Couple congruent thoughts synchronistically spun themselves into my head recently.

First, Delta’s D&D Hotpost asked, “Was Module B1 a Good Design?” This revived my old argument that B1, B2, and the original version B3 are — at least conceptually — a really solid introduction to dungeoncrawling:

B1 teaches the DM how to key a dungeon. For those unfamiliar with it, the module provides a map with an incomplete key: Rooms are described, but blanks are left for monsters and treasures. At the back of the module, a list of monsters and treasures are provided: The DM is supposed to take them and assign them to rooms. In practice, this teaches the DM that:

(1) Rooms are not defined by the monster you fight in them.

(2) The distribution and arrangement of monsters and treasure will fundamentally change the gameplay of a dungeon.

(3) You can stock a given chunk of geography in many different ways (and many different times).

B2 teaches the players how to play. When you go the Caverns of Chaos, you enter a valley and the first thing you see are a dozen cave entrances: So the very first action the players have to take in the module is to make a choice. And the choice they make will completely alter the future course of events through the module. It’s an incredibly empowering moment and a really important lesson for any player of an RPG to learn.

Finally, the original version of B3 (which was very different from the version eventually published) introduced what was originally supposed to be the centerpiece of every D&D campaign: The megadungeon. Jean Wells provided the upper levels of the dungeon, but included several “empty” rooms which the DM was supposed to key for themselves. And she included a number of passages that would lead down to lower levels that the DM was supposed to design for themselves. Although sometimes crude and inadequate in its presentation, B3 would have transitioned the DM into designing and expanding their own megadungeon on the superstructure it provided.

None of these modules were perfect. But new players who worked their way through them received a really solid education in what it meant to run and play an RPG.

In the years since then, a lot of introductory adventures have been produced by the RPG industry. And the interesting thing about most of them is that they take a very different approach: They try to simplify and carefully curate the first experiences of new players. They spoon-feed the GM and hand-hold the players.

Which brings me to the second thought, this one from the Psychology of Video Games: “How Game Tutorials Can Strangle Player Creativity.” In this essay, Jamie Madigan discusses a psychology experiment which demonstrated, in brief, that:

(1) If you take a toy with many different functions which are not immediately evident and introduce a child to it by “spontaneously” discovering one of its functions, then the child will experiment with the toy and discover its many different functions.

(2) But if you take that same toy and introduce a child to it by saying, “This is an awesome toy. Here’s how you use it.” And then demonstrate one of its functions, the child will spend less time playing with the toy and discover fewer of its functions.

(Madigan’s discussion of the study is excellent. I recommend clicking through the link and reading the whole thing.)

The application to roleplaying games should be almost self-evident: Introductory scenarios should be robust (so that new players don’t become stymied or lost). But that robustness should not take the form of hand-holding or railroading. If you want to introduce a new player to roleplaying games, then you need to embrace the Caverns of Chaos: You need to show them twelve options and say, “The choice is yours.”

Because, ultimately, it is that power of choice which makes RPGs special and exciting and worthwhile.

Over at Blog of Holding, Paul has just posted “The Cycle of Repudiation and Reclamation, and the 2nd Coming of 2nd Edition“: It puts forth his theory that a lost generation of 2nd Edition gamers, who have hitherto been silent, will emerge in the near future:

I predict that, within two years, some blogger will come along and express, with the persuasiveness of a Philotomy Juramont or James Mal, what was so special about the story-based, Elmister-infested, roleplaying-over-rollplaying Silver and Bronze Ages of D&D. We’ll learn why Spelljammer was actually awesome. THAC0 will stop being a punchline. People like Zeb Cook and Douglas Niles will finally get some praise for carrying the D&D banner for a while.

I started gaming in the summer of 1989: A brief period of BECMI followed by an almost immediate leap into 2nd Edition. So I’d be pretty much the definitional poster child for this “lost” generation.

But I think the reason no movement or “voice” has coalesced around this generation is that it’s never actually been been lost and it’s never really gone away.

For example, the OSR has been primarily driven by revisiting/rediscovering:

(1) Out of print systems

(2) Different ways of prepping and running adventure material

(3) Different ways of organizing your players and your campaign

And the exploration of these older ideas have resulted in the publication of new products using these lost methods. Many of which have also found new ways to explore these concepts.

With that in mind, let’s consider what these elements are during the 2nd Edition era:

• Narrative-oriented / scene-based adventures.
• Encyclopedic presentation of campaign settings.
• Splat books.
• Campaigns defined by a consistent group of 4-8 players who all attend each session.

And what you quickly realize is that the distinctive elements of the 2nd Edition era are still the distinctive elements of the bulk of the RPG industry. I mean, I basically just described Paizo’s entire focus and product line. There’s nothing to rediscover here: People never stopped publishing this stuff. People never stopped playing like this.

(I mean, yes, the late-3E/4E Delve Style adventures can be seen as beginning to depart from the classic narrative forms set by Call of Cthulhu and the original Dragonlance modules. But Paizo’s adventure paths are still being published every single month. And most other RPGs haven’t followed the path of 4E.)

So when you’re talking about something being “lost” from the 2nd Edition era, all you’re really talking about are the actual rules for 2nd Edition. And maybe a specific campaign setting that’s been allowed to malinger out of print.

And that simply isn’t enough material for a movement to really gain traction on. Particularly because 2nd Edition doesn’t actually have a lot of mechanical distinction from 1st Edition. Once you’ve said “let me count the ways I liked 2E” a couple of times, you’re basically asking a movement to coalesce around the glories of a proficiency system and three-hole punched monster manuals.

More likely would be strong communities forming around the out of print campaign worlds. But, of course, that’s already happened.

And to be perfectly clear here: I’m not trying to diss 2nd Edition. I actually think some of the best D&D products ever published were published during 2nd Edition.

What I’m saying, to sum up, is that the conceptual stuff from the era never went away: Which means there’s nothing “new” to rediscover and add to your games. And there’s no vacuum in the market waiting to be filled (because lots of people are still publishing products like that). So the only thing a “2ER” could be built around is a nostalgia for very specific products. And that’s why it hasn’t happened. And why it isn’t likely to happen.

Eclipse Phase has some pretty awesome pregenerated characters spread through their adventures and supplements. Awhile back they released a PDF collection of the whole kit-and-kaboodle. The only problem? They’re too dang pretty. Great if you’ve got an iPad; not great on the printer ink.

So I took out my copy of Adobe Acrobat, whacked all the fancy graphics, and recolored the text so that it could be read without the full-color backgrounds. I left the colored tables intact, but I found that I could print ’em up in grayscale and have them be perfectly legible.

Then I saw a guy online who was looking for the same printer-friendly solution. And I thought, “Hey! I’ve got that.”

And since Postmodern Studios releases everything under a Creative Commons license, I can make it available for everybody. Here ya go:

ECLIPSE PHASE PREGENS – NO PICTURES

Go to Part 1

#5. IMPROVISED RANDOM GENERATORS

Okay, we started by filling the map with every ounce of creative thought we had. Then we started recklessly stealing everything we could lay our hands on. But we’re still staring at empty hexes. What now?

Now we need to get our creative juices flowing again by rapidly injecting fresh ideas that will break us out of the dried-out box our thinking is currently trapped in. There are a lot of ways to provide this stimuli. A simple one I used was to simply roll on a wilderness encounter table and then combine the result with a treasure generator. For example:

(1) Roll 1d8 to determine a column on the AD&D “Sub-Arctic Conditions” encounter table. I rolled a 6, so the result is “Mountains”.

(2) Roll 1d100 with a result of 65. That’s a giant owl. According to the Monster Manual, giant owls appear in groups of 1d4+1. I roll and generate a group of five owls.

(3) Giant owls have a treasure type of “Q x 5, X”. I roll on those treasure tables and I get 1 miscellaneous magic, 1 potion, and 1 gem. Rolling on the sub-tables I get a black pearl (500 gp), a potion of human control, and an amulet of life protection.

Okay. The hex I’m looking at is in the Old Forest, so let’s try something like this:

N7 – TREE OF THE ELDER OWL

A giant tree, over 80-feet wide at its base and towering several hundred feet in the air. Around the base of the tree are a number of strange carvings, intermixed with primitive pictures of owls.

CALL OF THE OWL: Anyone performing an owl call near the base of the tree will cause a hidden door to open, allowing passage into the hollow center of the trunk.

COUNCIL OF OWLS: Within the tree, four giant owls sit on perches. For an appropriate tribute, these owls can each cast augury once per day.

UPPER EYRIE: For a much larger tribute, the Council will have the supplicant remove their arms and armor. Then one of the owls will clutch them by the shoulders and fly them to the upper eyrie where they will be placed before the Elder Owl.

THE ELDER OWL: The left eye of the Elder Owl has been replaced with a black pearl (500 gp) and he wears an amulet of life protection. The Elder Owl will answer questions as per a commune spell, but he is also completely enamored with physical beauty: If someone of particular beauty (Charisma 16+) presents themselves, he will use his potion of human control in an attempt to enslave them.

Now we can move onto the next hex. Using the same procedure I generate a herd of wooly rhinos. They aren’t interesting, so I skip them and roll again. This time I get a gynosphinx with 4,000 platinum pieces, a potion of plant control, a bag of beans, and wearing a platinum belt studded with six black sapphires (worth 3,000 gp). What do you make of that?

#6. SPIN-OFFS

Regardless of how you’re stocking a hex, you should keep your mind open to other locations that the current hex suggests.

For example, you’ve got a necromancer in a crystalline spire who’s served by a bunch of goblins he’s charmed by writing arcane runes on the inside of their eyelids and then sewing their eyes shut. Where’d he get the goblins from? Maybe there’s a village of them living nearby. They protect a tree that bears a single, bright red fruit each year. The fruit has magical properties and each year the necromancer comes to claim the fruit and take away goblin slaves.

Or you’re keying a grotto that a bunch of bandits are using as a hideout. Turns out these bandits have longbows of remarkably high quality. This is because they’re trading with a one-eyed troll who lives in a cave that can only be accessed through a green crystal which thrusts up through the forest floor: Lay your hand upon the crystal, say the magic password, and the crystal becomes intangible. The troll is a master bowyer.

#7. WALK AWAY

Finally, be willing to walk away from the project and take a break: Watch a TV show. Read a book. Flip through some unrelated game manuals. Power up the PS3.

Give your brain a chance to breathe and your creative batteries a chance to recharge.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a comprehensive catalog or definitive technique for keying a hexcrawl. It’s just what I happened to do while keying the Thracian Hexcrawl.

Go to Part 12: At the Table

This is not really an update for the status of Legends & Labyrinths because there’s not really anything new that I can discuss right now: The hold-up remains the artwork that was offered as a contributor reward. When the original artist flaked it initiated a series of cascading failures.

But I did want to generally assure people that progress is being made. And I’m hoping to have an actual update sooner rather than later. Until I have something actually concrete and in my hands, however, I don’t want to get into the business of publicly counting my chickens before they hatch.

I appreciate your patience, and I hope you can believe me when I say that nobody wants this ordeal to be over more than I do. There are days when this book feels like the Rock of Sisyphus to me, but I have to honestly believe that eventually the rock will find its resting place; you’ll all be able to enjoy the game; and I’ll be able to move on to new projects.

Thanks.