Actual Play x2: Moon Men and Peasant Rebels

Both of my A/D&D campaigns ran within two days of each other, so this is a double dose of actual play.

In my AD&D game, the PCs finished exploring a map that we had started way back in September. The dwarf got turned into green slime, but the cleric and paladin did nicely. The magic-user that the dwarf's player rolled up came with a fresh rumor (I'm as subtle as a brick, right?) of a dungeon to the northwest with orichalcum. The characters went in and saw a lot of statues, some of which caused intense delusions, but mostly didn't interact with them. The PCs had their first encounter with a dungeon chicken. Then there was a room with beastmen which prompted the comment: "Far be it from me to make presumptive comments about the tastes of wolf-headed men."

A non-encounter encounter with the dungeon cat preceded a pair of Selenites. I played them up as hostile, and they had a paralysis ray that zapped both the cleric and the paladin before the men-at-arms made short work of the moon men. This got the PCs the paralysis ray as their haul for the dungeon so far.

This morning I ran Sunday AM D&D, and prepared two potential adventure sites; of course the PCs didn't reach either. There was a non-encounter encounter with giant ferrets before they ran into a lot of difficulty getting across the river. I rolled up a troll on the encounter list, so of course it was living under an old bridge. The PCs wound up in a war of words with the troll but they were mounted and it didn't pursue them out of range of its bridge.

They went upriver and found a hillbilly named Bartto willing to row them across, but he couldn't take their mounts. They went further up and found a ferry, but it had been taken over by militant peasants (or bandits depending on who you listen to) who were immediately hostile and suspected them of being royalist spies. They went back to Bartto's crossing and overnighted, when I rolled another encounter - a giant crocodile - and rolled that it surprised them. This turned into a nasty shock when Bartto was rolling across the river, and the dwarf managed to get the boat across the river, but Bartto and the party's Magic-User, Treb, did not make it. They made their way down to the river town and found that this part of the world had a lot of tension related to the uprising upriver.

But these posts are about the lessons learned from running games, so here they are.

1. Encumbrance is a pain, but it generally works. AD&D 1e has a particularly brutal encumbrance system in terms of its requirements, but it makes players very conscious of what their characters are carrying and wearing around. My players look for ways to lighten their loads actively, including it as a factor in choosing armor and so on. I know it's a pain in the ass to track, but in an exploration game - which is what I'm running at its core - it really makes it feel more like you're making meaningful decisions.

2. It was a coincidence that both a chicken and the cat from the encounter list came up (and yes, it's a chicken and the cat) but both had good interesting effects. The players were freaked out properly. (There's a good reason for the chickens; the cat is special.)

3. The encounter charts in the Rules Cyclopedia are great. They encapsulate a lot of the ideas of the B/X / BECMI line, and feature some really neat animal encounters. They're a very good tool for wilderness hexcrawling. They've really fleshed out the world of the Sunday AM D&D game in a way that is fun to run.

4. So much of what actually happened in these games was driven by random encounter tables and reaction tables. For instance, the ferret non-encounter was a sequence of rolling "neutral" on the encounter charts, and played out with both sides avoiding each other. The insurgents, on the other hand, immediately rolled a "hostile" result toward the PCs. When I don't have a particular answer to a player question, I assign a percent chance to it, roll percentile dice, and improvise something from the result. I'm very happy where I am with this in exploration games.

5. It was fun to have both the full dungeon experience (which the AD&D game went into) and the full hexcrawl experience (as we hit it in the Sunday AM game).

The last thing to note is how good it is to be gaming regularly. And regular games, of course, mean more frequent blog entries. I'm not exactly at a regular clip but this January has been pretty good for a recent month, and I hope to keep the current pace up.

Sunday AM D&D: Actual Play Notes

A partial map made by players in my Sunday AM D&D campaign showing the Fazren Hills and the town of Farwater.

I've been using the Rules Cyclopedia and have to say that I've been enjoying it. We're using the optional skill rules, which add a very minimal but useful layer to the game. They're built on top of the "roll-under" system familiar to most B/X players, and add depth without dominating the way the game is played.

A couple of encounters in today's game were interesting even though they didn't result in direct interaction between the PCs and monsters. We've been playing in hexcrawl style, and the PCs were heading out at the north edge of the woods; I rolled an encounter overnight and it was a dragon. The characters had cover from the trees above them, and I only gave the dragon a 10% chance of noticing them and taking interest. The dice didn't show that, so I let the dragon fly over and focused on the incredible noise of its wings as it flew by in the early morning hours.

Later, after the PCs had secured a big treasure, I rolled another encounter in the overnight. This time it came during the dwarf's shift to watch, and a couple of elves were rolled. (Of course the dwarf was up for the elves.) I had them avoiding the PCs' campfire, and it wound up being a case where neither side wanted to approach the other.

Both encounters served to give a sense of depth to the world the PCs are in. Neither was actually about them at all, but instead just things they happened across. It's a richer place because it has things totally removed from the PCs and what they're doing. Also - having a dragon in the second adventure, even just a fly-by, simply feels right in a Dungeons & Dragons game.

One resource I used was the d30 Sandbox Companion by Richard LeBlanc. It's a really nice booklet, although I'm very much tempted to roll up a week or so of weather in advance of next week's game. It's a very good system for having weather actually happen during a wilderness exploration, it's just a thing that takes a minute out of the game when you actually roll precipitation.

Between the two was a short dungeon trip with a significant treasure. It will be interesting to see if the PCs go back next week for more - and if they find out what else was in the ruin they were exploring.

Reflections from AD&D

I ran another AD&D session last Saturday and it went well. I'm not going to summarize the whole game, but I do want to share a few impressions. None of these deserve their own post but together they make some observations I feel like sharing. This is spoiler-rich so my players may want to look away.

Logistics, or Sometimes You Need a Pack Goat

The players spent a lot of time on logistics. Since the temple they were exploring was up a mountain, with steps leading up to it, they couldn't bring their mule. This caused some rumination on alternatives, and the players discovered that the AD&D Players Handbook lists goats for all of 1 GP. So of course they decide that pack goats are a wonderful idea. Sadly they didn't go through with it, but it was filed away for future reference.

Since we live in a wonderful and strange world, there is a FAQ about pack goats. By my estimate, a goat should be able to carry 20-30% of its body weight, and goats tend to weigh about 150 lbs, so that'd be 30-45 lbs. Just in case you want pack goats in your game.

Also in logistics, the PCs spent a bit of time burying their coins in large metal boxes, which was interesting. Since I've used the Keep on the Borderlands so many times, PCs usually just leave money at the Keep's bank, so this was a new twist. They are lucky I'm not using the gold-spine books, because aurumvoraxes.

The Importance of Time

Some time had passed since the last time the PCs had gone to the temple. Their initial mission involved finding the priest who had gone to re-open it and his entourage. The PCs had left without finding where they were, so I decided that an aquazombie had found them instead. This led to some wonderful aquazombie encounters.

If you don't know what an aquazombie is, find Jennell Jaquays's superlative adventure "Night of the Walking Wet" from the old Dungeoneer zine. They are 2 HD creatures that replace living flesh with slime and communicate the disease with a successful unarmed attack (a save avoids this).

But I've found as a referee that I really enjoy making time count by having weird stuff happen in the dungeon when the PCs leave. After all, as Gary said, "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT. "

Dwarves and Elves are Useful

As a referee, it's much easier to describe Dyson Logos's maps if there's a dwarf involved. Since they have a great sense of elevation inside dungeons, you can just describe things to them directly - "You had gone up a hundred feet and you've come down about sixty." Makes perfect sense of things.

Elves spot secret doors a lot.

Thematic Unity and L'esprit d'escalier

I missed a few opportunities in my take on the water temple to thematically unify several elements of corruption. I wound up leaving it a mystery for the players, The aquazombies should have been tied to the corruption in the secret area of the temple, then I could have had something really cool going on. That's l'esprit d'escalier, stairway wit, the great example being George Costanza's "jerk store" comeback in Seinfeld. Players always figure out things in a better way than the referee does.

Of course that's what publishing a module lets you do, so I guess I have to get to work.

Actual Play: "Leave No Stone Door Unturned"

Yesterday, I began what I'm hoping will be a long-term monthly first edition AD&D campaign set in the borders of a medieval-ish kingdom on the edge of a set of weird mountains, with a few twists and very little of your classic AD&D monsters or treasure. It went reasonably well, though I'll have to get used to navigating the AD&D books.

As a note on system choice, it comes from a feeling that the long-term campaign interests are best served by AD&D, but letting a lot of the cruft associated with that system fall off. It can be useful but a lot of it can be simplified, particularly things like training or initiative. Developing good DMing reflexes and then letting players follow through, in my opinion, is a bigger deal than the specific system that is up front.

One rule twist that I thought was fun is that I've adapted the general sensibility of Dungeon Crawl Classics's "Mighty Deed of Arms" to a natural 20 in combat. It just gives things a bit more of an edge, having that possibility of imposing a disadvantage on your foe, either giving a penalty or costing them an action - that sort of thing. It also gets the player into the description of the event. I also think it's a great way to respond when players want to do something cool but very difficult, they can just roll for it and at least have a shot.

The party started off with two clerics, and considering the adventure seed was to investigate a formerly-abandoned temple that a cleric had gone to re-found, the PCs wound up well motivated. I asked the players to explain how the PCs know each other, which I like as a setup for a campaign a lot better than "hey, you meet in a tavern."

The adventurers were quite cautious approaching the temple, which was on the side of a mountain, and getting up and into it with care. They followed a path that took them to a set of stairs that actually went back into the open mountain air (this was riffing on a very interesting Dyson Logos map that I'll share at some point when it wouldn't be a spoiler) and back in.

A side chamber on the way, though, provided a diversion that changed the venture completely. The dwarven fighter who was taking point had the bad taste to look at a water nymph bathing in a pool - and proceeded to fail his saving throw, rendering him instantly blind. I had been curious how the encounter would turn out, and it turned out to be very interesting indeed. Since he'd had to go up stairs to see the nymph, the positioning stopped anyone else from having to look, and they got him back down the stairs and figured out about the whole blindness.

The dwarf's player was quite game about this and remarked a few times that he should be playing with his eyes shut. It was an interesting experience DMing for a character with blindness, because of course as a referee you are primarily describing the visuals of the world, what the characters see – and suddenly you're having to think of the imagined world in a different way. The dwarf took up torchbearing duties in place of the ill-fated hired torchbearer, and the party soldiered on.

Up in a room at the top of the stairs they found a pool with some very large lobsters in it. I based the stats on a monster I've always meant to use, Matt Finch's tunnel prawns, and that AC 4 proved a really tough thing for the PCs. After a couple of successes, the party began to lose the fight. Out of an initial party of five (two clerics, a halfling thief, a dwarf fighter, and an elven magic-user) plus the torchbearer, they lost the halfling, a cleric, and the torchbearer. The elf, the blind dwarf, and a cleric who had been on death's door managed to retreat. The others died in the lobster room and became lobster chow.

The PCs decided to go a long venture back to a larger city where they found a temple of Dagda, the god of both clerics. The cleric in service at the temple had a 9 on his reaction roll and decided to help the PCs out, and got the high priest, who heard their story and I rolled a 12 on the reaction roll. This was too good to pass up - I decided he was the uncle of the cleric who'd been lost, he was deeply grieved, and so moved that he wanted to help the PCs. He cast Cure Blindness on the dwarf and proceeded to give the PCs healing potions and get replacement characters for the other players, who returned to the temple.

With the new group the party moved back to the temple, only to find that the initial doors had been shut - which had been wide open when they came there before. They found their way up via a Spider Climb spell and some rope, and got their revenge on the lobsters. The last two of the initial six broke morale and went into another room. Soon after they heard a commotion.

The new room led to men with scimitars hacking at lobsters, who the PCs helped by killing the lobsters. Their boss claimed to be a merchant, but was haughty and ill-treated the surviving cleric; when the dwarf wanted to get them out he used Magic Missile and the fight was on, but the PCs won this one readily.

That was about wrap-up time for the night; the PCs made off with some treasure that the lobsters were guarding, and the merchant/wizard's money. There were two fatalities but a good share of money went to the newly composed party (adding a half-elf cleric/ranger and an elven magic-user/thief). There's still exploration to be done but the PCs got a chunk of the way through first level, the hard way.

AD&D worked well for the game, and it ran mostly like I expect things to run, except that a few things were percentile where I'd typically call for a d6 roll. There's nothing wrong with that, and the feel and flow are not hard to fix to what D&D has taught me. The lobsters were tougher than I expected, and the combat with them had a lot of swings and misses on both sides. But it was a fun, interesting game and I like the transition over to AD&D. I'll try to do a few posts on specific differences that I find interesting between the systems.

Actual Play: ReQuasqueton

Things have been quiet here because, well, they've been quiet in my gaming. I haven't been actively doing much by way of hangout gaming, but I got to run some games for other folks I know who drafted me to run an old school D&D game in Philadelphia.

I used Dyson Logos's ReQuasqueton map, which was his riff on the classic module B1 In Search of the Unknown. I wrote up my own concise version of Quasqueton that was similarly taking B1's concepts and developing them rather than following it literally. This is what the resulting player map looked like:

Since it was a one-shot and started at level 1, I decided to use Holmes Basic. The decision was really assisted by the excellent work Zach H. has done with Holmes Ref, a great series of one-page utility tables for Holmes Basic D&D that, particularly his recent character creation worksheet that gives a concise one page guide to rolling up a PC.

The crew started out balanced: two fighters, a cleric, a dwarven thief, and a magic-user / torch holder. I used hints of the battle in the entrance to Quasqueton as in B1, which gives a nice sense of danger. Tarrying at the entrance attracted wandering skeletons, which were turned and then pursued and beaten. The lack of any duration of turning makes the mechanics kind of wonky when players decide to kill the monsters anyway; I decided that turning lasts at least a turn, and the result was that the PCs pursued the monsters through a length of hallway.

They missed a room I was really hoping they'd pick up on, but did at least give the cavern section a brief go. The result was probably for the best, as the dwarf decided not to check out the bioluminescent fungus in the cavern beyond.

A tea service in one room was suitably freaky, with the cleric's player acting ultra-paranoid as one of the fighters ate one of those little cucumber sandwiches (they looked fresh and produced no ill effects). The teapot was eventually used as ammo against more skeletons in the following room, while the magic-user had considerable success using chairs as one-time improvised weapons; he did so well that he hauled a chair around and used it as a prop going forward.

Standard d6 damage in Holmes may seem like weak tea, but I do love the flexibility it allows. Maces, daggers, chairs – the variety is fun. I think the main issue isn't to add variable damage but to give monsters d6 hit dice (as the first edition of Holmes implied) and allow fighters bonus damage, and link it to high Strength: d6+1 for fighters with Strength 14 or better, d6+2 if they have Strength 18. Not only does it make the fighter a better class, it also gives the Strength spell something useful to do.

Eventually the PCs wound up fighting berserkers. Now, berserkers are to me like the booby prize of old school D&D. You put them in thinking, "Oh, this will be interesting." But then you put them in and you remember that berserkers just fight. They never break morale, they never negotiate, no prisoners is written into the description. It makes them one-dimensional, which is nice for "bad guys" but kind of bland for a dungeon that needs interesting factions. Forget the berserkers, use actual Norsemen instead.

The design of the rooms in ReQuasqueton wound up with a period where the dwarf was dead (he wanted to negotiate when he had succeeded in using Move Silently and gotten a full surprise round on three of the berserkers) and one fighter was holding a door with the rest of the group behind him. It wound up going better once the PCs took the room inside, but only because my dice stopped rolling over 10 and couldn't even hit the magic-user. So the PCs took a decent haul out with only one fatality.

One move I particularly enjoyed was one of the fighters trying to use her spear against two opponents in one round. I told her if she got a 20 on the die roll I'd let her make a second attack; she actually got a 19 and then rolled 6 damage on an opponent with just 2 HP left, so I let her get a point of damage against the second berserker. With older D&D combat I really find encouraging things like that, but leaving it at a fairly hard difficulty, makes life more fun.

ReQuasqueton is a solid map. It's got some nice long corridors without turning all mazy and geomorph-ish like the original. And since it basically invites a similar riff on B1 when populating the dungeon, it allows you to make it a good classic dungeon romp without duplicating the original. Running it with two players who'd DMed In Search of the Unknown worked out well; they recognized broad strokes but didn't know the map in advance. I enjoy the concept of a "module riff" and would have fun doing the same with B2.

Going back to Holmes really felt like the right move in this game, and it worked like a charm. It's light and really close to classic D&D without being hard to reference like OD&D can be in play. While it needs some tweaks and adjustments, it's actually the version of D&D I'd probably most recommend that a referee runs as a go-to for games that really need to have that classic "D&D" feel (as opposed to OD&D which is its own thing and has a different purpose, as a basis for freestyling rather than a complete package).

One note – it's always worthwhile to tell the player of the magic-user a few things, like the fun of torch-holding, the utility of lamp oil as Molotov cocktails, and the power of the Sleep spell. Although I really enjoyed the turn toward WWE style use of chairs from the player. If you don't, you're not taking the journey with me. Picture the stereotypical D&D wizard. Now he's going all WWE on skeletons. Yeah. That's just fun and there's no apologizing.

Actual Play: Funnel and Science Fantasy

I ran my first Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG funnel today, and four out of eight PCs met their ends in the process. The Kraken picture above is actually representative of the first encounter, where the ship the characters had signed onto was attacked by a giant sea monster. The PCs only had to beat back the tentacles, which still took a couple of characters. Then they rowed the two ship's boats to a nearby island as the ship started sinking, only to be taken down by the squid.

On the island the players actually took with gusto to surviving the night, which was one place that the funnel format showed off a wrinkle I hadn't thought of: a weaver was making a lean-to, an indentured servant starting a fire, a potato farmer finding edible tubers: characters doing survivalist stuff with the funnel skills. If you wanted to do a Swiss Family Robinson or Lost multi-part scenario in a fantasy RPG, a DCC funnel is actually a pretty great way to start it. Especially when there are a lot of interesting factions on the island.

But my scenario focused on a ziggurat at the center of the island, where things led. After a lizardman attack in the night, the characters went to the step pyramid and explored. Eventually they found a giant lizard, which took a PC out. But they found a back way down and a series of chutes that, carefully explored (though still losing a PC to a spear trap), led to an uncanny room that turned out to be a buried spaceship. I've been wanting to use one for a long time, and this one took off once the PCs sat in the command chairs. As of the end of the scenario, they were level one PCs en route to Mars.

The overall campaign setup is one I've wanted to do for a while, basically a mashup of Poul Anderson's The High Crusade with the classics of planetary romance. Crusade is science fiction where a group of English peasants commandeer a starship and get on with conquering alien worlds. Anderson's book is pretty much a romp for the humans, but I just want to take the basic image of medieval pseudo-Europeans with a starship and run with it. As a classic concept I just don't think it's done enough.

(Of course, I used an ancient astronauts explanation for the spaceship rather than a failed first-contact invasion, but that's just because it's more fun IMO.)

Adventures beyond this one are going to be using the Warriors of the Red Planet RPG as a supplement for Barsoom material. It's a retro-clone type of game by Al Krombach that provides a thorough D&D-alike conversion for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom with the serial numbers filed off (or at least down to a near-rhyme; I mean, the sample character is Pars Parthas). But it will be using the DCC RPG, which I think is a good fit for sword & planet type adventure.

Beyond Mars / Barsoom, there are many worlds I'd like to explore in broad strokes. Venus, of course, with others in the solar system; and maybe even savage Almuric, the Purple Planet and its weirdling sun, Jorune, and frozen Yuggoth and dim Carcosa.

Really, the only problem is picking where to go first.

Actual Play: OD&D, Greyhawk and a touch of Arduin

I ran OD&D today. It seems odd, given a wide array of systems – including clones – to still use the original booklets to run games. I did recently give Lamentations of the Flame Princess a whirl, and it's a fine clone. And yet I now feel like OD&D is my "home" system.

(The picture above is of dice inked by Lou Zocchi. I was using the tiger eye beauties above as my primary d20s, using a d6 as a control die. There's just something to it.)

The game used Dyson Logos's Dellorfano Protocols Map. I loaded it with an adventure that had some plot behind it, a portal leading to Cykranosh (the Clark Ashton Smith name for Saturn), a few other CAS references, a few monsters, and a couple of interesting tricks. It was a ball to run.

Using OD&D plus Greyhawk as a basis winds up a lot like AD&D lite, or an alternate version of B/X D&D. But I like this particular iteration's quirks the best. It was how OD&D was really played, and it hits a sweet spot that attempts to add more detail or systematize things wind up missing. There is a comfort level to it, but a big factor is that it doesn't feel as much like somebody else's game. That's the main weakness, in my opinion, of the various clones.

As a side note: I think the best thing that you can do for your D&D experience is to run original D&D, no supplements, at least once. It's like a Zen cleansing moment for D&D: you just get to focus on the dungeon crawl itself. My love for OD&D I think stems from that. Everything I add, I choose to add, for a specific reason that I understand.

I also used the Arduin Grimoire, which I've been consulting for its quirky-as-hell critical hit table for a few games. It's a frickin' riot in use. One of the PC hobbits got a result of "eye" against a bandit with a dagger, and the damage was enough to kill the bandit straight out, so I described the hobbit getting up on top of the bandit and jamming the dagger home. I'd actually like to see a book like Arduin but designed by a person with better rules-sense than Hargrave, and less of the stupidly complex charts like individual weapon damage by number of enemy HD.

And of course the Ready Ref Sheets were in hand. It's another product I love but would appreciate a new version for. I'd like a to-hit chart closer to the one in Iron Falcon, which has additional gradations by level, and a fresh dungeon searching table. And of course various and sundry other charts.

My feeling is that D&D is an intensely personal game, being a creature of imagination. So it's naturally going to wind up as a kitbash game, where you take from the variants and other games out there and construct your own. Other people have talked about how they're running an "OSR Frankengame" and I think that's educational. The best thing the OSR has done is put out an awful lot of material for kitbashing. No one piece is a sine qua non, but there's plenty out there to tune a game just the way you want.

Red Herrings and Reaction Rolls (Plus Kickstarters)

A couple of brief observations from my last game this past Saturday.

Reaction Rolls: These can be funky things. One NPC gets extreme positive reaction rolls – 11s and 10s – and the other negative ones – 4s and 5s – and you wind up with one accompanying the party and the other getting killed (after using Charm on the hobbit). It's kind of an inspired mechanic.

Red Herrings: I keep placing things in my dungeon that appear promising but are ultimately not useful in terms of finding treasure. In play, this can turn into a massive time sink. Players want the good treasure, so an area that appears like it might have treasure but doesn't can lead to a lot of time spent with no serious experience point gain.

So here are half a dozen ideas to spice them up:

1: Add a timer to the area. Rising water, sinking ceiling, clanking noise getting louder, treasure that only exists during the current planetary alignment, etc. Give the players ample notice and such timers can make their exploration at least much quicker.

2: Red herrings with teeth. This works especially well in D&D if it's a big, slow monster. The danger is that the players might think it has treasure and stand their ground for a fight, but the next group will know better.

3: It's a trap! Exploring too closely leads to various cave-ins, pit traps, arrow traps, explosions and flattenings. Especially good if there is a warning prior to the red herring area. For a fun variant, trap them inside and make escape a challenge.

4: Just wandering by. Increase your wandering monster rate in the red herring area so that it becomes prohibitive. Again, this has the disadvantage that too many player groups will try to fight it out.

5: Tell them it's a red herring. Mark off a torch or a flask of oil, let the players know they found nothing after diligent search, and get on with the game.

6: Fuck it, it's a special. Sure, you had planned on this being a time sink and nothing more, but they've spent long enough on it already. Grab your copy of The Dungeon Alphabet and throw the players a bone (roll 1d8 for type).

So with that said, I want to highlight the Kickstarter campaigns I'm currently backing.

Primeval Thule 5e is, well, a 5e campaign setting. It sold me quickly by listing "Conan and Cthulhu" as its reference points. Howard and Lovecraft are still big reasons why I game, and I think having a 5e book that supports this style will be really useful. I like Sasquatch Studios's material for 5e (Lost Mine of Phandelver, Princes of the Apocalypse), so I'm happy supporting this.

Metamorphosis Alpha: Epsilon City is Jim Ward's big city level for the Starship Warden. Followers of this blog know I'm a fan of MA, and I'm extremely happy to see that Goodman Games is putting out another adventure for the system. There are noises about expanded material and a boxed set, but the Kickstarter isn't exactly rolling along despite a fairly rapid start, so folks should get their pledges in already!

Ernest Gary Gygax Jr.'s Marmoreal Tomb Campaign Starter is a dungeon module by Ernie Gygax and Benoist Poiré. This one is growing quickly, with the Gygax name and some good press driving it. Benoist is a superb mapper whose work can be seen in issue #3 of the AFS zine and issue #3 of Gygax Magazine; he is doing all of the project's maps. Ernie is the son of E. Gary Gygax, and is writing this as a module in the tradition he learned from his father, as well as other luminaries like Rob Kuntz, in Lake Geneva. It's a wonderful project and I felt I simply had to back it.

One final note. I've been quietly using the Arduin Grimoire's critical hit chart without telling my players. It is monstrous, but I understand why people made so many imitations. I doubt whether I'll continue using it, but I always reserve the right to have it in my back pocket.

Goblins are slow, Velociraptors are fast

I got to run a hangout game of OD&D with Greyhawk last night, and the above was the list of books I used in prep and while running the game (less the Arduin Grimoire which I wound up using because it was handy). I'm actually lookng at finally writing the module I've been meaning to write and wanted to run some players through the dungeon; it was successful.

I have to give a positive mention to Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa; I used his "Spawn of Shub-Niggurath" generator to get inspiration for one of the monsters, which helped add to the high weirdness quotient of the game. I also reskinned a wand as a ray-gun, which went over very well. The dungeon itself is supposed to have an "ancient ruins invaded by some science fiction stuff" feel, so that was all very much to the good.

The one thing that really stood out to me in the game was the effect of movement rates in combat. It's a very static thing, where a high movement rate more or less always wins. The PCs, not yet being burdened with encumbering treasure, were able to chase down fleeing goblins so handily that they could have overtaken them if they liked. Later when they chose to run from a large number of goblins they had no problem doing so.

Likewise, when they got back to the surface they found that they could not run from the velociraptor whose interest they drew. (Velociraptors in my games are basically colorful, predatory turkey-vultures that primarily stay on the ground and have nasty sharp claws.) Giving velociraptors a movement rate of 18" (180/60 in B/X terms) means that the PCs could not even conceivably flee and had to stand and fight. This led to the near-death of the hobbit thief, who took a raptor claw to the face.

This aspect of the game is really important when you play it as generally intended, with monsters regularly breaking morale (like the goblins in my game) and running, and yet it isn't – to my knowledge – covered in any of the various rule sets and revisions out there with anything more sophisticated than the OD&D movement rate system. At best, initiative can get you a head start, but that's about it.

OD&D with Greyhawk has some pretty severe organizational issues, but overall it's such a favorite of mine that I couldn't permanently get away from it. Getting a chance to run it on hangouts is a real pleasure. If you don't have the real thing, I'd recommend giving Iron Falcon a shot. I don't use it because I prefer making my own inferences and rulings from the OD&D booklets, but more than any other clone it gets the rules I prefer to use out.

Convention Play: Metamorphosis Alpha

I spent a good part of the past week updating my adventure, now titled "Rites of Passage," for Philly GamesCon. Unlike my G+ Hangout game, the con game stayed entirely on my 10th deck of the Starship Warden, a pleasant pastoral area with two villages and a handful of strange areas.

The first area visited was a Round House Modular Dwelling Unit, populated per Jim Ward's tables in The House on the Hill. Until the power suddenly kicked out, this was a fun game of MA's typical "identify this weird technological thing," with PCs figuring out soft drink dispensers and discovering a jar of peanut butter and jelly (one of those mixed types). The insane engineering robot activated, but the PCs had just found a robot maintenance device and used it to reboot it (it discovered a firmware corruption) and open the access panel. They left after the power outage with several good technological artifacts, and some magazines and cups.

After this they decided to go to the "Forbidden Zone," a massive high-radiation area. One of the PCs went in but his Radiation Resistance was good enough that it just did damage to him. After this, the mutant with several heightened senses figured out that they were being followed by a mutant bobcat, which did some fancy tunneling and chased them back to the river that runs through the level. It was an interesting encounter, because the bobcat had tunneling claws that let it burst out of the ground. One of the PCs had an Apathy Field that helped them get away.

The PCs took a rest and then went north to a small grove, where they had spotted a dug-up area that hides a laser pistol, a brown color band, and a cougaroid skin. Unfortunately there were squirrels. The PC with Apathy Field tried using it but one o the squirrels had terrific Mental Resistance and resisted. The squirrel then used its trump card – Molecular Disruption. That PC was gone, poof. Quite dramatic. The others used Heat Breath to kill both squirrels and the vines on the trees.

After that, the remaining three PCs tried heading fore (north), and found the field of weird flowers. They were going to skirt it (not a terrible idea), but one of the PCs went to pick a flower to bring home. This happened to be a rose with poison thorns, and I had him roll a Dexterity check to avoid getting pricked. He failed and that was another PC. The last two PCs called it an adventure and went home with substantial gear.

It was an enjoyable game, although I do want to tweak the level a bit more - there needs to be an encounter near the RHMDU aside from the robot to keep it from being a cakewalk. A PC with holographic skin was able to trick the house's access panel into letting him in by imitating a color band, a neat trick but one I probably wouldn't let work with a robot or more sophisticated tech. The fact of "here's a house, try to get in" is a fun challenge. I am thinking it could use some mutant birds nesting nearby to make it more of a challenge.

The grove with the molecular-disruptor squirrels is, I think, a very Metamorphosis Alpha encounter. The squirrels don't have a lot of hit points, but they can straight-out kill PCs if they try fighting. And the trees will try to grab PCs who dig up the goods, but the PCs observed the vines moving and used Heat Breath to fry everything in sight.

In practice, the Mutation Manual is awesome, the best of the Goodman supplements. It has some great new powers that add a whole lot to making mutants, both PC and not, more interesting. I think humans need a bit more edge to make them competitive, which I'll probably work on by tweaking the pregens. I would also recommend reprinting all the powers that PC mutants have for reference if you're running the game. Also, the Referee's Screen is terrific; it essentially has the whole system aside from the mutations on it. Easily worth ten bucks.

MA is a terrific game. It's probably, for my money, the best pure exploration game out there in RPGs. Combat is extremely variable because of the mutations, and the artifacts just make discovering things a pure joy. The level I've designed would probably take three or four sessions to explore thoroughly; I think that's a good length for a very full MA mini-campaign. At some point, I may see about putting it out in the wild, because I think more good MA sandbox adventures are really needed out there.

Actual Play: Original D&D

Since I've had so many days off work over the holidays, I decided to run a pick-up game on G+ Hangouts of original D&D. This used a dungeon that I've been tinkering with ideas on for a while now, using some of the science fantasy elements I've discussed on this blog as well as some other mythological stuff I have picked up along the way. As dungeons are wont to do, a player choice early on wound up driving much of the game.

The PCs started exploring a dungeon complex I am calling the Orichalcum Age Dungeon, which was built during the years before Atlantis sunk beneath the waves. Things went quickly from town to dungeon and (after distracting some giant rodents with rations) the PCs wound up talking to an NPC magic-user, who they eventually convinced to come with them on their trip. It was really interesting to play this out using the reaction tables, as the MU went from skeptical to accepting their offer. But when a PC accidentally walked through a teleportation trap, he wanted to leave him for lost, while the other PCs stayed loyal. They voluntarily went into the trap while the NPC left them behind. Following the dice always leads to an interesting dynamic. It's practically the first law of old school roleplaying.

On the other side of the teleport trap, the PCs eventually found and slept a group of bandits, only leaving the leader. They had him as a captive, but he turned the table; having a good HP total will do that for you. At one point in the ensuing fight, he managed to take one of the PCs hostage, which was an on the fly ruling I made when he had rolled a 20 to hit and would've instantly killed him. I like the interpretation that a 20 allows you to do max damage or any other maneuver you like, and in the future I think I'll leave it open for PCs. The hostage character wound up getting the sharp end of the dagger when the PCs threatened a slept bandit in return; the bandit leader didn't value his followers that much, after all.

There was a fun encounter that happened because of an idea I ran across in the 5e DMG's tables: a false door with a trap behind it. I stuck a gray ooze behind a door and had it come out when it was opened.

Then there were Selenites. I used them in place of kobolds, figuring that as diminutive creatures and fairly weak they would have a similar role. The fun part was that the PCs chased them to a portal leading to a gray, featureless wasteland – the Moon, of course. This went to two principles I am working on with this dungeon. First, the idea that PCs shouldn't have to go deep in the dungeon to get to really interesting parts; second, the idea of replacing a lot of the generic monster crew with more interesting counterparts.

It being OD&D contributed greatly to the latter. I've gone back and forth over the issue of monster design, because OD&D has very few variables and correspondingly not a lot of design space to make monsters unique. But the flip side of this is that creating a new monster is just a question of changing one or two numbers from an existing monster. The referee can literally think up new monsters while stocking the dungeon. (Personally, my notes list armor class, movement rate and hit dice, so I can actually write up everything I need for a monster in my room notes.)

When comparing this to later iterations of D&D, the ease of inventing monsters on-the-fly for OD&D is an advantage that it's hard to overstate. The only things you have to spend any time thinking about are special abilities beyond basic d6 damage. Even in Metamorphosis Alpha I find design to be much more involved, while in B/X D&D it's a bit of a chore and in 5e it's such a maze I'm not sure I really want to think about it.

It's also interesting to notice patterns that people develop. Holmes and B/X make people throw tons of flaming oil; I ran with this strategy doing damage, although not as powerfully as in Holmes. Technically in a strict reading of OD&D, oil should just deter pursuit rather than doing damage, but I rolled with it for a session. Swords & Wizardry Whitebox also has players develop habits that are just wrong for by the book OD&D, for instance the whole idea of bonuses for a 13 stat other than Dexterity. And nobody turned over a character write-up for the game with the stats in OD&D order (Str Int Wis Con Dex Cha).

In my mind, this has always been an OD&D blog. Even though I think clones that go afield from what OD&D is are putting out really excellent material today and pushing the envelope in what D&D can do, the original game still has a very special place for me. Most of the time today was spent on the exploration game of OD&D, and I've always thought that is the game's real strength. None of that is to knock other editions, or the clones, but playing the original game always brings this home for me.

Actual Play: Running Metamorphosis Alpha

Since I have time off over the holidays, I wanted to make sure I got at least one really prime game in, and for months I've been wanting that to be Metamorphosis Alpha. So I finally got that done today, and a game has gone right from my to-play list to the list of games I really enjoy.

I had no idea what MA would actually be like in play, but Tim Kask's introduction to the new Goodman Games edition really defined some of the delightful moments: it gets a bit into cultural anthropologists as you explain high-tech things to players like they're the tribal barbarians their player characters are meant to be.

I loved mixing this with known science, which I think is why so many Gamma World games went into "modern plus apocalypse" rather than the "future plus apocalypse" that it was supposed to. I mean, an iPhone is basically a strange rectangle where one side is glass and the other is metal, and it has one button. (And when a PC pressed the button, an icon displaying no battery power came up. Familiar to anyone?)

The random Round House Modular Dwelling Unit generator in Craig J. Brain's module The House on the Hill helped generate some priceless moments. I think the players really enjoyed the discovery process with a packet of salt & vinegar potato chips that came out of the food machine and were a theme for the rest of the adventure. The RHMDU is a brilliant place to explore; the PCs actually got into the administrative center for a bit because of a laser pistol they had found.

Brian Blume's bionics (reproduced in the Goodman edition) made a really threatening NPC who got offed with the laser pistol - it did him a ton of damage, even more than he did with his bionic arm and vibro-sword. And I wound up using Jim Ward's forest level from Dungeoneer (also in the Goodman tome) when the PCs left the confines of the level I had designed. Both the Goodman book and House on the Hill pulled their weight.

One detail I really enjoyed playing out was that the PCs, in the RHMDU, found "casual clothing" - which I decided had them going around in "Starship Warden" t-shirts. I might need to petition WardCo to actually make some because I'm just so tickled by the idea. I also enjoyed the PCs finding out that the radiation-riddled "Forbidden Zone" was really, well, forbidden and not just somewhere the PCs' parents had warned them against.

The session ended in disaster because the PCs found explosives, which I described pretty clearly as C4. I know, I could've gone with something else, but it's so much more fun to run with something you can really get into describing. Plus, there's electrical effects abound in the game, and given that C4 is activated by electricity it only seemed fitting. This was what did the PCs in, as the electrified shed in the Dungeoneer level and a PC's ability to generate electricity both combined with the C4 and blew the PCs and the shed to kingdom come. (Two PCs technically survived because, as a G+ Hangout game, their players dropped out before the grand finale.)

The ending was appropriate given that it was a one-shot; I see MA as perfect for one-shots, or maybe a "mini-series" planned campaign. It was based on novels which are fairly brief, and relies heavily on the theme of discovery. I could also very much see it blending into D&D as I discussed in my last post. Because it isn't class-and-level based, players can get to the really good stuff right in their first or second adventure, and don't need to go through a grind of level building.

It deserves some mention that the system is more rough hewn than even OD&D. The organization of the rulebook is awful, especially given that the WardCo and Goodman reprints both contain errata-ed versions of most of the essential tables that you use to run the game. (And don't get me started on the fact that the mutations are in basically arbitrary order.) The lacunae don't really matter much, though, because the system is simply so light that an experienced referee can just make a ruling and not change the game at all. The material that is present works quite well, but it's not a game to be run by a neophyte.

One hint for the prospective referee: you should have stats for any NPCs or monsters you're using. The game runs a lot more smoothly when, at a minimum, they have Mental Resistance and Dexterity scores, and at that point you might as well give them Constitution, Strength and Radiation Resistance.

Metamorphosis Alpha is going through the best period of support in its lifetime, thanks to Goodman Games and WardCo.  It's very different from the D&D experience, but it is really worth giving a try in play. MA is really good for gamers who've played a lot of D&D and want the excitement of fresh discovery, really specializing in that aspect of play, and because of how it's structured it doesn't require a commitment of months or years to a campaign.

Actual Play: Fun with Infravision and Alignment

Infravision in B/X is described explicitly as "heat-sensing sight." So I tend to play the sight of elves and dwarves as being very broad; only the ability to see vague shapes of heat, generally not making out anything of the details of a monster.

Which was fun with the first of two encounters my players had with velociraptors last night. The raptors showed up during the first watch of the evening, and had the players surrounded, but there were only three of the raptors. The party's elf and one of the clerics were on watch, so the raptors were considering them potential prey until the cleric shouted everyone awake. The raptors disappeared in a flash (I give them a very quick movement rate) and it seemed like a false alarm. At this point they still weren't really sure what the threat was, other than that it was three or four feet high but broad and very fast.

The PCs wound up going back to the ruined palace where they had previously slaughtered some toad-men. Some exploration got them to investigate the statue in the courtyard, which had certain stops in its direction where it pointed. Investigating one of them led to another encounter with the raptors, who were now defending their nests and not just being curious. I described their motion with some keys that echoed Jurassic Park. The players got out, with only the hobbit getting a scratch when he went to his backpack to try and get some meat to slow the raptors down.

Deciding to try their luck elsewhere in the ruins, the PCs checked out a small block of rooms. This time they found a corridor with some caltrops in it; had they gone in without being wary it would have been a bigger problem for them. Around the next corridor they did get hit by a crossbow trap, and while investigating it found that they had the interest of a big, menacing warrior type. The players' reaction to his weapon, a military pick that they later found out was aligned with Chaos.

Once they dispatched the warrior and his companions, they found more materials, including a letter written in Chaotic. This was translated for them by one of the Acolytes from the Caves of Chaos, who has been charmed by the elf and is being used as a makeshift henchman. It's been fun to sort of let the idea of "forces of Chaos" as a persistent, but not unified, threat; the way I interpret Chaos working in my world is that powerful Chaotic characters are in touch with patron deities, and each such leader is a sort of absolute tyrant who imposes their will on their underlings. So there is now someone in dungeons (not yet discovered by the PCs) under the ruin who has transgressed against the forces loyal to the Chaos god Arioch.

I was very happy to be able to play up the Chaos and dinosaur aspects of this ruin in one session. It's been interesting in terms of PC balance, too: although there are two fourth-level fighters, who can take a fair number of hits, the rest of the PCs were 1st or 2nd level this adventure. One of the clerics hit 3rd, as did the hobbit, which will make the rest of this particular adventure interesting.

Actual Play: Gygax, You Magnificent Bastard

Several sessions after I thought my players were done with the Caves of Chaos, a number of low-level PCs added to last night's session brought them to a long-neglected mission into the Shrine of Evil Chaos.

The party composition is pretty mixed; there are two fourth-level fighters, but only one was present last night. There were also a second level cleric and hobbit, and a first level cleric and elf. Figuring that they'd handle the Caves more readily, they went out to Cave K.

Defiling the altar in the Shrine turned out to be a bad idea, and caused the alarm bell in the Temple to sound. Then the PCs ran and locked themselves in the passage to the east - down the stairs.

Exploring for an exit, the party instead promptly found the Medusa, and saving throws combined with lots of running they kept her in the cell room. The hobbit showed a lot of bravery by throwing his shield against the door opening when she slid it open to try and stone the PCs outside. More wandering led to the room with the wight, and a quick flight from there. The PCs wound up going back up and trading blows with the acolytes above. The second level cleric failed his save against cause fear and ran back down below, but the elf Charmed one of the other acolytes.

The fleeing PC wound up in the storage room, blocked in by the gelatinous cube. He used his superior speed and winning initiative to maneuver the cube into the storage room and then outrun it out of the room. Probably the cleverest bit of outright running I've ever seen in a D&D game, and it got him out alive.

Meanwhile the other PCs had run out of the cave. The cleric managed to turn a bunch of skeletons and get out without dying. No treasure, and only a few opponents killed, made this a bust for experience.

Despite that it was proof of the principle that sometimes PCs have to run. There were multiple occasions where I was wondering if there was going to be a TPK; despite the dice landing where they may, they got out of each jam. Nobody leveled, and I had to adjust XP downward for 4th level characters fighting much lower level NPCs. I also noticed that I need good B/X reference sheets; I found myself flipping between the Basic and Expert books a bit too often.

I came out with more appreciation of Gygax. Making a much harder level when you go down stairs is a great switch from most of KotB where, as one player noted, lower is easier. But that medusa was simply a magnificent moment of bastardry.

Following the Dice

Some days you just roll the dice and let them lead you.

Last night wound up being a game where the B/X rules specifically came into play a good deal. The player characters were en route to a ruin they had previously made a brief foray into, when a wilderness wandering encounter turned up on the die. A bit of rolling and soon the PCs were in a stereotypical ambush situation - one bandit pretending his horse had thrown a shoe and he needed help, others lurking in the woods about the road.

The party's hobbit had some heroics using a pony to charge and a spear as a lance, and one of the fighters managed to hit a bandit so hard (natural 20, maximum damage, magical weapon) that I simply had his head go missing. The other two bandits decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and retreated along an old "deer path" into the woods.

At this point, the PCs could've gone on a further adventure, but these players had a hobbit who could track them virtually invisibly in the woods. Seriously, halflings are really excellent at this, and so I rolled up a bandit camp – a full bandit encounter several miles into the woods. This involved 14 bandits, compared to 4 PCs, which normally wouldn't be a very fair encounter, but hobbits are really excellent at being invisible and silent in the woods.

The bandits went to sleep with two guards posted, one on either side of the camp. The PCs decided to make a night attack on them, and three PCs managed to blow their rolls on shooting the guard on their side of the bandit camp. The hobbit hit his with a sling, but he was so well covered that the guard still didn't see him!

I rolled each turn to see how many bandits came out of the camp, and within two turns there were three PCs taking on three bandits each, with more coming. Running was a consideration, as PCs were taking damage and may not have lasted too long. Then each of them killed one of their bandits, and following the Moldvay morale rules, the bandits broke. This turned into a complete rout between initiative and free hits for withdrawing from combat.

Now, if you know Moldvay, bandits are pretty worthless for individual treasure, but a lair of bandits are treasure type A. And the dice turned up good for the PCs on thousands of gold (2) and thousands of platinum (2). That made it a very large treasure, and actually got each PC a level. Two of the fighters are at 4th level (Hero) while the hobbit and the new fighter easily made level 2. This despite having a pronounced lack of magic-users or clerics in the party.

The rest of the session was spent in the Keep on the Borderlands, getting magic items identified and paying a Sage to get some information on the palace they had been seeking. This was another place where we spent a lot of time with the Expert rules; I had given arbitrary percentages for each type of specialist to be present in the Keep, and the Sage was the one that came up. It let me give a bit of background on the ruin, which was nice, without doing too huge of an infodump.

It was a fun derail, with a real element of danger. The recon the PCs did was the main reason they were able to defeat the bandits, and become big damn heroes at the Keep in the process. I found running with the results the dice were giving me created an interesting, if totally unexpected, result.

(For the curious, the dice pictured above are 4 sets of 7 GameScience poly dice, one set of 6 Diamond Dice from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, and two GameScience d20+ labelled 0-9 and 1+, 2+, 3+, ..., 0+ so you can use them as d10s or d20s, with the + indicating an add 10.)

Actual Play: Dyson's Delves, part II

My players finished the romp through the Cinder Throne, so I can share that this was the map that I was using without it being a spoiler per se. I really loved a few things about this dungeon and how it turned out.

Last night's group was as different as could be from the previous delve. Before there had been a fighter, an elf and two thieves. This time there were two fighters, a dwarf, two clerics and two elves, including the fighter and elf from the last session. It helped that the first fighter and the dwarf were level 3 and the other fighter had been sitting right below level 3 from a previous adventure. The troglodytes that had seemed like a bad idea the previous time were pretty readily dealt with this time. A random encounter with a party of Veterans turned into some harmless parlaying; the fact that it happened as they were leaving the troglodyte room and most of the fighters got sick from the stench helped with that.

The dwarf PC's hardiness proved itself when a giant black widow spider got the jump on the party; it bit him but dwarves are great at saving versus poison. The party was able to set fire to the webs and do some damage to the other spider hiding in the web-filled room, and take it out before it could do more damage. The Moldvay rules really encourage setting stuff on fire, and particularly spiderwebs if you read the description of the Web spell – the black widow spider webs are explicitly like the spell. I guess the logical deterrent would be to have something valuable like a scroll, or a human voice crying out from the spiderweb; otherwise a room full of webs is an invitation to set fire.

I had put an arrow trap in the angled hall with a niche toward the center of the map. The PCs used a 10-foot pole to prod the niche and trigger all the arrows, and the elves found the secret hole in the wall with some gold; if they hadn't prodded ahead, there was a second pressure plate in front of the gold that would've fired arrows. This carefulness went to the wind with the dead end a bit further on, where one of the elves promptly fell into a pit trap. There's just something about pit traps that gets 'em every time.

Then, because variety is the spice of life, I threw in some OD&D gnolls. Not that they're mechanically any different from Moldvay gnolls, which fit the hyena-man variety, but the vibe was a little non-standard when I was doing the dungeon stocking and I enjoy simple reskins like this. One of the elves wisely used a Sleep as the gnolls had spent their surprise round throwing axes at the PCs, so that was ended rather quickly. It wound up with one of the long-suffering fighters getting a Sword +2, so that was worth it.

(As a side note: while people buying modules often complain about generic loot like weapons with pluses, in play I've always found players quite happy with them. A Sword +2 is nothing to sneeze at, even if it doesn't have a particular backstory or weird power.)

After the gnolls they managed to get pretty much straight on to the area at the bottom of the map, going down into the room at the base, which had a weird pillar that would sometimes tell the truth and sometimes lie (by random roll). I can't remember which particular random generator I pulled this one from, but it worked and the PCs used questioning to figure out which room had the crown they were seeking. So they went to that room and saw the crown.

Now, I should mention that the dungeon walls bore scorch marks, pretty much throughout, as an atmospheric thing. I placed the crown in the one room with no scorch marks, and that single detail freaked the players out. They wound up dragging a heavy chest via rope, to make sure it was not trapped, and then checking almost every element of the room for traps. Except for the ceiling.

So when they finally made the plan for the elves to grab the crown and run, with everyone else already cleared out of the dungeon, the gray ooze lurking on the ceiling made short work of the elves. The red herring of some horrible fire trap had gotten the players to carefully check every aspect of the room except the one that had the actual danger, including performing a Detect Magic.

The other PCs came back and managed to get the crown, which was worth 5000 GP, and rightly was the crux of the adventure. Gray oozes are very slow and this one was already "feeding", so it ended well for the more established fighters and clerics. It's fascinating for me when plans go like that; I had decided in advance that only specific inspection of the ceiling would give hints to the ooze and the players didn't check it. If they had, they would have had to deal with the ooze otherwise.

I can't over-emphasize how happy I was with Dyson's map. The three-dimensional elements and hidden chutes were really quite neat and added a dynamic to the adventure that I enjoyed very much. I played with the "S" circles being like manhole covers that the players lifted to get to the chutes below.

I stocked it using Moldvay's dungeon stocking rules, which usually lead to a pretty interesting time, and used various substitutions as I saw appropriate. One thing I've been careful to do is add 1d10-5 to anything with tens of coins, or 1d100-50 to anything with hundreds, which results in coin amounts that don't feel arbitrary. (I never give exact totals until the PCs are out of the dungeon, of course.) I have generally replaced about half of the "typical" encounter types with unusual and bizarre things; it creates a memorable impression without being too much in weird-land.

So the game goes on, and the next adventure I might have a couple options available for the players to pick a direction. Overall Moldvay works really well in practice, even if it has a few pyromaniacal tendencies.

Actual Play: Dyson's Delves

In my latest B/X game, I looked through some maps from Dyson Logos, picked one (I'll share which map once the PCs have finished exploring) and populated it with the Moldvay rules. I used the random encounter list for monster picks, but "improved" on the results with weird and different creatures. I riffed on the dungeon's contents to come up with a backstory for it involving elves and a crown, and off we went.

Once again I used Geoffrey McKinney's Dungeon of the Unknown for some of the oddities, including a glop and one of the chimerical beasts. (C15, a smilodon/scorpion creature) that was met with some ferocity from the PCs. They used fire to slay the glop, and chokepoints to fend off my own Devil Monkeys. The leaping capability of the Devil Monkeys made the initial encounter really dramatic, as they lept clear 15 feet over an underground pool to attack the elf who thought he was safe taking pot shots.

Moldvay's dungeon generation gives a good balance of rooms. I supplemented it with the AD&D DMG, the Dungeon Alphabet, Ready Ref Sheets, and Dungeon of the Unknown for inspiration. A mix of traditional monsters and new / weird ones hits my sweet spot for D&D play. There's new and challenging encounters, and ones where player familiarity kicks in, like the troglodytes the players have not yet taken care of.

The most striking thing about last night's game, though, was how my B/X campaign has worked out fairly well in terms of having a large player pool. In the previous session, several PCs moved on from the Keep on the Borderlands to a town upriver. But none of those PCs made it to last night's session; only the player whose PC had died in the Tower of the Stargazer was in common between the two, so the PCs actually were at the Keep at the start of the game. It's an interesting shift in dynamics. There are a total of 10 living PCs with experience in the roster. Several new 1st level PCs went along with a 2nd level character (dating back to the Stonehell game I was running last year) who made 3rd on this adventure.

One thing I've noticed out of this is that the PC group's capability is really driven by the level of the highest level fighters. Since they can take the front lines during a fight, fighters over level 1 really take first level encounters out handily. And of course, numbers still reign supreme; higher level encounters with one monster don't make as much difference as more lower level opponents.

B/X D&D is holding up pretty well. I've noticed it has just enough guidelines in the rules to be firm on certain things, but not overwhelming with detail like AD&D 1e can get. A brief discussion of river transport clarified that for me: it has what I want as a referee but no more than I need. It's really a good, straightforward implementation of OD&D in the ways that matter. In practice I am finding it adapts to what I want a bit more smoothly than either Holmes or Swords & Wizardry did. OD&D of course retains a special spot in my heart, but I have been happy with B/X on the table.

A dungeon with an elevator

Spoliers ahead if you will be playing in the module Tower of the Stargazer.

Yesterday I ran another B/X game, and the players decided to check out some rumors outside of the Caves of Chaos. That was fine, as I have laid out some additional modules in an expanded woodland area (via a very rough sketch of a map that I drew). The adventure seed the PCs wound up following was the stories of mysterious lightning leading up to the Tower of the Stargazer.

This was a very interesting transition from Keep on the Borderlands, simply because the modules couldn't have been more different in execution. No huge sprawling caves here, it's a very compact area. Rather than every corner hiding a lurking creature, there was danger of death at every step, but in a largely abandoned area.

As Tower of the Stargazer runs, it feels like James Raggi read The Tomb of Horrors and considers it less of a one-off death trap and more of an artist's manifesto. His module is more focused on tricks and traps and puzzles, than on monsters and demons. Even exploration is blown wide open for this module by having the elevator system - which allowed the PCs to see, and get, the treasure in the lowest level.

The one PC who died did so because he insisted on looking in each mirror in Dungeon Level 1 and managed to fail every saving throw. (They did trigger the snake trap at the door but made their saving throws.) The surviving PCs figured out the switches in Dungeon Level 2 and got the treasure without a scratch, which gave each of them a level up. The wizard himself was a hilarious encounter for the already-wary PCs, who thought long and hard about trying to kill him but thought better of it.

Part of why I enjoyed this was that it made a total death trap that still felt appropriate as an adventure for low-level PCs (in this case, a level 3 now ex-thief, a level 2 dwarf and level 1 fighter and cleric). It also let me set the tone that not everything I'll be running is classic TSR in style, but felt like it worked well into the existing campaign. It's also a short module, but in a good way - whereas B2 gives you a ton of bang for your buck, Stargazer finishes smoothly without a dozen or more sessions.

It's also worth a shout-out to J.D. Neal, whose town from JN1 The Chaotic Caves I've nicked as a settlement not far from the Keep on the Borderlands. It's a good alternative to just sticking with the Keep.

In future sessions we'll have modules even further afield. But I do have to say, mixing Gygax and Raggi in a campaign isn't as hard as you'd think, and at least for Tower of the Stargazer it works to good effect.

Some B2 Notes

Apologies for the unplanned hiatus - being busy around the holidays and having a bit of writer's block doesn't help with blog productivity. I'll see about getting Dungeon Crawl 4 out before the end of the year but there's no guarantee there.

In the meantime I've run a couple games set in B2 Keep on the Borderlands. It's worth noting how much play I've gotten out of this module, and the players are a ways from being done. The humanoids have been totally devastated for numbers, while the deeper caves have only just been scratched.

The PCs played politics very well between the orc groups in the previous session, getting them to help in a raid that wound up killing both chieftains (with some PC trickery in the mix as well). The elf NPC with a vendetta proved quite bloody, though he wound up meeting his end last night, not at the hands of the orcs he hated, but from a group of zombies. He died having had his vengeance, so he was probably on his way out.

B2 encourages a lot of play that I really find enjoyable as a referee. For instance, there was a lot of roleplaying that led to the orc slaughter; the reaction and morale systems are really important for this. In a room further down the caves, the PCs cleverly destroyed a dozen skeletons before setting off the trap that would animate them - although this attracted the zombie guards that killed the elf NPC and one of the PC fighters.

In last night's game, surprise almost doomed a dwarf PC who's made it through many Stonehell and a few B2 sessions; he was in the path of the bear from my B2 wilderness encounter list. A 4 HD bear with 3 attacks per round is a formidable challenge to 1st and 2nd level PCs, even if they outnumber it. The bear won surprise and decided that the dwarf in his plate armor was a meal in a can, and he was determined to open it. High PC damage output did get the bear to break in morale and probably saved the life of Tybur.

I've also been doing some preparatory work in expanding the wilderness area. It's a good basis for a bit of a sandbox with dungeon modules around it; I won't spoil exactly what is lined up, but once the PCs finally finish with B2 I think there will be some good opportunities.

Actual Play: B2 Keep on the Borderlands

1. My wilderness encounter list (available here) came in handy. The party encountered bandits, dressed as clerics. It made initial sense because, in downtime, the curate at the Keep ran the traveling priest and his acolytes out and the party thief had tracked them. The bandits wound up getting beat with a quick Sleep spell.
2. In looking for a new NPC to help them, the PCs managed to find an elf (as per the notes in the tavern of a wanderer) coming along with a merchant group. The elf knew the Sleep spell that came in handy, and when facing the kobold chieftain managed to use the Wand of Paralyzation (and in so doing identify it in the breach).
3. The thief, who had not used most of his skills in four prior sessions, got to move silently, backstab and open locks - all successfully. The first two did a lot to take out the ogre, but once wounded the ogre batted one of the party henchmen, baseball-style, with a massive club. He was knocked directly into a tree branch and died. Another henchman bit the dust at the hands of one of the kobold chieftain's harem.
4. The kobold chieftain is kind of living the pimp life. Huge piece of bling around his neck, five kobold women - wow. It's a very profitable encounter, beating both the hobgoblin and goblin chieftains for money. But not getting slaughtered on the way in took some doing. After one henchman fell in the pit, a TPK was likely if the PCs held their ground. They wisely retreated to the mouth of the cave and beat the kobolds there, then picked off rats - who were not rushing in to fight - from a distance. Good tactics, no dead PCs.
5. The kobold cave was a lot of fun to run. It was good that the PCs went to it after several other caves and had some idea of what to do tactically to win.
6. I'm wondering what I want to do with the factions, since there have been two deprived of leadership (kobolds, hobgoblins) and two removed (goblins, ogre). But I have a couple of weeks to make the power vacuums interesting.

The module's gotten interesting. I'm also starting to think about that point every B2 referee comes to - the eventual follow-up to B2. I had been thinking of Caverns of Thracia but it is another faction dungeon.