Let’s talk about gods.

The history and treatment of religion in D&D is fascinating, and it’s had an enduring impact on the treatment of religion not only in roleplaying games in general, but in the fantasy genre as a whole.

Religion, of course, has always been a central part of the game. In the original 1974 edition of D&D, clerics were one of just three character classes (the other two being fighting-men and magic-users). But what, exactly, were these clerics and who/what did they worship? Gods are never explicitly mentioned and religion is only barely hinted at. In the rulebooks there are basically only two points of data.

First, the description of the cleric class, which is almost entirely dedicated to building strongholds at higher levels. Relevant quotes (with my comments in brackets):

• ‘When Clerics reach the top level (Patriarch) they may opt to build their own stronghold, and when doing so receive help from “above”. Thus, if they spend 100,000 Gold Pieces in castle construction, they may build a fortress of double that cost.’ [I don’t believe the intention is literally that the “above” will deliver cash money for the endeavor, but it could certainly be interpreted that way.]
• ‘Finally, “faithful” men will come to such a castle, being fanatically loyal, and they will serve at no cost.’ [Specific breakdowns of troop types are then given.]
• ‘Note that Clerics of 7^th level and greater are either “Law” or “Chaos”, and there is a sharp distinction between them. If a Patriarch receiving the above benefits changes sides, all the benefits will be immediately removed!’

A quick contextual note here: Arneson’s original Blackmoor campaign featured a Good vs. Evil dynamic in which those were literally teams: There was Team Good and Team Evil, with PCs belonging to one or the other. Gygax, heavily influenced by Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson, changed that to Law vs. Chaos, but with the same broad idea that these were more or less ideological alliances. (Which is why the early editions of the game had actual alignment languages.)

The interesting implication here is that the cleric’s alliance to a particular god is irrelevant, only their loyalty to the metaphysical alliance is significant. Furthermore, this alliance only becomes significant when a cleric achieves the rank of Patriarch. And even then, it’s not relevant to their supernatural abilities – which they keep even if they “change sides” – only to the loyalty of the men who have flocked to their service.

Which, if you’ve read Moorcock’s Elric stories, probably also makes sense: Elric had a specific patron of Chaos, but in general people served the Chaos Lords or the Lords of Law or were neutral in their strife. (Note that there are no neutral Patriarchs, strongly implying that there are no Neutral gods/lords.)

The only other source of information on religion in the original edition of the game are the level titles for Clerics, which were (in order):

• Acolyte
• Adept
• Village Priest
• Vicar
• Curate
• Bishop
• Lama
• Patriarch
• Patriarch, 9^th Level
• Patriarch, 10^th Level

You could hypothetically try to intuit some form of religious institution from this, but the reality is that Gygax — as he often did — simply cracked open a thesaurus and wrote down random entries with little care or concern. The list is clearly influenced by a Christian hierarchy, although whether that’s primarily due to the linguistic bias inherent in an English thesaurus’ selection of words or Gygax’s bias as a Jehovah’s Witness is debatable, but it’s probably the former since the list is pure nonsense. (A curate, for example, is subordinate to a vicar. And then, of course, there’s the abrupt shift to Buddhism before jumping to Eastern Orthodoxy for the ultimate rank of Patriarch.)

TANGENT: THAT OLD SCHOOL RELIGION

But, just for fun, let’s do it. Acolytes and adepts are basically apprentices who are dabbling in the arts of Law and Chaos.

Then you have village priests, vicars, and curates. These are clearly the local or lowest level of religious hierarchy. For the sake of argument:

• Priests are recognized with doctrinal and institutional authority. In a village, there may only be one such priest who oversees the local temple or shrine. (Some villages will be dedicated to Chaos; others to Law. Some might have competing shrines with separate priests dedicated to each. But we might also imagine some local priests who are better thought of as the ambassador between the community and both Law and Chaos; it is less that they “serve” the Lords, and instead that they are diplomatically engaged with them.)
• Vicars are still in charge of larger temples, overseeing at least one priest.
• Curates oversee multiple temples. (This might either be in a larger community that can support multiple shrines, or country curates that oversee temples across a small region.)

Now, in Christian churches a Bishop is someone in a position of authority over a large swath of territory. That’s not compatible with the D&D stronghold rules, though, so let’s instead extrapolate from their claim of apostolic succession (a direct lineage to the original Twelve Apostles): A bishop is someone who, like Elric, has a face-to-face relationship with the Lords of Law and/or Chaos.

(This is arguably not consistent with the mechanics: A 6^th level Bishop does not yet have access to the commune spell. But I think a distinction can be drawn between someone who has become of sufficient interest that a Chaos Lord might appear to them for a chat and someone who has gained the puissance to contact the Chaos Lord for themselves – i.e., cast a commune spell.)

Here’s the key to understanding our old school religion, though: At the top of our hierarchy is the Patriarch, which literally means the head of the church. (Etymologically, the Patriarch is the one who rules the ‘family’ of the church.) We know mechanically that when someone becomes a Patriarch they “have control of a territory similar to the ‘Barony’ of fighters.” And we know that the Barony of the fighter is a territory containing 2-8 villages of from 100-400 inhabitants each.

What this means is that religion (or, at least, religious organization) is intensely local. There are no huge religious organizations with a central authority overseeing vast swaths of territory. (Or, if there are, they aren’t the religions that the PCs are part of.) Religion is still a patchwork of very small organizations (that almost certainly have some territorial overlap).

This brings us to the curiosity of the Lama, the stage through which a Bishop (who has opened some kind of personal relationship with a Lord or Lords) must pass in order to become a Patriarch. We also know that this is the point at which the cleric MUST choose to become loyal to either Chaos or Law exclusively.

The title of “Lama” comes from Tibetan Buddhism, but its use is thoroughly confused in English by inconsistent translation and mystic Orientalism. Broadly speaking, though, a lama can be thought of us the spiritual leader of a specific school of spiritual thought. We could therefore think of this progression as such:

• The cleric begins making personal contact with Lords of Chaos and/or Law.
• As they gain the ability to directly commune with these entities, they begin formalizing these relationships. This might be a spiritual synthesis of their religious belief or it might be a more realpolitik negotiated alliance with specific Lord(s).
• In this process, they have effectively created their own religious organization, culminating with the foundation of a religious center or stronghold: The appeal of their teaching, the strength of their spiritual power, and/or the support of the Lord itself causes followers to flock to them.

They have, thus, become a Patriarch — of which, as we’ve established, there are many, all struggling with each other.

One would not necessarily expect this state of affairs to persist: Periods of similarly turbulent religious revivalism in our own history have universally collapsed into one or two successful organizations that subsume or overwhelm the rest. So this might just be the short term reality of the world as it currently exists (perhaps because these Lords of Law and Chaos have only recently made contact with this plane of reality? or because the cosmos is in a liminal period of transition between Law and Chaos?) or it might only be true on the outskirts of civilization (where, conveniently, classic D&D-style adventures typically take place).

It might also reflect the internecine and tumultuous conflict of the Lords of Law and Chaos themselves. The ever-unsettled nature of the Lords reflects itself into the ebb and flow of earthly religions.

SO WHAT IS A CLERIC?

But I digress.

As I noted before, these level titles — and anything of interest we might intuit from them — are not really representative of anything meaningful in the actual worldbuilding of Arneson or Gygax.

So what was a cleric? What was religion at the dawn of D&D?

It’s Van Helsing.

Specifically, Van Helsing from the Hammer Horror Dracula films.

This is pretty well documented: One of the PCs in Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor game was turned into a vampire and became an NPC antagonist. He was so incredibly dangerous that Mike Carr, one of Arneson’s players and later a TSR editor and designer, proposed the idea of creating a vampire hunter.

The primary focus of the OD&D cleric can actually be seen rather clearly in the fact that although they receive no spells at 1^st level, they do receive the Turn Undead ability.

So although we may now think of a cleric primarily as worshippers and could scarcely imagine creating a cleric without picking a specific god for them to worship, the reality is that the original clerics were primarily hunters of the undead drenched in Christian imagery (there are no holy symbols in OD&D, only wooden and silver crosses) who didn’t actually need to make a decision about their religious affiliation until 8^th level (which was more or less the endgame of D&D at that point).

RELIGION THEREAFTER

Supplement I: Greyhawk is the first time D&D mentions specific gods. Specifically, magic-users get access to the 9^th level gate spell: “Employment of this spell opens a cosmic portal and allows an ultra-powerful being (such as Odin, Crom, Set, Cthulhu, the Shining One, a demi-god, or whatever) to come to this plane.”

Note: Although the Shining One here is sometimes identified as Pelor, I’m near certain that it’s actually Satan/Lucifer. There are some semi-convoluted Biblical debates about this, but the key thing is that this title is endorsed in a number of Jehovah’s Witness commentaries on the Bible… and Gygax was a Jehovah’s Witness who led Bible study classes. By contrast, I’m not 100% sure when Pelor gained “the Shining One” as one of his apellatives, but I don’t think it’s until the ‘90s.

Edit: Geoffrey McKinney, in the comments below, identifies the source of the Shining One as A. Meritt’s The Moon Pool. That is almost certainly correct. Note that The Moon Pool appears in AD&D’s Appendix N.

The other thing that happens in Supplement I: Greyhawk is the arrival of paladins as a sub-class of fighting-men. This further strengthens the Christian basis of religious character classes in D&D, because paladins are just straight-up Charlemagnic holy knights.

Supplement II: Blackmoor briefly discusses a “great struggle of the gods to control the planet,” including the fact that “mermen were created by the Great Gods of Neutrality and Law while the Gods of Chaos bent their will to create the Sahuagin.” (This material would have likely been written by Steve Marsh, or possibly by Tim Kask based on material from Steve Marsh.)

Note: Marsh has cited the inspiration of the sahuagin as being “an old Justice League of America animated show.” I’ve seen people point to “The Invasion of the Hydronoids,” a season two episode of The All-New Super Friends as Marsh’s inspiration, but the date is wrong. (The episode premiered in 1977, after Supplement II was published.) I’m guessing it was actually “The Watermen,” a season 1 episode from the original Superfriends series that would have aired in 1973.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry introduces the Orcus, the Demon Prince. Also notable for our discussion because his rod “causes death (or annihilation) to any creature, save those of like status (other Princes, High Devils, Saints, Godlings, etc.).” There is also the Throne of the Gods, “crafted by an ancient race in honor of their gods.”

In these references we can begin seeing more influence seeping into the game from sword-and-sorcery authors like Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, where a patchwork panoply of mythological and fictional deities are sort of bouncing around.

What’s interesting to me is how the overwhelming Christian influence of both the player-facing character classes and, of course, the players themselves collide with this vaguely invoked pagan pantheism. You can see a rather clear example of the weird gestalt that results a couple years later in T1 The Village of Hommlet. The village church — the Church of St. Cuthbert — is straight-up Christian in its conception and organization: It’s shaped like a cross and named after an actual Christian saint (or possibly a lesser god who is named after a Christian saint).

This is basically not atypical of how D&D religions tend to work by default down unto today: Churches and religions following Christian models (cross-shaped cathedrals filled with priests and bishops), but with a non-Christian god slotted in for Jesus.

SUPPLEMENT IV

Obviously our discussion of religion in OD&D cannot be complete without talking about the elephant in the room — Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes by Robert Kuntz & James Ward.

This is a really odd book. It consists almost entirely of stat blocks and short descriptions for a panoply of real and fictional pantheons, fleshed out with a few mythological artifacts and a handful of mortal heroes. There’s no real explanation of what you’re supposed to actually do with any of this stuff. It just kind of… exists.

In the foreword to the book, there are three things that Tim Kask, TSR’s Publications Editor, want you to know:

1. He loathed working on Supplement II: Blackmoor. (I cannot express how bizarre it is that the first paragraph of this book is literally dedicated to trashing another book that the company had published the year before.)
2. This is the last D&D supplement that will ever be published. “Well, here it is: the last D&D supplement. (…) We’ve told you just about everything we can. From now on, when circumstances aren’t covered somewhere in the books, wing it as best you can.” He later returns to this theme at the end of the foreword to say that everyone should buy TSR’s magazines. “Just don’t wait with baited breath for another supplement after this one. May you always make your saving throw.”
3. “This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the ‘Monty Hall’ DM’s. Perhaps now some of the ‘giveaway’ campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44^th level Lord seriously?”

Of course, after reading this imprecation against overpowered characters, you will immediately turn the page to a book dedicated almost entirely to giving you combat stats for gods so that you can kill them.

Four years later when this concept was revisited for the hardcover Deities & Demigods supplement, editor Lawrence Schick was quick to say that the obvious purpose of these stat blocks was NOT in fact the purpose of these stat blocks:

But what exactly is it? Let’s see, it has a nice cover — open it up, inside there are lots of pictures next to sets of stacked statistics… it must be just like the MONSTER MANUAL! There, that was easy. Now that we know what it is, we know what to do with it, right?

Wrong.

DDG (for short) may resemble MONSTER MANUAL, and in fact does include some monsters. However, the purpose of this book is not to provide adversaries for players’ characters. The information listed herein is primarily for the Dungeon Master’s use in creating, intensifying or expanding his or her campaign.

Of course, the “Explanatory Notes” on the exact same page tell you that the gods’ Armor Classes are “a measure of how difficult it is to hit” them and their Hit Points “indicate the amount of damage a creature can withstand before being killed.” So… take it with a grain of salt.

Gary Gygax, in his foreword to the book, is more explicit about what the book is for:

In general, deities are presented in pantheons. You can select which ones, combinations, or parts of pantheons best suit your campaign. Players knowing which gods are “real” in the campaign world are able to intelligently choose to serve one (or more) suitable to the character’s alignment, profession, and even goals.

In this, Gygax makes explicit something that was only implicit in the organization of Supplement IV: That gods organize themselves into pantheons. This might initially seem like a, “No kidding,” statement, but it’s rather likely you’re only thinking that because D&D so heavily popularized this concept.

In sword & sorcery fiction like Howard and Leiber, various cultures — just like in our own world’s history — had collections of gods that they worshipped. But these associations were usually implied to be the result of the people worshipping them rather than because the gods themselves had stratified social circles. And, as a result, gods might be found in several different “pantheons” (i.e., worshipped in various locations that had overlapping sets of gods that they worshipped).

There were certainly exceptions to this: The handling of the Asgardian gods in Kirby’s Thor comics, for example. Or the divisive war between Moorcock’s Chaos Lords and Lords of Law. It just wasn’t the presumed default.

This de facto introduction of the pantheon more or less completes the weirdly incoherent metaphysics of D&D religion, in which:

• Gods are arranged into pantheons, a word literally derived from the Greek word for a temple which worshipped all gods, and yet…
• People (including the clergy) almost universally choose just ONE god to worship because…
• Every civilized god gets slotted into a church based on monotheistic Christian rites, architecture, and organization. (“Evil” gods are slightly more likely to get primitive fanes and the like.)

Back to Reactions to OD&D

In the Open Table Manifesto, one of the pillars I discuss for running a successful open table is fast character creation: When any or every session you run might have a new player sitting down for the first time, it’s essential that they can create a character and start playing as quickly as possible.

Back when open table-style games were far more common – and, arguably, the default mode of play for D&D – you can find all kinds of stories from people whose first experience with a roleplaying game was wandering past a table where people were playing and being invited to sit down and join the game already in progress.

(I don’t think it’s really a coincidence that D&D had its first – and arguably biggest – boom at precisely the time that it was designed for a style of play which was so conducive to being spread virally. But I digress.)

To a modern audience, these stories can sound almost absurd. That would basically never happen with an RPG today – including the 5^th Edition of D&D – because there’s no way you could generate a new character for the player and immediately drop them into the action.

But in OD&D, the original 1974 edition of D&D, I can get you a character in five sentences:

1. Roll 3d6, total them, and write them down in these six boxes in order.
2. Are you a human, an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit?
3. Are you a fighting-man, magic-user, or cleric? (If they picked a dwarf or elf you can skip this step. Randomly roll hit points and the magic-user’s spell.)
4. What’s your character’s name?
5. You have a sword, chain armor, a shield, 8 rations, a small silver mirror, 2 torches, flint and steel, a bedroll, and 16 gold pieces. (Customize equipment list appropriately.)

Let’s play!

It’s an incredibly streamlined system that’s built on a powerfully modular base. (Which is why people have been adding new classes and races to D&D ever.)

Is this the One True Way™ of character creation in roleplaying games? Of course not. There can be a lot of advantages to multiplying the number, complexity, and even opacity of the choices players make during character creation. (Note how all of the decisions in OD&D’s character creation are immediately accessible and comprehensible to a new player who has zero understanding of how the game works. Compare to the mechanical knowledge you need for even something as straightforward as point-buying attributes in newer editions.)

But the speed with which OD&D goes from, “Do you wanna play?” to stabbing orcs in the face can be a huge feature in its own right. And it’s not one that I think should be so casually dismissed.

(Rolling ability scores can, in my experience, also enhance this. See, players new to D&D associate “rolling dice” with “playing the game.” So when the first thing I say to a new player is, “Okay, let’s roll your ability scores,” they feel like they’re already playing the game. It consistently engages them in a way that pure-build systems just… don’t.)

Note: Hey… what about alignment and languages? I find these non-essential for jumping into play, but you can include them and still have character creation wrapped up in just seven sentences.

THE PROBLEM: BUYING EQUIPMENT

The one place where character creation in OD&D can still bog down is in purchasing equipment: The player rolls 3d6 x 10 to determine their starting gold pieces and then they need to spend that budget on individual items.

In practice, there are steps you can take to mitigate and streamline this. (For example, making sure you have enough copies of the equipment list so that everyone can buy their equipment simultaneously without needing to pass the book back and forth.) But in my experience, it still results in equipment buying taking three to five times longer than the rest of character creation put together.

This is why, in my example of fast-paced five sentence character creation, I leverage my own expertise in the system to effectively buy the equipment for them. Players can also get through this step very quickly once they’ve similarly mastered the equipment available and know what they should be buying.

What would be ideal, though, is if we could find a way to systemically mimic this mastery so that new players could buy their own equipment without bogging down here. To do that, we can split buying equipment into its own sub-process and literally package up our expertise.

STARTING EQUIPMENT PACKAGES

Note: These specific packages tacitly assume that you’re using my house rules for OD&D, which you can also find conveniently summarized in the Blackmoor Player’s Reference. But they should be broadly useful for any OD&D game regardless. The general equipment list has also be lightly amended with some items not found in the original 1974 books.

STEP #1: ROLL FOR STARTING GOLD

Roll 3d6 x 10 to determine your starting gold pieces.

STEP #2: BASE ADVENTURER KIT

Spend 15 gp to purchase the base adventurers kit.

• Large sack (2 gp)
• 1 week of standard rations (5 gp)
• Water skin (1 gp)
• 6 torches (1 gp)
• Flint and steel (1 gp)
• Suit of clothes (2 gp)
• Bedroll (3 gp)

STEP #3: ARMOR

Pick one type of armor.

• Leather Armor (15 gp)
• Chain-type Armor (30 gp)
• Plate (50 gp)

Optionally, pay for any or all of the following:

• Shield (10 gp, +1 AC)
• Helmet (10 gp, without helmet suffer -1 AC)
• Gorget (10 gp, +1 AC vs. vampires)

STEP #4: MELEE WEAPONS

Choose a melee technique:

• Sword & Board
• Dual-Wielding
• Two-Handed

(If you select sword & board, but don’t buy a shield, you’re just fighting one-handed.)

Sword & Board: 1d6 damage unless otherwise noted.

• Dagger (3 gp, 2d6 take lowest damage)
• Hand Axe (3 gp, 2d6 take lowest damage)
• Mace (5 gp)
• Sword (10 gp)
• Battle Axe (7 gp)
• Morning Star (6 gp)
• Flail (8 gp)
• Spear (1 gp, provides reach)

Dual-Wielding: Pick any two Sword & Board weapons.

Two-Handed: 2d6 take highest damage.

• Pole Arm (7 gp, provides reach)
• Halberd (7 gp, provides reach)
• Pike (5 gp, provides reach)
• Two-Handed Sword (16 gp)
• Lance (4 gp, must be riding horse)

STEP #5: MISSILE WEAPONS

You can optionally select a ranged weapon in addition to your melee technique:

• Sling (1 gp, 2d6 damage take lowest)
• Light Crossbow (15 gp, 1d6 damage, fire one-handed but requires two hands to reload)
• Heavy Crossbow (25 gp, 2d6 take highest damage, fire one-handed but requires two hands to reload)
• Short Bow (25 gp, 1d6 damage)
• Long Bow (40 gp, roll 2d6 damage take highest)

Ammunition: Sling stones can be gathered from the wilderness at no cost.

• 20 arrows (5 gp) + Quiver (5 gp)
• 30 quarrels (5 gp) + Case (5 gp)

STEP #6: ADDITIONAL EQUIPMENT PACKAGES

Optionally select one or more additional equipment packages. You can also roll 1d6 to select one randomly.

Delving Package:

• Lockpicks (30 gp)
• 20’ spool of wire (10 gp)
• 6 sticks of chalk (1 gp)
• 12 iron spikes (6 gp)
• 6 wooden stakes (1 gp)
• Mallet (2 gp)

Prepared Adventurer Package:

• 10 sheets of paper (2 gp)
• Silverpoint (5 gp)
• 50’ rope (1 gp)
• Lantern (10 gp)
• 3 flasks of oil (6 gp)
• 10’ pole (1 gp)

Wilderness Package:

• Bedroll (1 gp)
• Small tent (4 gp)
• 1 week iron rations (15 gp)
• Leather Backpack (5 gp)

Basic Mount Package

• Light Horse (40 gp)
• Saddle (25 gp)
• Saddle Bags (10 gp)

Note: A silverpoint is an historically accurate writing instrument. The scribe drags the silver stylus across the surface of the paper. Specially prepared paper can make the lines even clearer, but this “underdrawing” can also later be inked.

ADDITIONAL READING
Reactions to OD&D
Running Castle Blackmoor
On the Importance of Character Creation
Character Creation in 7 Sentences: Magical Kitties Save the Day

Not to be confused with hexcrawling, hex-clearing is the process by which monsters and other hostile forces were cleared out of a hex in preparation for a stronghold to be constructed. Clearing a hex was the first step towards bringing civilization to an uncivilized portion of the world. It was also the transitional point between the low-level activities of monster slaying and the high-level activities of realms management. It is one of the oldest game structures in D&D, yet I feel comfortable saying that probably 99% of all current D&D players have never done it.

In pursuit of a tangentially-related project, I decided to do a brief survey of the extant hex-clearing procedures in old school D&D. I offer them here in the thought that they might be of use to a wider audience.

OD&D HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 5 miles

1. Referee rolls a die to determine if there is a monster encountered.
2. If encountered monster is defeated or if no monster is encountered, the hex is cleared.
3. Territory up to 20 miles distant from an inhabited stronghold may be kept clear of monsters once cleared.

AD&D HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 1 mile / 30 miles

CLEARING HEXES

1. Make wandering monster check.
2. If encountered monster is defeated or if no monster is encountered, the hex is cleared.

Once cleared, hexes will remain cleared, except:

1. Once per day, check to see if a monster has wandered into an uncleared border hex.
2. Once per week, check to see if one of these monsters has wandered into the cleared territory.

Patrols: If regular (1/week) patrols from a stronghold are made through a cleared territory, the check to see if a monster has wandered into a border hex is made only once per week.

CONSTRUCTING THE STRONGHOLD

1. Must map and clear the central hex (location of stronghold) and six surrounding hexes.
2. Unless 7 hexes are actively patrolled, there is a 1 in 20 chance per day that a monster will enter the area.

GYGAXIAN VAGUERY – PATROLS

Because Gygax was objectively terrible at writing rulebooks, the rules above are actually incomplete. They overlap with a different set of incomplete rules which directly contradict the first set of rules. If you use this second set of rules, a cleared hex that is being patrolled should be handled in this way:

1. Once per week, check on the Uinhabited/Wilderness encounter table to see if a monster enters the cleared territory.
2. Once per week, also check on the Inhabited table. Or, if there is a road, check three times on the Inhabited encounter table.

Zone of Civilization: If a territory is cleared to a 30 mile radius [should probably be 30 mile diameter, filling the large hex that the stronghold is at the center of], make ONLY the second type of checks, but ignore all unfavorable checks except once per month.

Reversion to Wilderness: If patrols are not kept up, the territory automatically reverts to wilderness status. “Unless the lands around it are all inhabited and patrolled” in which case “all of the unsavory monsters from the surrounding territory will come to make it a haven for themselves.” [So it won’t revert to wilderness, it will just really revert to wilderness.]

RULES CYCLOPEDIA – HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 8 miles / 24 miles

Clearing the Hex: You just… do it. “An area is considered clear when all significant monsters in the area have been killed, driven out, or persuaded (through bribery, threats, persuasion, or mutual-defense agreements) to leave the PC’s subjects alone.” There are no further guidelines.

Constructing the Stronghold: Clear the 8-mile hex in which the stronghold is being built.

Patrols: Cleared areas automatically remain free of monsters as long as they are patrolled.

• Patrols can range 24 miles from a stronghold in clear terrain.
• Jungles, swamps, and mountains require a garrison every 8 miles.

There are more detailed rules for dominion management, but they don’t really pertain to hex clearing.

EXPERT SET VARIATIONS

• Hex scale is not clearly defined. (Isle of Dread, the sample adventure included in the set, uses 24 mile and 6 mile hexes.)
• Patrol ranges are limited to 18 miles and 6 miles (instead of 24 miles and 8 miles).
• The 18 mile limit of patrols matches the 18 miles an encumbered character can travel on foot in a day. The Rules Cyclopedia oddly maintains the same rule for determining overland movement rates (divide by 5 to determine the number of miles a character can travel over clear terrain per day, and therefore 90’ divided by 5 = 18 miles per day), but the Traveling Rates By Terrain table doesn’t follow that rule and instead uses values calculated to divide evenly into hexes (so an encumbered character only travels 12 miles per day in clear terrain).

JUDGES GUILD – HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 5 miles

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Judges Guilds’ hexcrawl procedures and management had a major impact on the game. Virtually all of OD&D’s hexcrawling procedures, for example, were abandoned by AD&D in favor of systems clearly drawing from Judges Guild material. This was somewhat less true when it comes to hex-clearing, but I thought reviewing the material from the Ready Ref sheets might be useful. In this case, it largely was not:

Constructing the Stronghold: Clear 4 hexes radiating from the stronghold’s hex.

Patrols: Automatically keep hexes clear of monsters, except for mountains, swamps, and dense woods.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

In Arneson’s Blackmoor, as described in the First Fantasy Campaign from Judges Guild, there are “fighting machines”, “water machines”, “flying machines”, and “teleportation machines”.

For those unfamiliar with the First Fantasy Campaign, it is largely comprised of the raw notes Arneson was using to run his campaign. Very little effort is made in the way of explanation, and the notes are also frequently (and frustratingly!) incomplete. Or confusingly combine notes from different, incompatible eras of the campaign. No explanation is given for what any of these “machines” do (although PCs are able to build flying machines and there’s also an “ancient war machine” in a Dark Lord’s throne room which he uses to communicate with his subjects).

Everyone basically assumes that they know what the “teleportation machine” and “flying machine” are. (Although that’s an assumption that you might want to challenge: It is very easy to casually interpret these early documents through the lens of what we know Dungeons & Dragons would become, while forgetting that D&D didn’t actually exist yet when these documents were written.) “Water machine” and “fighting machine”, in any case, have proven more elusive.

Some have postulated that the “water machine” is a boat. That its entry on Arneson’s treasure tables is identical with his description of this magical item:

Skimmer: Can cross stretches of water at great speed, 50 mph and greater, as well as marsh and short (10 yards) stretches of low unobstructed land. Hitting a snag will wreck the Skimmer and cause the occupants one Hit Die in damage per 5 mph of speed. Chance of hitting a snag is about 1% per 100 miles of water, 5% in marsh, and 5% every time any land is crossed. All encounter chances can be ignored due to its speed.

This, however, appears doubtful to my eyes. To explain why, let’s talk a little bit about where these “machines” appear in Arneson’s notes. The Water Machine appears in two different treasure tables, one for Loch Gloomen (where it’s on the “Information” sub-table):

Crystal Ball 9, Teleportation Machine 4, Flying Machine 3, Fighting Machine 10, Water Machine 11, Special Devices 12 + 2, Ancient Books and Manuscripts 8 + 5, Stores of Normal Weapons 7, Clothes 6, etc.

And the other for Bleakwood (where it’s on the Equipment sub-table):

Crystal Ball 1-5, Illusion Projector 6-10, Teleporter 11-12, Flyer 13-17, Skimmer 18-20, Water 21-30, Dimensional Transporter 31-32, Time 33, Transporter 34-39, Borer 40-44, Screener 45-46, Communicator 47-51, Tricorder 52-56, Battery Power 57-66, Medical Unit 67-72, Entertainer 73-82, Generator 83-87, Educator 88-92, Robots 93-98, Controllers 99-00

Note that “Teleportation Machine, Flying Machine, Fighting Machine, Water Machine” has become “Teleporter, Flyer, Skimmer, Water” on the latter list. It’s possible that Water Machine does mean Skimmer, and Arneson simply repeated the same entry twice in a row on the table, but that seems unlikely.

On the other hand, this isn’t the only seeming repetition on the table: Note that “Teleporter” (i.e., Teleportation Machine) and “Transporter”, which one might immediately assume to be the same thing, are listed separately. I, however, suspect that these are not the same thing, that the “Transporter” is based more literally on Star Trek and is a large facility which you can use to beam yourself to other locations (but not take the equipment with you).

And, similarly, I think that the Skimmer and the Water Machine are two different things (albeit perhaps grossly similar in function).

One option for the Water Machine would be a submarine.

Another option I’ve considered is that these “Machine” entries are actually triggers for sub-tables that no longer exist. (This wouldn’t be the only example of missing sub-tables in the First Fantasy Campaign.) Looking at Supplement II: Blackmoor, we find a number of water-related magical items: Ring of Movement (Swimming), Manta Ray Cloak, Necklace of Water Breathing, Helm of Underwater Vision. These could easily be re-characterized as “Water Machines”, perhaps suggesting that the other Machine types are also sub-categories. One could imagine similar sub-tables for other Machine categories.

Something else to note, however, is that you’re more likely to get a result of “Water [Machine]” on the Bleakwood table than literally any other type of treasure except the “Battery Power”. The function of Battery Power is also unexplained, but it seems quite likely to be way of recharging Arneson’s science fantasy “magic” items. Is it possible that the Skimmer is the Water Machine of the Loch Gloomen table and the “Water” entry is some similar resource that could be used in conjunction with the other items? Could it actually be some form of liquid fuel that could be used to power vehicles like the Skimmer?

While potentially cool, there’s no question that it’s a fairly large reach. Supplement II also includes another water-themed item which purifies 10 square feet of seawater. If that’s all that a Water Machine does, it could explain why they were so ubiquitous.

BY WAY OF FIGHTING MACHINES

Let’s leave the Water Machines aside for a moment and talk about the other enigma here, the Fighting Machines. One suspicion is that these are, in fact, robots. (Note that there is no “Fighting Machine” entry on the Bleakwood treasure table, but an entry for “Robots” has been added.)

Here, however, is what the phrase “fighting machine” would have almost certainly conjured up in an SF pulp afficionado’s mind in the early 1970s:

The fighting-machines of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds are, of course, vehicles. But they also have a robotic aspect to them.

I’m actually drawn to the idea that all of the Machines are autonomous robots – some of which might also function as vehicles – specializing in the listed functionality. Thus:

• Fighting-Machines are Wellsian tripods (with some perhaps at a smaller scale, and the larger suitable for giving their controllers a huge advantage in Blackmoor-style war games).
• Teleportation Machines as robotic entities who, upon request, will teleport you to a location of your desire. (Or use the same function as a devastating offensive capability or means of flight.)
• Flying Machines as UFO-like objects guided by sentient intelligence. (I’m anachronistically thinking of the ship from Flight of the Navigator; although, again, at various scales.)
• Water Machines as submersibles? Perhaps.. Or perhaps simply water-proofed robots.

This also suggests the possibility that the “ancient war machine” is, in fact, a robot through which the Dark Lord speaks.

Looking again at seemingly duplicated entries on the treasure tables, I’ll note that teleport-type objects actually show up three times: Once as a Teleportation Machine, once as a Transporter, and once as a Teleportation amulet. If the Teleportation Machine is just a magic device allowing for teleportation, than its utilitarian function is basically identical to that the of the Teleportation amulet. But if the amulet is an item you can carry, the Transporter is a largely immovable facility, and the Machine is an autonomous robot/tripod… Well, you can see how these all become distinct items.

Weighing against this interpretation is the fact that you’d expect some of Arneson’s original players to have recounted running into Martian tripods or teleporting robots. On the other hand, there are truthfully very few accounts of those early adventures, and those accounts have very rarely (if ever) included mention of any robots. Or tricorders. And those are right there in black and white.

With that being said, I’m not claiming to have definitively revealed holy writ here. There’s simply not enough information preserved for us to ever recover definitive answers. But this is one of the cool things about exploring these ur-texts of the hobby: That first generation of GMs may have collectively never figured out how to effectively transmit what they were doing in writing, but in puzzling our way through the fragments they did leave behind, I find there’s an amazing alchemy of closure that takes place, prompting creative insights that would never occur in simply reading a more authoritative text.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

Go to Running Castle Blackmoor

Newer readers may not be familiar with my old Reactions to OD&D series. If you haven’t read them, you may want to check them out first. It’s been more than half a decade since I last visited the series, but a recent discussion prompted me to track down and dust off some old notes.

Dave Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign was published by Judges Guild in 1977. It “attempted to show the development and growth of his campaign as it was originally conceived.” (For those unfamiliar with the early history of D&D, the campaign in question is Blackmoor: The original dungeon, city, and wilderness setting in which Arneson created modern roleplaying games, and which would eventually become Dungeons & Dragons.) In practice, sadly, it is a deeply flawed book. It’s a haphazard concordance of lightly edited campaign notes, and Arneson, unfortunately, is not particularly effective in explaining what many of these notes mean or how they were supposed to be used in actual play. The confusing nature of the book is heightened because its contents span both the original Blackmoor material (starting in 1970), revisions made to his home campaign after D&D was published in 1974, and further revisions made to the material in order to run it at conventions from 1975-77… and Arneson is rarely clear about exactly which material is which.

To take one small example, let’s consider the BLACKMOOR DUNGEONS section of the book. The material described here is literally Ground Zero for every single roleplaying game ever published (and, by extension, a huge percentage of pop culture, literature, and gaming over the past 50 years). Being able to get a glimpse into how Arneson actually ran those games would be an incredibly cool insight into a cultural watershed.

It’s frustrating, therefore, to discover that the First Fantasy Campaign makes it basically impossible to puzzle out what Arneson’s actual procedures were. I’ve spent an incredible amount of time pouring over this section of the book, and it remains a tantalizing enigma. I have, however, managed to work out a few details which I think others might find interesting.

Before we begin taking a close look at the text, however, it’s important to note a key point of context:

The Castle itself is still blank since it has been destroyed twice and rebuilt twice and then taken over by non-player Elves when the local adventurers were exiled. Thus, there are no sheets or goodies for it and only a sketch of its appearance. The Cavern sheet of Encounters is also lost (at least the first ones and the new one is in use). For these deletions I apologize.

The first six levels of encounters were prepared in the last two years for convention games, and set up along “Official” D&D lines. The last (7th – 9th and Tunnel Cavern System) are the originals used in our game. Additional crazy characters that got into the game over the years have been the Orcian Way and Sir Fang the Vampire.

(…)

Details on room, Cavern shapes for the Tunnel/Cave system have been lost or misplaced.

The first thing is that, as noted before, sections of Arneson’s notes as presented in the First Fantasy Campaign had been revised for convention play. This has, for better or worse, eradicated some amount of crucial information. The second is that the notes have also been partially (but not wholly) revised through actual play.  And the third is that Arneson has deliberately not included some of his notes because he’s still using them in actual play. So you can already see that there are multiple layers of obfuscation here, made worse by the fact that some material has simply been lost due to the passage of time.

With that being said, let’s take a look at what Arneson is able to give us:

(click for larger version)

The other obstacle we almost immediately encounter here is poor proofreading.

For example, Arneson lists Group I, Group II, and Group III for monsters. Later he says: “The Grouping of the Monsters were Level I for 1st and 2nd levels; Level III Creatures for 3rd and 4th levels, etc . . .” It seems fairly certain that “Level III” here should be read as “Level II”. One might initially conclude, both due to similarity of usage and the use of the capitalized term “Grouping”, that “Group I” and “Level I” are meant to be the same thing, but they are clearly not. (Balrogs on the 1st level of the dungeon would be an unusual design choice.)

Level I most likely refers to something equivalent to OD&D’s Monster Level Tables, so Arneson is saying to use the “Level I” (sic) tables for the 1st and 2nd level maps of Blackmoor. But if “Level I” and “Group I” aren’t the same thing, what are the Group listings used for? Ultimately, after going over the text several times, I’m forced to conclude that there simply isn’t any explanation given for why he created the Groups or what purpose they served. (Perhaps the order of the Groups was inverted and they ARE the same thing as the Levels, with Balrogs being Group III creatures instead of Group I?)

THE ARNESONIAN DUNGEON

Here’s what I think can be worked out with a fair degree of certainty. If you want to run Blackmoor in a style similar to how Arneson originally ran it:

1. You’ll need Level I, Level II, Level III, Level IV, and Level V monster tables.

• 1st / 2nd level: Level I
• 3rd / 4th level: Level II
• 5th / 6th level: Level III
• 7th / 8th level: Level IV
• 9th / 10th level: Level V

These tables are not provided in the First Fantasy Campaign, but it’s likely that these were D10-based tables. (He writes “all dice throws were with 10-sided dice.” Although this appears as almost a non sequitur in the text, the only logical use of the D10s here would be on the monster tables.) To stock the tables, I would probably try to pull a full list of monsters appearing on the Blackmoor key and the anomalous “Group” listings and then distribute them appropriately. (You might also consider stocking all of the creatures found in Chainmail.)

2. You’ll need to pull the point values for creatures from Chainmail. (And “due to the addition of new Creatures beyond those given in Chainmail” create point values where necessary. Additional values might also be gleaned from other sections of the First Fantasy Campaign.)

3. There is a “magic protection point” encounter budget that is determined by the dungeon level:

• 1st level: 5 points
• 2nd level: 15 points
• 3rd level: 15 points
• 4th level: 25 points
• 5th level: 35 points
• 6th level: 40 points
• 7th level: 50 points

(It feels extremely likely that the value listed for either the 2nd or 3rd level is a typo. I’m guessing the values should either be 10 & 15 or 15 & 20.)

4. For each room, roll an encounter chance:

• 1st level: 1 in 6
• 2nd level: 2 in 6
• 3rd+ level: 3 in 6

5. If an encounter is rolled, roll 1d6 for a 1 in 6 chance that the room includes “a higher (stronger) creature”.

(By default, I would assume “stronger” just means “use the next Level monster table,”  but you might have some chance of using encounters from even stronger Level tables. There’s also “a chance that weaker creatures would be present”, but it’s not spelled out. It’s possible Arneson just winged that. You might also consider rolling 1d6 and using a weaker encounter on 1 and a stronger encounter on 6.)

6. Roll on the appropriate Level table, then purchase creatures of that type using the “magic protection point” budget. If you don’t have enough points, then either “reroll or place a weaker version of the creature within the room (extremely old or young).

(Arneson gives no indication for mixed encounter types. You might wish to do so: Perhaps generate No. Appearing using OD&D methods and then, if you have points left over, check for additional encounters in the same room. OTOH, Arneson’s keys and wandering encounters give no indication that he ever used encounters with mixed creature types.)

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

It remains unclear whether this was a “restocking” procedure that Arneson used between sessions or if he randomly determined results during play as rooms were being explored. It has the feel of a during-play system, but look at the key for the 7th to 10th levels (the ones set up according to the original schema and not revised for post-D&D convention play):

Note that the “Protection in Points” entry doesn’t consistently list points; it also lists specific creatures which have been generated with those points. If these are the notes Arneson was running the adventure from, then he was using the Protection Point system to restock. (For more on re-stocking dungeons, see (Re-)Running the Megadungeon.)

On the other hand, look at the similar key given for the Glendower Dungeons:

Those entries would appear to be the “Protection Point” or “Magic Point” values for those rooms, without the nature of that protection being predetermined. In the description of Loch Gloomen, Arneson also writes:

Defense of Area

30 – 180 Magic Points Creatures (two six-sided dice): 2) Giant; 3) True Trolls; 4) Roc; 5) Air Elemental; 6) Ogre; 7) Basilisk; 8) Goblins; 9) Ghouls; 10) Lycanthrope; 11) Balrog; 12) Dragon

The fairly clear intention here is to roll 3d6 x 10 to determine the number of Magic Points, and then roll 2d6 to determine the creature type.

So it seems quite likely that the Protection Point system was a flexible one. Arneson could:

• Stock the dungeon with specific creatures (using the Protection Point system as a procedural content generator).
• Quickly note “there should be X amount of protection in this room” (and then either specify it later or generate it during play).
• Randomly stock the dungeon room by room during play.

However, there are still several points which I find confusing. You might notice the “(Magic)” values given in the key for the 7th level of the Blackmoor dungeons, for example. It’s unclear what this entry is supposed to be: In any single entry it might be interpreted as an empty room’s encounter budget, the total cost of the listed “protectors”, or an unspent number of “magic protection points” that is meant to be spent in addition to the listed protectors. But no explanation seems to satisfactorily explain all instances (and any given explanation I’ve ventured is frequently contradicted by one of the usages). My suspicion is that he actually had a point system for determining how many magic items were located in each room (similar to the point budget for monsters in each room), but if so there’s no surviving evidence of how it would have worked.

Based on the key, it’s also likely that Arneson had some method for generating “Wealth” values independently from the Protection Points, but it’s not detailed here. (I’m guessing it was not dissimilar from that described in OD&D: 1 in 3 chance for treasure in occupied room; 1 in 6 chance in unoccupied room. And then rolls on some associated treasure table based on the dungeon level.)

It’s also unclear whether Arneson used wandering monster checks in addition to these room stocking procedures. It seems likely, but whatever method he may have used isn’t detailed. (Note that the poorly described “Wandering Monster Area” quadrant system described in the First Fantasy Campaign is part of the revision done to the material for convention play.)

Arneson also mentions that he would intermittently create “Home Bases for the Orc Tribes” and “special treasure troves”. These appear to have been completely arbitrary in their creation, but he would randomly roll to determine which level of the dungeon they would be added to. (“Thus the upper levels would occasionally have quite powerful encounters.”) The special distinction of the “Home Bases for the Orc Tribes” (as opposed to lairs for other creatures) seems significant, but I’ve been unable to tease it out. (And it may be entirely illusory.) There were four orc tribes in the campaign: Red Eye Orcs, Orcs of the White Hand, Isengarders, and Orcs of the Mountains, but the only information given relates to outdoor adventures, and it’s unclear what their agenda/function within the Blackmoor dungeon would have been.

I’ll also admit that I stopped trying to make sense of Arneson’s key for Blackmoor when I realized that he had 32 dwarves keyed to a room that’s 20′ x 10′. In the lower levels, there’s a point where he keys “250 Dwarves (living quarters)” into a room 10′ x 40′ long. There’s clearly some method to the madness here, but it’s beyond my ability to figure it out.

Go to Arneson’s Machines

Back to Reactions to OD&D