One of the emergent properties of the Internet that I’m truly enjoying here in the 21st century is the continual discovery of little artistic sub-cultures that (a) I was previously unaware of and (b) would probably never have come to exist without the Internet to propagate them.

In that spirit, allow me to share with you the journey I have taken over the past half hour. It began with this:

One of the emergent properties of the Internet that I’m truly enjoying here in the 21st century is the continual discovery of little artistic sub-cultures that (a) I was previously unaware of and (b) would probably never have come to exist without the Internet to propagate them.

In that spirit, allow me to share with you the journey I have taken over the past half hour. It began with this:

Which amused me a great deal, largely because of the clever ingenuity it shows on the part of Nintendo’s game designers.

(EDIT: It has been revealed to me that the tubes of the interweb have lied to me. This level was, itself, a hack. I’m still fairly confident that it’s the video that started the autoplay meme, but the truth — if it even exists — is to be found on Japanese websites that I can’t read.)

That video, in turn, led me to this one:

Which was interesting to me largely because it demonstrated that the original autoplay level had inspired a community of independent modders to duplicate the (non-)gameplay involved.

The video also demonstrated, through it’s own workman-like quality, just how clever the original Nintendo level designers had been: They had not only designed a level that could be completed both traditionally and through autoplay, but their autoplay had actually been quite intricate and complicated in the techniques it employed.

But then I found this video:

And that, frankly, is transcendant.

The initial genesis of the idea seems basic enough: “Hey, this autoplay Mario stuff would make for a pretty nifty musical instrument.”

What’s remarkable is the amount of time it would take to perfect the skills necessary to play that instrument well. And then, furthermore, to develop that skill to the degree necessary to orchestrate the instrument into a complex musical arrangement.

I mean, sure, on one level it’s perfectly trivial.

But on another level it gives me some sense of what it must have been like in Ancient Greece when somebody said, “These choral-told stories are pretty interesting. But you know what might be interesting? If one of us stepped out of the chorus and pretended to be one of the characters.”

Or that afternoon during Christmas Break in 1970 when Dave Arneson said, “Instead of playing Napoleonics today, let’s try this interesting variant of Chainmail I dreamed up. You’re going to be heading down into the dungeons beneath Castle Blackmoor.”

On Wednesday I’m going to be running a one-shot adventure using the original 1974 rules for Dungeons & Dragons. These rules are also referred to as OD&D (Original Dungeons & Dragons) or the “White Box”.

Why the “White Box”? Because the rules were originally sold in a wood-grained box with white labels and, later, in an all-white box. The box contained three booklets: “Men & Magic”, “Monsters & Treasure”, and “The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures”.

Some quick background info on this: I have never run or played in an OD&D campaign. The earliest version of the rules I have ever used is the 1981 Basic Set designed by Tom Moldvay, and that only briefly. I originally came to D&D by way of the 1983 BECMI rules designed by Frank Mentzer before moving onto a weird hybrid of 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D.

(BECMI stands for Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal — the names of the five boxed sets comprising the rule system. This edition of D&D was largely identical to the Rules Cyclopedia published in 1991.)

I do not, unfortunately, own an original copy of the OD&D set. But I do own the PDFs available through RPGNow, which replicate the 6th printing of the rules. (Earlier versions of these rules cannot be reproduced legally because the Tolkien Estate successfully sued TSR for using hobbits and ents in the rulebooks.) So a couple weeks ago I printed them out and started reading.

Of course, even though I’ve never played OD&D, I’ve learned quite a bit of it here and there over the course of my two decades in the hobby. So it’s not like I was coming to it with completely fresh eyes.

But this was, in fact, the first time I’ve actually read these rules cover-to-cover. (Actually, I’ve read them several times now.) And I’ve found the process thought-provoking in many ways. So I’ve decided to start a new series of essays, of which this is the first: Reactions to OD&D.

I’m not entirely sure where these essays will take me. I have a few notes laid out, so I know that some of them will deal with history; and some of them will deal with game design; and some of them will deal with tradition. Some of it will be merely reflective and some of it will be practical.

But I will utter a word of caution before I begin: One thing these essays will not be is a pleasant romp down a nostalgia-filled lane. The OD&D rules are, in many ways, remarkable and fascinating historical documents. But — while I am looking forward to my one-shot as an entertaining and quirky evening of throwback fun — there’s no way that I would spend any notable length of time playing this game.

So if you’re grognard, I warn you to beware: I am going to be critical of OD&D’s flaws… of which there are many.

(For those who are curious: I’ll be using The Caverns of Thracia, one of the classic adventures from the Judges Guild, for the one-shot.)

REACTIONS TO OD&D
Reactions to OD&D
The Ur-Game
Thinking About Morale
Ranged Combat
Prime Requisites
The Scope of the Game
OD&D Character Sheets
Gygaxian Rulebooks
Experience Points
Encounter Probability
Turns, Rounds, and Segments… Oh My!
Wandering Adventures
Interesting Facts About the Blood Shield Bandits
Vampires as Lycanthropes
Turn Undead in Blackmoor
The Arnesonian Dungeon
Arneson’s Machines
Hex-Clearing Procedures
Gods & Clerics
Influence of Little Rules

ADDITIONAL READING
OD&D in the Caverns of Thracia
Running Castle Blackmoor
Character Creation in 5 Sentences: D&D 1974

I’m in the early stages of prepping a new fantasy campaign. One of the specific design goals is that the campaign needs to be able to handle a variable group of players. That means, for the sake of verisimilitude, it’s important that — at the end of any gaming session — the PCs are no longer in the dungeon. (In other words, they need to be in a position where it’s easy to explain why — since player X can’t attend the session — character X isn’t part of the adventure next week.)

Towards that end, I am instituting a simple rule of table etiquette. There are three ways in which a gaming session can end:

(1) The players can, at any time of their choosing, make their way out of the dungeon and end the session for the evening.

(2) As the GM I can, at any time of my choosing, announce that we will stop playing in 1 hour. If, by the end of the hour, the PCs have made their way out of the dungeon, the session ends normalyly.

(3) But if they have not made their way out of the dungeon (for whatever reason), then either (a) everyone in the session can immediately commit to another session within 7 days; or (b) the Escaping the Dungeon! tables will be used to determine their fate.

The Escaping the Dungeon! tables were designed, with a tip of the hat to Jeff Reints for the inspiration, to be used determine the fate of PCs left in the dungeon at the end of the session. At the GM’s discretion they may also be used for some wilderness situations. (For most wilderness situations, I anticipate being able to use PBeM to resolve the journey back to the home base of the PCs.)

ESCAPE CHECK

CHALLENGE ADJUSTMENT: Adjust the chance of escape by +/- 10% multipled by the difference between the average CR of the local opposition and the level of the character. (For example, a 5th-level character facing CR 7 opponents would suffer a -20% adjustment on their chance of escape. In a classic dungeon scenario, you can make this adjustment using the dungeon level — a 5th-level character on the 3rd level of the dungeon would enjoy a +20% adjustment on their chance of escape, for example.)

SMALL COMPLEX: If the characters are attempting to escape from a lair or other small complex, increase the chance of success by 10% to 20%.

MAKING THE CHECK: An escape check is made for each character separately. There is always a minimum 1% chance of escape or failure. On a failed escape check, roll 1d10 on the Failed Escape table below.

FAILED ESCAPES

DESIGN NOTES

The primary goal of this little sub-system is not to punish the players. However, it is designed to provide them with a meaningful motivation to leave the dungeon in a timely fashion. Failing that, it is designed to provide interesting consequences that (frequently) can be followed up on subsequent forays into the dungeon — whether that’s recovering lost equipment, ransoming a lost comrade, or the like.

The actual chance of outright dying, you’ll note is quite slim. If the escape check is the standard value of 50% (and it will usually be higher), then your chance of dying is only about 10% vs. a 55%

The results of the Failed Escapes table, it should be noted, are meant to be flexibly interpreted by the GM given the exigencies of the specific situation in which the PCs find themselves at the end of the session. The creation of a short fable explaining the events leading to their escape (or lack thereof) — perhaps even one garnering them with some bit of lore or insight into the dungeon complex — would not be out of place.

And, of course, the table is specifically designed to be used in a very specific type of old school inspired campaigning. In most of my campaigns I have no problem hanging out the reliable “To Be Continued” placard.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

PRELUDE 2D: THE AWAKENING – TITHENMAMIWEN

PBeM – March 5th thru 9th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Prelude 2: The Awakening – Tee

In which our heroine elf awakes to a welcome (yet surprising) homecoming, only to discover that things are not always what they seem and the past is not so easily forgotten (even if it has been completely misplaced)…

When I pitched In the Shadow of the Spire to my prospective players the campaign didn’t even have a name yet. Actually, it didn’t have much form at all. I only knew two things:

(1) I had pre-ordered Ptolus and it would be arriving within a couple of weeks. I already knew enough about the city to know that I wanted to run an urban-based campaign there, but I (obviously) didn’t know a lot of the details.

(2) I wanted to incorporate the Banewarrens adventure into the campaign. I first read this adventure back in 2002 and I’d been itching to run it ever since. In some ways I had actually started laying the groundwork for this campaign way back then, when the players in my original 3rd Edition campaign passed through the port city of Ptolus and saw the Spire for the first time:

(That’s a player handout modified from a DM-only reference image.)

As I started wading through the Ptolus tome and the campaign began to take shape in my mind’s eye, one of the things I realized early on was that the PCs shouldn’t be from Ptolus itself. It would be more interesting, in my opinion, if their characters were exploring the city with the same fresh eyes that they were. It would also be more disorienting (for both players and PCs) to awake with amnesia in completely unfamiliar surroundings.

Those of you who have been reading the campaign journal from the start, however, may have noticed a slight incongruity here: Tithenmamiwen is from Ptolus.

No plan, however, survives contact with the enemy… or, in this case, the players.

Actually, though, trying to push this one off on the player is a bit disingenuous on my part. Tee’s player simply came to me with the idea of playing an elf. The character concept she was discussing in general terms, however, struck off all kinds of resonance for me with the work I had just recently put into fleshing out some of the elven communities in Ptolus itself.

Taking a step back, I realized that it made more sense to tap into this pre-existing development work and use it as part of Tee’s background. I also came to the conclusion that variety is the spice of life: Yes, it was interesting to have both players and PCs coming to the city with fresh eyes. And, yes, that lack of familiarity was disorienting.

But there was also something inherently interesting in the broken homecoming experienced by Tee: She had left home for reasons she didn’t fully understand and now she was back again for reasons she didn’t even know. There was a disoriention to be found there as well, and a useful contrapuntal beat to the other characters.

This decision also had some long-term consequences that I hadn’t fully considered. For example, Tee had a greater sense of ownership in the city than the other PCs… which meant that her reputation was important to her from Day One. She needed to be able to live there when all was said and done, which meant that she helped to keep some of the more radical impulses of the group in check.