

3. Lords who build a castle are called what?

4. At what level can Magic-Users begin to manufacture magic items? A: 9, B: 10, C: 11.

5. True or False: One fifth of all magic items found, when using the Magic Items d00 roll, are magic swords.

Good Luck!

~Sham

ODD Bits 3

2010-08-11T17:28:00.002-04:00

ODD Bits is a web log series of trivia questions culled from the pages of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of original Dungeons & Dragons. If you care to play along, answer each ODD Bit question to the best of your knowledge without referring to the source material. Answers are provided in the comments section, so don't peek there until you've tried to answer all five questions.

Grade yourself based on the number of questions you answered correctly*:

5: Unbelievable, 4: Outstanding, 3: Well Done, 2: Not Bad, 1: Not Good,
0: Embarrassing

* - Sham is the referee here, so any rules interpretations taken are final, even if viewed through his warped lens.

ODD Bits 3

1. One miscellaneous magic weapon is found with a bonus of +2, but not +1 or +3. Name it.

2. Under the Angry Villager Rule, the insertion of some character like __________ is suggested to bring matters in line.

3. True or False: The War Hammer +3, when thrown by a Dwarf, deals 2d6+3 damage.

4. Dwarves add __________ levels when rolling saving throws against magic.

5. Name the three monsters specifically capable of a poison attack.

Good Luck!

~Sham

ODD Bits 2

2010-08-05T09:17:00.002-04:00

ODD Bits is a web log series of trivia questions culled from the pages of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of original Dungeons & Dragons. If you care to play along, answer each ODD Bit question to the best of your knowledge without referring to the source material. Answers are provided in the comments section, so don't peek there until you've tried to answer all five questions.

Grade yourself based on the number of questions you answered correctly*:

5: Unbelievable, 4: Outstanding, 3: Well Done, 2: Not Bad, 1: Not Good,
0: Embarrassing

* - Sham is the referee here, so any rules interpretations taken are final, even if viewed through his warped lens.

ODD Bits 2

1. True or False: A Ring of Regeneration can bring it's wearer back from the dead.

2. A player would roll what dice when using the Clerics versus Undead Monsters table?

3. A Ring of Spell Turning will at least partially turn all single target spells with what lone exception?

4. True or False: Creatures and monsters able to speak have a 50% chance to know the “common tongue”.

5. Fill in this blank from the Recommended Equipment section:
“1 _________ Referee”? A. Imaginative, B. Patient, C. Willing.

Good Luck!

~Sham

In the Land of Ooo

2010-07-27T08:55:00.003-04:00

As a Dad I get to watch plenty of cartoons created for kids. I have been enjoying Dexter's Laboratory, Courage the Cowardly Dog and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack for a while now, but this past year a new series began that is appropriate material for Ye Auld Grog n Blog. I speak of course of Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time.

Mr. Benedicto over at Eiglophian Press may have already turned some of you on to the show. If not perhaps I can encourage you to check it out.

I really took notice when one of the recurring characters, the Ice King, referred to himself as a “Magic-User” in an early episode. That's a term normally heard only in D&D circles.

In a later episode, the Ice King used the term “Magic Missile”. Another D&D term. Now I was fairly convinced of some ties to old school D&D.

The recent “Dungeon” episode sealed the deal, of course, with a Mimic, a Gelatinous Cube and a Trapper, amongst other things, protecting, what else, treasure in a dungeon. There's no doubting that Mr. Ward has some ties to old school D&D.

I recommend the Dungeon episode to any D&D fan, and I heartily endorse Adventure Time as a series. It's off-beat and is beginning to develop rather nicely.

~Sham

ODD Bits 1

2010-07-26T10:29:00.002-04:00

ODD Bits is a web log series of trivia questions culled from the pages of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of original Dungeons & Dragons. If you care to play along, answer each ODD Bit question to the best of your knowledge without referring to the source material. Answers are provided in the comments section, so don't peek there until you've tried to answer all five questions.

Grade yourself based on the number of questions you answered correctly*:

5: Unbelievable, 4: Outstanding, 3: Well Done, 2: Not Bad, 1: Not Good,
0: Embarrassing

* - Sham is the referee here, so any rules interpretations taken are final, even if viewed through his warped lens.

ODD Bits 1

1. Not counting Elves, name the three monsters able to Charm an opponent.

2. What's the to-hit and damage bonus of a Magic Arrow shot from a Magic Bow?

3. Characters with a Dexterity score of __________ or higher add 1 to their attacks when firing missiles. A. 12, B. 13 or C. 15.

4. True or False: In order for any character to change class a minimum of 16 is required in the new class's prime requisite ability.

5. Clerics first receive their highest level spells at what level of experience? A. 6, B. 7 or C. 8.

Good Luck!

~Sham

The Spirit of the Matter

2010-07-25T08:13:00.000-04:00

The Spirit of the Matter, not the Subject nor the Sound.

It's nice to enjoy the musical tastes shared by other bloggers out there who have been encouraged by my short lived but inspirational Friday Flashbacks series. Sharing music vids seemed natch to me when I started doing so a couple years back. Now it seems rather ordinary to find Youtube vids along side D&D posts. Who woulda thunk it?

Recently my ears have been treated to pure audio gold thanks to the Music Genome Project at Pandora Radio. As I type this I am rocking out and alternating between my Stiv Bators and Johnny Thunders stations. Chew on that three-chord madness. It's both enlightening and scary as hell when you discover bands that are awesome as all get out yet were formed and disbanded before you ever heard of them. Argh.

Nevertheless, the internet once more proves to be mana from the gods, by Crom.

Anyway, all of this reminded me of a time when the "so-called OSR" (I have always loved that semi-derogatory term) was represented (there were countless others involed) by but a handful of bloggers (discounting the other forms of OSR types). Ha! Disclaimers abound.

To my knowledge I was the first fool to tie D&D to Punk Rock. It really stirred me up last year when some moron linked "fatbeards" with "punk" and old school D&D guys in general. Let me tell you that absolutely NO ONE ever related Punk and D&D back in the day and the very notion was downright silly. I was there in the late 70's/early 80's, D&D and Punk simply did not co-exist outside of my off-beat leanings. Perhaps that is why I eventually linked up with another self-proclaimed Punk in Amityville Mike. To see the opinions that I had spread across the blogosphere reduced to random uninformed insults almost made me delete my web log.

In many ways I should have been flattered. Ah well. To this day I am often surprised by what insults me, and that was certainly a weaker moment. But Ye Auld Grog & Blog survived.

Back to the point. Here's a proto-OSR post (yeah I know it's not even three years old yet) with comments from some important old school types who used to read my ramblings. The definitive OD&D-Punk post which at the time flew in the face of the accepted OD&D-Metal philosophy.

All of that floated out there, I am still taking the non-formulaic DIY approach to D&D. Maybe this post and older link will convince others to do the same.

Oh, and I highly recommend both Johnny Thunders and Stiv Bators for your own Pandora stations. More on those two at a later date.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Magic Swords in OD&D

2010-07-23T08:18:00.001-04:00

I'm still considering the magic items in Vol 2, and once more the topic is Magic Swords.

If you aren't familiar with Magic Swords in OD&D neither this post nor the previous one concerning them will make a whole lot of sense, so maybe an overview is in order.

Magic Swords range from +1 to +3. This is a “to-hit” bonus only unless otherwise specified. Three-quarters of all of these enchanted blades are +1 to-hit, a little over half of which confer either increased to-hit and damage bonuses versus specific monsters, object location, or wishes. A Sword +2 is listed in two varieties, one with and one without a Charm Person ability. Lastly there is a standard Sword +3, a Sword -2 Cursed, and the 1 in 100 +0 Life Drainer. All of these types are randomly determined with a d00 roll on the Swords table.

It does not end there, however. There are nearly four pages of rules for determining the other features of a Magic Sword.

All Magic Swords possess an alignment, determined by a d00 roll, and a level of intelligence from 1-12. Alignment determines who can safely pick up a Magic Sword as they will cause damage to beings of different alignment who do so. Furthermore, alignment will help the referee when making decisions concerning these items in the continuing campaign.

Intelligence will determine the additional powers and communicative abilities of the sword, if any exist. These additional “Mental Powers” include the knowledge of Languages, Read Magic, Primary Powers and Extraordinary Abilities. Communicative abilities are: None, Empathy, Speech or Telepathy. The number of languages known is determined randomly and ranges from one to ten.

The Primary Powers are diced from a table of nine fairly generic dungeon-crawling detection and location powers. Included is the infamous “Detect Meal & What Kind” entry, a sure-fire, giggle-inducing tidbit from the olden days of nerdvana.

The Extraordinary Ability Table contains a dozen spell-like powers ranging from useful abilities like Clairaudience to Telekinesis, Teleport and Fly.

All Magic Swords with Intelligence of 7 or greater will also possess an Egoism score. Ranging from 1-12, Egoism is added to Intelligence during certain situations to see if the sword “takes over” the wielder.

Lastly, there is a 1 in 10 chance that a Magic Sword will possess a special Origin/Purpose. If so, based upon its alignment, the sword will grant yet another power. Swords aligned with Law will paralyze the targets they were fabricated to defeat while swords aligned with Chaos will disintegrate their targets. Neutral swords confer a +1 to all saves power when facing their specific foes. The referee chooses what the special purpose or specific targets of the sword is, for example a sword might be designed to defeat all (Chaotic) Fighting-Men.

Philotomy says it best so you could also benefit from his wisdom.

Anyway, on with the rambling.

Using this somewhat initially cumbersome method for Magic Swords will create plenty of variety. Even the most statistically common result, a Sword +1 aligned with Law and having an Intelligence 6 or below (indicating no special powers at all) only accounts for 11.38% of all random results. Beyond that, if using the Origin/Purpose rule as written, 10% of the swords will have a special purpose which automatically grants the blade a special power. That means the most statistically common result, essentially a run of the mill Sword +1, accounts for a mere 10.24% of all Magic Swords.

Admittedly one can achieve some fairly wacky results using the system in Vol 2 for rolling up Magic Swords. That in itself is part of the charm of OD&D's clunky method.

If you have Vol 2 and wish to not deviate from the original, here are the steps you follow:

OD&D Magic Sword Determination

1. 1d00 Swords Table
2. 1d00 Alignment*
3. 1d12 Intelligence: If result is 6 or less move to Step 8.
4. 1d00 Primary Powers: As determined by Intelligence.
5. 1d00 Languages Spoken: Skip this step if Intelligence is 9 or less.
6. 1d00 Extraordinary Abilities: As determined by Intelligence or Primary Powers.
7. 1d12 Egoism
8. 1d00 Origin/Purpose**: 91-00 indicates a special purpose.

* - Percentages are reversed for sword type 83 from Step 1 (drain life ability).
** - Listed last in my opinion because at this step no powers are subsequently added on as a result of moving Intelligence and Egoism to their maximum.

Granted, if you do not have access to Vol 2 these steps mean nothing to you.

Those wishing to get the same results with an alternate feel of clunk can try the revised version I've created which perfectly replicates the original statistically without duplicating the actual content of Vol 2.

Here's a scan.

I've made a PDF over there to the right in Sham's OD&D Stuff titled Revised Magic Sword Determination. Which reminds me, I have to finish moving all of my old Orbitfiles docs over to Mediafire one of these years.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Unique Underpinnings

2010-07-22T08:27:00.000-04:00

Revisiting a topic I touched on many moons ago, here's another look at the OD&D Vol 2 Magic Items tables. Discounting the wildly random aspect of magic swords, as addressed in yesterday's post, what are the rarest magic items in OD&D?

The following four categories each have but a 5% chance of being rolled on the Magic Items determination table: Misc. Weapons, Rings, Wands/Staves and Misc. Magic. Keep in mind that 25% of “items” are actually Maps and not Magic, then that 1 in 20, or 5%, is reduced to 3.75% for each of the four categories.

Now, within those four categories I will find the items with but a 1 in 100 chance of appearing, or a .0375% chance to be rolled randomly. There are 15 such items and each has 1 in 2,667 odds to be rolled randomly.

War Hammer +3
Spear +3
Spell Storing Ring
Ring of Many Wishes
Staff of Wizardry
Crystal Ball with ESP
Air Elemental Censor
Earth Elemental Stone
Fire Elemental Brazier
Water Elemental Bowl
Helm of Teleportation
Flying Carpet
Drums of Panic
Horn of Blasting
Mirror of Life Trapping

I was considering treating these “ultra-rares” as artifacts in some treatment in the near future. Before the players find any of these, I'll make a note as to where each one is located and remember to re-roll the result if by some slim chance one of these items pops up in a random fill. The end result is promoting the 15 items to some special status from which I can possibly create stories, rumors and even determine what protects or makes use of them within the underworld.

Although my intentions seem reasonable, there's simply no doubting the fact that I will continue to create new items; items which will invariably become more powerful than the ultra-rares. I always do and I'd be fooling myself if I decided to make these 15 rares the top of the magic item ladder, so to speak. The important aspect is these particular items are designated as unique in the campaign. This is not a new notion at all. In fact, I've read others mention that perhaps a campaign in which every single non-consumable item was unique would be interesting, a notion that I have shared myself in the past. For my current games, though, I have decided that the only unique items in the campaign, ones which will be re-rolled if they somehow appear in a random determination, are limited to the 15 rarest of the rare. For now I'll simply use the term “unique item” to describe the items elevated to this status.

Any item with historical notes, rumors and a predetermined location is deserving of a name as well. So I need to add that to the to do list for the unique items.

I think this is an exercise of note because I can already envision the numerous rooms, encounters and even sub-levels which will spring forth from such considerations. Being the dungeonista I am, you can be sure all 15 unique items will be in the deeper levels of my current underworld sprawl. Rumors and legends will beckon adventurers to seek them out and this entire process will create reliable underpinnings for both the dungeon and the campaign.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Somewhere Out There Waits Revoemag

2010-07-21T10:40:00.004-04:00

A pointless exercise in order to create the most campaign-breaking random Magic Sword possible using the rules found in Vol 2 (just without the random bit).

Roll 1d00: 01-65 for a Magic Sword aligned with Law.

Roll 1d12: Intelligence of 12 for a result of three Primary Powers, one Extraordinary Power, as well as the abilities of the sword to understand Languages, communicate via Telepathy and Read Magic.

Primary Powers Table

For the three 1d00 rolls on this table I select 96-99, which states:

“Take two rolls ignoring scores over 95 except a roll of 00”.

Roll 1A: 31-40: Locate Secret Doors
Roll 1B: 41-50: Detect Traps
Roll 2A: 51-60: See Invisible
Roll 2B: 00: Roll on the Extraordinary Ability Table
Roll 3A: 00: Roll on the Extraordinary Ability Table
Roll 3B: 00: Roll on the Extraordinary Ability Table

The sword now has three more rolls on the Extraordinary Ability Table, for a total of four.

Extraordinary Ability Table

For the four 1d00 rolls on this table I select 00, which states:

“Take three rolls ignoring scores over 97”.

Those four rolls just became 12 rolls.

The following rolls are can't miss powers:

21-30: ESP
51-59: Teleportation

The sword can have double-strength powers from this table if the same roll results twice. The sword could have rolled each of the following powers twice:

41-50 twice: Double-power Telekinesis
60-68 twice: Double-power X-Ray Vision
83-87 twice: Double-power Flying
88-92 twice: Double-power Healing
93-97 twice: Double-power Strength Boost

Languages Spoken Table

A 1d00 roll of 00 indicates two rolls. 90-99 rolled twice indicates that the sword knows ten Languages.

Origin/Purpose

A 1d00 roll of 91-00 indicates a special power when striking a particular opponent. For swords aligned with Law, this added ability is to Paralyze. The sword's purpose has been chosen as “Defeat Chaos”, which means all strikes upon those aligned to Chaos causes Paralysis.

I think that's it. Oh wait, as to the type of Magic Sword.

Roll 1d00: 79-80: Sword +2, Charm Person Ability

The Sword +3 and the Life Drain Sword are excellent candidates, but the possibilities with Charm Person added to the insane list of powers, generated “randomly” using just the Vol 2 rules, would be as much fun as a barrel o' barbarians.

Here's the synopsis:

Revoemag
Sword +2, Charm Person Ability
Lawful
Intelligence 12
Ego 12
Situational Egoism 36
Revoemag can Read Magic, use Telepathy and understands 10 Languages.
The wielder of Revoemag gains the following “at will” powers:
Charm Person, Locate Secret Doors, Detect Traps, See Invisible, ESP, Teleportation, Double-power Telekinesis, Double-power X-Ray Vision, Double-power Flying.
The wielder of Revoemag gains the following limited use powers:
Double-power Healing: 1 point/3 turns or 12 points/day.
Double-power Strength Boost: 2-8 times Strength for 2-20 turns, twice per day.
Purpose: Defeat Chaos.
Special Power: Causes Paralysis when striking Chaotic opponents.

With a Situational Egoism of 36, this sword would constantly be at odds with any wielder not spending every waking moment attempting to annihilate Chaos.

Would one ever actually see a sword like Revoemag in one of my games? Sure, if the dice were friendly enough. Although the odds of this sword being rolled randomly are mind boggling to say the least.

Let's roll one using the rules to see how close to an honestly rolled campaign-breaker we can get:

Murdmuh
Sword +1
Neutral
Intelligence 7
Ego 2
Situational Egoism 9
Communicates via Empathy
Locate Secret Doors
Purpose: None
Special Power: None

That's much more like the average OD&D Magic Sword. Murdmuh is the type of sword that might remain in one's arsenal for a long while simply for the Locate Secret Doors power.

Ah well, I'll keep rolling them and my players will keep searching for that one in a quintillion sword.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Don't Miss Out

2010-05-13T09:42:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time I thought about a post describing my Perfect DM. It never saw the light of day, but I was reminded of it yesterday with an email from one of those named below.

It went something like this:

My Perfect DM would have

The Originality of Jeff Rients
The Know-How of James Maliszewski
The Drive of Mike Curtis
The Zeal of James Raggi
The Enthusiasm of Michael Shorten
The Imagination of Scott Driver...

And so forth. In other words the never written post would key in on aspects of some of my fellow old guard bloggers (at the time) who espoused certain characteristics I found impressive.

A lot has changed since I considered that post. Sham's Grog 'n Blog has become eerily quiet. Chgowiz has taken everything down. Mr. Driver did the same with his blogs.

The old guard has exploded from just a handful of us to some unknown number now probably eclipsing one hundred. I no longer try to keep up with all of it. It's overwhelming and I am happy to say that is a very good thing.

Fortunately, Scott Driver emailed to let me know he has returned to blogging. Those of you who missed out on his Wilderlands and Thool blogs can now find out why I have always held Scott's writing in such high esteem, and why I plan to follow his new blog closely.

My advice, and the point of this post: start following Scott's new blog now at Mandragora so you can make sure you don't miss out on your own dose of Driverisms.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

One Year Ago Today

2010-04-01T09:06:00.006-04:00

A cheerful little necro-post to remind everyone what April 1st is all about.

Click here to read Sham's Proposal: A Major Announcement from April Fools Day 2009.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Otherworld Miniatures - Goblinoid Games Announcement

2010-03-08T11:04:00.001-05:00

Otherworld Miniatures and Goblinoid Games have announced a forthcoming series of miniature figure sets packed with related adventures.

As you may have read, these appropriately named "mini-adventures" will be written by some familiar names in our little corner of the web log multiverse.

I have some history with Otherworld Miniatures, having won the excellently sculpted, high quality BS1 - Pig-faced Orc Tribe Boxed Set, found here, in a 2008 Fight On! dungeon-writing contest. I happily agreed to contribute one of the mini-adventures when approached by Richard Scott. As it stands now my mini-adventure will be the final installment of the series so I have some time to watch the sets take off.

I'm excited about the project and based on the collection of talent involved I have no doubt that it will be very well received.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

2nd Anniversary

2010-02-28T10:09:00.001-05:00

Happy Blog-Day to me.

Ruh Roh. I scheduled this ages ago to remind myself of this approaching 2nd anniversary...and then forgot to alter it, so viola there you have the above Hall of Fame post! Short and sweet it is, cheerful it ain't.

Me? Doing great...currently working on four seperate D&D projects in addition to preparing for a new OD&D campaign which begins in the coming weeks. So blog on you loyal bloggers out there and I'll update here when I have something worth sharing.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Gold: Lifeblood of the Underworld

2010-01-22T12:48:00.004-05:00

Why Adventurers seek it, Dragons hoard it and Goblins idolize it.

Gold is woven into the very fabric of the fantasy role-playing campaign, often being the catalyst for adventure. Characters pursue gold because it is a means to an end for their goals, providing experience and wealth in order to realize greater power within the framework of the campaign world. Gold is, after all, power.

Adventuring characters gain experience through the wealth they extract from the underworld. As detailed in The First Fantasy Campaign by Dave Arneson, adventurers in the initial version of what was to become D&D were required to spend their plundered gold pursuing certain motivations in order to gain experience from it.

Gold allows experienced adventurers to bring order to the wilderness on the surface through the construction of strongholds. The forces of Law desire the plundering of gold from the clutches of Chaos in the underworld that they might spread the will of man across the land.

To further their own cause and maintain their grasp in the fantasy campaign, Chaos must oppose these efforts. He who has the gold makes the rules in a manner of speaking.

The underworld itself relies on gold, its presence attracts and emboldens monsters while luring adventurers into the unexplored reaches below. The absence of gold can lead to a dungeon's dormancy or perhaps eventual abandonment. Gold is the lifeblood of the underworld.

With the assumption that gold is more then mere currency, allow certain monsters in the fantasy campaign to become more powerful based on the amount of gold they are able to amass or otherwise keep hidden within the underworld. The underworld will often reward their efforts much in the manner that adventurers are rewarded for capturing and spending gold.

Goblin Hordes: Keeping the Lifeblood flowing

At the far end of the gold/underworld spectrum are the lowly Goblins. Being an abomination of fae-blood and spawned from the very Chaos of the underworld, Goblins find themselves attuned to gold in a manner not shared by most beings. It is their duty to keep this lifeblood of the underworld flowing, and they do so in a number of ways. Goblins place gold above all other motivations because it is one of the surest means of survival in the dark pits they call home.

Nocturnal surface raids, kidnappings and general Goblin mayhem assure that gold is always entering their world from the surface, robbing the forces of Law even if in but a small manner. Following this flow of gold are adventurers who seek to reclaim that which the Goblins have absconded with from above. The forces below value the activities of the Goblins in luring over-dwellers to their demise, and appreciate the fealty often paid to them by these dungeon underlings.

Goblins garner the benefits of gold as a collective, not individually. A typical Goblin community, or tribe for lack of a better word, consists of 40-400 Goblins as well as a King with 5-30 Guards. The King and Guards form the unit which gains a rudimentary type of experience, while the standard Goblins enjoy greater numbers and more powerful leadership.

Goblins do not earn any benefits from simply hoarding gold; removing it from circulation is how they are able to benefit from gold. Here are some possible methods through which Goblins may gain experience from plundered gold:

Goblin Gold Disposal Methods
Bury/Hide: The intent was to use it later but it is forgotten. Map optional.
Sacrifice: In pagan worship, dropped into a mindless monstrosity's lair or deep hole.
Recast: Typically into pagan idols, sometimes into nose-cleaners and the like.
Distribute: As long as the gold goes deeper into the dungeon, either as fealty, payment or tribute, and falls into the clutches of something more capable of guarding it.

Goblin tribes do not begin to gain experience until they have established a lair, with King and Guards, and subsequently disposed of 8,000 gold. At that time the King and Guards will continue to accrue experience. Individual Goblin Kings and Guards will be replaced if they perish, with no penalty, but if the entire royal court is slain the tribe loses all of its accumulated experience.

Goblin Hordes increase in membership while the King and Guards become more powerful based upon an accumulation of experience earned through gold disposal. These scores are tracked in increments called Goblin Horde Ranks, detailed below.

Goblin Horde Ranks
I – 8K: +25 Goblins, +1 Guard, K&G: AC 5, HD 1+1, SA: Max hits.
II – 16K: +50 Goblins, +2 Guard, K&G: AC 5, HD 2, SA: RT Saves.
III – 32K: +75 Goblins, +3 Guards, K&G: AC 4, HD 2+1, SA: RT To Hit.
IV – 64K: +100 Goblins, +4 Guards, K&G: AC 4, HD 3, SA: RT Damage.
V – 128K: +125 Goblins, +5 Guards, K&G: AC 3, HD 3+1, SA: Lucky.
VI – 256K+: +150 Goblins, +6 Guards, K&G: AC 3, HD 4, SA: Two Lives.

K&G: Stats for the King and Guards. King and Guards all possess Move 9 and +1 Morale, regardless of Rank. The Special Ability (SA) is only learned by the King himself, and all six are cumulative.

King Special Abilities: RT (Roll Twice, using the higher result), Lucky (King can Save vs Death to avoid a killing blow), Two Lives (King will spring from the dead once, fully healed).

Gains in tribe members are cumulative across the periods of growth. For example, a tribe at Horde Size IV would have gained 250 Goblins and 10 Guards, its King and Guards would fight with an increased level of expertise (AC 4 and HD 3).

Keep in mind that the King and Guards will often make use of any magic items found or captured if at all possible. Optionally, if gold disposal is focused in the methods of Sacrifice and Recasting into pagan idols a tribe might also realize members with shamanistic or anti-cleric abilities. These Shamans can replace Guards, or complement them.

Dragon Hoards: Establishing Hearts of Adventure

While Goblins keep the Lifeblood flowing, Dragons and potentially other powerful underworld denizens benefit from the hoards of gold they are able to establish and protect. These hoards create hubs of power, or hearts of adventure. Fed by the flow of gold above and around them, these hearts increase in size through a steady influx of wealth.

Dragons long ago learned the importance of gold, the mythical element. By hoarding wealth Dragons were able to realize greater power while preventing the growth of Law. While Dragons may take a stance of Chaos or Neutrality, and even Law in the case of Gold Dragons, they are normally opposed to the spread of civilized man as his influence sweeps across their ancestral lands. Given the ferocity and cunning of many dragons it is only natural that they are often able to collect vast amounts of gold. This then is the motivation for Dragons, by hoarding gold they gain a limited form of experience which impacts their existence in the fantasy campaign.

Dragons establish a proper Hoard much in the way characters build a stronghold; by gaining experience and using wealth. In the case of the Dragon, experience of this sort is a measure of surviving to the very old age of 100 years. The Dragon may have been accumulating wealth in its younger days, but the proper establishment of a Hoard requires a suitable lair, boasting 70,000 gold or more, and the aforementioned age requirement. Once the proper Hoard is established and cultivated the Dragon will begin to acquire greater power while attracting followers.

Dragon Hoard Ranks use a total gold equivalent value which includes copper, silver, gold, gems and jewels. The collection and massing of this wealth is measured in the increments detailed below:

Dragon Hoard Ranks
I – 70K: Followers: 30 HD. Growth: Maximum HD if not already very large.
II - 140K: Followers: 60 HD. Toughness: 7 hp/HD.
III - 210K: Followers: 120 HD. Prowess: Bite deals double damage.
IV - 280K: Followers: 180 HD. Resilience: +2 on all saves.
V - 350K: Followers: 240 HD. Fearsome Breath: penalizes saves by 3.
VI - 420K+: Followers: 300 HD. Long-winded: able to breathe 4 times per day.

Dragons surviving the loss of their Hoard will not lose their special abilities immediately but may stand a chance to watch their followers abandon them. Hoard-less Dragons so pilfered of their wealth will do everything within their power to reclaim their gold and riches. Such Hoard-less Dragons will begin to watch their experience-earned power wane over time. Subdued Dragons on the other hand will lose their special abilities once their wealth is captured and they are removed from the underworld.

* * *

The above Horde and Hoard benefits are just basic ideas; there's certainly much more that can be dreamed up to flesh out this concept of the gold/underworld system and the advantages earned by the monsters propagating it.

Just a little something I've been bashing about and I thought I'd share for your enjoyment on a rainy Friday.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

w/o WALLS

2009-12-04T04:00:00.001-05:00

As 2009 begins to wind down I am easing back into the blogosphere and once again finding myself amazed at how our community continues to expand. When I cranked this thing up here at Ye Olde Grog n' Blog twas but a few of us, now we are many. So many in fact that I KNOW I've missed some good new authors rolling out their first posts and opinions on the olden ways. Somehow I missed Havard's Blackmoor Blog, but it is now dutifully linked in my list (which by the way is in need of some housekeeping).

So I ask: please drop me some links to gaming blogs I should be in tune with. It's been three months since I updated here, and nearly four since I posted anything game related. Fall is always an extremely busy time for yours truly, but enough with lame blog-excuses, it's best to just post and not offer reasons for one's back-sliding. I'll make up for my absence with an extremely long post now. The quick-hitters and casual fans can move along.

During my hiatus I played around with a few pet projects and began toying with decks of cards. You know, the old fashioned 52-card types. I devised a few D&D related uses for that venerable game tool, including dice-less play and chargen rules using cards sans dice. But you know I love dice so it was, for the most part, just a futile foray into numbers crunching and card-flipping. One item did spring forth from my musings, and I wish to share with you a little something I've been fine-tuning these past weeks called w/o Walls.

I'll link up a few PDFs later if you care to dl them (and I can remember my mediafire account info), but in the meantime here is a copy/paste of the basics along with my own example using the template.

w/o WALLS
A card based dungeon system for your favorite RPG. w/o WALLS was originally designed for fast-play dungeon adventures. The goal was to allow an individual Ref the opportunity to exercise his or her creative freedom and ad-lib skills to improvise while entertaining players during a session of role-playing. The system may also be used for Ref-less gaming in a solo or cooperative set-up. The end result is a flexible, unique style of dungeon exploration.

w/o WALLS demands that participants accept the illogical lay-out of the fantastic underworld into which their characters have departed; as you shall see there is no method to return the way one has traveled, and there is no actual map. Turns are taken by the players drawing and revealing a single card at a time. The card drawn will determine what the adventuring group has found in the dungeon.

If you are planning on a traditional approach to dungeon crawling with you as the Ref, then prior to play, in as basic or involved a fashion as you desire, you will need to design the following items for your w/o WALLS dungeon level (or just wing it and ad-lib with zero prep):

[Card]: Item (Qty)

[2]: Single-target Traps (4)

[3]: Area of Effect Traps (4)

[4]: Tricks (4)

[5,6 of S,C,H]: Wandering Monsters (7)

[6 of D]: Fellow Delver(s) (1)

[7]: Empty Room (4)

[8,9 of S,C]: Rooms w/ Monsters (6)

[9 of H,D,10]: Rooms w/ Monsters & Treasure (6)

[J]: Level Exits (4)

[Q]: Secret Chambers (4)

[K]: Hidden Stashes (4)

How to play:
1. Shuffle one 52-card deck and place it face down. Designate an area near the deck for a discard pile.

2. Play begins on Dungeon Level One (or any level from which a returning character has taken a Magic Portal to Town in a previous expedition).

3. Take a Turn by drawing the top card and revealing it. Resolve that card before discarding it and drawing another.

4. Set drawn Aces aside. Aces may be used by players at a later time to escape/trump the last card drawn.

5. Once the drawn card has been resolved or trumped, discard it and any Ace used as a trump.

6. When and if the entire deck has been revealed, the characters must return to town and regroup while the dungeon replenishes itself.

7. If at any time the party ascends or descends to another dungeon level, or returns to town, shuffle all cards back into the deck.

Suggestions:
Tricks: One or more should lead to a lower level.

Empty Rooms: Or whatever you prefer. I allow limited hit point recuperation in these areas only.

Level Exits: Include Up, Down and Magic Portals to Town.

Secret Chambers: If the secret door is not found, treat as an Empty Room. Hide things like Fountains, Statues, Pools and Magic Portals to Town here.

Hidden Stashes: If the secreted treasure is not discovered treat as an Empty Room.

Suit Theme: In general, Spades are the worst and Diamonds the best for their respective categories.

Game Prep: Keep your notes simple, and create three or four levels at a time.

As a creative exercise, try to detail a full level of 48 cards in 30 minutes using the w/o WALLS Fill-in Template.

This latest version is simplified quite a bit, but fits onto one page. The previous version was two pages long and discussed the various play styles and possibilities. The original versions were just way too involved for something designed to be fueled by user input. I have play tested w/o Walls solo, with one player, and in a two player cooperative style. It works fairly well, and imho is more satisfactory that any of the random dice-driven auto dungeons I have seen in the past.

I would like some feedback and input from those who take the time to digest all of this.

The blank template is included as a PDF, as well as my initial example, which I'll copy/paste below:

w/o WALLS Fill-in Template

Dungeon: ECHO DARK
Level: ONE

Single target Traps
[2S]: Covered Pit. 10' deep. Slippery mud walls, bottom is quick-sand like mud.
[2C]: Trap-door Pit. 15' deep. Zombie waiting below.
[2H]: Transmogrification Beam. Turns target into a Giant Rabbit.
[2D]: Jabbing Spear Trap. Deals 1d6+1. A save of 1 equates to a lost eye.
Party Traps
[3S]: Deadly Fumes. Lose 1 CON each round over the next turn. Those under 1 CON perish.
[3C]: Spiked Gate Trap. Slams from wall for 2d6+2, save for 1d6.
[3H]: Volley of Mini-Darts. Struck by 1d6, save to 1. Each deals 1d2 damage.
[3D]: Evil-Eye Trap. Curses party members to fail their next three attacks or saves.
Tricks
[4S]: Utter-Dark Passage. Party lost. Reshuffle all cards back into deck and commence play.
[4C]: Swiveling Hallway. Deposits group one level down and resets. Deals 1d6 damage.
[4H]: Screw-Elevator. Forces group up one level and resets.
[4D]: Dimensional Hall. Returns group to Town. Does NOT count as a Magic Portal.
Wandering Monsters
[5S]: Anti-Cleric and Thugs (5). Here on business. Will pose as good guys.
[5C]: Evil Elf and Bandits (6). Here to recruit, extort or rob adventurers.
[5H]: Clean-up Crew. Grey Ooze (1) on the move quietly going about its duty.
[5D]: Zombies (5) rounding a corner, dragging a corpse back to their master.
[6S]: Skeletons (6) on patrol. Two w/ maces, two w/ spears, two w/ swords.
[6C]: Goblins (8) looking for a lost sack of door knockers. Armed with clubs and daggers.
[6H]: Giant Rats (7) searching for an easy meal. Will follow until forced away or they find food.
Wandering Monsters (Ally)
[6D]: Friendly Berserker (1). Leather armor, Sword and Spear. Looking to slay Goblins.
Empty Rooms
[7S]: Columned Empty Room. Graffiti scrawled in common: “Go seven, then four. Stop”.
[7C]: Cob-web choked Empty Room. A few old pieces of ruined and useless gear are in a corner.
[7H]: Ransacked Empty Room. Splintered bench conceals a sack filled with crude door knockers.
[7D]: A very Empty Room. Footprints of massive proportion seem to walk through the walls here.
Rooms w/ Monsters
[8S]: Granite Span. Manned by 12 Phalanx-Skeletons and a Wight Commander.
[8C]: Circular Catwalk. Skulking Man-eating Apes (3) attempt to attack with surprise.
[8H]: Shallow Pool. Grey Ooze (1) resting spot. Two empty chests rest in pool's center.
[8D]: Stepping Stones. Goblin Javelin-throwers (7) take pot shots at intruders and demand gold.
[9S]: Filthy Mess. Slime-covered Zombies (8) picking through the rubbish looking for brains.
[9C]: Collapsed Chamber. Giant Rat Nest (13). Each round 1d6-3 more arrive.
Rooms w/ Monsters & Treasure
[9H]: Black Shrine. The Zombie-Lord, his Acolytes (5) and Zombie slaves (9). 2,400 GP, 3 Magic.
[9D]: Smoke-filled Hall. Evil Elf Conspirators (4) plot the overthrow of Man. 1,800 GP, 2 Magic.
[10S]: Putrid Cave. Harpies (3) torturing caged captives on ledge above. 370 GP, 1 Magic.
[10C]: Smoldering Pit. Gargoyle (1) rises from mists. 220 Gold, 1 Magic.
[10H]: Flophouse. Drunken Zombie Pirates (12) guard casks of rum and a sea chest. 590 Gold.
[10D]: Stacked Barrels. Giant Cockroach (1) looking for a mate. 120 Gold.
Level Exits
[JS]: Steps Up and out of dungeon, or continue on this level.
[JC]: Steps Down to 2nd level, or continue on this level.
[JH]: Steps Down to 3rd level, or continue on this level.
[JD]: Shimmering Magic Portal to Town operated by Adventurers Guild, or continue on this level.
Secret Chambers
[QS]: The Fickle Fountain. Cures the sick, poisons the healthy.
[QC]: The Scholarly Statue. Asks questions, punishes those who do not answer.
[QH]: The Whispering Pool. Decipher to become fully healed.
[QD]: The Musty Tapestry. Unlock to form Magic Portal to Town.
Hidden Stashes
[KS]: Great heap of rubbish. Conceals sack: 190 GP.
[KC]: Fungus-filled dead end. Conceals panel: 320 GP.
[KH]: False Stairwell. Conceals cubbyhole: 380 GP, 1 Magic.
[KD]: Crumbling stucco. Loose floor stone hides sack: 490 GP, 2 Magic.

For example purposes I've added headers for the various card categories. These are not included in the template nor in the example PDF.

So there you have it. w/o Walls is, at the very least, fun to fill in using the template to see how quickly you can make a dungeon level. I went over my suggested 30 minutes because I was doing a lot of copy and paste while editing various items, but I think with a bit of practice and familiarity one could really crank out dungeon levels at blinding speed.

After I finished the example, I realized I'd truly enjoy making a map out of my ECHO DARK ONE example, but that is not the point of this project. Nevertheless I find that while I'm a huge fan of well-made, handcrafted maps, w/o Walls triggers something within me as a Referee that I find challenging and satisfying.

How's that for a return from absence update? Oh, by the way I am busy working on the updated Dismal Depths project from a new angle. Never fear it is one I am certain will cater to the expectations of those who have been asking for more updates and information on the Dismal Depths this past year. Here's to hoping I'll update again before the New Year.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-09-04T19:39:00.004-04:00

Words cannot describe the legacy of Lee "Scratch" Perry. Below is a minor sampling of his staggering body of work which spans five decades. "The Riddim of the Ghetto and the Lyrics of the Streets"; 70 years old and still recording and touring, Lee Perry is credited with over 70 albums.

Eccentric? Unbalanced? Genius? In his own words:

"Good evening and greetings to you people of the Universe - this is Lee "Scratch" Perry, the mighty Upsetter, madder than mad, dreader than dread, redder than red, dis ya one heavier than lead. We are here at the turntable terranova, it means we are taking over..."

"I am an alien from the other world, from outer space, I don't have no land, no estate, no property, no house. Not on this earth. I live in space - I'm only a visitor here. Some people are only here to collect property. I am here with my suitcase to collect only the good brains."

"I, Pipecock Jackson, Jack Lightning, Jesse The Hammer, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Daniel Dandelion the Lion, Jah Rastafari the crumbler, the ghost of King Arthur, put a curse on BBC radio and television, and BBC government, that they can never undo until they start playing Mr. Perry records morning, noon, and night, and around the clock - tick tock."

Rainy Night Dub

Skanking Dub w/ King Tubby

Zion's Blood

Have a great weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-08-28T11:12:00.001-04:00

This week we indulge in the Dub stylin' of the late, great Mikey Dread.

Dub? You don't know what Dub is do ya?

Mikey is here to learn ya:

Have a Dub-ful weekend.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-08-21T10:49:00.002-04:00

Oh no he didn't!

Yes, The Pioneers and Time Hard, a song popularized in the great Brit Ska revival by one of my favorites of the time, The Selecter. I can't find a version of the studio classic Everyday (Time Hard) from The Selecter's Too Much Pressure LP, but here's a live clip of Pauline Black solo doing the Pioneers cover she once did with The Selecter nearly 30 years ago in 79-80.

But wait...there's more to the story! Time Hard is actually a cover of Buddy Holly's Everyday! Who knew? Or is it? I'm so confused.

Well, anyway, The Pioneers Time Hard is pure genious, and George Dekker, Desmond's half-brother, was a member of the band.

Have yourself a great damn weekend and "Hold your head up high"!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-08-14T11:44:00.001-04:00

It's finally here...Friday!

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Here's a classic to kick the whole thing off with the right attitude:

The legendary Toots, with his Maytals. Words cannot describe the awesomeness that is 54 - 46 That's My Number (also known as 54 - 46 Was My Number):

Enjoy and stay outta the hoosegow.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Much Ado 'bout Ol' Schoo' part 3

2009-08-09T08:16:00.003-04:00

9. The Great Unknown and The Great Unwashed: One of the early lessons I learned with D&D is, I think, still true to this day. There is a correlation between how good the game is, and how much unpleasantness one can stand. A pleasant, inviting and friendly DM might run a crappy game of D&D, but one will play in it week after week because of friendship, respect or just the social aspect and the rest of the players with which to mingle. At the other end of the spectrum is the altogether weird, antisocial mess of a DM who runs the most enthralling game of D&D ever. Games move back and forth between these two extremes, sometimes meeting at that sweet spot where you find a DM you might actually hang out with outside of the game who also happens to run the best games of D&D you've ever played in. Once that sweet spot is found, you'll probably have a gaming crew for many, many years. You might even chase off newcomers that you find seated at your table in order to protect the traditional balance of the group. In order to find the right balance, though, you need to experience as many different DM's styles and approaches as you can. Even if it means politely finishing a game when you would rather stick your pencil through your eye.

10. Writ by the Finger of God: I'm not sure this is true any longer, but at one time, early on, the entire collection of various groups I mingled with waited with baited breath for anything new offered by TSR. The Dragon was our regular fix, and the modules were our irregular binges of gaming goodness. By the time Monster Manual 2 came out, this feeling was waning. Before then, however, it felt like we were a wild-eyed, crazed pack of Gygax-addicted junkies. We'd arrive at the after-school club hoping we were the first ones to have this vital new information. Man was it cool to be the first to show up with Dragon 83 and tell the players that today they would be entering Roger Moore's The Dancing Hut. Yep, I did that. It was new, it was from TSR, and I had to limit the number of participants for fear that they might steamroll the adventure. At the time it seemed like it was impossible for TSR or anyone else to publish too much material. We were ripping through all of it and asking for more.

11. The Radiant Egg: By the time we graduated in 1984, things had turned quickly from TSR-worship to Gygax-bashing. I suppose we had devoured everything we could, and found ourselves wanting. There were some new, interesting non-D&D titles on the shelves that took the Gygax & Arneson concept, and offered fresh new themes and settings. Perhaps it was a time for change. I do think the TSR marketing at the time had a lot to do with this. D&D ads were in comic books, and there was a Saturday morning D&D cartoon that made us cringe. Only a year later Gary was actually gone from TSR. We turned upon TSR and ridiculed Gary and Greyhawk. We stopped accepting and playing everything from TSR. We started homebrewing a lot as we had done in the earliest days. I created an alien planet in my campaign called the Radiant Egg; a parody of Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and the high fantasy of Gary's efforts, all ruled under the iron fist of a ruthless tyrant. We all had a good laugh for a number of years and settled in to a customized/kitchen sink hybrid one would loosely call D&D now. The years passed and people stopped talking about Gary. AD&D 2E was out, but by then we didn't even pay attention. Our regular games weren't quite as frequent. We had sealed ourselves off from the industry. To this day I look back and realize that the Radiant Egg was some sort of misguided pent up frustration stemming from our own reliance on TSR. Along the way we had learned enough about D&D and its concept to continue playing in perpetuity without any outside source of gaming material. In just six years we had seen it all, and come full circle back to taking pencil and paper and making the game our own. I miss Gary, I miss the old TSR, and the Radiant Egg will never be a part of any of my games in the future.

12. Winter of our Discontent: Not long after the heady days of twice a week play, after college saw many of us scatter and eventually reform, we found ourselves in something of a transformed state. Interestingly enough, our state of mind also coincided somewhat with the state of affairs at TSR. The great 80's fad of D&D was on a major downswing. Gary Gygax himself had been ousted from the company. None of us gave a damn about AD&D 2E. The guys were settling down; some engaged, others already entering the careers which they would still be in nearly 20 years later. I'm not sure if it was the gang getting older and facing real responsibilities, a loss of teenage gusto, or the game not being as fresh to us at is once was. I think it was a combination of all of these factors. We had separated and reunited after some very formative and influential years. Sure we gamed a lot during college as well, but it was never like the marathon Saturday games of the early 80's. Something happened, though. The games became more serious, more realistic, more grounded, more mundane. We had entered the long winter of our discontent, and slowly over the course of the following years the group drifted apart. Again, was this families, careers and kids, or a lack of interest in this more mature version of the game? Whatever the case may be, I have shed such unnecessary and burdensome concerns and returned to my roots; what matters now is the concept which once united us, best enjoyed in its undiluted form.

So what is old school? I'm just a Proto-New School Neo-Grognard, why the hell are you asking me? I know for a fact, based on the divergent styles I experienced in the first six years, that many readers who played during that era will offer entirely different memories and observations from the period of 1979-1985. The fact is that D&D exploded onto the scene in those years, and very soon after nearly went bankrupt. From the penthouse to the outhouse, as they say.

If hard pressed my only answer is that old school embodies the free form approach of the first decade of D&D. The one unifying element at the time was that there was no right or wrong way to play, and that everyone did so differently.

Thanks for reading, even if you only skimmed the initial summary in part one.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Much Ado 'bout Ol' Schoo' part 2

2009-08-08T08:13:00.003-04:00

3. Wet Behind the Ears: Additionally there were already, in these early days, various divisions in the fan base. Not only did I experience the normal school boy underclassmen – upperclassmen prejudices, but there were D&D prejudices at every turn. These opinions had little to do with whether one was playing original, basic or advanced D&D. In fact, pretty much everyone was, by that time, playing AD&D. The Dungeon Master's Guide was the latest addition to AD&D, and by then it was basically old news. I owned all three volumes shortly after I joined the D&D Club. Few of the groups I played in, in retrospect, played the game in the manner envisioned by Gygax and TSR, but your street cred was established by using the AD&D books. Only a silly Freshman, like me, would show up with the basic D&D box. Most of the time us underclassmen had to make our own games, and they were, shall we say, probably what you might expect from a bunch of 14 and 15 year olds. I suppose you could say we were the Proto-New School of the time, and our games were somewhat unconventional. The only defining aspect of our Proto-New School was that we definitely ad-libbed and made rulings on the fly much more often than the older players, and we were all just fine with that.

4. A Spork in the Road: It wasn't long before us Proto-New Schoolers were the upperclassmen of the club. By then I had developed something of a reputation as one of the go-to DM's, and my regular group was expanding quickly. Soon it grew to include weekly gatherings on Saturdays at the Rec Center. So I was averaging 12 to 14 hours playing twice a week by then. I watched as the hobby grew. I witnessed the various media stories, and how preconceived notions of the game spun out of control. We were undaunted, and luckily our parents, with a few exceptions, had open minds. Especially my own, as I was consumed with the hobby. DM'ing that many hours a week meant I was spending a lot of free time in game prep. I watched as the non wargamers came onto the scene. Thesbians, Ren Fair folks, comic book guys, burn outs, the occasional jock or two, and the curious older siblings. None of which had any idea what they were getting into, and had never rolled dice except to move past Go and collect $200.00. The game was changing; the second revision of basic D&D was out. It was the first time that I felt uncomfortable with the way I saw the game being played, and was probably when I began running into Rules Lawyers more than ever before. Suddenly I was being told I was doing it wrong. The AD&D 1E Rules Lawyers caused us to become insular and selective, and from there we departed down a narrow path that would eventually seal us into an early 80's time capsule.

5. Because It's There: One of the things that many of us took great pleasure in accomplishing was a result of what was in print at the time. If Experience Tables went out to Level 29, so did we. Grandfather of Assassins? Check. Grand Master of Flowers? Check. Sword of Kas? Check. And so forth. I even recall one game that actually rubbed me the wrong way; I had a Dwarf who discovered all the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts in the first game session. Now that's a really bad example of what I mean, the point is that we explored all the aspects of AD&D, including taking on various gods from the Deities & Demi-Gods hardcover. I mean come on, they had Hit Points. We had god-like PC's. Who says we shouldn't or couldn't? We did. And we talked about it for years afterwards. While my own campaigns ended up being of an extremely high power scale, the side effect was that I was forced to home brew a lot in order to keep things challenging. My players were crafty and shrewd. They were, and still are, meta-gamers. The game is a challenge, and they use every tool in their arsenal to persevere. After all, we were wargamers and we approach D&D with the same mentality; winning was more important than role-playing for us. If you print it we conquer it because it is there. Gamers will be Gamers.

6. Nebulous Stirrings: Obscure inspirations and unconventional themes always scored plenty of style points back in the day. At the time it was much easier to impress players than it is now, of course. There is very little new under the RPG Sun nearly 30 years later. Now we are often left with theorizing, philosophizing and waxing poetically about the old days. The concept is what was being explored. Mechanics and rules were secondary. Things worked, players understood the game, and the creative energy was spent on coming up with these unusual challenges or settings. Back then there was only one dungeon with aliens, mutants and robots. Yeah, that was old hat. You had to be much more original than that. The thing is that while the boundaries of the game were being pushed as far as themes and weird settings, no one, not a soul, even had the time nor inclination to worry about the rules themselves. The days of nebulous stirrings are long gone, and now it seems that mechanics and style are keeping everyone occupied. It was much more interesting when good ideas and interesting themes weren't simply rehashed ideas, and when the technical side took a backseat to the creative side.

7. Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble: The mindset of the average D&D enthusiast during that ascent to TSR's peak was one which was likely forged by the fellows at Lake Geneva themselves. AD&D 1E had been foisted upon the masses in what was a stroke of marketing genius. First of all it was “advanced”, and second of all those hardcover books were, for their time, glorious and overflowing with Gygax's gushing descriptions. We ate it up. The thing is, we had been trained, by TSR no less, to essentially pick and choose the bits we liked, and change or ignore the rest. This of course left plenty of room for throwing the veritable kitchen sink into our games. Not only did we have OD&D and its supplements, Holmes D&D, AD&D and The Dragon magazine, we also had tons of Judges Guild material, and oddball “unofficial” publications galore. You never knew what to expect from one DM to the next. The mechanics themselves were nearly always the same across the board, but the options were never limited to AD&D. If you pulled out the Critical Hit table from the Arduin Grimoire, nobody blinked twice. If you used some strange monsters from the White Dwarf magazine, you were outwitting the players. That was part and parcel in the wild and woolly games of the day; the cauldron was bubbling over with material from a seemingly unlimited amount of resources. Even if you never once took up pen and paper and designed custom monsters or magic items, the scene was bloated with offerings in print from countless sources; and they were never out of place in anyone's campaign.

8. Under the Big Top: While this may have been more or less a reflection of the scene at the time, I have never since witnessed it again. In both our D&D Club and our Rec Center games one would find players who arrived at the game table with one or more “traveling PC's”. I've shared a story of one such famous Paladin in our club who met his demise in the then infamous Tomb of Horrors. Traveling PC's were almost expected. Very rarely did someone simply create a high level PC in order to join into a game. In such a case the DM awarded the new player with an exisiting NPC, who for one or more sessions went from Henchman to Hero, or the new guy rolled up a 1st level character and hoped that the other players would have mercy on him and keep him safe until he could contribute. Short of those options the player would show the DM his traveling character, and after possible alterations said character would be introduced to the party. I had some fun with this too many times, to the point that my players would essentially tie up and interrogate all newcomers. I had hardened them through the long campaigns. What I took from this over the years was that there was a unique sense of community amongst all of us; we were sharing in this hobby and marveling at one another's accomplishments at the same time. Even if said traveling PC's bit the dust in one of my dungeons.

~Sham Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-08-07T21:05:00.002-04:00

A classic from 1969: Desmond Dekker and the Aces, The Israelites

And the 1980 Remix from Stiff Records:

Have a great weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Much Ado 'bout Ol' Schoo' part I

2009-08-07T08:03:00.001-04:00

A dozen observations from the front lines by a Proto-New School, Neo-Grognardian Dungeonista.

What follows is a collection of thoughts and observations that I recall from my own experiences in what many now call the old school era. Ranging from 1979 to 1985, these were my peak D&D playing years. All 6 of them, yet it feels like a landmark event in retrospect. Very little changed in fact after 1985; that is until 2007 when I embraced OD&D. But that is not the topic at hand.

My motivation for sitting down and collecting these memories is to tackle the oft asked question, what is old school? I'm part of something dubbed the Old School Renaissance. I'm not sure what the rest of the members of the OSR think old school is, or what they believe the OSR represents, so I cannot speak for anyone else other than to say that I support the OSR because I'm a fan of TSR era D&D. Plain and simple.

I was unaware until recently that many believe the OSR has a doctrine, or some unifying philosophy. As far as I'm concerned we're a collection of vastly different fans of D&D. In that regard I do not think anything has changed since 1985, when Gary Gygax left TSR.

In the effort of keeping this easy to digest, I have broken the post into three parts, and will offer up a summary that was initially going to be included at the end.

So what are the salient points for those not wishing to dredge through the sordid details of a 40-something's recollections? I will attempt to highlight them below and hope that they form some sort of understanding and not just the realization that I'm a crusty old stick-in-the-mud.

1. A wargames background that helped us form a game simulation approach to D&D, as opposed to some desire for or notion of realism.

2. There is no right or wrong way to play D&D, and each DM did it his or her way.

3. The only defining aspect of our Proto-New School was that we definitely ad-libbed and made rulings on the fly much more often than the older players.

4. The AD&D 1E Rules Lawyers caused us to become insular and selective, and from there we departed down a narrow path that would eventually seal us into an early 80's time capsule.

5. Winning was more important than role-playing for us. If you print it we conquer it because it is there.

6. It was much more interesting when good ideas and interesting themes weren't simply rehashed ideas, and when the technical side took a backseat to the creative side.

7. The scene was bloated with offerings in print from countless sources, and they were never out of place in anyone's campaign.

8. There was a unique sense of community amongst all of us; we were sharing in this hobby and marveling at one another's accomplishments at the same time.

9. In order to find the right balance you need to experience as many different DM's styles and approaches as you can.

10. At the time it seemed like it was impossible for TSR or anyone else to publish too much material. We were ripping through all of it and asking for more.

11. In just six years we had seen it all, and come full circle back to taking pencil and paper and making the game our own.

12. What matters now is the concept which once united us, best enjoyed in its undiluted form.

1. Gamers will be Gamers: I discovered D&D on my own in 1979. No one told me about it, nor taught me how to play. The thing was, though, back then, thanks to an older brother, I had already played numerous Avalon Hill and SPI table-top wargames. My older brother didn't like D&D, but he never gave it a chance. I suppose it was because his little brother had “discovered” it. None of his die-hard Diplomacy buddies knew anything about it. I grew tired of Diplomacy; it had swept away the other wargames I enjoyed before then, like Panzerblitz and Afrika Korps. I eventually discovered other D&D players. Like me, every one of them was also a fan of wargaming. Table top wargaming to be precise, miniature wargaming was still as foreign to them as it was to me at the time. We were arriving at D&D from a wargames background that helped us form a game simulation approach to D&D, as opposed to some desire for or notion of realism.

2. Unbridled Ambition: As my circle of fellow D&D enthusiasts grew beyond the first meager gatherings, I realized that this thing was bigger than I had ever imagined. By the time I was plunged into the Wargaming Club and the D&D Club in High School, there was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air. D&D was still expanding in popularity, and would continue to do so for years afterwards. Although we didn't know it, we were riding the waves of enthusiasm that were to herald in a new era in gaming and popular culture. I arrived on this scene thinking I knew all about both wargames and D&D. I was dead wrong. It was in this atmosphere that I discovered the many different approaches and playstyles popular amongst the various groups there. The gamers were exploring many different possibilities, not simply the Tolkienesque games I had experienced prior to High School. What I learned first and something I have never forgotten since; there is no right or wrong way to play D&D, and each DM did it his way.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Time in the Game

2009-08-05T09:01:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's post, Too Much Time, was a stream of thoughts and notions likely too lengthy for most sphere dabblers to digest. Today I emphasize the end result of the treatment; the Time in the Game PDF linked under Sham's OD&D Stuff over on the right, listed as "Game Time".

But Why? I'm fairly convinced that most referees have no idea how tracking time in OD&D actually works. Time in the Game presents an organized method that replicates the orignal system while removing references to minutes, and pushes combat into an easy to fathom game turn which gives no regard to the oft ridiculed one minute D&D combat round.

Maybe I'm in the minority that finds great value in distilling such elements down to the game essentials, but I am presenting this with the assumption that it might "turn the light bulb on" for other fans of OD&D.

After all, I am the Dungeonista. I dig this sort of stuff.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Too Much Time

2009-08-04T11:19:00.004-04:00

The biggest abstraction in D&D is Time. One of the first complaints leveled at 0e combat is the one-minute round. Many assume that the single Roll to Hit (RTH) and the single damage roll after a successful RTH are an abstraction representing how masterfully the combatant performed in that time, and that the hits dealt represent various attacks and blows in those 60 seconds. This depends upon how you interpret the guides. Look no further than the ruling used for magic shields which spells out the chance to block a single successful blow (attack). Others assume in that round that the combatant has exercised all of his experience and know-how in positioning, parrying, exchanging harmless blows, side-stepping, and generally Errol Flynn-ing it up in order to arrive at the single important RTH representative of that one meaningful attack. Maybe so. If you subscribe to that theory it's hard to justify tactical positional modifiers in your game. In reading the OD&D rules over and over, I've come to the conclusion that there was only ever one attempt to strike the opponent per round. Take into account Missile fire. In one minute a skilled Archer could loose half a dozen arrows quite effectively, and probably empty his entire quiver with non-stop launching. Again, I maintain that OD&D melee assumes but a single attack per round. I know this flies in the face of the standard oe acceptance of abstract combat. The issue is not truly one of combat, but rather the time associated with it.

For another example of the abstract treatment of the passage of time in D&D, look no further than Movement rates. The D&D Turn is defined as two moves in the Underworld. Characters take two moves per 10 minutes, ranging in distance from 60 to 120 feet. That's a rate of 120 to 240 feet in 10 minutes. Those rates may be doubled when the characters actually run in a panic situation. Hardly realistic at all.

Outdoors in the Wilderness (defined as unexplored areas, cities and castles; basically anything not in the Underworld itself) these numbers are tripled; a slightly more palatable 120 yards to 240 yards in 10 minutes. Not quite realistic either, although once in the light of day on the surface play normally becomes what is now known as hex-crawling; each Move constitutes one Turn which is equal to a single Day. But you get the idea. Don't let anyone tell you that glossing over Wilderness travel isn't old school. It was designed with the notion of rapid simulation in order to bring the player characters to their destination.

Take the rules for Surprise as another example of this abstraction of time. Surprise awards a free move segment or action, which can be taken to attack if the surprised foes are within range, and then a round of uncontested attack. If close enough the non-surprised combatant can use its free move segment to attack, followed by its free melee turn; that's two free attacks before melee proper begins. That's well over 60 seconds of attacks prior to a response by the surprised side.

Turns in 0e are so ingrained in the war gaming philosophy which gave birth to D&D that the original scheme was readily accepted, as it should continue to be. The fact is that time in D&D is all relative. It is based on Turns which begin at the high end outdoors in the Wilderness representing one Day, continue to the Underworld representing 10 minutes of movement or other non-combat activities, and end at the oft ridiculed one minute exchange of combat.

Does it really matter that a round (melee turn) is one minute long? Does it really matter that it takes 10 minutes to search a small 10 ft. section of dungeon wall? I think not. If you disagree feel free to adjust combat rounds to six seconds and Move Turns to two minutes, or whatever floats your boat. The simple Day-10 Minutes-Minute system is hard to resist for its ease of tracking. Yes the Move Turn could be changed to five minutes I suppose, but the abstract method first devised works very well if you employ it as written. When you keep it at 10 minute Turns, the characters are allowed five Turns before rest, thats 10 Moves followed by one Turn of rest, or one Hour. The Wandering Monster check is easy to track as well; in 0e it is made each Turn, or every 10 minutes.

The length of the melee turn is almost irrelevant. Whether an encounter takes 2 rounds or 8 rounds, referees will simply restart the clock post melee in most cases. So does it matter that 12 seconds or two minutes have passed? Downtime after the encounter normally rounds out the start of the next Move Turn. In my games combat normally represents 10 minutes. With 0e you almost get the feel that combat pauses the Underworld clock and moves to an abstract measurement of time in which sides simply take turns whacking at one another until the encounter is over and everyone has licked their wounds before restarting the clock once again. It's a fairly tight and simple system if you can accept the fact that it is nothing more than an abstraction and that the varied-duration game turns are all relative.

To recap, that's 10 Moves in 5 Turns, with 5 Wandering Monster checks, followed by one Turn of rest and a final Wandering Monster check. One Hour has passed. It is a simple and easy to remember system for tracking time in the Underworld. Each encounter will expend another Move Turn for every 10 exchanges of combat, or portion thereof. A typical Underworld expedition will embody up to 10 hours which includes all time spent underground and the return trek to the surface. Adventurers not resting as required, or surpassing the standard 10 hour allotment will become taxed or even exhausted.

Now we can stop talking even further about time with a few tweaks. Hours become Full Turns, and 10 Full Turns in the Underworld constitutes one Day. Other than the Day itself, all other references to time in the way of hours and minutes has been carefully removed. Suddenly we are returning to the table-top feel where time is all relative, or almost irrelevant. The true concern is using Turns wisely and effectively in the game Day.

To seal the deal consider this: All encounters which result in Combat expend one Move Turn; the first action being the melee itself, the second being rest and regrouping. Now Combat is merely the exchange of blows, each side taking turns until the outcome is determined.

I've whipped up a new PDF which considers the above information. It is now embedded in my OD&D links section to the right and is entitled Game Time.

EDIT: 3:00 PM EST: I made the changes necessary to the Time in the Game PDF. As a note, it does indeed replicate the OD&D rules with one exception; that all melee is considered to occur within the span of one Move (or roughtly five minutes for those keeping track).

I hope you find it of use. If nothing else it should help fellow fans gain a better understanding of the original system and its wargame underpinnings.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

On Deck at THM

2009-08-03T11:11:00.001-04:00

Amityville Mike has officially announced that his long awaited Stonehell megadungeon has reached draft status. Chgowiz and I have had the copy in hand for a couple of days now, and we've both been reading it over. I cannot provide any spoilers, but what I have had the pleasure to read thus far has certainly exceeded my expectations. Like many of the entries in the One Page Dungeon Contest, Mike's Stonehell pushes the boundaries set forth and becomes its own unique vision of the minimalistic approach adopted by the author.

Stonehell was perhaps the unifying force of Three-Headed Monster Games when the idea for a gaming coop was taking shape behind the scenes at the web logs maintained by the two Mikes and myself. It was clear very early on that Mr. Curtis is blessed with remarkable devotion and creativity, and that good things lay ahead for Stonehell.

I'll withhold further praise for the megadungeon until the three heads have ushered the project along through the creative pipeline. Like many others who have followed the development of Stonehell, I have very high hopes for the finished product; which is to say that we'll be holding this publication to some lofty standards. I am convinced that the collaborative spirit of THM Games will see to it that no one is disappointed.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

S&S Indeed

2009-07-31T10:51:00.003-04:00

Swords & Sorcery ain't got nuthin' on Spears & Spells! OK, yeah that's a stretch. What about Spears & Shields?

Swords seem to have captured the genre with a muscular grip of thick Hyborian sinews, but Spears should be just as important, if not more so, than Swords. I fully understand that Swords are widely considered the pinnacle of hand-to-hand melee technology. It's just that by the time the Sword actually took the title of undisputed champion, by way of the long sword, firearms were but a few generations away.

Compare that to the oft disregarded Spear. The reign of the Spear was far, far longer in the greater history of warfare. In the truest example of fiction/fantasy influence, D&D coughed up the crown to Swords. In OD&D Swords account for 1 out of every 5 Magic Items discovered. Spears? A paltry 1 out of every 200 Magic Items. Something's amiss here.

Also, consider the Shield in not just OD&D, but all editions. Shields improve Armor Class by one. Really? OK, I can live with that in the greater scheme of things, but Shields are realistically much more valuable in hand-to-hand combat.

Perhaps the Sword is the more romantic of the two. Perhaps the image of knights in shining armor is likewise more evocative of the fantasy genre which D&D embraces. The fact is, take a Spear & Shield and you're good to go melee wise, armor be damned.

Would it be heresy to make the unjustifiably disregarded Spear the predominant weapon in a campaign? Would it be blasphemous to make the disrespected Shield the basis of one's true Armor Class in a similarly conceived unconventional campaign? I think not, and I believe that such notions are both historically and logically sound.

So there you have it. The Spear reigns over all melee weapons, and the Shield is the backbone of any defensively-minded Fighting Man in said campaign.

The Spear is useful with one hand or two, as an effective deterrent to charges, tactically due to reach and usefulness in cramped confines, and further as a crude missile weapon. Nothing really needs to be said about the Shield; it is clearly as important as armor, regardless of whether one is clad in scale, chain or plate mail. That D&D made the Shield as effective as leather armor is laughable.

The Spear & Shield campaign replaces magical and sometimes intelligent Swords with Spears. It also rearranges the AC rules as detailed below:

No armor: 9
Leather: 8
Chain: 7
Plate: 6, reduces Move by 3
Shield: -3 AC
Large Shield: -4 AC, reduces Move by 3

Just thinking out loud. Carry on, but give the Spear and Shield their due or I'll get all Spartan on your Barbarian scum hides.

~Sham

Ugh

2009-07-30T23:58:00.002-04:00

Look, I'm one of a very tiny niche of a niche of a niche that loves both 0e D&D and Punk. Yes I went to some lengths last year to explain the ethos shared by both. So suddenly Punk is another bad word to level at 0e fans, just as fatbeard is another to utilize similarly. What have I wrought?

Unplugging from the sphere for a while to focus on the reason I'm actually here: D&D.

With the occasional "How ya like me now" video. In parting,

~Sham

Out of the Frying Pan

2009-07-28T01:31:00.007-04:00

Well, actually off of the Back Burner:

I'll be covering some of my future plans and projects over at Three-Headed Monster Games. Some of the tidbits discussed there will be linked here now that I have a new sharing account after the Orbitfiles debacle. Thanks for the various suggestions, but I've settled on MediaFire for the time being.

In the meantime I'll clutter my bandwith here at Ye Auld Grog & Blog with the scans I made. Apologies for the smudges in certain areas; my printer didn't want to cooperate with the way too think paper I was forced to use, but the images get the idea across effectively. There is one Open Office file and a pair of PDF's I've shared on MediaFire. The first of the files is Sham's OPD Template, seen below:

Using the "Check Method" will require the Open Office file entitled Treasure Tables. Once you grok the Check Method the small table on both the example and template will make sense. It's not nearly as complicated as it might at first seem; you'll grasp the idea quickly and find that it's simple as can be.

Finally I made a quick PDF of an Example OPD, borrowing old info from the Dismal Depths, level 1B; The Chambers of Zod. There's an error I just spotted on the map (forgot to change the 1A bit), but I'm sharing it just to give an example of the new template version, as seen below:

Feel free to dl the template, change the tables, add to it, whatever. More information can be found in my post over at the THM Lair (AKA the Head Shed).

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-07-26T00:59:00.004-04:00

Yes, I know it's actually (at this point) quite technically (who's counting?) Sunday.

Let me remind you whose name is hanging on the placard out front: Moi.

Yes this is the "Friday" Flashback.

Some history: I DVR'd the movie: What We Do Is Secret. A biopic of the influential early LA punk band, the Germs.

The plan was to watch said flick and get a post ready by Friday. Well, here we are over 24 hours later trying to get our act together.

The Germs. Love 'em, hate 'em, there are what they are. (Or were, thanks to a very timely Darby Crash suicide/OD):

First off the REAL s**t:

And an interview for Germs fans:

Realize that Darby died in 1980; the Youtube catalog is somewhat limited:

Now go get in-freekin-infected by some Germs. Oh, one more:

You'll thank me later.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The Good Major Weighs In

2009-07-24T11:30:00.005-04:00

David Wesely added to the comments section of the lengthy Q&A with Greg Svenson with insight into polyhedral dice, the co-founding of RPGs, and other tidbits which will be of interest to many readers. Thanks again, David!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-07-17T22:14:00.003-04:00

A few flashbacks for your listening and viewing pleasure tonight, from the inexplicably never-big-in-the-States mod/punk trio The Jam. One of the greatest three-man bands ever? Had I the time that would be a fitting tribute to yesterday's unveiling of Three-Headed Monster Games, but for now three from this legendary threesome will have to suffice:

In the City, live at the Circus:

All Around the World, live on the Marc Bolan Show:

And finally, the classic To Be Someone, live:

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Dirty Work Afoot...

2009-07-16T10:00:00.002-04:00

Born when the world was young, a trio of ancient powers, long trapped in time, have been fused together by inexplicable energies and emboldened with newfound vigor. Unchained at last the creature emerges from its otherworldly lair, a half-dozen eyes gleaming with steely determination, bearing three keyboards bristling with untold arcane force…what? Keyboards?

Announcing Three-Headed Monster Games, brought to you by, well, three heads, myself included. The other pair of heads is a pair of Mikes, namely Michael Curtis and Michael Shorten. Yes, those two characters better known in this realm of gaming as Amityville Mike and Chgowiz. I had the pleasure of becoming online blogging acquaintances with these two last year. In December the three of us began to trade advice and critical thoughts centered on the One Page Dungeon idea. Shortly thereafter we formulated the notion of publishing material with one another’s insight and assistance.

From that concept grew what we are unveiling today with Three-Headed Monster Games; a working cooperative and collaborative gathering place for like-minded gaming enthusiasts to congregate. Tapping into the collected talents of its members, Three-Headed Monster Games seeks to establish itself as a functional think tank and design space for both writers and artists who can maintain complete control of their ideas while publishing under an identifiable brand.

For the time being the effort involves just the three founders, Mike, Mike and Dave. You are invited to follow our plans, projects and progress at the new web log, which is sure to give plenty of tidbits on upcoming publications. The galvanizing force that prompted us to finally move forward with this concept is being unveiled as I type this. I’ve had the pleasure of a sneak peek at this book, and I am proud to announce the first in what promises to be a long line of quality material from Three-Headed Monster Games.

That book? Michael Shorten’s elegant Swords & Wizardry Quick Start rules. Mike has managed to create an effortless no frills set of low level rules, and the only analogy I can come up with is also the highest compliment I can conceive of; it is to S&W as Holmes D&D was to 0e. No I am not comparing the two or claiming that this is the new Holmes edit, just that it fills a similar role, serving as a great jumping off point for beginners while catering to the needs of dedicated low-level enthusiasts. The Dungeon of Akban is perfectly positioned within to provide invaluable examples for both the neophyte GM and the hardened veteran, and even if you own Swords & Wizardry already, you may find yourself reaching for this before the Core Rules themselves. If it’s not already available, it should be soon at Ye Old RPG storefront.

There are already other ideas percolating in the THM pot, and the Swords & Wizardry Quick Start is just the beginning. So pop by and say Hello. Just let me warn you, there’s dirty work afoot at Three-Headed Monster Games. You have been warned!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Summer Doldrums

2009-07-15T23:01:00.001-04:00

It’s been a bit quiet ‘round these parts of late. Only four posts in the past 30 days time is a clear sign of summer. Nearly a month ago I announced I’d be absent for a dozen days so I could focus on judging the One Page Dungeon Contest, and devote spare time to wrapping up a rather large submission to Fight On!

Agreeing to get that adventure done in one month was me being over-confident in my writing capabilities. I didn’t meet the deadline, but was able to estimate the size so it could be planned around. I should’ve known I wasn’t giving myself enough time; I’ve had nothing but delays and, well, writer’s block with that adventure since day one back in August of last year.

It’s been submitted for a number of days now, but I figured I’d make a post in regard to the blasted project tonight. It’s something of a flight of fancy in many ways, and I’m hoping the editor is bold enough to cut out chunks of the text I wasn’t able to part with. It is truly the polar opposite of the One Page Dungeon, overflowing with information and threatening to collapse under its own weight.

I don’t even know if it’s coming back to me with a nasty letter and orders to revise the thing. It was submitted in font size 9, weighing in at 31 pages, 10 of which are devoted to the adventure’s appendix. It features in the neighborhood of 90 rooms, 70 NPC's, 20 new monsters, 24 new magic items, 20 rumors, 20 suggestions/events, and some tables. That room count includes guest rooms and sub-caves, and many of the NPC’s are just names. Don't let the high page count mislead you, although it is wordy where it needs to be, it is still crammed with substance.

Here's the altogether dense mess of a map that I'm hoping will be in FO! 6:

It was something of a challenge working a functional Adventurer’s Inn into the dungeon. My insistence on including a detailed background and loose plot further complicated matters. Wrapped around all of that I plugged in what I hope are realistic cave and spelunking features using speleological terms.

With an Inn so close to the action I had to take a few things into consideration. Resource management becomes easy mode if this is a normal dungeon level, having a safe house and resupply point around the corner. How can I ensure that players would want to continue to make use of the Inn, even after they are “done” on this level? What on earth, or beneath it, would make anyone want to run an Inn down here?

To combat the proximity of the Inn I undertook two goals. First I would make the caves difficult to negotiate, much like a real cavernous complex. They’re difficult to map, even harder to traverse, boast secret sub-caves and hidden tunnels. Jogging back to the Inn after each encounter is time consuming. Second I deliberately made many very challenging encounters. Most of which can be retreated from safely, but add even more in ensuring that although the Inn not too terribly far away, the level is downright nasty for 5th level characters unless they have large numbers and play wisely.

There’s another plot driven aspect to the Inn that actually might deter characters from spending the night within, but that’s GM adjudicated and shouldn’t be something that prevents them from using it altogether. The Inn is really the focal point of the level.

In an effort to make the Inn actually feel like an Inn and not just a collection of dungeon rooms, I wanted to add enough creative opportunity for GM’s to be able to craft endless possible adventures revolving around the establishment. How successful I was there remains to be seen.

Lastly, why would Jalen Longspear want to open and operate such a place? Reasons are given in the adventure and I think they hold up well enough that players won’t consider the whole affair ludicrous…that is as long as they don’t consider megadungeons in general ludicrous.

In the end I think that the Inn has some nice sand-box aspects to it, as there are plenty of areas to discover and explore. The NPC’s in the Inn offer a plethora of city-type adventures with a crafty GM at the helm. There’s some history and an involved story that can be uncovered but is not essential to the level. There’s some really weird eerie old magic infused throughout.

As I told Calithena, if nothing else the 10 page appendix might be worthwhile for the additional homebrew within. I’ll have more on this submission once I learn whether or not it is seeing print, and then I can give away more information as it is warranted.

*****

This long hiatus has also involved something which I’ll be announcing tomorrow. There’s a six eyed monstrosity stirring in its deep, dark lair, and I think it will awaken on the morrow.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-07-03T22:56:00.004-04:00

Live version of 1971's Queen Bitch, which is cited by many as the starting point for Glam Rock, was David Bowie's tribute to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground:

Here's the studio LP track found on Hunky Dory being used in the end credits for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou:

Which is Director Wes Anderson's video tribute to the end credits found here:

Yes! The always awesome Buckaroo Banzai! So, when's that sequel again?

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the music score for Life Aquatic was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh. Yes, that Mark Mothersbaugh. Wes and he have teamed up for Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums as well.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

112 Page Dungeon Contest

2009-07-01T16:14:00.000-04:00

As most are aware at this point, the highly successful One Page Dungeon Contest (OPDC) Winners have been announced. I'd first like to thank Chatty DM and Chgowiz who together took on the bulk of the effort here; announcing the contest, assembling a staggering array of prizes, accepting entries, and remaining flexible during the entire process. They also served as judges, and brought in myself and a few other innocent bystanders to help in that department, namely Alex Schroeder, Amityville Mike, and Dave the Game, for a total of one half dozen judges charged with reading and evauluating all 112 entries, and coming up with winners.

By the time you read this my esteemed cohorts will have already compiled the Honorable Mentions, Runners Up, and Winning Entries. Rather than make you read what has already been posted, simply follow these links from three of the judges involved. I'd like to thank all 112 of the contest entrants. It was an honor to be able to get an early look at these dungeons, and to be able to evaluate each when formulating my list of favorites. To say I was impressed with the creativity of many of the entries would be an understatement.

Here's the little scan I made back in December of last year that started this whole thing. Wait until you see how many of the contestants interpreted this simple idea and made my original flounderings seem laughably rudimentary by comparison!

I'll have a lot more to add in regard to the contest, and I'll be focusing on some themes and individual entries in the future. In the meantime, hearty handshakes go all around to everyone involved with the One Page Dungeon Contest.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-06-19T01:41:00.000-04:00

A word to the wise: Youtube is both a blessing and a curse. Watch these videos at your first opportunity. More than a dozen of my Friday Flashback videos have already been removed from the site due to the Big Brother record company spies out there. Not that I can blame them, but nonetheless let these words remind you that Youtube music is best served fresh or not at all.

On to this week's heaping helping. I've been somewhat remiss in my 70s offerings so I'm taking a short break from my speleological research for the Lower Caves to correct that issue. A glaring oversight is about to be filled (and then some) with this serving of classic GLAM ROCK.

First, the stunningly awesome original of a 70s classic from Sweet, the Desolation Boulevard UK LP version of Fox on the Run:

And the US single top 40 hit take on the same song, which most readers will recognize immediately:

Lastly, the rare demo version of the same song which cannot be embedded but at 1:44 long is worth a click in order to hear the complete Fox on the Run history.

Fox on the Run Demo

Damn, Sweet could jam.

Have yourselves a GLAMorous weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

One Dozen Days

2009-06-16T20:59:00.000-04:00

For the next twelve days or so I'll be fairly scarce here as I have two pressing tasks which I need to see through to completion before the 28th. First is my contribution as one of the judges for the One Page Dungeon Contest. I'm nearly done with that effort. The second is finishing up the long lingering, somewhat troublesome Lower Caves of the Darkness Beneath level for Fight On!, something I've been wrestling with for far too long.

Speaking of the One Page Dungeon Contest, little did I know when I signed on to help judge these entries that we'd end up with so many! The daunting task of reading through the sheer number of entries was compounded by the fact that there are numerous fantastic One Page Dungeons in the mix, making the rating process harder than I would've imagined. There's some real talent out there and I'm convinced that once you see the winning entries you'll agree.

After many hours gnashing teeth and wringing hands, I am moving forward with a revamped, plot-lite version of the Lower Caves. The involved backstory and entangled scenarios of the original notes were proving to be too much. The sheer weight of the project was causing me to continually set it aside for another date. After 10 months of stop and start I've reworked those notes and begun anew. The map and most of the encounters remain unchanged, but the bulk of the story, ramifications of player actions and adventure paths have been expunged.

Before I sign off to focus on the above items, I'll tip my hand just a bit. For your viewing pleasure, below the break you'll find a sneak peek into my adventure design methods.

****************************************************************************

Welcome to the Lair of Sham! Here you will discover images detailing my three step dungeon writing process; Inspiration, Notes, and the magic of Technology!

INSPIRATION must not be rushed. The One Page Dungeon Concept came to me here after an unfortunate TP supply oversight.

Me and my Lower Caves NOTES. Definitely one of my better photos. I know, I know, Brad Pitt...I get it all the time. Thank you Nutri-System!

Where the MAGIC happens! Hard to call myself a Grognard with all these new fangled geegaws. Oops, forgot to empty the wastebasket before snapping that photo.

***************************************************************************

I'll be lurking in the shadows until I've finished judging those entries and writing the Lower Caves. Once those two tasks are wrapped up it's back to semi-regular blogging and another long lingering project, this time thankfully one with no deadline.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Hidden Chests

2009-06-14T17:51:00.003-04:00

Nick of Castle Dragonscar recently shared a nifty little OD&D dungeon he made using the Distribution of Monsters and Treasure guide from Vol. III, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. I enjoy using that guide for both random fills and restocking, as well as determining the contents of random treaure troves.

Longtime readers will remember how I made a single roll table with odds derived from those guides, one which changed slightly and has now morphed into Version 3.

Version 1:

Restock (1d6)
1 - Monster
2 - Monster & Treasure
3 to 6 - Empty (1in6 chance of hidden treasure)

Version 2 (below) succeeded in requiring less dice rolling while maintaining the same odds for hidden treasure.

Restock (1d6)
1 - Monster
2 - Monster & Treasure
3 to 5 - Empty
6 - Empty (4in6 chance of hidden treasure)

While considering how to streamline this process further, I realized I could do away with that last step in Version 2 altogether by introducing a new standard to the Dismal Depths, Hidden Chests.

Version 3:

Distribution & Restock (1d6)
1 - Monster
2 - Monster & Treasure
3 to 5 - Empty
6 - Empty (Hidden Chest)

Every dungeon has Traps and Secret Doors as well as suggestions on how to allow characters to sense or find them. Adding a third item to this concealed feature set seemed plausible and logical.

The Elf, in OD&D, has a 2in6 chance to sense the presence of a Secret Door, and double (4in6) the odds of locating one while searching in the proper area.

The Dwarf has the racial ability to note traps underground. As I've shared in the past, I use the Elf - Secret Door example as a precedent for judging this vague ability, allowing the Dwarf a 2in6 chance to sense the presence of a Trap, and double (4in6) chance to locate a Trap while searching in the proper area.

It only seems natural for me to handle this new, third standard in much the same fashion. Pick your campaign's burglar/robber/scalawag type (even if he's no more than a Fighting Man class-wise), be it the Hobbit, 'obbit, Halfling, Hobling, or Hoblit, and make that greedy little blighter the Hidden Chest expert. Again, using the Elf precedent:

The Hobbit has a 2in6 chance to sense the presence of a Hidden Chest, and double the odds (4in6) of locating one while searching in the proper area.

My concerns with the notion of Hidden Chests as a new standard include the fact that Traps and Secret Doors are found outside of rooms or chambers just as often as within, and that neither Traps nor Secret Doors are included on random tables like my latest Distribution & Restock Table. Well, not to worry, Hidden Chests can also be placed on the map with a symbol and legend description, just like Secret Doors. Nothing revolutionary here, but then I realized...why aren't there any random Traps on such a Distribution table? Hidden Chests takes care of that as well now.

But wait Sham, there's still no Traps on that there table! Ah, that's where I realized that the new standard would work well for my dungeons. The 1 out of 6 randomly filled rooms in your dungeon that end up with a Hidden Chest result can be, as always, filled manually, or one can roll on the subtable below:

Hidden Chest Table (All Locked)
1. Empty
2. Trap, Empty
3-4. Treasure
5-6. Trap & Treasure

And viola! I have Traps in my latest Restock table. Oh, and yes, there will be an optional Chest Traps Table for a half-dozen Trap examples. I'm still trying to decide how that will mesh with the Dismal Depths Trap Guide.

For those keeping score at home, this new version still maintains the original ratios. One third of the rooms have Monsters, of those one half have treasure. Two thirds of the rooms are empty, of those 1 in 6 have hidden treasure. Overall rounded percentages, for the original guide as well as all three single table versions, look like this:

Monsters 33.3%
No Monsters 66.7%
Treasure 27.7%
No Treasure 72.3%

Version 3 Features:
Hidden Chest 16.7%
Trap 8.4%

The notion of Hidden Chests might introduce a new Magic Item for the Dismal Depths as well, single use Magic Keys which disappear after opening a Hidden Chest. This depends upon whether or not there are any ne'er-do-well rapscallion types included in the campaign or not.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The Mt. Rushmore of D&D Monsters

2009-06-13T20:23:00.000-04:00

"Mt. Rushmore", in this blog's context, means the four most iconic or important items from a particular D&D topic. Today's topic is Monsters. The previous topics were Spells and Magic Items.

What would your Mt. Rushmore of D&D Monsters look like? You're only allowed four and for this exercise make the list without consulting any D&D books. After making your list, proceed to comments to see mine.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-06-12T17:23:00.001-04:00

Friday Flashback: Retro-Clone Version!

In the spirit of Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry, I present musical Retro-Clones of that other significant 70s revolution, Punk (yes, D&D was not the only important thing to happen in that decade). After 30 years, these guys GET IT!

First off, I can't resist these French babes and their garage retro Pop-Punk sound, The Plasticines and their rockin' song Loser:

Next, former Blur member Graham Coxon shells out some pure retro PUNK with Freakin' Out:

And, in the Art School CBGBs style, DIG THIS retro Punk from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the effusive Karen O singing Rich (apologies for the audio interruption and cut-off):

The delivery might be updated, but the attitude is what matters, three decades later. Punk will never die.

Have a great retro-freakin-weekend.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The Mt. Rushmore of D&D Magic Items

2009-06-12T00:57:00.000-04:00

"Mt. Rushmore", in this blog's context, means the four most iconic or important items from a particular D&D topic. Today's topic is Magic Items. The previous topic was Spells and next will be Monsters.

What would your Mt. Rushmore of D&D Magic Items look like? You're only allowed four and for this exercise make the list without consulting any D&D books. After making your list, proceed to comments to see mine.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The Mt. Rushmore of D&D Spells

2009-06-10T18:19:00.006-04:00

I'm kicking off a mini-series today, a short lived theme called Mt. Rushmore.

"Mt. Rushmore", in this blog's context, means the four most iconic or important items from a particular D&D topic. Today's topic is Spells, future topics will be Magic Items and Monsters.

What would your Mt. Rushmore of D&D Spells look like? You're only allowed four and for this exercise make the list without consulting any D&D books. After making your list, proceed to comments to see mine.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-06-05T15:38:00.002-04:00

Who would've thunk it? A song about jilted homosexual love with lyrics that rankle the FCC on Friday Flashback? I know, I know...but bear with me and read on. I'll bet you've heard this one before... Jet Boy, Jet Girl, originally written and recorded by Elton Motello in 1977, is a song that just won't go away. It's popularity stems from the blissfully catchy tune and chorus in spite of the lyrical content of Elton Motello's original. Released in November of 1977, it predates Plastic Bertand's wildly popular Ca plane pour moi, released in December of 77, by one month. The only common theme between the two is the music itself. Plastic Bertrand recorded his lyrics with the same backing band featured on Elton Motello's Jet Boy, Jet Girl, using the same melody. Both songs have been covered by countless bands since 1977, most notably Jet Boy, Jet Girl by The Damned, the song which most listeners will identify with and probably assume was the original. "Ca plane pour moi" translates roughly to "It is gliding for me", or basically, "Everything is swell", the lyrics relate the story of a night of drunken debauchery and a one night stand. The lyrics are mild compared to the Elton Motello original, which many laud as a gay Punk anthem of sorts. It's not the lyrics that make this particular song but the pop perfection of the melody and that always recognizable chorus.

I'm not sure if it's the unsettling lyrics of the original, or the unusual story behind the recording of Ca plane pour moi, whatever the case may be the trend of using the melody and chorus of Jet Boy, Jet Girl set to entirely different lyrics continues to this day.

I'll ease into this one with Plastic Bertrand's Ca plane pour moi:

Now Elton Motello's original Jet Boy, Jet Girl:

And The Damned performing their classic version live:

And finally an example of the strange Jet Boy, Jet Girl phenomenon recorded by Dr. Explosion called Surf Taliban:

Have a great weekend and let it all glide for you too.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Quotable Arneson

2009-06-04T09:27:00.000-04:00

During my recent research into Blackmoor, I saved a number of tidbits which I found interesting along the way. Of particular note are quotes from a few different interviews with Blackmoor's creator, Dave Arneson, dating from 1981, 1999 and 2004.

Dave Arneson Quotes

On Blackmoor's origins:
We established in our historical campaigns the principal of having a Judge who everyone listened to and who set up the battle or campaign. That’s where we were coming from, traditional wargaming.

On Blackmoor's best feature:
To me, what made it unique and different was that a lot of what made up Blackmoor was input from the players and the way they were seeing the world, and what they were doing in it. I just kept notes. I built the framework, and would occasionally throw in a few storylines, but it was the players getting involved in filling in a lot of the gaps that made a difference.

On TSR:
I was doing a lot of work for them but they weren’t doing anything with it. I got tired of waiting a year and a half to get something published so we parted.

On Homebrew:
We ask people to use their imaginations and when you do that, they tend to have their own ideas of how things should be done. Any group that sets up a dungeon will eventually have their own rules.

On Role-Playing:
When I do my games, I give roleplaying points for people staying within their character. If they want to go out and kill things, that's easy to do, and a lot of referees that's all they do, but there's more to it. The richness is not in just rolling dice, the richness is in the characters and becoming part of this fantasy world.

On Player involvement:
...when a character gets killed, I let the player run the monsters that the party encounters. This way he or she stays involved, rather than becoming a spectator or leaving. When the party encounters intelligent monsters, I brief them on what that monster’s life goals are (usually "Guard this room, don’t let anyone in"). Then if the party wants to negotiate, they negotiate with him rather than me. That system also takes a little pressure off of me as a Judge.

On 25 years of RPGs:
Sitting down and reading boxed dialog, going through seven or eight volumes of rules, is a long way from the scribbled notes I started off with...It just got very, very complicated and, in the efforts to simplify things, they just lost whatever creativity was left...I think what you lost there was the spontaneity of the whole operation...Too many of them try to do everything, or they follow the official line of "You can't change anything or you'll destroy the rules."...That's not the way things started, that's not the way things should be. If something doesn't work, get rid of it. If something works in another set of rules and you want to put it in your game, go for it. The [rules'] job is to make the referee's life easier, so he can referee, not harder.

The above copyright Judges Guild, 1981 and 1999.

On Blackmoor Castle, the first Dungeon:
Well, dungeon crawls were, I think, the easiest things to set up because all you had to do was draw a grid map and didn't have to worry about the great outdoors and setting up trees and stuff. People also couldn't go wandering off where you didn't have a map because it was solid rock.

On Rules:
Most of the rules are only between my ears and they're constantly changing.

The above, including image, copyright IGN Entertainment, 2004.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

ORIGINS of a HOBBY

2009-06-02T05:13:00.008-04:00

A chronological study of some of the most important events leading to the first published modern RPG, TSR's Dungeons & Dragons, 1974.

ORIGINS of a HOBBY: from LONDON to LAKE GENEVA

1893: William Britain, Jr. invents hollow casting in lead.
Wm. Britain, Jr's new hollow casting technique uses less lead which revolutionizes the toy soldier market. The result is little lead men which are less expensive to both produce and ship, making the collectibles more affordable and available in large quantities. Competitors soon followed suit and toy soldiers were being mass produced for the first time in history. Amazingly enough it all started with little Billy who had just inherited the toy company and didn't know the difference between dry measure and liquid measure. Junior went on to sell his toy soldiers across the globe, often delivering them by hand to such remote regions as Paris, France and nearby French Indochina.

1910: The Great War Game, Hanks.
Possibly the first published wargame designed for use with toy soldiers. Date not verified. Marketed in the U.K. as a game for Boy Scouts, it apparently did not prepare them for Tanks, Machine Guns, Mustard Gas or Barbed Wire. Unfortunately the supplement, The Great Dig a Trench War Game, never made it to publication. Interestingly enough, the game predated The Great War itself by four years. That's World War I in case you haven't been paying attention...ever.

1913: Little Wars, H. G. Wells.

Widely considered the first published wargame for miniature figures. By renaming the toy soldiers “miniature figures” and adding serious rules for shooting a toy cannon at them, adults could continue behaving like children in dignity. According to observers, Mr. Wells was notorious for making up house rules on the spot while playing Little Wars. Herbert would later use some of these personal house rules as inspiration for his most famous novels: The Time Machine (take an extra turn), The Invisible Man (add new troops mid game), War of the Worlds (bring random objects such as colanders to the field), and The Sleeper Awakes (enemy soldiers knocked over by Kipper the family Corgi were “dead”).

1929: ShamBattle, Dowdall & Gleason.

First U.S. Wargame for miniature figures. The major advantage on this side of the pond was access to Lincoln Logs, another toy which adults need a good reason to play with. The game's subtitle, Quixotic Reenactment, is one of gaming's strange, ironic twists. Not really. Entertainment trivia buffs will note that one of the coauthors is better known for his ongoing role as the lovable town drunk Otis in the long running television series The Andy Griffith Show.

1936: Real War threatens.

Hints of the struggle soon to come in Europe and across the globe are evident when Germany declares that the first true wargame was the Kriegsspiel, produced by Prussian army lieutenant von Reisswitz in 1824. Seeking to prove to the rest of Europe that England's Little Wars claims were hollow, Germany was gearing up for war. Then a rift in the Kriegsspiel methodology and doctrine divides the military minds into two distinct camps; those insisting on the 1824 von Reisswitz version, and those backing the more modern 1862 von Tschischwitz game. War is averted as die Alte Schule and die Neue Schule create an impasse in the German military machine. That and the imposing Maginot Line had German Officers wringing their hands in frustration for years.

1943: Fletcher Pratt's Naval War Game, Fletcher Pratt.
Perhaps if his pal L. Sprague had been involved the title for Fletcher Pratt's widely famous game would've been more clever, but Mr. de Camp was busy revealing the sordid truth behind the H. G. Wells Little Wars myth. Outrageous claims leveled against H.G. included de Camp insisting that the Little Wars subtitle, “a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for the more intelligent sort of girl who likes boy's games and books” was clear evidence that Mr. Wells was an unrepentant male chauvinist. Wellsians to this day have not forgiven the misguided de Camp.

1958: Gettysburg, Avalon Hill.

Gettysburg, along with other Avalon Hill Adult Games series titles, takes the battle away from miniatures and to the military boardgame. Gettysburg took the miniature figures world head on, redefining wargaming forever. Modern versions of this classic game feature Architecture Buffs defending the Cyclorama Visitor's Center and Gift Shop from History Buffs on a headlong Picket's Charge maneuver.

1959: Diplomacy, Allan B. Calhamer.

A military boardgame of strategy, negotiation and psychology with no dice and an optional GM/Judge. Optional as in if anyone wants to go home alive after the game you'd better make sure you have one. One of the first games to encourage lying and backstabbing, Diplomacy has established itself as a true classic. The more realistic house ruled version encourages cheating; eavesdropping and hiding, altering or peeking at notes. The game was a popular pastime behind the scenes during the Nixon administration. CAD (Citizens Against Diplomacy) blame the evil game for Richard's inexplicable activities during Watergate, and have been seeking to ban it ever since.

1966: Modern War in Miniature, Michael F. Korns.

First wargame with individual player-controlled Characters and a GM/Judge. And now we arrive at the first true RPG. Or is it a wargame? Well, it's both, and Modern War in Miniature includes a GM who sets everything up and can explain exactly why the Panzerkampfwagen VI was actually a better fit for the Wehrmacht than the SdKfz 182 Konigstiger. The original manuscripts for the game were tragically lost when the author used too much lighter fluid while melting plastic soldiers in a miniature flame-thrower encounter and set off a brick of fire-crackers. In perhaps history's first display of GM ad-lib aplomb, Michael declared that the battle was postponed on account of the Brits celebrating Guy Fawkes Night.

1966: Fight in the Skies, Mike Carr.

First RPG/wargame with persistent Characters and Experience. Still going strong, this game's newer version is called Dawn Patrol. It is the only game that has been played at every single GENCON since the first, in 1968. Of note is the fact that 2004 was the first GENCON where Mike Carr wasn't the only participant to sign-up for and play the game. Coincidentally, the 2004 convention also marked the end of Mr. Carr's record-setting 35 year run as Top Ace of GENCON. Rumors are that Mike Carr will unveil his “Snoopy Sopwith Gambit” at GENCON 41 this year in one last ditch effort to win back his hard earned title.

1969: Braunstein I, David Wesely.

Considered the first Open-Ended RPG/wargame sessions (not published). If it hadn't been for the players clamoring for another, that would have been the last Braunstein, as Wesely considered the whole thing a failure. Truth be told, Wesely had planned to come up with the worst possible game night ever for the club in hopes that they wouldn't ask him to run anything again. Wesely arrived for the game with no preparations, and figured if he just "winged it" all night his goal would be accomplished. When that backfired David was finally able to escape the constant "More Braunstein!" demands by joining the US Army. Wesely is credited with introducing polyhedral dice to gaming, laying the groundwork for the modern RPG, and inventing Thumb Wrestling.

1971: Chainmail, Gygax & Perren.

First published fantasy wargame for miniature figures. Regardless of which story you believe, Gygax's or Arneson's, it seems quite clear that Chainmail was a vital part of the concept that Dave Arneson formulated the same year with his Blackmoor campaign. Chainmail is an important piece of the puzzle detailing how modern RPGs came to be. Prior to the Fantasy Supplement section, Chainmail was published in two parts in The Domesday Book, the newsletter of the Castles & Crusades Society. Other articles included alongside Chainmail were Fabricating your first Beer Bong, Electric Jello: a How To, Hamms versus Pabst: the Debate Continues, and A Guide to Satisfying the Munchies.

1971: Tractics, Reese & Tucker.

The first wargame to use 20-sided dice. A game of modern tank battles, it required a d20 in order to establish the base 30% (15 or higher) chance to hit another tank. This was before the advent of the 10-sided die. The game borrowed from Michael Korns' Modern War in Miniature in that a GM/Judge was required to adjudicate the fog of war. The rules served to display the greater numeric range and higher level of detail possible with the d20. The game's major drawback was the sheer amount of set-up time involved. The rules were written on a scale of 1:1, meaning real-life tanks had to be employed. Reese and Tucker were last seen trying to secure a refurbished British Comet tank in 2001, near Brighton, Sussex, England. The very first Tractics game should be underway by the end of 2012.

1971: Blackmoor Castle, Dave Arneson.

Dave Arneson introduces Teamwork, Dungeons and other essential fantasy RPG concepts to his Twin Cities Club. Grows into the first fantasy Campaign, eventually defining the modern RPG (not published). Dave Arneson blended, borrowed, meshed and tested anything and everything while running his early, experimental games. It was the concept that continues, to this day, to shine through, no matter what form it has taken. This was the beginning of the modern RPG. Certain details of Blackmoor found their way into published form in The First Fantasy Campaign from Judges Guild. Notable players in those first Blackmoor sessions included Greg “Svenny” Svenson, Stephen “Rocky” Rocheford, Mike “von Ricthofen” Carr and future professional golfer “Fairway” Freddy Funk. The earliest participants in Blackmoor actually took on the role of their real life personae, except for role-playing pioneer Bill “Three-Dollar” Hastings, who insisted on playing as Annette Funicello's Dee Dee from the uproarious 1965 film, Beach Blanket Bingo.

1972: Castle Greyhawk, Gygax & Kuntz.

After seeing how Arneson ran a Blackmoor session, Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz collaborate to create their own version of Blackmoor Castle for their Lake Geneva Club, naming it Castle Greyhawk (not published). Given an outlet for his writing skills, Gary Gygax never looked back. The World of Greyhawk which was born of these early days remains a strong, viable fantasy campaign setting. What really stands out is the passion and verve with which Gary undertook the labor of bringing life to his imaginary world. A world which has seen countless fans and players of Dungeons & Dragons through the decades. It is said the very first expedition into Castle Greyhawk, consisting of Gary as Referee, and his son Ernie, Don Kaye, and the Kuntz brothers Rob and Terry as players, was almost a complete disaster due to Gary's insistence that all participants speak entirely in anagrams. Eventually the session was saved when it turned into an evening of experience point rewards for clever puns and one-liners. Although the dungeon entrance was not discovered on that initial adventure, the characters did happen upon the now infamous Concession Stand of Endless Hot Dogs in the castle ruins.

1972: Don't Give Up the Ship! Arneson, Gygax & Carr.
The first in a long line of collaborations from the creative team of Dave and Gary. Mike Carr contributed research and quite a bit of the writing and design here as well. In fact, he impressed the TSR guys so much that he went on to write the now famous module B1: In Search of the Unknown, and edited the first three AD&D books: Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Now he writes about snowmobiles and pursues his first love, World War I Ace Pilots from his secluded Wisconsin mansion, Quasqueton. Sources say there is indeed a room within full of mysterious pools. You guessed it, I don't have anything to say about Don't Give Up the Ship! at all. I'm sure it's a fine wargame, as Naval wargames go. I only wish that Arneson and Gygax had followed the theme of the game's title and continued working together.

1974: Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax & Arneson.

The first published modern RPG. And thus, here we are at the end of the time line. Sure, some things have changed out there in RPG land, but truly the modern RPG is, at it's core, still the same product we were given in 1974 by Gygax and Arneson. The concept is the thing, the rules are secondary. Whether you prefer rolling dice to role-playing, that's fine. Whether you prefer open-ended sand-box play to story-telling narrative games, that's fine. Don't like dice? They're not needed. This rule or that rule makes no sense? Change it. The critics can lay whatever claims they care to at the feet of 1974's Dungeons & Dragons game, but it's the concept that was conveyed within those three volumes that matters. Whether or not Gygax changed every single mechanic that Arneson had devised is likewise irrelevant. 1974 saw the introduction of a new concept in gaming, and the world stood up and took notice. In one form or another, D&D and the concept it unleashed upon mankind will always be with us...until Domesday that is.

Special thanks to Bob Beattie for his Wargaming Time-Line. I make no claims of ownership of the above titles or affiliation with the parties involved. As to my historical facts, parties wishing to dispute my findings may do so over a cold beer at an undisclosed local watering hole.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Q&A with Greg Svenson

2009-05-30T08:06:00.007-04:00

With Dave Arneson's recent passing, our hobby lost one of the most important links to its earliest, formative days. Arneson & Gygax will be forever remembered as the coauthors and founders of Dungeons & Dragons, but there is so much more to Mr. Arneson that we were never truly allowed to learn while growing up in the 70s, 80s and beyond while playing the game that his Blackmoor campaign spawned. I've read with wonder the stories that Greg “Svenny” Svenson shared with readers at his website before it was taken down*. As a player in the original Blackmoor campaign, Greg is one of only a handful of gamers who were present to witness the fledgling game sessions which eventually gave rise to the entire table top role-playing genre (and beyond).

I believe that remembering the magnitude of Dave Arneson's concept, and his Blackmoor campaign, is perhaps more timely now than ever before. As someone who is interested in the influences and inspirations that went into Mr. Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, I felt that being able to pose some questions to the Great Svenny himself might be an opportunity I couldn't pass up. I wasn't sure that my random email to his site's address would even be answered, let alone read considering that it was sent not long after Dave Arneson's passing. I had no idea that Greg had attended Dave's funeral, nor that he had delivered the eulogy. I was wary about pursuing this Q&A considering the nature of its less than appropriate timing, but Greg assured me that he would be happy to take a look at what I had drafted up and let me know what he thought of the idea.

During our various correspondences I learned that at the funeral Greg had seen another Blackmoor player from the early days, Stephen “Rocky” Rocheford**. Greg was able to later email Stephen and have him look over the answers below. Stephen was kind enough to confirm Greg's recollections of those events from the early 70s in the Twin Cities, before Dave Arneson had taken a position with TSR in Lake Geneva, WI in 1975.

My reasons for this Q&A were multiple, and I will let the answers speak for themselves. I think that Greg did an outstanding job in answering these questions considering that nearly four decades have transpired since that very first Blackmoor game in 1971.

---Start Q&A---

Greg: I haven't really been interviewed like this before, so I shared my answers with one of the other guys who was one of the players on that original dungeon adventure in Dave Arneson's basement back in 1971, Stephen Rocheford (later known as St. Stephen from the Temple of the Frog adventure). He was probably just as active as a player as I was though the early years of the Blackmoor campaign and D&D. I saw him for the first time in over 25 years at Dave Arneson's funeral. He agreed with my answers to all of your questions except for the date when Dave Wesely got home from the Army which I have corrected in my answer.

Sham: First of all I’d like to thank Greg for taking the time to read and consider these questions, and allow me to share his responses for the readers of my web log. Greg, when did Dave Arneson actually begin his Blackmoor games, to the best of your knowledge? When and how were you introduced to Blackmoor?

Greg: You are welcome; hopefully I will be able to answer your questions. Nobody is really sure when we started playing Blackmoor. My recollection was that we played the first adventure over the Christmas holidays during the winter of 1970-1971; but, I am not really sure. The first documented Blackmoor game was on May 21, 1971. Dave Arneson found that in an old “Corner of the Table” newsletter article a few months ago. The “Corner of the Table” was Dave’s newsletter for our Napoleonics campaign. Dave recently came across a complete set of them.

Sham: Were you around for Dave Wesely’s Braunsteins that helped introduce the concept of role-playing and a referee? Was Dave Wesely a player in any of the Blackmoor sessions you were a part of?

Greg: No, I was not part of that. Wesely was in the Army Reserves and was activated and sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and later to Alaska during the early years of the Blackmoor campaign. He came home in the October/November 1973 timeframe. We did play together at least a few times when he was on leave as well as after he came home.

Sham: I’ve theorized that the concept which Dave Arneson formulated was based on a combination of wargame combat simulation, the ongoing wargame style campaign, the role-play/referee idea that Wesely introduced, and fantasy/medieval inspiration. In other words, wargaming meets role-play meets fantasy. Do you have any thoughts to offer on this assessment?

Greg: Well, that’s basically true, but it really isn’t that simple. The fantasy/medieval elements of Blackmoor were totally new to me at the time (although, I had read Tolkien and some other fantasy literature). However, in the Napoleonic campaign that we had been playing before that first adventure was a combination of miniatures and diplomacy. Dave Arneson was the referee and each of the players represented the sovereign, a political faction, a general and/or an admiral in their respective countries. So, for the campaign we would try to correspond player to player and write battle reports “in character”. We were responsible for our nation’s diplomacy and even the national budget down to buying food, forage, powder and shot, as well as running the military campaigns and fighting the battles that came about as a result of our actions...We had also been playing “Fight in the Skies” where each player was a WWI fighter pilot tracking his missions and kills and getting better with experience. Before I joined Dave Arneson’s gaming group my home gaming group in Excelsior, Minnesota had been playing Korns*** for several years. Korns was a set of WWII rules where each player was a single soldier and we had a referee keeping track of both sides and resolving actions as the game progressed, at least that was the way we played it. I am sure that others in the group had similar gaming background experiences to mine.

Sham: Your character rose to great prominence in Dave’s Blackmoor campaign. Your character, The Great Svenny, is now a full fledged legendary NPC in published Blackmoor games. What would be the Great Svenny’s proudest moment during those many Blackmoor sessions? Aside from the Great Svenny’s accomplishments, what are some of your favorite memories from Dave’s Blackmoor games?

Greg: Yes, I have been startled to surf the internet and find web sites where they described how the Great Svenny was involved with that gaming groups adventures. That was a really weird experience for me...The two greatest moments that stick out in my memory are the two adventures I described on my website; surviving the first dungeon adventure and the raid on the lair of Fred Funk’s Orc tribe on the 10th level of Blackmoor dungeon. I participated in literally hundreds of adventures between early 1971 and 1975, but those are the two I have the clearest memories of. I hardly even remember the famous “Temple of the Frog” and “Valley of the Ancients” adventures. I know I was there, but they were not as memorable for me.

Sham: For how many years did you play as The Great Svenny in Blackmoor, and what exactly is the Great Svenny up to at this very moment?

Greg: I was actively playing Svenny from the beginning up until when Dave Arneson moved to Lake Geneva to work for TSR in 1975. I played with him again at GenCon in 1976 and at a reunion game in 1991. When I started gaming with Dave again in Orlando in 1999, I played Svenny’s son, Sol, although I called him Svenny Junior at first, until I put together Svenny's family history. I am currently playing Sol in an online play by post game (the Tomb of Rahotep in honor of Gary Gygax on the Wayfarer's Inn website). I have also been playing one of his grandchildren, Sven, in another play by post game (the Grim Winter campaign on the Zeitgeist Games MMRPG website)...Svenny is currently the Lord High Regent of the Regency Council of the Kingdom of Blackmoor in the D&D 3.5 Edition version of the Blackmoor campaign. I am currently working out what Svenny’s family would look like for the D&D 4th Edition Blackmoor campaign which is set some 270 years later.

Sham: In reading your stories of those early Blackmoor days, I learned that certain important monsters or villains were often controlled by other players. Was there ever a point in Dave’s Blackmoor games where the emphasis became the adventuring group, or was it usually adversarial between the players who mostly pursued their own individual goals?

Greg: We switched from the good guys versus the bad guys sessions to just one adventuring group fairly quickly. We realized that it was more fun if everyone was on one team working together. There were still people playing the bad guys, but that was usually in their own gaming sessions separate from the ones I was in; although, sometimes Dave would still ask for a volunteer to play the monster during a battle.

Sham: I’m aware that Blackmoor was much more than simply a dungeon crawl, but I enjoyed your telling of the First Dungeon Adventure and how your character survived it. After that adventure did the dungeon setting become a major focus of the campaign?

Greg: Well, we stopped making dungeon maps when the group realized that I had much of the dungeon memorized. Of course, that led to problems when Svenny was incapacitated and unable to tell everyone how to get back out of the dungeon. It was the major emphasis for a while, but we quickly moved out into the wilderness. We also had a period of several months, after some of us read the “Tarnsman of Gor” books, where we were traveling around on tarns (think of Rocs in the “Lord of the Rings”). That was after Gary Gygax had started his campaign because one of our adventures was to travel to Grayhawk on tarnback to rescue Gary’s players who had gotten into trouble.

Sham: I understand that as you gained knowledge and experience playing in Dave’s game you also took some turns behind the referee’s screen, running Blackmoor adventures for other players. What was that like? And do you ever have the opportunity to play or run Blackmoor these days?

Greg: In the fall of 1972 Dave Arneson gave me some of his notes and let me referee a couple of times when he was busy with other things. Dave tells me that I was the third DM ever. Later I developed a town called Tonisborg, complete with two dungeons. I didn’t think that I was very good at it. I guess I was comparing myself to Dave. At any rate, I didn’t DM very often; although, I must have DMed more often than I remember from what Bob Meyer has told me about the days when we were roommates in 1973 & 1974. Unfortunately, I loaned my Tonisborg materials to a friend to use for a game day and he never returned them, which was around 1980 or so when I lived in Boston. I have not run any Blackmoor (or other D&D) games since the early 1980's when I ran games for my church's youth group.

Sham: Would you say that Blackmoor evolved, in both rules content and as a campaign world, as a result of the player/character courses of action?

Greg: Of course, it evolved and very quickly. Using Chainmail rules on the first adventure, when you got hit the first time you were dead. We didn’t like that much, so the next time we played we had hit points. Within a month Dave introduced armor classes. There were many changes over time. One time when we were off adventuring the bad guys attacked and captured the then defenseless town of Blackmoor, leveling Zvenzen’s Freehold among other things. We all got banished to the swamps of Loc Gloomin for that one…

Sham: While refereeing Blackmoor for other players, how did you handle actions by the characters which were not covered by the rules? Was referee ad-libbing a vital aspect of the Blackmoor games?

Greg: I quickly came up with what the possibilities might be and either had the players roll dice against a related character attribute for success or on a table I made up in my head on the fly. This was an area that I felt I was not very good at, however, because Dave would just tell us to roll the dice and he then told us what happened.

Sham: You were playing in Blackmoor before D&D was published, and again afterwards. What impact did the release of that version of the rules have upon Dave’s personal campaign?

Greg: As soon as a draft was available we started play testing with them, but I don’t think it really changed how the game went when Dave was the DM. That’s just my opinion. The big difference was that others (like me) were more easily able to DM. All of the sessions I DMed were part of the same Blackmoor campaign that Dave was running. Often I was helping players get to a higher level so they could survive with the other higher level players.

Sham: What was Dave’s early opinion of TSR’s 1974 D&D game? For that matter, what was the general opinion of you and the other players in Blackmoor when you finally saw the original D&D game?

Greg: Dave was excited about it, but I am not sure what he actually thought about it, I don’t remember him ever talking to me about it in that way. I thought it was one and the same thing with what we had already been doing for several years. So, I didn’t really see much of a difference.

Sham: I’ve developed great respect for Dave’s impact to the gaming world. In my opinion he is often unfairly discredited in certain quarters for his lack of actual input to D&D. If you can recall, what were the major differences between Dave’s Blackmoor, and D&D in 1974?

Greg: Like I just said, I thought they were one and the same. They had just been organized, to make it easier for other people to use to run games. The individual levels and things like that were new, but the way we played we didn’t really notice the difference. Attributes were different, we had used two d6’s to get a number from 1 to 10, where we changed to three d6’s and a range from 3 to 18, but most were just changes in mechanics...We were not keeping our own records or character sheets as they are called now. Dave had an index card on each of the players (and NPCs) with their attributes, HP, possessions and other useful notes. I only remember seeing Svenny’s character card a couple of times. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to copy the information off of it for my own records. Dave told me a few months ago that he had been going though one of his boxes and discovered what he thought were all of our original character cards. I don’t know what happened to them after that, however.

Sham: From what I gather Dave’s major accomplishment was combining the essential elements of what was to become fantasy role-playing with Blackmoor, the same elements that were subsequently found in D&D. Would you agree that each of the essential elements was present in pre-D&D Blackmoor?

1. Characters

Greg: Yes, of course.

2. Ability Scores

Greg: Yes. I am not sure when Dave added them since he kept our character cards, but we were definitely using them during the spring of 1972, because I have definite memories involving ability scores that happened before I went away for the summer of 1972.

3. Hit Points

Greg: Yes, within the first month.

4. Experience/Levels

Greg: Yes, although handled differently. Fighters went from flunky to hero to superhero. We didn’t track our experience points as is done now. Dave simply told us when we had transitioned from one level to another. I do not know if wizards and clerics had different levels of ability or not.

5. Mechanics/Randomization

Greg: Yes, but again handled differently. Sometimes, we would roll against our related ability to resolve a task. Other times Dave would just say we were successful or not after we had described what we intended to do (he might have made a roll at the time, it may or may not have had any bearing in what happened).

6. Adventuring Groups

Greg: Yes, the first adventure involved two groups.

7. Exploration

Greg: Yes, we didn’t have maps of the area. Anytime we traveled we had to find our way, even just leaving the town of Blackmoor itself and going into the nearby countryside was a major adventure. Part of the adventure was getting lost. Sometimes that was the adventure.

8. Hazards/Challenges

Greg: Yes, problem solving was a big part of our gaming sessions, really the major part.

9. Treasure

Greg: Yes, we found money, stuff and magic items in the lairs of the monsters we killed.

10. Fantasy Setting

Greg: Yes

Sham: I’d also like to specifically ask about certain D&D features and whether or not they were present in the early Blackmoor games, to the best of your recollection.

1. Saving Throws

Greg: Yes, maybe with different mechanics. Dave just told us to roll and he would tell us what happened…

2. Clerics vs. Undead (Turning Undead)

Greg: Mike Carr**** played the Bishop of Blackmoor pretty much from the beginning. I think of him as being able to heal and on one or two occasions resurrect the dead. I do not recall when turning the undead came into it, but it was not a concept that was unfamiliar to me, either. I have to say that I am not sure.

3. Wandering Monsters

Greg: They were there from the first adventure on. We could see Dave rolling before he would announce an encounter.

4. Alignment

Greg: Absolutely, we had good and evil characters in the very first dungeon adventure; if fact, Dave’s perception of our alignment, as it is called now, affected whether we were able to hold the magic sword we found during that first adventure. Several of the players were injured when they picked it up. In fact, I was the only player who didn’t try to pick it up. I was afraid to try after seeing what happened to the other unsuccessful players. When I was the last one standing and the battle was over, I picked it up and wrapped it using a piece of leather, so that I would not come in contact with it and then carried it out of the dungeon and immediately sold it to the baron of Blackmoor for a whopping 150 GP.

5. Spell Levels

Greg: I was never a magic user in the original campaign, so I don’t really know the mechanics of how spells were handled. Pete Gaylord, Kurt Krey or Richard Snider would have a much better idea of how that worked.

6. Henchmen/Hirelings

Greg: Yes, after Svenny became a “super hero” I was able to hire soldiers and servants. That was how we were able to staff Zvenzen’s Freehold, for example. Slavery was also an option, at least initially. Svenny bought a slave once.

Sham: What was it about D&D that made it such a smashing success, in your opinion?

Greg: The limitless options for the players made it so much fun that it was hard not to enjoy yourself even when your character died in the adventure.

Sham: What other role-playing games have you had the chance to run or play in? Do you have a favorite role-playing game besides Blackmoor?

Greg: Blackmoor is the only D&D setting I have ever run a game in. I have especially enjoyed “Space: 1889” and “Traveller” (CT, MT and T4). I have played many others, including “Powers and Perils”, “Adventures in Fantasy”, “Shadowrun”, “Star Wars”, “GURPS” (fantasy, Traveller & WW2) and “Twilight: 2000”.

Sham: What do you feel Dave Arneson’s legacy to the hobby will be? Furthermore, what do you feel Dave Arneson’s legacy to the hobby should be?

Greg: To me, Dave Arneson is the father of modern role-playing games. They didn’t really exist before we played Blackmoor. They were a new concept at the time and he is the person who put it all together.

Sham: Have you ever worked in the role-playing field, or has it always been simply an entertaining diversion? What details can you tell the readers about yourself since those days playing in Blackmoor with Dave Arneson?

Greg: Not really, I made an attempt to edit John Snider’s “Star Empires” RPG rules back in 1983 for Adventure Games while I was working for 4D Interactive Systems (both companies were primarily owned by Dave Arneson) as a video game programmer, but it never got published. John had written it back in the mid-1970s and it had languished at TSR for years. By the time I looked at it, it was really out dated, although, in my opinion, if it had come out before or at the same time as “Traveller” it would have taken the Sci-Fi RPG market hands down...As for me, I am a computer geek. I have been in Information Systems/Technology for over thirty-two years. I spent a year and a half writing video games for 4D Interactive Systems back in ‘83 and ‘84. The rest of the time I have been with large companies, mostly in the aerospace industry. I am a Christian. The Lord has been very good to me. I am married to a wonderful woman, Paula. We have five children and two grandchildren.

Sham: Greg, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, including the many D&D related inquiries. My goal has been to not only learn more about the early Blackmoor games, and your role in helping shape that famous campaign, but to also further the legacy of Dave Arneson and remind readers of his impact on our hobby. Are there any details about Dave Arneson that you would like to share with the readers?

Greg: You are welcome. I am glad that I was able to answer most of your questions. With Dave’s passing, I have had lots of chances to think about him. His daughter asked me to do the eulogy at his funeral service, so I have thought a lot about his life. Dave was a humble man. I never saw him push his agenda at someone else’s expense or put himself ahead of others. He was always concerned about other peoples well being. He wanted everyone to be happy and have fun. He was generous and thoughtful, both with me and my family. My wife thought of him as a kind and gallant gentleman. He wanted to live at peace with everyone. I know that in the last few years he attempted to reconcile with those who had issues with him, including Gary Gygax and Tim Kask.

I hope you and your readers are edified by reading this.

---End Q&A---

I'd like to thank Greg, as well as Stephen, for taking the time to answer these questions about not only Blackmoor, but also about their good friend Dave Arneson who sadly left us far too early. It was very touching to read Greg's heartfelt answer to my last question, and I hope that readers can come away from this Q&A with a better appreciation of not only Dave Arneson's legacy, but also of the man himself.

* - Per an email from Greg, his early Blackmoor stories will once again be available as they are to be hosted at Havard's Blackmoor site in the near future. Stephen and Greg have just started collaborating on the First Dungeon Adventure story in order to bring back even more of the details. In the meantime you can read Greg Svenson's First Dungeon Adventure in Fight On! Issue 2.

** - Stephen Rocheford had the perhaps singular honor of actually reviewing Dave Arneson's original manuscript, detailing Blackmoor, before it was sent off to TSR and transformed into Dungeons & Dragons.

*** - Michael F. Korns Modern War in Miniature, 1966.

**** - Mike Carr, designer of Fight in the Skies, author of B1: In Search of the Unknown, Editor of AD&D Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, and Dungeon Master's Guide.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Fight On! Keeps Fighting On!

2009-05-27T16:38:00.003-04:00

Calithena announced that issue #5 of Fight On! is now available!

You can read the announcement here, and see the Table of Contents over here.

I've got a growing list of Lulu items I've been waiting to order until FO!5 was available, so the wait is over now.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Never Would've Guessed...Gene Wolfe

2009-05-27T09:35:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Matt for sharing this one. I took the HelloQuizzy Which Fantasy Writer are You? test last night.

Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?...

Gene Wolfe (b. 1931)

1 High-Brow, 19 Violent, 3 Experimental and -3 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Violent, Experimental and Romantic! These concepts are defined below.

US author Gene Wolfe is a very typical example of the kind of writer who is more appreciated by critics and, above all, other writers, than by the wider public. Science fiction writer Michael Swanwick has, for example, dubbed Gene Wolfe the greatest writer in the English language alive today. However, Wolfe's novel in four parts, The Book of the New Sun (1980-83), is widely known and considered a classic within both fantasy and science fiction (the book is generally considered fantasy although it is actually set in a distant future, where some technology may seem like magic to the novel's characters).

Wolfe, a veteran of the Korean war, is un-afraid of describing the fear and violence caused by warfare and the protagonist of his most well-known piece of fiction is a torturer, who at one time openly defends the importance of his work.

Wolfe is well-known for his stylistic excellence, often using first person narration in a masterful way. His narrators are often unreliable, for different reasons, sometimes leaving it up to the reader to read between the lines and figure out what's really going on.

Being a "literary" author, one of those few writers whose books it's worth the time and effort of reading more than once, does not stop Wolfe from being a great storyteller who is quite able to create all the magic and page-turning suspence of a typical best-selling writer. Much of this might stem from Wolfe's empathy with his characters and his almost religious commitment to his worlds. Several critics have pointed out the influence of Wolfe's strong Roman Catholic faith to his fiction.

No fantasy fan should go through life without having at least tried to read Wolfe. There are few writers who manage to put imagination back into the word fantasy like he does.

You are also a lot like Mary Gentle.

If you want something more gentle, try Tove Jansson.

If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, Robert Jordan.

Your score

This is how to interpret your score: Your attitudes have been measured on four different scales, called 1) High-Brow vs. Low-Brow, 2) Violent vs. Peaceful, 3) Experimental vs. Traditional and 4) Cynical vs. Romantic. Imagine that when you were born, you were in a state of innocence, a tabula rasa who would have scored zero on each scale. Since then, a number of circumstances (including genetical, cultural and environmental factors) have pushed you towards either end of these scales. If you're at 45 or -45 you would be almost entirely cynical, low-brow or whatever. The closer to zero you are, the less extreme your attitude. However, you should always be more of either (eg more romantic than cynical). Please note that even though High-Brow, Violent, Experimental and Cynical have positive numbers (1 through 45) and their opposites negative numbers (-1 through -45), this doesn't mean that either quality is better. All attitudes have their positive and negative sides, as explained below.

High-Brow vs. Low-Brow

You received 1 points, making you more High-Brow than Low-Brow. Being high-browed in this context refers to being more fascinated with the sort of art that critics and scholars tend to favour, rather than the best-selling kind. At their best, high-brows are cultured, able to appreciate the finer nuances of literature and not content with simplifications. At their worst they are, well, snobs.

Violent vs. Peaceful

You received 19 points, making you more Violent than Peaceful. Please note that violent in this context does not mean that you, personally, are prone to violence. This scale is a measurement of a) if you are tolerant to violence in fiction and b) whether you see violence as a means that can be used to achieve a good end. If you are, and you do, then you are violent as defined here. At their best, violent people are the heroes who don't hesitate to stop the villain threatening innocents by means of a good kick. At their worst, they are the villains themselves.

Experimental vs. Traditional

You received 3 points, making you more Experimental than Traditional. Your position on this scale indicates if you're more likely to seek out the new and unexpected or if you are more comfortable with the familiar, especially in regards to culture. Note that traditional as defined here does not equal conservative, in the political sense. At their best, experimental people are the ones who show humanity the way forward. At their worst, they provoke for the sake of provocation only.

Cynical vs. Romantic

You received -3 points, making you more Romantic than Cynical. Your position on this scale indicates if you are more likely to be wary, suspicious and skeptical to people around you and the world at large, or if you are more likely to believe in grand schemes, happy endings and the basic goodness of humankind. It is by far the most vaguely defined scale, which is why you'll find the sentence "you are also a lot like x" above. If you feel that your position on this scale is wrong, then you are probably more like author x. At their best, romantic people are optimistic, willing to work for a good cause and an inspiration to their peers. At their worst, they are easily fooled and too easily lead.

Author picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genewolf1.png Click the link for license info.

Take Which fantasy writer are you? at HelloQuizzy

High-Brow 1: Yep, just barely. I'd guess this is true in many things, not just fiction. At my best, cultured and at my worst, a snob. Probably not too far off, honestly. A score of 1 indicates that I am the "lowest brow" High-Brow possible. Sort of like being the last gentleman initiated into the Gentlemen's Club. I'd like to think I can rub elbows with both sides of the fence.

Violent 19: No surprise here. I'd suspect that most D&D fans lean to this side of the Violent vs Peaceful scale. At my best, the vengeful Hero and at my worst, the Villian. A score of 19 on this scale is my strongest lean of the test. I do indeed prefer a story involving the Hero kickin' arse.

Experimental 3: Readers might be surprised based on my preference for all things downright ancient in this day and age (classic D&D, 70s Punk), but I'd think anyone with these sorts of tastes would have an Experimental lean, even if mine is a slight one. I know I've progressed in Traditional values as I have in years. At my best, forward thinking and at my worst, a provocateur.

Romantic 3 (Cynic -3): At my best, optimistic and at my worst, gullible. This is dead-on for me. Just ask Mrs. Sham who thinks I'm a terrible bargain hunter. I do trust in the greater good of mankind, and believe in the human spirit; that despite the odds we shall persevere. Again, just a slight lean here. Like the Experimental vs Traditional scale, I know my leaning has changed as I've matured. I was far less Cynical as a youth.

The fact that my test result was Gene Wolfe was a bit of a surprise. I truly enjoyed Wolfe's New Sun books, and thanks to this quiz I'll likely dust them off and read them again. It's been far too long since I've followed the exploits of Severian, former torturer and future Autarch of Urth. Gene Wolfe's novels are considered a part of the Dying Earth subgenre named after one of my favorite author's works, Jack Vance. Per the New Sun wiki:

The New Sun series belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre, a kind of science fiction/fantasy set in a distant future when the Sun is dying, set against a background of mysterious and obscure powers and events.

So again, thanks to Matt for leading me to this thought provoking test!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Friday Flashback

2009-05-15T19:15:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been nearly two months since I took the time to put together a new offering in this somewhat irregular theme.

Heard this one on the radio the other day. Damn I miss the old Talking Heads. Their first gig was opening for The Ramones at CBGBs in 1975, and this song, Love - Building on Fire, normally known as simply Building on Fire, was in fact the first Talking Heads single, released by Sire in 1977.

The first few Talking Heads albums are masterpieces; Talking Heads:77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, and Fear of Music. Their fourth, Remain in Light, has its moments, and contains the familiar MTV generation hit, Once in a Lifetime. After their fourth studio LP, the band took a nearly three year long break. During this time the excellent live LP, The Name of this Band is Talking Heads, was released. Once the group got back together for a new studio LP, the direction had changed. It was with 1983's Speaking in Tongues, their fifth studio album, that the band began to realize commercial success, but the raw, jittery art rock sound was long gone.

Members of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and boasting four albums on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, here is Talking Heads: Building on Fire, from 1978.

I found a pair of interesting covers of Building on Fire for your listening pleasure. An outstanding live cover by The Figgs (sorry about the bass on The Figgs cover, but the audio is otherwise very good), and another live version, this time from Pearl Jam. Enjoy!

The Figgs: Building on Fire

Pearl Jam: Building on Fire

Have a great weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

One Page Dungeons

2009-05-15T09:33:00.002-04:00

When I first put together the concept of the One Page Dungeon, I was pursuing a few different angles. First and foremost I wanted to pursue an economy of words in my adventure writing. I am prone to verbosity and triviality when I allow myself to sit behind the keyboard and plunk away without a care. Such an approach might produce a dungeon which is more interesting for the reader, full of colorful descriptions and answers to various what-ifs which might arise during play. That which is interesting to the Referee does not necessarily add to the adventure nor to the enjoyment of the players involved.

I’ve found after decades of writing that my adventures were becoming more and more bloated, to the point that reading a room description in the middle of a game session was interrupting the natural flow of play. If the passage was for a room I had recently devised, the details were still fresh in my memory, so I didn’t need to actually stop and quietly read what I had written. Given the sheer amount of rooms in many of my dungeons, I found that my memory was failing me when the players entered an area that I had written months or sometimes years before. It was during these moments that I didn’t need all of the extraneous information. I needed the important bits, and I needed them quickly. With this consideration in mind, I began to frown on flavorful entries and the ramifications of possible actions which the players might not even consider. I wanted to stop writing to myself, which is what I realized I often did when I was in my creative mode. Essentially I was looking for nothing more than the facts, distilled down to their most concise form. I needed to cut off the fat and get to the meat.

I assumed that if I forcibly limited the amount of text I would allow myself for a given area of a dungeon, I could devise an interesting exercise in economy of words. Somewhere along the way I read a thread over at the OD&D Discussion forums in which Dwayanu mentioned that he likes to draw maps in a 30x30 square area of the graph paper, thus leaving room for a key. This idea helped me formulate the One Page Dungeon concept. I realized that if I attempted to fill a 30x30 section in my normal mapping method, I’d end up with 20-25 numbered areas, and that restricting myself to that single page, I’d force myself to keep to nothing more than the essentials. Furthermore, the end result would be something which anyone could pick up and run with virtually no preparation time.

Now this opened up other notions. In an effort to create a drop dead simple dungeon format, I’d want to include a few tables on the page as well. Tables which would be at the Referee’s fingertips in order to keep play moving quickly, dispensing with the need to leaf through notes or books. Thus I added Wandering Monsters, Restocking, Random Treasure, and a Legend for the map itself.

The one-page layout I designed originally is found in this thread, and is the exact blueprint which Chgowiz was kind enough to duplicate and turn into a user friendly document for me to continue my project. Were it not for Chgowiz, I doubt I would’ve continued with the concept because my first Word experiments proved to be more trouble than they were worth.

I was surprised by the amount of feedback I got in regard to what I considered to be a simple concept. A concept that in fact, unbeknownst to me at the time, has been done before in slightly different forms by other gamers, including this one by Alex Schroeder. In retrospect, I think what made my concept work was the modular format, the inclusion of tables, and of course Chgowiz’s easy to use version of my template.

One of the best D&D web log authors to enter the fray in the past year, Amityville Mike, took to the concept almost immediately. Mike’s Stonehell, shared through his excellent blog The Society of the Torch, Pole and Rope, is the finest example of the concept to be found on the internet, the Dismal Depths included. Granted, Mike realized the limitations of the One Page right away when he began using the concept for his megadungeon. Stonehell is One Page in spirit, and Mike found that allowing for both sides of the page afforded him the space to describe his rooms and ideas with a bit more clarity, and to include even more tables. Nonetheless, Stonehell is still a One Page Dungeon, even though it uses front and back. The design theory is embraced and Mike has made the most of the template I envisioned.

There is good and bad with the concept. The One Page Dungeon approach challenges the author to convey the essentials while still creating an interesting, viable adventure. The very economy of words, the main driving force behind the concept, is also it’s most limiting factor. This is, as I mentioned in my Dismal Depths Guide, an intentional feature of the approach, not a flaw. The adventure is not going to take the Referee by the hand and guide him or her through the dungeon. There are no suggestions or explanations. There is no boxed text to be read aloud to the players. Trappings and mundane features are kept to a minimum. Theme, plot, back story, hooks, rumors and the why of it all are left to the Referee’s own imagination. The area descriptions themselves intentionally allow for creative input on behalf of the Referee. Nay, they demand it. This is what I refer to when I say the concept is not for the timid, nor the inexperienced. This is not Dungeons for Dummies. The challenge is not merely limited to drawing up a One Page Dungeon. The end result must translate into good gaming, and the Referee must be able to bring this out during play while working with limited resources.

Amongst all of my projects since identifying the Empty Room Principle I have found that this One Page Dungeon concept exemplifies it the best. It is one thing to preach, but another to practice what I preach. One of the greatest strengths of the design theory, one which might be lost upon some, is the minimalistic nature therein, this Empty Room Principal. Much like the original D&D rules I've grown to appreciate more and more, the One Page Dungeon engages the Referee's imagination and offers limitless opportunities for personal input. The descriptions are not restrictive, they do not force your hand, and they do not tell you there is only one way to do things. The text is restricted to a few lines for each area, which should be just enough to encourage and inspire.

Although circumstances have delayed much of the design effort I planned to undertake with the megadungeon which kicked this entire theme off, the Dismal Depths, I have been forming ideas and inventing novelties for that project. I hope to able to return to it seriously in the near future. I’m happy with what I’ve created for it thus far, including the Dismal Depths Bestiary and the Dismal Depths Trap Tables. I’d ask that those who have been looking for new Dismal Depths information keep the faith. There is more to come, have no fear. I don’t want to force anything as the dungeon needs to write itself, otherwise it might lose some luster.

Perhaps this article is something I should have written prior to the One Page Dungeon Contest hosted by Chatty DM and Chgowiz. The contest ended last night, and I have printed all 70 entries. If I had been in charge of submissions, I might have placed more limitations on the design theory. I may have had some notion of “This is my idea, and this is how you do it.” For this reason it is probably best that I had nothing to do with setting up and running the contest. I may have enforced certain criteria or insisted upon inclusion of features important to me. In looking over these entries, I can see that restricting anyone’s creativity is a bad thing, and would’ve been contradictory to the very spirit of the concept. The simplest notion is what made this a good contest. Write an actual, usable adventure on a single page, with a map, and be creative. That was all that was needed to design a good entry.

I’m proud that this innocent little concept has been embraced by those beyond the limited reach of my blog here, just as I am satisfied that the idea is not restricted by my personal design theories. It’s quite clear that many of the contestants had a lot of fun with the idea. Some of the One Page Dungeons don’t look anything like the rudimentary lay out I drew up, for that matter, some don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I am left wondering if one of the entries is trying to get a Punk Rock vote from this judge, but I don’t want to leak any more information just yet.

Suffice to say that I am going to be up to my eyeballs in One Page Dungeons for the foreseeable future as I work toward judging these 70 entries. It’s particularly satisfying to see all of these versions of the concept from people who have probably never even heard of me nor read any of my ramblings here.

With that said, I’m signing off for a while for back to back out of town trips in which I’ll be reading and considering these dungeons during downtimes. I should be back to foist more drivel upon the unsuspecting after Memorial Day.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

EDIT: Due to unexpected circumstances, the contest has been extended! Word is that we are up to 90 entries now! Quote from an update by Chgowiz:

"To that effect, we are re-instating all entries that we've rejected in the last 30 hours and will accept new entries until May 21st at 8h00 AM."

So, if you thought you missed the deadline, you haven't! Get to work and make your own One Page Dungeon. Just remember to ignore most of what I wrote above and create your own vision of the ODP format!

The Miscellaneum of Cinder

2009-05-14T09:34:00.003-04:00

Jeff Rients just announced that his collection of campaign homebrew dice charts is available at Lulu, titled The Miscellaneum of Cinder.

In his words:

"A 36-page booklet of vaguely useful dice charts for games involving mythic underworlds and legendary fire-breathing lizards. Words by me, interior illos by my buddy Pat."

You might also be able to nab an Extra Special Edition if you email Jeff and offer something cool of your own for trade.

Check out this post for more details.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Knockspell #2

2009-05-13T11:26:00.000-04:00

Matt Finch just announced that issue 2 of Knockspell is available now from Lulu. Here's a copy of the announcement.

The Swords & Wizardry Storefront: http://stores.lulu.com/mythmere

Knockspell Magazine Issue #2 is now on sale at the Swords & Wizardry storefront, http://stores.lulu.com/mythmere. This issue contains dungeon design advice from both Allan Grohe and Philotomy Jurament, an adventure by Gabor Lux, and all kinds of other articles from jousting to monsters and all points in between! The art in this issue is phenomenal: artists include Jim Holloway, Liz Danforth, and others. The cover piece is "Dungeoneer," by Peter Fitzpatrick. Games covered include 0e, 1e, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, and other retro-clones. 86 pages. Note: the pdf isn't up as of 5/13, but will be up shortly.

DURING MAY the prices of Knockspell #2, Spire of Iron and Crystal (module), The S&W/0e Monster Book, and Eldritch Weirdness Compilation Books Three to One are all reduced, because we're in the middle of another lulu sales competition.

Table of Contents:
3 Editor’s Note, Matt Finch
4 Art Director’s Note, Jeff Preston
4 From Kuroth’s Quill, Allan T. Grohe, Jr.
8 The Dungeon as Mythic Underworld, Jason “Philotomy Jurament” Cone
14 The Trouble with Thieves, James Maliszewski
16 WhiteBox Thief (1): The Treasure Seeker, Rob Ragas
17 WhiteBox Thief (2): The “Standard” Thief, Salvatore Macri
18 Core Rules Thief (1): The Skillful Shadow, Salvatore Macri
20 Core Rules Thief (2), James Maliszewski
21 Thieves and Tasks, Akrasia
24 Isles on an Emerald Sea 2, Gabor Lux
31 Retro-Clones: Interviews with the Authors
36 Jousting (Optional Rules), Brendan Falconer
37 Dungeon Oddities, Michael Curtis
45 The Zocchi Experience, Matt Finch
46 The Claws of Ssur-Sparih, James Carl Boney
47 Random City Lair Generator, Sean Wills
48 Random Thieves Guild Generator, Robert Lionheart
51 The Fantasy Marketplace: Looking at Merchants Differently, Michael Shorten
55 Spell Complexity (Optional Rules), Brendan Falconer
57 Thoughts on Arnesonian Alchemy in the Original Dungeon Game, Jason Vasche
60 When is a Spell Book Much More than a Spell Book?, Brendan Falconer
62 Random Pits & Occupants, Mike Davison
63 Magic Swords & Treasure Maps, Jason “Philotomy Jurament” Cone
67 Leprechauns, David (“Sham”) Bowman
69 Why White Box?, Jim Adams
71 Surviving Old-School Dungeons, Sean Ahmed
72 Three Sorcerous Creations, James Carl Boney
77 Magic Items
78 Review: On the Road of Knives, Matt Finch
79 Masterminds & Minions, bat
82 The Bestiary
86 Classified Ads

Hey, looks like I even found the time to submit an article! Hats Off to Mr. Finch for continuing his fine publication and for the dedication required to make Knockspell such a blessing to our hobby.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Conceptually Speaking

2009-05-12T08:08:00.003-04:00

I spent many hours this past weekend reading Tim Kask’s thread at Dragonsfoot. First of all let me say that in my Essentials & Concepts post last month I shortchanged Mr. Kask’s efforts in compiling Supplement II, Blackmoor. I have no doubt that assembling those random, disorganized notes that he received from Arneson was a Herculean effort. It’s just that aside from the Temple of the Frog, which Kask claims was the only section of Blackmoor actually written by Arneson, I find little use with the book. I’ve never been a big fan of the Monk, the Assassin, Hit Location or of marine adventures. There’s little to get excited about. The book surely reads well, but I’m in it for the options and suggestions, and aside from the aforementioned TotF adventure, I don’t much care for that supplement.

It’s quite clear that Tim Kask and Dave Arneson didn’t work well together. In reading Tim’s posts, one finds it obvious that he had an axe to grind in regard to Arneson. That’s some serious long standing ill will, over thirty years after the fact. I cannot question or dispute his assertions in regard to Arneson, and I have no reason to do so. I do however feel compelled to recognize the yeoman’s work that Mr. Kask apparently performed in taking a jumbled hodge-podge basketful of handwritten notes and transforming them into a published book.

While catching up on Tim’s posts I learned quite a bit about the history of D&D and TSR. Tim Kask has probably forgotten more on the two subjects than many of us will ever learn. Assuming everything within is true, I came away from the often scathing comments with what I feel is essentially confirmation of how I envisioned the Gygax & Arneson co authorship of D&D. I’ll not mince words here. Arneson was not gifted with the written word. Gygax, as everyone already knows, was not merely gifted, but was a master of the language. Furthermore, Gygax was uniquely talented at putting together gaming rules. Arneson, not so much, if at all. Dave’s Blackmoor games used many outside rules which were bolted on to the ongoing campaign, such as Chainmail, naval wargame tables, and Avalon Hill’s Outdoor Survival.

Arneson is quoted as saying that he didn’t write a single word for the original D&D. I don’t doubt this one bit, but I think this fact can be taken out of context. Arneson blended the essential elements that became D&D. I believe this is why Gygax felt obliged to include him as co author. Whether or not Dave actually “wrote” anything in the first three volumes is besides the point. Gygax developed and wrote D&D. You’ll notice I say developed. This, for me, is one of the key points to the entire Gygax & Arneson team, such as it was. Gary did not come up with this concept, Dave did. Gary took Dave’s ideas and formed them into a coherent, comprehensive format that was playable by the masses. Dave couldn’t do that, and was infamous for his disorganized notes and random ideas.

I don’t mean to diminish Gary’s role here. There are certainly major rules differences between D&D’s progenitor Blackmoor, and D&D itself. It was more than a simple compilation and light edit effort. Ideas were nailed down and fleshed out, and made into streamlined playable game features. Grey areas were defined and turned into actual tables and guides. Additional rules from Gary’s Greyhawk were meshed into the system. For example, the concept of Experience, that being the reward for surviving through ongoing game sessions, went from Arneson’s Flunky-Hero-Superhero cycle to Gygax’s actual Class Levels. The idea is the same, but it has been improved immeasurably with Gary’s input. The fact that so much of the Blackmoor game used Chainmail as a basis cannot be dismissed either. Many of Gary’s own conventions introduced therein were a large part of the Blackmoor game.

It seems Arneson was good at coming up with ideas but needed someone else to translate them into a readable and playable format. It strikes me that when Gygax handed that basketful of Arneson’s notes for Blackmoor over to Kask, he knew it was a path he had already traveled. Gygax was confident that Kask could turn them into a Supplement. The components had been there for both D&D and Supplement II, someone just needed to bring them out and make them shine. I’m glad that Mr Kask was able to plunder the Temple of the Frog from those notes, polish it up, and transform it into the first example of a D&D adventure. It was never my intention to belittle his efforts in compiling Supplement II. Considering what Tim apparently had to work with he deserves co authorship on Blackmoor in the same way that Gary did on Dungeons & Dragons.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Thanks Steve

2009-05-11T11:53:00.004-04:00

I owe a big Thank You to Steve Zieser for creating the banner you now see above, adorning the top of the page at Ye Auld Grog & Blog. I wanted to give this dusty old place a new look, and Steve was kind enough to draw the horde of menacing Goblins which are now invading your computer screen. I'm proud to unfurl this new banner at the top of my web log, thanks again Steve!

You can find many more of Steve's excellent drawings at his own blog, Curmudgeons & Dragons.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Of Wombats and Zipper Arms

2009-05-10T01:07:00.002-04:00

Three decades after the fact, I find myself often looking back with dismay at some of the…shall we say “gonzo”…stuff that I devised for my (A)D&D games of yore. Sure many of us used the AD&D hard covers, but the electricity in the air was still the anything goes feel of the original three volumes. In hindsight it might have been Dave Hargrave’s Arduin that kept that link alive during the long night of AD&D for my particular gaming generation. We were often a house divided; Gygaxian devotees and guys who appreciated Hargrave and such other non-TSR things as the supplements by Fantasy Art Enterprises (Erol Otus and friends). I suppose you could simply say the Realists and the Dreamers. I never began playing this game in an effort to pursue realism. In those days, D&D was a way for me to explore the fantastic, not to quibble about such perceived non sequiturs as Dungeon Ecology. As I’ve written in other forums, the notion of ecology in a multi-level subterranean construction is akin to explaining exactly how Bugs could’ve possibly taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque; to fret about such details is entirely missing the point. It’s Fantasy. The free play of creative imagination, so extreme as to challenge belief.

It was many gaming sessions later that one of my players asked that fateful question, “What do these Monsters eat down here?”. The simple answer was obvious, “Why, YOU, of course!”, but I understood the line of thinking. It was a subject I had already encountered in an issue of The Dragon, a notion which at the time I found to be the antithesis of what I had come to expect from D&D. This is not to say that my dungeons at the time were simply an endless series of rooms with random monsters waiting patiently for the adventurers to open their locked or stuck doors, no. I don’t rightly think I ever designed such a dungeon, even in the earliest days. Nonetheless, the concept of Dungeon Ecology to this day rubs me the wrong way. It’s like Jumbo Shrimp.

All of this said, I did indeed fall into the Dungeon Ecology trap as my games and campaigns progressed through the years. Careful consideration was given to such things as food, air and light. Worst of all, the dreaded notion of Reason was beginning to guide my hand. During this long period, most of the more outlandish things I had hand written and gleefully unleashed upon my players in prior years began to gather dust in my gaming closet. Things were becoming, dare I say, decidedly sensible. I was still able to be imaginative and push the envelope in limitless directions, but in the end I think my adventures became less inspired and more restricted by the laws of logic. Reason was taking root, and diminishing the free flow of boundless creativity.

2008 was the year I folded up my tent and returned to the Dreamers camp, that of Unreason. Now, for whatever reasons, I remember why 30 years ago I never liked that Let There Be a Method to your Madness article in The Dragon. Logic, Reason and Dungeon Ecology had elbowed their way into my games, bringing perhaps a bit too much realism to the fantastic. I suppose you could say I’ve evolved, as do all old hands at Dungeon Mastering. These days I restrict the truly fantastic to the Underworld, while things in the Light of Day on the surface remain somewhat logical. The Wilderness is that grey area betwixt the Underworld and the Light of Day where little bits of Night’s Chaos might still be encountered without warning. So here I find myself now, having come nearly full cycle in my gaming sensibilities.

But what of those aforementioned teenage creations I had written so fervently all those years ago, the ones which I slowly expunged from my later games? I’ve already shared quite a bit in regard to what I did with Hargrave’s Whimsey idea. I still shudder when I read most of that. Would such things entertain my gaming group as it now stands? A few nostalgic laughs at best, methinks. I speak of the other off the wall creations that are slowly fading alongside those Whimsey Tables in my gaming closet. Things like Wombats as a playable race, and the infamous Zipper Arm that each and every player was willing to risk his character’s life for. Here’s a smattering of the possible classes which a character could pursue in those campaigns:

Celestial Crusader
Knight of Liberty
Mystic Knight
Beastmaster
Kilnsmen
Death Dealer
Dimension Dancer
Engineer
Corzan Warrior
Nesdeon Mage
Knight of Radiant Glory
Dies Iraen Gladiaor
Mar-Vexian Mage
Mar-Vexian Super Soldier
Witch Doctor
Justiciar
Rhythm Walker
Pit Fighter
Stonebinder
Cabalist
Inmatarou
Chirurgeon
Zealot
Hexmaster

That’s two dozen, and there were more. Someone, at sometime, played each and every class I devised along the way. Some were created from suggestions by players. I embraced the entire notion that in D&D, the players can be whatever they want to be. One such player wanted to run a multi-classed Phraint Ninja/Engineer which we subsequently dubbed the Ninjaneer. As ludicrous as it might seem now, these are some of the idiosyncrasies which I remember best. Being the nebbish that I was, I was compelled to write up a full description for each such class. There are stories of older D&D games from other DM's in which players were allowed to run anything, but these are mostly in regard to controlling a Monster. We never did that, except with a few notable exceptions in which participants attempted to thwart the other players while incognito, normally as part of the unfolding campaign flow. The above is a list of 24 examples of how I let the players play whatever they wanted to in my early games. I read these homemade classes in the same way I now read my Whimsey Tables; with what I’m afraid might be a jaded eye.

Whatever I think of these reams of notes NOW they certainly worked back THEN. I’m just not sure if what worked was the creations, the way I ran my games, or the chemistry of the assembled gaming crew and our anything goes mentality. No one told us how to play, only showed us possibilities. We were determined to explore the concept to its fullest extent.

One of these days I’ll tell you about Floid the Mongoloyd, Kaledron Kaleidoscope, and the now infamous Zipper Arms; a story which involves the Dark Side of the Moon, Hans the Uber Nazi, an army of Daemon Ducks, and the Seven Lords of Time. Gonzo nothing. More like Double Live Gonzo.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

D&D Essentials and Concepts

2009-04-20T11:01:00.000-04:00

As a follow up to yesterday’s post discussing Truths and Expectations, I wanted to discuss briefly that other list I threw together during my exploration of D&D concepts and categories.

Sham’s Essentials of D&D

1. Characters (Race/Class)
2. Ability Scores
3. Hit Points
4. Experience/Levels
5. Mechanics/Randomization
6. Adventuring Groups
7. Exploration
8. Hazards/Challenges (Monsters/Traps/Tricks, etc)
9. Treasure (Monetary/Magic)
10. Fantasy Setting (Dungeons/Wilderness)

I began thinking about the concept of D&D in earnest when I learned of Dave Arneson’s passing. I hate to admit it, but I suppose it is human nature to react this way. I did the same with Gary’s passing, reflecting upon his body of work and appreciating it more once he was dead than before. Surely there is a term for this state of mind. The sudden realization that there will be no more. It’s rather pathetic, honestly.

As I mentioned before, the above Essentials were all present in Dave Arneson’s formative Blackmoor games (not to be confused with Supplement II, Blackmoor). From what I gather, much of what is considered D&D was defined by Gary Gygax into the form we recognize today. For that matter, Blackmoor was influenced by Gygax’s own Chainmail game. But as far as the nuts and bolts of D&D, I am under the impression that Gygax applied his vast war gaming know-how to Arneson’s Blackmoor features. Not to say that Arneson was not an accomplished war gamer. The fact of the matter is that Gygax was simply better at explaining things with the written word. And he owned a typewriter, as Dave put it.

Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign, which preceded OD&D, was born of Blackmoor. Gary heard about Dave’s Blackmoor game, and that it used some bits of Chainmail, and he witnessed the game for himself. Gygax returned home and began his own Blackmoor inspired game named Greyhawk. Thus Blackmoor and Greyhawk became OD&D when the two agreed to publish some rules. Perhaps it is best that the events transpired this way. Accomplished game writer meets visionary gamer, and the two agree to turn the idea into a reality.

Unfortunately, Arneson’s planned D&D add-on, Supplement II, Blackmoor ended up being something not quite expected. I cannot remember the exact details, but if I have it right Arneson submitted reams of handwritten notes for the Supplement. The story I hear is that it would’ve taken many man hours to make heads or tails out of the disorganized pages. Someone else extracted some bits and threw a book together, but in my opinion really screwed the pooch. Get your hands on Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign to see what Supplement II probably should have looked like.

Dave later took a position with TSR in what would turn out to be a very short-lived period of employ. It ended rather abruptly, and then the lawsuits began over the future use of the D&D name in other TSR publications. Sadly, history threatens to forget that Dave Arneson created the Essentials of D&D, the concept itself.

The above list must be credited where credit is due. Thank you Dave Arneson for creating and sharing this concept with us. Your presence in the gaming world will be missed, but your impact will never be forgotten. I hope that the next time you log into World of Warcraft, dear reader, you will realize that the concept is all Dave Arneson’s. WoW is an MMO that in fact blends all ten Essentials of D&D together. There would be no such game were it not for that creative college kid from Minnesota who dreamt up the perfect, heady concoction for endless entertainment.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

D&D Truths and Expectations

2009-04-19T10:55:00.002-04:00

Having considered D&D conceptually or by name only, and explained labels, titles and expectations with the past three posts, I thought it might be interesting to actually put more emphasis on the lists I threw together along the way. Tomorrow Sham’s Essentials of D&D, and today Sham’s OD&D Truths.

Readers will certainly disagree with my lists, that’s a given. The point of compiling the Truths is not to identify what is or what isn’t OD&D. It’s an effort to share what I think the average devotee expects when a game is labeled OD&D. The missing Truth is of course that the Concept trumps the guidelines, and that everything is open for tinkering. If we push that missing Truth too far, there is no point in labeling our games at all. They’re just D&D then. Therefore Concept is not an OD&D Truth. Concept is the motivating force behind the Essentials. For that matter, the lists could be renamed. Truths could be Expectations, and Essentials could be Concept.

If I merge the lists, in other words if I maintain the Truths and pursue the Essentials, I can end up with a heavily tinkered game of D&D which I can proudly declare to newcomers is in fact OD&D. If I begin by designing my game or campaign with the Essentials first but follow the Truths I’d probably refer to the game as D&D using OD&D as a foundation. If I ignore the Truths and combine the Essentials, it’s pure D&D.

Sham’s OD&D Truths

1. Class and Level based Characters
2. Six Cardinal 3d6 Ability Scores
3. Combat Model (including RTH, HD, HP, AC)
4. Saving Throws
5. Spells and Spell Levels
6. Fantasy Milieu (the world and features)
7. "Fill-in-the-Blanks" Design

One of the Truths, the one added in hindsight, creates an interesting dilemma. Around the gaming table, in your personal game, you will organically grow house rules and features unique to your game. This is a feature of OD&D, that the flexibility of the rules allows the players to define them further. You are fleshing out the skeleton as you play. If you compile all of your tinkering and homebrew, even if you maintain the other six Truths, and publish your campaign, it is no longer OD&D. Why? You’ve filled in the blanks over the years. Around the table, it is OD&D. To an outsider, it is no longer OD&D.

From a purist standpoint, and really there shouldn’t be any purism associated with D&D to begin with, anything you change or add makes OD&D something else when taken away from the game table. All bets are off. For example, I create a complex system to handle something not covered in OD&D, but I continue to maintain the Truths. Perhaps I made a six page tactical Combat Procedure. I still used the Combat Model, with RTH, HD, HP and AC, but I went into great depth and homebrewed many unique, complicated rules.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the height of the D&D concept. I relish seeing other referees’ own house rules and tinkering methods. They can call it OD&D around their own gaming table, but if the envelope is pushed too far, from a (cringe) purist standpoint, it is no longer OD&D. BUT, it IS D&D.

It’s amazing what that little O means to many people. And, admittedly, to me at times.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

More My D&D

2009-04-18T12:01:00.002-04:00

My two most recent entries concerning D&D served to share some of my own evolving theories and opinions about the game. This post revisits a topic I wrote about last year; the question of at what point does tinkering with OD&D turn it into something else? This is one of the problems with using specific labels and titles for your D&D games. As soon as you declare an edition, players will have certain expectations for your game.

I’m aware that my own D&D essentials are not shared by other fans of the game. There are certain features, even in OD&D, that translate to “D&D” for the players. If I tackle the essential categories I shared in the last entry, and homebrew each by tinkering and reworking the rules, I’m certain that other OD&D devotees would say my game is no longer OD&D. As far as I’m concerned, it is still D&D, but this is only due to the fact that I approach the game more so now than ever from the conceptual side. The concept is what I have come to appreciate more than the framework of guidelines presented in 1974.

My point is that by utilizing an exact edition title, I am presumably enforcing more narrowly focused parameters. Even by using the OD&D tag. This theme has been visited by a few threads over at Finarvyn’s OD&D site in the past year. Here, here and here.

But how much tinkering can you get away with and still call your game OD&D? If you fool with it too much you’ll be better served just calling it D&D. Or making up some new name and pretending it’s NOT D&D, even though everyone knows it is. There are countless examples of NOT D&D out there, and everyone knows while they might not be D&D by Name, they are Conceptually D&D. That is, they combine the Essentials of D&D and claim to be some new game.

Apparently, Dave Arneson was the first to define and combine these essential elements in his original Blackmoor games. With Gary Gygax’s input, expertise and organizational skills, the two were able to create D&D. How much of it was Arneson and how much of it was Gygax I’m not sure, but I do find it interesting that the Ten Essentials I wrote in the last post were evident in Arneson's formative Blackmoor. Nonetheless, D&D introduced the concept and this blend of features which still has game geeks such as me writing about it 35 years later.

As usual, I digress. The question at hand is how much tinkering can you do and still call your game OD&D? Last year I summarized some OD&D Truths:

1. Class based Character progression
2. d20 Combat Model
3. Rules as a 'skeleton'
4. Six Cardinal Character Abilities

Yes on Class based Character progression. Yes on Six Cardinal Character Abilities. No on d20 Combat Model. I can use Chainmail 2d6 as well, but I think the point was using the whole Armor Class, Roll to Hit, Hit Dice system, or some reasonable facsimile. So Yes to that. Rules as a ‘skeleton’ is kind of the entire point to this post. Having Rules as a ‘skeleton’ as a truth serves to remind players that the referee will be fleshing out the guidelines and filling in the gaps prior to or during play.

But what about changing OD&D? Even the category OD&D can mean many things. My OD&D game might be limited to Volumes I-III and my homebrew additions, or it might include the Supplements and The Dragon articles. Supplement I, Greyhawk, blew up a lot of the conventions introduced in the first three volumes.

Rules as a ‘skeleton’ looks to be the most important truth now that I look back at that post. But aren’t there other nuances or features found in OD&D that come to be expected in a game described as such? What might those be? Saving Throws. Hit Dice and Hit Points. Spells and Spell Levels. Armor Class.

I can’t think of much else. To make it feel like D&D of course we set it in a fantasy milieu with Classes, Races, Monsters and Treasure that fit that particular theme. A theme which can be tailored or taken from the books.

Sham’s OD&D Truths

1. Class and Level based Characters
2. Six Cardinal 3d6 Ability Scores
3. Combat Model (including RTH, HD, HP, AC)
4. Saving Throws
5. Spells and Spell Levels
6. Fantasy Milieu (the world and features)
7. "Fill-in-the-Blanks" Design

Unlike Sham’s Ten Essentials of D&D, the above Truths are to be used as presented in the original volumes for the game to be called OD&D. These aren't simply categories or features which need to be present, but Truths that should be followed as presented in OD&D. I added number 7 in hindsight, but it's a vital Truth which is spelled out in a few places in OD&D.

Damn it, now there I go trying to label someone else’s game of OD&D.

Remember, no one can tell you how to play D&D. Let the above serve to remind you what outsiders might expect when you tell them you are running a game of OD&D. For what it’s worth, just make mine D&D. As long as I can explore dark labyrinths, trackless wastes, gloomy hollows or lost cities while not becoming some nameless horror's lunch all in the name of gold and glory, I’m in! That’s D&D.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

My D&D

2009-04-17T12:45:00.000-04:00

As everyone knows I am not a slave to the rules. My favorite aspect of D&D is making things up. Now that I have learned the concept, the one introduced by D&D to the gaming world in 1974, I don’t need to ever spend another penny on anything to continue playing the game for the rest of my life. Everything I create and run using this concept is D&D to me.

Let’s pretend that I learned how to play D&D in 1974. I paid particular attention to the Introduction in Volume I, Men & Magic, and the words: “[These rules] provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity - your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors…”. Notice that the quote says game and not world or campaign. So I grasped the concept and never, ever picked up another game book from TSR or any other RPG company.

The game I end up playing, let’s say three decades later, is D&D to me and my players. Others might see strange house rules and unconventional interpretations, and to them it might not appear to be D&D at all. Such an observation from an outsider would be an opinion based on subsequent events, those that occurred after 1974. Observations based on 35 years of game evolution which have brought about expectations and the need for labels and categories. If my make believe game no longer uses dice, hit points, alignment or character classes, it is still D&D in so far as the original concept was presented over three decade ago.

This is an extreme, unrealistic example of the concept, but one which serves to support the adage that every RPG is really just a house ruled game of D&D.

I like to call my D&D exactly that, D&D; and I like to call my other games by their titles: Gamma World, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and so forth. So what exactly then is D&D to me? Is it little more than simply the role-playing game concept that it created? As I’ve mentioned before, D&D could’ve been published with no more than a dozen pages from Men & Magic. The amount of pre-game work required by the referee would have been problematic for beginners, to be sure, so the other 100 or so remaining pages in OD&D filled out some of the details for referees. As far as I’m concerned, those “other 100” pages are no more than examples of what a referee can do with D&D.

If I had to distill my D&D down to the essentials, the list would look something like this:

Sham’s Essentials of D&D

1. Characters (Race/Class)
2. Ability Scores
3. Hit Points
4. Experience/Levels
5. Mechanics/Randomization
6. Adventuring Groups
7. Exploration
8. Hazards/Challenges (Monsters/Traps/Tricks, etc)
9. Treasure (Monetary/Magic)
10. Fantasy Setting (Dungeons/Wilderness)

If hard pressed, it comes down to Characters, Mechanics, and Environment. I added the other features which I feel are hard coded into the game. If I left the list simply at Characters, Mechanics, and Environment, I just described every RPG ever made. But hey, that IS the concept. It’s Distilled D&D.

As long as a game embraces these elements I would consider it D&D. And I suppose even a game with no Dungeons at all could still be D&D, even though it pains me to admit that.

Keep in mind that when I say distill my D&D down to the essentials and list categories such as Class or Monsters, it does not mean that one needs to use the published entries. On the contrary, what I am trying to clarify is that the only aspect required is the category itself. I can take these categories and completely homebrew each. If I mix them all together the end result is still D&D as far as I’m concerned.

Being D&D “as far as I’m concerned” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans to others, though. The question then becomes is it D&D in Name Only? If I’ve been running that imaginary D&D game, letting it evolve and change over the past 35 years, I might have something which would be considered D&D only conceptually. I’ve bought into the concept, but I’ve changed or overhauled every guideline found in Men & Magic. The modern term for the above example might be Homebrew D&D, but that’s a rather loose, catchall category.
To me, it is still D&D. Anything which combines the Essentials of D&D is, by all rights, D&D.

What does D&D mean to you?

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

It's all D&D to me

2009-04-16T14:41:00.001-04:00

Longtime readers will recall my posts from last year wherein I spoke about how we played D&D back in the early days. D&D was a catchall term describing whatever edition was being used at the time. At one point back then, the following editions were being actively used by various players: OD&D, AD&D 1E, Holmes Basic D&D, Moldvay/Cook D&D. One could easily move between editions with no issue whatsoever. Most players eventually graduated to AD&D 1E as it was nice owning the large hardcover books. The thing is, due to the methods by which most of us learned to play, few if any really played AD&D 1E by the book. It was just D&D.

The most obvious rules differences in each game of D&D had little to do with edition at all. All of the above mentioned versions had a shared concept which was clearly understood by all involved. Players didn’t seek out particular editions simply because there wasn’t that much of a difference between the way they were used back then. The variations came from the individual Dungeon Masters. It was commonly accepted that each game would have house rules and unique interpretations. I cannot recall many players at that point who cared to point a finger and say “Hey, this isn’t AD&D here!”. It was just D&D. It wasn’t until years later that I encountered rules lawyers who probably knew nothing besides AD&D 1E. Sure I used those hardcover books more than any other in all of my campaigns because they were very useful, but really we could’ve run our campaigns without them just as successfully.

As a culture we feel compelled to categorize and label everything. It’s a requirement when there becomes a proliferation of any item. From art to music, and even D&D now, there is a need to fit things under a title simply to keep them organized. D&D appears to have these categories covered since the editions all have their own names, so it’s not quite the same as pigeonholing music into the Bluegrass category, or Art under the Cubist movement. It’s just that now, with the multitude of editions, there is a need to clarify what is meant when one says D&D.

It’s not enough to simply say D&D anymore. We have managed to classify the versions by edition. For better or worse, we pigeonhole the grand old game of D&D into nice, neat categories. I always played a hodge-podge game, with influences from various early editions, as well as additions from whatever seemed useful or inspirational at the time. Such influences included not only Arduin but later even things from Dark Sun and The Forgotten Realms. I knew no other way to play D&D. Nothing was forbidden, nothing was sacred, and nothing was off-limits or out of bounds. If I wanted to bring some Fascist Ninja Wombats with powers derived from the Champions game, I did so. It was still D&D.

No one should be able to tell you how to play D&D. Each game should feel unique. The experience should be different from one GM to another, and from one play group to another. That is one of the endearing aspects of the game, in my opinion. It’s probably exactly why we were never specific about our games. It was D&D. We didn’t come out and declare we were playing OD&D, or Holmes Basic. We were simply rolling dice and exploring our imaginations.

When pressed about my favorite edition, I answer OD&D. The reasons are simple and quite clear to me now. OD&D exemplifies the pure concept better than any other version. I can get away with a lot more and still declare that I am running OD&D. The original volumes are littered with reminders that the rules are simply guidelines; that each referee should be running the game his or her way. Imagination, creativity and flexibility are the cornerstones of OD&D.

Surely at some point, if you declare you are running OD&D, though, even with these notions ingrained in those little brown books, you are opening yourself up to scrutiny. It’s best to just call it D&D.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Fight On Forever!

2009-04-15T10:31:00.004-04:00

The modest little old school fanzine Fight On!, only four issues old now, has claimed the top spot in the Lulu Author Sales Contest! Congratulations to Calithena and Iggy Umlaut, as well as to all of the artists and authors who have been a part of making Fight On! so great.

Follow the above link for the official standings. On a side note, Swords & Wizardry Core Rules made what appears to be First Honorable Mention. I'm assuming that means Matt Finch's retro-clone just missed out on that third spot. Quite a showing!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

One Page Dungeon Contest

2009-04-14T13:02:00.005-04:00

Seems my little One Page Dungeon idea refuses to lose momentum. I'm happy to see that the concept transcends schools and is both useful and sensible to various GMs of differing styles. And to think I almost gave up on the idea since I couldn't get the template to work. Chgowiz stepped up, laid it out exactly as I described and off we went. Amityville Mike has been using the concept to great success with his growing megadungeon, Stonehell. I have more plans in the works for the idea, once I get caught up with family and work matters.

In the meantime, I'm happy to announce that I will be helping to judge the first ever One Page Dungeon Contest. I'm looking forward to seeing what other creative GMs do with my concept and template. I'm certain that many of you will surprise me so do your best to knock it out of the park.

The Chatty DM has compiled an impressive collection of sponsors and prizes! And to think it all began with this post a few months back.

Here's a copy and paste of the announcement. I'll throw in a few links at the bottom in order that you might read properly written announcements from guys who aren't training the rookie at work again today!

Announcing the One Page Dungeon Contest

A few months ago, a three headed monster was born in the dark depths of Sham's Grog 'n Blog, Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog and Mike's Society of the Torch, Pole and Rope. We had put our heads together and come up with a neat template to help people create dungeons quickly and effectively, by concentrating on the meat and allowing the user of the dungeon to add in the flavor, fluff and setting.

A few weeks later, that little creation was "discovered" outside of the dark niche by Philippe-Antoine (Chatty DM) Menard who runs a blog called Musings of the Chatty DM. Tapping into the awesome power of a Chatty DM and mixing it with the dark and dangerous creation of the three, something Big and Crazy was born. A Dark and Sinister collaboration was taking place between those of the newer editions and those of the original editions... a collaboration full of Prizes and Fun! The One Page Dungeon Creation Contest!

The idea of the contest is to ask readers to create one dungeon level in an edition-less format (ex: you can name monsters but you don't provide stats for them) using the template and submit it for the contest. We'd judge the entries based on criteria such as 'most evocative setting', 'Funniest entry', 'Most creative use of a Trap" and so on. Once we've named winners, we'll be compiling a FREE PDF of the winners/runner-ups and releasing it to the community at large.

The contest starts today, April 14th and ends on May 14th at midnight. Once the contest is done, 6 judges will scratch their heads and figure out just who stands above the rest. Categories include (but not limited to):

Best All Around (Contest Grand Prize)
Grand Prize Runner-Up: Old School Dungeon Design

Grand Prize Runner-Up: New Edition Dungeon Design
Alternative prize categories: Most Creative Trap, Funniest, Most Gonzo, for example.The judges will no doubt have other categories in their minds, as we have a ton of prizes lined up!

We have several well known RPG bloggers who will be judging, in addition to us:

Sham from Sham's Grog n Blog (http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/)
Amityville Mike from Society of Torch, Pole and Rope(http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/)
Graham from Critical Ankle Bites (http://criticalanklebites.com/)
Dave from Critical-Hits.com (http://www.critical-hits.com/)

Contest Rules
1. Participants create a one page dungeon using the template found here. For a contest entry example see here.

2. The dungeon must have the following features:

Name of Dungeon
Map
Dungeon Key (in an edition-neutral form: Description of monsters, Treasure, Traps, etc... No game stats)
OPTIONAL (If you can fit them on one page...)

Wandering Monster or Random Event tables or a list of scripted "events" that can occur over the adventure
Background

Additional descriptions that add to the dungeon, such as detailed description of trap or trick or unique feature.
3. Only one entry per participant. Entry may win grand prize or one of the runner up prizes, plus any number of alternative prize categories.

4. Participants are allowed to modify the template, provided it remains a one-page entry.

5. Submission must be emailed in PDF, Word or Open Office format at the following address: onepage@chattydm.net

6. Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Share-alike license (US 2008) with credit to the contest participant.

7. Contest closes on May 14th 2009 at Midnight.

The prizes (oh yes, the prizes!)

Grand Prize
Patron membership of Open Design
Quarterly membership of Dungeon a Day
Fantasy Grounds II Licence
1 year membership to Obsidian Portal
50$ Gift Certificate for PDFs

Grand Prize Runner-Up: Old School Dungeon Design
Bundle of Necromancer games product
Bundle of Brave Halfling Production products
Otherworld Miniatures Demon Idol Miniature
Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues
Bits of Darkness Bundle
6 month membership Obsidian Portal

Grand Prize Runner-Up: New Edition Dungeon Design
WotC's Dungeon Delve
Fantasy Grounds II License
Quarterly membership to DungeonADay
6 month membership Obsidian Portal

To divide among other Categories
Kobold's Guide to Game Design
Bundle of Brave Halfling Production products
Bundle of Knockspell and City Encounter PDFs
Bundle of Fight On Magazine (issues 1-4)
Bits of Darkness Bundle
Deck O'Names Set
WotC's Adventures
Otherworld Miniatures - Pig Faced Orcs (Or Box of Minis)
Goodman Games Random Esoteric Creature Generator

Our sponsors!
These prizes have been generously donated by our sponsors - they really are excited about this contest and we hope you are just as excited about their support. Please be sure to show them your support as well.

Brave Halfing Publishings
Fight On Magazine
Goodman Games
Malhavoc Press
Mythmere Games
Necromancer Games
Obsidian Portal
Open Designs
Otherworld Miniatures
Smiteworks
Tabletop Adventure

So what are you waiting for? Sharpen those pencils, get out those dungeon mapping tools, grab some graph paper and your favorite beverage and show us what you can do... on ONE PAGE!

If you have any questions about the contest, please feel free to contact either of us: Phil (phil.a.menard@gmail.com) and/or Michael (chgowiz@gmail.com)

Good luck... if YOU DARE!

Amityville Mike's Announcement
Chgowiz's Announcement
Chatty's Announcement